May- 6

Dreaming Water by Gail Tsukiyama  What an interesting story.  Hana is the main character and has Werner's syndrome which makes her age two times as fast as normal, so she is in her 30s but in the body of an 80 year old.  Her mother Cate is in her senior days and her own health is failing but she spends her days taking care of her daughter.  Add to that a long lost friend, Laura, the same age as Hana and a recently deceased father/husband who both Hana and Cate are grieving.  The story is told from the perspective of both Hana and Cate and then at some points through the narration of the friend's daughter, Josephine.  I really liked the plot line and think there was a very unique story being told.  The lines of mother daughter relationships, aging parents, sick children, distant friendships, etc.  The one thing I am finding about this author though that I do not like is that she often makes choices that I don't always understand.  Authors make very deliberate choices of what is and is not included in their stories, and usually I appreciate the choices being made.  With this author I just feel a bit confused at times at the random introductions of characters or at the conclusions of story lines.

My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares  I really did not like this book.  It had such promise but I think it fell short on delivery.  The concept was a little more supernatural then I go for but I like the author, still do, so I thought I'd give it a shot.  The main character, Daniel, has spent centuries falling in love with the same woman.  The story works on the assumption that souls are reincarnated after death but that most souls don't remember or aren't aware this is happening.  In Daniel's case he is of a select few that do remember and he continues to seek out the soul of his love.  I liked the historical aspects and the plot line was definitely unique.  That being said, my problem with this book was that it just wasn't believable.  In general I'm not a fan of science fiction/fantasy, but I'm willing to attempt it but the writer has to paint the story in such a way that I can believe what I'm being sold even if it's in the realm of the unbelievable.  I need the author to provide me the setting and the story in such a way that it becomes believable in spite of all other evidence.  Sadly this just didn't happen with this book.

The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz  I really did not like this book.  It started out grabbing my attention but it never really went anywhere.  It tells the story of a Dominican American family, mostly through the perspective or story line of the main character Oscar Wao.  Wao is an obese teenager living in New Jersey as a first generation American and caught between his mothers Dominican culture and his American culture as a teen going through adolescence.  We follow Wao through his tumultuous adolescence along with his older sister and their mother and various family members and friends along the way.  The writing was actually very good but for me the story never went anywhere.  Overall I was disappointed and still am not sure of what the author was trying to convey, a message that should be very clear to the reader.

Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton  Love this author and her ability to guide you through her works exactly at the pace she wants you to go at.  This story is of a mother with two children who is at a field day with her children when the school they go to is caught on fire.  She finds her young son quickly is safe but realizes her older daughter helping in the nursing office is still in the building.  Both she and the daughter are badly burned and taken to the hospital.  Her husband is a TV media star and therefor very much in the public eye.  As both the mother and daughter attempt to recover an investigation into the reasons for why the fire, deemed an arson, was started.  The cool part though is that the entire story is told through the perspective of the mother as a narrator as she is in a coma in the hospital.  Both she and the daughter's spirits? souls? whatever are able to communicate and move about and hear conversations about the investigation as their bodies lie in the hospital beds.  Normally this is not the type of book I would have loved and enjoyed reading, but the author made this supernatural idea believable and as a reader I was immediately involved in the suspense and how the book would turn out for each of the characters.  Have yet to be disappointed with anything I read by this author.

Quotes:  "What must it be like to hold someone's life in your hands?  How heavy Jenny's must be for him, weighted with our love for her."  "When I was twenty weeks pregnant with Jenny, I found out that her ovaries were already formed.  Inside our unborn baby daughter were our potential grandchildren (or at least the part of us that would be a part of them).  I felt the future curled up inside me, my body a Russian doll of time."

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister  So far all the books I've read by this author flow in the same style.  Some main central storyline and then lots of stories radiating out from it.  In this one there is a chef in a restaurant who hosts a cooking school once a month.  Each new chapter tells the story of one of the students in the cooking school.  I liked the book enough but the trouble for me is that the story just isn't memorable enough.  Just as soon as you start to like a character and want to see what happens with them, their story wraps up quickly and on to the next.  Overall though these books are good for lighthearted quick easy reads which I will continue to use them as.

Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min  This is a historical fiction piece about the life of China's Madame Mao.  The book is divided in three parts telling the reader of the childhood, early adulthood, and finally years as Madame Mao.  I hadn't really known much about this piece of Chinese history before reading this book and was fascinated by the Madame Mao character.  I had to keep reminding myself that even though this was a fictionalized account, the main character was in fact a real woman in history.  It was a little easier for me as a reader who didn't have as much knowledge into this piece of history, to follow the story as I think the author wanted the reader to.  We are given a glimpse into the future and the ultimate end of Madame Mao before being taken all the way back to her childhood.  It's easy to sympathize with the character as well as continue to wonder how she will end up with her future husband and at her ultimate end.  The one gripe I had with this book was that it was divided into small chunks with breaks in between and at each break the tense would change.  At first this was an interesting way of adding history in with the first person account but after awhile it became a bit too much to follow when the main character was speaking and when we as readers were hearing from an unknown narrator.

April- 5

History of a Suicide My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky   This book has been on my list for awhile.  Unfortunately I couldn't find it at my local library (grrrrr) so I finally bought it.  I had forgotten, or perhaps didn't realize to begin with, that it took place in the same city I grew up in.  It is the true account told from the perspective of a woman who's sister completed suicide.  The youngest sister in a family of four sisters and single mother took her own life and years later the author is trying to convey how this has shaped her adulthood, and made her rethink her childhood.  It was very fitting to my profession, particularly my current job, and also struck a personal note in the familiarity of the childhood memories at least as far as setting.  The sisters in the book are decades older then me but it was so easy to picture everything that took place on streets in the same neighborhoods I grew up in.  I learned a lot and though I am a mental health professional, it was very educational to hear from the perspective of a stable family member who had suffered this loss.  The book is well written but also pretty sad, possibly not for the average reader looking for something light.  

