Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany

I had a hard time maintaining momentum on this book and ended up giving up about half way through. It's very much about food, when I wish the author would have leaned more toward the people who make the food.

2 stars - People who are into cooking would certainly rank it higher

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen

Finally got around to reading in April '07. What a great book! I couldn't put it down.

" Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison."

4 stars - reader caution, slightly graphic

The Tipping Point

I liked the inclusion of interesting psych studies in this book. Made me want to look into Fundamental Attribution Error and helping behavior or bystander effect more.

4 stars

Blink
Malcolm Gladwell

Gladwell very successfully explores expert cognition. This book makes you think twice about all the decisions we make without thinking.

I think this book would be interesting to include in a cognitive psychology class.

3 1/2 stars

Mountains Beyond Mountains

Book Club selection for Sept-Oct 2006

Currently reading...

Liars and Saints

The story follows one family through several generations. Chock full of interesting plot twists. Worth reading.

3 1/2 stars

Ya-Yas in Bloom
Rebecca Wells

Different feel from the other Rebecca Wells books, but still v. good.

3 1/2 stars

Little Altars Everywhere
Rebecca Wells

Must read.

4 stars.

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
Rebecca Wells

Classic.

4 stars

The Kite Runner
Khaled Hosseini

Starting reading but had to quit when the foreshadowing hinted toward a depressing plot line. Just not in the mood for sad.

The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks

Though I rarely feel this way, this is one case where I preferred the movie to the book. Still, not a waste of time.

Publishers description: "A man picks up a very special notebook and begins reading to his beloved wife, his voice recalling the story of their poignant and bittersweet journey to happiness. . . so begins The Notebook, a touching novel that is a dual tale of love lost and found, and of a couple's gentle efforts to retrieve the most cherished moments of their lives. The Notebook is irrepressibly romantic and has become a classic. "

2 1/2 Stars

The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Anne Fadiman

Excellent book. Moving example of the role of culture in medicine and disability.

Publisher's description: " Brilliantly reported and beautifully crafted, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down explores the clash between the Merced Community Medical Center in California and a refugee family from Laos over the care of Lia Lee, a Hmong child diagnosed with severe epilepsy. Lia's parents and her doctors both wanted what was best for Lia, but the lack of understanding between them led to tragedy."

4++ stars

The Man of My Dreams

When I started reading this book, I was concerned that I would be disappointed because Sittenfeld's first book "Prep" was so good. I was not disappointed in the lest! It was a fantastic book - I read it in one day.

4 stars

Prep
Curtis Sittenfeld

Great book. This author takes me back to high school in ways that I would sometimes rather not visit. She has an amazing ability to put words to the kind of inner turmoil and self-awareness specific to teenage girls in a way that made me understand myself better. Very insightful.

Publisher's description: "Lee Fiora is an intelligent, observant fourteen-year-old when her father drops her off in front of her dorm at the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. She leaves her animated, affectionate family in South Bend, Indiana, at least in part because of the boarding school's glossy brochure, in which boys in sweaters chat in front of old brick buildings, girls in kilts hold lacrosse sticks on pristinely mown athletic fields, and everyone sings hymns in chapel.

As Lee soon learns, Ault is a cloistered world of jaded, attractive teenagers who spend summers on Nantucket and speak in their own clever shorthand. Both intimidated and fascinated by her classmates, Lee becomes a shrewd observer of-and, ultimately, a participant in-their rituals and mores. As a scholarship student, she constantly feels like an outsider and is both drawn to and repelled by other loners. By the time she's a senior, Lee has created a hard-won place for herself at Ault. But when her behavior takes a self-destructive and highly public turn, her carefully crafted identity within the community is shattered.

Ultimately, Lee's experiences-complicated relationships with teachers; intense friendships with other girls; an all-consuming preoccupation with a classmate who is less than a boyfriend and more than a crush; conflicts with her parents, from whom Lee feels increasingly distant, coalesce into a singular portrait of the painful and thrilling adolescence universal to us all. "

4 stars

Don't expect this one to be like Bridget Jones - same author, but not funny. Still, good read, made me think a bit.

3 stars

Bridget Jones': The Edge of Reason
Helen Fielding

Just as funny as the first.

4 stars

Can't go wrong with Bridge Jones. Even makes a good re-read.

4 stars

I haven't seen the movie, but I imagine the book is better.

3 stars

Read this on the recommendation of a library when I told her I was looking for 'vacation' books. It was alright, nothing too special. Bit scary at times. Not something I would normally read, or recommend. I kind of question this librarian's taste, to be honest.

2 stars

Open Season
Linda Howard

Another book that I'd rather not admit to reading, but am justified that it was a vacation read.

The Amazon description: "On her thirty-fourth birthday, small-town librarian Daisy Minor resolves to enliven her boring life by finding a man with whom she'll have a steamy fling. Makeover done, she dances the night away and later finds a place of her own on the seamy side of town. Then one night she sees something that puts her in danger, and she finds herself having to deal with the infuriating local police chief--single, attractive . . . and sexy. Although the premise is a little shopworn and the "makeover changes all" plot point a trifle unbelievable, Linda Howard gives Daisy a lot of spirit and the police chief a lot of spice--and the result is good chemistry that makes for an enjoyable romantic thriller."

One star

This book served its purpose as a dumb vacation read, but I won't give it credit for much more than that.

The Amazon description: "Successful health club owner Blair Mallory is the only witness when a troublemaking member gets shot behind her North Carolina gym. Since the killer may not realize that Blair hasn't seen his face, she needs police protection—but her difficulties only escalate when Lt. Wyatt Bloodworth, with whom she had a short but intense relationship several years earlier, is assigned to the case. Still smarting from Wyatt's unexplained rejection, Blair resists his macho self-confidence; Wyatt in turn is irritated by her refusal to follow orders, even as he succumbs to her feisty charm and potent sexuality."

One and 1/2 stars