EDDIE'S METHOD (Michael Walsh)

Eddie's Fournier's method was simple:  "Do it until you can't do it wrong."  This mantra, drilled into author Mike Walsh's  head during his years with the Whip City Drum Corps, became the theme of his life.   Feeling like a round peg in a square hole as a young teen, Mike sought attention by rebelling in school, fighting with his older brother (a high achiever to whom he was often compared), and getting involved with questionable friends.  Despite the obvious love of his parents and extended family, something, some purpose or ambition, seemed to be missing from Mike's life.  He reminisces about his decision to approach school by ignoring homework and class participation while focusing on passing tests to achieve the necessary 70% grade to pass (since tests were worth 75% of his grade this gave him a little wiggle room).  Mike went to the same school I did, St. Mary's in Westfield, MA.  His natural intelligence became apparent when he achieved one of the highest scores in his class on the PSAT's, only to be accused by the principal of cheating since his school work did not reflect the test results.

One day an acquaintance invited Mike to try out for the Whip City Drum Corps and he made the cut, changing his life forever.  Leader Ed Fournier taught his trainees that working until you get it right was not good enough.  You needed to train and perfect your drill until there was absolutely no way that you could get it wrong.  Out of this philosophy was born a group of young men who understood that respect, humility, and a willingness to share your talents was the true road to success.  Mike was continually astounded during those first months in the Drum Corps by the level of teamwork, mutual respect, and willingness to work hard, all fostered by Eddie.  The group won 17 consecutive Northeast Championships, with Mike himself winning several individual awards during his years of involvement with the Corps.

Eddie's Method is the story of a kid who needed a push to get on the right track and found it through a spur-of-the-moment decision to try something new.  He even went on to train the Whip City Drum Corps after he served in the U.S. Army, and his two younger brothers participated in the Corps as well.  There were a lot of losses and heartbreak along the way, with the untimely deaths of several people close to Mike and his older brother's breakdown, but he continued to live by Eddie's advice.  This would make a great book for young adults!  I admire Mike for writing down his story and sharing it with the world.

WHAT ALICE FORGOT (Liane Moriarty)

One of my absolute favorite Christmas movies is "Comfort & Joy," starring Nancy McKeon and Steve Eckholdt.  Jane Berry (McKeon), an ambitious, materialistic young professional woman, skids and hits a light pole while on the way to her boss's suburban Christmas party, knocking herself out.  She regains consciousness and discovers that it is now 10 years later and she is a fashion-challenged housewife and mother of two, married to a man (Eckholdt) who runs a homeless shelter.  She also has no memory of the past 10 years.  I was very excited to discover that Moriarty's "What Alice Forgot" has a similar theme.

In 2008 Alice Love is injured during a spin class at a her local gym, hitting her head as the result of a fall.  She wakes up thinking it is 1998 and discovers that she is ten years older, thinner, the mother of three children that she can't recall ever seeing, and separated from her beloved husband and soul mate, Nick.  Alice is shocked to discover the woman that she has become and she isn't sure that she likes herself.  She also has no memory of what events led to the breakup of her marriage or how her relationships with her sister, mother, and friends have evolved over the past 10 years.  Apparently a mysterious woman named Gina was her best friend until her death a year before and Nick has become a sarcastic workaholic.  As she works to regain her memory Alice also struggles to understand how and why her life and marriage have changed so drastically from the dreams she held in 1998.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could revisit our younger selves and experience again the dreams and ambitions and hopes for the future that defined us then?  For Alice, her amnesia is a gift that enables her to  re-evaluate her life and the decisions that led to where she is in 2008.  Having to get to know everyone, either as their 10-years-older selves or, as in the case of her children, from scratch, to peel away the layers of time and try to make sense of where everything stands today, to be dropped suddenly 10 years into your own future...what an idea!  Moriarty makes it work.  You'll love watching Alice's past unfold before her eyes and enjoy the inevitable comic moments that come with forgetting 10 years of a life and the technology that had developed during that time (what is "texting" and why is everyone driving vehicles as big as tanks?).  I waited a few weeks to get this book because a book club was reading it.  It was well worth the wait!

