Happy Easter and Reading Update

A quick Easter Sunday post before I get preparations underway for company and Easter Dinner.  I made desserts last night and since we are not fans of ham, I'm cooking a turkey for dinner.  I'm looking forward to family being together and those (3) cute little kiddos.  Do you have any special plans for Easter?

One new book came by mail last week, it's a memoir which I think sounds pretty good  and the reviews have been wonderful ---

If At Birth You Don't Succeed; Zach Anner

Henry Holt & Company - 2016

(This weeks library loot)

On the reading front I have been very busy. This past week I finished, Spark Joy; Marie Kondo, Find Her; Lisa Gardner and All the Light We Cannot See; Anthony Doerr (audio) but, I still need to work on reviews.  I'm in the process of reading, The Guise of Another; Allen Eskens, Shelter; Jung Yun, Missoula; Jon Krakauer (audio)

That is about it for today. Wishing you all a happy day and wonderful week.

Bear is Not Tired; Ciara Gavin

Bear is Not Tired; Ciara Gavin

A.A. Knopf  - 2016

Bear is Not Tired is an adorable book about blended families and accepting the differences of others.

In this story Bear and the Duck family live together as one happy family, doing lots of things together.  As winter approached the ducks went along with most of their normal activities, while Bear grew sleepy because bears sleep the winter away.  Not wanting to miss anything Bear tried to remain awake but, kept dozing off.  Mama duck assured Bear that he wouldn't miss much and so he reluctantly agrees to go to sleep. The rest of the family stays close by while he sleeps away the winter.    When spring arrives Bear awakes well rested and the ducks show him of photo album of what they did while he slept the winter away.

The illustrations are so soft looking and lovely and Bear is very cuddly looking.  It was nice to read a story that celebrates differences and takes a look at blended families in the animal kingdom.

4.5/5 stars

Peppa Pig and the I Love You Game

Peppa Pig and the I Love You Game

Candlewick Entertainment - 2015

In celebration of Valentine's Day Mummy Pig suggests that the family play the I Love You game.  She has each of the family members: Mummy, Daddy, Peppa and brother George, naming all of the things they long and enjoy doing, and each names many things and people that they enjoy and love.

While the illustrations are once again awesome and fun, this book wasn't a favorite of mine.  I do think these books are best appreciated by readers who have seen Peppa and her family on television as that is where all of the characters really come alive and warm your heart.

3.5/5 stars 

(library)

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald; Therese Anne Fowler

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald; Therese 

St. Martin's Press - 2013

My book group met this week to discuss Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald and almost everyone enjoyed it.

I think many readers are somewhat familiar with Zelda's story, a Southern Belle who meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a dance in 1918 when she was only seventeen.  She sees him as exotic, exciting and desirable.  Her father is against the marriage as he isn't a Southerner and doesn't come from a prominent family or have money.  He assures Zelda that his writing will bring them fame and money.

Although their Jazz Era life style is exciting and a series of travels and endless parties, their marriage is in trouble early on.  Both drink too much and Scott is a mean drunk.  He's physically and verbally abusive and, he has a way of crushing Zelda's every dream: actress, dancer, artist and writer. If that's not bad enough he's a womanizer and hadn't been very successful as a writer so the couple is always broke.

When Zelda needs to stop drinking for health reasons she busies herself in ballet and writing but, her marriage starts to crumble and Scott needs new drinking buddies.  Zelda definitely exhibits some form of mental illness (our group differed on whether she suffered from bipolar or schizophrenia) and whether Scott was the major cause of her breakdowns or whether she was victim of society during that time -- her ambitions stifled.  

The story is told from Zelda's POV mostly from the time the couple met until the end of their relationship.  Despite their love for one another they were disastrous for one another.  Scott had a huge ego and was terribly insecure and his behavior at times seemed to worsen Zelda's mental health issues.  I felt for Zelda at times, I thought her judgement was so much keener than Scott's yet she differed to her husband as women at that time were expected to do.

The author does a great job of capturing Zelda's voice -- both at the high and low points of her life.  Zelda was intelligent but, she was a woman born generations too early when ambition in women was not seen as a favorable trait.  Although a work of fiction, I thought this book served as a very good intro to Zelda and Scott lives.

QUOTE I liked --"Single women could work all they wanted; married women locked themselves into a gilded cage.  All of that seemed natural before.  Now it made me angry.  Now I saw how a woman might sometimes want to steer her own course rather than trail her husband like a favored dog."

4.5/5 stars

(library book)

Coming Soon to a Book Store Near You - 3 May Releases

(3) coming soon May releases that look very good to me.

Nitro Mountain; Lee Clay Johnson

Knopf- May 2016

(Description)

An astonishing, even shocking debut written with both humor and heart by, as John Casey puts it, “a natural-born writer who inhabits every one of his characters—the good, the bad, and those who swing back and forth.” 
Set in a bitterly benighted, mine-polluted corner of Virginia, Nitro Mountainfollows a group of people bound together by alcohol, small-time crime and music. There’s Leon, a hapless bass player who can embroil himself in trouble just by getting out of bed in the morning. And his would-be girlfriend, Jennifer, who’s living with Arnett, the town’s most dangerous thug—and hoping Leon will help her poison him. And there’s Arnett himself, a psychopath for the ages—albeit so charming and deranged, so strikingly authentic, that he arrests the reader’s attention at first sight and holds it fast. His mirror image, a singer-songwriter named Jones, has his own moral issues, though at least he’s tryingto be a good man. The bright if battered soul who pulls us through this story is Jennifer, a vulnerable yet strong woman struggling heroically to survive the endemic hopelessness and violence that have surrounded her since birth. 

