Readers Delight

The Road Out of Hell: Sanford Clark and the True Story of the Wineville Murders by Anthony Flacco

2012-01-26T19:14:00.000-08:00

From 1926 to 1928, Gordon Stewart Northcott committed at least twenty murders on a chicken ranch outside of Los Angeles. His nephew, Sanford Clark, was held captive there from the age of 13 to 15, and was the sole surviving victim of the killing spree. Here, acclaimed crime writer Anthony Flacco-using never-before-heard information from Sanford’s son Jerry Clark-tells the real story behind the case that riveted the nation. Forced by Northcott to take part in the murders, Sanford carried tremendous guilt all his life. Yet, despite his youth and the trauma, he helped gain some justice for the dead and their families by testifying at Northcott’s trial–which led to his conviction and execution. It was a shocking story, but perhaps the most shocking part of all is the extraordinarily ordinary life Clark went on to live as a decorated WWII vet, a devoted husband of 55 years, a loving father, and a productive citizen. In dramatizing one of the darkest cases in American crime, Flacco constructs a riveting psychological drama about how Sanford was able to detoxify himself from the evil he’d encountered, offering the ultimately redemptive story one man’s remarkable ability to survive a nightmare and emerge intact.

This book was amazing. It reads like a novel, and the story is unbelievable, especially for its time. What Sanford went through, and came out of, is totally beyond belief. Even if you don't like true crime, this is an excellent book.

4 stars

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

2012-01-11T11:03:00.001-08:00

Set in the future, 2 children from each of the 12 Districts of Panem must compete in the yearly Hunger Games. Katniss Everdeen is sent from District 12, along with Peeta Mallarky, a boy who made a small gesture of kindness to her when they were kids that she still feels the need to repay. They at led by their mentor and former winner of the Hunger Games, Haymitch, along with an entourage of stylists. But all the preparation in the world could not prepare them for what they are about to encounter. A cruel game, designed by the Capitol, as a punishment for their uprising years ago, in which all 24 players are dropped into an arena of unknown circumstances and climate and are forced to fight to the death. Will Katniss and Peeta survive, should they align their forces, and what else keeps pulling them together?I was shocked that this was a YA book. It is brutal, but fascinating. Toward the end I was rooting out loud for people. Very fascinating, but unlike most people I know that read it, not fascinating enough to keep me up all night. I think I would have enjoyed more scenes with how Haymitch and Katniss' stylist Cinna and their reactions to what was playing out in the arena. That's my only complaint though. 4 stars- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Serial Killers and Mass Murderers by Nigel Cawthorne

2011-12-25T20:32:00.000-08:00

Tis the season to read about some freaky and disturbing people! This is a collection of the most notorious, although in some cases obscure to me, serial killers and mass murderers. People like Jeffrey Dahmer, the Zodiac, The Night Stalker, and over a dozen more. All of them were interesting. The only one that freaked me out was The Night Stalker. My only problem was for every person profiled, I had to read about what a horrible childhood they had. Not everyone that has a horrible childhood turns into a monster and vice versa. Some people are just plain evil.

4 stars

The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson

2011-12-17T15:25:00.000-08:00

The Lottery , one of the most terrifying stories written in this century, created a sensation when it was first published in The New Yorker . "Powerful and haunting," and "nights of unrest" were typical reader responses. This collection, the only one to appear during Shirley Jackson's lifetime, unites "The Lottery:" with twenty-four equally unusual stories. Together they demonstrate Jackson's remarkable range--from the hilarious to the truly horrible--and power as a storyteller.

I bought this just so I could read The Lottery. I wasn't too impressed by it. The story that really bothered me was The Daemon Lover. It was really sad to me. I had a hard time getting with the writing, and most of the stories I just didn't see the point of. I guess this is meant for someone far more intelligent than I, because after finishing most of them I thought "What?"

2 stars

We Have Always Lived in the Castle By Shirley Jackson

2011-12-17T15:18:00.000-08:00

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate.

This may be one of the top 5 creepiest families I have ever read about. I wasn't really into the book and kept waiting for the big reveal but I was kind of disappointed. I can see that, for it's time, it was maybe considered sensational, but I was so creeped out by the family I didn't really get into it.

2 stars

Best Books of 2011

2011-12-12T20:26:00.000-08:00

1. Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
2. Last Nocturne by Marjorie Eccles
3. The Restorer by Amanda Stevens
4. Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
5. Iron House by John Hart
6. The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes
7. Back Roads by Tawni Odell
8. Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice
9. The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Burberry
10. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

Best Debut - Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn
Best Series - The Graveyard Queen by Amanda Stevens
Best Classic - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Best Book to Lose Yourself In - Back Roads by Tawni Odell
Best Nonfiction - Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum
Biggest Disappointment - Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs
Best Suspense - Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King
Best Historical Fiction - The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen
Best Vacation Book - Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

The Moonlit Mind by Dean Koontz

2011-12-04T23:45:00.001-08:00

In this chilling original stand-alone novella, available exclusively as an eBook, #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz offers a taste of what’s to come in his new novel, 77 Shadow Street , with a mesmerizing tale of a homeless boy at large in a city fraught with threats . . . both human and otherwise. Twelve-year-old Crispin has lived on the streets since he was nine—with only his wits and his daring to sustain him, and only his silent dog, Harley, to call his friend. He is always on the move, never lingering in any one place long enough to risk being discovered. Still, there are certain places he returns to. In the midst of the tumultuous city, they are havens of solitude: like the hushed environs of St. Mary Salome Cemetery, a place where Crispin can feel at peace—safe, at least for a while, from the fearsome memories that plague him . . . and seep into his darkest nightmares. But not only his dreams are haunted. The city he roams with Harley has secrets and mysteries, things unexplainable and maybe unimaginable. Crispin has seen ghosts in the dead of night, and sensed dimensions beyond reason in broad daylight. Hints of things disturbing and strange nibble at the edges of his existence, even as dangers wholly natural and earthbound cast their shadows across his path. Alone, drifting, and scavenging to survive is no life for a boy. But the life Crispin has left behind, and is still running scared from, is an unspeakable alternative . . . that may yet catch up with him. There is more to Crispin’s world, and its darkest corners yet to be encountered, in this eBook’s special bonus: a spine-tingling excerpt from Dean Koontz’s forthcoming novel, 77 Shadow Street .

Nice and short but very boring. Not even a little bit chilling. Reminded a little of Neil Gaiman's writing, but without the enjoyment Gaiman gives me. Will not be reading 77 Shadow Street.

1 star

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

2011-12-03T22:41:00.001-08:00

"I believe there is another man inside every man, a stranger . . ." writes Wilfred Leland James in the early pages of the riveting confession that makes up "1922," the first in this pitch-black quartet of mesmerizing tales from Stephen King. For James, that stranger is awakened when his wife, Arlette, proposes selling off the family homestead and moving to Omaha, setting in motion a gruesome train of murder and madness.

In "Big Driver," a cozy-mystery writer named Tess encounters the stranger along a back road in Massachusetts when she takes a shortcut home after a book-club engagement. Raped and left for dead, Tess plots a revenge that will bring her face-to-face with another stranger: the one inside herself.

"Fair Extension," the shortest of these tales, is perhaps the nastiest and certainly the funniest. Making a deal with the devil not only saves Dave Streeter from a fatal cancer but provides rich recompense for a lifetime of resentment.

In "A Good Marriage" when her husband of more than twenty years is away on one of his business trips, Darcy Anderson looks for batteries in the garage. Her toe knocks up against a box under a worktable and she discovers the stranger inside her husband. It’s a horrifying discovery, rendered with bristling intensity, and it definitively ends a good marriage.

King's novels bore me to tears, with the exception of The Long Walk. His endless narrative almost puts me into a coma. However, I have always loved his short story compilations. The theme in all of these stories is a revenge of some kind. And for the most part it is an every day kind of revenge, due to a horrible every day circumstance. "1922" left me with feeling nothing; "Fair Extension" was kind of predictable, and "A Good Marriage" was pretty predictable too. The only reason this book gets 4 stars is for the story "Big Driver". Disturbing, hard to read, and all too possible, this one story pushed the rating up from a 2 to a 4. You feel everything Tess is feeling, and can't help but go along on this horrible ride with her. I was up till 7 in the morning reading it because I had to find out what happened and had knots in my stomach by the time I had finished it.It really makes you think about what you would do if you were in a similar situation; contact the authorities or take matters into your own hands to save yourself embarrassment and get true justice for what you had to endure. King proves in this story alone, that all of his books don't have to have the supernatural elements, because every day life and circumstances beyond our control are way more terrifying, and he is the perfect person to write about them. Read this for Big Driver alone, you won't be disappointed, but you will be left disturbed.

4 stars

Don't Blink by James Patterson and Howard Roughan

2011-12-03T22:35:00.001-08:00

New York's Lombardo's Steak House is famous for three reasons--the menu, the clientele, and now, the gruesome murder of an infamous mob lawyer. Effortlessly, the assassin slips through the police's fingers, and his absence sparks a blaze of accusations about who ordered the hit. Seated at a nearby table, reporter Nick Daniels is conducting a once-in-a-lifetime interview with a legendary baseball bad-boy. Shocked and shaken, he doesn't realize that he's accidentally captured a key piece of evidence. Ensnared in the city's most sensational crime in years, Nick investigates for a story of his own. Back off-- or die-- is the clear message as he closes in on the facts. Heedless, and perhaps in love, Nick endures humiliation, threats, violence, and worse in a thriller that overturns every expectation and finishes with the kind of flourish only James Patterson knows.

I keep getting more and more disheartened by Patterson's books and I'm not sure why I keep reading them besides the fact that they are a quick read. I was hoping for a good, quick mob story. What I got was a story with tons of characters that I had no feelings for either way. The whole thing bordered on absurd, the baseball "bad boy" tie in was ridiculous and seemed like it was just thrown in as a way to tie things together, and once again each and every chapter is peppered with unnecessary and overused exclamation points. I was thinking, same as I did with Now You See Her, how much crap happens to one person? I mean really.

2 stars

The Abandoned by Amanda Stevens

2011-11-28T07:33:00.001-08:00

There are rules for dealing with ghosts. Too bad Ree Hutchins doesn't know them.

When her favorite patient at a private mental hospital passes away, psychology student Ree Hutchins mourns the elderly woman's death. But more unsettling is her growing suspicion that something unnatural is shadowing her. Amateur ghost hunter Hayden Priest believes Ree is being haunted. Even Amelia Gray, known in Charleston as The Graveyard Queen, senses a gathering darkness. Driven by a force she doesn't understand, Ree is compelled to uncover an old secret and put abandoned souls to rest—before she is locked away forever....

This is the prequel to the new Graveyard Queen series. It doesn't have much to do with the first book, The Restorer, but it was a nice quick read. It was only 64 pages on my e reader, so there isn't much character development, but still entertaining.

3 stars

Last Nocturne by Marjorie Eccles

2011-11-27T08:56:00.001-08:00

What could make a successful, happily married man take a gun and shoot himself? What made a young artist on the brink of fame throw himself to his death? These are the questions facing Chief Inspector Lamb and his assistant, Detective Sergeant Cogan. Neither victim left a note behind to explain what drove him to take his own life, and it appears that nothing untoward had occurred in the weeks preceding their deaths. Having briefly met both victims, Lamb struggles to connect the impression he gained of the men with their final actions, and his close attention pays off when a postmortem reveals some surprising results. With one case now looking like a suspicious death, Lamb looks for links between the two men. All paths seem to lead to the enigmatic figure of Mrs. Isobel Amberley and a mysterious event that took place one winter’s night in Vienna. Beautifully written and highly evocative of the bustling streets of London and Vienna in the early twentieth century, Last Nocturne is an intriguingly complex mystery of passion and the devastating repercussions of a single action.

I was very impressed with this. I loved that it was a mystery set in the art world. Even though I know absolutely nothing about art, I feel that books in this setting make for the most interesting characters. It was well paced and kept you guessing as to what was really going on. There are a lot of characters, but written in a way that is not confusing at all.

4 stars

Now You See Her by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

2011-10-31T04:37:00.000-07:00

A successful lawyer and loving mother, Nina Bloom would do anything to protect the life she's built in New York--including lying to everyone, even her daughter, about her past. But when an innocent man is framed for murder, she knows that she can't let him pay for the real killer's crimes.

Nina's secret life began 18 years ago. She had looks to die for, a handsome police-officer husband, and a carefree life in Key West. When she learned she was pregnant with their first child, her happiness was almost overwhelming. But Nina's world is shattered when she unearths a terrible secret that causes her to run for her life and change her identity. Now, years later, Nina risks everything she's earned to return to Florida and confront the murderous evil she fled.

This book is exactly the reason I stopped reading James Patterson. While they are light, easy and quick reads, the plot and storyline is just unbearable and ridiculous. Without spoiling anything, how many things can happen to one person? The things that happened to Nina were so absurd I actually said "Give me a break" out loud. No big climax in my opinion and the whole story was so unbelievable it wasn't even remotely entertaining.

