Bookin' It Thru Life

A friend who is a reader recommended this one and said she could not put it down.  I agree that I could not put it down, but more because I am on vacation and its like 18 degrees outside and I have done my shopping and groceries and house cleaning and the kids are enjoying their Christmas presents so why shouldn't I just curl up and read this book kind of way, not that I found the book un-put-down-able in and of itself. That said, I did enjoy it and I immediately looked up other books by Ng to add to my "To Read" list. The story revolves around two families, one a traditional family with deep roots in the community, the other a single mom and her daughter recently arrived in town.  It had hints of Big Little Lies to it so if you liked that book, this one will be right up your alley.  Here, the relationships are between the teenage children in both families and between the children and the moms.  The "Dad" is largely absent, the money maker whose main job in t

Billed as a ghost story of sorts...a year after their baby disappears, he reappears in their house for just "one more day"...anyone who thought this was going to be a straightforward missing kid story misread the cover.  Over the course of the book I thought lots of different things about the mom and dad of the missing kid-she made a dumb mistake that cost her everything-but I had a hard time connecting with her.  The dad was creepy, not in a "I kidnapped and killed my own kid" kind of way but in a "I have some stalker blood in me good thing my wife is a little wacky else she'd realize I'm a little out there" kind of way.  I finished the book because I kind of wanted to know what happened but not because I actually cared.  It was more like I wanted to find out what happened in the book and not what happened to these actual people.  The Sixth Sense this was not.  I'd recommend a hard pass on this one. Rating:  Eh, #7

The synopsis indicates a page turner of a book rooted in family lies and betrayals...which I suppose it was, but its really about a girl and her family and the complications that are buried in just about everyone's past, at least within six degrees...there were some characters who never got the comeupance to which they were due, there were some plot points that never really resolved, there were some story lines that were never quite flushed out...this was a flawed book which tried to sell itself as more than it was capable of being. Was it terrible?  Nah, and as a beach read when there is not much around, sure, you'll probably like it well enough.  Don't read that much?  Skip it.  Pick up State of Wonder or Calypso or Devil in the White City or A Gentleman in Moscow ...there's better fish in the sea.  Rating:  #5 Good Enough

I read this last summer when I was on my Robin McKinley kick.  This fell somewhere on the scale lower than Deerskin and the Blue Sword but well above Beauty.  Its a vampire book and in my opinion so superior to Stephanie Meyer's trash that it really shouldn't be in the same genre.  Its also described as "urban fantasy" which I suppose it is too-again, superior to most such.  In the book, Sunshine is an everyday girl facing the same issues as every other young adult trying to figure out their place in the world until boom-she is dropped into a vampire gang's torture game, meets the most compelling Constantine (of course he has a cool name) and starts to recall some not-so-normal things from her own past.  I like McKinley, I don't hate vampires (Meyer's books notwithstanding), fantasy is right up my alley and all in all, I liked this book quite a lot.  Worth the read.  Rating:  #4 Liked It

Do you like fairy tales?  That are a bit dark and twisted?  And dogs?  Lissar is the heroine of this one and boy is she put through the ringer.  The author's note at the end of the book indicates that the inspiration for the book was a story by Charles Perrault called Donkeyskin which, because of its subject matter, is often not included in collections of fairy tales.  There is a reason-no one would read this story to a child! That said, and accepting that this is NOT your child's fairy tale, the book was very good.  The story one of redemption and finding oneself and one's place in the world.  Of taking time and accepting help when its needed and in taking ownership of your life and your path when you are ready.  It was also a love story between a girl and her dog and also a little bit of the more traditional love story.  As I made my way through this book I realized that I had read it before, likely many years ago, but that did not deter me from continuing to read it. I d

