Blushing Pink

Jill Winters romance. I never read her before and I probably won't again. It was cheesy, it was badly edited (she sees her love interest sitting in a booth, has to scoot in next to him, and then...wait a minute! Now she's about to cross the room to go sit by him. What?), and it was pretty boring and cliche. It just didn't have a lot to recommend it.

On the other hand, I didn't hate it. I just didn't have much use for it either. Eh.

The $64 Tomato; Enslaved By Ducks; Marley and Me

These three books are all different--one on gardening, one on unusual pets, one on a particularly quirky dog--but they have an underlying theme, a very similar voice, if you will, so I decided to review them all together.

Well, that and I'm pressed for time. =)

Anyway. I got The $64 Tomato, by William Alexander, is ostensibly a memoir about a man's gardening experiences, which sounded like just what i need. But. It turned out to begin with a litany of complaints about the landscapers and the ditch-diggers and the lawn care guys and blah blah blah he's got a bunch of money and he pays people to do a bunch of crap I don't care about, NOT GARDENING. Then he turns to trying to grow pesticide-free apple trees, the conclusion of which was extremely frustrating to me. Let me sum up: "Theoretically I'm against pesticides, but I'm too lazy to research more that can be done, so I'll use them for myself so I can get apples. Ha ha ha, I was so naive to think I didn't need them." Gag me. So I stopped reading it. This one was obviously not my favorite.

Enslaved by Ducks, by Bob Tarte, has been on my reading list for a long long time, since I first saw it in a Chinaberry magazine. This guy somehow (mysteriously, according to him) got himself involved with a menagerie including 5 or 6 house birds, two cats, maybe 7 ducks, 3 bunnies (although not at once) and maybe a few others. They're all neurotic and demanding and do silly things. The book, however, didn't keep my interest as I hoped it would. It was mildly funny. It was interesting in that I learned some things about ducks that I didn't know, and about being cautious and prepared when choosing what breed of animal you would like. But yeah. Just not nearly as great and heartwarming and laugh-out-loud funny as I had heard, and hoped.

But Marley and Me (by John Grogan)? It was everything I just mentioned Ducks wasn't. I laughed out loud a million times. I cried at least twice. I just loved it. I think that's because it has so much more about the man's family and real life in it than the other two, where family plays a more peripheral role. I obviously care a lot more about family and babies and puppies than about budgies and parrots and malathion*, thus the progression of favor these books found with me. Tomato bad, Ducks okay, Marley good. And there you have it.

As for the similarities, I honestly thought the same guy could have written all three books, so similar was the flow of the narrative and the vocabulary and expressions used. Books by middle-aged guys in which they reflect back on their naivete and complain a lot and try to be funny are apparently popular right now. Just be aware that some of them are faaaaaaaaaaar superior to others. And, to be fair, that that might depend on where you are in your own life journey, and what things you value. Duh.

*Okay, maybe I do care about malathion. But in a very different way than the author did. Yuck.

The Blessing Stone

By Barbara Wood. Most horrible book ever. Doesn't even deserve full sentences. I couldn't even read it head-on. I had to page through different areas at different times.

Some examples of problems I had with this book:

At the beginning, it's about humans 100,000 years ago...about how animal-like and therefore low-down and degraded we were. WHAT? We are animals, people. Deal with it. We are still animals. Living in houses does not change that. And back then? We were also still humans. Therefore, we would have, for example, mourned the death of a child. GAH!

Also, these down-and-dirty animal-humans? They don't know anything about the future. They have no concept of a future. WHAT? How do you think they went freaking hunting then? AAAAHHHH. They were people, people. Humans. They might not have thought like you and me but they certainly THOUGHT with the same BRAINS that we have.

And...the main character in that part of the writing feels a "danger" coming....but can't figure it out since she can't conceive of "the future." Grr enough, but it turns out to be a volcano that's about to erupt. Because this woman senses danger, apparently because the blessing stone helped her, she gets everyone to safety or something. Um...wait a minute....I thought they were animals. Show me animals who don't realize something funky's gonna happen and get the heck out of Dodge when a natural disaster like that happens. Remember the tsunami in December 2004? Remember how animals took off for higher ground? Yep, they knew to get away from there. Since she goes on and on about how they were animals, she should have remembered that they would have trusted their instincts and not need some stupid outer-space stone to save them. It's just so full of stupidity and contradictions that I can't even write down all that I want to criticize of it. I hope I'm making it clear anyway.

Another point I disliked that's a completely different issue. So this stone is supposed to help the people it comes to. One of them is an early Christian woman. The stone "helps" her to "have the courage" to choke herself to death on it. WTF? This is not exactly helpful in my opinion. And the situation wasn't even remotely like the regular Christian martyrs anyway. And then how the heck does this lady end up a saint if no one knows she choked herself on the stone? Just full of crap. Seriously.

So obviously I didn't like this one. You may disagree. God help you.

