Finished: Before I Go To Sleep (Watson) OMG, a true page turner about a woman with amnesia who wakes up each morning having forgotten her life from the day before! What's more, Christine has forgotten her entire life, yet she has a journal her doctor, Dr. Nash, has encouraged her to write in and the first words she reads are DON'T TRUST BEN! Ben is her husband who she wakes up to every morning who patiently tells her that they're married, and about their lives together. Sadly, she doesn't remember him, and he goes through the pain of telling her every day about their love, that she doesn't know if she can reciprocate, and of the son they shared that he says died in Afghanistan. When she wakes each morning, she usually feels like she's still in her early 20's, when in reality, it's been over 20 years since her "accident" and she's 47. Of course, she gets the tiniest flashes of memories and she knows that something is not right. Things snowball from there to a scary thriller that I couldn't put down! In the end, the truth comes out, and it's not at all what the author has been leading you to think. Though, I must say that I guessed pretty close to the truth. Thank goodness for Dr. Nash, the college best friend, Claire, and Christine's own fortitude!

Finished: Peyton Place (Metalious) My curiosity got the best of me and I finally decided to read this 1950's blockbuster. I read it a little bit at a time for the past couple of weeks. I can vaguely remember the television series, which I'm quite sure I wasn't allowed to watch. However, I do remember Ryan O'Neal being in it and thinking he was so dreamy, lol. After seeing which character he portrayed in the book, if the television show stayed true to the book, then he was a quite unlikable character. Peyton Place is all about the closeness of a small town in New England, and when I say closeness, I mean sometimes too much closeness, i.e., they all know each other's business! There are the town gossips and the town good guys and the town drunks and the town rich guy (Leslie Harrington) with the rich son (Rodney) who gets whatever he wants, until he crashes his convertible into an oncoming truck while trying to convince a girl to have sex with him. Buh Bye Rodney. There's the town poor "shack" girl (Serena) from the wrong side of the tracks who, though she's sexually abused by her step-father as a young teenager, develops the most strength of character out of all the youngsters. There's the naive but ambitious daughter (Allison) of the hot, single, store-owning mom (Constance) in town, the product of a shameful secret of her mother's that eventually comes to light. There's the awkward town nerdy boy (Norman) who falls for Allison (and vice versa), but whose mother is so domineering that she insists on giving him enemas (ewww), and pretty much nips that relationship in the bud.There's the mysterious new principal (Tom), tall, dark and handsome, who comes to town and woos Constance. And, my favorite character, the white-haired, widowed, but not too old, town doctor, Matthew Swain. The best person in town. When Serena goes to him, a 15 year old pregnant by her disgusting stepfather (Lucas), Dr. Swain performs an illegal abortion so Serena's life won't be ruined. Then, he extracts a confession out of Lucas, runs him out of town and tells him never to come back. Of course, you know that in Peyton Place the truth will eventually come out. When Serena is 19, practically running Constance's store, still taking care of her 8th grade brother, Joey, and planning a future with longtime love (Ted), Lucas comes back to town and tries to force himself on Serena again. In self-defense, Serena bludgeons him to death with a fire poker. Serena and Joey cover up the crime by burying Lucas under the sheep pen out back. It all comes back to haunt them when the truth is discovered and Serena goes on trial for the murder. Of course, Matthew Swain steps forward to save the day and tells what happened all those years ago. Even the prosecutor doesn't really want to prosecute Serena and is thankful for the new evidence. Serena is acquitted and the town goes back to being as normal as possible. Meanwhile, the other main female character, Allison, had gone to New York to be a writer after graduating high school. She was one of the few who hated Peyton Place and couldn't wait to get out. She comes back to town for the trial of her childhood friend and ends up reconciling with her mother, who she had never forgiven for blurting out Allison's bastard status AND for marrying Tom. She also reconciles with the town she loved as a child  but had become disheartened with as an adolescent and teen. I see there's a Return to Peyton Place. Hmmm....:-)

Finished: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)

   "It only put me in Gryffindor," said Harry in a defeated voice, "because I asked not to go in Slytheryn...." 
   "Exactly," said Dumbledore, beaming once more. "Which makes you very different from Tom Riddle. It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." 

