THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS

THE SCHOOL OF ESSENTIAL INGREDIENTS by Erica Bauermeister

From the back of the book:

Once a month on a Monday night, eight students gather in Lillian's restaurant for a cooking class.  Among them is Claire, a young woman coming to terms with her new identity as a mother; Tom, a lawyer whose life has been overturned by loss; Antonia, an Italian kitchen designer adapting to life in America; and Carl and Helen, a long-married couple whose union contains surprises the rest of the class would never suspect.

The students have come to learn the art behind Lillian's soulful dishes, but it soon becomes clear that each seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen.  And, one by one, they are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of what they create...

This book was divided into sections, each one dealing with either Lillian or one of the students.  Giving a little background on each, the chapters showed how different foods were used to reach out to each one.

I enjoyed the book, but didn't love it.  The descriptions of the food and the preparation were almost sensual and managed to wake up my taste buds in some instances - except for the overuse of garlic.  I never clicked with any of the characters though.  The book reminded me of an old Maeve Binchy book, EVENING CLASS, where different students came together to learn a language.

I had heard a lot of hype about this book, but it just didn't quite live up to it for me.

LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER

LIFE WITHOUT SUMMER by Lynne Griffin

From the back of the book:

Tessa Gray's life changes forever when she loses her four-year-old daughter, Abby, in a hit-and-run accident outside her preschool.  As she grapples with a terrible grief, made worse by the police's insistence that the case in unsolvable, she finds her only solace in Celia Reed, the grief counselor her husband has pushed her to see, and in the journal she's begun keeping, where she compulsively counts the "days without Abby" and maps out her plan for catching the driver who tore her family apart.

Celia struggles to keep Tessa from getting caught up in a bleak crusade for answers, but she finds that their sessions open the door to emotions she's spent years ignoring, forcing her to face the rising tensions in her own life - her troubled teenage son, her alcoholic ex-husband, and her fragile new marriage.  Celia soon begins to realize that she must come to terms with the tragic mistakes of her own past and the choices that have led her family to the brink of destruction.  

Life Without Summer is a haunting portrait of two women whose  lives converge unexpectedly when the answers one needs turn out to be the other's only chance for peace.

I had mixed feelings reading this book.  It was written in two voices, Tessa and Celia.  At first it seemed to be mainly about Tessa and her feelings about Abby's death and her search for the truth about what happened.  But then the focus of the book seemed to turn to Celia and her troubles and she became the main character.

Throughout the book, I didn't like Celia.  She seemed too uptight and rigid to be of any help to her patients.  Her home life was a wreck.  I especially didn't like her new husband, Alden.  He was a totally pompous jerk. I couldn't understand how a person like Celia, who was supposed to be a smart woman, could kow-tow to someone like Alden.  But the ending of the book made me take a second look at Celia, slightly changing my opinion of her.

This was a book that made me think.  How would I have handled the situation had I been in Tessa's shoes?  Or in Celia's?  I think Ms. Griffin did a good job writing about a hard subject.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER

We're having our Thanksgiving dinner today.  

Dom and I went to Cracker Barrel on Thanksgiving for our dinner.  Unfortunately, the food wasn't as good as last year, and our waiter had the personality of a wet dishrag.  Oh well.  Shelby was supposed to go to a friend's house for dinner but changed her mind.  So later in the afternoon, I threw together a little Thanksgiving dinner for the 3 of us - roasted chicken instead of turkey, stuffing that was frozen from last year but still tasted good, a sweet potato casserole and cranberry sauce.  Not too bad for a last-minute meal.

I decided this year to do our family dinner a few days after Thanksgiving.  That way, Shelby, Ashlie, and Donna could all invite their respective boyfriends, who probably all had meals with their families on Thanksgiving day.  Between the planning and today, Ashlie and Donna have parted company with their guys, so only Shelby will be bringing her fellow.

I think I have a nice meal planned.  Some appetizers to start us off - spinach/artichoke dip, little pinwheel sandwiches, a cold crab dip, cheese and crackers.  Then for the meal.  Turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, potato salad (Susan's contribution), a corn casserole, green beans, candied sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and dinner rolls.  Donna is bringing the dessert - I think a pumpkin roll and something else for those who don't care for pumpkin.

I've been cleaning the house for the past couple of days.  Not that the house was so dirty that it took more than a day - I've just been doing a little bit each day.  Just have the floors to mop left on the list.  I tend to work better when I have a deadline.

So while you all are finishing the turkey leftovers, we'll be starting from scratch.  Better late than never!

