Family Drama: Young Adult Novel

Dear Readers,

This is the final post for my Toastmasters challenge to create a compelling blog. This morning I am checking on information about Celeste Ng, the writer of Little Fires Everywhere. Her debut book is titled, Everything I Never Told You (2014).

After reading information on the debut novel online, I can see that Celeste has a pattern. Celeste likes writing about family drama, rifts within the family.  In this first book, as well as the one I just read, the youngest child in the family is a key character; the one who knows the truth. Both books feature Chinese American families. The main story in the debut novel is about a Chinese American family with three children while in the book I just read, family means an unmarried Chinese American woman and her baby. You know what else these two books have in common? Both are bestsellers!

Personally, I would rate the novel I just read 4 out of 5 stars.  It kept me up until well past midnight so it held my interest. I am not satisfied with how it ended for Izzy, the youngest child, but the resolution for all the other characters was satisfying. I will not give away anything more in case you want to read this book.

I notice also that Celeste is from Shaker Heights, Ohio which was the setting of the novel. Shaker Heights was presented in the book as this very orderly community with lots of rules and in the midst of it were all these teens in chaos.

There you have it dear readers. I am pursuing the Toastmasters Innovative Planning Path and my challenge was to write 8 blog posts in the month of January. This is the final post for this particular challenge.

Are you blogging? Share a link to your book blog with me. Thanks.

Our Book Club Selections October 2013 - October 2014

A year of reading with my Book Club. We do not meet in December. In January we usually meet and discuss books that we read and enjoyed during the Christmas break. This year we missed a meeting in July and discussed that book in August.  How many titles on our list have you read?

2013

October: Blood of the Prodigal; an Amish Mystery by P.L. Gaus.

November : Open and Shut by David Rosenfelt 

2014

February: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

March: Half Broke Horses by Jeanette Walls

April: Last Message by Shane Peacock

May: Sycamore Row by John Grisham

June:  Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

July:  Fault in Our Stars by John Green

August: The Husband's Secret by Liane Moriarty

September: Tyrant’s Daughter by J. C. Carleson

October: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

The book selections that were my least favorite were Fault in Our Stars and Half Broke Horses. My favorite selections were Bel Canto , The Husband's Secret, and Gone Girl. 

 Next Month's Book Selection

November : Ludwig Conspiracy by Oliver Potzsch 

I'm Reading "Orange is the New Black"

I am reading Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman and she is giving me an inside look at life in a women's prison. Most people I have spoken to have heard of the made for TV version with the lesbian scenes and the overabundance of using-the-toilet scenes but they didn't know it was based on a book by Piper. The book is not exactly like the TV version. The characters are there Pop, Vanessa, Pennsatucky, "Crazy Eyes", Yoga Janet but not their back story as in the movie. The anecdotes in the book are not as dramatic and colorful or sexual as on TV.

I am on page 199 and the inmates are upset about this article written by Lynn Tuohy in 2004 that gives the impression that life in the Danbury Camp was like living in a big hotel. The informant gives the impression that the soon-to-be-imprisoned Martha Stewart would fit right in with all the classy inmates.  Piper, on the other hand, described the prison as a ghetto for the poor, uneducated and unskilled. In her opinion there was a revolving door between the ghetto where the poor, uneducated and unskilled lived on the outside and the ghetto in the prison system.  Turned out that the authorities really did not want Martha at Danbury anyway; there would be too much media focus on the conditions of the prison.

I am enjoying the book. Piper is great at expressing her emotions mainly her worry and humiliation but also her pleasure. She worried about her family and fiance and how her going to prison would affect them. She expressed her pleasure when receiving visitors in prison. She wrote of her pain and humiliation after seeing the prison gynecologist. Also, Piper has a lot of opinions about the prison system. I would rate this 4 out of 5.

Dissecting a Marriage, Missing Wife, Clueless Husband = Gone Girl

Listen to Gillian Flynn writer of Gone Girl. The book was awesome.  I read until 4:00am this morning.  Dysfunctional families make great stories. This novel had some unexpected twists and turns and some will either love or hate the ending.   Language unnecessarily crude sometimes but this book is definitely  movie material. So what do you know, I searched the internet and discovered the movie will be released October this year starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike as the main characters and Tyler Perry as the lawyer, Tanner Bolt.

