A House in the Sky by Amanda Lindhout and Sara Corbett

Perhaps you've thought that I've given up on blogging about the books I've read.  That is not true.  The fact is, I've been so busy that I haven't finished a book since July.  Fortunately, that changed this morning.  I hope to be back on track(ish) now.

The main reason I haven't been reading is the general busyness of my life, especially my studies.  My courses this semester involved a lot of reading, which didn't leave much time for reading for fun.

But another reason is that the book I was reading was A House in the Sky.  This is the true story of a Canadian woman who was taken hostage in Mogadishu, Somalia, and held there for 15 months.

As you can imagine, this was not pleasant reading.  What Amanda, and her fellow captive Nigel Brennan, endured was unbelievable and heartbreaking.  At the end of a long, busy day, it was hard to want to pick up a book that involved so much devastation.

This was my book club's chosen book for October.  I finished it this morning.  Not bad.  (haha).  I wasn't able to attend the meeting where it was discussed, so I don't know how the other women in my group felt about it.  A women's group from my church will also be discussing the book in January.  I'll be interested to hear their thoughts.

It is helpful to know that Amanda wrote the book herself.  Otherwise as you are reading it, you would never believe that she could make it out alive.  But I would love to read or learn more about her adjustment back into "normal" life.  In the epilogue she talks briefly about some of the PTSD therapy she received, but I still can't imagine how difficult the transition was for her.

It is a powerful story of what a person can endure, but it is not a book you will read for fun.  If you read it, or have read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts too.

This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall by Gordon Korman

Sorry, we finished this book weeks ago, but I never got around to blogging about it.

After we finished the Chronicles of Narnia we were looking for a new series to read together as a family.  A friend reminded me of the fun Canadian series about MacDonald Hall and we thought we'd give it a try.  Are we ever glad we did!

This Can't Be Happening at MacDonald Hall was written by Gordon Korman when he was 12 years old and published when he was 14.  It is a very funny book, about the adventures of two mischievous students, Bruno and Boots who keep things interesting at their boarding school, MacDonald Hall.  I remembered loving these books as a kid and hoped the kids would love them too.

They did.  There are many times when we were laughing so hard we had to take a break from reading.

Bruno and Boots get into serious trouble at the beginning of the book, so they lose the privilege of rooming together.  They are assigned new roommates, probably the last two guys in school they'd choose as their roommates.  Their new mission becomes finding a way to get put back together again in their old room.

We all loved this book and laughed a lot.  I only had one problem with the book.  The book was published in 1979, but this version has clearly been updated.  On one page we were reading about one of the new roommates having a 3D LED TV in his room.  I'm a purist who would like the original text to be left as it was written.

But aside from that minor bit, we highly recommend this fun book!

Crazy Adventure by A. McDormand, A. McDormand and M. Peddle

Well, this was my surprise read of the summer.

After spending a rainy afternoon playing some fill-in-the-blank story games, some of my day care crew decided they wanted to write a book themselves.  The next day, "Crazy Adventure" was born.

As the book was being written I was asked if I am troubled by nightmares.  I said that I had them from time to time.  The response was, "I hope this doesn't give you any tonight!"

This is the story of a day care, with a day care provider named Sue, who is afraid of snakes.  The kids find a treasure map and as they head out in search of the treasure, they run into some obstacles along the way.

As the adventure continues, they encounter crocodiles and snakes.  One of the snakes bites Sue and she is suddenly transformed into a snake.  They find some medicine that transforms snakes into humans, but (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!) it doesn't work and Sue stays a snake forever.

This is a very funny story, with great characters.  There is fantastic art throughout the book as well.  I highly recommend this book, but seeing as how I have the only copy, you might need to swing by my house to have a read.  I hope these authors come up with more books, I'm looking forward to reading anything else they publish.

Be Careful What You Wish For by Jeffrey Archer

Picking up where Best Kept Secret left off, this is book #4 in Jeffrey Archer's Clifton Chronicles series.  At the end of the previous book there is a serious car accident and you know one of the young men travelling in the car has been killed and the other is alive.  But which one lives and which one dies?

You find out the answer pretty quickly once this book starts, and the story of Clifton/Barrington family continues.

I found this book to be much more enjoyable than the previous book.  Where the previous book seemed like a collection of short stories, this one had more threads that wove through the whole book, which helped keep my interest better.

