Challenge: 50 Books discussion
Finish Line 2011
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Connie F's 2011 challenge
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1) Finally Home - Lessons on Life from a Free Spirited Dog by Elizabeth Parker **I love finishing the 1st book of the year on the 1st of the year!!!! This is an o.k. book. A little bit like Marley - but Ms. Parker is not as a good a writer as the author of Marley & Me. I enjoy humorous and touching stories about animals and the relationships between animals & humans (to be honest I sometimes prefer the company of animals to that of humans). This appears to be a self-published book on Amazon (it may only be available in Kindle format but I'm not sure.) At the end of this book however, it does show that the author has two other books out. Anyway - it was an o.k. book, very short, but I did do some skimming in areas that were boring or repetitious.
2) Consequences
***I read this book for my f2f book club. A lot of the women thought this was a great book. I thought it was just o.k. She spanned a time period of approximately 70 years and did it in 258 pp. It was a quick read. The book tells the story of 3 generations of women in one family. The choices they make and subsequently the consequences for those choices. Much of the story was a little contrived and her foreshadowing told you exactly what to expect. Again, I thought the book was just o.k.
3) Never Let Me Go
****I really liked this book. It is not a feel good book and definitely made me think about how human beings can easily fool themselves into thinking they are doing the right things, whether they are lying to children to keep them from knowing an awful truth about their future, lying to themselves by thinking they are doing a good thing when in reality they are just complacent in allowing society to act in an immoral fashion, or constantly making excuses for people who treat them poorly. I recommend this book.
The Strangers Outside by Vanessa Morgan 0*First off, I believe this was highly recommended on goodreads,maybe in the Kindle discussion group, so I immediately went to Amazon and bought the "book" for $2.99. Well I finally read it tonite and it certainly wasn't a "book" it was barely a short story, and not a very good one at that. It was so short, I am not counting it on my list, however, I do want to warn people that it's a short story (and not a good one) in case they were thinking about downloading it onto their Kindle. I think now it is tagged as a short story, but I don't recall seeing that tag when I bought it.
There is really no plot, no character development, and it was just plain stupid.
4) The Strain
****Like so many books, the ending got a little hokey, but all in all this was a very good book. I couldn't put it down. Very quick read and very engaging. The authors created some very likeable characters that you wanted to root for, as well as creating the villains you want destroyed.
A storyline very similar to The Passage (although this book was published in 2009 as opposed to The Passage's copyright of 2010), but this is the story of how society tries to fight the virus that turns people into vampires. The vampires are monsters, not what you find in the Sookie Stackhouse or Twilight series, they retain very little human appearance once they turn completely, and the authors do a good descriptive job. There is no liking the vampires in this novel.
I think I want to wait a month or so before reading the 2nd in this triology ("The Fall").
5) The Invisible Bridge
**I started out liking this book (which is why I am giving it 2 stars in stead of just 1). It was our book club read (& I didn't even attend the meeting tonight because I was struggling to finish this book). I'm not a fan of love stories but the women in the book club went on about what a page turner this book was and that it didn't feel like it was over 600 pp. Well for me it felt like it was twice as long. I started reading it on Jan. 25 and just finished today. I'm also not a huge fan of really descriptive authors (particularly authors whose description is just overkill), and this author was very descriptive. I just felt that she could have told this story in about 300-350 pp. She lost me with her writing about 1/2 way through the book and I stopped caring about the characters. I didn't like the love story between Andras & Klara because I really didn't like either character that much, but Klara in particular.
It just felt like this author just drolled on and on and it really took away from what could have been an excellent story. IMO :)
If you like authors who put in so much description in their books that it feels like they are just writing to make a story longer, you may like this book.
Funny how some authors can sweep you away with description and others just make you think "yeah, yeah, the sun is setting; it's pretty; get on with it already. And, please god, don't tell me the moon is rising!"
Donna wrote: "Funny how some authors can sweep you away with description and others just make you think "yeah, yeah, the sun is setting; it's pretty; get on with it already. And, please god, don't tell me the mo..."Well said, LOL!
6) Secrets of Eden
****this is the 1st chris bohjalian book I've read. I really liked it. It is told from the points of view of 4 different ppl. Good book. I recommend it. I've had Midwives on my Kindle for over 2 years (one of my Oprah picks book I want to read) so I really look forward to reading that this year.
