The House Girl by Tara Conklin (audio)

★★★★

"Over the years she had learned to fold down rising emotion just as she would fold the clean bedsheets, the sheet growing smaller and tighter with each pass until all that remained of the wide wrinkled expanse of cotton was a heard closed-in square."

This debut historical-fiction novel by Tara Conklin intertwines two stories.  Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell is a slave on a failing tobacco farm in Virginia in 1852 and Lina Sparrow is a young lawyer in New York in 2004.  The two women are connected with Lina becomes involved in a class action lawsuit against slavery and beings to research Lina and her descendents.  It also comes to fact that Lina might have been a famous painter and that her art was passed off as having been created by her owner.

I enjoyed this story - especially that of Josephine in the 1850s.  I thought she was an extraordinary women that had to endure circumstances beyond her control.  I found myself losing focus a little when reading about Lina in present-day.  I really liked description of Josephine's artwork (and would have liked to see more development of this), but the lawsuit seemed out-of-place to me.  I felt like it was just placed there as an after thought to better connect the novel, but it felt a little disorganized and unrealistic.  Even so, I found myself fascinated with the book.  I loved the author's use of Josephine's thoughts in the beginning of the story and thought that the incorporation of letters and art critiques added a lot of interesting aspects to the novel.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer (audio)

★★★

"Even in the Future the Story Begins with Once Upon a Time."

Cinderella meets sci-fi / cyborgs / Beijing in fairy-tale retelling and the first book in the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer.  I wanted to like this book more, but there was just too much going on and not enough development.  The main problem I had was with the characters - especially in Cinder, the main character.  Her actions seemed very inconsistent and I often thought her decisions were based more on adhering to the "Cinderella" storyline and were not realistic.  I kept hoping that she would develop more as a character, but she didn't.  I also would have liked to see more detail and history in the world that the author created.  I did, however, enjoy the author's creative take on a classic fairy-tale and was interested in where the book would go.  Overall, it was moderately entertaining and worked well as an audio book.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple (audio)

★★★★

"Maybe that's what religion is, hurling yourself off a cliff and trusting that something bigger will take care of you and carry you to the right place."

I liked this quirky and funny and highly original novel - it was just so much fun to read! Bernadette was such an interesting character, but ultimately it was her 15-year-old daughter Bee that won me over.  When Bee's mother disappears shortly before that family's scheduled trip to Antarctica, Bee is determined to find her.  The book consists of numerous documents including emails, letters, and secret corespondents leading to the story's dynamic ending.  The last half felt a little flat for me at times, but the novel had a lot of really great moments and I loved that it highlighted a charming mother-daughter relationship.

American Housewives: Stories by Helen Ellis (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"I fix myself a hot chocolate because it is a gateway drug to reading."

I don't usually read a lot of short story collections, but I kept hearing about this one and it sounded interesting.  The stories usually entertaining and were filled with irony and humor.  Most of the  featured "housewives" were a bit overkill, but they did the trick and had me laughing more than a few times.  I also enjoyed the focus on literary and publishing themes.  Some of my favorite stories included "Hello! Welcome to Book Club," "How to Be a Patron of the Arts" and "My Novel is Brought You to By the Good People at Tampax."  

The Selection by Kiera Cass (audio)

★★ 1/2

"True love is usually the most inconvenient kind."

This one has taken me awhile to read - and I'm glad that I ended up deciding to listen to it because I'm not sure that I would have finished it otherwise.  I'm not going to get into what this book was about, but it was pretty much equvilent of watching The Bachelore while reading The Hunger Games books - rich, but super hot guy has televised contest for finding the love of his life.  Except their in this dystopian world.  Or something like that.  

The story was sort of cute (ish) and kept my attention (most of the time).  I enjoyed reading it and am mildly interested in what happens next.  But probably not interested enough to actually read the rest of the series.  

It wasn't an awful book.  It just wasn't super amazing or anything.  Every time I would think I knew what was going to happen, I was completely wrong.  Not sure if that was a good thing or not.  And the world building was very much lacking.  Their decades (or more?) into the future, but hardly anyone has a cell phone?  Highly unlikely.  I felt like the technology just stopped developing in the 1990s. Um, no. And the prince was just sort of dumb.  He was so oblivious.  Which I guess was probably the point, but it still annoyed me.

Under the Wide and Starry Sky by Nancy Horan (audio)

★★★★

"Writers should find out where joys and give it a voice."

