September Sister Read - The Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman

Synopsis (as taken from Goodreads):  
Alice Hoffman’s previous novel, The Third Angel, was hailed as "an unforgettable portrait of the depth of true love" (USA Today), "stunning" (Jodi Picoult), and "spellbinding" (Miami Herald). Her new novel, The Story Sisters, charts the lives of three sisters–Elv, Claire, and Meg. Each has a fate she must meet alone: one on a country road, one in the streets of Paris, and one in the corridors of her own imagination. Inhabiting their world are a charismatic man who cannot tell the truth, a neighbor who is not who he appears to be, a clumsy boy in Paris who falls in love and stays there, a detective who finds his heart’s desire, and a demon who will not let go.

What does a mother do when one of her children goes astray? How does she save one daughter without sacrificing the others? How deep can love go, and how far can it take you? These are the questions this luminous novel asks. 

At once a coming-of-age tale, a family saga, and a love story of erotic longing, The Story Sisters sifts through the miraculous and the mundane as the girls become women and their choices haunt them, change them and, finally, redeem them. It confirms Alice Hoffman’s reputation as "a writer whose keen ear for the measure struck by the beat of the human heart is unparalleled" (The Chicago Tribune). 

S’s Rating: ❤❤❤❤1/2  (out of five hearts)

D’s Rating: ❤❤❤❤1/2  (out of five hearts)


S’s Thoughts:
"The Story Sisters" is the first book I've read by Alice Hoffman and I can assure you it won't be the last.  Though a relatively short novel, TSS was a dense read filled with allegory and (my favourite) magical realism in spades.  There's nothing like a good read with a bit of magical realism thrown in... my personal favourite is Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude", but TSS gives even that classic a run for its money in my opinion.

I think the reason why TSS appealed to me at the start was the "sister factor"... I mean, given this is a blog written by two sisters it seemed a perfect fit.  Like in TSS, there are three of us which I thought was a nice similarity anyhow.  And it was weird/funny but, while reading TSS, I pictured myself and my sisters as certain characters.  I saw L (who doesn't do much reading so you won't ever see her on here) as Claire, surprisingly... D as Meg, not surprisingly.  Me?  I identified the most with Elv, especially given the current relationship I have with members of my family. 

Elv is the oldest of three sisters... like me.  Elv is her own spirit... like me.  Pre-kidnapping she's a typical little girl, loves her family/sisters, takes care of them, and in the case of Claire saves them.  Then, well, things happen and she stops living so much for others but instead living for herself.  She gets involved in drugs and crime, is somewhat rehabilitated, meets the love of her life, leaves behind her family and... I won't reveal the rest.  I can identify with that... minus the drugs/crime/rehab. I won't go into the details here because it's quite personal, but also like Elv my relationship with some members of my family is quite strained. 

Anyhow... what did I like a book?  Well, that my fear of moths is justified!  (I hate those damn things... I've always told my husband they were evil!)  Joking (and magical realism) aside, I did enjoy TSS and will definitely be reading more of Hoffman's work soon.  I already have The Dovekeepers on my Kindle so that'll be next I suppose.  If I'm honest, there wasn't really much of anything I didn't like about this book... I even liked the ending!
Standout Quotes:
"Love is what matters," she said.  "Real love.  The kind that turns you inside out."

Demons were said to be cruel, but a demon would never have been so brutal as this.  A demon merely called you by name, threw his arms around you,  whispered his plight, understood yours, then took you for his own.  

The rest of the world didn't matter.  She was one thing only, and that was his alone.  When the counselors held up a mirror, Elv wasn't like the other girls, who cried and covered their heads.  She wasn't like her sister, willing to betray her own flesh and blood.  She didn't flinch when she saw her reflection.  Now that her hair had been shorn, the black rose at the base of her neck was visible, as if in  bloom.  So much the better.  This was who she was inside.

