Head Hunters [Book #8]

This book was painful to plough through. A story about a sociopathic head hunter for a company in Iceland and his difficulties as an art thief. Perhaps things were lost in translation but it was a truly terrible book with unlikeable characters and an awful ending. Period.

American Dervish- Akhtar [Book #6]

I wanted to like this book. I paid full price for this hard-cover. I regret it very much. This book is an awful representation of what it is to be an American Muslim and the fact that its getting so much praise for showing what it is to be just this disturbs me more than I can properly articulate. Outside of this, the characters are one dimensional and flimsy. The main character is unlikeable and nothing much happens to him as much as happens around him. Most of this book was simply a soap box for the author to let out what seems like years of angst. Absolutely awful.

Talk Talk- Boyle [Book #5]

Wow. Just. Wow. TC Boyle is easily one of my favorite writers and this book certainly sealed the deal for me personally. This is a jarring novel about identity theft and just how badly it can affect someone's life. The story follows a thirtysomething woman who is deaf and is arrested for crimes committed under her name. She and her boyfriend are determined to find out the man who did this and make him pay. The story is told from the perspectives of herself, her boyfriend, and the criminal in question. I found it very difficult to put this book down and was overall quite satisfied with the ending.

Kindred- Butler [Book #4]

This is a science fiction book about slavery and time-travel. Yes, really. Dana travels back and forth through time when summoned by her great-grandfather Rufus, a white slaveowner's son to save his life. Each time he is near peril she is swept back into the era of slavery and each time she falls into peril there she is swept back to her life in the current contemporary world she lives in with her white husband. I found this to be a very jarring novel detailing what happened in the time of slavery, a topic I haven't really thought about since high school and for that I very much appreciated it. There were definitely things I didn't like about the novel such as character motivations, etc, but overall this is a great book that makes you think.

The Fixer Upper- Andrews [Book #3]

I wanted a light breezy well-written novel and hoped that this book would live up to fit the bill. It began very interesting and I enjoyed reading about how the young attorney got caught up in a political scandal, thrown under the bus by her boss, and then headed to Guthrie, Georgia to fix up her family's old fixer upper and in the process fixed up herself. While the bare bones outline of this story is good enough, I just didn't really connect with the protagonist and her love interest and thought the author fell a little too in love with the details of fixing up a house. While not a bad book, it wasn't a great book, one that I ultimately skimmed quickly at many parts, and felt I missed nothing as a result.

The Sweetness At The Bottom Of The Pie- Bradley [Book #2]

A lovely book about a young orphaned girl Flavia growing up in a creaky old mansion in a town in which nothing much happens until a dead sparrow with a suspicious postage stamp affixed to his beak winds up at their doorstep followed by a red haired man breathing out his last breath as the eleven year old Flavia looks on determined to solve the mystery of exactly what is going on. The story is earnest, light hearted, and well written. I do wish it had been edited a bit as the history of postage stamps went on a touch too long, and the ending was drawn out longer than I would have liked, but I very much enjoyed this debut novel and will certainly keep an eye out for others Bradley writes.

Patron Saint of Liars- Patchett [Book #1]

After reading Ann Patchett's beautiful epic novel Bel Canto I immediately set about finding her other books to quickly devour. [Warning: small spoilers may follow] Patron Saints of Liars does not disappoint to a certain extent as her debut novel does have a similar beautiful writing style, an easy way with sentences and character creation that makes you lose yourself completely in the story. I liked this story for the most part but I had a really difficult time understanding the percipitating event that led to everything in this novel. I have a hard time believing not loving your kind husband is enough of a reason to run away and leave behind everyone including the mother who desperately loves you and who you also desperately love in return particularly when Rose knows that her mother would help her and support her through a divorce if she wanted. Taking on the life she took instead makes zero sense to me. I also really wish the author hadn't divided the novel into three sections one of Rose a woman leaving behind a loveless marriage and heading to an unwed mother's home to give her baby away, the second of Son the man she meets at the Home, and the third the story of the daughter she gives birth to. I will say that this is another one of her novels that makes me think and that leaves characters who stick with me for some time to come, so I'm glad to have read it, but it was a library read, not one that I should have purchased.

