The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love by Kristin Kimball

My rating: 4.4 of 5 stars

From the tips of my manicured nails down to my high heels, I am a city girl through and through. I could never do what Kristin Kimball chose to do and yet, I loved this story. Kimball is a wonderful author and made me understand her choices and respect and even envy her for it. I laughed at her withdrawals from city life and loved her adjustment to farm life. She captured her process of falling in love, with the farm, the way of life and with her husband, so well. Warning, do not read this book if you are hungry as her descriptions of the textures, colors and flavors of the food will leave you drooling.

Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen

This story of the Revolutionary War is told from the perspective of a 13 year old boy.  Samuel spends his days in the forest, hunting for food for his family. He has grown up far from any town, or news of the war.  Soon, the war comes to him as the British Army and Iroquois attack his home and take his parents away as prisoners.  Each day he confronts the enemy, and the tragedy and horror of this war.

The depiction of war and how impacts both soldiers and local families is realistic and somewhat graphic, so squeamish people might squirm.  The fictional story of Samuel is told with alternating non-fiction chapters telling historical notes that illuminate the sobering realities of the Revolution and add some enlightening context of the conditions, (prisoners of war were fed by their families as their captors weren't expected to be fed by their captors until the 1900's)  This is a quick read that, not being raised in America, educated me on how things were for soldiers and families during this time.  

Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Ten-year-old Opal has just moved to a Florida town with her preacher father, and she is very lonely.  At the local Winn-Dixie supermarket, she instantly takes a shine to a scraggly stray dog that she adopts.  The pooch, Winn-Dixie, named for their meeting place, becomes a trusted companion with whom Opal can share her thoughts and fears, and her hurt, confused feelings about the mother who left the family when Opal was three. Winn-Dixie is soon helping Opal in other ways, too.

This is a cute easy read.  I am not sure if it may be a bit young but, I might get it for my 10 year old niece.


Rating: 4.5 Recommend

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

You have to be warped and not mind cursing in order to enjoy this book.  I laughed out loud reading this at the airport and on the plane.  It is hilariously funny.  It is short enough that you don't get tired of the harsh humor.  Definitely something for when you are in the right mood and need a laugh.

Rating: 4.5 Recommend

I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Eliza Benedict, a 38-year-old married mother of two receives a letter from Walter Bowman, the man who kidnapped her the summer she was 15 and is now on death row. The narrative shifts between the present and that long ago summer, when Eliza involuntarily became a part of Walter's endless road trip, including the fateful night when he picked up another teenage girl, Holly Tackett. Soon after Walter killed Holly, Eliza was rescued and taken home.

While this story did seem like it should have had enough to drive the plot, the lack of character development left me skimming the pages.  From Barbara, the over bearing woman with too much backbone who befriends Walter, to Eliza herself who is so mousey and lacking in backbone, this book was just very mediocre.

Rating: 3.0  Just Ok

Amy and Isabelle by Elizabeth Strout

The novel unfolds in a small town in New England of a mother/daughter both alike in so many facets and yet neither wanting to be like the other.   It is about the secrets we keep from ourselves and others, about the fictions we create and believe, sincerely or otherwise, to protect our images and illusions in others' eyes. In quiet, lucid prose, Strout captures the hesitating, awkward moments of friendship, crushes, life at work and at home.

 I didn't care for how insecure most of these women were but, did care about them and how they evolved.

This is a subtle book with a slow plot line.  While the writing and the story were good, it was not a light or overly enjoyable read.  That being said, I am glad I read it and I will read other works by this author.

Rating:  3.2 OK

Once Was Lost by Sara Zarr

Samara Taylor is a small town pastor's kid and all the other kids think she has the perfect family.  Then, one summer, everything changes, her mother ends up in rehab, her father is always too busy for Sam and then Jody, a 13-year-old girl, a member of their church, disappears. This is a summer of a lot of changes for Sam and this book examines the effects on an impressionable teenager.  A bittersweet coming of age novel.

Rating:  4.0  Recommend

Like Mandarin by Kristin Hubbard

This takes place in the badlands of Washokey, Wyoming, around 14-year-old Grace Carpenter who does not share her mother's pageant obsessions, or the cowboy dances adored by her small-town classmates. She is intrigued by wild-girl Mandarin Ramey: 17, shameless and utterly carefree. Grace would give anything to be like Mandarin. 

When Grace and Mandarin are united for a project, they form an unlikely, explosive friendship.  This is a light easy read with enjoyable quirky characters and a good plot that has a steady pace.

Rating: 4.4 Recommend

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris

"It's back."  With those words Tim and Jane Farnsworth reenter a nightmare they know so intimately it needs no other description.  I have barely started this book but from, the beginning, I was hooked.  I love how the book unfolds slowly letting you in on what "It's back." means.  It did lose me a bit about 3/4 of the way through but, overall it held my interest.