Album to listen to while reading this book: Passerby by Allie Moss

D’s Thoughts: The only reason I won't go as in-depth into TSS as S is because our thoughts are nearly identical. This book reads like a faerie tale, and that's what made it hard to put down. Hoffman puts so much thought into colors of light, the scent of various people, and other such details...it's extremely reminiscent of my own writing. Call me an egomaniac, but I like it when others parallel my literary style. S's comparison of the three sisters being like ourselves is spot-on, so let me go a little more in-depth about the character I identified most with: Meg. Meg is the the middle sister (which is unlike me, as I am the youngest). She is the first to deny the fantasy world that Elv created, and she is also the most aware when Elv no longer "lives for others", She bears most of Elv's later abuse. Meg is book-smart, but her people skills are poor, in part due to the fact that she is not as close to Claire or Elv as those two are to each other. Nonetheless, her sisters care about her, and Meg trusts them...in one case, to a fault. There are fewer details about Meg than there are the other two sisters (once you've read the book, you'll understand why), but I still feel closest to her for a completely different reason. About halfway through the book, while Claire, Meg, and their mother are in Paris, Meg decides that she wanted each of them to remember the way the sunlight looked at that moment: orange. In response, she found a piece of paper and scribbled the word orange, then folded it in half. The motif of sunlight colors does not seem important at first, but it will be discovered later that good memories of Meg will need to be revived regularly throughout the rest of the book because...sorry, not spoiling it!

Perhaps my only complaint was that the time frame of the book was so spread out--upwards of 15 years--that it was hard to remember the beginning once you reached the end. It was necessary, but I wish there would have been a shorter way for every problem to find its solution.

Otherwise? Flawless. There is so much love in this book: not just romance, but the kind of love that sisters have that can't ever break. That, I believe, is what Elv was really searching for in love "that turns you inside out".
Standout Quotes: "[Elv] tried not to let on how excited she was. She was seventeen and ready for the world, whether or not it was ready for her. She could actually feel things after all."


"He wished he could show Claire what love was. The ability to ask for something. The desire to give someone what they asked for."

"Maybe some love was guaranteed. Maybe it fit inside you and around you like skin and bones. That is what she remembered and always would: the sisters who sat with her in the garden, the grandmother who stitched her a dress the color of the sky, the man who spied her in the grass and loved her beyond all measure, the mother who set up a tent in the garden to tell her a story when she was a child, neither good nor bad, selfish nor strong, only a girl who wanted to hear a familiar voice as the dark fell down, and the moths rose, and the night was sure to come."

Album to listen to while reading this book: Hard Candy by Counting Crows (in case you haven't noticed, Counting Crows is by far my favorite band)


October’s book is D’s choice and is Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor

See you soon! S & D

D's August Review: Night by Elie Wiesel

Night by Elie Wiesel

Synopsis (as taken from Goodreads): A terrifying account of the Nazi death camp horror that turns a young Jewish boy into an agonized witness to the death of his family...the death of his innocence...and the death of his God. Penetrating and powerful, as personal as The Diary Of Anne Frank, Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

D's Rating: ❤❤❤❤❤ (out of five hearts)

D's Thoughts:

I told you that Night would be here this month! To be fair, I haven't read all that many books in the past month, and it hasn't really been for excusable reasons. Nonetheless, If I had somehow managed to read 50 books this month, Night still probably would have been my favorite.

It's not like I didn't expect this book to be sad, but I was often taken aback by how graphic and disturbing Wiesel's accounts were, particularly in terms of the earliest deaths at his first concentration camp, Birkenau. Much Holocaust literature focuses on the dissolution of both God and self, but Wiesel perhaps tells it best in this passage from his first night in Auschwitz: 


Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long night seven times sealed.
Never shall I forget that smoke.
Never shall I forget the small faces of the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky.
Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.
Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. 
Never shall I forget those moments that murdered my God and my soul and tuned my dreams to ashes.
Never shall I forget those things, even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. 
Never.
I'm not sure why it is I love this book that disturbed me so much. Perhaps it was because I did indeed learn a lot about life during the Holocaust without censors and sugarcoating. Perhaps it was because every word was blunt but still lyrical (see the quote below). Why do I have to explain why I loved this awesome--and when I say this, I don't mean in the "yeah bruh, that's totally hip" kind of way, I mean awesome in the knees-buckling, terrifyingly wonderful way--novel. I can only marvel at how frightening the situation it describes is, how appalling it is that it is not a work of fiction and that there were people who did not think twice about sending young children into fires and gas chambers because of their lineage and family  beliefs, and wonder how the author has found the strength to write so many books (Night is a far cry from his only work, though it is the most popular) about his experiences. I'm not sure what else to do but cry.

Standout Quotes:

While there are many outstanding quotes from this book, I am only including this one, because it is the one that a) is most personal to me as a musician and b) the quote that still makes me want to crawl under a blanket and cry for hours, though I did not do so when I came across it and I still have yet to do so.

"...All I could hear was the violin, and it was as if Juliek's soul had become his bow. He was playing his life. His whole being was gliding over the strings. His unfulfilled hopes. His charred past, his extinguished future. He played that which he would never play again.
   I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and the dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.
   I don't know how long he played. I was overcome by sleep. When I awoke at daybreak, I saw Juliek facing me, hunched over, dead. Next to him lay his violin, trampled, an eerily poignant little corpse."Album to listen to while reading this book: Not an album, but instead this movement of the Beethoven Violin Concerto that my best friend and I have agreed had to be the piece that Juliek was playing the night he died.