That about sums up book two of the Harry Potter series. It has taken me years to start reading these after much encouragement from my kids, hubby and family. I think I read book one over a year ago. And now, I'm much more interested in reading book three since I can see the character building going on here. And, by the way...who KNEW that Tom Riddle was Lord Voldemort??? ok, everyone else but me. :-) I love how Harry never wavers in his loyalty to Hagrid or Dumbledore...not to mention Ron and Hermione, when all his young life he never had anyone to believe in HIM. I love how Harry is brave enough to face Aragog the huge spider and Basilisk the deadly serpent, all the while fearing that he's truly a Slitherin and not a Gryffindor. And, I love seeing all the relationships developing that I know will be continued throughout the series. I'm not sure how fast I'll read the books, but I'm thinking now that I will read them. oh, and Professor Lockhart! What an odious tool!!!

Finished: American Gods (Gaiman) What a good book! The story of 32 year old inmate, Shadow, who is released from his three year prison sentence early, only to find himself on an airplane with the mysterious Mr. Wednesday, who is in reality the old Norse god, Odin...or at least an incarnation of Odin. The wild tale begins there as Mr. Wednesday talks Shadow into coming to work for him as he travels the country stirring up all the other old gods to prepare for the coming battle with all the new gods like money, technology, media, drugs, etc. We find out that the old gods arrived in America through many different channels in the minds and hearts of people who traveled here ages ago and brought their beliefs and worships of gods with them. However, once living in America, with each generation, the beliefs and stories faded until most of the old gods and their powers were forgotten. However, the gods still existed! Manifested in human bodies, they lived among the people. When the newer gods started growing strong and prevailing in the forefront of the human's minds, the new gods became brazen and cocky. They decided it would be okay to get rid of the old gods and provoked them into war. This is what Mr. Wednesday would have Shadow believe, anyway. In reality, Mr. Wednesday's Odin drew his power from other gods dying, and he relished the impending battle. He didn't really care which side won as long as more gods lay dead in the aftermath. His partner in crime in provoking the old gods is another old god himself, Loki...the god of chaos! Together these two pit the old gods and new gods against each other and almost get their way with an incredible battle until Shadow figures it all out and puts a stop to the battle. I love Shadow! From the first moment I feel very compassionate towards him...in the same way I feel compassionate about the suicidal Quentin Compson in The Sound and the Fury. Shadow was basically talked into being the driver of a bank robbery by his beloved wife, Laura. Though Laura was never associated with any crime, and Shadow was not convicted of the bank robbery due to lack of evidence...Shadow was convicted for beating up the two guys who robbed the bank and cheated him out of his portion of the money. No money was ever found, hence the no bank robbery conviction. Once in jail, Shadow's cell mate is a wise inmate, about ten years his senior, Low Key Lyesmith. Yep....that's Low Key, as in Loki!! It turns out that Mr. Wednesday ("Day of Woden" (Odin, get it?)) and Loki have been following Shadow since his birth and have big plans for him. Shadow is going to be their distraction to all the other gods while they pull the big one over their eyes and work together to start the big battle. As it turns out, Shadow's mother (who died when he was 16) had a one night stand with Mr. Wednesday and Shadow is his son! I can't possibly recap the whole book here, but there are so many things that were interesting. Shadow gets out of prison early because his wife, who he is about to see in three days when he's released, is killed suddenly in an automobile accident. Yep, Mr. Wednesday's doing. They couldn't afford to have Shadow distracted. To pour salt on the wound, though, and no doing of the gods...Laura is killed while driving in a car and performing one last sex act on Shadow's best friend, who she'd been having an affair with! Shadow, distraught by her death, is even more distraught to find out about her infidelity. Shadow tosses a gold coin given to him by Mr. Wednesday into Laura's grave before it is covered in dirt and low and behold, the dead, but undead Laura follows Shadow throughout the book. She still loves Shadow and actually helps him out of at least three scrapes. Independently of Shadow, Laura figures out that Loki is no good and she ends up killing him. We meet loads of colorful characters in the form of old gods...Mr. Ibis the undertaker and his partner Mr. Jacquel, Egyptian gods Toth and Anubis; Easter, the Germanic goddess of the dawn, Eostre, who brings Shadow back to life; Mr. Nancy, aka, Anansi, a trickster from African folklore; Bilquis, the man-devouring Queen of Sheba, and on and on. Throughout the book we also get glimpses of some of the stories of the actual old gods, what their legends and powers were, and at the same time, the people they supposedly traveled with over to America. At one point, Wednesday places Shadow to live in a Wisconsin lake town where the people are very friendly. He meets some characters there...Mr. Hinzelmann and police chief, Chad Mulligan, who he befriends. And, he meets a hitchhiking female named Sam on his way to the lake town who comes back into play again. He also gets peripherally involved in the mysterious disappearance of a local 13 year old girl and figures out that the disappearances of local teens in the town are a yearly thing, same time each year, and have been going on for decades! Needless to say, Hinzelmann ends up being a supernatural figure as well, and responsible for the "sacrifices" of the children. Anyway...far too much to put into words except to say that Shadow really does end up being a good, honorable guy who I really rooted for. So glad that he didn't stay dead after sacrificing himself to to keep his word and hold vigil for Mr. Wednesday in an outrageous way! I hear that Gaiman is working on a sequel to the book, but not sure if I want to read it or let Shadow live on the way he was at the very end of the book. :-)

