Book: The Master Butcher's singing club

Author: Louise Erdrich

Review: This was a good book, although the author seemed to not know quite where to end it. 

Book: World Without End

Author: Ken Follett

Review:  The sequel to Pillars of the Earth.  Both are excellent, although epic novels.  This book picks up about 200 years later in Kingsbridge with the descendents of the Pillars of the Earth families.  There are several parallels in the stories.  There is another collapse in the old cathedral, and later a tragic collapse of the town bridge.  The tallented and intelligent Merthin is not allowed to complete his rebuilding of the structures, and on the day he is to marry the also intelligent Caris Wooler she is accused of witchcraft and must join the nunnery to get away.  The main theme of this book is also that peoples ignorance and greed is what holds back a society.  There are many side stories, such as: Merthin's brother Ralph is the bloodthirsty warrior, Philemon is the immoral thief turned monk, Anthony is the prior who wanted to do good but was afraid of change, Gwenda is the peasant girl who fools Wulfric into marrying her.  There is some gray to all these side characters, they often mean well, but their poor actions and decisions cause everyone grief in the end.  The book is even left open ended for another sequel. 

Book: Thirteen Moons

Author: Charles Frazier

Review:  This book is by the author of Cold Mountain.  I prefered Cold Mountain, but in both cases the author has an awesome writing style, with an encyclopedic knowledge of pioneer-civil war era.  This story follows Will Cooper, from his teen years to extreme old age.  He is an orphan and is living with his uncle's family.  Since he is a child, he does not necessarily stand to inherit his father's farm.  Rather he is indentured to an old man to become a clerk in an outpost on the edge of Indian territory.  While the book never specifies what state he is in, it is implied to be North Carolina area.  Fortunately for Will, he is adopted by the Indian Bear.  Will is intelligent, and better read than I.  He and Bear end up purchasing large tracts of land to try to maintain a cherokee homeland.  Will also is having a love affair with a neighbor girl, Claire.  The love story is ok, kind of goes nowhere.  Will becomes a soldier during the civil war, but this is primarily in the interest of his Indian friends.  He also becomes entangled in government affairs on the Indians behalf, and becomes famous as the White Chief.  Will's village is maintained during Jackson's trail of tears, and he even manages to get government stipends for tribe members years later.  Unfortunately, he loses interest in his business in later years, and almost goes bankrupt, and his love affair with Claire never quite pans out either. 

The book was a bit of a disappointment for these reasons.

Book: Stones from the River

Author: Ursula Hegi

Review:  This was highly recommended by family, and was quite good.  It is the story of a female dwarf who was born shortly after WWI and lives through WWII.  The story follows Trudi's life from birth.  Her Mother was a little bit crazy, and having a deformed child did not help her out.  She died in a mental institution when Trudi was a little girl.  It is heartbreaking that because they live in a small village, people are ignorant about Trudi's condition.  This includes Trudi herself when she is a child.  She wishes and prays and tries to stretch herself to become big.  Of course, she is picked on by the local children.  Later this parellels what happens to the Jews in their town.  Slowly, the people in the town turn their neighbors, and in one case his mother in to the Nazi's.  Trudi and her father start giving refuge to Jews in their basement.  Overall the book gives an interesting look at how the Holocost could have happended, as well as an interesting look at the life of a dwarf.

Book: Picture Perfect

Author: Judy Picoult

Review:  This book was not as good as her Keeping Faith.  I was struggling to keep going through it.  It starts with the main character waking up in a cemetary of a small church with amnesia.  She is rescued by Will, who has just moved to LA to be part of the LAPD, he is recently moved from a poor Indian reservation.  Jane Doe is suprised to learn that she is actually Cassie, and is married to a famous young actor.   After she gets home though, it becomes clear that life is not picture perfect.  Once she recalls that her husband is abusive, and that she is pregnant.  She turns to Will to protect her. 

