Bookin' It Thru Life

In a desperate state and without a lead, I did a search for old fantasy novels and stumbled on these gems.  Asimov is known for his science fiction and while I enjoy good sci-fi, its not at the top of my list.  Like fantasy, there is so much very, very bad science fiction out there - I tend to just avoid it for fear of getting sucked into something that is a waste of time.  I had never read any of his work.  In this case, I was delighted to find that Asimov deserves his reputation as a leader in the genre.  This also crosses over to the detective genre which again, is not my favorite, but I dabble in it occasionally.  And thanks to this trilogy, I now have a new second favorite literary detective (Cormoran Strike, your first place spot is not in any danger).  Its worth mentioning that the first two books were written relatively close together (between 1953 and 1957, depending on whether you count the serialized publication or only the actual book) with the third coming decades later

Yeah, I'll admit it.  Once again I was a victim of the Nook "cheap books to drag you in" gimmick.  Yes, I paid under $3 for this.  Yes, I read the whole thing. No, I won't be reading the sequel.  No, I did not find it to be a great book.  I really just should just learn my lesson. I hate to label it a "trope" but there it is-I'm going to call it.  Middle age woman abandons her newborn and years later longs to get in touch and explain her "why".  Young woman on the brink of big changes in her life struggles, in the face of her loving adoptive family, with her longing to find her birth mother.  Twists on the traditional story such as a cut short and potentially illegal adoption process and the situational complexities of a long distance marriage and an ill-conceived affair don't do much to bring this book out of the mundane.  The daughter and her love interest have a g-rated relationship that seems right out of a Christian novel (kill me no

According to google this is the second book in a series- a fact that I had no idea about when I read the actual book.  Honestly, knowing that may have prevented me from reading it, as I don't generally pick up right in the middle of a series.  Our hero here is Kate, an investigative reporter looking for a story.  She finds one in the hint of a reference to the remains of a newborn discovered on a construction site.  The story is told by Kate and two other narrators and the telling moves between them.  In all honesty, I am doing this write-up well after I read this book and I simply don't recall any of the details.  I remember the end of the book and how the mystery resolves but how we get there-I don't recall.  I'm looking at an online review thinking, yeah, that sounds familiar, and yeah, I remember what happened (the reviewer is trying desperately not to divulge any spoilers) but nothing else really comes to mind.  I do recall that I liked it just fine but not much mo

I'm not sure that "dystopian" is the right description for this novel ( dystopian-relating to or denoting an imagined state or society where there is great suffering or injustice ), though each of the characters does have their own moments of suffering.  Its science fiction-y, but not too over the top and in most sci-fi, the characters are well aware that they are in a sort of fantastic situation for whatever reason and here, they all seem to be struggling just to deal with their generally normal lives.  The novel is set in a town on the edge of a mountain (in Oregon I think) and a handful of neighbors are the focus of the story.   Over the course of the novel they each start to experience odd visions of themselves in alternative realities.  Some of the "visions" come across as hallucinations; some as live experiences.  The twist for me was that by the end of the book I was not really sure which "lives" were being lived in the same times...all the wa

Typical Cornwell with all our favorite players in different places...Scarpetto and Marino are back in Richmond on an ill-advised consulting case; Benton is stuck in Aspen with an reluctant patient and Lucy is in Florida working an attempted murder.  The underlying story was a stretch, the tenuous ties that hold it together stretching even my willing suspension.  And though the main mystery was of course solved by the final page, I was still left with too many unanswered questions to feel fully satisfied-did Dr. Touchy-feely ever get his comeuppance?  Did Mrs. Wacky Sex Life ever face reality?  How did Chief I Suck At My Job really get his position, and did his ghosts ever come home to roost?  I suppose these could be setups for future books but its a stretch to expect that readers will maintain that sort of active curiosity until the next book comes out. Overall, the book was exactly as expected when I grabbed it out of the basement (another one of the trove I inherited from my fathe

