Ratmammy's Books and other things

#35 WINTER HAVEN by Athol Dickson

2008-06-22T17:10:00.001-07:00

Date Began and Finished 6/02- 6/06 2008
Genre - Christian Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2008
Publisher - Bethany House
Number of Pages 333
Hardcover
Reason for reading: Review for Curled Up
Rating 4.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I have only read two books by Athol Dickson, but I feel I can safely say that his books are some of the best I've read not only in the Christian fiction genre, but the previous book CURED was one of my favorite books from 2007. Dickson writes in a beautiful prose, and while they are Christian fiction books, I think those who normally don't read books in this genre may feel drawn to his books as well.

WINTER HAVEN takes on a Gothic feel as the story takes the reader into a world that is seemingly filled with mysterious doings along the foggy coast of Maine, with people that are filled with evil intent, at least it seems so on the outside.

The book opens with Vera taking a boat trip to an island off the coast of Maine. She feels out of place there, as she goes to retrieve the body of her deceased brother Siggy, who she has not seen in thirteen years. She was just a young girl when Siggy, a highly functioning autistic young man, ran away from home and was never seen again. but upon the news of his death, Vera rushes off to Maine, a trip that was out of character for the very shy and insecure woman she has become. but she needs to find the answers to why he ran away, and to confirm whether this body is truly her brother who disappeared without a trace.

Vera's search for the answers to her questions is not easy. The islanders do not appear to like her, and she feels that they are doing their best to keep her in the dark. What should have been a short trip turned into an extended one as she stumbles upon one roadblock after another in her search. While she at first denies that this body is her brother's, she finally accepts it and then realizes he has not aged a day. How could that be? Was there something wrong with him that he did not age a day since she had last seen him? Nothing made sense, and it gave her more cause to find those answers that she felt the islanders were keeping from her.

In her search for a place to stay, she ends up rooming at Ida Abernathy's home, a widow who appears to have her own secrets. She's abrupt with Vera, and gives Vera the creeps, but she needs a place to stay. And despite Ida's warnings, Vera ends up searching a part of the island that is supposed to be dangerous, and runs into a man that will change her life forever, a man that she isn't sure she could trust, or she could love.

I know WINTER HAVEN is labeled as Christian fiction, but it truly reminds me of the old Gothic suspense romances that were so popular back in the day. it is my favorite genre of fiction, and this book brought back all those memories. WINTER HAVEN does mimic the old Gothics, with the foggy atmosphere of the islands, the mysterious Ida Abernathy and her strange ways, a supposed ghost that scares Vera out of her wits, and the rumors and tales that are being passed around by the locals. Vera, while not the classic heroine of the old Gothic romances, still fits into the scheme of things as she continuously refuses to listen to the warnings of the locals while she searches for the answers to her
brother's death. And the mysterious man Evan Frost, a man that has his own secrets and is considered by some on the islands to be a danger to Vera, is the turning point in Vera's life. the intrigue presented by the book was enough to keep me reading.

Obviously, I'm recommending this book and it may end up on my 2008 list of top books read. I am definitely looking forward to his next book.

#34 MENDING FENCES by Sherryl Woods

2008-06-22T16:27:00.001-07:00

Date Began and Finished 5/27- 6/02 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2008
Publisher - Mira
Number of Pages 387
Mass market Paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Curled Up
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Two families lived next door to each other for 10 years. Emily Dobbs and Marcie Carter were what they thought best friends, with their children nearly the same ages. While their husbands didn't' get along as wonderfully as the two women, the two families would often socialize with each other. Their lives were almost intertwined.

The book opens with a young shy college student comes forward and accuses a popular super star college athlete of raping her during a date. What shocks those who hear about it is that the accused is none other than Evan Carter, Marcie's oldest child. He is known to all as a very polite, popular, and just all around good guy. But is there another side to him?

The accusation is one thing. But what Emily notices is that this news has affected her daughter Dani. Emily knew that Dani had always had a crush on the older boy, but couldn't understand why she was as upset as she was. Dani was behaving in a radically different manner, and it didn't make sense. Also, Dani's close friendship with Marcie's daughter Caitlyn was falling apart. The only one who seemed to be affected very little was Emily's son Josh. While josh and Evan used to be the best of friends as children, the two drifted as they were older, and Emily never questioned it.

The alleged rape is what starts the breakup of a long close friendship. But the book not only covers this incident, but actually goes back in time and starts at the beginning, when the two families first meet, as their families grow, through Emily's divorce and Marcie's difficult marriage. While I felt there could have been some editing (her books seem to be a tad too long), I did enjoy this book over SEAVIEW INN, mainly because of the very fascinating story line. I'm recommending MENDING FENCES to all who enjoy reading what is now termed as "women's fiction". So far I've read two of Sherryl Woods' books, and I will definitely read more by her.

Ratmammys reads for May 2008

2008-06-17T18:00:00.001-07:00

Here are the books I read in May 2008

(rating based on 5 Stars being the best)

#27 2cool2btrue by Simon Brooke Pgs 368 - 4/5 stars
#28 THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER by Theresa Rebeck pgs 335 - 3.5/5 stars
#29 DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT by Lauren Henderson Pgs 304- 4/5 stars
#30 A SOLDIER COMES HOME by Cindi Myers Pgs 242 - 4/5 stars
#31 SEARCHING FOR PARADISE in Parker, Pa by Kris Radish Pgs 343 -4/5 stars
#32 CRYSTAL CLEAR by Jane Heller Pgs 380 - 3.5/5 stars
#33 SWEET LOVE by Sarah Strohmeyer Pgs 297 -4.5/5 stars

My favorite book this month was a tie between SWEET LOVE, SEARCHING FOR PARADISE and THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER, followed closely by 2COOL and DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT... this was a really good reading month in terms of quality. I got lucky.

My least favorite book was CRYSTAL CLEAR and it wasn't a horrible book but i have read other books by this author, and this was definitely not her best.

Average 73.19 pages per day
Average pages per book: 324

I'm reading less per day, but the books are getting bigger... amazing...i was back to work in May (part time) so that explains why I read less. April was the month we went to Japan and I found a lot of time to read on the plane and in our hotel room in between events.

Of the 7 books I read this month, the following were books for review or requests by the author/publisher:

THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER - review for Curled Up
A SOLDIER COMES HOME - review for Love Romances
SEARCHING FOR PARADISE in Parker, Pa - review for Love romances
SWEET LOVE by Sarah Strohmeyer - review for Bookreporter

A good month of reading in terms of quality, but not quantity. June is already looking dismal, due to more work, but July we will be going to Maui for 10 days and I do spend a lot of time in the mornings reading.... it should be my best reading month of the year...

banned books

2008-06-14T07:42:00.001-07:00

Andi over at Tripping Toward Lucidity and Michelle from Fluttering Butterflies posted a Banned Books list, sharing with readers which books from the list they have read.

The titles in bold are the books I have read, and the titles in italics are ones that I have on my shelves waiting to be read.

#1 The Bible (I actually own several different versions of the Bible and have attempted to read it on two occasions. Not sure I will try again.)
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (I have read bits and pieces of
this one.)
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#58 Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 A Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Émile by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Émile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

#33 SWEET LOVE by Sarah Strohmeyer

2008-06-04T21:11:00.001-07:00

Number of Book #33
Date Began and Finished 5/24- 5/27 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2008
Publisher - Dutton
Number of Pages 297
Hard cover
Reason for reading: Review for Bookreporter (also review request by author)
Rating 4.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Inspired by the most important woman in her life, Sarah Strohmeyer wrote SWEET LOVE to honor the memory, but also to get closure after the passing of her beloved mother. SWEET LOVE opens with a prologue, written from the view point of Betty Mueller, who feels a need to correct a wrong she thinks she did to her middle aged daughter many years ago. Betty did not approve of her daughter's budding crush on the young man Michael Slayton, a family friend who was a bit older than Julie's teenage years. In the same breath, Betty also confesses she loves desserts and feels it's what helps make the world go around. She admits her own daughter Julie hates to cook because Betty was a slave to her own kitchen. Julie will have none of that.

And so, Betty decides to help fix a wrong that she did all those years ago, and through some finagling she manages to get Julie into a very exclusive cooking class featuring desserts. What Julie doesn't know is that Michael has also been given this same gift. When the two attend their first class, it's the beginning of a renewed acquaintance, where both Michael and Julie walk down memory lane and figure out what went wrong with what had been a good childhood friendship, and later was ruined by a misunderstanding in their professional lives. Julie is embarrassed to even see Michael, because her feelings were never reciprocated, that he only saw her as his best friend's little sister. What makes it worse, Michael doesn't' come to class alone. He brings a very attractive woman with him, and Julie is convinced they are involved.

Betty continues her manipulating, hoping to get the two of them together. But as she is doing this, she's also dealing with her own issues, health issues that will bring Julie and Michael even closer together.

SWEET LOVE I feel is the best book so far written by Sarah Strohmeyer. While her earlier novels, in particular the Bubbles Series of books, were light comedies with one-dimensional characters, her stand alone novels show a lot of depth. SWEET LOVE still showcases her humor, but there is a serious side to this book, with the characters being much more rounded and three dimensional, characters that change and grow from their mistakes. And while there is plenty of humor, there will be a times when the tissues will be needed as well. I was bawling by the end of the book.

As always, I am not disappointed by a Sarah Strohmeyer book, and this one especially rings true for me, as I can relate to Sarah's experiences in the loss of our mothers. SWEET LOVE is recommended.

#32 CRYSTAL CLEAR by Jane Heller

2008-06-04T13:53:00.001-07:00

Number of Book #32
Date Began and Finished 5/18- 5/24 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction/Humorous
Year It Was Published - 1998
Publisher - Kensington Fiction
Number of Pages 380
Mass Market paperback
Reason for reading: Tbr/trade with friend
Rating 3.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Crystal Goldstein is an accountant living in Manhattan. Her life is very orderly and quiet. She's been seeing a boyfriend for a number of years now but realizes it's going nowhere. She had been content, but now feels that she's wasting her time with him. When she discovers he's been cheating on her with his ex-wife, she's just about had it. Her best friend, Rona, coaxes Crystal to make a visit to Sedona for a vacation and also to help find herself and find some direction in her life.

So, Crystal makes the trip, checks into a very posh resort, and signs up for a 5 day "Sacred Earth" jeep tour, something she would never have done before this idea of even GOING to Sedona came up. This could be a sign, but the leader of their tour was none other than Crystal's ex-husband from years ago, a man she never thought she'd set eyes on again. Terry looked even better than when she saw him last, but as she got to watch him in action, she realized he'd also grown up. he was no longer that immature young man she had been married to, a man that was more like a boy who had no real direction in life. Crystal had always had more discipline, knew how she wanted to lead her life, and Terry was holding her back. She couldn't stay with a husband that had no goals or direction.

But now here they were, together again on a jeep tour. Terry was actually the owner of the company who ran the tour, and he looked happy. The two still feel the sparks, but Crystal hears that he's got a woman in his life, not really sure if it is his wife or girlfriend, but she is disappointed that he's not free to carry on where they had left off.

It is during this jeep tour that one of the customers of the tour disappears. Amanda Wells Reid, an international jet-setter who for some reason or another was on this tour (along with her entourage), has been kidnapped and now the company and the town of Sedona are the hot spot for the media. This is big news. Suspects include Amanda's husband, all of her entourage, as well as Terry's business partner and friend Will Singleton, a Lakota Sioux who was the last person to be seen with Amanda.

In the meantime, Crystal's boyfriend (ex-boyfriend?) wants to see her, and now she's not so sure she wants him back in her life. She's rediscovered Terry, and likes what she sees.

I've read a few books by Jane Heller, and this one is probably the oldest of them all. I didn't' quite like it as much as the others; the humor seemed a bit forced and the characters were all rather stereotypical on top of that. The story was enjoyable however, and I had fun trying to figure out who actually was guilty of kidnapping Amanda.

Crystal was the main character, but I think her romance story between Terry and her troubles with the boyfriend back home for me held the same interest as the story of Amanda's kidnapping. I didn't' like nor dislike Crystal's character; i just didn't' really care about her. It wasn't a bad book, but i think if i hadn't read this book at all, it wouldn't have been a missed opportunity. This is the type of book one would take on an airplane to read - light humor, beach read. I give it a mild recommendation.

#31 SEARCHING FOR PARADISE in Parker, PA by Kris Radish

2008-05-31T20:55:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #31
Date Began and Finished 5/13- 5/18 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2008
Publisher - Bantam
Number of Pages 343
hardcover
Reason for reading: Review for Love Romances And More
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Addy and Lucky Lipton have been married for nearly 30 years. And neither can say they are really happy. Addy is going crazy, angry at all the junk Lucky has collected over the years and has put in the garage. She doesn't feel a connection to him at all, and is on the verge of kicking him out.

When Lucky wins a trip to Costa Rica and asks Addy to go with him, they are both secretly hoping that this may revive their sinking marriage. But that morning as they are about to head on out, Lucky hurts his back so badly that he is bedridden and needs Addy to help him with the most smallest of things. Addy is angry and frustrated, does not want to even deal with him anymore, can't even face him in the mornings, and decides
she needs to make a change in her life.

With the help of her best friend and sister Hell (short for Helen) and their friends known as the "Sweat-Hers", a group of gals that all work out together, Addy makes some changes in her life and makes demands upon her husband. But it's not only Addy that makes some changes. It looks like the entire town is in on the act!

While Addy goes on her crusade to make life a little more livable (a paradise in Parker), Lucky becomes closer to the next door neighbor Bob(#1 - the other neighbor on the other side is Bob #2), who has been divorced for some time and has gone through some drastic changes himself. With Bob's help, Lucky makes some of his own drastic changes, which will shock the hell out of the ladies of Parker, Pa, if not just Addy Lipton. The two begin to "talk", unlike any conversation held between two men who are not gay. They start cooking sessions, dress a lot nicer, and basically, Lucky becomes a new man. And while this is all going on, Addy is busy with her female friends, wanting desperately to start a new life, because she feels that no matter what Lucky says or does to win her back, she is done with him. She's ready to move on.