1 star

The Ghosts of Varner Creek by Michael Weems

2011-10-28T17:58:00.000-07:00

In the summer of 1909, Solomon Mayfield awoke to find his mother and sister had disappeared. Left with his alcoholic and abusive father, Sol lived his life believing the story he'd been told, the story all the people of Varner Creek believed about what happened that summer. But in a plot of twists and family secrets that will leave the reader reaching for their jaw upon the floor, Sol is taken back to his childhood by the spirits he knew in life when he passes away so many years later . . . it is only then he learns what secrets The Ghosts of Varner Creek have been keeping so many years.

Very engaging book. As I slowly found out what had happened it really bothered me, which usually doesn't happen with books. I really loved the way Sol ended up finding out the truth; it was very original. Very well written, keeps you reading long into the night. Looking forward to more by this author.

4 stars

A House Divided by Deborah LeBlanc

2011-10-23T17:20:00.000-07:00

Keith Lafleur, Louisiana's largest and greediest building contractor, thinks he's cut the deal of a lifetime. The huge old two-story clapboard house is his for the taking as long as he can move it to a new location. Its too big to move as is, but Lafleur's solution is simple:divide it in half. He has no idea, though, that by splitting the house he'll be dividing a family.....one long dead.

Not for anyone with a weak stomach. Some parts made me a little nauseous, but a good enough story. Not creepy or anything even though I think it was meant to be, but it was fun to read. I was hoping for more of the Louisiana flavor, but that is the one thing I did find it lacking. However the character to Tawana makes it all worth while.

3 stars

The Restorer by Amanda Stevens

2011-10-16T05:15:00.001-07:00

Amelia has seen ghosts since she was a child. The first time she was with her father, a cemetery caretaker and restorer, who she found out he could also see them. He gave her a very specific set of rules to follow, because once the door has opened between the living and the dead, something comes through, and it can never go back.

Now in her 20's, Amelia works as a cemetery restorer, working in old and long forgotten cemeteries, cleaning them up and restoring the headstones and the cemeteries themselves to their original state.

She is working at Oak Grove cemetery in the south when she's approached one might by Detective John Devlin, a man haunted by his own ghosts who she develops a strong attraction to, the likes of which she has never felt before. A body has been found in Oak Grove, only it is not one of those buried there. A young girl who was murdered in a brutal way was buried recently in an already occupied grave. Amelia is called in as a consultant to make sure nothing is disturbed or ruined during the investigation. As she works closely with Devlin, more bodies are discovered. Trying to figure out who the killer is, she is drawn inexplicably to Devlin and his ghosts, and breaks one of her fathers rules: stay away from those who are haunted.

I'm not a big fan of books that are a part of a series but I can't wait for the next book to come out. If you are looking for horror this isn't it, but it is definitely creepy enough. Amelia is a very likable character and I may have a fictional crush on the haunted detective, John Devlin and I think any woman with a pulse who reads this will agree. The book manages to solve the case of the murders while bringing a few things up throughout that makes you want to read the next book to see what's going to happen. This was a very pleasant surprise.

4 stars

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

2011-10-08T21:33:00.000-07:00

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER________________________________________________________________________________________

Told in the point of view of a governess sent to a pleasant country home to care for 2 orphaned children, the tale turns dark by the appearance of 2 ghosts. These ghosts, who are said to belong to the prior governess and a common man whom she carried on an affair with, both of whom died under curious circumstances, are seen by the governess, who believes the children can also see them. The kids come off charming at first, but ended up creeping me out as the story went on. Then there is the question of are there really ghosts at all, or is the house playing tricks on the governess? And if they really are there, why are they always staring intently at the children when they appear?

I can't write a description of this at all because I have no idea what the hell I just read. For a short book, this took forever for me to finish. I always have trouble with reading books written during this time period and this is no exception. The sentences carry on so long, and with so much punctuation, by the time I get to the period I don't remember what I just read. The whole story is very elusive, or was in my opinion. Probably a story for people a lot smarter than myself.

1 star

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

2011-10-05T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hill House has stood empty for years, being the backdrop to many stories that go around the town where it stands. But the townspeople stay away from Hill House, because whatever walks there, walks alone. Dr. Montague organizes a small group of sensitives to stay in Hill House for the summer and record what, if any, paranormal things occur. The guests are Luke, who is the young heir to Hill House, Theodora, an antique store owner who jumps at the chance to spend the summer at Hill House after a fight with her lover, and Eleanor Vance, a 32 year old woman who experienced a poltergeist phenomena as a child and who's mother, that she took care of full time, just passed away. Within their first week there, things are happening that no one can explain, Theodora and Eleanor have become friends but compete for the attention of Luke, and everyone is on edge. All of this culminated into an ending you will never see coming.

Unless you are like me and saw the movie The Haunting when it was in theaters. I had a hard time getting into it because I kept thinking about the movie and waiting for the same things to happen. I know the book and the movie are never the same, but I couldn't stop comparing the two. I think what really makes this creepy is there are no answers, no resolutions. The reader is left with their own thoughts and impressions about what really happened. It would be a great book for a book club to read because I think it would spark a lot of discussion and it would be interesting to see what other people took from it.

4 stars

Top Ten Shocking Book Endings

2011-10-03T22:44:00.000-07:00

I saw this on another blog and thought it was a god idea. Since I can't sleep tonight to save me, I am going to try to come up with my top ten book endings that shocked me:

1. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
2. Blood and Circumstance by Frank Turner Hollon
3. Come Closer by Sara Gran
4. The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder
5. The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
6. Back Roads by Tawni Odell
7. Standoff by Sandra Brown
8. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult
9. I Am Not a Serial Killer by Dan Wells
10. Family History by Dani Shapiro

http://brokeandbookish.blogspot.com/2011/10/top-ten-book-endings-that-left-me-with.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FJywQY+%28The+Broke+and+the+Bookish%29

The Girl She Used To Be by David Cristofano

2011-09-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

Melody McCarthy and her family were forced to enter the Witness Protection Program when she was 6 years old after accidentally walking in on a mafia murder. She spent the next 20 years of her life, running from town to town, identity to identity, constantly looking over her shoulder as she tries to live her life to the fullest she can. That is until the day a man walks up to her and calls her by the name she left behind years ago, and she is forced to face her past.

I can't say too much about this without giving anything away. The writing at the beginning and the end was wonderful, bordering on beautiful and poetic, but the story in between really bored me. Melody annoyed the hell out of me and I just didn't really care what happened to her, but that wonderful writing in the beginning kept me reading just in case it came back.

2 stars

The Plantation by Chris Kuzneski

2011-09-23T04:48:00.001-07:00

The first to disappear is a ski instructor, out for a morning jog in the secluded mountains of Colorado. Hours later, a pregnant woman is abducted from a crowded hospital and smuggled past security without a hitch. Two places, two incidents, a single motive. And so it begins. . . . One by one, in cities across America, people of all ages are being taken from their homes, their cars, their lives. But these aren't random kidnappings. They're crimes of passion, planned and researched several months in advance, then executed with a singular objective in mind. Revenge. Ariane Walker is one of the victims, dragged from her apartment with no obvious signs of a struggle. The cops said there is little they can do for her. There isn't enough evidence to go on. Not enough time has passed. But that isn't good enough for Jonathon Payne. He loves Ariane and isn't about to sit around while her trail runs cold. Using the skills that they learned in the MANIACs, a special branch of the U.S. military, Payne and his best friend, David Jones, give chase, trekking to New Orleans on little more than a whim, hoping that Payne's gut instinct pays off. It does. With the help of several locals, the duo slowly begin to uncover the mystery of Walker's abduction and the shocking truth behind Louisiana's best-kept secret: THE PLANTATION.

Wow, that makes it sound so promising. I have been dragging though this book for a week now. I finally just skimmed the last 50 pages so I could finish it. The interaction between Payne and Jones seemed a lot like a Scooby Doo episode, if you are paying attention, everything is pretty much given away half way through the book and like me you will just want it to end., and quickly.

1 star

A Stolen Life by Jaycee Dugard

2011-09-18T18:08:00.000-07:00

The story of the abduction of Jaycee Dugard at the age of 11 by a sex offender and his wife, her life in captivity, and her rescue 18 years later. I work for the prosecutor's office and have been there 9 years and have seen things most people wouldn't even believe and have become quite desensitized. I had to actually stop reading this twice because it was too much for me. Incredibly graphic and disturbing. It made me sick at times. I can't imagine going through that myself. While I appreciate her courage to tell her story, I think she wrote this a little too soon. The writing jumps all over the place, sometimes I didn't know what she was talking about and had to reread the same paragraph over and over and sometimes I still didn't know what she was talking about. I hate to rate this low, because what she went through is completely horrifying, but I think if she would have let herself heal a little more before she took to putting her story out there, it would have been easier to read and the flow of the narrative would have been better. I have gone through therapy myself, for different reasons, and one of the things they had me do was write a letter to everyone I was upset with, but you never send it; when you are finished you burn it. It provides a lot of closure and helps you move past things you thought you would never have been able to move past. So while I understand this is part of the healing process, I still think it was too soon to put it out there.

2 stars

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

2011-09-12T05:28:00.001-07:00

After witnessing his grandfather's murder, Jacob is given a message from the dying man that leads Jacob and his father to the island where his grandfather spent most of his childhood after fleeing the Nazis. At Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, everyone has their own strange talent; one person can levitate, one is invisible, and so on. Jacob had heard these stories as a child and saw his grandfather's pictures but never believed any of it was real. That is until he finds the house on the island and discovers a secret world there that he play a key role in preserving.

I didn't think this book was ever going to end. The story was boring, the characters were boring, the pictures scattered throughout were about the only amusing thing in the whole book. It was just ridiculous all the way around and I wish I wouldn't have wasted my time reading it.

1 star

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

2011-09-06T05:33:00.000-07:00

From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiff —called “powerful, remarkable, exceptional” by the Los Angeles Times —comes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. In The Devil All the Time , Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic overtones of Flannery O’Connor at her most haunting. Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia, The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. There’s Willard Russell, tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific, who can’t save his beautiful wife, Charlotte, from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his “prayer log.” There’s Carl and Sandy Henderson, a husband-and-wife team of serial killers, who troll America’s highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. There’s the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick, Theodore, running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell, Willard and Charlotte’s orphaned son, who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. Donald Ray Pollock braids his plot lines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel, he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.

Well I wasn't deeply moved and didn't think it was all that taut. The novel is very noir/pulp fiction, and reminded me a little of Yellow Medicine by Anthony Neil Smith, just without the edge. It was a fast read and tied up into a neat little bow at the end, but it was a little too neat for my taste. If I was to recommend this or Yellow Medicine for this type of book, Medicine would still win.

3 stars

Dismembered by Susan D. Mustafa and Sue Israel

2011-09-06T05:21:00.001-07:00

The shocking true story of serial killer Sean Gillis, a nerdy, nonthreatening, Star Trek fan from Baton Rouge, who killed over 9 women. He chose his victim's carefully: made sure they were of slight stature so he could control them, after his first kill went for prostitutes, drug addicts and alcoholics, women who he felt wouldn't be missed. After he killed them by putting a zip tie around their necks after getting them in his car with the promise of money for sex, he went to work on them. Cutting of legs, heads, etc and having sex with the body parts, before he disposed of them and went on with his life. When finally caught, he would tell the police a story that shocked the most seasoned veteran, saying he was "pure evil", the whole time with a smile on his face.

Quick fast read. Wasn't that disturbing to me, but I can see where it would bother people, it gets pretty graphic. This guy was one sick puppy. The writing at the beginning made me feel like I was reading a high school students paper, but it got much better about halfway through and was much easier to read.

3 stars

Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum

2011-09-04T07:12:00.001-07:00

Nine Lives is a multi-voiced biography of the fascinating city of New Orleans told through the voices of nine unforgettable people, from different walks of life, bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which hit in the 1960's and changed the city, and Hurricane Katrina, which nearly destroyed it.

A quick run down of the characters:

Ronald Lewis: a black man that lives in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, where he was born and raised, that doesn't want to see his ward disappear due to the storms, the kids taking to the streets to live lives he never even imagined when he was their age, and the politicians who want the ward to disappear.

John Guidos: a white man who loses his family's business due to bad investments and continually struggles with his sexuality and gender while try to live a "normal life" with his wife and children.

Anthony Lewis: a black man from California who always tried to get back to the New Orleans he visited as a child, just to get there and see it destroyed.

Joyce Montana: a black woman who is the wife of the famous Tootie Montana, a man who lead the change of the Mardi Gras Indians from fighting every year, to a more peaceful resolution of seeing who could have the best Indian costume.

Frank Minyard: a white doctor, prone to bouts of depression, who sees change is needed in 1960's New Orleans, and goes after it by running for city coroner. He survives both hurricanes to help the city get back on it's feet.

Billy Grace: the current Rex when Katrina hits, Billy tries to get his rich friends to help rebuild the city but it seems everyone likes to profess their love for the city but don't want to touch their wallets.

Belinda Carr: a black woman who has dreamed of a Walton life with a white picket fence since she was a young girl, and never gives up the dream that she will eventually get there no matter what life hands her.

Wilbert Rawlins Jr.: a high school band teacher, he takes his job seriously and changes the lives of every student he comes across, no matter how down and out they are or how rough a life they are living.

