The Rescue

I finished this book sometime last week. I've really been slacking on my blogging lately so I'm trying to get caught up tonight. We'll see how that goes. . .

The Rescue was basically a love story. Woman in peril. Man in uniform. Man saves woman. Man is confused. Can't figure out whether or not its related to being faced with a commitment or whether or not he remembered to put deodorant on that particular morning. Nonetheless, love prevailed, as it always (never) does.

I needed a feel good novel on account of having the blues lately. All this book did was make me cry or make me mad. By the time I was on page 17, I could see exactly what was going to happen. Unfortunately, I had already cried once and was emotionally invested in the book. I finished it. It wasn't BAD, I just hate hate HATE it when men write novels about love and women. And the way they make women act is so degrading and insulting. Like all real women want is a ride to work and someone to play catch with their son. Blech.

I should have known better. Nicholas Sparks, you don't know shit about Xs and Ys. Maybe someday, a woman will take a frying pan to his head and then he'll have a better perspective. I'm just sayin'.

I did have a favorite quote, though. NS isn't all that bad, I suppose. "People come, people go - they'll drift in and out of your life, almost like characters in a favorite book. When you finally close the cover, the characters have told their story and you start up again with another book, comlete with new characters and adventures. Then you find yourself focusing on the new ones, not the ones from the past." I don't necessarily agree 100%, but it sure does make me feel better about those people that have drifted in and out of my life. Maybe, just maybe, I offered something to their life. . .

Best Friends Forever

I like Jenifer Weiner. She's a talented writer and writes about everyday happenings in a way that allows the story to be believable and entertaining. Kind of like if you take my life and take it down one notch :) I finished this book a couple weeks ago as I was returning from a flight from Sacramento.

I didn't laugh outloud. I didn't cry. I wasn't grasping at every page, excited to see what came next. I was, however, drawing parallels to my life and the lives of the two girls in the story. These girls were the best of best friends. Something happens and Valerie thinks she's accidentally murdered someone and runs to the side of her long lost best friend Addie. Reluctantly, because Valerie has hurt her in the past, jumps on board. They embark on a somewhat Thelma and Louise run from the law.

All in all, it was a big misunderstanding and everything worked out okay and Valerie and Addie remined best friends until all eternity. What's even better? Addie falls in love with the FBI agent following them. Bonus!

I have one favorite quote from this book. Only because it puts into words what I have been feeling over the last several weeks, and months, really. "At some level underneath conscious thought, a place down in my cells where, the scientists tell us, memories reside, I'd been waiting for hears for that knock, waiting for the feel of my feet moving across the floor and my hand on the cool brass knob. " This can be interpreded in two different ways. My reunion with my new dad, and my reunion with D. Either way, I have been waiting.

Water For Elephants

I wish I could remember the date when I finished reading this book. I know it was somewhere between moving into this new house and hanging wallpaper in the babies' room, which they immediately tore down. I can't remember who recommended this book to me. I can't believe that I would find a book about a circus entertaining in the slightest. I hate the circus. I hate the way they treat animals and the last thing I wanted to do was read about it.

I did, though. And it was very entertaining. I even accidentally dropped it in the jacuzzi and read wet pages for the next week. The circus part was circumstantial. It was a love story about two people who wanted to be together and an abusive man (both to women and animals) stood in their way.

Has anyone read this book? I'm a little confused. The opening chapter reads as if Marlena was the one to kill her husband, with her boyfriend, Mr. Jankowski (can't remember his younger years name) seeing the whole thing happen. The end of the book reads as if her husband was killed by a stampede started by a disgruntled and abused elephant. So, WTF? I can't tell what happened.

The bottom line is that it was entertaining. Reading about this elephant. Who only responded to speak in Polish. She was abused and hit and tortured by Marlena for not responding and when Mr. Jankowski started talking Polish and the elephant responded, she was then, the star of the show. Until she started a stampede. And that's where I get confused. Input, please. . .

The Bone Collector

While on vaca in Santa Barbara this past week I finished The Bone Collector. It sure has taken me forever to read this book. Mostly because I don't sit in the jacuzzi at night anymore on account of it being one hundred million degrees outside.

It was a good book. I've heard good things about the Lincoln Rhyme series so I decided to give it a shot. The fact that it is a series kind of ruined it for me because I knew that Lincoln wasn't going to kill himself at the end, which is one of the major plot elements.

With that being said, this book was about a former detective who was injured on the job and becomes paralyzed from the neck down. He is asked to help out with a case because he's ridiculously knowledgeable about forensics and the city (New York, I think).