Some great information I learned and some favorite quotes:   "in patients who had committed suicide, they had 30 percent more of the specific serotonin receptor called the 5 HT 2 A receptor" "How are we to know why at one moment someone's anguish is so overwhelming she can't get out of bed?  Why on the next day that same person seems to have found the spark of life again?"  "Time doesn't really heal, it only makes living more bearable."  "Fear that if we do not locate the time and place, the exact moment along the way where our loved one became unhinged, someone else we love will end his or her life and once again we'll be blindsided?"

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult  The best part about March for me is that it means a new Picoult book is out.  Didn't get my copy until this month instead but it was worth the wait.  I must say though she is one of my favorites, I had been a little disappointed with the last few novels of hers that I read.  I am very glad I didn't give up on her though.  This one was incredible.  It tells the story of a young woman who has suffered a personal tragedy and has since taken to being a loner.  She finds a friend in a much older gentleman who then confides in her the reason he became friends with her was so that he could ask her to assist in killing him.  He also confesses he was a Nazi in WWII.  To complicate this matter the girl's grandmother is a concentration camp survivor.  The book is divided up, as most of Picoult's are, and we hear from many narrators.  The middle section of the story is told from the grandmother's point of view and goes into harrowing detail of the terrible events that she endured.  I'm still, almost a full moth later, uncertain on the ending of the story but I also see why the author left it the way she did.  Overall a very powerful and emotional story and well worth reading.

Quotes:" 'It's a great city,' I say automatically, although I do not entirely believe this.  The traffic is insane, and there's a protest every other day about some cause, which quickly stops being idealistic and starts being a pain in the neck when you need to get somewhere in a timely fashion and all the roads are blocked off."  "How dare you tell me this, when I lived it?  How dare you erase my life just like that?"  "When you are too young to think for yourself, you are baptized and taken to church and droned at by a priest and told that Jesus died for your sins, and since your parents nod and say this is true, why should you not believe them?" "You can struggle against the isolation, or you can give yourself up to it."  "I do not believe in God.  But sitting there, in a room full of those who feel otherwise, I realize that I do believe in people.  In their strength to help each other, and to thrive in spite of the odds.  I believe the extraordinary trumps the ordinary, any day.  I believe that having something to hope for- even if it's just a better tomorrow- is the most powerful drug on the planet."  "You do not understand... You are asking me to poke a hole in a dam, because you are thirsty, even though I will end up drowning in the process."  "It's as if, now that they have something good in their lives, they cannot bear to see it go."  "...even when she became collateral damage, she believed in the power of the human spirit. She gave when she had nothing; she fought when she could barely stand; she clung to tomorrow when she couldn't find footing on the rock ledge of yesterday... She became whomever she needed to be to survive, but she never let anyone else define her."  "But forgiving isn't something you do for someone else.  It's something you do for yourself.  It's saying, You're not important enough to have  stranglehold on me.  It's saying, You don't get to trap me in the past.  I am worthy of a future."  "If you end your story, it's a static work of art, a finite circle.  But if you don't, it belongs to anyones imagination.  It stays alive forever."

When the Elephants Dance by Tess Uriza Holthe  What a book.  This story takes place in the Philippines at the end of WWII with the Americans and Japanese still fighting on the land.  The story begins with a family and community members taking shelter in the family's basement and trying to survive with little to no food.  Several family members leave the shelter and risk their lives to find food. In between pages of absolute horror and violence during the war, there are chapters woven in of folklore legends told through narrators in the basement and sharing lessons of courage and hope to keep everyone going through such a terrible time.  I loved the graphic details the author wrote about the outside world, and the tender magical story telling that took place in between.  They provided such a unique contrast that kept me turning the pages.  Though the story has many tragedies along the way, you root for the family and the community in hiding throughout and even knowing there will be tragedy I was still saddened by the losses they endured.  

Night of Many Dreams by Gail Tsukiyama  This is the story of two young sisters living in Hong Kong as WWII breaks out.  The story follows the lives of the girls from young adolescence during the war to 

young adulthood.  We as readers get to follow the girls through a variety of cultures as the move, first for safety and then later on along the paths their lives take them.  We follow the family as the parents and close aunt grow older as well and how their lives change based on what happens with the girls.  I liked the book enough though I didn't feel like it matched with what the jacket said.  I also didn't like that in parts of the book a new piece of the plot would be opened up but then closed up immediately and not really explored which made it seem then that it wasn't really necessary to the story.  

Water Witches by Chris Bohjalian  Very interesting story.  One of this authors shorter novels but I enjoyed it as I usually enjoy his writing.  The narrator is a father with a young daughter who inherited the ability to find water sources underground.  Though his wife/her mother is also able to do this his sister in law is talented with additional abilities in tune with nature.  The story takes place in a small Vermont town which thrives on it's ski industry.  The narrator is an attorney working for the ski industry to be able to expand and continue to grow but caught between his job and his family since this expansion would cause environmental concern in the area.  Since his wife, daughter, and most of the wife's family are so in tune with nature/environment this causes conflict.  I learned a lot about the practice of water divining that I did not know even existed.  I also really liked that throughout the book you got a strong sense of the characters love and affection for his young daughter.  This father's love is what gives the story direction.