Tim Bruneau: a white man who becomes a New Orleans police officer after the major change in the way the department is run, he takes his job in this city seriously, until Katrina hits and changes everything he ever thought and believed to be true.

This is by far the best book I have read in the past 5 years. Although nonfiction, it reads like a novel. Usually in a book like this there are 1 or 2 people I don't really care about and have to force myself to read their sections but not the case in Nine Lives. I loved every one of people as if we were friends. I truly, honestly did not want this amazing book to end. Its fascinating and heartbreaking, at times making me laugh, shake my head in shock and fill with tears. New Orleans is a city that has been through hell, twice, and it's people have never lost their spirit or their love for their city. I think a big theme is race, but it isn't told on a way that says this way is right and that way is wrong. I can't even give this book justice in a review. I just recommend everyone to read it and see if you don't fall in love with The Big Easy and it's amazing and fascinating cast of characters.

5 stars

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The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

2011-08-24T05:18:00.000-07:00

The time: the present. The place: a Balkan country ravaged by years of conflict. Natalia, a young doctor, is on a mission of mercy to an orphanage when she receives word of her beloved grandfather’s death far from their home under circumstances shrouded in confusion.

Remembering childhood stories her grandfather once told her, Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for "the deathless man," a vagabond who claimed to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man, would go on such a far fetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the tiger’s wife.

I'm pretty sure this entire book went over my head. It is beautifully written, but I felt through the whole thing, especially at the end, that I was missing something the author was trying to convey. It was interesting, but the whole thing about the tiger's wife was completely beyond me. I mean, I understood it, but I think there was a deeper meaning that I didn't pick up on.

2 stars

Iron House by John Hart

2011-08-16T04:33:00.001-07:00

An old man is dying.

When the old man is dead they will come for him.

And they will come for her, to make him hurt.

HE WOULD GO TO HELL

At the Iron Mountain Home for Boys, there was nothing but time. Time to burn and time to kill, time for two young orphans to learn that life isn’t won without a fight. Julian survives only because his older brother, Michael, is fearless and fiercely protective. When tensions boil over and a boy is brutally killed, there is only one sacrifice left for Michael to make: He flees the orphanage and takes the blame with him.

TO KEEP HER SAFE

For two decades, Michael has been an enforcer in New York’s world of organized crime, a prince of the streets so widely feared he rarely has to kill anymore. But the life he’s fought to build unravels when he meets Elena, a beautiful innocent who teaches him the meaning and power of love. He wants a fresh start with her, the chance to start a family like the one he and Julian never had. But someone else is holding the strings. And escape is not that easy. . . .

GO TO HELL, AND COME BACK BURNING

The mob boss who gave Michael his blessing to begin anew is dying, and his son is intent on making Michael pay for his betrayal. Determined to protect the ones he loves, Michael spirits Elena—who knows nothing of his past crimes, or the peril he’s laid at her door— back to North Carolina, to the place he was born and the brother he lost so long ago. There, he will encounter a whole new level of danger, a thicket of deceit and violence that leads inexorably to the one place he’s been running from his whole life: Iron House.

Awesome, awesome book! Family secrets, hit men, the mob, enforcers, this has it all. There is only one thing keeping me from giving this book 5 stars: Elena. She annoyed the hell out of me. Possible minor spoiler coming up......................................how could she even think to ask Michael to chose between his brother and her? I know she was pregnant but come on! And she was such a whiner! She found out who Michael really was, decided to go with him, and then had a fit every time he did something illegal. Make up your mind. I wish she would have left early on in the book to go to Spain because her little tantrums and drama made me freaking insane. Otherwise, this book is Hart's best by far in my opinion. It rocked!

4 stars

Reign of Madness by Lynn Cullen

2011-08-15T05:08:00.000-07:00

Juana of Castile, third child of the Spanish monarchs Isabel and Fernando, grows up with no hope of inheriting her parents' crowns, but as a princess knows her duty: to further her family's ambitions through marriage. Yet stories of courtly love, and of her parents' own legendary romance, surround her. When she weds the Duke of Burgundy, a young man so beautiful that he is known as Philippe the Handsome, she dares to hope that she might have both love and crowns. He is caring, charming, and attracted to her-seemingly a perfect husband. But what begins like a fairy tale ends quite differently. When Queen Isabel dies, the crowns of Spain unexpectedly pass down to Juana, leaving her husband and her father hungering for the throne. Rumors fly that the young Queen has gone mad, driven insane by possessiveness. Who is to be believed? The King, beloved by his subjects? Or the Queen, unseen and unknown by her people?

First of all, I did not write that summary, I was afraid if I did I would give something away. Reading books like this always make me realize that if I had been born in this time period I would have most likely been beheaded very soon because I would not have been able to hold my tongue. I felt so sorry for Juana, and oh how I hated Phillipe. As soon as his name turned up on a page, I could feel my blood pressure rise a little. Another great historical fiction read by someone who is becoming one of my favorite historical fiction authors. Can't wait to read more by this author.

4 stars

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

2011-08-09T04:34:00.000-07:00

At times stern, at other times patient, at times perceptive, at other times in sad denial, Olive Kitteridge, a retired schoolteacher, deplores the changes in her little town of Crosby, Maine, and in the world at large, but she doesn’t always recognize the changes in those around her: a lounge musician haunted by a past romance; a former student who has lost the will to live; Olive’s own adult child, who feels tyrannized by her irrational sensitivities; and her husband, Henry, who finds his loyalty to his marriage both a blessing and a curse. As the townspeople grapple with their problems, mild and dire, Olive is brought to a deeper understanding of herself and her life–sometimes painfully, but always with ruthless honesty.

I am not too sure how I feel about this book. Some of the stories made absolutely no sense to me or had no resolution or little details and I kept waiting for the characters to pop up again but they never did. I liked Olive a lot; she reminded me of myself. It also made me take a step back and look at the way I treat my parents now that I am older. That is the part that resonated with me the most. The way we behave and act toward our parents may seem like no big deal to us and we see nothing wrong with it, but it affects them deeply, and hurts them. I kind of felt like crap when I finished reading it, but it was interesting enough to hold my attention on vacation which is a feat.

3 stars

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan

2011-07-31T03:41:00.001-07:00

The story of 3 generations of the Kelleher family and the drama that unfolds at the family beach house in Maine one summer. There is Alice, the matriarch, who is still suffering over the death of her husband 10 years earlier and for which she blames her daughter, and the tragic death of her sister at the Coconut Grove when she was young for which she blames herself. Then there is Kathleen, Alice's oldest daughter, the one Alice blames for her husbands death. Kathleen is a recovering alcoholic who lives with her boyfriend on a worm farm in California. She always swore she would never return to that beach in Maine, but circumstances beyond her control make her go back on the proclamation much to her dismay. Finally there is Maggie, Kathleen's daughter, who's in her 30's, just broke up with her loser boyfriend, and found out she is pregnant with his child. On the sidelines is Ann Marie, wife to Kathleen's brother, who just won a dollhouse competition (she's in her 50's) and thinks it is her sole purpose to care for Alice, much to Alice's chagrin. These women converge at the house in Maine one summer to confront their demons, come to terms with each of their deep secrets, and try not to kill each other.

I had a really hard time giving this book a rating. I wasn't rushing home to read it, but once I picked up reading it I didn't want to put it down. Every character in this entire book is self absorbed and insufferable. Alice is a tyrant, and knowing the truth of what happened that night at the Grove didn't make me change my opinion of her. It was sad and tragic, but her actions through the whole book could not make me pity her. Kathleen, who is 59, needs to grow up and get over herself, however out of all of them she is the one I liked the most and that isn't saying much. Ann Marie is just incredibly bizarre and reminded me of a Stepford wife with a savior complex. Then there is Maggie. I think she may have been the absolute worst character in my opinion. The things she did to spy on her boyfriend, the whining, her complete dependence on a guy who doesn't care for her and is obviously an asshole and the way she pines away for him made me sick.

However, there were parts that had me cracking up out loud. If you have read it or plan to read it, remember the Canadians. Just thinking about that part makes me smirk even now that I've finished it. The story of Alice's sisters death was one of the most tragic things I've read and made me pity her, until the next time she opened her mouth that is. No one really ends up with any redeeming qualities. I wish Alive would have told her family the story if her sisters death; I think that would have made for good reading. I'm really on the fence with this one and the more I think about the less I'm decided.

3 stars

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The Last Letter from Your Lover by Jojo Moyes

2011-07-22T05:13:00.000-07:00

When journalist Ellie looks through her newspaper's archives for a story, she doesn't think she'll find anything of interest. Instead she discovers a letter from 1960, written by a man asking his lover to leave her husband - and Ellie is caught up in the intrigue of a past love affair. Despite, or perhaps because of her own romantic entanglements with a married man.
In 1960, Jennifer wakes up in hospital after a car accident. She can't remember anything - her husband, her friends, who she used to be. And then, when she returns home, she uncovers a hidden letter, and begins to remember the lover she was willing to risk everything for.
Ellie and Jennifer's stories of passion, adultery and loss are wound together in this richly emotive novel - interspersed with real 'last letters'.

I am not one for love stories, romance or any other kind of mushy topic, in books, T.V. or movies. I find them corny and pathetic. I bought this because I thought it had a really cool title and sounded pretty interesting. I was amazed by how much I loved this book. It almost made me cry, and that is a feat in itself. I was up late many a night reading it trying to find out what was going to happen to Jennifer and her ill fated love affair with Anthony. If I could ever have a love of my life, I would want it to be like theirs. The only reason it didn't get 5 stars is because in the beginning, you stay in the 1960's, but it flashes back and forth from before Jennifer's accident and after, and it took me about 75 pages to realize that is what was happening. Be prepared to be swept away in their beautiful and heartbreaking story.

4 stars (I wish it was 5!)

Good Neighbors by Ryan David Jahn

2011-07-15T21:26:00.001-07:00

This is a fictional account of the Kitty Genovese case from the 1960's. After coming home from work she was attacked outside her apartment and stabbed. She managed to get away and run to the courtyard where she was attacked again. There were 38 people in the complex that watched it happen and not one of them called 911 or tried to help. After her attacker fled the second time, she managed to drag herself back to her apartment only for him to come back for the final time. This book tells individual stories of the little dramas unfolding in all of the apartments.

I read this true story a few years ago and was appalled by it and I didn't feel any different after reading this book. It gives me chills. Great story, wonderful writing, you won't want to put it down. Just don't hope for a happy ending because there isn't one sadly.

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Back Roads by Tawni Odell

2011-07-11T02:29:00.001-07:00

Harley Altmeyer should be going to college. Instead he is stuck in a mining town in Pennsylvania raising his 3 sisters, working 2 jobs to pay the bills, while his mom serves a life sentence for killing his father. Harley ends up becoming obsessed with Callie, the 33 year old mom of his youngest sister Jody's friend. As they begin a doomed affair, Harley starts to find out what really happened the night his father was shot, who is really to blame, who really pulled the trigger, and some family secrets that were best kept hidden.

I read this in one day. It was like a train wreck, you know you aren't supposed to look but you just can't help but stare. I can't remember the last time a book gave me such a sense of foreboding. A lot of reviews remark that the book is funny; I did not find it funny. It was heartbreaking, disturbing, sad, but not funny. Be prepared if you read it; I had an idea as to what was going to go down, but I hadn't even scratched the surface.

5 stars

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The Creation of Eve by Lynn Cullen

2011-07-08T02:05:00.003-07:00

Sofi is a young girl from Italy who's portraits attract the attention of Michelangelo, who invites her to come study under him. While learning everything she can, she also falls into a dangerous, at that time in history, relationship with a fellow student. After an encounter that could forever tarnish her family's name, she leaves her study and returns home to soon become a painting teacher to the new queen of Spain, wife of King Felipe. The Queen, a French girl of 14, in a Spanish court, has to learn how to please her King, in matters of the flesh and heart, and must ensure the birth of a son for an heir to the throne. King Felipe has been married twice previously and has a son from one if the marriages, Don Carlos, but everyone knows that he can never take over the crown. The queen develops a strange, in my opinion, relationship with Don Carlos, and becomes involved in a dangerous relationship with the Kings half brother, Don Juan. Sofi goes from being the Queens painting instructor to her favorite lady in waiting, trying to teach her how to please get husband, all the while receiving constant news about the Spanish Inquisition and their focus on her old mentor, Michelangelo, and the man who stole Sofi's heart along with something much more important in that day and age.

I loved this book. It was like a historical soap opera. Sofi is so real you can't help but relate to her on some level, Don Carlos completely freaked me out and his relationship with the Queen was just plain weird, as was he, the fighting between the Queens French and Spanish ladies in waiting, and wondering what will ever come of the incident that caused Sofi to leave her painting studies to begin with, I couldn't get enough of this historically accurate account of one if the few women painters of the Renaissance. If you are into historical fiction, a little romance (which I usually am not), betrayal, secrets and possible murder check this one out. You will not be disappointed.

5 stars

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Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

2011-07-08T02:05:00.001-07:00

The vampire saga continues within third installment in Rice's popular vampire series. In this one, the vampire Lestat becomes a rock star, his music and lyrics about vampire history waking the Mother, who is out to kill anyone that is against him.

