Read in July/August

Here's a quick run-down of what I've read in July and August. A couple more, that warrent a longer review, coming soon.

The Skinny Rules by Bob Harper: Sound, usable rules for healthier eating.  Can't say I'm following every one of them, but I learned some good basics for healthy eating.  Highly recommended for anyone who wants realistic, easy to follow guidelines for losing weight.

Then Came You by Jennifer Weiner: Explores the new trends of surrogacy and egg donors, and the effects they have on everyone involved.  Interesting premise but just didn't grab me - 3 out of 5 stars.

Watership Down by Richard Adams: "It is a powerful saga of courage, leadership and survival; an epic tale of a hardy band of adventurers forced to flee the destruction of their fragile community...and their trials and triumphs in the face of extraordinary adversity as they pursue a glorious dream called "home." Classic - 'nuff said.

True Colors by Kristin Hannah: While the story is centered on racial prejudice and a man wrongfully imprisoned, the real story is in the relationship between his wife and her two sisters. Extra interesting to me because I am the middle child of three sisters.  Moved a little slow - but still gets 4 stars.

Jeeves Takes Charge by P.G.Wodeshouse:  A classic in audio version performed perfectly. The variety of voices performed by one man was amazing.

A Turn in the Road by Debbie Macomber:  If you follow me on Twitter (@mrschupa), you might remember that I mentioned wanting to load up the car and just drive till we see an ocean. This is the book that helped spark that wanderlust.  Three generations of women drive from Washington to Florida - working out their life problems along the way. Good but not great.

Demon Rumm by Sandra Brown:  Don't bother

11th Hour by James Patterson:  Latest in the Women's Murder Club series. It's typical Patterson - standard thriller, nothing out of the ordinary, but keeps you turning pages.

Mini Review: A Little Night Magic/Lethal

A Little Night Magic by Lucy March

Olivia Kiskey needs a change. She’s been working at the same Nodaway Falls, New York, waffle house since she was a teenager; not a lot of upward mobility there. She’s been in love with Tobias, the cook, for the last four years; he’s never made a move. Every Saturday night, she gathers with her three best friends—Peach, Millie, and Stacy—and drinks the same margaritas while listening to the same old stories. Intent on shaking things up, she puts her house on the market, buys a one-way ticket to Europe, and announces her plans to her friends . . . but then she meets Davina Granville, a strange and mystical Southern woman who shows Olivia that there is more to her life than she ever dreamed. As Liv’s latent magical powers come to the surface, she discovers that having an interesting life is maybe not all it’s cracked up to be. The dark side of someone else’s magic is taking over good people in town, and changing them into vessels of malevolence. Unwilling to cede her home to darkness, she battles the demons of her familial past and her magical present, with those she loves at her side . . . and in the cross fire. Can the most important things in life—friendship, love, magic, and waffles—get her through the worst that the universe can throw at her?

I love stories with a magical twist, and this one was a lot of fun.  The magical elements tracked a little farther towards the "dark side" than I like, but the kooky cast of characters and the cozy location made up for it.  And there weren't any vampires or zombies, so it's got that going for it.  A fun, entertaining read. 

Lethal by Sandra Brown

When her four year old daughter informs her a sick man is in their yard, Honor Gillette rushes out to help him. But that "sick" man turns out to be Lee Coburn, the man accused of murdering seven people the night before. Dangerous, desperate, and armed, he promises Honor that she and her daughter won't be hurt as long as she does everything he asks. She has no choice but to accept him at his word.

But Honor soon discovers that even those close to her can't be trusted. Coburn claims that her beloved late husband possessed something extremely valuable that places Honor and her daughter in grave danger. Coburn is there to retrieve it -- at any cost. From FBI offices in Washington, D.C., to a rundown shrimp boat in coastal Louisiana, Coburn and Honor run for their lives from the very people sworn to protect them, and unravel a web of corruption and depravity that threatens not only them, but the fabric of our society.

This one falls under the Prolific Author Rule:  No need for a deep review.  It's a solid, well-written romantic/suspense story.  Just what you would expect from Sandra Brown.  

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

This book came out last January and I wrote a passing recommendation and promised a full review later.  I guess it's later.  I picture you all sitting quietly, perhaps sipping a little summer drink with an umbrella in it, with nothing to read because I haven't gotten around to telling you to run as fast as you can to get this book. Shameful!

How can it be anything but love-at-first-page with a book that includes the line:  There is no problem that a library card can't solve.

