Forever by Nora Roberts (2009)

These reprints just do a siren call on me when I go to a department store. Nothing else really catches my eye in the book section. My biggest concern is that I will pick up something I have already read by Roberts, as I don't carry my list around. I have plenty of "better" unread books on my shelf, but just my guilty little pleasure. These two are 1980's Sihouette books with the usual strong women in some profession who meet or have known some gorgeous guy. Why do these guys have to be independently wealthy? Do money issues get in the way of romance?

Rules of the Game (1984)
Brooke Gordon is one of Roberts' usual strong, very competent women, who has worked her way up from a hard childhood to be a great director of TV commercials that everyone respects, maybe even fears. She is assigned to direct Parks Jones, a cocky baseball star, in some clothing commercials. She knows nothing about baseball (I can relate, though I had a friend who took the time to explain that it is a nuanced game), but learns. I liked the way she can evaluate him from the standpoint of what is going to look good on camera - and that this causes him discomfort. He is again a too perfect man, but I liked that the book doesn't end with a proposal or wedding, but with issues that have to be worked out post wedding. I also liked the subplot of the middle-age romance of her boss. 

The Heart's Victory (1982)
Cynthia "Foxy" Fox has been assigned to photograph the race car circuit, an environment in which she grew up. Her older brother and race car driver Kirk raised her there when her parents died. She has been away at college, but is now a free lance photographer and has been assigned to accompany Pam, a writer. I didn't quite get how the two of them worked, and who footed the bill for them to travel with the circuit for a whole season. Did they submit regular articles and photos? Because it sounded like Foxy only developed her photos after the season. Oh, and the guy - Lance Matthews, Kirk's best friend and rich sponsor/car designer, whom Foxy has know since she was a child. The race car world is one I have glimpsed, having dated a guy who worked on race cars and who took me to Watkins Glen and one other race. I was wondering if Roberts would pick up on the noise and smell, which is what remains in my memory, and I think she did. It is also a hard working, hard partying crowd, so I felt she got that too. Other details I can't attest to. But otherwise, I liked this story less than most of Roberts' tales. Something about the way the relationship played out, though it made more sense in the end. This one too had a quick wedding and even more issues to work out post wedding.

The Boy Who Painted Dragons by Demi (2007)

This time Demi takes us into the mythical world of the Chinese dragons with lots of dragons on each page, many gilded and very impressive. A boy starts painting dragons because he is afraid of them, but he learns to face his fears and grows strong and wise and good.

I knew Chinese had all these dragon images everywhere, but did not really know their symbolism. They have power of the forces of nature, especially those related to water, such as rain, hurricanes, and floods. Obviously, when you think about it, they are also a symbol of power and strength.

I liked the wisdom the dragons gave the boy. The first pearls of wisdom were: Seek your truth, Find your truth, and Dare to be true. The dragons of water, fire, earth, and wind gave him the Wisdom of Goodness, Purity, Acceptance, and Clarity. These all resonate with me, as I fell they were the things I used to seek in my youth, but someplace along the way life happened and all got muddied.

The Hungry Coat by Demi (2004)

This Tale from Turkey is the next Demi book I read. She was visiting her son in Istanbul and was inspired to write and illustrate this tale about an actual historical figure - Nasrettin Hoca, who lived in the 13th century and is described in the afterword as a folk philosopher and humorist. Stories about his adventures have become true folktales and part of the folk wisdom. A festival is held in his name every year in July. Again, beautifully illustrated.

The funny, little wise man named Nasrettin Hoca wears a huge white turban and a worn-out coat and helps people. One day he helps catch a goat, which makes him late for a banquet, so he doesn't go home to change. No one will talk to him, so he goes home, washes up and puts on a fine new coat. He goes back to the banquet and now he is popular. So he starts feeding his coat. It must have been the coat that was invited to the banquet, not him.

One Grain of Rice by Demi (1997)

Subtitle: A Mathematical Folktale.

I ran across this author when working with ESL students at the library and watching them be fascinated by a children's book on the Prophet Mohammed by this author. That book was checked out, but I realized this author has written a lot of children's books about other cultures, mostly from the Middle-East and southern Asia. Though she lives in the state of Washington, she lived in India for two years and fell in love with Indian art, which she captures beautifully in this richly illustrated book, even with gold.

This book is about India and a raja who gathered rice from all his peasants for times of famine, but when famine came, he did not redistribute the rice. A young girl does him a favor and he promises her anything. She ask for just one grain of rice. When pressured, she asks for one grain today, and each day for thirty days double the rice he gave the day before. You do the math.

Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard (2004)

This was on the favorites shelf of one of the employees at the audio book store. It was about Michigan, so I picked it up. I didn't care for the rough voice reading the book or the cop banter, though I watch enough cop TV shows. But I always give a book at least one CD of a chance. And by the end of the first CD I was hooked.