Sundays at Tiffany's

This is the book for our February book club. I don't really know what to say about that except I'm worried that this book club thing is not working out for me. I really enjoy getting a night off, out of the house, and going and talking with these fun women...but the book part is eh. So far we've read four books: the first two I liked (Julia's Chocolates and The Last Time I Was Me), but they were by the same author and I felt maybe we should branch out a little more for our first two. The third (Off Season) was pretty awful. The fourth was the book I picked (Prodigal Summer), and no one else really liked it much. So I feel like maybe I'm book-incompatible with these people, which is very sad, because they're nice.

But this book, by James Patterson, was pretty worthless too. The girls said they wanted something "happy," and this is a sappy romance, basically, so it was picked. (And yes, I'm cringing already because I hate to criticize someone else's pick. Please don't take it personally. You are not the book you picked, even if you like it. I like you. I don't like the book.)

First on my list of complaints: girlie romance written by an old man. Creepy! The picture on the back of the book kept giving me the willies. And then of course it was just completely unrealistic to MY world of being a woman, although I think it used just about every stereotype possible. The main man character, for example, learns lessons about life from Oprah and then pontificates on them, or at least he brings up the fact that he learned a lot from Oprah, or she really spoke to his heart, or something. Gag.

So. Fakey. Weirdly enough, written by a dude specializing in thrillers (Kiss The Girls, for example). Also, the plot was shaky. (Ooh, fakey-shaky. Nice.) All these little things happen that are supposed to make you think one thing, and then of course another thing magically appears as the answer (aka Deus ex Machina), and you're supposed to forget about all the things that happened in the first place.

This book is not something I would recommend to anyone. It might be enjoyed by any number of women, but I hope not. I hope women these days are wiser than that, more aware of ourselves as people and not as objects. I hope women want to read a LOT less about female characters obsessed with their weights, as women learn to forget about what we look like and focus instead on our health and happiness and on making the world a better place for all living things.

Okay. I was interrupted in the middle of that so I'll get off my soapbox and just say this: I'm in a bad mood today because my health insurance is CRAP and because I feel kinda crappy and am tired of being judged if I look crappy. I want to look out on the world and not worry about it looking in on me. So this was NOT a good book to read in the mood I'm in. And it is NOT quality reading any time, if you ask me. But it might be one of those books that sometimes people just need to escape regular life and not tax the brain. Still, you won't get that recommendation from me, although I'll try to be nicer at the book club meeting since I certainly don't want to inflict judgment on my friends, with whom I enjoy discussing life, as I said. Sorry if this is incoherent. Seriously bad day that started about halfway through the post. =)

Off Season

This book, by Ann Rivers Siddons, was assigned to a book club I thought I might join. The last book the club read was Julia's Chocolates, which, as you all know, I looooved.

This one, not so much. I didn't like the way the author only hit the very extreme events of the protagonist's life, and didn't allow for any development out of those events. Example: someone dies and the next thing you know, it's 10 years later. What happened after that person died? I dunno.

I also HATED the ending. I feel I shouldn't say too much but it ends very abruptly after making an abrupt and, in my opinion, dumb revelation, that you therefore have no time to think about or deal with or develop or whatever. Also, said revelation is pretty meaningless to me, since all the little daily life details that might have given it meaning for me were left out by the author.

It wasn't the most horrible book ever. But I think I'm still categorizing it as trash because it felt like a SUPREME waste of time.

Disobedience

I read A Map of the World and The Book of Ruth, both by Jane Hamilton, several years ago, and was wonderfully impressed by her writing abilities. My mother recently read her When Madeline Was Young and enthusiastically recommended it to me. So when I was at the library and saw this book among her works, I decided to try it, figuring it would be good.

Boy, was I wrong. I don't know if this book is really good or not, but it is slow as molasses. It's about a high-school-aged boy who accidentally discovers his mother's affair, and about what is happening to the heart of his family at this point in their lives, but I just couldn't get into it. I wasn't connected to any of the characters and I didn't really care what would happen to them and I didn't really feel like anything really could happen to them or that the novel was actually going anywhere. I can appreciate the way that she crafts the boy's point of view, and I think it's especially clever how she lets him alternate between calling his mother many different names, since he's not sure how to view her and who she really is, but I just Did Not Like This Book.

So sad, really. I guess I'll have to steel myself to try When Madeline Was Young and just assume it must be better. And I can't imagine that it won't be, since I feel this one was pretty bad for me. At least at this point in my life. Boy, I really have a tough time saying a book is bad...but I also really think in this case it's half the book and half me, so I don't want to blame it for not suiting my tastes. Eh.

Angela and Diabola

This is another book I "found" in the kids' section of the library...and by "found" I mean James handed it to me and insisted we get it. And I was interested, because the author, Lynne Reid Banks, is one I know well, but I had never heard of this particular book. I loved her Indian in the Cupboard series, and One More River was one of my favorite books when I was a pre-teen.