I had very low expectations for this book which it exceeded.  I think it was on a cheap books list in the Nook...when I don't have any particular next book in mind I'm a sucker for the under $3 cheap read that doesn't require me to do anything except hand over a couple of bucks and hit "Download".  What's not to like?  Well, sometimes the book.  This one was better than average. Cin-opsis:  Liza, Maggie's estranged friend, leaves our heroine her house-with the caveat that the friend's mother (Edith) comes along with the property.  Maggie takes the offer and hopes for the best.  This set-up lends itself to certain comedic tropes around multi-generational living.  While Fishman is not 100% successful, she largely avoids the predictable and tells a funny, touching story.  Both women come to know and appreciate Liza in a new way through her endowment as they grow into their new relationship as "property mates". Rating:  #5 Good Enough

My sister (the primary school librarian) gave me this book over the summer after she finished it.  Its target audience is the older elementary school/younger middle school student.  Modeled after Chaucer's Canterbury Tales , the book follows the adventures of three youngsters as they travel across the countryside trying (and largely failing) to stay out of trouble.  The children come complete with backstories and baggage and they bond in part because of, and in part in spite of, their differences.  There's a cliffhanger and a twist.  I thought it was good, though it was a bit longer than it needed to be in my opinion.  For what it is worth, I encouraged my 10 year old to read it and he made it through about 20 pages before declaring " I can not read another page of that book !"-so it clearly was not up his alley. I think I would have been a fan had I read it when I was his age. Rating:  #5 Good Enough

Well, I picked this book up sometime this year and did not get around to writing it up until now.  I'm looking at the title thinking, I don't remember a THING about this book.  I googled it and the description did not help.  So I pulled it up on my Nook.  Yes, I ordered the book.  Yes, I apparently read a good part of it.  I seem to have gotten to page 265/341 and apparently bailed.  So put this in the "didn't even finish it" category.  Even after all that, I still don't remember much about it and I made no notes while reading it.  My vague recollection is that the book itself did not track with the description on the cover and if I stopped reading it part way through, it must just have not been that interesting.  I mean, I will sometimes not finish a book because I don't like it-those I generally remember and have strong feeling about re: why I did not like it.  Its very rare that I just stop reading a book and don't even remember why...this book seem

I hate to say it because my worship of L’Engle knows no bounds, but I did not like this book.   Well written? Sure-that goes without saying.   But it was a little too  dreary and depressing for me and our "hero" was no such thing.  Unrequited love that lasts a lifetime?  Sure, I'll buy it.  Unrequited love that is so consuming that life outside of it is just shadow living for a lifetime ?  Nah.  The book also had overtones of The Great Gatsby which is not a book that I love or really even like.  I've tried Fitzgerald's "masterpiece" three times (twice for classes, in high school and college, and once as an adult) and I. Just. Don't. Get. It.  This book reminded me of that for some reason.  Not all the racy, high fashion nonsense, but the obsession without a relateable reason... I was happy to read it as I had never stumbled over this particular book before and I always like to tick off another L'Engle.  Glad I borrowed it from the library, s

Cin-opsis:   Young woman who hasn’t seen her favorite uncle in 15 or so years inherits his bookstore.   Following clues in imitation of the scavenger hunts they played when she was a child, Miranda susses out her uncle’s life since he disappeared and in the process, discovers herself.    It’s a good read, uncomplicated, easy to like.   Favorite book of the year?   Not even close.   Readable and entertaining?   Sure. Rating:   #5 Good Enough

Our narrator is a young man whose “uncle” was a WWII hero.   The uncle writes a well-received memoir and we as readers are treated to both his story and his “nephew’s” reactions to such.   The war story has all the ingredients of a hit:   love and battles and sex and airplanes, desperate rescues and heroic adventures.   Our narrator is suitably in thrall.   The writing was pleasant:             “ groans of downy sleep, death’s counterfeit ”  and            “And isn’t that the very problem with even the simplest lie, let alone a lie the size of Poxl’s?   It             breeds suspicion, incredulity without bounds ” The book was fine.  I did not find it to be the masterpiece that some did.   In addition, and perhaps overriding what I might otherwise have thought of it, shortly after I read this I read Chabon’s Moonglow and Poxl West can’t hold a candle to “grandfather”, nor Torday to Chabon.   An unfair comparison probably as Chabon is a seasoned author and this is Torday

