Peace Like a River

This book, by Leif Enger, was recommended to me by a friend. It's about a family who is searching after their brother who has broken out of prison after being convicted of murder. Each character in the family has a special trait of some kind; the father, who in some ways is a miracle worker. The brother, Ruben, an asthmatic, who learns from experience how to make decisions even when there's no clear line between right and wrong. And the younger sister Swede, whose literary creativity weaves a web through the entire story. It's an interesting book; to me it's like a cross between a Western and an inspirational almost religious type book. There's alot of values such as family loyalty, honesty, and love which play a huge role in the book.
Admittedly, this was a slower-read for me, and the ending at first seemed a little unfulfilling. But after thinking about it more (and reading the suggested questions for discussion at the back of the book), I came to understand how the ending was rather fitting. But I think I would probably appreciate the whole book more reading it again after having read the ending.

Moon Over Manifest

Well, funny thing. I have NO IDEA why I got this book from the library! It is technically a juvenile fiction, and that's not a section I just randomly browse through. I thought that I had requested it from the library because someone had recommended it on this blog, but I can see that no one has. Reading the back and the first 20 pages, it did NOT seem like my cup of tea. But, thinking that someone here had recommended it, I persevered... and ended up falling in love.

So anyway... should you decide to check it out, don't get turned off by the idea of a medium. She's not all hoodoo the way it appears at first; she's just a vehicle to be able to tell a second storyline in the book. And I really enjoyed watching the two story lines weave together by the end of the book. Plus, it was fun getting glimpses of history since the book is set in 1918 and 1936.

Anyway, brief plot overview: Abeliene's father sends her to live in Manifest, the town where he grew up. She spends the summer learning about the town's history (through her friend Miss Sadie the medium, as well as through town newspapers and old letters), trying to learn more about what makes her father the way he is. She ends up learning about him and about herself. Wonderful and sweet story!

The Giver

The Giver by Lois Lowry is set in a control-based society where all decisions are made for you. The size and type of your family, your profession, your friends, etc. In such a controlled society, a young boy by the name of Jonas receives the assignment to be "The Receiver" wherein he receives memories and feelings from on old man called The Giver. Discover with Jonas the meaning behind color, feelings, happiness and joy, and the decisions we must make because we know these things.
This is a short book, and it's quite the classic, but I really enjoyed it. There's lots of symbolism as to how you can perceive the ending, but that's another thing I like about the book; its open-endedness changes the whole tone of the book.

Time Lottery

Nancy Moser is the author of this wonderfully thought-provoking book. (It is Christian, and hence clean, but the preachy stuff is very minimal.)

The idea behind this story is that a company develops the ability for one to travel back to an Alternate Reality, or a place where some decision s/he made changed the course of his/her life. Since this is done using their memories, the person's body remains in the present for seven days while they experience life as it would have been, almost in a vivid dream. At the end of seven days, they experience a time of Dual Consciousness, where they are simultaneously aware of the realities of each world and are able to choose which reality to stay in.

The company holds a lottery and chooses 3 people to participate. In this first book, you follow these three people back through their memories to find out what they ultimately decide. (I promise, the book is much more about the people's lives than about the science behind the time travel.)

I loved it and really enjoyed the concept behind it; in fact, I am currently reading the sequel called "Second Time Around." I hope someone else can enjoy this book, too!

Persuasion

This is the last book written by Jane Austen, and it wasn't finished being edited when she died. But, I still love this book! Anne Elliot is the middle of three girls and fell in love with Captain Frederick Wentworth when she was only 19 years old. Because he had no money and nothing to call his own and she was so young, Anne was persuaded by her friend, Lady Russell, a fill-in for her deceased mother, that it wasn't a good match.

Years later, Anne and Captain Wentworth meet again and this time their relationship grows slowly because of hurt feelings, and because of other suitors.

Of course, the two end up together, (seriously....I'm not spoiling this for anyone, because this story has been around forever), but I just love the way Jane Austen uses all of her characters in her books to further the plots. There are hardly any inconsequential people in her novels.

So, really, read this. And then read all the other books written by her because I LOVE them all!

The Lost Symbol

You guessed it. This is the third book in Dan Brown's trilogy, following Angels and Demons and The DaVinci Code. I finished this book most recently.