Mr. Paradise of the title is Tony Paradiso, a rich old guy , who likes his high end hooker Chloe to do cheers in a Michigan cheerleader uniform, while watching tapes of U of M football games. He likes it if she brings a companion, so she talks her Victoria Secret model roommate Kelly in joining her. They are driven to the house by Montez and the evening does not end well with Mr. Paradiso and one of the girls dead.

Frank Delsa is the detective sent to solve this murder, a likable guy who lost his wife a year ago. There are all sorts of interesting characters in the book - the hit men Carl and Art, a crooked lawyer, Lloyd the cook, Triple J, and more. There is a side plot of three dead bodies in the basement of a drug dealer's house, and they sorta have something to do with each other in the end, but maybe this was just to show the complexity of cop and detective work.

As I often do, I had to look some things up about this book and author and it turns out that Elmore Leonard is a well know crime fighter author with 45 books to his name. He has been called the "Dickens of Detroit" and the TV series Justified is based on one of his characters. So maybe I can look in a few more of his books sometime.

Gideon the Cutpurse by Linda Buckley-Archer (2006)

This is the first book of The Time Traveler's trilogy. Peter Schock lives in current day London, and has a busy father who never has time for him, his mother is working on a film in Hollywood. He goes off to the the country with his nanny where he meets Kate Dyer, who's father is a scientist and they both get accidentally transported to 1763 by an anti-gravity machine. There they meet the nasty Tar Man, who takes off with their machine. Luckily Gideon Seymour sees them appear and takes care of them, taking them to a well of family - the Byngs. Gideon is an interesting character, having been saved from hanging for stealing some food by Lord Luxon, for whom he becomes a trusting servant and cutpurse for a while. He is escaping from Luxon by taking a position with the Byngs, when he runs into Peter and Kate. He tries to help them to get back their machine and get back to their own century, encountering highway men and all sorts of obstacles on the way.

So it is basically an adventure story where two current day kids get thrown into the 18th century and get the history lesson of their lives. I always like historical details of everyday life - the sights, sounds and smells, such as the fact that no one, including the rich, bathed much back then, so everybody had an odor about them. A fun read to counteract a heavy book I am reading. Maybe I will read the rest of the trilogy, maybe not.

2013 Review

It is worth doing this analysis of the previous year’s reading. The blog itself is useful and I use it to see which books I have read by an author or to choose Christmas gits, but only upon reflection do I realize all the fascinating worlds that opened up to me through my readings.  I did not read any classics and still like historical fiction, contemporary fiction, thrillers, some romance and children’s and young adult books, very little non-fiction. I continued reading Baldacci and Nora Roberts, this year read three Vince Flynn books as he passed away, and have an intention of reading through most of his Mitch Rapp books. Of my favorite authors, I read Tracy Chevalier’s The Last Runaway, one of my favorite books of the year; Khaled Hosseini’s And the Mountains Echoed; Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior, Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Lowland, and Audrey Niffenegger’s Raven Girl (met the author at a library conference.) My other favorite fiction books were: The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett, Love Anthony by Lisa Genova, The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (maybe my favorite book of the year),and  Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline. I also discovered Maeve Binchy, a popular Irish writer. In non-fiction I was fascinated by Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, MSNBC reporter Rachael Maddow’s analysis of our military in Drift, and Will Schwalbe’s End of Your Life Book Club – the ultimate book lover’s book, as well as a look into ending your life gracefully and helping others do so. I also tried to do a bit of regional reading. When heading out to Montana and Wyoming, I tried reading something about the area, and asked people out there what to read that was typical of the area. Ivan Doig and CJ Box were suggested authors. I also tried to read up on the Middle East a bit – both fiction and non-fiction, and am still in the middle of that.

Transfer of Power by Vince Flynn (1999)

I wanted to read the early Mitch Rapp books, so I would understand the later ones, especially why President Hayes trusts Rapp and how the relationship started with Anna Rielly. Though this was the first Rapp book written by Flynn, it is the third book chronologically. He later went back and wrote Mitch Rapp's back story.

Since I am just reading On Killing, a non-fiction book about the difficulty of soldiers to actually kill another human being, especially when looking them in the eye, I am reminded of the uniqueness of Rapp being able to kill so efficiently and wonder about myself for liking this character so much. I was planning to reread the first book to remind myself how Rapp became what he was, because there was a very good reason, if I recall correctly.

My other caveat is about the whole Middle East terrorist scenario. I just had dinner with some Arab students and find I am still so ignorant of their culture, their thinking, and can easily understand that they could dislike us Americans, after all we have done to their countries. I could understand the anger of the terrorists in this book - though I do not condone their actions at all. I am wondering if it is PC to even be reading this book, but since the old commie enemies are no longer around, unfortunately these are the new enemies of choice in thrillers.

