Book Twenty Six

ooh. ooh. ooh.
I am halfway there. I feel that this goal could be possible now and YET fall TV has already started - Top Chef, Mad Men, Project Runway, Gossip Girl on the way. I will try to limit my TV addiction to just one hour a day leaving room for the pages.

I LOVED this book. Olive Kitteridge is the most interesting curmudgeon I have encountered in a long time. I could picture her to the detail and kept waiting for her to show up in every short story. BNoble describes her as "loud, unnerving, tart-tongued, and completely unforgettable." The other characters could have been quite memorable but there were so many that they started to fade to grey.

Favorite Passages:
p. 162 when she visits Louise Larken "people mostly did not know enough when they were living life that they were living it." When she takes a scissors to her new daughter in law's belongings, when she is taken hostage in the hospital ER because of bad indigestion, the born again parrot in NYC . . .

This book makes me want to visit Crosby, Maine. If the town does not exist, it should. A perfect book club selection (in my mind). I didn't want the book to end.

the 2008 Pulitzer Prize Winner and the most satisfying book I've read this summer.

Book Twenty Five

What to say about this book. Terribly readable. I could relate to many parts of the growing up narrative. The first page I bookmarked was Page 97 where Kelly talks about a friend who has lost her mom: "Who's gonna remember what you were for Halloween that year or the name of your fifth grade teacher. Who's gonna loan you money to buy your first house or cry when your baby is born? Who's gonna sit in the front row of your play? Enough said . . .

When Kelly learns her dad has been diagnosed with cancer while she is currently going through chemotherapy . . . the tension in the book is so real. You can tell it's just too much.

But then there were positive moments too. Page 83 puts it in perspective. "This, like the day I was diagnosed, turns out to be a great day, a day to remember, a day when we lived up to ourselves and all our promises to each other."

Oh, oh and the ending. I won't give it away but Kelly totally gets how childhood runs out the back door when cancer hits a family.

I will read a million books about cancer going forward and it won't help me understand but I do understand the author and her words made sense.

Book Twenty Four

This book scared the #@$#% out of me.

This is not happening to our grandkids. It's already happened. Simply put - a must read and must act.

Why is nobody talking about this book? I know the economy bottomed out but c'mon. The politicians better get their act in gear. My compost bin and rain barrel aren't going to cut it.

Book Twenty Three

This was an OK book but probably not one I'd recommend outright. It's more of a book to stumble upon. Zadie Smith is an author that excels in piecing words together but I found myself skimming (I'll admit this time) to get through the 400+ pages. I found Kiki to be the most satisfying character and was absolutely disgusted by the male professors by the end of the novel. There is a lot of race relations and political analysis in this book but it bored me a bit. And I was prepared to laugh at the dry humor but didn't even giggle once.

I think the characterizations were spot on and Zadie Smith did an excellent job at painting the life at a liberal, progressive college. I'm not really being fair. In retrospect this was a great book but I didn't necessarily ENJOY reading it, you know? Ah, if I was only more academic. Guess, I've been reading too many novels with bunnies and shoes on the cover lately.