Combined Print & E-Book Fiction:
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, by E. L. James
FIFTY SHADES DARKER, by E. L. James
FIFTY SHADES FREED, by E. L. James
THE LAST BOYFRIEND, by Nora Roberts
DEADLOCKED, by Charlaine Harris

Combined Print & E-Book Nonfiction:
THE PASSAGE OF POWER, by Robert A. Caro
HARD MEASURES, by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. and Bill Harlow
THE POWER OF HABIT, by Charles Duhigg
MANHUNT, by Peter L. Bergen
LOTS OF CANDLES, PLENTY OF CAKE, by Anna Quindlen

Hardcover Fiction:
DEADLOCKED, by Charlaine Harris
THE WIND THROUGH THE KEYHOLE, by Stephen King
THE INNOCENT, by David Baldacci
CALICO JOE, by John Grisham
THE WITNESS, by Nora Roberts

Hardcover Nonfiction:
THE PASSAGE OF POWER, by Robert A. Caro
MY CROSS TO BEAR, by Gregg Allman with Alan Light
LOTS OF CANDLES, PLENTY OF CAKE, by Anna Quindlen
PRAGUE WINTER, by Madeleine Albright with Bill Woodward
THE POWER OF HABIT, by Charles Duhigg

Paperback Trade Fiction:
FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, by E. L. James
FIFTY SHADES DARKER, by E. L. James
FIFTY SHADES FREED, by E. L. James
THE LAST BOYFRIEND, by Nora Roberts
THE LUCKY ONE, by Nicholas Sparks

Paperback Mass-Market Fiction:
THE LUCKY ONE, by Nicholas Sparks
BURIED PREY, by John Sandford
SUNRISE POINT, by Robyn Carr
THE FIFTH WITNESS, by Michael Connelly
A GAME OF THRONES, by George R. R. Martin

Paperback Nonfiction:
IN THE GARDEN OF BEASTS, by Erik Larson
HEAVEN IS FOR REAL, by Todd Burpo with Lynn Vincent
THE IMMORTAL LIFE OF HENRIETTA LACKS, by Rebecca Skloot
BOSSYPANTS, by Tina Fey
THEN AGAIN, by Diane Keaton

Three people living lives they never wanted, hiding secrets that even those closest to them would never suspect, will find that the past doesn’t recede. Even as the terrible consequences of long-ago events crash together in the present and threaten to ruin lives, they will come to the startling realization that they may not want to forget the past at all. And as each confronts the dark side of the American Dream- the boredom of a nice suburban life, the excitement of temptation, the desperation and hunger that can lurk behind even the prettiest facades- they will discover the hard truth that the line between one kind of life and another can be as whisper-thin as a heartbeat.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• I thought Ray’s faux paparazzo gig was a fantastic detail. The way Coben described made it clear that this guy had hit rock bottom as far as work was concerned.
• The Mardi Gras connection between the murders was a nice twist. That was a great way to make readers believe that the killer’s “pattern” could be hidden from law enforcement for so long.
• I called that Lorraine was the killer about midway through the book. Usually I don’t figure these things out at all and have to wait for the reveal. This fact should probably go under the “Disliked” category because it implies that the solution was too easy, but I want to pat myself on the back here!
• I also liked that Lorraine became a celebrity after the arrest. She’s definitely not the kind of person who would spend the rest of her days in one of those chairs church goers know so well, spilling her guts to a priest. This was a fitting end, I thought.

Disliked:

• I had a hard time believing that Megan/Cassie was sooo in love with the stripper life that she longed to go back and see the old place after 17 years. Are you kidding me? I know this novel needed a jumping off point, but that one was a doozy.
• I didn’t care for either Ray or Megan/Cassie as characters. Neither had the kind of qualities that I tend to root for, so I didn’t enjoy spending all that time with them or seeing them land on their feet at the end.
• Coben uses a lot of “coincidences” in his books to keep the plot churning along, but this time they seemed thinner than usual. For example, how lucky was it that Ray just happened to snap a photo of Carlton Flynn (the most recent victim) a mere hours before Flynn disappeared? Gimme a break.
• The Barbie and Ken team were over the top and unnecessary (given how ineffectual they actually were). One thing that remains consistently bad in Coben’s standalone books is how ridiculously cartoonish the bad guys/hired killers/enforcers always are. I hate that!

Rating:

While Stay Close isn’t Harlan Coben’s best effort, it was definitely readable. I zipped through it in just a few days and was sufficiently entertained by the content to give this one 3 stars out of 5.

