Library Checkout: April

Thanks Shannon for this check-in!

I have issues.  When walking past the library last Friday with my daughter I stopped to check the awesome Chicago Public Library app to see if I had anything in.  She asked me if she could get a book too -I started to say “You don’t need a library book, you have enough at home…”  Can you believe those words came out of my mouth?  Followed by: “Sweet! I have holds in, let’s go inside.”  And yes, she got 2 books too.

Read

• The Radiant Road by Katherine Catmull
• We are All Completely Beside Ourselves (Thanks Chrissy!) by Karen Joy Fowler
• Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
• The Princess and the Pony by Kate Beaton (5 year-old found this hilarious! See Miss Print’s review )
• Lady Pancake and Sir French Toast by Josh Funk – GET THIS IF YOU HAVE KIDS. We love it. I need to buy it.
• Hedgehugs by Steve Wilson – also adorable!

Checked Out To Read

• Breaking Bad Season Five  – OMG Walter White I hate you! Almost done with this
• Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems (HA HA HA HA) Never going to happen Dr. Ferber. She’s trying to torture me.
• The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck by Sarah Knight.  (Soon I won’t give a f*ck about anything because I will be so tired)
• The Expatriates by Janice Lee
• The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips
• Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman
• Nil by Lynne Matson. I’ve renewed this 10 times – when do I admit I might never read it?
• Samantha Learns a Lesson and Samantha’s Surprise – American Girl Doll books to read with Babycakes

On Hold

• I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
• Tuesday Nights in 1980 by Molly Prentiss
• The Wife, The Maid and The Mistress by Ariel Lawhon
• Breaking Bad: The Final Season
• The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi
• The Last Days of Magic by Mark Tompkins
• The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee
• A Gathering of Shadows by Victoria Schwab
• You by Caroline Kepnes
• The Swans of Fifth Avenue by Melanie Benjamin
• Troublemaker by Leah Remini (I’m judging myself for this a bit)
• The Beast by JR Ward (don’t judge me more)
• Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld

Returned Unread:

• The Widow by Fiona Barton
• After the Crash by Michael Bussi
• My Name is  Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout

How was your library reading this month?

Review: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death, James Runcie (The Grantchester Mysteries #1)

Paperback, 400 pages

Published January 13th 2015 by Bloomsbury USA

Source: Copy from Publisher

Sidney Chambers, the Vicar of Grantchester, is a thirty-two year old bachelor. Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot.

Together with his roguish friend Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Year’s Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter and a shocking art forgery, the disclosure of which puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty . . .

How did I not know about Grantchester?  A swooningly handsome English vicar with his loyal black lab puppy getting involved in murder mysteries in the 1950’s – yes please.  Meet tv Sidney:

 

With that image in mind I am happy to sacrifice my imagination to the BBC’s fine work.  I decided to dive into the books before checking out the tv series  and found myself reading a book that almost feels like it was written to become a tv series. The Shadow of Death was not one mystery but a series of somewhat interconnected stories.  As Sidney gets pulled in by the police we meet his friend Inspector Keating, his grumpy housekeeper, his love interests and his family.  I love the setting of England recovering from the war and the internal conflict of Sidney the war hero with the upright vicar.  You feel Sidney’s initial reluctance to become involved in police business then turning to excitement as he gets more involved in each case.  I can’t put my finger on why – but something reminded me of my beloved Flavia de Luce – maybe the slight grumpiness that gets into Sidney at times?

And obviously here’s where I was sunk – when Sidney is gifted a puppy he is told:

“There is nothing like a Lab for company, and the black are better for conversation I find.”

Loki – Always listening for conversation

I am looking forward to seeing if the stories grow any deeper in the second book in the series, after all now the stage has been set and Sidney’s supporting characters largely revealed.  I’m very curious about where dualing love interests will head

Now the biggest question is – do I binge Season One of Grantchester before or after reading more Sidney?  Are you reading or watching this series?  Let me know!

Thank you Bloomsbury USA for this copy in exchange for an honest opinion!

Review: Down With The Shine

Down With The Shine, Kate Karyus Quinn

Hardcover, 355 pages

Publication: April 26th 2016 by HarperTeen

Source: e-ARC from Edelweiss

There’s a reason they say “be careful what you wish for.” Just ask the girl who wished to be thinner and ended up smaller than Thumbelina, or the boy who asked for “balls of steel” and got them-literally. And never wish for your party to go on forever. Not unless you want your guests to be struck down by debilitating pain if they try to leave.

