The Time Traveler's Wife timeless classic

Audrey Niffenegger did it. She wrote my newest favorite novel, a novel I long to read again and again to discover more treasures and greater understanding with each review.

The Time Traveler's Wife was a book club selection for my reading pals and I and I was so thankful to have a group to discuss it with as it brought forth questions, concerns, tears and interest into realms I'd never even considered. I'm not one to ponder time travel on a regular basis, but Niffenegger managed to build a book based on a long sought after scientific thought that beautifully molded together love, distance, longing, family and even ethics into a portrait that crossed all boundaries of time and space.

The author's eloquent chapters sweep the reader along on visits to the future and the past. The reader rises and falls with the hopes of creating a family and learning to love through time and knowing although we seem to think we have complete control of our futures, we can't change the past where our futures were written.

I recommend this book to anyone, but especially to someone looking for a little romance, someone looking to get a little lost in time, and someone not afraid to cry openly while turning the pages of what will be a book passed along to friends in the years to come.

The Love Season leaves a chill in the air

This book had me from hello. Elin Hilderbrand's story stretches over the course of three decades but is slammed into a little more than 24 hours on Nantucket Island in the summer time.

This is the first work of Hilderbrand's that I've read and I admit, I didn't want to put it down. Her descriptions of Marguerite's work as a chef nearly conjures the meals she created before your very eyes and for your taste buds to enjoy. Her deft handiwork at engaging women - one in her very late teens and the other over 60 - is stellar. The average reader identifies with both - not feeling one is too young or too old, but that the story each has to tell is one that will touch the reader's heart.

Hilderbrand does an excellent job of constructing her main characters and building her plot, but don't get too comfortable with those peripheral characters who make BIG appearances only to fade out and be forgotten in the rush for the author to finish the day and thus the book.

Although the book is hard to put down, I found I wanted to throw it when it all ended. The conclusion was anti climatic, disappointing and weak from an author who demonstrated such literary prowess through the previous 290 pages. Nothing is solved, only an age-old story of love and forgiveness is revealed and the reader is left to wonder if that is even enough to right the wrongs made over the course of a day and several decades. I am not a reader who likes to be left to wonder and Hilderbrand left me to do just that as she shut off the final light in her main character's home. What a pity she couldn't have kept a night-light on somewhere, or even lit a candle to illuminate a more encompassing set of circumstances at the books close.

It must have been a gusty Nantucket wind that blew the candle's flame out and shut this interesting novel too early.

On Chesil Beach - not a place I want to be

Ian McEwan does it again with his enchanting story telling. His words read like a lyric to a song you don't want to end. On Chesil Beach is a quick read, engaging and true but at the end of the story, the beach is not a place you want to be.

Don't look for a happy ending or even a level of understanding to how this short novel of McEwan's ends. Enjoy the ride, stop and re-read the passages, savor the moments he paints on the paper. It's much like an amusement ride. The end is back to the beginning of understanding just what defines love and a working relationship and it may be something you have to replay, repeat, or reread to understand.

Give McEwan's book a chance. His artistry is worth the time, just don't expect a superhero ending or anything with warm fuzzies. McEwan is much to real and true to human spirit to spoil his prose with fantasy.

The Last Summer (of You & Me) calls for tissues

Ann Brashares' latest novel isn't for her blue-jean wearing fans of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. The novel that crosses the lines of love, loss, grief and healing calls upon the writer's skills to play the heartstrings of a more mature audience thirsty for a love more lasting that high school crushes allow.

While I've been a fan of all of the Traveling Pants books by Brashares, I was worried about how her first published turn at an adult audience would pan out.

I was pleasantly surprised. The book reads well, with emotion and reality and calls for a box of tissues and a comforting cup of tea at the end. At times, in efforts to sound like she is writing for an older audience it seems, Brashares trips over her own prose and layers on more description when less would probably conjure the right element from the reader's past instead of making the reader question if they've ever felt that way or seen that sadness or can identify with that love or loss.