~D

And This is Why I Love My English Class

Hello! In lieu of a regular post, I wanted to share the story of my first day of sophomore English.

When we found our way to the class in the basement on Wednesday afternoon, our teacher was nowhere in sight. I turned to the boy next to me. "I bet he's going to make some grand entrance," I whispered. We'd all been told that this teacher is pretty out there, but never received a further explanation.

And then he walked in, casually. If we hadn't been expecting him, we wouldn't have even noticed him. "Hi, guys." He was calm, unlike all of our other antsy and overeager teachers of earlier in the day. "So, there's a poem under your desks. Pick it up. Let's read it, shall we?"

He didn't start with roll call or anything, we just dove right in. The poem was by Wendell Berry, and I've copy-pasted it below for your reading pleasure:

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

By Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag. Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot

understand. Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie down in the shade. Rest your head

in her lap. Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it. Leave it as a sign

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go. Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary,

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.      

He read this poem to us. The first stanza, sarcastic, as it should be. The rest, lullaby-like. That is, until the last two lines. He took in a big breath. "PRACTICE RESURRECTION!" Shouting would be an understatement. The room jumped.

"Christ! Never sleeping in this class again," a girl behind me muttered.

"Now that the class has been resurrected," the teacher said, stifling a chuckle, "shall we discuss? Pick your favorite line and tell me why you like it."

The next thirty minutes spun into conversations about corporate America, women's rights, and (from yours truly) how decisions that differ from the majority and are free of influence from the "generals and politicos" are what make our lives a) worth living, b) worth remembering and c) ours.

I've been waiting for an English class like this. Don't get me wrong, I've had other great English teachers (and I'm not just saying that because at least one of my former teachers reads this blog, I mean it), and that's probably one of the key reasons I love English as opposed to, say, math. But to avoid all of the formal stuff (we're still waiting on a syllabus and it's the second week) and just go straight into the heart of the matter of literature? It's about time.

~D

NPR's 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels

I'm not an overly huge fan of NPR (I don't really listen to it at all, to be honest... but then again I'm not a massive fan of radio in general) but an article on their website caught my eye this morning--The 100 Best-Ever Teen Novels.  This seemed like as good of a place to share it, since, you know, we're book-nerdy here and whatnot. 

I've gotta say, despite having read nearly half of the 100 books on the list I'm a bit curious as to how some, like the Twilight series made it while Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain series and anything by Mark Twain (gasp!) were left out.  Bit of a travesty there, if you ask me (I'm a huge Mark Twain fan, thanks). 

Anyhow, I guess there was a bit of outrage (rightfully so) that quite a few good books were left off the list so NPR put together a little blurb justifying their methods of choosing books for the list.  If you're interested, check it out here.

I've read 37 books from this list... more if you count the books that were in a series.  Here's my list:

1. Harry Potter (series), by J.K. Rowling
2. The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
3. To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee
4. The Fault in Our Stars, by John Green
5. The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien
6. The Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger
7. The Lord of the Rings (series), by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury
10. The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
11. The Giver (series), by Lois Lowry
12. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (series), by Douglas Adams
15. His Dark Materials (series), by Philip Pullman
16. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
17. The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
18. Lord of the Flies, by William Golding
23. Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes
25. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, by Mark Haddon
26. Speak, by Laurie Halse Anderson
30. Tuck Everlasting, by Natalie Babbitt
32. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (series), by Anne Brashares
33. The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
35. Go Ask Alice, by Anonymous
37. Stargirl, by Jerry Spinelli
40. Abhorsen Trilogy / Old Kingdom Trilogy (series), by Garth Nix
43. My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
46. Forever..., by Judy Blume
49. The Princess Diaries (series), by Meg Cabot
51. Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson
58. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs
59. The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros
60. Something Wicked This Way Comes, by Ray Bradbury
64. The Truth About Forever, by Sarah Dessen
73. The Last Unicorn, by Peter S. Beagle
85. Chaos Walking (series), by Patrick Ness
89. Weetzie Bat (series), by Francesca Lia Block
91. Confessions of Georgia Nicolson (series), by Louise Rennison
99. Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson

How many have you read?  What books do you think were left out or did NPR get it spot on?