I picked this one up on the Nook (I believe based on someone’s “best of” list?)   Set in India between 1916 and 1921, the setting was appealing for its very “different”ness from what I generally read.   Mysteries are not my first choice when looking for a new book but I can be up for anything that will keep me entertained and engaged.   This one did both.    I was intrigued by Perveen and her backstory and equally curious about how the widows of the title had gotten into the situation that drives the central mystery.    Observations on Bombay in 1920:   its hard to believe that Perveen’s experiences took place 100 years ago-while so many things have changed, sadly, so much has not!   Though clearly we have come a long way, we are still fighting the same battles for equality both in the home and in the workplace.   You would think that 100 years would be long enough for us to have mastered this but alas, no.   Cin-opsis:   Perveen, a young, ambitious lawyer, works for her fami

I first read these books when I was perhaps 13 or 14.  I reread them when the movies came out-give or take late 2001.  I'm not sure I have read them since, though for sure its possible.  On a late summer vacation my Nook was lost somewhere in between home-MSP-BWI-my sister Kim's house-the beach house-the other beach house-my sister Cathy's house-RDU-a six hour layover in BWI-MSP-home again.  So I hit the basement bookcases for reading material.  These books (the trilogy) were sure to keep me occupied and entertained while I procrastinated obtaining a new Nook. As a (if not the ) forerunner of the entire fantasy genre, Tolkien has a special place in my heart.  I loved his books as a youngster and love them even now.  The story of Frodo and his Companions is timeless and in revisiting it I was not disappointed.  The fellowship of man, elf, dwarf and hobbit along with all of the mystical creatures they met along the way from Hobbiton to the end of the world and back again is

I actually liked this book a lot (caveat: until the end, which I kind of wish had happened one chapter sooner than it did).  I love a good road trip and our "hero" was road tripping from page one.  Quick cinopsis (nod here to Hrishi and his "hrinopsis" on WWW):  Late middle aged man with addict son heads out in an RV to meet up with his ex and try to find their missing child.  It was funny and quirky and I am just enough short of his middle age age to find all of his laments about his slowly failing body relateable but not quite personally applicable (yet).  While driving, Greg reflects on his childhood, his relationship with his ex-wife, his love for his wife, his interactions with his son and other aspects of his life.  Hunter does a great job bringing Greg's feelings to life and lending poignancy to his reflections, as in here where he recalls the feelings he got when his friends' moms would be nice to him:  " Most of him was on guard, calculatin

I had very low expectations for this book. I was wandering around Target, bored and unwilling to actually shop while my kid had indoor soccer practice across the street.  Target is not known for its wide variety of reading material so I was more looking for an opportunity to feel superior than an opportunity to buy a book.  This one caught my eye for whatever reason and so, book and a bag of popcorn in hand, I headed back to the dome parking lot to try to find that balance between running your car for an hour and freezing in the Minnesota chill of a late winter evening.  Chapters later I was captivated.  A review on the cover indicates that Reese Witherspoon thought the book was "Beautifully written and incredibly funny" and while I have to agree with both characterizations, I also thought it was delightful and heartbreaking and cringe inducing and tragic and lovely. Honeyman takes us inside Eleanor's head so that we can see her foibles and recesses in all of their woun

Another chick-lit book from the cheap rack at B&N.  Darker than most, without the comedic intervals more common in a traditional beach read, this one was forgettable virtually from the beginning.  I'd say it goes in the don't bother category. Rating:  #7, Eh.

