Her Fearful Symmetry

by Audrey Niffenegger

My favorite novel by Niffenegger, hands-down, is "The Time Traveler's Wife" - which many have seen in its movie form (sidenote: very well done adaptation).

That being said, "Her Fearful Symmetry" is an intruiging novel with four intriguing main subjects- two generations of identical twins, which alone suggests a mystical connection between two humans that others cannot understand.

The story revolves around the mysterious comings and goings at London flat vacated by the younger twins' deceased aunt- the twin of their mother. The twins quickly discover that they aren't as alone as they think they are...both in the living and in the deceased sense.

Becoming involved in the lives of their neighbors, the twins begin to question their deceased aunt's relationship with everyone around them....including their own mother, whose twin held secrets she never intended to reveal.

As the twins story starts to imbed itself in their mother's and their aunt's story, and eventually plays out, the roles and identities of these four twins become nearly interchangeable.

The book was engaging in the sense that you knew something wasn't quite right, but it wasn't easy to put you finger on exactly what was wrong. The ending, as well, will leave you with the sense that things may not have all come out terribly right in the world, which is another of Niffenegger's themes- happy endings that aren't, always.

Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghese

I'll probably say this a few times this year, but my goodness, hands-down, no-contest, straight-up, BEST BOOK I HAVE READ SO FAR THIS YEAR.

"Cutting for Stone" is an amazing, beautiful, awe-inspiring, insert-fifty-glowing-adjectives-here type of book. Reviewers use words like "Richly written, vivid, masterpiece," and I couldn't agree more.

Set largely in Ethiopia and America in the 1950s- 1980s, the story is that of two twins born attached at the head. Surgically separated after the horrendous birth that kills their mother and drives their father to leave the hospital - and his babies- behind, the twins are raised by two doctors working at "Missing" hospital in Addis Ababa.

While each twin exhibits unique personality traits, their initial tie remains strong and causes intersections throughout their lives. Both twins will follow in their adopted parents' footsteps to careers in medicine, though their specialties and motivations will differ greatly. One twin will travel to America, and experience life as a medical resident in the 1970s & 1980s, before returning to Addis Ababa.

I literally couldn't put this book down, and am thankful that my mother had the presence of mind to give it to me in the chilly winter months, when I wasn't busy with work and could basically abandon my life for two days to read it while getting ready in the morning, brushing my teeth, eating breakfast, etc etc etc.

It's written by Abraham Verghese, a physician who also wrote "My Own Country," his story of working in an eastern Tennessee hospital and specializing in infectious disease during the onset of the AIDS epidemic, when the first HIV/AIDS patient arrives in the town. This book is absolutely on my list of books to read this year!

Best Friends

by Thomas Berger

Named a "New York Times Notable Book" and reviewed by the same publication as "One that ranks near Berger's best: tautly drawn tragicomedy, taking one more mythical swipe and contemporary life," I have to confess...........meh.

Perhaps I was expecting too much; after all, Berger's work "The Feud" was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and "Little Big Man" is known throughout the world (this according to the author bio on the back cover.)

Or perhaps there was a reason that this book was also on the Borders' 99 cent markdown pile, and that's because, while it's written extremely well, the story is a little- well- something. Old? Told? Expected? I'm honestly not sure which adjective to use.

Oh sure, the book was entertaining enough- which is to say I started reading it, wondered how it would end, and thusly finished it. Along the way there were great small "aside" moments and lots of rich character detail, which is probably what contributes to Berger's books being as popular as they apparently are.

But the basic story.

My lord.

It's been told.

Two guys are best friends their whole lives. Predictably, they are different people. Predictably, they are motivated by different things. Predictably, undercurrents of jealousy permeate. Predictably, they find themselves at a crossroads.

It's pretty much the same story, in fact, as ANOTHER "Best Friends" novel I'd read several years back- this one by Martha Moody, I believe- except that instead of two men experiencing the fallout of differences over morals and money, it's two women experiencing the fallout of differences over morals and money, and manages to weave in the porn industry. Points.

Would I rave about this book to a friend? Probably not. Would I loan it to them if they happened to pull it off my shelf and wanted to read it? Sure. I may even give Berger another try and check out one of the works more raved about on the back.

This one, though? Will probably get shelved.

