Heroes Are My Weakness.  Finished 11-16-14, rating 3/5, romance, 367 pages, pub. 2014

The dead of winter.  An isolated island off the coast of Maine.  A man.  A woman.  A sinister house looming over the sea …

He’s a reclusive writer whose macabre imagination creates chilling horror novels. She’s a down-on-her-luck actress reduced to staging kids’ puppet shows. He knows a dozen ways to kill with his bare hands. She knows a dozen ways to kill with laughs.

But she’s not laughing now. When she was a teenager, he terrified her. Now they’re trapped together on a snowy island off the coast of Maine. Is he the villain she remembers or has he changed? Her head says no. Her heart says yes.
from Goodreads

The book opens with our heroine, Annie, having a conversation with her multitude of puppets as she drives to her secluded cabin in the middle of a snowstorm.  It’s those puppets that kept me from investing fully in Annie from the beginning.  She grew on me but the absurdity of the puppets (and their continued butting into the story) turned me off.  The puppets did, much later, play a part in the sweetest aspect of Annie’s story and I think if that had been their involvement I may have liked this better.  I’m sounding very anti-puppet with all of these complaints, aren’t I?  Maybe it’s my problem and not Annie’s!

As for Theo Harp, our dark hero, he came off as so damaged at the beginning it was interesting to see how she would redeem him. In the end the big reveal wasn’t all that big a surprise but it did work in making him a more sympathetic character.

This felt very different from SEP’s other romances.  There’s always hot sex that happens before it seems it should and there is always humor, sarcasm and intelligent characters and this book had all that.  It felt like less romance this time around and it had a more sinister undertone since someone was trying to scare/hurt Annie.  It was good, but different.

I know this has been nominated for many end-of-the-year book awards, but it just didn’t quite do it for me.  But, no worries, I’ll still buy the next book by Susan in hardcover the week it comes out 🙂

Miracle Cure. Finished 6-14-14, rating 3/5, thriller, 391 pages, pub. 1991

A stunning, controversial, nonstop thriller that careens through the inner halls of high-stakes medical research, the upper echelons of Washington politics, and the steamy streets of Bangkok, on the trail of a dangerous and deadly cure for AIDS.

from Goodreads

On the very first page of this re-released book is a note from the author, bestselling author Harlan Coben.  He tells you to put it down if you haven’t read any other books by him. Why?  Well, the very obvious reason is that the book isn’t really up to snuff with his other thrillers.  I think this is his second book and while I’m a huge fan, I’m not sure if I’ll be going back to read the first.

This centers around a clinic looking for and possibly finding a cure for AIDS in the early 90’s.  Their top-secret patients are showing signs of being cured and the three doctors are trying to perfect the treatment before going public.  Newswoman Sara and her NBA player, Michael, are good friends with one of the doctors and are very familiar with the clinic.  There is a religious televangelist trying to make AIDS into God’s war against gays and there are politicians more than willing to settle old scores before considering what’s best for the American people.  Oh, and there is a gay slasher who is killing the cured.

There’s a lot going on and Coben deftly keeps the story moving. I didn’t mind the outdated story about AIDS, it’s a snapshot of a time that I remember well, but there were pages of fairly preachy dialogue that I just barely skimmed past.  The story was all over the place and there were plenty of loose ends, but I was surprised by the killer, so that was good.

Who should read this one?  Anyone who thinks their writing is no good and never will be.  Read this and then Tell No One and see how far one author can go.  This was from my personal library.

Rescue. Finished audio 6-13-14, rating 3/5, fiction, pub. 2010

Unabridged audio read by Dennis Holland.  7.5 hours.

A rookie paramedic pulls a young woman alive from her totaled car, a first rescue that begins a lifelong tangle of love and wreckage. Sheila Arsenault is a gorgeous enigma–streetwise and tough-talking, with haunted eyes, fierce desires, and a never-look-back determination. Peter Webster, as straight an arrow as they come, falls for her instantly and entirely. Soon Sheila and Peter are embroiled in an intense love affair, married, and parents to a baby daughter. Like the crash that brought them together, it all happened so fast. 

from Goodreads

I consider myself an Anita Shreve fan even though this is only the fifth book I’ve read by her.  She has a way of making her characters so real and relatable that she draws you in no matter the story.  I was missing a little bit of that in this one.  Webster was easy to like as the good, always-able-to-count on guy.  I mean he made his life’s work rescuing people so you know he has a heart of gold, but Sheila as his first rescued soul is not as easy to understand.  And what you do understand isn’t necessarily good.  Sheila has some demons and a husband and newborn daughter are not going to make them go away.  When the going gets tough, so does Webster and he ends up raising his daughter alone and I was rooting for them to make a new, happy life together.

The story itself was safe, boring, depressing?  It was solid but nothing new here, just a few characters who I never really understood together and the hope of a better life for their daughter.