Rating: 3.5  Good

Caribou Island by David Vann

On a small island in a glacier-fed lake on Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, a marriage is unraveling. Gary, driven by thirty years of diverted plans, and Irene, haunted by a tragedy in her past, are trying to rebuild their life together. Following the outline of Gary's old dream, they're hauling logs to Caribou Island in good weather and in terrible storms, in sickness and in health, to build the kind of cabin that drew them to Alaska in the first place.

But this island is not right for Irene. They are building without plans or advice, and when winter comes early, the overwhelming isolation of the prehistoric wilderness threatens their bond to the core. Caught in the emotional maelstrom is their adult daughter, Rhoda, who is wrestling with the hopes and disappointments of her own life. Devoted to her parents, she watches helplessly as they drift further apart.

This is a raw, honest and uncomfortable novel.  There is so much dysfunction in every relationship and no likeable characters.  The author captures the cold ruggedness of Alaska very well but, the story line leaves much to be desired.

Rating:2 Do NOT Recommend

Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin

Alice Liddell Hargreaves is an lonely old woman now, but once she was full of passion, fire, and true love. As a child, she was the muse of Mr. Dodgson, a professor at Oxford who used the pen name Lewis Carroll, and inspired the classic Alice's Adventure in Wonderland. What Alice doesn't realize, though, is that her life will be both illuminated and shrouded by just one day in her life, a day when, at eleven years old, her life changes forever when she is the 'real' Alice in Wonderland.

This work of literary fiction, which sticks very closely to Alice's true life, and captured my interest.  The author not only does wonderful character development (I love the spunk of Alice as a little girl) but captures the 1800's so beautifully.

Rating: 4.3  Recommend

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obert

Obreht portrays two besieged doctors. Natalia is on an ill-advised good will medical mission at an orphanage on what is suddenly the other side, now that war has broken out, when she learns that her grandfather, a distinguished doctor forced out of his practice by ethnic divides, has died far from home. She is beset by memories, particularly of her grandfather taking her to the zoo to see the tigers. We learn the source of his fascination in mesmerizing flashbacks, meeting the village butcher, the deaf-mute Muslim woman he married, and a tiger who escaped the city zoo after it was bombed by the Germans. Of equal mythic mystery is the story of the deathless man.

This story just lost me.  It started off as a fascinating blend of myth, superstition and folklore but the many segues ended up feeling like the author herself wasn't sure where she was taking us and, indeed, it ended up that it led nowhere.

Rating: 2.5 Do NOT Recommend

The Highest Tide by Jim Lynch

This is a wonderful coming of age story.  Jim Lynch's extraordinary first novel centers around a runty thirteen year old boy who knows more than the local marine biologist about the teeming life in the mud flats of Puget Sound and its coves. Narrator Miles O'Malley is an insomniac who takes his battered kayak into the sound at night while his parents and the rest of the town sleep. He collects unusual specimens for aquariums and collectors, and digs for clams with his friend Phelps to sell to local restaurants. In the middle of the night, Miles hears the final exhalation of a dying giant squid. His discovery of the enormous creature never before found on the shores of North America prompts a rush of media attention.

At first, no one questions how Miles managed to find the squid in the middle of the night despite his poorly fabricated lie, but when he discovers other non-native sea life and anomalies in the sea and tidal pools, he becomes an object of local fascination. Miles just wants to remain invisible. He is neglected by his parents, who have their own problems, and he struggles with his awkward crush on Angie, an eighteen-year-old, body-pierced girl who plays bass in a grunge band.

Much of Myle's world is consumed by nature and the ocean.  Lynch's confident style guides the reader through an odd yet believable world where sea stars can be of any color and thirteen-year-old boys can befriend judges, psychics, and cult leaders. Readers will finish this novel with a sigh not unlike that of the giant squid marooned on the beach.

Rating: 4.6 Very Good

What Now by Ann Patchett

This is a very short easy read (100 pages with lots of pictures) from Ann Patchett's commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College.  This stirring essay offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, What now?

I especially enjoyed this after recently reading her book "Truth & Beauty" which also covered a lot of the time period she referenced - her time at Sarah Lawrence, moving back home with her mother, working as a dishwasher and struggling to find her way as a writer.

Patchett has a way of writing that strikes a chord in all of us.  She shares moments and emotions that we all go through.

Writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing.  The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way.

Rating: 3.2 Good

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith

When this book was picked for my book club, despite being told "don't let the title put you off, it is really good", I have to admit that the title put me off and I wasn't interested in it.  I figured I would just get a sample on my Kindle and see what it was like.  Well, I just bought it and was glad I read it, although it is not one I would recommend.

Grahame-Smith inserts a grandiose and gratuitous struggle with vampires into Abraham Lincoln's life. Lincoln learns at an early age that his mother was killed by a supernatural predator. This provokes his bloody but curiously undocumented lifelong vendetta against vampires and their slave-owning allies. The author's decision to reduce slavery to a mere contrivance of the vampires is unfortunate bordering on repellent, but at least it does distract the reader from the central question of why the president never saw fit to inform the public of the supernatural menace.

