Drinking Midnight Wine

Drinking Midnight Wine by Simon R. Green is one of his few stand alone novels. I am not sure how much I LOVED this book but now that it is over I miss the characters. So I guess that means it was pretty good.

This is the tale of two worlds colliding. The world of magic and the ordinary world of humans. Powerful forces, godlings, lycanthropes, you name it, they make an appearance.

To sum it up here is a few lines from the story:

What value can one ordinary man have in a magical world?

What can a mortal bring to the affairs of immortals?

Insight. Honor. Morality. Perspective.

Because nothing makes love and life matter more than the knowledge that some day it must end.

Winkie

Winkie by Clifford Chase has been on my list for a while. It came out last summer and it sounded very intriguing. But due to the enormity of my overwhelming book list it sort of got lost in the bookshelf shuffle. But it called to me and so I listened.

This was a fascinating book. It's a very quick read but an utterly maddening one. Towards the end of the book my blood was boiling. Who'd have thunk a story about a teddy bear could rile me up so much. But rile it did.

Basically in a nut shell this story is about the extreme illogical paranoia we have with terrorism and how some people are so desperate to blame anyone and anything for our fears that we blindly stop at nothing to find someone to accuse. And we turn a blind eye to the atrocities our government has been committing all in the name of national security.

But this book is not just about terrorism. It is also about love, kindness, and the discovery of what it means to be alive. So check out Winkie. I think you will like this little bear.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling was a satisfying end to a wonderful series. No spoilers, I promise. I will simply say that it was a really good read and I am sad that the series is over. But I hope that if Rowling continues her writing career her direction changes. I feel that the story is complete and perfect as it stands. Don't mess with perfection.

She achieved something greater than just a good series with Harry Potter. She caused generations of children and adults alike to discover the joy of reading. People who would normally never pick up a book did so to read Harry.

I would nominate this book for the Pulitzer this year. NOT because of the book itself but rather everything that went along with it. The entire planet was reading Harry Potter July 21st. No one has ever achieved a feat on that scale. No one in the history of writing has gotten so many people together with one goal. And I admire that. I don't know if we will ever see such an achievement ever duplicated again. But I thank Ms. Rowling for helping millions discover the joy of reading.

A Kiss from Maddalena

A Kiss from Maddalena by Christopher Castellani tells the story of life in a small Italian village toward the end of World War II. The central characters are the beautiful Maddalena and the love of her life, the young Vito.

The war tears their lives apart as Maddalena's family finds itself fleeing their small village for safer parts of Italy. Vito must stay behind and care for his ailing mother.

Once the war is finished Maddalena and her family return. And life is never the same for either of them.

A wonderful story, beautiful, eloquent, and absorbing.

***I can't ruin the story for you so I'll just say this: this is not a "hollywood" story.

Shoot the Moon

Shoot the Moon by Billie Letts was a really great read. I picked this up because I really enjoyed Where the Heart Is. Both the book and the movie. I started the book on Friday. And finished it Saturday afternoon. It's a wonderful story about the return of a young man that had disapeared and was thought dead over 20 years before.

I giggled, I got angry, and I cried. The characters in this story are simply fabulous. From almost the first page you feel like you know the characters personally. They are so vivid and so alive.

The Cabinet of Curiosities

The Cabinet of Curiosities by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child is the third in the Pendergast Series. I haven't read the previous two novels but they are on my list now.

I was chatting with a guy on the bus yesterday, he was reading a different Douglas Preston novel, and he said that this was the weaskest in the series. If that is truly the case than I am in for a treat.

The only thing I was having trouble with was that I couldn't read as fast as my curiosity. So I found myself looking through pages in the book to see if certain characters survived or not. Yep, that's cheating. But there is so much detail in the story that I did find myself wanting to get through it and skip the details just so I can find out who done it and why and who survived.

The story is about a serial killer in the turn of the 19th century. His crimes are unearthed at a construction site in New York. After breaking the story in the Times the city is suddenly faced with a copy cat serial killer. Will Agent Pendergast be able to solve the crime before another murder takes place? Will the NYPD? And what do all these murders have to do with the Museum of Natural History?