Borrowed this one from a friend of mine.  Per the cover this is based on a real-life scandal in which the director of a Memphis based adoption agency kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country.  Part of the story is set in the late 30s and early 40s, as an itinerant family finds itself on the brink of disaster when the mother's pregnancy brings attention to presence of children who would be lucrative additions to the adoption agency's rolls.  In the present day, a young woman finds some curiosities in her family history and tries to put generations old pieces together.  Worth a summer read if you have the time and inclination. Rating:  #5 Good Enough

Part mystery, part horror story, part family drama- grabbed this one off the bargain rack at B&N and had very low expectations.  Turns out, it exceeded expectations.  Emma and her sister disappear on the same night under mysterious circumstances.  The mom's a little crazy, the stepdad's a little off, the father's a little out of it...when Cass shows up three years later with her own agenda, no one knows what is going on, including the reader.  The story works and I found myself proposing possible outcomes right along with the detective.  Winning mystery of the year?  Probably not.  Worth reading at the beach?  Sure! #4-Liked It

When Barbara Kingsolver comes out with a new novel I always take a peek.  I know some people lover her stuff...I have loved some of her stuff, but some I found just passable and some simply unbearable.  This one was fine...the story is split between the present time where a middle aged woman is living through a difficult year on the heels of having briefly experienced a time when she had everything she ever wanted and the post-Civil War period where a young man is coming to terms with his life as a groom and provider in an equally unstable time of life.  Both families live on the same property more than a hundred years apart and the title refers to the significant issues with their homes-both are "unsheltered": " Nesting was ludicrous, given the doomed state of the nest " Kingsolver undeniably has a way with words and I enjoyed present day Willa's story very much.  Part of her story was grieving her mother ( "when someone mattered like that, you didn'

Got this recommendation from a Facebook friend.  Its about Jefferson Davis's wife, Varina (or "V" as she is referred to in the book), and is told in parallel time frames, one as she and her family flee post-civil war Richmond and the other of her childhood, youth, courtship, marriage and life leading up to the war.  Its also in large part about James, a young black boy who was part of Varina's household in during the Civil War.  The two are reunited many, many years after the war as James tries to find his own lost story which includes his time as companion to the Davis children and foster son to Varina. Since the book is about his wife, Jefferson Davis is portrayed not so much as the President of the failed Confederate States (or the fleeing traitor that he eventually became) but mostly as a (somewhat disinterested) husband and father.  Frazier's Varina is an opium aficionado, though she claims to be an amateur, not a professional, a self-proclaimed victim of t

Need a book recommendation? This is it!!! David Sedaris' Calypso . Not quite a novel and not quite a series of essays, it nominally circles around his purchase and enjoyment of a beach house in NC but really, its about him and his life. Note that the reviews say its about a man in mid-life who buys a beach house in NC and faces his age-did they even read the book? Its not about that AT ALL! I mean, yes, he is and does those things in the course of th e book, but that's not what its about...book reviews sometimes annoy me. \ I have not read Sedaris before and I have since gathered that all of his books are about him but this one could have been about me...he grew up in Raleigh in a displaced family (meaning they were not from Raleigh, not that they were refugees or anything), had a family of six kids, vacationed every summer on the NC coast, values his siblings like crazy, etc. I mean, I'm not a short gay man (well, I suppose one could call me short) who has made million

So this book is odd...I mean, really, really odd.  In the interest of full disclosure, I only read part of it (179/302 pages-you do the math).  Not because I was not entranced-I was.  But because I just sort of stopped reading it.  I think this is one of those books that had I started it on vacation I would have plowed through to the end without ever putting it down.  As it was, I tried to read it in between "life" and it just does not lend itself to the up/down/ten minutes here/half an hour there reading that I generally do when I am NOT on vacation.  I didn't feel compelled to pick it back up and see what happens-its not one of those books that you think is going to have some great reveal at the end (though it may-like I said, I haven't finished it)-I think I just put it down one day and when I went to read next, I picked something else up instead and when I realized I had not finished Lincoln in the Bardo I was like, eh, that's too bad, but... The book is se

