The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Sogavia

 My Rating: 5.0

Old Nana Reja finds a baby abandoned under a bridge and the life of a small Mexican town changes forever. Disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, little Simonopio is for some locals the stuff of superstition, a child kissed by the devil. But he is welcomed by landowners Francisco and Beatriz Morales, who adopt him and care for him as if he were their own. As he grows up, Simonopio becomes a cause for wonder to the Morales family, because when the uncannily gifted child closes his eyes, he can see what no one else can—visions of all that’s yet to come, both beautiful and dangerous. Followed by his protective swarm of bees and living to deliver his adoptive family from threats—both human and those of nature—Simonopio’s purpose in Linares will, in time, be divined. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution and the devastating influenza of 1918, The Murmur of Bees captures both the fate of a country in flux and the destiny of one family that has put their love, faith, and future in the unbelievable.   

I can't properly describe this book to do it justice. Translated from Spanish, it is so beautiful. All of the characters come to life as does the Mexican Revlution, the horror of the Spanish flu and dealing with the farm and raising children. Such a beautiful book and I will definitely be reading more by this author.

This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel

 My Rating: 5.0

Rosie and Penn have 4 boys and she decides to roll the dice to see if they can have a girl. This is about raising their children, how parenting doesn't have a manual and trying to deal with the difficulties along the way. They have a unique family that comes alive and will make you feel like you are part of their clan.

Wow! The writing pulled me in and swept me away. So much love radiated off of the pages. Do yourself a favor and don't read anything but just jump in. WARNING: a definite controversial story line but I think it was handled extremely adeptly in a way that made it so relatable. 

Ask Again, Yes by Mary Beth Keane

My Rating: 5.0

This is about two kids, Peter and Kate, who grow up next door to each other and fall in love. It starts before they are born with their dad's, Francis and Brian, as rookie Irish cops on the same beat. You get to know all of Peter and Kate's family members as well as what goes on behind closed doors. There is a pivotal event that changes everything for both families.

This readable family drama is about life, love, forgiveness and so much more. I love how she captures Irish cops, living in New York. I fell in love with all the characters, flaws and all. I couldn't wait to get back to this book. Wow. Just wow. So sad it is over. Without a doubt, the best book I have read in quite a while. LOVED it!!!

The Name of the Wind by Philip Rothfuss

My rating: 5.0

This flashes back and forth in time between modern day when Kvothe is an innkeeper and back to his youth. He recalls how he grew up with amazing loving parents in a troupe and how they were family who fostered him to grow into the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.

What an amazing writer. This reminded me of a much more mature version of Harry Potter with less magic. The back story on the gods was a bit tiresome (picture reading about Greek Gods) but I loved the rest and will definitely be reading the other books in this series.

Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

My Rating: 5.0

I have had girlfriends recommending this book to me for years. I knew two things about it, neither of which were selling points: 1) It is a Western 2) It is long.  When I started it, it seemed very slow and rambling and I thought "I don't think this book is for me". My girlfriend made me promise to read 100 pages before I gave up on it.  By about page 50 I was hooked.

Wow.  I loved it.  I loved all the characters but especially Gus (my gf is going to call her next dog Gus!). This is about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana.  I 'felt' what it was like to live in those times.  This is amongst my all time favorite books. Did I say 'wow' already?  Amazing! Read it.  You won't be sorry.

The Dog Stars by Peter Heller

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow! Finally, a book that had me lying in bed, thinking of getting a book light so I could read just a few more pages. When I woke up and in those first few moments of thinking of my day, I am instantly thinking of when I can get back to this book. I chuckled, I laughed, I cried. I want more. Yes, it is reminiscent of The Road by Cormac McCarthy in that it is in a post apocalyptic world and has beautiful sparse prose that takes a bit to get used to but, for me, The Dog Stars is so much more. It is sad but it was also funny. The characters have wonderfully complex layers (yes, I even loved Bangley). Hig with his heart and compassion (don’t even get me started on Jasper!). It made me feel the deprivation and want to go out and hug a tree and breathe it in deep. I loved that the ending didn’t have a neat bow on it. The only fault I have with this book is that it is over. I didn’t want it to end…..ever.

Peter Heller, where have you been all my life. I am so happy to have discovered you and that you have other novels waiting for me to lose myself in. Although I don’t generally like to reread books, I suspect that I will come back to this novel again one day to lose myself and fall in love all over again.

The Prince of Tides: A Novel by Pat Conroy

My rating:  4.9 out of 5

This beautiful epic novel took my breath away.  It is the story of three kids, Luke, Tom and Savanaah Wingo, being raised in South Carolina in a dysfunctional abusive family.  It is told through the eyes of Tom Wingo, with his wit and sarcasm and heavily infused with his belief that South Carolina is one of the most beautiful and nurturing places on earth.

This book is told in combination of present day with the kids as adults and flashbacks to their childhood which is captured as both idyllic and extremely dysfunctional.  It is awe inspiring in the images that it paints of both their shrimping life in the Carolinas as well as that of New York City.  It goes from these beautiful images to capturing some horrid scenes of carnage – all in vivid detail.  This is definitely among my top rated books.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wow. I just finished this book and am feeling the ripple effects of the words, phrasing and plot. This will be one that I turn over and over in my mind.  I can see why this won the 2011 Man Booker Prize.

