4.5 Stars. This is another desperate end-of-year reading challenge grab that paid off. I'd never even heard of this book but I started trolling through an "Epistolary novel" list, comparing it to what was available as an audio download from my library, and landed on this. I loved it. I don't know exactly what my reaction would [...]
4.5 Stars. This book was so heartbreaking so much of the time. I adored Kimberly. She's such a good daughter, friend, and student. She's trying so hard to be everything to everyone. Her life is always hard, but it's hardest when she first arrives, with no comprehension of American culture and little comprehension of the language [...]
4 Stars. This book got a little dark! I was surprised! The Penderwicks have always had their childhood troubles but as an adult listening, they don't seem insurmountable to me. My heart ached for Batty now. Poor thing. She's always been the baby of the family, so I guess I'm used to thinking of her that way. I had a hard time [...]
4 Stars. Oh my. I did not ever, in my wildest dreams, expect a book about Miss Gwen! What a hoot! Somehow, I'd decided that she was at least 70. She's actually only about 45. And an attractive 45 at that, if you can get past the fierce way she wields her parasol in defense of Jane's virtue. I'm so glad she got her own story [...]
3 Stars. I didn't even realize Ernest Cline had published a new book until I saw Sheila over at Book Journey mention it. I knew I had to get my hands on the audio. I loved Cline's first book, Ready Player One, but didn't realize that Wil Wheaton narrated the audio version until after I'd read it in print. I wasn't going to miss [...]
I don't know whether I feel like I just made three new best friends or if I just lost them. This was one of those books where I truly felt like I was part of the characters' lives, if only for a little while. I didn't want it to end. Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean have been best friends since high school, when they earned the nickname, "The Supremes." Now that they're "women of a certain age," they're still fast friends--practically family--but they've hit a period of change. Odette, like her mother before her, has started seeing dead people. Clarice is getting tired of her husband of 40 years running around. Barbara Jean is as beautiful as ever, but is she strong enough to make a fresh start? I can't quite say that I cried with these amazing women, although that was a close thing a time or two, but I definitely laughed with them, rejoiced with them, worried with them, and felt like I was living with them. Odette is strong like the sycamore tree she was born in. She generally says what she thinks and gives everyone else their marching orders. The other Supremes and her husband James see that she has a gigantic heart under all that bullying though. One scene when she was a teenager facing down Barbara Jean's abusive stepfather had me laughing 'til I cried--on my way to work! I am not a morning person in any way, shape, or form. To be laughing at that hour of the day is pretty much unheard of. Clarice can be a bit snobbish, but she's getting better as she gets a little older and wiser. She's been handicapped to be that way by her awful Mama. As she's growing, she's leaving her Mama's shadow behind, becoming…
Okay, this was weird. But it was a weird that I liked. Astronomer Irene Sparks decides to move back to Toledo on the day that she almost simultaneously creates a mini black hole in her lab and learns that her alcoholic mother has died. She's always wanted to go back home and work for the world-famous Toledo Institute of Astronomy, so when she's offered a job there, she jumps at it. George Dermont is also an astronomer working at The Institute. While Irene's approach to the night sky is grounded firmly in reality, science, and math, George is fusing religion and science. In fact, the Goddess of Love is the one who gave him the secret to a Gateway that would explain a lot of astronomy's inexplicable problems. Seriously. George and Irene are instantly drawn to each other, in ways they don't understand and can't explain. What they can't know is that their mothers used to be best friends and made a pact as teenagers to raise their children to be perfect soul mates for each other. We all know by now that I'm that reader who is upset if I don't like any characters in a book. But you know what? I didn't really like any of these characters and I still liked this book. I must be growing as a reader! They had elements that I liked, and I definitely liked some more than others, but there's not one character here that I would want to spend time with in real life. Irene is so serious and career-driven and resentful of her mother (with reason) that I truly don't know what George sees in her. She has a boyfriend at the beginning of the book (Beallyon? Weird names are the downfall of audio books) and she's using him.…
3.5 Stars. I'm finding this hard to rate. On the one hand, it is well-written and exciting and everything that I expect from this series. On the other hand, it's Levana. Oh my gosh! I despise this character! I tried hard to find something to like and to see her as more of a victim than a victimizer and that worked for maybe the [...]
Allan Karlsson impulsively leaves his nursing home by way of his bedroom window on the day of his 100th birthday. There was no real decision-making involved; it was just done. So there he is, on the run in his "pee slippers" (so called because 100-year-old men don't reliably miss their shoes in the bathroom) and no real destination in mind. His journey leads him to the bus stop, where he steals a suitcase and then travels by bus as far as his limited funds will take him. It gets crazier from there as he goes from a missing geriatric to a wanted murderer. In flashbacks, we read the story of Allan's life. He meets many, many world leaders during his time, influences world events, and makes a lot of friends in strange places. I try not to read review of books I'm reading too close to the time I start reading them. I don't want others' thoughts to influence my own review. But this title caught my eye and I'd never heard of it, so before I downloaded the audio from the library website, I had a quick look through the GoodReads reviews. I came across many people who compared this to Forrest Gump. I have to agree. But it's like, Forrest Gump to the nth degree. It's just crazy and hilarious. No drama with broken women here. I also have to compare it to the Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man. Allan is an agreeable sort of fellow and he'll do anything to help someone else out, whether it's saving General Franco's life during the Spanish Revolution or giving Stalin the secret to the atomic bomb. Indirectly, in that case. Stalin was one of the few people Allan met that he didn't actually care for. Anyway, his propensity to say…
Tin Win is a successful lawyer who simply walks out of his life one day. His children have both graduated from college so he apparently has decided that he's a free man. There's a search but it quickly comes to a dead end in Bangkok. His daughter Julia decides several years later to go looking for him in Burma, his native country, after finding a love letter he had written to a woman named Mi Mi. She quickly stumbles onto a man named U Ba who is able to tell her father's story from his start as an abandoned peasant boy to the time he left Burma. Eh. I enjoyed this. And then I got to the end. It felt way too Nicholas Sparks-y to me. Nothing against him, that's just not my kind of book. At all. The book and translation are beautifully written and the audio version is fabulous. Cassandra Campbell is an excellent narrator. Burma is not a country that I've read much about but it was fascinating. The descriptions of Tin Win finding his way through the world as child, relying mostly on his sensitive hearing, were amazing. The story of his first love was heart-wrenching. But then I don't understand what happens. We are told how he ends up in America but I can't say that I truly get it. I can't lay out my questions without giving away spoilers, so I'll just say--why? I think it was a cultural thing. But it felt like a contrivance to set the story on the teary Nicholas Sparks path. So I obviously don't think this is for everyone but if you like reading love stories with your box of tissues nearby, pick this one up. Read an excerpt. Find author Jan-Philipp Sendker on his website and Facebook.…