I remember when this book hit the library shelves because I was in my advanced reporting class in the fall of 2009. For the first couple of weeks in the semester, I had a student in the beginning reporting class, Adam, shadow me to get the hang of shooting, editing, and writing a package. The story we looked into together was the higher influx of peeps heading to the library to avoid the costs of renting/buying movies (and books, but movies were mostly relevant because that's when Blockbuster started to close like a billion stores). Adam looked into The Lost Symbol on the library's system and found that it had more than 80 people who had placed a hold request on it.

Robert Langdon is slightly older, but still an intellectual giant in the world of symbology. There are a couple over-arching things about the third book that I liked a lot. First, the whole thing takes place in Washington, D.C., so for once it was my turn to enjoy the places mentioned and be able to picture them from the fam's east coast vacation in 1994. Secondly, the historical aspects of this book tie into Freemasonry. I still don't know a ton about the Free Masons, but a) I know Joseph Smith was a Mason, and b) National Treasure, one of my favorite movies, has a lot of ties to masonry, too. Overall, it's a group that intrigues me, if nothing else.

While Whitney and I agree that this book wasn't quite as satisfying as the first two because the whole clue-filled quest didn't seem to serve as much of an overall purpose, it was still a good read with some intense moments. In fact, I told Whitney not to read it right before going to bed because she often has nightmares, and there's at least one scene in particular that could be kind of scary. It is not, however, a scary book; it's just that the villain is quite a creeper.

The DaVinci Code

Part Two. This is the second book in the Dan Brown trilogy, after Angels and Demons. Again, it doesn't really matter what order you read these books in; I'm just posting about them in the order they were written. But, truth be told, this was the first of the three that I read.

I say 'read' loosely, for Whitney and I listened to it on CD way back in May 2008 while we drove from Provo to Midland and back for our wedding reception. I remember that the corresponding movie came out while I was on my mission. People in Argentina were outraged by the movie because they (the majority of whom are Catholic) didn't like that the book portrayed Jesus Christ as having been married during His life. But remember, this book is fiction tied into some real pieces of history. As far as I'm concerned, looking at it as fiction shouldn't cause anyone with a true testimony to waiver. Anyway, listening to the book sure made the 17-hour one-way trip a lot shorter (by taking breaks to listen to other things from time to time, the book CDs timed out perfectly; the book ended when we were about 45 minutes away from Provo on the return trip).

Robert Langdon is back in action, this time in Paris. Well he starts in Paris, but the whole book takes him through various European countries (again leading to Whitney's excitement). This time he's following clues left by artists (can you guess who one of them is?) and other great thinkers to ascertain the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. It's not as Indiana Jones-y as it may sound on the surface, but it is again pretty intense. There are moments when you pride yourself if you can figure out clues before Langdon does.

This is also a really good book, and we've also seen the movie, which did a pretty good job of matching up to the book.

Angels and Demons

Betcha didn't think you'd hear from me on this blog, did you? Well I do read. Occasionally. When I have time. And a good book. And this happened to be one such good book.

Despite what movie watchers may think, this is the first in a trilogy by Dan Brown (he has written two other books that I know of outside of the Robert Langdon series). It was made into a movie after the more famous movie, The DaVinci Code, but it was actually written first. The series is one of those where the plots technically did happen in a certain order, but it doesn't matter in what order you read them; they aren't connected in any way except that Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor and symbologist, is the main character in all of them.

This suspense-filled series ties fiction into many things that are quite historically accurate (okay, I didn't independently verify that it's all accurate, but Brown has short notes at the beginning of the books that tell the reader which organizations/events/traditions actually exist).

In Angels and Demons, Langdon is in Rome (and The Vatican City), chasing down the bad guys to try to stop the murderous intentions of the Illuminati, a science-based brotherhood that originated long ago to keep scientific discoveries protected from the Catholic Church, which tended not to be so accepting of worldly knowledge back in the day. Centuries after the church put great scientists and thinkers to death for their works, the Illuminati want revenge.

I usually only had time to read it a little bit at a time before bed, and there were some nights when I stayed up later than I should have because the book was so good. Whitney read it right after I did, and it was really fun to share our thought processes throughout the plot. Plus, she loves it because she's been to most of the places where things happen in the book.