This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• The author chose an interesting period in which to set this story. I didn’t know much about the Japanese internment camps before reading this book, but now have a better understanding of how widespread the roundup was and how many innocent lives were disrupted forever.
• I thought it was interesting to have the story told from the POV of a Chinese-American. By virtue of his ethnicity, Henry appeared outwardly to be in the same position as the Japanese people of the area. One quick glance at him would tell others that he wasn’t “American” and ought not to be trusted. But at the same time, he wasn’t actually Japanese, so he wasn’t in the same kind of danger as Keiko and her family. He was caught squarely in the middle, and the author did a nice job detailing his struggles with this.
• Some of Henry and Keiko’s adventures during and after school took me back to my own school days and a similar crush I had when I was in elementary school. It was nice to remember such an innocent time.

Disliked:

• The story moves at a glacial pace throughout most of the book. Seriously, it took me about six months to get through this thing because there simply wasn’t anything going on that compelled me to finish. I always had another, more interesting book to turn to and could barely read more than 5-10 pages at a time of this one.
• I disliked everything having to do with Sheldon, jazz clubs, music, records, etc. I suppose the author included those details to add to the feel of the period or whatever, but my eyes just glazed over whenever those topics came up. Ugh.
• I had a hard time believing that Henry and Keiko were each other’s “true loves” from the age of 12. As I said, this book reminded me a little bit of a crush I had back in 6th grade, but come on… there’s no way I considered myself in love with the boy. And honestly, I just don’t think CHILDREN of that age could/would fall so deeply in love. Sure, there might be some real-life couples that have been together since their pre-teen years. But I would almost guarantee you that they started out as just a crush and that love took many years to blossom and develop. With the limited time that Henry and Keiko spent together, I don’t buy that they were in love. Call me cynical, I guess.
• Henry’s son found Keiko by searching the Internet? In 1986???? Okay, I suppose a few people were using the Internet back then, but how much information was really available online at that time? It’s not like he had Google or Facebook, ya know?
• I felt lukewarm about the ending. It was supposed to be happy and romantic and all that, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I just found it incredibly convenient that Keiko was a recent widow like Henry (Neither was even 60 yet, so it wouldn’t be THAT common to have lost spouses already) and was ready to welcome him with open arms. At least the author had the sense to end the story with their meeting at the door. This way, I can just imagine that they reconnected in the way that any two long-lost friends would, and that they didn’t necessarily pursue a relationship afterwards.

Rating:

From all the positive reviews I read beforehand, I was really expecting Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet to be a fabulous novel that would make me smile and cry by turns. But that was hardly the case, as I could barely get into the story to begin with and didn’t connect with either of the main characters. The author’s writing style (it was so basic that I’m classifying this as a Young Adult book, even though I’m not sure that’s truly the case), the anachronisms, and some unbelievable plot points made this a very difficult book to even finish, let alone like. I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Through Guy’s pioneering research and superbly readable prose, we come to see Mary as a skillful diplomat, maneuvering ingeniously among a dizzying array of factions that sought to control or dethrone her. Queen of Scots is an enthralling, myth-shattering look at a complex woman and ruler and her time.

Liked:

• I knew absolutely nothing about Mary Queen of Scots before reading this book; now I feel as though I at least have a passing acquaintance with the highlights (and lowlights) of her life.
• I kind of got a chuckle out of the fact that Mary’s four best friends were all named Mary as well. It reminded me of the movie “Heathers”.
• I had no idea that Mary was imprisoned for almost 19 years, and that she was completely separated from her son for that whole time. Wow, that seemed pretty harsh punishment. I mean, I guess I can understand why Elizabeth would have wanted Mary out of the way, but why wasn’t she allowed to see James?
• Speaking of James, I honestly did not know that the word “Jacobean” had anything to do with that name. I thought it was an adjective related to “Jacob”! I felt pretty stupid once I discovered my mistake.
• Mary’s marriages and affairs were the stuff of soap operas. Her first husband Lord Darnley was murdered, then she married the man widely thought to be Darnley’s killer, the Earl of Bothwell. This after Bothwell staged some kind of kidnapping and rape of Mary –despite the fact that she had been interested in him for a while. It was a plot befitting All My Children or something!
• Mary’s death scene was pretty touching. I liked that she put her faith out there even as she was led to execution; it reminded me of the way so many other martyrs died. I know some people believe her religion was all for show, but just from what I read in this book I have to think it was real.

