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Carolyn rated a book really liked it Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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May 04, 2013 02:00PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn has read Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
May 04, 2013 01:57PM · 13 likes · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — Telegraph Avenue by Michael Chabon <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn rated a book really liked it If The Dead Rise Not (Bernard Gunther, #6) by Philip Kerr	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Another very good entry in Philip Kerr's series of historical crime novels featuring Bernie Gunther, this wonderfully vivid, achingly romantic novel connects events in Bernie's life that take place in Germany in 1934 with events that occur in Havana ...more
Sep 21, 2012 10:29PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of If The Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — If The Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn rated a book really liked it On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
McEwan is an absolute master at laying the psychologies of his characters bare, and as a result, I often find myself sympathizing with words spoken or actions taken by his characters that might otherwise seem nigh unforgivable. In this sense, I think ...more
Jan 01, 2012 06:29PM · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn wants to read A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther, #5) by Philip Kerr	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jan 01, 2012 05:51PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn rated a book really liked it The One from the Other (Bernard Gunther, #4) by Philip Kerr	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
Jan 01, 2012 05:51PM · like · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The One from the Other by Philip Kerr. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The One from the Other by Philip Kerr <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn rated a book really liked it When Will There Be Good News? (Jackson Brodie, #3) by Kate Atkinson	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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Carolyn rated a book really liked it A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1) by George R.R. Martin	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
I don't read much fantasy. Most of the admittedly little I attempt to read just doesn't hold my interest, and when it involves clear forces of good fighting clear forces of evil, my brain always makes unfavorable comparisons between it and Tolkien's ...more
Jul 31, 2011 02:00PM · 2 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">
Carolyn rated a book really liked it The Troubled Man (Kurt Wallander, #10) by Henning Mankell	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
This is not a book with which to begin your relationship with Henning Mankell's moody detective, Kurt Wallander. This is a novel purely for those who have formed a connection with Wallander over the many preceding novels. I find Wallander one of the ...more
Apr 25, 2011 09:53AM · 8 likes · like · see review · preview book See a Problem? We’d love your help. Let us know what’s wrong with this preview of The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell. Problem: Details (if other): Thanks for telling us about the problem. Not the book you’re looking for? Preview — The Troubled Man by Henning Mankell <iframe id="wrongBookKindlePreviewScreen">

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Telegraph Avenue
by Michael Chabon

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My first experience of Berkeley was a dream, a stolen week or so when, on one hand, I was trying to convince myself I could make it work with this person I loved, while simultaneously breaking apart inside under the emotional strain of pretending to My first experience of Berkeley was a dream, a stolen week or so when, on one hand, I was trying to convince myself I could make it work with this person I loved, while simultaneously breaking apart inside under the emotional strain of pretending to be the person I believed she (and my family and society and the world) wanted me to be. Unable to come clean, to admit to myself or to her or to anyone else in my life what I was feeling, I instead let things fall apart in a way that was spectacularly painful for numerous people. But for snatches here and there during that week, those moments when I deluded myself into thinking that things might work, my life felt magical, and everything was wondrous and strange; not least of all Berkeley itself, the bustle of life along Telegraph Avenue fascinating to me, visiting, as I was, from the strip-mall-plastered cultural barrens of the San Fernando Valley.

Now, today, I live in Berkeley. I’m far more satisfied here than I ever was in Reseda or Van Nuys, but exposure has made the neighborhood, for all its beauty that I am grateful for each time I go for a stroll, mundane.

Michael Chabon is a novelist whose works, for me, have veered between the mundane and the transcendent. I doubt that if I were to first read The Mysteries of Pittsburgh today, it would resonate with me much at all, but it was the perfect book for that frightening first year out of college; the sense that Art Bechstein’s life is full of magical possibilities seeped out of the pages and into my own existence. And The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is one of the most shimmering, revelatory works I’ve ever read. Meanwhile, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, despite its alternate-history setting and its unlikely mixture of cultural influences and literary styles, was intellectually engaging to me but never got my emotions off the ground. As I ventured into his latest novel, Telegraph Avenue, I wondered if the landscape of its pages would more closely resemble the real one I lived in day in and day out, or the magical one in my painful, dreamlike memories.

Telegraph Avenue is the story of two deeply intertwined families. Gwen Shanks and Archy Stallings make up one of those families. Stallings is a wonderfully fitting last name for Archy, who has a habit of postponing every major decision life demands he make. (There are echoes here of Grady Tripp, the writer and professor at the center of Chabon’s novel Wonder Boys. Both men are reluctant to confront the realities of their lives, which put increasing pressure on them to become more reliable and responsible.) Gwen is a midwife, one half of the Berkeley Birth Partners, and is also pregnant, which is just one of the many factors encouraging Archy to re-evaluate his personal behavior and his professional situation. That situation involves running Brokeland Records, a beloved but not especially profitable independent record store. Gwen’s fellow Berkeley Birth Partner is Aviva Roth-Jaffe, while Archy runs Brokeland with Gwen’s husband, Nat Jaffe. Both of these longstanding partnerships are shaken up in the summer of 2004, as Brokeland is threatened by plans to build a chain megamall in the area, and Gwen has a heated confrontation with a racist doctor who then takes actions which could result in the Berkeley Birth Partners losing their license to practice.