In a similar style to Loving Frank, Nancy Horan tells the story of Fanny van Grift Osbourne. The year is 1875 and Fanny sees studying art in Paris as the only way out of her less-than-ideal marriage.  Travels with her three children and their Nanny, but being on her own is more complicated than Fanny expected.  She is denied admission to art school because she is a women and is constantly looked down upon.  Soon Fanny meets the inspiring writer Robert Louise Stevenson and she eventually finds love and a whole new set of challenges.

I felt that the book was a bit slow and drawn out at times, but I overall enjoyed it.  I loved the description and learning about the life of Robert Louise Stevenson.  The book gave a lot of interesting insight of what it was like to be an author and a women during the time period.  The whole "independent women" theme got a bit redundant at times (very much like the author's first book), but it brought out a lot of unique aspects on the limited choices that women had.

I tried reading Treasure Island to Isabelle, but it was way too wordy and long for her at the time.  We made it through the first few chapters though and it was a interesting companion to the novel.  I would like to read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at some point as well.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"Women are weak, but mother's are strong."

This was the first audio book that I have listened to since I stopped having to drive an hour to work and back everyday to Whitewater.  Since I'm going to start doing a lot more driving soon on a daily basis, I figured I might as well get some more books read.

This book was descent.  The author uses different themes to describe a group of mail-order Japanese bride's experiences as they travel from Japan and live their new lives in the United States.   The story was told by strings bits and pieces of each women's live together as they adapted to new challenges in a world completely different in the one that they had grown up in.  It talked about everything from the voyage to America to wife and motherhood to the war.

I'm glad I listened to it as an audiobook - the author had a unique way to blending each women's lives together that was brought out by the narrator.  I really enjoyed this technique for the first couple of chapters, but it started to seem a bit like an essay after awhile - one of the main reasons why I did not give it more stars.  Plus, I found myself way to invested in each of the characters.  After finishing the book, I really wanting to what happened to each of the women because I couldn't at all tell who was who.

Summer Island by Kristin Hannah

★★★

"As mothers and daughters, we are connected to one another.  My mother is the bones of my spine, keeping me straight and true.  She is my blood, making sure it runs rich and strong.  She is the beating of my heart.  I cannot now imagine a life without her."

Goodreads Summary: Years ago, Nora Bridge walked out on her marriage and left her daughters behind. Now she is a famous talk show host. Her daughter Ruby is a struggling comedienne. The two haven’t spoken in more than a decade. Then a scandal from Nora’s past is exposed, and Ruby is offered a fortune to write a tell-all about her mother. Reluctantly, she returns to the family house on Summer Island, a home filled with frayed memories of joy and heartache. Confronting a past that includes a never-forgotten love, a sick best friend, and a mother who has harbored terrible family secrets, Ruby finally begins to understand the complex ties that bind a mother and daughter—and the healing that comes with forgiveness.

This book was ok.  I enjoyed the story, but felt like there was a lack of "substance."  I wanted to care more about the characters, but I didn't feel like I got to know them well enough to really establish an opinion.  I found lately that it's really interesting to read earlier books written by some of my favorite authors.  I love Kristen Hannah's recent books (Winter Garden and Night Road to name a few) and I felt there was a huge different in literary quality and character development between them.  Plus I couldn't help noticing some details from Fly Away in this one as well.

Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind (audio)

★★★ 1/2
"People are stupid.  They will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."

This is one of those books that I've been meaning to read for years and years and haven't managed to get around to it until now.  I felt like it was a very "typical" epic-fantasy novel: lots of action, ok writing, and very predictable.  The story was interesting and I enjoyed learning about the world that the author created, but everything else was pretty much average.  I was glad I listening to it as an audio book - all 33 hours of it.  Would I read the rest of the series if I was stuck somewhere for a week with no other books to read? - definitely.  Will I realistically finish the series? - probably not...there's a lot of them.

Day After Night by Anita Diamant (audio)

 ★★★★

"Sometimes luck was just another word for creation, which was as relentless as destruction."

This novel covers the post-World War II experience of four young girls.  Their lives shattered after the Holocaust, Shayndel, Leonie, Tedi, and Zorah struggle to find new lives for themselves in a holding camp for illegal immigrants in Israel.  Each women deals with their loses and memories in different ways and come together as a support system.

