Finished 8-24-11, rating 4/5, fiction, 319 pages, pub. 2001

I must say a word about fear.  It is life’s only true opponent.  Only fear can defeat life.  It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know.  It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy.  It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease.  It begins in your mind, always. 

Chapter 56

Pi, an Indian teenager, was raised by loving parents who ran a zoo.  He didn’t feel like he had to choose between religions, he studied them all.  He was a Hindu, Christian, and Muslim and no one could convince him this was contradictory.  When his family decided it was best to leave India, they packed up all of the animals (the ones they didn’t sell) and headed for Canada.  They didn’t make it.

Pi finds himself in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on a lifeboat with Richard Parker.  Richard Parker is a 450 pound Bengal tiger.  Day after day he must work to survive,  and his only chance is to keep Richard Parker alive too.  From early on you know that Pi is at sea a very long time, but you also know that he survives, so it isn’t that uncertainty that keeps you reading.  The day-to-day struggle is compelling and outrageous.   If you are taking an ocean voyage this book will teach you everything you need to know about staying alive.

This is a consideration of religion, a compassionate view of zoos, and at some points, a test of your ability to listen to/read about savagery of killing, even of only for food.  I listened to the first half of this one on a road trip with Jason and Gage and read the print for the rest.   I have nothing against the audio, but I much preferred reading it.  The play-by-play of animals ripping each other apart is much easier to read than to hear.  Not that this book can be reduced to that, only that’s what made the reading more enjoyable for me.  It is a book about belief and how what you believe can make your life meaningful and livable.

I really loved Pi’s story and grew to love Richard Parker too.  I was nervous that RP would meet the same fate as Wilson in the movie Castaway and I was very nervous for him.  I won’t spoil it by telling you.  I wasn’t crazy about the ending.  Jason loved it.  I’m not sure if my opinion will change after it’s had some time to settle.  I know I’ll be thinking about it for the next several days, but these are my initial thoughts.  The imagery was beautiful and obviously thought-provoking since I know I will be thinking about it, re-evaluating the whole based on the end.

 

This is from my personal library and chosen by Heather (Gofita’s Pages), Carol, Staci, MsMazzola, Heather (Book Addiction), Kerri, Alita, Julie, Rebecca and Rhapsody in Books.  Here’s what they had to say…

“It will blow you away.”  Rhapsody in Books

“I thought I was the only one left who hasn’t read it yet!”  Julie

“Some people didn’t like the unexpected ending, but I did and I would love to see what you think, too.”  Rebecca

“I’m going to attempt it next year as well”  Kerri

“It is on my TBR list, so I put it on your’s too.”  MsMazzola

“My brother bought it for me and I never read it, but encouraging you to relieves some of the guilt.”  Carol

“It’s on my TBR pile and I hear it’s amazing!”  Heather (Gofita’s Pages)

Finished 8-21-11, rating 3/5, romance, 378 pages, pub. 1993

It’s 1897 and Brett McCullum is looking for a newbie who needs to be led to the Alaskan gold towns.  Paulina Wintrop is poorly disguised as a boy so she could make the journey to find a family friend from her home in Utah.  Time is short and so are tempers.  Sparks fly between the two immediately and lots of sharp exchanges do little to disguise the interest.

This book is a bit of a hot mess. I was enjoying this above average, yet somewhat typical, historical romance when at a point fairly early on I realized this was not a typical romance at all.   There was a hidden city, a prince, and an island of jewels.  I was intrigued, but confused.  Then another turn and I was disappointed but still entertained.  So everything was fine until the end.  The end was such a letdown that I felt like I’d been cheated.  As you can see it’s hard to talk about without giving too much away.

I really enjoyed the dialogue and the two main characters so I might give Bourne another chance in the future, but it won’t be soon.  Isn’t that cover awful?

This book is from my personal library (although I have no idea how it came to be here!)

Finished 8-15-11, rating 4/5, mystery, 300 pages, pub. 1981

God only knows how it all began.  After all the searching and seeking, the rationale debate and wild, intuitive guessing.  I’m not sure we really arrived at the truth.  We poor humans are so imprisoned in narrow boundaries of space and time, so confined by five meager senses.  We are like ants, running frantically back and forth on meaningless errands that consume our years, taking a few square inches of earth for a universe.

first paragraph

Grayhaven Manor, an English Gothic mansion, was moved stone by stone (graves in the basement included), to rural Pennsylvania.  When Kevin’s parents won the lottery they bought the extravagant home and asked Kevin to live there for the summer to watch over it while they traveled.  He invited his fellow college professor, Anne, so they could work on a textbook they were writing together.  And then Aunt Bea and opinionated neighbor, Roger, show up and the house seems full, especially with the ghosts that make themselves known at night.  They are ghosts, right?

This spooky story is told in first person from Anne’s perspective and she had spunk.  I enjoyed her intelligence and identified with her insecurity about her looks.  She felt very real to me and if Anne saw a ghost then I believed her.  Kevin was a hot guy who everyone woman desired, maybe even Anne, to her disgust.  I liked Kevin and his easy-going nature, but did find him a bit shallow.

There was a considerable amount of history and I did love the way the three differing opinions were shown.  This book was haunting and I really want to visit a gothic mansion to see if I can detect ghost activity.

I did feel like the end was a little rushed and I was a bit disappointed, but not enough to take away from my enjoyment of the book.

Did you know that Barbara Michaels is Elizabeth Peters?  I recomend this for cozy mystery lovers and ghost story fans.

This was from my personal library.

Enter my giveaway for All for Love:A Romantic Anothology here.

