#105 A Tale of the Dispossessed

Another short one to keep myself on schedule.  To be honest I'm not going to get in to this one too much.  It was one of the ones I talk about that forgets to really tell the story.  This one spent so much time describing everything that there wasn't any story to it.

Anyway so I am finished with my first half of my reading journey.  I have really enjoyed it and I'm trying all kinds of different books I normally wouldn't.  A lot of them have been pretty darn good.

Happy Reading!!!

Man in the Dark by Paul Auster #104

Okay truth time, this book has been in my stack for quite some time.  At some point something must have drawn me to it, but I'm not sure what.  The cover was a total turn off for me so I just kept going around it so to speak.  I picked it for #104 because it was a shorter book and on a time crunch to get to #105 I needed the help.

So why did the cover turn me off?  I think it looked to much like a mystery or spy book which I am not a big fan of.  Once I started reading though it wasn't.  It was a great surprise to me, which I think made me like it even more.

This book is about an retired book critic, August Brill who was in an accident and lives with his divorced daughter, and his granddaughter who moved back after the death of her boyfriend.

He suffers from insomnia and during the night he works on a story to avoid thinking about his past.  He is a man with a lot of pain and sorrow as are the members of his family.  During the day he spends time with his granddaughter watching old movies.

It was kind of weird at first his story within the book and normally I don't like that.  I was very much turned off on The Novelist by Angela Hunt for this very reason.  It worked with this book.  I was absorbed into both stories and found myself both rooting for and against his fictional character who wakes up and finds himself in an alternate world.

I am so glad I read this book.  It was great and I would recommend it to anyone.

Going Backwards to #99 Resistance by Anita Shreve

I have been a fan of her books for some time now.  This one really sealed the deal.  I can't believe I forgot this one when updating everything yesterday.

Ted, an American pilot during WWII is shot down over Belgium, injured he tries to hide from enemy forces.  A boy, Jean Benoit, finds him hiding in the trees and brings him to the home of Claire and Henri, part of the resistance in Belgium.  Claire once a nurse, nurses Ted back to health and their love story begins.

The Nazi assigns pilots to guard the plane, in the middle of the night those guards are killed.  The Nazis begin "retribution" and kill members of the community including the young boy Jean Benoit.  Henri goes into hiding with some other male members of the resistance.  During that time while Henri is gone, Claire and Ted begin an affair.

It was an amazing love story.  I love a good story set in World War II, in particular human stories.  Claire is an interesting character for me as she is not unhappily married, but yet without much preamble falls into bed with Ted.  It wasn't even that she was a woman of loose virtues. 

I tried to think of the contrast of that during war time.  We are very lucky in America to have never been invaded by an enemy such as the Nazis.  But I couldn't help thinking in an instance such as that during a war, how one would act outside of themselves.  If you think each day could be your last day, would you do something you would normally not.

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In the end of the book, Ted's son goes to meet Claire not knowing anything of their relationship.  It was fascinating that she had no real regrets.  Was it because of the daughter she conceived with Ted or love?  I like to think it was love.

Anyway another brilliant book by Anita Shreve!

The Truth about Delilah Blue by Tish Cohen #103

As I was preparing to write this, I read the review from Publishers Weekly that appears on Amazon.com.  They were not very flattering about it and I rather enjoyed it.  Yes I agree with some of their points which I will get into, but overall the book kept me interested.

In this book Delilah Blue Lovett is now Lila Mack.  She moved with her father from Toronto to California when she was 8.  Her dad told her that her artist mother needed space.  Her father suggests that he prefers Lila so her name is changed.  

Her mother ends up finding her as her father is starting to exhibit symptoms of early onset Alzheimer's, and she learns her father kidnapped her.  Her father still feeling somewhat guilty refuses to explain his actions to Lila.  While spending time with her mother and the little sister she just learned about Lila comes to understand some of her fathers actions.  Her mother is self absorbed and careless.  Although not meaning to be neglectful, she is.

One of the things that was pretty far fetched in my mind as well as to the reviewer at Publishers Weekly is that her little sister tells her about a website set up to search for her and she never encountered it.  She talks about googling her mothers name and how she wouldn't go past the second page on Google.  I find it hard to believe that never once did that site appear on the first page, especially as they talk about her being on TV doing interviews.

So yes somethings made it hard to swallow, but overall the book was enjoyable and kept my interest up to the end.  Although like Publishers Weekly says, the ending just came together too fast.  Lila never really has the confrontation with her mother about her mothering skills that you want to see happen.

April and Oliver by Tess Callahan #102

I'm happy to say that this was another good book.  It was depressing, but it was thoroughly enjoyable.

April and Oliver, cousins by marriage,  were nearly inseparable for most of their childhood.  They had drifted apart with Oliver moving away for school and other issues that drove them apart through the years.

They finally reunite when April's brother is killed in a car accident.  It is quickly realized what a horrible life April had.  As a result of the abuse she suffered as a child, she is very self destructive.

Oliver, although engaged, finds that he is still in love with her.  His urge as it always has been is to protect her even from herself.  His frustration turns to anger on many occasions, to the point of violence.  It was not the typical love story, but one full of complications.

Oliver attempts something pretty despicable, but yet with them in some ways as the reader you didn't feel it was as bad as the character did.  Maybe becomes what April had been through in her life was so much worse or maybe it was because underneath it all they both loved each other.

This is what an award winning book should be, just tell a good story.  This was a great story even though it was depressing.  You could feel the emotions simmering at every turn.  Definitely an A to me. 

The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse #101

I'm not exactly sure where I read about this, but it looked intriguing so I bought it last week at the store.

To be honest I didn't like it.  I don't usually like short stories that are all tied together.  The only author I have truly loved that does that is Maeve Binchy.  Most books like this I don't feel really flesh out the characters, and this is true in this book.  I just didn't feel invested in any of the characters.

I have thought about it and wondered if it was because it is a culture I can't relate to, but if that were the case I wouldn't like most books I read, which isn't true.  While I think that my lack of knowledge of the culture probably contributed to my dislike of the book I wouldn't say it was the sole reason.

It just seemed to jump around too much for me.  I could never tell when the stories were taking place in relation to the one incident that ties the book together. 

It wasn't horrible for me or totally unreadable, it just wasn't enjoyable for me. 

The Walk by Richard Paul Evans #100

Okay so these will be out of order, I can't remember #99, I have read four others since then, I need to go home and look through my pile to remember which was which!

But this one I remember, it was fantastic!!!!  I can't say enough good things about this one. 

Alan Christoffersen is a successful ad guy and completely devoted to his wife, McKale.  They are living the American dream, until an important meeting is interrupted with distressing news.  His wife was thrown from her horse and is being rushed to the hospital.

While Alan is at his wife's bedside he has his partner running his business.  During this time he finds out his wife hasn't been paying the bills and their fancy cars are repossessed.  This doesn't seem a big deal to him, the most important thing to him is his wife. 

When she is released from the hospital paralyzed, he returns to work only to find his partner has stolen all the clients and set up his own business.  Unable to process it all he goes home for lunch to check on his wife, during that time an infection has set in and she ultimately dies.

After the funeral he finds out his house is being foreclosed on.  Nowhere to go, no one holding him back he decides to walk across the country to the furthest destination he can, Key West.

The book is really more about the journey than the destination, an applicable metaphor for life.

The book was absolutely stunning as I have come to expect from Richard Paul Evans.  His books are inspirational and talk about God without being preachy.  He has found a way to write spiritual books which won't turn off the readers who don't normally read those types of books. 

Absolutely fantastic book, one of the best I have read so far.