I first read Anita Diamant many years ago when I read The Red Tent.  I believe I was around 14 at the time and it was one of earlier attempts at reading historical fiction.  Today it remains one of my favorite books.  Day After Night was no comparison, but I did enjoy reading it.  I read a lot of Holocaust historical fiction, and this one gave the unique perspective of what happened to people directly after the events of the war.  Usually novels end in 1944-1945 or shortly after or flash back between the past and the present.  Day After Night had really unique characters that processed their past in different ways.  It was interesting to see the direct effects that the war had on them.  I did get a little confused sometimes with all of the story lines, but listening to the audio at work might have had some effect on that as well!

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

★★★ 1/2 

"It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it.  In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life.  You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin.  That brought you down to earth.  That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin."

I normally don't read too many mysteries, but this one has been sitting on my shelf for awhile.  This one was entertaining, but didn't have that "wow" factor for me.  I did enjoyed the character of Mma Ramotswe and her "small town" lifestyle in Africa though.  There were a lot of funny moments and interesting secondary characters as well.  It was a good audio book to listen to - not too much plot line to keep track of!  I also really enjoyed the authors book La's Orchestra Saves the World that I read a few years ago.

Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"In the space between yes and no, there's a lifetime.  It's the difference between the path you walk and the one you leave behind; it's the gap between who you thought you could be and who you really are; it's the legroom for the lives you'll tell yourself in the future."

I must be reading too many Jodi Picoult books because I guessed the ending on this one...again.  Maybe it's just that I've been going back and reading her older books lately?  I don't know, but I'm use to having me completely surprised by the last few pages!

This one was good, but nothing special.  Years after June Nealon's husband and young daughter are killed in a tragic murder, she is faced with a tough decision.  Her daughter, Claire, needs a heart transplant and she doesn't have much time left.  Suddenly, she gets a phone call that Shay Bourne, the man that was charged for the murder of her family, wanted to donate his heart to Claire after he is put to death for the crime.  June is left with many questions about forgiveness, redemption, and what cost she is willing to pay for the her daughter's life.

Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★★

"Every life has a soundtrack."

After one miscarriage too many, Max and Zoe's marriage of nine years is over.  After the divorce, Max struggles with alcoholism and goes to live with his brother, Reed, and sister-in-law, Libby.  He takes a turn for the worst and then becomes involved in their church.Zoe spends her time focusing on her career as a music therapist.  While working with a troubled teen at a high school, Zoe strikes up a close friendship with Vanessa, the school guidance counselor.  Their friendship slowly turns into a romantic one and the Zoe beings a new chapter in her life.  After Zoe and Vanessa are married, they decide they want to have a baby.  Struggling to have a child with Max, there are still three frozen embryos left from the fertility treatments.  Since Zoe can no longer have children, Vanessa plans to use the embryos to have their.  There is just one problem - Max has to sign off at the clinic and his new religious beliefs do not support Zoe's life style and raising a child in a save-sex marriage.

This novel brought up a lot of different issues.  The main ones, of course, was gay rights and what constitutes as a good family.  Max is forced to make hard decisions about the future of his unborn children.  There are also a lot of questions about what is considered to be a child, what rights the children have, and who gets to decide those rights.  

All in all, I enjoyed the book.  It was really interesting to see the different perspectives from each character.  I felt that the author was a little too "black-and-white" though.  I felt that there was too much focus on religion being a bad thing.  Just because someone is religious, doesn't automatically mean they are against gay rights.  Is it wishfully thinking that both can exist?  Maybe, but I felt that some of Max's story was a little far fetched and focused on the wrong aspects.  Throughout the book, I kept trying to form an opinion, but I ultimately decided that I couldn't really form one without considering all of the options.  And that just lead me to ask more questions.  I guess that's what a good book does - force you to ask more questions.  

Also, the book included a soundtrack of music that was played through the novel.  All of the songs were written specifically for the book.  Since Zoe was a music therapist and music was a big part of her life, this worked perfectly!  I'm glad that I listened to the audio book - otherwise I might have missed a lot of the songs. 

 

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★★ 1/2
"History isn't about the dates and places and wars.  It's about the people who fill the spaces between them."

Sage Singer is a loaner in her small town - which is why working the late night shift at a bakery is the perfect job for her.  She loves her job, but has been a in a bit of a rut lately.  Both of her parents have recently died, she hardly talks to her sisters, her boyfriend is married, and her only real friend is her boss.  One day at the bakery, she strikes up a unique friendship with an elderly man named Josef.  Josef is seen as legend in the town - teaching German at the high school and coaching baseball - and frequently comes to the bakery with his dog.  Sage and Josef begin spending a lot of time together, but one day Josef asks her to help him die.  Sage is shocked at the request and Josef confesses that he was a Nazi during World War II.  Unknown to Josef (or so she thinks), Sage also has a link to the holocaust.  Her grandmother was a survivor of Auschwitz.  As Sage struggles to make a decision, she also learns the story of her grandmother.  She is left with many questions about family, forgiveness, and acceptance.