These are things Lennie only learns when it’s too late-after she brings some of her uncles’ moonshine to a party and toasts to dozens of wishes, including a big wish of her own: to bring back her best friend, Dylan, who was abducted and murdered six months ago.

Lennie didn’t mean to cause so much chaos. She always thought her uncles’ moonshine toast was just a tradition. And when they talked about carrying on their “important family legacy,” she thought they meant good old-fashioned bootlegging.

As it turns out, they meant granting wishes. And Lennie has just granted more in one night than her uncles would grant in a year.

Now she has to find a way to undo the damage. But once granted, a wish can’t be unmade…

Magic moonshine?  Who could pass that drink up?  Ok, I might now after reading this strange little book.  But given the chance at a magical drink as a teen?  What a premise this book gives!  I read Down With the Shine in a day – I had to fly through it to see how this mixture of YA, grit lit, and magical realism could turn out.  I have to say that I was surprised and entertained all throughout.  Lennie knows that her uncles brew moonshine.  She knows there is a family ritual that offers a wish to go with drinking the first sip, but she doesn’t know that her uncles are really granting wishes.  So when she takes jars of shine and crashes the party of year and makes a wish for everyone who asks – let’s just say she wakes up to all kinds of messes the next day.  

I liked Lennie.  She started out pretty sad and morose, but she grew quite a spine in the end.  She has a pretty rough awakening to the wish granting business and I liked how she owned up to her mistakes.  I really was amused by her uncles and I wish there had been more time with them.  I would have liked to have learned the secrets to a successful moonshine/wish granting lifestyle!  

The description of the book should make it clear that Down With The Shine isn’t a book to take too seriously – with literal balls of steel and all – but it seemed to take things a little too lightly at times.  This started like it was going to be a very dark  – Lennie is a social pariah after the murder of her best friend.  But then after the party the feeling changed pretty rapidly which took me a minute to get used to.  I think the elements of darkness in Lennie’s life just didn’t balance with the silliness for me.  It was hard to go from feeling sorry for Lennie due to her murderous father, spaced out mother, and overall loneliness  to laughing at those balls of steel or teenage boys with working wings.  I like dark humor – I just needed the darkness and humor to meld more overall.   Had there been more depth all around I think this could have gone from a fun and fast book to a really great book. 

However, I thought the ending was clever and tied things up just right.  Not at all what I expected!  Definitely one to try when you want to laugh and are ok with some gross along with it.  

Thank you HarperTeen and Edelweiss for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

Review: My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry, Fredrik Backman

Published June 16th 2015 by Atria Books

Hardcover, 372 pages

Source: Library

From the author of the internationally bestselling ‘A Man Called Ove’, a novel about a young girl whose grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters, sending her on a journey that brings to life the world of her grandmother’s fairy tales.

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa’s best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother’s stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa’s greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother’s letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other.

If you haven’t read A Man Called Ove I have to respectfully ask what the hell you’re waiting for?!  Frederik Backman broke my feelings into tiny pieces and he tried to do it again with last year’s My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You I’m Sorry.  I was afraid that Backman wouldn’t work magic twice and so I waited too long to pick this up. I was wrong.   

Elsa’s grandmother is batty – totally batty.  We meet Elsa and her Granny after they’ve broken into the zoo and granny has been arrested.  Not what you expect for a woman with her 7 (almost 8) year-old grandmother.  Elsa basically broke my heart.  She’s smart and precocious and she’s bullied and so lonely.  Granny tells her stories to help her to be brave and to fall asleep at night.  They journey every night to a fairy tale world with warriors and Beasts, dreams and magic.  Every child needs someone like Granny in their lives because she was brilliant and amazing.   

Having a grandmother is like having an army.  This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.

But then Granny dies.  Elsa is left friendless and without her champion.  Her mother is 8 months pregnant with her new half-sibling, affectionately called Halfie, and Elsa is excited but unsure of her place in her family.  Elsa and her Granny were neighbors in an apartment building of odd characters.  There’s Alf, who drives a cab; the boy with the syndrome; and Britt-Marie, who is a nag bag to name a few.  Granny leaves Elsa with a letter for one of these neighbors with an apology and ends up leading Elsa on a quest to find magic and friendship.  Once again Backman made me laugh out loud and cry while reading.  I loved how strong and brave Granny was and what she taught Elsa along the way. 

