Finished: Veronika Decides to Die (Coelho). A really good book, especially the ending. :-) The story of 24-year old Veronika, a young woman living in Slovenia, who has decided that she's done everything she can with her never-progressing life, so she decides to commit suicide. Unfortunately (for her), she doesn't take enough pills and wakes up in the local sanitarium, Villete, still alive. The head of Villete, Dr. Igor, informs her that she was touch and go for a week, but that she definitely survived her attempt. The bad news?....Veronika irrevocably damaged her heart and will not live more than a week. Veronika feels cheated at first, but then decides to accept the fact that at least she'll still die, it will just take a little longer. In the meantime, she comes into contact with a few of the other hospital's patients, Mari, Zedka, and Eduardo, in particular, and along with rediscovering her piano talents, discovers that she'd also like to live....live like she never did before. Mari, Zedka and Eduardo all have different influences on her decision. Eduardo is a diagnosed schizophrenic who likes to stand there in his own little world and just listen to the beautiful piano music. In reality, and as Veronika comes to see, he is really a young man who didn't want to follow in his diplomat father's footsteps, and instead wanted to become a painter of "scenes of paradise". When his parents refused to accept that, he withdrew from his life and his parents had him committed. Needless to say, when Veronika is getting weaker and weaker and has only about 24 hours to live, Veronika and Eduardo realize they love each other. They decide to leave the hospital and spend the next day doing whatever they want in the city. They do all kinds of sightseeing and drink too much wine. That night, as they look at the moon, Veronika feels as if she's dying happy in Eduardo's arms. When Eduardo wakes the next morning, Veronika is laying there so still, he assumes that she's died.....but no, she stirs! A miracle, they think, another day to enjoy together! Meanwhile, back at the hospital, when the nurses report to Dr. Igor that Veronika and Eduardo are missing, he outwardly shows all the appropriate outrage, but when he closes the door and sits down to himself, we hear the real truth! In his experiments with trying to get people to get rid of the poisonous "vitriol" within themselves, which he believes is the root of most mental illness, he has actually been giving Veronika a drug to simulate heart problems. Her heart is actually as strong as ever! He knew that the rate of reattempting suicide was so high in the first few weeks after a failed attempt, that he decided to try this unique approach....make Veronika think she was still going to die so she'd spend her last few days living as much as she could...with the hopeful result being that she'd actually find a reason to really stay alive....which she did in the end. :-)

A good book written by the author of  The Alchemist, which is supposed to be very good as well. I may just have to give it a try!

Finished: The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov) An interesting, fantastical, satirical novel set in early 1900's Russia. The devil visits Moscow one night when two men are arguing the existence or non-existence of the devil. The two men, Berlioz, the director of Moscow's literary bureaucracy, and Ivan Ponyrev, an up and coming poet are then instantly thrown into turmoil when the devil himself, in the form of a "professor Woland" arrives to chat with them. The devil correctly prophesizes Berlioz's imminent death by tram car beheading. In trying to convince the police about what has just happened to Berlioz, Ivan is considered to be mentally ill and sent to the psychiatric hospital. While there, he meets a man known simply as "the master". The fellow patient proceeds to tell Ivan about his love for a married woman named Margarita. Margarita loves the master in return, and while the master was writing his novel, Margarita was his lover as well as his literary cheerleader. When the master finished his novel he had taken it around to various publishers and critics only to be laughed at and highly criticized. Humiliated, the master left Margarita, since he felt he was not worthy of her, and took himself to the psychiatric hospital. Margarita is now devastated and sits in her house wondering what has become of the master. As it turns out, the master's novel was the story of Pontius Pilate and how he gave the ultimate order for Jesus to be executed. The Master and Margarita then splits from the story about the devil in Moscow and goes back in time to the actual Pontius Pilate plot. The book goes back and forth in this unique way, and as "out there" as all the book's antics are, going back and forth between the two stories really kept me turning the pages. While Pontius Pilate is personally wishing he didn't have