Heaven Is Here

This is an autobiography telling Stephanie Nielson's story from her plane crash that ended with 80% of her body burned.  She describes her recovery process and life after (as well as some life before).  What an amazing story.

The Book Thief

I read this book thinking that one of you had posted it here to read, but I guess I got this recommendation from somewhere else.

This book is amazing! You'll need a bit of time, and most likely a box of Kleenex.

Liesel Meminger is only nine years old when she is taken to live with the Hubermanns, a foster family, on Himmel Street in Molching, Germany, in the late 1930s. She arrives with few possessions, but among them is a book she stole from her brother's burial place. During the years that Liesel lives with the Hubbermans, Hitler becomes more powerful, life on Himmel Street becomes more fearful, and Liesel becomes a full fledged book thief. Hans Hubermann teaches her to read, from which Liesel uses the power of words to befriend many unlikely characters, including Max, the Jew the Hubermanns are hiding in their basement.

What's interesting about this book (and it took me a few pages to realize it), is that the narrator of the story is Death. You can sense that Death is trying to prove that somehow humans don't deserve him. Very beautiful story.

A Winter Dream

Don't be fooled by the title or cover picture -- you can read it in any season.
It is a modern-day telling of the Bible story of Joseph, son of Israel (Jacob).  Even though you know what's going to happen (if you are familiar with the Bible story), you can find yourself surprised with how the events in this story occur and the timing with which it occurs. 

It's a quick read.  This fiction book, unfortunately, represent unkindness that could happen many years beyond the time of the Bible.  However, (since you all know it ends well) I loved reading something that lifted me up and showed the goodness of the soul of men.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's stunning novel, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattles' Japantown.  It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery:  the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II.  As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.

This simple act takes Henry back to the 1940s, when his world was a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who was obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American.  While "scholarshipping" at the exclusive Ranier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student.  Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship--and innocent love--that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors.  After Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end and that their promise to each other will be kept.

Forty years later, Henry Lee, certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko, searches the hotel's dark, dusty basement for signs of the Okabe family's belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure.  Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice:  words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.

I read this book for our Book Club and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Even though it is fiction, I learned a lot about a time in American history which wasn't taught much when I studied American history in school.  The Japanese internment camps were glossed over as though they were something of which Americans were not proud.  I also found myself relating to the universal theme of people being afraid of those who are different, whether they be blacks, Mormons, American Indians, even someone who is different in an elementary school class -- and the persecutions that result because of the fear of those differences.

Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman

This is a quick read and even won the Newbery award.  The little no-one no-named orphan girl gets taken in by a midwife to do menial tasks in exchange for food and shelter. Over time the girl (who has named herself Alyce) learns skills and tries her hand at doing what the midwife does.  It's a good book about belonging and finding purpose in life despite the difficulties that seem to be in our way.

Learning to Fly

This is an amazing book by Roxanne Henke about what it means to be a mom, when and how you learn what to do as a parent, limits to set or ignore, etc. It follows two women who have little girls at the same time, and goes through the girls' lives through high school graduation. It is told from the mothers' varying points of view and truly made me think about my parenting style and what I should or shouldn't do. My only wish was that she would write a similar story with the children being boys because many of the challenges that the daughters faced were more girl-centered (gossip, peer pressure to look a certain way, curfew, drill team, etc.) than perhaps some of the more boy-centered ones (pornography) that I worry about for my sons. But it was a very good read!

Under the Greenwood Tree

Okay, okay. This isn't the cover from the book. It's the 2006 BBC version of the book. And it was good. Fancy Day moves to town to take care of her ailing father but soon finds herself with three different suitors. Each one offers her a different kind of life. Which one will she pick?!?!


This is originally a book by Thomas Hardy. But I haven't read the book. I only saw the movie and loved it. I thought you gals who like all the other BBC things (Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell, etc.) would enjoy this movie. And it's only an hour and a half. Watchable in one night.

Delirium

This book by Lauren Oliver is AMAZING!!! Lena lives in a futuristic society where love is considered a disease. Once people turn 18, they can be cured from ever falling in love by having a portion of their brain lasered away. Lena can't wait to finally have the cure and be happy... until she falls in love just 95 days before her scheduled procedure. It is fast-paced, full of twists and turns, has excellent characters, and is super compelling. I couldn't put it down!

(I'll add a pic of the cover later if I remember - I'm uploading pics to my other blog right now.)

A Single Thread

I just finished reading A Single Thread by Marie Bostwick. It follows the lives of 4 main characters as they intertwine. It is told from the alternating perspective of two of the main characters. All four women start as strangers, but through a bout of cancer and a quilt circle, they end up becoming friends. It is very well-written, the characters are realistic and compelling, and I couldn't put it down until I finished it! In fact, I'm reading the sequel (A Thread of Truth) right now!

Missing May

Missing May by Cynthia Rylant is about a young girl, Summer, who is adopted by her aging Aunt May and Uncle Ob. Aunt May passes away, and Uncle Ob especially misses her. Together, Summer, Uncle Ob, and the peculiar neighbor boy named Cletus, learn to find strength from each other as they continue to live life all the while missing May.
It's a rill short book, but it's so sweet. I figure if Mom were to read it, she'd cry. That's why I posted it. Plus also, I read it for my Children's Lit class . . ..

Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting

This was a book I read for my children's lit class. Normally, I'm not a big fan of history non-fiction type books, but this book was very moving. The book begins by talking about the lead up to WWI and life in the trenches. Then it beautifully and poignantly gives the account of the Christmas Day Truce of 1914, wherein troops from both sides of the war caused a cease-fire for several hours and crossed enemy lines to celebrate Christmas Day together. I like the format of the book because there's lots of great photographs. There's actual quotes from soldiers, too, but they are seamlessly intertwined with the narrative.
Even if you don't like history or war, I would still recommend this book. It shows the human nature of us all, even in the midst of war. Personally, while I was reading it, I kept thinking, "Okay, so what happens next as a result of the truce?" Obviously, the war went on for a few more years, but I still think the Christmas Truce of 1914 was an important event in the war.

A Year Down Yonder

Mary Alice, 15, spends a year living with her eccentric grandma in a small country town. The adventures they have are absolutely hilarious as they cause town riots, find creative ways to make money, and otherwise either endear themselves or scare themselves away from everyone else in the town.
This is a feel-good book for sure, and it's real short, too!

Plus also, this book is a sequel to A Long Way From Chicago which is about Mary Alice and her brother Joey as they visit Grandma over consecutive summers. Also a good book.

The Help

This book is wonderful! It's about black maids and hired help during the 1960s. It outlines the story of three main characters-two maids, and a white college graduate - who work together to write their stories. It was such a good read, and I definitely gained a lot of appreciation for that time period and the unspoken racial social rules. I really liked what they included in their stories to "give it insurance" against the high society socialites. I give it 5 stars!!

I Sit All Amazed: The Extraordinary Power of a Mother's love

Written by Steve Mikita, this book talks about his life in a wheelchair because of a muscular disease. He reflects back on all his mother did for him during her life and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ has sustained him in his trials and hardships.

A very good read! It's neat to see how this man has progressed beyond the slim prognosis of life expectancy and has done so many things with the necessary assistance from his mom and others & shows how determined one can be and how they can succeed when they work toward it.

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.