How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens, by Benedict Carey

Random House, ISBN 9780812993882, September 2014

In this book, Benedict Carey (no relation, as far as I know) takes a look at our surprisingly haphazard and incomplete understanding of how we learn.

We think we know how to learn. Be organized, be disciplined, focus, concentrate, keep plugging away. Do your reading and studying for academic subjects, and practice, practice, practice for physical skills, be it playing basketball or playing piano.

Yet we all know people who barely seem to study at all, who hardly seem organized about it, yet who ace their courses, or pick up new skills, apparently without breaking a sweat. What's going on?

Broken Monsters, by Lauren Beukes

Mulholland Books, ISBN 9780316216821, September 2014

Detroit Police Detective Gabriela Versado goes to the scene where a murdered boy has been found, and walks into the most nightmarish case of her career.

It's the body of an eleven-year-old boy, or at least the top half is. The bottom half is the back half of a fawn. They're quite effectively joined together by a means which isn't at first obvious to the police or to the medical examiner. It's a potentially explosive case, and looks like it may be the start of a serial killer's spree, and they try very, very hard to keep the more outre aspects of it under wraps.

Elephant Company: The Inspiring Story of an Unlikely Hero and the Animals Who Helped Him Save Lives in World War II, by Vicki Constantine Croke

Random House, ISBN 9781400069330, July 2014

James Howard "Billy" Williams, twenty-three years old and recently released from military service after World War I, traveled from England to Burma to take a job as a "forest man" for a British teak company. Besides the experience and discipline of his war service, that main thing he brought to the job was his gift for understanding and handling animals--an important asset in an industry that depended on the labor of elephants to haul heavy logs, build bridges, and transport supplies and people.

He expected to enjoy working with the elephants; in fact, he fell in love with them. Over the next twenty years, Williams made himself a first class expert on elephants, their handling, their care, their medical treatment.

Blood on the Water (William Monk #20), by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, ISBN 9780345548436, September 2014

William Monk is out on the Thames River with one of his men, Orme, when they witness the shocking explosion and sinking of the pleasure cruise ship Princess Mary. Almost two hundred people die, and this was no accident. The explosion happened in the bow of the ship, not the boiler room.

Monk has his River Police already investigating the crime when, the next morning, the commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, arrives to explain, in some embarrassment, that the case has been taken from the Thames River Police and given to him.

Monk and his men may be frustrated by how the Metropolitan Police, who don't know the river and its people, are running the investigation, but there's nothing they can do. A suspect, an Egyptian man name Habib Beshara, is arrested, tried, and convicted.

And then Monk discovers in the course of another investigation a critical piece of information that reveals that a critical eyewitness in the Beshara case can't have been where he said he was. He realize that not only is the guilty verdict against Beshara very weak, but the investigation was sloppy in ways that can't be entirely explained by the Metropolitans not knowing the river well.

And that's when things get very, very dangerous, for Monk, Hester, Oliver Rathbone, and their friends.

This is another solid entry in the long-running William Monk series. All our old friends are back. Monk is comfortable and confident in his role as head of the Thames River Police, Hester in hers as head of her clinic, and they have a solid partnership that they've worked hard for over the course of the series. This is one of the added benefits of a good mystery series, the long-term character development.

We see all our regulars struggling with the balance between the ideals they believe in, and the often much messier reality of human fallibility and corruption.

Not the place to start, but well worth the read if you're a follower of the series.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Death on Blackheath (Charlotte & Thomas Pitt #29), by Anne Perry

Ballantine Books, ISBN 9780345548382, March 2014

Thomas Pitt, now Commander of Special Branch, is called out to look into a matter that at first blush hardly seems like a Special Branch concern: the disappearance of a maid from a wealthy home on Shooters' Hill. The owner of the home, though, is Dudley Kynaston, a critically important naval weapons specialist. Britain can't afford any scandal around him. But it seems that Kitty Ryder has likely run off with her suitor, an itinerant carpenter, and there's little risk of scandal. Pitt is happy to turn the matter back to the local police.

A few weeks later, a woman's mutilated body is found in a gravel pit not far from the Kynaston home. Although she can't be positively identified, she fits the general description of Kitty Ryder, the missing lady's maid. Now there's a dangerous hint of potential scandal.

It gets worse when Somerset Carlisle, a sometime friend and ally of Pitt's, starts asking questions in Parliament about the matter, making sure it's a cause célèbre Special Branch--Thomas--can't ignore.

