Ask Again Later by Jill Davis #41 ***

From Amazon: When her mother is diagnosed with cancer, New Yorker Emily Rhode ditches her too-perfect boyfriend and far from perfect legal career to become her mother's primary caregiver. At the same time, she reconciles with her estranged father, who left when she was five. When he offers her a job as a receptionist at his law firm, complete with Friday martini lunch dates and father-daughter cab rides to work, Emily agrees, and jokey family bonding follows as mom skates through treatment and dad proves to be more of a teddy bear than an iceman. Davis, author of Girls' Poker Night and a former writer for The Late Show with David Letterman, loads the narrative with one-liner asides and funny riffs (there's a particularly good bit about espresso machines), though she's less adept at sizing up Emily's inner turmoil, notably her fear of committing to smart, patient and loving boyfriend Sam.

Life's A Beach by Claire Cook #40 ***

From Amazon: Ginger Walsh, 41, who has ditched her job in sales and moved above her parent's garage with a cat she calls Boyfriend— despite (or because of) her casual relationship with alluring glassblower Noah. As big sister Geri gets anxious about her impending 50th, their parents decide to sell the house, and Geri's second-grader Riley lands a small role in a horror movie being filmed in their quaint New England town. Ginger babysits Riley on the set and meets a gaffer who may be charming enough to make her forget all about Noah.

08/28/07 Light, fun read.

The Ruins by Scott Smith #39 ****

From Amazon: Four American friends on vacation in Cancún, Mexico—Jeff, Amy, Eric and Stacy—meet a German tourist, Mathias, who persuades them to join his hunt for his younger brother, Henrich, last seen headed off with a new girlfriend toward some ruins. The four soon regret their impulsive decision after they find themselves lost in the jungle and freaked out by signs that they're headed for danger. Smith builds suspense through the slow accretion of telling details, until a deadly menace starts taking its toll, leaving the survivors increasingly at each other's throats.

08/27/07 Great horror/thriller read. I couldn't put it down and when I wasn't reading it I couldn't stop thinking about it.

100 Greatest Movies of All Time by Ty Burr #38 ***

Pretty much what the title suggests! Great photos and added several to my "to be seen list".

Long Time No See by Susan Isaacs #37

From Amazon: In Susan Isaac's Long Time No See, Courtney Logan, former investment analyst, devoted mother, and Long Island housewife, leaves her home on Halloween night for a quick trip to the grocery store. Five months later, her badly decomposed body is found floating in the backyard pool, concealed by the pool cover.
Enter Judith Singer, who helped find a murderer in Isaac's 1978 bestseller, Compromising Positions. Something about the Logan case doesn't make sense to Judith, and she becomes so engrossed in the mystery that she actually knocks on the grieving husband's door and offers to help exonerate him. Long Time No See draws on the best of the light, character-driven mysteries, like those by Janet Evanovich and Mary Daheim. Isaac's first- person heroine is impulsive enough to get herself into trouble, yet thoughtful enough to invite confidences. And her voice is appealingly funny and honest. "Since becoming a widow," she reflects, when faced with a twist in her investigation,


I'd tried hard not to indulge in the lonely person's Happy Hour: talking to oneself. About a year earlier, in the drugstore, I found myself befuddled, dithering between a condom rack and a display of batteries, and was startled when I heard my own loud voice demanding: 'Why am I here?' But now I gave in and had a chat with me.

Eye Contact by Cammie McGovern #36 ****

From Amazon: A parent's worst nightmare becomes a crusade for justice in McGovern's dynamite second novel (after 2002's The Art of Seeing), set in an unspecified middle-class suburban community. Shortly after Adam, a nine-year-old boy with autism spectrum disorder, and his friend Amelia, a 10-year-old diagnosed with PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder—not otherwise specified), disappear during recess from Greenwood elementary school, a traumatized Adam turns up next to Amelia's body in the nearby woods. Cara, Adam's 30-year-old single mom, helps the police unlock the clues in Adam's mind to try to identify Amelia's killer. Cara finds surprising assistance from 13-year-old Morgan, who's determined to solve the crime in order to distract authorities from his own guilty secret—accidentally starting a fire in the wetlands his lawyer/environmentalist mom was trying to protect. Meticulously researched and emotionally absorbing, this provocative page-turner also addresses an important issue—how to educate and care for children with special needs.

08/14/07 Great read.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls #35

From Amazon: Jeannette Walls's father always called her "Mountain Goat" and there's perhaps no more apt nickname for a girl who navigated a sheer and towering cliff of childhood both daily and stoically. In The Glass Castle, Walls chronicles her upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic parents--Rose Mary, her frustrated-artist mother, and Rex, her brilliant, alcoholic father. To call the elder Walls's childrearing style laissez faire would be putting it mildly. As Rose Mary and Rex, motivated by whims and paranoia, uprooted their kids time and again, the youngsters (Walls, her brother and two sisters) were left largely to their own devices. But while Rex and Rose Mary firmly believed children learned best from their own mistakes, they themselves never seemed to do so, repeating the same disastrous patterns that eventually landed them on the streets. Walls describes in fascinating detail what it was to be a child in this family, from the embarrassing (wearing shoes held together with safety pins; using markers to color her skin in an effort to camouflage holes in her pants) to the horrific (being told, after a creepy uncle pleasured himself in close proximity, that sexual assault is a crime of perception; and being pimped by her father at a bar). Though Walls has well earned the right to complain, at no point does she play the victim. In fact, Walls' removed, nonjudgmental stance is initially startling, since many of the circumstances she describes could be categorized as abusive (and unquestioningly neglectful). But on the contrary, Walls respects her parents' knack for making hardships feel like adventures, and her love for them--despite their overwhelming self-absorption--resonates from cover to cover.