Catching up

Wow, a long time has passed since I posted.  I think I decided to give this up since I'm not much of a reviewer, there are so many of those out there.  I do miss being able to review where I have been.  So I will list what I have read since I last made an attempt to post & see where this goes.  These will not be in any order.

Pirate King, Laurie R, King
Murder on Astor Place, Victoria Thompson
Before the Poisen, Peter Robinson
22 Britannia Road, Amanda Hodgkinson
Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox, Maggie O'Farrell
Pops:  a life of Louis Armstrong (didn't finish)
Try & Make Me, Levy
A Stolen Life, Jaycee Dugard
The Women, T.C. boyle
Social Life in old New Orleans
The Grandissimes
Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Doyle

Dexter in the Dark, Jeff Lindsey

Dearly Devoted Dexter, Jeff Lindsey

Darkly Dreaming Dexter, Jeff Lindsey

The Stuff of Legend

This story is good and the artwork carries any deficiencies through to the end. My husband & I went to Comiccon in Baltimore this year for the first time and I was instantly drawn to this comic. I LOVE the artwork, I also love the story, what could draw one in more than a story about the boogeyman?

Fables: The Dark Ages

I am losing steam for this series. The whole war thing bores me, maybe cause I'm a chick? I guess the story would be flat without the conflict but I think I am done after this, the 12th in the series.

Life, Keith Richards

The Confessions of Arsene Lupin

Captain Blood

Dead Reckoning

Dead and Gone

This may be my favorite, yet! The romance with Sookie and Eric is on, hot & steamy! My favorite part & I think I have been reading 8 books to get here! Yum.

There are so many layers of drama I love it! A multi-layered Sookie novel! There are troubles with the Were's, the vamps, the FBI and the Faes. I almost had trouble keeping it all straight.

I have to say this one, above all the others, was very difficult to put down & when I finished it was all I could do to get the next one. T would be amazed!

From Dead to Worse

The drama continues. So Sookie is now recovering from her most taxing events yet. Hurricane Katrina, the disaster at the vampire summit, her boyfriend Quinn(rawrrr) is missing & she finds out she is part fairy. Because her grandmother, yea her, had an affair with a half fairy. Oops.

It continues with family drama, her brothers wife is a whore, Vampire drama, another crew wants to come in & take over (but will they? check it out!)

Sookie draws me in again, bitter sweet.

Little Bee

I really, really liked this novel. It moved me to tears as well as laughter. The story of the treatment of the African people by their own people was heart wrenching.

If you don't know it, I love character driven novels. I enjoy reading the depths of personality in characters and enjoy how this moves me emotionally. Little Bee moved me a great deal. I could relate to the working woman, driven to advance her career; the wife that is struggling to balance career and family life; and the mother that is raising a delightful male child. I could also relate to Little Bee, with her wisdom and calm. Unlike most of us in this country she was strangely at ease in her elements, focusing on what she could change and sometimes this was only her life or death.

I understand why I have read online that people are concerned about spoiling this novel. I, too, will choose not to spoil it by not revealing too much.

But read it. Read it and weep, read it and laugh, then sit still for a few moments letting it all sink in.

Shit my Dad Says, Justin Halpern

OMG. I loved this compilation! I giggled and laughed out loud throughout the novel. His father seems like such a typical blue collar, North eastern guy (like many I know about here on the East coast), but not! They are on the West coast & his father is some crazy neurophysicist spewing the worst language in front of his children that you can imagine!

I also love the concept of someone with a blog making it work & making a life of it, wouldn't it be grand?

The Sign of Four, Arthur Conan Doyle

Yes! The next Sherlock Holmes story! This was more interesting than the first, to me. More exotic, more intrigue, more characters.

It's interesting to read about Sherlock's drug problem especially with all the tear jerking and intervention stories that are out now-a-days. This introduces his drug problem without all that. It's introduced as commonplace or as a part of his personality without Watson, in first person, judging or stressing on the implications of this problem. Not that the problem isn't a problem but more that it isn't the story nor the sub story, just a part of Sherlock's personality.

Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle

After reading all the Laurie R. King / Mary Russell novels I am finally getting around to reading the actual Sherlock Holmes novels. And I love them!

These are wonderfully written, keeping one guessing from the start. I like how details are completely eliminated or minimized but come back later as a slam dunk in Sherlock's synopsis.

I can't help but see Robert Downey, Jr. as Sherlock since the movie came out a year or so ago but I think he fits! I don't think he fits for the Mary Russell Sherlock somehow but I can see Robert Downey, Jr's Sherlock all over this novel. Either he really nailed the character or he really is the character.

I will go on to read the other Conan Doyle Sherlock stories, I can download them free from www.epub.com onto my Nook Color, I am really looking forward to it!

The Weird Sisters, Eleanor Brown

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown was a coming of age story of three adult sisters and their relationship with their parents. Their father was a Shakespeare scholar, hence the name of the story and how it was reflected in the story. I expect if I knew Shakespeare I would have had a better appreciation of this novel.

Not that I didn't appreciate the story, because I did. I just wonder what was there that I didn't see because I don't know Shakespeare.

I came from a family with three daughters, I was the youngest. I can relate to Cornelia, the youngest in this story, even though my travels away from home did not take me in quite the same direction.

The middle sister in my family has very little in common with Bianca except for the desire to get away from the family, be successful and eventually to come back into the fold. My sister never strayed as far away as Bianca.

My oldest sister has some similar characteristics as Rose, the doer, the centered, grounded one. Thought not necessarily the flaws.

Their mother's cancer is what brings them back home, my mothers cancer brought me back home and I believe it brought my sisters and I closer as well. The conflicts with their relationship with their father never really goes away, like in my family, but these young women question themselves and find themselves to be more similar to themselves and with a different understanding of what home means.

Sandman, Preludes and Nocturnes, Neil Gaiman

The Sandman was one of my first graphic novels and reading this a second time around does not fail me. There's a little horror, maybe a little sci fi and definitely a little fantasy. Neil Gaiman knows and enjoys his craft and introduced me to a new genre like I'd never been interested in before.

As well as the writing, I enjoyed the graphics and enjoy the mixture of artists involved, I believe some of these are introduced in other volumes. I love Gaimen's definitions of the character Dream and the introduction of Dream's sister, Death.

Please read this, especially if you aren't into graphic novels or this fanstasy/ sci fi/ horror genre. You may find yourself a changed person.

Underboss, Sammy the Bull Gravano's Story of life in the Mafia, Peter Maas

This was JUST LIKE any mafia or mob story I have ever read or see on the screen. I suspect all the best have read this as research material.

I have wanted to read this since it first came out but it wasn't high on my lists, just one of those that I was always drawn to. It didn't disappoint me at all, but it really was just like a lot that I have seen.

There's also this element of braggadocio, Sammy is the best at everything he did & was the most loyal and honest, more than anyone else ever could be. It gets a bit thick if you've already heard about his double foot jump back into crime. It's hard to believe his wife divorced him & didn't know anything about his work life when you know she was arrested with him after being in the witness protection program, leaving it & getting back into crime.

At any rate, it was a good, fun read. Probably polished up a bit as well as exaggerated a little bit. It's obvious that The Sopranos writer had read this at some point since stories from the Sopranos seemed to come directly from stories in this novel.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl

Woooo, dude really must have been on drugs and thank goodness for it! I love love love the 1971 Gene Wilder movie version of this, the 2005 Johnny Depp version was pretty good, too. I'm just very partial to the 1971 version with all it's scary creepiness. The book was just like the first novel with a little of the second thrown in.

Just like with James & the Giant Peach I have refound my love for this author. I don't think I ever completed this when I was a child. I am glad I've read this even after multiple times of watching the movies.