Belated Posting and a Challenge

It's been several months since I've done a book review. I have been reading but the desire to write has been missing.

If you know me personally, you are probably aware that I have a lousy memory.  It's partially responsible for my blogging as a way to recall what I've read and what it was about.  With that in mind, I am going to do a few short blogs to catch up with the books I've read recently, but the reviews may be non-existent, as long as I can add the cover blurbs.  I apologize in advance. 

As to the my challenge.  This is a challenge to myself to catch up on my wish list of reading. That list grows longer almost daily with more books being added and few being read and removed.  I have a Goodreads.com account where I keep my complete list of books I've read and want to read.  Recently I discovered that Goodreads.com offers book giveaways and as I've entered to "win" books they have been added to my "want-to-read" list causing it to grow even more quickly.

Ack!!!

My new challenge to myself is to start at the oldest end of my list and read 20 books from it before allowing myself to read any other books already on the list or not.  I'm not going to require that I read them in any particular order, other than the first oldest 20.  So for the next period of time, the following list,in no particular order, is my-read-it-or-delete-it reading profile.

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen by Susan Gregg Gilmore

As Always, Jack by Emma Sweeney

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart

Under the Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer

The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

Civil War Wives by Carol Berkin

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

Circle of Friends by Maeve Binchy

A little update:  I've moved the books I've read (in the order I read them) to the bottom of my list.  It's an easy way for me to see that I am making progress.  In regard to that - I'm really enjoying this self made challenge and also enjoying the books that I've put off reading for so long! 

If you've stumbled upon this particular post and would like to read any of my reviews of the books I've completed and listed here, just click the photo. 

First book completed of 20 book challenge

Book 2 of 20

Book 3 of 20

Book 4 of 20

Not My Time!

It is difficult for me to give up on a book.  I've read many that I should have quit on far before reaching the end.  But I've decided life is too short to be held hostage by a bad book.  I'm giving myself permission to put them down.

This is my list:


The End of Your Life Book Club by Will Schwalbe

I read more of this one than I should have.  Just not interesting.  I thought I'd get some great recommendations, but I'll never read what they read. 

I Shall Be Near To You by Erin Lindsay McCabe

This is one I will more likely than not return to.  I've enjoyed what I've read, probably about 1/4 to 1/3 of the book, but I'm thinking the timing is just not right. 

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Started as a book club selection I just couldn't get into it.  Dull and boring.  The one person who did read it felt it was a waste of time.

Coming Clean by Kimberly Rae Miller

I won this book on Goodreads.com and it wasn't bad.  I think it may have been another timing thing.  I just got to a point where I put it down and never went back to it. 

Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman

I can't say why I didn't finish this one.  I am sure I was at least 80% through it and then just stopped.  I doubt I'll ever go back to it.

Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout

I'm not sure what originally attracted me to this book.  It could be that I wanted to read a Pulitzer Prize winning book.  I'm not sure I've ever read one before.  But the synopsis on the back was interesting and so I added it to my collection of unread books waiting to be read and, as usual, promptly forgot about it for a while.

I pulled it out while trying to slog my way through a book that I ended up not finishing.  I needed something to keep me going and this was handy.  In the end, I'm glad I stumbled back across it as I enjoyed it very much.

Olive Kitteridge, of the title, is occasionally the center of the book, but the book is not just about her story or any others.  Instead, Olive Kitteridge is a book of barely connected short stories.  The connection is the town where the people all live, Crosby, Maine.  Some of the stories involve Olive or her immediate family but many of them she has simply a walk-on role with no lines.  For example, she may simply be another customer in the restaurant where the story is taking place that chapter.

Each chapter introduces new characters. Like an onion, Ms. Strout begins to peel away the outer layers to reveal the raw flesh beneath.  In a just a few pages we learn secrets, insecurities, dreams or fears of our new friends and quickly begin to care about them whether with compassion or disdain.  By the end of each chapter I felt I might know what the future held, but usually had to complete the picture myself.  Isn't this like the real world?  Each meeting with a friend ends with a parting and uncertainty of what may come next.  Although each chapter may have left me with a question, like the rise of a voice at the end of the sentence, I didn't feel dissatisfied with the story.