SEARCHING FOR PARADISE was my introduction to author Kris Radish, and I am hooked! Her writing style reminded me in part of one of my favorite authors, Lorna Landvik. Same type of quirky characters living in a small town, with that same feel that I get from Landvik novels. All the characters are fun and unique and likable. The pace of the book is fast; there is a lot of humor despite the downer theme of a marriage on the rocks. The subplots include Addy and Lucky's son and his search for his biological mother, a plot line that adds to Addy's stress while she deals with her failing marriage.

I can't say enough about SEARCHING FOR PARADISE, a very fun and enjoyable read that I think may end up on my list of top books for 2008.

#30 A SOLDIER COMES HOME by Cindi Myers ("number" and date correction)

2008-05-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #30
Date Began and Finished 5/7 - 5/10 2008
Genre - Contemporary Series Romance
Year It Was Published - June 2008
Publisher - Harlequin (Superromance #1498)
Number of Pages 242
Mass Market Paperback
Reason for reading: review for Love Romances And More
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: In A SOLDIER COMES HOME, Captain Ray Hughes has just come home from a tour of duty in Iraq. But no one is meeting him. Unlike all the other soldiers returning from war who have spouses waiting for them, his wife had decided before he came home that she wanted a divorce because she couldn't stand living the lonely life of a military officer's wife, and had moved on and was now living with an ex-friend of his. And, she had left their son behind, a toddler that hardly even remembered him. While at the Special Events Center while figuring out how to get home, a corporal from his unit asks if he needs a ride. Daniel has also just returned from Iraq, and his wife Allison was there by his side to meet him. Dan and Allison drop off Ray, noting the somber look he had when approaching his dark and lonely house.

Chrissie Evans works with Allison at a dental office, and she also happens to live next door to Tammy Hughes, the young woman whose husband Ray had gone off to war. Chrissie befriended Tammy, thinking that she was lonely and needed support, and would often baby sit her child young TJ when Tammy went out on the town. The two also would occasionally go out to bars, where Tammy would flirt and try to pick up other men. Chrissie soon wanted out of this friendship,but she continued to baby sit TJ, who needed love desperately.

By the time Ray had returned from Iraq, TJ was living with his grandparents while Tammy moved in with the new boyfriend. Ray was obviously bitter about what had happened, but he also blamed Chrissie for Tammy's wild ways. He thought that it was Chrissie who influenced Tammy to hang out in bars. While at first Chrissie had shown interest in the soldier, she now was angry that Ray had assumed some terrible things about her without even asking for the real story.

I found A SOLDIER COMES HOME to be a very captivating read. I hadn't' read a Superromance in a while, so this was a treat. Secondary characters Rita and her husband Paul, who was also about to sign up for the war, had a plot line that was equally as important as that of Chrissie and Ray. Often times too many characters bog down the story, but Rita and Paul's struggles with coming to terms with Paul's' brother's death in the war, as well as choosing between fighting in a war or staying home with your spouse was an intriguing part of the book. The story lines meshed well, with Rita being Chrissie's best friend, as well as both stories focusing on the war. I think this is the only romance I've read so far that has incorporated the Iraq war as the main theme of it's story, and Cindi Myers did a good job with it. A SOLDIER COMES HOME is recommended.

#29 DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT by Lauren Henderson

2008-05-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #29
Date Began and Finished 5/7 - 5/10 2008
Genre - Chick Lit
Year It Was Published - 2003
Publisher - Downtown Press
Number of Pages 304
Trade paperback
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Another fun DOWNTOWN PRESS book. In DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT, Katie meets a new boyfriend and moves with him to London. Michael is a very popular good looking guy, and has a reputation for not committing. But Katie thinks he's the one. Michael's best friends Sally and Jude had watched as he constantly meets women and goes from one to another. Sally, by the way, is one of his many ex-girlfriends, but for some reason the two have remained best friends. What Sally can't admit is that she's still in love with him, but she tries to push those feelings away.

Things get complicated as Katie gets herself pregnant, and she and Michael plan for the baby. But Sally knows better, that he's freaking out and sooner or later he's going to run off again. Katie however is excited and thinks that she's got a future with him.

Jude is the friend that stands watch while her best friend Sally makes a fool of herself over Michael, a guy that had treated her horribly in the past and doesn't' get that she's still in love with him.

What i really liked about this book was how complex these characters were. I don't think they write chick lit like this anymore. It was a fun read but at the same time, it's not one dimensional but ultimately the characters do feel realistic, especially with the fact that it's not quite a happily ever after type of book. I recommend DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.

#28 THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER by Theresa Rebeck

2008-05-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #28
Date Began and Finished 5/2 - 5/7 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2008
Publisher - Shaye Areheart Books
Number of Pages 335
Hardcover
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 3.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Pulitzer finalist Theresa Rebeck's debut novel,THREE GIRLS AND THEIR BROTHER was a well-written satire on a segment of the population whose lives are constantly fodder for the entertainment tabloids. The three girls are Daria (age 18) Polly (age 17) and youngest sister Amelia (age 14). They, along with their brother Phillip (age 15) and their ex-beauty contestant mother find themselves at the center of celebrity-dom when the NEW YORKER decides to do a segment on the three girls, whose beauty soon becomes the talk of the town. The fact that the girls are the granddaughters of the famous literary critic Leo Heller is what ultimately helped them to get this attention.

The book is narrated in four parts, with each sibling taking his/her turn. Daria and Polly are obviously wanting the celebrity and are quite excited to become models. Amelia on the other hand is wanting a more normal life, and is quite anxious to return to school. She's a role model of student, enjoys her classes, but finds that once they become celebrities, her life becomes one big mess, with no privacy whatsoever.

Things could have stayed quiet, with just the one photo shoot, but unfortunately another celebrity sees this as an opportunity. Rex Wentworth, a very popular and famous actor, invites the girls for drinks (does he realize Amelia is underage?) and meets them along with their mother and his agent Maureen (a large almost frightening woman who claims she's the great granddaughter of Kafka). Phillip shows up for this outing at Amelia's insistence, against their mother's wishes, and after being served alcoholic drinks and Rex tries to come on to Amelia (he's old enough to be her father), Amelia does the unthinkable and bites him. It didn't' help that they had already angered Maureen during a previous meeting (thanks to Phillip).

Phillip starts the narration and ends his part when he is taken away from the girls to live with their father and his second wife, so that Phillip didn't get "in the way" of the girls' fame and brand new modeling career.

What i found interesting is that with each new narration, the reader gets a different view point of what really happened. Phillip is obviously loyal to Amelia, and it shows in his narration. Daria and Polly are painted as the evil sisters, but once the reader reaches their narration, they find that their motivations are quite different from what we had learned about them from Amelia and Phillip.

Ultimately, the story of the three girls, continues to unravel as Amelia soon is asked to try out for an off-Broadway play,which she at first thinks is dreadful. And then she discovers she's got the acting bug, and announces she will peruse this new interest. Things get out of hand with the media, so they are constantly doing damage control. (A stint on Regis and Kelly was classic). Their mother comes across (to me anyway) as the bad person in this story, as she's the one that really wants the fame and fortune, living vicariously through her daughters and doing what she can to help their careers along. The book ends with a rather over the top scenario, which led me to believe this book would be a great movie script; a lot of laughs, a lot of high drama antics.

Overall, while i found this book well-written, i wasn't' sure whether I really liked it or not. Keeping in mind this was a satire helps, and I have to admit, it IS a book that is hard to put down. It's one thing after another that keeps this book from getting stale. there's a lot of action, but at the same time there is some good psychological type of characterization going on, although it was not as big part of the story line as I'd hoped for. This is NOT a serious type of story, although the way the novel ended will make one think twice. It all reads like a movie script, but many in the industry will agree that it's all spot on.

#27 2COOL2BTRUE by Simon Brooke

2008-05-28T16:09:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #27
Name and Author 2cool2btrue by Simon Brooke
Date Began and Finished 4/27 - 5/2 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2005 this edition
Publisher - Downtown Press
Number of Pages 368
Trade Paperback
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I'm finding that I'm really enjoying these older DOWNTOWN PRESS books. Such fun! In 2cool2btrue, male model Charlie Barrett is ready for a career change. Modeling was supposed to be just a transition to what he'd do later on in life. But in the interim he met fellow model Lauren and the two hit it off. Now living together and for quite a while, it seems things are cooling off between them, especially now that Lauren is focused on a career in television. They rarely see each other, and she seems to be spending all her time with her new boss.

In the mean time, Charlie is contacted by a man that wants to hire Charlie as a marketing person (marketing happened to be his major in college). This was the chance Charlie had been looking for, a chance to get out of modeling and use his degree. He knew his father had been disappointed when Charlie went into modeling, and now he would be able to prove to his father that he could be as successful with a proper job.

The new job is for a start up company called "2cool2btrue", a hip website that would be the place for all those savvy with the Internet to hang out. It all seemed to good to be true, too. He's given carte blanche almost to spend as much as he wants, and notices that his bosses are splurging left and right on many extravagant things. But Charlie, naive as he is, trusts them and figured that the company is doing great.

But then the unthinkable happens : The two founders of the company disappear, and no one seems to know where they have gone. And then they all find out that the two founders have been embezzling funds, and tons of bills are unpaid, and there is no money to pay these bills. Charlie is now the scapegoat,as he's the only one left that was "in charge" and he was also a cosigner on several checks. Charlie's world is falling apart, and not only that, his father is acting very strangely, more than usual, and Charlie needs to find out what is going on.

2cool2btrue was a really intriguing story that kept my glued to the pages until the very end. It's books like this that i keep coming back for more. What i loved about this book was the characters, and how the author kept me guessing on what was really going on, who was being deceptive and who was on the up and up. Nora, a journalist that keeps hounding Charlie regarding the company's problems, is a total mystery and kept me guessing about her ultimate motives. Was she just out to get a story, or did she have any feelings for Charlie? The really funny twist to the story had to do with Charlie's girlfriend and her boss, and that doesn't play out until nearly the end. Great story, great writing!

Ratmammy's reads for April 2008

2008-05-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

Here are the books I read in April 2008

(rating based on 5 Stars being the best)

#18 START LIVING,START LOSING - Weight Watchers Pgs 232 - 4/5 stars (Amazon vine)

#19 IF LOVE IS GOOD TO ME by Francine Craft Pgs 296-2.5/5 stars

#20 WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen Pgs 331 -4.5/5 stars

#21 BUBBLES BETROTHED by Sarah Strohmeyer Pgs 289 -4/5 stars

#22 HELLO, DOGGY! by Elaine Fox Pgs 371- 4/5 stars (curled up)

#23 THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS by Dorothea Benton Frank Pgs 354- 4.5/5 stars (LR)

#24 MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES by Gabriel Garcia Pgs 115 -3.5/5 stars

#25 EVERY SECRET THING by Ann Tatlock Pgs 364- 4/5 stars (curled up)

#26 TWISTED CREEK by Jodi Thomas Pgs 296 -4/5 stars (curled up)

My favorite book this month was WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. This will definitely be on my top 20 at the end of the year.

My least favorite book was IF LOVE IS GOOD TO ME, which is interesting because another of this author's book was my least favorite last month! She's written quite a lot of books, and I can't believe they are all this bad.. doesn't make any sense! But then again, it's all a matter of opinion and maybe what i think is bad passes for good with someone else...

Average 88.67 pages per day

Average pages per book: 294.2

I did better in April than i have the rest of the year so far. What helped was I got really sick that month and had more time to read. Plus a trip to Japan allowed me to finish 3 books while on the plane...

Of the 9 books I read this month, the following were books for review or requests by the author/publisher:

START LIVING,START LOSING - review for Amazon Vine

HELLO, DOGGY! - review for Curled up

THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS - review for Love romances and more

EVERY SECRET THING - review for curled up

TWISTED CREEK - review for Curled up

This was the best reading month I've had all year. Not sure how May will stack up. So far I have finished 3 books, so that's not too bad and all these books so far have been good.

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-Ins #73

2008-05-26T18:10:00.000-07:00

1. On my laziest day I like to read all day!
2. Writing book reviews or cooking a meal makes me feel like I'm being productive.
3. I love little animals and big houses.

4. This summer I want to stay home and not have to work!.
5. A whim made me start my blog.
6. Red skies and orange hair. (this just popped up in my mind)
7.
And as for the weekend, Friday I was looking forward to a quiet evening at home, Saturday my plans included going grocery shopping and running to the bank and Sunday, I went out with friends to CROCE'S restaurant!

#26 TWISTED CREEK by Jodi Thomas

2008-05-26T06:07:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #26
Date Began and Finished 4/25 - 4/27 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - April 2008
Publisher - Berkley
Number of Pages 296
Mass Market Paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Curled Up
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Allie Daniels hasn't had much success in life. She and her grandmother move from town to town, wherever the money can be made. Then she gets news that she's inherited property from an uncle she's never heard of, and because her luck has run out, she decides to see how much the property is worth. She brings her grandmother with her, and with what little they they drive to a small town in Texas, Twisted Creek,located almost in the middle of nowhere. What they find out is very discouraging, but it's all they have.

Allie has inherited a run down store that seems to be the main place where people in town get their supplies. The towns people are aware that Allie will be taking over for her "uncle", and help her get acquainted with the store and the people, and soon Allie is running the store and selling all sorts of products to any one that needs it. And with Nana in the kitchen, they also begin serving meals to the local regulars, a group of misfits that come to see the cafe a second home.