Book: Mr Jefferson's Hammer (William Henry Harrison and the origins of American Indian Policy)

Author: Robert M Owens

Review: I thought I would read something different.  This took me quite awhile, because it is essentially someone's research paper put into book form.  William Henry Harrison is best known for being the first president to die in office, and for only serving 31 days.  This looks at his earlier history.  One that is interesting to me, because it takes place mostly in Vincennes.  Harrison was Govenor of the Indiana Territory, appointed by Jefferson.  I also found it interesting to read some of Indiana's early famous citizens, after whom many of Indiana's towns and counties are named.  Harrison was the son of a Virginia plantation owner.  This made him appreciate aristocracy and class.  While Indiana was technically a slave free territory, Harrison passed several acts to get around this.  His reasoning being that without slavery, Indiana would not be settled quickly enough to become a state.   While this may have been true, it also caused Illinois to request being considered a different territory.  Harrison also had some questionable policies towards Indians.  Getting them to sign over large portions of their land.  Harrison's biggest claim to fame, became defeating the Prohet at Battleground.  I have been to the monument there.  The actual story is less grand than the monument.  The Prohet's brother Tecumseh was a great warrior.  The Prophet had been a loser, but had gotten a name through religous fervor.  He cause some uprisings and murders among the Miami's.  Some time later, Tecumseh went through Vincennes on the way to New Orleans, and asked Harrison not to make any trouble with his brother.  Which of course, Harrison ignored and launched a full scale attack.  Several important American's were lost at the battle, and it led to more Indian retaliation.  This in turn led to the war of 1812.  But Harrison became a war hero, and eventually became president.

Book: The Glass Castle

Author: Jeannette Walls

Review:  This book was fantastic, I kept thinking about well after I had finished reading it.  It is really a memoir.  It is incredible that this girl survived to adulthood and was able to become somewhat of a success.  It opens with her earliest memory.  She is three years old and is boiling herself a hotdog, by standing on a chair next to the stove.  She is wearing a pink princess outfit, which is less than flame retardant.  When she goes up in flames she starts calling for her mother, who is working on her art in another room.  While she is in the hospital the state wants to take her away from her family, but her father comes in and checks her out "Wells" style.  They skip town and (thankfully?) stay together.  There is one incident after another like this.  Sadly, the author states that their best time is when they live in the desert.  They are barely scraping by, but that is best, because if they have any money then her father will start drinking.  Every time they come somewhat close to getting a better life, her parent's blow it.  For example, her mother gets an inheritance, which includes a house and some land with oil.  They move into the house, but within months it is falling apart, and they abandon it to go to her father's family.  You will be riveted by each story.  It is an amazing look at alcoholism, homelessness, and poverty.

Book: The Almost Moon

Author: Alice Sebold

Review: This was an interesting read.  The book takes place within twenty-four hours, if you don't count the lifetime of flashbacks.  The main character, Helen, is called to her mother's house by her neighbor.  Her Mother has been housebound for years, it is later revealed that she was agoraphobic.  Helen's mother is obviously going downhill, and when it becomes clear that Helen will not be able to clean up after an accident she calmly suffocates her mother.  The interesting thing is that Helen almost convinces you that it was justified, and that she is not crazy.  It takes an interesting look at mental illness, as it seems her Mother and Father were both unstable, as is she, and possibly one of her daughter's as well.

Book::  The Friday Night Knitting Club

Author:Kate Jacobs

Review:  I was pleasantly suprised at how good this book was.  It is really not about knitting, but rather the lives of the women who attend the club.  The primary focus is the owner of the shop and her teenage daughter.  The daughter's father is black, and the mother white.  The father suddenly comes back to New York after 14 years and wants to be involved, not just with the daughter, but with the mother as well.  There are several endearing characters in the club: the grandmotherly figure, soon to be single mother, grad student with troubled marriage, designer trying to break out, middle aged career woman who is out of work.  It all comes together suddenly at the end, and makes the trip worthwhile.

Book: The German Bride

Author: Joanna Hershon

Review:  It took me awhile to get into this book, because it is in Third person narrative.  Eva is a rich Jewish girl in 1860's Germany.  After she and her sister, Henriette, get their potraits painted, Eva starts an affair with the Catholic painter Heinrich.  After the affair turns sexual, Eva puts an end to it, but when she and her sister run into Heinrich later, she finds herself sneaking out to see him.  Unfortunately, Henriette follows her despite the fact that she is seven months pregnant.  The result is that Henriette is able to keep their parents from finding out about the affair and ruining Eva's life, but she looses her life and that of her child.  Eva is so distraught that she accepts a marriage proposal from a Jew who has moved to the American West.  The life that Abraham promises her is not the reality.  When they reach Santa Fe, she finds that they don't even have a home.  And she never really gets one, because he gambles away all of their money. 

