Four Wives by Wendy Walker

Cover of Four Wives

When the first novel by Wendy Walker arrived in my mailbox, I couldn’t help but cringe when I saw the cover.  I wondered why I agreed to review it, and just hoped that I’d make it through the novel.

The first chapter didn’t seem too promising, but I continued to read and soon found myself throughly invested in the lives of the four wives.  I looked forward to see how each of their stories would turn out, and was surprised by how each of their stories ended.

I’m looking forward to reading Walker’s second novel “Social Lives” coming out in a few months.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

On first glance the Wheeler family seems like the quintessential 1950’s family.  Frank and April are young couple with two young children.  They recently bought a house in the “perfect” suburban neighborhood.

Behind closed doors however, we see a couple who are in constrant struggle.  They are struggling with themselves, struggling with and against each other.  They are struggling to break out of the mold they have put themselves in.

“Revolutionary Road” explores the complexity of marriage, love, hate, and human emotions.  It’s an intense look at what happens when two people marry under the wrong circumstances.

Step on a Crack by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge

Cover of Step on a Crack

Detective Michael Bennet has a lot going on this Christmas.  He is father to ten adopted children, his wife is quickly losing her battle to cancer.  Life couldn’t get much worse could it?  Then the First Lady is murdered and during the funeral all the high profile celebrities gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathredral are taken hostage.

“Step on a Crack” is an exciting page turner, perhaps not the most sophisticated piece of literature you will ever read, but entertaining-as are most Patterson novels.

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

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After Adam Baye’s best friend committed suicide, his parents decide that it’s time to breach the privacy that they’ve given their son in order to protect him.  What they find sends the couple in over their heads as they enter the world of pharm parties.

Being that Harlan Coben is regarded one of the best authors in his genres, I expected to be fully engrossed as the story unfolded.  However, I found myself questioning the believability factor throughout the entire book.  Certain liberties have to be taken when it comes to fiction books, but unless the book is fantasy, there should be at least some degree of credibility intact.  I found “Hold Tight” to be lacking in that department, especially in terms of the characters.  Try as I might, I could not believe the motives of many of the characters, especially teenager Adam or his little sister.  I also found the introduction of the subplot to be confusing and unnecessary.

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Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami

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Kafka on the Shore begins with 15 year old Kafka preparing to run away from home.  You have the sense that he’s running away from something, but whatever that thing is, it’s not clear.  He leaves home, travels across country and arrives at a privitely owned library.  He quickly befriends the librarian and her assistant and within a few days he finds himself living and working in the library.

The novel twists into a mysterious surrell journey as Kafka’s father turns up dead-mysteriously murdered by a mentally challenged elderly man.  Kafka’s and the old man’s life intertwines as both characters attempt to find meaning in the direction their lives have taken them.

It’s an excellent book, one that will surely leave you puzzled a few times-but worth the confusion by the end.

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My Lobotomy by Howard Dully

Cover of My Lobotomy

Brain Lobotomies are usually subjects that are reserved for scientific texts found in the darkest bowels of medical school libraries.  Its a subject that is highly controversial amongst the medical community and except for some bad soap opera story lines, it’s not  a subject that is explored or talked about in the general population.  It’s almost taboo.

Howard Dully knows all to well what a lobotomy is, and what it does to a person.  At the age of 12, in the year 1960-he was given a lobotomy due to his outrageous (i.e. rather typical) behavior.  “My Lobotomy” follows the events that led up to Dully’s family’s decision for the procedure, and Dully’s struggles to then cope with life post lobotomy.  With little to no family support, Dully spends the next several decades of his life struggling to learn to stay out of trouble and fit into adult society.

It’s an intense and often depressing story, however, its also hopeful and moving.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

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Bill Bryson is one hell of a well traveled writer.  He had traveled around Europe, Australia and the US.  He’s hiked the Appalachian Trail.  In each of his travelogues, Bryson shines through with his wit, charm and first rate knowledge which has his audience roaring with laughter-and finishing each book ten times smarter.

In recent years, Bryson has struck out on a different travel…this time exploring various subject matters.  In his award winning “A Brief History of Nearly Everything” Bryson educates us on…well, everything science related from palentology, astronomy, to geology.   In is biography about William Shakespeare, Bryson gives us a glimps at one of the most mysterious figures in the literary world.

With “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid”, Bryson delves in to the psyche of himself…growing up in Anytown, USA (really Des Moines, Iowa).  He tells us exactly what it was like to grow up in the 1950’s, all the while regaling his audience with stories of his imaginary alter ego “The Thunderbolt Kid”.  The book is highly entertaining and one that really makes you long for those days of simple suburbia life.

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Twilight: The Movie

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I have been late jumping on the Stephanie Myers bandwagon.  I haven’t read any of her books in her Twilight series and until yesterday I hadn’t bothered going to see the movie version of the first installment.

After hearing all the hype I had high expectations.  When I walked out of the theater however, I was pretty disappointed.  None of the characters seemed remotely “real” to me.  If anything, I thought that vampires in the film seemed more believable than the human characters did.  And Bella?  I spent the second half of the film just rooting for her to become vampire feed.

Now, I will probably still try to read the book version as I’m a true believer in the book being better than the movies (generally anyway) but I don’t see myself taking the time to bother with any of the other movies in the series.  I will stick with Harry Potter.

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Sleeping with Ward Cleaver by Jenny Gardiner

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Quickly approaching 40, Claire Doolittle is worried that her life has fallen into a serious rut. She can barely look at her husband Jack without picturing Ward Cleaver, the father from Leave it to Beaver. While at one time she radiated love for her husband, now she radiates resentment for the turn her marriage has taken.

While this book is enjoyable and fun to read, to someone who has never experienced marriage or motherhood-it was kind of hard to relate and to truly understand what Claire was dealing with.

The Castle in the Forest by Norman Mailer

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Before Norman Mailer’s death earlier this year, he had a vision to write a trilogy exploring (fictionally) the life of one of history’s most fascinating and terrifying figures-Adolf Hitler.  Unfortunately Mailer was only able to complete the first book in the trilogy.

“The Castle in the Forest” follows the Hitler family from before his parents meeting until Hitler’s graduation from school.  According to this fictionalized account of Hitler’s childhood-narrated by one of Satan’s workers-Hitler was a product of incest.

This book has quite a sexual tone, much of this leaning towards the Hitler’s family’s (fictionalized) penchant for incestuous and homosexual relationships.  Not that this is a bad thing, per say-it’s just a warning to those who might take offense.  However, there is nothing too overly graphic about this book-at least that I can recall.

Although the narrator is supposedly an underling to Satan himself, the book can be interpreted as psychological look at Hitler’s childhood, and some of his behaviors and his family members behaviors give an insight to his later behavior while dictator of Germany.

It would have been interesting to see the following two books in the series, however, just this brief glimpse into Adolf HItler’s psyche is enough.

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