Book Reviews
3:26 p.m. - Tuesday, Jun. 28, 2005
Book Reviews
Tuesday, June 28, 2005
kim dearth the compassion of dogs
- I used to be a cat person. Then I came to be the caretaker of the two most wonderful dogs on the planet and while I now consider myself an animal person I really lean more towards being a dog person. This book is a happy/sad book. The stories of dogs that have beyond-the-average bonds with their owners and clients are uplifting. The sad comes when the occasional animal death is imparted. We've all had to deal with the death of a pet so this comes as no shock, merely the norm as for the most part we outlive our pets/service animals. These stories will warm the hearts of all animal lovers.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
alice randall the wind done gone
- Based on the reviews when this book was released, it made my had-to-have Christmas list. Well I finally got around to reading it this past month�yes, I am way behind, but as you can see, I'm making up for lost time�and I must say I just don't get it. Please know that what I am about to say is not a racist statement. I've dealt with good people and bad people all over the world and good or bad has nothing to do with color. I think I am just too white for this tale so I don't get it. I'm a smart girl. I had no trouble reading and comprehending the text, and while it's a beautifully crafted tale, it just didn't have the same effect on me as it did the reviewers and the only difference I can find is one of the black experience/perspective vs. the white experience/perspective. I think I will try it again in a year and see if a second reading does something that a single reading could not.
Thursday, June 9, 2005
joyce maynard at home in the world
- Being just young enough to have not been raised to revere J.D. Salinger, I would have been unaware of the controversy surrounding this tome without the forewarning of the author. This book is more a memoir of rich and heady experience for a steadily maturing author than a kiss-and-tell potboiler. Detailing her handicaps with brutal honesty and rising above them to become a serious author in her own right, Joyce Maynard gives hope to the writer in all of us that our varied experiences, both good and bad, can hone the writer's craft to produce works of emotional clarity that echo with the reader.
- Back in the day when I was married, I used to read Joyce's domestic life column which was syndicated in my local newspaper. I'd always known there was something off about my life. I was doing all the things I'd always wanted to do; I was just doing them with the wrong life partner, my husband. In reading her column that detailed country life, raising kids and all the little moments you experience doing that, I aspired to live this perfect little life she had. I drank her column in every week and as long as I could, it made what was missing in my life bearable. The week she announced through her column that she and her husband were divorcing was a blow I will never forget. I guess I was so busy ignoring the cracks in the foundation of my life, that I never noticed the ones in hers. I felt angry, cheated, betrayed. If she couldn't make the perfect life work, what chance did I have? I was furious. Swore I'd never again read a word she'd written. At the time, I had no clue that there were others who felt the same as I did. It wasn't until I read the part where she describes this time in her life and the impact it had on her readers that I found I wasn't alone and that I wasn't really angry at her at all. I was angry at myself for living life through someone else's as it were and not doing what I should have been doing to take care of the growing cracks in the foundation of my own home.
- The funniest thing on my part is that when I first attended the writer's retreat at Walloon, I went with every intention of confronting her, of berating her for the havoc she caused in my life. Her gracious demeanor and attentive attitude towards all the retreat attendees stayed my tongue and I never took the opportunity to voice the emotions boiling beneath the surface. In fact, on the last day of the conference she had something complimentary to say about one sentence in my short story that still gives me wings to this day. And now that I've read At Home in the World, I realize that there is nothing for her to apologize for and nothing for me to forgive. I've grown enough to realize that while at times other people have been to blame for the problems in my life, she never was, and how I react to the problems in my life�regardless of their source�is entirely up to me.
Friday, May 27, 2005
greg iles sleep no more
- Interesting paranormal thriller. A middle aged man with a wife and child meets up with the spirit of the now deceased love of his life. The spirit is currently occupying the body of the sexiest realtor in town and her obsession with her former love leads him down a path of terror filled with infidelity and murder. Built on the premise that the spirit of his dead lover is able to hopscotch her way around the world by moving from body to body through the act of orgasm, it will definitely creep you out when you have your next orgasm. When the realtor turns up dead in a hotel room, the mad scramble to discover who's body the lover's spirit now inhabits and how to stop her once and for all begins.
recent reads
kim dearth the compassion of dogs
alice randall the wind done gone
joyce maynard at home in the world
linda howard kiss me while i sleep
brad metzler the zero game
greg iles sleep no more
jonathan kellerman cold heart
jonathan kellerman the web
stephen woodworth through violet eyes
billy letts honk and holler opening soon
sara paretsky blacklist
last five reads
kim dearth the compassion of dogs
alice randall the wind done gone
joyce maynard at home in the world
linda howard kiss me while i sleep
brad metzler the zero game |
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