I'm going to keep reading these but I couldn't get with this at all. Flashing from the past to present, with more characters, both old and new, that are too many to begin to name here, I didn't even know what was going on most of the time. While the story of the twins was very intriguing along with the mystery behind it, it couldn't redeem this even a little.

1 star

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The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice

2011-06-25T05:31:00.000-07:00

The Vampire Chronicles continue in this second installment, with Lestat taking the center stage to tell his history and his side of things. Going from pre-turn of the century Paris to Egypt, Lestat tries to find meaning in what he has become and the story of how all vampires came to be. I really liked this one also. The history of Egypt and the Mother and Father was fascinating, and at times freaked me out so much I had to stop reading for awhile. I loved the character of Marius and would liked to have seen him with his own installment because I think he was fascinating. I am so glad I tried to read these again because I am really loving them.

5 stars

Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice

2011-06-21T04:45:00.000-07:00

I am not going to summarize this one either because I think pretty much everyone knows what this is about; either from reading or hearing about the book or the movie. I was a huge fan of the movie. When it came out I saw it at least 20 times; I loved it. Not a Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt fan but I found it fascinating. This book made the movie look like something I shouldn't have even wasted my time watching all those times. The writing is beautiful, the descriptions perfect so that you can see all in your head, and the characters you felt you knew. (Every time they talked about "the boy" that was listening to Louis' story I kept picturing Christian Slater) but other than that I didn't even think about the actors who played the characters in the movie. Lestat is mesmerizing, Louis is grappling with his life as a vampire and Claudia may be the creepiest character in all fiction for me to this date. If you loved the movie like I did and didn't read the book because of that, please read the book. You will be blown away like I was.

5 stars

Blackwood Farm by Anne Rice

2011-06-21T04:36:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to get into Anne Rice books for as long as I can remember and have never been able to. I loved Memnoch the Devil and the Mummy but that was about the extent of it; until I read Blackwood Farm. It was a 600 page book and I didn't want it to end! I loved loved loved it. Vampires, ghosts, family secrets, and the creepy backdrop of a Louisiana swamp. Perfect in every way. I don't want to give too much away so I am not putting a summary, but if you want to lose yourself in a creepy book for a few days, this is the one.

Reading and loving this has also sent me on an Anne Rice kick, so most, if not all, of my reviews will be of her books until I get through them. I may throw some different ones in there, but right now I can't get enough of Lestat.

5 stars

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Burberry

2011-05-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

Renee is a concierge at a high class building, trying to hide her true self from everyone who lives there. Though she may be just a concierge, she is incredibly intelligent, reads massive amounts of books on a wide variety of subjects, but due to an event her past, feels that she should not mingle with the upper class people of the building. So she buts on a front, careful not to let anything slip that would give her away.

Paloma is a 12 yr old girl that lives in the building, the daughter of a wealthy parents who has a secret of her own. She is exceptionally intelligent, a genius in fact. But she also feels that she needs to hide this from everyone, just getting by in school, because if her parents knew how smart she was, they would expect more of her. She dwells on her life and the life of all those around her, and decides she doesn't want to be "stuck in the fishbowl" like everyone else, so she comes up with a plan to set the building on fire and commit suicide on her 13th birthday. While she waits for the day to approach, she keeps a journal of deep thoughts that she has, and decides from things she has experienced whether the human race is worth not taking her life. If there is hope after all.

While both Renee and Paloma already have their careful plans, a new man moves into the building, Kakuro Ozu, and everything they thought was true falls to the side. All 3 become friends, and Ozu, through his actions, shows them both that not everything they think is as it should be or is true.

This book was great, but very hard to read. The intelligence of Renee and Paloma is so great, that most of the time I had no idea what they were even talking about, but the writing was so beautiful and poetic that I couldn't stop reading. I am not saying you won't understand the book. Its just very philosophical, and that kind of thing goes way over my head, but you still know what is going on in the story. It is chock full of beautiful quotes also, and the ending had my eyes filling with tears.

4 stars

The I-5 Killer by Ann Rule

2011-05-11T05:14:00.000-07:00

Randy Woodfield had an athletic career ahead of him, with his good looks had his choice of any woman he wanted. But it was never enough for Randy. He started out in high school and college being arrested and most times not for indecent exposure. He got a rush from the looks on women's faces when he exposed himself to them. Not being able to hold a job, he started robbing commercial businesses. After a stint in prison for robbery, he got out and his urges got even darker. He cruised the I-5 highway, from California to Oregon, raping, sodomizing, robbing and terrorizing women, eventually leading him to murder.

Fast read. It was pretty interesting, kind of crazy how much mayhem he could cause in one day. If you have read Ann Rule before, this is just like the others, just a different story.

3 stars

These Things Hidden by Heather Gudenkauf

2011-05-11T05:06:00.000-07:00

I am so behind on reviews I can't even remember the characters names. Sorry guys!

A young girl is sent to prison for a heinous crime when she is 16 years old. After receiving 10 years in prison, she is paroled for good behavior and sent to live in a halfway house to get on her feet. But what happened that fateful night keeps coming back to her. She desperately tries to get a hold of her younger sister to talk about what happened, but her sister wants nothing to do with her. When they finally meet up, the secrets of that awful night come to light completely, and secrets they had both been hiding are forced into light, showing that hings were much worse than they seemed.

Sorry that summary sucked, I read this so long ago I don't remember much. What I do remember: this was seriously a screwed up book. I thought I had it figured out but at the end my mouth dropped open from shock. Good, fast read, but if books involving bad things happening to kids bothers you I wouldn't recommend this. Those things don't bother me and I was still shocked by the secret.

4 stars

I Don't Want to Kill You by Dan Wells

2011-05-11T04:57:00.000-07:00

The third installment in the John Wayne Cleaver trilogy, John is searching for the monster he spoke to on the phone, sure that she is going to come after him. When bodies start showing up in his town again he thinks at first that it must be her; that she gave in to his taunting. But the more he looks at the bodies when they arrive at his family mortuary, the more he thinks this is something else. Could 2 monsters have come to town? And can he stop them both before its too late?

I loved this trilogy, I really did, but this last book was a letdown. I thought the ending was a bit of a cop out. Without going into detail, I thought the ending was pretty sad, and not in the weepy way. It was still a good, fast read, but I wish Wells wouldn't have stopped at 3 books and kept exploring the character of John. There was a lot of potential there, a little Dexter in training if you will. But the ending was just like, oh well, this is only a trilogy so let's make this happen to tie it all up.

3 stars

The Raising by Laura Kasischke

2011-04-25T04:40:00.000-07:00

The accident was tragic, yes. Bloody and horrific and claiming, the life of a beautiful young sorority girl. Nicole was a straight-A student from a small town. Sweet-tempered, all-American, a former Girl Scout, and a virgin. But it was an accident. And that was last year. It's fall again, a new semester, a fresh start.

Craig, who has not been charged with murder, is focusing on his classes, and also on avoiding Nicole's sorority sisters, who seem to blame him for her death even though the police did not.
Perry, Craig's roommate, is working through his own grief (he grew up with Nicole, after all, and had known her since kindergarten) by auditing Professor Mira Polson's sociology class: Death, Dying, and the Undead.

Mira has been so busy with her babies -- two of them, twins, the most perfect boys you could imagine but still a nearly impossible amount of work even with husband Clark's help -- that she can barely keep herself together to teach (Death, Dying and the Undead), let alone write the book she'll need to publish for tenure.

And Shelly, who was the first person at the scene of the accident, has given up calling the newspapers to tell them that, despite the ''lake of blood'' in which they keep reporting the victim was found in, the girl Shelly saw that night was not bloody, and not dead.

This was so super creepy. I read it in one day and it reminds me of something but I can't seem to remember what. A movie or something. Nicole, the sorority, the hazing, all of it; creepy, creepy, creepy. I could not put this book down, and yet I read the whole thing, and have no idea what the outcome was; I didn't get it. That was the only negative thing. Knowing this author wrote The Life Before Her Eyes (I saw the movie, didn't even know it was a book until I started reading this one), I knew that the ending was going to leave me confused, but I had hoped for more of a resolution than there was. A story about relationships, campus ghosts, getting into the perfect sorority, and obsession at the very heart of it, I think anyone who reads this will be up late finishing it. And if you do and understand the ending? Please let me know....

4 stars

The Strain by Guillermo del Torro and Chuck Hogan

2011-04-20T05:50:00.000-07:00

A Boeing 777 lands on the tarmac at JFK airport and goes completely dark. The engines have shut down, communication has been cut off, there is no movement inside, and every shade has been pulled down. The FAA and CDC are called in, and Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his team from Project Canary are called in to investigate. What he sees and finds is beyond his imagination.

In a pawn shop in New York, Abraham Setrakian knows something has landed on US soil. Something old, something evil, something he tried to stop years ago while he was in a WWII camp being held by the Nazi's. He knows it is here now, and he knows how to stop it, but will anyone believe him and his story of the unbelievable?

Think Stephen King meets Michael Crichton. It was good, not as great as I had expected, but still good. Some parts were seriously creepy and I may never go in my basement alone again, but I was hoping for a bigger scare. Hopefully the second and third installment are better.

4 stars

Book Giveaway!

2011-04-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

I am giving away a brand new copy of the third installment of author Dan Wells John Wayne Cleaver trilogy, I Don't Want To Kill You. Reply to this post and I will radomly pick a winner at the end of next week.

The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith

2011-04-11T06:05:00.000-07:00

Tom Ripley is a young con, running IRS scams from New York City. He is approached one night while he is out at a bar by, Mr. Greenleaf, the father of Dickie Greenfleaf, a brief acquaintance of Tom's. Mr. Grenleaf believes Tom and Dickie to be closer than they actually are and asks Tom for his help. Apparently, Dickie went to live in Italy and work on his painting, which his parents think he has no talent for, and won't come home to help with the family boating business. Mr. Greenleaf agrees to pay Tom's way to Italy, so he can bring his son home. But once Tom gets there and slips into the lives of Tom and his friend Marge, he becomes obsessed with Tom and his life. He wants to be like him, exactly like him, and will stop at nothing, not even murder, to accomplish it. This was pretty disturbing. I never saw the movie so nothing was spoiled for me, but Ripley is a complete nut! I couldn't believe some of the things he did and got away with, all the way up to the end. I am going to have to check out the other Mr. Ripley books to see what he gets into next. 4 stars

Plain Jane by Laurien Gardner

2011-04-08T08:07:00.000-07:00

The story of Jane Seymour and her rise from the daughter of the inhabitants of Wolf Hall, to a lady in waiting to Queen Catherine and later Queen Anne, and her sudden ascent to the Queen of England, wife to King Henry VIII. I love reading about Tudor history so I was happy to find a book devoted to the Queen there is so little known about. It was a great, interesting, quick read. The actions of Anne Boleyn never cease to amaze me no matter how many books I read involving her. The ending is sad, very sad in my opinion, and gave a view of Henry that I had never read about before.

4 stars

A Long Fatal Love Chase by Louisa May Alcott

2011-03-31T06:59:00.000-07:00

Rosamund tells her grandfather that she would gladly sell her soul to Satan for a chance at freedom from the house where she lives with him and no sooner are the words out of her mouth than a stranger shows up at the home. Philip Tempest, a long time student of Rosamund's grandfather, hears these words and starts beguiling her with tales of his travels. When he asks her if she will go with him, where he lives on his yacht and travels at his own freedom, she readily agrees having no idea what she is getting in to. The two sail off, and when Philip's true self becomes clear, Rose does everything she can to escape him, going from Paris to England, convents to insane asylums, with Philip following her every move. The story culminates in an ending that I didn't even see coming. I usually have a hard time reading books written in the 1800's but had no trouble with this one. The story is fast paced, interesting, and its easy to see why it was too sensational to be published at its time. The lengths Philip goes to in order to get back Rose are disturbing in the least. Rose's character got on my nerves a little in the beginning, but as the story moved on I liked her. This is the truest stalker/obsession/domestic story I have ever read. It was describe in such detail as to be creepy. Good book. 4 stars

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty

2011-03-28T05:02:00.000-07:00

I can't even begin to describe my love for this book. I can't really give a plot summary, as there is no definite beginning, middle and end. It is the story of a group of ex-Texas Rangers who decide to run cattle up to Montana and be the first to settle there. The book follows their journey from Texas to Montana, everything they endured, those they lost upon the way, and those they gained. I have never been a fan of westerns, but this book was amazing. I have seen reviews that call it epic, and I don't think I have ever used that word to describe any book, but this truly is epic. There are characters you love, characters yo hate, and characters you love to hate. It made me laugh, made me cry, and made me slow down my reading because I didn't want it to end. I have the next one in the series but I am afraid it won't be as good so I am going to put off reading it for awhile. I recommend this to everyone though. All day at work I looked forward to getting home and losing myself in the journey with Captain Call and his unlikely group of cowboys. 5 stars

Angel Time by Anne Rice

2011-03-16T04:48:00.000-07:00

Lucky was born and raised in New Orleans by 2 alcoholic parents, one who was a crooked cop that ended up going to jail and being killed when he was very young. Lucky's mother never got off the booze, so he was left to bring in all the money and take care of his 2 younger siblings. The only comfort he finds is when he plays his lute. After a shocking tragedy, Lucky goes to New York to start over. There he finds company with an unlikely man, and ends up becoming what we meet him as, a hit man. He calls his boss, The Right Man, finds out the particulars, and kills with frightening accuracy. He has record with Interpol, the CIA and the FBI but no one knows who he really is. He's a ghost, and he likes it that way. The next job he gets he has to kill a Russian banker in the hotel room in California that Lucky himself always stays in when he needs to get away. He is himself whenever he's there; no disguises, no false names.

