Read This!: A Summer Affair

By Elin Hilderbrand

I took a break from my Christmas reading for this, a book fair book.

Claire Danner Crispin agrees to co-chair the Nantucket Children’s Summer Gala.  A mammoth task in itself, she also agrees to have her old boyfriend, a famous rock star, perform at the event and as a glass-blower, to create a “museum-quality” piece for the auction.  In addition to all this, she has four young children, a husband who is not really “there” for her, personality conflicts with other people on the Gala committee, a fight with her best friend, and an affair with the executive director of the charity.  Yikes!

This book was definitely beach read material.  It did drag in spots.  In others though, the tension was high and it was stressing me out so I kept reading on and may have read ahead a bit.  I don't really have much to say about this novel except to mention that Claire's lover was not described in a way that I found remotely attractive so I wasn’t impressed. 

Read This!: Let It Snow

By Maureen Johnson, John Green, and Lauren Myracle

Book fair book!

It’s Christmas Eve and a major snow storm and lots of romance have hit Gracetown.  The first story (there are three total in this book which are separate but intertwine) leads from a stranded train to sparks in a snow bank.  In the second, a drive to a waffle house turns into amour with an old friend.  And the last shows that a crappy Christmas and an super early shift at work can end up as a happily ever after.

When I saw this book at the book fair, I was like “Yes! Three holiday romances!”  Alas, soon after starting it, I realized that this was actually a book for teens…  Which was fine…  Until I was subjected to 300 pages of teen angst.  I don’t mind some young adult literature but I think when you are 35, you have a different perspective on things and you have a tendency to roll your eyes at some of this teen stuff.  For example, in the second story, I kept thinking 1. These kids are complete morons to be driving in this snow, 2. The author must never have been in a major snow storm since these kids would have frozen to death if this was real, and 3. Do kids really talk and act this way?  This book did make me laugh from time to time and it also helped to get me in the Christmas spirit so my time wasn't completely wasted. I think I was just a bit thrown because I wasn’t expecting Dawson’s Creek when I picked it up.  I was expecting more like The Guiding Light.  :P

Read This!: Summer on Blossom Street

By Debbie Macomber

Book fair book!  After my recent darker reads, I decided to change my tune and read this Debbie Macomber.  She is not dark.  At all.

Summer on Blossom Street is part of a series.  I have never read any of the other books.

Lydia Goetz runs a knitting shop on Blossom Street where she is teaching a class called Knit to Quit.  Phoebe Rylander is trying to quit her philandering fiancé.  Bryan Hutchinson needs to de-stress his life.  Alix Turner wants to quit smoking so she can have a baby.  Adding to this, Lydia’s friend Anne Marie Roche and her adopted daughter have a new “friend” while Lydia is trying to cope with her 12 year old foster daughter.

I enjoyed this read.  Even though I love these books with these happy streets that have all these small little shops someone wonderful owns, where do these places exist?  Can someone please tell me so I can go open a bakery there?  Or maybe a tea shop?  Anyways, I liked the Phoebe and Bryan storyline the best.  Lydia’s was fine but she was annoying me with her “I don’t understand why Casey won’t act like she loves me”.  Um really?  You can’t figure it out.  Side eye saloon. 

Summer on Blossom Street did the trick of bringing me out of the dark read stretch into the more light-hearted one that I am currently in with this and then some holiday reads.

Read This!: The Dead Lie Down

By Sophie Hannah

This is a book fair read.

Ruth Bussey’s boyfriend Aidan confesses that many years ago he murdered a woman.  But, the thing is, Ruth knows this woman and she is definitely alive.  So what gives?  Frustrated with Aidan’s lack of belief that this woman is alive, Ruth goes to the police as does Aidan.  The police think something is up and look into the murder that doesn’t seem to be a murder but what is happening for real with these people?

It took me awhile to get into this book because the narrator kept alluding to past events for everyone and I was getting annoyed at the lack of any detail for like 200 pages.  Once more information started coming to light, I was hooked and things moved much faster.  The mystery was interesting but I was on to some of it which always makes me think I am superior.  One thing, I didn’t think the Charlie-Simon marital relationship issues were ever resolved so I am not really sure why they were even in the book except I think this might be a series and maybe it is dealt with elsewhere?  The other thing is that each chapter had a date on it.  So it would be “February 27, 2009” or whatever and then suddenly the next chapter date format would be 2/3/2009 so I thought the book went back in time but then I realized the dates were in British format and it was actually 3/2/2009…

This may not sound like a glowing review but I liked the book enough to think I might want to read another Sophie Hannah, so that is not nothing.

