The Lake of Dreams

I thought The Memory Keeper's Daughter was a great book - it drew me in and fascinated me.  When I saw another book by the same author on one of my quick pass-throughs of the adult section of the library, I grabbed it quickly. 

Edwards didn't disappoint.  Not only is the story interesting, but the langauge of this book is poetically beautiful in places.  It is vivid and draws you on in spite of the story, which is strong in its own right.  A story of how the past determines the present, infused with dreams and dream metahpors, this is a beautifully woven novel.

A definite summer recommendation!

These Things Hidden

My grandma recently gave me a stack of books about the time another friend gave me a stack of books.  I've been slowly working my way through both of them.  This is one of my favorites.

Every bit a page-turner, the author is masterful at creating and building tension.  I could figure things out as I read, but was still a bit surprised by the ending.  This would be a great beach read or airplane book.  It's not light and fluffy, but it's also a very quick read.

The Thirteenth Tale

Don't pick this book up unless you want to give up extrarraneous activities and sit and read for hours.  It will draw you in and keep you turning pages until you get to the end and feel disappointed that it is over.

A bit of a ghost story (which I don't normally like) and a mystery quite unlike those typically in that genre, it tells the story of a strange place called Angelfield, a set of twins, a biographer dealing with her own grief and a story that once it is told, changes everything you believe at the beginning of the book.

Pick it up and read it but don't expect to get much done until you turn the 408th page.

Book Club Review: The Map of Love

I was so excited to read this book...but I think I'll have to give it a mixed review. 
I enjoyed the imagery in this book and the overall storyline...two love stories that entwined with a shared history.  In light of all that is happening in the Middle East currently, I found it fascinating to read of Egypt's history.  And I always enjoy reading books about other cultures and those set in times and places that I haven't read much about.  I also really liked the parts showing the roots and connections of the Arabic words - something I know nothing about but find interesting.  I also liked how the book was divided into sections:  A Beginning, An End of a Beginning, A Beginning of an End, An End - very clever.

However, I got really bogged down in the middle of this book.  I considered not finishing it, but I have such a hard time doing that and I am glad I stuck it out.  I would have enjoyed it a lot more if there had been a bit less political and historical information and more development of the characters.  The back of the book makes it sound like it is about the characters' love stories while it seemed to be more about the political situations.  And I suppose given the nature of the tale, the characters' stories were incomplete without a description of the times they lived in.  The other thing that frustrated me - I didn't discover until I finished it that there was a glossary of terms in the back that would have really helped me. 

Overall, it was an interesting book, but not one I'll ever feel the need to read again.

The Falls

I love me some Joyce Carol Oates.  It amazes me how she churns out the books and all that I have read, I have liked.

Her books are mostly dark.  But, she deeply psychologically mines her characters.  I think that is what I love the most.  If you are at all interested in character development and character driven writing, Oates is your gal.

Ariah is honeymooning in Niagara Falls when her husband throws himself over the railing, leaving her the "Widow Bride of the Falls".  Ariah determines that she is damned.  Enter Dirk Burnaby.  He is a well liked and rich man from Niagara Falls and falls inexplicably in love with Ariah.  They marry and have a few years of happiness and three children.  Dirk then becomes involved in "Love Canal", a lawsuit against toxic dumpers in the area.  The waste is making people sick and Dirk becomes consumed with the case.  The Burnaby children and their eccentric mother, Ariah, are left to deal with the aftermath of the case.

If you like Oates, I'd recommend this book.  If you are new to her, start with We Were the Mulvaneys.

Freddy and Fredericka

This book has been the bane of my existence for the last couple of weeks.  Probably not the best way to start a book review...let me explain.

My feelings about this book were all over the place.  It was so difficult to get into.  The first chapter was tedious and wordy.  I flew through the second chapter actually laughing out loud.  And so the book went, from tedious to delicious and back.  There were many times that I was going to put it back on the shelf.  The last time I thought that I was on page 426, so I thought I had a bit invested in it.  I should see how it turns out.