V IS FOR VENGEANCE

V IS FOR VENGEANCE by Sue Grafton

From the book jacket:

A woman with a murky past who kills herself - or was it murder?  A spoiled kid awash in gambling debt who thinks he can beat the system.  A lovely woman whose life is about to splinter into a thousand fragments.  A professional shoplifting ring working for the Mob, racking up millions from stolen goods.  A wandering husband, rich and ruthless.  A dirty cop so entrenched on a force he is immune to exposure.  A sinister gangster, conscience-less and brutal.  A lonely widower mourning the death of his lover, desperate for answers, which may be worse than the pain of his loss.  A private detective, Kinsey Millhone, whose thirty-eighth-birthday gift is a punch in the face that leaves her with two black eyes and a busted nose.

And an elegant and powerful businessman whose dealings are definitely outside the law:  the magus at the center of the web.

V:  Victim.  Violence.  Vengeance.

This is the 22nd book in the alphabet series by Ms. Grafton.  Another good one.  There are some very interesting characters, both good and bad.  Not a whole lot of action and shoot-em-up, but a lot of thinking and connecting-the-dots by Kinsey.  A few different stories going on at the same time, but they all come together at the end.

Ms. Grafton has kept her characters true.  No major changes in their lives.  And she has kept them in the same time frame as when the series started.  As you read from one book to the next, you're only moving a few weeks in time.  I like this format, and I would think it would help Ms. Grafton with the writing as she wouldn't have to remember too many differences in the characters.

It looks like only 4 more books to complete the alphabet.  I wonder what titles she will use for W, X, Y and Z?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

I hope you all have a wonderful day, surrounded by friends and family.

EXPLOSIVE EIGHTEEN

EXPLOSIVE EIGHTEEN by Janet Evanovich

From the book jacket:

Before Stephanie can even step foot off Flight 127 Hawaii to Newark, she's knee deep in trouble.  Her dream vacation turned into a nightmare, and she's flying back to New Jersey solo.  Worse still, her seatmate never returned to the plane after the L.A. layover.  Now he's dead, in a garbage can, waiting for curbside pickup.  His killer can be anyone.  And a ragtag collection of thugs and psychos, not to mention the FBI, are all looking for a photograph the dead man was supposed to be carrying.

Only one other person has seen the missing photo - Stephanie Plum.  Now she's the target, and she doesn't intend to end up in a garbage can.  With the help of an FBI sketch artist Stephanie re-creates the person in the photo.  Unfortunately the first sketch turns out to look like Tom Cruise, and the second sketch like Ashton Kutcher.  Until Stephanie can improve her descriptive skills, she'll need to watch her back.

Over at the bail bonds agency things are going from bad to worse.  The bonds bus serving as Vinnie's temporary HQ goes up in smoke.  Stephanie's wheelman, Lula, falls in love with their largest skip yet.  Lifetime arch nemesis Joyce Barnhardt moves into Stephanie's apartment.  And everyone wants to know what happened in Hawaii?


Morelli, Trenton's hottest cop, isn't talking about Hawaii.  Ranger, the man of mystery, isn't talking about Hawaii.  And all Stephanie is willing to say about her Hawaiian vacation is...It's complicated.

You've got to love Stephanie.  No one gets herself in more trouble than she does.  She's got all kinds of people after her in this book - fake FBI agents, real FBI agents, a thug named Razzle Dazzle, a hairdresser who thinks Lula has fantastic hair.  All after a picture that Stephanie doesn't have.

There are shots fired, knives used, a few good kicks and punches thrown.  A fire or two, rats, plenty of fried chicken - a typical day in the life of Stephanie Plum.  Oh, and an explosion - but not Stephanie's car this time.

And the mystery about Hawaii - it's complicated.

THE DOVEKEEPERS

THE DOVEKEEPERS by Alice Hoffman was read for the Just for Fun Reading Challenge 2011.

From the book jacket:

In 70 C.E., nine hundred Jews held out for months against armies of Romans on Masada, a mountain in the Judean desert.  According to the ancient historian Josephus, two women and five children survived.  Based on this tragic and iconic event, Hoffman's novel is a spellbinding tale of four extraordinarily bold, resourceful, and sensuous women, each of whom has come to Masada by a different path.  Yael's mother died in childbirth, and her father, an expert assassin, never forgave her for that death.  Revka, a village baker's wife, watched the horrifically brutal murder of her daughter by Roman soldiers; she brings to Masada her young grandsons, rendered mute by what they have witnessed.  Aziza is a warrior's daughter, raised as a boy, a fearless rider and an expert marksman who finds passion with a fellow soldier.  Shirah, born in Alexandria, is wise in the ways of ancient magic and medicine, a woman with uncanny insight and power.

The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent women intersect in the desperate days of the siege.  All are dovekeepers, and all are also keeping secrets - about who they are, where they come from, who fathered the, and whom they love.

