The Incident Report by Martha Baillie

If you are a librarian, the likelihood of your intimate knowledge of incident reports is pretty high. Let’s face it-the public library is not a place for quiet reflection and study so much as a gathering point for all things public…the good, the bad and the freakin’ hilarious.

Baillie’s book outlines all of the above in chapters listed as different incident reports told from the view of Miriam, a children’s librarian at the Toronto Public Library.  She carefully weaves stories of the different patrons that come into her library as well as the life she has lived and hopes to live.  The only story to repeat is the continuous letters she receives from an anonymous Rigoletto who in intent on making sure nothing happens to his Gilda.

This is a quick read, I read it in a few hours transfixed sitting on my couch.  The incident report format makes it almost feel like short stories that are all tied together in an eerie ride to the end of the book. The reader gets to know Miriam’s life on the surface with surprising jumps into her depths that startle because in the end, you really don’t know much more than when you started but you are greatly affected by her life.  It may be that I can’t shake this book because I’m a librarian and I recognize so many of the people in the story, including Miriam.  Then again, it may be because we all try to let go of the scary moments and in this book Baillie refuses to let us take the easy way out. 2009, 195 pages.

 

Thanks for the Memories by Cecelia Ahern

There are a few authors out there that I can count on for a really enjoyable read. My criteria for this is pretty simple-lots of laughs, characters I can believe in or relate to and a good well-written story. Not a lot of details, please. I know that about myself and I’m ok with that.

Cecelia Ahern is one of those authors with the exception of she’ll often make me laugh AND cry. I heart Cecelia Ahern.  She does all of the above and she also has a way of pulling on your heart strings without you realizing it until you are knee deep in tissues and laughing out loud as you blow. Geez, I am a mess.

Joyce Conway is haunted. After a terrible accident in which she loses a most precious gift, her already unhappy marriage falls apart and she finds herself moving back in with her father. When she starts spouting off facts and figures that she has no way of knowing and when memories come that are not her own she wonders if she’s finally cracked.

Justin Hitchcock is an American architect who moves to London to be close to his daughter. When in Dublin teaching a class, he is persuaded to donate blood to impress a woman. He goes on and on about how precious his blood is and how he would hope the recipient would shower him with gifts galore.

Where does it go from here? Ahhh, you must read the book! I can’t give away all the good dirt. The pacing is fast. The story is set in London and Dublin but for the most part this is not integral to the story. Ahern is from Ireland, so there are a few terms that can be confusing to American readers. The tone of the book bounces back and forth between despair and hope, grief and chaos. It is an emotional roller coaster that most readers will enjoy. There is a touch of magic in Ahern’s books and my suggestion is to just sit back and let it flow.  2009, 371 pages.

P.S. The audio book is read with an Irish accent. It adds greatly to the authenticity of the experience.

 

Sweet Life by Mia King

Marissa Price had the perfect life in Manhattan with a loving husband and adorable eight-year-old daughter.  When her husband, Paul, asks to uproot the family to Hawaii for a new job Marissa envisions a new life in paradise full of beaches, great sunsets and paradise. What she finds is a husband in the throws of a mid-life crisis, a run down house and more cows that beaches in her life.   But, instead of fleeing back to New York, Marissa starts to find her way through the heartache and manages to create a network of close friends and maybe, just maybe, finding the paradise they came there to discover.

There isn’t anything really unexpected in this book.  Marissa is a pretty well-drawn character and the reader gets to understand how she deals with the crisis at hand. The secondary characters bring entertainment and flavor to the book. The setting of the big island of Hawaii and the descriptions of local Hawaii versus what tourists know is a nice change of pace. Many Hawaiian recipes are included at the end of the book. 2008, 337 pages.

 

Don’t You Forget About Me by Jancee Dunn

Some stories are like watching a drunk person trying to navigate a complicated task…you can see where they are headed and that it is going to end badly for them. Yet, at the same time, you can’t help following along to see just how messed up they get before they figure it out. Is that just human nature or am I just twisted? Oh, I’ll go out on a limb and say both!

Lillian, 38, thought she had a good marriage until she was left unceremoniously by her husband of 12 years in one night. Stunned and miserable, she takes a forced sabbatical from her job and winds up living with her parents. To me, this sounds like a nightmare come true but for Lillian it is the perfect opportunity to do whatever she wants and have no responsibilities. With her reunion coming up she reconnects with her high school friends and sets her sights on the guy that got away. Is Lillian regressing or just enjoying the fleeting passions that only high school can produce?

A fairly predictible tale of a lost woman trying to find herself by becoming who she was in high school. The characters don’t do anything that surprises the reader and you can see the ending coming from a mile away. Still, despite these flaws, it was a laugh out loud funny sometimes and even if we probably shouldn’t-we all think about high school and the friends and people we loved then.  The quirky side characters help move the pace along. 2008, 276 pages.

 

As Good as it Got by Isabel Sharpe

“People who are never lost are just traveling paths that are too easy and too obvious.”

 

A little light reading…ahem. Ann, Cindy, Martha and Dinah are brought together at Camp Kinsonu a camp for adult women who have found themselves “suddenly single.”  Suddenly single can happen in a variety of ways as is represented by the group and despite all the activities, singing and touchy-feely opportunities at the camp the personalities and emotions of the women make the retreat anything but calm.  Hope and despair walk hand in hand in this novel that says It has to get better…’cause it can’t get worse!