 

 

In the Garden of Beasts

Erik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts:  Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin is the true story of William E. Dodd, America’s first ambassador to Germany under the rule of Adolf Hitler.  Dodd is a professor in Chicago when he accepts Franklin Roosevelt’s appointment to ambassador and brings his wife and adult children with him to Berlin.  There the family experiences the beginning of what it was like to live in Nazi Germany and Dodd encounters the difficulties of dealing with this brutal new regime.

True to its title, the book focuses on the Dodd family as they arrive in Germany and begin to see firsthand the terror the Jews are facing at the hands of the Nazis.  Larson explores the relationship between Ambassador Dodd and his various superiors in the US government as he tries to convince them of the danger of the new German government.  The other main topic is Dodd’s daughter, Martha, who created some scandal by getting involved in relationships with Nazi officials, as well as a Soviet secret agent in Germany.  You can’t make this stuff up folks.

Larson is clearly a talented writer/researcher and there was some interesting stuff in the book.  It was particularly chilling to read of the ambivalent feelings of some US officials towards the Nazi treatment of the Jews.  And while Dodd seems to be a little miscast in his role of ambassador, it was fascinating to see him arguing with both his superiors back home as well as attempting to push back with the Nazi leaders, including Hitler himself.  If you like history this was a pretty good glimpse into the start of a terrible time in the history of the world.  I’d recommend, but you’ve probably noticed that I recommend most books I read, so obviously I’m a bit of an easy grader.

Next up:  Straight Man by Richard Russo

Read This!: Interview with the Vampire

By Anne Rice

Challenge: Vampires

So this is Mr.’s favorite book and I have successfully avoided it (although I have seen the movie) for years, but when the vampire challenge came up, I went for it.

Interview with the Vampire is told by Louis (lou-ee not lou-is as he is Creole), a 200 year-old vampire.  In the late 18^th century, Louis, disenchanted with life, falls into the hands of the vampire Lestat and thus becomes a vampire.  Even though they have a contentious relationship, Louis and Lestat remain together for years, adding another vampire, a child, Claudia, to the mix.  Claudia, adult in mind but still a child in body, and Louis, always pensive, have many questions about the origins of vampirism, what they actually are, etc. etc. etc. but Lestat, a bit of a jackass, won’t give up any information.  This stalemate leads to a series of events which have catastrophic consequences.  

I confess I liked this book a lot more than I thought I would.  I became interested in learning more about Lestat in particular and ended up reading Wikipedia to get some more info.  Yes, I could read the other books in the Vampire Chronicles of which Interview is the first but Mr. seems to think I won’t be into them because they aren’t as good as this book. 

Louis is Mr.’s favorite vampire and has a penchant for over-analyzing and philosophizing and thinking, constantly, to where I was like, “Get it together Louis!  Stop obsessing!  Quit being such a wet blanket!”  This is why Mr. likes him, for all of his thought and introspection.  And this is where Mr. and I differ.  Case in point, this movie was playing on TV while I was in the midst of reading the book so I decided to have the movie on while I read the book simultaneously.  It had been awhile since I had seen it but (semi-spoiler) I died over Lestat’s comment about Louis whining at the end.  That wasn’t in the book but it was awesome.

I’ll end with Louis’ constant battle within himself over whether he is good or bad makes me wonder if Anne Rice meant this as kind of a philosophical work.  What makes a person bad?  Are you bad because everyone is telling you you are bad and so you think you are or is it your nature? 

The Book Thief

It was a busy October, which meant I wasn’t writing anything for this blog.  And now I’m three books behind on book reviews.  I know this has been devastating for the zero people who read these.  Anyway, I’ll do my best to kick these next few reviews out quickly.  And I’ll try to keep them short.  At least short for me.

Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is set in Nazi Germany and tells the story of Liesel Meminger, an adolescent girl who is given up for adoption by her mother and whose brother dies on the way to their foster parents' home.  Liesel can’t read well, but develops a relationship with her foster father as he attempts to teach her, which leads to a love of books and eventually writing.  Zusak's story also includes book burnings, the Hitler Youth, Jews hiding in basements, bombings, stolen books and the dangers of living in Nazi Germany, both for the Jews (obviously) and also the non-Nazi sympathizing German citizens.

I had purchased this book over a year ago, but despite being intrigued enough to buy it, I didn't read it at first because I was unsure about the young adult label I had read somewhere.  Mrs. ended up reading it first and reviewed it here.  Well, I'm glad I finally picked it up because it didn’t read like young adult at all; the writing was sophisticated and the story was dark and engaging.  It was easily my favorite book I’ve read this year and possibly since I started reviewing books on this blog.  Zusak did a wonderful job crafting the story and developing the characters and making all of them sympathetic, as they lived in these unimaginable times.  The book was narrated by Death, which was a creative idea, but I probably wouldn’t even have noticed if it wasn’t.  It was the story that made this great.

I was supposed to keep this short, so in conclusion – go read this book.

Next up:  In The Garden Of Beasts by Erik Larson