Lagging Behind Again

Here are the books I've read, and haven't had the opportunity to post about:

Resolution by Robert B. Parker- This was the sequel to Appaloosa, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may have to start reading more westerns. I love the camaraderie between the two lead characters, and the great John Wayne/old west feel to the book.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry- This was a wonderful book, and a very interesting subject (reading the future in lace). I was a little disappointed in a certain twist to the story, though. I don't know, it just kind of threw me a bit, and I didn't like that. Haha! I loved the locale, however, and I am very interested in reading the sequel when it comes out.

Probable Future by Alice Hoffman- I loved the locale, the characters, the unique "gifts" that each woman had, the family history, and oh just about everything. Haha! It was well written, fast-paced, and completely enthralling.

The Old West

Rating: 4/5

Review: This was my first western book that wasn't considered a romance. I liked it a lot, and I am already starting it's sequel, Resolution. I saw the movie version first, and I enjoyed it. I liked having a visual of the characters already in my mind. Of course, I love Viggo Mortenson, and he was an excellent Everett Hitch. If you like John Wayne movies, then you should like this book. It's a classic western theme, and though a bit harsh at times, it was a great story. It seemed quite true to it's genre, and history. It was also a very easy and fast read.

Book Description: In one of Parker's finest, two gunmen arrive in the lawless town of Appaloosa where the actions of a renegade rancher have already taken their toll.

Not Just a Cat

Rating: 4.5/5

Review: This was a wonderful, heartwarming story about a cat and the woman who saved his life. I had never heard of this famous cat, but I am so glad that I have learned about him now. Had I known of him before, though, I would have found a way to go and see him in person. I love that he was such a people person and that he really lifted the spirits of those who needed it the most. It is funny, bittersweet, interesting, and just plain good.

Book Description: How much of an impact can an animal have? How many lives can one cat touch? How is it possible for an abandoned kitten to transform a small library, save a classic American town, and eventually become famous around the world? You can't even begin to answer those questions until you hear the charming story of Dewey Readmore Books, the beloved library cat of Spencer, Iowa.Dewey's story starts in the worst possible way. Only a few weeks old, on the coldest night of the year, he was stuffed into the returned book slot at the Spencer Public Library. He was found the next morning by library director, Vicki Myron, a single mother who had survived the loss of her family farm, a breast cancer scare, and an alcoholic husband. Dewey won her heart, and the hearts of the staff, by pulling himself up and hobbling on frostbitten feet to nudge each of them in a gesture of thanks and love. For the next nineteen years, he never stopped charming the people of Spencer with his enthusiasm, warmth, humility, (for a cat) and, above all, his sixth sense about who needed him most.As his fame grew from town to town, then state to state, and finally, amazingly, worldwide, Dewey became more than just a friend; he became a source of pride for an extraordinary Heartland farming town pulling its way slowly back from the greatest crisis in its long history.

Time travel to the Black Plague

Rating: 4/5

Review: This was an amazing book that takes the reader into the time of the Black Plague. The characters were well developed and one truly cares what happens to them, especially the young historian, Kivrin. There is sadness, humor, intrigue, and even a bit of adventure to the story, and it's no wonder the author has won awards. I like the concept of time travel being an everyday thing, and used by historians to get facts straight.

Book Description: For Kivrin, preparing an on-site study of one of the deadliest eras in humanity's history was as simple as receiving inoculations against the diseases of the fourteenth century and inventing an alibi for a woman traveling alone. For her instructors in the twenty-first century, it meant painstaking calculations and careful monitoring of the rendezvous location where Kivrin would be received.But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin -- barely of age herself -- finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history's darkest hours.Five years in the writing by one of science fiction's most honored authors, Doomsday Book is a storytelling triumph. Connie Willis draws upon her understanding of the universalities of human nature to explore the ageless issues of evil, suffering and the indomitable will of the human spirit.