 

When I say that to myself, something else bad happens. A hurricane makes all my windows leak or my father has a heart attack so I am very leery of such blanket statements. This book was a hard read for me but also somewhat therapeutic. High drama, emotional turmoil and some nuggets of pure life lesson wisdom intermingle with each other and create a story of four women that is hard to put down. Without a doubt, the characters are the soul of this novel. Their inner emotional turmoil and struggle is thrust at you early on. My only disappointment was that the fourth character, Dinah isn’t really examined like the other three are and that left me wondering why wasn’t she worthy? The pace is moderate to slow as an interior focused novel often is. The beauty of Maine and the surroundings of the camp set the scene well but are not integral. Any place that can provide space for solitary reflection would do. 2008, 301 pages.

 

The Rainbow List

The Rainbow List is an annual list of titles nominated by members of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, & Transgendered Round Table of the American Library Association. This is the second year I’ve received the list and been able to order titles in my new position. I am grinning ear to ear to know that when I checked this year’s list, our library already owned every single title. Go Jen!! I was also excited to see almost everything checked out and with holds.

You can find the list as well as information about the group on myspace. They are working towards getting an ALA award for GLBTQ for youth and that is good news indeed.

http://www.myspace.com/rainbow_list

 

Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner

What to say….

I’m a little at a loss for words and when it comes to books, that rarely happens to me. I love Jennifer Weiner, she is one of my favorite authors and I eagerly put myself and several of my friends and patrons on hold for her new titles when they come out.  AND, being in the readers’ advisory field, I try to not put my personal opinions in my reviews but you know, that is the most frequent comment I get from the few minions I have on this site. Did you like it? Yes, I get all of that, but did you enjoy the book?

So, with that in mind, I’ll say this. I’m not sure I liked this book. Or, should I say, I just finished it yesterday and I haven’t fully recovered. I picked it up off the floor where I had thrown it the night previous and finished it, but I am still not happy and I keep thinking that this would make Jennifer Weiner triumphant. This was her intention and it worked. So be it.

Certain girls is the sequel to Good in Bed, which is the book most of us discovered Jennifer Weiner’s laugh out loud but also serious style.  The story skips forward several years to Joy as a teenager. Told from alternating viewpoints, the reader is treated to the frantic love of a mother trying to hold on to her child as well as the child who is ready to be treated like an adult and is searching for her identity…without mom. You ache for both sides and you remember what it was like to want independence so badly and also what it is like to want some things to never change. The pace is quick and the reader is pulled in to the characters lives as they progress in a very normal, lifey (is that even a word?) sort of way.

Be warned, there is a surprise at the end and no, I am not going to tell you what it is.  2008, 386 pages.

 

Within a Whisper by Caroline Upcher

Within a Whisper is a story a lot of folks will recognize. A long-term marriage at the brink. Still in the same house but sleeping in different rooms and communication is strained and uncomfortable. In this story, even tho it is fiction, it is based on the true love and marriage of James and Nanci LaGareene.  Each of them wrote in to a contest called the “greatest love story never told” and won.  Told from Nanci’s point of view it traces their courtship, love and how they fell out of love with each other, caused great hurt to one another (including multiple affairs) and then finally realized what few couples do-that marriage is like life-unpredictable, painful yet also equisite or as I like to say, humanly flawed.

The writing style of the book is very simplistic and can sometimes be frustrating. The pace is fairly quick but the emotional toll the characters experience make it an emotional read with a mostly somber tone. 2001, 211 pages.

 

For One More Day by Mitch Albom

It is easy to pigeonhole Mitch Albom into a sappy category that you roll your eyes at but, then you read one of his books and you are captured by the intense emotional journey he takes his readers on. In One More Day, Chick tells the story of his life, his dreams and his mistakes that have cost him everything. It is easy to get lost in this thing called life and Chick does a bang up job. He holds his deadbeat father up on a pedestal and does whatever he wants in hopes that he will finally love him. When those dreams fail and his father disappears again Chick finds himself in an alcoholic tailspin that costs him the final moments of his mother’s life, his marriage and even his daughter’s wedding. Desperately lonely Chick tries several times to kill himself and fails. As he makes his way back to his old house he runs into his mother who has been dead for several years. Does she have the power to pull him back from the edge or will Chick be lost forever?

Deeply emotional and at times difficult to read about the downfall of a man that could be any of us. The story moves quickly as Chick has the opportunity most of us never get, to connect with a lost loved one and truly understand the power of love and family. Readers get to know Chick with all his faults and regrets and the development of his character is what makes the book. 2006, 197 pages.

 

Sweet Home Carolina by T. Lynn Ocean

Jaxie is a city girl. An advertising executive on the fast track, Jaxie loves everything about the city-the constant noise, bustle of people and take-out delivery at 1 am. When her boss assigns her to the firm’s pro bono project for the year in a small, failing town in South Carolina Jaxie is miserable. Rumton doesn’t even have a hotel and she ends up staying with an older man everyone calls Pops and his pet dog and raccoon.

Predictable storyline but one that fans of southern fiction will enjoy. Ocean packs the novel full of odd, quirky characters and strange behavior by the locals. Low country ocean life is integral to the feel of the book. A touch of romance and a dash of mystery make it a light & fun read. Oh, and don’t forget the pirates! 2006, 258 pages.