Finished: The Boys in the Boat (Brown) The awe-inspiring story of the incredible young rowing crew from the University of Washington who, after first battling to a national championship, went on to win the Gold medal at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Berlin. An amazing story that focuses on the nine man crew, coach and boat maker, and in particular, on the life of Joe Rantz, a rower who had a childhood of abandonment and poverty. The mostly working-class crew had to work their fingers to the bone just to finance their trips to the east coast to face their rich counterparts at Princeton, Pennsylvania, etc. And, they had their California competitors to the south who had already won national championships and Olympic Gold. With an incredible coxswain, Bobby Moch, at the head of the boat, the crew won resounding victories at the national championship and Olympic trials, only to be thrust into the cleverly constructed Berlin that Hitler chose to show the world, when all the while he had already began committing the human atrocities that the world would soon be privy to. And, even though having the best time during the pre-race heats at the Olympics, the U.S. team was put in the outside, extremely choppy, and absolute worst lane. No amount of arguing by the coach would change the situation. The Germans, of course, had lane number one. It was an uphill battle for the young Washington crew. If I hadn't already known the outcome of the contest, I'm not sure I could have kept reading to find out if they won! Whew! The book has inspired me to look up some of the old crew footage from the 1936 Olympics and it's rather neat to see the faces from the still pictures in the book come to life! I'm also so happy that Joe ended up meeting the love of his life, Joyce, who, along with their five children, finally gave him the family he'd been missing since being deserted at such a young age. In all, a very inspiring book! I think I can probably walk a 5k if these guys can row like that! :-)