Chief Inspector Armand Gamache Series

Loved Miss Louise Penny's latest, How the Light Gets In, named one of the best mystery/thriller novels of 2013 by NPR. Absolutely loved it. All the pieces of the puzzle from past books in the series seemed to have been resolved at the end of this story.  It felt as if  this was the last of the Inspector Gamache series.  The series started in the small Canadian village of Three Pines and feels like it has ended in Three Pines. Even Yvette Nichol, the socially inept officer, turned up in this book. The last time this character was mentioned was in the sixth book in the series, Bury Your Dead.  I liked the back and forth conversation as Team Gamache tried to hack into the computer that held the secrets of Team Francoeur; it added excitement to the story.  I also enjoyed the humorous tone in the story.  I finished this book in two days could not bear to put this book down and I am glad I read the series in order.

Best Books of 2013

Just look at this Best Books of 2013 on NPR! I can't keep up. I see Louise Penny's book on the list of Mysteries and Thrillers, How the Light Gets In, from the Chief Inspector Gamache series. Remember I first came across Penny because her first book in the series was a book club pick? I have that book at home to read during the month of December. I also have these books that I intend to read: John Grisham's Racketeer,  Jan-Phillip Sendker's Art of Hearing Heartbeats, JD Robbs' Promises in Death, and Susan Gregory's The Daniel Fast.  

I just finished reading The Mercy Prayer by Robert Gelinas and enjoyed it so much I bought copies as gifts for my friends. I have a testimony. Bring out the tambourine. Have you ever worked with a narcissist? Someone who constantly talks about himself or herself day in and day out? The talk varies. In my situation, sometimes the husband, the son, the mother in law, the sister in law, the siblings were all portrayed as awful people and she was a victim of some awful thing done to her.  Another time these same people were all wonderful and gifted with high IQs. Then the stories took a different turn. I became a target of the lies. Eventually we had creative story about a strange smelly man entering the workplace while she was alone and who made uncomfortable comments except after investigation the man turned out to be invisible to security cameras.  Praying, "Lord, have mercy on me" took on a whole new meaning. It is a prayer described as a raw plea for intervention. After reading Daily Word on September 9th, Isaiah 57 verse 14 also became a prayer: "Prepare my path and remove every obstacle from my way". Shake the tambourine. The narcissist resigned yesterday.

New Book to be Released: How the Light Gets In by Louise Penny

Today, I finished reading The Beautiful Mystery, a murder mystery that features Gregorian Chants that connects with the murder of Thomas Beckett and includes a continuation of events in Penny's previous book, Bury Your Dead. This is 41/2 stars for me.  I loved it.  This book made me think, laugh out loud, feel anger, anxiety, and sadness. I loved the dialogue.  I loved all the subplots in the story.  I  loved the historical elements about the music, the monks, the Jesuits.  I loved the contrasts in the story of harmony and disharmony.  The fabulous acoustics in the chapel as described by the writer reminded me of  the Church of St. Anne in Israel.  I am looking forward to the next book, How the Light Gets In, which will be released in August to see how the relationships between Chief Inspector Gamache and Lieutenant Beauvoir and Beauvoir and Anne, the Chief's daughter, develop. 

To Be Released:New Book by Jeannette Walls

Jeanette Walls has a new book that will be released on June 11th titled The Silver Star.  Our book club chose her first book, The Glass Castle, for discussion in 2005 and it is one of my favorite reads. If you are a fan of the bestseller, The Glass Castle, you will enjoy this article in the New York Times.  Jeannette's Mom is a hoarder so I love the photo with the article. Jeannette and her mother are sitting in the middle of the clutter in a cottage where the mother resides.  Having read the Glass Castle, this is how I imagine her mother would be living.  The article refers to the smell of cat urine on entering the cottage, garbage and a junk room.  I am not surprised by those details. Here is one new thing I got from the article. One motivation for Walls to write her memoir,The Glass Castle, had to do with her learning that the Church of Scientology was about to look into her background. I tried to find the article that Walls wrote that probably upset the church enough to investigate her but found nothing.  Could it be this one about Jenna Elman, updated 2/15/05? Or this one about Tom Cruise updated 1/21/2004? I have no idea but I am curious.

