Sister

Fiction by Rosamund Lupton.



Cool book. I totally recommend it.

Literary yet suspenseful. Like if Jodi Picoult could marry Tom Clancy and have a book baby.

I hope nobody takes that comment the wrong way....

The House at Riverton

Fiction by Kate Morton.




Good book by the author of The Forgotten Garden, which I also enjoyed.

It's like a Gothic novel, only real and grounded in the present.

I recommend Kate Morton.

(image from http://www.barnesandnoble.com)

Lunatics

Fiction by Dave Barry and Alan Zweibel.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

This. Book. Is. HYSTERICAL.

I'm seriously talking laugh-out-loud-in-a-public-place-by-yourself all-out-funny.

It does have cuss words in it. So not for the kids. But FUNNY as heck.

The Next Best Thing

Fiction by Jennifer Weiner.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

Good book.

This was about a woman who manages to get her comedy show on TV...and all the problems involved. (There were a lot.) It kind of makes me amazed that ANYTHING good gets on TV.

Or, I could say, it makes me not surprised that there's nothing good on TV.....

Well, I guess "good" is a relative term, isn't it.

The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection

Fiction by Alexander McCall Smith.



http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is number thirteen in the "Number One Ladies' Detective Agency" series. I have read all these books and they are great.

It's set in Gabarone, Botswana (a country in Africa), and features some of the most low-key but absorbing detective stories I've read.

I mean, it's not murder, mayhem and gore; it's human nature and real situations. You may feel it moves slowly, but the story will grab you if you give it the time.

I recommend starting with the first book though. (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

Heading Out to Wonderful

Fiction by Robert Goolrick.



http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Really good story, although a little dark near the end, in an unexpected way.

I got this book because I'd liked A Reliable Wife by the same author. That one also had a surprising twist to the dark side. Not that I'm giving anything away.

So, based on that other book, I got this one without knowing what it was about.

Still, I didn't really like the cover of Heading Out to Wonderful, or the title really, which are major deciding factors for me in book-choosing, as I am extremely shallow. So I wasn't sure if I wanted to read it, since I'd just gotten a large stack of library books and was running out of time to read everything.

But I decided to give this book a chance, and it got me with the first line:

"The thing is, all memory is fiction. You have to remember that."

Isn't that a cool first line?

The World We Live In

Young adult fiction by Susan Beth Pfeffer.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

Cool final book in this series. (Read the other two books first.)

I read this series because my 16-year-old daughter wanted me to read it and discuss it with her.

Seriously.

The Dead and the Gone

Young Adult Fiction by Susan Beth Pfeffer.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

This a parellel novel to life as we knew it which I read a couple of weeks ago.

In book series talk, parellel novel is like the cousin of a sequel. It runs alongside, but completely independently of, the first book, as opposed to coming afterwards like a sequel. (Isn't that cool how the word is like geometry and literature mixed?)

This was a cool book, assuming you like end-of-the-world stories, which, as I believe we've established, I do.

See tomorrow's post for the final book of the series that ties both parellel stories together.

Coming Home

Fiction by Karen Kingsbury.



http://www.barnesandnoble.com

For the whole first half of this book, I thought it was the written version of a "clip show."

You know those episodes of TV shows where the writers don't bother to come up with a new plot; they just string together a situation where the characters sit somewhere and reminisce, so they can rehash a lot of old clips and not have to really shoot any new footage? That's what was happening.

Clip shows are okay if you've seen all the old shows they are referencing and you liked them...and it's been long enough since you saw the aforementioned shows so that you are able to enjoy watching the scenes again.

But it turned out that the first half was just the background part, like when they show a few fast clips with a voice-over at the beginning of the episode, in case you missed the last few weeks. And this author had a LOT of ground to cover. Here's a list of the previous books in Baxter family series:

First the "Redemption" series: Redemption, Remember, Return, Reunion, and .Rejoice

Then the "Sunrise" series: Sunrise, Summer, Someday, and Sunset.

Then the "Firstborn" series: Fame, Forgiven, Found, Family, and Forever.

Then we have the spinoffs: the "Above the Line" series: Take One, Take Two, Take Three, and Take Four.

Last of all, there's the "Bailey Flanigan" series:  Leaving, Learning, Longing, and Loving.

I'm not even kidding here. That's a lot of books. So I guess I can forgive Karen Kingsbury for rehashing a bit.

Especially since, halfway through the book, something NEW happened!

Which I'm not going to tell you, because that would spoil it.

(By the way, I wholeheartedly recommend the first few sets of books, although I didn't care as much for the last two sets.)

The Middle Place

Nonfiction by Kelly Corrigan.



http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This is a memior, and not a bad one.

It's not The Glass Castle, but it isn't Girl Meets God either. (click on either title to read what I thought of those two.)

Kelly Corrigan is an engaging writer and I was interested in her life. So, one of the better memoirs I've read.

Especially for a non-celebrity.

The Hula

Nonfiction by Jerry Hopkins.


http://www.barnesandnoble.com

This book, about the history of the hula, was interesting, although I admit I got it just for the pictures.

It's  pretty much a coffe table book with more text than usual, so I'm sure I'm not the only one who skimmed a bit.