Shutter Island by Dennis LeHane #8 ****

From Amazon: In 1993, Dr. Lester Sheehan begins a journal to remember "Teddy and his poor dead wife. . . and those twin terrors, Rachel Solando and Andrew Laeddis." With this narrative device in place, the story flashes back to 1954, to Shutter Island's Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane. U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels is called after a female inmate vanishes from a locked room. One difference between simply listening and having a listening experience is Tom Stechschulte. He doesn't merely perform characters; he channels them. Main characters, doctors, nurses, inmates, and orderlies have believable individual voices and personalities.

02/28/07 I enjoyed this read the pages sped by. It did leave me with more questions than answers. May be worth reading again to see if I missed some things.

You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore #7 ****

From Amazon: Nineteen-year-old Tommy is a bewildered hipster recently relocated to San Francisco from Incontinence, Ind. His sarcastic redhead (and bloodsucking) girlfriend, Jody, brings him into the fold of the undead ("I wanted us to be together," she says). Tommy, understandably, has mixed feelings; vampirism has its perks (you can turn to mist, live forever and the sex is awesome), but sunlight is death and blood hunger makes you do some pretty foul things. Also, the duo is hunted by Elijah, the ancient vampire who "turned" Jody and wants her back, and a band of Safeway stock boys/amateur vampire hunters known as the Animals (with whom pre–dark side Tommy once rolled). With the assistance of their devoted minion, goth girl Abby Normal, whose hilarious diary entries form part of the narrative, Tommy and Jody evade their pursuers, feeding at night and conking out at dawn, all the while learning how vampirism complicates love.

02/28/07 Another fun read from Christopher Moore!!!

Rachel's Holiday by Marian Keyes #6 *****

From Amazon: Irish by birth but a trendy New Yorker for the past eight years, Rachel Walsh learns just what it means to have too much fun in this lively drama about addiction and recovery. Rachel enjoys cocaine, alcohol and meeting men in bars, especially men wearing tight leather pants. She can match anybody's hilarious anecdotes about a Catholic childhood, but recently her life's gone awry, and God has become "more like a celestial stand-up comic" than a "benign old guy with long hair." When she wakes up in a hospital emergency room and finds she's been diagnosed as a suicidal drug addict, she's enraged. She's also broke and unemployed, and her boyfriend has abandoned her. As a final indignity, her father takes her back home and books her into Dublin's Betty Ford-like clinic, the Cloisters. Famous for a clientele of rock stars, it should be a glamorous spa, but it isn't. Quarters are spartan, clients do housework and group therapy is humiliating. It could be worse, though, and there's one good-looking fellow-inmate who might, or might not, be a lifeline post-Cloisters. This novel isn't a how-to on overcoming addiction but an examination, often comic, of treatment that is expected to result in personality changes necessary for recovery. Smart-ass Rachel actually becomes a beguiling heroine after learning to wake up and cook eggs at about the same time in the morning she used to fall into somebody's bed in New York. Clever badinage ("the only way to get over one man is get under another") unfortunately sometimes gives way to phrases like "pantie-meltingly gorgeous."

02/19/07 I adored this book!

Self Storage by Gayle Brandeis #5 ****

From Amazon: Flan Parker is floundering: her sweet but hapless husband, Shae, is procrastinating on finishing his dissertation, their young children are running wild, and the beloved yard sales she holds in their University of California-Riverside student housing cul-de-sac are under fire from the housing office. Then Flan becomes fascinated with her Afghani neighbors, particularly the wife, Sodaba, hidden beneath a burqa. When Sodaba, pulling into her driveway, accidentally runs over Flan's daughter, racial tension in the community is heightened. The unlikely friendship that develops between Sodaba and Flan in the accident's aftermath sparks its share of trouble as the FBI begins investigating Sodaba's husband for suspected ties to terrorism.

02/12 I thourghly enjoyed this story! I could relate to Flan on so many levels it was great.