I really enjoyed this book!  I've been wanting to read this for awhile - being a Jodi Picoult fan and having read lots of holocaust/World War II novels.  This book was a little different from her usual.  I had the ending pretty much figured out (which usually doesn't happen) towards the middle of the book, but I kept second guessing myself.  I liked Sage's story, but what really kept me going was the story of Minka, Sage's grandmother, and her experiences during the war.  For awhile, I almost forgot that Minka was just one part of the novel.  I also loved her writing of a fairy tale that ultimately saved her live in the camps.  It was really unique and has so many connects to her life.  This novel brought up a lot of questions about what was right and wrong and if someone can ever truly be forgiven for their past.

Midwives by Chis Bohjalian (audio/abridged)

★★ 1/2

"Everything about [chance] scares the bejesus out of so many people; it's the this thing they try to avoid at all costs.

Eh, another so-so book by Chris Bohjalian.  I keep waiting to find another one of his books that I enjoyed as much as the The Sandcastle Girls, but it hasn't happened yet.  This is the last of his books that I've listened to on audio books - either at work or on my hourly commute each way.

This book focuses on the controversial issue of midwives in the early 1980s.  Sibyl Danforth has been a practicing midwive for years.  She has been a well-respected member of the community until a snowy night when a birth becomes dangerous.  Unable to take the mother to the hospital, Sibyl makes the rash decision to perform a Cesarean section on her patient after she appears to have died.  The baby is saved, but what happens next is a tremendous guilt mixed with a huge legal debate - did Sibyl make the right choice or was she the one who was responsible for the death of the mother.

The story is told from the point of view of Connie - Sibyl's fourteen-year-old daughter.  This gives readers a unique perspective of what her mother was going through during the trial and her emotions along the way.  She author brings up aspects of how doctors felt about midwives during the time period and the process of the legal system (I've somehow managed to read a lot of legal books lately...).  It was decent to read, but nothing that stood out too much for me.  I did read the abridged version though, so I might not have been getting all of the details of the story.  Midwifery proved to be an interesting debate and it would be interesting to look into how it is viewed differently today.

Fly Away by Kristin Hannah (audio)

 

★★★

"You will always miss her.  There will be days - even years from now - when the missing will be so sharp it will take your breath away.  But there will be good days, too, months and years of them.  In one way or another you'll be searching for her all your life."

Kristin Hannah is one of my favorite authors and I am currently going through many of her audio books.  This novel continues the story of Kate's family and best friend, Tully, after Kate dies of breast cancer the the book Firefly Lane. Deal with the lose of their wife/mother/daughter/and friend, each character must put the pieces of their life back together.  

This book was ok, but not one of my favorite of Kristin Hannah.  I enjoyed hearing about what happened to the characters after Firefly Lane ended.  Overall, it was a little to sappy for me - I don't usually to well with authors over talking emotions.  The novel began with Tully in a car accident a few years after the death of Kate and proceeded with several different back story lines of each of the main characters.  If often felt like a mix of a Lifetime movie and Charles Dickenson's A Christmas Carol.  I was interested in what had happened to everyone in the story, but I felt that there were too many "ghost of Christmas past" aspects.  It sometimes hard to tell whose back story we were hearing and many of the events were repeated several times.  

I think my favorite part of the book was the story of Tully and her mother Dorothy.  Tully was raised by her grandmother and hardly knew her mother growing up.  In this novel, we get to see Dorothy's tragic young adulthood and what events lead her to keep her distance from her daughter.

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult (audio)

★★★★

"This is what I like about photographs.  They're proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect."

 After a tragic car accident, Cara's father suffers from a brain injury.  Cara is forced to make the decision on ending her father's life with her brother Edward, who has been away for the past six years after a fight with their father.  As they discuss their option, a web of family secrets are unraveled.

I enjoyed this book a lot.  I loved Jodi Picoult's style of having multiple narrators and tackling tough subjects.  Each voice in the novel provides the reader with a unique aspect of the situation. This book focused primarily on family and the quality of life.  It also had a lot of animal aspects in it due to the fact that Cara's father was a zoologist and studied wolves for most of his adult life.  He was vary detailed in his study of wolf behavior and it was really interesting to learn about his story while his family was dealing with his injuries in the present.