This is an excellent book, probably one of the best books I've read this year - or any year.  The story is told in four parts, one by each of the women.  Each tells of her life before coming to Masada and then of how their lives came together.  The writing is descriptive and beautiful, and the reader can feel the pain each endured.

I didn't know anything about Masada before reading this book.  As I was reading, I kept thinking I should go to the computer and look up Masada and find out what happened.  But I couldn't - I didn't want anything to interfere with reading this and learning the story as told by Ms. Hoffman.  I did research Masada after finishing and found that Ms. Hoffman did an excellent job in following the historic details of this siege.

If you have any interest in early Jewish history, this is an excellent book to read.

THE LITIGATORS

THE LITIGATORS by John Grisham

From the book jacket:

The partners at Finley & Figg - all two of them - often refer to themselves as "a boutique law firm."  Boutique, as in chic, selective, and prosperous.  They are, of course, none of these things.  What they are is a two-bit operation always in search of their big break, ambulance chasers who've been in the trenches much too long making way too little.  Their specialties, so to speak, are quickie divorces and DUIs, with the occasional jackpot of an actual car wreck thrown in.  After twenty-plus years together, Oscar Finley and Wally Figg bicker like an old married couple but somehow continue to scratch out a half-decent living from their seedy bungalow offices in southwest Chicago.

And then change comes their way.  More accurately, it stumbles in.  David Zinc, a young but already burned-out attorney, walks away from his fast-trace career at a fancy downtown firm, goes on a serious bender, and finds himself literally at the doorstep of our boutique firm.  Once David sobers up and comes to grips with the fact that he's suddenly unemployed, any job - even one with Finley & Figg - looks okay to him.

With their new associate on board, F&F is ready to tackle a really big case, a case that could make the partners rich without requiring them to actually practice much law.

I liked this book.  Written in a different vein from his earlier lawyer/trial books, this one was lighter and funnier.  Finley was an older man who didn't really want to do much work - all he wanted was a divorce from his wife, without it costing him an arm and a leg.  Figg had big plans and ideas, but he didn't have a clue how to get what he wanted.  Zinc tried to put the firm into some kind of order.  The courtroom scenes showed the complete ineptitude of these three lawyers.

I have always thought that Mr. Grisham's first book, A TIME TO KILL, was his very best.  He followed up with other good ones, then seemed to drop the ball in later books.  With this one, I feel he might be headed down the right track again.

CHASING THE DIME

CHASING THE DIME by Michael Connelly

From Amazon.com:

Henry Pierce is about to become very rich - as soon as his firm, Amedeo technologies, gets an infusion of capital from a big backer.  But the brilliant chemist's workaholic habits are disrupted when his lover, the former intelligence officer of his company, breaks up with him.  Lonely and dispirited, he moves into a new apartment and gets a new phone number that attracts a lot of callers, but not for him.  His new telephone number seems to have previously belonged to one Lilly Quinlan, an escort whose Internet photo arouses Henry's curiosity, especially when L. A. Darlings, whose Web page features the beautiful young woman, can't tell Henry how to find her.  With the same single-mindedness that made him a high-tech superstar, Pierce pursues his search for the missing girl, motivated by his guilt over the disappearance years earlier of his own sister, who, like Lilly, was also a prostitute (and ultimately the victim of the Dollmaker, a serial killer from Connelly's 1994 novel The Concrete Blonde).  But that motive is too thin to support Pierce's sudden abandonment of his career at such a critical juncture, even if forces unknown to him are setting him up for a fall.  Despite those holes in the plot and a less than compelling protagonist, the novel succeeds due to Connelly's literary and expository gifts and his more interesting secondary characters. 

I borrowed this book for my Kindle from my library, thinking I had been lucky enough to grab a brand new book without having to wait months.  As I started reading it, I was slightly disappointed.  It didn't seem to live up to the other books I've read by Mr. Connelly.  It was interesting enough, but I thought the main character was unbelievable.  He put so much effort into trying to find Lilly, a woman he had absolutely no connection to other than a shared phone number.  He put himself into harm's way and even wound up in deep trouble with the police over this obsession.  It just didn't ring true for me.

It wasn't until I finished the book that I realized that this was an older book by Mr. Connelly, released in 2002.  No wonder it didn't have the same feel and strength of his newer books.  I should have known - my library's selection of Kindle books is very poor, with hardly any newer releases.  Live and learn.

CODE BLUE

CODE BLUE by Richard Mabry was read for the Medical Mystery Madness Challenge 2011.

From Amazon.com:

In the first book of the Prescription for Trouble series, Code Blue means more to Dr. Cathy Sewell than the cardiac emergency she has to face.  It describes her mental state as she finds that coming back to her hometown hasn't brought her the peach she so desperately needs.  Instead, it's clear that someone there wants her gone...or dead.