Second Summer of the Sisterhood by Ann Brashares #4 ****

From Amazon: Like the summer before, Carmen, Bridget, Tibby, and Lena share their individual adventures with the Pants collective, creating an engaging, kaleidoscopic narrative of four voices. This summer, Tibby attends a film program in Virginia and Bridget (Bee), whose mother has died, impulsively jets off to Alabama to get reacquainted with her estranged grandmother. Lovely Lena tries to protect herself from the heartbreak of loving her long-distance Greek god boyfriend Kostos, and Carmen deals (poorly) with her mother dating again and having the nerve to borrow the Pants!

The Second Summer, while breezy and fun to read, deals seriously with love lost and found, death, and finding the courage to live honestly. The teens' lessons are often painful, but the Sisterhood prevails.

02/12 This is a fun read and look forward to seeing the girls grow in the next book.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman #3 ***

From Amazon: Shadow gets out of prison early when his wife is killed in a car crash. At a loss, he takes up with a mysterious character called Wednesday, who is much more than he appears. In fact, Wednesday is an old god, once known as Odin the All-father, who is roaming America rounding up his forgotten fellows in preparation for an epic battle against the upstart deities of the Internet, credit cards, television, and all that is wired. Shadow agrees to help Wednesday, and they whirl through a psycho-spiritual storm that becomes all too real in its manifestations. For instance, Shadow's dead wife Laura keeps showing up, and not just as a ghost--the difficulty of their continuing relationship is by turns grim and darkly funny, just like the rest of the book.

Armed only with some coin tricks and a sense of purpose, Shadow travels through, around, and underneath the visible surface of things, digging up all the powerful myths Americans brought with them in their journeys to this land as well as the ones that were already here. Shadow's road story is the heart of the novel, and it's here that Gaiman offers up the details that make this such a cinematic book--the distinctly American foods and diversions, the bizarre roadside attractions, the decrepit gods reduced to shell games and prostitution. "This is a bad land for Gods," says Shadow.

02/06/07 Well I gave this 3 stars despite the fact I didn't even finish the only reason I'm including it is I was just about done but was so frustrated about how long it was taking me I had to move on. I know I'm probably missing a great ending but maybe I'll catch up with it another time. Had some good potential an in the end probably just not my genre.

Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors #2 ***

From Amazon: This is the story of the eldest daughter of the 17th-century emperor who built the Taj Mahal. From her self-imposed exile, Jahanara recalls growing up in the Red Fort; the devotion her parents, Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal, had for each other; and the events that took place during the construction of the fabulous monument to their love. Although Jahan is the emperor and has many wives, Mumtaz (he calls her Taj) is his soul mate, a constant companion and wise political consultant. She even travels with him into battle, where she eventually dies giving birth to their 14th child. Fortunately, she has the foresight to begin preparing her favorite daughter, Jahanara, by instructing the girl in the arts of influence and political strategy. Thus the young woman is able to pick up where her savvy mother left off. From then on it is Jahanara who advises the emperor, often instead of her dreamy brother, Dara, who is the rightful heir to the throne. It is she who helps with construction of the magnificent mausoleum for Mumtaz's remains and who falls in love with its architect, Isa, a man whom she can never marry. And it is she who leads a failed effort to defend the throne against a coup by her evil brother, Aurangzeb.

The Pact by Jodi Picoult #1 ***

Popular high-school swimming star Chris Harte and talented artist Em Gold bonded as infants; their parents have been next-door neighbors and best friends for 18 years. When they fall in love, everyone is ecstatic. Everyone, it turns out, except for Em, who finds that sex with Chris feels almost incestuous. Her emotional turmoil, compounded by pregnancy, which she keeps secret, leads to depression, despair and a desire for suicide, and she insists that Chris prove his love by pulling the trigger. The gun is fired in the first paragraph, and so the book opens with a jolt of adrenaline. But Picoult stumbles in delineating both sets of parents' responses to the tragedy. Unconvincing behavior and dialogue inappropriate to the situation (plus, most importantly, the fact that the parents fail to discuss crucial topics) never touch the essence of bereavement and thus destroy credibility. Picoult redeems herself in flashbacks that reveal the two marital relationships and the personalities of both couples; and she sensitively explores the question of how well parents can ever know their children. After Chris is accused of murder and jailed, the narrative acquires impressive authenticity and suspense, with even the minor characters evoked with Picoult's keen eye for telling detail. The courtroom scenes (reminiscent of Picoult's 1996 novel, Mercy), are taut and well paced. Readers may remain unconvinced, however, that an intelligent young man like Chris would not have sought some help rather than respond to his lover's desperate request.