Not charting any new ground, GMR documents a childhood trauma experienced by three children and the repercussions of such on their lives in the decades that follow.  The story explores and exploits the games that memory and perspective can have on events as they retreat into the past, and how motivations and syllogism can intertwine and overlap to distort reality.  This book was not particularly well-written, though I have no specific criticism of the writing.  The story was not particularly good, though I can't point to a fatal flaw.  The characters were not especially compelling, though I can't say exactly why they did not land.  All in all, not much to complain about here, but not much to recommend either. Rating:  #5 Good Enough 

Having just read Michener's Alaska this fictional book set in the same state caught my attention.  I was eager to read a book with Alaska as the backdrop, thinking I would recognize the land that I had been so impressed with in my recent reading.  That part worked- I was pleased to recognize the setting and I felt that I appreciated the various references to Alaskan history and recognized the characteristics of the Alaskan people which were endemic to characters in both books:  fierce, almost obsessive independence, a highly developed sense of community, rampant alcoholism, seemingly automatic challenges to authority.  The book was fine; I liked it well enough.  Its the kind of book that hits the shelves every single day and does not really stand out from its brethren.  Had it not been set in Alaska, it would have been a hard pass for me, and in the final analysis I am glad that I read it. What's it about?   Call it a coming of age story, call it a wilderness story, call it a

Though the reviews on it are extraordinarily mixed, I fall on the side of liking this book.  It tells the story of an young woman who is raised in Nigeria, comes to the US for much of her young adulthood and then decides to return to her home country. Its ostensibly a love story, though not really.  It sort of a coming of age, but not really.  Its hard to define.  I found myself liking Ifemelu (even if I never did really figure out how to pronounce her name) and enjoying her journey.  I liked that she lived in a country and a culture that I have little real life experience with, and did not find it at all odd that even so, there were so very many things that I did relate to.  I was sort of lukewarm on the various love stories but liked that she ended up back home again.  I'd recommend this book, especially if you are looking for something that does not fit nicely into the traditional coming of age in the US book. Rating:  #3 Enjoyed it very much

Overall this book was ok-probably hovering somewhere just north of a 5 “good enough” with one huge caveat:  it could have used a stronger editor.  When a book has glaring enough inconsistencies and errors to take me out of the story, I start to get irritated.  When it does it over and over, I start to lose faith.  I love to just sink into a story and forget about life for a while…hard to do when you keep saying to yourself “that doesn’t make any sense!” as you are reading.   Bummer, because this was otherwise a likeable story.  Part mystery, part family drama, the protagonist and her twin sister were interesting characters and the story had legs, it just fell apart for me a little in the telling.  Examples:  At one point our heroine (if she really is such) dons a bikini and then proceeds to undress down to her underwear…and I know it sounds petty but there was a whole lead up to her wearing the bathing suit to begin with and a whole discussion of her still having it on, so why hav

Follett tends to fall into the same category for me as Baldachi, Grisham, Cornwell, etc. etc…you know what you are getting when you dive into one of his books.   Its going to be compelling, well written, most frequently long enough to be worth the effort, and ultimately, forgettable.   Classic escapism.   It did not disappoint.   This copy of the book has been on my shelf for years, unread, most likely one a host of books I inherited from my father-in-law when he purged his book shelves a couple of years back and I took anything I thought I might want to read someday.   The story takes place on a plane flying the overnight route from Europe to America with a cast of characters straight out of a, well, a novel…you have your ne'er-do-well young rouge running from the law, your wealthy family with its haughty mother, overpowering father, petulant but relatable daughter and impish but lovable son, the mysterious trench-coated lawman, etc. etc.    There is a love story, a mystery, a t

This has been on my list for a couple of years but I never could pull the trigger.   I am not sure what was stopping me…I think I thought that I had already read this years ago and I did not want to repeat.   Then, last fall, Netflix put out an 8 or 9 episode version of the book and my sister raved about it.   I DO NOT like horror movies or horror tv so I was not inclined to watch it.   However, eventually I gave in to the hype and turned it on on a Sunday afternoon while folding laundry.   If folding a weeks worth of clothes for a family of five is not enough to overcome the creepiness of a tv show viewed in broad daylight while kids and dogs wander around the house then its probably not a show for me. Well, the show was captivating and compelling and very definitely not something I wanted to watch in the dark of night alone.   My daughter watched most of it with me over the course of the next few weeks (always during daylight hours, most frequently during the weekly laundry fun

