Book Review - The Best Mariachi

Book Review Smith, J.D.The Best Mariachi. McHenry. IL : Raven Tree Press, 2008


Gustavo wants to be a Mariachi. Gustavo wants to be the best Mariachi. He wants to wear a sombrero and a charro and play the guitar, or the trumpet or the violin. He wants everyone to clap when he plays. Unfortunately for Gustavo he can't play the violin or the guitar. He can't play anything. He is not the best mariachi in the world, he is the worst mariachi in the world! He would never get to wear a charro or a sombrero and nobody would every clap for him. One day he gets up early to sing. He can't stop singing, and he is good at singing! Everyone claps for him and he is no longer the worst mariachi in the world, he is the best mariachi in the world!

I tried reading this book to my children since they would be the best judges of whether this was a good book for their age group. I found that the book was a good read aloud book, with nice illustrations and a good moral about not giving up and trying to find your best role in life. Gustavo was an appealing character who you really wish the best for and are happy to find can do something really well. My kids let me know that the story is sticky and that there are parts that small children will remember for a long time. Weeks after reading this book my son (four) remembered that the book was called the “Best Mariachi. This book also introduces children to Mexican culture and teaches them a few Spanish words. To be honest my daughter did not like this book as much as my son did, who kind of “adopted” the book and carries it around with him. But it really seems to be easier to find books that appeal to girls than books that appeal to boys.

I would recommend this book to any children from around 4 to 7, especially little boys.

Book Review - Any Given Doomsday

Book Review: Handeland, Lori Any Given Doomsday. New York: St. Martins Press, 2008.

Word of caution here: I am not a fan of genre fiction, especially thriller fiction,and I was very surprised to hear that I was receiving this book. That being said I was pleasantly surprised to enjoy this book - at first. Liz Phoeniz is an ex-cop turned bartender who is also a psychic. She has a “sense” that her former caregiver , Ruthie needs her help. When she gets to Ruthie's house, she finds that Ruthie has been brutally murdered. Even worse, her former lover Jimmy Sanducci is the prime suspect. She soon finds out that Ruthie had special powers that Liz inherits and that she is about to be in the front lines of a battle of good versus evil, loosely based on the biblical book of revelations. Jimmy and others are also involved in this battle.

As I said I enjoyed this book at first. However the more supernatural forces that entered the picture the less I found myself enjoying this book and the more I found my belief suspended. I also found none of the characters likeable, especially not Liz and Jimmy. As I often find with genre fiction, the plot and the characters were somewhat formulaic. (Bitter ex-cops who are products of the foster care system anyone?) but I recognize for many readers that this is an appealing aspect of genre fiction. However what really lost me was the amount of gratutitous violence and later the amount of gratuitous sex. The amount of sex in the book was especially of putting . Was this a paranormal thriller or a romance novel? There was far too much genre mixing for my taste.

Readers who enjoy paranormal thrillers might enjoy this book, but as someone who does not usually read thrillers, this book seemed to be a not particularly well written representative of the genre

Book Review - Sweetsmoke

Book Review: Fuller, David. Sweetsmoke. New York : Hyperion, 2008

Sweetsmoke follows the story of the slave Cassius Howard living on his masters plantation in Virginia during the civil war. When his friend and mentor Emoline Justice is found murdered, Cassius sets out to find her murderer, hardly an easy task for a slave in Civil War Virginia. His ability as a carpenter has kept him in the favor of his Master Hoke Howard, but when he investigates his friends murder he finds out things about his master that strain their relationship.

This was a very difficult review to write as I wasn't sure what to say. I was excited to hear about this book being available. I read a lot of fiction about slaves living in the pre-antibellum south. However, when I read this book I just never connected with it. There is no doubt that this book is very well researched and the story is compelling. Nonetheless I wasn't drawn into any of the characters and I felt that sometimes the narrative jumped around quite a bit. By contrast, the next book I read was Somebody Knows my Name by Lawrence Hill, a book with a lot of similarities in subject matter butt I loved it. I think that Sweetsmoke is very well written and would recommend it to the many readers who enjoy well researched historical fiction and will really enjoy it.

Book Review Mired in the Health Care Morass

Davis, Neil. Mired in the Health Care Morass: An Alaskan Takes on America's Dysfunctional Medical System for his Uninsured Daughter. Ester Republic Press, 2008. (Book Review)

In 1994 Patricia Davis faced an increasingly common dilemma. Symptoms indicated that she should seek medical care immediately. Having just started a new job, with health insurance that didn't kick in for six more months, she was trying to put off seeing a doctor until then. Three months into this job the need to seek medical attention had become inescapable. Her diagnosis was lung cancer. She did not have insurance yet and her cancer was now a “pre-existing condition”. Now she was faced with tens of thousands of dollars in potential medical bills that she could not afford to pay. Enter her father, Neil Davis, who offered to pay her bills to the best of his ability.