Psychological thriller...yes.  Unputdownable?  Not really.  Do I feel for this woman and her lost child?  Yes.  Do I wonder where the story is going?  Sure.  Does the author lead you one way, then another, and make you ponder?  Sure.  But not for long, and not very deeply, and frankly here I am a month or so after reading the book and I don't even remember exactly what happened so there you go.  My recollection is that the ending was satisfying if not quite the surprise that the author intended it to be (I think I read too much...I saw it coming).  Rating:  #5 Good Enough

Ever heard of "Chick Lit"?  This is a classic example.  Suburban married woman falls and hits her head and forgets the last 10 years of her life.  Chaos ensues.  There's the estranged husband who she thinks she is still in love with, the 3 kids who she doesn't remember at all, the sister/best friend figure whose job it is to support her...its all there.  Its really one of those books that you enjoy while you are reading it because well, do you really have anything better to do while you are waiting for another sports practice to finish but which, once you are done, you don't really think about again.  Its books just like this that got me started writing this blog...I was tired of picking up a book and getting 20 pages in and thinking, huh, I think I already read this.  When you read a lot of books, not all of which are "fabulous", its very easy to stumble onto a book and not realize from the cover's synopsis that O already read it.  Anyway, not sure

With this book I broke my cardinal rule of fantasy books that come in a series...I read Book One before the rest of the series was even out.  I hate that.  Cause if I love the book, I have to wait for the sequel and then I either forget to ever read it or when I go to read the sequel I have to go back and reread the initial book again.  So its nearly always better to just wait until the series is good and established and then dig in.  But I did it so here goes. Summer Dragon was standard fantasy fair.   A world that has its own politics and dangers, a protagonist whose situation during youth forms her "hero-ness" and of course, dragons.  Nothing to love here, nothing to hate, if it occurs to me later or I happen to stumble on it I'm sure I'll read the sequel 'cause I'm always looking for a book to read but its not going on my "must read" list or anything. Rating:  #5  Good Enough

I picked this up because I recall reading Stegner's Angle of Repose  and thinking it was fabulous.  A while back I read Crossing to Safety and liked it though did not think it was up to snuff with Angle .  Big Rock Candy Mountain appealed to me because I wanted something by someone I thought I could count on to give me a good read and for whatever reason I heard the song echoing in the background when I saw the name of the book.  (It doesn't take much to send me down the road of reading a book.) In some ways, the book did not disappoint.  The intro started out strong and I pulled the following quote:  " Books that render great insight may provide it gradually over time or with great suddenness.  Often the best novels don't completely reveal themselves the first time through, demanding to be understood at the right age and state of mind, in readings separated by the passage of years. "  This from Roger Stone who wrote the introduction.  Yes! I thought!  That'

I believe that I picked this up off the "sale" shelf at Barnes and Noble.  You know, the one where the not-so-recently released hardcovers are marked down to $6.  As a general rule I peruse this shelf whenever I am in B&N.  You can often pick up an older Balducci or Grisham etc. etc. for dirt cheap and if you didn't read the book when it was "hot", you can read it now.  They also mix these "popular writer" overstocks with unknowns and with those, its really a crap shoot.  Some are good, some are bad, most are worth the mush reduced hardcover price tag assuming you don't mind dropping the occasional $30 to get 5 or 6 books which may or may not include a hidden gem.  I don't know that I'd call this one of those but I liked it well enough.  The premise is that a brother and sister are invited to their older, more successful, half sister's wedding to which neither one actually has an desire to go.  The book opens with them snarkily revi

I was super excited about this book.  I loved French's other books (the Dublin Murder Squad) and expected this one to be a continuation of that series.  Alas, it was not, which in and of itself is not so bad.  However, it was also nowhere near the caliber of her other books.  I was, in a word, disappointed. It was not all bad...her characteristic " Fair play " in the narrative was present (Kristi, you won't have to look far to see it!!) and the overall tone was classic Tana French.  Toby's reminiscing about his vacation time spent at the family home with his cousins and his uncle's " benign neglect" as a caretaker made me smile; his wandering around the old family home just looking at what was the same and what was different-that evoked memories of doing the same thing at my grandmother's house when I'd go back after being away for some time.   And there were some fun words that I noted for future reference:  inchoate, ranunculus, rapacity

