Recently read books

I have a couple of books to report on, all very different from each other but all very good.

RAYLAN by Elmore Leonard
If you are familiar with the TV series "Justified" you will recognize the name Raylan.  Played by the incredibly hot Timothy Oliphant, the character Raylan Givens is a US Marshall currently working in Harlan County, Kentucky.  As US Marshalls usually do, Raylan is always in pursuit of some criminal or sniffing out criminal activity.  Raylan is a crack shot, sometimes works a little outside the boundaries of the rule book.  There are a couple plot lines working here so the book is quick and jumpy and greatly entertaining, especially if you like Leonard to begin with.  Raylan is a wise-cracking guy but he also speaks with a sincere economy of words.  The book is one of Leonard's best, in my opinion, not the least because I imagined Oliphant on every page, not a bad thing at all.

YOU KNOW WHEN THE MEN ARE GONE by Siobhan Fallon is a collection of short stories about women and men stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas.  Most of the stories deal with the women and families left behind when the men are off to war in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Fallon lived on the base for a time as an army wife and her first-hand knowledge of that experience is obvious in the emotion and detail she brings to her characters.  Each story seems so real, they could almost be small biographies of every-day people just trying to slog through the mire.  If you like short stories, check this collection out.  I am more of a novel person but Fallon was interviewed on NPR and that interview led me to the book.  Sad, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes infuriating and now and then hopeful, these are meaningful stories.

THE GRIEF OF OTHERS by Leah Hager Cohen is a beautiful, almost lyrical novel about grief, hope and healing.   At the heart of the story is the Ryrie family, dealing with a tragedy no one wants to talk about but which is present every single day.  Enter a couple of other characters who connect in accidental ways.  Every character is deeply flawed in emotional ways and each one is desparate to hide within that emotional armor, trying to wrap themselves in solitude in order to avoid pain.  It sounds depressing but it isn't.  The climb out of the pain is slow for each person but you, the reader, have hope that they will all succeed.  For each time you want to yell at one of them, there are two times you want to hold them.  Cohen's writing is sometimes gut-piercing but never untrue, never maudlin and always compelling.

THE FEAR INDEX by Robert Harris is a cross between a sci-fi book and a crime novel.  It's a fast-paced book of intrigue and suspense (that sounds like a back-of-the-book blurb) about artificial intelligence and hedge funds.  Now, to be honest, those two subjects don't really seem to go together but Harris has created Alex Hoffman, a mathematical genius who invented a computer with the ability to independently analyze the stock market and make automatic trades that no human broker would be willing or able to make.  The hedge fund is wildly profitable but in a 24 hour period the computer seems to be out to destroy not only the world financial market but Alex as well. Is the computer really thinking and acting like a person?  Is it really intrinsically evil, manipulating humans with fear and determined to destroy its creator?  Will things end badly?  A good read, a great ride, even if a bit far-fetched for this non sci-fi fan. But I enjoyed it anyway.

All these books and more are available for FREE!  At your local library. 

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