My to be read list

I currently own or have checked out the following books on my "to be read list":



The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I see the similarity with the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Not just that the protagonists exist on the autism spectrum, but that the constant interpretation of behavior lends everything an air of mystery and uncertainty.  It engages you early on and has good pacing - the exposition is brief.  I can see why it's been a popular book.

While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell

How Paris Became Paris by Joan De Jean


I've begun "How Paris" and I like it .. easy to read, good flow, interesting, not too many details.  It's primarily a book about the 17th century, not the 19th century as I expected.

4/22/14

I've started One Plus One by JoJo Moyes.  I'm only a few pages in but I can also imagine this as a movie .. it reminds me of that movie, Sunshine Cleaning, with Amy Adams and Emily Blount .. I just saw American Hustle the weekend before last, in which Adams was reunited with Alessandro di Novala from June Bug and whose performance in Mansfield Park I remember with fondness.

4/27/2014

Have begun an ARC copy of Natchez Burning by Greg Iles.. I've really only just begun, but I think I'm going to like this book very much.  I must also say I really like the cover.  It has a legal theme, and it reminds me of John Grisham and Scott Turow.  Like Grisham's Sycamore Row, it's set in Mississippi.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

Read this for my book group; I didn't expect to like it, but I did like it and I found it very easy to read.

For me, the narrative did start to lag about two-thirds of the way through; I can't quite put my finger on why but I definitely thought so.  Perhaps it was, in part, that the protagonist had gone through so many changes that by that point, she was really a different person, one I wasn't so interested in.

It's also the case that there was a discussion of retailing at that point that just bothered me.  It bored me; it interrupted the narrative flow.  And, it reminded me of the Nora Roberts books I have read where having your own business is the ultimate dream and the business dreamed of is always a retail establishment.

Molly is in foster care and she's just about to age out of the system. She's bounced from foster home to foster home, and she's emotionally closed off as a result.  She gets into trouble and is given a sentence of 50 community service hours.  Her boyfriend, anxious to help her, arranges for her to help a 91-year-old retire clean out her attic.  What happens to her in that attic changes everything.

(Molly's employer reminisces about her life, which proves to have been both fascinating and heartbreaking.)