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.

October 11

Growing Up Amish by Ira Wagler
We recently got hooked on a TV show on the National Geographic Channel called Amish Out of Order.  From there we heard about this book, as the author was on an episode.  I, like I suppose a lot of the outside world, am fascinated with the Amish.  I used to think this was unique to me since I grew up in a state that had a lot of them in it, but I think we are all fascinated with them because of how different they are and are able to remain.  Recently though I keep learning all these things about them that don't really fit the picture I used to have.  While I'm still torn on what to think of them as a culture, I continue to want to read and watch everything I see out there about them.  This book is a true story of one man's continued struggle to leave the only community he ever knew.  He first leaves at age 16 and continues to struggle with finding his identity and coming back and forth with his family/religion/community.  He even gets baptized in his church but still struggles to accept that this is his faith.  The book shares his journey with the reader and ends on a happy note with him finding himself after so many sad years of struggle.  It wasn't quite what I expected, I thought the book would be more about after he left the amish what happened, but it was mostly telling of his upbringing and his struggle to decide what he wanted for himself in life.  I appreciated the honesty though and his clearly thought out story.

Hell is Other Parents by Deborah Copaken Kogan
I really like this author, she's a newer find for me and I love her fiction books.  This was an interesting non fiction look at her own life as a mother and sharing stories of interesting things that have happened as a parent.  She's a great writer and I was certainly entertained with her sharing the most unique moments in her families life but collectively I'm just not sure of the audience of this book.  Mothers?  People who like this author?  I don't know maybe I couldn't relate on some level not being a mother but while I found the chapters entertaining, I just wasn't sure of the message the book was trying to convey.

Maine by J Courtney Sullivan
I'm torn on this book.  I liked the style of the writing and the concept of the plot.  A summer house in Maine, four generations of women, told from different views of the women family members.  I liked the strong female characters.  I liked too that it was an Irish Catholic Alcoholic family, this may be a strange thing to say but I enjoy books with addiction themes.  That being said the characters didn't really go anywhere.  They spent the majority of the book in the same place and then at the very end took one or two tiny steps forward.  The ending was also slightly confusing though I think the author strongly suggested what was happening, it wasn't entirely clear or for certain so I could be way wrong.  The first character we meet is the oldest member of the family, the grandmother who's husband won the property in a bet many years ago and has been coming to the house for many many years.  She has 3 adult children, 2 girls and a boy.  One of the girls is another narrator.  She lives in California far away from her family by choice and continues to work on who she is outside of her family.  Her adult daughter is another narrator, in her early 30s living in New York and having recently found out she is pregnant after also recently breaking up with her boyfriend (the baby's father).  The last narrator is the son's wife who married into the family, but never felt good enough for them.  We hear from all 4 and learn about the unique things that make them them.  An interesting part of the book is that with each chapter you get a different narrator and in each chapter you see the positive qualities of that character but then in the next 3 chapters before you get to hear from that character again, you hear all the negatives about them and decide to dislike the character.  This was the part I didn't like.  You weren't really rooting for anyone.  When they were speaking they seemed strong and then when everyone else was you saw all their weaknesses and faults and in ways that you couldn't ignore by the time you got back to their voice.  I've already picked up another book by this author though to give her another chance because her writing style was unique and the book was far from predictable and I did keep turning the pages.
A quote I liked from the book " "It would be a different story if you didn't let them get under your skin like you do, but they seem to make you so stressed," he'd said.  "Around your family, you never act like yourself."  "I know," she replied, though sometimes she feared the opposite was true, that her real self was that dark, angry one she had shoved in a box years ago, the one that emerged only when she was home." "