01/10/07 This was a good read but a bit perdictible after reading My Sister's Keeper and Plain Truth prior to this. It's a bit of a sad story but interesting and a page turner.

#55 The Boy Next Door by Meg Cabot ***

From Amazon: New York City gossip columnist Melissa Fuller is known for being obsessive about Winona Ryder, dating the wrong men and being tardy for work. Arriving particularly late one morning, she explains to her colleagues at the New York Journal that she was detained by the attempted murder of her elderly next-door neighbor, Mrs. Friedlander, who is in a coma. Always the good girl, Mel has volunteered to take care of Mrs. Friedlander's many pets until the neighbor's nephew Max, a famous fashion photographer, can be reached. Her co-workers warn her about Max, a notorious lady's man. Contrary to the gossip, when she meets Max he is down to earth, funny and kind. Despite the strange fact that he likes to be called John and appears to be between photo shoots, she begins to date him and learns that he shares her love for Stephen King novels and natural disasters. It doesn't take long for her to fall head over heels, or for Mel's mom to write, "Get a ring on your finger before you uncross those legs, sweetie." When a mysterious e-mail arrives explaining that there is more to her beau than meets the eye, she is duly upset and uses the power of her pen to get even. But when Mrs. Friedlander's attacker returns, will Mel and Max be able to put their differences aside to catch a killer? Full of clever e-mail banter and tongue-in-cheek humor, this cheeky novel should be enjoyed in one sitting.

01/02/07 This was a fun, quick read. I got clued in on Meg Cabot from my 13 year old daughter and some friends over on the Woman to Woman board on iVillage.

#54 The Cold Dish By Craig Johnson **

From Amazon: Walt Longmire, the veteran sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyo., usually has little to do on his patrols. When Cody Pritchard is found shot to death near the Cheyenne reservation, everyone, including Deputy Victoria Moretti, a transplanted Philadelphian, believes he died in an accident. But two years earlier, Cody was one of four high schoolers convicted of raping a young Native American girl. All were given suspended sentences, and when another of the four turns up dead, it appears that someone is out for revenge. As fear mounts, Sheriff Longmire feels tension in the air between the white population and the Native American community, and he's not pleased to think that his lifelong friend, Henry Standing Bear, might be directly involved in the murders.

01/19/07 I hate to say this but this was just okay for me. I really wanted to like this Wyoming author being from there and all. Maybe that was part of the problem I didn't need so many words to tell me what Wyoming is like. The parts that caught my interest were just two few and far between. However, I was surprised; never guessed who the killer was.

#53 Leave No Trace by Hannah Nyala ****

From Amazon: Nyala's first foray into the fiction arena chronicles a similar quest for survival that's so believable, it's easy to forget this is fiction. Set in Australia's Tanami Desert, the book eloquently balances suspenseful and graphic scenes with moments of introspection and light humor. A trio of complex protagonistsTally Nowata (the female tracker who narrates the story), Paul O'Malley (her lover) and Josephine O'Malley (Paul's spoiled 10-year-old daughter from a previous marriage)engage the reader from the outset. The story opens with Paul taking a routine trip from his desert research camp to pick up Jo, who just arrived from the States. When Paul and his daughter fail to return after several days, Tally begins making her way across the desert, eventually encountering Paul, who's been murdered, and a near-death Jo. The rest of the novel chronicles Tally and Jo's courageous journey as they struggle to survive and elude Paul's killers, who are hot on their trail.

12/20/06 I really enjoyed this book. I was drawn to it because the main character is a SAR worker in the Grand Tetons. However, the book takes place in the Austrailian dessert. Tally took awhile to grow on me but once the story got moving it was nonstop adventure at it's best.