I recommend Brashares book, but suggest waiting for the paperback edition or for it to hit your local library. Don't dish out the coin for the hardcover. It's a good story, but it doesn't have the staying power for a long-term bookshelf.

"The Girls" an unimaginable story

Lori Lansens' "The Girls" is a story no one every thought to tell of characters no one would want to imagine.

She introduces her readers to Rose and Ruby Darlen, sisters closer than nature should allow. The conjoined twins tell us the story of their life in overlapping layers of a journal-like voice as they come to grips with the fact that at 30, their life is about to end.

Living their lives without ever looking each other in the eyes, the conjoined twins are joined at the head, sharing major arteries and veins that make separation impossible. They live in a house filled with mirrors, for looking at their misshapen heads is the only way they can see one another to read each other's expressions and body language. Joined in this highly unusual way, Rose is fully developed, but Ruby is like her child, born with club feet and an underdeveloped internal system. Rose must carry Ruby, all her life, with there arms wrapped around each other in support as Ruby sits on Rose's hip.

The girls are night-and-day different. One bookish, the other outgoing. One quiet, the other a chatterbox. But together they must learn to not only share their body, but their life. Their road isn't an easy one. Definitely not one that someone would choose to live, yet Lansens doesn't allow you to feel pity for the girls.

She introduces you to them without the pitying stares of handicapped labels. The reader knows the stares occur, and feels almost indignant when they do. The reader feels protective of The Girls, but wants to see them live, survive, thrive in their unusual way.

As the end of their time draws near, the reader hopes for the best for the girls, prays for love to find them, even in their last days, cries for the lost daughter, the lost mother, the chances that could have been if things had been different. If they weren't thought of as witches on their visit to Slovakia. If they hadn't been born on the day a tornado tore through town and robbed their neighbor of her only son. If they had only had more time with their aunt and uncle. If their mother hadn't looked at them in horror and run away.

But The Girls capture it all in their own words, put down on paper through Lansens' eloquent prose that bring The Girls to life. The fictional work is so real in its emotion and power that the book ends long before you want it to, but well before you have to believe The Girls are gone.

The 300-plus-page book is well worth the trip to a place most readers could never imagine into a life most readers would never dare to dream of for fear it would be a nightmare. Lansens' work is truly unforgettable. Never will you think of sisters again without thinking of the two that shared everything, their life, their loves, and all their blood.

Charmed Thirds proves writer can have charms three times

Megan McCafferty writes a hit again with her spunky lead character Jessica Darling charging through her college years in yet another angst filled books "Charmed Thirds." the third in a series, McCafferty's journal-style novels capture the pure emotion, semi-drama and debacle of being in college. She rocked with Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings and did nothing to disappoint readers with her third endeavor "Charmed Thirds."

Nothing brings back college years and college mistakes better than the vivid writing and sarcasm laced voice of Jessica as you follow her through breakups, hookups, being broke and most of all being lost in the unfathomable complexity of being 20 something and not knowing what to do with one's life. For anyone who ever went to college and wondered if they made the right decisions, learned from their mistakes or wondered if anyone else felt as misunderstood as they did - "Charmed Thirds" is a book to read and enjoy.

Halberstam's Teammates a must

David Halberstam knew how to write. His voluminous works that he left behind after his recent death is a tribute to his diversity as a writer and his belief in telling the WHOLE story.

In a shorter book than say "The Powers that Be," "Teammates" captures the essence of a rarely touched upon issue - the male friendship and the bond of being a teammate.

The story of friends last trip to see Ted Williams alive illustrates the camaraderie of men who played ball, made history, were icons, but still remained at their heart - simple men who enjoyed the basics of life, good food, good fishing, a nice roof over their head and the box scores for the Red Sox during the season.

These men weren't the superstars of today. They didn't hold out for millions upon millions of dollars. Baseball players today - like Roger Clemens - will make more in one game than these men made playing their entire lives - except for time off for wars they participated.

These men played for the love of the game, for the definition it gave them - not superstars, but teammates, not by the drugs they took to hit home runs, but for a batting record come by cleanly at .400.

