Room

Room
by Emma Donoghue (Goodreads Author)

Hardcover, 321 pages

Published September 13th 2010 by Little, Brown and Company

ISBN 0316098337

Finished This Book:  March 20, 2011
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

About This Book 
(Goodreads)

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the entire world. It is where he was born and grew up; it's where he lives with his Ma as they learn and read and eat and sleep and play. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits.

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma, it is the prison where Old Nick has held her captive for seven years. Through determination, ingenuity, and fierce motherly love, Ma has created a life for Jack. But she knows it's not enough...not for her or for him. She devises a bold escape plan, one that relies on her young son's bravery and a lot of luck. What she does not realize is just how unprepared she is for the plan to actually work.

Told entirely in the language of the energetic, pragmatic five-year-old Jack, ROOM is a celebration of resilience and the limitless bond between parent and child, a brilliantly executed novel about what it means to journey from one world to another.  


My Thoughts on This Book

It took me a while to figure out that this was written from a 5 year old's perspective.   With that, imagine trying to understand a 5 year old telling a story of being locked up in a room with his kidnapped mother.  It is a tragic story and is told extremely well.  I could relate to both the boy and his mom at any point during the story.  There were times when I found myself shaking, I wanted to know what was going to happen next.  This book was riveting and sucked me in from the beginning.  However, about half way through, it slows down for me.  You reach a climax in the book and the remainder is tying up the story of this duo.  Had it not been for that, I would have rated it with 5 stars.

Kane and Abel

Kane and Abel
by Jeffrey Archer

Kindle Edition, 656 pages

Published April 1st 2010 by St. Martin's Paperbacks 

(first published 1979)

ASIN B003JMF4FC

Finished Book: February 18, 2011

My Rating: 4 Stars

About the Book
(Goodreads)

William Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless polish immigrant-born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world-are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. Two men - ambitious, powerful, ruthless - are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fueled by their all-consu...moreWilliam Lowell Kane and Abel Rosnovski, one the son of a Boston millionaire, the other a penniless polish immigrant-born on the same day near the turn of the century on opposite sides of the world-are brought together by fate and the quest of a dream. Two men - ambitious, powerful, ruthless - are locked in a relentless struggle to build an empire, fueled by their all-consuming hatred. Over sixty years and three generations, through war, marriage, fortune, and disaster, Kane and Abel battle for the success and triumph that only one man can have...

My Thoughts on This Book


This was a book full of intertwined characters and story lines.  I was mesmerized by the life of both the main characters in the book.  I loved and hated both of them at different times in the book.  It was an amazing story of strength, courage, deception, greed, and a little bit of love in the mix.  I liked that there was a lot of detail about each character, luring the reader in.  What I didn't like about the book was that it seemed like the author ran out of gas in the end.  I felt like the last 100 pages drug on and on.  To top it off, I didn't like how he tied the end together in the end.  I'm not sure how I would have ended the book, but that certainly wasn't it.  Overall, it was a good read.

The Handmaid's Tale

The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood

Paperback, 309 pages

Published March 16th 1998 by Anchor  

(first published 1985) 

 

ISBN 038549081X (ISBN13: 9780385490818)

Finished Book:  January 1, 2011

My Rating: 3 Stars

About the Book
(Goodreads)

It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed.

My Thoughts on This Book

I found this book to be an odd one at first.  It was a book club selection and was a college classic at best.  I'd heard of it, but never really knew anything about the storyline.  Imagine going to work one day to find the government has taken over EVERYTHING.  They take your credit cards and cash, leaving you an allotted amount of money on a government issued money card.  The government now owns you and determines what class of people you are to be put into for your own protection.  If you really sit and think about it, it isn't that far fetched.  Think about our government for a minute.  If they really wanted to, they could trace everything about you...where you shop, where you work, what you spend your money on, where you vacation.  I can only imagine how this book was perceived when it first was written.  I'm sure it was a little far fetched.  What about now?  Not so much in my opinion.

The Girls from Ames

The Girls from Ames: A Story of Women and Friendship by Jeffrey Zaslow

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

About the Book:
Meet the Ames Girls: eleven childhood friends who formed a special bond growing up in Ames, Iowa.  As young women, they moved to eight different states yet managed to maintain an enduring friendship that would carry them trhough college and careers, marrage, and motherhood, dating and divorce, a child's illness, and the mysterious death of one member of the group.  Capturing their remarkable story, The Girls from Ames  is a testament to the deep bonds of women as they experience life's joys and challenges - and the power of friendship to triumph over heartbreak and unexpected tragedy.

The girls, now in their forties, have a lfetime of memories in common, some evocavative of their generation and some that will resonate with any woman who has ever had a friend.  Photograph by photograph, recollection by recollection, occasionally with tears and often with great laughter, their sweeping and moving story is shared by Jeffey Zaslow, Wall Street Journal columnist, as he attempts to define the matchless bonds of female friendship.  It demonstrates how close female relationships can shape every aspect of women's lives - their sense of themselves, their choice of men, their need for validation, their relationships with their mothers, their dreams for their daughters - and reveals how much friendships thrive, rewarding those who have committed to them.

