2012 books

the year is 2012 ... these are the books i've read ...

january

these first books of the year are travel/memoir/diary type books ... first person true stories .... all kindle books that were super inexpensive ....

1. mermaid:our family in paradise by philip rink .... a family takes off from jobs and school and hops on a sailbook .... travel journal writing/memoir ...

2. facing the lion: growing up maasai on the african savanna by joseph lemasolai lelukuton ... i was an anthropology minor in college ... i just love this sort of book .. memoir/culture shoick... it is extraordinary in this age of global culture where it feels like there is a starbucks on every corner, that there are still such isolated cultures as the maasai ... makes me want to have someone give me a cow because they love me ...

3. up the down volcano by sloane crosley .... odd book/memoir/journal about a woman's poorly planned travel adventure as a writer ....

4. i'm gonna live my life like a jimmy buffet song by anthony bjorkland ... memoir/travel adventure ... anthony realizes he is unhappy in his job, quits, sells or gives away all his stuff, then goes searching for happiness and margaritas ...

5. late to the wedding by laura briggs .... love lost .... or ... was lost, now taking a taxi hundreds of miles to see if it can be found again .... 99cents on kindle ....

6. chasing rainbows by kathleen long .... laugh and cry book ... well .. i don't really cry at books, but if i did, i would have .... learning through death and the life that comes after .... i loved the cryptograms from the father .... very touching book ...

february ... so i'm on track now to read 60-75 books this year ....

7, 8, 9.....
feint of art: an annie kincaid mystery
shooting gallery: an art lover's mystery
brush with death: an art lover's mystery
... all three by hailey lind (who i believe is a psuedonym for two sister writers) .... clearly i read all three books ... because i loved them ... but they are exactly the perfect book for me .... annie kincaid is an artist (like me) and loves a mystery (like me) and used to be a forger (oh, not me) and gets into sticky situations with famous paintings and dashing men (nope, not me at all) .... but i loved them .... they are a little like the stephanie plum/janet e. books .... but a bit more high brow with museums and fine art and no hookers ....

10. those who save us .... by jenna blum  ... GREAT book ... heart wrenching ... but compelling and very well written .... it is a multi generational holocaust story that moves between eras ... modern day times with a grown woman professor of the holocaust who is a daughter of a german woman .... and the war era with the mother as the primary focus .... and secrets ... lots and lots of secrets .... if you follow my reading, this is a high quality, fabulous book ... well worth the full price on kindle .... it is stuck here in the middle of my lighter reads and my kindle bargain books .... but mark this one down as one you should read .... although, it is not a light and airy summer beach read ... it is tumultuous and heavy and frequently hard to read ...

11. first love, last dance .... by nancy rossman .... i got this because i saw a news clip abou this couple ... it is a daughter's memoir of a great love .... sweet read ... i think it is probably self published ... it is fairly simply written and could have used more editing .... but the underlying story is dear ...

12.  becoming odyssa by jennifer pharr davis ... AWESOME ... i believe i am not ready to hike the appalachian trail ... ok ... or not ... but, this memoir of a new college grad hiking from georgia to maine on the AT (that's what those of us in the know call it) was excellent ... just excellent ... she chose odyssa as her trail name in homage to odysseus ... and it was quite appropriate .. like odysseus, she had an epic journey .... i bought this in sale week (do you get those emails, rah!) without doing any research ... it just sounded good ... and it was GREAT ...

13. a modern witch (modern witch series book 1) by debora geary .... not  serious! not.serious.at.all. .... started it this morning because it was just the next book on the kindle and i was on the eliptical machine at the gym .... i don't recall buying it .... but so far it is goofy and amusing .... (feb.28)

MARCH

14. organized simplicity by tsh oxenreider .... i love that tsh has no vowels in her first name ... or is that a kindle typo? i love it anyways ... this book is like a giant peptalk on having a happy home ... i liked it ... didn't read it one sitting ... read a chapter hear and there betwixt and between other books ...

15. falling for you (book one of pearl island trilogy) by julie ortolon .... i bought this off a kindle sale list ... not knowing it was very much in the romance genre ... i tried to outgrow romance novels when i left high school, but it is fun to read one here and there .... this one was happy ...

16.  growing up amish ... by ira wagler ... wow ... tell it like it is ... ira wagler had a hard, hard, hard, hard time growing up amish .... and he wrote about it eloquently ... this was not like all the other amish books i've read that glorify the hard life the amish choose .... very interesting ...brave man ...

17.  seasons: a real story of an amish girl by elizabeth byler younts ... another off a kindle list ... also not glossing over the amish lifestyle or idealizing it .... this account has the family near starving some of the time ... a hard life ...