In this latest Pitt adventure, Charlotte and her sister Emily aren't able to participate as they used to when Pitt was with the Metropolitan Police, but they don't want to be mere spectators, and Emily in particular is feeling bored, frustrated, and insecure. In counterpoint to Pitt's pursuit of a dangerous mystery that threatens national security, Charlotte, Emily, and Great-Aunt Vespasia grapple with what at first seem far more personal and private issues.

Most of our old friends are here again, and after twenty-nine volumes, the characters and their relationships continue to grow deeper, richer, and more interesting. I honestly felt the series hit a rough patch and nearly collapsed when Pitt was first forced out of the regular police and transferred to Special Branch, and I thought it might peter out. Happily, it hasn't. Perry and her characters found their footing again, and the series has remained a real pleasure.

Recommended.

An interview with Anne Perry:


I borrowed this book from the library.

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local--and Helped Save an American Town, by Beth Macy

Little, Brown and Company, ISBN 9780316231435, July 2014

John Douglas Bassett, a.k.a. J.D. Bassett, started first a sawmill and then a furniture company with his brother, C.C. Bassett, in Virginia in 1902. The unincorporated town of Bassett grew up around the factory. As the business and the family grew, J.D. assisted relatives and in-laws to start other furniture companies, and the region became a powerhouse in the American furniture industry.

And then the 1980s and the beginnings of globalization and cheap Chinese import furniture arrived.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer (author), Jeff Woodman (narrator), Barbara Caruso (narrator), Richard Ferrone (narrator)

Recorded Books, ISBN 9781419328794, April 2005

Oskar Schell is a nine-year-old boy living in New York City, and trying to cope with the terrible loss of his father in the Twin Towers on 9/11.

Shortly after that horrible day, Oskar finds an odd-looking key in a vase stored on a closet shelf. It's inside an envelope, on which someone has written one word: Black. He seizes on this, and decides that he has to find the lock that the key fits, to learn something important about his father. Concluding that "Black" must be a person's name, Oskar sets out to meet every person in New York City with the last name of Black, and find out who has the right lock.

Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, Gorillas on Drugs, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves, by Laurel Braitman (author), Madeleine Maby (narrator)

Simon & Schuster Audio, ISBN 9781442371354, June 2014

Braitman and her husband Jude adopted a four-year-old Bernese Mountain  Dog  named Oliver, who was being rehomed through his breeder for reasons that they didn't ask enough questions about. Oliver proved to be a sweet, loving, friendly, devoted dog who suffered from serious insecurity and separation anxiety.

The next few years grew increasingly difficult, as they struggled to help Oliver be more secure, and Braitman became interested not just in her own dog's problems, but the larger question of mental health and emotional balance in animals, domestic, wild, and captive, what that can teach us about human mental health.

Maverick Sheriff (Sweetwater Ranch #1), by Delores Fossen

Harlequin Intrigue, ISBN 9780373697823, August 2014

Jessa Wells, Assistant District Attorney, is determined to close an old case, a murder in which the prime suspect is the estranged mother of the local sheriff, Cooper McKinnon. But when her two-year-old adopted son, Liam, is badly injured in a hit-and-run accident that forces her car off the road, he needs a blood donation from the only person locally that shares his rare blood type--Cooper McKinnon.

Cooper McKinnon's wife and six-week-old son were killed in a flood two years ago, and while his wife's body was found, their baby's body never was. Could Liam be his lost son Cameron?

Hideaway Cove (Windfall Island #2), by Anna Sullivan

Forever (Grand Central Publishing), ISBN 9781455525409, July 2014

It's barely a week since Maggie Solomon was nearly killed because she might have been the missing Stanhope heir, and DNA testing revealed that she isn't. Her friend and business partner, Jessi Randal, has realized that she's a likely next target, since her family history also makes her a possible heir. And there's a limit to how long she can protect herself by pretending the possibility doesn't exist. Genealogist Holden Abbot is on their side, but he's not the only one who can study public records and identify her as a possibility.

She's also finding Abbot way too attractive. Jessi's last relationship left her alone and pregnant at sixteen, and her son Benji, now seven, is her primary concern. Jessi doesn't want either of them getting attached to another man who won't stay in their lives--and Hold Abbot is a handsome, smooth-talking southerner who doesn't share anything about his personal life. Not a good risk, she thinks, not a risk she's going to take for herself or Benji.