I have been on a roll lately with my 24 books a year goal, so I upped it to 30 books. Challenge!
Pure
While I would never have picked this book up on my own, once again I am branching out do to my book club assignments. A girl with a doll’s head for a hand and a perfect boy from the dome = steam-punk apocalyptic stuff. It took me a little while to get into this book, but the characters were solid and I found myself sucked in. Now I would like to read a science fiction / fantasy novel that isn’t part of a trilogy. Grr.
Crocodile on the Sandbank
Elizabeth Peters, the author, has a lot of similarities to Agatha Christie, whom I adore. I really enjoyed the fast-paced and witty narrative from the main character, Amelia Peabody and the setting in Egypt. This is the first in a series of books starring this lead character and I will read more.
This is Where I Leave You
I did not want to put this book down. I found it entertaining, sad, hilarious and heart-breaking. I rarely read books so obviously from a purely male perspective, and I found this to be better than Running With Scissors for the dysfunctional family experience. A man returns home after the death of his father to spend a week with his crazy family after just finding out his wife is cheating on him with his boss. Highly recommended.
The Perilous Gard
This book was written as a re-imagined fairy tale with a girl sent off to live in an enchanted forest (in Queen Mary’s England) and the perils she runs into when she noses around where she doesn’t belong. I found the story captivating, it was a very quick read.
Before I Go To Sleep
Another book club book, I was a little scared off by all the comparisons to the movie, Memento, which I didn’t care for at all. However, this book immediately sucked me in and I could wait to figure out who to trust (if anyone) and what the narrator was going to learn next about her life. Imagine having to live your life without knowing what happened to you the day before, or the day before that… for twenty years. This was a good thriller.