I'm currently reading
You Know When the Men Are Gone. so far I like it (it's a book of interconnected short stories of military wives while their husbands are away tdy in Iraq/Afghanistan. As a vet, I usually prefer stories about the soldiers, but I have a lot of friends who got married while on active duty and then got out while their husbands stayed in, so getting this POV is interesting.
7) You Know When the Men Are Gone
****This is a collection of interconnected short stories about life for soldiers and their families on Fort Hood while serving during a period of war (Iraq/Afghanistan). The stories vary in theme dealing with problems like an army wife's suspicians of her husband's infidelity while serving in Iraq; an intelligence soldier's suspicians of his wife's infidelity at home while he is serving in Iraq,taking his mid-tour leave without telling his wife so he can perform a reconnaissance mission on his own home for a week seeing if his wife is faithful to their marriage, or not; a wounded soldier's return home having to deal with the possible breakup of his marriage, and an army wife having to cope with a newborn and a recently returned husband who exhibits signs of PTSD.
In the story about the army wife coping with a newborn and her PTSD husband, Fallon writes:
"She bit her lip and wondered if this was the sum of a marriage: wordless recriminations or reconciliations, every breath either striving against or toward the other person, each second a decision to exert or abdicate the self."
This is an excellent book and I highly recommend it.
8) A Visit from the Goon Squad
***Another book of interconnected short stories. The majority of the stories were really good but by the last few I was ready for the book to be over with. She just introduced too many characters & with short stories it's hard to care about the characters. Although there are 2-3 characters are in more than one story. This was a good book if you like short stories, but I'm not sure it lives up the all the hype. I gave it 3 stars - just an o.k. read.
I felt the same way. I heard a review on NPR and was excited to read it, but it didn't live up to my expectations.
9) The Lake the River and the Other Lake
****This is a quirky little book that takes place in a made-up little town, Weneshkeen, Michigan. The town is named by a Greek guy who jumped overboard after a mutiny on a ship in Lake Michigan (that was trying to sale to China) and lived with the local American Indian tribe for a few weeks. They kept saying "Weneshkeen" to him, so he told everyone later that was the town's name. In fact, Weneshkeen translated was "Who are you?" This is a very character driven book, with plenty of characters. Each chapter has a different protagonist. It deals with the mind-set of the "locals," the "summer people," and the "fudgies." Anyone from Michigan will understand what fudgies are (tourists). There are a couple of "uncomfortable" story lines, but all in all this was a good little book.
It seems I've fallen behind this month. I need to hit at least 4 books a month. Anyway, now I'm reading
for my f2f bookclub. I just started it and so far it's living up the hype. Hopefully it holds on to that.
Quite often I feel books don't live up to their hype, but I think you'll find this one does!
10) The Help
*****First 5 star book of the year. I have to say, this was one of the best books I've read in a long time. It definitely lives up to the hype. Can't wait to see the movie this summer.
11) The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
***3 stars for this book. It's an average read. The story did keep me interested, however I never really got attached to any of the characters. I thought the book was just about the salem witch trials and a modern day history grad student uncovering the story of one of the women hanged after the trials. Which, in part that is true, however, the story then moves into a more fantasy type plot (and I don't really like fantasy books). Again, this book is an o.k. read, just wasn't what I really expected.
Wow I only finished one book in April. I just haven't been in a reading mood. Hopefully May will be better!12) The Lace Reader
***I'm not really sure how I feel about this book. It was well written and I enjoyed the story and the mystery did keep me in the dark until about 80-100 pages left and I thought "I wonder..." but I still wasn't sure. But it was depressing to think that a person might actually live their life in that kind of reality. So I guess a little depressing.
Connie wrote: "Wow I only finished one book in April. I just haven't been in a reading mood. Hopefully May will be better!12) The Lace Reader
***I'm n..."
It's been a slow go for me too. Of course the book I am now reading is slow going but I'm drawn to continue. It may take me all of May to complete it.
13) The Book Thief
****I really liked this book. It's narrated by Death and takes place during WWII. I've been reading very slowly the last year (not sure why, just haven't wanted to consume my time with reading) but this book is worth the time. I absolutely fell in love with Rudy, and I liked the main character Liesel. A poignant quote in the book by Death comes at the end when he wanted to ask Liesel "...how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant." He of course was referring to WWII. This question rings true to any difficult time - we see people who rise above, and those who cause strife and disaster all in the same experience.
I thought this was definitely a worthwhile read. Although beware, Death doesn't believe in surprise - he tells you things that are going to happen way before they do.
14) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass
**Creatively written, however - not my cup of tea. Not much into fantasy but since this is a classic I thought I should read it. His use of language at times was a bit confusing, I'm not sure if it was because he was English and this story was written in the 1860s or if he did it for the feel of the story, but it made the story feel a bit choppy.
15) Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
****This is a very good book about Louis Zamperini, a WWII vet who was a POW in Japan for a couple of years. I gave this book 4 stars, because it is well written & interesting, however, I've had a hard time over the last year finding any book that has me reading at all times. So even though this book was very good it did take me about a month to finish it.
In the beginning of the book it reads like a novel, but at times Laura Hillenbrand did bog down the book with many facts and many names (a big reason why I only read a couple biographies a year).
My mother was a young girl during WWII and my father & my 2 uncles all served in the war as well as an aunt. I do remember my mother talking about how vicious the Japanese were to the POWs, but it's not really anything we talked about in history class. It's almost as if Japan and Italy are left out and we only concentrate on Germany. While reading this book I wondered whether Germany & the Italians treated POWs the same as the Japanese. Ms. Hillenbrand answered that question for me and I was floored. "In its rampage over the east, Japan had brought atrocity and death on a scale that staggers the imagination...Japan held some 132,000 POWs...Of those, nearly 36,000 died, more than one in every four. Americans fared particularly badly; of the 34948 Americans held by Japan, 12,935 - more than 37 percent died. By comparison, only 1 percent of Americans held by the Nazis and Italians died..."
I never thought about how difficult a job pilots in the Air Force had with respect to navigation back then. Today we have all the technology that planes virtually fly themselves, (and now we even have remote controlled air craft with a pilot sitting in Nevada controlling a bomb attack in Afghanistan or Iraq) back then the navigators were doing trigonometry on the fly, if their numbers were off, they would completely miss one of those small pacific islands that they were supposed to land on. If they did - they usually were never seen again - they ran out of fuel, their plane crashed into the ocean and if they survived the crash - they usually didn't survive the sharks. There was another quote from the book I found quite profound - “Given that a plane only had to be a tick off course to miss an island, it’s amazing that any crews found their destinations. Many didn’t.” “We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back…I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war.” Martin Crohn, ordinance officer on Oahu during WWII.
The quote below resonated with me -
"John Falconer, a survivor of the Bataan Death March, looked out as Hiroshima neared. 'First there were trees...Then the leaves were missing. As you got closer, branches were missing. Closer still, the trunks were gone and then, as you got in the middle, there was nothing. Nothing! It was beautiful. I realized this was what had ended the war. It meant we didn't have to go hungry any longer, or go without medical treatment. I was so insensitive to anyone else's human needs and suffering. I know its not right to say it was beautiful, because it really wasn't. But I believe the end probably justified the means.'"
Life is cheap during war time and I think that as responsible citizens we need to remember that when the politicians and the media start beating the drums of war.
It's good to read books like this to help us to understand history.
16) All That Is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir
*** 1/2I'm not sure how I feel about Ashley Judd after reading this memoir. I liked her before I read it and now, I'm not sure. Although I admire and give her credit for her work with PSI and other NGOs in raising awareness of gender inequality & HIV/AIDS around the world, she did reinforce my dislike of celebrities & causes. I somehow feel that they think we're all stupid and it's up to them to enlighten us on the ills of the world. Why someone like Bono or Ashley Judd should be able to secure meetings with the President of the United States or other world leaders, to me seems a bit ludicrous. Whenever I see those telethons with celebrities asking us commoners for our money, I just always think, "why aren't they going to all their rich millionaire friends and getting money from them??"
Anyway, the book delves very deeply into her travels around the globe on behalf of PSI. She tells some touching stories of women who are forced into prostitution and women who are HIV positive. The books can be a little preachy in spots (and a little too religious for my taste).
She does tell stories of her twisted upbringing and does not show her mother in a very good light but if you're looking for a lot of dirt on the Judds you don't really find it in this book. She really keeps stories of her family to a minimum.
I watched the Judds reality show on OWN and I thought that Wynonna cried more than any person ever. Well, apparently it runs in the family. Ashley seems to have spent a vast amount of her time crying. I feel for anyone who has grown up or lives in an environment of abuse, but geez these women break down regularly!
The book is filled with a lot of facts and figures which can get a little boring to read, but all in all it was an informative book. If you're into reading up on the current status of HIV/AIDS & gender inequality in the world and you want to read about Ashley's therapy & recovery you may like this book. I'm still processing how I feel about her after reading the book.