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson  *sigh* I'm so sad this series is over.  Especially because this isn't the last book in the trilogy because that's what the author wanted but because he died and couldn't continue the characters moving forward.  These books were difficult to get into, each of the three was a struggle to start but then once you get into it there is no putting it down.  I love love love the strong female main character who is so unique.  In this book she finally gets resolution to the atrocities that have been committed against her since her childhood.  We finally get some new characters on her side and that help her with her murder trial.  She finally gets to exact the revenge she has been seeking out for such a long time.  And it's done in such a clever and skillful way by the author.  I liked too that although there were romantic story lines in each of the three books, they weren't the main focus and the conclusion of the series was about the characters not their love lives.  Each character ended in a way unique and good to them and not about having fallen in love with someone who fixed everything.  Each character really stood on their own two feet even if/when they did have others around them.  I wish their were more books to read and I also wish they had been easier to get into because although I stuck with them, I'm certain many people put them down pretty easily and never got to read about such an amazing character and a really cool plot line.

The Next Best Thing by Jennifer Weiner  I really like Weiner for light hearted reads that share unique stories and make me fall for and root for a usually down main character who would not normally be the character you root for.  However, some of her recent work since she got some movie/tv deals has not been as good as her earlier work.  I keep looking each year with her new novels for the same feelings I got curled up with her first books and each year I finish the book without really getting that same feeling anymore.  This one was about an adult orphan physically scarred main character who moved to Hollywood with her grandmother in her early 20s.  She and her grandmother are super close since her parents died when she was very young.  She moves to Hollywood to be a screen writer and we as the reader get to follow her a few years after they've arrived when her dreams are starting to come through. Of course though Hollywood doesn't allow her to do her show her way and she learns lessons along the way about love, beauty, and having your own voice.  I loved the closeness of the main character and her grandma, definitely made me miss my grandmothers.  I like how Weiner never gives you a 5'8'' 100lb blond hair blued eyed female lead, always give you someone you wouldn't quite expect.  I didn't like the predictability of the romance in the book.  I didn't like too that the character didn't grow anywhere you didn't expect her to.  She went exactly where you knew she would right from the beginning.

Up High in Trees by Kiara Brinkman
Hmm I'm not sure where to start on this one.  The story was told all in very very short sections that were to be linked together.  It's the story of a young (autistic?) boy who's mother tragically and suddenly dies and how he and his father struggle to get through the loss.  He has two older siblings that are much more independent but he struggles with their loss in unique ways.  The story was published in 2007 but takes place in the 90s and has lots of conversation of the political times then and election going on.  The reader is never told if main character Sebastian is autistic but we are given signs pointing that way and clues to make us believe that's a part of the story.  I read the book in an afternoon because it did suck you in and make you want to see what happened, but after putting it down I just wasn't all that sure what I had just read.  What was the author trying to share with the reader?

Diary of a Wombat  by Jackie French
Okay I'm not sure if I should count this or not but I'm gonna.  I read this book and a bookstore/bar.  Yes you read that right, my new city has a bookstore that has a bar in the back how awesome is that!  So as we were standing there drinking surrounded by books (a pretty cool combination for me) I saw this picture book on the shelf.  I immediately thought it was a new book by the same author as Diary of a Worm  I quickly realized it was not but still read through it and found it to be a cute story.  I loved Diary of a Worm, first reading it to a little girl I babysat for many years ago.  I loved it so much that whenever we had story time I tried to convince her it was one she wanted to hear.  It was such a cute story.  Wombat was more or less similar in taking you through some funny moments in the Wombat's life.  I also think kids would just get a kick out of continuing to say the word "wombat" it's a fun word to say.  Cute children's book, and since leaving a job at the library a few years ago, I don't get nearly enough chances to read children's books anymore so I was thrilled just to have read one.

