Book Seven

Stephenie Meyer
THE HOST
Little Brown & Company (2008)

"The soul shone in the brilliant lights of the operating room, brighter than the reflective silver instrument in his hand. Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank. Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair."

Crying when reading a book is a sure sign that the author had the power to bring characters to life, to weave a story that so grabbed me that I was invested in the outcome ... and boy, did I cry!

Definitely not my usual genre of writing ... she's kind of a cross between Isaac Asimov and Stephen King. The story is sci-fi/fantasy ... but within a chapter or two, I was right there with the last rebel cell of humans on a planet Earth taken over by "the hosts".

It's a magnificent love story ... between host and human ... love everlasting between human and human in the face of death ... and a story that transcends into a definition of sorts of the most unconditional aspects of the broader sense of the word "love" ...

An absolute must read!

Book Six

Patricia Cornwell
BOOK OF THE DEAD
Penguin Books - 2007

Kay Scarpetta is another one of those characters who lives and breathes through the author's writing ... and though the storyline is important ... what is happening in the lives of the central characters - Kay, Marino, Benton and Lucy - is just as important. Cornwell always delivers what she promises - human interest, gore and madness, shivers, magical technology through Lucy's gadgets and gizmos ...

" One of those details we may never know," Benton says. "People don't tell the truth. After a while, they don't even know it."

Book Five

Ken Burnett
THE ZEN OF FUNDRAISING
John Wiley & Sons Inc - 2006

An absolute must-read for anyone who works in the fundraising - development field!

A one-of-a-kind look at why donors give ... written in common terms with illustrative examples that speak for themselves.

I don't usually like how-to business books ... but a refreshing take on basic principles and humour make this a book I will refer to again and again.

Book Four

Jonathan Kellerman - COMPULSION

Ballantine Books - 2008

Psychologist Alex Delaware, his girlfriend Robin, their dog Blanche and Alex's friend, LAPD Detective Milo Sturgis are like family to me ... they're who I go visit when I need a vacation, a break ... when I need an escape to wander into another world filled with intrigue, mystery, death, drama and pyschological profilings ...

Compulsion was as good as any other of Kellerman's other books ... and I didn't start figuring out who really "done it" until Kellerman wanted (or needed) me to. Probably the main reason I keep returning to purchase his next offering ... though there's a formula at work here, I can still fool myself into believing that I'll figure it out before Alex Delaware does.

Kellerman has created a cast of characters that are credibly "real" ... and I end up caring as much about the storyline as I do about their relationships, toils & tribulations.

Other authors that I've read of the same genre - Grisham, Patterson to name but two - have become so predictable in their formula that reading their latest offering is like drinking weak tea ... not a pleasant escape at all, almost painful.

All in all, a great read ... a wonderful escape ... I'll be ready for his next.

Book Three

Randy Pausch - THE LAST LECTURE
Professor, Carnegie Mellon with Jeffrey Zaslow


Hyperion - 2008

I'll begin by stating my apologies for the record to the tens of thousands of readers who have made this book a national bestseller ... and remind you, that this is just one woman's opinion.

I knew better ... had actually turned my back on the book a few dozen times before I took it upon myself to purchase it and see "what the fuss was all about".

And now that I've read it ... I'm still wondering ...

Sure it's thoughtful, and touching and filled with wisdom we've heard before from others. A nice book, nice thoughts, good rules to live a life by ...

I was simply hoping for more ...

Book Two

Diane Setterfield - THE THIRTEENTH TALE

Anchor Canada - 2007

Absolutely spell-binding ... I couldn't put this book down ... and when the number of pages grew thinner, my reading slowed as I did not want it to end! Absolutely brilliant ... I fell in love with all the characters, could hear the creaks of the floor boards at Angelfield ... and could smell the mustiness of the books in the bookstore.

An amazing story about story-telling told by an incredible story-teller ... riveting with layers upon layers of tales and plot twists.

Diane Setterfield has an ease with words ... and a beautiful way of stringing them together.

One of my favorite passages:

"My job is not to sell books - my father does that- but to look after them. Every so often I take out a volume and read a page or two. After all, reading is looking after in a manner of speaking. Not old enought to be valuable for their age alone, nor important enough to be sought after by collectors, my charges are dear to me even if, as often as not, they are as dull on the inside as on the outside. No matter how banal the contents, there is always something that touches me. For someone now dead once thought these words significant enough to write them down.

People disappear when they die. Their voice, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living memory of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continue to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humour, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

As one tends the graves of the dead, so I tend the books. I clean them, do minor repairs, keep them in good order. And every day I open a volume or two, read a few lines or pages, allow the voices of the forgotten dead to resonate inside my head. Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs? I do hope so. For it must be very lonely being dead."

But this wondrous work of fiction is not just a book about books and stories and tales ... but of people, families and truth ...

Book One

Michael Crichton - NEXT

HarperCollins - 2006

How I loved Jurassic Park ... and hoped and prayed. NEXT held promise ... and delivered some of that promise. Genetics, cloning and the exploitation of the human gene ... I know more today than I knew yesterday ... and Crichton, true to form, added a challenging bibliography as recommended reading should I want to educate myself.

But as far as a story goes ... he disappointed: NEXT read as a movie script, switching between scenes with no apparent pattern. Dizzying plot lines, poorly developed characters had me wondering why Crichton had not chosen a non-fiction path for his education of the masses and editorializing.

Intellectually, morally, ethically ... and definitely scientifically ... he raised some major issues that I have since peppered into conversations ... do we own our own genes? and we don't who does? ... and does that person and/or entity have the right to harvest genes from me anytime they want? ... should genes be patented? Are blondes going extinct?

Left me with many questions, a reading list ... but not really wanting to read more.