Disliked:

• As a newcomer to Mary’s life, it was very hard to keep track of all the major players. Plus, since I wasn’t particularly familiar with that time in history, it was difficult for me to understand the significance of some of the action as described in the book. This is not on the author, of course, but is nevertheless something I disliked.
• John Guy didn’t come across as very impartial in this book. He seemed to go out of his way to justify Mary’s actions or try to put her in the best light possible. This happened with everything from Darnley to Bothwell to the Casket Letters, and got to be tiresome after a while. A bit more balance was certainly warranted.

Rating:

I read Queen of Scots: The True Life of Mary Stuart as a casual reader, not as a scholar or any kind of expert. As such, my opinions and rating of this book are not to be taken as any kind of authoritative proclamation. Judging the book strictly from this standpoint, I thought it was a decent biography. It was fairly in-depth and seemed to be well-researched; yet at the same time, it was biased and a bit hard to follow. As a result I give it 3 stars out of 5.

And sometimes it is simply deadly…

A three-hour drive from Washington, D.C., two clandestine institutions face each other across a heavily guarded river. One is the world’s most unusual laboratory, whose goals and funding are a mystery. The other is an elite CIA training camp shrouded in secrecy. Now a man and a woman are about to run a gauntlet between these two puzzle factories, straight into a furious struggle to exploit a potentially world-shattering discovery—and keep some other secrets underwraps forever…

Former secret service agents turned private investigators Sean King and Michelle Maxwell have seen their lives splinter around them. Michelle lies unconscious ina hospital bed after a night of suicidal violence. And Sean is forced to take on a thankless investigation into the mutder of a scientist just inside the CIA’s razor-wire fence near Williamsburg, Virginia.

Soon he is uncovering layer after layer of disinformation that shields a stunning world filled with elite mathematics, physicists, war heroes, spies, and deadly field agents. Amid more murder, a seemingly autistic girl’s extraordinary genius, and a powerful breakthrough in the realm of classified codes, Sean soon learns enough to put his life at risk. Now more than ever, he needs Michelle—at her best—to help stop a conspiracy of traitors operating in the shadow of the White House itself.

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• The twist about the Camp Peary director being Valerie instead of Ian and of Ian being the good guy was unexpected. In a book full of telegraphed “surprises”, this one actually had an impact.
• I also fell for the misdirection regarding Babbage Town. Like Sean and Michelle, my attention was focused there when it should have been on Camp Peary all along.
• The visual of Michelle’s truck being so garbage-strewn that not even the trace of a seat cushion or floorboard could be seen under the debris reminded me of the first car I ever owned. Hmm, does that mean there’s a deep-rooted psychological problem in my past as well?

Disliked:

• I hated the Horatio character and didn’t like that he played such a prominent role in this book. It would have been better if he were relegated to a smaller role (occasional consultant) rather than having him dominate 1/3 of the plot.
• The ending dragged out way longer than it had to. What was the point of that whole thing with Sean and Michelle getting captured, detained, and tortured? Oh, yeah, it was just to show how big and bad the CIA is. *Yawn* That angle is sooo overplayed in “thrillers” and just boring now.
• Viggie was another stereotypical character that has been done to death in these types of books. A child genius/prodigy who has Asperger’s or something and can’t communicate in a straightforward manner with anyone. Cliche much?
• The stuff regarding Michelle’s traumatic childhood experience (shooting her mother’s lover during an attempted rape of dear ol’ adulterous Mom) was long, drawn-out, and, yes, BORING.
• Michelle’s stint in the psych ward seemed like it belonged in a wholly different book. By the time the end of the novel rolled around, I’d forgotten all about that complete waste of time.
• There were just way too many threads in this book — and none of them were compelling enough to keep my attention.

Rating:

Simple Genius by David Baldacci is a book rife with problems right from the beginning. From long-winded detours to psychiatric facilities to cookie-cutter characters and cliched situations throughout, this is a novel I had a lot of trouble finishing. There’s very little in the way of entertainment or enjoyment in this one, which is why I give it 1 star out of 5.

Julie Powell is 30 years old, living in a tiny apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that’s going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother’s worn, dog-eared copy of Julia Child’s 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes — in the span of one year.

At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crepes, she realizes there’s more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her outer-borough kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life’s ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.

Liked:

• I thought it was amazing that Julie Powell could turn such a random “project” into a successful blog, book deal, and movie. I thought at the most she would be able to start a food gifts company from her apartment, but she did so much more. Hat-tip to her!
• This book is genuinely funny in places, and I laughed out loud several times. Some of it had to do with the sheer lunacy of the situations being described, and some with Powell’s writing style, which was often good.
• She made it! She cooked all 524 recipes in 365 days. That’s something to be proud of, considering how easy it would have been to quit. Just reading about some of the things she had to do for those recipes made me 100 percent sure that I would have given up early.
• I liked that Julie didn’t let Julia Child’s opinion of her project detract from the overall experience. In fact, Julie was rather gracious in saying that Julia’s comments didn’t diminish her feelings about the Julia Child of her mind, the Julia she had created and thought about while working through the cookbook. A lot of other people would have simply been crushed by Julia’s reaction.

