Sunday, October 19, 2014

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.
My comments are not meant to be recaps of the story lines as I include a link to Goodreads for their synopsis of the book. I am merely stating how I felt about the book without giving any spoilers.



COMPLETED READS TO DATE - 90


ABANDONED - title?
Thirty Girls
Evening


FINISHED:
The Glass Harmonica

Synopsis here.

Set on a street in St. John`s Newfoundland, I LOVED this book! I felt like he was writing about our street where we had our house. Crazy neighbours, 
and everyone knows everyone else`s business.
My only complaint is I wish I had drawn a chart with house numbers and names as I got a little confused
as I went along.

My Mother's Secret: A Novel Based on a True Holocaust Story

A novel based on a true story, a mother and daughter risk their lives to provide shelter to two families and a German soldier--all unbeknownst to each other--in a tiny two-room house in Sokal, Poland, during the Nazi invasion. 

Based on a true story, MY MOTHER'S SECRET is a profound, captivating, and ultimately uplifting tale intertwining the lives of two Jewish families in hiding from the Nazis, a fleeing German soldier, and the clever and "righteous" mother and daughter who teamed up to save them.

I liked it but I love anything to do with the holocaust. The writing style bothered me as I felt it was written
for children. Plain sentences and little character development.

The Saint Zita Society

'Someone had told Dex that the Queen lived in Victoria. So did he, but she had a palace and he had one room in a street off Warwick Way. Still he liked the idea that she was his neighbour.'

Dex works as a gardener for Dr Jefferson at his home on Hexam Place in Pimlico: an exclusive street of white-painted stucco Georgian houses inhabited by the rich, and serviced by the not so rich. The hired help, a motley assortment of au pairs, drivers and cleaners, decide to form the St Zita Society (Zita was the patron saint of domestic servants) as an excuse to meet at the local pub and air their grievances.

When Dex is invited to attend one of these meetings, the others find that he is a strange man, seemingly ill at ease with human beings. These first impressions are compounded when they discover he has recently been released from a hospital for the criminally insane, where he was incarcerated for attempting to kill his own mother. Dex's most meaningful relationship seems to be with his mobile phone service provider, Peach, and he interprets the text notifications and messages he receives from the company as a reassuring sign that there is some kind of god who will protect him. And give him instructions about ridding the world of evil spirits . . .

Accidental death and pathological madness cohabit above and below stairs in Hexam Place.

I`m a huge fan of Rendell. This lived up to my expectations. it twisted and turned and twisted again.
But it didn`t have the impact of a lot of her previous books. Goodreads fans did not give it good reviews, but I was entertained.


A Sleeping Life (Inspector Wexford, #10)

A wallet found in the handbag of a murder victim leads Inspector Wexford to Mr. Grenville West, a writer whose plots revel in the blood, thunder, and passion of dramas of old and whose current whereabouts are unclear. When a second Grenville West comes to light, Wexford faces a dizzying array of possible scenarios--and suspects!

This is an old, from 1978, Rendell story. I enjoyed it but did begin to figure out where the story was going.
It is funny to read a story where someone is raging about Women`s Lib and one has to go to the library to
look up information.

STARTED:
Everybody Has Everything

What happens when the tidy, prosperous life of an urban couple is turned inside out by a tragedy with unexpected consequences? After a car crash leaves their friend Marcus dead and his wife Sarah in a coma, Ana and James are shocked to discover that they have become the legal guardians of a 2½-year-old, Finn. Finn's crash-landing in their lives throws into high relief deeply rooted, and sometimes long-hidden, truths about themselves, both individually and as a couple. Several chaotic, poignant, and life-changing weeks as a most unusual family give rise to an often unasked question: Can everyone be a parent?

2 comments:

  1. I should give some of Ruth Rendell's work a try.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm going to keep an eye open for Everybody Has Everything. And I will watch for your thoughts when you are finished.

    ReplyDelete

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