But as far as Jeffrey Archer books, I would still say this is far from his best (First Among Equals).  This book is full of stock market trading and board room meetings which dragged a bit.  The family company decides to get into the luxury cruise ship business and their enemies start plotting to bring them to ruin.  Will the ship get built?  Will the business succeed or fail?  Who will be the chairman of the company to lead the business in the right direction.  I'm not a lover of books about big business, and I've hated being a part of board meetings when my previous job required them, so this really wasn't my thing.

Still, I've grown attached to these characters and it's interesting to see how their personal lives develop. But I feel like their stories are mostly told by now.  There will be a fifth book next year.  I hope this is the end of it.  If you're reading the series, keep going, but if you haven't started, I think you can find better series out there.

The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis

I am so sad that we are now done the whole Chronicles of Narnia.  We read the end of The Last Battle tonight and now the whole series is done.

I can't say enough about what an amazing experience it was to read these books again with my kids and to see their reactions to the stories that I've loved for so long.  They listened to every detail and loved trying to guess what was going to happen next in each book.  They fell in love with the characters and feel like they've made new Narnian friends.  There were times when they were jumping for joy, cheering, and clapping as we read a new victory for the "good guys".  There were times when they were sad, and even times when we had to think of funny stories before bed because they were scared by what we'd read (the description of Tash in The Last Battle for example).

This final book tells the story of the end of Narnia, after a battle with Shift the Ape and some Calormene soldiers who are trying to take over Narnia.  Shift dresses a donkey up to look like Aslan and so gets all the creatures doing his bidding.  There are only a few who remain loyal to the real Aslan, and Jill and Eustace are pulled in from England to help fight this final battle.

I think the last page of this book is one of my all-time favourite endings in any book I've read.  The last chapter was filled with so many reunions with characters from earlier books that the kids were going out of their minds with excitement.  It was just such a great way to finish the series.

Now I really don't know what to read next.  They just want to go back and start the whole series again, but I want to move onto something new.  I can't convince Wesley to go for Anne of Green Gables (too girly), so I'm trying to find something they'll both enjoy.  I'm thinking of Charlotte's Web.  I'm not a Tolkien fan myself, so I don't really want to do The Hobbit.  I'd appreciate any suggestions!

The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

I enjoyed this book.  What a light, fun summer read.  It's not going to be a literary classic, but if you're looking for something light to take along on your vacation, I recommend this one.

Martha Andersson is a resident of the Diamond House nursing home in Stockholm.  After being taken over by new owners, there have been cutbacks to the care at Diamond House making life pretty miserable for Martha and the other residents there.  Some of her lifelong friends, Brains, Rake, Anna-Greta and Christina are in there with her, and they need to come up with a plan to make things better.  They've been cut back to one meal a day, with a few snacks, no alcohol, no outside time, no recreation and a limit on the amount of coffee they can drink!  How can they live like that?

One night, Martha and Brains watch a documentary about the prisons in Sweden and the quality of life experienced by the prisoners there.  The prisoners get three square meals a day, daily outside time and the opportunity to take classes.  Martha quickly realizes that life is better in prison than in the nursing home and starts making plans so that she and her friends can end up there.

Being new to the crime lifestyle in their late-70's and early-80's, they've got a lot to learn, but they learn quickly and soon begin their life of crime.  This funny story follows their escapades through their successes, failures and the attempts by police to determine who is behind this new crime ring.

Again, it's not classic literature, but it's fun.  If you liked, "The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and then Disappeared", you'll like this one.

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

We are sad to be approaching the end of the Chronicles of Narnia as we finished this book.  Only one book remains.  As with the others, we loved this book and the adventures we read about along the way.

I know I've read this book before, but as we started it, I had very little recollection of what the story was.  We found it to be one of the darkest books of the series.

My guest reviewer, Darcy, found the book to be terrifying in some spots. There was even one night after we'd done our pre-bedtime reading, that I needed to tell them some funny stories to lighten the mood because they were a bit freaked out by what we'd read.

Picking up where The Voyage of the Dawn Treader leaves off, this book follows Eustace and his new friend Jill as they enter Narnia after running away from some bullies at their awful school.  Once there, a scuffle between the two friends ends with Eustace falling off a mountain and Jill meeting with Aslan.  He tells her it is her job to find King Caspian's missing son, Prince Rilian, and gives her signs to follow that will help her in her quest.  Jill manages to mess up the first few signs, which makes their task even harder.

