October Reads

88.  Think of a Number (Verdon) ~ 4.5/5

* Part Light, Part Memory (Hill) ~ 3.25/5

89.  City of Thieves (Benioff) ~ 3.75/5

90.  Running the Books (Steinberg) ~ 2.75/5

91.  A Carrion Death (Stanley) ~ 2.5/5

92.  Deed to Death (Henson) ~ 3.25/5

93.  The Dreaming (Chan) ~ 3/5

94.  A Duty to the Dead (Todd) ~ 3.5/5

95.  Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter (Franklin) ~ 4.5/5

96.  You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know (Sellers) ~ 4/5

97.  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (Skloot) ~ 4/5

98.  The Unnamed (Ferris) ~ 2/5

99.  Moonlight Mile (Lehane) ~ 3.5/5

* Blarney (Hockensmith) ~ 4/5

* Heat Lightening (Krueger) ~ 3.5/5

* Till Death Do Us Part (Maleeny) ~ 4/5

* The Cold, Hard Truth (McMahan) ~ 4/5

    

Short Story (not counted)

BOLD titles made my Best Reads List

Clicking on a title will link you to "Thoughts of Joy...".

~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~ ~*~

Monthly - Yearly Genre Stats:

Biography:  1 - 1 
Chick-Lit:  0 - 0

Classic:  0 - 0

Fiction:  1 - 23

Graphic Memoir:  0 - 1
Historical Fiction:  1 - 1

Memoir: 2 - 5

Mystery/Police Procedural: 5 - 24

Non-Fiction:  0 - 2

Non-Fiction Graphic Novel:  0 - 1

Science Fiction:  0 - 1

Short Story Collection:  0 - 3

Suspense/Thriller:  1 - 13

True Crime:  0 - 2

YA Classic:  0 - 0

YA Fiction:  0 - 8

YA Graphic Novel:  0 - 7
YA Manga:  1 - 1

YA Mystery:  0 - 1

YA Non-Fiction:  0 - 0

YA Science Fiction:  0 - 1

YA Short Collection:  0 - 1

YA Thriller:  0 - 1

Children's Fiction:  0 - 1

Children's Graphic Novel:  0 - 1

Children's Thriller:  0 - 0

Children's Sci-Fi/Fantasy:  0 - 0

Short Stories: 5 - 29

Audiobooks:  5 - 46

Books:  6 - 49

eBooks:  1 - 4

Total:  12 - 99

Best Reads:  2 - 7

Series:  4 - 35

DNF:  1 - 2

THE COLD, HARD TRUTH (9 of 19)

Author: Rick McMahan

(Edited by Harlan Coben)

Genre:  Short Story Collection

Published:  Death Do Us Part, 2006

Personal Rating: 4/5 (very good)

(ss) Yearly Count:  29

A Kentucky trooper wonders if he had made different choices within his career if they would have changed the lives of others.

This story had more depth than several of the others. It also looked at a question many of us wonder at some point in our lives, which assisted in making it a realistic story.

TILL DEATH DO US PART (8 of 19)

Author: Tim Maleeny

(Edited by Harlan Coben)

Genre: Short Story Collection

Published: Death Do Us Part, 2006

Personal Rating: 4/5 (very good)

(ss) Yearly Count: 28

A couple celebrating their 60th anniversary prepare a special meal for each other.

Oh my.  This was an intriguing, outside-the-box kind of story.  It certainly wasn't what I expected.  The conversation between the two was endearing and gripping at the same time.

HEAT LIGHTENING (7 of 19)

Author: William Kent Krueger

(Edited by Harlan Coben)

Genre: Short Story Collection

Published: Death Do Us Part, 2006

Personal Rating: 3.5/5 (good)

(ss) Yearly Count: 27

A man is having an affair while his wife is dying.

I wasn't that impressed with the storyline, but I still thought the writing was good. I have a few books in Krueger's Cork O'Connor series and am eager to get to them.

BLARNEY (6 of 19)

Author: Steve Hockensmith

(Edited by Harlan Coben)

Genre: Short Story Collection

Published: Death Do Us Part, 2006

Personal Rating: 4/5 (very good)

(ss) Yearly Count: 26

After attending a writing seminar, three acquaintances are debriefing at a bar when one of the speakers walks in and joins them. They get the lesson of their lives.

This story had an odd appeal. I was extremely curious as to what the lesson was going to be and found the main character's thought process to be interesting.

MOONLIGHT MILE

Author: Dennis Lehane

Genre: Mystery, Series #6

Published: 2010

Personal Rating: 3.5/5 (good)

Yearly Count: 99

From Dennis Lehane's Website:

Amanda McCready was four years old when she vanished from a Boston neighborhood twelve years ago. Desperate pleas for help from the child's aunt led investigators Kenzie and Gennaro to take on the case. The pair risked everything to find the young girl—only to orchestrate her return to a neglectful mother and a broken home.