Someone is kidnapping victims and leaving them to die and at the scene there are clues leading to the next victim. Sometimes the victims are saved and sometimes they are not. Turns out the killer is Lincoln's doctor. And one of the victims who was saved ends up blowing up a building at the end of the book and they ask Lincoln to stay on the case to try and find her.

I'm guessing this is where the next book picks up. . .

Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Tonight I finished this book. I don't know why this series entertains me so well. But it does. The characters are absolutely hilarious and I found myself laughing out lout, at least twice.

Lula is an ex-ho turned to working for a bounty hunter as a file clerk. She sometimes fills in with Stephanie to attempt to apprehend the bad guys. Stephanie is a terrible bounty hunter and relies on her relationship with a local cop or her relationship with another bounty hunter. Raaaaanger. He's finger lickin' good if you ask me. But you're not, so we'll move on.

Some killers are in town to assassinate the cook who will obviously win the barbeque cookoff. Lula witnesses the murder, then they come after her. She and her entourage enter the cooking contest and everything goes awry. The canopy catches on fire, the ribs fall on the ground, blah blah blah.

Ultimately, she catches the killers and everything right is restored in the world. The hamster is still alive. And Grandma Mazur is still alive. There have been FIFTEEN books, I just can't see how this is happening, but I'm enjoying it all just the same.

Especially coming off of My Sister's Keeper. If you read the book, go to the movie and leave about 20 minutes before it ends or else you'll need restraints to settle down your fury. If you watch the movie and don't read the book, call me, I'll tell you how it really ends. . .

I do have a quote. It made me laugh. Don't know if it will do the same for you but it was funny as shit when I read it. And again, just now to make sure it was funny:

"I thought back to Ernie as a kid. 'I can't remember him setting fires, but he did a lot of weird things. One time, he entered a talent show and tried to burp The Star-Spangled Banner,
And then he went through a period where he was sure he could make it rain, and he'd start chanting strange things in the middle of arithmetic. "Oowah doowah moo moo hooha." '

"Did it rain?"

"Sometimes."

"What else did he do? I'm starting to like this guy."

"He took a goat to the prom. Dressed it up in a pink ballerina outfit."

Now, that's funny. I took a goat to the prom too. Except I called him my boyfriend at the time :)

Why We Suck - A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid

I'm not finishing this book. I read exactly 39 pages and decided it was time to move on. I like Denis Leary, really, I do. As an actor and as a comedian, he's absolutely hilarious. As a writer? He kind of sucks. I'm sure it has mostly to do with the content of this book. He wrote it very well, although he makes it very clear that he just threw out the ideas and left if up to his staff to put it into words.

I don't need a guide to staying fat and stupid. Actually, I'm quite the opposite. I'm not sure what type of audience this book was written for, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't care to specify or narrow it down any. Therefore, it was written for no one except Dr. Dennis Leary. That, my friends, is called a journal.

And, unless you're Anne Frank, Marilyn Manson, or Anna Nicole, I have no interest in reading your journal.

I find nothing funny in making fun of children with autism. I find nothing funny in making fun of working moms. And, I take personal offense to criticizing overweight mothers, doing their absolute best to raise decent children, with their weight being the least of their concerns.

I'll use his own words when explaining why you should not read this book. I only wish I had started reading it before the 7-day-return-rule had been enforced by Barnes and Noble:

"Put this book down. Right now. Do not buy it. Stop reading. Now. . . I am here to debunk and decalssify and otherwise hold up a brutally hones mirror to our fat, ugly, lazy American selves."

While I tend to agree with most of his points (in the one chapter that I actually read), I think that if you don't like America, GET THE FUCK OUT!

I'm moving on to better and brighter things. Denis! Stick to acting. And, if you happen to read this, I want my money back.

My Sister's Keeper

Holy crap! *warning* I will tell you how this book ends in this post, so if you have any interest in reading this book, or seeing the movie. Please, do not read any further. . .

All of the books I have read in the recent year or so have been very entertaining. However, that's just it. That's all they have been. Entertaining. This book, by the end, had me crying. And not just the teary-eyed crying. I'm talking full on sobbing.

Anna was created based on her genetics so that she could be used as a donor for her already born sister who has lukemia. As soon as she was born, Anna started the donation process with her cord blood being infused into her sister's body. After that, there were numerous procedures, invasive ones, that she continued to participate in.

When Anna was 13, she decided to sue her parents for medical emancipation. Not wanting to be a donor for her sister anymore. This action shook her family to its core. What you don't know, until the end of the book, is that it was her sister who asked her to do this. That she didn't want to continue to live the way she had, with most of her time being spent in the hospital, sick and always on the verge of death.

Ultimately, Anna was granted medical emancipation. Her parents left the courthouse to go to her sister's side in the hospital and Anna was asked to stay behind and fill out the paperwork. On the way home, her and her lawyer were in a car accident. Anna was killed. Her kidney was donated to her sister.

