2012- 77

Well year end update:  November/December were very disappointing numbers but I must say I started a new job and I'm not that surprised I had so little time to read.  Hopefully 2013 will start off on a better reading note.  This year has been full of so much change.  Change that has also affected all my reading.  I have fallen in love with my new city, but have yet to fall in love with any of the libraries it has to offer *sigh*  But I'm making do with what I have and I'm thankful for where I am now after all this adjusting and changing.

In looking back over the list of all the books I read this year I read a lot of series: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, The Hunger Games, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.  I also read a lot of "Jewish" stories, Unorthodox, The Outside World, The Ladies Auxiliary, The Jew Store.  I always love looking back over the list and seeing the stories that really stuck with me, The Submission (a 9/11 memorial story), The Night Circus (such a visual story, and one I hope to see made into a movie), The Language of Flowers (a unique story), I Know this Much is True (a family dealing with mental health issues novel), Amaryllis in Blueberry (A great new author I had never read before), Between Shades of Gray (A Lithuanian novel that took me back to my roots).  I seem to have repeated authors a lot too, Lisa See, Deborah Copaken Kogan, Joyce Carol Oates, Lionel Shriver, Tova Mirvis, Christina Meldrum, Jane Green, Marisa de los Santos, J Courtney Sullivan, Rebecca Miller.

Overall I'll take the 77, it's a way better number then last year and although there are some I might trade out for better books I think overall I read a good combination of light hearted books and heavier novels.    2013 may see me as more of a book buyer then borrower but no matter where I get the books from, I'll continue to always have a book on me no matter where I am...

-L

December 2

The Jew Store by Stella Suberman  Great true story of the only Jews in a small southern community in the 1920s.  This story shared by the youngest daughter of the family shares her parents background and how they came to own a "Jew Store" in the community she was raised in.  The story had many interesting stories from the authors childhood but was not quite what I expected to be reading about.  Also throughout the story the author references an incident she will get to later as though there is a major plot twist to be expected.  This turn did not end up happening until very close to the end and was given only a few paragraphs of space which seemed odd given the build up.  Overall not a bad read but I'm still a little confused on what the overall message of the book was meant to be.

So Much for That by Lionel Shriver This is the story of a man who has always dreamed of retiring early in life and moving away to an amazing place with his wife.  Through circumstance his big dream has never come to be.  The day he decides to make it happen no matter what, and buys plane tickets for himself, his wife, and his high school age son, he shares his plan with his wife only to find out that she needs him to stay because she needs his insurance due to being diagnosed with a rare cancer.  For whatever reason it always takes me a minute to get into this authors books but I always end up really liking what I find when I stick with it.  This story shared what happens in families when things don't always go the way you want/think/hope they will.  There was also an interesting political background in how the health care system fails and how employers really hold such a key to our family members care.  This was also compared to other cultures and what they value and how things can be different in other parts of the world.  Overall a great book with some odd twists and turns but with an amazing ending that did a good job closing the characters story lines.

November 3

My Husband's Sweethearts by Bridget Asher
This was an interesting plot line.  A woman who's husband cheated on her returns home to take care of him as he is suffering from a terminal illness.  The first night she returns home she drinks too much and decides she shouldn't have to do this alone and calls all his ex girlfriends to let them know he is dying and they need to come help too.  It's a really funny first few chapters as the mess gets sorted out but some of the exes do show up to say their goodbyes and get their closure.  Which leads to lots of stories along the way of both ways that the husband helped and hindered their lives.  The woman also realizes her husband has a grown son whom she and he have never met but that he has been sending money to all his life.  He now as part of his dying wish wants to meet this son.  I liked the unique story line which is what originally draw me to this light hearted book, but I didn't like the romance novel turn it took very quickly and predictably.  Overall though it was an easy quick read with lots of laughs.

Some quotes I liked from the book:  "There is a blurry line between love and hate."  "Sometimes it's hard to figure out what happens when your eyes are wide open."  "...because women know how to survive.  It's what we do.  We have more inner strength, and all those years that men thought they were superior, it wasn't true.  It was something we allowed them to believe, because they're weak.  And then women's lib came along- and don't get me wrong, I love women's lib- but they messed up the whole charade."  "Well, they say I tried to fix them or change them and that I made a promise to them, and the promise is what would make their lives better.  The promises made them feel, well, safe, for example.  And when I failed them or betrayed them, they ended up with two problems instead of one or I made the one problem worse.  It's always complicated." "We are the stories we tell and stories we don't tell."  "The difference between breaking down and breaking open is sometimes so slight it's imperceptible."  "And sometimes you can be brought back to yourself, whole"

Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan

This is a story of four women who met in college and what happens after graduation as they move forward into the "real world."  It was an interesting story, with each chapter switching between one of the four main characters as narrators.  The women are all very different and I'm not certain if they would have become friends anywhere other then in a fictional world.  But perhaps just having a small all female college in common is enough to form a bond even among unlike characters.  Throughout the book even as the characters have less and less in common as they mature into adults, they still stick by their original friendships.  Through weddings and pregnancies and major life events we get to go back in the past and see how the friendships formed and we also see in the present how "bonded for life" the women are.

Some quotes I liked from the book: "With the Smithies, it was different.  There was sometimes no telling where one of them began and the others left off."
"Sometimes April worried that she'd been built without some fundamental piece that everyone else had that just let them deal... But the evil in the world, everywhere you looked, was always on April's mind"
"They recognized that they were the first generation of women whose struggle with choice had nothing to do with getting it and everything to do with having too much of it- there were so many options that it felt impossible and exhausting to pick the right ones."
"It amazed her how chemical a feeling love could be, how it could take hold of you even when you had come to despise its object."

Where We Belong by Emily Giffin

This is the story of a woman in her mid 30s with a great career but still working on her love life.  And the story of an almost 18 year old woman trying to figure out where she came from.  The older woman has kept a secret from everyone in her life, except her mother, about having a child and giving that child away in her teens.  Needless to say the 18 year old turns out to be her daughter and the story goes back and forth between the two women as narrators sharing their unique coming of age stories.  I liked the mostly realistic story line of the this novel and the focus on the two main female characters.  I didn't like some of the romance novelish stuff that got thrown in towards the end.  Overall though I think the author did a good job sharing a storyline that hasn't been explored that much.  I've read a lot of non-fiction on adoption stories and seen a bit on finding birth parents later in life, but this fictionalized story brought out real emotion in a fictional setting.