Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Cold Comfort Farm is the perfect solution to the Gothic type of works as it takes on people brooding on moorlands with a fun and spirited dialect. It was extremely funny and definitely laugh out loud. 5 Stars

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulk

Birdsong by Sebastian Faulk is a stunning, thoughtful and dramatic book. The books opens with a love affair, but moves to the appaling battlefields of France and the sheer desperation of the men in the trenches. I never knew, until I read this book, about the tunnelling that went on beneath the battlefields of France. I rather liked the way the narrative jumped from Stephen's story before and during World War I, and the closer present with his granddaughter Elizabeth researching his past. 5 Stars

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman is one or actually three of the best books I have ever read. I was recommended the book by my niece and I admit I was skeptical at first but I was beyond impressed. Pullman creates an infinite universe with various hodgepodge characters and manages to pull it all together to create a wonderful story. 5 Stars

The Cove: A Novel by Ron Rash

Set in Appalachian North Carolina The Cove ‘s main characters, siblings named Laurel and Hank live in a remote harbor during World War I. Everyone in the area feels there is something wrong with the people who live in the remote harbor called The Cove. They tolerate Hank, but reject Laurel who they have decided is a witch. Laurel on the other hand just wants to live her life but when a stranger named Walter appears Laurel feels this is her chance to be known as something other than the witch. The book captures the look and feel small town life in that era and place. 4 Stars

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Cheryl Strayed is a exceptional writer, and I was involved in her story Wild instantaneously. After she leaves her husband she decided to hike the Pacific Coast Trail where she finally grieves for the mother she lost to cancer when she was in her teens. Cheryl is sadly unprepared for the actuality of the physical trail challenges with her unresolved issues of her life and the way course it has ran to that point. The 100 days spent on the trail give her a chance to come to terms with herself and the courage to move on. 5 Stars

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult

The most important question that Lone Wolf asks is what would Luke want? Luke, a wolf researcher, has spent his life trailing, observing, and living out in the wild with his wolves. He is more at home with his animal pack than his human family. In the wild, a sick wolf can wander away to die, but humans aren't that lucky and therein lies the entire premise of the story. After an accident there is family turmoil concerning the actions that could be taken to Luke in his vegetative state and whether the family should pull the plug or not which creates a thought provoking dilemma for the reader. 5 Stars

Copper Beach by Jayne Ann Krentz

I have a great love of paranormal books and I have to say the plot and characters in Jayne Ann Krantz's book Copper Beach were very realistic. Abby is a solid female character that fights with trust issues. She ends up working with Sam after incapacitating a man with her talent. She learns to trust in him as they go on a whirlwind adventure. 5 Stars

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore

Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore is the story of painter/baker Lucien Lessard and real-life artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec as they try to figure out if their friend Vincent Van Gogh really killed himself or if he was murdered. This book was definitely bizarre, as Moore usually is, but it was more insignificantly charming than laugh out loud. 3 Stars

Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer

Proust Was a Neuroscientist by Jonah Lehrer really read as if each chapter was a short vignette and I really enjoyed each and every word of this book. It's a series of dissertations that explore the work of a chosen artist and how his or her work predicted some scientific finding on the nature of the mind and our insights and acuities. 5 Stars

Landed by Tim Pears

Landed by Tim Pears is about a man’s personal tragedies. The main character was in a car accident in which his daughter perishes and he has to have his right hand amputated. After all this his wife divorces him and she has full custodial rights over the children making it impossible for him to see his kids. The characters are all detached and after finishing the book I feel like there is another, deeper, story in there. 3 Stars

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes

Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes painted the horror of the Vietnam War as a war with no real purpose, taking the life of young men, some that were still considered teenagers, before they actually had a chance to live and the politics that make you want to move out of the United States. This was a horrendous situation in which our soldiers followed their commander in chief and lost. 5 Stars

Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor

As a novel, Even the Dogs is stretched to sparsely. McGregor's dialect is a relentless volley of a drug-addled torrent of realization that after about 20 pages I found deadening. The lack of dialogue and strange multi-person point of view and rambling intensified this effect. The dysfunctional lives of the book's characters became more attention-grabbing later in the book though the last chapter was my favorite. 2 Stars