GONE GIRL (Gillian Flynn)

When I started reading the eagerly anticipated "Gone Girl" (after working my way through a hold list of 14 people!) I was a little disappointed.  While it seemed like a pretty good run-of-the-mill thriller (an ideal couple is set to celebrate their 5th wedding anniversary when the wife mysteriously disappears without a trace and mounting evidence naturally points towards the husband), I didn't see the WOW factor that everyone is talking about.  Then I got to the middle of the book and things started to become more complicated.  Flynn is an absolute master of character and plot development.  I can just imagine the notes and graphs she must have had to keep track of psychological action in this novel!

Amy Elliott Dunne and her husband Nick started out as a beautiful couple with a seemingly charmed life.  Amy  is a 38-year-old New York trust-fund girl, the daughter of two renowned psychologists who have earned a fortune with their  "Amazing Amy" children's book series by using events in their daughter's life as plot catalysts.  Nick is 4 years younger than Amy, the handsome son of divorced parents, a writer who is downsized from his magazine job just around the time that Amy loses HER job.  At the same time Nick's mother is diagnosed with cancer and the couple decides to make the move to Nick's Missouri hometown to help care for his mother and his father, who suffers from Alzheimer's.  After Amy purchases a business,  a bar called "The Bar,"  for Nick and his twin sister Margo (known as "Go")  with part of her trust fund, her parents request a loan of $650,000 (essentially all of her remaining money) to avoid financial ruin after some bad investments threaten to ruin them.

Each year on their July 5 anniversary Amy presents Nick with a complicated quiz composed of a series of clues that will ultimately lead him to his gift, a tradition that has become increasingly annoying to Nick with each passing year.  Before Nick has the chance to even buy Amy's 5-year gift, he receives a call from a neighbor in his half-deserted McMansion neighborhood (they rent) that the Dunne's front door is wide open and Amy's indoor cat is outside on the stoop.  When Nick arrives home he discovers that Amy is missing and there are signs of some sort of struggle in the living room.

The story alternates between Nick's experiences in the aftermath of Amy's disappearance and Amy's diary entries for the past 5 years, which detail an initially loving partnership that has deteriorated into a stressful and complicated love-hate relationship punctuated by fear on Amy's part.  As Nick begins following Amy's anniversary clues the reader comes to the realization that all is not as it seems.  The police are beginning to doubt Nick's devotion to his wife, the press have convicted him as a wife-killer, and he is being hounded mercilessly from all sides.  Even Amy's loving parents begin to doubt his sincerity.

I can't say any more about how the story unfolds without ruining the plot for you.  My advice is to read it.  The complicated, multi-layered plot and the constantly evolving characters will shock and delight you.  Might I say that you will be well and truly thrilled by it all?

JUST SOME OLD MAN (Michael Walsh)

Reading Just Some Old Man was a unique experience for me.  Author Michael Walsh is my cousin, the second son of my mother's only brother, and we recently reconnected on Facebook.  

Mike's coming-of-age story probably doesn't sound all that unusual.  Feeling out of place and overshadowed by his three brothers, he internalizes his pain and experiences a series of events that shape his life and attitudes.  In some respects it almost seems as if Mike's life has been defined by death.  In 1961, at age 13, he witnesses the death of 2 six-month-old infants from smoke inhalation during a neighborhood house fire and wonders if he could have done something to save them.  Over the years he loses three close friends to murder.  Mike himself has had several personal brushes with death, each time emerging confused, yet relatively unscathed, and asking himself, "Why am I still here?"  From a difficult stint in the army through an unhappy early marriage, Mike continued to ask, "Why am I still here?" until, at the age of 29, he was nearly felled by a life-threatening cardiac virus.  This short book is the story of Mike's journey towards becoming the man he is today, of the decisions and choices that led him to finally understand why he is still here and how love and family can transform a life into something precious.  It takes courage to be so frank about such deeply personal issues, to allow the world to read your  private diary.  I am grateful that I have the opportunity to know my cousin better.  He is an ordinary man with an inspirational story to tell.  I would recommend that you read it if you have the opportunity!

