Top Ten Books of 2010

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!!!

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

Waiting on Wednesday

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.

Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

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

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

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

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

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

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