If I can’t convince you will all of the above let me leave you with this quote:

And there’s a Russian playwright who once said that if there’s a pistol hanging on the wall in the first act, it has to be fired before the last act is over.  

Any book that references Chekov’s gun on the wall has to be a winner!  Read it!  I didn’t make the mistake of waiting to read Backman’s next book.  I’ve already devoured his May 2016 release and will review it soon!  But I will say for now that you don’t want to miss it.  Backman is magic – if magic brings both tears and laughter while reading.

Review: Five Days at Memorial

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Sheri Fink

Hardcover, 558 pages

Published September 10th 2013 by Crown

Source: Blogging for Books

In the tradition of the best investigative journalism, physician and reporter Sheri Fink reconstructs 5 days at Memorial Medical Center and draws the reader into the lives of those who struggled mightily to survive and to maintain life amid chaos.

After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths.

Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.

In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.

I worked myself up to being extremely nervous before beginning Five Days at Memorial – this was a mistake on my part.  I was afraid this book was going to be an extremely emotional account of the days spent at Memorial Hospital following Hurricane Katrina.   What I found was a well balanced recounting of the history of the hospital, the time leading up to the storm, and riveting accounts of the medical staff and families inside Memorial Hospital.  This is not to say the book was without emotion, but Fink moved so quickly from person to person that I never felt too caught up in any one individual’s story or feelings.

I really don’t want to imagine myself in that powerless, stifling, and terrifying building but Fink nearly had me there in the minds of the nurses and physicians.  I cannot imagine the decisions they were forced to make about triage, evacuating patients, and about letting go of patients that were too sick to face the conditions outside Memorial – all while worrying about their own loved ones and homes.  I can’t stop talking about this book with my friends and family.  Fink brings you to see why the doctors and nurses felt they needed to make the decisions they did, but leaves the reader to wrestle with the implications of those decisions.   

Fink tells the stories without judgement and follows with important discussion about what we’ve learned since Katrina.  It was shocking to read that the same kinds of decisions about patient triage were made in New York facing Hurricane Sandy and I don’t know that we’re any more prepared for medical disasters today.  Pretty terrifying really.  What’s also so important is more discussion about end of life care and about what kind of life prolonging treatment we want for ourselves and our families.  We could be doing so much better.  I think my next non-fiction now has to be The Good Death: An Exploration of Dying in America.   It will be interesting to see how these two link up in my thoughts.  

4 stars!

Thank you Blogging for Books for this copy in exchange for an honest review.

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 Books to Make You Laugh

Today’s Top Ten Eleven from the Broke and the Bookish is books that will make you laugh – my favorites of these had me laughing in public while reading and even in tears.  Parts of these will at the very least absolutely make you smile – they might also knock you down with tears later as a fair warning.

1. Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster (And Bright Lights Big Ass!)
2. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (basically ALL his books)
3. Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
4. Discount Armageddon (Incryptid #1 and the whole series) by Seanan McGuire
5. Running with Scissors by Augusten Burroughs
6. Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
9. This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
10. Nimona by Noelle Stevenson
11. Marley & Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog by John Grogan (will also make you cry like a baby)

What funny books am I missing?

 

 

Review: Lilac Girls

Lilac Girls, Martha Hall Kelly

Published April 5th 2016 by Ballantine Books

Hardcover, 496 pages

Source: e-ARC from NetGalley
New York socialite Caroline Ferriday has her hands full with her post at the French consulate and a new love on the horizon. But Caroline’s world is forever changed when Hitler’s army invades Poland in September 1939—and then sets its sights on France.

An ocean away from Caroline, Kasia Kuzmerick, a Polish teenager, senses her carefree youth disappearing as she is drawn deeper into her role as courier for the underground resistance movement. In a tense atmosphere of watchful eyes and suspecting neighbors, one false move can have dire consequences.

For the ambitious young German doctor, Herta Oberheuser, an ad for a government medical position seems her ticket out of a desolate life. Once hired, though, she finds herself trapped in a male-dominated realm of Nazi secrets and power.

The lives of these three women are set on a collision course when the unthinkable happens and Kasia is sent to Ravensbrück, the notorious Nazi concentration camp for women. Their stories cross continents—from New York to Paris, Germany, and Poland—as Caroline and Kasia strive to bring justice to those whom history has forgotten.