Once she meets up with Eustace (who Aslan had guided safely to the bottom of the mountain) they set off on their quest along with their new friend, the eternal pessimist, Puddleglum.

A long journey follows, including a trip to the middle of the earth.  There are funny times, scary times and sad times along the way.  But there were times that were so exciting that Wesley was jumping out of his chair and clapping and cheering.  I love seeing him so excited about a book.

So, now we've begun The Last Battle and we will be sad to see the end of it.  Any suggestions for what we should read next?

The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan

This was another selection for my book club, and I just didn't enjoy this one at all.  It took me a long time to get interested in the book, and even then, I still wasn't all that interested.

This is the story of Bess Heath, a young woman growing up in Niagara Falls in the early 1900's, just leading into World War I.  Bess's family is one of wealth and privilege until her father suddenly loses his job and the family finds themselves falling on hard times.  While struggling to keep her family afloat, Bess meets and falls in love with Tom Cole.  Tom is not in the same league as Bess's family, but he is a man who knows the Falls and the river and has special abilities to see dangers there that others cannot see.

Their story is sweet and endearing, but it is buried beneath a story of the development of Niagara Falls, the building of hydroelectric plants, and how the development is beginning to destroy the natural beauty and majesty of the falls.  Tom struggles to fight against that development while needing to work for the plants to support his family after his return from the war.  I found the details of this struggle to be really, truthfully, uninteresting.  I normally enjoy historical fiction, but I really found it hard to get emotionally invested in this story.  I also felt the tragedy that happened at the end of the book was heavily foreshadowed, so it wasn't surprising when it happened.

The woman in our group who chose this book is from the Niagara region, and I can see why she would find it interesting for that reason.  There is a lot of talk about the different areas of Niagara Falls and if you were really familiar with that area, it would be fun to read about that.  But with me having only a tourist's knowledge of the area, that wasn't an important feature for me.

It's a fairly light book, but definitely not a page turner.

The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

Continuing on in the Chronicles of Narnia series, we finished The Voyage of the Dawn Treader tonight.  When I asked the kids what they thought I should say about it on my blog, Darcy said, "It's amazing!" and Wesley said, "It felt like it went on forever!"  When I asked him what he meant by that, he said that they had so many amazing adventures in this book, that it seemed like it went on forever, but in the best way.  He loved every minute of it.

I found this one difficult to read aloud, because of some of the nautical terms that I'm not familiar with (we had a lot of giggling every time the book made reference to the "poop" of the ship), but it's a great story.

Lucy and Edmund Pevensie are sent to spend the summer at the house of their nasty cousin Eustace.  One afternoon a painting of a sailing ship comes to life, filling the room with water, taking Lucy, Edmund and Eustace to Narnia.  There they encounter their friend King Caspian, who is on a journey to find seven missing Lords who were loyal to Caspian's father.  Along the way they encounter some strange lands, some strange people, and lots of magic.  Eustace spends some time as a dragon and it goes a long way to improving his personality.

We made the mistake of watching the movie before reading the book.  The movie changed the story in a lot of ways, but because the kids saw the movie first, they thought that was the right way to tell the story. It took a bit of convincing on my part to get them to believe that the book is actually the way the story is meant to be told.

Wesley says that this is his favourite book in the series so far (Darcy's is A Horse and His Boy).  That's not really surprising giving the pirate-like feel of a story told on a ship, with countless adventures to be had.  All in all, a really fun book that we had a lot of fun reading.

We Are Water by Wally Lamb

I have been a fan of Wally Lamb's for years.  I love the way he tells stories, the depth he brings into a storyline and how his stories often span generations in a family.  When I heard he had released a new book, I bought it without knowing anything about it. I will not do that again.

His books can tend to be dark (with the hilarious exception of Wishin' and Hopin') but this book is disturbing.  Just completely disturbing.  I wish I'd never read it, because there are now images in my mind that I can't get out.  The book claims to be about how a woman (Annie) shocks her family by leaving her husband of 27 years for a woman.  The book jacket references "a Pandora's box of secrets" that will be opened as these women prepare to be married.  The book looks at Annie's family and how her first marriage fell apart and the impact that had on her children.  Annie had some secrets that she brought into the marriage that she couldn't quite cope with.