Rating: 3.0  Good

A Ship Made of Paper by Scott Spencer

This is a love story.  Daniel Emerson is a New York City lawyer who has returned to his hometown of Leyden, N.Y., a picturesque Hudson Valley village, with his girlfriend Kate, a novelist, and her daughter, Ruby. Kate drinks and obsesses about the O.J. Simpson trial instead of writing fiction. Daniel finds himself falling in love with Iris Davenport, an African-American grad student at the local university. Iris is married to Hampton Welles, an investment adviser. The book records Iris and Daniel's affair from both perspectives and poses the question, is their fleeting happiness really worth so much ruin?

It is entertaining.  At times, this is more about interracial relationships than an affair.  I didn't like how Kate and Hampton are both very unlikeable characters....probably to help us find Daniel and Iris' affair less objectionable to our moral standards and maybe even to sympathize with them when they each have such unappealing spouses.  Still, it is an enjoyable enough read that I am staying with it for quotes such as this: "Time passes, bodies decay, every day spent without love is lost forever, the time cannot be recaptured or made up for."

There are enough twists to the story to keep your interest.  The ending felt hanging but, I think it was to show that nothing in life ends how we want and is definitely not in a neat and tidy box.


Rating: 4.2 Good

Truth & Beauty by Ann Patchett

I picked this book as it was in my queue.  I couldn't remember who recommended it (thank you!!!) or what it was about.  The only preconceived notion I had was that Ann Patchett had written Bel Canto and I enjoyed that immensley.  I was probably 100 pages in before I discovered that one of the "characters" name was Ann Patchett and I quickly realized I wasn't reading a beautiful work of fiction but, an even more amazingly beautiful memoir.

This is about friendship -- between Lucy Grealy and Ann Patchett -- and shares many insights into the nature of devotion. One of the best instances of this concerns a fable of ants and grasshoppers. When winter came, the hard-working ant took the fun-loving grasshopper in, each understanding their roles were immutable. It was a symbiotic relationship. Like the grasshopper, Grealy, who died of cancer at age 39 in 2002, was an untethered creature, who liked nothing more than to dance, drink and fling herself into Patchett's arms like a kitten. Patchett tells this story chronologically, in bursts of dialogue, memory and snippets of Grealy's letters, moving from the unfolding of their deep connection in graduate school and into the more turbulent waters beyond. Patchett describes her attempts to be a writer, while Grealy endured a continuous round of operations as a result of her cancer. Later, when adulthood brought success, but also heartbreak the duo continued to be intertwined, even though their link sometimes seemed to fray.

This gorgeously written chronicle unfolds as an example of how friendships can contain more passion and affection than any in the romantic realm. And although Patchett unflinchingly describes the difficulties she and Grealy faced in the years after grad school, she never loses the feeling she had the first time Grealy sprang into her arms.

Rating: 4.6 Recommend

The Stuff That Never Happened by Maddie Dawson

Annabelle McKay's midlife crisis as her empty-nest marriage to historian Grant falls into the doldrums, flashes from current day back to the 1970's when they first met.  Annabelle and Grant love each other deeply, but the glue that holds their marriage together might not be enough once the kids are (mostly) grown. The new emptiness in their house begins to fill up with dangerous thoughts and emotions related to an earlier, difficult time in their life together, a time they have agreed never to speak of again. This chapter in their marriage becomes "the stuff that never happened." It did happen, though, and when a new crisis in their lives threatens to break through the silence, Annabelle and Grant have to face the ramifications of keeping their mutual secret. This book is wry, witty, cynical and worldly.

Rating: 4.4 Very Good

Traveling Light by Katrina Kittle

It's generally thought that the story of a man or woman "coming of age" is about their struggle to define themselves and their place in the world when they are young and moving into adulthood. Certainly that is true. But the process is one that never really ends. Things like injury, illness, or tragedy can force us to re-examine our lives and our place in the world.

Such is the story of Summer Zwolenick. An injury to her ankle has ended her promising dance career. Her brother is slowly losing his fight with AIDS. Her grandmother is losing a battle with cancer. Her new life as a teacher at a small-town school seems ungratifying to her. There is a lot to force her to re-examine who she is and where she's going. And she's made a promise to her brother. It's this promise that Summer is struggling to fulfill through out the book.

This book was incredibly honest and at times, was uncomfortable in the reality of a long slow death.

Rating: 4.6 Recommend

While I'm Falling by Laura Moriarty

One day, Veronica Von Holten is happy, med-school bound, in love with her boyfriend and not far from her supportive family. Then her father finds another man in the bed he shares with his wife of 26 years. As a messy divorce ensues, Veronica struggles to keep her own life in check while her mother's unravels, and a car accident, a house-sitting gig gone bad and an illicit kiss turn Veronica's personal life upside down.

I like the "falling" analogy of Veronica falling love, falling behind in her college courses and so many people's lives falling apart....free falling.

This is a light and enjoyable read that truly captures the emotional trauma of instances/choices in your life and how it forces you to grow up.

Rating: 3.9 Good