The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
Literature

Two Jewish children are left in a dense forest when their parents are pursued by Germans during the last part of WWII. Their parents caution them to use the good German names of Hansel and Gretel. They make their way through the forest to a hut on the outskirts of a village. There they find Magda, a stubborn and eccentric old woman, who decides to take a chance and get documents and introduce the children as relatives from afar.

Meanwhile their parents escape and join some partisans. Each of them must learn to live in a new environment. The children must learn to keep apart and keep their secrets. The parents must learn how to live in the forest and attack steathily.

When the Germans come to the village looking for 'perfect' children a whole new set of problems ensue.

I loved how the author continually drew parallels with the old folk tale. It was creative and made for a great story. It is a gruesome story about the trials and tribulations of war, starvation, murder and insanity

First Line: "Caught between green earth and blue sky, only truth kept me sane, but now lies disturb my peace."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Holiday in Death

Holiday in Death by J. D. Robb
Mystery

This is the next in the 'In Death' Series. The deaths have a 12 days of Christmas theme. Each victim answers her door to find a Santa Claus with a special gift.

Eve Dallas finds the link that connect the murders, a personal Dating service, Personally Yours. A brother and sister run the agency. They are very much in love. Are they killing off their own clients? Peabody and McNab go undercover as lonely hearts to try to find the murderer. I love the sparks that are flying off of Peabody whenever McNab comes near.

At the same time Dallas must deal with the traditions of Christmas. She really has no clue and needs help in order to even buy gifts.

First Line: "She dreamed of Death"

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Maggie Again by John D. Husband

Maggie Again by John D. Husband
Fiction/Literature

Maggie lives in a small farm town in Indiana where everyone knows each other. Her three best friends spend as much time having fun as they do completing their chores. Alfie, one of her friends, has a gift of premonition and the sense of what will happen in the future. Once they jump on then off a boxcar that goes through their town, Alfie has a premonition that they will be doing something similar in the future.

Once Maggie finds out that her dad has given up a life in New York, she realizes that her time at Cobbler's Eddy may be coming to an end. Her father gets his note from New York just in time and Maggie's entire family ends up moving to New York, never to return to Indiana again.

But Maggie can't forget her friends that easily. She writes them and asks them to visit her ASAP. Three boys hop on a box car and ride to New York. However, after a week, there's no news from them. Everyone thinks they are lost, and after more time, it is believed that they are dead. Maggie is heartbroken. She goes through life in a sort of daze until one day, three boys from her past show up.

This book is a charming book, as are the characters. Combining the easy times of the late 1920s with the much faster times of the 1980s was interesting. How would you ever be able to explain to someone from 1920 how much the world has changed by 1980? This was a nice, short, enjoyable book!

First Line: "The village of Cobblers Eddy, Indiana is just a collection of houses, shops and barns strung along a two lane concrete road and surrounded by rolling farmland that extends to the horizon in all directions."

Rating:

(3 .5/5)

Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey

Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey
Fiction/Literature

Frey is the controversial author of A Million Little Pieces and comes back for his third novel, and first try at fiction. This book has Los Angeles as a character as much as the novel is set in LA. In the beginning, we get many stories of people living in LA. Artists, immigrants, homeless, movie stars, runaways, bloggers, gang members, any typical story to LA is mentioned in this book.

Frey focuses on four separate story lines: a closet homosexual who happens to be one of the biggest movie stars in the world, a young couple who run away from their home and come to LA to try and turn a new leaf without any abuse from their parents, a young woman born in America to Mexican who has abnormally large thighs, and a homeless man who lives in a washroom on Venice Beach.

Some of the main characters are pretty easy to relate to, others aren't, but I think that's the point. The characters all have their flaws though, but you don't necessarily want them to get away with everything they try.

The rest is just background noise, like commercials in between your favourite soap opera. Sure the facts about LA and the side stories are interesting, but you get wrapped up in the main stories and you just want to find out what happens next. It was a bit hard to remember who was who at the beginning, but you eventually remember and the pages start turning until you're done!