Halberstam's book is a treasure. It's a glimpse into the pure age of baseball history from the view of some of the best known Red Sox players ever. It's a view into a friendship between men built over batting practice and decades of ups and downs, wins and loses, loves and heartbreaks.

It's a short read - don't let Halberstam's byline discourage you. Let the book take you back in time and then back to the present to a world where Ted Williams no longer lives, but his memory will hold on forever ... as long as there is baseball and as long as there are little boys learning to swing a bat and catch a fly ball.

Learning to Breathe not breathtaking

Karen White's book "Learning to Breathe" was a nice story. It was touching in all the right spots and even brought a tear of two to my eyes as the story of a life lived unfolded with disappointments and joy, but ... it didn't take my breath away.

The book was a disappointment in it's predictability. I knew within the first few letters read by Brenna who the mysterious ME was. I knew who she would end up with in the end. I could tell who the mysterious newcomer was within a few chapters of his arrival. It was all very easy to figure out and left that element of suspense back at the book store once you purchased the book and began to read it. I will say the path through the story was well woven, just not intriguing.

It's a fun, quick, easy read - great for a plane ride or a trip to the beach to absorb you just enough but to not make you think too hard about what's in front of you.

Don't expect any wild revelations or even twists or turns in this warmhearted book about overcoming hurdles, sometimes even the ones there from your very own family, and accepting the chance for happiness for what it is and not worrying about how it may feel if you lose it.

Sea Glass shouldn't be in the bargain bin

I picked up the paperback book "Sea Glass" for less than $6. It retails for $15. Anita Shreve, the author of the Oprah Book Club selection "A Pilot's Wife," would probably cringe to see the bargain priced sticker on her book. I saw it as a chance to give an author I enjoyed once another opportunity to entertain me.

With her beautiful imagery and historical research, Shreve weaves a tale of misguided love the devastation of the depression and how some people lost more than their homes and items in the crash, but they lost their lives, and their loves, fighting to hold onto what little dignity, pride and humility they had.

Shreve uses different voices throughout the story to capture the emotion, scene and unrest the characters face. Her eloquent prose keeps each page flowing into another until you realize hours have passed with this "bargain" book and you haven't put it down.

"Sea Glass" doesn't belong in the bargain bin.

Songs of the Humpback Whale a great trip

Let Jodi Picoult take you cross-country in a search for love, an identity and most of all a family connection.

Picoult tells the story through the voices of the main characters and chooses different points of the story to illustrate - don't look for the story to go from beginning to end. the chronologically challenged may find it hard to follow, but the style lends a unique sense of intrigue and interest to read the story. It's hard to put down once you are locked into the story.

For any mother and daughter or woman who has questioned the reasoning for her marriage, this is a book to explore. It may help you find the answers you - and the characters in this book - are looking for.

The tale of the cross-country trip paints a pretty backdrop to exploration of a family dynamic that is near implosion.

I recommend the book by New York Times bestselling author. It's worth the money for the journey she takes with you.

Keep dreaming after reading Sittenfeld's latest

Curtis Sittenfeld, the author of New York Times bestseller "Prep" the story of a prep school girl who never quite finds her way in the world of the elite, leaves the reader hanging in her latest novel, "The Man of My Dreams."

Meet Hannah - a young girl who's father set a lousy example for her of what a loving relationship is supposed to look like. Watch Hannah grow up groping through the dark as she tries to figure out how to make relationships, sex and a basic social life work. Hannah has all the cliches around her - a beautiful sister who has her pick of men and proposals, a doting mother, a therapist and a wild cousin/friend she drops almost everything for.

The coming of age novel that follows Hannah from 14 to her mid 20s is sad. Sad because Hannah never quite gets it, and even when you think she's about to, she doesn't. Sittenfeld leads her on a wild goose chase to Chicago and then lands her in New Mexico, all so she can find herself, but even when she does, the reader is still not sure who she is or if there is a man of her dreams.

My advice, skip The Man of My Dreams and find something with an actual conclusion.