I'm a HUGE Robin Hobb fan.  To date, I have not read a book by her I did not like.  If that's the standard, this trilogy met it.  But beyond that?  Not so much.  This trilogy went on and on and on.  One of the recurring themes (thematics?  something) was the impact that the book's magic had on the main character's weight.  I found that whole thing overbearing (huh-see how I did that...aren't I clever...not) and overwraught (how the hell do you spell that?) and frankly annoying.  I was not a fan of Nevare, I ultimately did not care much about what happened to him and at the end of the day I was really just happy the books were finally over.  Sorry, Hobb, as much as I love you, this particular series did not do it for me.  If your a fan and you have the time, of course I'd read these.  If your a fan and you don't have the time, you shouldn't feel to bad about skipping.  If your not a Hobb fan?  Pass. Rating:  #5 Good Enough

I stumbled on these books when I was perusing what I like to call the Nook "cheap reads" section.  Most of the time you get what you pay for; see my post on His Baby Bond ...eeee gods!  In this case, the first book in the trilogy was a cheap read offered with the hope of drawing you in and getting you to buy the other two which were progressively more expensive...but let's keep it in perspective in the final analysis I think the whole trilogy was like eleven dollars and fifty cents so we're not breakin' the bank here or anything.  These books were certainly worth the price of admission. The Twisted Cedar Mysteries follow one main thread over the course of the trilogy.  True crime writer Dougal Lachlan is drawn into a decades old unsolved crime which continues to fester and develop even as he and his sidekick try to pin it down.  Lachlan reminds me a little of Balducci's heroes (which as I've written before, I find somewhat indistinguishable from each oth

I picked these up on the Nook when I was heading for Jamaica this spring.  I wanted to have enough to read to keep me busy should I either finish or not enjoy the other "real" books I took along.  I had seen the trailers for the movie "Annihilation" and thought that it looked interesting; reading the book is always a go-to for me if a movie I want to see is based on a book.  These books were in the genre of Cronin's The Passage Trilogy, with some echoes of Lost, a hint of Alien, a Charlie-like Voice directing traffic, some serious Freudian relationship challenges and more than a little Predator.  See why they made it a movie?  I'm not sure I could adequately evaluate any of the books on their own and I am fairly certain that had I read the first one when it originally came out it would have gracefully faded from my memory long before the sequel was available. However, given that I was able to get them all at the same time, I found them fairly enjoyable. 

Amazon describes this as "a dark and twisted page-turner" ...gotta say, that's quite the exaggeration.  I mean, is it dark and twisty?  Sure, I guess.  The beyond the backyard hideout gave me the creeps.  A page-turner?  Not so much.  First off, I get annoyed with the trope of the unreliable narrator.  While I think its ok for a character to be confused and therefore untruthful, or to tell his or her own "truth" even if it ends up being a complete fantasy...but in this book the narrator was telling us things as if they were true when they weren't, and not only were they not true, the narrator herself did not believe them.  Her actions may have been unhinged, and her motivations deranged, but at no point did I understand her to not know that her actual actions were wrong and would result in harm.  This motif bugged me the whole book and really took me outside of the story.  The plot itself was one that has been done before, and done better.  Interesting twist

Mrs. by Caitlin Macy March 2018 On Amazon the description includes the following sentence:  Macy has written a modern-day HOUSE OF MIRTH, not for the age of railroads and steel but of hedge funds and overnight fortunes, of scorched-earth successes and abiding moral failures. A brilliant portrait of love, betrayal, fate and chance, MRS marries razor-sharp social critique and page-turning propulsion into an unforgettable tapestry of the way we live in the 21st Century. I gotta tell ya, that's an insult to Edith Wharton...  Set in the NY apartments, schools and similar involved-mom venues,this is "urban chick lit" (if there is such a thing).  Gossipy, bitchy women?  check.  Competitive kid-raising?  check.  Power parents and privelege in spades?  oh yeah.  Enjoyable read?  Eh. Rating:  #6 Bearable, Just Barely.