Rafique Aziz is the ultimate bad-ass terrorist, who has planned for years a way to take over the White House and hold the President of the US hostage to his demands for his people. Most of his plan works out well, but he has not factored in Mitch Rapp, who not only captured Aziz's mentor that provided information in the nick of time to get the President in the safe bunker, but Rapp is able to infiltrate the locked down, explosive rigged White House to get intel out and with the help of various special forces, bring the plan to a halt. So yes, another riveting thriller from Vince Flynn.

There are many aspects of this book that make it fascinating to me, besides just being an exciting story. There was the nuanced Rapp himself, who can come to the rescue of a damsel in distress, though that is against his orders, and the conflicts within him - to be focused, use his anger to react quickly, but reign in with thought when necessary. Then there was the look into all the folks making decisions in our government. There are a lot of chiefs (including my favorite Irene Kennedy and her mentor Thomas Stansfield), so I am no longer surprised that we don't always make the best decisions as a country and I am glad I don't have anything to do with those kinds of decisions, except as far as I can help elect the president that I think will try to make the best choices in my opinion. The scariest part is when a political way of thinking takes precedence over what is best for the nation and the world. The special forces like the SEALS are always an interesting group, and though I still don't have them straight, three different special forces were described and the differences in their responsibilities explained. I am glad they all worked together on this one. I also liked that the White House is full of secret tunnels, elevators, etc. I don't know how much of that is true, but I would like to think of the White House as our castle with its secrets. 

One last comment. Since this was not available in audio, I checked it out from the library in hardcover. I found it languished on my nightstand and book table for quite a while. I can't say that a large hardcover is my favorite format anymore. I think for reading I like the medium sized paperbacks the best. I did like the map of the area from the Pentagon to the Capital, so I could visualize the movements of the action. One thing I miss highly in audio books.

The Perfect Christmas by Debbie Macomber (2011)

I was looking for something light and Christmassy to balance out a heavier book I have started to read. This was a bit too light for me, and it looks like I have read only one other Macomber book, so it is hard to say if I need to stay away from this author.

Cassie has a good job, friends, but not the perfect husband and family she imagined she would have to make Christmas perfect, even though she has even tried online dating. So she lets her friend talk her into going to a matchmaker for an exhorbitant fee (money she has saved for the „perfect” wedding.) The matchmaker is a gruff, critical man named Simon. For some unexplicable reason there is chemistry between them, though of course it takes a while for both to realize that.

I remember as a kid fantasizing about getting married – as in having a dreamy guy and beautiful wedding, but somehow the difficulty of working out a relationship never entered those dreams. Cassie too seems to have an unrealistic view of what family life would be like and thinks a friends photo of her family is „perfect.” Who knows how they really get along.

I can’t say I didn’t like the book at all, as it had some colorful characters. The part that I really enjoyed was that Simon gave Cassie three tasks to do, to see her mettle – ringing Salvation Army bells in freezing weather, helping a Santa with kids, and giving a dinner for her neighbors, with whom she does not really get along. That was the most touching and Christmassy moment for me, when lonely people get together and start warming up to each other. So, I will give it that – I did get some Christmas spirit out of the book.

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (2013)

This is the third book I have read by Lahiri, and probably the best. She tells another in depth story of her people, but this one spans about 50 years and starts in India in a suburb of Calcutta. The boys play in the field across the lowland (of the title), an area that floods during the rainy season. We get a sense of life there, the boys go to school, eventually attend local colleges. Udayan sees the inequities of the world and becomes a revolutionary. Subhash becomes an environmental chemist and goes to America for grad school. Udayan marries Gauri, a philosophy major. Udayan dies early in the book and Subhash comes back to India and rescues pregnant Gauri from his parents by marrying her and bringing her back to Rhode Island.

There are many layers to this book that I enjoyed. As usual, I enjoyed learning about another culture, another historical period. I knew nothing of the student uprisings in India and may want to look into these more. The emigrant experience is always dear to me - the not quite fitting, the accent, the food, but also the wish to stay in America. Then the complexity of families - both what is expected of Indian families and then what happens to the family in the U.S. I also liked the act that libraries and academia played an important role in this story. 

The tale was told by the various characters of different generations, not necessarily chronologically, as memories brought us back to the past, filling in gaps of our understanding. Even Udayan has a voice at the very end.


I have a new state to explore. The only thing I remember about Rhode Island is visiting my freshman roommate's family in Newport and driving through it to Boston. It is a very New Englandish state and I forgot how much it is exposed to the ocean. I may take a loop around it when I attend a conference in CT next year.