Tag: Books

The Last Time I Saw You, by Elizabeth Berg

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The Last Time I Saw You: A NovelFinished audio 5-26-11, rating 3.5/5, fiction, pub. 2010

Unabridged audio 8+ hours.  Read by the author.

Four classmates are about to attend their 40th high school reunion.  One is going to land the jock who got away, one is going because he wants his soon-to-be ex-wife to see that they can recapture the good years, one is going because his secretary is making him, the invisible girl is returning for a chance at redemption, and the beautiful one is showing up to live before she dies.  None of them gets exactly what they expected, but they all go home changed.

I liked high school.  I was not the most popular, but I was involved in a lot of activities and I had a few friends I really loved (and still do). I am class secretary so it’s my job to find everyone when reunion time comes around and this past year Facebook made it a while lot easier.  Last October, on the night of our 20th reunion, I checked into the hospital to have a baby.  Seriously, when I think of it, I laugh.  I never thought I’d be having my first baby 20 years later.  I always thought I wanted five kids.  Not only does this sound insane, but a little like overkill now that I have one 🙂

So, this book came at a good time for me.  It is easy to take the time of your reunion (whether you attend or not) to reflect on your high school self and how, if at all, you’ve changed.  And, when you walk into the reunion is everyone seeing you as the 18-year-old you were or the person you’ve become?

I liked the book, but wish it would have focused on less that five people.  The book was too short to get really involved, but I did enjoy the time I spent with them and the people they represented in my own school days.  I thought it was a fun way to take another look at the roles we all played in high school.

As always, I love listening to Elizabeth Berg read her own novels.

I checked this audio out of the library.

A Classic Summer

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My friend Molly of both The Bumbles Blog and Quirky Girls Read is hosting a challenge.  And since Molly is fun, creative and just all around great, I thought I would join in and invite you to do the same.

She couldn’t have made the challenge any easier.  Read a classic book before Labor Day, review it (linking to Molly’s challenge post) and add your post to Mr. Linky.  And you can enter as many classics as you want!

Did I mention she’s giving out an Amazon gift card?  You should probably head over there and check it out for yourself!

The Classic Bribe

I am currently reading A Room with a View by Forster (and loving it) and hope to get Emma by Austen in this summer too.  I also need to read Roots and Mists of Avalon.  What about you?  Is there a classic that you’d like to read this summer and this challenge is just the thing to give you a gentle push?

Tangled Webs:How False Statements are Undermining America:From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff by James B. Stewart, part 2

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Tangled Webs: How False Statements Are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie MadoffFinished 5-31-11, rating 4/5, current events, 441 pages, pub. 2011

(part one reviewed here)

I jumped on my soapbox in the first half of my review so I’ll try to exercise some restraint this time around.  Lying is bad.  Perjury is worse.  How can we be a country ruled by law if people, under oath, lie.  I covered the first two celebrity perjurers, now on to the last two.

Barry Bonds is not a likeable guy, he used some sort of steroid, and his old friend was so faithful to him that he went to jail instead of testifying against him.  Oh, and the case is just now going to trial.  It’s like 10 years later! Sprinter Marion Jones was somehow caught up in the same investigation and she’s already served her time!  There were a lot of players involved and since baseball is not my thing, it was my least favorite.

My husband is a portfolio manager, so the Bernie Madoff case was right up my alley.  Somehow Bernie got away with lying to the SEC for years and to many different people.  Seriously, the SEC looks bad.  There were a few people in the SEC who were actually doing their jobs, but they or their superiors were in awe of Madoff’s power and reputation.

I really liked this book.  I thought all the stories were interesting and told with an easy to understand, yet detailed, narrative.  I complained in my first post that people made excuses for liars if they liked them.  I had to swallow that sentiment this week as my beloved Coach Tressel (Ohio State football coach) fell prey to the exact problems addressed in this book.  He didn’t commit the crime, but he did lie to cover it up.  If it can happen to the squeaky clean sweater vest, it can happen to anyone.

This book was sent to by the publisher for this book tour.

James’ Tour Stops

Wednesday, May 11th: Take Me Away

Thursday, May 12th: Laura’s Reviews

Tuesday, May 17th: Power and Control

Tuesday, May 17th: Marathon Pundit

Wednesday, May 18th: Man of La Book

Wednesday, May 25th: Stacy’s Books

Wednesday, June 1st: Bibliophiliac

Monday, June 13th: Lisa Graas

Tuesday, June 14th: Ted Lehmann’s Bluegrass, Books, and Brainstorms

Wednesday, June 15th: Deep Muck Big Rake

Book Problem, Year 4

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Every May for the past few years I’ve stacked up all of of my unread books (always the same way) and taken a picture to share with you all.  In May 2008 my stack looked like this. My post lamenting my problem in May 2009 is here. Last year’s picture is here with its 407 books plus those 5 box tops I did not count.