Ghosts, Unusal Happenings, and Interesting People

Rating: 5/5

Review: This is one of those novels that completely consumes you, until you finally reach the end with a big gasp of breath. It's beautiful and tragic, heartwarming and intriguing. It's full of ghosts, history, characters you really care about, and a mystery that will completely hold you enthralled. It's also a book that will make you value your mortality and hold on to life. It will make you want to talk to the ones you love and hold them just a little bit tighter, because you just never know what's around the next corner. Someone is always worse of then yourself.

Book Description: An intricate tale of love, haunting memories, and renewal, Second Glance begins in current-day Vermont, where an old man puts a piece of land up for sale and unintentionally raises protest from the local Abenaki Indian tribe, who insist it's a burial ground. When odd, supernatural events plague the town of Comtosook, a ghost hunter is hired by the developer to help convince the residents that there's nothing spiritual about the property.
Enter Ross Wakeman, a suicidal drifter who has put himself in mortal danger time and again. He's driven his car off a bridge into a lake. He's been mugged in New York City and struck by lightning in a calm country field. Yet despite his best efforts, life clings to him and pulls him ever deeper into the empty existence he cannot bear since his fianc - e's death in a car crash eight years ago. Ross now lives only for the moment he might once again encounter the woman he loves. But in Comtosook, the only discovery Ross can lay claim to is that of Lia Beaumont, a skittish, mysterious woman who, like Ross, is on a search for something beyond the boundary separating life and death. Thus begins Jodi Picoult's enthralling and ultimately astonishing story of love, fate, and a crime of passion.

Well, I guess I have a little catching up to do! Here's what I've been reading:



Rating: 5/5

Review: This was an excellent resource, and I highly reccomend it for anyone wanting to "go green".

Rating: 5/5

Review: This was a wonderful book about hope and faith in the absolute worst of times. I am so glad that I read it, and I highly reccomend this book to anyone and everyone.

Rating: 4/5

Review: Creepy and disturbing, but very good. I could barely put it down.

Rating: 4/5

Review: This was a very interesting take on the Salem Witch Trials, and I was intrigued by the fact that the author is an actual descendent of one of the women that was sentenced. The details were extraordinary, and I was completely enthralled by the middle of the book. I was right there in that time period, witnessing the idiocy and cruelty of those people. It was quite an experience.

A Dark Romance

Rating: 5/5

Review: Well, this was certainly a powerful novel. I can't believe that this is the author's first book! The details were amazing, and even hard to bare at times. I could see the burning of flesh far too vividly in my mind, but I suppose that's what held me captive. It definitely gives you a new outlook on life, and even love. The stories that were interwoven with the main one could be a bit tedious at times, but not overly so. Take the time to read this one, and I am sure you won't regret it.

Book Description: The narrator of The Gargoyle is a very contemporary cynic, physically beautiful and sexually adept, who dwells in the moral vacuum that is modern life. As the book opens, he is driving along a dark road when he is distracted by what seems to be a flight of arrows. He crashes into a ravine and suffers horrible burns over much of his body. As he recovers in a burn ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, he awaits the day when he can leave the hospital and commit carefully planned suicide—for he is now a monster in appearance as well as in soul.

A beautiful and compelling, but clearly unhinged, sculptress of gargoyles by the name of Marianne Engel appears at the foot of his bed and insists that they were once lovers in medieval Germany. In her telling, he was a badly injured mercenary and she was a nun and scribe in the famed monastery of Engelthal who nursed him back to health. As she spins their tale in Scheherazade fashion and relates equally mesmerizing stories of deathless love in Japan, Iceland, Italy, and England, he finds himself drawn back to life—and, finally, in love. He is released into Marianne's care and takes up residence in her huge stone house. But all is not well. For one thing, the pull of his past sins becomes ever more powerful as the morphine he is prescribed becomes ever more addictive. For another, Marianne receives word from God that she has only twenty-seven sculptures left to complete—and her time on earth will be finished.