Page Turners

I found a link to 6 page turners for summer reading on Oprah's website.       The blurb on the 6th book, Drowned by Therese Bohman, reminded me of the book that kept me up until 2:00 this morning. The Boy in the Suitcase by Danish writers,  Lene Kaaberbol and Agnete Friis, was a really exciting thriller set in Denmark and Lithuania.  The kidnapping of a three year old boy turns his mom into a mama grizzly and she sets off from Lithuania to Denmark to track down her boy.   Her path crosses with Nina, a Danish nurse, who lives to rescue young women and children.  So dear readers that's the seventh book I would add to this summer reading list.

Books to Clean Up Your Life

I found these 9 books on Oprah.com that are being promoted as life changing books.  I  have read only one on the list; the historical fiction Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.  Powerful, powerful love story and tragedy. I absolutely loved it but it did not "clean up my life."   Take a look at the list of characters in Tale of Two Cities. 

How God Changes Your Brain is a book on the list of 9 that I would  like to read.

Movies Inspired by Books

Books that inspired Movies were featured on Oprah's website.

The Help we read for our book club discussion but I have not read the other books on the list, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan or One Day or the Harry Potter book.

Right now I am still reading and enjoying The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller.  I think this would make an interesting movie.  Instead of the flash forward genre of movies with different outcomes.  This would be a flash backward with different outcomes.  Adamine's story and Mr. Writer Man's story are two different versions of the same story.  Fascinating!

Advice, How-To Bestsellers

On my Feb 24 post, I alluded to Ayanla Vanzant's book moving up to number 1 on a bestsellers list after her appearance on Oprah's show. I have a list before me of NY Times bestsellers in the category - Hardcover, Advice, how To and Miscellaneous - and there it is, Peace from Broken Pieces is number 1. Number 2 is prospective presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's book, A Simple Government. Janet Jackson's book, True You, is number 5 and Steve Harvey's second relationship book is number 6, Straight Talk, No Chaser. Veganist is holding on to the number 10 slot. The author, Kathy Freston, has had an appearance on the Oprah show as well.

Book Buzz March 2011

Oprah's website lists a new book by Jodie Picoult, Sing You Home, under the heading, 17 Books to look for in March 2011 . Also on the list are History of a Suicide: My Sister's Unfinished Life by Jill Bialosky and Minding Frankie by Maeve Binchy.

Book Buzz: Tiger Mom's Memoirs

The memoirs of Amy Chua titled, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother is the book buzz of the month. She is on so many talk shows these days explaining that her book is a memoir and not a "how to parent" book. See her interview on Oprah.com.

Is it time to write your own memoirs? Abigail Thomas on Oprah's website gives you some exercises to get you thinking and writing.

Holiday Reading

Happy New Year! I did some serious holiday reading in December. Encouraged by Oprah herself (LOL), I read A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens who is described as one of the grand masters of Victorian literature. This was a well written emotional story set in the time of the French Revolution about friendship and sacrifice. It was hard reading at first because the language was difficult to follow. I may continue to read Oprah's other selection, Great Expectations, but I read that book and watched the movie version years ago.

Book club member, Christine, gave us all books for Christmas. She bought lots of books at a warehouse in Savanna for giveaways. I loved my book about the 'Fishing Fleet', that is, British women going to India by ship 'to fish' for British military husbands. The book title is East of the Sun by Julia Gregson. In this book we followed the lives of three girls going to India. One already had a fiance in India, one that she hardly knew before becoming engaged. Her friend accompanied her but her intent was to fish for a husband. The third girl was their paid chaperone who was British but born in India and was on a mission to get back to her roots and make money as a writer. The chaperone was also in charge of a troubled teenager named Guy.