Sometime in late December 2018 I stumbled on a delightful little television series on Netflix called When Calls the Heart .   It’s set in the Canadian West during the period right around the turn of the 20 th century and centers around a young teacher who is assigned to a country school, the young Mountie who is coincidentally assigned to the same remote town, and the folks with whom they live and work.   Very much reminiscent of Little House on the Prairie , though taking place decades later and a whole country farther north, it’s family friendly drama that my kids referred to as “mom’s cheesy show” but which my then 9 year old and I binge watched over the Christmas break with secret delight.   It has all the markings of its parent channel’s best shows:   Christian based themes, no cursing, absolutely no naughty $ex, and story lines that your grandma would be happy to hear about over Sunday dinner.   I ate it up. Knowing that the tv show was based on the novels, of course my fi

Typical Baldacci...mildly entertaining, wholly forgetable...good airplane read, probably not a whole lot else to recommend it.  Even now looking at the book I have to read the cover description and skim the book to even recall what it was about and whether I liked it.  Rating:  #5 Good Enough

Broke one of my reading rules with this one since its ostensibly the first of a series and the others are not written yet...but I did not know that when I started is so I'll forgive myself this once.  The story starts by pulling out all of the fantasy tropes one by one...an orphan taken in by reluctant guardians, a teacher who takes a special interest, a test/challenge which must be mastered against all the odds, placement in a school/unit where outsiders have to work 10 times as hard to achieve the same recognition, discovery of a special power which elevates....I could go on and on and we'd hit every. single. one.  Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with that-I love a good fantasy novel!  But while not bad, this one also does not stand out from the crowd:  Rin is no Harry Potter or Rand al'Thor. Will I read the sequel should it ever come out?  Maybe.  Will it be on my must read list?  Nope. Rating:  #5 Good Enough 

Yikes,,,ever heard of "chick lit"?  This is a classic that deserves the label.  The protagonist even has a properly chick-y name:  Fixie Farr.  Poor Fixie is stuck being the dumping ground for a family of losers who can't see the forest for the trees.  Her mom's a mess going through a late mid-life crisis, her siblings are clueless hanger-on-ers, her boyfriend (of sorts) is a dweeb who even our fictional Fixie should not have fallen for and her hero, well, he's picture perfect straight from a movie and somehow (classicly) she doesn't even see it.  Other than being a little too over the top and far fetched, its your typical romance ...the final sentence in the description on the back of the book says more than I can say:  "Will she finally grab the life, and love, she really wants?"  Oh dear, Fixie, please do!  Its more than I can stand to see you waste away for a single more page! That all probably sounds more harsh than its meant to.  I Owe You On

I’ve read several Chabon books with varying success.   The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Clay is phenomenal-a recommend from me with high honors.   The Yiddish Policeman’s Union was ok-I don’t remember being blow away by it or anything.   Moonglow was one of those books I picked up in a hurry off the B&N discount rack-I saw Chabon’s name and thought, eh, why not?    The summary on the cover was NOT helpful-upon starting I was not sure if I was reading a memoir, a novel, a historical account of his grandfather’s life, or something altogether different.   Having finished it, I’m still not sure.   Was Chabon actually the grandson retelling his family’s story?   Was the whole account fictional?   At the end of the day, I don’t think it matters.   The story was compelling, the characters deeply flawed and equally relateably human.   A delight.     The family in the story was Jewish and their history was intertwined with Hitler’s Germany and World War II, without actually t

Silly book by an author I have grown quite fond of.   Nothing like Calypso, still I recognized his voice on every page.   It’s a brutal look at today’s society told in parable form using little forest creatures.   Sedaris has an uncanny eye for truth-telling and laying things bare and he does it again here.   Rating:   #4 Liked It