Murder in the Monastery

There is a wolf in the fold dressed in a black robe with shaved head and he whispers prayers with his brothers. At last I am reading The Beautiful Mystery by Canadian mystery writer, Louise Penny.  I have been looking forward to this book featuring Inspector Gamache for a long time. The setting is not Three Pines as  in most of the other books in the series.  This time it is a monastery called Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups located in Canada.  This is a remote cloistered monastery with twenty-four monks so one of them must be the "wolf".  The choir director in the story, Frere Mathieu, has been found murdered with a rock in the abbot's garden. His body was found curled up into a fetal position with the Latin words meaning "Day of wrath" written in vellum, possibly from a page of an ancient chant, and placed in the sleeve of his robe.  I was curious if this was a real monastery but it is not.  However, it is based on a real monastery famous for singing gregorian chants. I am on page 50 and so far there is Inspector Gamache, Jean Guy Beauvoir and a new character,Captain Charbonneau, investigating the murder.

Matthew Shardlake series

I have started Heartstone by bestselling author C. J. Sansom. It is the fifth  of the Matthew Shardlake mystery series. The setting is 16th century England. King Henry VIII has now married wife number six, Catherine Parr, and is preparing England for war with France.

As usual Matthew Shardlake, the narrator, has several mysteries to solve.  The main one has to do with an assignment from the caring Queen Catherine who has Matthew representing the legal interests of the son of her retired maid.  Michael Calfill, the son of the retired maid died, presumably at his own hands, just before laying a Bill of Information before the Court of Wards in which he alleged some monstrous injustice against a former student, Hugh Curteys by his caregiver.  I am anxious to find out what the "monstrous injustice" really is.  I can guess that Michael's death was no suicide because he would not have killed himself just before the hearing.  The second mystery has to do with Ellen Fettiplace who suffers from agoraphobia and has been living for years in Bedlam, a place for the mentally ill.   Who exactly has been paying her bills at the Bedlam for nineteen years and where is her family?  Ellen was a character in the fourth book, Revelation.   The third and minor mystery has to do with Matthew's steward, Coldiron.  He is a new character in the series. Is Josephine his daughter?  Why is she really afraid of Coldiron?  Will Matthew be able to dismiss him and keep Josephine as an employee.  Finally, will Jack Barak, Matthew's law clerk and a recurring character from the previous series, really be conscripted in the military?  I am only on page 90 and I am loving all these mysteries. 

The Best of 2012 in Books & Movies

I have been surfing twitter this morning to find the best books for 2012.   So far I have been directed to ten highly recommended Business Books for 2012.  I have also been directed to a  link to the Top Ten Films for 2012.  Les Miserables, based on our previous book club pick, and Lincoln are among the top ten.  I found a link to Brain Pickings and its 2012 Best-of Reading Lists covering different genres.

I searched the Goodreads website and found that Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling topped the 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction for 2012 and Light Between Oceans, set in Australia, was the top pick for the Best Historical Fiction.

By the way, allow me to move away from books and movies for a second. I am sure you would not be surprised to see the top Ten Twitter Trends:  The Olympics, The Elections, Justin Bieber take the lead.

If you are looking forward to the new year, I found  a list of 13 Must Read Books to kick start 2013.  However, if you really think the world will end on December 21, 2012, feel free to  scan the heavens for any sign of the apocalypse. 

Let me lead briefly into the book I am now reading.  I am enjoying the historical fiction, Revelation by C. J. Sansom, which indicates that the fear of doomsday goes way back. It was an obsession in the sixteenth century. People so feared going to hell that it led to insanity.  The protagonist, Matthew Shardlake suspects that some bizarre murders taking place in London are linked to the Book of Revelation and possibly to a former monk who has knowledge of a drug called dwale.  I am on page 210 and there have been three murders so far.

December 7th: 71st Anniversary of Attack on Pearl Harbor

It's December 7th, the 71st anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  I am a reading  Winter of the World , the bestseller by Ken Follett, and coincidentally today I reached the section that deals with Pearl Harbor.   The story before, during, and after the attack is extremely informative and full of drama.  As you probably know, this is the second book of a trilogy and covers the lives of families in Russia, Germany, Wales, England, and America and how their lives are connected through love, marriage and war. The section on Pearl Harbor focuses on the Dewar family in America.  It is very hard to write a review of this book.  I am getting some lessons in history that I never knew.  So far  there is not much emphasis on the Jewish holocaust in the section dealing with the Nazi Germany.   The cruelty of the Nazis is emphasized and there is a story about the Nazis murdering the disabled.  Lots of unrequited love and political intrigue going on in this book.   I wish there were not so many characters for me to keep track of but the stories of how the characters lives intertwine are very fascinating.