Freddy and Fredericka are the prince and princess of Wales (fun to read and think about with the upcoming royal wedding).  They are constantly getting into trouble and embarrassing for the crown.  Freddy comes off as a bumbling fool and Fredericka wears plunging necklines.  The part of the book describing Freddy's antics made me laugh so hard.

The Queen decides to teach them a lesson and literally drops them from the sky, naked, into America.  Thus begins Freddy and Fredericka's real education.  It was fun to read about them taking real jobs and living on and with nothing.  And then discovering their love for one another and their resulting acceptance of what their royal life needs to be like.

And all through the book it was love/hate.  I'd love one part and be so carried away that my heart would break when I got to the next tedious part.  It is an amazing read if you love language and play on words and grammatical play.  It was a fun read if you like imagining what a royal life is like.

Give it a shot and let me know what you think.  I think this book would make an amazing movie...

The Known World

Our library is great.  It is well-stocked, new, cool to be in, and has its own children's room with toys and activities and a pet fish named Blueberry.  There are many programs if you want to be involved from reading with your dog to books & babies to traditional storytime. There is even a great coffee shop where we often stop to get a treat.  They have lots of healthy kid-friendly snacks too.  And Big Train chai.  And, you can take your drink into the library. 

On one of my stops into the coffee shop, I inquired about the books on the shelves around the shop.  I found out they were used books that had been donated and were for sale; all profit from their sale goes to the library.  I pulled this one off the shelf, excited to read it because of its content and the fact that it won a Pulitzer.

This book was so hard to get into.  I bet I started to read it a half dozen times before I really got into it.  Mostly because I had a few brain candy books I was reading and whenever I picked this one up it took so long to remember the context, I could only read a few pages before drifting off.  But once I finally got into it, I enjoyed it.

The book's timeline is fluid as are the characters.  The central event is the death of Henry Townsend, a black slave owner (I learned there were African Americans who owned other African Americans).  The story shuttles back and forth among the slaves on his plantation, his early days as a slave himself, the story of his parents, his owners, the local sheriff, and numerous other characters.  That was part of what it made it difficult to get into.  I think if I read it again, I will see how beautifully woven the story truly is.  It is a remarkable story of human character and the things that we both need to see and shudder at.  If you've got some time to sit down and read it, do it...but this is anything but brain candy...consider yourself warned.

Book Club Review: The Weird Sisters

I loved so much about this book.  I loved that the characters always had their nose in a book.  I loved that it was told from the first person using "we" instead of "I".  I loved the father who would always quote Shakespeare and leave his family to search out the meaning.  I loved the stories of sisters.  And, I loved how real and flawed the characters were.

Bean flees for home after a disastrous stint in New York where she stole money from her employer to buy clothes.  Cordy, the baby, flees for home after she finds out she is having a baby.  And, steadfast Rose, is home thinking she is the glue that holds it all together.

I enjoyed reading about how they navigated each other and plodded their way through their messes.  Eventually they each let go of their expectations of how things were "supposed" to be.  

The Girl Who Chased The Moon

Another one of Sarah Addison Allen's books.  They are like candy and I can't get enough.  She also wrote Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen.

This is by far my favorite of her books.  All of them have been fun to read and all have been read in one sitting.  I love the magical elements, the food, and the mystery.

After her mother dies, Emily moves to a small North Carolina barbeque town to live with her grandfather whom she has never met.  She soon learns that her mother left after something horrible happened and now Emily has to live down her mother's reputation.

There is a little bit of romance.  A lot of cake baking (recipes included at the end of the book).  Mysterious lights and wallpaper that changes on a whim.

I would recommend this book when you are in need of something light and fun.

Sweet, Shattered Dreams

I was excited to dive into the next book by West sitting in my library stack.  Unfortunately, it was nowhere near as intriguing as Amos. 