I'm not normally one for spoilers, but I really wish I had known this before I read the book.  Annie, was molested and raped as a child by a cousin who lived with her.  The chapters of the book are told in alternating voices, so we get the perspectives of different characters.  Well, several chapters are told from the perspective of the molester.  I was completely unprepared for that, and to be honest, it's not a perspective I had any interest in reading.  He discusses how he finds new girls to approach and how he grooms them.  This is not something I want to read for fun.  Again, the book jacket talks about the alternating voices, but only mentions Annie, her ex-husband and children, it doesn't say anything about the cousin.

Wally Lamb's storytelling is still incredible to me, but this is not a story I want to be told.

Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis

Continuing in our quest to read the Chronicles of Narnia, we have now finished Prince Caspian.  Darcy is helping me with this review.

This book is an exciting adventure, which has the Pevensie children transported from a train station platform to an unrecognizable Narnia.  Since they've been out of Narnia, hundreds of years have past in Narnian time, their castle is in ruins and the landscape has changed.

They soon find out that they have been summoned to Narnia by Susan's horn, to come to the aid of Prince Caspian and the Narnians, who are fighting against Miraz, Caspian's uncle who has made himself king.

Of course there are battles and adventures along the way, and lots of amazing characters to meet. As with the other books in this series, we loved this book.  Darcy thinks the movie is better though.  I can't believe she just said that.

Egghead by Caroline Pignat

It's a rare thing when I finish a book in one evening, but that's what happened with Caroline Pignat's "Egghead".  I heard about this book a couple of weeks ago in one of my classes, when we were each asked to present a book geared at students in grades 4 and up.  One of my classmates presented this book and I decided to read it.

Written by a local Ottawa writer, this is a book that takes a look at bullying, and is set in a high school (St. Patrick's High School, here in Ottawa).  It is the story of Will Reid, a grade 9 student who just doesn't seem to fit in.  He's not really all that concerned about fitting in, but Shane, Brad and Devan, the school bullies turn it into a big deal.  Katie, Will's only friend wants to help but often feels torn between Will and other friends who want to be more popular.  She's also never quite sure what she should do to help.

Three different characters narrate the story, chapter by chapter.  Will's chapters are told in poems that he's written, then Katie and Devan each tell their parts in the story too.  I know some people don't like stories told in different voices like that, but I really enjoy it.  I like reading the different perspectives and I feel like you get to know the characters better that way.

I would like to know how St. Patrick's High School feels about being the setting for this story, as the school administration is portrayed as not doing very much and the teachers are perceived as not caring about their students.  But, as the story is told from the point of view of three teenagers, I can understand that a lot of high schoolers feel that way about the staff at their schools.

The bullying in this book is downright cruel in parts and can be difficult to read.  But I still recommend the book, especially for teens to see the effects of bullying.  It's a short read, and has received a lot of good reviews from teens on Goodreads.

If you give it a read, or have already, I'd like to know what you think.

The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan

This is a book that took me a bit by surprise.  It was another book club selection, and I'm very glad it was, because I'd never heard of it before then.

It's the story of Gwenni, a young girl growing up in Wales in the 1950's.  She flies through town in her sleep, giving her the chance to see things from a different vantage point.

The father of a family she babysits for goes missing and is soon discovered to be murdered.  Gwenni hopes to become a detective when she grows up so she decides to help solve the mystery.  But there are so many other things to figure out along the way.  Like why does her mother need so many pills from the doctor to get through the day, why does her sister have different coloured eyes than either of their parents, why does that woman in town wear a dead fox around her neck, and why is her best friend suddenly more interested in boys than in solving the mystery with her?

With the setting in Wales, I had a hard time figuring out how some of the places and names should be pronounced.  So I ended up just making up pronunciations in my mind and sticking with them.

I found this book to be similar in feel to The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, so if you liked that one, I think you'll like this too.

Many, but not all, of Gwenni's questions get satisfactory answers.  I've seen some reviewers who aren't happy with how some of the questions were left hanging.  I didn't mind that.  You don't always get full answers to your questions in life, and sometimes I find books are wrapped up just a little too neatly.  This one leaves you to try to figure some things out on your own.

I found this to be a light, fun little read.  I highly recommend it.

Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Another book club choice, I really wasn't sure what to expect from this book.  I certainly didn't expect anything close to what I got.

If I didn't know this was a true story, I would  never believe it.  It just seems impossible for one person to survive so much hardship in his life.  Not only did he survive, but the way in which he was able to move on and build a new life is just astounding.  I don't want to say too much to give away the story, but the fact that he's still alive now, kind of lets you know that he's going to make it through the book.

This is the story of Louis Zamperini, an American Olympic runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics.  He was a bit of a trouble causer as a child, but running gave him the focus and outlet for his energy that he needed.  As he prepared for the 1940 Olympics, World War II broke out, and Louis joined the Air Force.  A plane he was in was attacked by the Japanese and went down.  He survived for more than 40 days at sea with little food and water, surrounded by sharks.  When they finally reached land, they were taken prisoner by the Japanese and were subjected to absolutely horrifying conditions in the POW camps there.

But we all know how WWII ended, and again, because we know he's still alive, we know that even though it seemed unlikely, he made it out.  But my favourite part of the book was his return to California and the difficulty he had rebuilding his life there.

This is not an easy book to read.  The subject matter made it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time.  It was just so upsetting in spots.  But it went a lot more quickly once he had returned home.

I highly recommend this book.  I'm not normally a lover of non-fiction and would never have picked this up on my own, but I'm so glad that I read.  I've also learned that it is being made into a movie.  It will be interesting to see how that is handled and if they do justice to this amazing story.

The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis

Continuing on in the Chronicles of Narnia series, the kids and I finished "The Horse and His Boy" tonight.  Again, what can you say, but how great these books are?  We're just loving them.  And I am loving watching the kids experience these stories for the first time, seeing their expressions as they figure things out and listening to their predictions about what is going to happen next.

We have a joke between the three of us about reading ahead when the others aren't there.  What I love is that Wesley is trying to do that too.  I often find him sneaking into my room to pick up the book to try to figure out what's going to happen next.  On his own, this book is way above his reading level, but he uses the pictures and tries to read the chapter titles to figure out what's going to happen.  I just love that.  It's getting him passionate about reading and that's what I want.  He hasn't always shown a lot of interest in reading, so seeing him this excited is fun for me.

This story focuses less on the Pevensie family (they're very minor characters in this one) and more on Shasta, a young slave boy who runs away with his horse to prevent being sold to a crueler master than the one he's had.  He lives in the land of Calormen, near Narnia, and he and the new master's horse (a Narnian talking horse who had been captured by Calormenes) decide to try to get to Narnia together.  They meet lots of interesting people and have some amazing adventures along the way.  Shasta discovers his true identity and a future he never imagined.

While we loved this story, the language in this book was a bit more challenging for the kids than in the two previous books.  There are a lot of queens and kings who speak in very formal, old fashioned ways and the kids had some trouble understanding that.  We often had to stop so I could summarize what had been said, or to define some words for them.  So we felt like this one took us a bit longer to get through than the others.  But once they understood what was happening, they loved each scene and all the fun characters.

Prince Caspian, here we come!  We watched the movie this weekend, so now we're ready to see how much better the book is.

Longbourn by Jo Baker

Every time I read some author's take on Pride and Prejudice, I always get frustrated and say that I will never read another one.  Then, after a few years a new book will come along and I'll get sucked in again.  And I get frustrated again.

I thought this was going to be the book that broke the pattern. I was wrong. This is my book club's selection for March.  Sadly, that was on my recommendation.

Hailed as "Pride and Prejudice" meeting "Downton Abbey" I thought I couldn't go wrong.  I love P & P.  I love Downton.  What a perfect combination.  It just didn't deliver for me.

This book takes the events of P & P and retells them through the eyes of the servants of Longbourn, specifically Sarah, the housemaid.  I think they did an OK job, for the most part, of using the familiar storylines as the backdrop for the new story.  I just didn't find the characters or their storylines to be very interesting.  It took me a couple of weeks to get through the book, because I was never interested enough to read more than a few pages at a time.  If it wasn't for my two long train rides over the weekend, I don't know when I'd ever have finished it.

As always, I don't want to give away major plot points, so it will be a bit hard for me to explain exactly what I didn't like about the book.  Let me say this: if you are going to use a very familiar and very loved story, DON'T CHANGE IT!!!!  There is a major storyline in this book that is very different from P & P.  That bothers me.  If you've read it, or you do read it, let me know and we can talk about it.

