The Secret Life of Bees

I finished The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. I loved it!  It’s a great story about a young teenage girl who lost her mom to a horrible accident when she was little and is left with her less than desirable father.  The time is the early 60s during the civil rights movement.  Her nanny is a black woman who stick s up for herself and lands in jail.  Lily breaks her out and they head to a small town in South Carolina so that Lily can find out more about her mother.    It’s a wonderful story full of humor, drama, sadness, determination, and the power of optimism!  I look forward to reading other books by Ms. Kidd.

I am now reading Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell.  This is the story of the young woman who decides to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Pretty good so far.

I am also re-reading A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon.  Her newest Jamie and Clare book, An Echo in the Bone, was sitting on my table for me when I came home Friday!  Misha had bought it for me.  I started to read it, but realized it has been a while since I read Breath and I had read it very quickly, so I have gone back to it first.

Reading like crazy!

I have been out of control with my reading.  In the past week I have read 6 books, not to mention the book that I finished to start this roll!  I think I am going to give each book its due and put them in separate entries.  I’ll start with Lord John and the Hand of Devilsby Diana Gabaldon.

This was a great book.  It is actually 3 short stories – LJ and the Hellfire Club, LJ and the Succubus, and LJ and the Haunted Soldier.  I really enjoyed these.  I think that these were my favorite LJ books to date.  I am not usually a fan of short stories because I feel like things are either wrapped up too quickly, or you are left dangling and wondering what came next.  I didn’t get that with any of these. 

Kudos to Ms. Gabaldon!

The Pig Did It

I finished The Pig Did It and all I really have to say is, “who cares?”  I was starting to enjoy the book, but it wrapped up with no real excitement and kind of ended like a short story.  Do I recommend? NO.

I started Lord John and the Hand of the Devils.  This is actually a compilation of three short stories involving Lord John.  The first one is actually the very first story involving Lord John (prior to his first book being released.)  I have finished that one and it was pretty good.  I believe the next two short stories take place between the 2nd and 3rd books.  Should be good. 

I am still not getting a whole lot of reading done – mostly at the doc appointments and those are getting ready to drop to once a week.  Guess I need to start reading before bed again!

The Pig Did It

I finished reading Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade yesterday. Eh. Eh, is really all I have to say. It was, well I was going to say okay, but I don’t even know if I can do that. It wasn’t bad, but it never really captured me and really had hold of my attention. I was often doing multiple things while I was reading it. Normally, I am so engrossed you can’t even get my attention! I have the next in the series and I am sure I will read it shortly!

I will be finishing The Well of Lost Plots now. I started it when Dad was in the hospital and then returned to the Lord John book to finish it.

Tonight, I bought a new book by an author unknown to me. The book is called The Pig Did It by Joseph Caldwell. Here’s what the inside flap says, “What the pid did–in Joseph Caldwell’s charming romantic tale of an American in comtemporary Ireland–is create a ruckus, a rumpus, a disturbance . . . utter pandemonium. Possibly the most obstreperous character in literarture since Buck Mulligan in James Joyce’s Ulysses, Mr. Caldwell’s pig distracts everyone from his or her chosen mission. Aaron McCloud has come to Ireland from New York City to walk the beach and pity himself for the cold indifference of the young lady in his writing class he had chosen to be his love. The pig will have none of that. Aaron’s aunt Kitty McCloud, a novelist, wants to get on with her bestselling business of correcting the classics, at the moment Jane Eyre, which in Kitty’s version will end with Rochester’s throwing himself from the tower, not the madwoman’s. The pig will have not a bit of that. What the pig eventually does is root up in Aunt Kitty’s vegetable garden evidence of a possible transgression that each of the novel’s three Irish characters is convinced the other probably benefited from. How this hilarious mystery is resoved in The Pig Did It–the first entry in Mr. Caldwell’s forthcoming Pig Trilogy–inspires both bitingly comic eloquence and a theatrically colorful canvas depicting the brooding Irish land and seascape.”