If you have a review to share, e-mail editor Sherry Devlin at sdevlin@missoulian.com or by mail to Missoulian, P.O. Box 8029, Missoula, MT 59807.
Keren Wales: "Shantaram," by Gregory David Roberts (St. Martins Press).
One of my favorite reads, if not the top spot, of 2007 was "Shantaram" by Gregory David Roberts, published by St. Martins Press in 2004 (973 pages).
Filming on the movie began last August or September, and will star Johnny Depp as Shantaram.
The top-billed book on my list is a novel based on Roberts' life as an escaped criminal living in Bombay, India. It is full of bigger-than-life adventure, and the realness of people and
their reliance on and care for each other. It told me about life in a place vastly different from what I know here in Alberton and expanded my vision of people and the world. While I wasn't
reading it, I was thinking about it and the people in the story.
A customer of mine told me about this book when she traded it in. She said she has read it 10 times in four years, and will rebuy it when she lacks other reading material and read it again.
Sally Daer: "Violin Dreams," by Arnold Steinhardt (Houghton Mifflin).
I read a lot of good books in 2007, but many are probably the ones everyone else loved, too. But a great one that didn't hit the bestseller lists that I keep thinking back to - mark of a good read, right? - is Arnold Steinhardt's "Violin Dreams," published by Houghton Mifflin.
The author is the first violinist of the famed Guarneri String Quartet, the longest-tenured in the world still employing its original four musicians.
The theme is the search for the perfect-sounding violin for the quartet, with a subtheme on how the Bach "Chaconne," the fiendishly difficult holy grail for solo violinists would sound on the perfect fiddle Steinhardt seeks.
The book starts with Steinhardt's childhood and goes to the present, but constantly goes back to his preoccupation with the "Chaconne," from Partita No. 3. Steinhardt is a fabulous writer and for a genius, very witty and down-to-earth. Good gossip and insights on many stars of the classical world.
The book includes a CD with two of Steinhardt's performances of the "Chaconne":
one as a teenager and one now, on the the newfound "dream" violin. A fellow violinist in the Missoula Symphony loaned the book to me, but one would not have to be a musician to enjoy it.
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