The Kiko's House Book Club

Joan Didion and John Gregory Dunne at their New York City
apartment in 2000. Writes Didion of Dunne her her new book:
"We were each the person the other trusted."

Will the June meeting of the Kiko’s House Book Club come to order. Thank you.

We have for your perusing pleasure six books -- evenly divided between fiction and non-fiction -- that were recommended by visitors to Kiko’s House, including one who sends his pick from Java, as well as picks from Yours Truly. Books marked with an asterisk (*) are available in paperback.

Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam
By Mark Bowden (Atlantic Monthly Press, 2006)

This terrific new book by the author of "Blackhawk Down" is a timely opportunity
to re-examine the 1979 American Embassy siege and 444-day hostage crisis in Iran from the fall of the Shah through to the release of the hostages and election of Ronald Reagan.

So has the U.S. learned any lessons from those agonizing events and perchance have they been applied in Iraq? Or in the ongoing showdown with Iran? The answer is a resounding "no."

The Lost Painting
By Jonathan Harr (Random House, 2005)

This sweet little book is the story of art history student Francesca Cappelletti's journey to find "The Taking of Christ," painted by Caravaggio, the 16th century Italian baroque master, which had gone missing in the late 19th century. It is not until Cappelletti meets Sergio Benedetti, an art restorer working in Ireland, that she finally manages to assemble all the pieces of this intriguing puzzle.

One complaint: Astoundingly, the book does not include a photo of the painting itself, although the endpapers include blurry details from it.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers
By Paul Hoffman (Hyperion, 1998) (*)

At the time of his death in 1983, Paul Erdös was the second most prolific author of mathematical papers of all time -- some 1,475 to be exact. He also was a charming eccentric of the first water, and this bio does justice to both he and his genius. The book delves fairly deeply into higher mathematical concepts, but it's easy to read around them if you get in over your head.

One way that mathematicians like to measure their importance in the field is by calculating their "Erdös number." Erdös himself had number 0. Anyone who published a paper with Erdös has Erdös number 1. All those mathematicians who published a paper with someone who has published with Erdös have Erdös number 2. And so forth. Tokyo Station
By Martin Cruz Smith (Macmillan, 2002) (*)

Written by the author of "Gorky Park" and other bestsellers, this thriller is set in Tokyo on the eve of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The protagonist is Harry Miles, who was born in Tokyo to American missionary parents. Harry, who can speak and read Japanese fluently, is a hustler and con man who drifts back and forth between an expatriate community that hates him because he is too much like a Japanese and a Japanese society that scorns him because he can never be one of them.

Winter's Tale
By Mark Helprin (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1983) (*)

Genre wise, "Winter's Tale" falls somewhere between science fiction and a novel. It is set in a markedly different New York City at the turn of the 21st century and like the Shakespeare play after which it is named, the hero returns after a long, unexplained absence as a redeemed soul.

Helprin's fantastical writing has been compared to Gabriel García Márquez and Salman Rushdie and he is the equal of both.

The Year of Imaginary Thinking
By Joan Didion (Random House, 2005)

Shortly before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall gravely ill. Days later, Dunne suffered a fatal heart attack, ending a symbiotic marriage of 40 years between the two great American writers.

This account of the year following Dunne's death is Didion's most powerful book. She attempts to make sense of the “weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death, about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself.” She succeeds admirably.

HOW THE KIKO'S HOUSE BOOK CLUB WORKS

Whenever you read a good book or may have read one in the past that you'd recommend, e-mail me at kikokimba@gmail.com

Include in the body of the e-mail the book's title, author and type (fiction, nonfiction, bio, advice, etc.) and a few words about why you enjoyed and would recommend it. I'll post your recommendations at the next Book Club meeting.

A FOOTNOTE

The folks who attended the last book club meeting will recall that the review (mine) of "Memoirs of a Geisha" noted that it had been released on the big screen.

As someone who loved the book and a former Tokyo resident, as well, it was with some trepidation that I sat down to watch the DVD. Several screenwriters had struggled but failed to adapt the book's subtle textures to the screen. I wasn't confident that director Rob Marshall, who assembled a cast that included Chinese women in the two lead female roles, was the guy to pull it off. Well, he did and I heartily recommend it. Ziyi Zhang is especially good as Chiyo, the geisha.

PREVIOUS KIKO'S HOUSE BOOK CLUB SELECTIONS

America at the Crossroads by Francis Fukuyama (Yale University Press, 2005)

The Assassin’s Gate: American In Iraq by George Packer (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005)

Ava Gardner: Love Is Nothing by Lee Server (St. Martin's Press, 2006)

Candide: Or Optimism by Voltaire (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition, 2005)

The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror by Nathan Sharansky with Ron Dermer (Public Affairs, 2004)

A Dance To the Music of Time by Anthony Powell (Mandarin, 1997)

Daniel Martin by John Fowles (Jonathan Cape, 1997)

Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir by Danielle Trussoni (Henry Holt, 2006)

The Fall of Lucifer (Chronicles of Brothers) by Wendy Alec (Realms, 2005)

The First Emancipator: The Forgotten Story of Robert Carter, The Founding Father Who Freed His Slaves by Andrew Levy (Random House, 2005)

Freedom at Midnight: The Epic Drama of India's Struggle for Independence by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre (Simon & Schuster, 1975)

Grand Days by Frank Moorhouse (Picador, 1994)

I Am Charlotte Simons by Tom Wolff (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2004)

Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins (Henry Holt, 2005)

In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences
by Truman Capote (Vintage, 1994)

In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing 'The Second World War' by David Reynolds (Random House: 2005)

In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant (Random House, 2006)

The Life of Pi: A Novel by Yann Martel (Canongate, 2001)

Lost Battalions: The Great War and the Crisis of American Nationality by Richard Slotkin (Henry Holt and Co., 2005)

The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan by Ben Macintyre (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005)

Margot Fonteyn by Meredith Daneman (Viking, 2o04)

Middlemarch By George Eliot (Oxford University Press, 1997)

Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel by Arthur Golden (Vintage, 1997)

The Playmate Book: Six Decades of Centerfolds by Gretchen Edgren (Taschen, 2006)

The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood and the Humble Genius Who Discovered a New History of the Earth by Alan Cutler (Dutton, 2003)

The Second World War by Winston Churchill (Houghton Mifflin, 1948-53)

What Is Life Worth? The Unprecedented Effort to Compensate the Victims of 9/11 by Kenneth R. Feinberg (Public Affairs, 2005)