This is a sweet novel about a divorced couple finding their way, and refining their relationship, after their daughter's traumatic experience. It was a quick read with very realistic situations and characters.
John and Irene got married late - they were 36-years-old - and both had doubts going in. Fast-forward 20 years, and they're divorced and living in separate cities, he in Minneapolis, she in San Francisco. The one thing they share is their beloved 18-year-old daughter Sadie. When Sadie runs into some trouble, John flies to San Francisco to be with Irene.
I really like John and Sadie, but found Irene kind of annoying (though I think that added to the believability of the books/characters). Elizabeth Berg is an author I read regularly, and this book was one of her best. Just a nice, enjoyable story.
Once Upon a Time There was You
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Monday, May 5, 2014
Shadow Spell
For the 3 of you who follow this blog, you know I have a love/hate relationship with Nora Roberts. She's like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. You know they're bad for you and you're going to regret having them moments after you scarf them down, but you just can't resist them. That's the way her books are for me, especially the trilogies, especially the mystical realism trilogies. So I scarfed down Shadow Spell in like two days, and I feel so guilty.
This is the second book in the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy, where the Irish witches have to destroy the evil sorcerer Cabhan to fulfill their destiny. Of course they can't defeat him in this book, otherwise why have a third one? But in this book we focus on the relationship between long-time friends Connor and Meara, who find their relationship changing from friends to lovers.
I love the characters, I love the very "Irishness" of everything, and of course I'll be back for the third book to find out what happens with Branna and Fin and how they vanquish Cabhan. But I'll still be ashamed about it.
Shadow Spell
This is the second book in the Cousins O'Dwyer trilogy, where the Irish witches have to destroy the evil sorcerer Cabhan to fulfill their destiny. Of course they can't defeat him in this book, otherwise why have a third one? But in this book we focus on the relationship between long-time friends Connor and Meara, who find their relationship changing from friends to lovers.
I love the characters, I love the very "Irishness" of everything, and of course I'll be back for the third book to find out what happens with Branna and Fin and how they vanquish Cabhan. But I'll still be ashamed about it.
Shadow Spell
Monday, April 28, 2014
On Such a Full Sea
I've never read anything by Chang-Rae Lee before, but this book was highly-rated and looked interesting, so I got the ebook from the library. After having read the book, I'm honestly still not quite sure what I think about it.
The novel is set in a distant future where everyone either lives in "facilities," "charters," or "open counties." The facilities are specialized highly-regimented (but not horrible) working towns that provide high-end goods for the lucky wealthy who live in the charters. The open counties are wild areas where the government has pretty much given up and you pretty much take your life in your hands. The story focuses on Fan, a young woman who raises fish in the B-Mor facility, which was once Baltimore, and her boyfriend Reg, who raises plants there. When Reg suddenly disappears, Fan leaves the safety of B-Mor to take her chances in the counties, hoping to find him.
Lee does a wonderfully detailed job creating his future world, and he uses an odd technique of having the story told by a nameless, faceless, but still interested third party, almost like a descendant of Fan's passing on a piece of family lore to the next generation (which makes for an interesting experience for the reader, because the narrator tells a lot of things that he doesn't actually witness). But the characters were disappointingly one-dimensional to me, and I never really felt a connection with Fan (and Reg was totally flat).
I have a sense that there is something larger here, that I need to think more about the story before forming my final opinion. There are a lot of layers, and different ways of reading things. This was definitely one of the most intriguing novels I've read in a while, and that's certainly worth something.
On Such a Full Sea
The novel is set in a distant future where everyone either lives in "facilities," "charters," or "open counties." The facilities are specialized highly-regimented (but not horrible) working towns that provide high-end goods for the lucky wealthy who live in the charters. The open counties are wild areas where the government has pretty much given up and you pretty much take your life in your hands. The story focuses on Fan, a young woman who raises fish in the B-Mor facility, which was once Baltimore, and her boyfriend Reg, who raises plants there. When Reg suddenly disappears, Fan leaves the safety of B-Mor to take her chances in the counties, hoping to find him.