One final rant.  I feel I know the original story pretty well.  It's no secret that I love it.  My daughter is named Darcy, after all.  I also feel I have a pretty good understanding of the characters.  I guess the biggest problem for me in reading another author's take on these characters is that their understanding of the characters is often different from mine. There is a section at the end of this book that takes place after P & P finished and it shows Elizabeth living at Pemberley as Mrs. Darcy.  She comes across as insecure at times and at others she is rude to the servant who has been with her since her youth.  I can't be alone in thinking that that is not how Elizabeth would have been.

So, if I ever tell you that I'm going to read a new take on P & P, please stop me.

The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis

This was our next stop on our trip through Narnia.  For this book, we went back to the beginning to see how Narnia was created.  I prefer to read this one second when I read the whole series as I think it helps to know what happens in "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" before you read this one. That was confirmed for me when I saw the looks on the kids faces when they found out that Digory grows up to be the Professor in "The Lion...".  They were so excited.

There are some really funny parts in this book, like when the White Witch invades London, or when Uncle Andrew is planted like a tree in the new land of Narnia.  It's interesting to see how the White Witch leaves the land of Charn and ends up in Narnia, causing trouble.

All in all, we loved this book.  The kids are loving the series and I'm loving reading it again with their first-time enthusiasm.  Next we will read, "A Horse and His Boy" and then work the rest of the way through the series as they're numbered.

Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

I'm iffy about this one.  I started reading it on the recommendation of a friend, but I didn't read any sort of synopsis before I started.  I had no idea what was about to happen.  I really liked it at the beginning, but as it wore on, I kind of lost interest.

This is the story of Clay Jannon, a young man living in San Francisco who finds himself out of work.  He stumbles across a "Help Wanted" sign and goes into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and gets a job on the spot.  But when he is hired, he is told not to look into the books that are available there.

Soon after starting, Clay notices that strange things are happening in the bookstore.  Regular customers come in (and he must record every detail of their visit in a log book) and borrow books, but they never purchase them.  Even though he has been told not to, Clay decides to look at the books to see what is inside.  He finds a series of symbols that don't make sense to him and stumbles across a secret society trying to crack the code.

Conveniently, his girlfriend works for Google and his roommate works for Industrial Light and Magic.  Having these two at his disposal makes it easy for him to try to find out more information and even crack part of the code that takes some of the members decades to do on their own.

From here, it lost me a little.  It was a little too convenient that he had people working for Google and ILM available to him.  Also, the secret society part seemed like it was trying to be a bit Dan Brown-y.  I don't like Dan Brown, so for me, that's not a good thing.

It was good, not great, but a fun, quick read.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

I really have a hard time talking about this book.  It's so beautiful, yet so difficult at the same time.  This was a re-read for me.  I read it for the first time several years ago, and then it was the selection for my book club for this month's meeting.  I don't know if I would have read it a second time without it having been selected by my book club.

Set in Germany during World War II, I feel this book gives an insight into WWII that is often overlooked.  When thinking of that war, we often (or at least I do) just think of Germany as the "bad guys".  You don't think about the average German family at that time, people who may not have agreed with the direction their country was heading, but had to survive there regardless.  The book is narrated by Death, and he is kept very busy throughout the book.

The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, who at the beginning of the book is an illiterate girl being taken by train to live with a new foster family.  She is taken by her mother, a communist, to try to give her a safer life.  Her younger brother dies on the train journey.  Liesel in now left to start a new life alone with her new foster parents, Hans and Rose Hubermann.

After the death of her brother, Liesel steals a book dropped by the gravediggers who bury him.  It is the beginning of her love of words, books and language, which carries her through the rest of her life.  Taught to read by her foster father, words change Liesel's life in ways she never imagined.

As a lover of words and books myself, this strikes a chord with me.  I love this girl and her story.

But aside from all that, this book introduces one of my favourite literary characters of all time, Hans Hubermann, Liesel's stepfather.  Foster parents often are depicted as the villains, but nothing can be further from the truth in this book.  Hans is genuine goodness and love personified, and one of the most beautiful characters I've ever read.