It didn't take Davis long to notice huge discrepancies in the billing. Thus began his education on medical billing practices in the United States. He discovered that uninsured patients are billed fees that are astronomically higher than the fees the paid by insurance companies on behalf of insured patients and by Medicaid on behalf of Medicaid recipients. This is to cover expenses that have not been paid either by indigent patients or by ordinary middle class patients who cannot cover their uninsured expenses. The many charts and statistics he uses to illustrate his findings can be hard to understand at times, but believe it or not they accurately illustrate his point that the complexity of the American system creates expense. He skewers some fondly held myths about the U.S. Health care system and shines light on the health care systems in other nations. He also gives his prescription for how the U.S. Health care system can be changed.

Neil Davis has experiences in being a consumer of health care that most of us never hope to have, but which will become increasingly commonplace as the health care becomes increasingly broken. His answers to the health care crises (universal, uniform payments, distributed to patients regardless of ability to pay, regulation of drug companies) are well thought out and do not come from a place of a particular political ideology but instead from his own experiences and research. His book is well researched and a convincing call to radically overhaul the American health care system from someone who has experienced the worst that the American health care system has to offer.

Book Review "The Translator" by Daoud Hari

Book Review
Hari, Daoud. The Translator New York: Random House Publishing Group, 2008.

“I bring the stories to you because I know that most people want others to have good lives, and, when they understand the situation, they will do what they can to steer the world back to kindness” writes Daoud Hari at the beginning of his new memoir The Translator. Most of us in North America have only a vague idea about the troubles in the western Sudanese region known as Dafur, and even those of us who are reasonably knowledgeable about the situation there cannot even begin to imagine the levels of the atrocities there. This allows Americans to be complacent about the situation in Dafur and fail to respond with the help that is so clearly needed.

The deterioration of the climate in Sudan and subsequent famines during the eighties and nineties led to a worsening of relations between Arabs and the indigenous Fur and Zaghawa. In April of 2003, thirty three rebel land cruisers attacked a government military base. In retaliation President Bashir began a program of systemic genocide by the Arab government forces against the Zaghawa majority. Daoud Hari watched the harrowing destruction of his own village. Heartbroken at the deaths of friends and family members and armed with high school English and some key telephone numbers, Hari offered his services to western journalists so that they would have no reason not to come and get the story out about what is happening in Dafur. In the process he put his life on the line over and over again so that western journalists could get a realistic picture of how the people of Dafur have suffered. In the end he was imprisoned and tortured along with American journalist Paul Salopek, with his life being spared only through the intervention of Americans who were helped by him in the past.

Hari's description of the violence is harrowing and heartbreaking. This makes it impossible for the reader to look away and ignore what they have read. His courage and determination that one person can make a difference should be and inspiration to everyone. This is an important book that should be read and talked about as much as possible. I will definitely recommend this book to my friends.

Book Review - The Story of Forgetting by Stefan Merrill Block

Book Review Block, Stefan Merrill. The Story of Forgetting. New York: Random House, 2008


“Once, I fell in love with everything” writes Stefan Merrill Block at the beginning of his first novel The Story of Forgetting. With this one sentence I was hooked. This book tells the stories of Abel Haggard, a elderly hermit who is stuck in the past and Seth Waller, a lonely and precocious 15 year old whose mother is afflicted with a rare and inherited form of early onset Alzheimer's disease. As the stories of Abel Haggard become more inextricably linked, it seems at first as if the only thing these two characters have in common is a memory of stories of a fantastical land called Isidora, which are interwoven throughout the book.

Seth Waller is an intelligent and sensitive teenager living in suburban Austin, who is rejected by his peers. It does not help at all that his mother is becoming increasingly forgetful and absentminded. After his mother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease he conducts an “empirical investigation” to determine the source of his mothers affliction as his mothers background is shrouded in mystery. Abel Haggard is a hermit who is becoming increasingly mired in the past, especially the past with his brother and his brothers wife with whom he is in love and their daughter whom he claims as his own. He lives on his broken down family farm on the outskirts of ever encroaching suburban sprawl on the outskirts of Dallas.

Blocks prose is very lyrical and at times almost reads like poetry. The narrative flows along very smoothly and Block does an excellent job of blending all the disparate elements (Abel's story, Seth's story, Seth's “empirical investigation” and the Isidora story) and I though the themes of the Isidora story mirrored perfectly the state of mind in the main narrative at the time. I also felt the Block dealt sensitively with the motivations and feelings of his characters, whether dealing with the emotional baggage of having a familial form of a debilitating disease such as the type of Alzheimer's disease which afflicts Seth's mother which affects half of all descendants of its carriers in the prime of life or dealing with saving the family home in the face of increasing suburban sprawl. I have not read a book which dealt so well with the issue of trying to live while literally living under the threat of what must feel like a genetic time bomb, which may or may not cut short the prime of one's own life or that of one's own children.


In short, I felt that the Story of Forgetting was an excellent debut and I would be very interested in reading more from this young author.

Note: This review is based on the Advanced Reader's Edition.