Book Review Time

Quickly (can I ever do anything quickly on this space?) I'm going to comment on three books I've just read.  The first was Marley & Me by John Grogan - true story from which the movie was created.  Tonya loaned it to me and it is one I recommend heartily - well written, hilarious, and fun!  I loved the dog.  It made me feel a whole lot better about having a hair shedding, hairball vomiting, meower-in-the-middle-of-the-night hanging around.  Unfortunately, Brent hasn't read the book so he still doesn't see it my way.  (Besides, he's the number one champion of our daughters-in-law and really wants them to visit us.)

Next, on recommendation from Leslie, I started reading These is My Words.  This is the book I was going to take with me on vacation and was far enough into it the day we left that the character was rattling around in my head already.  I was far enough into it that I couldn't pack it in advance, just so I could keep reading it right up to the minute we left.

Far enough into it that when we got to the airport and I realized I had left it at home, I wanted to cry.  How could I spend a week away from Sarah?   I was far enough into it to know it was a book I wanted to own.

So I went into a shop at the airport, hoping to find another copy of it to continue.  No luck.  But I did find The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton, a book that had been heavily recommended by Lisa Jensen, another friend.  In fact, that was the one I was originally planning on purchasing and taking with me, but simply ran out of time to find it before we left.  It was a no brainer.

With the story of Sarah Pine still flavoring even the way I spoke, I settled down and started Forgotten Garden.  As expected, it wasn't long before I was totally engrossed in this new story.  I read it throughout the trip and it became a time-hopping friend to me as Brent dozed away his boredom during long layovers, and as Brent went to his meetings and it was raining outside.  I had almost completed the book by the time we got home, and did turn the last page a couple of days later.   It was a very well written book, taking the reader forward and backward through four generations to solve the mystery of why a little girl was left alone on the docks in Australia.


Then I finally got back into the world of Sarah Pine in These is My Words.  And I finished it yesterday.  Of the three books, I think I liked this one the best.  It's a story I want to read again and again.  I empathized, I cried, I laughed with this sturdy Pioneer woman who helped settle the rough Tucson area (think of Tombstone).  It is based on the life of a real person who lived in the late 1800's, but has been somewhat fictionalized, too.

Anyway, if you like to read and haven't read any of these, I can recommend them all.  Marely would be a G-rated book.  Forgotten Garden I would have to say was an implied PG-13 (limited sexual content;  re: not descriptive but you knew what was happening).  And These...Words would also be a PG-13 (violence).

Lest you think I just love everything I read (which does have a little ring of truth to it) one book I had started but put down after the first chapter was Time Traveler's Wife. I realized it was a little beyond what I care to put into my brain just in the first chapter alone.

Yesterday I started Edgar Sawtelle, on loan to me from Martha at work.  I'll let you know....