Luke is on a mission, but Allie and most of the townspeople don't really know who he is. However, he happens to be someone that knew Allie's "uncle",and part of his reason for sneaking into the vacated store is to find out who Allie is and whether she's got hidden motives regarding the inheritance. She's a woman that has never made an appearance in town until after her "uncle" has died, but Luke as well as the rest of the town were expecting her to show up, because of the inheritance. Luke appears to Allie as a bum, a hippie, but his appearance is deceiving, which is what he intended all along. But why he is in town, and who he really is, has to remain a mystery in order for him to accomplish what he was sent for. Allie doesn't' trust him, but at the same time she is intrigued by him and attracted to him.

I enjoyed TWISTED CREEK a lot more than i had expected. The writing was well done, the characters were well drawn out and likable, and I felt the structure of the story was also very solid. The reader will easily feel for Allie and her relationship with Nana, the woman who took care of her like a mother would. The various minor characters were as well-rounded as the main characters, and i enjoyed reading about them, especially the scenes in which they all met for dinner every night at the cafe. The only thing that bothered me a little is that I felt that the entire book should have been told in the 3rd person, but for some reason the book would switch to a first person narrative when it was told in Allie's perspective. It felt awkward to me switching from 1st to third throughout the book, and would have been much smoother if the author kept to the third person the entire time.

There are two plot lines in the story, one that follows the mystery of who this uncle is that named Allie in his will, and the other is the plot line that follows Luke's undercover mission. I felt both story lines were done well, and was surprised at how well Luke's story actually fit in. I would definitely read more by Jodi Thomas.

1% Challenge - My choices

2008-05-21T13:53:00.000-07:00

Here are the books that I will pick from when I do the 1% challenge....

1. Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
3. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
4. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
5. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
6. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
7. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
8. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
9. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
10. Underworld – Don DeLillo
11. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
12. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
13. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
14. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
15. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
16. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
17. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
18. Beloved – Toni Morrison
19. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
20. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
21. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
22. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
23. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein

Books I've already read from the 1001 list of books

2008-05-21T13:21:00.000-07:00

19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
27. Unless – Carol Shields
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
86. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
89. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
117. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
145. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
195. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
242. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
258. Neuromancer – William Gibson
272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
276. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
303. The World According to Garp – John Irving
320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
375. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
389. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
425. Herzog – Saul Bellow
427. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
444. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
470. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
492. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
496. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov (1/2 finished)
527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
539. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
542. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
564. Animal Farm – George Orwell
566. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
588. Native Son – Richard Wright
603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
660. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
676. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence (1/2 finished)
695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
717. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
791. The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
797. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain (im' not sure if i did or not)
840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy (I may have startd this one)
854. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
893. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
895. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
906. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
920. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

1001 Book list by 3M

2008-05-21T13:13:00.000-07:00

I have decided to check out this list and accomplish this goal. I'll list the books I will read in the next post:

The goal of this challenge is to read 10 books in 10 months from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. For you non-math people, 10 out of 1001 is approximately 1%, hence the title. The challenge will run from May 1, 2008 through February 28, 2009.

You may change your list at any time and cross-posting to other challenges is permitted. The only requirement is that your ten book choices must be on the ‘1001 List‘.

1001 List Published by 3M

1. 2000s Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro
2. Saturday – Ian McEwan
3. On Beauty – Zadie Smith
4. Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
5. Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
6. The Sea – John Banville
7. The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
8. The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
9. The Master – Colm Tóibín
10. Vanishing Point – David Markson
11. The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
12. Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
13. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
14. Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
15. The Colour – Rose Tremain
16. Thursbitch – Alan Garner
17. The Light of Day – Graham Swift
18. What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
19. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
20. Islands – Dan Sleigh
21. Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
22. London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
23. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
24. Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
25. The Double – José Saramago
26. Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
27. Unless – Carol Shields
28. Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
29. The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
30. That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
31. In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
32. Shroud – John Banville
33. Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
34. Youth – J.M. Coetzee
35. Dead Air – Iain Banks
36. Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
37. The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
38. Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
39. Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
40. Platform – Michael Houellebecq
41. Schooling – Heather McGowan
42. Atonement – Ian McEwan
43. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
44. Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
45. The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
46. Fury – Salman Rushdie
47. At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
48. Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
49. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
50. The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
51. An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
52. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
53. Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
54. White Teeth – Zadie Smith
55. The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
56. Under the Skin – Michel Faber
57. Ignorance – Milan Kundera
58. Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
59. Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
60. City of God – E.L. Doctorow
61. How the Dead Live – Will Self
62. The Human Stain – Philip Roth
63. The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
64. After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
65. Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
66. Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
67. House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
68. Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
69. Pastoralia – George Saunder

1900s
70. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
71. The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
72. Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
73. As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
74. Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
75. Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
76. The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
77. Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
78. Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
79. Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
80. Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
81. Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
82. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
83. All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
84. The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
85. Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
86. The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
88. Another World – Pat Barker
89. The Hours – Michael Cunningham
90. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
91. Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
92. The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
93. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
94. Great Apes – Will Self
95. Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
96. Underworld – Don DeLillo
97. Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
98. The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
99. American Pastoral – Philip Roth
100. The Untouchable – John Banville
101. Silk – Alessandro Baricco
102. Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
103. Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
104. Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
105. The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
106. Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
107. Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
108. The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
109. Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
110. The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
111. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
112. The Information – Martin Amis
113. The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
114. Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
115. The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
116. The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
117. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
118. Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
119. The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
120. Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
121. The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
122. Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
123. Land – Park Kyong-ni
124. The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
125. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
126. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
127. City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
128. How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
129. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
130. Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
131. Disappearance – David Dabydeen
132. The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
133. The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
134. Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
135. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
136. Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
137. Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
138. Complicity – Iain Banks
139. On Love – Alain de Botton
140. What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
141. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
142. The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
143. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
144. The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
145. The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
146. The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
147. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
148. Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
149. The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
150. A Heart So White – Javier Marias
151. Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
152. Indigo – Marina Warner
153. The Crow Road – Iain Banks
154. Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
155. Jazz – Toni Morrison
156. The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
157. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
158. The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
159. Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
160. The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
161. Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
162. Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
163. Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
164. Arcadia – Jim Crace
165. Wild Swans – Jung Chang
166. American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
167. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
168. Mao II – Don DeLillo
169. Typical – Padgett Powell
170. Regeneration – Pat Barker
171. Downriver – Iain Sinclair
172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
173. Wise Children – Angela Carter
174. Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
175. Amongst Women – John McGahern
176. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
177. Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
178. Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
179. The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
180. The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
181. A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
182. Like Life – Lorrie Moore
183. Possession – A.S. Byatt
184. The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
185. The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
186. A Disaffection – James Kelman
187. Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
188. Moon Palace – Paul Auster
189. Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
190. Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
191. The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
192. The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
193. The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
194. The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
195. Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
196. A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
197. London Fields – Martin Amis
198. The Book of Evidence – John Banville
199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
201. The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
202. Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
203. The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
204. The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
205. Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
206. Libra – Don DeLillo
207. The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
208. Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
209. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
210. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
211. The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
212. The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
213. The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
214. The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
215. The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
216. The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
217. Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
218. The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
219. The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
220. World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
221. Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
222. The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
223. Beloved – Toni Morrison
224. Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
225. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
226. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
227. Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
228. The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
229. Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
230. An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
231. Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
232. Foe – J.M. Coetzee
233. The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
234. Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
235. The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
236. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
237. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
238. The Cider House Rules – John Irving
239. A Maggot – John Fowles
240. Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
241. Contact – Carl Sagan
242. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
243. Perfume – Patrick Süskind
244. Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
245. White Noise – Don DeLillo
246. Queer – William Burroughs
247. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
248. Legend – David Gemmell
249. Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
250. The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
251. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
252. The Lover – Marguerite Duras
253. Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
254. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
255. Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
256. The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
257. Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
258. Neuromancer – William Gibson
259. Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
260. Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
261. Shame – Salman Rushdie
262. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
263. Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
264. La Brava – Elmore Leonard
265. Waterland – Graham Swift
266. The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
267. The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
268. The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
269. The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
270. If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
271. A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
272. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
273. Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
274. A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
275. Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
276. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
277. The Newton Letter – John Banville
278. On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
279. Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
280. The Names – Don DeLillo
281. Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
283. The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
284. July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
285. Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
286. Broken April – Ismail Kadare
287. Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
288. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
289. Rites of Passage – William Golding
290. Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
291. Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
292. City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
293. The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
294. The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
295. Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
296. Shikasta – Doris Lessing
297. A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
298. Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
299. The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
300. If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
301. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
302. The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
303. The World According to Garp – John Irving
304. Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
305. The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
306. The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
307. Yes – Thomas Bernhard
308. The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
309. In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
310. The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
311. Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
312. The Shining – Stephen King
313. Dispatches – Michael Herr
314. Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
315. Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
316. The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
317. The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
318. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
319. The Public Burning – Robert Coover
320. Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
321. Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
322. Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
323. Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
324. Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
325. W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
326. A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
327. Grimus – Salman Rushdie
328. The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
329. Fateless – Imre Kertész
330. Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
331. High Rise – J.G. Ballard
332. Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
333. Dead Babies – Martin Amis
334. Correction – Thomas Bernhard
335. Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
336. The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
337. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
338. The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
339. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
340. Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
341. Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
342. A Question of Power – Bessie Head
343. The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
344. The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
345. Crash – J.G. Ballard
346. The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
347. Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
348. The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
349. Sula – Toni Morrison
350. Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
351. The Breast – Philip Roth
352. The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
353. G – John Berger
354. Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
355. House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
356. In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
357. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
358. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
359. Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
360. The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
361. Rabbit Redux – John Updike
362. The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
363. The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
364. The Ogre – Michael Tournier
365. The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
366. Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
367. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
368. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
369. Troubles – J.G. Farrell
370. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
371. The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
372. Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
373. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
374. Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
375. Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
376. The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
377. The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
378. Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
379. The Godfather – Mario Puzo
380. Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
381. Them – Joyce Carol Oates
382. A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
383. Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
384. Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
385. The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
386. Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
387. Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
388. The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
389. 2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
390. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
391. Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
392. The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
393. In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
394. A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
395. The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
396. Chocky – John Wyndham
397. The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
398. The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
399. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
400. The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
401. Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
402. The Joke – Milan Kundera
403. No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
404. The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
405. A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
406. The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
407. Trawl – B.S. Johnson
408. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
409. The Magus – John Fowles
410. The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
411. Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
412. Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
413. The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
414. Things – Georges Perec
415. The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
416. August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
417. God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
418. Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
419. The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
420. Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
421. Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
422. Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
423. Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
424. The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
425. Herzog – Saul Bellow
426. V. – Thomas Pynchon
427. Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
428. The Graduate – Charles Webb
429. Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
430. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
431. The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
432. Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
433. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
434. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
435. The Collector – John Fowles
436. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
437. A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
438. Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
439. The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
440. The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
441. Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
442. Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
443. The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
444. Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
445. Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
446. A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
447. Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
448. Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
449. Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
450. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
451. Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
452. The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
453. How It Is – Samuel Beckett
454. Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
455. The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
456. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
457. Rabbit, Run – John Updike
458. Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
459. Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
460. Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
461. Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
462. The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
463. Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
464. Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
465. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
466. Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
467. Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
468. The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
469. Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
470. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
471. The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
472. Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
473. Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
474. Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
475. Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
476. The End of the Road – John Barth
477. The Once and Future King – T.H. White
478. The Bell – Iris Murdoch
479. Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
480. Voss – Patrick White
481. The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
482. Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
483. Homo Faber – Max Frisch
484. On the Road – Jack Kerouac
485. Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
486. Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
487. The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
488. Justine – Lawrence Durrell
489. Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
490. The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
491. The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
492. Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
493. The Floating Opera – John Barth
494. The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
495. The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
496. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
497. A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
498. The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
499. The Quiet American – Graham Greene
500. The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
501. The Recognitions – William Gaddis
502. The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
503. Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
504. I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
505. Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
506. The Story of O – Pauline Réage
507. A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
508. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
509. Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
510. The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
511. The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
512. The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
513. Watt – Samuel Beckett
514. Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
515. Junkie – William Burroughs
516. The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
517. Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
518. Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
519. The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
520. Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
521. The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
522. Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
523. The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
524. Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
525. Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
526. Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
527. Foundation – Isaac Asimov
528. The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
529. The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
530. The Rebel – Albert Camus
531. Molloy – Samuel Beckett
532. The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
533. The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
534. The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
535. The Third Man – Graham Greene
536. The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
537. Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
538. The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
539. I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
540. The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
541. The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
542. Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
543. The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
544. The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
545. Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
546. The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
547. Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
548. All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
549. Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
550. Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
551. The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
552. Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
553. Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
554. The Victim – Saul Bellow
555. Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
556. If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
557. Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
558. The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
559. The Plague – Albert Camus
560. Back – Henry Green
561. Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
562. The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
563. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
564. Animal Farm – George Orwell
565. Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
566. The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
567. Loving – Henry Green
568. Arcanum 17 – André Breton
569. Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
570. The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
571. Transit – Anna Seghers
572. Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
573. Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
574. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
575. Caught – Henry Green
576. The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
577. Embers – Sandor Marai
578. Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
579. The Outsider – Albert Camus
580. In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
581. The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
582. The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
583. Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
584. Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
585. The Hamlet – William Faulkner
586. Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
587. For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
588. Native Son – Richard Wright
589. The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
590. The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
591. Party Going – Henry Green
592. The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
593. Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
594. At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
595. Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
596. Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
597. Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
598. Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
599. The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
600. After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
601. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
602. Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
603. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
604. Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
605. Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
606. U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
607. Murphy – Samuel Beckett
608. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
609. Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
610. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
611. The Years – Virginia Woolf
612. In Parenthesis – David Jones
613. The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
614. Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
615. To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
616. Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
617. Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
618. The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
619. Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
620. Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
621. Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
622. Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
623. At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
624. Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
625. Independent People – Halldór Laxness
626. Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
627. The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
628. They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
629. The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
630. England Made Me – Graham Greene
631. Burmese Days – George Orwell
632. The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
633. Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
634. Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
635. The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
636. Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
637. A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
638. Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
639. Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
640. Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
641. Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
642. Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
643. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
644. Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
645. A Day Off – Storm Jameson
646. The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
647. A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
648. Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
649. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
650. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
651. To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
652. The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
653. The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
654. The Waves – Virginia Woolf
655. The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
656. Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
657. The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
658. Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
659. Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
660. The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
661. Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
662. Passing – Nella Larsen
663. A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
664. Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
665. Living – Henry Green
666. The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
667. All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
668. Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
669. The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
670. Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
671. The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
672. Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
673. Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
674. Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
675. Orlando – Virginia Woolf
676. Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
677. The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
678. The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
679. Quartet – Jean Rhys
680. Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
681. Quicksand – Nella Larsen
682. Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
683. Nadja – André Breton
684. Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
685. Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
686. To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
687. Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
688. Amerika – Franz Kafka
689. The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
690. Blindness – Henry Green
691. The Castle – Franz Kafka
692. The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
693. The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
694. One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
695. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
696. The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
697. Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
698. Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
699. The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
700. The Counterfeiters – André Gide
701. The Trial – Franz Kafka
702. The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
703. The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
704. Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
705. The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
706. The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
707. We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
708. A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
709. The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
710. Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
711. Cane – Jean Toomer
712. Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
713. Amok – Stefan Zweig
714. The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
715. The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
716. Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
717. Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
718. The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
719. Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
720. The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
721. Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
722. Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
723. Ulysses – James Joyce
724. The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
725. Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
726. The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
727. Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
728. Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
729. Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
730. Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
731. The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
732. The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
733. Summer – Edith Wharton
734. Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
735. Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
736. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
737. Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
738. Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
739. The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
740. The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
741. Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
742. The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
743. The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
744. Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
745. Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
746. Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
747. Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
748. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
749. Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
750. Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
751. The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
752. Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
753. Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
754. Howards End – E.M. Forster
755. Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
756. Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
757. Martin Eden – Jack London
758. Strait is the Gate – André Gide
759. Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
760. The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
761. A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
762. The Iron Heel – Jack London
763. The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
764. The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
765. Mother – Maxim Gorky
766. The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
767. The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
768. Young Törless – Robert Musil
769. The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
770. The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
771. Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
772. Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
773. Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
774. Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
775. The Golden Bowl – Henry James
776. The Ambassadors – Henry James
777. The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
778. The Immoralist – André Gide
779. The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
780. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
781. The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
782. Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
783. Kim – Rudyard Kipling
784. Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
785. Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad

1800s
786. Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
787. The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
788. The Awakening – Kate Chopin
789. The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
790. The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
791. The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
792. What Maisie Knew – Henry James
793. Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
794. Dracula – Bram Stoker
795. Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
796. The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
797. The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
798. Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
799. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
800. The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
801. The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
802. Born in Exile – George Gissing
803. Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
804. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
805. News from Nowhere – William Morris
806. New Grub Street – George Gissing
807. Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
808. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
809. The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
810. The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
811. La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
812. By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
813. Hunger – Knut Hamsun
814. The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
815. Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
816. Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
817. The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
818. The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
819. She – H. Rider Haggard
820. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
821. The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
822. Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
823. King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
824. Germinal – Émile Zola
825. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
826. Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
827. Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
828. Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
829. The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
830. A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
831. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
832. The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
833. The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
834. Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
835. Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
836. Nana – Émile Zola
837. The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
838. The Red Room – August Strindberg
839. Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
840. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
841. Drunkard – Émile Zola
842. Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
843. Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
844. The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
845. The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
846. Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
847. The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
848. Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
849. In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
850. The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
851. Erewhon – Samuel Butler
852. Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
853. Middlemarch – George Eliot
854. Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
855. King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
856. He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
857. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
858. Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
859. Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
860. Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
861. The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
862. The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
863. Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
864. Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
865. The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
866. Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
867. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
868. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
869. Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
870. Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
871. Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
872. The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
873. Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
874. Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
875. Silas Marner – George Eliot
876. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
877. On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
878. Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
879. The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
880. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
881. The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
882. Max Havelaar – Multatuli
883. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
884. Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
885. Adam Bede – George Eliot
886. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
887. North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
888. Hard Times – Charles Dickens
889. Walden – Henry David Thoreau
890. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
891. Villette – Charlotte Brontë
892. Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
893. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
894. The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
895. The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
896. Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
897. The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
898. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
899. Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
900. Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
901. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
902. Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
903. Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
904. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
905. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
906. The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
907. La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
908. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
909. The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
910. Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
911. The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
912. Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
913. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
914. Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
915. The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
916. The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
917. The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
918. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
919. The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
920. Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
921. Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
922. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
923. The Red and the Black – Stendhal
924. The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
925. Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
926. The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
927. The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
928. Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
929. The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
930. Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
931. Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
932. Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
933. Persuasion – Jane Austen
934. Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
935. Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
936. Emma – Jane Austen
937. Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
938. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
939. The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
940. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
941. Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
942. Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth

1700s
943. Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
944. The Nun – Denis Diderot
945. Camilla – Fanny Burney
946. The Monk – M.G. Lewis
947. Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
948. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
949. The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
950. The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
951. Justine – Marquis de Sade
952. Vathek – William Beckford
953. The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
954. Cecilia – Fanny Burney
955. Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
956. Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
957. Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
958. Evelina – Fanny Burney
959. The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
960. Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
961. The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
962. A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
963. Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
964. The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
965. The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
966. Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
967. Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
968. Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
969. Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
970. Candide – Voltaire
971. The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
972. Amelia – Henry Fielding
973. Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
974. Fanny Hill – John Cleland
975. Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
976. Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
977. Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
978. Pamela – Samuel Richardson
979. Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
980. Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
981. Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
982. A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
983. Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
984. Roxana – Daniel Defoe
985. Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
986. Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
987. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
988. A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift

Pre-1700
989. Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
990. The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
991. The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
992. Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
993. The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
994. Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
995. Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
996. The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
997. The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
998. Aithiopika – Heliodorus
999. Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
1000. Metamorphoses – Ovid
1001. Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-Ins #72

2008-05-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-Ins #72

1. There is absolutely NO way you can get me to jump out of a plane!

2. Hot weather reminds me that summer is almost here!

3. I cannot live without my computer!

4. There is nothing i can think of that I'd like to try.

5. When life hands you lemons obviously you make lemonaide. Sorry!

6. Summer time is my favorite childhood memory.

7. And as for the weekend, Friday night I looked forward to reading and some quiet time, Saturday my plans included visiting a friend for lunch in Oceanside, shopping for a Father's day gift and Sunday, I ended up seeing IRON MAN with my husband!

#25 EVERY SECRET THING by Ann Tatlock

2008-05-15T10:52:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #25
Date Began and Finished 4/23 - 4/25 2008
Genre - Christian Fiction
Year It Was Published - October 2007
Publisher - Bethany House
Number of Pages 364
Trade Paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Curled Up
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Elizabeth Gunnar is going back to the school she attended many years ago. She's returning to Seaton Preparatory School as an English teacher, and she has a lot of misgivings about it. Still, she finds that she enjoys teaching there, but there are memories that are making this return somewhat uncomfortable for her.

When she was a student at Seaton, she and her friends admired and loved an English teacher named Mr Dutton, a Vietnam Vet that seemed well-adjusted after the war, but was still probably harboring a lot of the trauma in his mind. it was during one night that Elizabeth and her friends lose Mr Dutton, but the school officials cover up the story and tells the student body that Mr Dutton is recovering from a heart attack and is not going to return to their school. Elizabeth and her friends believe that Mr Dutton is dead, but they do not have any real proof except what the saw that one night when their lives were changed forever.

In the meantime, Elizabeth catches up again with some of the old gang from her Seaton days, including Ray, who she once was involved during their time when their days were filled with Mr Dutton's words. Ray has two children from a marriage that didn't work out, and Elizabeth and Ray decide to renew their relationship and see where it leads them. She questions Ray about Mr Dutton, but Ray doesn't want to have anything to do with that past. He refuses to talk to her about it, and wants to move on.

A student of Elizabeth's, Satchel Queen, is having a hard time in school and for some reason Elizabeth feels compelled to know the girl better. Elizabeth sees that Satchel has a talent for writing, and soon she takes the troubled teen under her wings.

There are a few major spoilers that I want to write but will not, but they are the key to this story and help resolve the story of Mr Dutton as well as Satchel's. There's a lot of drama in this book with the mystery behind Mr Dutton's disappearance, as well as Elizabeth's need to find out the truth behind him. Her relationship with Satchel is another primary story line, and that inevitably links up with Mr Dutton's story. I think this was one of Ann Tatlock's better novels, and I recommend it.

(For those who are not readers of Christian fiction, I feel that this is a book that all readers can enjoy. Elizabeth does have a religious faith that she has neglected, and that is mentioned in the story, but over all the emphasis on Christian fiction is downplayed, and only brought up minimally towards the last half of the book.

#24 MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2008-05-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #24
Date Began and Finished 4/20 - 4/23 2008
Genre - Literature
Year It Was Published - 2005
Publisher - Knopf
Number of Pages 115
Small size Hardcover
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 3.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I really wanted to LOVE this book, but I think again my problem with Gabriel Garcia Marquez (this being the 3rd piece of work that I've read by him) is that I am either not focused on the writing,or I'm simply not getting it. When I enjoy a book, I close the book after the last page with a WOW feeling, or I'm crying, or I wish the book hadn't ended. With MEMORIES OF MY MELANCHOLY WHORES, I didn't have any of these reactions. Yes, I loved this writing - he has a gift for details, and he doesn't hold back. He seems to enjoy writing about illness and bodily fluids, and I'm always laughing out loud during these passages. But when I finished the book, I didn't have the "wow" sensation I expected to have.

The main character, who remains nameless, is about to celebrate his 90th birthday, and wants to give himself a present in the form of a virginal prostitute. He has had prostitutes, hundreds of them, but this time he wants something special. She needs to be untouched and young. His old friend, a madam he has gone to for years, promises to obtain what he wants, and she brings him a young girl, virginal, for his birthday. However, for some reason, he never deflowers her. He instead leaves her untouched (as she gives him the sign that she is frightened) and marvels at her body.

At the same time, he turns to his memories and his long life, his career as a journalist, and the fact that he never married. And night after night, he does not touch this virginal girl, and the one thing he has never had happen to him has happened - he falls in love.

I love reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez because his words are so beautiful. But again, I felt that I couldn't grasp what he really wanted to say in his book. I am disappointed that I don't have the capacity to really appreciate his works, and this will be the last time I will attempt to read a fiction book of his. However, I will read his autobiography, which I hope will be a fascinating read.

#23 THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS by Dorothea Benton Frank

2008-05-14T16:05:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #23
Date Began and Finished 4/13 - 4/20 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - May 2007
Publisher - Avon
Number of Pages 354
Mass Market Paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Love Romances and More
Rating 4.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I haven't read many of Dorothea Benton Frank's books, but each time I do they get better and better. A few years ago I had reviewed a book of hers, and she wrote me and said that I "got it", and that not many people do. She also mentioned that she just had a death in the family, and that she will turn this into a book. I truly believe that book is THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS, and that the death she referred to was her mother.The book is dedicated to her, and the story in part revolves around a woman and her relationship with her elderly mother.

Miriam Elizabeth Swanson lives in New York. She's divorced, and rents out her apartment to help make ends meet. Her good for nothing husband had run off with another woman, much younger, and good riddance to him! Miriam's best friend is her gay renter Kevin, who is the only man in her life that she can trust and depend on. At the start of the story, she is trying to find another renter, to replace the one that had recently died. After much interviewing, they eventually agree on a young woman from Alabama, Liz, who they feel will fit right in.

Miriam's personality is that of a very stuffy southern belle. When I first started reading the book, I had assumed she was elderly. Part of the story line has Miriam writing thank you notes as obsessively and diligently as one can do. She writes these thank you notes for almost everything, and most of them have to do with the social groups she participates in, groups that at one time held her in high regard. but since the divorce, her standing has fallen. Her husband had the money and evidently once the money left she was now considered a nobody.

Miriam's heart however belongs in the south, in the Low Country. When she goes home to visit her mother, she feels her troubles melt away. And when the new renter Liz encounters troubles of her own, Miriam takes Liz home with her to recuperate and to get some mothering from her own mother.

While visiting home, Miriam meets her mother's boyfriend, a much younger man named Harrison Ford (true!). Miriam notices her mother's changed lifestyle, too. She's eating organic, raising her own chicken for eggs, and basically she's a transformed woman. this southern-bred woman is now a hippie, thinks Miriam. her mother must be crazy or it could be just age.

With encouragement from her mother and Harrison, Miriam goes out with a man that Harrison knew, Manny, who brings out the wild side in Miriam, and she even accepts a new nickname, Mellie, which fits just fine. Mellie loosens up her hair so to speak, and to the surprise of everyone becomes a much less stodgy person and a more relaxed woman. But while she's having fun with Manny, she actually has her eyes on Harrison, but she knows Harrison is off limits.

Closer to home, Miriam regrets not having a strong close relationship with her two sons. She had a falling out with one son due to the awful names he had given to his two children, and the other son Miriam wrote off because he moved in with a woman of color who also happened to be boring, and she wasn't even from this country! But something happens to change Miriam's view on life. She vows to change and to not waste her time regretting the past. To prove that she's changed, when Miriam's son Charlie announces that he and Priscilla are finally getting married, she gives him the shock of his life by congratulating him and his fiance, and opens up her arms and heart to both of them. Thus starts their adventures as they plan the wedding,and Miriam hopes that this wedding will be celebrated by the entire family, including her estranged son.

Ultimately, however, THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS is about Miriam (Mellie), who starts off as a person that many people find harsh and stuck up and not very fun, and transforms to a totally different person. Her struggles to unite her family will strike a chord with many people, just as her relationship with her mother will bring out the tissues. I am going to say,without having read all of her books, that THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS is one of her best books yet. A review of this book cannot really describe the wonderful journey the reader will take as they start from the first page and end on that last happy, albeit sentimental, paragraph. THE LAND OF MANGO SUNSETS is highly recommended.

#22 HELLO, DOGGY! by Elaine Fox

2008-05-13T12:50:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #22
Date Began and Finished 4/10 - 4/13 2008
Genre - Romance
Year It Was Published - January 2008
Publisher - Avon
Number of Pages 371
Mass Market Paperback
Reason for reading: Review for CURLED UP
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: This book was fun! At the center of the story is Keenan James. He is currently a guru to women everywhere, in that he gives advice on relationships. He's done quite well and is quite the celebrity. Tory Hoffstra is an insecure psychologist who despises people like Keenan, people who will take advantage of the average consumer and pretend they are experts for a quick buck. Tory has been asked by her publisher to co-write a book with the famous Keenan James, because they want credibility from her but Keenan will bring in the big bucks and guarantee a best seller. Tory is appalled, and says that she wants to check him out first in action.

