How’s That Book: 2017

Friday, December 29, 2017

The Gift

by Danielle Steel

It's the 1950s, Liz and John Whittaker along with their children, Tommy and Annie, are living in a dream world, they couldn't be happier. Then tragedy strikes taking four-year-old Annie. The family is devastated. Liz and John's marriage is falling apart and Tommy is struggling.

Meanwhile miles away, Maribeth Robertson is getting ready for her first Prom. She loves her beautiful peacock blue taffeta strapless dress with it's little bolero, but her dad is throwing a fit, telling her that she and all the other girls who are going to prom are dressing like sluts. She finally returns to her room where her mother helps her pick out a navy blue dress with a white collar and long sleeves. She feels mortified, but desperately wants to go to the prom - even if it is with David O'Connor, a boy she barely knows, but the only one who invited her. Maribeth knows he probably couldn't get a date with anyone else.

Once at the prom, David goes in search of drinks for both of them, and when he returns after almost a half hour, Maribeth realizes David had had a few "drinks" before returning to her. She wasn't interested in alcohol and is realizing that coming to the prom wasn't such a good idea after all.

After sending David back for a "proper" drink for a teenager, she decides to walk home, but rests on a bench outside for a while. There she is approached by Paul Browne, the coolest and most handsome high school senior who offers her a ride home. It takes some coaxing, but she finally accepts the ride, and is secretly thrilled that he has noticed her. He suggests going for a hamburger before going home and she readily accepts. After they've eaten, they get back into the car and he suggests driving around for a little while as there is still time before her curfew.

I think she's never been on a date as she is giddy with the attention he is showering on her. They find a place to park and a kiss leads to other things and finally the inevitable. She is confused, happy and scared.

A couple of months later her biggest fear is realized and she knows she has to tell her parents she is pregnant. Of course, her father hits the roof while her mother cries. Her father sends her away with money to cover staying at a local convent until the baby is born. One month there and she knows she cannot stay any longer. She still has a few hundred dollars and decides to head for Chicago. At a bus stop, she eats in the diner. She decides she loves the atmosphere of the town and when she notices a help wanted sign in the window, she decides to stay. She gets the job and meets a young man.

Maribeth doesn't realize it, but she has a "gift" for everyone in that town, especially the Whittakers.

I'm not particularly a Danielle Steel fan, but I found this to be a lovely story of someone who's fallen from grace, finds love and redemption and then the strength to give to others.

Bye Bye, Sweet Susie

by David A Estes

Just before Jeff Timberlake’s mother dies, she hands him an envelope and instructs him to deliver it to an old friend in the town of Marlow, Missouri. This suits him fine because Marlow is on the way to St. Louis where he’s going to apply for a newsman job at a radio station.

When he hits the outskirts of Marlow he sees a billboard that reads … ‘SUSIE McCORD DIED HERE’. The words pique his interest. Is Susie McCord a celebrity? someone he should know? He’s not sure, but one thing he discovers is the town folks clam up when he starts asking questions. His journalistic nose tells him something is going on in the city of Marlow.

David A. Estes has written 10 novels so far and I've read three of them. I love his Ozarkian style of writing, especially depicting the 1950s or 1960s as in this book. I enjoyed the interaction between Jeff and the people of Marlow. As Jeff noses into the town's business, I was waiting for someone to run him out of town. I thought it a tad unbelievable that he could solve a four-year-old mystery of who killed Susie McCord within less than a week though. But then sometimes those things are easy in books.

The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

I know this has been reviewed by many others. But while the book appears on many of the must-read lists, I found it was one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Supposedly, Plath is writing about her own life and attempts at suicide masked in comedic drama. Esther has received a coveted six-week internship at a famous magazine publishing house. During a summer break from her college classes that are covered by scholarships, she lives at a hotel for girls - those what were prominent in large cities during the 1950s and 1960s. Even as she has her mental breakdowns, those expenses are covered by a wealthy matron. I find myself jealous of all that has been given to her and she seems to have no appreciation for any of it. In fact, nothing nor no one seems to be good enough. All she can see are the flaws of others.

It seems to me that when someone is continually looking for perfection in others while ignoring their own blemishes, they are going to be disappointed. The protagonist in this book tears down and dissects everything around her. This book seems to glamorize that depression. But then, maybe shock treatments were the "thing" back then like psychiatric and psychological treatments seemed to be the "thing" in the 1960s. I read other reviews of this book, I read explanations of this book, but the thing I wonder is if had she not committed suicide shortly after the publication of the book, would it still be a must-read?

