What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
When Alice Love falls and hits her head on the gym, all her memories from the past ten years disappear. She thinks she’s a twenty-nine year old in love with her husband and expecting her first child. In reality, she’s a soon-to-be divorced thirty-nine year old with three kids. Alice must get to know her thirty-nine year old self and try to figure out how she got to where she is in her life. Of course, everyone in her life has also changed in ten years and she has to get used to that as well.
I loved the pacing of the story and how the author revealed information about the ten year gap in Alice’s memory in bits and pieces. It was suspenseful enough that I could not put the book down but not so suspenseful that I got frustrated. It was also fascinating to read multiple characters perspective on why thirty-nine year old Alice is the way she is. The back cover of my copy says, “Finally, a smart woman’s beach read.” I think that’s a great assessment. Alice is charming, likable and really funny at times like a good chick-lit heroine but this was not a fluffy story – it had some real meat to it.
This book had me thinking about for days after I finished it. What would my self of ten years ago think of my self now – not knowing any of the things that have happened to me over the past ten years? I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fun AND thoughtful summer read.
*** As an aside – there is an infertility subplot that was handled really well. As someone who experienced three years of infertility before my first child was born, I’m extra sensitive to that sort of thing. It drives me crazy when books and movies have medically unrealistic infertility stories. The infertility story in this book was medically accurate and emotionally accurate as well. I could completely relate to the character that experiences infertility and I went through many of her emotions myself during my own struggles.
What Alice Forgot comes out today! By it at:
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(I received this book courtesy of the publisher.)
June 2nd, 2011 in
Books |
5 Comments
West started summer school today. It’s a two week session to get him acquainted with school and make it easier when he starts kindergarten in the fall. He has to catch the bus at the ungodly hour of 6:30am. I was thinking I’d get him on the bus, come home and have some (more) coffee, workout and then relax a bit with a book while Cash played. Little did I know Cash had other plans. He wanted to make a “happy starting school” cake for when West came home from school. I thought that was such a sweet idea that I let him run with it. It quickly went from just a cake to an entire “happy starting school” party. After a trip to the grocery store for ingredients and Joann for craft supplies, we were good to go. He helped me bake the cake – Cash wanted a yellow cake because that’s West’s favorite flavor even though chocolate cake is one of his favorite foods. I suggested chocolate frosting but he said that brown was not a happy color and the frosting needed to be white to be a good background for the picture he was going make on it. I iced the cake white and then he decorated the entire thing himself. The only thing I did was write the message on it. He may have a future as a pastry chef!
Just in case you cant’ tell – that’s a school bus on the left and the school on the right. The green is grass with flowers on it.
Cash made this sign and we hung it up on the garage door so West would see it right away.
West was a *little* tired when he got home.
West loved his cake. Cash also insisted that West choose what we had for lunch (mac n cheese). I could tell the whole “happy starting school” party made West feel really special. He’s so lucky to have such a thoughtful big brother!
June 1st, 2011 in
Cash,
Family,
West |
4 Comments
Bonobo Handshake: A Memoir of Love and Adventure in the Congo by Vanessa Woods
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I picked this book up because I wanted to learn more about bonobos after reading Sara Gruen’s Ape House. Bonobo Handshake is a memoir about the author’s time in Congo working at a bonobo sanctuary. Like chimps and humans, bonobos and humans share almost 99 percent of their DNA – yet hardly anyone has even heard of a bonobo.
Bonobos are wonderful, gentle, intelligent creatures and it was fascinating to learn more about them in this book. The author didn’t know much about them before coming the sanctuary either so she takes the reader through her journey of becoming acquainted with and eventually falling in love with these amazing animals.
There is also a fair amount of the political history of Congo throughout the book, of which I was woefully ignorant. Bonobos are hunted for their meat in Congo (even though it’s technically illegal) and what happens to their species depends in a lot of ways on the condition of the country – if food is scarce due to war or other reasons, bonobos are hunted more and more.
This was great book on its own merits and even more fun to read after having read Ape House. It showed me that Gruen’s book was very well researched and an accurate depiction of how bonobos act. I highly recommend this book to fans of Ape House and animal lovers in general.
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June 1st, 2011 in
Books |
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Blind Your Ponies by Stanley West
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’m a sucker for a good sports underdog story like Hoosiers and Rudy. Blind Your Ponies is that and so much more. Set in the small town of Willow Creek, Montana, a town whose basketball team hasn’t won a game in the last five years. The story centers around the coach Sam Pickett but there is huge cast of unique supporting characters that reside in the small town. As Sam tries for one last season to build a winning basketball team, he is also struggling with a past that haunts him. As the story progresses, Sam becomes aware that most everyone in the town has personal challenges too and he looks to them for inspiration.
I became totally absorbed in the story – the characters were all really well-developed and relatable. However, I listened to this book on audio and at times it was hard to keep track of some of the minor characters. Having a paper copy and being able to page back through what I had already read would have been helpful. The other criticism I have is that some of the dialogue was a little over the top and at times a tad cheesy.