I can't believe that I have to wait almost a whole week to see the movie. If it is half as good as the book, it will be an awesome movie.

Watchers

I took a sick day today. I'm not feeling well and after I realized this stupid cold isn't going anywhere, I decided to succumb and stay home with some thera flu and my book. I finished Watchers by Dean Koontz today. His books are known for having that supernatural element. But, he writes it in a way that it is believable.

In this book a genetic company had altered DNA to create two super human animals. One good, one bad. The good one was a dog with human-like intelligence levels and the other was created to create mass hysteria. It had the same intelligence level, but it was hideous looking and not so nice.

Both the dog and the other escaped the lab and the dog found Travis and became his pet. The other spent all of his time outside of the lab tracking down the dog to kill it, murdering several innocent people and animals along its way. The dog could sense when the Outsider was coming and would warn Travis using a ridiculous Scrabble-tile-dispenser to spell out words for his owner.

Finally, there was a big showdown. The Outsider was killed, the dog was hurt but survived and everyone lived happily ever after. I read the afterward by the author and he claims this to be his best work ever. I'm thinkin' not so much. It was good, don't get me wrong. It was hard to put down during the last 50 pages or so, but definitely not his best work ever. I was a little disappointed probably because this came off of the tails of my last book where the central theme was also genetic engineering. A topic which is of absolutely no interest to me.

Oh. I almost forgot. My quote: Most people believe psychoanalysis is a cure for unhappiness. They are sure they could overcome all their problems and achieve peace of mind if only they could understand their own psychology, understand the reasons for their negative moods and self-destructive behavior. However, in spite of that understanding, most people do not change their behaviors. See, now I think that's just a bunch of crap!

Don't worry, I joined book club. Maybe if someone tells me what to read, I will start having better luck. Look forward to future posts of doves and daisies, my friends.

The Third Twin

This book was by ken Follett. I have read a few of his books and they were pretty good. I let Jim pick it because I was having such a hard time getting back into reading. I just seemed like everything sucked! It was pretty good, though.

It was about a young scientist who was doing research on identical twins raised apart. The age-old nature versus nurture question. She develops a search engine that can track them based on their medical history. Dental records, echos, thumbprints, etc. She finds a set of twins that meets her criteria. she begins to question them. One an upstanding citizen. The other a criminal.

Turns out she embarks on a journey to get to the bottom of some deep mystery buried under the CIA, Senators and CEOs of genetic research companies. They don't want her to find out their secret. Which is that 23 years ago, back when fertility treatment was an experimental phenomenon, they developed a method to split embryos who had desirable qualities. Basically, neo-nazis dressed up as leaders and contributors to our society. Blech. They split one embryo seven times and implanted eight unsuspecting women with these embryos who were undergoing fertility treatment at one of the facilities involved.

Ms. Super Scientist figures it all out though. They fired her, ruined her reputation and had the life of one of the "good" twins (octuplets) hanging in the balance.

Ooooooh. Then, the plot thickens. She falls in love with the good one and this gives her more ammunition to expose these people. In the end, she does. All the women are compensated and she and the good twin live happily ever after.

It was a good book. Entertaining, but clearly written by a man. I just don't think that the lead figure should be female if the book is written by a schovanistic male as Ken Follett clearly is. The undertone of his writing infuriated me. The way women were portrayed, their desires, etc. was borderline offensive.

I did pick out a quote. "If we're all aggressive, obedient soldiers, who's going to write the poems and play the blues and go on antiwar marches?"

I'm looking forward to my next book. The Watchers by Dean Koontz. A friend of a friend said it was sooo good that she was reading it while she was brushing her teeth. Now, THAT'S a good book!

A Complicated Kindness

Tonight I finished A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews. I thought If I picked a book at random, it would break me out of my reader's block. Unfortunately, it did not. It's not that this wasn't a good story. It was. A good story. I just think it would have been a better short story rather than a novel.

The novel is about Nomi, who lives in a Mennonite town. She is an outcast teenager in an outcast town, struggling to find her place in the world that doesn't even allow her to find a place in her small community. Her mother and sister left her with her dad when she was a young girl. Much of the book was devoted to her reminiscing about her life with her mom and sister before they skipped town. She is also struggling with what she wants to do with her life after high school. Tradition suggests that she will take a job at the local slaughter house and murder chickens for the rest of her life. This doesn't sound appealing to her, but neither does leaving her religion that she almost, but not quite, but by default, believes in.