So, when I recreated the stacks this year I was happy to discover that I’d read 32.  I think that’s pretty good considering how my reading time has suffered this past year. I gave away or will give away 24 more.  I even took out a whole box of books from the bottom and have been giving them away this year.  This was what it looked like with all of those books gone.

So, I was feeling good.  Until I added in the books I bought or received this year, which was 104.

So, the grand total of unread books, when I add in the 149 from the boxes that I didn’t include last year is…

604!

To get to this number I pulled out 15 old titles that I know I will never read and will be giving them away on June 1st, so come back for that.

So, c’mon, fess up.  How many books do you have sitting around waiting to be read?

Tangled Webs:How False Statements are Undermining America: From Martha Stewart to Bernie Madoff, by James B. Stewart, part 1

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Tangled Webs by James B. Stewart: Book CoverRating so far 4/5, current events, 441 pages

When I was offered the chance to read this book for the TLC book tour I jumped at the chance.  I follow the news fairly voraciously (at least I did before Gage was born) and I was interested in the four stories this book covers: Martha Stewart, Scooter Libby, Barry Bonds, Bernie Madoff.  I knew the most about Libby and Madoff.  I am embarrassed to say that I am only halfway through the book, so I will write about the first two cases today and you can come back on Friday for the last two and my final thoughts.

To lie, or not to lie, that is the question.  In my humble opinion, which is also the law of the land, it is illegal to lie to the police or government officials.  Stewart, a Pulitzer Prize winner, argues that these high-profile cases show how morally corrupt we’ve become.  In so many instances the lying and cover-up is so much worse than the crime.

Martha Stewart was and is a successful businesswoman.  She was and is a woman who lied and to presecutors and got an assistant to erase an incriminating email.  She was first investigated for insider trading, but they couldn’t prove that.  Had she not lied she never would have gone to prison, end of story.  I am not a Martha fan, don’t watch her show or read her books or magazines, but I have purchased her products and liked them very much.  Only now I’d think twice.  Not only is she not a very nice person, but to maintain that you are innocent against clear facts otherwise is insulting to my intelligence.

The Scooter Libby case is one that I was the most familiar with and so I was surprised that of all the myriad of people involved in this story he was the one I felt the most sympathy for, maybe because he got thrown to the wolves.  The case stemmed from a Novak article that gave the name of a CIA agent (Valerie Plame).  This is illegal.  He had two sources who in the course of the investigation outed themselves, Richard Armitage and Karl Rove.  They broke the law.  What happened to them?  Nothing.  President Bush said he would fire anyone who leaked information and even when Karl Rove admitted he was one of the leakers, President Bush kept him in the White House.  I remember being disgusted by it at the time and still am.  So, if these were the main culprits why did Libby get in trouble?  Because he lied to investigators.  Or at the very least has a very, very bad memory which is hard to believe of someone of his success.  The rule breakers got away with it, but the liar did not.

I have taken two main points from the first half of the book.  This book is for detail oriented readers and will appeal to them best.  There are lots of details and they sometimes repeat themselves a few times in a few different recollections. The second and most sad for me is that people don’t seem to be swayed by the truth.  Do they like the fact that you bake a pretty cake on tv?  Then you are being railroaded.   Are you a Republican or Democrat?  Because whatever I’m not is wrong 100% of the time.  Both of these drive me crazy.  You are allowed to still like a person if they broke the law, but please don’t make excuses for them.

Part 2 reviewed here.

This book was sent to by the publisher for this book tour.

James’ Tour Stops

Wednesday, May 11th: Take Me Away

Thursday, May 12th: Laura’s Reviews

Tuesday, May 17th: Power and Control

Tuesday, May 17th: Marathon Pundit

Wednesday, May 18th: Man of La Book

Wednesday, May 25th: Stacy’s Books

Wednesday, June 1st: Bibliophiliac

Monday, June 13th: Lisa Graas

Tuesday, June 14th: Ted Lehmann’s Bluegrass, Books, and Brainstorms

Wednesday, June 15th: Deep Muck Big Rake

The Glass Flame, by Phyllis Whitney

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Product DetailsFinished 5-18-11, rating 3.5/5, mystery, 317 pages, pub. 1978

Karen’s husband, David, has been killed in a fire and she thinks it was murder because of a letter he sent her just before the explosion that claimed his life.  Their marriage wasn’t a good one, but she did feel an obligation to check out the situation surrounding the fires that he had gone to Tennessee to investigate.  David’s half-brother, Trevor, is an architect and the victim of the fires.  Trevor was also Karen’s first unrequited love.  Now she is staying in his house with his wife and child and there is no end to the weirdness happening there.