The Hate List-Brown (Book #17)

A powerful YA book about a girl who is living with the after effects of her boyfriend performing a "Columbine-like" massacre on the students that had picked on him and Valerie, his girlfriend, for years. Valerie and him had compiled a notebook with a list of people they hated. It was from this list that her boyfriend picked his victims. Though Valerie never knew he would use the list as anything more than a tool to vent with, she is looked at with suspicion when she returns to school not only from teachers and classmates, but from her own parents who also not-so-secretly blame her for what happened. This is a story about healing and forgiving oneself. I enjoyed it though it followed a very predictable format for me. Still, over all, a poignantly written novel.

Revenge of The Spellmans- Lutz (Book #16)

A humorous tale of a former-detective trying to leave the family business but finding it near impossible to actually do. We follow the lead character as she investigates minor cases, figures herself out, and tries to discover what secrets are ailing her family.

I thought this was an okay book. Not awful by any means, but not quite as funny as it was promised to be. Just a very solid medium. In defense of this book- I did not read the first two in this series, so perhaps had I done so I might have a different opinion on this book.

Book of Joe- Tropper (Book #14)

I love anything this guy writes. He is similar to Nick Hornby who I also love though he deals with sometimes a bit harsher issues. This is a story about Joe and how he wrote about his town Bush Falls in scathing terms and never returned for 17 years until his father got ill. He returns to learn that the town residents hate him for the words he wrote. What follows is a look into dying, prejudice, the meaning of life, and so and so forth. I find myself often underlining passages and parts of this book. Its just beautifully written. It's deep without being heavy handed. I find it interesting though, as a side note, that the more ou read certain author's collective works, the more you learn a bit about them too. I've begun to identify themes in Tropper's books that show up in all of them. As you read more and more of an author's book you begin to feel you're treading in autobiography more than you previously thought. Still, this is definitely a book I might read again.

Pride and Prejudice- Austen (Book #12)

Wonderful and perfect each and every time. I've read Austen's other works but this is my favorite book by far. I particularly liked Penguin's new cover for the book. Very cool. I know you should not judge a book by its cover but when a cover is this cool it does make you look twice. In any case, this is a perfect love story that is awesome on every read, and I can't wait to now watch the BBC miniseries!!

The Unnamed- Ferris (Book # 5)

I loved Ferris' first book and so eagerly awaited this book from the library. Its very well written, certainly a departure from the dark comedy of his earlier book but still you can tell you're in the presence of a good writer. This is a story of a man who suffers from something unnamed, he is convinced its biological but most doctors suspect its psychological. From time-to-time this successful attorney, husband and father, must take a walk that he cannot prevent himself from going on despite the weather, conditions, or where he is at the moment. This disease takes away everything in his life and this book involves us watching his life unravel. It's a sad disturbing book. While well written, I did not find the plot as satisfying as I would like. Still, its a good book but its not as good as his first novel in my opinion.

The Help- Stockhard (Book #1)

I have considered reading this book so often but I always put it back in 2009 due to its length. A book club I joined was reading this book and I'm so glad I finally got a chance to sit down and read it. The Help focuses on three women in the south at the cusp of the civil rights movements. Jim Crow laws are still in effect and the south is resisting the changes to come. We follow the lives of two black maids and a white woman Skeeter as they live their lives and slowly decide to undertake a project that could jeopardize their futures but one they can't seem to walk away from. It took me about 30 pages to get into the book and I admit had I not been reading it for a book club I might have just put it away after the first few chapters because the vernacular threw me off and I could not seem to get past it. I'm glad I kept reading because Stockhard has a gift for story telling and her writing keeps you turning the pages and you are sad when you reach the end of this beautiful story.

