Finished: The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Gaiman) Thanks for the recommendation, Caroline! A very good story, hard to put down, and I want to know if the little boy ever sees Lettie again?? I just realized that his name is never said or known, but I feel like I know him well. Anyway, a very good story, but very short...leaving me wanting more. The boy is only 7 years old, but a very bookish boy, and though his mother sets a huge table for his birthday party, nobody comes. :-( He has no friends, really. He lives with his mother, father and sister. When things get tight money-wise, he's got to give up his bedroom so they can take in renters, the first of which is a scruffy old opal miner who accidentally runs over and kills the boy's brand new kitten, Fluffy. :-( :-( Not long after, the old renter takes their family car down a country lane and kills himself because he's spent all the money people gave him to invest in America. The boy has gone along with his dad to get their car, and they are shocked to see the dead body. An eleven year old girl, Lettie Hempstock, whose land they are on, offers for the boy to come back to her house for a bit while the police do their thing. Here the boy finds a new, protective friend, and meets her mother and grandmother. She learns that Lettie considers the pond out back on their farm to be an ocean. He also soon learns that there is more to the Hempstock women than he could ever have imagined. They never exactly say what they are, but not witches. They are ageless, though, and have special powers. When Lettie and the boy come across an evil, huge, bat like "flea", a being that wants to escape into our world and thrive, Lettie tells the boy not to let go of her hand as she starts reciting old language to contain it and put it away. However, the flea throws some kind of fireball at the boy and he instinctively reaches out to catch it. At that moment, he feels a sharp pain in his heel, and unbeknownst to Lettie, who thinks she's contained the flea, the flea has entered the boy! The next day the boy and his sister have a beautiful but sinister new nanny, Ursula, who wreaks havoc on their family. Having found the new hole in his foot, and pulled part of a slimy worm from it, the boy just knows that this is the evil being. No one would believe him if he said anything though. The flea takes control of his father when the boy tries to leave the yard and makes the father get angry and nearly drown the boy in the bathtub! (The mother suddenly has a new night shift job.) The flea has threatened to lock the boy in the attic if he tries to leave the property again. The next night, the boy hears his father with the nanny and though he doesn't know exactly what they're doing, he figures they'll be preoccupied for awhile. He climbs out his window and makes his way to Lettie's....but not before Ursula comes flying through the air after him. Lettie protects the boy and Ursula flies back to his house. Lettie, her mother and grandmother all know that they must rid the earth of the flea, but she has created a "door" inside the boy which is her portal. The grandmother pulls the portal out of the boy's foot, and Lettie and the boy set off back to his house to put the flea back in the portal. (Why the grandmother and mother don't do this, I don't know...I guess they figure Lettie is capable.) Anyway, Ursula refuses to go back into the portal so Lettie must summon the awful "hunger birds" to come and literally eat Ursula away. They won't leave when they're finished though because they say there is still a little bit of Ursula's portal left...inside the boy! Lettie puts the boy in a safe faerie circle and tells him not to move no matter what. It takes her all night but she comes back with a bucketful of water from her "ocean". She has the boy step in the pail and suddenly he's immersed in a huge ocean and he knows all things! He can see how earth was created, how it will end, and everything in between. When he comes out of the ocean, he is actually exiting onto Lettie's property, and though the piece of Ursula's portal isn't removed from his heart, he is protected on her property. When he comes out of the ocean, his mind starts getting blurry and he forgets all the wonders he just knew. So, Lettie, her mother and grandmother know there is a battle to come with the hunger birds. They don't count on them being so relentless though. Even though they can't swoop down and take the boy, they start eating everything surrounding the farm in sight, the forest, a fox, a constellation! The boy, seeing that everything in the world will be destroyed because of him, breaks free from Lettie's hold and runs to the edge of her property. Once off their land, the hunger birds swoop down on him to eat his heart. Lettie throws herself on him, though, and in that time the grandmother has come out. She's very powerful and admonishes the birds and they fearfully leave....not before they have done apparent irreparable damage to Lettie though. :-( She appears to be pretty lifeless, so her mother carries her into the "ocean" where