Finished: Foundation (Asimov) My first venture into a truly Sci-Fi book and I liked it. :-) I'm not counting Brave New World and 1984. I guess I consider them more futuristic than Sci-Fi. Maybe it's the same thing? Anyway, obviously set thousands of years in the future, Foundation is the story of how one psycho-historian, Hari Seldon, is able to predict the downfall of the Galactic Empire, and so convinces the powers that be to let him set up refuge on two outlying planets with his fellow scientists, with the pretense of documenting the history of the galaxy. In reality, Hari Seldon knows, due to his ability to predict social behavior on a massive scale, that the empire will soon crumble and go into 30,000 years of darkness, barbarism, and turmoil, while all the outlying planets vie for power. With the creation of his foundation, and their strict following of his "plan" even after he dies, he declares that he can shorten that time of darkness to just 1000 years. The book itself doesn't see too much of Hari Seldon alive, but we see him at different intervals in messages that he brings to the other people in the future. I think my favorite of his followers, who comes 50 years after the creation of the foundation, is Salvor Hardin, who follows the Hari Seldon line of thinking to a tee. He rises in power on the small planet of Terminus and using peace and clever negotiating with the surrounding "kingdoms" of planets, is able to avoid war with one of the kingdoms that is trying to invade Terminus and incorporate the planet into its kingdom. Instead, Salvor ends up instilling foundation religious beings at each of the kingdoms, as they are the only ones who are in charge of the nuclear power...therefore associating the nuclear power with the religious and spiritual necessities of the people. In other words, he completely flips things around and gains control over the kingdoms. :-) My only problem with the book is that it is divided into five parts that take place years and years apart, so I only get to see some of my favorite characters briefly, and then they become a part of history...often referred to, but still history. Anyway, this book is a series and I might just read another one at some point. Hard to believe that Asimov was only 21 when he wrote this first book of the series!!

Finished: The Light Between Oceans (Stedman) Book Club book #6. A pretty good summer read, but sad. The story of Australian WWI vet, Tom, who inwardly scarred by what he had to do in the war, decides to live a pretty solitary life as a lighthouse keeper. He will only get supplies every three months from a boat from town, and will only get to make a trip to town himself every three years! Of course, in the days before he heads off for his post at Janus Lighthouse he meets the free-spirited Isabel. They fall for each other pretty quickly, and after he leaves, she writes him a letter which he gets on the three month boat. By the time the 2nd three month boat comes, they have agreed to be married. Tom gets special permission to go to town to be married and honeymoon, and then Isabel leaves her parents to go and live with Tom on the lighthouse island. Isabel and her parents have suffered the enormous loss of both of her brothers in the war, but they all love Tom and know that he will take good care of her. Tom and Isabel both long for children, but sadly Isabel suffers two early miscarriages. When she suffers the loss of a third baby, this one at the seventh month of pregnancy, Isabel is beside herself and ready to die. Six years on the island and though they love each other, so much heartbreak. Two weeks after they bury their premature son, Isabel hears a baby's cry. Tom hears it too and rushes to the water's edge. There in a small rowboat is a dead young man and a very much alive tiny baby wrapped in a woman's shawl. Tom, a very upstanding man, is ready to alert the authorities and log the event in the books, but Isabel convinces him that the mother must also be dead...for why wouldn't she have been with the father and child? She falls in love with the baby and convinces Tom they should keep her. Tom is soon also in love, though his conscience always bothers him. They name the baby Lucy and live blissfully for the next 18 months. They don't even tell Isabel's parents, or the boat friends, Ralph and Bluey who deliver the supplies every three months, that Isabel had the third miscarriage. They just let everyone believe that Lucy is their child, born on the island. They get their three year shore leave when Lucy is 18 months old and Isabel's parents meet their granddaughter for the first time. Isabel's grieving parents finally have a new life to live for after losing their sons. In a shocking turn of events, though, Tom and Isabel hear about the tragic local story of a young mother, Hannah, who lost her husband and infant daughter to the sea!! Her young husband, Frank, had run away from an angry mob towards the docks and thrown himself and the baby into the rowboat to escape the baby being torn from his arms. Frank was a native of Austria and though he had nothing to do with the war or Germany, many of the town's men got drunk and felt very belligerent towards him when celebrating their fallen sons and brothers one night. They determined to take his child away from him as some of their sons had been taken from them! Frank, a mild-mannered baker, and a very good man, had a bad heart. Though the town and his young wife never knew what happened to them, Tom and Isabel realize that the dead man in the boat was Frank and that their beloved Lucy is Hannah's baby girl! Tom feels like they should do the right thing and immediately give Lucy over to Hannah, as heartbreaking as it will be, but Isabel is distraught and refuses. They head back to the island...but not before Tom sneaks an anonymous note into Hannah's mailbox telling her that her baby is alive and being cared for. Of course, this just fuels Hannah, who most of the town thinks is crazy in her grief by now, to push the authorities harder to find some answers. Without completely typing out the whole plot, needless to say...eventually everyone finds out that Tom and Isabel have Hannah's now nearly 4 year old little girl, Grace. The authorities come to arrest Tom and Isabel and reunite mother and child, but Tom says it was all his doing...that he insisted to Isabel they keep the child. He doesn't want her arrested. Isabel is so furious with Tom for his anonymous actions for the past two years leading to the discovery that she lets the authorities believe his story. It is so heartbreaking for all the parties involved, but mostly for little Lucy who has no idea why her "mamma" and "pappa" are being ripped away from her...and why the intense other lady is insisting that she's her mother. Lucy is so devastated that Hannah is beside herself realizing that the baby she loved is now someone else's. After several weeks, she heartwrenchingly decides that Lucy would be better off with Isabel, because she believes the story that it was all Tom's doing. She tells Isabel that she will give Lucy back to her to raise if Isabel will testify against Tom so he'll see prison time. In a twist that I didn't see coming, Isabel actually chooses Tom instead and goes to turn herself in. In another twist, Hannah actually ends up realizing that she would be better off trying to forge a new future with her daughter and not seeking revenge, so she testifies in favor of Tom and Isabel...that they probably saved her daughter from imminent death when she was a baby. Tom and Isabel are sentenced to just a few months in jail each, and then leave town never to see Lucy again. In six months time, with patience, perseverance, and the ingenuity of Hannah's father, Lucy's "Grandad", Lucy (Grace)...now called Lucy-Grace, starts to think of Hannah as her mother and her memories of Tom and Isabel fade away. It's all so sad. :-( Not that I condone what Tom and Isabel did at all...but I've also never lost my mind over three miscarriages in a row, so who's to say what my actions would have been. Anyway....20 years later, Tom and Isabel have settled in a town far way and have lived a quiet life by the ocean. Isabel has just died from cancer and Tom is lost. A car comes up the road, and a pretty young blond woman steps out. It's Lucy! She hadn't forgotten them as much as we thought, and upon hearing of Isabel's illness, had hoped to get there to see her. She has with her, her own little 3 month old son, Christopher. She and Tom have a quiet reunion and he gives her a letter Isabel had written for her in case Lucy ever came looking for them. Lucy promises to come again soon and Tom is left once again reflecting on his life, but just a bit happier now. A pretty good read, but such a tough subject. Glad I"m through with that one. :-)