Light of Day

by Jamie M. Saul

A few weeks ago, I happened upon a Borders' bookstore that was closing and had marked down their remaining inventory. Though the top two floors had already been seriosly picked over, I hit jackpot in the basement with books marked down to 99 cents!!

I picked up several, including "Light of Day," and figured that at 99 cents each, I'd lump any bad ones as a loss and happily put the $6 total I spent towards the one good one.

I haven't read them all yet, but so far? "Light of Day" makes the entire purchase worth it.

Why?

OH MY GOD.

Compelling storyline.

Amazing characters.

Intruiging friendships.

Revealing sub-plot flashbacks.

Twists and turns.

Everything, absolutely everything, requires you to keep turning the pages until you find out what's next. In the first ten pages alone, you meet Jack Owens, the character who will chart the course of the rest of the book through his actions and memories, and learn that he's a man haunted by the past- despite having left and moved to a small town to escape it.

And that's where the body is found.

I won't give away anything more, because you quite simply just have to go read this book, if you're the sort who enjoys intruige, suspense, and questions that don't always have answers.

Fall of Giants

by Ken Follett

Because Ken Follett can do no wrong, in my eyes, I expected nothing less than greatness when I cracked open "Fall of Giants," a Christmas gift from my mother.

I was not disappointed.

Again following his masterful pattern of taking readers through history by creating small family groups to experience society and events, this book starts readers off in Russia, England, Germany, Austria, Wales, Scotland, and the US in June of 1911, takes them through World War I and the Russian Revolution, and leaves them in January of 1924.

With a cast of characters list six pages long prefacing the start of the book, I worried that I'd be confused at trying to keep everyone's names and whereabouts straight.

But I forgot it was Ken Follett.

I need not have worried.

The characters, stories, subplots and dramas woven into history are so engrossing that, I have to confess, I became somewhat of a nut about reading this book. At 983 pages long, I expected it to take me at least a week, if not a bit longer.

Or, you know.......three days.

Granted, I am a speed-reader, but the length of time it took me to finish this book definitely speaks more to the amazingness of the book than of my skills.

The best part?

It's only the first installment of "The Century Trilogy."

Which means THERE ARE TWO MORE COMING.

*HAPPY DANCE*

The next book is due out in 2012, and will (according to Ken Follett's website) feature the children from Fall of Giants during the Depression and World War II. The third is not due out until 2014 and will feature (again according to the website) future generations during the Cold War.

This trilogy's timeline is of particular significance to me, and many I'm sure, as it depicts the era that our grandparents or great-great grandparents were born into. I can't help picturing my maternal grandfather, born in 1917 and just a year or two younger than several of the children in the book, and my grandmother, born shortly after. My grandparents would live through the Great Depression, with my grandfather surviving health scares that claimed the lives of many. He and two of his brothers would go on to fight in World War II. I look forward to reading the future volumes for the rich detail I know they'll contain about the time my grandparents lived in.

The Rest Of Her Life and While I'm Falling

by Laura Moriarty



I was trolling around in the bargain areas at Borders when I discovered "While I'm Falling" by Laura Moriarty. The book cover was intruiging enough, but what really grabbed me was the single-sentence review on the cover.



"Moriarty keeps getting better and better."- Jodi Picoult.



JODI. PICOULT.



Um, confession. I might have a slight obsession author crush fondness for Jodi Picoult.



The kind that makes me run out and buy every single one of her books, the day it comes out, in hard cover, at full price.



Ahem.



Anyway, I figured that any book Jodi liked I'd be a fan of as well, so I picked up "While I'm Falling," and discovered a gem of a novel about the events in a character's life surrounding the first time she falls in love, including her relationship with her mother as her parents own marriage is questioned.



Later in the year I also picked up (or somehow acquired- it's possible, in fact, that this was one of my mother's book club picks that she passed along to me) "The Rest of Her Life," another Moriarty book with a Picoult endorsement on the cover. This one, again, focuses largely on the relationship between mother and daughter following a tragic accident.



In both, her characters are incredibly realistic and well done. I'm definitely looking forward to reading more of her books!

The Weight Of Silence

by Heather Gudenkauf

On a quiet morning two little girls - one a mute and the other her best friend - go missing in the woods.

Over the course of the coming hours, their families will face fear, history, relationships, unanswered questions and new revelations as they search for the girls and deal with the outcomes of the morning.