Of course, like anyone, I like reading about places I've been or lived.  And this book took place about ten miles from my home.  It was fun to read the name of the grocery store where I go a few times a month, and to picture the ranch nestled up by the mountains.

However, the writing felt more forced.  I loved the lyrical, almost poetry-like passages in parts of Amos.  That same style felt awkward to me in this book.  The plot seemed interesting at first.  The story is about a washed-up country singer who, through a series of circumstances, is assumed to be dead but is in fact not.  He goes into hiding to try to find a way to make a life under an assumed name and finds the perfect place to hole up - a ranch in Big Sky country.  The various cast of characters were somewhat redeeming.  However, the love story part of the book just made me irritated.  It seemed so unrealistic.  I knew almost exactly what was going to happen before it began to unfold.

Overall, it was an okay book.  The familiarity and interesting characters brought alot, but weren't enough to overpower the trite story line and forced poetic passages.

666 Park Avenue

I've been sick this week.  Which means lots of laying around.  Which means needing a book to read.  Nothing heavy.  Beach read.  Chick lit.  Brain candy.

This book didn't take long to read and was exactly what I needed:  a little escape.  And while it served its function as a little get away, I can't really say it was a good read.  It was just something to read.

Jane's parents died when she was 10 months old.  She is then raised by her very overprotective grandmother in the French countryside.  She runs away from said grandmother to start her life in Paris.  She has just met a wealthy and handsome man and that is where the story begins.  He proposes to her after a month of dating.  She finally goes back to her grandmother's to introduce her fiance and her grandmother is dead, leaving her a note telling her that she is a witch.  Suddenly all the weird electrical debacles that seem to follow Jane around make sense.

She goes to New York with her fiance who happens to be New York royalty.  And, happens to be from a witch family.  She soon discovers the whole thing has been orchestrated by his mother, Lynne, to produce magical progeny.  Jane finds herself having to learn quickly how to use her magic to save herself and her fiance.

Poorly paced.  Not very good writing.  Fantastically bad plot.  Oh, and it sets itself up for a sequel.

However, exactly what I needed in my cold medicine fog.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

I liked Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.  I had never seen the movie, so I watched it a few weeks ago and loved it.  So, when I picked up this book and the cover said, "playful and devoted homage to Sense and Sensibility", I snatched it up.

It is the wealthy Jewish New Yorker version of Sense and Sensibility.  Betty's husband decides to divorce her after decades of marriage.  And, for a younger woman.  The younger woman wants the fancy apartment, so Betty heads to a cottage owned by her cousin Lou.

Her two middle-aged daughters join her.  One has two grown boys and is divorced.  The other had a literary agency that was thriving until it hit the news that all of the memoirs she published were fake (she went on Oprah to defend her authors).

They live together in the tiny cottage for a year.  Going to dinners at Cousin Lou's, learning what it is like to live on a budget, buying tons of things from TV infomercials, dealing with love and loss.

Overall, a very fun read.

Amos

On a wonderful, nonexciting date with my husband, we ended up at Barnes and Noble as we almost always do.  There was a display table with Montana authors.  Intrigued by this book, and vaguely remembering reading another book by West, Blind Your Ponies, I grabbed it.

I was hooked from the first sentence:  "He was an old man, clinging fiercely to the tattered garment that had once been his dignity."

I could barely put this book down.  I even stayed up until one last night, which I rarely do these days.  The writing was exquisite, the story painful, the characters full of life despite the fact that they are all living in a county home for the elderly. 

Amos finds himself choosing between heroism and comfort, choosing to live out the rest of his days or find solace in sleeping away his life.  Love, danger, pain, intrigue, daring and courage fill his golden days.  Some would find this a depressing book, but I loved every minute of it.  In fact, I've got four more books by West sitting on my end table, snatched from the library this very week.

The Septembers of Shiraz

This is a book that I picked up at Hastings.  I was wandering and saw that the front the book had a review from an author I love to read, Claire Messud, "miraculously light in its touch...Sofer writes beautifully...a remarkable debut."  Sold.