This is one of those books where, the less you know about it the better so, I won’t reveal too much here. This book is told by Tony, one of a group of three friend in high school. Their group is joined by a fourth, Adrian. The telling varies between their high school years and a middle aged Tony. I am in awe of Julian Barnes. His writing is amazing. It seems deceptively simple and yet captures so much. I have never found someone explain the elusiveness of memory….the remembering and forgetting, and reinterpreting the past…so clearly. This book was a wonderful journey. When Tony reread his letter, I felt like I needed a shot of whiskey as I was reeling with shock. There were so many times along the way I thought I saw what was coming when, in fact, Barnes allowed my smugness on the smallest of scales while the core secret didn’t unfold until the last pages. Don’t read anything more about this book or it will spoil it. Go quickly and devour this book for yourself.

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a slow, magically beautiful book. Everything from the character development to the author's ability to capture the haunting dramatic breathtaking wilderness and lifestyle. It is hard to believe this is the author's first book....and hopefully not her last. I can not do justice to this book other than to simply say, you must read it.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Louie Zamperini--a juvenile delinquent-turned-Olympic runner-turned-Army hero. During a routine search mission over the Pacific, Louie’s plane crashed into the ocean, and what happened to him over the next three years of his life is a story that will keep you glued to the pages, eagerly awaiting the next turn in the story and fearing it at the same time. You’ll cheer for the man who somehow maintained his selfhood and humanity despite the monumental degradations he suffered, and you’ll want to share this book with everyone you know.

This is extremely well written and an absolutely amazing story.  It makes me even more grateful to all the wonderful service men and women  - thank you..

Rating: 4.5 Recommend

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I very rarely ever re-read a book.  When this book was picked by my bookclub, I knew I wanted to re-read it as I enjoyed it so much the first time (4 years ago!)  Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen (definitely not for anyone too young) and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative and I am SO glad that I picked it up again.

Recommend: 4.8 Definite Recommend!

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts

Lindsay escapes from a New Zealand jail and arrives in Bombay with little money, an assumed name, false papers, an untellable past, and no plans for the future. Fortunately, he meets Prabaker right away, a sweet, smiling man who is a street guide. He takes to Lin immediately, eventually introducing him to his home village, where they end up living for six months. He also meets Karla, an enigmatic Swiss-American woman, with whom he falls in love. Theirs is a complicated relationship, and Karla’s connections are murky from the outset.

Lin is a tough guy with a tender heart, one capable of what is judged criminal behavior, but a basically decent, intelligent man who would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially anyone he knew. He is a magnet for trouble, a soldier of fortune, a picaresque hero: the rascal who lives by his wits in a corrupt society. His story is irresistible. Shantaram brings out the humane side of the Lin who couldn’t help but fall in love with innocence of people and led his life in abandon savoring each and every tide of life in his own stride.  I have fallen in love with Prabaker and his optimistic ways and constant smile.

Do not let the fact that this is almost 1,000 pages deter you - it flies by! Consider it "more for your money" :-)  This is amongst my list of top books of all time.  A definite must read!

Rating: 5 DEFINITE Recommend

Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese

There is a reason that I picked this book as the first book to start my recently founded Book Club.  It is spectacular and I wanted to set the bar high for all future reads.  In a magnificent, sweeping novel that moves from India to Ethiopia to an inner-city hospital in New York City over decades and generations. Sister Mary Joseph Praise, a devout young nun, leaves the south Indian state of Kerala in 1947 for a missionary post in Yemen. During the arduous sea voyage, she saves the life of an English doctor bound for Ethiopia, Thomas Stone, who becomes a key player in her destiny when they meet up again at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa. Seven years later, Sister Praise dies birthing twin boys: Shiva and Marion, the latter narrating his own and his brothers long, dramatic, biblical story set against the backdrop of political turmoil in Ethiopia, the life of the hospital compound in which they grow up and the love story of their adopted parents, both doctors at Missing. The boys become doctors as well and Vergheses weaving of the practice of medicine into the narrative is fascinating even as the story bobs and weaves with the power and coincidences of the best 19th-century novel.

Rating: 5 Definite Recommend!

Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill

Rating: 4.9 Definite Recommend

Stunning, wrenching and inspiring, the fourth novel by Canadian novelist Hill (Any Known Blood) spans the life of Aminata Diallo, born in Bayo, West Africa, in 1745. The novel opens in 1802, as Aminata is wooed in London to the cause of British abolitionists, and begins reflecting on her life. Kidnapped at the age of 11 by British slavers, Aminata survives the Middle Passage and is reunited in South Carolina with Chekura, a boy from a village near hers. Her story gets entwined with his, and with those of her owners: nasty indigo producer Robinson Appleby and, later, Jewish duty inspector Solomon Lindo. 

During her long life of struggle, she does what she can to free herself and others from slavery, including learning to read and teaching others to, and befriending anyone who can help her, black or white. Hill handles the pacing and tension masterfully, particularly during the beginnings of the American revolution, when the British promise to free Blacks who fight for the British: Aminata's related, eventful travels to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone follow. In depicting a woman who survives history's most trying conditions through force of intelligence and personality, Hill's book is a harrowing, breathtaking tour de force.

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.  This is a close second to his first novel, The Kite Runner.

Rating: 4.8 Definite recommend!

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Rating: 5.0

Excellent writing. A story of a boy in the 30's depression who joins a circus and also about him as an old man in the old folks home. VERY good and enjoyable.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")

Rating: 5 Definite Recommend!