It's not a light read.  You're not going to walk away from this book and think, "Wow, that was great.  I loved that!" in a traditional way.  But if you're like me, you will be challenged by what you read, you'll love the characters, and you might even gain a new understanding about how people lived during WWII.

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis

I'm not sure how many times I've read this book, but this past reading was definitely my favourite.  The kids and I have been reading a chapter (or two) at night before bed.  Reading one of my favourite stories from childhood with my kids was so much fun  They were so excited each night to see what was going to happen next and every night they asked me to just read a little more.  In fact, the best motivator I've ever had to get Wesley to brush his teeth was to say, "Come on, let's go so we can see what's happening in Narnia."  The teeth got brushed every time.

We loved reading this book together.  They loved the characters, the creatures from another world that they've never heard of and couldn't quite picture.  They loved the idea of being able to sneak into another world, and have asked me to buy a wardrobe in case it's one that will get us into Narnia.

I don't think I really need to say a lot about this book, it's such a classic.  If you haven't read it, you should, no matter what your age.  And if you can read it with your kids, even better.

I decided to read the series a little out of order with them.  Chronologically this is the second in the series, but I thought they'd enjoy this one more than, "The Magicians's Nephew" which is #1 in the series.  We're going to start that one tomorrow.

Now I just have to keep Darcy from reading ahead.  No easy task.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I loved this book!  What a fun, refreshing read.  I finished it in two days (but don't ask me about the state of my house).

Professor Don Tillman has Asberger's. But he doesn't know that.  What he does know is that he doesn't do well in social settings and that he wants to find wife.  So after years of never being able to get to a second date with a woman he develops, "The Wife Project", a lengthy questionnaire he can give to women to rule out unsuitable women without wasting their time on a first date. The questionnaire involves things like smoking, drinking, vegetarianism and ice cream preferences (after one particularly horrible date), among countless others. 

Along the way he meets Rosie, who fails the questionnaire on so many levels.  But she is looking to find her biological father and Don, a geneticist, can help her with this.  As he sets aside his wife project to help her look for her father, he learns a lot about himself and about what it really means to love someone.

At times it's hilarious, others sweet, but, in my opinion, always enjoyable. Don's rigid routines, his awkward social encounters and his struggles to deal with life as he sees it are fun to read and develop a character that you really grow to care about.

I've read that this book was actually written as a screenplay that was turned into a book and of course, Sony has already optioned the screenplay.  So it's quite likely that there could be a movie version in the future.  I'm not sure how I'd feel about that, but I've also heard he's working on a sequel to the book.  I'm much more interested in that.

So, if you're looking for a funny, light read, I highly recommend this one.  It could be my favourite book of 2014 and it's only January 26th!

Best Kept Secret by Jeffrey Archer

I think this is the most disappointed I've ever been by a Jeffrey Archer book.  This is the third book in his "Clifton Chronicles" series, and having enjoyed the first two books, I was eager to read this one.  The second book ended on a bit of a cliff hanger, so I wanted to see how that resolved.

What I usually love about Archer's books is that they keep me intrigued from beginning to end.  There is some sort of mystery that keeps you guessing until the very last page (First Among Equals is a great example).  But that just didn't happen in this book.  This one read like a collection of short stories.  There's a crisis to be solved and it's solved within 50 pages.  Then we're on to the next one.  Then the next.  But there wasn't really a thread through all of them that kept you wondering what was next, they could all have been completely unrelated to each other.  While most of them were interesting, once you finished one there wasn't really anything to keep you reading the next section.

I won't say much about the story line of this one, in case you've read (or are planning to read) the first two books, and I don't want to spoil their stories. This one does end on an exciting cliffhanger again, so now I have to decide if I want to read the next one when it comes out in May. Will it be as good as the first two, or a dud like this one?

The Imposter Bride by Nancy Richler

Often, by the time I get around to reading a book, I have no idea where I heard about the book in the first place.  This is one of those books.  I actually started reading the book months ago, couldn't get into it and set it aside.  I just picked it up again this week and was able to finish it this time.  (Side note, in my life, there have only been three books that I have started and not finished: "The Hobbit", "Catch-22" and "Captain Corelli's Mandolin".)

Although I finished it, I didn't love it.  And that's ok.  No one is going to like every book they read.  I just wish I remembered where I heard of this one and what it was that made me want to read it in the first place.