The book chronicles a family in the 1980s shortly after the Iranian revolution.  It describes the chaos and the slow chipping away at the familiar.  The father, Isaac, is arrested and sent to a prison to be constantly interrogated about his "crimes".  The wife, Farnaz, tries to hold what remains of their daily lives together.  The daughter, Shirin, finds herself unable to eat and sickly due to the stress.  And, the son, Parviz, is in New York going to school, lonely and penniless.

The writing is sparse and beautiful.  Sofer makes a difficult and sad subject immensely readable.  I usually don't read the interviews with the authors at the end of the book, but in this case I was really glad that I did.   The story is very loosely autobiographical.  Sofer's father was imprisoned in much the same manner and came back a changed person.  Sofer's family was smuggled out of the country to safety.

I really enjoyed this book.  However, if I had solely read the back, I don't think I would have picked it up.

The Wednesday Sisters

My mother-in-law got me this book for Christmas.  I was really impressed that she picked out a book I hadn't read and was interested in reading.  About the only one who buys me books is my husband, unless I give specific requests. 

The book chronicles the friendship of five women who meet in Palo Alto, California, in 1967.  All wives and mothers, they form a writing club and meet weekly at the park while their children play.

Each character has her own story both with her writing and her personal life.  From breast cancer to cheating husbands, the gamut is covered.  The historical climate plays a lot into the story.  I feel like if you were a contemporary to these women, this book would mean so much more.  It caused me to contemplate how much has changed since then, particularly for women.

I enjoyed all of it but the end.  I felt like it just.  Ended.  Kinda like that.  Obviously that's probably intentional but it still bugged me.  I wanted a sounder conclusion.  Other than that, I really liked it.  Enough to stay up an hour past bedtime three nights in a row. 

The Sugar Queen

It was fast and sweet.  Seriously.  I just sat down and read it.  By the same author of Garden Spells.

It has magic, mystery, and a little romance.  Another piece of candy that I totally enjoyed reading.

Josey wakes one morning to find someone is living in her closet.  Her closet full of sweets.  Each chapter is named after a sweet treat.  She has been basically trapped by her mother and at 27 finds that she is a bit tired of it.  She ventures out to find new friends and a new love.  In the process she uncovers some family secrets.

Nom.  Nom.  Nom.

Garden Spells

Are you in need of a delicious truffle of a book?  Then this is it.

It isn't great literature but it is such a fun story.  Full of magical elements and interesting relationships.  Kinda reminded me of the movie Practical Magic.

But, beware, it was a bit difficult to read in the winter.  It obviously is about a garden and it totally made me miss summer.  Sleeping with the windows open.  The smell of fresh cut grass.  Totally sassy apple trees!

This book was a great break in winter and something almost guilty to look forward to reading.  It doesn't take long to finish.  Complete candy.

The Secret History

A couple of friends from my yoga blog recommended this book.  I grew up on a steady diet of dark Anne Rice books.  I love dark books.  And this was certainly a dark book.

At an elite, small university in Vermont, six students take their Greek education very seriously.  Four of the students try to recreate a bacchanalia.  It goes horribly awry and a local farmer ends up maimed to death.  One of the excluded friends, Bunny, a character that seems to have no conscience or morals, finds out about the incident and begins to blackmail his friends as he struggles with what they did.

The group, led by eccentric Henry, are constantly in a worried frenzy that Bunny is going to tell someone what they did.  Apparently their only solution to the problem is to kill Bunny.

The story, told by one of the friends, chronicles how they came to the decision and how that decision ruins their lives.

"It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did.  But of course I didn't see this crucial moment then for what it was; I suppose we never do.  Instead, I only yawned, and shook myself from the momentary daze that had come upon me, and went on my way down the stairs."  p. 199

"After dinner, I went back to my room.  I dreaded the thought of the night ahead, but not for the reasons one might expect--that I was worried about the police, or that my conscience bothered me, or anything of the sort.  Quite the contrary.  By that time, by some purely subconscious means, I had developed a successful mental block about the murder and everything pertaining to it.  I talked about it in select company but seldom thought of it when alone."  p. 317

Brush up on your classics and your Greek.  This book is full of delicious literary references and I'm sure I only understood half of them.