So, this didn’t totally work for me, but it was good and I’m still looking forward to reading all of Shreve’s other books 🙂

I checked the audio out of the library and thought Dennis Holland did a great narration.

Last week I offered to send my book, The End of Everything, to one lucky commenter.  I would have Gage choose, but he’s napping and I need the break ;).  After placing the names in a bowl, the winner is….

Mystica! 

Congratulations! I’ll be sending the book to Sri Lanka next week 🙂

Traveling Light for Mothers. Finished 4-26-14, rating 3/5, inspirational?, 120 pages, pub. 2003

I read this easy and light spiritual/inspirational book during the 24 hours read-a-thon and it was a perfect time for it.  It was my hot tub reading and it didn’t take me long to finish.  It covered self-reliance, discontent, weariness, worry, hopelessness, and guilt.    I liked the mix of scripture, stories and a splash of stats.  The chapter on weariness focused on getting enough sleep, which gave me a giggle while reading since I was trying to stay up 24 hours reading 🙂

I liked it and am happy that my cousin decided to share it with me.

I Feel Bad About My Neck. Finished 10-12-13, rating 3/5, non-fiction, 137 pages, pub. 2006

I thought this would be the perfect choice for the read-a-thon.  I had it on my shelves, it was short, it should be funny.  Nora Ephron has written some of my favorite movies: When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail (hm, maybe it’s Meg Ryan I love?).  The good thing is that it was short, the bad thing is that I still caught myself skimming. It’s not bad, it just didn’t hold my interest.  I think I find essays like this more interesting in small doses and when I try to read them compiled in a book like this I don’t care for them.  The average or boring ones ruin the good feeling from the great ones.

This was from my favorite paragraph…

When I pass a bookshelf, I like to pick out a book from it and thumb through it.  When I see a newspaper on the couch, I like to sit down with it.  When the mail arrives, I like to rip it open.  Reading is one of the main things I do.  Reading is everything.  Reading makes me feel I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person.  Reading makes me smarter.  Reading gives me something to talk about later on.  Reading is the unbelievably healthy was my attention deficit disorder medicates itself.  Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a was to make contact with reality  after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real.  Reading is grist.  Reading is bliss.  But my ability to pick something up and read it-which has gone unchecked all my life up until now-is now entirely dependent on the whereabouts of my reading glasses. (Blind as a Bat chapter)

I was going to make one funny note from each of the 15 chapters, but only made notes on 5, that’s not a positive percentage.  A few things Iearned…

1. Necks go south at 43 and there’s nothing you can do about it.  This probably struck me because I just turned 42.

2. I can buy a Metrocard bag/purse at the Transit Museum in Grand Central Station.  I want one!

3. One Away friendships do not work. (both of you having slept with the same person)

4. Don’t romanticize your home. You can make another one.

5. JFK didn’t sleep with every intern.

It was okay, nothing to get too excited about but a quick diversion.

The Spark. Finished 8-16-13, 3.5 stars, education/inspiration?, 250 pages, pub. 2013

Jake was never expected to talk or to read, but his mother never believed that.  After his autism diagnosis and standard therapies, she took things into her own hands to reach Jake and bring him out of his autism.  This is her story, and his.

There is a lot to like in this story of a mother’s love and a child’s gift.  Barnett was running a day care out of her home and was pregnant with her second child when Jake was diagnosed at 2.  He started some home therapy through the state and then early intervention preschool,  When a teacher told Barnett that her son would never need his alphabet flashcards that he loved so much, Barnett understood her meaning to be that he would never learn to read, and she pulled him out of school and kept him home with her.  The lengths she went to for her son are staggering as was her creativity and commitment to other kids like Jake.  She had a vision for Jake and for other autistic kids too.  And Jake himself is an inspiration.  This boy who was never expected to read now has an IQ higher than Einstein’s!  The Barnett’s pulled him out of elementary school to go to college at 9 and he’s on track to make great discoveries as an astrophysicist, thanks in large part to his mother who encouraged his love of space at a very age.  Here is the website for Jacob’s Place and more about Jake.

I must say that Barnett seemed to find more hours in her day than most people.  She ran a daycare during the day, a preschool prep class for autistic kids in the evening, raised three young kids and also started weekend sports league for autistic kids. Oh, and somewhere in there she managed to have another child and a stroke.  I am happy if I actually get dinner on the table for my two guys!

There were things that put me off a bit and I hesitate to go into them because it seems like I’d be making a judgment on this hero of a mother and I don’t want to do that because I think she’s amazing.  I’ll just note the one thing that Barnett herself talked about. I was shocked at how cavalier she was with money. Or maybe she was just blasé?  It was something that came up often in the book and it drove me a little nuts.

If you are looking to find a roadmap on how to raise a genius, forget it.  But if you want to be inspired to be better mother then this book will do the trick 🙂

This book was from my personal library.

Finished audio 7-28-13, 3 stars, fiction, pub. 2012

Unabridged audio 7 hours 50 minutes. Read by Cassandra Campbell