Disliked:

• I cannot believe how filthy Julie’s kitchen was and how she rather nonchalantly described the mess. Sure, she was a bit “horrified” at the maggot infestation, but there were problems long before that! I just wonder why any of her friends would WANT to eat her food knowing the disgusting circumstances under which it was prepared. No thanks! Oh, and at one point Julie wrote something like, “Well, that’s to be expected, considering the amount of cooking that was done.” Um, honey, no. I use my kitchen quite a bit too and have NEVER had maggots or had my feet turn black after walking on the floor.
• The writing was so overwrought and pretentious at times that it just drew attention to itself. I had to keep wondering if she was an aspiring actress or an aspiring writer.
• I didn’t care for the blasé attitude towards the 9/11 families she dealt with at work. It wasn’t exactly in good taste to put those feelings in the book — along with the attendant political digs.
• Julie just doesn’t seem like a person I would want to know or be friends with IRL. There was something distasteful about the way she treated her husband, and though I’m sure some of the incidents were embellished for the sake of the book, I still didn’t like her selfishness and near-constant whining.

Rating:

I haven’t seen the movie yet, so I didn’t have any wild expectations coming into this book. I just wanted to read it because of all the buzz it had received. I really couldn’t fathom a book about cooking being interesting or enjoyable — but a lot of it was. The premise got played out after a while and I could have done without so much of the personal stuff, but on the whole, I found this to be a decent read. I give it 3 stars out of 5.

I’ve been checking various online music stores, and have found some good prices on Evans drum heads. I could probably get a decent setup going in the basement without having to spend a boatload of cash, which is obviously a plus. Then if I buy this Drumset Essentials book by Peter Erskine, I can begin learning the basics before shelling out for lessons.

It’s something to think about, anyway!

Warning: Spoilers below!

Liked:

• Some of the rabbit characters were very well developed. I felt by the end of the book I had a very good grasp of what kind of personalities Hazel, Fiver, and Bigwig were. Even Woundwort was given lots of background info and was fleshed out as the main antagonist.
• The description of Bigwig’s infiltration of and escape from Efrafa was exciting! That was the best part of the entire novel for me, and had me on the edge of my seat.

Disliked:

• I couldn’t stand all the stories about El-ahrairah. They were long and boring, and served only to interrupt the flow of the main narrative. Sure, they were probably replete with symbolism and meant to show how rabbits got their cunning ways, etc. If there had been one or two such interruptions, I might have been able to handle it. But there were just so. damn. many. UGH!
• There were a lot of slow parts in the book besides the El-ahrairah stuff. This novel was extremely long, but it certainly didn’t have to be. I think at least 100 pages (and probably more) could be excised without losing a thing.
• Was the Lapine language really necessary? First of all, the author only included a handful of words, despite saying in the intro that he wanted to create words that rabbits would need but that aren’t available in English because humans don’t need them. So “silflay” is grazing or whatever. But this doesn’t work because it seems that there should have been A LOT more Lapine words necessary to describe unique things in a rabbit’s life. Obviously Adams was trying for something unique there, but the attempt was misguided, IMO. (And BTW, why would they need a word for “hraka” or passing waste? Don’t humans do that too???)
• I find it hard to believe that the rabbits, upon first leaving their original warren after Fiver’s vision, didn’t think they needed any does with them. That’s kind of a basic requirement when starting a new colony, right?

Rating

I know that Watership Down by Richard Adams is an award-winning classic that is beloved by many generations of children and adults. However, I just couldn’t get into the book very much, and found that the boring, unnecessary parts significantly outweighed the good stuff. In short, this one wasn’t for me at all, so I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Liked:

• I listened to the audiobook version of Seriously…I’m Kidding, which was read by Ellen herself. As such, it sounded like I was listening to a bunch of her monologues, and it was great! I have a feeling that many of her jokes or witticisms would have fallen flat if I simply read them in a book by myself. But with Ellen’s intonations and so forth, this was really quite enjoyable.
• Ellen seems like a genuinely kind person. There seems to be very little pretense about her, and she appears to be the kind of person I’d love to have as a friend.
• The chapters are very short (so’s the whole book, actually), making it very easy to get through the whole thing in just a couple of days.