Keenan leads a weekly group of women to meet and discuss their relationships, and Tory manages to get a spot in his group, but disguises herself as the luscious Vicky Smith. Coincidentally enough, Keenan has just moved into the same building as Tory's s ex-boyfriend Stewart (although they still seem to be in this relationship going nowhere fast), and she runs into him while he is walking his mother's dog (which he has taken on unwillingly to help out his mother). Tory is deathly afraid of dogs, especially the cute golden doodle named Barbara Streisand.

There are a lot of laughs between the antics of this uncontrollable dog and Tory's disguised moments as Vicky Smith at the round table. Tory uses her own relationship with the ex-boyfriend to use for the round table, and eventually it's apparent that she's taking a lot of her own real life; she is no longer making things up. And while Tory at first despised the idea of dressing up, putting on makeup, and making herself look attractive to the opposite sex, she notices the affect she has on men. The scenes with Tory and the two ladies who help make her up every day at the cosmetic counter are pretty funny in themselves.

On top of the main story line with Keenan and "Vicky", we are also introduced to Keenan's family - his brother who seems to be reluctant to see their aging mother who now lives in a home, and of course their mother who loves both her sons and wants them both to be happy. Claudia, Tory's sister, is mistaken for a friend of Tory's, because there is no way Keenan would believe they are related to begin with. Claudia is the opposite of Tory - glamorous, has a lot of friends, and seems to be their mother's favorite. And Tory doesn't like her, but what i found amazing was how Claudia's true self comes out and Elaine Fox did a great job with creating such a fully dimensional character, first allowing the reader to see her through Tory's eyes, and then watch the transformation as Tory begins to understand what her sister is all about.

I think you could classify HELLO, DOGGY partly as a Cinderella story, because Tory goes from ugly duckling to someone very attractive. But it's also a very funny and entertaining book and well written too. I will definitely read more by Elaine Fox.

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill In #71

2008-05-09T10:38:00.000-07:00

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill In #71

1. The loaf of bread had an extra secret ingredient; it was nutmeg! (I just baked an oatmeal spice bread this week, and it had all sorts of ingredients including nutmeg)
2. I love to look out through my window.
3. Right now, I need money.
4. Nowhere is where I went Thursday night; it was nice to be home.
5. Why does love hurt so much?
6. All I can think of is the lack of money.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to catching up on books and book reviews, tomorrow my plans include goofing off and Sunday, I want to no, i'm PLANNING to see my father for Mother's day. We'll have brunch with him, then go to the cemetery to leave flowers for my mother!

#21 BUBBLES BETROTHED by Sarah Strohmeyer

2008-05-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #21
Date Began and Finished 4/7 - 4/10 2008
Genre - Mystery/humor
Year It Was Published - 2005
Publisher - Dutton
Number of Pages 289
Hardcover
Reason for reading: Tbr, trade with friend
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: The BUBBLES series has always been fun. They are very similar to the Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich (the two authors are friends, which is not surprising) and while you can see the influence, there are differences. both are humorous takes on the whodunit, but i think Stephanie Plum is by far the more outrageous of the two characters, often times reaching out into the bizarre. Bubbles Yablonsky is a little more down to earth, although inept in many ways. But that's what endears her to the readers, I believe.

For those who haven't read any of the Bubbles books, Bubbles Yablonsky was a hairdresser (she still hangs out at the House of Beauty), then went to get her degree at a community college that used to be a shopping mall, now known as TWO GUYS COMMUNITY COLLEGE to become a journalist. Bubbles now works for the local paper, and has a hot boyfriend (Stiletto) who is an award winning photographer.

In this book, Bubbles tries to seek an interview with a woman who is accused of murder, and ends up witnessing the accused own death. Crazy Popeye was in jail for murdering Principal Schmidt, but Bubbles learns from Popeye that she's innocent. Of course no one believes it, but Bubbles does, and her mission is now to clear up Popeye's name and the real killer.

In the mean time Stiletto needs a favor from Bubbles. He needs to show that he's engaged in order to avoid a job transfer overseas. Bubbles would rather it be the real thing, but agrees to pose as his fiance for his career. Unfortunately, her mother and others see the "rock" on her finger, and it's not small. Word spreads that Stiletto and Bubbles are about to be married.

Bubbles' ex husband Dan is still in the picture, and there is a twist in his story that changes Bubble's life. It doesn't look like Bubbles is going to get her happily ever after.

I made the mistake of reading the books out of order (I thought for sure this was the last in the series) and instead, I found out what happens in THIS book because I had read the next book first! but regardless, I was still able to enjoy the book. The story line of Principal Schmidt's murder i thought was pretty good, and figuring out who was the real murderer was fun. It is better to read these books in order, because there is continuity throughout the series, but hopefully if you do make the mistake of reading one before the other, I think they are still enjoyable. BUBBLES BETROTHED is recommended and is a great beach read.

#20 WATER FOR ELEPHANTS by Sara Gruen

2008-05-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #20
Date Began and Finished 4/4 - 4/7 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2006
Publisher - Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Number of Pages 331
Hardcover
Reason for reading: Tbr, Group Read
Rating 4.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: This book had a lot of hype the year it came out, and I usually don't like to read books like that until the fuss has died down a bit. A friend sent this to me and I finally found the time to read it (it was also a group read). The book definitely does live up to its reputation, and I will most likely put it down as one of my favorite reads in 2008.

WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is the story of a man, who now in his golden years, is reminiscing about his past and his days in the circus. The book goes back and forth between the two time periods, the present and the past (Depression era), and I think it was done quite nicely. Jacob Jankowski is the narrator and old man that is looking back on the eccentric life he had in the circus, about the people he met and knew, and the woman that changed his life. While Jacob sits in the old folks home, his mind wanders back to those days, often confusing the present with the past.

His past takes us to his story of how he ended up with the circus, just a few exams short of a degree. His future was that of a veterinarian, but that dream was cut short when his parents die suddenly, and he doesn't have the focus to continue. He loses the family home, loses his bright future, and has nowhere to go. Luck brings him to the train that carries the circus from one town to another. He hitches a ride, and thus begins the adventure of a lifetime.

The reader will discover that this book is not really about the circus. Yes, most of the story line does take place behind the scenes of a circus, but what WATER FOR ELEPHANTS is really all about is loyalty, and friendship and love, and the relationships that Jacob develops during these years in the circus. I think while comparing Jacob's current life in the Seniors home to what he had in the circus, is almost akin to that of a caged animal locked up. Jacob's time in this Seniors home is stagnating him, and he continues to look back at his younger years with longing. He remembers all that had transpired, his relationship with his fellow circus entertainers and workers, the circus ringmaster, a cruel and dangerous man who had his gentle side, and the ringmaster's wife, Marlena, who is in a way imprisoned in a marriage that she can't get out of. In the middle of it all is a gentle elephant named Rosie, who becomes an integral part of the circus and an animal that Jacob takes under his wing. It is Rosie's relationship with several of the main characters that helps tell the story of these people, leading back to Jacob's present state and where his last remaining days on earth will take him.

I highly recommend WATER FOR ELEPHANTS. It's an insightful story about people, in an unusual setting.

#19 IF LOVE IS GOOD TO ME by Francine Craft

2008-05-03T15:47:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #19
Date Began and Finished 4/1 - 4/4 2008
Genre - African American Contemporary Romance
Year It Was Published - October 2007
Publisher - Kimani Romance #14
number of Pages 296
Mass Market Paperback
Reason for reading: Tbr
Rating 2.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I decided to pick this book up because I had just read another book by the same author, and since that other book was still fresh in my mind, i wanted to see if i had the same feelings for this book as well. If so, i wouldn't' be reading her again...

The title IF LOVE IS GOOD TO ME comes from a song that is written by one of the main characters, and that seems to be the only connection to the book. The book takes us to Tenerife, Spain, because Dosha Steele is trying to escape the memories of a former love. In the prologue, Dosha and her new love Christian Montero, a man of mix racial ancestry, have just had their cards read and the results show a rather dark future. This is supposedly telling the reader that something bad is going to happen.

I'm not going to go into the plot. I felt a lot of this was not very structured, but what was really annoying was the dialog and way the book was written. I felt like i was reading an old fashioned harlequin from the 60's, and the use of a lot of dated lingo was also very grating on my nerves. After reading a few reviews on this book, I realized it wasn't just me. For some reason this book reads like it was written by someone who does not know modern lingo and I did not get the impression that Dosha was black. I also felt cheated by Christian's character, because he was supposed to be one of many descendants of African Americans called "Brown Babies", babies that were born as a result of American G.I's stationed in Europe. Yes, i got the sense that he was very Spanish, but there really wasn't any hint of the history of these people, except for the occasional reference to them.

I do not recommend this book, as I felt almost embarrassed reading it. I cannot imagine all her books are as bad as this, because she's published so many romances in her writing career. I am just hoping this is one of the few novels she's written that were not worth reading.

#18 START LIVING, START LOSING - Weight Watchers

2008-05-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #18
Date Began and Finished 3/28 - 4/1 2008
Genre - Non Fiction
Year It Was Published - January 2008
Publisher - Wiley
Number of Pages 232
hardcover
Reason for reading: Review Amazon Vine
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: START LIVING, START LOSING is a series of short inspirational pieces written by people who have had success with Weight Watchers and lost and kept off weight. What I especially liked about this book is that it gave me ideas on what i was doing wrong with my own weight loss program, as well as help motivate me to change my current eating habits and try something different. Stories came from 'average every day people' to celebrities such as the Duchess of York, and the amount of weight loss varied from 10 lbs to hundreds of pounds.

I recommend START LIVING, START LOSING to anyone trying to make a life change and wanting to lose some weight. There's a lot of great ideas in this book. It's fast reading, too, so for those who aren't big readers shouldn't be intimidated by this book.

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-In #70

2008-05-02T10:24:00.000-07:00

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-In #70

1. Two of my favorite ingredients in a drink are water and coffee (sorry, i don't do alchoholic beverages anymore)!

2. Life often amazes me.

3. You can keep doing that forever, the dog is stupid.

4. Gather your ingredients, mix it all together and voila! You have a slow cooker meal!.

5. If I had a yard with a garden, I would love to grow an english garden.

6. Making love is best au naturel.

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to a quiet evening on the computer to work on reviews, tomorrow my plans include possibly going out to dinner and Sunday, I want to go to a coffee house and read my book!

Booking through Thursday 5-1-2008

2008-05-01T11:48:00.000-07:00

Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember….

hell, i buy a book!!! Are you kidding me? I forget to grab a book, i buy one! I haven't bought a book at an airport in years, though, since I do always remember to bring one with me.. but still....... i will always find time to buy a book if needed...

Ratmammy's March 2008 Reads

2008-04-30T17:35:00.001-07:00

Here are the books I read in March 2008
(rating based on 5 Stars being the best)
#13 MADNESS by Marya Hornbacher Pgs 320 - 4/5 stars
#14 ONE MORE SUNRISE by Michael Landon Jr and Tracie Peterson Pgs 358 - 3.5/5 stars #15 PLEASURE by Eric Jerome Dickey Pgs 442- 4/5 stars
#16 DESIGNED FOR PASSION by Francine Craft Pgs 248 - 3/5 stars
#17 REMEMBER ME? by Sophie Kinsella Pgs 389 -4/5 stars

My favorite book this month was a tie between MADNESS and REMEMBER ME. Both are different types of books, but both books were ones that I had a hard time putting down.

My least favorite book was DESIGNED FOR PASSION. I didn't think the writing was as good as it could have been, but gave it a 3 for it's subject matter (beauty in the body of a large woman). I'm actually reading another book by the same author, and I think this will be the last time I read this author. Something about her writing is off, like she's writing for a totally different time period...

Average 56.67 pages per day

Average pages per book: 351.4

I'm spending less time reading, but the books are growing longer...

Of the 5 books I read this month, all were either books for Review Or requests from the author/publisher--

MADNESS - review for Curled up
ONE MORE SUNRISE - review for Love Romances
PLEASURE - review for Bookreporter.com
DESIGNED FOR PASSION - review request by author for Love romances
REMEMBER ME - review for Love Romances

This was an interesting reading month, since I read a diverse set of books. One was a psychological memoir, another was African American romance, another was African American erotic, another was Christian fiction, and one was chick lit!

Now that I'm off work again, I hope to fit in more reading time, but so far I haven't been too successful.

#17 REMEMBER ME? by Sophie Kinsella

2008-04-30T17:35:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #17
Date Began and Finished 3/26- 3/28 2008
Genre - chick Lit
Year It Was Published - March 4, 2008
Publisher - Dial Press
Number of Pages 389
hardcover
Reason for reading: Review for Love Romances and More
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I've only read the Shopaholic series by Kinsella so wasn't sure if one of her standalones would be worth reading. But REMEMBER ME? was a very delightful book, so I'm looking forward to reading more by this author.

The story starts with the main character, Lexi Smart, having drinks with friends in a bar. As they leave the place, she falls and hits her head. Next thing she finds herself in hospital and is told it's now 3 years later? She is flabbergasted! She has lost her memory and all that had happened to her in the last 3 years. Her last memory was of the drinks she had with her best friends Carolyn, Debs, and Fi. She was slightly over weight, and was called Snaggletooth by loved ones. But, upon looking at herself now, 3 years later, she's got really nice nails, her hair has been nicely done, she's got very expensive clothes and handbag, and she's lost a lot of weight. Furthermore, she's no longer Snaggletooth. Her teeth had been straightened out! What the hell happened?