The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna

The Memory of Love was very hard to get into because it starts off very slow BUT it does gradually build as the theme becomes clearer. The book is set in Sierra Leone soon after the end of the civil war and has three main characters whose lives and loves traverse the story . 3 Stars

Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer

Rocks in the Belly moves between past to present in the life of a son who comes home to care for his dying mother. It soon becomes clear that the bond between them is broken. Mary, the mother took in foster boys while the son was a child and because of this he became a very resentful child as he feels that his mother pours adoration and care on the foster boys, which he feels belongs to him. The son eventually grows into an emotionally impaired man who now has control over his dying mother. This was a very good but distressing read. 4 Stars

The Matter with Morris by David Bergen

The Matter with Morris by David Bergen is about Morris Schutt, husband, father, and successful journalist, and how he is caught in a mid-life crisis that encompasses incredible anguish at the loss of his only son who was killed in Afghanistan. His marriage is incapable to withstand the loss, dissolves, and Morris becomes irrational. He seeks comfort in assorted affairs with women. He uses monetary expenditures to disguise his grief and his tumultuousness. Eventually Morris finds his way back to his estranged family and a woman he comes to love helps him find his way. 5 Stars

Fever by Joan Swan

I started reading Fever by Joan Swan at lunch and it sucked me right in. I had a hard time putting the book down and I kept glancing at it so much I had to go put the book in the car. So the story starts with the main character, who is a doctor, walking down the hall thinking when she gets to the room that is holding a condemned criminal in need of an ultrasound. From there he manages to escape and takes the doctor with him and from there the story begins.

5+++++++++++++++ Stars

Fever by Joan Swan

I started reading Fever by Joan Swan at lunch and it sucked me right in. I had a hard time putting the book down and I kept glancing at it so much I had to go put the book in the car. So the story starts with the main character, who is a doctor, walking down the hall thinking when she gets to the room that is holding a condemned criminal in need of an ultrasound. From there he manages to escape and takes the doctor with him and from there the story begins.

5+++++++++++++++ Stars

Flat Out Love by Jessica Park

Flat Out Love by Jessica Park is a charming book about a dysfunctional family that had the right person come into their lives and alter their everyday family dynamic repeatedly. There was adoration, sorrow, treachery, resentment and optimism all bound up here.
3 Stars

I loved Sweet as Sin by Inez Kelley

I loved Sweet as Sin by Inez Kelley. The characters were soundly written and very genuine. John, the persecuted protagonist, was excellent, his struggle to get over his demons was enthralling. Livvy was also great. She had her fears and problems to toil through. But I loved every minute I spent with them and the story was very erotic.
5 Stars

Passing Strange by Martha A. Sandweiss

Passing Strange by Martha A. Sandweiss tells the story of Clarence King, a Yale-educated geologist and explorer of the American West during the post-Civil War era. Jaunty, charming, and a favorite by New York's social elite, King was considered an privileged dinner companion, and an entertaining and suitable bachelor. After his death, it was discovered King had a black wife and five children living in Brooklyn. Social pressures and racial pressures forced King to build a complex double life and false identity. Sandweiss divulges this unknown side of King with a likable flair reinforced by comprehensive research.
5 Stars

Searching for Tina Turner by Jacqueline Luckett

Searching for Tina Turner by Jacqueline Luckett turned out to be a very intuitive and profound book about a woman coming into her own after a divorce and years of being known only as a wife and mother. I was amusingly surprised by this novel, as I expected it to be a quirky chick-flick novel, and it was not.
5 Stars

Pure by Julianna Baggott

Regrettably, I was unable to get very far into Pure before I grasped that I felt little connection in the characters. The story is well written but the plot moves at a sluggish pace. I liked the world of Pure, it wasn’t the story that could have been written out of Pure’s world full of very interesting possibilities.
2 Stars

Pure by Julianna Baggott

Regrettably, I was unable to get very far into Pure before I grasped that I felt little connection in the characters. The story is well written but the plot moves at a sluggish pace. I liked the world of Pure, it wasn’t the story that could have been written out of Pure’s world full of very interesting possibilities.
2 Stars

Yesterday Morning by Diana Athill

Yesterday Morning by Diana Athill is a memoir of a affluent Norfolk childhood. Athill's writing is clear-cut and authentic, happy but uneventful. I really loved the writing but the subject matter was a bit too dull for me.
3 Stars