I also got Plain Jane by Laurien Gardner from Christine. It was about the third wife of King Henry VIII. I am just learning that Gardner is a pseudonym for a group of writers and that this is the third of a series. The other books in the series include: The Spanish Bride about Catherine of Aragon and A Lady Raised High which is about Anne Boleyn

Lorien Legacies

I am reading a magazine called, The Week. In the December 3 issue, on page 30, there is a very interesting article about James Frey, the talented but not so straight-forward author, who was exposed on Oprah. Well lately, he has been hiring writers to produce and complete manuscripts and this is being frowned upon by critics. He has a best seller on his hands, or should I say they have a best seller on their hands. The article says the title is, I Am Four, but amazon has it as, I Am Number Four using the pseudonym Pittacus Lore.

Oprah's book club pick: Freedom

I did not like Freedom. I couldn't waste any more time reading it. The characters were all dysfunctional; none was likeable. (What follows could have spoilers, if you are also reading this book.)

In the story, Patty is married to Walter and is in love with Walter's "friend", Richard. Walter is stable and husband material while Richard is a womanizer. Why would Patty fall for a character like Richard? Why would Walter be in love with Patty, a woman that was clearly stupid and naive? Patty made friends in college with Eliza, a manipulative and controlling person who established rules for their relationship. How could Patty not see right away that something was not quite right about Eliza?

Patty grew up feeling neglected by her parents yet she herself raises two children and repeats the pattern. She ignores one child, her daughter, and she overwhelms the other child, her son, with so much attention as if he were her best buddy. He grows up resenting her for burdening him with her issues. He gets his freedom by escaping and moving in with the family next door.

Walter and Patty move to Washington D.C. where Patty encourages Walter to have a relationship with his young Indian assistant who is actually in love with Walter. Patty and Walter are clearly unhappy with each other but not ready to end the marriage. Patty hooks up with Richard again.

I was intrigued with Patty's son and how his relationship with the clingy Connie was going to turn out. I skimmed the pages and saw that he actually marries her despite treating her so badly.

Yesterday, I moved on to read Crossing by Andrew Xia Fukuda. Only 213 pages so I finished in a day. It was a sad book about the bullying of a Chinese American boy in a predominantly white school. This is a mystery story where boys in his class start disappearing; in fact it is a good Halloween scary type story. There is no happy ending.

Dude Lit?

The success of Franzen's new book, Freedom, has stirred up a discussion by Laura Fraser about "Dude Lit" versus Chick-Lit on The Daily Beast .

Book Club Selections and Other Stuff

A small spelling correction to my last post - I meant to point out that so many children have tackled not "tacked" those huge volumes by JK Rowling and have come to love reading.

Today I want to turn the spotlight on Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Oprah's book club selection. The feedback I am getting is that once you read pass the first chapter, it is really really good.

Now let me turn the spotlight on the Okefenokee Book Club pick for October: The Help by Kathryn Stockett, a book that I already read and blogged about in May.

Kudos again to JK Rowling and also to Oprah for their promotion of reading. As a matter of fact, kudos to my Dad who read the comic strips to me, while I sat on his lap, and gave me a love for reading. Kudos to my teachers at Holy Rosary Prep school who taught me to read and at St. Andrew Prep school for fostering my love for reading.

I have fond memories of competing with my friends at St. Andrew Prep to see who could read the most books in the Nancy Drew series. In my pre-Harry Potter life as a child, I loved the Cherry Ames series, Bobbsey Twins series, and books by Enid Blyton, a British writer.

Harry Potter series

I agree; Jo Rowling, also known as J.K.Rowling, has done more to promote literacy than anyone on the planet. So many children tacked those huge volumes of the Harry Potter series. Read her interview with Oprah. Watch the trailer to a Potter movie.

Oprah's Book Club Pick

What? Oprah's book club selection is Freedom by Jonathan Franzen? Isn't this the writer that did not want his book, The Corrections, to be an Oprah Book Club selection? Has something changed? Isn't this the book that President Obama chose to read over the summer? This book purchase or gift caused a minor stir in the media, as so often happens with every breath the President takes.


If you take on the Oprah challenge to read this book, then log in and write in the journal.

I didn't like The Corrections ; it was long and tedious to read so I am not planning to join the rush to read Freedom.