Lee does a wonderfully detailed job creating his future world, and he uses an odd technique of having the story told by a nameless, faceless, but still interested third party, almost like a descendant of Fan's passing on a piece of family lore to the next generation (which makes for an interesting experience for the reader, because the narrator tells a lot of things that he doesn't actually witness). But the characters were disappointingly one-dimensional to me, and I never really felt a connection with Fan (and Reg was totally flat).
I have a sense that there is something larger here, that I need to think more about the story before forming my final opinion. There are a lot of layers, and different ways of reading things. This was definitely one of the most intriguing novels I've read in a while, and that's certainly worth something.
On Such a Full Sea
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Where Nobody Knows Your Name
This is John Feinstein's latest book, and it's a must-read if you're a baseball fan(atic). Feinstein basically spends one season in the Triple-A International League, chronicling the highs and lows of life as a player, manager, and umpire in the highest of the minor leagues of baseball.
This is one of those books that I kept marking passages in to read to my husband. Feinstein is a great storyteller who is given a lot of access, and he uses that combination to share some funny, amazing, and heart-wrenching real stories about people both whom you've heard of and of whom you will never hear. He focuses mostly on 3 or 4 teams and a dozen or so people who are either on their way up or on their way down (that's pretty much the way it is in AAA, nobody wants to stay there). But he also shares great stories of baseball lore, like what Tommy Lasorda had to say about Bobby Valentine when he managed him in the Dodgers farm system (the book is worth the read for that story alone).
I learned a lot of things from the book that I didn't know about all the movement in baseball if you're not a "hot prospect" or signed to a multiyear contract, and read some really great baseball stories. I highly recommend this book for any fan of the game.
Where Nobody Knows Your Name
This is one of those books that I kept marking passages in to read to my husband. Feinstein is a great storyteller who is given a lot of access, and he uses that combination to share some funny, amazing, and heart-wrenching real stories about people both whom you've heard of and of whom you will never hear. He focuses mostly on 3 or 4 teams and a dozen or so people who are either on their way up or on their way down (that's pretty much the way it is in AAA, nobody wants to stay there). But he also shares great stories of baseball lore, like what Tommy Lasorda had to say about Bobby Valentine when he managed him in the Dodgers farm system (the book is worth the read for that story alone).
I learned a lot of things from the book that I didn't know about all the movement in baseball if you're not a "hot prospect" or signed to a multiyear contract, and read some really great baseball stories. I highly recommend this book for any fan of the game.
Where Nobody Knows Your Name
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
TWO Books I just read!
So I just got back from Las Vegas, and in the course of my travels I read two novels. The first, That Part Was True by Deborah McKinlay, I finished on the plane ride there. The second, The Ashford Affair by Lauren Willig, I started before I left and finished on the way home. Both books were great, different, but very enjoyable.
That Part Was True is the story of a correspondence that grows to be a friendship, between two people who don't actually meet during the course of the story. Jackson Cooper is a novelist living in the Hamptons, and Eve Petworth is a lonely, well-off British woman living in the English countryside. Eve enjoys one of Jack's novels so much that she decides to write him a letter, and so begins a correspondence that turns into a deep and caring friendship. I really like these characters, and their interactions through snail-mail and e-mail are interesting and engaging. This is just a really sweet book, and the end is just lovely.
The Ashford Affair is two connected stories in different times and places. In the early 20th century, Addie Gillecote is orphaned and goes to live with her aunt and uncle and cousins, and she and cousin Bea develop a special friendship. At the turn of the 21st century, Clementine Evans' Granny Addie dies at the age of 99, and a family secret finally comes to light. Alternating between Addie's point of view in the past, and Clemmie's point of view in the present, Willig presents an intriguing story of love, betrayal, and what it means to be family. This was a real page-turner.
