The books of September 2011

September completely flew by, didn't it? It was a good month though. I mean, it's hard for a month to be bad when you spend half of it traveling in Italy.

Why aren't all of the ceilings like this everywhere?

Before I left, I finished up a couple of projects: my wrist-warmers (which have already been worn at work) and my friend's birthday present as mentioned last month.

The Happy Birthday Monster is coming to get you!

It was the last month of Borders bookstore...so sad! I picked up a few titles before they were gone for good: Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge, The Year of the Hare by Arto Paasilinna, and The Emperor's Tomb by Steve Berry.

I continued reading books from the library, but I needed to have things turned in before my vacation, so I took books I owned with me on the trip. Here's what I read in September: It Looked Different on the Model: Epic Tales of Impending Shame and Infamy by Laurie Notaro, The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan, Un Amico Italiano: Eat, Pray, Love in Rome by Luca Spaghetti, Once in a Blue Moon by Eileen Goudge, Commencement by J. Courtney Sullivan, The Charlemagne Pursuit by Steve Berry, and part of The Host by Stephenie Meyer.

The Laurie Notaro was funny as always. I'm not a huge fan of her fiction works, but these essays on her life are hysterical every time. I recommend all of them. This one has a couple of appearances from Ambien Laurie who takes on a life of her own while regular Laurie is sleeping. Seriously, if you've not read her before, check out the first one from her, The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club: True Tales from a Magnificent and Clumsy Life. I remember laughing out loud while having coffee somewhere quiet and everyone looking at me because of the disruption. If you like that one, you'll like the rest.

Dead-Tossed Waves is the second book in the Forest of Hands and Teeth series. (The library has the third one, so it will be coming soon to this blog.) This story focuses on the daughter of the main character from the first book. It turns out the story is much more complex than I originally thought...apparently the daughter is not hers biologically and she has a twin who's been gone for a long time, but was alive the last time the new male interest saw her. There are a lot of twists and turns in these books, but for a post-apocalyptic teen book, it's pretty intriguing. It's not the Hunger Games, but it's a different take on survival and you root for the characters who are pushing the story forward.

The Luca Spaghetti book wasn't that great. It did fill in any holes you may have thought existed in the Rome portion of the Eat, Pray, Love story. Luca Spaghetti is a real person and in this book he tells his story and writes in depth about his friendship with Liz and what it's all come to mean to him. Reading it while in Rome was the only thing that saved it for me because he gave a lot of history/background stories to many of the places we visited, so sometimes I would know a little more about it than if we'd just walked there and looked at it. I left it at the apartment in Rome for the next person in case it was of interest.

Once in a Blue Moon was definitely my vacation book. I've read a few of Goudge's books before...they tend to be about families and twists in lives and trying to piece it back together...generally with a few well-written sex scenes to glue it all together. This particular story was about two sisters, living with a horrible mother who ended up in jail while they were farmed out to foster care. One thrived; one repeated their mother's patterns. Once reunited, they were able to come to terms with the different hands life had dealt them and it all ends happily...after more ups and downs. It wasn't the best novel ever written, but it was engrossing and passed the time. I left it at the apartment in Positano.

Commencement is one I read about on Jen Lancaster's blog. It's four unlikely friends who go to an all female college and how their paths cross and uncross after college. It was really well done and I loved reading it. I couldn't believe what happened toward the end and that's pretty amazing to me. I started picking up on the twist, but I had never expected that particular thing to be the twist. She's a good writer, and now I totally want to read the other one by her, Maine. This one stayed in Positano too after being read almost completely while on the terrace.

I read Steve Berry's The Romanov Prophecy sometime a couple of years ago. I loved it so much that when I noticed The Charlemagne Pursuit out in paperback around the following Christmas, I asked for it. I didn't get around to reading it until I was on vacation. Apparently the Romanov one was a one-off and I plunged into the middle of a series when reading the Charlemagne one. But that's ok! The series is about the main character, Cotton Malone. There are several in the series (most all currently on loan to me from the library) and a couple more one-offs. I plan to read them all. In this book, Cotton Malone, retired justice agent, is pulled into a huge mess, simply by trying to figure out more about his father's death on a submarine that was never found. He got a classified report and it turns out, the mission of the sub was not what they'd been told and only one ship was ever sent to look for it. The mystery of this leads to a huge amount of killing, both in the states and in Europe. I could not put this book down. When it was time to do stuff, it was really hard for me...and I was in ITALY and it was BEAUTIFUL and I wanted to read about people getting killed over something that had happened like 40 years earlier. It was really, really good. I can't wait to read the rest...he's a very strong character.

When I got back, instead of heading to the library right away (just went today), I decided to read whatever was on top of the night stand. Unfortunately, that was The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I read the Twilight series. I always said it wasn't the best written, but the story was compelling, so I kept reading, and yes, I've seen all the movies so far and plan to see the other two from the last book. This one though, it's just, well, the same writing style (bad) with a story that I can't seem to follow and kind of don't want to. One friend said she liked it and others have all said it was bad. I'm determined to finish the thing since it's been a chore to read at all so far but it seems like it might be picking up a little (I'm about a third of the way through). I don't think it's going to turn out ok though...not like Anne Rice's The Queen of the Damned - the first half was the worst book I'd ever read and then all of the sudden, POW! Awesomeness! Not many authors can pull that off, and most shouldn't even try. I'll let you know how it goes next month.