I was sold on this book as soon as I saw the cover: a rubber duckie, looking as if it were recently plucked from Ernie’s bathtub, floating in a vast sea, coupled with a title referring to one of the so-called Great American Novels. Moby-Duck follows the journey of a crate of plastic bath toys. The duck was one of a group of animals, though it seems to have utilized a better publicist than the beaver, frog, and turtle, as its story is the one that has survived in the public’s mind. Left to their own devices, where did the current take them? Who found their beached, faded bodies and where? Who manufactured them and shipped them? How many shipped items are lost at sea? A book simply focusing on these questions would satisfy most readers, but this is also the story of a personal journey, namely that of a high school teacher who pursues the Great Yellow Duck across oceans and years.

I didn’t know about the local connection when I checked out the book. Gore Point features prominently in the story, as do a few Homer residents. Homer News wrote an article about it when the book was released. Gore Point, due to currents, collects heaps of trash. The occasional non-profit organization and a crew of volunteers spend countless dollars and hours to clear the debris and dispose of it. Homer happens to have the nearest dump. The section that focuses on the Kenai Peninsula is a brief one, so don’t read this for local interest only. More often, Donovan Hohn is elsewhere. And for the most part, his blending of science, social/environmental commentary, and travelogue works. Unfortunately, the moments of personal discovery are least interesting to me, and the sum rarely exceeds the parts. As a traveling companion, Hohn is nowhere near as entertaining as Bill Bryson, my favorite travel writer. His existential need to undertake this physical and emotional journey would have been best kept in a leather-bound journal on his nightstand. I was more interested to read about ocean currents and floating trash islands than numerous Moby-Dick allusions and Hohn’s decision to travel to Alaska during the final moments of his wife’s pregnancy. Call me ambivalent.

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit follows the successes and failures of a con man. Christian K. Gerhartsreiter was born in Germany and later posed, among other personalities, as Clark Rockefeller in the States. And yes, he was supposed to be one of those Rockefellers. Gerhartsreiter reinvented himself, his image, and his name numerous times throughout his life. He secured employment, married, and made friends. The amazing thing is that he was able to get away with the ruse in multiple cities using multiple backstories. As someone who has trouble lying convincingly about the most trivial matters, I can’t comprehend the effort involved in creating and maintaining complex cover stories.

It’s easy to see why so many people were fooled. “Mr. Rockefeller” was extremely intelligent, charming, and exhibited a sufficient amount of eccentricity to reasonably belong to a ridiculously wealthy family.  When viewed in hindsight, one sees a funny looking guy whose stories are clearly preposterous, whose manner is obviously affected, and whose business acumen is suspect. But we don’t live in hindsight, and neither do the people in this story. Most now admit that something seemed fishy. But what good is that insight after the fact? Throw in an unsolved murder case that includes an addition missing person (Gerhartsreiter is currently undergoing a preliminary hearing to see if he’ll stand trial), and you’ve got a stacked deck that Mark Seal competently deals out. Currently the only format available is an audio book download through  ListenAlaska. It’s expertly read and moves at the pace of a thriller.

I really wanted to love The Marriage Plot as much as I loved Jeffery Eugenides’ previous novels. The incredible prose is still there. The keen characterizations are present. And there are moments when the book reaches peaks of greatness. But they are peaks only and are interspersed with a few disappointing valleys.

The book is primarily a meditation on the marriage plot itself, that uniquely antiquated (or is it?) trope of Jane Austin and her ilk. When the story begins, Madeleine, our heroine, is set to graduate from college. She has studied and written extensively on the marriage plot as an undergraduate. Of course in modern times, this would more likely be termed a love triangle, but in the nineteenth century and before, such a geometric description did not exist. Madeleine soon finds herself in a marriage plot of her own, which she doesn’t quite realize at the outset. The three points of the love triangle (Madeleine, plus her two male suitors) are flawed characters. The problem is that the flaws left me feeling ambivalent instead of sympathetic. I realize this is a fine line and that different readers will find themselves on different sides of the line. I usually want to root for flawed characters and hope that they’ll learn from their mistakes, even if it’s unlikely that they will. In The Marriage Plot, I knew they wouldn’t learn. The lack of hope turned me off and kept a very good writer from writing another great book.

Erik Larson has made a name for himself by writing plot-heavy narrative nonfiction. As is the case with his most popular work, The Devil in the White City, his latest book illuminates a familiar event in time and a cast of many famous characters by highlighting some of that story’s lesser known participants. In the Garden of the Beasts follows the rise of the Nazis in the years preceding World War II. We’re shown that world from the point of view of America’s ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, and his family.

This is a good book with a little problem. The problem is not that the story isn’t interesting. The problem is that the book follows some of the least interesting characters in the story. If this were a novel, I would ask Larson why Hitler and Goebbels don’t receive more face time. The simple fact is that the Dodds will never be as compelling as Adolph Hitler, despite Martha Dodd (William’s daughter) and her numerous sexual indiscretions. However, the details of Berlin in the 1930s serve to make the city the story’s second most compelling character (again, it’s tough to top Hitler).

When I read a book with a title like Robopocalypse, I’m aware that it’s not going to win a Pulitzer, but I gave this one a chance because of a number of positive reviews and the promise of escapism. The book delivers a war between humans and robots. Unfortunately, it doesn’t deliver much else. Robopocalypse apes the format of World War Z, a novel about the coming zombie apocalypse. The story is told from various points of view. Each chapter is said to be taken from security footage, an interrogation, a personal statement, or something equally “real.” This attempt to add verisimilitude is unfortunate. Any chapter purporting to be the recollections of an individual simply comes across as ridiculous because no one uses that much descriptive detail when recalling an event. It’s not an original conceit, and its execution doesn’t save it.

The characters are bland and often speak with overly folksy dialogue. The love interest storyline feels tacked on. The entire battle is not apocalyptic enough (maybe I just prefer a little more mayhem). It all amounts to barely more substance than your average action movie. I kept hoping that Will Smith would swoop in, speak a few witty lines of dialogue, and infect the robots with a virus. At least then, even though the method of destruction would be ridiculous, we’d have a few witty lines of dialogue. I’ve been more entertained by a Roomba. I read the EPUB version downloaded from Listen Alaska. We own a paper copy as well.