I last read this book in college and there are three (count them-3) copies of this in paperback on my bookshelves downstairs.  I distinctly remember buying it, losing the first copy and having to buy a second copy, and then magically finding the original.  My recollection is that I left it at the soccer field and someone picked it and returned it to me a few weeks later.  Where the third copy came from who can say???  In any case, this summer I left my Nook somewhere between my sister's house in Maryland, BWI, the beach house, the beach itself, my other sister's house in NC, RDU and MSP...I know I was reading Pride and Prejudice on the plane on the way to Maryland and I know it did not make its way back to Minnesota so its anyone's guess where in between the darn thing disappeared.  I hadn't acquired a new Nook yet so I was "stuck" reading things that are already in my possession which is fine because I love my books.  But I digress from my review...oh, and

I read this knowing that I liked the Harry Potter series and I love her Galbraith's Cormoran Strike series but outside of those, could she really write?  I should have known that the answer was yes without having to read a book to be convinced.  This novel is a one-off unrelated to anything else she has written and the back cover of the book claims its her "first novel for adults"...I beg to differ, Harry Potter is NOT just for kids, but that's a quarrel I have with the book jacket writer, not with Rowling.  You can read a summary of the book somewhere else but a quick hit on what the back cover says is this:  a man is dead and his place on the parish council is up for grabs.  Let the machinations ensue.  That not inaccurate per se but really, like any good book, this is a story about families and relationships and the complications that come with both, set with a backdrop of ambition and failure and privilege and desperation.   I flipped through the book just now

Josh needed a book to read for school.  I have an entire bookcase in the basement full of young adult/old children's books.  Granted, the majority of these are my old Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew books, two copies of Wilder's Little House series, various versions and copies of Harry Potter (hardback, paperback, old and in between), L'Engle's entire collection, the CS Lewis books and so on and so forth...but there are also various books the kids bought over the years from the Scholastic Book offering (yes, they still have those) including this gem which seemed right up my almost 5th grader's alley.  We read it over the summer (yes, I still read to him at night and will continue to do so until he kicks me out-sharing books with my kids is one of the things I enjoy about being a parent, going all the way back to Boynton's But Not the Hippopotamus books of their infancy) and he loved it.  He wanted to read the sequel right away but some other book jumped in line th

Oldie but goodie?  Maybe.  Sort of.  Not really.  I apparently read this back (or at least started this book) in either college or more likely high school as the book has my maiden name written on the inside cover in a pretty youthful scrawl.  But I don't remember much about it other than that it was indeed about vampires and it fit into the gothic genre which I was super into in my younger days.  I don't recall any opinion on liking or not liking it.  I suspect I read this when I was on my Wuthering Heights/Frankenstein/The Moonstone/Jane Eyre/etc. etc. kick back in the day.  Rereading it, I can see all of the vampire tropes which other writers have used with such success.  As I proceeded through the book, though, I realized why there was a bookmark stuck halfway through when I picked it up-I don't think I ever finished.  This time around I did wade my way through but it was not easy-even for me, who generally loves this kind of thing, I was ready for it to be done well be

I've written before about my affinity for the bargain shelf at B&N...you win some, you lose some.  This little diversion was somewhere in between.  Told from the points of view of two couples vacationing in Italy, its part the latent unraveling of the two marriages, part psychological thriller, part mystery...I had low expectations and it exceeded them so that's something.  I also read it in like a day and half so that's also a tick in its favor-no wasted time.  As chick lit goes, it was pretty satisfying.  As literary candy?  Not so much.  If you have the time and the inclination and its cheap (or free!  check out your library!) go for it-there are worst ways to spend your time.  Looking for the one book you want to read in the next few months?  You can do better. Rating:  #5 Good Enough

