Book Reviews
A Leaf On the Wind of All Hallows by Diana Gabaldon
I read this wonderful novella on my Kindle and ended up crying in the orthodontist's office while my daughter was getting her braces on. It was fantastic. It is a perfect little side story that tied up some loose ends in the world that is Outlander, but not only that, it brought Dolly and Jerry McKenzie to life and I LOVED them!! Seeing Frank from another perspective was intriguing and it was fun to see baby Roger. I read this after reading Book 8 and I think that was the perfect way to do it. The whole Jerry, Roger, and Buck story line from Jerry's perspective, after reading Roger's, was awesome and don't even get me started on Jerry and Dolly!! Worth every tear in the orthodontist's office!!
From Goodreads:
...In this original Outlander novella, Diana Gabaldon reveals what really happened to Roger MacKenzie Wakefield’s parents. Orphaned during World War II, Roger believed that his mother died during the London Blitz, and that his father, an RAF pilot, was killed in combat... Now, in “A Leaf on the Wind of All Hallows,” readers finally learn the truth.
My Rating: I LOVED IT!!
The Death of Santini by Pat Conroy
From Goodreads:
Pat Conroy's father, Donald Patrick Conroy, was a towering figure in his son's life. The Marine Corps fighter pilot was often brutal, cruel, and violent; as Pat says, "I hated my father long before I knew there was an English word for 'hate.'" As the oldest of seven children who were dragged from military base to military base across the South, Pat bore witness to the toll his father's behavior took on his siblings, and especially on his mother, Peg. She was Pat's lifeline to a better world-that of books and culture. But eventually, despite repeated confrontations with his father, Pat managed to claw his way toward a life he could have only imagined as a child...The Death of Santini is at once a heart-wrenching account of personal and family struggle and a poignant lesson in how the ties of blood can both strangle and offer succor. It is an act of reckoning, an exorcism of demons, but one whose ultimate conclusion is that love can soften even the meanest of men, lending significance to one of the most-often quoted lines from Pat's bestselling novel The Prince of Tides: "In families there are no crimes beyond forgiveness."
Let's just set the record straight...anything written by Pat Conroy is pure magic. This wove a tale of dark magic as he recalled and relived his turbulent childhood, dysfunctional family, strained family relations, mental illness and depression, failed marriages, all while experiencing great literary success and notoriety. I was definitely drawn in. Learning more about the real Great Santini aka Don Conroy was both painful and cathartic. It was fascinating to read about how Pat Conroy journeyed from a deep and well deserved hatred of his father to his ultimate redemption, forgiveness, and love for his complicated and fatally flawed father. I love how he showed us that this journey to forgiveness can be beautiful despite the pain. I found it profoundly moving. I started the book despising Don Conroy and was surprised to find myself with tears running down my face while reading his eulogy at the end of the book.
I also enjoyed the exploration of the darker side of his mother because of course she had to have had one. What causes a person to stay with someone who violently abuses them and their children over the course of several decades? Fascinating stuff.
I also loved reading the back story of getting his books published, movies made, and all that he experienced through out that whole process. I wish there was more about The Prince of Tides...my all time favorite Conroy book but perhaps that is a memoir for another day...and this book is about The Great Santini after all.
The writing is gorgeous as usual, despite that dark subject matter. I love Conroy's style and voice. I adore his musings and fluctuations through time. I appreciate his sarcastic dark humor...a necessary tool for navigating family dysfunction. I appreciate his struggle to find peace...to choose forgiveness... and it is chosen...every. single. day. I found this book to be heart-breaking at times and achingly honest. Powerful and compelling...despite it's raw brutality.
Family dynamics...they are complicated. Parent/child relationships are complex. Sibling relationships are even more so. Sometimes they are ugly and confusing. I loved that Conroy often contradicts himself. His father pure evil. His father was brave and courageous. His mother was a goddess. His mother was selfish and vain. His siblings are *assholes*. His siblings are his saving grace. That is truth. No one is all one thing...not all bad and not all good. None of us are.
“Not a single family finds itself exempt from that one haunted casualty who suffered irreparable damage in the crucible they entered at birth. Where some children can emerge from conditions of soul-killing abuse and manage to make their lives into something of worth and value, others can’t limp away from the hurts and gleanings time decanted for them in flawed beakers of memory. They carry the family cross up the hill toward Calvary and don’t mind letting every other member of their aggrieved tribe in on the source of their suffering. There is one crazy that belongs to each of us: the brother who kills the spirit of any room he enters; the sister who’s a drug addict in her teens and marries a series of psychopaths, always making sure she bears their children, who carry their genes of madness to the grave. There’s the neurotic mother who’s so demanding that the sound of her voice over the phone can cause instant nausea in her daughters. The variations are endless and fascinating. I’ve never attended a family reunion where I was not warned of a Venus flytrap holding court among the older women, or a pitcher plant glistening with drops of sweet poison trying to sell his version of the family maelstrom to his young male cousins. When the stories begin rolling out, as they always do, one learns of feuds that seem unbrokerable, or sexual abuse that darkens each tale with its intimation of ruin. That uncle hates that aunt and that cousin hates your mother and your sister won’t talk to your brother because of something he said to a date she later married and then divorced. In every room I enter I can sniff out unhappiness and rancor like a snake smelling the nest of a wren with its tongue. Without even realizing it, I pick up associations of distemper and aggravation. As far as I can tell, every family produces its solitary misfit, its psychotic mirror image of all the ghosts summoned out of the small or large hells of childhood, the spiller of the apple cart, the jack of spades, the black-hearted knight, the shit stirrer, the sibling with the uncontrollable tongue, the father brutal by habit, the uncle who tried to feel up his nieces, the aunt too neurotic ever to leave home. Talk to me all you want about happy families, but let me loose at a wedding or a funeral and I’ll bring you back the family crazy. They’re that easy to find.” -Pat Conroy, The Death of Santini; The Story of a Father and His Son.