Cathy returns to her hometown seeking healing after a broken relationship, but discovers that among her friends and acquaintances is someone who wants her out of town...or dear.  Lawyer Will Kennedy, her high school sweetheart, offers help, but does it carry a price tag?  Is hospital chief of staff Dr. Marcus Bell really on her side in her fight to get hospital privileges?  Is Will's father, Pastor Matthew Kennedy, interested in advising her or just trying to get her back to the church she left years ago?  When one of Cathy's prescriptions almost kills the town banker, it sets the stage for a malpractice suit that could end her time in town, if not her career.  It's soon clear that this return home was a prescription for trouble.

Ho hum.  Not a great book.  It fulfilled the reading challenge, but that's about all.  No real suspense.  A little heavy-handed on the religious aspect.  I had read another book by this author, MEDICAL ERROR, and didn't like that one too much either.  I guess this one was worth the price though - free on the Kindle.

WHAT'S IN A NAME 4 CHALLENGE COMPLETED

I finally finished the What's in a Name 4 Challenge.  This has been one of my favorite reading challenges for the past 4 years.  But this year, it was tough finding books for all the requirements.

Here's what I wound up reading:

Travel or movement:  CROSSING OCEANS
Number:  THE SIXTH MAN
Lifestage:  BLESS THE BRIDE
Size:  TOO BIG TO MISS
Evil:  NAUGHTY IN NICE
Jewelry or gem:  THE STOLEN CROWN

I'll be looking forward to next year's challenge - I can't wait to see what categories are chosen.

THE STOLEN CROWN

THE STOLEN CROWN by Susan Higginbotham was read for the What's in a Name 4 Challenge (jewelry or gem).

From Publishers Weekly:

Higginbotham's latest historical novel is set during England's turbulent War of the Roses.  The title refers to King Edward IV's secret marriage to Elizabeth Woodville, which serves as catalyst to the exploits of the main characters, Woodville's younger sister Katherine and her first husband, Henry Stafford, Duke of Buckingham.  Great artistic license is taken in fictionalizing their marriage as a mostly happy one.  Those without a strong knowledge of the period will find the book daunting, due to ever-changing alliances and the sheer number of characters, but more knowledgeable readers may find the fruits of Higginbotham's imagination more difficult to swallow.  Higginbotham's Henry seems to wander through his life making impolitic outbursts to King Edward, hero-worshipping Richard, and, later, innocently led by Richard's machinations.  The majority of the book is narrated by Katherine, whom historians know very little about; she makes an appealing heroine, and those who can suspend disbelief will sympathize quite strongly with this character and the plight of a noble woman in Medieval times.

I've read a few books about the War of the Roses, beginning with Sharon Kay Penman's epic THE SUNNE IN SPLENDOUR.  In that book, the Duke of Buckingham was an evil man who planned the murder of the young princes in the Tower of London.  In that particular book, Richard was a "good guy" who had nothing to do with the murders.

In this book, however, Richard wore the black hat and ordered the death of the princes, confessing this crime to Buckingham.  Buckingham was a nice guy who made a lot of wrong choices and put his faith in the wrong people.

The question of whether Buckingham was good or evil aside, I enjoyed this book.  It was interesting to follow the actions of the characters, seeing their loyalties change at the drop of a hat.  I can't say if my thoughts on Richard and Buckingham changed after reading this book, but it did re-kindle my interest in the War of the Roses and make me want to read further.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PO

Atlanta's little panda cub, Po, turned 1 year old yesterday.  And can you believe, I haven't been down to the zoo to see him?  The one time that Dom and I went to the zoo, for a special evening event, we weren't allowed to go to the panda exhibit.

Now that the weather is considerably cooler, I'm going to make it a point to get to the zoo to see Po and the 2 new tiger cubs.

OCTOBER BOOKS

October wasn't a great reading month.  I finished one chunkster that took a bit of time and then struggled through a couple of books that just didn't live up to expectations.  Plus some personal things that cut deeply into my reading time.  So I managed just 6 books this month.  My goal of 100 for the year is in jeopardy.

Here's what I read this month:

FALL OF GIANTS by Ken Follett (Just for Fun Reading Challenge 2011)

REASONS TO BE HAPPY by Katrina Kittle

HARMFUL INTENT by Robin Cook (Medical Mystery Madness Reading Challenge 2011)

A DUBLIN STUDENT DOCTOR by Patrick Taylor

IN THE COMPANY OF OTHERS by Jan Karon

LOW COUNTRY SUMMER by Dorothea Benton Frank

This puts me at only 73 books for the year.  With only two months to go, I better get on the stick.  I usually manage quite a few of those cute little Christmas books in December, so that should help pump up the numbers.

How was your reading this past month?