Pretty much what the title implies...its a "horror" story about a nanny.  This one doesn't seduce the husband and start breastfeeding the baby; its a little more subtle then that, but still.  You feel a bit like the family is taking advantage of the nanny; you feel a bit like the nanny is losing it.  Ultimately its more about the mental health crisis in our world then anything else which in this wrapping is frankly not all that compelling.  By halfway through the book I just wanted it to be over cause I really didn't care about these people and was only vaguely interested in how the book resolved.  If I'd had another book waiting in the wings I probably would have just skipped to the end to satisfy what curiosity I did have and bail on the rest.  As it was, I'm a fast reader so I only wasted a couple of hours. Rating:  #8 Only As a Last Resort

This book...I should have seen it coming.  You would think that at some point I would have read it but no, I did not.  Nor have I ever seen the movie.  Nor, now that I have read the book, would it have been a movie I would have been dying to see.  And frankly, had I realized "which book" this was, I probably would not have read it either. But I stumbled on it (as I do a lot of the books I read) somewhere in the Nook world and thought, sure, 4 guys go into the wild and have some adventures, why not? First, now that I have read it, I did google it and its well known both as a book and as the source of the movie by the same name.   The writing, I will admit, was good...though not as good as the internet seems to think it is. Dickey was a Poet Laureate.  I don't know about all that because poetry this was not, but I did find several passages to be note worthy and I thought the writing was noticeably superior to much of the fiction I come across. I found this book

I picked this up at the library right before we went to the beach thinking it would be a good beach read-scary books don't work so well for me at home because I do a lot of my reading after everyone is asleep I tend to freak myself out...but at the beach, a) someone is always awake and b) I'd be able to read it in the light of day on a beach!  The book is about a young family in Japan who moves into a haunted hotel. Its translated from Japanese to English but I don't think that it lost much in translation, though its hard to say for sure.  That aside, the writing was fine-nothing that I bumped on.  The plot though-not so much.  The husband's ex-wife was a suicide and by the end of the book we are well versed in her life and death, but it remains as background to the whole story and never gets incorporated into the action.  Its like the smoking gun that turns out to just be a funny color grey-not really important at all.  And the ending-ugh.  Let's just say it was

Ah, Harry, how wonderful you are!  Before Potter there was you and you are fantastic!  I read this in awe and wonder at how I could possibly have missed reading this book before now.  Though I disagree with the reviewers that say you are a heroine who is unconcerned with romance because, well, turns out that's not quite true, I do believe that you are a heroine appropriately concerned with romance because let's face it, it would be unrealistic for a happy, healthy young woman to not have some sort of attachment to someone! Similar to The Hero and the Crown , this is a fantasy/adventure story about a young woman who must find her place in the world and does so by saving the day.  If you look at reviews and commentary online there is much about how the background for the story has challenges due to its colonial/empire parallels, and there are those who disparage the lack of development of characters beyond our hero.  Fair assessments all, though they don't in this reader

A Facebook friend turned me on to this author, and specifically this book, and all I can say is "Where have you been all my life????".  I really, really, really enjoyed this story.  The writing was top-notch and the story was a classic adventure/fantasy with a strong female lead.  These books have been around for a really long time, I just never heard of them before.  Which, I find odd.  I did not even recognize the author and she's been writing in this genre since I was a kid.  This particular book is aimed at the "young adult" audience which may not be where I tend to look for books so perhaps that is why I missed it but as I have said before, specifically about The Hunger Games which is one of my favorite books, young adult fiction should really not be pigeon holed as such-its a self-limiting description which truly should be tossed out the door.  I read this book second, on the heels of The Blue Sword , and at first I was a little miffed at myself that