The Andreas family is one of readers. Their father, a renowned Shakespeare professor who speaks almost entirely in verse, has named his three daughters after famous Shakespearean women. When the sisters return to their childhood home, ostensibly to care for their ailing mother, but really to lick their wounds and bury their secrets, they are horrified to find the others there. "See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much."  But the sisters soon discover that everything they've been running from - one another, their small hometown, and themselves - might offer more than they ever expected.

This story includes two things that are dear to me - sisters and books.  I am the middle child of three sisters and, even though some days you would be hard put to tell that they are dear to me, there's always a connection down deep (w-a-a-a-a-y down deep) - A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. ( Ecclesiastes 4:12)  In spite of age, arguments or life-events, there is a dynamic between three sisters that never changes.  Parts of the story are written in a rather odd "community voice".  I have no idea what the technical term would be, but some passages are told from the perspective of the sisters as a group - one unit with one emotion, one viewpoint.  It's a bit disconcerting at first, but it also strengthens that sister dynamic.  Ms. Brown obviously has sisters of her own, because she captured it perfectly.  When brought together by a common crises, the Andreas sisters each instinctively returned to her childhood role.  The story is in how they moved beyond them.  

One sure measure of how much I like a book is the number of passages I mark to remember later.  This book had a peacock plume of sticky-notes by the time I finished.  There are lots of wonderful lines about aging, books, and family relationships.  Here are a handful of my favorites:

"We were fairly sure that if anyone made public the various and variegated ways in which being an adult sucked eggs, more people might opt out entirely." (p. 7)

"We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sort of logical order.  We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour.  Put a book down in the kitchen to go to the bathroom and you might return to find it gone, replaced by another of equal interest...Cordy claims this is the source of her inability to focus on anything for more than a few mintues at a time, but we do not believe her.  It is just our way."  (p. 23)

"How can we explain what books and reading mean to our family, the gift of libraries, of pages?" (p. 70)

"I keep waiting to feel old, to feel like a grown-up, but I don't yet.  Do you think that's the big secret adults keep from you?  That you never really feel grown-up?"  (p. 188)

"She remembered one of her boyfriends asking, offhandedly, how many books she read in a year.
'A few hundred,' she said. 

"How do you have time?' he asked, gobsmacked. 
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her.  Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on?  Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pregame, in-game and post-game talking heads?  Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati?  Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in available reflective surfaces?  I am reading!

'I don't know,' she said, shrugging.

This conversation, you will not be surprised to know, was the impetus for their breakup, given that it caused her to realize the emotion she had thought was her not liking him very much was, in fact, her not liking him at all.  Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well, let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put."  (p. 71-72)

"Our mother shook her head...'You girls are all the same like that.  I don't know what we did to give you the idea that you had to be some master in your field by the time you were thirty.' ...'
'I don't really want to be a master in my field,' Bean said.  'But I'd like not to be a complete and total f*ckup.'

Here we expected our mother to rebuke Bean for her language, but she didn't.  She just smiled indulgently and said, 'Oh, honey, we're all f*ckups in our own special ways.' " (p. 308)

Oh...ain't it the truth!

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

This was our first read together - mainly because we were on a trip, the CD player wouldn't work and I had one pre-release copy of the book and two readers vying for dibs. I read and loved the DaVinci Code so had high expectations for this book. I wasn't disappointed. The story may have been slightly less gripping for me because of the subject matter - having had family members involved in the Masonic Lodge for years, they just didn't stir my imagination as the dark, covert, keepers of apocolyptic secrets - but it was still the page-turner I expected from Dan Brown. There were times that the story got bogged down in the details and history, but never long enough to make me lose interest. Towards the end, I discovered one of the many benefits of "couples reading". When the story seemed to be progressing down gruesome and disturbing paths, I handed the book off to Dave and let him censure the details to only those absolutely necessary for the progression of the story. Fortunately, the passages he needed to edit for the sake of my ability to sleep were far fewer than I feared. (Aside to authors: I have an imagination. Please just give me the minimum trauma and horror and I guarantee I will fill in the rest.) Several of the plot twists at the end really weren't surprising. We had predicted them, sometimes several hundred pages earlier, and since I know we aren't especially adept as sleuths, perhaps there should have been less foreshadowing. My best advice is to take this book for what it is -a fiction thriller meant to entertain - and avoid getting caught up in the controversies and consiracy theories. Then it is a fun, fast-paced read well worth the time.