"There were omens from the beginning"

Lucky didn't feel good about this assignment. It was a part of his life that he kept away from The Right Man, so he had no idea that this was Lucky's personal place to go and be himself, but it was still a job and had to be done, whether he liked it or not. After completing the job, Lucky is approached in the room by Malchiah. Malchiah is an angel, not a guardian angel, but one of the Seraph, who took an interest in Lucky's life early on. He takes Lucky back to his past, to the tragedy that still haunts him to this day, shows him how he became what he is now, and asks for his help. He wants Lucky to start working for him, using his skills for good instead of bad. With Lucky's consent, they travel back in time and Lucky tries to complete the task given to him. But his past continues to haunt him, the things he has done and seen continue to haunt him, and he wonders if anything he does will make a difference to anything. What happens if he completes this great task given to him? And what happens if he fails?

I was never an Anne Rice fan. I didn't get into the vampire books or the witch books, in fact the only 2 books of hers I really enjoyed were Memnoch the Devil and The Mummy. I fell in love with this book. Her writing is beautiful, the characters are engaging, and as we went back in time with Lucky to see what tragedy befell him when he was 18, the angel Malchiah turned and wept, and I found myself weeping as well. I am thoroughly looking forward to the second book in this series, and can only hope for more wonderful things.

5 stars

The Girl in the Green Raincoat by Laura Lippman

2011-03-04T23:15:00.000-08:00

Private investigator Tess Monaghan is on bed rest due to her pregnancy. With nothing to do during her long hours sitting on her back porch, she has taken to watching all of the dog walkers in the park. One in particular catches her attention, a girl in a green raincoat walking an Italian Greyhound in a matching green rain coat. They are there every day at the same time, except for the Sunday Tess sees the little dog running through the park in his coat, leash attached, and the girl is nowhere to be found. She enlists the help of friends to try to find out what happened to the woman, getting involved in something that she never expected.

Yes, it is Rear Window basically. Its a nice short read, and there is a bit of a twist at the end, but nothing spectacular. Still, if you are looking for an enjoyable quick read, I would check it out.

3 stars

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

2011-03-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

Eliza has been happily living her life with her husband and two children, not thinking about her past, when she receives a letter in the mail. It is from the man who kidnapped her when she was 15 and held her for 6 weeks, eventually raping her before letting her go. He is on death row for the murder of another girl, and is believed to have killed others, but it could never be proven. His letter tells her that he saw her and her husband's picture in a newspaper and though she had grown up, he'd know her anywhere. This starts a series of correspondence with the man, Walter Bowman, phone calls and an eventual visit. Eliza doesn't want her children to know yet what happened to her that summer, and she knows Walter wants something. She wants something herself; she wants to know about the other girls he never admitted to killing and she wants to know why he let her go.

Going back and forth from the present to the time she was being held captive by Walter, this was pretty interesting, disturbing and creepy to say the least. The game of cat and mouse, and the true reason Walter is contacting Eliza will keep you reading long into the night.

4 stars

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

2011-03-02T05:19:00.000-08:00

Ann Rule was working at a crisis hotline when she met and became friends with her coworker, Ted Bundy. They became very close friends and as his murders started coming to light, with no suspect in sight, but a slight description, she was working with police on the case, never knowing that it was Bundy who they were looking for. As a few of the women he tried to kidnap and later kill got away and gave descriptions, she realized that the person sounded more and more like Ted.
This was audio book and read by the author. I had never really read about Bundy because he is pretty notorious and I like reading about crimes that most people hadn't heard of. This book wasn't bad, I didn't like the authors narration. The fact that he escaped from custody 3 times is astounding to me. I work for prosecutors and I can't imagine that ever happening, but things were different back then. The brutal killing spree he went on in Florida, beating, strangling, and raping 5 women in a college dorm in 15 minutes time with no one hearing anything was more than disturbing. The thing that I didn't like about this most of all was how the author goes on and on about the women who had become blind to the things they suspected Ted of doing and the things they knew, when she herself was one of them. I would think if it was me, a time would come when I would say to myself, "OK, it is him" and stop taking his freaking calls! I don't care how close of friends we were, some things you can't ignore.

2 stars

The Murder Room: The Heirs of Sherlock Holmes Gather to Solve the World's Most Perplexing Cold Cases by Michael Capuzzo

2011-02-23T05:12:00.000-08:00

The Vidocq Society, a group made up of the top profilers, detectives, pathologists and other types of law enforcement from across the world meet once a month in Philadelphia to discuss a cold case to see if they can provide any insight or help with the investigation. The case must have been cold for at least 2 years for the society to even consider taking it on. The group was founded by William Fleischer, former Philadelphia Police Officer, FBI Special Agent who later became the Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the U.S. Customs Service in Philadelphia; Frank Bender, a talented sculptor and forensic reconstructionist who's bust of John List helped lead to his eventual capture; and Richard Walter, forensic psychologist for the State of Michigan prison system and a crime scene analyst/profiler. The group is now compromised of over 150 men and women from around the globe who gather to try to solve the world's most perplexing crimes.

This was an audio book for me. I think if I had read it, I never would have been able to finish it. The stories are very interesting, the members of the Vidocq are incredibly interesting and I enjoyed reading about all of them, however the problem I had with the book that it seems most people have had is that it jumps all over the place. A case that is brought up in the first chapter doesn't show up again until the end of the book, so I think it would be hard to follow if you read it; at least for me. Otherwise, I found it fascinating. The narrator was enjoyable, and his narration of the crime of John List was so intense I stopped what I was doing as I listened to devote my full attention to what he was saying.

4 stars

Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah

2011-01-23T09:30:00.000-08:00

On their father's deathbed, Meredith and Nina's father extract a promise from them that they will get the full fairy tell their mother always told them when they were children. Their mother, Anya, has been distant their entire life and appeared to not love them. After his death, Nina is able to get Anya to start telling the fairy tale only its not a fairy tale at all, but the story of her life in Stalin's Leningrad before she met and married their father. It is a story of love and loss, surviving in the harshest of circumstances, and the things we are forced to do and how they stay with us and influence the rest of our lives.

This book reminded me of why I love historical fiction. I loved this book. Great story, great characters. I hope she writes another historical fiction because out of all her books I have read, this is by far the absolute best.

5 stars

Im Dreaming of a Black Christmas by Lewis Black

2011-01-04T06:43:00.000-08:00

Let me start by saying I love Lewis Black. Not many people can make me laugh as hard as he does. However, this book is just too far. I get it, he is Jewish and doesn't celebrate Christmas. I was hoping for a funny book where he makes fun of the holiday and all of the fuss and what I ended up with was him continually whining over the fact that he is 61, not married and doesn't have kids, how the marriage wagon passed him by, and about those he has lost in his life. Dwelling on those I have lost in my life is the reason I am depressed from November to January, I don't need to read about someone else's misery. When he isn't going on about that, he is going on about what a glutton he is, how he doesn't give enough to charity, and his addiction to clothes. I am really glad this was a free download and I didn't pay for it. The only reason it got 2 stars is because the final chapter about his USO Tour was wonderful.

2 stars

Top Ten Books of 2010

2011-01-03T05:22:00.000-08:00

1. The Long Walk by Stephen King

2. The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom

3. The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell

4. The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse

5. I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

6. Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

7. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

8. American Gods by Neil Gaiman

9. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

10. Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

Best Debut - I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

Best Series - John Wayne Cleaver series by Dan Wells

Best Classic - The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Best Book to Lose Yourself In - The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom

Best Nonfiction - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Biggest Disappointment - The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larson

Best Suspense Book - The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse

Best Historical Fiction - Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell

Best Vacation Book - A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin

Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah

2010-12-27T05:16:00.000-08:00

Deep in the Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest– nearly one million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. Even in this modern age, much of it remains undiscovered and uncharted. From the heart of this old forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she can give no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past. . . . Until recently, Dr. Julia Cates was one of the preeminent child psychiatrists in the country, but a scandal shattered her confidence, ruined her career, and made her a media target. When she gets a desperate call from her estranged sister, Ellie, a police chief in their small western Washington hometown, she jumps at the chance to escape. In Rain Valley, nothing much ever happens–until a girl emerges from the deep woods and walks into town. She is a victim unlike any Julia has ever seen: a child locked in a world of unimaginable fear and isolation. When word spreads of the “wild child” and the infamous doctor who is treating her, the media descend on Julia and once again her competence is challenged. State and federal authorities want to lock the girl away in an institution until an identification can be made. But to Julia, who has come to doubt her own ability, nothing is more important than saving the girl she now calls Alice. To heal this child, Julia will have to understand that she cannot work alone and must look to others–the people in the town she left long ago, the sister she barely knows, and Dr. Max Cerrasin, a handsome, private man with secrets of his own. Then a shocking revelation forces Julia to risk everything to discover the truth about Alice. The ordeal that follows will test the limits of Julia’s faith, forgiveness, and love, as she struggles to ascertain where Alice ultimately belongs. In her most ambitious novel to date, Kristin Hannah delivers an incandescent story about the resilience of the human spirit, the triumph of hope, and the mysterious places in the heart where love lies waiting.

Took me an incredibly long time to read even though it's not that long. I keep not being impressed by her books but I keep reading them. The whole interaction with Alice and trying to get her to speak kept reminding me of the old Tarzan movies my dad made me watch. I think that was the reason I had such a hard time finishing it.

3 stars

Favorite by Karen McQuestion

2010-12-21T13:43:00.000-08:00

On my eleventh birthday, my mother disappeared. That morning my mom drove Jason and me to school. When we arrived, she helped me carry in a large Tupperware container full of cupcakes, made small talk with my teacher, told me to have a good day and kissed me good-bye. I never saw her again. Five years have passed since Angie Favorite’s mother, Laura, disappeared without a trace, and Angie still hasn’t recovered. Sure, things look normal on the surface—she goes to school, works her summer job, and argues with her older brother Jason—but she can’t shake the feeling that Laura didn’t leave by choice. Angie’s dad does the best he can, but his work as a musician keeps him on the road and away from home, where it’s up to Angie’s grandmother to keep an eye on the kids. She can’t be with them all the time, though, and she can’t help Angie when she is snatched from a mall parking lot by Scott Bittner. The girl narrowly escapes, and Bittner is arrested, but he takes his life in jail before he can offer an explanation for his crime. When his mother contacts Angie, begging forgiveness on her son’s behalf, the girl agrees to meet with her in hopes of finding answers to the seemingly random attack. But when she arrives at the massive Bittner estate, she is overcome by an unshakable sense of foreboding… Part thriller, part coming-of-age tale, Favorite is an engrossing young adult novel in which nothing—and no one—is as it seems.

Very predictable, but something about it kept me reading even when I knew everything that was going to happen. Good YA book, but I wouldn't rave about it to others.

2 stars

The Grove by John Rector

2010-12-13T05:09:00.000-08:00

Dexter McCoy wakes up after a blackout with no recollection of what happened the night before. He finds out from the town sheriff that he got into an argument with his estranged with the night before and threatened to kill her. Later that day when he goes out into his grove, he finds the dead body of a teenage girl from town. For some reason he decides to leave the body there and try to find out what happened to her. Then the dead girl starts showing up and speaking to him herself.

This was so bizarre. I am not even sure what the whole point was. Did Dexter do it? Do you really care? It is a fast read, only took me a couple of hours, but it is just so completely out there I have already forgotten most of the plot.

2 stars

Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah

2010-12-06T05:12:00.000-08:00

In the turbulent summer of 1974, Kate Mularkey has accepted her place at the bottom of the eighth-grade social food chain. Then, to her amazement, the “coolest girl in the world” moves in across the street and wants to be her friend. Tully Hart seems to have it all---beauty, brains, ambition. On the surface they are as opposite as two people can be: Kate, doomed to be forever uncool, with a loving family who mortifies her at every turn. Tully, steeped in glamour and mystery, but with a secret that is destroying her. They make a pact to be best friends forever; by summer’s end they’ve become TullyandKate. Inseparable...
So begins Kristin Hannah’s magnificent new novel. Spanning more than three decades and playing out across the ever-changing face of the Pacific Northwest, Firefly Lane is the poignant, powerful story of two women and the friendship that becomes the bulkhead of their lives. From the beginning, Tully is desperate to prove her worth to the world. Abandoned by her mother at an early age, she longs to be loved unconditionally. In the glittering, big-hair era of the eighties, she looks to men to fill the void in her soul. But in the buttoned-down nineties, it is television news that captivates her. She will follow her own blind ambition to New York and around the globe, finding fame and success . . . and loneliness. Kate knows early on that her life will be nothing special. Throughout college, she pretends to be driven by a need for success, but all she really wants is to fall in love and have children and live an ordinary life. In her own quiet way, Kate is as driven as Tully. What she doesn’t know is how being a wife and mother will change her . . . how she’ll lose sight of who she once was, and what she once wanted. And how much she’ll envy her famous best friend. . . . For thirty years, Tully and Kate buoy each other through life, weathering the storms of friendship---jealousy, anger, hurt, resentment. They think they’ve survived it all until a single act of betrayal tears them apart . . . and puts their courage and friendship to the ultimate test.
Firefly Lane is for anyone who ever drank Boone’s Farm apple wine while listening to Abba or Fleetwood Mac. More than a coming-of-age novel, it’s the story of a generation of women who were both blessed and cursed by choices. It’s about promises and secrets and betrayals. And ultimately, about the one person who really, truly knows you---and knows what has the power to hurt you . . . and heal you. Firefly Lane is a story you’ll never forget . . . one you’ll want to pass on to your best friend.