I have to confess, I had a very rocky reading relationship with Lilac Girls.  I almost quit more than once, but I am glad I stuck it out.  I admit that I really am not familiar with what happened at the concentration camp at Ravensbruck.  The attention to Sarah Helm’s book last year Ravensbrück: Life and Death in Hitler’s Concentration Camp for Women caught my eye and I think was the first time I really learned there was a camp that was just for women.  When I was offered a chance to read Lilac Girls with a fictional account of one prisoner’s story I jumped for it.  Lilac Girls follows three very different women; New York socialite Caroline, Polish Girl Guide Kasia and frustrated German medical student Herta.  Caroline and Herta were real women while Kasia is based on one of the Ravenswood Rabbits – healthy women that the Nazis performed horrific medical experiments on.

I know not to judge a book by its cover – but I feel like the cover of Lilac Girls suggested a story that didn’t happen.  I’m not complaining that I didn’t get that story – but I am complaining a bit that I was misled!  Maybe that is part of why I couldn’t connect with this book to begin with.  I simply couldn’t see how a Polish resistance member and a Nazi believer would connect.  That being said, I think the contrast between Herta and Kasia’s stories was very powerful when they were both in the camp.  

Hall Kelly clearly put a ton of love and research into this book so I just wish it had been more consistent.  The first third, I felt Caroline was totally underplayed and made me almost ready to quit the book.  Once I did get into this book I was IN and didn’t want to put it down.  Caroline Ferriday was clearly an amazing woman, but she’s played as such an airhead until the final third that it was kind of shocking to see what she was capable of.  Even her dialogue was weaker than the other characters which made her annoying.  I would love to read more about her actual life.  I think the fictional romance created for Caroline almost weakened her real life story.  

Herta is nearly forgotten until the end which was also disappointing.  It would have been interesting to learn more of how her life was after Hitler died.  Despite being the fictional character Kasia’s emotions came across the most powerfully.  Her story was heartbreaking and made me all the more determined to read more about Ravensbruck.  

It was eye opening for me to read a World War II and Holocaust book that was not about the atrocities against the Jewish people – this is a lot of what made the book for me.  Lilac Girls left me thinking about the Nazi occupation of Poland and the Iron Curtain in a way I never have.  Our great-grandparents came from Poland and I’m curious now about what might have happened to the family they left behind.  My next step is to get my sister working on genealogy to understand where our history might lead.  

3 stars
Thank you Ballantine Books and NetGalley for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

Therapeutic Reading: The Obsession

The Obsession, Nora Roberts

Hardcover, 464 pages

Published: April 12th 2016 by Berkley

Source: ARC won from publisher giveaway

Naomi Bowes lost her innocence the night she followed her father into the woods. In freeing the girl trapped in the root cellar, Naomi revealed the horrible extent of her father’s crimes and made him infamous.

Now a successful photographer living under the name Naomi Carson, she has found a place that calls to her, thousands of miles away from everything she’s ever known. Naomi wants to embrace the solitude, but the residents of Sunrise Cove keep forcing her to open up—especially the determined Xander Keaton.

Naomi can feel her defenses failing, and knows that the connection her new life offers is something she’s always secretly craved. But as she’s learned time and again, her past is never more than a nightmare away.

It’s all very well and great to read deep and intense books like Hausfrau or Fates & Furies but sometimes all I really want is a Happy Ever After.  A glass of wine, alone time and a good story with romance and happiness in the end.  When I want reading for mood therapy I almost always turn to Nora Roberts.  Opening the mail to find this ARC a few days into January was like Christmas Day all over!

The Obsession continues my Nora streak of total happiness in a book.  Romance, murderous tension, just enough smut, plus talk of books and a true and loyal pooch.  I liked the slow buildup of the romance and the friendship between Naomi and Xander.  I think there could have been more to the mystery – it was actually a pretty short part of the book itself – but it was still satisfying in the end.  So when you need a happy read, I highly recommend the Obsession and a glass of wine – that’s my book therapy prescription!

4 stars!

Thank you Berkley for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review!

Review: Jane Steele

Jane Steele, Lyndsay Faye

Published March 22nd 2016 by G.P. Putnam’s Sons

Kindle Edition, 427 pages

Source: Penguin First to Read

“Reader, I murdered him.”

A sensitive orphan, Jane Steele suffers first at the hands of her spiteful aunt and predatory cousin, then at a grim school where she fights for her very life until escaping to London, leaving the corpses of her tormentors behind her. After years of hiding from the law while penning macabre “last confessions” of the recently hanged, Jane thrills at discovering an advertisement.  Her aunt has died and her childhood home has a new master: Mr. Charles Thornfield, who seeks a governess.

