People of the Book

by Geraldine Brooks

So I decided to give Brooks another try, after 'Caleb's Crossing' disappointment. And was glad I did.
This was an amazing book, with a huge scope.
It follows an ancient religious text and bounces from an art restorer/archivist working with the book to the people who had impact on the book throughout five centuries of its existence.
So many voices: a Jewish teenage freedom fighter in WWII, an African slave and artist, a rabbi living in Venice during the Inquisition, and more.
Every character is picture-perfect, the story is compelling...it was a perfect read.

The Secret Scripture

by Sebastian Barry

I didn't expect much from this book, I'd never read anything by this author -- but I will now.
The story is told from two different narrators, an English/Irish psychiatrist and director of a state-run mental hospital, and Roseanne,  a patient.
Through a slowly-evolving story we learn about Roseanne's life as a desperately poor Irish girl, a young widow and mental patient. The doctor's life is told in parallel, mostly over his many decades running the asylum Roseanne spends most her life in.
The back and forth is told perfectly, with distinct yet subtle language differences.
The story is tragic, sweet and compelling.
Loved this books.

Caleb's Crossing

by Geraldine Brooks

Typically I love historical fiction but this one seemed too...I don't know, like a high-class Harlequin romance novel.
It's based on a bit of actual history, one of the first Native Americans to attend an American university -- Harvard, no less and way back in the 1600s. It's told through the eyes of Bethia, a Colonial girl who befriends him.
Some of the history was interesting, Colonial politics, Native traditions and daily life, but the storytelling was too melodramatic and the formal English language, while factual, made it worse.

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

Such a huge fan of the movie, knew the book would be exceptional -- and it was.
The author has such an unusual way with words, odd sentence fragments and rambles. But it totally works.
The book takes place prior to and in the waning days of WWII. There is an odd assortment of characters -- a petty thief who is also a drug addict, a nurse traumatized by life, an Indian bomb disposal expert who tries to live his life by holding himself apart, and a scientist fatally burned an an accident.
They all hole up an a wrecked villa and their lives prior out spill out in little rivulets, over time.

Loved, loved. loved. this book.

Christine

by Stephen King


This was one of his older books that I hadn't read yet, a good summer choice.

Dennis and Arnie are typical teens, except that one is a popular jock and the other a pimply loser. When the geek impetiously buys an old clucker car, Christine, strange things start to happen.
King always tells such a good story. His characters are quirky and well-drawn, not typical. His momentum is amazing. This book was not quite as gory as some, more suspenseful but King has never been one to shy away from blunt crudeness from time to time and being about teenagers, this book has it.

The Bone House

by Stephen Lawhead

Okay, so obviously I need to research by audio book choices better.

This was 1. a fantasy, which I don't enjoy now like I did when I was 12.
and          2. a serial that I was started partway through.

Really annoying.

It was all I had with me on vacation, however, so I stuck with it.

Kit is pursuing a 'skin-map' that holds many secrets; he's part of a special group that can 'lay travel' through time and space.Yeah, characters not all that interesting and plot convoluted (maybe not if you started at the beginning, but....)

The Deepest Water

by Kate Wilhelm

This was another simple summer read, a crime/dysfunctional family thriller and although I had the villain picked out after the second chapter (and I was right) I enjoyed it nonetheless.
Abby's father, a writer, is killed and she is determined to find out who did it. He lived in an isolated area and had few friends, so it seems everyone is suspect.
One odd thing -- the author is from Oregon and the book is set there too, so I thought I'd really enjoy that part of it. Yet this was an audio book and it was crazy-making that the actor doing the book kept mispronouncing local place names. What kind of crappy producer doesn't make sure geographic names are researched and pronounced right? Yachats was "Yeah-chits". Drove me nuts and almost make me want to walk away from the book.

Coop: A family, a farm and the pursuit of one good egg

by Mathew Perry

I'm turning into quite a memoir lover. If it's well done, it is so enjoyable.

This journalist chronicled a certain time in his life, returning to his rural farm-dwelling life, with a new wife and child. He chronicles his victories - very few -- and failings -- plenty -- as he learns to be a farmer, husband and father.

It is very plain-spoken in its prose but lovely all the same.

Love, love, loved it.
More Michael Perry in my future I can see.