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Finished 8-7-11, rating 4/5, mystery, 528 pages, pub. 2011

Second Dave Gurney thriller

What are you thinking?” he said.

She smiled and frowned, almost at the same time.

“I’m thinking life is short,”she said finally, in the way of someone who has come face-to-face with a sad truth.

“And therefore…?” he prompted, trying to break through her strange mood. 

She seemed to be weighing his tone, his words.  Just as he concluded she wasn’t going to answer him, she did. 

Just as he concluded she wasn’t going to answer him, she did.  “Therefore we’re running out of time.” She cokced her head-or maybe it was a tiny involuntary spasm-and regarded him curiously.

Chapter 14

Dave Gurney, retired NYPD detective, is trying to stay retired, but having a hard time relishing his new life in the country.  It’s been a year since he was pulled out of retirement for a case and it almost cost him his life and marriage.  Now a new case has been dangled under his nose and he rises to the bait and goes to work on another seemingly impossible murder.  A woman is murdered on her wedding day at her reception.  Not just murdered, but decapitated while more than a hundred wedding guests lived it up, oblivious to the horror.  Dave can’t resist, much to the consternation of his wife, Madeleine, and takes the offer from the murdered woman’s mother.

I really liked the first one and I really liked this one.  Dave Gurney is the man you want to hire if a crime has been committed and you want answers.  He is a brilliant detective.  I liked the initial impossibility of the crime and I didn’t completely figure out the how until the end.  I liked the continued look into the marriage of Dave and Madeleine, although Madeleine got on my nerves a bit in this one, but only for a little while.  I think Verdon is very skilled at fleshing out a character which doesn’t always happen in a thriller.

There was a lot going on in this one and lots of characters I wanted to know more about, but even though the book was over 500 pages it wasn’t long enough to get to know more about some of the more interesting characters.  Maybe we’ll run into them in a later book.  I do think the story could have been tighter.  I had to stop a few times to try to wrap my head around everything that was going on.  I did figure out the murderer and related mystery before the halfway point, so maybe part of my enjoyment came from feeling smart when I turned the last page.  One of the main storylines involved sexual depravity and it wasn’t something I really enjoyed, but it did keep me reading.

I thought this was a solid follow-up to Think of a Number.

I received this Uncorrected Proof for the TLC Tour.  Visit these other bloggers who shared their thoughts about this thriller.

John Verdon’s  TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, July 11th:  Life in Review

Wednesday, July 13th:  A Bookworm’s World

Thursday, July 14th: Simply Stacie

Monday, July 18th:  Sara’s Organized Chaos

Wednesday, July 20th:  Books Like Breathing

Monday, July 25th:  Thoughts of Joy

Tuesday, July 26th:  Stiletto Storytime

Wednesday, July 27th:  Jen’s Book Thoughts

Friday, July 29th:  Colloquium

Monday, August 1st:  Cafe of Dreams Book Review

Tuesday, August 2nd:  My Random Acts of Reading

Thursday, August 4th:  Life.. with Books

Monday, August 8th:  Stacy’s Books

Wednesday, August 10th:  Lesa’s Book Critiques

Monday, August 15th:  Rough Edges

Wednesday, August 17th:  Bewitched Bookworms

Thursday, August 18th:  Rundpinne

Monday, August 22nd:  Book Junkie

Wednesday, August 24th:  Readaholic

 

Finished audio 8-4-11, rating 4/5, fiction, pub. 2005

Unabridged audio read by the author.  14 hours.

Book  2 of the Oz series.

I loved Wicked, the first book about Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West.  I was less in love with the musical, but it was still good.  The book had it all.  Here is a link to the review I wrote for another book review site before I started my blog.  I thought the book stood on its own brilliantly and was not all that excited to read a sequel, Elphaba was dead, the story was told.

Liir might be Elphaba’s son, no one is sure.  He was raised by her but without maternal actions he was left to feel more like ward than a son.  Liir was just a boy when Elphaba died and the story begins when he is found left for dead on the side of the road.  He is nursed back to health at the cloister by the quadling girl, Candle.  In alternating chapters we read about his recovery and what he did on the ten years between Elphaba’s death and his being found.

I felt a detachment from Liir that I didn’t feel to Elphaba, so the story, while good, did not touch me in the same way.  I loved revisiting Oz and the Scarecrow and Glinda, the good witch.  Maguire is a genius at creating an alternate reality.  You will never watch the movie The Wizard of Oz in quite the same away again.  This Oz has a dark underbelly full of political intrigue, revolution, animal rights, and an army of dragons trained to kill.

With all of the spectacle that is Oz this is still Liir’s story.  His quest to find himself and discover his purpose.  The journey was full of love, pitfalls, rediscovery, and disillusionment.

I would recommend this only for those who loved Wicked.

Maguire did a great job narrating his own novel, but I wonder if the distance that I felt from Liir was because that is how he chose to read him.  It’s hard to say.

This is from my personal library and was chosen by Shanyn, JoJo, Laura, Donna, and Lisa-Marie.  Here’s what they had to say…

“Son of a Witch is REALLY good! I think you’d really enjoy it!”  Lisa-Marie

“Absolutely one of the books everyone should read. Well actually they should read all 3 in the series – Wicked, Son of a Witch and A Lion Among Men. There is so much more to these books than them being loosely based odd the Wizard of Oz.”  Donna

“I have that in my stack and would like to know what someone else thinks of it.”  Shanyn

Take a guess at this week’s Who’s Older Quiz.  For every participant the winner will receive $1 B&N gift card.