Monday, November 13, 2017

The Noel Diary

by Richard Paul Evans

Every November I eagerly await Richard Paul Evans' latest book and he never fails to please. I've read every one of them, and this is one of my favorites, being topped only by Promise Me and The Christmas Box trilogy.

While many of his books are inspired by events in his life, it is my understanding that The Noel Diary is closer than most to the trauma he experienced in his younger years.

The book starts out with Jacob as a successful, but lonely, author. His abusive mother has died years after she placed all his belongs on the front lawn when he was in his late teens. She had never recovered from the death of his older brother, when Jacob was only four years old. As he returns to settle her estate, he finds that she's become a hoarder. Sifting through years and years of accumulation of "stuff" Jacob begins to find answers to questions that have haunted him. He wonders is there a connection with the beautiful woman is of whom he has been dreaming? The girl who stops by to ask about her birth mother reminds him so much of that woman in the dreams who comforts him as a child.

As Jacob searches through his mother's things, I found myself searching with him and wondering what would he find next. I was not disappointed.

I loved the book!

See Me

by Nicholas Sparks

I normally love Nicholas Sparks' novels, but this one was too slow, and didn't get going until about halfway through. The characters were just too perfectly perfect (Maria was the beautiful hispanic lawyer, and Colin the perfectly bad-guy boyfriend. Lily was just not "real" as far as I was concerned), but then maybe I'm jealous of perfection. I like to be able to relate to the characters just a little bit.

Once the story really got started, the book was okay, but definitely not in the same vein as The Lucky One or Nights in Rodanthe, both of which I liked better than even Message in a Bottle.

I'm glad I read the book, but it will go into the Goodwill box.

Friday, October 6, 2017

Between Shades of Gray

by Ruta Sepetys

In the midst of war, the will to survive is strong in humans - even in Siberia in the winter!

A knock on the door late one night in June 1941 forever changed the lives of 15-year-old Lina and her family. As her family and neighbors were rounded up and driven to the trains, they were separated with Lina, her mother and young brother going one direction and her father going another. Leaving the comforts of home for the first time, a new life begins in the cattle cars where they spend the next several weeks traveling from Lithuania eastward through Russia. Death becomes a constant companion as they fight for fresh air and food and dignity. Sent to the potato and turnip farms, they are rationed 300 grams of bread a day (about a half pound). Stealing potatoes and turnips or even finding a frozen owl to cook means the difference between life and death.

While Lina loses herself in her drawings when she's not being forced to work, Lina's mother and and her friend Andrius' mother are forced to negotiate with the guards they hate. They never lose hope that contact with their husbands is possible.

Eventually in late August, their group is sent to Siberia where they are forced to build housing for the guards with bricks that were in the bottom of the ship when they crossed the sea. Finishing the building, they are forced to carry the supplies the guards will eat during the coming winter. After they gather daily firewood for the guards, they then are tasked with building their own huts using only driftwood and scraps, and mud and seaweed to seal their buildings. They are not allowed to use wood from the forest nor to fish. Their only sustenance is their daily bread ration. Medical help is a vet who has no medicine.

I am amazed at the cruelty that humans can inflict on each other. The story of the Baltic people's genocide has been pretty much unknown, only coming to light through buried jars of papers containing drawings and their stories. Those who survived spent 10 to 15 years in Siberia and when they were released in the mid-1950s, they found that their homes, furnishings and identities had been taken over by the Soviets. They were forced to live in restricted areas as criminals - though their only crime was education and art. They were teachers, lawyers, doctors, writers, librarians, artists and musicians, who had been forced to live in the most depraved conditions imaginable. Even speaking of the things they endured meant immediate imprisonment or deportation back to Siberia. The Russians deny they ever deported anyone. Under the rule of Josef Stalin, more than 20 million people were killed.

This book, though fictional, is a combination of stories found in buried jars of those people and their fight for survival.

Tuesday, September 26, 2017

The Pilot's Wife

The Pilot’s Wife

by Anita Shreve

When Kathryn Lyon receives the dreaded late-night knock on her door, she realizes the "worst" has happened - the plane piloted by her husband, Jack, has exploded near the coast of Ireland.

As reporters gather outside her home and the airlines sends their investigators to question her about her husband's life, she begins to realize there is much she really never knew about him. This is the most exciting thing you will read within the first 150 pages.