18. a secret kept by tatiana de rosnay ....GREAT book ... set in paris .. well .. in france .... secrets and stories and memories and a mortician and multi generational problems .... the best part to me is that i now want to go to the coast of france to the gois passage ... a road that is submerged at every high tide ... so you must be careful to cross at the right time! ... lest you not make it to ile de noirmoutier ...

19. a hidden witch (book 2) by debora geary ... fun and light and easy about witches ... the second i've read ... i don't think the stories are that compelling ... but the characters are fun and lovely ....

20.the kitchen house by kathleen grissom ... my guess is that this will be the best book i read this year .. just fantastic ... compelling historical fiction ... great, multi dimensional characters... heart wrenching plot and sub plots .... just extraordinary ... three thumbs up even though i only have two thumbs.

21. the hunger games by suzanne collins .... (first read it in 2009, i think) ... i told my littlest that she was not allowed to go to this movie ... she said she had friends reading the book, could she? not being one to deny anyone a book, i said she could try ... she read all three in the series ... we talked about them ALL the time .... she was aghast at parts and said she just read the scary parts fast ... so, i let her go to the movie ... with mr.e.beck.artist on standby to leave the movie with her if it was too much ... they went out for about five minutes ... (trying here to be not a spoiler) and they came back in to the theater just as katniss laid out the flowers and was singing ... she knew which part would be hardest to watch so she just didn't .... i will reread the other two, i think...  as soon as the rest of the family is done rereading them ...

april

22. sophie kinsella writes fun romcom chick lit sorta books ... i've read bunches ... so, when" i've got your number"  showed up on my kindle sale list, i knew i'd like it ... and i did .... it was rom and com and a fun, easy read ...

23. catching fire ... the second book in the hunger game series ... a re read for me ... i read it years ago ... but all three kids have read/reread it in the last couple weeks ... so i did too .... love it....

24. mockingjay ... the third book .... a re read .... my least favorite of the three ... but you have to read it to know the rest of the story ....

25. the beginner's goodbye by anne tyler. so, anne tyler is my favorite author, i think. well, usually she is.  she's a subtle story teller ... usually poignant ... or heart breaking .... a widower is visited by his dead wife .... her "presence", i don't think they ever say ghost, helps him to cope with his loss ... it sounds hokey like that, but it was totally believable in its ambiguity ... as he rebuilds his house, he also rebuilds his life .... yay ... i loved this book.

26  human blend by lori pescatore ... young adult fiction .... my daughter read it first ... a girl who doesn't quite understand how she is different runs away from captors and tries to start a life in a new town ... she wants to work at a hospital because she can heal..... others who are like her find her .... bad things happen ... good things happen .... it ends with the clear indication that there will be more books ....

27  daughter's of the north by sarah hall ..... oh! this book was so interesting to me ... dystopian future seems to be a trendy genre these days ... this one seemed a bit handmaid's tale to me .... the government runs a strict society ... a woman escapes and finds a utopian society .... sorta .... it has its own burdens .... the story arc was interesting ..... lots to think about ....

28, 29, 30 ....
shakespeare's landlord... 1
shakespeare's companion... 2
shakespeare's christmas ... 3
these are the lily bard series by charlaine harris ... do you remember her? last summer i read all of her sookie stackhouse books ...i think she is a great author .. quirky, light, smart, funny, unusual .... lily has a horrific past, moves to small town shakespeare, and finds herself in trouble and needing to sleuth .. luckily she's buff and beats people up ...... i really enjoyed these .... happy, easy reads ....

MAY

31   grave sight ... a harper connelly mystery ... yay, the first in a series by charlaine harris ... i like the characters ... the premise is weird ... weird good .. i like weird ... the main character can feel dead people and know how they died ... needless to say, she's only good at murder mysteries, not missing person mysteries ... if they aren't dead, she's no use ....

32  grave surprise ... a harper connelly mystery ... number two ... by charlaine harris ... really good ... i just love this author .... am about to pick up number three ... yay

33. an ice cold grave ... harper connelly by charlaine harris .... i love charlaine harris ....

34 before, after and somebody in between by jeannine garsee ... wow ... this book was so much more than i expected it to be .... it was a YA book that came across in a kindle sale email ... sounded good ... and it was amazing ... though i'm reluctant to pass it on to the YA readers in this house ... it was VERY intense ... heartbreaking .... a 14 year old girl growing up in horrid circumstances ... drug and alcohol dependent parents, bad foster home, all sorts of turmoil .... with a bit of redemption at the end ...

35. easily amused by karen mcquestion .... good light read ... nearly 30 year old inherits a house from an old aunt .... nosey neighbors, good friends, mysterious boyfriend ... easy, charming .... so, i'm reading another mcquestion book too:

36. the long way home by karen mcquestion ....oh! jazzy is a GREAT main character .... a whole carful of quirky interesting characters ... i love the name mcquestion ... is that a pen name? have you ever heard of that name before?