Connie wrote: "16) All That Is Bitter and Sweet: A Memoir *** 1/2I'm not sure how I feel about Ashley Judd after reading this memoi..."
Good review! Thanks.
17) The Delta Solution
1/2*This is probably one of the worst books I've ever read. I try not to give bad reviews or at least I try to find something positive about a book, since I think it takes a lot to write a book and I probably couldn't do it, but this book was just that bad. Part way through, the writing started to remind me of a non-fiction book I read a couple of years ago called "Lone Survivor." I really wanted to like the person that "Lone Survivor" was about but had a lot of trouble because throughout the whole book he continued to blame all the world's woes on the "liberals and the liberal media" and God forbid the evil Geneva Conventions. He never took responibility for any bad decisions made in the field. Anyway, this book (The Delta Solution) has the same closed minded view points and when I looked it up, both books were written by this author.
Anyway, it's too bad because the premise of this book was very relevant in today's world, focusing on the pirate raids out of Somalia. However, the plot was weak and there was very little character development so you really never care about any of the characters. I'd love to see a writer like Clancy or DeMille tackle this subject. Of course it would probably be a tome, but it would be a very well developed, fast paced book.
I don't recommend this book to anyone.
18) Dead Reckoning
***Typical entertaining Sookie Stackhouse read. I read books 1-11 last year from March - July. So this was the first time I had a whole year in between books. I did find that I had forgotten a lot from the previous book, but all-in-all an entertaining & quick break from the heavier books I've read. If you like the Sookie Stackhouse books, you'll find this enjoyable.
19) Robopocalypse
****This is a pretty good, fast-paced book. It is about "smart computers" taking over the world and the war that ensues between the machines & humans (yeah I know, sounds a little like "The Terminator"). This was a pretty good read. I would have finished it last weekend if I hadn't had to put my 15 1/2 yo cat down. Too bummed to read last week, only wanted to watch mind-numbing t.v.
20) Back Roads
****This was an Oprah book club selection and like many of her book selections was a depressing exploration of human imperfection, frailty and the effects that abuse plays on a family. The books main character is Harley, who, at 19, is supporting his sisters after his mother is sent to prison for killing their father. Harley is both likeable and dislikable at the same time. You hate some of the things he does yet you try to understand that they are coming from a place of deep hurt, immaturity and confusion.
Although Tawni O’Dell wrote this book with a male protagonist, I found myself wondering if a guy, in particular a late teens early twenties guy would say things like "It wasn't that Misty was butch. She was slight & freckled and had a glossy ponytail the color of an acorn and long, thick eyelashes like tiny feathers from a baby bird's wing..." or "they weren't her usual scuffed black pumps that gapped at the sides when she walked...they didn't go at all with the coarse, putty-colored dress she was wearing." I don’t know any man who knows the difference between taupe, tan & brown, let alone would describe any color as “putty.”
Harley at times was insightful, especially while thinking about the abuse he endured from his father. You see how a victim will often forgive their abuser and make excuses for them. Harley thinks that his father blew a perfect opportunity to clear things up with his father while his father was in the hospital dying. Harley thinks that if he had the chance to know his father was going to die he “…would’ve stopped first and cleared some things up. I would’ve asked him why he didn’t like me. I would’ve apologized for being a disappointment to him. And I would’ve told him I loved him – because I did – in some joyless, unsatisfying way that hurt instead of healed but I knew it was still love.” Harley spends much of this book trying to figure out how he and his family got to where they are. He can be a deeply introspective, intelligent guy and then turn around and do the most heinous, disgusting things. The violent thoughts that cross his mind are disturbing. Early in the story he thinks “I had never seen Dad smile sincerely the way Mom did. Happiness to him was just another violent emotion as far as I could tell, something he turned into backslapping and arm-punching and used for an excuse to get drunk and destructive. As a kid it seemed to me it was the same for all men, and I worried that maybe men could only feel anger and every other emotion had to grow out of it.”
Harley later thought about the visitor's to men’s prisons versus women's prisons "I imagined the visitors at a man's prison to be mostly lawyers and whores. It would make sense. Prison was a reflection of real life, and it had always seemed to me that once a woman had a kid nothing else mattered about her. Being a dad might describe a man, but being a mom defined a woman."
O’Dell’s writing is very good and she kept the story going at a nice pace. There are some twists and you are kept guessing about what actually happened to this family. Once you think you have it figured out, it turns out to be something else.