Finished: Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans (de Balzac) I just finished my ninth de Balzac book, a part of his body of work called La Comedie Humaine. This book continues the story of the main character of Lost Illusions, the charming, good-looking, but completely broke Lucien de Rubempre. I hesitate to call Lucien the "hero" or the "protagonist" because he's such a horribly selfish person. In Lost Illusions he took nearly every penny from his mother and sister just to promote himself in society, and he betrayed the closest person he had to a brother, David Sechard. I don't know why Lucien wasn't on my list of Least Favorite Characters....maybe I found him too pathetic before. In any event, after his behavior in this book, he belongs there now. As the book opens, Lucien has sold himself to the human incarnate of the devil, the evil Vautrin from Le Pere Goirot. Vautrin and Lucien had met in the last pages of Lost Illusions...Vautrin on the run from the law, and Lucien having lost every penny to his name. Vautrin will sink lower than low to get money to promote Lucien in society, hoping to benefit from it for the rest of his life once Lucien marries into a rich family and gains a title. The problem, though, is that Lucien is in love with a beautiful young courtesan, Esther, and she with him. Lucien would be happy to spend the rest of his life with Esther, but Vautrin (in the story disguised as a priest, Father Abbe) has different plans. Vautrin convinces both Lucien and Esther that Lucien must be married to a wealthy society woman, and then he can keep Esther as his mistress on the side. Both of the young people reluctantly agree, however it becomes a mute point. Despite Lucien's ability to quickly make the rich, young, not very attractive Clotilde Grandlieu fall in love with him...her father the Duke will hear nothing of courtship or marriage until Lucien brings a one million dollar estate to the family as proof of his worth. Conveniently for Vautrin, Esther has been espied by the multi-millionaire Baron de Nucingen. Completely smitten, the baron has become ill with instant love. He will do anything to find the mysterious girl he saw walking in the park and make her his wealthy mistress. Here's where Lucien goes past the point of moral character return for me. He agrees to let Vautrin arrange for the baron to meet Esther, and save her from her debt by paying off several false notes that Vautrin has forged. Lucien knows that Esther will basically have to become the baron's lover for his plan to succeed. Ugh. Through a series of underhanded events, Vautrin quickly bilks de Nucingen of five hundred thousand francs using the beautiful Esther. Esther, unaware of exactly what is going on just knows that she's helping her beloved Lucien by going along with the plan. When Esther realizes she is supposed to become de Nucigen's mistress, she becomes distraught. The baron actually gives her over a month before he expects her to consummate their relationship. He's getting a house ready for her and says they will wait until the housewarming. This buys Esther a little time, but just the thought of being with anyone but Lucien, who she had an exclusive, loving, five year relationship with, makes her contemplate suicide. There are lots of characters who come into play, all trying to one up each other, to spy on each other, to undo each other's plans...to gain their cut of the money as everyone strives to dupe the baron. Just when it looks like Lucien is about to convince the Duke that he's got the money, and has been all but given his blessing to marry Clotilde, the house of cards comes tumbling down when two detectives with their own stake in the game uncover Lucien's lies and inform the Duke of Lucien's dubious character. In the meantime, Esther is being lavished upon by the baron and has began enjoying dinner parties with old friends. However, when she hears of Lucien's troubles, her heart breaks for him. Little does she know, as we readers find out at the end, Esther is really the heiress of a seven million dollar fortune. However, when Lucien comes to her lamenting his loss, he tells her how he still loves her, but how he's got to try and get Clotilde to marry him despite her father. Heartbroken, Esther goes through with the consummation of her relationship with the baron, and then takes her own life...days before she would have found out about her own wealthy status. Someone finally recognizes Vautrin and he is arrested. And, Lucien is also arrested for fraud and as an accomplice to a murder that Vautrin has committed to hide their illegal doings. That is the end of the book! I'll need to do some research and see if Lucien turns up again in another book. What a sad, sad ending for Esther, though. :-( On the only happy note, one of my favorite de Balzac characters, most prominent in Le Pere Goriot, Eugene de Rastignac, shows up here and there at various social events in Splendors and Miseries. :-) He's in several of the books of the La Comedie Humaine. Despite the sadness of the tale, I definitely enjoyed this book and really like Honore de Balzac as an author!

Finished: Some Luck (Smiley) A very low-key, but interesting book about four generations of an Iowa farm family, concentrating on the main family, the Langdons, Rosanna and Walter, and their six children, Frank, Joe, Mary Elizabeth, Lillian, Henry and Claire as they are born, grow up, live their lives, have their own children, etc. Each chapter is a different year in their lives and the point of view switches from person to person, even within chapters. We see the true highs and lows of a farm family starting in 1920 and the hardships they had to deal with, the weather, the depression, the wars, etc. We get to know a little bit about each person, and grow to really care for them. Frank, the oldest boy, is brilliant, but hard to get a read on whether he truly loves anyone back or not. A large part of the story is spent about his time in World War II. Joe becomes a farmer like his father, and becomes even more successful at it than he does. Mary Elizabeth dies as a baby in a freak accident. Lillian becomes the perfect daughter who finds happiness in marrying and raising her own family. Henry is a smart college student when the story ends, who loves books of all kinds, but mostly 18th century literature. And Claire, the baby, is a young teen when the book ends. She has grown up closer to her father than her mother and is devastated at the end of the book when 57 year old Walter, who knows he's not as healthy as he should be, goes out to the farm land, lays down and dies. Of course, Rosanna and Walter are the backbone of the family and their story is one of love, dedication, sacrifice and hard work. Walter's death is at the end of this book which is supposed to be the first book in a trilogy. Darn it. I'll probably have to read the next one to see what happens to everyone! Smiley is a very nice writer and I enjoyed the book very much. :-)