Best-Sellers This Week.

I must be among the few who had never heard of this book, also referred to as "Mommy porn", until this week; Fifty Shades of Grey.  It's number 1 on the New York Times e-book fiction best-seller list, number 3 on Amazon’s best-seller list, and number 4 on USA Today's best-seller list. It's a trilogy by a British female writer E L James. By the way, Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is number 1 on USA Today's best-seller list. This is book 1 of a post-apocalyptic trilogy. Books 2 and 3 are also on the USA Today's best-seller list.

Book Club Discussion - November 18th

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini is our book choice this month. The setting is Afghanistan, first in the town of Herat and then Kabul. It's a love story but it's also about the harsh family life that Afghan women endure. I read it such a long time ago that I decided to read this summary to refresh my memory before our meeting next Friday. This link gives the background of the writer, who was the son of a diplomat, and also has a discussion guide.

Take a look at the very exciting movie trailer. Hosseini is also well-known for his first book, The Kite Runner. Here is that movie trailer.

Our pizzeria location closed so we are headed for Michael's Deli.

Wendi's Right Hook May Save Movie

Just  a day or so ago I read that the movie Snow flower and the Secret Fan co-produced by Wendi Murdoch would get a big blow at the box office because it debuted around the same time as the popular Harry Potter movie and in the midst of Rupert Murdoch's News Corps scandal.  Today I read that it is anticipated that Wendi's right hook thrown to protect her husband will probably save the movie.  Wow!

Book into Movie: Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Oh oh, new movie based on the book Snow Flower and the Secret Fan has a connection to Rupert Murdoch.  Read this.  Will that link affect the success of the movie? I doubt that.


I found a preview of the movie on this link.  The book was written by Lisa See and the movie was released July 10.

Theme of Snow Falling on Cedars

The story has to do with prejudice; the bigotry shown towards Japanese Americans  about10 years after World War 11 ended.   In my opinion the theme is right there on page 418.  It has to do with the battle of  fate, coincidence, and accident versus reason.  Reason won but the game changer was truth.  It was truth that won a victory for one of the protagonists in the story, the proud, stoic Kabuo Miyamoto.   Very good storyline, steamy love scenes, graphic description  of an autopsy and of the war, good use of  imagery but there was an overabundance of descriptive details which slowed the action. 

I was a little disappointed that the much described  island of San Piedro, devoted to fishing and strawberry farming, did not actually exist outside the imagination of the writer.  I don't know the meaning of the symbolism used, the snow and cedars, but there were constant references to both through out the story.  May be the cedars had to do with the quiet, patient, strength of Kabuo.  I would have liked to have known if Kabuo got his 7 acres in the long run but that is not clear.

I see on wikipedia that the novel was a bestseller in 1995 and a movie has been made based on it.

Historical Fiction

I am waiting for my book to arrive: Darling Strumpet, the story of Nell Gwyn; the mistress of King Charles 11.  While I am waiting I will start reading New York, bestselling book, by Edward Rutherford. 

Princess Diana is supposed to be a descendant of King Charles 11 and Nell Gwyn, "the strumpet".  When Prince William becomes King, I read that  he will be the first descendant of King Charles 11 to occupy the throne.

Reece Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson

Reece and Robert star in the movie version of the best selling novel by Sara Gruen, Water for Elephants, one of our book club selections. Click here to see the movie trailer. Release date is April 22.


This was a really interesting book; Check out the reading guide. The movie looks like it is going to be a big hit at the box office.

"The Help" Author being Sued

This sounds like a ridiculous lawsuit. Could there possibly be more to it than what is on the surface? Aibilene, a character in the bestselling novel, The Help, is portrayed positively as a leader, a wise woman, and a writer yet Ablene Cooper, maid to the writer's brother and his wife, wants to sue because she thinks the character is based on her name and likeness and says the character is portrayed negatively. Here is the writer's response to USA Today

Read more in the New York Times. This article points out that the lawsuit is two years after the book is published and just months before the movie version is scheduled to be released.