#52 The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers***

From Amazon: At its center is the deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly, the book's heroine (and loosely based on McCullers), finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attuned to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins a haunting, unforgettable story that gives voice to the rejected, the forgotten, and the mistreated -- and, through Mick Kelly, gives voice to the quiet, intensely personal search for beauty.

12/20/06 Glad I got this one read. I had it on my shelf for some time and saw it in the movie A Love Song for Bobby Long and had to pick it up.

The Best of 2006

All 5 star reads!!!

Godless by Pete Hautman
Across Five Aprils by Irene Hunt
Towelhead by Alicia Erian
Watermelon by Marion Keys
So B. It by Sarah Weeks
Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs
Gods In Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
The book of Joe by Johnathon Tropper.

To make it an even 10 my favorite 4 star reads. I'll up them to 4 1/2 stars...

Lost and Found by Carolyn Parkhurst
Must Love Dogs by Claire Cook

***Subject to change since the year isn't up yet.

2007 Fiction Lovers Challenge

Read 26 books that have been sitting on my shelf way too long!!!

I've composed a list which is subject to change. What constitutes too long?? Something that has been sitting on the shelf over 6 months???

2nd Chance by James Patterson
The Analyst by John Katzenbach
Back When We Were Grown Ups by Anne Tyler
Big Cherry Holler by Adriana Trigiani
Lamb by Christopher Moore
Enders Game by Orson Scott Card
Eyes of Prey by John Sandford
Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon
Second Summer of the Sisterhoodby Ann Brashares DONE!!
White Out by Ken Follett
Sahara by Clive Cussler
Tillerman Series by Cynthia Voigt
Shutter Islandby Dennis LeHane DONE!!
The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Two for the Money by Janet Evanovich
The Laughing Corpes by Laurell K. Hamilton
True To Form by Elizabeth Berg
Oliva Joules and the Overactive Imagination by Helen Feilding
No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Messenger by Lois Lowry
Magical Thinking by Augsten Burroughs
The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier
The Colorado Kid by Stephen King
Donorboy by Brendan Halpin
The Ha Ha by Dave King
Object of My Affection by Stephen McCauley

2006 Fiction Lovers Alphabet Challenge; How I ended up

The challenge was to read a "new to me author" for every letter in the alphabet. Well I'm still missing a few letters but read over 30 new authors which were over half of all the books I read this year.

A
B = Beard, Philip Dear Zoe
C = Cook, Claire Must Love Dogs
C = Colas, Emily Just Checking
D = Dallas, Sandra The Persian Pickle Club
E = Estes, Winston M. Another Part of the House
E = Erian, Alicia Towelhead
E = Evanovich, Janet One For The Money
E = Edwards, Kim The Memory Keepers Daughter
F = Flock, Elizabeth Me & Emma
F = Farmer, Nancy The House of the Scorpion
G
H = Hautman, Pete Godless
H = Hunt, Irene Across Five Aprils
I = Isaacs, Susan Compromising Positions
J = Jackson, Joshilyn Gods in Alabama
K = Keyes, Marian Watermelon
L = Leavitt, Caroline Girls in Trouble
L = Lindsay, Jeff Darkly Dreaming Dexter
L = L'Engle, Madeleine A Wrinkle in Time
M = Myers, Walter Dean, Monster
M = McCullers, Carson The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
N = Nolan, Han Send Me Down A Miracle
N = Nyala, Hannah Leave No Trace
O
P = Packer, Ann The Dive From Clausen's Pier
Q
R = Rosoff, Meg How I Live Now
S = Spark, Muriel The Finishing School
S = Sandford, John Rules of Prey
S = Saul, John Perfect Nightmare
T = Tucker, Lisa Shout Down The Moon
T = Tropper, Jonathan The Book Of Joe
U
V = Voigt, Cynthia Homecoming
W = Westerfeld, Scott Uglies
W = White, Kate If Looks Could Kill
W = Weeks, Sarah So B. It
W = Wilde, Oscar The Importance of Being Earnest
W = Wiesel, Elie Night
Z

#51 Night by Elie Wiesel ***

From Amazon: In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night, a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers in this harrowing book, which probes life's essential riddles with the lucid anguish only great literature achieves. It marks the crucial first step in Wiesel's lifelong project to bear witness for those who died.