Well-written and descriptive, the author tells the story through the characters of Callie, a 7-year-old who has, for reasons that will be revealed, not spoken in years; her mother Antonia; her older brother Ben; Deputy Louis, who searches for Callie while confronting his complicated feelings for Antonia and the crumple of his own marriage, and Martin Gregory, the father of her best friend Petra, also missing.

Like many books in which I become immersed, I found myself wanting to jump into the book at certain times- to shake the mother, for never leaving her awful abusive husband, to protect the children from their dad, to force the deputy's wife to leave him alone so he can find the girls, to beg Callie to talk and beg those around her to understand why she can't, and force them to ask themselves why.

It's a fascinating book that will pull you in quickly and surprise you along the way.

The Bride Quartet

Vision In White
Bed Of Roses
Savor The Moment
Happy Ever After
by Nora Roberts

As sugary-sweet as wedding cake icing are The Bride Quartet books, a series about four friends in Conneticut who find their own happy endings while running a bridal business on the grounds of the Brown Estate.

Despite their predictable patterns, these lace-laden, rose-strewn, bliss-bringing books are a fun little indulgence and, for those of us who work in the wedding industry, a remarkably accurate portrayl of what goes on behind the scenes at an event (if not in our daily lives aside from the events. Seriously, they all -even the florist- routinely get up at 5 AM to exercise. Let me tell you, not in my case, baby.)

As Laurel, Mac, Emma and yes, even the Type-A, Tums-popping Chief Planner Parker find love in unexpected places, the lush wedding details of the various events they plan in the meantime are a guilty pleasure (and a wealth of inspiration!) for this florist.

And let's face it, Nora Roberts is really damn good at writing hot sex.

So there's that.

I was given the first two books by a former bride and purchased the third and fourth shortly thereafter, and though it is fun to read them all together, not neccessary to following the plot line. I would reccomend, however, reading them in chronological order as some of the longer events carry through all four books (i.e. a wedding they begin planning in book 1 actually takes place in book 4). You won't ruin the story if you don't, but you'll enhance it if you do.

The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo Who Played With Fire and Kicked The Hornets Nest

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
The Girl Who Played With Fire
The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest
by Stieg Larsson

I jumped on the "The Girl" bandwagon towards the tail end of it, as the third book was coming out in hardcover form- worrying briefly and ultimately unneccessarily that all the previous hype had clouded the book for me, and I was destined to enjoy them, but not be blown away.

I was still pretty blown away.

Lisbeth Salander, and Mikael Blomkvist, have definitely been added the list of serial characters I love, making author Stieg Larsson's death just after finishing the third even more devastating, as Lisbeth Salander's tales of subterfuge and cyber espionage would reportedly have continued for at least several further novels.

(Side note: his partner, Eva Gabrielsson, retains the laptop on which he was working on the 4th novel. The rights to this book are currently being debated; there is also speculation as to whether it was meant to be the 4th book or actually the 5th book in the series, which was to include 10.)

The books center around massively intricate plots involving lots of conspiracy and government cover-up, which, if you know me, is exactly the kind of book I love to curl up with and dive into.

If you haven't read them yet, I'd make several strong reccomendations:

1) Wait until you can read them one right after the other. Rich in detail, plot, character development and with twists and turns along the way, these books seamlessly blend into the next, particularly the second and third. If you pause too long between them you'll risk forgetting the buildup of the previous.

2) The books, as you might know, take place in Sweden. The names of the characters, thusly, are Swedish. I found it a bit hard at times to keep track of who was who and got distracted at trying to figure out how to pronouce the names. I found I enjoyed the story much more when I let go of this and assigned a mental "face" to each name, which helped me keep track of the characters, particularly in the third book.

I am in the camp of "excited to see them make a movie" about these books, where some fans are hotly against and some are hotly for. Like any make-into-a-movie, I think there is merit to the idea and anticipate some adaptation.....and again, like any other, highly recommend the books first!

Sarah's Key

by Tatiana de Rosnay

Oh, my heart.

It aches.

As you might well expect, given that this book simultaneously takes place in Paris around the milennium, and in Paris in 1942 in the midst of the Holocaust.

Where, on a July afternoon, a Jewish family is one of many taken during the Velodrome d'Hiver roundup, an event I was unaware until this novel despite having traveled to Paris several times in my life and, I'm nearly certain, walking in the neighborhood near the Eiffel Tower that has since been built over the former site of the Velodrome.

