Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine/ Gail Honeyman/ 533 pages

This was a fascinating book about a woman who survived major traumatic events.  At the beginning of the book, Eleanor is merely surviving as she has been doing for years.  She is disconnected from society and has no friends.  This book shows her growth and change during a year after she makes her first friend.  It takes place in Glasgow, Scotland and is written by a British author.  Eleanor's thoughts are often counter to societal norm and are quite interesting and outsider commentary.  Her process of dealing with her past is also quite interesting and the details of her past are only revealed in the book as she is able to handle them.  Really good book.

The Interior / Lisa See / 391 pages

     This is book 2 of a trilogy about the Chinese police Liu Hulan and her American lawyer boyfriend David.  In this one, she investigates a factory to solve a murder and discovers the world of unsafe working conditions and illegal business practices.  David is caught up in representing an American corporation buying another business with the manufacturing in China.  There is so much corruption and illegal dealings in the name of "good old American capitalism" that it is difficult to come away from this book without new awareness of the problems and how the problem is global.  What to do in response is the difficult part.  How to be responsible for purchases so that safer, fairer working conditions can arise while knowing that it is occurring many other places besides China.

Inferno / Dan Brown / 461 pages

     First book read on a Kindle.  I chose it because it was the first author I had read before.
Nice positive topic: human population is growing at such a rate that the world needs something drastic like a plague to cull the population by 1/3 in order to survive.
     Okay, that being said, Robert Langdon is off on another adventure deciphering clues from paintings and Dante's Inferno.  Will he prevent the apocalypse?
     I did enjoy the book even with the grim topic.  There is a bit much of travelogue in it.
Dan Brown obviously spent a lot of time in Italy to "research" the book and get tax breaks..
Hmm.  What location should I use when I write a book?
     Not as good as The Da Vinci code, but still pretty good.

And the Mountains Echoed / Khaled Hoseini / 402 pages

Another really good book by Hosseini.  Just thinking about losing a sister or giving away a child makes me want to cry again.  Even though living up in Paris and having education and opportunities in her life without the trauma of war, Pari still carried that invisible wound of something missing inside her.  It was a trauma to each of the characters involved and Hosseini follows the story of each character with great insight.
This was not as tough to read as Kite Runner or A Thousand Splendid Suns, but it was still an emotional ride.