Love Walked In by Marisa de los Santos
Okay so last month I read the book Belong to Me by this same author.  It turned out after I read it that there was a book before that one with some of the same characters.  Belong to Me was about main character Cornelia and her life with her husband in suburbia. Love Walked In was about how Cornelia met Clare and also wound up with her husband.  The story is told alternately from Cornelia and Clare's perspectives.  Cornelia meets and falls for a handsome man that is a look a like for Cary Grant, and as a film buff that seems to be a huge factor of her falling for him.  Clare is 11 years old and sees her mom start to unravel but isn't sure what to do about it.  She calls her father, who is not with her mother or really much a part of their lives, for help but he more or less ignores her call for help.  She then has to take care of herself and try hard not to let anyone know that anything is wrong with her mother.  Then her mother disappears and Clare is unsure what to do.  Meanwhile Cornelia is working on her new relationship and continuing to try to decide what she wants from life in general.  Their paths connect and both lives are changed forever.  I really like this author and was sad this was the last book of hers I haven't read.  I liked this story although there were a few parts of the story that disappointed me, don't want to give away the surprises though.  And even though I was originally upset to be reading this "out of order" there were enough surprises about the characters and how they came to be the people they were in the next book that I got over the fact that I hadn't read this one first pretty quickly.

The Beach House by Jane Green
I like this author because you can count on a good story with characters the reader easily falls for and gets invested in.  That being said this particular book of hers was not one of my favorites.  I did get invested in the characters but a lot of what happened was pretty predictable and then the stuff that wasn't, was very unrealistic.   This is the story of a beach house in Nantucket that becomes one of the main characters year round house.  She starts to run out of money and rents out rooms in her home for the summer.  We meet the characters who will end up in the rooms much before the summer they arrive and get invested in their stories as well.  Nan, the main character who owns the house, lost her husband when her son was only a small child and raised him as a single parent.  She is a quirky 65 year old woman who lives on the island year round.  Her son Michael is in his early 40s and has yet to settle down, never able to find the right woman.  He ends up in an affair with his married boss and quits his job and returns to Nantucket for the summer.  There is also a married couple with two small girls who have a major struggle going on in their marriage as each of them works on figuring out who they are individually and where they come from.  Lastly there is a family of a recently divorced couple with a troubled teenage daughter who is struggling with her parents divorce.  The father cheated on the mother but the daughter does not know this.  She wants to move in with her father to get away from her mother, who she blames for the divorce, and so her mother takes off for the island for the month of August to rediscover herself.  This book has a good enough plot and had some good potential but it just never really went anywhere that interesting.  Still this author is good for light hearted reads.

Madapple by Christina Meldrum  I really like this author, I hope she writes more.  This book was marketed as young adult but I'm not entirely certain why, it read more or less like an adult novel.  It had similar themes to the first book of her's I read, Amaryllis in Blueberry, religion, non traditional beliefs, family secrets, legal systems, etc.  It took a minute to get into the novel as she has such a unique writing style but she does instantly grab your attention you just have to wait a few chapters to keep your attention.  This one was written also in future/past tense as each chapter was from the past events that occurred but between the chapters, and at the very start of the book, readers got to read a transcript of the court trial taking place.  The story is of a young girl who's mother dies and leaves behind many secrets for her to discover after having been sheltered all her life.  She turns to the only family she knows and thinks she can trust but very quickly learns her situation has gotten much worse and not better.  As a reader reading the court transcripts in between chapters it is very easy to side immediately with the young main character.  Since we aren't actually in the courtroom and just given court room scenes it's much harder to not have an opinion very quickly on her innocence in everything she is charged with and to hope that everything will get resolved as it should.  The thing this book made me think about too was that in a court case there is a lot of objecting going on and then the jury is supposed to "strike" from memory questions or answers or whatever.  I started getting confused and in the early parts of the story went back and forth a little on what had happened, even though I had just read in a narrative about what had happened and knew what the truth was unlike the jury.  Meldrum seems to be very educated on various religions and seems to struggle to connect truths and also involve spirituality.  As a reader she takes us on a fun journey of discovery and education that makes it hard to put the book down.  Really wish she had more novels for me to devour as quickly as I did these two.

