Every Last One Anna Quindlen Mary Beth and Greg Latham have a picture perfect family:17-year-old Ruby, a talented writer; and twins Alex, a budding athlete, and Max, the drummer. Mary runs a successful landscaping business and Greg is a respected local doctor. Add to that their sprawling home in a small town, surround them with …
Misfortuneby Wesley Stace Is Rose Loveall “Miss Fortune”? Did her fortune pass her by miss her? Did she long for miss fortune? Or, is her cross-dressing life itself a misfortune? I loved Wesley Stace’s By George and wasn’t displeased with Misfortune, either. It is, however, a riot of a novel filled with more characters and …
The Leftovers Tom Perrotta As I mentioned last post in my ‘Next Up’ blurb, I loaded The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta on my Kindle after leaving behind (pun!) Misfortune at my daughter’s. When the Left Behind series was all the rage several years ago I had no desire to even pick up the books. In …
The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht Magical realism is just not my thing. I want to feel oh-so-cultured and understand the hidden meaning and deeper beauty. But Love in the Time of Cholera, Beloved and Like Water for Chocolate were just too obtuse for my story-loving taste. (Although, Time Traveler’s Wife and Life of Pi …
By George Wesley Stace I love a book that puts me in a place I’ve never been before with people I’ve never met—By George did just that. The novel’s opening starts with a ventriloquist act, waiting in the wings to take their places on stage. That brief prologue ends with, “The great ventriloquist is more than …
The Fault In Our Starsby John Green “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” ~ Julius Caesar Last month I heard author John Green on NPR and immediately …
11/22/63Stephen King “The past fought change because it was destructive to the future.” Never in my life did I think I’d read two Stephen King books in one year. You might remember that last spring my book club Chicks on Books read Full Dark No Stars … and that, surprising to me, I loved it. …
Swamplandia!by Karen Russell This book sat tucked away for several months– a reader’s copy, passed on by a lucky friend who attends the Michigan Booksellers Association every year– until it finally wormed its way off my bookshelf when I heard NPR’s own Nancy Corrigan add it to her “10 Best Novels of 2011” list. Now …
Secret Daughterby Shilpi Somaya Gowda Somer and Krishnan have it all. Meeting in med school he was drawn to her American optimism and drive, she to his British accent and exotic Indian homeland. Marrying to improve their chances of being assigned a shared residency program, they set out (as most do) with the dream that …
What Is Left the DaughterHoward Norman I chose this book, plain and simple, for the title. I have a kind of fascination with daughters, being one and all. And so it was with some disappointment that I realized the novel was really a father’s letter to his daughter, a daughter he had never lived with and hadn’t …
This is my symphony 