MARK OF THE LION (Suzanne Arruda)

I am not a fan of big game.  I have never enjoyed circuses or zoos and I just hate it when I come across one of those nature shows where lions hunt down innocent antelope and tear them to shreds before our eyes.  Once, while riding the commuter bus to Hartford, I looked up from my book and was stunned to see a TIGER looking back at me from the circus truck in the next lane.  Our eyes actually met!  That's an experience that has stayed with me all my life.  Predators scare me.  I wonder if that tiger remembers the look on my face?

That being said, I have a definite love/hate relationship with this book.  You already know what I hated: the throat-tearing, flesh-eating, growling lions and hyenas, the stampeding, bone crushing elephants and rhinos  AND the fact that humans pursue them for sport.  The thing about Arruda's novel, though, is that the writing is so compelling that I could, for the most part, overlook the distasteful aspects of life and tourism in Kenya.  Set in 1919, Arruda incorporates many subtle but detailed references to the fashion, manners, and attitudes of the post WWI era that sets the stage for development of relationships among the various characters.  Her heroine, Jade Del Cameron, is a modern woman on a quest to fulfill her dead love David Worthy's last request: to find his half brother, who is most probably in Kenya.  Jade suffers a bit from PTSD after her experiences driving an ambulance in France during the war, but she is a self-sufficient, accomplished sharp-shooting mechanic who is also a talented writer and exotically beautiful.  She arrives in Kenya as a reporter for The Traveler, combining her work assignment with her quest to locate the mysterious "Abel" Worthy and to unravel the mystery behind the death of David's father, Gil Worthy, a few years before.  During the course of the story, Jade manages to divert a charging rhino by waving a blanket matador style, shoot an attacking hyena dead, repair a carburetor, cut a friend's hair into a modern bob with a pocket knife, and solve the problem of a dry radiator by suggesting that the men in the safari party "relieve themselves" into the radiator in order to avert a dangerous and time-consuming trip to the river for water.  Enough said!

No matter how distasteful I found the details of life among the wild beasts of Africa and the safari, I cannot deny the absolute beauty of the African wilderness.  Arruda brings the continent to life with her descriptions of Mount Kilimanjaro, lions lurking in the high grasses, the blue African sky, and more.  I wouldn't even attempt to do justice to her verbal illustrations of the beauty of this untamed land and its people or to her character development, which is intriguing as well.  I've said before that one of the marks of a truly good book is that it stays with you after you have finished the last page.  That is certainly true here.  I feel as if I have been on safari myself and the memories will stay with me for a while.

A VIOLET SEASON (Kathy Leonard Czepiel)

If you ever have the opportunity to travel through time, take my advice and don't choose to go back to 1898 as a housewife in a financially challenged household!  Ida Fletcher, mother, wife, wet nurse, worker on the family violet farm,and household drudge is, despite her sad lot in life, a wonderful character.  She is intelligent and dedicated to her family  and home in the Rhinebeck area of New York state.  Ida's husband, Frank, is the black sheep of the Fletcher family, having stolen and lost his share of the family "fortune" as a young man.  As a result, he lives with Ida and his children as an employee in a tenant rental on the family violet farm while his two brothers occupy stately homes and shower the best things in life on their families.  The deal is that Frank can take his rightful place in their lives when he repays his debt.  Ida works as a wet nurse to help make ends meet.

The reader garners little insight into Frank and his motivations as the story is told from Ida's and her daughter Alice's point of views.  What we do know is that he is a bitter man obsessed with money to the extent that he would feel no remorse at selling his daughter or burdening his wife with an exhausting schedule of nursing and laboring on the farm, treating them as commodities rather than human beings.  Ida, isolated and without resources, finally takes matters into her own hands to save her family.

This book attracted me initially because I have a special place in my heart for violets.  My grandmother always had pots of African violets in her picture window and loved to wear purple, so I always associate the flower and the color with her.  "A Violet Season" is the story of a resourceful, hard-working woman who loves her family fiercely and is willing to sacrifice all for them.  I admire Ida and I think you will, too!