I got back from Florida on Thursday evening and woke up to snow on Friday morning. And it's been snow showering ever since. That's New England weather for you!
I started this book before my Kindle mishap and didn't finish it until I got back from my trip. It's not that I didn't enjoy it; it's just that I didn't have much time to read except on the airplane. Plus, it's a long book.
Jacob Hunt has Asperger's Syndrome and is accused of murder. The story is told through his eyes and the eyes of several characters: his mom, Emma; his brother, Theo; his lawyer, Oliver; and a detective, Rich. They are all interesting and keep the novel moving forward.
I loved all the info about Asperger's and the fact that we experience it, somewhat, through Jacob.
What I missed in this Jodi Picoult book is her exquisite style. There are very few unusual metaphors or unique similes. It reads almost like a James Patterson novel. It feels like she just wanted to tell the damn story and get her paycheck.
That said, however, I did enjoy it although I felt a bit let down by the ending. It just seemed abrupt and anticlimactic.
And that picture on the cover? Jacob is 18! Sure, it talks about him as he is growing up but the major focus of the book is the present. I found that kind of misleading.
Okay, I'll stop complaining now and move on to my next book! Will I read another Picoult novel? Absolutely! If this one had been written by anyone else, I'd have loved it and not had any problem with it. It's just that I know she can do so much better.
I'm on school vacation this week so, hopefully, will get lots of reading in. Enjoy your week!
Another cloudy Sunday. Cool, too. But the lilac leaves are about an inch long and the crocuses have popped open. The daffodils and irises are about 6 inches tall. Spring is happening even though it snowed yesterday morning.
Tragedy struck Wednesday afternoon as I was getting ready to leave school. I was rearranging my podium and it tipped over a bit and my Kindle flew onto the floor with a loud slap. I'd bought a cover for it and the cover was on and is slightly padded so I hoped it would be okay.
It wasn't. I turned it on and half the screen was fine but the other half had verticle lines all over it.
When I got home, I called Amazon and explained what happened. I knew the 1-year warranty didn't cover accidents so had my credit card ready to buy a new one. (That's how addicted I am to it!) But I just wanted to double check with the support person to see if something like this had been reported before and if there was anything I could do. He had me hold the on/off switch for 15 seconds to reset it but that didn't do anything.
"It's dead" he said. "We'll send you a new one."
"Really?"
"Yes, that shouldn't have happened with the cover on it."
Since I knew I'd be traveling to Florida on Sunday, I asked if I could pay extra to get it shipped overnight. "No," he said. "That's the way we'll ship it anyway."
And there it was Thursday afternoon! I went to my archived items and was able to download all my books.
Can you tell how much I love Amazon right now?
Anyway, I'm still reading House Rules. It's really good so far about a young man with Asperger's. I'm only 14% of the way through and am looking forward to some uninterrupted reading on my flight this afternoon!
Have a good week!
A beautiful, warm Easter Sunday for a change. Yesterday it got up to 80 degrees. Amazing for early April in northern NH. I spent some time sitting in the sun reading and trying to get a little color on my white legs.
Harlan Coben never disappoints. I sped through this one because it's that kind of book. Wendy is a TV journalist who exposes a pedophile on the air. She quickly realizes that he was set up and she is determined to make things right.
What is so cool about this book is that a couple characters from earlier Coben novels pop up in this one including Win from the Myron Bolitar series.
This is a book of poetry written by a woman I've "met" on different online poetry sites. When I saw that she has a book published, I just had to buy it. And I'm really enjoying the poems. She talks about her childhood and the things that were going on underneath the outer layer of her life.
I haven't finished it yet because I like to read a few then let them digest for awhile. It's nice having it nearby to pick up whenver I want.
Woke up to cold sunshine but, now, it's cloudy. We've got a few days of cool, rainy weather ahead of us. But, that's okay; it'll give me a chance to sit in my La Z Boy and read instead of being outdoors washing windows or raking winter from the lawn.
I finished this book last Sunday night. It was a real tearjerker and I didn't want to have to read it in school for Silent Reading. Too embarrassing!