to sentence Jesus to death because he wants to personally get to know him, back in Moscow the devil and his entourage, including a giant walking, talking black cat, wreak havoc on several people's lives. However, the devil takes Margarita under his wing and makes her a witch. He tells her that if she'll be the queen of Satan's ball for one night, that she can have whatever she wishes. Margarita longs only to know what has become of the master, her beloved. After the spooky Satan's ball, the devil keeps his word and he brings the master to Margarita. Of course...their eventual future is another matter, and a surprising one to me. The entire book is supposed to be a satire on the mostly atheist population of Russia at the time, or so the introduction says. I can't ever figure out in satires what fictional character is supposed to match up with what true life person, but it wasn't really necessary for me to enjoy the book....a book given to me by my son with the recent European and Russian Studies Masters degree from Yale. :-)

Finished: The Sun Also Rises (Hemingway) A good book that just kind of quietly absorbs you while you're reading. It is supposed to be Hemingway's greatest book, but that might be a little bit of an over-rating. I don't usually find myself with much compassion for those writer artistes after World War I who were called the Lost Generation. It seems that they had money to spend, time to kill, alcohol always present, and they had a displeasure for living in America. I always kind of thought of them as whiners, even though many of them wrote some great books! However, actually, reading The Sun Also Rises I felt a little more compassion for some of the characters because they'd actually been IN the war, and had some physical, as well as emotional scars from it. The protagonist in The Sun Also Rises is Jake Barnes. He's an "ex-patriot" American journalist living in France. He was made impotent by an injury he received in the war. He is in love with the divorced Lady Brett Ashley, and she with him...but they cannot consummate their love because of his physical inability. Lady Brett forgoes the sexless love with Jake and has many relationships, even though she's engaged to another war vet named Mike. Mike spends most of his time getting drunk, and sometimes jealous, but he doesn't seem to mind Lady Brett bedding most of the men she does, hmmm. Jake and company have decided to travel from France to Pamplona, Spain for the running of the bulls and the week long festival that surrounds it. Jake is fascinated by bullfighting, and wants his friends to see the spectacle. Enter Jake's college buddy, Robert Cohn, who was a championship boxer at Princeton. He falls instantly for Brett and has a several day fling with her before going down to Pamplona. Once they are all in Pamplona, Robert then proceeds to act very possessive of Brett, even right in front of her fiance, Mike. Jake gets mad, Mike gets made, Robert gets mad...and punches them both to the ground. Robert is mostly mad because Brett's head has been turned by the gorgeous, and really good, 19 year old bullfighter, Pedro Romano. She goes off to have a fling with Romano and even thinks she's fallen in love with him. He fights his fights for her, clearly. This makes all the men jealous, but Robert Cohn goes ballistic and beats up Romano before his final and biggest bullfight. The group asks him to leave Pamplona, which he does. Romano, though battered, is successful in his last bullfight. Mike and Jake continue to get drunk every night, and Brett and Romano continue their affair. The descriptions of the bullfighting scenes are intense. I've never liked the idea of bullfighting because I just don't like maliciously hurting or toying with any animal. And, one sad result of Brett getting involved with Romano....because Jake is the one who brought Brett to Pamplona, Jake loses the respect of his Spanish friends, who he has been visiting for years when he goes to the bullfights. They didn't like the fact that he let his "friend" have such an influence on their young bullfighter. So, after the last bullfight is over, Brett runs off with Romano. Jake drops Mike at another little city where he will continue to drink, and Jake heads back to France to get back to work. Before Jake even reaches his destination, though, he gets a telegram from Brett. She's in Madrid and she needs his help. Of course, he drops everything and goes because he loves her. When he arrives, Brett tells Jake that she let Romano go because he wanted her to become his exclusively and she knew down the line she would crush him and break his heart. She wonders if Jake will give her some money to make it back to Mike? Brett and Jake ride around in a cab together, and as she leans on his shoulder and they wonder how life could have been for them if they COULD have ended up together, the story ends. It's not a very long or complicated book, but it did tug at my heartstrings a bit for Jake and Brett. However, their lifestyle was one of total debauchery, lol. Anyway....I think I'll probably eventually read For Whom The Bell Tolls and I will have read all the major Hemingways. :-)