OK, so I totally didn't write that summary. I read this over a week ago and don't really remember much of the plot. This was my first book by Hannah and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I was on vacation and needed something easy to read and this was perfect. The characters are kind of one dimensional and the ending was a bit contrived, but it was a good read none the less.

4 stars

How Many Have You Read?

2010-11-22T05:54:00.000-08:00

How Many of These Books Have You Read?

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold those books you've read in their entirety. Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read only an excerpt. Please comment on what you have read. Feel free to post on your blog, just please link back.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Caroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma -Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Inferno - Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Shoot the Moon by Billie Letts

2010-11-19T12:12:00.000-08:00

Dr. Mark Albright, Beverly Hills vet to the star's pets, finds after the passing of his father documents that show he was adopted. He goes to Declare, OK looking for his birth mother only to find out that she was murdered when he was a few months old and he disappeared at the time and was presumed to be dead also. His return to Declare causes all kinds of emotions that were repressed for over 25 years in the town to come back to the surface. Meanwhile, he is trying to find out who killed his mother and who his birth father is and starts to fall in love.

The mystery wasn't really a mystery to me, the love story was nonexistent, but I couldn't help but love this book. The town, the characters, I fell in love with all of it. Great book to lose yourself in without requiring much thought; just sit back and enjoy.

4 stars

Mr. Monster by Dan Wells

2010-11-16T05:04:00.001-08:00

John Wayne Cleaver is back. After fighting off the demon that was terrorizing his hometown in Wells' first book, I Am Not A Serial Killer (freaking awesome book by the way), sixteen year old John is trying to ignore his sociopathic tendencies and try to live a "normal" life. He still lives with his mom above the family mortuary, still goes to high school with his best friend (if a sociopath can have a best friend) Max, and is trying to work through the strange feelings he is having for his longtime neighbor and fellow classmate, Brooke. When bodies start turning up in the town again, John starts to become obsessed once again. No organs are missing from these bodies, but there are obvious signs of torture, burn marks, cuts that were made with screwdrivers, scissors, knives, etc. While John is trying to keep his excitement over this turn of events to himself, he comes to realize that the bodies seem to be showing up to draw his attention to them. It's kind of like someone is saying "I know what you did, I know what you are, come and get me". John must try to figure out who the perpetrator is while trying to protect his family and Brooke, and trying to keep Mr. Monster inside and not let him out. Because he is there, and lurking, and this time he may not be able to force him down deep because his urges are getting stronger, and sometimes it's easier just to give in.

Not as good as the first one. I liked it, and will be reading the third in the series when it comes out, but I didn't enjoy this one as much. Maybe because there wasn't that initial surprise when you find out about the demons. That was completely unexpected in the first one, but in the this installment it is just taken for granted. This also bothered me a lot more than the first one. It seemed a lot more graphic, and the details about embalming bodies and the killer's "toys" and how he tortures them was almost too much for me at times. All in all, worth the read though. Ends with a lead in that makes you have to read the third and final installment. I just hope Wells' doesn't take this too far and loose me because I really like John.

4 stars

Follow Friday

2010-11-12T05:13:00.000-08:00

It's time for Follow Friday, a weekly meme hosted by Parajunkee.com. Today's question is what is your book budget?

Well, I don't really have one. I get most of my books at yard sales, flea markets, and garage sales where they are $.50 at the most, so I never spend that much money on a book. The only time I pay full price is if it is something I have been waiting for and must have. I have a rule when I go into those big chain bookstores, you know which ones I mean, that I will not pay full price for a book unless it is of considerable length. I cannot justify paying $20 and upwards on a book that is a couple of hundred pages.

What about you?

A Scattered Life by Karen McQuestion

2010-11-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

Free spirit Skyla Plinka is enjoying her normal day to day life with her husband Thomas and daughter Nora, a stark contrast from her childhood which she spent moving from place to place with her dad after her mother died. A new family moves on to their block, and Skyla becomes instant friends with the mother, Roxanne. They get together daily, much to her husband's chagrin, and it is the first true friendship Skyla has ever had. When a tragedy strikes Roxanne's family, Skyla must chose to finally open herself up and let others in.

I don't really know what else to say about this book. This review is terrible, along with the previous one, I guess because the books were completely pointless to me. It kept me reading, which is why it gets on star higher than The Friday Night Knitting Club, but I kept waiting for something to happen that never did.

2 stars

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs

2010-11-08T05:32:00.000-08:00

A group of women from different backgrounds and different professions in New York City gather every Friday night to knit and talk about their lives. When something unexpected happens, they will all have to come together to get through it.

Boring. Basically Steel Magnolia's in NYC. Not my kind of thing, I flipped to the end just to see what ended up happening so I could move on to something else. Only good thing I got from it is I may start knitting.

1 star

Top 5 Sunday's = Favorite TV Shows That Got Cancelled

2010-11-08T05:14:00.001-08:00

Hosted by Larissa's Bookish Life; I just had to participate in this one becuase every time I fall in love with a show it gets cancelled :-(

My First Follow Friday!!!

2010-11-05T05:09:00.001-07:00

It's Follow Friday, my first, hosted by Parajunkee.com. Please leave a note if you stop by!!

Waiting on Wednesday

2010-11-03T05:07:00.001-07:00

Waiting on Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by @BreakingtheSpine about what book you are eagerly awaiting the release of this week.

The Distant Hours by Kate Morton

Release Date: November 9, 2010

A letter posted in 1941 finally reaches its destination in 1992 with powerful repercussions for Edie Burchill, a London book editor, in this enthralling romantic thriller from Australian author Morton (The Forgotten Garden). At crumbling Milderhurst Castle live elderly twins Persephone and Seraphina and their younger half-sister, Juniper, the three eccentric spinster daughters of the late Raymond Blythe, author of The True History of the Mud Man, a children's classic Edie adores. Juniper addressed the letter to Meredith, Edie's mother, then a young teen evacuated to Milderhurst during the Blitz. Edie, who's later invited to write an introduction to a reprint of Raymond's masterpiece, visits the seedily alluring castle in search of answers. Why was her mother so shattered by the contents of a letter sent 51 years earlier? And what happened to soldier Thomas Cavill, Juniper's long-missing fiancé and Meredith's former teacher? Despite the many competing narratives, the answers will stun readers.

Top Ten Tuesday - Top Ten Books That Made You Cry!

2010-11-02T05:33:00.000-07:00

This is my first time participating in this. I am trying to blog more often and get some more followers. Don't know if I will be able to come up with 10, but lets see what happens:

Top Ten Books That Made You Cry

1. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls

2. My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult

3. Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas by James Patterson

4. Plantation by Dorothea Benton Frank

5. The Devil of Nanking by Mo Hayder

6. She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

7. The Book Thief by Makus Zusak

8. Shelter Dogs by Traer Scott

9. The Histroy of Love by Nicole Krauss

10. Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

2010-11-01T05:14:00.000-07:00

15 year old Kafka Tamura runs away from home to become "the toughest 15 year old on the planet. Whether he is trying to leave behind the oedipal prophesy his father constantly told him about or to start a new life he isn't sure. Taking a journey on his own is Nakata, a man in his 60's who suffered a wartime affliction that left him "dumb". Nakata embarks on a trip to find the entrance stone and open it, and is drawn toward Kafka without knowing why. A mind bending story where fish and leeches fall from the sky, cats can talk, and spirits float between this world and the next to make love or kill.

I can't really summarize this any better without giving anything away and I have been thinking about it since last night. Very surreal, its like an acid trip most of the time, but I loved it. The story is so bizarre I couldn't stop reading it. Although much of what happened I did not understand at all, I think if I read it again I might understand more. Nakata is one of the most lovable characters I have ever read, I just wanted to give him a hug. I wouldn't say this is for everybody, but it was not what I expected and I was very surprised in a good way.

4 stars

Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

2010-10-26T05:40:00.000-07:00

This is a fictional account of the girl who inspired one of Vermeer's most famous paintings. I don't really have much to say about it because I'm not too sure what the point of this book was. I read the whole thing, I made time so I could finish it, but it left me thinking "OK, what was the whole point of that?" Engaging story, but I just didn't get it.

2 stars

The Long Walk by Stephen King

2010-10-18T04:51:00.000-07:00

Ray Garraty is participating in this year's Long Walk. One hundred men under the age of 30 participate every year. You walk, without stopping, hundreds and hundreds of miles, until there are only 2 people left, and the winner wins the big Prize. Everyone knows the rules, you get 3 warnings, and after that you get your ticket. But what does getting your ticket really mean? Ray and the friends he makes along the walk are about to find out the hard way.

King is extremely hit or miss for me, more misses than hits. I picked this up at a yard sale Saturday and finished it last night. It was so hard to read, and so disturbing, but I couldn't put it down, I had to see the outcome. Sometimes I had to stop for a few minutes it was so disturbing and sad. But I loved it. The whole story reminded me of several other books like Lord of the Flies and the Hunger Games. Almost in tears as the fate of Ray's friends are handed down on the last leg of the Long Walk, this is one that will stay with me.

4 stars

The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom

2010-10-12T05:02:00.000-07:00

Expatriate and former LAPD detective Nicholas Marten returns to the United States at a long time friend's request who is in the hospital dying. What she tells him when he gets there, that her illness is no accident, but was purposefully injected into her and is in relation to the death of their son and husband a few months earlier, leads Marten to take a closer look at the deaths of all 3 of them. What he ends up uncovering is a plan for mass genocide in the Middle East, the assassination of 2 leading political leaders, and a centuries old group, based on the lost writings of Machiavelli, who practice blood sacrifice and human torture to further their place in the world. His digging leads him to Europe, where he pairs up with journalist Demi Picard, who is on a very private search of her own, and President John Henry Harris, who uncovers a plot so horrendous he doesn't know who his enemies are and forces him to escape from his political advisers and Secret Service detail and team up with Marten and Picard. While trying to stop a massive plot against the human race, and save their own lives, all 3 are faced with a force far greater than any of them believed possible.

My mom has told me for years that I need to read Folsom. It was the weekend and the books I brought home sucked, so I picked this one up - and had to force myself to go to bed. Great characters, true heroes and villains, reading this book was like watching an episode of 24 when it was still exciting. Secret government plots, cults, cover ups, betrayal, murder, suicide, and high treason make for an excellent book. I cannot wait to read more by Folsom. Just have to make sure its when I am on vacation and it doesn't matter if I stay up all night reading.

5 stars

The Blood Detective by Dan Waddell

2010-10-01T05:08:00.000-07:00

When the naked, mutilated body of a man is discovered in a Notting Hill graveyard, the police, led by Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster are forced to call upon the help of genealogist Nigel Barnes for help. Two more bodies show up, also mutilated, and to solve the case Barnes, along with the help of Detective Superintendent Heather Jenkins, must figure out what the mysterious clue left on the bodies means. Their research brings to light a serial killer from 1897, and the man who was falsely accused and executed for the crimes. As the clock keeps ticking, the police try to stay one step ahead of the killer to prevent another killing, while using the victim's family trees to figure out why they are the chosen victim's and who will be next. History is beginning to repeat itself.

Great book. A true mystery, fast read, likable characters and an interesting take on the thriller genre. Really piqued my interest in genealogy and I am really looking forward to reading the next book in the series.

5 stars

The House at Midnight by Lucie Whitehouse

2010-09-28T05:00:00.000-07:00

After the suicide of his uncle, a successful art dealer, Lucas Heathfield inherits Stoneborough Manor. He thinks of it as a place where he and his tight knit group of friends can spend some time away from the bustle of London. He risks his friendship with Jo, professing his love to her on New Years Eve, delighting all of his friends and Jo. But she begins to see the house in a different way. It's affect on all of them, especially Lucas, is strange. he quits his job as a lawyer and moves to Stoneborough permanently with one of their other friends, Danny, a wild child who takes no responsibility for his actions. After moving to the house full time, Lucas finds some old family movies that he becomes obsessed with, movies that show a small group of friends eerily similar to their own. As the movies play out, they reveal a startling revelation to Lucas about his own family and everything he thought to be true. Caught up in obsession, passion, and jealousy, the group meets up for one final party at the house, with consequences no one could have seen coming, consequences that will change all of their lives forever.