I thought the mystery was good.  It was creepy and there were just enough people involved that you got to know them but not too many that you got confused.  I liked getting to know more about architecture and photography.  The book is dated, but not in a bad way.

I will say that the characters didn’t really behave in a way I expected, so I didn’t really connect with them, but I still enjoyed the mystery.  The only thing that seemed over the top was Karen’s love for Trevor.  For some reason it annoyed me, maybe because it seemed so baseless.

If you like Barbara Michaels or Victoria Holt, I think you’d like Whitney.

This was from my personal library.

A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving

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Cover ImageFinished 5-12-11, rating 2.5/5, fiction, 617 pages, pub. 1989

John and Owen have been best friends forever.  There wasn’t anything they didn’t talk about or share.  Even when Owen killed John’s mom in a fluke of fate their relationship was solid.  John narrates this story of Owen Meany, the small boy with the strange and scary voice who comes from the quarry with nothing to recommend him but his sharp mind.  The story follows their friendship over the many years and then some.

I wanted to like this book.  I expected to love this book.  The reason it was on my shelf was because I picked it up years ago after so many of my fellow booksellers told me I had to read it.  It would change my life. Then I let my fellow blogger friends choose my reading material and 10 of you, bloggers I love and trust, voted for this one.  So, I have to assume the problem is with me and I am one of a handful of people who did not like this one.  If I had not promised to read this I would have given up after I was 150 pages in last summer.

So, why didn’t I like it?  The details, all of those tedious details, made the story travel at a snail’s pace and I felt like I was reading in quicksand.  Not that I didn’t like Owen or the grandmother and Dan, but it was hard to maintain my enthusiasm.  It was a little like reading someone’s daily diary.  There’s some good stuff in there, but you have to wade through all the rest of the stuff no one but the diarist cares about.

It is very political and anti-church (not anti-God).  I had no problem with either of these issues.  I actually agreed with most of Irving’s thoughts here.  But that was probably part of the problem for me.  I felt like I was reading very long paragraphs and sometimes pages of Irving’s views that did little to advance the story.

Okay, so please don’t hate me for not liking this one.  There were parts I loved, I enjoyed their time and exploits at the Academy.  This was my favorite part of the novel.  I was charmed by Owen, but not enough.

This is from my personal library and was chosen by Mary, Kathy, Hannah, Linda, Em, Jennifer, MsMazzola, Jessica, Mille, and Margie.  Here’s what they had to say…

“The best structured suspense novel I’ve ever read. I’m not a huge fan of Irving, but this one makes it on to my best books list all the time.”  Mille

“I love Irving, he is funny and Owen Meany will break your heart.”  MsMazzola

“Because I’m hoping to read it in 2010, too.”  Jennifer

“I tried other books by this author and couldn’t get into them, but I loved Owen Meany and have recommended it to others.”  Linda

“Classic. Needs to be read.”  Em

“It’s very readable and an instant classic.”  Hannah

“You will be charmed by Owen.”  Kathy

“Because it’s very readable and a classic.”  Mary

HeartSick, by Chelsea Cain

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Heartsick (Gretchen Lowell Series #1) by Chelsea Cain: Book CoverFinished 5-10-11, rating 4.25/5, thriller, 324 pages, pub. 2007

He picked up the phone. “Yeah,” he said.  He was sitting in his living room in the dark.  He hadn’t planned it that way.  He had just sat down a few hours before and the sun had set and he hadn’t bothered to turn on the light.  Plus, the dingy apartment, with its sparse furnishings and stained carpet, looked slightly less cloaked in blackness.

Henry’s gruff voice filled the phone line.  “He took another girl,” he said. And there you had it.

The digital clock that sat on the empty bookcase blinked insistently in the dim room.  It was an hour and thirty-five minutes off, but Archie had never bothered to reset it.  He just did the math to calculate the time. “So they want to reconvene the task force,” Archie said.

Chapter 2

Archie is a damaged police detective out on medical leave until a serial killer reels him back in.  Susan is a damaged newspaper reporter asked to cover Archie and his new task force as they investigate a series of murdered high school girls.  Gretchen is a damaged serial killer (is there any other kind?) who still has her hooks in Archie, even from prison.

So, this is your standard serial killer thriller until you add all of the baggage these three are carrying.  I love flaws and Archie has many.  He gets aroused by a woman who held him captive and tried to kill him, takes way too many pills, and has abandoned a family who loves him.  And the worst part?  He knows his fate and doesn’t want to be saved.