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller  Perhaps I should be waiting a few more days to write this as I just finished this one last night, and it might need some time to be digested.  I don't know though, this write is well liked by many and now she has some films and what not.  I just don't always get her I guess.  Maybe she and I just don't click but for some reason I keep feeling this need to read her books...  This book was about the main character, Pippa Lee.  Pippa is in her 50s and recently moved into a retirement village with her octogenarian husband.  The book is divided into four parts, the first part explains the move and what is currently happening.  The second part goes back into her childhood and shows themes of mother daughter relationships, addictions, etc.  The third part goes back to the present day but as a reader you now have new info on the character.  The last part concludes the book.  I really liked the very very ending but the chapters leading to the end I did not like.  And maybe that's not the right way to say it, I might more so mean I just didn't understand the choices the author made.  I will say that to the authors credit what you expect to get from her books you usually do not, but in a good way.  You get surprise story changes and themes you did not expect perhaps.  I think this book was about the aging process and life choices we make, about being true to yourself (though that constantly changes throughout the life process), and about family relationships (especially mother daughter)  A quote I really liked:
"Poor girl, she didn't know what sickness had been passed to her through the women in her family.  Mother to daughter in a line as long as Pippa had lived, and maybe farther, maybe past Grandma Sally, to Sally's mother, and her mother before her; the chain of misunderstandings and adjustments, each daughter trying to make up for her mother's lacks and getting it wrong the opposite way.  Some families were cursed like that."

September 6

Belong to Me by Marisa De Los Santos  This book wasn't exactly on my list but when I was at the library I saw the name and remembered I had read another book by this author and really liked it.  So I impulsively grabbed it even though it wasn't on the list.  And although I'm glad I did that, I should perhaps have waited since after I finished this book I realized it was the continued story of a character from a book the author wrote previously which is now also on my list.  (I dislike being out of order)  That being said, I liked the book a lot.  It had a semi complicated plot with some expected twists and turns but also some unexpected moves even within the anticipated ones.  The story is of a woman who is wanting to start a family with her husband but they first move out to the suburbs away from their city life.  The woman has to struggle with new friendships, gossiping neighbors, and past events in her family's lives that will shape their future together.  The story is told from 3 points of view.  The main character, a hardened female neighbor who has lived in the neighborhood for years but is in the process of watching her best friend die from cancer, and a young boy who changes everything for the characters.  It was interesting to read from two strong female characters and then from a highly intelligent young male character.  The author could have chosen to have the boy's mother as the third narrator but I think made a good deliberate choice to have his voice heard instead.  Overall an entertaining read that has me excited to read the novel with some of the same characters even though I now know how their story ends.

The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories by Don DeLillo  This was a series of short stories which seemed like they would be very interesting, but overall I just didn't get hooked at any point.  A few of the stories were alright and I like this author and like how he writes, I just didn't get invested in the characters or stories as I would have liked to.  Each of the stories had similar themes of being trapped/wanting to escape but didn't really come together to form a cohesive book otherwise.

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson  I was a bit skeptical of reading this book because although I liked the first in this trilogy I didn't really like the first movie and wasn't sure where things were going from there.  I got sucked in about 50 pages in or so and finished the book very quickly because I couldn't stop turning the pages.  I love the main character, Lisbeth Salander, who is a wonderful female heroine and strong main character for the trilogy.  In this book she is wanted for 3 murders and her "friends" Blomqvist, the journalist and main male character from book one, and her sometimes boss Dragan Armansky, start their own investigations to prove her innocence, while the police look for Salander who has disappeared, believing her to be guilty.  I liked that as a reader you got many narrators stepping in and out aside from just the main characters which allowed you to know much more then the characters knew much ahead of them.  Towards the end there is a very odd narrator briefly which I found funny but I think overall made sense for the book.  I now feel hooked on the series and am excited to read the last one in the series.  In finding the link for this entry I learned that the author had continued on with a fourth book but died before it could be finished.  I'm very excited now to read the last one in the series and also sad to see the series conclude.

