Weekend picks for book lovers
What should you read this weekend? Paste BN's picks for book lovers include the new legal thriller from John Grisham, and a history examining the way Abraham Lincoln used the press.
Gray Mountain by John Grisham; Doubleday, 384 pp.; fiction
If the comments made by John Grisham about child pornography have not convinced you he has strong opinions about what he considers to be inequities in the legal system, his novel Gray Mountain will.
Grisham said some men who have viewed pornographic images online do not deserve harsh prison sentences. He apologized, but don't expect the same response after his claims that the coal mining industry in Appalachia is corrupt.
Samantha Kofer quickly finds that out in Gray Mountain. A third-year associate in a New York firm, Samantha is sent reeling by the financial crash to the Mountain Legal Aid Clinic in Brady, Va.
Practicing law in Brady consists of helping women disentangle themselves from abusive marriages and challenging Big Coal. Samantha is adamant about avoiding the latter. But the horrors wreaked by strip mining can't be avoided. And the handsome and fearless litigator who stands up to them, Donovan Gray, can't be resisted.
Paste BN says ***½ out of four. "Events take shocking turns, characters take great risks, and lawyers take off their gloves."
Lincoln and the Power of the Press by Harold Holzer; Simon & Schuster, 768 pp.; non-fiction
Holzer colorfully details how Honest Abe skillfully managed the press of 19th-century America in his efforts to end slavery and save the Union.
Paste BN says ***½. "Mines a worthy vein in the study of Lincoln's link to modernity."
Beautiful You by Chuck Palahniuk; Doubleday, 240 pp.; fiction
Sex is taken to extremes and tweaked to outrageous lengths in this tale of Penny Harrigan, a girl off the bus from Nebraska trying to make it in a stuffy boys' club of New York law firms.
Paste BN says ***. "A smart, satirical take on misogyny, fame, the fashion industry, self-help and science."
Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free by Hector Tobar; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 320 pp; non-fiction
The author, a journalist, interviewed all the miners and their families for this three-dimensional portrait.
Paste BN says ***½ out of four. "Tobar excels by showing us that the miners, despite their heroic survival story, are still human."
Some Luck by Jane Smiley; Knopf, 416 pp.; fiction
The first installment in a new trilogy following an Iowa farm couple and their children over an entire century beginning in 1920.
Paste BN says ***½. An "auspicious beginning" to a trilogy… "a masterpiece in the making."
Contributing reviewers: Dennis Moore, Matt Damsker, Brian Truitt, Ray Locker, Kevin Nance