a huge light-filled wave envelops her. They are all very sad and the grandmother tells the boy that they may see Lettie again someday, but they don't know. It will take a long time for the ocean to heal her if ever. The ladies take the boy back to his home and thank his parents for letting him come to Lettie's going away party...she's off to Australia with her father. A bit confused, the family and even the boy come to know this as the real story and forget all else that has happened. When the boy is a man with two grown children and a divorce behind him, he goes back to the area for a funeral. He makes his way to the pond and suddenly everything comes back to him! The grandmother makes her way down to sit by him and says that Lettie wanted to see how his life turned out...was her sacrifice worth it? Was he a good human being? The boy says he can't believe it took him so long to come back. The grandmother says, oh you've been here before, twice before....he just doesn't remember. They always take the memory from him. At the end, he heads back to the funeral reception and Lettie fades from his head again. Pooh, I really wanted some communication between Lettie and the boy at the end! No matter what, though, it was a really good book and makes me want to read more from Neil Gaiman! :-)

Finished: The Leftovers (Perrotta). eh, not as good as I hoped it would be. This is supposed to be one of my summer page-turners that I can read on the treadmill, but this Left Behind rip-off, sans in depth Rapture angle, wasn't as page-turnery as I hoped. In this story, we are focused on the town of Mapleton where in one instant, people of all ages, shapes, religious affiliations, and morals suddenly disappear. There is no apparent rhyme or reason, though there is a contingency of people who do believe it was the biblical Rapture. These people form a group called the Guilty Remnant, leave their families, live in a commune, begin wearing all white, take a vow of silence, and start smoking cigarettes...yes, that's a requirement. In pairs they creepily stalk and follow other people who are trying to get on with their lives in the town. During the course of the story, two GR's are murdered and skittish town folk are suspected. By the end of the story, there is a third GR death, and the reader comes to see how far down the road to martyrdom the Guilty Remnants will go to make their point. One of the main characters of the story is Kevin Garvey. He and his wife, Laurie, are a normal, busy, harried couple with two teenage children when the event occurs. None of their family disappears! However, 13 year old Jill's best friend disappears before her eyes. College freshman Tom becomes too freaked out by the whole thing and leaves college to go and follow the whackadoodle man, Gilchrest, who forms a sort of cult across the country when his young son vanishes. All kinds of young folks follow him, and he eventually gets a big head and starts taking young teenage "wives", trying to father the "chosen" son who will lead them all to some kind of salvation? Anyway, Tom gets mixed up in that group. Meanwhile, Laurie, the mother who should be thanking her lucky stars that her family remained intact can't get over the where, why, and how of it all. She leaves her family to join the Guilty Remnants!! Ugh. I hate, absolutely abhor, mothers in stories who abandon their children. I think we are supposed to feel something for her, but nothing I feel towards her is positive. So, three years later, Kevin has tried to pick up the pieces and he's become mayor of the town. He rarely speaks to his son who sometimes calls from the road. And, Jill, a former straight A student, has shaved her head, let her grades slack, and fallen in with the druggie group...including her new best friend Aimee who moves in with Kevin and Jill. Jill clearly aches for her mother and can never understand why she left them. On the other side of town there is another mother, Nora, whose husband, 6 year old son and 4 year old daughter all disappeared from the dinner table in a snap. She's considered somewhat of a town hero as she's considered the "most affected", having lost everyone. Nora and Kevin attempt dating, but Nora truly can't get over her lost family. She spends most of her days watching reruns of her son's old favorite cartoon, Sponge Bob Squarepants. Anyway...blah, blah, blah...the story follows everyone as they make decisions on where to go next with their lives. The problem is I just never grew to care that much about the characters. The ending does supply a couple of surprises, one a bit nice that might actually draw Kevin and Nora together. And, one that is a little shocking that regards that martyrdom issue and Laurie. As I said in the first sentence, eh. However, lol, I think I will tune in and watch at least one episode of the upcoming television series just to see how closely they follow the book. :-)