Set in Montreal, beginning right after WWII, this is the story of a Jewish woman who arrives in Montreal from Europe, to meet the man she had corresponded with and who had promised to marry her.  He has a bad feeling when he sees her get off the train so he leaves her at the train station and she ends up marrying his brother instead.  But it is clear that she is not who she claims to be.

The story is told in alternating chapters between her story and the story of her daughter, who grows up not knowing her mother.  The story really belongs to Ruthie, the daughter who grows up without her mother, trying to find where she belongs and how to deal with how different she feels from everyone else who has a mother.  For reasons that are never fully explained, members of her family keep what they do know about her mother from her and her small attempts at finding her mother don't work.

I just wasn't drawn into this book.  I didn't feel an emotional connection with the characters.  I didn't understand a lot of the decisions they made.  For that reason, the book just didn't sit well with me.  I usually love WWII stories too, which is probably part of what drew me to this one.

One thing I did like about the book were the familiar settings around Montreal, hearing descriptions of places I've been and seen.  That's always fun.

So, I thought this book was OK. A fairly light read, an interesting look at what defines us, but there are better books out there.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

This was the selection for the January meeting of my book club.  I'm still fairly new to the whole idea of books clubs, but I'm loving it so far.  Maybe because we're a pretty laid-back group that doesn't get too serious about themes and symbolism, but we just talk about what we like and don't like.  That's my kind of book club.

I left this one until a week before the meeting, not fully realizing that it had 650 pages. So I kind of rushed through it a bit, not fully immersing myself in some of the vivid descriptions in the book.

This is the story mainly of Marion Stone, but you can't tell his story without including his identical twin, Shiva.  Marion and Shiva are the sons of a nun (yes, a nun) and one of the doctors at the Ethiopian hospital where she worked as  nurse.  Having hid her pregnancy from everyone, including the father, the hospital staff went into shock and weren't prepared for the complicated birth. As a result, the mother dies in childbirth, causing the grieving father to abandon the boys and flee the country.  The boys are raised on the grounds of the hospital by some of the doctors remaining there.

This is a beautifully written book.  As I mentioned earlier, there are a lot of very vivid descriptions (some of which I sped over, in the interest of finishing the book) that really help capture the setting of the book.  At the beginning of the book there is a scene inside a crashing airplane.  I felt like I was right there in the plane, I could feel the fear and tension perfectly.

Because the book is set mainly in a hospital, with many characters being doctors, a lot of the descriptions are of medical settings which can be a bit much.  One of the women in my book club said she often got queasy from some of the medical scenes and had to take a break from reading.  Surgeries are described in great detail, including a step-by-step demonstration of how to do a vasectomy, so these are areas I tended to skip over a little.  I don't think I'm ever going to need that skill.

On the whole, I really enjoyed this book, I loved the characters and the Ethiopian setting.  In our book club we also discussed that things seemed to wrap up a little too neatly, with some pretty big coincidences factoring in to how the plot is resolved.  Still, I enjoyed it and recommend it.

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

Like many others, I was intrigued by this show when it first appeared on Netflix.  It has great characters who are developed well (I particularly like how they introduce everyone's back stories) and great writing.  When I heard it was based on a book, I thought I'd give the book a try.

The similarities between the book and tv show pretty much end at the title.  Oh, and the main character in each is named Piper.  That's pretty much it.

But if you set aside any expectations about it being like the tv show, it's a good book on its own.  I'm not a huge reader of non-fiction, I like my reading to be more of an escape, but this is one I enjoyed.

Piper takes an honest look at the decisions she made that result in her being sentenced to 15 years in a federal prison.  She serves her sentence, fearfully, but knowing that it was her own choices that sent her there.  But while she's there she takes a look at the prison system and how it's not working.  How women serving long sentences are not being rehabilitated and prepared for a new life on the "outside" once their sentences were done.  How there is little help available to help find housing or jobs once a prisoner is released.  She is fortunate to have a home and a job waiting for her, but many of her fellow prisoners aren't in that position.

There are still a lot of interesting characters, but you don't get to know them well.  I'm sure that is, in large part, to protect the identities of the real women she encountered in prison.

One thing that bothered me throughout the book was her repeatedly telling us how often she was told that she was "too pretty" for prison, or that she didn't belong there.  It just got a bit much.

All told, it was a good read.  Not great but good. Just don't read it if you're expecting it to be like the tv show.