books 14-17

Well, I certainly did not mean to go so long in between posts.  I had to go back to my online library reading history to double check what I had read!  Once a book is finished, unless it was a truly amazing one, it flies right out of my head.  I cannot tell you how many times I’ve picked up a book at the library, thought it sounded interesting and brought it home, only to discover about 5 pages in that I’ve already read it.  Whoops.

1. The Girls, by Lori Lansens.  This book was phenomenal!  It’s the story of conjoined twins, attached at the side of the head.  They each have a voice in the book (represented by different fonts, although she made them sound so individual it wouldn’t have taken long to know who was speaking even without the font changes), and it chronicles their short 30 year life.  And it’s a pretty thorough life, at that.  Definitely read this one!

2. The Girl Who Fell From The Sky, by Heidi Durrow.  This was a pretty forgettable book.  Meh.

3. Thank You For All Things, by Sandra Kring.  I just finished this one two days ago and it was really, really good.  It’s the story of a girl and her twin brother and their single mother who return to live with the mother’s divorced parents as the father (who had been seriously abusive) is nearing the end of his life.  Lucy (the young girl) is the narrator of the book and as she discovers family secrets through her mother’s journal entries, she figures herself out a little bit too.  I loved this book and was just WEEPING with Lucy.

4. A Special Relationship, by Douglas Kennedy.  Ay yi yi, I should have known.  I truly should have known that this book would raise my blood pressure and make me want to throw it across the room.  This author also wrote The Pursuit Of Happyness and while I haven’t read the book, I saw the movie and LORD, HAVE MERCY, was it depressing.  I don’t necessarily mind the parts of this man’s life that involved deep despair and suffering, just DON’T force us to watch this little boy suffer too.  Anyway… In A Special Relationship an American female journalist meets a dashing male journalist on assignment in Egypt, quickly fall in love (or so it seems), she gets pregnant, they get married and settle in London.  She has a difficult pregnancy and birth and then suffers with a terrible case of Post-partum psychosis.  Her seemingly loyal husband then betrays her in the worst way.  And I can’t write any more about it – I feel my heart rate going up and my anxiety level on her behalf is probably more than what’s appropriate.  Only read this if you can take this kind of thing and not internalize it, like I do.  I will say, there is a happy ending if you’re able to make it that far.

I really do have a couple of posts I want to do – one on the kids and their recent antics, and one on my views of a future pregnancy, people who boycott Planned Parenthood, and the Save-A-Lot cashier.  Intriguing, no?

[who am I kidding, no one reads this blog anymore!]