Falling through the Earth

A father-daughter relationship is murky at best most of the time. A father-daughter relationship involving a Vietnam war survivor who spent most of his time in 'Nam hunting the enemy in underground tunnels is downright challenging. But Danielle Trussoni somehow makes her relationship work with her hard-drinking, hard-working, un-affectionate father who raised her while her siblings grew up with her mother.

Trussoni captures the life she led with her father in her memoir Falling through the Earth. In it she recounts sitting as a child on a bar stool in Roscoe's as her father and her uncles traded stories. She also reveals her own experience of going to Vietnam and traveling down into the tunnels that kept the Viet Cong alive during the long years of the war. It was there that she believed she would find a piece of her father that he had left behind as a young man.

Trussoni comes back without the missing key to her father's affections, but in the meantime she learns more of who she is and the stock she came from than most ever begin to realize.

Falling through the Earth is an interesting read. Don't expect any great revelations from this memoir, instead, just go along for the ride.

Luck is in the eye of the beholder

Alice Sebold took an incredibly brave step when she was 18 and only a freshman in college at Syracuse University. She fought back against a rapist. She pressed charges. She won.

Alice Sebold did another incredibly brave thing in 1999. She published a book about her rape, how it affected her. How she lived after that. How her life was viewed in halves - the first half before the rape, and the second half after. She laid out her heart, her soul, her mind and her fears in the pages of "Lucky." Can you believe it. That's what the police told her when she went to police station to tell her story. They said she was lucky because in the tunnel in a park next to campus where she was raped, another woman had been brutally murdered. Alice got out with her life, but lost her virginity, innocence and ideals to a rapist that had the nerve to approach her on the street less than a year later and ask if he knew her from somewhere - with a sneer.

Alice Sebold's personal story is as gripping as the New York Times best seller she penned "The Lovely Bones," and it is just as haunting. Lucky is a book you can't put down. It is a story of strength that we hear so infrequently about rape. Sebold's book has the power of Trisha Meili's I am the Central Park Jogger and is told in a more riveting style. Both are books for every woman to read.

I give Alice Sebold credit for the book she wrote. I give her my admiration for having it published and I give her applause for having the bravery to have the world read it and shaming all those who still believe there is a stigma tied to a woman who is raped. Alice Sebold is not a victim. She is a survivor and a wonderful writer as well.

A tribute to Vonnegut

We all know that the literary world lost an amazing mind and writer in the passing of renowned author Kurt Vonnegut.

There aren't words to describe his prose or approach to stories that carry such heavy memories like Slaughterhouse Five. Though hundreds have tried to capture his wit and wisdom with catchy turns of a phrase with a little science fiction thrill tossed in, I won't even try.

Here, in this post, I will simply say that I admired his skill greatly. I am glad I was encouraged to read Slaughterhouse Five recently for book club and I am thankful I picked up A man without a country a few months ago and read it joyfully in one sitting a few months prior to Vonnegut's passing. He mentions his death several times in the book and as one critic said, it was a work that led a reader to pour over every word.

One such passage made me stop and think of what Vonnegut may have been trying to tell us many times over but didn't hear. What we may practice in every day life and not realize the folly of. What we should open our eyes to:

"I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, so we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise."

Thank you, Kurt Vonnegut.

Before you know kindness ... read this book

Chris Bohjalian's "Before you Know Kindness" captures a heart wrenching story that could happen to any family at any time. It's hard to say if any family would come out on the other side as well as the Setons and the McColloughs do at the end of this novel.

The book gets off to slow start in New Hampshire, chronicling the lives of the well-to-do during the summer months. You can't feel the heat of the summer or this novel until the action hits in the July evening with a gun shot.

The issues of animal protection, guns, violence, family communication, vegetarianism, legalities and more surface as the book progresses. There are no real heroes in this book. It's hard to like any of the characters - they all have their well written flaws, but it only goes to make the books more readable and realistic.

Kudos to Bohjalian and "Kindness."