That Part Was True
The Ashford Affair
That Part Was True is the story of a correspondence that grows to be a friendship, between two people who don't actually meet during the course of the story. Jackson Cooper is a novelist living in the Hamptons, and Eve Petworth is a lonely, well-off British woman living in the English countryside. Eve enjoys one of Jack's novels so much that she decides to write him a letter, and so begins a correspondence that turns into a deep and caring friendship. I really like these characters, and their interactions through snail-mail and e-mail are interesting and engaging. This is just a really sweet book, and the end is just lovely.
The Ashford Affair is two connected stories in different times and places. In the early 20th century, Addie Gillecote is orphaned and goes to live with her aunt and uncle and cousins, and she and cousin Bea develop a special friendship. At the turn of the 21st century, Clementine Evans' Granny Addie dies at the age of 99, and a family secret finally comes to light. Alternating between Addie's point of view in the past, and Clemmie's point of view in the present, Willig presents an intriguing story of love, betrayal, and what it means to be family. This was a real page-turner.
That Part Was True
The Ashford Affair
Monday, March 17, 2014
The Invention of Wings
I am a big Sue Monk Kidd fan (loved The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair) so I was very happy when the notice came from the library that my hold was finally in. I proceeded to gobble up this book in short order, and I was not disappointed. What I didn't know until I reached the end notes was that the main characters were actual people.
Kidd tells the story of Sarah and Angelina (Nina) Grimke, two Charleston sisters of the early 19th century who find slavery so abhorrent that they head north, become Quakers, and are two of the most outspoken abolitionists and feminists of the time. In order to personalize the story a bit, Kidd creates Handful/Hetty, the slave Sarah's parents give her on her 12th birthday to be her waiting maid. The novel alternates telling the story from Sarah's and Handful's point-of-view, and it's a very effective way of really sending the message about the evils of slavery, and also of showing the complexities of the relationships between slaveholders and their slaves.
This is a beautifully told story with rich, interesting characters and a message that resonates across the centuries. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Invention of Wings
Kidd tells the story of Sarah and Angelina (Nina) Grimke, two Charleston sisters of the early 19th century who find slavery so abhorrent that they head north, become Quakers, and are two of the most outspoken abolitionists and feminists of the time. In order to personalize the story a bit, Kidd creates Handful/Hetty, the slave Sarah's parents give her on her 12th birthday to be her waiting maid. The novel alternates telling the story from Sarah's and Handful's point-of-view, and it's a very effective way of really sending the message about the evils of slavery, and also of showing the complexities of the relationships between slaveholders and their slaves.
This is a beautifully told story with rich, interesting characters and a message that resonates across the centuries. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The Invention of Wings
Monday, March 10, 2014
David and Goliath
I am a big Malcolm Gladwell fan, and his latest book does not disappoint. Gladwell has a way of thinking and looking at things that is quite different from the way I think and look at things, and that always makes me say, wow, that's really interesting.
In his latest book, Gladwell looks at how perceived advantages can sometimes be disadvantages, and vice versa. He uses examples of real people in real situations who have overcome something to do great things... or who didn't live up to their great expectations. He uses statistics and math, but in ways that are very approachable and understandable (and that had me going to Google again and again to find out more). And he just has this way of humanizing his subjects that's very readable and likeable.
This is a super easy, very interesting read. If you like this and haven't read any other Gladwell, I highly recommend The Tipping Point and Outliers.
David and Goliath
In his latest book, Gladwell looks at how perceived advantages can sometimes be disadvantages, and vice versa. He uses examples of real people in real situations who have overcome something to do great things... or who didn't live up to their great expectations. He uses statistics and math, but in ways that are very approachable and understandable (and that had me going to Google again and again to find out more). And he just has this way of humanizing his subjects that's very readable and likeable.
This is a super easy, very interesting read. If you like this and haven't read any other Gladwell, I highly recommend The Tipping Point and Outliers.
David and Goliath
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