Crooked Little Heart- Lamott (Book #89)

I feel bad giving this book a low rating because I think some people will love it but it just wasn't for me. This is a book about a family and insights into their dysfunctionality. I was shocked to learn this book has been assigned reading in 9th grade english. The story is fine in and of itself but I think I've read too much of Lamott's autobiography in memoirs to be able to read the story as fiction and not just small vignettes about her real life. I think I prefer her memoirs to her novels but I will give her one more try in the fictional arena.

The Age of Grief- Smiley (Book #87)

I enjoyed Jane Smiley's writing in this book. She deftly captures human emotion and my favorite in this short story collection was her novella, the namesake of this book which has been made into a major motion picture, "The secret lives of dentists."

Gourmet Rhapsody- Barbery (Book #85)

I love reading books that focus on the little things such as books by Alexander McCall Smith but I was disappointed in this book. This is a novel about a food critic who is both loved and hated. We find him on his death bed trying to remember a flavor from his past and we see his childhood and other musings on food. The story also has stories from others in his life. There are too many characters and its hard to know when you start reading whose perspective you are reading. A few titles do tell you but most just have random headings and how am I supposed to know who is narrating when there are at least 10 different narrators in a very slim book? I can tell some will find this book to be a deep and loving reflection on food, but I was not particularly impressed.

Tell Me Something True- Cabo (Book #80)

This is a book about a girl whose mother died in a plane crash. She lives in LA with her movie producer father and visits her grandmother in Columbia each year and revisits the memories of her mother. The premise of the story is there is a lot more to her mother that she never was told and the book's blurb says "what happens when you find out everything you thought was true was a lie?" Except that's not true. There is something she didn't know about her mother, but its not earth shattering and it does not invalidate any other part of her life. The story pushed itself as being way more dramatic than it was and I found the constant POV changes a little distracting and unnecessary.

Plan B- Tropper (Book #79)

If you scroll the list of my recent reads you'll see Tropper's books quite a bit. When I like an author I tend to devour their entire list of published books. This was the last of the books I had yet to read by Tropper. I must admit that as is the case with most authors who I read extensively I begin to see themes and though this is kind of cool, it also sometimes can feel like you're reading a variation of the same story again. I can't hold this against Tropper with this book as this is his debut novel, so any books I subsequently read are instead, variations of this, not vice versa.

This is a book about a group of 30 somethings who are very close and are all at various stages in their lives, some sucessful some not so much. They are drifting apart but come together out of concern for one of their friends who appears to have a drug problem. Hilarity and deep moments ensue.

I enjoyed the book as I've enjoyed most of Tropper's books which have a good dose of reality and deep reflection along with laughter at the small absurdities of life.

Damas, Dramas, and Ana Ruiz- Acosta (Book #78)

I should start by saying I doubt I am the target audience for this book, so though I did not particularly love it, that's not to say a Spanish-American reader would not love it. This is a story about a woman whose husband just left for reasons we only find out later, and has to deal with her two children. Diego, the eldest is trying to be the man of the house while he deals with a crush on his friend's sister, and Carmen is furious, a ball of anger at her mother who she perceives to be the reason that their father left. The story trails Ana as she tries to make sense of her marriage, her children, her dreams and an artist on campus whom she is attracted to. I don't mind books that sprinkle other languages into the dialogue but this book took it a step too far. Also, I thought the author focused too much on the daughter-mother hatred and then summed it up in a matter of a paragraph or so at the end. I would have liked more exploration and understanding of the marriage and the husband's reasons for what he did.

How To Talk To a Widower- Tropper (Book #77)

I told you, when I find an author I start reading everything they write, and considering the last few books are Tropper books you should not be surprised that again I'm reviewing a book by the same guy. One interesting thing about reading an author's entire work is you begin seeing trends in their writing and the same has been true for Tropper. This novel is about a 29 year old widower grieving his wife's death and writing a monthly column about it. He also is being pushed into dating and dealing with his stepson, a 16 year old sullen kid who is a trouble make but deeply hurt. It's a book about love, and grief and family and he certainly can nail the topic of grief quite accurately.