For One More Day requires more than one tissue

Mitch Albom's back again with a tear-jerking story that tugs you along to depths of a story and your heart you may not be ready to explore.

Albom, a renowned sports writer (who has made his fair share of mistakes) grabbed the hearts of readers with Tuesday's with Morrie - a tribute to his college professor who taught him a final class on what it meant to live and love. That book is enough to require a box of tissues on its own.

For One More Day takes you back in the life of a former baseball player, walking you through his mistakes and losses and his ultimate decision to take his own life. It's only when he is near death that he learns what it means to be alive by getting that ever evasive "one more day" with a loved one that we just had a few more questions for.

The book is syrupy sweet and a little constricted at times, but for those who long to have a single moment, conversation or day with a loved one who is gone, it has a resounding message of hope and promise.

Albom's books are always quick reads. I attribute it to his newspaper style. The 188-page book can be read in just a few hours. The time is worth it to be able to reflect on what you would want with one more day.

The Pursuit of HappYness a little dull

Chris Gardner's The Pursuit of HappYness was an easy, quick read, if that is what you are looking for.

Author Gardner chronicles his rise from a life without a father, in an abusive home and eventually from living on the streets to becoming a wealthy and stable father and stockbroker. While his story is moving and poignant and a testimony to millions struggling to find their way, Garnder glossed over his indiscretions, poo-pooed his failures and relied solely on the words of his mother to get him through life. It seemed a little far-fetched to me, the reader.

While I admire the choices Gardner made and the promises he never broke to his son, I wonder how easy it would be to climb a ladder like Gardner in today's day and age when the paper is even more important than the experience he had so widely gathered. I wonder if we would be willing to give this man a chance like he got 20 years ago.

I just don't know if it would be that easy. I don't even know if it was as easy as Gardner made it sound. It's a good story if you want to believe it.

Prozac Nation enough to drive you to Zoloft

I just completed Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Prozac Nation." May I have a Zoloft, please.

The 300-page memoir is a diet of depression roughage. The word pain is used incessantly to describe Wurtzel's life of drowning under the "black wave" of deep, deep depression. While many Americans, including myself, can relate to Wurtzel's despair, but some of us have to question her approach and lack of perspective. As she spent time cutting herself in her junior high school's locker room during lunch, she was shielding herself from experiencing life or as she says "gaining perspective."

I feel for Wurtzel, but sometimes I just wish she'd pull her head out of her butt and and realize that she had opportunities before her others only dream of. A semester in London, an internship in Dallas, an opportunity to write for Rolling Stone, Seventeen and more. Yet, she was willing to throw it all away even when she had a caring therapist who was ready to do everything it took to make her better, she still took the final step and made an attempt to take her life. THEN she laughed about it.

By the end of the book, I was well ready for it to be over. Her depression was so overly expressed, I was depressed.

While the epilogue and afterword made interesting points about the increasing diagnosis of depression in America today and even the trivialization of the disease that affects millions of people, it was not enough to bring a reader out of the darkness Wurtzel had painted.

Reviews called Wurtzel's book important, smart, real and truthful. I call Wurtzel's work excruciatingly redundant, overworked and ploy filled. I don't doubt Wurtzel's pain, I just doubt her reason to write this book and expose all of us to her utter despair. She claims she wanted to be true to the darkness that filled her. In fact she was true to her self-serving, self-absorbed nature that led her to the path of depression to begin with.

Pass the Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil, please.

Freedom Writers teaches tolerance

If you haven't seen the movie, save your money and buy the book "Freedom Writers" - a collection of diary entries from Long Beach students and their teacher Erin Gruwell in the wake of the Rodney King riots and continued gang warfare on the California streets where the students live.

The book is gripping in its personal accounts from the powerful voices of teens living in an "undeclared" war zone. They draw parallels to Anne Frank's life during World War II and that of 15-year-old writer and survivor of the Bosnian genocide Zlata.