Michener-ever a favorite.  He educates, he entertains, he is timeless.  That said, Alaska was not at the top of my list of his books.  The formula was the same...here is the earth and how the land was formed; here are the early inhabitants and the trials and tribulations that made them both unique and ubiquitous; here are some early people you can relate to who contributed to the evolution of the place; here is how things progressed up to the modern day.  Somewhere around 75% of the way through the book I started to lose interest and he never really brought me back around.  At 1,073 pages that's quite a slog to get through when you are not engaged.  Slog I did as much because I had no replacement book picked out as because I really wanted to finish this one.  Still, I am glad I read it.  As always, I learned something and will try to retain the information for use in Jeopardy-like challenges.  Here are some things I learned which I suppose I knew at one time in the distant past b

subtitled:  A Novel of the O.K. Corral ...  so yes, that's what this is.  I like Russell, her The Sparrow is one of my favorite books.  I like a good western.  I like historical fiction.  I like a good showdown and a who doesn't like a good pistol fight?  What could go wrong? In the final analysis, not much.  I got what I came for, plus some.  Russell's writing is easy on the reader, pulling you in without a struggle.  The OK corral legend is a fine stand alone story and Russell spins it as a tale of love...between men and women (though those don't tend to turn out so great) and between brothers and between men who chose to be "brothers".  Its a tale of law enforcement doing the best they can in trying times (we could take a lesson or two on this in our own day and age) and of a new land struggling to figure out what its legacy will be.    I picked this one up off the bargain shelf at B&N and it was a step above the typical fare I find there.  I liked

"This is the fictionalized account of the real-life, cutthroat rivalry between two of America's earliest, preeminent paleontologists, Edward Drinker Cope of Philadelphia and Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale. "  So describes the USA Today's Dan Oldenburg in his May 2017 review of this delightful book.  Historical fiction with some reality tossed it?  Adventures with dinosaur bones?  The wild west?  A coming of age book?  I'm in! I've read many of Crichton's books over the year with varying degrees of enjoyment...I think as a general rule I like his stuff well enough but I generally find the stories more compelling than the writing.  This book, published posthumously, was more polished than some of his other works.  I found it delightfully entertaining and it made me want to revisit his collection to see if in my advanced age I would like them more than I recalled.  Alas, I haven't gotten around to doing this yet. If you like this sort of thing, I rec

Picked up off the deep discount shelf at Barnes and Noble- could have left it there and been no worse off.  But, I was heading to the beach, I needed a book to read on the plane and the kids were getting antsy...so I bought it.  A mixture between a pyschological thriller and a mystery, it was not a bad "beach read" if you have low expectations for such.  I left it on the bookcase at the beach house for some other desperate beach goer to read...there was no way I was dragging it back to Minnesota. I should not be so hard on it, I did finish it and it did keep me guessing for most of the book.  But there were a couple of overriding issues for me.  I could not really relate to the characters...the premise of the book was that these young women were invited to live in a dream house but the invitation came with strict rules regarding how one was supposed to live in such house-I just could not relate to being willing to live in a place where there could never be any dirty dishes,

My 14 year old daughter read this book and said she liked it so I picked it up.   It was ok…but my overriding sense was that it could not decide if it was supposed to be a supernatural tale (was it?  ) or not.  There ended up being a reasonable, rational explanation for everything, if you could buy into the fact that the mother was suffering from some sort of mental health issue.  I didn't particularly like the book and I did not think it was especially well written but I think it was aimed at the "young adult" crowd so my expectations should have been lower to start off. Bearable, Just Barely #6

I found this book in a used book store ‘round about 1993.   It intrigued me then-a Richard Adams book that I had not heard of (Watership Down, anyone?) and which upon reading defied all expectations.   It’s the story of a young girl who was sold into slavery by her mother, became the concubine of a wealthy spymaster and was positioned to (and did!) become a hero for her country.  What's not to like? On the reread, the book has traits of soft porn (I know, I know, but I gotta tell it like it is) but it doesn’t feel as risqué as it actually is because all of the “naughty” words are replaced with words in the language of the book which makes everything just a bit remote and disconnected.  The book seemed really long this time around-I don’t recall it taking so long to get through and I can’t really account for that.  I mean, I think I probably read as fast now as I ever have…  In terms of the book, Mia is a tremendous adventure story, a coming of age novel, a story of fri