Complicating matters between the families even further, Archy’s teenage son Titus, with whom he’s had no contact, arrives in their lives, and Julius “Julie” Jaffe, Aviva and Nat’s teenage son, becomes smitten with him.

For the novel’s first 400 pages or so, I felt that the East Bay in its pages was the one right outside my window, that one I set foot in every day. I grew to love its characters and admired how Chabon explored issues of race and privilege between them in ways that was always compassionate and humanizing for all involved. At one point, Gwen vents,
“I’m sick of having no power in this game, Aviva…Of always fighting against feeling useless. Of how sad it makes me feel that sisters won’t go to a midwife. Also, frankly, I’m sick of overprivileged, neurotic, crazy-ass (white ladies) with their white-lady latex allergies, and their white-lady OCD birth plans, and that bullshit white-lady machismo competition thing they all get into.”

By the time Gwen goes on this tear, we’ve spent enough time with her to not be taken aback or alienated by her anger, but to understand that of course she would feel this way. We also understand why Aviva is hurt by Gwen’s words.

But in its final stretch, Telegraph Avenue becomes tinged with transcendence. Like the zeppelin that represents the Dogpile corporation which seeks to build that megamall that threatens Brokeland’s existence taking flight, Telegraph Avenue finally found some emotional lift. It is a novel that understands that things don’t always work out the way we want them to, but that we usually find a way to carry on and to take our pain with us. In its closing passages, my heart was pierced by the evolving relationship of Julie and Titus, a complex and in many ways unsatisfactory love that endures in a way that is both tremendously limited and tremendously liberating. As I finished the novel, I realized that the dreamlike East Bay of that stolen week and the East Bay of my day-to-day life are, of course, one and the same. ...more

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Telegraph Avenue
by Michael Chabon

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If The Dead Rise Not (Bernard Gunther, #6)
by Philip Kerr

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Another very good entry in Philip Kerr's series of historical crime novels featuring Bernie Gunther, this wonderfully vivid, achingly romantic novel connects events in Bernie's life that take place in Germany in 1934 with events that occur in Havana ...more

Carolyn rated a book really liked it

On Chesil Beach
by Ian McEwan

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McEwan is an absolute master at laying the psychologies of his characters bare, and as a result, I often find myself sympathizing with words spoken or actions taken by his characters that might otherwise seem nigh unforgivable. In this sense, I think ...more

Carolyn wants to read

A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther, #5)
by Philip Kerr

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The One from the Other (Bernard Gunther, #4)
by Philip Kerr

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When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

When Will There Be Good News? (Jackson Brodie, #3)
by Kate Atkinson

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A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, #1)
by George R.R. Martin

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I don't read much fantasy. Most of the admittedly little I attempt to read just doesn't hold my interest, and when it involves clear forces of good fighting clear forces of evil, my brain always makes unfavorable comparisons between it and Tolkien's I don't read much fantasy. Most of the admittedly little I attempt to read just doesn't hold my interest, and when it involves clear forces of good fighting clear forces of evil, my brain always makes unfavorable comparisons between it and Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, which captured my heart at an early age. But, compelled both by the raves of a number of friends and by the tremendous praise the HBO adaptation has received, I decided to give Martin's A Game of Thrones saga a chance, and I'm glad I did.

While a story like The Lord of the Rings is a heroic quest in the sense dating back through thousands of years of oral tradition, A Game of Thrones is more like, as someone described it to me, The Sopranos with swords. Here, we have not just clear forces of good and evil, but complex shades of gray, along with political machinations and betrayals so shocking they twisted my stomach in knots. Characters are vivid, complicated and believable. By the end of this volume, things are such a glorious political mess that I have absolutely no idea of where things are going to go from here, no do I know how I want them to go. My feelings as a reader are torn, though there are a few characters I hate with the fire of a thousand suns and who I look forward to seeing reach a spectacular comeuppance at some point down the line. Thus far, though, the series is delightfully unpredictable, so I have no way of knowing if such a comeuppance awaits those most despicable characters, and given that Martin has already demonstrated a willingness to kill off likable characters that rivals that of the television show 24, I'm sure that whatever victories the forces of relative good may achieve in the future will come at a painful cost. It's that unpredictability, that sense of life and death and chaos with which the tale is imbued, that made it captivating to me. While seven more hefty volumes seems a long and daunting road and I'm not sure if Martin can sustain my interest for quite that long (if he even lives to finish the tale), I am, for the moment, hooked. ...more

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The Troubled Man (Kurt Wallander, #10)
by Henning Mankell

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This is not a book with which to begin your relationship with Henning Mankell's moody detective, Kurt Wallander. This is a novel purely for those who have formed a connection with Wallander over the many preceding novels. I find Wallander one of the ...more