Olive, her husband, Henry, and her son, Christopher are the only characters to reappear in more than one story.  We get unique perspectives from each of them of their family dynamic and how it unfolds over the years.  Olive Kitteridge herself was not outwardly a very sympathetic character, and yet I came to be quite fond of her.

I give Olive Kitteridge 4 shots of 5. 

Love Anthony

Love Anthony
by Lisa Genova

Lisa Genova is a fiction writer who has the educational background to write about the subjects she chooses. And of course she researches her topics extensively, too.  Her first book about Alzheimer's and her second book about brain injury both related closely and personally to my life and helped me feel more compassion and understanding.  Love Anthony is about autism and I don't have any experiences relating to it, but I trusted this author to pull me into a story involving autism and finish once again with more compassion and understanding.  She didn't disappoint.

In this case, the story was less about the condition and more about the effect of it on the world outside it, parents, family, friends and strangers.

The story starts without revealing a whole lot about autism.  In fact I wondered as I turned page after page if it was really going to invest much in the subject at all.  I was following the lives of two different women wondering where the story was going to interconnect.  Ms. Genova is a good story teller and I was involved in the book, so please don't think I was disappointed.  Eventually, one of the women starts to write a story from the perspective of a young boy with autism.  It was fascinating as she described his life from his view.  He was indeed a happy child who, in his own way, was much more involved in the world around him than it appears from the outside.

There is so much more to this book than I am going to even touch on.  Not just the effect of autism on a family but other stories of relationships and struggles, boiled down to the four most important things, to feel wanted, loved, safe and secure (I think that was the last thing..?) I really appreciate Ms. Genova's attempt to bring understanding for what it is like in Anthony's world.  And lest you think she assumes she got it perfect for all children with autism, I will paraphrase a quote from the book:

Once you've met a child with autism, you've met just one child with autism.

The spectrum of this condition is long and varies greatly from person to person. 

Five shots of five for one of my favorite authors.

The Forgotten Garden

The Forgotten Garden
by Kate Morton

I've forgotten more of the story than I remember but with the help of other people's reviews can put some of it together.  A young woman is bequeathed a cottage by her grandmother that she never knew existed.  She goes off to England, curious about the cottage, and what she can learn about her grandmother's ownership of it. 

The story unfolds told by women of three generations, eventually solving the mystery of the cottage and the ancestory of the women.

Okay, I realize this review is pretty lame, but I enjoyed the book.  Four of five shots. 

What Alice Forgot

What Alice Forgot
by Liane Moriarty

Alice fell off her bike during a spinning class and lost 10 years of her life.  Her memory of the last ten years, that is.  Suddenly she was not only ten years older, she didn't recognize her children, her husband didn't live with her any longer and everything had changed.  She tries to get by without letting on that she doesn't recognize her own life much less the people around her.. 

I love this story.  Imagine being transported ten years into the future and trying to understand why your once perfect life was no longer the fairy tale you've been living.  No explanation seems plausible, do you try to 'fix' it or just go with it?  You still feel passionately about a man who treats you as cool as a stranger and it's incomprehensible that these grown children could possibly belong to you.

It's one of those books that causes me to think about my own life and ask those "what ifs."  I give What Alice Forgot five of five shots. 

 

The Snow Child

The Snow Child
by Eowyn Ivey

This is the story of a lonely older couple who "adopt" a feral child. But is the child real or imaginary? Even as the reader, one isn't sure of the existence of the snow child. She exists where a normal man would have frozen or starved to death.  She disappears when the snow does and returns each fall with the first flakes.  But whether she is real or imaginary, she brings joy and pleasure to the lonely couple who rekindle their own relationship as a result of their new family dynamic.

A simple yet complex story, very different from most I've read. Four of five shots.