But this one was disappointing. I hesitate to actually call it "trash," but I certainly wouldn't recommend it. It was about twins, one who is everything good and one who is all evil...so it was sort of a boring idea for me to wrap my mind around anyway, and then the events of the story and the conclusion were not even worth the 30 minutes it took me to read them. So predictable, so uninteresting, so completely unenriching and unfulfilling. Uck.

I seriously expected better. But then again, maybe I should have paid attention to the fact that this is a book by one of my old favorite authors and I had never heard of it. Consider yourselves warned.

Forever Amber

This is that book I was telling you about earlier, the one that's 972 pages long and has taken me over 6 weeks to read. It was written by Kathleen Winsor in 1944, and it's supposed to be a "new classic." Yes, I know, cue the groaning and eye-rolling now, because you know a new classic is probably not going to work out well for anybody.

I finished it today, and I have to say, it turned out to be every bit as awful as I first suspected.

Well, wait a minute. This is sort of complex, because I liked some of it. You see, the book is about a girl living England in the time of King Charles II--and you all know how crazy I am for English history, especially during the time of the Tudors and Stewarts...so I LOVED getting to read all the period detail. The Restoration, the plague, the Great Fire, what life was like as an actress or a courtier in those days, all of these details were highly Susan-pleasing.

But I have never hated two main characters more than I hated the two in this book. Amber and her lover, Lord Carlton, are just really people that I don't want to read about and that I cannot sympathize with. They NEVER LEARN, for one thing. They show no HOPE for learning. They just do the same old tired things again and again and with complete disregard for all the other human beings on the planet. And I feel bitter about this because I kept wanting to connect with them and like them a little, and I never managed to. In my eyes, they never did anything redeeming AT ALL. Lord Carlton uses Amber, and many others, in whatever way suits him, because it's easiest or most enjoyable or whatever, and Amber...she gets people KILLED! GOOD people die because of her. And that is just not okay, not when she doesn't even really NOTICE. Geez.

Also, I have to say there were a lot of details included in this book that I didn't think should be there. I can see the point of having them there, but ultimately it didn't work for me. For example? There's a short history of Amber's mother's life in the beginning of the book. Makes sense to know where she came from, and also gives us a view into life before the Restoration. But there are so many weird details that it ends up feeling like an incredibly loose end. And the author actually picks it back up a little bit later in the book, but does nothing satisfying with it. Moral of the story? Gaping holes in this story make me feel strange.

Ultimately, this book was very disappointing. The ending was typical--I saw it coming from a million miles away. Every time I had to pick up this book I cursed myself for it because I couldn't stand the two main characters, those two who supposedly have this wonderful romance. BAH! I totally don't understand why the Amazon reviewers liked it so much, but feel free to check out what they had to say about it.

But I still kept picking it up because I wanted to read about the life and times of Charles II and his subjects. So sue me.

Baby Proof

I finished this book, by Emily Giffin, last week, but with all the new-kitchen-building craziness around here, I haven't had the chance to get on the computer AT ALL.

So, in sum, here's what I thought of this book:

Eh.

That's about it. It just didn't capture my interest much. I think at least part of it was the subject matter (a woman breaks up with her true-love husband because she doesn't want kids and he decides he does), but mostly it was just that the scenes the author chose to move the story along didn't seem appropriate. It just seemed jumpy at some points and dragged at others, and wasn't meaty enough for me. It was sort of okay, but I wouldn't really recommend it. If you liked it, that's great, but it was just not my cup of tea.

That being said, it was SUCH an easy read that I don't feel like I wasted a lot of time or anything, and, as always, I appreciate the author's ability to write a complete sentence.

The End.

Upon the Midnight Clear

The first few books I read by Sherrilyn Kenyon really impressed me, because they made me feel like I'd like to have the author as a personal friend. She had a sense of humor I appreciated, and I felt like she'd fit right in to my circle.

It also helped that she was writing funny romance novels about the Greek gods. I mean, it can't get much better than that, right?

Well...now I just sort of feel like she's cranking 'em out too fast. It's been a long time since I've read a new Kenyon novel that I really enjoyed. I'm so bogged down in trying to remember everything that's happened before, and not getting all the answers to what's going on because apparently they're coming in future books, that I can't enjoy the characters. She just flies through the plot, and I never connect with the people, and I'm confused and distracted by all this other stuff that's going on.

I still do like her style...I just don't want to read more of this series right now. But, darn it! She sucked me in in the beginning and I want to know what happens! So even though I wouldn't recommend this book, I'll still read the next one that comes out, because it's supposed to be "Acheron's book," and he is a major character and a major mystery. So I hope I enjoy future books more than I did this one. It just felt like the middle movie of a trilogy. You know how that one is just almost never as good as the first and last? Yeah. It's like that.

Sorry, loyal fans. I still like her, I do, but I didn't like this book.

At least it only took me like an hour to read.