February Book Report (late again)

1. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwen. Beautifully written, but sad and haunting.

2. True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa Michael Finkel was a reporter working for the New York Times Magazine when it was revealed that a story he wrote about the African chocolate trade contained misrepresentations (he combined multiple interviews and details to create a fictional boy that he "profiled", including providing fake photos). He was sacked. Right around this time, he was contacted by an Oregon reporter who told him that a man accused of murdering his wife and three kids had been hiding out in Mexico using Finkel's name. Finkel draws parallels between his own journalistic deception and the lies spun out by the defendant (who by then was facing capital murder charges). Finkel befriended the defendant, and so there are shades of the Joe McGinniss-style dilemma of a writer getting too close to the story. To Finkel's credit, he doesn't spare himself, and he used the experience to help figure out traits of his own personality.

3. My Father's War by Julia Collins. I stumbled over this book while looking for a completely differene one. We hear a lot of grandiose stuff about the Greatest Generations -- and it's true: that generation suffered and triumphed over World War II, changing America (and the world) forever. But what makes this book so interesting is that it gives us a glimpse of the toll that those achievements took on the ordinary men and women who were part of the Great Generation -- and the price paid by their children. Collins' father was drafted while a student at Yale. He fought in the Japanese theater, including the brutal fighting on Okinawa. His wartime experiences affected him profoundly, and Collins weaves together his memories of the war with her memories of growing up as the daughter of two deeply-troubled parents. Her father suffered from what would now be diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder, but forty years ago, no one had ever heard of that or knew what to do. Especially compelling when you relate it to all of the Iraq veterans out there.

4. Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach. I enjoyed Roach's earlier book but for some reason, didn't finish this one. The topic was interesting -- an examination of a random assortment of phenomena pertaining to life after death, including the doctor who weighed terminal patients at the moment of death to determine if a sudden drop of weight indicated the departure of a soul. For some reason, I found it too bogged down in detail to get sucked in.

As always, feel free to recommend some recent good books you've read in the comments -- I'm always looking for new stuff to read.