Finished: An American Tragedy (Dreiser). A good, good book with a very appropriate title! An American Tragedy is one of those loooonnnggg books (856 pages) that is on the Top 100 list that I've been putting off reading. Well, now I've read it. And, it was a tragic story. It could have stood for a little editing...been a little shorter, but it was a compelling story. When I read the back flap and saw that the Elizabeth Taylor/Montgomery Clift movie, A Place in the Sun, was based on this book, I knew what the major tragedy would be right away! Sadly, the story is about Clyde Griffiths, a poverty-stricken young boy being raised by street-preaching parents. His upbringing has kept him from any formal education, and from most practical education as well. He doesn't really believe in what his parents are peddling, and by the time he's 17 he leaves the family "business" and finds himself his first job at a luxury hotel as a bellboy. Suddenly, he's making more money than he's ever seen....and his true moral nature comes to the surface. Rather than innately giving up most of his earnings to his impoverished family to help out, he lies about the amount of money he's making and, instead, spends more and more money on nice clothes for himself. He is a good-looking, pretty charming boy, who longs to be nicely dressed and longs to associate with girls and other guys in a higher social class than himself. At this point in his life....any social class is higher than his. Unfortunately his first experience at love is with a young girl, Hortense Briggs, who sees how infatuated he is with her and totally strings him along so he'll spend all his extra money on her, taking cruel advantage of him. When one of the other bellboys takes a car of his uncle's employer without permission so all the friends can go on an adventure out of town (Clyde and Hortense included), tragedy occurs as the gang is rushing back to town with unsafe speed so the boys will not be late back to their jobs and they accidentally hit and kill a 10 year old girl in the street. Fearing prosecution for them all, the boys scatter and Clyde runs away to Chicago. Three years later, at 20, he's working at an exclusive Men's Club, again in a service roll, when he runs into his rich uncle, Samuel Griffiths. Samuel is his father's well-to-do brother. He owns a collar making factory in upstate New York. Samuel feeling somewhat guilty that his own father had been estranged from Clyde's father, and therefore excluded him from the wealth of his will after he died, decides that maybe he can do something for his impoverished nephew. Oh, don't get me wrong....he doesn't think Clyde should be elevated into the same social stratosphere as Samuel and his children, Clyde's cousins. As a matter of fact, he's a bit concerned about how bringing the poor relation to work in his factory might reflect on the Griffiths name...but his "compassion" wins out and he offers Clyde an opportunity to come and work at the very lowest level in the factory. Clyde jumps on the opportunity and heads to New York to work for his uncle. Gilbert Griffiths, his 23 year old cousin, Samuel's son and heir, HATES the idea of splitting anything at all with this interloper. He pretty much runs things at the factory and assigns Clyde, with his father's consent, to the sweaty, manual labor of the collar "shrinking" room. Sadly, and this is one of the few times I feel sorry for Clyde, he really is caught between a poor-rock and a rich-hard place. He doesn't want to do to anything at all to disappoint his uncle or to besmirch the Griffiths name, in great hopes that the family will eventually embrace him and fold him into their world. At the same time, the family really wants nothing to do with him socially. So, while he avoids socializing with anyone in the lower class who he actually works with, he's shunned by his own "family".  Therefore, Clyde is extremely, extremely lonely and, at times, in despair. After a couple of months, when his uncle realizes he's still languishing in the shrinking room, he tells his son that Clyde has worked hard enough down there and Gilbert needs to find him a small managerial position. After all...how does it look to keep a Griffiths down in the shrinking room for so long? Clyde is moved up to the collar stamping room where he is put in charge of a bunch of 20-something young women. Gilbert lectures Clyde that management types never, ever, ever fraternize with the worker types...and especially not the young women. Clyde understands and does fine keeping things to all business for a few weeks until the beautiful, sweet, also impoverished, young Roberta Alden comes to work