The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis  I guess I still don't have a final verdict on this novel.  It was a good read, and I like the author, though this is one of two of her books and I've already read the other one so I don't have anymore to add.  The story is of a woman who moves into a small orthodox jewish community in Memphis TN.  As an outsider her neighbors worry about the effect she will have on the community and begin to use her as a scapegoat for the community members wanting to start looking at life in new and different ways.  At first some members of the community attempt to be welcoming and can see the good in this new non traditional member of their hometown.  Then as she refuses to conform to their ways and continues to make her own path for her and daughter, the community grows increasingly intolerant.  The story unfolds as told through most of the women of the communities perspective, but never through, essentially, the main characters view.  We hear from her only through the other narrators.  I like the way the author did this, making her both the main character but also the one voice you never hear from.  I liked the book overall but I did not like the very end.  It felt like the book concluded the chapter before the ending and then the last chapter was thrown in to tie everything together in an awkward way.  I did like some of the things I learned about the orthodox community and I found it personally interesting to be reading about Memphis as that was a city on the list that we almost moved to a few months ago.  I hope this author writes more novels, she has an interesting way of weaving religion and rich characters with hopes and dreams that go above and beyond their religious upbringing.

Trans-Sister Radio by Chris Bohjalian  I have liked this author for a long time.  He has such a way of presenting a story to the reader that is hard to put the book down until you know how it ends and how each character resolves their situation.  This novel was about a transexual professor in a small town in Vermont who is in the process of going from a male to becoming a female.  As a man he meets and falls in love with a woman who is a teacher in their community and they settle into a relationship that they both attempt to keep going after the operation is completed.  The story is told through the transexual's view, the woman she falls in love with, the college aged daughter of the woman, and the woman's ex husband.  The professor comes into their lives in a unique way and has a profound impact on each of them.  The ex husband is a radio personality and the college daughter is following in his footsteps so in between chapters are radio scripts of interviews that both of them have done with the professor and the teacher and sharing their own points of view as well.  At some point in the book I started predicting what was going to happen at the end, but attempted to convince myself that no that would be too crazy of a turn.  I kept convincing myself of that until a few pages to the end where everything was finally answered and I turned out to be right.  Still not sure how I feel about the major twist of an ending, but I of course will continue to read books by this author who leaves me wondering until the end and is able to pull off wild turns in the plot that seem to still fit into the books he writes.

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys   Okay let's get something out of the way, no this is NOT the erotica porn book, it just has a similar title (which according the Barnes and Noble worker who helped me find it, has led to some awkward moments as this book is labeled a young adult novel and that other book is certainly not!).  This is an amazing book to me and I was so excited to hear about it.  This is the story of a young girl in Lithuania in 1941 during WWII who is taken out of her home and sent to labor camps and struggles to keep her family together and to stay alive and see her hopes and dreams come to be and also to be able to return to her home country.  It is also a love story as Lina, the main character, is 15 and someone in the midst of so much tragedy finds love.  The moment I read a review for this book I was drawn to it.  My mother's parents left Lithuania during the war.  They had a terrific love story that the war could have added tragedy to but instead just left a few surprise elements and suspenseful moments too.  I grew up hearing this story and trying to imagine it.  To read Lina's fictional story felt like it brought me closer to the reality of my family's history.  Lina's struggles and limited joys felt so connected.  Within a few pages so many of my family members unique names had been mentioned, familiar city names mentioned (some of which I have been fortunate to visit), and Lithuanian words/traditions that made me smile.  This book was truly a joy to read and had so much significance to me.  I loved reading each word.  I smiled at the familiar and had tears in my eyes at the tragic.  I raced through the book unable to put it down (except for the hours when my boyfriend, gently, reminded me that taking a book to the wedding reception of one of my closest friends was not acceptable).  The epilogue was both hopeful and also sadly realistic.  I now have a renewed interest in continuing to read about the past history of Lithuania.  I also, in the 10+ years since she has been gone, have never quite missed my grandmother as much as I missed her in reading this book.  I feel it brought me closer to her in a way that I haven't been able to feel in so many years.  I so appreciate this author and hope that since her debut novel seems to have been a success she might continue to write more on this subject.