I have a love/hate relationship with Nicholas Sparks. I've liked some of his books but, for the most part, find them too smaltzy. Many of my teenage students have been reading this book and saying how much they love it so I figured I'd give it a chance.
And it actually wasn't too bad. I got into the characters and the plot was nonstop. Ronnie and her brother must spend the summer with their father and Ronnie is furious about this. She hasn't spoken to her dad for three years ever since he and her mom got divorced. So, the prospect of spending a couple months with him has her really upset. How she deals with him, the friends she makes, and the situations that arise make for a decent read.
This fast-paced novel was just what I needed after The Last Song. It's about a Wall Street investment specialist who checks his balance one night and sees that someone has stolen his identity and all his money. He spends the rest of the book figuring out who did it while trying to avoid the police who are looking for him for murder.
I like how the book explains everything so anyone can understand the financial shenanigans. Makes me wonder if anyone can be trusted.
So, it was a good reading week. I'm almost halfway through Caught by Harlan Coben and it's a winner.
Well, my husband is bugging me to get dressed so I can go down in the cellar to help him with the motorcycle he's building. Can't wait!
Have a great week!
We just had a week of spring-like weather so I was able to sit on the porch after school in the sun and read. Love doing that!
This is the latest installment of the Women's Murder Club. Lindsey is after the killer of rich and priviledged people. Yuki is trying to prosecute a woman who killed her father and almost killed her mother. Cindy is tracking the person who murdered Bagman Jesus, a homeless person. And Claire is doing her job of examining the bodies of the dead.
The mixture of their working lives with their personal lives makes for page-turning reading.
Now that spring has officially arrived here in New Hampshire, winter is going to return with cool temps and possibly snow. Wonderful!
Happy Reading, all!
Good morning a day early. Kylie is coming to visit overnight so I thought I'd update this blog before I'm too busy.
One of my students recommended this series to me. She said she liked it much better than the Twilight one so I downloaded Uglies. I had a preconceived notion that it would be about cliquey girls bullying less pretty ones and the message would be that true beauty is on the inside not the outside.
Well, the message was right but the premise was wrong. This YA novel is set in the future where all adolescents are considered ugly. They must live together in Uglytown until they turn 16, at which point they are given an operation to make them Pretty. They then move to New Pretty Town and finish their teenage years partying and doing whatever they please.
Tally Youngblood is only months away from her sixteenth birthday when she meets Shay who is the same age as her. Shay tells her about David and a secret settlement where Uglies, who do not want to become pretty, can escape to. Even though Tally is anxoius to become pretty, she is forced to betray her friend and lead the powers-that-be to David and the others.
Lots of adventure and fast action keep this book moving and not boring. While sci-fi is not my genre of choice, I still enjoyed this book and will read the next installment one of these days.
Have a good weekend. Time for me to get dressed and go to pick Kylie up. Can't wait to see her!
It's weird; I get more reading done during school weeks than during vacations. I finished one and read a whole other one and started one more.
I so enjoyed my visit to Botswana! Mma Ramotswe and the rest of the crew never get stale. There is such dignity and sweetness in this series that shows it's the little moments that should be honored in life: red bush tea, pumpkin, tiny white vans that keep on running, good employees, cases that turn out wrong but ironically right, and the hope for miracles.
I thought this would be a novel about a trial that Alex Cross is part of but it turns out to be a book written by Alex Cross about a trial his ancestors were involved with back at the beginning of the 1900s. So, it turned me off mometarily...but just for a moment.
Ben Corbett is a white lawyer from Mississippi now living and working in Washington D.C. He's commissioned by President Teddy Roosevelt to investigate the lynchings that have been occuring back in his hometown of Eudora, MS.
On the surface, it's a sleepy, pretty southern town but the more Ben searches, the more the rotten underbelly of the town is exposed. He befriends Abraham Cross, Alex Cross's great uncle, and his family, and takes a stand with them against the sickness spread by the KKK.
So, even though I had to go back to school this week, I still got to enjoy two good books.