Even though this is at heart an underdog sports story, the author kept it from being too predictable – I was still on the edge of my seat at times.
An interesting side note: Stanley Gordon West self-published this book in 2001 and he sold 40,000 copies of it before it was discovered by Algonquin and republished under their imprint in January 2011.
Buy this book at:
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(I received a copy of this audio book courtesy of the publisher and the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.)
Whenever West is trying to smile extra nicely, he makes his turtle face:
Putting the boys too close together in the photo never goes well. This was towards the end of the shoot so they had already used up most of their good behavior:
This one is not the boys’ fault. What the heck kind of pose is this? I’ve been going to this portrait studio for years and they’ve never had them do anything so weird before. (Side note: how long to you thing they laid head to head like that before one of them rolled on top of the other and they started wrestling? Yeah, about two seconds.):
May 27th, 2011 in
West |
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Dark Lover by J.R. Ward
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Dark Lover is the first book in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series. The Black Dagger Brotherhood is a group of vampire warriors whose job is defending the vampire race against the lessers. The lessers are evil, undead creatures – kind of like zombies without the brain eating.
Each book in the series focuses on one of the brothers and their love interest. There is a continuous overall story that runs throughout the books but you could probably pick up a book in the middle of the series and not have too hard of a time figuring out what was going on.
This first book is the story of Wrath, the leader of the Black Dagger Brotherhood. When his fellow warrior Darius asks him to look out for his half-human daughter should anything happen to him, Wrath is hesitant. He’s a tough warrior who doesn’t form attachments to anyone, especially humans and/or females. When Wrath actually meets Darius’s daughter Beth, the attraction is so strong that Wrath must fight to maintain control.
This book has all the elements of great, smutty vampire romance. The only part I didn’t really like were the scenes with the head of the lessers. He was too sadistic for my taste and I would rather have been reading steamy sex scenes than fight scenes.
I read the print version and listened to the audio book version of this book. The audio version was not quite as good as reading the book. For some reason the narrator gave Marissa (and only Marissa) a really weird Slavic accent. The book says that all the vampires have slight accents so if he did an accent for her he should have done it for all them. I’m glad he didn’t though because it was really bad.
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May 26th, 2011 in
Books |
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Abandon by Meg Cabot
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Pierce had a near death experience two years ago when she drowned in her parents’ swimming pool. Her life hasn’t been the same since. She and her mom move to a town and she starts a new school for a fresh start.
This book surprised me because it was so much darker than everything else I’ve read by Meg Cabot. There was an invisible cloud of gloom over every scene. That would have been okay if some of the characters would have been likable. Pierce was just kind of blah, she didn’t have the charm that Cabot’s female leads usually have. Her love interest was just awful. I get the whole being attracted to the bad boy thing but that’s usually because the bad boy is secretly sensitive and every once and a while there is a little peek into that side. The guy in this book was just a jerk, plain and simple. There wasn’t any believable chemistry between him and Pierce.
Even though I didn’t enjoy this book, I will read the next one in the trilogy because I normally really enjoy Cabot’s books and I’m hoping that the second book will be better.
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(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and Amazon Vine.)
Strings Attached by Judy Blundell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Kit Corrigan, one of the Corrigan Three (a set of triplets born in the 1930s), leaves her family and life in Providence, Rhode Island to make a career for herself as an actress and dancer in New York City. After a bit part in a Broadway play wraps up, Kit is floundering. Her boyfriend’s father, Nate Benedict, offers her an apartment and a job as a dancer in a popular night club. Unfortunately, he’s a mob lawyer and naive Kit doesn’t realize that accepting his offer will come with “strings attached”.
The author did a great job of giving this book an authentic 1950s noir atmosphere. The attitudes and motivations of the characters are also realistic for people in that time period. However, I felt that the plot just kind of meandered along up with no point until the last fourth of the book. Then things picked up as Kit started to look for her missing Aunt Delia.
The story unfolded in non-chronological order. The author kept the reader’s interest by leaving out important information in the present day sections and then going back and filling in the details in the flash back sections. But really there was no mystery introduced into the plot until the book was almost over. I would have preferred the mystery of “where is Aunt Delia?” to drive the story and Kit from the beginning.
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(I received this book courtesy of the publisher and Amazon Vine.)
May 17th, 2011 in
Books |
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Earth (the book): A Visitor’s Guide to the Human Race by Jon Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Earth (the book) is a synopsis of the history of the human race to be read by the aliens who will arrive on our planet after we self-destruct. Written by Jon Stewart and The Daily Show staff, it is full of same kind of witty and biting humor that you would expect from The Daily Show. It wasn’t political though – everyone can enjoy this book and find it hilarious.
I listened to this book on audio. Jon Stewart does most of the narration with The Daily Show correspondents doing some skits and Sigourney Weaver reading the section titles. I loved it – Jon Stewart’s dry delivery was just as great as it is on the Daily Show. My husband has read the book and he tells me that the pictures in the print book were really funny – I’ll have to go back and read the print version as well someday.
By this book at:
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