REMEMBER ME is Lexi's journey as she tries to put together the puzzle of the last 3 years. She cannot understand how she had changed so much, and why she married a very wealthy man who doesn't seem to be a good fit for her, at least for the old Lexi Smart. She has new best friends, her new job is being the head of the department she used to work for (Flooring), and lives in a very wealthy home in a very wealthy neighborhood. And, she's been told, she was on television. She finds her way as she "meets" her new friends and old, and asks questions that slowly bring her back to where she left off. The ultimate question, though, is why?

I found this a very fun read, reminiscent of the Shopaholic books but the main character is not as aggravating as I know many readers found Becky Bloomwood, the shopaholic. Lexi is a lot smarter than Becky, as is shown from her track record from just another flunky in flooring, to a director who has saved the company from ruin. But REMEMBER ME? is Lexi's quest to find her real self, to try to remember who she was and where she came from, and where she should be going, whether it be with her new wonderful husband Eric, or someone else entirely.

#16 DESIGNED FOR PASSION by Francine Craft

2008-04-29T17:34:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #16
Date Began and Finished 3/21- 3/26 2008
Genre - African American contemporary romance
Year It Was Published - March, 2008
Publisher - Kimani romance #082
Number of Pages 282
Mass market paperback
Reason for reading: Review by Author's request (Love romances)
Rating 3/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Melodye Carter has always been over weight, and her sister and mother never let her forget it! Despite her sister and mother's cruel behavior, Melodye has always been her own person and has done quite well for herself. She's got a successful boutique for plus-sized women and had been married until her husband died in a shooting. She's conflicted over her feelings for her deceased husband, because their marriage wasn't as perfect as it could have been.

Detective Jim Ryman is helping out with the case of Melodye's husband's murder,and while he gets to know Melodye better, he feels drawn to her. There are sparks flying between them, but to start anything now would be inappropriate. Still, he looks forward to spending time with her and her two children. His mother helps Melodye out by baby sitting the kids, and through the children he's gotten to know Melodye too.
Jim has his own history. His wife had also passed away and he's not ready to start fresh. But if he ever did love a woman again it would be someone like Melodye.

While part of the focus of DESIGNED FOR PASSION is the find the person who killed Melodye's husband Rafael, the core story centers on Melodye's blossoming relationship with the detective assigned to the case, Jim Ryman. He proves to her that larger woman are beautiful too, and one of the main themes of the book is to show that you don't have to be thin to be beautiful. Melodye has a successful career despite her mother's disinterest and lack of moral support. Despite the type of environment she grew up in, Melodye made a name for herself.

Melodye's sister and mother are portrayed as two very mean-spirited people, but by the end of the book it is explained why they became the people they were, and why they treated Melodye the way they did. Nothing excuses that type of behavior, but I found it interesting and was also relieved to discover there was a reason for this bad behavior, and not just an element of the book to make it more interesting.

I had some issues with the writing; I wish I had written these down but there were moments in the book that the language didn't ring true; "who talks like that??" is what I wanted to say. Because of that I'm only giving this book a 3 star rating. I think the moral of the book is important, but the story could have been written much better. I plan on reading another book by this author soon to see how it compares to this most recent one. She's written a number of books and I can't believe someone with bad writing skills would be contracted to write more for one publisher.

TMI Tuesday #133

2008-04-29T08:54:00.001-07:00

1. Early bird or night owl? Early Bird

2. Where was the first place you ever had sex? a bed

3. On a scale of 1-10, how happy are you? (1 is lowest, 10 is highest) 8

4. Are you more submissive or dominant? dominant

5. Do you believe in love at first sight? yes!

Bonus (as in optional): Describe your bed time habits. What side do you sleep on? What do you usual wear? Any night time rituals?

I sleep on the right side, wear a HUGE tshirt (size XXXL) and i like to read a bit before going to sleep. I also journal for the day - my eating habits, weight, good things of the day...

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-In #69

2008-04-28T22:28:00.000-07:00

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill-In #69

1. When I fell in love I knew it would be "the one"!
2. I get allergies when the flowers bloom and it heats up outside!
3. Oh no! The internet connection is down, and I'm really pissed off!!!.
4. SURREAL LIFE is the craziest tv show ever.
5. Cheese and crackers make a great meal!
6. The perfect house has a garden.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to My cousin's wedding in Japan (we just got home today) , tomorrow my plans included shopping in Shinjuku, and Sunday, I want to rest after the wedding!

#15 PLEASURE by Eric Jerome Dickey

2008-04-22T17:34:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #15
Date Began and Finished 3/12- 3/21 2008
Genre - Erotic Fiction
Year It Was Published - April 1, 2008
Publisher - Dutton
Number of Pages 442
Hardcover
Reason for reading: Review for Bookreporter.com
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: While I'm a big fan of Eric Jerome Dickey, I was a bit hesitant when I heard that this book was erotic fiction. I have always imagined erotic fiction to be plot-less stories with non-stop sex scenes. And when I started reading the book, it did seem to be just that. But as the reader progresses with PLEASURE, one will find out that there is more to this book than just plain sex. Yes, Nia Simone Bijou makes her living as a writer who dabbles in erotic fiction and yes, she admires the writings of Anais Nin, famous for her erotica. But there is a plot!

The book opens with Nia having an erotic fantasy. But when it ends, she finds a text message waiting from her ex-boyfriend Logan. The reader soon learns that Logan is pretty much stalking her. He can't accept that their relationship is over. He cannot accept that she's moved to a different state to get rid of him. He continues to pursue her, which gets Nia angrier every time he tries to contact her. Thank God he doesn't know where she lives...

Move to a scene with Nia running up a hill and she encounters a really fine looking black man. She wants to get to know him better. Surprise! She finds out he's one of two identical twin brothers, and that their meeting is the first of many future encounters that opens up a new world of sexual delights. The two men are twins but they are different. One is married, and he's the one that touches Nia's soul. She relates to him and wants to get to know him. The other brother has a rougher edge; he's single but he's got a past that still haunts him. A tattoo of KENYA is his secret, and she's a woman that he cannot let go.

A good part of the novel is sex. The three of them experiment and bring Nia to new highs. She meets a friend of theirs, Kiki Sunshine, who models for Karl, the single brother who is a professional photographer. Nia is attracted to Kiki's beauty, and eventually the three of them get together for more sex. But it's a one on one encounter between Kiki and Nia that gets Nia excited. She cannot get Kiki off her mind.

The book continues with the sexual encounters, but then another person enters the equation - Mark's wife is an unknown person to Nia, but she finds out by accident who the wife is. Mark happens to be married to the most famous person in Atlanta, a morning show reporter that is beloved by all, Jewell Stewark. On TV Jewell appears as a very classy and sophisticated woman, a professional. But when Nia encounters Jewell by accident as Nia and Karl are driving to his condo, Jewell appears and it's not pretty. There is a lot of hate and anger in Jewell when she sees Karl, and Nia cannot figure out why this is happening.

For long time Eric Jerome Dickey fans, PLEASURE is his wildest book yet. Dickey has been slowly drifting towards a more erotic form of novel with his past few books, getting away from the urban tales he's had centered around Los Angeles and Southern California. The few sex scenes he's had in past books, however, showed that he is good at writing them. Not all writers can get away with writing sex scenes, but Dickey knows how to do it right. PLEASURE is filled with hot, sexy, over the top scenes. If this were a movie, it would be rated XXX. But it's not all about sex. PLEASURE is a woman's search for happiness as she explores her sexual side, while at the same time coming to terms with a relationship that went wrong. The subplot involving the twins and their story of tangled love and the mess they made is just as tawdry as it sounds. I didn't think I'd like this book as much as I have his older books, but I was surprised and found that once again Eric Jerome Dickey has done it again. He's written a fast moving book that the reader will not be able to put down.

#14 ONE MORE SUNRISE by Michael Landon Jr and Tracie Peterson

2008-04-20T17:33:00.001-07:00

Number of Book #14
Date Began and Finished 3/6/- 3/12 2008
Genre - Christian fiction
Year It Was Published - Jan 1, 2008
Publisher - Bethany House
Number of Pages 358
Trade paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Love Romances and More
Rating 3.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Michael Landon Jr's debut novel, ONE MORE SUNRISE falls under the Christian Fiction category and centers on a man, Joe Daley, whose life did not follow the route that he had mapped out as a young man. The book opens in August of 1941, and young seventeen-year old Joe is intent on sneaking out of the house in order to meet his girlfriend Meg. He is in love and wants to surprise her with a plane ride and a marriage proposal. it is a romantic scene out of the movies, and at this point in his life, Joe feels that he has the world to look forward to, a future bride, and a promising future.

Chapter two jumps forward to the summer of 1958, and Meg is looking through some old papers and books from high school, and remembers the joy she felt before she and Joe were married. However, the years since have been difficult, as one thing or another happened to change the happy future the newlyweds were looking forward to. Meg rarely sees Joe now, and when she does they argue. Joe spends most of his time either at work or in the bars, and all he can think about is how pitiful his life has become. He feels sorry for himself, and lets this attitude take over. Meg does her best to keep the family together, but the longer this goes on, the more frustrated and unhappy she becomes.

Out of the blue, several people enter their lives that alters their futures in a big way. First off, an high school admirer shows up back in town, a boy who had to leave before finishing high school because of something his father had done. Now, Luke Ramsey has returned, claiming that he wanted to make up for what his father had done to the townspeople years ago. Luke works for a corporation that is buying out the local farmers and making life "better" for everyone. He proposes to help out Joe and Meg by hiring Joe as one of the company's pilots. Joe doesn't want anything to do with Luke, but he eventually gives in.

Another person to show up is Meg's old friend Norma, who shows up in town with three foster children and no husband. They want to start a new life working the farmland she had inherited, and wants to come back to her roots. Luke's company needs her land, but Norma doesn't want to sell.

Then, Joe has a life altering experience while flying his plane one day. He loses control of his plane when something hits it (probably a bird) and he promises God to change his ways if he lives. Joe finds it hard to keep this promise, and unfortunately Meg doesn't believe he will keep that promise to mend his ways. She knows he's an alcoholic, and she wants nothing more to do with him.

ONE MORE SUNRISE is about a man, Joe, who has lost faith in God and in life, and has given up. But it is with the help of a stranger that appears to him after a near fatal plane accident that changes his life and steers him in the right direction. It is not easy,and Joe makes many wrong moves because he gets back on track. And even when he thinks he's back on track, he isn't sure his wife will take him back after disappointing her too many times. For those who enjoy Christian fiction and a story about a man's search for his lost faith in God, this is it. While I felt the writing was a little weak, it is still an uplifting story that follows in the family tradition that the Landon's have created over the past decades, family fare that has a lesson or moral and at the same time is enjoyable.

#13 MADNESS by Marya Hornbacher

2008-04-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #13
Date Began and Finished 2/29- 3/6 2008
Genre - Memoir
Year It Was Published - April 9 2008
Publisher - Houghton Mifflin
Number of Pages 320
Hardcover
Reason for reading: Review for Curled Up
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: MADNESS was the memoir of a woman suffering from bipolar disorder, and the journey she took to get to where she is today. A very candid and blunt view of a typical life of person afflicted with bipolar I, the more severe of the two forms of bipolar disorder. Symptoms include weight issues, runaway money issues and spending sprees, memory losses, manic highs and depressive lows, and mixed episodes which can lead to suicide. Other symptoms include various forms of self-mutilation, excesses with alcohol, drugs, and sex. Marya Hornbacher had all these symptoms, and more, but was not diagnosed until much later in life.

Marya Hornbacher is a gifted writer, as evidenced by this book. What is remarkable about her is her courage, and the strength she had to write down her experiences and make her condition known to all. She tried to hide her disorder through most of her life, "pretending" to be normal and to now acknowledge her problems, so that she never really dealt with her problems for a very long time. But her candid observations on her life and how she went from one phase of her disorder to another is what i think helped her in the long run. Despite long periods of memory loss, where she doesn't' even remember what happened during those periods, she was able to write down the many different episodes and events that marked her disorder, and finally acknowledge the fact that she is indeed "not normal", and that she needed help. I truly appreciated Hornbacher's candid writing, and applaud her bravery in divulging what she has gone through for most of her life.

MADNESS is a book that I think is an eyeopener to those who know nothing about bipolar disorder, and at the same time can be used as a "guide" to those who live with or have family that are afflicted with bipolar disorder. It certainly has helped me understand some of my friends who are afflicted with it. MADNESS should be a "must read" for all who are dealing with bipolar disorder and those who have loved ones who are living with it.

Ratmammy's February 2008 reads

2008-04-19T19:28:00.001-07:00

Here are the books I read in February 2008

Rating based on 5 Stars being the best

#7 LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Pgs 348 -3.5/5 stars
#8 THE FICTION CLASS by Susan Breen Pgs 296 - 4/5 stars
#9 THE LAST PROMISE by Richard Paul Evans Pgs 303 - 4/5 stars
#10 NEARLYWEDS by Beth Kendrick Pgs 333 - 4/5 stars
#11 HER BETTER HALF by CJ Carmichael Pgs 296 - 4/5 stars
#12 SEAVIEW INN by Sherryl Woods Pgs 383 - 3.5/5 stars

My favorite book this month was THE FICTION CLASS. It was a book i related to very well. There weren't any books I could say I didn't like. LOVE IN THE NAME OF CHOLERA was a book i was hoping I'd like more, but had a hard time getting through it.I enjoyed 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE much better.

Average 67.55 pages per day

Average pages per book: 326

Of the 6 books I read this month, the following were either books for review Or requests from the author/publisher--

THE FICTION CLASS - review for Curled Up
SEAVIEW INN - review for Love Romances

Another good reading month, although I'm still reading a lot less than i did last year. Will try to stick with the 6 books a month, so I hope to read about 70 books this year.