I had a hard time getting into this novel, but then it seemed to end too soon. 

Book: Mister B. Gone

Author: Clive Barker

Review: I was hesitant to even pick up a Clive Barker book.  I had read one of his works previously and found it overly gory.  This was even more of a disappointment.  The idea of the book is that a demon is trapped within it's ancient pages, and he spends chapter upon chapter asking the reader to burn the book.  The only thing I liked about that was how the pages were made to appear slightly singed already.  The demon Jakabok Botch tells the story of how he was pulled from the Ninth Gate of hell into this world, and only like two of the adventures he had up here.  It ends with Guttenberg inventing the printing press and a war between heaven and hell, as to how it may be used.  An alright concept, with a lousy execution.

Book: The Secret Life of Bees

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

Review:  I read this one in only a day.  Lily is a sad teenage girl.  She accidently shot her mother when she was four.  Her stand in mother is Rosalee, a former black peach picker on her father's farm.  Her father is awful to her.  It is 1964 and Johnson has just signed the Civil Rights law.  When Rosalee gets herself arrested, Lily breaks her out and they make a run for Tiburon SC.  A name that she got from one of her mother's possessions.  She arrives at August Boatwrights house.  She is a beekeeper, who has a house full of love.  Lily learns that her mother had once been there, and had left her to go there.  The story has heartbreak, but Lily also finds a place where she is loved.  The story is very real, that parents aren't perfect, and even her father is not really a monster.

Book: The Djinn in the Nightengale's eye

Author: A G Byatt

Review:  As one might guess from the title, this book is in the form of a fairy tale meets real life.  I was a bit confused when I started reading, because ther are three tales that prelude the actual story.  I assume that they are included to add something to the story, but then the author also includes more classic tales with the main story.  Dr Gillian Perholt is a naratologist.  In other words, she knows lots of fairytales.  She is getting older, and her husband left her for a younger woman, but she didn't really mind that much.  She finds a Gin in a bottle, who of course gives her three wishes.  In their discourse, the genie tells his own tale which consists primarily of unrequited love.  Gillian wishes for a younger body, but not an overly young body, her own when she was about 35.  She is taken by the Gin's tales of love, and wishes that he would love her.  The Gin tells her a tale about wishing, and it becomes obvious that she should grant him his freedom as her final wish.

Book: Katya

Author: Sandra Birdsell

Review:  This was an interesting story of Katya, who is a young girl growing up in a Mennonite farming community in the steppes of Russia.  Apparently, Russia was one of the places that Mennonites fled to due to religous oppression in Germany.  They became very successful, which put them in a bad situation once World War One started, and then the Russian Revolution.  Katya's father is the overseer of Privol'Noye plantation.  She has an older sister and 3 little brothers and later a baby sister.  Her father is somewhat cheated by the owner, he is not given promised land, and his children have to start working in exchange for an education that was previously free.  Things go from bad to worse, once the revolution starts.  The peasants come in and take over the plantation, it is horrible that they waste all the stored food and shoot the milk cows, rather than making an effort to take care of the land.  Then a killing frenzy starts, Katya is able to escape with her little sister Sara.  Eventually, she is able to immigrate to Canada, where she grows old, and tells her story to a young man.

I love books where I get to learn new things.

Book: The Shipping News

Author: Annie Proulx

Review: This was a good book.  Quoyle is the unlikely main character of the book.  He is an overweight loser, whose wife is sleeping around on him to the point that she is not even living in their trailer anymore.  He does his best to take care of their two young daughters, who his wife, Petal, sometimes claims to have forgotten completely.  When his wife dies, he is still completely crushed.  His Aunt convinces him to get a new start with her, by moving to their homeland of Newfoundland.  It sounds like a lousy place to live to me.  There ancesteral home is still standing on the rock that it was dragged and bolted to.  Quoyle gets a job writing the shipping news for the local paper.  They meet all kinds of great characters in the slowly dying town, and a family secret is revealed as well.  Quoyles daughter, Bunny, is stuggling with understanding death, and is more confused than ever, when their friend wakes up during his own funeral. 

