Maria Daniels

Catching up on the bestsellers.

Suffer the Little Children, by Donna Leon. Delaware beach read. I only read this because other family members love the series. Disappointing - maybe because not much happened in the book. Lots of hanging around Venice, drinking coffees. Maybe that's why people like these Guido Brunetti books.

Lipstick Jihad, by Azadeh Moaveni. OK, maybe not a bestseller. This was on my husband's night table. Turns out he found it in the library, though it wasn't a library book. An Iranian expat goes back to report on liberalization under the mullahs. Four years old but still relevant, and I liked the memoir approach because it made the turmoil and factional politics real.

The Key to Rebecca, by Ken Follett. Picked this one up at the Falmouth library's book sale. Good beach read. The best spy novels have you admiring the bad guy even as he does terrible things. Afterward I revisited Follett's classic Eye of the Needle, in which the survival of Western civilization is also at stake. Loved the heroine on Storm Island - cheered when she mutilated then offed the bad guy.

The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. I am the last person on the planet to read it. Gaping plot holes and weak character development. I guess Opus Dei, potential Catholic-bashing, secret societies, sex rituals (Hieros Gamos), torture (Silas's Discipline) and Leonardo da Vinci are enough to sell a book no matter what's actually on the pages. (For some reason I don't think the Goddess stuff is what sold it.)

All Souls, by Michael MacDonald. "A family story from Southie." I picked this up at the library since it's on the high school's summer reading list. A story about growing up on welfare in South Boston in the 70s... A rough book... the author and his family were victims and perpetrators of every kind of evil... drugs, gangs, severe poverty/malnutrition, social stigma, racism, all kinds of deprivation and ignorance. It certainly made me think.