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Read My Lips
Teri Brown
2008
Simon Pulse

Serena just wants to fly under the radar at her new school. But Serena is deaf, and she can read lips really well-even across the busy cafeteria. So when the popular girls discover her talent, there’s no turning back.

From skater chick to cookie-cutter prep, Serena’s identity has done a 180…almost. She still wants to date Miller, the school rebel, and she’s not ready to trade her hoodies for pink tees just yet. But she is rising through the ranks in the school’s most exclusive clique.

With each new secret she uncovers, Serena feels pressure to find out more. Reading lips has always been her greatest talent, but now Serena just feels like a gigantic snoop…

Not much to say, but it’s very cute, very quick read. I can easily see this as a ABC Family channel movie. There’s not really a whole lot to say. It was a stereotypical YA romance, but the author is a good writer and Serena being deaf added a lot to what could have been a boring story.

I wouldn’t buy it, but you could probably read it in the library in an hour or two.

Amazon

Second Glance
Jodi Picoult
2004
Washington Square Press

Summary:

When the patriarch of the Abenaki Indian tribe that was nearly eradicated by that state’s eugenics project in the 1930s encounters Ross Wakeman, the miraculous survivor of several attempted suicides who wants nothing more than to be reunited with the woman he loved and lost, they set in motion a chain of events that will unravel an ancient murder and lead to a second chance at life and love for the victim’s descendants.

I should probably add a Picoult tag for the site, as many as I have reviewed so far. As a woman and lover of pop fiction, she’s a natural choice for me. I don’t always love her books, but there is no denying she’s a good author.

This one I did really enjoy though. It was a great old fashioned ghost story. The twist isn’t cheesy if you buy into what the book is selling. It’s suspenseful, dark and still has a very believable love story.

Perfect beach read!

Amazon

Peace Like A River
Leif Enger
2002
Atlantic Monthly Press

Summary:

Born without air in his lungs, Reuben Land is keenly aware of the gift of breath—and, by extension, the gift of life. Time and again, both gifts are bestowed on Reuben by his father, a gentlemanly soul who works as a school janitor and has the power—and faith—to bestow true miracles. But when Davy (Reuben’s brother) kills two intruders who break into the Land home with evil intent, and then escapes from prison while his trial is in progress, events seem to have worsened beyond the aid of miracles. Or have they? For, once Reuben and his family set out to find Davy, the reader eventually witnesses rivers, plains, and city lights unseen by mortal eyes.

I hate to gush about two books in a row, but sometimes you just have to. Every detail of this book should be read and reread. Enger weaves a masterful story with this book. It has a touch of everything. The book is a literary equivalent of all your favorite foods on one plate. The book combines elements of outlaws, a journey, an epic Western poem, newspaper articles and not-so-small miracles.

Enger is extremely knowledgable about the time period he is writing and there is an abundance of references to things I know and did not know (and subsequently Googled). To me, this is one sign of a truly great novel. Enger is able to allude without being superfluous.

The strongest theme of the book is religion, but Enger is able to navigate without being preachy. The Lands are not only G0d-fearing, but his father is prone to make miracles. One night while making a trip to the outhouse, Rube comes across his father having a conversation with God. A true conversation asking questions and receiving answers only he will know. While he paces on the flatbed of a truck Rube looks closely and realizes that he is walking on air a good 30 feet from the actual truck bed without breaking stride. There are many smaller and bigger miracles throughout the book that leave the reader with a sense of awe and not too much disbelief.

“Peace Like A River” is a beautiful story. I can picture it being read in high school English classes and students actually enjoying it. The book forces you to read between the lines and find the larger themes.

Amazon 

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Jonathan Safran Foer
2006
Mariner

Summary:

Oskar Schell is not your average nine-year-old. A budding inventor, he spends his time imagining wonderful creations. He also collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends letters to scientists. When his father dies in the World Trade Center collapse, Oskar shifts his boundless energy to a quest for answers. He finds a key hidden in his father’s things that doesn’t fit any lock in their New York City apartment; its container is labeled “Black.” Using flawless kid logic, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York City with the last name of Black. A retired journalist who keeps a card catalog with entries for everyone he’s ever met is just one of the colorful characters the boy meets.

I wish there were words to describe how much I love this book. I e-mailed the friend who recommended it (hi Mel!) within minutes of finishing to tell her. Her response (a quote from the book), “Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” was perfect. This is the smartest, funniest, most heartbreaking and heartwarming book I’ve read in years and years. I can’t remember the last time I laughed out loud or cried openly while reading a book since “A Prayer For Owen Meany.” The feeling the book leaves you with is unparalleled.

Absolutely flawless. I stopped over and over and read long passages to my fiance in hopes of getting him interested in something other than non-fiction. I’m hoping the bits I read will be enough to inspire him or I will drive him crazy talking about it until I’m blue in the face.

Read this book. I promise you will love it.

Amazon 

I’m heading to the beach for the week and wanted to share what I’m bringing to read since I won’t be doing any reviews this week!

Peace Like A River by Leif Enger:

To the list of great American child narrators that includes Huck Finn and Scout Finch, let us now add Reuben “Rube” Land, the asthmatic 11-year-old boy at the center of Leif Enger’s remarkable first novel, Peace Like a River. Rube recalls the events of his childhood, in small-town Minnesota circa 1962, in a voice that perfectly captures the poetic, verbal stoicism of the northern Great Plains. “Here’s what I saw,” Rube warns his readers. “Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.” And Rube sees plenty.In the winter of his 11th year, two schoolyard bullies break into the Lands’ house, and Rube’s big brother Davy guns them down with a Winchester. Shortly after his arrest, Davy breaks out of jail and goes on the lam. Swede is Rube’s younger sister, a precocious writer who crafts rhymed epics of romantic Western outlawry. Shortly after Davy’s escape, Rube, Swede, and their father, a widowed school custodian, hit the road too, swerving this way and that across Minnesota and North Dakota, determined to find their lost outlaw Davy. In the end it’s not Rube who haunts the reader’s imagination, it’s his father, torn between love for his outlaw son and the duty to do the right, honest thing.

Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand:

Hilderbrand’s sixth novel heaps on the trauma as a substitute for realistic connection in this heady mix of beach house, cancer, affair and mom lit. Connecticut housewife Vicki, diagnosed with lung cancer, has packed up her two kids for a chemo-commuting summer at the family’s Nantucket cabin; sister Brenda, a newly minted high-powered assistant professor, has just been fired for having an affair with one of her students; Vicki’s best friend, Melanie, newly pregnant, has discovered her husband is cheating. The three hit the tarmac of the tiny island airport, where they run into home-for-the-summer Middlebury senior Josh Flynn, who has a summer job there that he hates.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer:

Oskar Schell is not your average nine-year-old. A budding inventor, he spends his time imagining wonderful creations. He also collects random photographs for his scrapbook and sends letters to scientists. When his father dies in the World Trade Center collapse, Oskar shifts his boundless energy to a quest for answers. He finds a key hidden in his father’s things that doesn’t fit any lock in their New York City apartment; its container is labeled “Black.” Using flawless kid logic, Oskar sets out to speak to everyone in New York City with the last name of Black. A retired journalist who keeps a card catalog with entries for everyone he’s ever met is just one of the colorful characters the boy meets.

I’ve started this one, but haven’t had time to get into it. I’m loving it so far though!

Bitten by Kelley Armstrong:

Elena Michaels is a self-described “mutt,” a werewolf who left her secretive pack in upstate New York for a life among humans. In the year since she relocated to Toronto, she’s embarked on a career as a journalist and begun a pleasingly mundane relationship with a decent man. All this is jeopardized when she agrees to help her old packmates hunt some troublesome mutts who are converting common criminals to werewolves and leaving a trail of conspicuous carnage. Reunited with her former lycanthrope lover and forced into brutally predatory confrontations, Elena finds the call of the wild subtly reasserting itself.

A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole:

Meet Ignatius J. Reilly, the hero of John Kennedy Toole’s tragicomic tale, A Confederacy of Dunces. This 30-year-old medievalist lives at home with his mother in New Orleans, pens his magnum opus on Big Chief writing pads he keeps hidden under his bed, and relays to anyone who will listen the traumatic experience he once had on a Greyhound Scenicruiser bound for Baton Rouge. (”Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss.”) But Ignatius’s quiet life of tyrannizing his mother and writing his endless comparative history screeches to a halt when he is almost arrested by the overeager Patrolman Mancuso–who mistakes him for a vagrant–and then involved in a car accident with his tipsy mother behind the wheel. One thing leads to another, and before he knows it, Ignatius is out pounding the pavement in search of a job.

Second Glance by Jodi Picoult:

Ghosts and ghost hunters collide in this compelling tale of the paranormal set in Vermont’s green mountains. When the patriarch of the Abenaki Indian tribe that was nearly eradicated by that state’s eugenics project in the 1930s encounters Ross Wakeman, the miraculous survivor of several attempted suicides who wants nothing more than to be reunited with the woman he loved and lost, they set in motion a chain of events that will unravel an ancient murder and lead to a second chance at life and love for the victim’s descendants. Picoult, author of Salem Falls, brings the past alive and peoples it with a cast of extraordinarily well-realized characters whose reach into the future touches the lives of a dying boy, a frightened girl, and their mothers–two women who’ve given up on love until the revenants stirred up by a plan to develop an ancient burial ground show them what they’re missing.

Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore:  

This is an accelerating comedy with shadows setting off the wry, polished humor. Trickster deities thrive on contrariety, which is why one finds them bringing life into dead landscapes and disorder into order. A Santa Barbara insurance salesman’s too-tidily-contained lifestyle, far from the Crow reservation he grew up on, is an irresistible target for Coyote, who wants to make sure his chosen people don’t forget him. Coyote descends on Sam Hunter like one of Job’s plagues, albeit a charmingly disingenuous one. “Why me? Why not someone who believes?” asks Sam, suffering from god-induced chaos. “This is more fun,” says Coyote. He’s right.

Angels by Marian Keyes:

 Thirty-three-year-old Brit Margaret (”Maggie”) Walsh is going through a “bad patch”: she’s drunk her contact lenses for “the third time in six weeks”; she’s lost her job; and her nine-year marriage to Garv is over. Thus begins Keyes’s enormously entertaining fifth novel. She resurrects the “maintenance-level dysfunctional” Walsh family: sisters Claire (Watermelon), Rachel (Rachel’s Holiday), Helen and Anna, plus a befuddled dad and hyper-as-a-hummingbird mum. Maggie, however, is the “good” sister, so it is especially shameful when she must slink back home. She tends to the “mourning sickness” over her failed marriage, which Keyes describes with surprising depth and verisimilitude, and begins fantasizing about what might have been with her first love, Shay Delaney. Accepting an invitation from her best friend, Emily, a struggling screenwriter, Maggie visits L.A., the mecca of reinvention. She decides to trade in her “plain yogurt” persona for that of bad girl and takes an oft-bumpy walk on the wild side, with results that are riotously and embarrassingly silly. Amid her drunken nights and poor flirting choices, she throws herself into the glittering cesspool of La-la-land: acting as Emily’s assistant, she witnesses the superficial frivolity and vicious fickleness of the entertainment business.

I’m sure I’ll be taking about 10 more books on top of this so I have some more choices, but I’m really looking forward to a week of solid reading!