Before You Know Kindness by Chris Bohjalian (audio)

★★

"Sara knew that behind its locked front door no home was routine.  Not the house of her childhood, not the apartment of her husband's, not the world they were building together with Willow and Patrick.  All households had their mysteries, their particular forms of dysfunction."

While on the annual summer trip to his mother's, Spencer McCullough is shot is accidentally shot in the shoulder by his twelve-year-old daughter, Charlotte.  What unfolds is a more complex story then anyone first thought.  And thrown in, are even more complex issues of animal rights.

Eh, I didn't really enjoy this book at all.  I didn't like any of the characters, and frankly, all of the animal rights and lawsuits aspects just annoyed me to no end.  Luckily I listened to it as an audio book, so it at least did help pass the time at work.  I now officially have a love/hate relationship with Chris Bohjalian.  I absolutely LOVED The Sandcastle Girls.  The Light in Ruins was really good too and The Night Strangers and Skeletons at the Feast weren't bad either.  But his more "contemporary" novels I can hardly get through.  Many it's the fact that I tend to enjoy historical fiction and care more about a story, but they almost seem to be written by different authors.  That's the big thing I missed in this book - there wasn't a really climax (at least not that I cared enough about) and then ending just seemed very insignificant.  I want to read another "Sandcastle Girls!" We'll see how "Midwives" turns out - the last of my Chris Bohjalian audiobooks.

The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh

★★★★ 1/2

"He said: 'You don't understand.  We never thought that we were being used to conquer people.  Not at all: we thought the opposite. We were told that we were freeing those people. That is what they said - that we were going to set those people free form their bad kings or their evil customers or some such thing. We believed it because they believed it to. It took us a long time to understand that in their eyes freedom exists wherever they rule."

 

I expected this novel to be a love story - a "star-crossed lovers" love story that spans multiple generations and where the character's love triumphs against all odds.  This is not what it was.  I kept trying to see it, but it wasn't there.  And the more that I tried to make it into a love story, the more I realized that it wasn't what the book was about.  I kept hoping that things about finally go well for the characters, but they usually didn't.  Most of the time, the wrong characters were in the wrong place at the wrong time and things went horribly wrong.  But in the end, bits and pieces of good things came out of these wrong things.  And in response, new lives and new opportunities were created.  This novel was about family and betrayal and sorrow - lots of sorrow - and also about how the lives of a young man and a young women come together to shape something completely unexpected. 

The story begins in Burma with a young boy named Rajkumar.  Through random circumstances, he meets a girl named Dolly who is serving in the court of the Brumese Queen when their empire begins to fall.  The two go their separate ways, but Rajkumar never forgot Dolly.  Years later, he goes in search of her.  As the years pass, their lives are intertwined with their children, their families, and the political chaos of the world around them.  The story continues to pick up new characters until the reader is left with a web of people intertwined by family connections and chance meetings.  In the end, we are left with Jaya, Rajkumar and Dolly's daughter who travels back to Burma in search of her missing family.

This book was wonderful.  I loved the characters and the story and history.  I knew next to nothing about the political history of Burma, and India and Malaya, so it was a bit of a challenge to keep up with it all.  I loved the complexity of the characters most of all.  As individuals, they didn't really stand out.  Like most people, they were just average people living average lives - many of them ending in tragedy due to the struggles of the time - but, together they created something more.  The only thing I struggled with while reading this book was keeping track of the characters and their complex relationships to one another.  I think this many have been easier for me if I had read the book instead of listened to the audio version - hearing the Indian names were a little overwhelming sometimes!  And best of all, this book was different.  It wasn't what I expected - or what I wanted at times - but it was exactly the type of story that I grew to love and enjoy and appreciate it for what it was.

The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian (audio)

★★ 1/2

"A term came to her that they used on occasion at the shelter: the double bind...They used the expression in much the same way that they would use a term like catch-22."

 After 26-year-old Laurel is attacked while riding her bicycle, she begins to withdraw into her photography and working at a homeless shelter.  She meets Bobbie Crocker and, when he suddenly dies, gets swept into a mystery involving a box of photographs that may lead to secrets about his past.  While looking for clues to Bobbie life, she realizes that there maybe connections to her own secrets as well.

This book didn't really do much for me.  I enjoyed the writing, but the story was just so-so.  I guess I have a harder time connecting to modern-day characters.  One of the few things that kept me going in the novel was the references to characters from F. Scott Fitgerald's "The Great Gatsby."  I really liked how the author was able to use these references in a way that flowed so well together.  It made me forget that the characters were from a book and not the past!