Read on,
S

August Sister Read - Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson

Synopsis (as taken from Goodreads):  Lia and Cassie were best friends, wintergirls frozen in matchstick bodies. But now Cassie is dead. Lia's mother is busy saving other people's lives. Her father is away on business. Her step-mother is clueless. And the voice inside Lia's head keeps telling her to remain in control, stay strong, lose more, weigh less. If she keeps on going this way—thin, thinner, thinnest—maybe she'll disappear altogether.

In her most emotionally wrenching, lyrically written book since the National Book Award finalist Speak, best-selling author Laurie Halse Anderson explores one girl's chilling descent into the all-consuming vortex of anorexia

D’s Rating: ❤❤❤½  (out of five hearts)

S’s Rating: ❤❤ ½  (out of five hearts)

D’s Thoughts:
As much as Laurie Halse Anderson is not S's favorite author, I really do love her books. Speak actually isn't my favorite (but I will admit that it's my guilty pleasure), nor is Wintergirls. The nerd girl that takes too much for granted that essentially describes me simply adores Catalyst above all else. But hey, that's another story for another day.

Why did I choose this book for our sister read? Well, for starters, I expected more out of the book, so it would be more enjoyable for us...I'll get there momentarily. More importantly, however, I chose Wintergirls because I know S and I have both felt the way the main characters, Cassie and Lia, felt. I didn't feel the need to deny myself food because I had to be the most gorgeous person, though, but instead because I felt undeserving of food entirely. This made it harder for me to connect with Lia, as I didn't understand why she cared so much about how she looked to others when she made absolutely no respectable attempt to communicate or socialize with anyone. I suppose that's a mental aspect of anorexia that will never be clear to me. The lack of logic in a single character--not just Lia, but everyone--was what turned me off to this book. It's either a real eye-opener to how little people think or a poor plot execution. I believe it's a little of both.

The thing that redeemed (and then some) Wintergirls was Anderson's astounding analogies and way of expressing the emotions of a broken girl. Throughout the book, Anderson would literally cross out what Lia was actually thinking and replace it with something more acceptable. I personally wouldn't have ever thought of that! Additionally, as you'll see in my quotes section, she composes bold-yet-fragile statements that, when taken out of context, are beautiful--not conceitedly, but silently so--and are too easy to relate to in the ways you don't really want to talk about, in the ways you don't really want to remember... 

And that is why Wintergirls will still be memorable.

Standout Quotes:"The doctors tied me back together with twine...they tied me back together, but they didn't use double knots. My insides are draining out of the fault lines in my skin, I can feel it, but every time I check the bandages, they're dry."
"...Anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop.
Look into a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is wrong with you.
"Why [we hurt ourselves] is the wrong question. Ask "Why not?"" 

"Dr. Parker and all my parents live in a papier-mache world. They patch up problems with strips of newspaper and a little glue."
"There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh..." 

Album to listen to while reading this book: Not an album, but instead the Deryck Cooke version of Gustav Mahler's 10th Symphony. For those who don't know, Mahler died before completing this work, and it is often said that he knew he was dying when he wrote the 10th Symphony. The piece reflects on the choice between life and death. Just. Like. Wintergirls. 

S’s Thoughts:

Ahhh… Laurie Halse Anderson… the author of Speak, that much overrated-everyone’s-reading-it-in-high-school-so-I-should-too book.  I hated Speak… probably because it was the book to read.  I don’t know.  Moving on from that though, let’s have a look at Wintergirls.

I found the book to be a bit unnerving in that I could see some of my habits within Lia’s.  Not to the extreme as with her but I do count calories constantly (though I don’t know calories by heart) and I do work out on almost a daily basis nowadays.  I’ve lost nearly 30lbs since January, not out of compulsion but because I had to, both for my self esteem and my physical health.  Lia, on the other hand, is without a doubt extremely anorexic.

I knew girls like Lia and Cassie growing up.  Starvation and bulimia are infectious, especially when your friends are doing it, and I’d be lying if I said I’d never tried either.  Really though?  I like chocolate way too much and I hate barfing, so both options were immediately out.  Some of these girls now have serious health problems from diabetes to being infertile.  It’s sad, really.  But I do know what it’s like, to feel that desperate need to be thin or to be “clean.”  It’s a tough emotion, one that I still occasionally struggle with.

So what did I like about the book?  While I didn’t like/appreciate Speak, Anderson’s almost lyrical prose is very engaging.  She reminds me a lot of one of my favourite authors, Francesca Lia Block.  That’s definitely a plus in my book!  (If you haven’t read anything by Block, smack yourself and then pick up I Was a Teenage Fairy.)