Now Amanda is sixteen—and gone again. A stellar student, brilliant but aloof, she seemed destined to escape her upbringing. Yet Amanda's aunt is once more knocking on Patrick Kenzie's door, fearing the worst for the little girl who has blossomed into a striking, clever young woman—a woman who hasn't been seen in weeks.

Haunted by their consciences, Kenzie and Gennaro revisit the case that troubled them the most. Their search leads them into a world of identity thieves, methamphetamine dealers, a mentally unstable crime boss and his equally demented wife, a priceless, thousand-year-old cross, and a happily homicidal Russian gangster. It's a world in which motives and allegiances constantly shift and mistakes are fatal.

In their desperate fight to confront the past and find Amanda McCready, Kenzie and Gennaro will be forced to question if it's possible to do the wrong thing and still be right or to do the right thing and still be wrong. As they face an evil that goes beyond broken families and broken dreams, they discover that the sins of yesterday don't always stay buried and the crimes of today could end their lives. 

Well, I broke a big rule of mine by reading this book.  I haven't read any Kenzie and Gennaro books, so this was clearly a jump to the latest in an established series.  It's a triple whammy of sorts because I knew I was doing it, and it was a sequel to #4 as well.  My bad, bad, bad!  What happened was that I was enticed when I saw that Moonlight Mile was a comeback couple from 10 years ago.  I had wanted to become acquainted with this couple for a long time, so this seemed like a good time to do it and Shelf Awareness delivered!  Bit of an impulsive act, but one I enjoyed.

The storyline and relationship details were explained throughout, so I wasn't lost, but I did feel like I missed out on some of their very adventurous cases and lives in general.  They are 10 years older now and are feeling that shift in time in many ways.  They question and re-question their choices and try to make sense of their current world.  All that was fine, but the plot in itself wasn't stellar for me.  I'm not a fan of mobsters, and I thought a few of the secondary characters were unappealing and not realistic; that's not a good combo.  Despite that, I have been introduced to Kenzie and Gennaro, and I feel good about the decision I made to go ahead and read this one.  Now, I need to start at the beginning and see what I missed.

          

My thanks go to Shelf Awareness and William Morrow for sending me this ARC.  Moonlight Mile is scheduled to be released on November 2, 2010.

Help!

OMG!!!  I am so annoyed.  For the past several weeks, maybe longer, every single time I publish a post - whether in Edit HTML or Compose, my post comes out all jumbled up.  The jumble mainly consists of unwanted spaces.  The greater problem is trying to get rid of them.  You'd think that would be an easy task, but NO!  It takes me forever and a day to remove them.  Is anybody else suffering with this problem?  I have never had any problems with Blogger (over 4 years!), but it's making something so simple into a major chore.  And, I'm extremely frustrated.  I'm going to change providers if this can't be resolved soon.  The problem could certainly be me.  Maybe I have a setting wrong or something, I don't know.  Any suggestions?

THE UNNAMED

Author:  Joshua Ferris

Genre:  Fiction, Standalone

Published:  2010

Personal Rating: 2/5 (not enjoyable)

Yearly Count:  98

Attorney, Tim Farnsworth has been living a successful and happy life until he develops a strange illness that compels him to walk until he passes out from exhaustion.  This story delves into how Tim and his family deal with the illness.  

This simply was not enjoyable.  It was peculiar, redundant and laced with a good dose of despondency.  While I liked the premise and actually thought the first 1/3 was pretty good, the repetitive nature ultimately bored me.

THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS

Author: Rebecca Skloot 

Genre:  Biography, Standalone

Published:  2010

Personal Rating:  4/5 (very good)

Yearly Count:  97

Henrietta Lacks was a black woman who died from cervical cancer at the age of 31.  Without her knowledge, samples of tissue from her cervix were removed for research and miraculously the cells (HeLa) reproduced over and over again.  Her immortal cells are commonly used to this day for medical advancement. This book not only explains the history of cells, but the history of the Lacks's devoted family.  

The story of Henrietta Lacks was very interesting, and Skloot told it in an easy-to-follow, sequential manner.  I learned an ample amount of scientific details regarding cells, research and procedures.  And, in general, I found most of the book to be quite compelling regarding the Lacks family.

YOU DON'T LOOK LIKE ANYONE I KNOW

Author:  Heather Sellers

Genre: Memoir, Standalone

Published: 2010

Personal Rating: 4/5 (very good)

Yearly Count: 96

From the back of the ARC:

Heather Sellers is face blind--that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people's faces. Growing up, she took what cues she could from speech, hair, and gait, but unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she feared she must be crazy. Yet it was her mother who nailed windows shut and covered them with blankets. Her father went on weeklong "fishing trips," wore panty hose and a bra under his regular clothes. Heather clung to a barely coherent story of a "normal" childhood in order to survive the one she had. 