First Line: "On September 4, 1781, a group of forty-four men, women and children who called themselves the Pobladores establish a settlement on land that is near the centre of contemporary Los Angeles."

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Rating:

(4.5/5)

Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? by Erica Orloff

Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven? by Erica Orloff
Chick Lit

Lily is a single mother of two, ex-wife to the "spawn of the devil" who, while she was in labour with her second child, cheated on her with someone on 10 years older than their daughter. However, Lily has Michael, her best friend of 20 years, and a gay man. Michael is close to Lily's children and does a lot of with the family. He's had his own struggles, coming out of the closet and having to give up a career in baseball because he was beaten close to death for being gay.

Lily writes a column in the paper and her boss tells her she should go get a mammogram and write a story about it to bring awareness to the community. When Lily finds a lump in her breast however, she starts to get worried. It turns out to be cancer and Lily must start to look at life in a new light for fear that she might not be around for much longer.

While the end of this book was touching, I wasn't overly impressed. I felt like Orloff was trying way too hard to gain sympathy for Michael - having him be beat up to a bloody pulp, having his father not talk to him, having him give up his career. Was all that really necessary? Michael is a likable character without having to feel sorry for him too. More than a couple of times I felt like saying "I get it! He's had a tough life! Move on!", and this detracted from the main story of Lily and her cancer.

First Line: "My phone rang, and I reached a hand out into the blackness and fumbled for the receiver."

Rating:

(3.5/5)

Ace has gone to the mountains for 2 weeks. She hopes to get lots of reading done and will post reviews on her return

You Suck

You Suck by Christopher Moore
Paranormal

This book is the sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends. Jody has turned Tommy into a vampire and he must now learn some new habits. First they must find a new minion to do their daytime chores. They find a way to drink coffee without vomiting and they have to decide what to do about a bronzed old vampire.

Tommy's old night crew friends blow all their money on a Vegas hooker and now the hooker wants Tommy's money too. I loved the way the minion took care of Jody and Tommy in the end

This book was very similar to the first but it was still entertaining.

First Line: "You bitch, you killed me"

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Good-Bye and Amen

Good-Bye and Amen by Beth Gutcheon
Fiction

When both parents die how does a family divide up the family heirlooms without causing irreparable rifts? Good-Bye and Amen is a book about just that.

Laurus Moss was a Danish Concert pianist married to privileged Sydney Brant. Sydney loved to cause dissension among her three children (Eleanor, Monica and Jimmy). Even beyond the grave she attempts to cause fights by holding a lottery for her possessions.

Eleanor is the oldest child. A traditionalist who has a nice stable and secure life married to Bobbie. She wants things for her children.

Monica is the middle forgotten child. Sydney had never really helped Monica when Monica needed her and now everything seems to be dissolving right before her eyes. Monica married the charismatic Norman, a lawyer turned Episcopal priest. Norman also takes Monica for granted and just seems to think she is invisible. He is one of those types who seem to think woman are there to serve them and the world revolves around themselves. He has moved from parish to parish trying to move up the ladder to bishop.

Jimmy is the youngest. He had a difficult adolescence and had alienated himself from the family but has found his way back. His style of living in more carefree than the rest of the family.

The book is written from the perspective of each individual character. At first I had difficulty keeping them all straight and wished I had turned to the back of the book where they are all outlined. This book is so detailed in character development it almost reads like a non-fiction memoir.

I enjoyed the book and can only hope when my siblings and I are in the same circumstances we do as well as the characters in this book

First Line: "The trouble started when Jimmy took the piano."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy
FictionLiterature

This book opens up with a Jewish family of four being chased down a road by Nazis. The father tells the children that they must leap out of the vehicle and that they must run into the forest, forever using the names Hansel and Gretel, good German names. At a bend in the road, the children separate from their father and stepmother and run into the forest. They walk the night, rest in leaves, and continue on in the day, eventually finding the house of an elderly woman named Magda. Magda is considered to be a witch by the people in the village that she lives close to.