Finished: The Color Purple (Walker) A book about one African American woman's life that hits you right between the eyes with it's stark, sad reality. It's always so hard for me to grasp how human beings can treat their fellow human beings so despicably. And, we're not talking about a book on slavery here...we're talking about that period of time where black men themselves treated their women like dogs, worse than dogs, really. Did this all filter down from the way slaves were treated by slave owners in the first place? Possibly. Anyway, the harsh realities of men beating their wives, sexually abusing their wives, daughters, sisters, cheating on their wives, expecting their wives to work out in the field, as well as in the home, while sometimes they just sat on the porch watching. Women were nothing much more than property to fathers and husbands. This is the story of Celie from the time she's a teenager to the time she's a grown woman with grey hair. Celie spends the first part of the book writing her feelings down to God. At a certain point, after she's given birth to and had taken from her two children by her own father (later discovered to be her step-father); been forcibly separated from her beloved sister; been married off to a man who only wants her to keep his house and existing children; found out that her mother was crazy before she was murdered; and on and on...Celie begins to question whether there really is a God. Her friend, Shug (who also happens to be the woman Celie's husband has been in love with for years), gives a long dissertation about the existence of God and a couple of my favorite statements come from that. Over the years, Celie and Shug have become the best of friends, and more. When Celie one day tells Shug that her husband "Mister" beats her, that's the last time Shug ever sleeps with Mister. From then on, it's Celie and Shug who develop the deep relationship. Anyway, after Celie stops writing to God, she starts writing to her sister, Nettie. She and Nettie haven't seen each other since Mister forced Nettie to leave years before because Nettie refused Mister's advances. Nettie has since been in Africa for years as a missionary with a married couple and their two adopted children (in a keen twist of fate...the same two children that Celie was forced to give up!) One day, Shug and Celie discover that Nettie has been writing Celie letters for years and years and Mister has always hid them from Celie. The one person who loved Celie unconditionally has been kept from her in the most malicious way. :-(

This is Celie writing to her sister Nettie about Shug and God. "She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not find God."

"Here's the thing, say Shug. The thing I believe God is inside you and inside everybody else. You come into the world with God. But only them that search for it inside find it. And sometimes it just manifest itself even if you not looking, or don't know what you looking for. Trouble do it for most folks, I think. Sorrow, lord."