Never is there a dull journal entry as you follow the students and their teacher from freshman year through graduation and all the people they meet and books they read. For Gruwell, who was giving the lowest of the low students - the ones not expected to graduate or even make it through the year, the four years was spent inspiring new ways to educate, enlighten and reach out to her 150 students who at the beginning couldn't be bothered with English or reading when most had to worry about getting home without getting shot and then worry that there would be food to eat when they did get home.

The book illustrates the progress these students make under their teacher's leadership - from believing that she would only last one month to believing that she could help them change the world. The students go from believing that they will live and die in the projects to attending colleges - many on scholarship and becoming heroes and leaders for other students in the gang-torn West coast.

The book is powerful and makes any reader want to pick up a pen and write for justice like the Freedom Writers themselves.

"Comeback" hard to put down

Imagine living on the streets at the age of 15 when you know you have a loving family and warm bed to go home to. Imagine the fear of not knowing where your daughter is, who she is with or what she is doing for months on end? Imagine carrying around so much guilt and shame for the treatment you received at the hands of a loved one as a toddler that you can't function in daily life and must drown your fears, hatred, sorrow and other emotions under the thick layers of drugs and alcohol.

These are things that "Comeback" asks you to imagine. The memoir, written by mother-daughter team Claire and Mia Fontaine, chronicles the struggle of the team to overcome Mia's molestation at the hands of her biological father when she was a toddler and also the dramatic twist Mia made with her life at age 15 when she ran away after feeling she could no longer live the dual life of a happy Mia on the outside while the shame and fear of her molestation turned into a dark, drug dependant teen who hated the world.

The book isn't all dark and twisty, it shows Mia and Claire on the path to recovery through a questioned school in the Czech Republic Morava. The path isn't easy - it is scattered with pitfalls, steps forward and back and a lot of inner reflection. As a reader, I had to wonder if I would have the courage to undergo the immense self examination that Mia and Claire endure to save Mia's life as well as their mother-daughter relationship.

The book is gripping and one that should be read by any parent with an angst ridden teen or someone who thinks one day they may want children. Sometimes the road of parenthood is not easy and as badly as we strive to protect our children by surrounding them with love and affection, evil can creep in from the least expected places and destroy the precarious balance of a parent-child bond, even if it takes years to manifest.

Claire and Mia should be lauded for their bravery to share their gripping story with others. They showed their souls, dirt and all to the world and were prepared to take the judgement. Not many people would be so courageous.

"Comeback" is a book that keeps readers tied to the pages and filled with awe at what can happen in today's world of drugs and drinking among teens and the drastic measures some parents must seek to save their child from falling off the edge.

19 Minutes not worth the hours of reading

I love author Jodi Piccoult. I think that was established when I blogged about "My Sister's Keeper," but her latest book "19 Minutes" left me disappointed and disillusioned with the "namebrand" author, as she refers to herself.

"19 Minutes chronicles the moments of a school shooting that killed 10 people and wounded another 19 students and teachers. The book is graphic in it's carnage. Piccoult's strong imagery allows the reader to see the fear, blood, smoke and carnage that was laid in a small-town school. She chronicles the events leading up to the tipping point in the 17-year-old shooter Peter and as is always Piccoult's style, she throws in a twist at the end that she doesn't think the reader is expecting.

But, Piccoult's writing style in all her famous-ness, has become formulaic. If you've read more than three of her books, you see the romance of the plot written within the first chapter, thought it won't actually develop until half-way through the text. And if you are an insightful reader, you know the twist is coming long before it occurs in the final chapters of the book.

The ending itself was a disappointment. Piccoult doesn't sugar-coat the reality of school bullying and what it means to take a life in revenge. Peter's penalties are real and the end that he takes is selfish and easy - for both the character and the author.

Josie, the book's main character, is poorly drawn and difficult to identify with. Piccoult doesn't draw this character as strongly as she has in past novels and it shows. With glimpses into an abusive relationship as well as elements of a loving home life, it is difficult for the reader to understand where Josie comes from with her feelings. Piccoult needed to give the readers more of Josie, more of herself, to make her plot as vivid as "My Sister's Keeper" and other books like "Keeping Faith."