The fairy tale unraveled decades later, when she took the man she would marry hoe to meet her parents. There Heather began to bring the story of her family and herself to light. As she came at last to trust her own perceptions, she learned the gift of perspective: that by embracing the past as it is, we can let it go. And in the process she illuminated a deeper truth: that even in the most flawed circumstances, love may be seen and felt.

Prosopagnosia is a condition that I never knew existed, so I was very interested in learning about it through this memoir. However, as it turns out, the story about her condition was secondary to her life growing up with mentally ill parents. That was not a deal-breaker, but one I didn't expect. I understand its importance in the flow of the book and can appreciate what she was sharing.

I believe Heather describes her difficult childhood with clarity and a truthful awareness of her reality. There was not a self-pitying or aren't I special attitude - she was genuine.  I found it interesting to learn about the process she went through to become the person she is today. I liked her and am happy she finally told!

My thanks go to LibraryThing Early Reviewers program and Riverhead Books for sending me this ARC.

CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER

Author:  Tom Franklin

Genre:  Southern Mystery, Standalone

Published:  2010

Personal Rating: 4.5/5 (excellent)

Yearly Count:  95

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is about two boys, one white and one black, that grow up in Mississippi as secret friends in the late 70s. A couple of devastating events occur - one at the beginning of a 20 year span, which separates the boys and the other at the end that reunites them as men. Between alternating chapters of the past and present, how the events continue to effect their lives is gradually revealed.

I wish I had longer lengths of time to devote to this book. Life, in general, continually yanked me out of its Mississippi drama every chapter or so, and I would lose some of the flow. However, due to the in-depth characters, intricate story line and detailed setting being incredibly engrossing, I was successfully transported back each time.  It would have been so nice to have the picture reel in my mind continue to roll without so many interruptions, though.  Ultimately, it was an excellent southern character study, with a mystery at its core.

A DUTY TO THE DEAD

Author: Charles Todd

Genre: Historical Mystery, Series #1

Published: 2009

Personal Rating: 3.5/5 (good)

Yearly Count: 94

Bess Crawford, a nurse in WWI, is at the bedside of a soldier during his last days. He elicits a promise from Bess to pass on a message to his brother. Bess follows through and discovers a family with many secrets.

I found it extremely difficult to not compare Bess Crawford to Maisie Dobbs (Winspear series), so I finally gave up and compared to my heart's content. The end result is that I prefer the Maisie Dobbs series by far and for several reasons, but still enjoyed this introduction to Bess.

The Todds (mother and son team) created Bess as an intelligent, independent woman, and the setting of France and Britain during WWI seemed authentic. The problem for me was within the plot. The actions of one of the brothers was beyond reasonable, therefore, shifting the story into the unbelievable. Regardless, I'm still interested in Bess and thought the venture with her was a good one.

THE DREAMING

Author: Queenie Chan

Genre: YA Manga, Vol. 1

Published: 2005

Personal Rating: 3/5 (just okay)

Yearly Count: 93

Twin sisters are shipped off to a private boarding school in the Australian bush and are quick to discover that something is off.  The girls are informed of rumors regarding the surrounding bushlands and the dreams begin.

This was the first manga book I read, and I thought it was okay.  I loved the mystery and creepiness of the plot, but in general have never cared for characters that have dreams as part of the story. I began to shut down at that point. This was a very quick, one sitting glance read, as it is only Vol. 1 of 3. Alas, it didn't capture my attention enough for me to continue.

*Recommended By: Nicola from Back to Books

DEED TO DEATH

Author: D. B. Henson

Genre: Mystery, Standalone

Published:  2010

Personal Rating: 3.25/5 (better than just okay)

Yearly Count:  92

A successful couple are on the brink of getting married when unexpectedly the groom-to-be jumps to his death.  When law enforcement doesn't agree to the suggestion of foul play, the baffled bride-to-be is determined to find out what possibly could have caused him to commit suicide.

I felt like there were a lot of unbelievable stunts and the characters were underdeveloped, but despite that, I was always pleased to get back to it and enjoyed the suspense. Also, the climax received an eye-roll or two, but overall this debut was better than just okay, and I'd be happy to give Henson another shot. I think she has potential.

LIAR

Author: Justine Larbalestier

Genre: YA Fiction, Standalone

Published: 2009

Personal Rating:  DNF #2

This one falls under the column of CONS when deciding whether or not to read book descriptions or reviews. I wasn't necessarily enjoying this, but thought the plot would thicken soon and grab my attention.  Well, it did, and without hesitation - it became a DNF.  I'm not going to say what the changing force was because it may ruin it for others.  But, if you're like me and don't like to know much about a book, you may want to have a clue about this one.  Thankfully this doesn't happen to me often.