Around page 150 Kathryn decides to call a number found in one of Jack's pockets, and at page 200, she decides to fly with Robert (the lead investigator) to London to find the person who answered the phone. While Robert seems overly interested in Kathryn while she's in the midst of her grief, he does not go with her to confront the person on the other end of the phone. Instead, after she's run from the apartment into the pouring rain without an umbrella and walked the streets for hours, he tries to rescue her. The final answers come the next morning at breakfast when she and Robert are joined by the woman she visited the day before (around page 253).

The story is sad, boring and unrealistic. This is the slowest book I've ever read and I have no idea how it ended up as an Oprah's Book Club book. I would give this book one star just for having a lot of words.

Wednesday, July 12, 2017

The Best of Me

by Nicholas Sparks

Love stories usually aren't my favorite type of books, though I will occasionally read one now and then. There are a few authors I like and Nicholas Sparks is one.

The story is typical, it is about love and it has all the elements that make a good story: The girl, the boy, the forbidden love that they overcome. Amanda was more high society and Dawson was from across the tracks. Amanda was headed to college and Dawson was just trying to escape his family's violence and drug trade. Though they fell in love, Dawson and Amanda couldn't get past her mother's fears. So Amanda went on to college and Dawson spent four years in prison due to a car accident that really wasn't his fault.

Now it's twenty years later, Amanda is married and Dawson works on an oil rig out in the ocean. Unknown to the other, they both receive a letter from the home town lawyer requesting their presence at the reading of a will. Their mentor and friend, Tuck Hostetler, had died.

Once they meet again, they realize their love has never died and is only rekindled. Amanda has important decisions to make. Dawson wants her to run away with him. Should she leave her alcoholic husband?

Business in town finished, she's headed home to rethink her life when she gets a telephone call. Her son and husband have been in a terrible auto accident and the boy may not make it. Amanda races to the hospital.

Several subplots weave their way throughout the book, each affecting our two main characters. Jumping from scene to scene is a nice way to tell the whole story - until you realize that one subplot has stopped. It was then that I knew exactly where this book was headed and I was not happy.

I know that not everything goes exactly the way we hope, but sometimes it would be nice if it did.

Nicholas Sparks said this book was one of the hardest that he ever wrote. Well, Nicholas, it was one of the hardest that I ever read too!

Sunday, July 9, 2017

A Walk in the Woods

Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail

by Bill Bryson

I'm not sure what I expected from this book, other than the back cover mentioned "bizarre assortment of hilarious characters" and "comic genius."

The book started out interesting enough; I enjoyed the trips to the Dartmouth Co-op picking out camping gear, and I enjoyed the meet-up with his overweight hiking buddy who seemed to think that tons of donuts would sustain them on their hike through the Appalachians. The characters they met along the way were interesting and fascinating; I especially liked the girl who debated every comment and seemed to think she was the only person who knew anything, eventually ending up debating her own comments.

While the beginning of the book was enjoyable, my interest began to wane. As I watched my bookmark's progression, my feelings about its placement seemed to coincide with Bryson's feelings about the walk - I was a bit tired of it. Much of the middle of the book consisted of informational entries about the mountains and history of the trail rather than Bryson's experiences on the trail. I then realized that when you're walking through the woods, it's difficult to describe the sameness of each day differently, especially when one might go days without seeing another person. Each tree, each trail looks the same as another.

I was hoping for at least a bear or bobcat encounter, but there was none. The buddy did have an exciting episode though.

There were points along the way for tents and short trails into the nearest town. It was at one of these stops when they realize they've moved only two inches on the map. Eventually, rather than being discouraged, all of a sudden they, along with the reader, experience freedom - it's okay if they don't walk the whole trail. Hence - A Walk in the Woods.

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Last Days of Summer

by Steve Kluger

This epistolary novel about 12-year-old Joey from Brooklyn who is looking for a father-figure was a joy to read. Joey is open about his disdain and at the same time his admiration for third baseman Charlie Banks of the New York Giants.

Through a series of determined and hilariously annoying letters to the baseball player, Charlie at first responds in kind, then to his surprise softens and eventually befriends Joey. Throughout, the road to their friendship is examined by Joey's psychologist.

The book is a series of letters and notes to and from Joey and Charlie, Charlie's girlfriend, Charlie's baseball friends, Joey's teachers, his psychologist, and his best friend, etc. As Joey plans his angle of approach to Charlie, his persistence in the relationship is laugh-out-loud. He becomes even more lovable the harder he tries - even when he tries to join the Army at age 13 - just to be with Charlie.

Last Days of Summer will have you laughing, crying, and wishing for the glamorous and innocent age of the 1940s before the war.