See! Don't you want to read more. It true...true of every single family out there. Including my own.
Thank you Pat Conroy.
My rating: Excellent.
The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons
From Goodreads:
During the summer of 1941 the Metanov family are living a hard life in Leningrad. As the German armies advance their future looks bleak. For Tatiana, love arrives in the guise of Alexander, who harbours a deadly and extraordinary secret.
This book came so highly recommended from so many trusted sources that I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. So many people absolutely adore this book and series. Unfortunately, for me, it did not live up to the hype. It really reminded me of Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah...which I didn't love...and yet found to be a more interesting and compelling tale of the same time period. The fall of Leningrad during WWII. Maybe this time period just doesn't do it for me...so sad...so depressing... I don't know. I just found this book to be okay. I am not even super interested in reading the rest of the series. Maybe when I am in a book slump I'll reconsider.
My Rating: Definitely didn't live up to the hype.
Food: Love Story by Jim Gaffigan
From Goodreads:
Bacon. McDonalds. Cinnabon. Hot Pockets. Kale. Stand-up comedian and author Jim Gaffigan has made his career rhapsodizing over the most treasured dishes of the American diet (“choking on bacon is like getting murdered by your lover”) and decrying the worst offenders (“kale is the early morning of foods”). Fans flocked to his New York Times bestselling book Dad is Fat to hear him riff on fatherhood but now, in his second book, he will give them what they really crave—hundreds of pages of his thoughts on all things culinary(ish). Insights such as: why he believes coconut water was invented to get people to stop drinking coconut water, why pretzel bread is #3 on his most important inventions of humankind (behind the wheel and the computer), and the answer to the age-old question “which animal is more delicious: the pig, the cow, or the bacon cheeseburger?”
Loved this book! LOVED IT!! I was laughing non stop. But listen to the audiobook, don't read the actual book. I did both and hearing Jim Gaffigan's crazy slew of voices takes this book from funny to hilarious. I made the mistake of reading Amy Poehler's book Yes Please. I learned from my mistake. Super fun audiobook. Would make for great summer road trip listening. I am a huge Jim Gaffigan fan and this was Gaffigan perfection.
My Rating: I loved it.
FEVER SERIES BOOKS 3-7 by Karen Marie Moening
My Rating: Skip this series...but in all truthfulness I will probably read another one when it comes out, and yes, I am embarrassed to admit it.
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen
I saw this book on Goodreads and thought that it would probably be entertaining fluff. It was. Nothing too deep, or dark, or introspective. Good old fashioned chick-lit with a bit of a Practical Magic flair.
From Goodreads:
The women of the Waverley family -- whether they like it or not -- are heirs to an unusual legacy, one that grows in a fenced plot behind their Queen Anne home on Pendland Street in Bascom, North Carolina. There, an apple tree bearing fruit of magical properties looms over a garden filled with herbs and edible flowers that possess the power to affect in curious ways anyone who eats them.
For nearly a decade, 34-year-old Claire Waverley, at peace with her family inheritance, has lived in the house alone, embracing the spirit of the grandmother who raised her, ruing her mother's unfortunate destiny and seemingly unconcerned about the fate of her rebellious sister, Sydney, who freed herself long ago from their small town's constraints. Using her grandmother's mystical culinary traditions, Claire has built a successful catering business -- and a carefully controlled, utterly predictable life -- upon the family's peculiar gift for making life-altering delicacies: lilac jelly to engender humility, for instance, or rose geranium wine to call up fond memories. Garden Spells reveals what happens when Sydney returns to Bascom with her young daughter, turning Claire's routine existence upside down. With Sydney's homecoming, the magic that the quiet caterer has measured into recipes to shape the thoughts and moods of others begins to influence Claire's own emotions in terrifying and delightful ways.
My Rating: Okay...perfect pool side reading.
The Space Between by Diana Gabaldon
Joan MacKimmie is on her way to Paris to take up her vocation as a nun. Yet her decision is less a matter of faith than fear, for Joan is plagued by mysterious voices that speak of the future, and by visions that mark those about to die. The sanctuary of the nunnery promises respite from these unwanted visitations . . . or so she prays. Her chaperone is Michael Murray, a young widower who, though he still mourns the death of his wife, finds himself powerfully drawn to his charge. But when the time-traveling Comte St. Germain learns of Joan’s presence in Paris, and of her link to Claire Fraser—La Dame Blanche—Murray is drawn into a battle whose stakes are not merely the life but the very soul of the Scotswoman who, without even trying, has won his heart.
I love every single thing Outlander. This was the same. A delicious treat. A perfect novella that reacquaints us with a few minor characters from the Outlander world and takes us on an adventure all the while giving us hints and revealing secrets that pertain to the main Outlander series. It was awesome and I devoured it and was left wanting more!! I really enjoyed learning more about Joan and Michael and especially the Comte St. Germain!!
My Rating: I loved it!! Definitely recommended reading for Outlander fans...read it after Echo.
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