Very intense, very creepy, the house itself is a character, possibly the biggest one. I felt like a member of the group relegated to the corner to sit and watch the tragedy of their loves, lives and friendships consume and destroy them all. This one will keep you up many nights to see how the story plays out. If you are looking for a book that ends with the whole story all wrapped up completely, this is not it. I usually want my books that very way, but this ending was satisfying nonetheless.

5 stars

In Honor of Halloween...

2010-09-27T05:15:00.000-07:00

OK I am totally not a Halloween person. I think it is a huge waste of a holiday, but mainly because I am too old to trick or treat anymore. And the fact that I get scared very easily. But since October is my birthday month also, I wanted to ask the readers: What is your favorite scary book? Besides anything by Stephen King. His books just don't scare me and I think he has diarrhea of the mouth for the most part. Plus his books are the standard answer for this kind of question. Off the top of my head, the scariest books I have ever read are:

Come Closer by Sara Gran
Ghosts by Ed McBain
A Haunting in Connecticut can't remember the authors name

I will post more as I remember them, but I would like to know what books freaked you out. Depending on the responses I may start posting random questions like this. Let me know what you think.

Boo!

Juliet by Anna Fortier

2010-09-21T05:02:00.000-07:00

After the death of the aunt who raised her and her twin sister, and finding out that the will was changed at the last minute leaving her nothing, Juliet Jacobs heads to Italy after reading a note left for her by her aunt. In the note she finds out that there is something in a safe deposit box there that once belonged to Juliet and Janice's mother, who was killed in a car crash in Italy when they were toddlers. Juliet heads off in search of it after finding out that her name isn't really Juliet Jacobs, but Giulietta Tolomei, her twin sisters being Gianozza Tolomei. Her aunt changed their names after she brought them to American fro their own safety. After arriving in Sienna, Giulietta is befriended by Eva Maria Salimbini, a member of a family that was the Tolomei's enemies years ago. As Giulietta struggles to figure out what her mother left behind she starts to unearth secrets about her only families past in the middle ages, and how they are tied to Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Eventually working with Alessandro, Eva Maria's godson, her family in Sienna, a Maestro that swears Romeo still comes to visit him at night, and her twin who shows up unexpectedly, Giulietta starts to unravel the truth about her parents untimely death and her personal connection with one of literature's most haunting love stories. Alternating between the present day and Sienna in the Middle Ages, you sit back and watch as Giulietta's own story heads to an expected climax.

Sounds good doesn't it? Not so much. Giulietta is so incredibly naive I had to refrain from throwing the book across the room at times. Her twin is absolutely unbearable, Alessandro is a poorly written character, and there are so many minor players I was forgetting who was who. The transition between present day and the Middle Ages didn't flow that smoothly as to not be confusing. A novel packed full of superstition, secrets, lies and betrayals, I did not care what happened to one of the characters. The parts set in 1340 I loved, especially the story of the Palio in 1340, which gave me chills as I read it. But as a whole, I found it very disappointing.

Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey: The River of Doubt by Candice Millard

2010-08-30T06:42:00.000-07:00

After losing the Bull Moose election, former president Theodore Roosevelt was looking for something exciting to do. He always liked a challenge, and when his old friend, Father Zahm, proposed a trip to the Amazon he was ready to go. After getting backing from the American History Museum, Roosevelt, his son Kermit, and others head down the Amazon on a river that had never been mapped before, The River of Doubt. What ensued was beyond what any of them could imagine; Indians lurking in the jungle waiting to kill them, rapids and falls they didn't know where there until they were upon them, running out of provisions, losing some of their boats in the rapids, mosquitoes and insects that could and would give they malaria and other diseases, and murder and suicide among their group.Roosevelt's wish to map this dangerous, uncharted river became a fight for the lives of everyone on the mission.

This starts out pretty slow, but once everyone gets to South America, it really picks up. I couldn't help but love Roosevelt even though I haven't ever read anything about him before. He treats everyone as his equal, and had courage beyond anything I can imagine. A very interesting true life adventure story.

4 stars

Fragile by Lisa Unger

2010-08-16T05:00:00.000-07:00

Maggie and Jones, psychiatrist and small town detective, seem like your every day small town couple. But through secrets kept from each other there is always a tension among them. Especially when it comes to their 17 year old son, Rick. He is into the Goth scene, in a band, doesn't want to go to college even though his grades are good and he has great SAT scores, and he is dating a girl, Charlene, that Maggie and Jones feel is nothing but trouble. When Charlene disappears one night after a fight with her mother all of those secrets kept over two decades start to bubble to the surface. Every one is remembering a time when Jones and Maggie were in high school and another girl disappeared only to be found dead a few days later. Everyone who was around at the time of the disappearance see striking similarities between the two vanishings, even though it is purported that Charlene ran away. Now Maggie and Jones must face the demons of their past if they are to help Charlene.

This book was so completely pointless. There is no mystery, which is fine, but there is nothing to keep you reading. I finished and was not happy about the time I wasted reading this book. You know what is going to happen, who is involved, and how everything is going to play out, and the Hallmark inspired ending didn't help the story at all. None of the characters were sympathetic, they were all self absorbed and I had to force myself to finish this.

2 stars

Still Missing by Chevy Stevens

2010-08-01T03:57:00.000-07:00

32 year old Annie O'Sullivan was just about to end the open house she was running on the day she was kidnapped. As she headed out to her car, a van pulled up with a friendly guy inside, asking if he could look around real quick. Annie agrees, and later finds herself tied up in the back of the van. After her capture, she lives in a cabin in the mountains of Canada with her captor for over a year. Here she endures physical and psychological abuse and is raped nightly. The book is told by Annie, as she finally goes to therapy for what she had been through and finally tells her story, and how it affected her and everyone she thought she knew and loved.

Good story, very hard to read at times, and incredibly disturbing. The things this character went through were almost too much to read about at some points. However, when the mystery of Annie's capture is unravelled it is just too much to believe. The book was moving at a great speed, but a side note of something happened made me figure out what was going on as soon as I read it and the conclusion was just way too bizarre for me. I can't imagine it being plausible in any kind of circumstances.

4 stars

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen

2010-07-25T16:39:00.000-07:00

Don't really have anything to say about this one. Plot and characters were boring and I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could move on to something else. Will not be reading anymore of her books.

1 star

A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin

2010-07-21T06:54:00.000-07:00

20year old Violet Hayes has just come home from finishing school to find out that her father is set to remarry and the mother she had been told was ill and in a sanatorium is actually alive and well in Chicago, and has just formally divorced her father. Under the pretense of seeing the Chicago World's Fair, Violet talks her father into letting her spend a month in Chicago so she can look for her mother. While there she will stay with her grandmother, who knows the secret about Violet's mother and refuses to tell her and has secrets of her own, her Aunt Matilda, or Aunt Matt, who is involved in the suffragist movement, her Aunt Agnes, who puts all of the lessons Violet learned in finishing school to use courting her around the city to visit all of her well-to-do friends and hoping to find Violet a husband and her Aunt Birdie, who's husband died in the Civil War but she thinks he is still alive and fighting it. Violet's search for her mother and the truth is sidetracked when she begins being courted by different men, from different walks of life, for different reasons. There is Herman Beckett, who is from her hometown, bores Violet silly, and has no imagination whatsoever; Nelson Kent, heir to a banking empire who Violet likes but doesn't get the love story feelings she has always read about that she longs for; Louis Decker, an evangelist who works Violet's grandmother in helping the poor and immigrant families in the slums of Chicago and believes everything is God's will and part of God's plan; and Silas McClure, a stranger Violet meets on her train ride to Chicago who is everything she has dreamed of, but is he a thief? Through all of this Violet works diligently to answer burring questions about her family, find her mother, see the Chicago World's Fair in all its magnificent glory, and hopefully, fall in love.

I loved this book. Violet is a very likable character, her aunts are too funny, Aunt Birdie had me laughing out loud at some points, and the story is very engaging and keeps you reading. I slowed down my pace during the last 3/4 of the book because I didn't want it to end. I found out after I had read this that it is Christian fiction, which I never, ever read, but I loved this. It wasn't preachy, didn't shove God down your throat, and was incredibly enjoyable. This is the first book in a long time where I was rooting for some characters, and wincing at others. One of the best I have read in quite awhile.

5 stars

Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger

2010-07-16T05:17:00.000-07:00

Mirror twins Julia and Valentina Poole inherit the flat in London belonging to their aunt, who is their mother's twin, after her death. The stipulation is that they both move to London and live in the flat for a year before anything can be sold or any other changes made. Living in the building is Robert Fanshaw, their aunt Elspeth's lover, and Martin, a man who's wife has left him and suffers from OCD and cannot leave the building. The building itself backs up to Highgate Cemetery, where Robert works as a tour guide. After the twins move in strange things start to happen and they realize they are being haunted by the ghost of their dead aunt. Each trying to create a life for themselves in London, one of the twins longs for being free of her twin sister. They do everything together and she wants to break free of this routine that she feels is blocking her life and what she wants to do. Through conversations with their dead aunt through a Ouija board and automatic writing, one of the twins comes up with a plan that will give her a life of her own, but the cost is one that she never could have imagined.

This was very weird, very creepy, very Gothic. Reminded me a little of The Virgin Suicides. It kept me reading, but when certain secrets were revealed I had to reread them about 4 times and I am still not sure I understand what happened. The ending I did not understand at all, but I was pulled through this book by the story of these twins, and was just waiting for the tragedy to hit them that I felt was inevitable, and the betrayal that I did not see coming and would change every one's lives forever. Valentina is an incredibly likable character, her sister Julia is very annoying, and the ghost of her aunt Elspeth made me cringe when I realized what was going to happen. More character driven than anything else, this is one story that will stay with you, haunt you, for quite awhile.

4 stars

I Am Not A Serial Killer by Dan Wells

2010-07-10T12:29:00.000-07:00

15 year old John Wayne Cleaver feels he is predestined to become a serial killer. His parents named him John Wayne after the iconic actor, but he sees it as being named after John Wayne Gacy. His last name, Cleaver, is a murder weapon. And his father's name is Sam, making him, the Son of Sam. Then their is his obsession with serial killers. It doesn't help matters that his mom and sister run a funeral home, where he gets to help prepare bodies for their final resting place, embalming, etc. His mother is worried about his preoccupation with serial killers, especially after for a school project, he does an in depth report on Jeffrey Dahmer so disturbing his teacher calls his mom and it puts him in therapy, where he is diagnosed as being a sociopath, unable to feel empathy. Then his dream comes true, a serial killer starts to stalk the residents of his small town. He tries to keep himself under control, but he sees patterns the police and FBI don't and unravels the mystery of who is committing these violent acts. But in that knowledge comes the problem of deciding what to do about it. He has watched this person kill 4 people without trying to stop it. He can't talk to his family, and the authorities won't believe him if he did tell them. All the while The Monster inside him that he has kept locked up for a long time by following strict set of rules he set for himself is begging to be let out finally. All of this culminates into an outstanding debut, and the first in a trilogy of books that will leave you begging for more.

I have been in a major book funk, and this has to be one the most incredible stories I have ever read. As disturbing and creepy as John Wayne is, you can't help but root for him, to stop the murders and to save himself. Fast paced plot that reveals the murderer early on in the book, but that just adds to the grab you by the throat tension of it. I cannot wait for the other books to come out to see what happens. Strong character study, beautifully written, and grabs you from the beginning and doesn't let go until the final breathless page.

5 stars

Dracula in Love by Karen Essex

2010-07-06T05:20:00.000-07:00

This is the story of Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's classic, Dracula. In this novel, she tells her side of the story as to what happened involving the Count and defines the role she played. Dark, Gothic, and sexual, the story leads you from London, where Mina is a teacher at a School of Accomplishment for Girls, to an insane asylum where women are committed for their sexual desires and "treated" in ways that cause their death. From mist filled cemeteries to stories from her childhood in Ireland, Mina is forced to make a decision that she has been avoiding for centuries.

I finished this yesterday and have been trying to figure out how I feel about this book. The story didn't hold my attention, the first 250 to 300 pages were very boring to me and I didn't really see where the story was going. It picked up from there but was so highly sexual and erotic that I didn't enjoy it. The last 50 pages or so seemed incredibly rushed, and the story was wrapped up so quickly it left me feeling nothing for any of the characters. At times while reading I was thinking of the Phantom of the Opera, just for Dracula's obsession with Mina, how they are tied together, and their fate. But this story held none of the splendour that Phantom of the Opera has captivated me with for years. Maybe if I had read Dracula more recently than 18 years ago, I would have appreciated the story more, but it jumped all over the place and at times made no sense to me whatsoever. If you like romance, especially the dark, erotic, Gothic kind, than this is for you. I enjoy Gothic stories, but that is where it ended. I spent my weekend reading this when realistically it should have taken me a day and a half. I had to force myself to finish it. I appreciate what the author was trying to do, but I was not impressed.

2 stars
Release date August 10, 2010

I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

2010-06-30T18:20:00.000-07:00

Nineteen year old Ed Kennedy doesn't have much going for him. He drives a taxi, is in love with a girl who doesn't love him, spends his spare time playing cards with friends and is bad at sex. After stopping a robbery at a bank he and his friends were in, he starts receiving playing cards in the mail. Aces to be exact, and written on each card is three things. Three tasks he must complete, messages he must deliver, and in each of these tasks he finds that maybe he isn't so useless after all.