Disliked:

• What is this trend with celebrities (especially comediennes) writing books that are little more than collections of essays on a wide range of subjects? Tina Fey, Mindy Kaling, Ellen… I guess they’re all too young to write a standard autobiography, and yet they want to get a book out there so they do something like this. Kind of a weird trend if you ask me!
• Some of Ellen’s jokes were big duds, such as the chapter of her making strange noises for the benefit of audiobook listeners. (Really?)
• Ellen didn’t really include any behind-the-scenes stuff in the book. No inside scoop on guests of her talk show, no dirt on American Idol or details about her days with Portia. The subjects she talks about were pretty bland and banal.

Rating:

I found Seriously…I’m Kidding to be an entertaining read overall. It’s not particularly insightful and doesn’t delve in-depth into any topic, but you aren’t actually expecting that kind of book, are you? It’s short and fun, so read it in two days and forget about it two hours later. That’s pretty much what I did! I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Jack Woodson was a thermal design engineer for four years until he was laid off from his job. Now, as a teacher (dealing with those forty children), he faces new challenges. Conference calls have been replaced with parent conferences. Product testing has given way to standardized testing. Instead of business cards, Jack now passes out report cards. The only thing that hasn’t changed noticeably is the maturity level of the people surrounding him all day.

Learn Me Good is a hilarious first-person account, inspired by real life experiences. Through a series of emails to Fred Bommerson, his buddy who still works at Heat Pumps Unlimited, Jack chronicles a year-in-the-the life of a brand new teacher. He holds a March Mathness tournament, faces a child’s urgent declaration of “My bowels be runnin’!” and mistakenly asks one girl’s mother if she is her brother. With subject lines such as “Irritable Vowel Syndrome,” “In math class, no one can hear you scream,” and “I love the smell of Lysol in the morning,” Jack writes each email with a dash of sarcasm and plenty of irreverent wit.

Liked:

• Pearson made it clear that he was laughing with the children, rather than at them (for the most part). It would be easy to turn a book like this into a diatribe against today’s bratty youngsters, but Pearson doesn’t do that. He actually enjoys being a teacher despite the challenges, and I’m glad he was able to make that feeling come across clearly in the book.
• Third-graders are amazingly funny! Although Pearson admits to embellishing certain parts of the book, he states that every communication attributed to the kids themselves was supposedly legit. I have no reason to doubt Pearson on that point, and was constantly surprised at the gems his kids came up with.
• “I told her to shout the fouk up” still has me laughing!! (When one of Mr. Woodson’s students gets in trouble, he has the kid write down what he said. This is how the kid transcribed “Shut the fuck up.” Yikes!)
• Another wonderful line I liked was, “Hopefully Juan will be more motivated than his brother, whose greatest feat last year was crafting the simile, ‘My room smell like pee-pee.’” Ha! If my kid ever wrote that, I’d call the best house cleaning services apex nc has to offer and get them to come in immediately.
• The chapters, each in the form of an e-mail to a former colleague, were short and easy to read. This was just a fun book overall.
• Edited to add: One more terrific part I forgot to include was when Mr. Woodson made his kids write notes about why they think the class wastes so much time every day. One new student, who hadn’t said a word all day, wrote, “I am sorry I talked. I will never do it again.” Those lines give me the giggle fits every time I read them!

Disliked:

• The cutesy nicknames Mr. Woodson used to sign off each email got to be a bit old after a while. Nobody does that for EACH AND EVERY message. That must have been one of the “embellishments” he was talking about.
• This book really could have used a proofreader. There were some errors throughout (maybe this was a self-published effort; I have no idea), including the utterly cringe-worthy “Great, so now in addition to severe ADHD, he’s got Turret’s Syndrome, too?!?” Wow. (Edited to add: It was pointed out to me that this error was corrected years ago in the paperback version, but still persists in the Kindle edition for some reason.)
• It was rather shocking how often the kids seemed to come and go in Mr. Woodson’s class. I don’t know if that aspect was played up for the purposes of his book or not, but I feel bad for kids who can’t seem to get any stability in their lives.

Rating:

Overall, I thought Learn Me Good was a surprisingly enjoyable little book. I managed to snag the Kindle version when it was offered for free, so I guess that might also color my opinion of the content. This free book was significantly better than some of the other free stuff I’ve gotten for my Kindle. It’s not a literary achievement or anything, but it’s fun, interesting, and more original than a lot of the other titles I’ve read recently so I give it 4 stars out of 5.