"19 Minutes" just wasn't worth the hours of reading for me. Sorry Jodi.

The Kite Runner - a book of highs and lows

"Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini took me on a trip through nightmares and hope not to mention a journey from Afghanistan to America and back again.

First time novelist Hosseini captured his readers like a pro. His story line was gripping, harrowing and at times disturbing. The book was difficult to put down, but at times the contrasts were so stark and devastating in war-torn Afghanistan that the book had to be set aside.

The reader cried for Hassan and then for Hassan's son and marveled at the ability to keep secrets that tore long-held beliefs to the core. The reader struggles to like Amir, his childish selfishness set into action a chain of events that nearly destroyed a young man's life, all because he was of a different ethnicity. In the end, love conquers bigotry and even the Taliban, but not without a grave price.

The book is worth the read. Have tissues handy and be prepared for sorrow, anger and disbelief of the glimpse you see into the Afghan life and the aftermath of Taliban control. The book isn't pretty, nor is it a happy ending, but it mirrors a life that many Americans are struggling to understand.

Keep "My Sister's Keeper"

Has one book ever made you rush out literally the next day to buy another work by the author? Have you ever been so moved by one writer's work to wish to devour every word they've written? That is how I felt when I completed "My Sister's Keeper," by Jodi Picoult.

The last time I was so moved by a book that I didn't stop crying for at least a half hour after completing it was a pre-teen reading Katherine Patterson's "Bridge to Terabithia."

Picoult created a story that touched reader's hearts and troubled their minds. You couldn't help reading the book and wondering, "Would I do that?" "What would I do."

Anna, the 13-year-old child who brings a lawsuit against her family for medical independence, is at once believable and unimaginable. Her maturity supersedes her years, but then again, she never had a childhood. The reader sympathizes with Anna as she struggles to identify herself away from her leukemia-plagued sister Kate, who has needed everything from her sister from cord blood to now her kidney to survive. The story is riveting as you see it from the eyes of the mother, Sara, father, Brian, and brother Jesse. Peripheral characters Julia, a court-appointed advisor, and Campbell, Anna's lawyer, round out the eyes, ears and hearts of the story and provide dramatic relief to what could be an overwhelmingly suffocating story.

The story is one that chills you to the core as you consider the medical mysteries we still face and the answers we have at our fingertips, such as genetic modification of embryos to create "perfect matches" or more. You can't read "My Sister's Keeper" without being forced to think which I believe is one of the most telling attributes of a good book. Does it make you want to discuss it? Are there questions that aren't left unanswered by the book, but by yourself?

Thank you, Jodi Picoult for making me think and making me ask questions I haven't yet found the answers for.

John Berendt - oh, to have eight years to travel

I just completed two works by John Berendt - "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and "The City of Falling Angels." Both billed as travelogues, the novels capture more of the location through the people Berendt meets than the average tourist might.

For example, Berendt spends eight years traveling back and forth between New York City and Savannah in "Midnight." Who gets to spend eight years writing a travel book? Berendt's years weren't spent all in vain enjoying the sweet Georgia peaches though. During his time in the South the characters he encounters, oops I mean people, are more telling than an description of Bonaventure's cemetery could ever be.

People like Joe Odom weave in and out of the sounds and sights of Savannah crafting a story that begins with the smoothness of fine whiskey, blasts in the middle like a gun shot (wait it was a gun shot) and ends like the South during the Civil War, a heroic battalion refusing to die. Then there are the juxtapositions of a brassy Chablis and the Southern gentrified Lee Adler - making the twists and turns of what you expect to be a sleepy story feel more like a rollicking ride through highs and lows of a society that refuses to live by anyone's rules, even their own.

The City of Falling Angels was interesting and well crafted, but I'm glad I read it first. Had I read it after "Midnight," I would have been disappointed in the ride. While Venice provided a romantic backdrop for the story of a treacherous fire, it's characters proved more scholarly than friendly. Living in their Venitian palaces, the characters of Berendt's second novel seemed more unattainable and even less realistic than those in "Midnight."