What didn’t I like?  I’m not sure what it was about this book that made me give it 2 ½ hearts.  I just didn’t feel like I liked it very much.  It wasn’t a bad book, it wasn’t a fantastic book.  Insert shrug of shoulders here.

Standout Quotes:
"I don't need a muffin (410), I don't want an orange (75) or toast (87), and waffles (180) make me gag."

Album to listen to while reading this book:

Evanescence? Maybe?

September’s book is S’s choice and is Story Sisters by Alice Hoffman.  It may be super early in the month or towards the end as S will be relaxing on the beach for two weeks in the middle of the month. Additionally, D will have begun school and will have a marching band competition almost every Saturday, plus a few details regarding S and D's mother's upcoming marriage. Be jealous of S and extend your innermost pity to D!

See you soon! S & D

D's July Book Wrap-Up

Not that I'm a big supporter of bandwagons, but here's my I-totally-stole-this-idea-from-my-beautiful-sister-S book wrap-up.

Books Read: 8 

• The Raging Quiet --Sherryl Jordan
• You Are Not So Smart --David McRaney
• The Fault in our Stars --John Green
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close --Jonathan Safran Foer
• The Big Lie --Isabella Leitner (Okay, so this one probably shouldn't count because it's a book meant for the ages 8-10 range and I read it in 25 minutes because it's been sitting on my shelf for more than a decade and I never got around to it but I like reading about the Holocaust and this polysyndeton isn't even artful anymore. It goes, with or without my decent sentence structure.)
• Prufrock and Other Observations --T.S. Eliot (again, it probably shouldn't count, but it will today!)
• An Abundance of Katherines --John Green
• Paper Towns --John Green (catch a theme here?)

Books Abandoned: 0

Books in Progress: 1

• Night --Elie Weisel

Best Book: The Fault in our Stars--John Green

Okay, I've already gushed enough about TFioS (you can read and/or re-read my review of it here) so I will drag on about neither its astonishing figurative language nor the fact that Green struck the perfect balance between comedy and tragedy nor the importance of symbolism. I won't do it. Anymore.

I do feel like Night will be in this place next month. It was recommended to me by my best friend, and he's accurate about the legitimacy of epicness about 99.4% of the time. I already love it, and I'm only a few pages in.

Worst Book: An Abundance of Katherines--John Green

Yes, the best and worst July books are by the same author. Sue me. Seriously though, I had higher hopes for  Katherines. Why didn't I like it? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed it thoroughly. I just felt that Colin, the beyond-nerdy main character, was difficult to relate to even within our own similarities. Quite simply, Colin was that annoying kid from middle school who always tried to outsmart you but never had the right words to do it. Other than that, I loved the methodical structure of the book (many humorous footnotes that taught me a few words and phrases in ten languages) and the humanness found in some of the secondary characters. It really wasn't a bad book, it just couldn't stand up to its rivals this month.

I'm looking forward to Night as well as August's shared read: Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson. I've also got two more books on hold at the library: Looking for Alaska by (who else but) John Green and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Between marching band, which started this week, (ow, four mallet marimba hurts my hand!) and the beginning of school, I won't make any promises to read more books in August than I did in July. However, I can guarantee books of a higher caliber. As you can see, I seemed to be lacking in actual, ya know, challenge.

So long for now!

D

S's July Book Wrap Up

On my other blog, The London Diaries, I post a book wrap up at the end of each month. Since this is a total book nerd blog I thought I might just cross post those wrap ups here as well.

Books Read:  7

• House Rules - Jodi Picoult
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - Jonathan Safran Foer
• We Are All Made of Glue - Marina Lewycka
• Ours Are the Streets - Sunjeev Sahota
• Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
• Vaclav and Lena - Haley Tanner
• The Small Hand - Susan Hill

Books Abandoned: 1

• The Dead Room - Robert Ellis

Books in Progress:  1

• The Hour I First Believed - Wally Lamb

Best Book:  Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe - Fannie Flagg
It was actually really difficult to choose a favourite book this month as I loved “We Are All Made of Glue” just as much as “Fried Green Tomatoes” but the latter won the slight edge with its southern charm.  I haven’t actually seen the movie (gasp!) but from what I hear it’s a bit different to the book.  I hope not too much as I plan on watching it very soon!  It read a bit like I imagine Steel Magnolias would read if it were a book (and my GOD I wish it was!).  As a total aside, what the hell is THIS about???!!!

Worst Book:  House Rules - Jodi Picoult
While I did manage to finish this book (only just) it wasn’t Picoult’s best (or even decent) by far.  I just disliked everything about this one.

X
S