Book Review: Spring 2012

I had some real winners this time!  Happy reading!

11/22/63 by Stephen King-I’m not really a Stephen King fan, I think his novels get a little wordy, off-track, and tiring to read, and although I really liked this (very long, thick)  novel and found it hard to put down, it definitely had tendencies toward being wordy, getting off-track, and being tiring (in the “I’m kind of sick of all the extra crap, get back to the story already” way).  The premise is what sold me initially.  The main character, Jake Epping, is given the opportunity to travel back in time, however the person who told Jake how to do it requests that he go back in time and save John F. Kennedy from being shot.  The catch is that the “wormhole” through time only goes back to one particular day, which is somewhere in the late fifties, which means Jake will have to spend about 4-5 years in the past before 11/22/63 arrives.  How many things will Jake change back in the modern world due to the butterfly effect (not even from something major like stopping the assassination, but also from something simpler)?  A few of the offshoots in the book involve Jake also trying to save some people from accidents he researched before heading back in time.  The novel is not Stephen King-creepy, but it has a creepy undertone at times.  I had a hard time putting it down, and really do recommend it to you!  (Dave read it and liked it too!)

Explosive Eighteen by Janet Evanovich-I usually love all of Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels, they are super fun, light reading, and I often find myself laughing out loud.  Not this one.  I found it pretty boring and almost drudgery to read.  It picked up about halfway through, but it wasn’t enough to save the book.  If you love the S. Plum novels, read it anyway, but if you don’t, skip it!

 

Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James-So with all of the giggling hype on Facebook and at the bus stop and in the grocery store check out lines regarding this book, I felt it was my duty to read it and report back to you.  If you have been out of the country and are unaware of the premise for this book, let me fill you in.  Our heroine main character, Anastasia, is about to graduate from college.  She’s smart, bookish, and a virgin.  She interviews a billionaire (of course) named Christian who falls in love with her and she with him, and then he tells her that if things are going to progress further between the two of them, she will need to sign a contract because he’s into Dominance and S&M.  It took way too long to get to the sex, which was really good at first and then after the tenth time she calls him sir and refers to her inner goddess and he shakes a whip at her and then eventually pulls out her tampon (ewww!) I was skimming all that badly written crap and just praying for the book to end.  I’m not sure why I finished it, maybe to get some closure on why Christian is fifty shades of “f***ed up” and why Anastasia is a such a simpering stupidhead.   Deb, Stephanie, Wendy, Tara (in absentia), and I had a  book club just to discuss this book (we aren’t usually in a book club together) and everyone agreed.  We actually spent more time discussing the 50 shades of blue Stephanie had taped to her kitchen wall (she’s planning on painting) more than the book.  I’ve heard of many people who like it though, so I do think it has entertainment value.  It just wasn’t for me.  Go ahead and read it, you know you want to.  But I’m not taking the blame for this one.

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls-I LOVED this book!  It will go down as one of my favorites of the year. Walls wrote The Glass Castle (find my review under August 2011 book reviews on your right) and although this one was not as good as The Glass Castle, I just couldn’t put it down!  Walls began writing this book about her mother’s upbringing, but her mother convinced her to instead write about her grandmother (her mom’s mom), Lily Case Smith  (Walls referred to Lily in The Glass Castle…she was the grandma she loved who owned the house in Phoenix). Walls did her research, but then decided to write about Lily’s life in novel form instead of as a biography.  What a life this woman had!  She was a hard working child on her family’s ranches in west Texas and Arizona in the early 1900’s, tried to get some schooling, rode her horse at age fifteen 500 miles across Arizona for a job (alone!), moved all by herself to Chicago for a time, etc. I don’t want to tell you everything that happens.  When I finished with this book, I had a hard time moving onto my next one.  I mourned for this book, if you can imagine.  I was so sad that I wasn’t still caught up in Lily’s tough prairie/ranch world, breaking horses, learning to fly an airplane, and raising children in a a crazily laid back way.  This book will grab you from page one and not let you go.  READ THIS BOOK! 

The Ten Year Nap-by Meg Wolitzer- This beautifully written novel explores a group of four women linked together by their children who all attend the same private school in New York City.  All of the women left jobs about ten years prior to raise their children, becoming stay at home mothers.  Now that the children are all maturing, each woman is faced with getting back into the workplace after her ten year gap (nap!), each sometimes feeling too incompetent to return to a previously satisfying (though sometimes not) career.  The author devotes a chapter to each woman, and each chapter in between to that woman’s mother, contrasting women of today and women of 30-40 years earlier.  Each woman is then further detailed in the remaining chapters.   I felt that the earliest part of the book really spoke to me, as I’m currently in the same circumstances.  I wish I would have been able to use a highlighter on some of the passages and even some of the simple wordings, because Wolitzer wrote so descriptively and beautifully.  As the novel progressed, I lost interest a little but can still definitely recommend it to you.  The ending wrapped up each woman’s life/choices very neatly and satisfyingly.