Book Review: Late Winter

Holy cow, it’s taken me since January to read 5 books!  Darn that Words With Friends!  Honestly, I read a few of these books so long ago, I don’t remember them terribly well, so some of my reviews might be very general and superficial. Next time I will record my thoughts right away and keep it in draft form, like Tara does.  She’s so smart. 

The Night Strangers by Chris Bohjalian-  Chip Linton is a pilot whose plane carrying 39 people hits a flock of birds shortly after taking off.  However, unlike the plane that landed on the Hudson River a few years ago, Chip’s plane crashes as he tries to land in the nearby lake and most people on the plane die.  Chip survives, and the early part of the book is Chip reliving that plane crash in flashbacks.  He and his wife and twin daughters move to New Hampshire into what eventually seems to be a haunted house.  There’s a boarded up room in the basement that Chip is curiously drawn to.  Also, he and one of his daughters are hearing, and occasionally seeing, what Chip comes to realize are the ghosts of some of his passengers.  I know!  Creepy, right?  There was a whole secondary story mixed in about some local women who were all witches, though they didn’t call themselves witches.  They got involved with the Lintons’ lives for a very creepy reason, I’m not telling you why.  Read the book.  You’ll like it, I think.  Unfortunately, I read this while Dave was out of town, and I found myself too scared to read it at night!  I couldn’t put the book down and turn off the lights, I was such a scaredy baby.  I ended up mostly reading this book during daylight hours.  I will add that I hated the ending of this book big time.

 

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides-I really hated this book and forced myself to read it because it said Winner of The Pulitzer Prize at the bottom of the front cover, and I like to be able to say “I’m reading the current winner of the Pulitzer Prize”, with my nose in the air, when asked at the many cocktail parties I attend about what’s on my nightstand.  Right around the end of the book, I realized that the cover meant Jeffrey Eugenides was the Winner of The Pulitzer Prize for a different novel, not for this stinking book, and I had wasted about 3 weeks of my life slogging through the darn thing.  Don’t read it.  I’m not even going to tell you about it.  (By the way, I actually like to read Pulitzer Prize novels because I assume they will be good or have some redeeming value.) (But I refuse to read anything else by this author now.) (Also, if I was the kind of person who went to cocktail parties, I might just throw around the Pulitzer Prize comment for the heck of it, but I’m not).  (Please, won’t someone invite me to a cocktail party, just this once?)

 

The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie by Wendy McClure-  I have been waiting for this book to arrive in my library forever, and I was so excited when it finally did!  Unfortunately, the book was only so-so. The author, a Laura Ingalls Wilder fanatic like me (though she just likes the books, not the t.v. show, and I like both) decides to visit all of the places mentioned in Laura’s books that are visitable.   I enjoyed seeing all of these places through her eyes, and I am telling you right now, that when my kids have all flown the coop someday, I will be forcing Dave to make a similar pilgrimage with me.  However, the writing itself just seemed so…unorganized and haphazard.  There didn’t seem to be a solid focus to the book, as the author mixed visits with history and personal anecdotes without any rhyme or reason.  She also jumped around timewise.  I’m not sure why that bugged me but it did.  One thing I found out, however, was that Ms. McClure and I shared a similar fantasy, as do many women apparently:  that we would meet Laura someday, through time travel or something like that, she would somehow show up in our current times, and we would show her all of the amazing things we have now, like cars, and refrigerators, and butter you don’t have to churn.  Seriously.  When I was younger, this was my dream.  I thought I was the only one!  I still recommend the book if you are a Little House on the Prairie fan!

The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne- I’ve never included books I read to my children here, because my book review is more for adult books (or sometimes Young Adult) than children’s books, but I’m going to do it this time.  I read all of the Pooh books at some point in college (just for fun, not for a course), and I loved them so much.  I decided recently to read one of them to Ben for his bedtime book, and this is the one I pulled off the shelf.  It didn’t matter to me that it’s the last one in the series, I didn’t really think Ben would like it, but he’s pretty flexible about what I pick and I wanted to reread it.  Winnie the Pooh books aren’t necessarily for children.  There’s a lot of metaphorical stuff going on that children aren’t even going to begin to understand or appreciate, and the books are just so sweet and lovely.  So I got to the end of the book, and since it’s the last one in the series, we had been getting hints all the way through that Christopher Robin, who is really the “Imagineer” of all that goes on in the Hundred Acre Wood, is growing up. But now that I have children, the last chapter, when all the animals realize that Christopher Robin is going away and won’t be back, hit me like a car crash.  It was all I could do to get through the last chapter without crying about CR growing up and leaving his childhood things behind.  Do yourself a favor and read at least one of the Pooh books! (Note:  When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six are lovely Pooh poetry books, and I’m currently reading When We Were Very Young to Ben, but you might want to read Winnie the Pooh or The House at Pooh Corner for the total Pooh experience. (Another good one is The Tao of Pooh by Benjamin Hoff, which explores Taoism through the Winnie the Pooh characters.  Geez, I’m such a geek.)

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout-I reread this one, because I needed a book to take to Disney and I didn’t have a new one from the library.  Since I’ve never reviewed it here, I’m going to take this opportunity and encourage you to run to the library and get yourself this novel! Stephanie agrees with me, and even got to meet the author at a reading at the Hershey Library last year!  Anyway, we learn about our title character through a series of chapters, each of which could stand on their own as short stories.  Sometimes the chapter is all about Olive, sometimes she is barely mentioned, but by the end of the novel, these seemingly unrelated chapters will take the reader from the autumn of Olive’s life to the end, and include many flashbacks at her younger self, again, mostly through the eyes of her fellow townspeople.  Two themes I’d say this book wants us to ponder:  we never know what it’s really like to be someone when we’re on the outside looking in, and exploring the various stages of adult life…from honeymooners, to new parents, to happy or divorced or cheating couples, to visiting a spouse in his nursing home, to death.  I’m not putting any of this well. Read the book!  You won’t regret it!

 

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty-I read this one because it was recommended to me by Tara over at Taradactyl.  I loved this book!  The novel begins with 39 year old Alice waking up after a fall during her spin class which gives her amnesia and takes away the previous 10 years of her life.  She finds out that she’s in the middle of a divorce (which she just doesn’t understand because the 29 year old that she thinks she is loves her husband of ten years ago so much), she has 3 children (whom she doesn’t even care about, and is in fact afraid to meet because she doesn’t remember them at all), and that her previously best friend and sister doesn’t really like her anymore.  There’s also the mysterious Gina she keeps hearing about.  I really just couldn’t put this book down and stayed up late to read and find out if she gets her memory back, if she can fix things up with her husband, will she remember her children, and who the heck is Gina?  This is a fun and easy, but well written read!