under him. Clyde is immediately smitten with Roberta and she with him. He once again wears his heart on his sleeve and almost immediately declares his love for her. He rather pushily finally convinces her to embark on a sexual relationship. In his own mind, he knows he can never marry someone like Roberta because he fully expects to climb his way into the higher social class of his uncle's family. However, Roberta is certainly good enough for him to have a super-secret relationship with. All goes well with them, especially since no one knows about them, until one day when Samuel Griffiths finally decides that it's time to have Clyde out for a family dinner. Clyde arrives nervously, but seems to get more at ease as he gets to know one of Samuel's daughters, Myra. She's the homely one, so she's at home most nights. Gilbert is as snobby as ever, and treats Clyde pretty coldly. Finally, teenage Bella breezes in the door with her two socialite friends, Sondra and Bertine. Clyde is, once again, instantly smitten....with Sondra. She's gorgeous and well-dressed and doesn't give him a second look. However, he is instantly in love. Not really thinking he's got a chance ever with Sondra, he continues to sleep with Roberta, but now his heart and mind are elsewhere. Finally, Clyde starts getting invited to the upper crust society events and Sondra DOES actually take an interest in him. Of course, all the rich kids know that he's a poor relation, so none of them can really get serious about him, but since Sondra becomes infatuated herself, she keeps figuring out ways to have Clyde invited to events. Clyde is thrilled with the turn of events and begins blowing off Roberta. Just when Sondra has declared her love for Clyde and they are trying to figure out how they can be together once she turns 18 in the fall, Roberta comes to Clyde and tells him that she's pregnant. Poor Roberta. :-( She's a really nice girl who has given herself to Clyde because she didn't want to lose him. And now, he treats her terribly, standing her up all the time...and now she's pregnant. Clyde and Roberta try to come up with a way to "take care of the pregnancy", but it doesn't work. Roberta insists that Clyde should marry her so her baby can at least be legitimate, even if Clyde doesn't love her anymore. However, this is not acceptable at all to Clyde because he can't let Sondra or anyone else know he has been in relations with Roberta. To move things along here, Clyde does the unthinkable when Roberta threatens to go to his uncle if Clyde doesn't do right by her. Clyde lies to Roberta that he's taking her on a pre-wedding trip, and then takes her out on a remote lake with the intent of tipping the rowboat over and letting her drown, and pretending to drown himself, but then swimming out. He signs them in at the lake Inn with fake names and thinks that all is hunky dory with his plan. When he gets to the point of tipping the boat, though, he can't go through with it. He gets such a weird look on his face, though, that Roberta stands up suddenly to reach out to him. She lunges towards him and he accidentally hits her with his camera and she tips the boat over and they both go in the water. The boat hits her on the head, but she's still conscious and struggling because she can't swim (which Clyde already knew). Clyde watches as Roberta drowns. He does nothing to save her. He makes that conscious decision knowing that it will free him up to be with Sondra, and after all, he didn't murder her...he just didn't save her. Uggh. Anyway, Clyde has not covered everything as nicely as he thought, and after he's made his way to the high-class weekend cabin of his rich friends, including Sondra, the police are soon on his tail and arrest him. All his nightmares of them finding out about him come true. The rest of the book (which is based on a true story that happened in upstate New York in 1906), is all about Clyde's trial and eventual death sentence. It's also about his uncle and family, and all the other rich "friends", caring far more about their names and reputations than helping Clyde out at all. Needless to say, Clyde never sees Sondra again. Clyde's poor mother finally makes it out to see him after he's sentenced, but Clyde is still in denial that he is guilty since he had decided not to murder Roberta after all, but she still died. It's really just like it says...a tragic story. I think Clyde is a victim of his awful upbringing, no education, undo influences at an impressionable age, and also the class system. However, so many people who have Clyde's disadvantages are not so narcissistic that they can think only of themselves and their answer to getting rid of a "problem" that will hinder their social climb is to kill the problem. I've got to say that Clyde is one of my least favorite characters in a book in a long time. However, his rich uncle and his family aren't much better in my mind.

