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.