Ultimately, her father also leaves. She finds out through letters left in her mother's underwear drawer that her mother had had an affair with her English teacher who had been badgering her to finish her final writing assignment. Everything she turned in denounced her religion and was returned to her with failing marks. Her graduation depended on this assignment. After her father left, she wrote her fourth or fifth, and final, writing project on how her teacher broke up their family. Forced her mom to be excomunnicated and therefore resulted in her leaving town.

Once her father leaves, she has plans to pack up the car he left her, sell the house he left her and live in New York City. We never find out if she does. She is always torn between living her life and serving her church.

And that's where the book ends, my friends. Very anticlimactic. I have asked Jim to pick my next book. Since I can't do it myself, perhaps he can choose something that interestes me. I really want to get started on the Jeffrey Deaver series that AK referred me to (she would be excommunicate me if I used her real name), however I cannot locate The Bone Collector for the life of me...

Onto the quote. I earmarked three pages of this book but this one is my favorite. Not quite as morose as the last quote. Perhaps I'm on the road to recovery :)

"She (Nomi's fourth grade teacher) said life was not a dream. And dancing was a sin. Now get off it and sit back down. It was the first time in my life that I had been aware of my own existance. It was the first time in my life I had realized that I was alive. And if I was alive, then I could die, and I mean forever. Forever dead. Not heaven, not eternal life on some other plane... just darkness, curtain, scene. Permanently. And that was the key to my new religion, I figured. That's why life is so fucking great. . . There's no other place to be. This world is good enough for you . . . Go ahead and love it."

London Bridges

Tonight I finished reading London Bridges by James Patterson. Mark your calendars. I'm very serious about this. I will NEVER pick up a James Patterson book again. And not because I've read them all. I haven't. However, I have read enough of them to know that I never want to read another one again!

I shouldn't dread my glass of wine and 30 minutes of alone time in the jacuzzi with my book. I should't rejoice in the nights I don't have time to read, thinking "thank GOD I don't have to read that stupid book tonight!"

This book was just like any of his other books. Good, until you reach the half-way-mark and from there on out, absolutely dreadful. This book was about some Russian Mafia guy blowing up cities around the world. Specificly, bridges. In London. Hence the title London Bridges, I suppose. The Mafia guy's code name is The Wolf. Alex, the detective in all of James Patterson books I think, is on assignment to capture this man.

He catches him, but it's not really him. Then he catches her and it's not really her. Then he catches him and it's really him. But wait. No it's not. Then he catches him again, then FINALLY, the book ends.

I've been having reader's block lately. Nothing seems to be a really good read. Another one of the mothers in my twin's club suggested reading some Jeffrey Deaver so I think I'll give him a try. I bought enough of his books at the book sale to keep me going for a while so we will see.

Maybe I'm just being cynical. I try to pick a quote from every book that I read that I find moving. I simply fold down the corner of the page and read it after I finish the book and see what I think. See if it still hold some meaning. As I turn to the page I ear-marked, it's weird to see that I picked such a morose quote from this terrible book...

"All bets are off nowadays. Anything can happen, and sooner or later, it probably will. We don't seem to be getting any smarter as a species, just crazier and crazier. Or at the very least, a whole lot more dangerous. Unvelievably, unbearably more dangerous."

Holy crap! Looks like my next book needs to be The Complete Idiot's Guide to Happiness. Does such a book exist?

The Reincarnationist

Tonight I finished reading The Reincarnationist by M.J. Rose. I figured after about 5 years of reading books that are easy to read I should start to read ones that get the wheels in my head turning again. I've been out of school for a while now and it's difficult to find that intellectual connection when I'm surrounded by all these kids, all these kids' books, all these redundant work reports and all these kids. So, I decided to read what I though would be an intellectually stimulating novel.

It was. Intellectually stimulating in some parts. In other parts it was the same old murder mystery, and in other parts the reference to religion prior to 450 A.D. was, quite honestly, a little bit over my head.

I'm familiar with the fall of the Roman Empire somewhere around this time. Not a fanatic, but I've heard of it so I was able to keep up with that part of it. The part that really confused me was the reference to the Catholic religion and reincarnation in its earliest form. Whoa, what? Catholics at one point believed in reincarnation? I'm not so sure about that....

Anyway, this was a story about a man named Josh (Julius and Percy in past lives), and his quest to find out if the visions he is having are really his past lives reliving themselves or if he's just off his rocker.

Turns out he's not completely insane and reincarnation does exist. I really need to talk to someone who knows about early Catholocism and get all the kinks worked out. I guess if I just looked at this from a novel standpoint and not one where I'm looking for intellectual stimulation, it would have been a good book.

It was a good read. Interesting. Well thought out. But I must tell you, I totally predicted the ending waaaaay before I was supposed to. And to those of you who might read it. Malachai is the one who orchestrated the whole thing.

Sorry, ruining books is part of the fun of this blog.