After The Blue Sword , The Hero and the Crown , Sunshine and Deerskin I had high hopes for Beauty .  Alas, good books are still hard to find, even by authors we love.  The story we all know-its a variation on Beauty and the Beast.  And perhaps this book did not stand a chance and I should blame Walt Disney because all I could see was Hermione and all I could hear was "Be Our Guest" and well, I couldn't get past it.  Recommend this?  Maybe to the younger crowd depending on their appetite. There is certainly nothing PG rated or above in this book and in that space, I suppose its a fine read.  Is this a young adult book that passes muster for a wider audience?  Not in my opinion. Rating:  #5 Good Enough

#7-Eh Barton won a Pulitzer Prize for some other book she wrote...I don't see a Pulitzer in her future for this one.  Was it well written?  There were no obvious flaws in the actual writing.  Did I like the story?  I found the story and the characters...forgettable?  The backbone of the story, and it seemed to me the whole reason for its having been written, was to showcase the bond between a mother and her daughter and I found this part of it believable.  But the circumstances of the main character seemed designed solely to create a situation in which this relationship could be exploited, which I found distracting.  On the other hand, I thought the underlying theory was accurate:  sometimes, you just want your mom, and there is literally nothing else that will do.  In her absence, there is just that-an absence.  I don't think it matters if she was a great mom, a terrible mom, an indifferent mom or frankly a cruel mom -I suspect the same longing exists.  (Mine was a great m

So I read this book for the first time many, many, many years ago...like I think I might have been 13 or 14, which scarily enough means it was over 30 years ago (dear god, did I really do that math right?); certainly it was before I went to college.  I may have read it again in the intervening years; I don't really know.  What I do know is that there are certain scenes from this book that have stuck with me since my first reading even to this day.  And I also know that this was one of the books I read that solidified my love for the romance novel...and my equally fervent annoyance at most books in the genre.  Because this one was so well written, the characters so etched in my mind, the land and the story and the love stories  buried in the plot were so palatable that its hard  (dare I say impossible?) to find other books that match up.   I mean, I probably should have started with a Harlequin romance or something and eventually stumbled onto this one instead of reading this one fi

Last summer I read Horse Heaven by Smiley at the beach.  Scorewise, I think I would have given it a #3, Liked It Very Much.  As I was heading to the beach again this month, I thought I'd grab another one of her books.  Plus, it was a Pulitzer Prize winner so I thought, how can I go wrong? Writing-wise, Smiley is a master.  Her descriptions of the land are exquisite, and the way she wraps her words around the characters...wow.  Of the father in the story:  " He was never dwarfed by the landscape-the fields, the buildings, the white pine windbreak were as much my father as if he had grown them and shed them like a husk ."  The land in this book is as much a character as any of the people.  Smiley writes about it with a startling intimacy.  I live in Minnesota, I have spent some time in Iowa, but never would I have been able to describe it the way she does.  She also writes of family relationships with bewildering accuracy.  Between a man and his father-in-law:  " It

This was a powerful book about family-the love that exists and sustains and challenges, the secrets and jealousies that can tear apart.  More importantly, with one exception The Story of Edger Sawtelle is by far the best book I have every read addressing the love between a boy and his dogs (the best being Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls which is to this day unrivaled in that category), or really to state it more broadly between a man and his animals.  If Wroblewski didn't have Big Dan and Little Ann as role models, he managed to channel their spirits anyway.  If you are not up for sorrow and sadness, don't embark on reading this one because it has both in spades.  And, suprisingly, a ghost.  Its also a testament to his writing that the main character was deaf and that was the least important thing about him.  In some ways I'm torn on whether I actually liked the overall book-no spoilers here but I wasn't super happy with the ending.  That said, Wroblewski can