Finished: Sharp Objects (Flynn) Very disturbing, page-turning book! By the same author who wrote Gone Girl, which I liked more...only because this one was so disturbing on many levels. The main character, Camille, is a 30 year old reporter who has to go back to the small Missouri town she grew up in to cover the brutal deaths of two young girls. What we find out about Camille is that she's been a basket case from the time she was 13 and her own 10 year old sister died. Camille has nearly every portion of her body except her face covered in word scars that she carved into herself over the years. She's only 6 months out of a psych facility for cutting, as a matter of fact. Her mother, Adora, is an unloving, sick woman. I figured out pretty quickly that Camille's sister had spent her life ill and finally died because the mother spent her young life poisoning her....Munchausen's by Proxy. Of course, Camille didn't know that...but comes to realize it in the end. Camille's also got a younger, 13-year old, step-sister, Amma, who has been brought up and "cared for" whenever she's ill by the same psychotic mother. Amma is a piece of work all her own because of her upbringing. She figured out long ago what her mother was doing to her but figured that kind of love is better than no love at all. Amma and Camille form a little bit of a bond, but Amma is totally jealous of anyone that gets the slightest bit of her mother's attention. When she figures out that Adora doesn't care for Camille, then she is more willing to bond with her. However, again, I figured out pretty early that is was "mean girl" Camille, and her three other pretty blonde mean girl friends who actually killed the two little 9-year old girls! It's just a horrific story. For instance, Amma pulled all the teeth of the little girls after she killed them to use them to create her mother's ivory bedroom floor in her doll house, which is an exact replica of their own stately home. (Adora has a genuine ivory floor in her bedroom put in long before hunting for ivory became illegal.) Even Adora's back story suggests she was also psychologically abused as a child. When she was 8, her own mother walked her out into the woods and then released her hand and told her not to follow her back. When she finally turned around and made her way home after her mother left, it was hours later, and her bare feet were bloodied. She walked in the door and her mother was just reading a newspaper, lowered it, and looked at her. Cold, creepy, evil, heartless women. Camille actually escapes the cycle of abuse as she finally comes to realize all these things. She wonders if she would be that way to a child of her own, but then realizes that no...she would be kind. Of course, that's after she's ruined her own body and psyche for all these years. Amma, didn't survive it. She's institutionalized in a juvenile facility until she's 18..."and probably for much longer than that".

Finished: The Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King (Tolkien). Awww, good books! Finally, I've read all three. :-) Of course, in the middle of the book I had to take a break and pop in the last movie! I wanted to visualize things, lol. I was surprised that the last movie really dealt with a few things that were in book two. Anyway...a good solid book that reinforces the often unseen traits in people of true loyalty and goodness. I think I enjoyed the storylines of all the kings and warriors more than Frodo's Hobbit journey to toss the ring in the fire; actually, I think because that journey became more about Sam persevering than Frodo, if truth be told. At the very end, the ring was actually defeating Frodo, and he put the ring on and was NOT going to complete his mission unless Gollum hadn't jumped him and actually cut his finger off to get his "Precious". Of course, then Gollum fell into the fiery pit with the ring, so mission accomplished in a round-about way. Through that entire journey, Sam was the strength and the reason for Frodo. I loved him! On the other end, I really found two new characters to love in Faramir and Eowyn....two good, loyal, strong, brave souls who I'm so glad end up together! :-) And, of course, I love the character of Aragorn. I'm so glad he ends up in his rightful place on the throne at the end of the book, and you just know he will rule the kingdom with humility, goodness and fairness. Loved how all the Hobbits grew in character, and inner and outer strength. I didn't particularly care for the end of the book where the Shire had been all looted by Saruman....but loved that the outcome was Sam using his dust and seeds from Galadriel to make all the trees, flowers and crops grow again and be fruitful like never before! Anyway, we have a beautiful day going here with a nice breeze and I feel like The Lord of the Rings has left me with a good, positive feeling. :-)