My Review:
This is the story of Karla, Kelly, Marilyn, Jane, Jenny, Karen, Cathy, Angela, Sally, Diana, and Sheila.  I was so moved by this book.  I haven't read a book in a long time that just consumed me like this one did.  It made me sit and ponder past friendships and relationships that molded who I am.  To some extent, aren't we who we are because of those childhood friendships?  As I read, I kept recalling old stories from my own childhood.  Ones I hadn't thought of in years... 

For the most part, I liked how the book what broken up.  However, there were entire chapters devoted to four of the girls, then the rest were stories and highlights of all the girls.  I would have liked to have seen individual chapters on all the girls.  Yes, I'm nosy.  What about the dirt on the others?  Their stories made me laugh and cry, envy that their relationships are still strong today.

Look Again

Look Again by Lisa Scottoline

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

About the Book:
When Ellen Gleeson gets a "Have You Seen This Child?" flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away.  But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops.  The child in the photo looks exactly like her adopted son, Will.

Everything inside her tells her to deny the similarity between her son and the boy in the photo, because she knows her adoption was lawful.  But she's a journalist and won't be able to stop thinking about the photo until she gets to the truth.  And she can't shake the question: If Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up?  Ellen makes the wrenching decision to investigate, uncovering clues no one was meant to uncover.  And when she digs too deep, she risks losing her life-and that of the son she loves.

My Review:
What would you do?  That's what the author is asking the reader through the entire book.  I'm glad the storyline (a) is about a boy and (b) about an adopted child.  To be honest, I had a hard time even imagining that I would ask myself, "What would I do?"  I can't imagine have a feeling that my child isn't really mine.  I liked the premise of the storyline.  It kept me interested and I really liked Ellen, the main character.  Then about 3/4 of the way through, the storyline got a little "out there" and all of a sudden, the book became a murder mystery.  HUH?  Up until that point, I was really enjoying the emotionally charged book I was reading.  The ending was far fetched and predictable for me.  Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but not as much as I would have with a completely different ending!

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder

The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder
by Rebecca Wells

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

About the Book:
The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder is the sweet, sexy, funny journey of Calla Lily's life set in Wells' expanding fictional Louisiana landscape.  In the small river town of La Luna,  Calla bursts into being, a force of nature as luminous as the flower she is named for.  Under the loving light of the Moon Lady, the feminine force that will guide and protect her throughout her life, Calla enjoys a blissful childhood-until it is cut short.  Her mother, M'Dear, a woman of rapture and love, teaches Calla compassion, and passes on to her the art of healing through the humble womanly art of "fixing hair."  At her mother's side, Calla further learns that this same touch of hands on the human body can quiet her own soul.  It is also on the banks of the La Luna River that Calla encournters sweet, succulent first love, with a boy named Tuck.

But when Tuck leaves Calla with a broken heart, she transorms hurt into inspiration and heads for the wild and colorful cit of New Orleans to study at L'Academie de Beaute de Crescent.  In that extravagant big river city, she finds her destiny-and comes to understand fully the power of her "healing hands," to change lies and soothe pain, including her own.  When Tuck reappears years later, he presents her with an offer that is colored by the memories of lost love.  But who know how Calla Lily, a "daughter of the Moon Lady," will repond?

A tale of family and friendship, tragedy and triumph, loss and love. 

My Review:
I liked it.  I liked the characters and the setting.  I was a bit thrown of by the Moon Lady exerpts (could have done without that).  Experiencing a young girl as a teenager in loved made me relate back to my own childhood and first love.  Once Calla moves away to experience life, I loved her new gay friends in New Orleans.  Really, they made the book for me.  Being someone obsessed about my own hair, the book made me want to be a hairdresser too.  There was one unexpected twist in the book, but otherwise, it was a tad bit predictable for me.  It is hard for me to imagine having my childhood friends in my day to day life, but maybe that's how a small town in the south would be.  I would have like to have seen the book end differently, but I enjoyed it.  It kept me reading and I loved the character development throughout.

God's Dream

God's Dream by Desmond Tutu

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

My Review:
I picked this book out at the local library.  The title intrigued me.  The first time I read it to my daughters, I experienced a feeling of ahhh.  Someone gets it.  This book is what being a believer is all about.  If only adults would pick this book up and read it.  And yes, it is mostly the adults.  Everytime I read this book, my daugter gives me a hug and kiss, because even at 5, she GETS IT.  Have you ever thought about what God dreams about for you?  What kind of person does he want you to be?  For me and my children, we ponder this daily...

As easy as sharing, loving, caring.

As easy as holding, playing, laughing.