a collection of tried and true
A 15 year old boy’s parents get caught robbing a bank in a small town in mid America in early ’60’s. The boy is sent to obscure relatives in northern Canada. This book received good buzz but I didn’t enjoy it. I found it plodding and melodramatic.
PJH Rating: ***
A 17 year old girl living in a well-off west coast town is involved in drugs and alcohol with her similar fast paced friends. The novel goes back and forth between the typical 17 year old know-it-all thoughts and her recovering alcoholic mother and step father. I didn’t like this book at all. There was not much plot and I wanted to slap all of them and tell them to get over it already.
PJH Rating: ***
A young woman in southern Tennessee is on her way to cheat on her husband but instead encounters a flock of butterflies than changes her life. Barbara Kingsolver, one of my favorite authors, takes it all on in this novel: religion, environmentalism, sexism, marriage…but her great storytelling and beautiful prose, as usual, all come together to make it a great novel.
PJH Rating: ****1/2
One of my goals for 2012 was to read 40 books. I finished 42. Hurray. My goal this year is to read 45. I read a lot of good ones this year so it was really tough to just pick five. You can see the whole list here on my blog.
My top 5 in no particular order:
A couple of other 2012 top books lists to check out:
In the early 1960’s a beautiful American woman arrives on the dock of a tiny island off the coast of Italy and the twenty something Italian owner of the small hotel falls in love at first site. This triggers many overlapping, jumping around stories set in Italy, Hollywood, Florence, Portland and others covering over 50 years. A beautifully written novel that was very hard to put down. Funny, romantic, suspenseful and very moving. Best book I’ve read in a long time.
PJH Rating: Five stars
Eat On Edgecliff 