A Jewish family with a daughter and a son, who manages to conceal himself upon the arrival of the police in a small hidden closet, locked in by his sister who - innocent of the meaning of the roundup - promises to return shortly. She, and her parents, are then sent away.

Sixty years later, an American journalist living in Paris with her family begins researching an article about the Vel' d'Hiver roundup and discovers a distant connection to her husband's family, which grows closer to home the more she follows the trail. As she does her relationship with her husband, and her understanding of his family, starts to come into question.

I can't say much more about the book other than to say you'll want to keep reading all the way through to find out what happens to the family, to the young girl Sarah and to the journalist Julia, and to find what, if anything, is the absolution that can be offered in the wake of such devastation.

Our Lady of The Lost And Found

by Diane Schoemperlen

The book jacket reviews call it "one of the most charming novels you're likely to read this year," (New Orleans Times-Picayune) and I have to say that I'd agreee.

The novel opens with the narrator becoming the author - who never reveals her name - as she writes the account of what has just happened to her over the course of a week she has spent with her new friend, Mary.....

.......as in, Mary, the Virgin; Mary, the Blessed Mother; Mary, who has been appearing to those in need for many, many years and is in need of a respite from it all.

That Mary.

So what initially seemed like a quirky, light read soon finds interesting questions brought to mind as the friendship between Mary and the author develops.

The novel runs between the author revealing bits of herself to Mary, spliced with historical accounts of Mary appearing to others in their time of need. We also see the development of Mary as a real, and witty at that, person- the kind that, as the author does, you might hang out at the mall with cracking jokes as the expense of the woman selling anti-aging cream ("Heaven forbid that a woman should look her age, Mary said, slipping her arm through mine. Imagine what that stuff could do for me. I'm two thousand years old and don't look a day over two hundred.")

I also found it extremely interesting how well the author developed the narrator's character, given the hinderance of never knowing her name. Instead, she chooses to divulge small insights into the narrators life throughout the book as well as lovely descriptive aside passages that help us develop a sense of her without naming her, for example, a passage setting the scene of doing a household chore while having a conversation:

"Ironing, I can honestly say, is one household chore that I do truly enjoiy. I find it relaxing and comforting; the smooth pointed glide of the iron, the steam hot smell of the fabric, the tug of the muscles in my upper arm. I still use a heavy steam iron that must be twenty years old now. I bought a new one once, not bcause there was anything wrong with the old one but just because I thought it was time. But I found it unsatisfying. It was too light in my hand, altogether lacking the serious and stalwart heft of the old one, so I returned it to the store with a flimsy excuse, got my money back, and caried on happily as before."

Seriously, I love this. I love this woman and her flimsy excuse and her crazy old steam iron.

There was one particular, longer passage about finding things that I loved towards the middle of the book, as well, which sums up quite a bit about the book for me.

"This new proliferation of Marys in my life would seem to bige lie to the popular nothiong that you are most likely to find something when you're not looking for it. This idea is most often offered in the spirit of consolation and encouragement to a single woman looking for a man and repeatedly coming up empty-handed and/or broken-hearted.

-Don't worry, people say. You'll find him when you least expect it. Once you stop looking, you'll find him for sure.

These well-meaning advisors may or may not go on to mention how a watched pot never boils.

In light of my recent experience of running into Mary everywhere I turn, it now seems to me that, much as the old notion of finding something when you're not looking for it has often been proved true, the opposite is also equally true: you find what you are looking for. Sometimes, once your blinders have been removed, you find it over and over again.

So there was Mary: on television, in newspapers and magazines, in a friend's neighborhood, in my stamp collection, at the beauty salon, the grocery store, and my favorite downtown restaurant.

And, on a Thursday afternoon in April, there she was among the lawn ornaments just where she had always been. If only I had thought to look."

Look. Read. Enjoy.

Book Reviews Coming!

For months I have been reading books and writing mental reviews and witty remarks about them. I've even gone so far as to dog-ear the pages of favorite quotes and create stacks of books that I need to write reviews on.

And as you can tell........

.....I haven't actually written any.

This has long been a thorn in my side, and now, I'm pleased to say the thorn has been removed!! Starting tomorrow there will be actual reveiws of actual books that I have actually read and actually written about, RIGHT HERE, along with fun little labels you can use to find good beach reads, by-the-fire reads, long books or short books, or happy-ending books.

Enjoy!