Finished: The Lord of the Rings - The Two Towers (Tolkien). Finally, I read the second book in the trilogy and it was good! :-) The movies have been on at my house so many times over the years as Josh had friends over for LOTR marathons, that I clearly picture most of the characters! The books, so he's told me though, are different. For instance, Aragorn has an inkling of a twinkle in his eye for Eowyn in Two Towers, and she for him. Nowhere do Aragorn and his Elven main squeeze, Arwen, get together, even though they end up together at the end of the last movie. So, The Two Towers was split into two different parts. In the first part, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli mourn the death of Boromir (sigh, Sean Bean!) and send him down the river on an Elven boat. They then decide to go after their Hobbit friends, Merry and Pippin, who they fear have been kidnapped by the Orcs, who killed the valiant Boromir. While tracking Merry and Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli come across the riders of Rohan who loan them some horses for their quest, and ask that after they find their friends that they come back to Endoras, return the horses, and meet with their King, Theoden, to see how they can help with the impending war with the evil forces of Sauron. Aragorn and company come across all the dead Orcs that the riders of Rohan said they killed, but there is no sign of their Hobbit captives. They assume that somehow the Hobbits have escaped into the forest of Fangorn. And, indeed they have! Merry and Pippin escape into the forest and meet the ancient and very huge tree people, the Ents. They befriend the Ent leader, Treebeard, and are carried along by Treebeard and the other Ents as they march upon Saruman, a wizard gone to the dark side, and Gandalf's nemesis in the first book. The Ents destroy Isengard, Saruman's home, and decimate his Orc defenders, because Saruman has hit too close to home and destroyed so much of their forest. Just after the Ents have flooded Isengard and stranded Saruman in his tower, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli finally catch up with the Hobbits and meet Treebeard. And then...out of the mist a mysterious white figure rides up from the distance and as they all watch in wonder they see that it's Gandalf and he's ALIVE!! He is now Gandalf the White and he's riding the magnificent horse, Shadowfax. He survived the fall into the deep pit with the Balrog monster in book one, and is back from the supposed dead. Now that all the fellowship are back together (except for Frodo and Sam who left the gang at the end of book one, and Boromir who is dead), Gandalf says they must head with haste towards Endoras to help the people of Rohan fight the evil Orcs. They get there in time to fight the battle of Helm's Deep, and are about to be overrun by the numerous Orcs when Gandalf (who had left them to go gather more troops) shows up with the other warriors in the nick of time. For now, they have battled back the Orcs, but only this battle has been won for now. The war with evil is far from over. The second part of the book is all about Frodo's and Sam's journey towards Mordor, where Frodo still must go to throw the ring into the fiery pits to be destroyed. Of course, they have along with them as a "guide" and a scoundrel, Gollum. Gollum's only true interest is to get his hands on "Precious", the ring. The three of them come across Faramir, Boromir's younger brother, who is good and true. They spend a day together, and then Faramir lets them go on their way, knowing they have an important quest...and knowing that he has to go into battle with the dark forces as well. Gollum leads Frodo and Sam into some caves where they come across the super scary and gross giant spider, Shelob. Gollum has led them to Shelob in hopes that Shelob will eat the Hobbits and spit out their clothes and his precious ring. Sam, with his super human determination battles the Shelob and makes her retreat back into her cave...but not before Shelob has poisoned Frodo and he lies still on the ground. Sam stays by Frodo's body for hours before he realizes that Frodo is dead. :-( He decides he must carry out the mission on his own and takes the ring on the necklace from around Frodo's neck, sadly bids goodbye to Frodo's body, and heads out of the cave. Just then, an army of Orcs comes marching towards the cave! The only thing Sam knows to do is quickly put the ring on his finger and become invisible. He watches as the Orcs pick up Frodo's body to take it to their leader...and, more importantly, he listens as they talk of Shelob's poison and how Frodo's not really dead but in a deep, poisoned condition. Sam is elated and panicked at the same time as he realizes the Orcs are now carrying Frodo off to the depths of Mordor and he must follow to try and save him. That's the end of Two Towers! Now, I can't leave Frodo hanging in the wind, so I've got to begin book three tonight. :-)