"Listen, God love everything you love--and a mess of stuff you don't. But more than anything else, God love admiration. 
   You saying God vain? I ast.
Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it."

I love that! The color purple. Also compelling in the book is the side story of Sophia, who marries Mister's oldest son, Harpo. Harpo wants and expects a pushover wife like Celie has been to his father...but Sophia is a tough woman with different ideas. If Harpo tries to beat her, she puts a whooping on him that's much worse than he could do to her. Harpo asks his father's advice, and he tells Harpo to beat her. Harpo looks over at Celie, and she just agrees with Mister and says beat her. In a heartbreaking exchange, Sophia comes up the drive to visit Celie and bring back the curtains she made her. Celie suspects she knows what's wrong, but the words that Sophia directs to her are heartbreaking.

"She say, All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me."

I couldn't help but conjure up Oprah talking to Whoopie in that scene! Anyway...a really good book. I'm glad I finally read it. I'm so glad I'm off of my list of Top 100 and now on to books that I've been wanting to read. :-)

Finished: The Tale of Genji (Shikibu) omg, I'm finally finished with the behemoth, 9th century Japanese tale of the many loves of Genji. The story spans four generations with dozens of characters, four different emperors, scads of princes and princesses, and even more concubines. Genji is the son of the emperor at the beginning of the story. His mother is one of the "lower class" concubines, so rather than make Genji a prince to potentially become the crown prince, the emperor makes Genji a commoner...but still, a very rich and privileged commoner...who also happens to be handsome, charming, etc. He grows up getting practically everything he wants, and is hard for anyone to resist. He becomes known as the "shining" Genji. He falls in love with several women over the years and we get to hear of each one in detail. I was able to keep most of them straight...Murasaki, the Akashi lady, Oborozukio, the Orange Blossom lady, etc. However, when they started having their own children. And when Genji's best friend and rival To No Chujo started having children with his many women. And when Genji's brother, the crown prince, started having children with HIS many women. And, then all those children started growing up and mingling, the story was a little harder to follow! I'll just say this...I would not have wanted to be a woman in 9th century Japan, lol. The courting was very formal back then, i.e., the men were not allowed to see the women at all. They had to speak to them from behind screens or curtains. And, they constantly sent notes in the form of little poems to each other as communication. The poems would be mostly about nature, but apparently with strong innuendo that many times I didn't understand until the author explained what it meant. Anyway...the screens were not really such protection if a man wanted to be with a woman. Several times Genji, and then his ancestors, would "push through" the screen and "touch the woman's sleeve". The next thing you know it would be "dawn" and there had been relations began that usually the woman was unhappy about! I suppose it was the way of the world there and then. I just couldn't really get myself interested in or be compelled by Genji's dramatic emotions knowing that he had his wife, Murasaki, who he loved more than life waiting for him at home having to look the other way. Once Genji dies in the book, then the tales keep going with one of Genji's sons (who is really not his son, but shhhh, don't tell Genji), Kaoru. His best friend and rival is Prince Niou, his cousin, and mostly like the next emperor. The book ends rather abruptly as if there might have been more to the story, but at 1090 pages, I'm rather glad it ended when it did. Does it belong in the top 100 books? It's not for me to say, I guess. I mean...to think that such an intensive book with so many story lines and characters woven so intricately was written in the 9th century, with many a poetic verse, well perhaps it belongs there. It just, once again, wasn't really my cup of tea. The good news??? I'm DONE with the Top 100 Book List!! yay! Now, I can keep reading the many books I have put on my list to read and not worry about that goal any longer!

Finished: My Antonia (Cather) Another descriptive story by Willa Cather that just draws you in with her lovely writing! Such a simple story, with no blatant tragedy used to propel or end the story...just life. Ten year old Jim moves from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents after both his parents die. At the same time, the immigrant Shimerda family from Bohemia makes their way to their new home (basically a cave) in America in the vast expanse of Nebraska. Nearest neighbors, Jim and 13 year old Antonia (pronounced ANT-oh-nia) become the best of friends, perhaps even soul mates. For awhile Jim is in love with Antonia, but mostly they just remain in each other's lives through the harsh farming years, through the suicide of Antonia's father, through Jim and his grandparents moving into town, through Antonia coming to work in town and both of them being taken under the wing of next-door neighbor, Mrs. Harling, and her children, through Antonia developing a bit of a wild streak, to Jim going off to college, through Antonia going to get married, only to be left before making it to the alter...only to come home pregnant and in disgrace, through a twenty year space of not seeing each other, through Jim finally going to see Antonia after all those years and meeting her then 11 children and husband (not the one that left her earlier). They come back together where they first met and the peacefulness of their beautiful surroundings brings them full circle. A lovely story, really. One line I liked explaining why Jim kept putting off going back to Nebraska for all those years was so true: "In the course of twenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish to lose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again." I love that!

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.