Life Would Be Perfect if I Lived In That House by Meghan Daum

Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived in That House by Meghan Daum

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Daum writes about her escapades as a home shopper and home buyer and why that hardly ever leads to her being a home owner. The premise is interesting - why do so many of us think that if we lived in the right abode, the rest of our life would fall into place? How do the influences of where our parents chose to live (and not live), along with all those perfect happy families from TVLand shape what where we think we will thrive? Unfortunately, Daum never goes much deeper than "I discovered I was I shopper, not a buyer" to explain why she moves dozens of times in less than ten years. She's a funny writer, but don't look to this book for anything beyond a few smiles.

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City of Thieves by David Bennioff, Audiobook narrated by Ron Perlman

City of Thieves by David Benioff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A coming of age historical fiction set during the siege of Leningrad (late 1941). Lev, the young man (who we know lives through his ordeal because the story is framed as him telling the story as an oral history to his grandson), is arrested by the Russian NKVD for looting, but instead of being executed, he's teamed up with diserter Kolya to achieve what would seem to be impossible at that point in time: find one dozen eggs to be used for the Colonel's daughter's wedding cake. During their quest, they meet, work with and against the best and worst of a city trying to survive. Kolya is the eternal optimist, perhaps a too perfect of match for Lev's naive feeling of eternal doom. When a pretty young sharpshooter is introduced to the story, the focus of the story takes an unfortunate (but great for a Benioff screenplay) turn from survival to falling in love, but in the end, every thing's pretty much what you'd been expecting. There are no surprise twists, just a good, basic war time story.

As a narrator, Ron Perlman is an actor. What that means is that when he's doing dialog, it's an engrossing story. When he's reading actual narrative, his voice is flat and dull. That makes the beginning of the book very hard to get through, and it's what makes this a three star rather than a four star book.

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Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life

Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life by Thich Nhat Hanh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A good book for those looking to learn how the Buddhist practice of living in this moment can be used to improve and possibly reduce bad eating habits. Some principals of Buddhism are introduced when they can be applied towards living a more healthy physical life, and very simple meditations are given to use to help one get through the smooth and the rough parts of the day. On the nutritional side, there's nothing new or ground breaking, but what is there is very well explained, especially when discussing how what we eat effects us on a chemical level.

If you've read any of Thich Nhat Hanh's writings before, you'll know that the man can see a positive way out of any problem. That's not quite the middle path of Buddhism, but it's certainly easier to grasp than the "life is suffering" truth. It's not that he sugar coats how hard it is to learn new habits and break the code, it's that he has faith that everyone can, and that belief is contagious, even on the written page.

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Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
As a historical fiction, this is a great book. Guterson knows his setting and he put some very interesting characters in a very interesting time period. There's no information dump going on here - everything you need to know about life on a NW Pacific Island in the 40's and 50's, including what it was like to be a Japanese immigrant or first generation Japanese-American is revealed naturally through the story telling process. The internment camps, as awful as they are, don't bring the story to a dead stop as so many historical fiction writers would allow them to do. As I said, this is great historical fiction.

However, it's also a mystery. Or at least we're supposed to believe there's a mystery. The problem is, anyone who'd read a fair share of courtroom mysteries (or watched at least one season of Law & Order) knows that if it's called a mystery, then obviously the first person accused probably didn't do it. Otherwise, where's the mystery? Guterson tries to build suspense by alternating between the courtroom scenes and everything that lead up to them, but honestly, if an author has to tell a story in non-linear style to keep the reader interested, he probably didn't have a strong enough story.

My rating break down would be two stars for mystery, four for historical fiction.

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Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The two narrators are less than lovable, and considering this is a book about falling in love, that's a big risk for the authors. But it's a risk that pays off, not only for the conflict resolution that must take place is a YA novel, but also because it gives the supporting characters a way to actually support other than providing dialog openings. Green and Levithan would have benefited from a few more trips back to their setting, though. Tiny Cooper, the supporting character that holds the two Will Grayson's together, isn't quite the novelty that Green and Levithan try to make him, there's at least one guy or girl like him in every suburban high school now; and hoodies worn with the hood up during school??? There were other miscues, some needed for the sake of the story, others simply poor research, but the story is a good one that goes beyond dare to be different and into dare to make mistakes.