Relentless? Yes, of course, but never remotely gratuitous. Every single moment is shot through with the pain and misery that inspire so much of the music these people love more than life itself.

Dear Fang, With Love; Rufi Thorpe

Knopf - May 2016

(Description)

A bold, spellbinding novel featuring one of the most fascinating protagonists in recent memory, Dear Fang, With Love tells the story of seventeen-year-old Vera—ravishing, troubled, wildly intelligent—who travels to Europe with her estranged father, hoping that an immersion in history might help them forget his past mistakes and her uncertain future.

Lucas and Katya were boarding school seniors when, blindingly in love, they decided to have a baby. Seventeen years later, after a decade of absence, Lucas is a weekend dad, newly involved in his daughter Vera's life. But after Vera suffers a terrifying psychotic break at a high school party, Lucas takes her to Lithuania, his grandmother's homeland, for the summer. Here, in the city of Vilnius, Lucas hopes to save Vera from the sorrow of her diagnosis. As he uncovers a secret about his grandmother, a Home Army rebel who escaped Stutthof, Vera searches for answers of her own. Why did Lucas abandon her as a baby? What really happened the night of her breakdown? And who can she trust with the truth? Skillfully weaving family mythology and Lithuanian history with a story of mental illness, inheritance, young love, and adventure, Rufi Thorpe has written a breathtakingly intelligent, emotionally enthralling book.

The Veins of the Ocean; Patricia Engel

Grove Press - May - 2016

(Description)

“Engel has an eye for detail. She knows how to drown the reader in a sense of enchantment... She writes exquisite moments.”—Roxane Gay, The Nation

Reina Castillo is the alluring young woman whose beloved brother is serving a death sentence for a crime that shocked the community, throwing a baby off a bridge—a crime for which Reina secretly blames herself. With her brother's death, though devastated and in mourning, Reina is finally released from her prison vigil. Seeking anonymity, she moves to a sleepy town in the Florida Keys where she meets Nesto Cadena, a recently exiled Cuban awaiting with hope the arrival of the children he left behind in Havana. Through Nesto’s love of the sea and capacity for faith, Reina comes to understand her own connections to the life-giving and destructive forces of the ocean that surrounds her as well as its role in her family's troubled history, and in their companionship, begins to find freedom from the burden of guilt she carries for her brother’s crime.

Set in the vibrant coastal and Caribbean communities of Miami, the Florida Keys, Havana, Cuba, and Cartagena, Colombia, with The Veins of the Ocean Patricia Engel delivers a profound and riveting Pan-American story of fractured lives finding solace and redemption in the beauty and power of the natural world, and in one another.

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - The Guise of Another; Allen Eskens

Every Tuesday I host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros where I share the first paragraph sometimes two, of a book that I'm reading or plan to read soon. I really enjoyed The Life We Bury by Allen Eskens so I'm looking forward to his most recent book as well.

The Guise of Another; Allen Eskens

2015 - Seventh Street Books

PROLOGUE

"That night, there were a few things that the man knew to a religious certainty.  He knew that he'd soon be having sex with the woman sitting in the passenger seat of his Lexis.  He knew that neither his wife nor the woman's husband yet suspected their infidelities.  And he knew that any whisper of guilt he may have felt would soon be silenced by the tumult of their act.

There were other things, however, that the man did not know.  He didn't know where or how they would be having sex.  He didn't know whether his feelings for this woman reached beyond the carnal pull of her body.  And he didn't know that their recklessness that night would trigger a chain of events that would ripple far beyond their self-absorbed little world."

What do you think -- keep reading or pass? 
(Feel free to join in this week by posting your intro below?

The Invaders, Karolina Waclawiak

The Invaders; Karolina Waclawiak

Blackstone Audio - 2015

(narrator - Bernadette Dunne - was fantastic)

Little Neck Cove is a wealthy seaside community in Connecticut where outsiders are clearly not welcomed. Here snobby country club ladies embellish stories to police for the purpose of having "the invaders" removed.  It's a place where border fences are built along the seawall by migrant workers to keep harmless fishermen out as well.

Cheryl is a 40-something year old wife of much older Jeffrey who never felt like she fit in among the other country club wives.  Once a trophy wife for Jeffery who ditched his first wife for Cheryl, now Jeffrey has lost interest in middle-aged Cheryl as well.  Teddy is Jeffrey's son, who is living with the couple after he was kicked out of Dartmouth. He's a troubled kid, whose mother has died and he is unable to curb his drug use. Cheryl and Teddy have something in common though - both of their lives are falling apart.

The storyline is hard to describe but for the most part, it is a story about identity, fitting in and family.  There is a good deal of focus on women and aging and how women are easily cast aside by some men for younger trophy wives.  The story begins with a lovely sunrise and ends with a hurricane approaching which was so appropriate for how the story plays out.

Most of the characters are unlikable and some are clearly racists.  Even though Cheryl and Teddy were not exactly likable characters, at times I felt their internal turmoil.  The Invaders reads like a dark satire about what life is probably like among the rich, bored inhabitants of one snobbish coastal community.  I was on the fence about how I really felt about this book. It is definitely a story that annoyed me at times yet I loved the audio version so much.  The narrator Bernadette Dunne was fantastic. She made the characters and their self-destructiveness come alive to make this story feel like a screenplay at times.

3.5/5 stars

(library audiobook)