The Time Traveler's Wife

by Audrey Niffennegger

I almost didn't read this book because I had seen (some of) the movie and thought it was horrible.
Book? Way better.
It tells the story of Henry, a man who travels through time incessantly due to some unknowable genetic anomaly.
It is, at its heart, a love story. Somewhere along the line he meets Claire. They fall in love, have a child.
But the novel is free-flowing, moving from  scene where Claire is 10 and Henry 40, then back to a scene where Henry is 15 but his child is 8.
It can be confusing but if you relax and let it be what it is, the story is epic and the characters well-drawn. 

A Singular Woman

by Janny Scott

I don't read a lot of biographies but when I pick one up I'm usually happy I did.
This one features the mother of President Obama, a strange subject because for one, she's dead and two, she did nothing in her own life to earn fame.
Yet she was a distinctive woman and Scott's research seems impeccable.
Ann Dunham grew up in an ordinary way and went on to to extraordinary things with her life -- unusual and brave marriages, passionate career, dedication to a cause.
Proof the most ordinary of us is amazing. 

The Help

by Kathryn Stockett

I resisted this book for a long time. It was wildly popular when it came out, which made me suspicious. It sounded kind of sappy and sentimental.
I resisted.
Then it was almost immediately made into  movie, which made me resist it even more.
Finally I caved and was happy I did.
It's a story of black servants in the Deep South, as the civil rights movement was just beginning. It's the story of their employers. It's the story of what a very odd relationship that is.
Told through the voices of several of the servants and one of the white women, you felt the emotions strongly and got deep into the story.
Popular isn't evil, I need to learn.
Leastwise, not always.

The Book Thief

by Marcus Zusak

Hands down one of the most unique novels I've read in years.
In many ways it tells the story of WWII in Germany but from the aspect of a young girl and ...an angel of death?
Sounds way new-agey to describe but it's not.
Liesel goes to live with foster parents in a mid-size German town just before the war breaks out. She learns to love her new parents, misses her dead brother, makes friends and steals books. The war starts, her father goes off to the Army, he comes back, they shelter a Jew in the basement and she steals books.
This is a remarkable novel, really practically indescribable. Can't even begin to say how remarkable it is -- lyrical and plain, magical and down-to-earth. 

Killshot

by Elmer Leonard

I stumbled across this in the audio book lists quite by accident; I'm not even sure why I downloaded it -- it isn't my typical kind of book. I think it's a series, or at least a 'genre' type of book.
The main characters are a crazy combination, two a middle-class couple who are ordinary, yet exceptional, and the other two a Native American hit man and a psycho killer ex-con.
I know, right ? Sounds so predictable but the characters are so finely drawn you get sucked into the story -- which by itself isn't that unique. But the characters make it all worthwhile.
May have to find something else by this author. 

Out Stealing Horses

by Pers Petterson

This was an uncommonly lyrical book.

Since it was translated from its original Norwegian, I wonder how that is possible. Was the original MORE lyrical, I wonder.  Is that even possible? Or perhaps the translator added her own voice. Or maybe translating isn't as hard as I think it is.

Its passages haunt me. The book's subject is an old man, recently moved to the country for solitude. He lives a simple life and at first it seems even his memories are of simple things, with little meaning.

But that's deceiving. Even the title is deceiving. Out stealing horses may refer to a harmless joyriding prank he does with his childhood friends but it's also an expression Norwegians used for resistance activities during Nazi-occupied WWII.

As it turns out, there are very powerful things going on in Trond's life and very powerful things that happened in his past.

But it is unfolded very slowly, very simply.

State Fair

by Earlene Fowler

This was a fast vacation read, over the holidays. I stumbled on Fowler's first book back in the early 1990s, when I was bitten by the quilting bug (it's theme was around a quilt) and found myself liking it, despite myself.
I don't usually like series, or genre books -- like romance, or mysteries, or horror -- but her 'Benni Harper' books is a mystery series and a good one.
The characters are well-defined, the plots not to predictable and the writing crisp.
What else can you ask for?
In this book of the series a young man is killed during the county fair and Harper, curator in a folk art museum in central California, is drawn into the crime. It seems as she goes on Fowler's Harper series has less and less to do with quilting and I kinda miss that.