Finished: Henry VIII (Shakespeare) I always love reading Shakespeare, but this one was harder for me to get interested in for some reason. Henry VIII was the son of Henry Tudor (the VII), who won the crown from Richard III. I really enjoyed reading all those Shakespeare "histories", so I'm not sure why this one didn't grab me. Surprisingly to me, it wasn't very much about his seven wives. As a matter of fact, we only meet two of them...his first one, Catherine of Aragon, and then the one he divorced Catherine for, Anne Boleyn. The story was more about how King Henry put so much trust in Cardinal Woolsey, only to find out that Woolsey was being duplicitous. Of course, he didn't find that out until after Woolsey had been responsible for the beheading of the beloved Duke of Buckingham. Anyway, by the end of the play, Anne Boleyn has given birth to Elizabeth and the future Queen has just been christened. Not my favorite, but I'm still glad to have read it! I always feel smarter, yet really dumb at the same time, after reading a Shakespeare play, lol.

Finished: A Daughter of the Land (Stratton-Porter) A fine, old book that belonged to my great-grandmother. It reminded me very much of a grown-up version of the Little House on the Prairie books with it's wholesome values and lesson-learning events. It tells the story of 18 year old Katherine "Kate" Bates, the youngest daughter of sixteen children, of a hardworking farming family in the late 1800's. All their lives the Bates children work the farm so that when each son reaches the age of 21 his father gives him 200 acres of the huge farm to go and get a bride and build a home of his own. Even the daughters work towards this goal, because being women, they won't need land of their own when they get married. (ugh) Instead, when the daughters turn 18 they are sent to Normal School, which is a weeks long program in the summer to teach them to become teachers. Kate, of course, is very headstrong and would love her own 200 acres. However, she's resigned to the way of the family and is at least excited to go and learn to become a teacher. Shockingly, her parents have other ideas. Since Kate is the youngest, they expect her to stay on at the farm indefinitely, continuing to help her mother run the house and do her share of the farming as well. Kate is understandably upset when her parents refuse all reason and begging. Kate takes matters into her own hands and goes to her oldest brother for a loan of the money required to go. Adam doesn't want to buck his father, but his feisty wife, the only sister-in-law worth a darn, gives her the money to go! And so Kate begins her life of adventures, including falling in love, spurning the love because he's illiterate and rich, refusing her father's job suggestion and therefore being banned from the family home forever, marrying a man who doesn't love her, having a set of twins, finally getting her "share" of her father's inheritance when he dies, investing all her money in a sawmill that is about to open and be profitable when her drunkard husband accidentally burns the whole thing down and dies in the process, raising her twins in near poverty, finally going back home to help her mother where she and her children both thrive on the farm, etc. etc. It was a good book that kept me reading...not really deep, but good enough. Oh, and Kate finally got land all her own when her mother died and left her and only her the original acreage of the homestead! No matter what, it was very surreal reading a book that my great-grandmother, and probably my grandmother, held in their very own hands!