A CARRION DEATH

Author:  Michael Stanley

Genre:  Police Procedural, Series #1

Published:  2008

Personal Rating:  2.5/5 (eh)

Yearly Count: 91

Assistant Superintendent of the Botswana Police Department, David Bengu (nicknamed Kubu which means hippopotamus in Setswanan), is called when a body is found in a remote area, half devoured by hyenas.

I was really excited to see how this book was going to compare with The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency being that they share the same setting and solve mysteries.  Initially this mystery had intrigue, but as it progressed, I discovered that I didn't care about the actual plot.  It followed this repetitive pattern throughout (with not much exaggeration, I might add):

Food and drinks, dead body, little bit of thinking and gathering of clues, repeat over and over and over again.

Sad to say, but it just didn't capture my attention or have any likable characters.  I never built a connection with Kubu and frankly, could care less what he eats and drinks. I think I'll stick to Detective Precious Ramotswe when I want a Botswana mystery.  (I think I appreciate her much more now.)  Others have really enjoyed this, but it just didn't work for me.

RUNNING THE BOOKS

Author:  Avi Steinberg
Genre:  Memoir, Standalone
Published:  2010
Personal Rating:  2.75/5 (better than eh)
Yearly Count:  90



Subtitle:  The Adventures of an Accidental Prison Librarian



From the back of the ARC:

Avi Steinberg is stumped.  After defecting from yeshiva to Harvard, he has only a senior thesis essay on Bugs Bunny to show for his effort.  While his friends and classmates advance in the world, he remains stuck at crossroads, unable to meet the lofty expectations of his Orthodox Jewish upbringing.  And his romantic existence as a freelance obituary writer just isn't cutting it.  Seeking direction--and dental insurance--Steinberg takes a job as a librarian in a tough Boston prison.

 The prison library counter, his new post, attracts con men, minor prophets, ghosts and an assortment of quirky regulars searching for the perfect book and a connection to the outside world.  There's an amiable pimp who solicits Steinberg's help in writing a memoir.  An industrious gangster who dreams of hosting a cooking show titled Thug Sizzle.  A disgruntled officer who instigates a major feud over a Post-it note.  An ex-stripper who asks Steinberg to orchestrate a reunion with her estranged son, himself an inmate.  Over time, Steinberg is drawn into the accidental community of outcasts that has formed among his bookshelves--a drama he recounts with heartbreak and humor.

Running the Books is a trenchant personal exploration of prison culture and an entertaining tale of one young man's earnest attempt to find his place in the world while trying not to get fired in the process.

This was a long - a very long, sometimes dull read.  I believe Avi has so much to share about his experience as the prison librarian, but it just didn't come out right. I'm left with a flat feeling and many unanswered questions.  Blob.  That doesn't make me very happy.

However, I now know many of the inmates that Avi was in contact with and a little about his co-workers, but I don't know Avi much more than I did going into the book.  I actually had developed some concern for an inmate or two, so he told the story of their meetings well.  But, do I care about Avi?  Not really.  I didn't get the opportunity to know him, so how could I?







Thanks to Shelf Awareness and Random House for sending me this ARC.  Running the Books is scheduled to be released on October 19, 2010.
   

CITY OF THIEVES

Author:  David Benioff
Genre:  Historical Fiction, Standalone

Published:  2008

Personal Rating:  3.75/5 (better than good)

Yearly Count:  89



During the siege of Leningrad, two males are taken into custody by the Red Army and are accused of specific crimes.  Instead of the due execution, the Colonel has given them a major task to complete in a limited amount of time.  The story is told from the 17-year-old's point of view. 

It's very rare that I don't love a book that is about WWII, so I'm a little disappointed - even though I thought it was good.  I suppose my expectations were set too high.  The walk (literal) takes one through a slew of emotions, but that didn't make or break my experience.  I think if the coming-of-age or boy talk was toned down a bit, I may have enjoyed it more.  It wasn't at the annoying level, but it was beginning to wear on me. I did enjoy the interaction between the two main characters and seeing another perspective of the war, but I didn't find it to be as good as others I have read on the same topic. 

PART LIGHT, PART MEMORY (5 of 19)

Author:  Bonnie Hearn Hill
(Edited by Harlan Coben)

Genre: Short Story Collection

Published: Death Do Us Part, 2006

Personal Rating: 3.25/5 (better than just okay)

(ss) Yearly Count: 25

An African slave girl thinks about revenge for the death of her father.

This was probably a better story than I'm giving it credit for, but I unfortunately fell asleep after only reading half of the story.  When I picked it up again this morning, I had lost the continuity and didn't want to reread.