Not as good as The Book Thief. Some of the places he had to go and messages he had to deliver were pretty hard to read about, but the book is written in a way that keeps you reading to see what happens and how everything is going to play out. It was a 5 star book until the end. It totally confused me and I had to reread it a couple of times. I'm still not too sure I understood it.

4 stars

In the Shadow of Gotham by Stefanie Pintoff

2010-06-15T05:02:00.000-07:00

Sarah Wingate is found brutally murdered in her aunt's home and Dobson, New York in 1905 and police detective Simon Zeile is called in to investigate. No one saw anything, but everyone reports hearing the same blood curdling scream at the exact time Sarah was killed. In the early stages of the investigation, Zeile is contacted by Alistair Sinclair, a professor at Columbia University and founder of a group of criminologists at the school. He believes he knows who killed Sarah, but as the investigation proceeds, every clue eludes Zeile, Sinclair and his team. Why was Sarah Wingate killed and what is her connection to the person Sinclair believes killed her? And are Sinclair's motives truly in the best interest of the investigation? Zeile must discover this and come to his own conclusions if he hopes to solve a brutal murder that is not as simple as it seems.

Pretty good story. The only reason it didn't get 5 stars was because of all the corrupt political sidelines that seemed to be thrown in for no reason. The book ends with some questions unanswered and leaves it wide open to a sequel, which I hope does happen because this has a lot of potential. Good thriller. Check it out.

4 stars

Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer

2010-06-06T17:12:00.001-07:00

Two very different men from very different backgrounds, try to fulfill their dreams and destiny in the banking/hotel world and along the way develop a hate for each other that may cause them both to lose it all.

William Kane, son of a wealthy banker, follows in his father's footsteps, attending Harvard and going into the family banking business. Abel Rosnovski, of Polish descent, survives Russian war camps and a journey to the "New World", America, to make a better life for himself. Kane continues in his father's footsteps where Abel eventually ends up running a hotel empire. However through one misunderstood event, they cannot get past the deep seated hatred they have for each other as each tries to ruin the other. All of their choices and misconceptions come to a head when Abel's daughter falls in love with Kane's son, neither having any idea of what the truth really is anymore.

5 stars

Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell

2010-06-02T07:44:00.000-07:00

Author Sarah Vowell has a morbid fascination with Presidential assassinations. In her book, Assassination Vacation, she explores three that interest her the most, President's Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley. From following the path John Wilkes Booth took after fleeing the Ford Theater that fateful night, to going on a tour of the city of Oneida, where in the 1800's the members practiced a kind of "free love" way before its time, she takes you along on the trip.

The very long, boring trip. If you are into history then I think you would really enjoy this book. It had me laughing out loud at some parts, but it is mostly about presidential history, and history was never my big interest. I did find out about a website to check out from reading this book: www.FindAGrave.com. And there were some funny anecdotes that I will be using, but I am glad I didn't buy it.

2 stars

The Last Child by John Hart

2010-05-29T17:19:00.000-07:00

Johnny Merrimon's life was turned upside down when his twin sister vanished without a trace on her way home from school. His mother blamed his father, who was supposed to pick her up, causing him to leave, his mother became addicted to pills and alcohol thanks to the supposed family "friend", Ken, who was all too eager to take over her life when her husband left and owns most of the town, they lost their home, and are living in a home Ken gave them, and can take away whenever he feels like it.

Johnny has never been able to stop looking for his sister, even though the police have. While out one day by the town creek, he sees a man run off the bridge by a car, and the man's final word's are "I found her. I found the girl. Run", which Johnny does. He is convinced the man was talking about his long missing sister, even though when he returns home he finds out that another girl has been snatched in broad daylight. As the police try to find the girl, Johnny takes on his own search, to find the missing girl who will hopefully lead him to his sister's whereabouts. He takes to his bike where he checks up on pedophiles, and any other avenue he can think of. But when the truth is finally revealed, it is far from anything Johnny could ever imagine.

This was so much better than Down River. Even though I figured out who it was, it was still a great book. A little unbelievable that a 13 year old kid is riding around on his bike checking up on the town perverts, but still suspenseful. If you like a good thriller, check this one out.

4 stars

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2010-05-29T17:06:00.000-07:00

As a toddler, Nobody Owens escapes from the man who murdered his parents and sister and is taken in and raised by the ghosts of a graveyard. Under the teaching and stories of its inhabitants, his adopted "parents" and his guardian, Silas, he earns the Freedom of the Graveyard, learns how to do the same things as ghosts, such as how to Fade and Haunt, and gradually learns the fate of his original family and why his keepers and guardian are so protective of him.

This was pretty weird but entertaining. I love the chapter Danse Macabre, I kept picturing the Thriller video, and it is a quick easy read. Pretty bizarre, but amusing enough to keep you reading.

4 stars

Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie

2010-05-16T17:10:00.000-07:00

Virginia Kate Carey goes home to the hills of West Virginia after her mother passes away to confront her past. Going through her mother's things brings back memories of her childhood, of the mother who gave her and her two brothers to their father with no qualms and no desire to see them again,who would rather drink than take care of her family, and the secrets every member of the Carey family tried to keep carefully hidden. Is it possible to to confront your past without it consuming you? Virginia Kate is about to find out.

This was an amazing book. I didn't have much hope for it since it was free on the Kindle, I figured that was because it wasn't too great but I was so wrong. Great story about families, siblings, secrets, and betrayal. Deeply moving, a bit supernatural sometimes but not enough to notice, and at times had me shaking my head at the things these characters went through. Virginia Kate and her family will stay with me for quite awhile.

5 stars

Claude and Camille by Stephanie Cowell

2010-05-08T19:06:00.001-07:00

The story of Claude Monet and the love of his life Camille Doncieux. Camille comes from a high class family and is already engaged, but she and Monet are drawn together over the time Monet spends painting her. She leaves her fiance for him, and they try to build a life together, but getting his art recognized in Paris is more trouble than he thought it would be. Monet and his artist friends, which include Renoir and Manet, put themselves and their livelihoods on the line for the sake of their art. Constantly moving to escape their debts, and owing large sums of money where ever they go, Claude and Camille push their way through, even though it is not an easy road. For Camille has secrets of her own, and them coming to light will change everything Monet thought he knew.

Not usually the kind of book I would read but I really enjoyed it. Artistic without being hard to understand. Nice look into the life of Monet and his struggle to become famous. Definitely not the life I myself could ever lead, no matter how passionate I was about it. If you are looking for a beautiful book to lose yourself in, this is the way to go. Will be reading more by this author.

4 stars

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

2010-04-30T07:43:00.000-07:00

In the sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist and his magazine, Millenium, get an offer from a freelance journalist to run an article and later publish the book on his story about sex trafficking in Sweden. Before it can be published the freelancer and his g/f, who worked with him and is using the work as her dissertation are shot in cold blood execution style in their apart, where they are discovered by Mikael. The police find the murder weapon and the fingerprints belong to Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist is convinced of her innocence and believes their deaths are related to the work they were doing regarding the sex trafficking and its players and johns. As a full on manhunt looks for Lisbeth, Blomkvist tries to figure out what really happened, what the cryptic name "Zala" that keeps popping up in the research means, and to help Lisbeth before the police get ahold of her.
A lot of back story for Lisbeth in this book. It once again started with a pretty big event that was never mentioned again throughout the rest of the book. There were so many characters in this one I had to keep stopping to remember who was who. I liked this one much better than the first one. Faster paced story and answers some questions, but still leaves a lot unanswered. Like the first one I liked it, but wasn't blown away by it like everyone else. I will read the third one when it comes out though.

4 stars

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

2010-04-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

Mikael Bloomkvist, a Swedish financial reporter, has just been convicted of libel concerning a story he did on a corporate CEO when is asked to go to Hedestad and meet with Henrik Vanger, former CEO of the Vanger Corporation. With nothing else to do since the conviction he agrees. Henrik explains to him that he wants to hire him for one year, and in that year he wants him to ghost write Henrik's autobiography and try to solve the mystery of the disappearance of Henrik's niece, Harriet, in 1966. The disappearance has obsessed Henrik for the past 40 years and since he is getting older, he would like closer as to what happened. he is convinced Harriet was murdered, and wants Bloomkvist to see what he can find out. Bloomkvist agrees, for an outrageous payout at the end of the year and a little bit of sliver lining. Henrik can give Mikael Hans-Erik Wennestrom on a platter and help him clear his name after the libel conviction. As he starts his research for the autobiography and his attempt at figuring out what happened to Harriet Vanger, he is faced with the pure dysfunction that is the Vanger family for the past generations. Wife beaters, Nazi's and perverts make up most of the family and the closer Mikael gets to the truth, the more he gets sucked in to the family secrets that Henrik is hellbent on exposing. Once Mikael finds some things the police overlooked in the case of Harriet's disappearance, he requests the help of a researcher, who Henrik would approve of, to assist him with all of the sources he needs to check out. Bloomkvist goes to Dirch Frode, Henrik's longtime lawyer, friend and confidante, and in return gets a name of someone that can help him: Lisbeth Salander.

Salander is a 24 year old hacker who works freelance for a private investigation company. She was hired by Frode prior to Henrik hiring Mikael to run his background and provide a report on him. A product of the system, she accepts the job and goes up to Hedestad to help Mikael.

From then on the secrets start to split wide open about the Vanger family. Together they uncover what happened to Harriet in 1966, sexual abuse, incest and murder all in the family tree which brings forward someone who does not want the truth to get out and will stop the 2 of them at any cost.

I finished this yesterday but have had a hard time deciding what to write. The mystery plays out well through the whole book, but the constant financial secondary story was distracting. The first 50 - 100 pages concerning the lawsuit against Mikael went directly over my head. The answer to the mystery was pretty sick and twisted, but not so shocking that I didn't have a feeling where the story was going, even though there were a few surprises in particular that had me setting down the book for a few minutes.. A thing at the very beginning of the book that I thought would play a key roll in the whole story is just explained at the end as an aside. On the other hand, I loved the characters of Bloomkvist and Salander, who reminded me a bit of myself, and I am going to Walgreens this morning in the pouring down rain just so I can get the sequel and start reading it today.

4 stars

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni

2010-04-19T05:55:00.000-07:00

Evangeline was sent to St. Rose convent at the age of 12 by her father after her mother was kidnapped and murdered. She has led a quiet life inside the cloister, not questioning anything she has ever been told. When she receives a letter asking for access to the convent's archives from an art historian, she at once refuses, writing out the convent's usual response to such requests. But something about this one strikes her as odd; the man is looking for lost correspondence between the former abbess of St. Rose and Abigail Rockefeller in the 1940's, right before the original convent burned to the ground. In their search for the letters, Evangeline realizes that nothing in her life is as it seems and that she is a small piece of a greater puzzle. A group of angelologists, who's sole purpose is to hide the lyre of Orpheus from the Nephilim, a group of men who were born to human and angels and posses both powers. The Nephilim are intent on getting the lyre so they can release their ancestors, The Watchers, from a cave where they have been chained for centuries for disobedience. Also after the lyre is Percival Grigori, a descendant of The Watchers, the man who hired the art historian and someone with a connection to the whole mystery that is almost as deep as Sr. Evangeline's, who is slowly dying from a medical condition only the lyre can help stop.

I didn't like this too much. Some parts I loved, but the story as a whole was long, drawn out, and a bit of a DaVinci Code knock off. If I wouldn't have been house sitting and had been at home with something else to read I wouldn't have even finished it.

3 stars

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

2010-04-11T14:04:00.001-07:00

In 1986, Henry Lee is among a group of people standing outside the Panama Hotel when it reopens, revealing an abundance of belongings of the Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II. The discovery causes Henry to remember his best friend and first love, a Japanese girl he went to school with during his childhood in the 1940's. They formed a strong bond of friendship and loyalty that they both hoped would last through the war years. Now it's 40 years later and the past is coming back to life, in old photo albums, sketchbooks, and a record recording that many music aficionados don't believe exist. Henry's search through everything found in the basement of the hotel takes him on a journey back in time, to the world he grew up in, his relationship with his parents, and his love for a girl that he let go.

I know everyone loved this book. As usual I am the exception. I thought it was drawn out and overall pretty depressing. The only character I really enjoyed was Sheldon. But I am not one for love stories so maybe that is why. For such a short book it took me almost a week to read it because I just wasn't that interested.

2 stars

Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid by Dr. Denis Leary

2010-04-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

Leary explains to all who read his book why other countries hate Americans, how people are raising their kids wrong, and how relationships work all from personal experience. From Michael Vick to how men interact with other men and the women in their life to America's fascination with train wrecks like Brittany Spears and Lindsey Lohan to his own version of the 10 Commandments that somehow end up including Michael Jackson and Charlton Heston, Leary is on a major tirade interspersed with hilarious stories from his childhood, his marriage to his wife Ann, and a lot of things I think a lot of people feel but would never say aloud.

Funny enough, laugh out loud funny sometimes, but I wouldn't buy it. Get it from your library instead.

3 stars