Susan was my favorite character.  The reporter with the pink hair who has father figure issues and while Archie uses pills to deal with his pain, she uses sex to deal with hers.  But she also had a vibrant  humanity.  She still cared about not exploiting victims and being a real reporter who did stories that matter.

Gretchen is one crazy serial killer.  She and Archie’s relationship really creeped me out.  That she could creep me out from prison is saying something.

It’s the characters that made the story, even though the plot was good too.  My only complaint is that the end felt a little too much like a standard thriller wrap up when the rest of the story had been unique.  But that is not stopping me from adding the next book in this series to my reading list.  I can’t wait to revisit these characters.

I almost forgot to mention how much Portland, Oregon comes alive.  I’ve always wanted to visit and now I feel as though I have!

Highly recommended for thriller fans.

This book is from my personal library.

Black Out, by Lisa Unger

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Black Out by Lisa Unger: Book CoverFinished audio 5-5-11, rating 3/5, fiction, pub. 2009

Unabridged audio 13 hours 24 minutes. Read by Ann Marie Lee

Annie Powers is crazy.  I don’t think I’m spoiling too much by telling you that since the title of the book comes from her spells of losing her memory.  Annie also used to be Ophelia March, daughter of one present parent,  her mother who is in love with a death row convict.  When the convict is released and he and his son are living with Ophelia her once crappy life takes a turn for the worse.  She becomes involved with her new stepbrother, Marlo.  But currently, Annie is a rich wife and mother who has everything she never dreamed possible when she was growing up.

So, does jumping around from past to present annoy you?  If it doesn’t then this book should hold your interest.  Do you like reading books that have no true sympathetic character?  This is the book for you.  As much as I wanted to like Annie/Ophelia the way the story was told made it impossible.  After reading the end of a book do you like knowing what happened?  What was real and what wasn’t?  If so, be prepared to be disappointed.  There were plenty of questions at the end, enough to make me rethink some of my basic assumptions, and I’m not sure if even a reread would answer them.  At the very least there are so many different stories all tied together so precariously that it feels exciting at first but then becomes a little hard to take seriously.

I liked the audio, but maybe I needed to have more focus (ie not when I’m driving around with Gage) when listening to it.  Maybe being able to read at a slower pace would have helped.  Or maybe I would still be just as confused and ambivalent about Annie/Ophelia.  She was not a warm and fuzzy character.  I liked the story through most of the book, but it had no real wrap up and I need a story that at least lets me think I’ve known what has happened.  The end had the potential to save the story but instead I was really disappointed.

I checked the audio out of the library.

The Hellion, by LaVyrle Spencer

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The Hellion by LaVyrle Spencer: Book CoverFinished 4-25-11, rating 2.5/5, romance, 293 pages, pub. 1984

It was well known around Russellville, Alabama, that Tommy Lee Gentry drove like a rebellious seventeen-year-old, drank like a parolee fresh out, and whored like a lumberjack at the first spring thaw.  He owned a four-wheel-drive Blazer for his hunting trips, a sixteen-foot runabout for his fishing trips, and a white Cadillac El Dorado to impress the town in general.  He was rarely seen driving any of them without an open beer or an on-the-rocks glass in his hand, more often than not with one arm around some carmine-lipped floozy from up Muscle Shoals way, his left hand dangling limply over the steering wheel and a burning cigarette clamped between his strong white teeth.

first paragraph

Tommy Lee and Rachel were raised together.  They lived next door to each other and their parents were good friends.  When they fall in love as teenagers it was no surprise to anyone.  What was a surprise to the teens was an unexpected pregnancy and a major push from their parents to keep them apart when they needed each other the most.  Now they are both 41 and there are no obstacles between them except the lives they’ve lived while apart.

If you enjoyed the first paragraph I included and would like to know more about Tommy Lee, then this is the book for you.  For me, the story wasn’t deep enough.  Obviously, being a romance and all, Rachel’s love was going to reform the wild Tommy Lee, but unfortunately, I was never really drawn in. Somehow the two of them lived in the same smallish town for over 20 years and yet they never spoke or saw each other.  The missing years made no sense to me.  And I don’t think this is Spencer’s best writing.  It was one of her earlier books and it did feel dated.  I used to gobble up Spencer’s romances as a teen and I remember loving a few of them.  This one was not one of them, but that doesn’t mean I’m not going to read the rest of the ones in my stacks.  I just won’t be rushing to do so.  Do you have a favorite LaVyrle Spencer romance?

This was from my personal library.