Tag Archives: book

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Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea

 

I’m not going to repeat the blurb, basically the book’s plot is centered around immigration and repatriation.  A group of young people from a small Mexican village sets out for America to bring men back to their small town.  I am reading it for a book club and I picked up my copy from the library.

Into the Beautiful North includes bits and pieces from several story types, romance, buddy story, road trip story, women’s fiction, YA, parable, political statement and thriller, although you never get to the  “thrill” part.  The book seemed to suffer an identity crises.  There was not enough of any one genre to satisfy me as a reader.  The girls’ characters felt flat.  In contrast, some of the men were cartoonish in their extremes, which could work in a parable, but not so much in romance or women’s fiction, and we never see a resolution to the the thriller part of the plot.  The road trip is somewhat monotonous and the political statement is very shallow, just a cursory overview of the issue.  No real depth there.

Urrea does excel at description of place and his prose is clear and engaging.  I did enjoy that about this book.  It was a quick, very easy read,  struck me as something one would read in high school, thus the YA reference.  The main theme of the book was love in all its forms and it  presents some very  positive messages in that light.

 

 

 

 

 

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The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

 

Finished this in one sitting tonight, very quick read, but not light by any stretch of the imagination.  This book is very graphic with details of animal torture, experimentation on humans, murder of children…not light stuff.  Seriously, I have problems reading about animals being tortured and this was beyond what I would normally read but I kept going because I HAD to know what was going on.  The story is about a young teen, who lives with his…eccentric father, was abandoned by his hippie  mother and has a brother who just escaped from a mental institution and it just gets darker from there.  I don’t want to say to much and give away any twists and turns in the plot but I will say I thought I had it figured out and I was completely wrong.  I didn’t see the twist at the end coming.

Very well written, elements of black humor amid all the gore.  I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it because it more horrified me than anything. A fascinating story that kept me turning the pages against my better impulses that were telling me to just shut the book and walk away.

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Under the Dome by Stephen King

 

I finally finished it!  I felt like a trudged along forever through this book.  I used to read a lot of Stephen King and I loved Salem’s Lot but I just couldn’t get into this.  Don’t get me wrong it is well written and Stephen King really does description well, allowing the reader to picture every scene.  I think if you are a fan of Stephen King, especially the older King, this has a similar feel to it and you will probably like it.   It reminded me of The Stand to some extent.

The premise is basically a town gets sealed off from everything by a giant dome one day.  There are various accidents and events until people realize the dome is there.  Once the townsfolk realize what is happening, there the struggle for power, a fight between good and evil, maybe Lord of the Flies without the island?   There is some non-consensual sex and some gruesome scenes, but nothing I wouldn’t have expected.

I think I am just not into reading this kind of science fiction and the commitment this book required at 1,100+ pages was too much when I wasn’t really into it.

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Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton

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I finished rereading this today.  I have read most of the Hamish Macbeth series and just went back to revisit book one as it was a group read for the English Kindle Mystery group this month.  As this was a rereading, I already knew the villain and the victim.  What was interesting about this book is that it seems  so different from later books in the series, which are very Hamish centered.  In this book, Hamish is definitely present, however working quietly in the background.  As a reader, you get the hints of Hamish’s intelligence and abilities that become more evident in later books.  I love this series and the characters.  The Scottish setting is wonderful.  This is a great example of a cozy mystery.

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading?

 

This is a meme hosted by bookjourney.  Visit her blog here.

This week I am reading:

 

Still reading this…tough going.  The last Stephen King I read was in 1989.  I just feel like I’m trudging through right now.

Also – rereading this for a the English Kindle Mystery Club on Goodreads

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I love this series, so I think it will be fun revisiting the beginning 🙂

I also need to return these to the library, so I will try to get to them this week:

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So – What are you reading this week?

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Knock off by Rhonda Pollero

I read this today sitting out on the back patio, drinking Middle Sister Rebel Red wine.

Anyway, I started out by being  turned off by the protagonist.  Finley is a paralegal and spends the first 30 or 4o pages explaining how she is irresponsible with money a credit abuser, a compulsive shopper of name brand items, and a nightmare co-worker.  She basically brags about coming in late and taking long lunches, lying to her employer about going to the courthouse and meeting her friends for long lunches instead.  I almost put the book down but I was too comfy in my lounge chair and didn’t want to get up to get another book so I continued.

I’m glad that I did.  The mystery turned out to be quite good and Finley redeemed herself somewhat by working hard once she got involved in solving the mystery.  I liked all the twists and turns and connections to other victims.  I also enjoyed the legal theme and the investigative techniques.  The writing is well done.  I still will not say that the protagonist is one of my favorites but there is enough else good in the book to redeem it.  Perhaps the problem is me, I tend to need to like characters or at least relate to them, in order to like a book… or maybe I’m a little too old for the target demographic.