Oh good god I can't even believe this is on my list.  In a desperate attempt to find something to read when my credit card on file on my Nook had expired and I did not have the energy to go to the library or Barnes'n'Noble or even the paperback aisle at Cub I ordered a free book on the Nook.  In the spirit of you get what you pay for boy did I ever.  This book was everything that I abhor in a novel...a predictable plot, substandard writing, a Christian theme (if the author wrote one more line about a "longing look" I thought I was going to puke) and not much to admire.  It had all the makings of a classic cheap, cheesy romance and if you threw a half naked Fabio on the front with an adorable baby dangling in his arms the package would have been complete.  As it was, the guy on the cover was mostly dressed because, you know, God.  And the story was such standard fair that I could have come up with it in my sleep when I was 13.  Now, I don't mean to disparage th

Having heard of Ishiguro, I was eager to take part in some of his writing.  It was billed as fantasy which it clearly was...there was some magic here, a general forgetting by everyone of everything, a world set post-Arthur with some of the legends still hanging about and drifting in and out of the story...dragons and giants and whatnot...I like his style well enough, I liked the characters well enough, I found their adventures palatable enough...I think I might have missed the point of the ending because did they end up together or not??? so that bugged me a little bit... In a review by Neil Gaiman he describes this book as " a novel that's easy to admire, to respect and to enjoy, but difficult to love"...and I think that's just about right.  Recommend it?  Sure, it was fine.  Insist you should read it?  You won't hear that from me. #5 Good Enough

Mixture of murder mystery, film noir, psychological thriller, and just plain sad...I "Liked It"...though I will say, on the heels of The Children , I wondered what sort of list I was looking at to get these book recommendations where two books in a row the protagonist was an agoraphobic woman...since things often happen in threes, I'm on the lookout for another one... This book had hints of Rear Window (I think that had to have been deliberate) and I seriously kept picturing Jimmy Stewart's girlfriend, her slim skirts and her hair always done and digitally remastered color...it was honestly a little distracting.  It also had a little bit of The Sixth Sense and some Stephen King to it. I haven't read Finn before (at least that I recall) and I liked her style.  This book also hit all the pop culture lists and seems to be one "everyone" is reading or has read...as those type books go, I can see the appeal, which is more than I usually say for those ty

Yikes...still considering whether its worth making my way through this.  Stumbling on page 30 and not sure how or if I am going to proceed...if anyone has made it through and enjoyed it I'd love to know if its worth the wade...otherwise, it'll probably go on the "maybe someday, probably not" list...

Set in modern day world of blogs and cell phones (and dependent on these for certain plot devices which in my opinion takes away from the book instead of adding to it), this is a novel about a home bound (mostly) woman and the family dynamics that take on a life of their own one summer.  Some of the things that I liked about this book included a) the girls' relationship with their mother-accepting of her flaws, tolerant of her ignorance, loving and mocking in equal measure while never losing sight of the fact that she was their mother-I thought it was well portrayed... b) the house...it reminded me a little of my grandparents house on the Hill, sprawling, never changing but never quite the same, always needing upkeep that it never seemed to quite get but never being truly run down to the point of being uninhabitable, though surely some would see it so...it made me nostalgic...c) I thought her relationship with the caretaker/boyfriend was done well enough for me to buy it...a little

What to say about this book...I guess the first thing that comes to mind is that its "pop fiction"...the cover is everywhere, so on some level I read it because I wanted to know what all the fuss was about.  I don't know why I do that-it hardly ever works out.  But I feel like I can't really disparage a book until I have read it.  For example, I heard so much about those vampire books (wait, I'll remember in a second what they were called...Bella and her vampire, set I think in Seattle, big, big, big movie, people rave about the books I found them borderline terrible...I read the first one and probably would have rated it a "Don't Bother"...what the heck...I'll have to google it...ah yes, Twilight..dreadful) that I had to read them...mistake...I read the first one and vowed never to read another one nor to ever see the movies.   This book reminded me a little of Girl on a Train ...and I'd say it was way better.  It also brought to mind the