The Monsters of Templeton

I have to admit that I bought this book because of its cover.  I was walking through Hastings, saw it, saw that it was a NYT Bestseller, and picked it up.

I'm not in the habit of reading books that I don't enjoy.  I figure there are so many amazing reads out there, why trudge through something miserable?  With that said I'm not quite sure why I continued on with this book.

Willie Upton returns to her hometown pregnant and disgraced (her opinion).  While home the lake monster dies and she is digging up family history and trying to get along with her mother.  Templeton is the shadow of Cooperstown, New York and Willie Upton is a descendant of the great writer Jacob Franklin Temple (James Fenimore Cooper).  Willie's mother tells her that her father is not who she originally told her and encourages Willie to research into family history to find the identity of her father.

Thus the book goes through generations of the family told from different points of view.  Which, in theory I like, but with that many voices in that short of a book, it just got annoying.

I desperately wanted to like the main character.  The author tried to make her this intelligent, charming character.  I found her weak, whiney, and anything but intelligent.  I didn't feel any connection to her at all.  Nor the hippie to born again mother, Vi.

The book had all the elements of a good story:  lake monster, secret history, ghosts, heartache.  But, for me it never came together.

Which is why I can't figure out why I read the whole thing.  I actually enjoyed reading it with all my criticisms aside.  It was a fun read.  It was a fast read.

Try this one at your own risk.  And, if you make it through, let me know what you think.

Book Club Review: The Book Thief

This was a fast and fun read.  Although, I guess "fun" isn't the exact word I'm looking for here.  The book takes place in Nazi Germany and there really isn't a lot of fun about it.  But, I couldn't put it down.  I wanted to keep reading it even though I knew what was going to happen.

I knew what was coming because of history.  And, because the narrator is Death.  Doesn't take a lot to figure out.

We follow young Liesel as she grows through the war years.  Her father is either dead or disappeared because he is a partisan (communist) and her mother is running for her life.  We meet the main character as she is riding a train to her new foster home.  And, watches her brother die.  As they are burying her brother, the gravedigger drops a book in the snow and Liesel stealthily snatches it up.  "The Gravedigger's Handbook".  A book thief is born.

She goes on to live with her foster parents.  I was ready for them to be horrible, but they are taking in a partisan child during a war.  They get a small amount of money, yet not enough for that to be the reason for taking Liesel in.  She creates a very tight bond with her accordion playing foster father, Hans.  And, we learn to love the well meaning cussing and gruff from the foster mother, Rosa.

Liesel struggles to learn to read and falls in love with books.  Her second stolen book was from the ashes of one of Nazi Germany's book bonfires.  And, a very unexpected person witnesses the theft, the mayor's wife.  The mayor's wife has a large library and leaves the window open for Liesel to steal more books.  These are the books she reads to the town when they are all in a bomb shelter during air raids.

Liesel has two amazing friends in this story, not counting the mayor's wife who really saves her life, Rudy and Max.  Rudy wants to be Jesse Owens when he grows up.  He and Liesel get into all sorts of mischief together.  One of my favorite passages is when the scrape up enough money to buy candy but they can only afford one piece.  They take turns sucking on it.

Max is the Jew who lives in her basement.  Max and Liesel become good friends and due to a kindness done by Hans, Max has to leave.  Liesel searches for him constantly.

This book is about the horrors of war.  The overwhelming despair that comes with loss.  And, the overwhelming goodness that humans are capable of.

One of the reviews on the back of the book says that the author, "doesn't sugarcoat anything, but he make his ostensibly gloomy subject bearable."

Of the book club books we have read, this one is my favorite.