Finished: Journey To the End of the Night (Celine) Dark, negative, depressing book about a few years in one French man's life. "I'd always worried about being practically empty, about having no serious reason for living. And now, confronted with the facts, I was sure of my individual nullity. In that environment, too different from the ones where my petty habits were at home, I seem to have disintegrated, I felt very close to nonexistence. I discovered that with no one to speak to me of familiar things, there was nothing to stop me from sinking into irresistible boredom, a terrifying, sickly sweet torpor. Nauseating." Uggh, over 400 pages of negative narrative like that. This was hard to read for a person who is generally positive and optimistic. I don't really feel like rehashing the plot, because it just involves the very negative, unmotivated, cowardly, selfish Ferdinand Bardamu as he fights in the war, does a stint in the colonies of Africa, is indentured on a ship to America, escapes from the ship, works in the Ford factory, generally detests America, makes his way back to Paris, becomes a sub par doctor, doesn't save anyone...mostly due to his non-effort and caring, etc. etc. Blech...Top 100? No way. On to book # 100! :-)

Finished: Bittersweet (Beverly-Whittemore) A current day nice little page-turning book about the mystery and family secrets that a poor college girl finds out about her very rich room mate and her family when they go to the family lake house for the summer. A pretty good read, and definitely in my category of "treadmill" books. These are the books that I can take with me to the gym and read while I'm on the treadmill and they make the time fly by. :-) Mabel Dagmar is the less fortunate room mate of Ev Winslow, who usually just ignores Mabel, until one day Mabel enters their dorm room to find Ev distraught and Mabel comforts her. They become fast friends, or so Mabel thinks. Mabel, with family demons of her own, jumps at the chance to go to the Winslow family lake house compound for the summer when invited. All kinds of family intrigue occurs once Mabel, renamed May by Ev at the lake, meets Ev's parents Birch and Tilde...and then all her siblings. With sturdy locks on all the cabins, a wacko sister of patriarch Birch's, Aunt Indo declaring there is a huge family secret, and lots of shenanigans going on, Mabel tries to uncover the mystery. Meanwhile, Ev is in love with "the help", longtime handyman, John. Of course....this true love can never be because John ends up being Ev's half-brother, as Birch impregnated John's mother, also "the help" many years ago. Meanwhile, the only normal brother seems to be Galway, who is very attracted to Mabel and she to him, but it turns out he's married. Well...pretty much a marriage of convenience. He was helping someone get their green card and he really loves Mabel. Birch is very much the control freak and very intimidating. When Ev and John elope, Mabel breaks down and tells John that she figured out he's Ev's half-brother. He goes off in a storm, and the next thing you know, John's invalid mother is dead and so is John. :-( The mother is strangled and John has flown off the cliff. Everyone assumes that John killed his mother in a rage and then jumped. However, Ev's younger sister Lu is traumatized and saw it all! Her own father strangled John's mother and then pushed John (his own son!!!) off the cliff to keep the secret from coming out. Clearly Birch will do anything to have his way. Meanwhile, the rantings of Aunt Indo are coming true as an old diary of Birch's mother shows that their family avoided becoming destitute in the early 1900's by dabbling in major stolen goods, artwork, etc. for years and years, even dealing with the Nazis. Eventually Tilde stands up to Birch when she realizes that he is threatening her own girl, Lu. She tells Mabel she knows just as many powerful people in all kinds of places that Birch does. Before you know it, Birch is dead of a "heart attack"! Hmmmmmmmm. Mabel ends up marrying Galway now that the abusive Birch is no longer a part of or threat to the family. And, together with Tilde, they profess their horror at the family's illegal dealings in the past and set up a foundation to see that all the stolen art is returned to the rightful heirs.Of course there are a lot more details, but that's about the gist of it. A pretty good summer read. :-)

Finished: Gargantua and Pantagruel (Rabelais). A farcical book about benevolent father and son giants and their adventures is just not my cup of tea. I know the "masterpiece" is full of satire, double entendres, and scathing nonsensical commentary about everything from morals, to society, to religion, to lawyers, to sex...but I just don't enjoy books written in that manner. Much the same way I really didn't enjoy two other heavily lauded books, Gulliver's Travels and Tristam Shandy. It could be that I'm just not deep enough to understand all the implications. :-) I'd rather just read a good story! One thing about this book DOES fascinate me, however, and that is the fact that it was written in the 1400's and so many of the ideas still apply to today. That's pretty cool or pretty sad, however you want to look at it. Anyway...so glad to be done with this literal behemoth of a book.