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The Girls from the Revolutionary Cantina: A Novel by MIke Padilla

The Girls from the Revolutionary Cantina: A Novel by Mike Padilla


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This book was one tough editor short of three stars. Someone needed to tell Padilla when he'd strayed too far from his main plot to the sub plots; someone needed to ask him if the actions of Julia (the main character and the POV of the whole story) in the subplots were consistent with the main plot. In my opinion, they weren't, at that made those subplots stick out all the more. One reads like it was added for slapstick effect, and both subplots have a "look! this book is topical!" feeling more than something anything. An earlier review of this book said it had a "Sex and the City" feeling to it, and I'd agree. Not only in the character's relationships, but also that it's episodic. You can almost see the credits rolling at the end of the chapters. The principle story, between Julian, her BFF, her job, and the guy that is involved with all three, is a good contemporary romance, and the setting is really well done. It's just those darn subplots that belong in another book.

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Same Place, Same Things by Tim Gautreaux

Same Place, Same Things: Stories by Tim Gautreaux


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A really good collection of stories set in the part of Louisiana that isn't New Orleans. All but one of the stories are tied in some way to the work that the characters do or don't do for a living. They are unremarkable people who end up in remarkable situations, or at least enjoy talking about other people who've had remarkable things happen to them. Gautreaux immerses the reader in his setting is such a way that proves that he's mastered the "show, don't tell" rule of writing. The characters of these stories have been busy living day bay day, they don't have time to sit back and see beauty and danger of where they live. It's just life to them.

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Provinces of Night by William Gay

Provinces of Night by William Gay


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I finished reading this book five days ago, and I am still thinking about what happened after the book ended. I've started and finished other books since then, and as I've read them, I've wondered how the characters of this book would have fit in to other stories. I wonder how the characters of these new books would have interacted with the Bloodworth family. How would they have fit in that tough little corner of south western Tennessee? William Gay is such a good story teller that his people and places will stay with you for a long, long time.

The jacket flap of this book will lead you to believe that this is a story of a father returning and the three sons that he never connected with during the hit and miss years he did live at home. It's not that story. This is the story of the grandson, Fleming, a young man who can not catch a break. Fleming dreams of being a writer (perhaps a bit of autobiographical writing for Gay?), and most of the story is told through his eyes. He is an observer, a kid who prefers to live on the edge and observe what goes on around him. Eventually, through the absence of his own father, the return of the grandfather he never met, and the ongoing presence an amazing (and never extraneous) supporting characters, Fleming decides to go "out among them". The story weaves and turns, characters are introduced and then dropped, but in the end, everything is brought back together believably. There are very sad parts to the whole story (even the creepy prologue isn't there just for atmosphere). Depending on your opinion of Fleming's reaction to all that has happened to him and his family, the ending is either sad or a window opening. Either way you look at it, the story will stay with you.

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About Time - 12 Short Stories by Jack Finney

About Time: 12 Short Stories by Jack Finney


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Eleven of the stories in this collection deal with some sort of time travel. The twelfth story is the painfully correct for its time period story about magic props that, thankfully, is easy to forget. Finney's ideas about time travel are rare in science fiction, but common in the mind of most people's imagination. It's the "if you could live any time in history, when would it be?" and people almost always want to go back to what they thought were simpler times. If someone imagines an alternate universe to live in, of course you'd want it to be a better universe. There are no worries about butterfly effects in Finney's stories, there's no mention of time/space continuum that must never, ever be disrupted for whatever reason. These are stories where going back to a simpler timer (or in one story, staying around a little longer in present time) will lead to good things. These stories are cozy sci-fi, a very tiny but enjoyable genre.

My favorites from this collection: "I Love Galesburg in the Springtime", a story that will go right to the heart of the type of person who'd rather drive on a state highway than an interstate; and "Such Interesting Neighbors" - the closest to pure sci-fi that these stories come, and yet it's still light and fun.

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The White Road (Nightrunner #5) by Lynn FLewelling

The White Road by Lynn Flewelling


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
After the last book's excessive torture scenes, this book reads like a breath of fresh air. Serigil and Alec are together, they're still discovering secrets about each other, and there's plenty of archery, sword fighting, feasting, and all the other stuff that is supposed to be in this genre. When Flewelling gets back to the heart of this series, she really gets it right. My only complaint is that the supporting character's names are becomeing more difficult to tell apart. I hope there's a companion book in the works, something that breaks down the various languages so there's something to go by other than what are now appearing to be random syllables strung together.