#4-Liked It With Balducci, you get what you get.  You know when you pick it up you are going to read an adventure story with a couple of badass characters who go up against some not-so-good-guys and hopefully at the end come out ahead.  He's not as good as Grisham at his best; he's far above Grisham at his worst.  The plot just rolls past you...seriously, I am not sure that I can remember exactly who the main character was or what the objective of his mission was and I just finished the book...but that's not really important when reading his stuff.  And his characters, while by no means flat, are not exactly full-dimensional.  But hey, why do they need to be?  If a book's goal is to get you through a flight and some out of town downtime, and you are just looking for escapism and not anything fancy, he's your guy.  I've read most of his stuff and I'll continue to read it until he stops publishing it...so that, my friends, is sometimes all that you can ask f

None to Accompany Me by Nadine Gordimer mid-2017 thru early 2018 until TBD (if I ever finish it???) I am not sure where I picked this book up, whether I found it on a list or whether I just grabbed it at Barnes and Nobel one time-I think I've had it for a while.  Started this book last year and stopped.  Started it again and put it down.  Picked it up, read a few chapters, put it down.  I suppose I'll finish it eventually since its a paperback and it just sits by my bedside until I am out of other things to read.  The writing is very, very dense which is probably why its taking me a while to get through it...I can't just "escape" by reading this book.  She doesn't use traditional punctuation, there is much stream of consciousness interspersed with active voice and you have to focus to take it all in.  Its also pretty far off the beaten path for me...its the story of two couples and their lives in post-apartheid South Africa.  I'm pretty certain the la

The Children's Book by A.S Byatt March 2018 I found this on a list online of books some author recommended.  It may have been Novik, the author of the last book I read (I sometimes go look at their websites after I finish a book).  It may have been someone else entirely, I really don't remember where I got the recommendation.  I had been heavy on the fantasy recently and was looking for a change in scenery.  This seemed to be a story about people, specifically an author and her relationship with her many children.  I'm a sucker for books about big families so off I went. Well, it was unexpectedly "artsy" in places...literally, there was a whole chapter that I barely skimmed because it was full of what I viewed as arcane and snotty references that even with my English major background and prolific reading experiences, I simply could not follow.  But that chapter was an anomaly in an otherwise very readable book. The lives of the characters were set in the

A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L'Engle February/March 2018 Obviously this book gets a "Fabulous" from me as well as a SUTMRS.  Obvious why, you ask?  Because L'Engle is one of my favorite authors of all time, I have read all of her books (most more than once), her children's book "The Other Dog" was a staple of my children's reading time, and well, just because.  A Wrinkle In Time was the original fantasy book that started me on my lifelong love of reading in general and fantasy in particular.  I read the book multiple times as a youngster and reread this book as an adult.  And, in anticipation of the release of the Disney movie I read it out loud to my 9 year old and I must say, the out-loud reading to him was far better than the adult reading to myself.  When he cheered out loud that the Mrs.'s were back I laugh/cried at his excitement.  When he expressed how scary IT was and how scared the children must be, my heart warmed at his empathy.

Caroline by Sarah Miller March 2018 My sister directed me to this book too.  Its a retelling of the Little House books from Ma Ingalls' perspective.  Or rather, its the retelling of one specific year in the life of the Ingalls family from Caroline's perspective.  I'm a sucker for the retelling/other perspective books...I've read several Austin "literary pastiche" or "parallel novels", March by Brooks (Jo, Beth, Amy' father), I think there was one based on Gone With the Wind and one based on Rebecca that I read? Anyway, its a genre that I enjoy delving into on occasion.  This particular book was approved by the LHOP "official" organization so its pretty white-washed even for an "adult" book.  At first I was like, yeah, yeah, get on with it but as the book progressed I came to enjoy it more and more.  In the final analysis, I'd give it a "Liked It".  Plus, even at 346 pages it was a pretty quick read...nothi