Corrections dealt with dysfunctional family members in the Lambert family. The oldest son Gary was stingy with his money and manipulated by his wife. Chip was the con artist in the family. He was the brilliant and sex obsessed middle son. Denise was the talented and competitive last child; an only daughter who kept falling for older men. The parents Enid and Al were an incompatible and unhappy couple.

Books about Food and Weight-loss

I finished reading Roth's book, Women Food God. I think I understand what she is saying in pages 198 - 201 but I am not sure how it really helps someone who is a compulsive eater, or who is obese to the point of having issues with diabetes, high blood pressure, and other ailments.

Roth outlined the Sufis three journeys to a Spiritual Path: Journey from God, Journey to God, and the Journey in God and related them to using food as a doorway to God.

Journey from God which is equated to the journey from self: We believe we are what we weigh and spend life dieting, bingeing, exercising etc. until this journey ends with disappointment.

Journey to God which is on par with the journey to self: We stop dieting, we keep the weight on and we hold on to the drama of agonizing about the weight until this journey also ends with disappointment.

Journey in God and the discovery that we are one with God: We stop obsessing about food, dieting, and weight and the journey ends with kindness to self, freedom, and peace.

The Eating Guidelines are at the back of the book on page 211 and they sound very much like the point of view in Mireille Guilano's book, French Women Don't Get Fat. If I remember correctly, in that book Guilano pointed out that French women walk more than American women, they enjoy their food more and portion sizes were much smaller than what the average American eats at home and at a restaurant. Weight from her point of view had to do with culture; not God.

Read more from Roth and about Roth on www.oprah.com.

Women Food God

Started reading Geneen Roth's book, Women Food God yesterday. The message of the book is essentially that our body obeys the shape of our beliefs about love; that overweight is not about weight but about deficiency, emptiness and dissatisfaction; and that overweight is based on the story we tell ourselves about where we are supposed to be in life. I am on page 99 and the solutions so far to compulsive eating is acceptance of the moment, paying attention to now, treating the body as a friend rather than something that needs fixing, stop dieting. The message is for emotional eaters.

More from Oprah's Book Club Selections

Middlesex is the only one on the list that I've read and I loved it.

01. Say You're One of Them by Uwem Akpan
02. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
03. A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
04. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
05. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
06. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
07. Night by Elie Wiesel
08. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
09. The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
10. The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Book Suggestions for the Month of June

Summer reading suggestions from Oprah's website.

Book links from Oprah's website

The Big List of Best Books

1. 31 women writers you should know
2. 20 addictive true stories
3. 16 books any mom will love
4. 12 luscious literary reads
5. 11 unputdownable mysteries
6. 10 books on everything you ever wanted to know about sex (but were afraid to ask)
7. 10 terrific reads of 2009
8. 10 of our favorites for everyone on your list
9. 8 great adventure books
10. 8 books to read with a broken heart

Links to Books about Food

Check out Oprah's links to the 9 books that will change the way we view food:


1. Broccoli and Other Tales of Food and Love by Lara Vapnyar
2. Righteous Porkchop by Nicolette Hahn Niman
3. Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky
4. The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone
5. The Family Chef by Jewels and Jill Elmore
6. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver
7. Jamie's Food Revolution: Rediscover How to Cook Simple, Delicious, Affordable Meals by Jamie Oliver
8. Food Not Lawns by Heather Flores
9. American Food Writing edited by Molly O'Neill

There is also link on Oprah's website to Food Rules by Michael Pollan which is a little book that I have read. Here is something to do; read Women Food and God by Geneen Roth with Oprah.

One Name Two Fates

That is the subtitle for the book, The Other Wes Moore. I saw one Wes Moore speaking about his book on Oprah about a week or two ago. Now he's promoting his book on radio on the Tom Joyner Morning Show. I predict this book will be a bestseller. Wes Moore, the writer, was a Rhodes Scholar and I read that he was an assistant to Condolezza Rice. The other Wes Moore is in prison for life. Both grew up in Baltimore with single mothers but their fates were different. Read the book to find out why.