Well, this was kind of annoying. Good idea- Alter decided to take one year, and follow the advice in magazines to see if her life would improve. It did- and maybe dumbing the jerky boyfriend and learning to cook etc helped with that. What was annoying about it was that she never said how she could afford to spend Beauty Month trying all sorts of new makeups and spas, she never talked about how Clothing Month would devastate a normal person's budget, she never talked about how she could afford all the new pots and pans that went into Cooking Month. Apparently, freelance writers make a lot more money than one could have guessed. I just kind of wanted to slap her silly, which isn't a great way to enjoy a book.
Disturbing, haunting book. Lives in a small, mostly wealthy college town intertwine in desperately sad ways, and people's attempts to keep their families, lives, and town safe lead to even more trouble. Security company owner Edward is distanced from his crusading politician wife Meg, and drives around all night. One night, he gets a report of an alarm going off at the home of a local business magnate Doyle (whose money, incidentally, is supporting Meg's campaign), and after speaking with Doyle and hearing that it was nothing, drives through the town and comes across Connor, his ex-girlfriend's troubled son. Taking drunken Connor home, he begins to rekindle his relationship with his ex, Katherine. Trouble really beings when Mary, a student at the local college, claims that she was assaulted that night at Doyle Cutler's house, and college classmates, townspeople, and even the newspapers turn against Mary and her father. As events tighten up, all in the space of a week, the awful inevitable looms, and while it is certainly sad, it wasn't shocking.
Slightly silly thriller- I had hoped for a better book. A team of researchers studying global warming's effect on glaciers discover a perfectly preserved large mammal, like a saber tooth tiger but bigger, frozen in the ice. The researchers received grant money from a nature documentary company, so are obligated to let the tv people do what they want with all of their findings, and of course, lots of people die in increasingly horrible ways, and wise native people have to step into the scene. Also, one character is an ice trucker who wants to make a movie about ice truckers. Oh, well.
Very funny memoir of being a lifelong hypochondriac. It wasn't as funny as her other book, Devil in the Details, which made being an anorexic obsessive compulsive laugh-out-loud funny, but she is definitely an amusing writer.
This was a strangely mournful, odd book. Henry Bay writes for specialized magazines- hobby magazines, Crochet Life, Zipline Monthly, things that have a tiny but dedicated fanbase, but he doesn't actually do or love any of the things he writes about, he just loves the enthusiasts. It got long and kind of wildly complicated at the end, but the nugget of such a good book was in this. I'll be psyched to read his next book.
Fantastic (and gory) fast paced thriller. Ex-military policeman Jack Reacher is on a subway in NYC when he notices a passenger showing every sign of the checklist to suspect a suicide bomber. He tries to intervene, and gets caught up in an international terrorist plot. This was a lot of fun, but some of the ickier bits will haunt my head. Definitely want to read more of these though- now I understand the epic waitlists for this title!
I bet this will be huge, with the YAs. Trauma-pornish dead friend and rehab book. Flavor quite like Sarah Dessen. After her last, Living Dead Girl, this was a relief, what with no abduction/molesting etc, but still was v. dark and will be, I'm sure, adored.
Pretty decent vampire horror/thriller- a plane lands at La Guardia, but never taxis in. When TSA and DHS et al get to it, every one on board is dead. What goes on next is a plot-hole disaster of a story, but it was pretty well done. Kind of Stephen Kingish/Michael Crichtonish/Richard Mathesonish but not as good. Still, was very refreshing after the Jane Austen. Gory and fast, and very cinematic.
The subtitle says so much more : The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal .
Fun between-the-numbers Stephanie Plum book. I am not personally crazy about urban fantasy, and this one took a definite turn toward the paranormal, but it was fun and quick and not bleak and violent in Sweden, so it had that going for it.
Unspeakably depressing movie. Based on John Cheever's short story by the same name, Burt Lancaster plays Ned Morrell, who decides to swim, by way of neighbor's pools, to his home. As he gets closer, the reactions of his neighbors and people he meets at a public pool fill in more of the devastating details. oh, god, this was sad.
BEAUTIFUL book- not many instructions, but so many ideas, and the photography was wonderful. Made me want to run to the beach.
Pretty great craft book- lovely ideas, well executed, with great instructions. Seed bombs! Oh well. Some really nice projects I'd quite like to make or adapt.
Sequel to Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree, and it was good, but I'm starting to think that the author is making Colleen seem extra-stupid. I don't know if this is intentional. It's all a little worrisome.
This was so much fun! A quick, entertaining YA (6th or 7th grade target, I guess) about girls who work together to solve a puzzle that leads to the ring, and all the clues are set out in the book so one could solve them along with the characters, if only one remembered Algebra 1! It kind of reminded me of The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil Frankweiler, it had a lovely feel to it. Looking forward to the next.
Very funny but wildly inappropriate dick flick. Excellent take-offs of all the classic Vietnam movies with great pokes at Hollywood pomposity.
This was a good mystery, set on the set of a Northern England soap. The relationships between the cast members don't equate with the relationships of the characters they've played for years, and when actors start dying, the police have to get involved. Bit of a mishmash at the end- veered into psychological suspense, almost, but still a fun quick well-written read.
Once again, a murder mystery, cosy, southern, not gripping but not terrible.
Pretty fantastic sciency thriller. A little Jurassic Park, a little Andromeda Strain, a whole lot of bloodshed, and some amazing imaginary beasties made this impossible to put down. Cricton-y science babble and vividly described scenes made it super easy to see this as a major summer movie- the beasties especially seemed like there must be CGI people just begging to design the spigers and disk-ants!
Pretty lovely children's book. Scarlett has been expelled from school (again) and her mother packs her off to Ireland to live with her father, his new wife, and her daughter. From her dyed red hair to her pierced tongue and aggressive ways, she has a rough start at the new school there, and soon is being 'homeschooled', by learning about the history of Ireland and the plants and geology of her new home. I thought it was going to veer wierdly off into some kind of myth thing, but it took a nice surprise turn, and was actually very good.