Magda decides to chance it and takes the children into her home, getting them documents and introducing them to her family. However the children and the village are not safe. A senior officer of the Reich comes to the village to take away "perfect" children back to Germany and the village needs to hatch a plan to make sure that no children are taken a way.

Meanwhile, the parents manage to escape from the Germans chasing them and meet up with a group of Russians and Lithuanians. They fight side by side with this group to try to stay alive in these trying times.

Given the serious nature of the subject matter in this book, you're never really sure whether this book is going to end with a happy or sad ending. Meanwhile, the characters capture you and all you can do is hope that everything works out well for them. I would definitely search out another book by Murphy. This one was a real page turner.

First Line: "Caught between green earth and blue sky, only truth kept me sane, but now lies disturb my peace."

Rating:

(4.5/5)

Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
Fantasy

Tucker Case is a screw-up. When he destroys his company's jet while accompanied by a prostitute who wants to join the mile high club, he has to leave the United States and quickly.

He ends up in Micronesia hired to fly a brand new Lear jet for some Missionaries. How did he figure they could ever afford a jet? To get to the job, he misses the boat and ends up in a small boat with a cross-dressing navigator and a pet fruit bat. The navigator does not even consider checking weather forecasts and they are in a typhoon. By good luck, Tuck lands on the correct island but is almost dinner for an elderly member of the natives who inhabit the island.


I loved the book. It was outrageously funny and completely off the wall. A very entertaining read

First Line: "Tucker Case awoke to find himself hanging from a breadfruit tree by a coconut fiber rope."

Rating:

(4.0/5)

Predicting Technology by Thomas E. Vass

Predicting Technology by Thomas E. Vass
Technology/Economics

We all know how much technology has changed our lives over the past few years. You can even trace the evolution of technology over the course of a single year. Vass has written this book with the hopes that from it, organizations, entrepreneurs, and ordinary citizens can better understand how technology evolves, how it affects our lives, and what we can do to assist in technological innovation.

Vass starts out by giving the basic definitions that people need to understand to grasp the concepts of the book. These definitions are clearly explained in such a way that anyone should be able to understand. Vass also takes well known economic models and expands on them. For anyone that has taken an economics course before, we know that the models only actually work in a 'perfect world'. However, there's no such thing as a perfect world and Vass does a great job of adapting models to take this into consideration. I've never seen anything like his proposed spiral models. They make a lot of sense!

We were taught in the MBA that if you can get your point across in a table, then you will likely be able to communicate your idea much better. Vass neatly sums up his ideas at the end of the book which allows them to be used as tools for anyone reading the book.

The amount of research that Vass has done is exceptional. He supports his ideas with multiple sources and explains quotations from those sources. However, I am concerned that Vass is targeting his book to the wrong audience. He states at the beginning that this book can be read by "ordinary citizens" but I think this book would be better targeted towards people with economics and technological knowledge. Specifically, CIOs and business students. Ordinary citizens are not going to be able to understand the mathematical equations or some of the economics concepts unless they've been exposed to them before.

Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
Memoir

This book is about one woman's journey for one year. Liz Gilbert went to Italy (eat), India (pray) and Bali (love). She has just suffered through a bitterly contested divorce and a failed love affair. First stop, Italy. Liz locates herself in Rome and immerses herself in Italian language and food. She travels all over the country and has some of the most phenomenal meals. This was very interesting to me as I have just returned from Italy myself. I wish I could have eaten like Liz and not have had to worry about the weight gain.

Next stop, India. Liz now is at an ashram in India. This part is very spiritual and very dry. I just could not relate in any way. I am a practitioner of yoga but I can not envision myself meditating for hours on end. I could not get into this part at all

Next stop, Bali. Here Liz 'trains' with a Balinese medicine man. This part detailed some of the Balinese customs and ceremonies which are so totally different from the Western world. I enjoyed Wayan's cure of male infertility. Again I found this section interesting and even in parts very funny. It is fantastic that Liz is able to raise so much money so quickly to help her friends.

First Line: "I wish Giovanni would kiss me."

Rating:

(3.5/5)