Finished: Flight Behavior (Kingsolver) Book Club Book #7. A deeply moving and well written book about the "miracle" of the sudden migration of millions of monarch butterflies to a little mountain farm in the Appalachians and the ramifications this event has on the people on the farm, the town folks, the scientists who come to study the migration, and mostly the young mother who first discovers the huge, fluttering field of orange. Dellarobia Turnbow is an unhappy, 28 year old mother of two small children, married to her high school sweetheart because they got pregnant. Even though they lost that baby, Dellarobia and her husband, Cub, stayed married and continued living in a small house built on the Appalachian sheep farm of his parents, Bear and Hester. When we first meet Dellarobia she is running away from her marriage...leaving it all behind, including five year old Preston and 18 month old Cordelia. She's headed up the mountain for a rendezvous with a younger man and plans to finally run away and leave behind the life she never wanted to be tied down to. Oh, she apparently loves her children, but it's hard for me to reconcile that when we first meet her completely prepared to ditch them. Anyway, on the way to her rendezvous, Dellarobia stumbles upon a valley of undulating orange...and not just a valley, but every branch of every tree seems to be covered with the mysterious orange hangings. She doesn't know what in the world it is, but she takes it to be a sign that she should not be doing what she's doing and she returns home. When she hears from her husband Cub that his father is thinking of cutting down all the woods above their house to pay for a near-defaulted balloon mortgage on the farm, she suggests that Cub needs to first go and see what is in those woods. After that, things happen pretty quickly with town folk, the preacher, the media and scientists all descending on the area. The orange mass is actually millions of monarch butterflies who have accidentally come to the Tennessee mountains for the winter, instead of to their natural migratory place, Mexico. Soon we meet Ovid Byron, the scientist who sets up camp in a trailer by Dellarobia and Cub's barn, and creates a lab to study the butterflies in a part of that barn. Dellarobia, some of the town folk, and the preacher...and even Dellarobia's very cold, businesslike mother-in-law, all feel that the trees should not be cut down. They feel that nature should not be messed with when God has brought this miracle to their backdoor. They are afraid that Bear will not listen to reason and will destroy the butterflies. Ovid, on the other hand, is more concerned with global warming and what could have possibly caused the butterflies, with hundreds of years of instinct and distinct migratory patterns to suddenly light here. His fears run deeper than cutting down the forest. He's afraid that the cold mountain winter will freeze all the butterflies and completely destroy the species. Though she never went to college, Dellarobia finally finds a subject to spark her intellect and her passion, and for the first time becomes a working mom as Ovid pays her to work every day in the lab and on the mountain. Little Preston is also very interested. He's only in Kindergarten, but smart as a whip and relishes the time that Ovid spends with him. Needless to say, Dellarobia falls for Ovid, or she thinks she does. I think mostly she just finds a fulfillment there of her self-worth that she doesn't find with Cub. Ovid is happily married, though, and never even aware of Dellarobia's feelings. He's only concerned with the butterflies and the significance of this huge event. In the end, Dellarobia and Preston do witness the coupling of a male and female butterfly, even after Ovid said they'd all frozen in the snow. It turns out, huge numbers of them did not freeze and end up flying away in a huge swarm at the very end of the book. But, also by the end of the book, Dellarobia has "found" herself and lets Cub know that she's never been happy. She has a conversation with Preston and tells him they are going to live in the next town with her best friend, Dovey, where there is a college that Dellarobia can attend, thanks to some strings pulled by Ovid. Poor Preston realizes the implications of them leaving his father behind, but as he does the whole story, takes it like a little man. I really don't think I can forgive Dellarobia for telling him all this the day before his birthday. Basically she sits him down to tell him three things: 1) before he was born there was another baby who would have been his older brother who died, 2) oh, but I've got a really great surprise for you for your birthday, you finally get a little computer phone, that we have to share, to look up all your science questions, and 3) but yeah, also we're moving away to live with Dovey and leaving your dad here on the farm. Don't worry, you and Cordie will get to see him. You'll be just like the butterflies migrating back and forth. Huh. I just can't say that Dellarobia is one of my favorite characters a story has ever been written about, but I do have some pangs of sympathy for her. I can't imagine being born and raised in a world so cut off from most of the outside world and having your future be laid out for you with practically no choice. Well, they did make that teenage sex choice, but that stupidity is not singular to a small town Appalachian girl. Oh well. In all, it was a very well written book with lots of wonderful phrases. And, it was deeply moving, probably in a different way for me that it was intended.

Here are a couple of memorable quotes:

They all attended Hester's church, which Dellarobia viewed as a complicated pyramid scheme of moral debt and credit resting ultimately on the shoulders of the Lord, but rife with middle managers.

And the next one, which really resonated with me. Lately I've myself been kind of mourning the lost knowledge of my dad and brother. I mean, there are so many questions I'd like to ask them that I'll never know the answer to. Sigh. Here's the quote:

As a child she'd never thought to ask, and now she would never know. So much knowledge died with a person.