I read about this book a while ago and thought maybe I’d read it but sort of moved on without picking it up at the time.   When I found it on the sale rack (you know, $4 for recent hardbacks, gotta get me some, I can’t resist a book on deep discount) I thought ah, sure, I’ll give it a try.  I was pleased that I did. The book centers around two families living on either side of the border of a modern day Indian reservation.   Each family has a five year old son.   One of the men kills the other family’s child in a tragic hunting accident and as recompense, he offers his own son to the family of the slain child.   Devastating, right?  And that does not even take into account how his wife felt about the "trade". Its ultimately a book about these two families, the town they live in and the school and parish they attend.   It’s about taking in strays and making sacrifices for others.   The characters felt real and fresh.  The author has mastered the trick of conveying sh

Billed as a psychological thriller this book documents the aftermath of a couple’s honeymoon where they find “something in the water”.   It was surely that-they did indeed find something in the water.   And it had all the trappings of a thriller but I just was not quite “thrilled”.   First, I had some issues with the way the author told the story.   The book was told in the first person and there were no signs that she was a unreliable narrator, yet she kept second guessing herself and having other characters react in ways that were inconsistent with the story that she was telling.   And the disintegration of her relationship with her husband…odd.   My kids asked what I was reading about and I said it was a book about a person who made one tiny misjudgement and then another and then another and suddenly had gone so far wrong they could not recover without ever having realized it was going south.   But really, even the initial missteps seemed obviously wrong.   I don’t know, I am

This was my favorite book of 2018.  I found myself riveted from start to finish.  The book is set partially in Minnesota, my current stomping grounds, and I found the author's perspective on my adopted home state touching.  The rest of the book was set in the Amazon and echoes of Marlow's journey up the Congo abound.  Its a love story (of sorts-Marina and Mr. Fox's "love story" is not one I'd want to be a part of but it feels just messy enough to be realistic)...but not just romantic love, but love of colleagues and of children and of a people and of places...its a coming of age story...with some science fiction and some politics thrown in for good measure. Our heroine describes herself as " profoundly suited for Minnesota " which, being a transplant to Minnesota, I found profoundly funny.  " Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her dire

Have you ever been charmed by something? I mean, to the point where it made you smile, and laugh, and maybe tear up, and you just can't put your finger on it but the delight is present and accounted for?  Well, this book charmed me.  The premise was nothing to write home about...aristocrat spends his life under house arrest in a hotel in Moscow.  OK, so what...his pals come to see him and he gets a lot of room service?  Nope, not even close. This book clocks in at an impressive 453 pages of delight.  From the first page I was captivated and did not stop being thrilled until the end.  I am not one to balk at long books (the longer the better, bring it on) but this one did not stop being great for even a single page in between.  The writing is a little dense so if that's troublesome, you may have to stick it out until you fall into the rhythm.  But once you do, oh, the joy! I'm no historian, not of American history and certainly not of Russian history so I will admit to g

I can’t think of when I have been as pleasantly surprised by a book.   On the heels of State of Wonder which I loved, loved, loved, I stumbled on The Thirteenth Tale and was certain it would just be another book to read.   Boy was I wrong.   It had all the trappings of a generic Gothic novel with none of the hype that comes with the classics…spinstress bookseller living in her father’s house is called away to assist a mysterious recluse with a cryptic request.   See what I mean?   I almost skipped it,  deciding without even reading it that it was not worth my time!  And in addition to the story, the WRITING about READING oh my dear friend, the way this author writes of reading was astonishing, as if she looked into my very soul and wrote of what she saw! The following is an annoyingly long passage from the book but I have to include it in its entirety because its so strikes a nerve:    Of course, one always hopes for something special when one reads an author one hasn’t rea