As a side note, I think it's interesting that many of this months books were about women and a new journey in their lives and where it will lead them.  Having just moved a few states away from my previous home state that I had never before left, and starting on my own new chapter in my journey, it seems fitting.

August 6

French Lessons by Ellen Sussman-  I don't have much to say about this book, I'm writing this only a few weeks after I read it and although I remember liking it enough, I can't remember too much about the book which I think says a lot.  Three French tutors share the story of one day in their world and the people they meet.  The "students" get to share from their perspective too which is where you get more rich details and a background on some of the characters which holds interest.  I liked it enough but there wasn't anything different or special about it.  It was borderline romance novel too which I really dislike.  It had some good moments though with the individual characters and well it took place in Paris so that's a huge plus always if you ask me, that just shouldn't be the only plus.

Anything you Say Can and Will be Used Against You by Laurie Lynn Drummond-  An interesting fiction story of several women in the police force playing various roles.  Each woman gets a section of the book and some of them within that section get to tell several stories.  I liked that some of the women's lives intersected at times and that the story was consistent within the same setting.  Some of the book went into very graphic/gory detail which I could have done without.  I liked though that it was more realistic then the Law and Order police we tend to see on TV.  I don't think it's a secret that being a female police officer is difficult to say the least, I liked the personalized take on what this means not only for the force/on the job, but also at home in their personal lives.

Mothers and Other Liars by Amy Bourret-  So back to July's theme, this book wasn't quite what I expected it to be.  The concept was unique, a woman finds a child in a dumpster takes it home with her to raise instead of involving the police, thinking the family clearly does not want the child.  9 years later the woman reads an article knowing it's about her "daughter" and it turns out she wasn't tossed in the dumpster by her own family but by her kidnappers who really only wanted the car she was in and not a baby too.  Interesting concept very unique, a bit "Face on the Milk Carton"ish but with it's own twist.  Then the book got a little odd.  The non bio mother is pregnant and the bio parents wanted their daughter back but have trouble bonding since she isn't an infant anymore.  The non bio mother to the girl has formed a new relationship with a Latino man who is the father of her unborn child and when she decides she wants to, forgive me I don't know how else to write it, "trade" children, he and his family are against it.  So now we have kidnapped children, court cases of kidnapping, court cases of grandparents rights, nature vs nurture, foster care, oh and the lesbian couple.  The woman also made friends with a lesbian couple who have become her greatest support system and weigh in on their rights, or lack thereof, to parent.  Are you confused yet?  I think this book had great potential to be a good book, but it's almost a case of too many ingredients and not enough substance.  It jumped around from this storyline to that storyline and then surprise here's something new for the mix.  I liked all the subject matters, but if only a few had been focused on instead of the always adding more it may have been much better to read.  I also disliked the near ending for how unrealistic it was.  Overall I was disappointed because the potential was so right there, but ultimately just didn't pan out.

Joy For Beginngers by Erica Bauermeister-  This is the story of a woman who survives cancer and is challenged by her daughter to go white water rafting the following summer in celebration of her life.  Her friends beg her to accept the challenge and she does provided they too accept a challenge from her.  It's a great story, though not terribly unique an idea.  That being said I liked reading about the characters and their challenging tasks.  The trouble I had with this book was that just as you were getting to know a character and really enjoying reading about them, their chapter was over and it was on to the next one.  This book may have been better written all together rather then each individual chapter being a different person.  I did like though that if you thought ahead sometimes you got a clue in the chapter before, or a couple chapters before, of what the next characters challenge would be, as they were not revealed in the first chapter but only as you continued on through the book with the characters.

