Wednesday, March 31, 2021
Review - Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine
AUTHOR: Gail Honeyman
RATING: ★★★★
Summary (from Goodreads): No one’s ever told Eleanor that life should be better than fine.
Meet Eleanor Oliphant: She struggles with appropriate social skills and tends to say exactly what she’s thinking. Nothing is missing in her carefully timetabled life of avoiding social interactions, where weekends are punctuated by frozen pizza, vodka, and phone chats with Mummy.
But everything changes when Eleanor meets Raymond, the bumbling and deeply unhygienic IT guy from her office. When she and Raymond together save Sammy, an elderly gentleman who has fallen on the sidewalk, the three become the kinds of friends who rescue one another from the lives of isolation they have each been living. And it is Raymond’s big heart that will ultimately help Eleanor find the way to repair her own profoundly damaged one.
Soon to be a major motion picture produced by Reese Witherspoon, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine is the smart, warm, and uplifting story of an out-of-the-ordinary heroine whose deadpan weirdness and unconscious wit make for an irresistible journey as she realizes. . .
The only way to survive is to open your heart.
REVIEW: Wow...where to begin? First off, let me just say that knowing this book is Gail Honeyman’s debut novel really blows me away. Although the story lagged a little in the beginning, it didn’t take long before I was completely sucked in and anxious to learn more about Eleanor’s life. I will admit it was quite a struggle for me to like this character in the first few chapters. (She reminded me a lot of Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory television series, with her very blunt and unapologetic remarks.) But my attitude softened toward her as the author began unraveling the details of her horrific childhood. I should point out there were many times when Miss Honeyman’s grammar threw me, and I’m not ashamed to admit I had to keep a dictionary on hand to look up a few words I’d never seen before. LOL. Also, and I’m not including any spoilers, but I have to say I was very surprised with the ending. Overall, I’m glad I got to know Eleanor Oliphant, and I would happily recommend this book to everyone I know.
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
Review - Greenlights
AUTHOR: Matthew McConaughey
RATING: ★★★★
Summary (from Goodreads): From the Academy Award–winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.
I’ve been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It’s a love letter. To life.
It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights - and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.
Good luck.
REVIEW: It’s been a long time since I read an autobiography because I normally gravitate towards fiction. I will gladly admit the handsome face on the cover is the initial reason I was so drawn to this book. Plus, Matthew McConaughey is one of my favorite actors. I knew if his talent for writing was anything like his acting talent that he would be an awesome storyteller, and I was right. Matthew is very straightforward in his autobiography, and I appreciated that. He doesn’t beat around the bush. When you read about his highs and lows, you can tell it’s genuine. I don't picture him as overly concerned about the reader being shocked or appalled at his life story, and I like that. My opinion is, if you’re going to take a leap of faith and write your autobiography then lay all the cards on the table. Don’t hold anything back, and Matthew did exactly that. I learned so many new things about him while reading this book, and his honesty and transparency was refreshing. I would recommend it.
Saturday, February 13, 2021
Review - Almost Home
AUTHOR: Valerie Fraser Luesse
RATING: ★★★★
Summary (from Goodreads): With America's entrance into the Second World War, the town of Blackberry Springs, Alabama, has exploded virtually overnight. Workers from all over are coming south for jobs in Uncle Sam's munitions plants--and they're bringing their pasts with them, right into Dolly Chandler's grand but fading family home turned boardinghouse.
An estranged young couple from the Midwest, unemployed professors from Chicago, a widower from Mississippi, a shattered young veteran struggling to heal from the war--they're all hoping Dolly's house will help them find their way back to the lives they left behind. But the house has a past of its own.
When tragedy strikes, Dolly's only hope will be the circle of friends under her roof and their ability to discover the truth about what happened to a young bride who lived there a century before.
Award-winning and bestselling author Valerie Fraser Luesse breathes life into a cast of unforgettable characters in this complex and compassionate story of hurt and healing.
REVIEW: Almost Home is a very endearing story, but I want to be completely honest right from the start and admit that I didn’t think I would enjoy it because the story kind of got off to a slow start. But when I finished reading it, I was SO thankful I didn’t give up on it. The close friendships and sweet romance are the heart and soul of this book, and there were several couples at the focal point, which I enjoyed. (It was like getting several love stories in one book.) I’m also a born and bred southern girl, so of course I loved the many references to living in the south. I would like to give a special shout-out to the author for her heartfelt depiction of a young soldier named Reed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (It was as much inspiring as it was heartbreaking.) If you enjoy sweet, inspirational fiction, then you should definitely add this one to your TBR list. I look forward to reading more of this author’s work in the future.
Sunday, January 31, 2021
Review - Where the Lost Wander
AUTHOR: Amy Harmon
RATING: ★★★★
Summary (from Goodreads): In this epic and haunting love story set on the Oregon Trail, a family and their unlikely protector find their way through peril, uncertainty, and loss.
The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger in both.
But life in a wagon train is fraught with hardship, fear, and death. Even as John and Naomi are drawn to each other, the trials of the journey and their disparate pasts work to keep them apart. John’s heritage gains them safe passage through hostile territory only to come between them as they seek to build a life together.
When a horrific tragedy strikes, decimating Naomi’s family and separating her from John, the promises they made are all they have left. Ripped apart, they can’t turn back, they can’t go on, and they can’t let go. Both will have to make terrible sacrifices to find each other, save each other, and eventually…make peace with who they are.
REVIEW: What a wonderful story! Packed with everything you look for in a book that will keep you hooked - joy, heartbreak, love, loss, etc. Amy Harmon did a superb job detailing the hardships of the 1850’s wagon trains as they sought a better life in the west. You’ll find yourself smiling through your tears as you read about their admirable strength and determination. You also get Naomi and John Lowry’s beautiful love story within these pages. (*happy sigh*) So much to love in this book. READ IT!
Saturday, January 16, 2021
Review - The Midnight Library
AUTHOR: Matt Haig
RATING: ★★★★★
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!
Summary (from Goodreads): Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? A novel about all the choices that go into a life well lived.
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
Nora Seed finds herself faced with this decision. Faced with the possibility of changing her life for a new one, following a different career, undoing old breakups, realizing her dreams of becoming a glaciologist; she must search within herself as she travels through the Midnight Library to decide what is truly fulfilling in life, and what makes it worth living in the first place.
REVIEW: I honestly don’t know where to start. I could probably sum up this review just by saying I finished The Midnight Library in one day because I couldn’t put it down, but that doesn’t seem to do it justice. I won’t give away any spoilers, but I will say I saw myself through Nora Seed’s eyes within the pages of this book. If you’ve read it, then you understand what I mean. If your eyes filled with tears or you found yourself wiping them from your cheeks while reading this story then you get it. I don’t know what else to say other than The Midnight Library grabbed me from the start and didn’t let go. I commend Matt Haig for taking such a delicate topic as depression and weaving it into a beautiful and poignant story that stays with you long after the last page is turned. I look forward to reading more of his work in the near future.
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