The world in which they lived was well described, but not as vivid as the squares of Savannah in "Midnight." The carnival nights of Venice didn't compare to the luster of the Southern city's St. Patrick's Day Parade.

Comparison's aside, Berendt's book was fascinating in the details he extracted from the people that filled its pages. The simple things he researched for the book were impressive. The look into the glass making history of Venice and even the family feuds that mar most business histories was endearing.

The overall novel's thread of fire of Fenice was sometime lost along the rambling canals' way as Berendt took breaks to introduce new Venitians or expatriates or others along the way. The story was loosely held together and if not for Berendt's finely detailed and enchanting travels off the trail, the novel would have been lost.

In all, though, I rank "Midnight" above "Falling Angels," as a more masterful and intoxicating work.

About the Book Bashing Blog

Ok - I'm not really a book basher. I am a book lover. Reading books is what I do. Aside from my work, family and friends, reading is what I love and I decided that as quickly as I run through books, I should share what I think of them with the general public - so that's what this is - my book blog. Consider it my grown up book report, but with more fun and less grammatical structure (Sorry, Mrs. Redden - my high school English teacher.)

This is where I can vent, rage, cry or rave about my latest literary conquest. I get to do it verbally with my book club that meets once a month, and I usually fill my husband in each time I finish a book, but even he has said I need to find an outlet for the emotions that some books bring out in me. That's why I am blogging. After I finished the book "Suite Francaise" by Irene Nemirovsky last night and bored my hubby to tears with my ranting about how such a beautiful work could go unfinished because of the pure evil in this world (see previous post), I realized I needed a place to pour it all out.

I hope whomever reads this out on the World Wide Web enjoys it. Leave me comments. Tell me if you don't agree. Tell me what you are reading. I'll tell you!

Sensational simplicity in Suite Francaise

I hate Hitler.

I know that's how millions feel and it's how I've felt since as a child I first learned of the horrors of World War II, but last night when I completed the book Suite Francaise, I hated the evil villain of world history anymore.

He stole the lives of millions of Jews, Gypsys, homosexuals and more and last night he stole the words of an amazing author and her uncompleted manuscript.

Irene Nemirovsky's work in Suite Francaise was pure genius. Although she only completed two of the five sections that were to be a complete set, the moments she captured in black and white on a page of cramped handwriting shown a light on the raw emotion, humanity and reality of life in France during World War II.

Reading Nemirovsky's notes on her work, included in the recent English translation, was riveting. Her eye for contrast and simplicity helped her to weave a tale of life, death, fear and even love in an environment unknown to many readers.

Her simply constructed scenes are like opening the curtain to an elaborate set and watching life reveal itself in moments of reality. She captures the children scampering in a long deserted garden, and the women in black who simply want a photo album and a few items from the home they once treasured.

She illustrated how love can cross barriers of society and family and develop in the most alarming, yet obvious places. Her words - each one - whisper of a life lived in the time of her characters, of experiences survived, of choices made and most of all of truth.

Completing Suite Francaise is disappointing. The book, you think shouldn't end. And it shouldn't. At least not where it does. Three more parts were to reveal for all us what happened to Lucille, Jean-Marie, Hubert, Corte, the Michauds and the others. Nemirovsky pulls her reader in, touching them on the emotional level with the fear of war, the physical level with her descriptions of the difficult life they faced - limited food (even the obsession of food among those fleeing Paris) - and the mental level as the readers struggles along with the characters over the occupying forces, the threatening Bolsheviks and the precarious promise of rescue from England and the United States.

Without Nemirovsky there can be no end to the book. Hitler stole her from her two daughters, her husband and her readers. Dying in a concentration camp for having Jewish grandparents, the Catholic and two-decade French resident Nemirovsky left her daughters with a gift in the form of a manuscript that the world is just beginning to recognize. The value of the glimpse she provided to all of us, even now, six decades after World War II restructured the globe, is one that should be read, celebrated and remembered.


Hitler stole the ending to Suite Francaise, but Nemirovsky captured her world for all of us to remember.