Amaryllis in Blueberry by Christina Meldrum-  I love love loved this book.  I feel bad for the book I read next because it can't compare to this one.  When you read as much as I do it's hard to love every book you read and most go into "I liked it" or "I didn't like it" categories.  But this book really stood out.  It was so unique in both the story telling and the story itself.  The plot is about a woman who is on trial in Africa for murdering her husband.  She and her husband went to Africa as missionaries with their four daughters.  Each of the powerful women characters from the youngest, Amaryllis, to the mother share their secrets with the reader and develop as characters throughout the book.  The story telling starts at the "end" of the novel and weaves in and out from the beginning to the end.  Each character shares a bit at a time about what is happening linearly but throughout the novel is interrupted with moments from the "end" or the middle or the beginning so the reader gets the information at different times, sometimes before the characters have it.  I should not have liked this book filled with religion, romance gone wrong, adultery, etc. but the way the author weaves the story in and out had me so sucked in.  I looked up after the first 6 pages and said, wow a book has never sucked me in like this in the first 6 pages.  I am super sad that this author only has one other book for me to, hopefully, enjoy.

Quote from the book: "Love is not what I thought.  Love is impatient.  It's not always kind.  It does envy, it does boast.  At times it is proud and rude and self-seeking.  And easily angered.  It does, now and then, keep a record of wrongs.  And it doesn't always avoid evil or rejoice in truth.  It can't always protect.  It doesn't always trust or persevere: sometimes love fails...And while I knew hate and love sometimes mixed-that love could be peppered with hate and yet still be love- I hadn't realized hate is integral to love, that it's within the reach of love's expanse.  I hadn't realized what makes love Love is not it's consistency but it's malleability, its magnanimity.  It's abundance: love holds it all.  Love is ugly and full of hate even as it's tender and kind.  There's nothing pure about love.  it's the impurity that is love... Love hopes to be patient.  It hopes to be kind.  It hopes to not envy or boast or be proud.  It hopes to persevere.  But love is not perfect."

Second Chance by Jane Green  This was a typical "high school reuniony" story where one member of an old group of friends from school dies and the rest of the group rekindles their friendships.  What I liked was that it wasn't typical in that it followed them further after the friend's death then just the immediate aftermath.  Most of the stories center around the event that brings them together and then you get to look back in time but not so much forward.  This novel started more or less with the character Tom's death and then moved forward.  The characters not only looked back into their old friendships and reconnected, his death also had a profound impact on their current lives and the novel was about the changes they made in their lives because of the tragedy.  It wasn't an awarding winning book by any means, but I'm starting to like this authors simplicity but also creative story lines.

July 6

Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman-  Here's the thing this book wasn't really bad and it was informative, it just wasn't quite what I expected it to be.  It is a true story of one woman's "escape" from a strict orthodox community.  The way the book is described though is that it will be the story of her escape and her life after her escape.  The way the story is told however, is more linear and the so called escape happens in a few paragraphs and then we don't learn much about her getting out.  I did learn things I had never known, things that made me rethink the way I have viewed the orthodox Jewish communities.  Growing up I lived in an area that had quite a few orthodox Jews.  Outside of the longer skirts and other differences in dress I never really paid much attention as these seemed like happy good families.  The story Feldman paints does not match with my own views.  I've always struggled a bit with religion but felt that for some people it is a good thing.  At the same time I've always believed that religion in extreme forms is not good for anyone.  Though I hadn't applied it to the orthodox communities, this book reaffirmed that belief.  I'm glad that Feldman stood up and made good decisions for herself and her child and chose the life she wanted.  I'm not sorry I read the book, I just feel like it could have sent a more powerful message then it did.