Burning to know whether she is in fact the rightful heir, Jane takes the position incognito, and learns that Highgate House is full of marvelously strange new residents—the fascinating but caustic Mr. Thornfield, an army doctor returned from the Sikh Wars, and the gracious Sikh butler Mr. Sardar Singh, whose history with Mr. Thornfield appears far deeper and darker than they pretend. As Jane catches ominous glimpses of the pair’s violent history and falls in love with the gruffly tragic Mr. Thornfield, she faces a terrible dilemma: can she possess him—body, soul, and secrets—without revealing her own murderous past?

“Reader, I murdered him.”  

Who doesn’t want to read this book based on that line?  So let me tell you, Reader, it was amazing.  I was a bit unsure at first as I read, wondering just how beloved Jane Eyre could be turned into a murderess.  Then Jane Steele herself holds Eyre up as a model of nearly all goodness and I realized how very different these characters would be.  Jane Steele is orphaned and is sent by her aunt to away to school, these facts and that she later becomes a governess are pretty much where her similarities to Jane Eyre end.  Jane Steele is funny!  She’s smart.  She’s quick on her feet.  Most importantly she realizes violence is necessary to save herself at times.  

As excited as I was to read this book I did not think I would get too attached to our murderess but I really did.  I was expecting a cold-hearted sociopath.  What Faye delivers is a child who is lost without her mother, preyed on by a creepy cousin and then delivered into a school that sounds like hell.  No wonder she turns to murder!  Really when you consider what she’s been through she is very brave!  Jane is also loyal and remarkably honest.  She grows into a remarkably thoughtful young woman, despite her views of herself.  

I’ve seen some complaints in reviews about the second half of the book where Jane returns to Highgate House being slow.  I thought this half was nearly faster than the beginning and the gothic feel much lighter.  I loved the addition of the Sikh party at Highgate House and how comfortably teaching Jane about their religion and history in India flowed with the story.  The romance was sweet and completely appropriate for the book.   I was nervous for Jane while she wrestled with the question of how to meld her past and  her hopes with  Mr. Thornfield (and I loved Thornfield!).  In the end I was just delighted and completely entertained.

Now that I’ve read my second successful Jane Eyre related book (Re Jane was another great book!) I am definitely going to have to go back to the classic.  

4 stars!

Thank you GP Putnam and Penguin First to Read for this advance copy in exchange for an honest opinion!

review: what is not yours is not yours

what is not yours is not yours, helen oyeyemi

Hardcover, 336 pages

Published March 8th 2016 by Riverhead Books

Source: Galley giveaway from Publisher

Playful, ambitious, and exquisitely imagined, What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is cleverly built around the idea of keys, literal and metaphorical. The key to a house, the key to a heart, the key to a secret—Oyeyemi’s keys not only unlock elements of her characters’ lives, they promise further labyrinths on the other side. In “Books and Roses” one special key opens a library, a garden, and clues to at least two lovers’ fates. In “Is Your Blood as Red as This?” an unlikely key opens the heart of a student at a puppeteering school. “‘Sorry’ Doesn’t Sweeten Her Tea” involves a “house of locks,” where doors can be closed only with a key—with surprising, unobservable developments. And in “If a Book Is Locked There’s Probably a Good Reason for That Don’t You Think,” a key keeps a mystical diary locked (for good reason).

Oyeyemi’s tales span multiple times and landscapes as they tease boundaries between coexisting realities. Is a key a gate, a gift, or an invitation? What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours captivates as it explores the many possible answers.

My issue with short stories is often -What the heck?!  I want more!  Or often -What the heck – that was so short why was it a story?  

I definitely did not have that issue with this new collection by Helen Oyeyemi.  Some stories like “books and roses” or “drownings” I could have read much more of to get into the worlds she created.  I would love to know more about the wolf present in “dornicka and the st. martin’s day goose”.  But even though I would have read had I had more pages I was completely satisfied with what I read.  The stories were so rich and detailed and captivating.  Even while the puppets weren’t my favorite I still was swept up in the drama and the characters.  The magical realism in these stories definitely carried me away.

The writing was beautiful and mystical and I have so many questions about what I just read. Definitely a book I will be taking time to reread and savor.  The stories were both haunting and delightful.  I definitely will not be looking at my keys in the same way for a while.  

4 stars

Thank you Riverhead Books for this advance copy in exchange for an honest review.