Books I've been reading lately.

"The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri. A gifted new writer. I really enjoyed her short stories "Interpreter of Maladies". This is a novel about the immigrant experience. The protagonist is the son born in America to an Indian academic and his wife.

"Evening at Five" by Gail Godwin. A rather lightweight read on a heavy topic...the death of a spouse. Had something going for it.

"The Wailing Wind" by Tony Hillerman. My usual light mystery for reading on the plane. Hillerman always delivers a satisfying story.

"The Episode" by Graham Greene. This is Greene's first novel (unpublished) that just came available for scholars about a week before we were in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown University) so when we were there Jim had it zeroxed. It became available because Norman Sherry's last volumn of the biography was finally finished. Read it on the train and also on the plane home. Not really very good and lots of overwriting and purple prose but interesting because it was Greene writing and knowing I was one of probably fewer than five people in the world who had read it.

"One Hundred Million Hearts" by Kerri Sakamoto. Most interesting read and glad to see her out with a new novel. Been quite a while since "The Electrical Field". A story about a Japanese born Canadian girl who learns (after her father dies) that he went to Japan (he was also Canadian born) to be a kamikaze and that she has a half-sister in Japan. She goes to Japan to meet this sister and learn more about her father...then the plot thickens...

"The Five People You Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom. Picked this up on the Fast Read rack in the library as I had noticed it's been on the best seller list for quite a while. Yuck...what a pile of blithering sentimental nonsense. I gave up after 50 pages but don't think it would have got much better.