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Out of Circulation by Miranda James

 

Another good outing in The Cat in The Stacks Mystery series.  I love the main character, Charlie and Diesel, his cat.  In this book, several recurring characters feature prominently, Sean, Laura, Stewart, Azalea and her daughter.  The plot in this one is that Azalea is accused of murder and Charlie is recruited by her concerned daughter to help clear her name.  There is more of Charlie’s work as an archivist involved in this mystery and it is really interesting.  I  have been reading this series out of order because my library only had two of them.  I will definitely order the other two to finish the series.

There is romance in this book, but not the traditional love triangle that you see a lot of in cozy mysteries.  It is also a well done romance and I quite enjoyed that sub plot.  I really can’t see any negatives with this book.  Well written cozy, interesting plot,  great characters, and nothing too far fetched to distract the reader from the mystery.

 

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Classified as Murder by Miranda James

 

Best cozy I have read in a while!  I think part of it is because it had a lot of differences from other cozies I have been reading .  It was like a breath of fresh air. The biggest difference was a male protagonist.  I haven’t read a cozy with a male protagonist since  The Cat Who…series.  Charlie is great and he is a fully developed character.  You hear his inner thoughts and his doubts and insecurities regarding his relationship with his son as well as his thoughts on the mystery.  The second difference is that there was no romance element, some cozies get so caught up in the love triangles that it takes  away from the mystery.  Love triangles are fine to a point, but I want the focus to be on the mystery.    Finally, it is a book based cozy which have always been my favorites and I have been reading other themes lately.

The mystery plot was well crafted.  I had the mystery solved early, but not really due to any clues in the book, it was just a gut feeling.  This did not detract from my enjoyment of the story.  I am going to read more in this series, in fact I have Out of Circulation checked out from the library already.

 

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Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams

 

I read this book for a book club I belong to that is currently following a travel theme.  The book follows Mark Adams as he retraces the steps of Bingham, the explorer/adventurer/professor who “discovered” Machu Picchu, on the 100 year anniversary of the discovery.  This should have been a great travel adventure but there were some issues with the book.  Mark Adams tells his present day story interspersed with Hiram Bingham’s  original tale and then with tales from Pissaro and the Conquistadors.  The switching back and forth is done erratically and is often disruptive.  I can’t tell whether the author did this deliberately to make a statement about how the journeys were interchangeable even after the passage or time or if it was just ….erratic.

Another issue is that the author is not the most descriptive of writers, when I am reading a travel book about some place I will probably never see, I would like the author to “paint pictures with his words” so that I can vicariously “see” his views and experience the trip.  Some of the writing is very flat and leaves you with a let down feel,… okay we got to Machu Picchu, now we’re going someplace else….what?

The main positive of the book is John Leivers, Mark Adam’s Australian born guide.  He seemed like a fascinating person and I would probably have loved a story about him.  There is also information about the controversies surrounding Machu Picchu and antiquities in general that was all very interesting.  It seems to me that the book had an identity crisis.  It tries to be a little bit of everything, a biography of Hiram Bingham, a travelogue, a historical text of Peru, and some ethics essays about antiquities.   In trying to do too much , if succeeds at nothing.   it has interested me enough in Hiram Bingham, that I will look for other books about him.

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The Hole in the Middle by Kate Hilton

 

I usually don’t include spoilers in any reviews but I couldn’t think of a way to discuss this book without discussing something that happens at the end so be warned….MINOR  SPOILER……

 

This book was an Amazon freebie. I will say that it was a well written book which often is not the case with Amazon free books. The book has a cheerful cover and I started it thinking, chick lit/women’s fiction light kind of thing…no, not exactly. Everyone is miserable and stressed out.  The main character’s life is an essay on everything that can go wrong with a dual working couple’s life.  Sophie, her husband, her children, her mother, her co-workers, basically everyone is miserable.  There is no humor to soften the misery.  This is a very realistic portrayal of failure in a marriage, a family, a life.  

So, if that part of the book is the doughy part of the doughnut, then the feminist manifesto parts are probably the sprinkles on top, which only leaves the chocolate frosting.  That is where the light read, chick lit piece comes into play. *** SPOILER*** The uber rich fairy godmother type who swoops in at the end and makes everything better after admitting she meddled around with questionable results back in the beginning.    

I’m really torn about this book.  I’m not so sure that the three parts  work so well together, but the writer does write well.  I think it is just so depressing in the beginning, it doesn’t achieve that angsty kind of misery balanced by humor that other chick lits seem to excel at.  Then, the mood shift at the end seems almost jarring in contrast, like reading two separate books.  Maybe it just wasn’t the book for me.  I thought I was getting a light, escapist read and this is not that, for most of the book.