Book: The Watchmen

Authors: Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons

Review: This is a comic book published in 86-87.  Bryan saw it in the library and insisted that I read it.  It is a rather dark look at a future where masked vigilantes had once been heroes, but are now obsolete and have been made illegal.  The story opens with a questionable death.  One of the former heroes appears to have been murdered, by being thrown out of a shatter proof window in a highrise.  Rosharch, one of the heroes who refused to quit, starts to investigate.  He finds that the victim was "The Comedian", a former hero, who had since worked for the government.  There is a hero who has real superpowers.  The government dubbed him Dr. Manhattan, but he is really a scientist who was the victim of an unfortunate accident.  This has left him with some amazing abilities, like being able to walk through walls, teleport, see the future, see and manipulate atoms.  He is part of the reason the vigilantes are obsolete.  Yet the world is becoming a worse place.  When Dr. Manhattan retreats to Mars, will the former vigilantes be able to solve the mysteries of their kind being killed, and will they be able to save the world from one of their own?

Book: The Faraday Girls

Author: Monica Mcinerney

Review: The Faraday Girls are five sisters.  They are: Juliet, the surrogate mother; Miranda, the drama queen; Eliza, the sports trainer; Sadie, the "runt of the litter"; Clementine, the scientist.  The youngest, Clementine, finds herself pregnant at seventeen.  She takes a very mature view that the father will probably not be involved and that she can still put herself throught school and raise a child.  Her sisters make a promise to help her until Maggie is five.  The sisters start to flag after a few months, and Clementine is overwhelmed.  Sadie, who is not doing well at university, volunteers to become the nanny.  This causes some bitterness between Sadie and Clementine.  When Maggie turns five, all of the sisters start to move away to jobs or get married, except Sadie.  In a panic, Sadie kidnaps Maggie briefly.  Maggie is reunited with her mother and grandfather, but Sadie becomes an outcast.  It is revealed that their deceased mother, was not the saint their father makes her out to be, and in fact hated Sadie.  Twenty years later, Maggie is sent to find Sadie. 

I was suprised that this book did not have a storybook ending, and the characters were very realistic.

Book: Keeping Faith

Author: Jodi Picoult

Review: Because this author has several best sellers, I picked one out from the library.  This one was pretty good.  Mariah catches her husband in the act, when she drops by home with her daughter Faith and his girlfriend walks out of the shower.  It is revealed that Mariah had tried to kill herself seven years before, and her husband had her committed.  After Faith has an unusual accident, she starts talking to an imaginary friend she refers to as her Guard.  Mariah takes her daughter to a psychiatrist because of her own history, and the fact that she was medicated when she was pregnant with Faith.  The doctor can find nothing wrong with her, and suggests that Faith my be speaking to her God, not her Guard.  The doctor innocently reports this at a conference, and the story falls into the hands of a TV show host, who makes a living debunking religious stories.  Faith's story becomes more believable when she brings her dead grandmother back to life after a heartattack. 

This was a page turner, I kept wondering how they were going to resolve the little girls relationship with God.

Book: The Persian Bride

Author: James Buchanan

Review: A young Englishman finds himself in Iran in 1974.  He speaks Persian, and is able to forge documents to get a job teaching at a girls school.  He falls in love and marries the daughter of a high ranking Iranian official.  They have to flee with the help of a Russian diplomat/spy.  John only gets to spend a year with his bride and their baby daughter before they are forced apart during the serious upheavals of Iran in the seventies.

This book was a bit confusing in places, but the story of John searching for Shirin is incredible.  They spend years in prisons being tortured, because it turns out that she is the illegetimate daughter of the Shah.  I would recommend getting some of the backstory on Iran's polictial history before trying to read this.

Book: local Girls

Author: Alice Hoffman

Review: This is the story of a girl growing up in the Long Island Suburbs.  As a young teen, she and her best friend Jill sneak out of the house at night, and sometimes play pranks on the neighborhood. As they get older, Jill gets pregnant and drops out of school, Gretel's brother ends up working permanently at the Food Star rather than going to Harvard, and her father leaves her mother for a younger woman.  On top of all of that her mother's cancer returns.  It sounds like a lot of bad luck, but realistically is a pretty average life.  There are a few "miracles" in the story that I found to be a bit far-fetched, but all in all it was a decent read, although I'm not sure there was much point to the story.