#12 SEAVIEW INN

2008-04-19T19:28:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #12
Date Began and Finished 2/24- 2/29 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - March 2008
Publisher - Mira
number of Pages 383
Mass Market paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Love Romances
Rating 3.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I've been collecting Sherryl Woods' books but this is the first one I've actually read, and I know I'll read more by her.SEAVIEW INN is women's fiction at its best, centering on Hannah Matthews, a single mom who is in remission from breast cancer. Her mother had just died from the same disease, and it's not surprising that Hannah is a little scared about her own life and whether the cancer is going to reappear, just like her mother.

Besides dealing with cancer, Hannah needs to take care of her grandmother, her mother's mother. Grandma Jenny was getting on in years, and Hannah believes that grandma needs to be placed into a home where people can look out for her. In the mean time, they need to sell the old Seaview Inn that has been in the family for generations. Grandma refuses to cooperate, and instead is trying to reopen the inn.

To complicate matters, Luke Stevens is back in town. Luke was at one time Hannah's best friend's boyfriend, but Hannah had always had a big crush on Luke, never letting anyone know because she didn't want to hurt her best friend or embarrass herself. Luke doesn't tell anyone why he's back in town, but he has just returned from Iraq some six months ago or so, and is still dealing with the pain in his leg, as well as a pain in his heart. During his stay in Iraq, his wife decided to start an affair with his business partner and best friend, and now Luke is single and very bitter. He has two children that are being traumatized by their parents divorce, and he wants to make it up to them somehow.

Hannah's college age daughter Kelsey is also having problems. She's announced to Hannah that she is pregnant, but she does not want the baby, nor does she want to marry the father, Jeff. Kelsey returns to Seaview Inn to be with Hannah and Grandma Jenny to sort things out.

With two "strays" living in the Inn with them, Grandma Jenny makes good use of them both and they work on getting the Inn back in shape. Hannah hopes this will help them sell the Inn faster, but Kelsey has other plans - to run the Inn which she will eventually inherit after her Grandma Jenny passes away.

And now, Hannah's old high school crush is back, and while she'd love to start something with Luke, she thinks that her life will be cut short and refuses to make any commitments to him , or anyone else.

SEAVIEW INN moves at a moderate pace, and what I found I liked about the book was it's "comfort" feel. It's not a book with a lot of highs and lows, but it does have a number of serious themes that will hook the reader. I really enjoyed the book, the characters, and the setting, a beach side inn in the Florida Keys. I recommend SEAVIEW INN for all readers who love contemporary women's fiction and want an escape.

#11 HER BETTER HALF by CJ Carmichael

2008-04-19T19:19:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #11
Date Began and Finished 2/20- 2/24 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2006
Publisher - Harlequin (Next)
number of Pages 296
Mass Market paperback
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I still cannot get over the demise of this wonderful brand of books by Harlequin. The NEXT books were different at first, in that they did not fit into a set formula. They were not all romances or women's fiction or whatever genre you can think of. I have read paranormal NEXT books, women's fiction, but every book was different. Towards the end they changed the formula to fit a certain type of reader, and this brought down the quality of the series. But HER BETTER HALF still showed how diverse these books can be and how creative harlequin books can be if given the chance.

HER BETTER HALF is the story of two women - one is the mother of twin teenage daughters and she's newly divorced and ready to start a new life. She's down financially and has to move into a rough neighborhood, after living in luxury and privilege for many years. Laurens's husband had run off with his yoga instructor and was now living in India. She and her two daughters just don't know what to think anymore.

Lauren needs a job, and answers an ad placed by Erin, a younger single mother who has her own private investigating business. This is quite a different type of career move than what Lauren had expected but she figured why not? Soon, Lauren is working side by side with Erin, spying on unfaithful husbands and doing criminal checks on others.

When Lauren first meets Erin, her first impression is that Erin must be a drug user, or maybe a prostitute! Erin seemed much too lose to be a straight and narrow sort of woman, but as the two women get to know each other, Lauren realizes she's been wrong about Erin, but she still cannot figure her out. There is something Erin is hiding from Lauren, and the only person that probably knows is Murphy Jones, who runs a greasy diner nearby.

This story caught me by surprise. By the end of the book it had me in tears. I have read other books by CJ Carmichael, mostly through the Harlequin superromance line of books, and i have to say she's one of the better writers around. HER BETTER HALF was a very good reading experience and i highly recommend it to readers who enjoy women's fiction. It's definitely not a romance, but a story of two women who as they become friends, realize how much they need each other and how fleeting life can be.

#10 NEARLYWEDS by Beth Kendrick

2008-04-19T18:31:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #10
Date Began and Finished 2/18- 2/20 2008
Genre - Chick lit
Year It Was Published - 2006
Publisher - Down town Press
number of Pages 333
Trade paperback
Reason for reading: TBR, trade with friend
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: This was a fun, easy going tale of three women who discover their marriages were never legal. Each of them are notified that the minister that performed their ceremonies has died, and unfortunately he never signed the documents to make their marriages legal.

The thing is - each of the three women are actually having second thoughts on their newly married statuses, and this problem with their marriages may be a good thing. NEARLYWEDS had all three women, Stella, Casey and Erin, look at their relationships with their new husbands and now have to decide whether to tie the knot again. All three are very different women from different walks of life. Told in a very light tone of voice, NEARLYWEDS is a funny look at the mistakes these women make as they try to figure out where they want to be once the dust has cleared, and it is a wild guess which of these women will stay married, or move on without their husbands.

I was surprised at how well-written this book was, and how much I enjoyed it. It's not a literary masterpiece but it's the type of book that one enjoys to escape. What are the odds that all three women meet? Not very high, but one ignores facts like that to focus on the three women and their very different situations. NEARLYWEDS was very enjoyable, and worth the time spent.

#9 THE LAST PROMISE by Richard Paul Evans

2008-04-19T17:31:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #9
Date Began and Finished 2/15- 2/18 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2002
Publisher - Signet fiction
number of Pages 303
Mass Market paperback
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: THE LAST PROMISE is the story of two people that meet and fall in love in the Italian countryside. Eliana is an American woman who marries an Italian man and moves with him back to his native Italy to help manage a family vineyard. Her husband is rarely home, as he says he's traveling for business. Their son, a highly asthmatic child, Alessio, stays with Eliana while her husband travels. It is fate that brings her together with another American, Ross Story, who is now living in Italy for reasons not immediately made known to the reader. All we know is that he's decided to get away from America and start a new life in Italy. The place he chooses to stay is a room on the vineyard where eliana lives.

The two are attracted to each other right away, and then Eliana tells Ross she is married. The two strike up a friendship and the attraction is apparent to them as well as to others who watch them together. But they keep the friendship platonic, because she has made it clear that she is married and has no intentions of leaving her husband, despite how unhappy she is. But despite what she says, it is inevitable that one day they may cross that fine line. But would she risk losing her son for the love of another man and her happiness?

I've read a number of books by Richard Paul Evans and I think this was my favorite so far. I loved the Italian back drop, and i also think Evans did a good job with the characters. They felt real to me, and not just characters in a book. I'm definitely recommending this book to those who enjoy reading love stories.

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill In #68

2008-04-18T08:09:00.000-07:00

Friday Fill-Ins: Friday Fill In #68

1. The last time I lost my temper I slammed the door and yelled out "f*** you"!
2. The government is what I'm fed up with!
3. The next book I'd like to read is a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
4. Our trip to Japan next week is what I'm looking forward to.
5. If you can't get rid of the skeleton[s] in your closet, then move on!
6. The best thing I got in the mail recently was toys for my kitties!.
7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to a nice quiet evening with my husband, tomorrow my plans include a possible 10k walk and Sunday, I want to read my book!

#8 THE FICTION CLASS by Susan Breen

2008-04-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #8
Date Began and Finished 2/10- 2/15 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - Feb 26 2008
Publisher - Plume
number of Pages 296
Trade paperback (Advanced Readers Copy)
Reason for reading: Review for Curled Up
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Arabelle Hicks is a frustrated writer who teaches a weekly fiction class in New York. Her mother, who she never got along with, is currently living in a nursing home. As the dutiful daughter, Arabelle visits her mother once a week, dreading the visit every single time. However, when Arabelle mentions to her mother that she is now teaching a fiction class, her mother takes interest. Arabelle makes it a point now to tell her mother about the class that week, the lesson she taught and the homework that her students were to complete for the following class, and through these discussion, Arabelle and her mother find a common ground.

The students in Arabelle's class become more than just students for her.As the weeks progress, the class bonds and to a point they become friends. Each student has their own personalities and quirks, and Arabelle learns about each of them as they do their home work assignments and participate (or not) in class. One student stands out, a rather disruptive older student who eventually becomes a potential love interest for Arabelle, a man that she finds out later is more than just a disruptive student, and becomes someone she can lean on when things with her mother become rough.

THE FICTION CLASS starts out slow. As a reader i wondered where this book would lead me. there are pieces of a book interspersed with the actual action of the story, and the author of the book is revealed by the end. Breen does a good job at weaving the story of Arabelle and her mother's relationship with the blossoming relationship she has with her students, with both sets of relationships changing as the class progresses. I felt this book was well written, and did a good job at showing the change and growth between two women who never got along, with Arabelle seeking the resolution of a difficult relationship with her mother before it was too late. I was able to relate completely to the main characters, reminding me of my own relationship journey with my mother, a relationship that resembled Arabelle's.

THE FICTION CLASS is a short and fast read, but it gets its point across. I'm looking forward to more by Susan Breen.

#7 LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

2008-04-16T17:31:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #7
Date Began and Finished 1/27- 2/10 2008
Genre - Literature
Year It Was Published - 1985
Publisher - Knopf
number of Pages 348
Trade paperback
Reason for reading: TBR (Group read)
Rating 3.5/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: OK, the reason for the rather low rating for such a highly touted book is because I think I didn't quite get it. When I read 100 YEARS OF SOLITUDE, i finished that book and felt satisfaction at such a wonderful read. I did not feel the same for LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA. I loved the details of the book, and i laughed out loud a lot as i read the story of the love sick Florentino, his great love for Fermina Daza, who ends up marrying another man, Dr Urbino. The book is written on an epic scale, as the author takes us from the beginnings of the relationship between Florentino and Fermina, to her marriage to Urbino, and beyond. The book actually starts with Dr Urbino, who dies early on in the story (I loved the whole scene with the parrot!) and thus starts backtracking to Fermina's childhood and her infatuation with the very odd Florentino.

I don't even know how to write my thoughts on this book, which is why it took me this long to even write this post, but i think LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA is not for the faint of heart. It's long and drawn out, and the reason I think i even enjoyed it is because I sat and read big chunks at a time in order to keep in the mood of reading it. I focused on the details, which Marquez is very good at. He seems to relish in bodily fluids, at least in this book, and while I thought a lot of this was funny, others may not. Florentino knows he'll one day be reunited with his Fermina, but he also knows that it will have to take the death
of Urbino to see this happen. In the meantime, Florentino lives out his years without Fermina going from one woman to another, and again Marquez does not hold back. Florentino is also a very disgusting man, and half the time he's ailing from one thing or another. He shows the symptoms of cholera, but was told that it was only love that he was going through.

Anyway, I hope I can do a decent review of this book. I think i would have to read this book again to really appreciate it.

#6 VANISHING ACTS by Jodi Picoult

2008-04-16T17:30:00.001-07:00

Number of Book #6
Date Began and Finished 1/24- 1/27 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2005
Publisher - Atria Books
number of Pages 418
hardcover
Reason for reading: TBR
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Another page turning book by Jodi Picoult, VANISHING ACTS tells the story of a woman who learns that her real identity is not who she thinks she is. Her father had kidnapped her when she was around 3 years old, and since then he had told Delia that her mother was dead. The news comes to her as a shock, learning that she has a mother who she does not remember, and a father that has been lying to her all these years.

Delia is about to be married to the father of her daughter. she has her own business, a search and rescue service. Things were going well but now they are falling apart. Her father is now in jail for the kidnapping and has been extradited to another state, Arizona.

Besides the drama surrounding her father's case and the fact that her fiance Eric has become her father's lawyer, Delia is having problems with her relationship with Eric, mainly because he's keeping her out of the loop. But it's all about client confidentiality, yet Delia feels she's being shut out.

In the mean time, Andrew, Delia' father, is learning what it is like behind bars, and it is not pretty. What he goes through may offend some readers. It's traumatic, it's brutal. But the entire time Andrew insists he plead guilty, while Eric tries to get Andrew to change his mind.

Fitz, Delia's other best friend, does all he can to be supportive. What Delia doesn't realize, is that all this time, throughout their entire friendship between the three of them - Eric, Delia and Fitz - Fitz has had feelings for Delia. But he's been the good guy and has kept his distance from her except in the capacity of a best friend. Delia begins to lean on Fitz more for emotional support, as Eric begins to distance himself from her.

Eric is also going through some trauma of his own. The case has brought back on his drinking problems, and as he learns more about Andrew and the women he had been married to in the past, Eric finds a connection between this life and that of little Delia, when she was living her first life with her mother and father in Arizona.

Jodi Picoult's books are always riveting and hard to put down. I've never been disappointed by any of her books and was glad I finally picked up VANISHING ACTS.

#5 BETWEEN SISTERS by Kristin Hannah

2008-04-16T17:22:00.001-07:00

Number of Book #5
Date Began and Finished 1/20- 1/24 2008
Genre - Women's Fiction
Year It Was Published - 2003
Publisher - Ballantine Books
number of Pages 428
mass market paperback
Reason for reading: TBR trade with friend
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: This was my first book by Kristin Hannah and i loved it!I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the story and how fast it went for me. Meghann Dontess is a high powered divorce lawyer and is obviously very successful based on where she lives and how she lives. she goes from man to man, never seeing anyone for very long, avoiding commitments. her life is empty.

Part of Meghann's problem is a guilt that she's lived for nearly her entire life. she and her younger sister Claire Cavenaugh were separated when Meghann decided to leave Claire with Claire's biological father. Their mother rarely around to take care of them, and in order to save themselves, Meghann had gone in search of Claire's biological father, who promptly took them in. But Meghann and Claire's father clashed, and so Meghann ran away, knowing she was leaving Claire in responsible hands. But since that parting, the two sisters have not been close, and every time they do talk, they fight. Meghann actually took care of Claire as a mother would a daughter, because their own mother was not responsible enough or ever there to take care of them herself. being an actress was much more important.

