Full Dark, No Starsby Stephen King This read was a step out of my comfort zone in two ways: I don’t read Stephen King (or any kind of horror), and it was my first book on my Kindle app. Let’s get the Kindle app out of the way first. I am a former book store …
The Weed That Strings the Hangman’s Bagby Alan Bradley It took me a more pages than I was comfortable with to admit I liked Alan Bradley’s first Flavia DeLuce novel, Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. I am not a murder-mystery fan, so that may have been part of it. Or maybe what kept …
If I Stayby Gayle Forman Recommended on NPR’s “You Must Read This” feature, If I Stay is a young-adult novel that doesn’t read like one: the writing is evocative, the story isn’t maudlin, the romance almost (!) believable. The novel does have the quick-read characteristic of YA, though–no dense writing here. The premise, however, is …
Major Pettigrew’s Last Standby Helen Simonson I settled into this book like a cat on a lap–it was a comfortable story, warm and familiar, and not overly challenging. Kind of a second or third cousin to Elegance of the Hedgehog with a nod to Remains of the Day, I felt right at home. (It need …
Crooked Letter, Crooked Letterby Tom Franklin Post-Christmas open house found me sluggish, lounging on the sofa in my pj’s until 4 PM–and devouring Tom Franklin’s Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter in a mere ten hours. Set in Mississippi in the early seventies and the present, the novel explores the lives of two men, one black, one …
Hunger Gamesby Suzanne Collins This summer I read Scott Westerfeld’s Pretties/Uglies series and loved the fresh-take on storytelling in Young Adult novels. One member of our bookclub has been campaigning for Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games for a few months, and I wanted to quickly read it so I could get on to my Christmas break …
The Selected Works of T.S. Spivetby Reif Larsen I had no idea when I opened this beautiful, quirky, and imaginative novel what awaited me–every page is embellished with hand-drawn maps, drawings, schematics, sidebars, and footnotes that follow up on some reference in the narrative. Supposedly the story of twelve-year-old T.S. (Tecumseh Sparrow) Spivet, map maker …
Cutting for Stoneby Abraham Verghese From the very first pages, I heard echoes of John Irving in Verghese’s first novel: the exotic setting, strangers in a strange land, and unbelievable (and yet SO believable!) twists of fate. Imagine–a British doctor and an Indian nun work together in Ethiopian mission. Sister Mary Joseph Praise finds herself …
Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough I was intrigued with McCullough’s premise–to unfold TR’s life to the point where he “came to be” the TR we know from history. And so McCullough writes of Roosevelt up to his run for mayor of New York. I have to admit I knew so little of Roosevelt–mainly, the …
–for blogging, at least. Sometimes frugal to a fault I hesitated buying this NPR recommended book–but my husband ordered off my wish list as a bit of “Happy Winter Break” reading material and it’s definitely a keeper. While I was initially drawn in by the stories of the help, it was Skeeter Phelan’s story that …
This is my symphony 