The museum is the next evolutionary step in what used to be Cabinet of Curiosities. People started private collections of nature and natural phenomenon. Those collections would sometimes go on view to the public. But as the world moved forward the Cabinets became less popular. And the Museum of Natural History inherited many of these collections. Strange skeletons, mason jars filled with unusual creatures, gem stones, dinosaur fossils, shrunken heads, elephant feet. You name it, the Cabinets had them.

Overall this was a well written and fun read. And I look forward to more of their books.

The Master

The Master by Colm Toibin was a very beautifully written book. This book has been on my list of must reads for a few years. It was recognized by both the NY Times and the LA Times as one of the best works of fiction. I can see why.

However, as beautifully written as this book was it was, for lack of a better description, tedious reading. As much as I enjoyed it I also kept looking to see how much more I had left to read.

It covers 4 years in he life of Henry James. Through memories and flashbacks it covers a greater span of the author's life, but the basic story covers from 1895 to 1899. I found it interesting, enlightening, and educational. But again, at the price of being a little slow going. Grant you I read this book in just a few days but still, it became more of a "get it done" sort of task. The book was so well written that I wanted to finish it, it deserved to be read. However it didn't grasp and hold my undivided attention. I found there to be many instances in which my mind had wandered though I kept reading the words and a page or two later had to stop and go back because I had no idea what I had been reading.

Don't let my thoughts dissuade you from reading this book. Like I said, it's beautifully written. And I knew nothing about Henry James so I found this very interesting. The scenery and descriptions of London, Venice, Florence, Rome, English countryside were worth it alone.

Shoe Addicts Anonymous

Shoe Addicts Anonymous by Beth Harbison was given to me by Girl J. She saw it before it was released and had to pre-order it for us. She only told me that I was not to buy a book for the next couple of weeks. And that I would know exactly what book she meant if I saw it on a shelf.

Finally the book arrived and she surprised me with my copy. And I cracked up. She was right. I would have known exactly what book she was talking about. I read it in a day.

This is a chick book at it's finest. I actually loved this book because it is all about women. Completely and totally about being a woman. About love, life, friendship, and yes, about shoes. This was a charming and fun story. I think one of the things I most liked about this story is that it truly revolves around the women. Typically chick books always lead to something that revolves around children, and myself, being childless, always think that there has to be more to life than making everything about kids. And this book does just that. And I loved it the more for it. I could relate to every single one of the characters. There was a little of me in each of them.

This is the perfect, perfect, perfect beach blanket book. Or the perfect long plane ride book, or the perfect vacation book. Just make sure you have more than one book with you if you take it on vacation. I plowed through this book in less than 5 hours. It was just that fun, that light, and that entertaining.

I do have to admit that the shoes themselves were way out of my league. I have never even tried on a shoe that costs more than $250.00 let alone had a closet full of them. But the general addiction I could totally relate to. I just do it on a smaller $$ scale. Though they do mention DSW so I guess even the high end shoe addicts will "slum" once in a while.

So if you want to bring out your inner girly girl pick this book up. It's fun.

My Lover's Lover

My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell is the second book that I have read by this author. She also wrote After You'd Gone.

I loved both stories. She has a writing style that is warm and comfortable. Dealing with real human emotions in a way that we can easily relate.

The thing I love about her books is they aren't quite "Lifetime" channel material. In once sense they are stories of love and loss told from a woman's perspective - so it's perfect lifetime material. But I never get the feeling in her stories that they are written "for a good cry". They are deeper than that, they hit a little harder and make you think a little bit more. There is courage, depth, and honesty in her books without turning them into "Chick"
books.

I'm not sure if that makes any sense what so ever. But it's the best way I can describe her books. They are simply beautifully written stories.

Twilight of the Empire

Twilight of the Empire by Simon R. Green consists of three stories that all take place just before his Deathstalker series.

Like every Simon Green book this is a fast and fun read. You don't have to read it before the Deathstalker series. It basically is some back story for characters that appear in the rest of the series.

As fast as I want to read his books I have to force myself to slow down and savor them. He is a remarkable writer. Maybe not in that "Classic literature" Nobel Prize winning way, but rather in a "Damn good read" sort of way. From cover to cover I just love his books. Every single one of them.