12/04/06 My daughter had gotten this book and gave it a good review. Also heard other good things about it. Good!!!

#50 Just Checking by Emily Colas ***

From Amazon: Colas worries a lot. She fears that the baby-sitter is using the family's toothbrushes. She suspects someone has tampered with her Cap'n Crunch. An obsessive-compulsive mother of two, Colas makes worry an art. This anecdotal, first-person account of Colas' illness is highly readable and funny. It also benefits from one of the symptoms of the illness (which affects 2.5 percent of Americans over the life course): a vague awareness that something is awry. At its best, Just Checking is a lighthearted glimpse of a treatable illness. But it's not the whole story. After she runs over a chipmunk, Colas repeatedly returns to the scene to verify that she has not killed a child. Behind the comic behaviors that Colas emphasizes is a gnawing disorder that is often painful and frightening. One hopes that Colas will take up her pen again, explore this part of her experience, and risk the darkness.

11/27/06 Was a nice quick read and you may not appreciate it unles you or someone you know has a quirk or two that could be persceived as OCD.

#49 The Dive From Clausen's Pier by Ann Packer ****

From Amazon: Carrie Bell is the worst person in the world. Or so she would have you think. In the gripping, carefully paced debut novel of personal epiphany, The Dive from Clausen's Pier, by O. Henry Award winner Ann Packer, Carrie's very survival is dependent upon her leaving her fiancé, even after he dives into shallow water at a Memorial Day picnic and becomes paralyzed. Things hadn't been going so well for the Madison, Wisconsin, high school and college sweethearts. Carrie knew, deep down, that she wasn't going to become Mrs. Michael Mayer. But expectations and pressure from all sides--his family, her mother, her best friend Jamie, Mike's best friend Rooster--force Carrie to shut herself up in her room and sew outfits of her own design as if in a trance. Then one night she slips out of the only universe she's ever known. Many hours later she finds herself on the doorstep of a high school classmate living in Manhattan. Carrie's adventures in the city--quirky roommates and a new romance with an older, emotionally impenetrable man--confuse her in her quest both to forgive herself and to embark on a career in fashion design.

11/27/06 This was a good read but was unhappy with the ending.

#48 The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

From Amazon: Oscar Wilde’s madcap farce about mistaken identities, secret engagements, and lovers’ entanglements still delights readers more than a century after its 1895 publication and premiere performance. The rapid-fire wit and eccentric characters of The Importance of Being Earnest have made it a mainstay of the high school curriculum for decades.

Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gewndolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack’s ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack’s country home on the same weekend—the "rivals" to fight for Ernest’s undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds—pandemonium breaks loose.

Only a senile nursemaid and an old, discarded hand-bag can save the day!

#47 The Memory Keepers Daughter by Kim Edwards***

From Amazon: A snowstorm immobilizes Lexington, Ky., in 1964, and when young Norah Henry goes into labor, her husband, orthopedic surgeon Dr. David Henry, must deliver their babies himself, aided only by a nurse. Seeing his daughter's handicap, he instructs the nurse, Caroline Gill, to take her to a home and later tells Norah, who was drugged during labor, that their son Paul's twin died at birth. Instead of institutionalizing Phoebe, Caroline absconds with her to Pittsburgh. David's deception becomes the defining moment of the main characters' lives, and Phoebe's absence corrodes her birth family's core over the course of the next 25 years. David's undetected lie warps his marriage; he grapples with guilt; Norah mourns her lost child; and Paul not only deals with his parents' icy relationship but with his own yearnings for his sister as well.

11/16/06 This was a good story. However, I did find most of the characters on the depressing side. Loved the way it ended even though I despised the way it started.