Another Piece of my Heart by Jane Green-  An interesting take on what makes family a family. This is the story of a stepmom attempting to integrate into a ready made family with two teen girls.  One of the girls takes to stepmother just fine and the other struggles with adolescence and wrecks havoc on the families.  The biological mother struggles with addiction which the oldest child later has to confront as well.  The stepmother, Andi, has also wanted to get pregnant but been unsuccessful in having her own biological child.  In the meantime the oldest daughter, Emily, becomes pregnant adding a whole new dimension to the family.  I have to say that while the book sometimes lost my interest, the unique concept kept me coming back.  The one thing that confused me, was that this was a book I was listening to but then due to the big move I made this month, I had to start reading too to make sure I finished before everything had to be returned, in the disc version the bio mother has one name and in the book version the bio mother has another.  I kept getting confused when I went back on forth on who Janice/Brooke was until I finally confirmed what I started suspecting, not that I was forgetting the characters name, but that in each format it was different.

Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates- Not my favorite JCO book.  This is the fictionalized account of a senator crashing his car in a river with a young girl who gets trapped inside and drowns when he walks away unharmed.  At least I think that's what happened.  To be honest the way it was written, with the character telling one thing but then later saying no that didn't happen left me way confused.  Still a big JCO fan and will continue reading her novels, but am glad this one was very short so that I didn't waste too much time on it.

The Outside World by Tova Mirvis-  This book has been on my list for quite a while and was a really good read even though it wasn't quite what I thought it would be.  It tells the story of two Jewish families in different sects with varying degrees of faith.  Each family gets to share their side of the stories.  In the women's story she is a young adult wanting more then to get married and start a family as her orthodox peers and family want her to do.  In the man's story he is a young adult living with his liberally religious family and wanting more from his religion.  I won't give away the surprise part but the two find each other in Israel and decide to marry.  The ways in which the family must come together and form a new family keep the reader interested to find out how the story will end.  The story is told through both the main characters perspectives and both of their mothers mostly.  The fathers though and siblings are randomly given a voice in some chapters as well which was somewhat unique. Really liked this author and her style and am sad to know she only has one other book so far for me to read.

Between Here and April by Deborah Copaken Kogan-  This is the second book I've read by this author and I really like her.  This is the story of motherhood told in a whole new way and exploring post part-um depression and not so joyous moments of motherhood.  The main character begins to have flashbacks of her best friend in first grade who she had mostly forgotten about after she disappeared a few months into the school year.  The main character now has two daughters the same age as her best friend and her sister were when they disappeared from school overnight never to return.  Very quickly, as in I'm not giving any big secret away here, the reader learns the girls were murdered by their mother and it was not discussed at the school or in the main characters home.  She then explores how these things happen, how it has affected her life, her own role as a mother and wife and daughter.  She also must explore the mental health system somewhat and the way times have changed since her childhood and how the mental health system is now compared to then, for better or worse.

A quote from the book that struck me: " 'Think about it this way.  We do not judge someone who do something crazy to end his physical pain.  A soldier who cut through his own leg to release it from under the rubble.  A person who must eat the raw flesh of the dead in order to survive.  Heroes, we call them... But when a person do something crazy to relieve mental pain we judge.  We say bad person.  Evil, cowardly person.  Maybe a little sympathy for the suffering, yes, but we say, I never do that.  I am better than that.  But maybe somewhere deep inside we want to do that same thing. To end it.  To find peace.' "

Personal Velocity by Rebecca Miller-  This book too has been on my list for awhile, but I have to say it also wasn't really what I expected nor did it live up to it's advertised greatness.  It is a novel of short stories about women and their lives.  As the reader we learn "secrets" about the women or details of defining moments in their lives.  I liked the style of writing and I liked that there were some links to the other stories in a story before or after, I guess perhaps this book was just oversold though.  It became a movie, has "Washington Post best book of 2001" all over it and perhaps I just expected more.  I liked the writing and the stories were okay, but I felt myself waiting for them to get "great."  I may give the author another chance as I definitely see her talent as a writer, perhaps this book just wasn't my cup of tea.