Connie wrote: "11) The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane ***3 stars for this book. It's an average read. The story did keep me interest..."
I liked this one :) Being a witch myself, I think it's important that the modern generation remember what happened up there just as much as they need to be reminded of what happened in WW@ to the Jews. The witch trials started as just that, but it quickly deteriorated into a political thing, to take the power & the land away from the women that owned it. I have always loved the fantasy genre, & the incorporation of it into the book made it cute instead of what could easily have been a rather boring book. It is a trifle predictable though...
Connie wrote: "13) The Book Thief ****I really liked this book. It's narrated by Death and takes place during WWII. I've been reading very slowly the last year ..."
Loved this one too :)
Connie wrote: "14) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass **Creatively written, however - not..."
Not to mention, he was probably seriously under the influence of SOMETHING when it was written. A LOT of the scenes are choppy, & feel hallucination invoked....
22) The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL
****The Heart & the Fist is a book written by Eric Greitens. The author went to Duke University and then as a Rhodes Scholar spent three years at Oxford. During his humanitarian travels he realized that sometimes you have to use force in order to stop violence from happening. Because of that he chose to join the Navy and become a Navy SEAL. It was very nice to read a book like this by someone in the military who has many thoughtful and thought provoking ideas. Not just a Hooyah, I love the SEALS mentality.
At one point in the book, when commenting on his time in Afghanistan he said: “So what makes us different from the Taliban? What distinguishes a warrior from a thug? Certainly it’s not the quality of our weapons or the length of our training. Ultimately we’re distinguished by our values. It would have been easy to abuse a prisoner, but any act of wanton personal brutality is not only unproductive to defeating a group like the Taliban, but on a personal level, it degrades the warrior and turns him into a thug. Any man who tortures a prisoner, who shoots an innocent person, might escape formal justice, but he can never escape his own self-knowledge.”
The author spent a short amount of time in Afghanistan and then later was sent to Africa – a country where, while in college, he had spent a few weeks on a humanitarian mission in Rwanda. While in Africa, he noted that while the United States may have good intentions, many times our lack of understanding of different cultures tends to diminish our abilities to truly form good relationships with the citizens of the very countries we are trying to help. He noted that we constantly want to build things, a new school, a playground, a democracy. And that instead…“We’d be far better off paying for the quality training of quality teachers and then even paying some teachers’ salaries…By investing in people, we could build pro-American ambassadors to teach the next generation of schoolchildren and those teachers would feel personally connected to the United States. They would be in the classroom every day. If we were investing in projects to make friends, why wouldn’t we invest in people? It’s hard to be friends with a building.”
I enjoyed reading this book, it moved quickly and he described his SEAL training in a more personal way than I’ve read of other books about SEAL training. It was an interesting, informative and entertaining read.
23) The Synthesis
***This was an o.k. read. Someone from Goodreads suggested it to me since I liked The Hunger Games. IMO I didn't think this book was nearly as good as The Hunger Games, but it was entertaining. The character and story development left a lot to be desired. I didn't find myself caring at all about any of the characters in this story. It is a YA book, and even though I've read some really good YA books that were enjoyable for adults, the writing in this book felt like it was too simplistic for my taste. I'm not sure if I will continue with this series, I'll have to think about it.
24) From Baghdad, With Love: A Marine, the War, and a Dog Named Lava
****
I give this book 4 stars. Although the military brass and the hordes of brains and suits at the Pentagon don’t like military members in combat to adopt animals ,they say it’s against regulations for “health reasons,” actually it’s because they don’t want them to feel normal human compassion when their jobs require them to kill the enemy. You let a little compassion slip in and what might happen when you’re in the field and instead of acting on your training you start to think.
But what the Pentagon cronies, most of whom have never seen combat, don’t take into consideration is the stress relief and mental health that animals provide to service members while they are deployed in a combat zone. Animals give them something to take care of, a companion that doesn’t judge them, but only wants to receive and give love and companionship.
The story is funny at times, like when Lt. Col. Kopelman describes the way the Marine platoon reacts to Lava:
“Still, the best part is how these Marines, these elite, these well-oiled machines of war who in theory can kill another human being in a hundred unique ways, become mere mortals in the presence of a tiny mammal. I’m shocked to hear a weird, misty tone in my fellow Marines’ voices, a weird, misty look in their eyes, and weird, misty words that end in ee.