Now, Meghann and Claire are reunited. Claire has decided to marry a man that she had met recently, and Meghann feels it's her responsibility to steer Claire in the right direction. Meghann had kept out of Claire's life for the past 27 years ,but now she feels it's time to fix things. Claire, however,doesn't want her older sister to meddle. All she wants is Meghann's blessing.

When everything seemed to fall into place, something happens that may bring short the sisters's new found friendship. The story becomes a near tragedy by the end of the book, and will have the reader in tears.

Meghann meets a man while visiting Claire and helping her get ready for the big wedding. He's a mystery at first, until the reader and those around them realize who he is, the brother of one of Claire's best friends. his story is tragic and ties in together in a way with Claire's as it will be revealed in the last half of the story. Meghann may have finally found the man of her dreams, but is afraid to go that extra step. Commitment had never been her strong point.

BETWEEN SISTERS was a highly enjoyable piece of women's fiction. Good writing, characters were believable, and i wanted to know how the book ended. I'm definitely reading more by this author.

#4 SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

2008-04-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #4
Date Began and Finished 1/18- 1/20 2008
Genre - Teen Fiction
Year It Was Published - January 2008
Publisher - Simon Pulse
number of Pages 225
paperback
Reason for reading: Review request by author
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: This was one of my rare ventures into the world of YA books and Teen Fiction. When i was first offered to read this book, I had no idea and I'm glad i wasn't told because I would have refused the book.

Instead, I got to read a really funny yet somewhat poignant story about a teenager, Ren (Lauren) who is learning to deal with life with a single Dad, moving to a new city , going to a new school, and trying to fit in.

Ren's mother was a writer who happened to be killed by Harry Potter - a stack of Harry Potter books fell on top of Ren's mother and killed her.So, instead of continuing life in New York, Ren and her writer father are in the suburbs of Connecticut, very boring in comparison to New York.

Farrin is the most popular girl in school. Ren and Farrin "connect" when Ren is forced into the cheer-leading squad (since Ren was a failure at all other sports). They also have some of the same classes, and it's during one of these classes that Ren learns an awful secret that Farrin has been keeping, and it's so bad that Ren's life changes because of it. Farrin has been secretly communicating with an older man via the Internet, and Ren is afraid that Farrin is about to make a big mistake. Farrin figures out a way to impersonate Farr in on line to intercept the pervert, but the "joke" is on Ren when she finds out who this pervert is that Farr in is about to meet!

The book is told from Ren's point of view, along with letters and email communications between a girl (Sexgurl) and an older man (FDA), and Ren's letters to her mother, who she confides with and misses terribly. At times Ren seemed a lot older than her years and i wasn't sure if this was the author's intention, but if you have seen JUNO, i imagine Ren to be a somewhat milder version of the title character of that movie, who also seemed wiser than her teenage years and spouted off words of wisdom that had the audience laughing.

SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE is populated by all sorts of people typical to the average teenager. Ren's got a best friend, Shannon, who she left behind in New York and misses a lot. Shannon, however, has moved on with her life, and has some secrets of her own. Ren's got a crush on Jack, who unfortunately is dating Farr in. jack and Ren strike up a friendship, and secretly Ren is hoping Jack may start to have feelings for her. But the competition is pretty fierce. what guy wouldn't want Farr in as a girlfriend? Lucky for Ren, she manages to get involved with jack's family by mentoring his little sister Amanda, a girl who is as obnoxious as they can get. Ren can't believe that the two are even related.

Ren's making new friends at school, in particular T'Keyah who's related to a famous basketball player, but the two don't hit it off right away.It's a lot of work being the new girl in school, and Ren wishes that her mother never died.

I'm going to recommend SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE because it was such a delightful surprise. I enjoyed it a lot and am glad i had the chance to read it.

#3 THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

2008-04-15T17:23:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #3
Date Began and Finished 1/5 - 1/18 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - Feb 2008
Publisher - Doubleday
number of Pages 277
(ARC) Trade paperback
Reason for reading: Review for Bookreporter.com
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: The retelling of the tales from the Mahabharat,one of the longest epic poems in history, THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS takes place between 5000 bce and 6000 bce and comprises of kings and queens and deities, spanning decades and revolving around Panchaali, a princess that is forced to marry 5 men. the story is told from her point of view in the first person, and we learn of her birth, her childhood, and her marriages to the five Pandava brothers. As a child she's a willful girl and lives an unconventional childhood when she finds ways to learn things that only boys are taught in school. She doesn't want to be a typical woman, but wants to learn the ways of men in power. A sage tells her early in her life that she will end up marrying 5 men, and that she will be the reason for a great war which will destroy the THIRD AGE OF MAN. Panchaali doesn't believe this, but as one by one the prophesies come true, she begins to learn that the sage is right... and that her life will not be an easy one...

Women are strong characters in this version of the tale, taking center stage, and Kunti, Panchaali's mother-in-law, is a formidable woman, doing what she can to make Panchaali's life miserable. The two clash most of their lives, but there will come a time when the two will finally see eye to eye.

Panchaali's friendship with Krishna is a continuing thread throughout the story, the main person in her life that she constantly refers back to. She's known him most of her life, and even through her marriage to the 5 brothers, he is still there for her, if not in person, then in her heart. She doesn't realize how much she loves him. Her secret passion however is for Karna, the man she rejected initially on her wedding day, and her love for him consumes her. When she learns of a secret that involves him and her mother-in-law, it is all she can do to keep from telling her husbands. No matter how angry she is with Karna, or how much he hates her for her rejection of him, her passion for him smolders until the day she dies.

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS spans decades, from Panchaali and her brother Dhri's childhood, to her marriage to the 5 Pandava brothers, to the great war and their downfall. It is as grand as the epic poems by Homer, and as tragic. The story is complex, as political relationships twist and create friends and enemies, leading to battles and wars that will eventually destroy them all. I found that while I personally didn't connect with the political themes of the novel, i felt connected to the tragic story line and the fate that Panchaali was born into. THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS is an admirable attempt to recreate the epic Mahabharat from the view point of a strong woman, Panchaali.

#2 JEMIMA J by Jane Green

2008-04-15T17:21:00.000-07:00

Number of Book #2
Date Began and Finished 1/2 - 1/5 2008
Genre - Fiction
Year It Was Published - 1999
Publisher - Broadway Books
number of Pages 373
Trade paperback
Reason for reading: TBR/group read/trade with friend
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: I had forgotten how much I love books by JANE GREEN! JEMIMA J has to be my favorite Jane Green book so far, and to think this one was published nearly 10 years ago. Amazing! Despite being dated (at this stage, the characters are just discovering the Internet as if it's a brand new invention) I enjoyed the story of Jemima Jones and her need to be loved.

Jemima Jones is hugely overweight, and while she seems to have good self esteem and has her group of friends, she notices that it's the thinner prettier people that move up the corporate ladder and get boyfriends. It's not that Jemima hasn't had relationships in the past, and she's had her share of sex, but she's never had a real boyfriend.

Currently she works for the Kilburn Herald, a small town outside of London, and she's in love with Ben, a colleague that may be moving on to greener pastures. She and Ben socialize, usually with another colleague Geraldine, who is beautiful yet finds the time to befriend overweight Jemima, but there is nothing romantic going on. In fact, Ben and Jemima get along famously, but she can never get him to see her in a different light other than as friends.

Jemima discovers a new world in the Internet, when she, Ben and Geraldine take a class, and while Geraldine finds the whole thing boring, Jemima and Ben go ape over it. Jemima soon discovers the world of chatting, and through this new world she meets a really good looking man named Brad, who lives in far away California. They exchange photos, but Jemima sends him an altered photos of herself, a photo that would BE her if she lost 100 lbs. Jemima sees how beautiful she could be, and is determined to lose weight. ASAP. So she can meet Brad and prove to the world she can be desirable.

Jemima joins a gym, and soon the pounds start to drop. Fast. Geraldine is ecstatic, and helps Jemima with a makeover. By now Ben has moved on to his new career, that of a TV personality, and drops out of sight, except via the telly. Jemima misses Ben but she has moved on, and now is focused on meeting Brad and starting a new life. When Jemima hits her goal and Geraldine does the makeover, the world sees a new Jemima J (or JJ as Brad knows her as) and the world is now Jemima's oyster....

JEMIMA J was a wonderful duck to swan story but the twists to the story is what makes this book unique. The only thing that bothered me is that while i read the book, i felt that i had read this story before, and maybe JEMIMA J's story isn't unique and maybe it's been done before, but I still loved it and enjoyed it. This is the type of book that is reminiscent of BRIDGET JONES' DIARY. They don't write them like this anymore it seems, and you have to go back 10 years to find something as charming as JEMIMA J. I highly recommend it.

#1 - STARING AT THE SUN: OVERCOMING THE TERROR OF DEATH by Irvin D Yalom

2008-04-14T17:21:00.005-07:00

Number of Book #1
Date Began and Finished 12/29 - 1/2 2008
Genre - Non Fiction/ Psychology
Year It Was Published - February 2008
Publisher - Jossey-Bass
number of Pages 277
Advanced copy trade paperback
Reason for reading: Review for VINES Amazon program
Rating 4/5 stars

Blurb or Synopsis: Having been told I have anxiety and learning that this equated to a fear of death, I jumped at the opportunity to read STARING AT THE SUN when it was offered to me by Vines Amazon. This is my first book by Irvin D Yalom,and i was very impressed with the contents and writing style of a topic that can be pretty heavy duty.

Yalom discusses anxiety and the fear of death by throwing in examples from the patients he's known, each of them having diverse symptoms and traits, but all of them having a fear of death. a lot of what he went over I already knew from therapy, and it was good to see it all in print. he also talks of methods to use to help overcome this fear, helping many of us to cope with daily anxiety and learn to relax and live life as if THERE IS A TOMORROW. Case studies include a woman who fears death by stating that she had so many things to do before she died. It's a classic case, in which I can relate to,where we simply cannot relax until our ever growing to-do lists are completed. It's the unlived life that many fear, the fear of not accomplishing everything one had meant to do throughout a life time, but for some they feel this life may end too soon, thus the anxiety to finish things asap, before it's too late.

Others begin to have anxiety after the death of someone close, possibly a husband or a close friend. often times any life changing event can set anxiety off. in each case, Yalom gives explicit details of a particular patient, using a very reader-friendly voice that anyone will feel comfortable in reading.

The only chapter that i felt was as reader-friendly was the last, in which he warns the reader that this particular chapter is aimed at therapists. it is still helpful to read this last chapter, but i felt my eyes glazing over at times, as it was a little too technical for me.

I found STARING AT THE SUN a fascinating and informative book regarding anxiety and the fear of death. while I may have a long way to go in conquering my own fears, I feel that this book was helpful enough in that it confirmed a lot of what I've learned about anxiety over the past 9 months or so. I definitely recommend STARING AT THE SUN.

Ratmammy's reads for January 2008

2008-03-05T21:32:00.000-08:00

Here are the books I read in January 2008

(rating based on 5 Stars being the best)

#1 STARING AT THE SUN:OVERCOMING THE TERROR OF DEATH by Irvin D Yalom Pgs 277 - 4/5 Stars (VINES Amazon program)

#2 JEMIMA J by Jane Green Pgs 373 - 4/5 stars

#3 THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Pgs 277- 4/5 stars (BR)

#4 SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE by Lauren Baratz-Logsted Pgs 225 - 4/5 stars

#5 BETWEEN SISTERS by Kristin Hannah Pgs 428 - 4/5 stars

#6 VANISHING ACTS by Jodi Picoult Pgs 418 - 4/5 stars

My favorite book this month was VANISHING ACTS. Actually, i think i enjoyed each of these books equally, for different reasons. They all kept my attention, and even the non fiction book I found intriguing. There were no least favorites this month!

Average 64.45 pages per day
Average pages per book: 333

i have to explain the reason for the low numbers.... I actually have another book in the mix - a book by Joanne Harris, which I couldn't finish and had to put down. I spent at least a week on that book. I will try to finish it later this year. I usually love Joanne Harris but this time I just wasn't in the mood for her.

Of the 6 books I read this month, the following were either books for Review Or requests from the author/publisher--

STARING AT THE SUN:OVERCOMING THE TERROR OF DEATH - review for Amazon Vine
THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS - review for Bookreporter.com
SECRETS OF MY SUBURBAN LIFE - review request by author

I think I'm off to a good start in terms of quality of books. Quantity will definitely be lower this year. I will probably not even read 6 books in February, due to the fact I am currently trying to finish a slow one (LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA). My goal this year is to read 4 and 5 star books and not worry about quantity.

2003-08-04T19:19:00.000-07:00

Favorite books so far in 2003

1. A Woman Betrayed by Barbara Delinsky
2. Affinity by Sarah Waters
3. All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki
4. Blu's Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka
5. Daisy Fay and the Miracle Man by Fannie Flagg
6. Family History by Dani Shapiro
7. Female Intelligence by Jane Heller
8. Fingersmith By Sarah Waters
9. Fortune's Rocks by Anita Shreve
10. Frida: A Novel Based on the life of Frida Kahlo by Barbara Mujica
11. House of Gentle Men by kathy Hepinstall
12. Once Two Heroes by Calvin Baker
13. Pigs in Heaven by Barbara Kingsolver
14. Prince of Lost Places by Kathy Hepinstall
15. Sister of my Heart by Chitra B Divakaruni
16. Summer Sisters Blume, Judy
17. The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan
18. The Boy Next Door Cabot, Meggin
19. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
20. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
21. The Mistress of Spices by Chitra B. Divakaruni
22. The Pact by Jodi Picoult
23. The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama
24. The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
25. Willem's Field by Melinda Haynes