‘You had yuckee little buggees all over you when we found you, huh? Now you’re a brave little toughee. Are you our brave little toughee? You’re a brave, little toughee, yessiree.’”
And even touching when he describes the moment one of the Marines who has been watching over Lava while he (Kopelman) was sent to the Syrian border, has to hand over Lava to Anne Garrells, the NPR reporter who agreed to watch out for Lava since the military started enforcing the regulation banning “pets” in war zones and began killing cats and dogs found on bases:
“When they finally connect, Matt hands Lava over to Anne. It’s kind of an ordeal for him, because, you know, he’s a Marine standing in front of a bunch of other Marines who don’t want to see one of their own all wimped out over a puppy, only they’re all a little wimped out over the puppy, and Anne, who doesn’t want to be seen in the company of wimpy Marines, grabs Lava and leaves as fast as she can.”
This story is mostly about Lava and Lt. Col. Kopelman’s relationship and his frantic actions to try to get Lava back to the states, he also tells some important stories about what it was like to be in Iraq and just what these people we continue to call the insurgency were capable of, like the story below which describes how the insurgents used a boy with Down Syndrome as a suicide bomber instead of using animals which they had been doing, but couldn’t control well enough:
“So they reverted to something even better-people like nineteen-year-old Amar, who had Down Syndrome. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Amar’s parents went out to vote and then went to a relative’s house for a celebratory party. While they were gone, insurgents kidnapped Amar, strapped a bomb to him, and told him to walk toward a polling site”
“Amar’s parents heard the blast from their party, and when word spread that a “mongoli” was the bomber, they raced home to find Amar gone. Amar’s cousin told the Sydney Morning Herald: ‘they got neighbors to search and one of them identified Amar’s head where it lay on the pavement.’”
He also discusses how inept the US government was with money and how there was a ridiculous amount of fraud, waste & abuse that went on over there. “Later, former senior adviser to the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority would say that Iraq was a ‘free fraud zone’ as a result of the US government’s refusal to prosecute contractors and companies accused of corruption.”
This was a very good book, a short, quick read. I recommend this if you are an animal lover or even if you aren’t, the book offers other informative information about what it was like to be a Marine in Fallujah in 2005.
25) Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease: The Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven, Nutrition-Based Cure
****I purchased this book after watching Dr. Sanjay Gupta's special on CNN entitled "The Last Heart Attack." Dr. Esselstyn, although not a cardiologist, has been doing research regarding plant based diets and the prevention, arrestment, and in some cases reversal of heart disease. He has stories of some of his patients who had had heart attacks, and either were not candidates for surgical intervention or chose to try his diet instead. All of his patients, after only a few weeks on his plant based diet, saw their symptoms of angina/chest pain stop usually with a week or two. They also went back for follow-up stress tests which came back normal, and most saw a shrinkage if not total reversal of the blockages in their arteries. In this book he quotes Dr. Dean Ornish who wrote "The China Syndrome" as saying: "I don't understand why asking pople to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open."
This book gives me a lot to think about. I've been flirting with the idea of veganism, but I'm not sure I can stick with it, but the results seen by Dr. Esselstyn are an extraordinary push in that direction.
If you have ever thought about the effects of diet on your health, if you have heart disease or any other ailment, I recommend you read this book and make you own decision about it.
26) Uglies
****This is a YA book about civilization in the future where they make everyone have plastic surgery on their 16th birthday in order to make them Pretty. Feeling that making everyone pretty is fair. It's a quick read and pretty good. If you read and liked The Hunger Games, you may like this book as well.
28) Specials
***Good, quick YA series. I liked these books. I haven't been in the mood for any sort of serious tomes lately, so these books hit the spot.
29) The Fall
***This was just O.K. Not a good reading year for me this year. The first book in the triology, The Strain, I read over a weekend, this book took a month. Not sure if it's me, though, I just can't seem to get into anything I'm reading & I'd rather turn on the T.V. for some mind numbing entertainment.
30)
The 5th Horseman ***Another quick read by James Patterson & Maxine Pietro. I like The Women's Murder Club series, they are usually quick reads.
Challenge: 50 Books
Books mentioned in this topic
5th Horseman (other topics)The Fall (other topics)
Specials (other topics)
Pretties (other topics)
Uglies (other topics)
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I'm going to concentrate less on the number of books I read this year (although 50 is still my goal), but I want to make sure I read books that challenge me as well as entertain me.
Hope this New Year brings great things to everyone. Happy New Year and Happy Reading!!!