The Art of Racing in the Rain / Garth Stein / 321 pages

I wasn't sure what to make of this book at first. After having read A Dog's Purpose and loving it, and knowing this book also is from the POV of a dog, it's hard to not draw comparisons. So, while in the former book the dog lives multiple lives, always striving to be a good dog and love its master, the dog in this book, Enzo, lives only one life and is striving to be more human. This makes Enzo into some sort of sage and philosopher, extremely self-aware, and not nearly as lovable as the dog in the former book.

In fact, the book really didn't take off for me until halfway through when the story of the family that Enzo lives with took one bad turn after another. Enzo's master is a race car driver, one who is really good at driving in the rain, and his young wife becomes sick. What happens after is something you need to discover on your own as you read about the human family that is at the center of Enzo's world. By the end, I was very happy with the book and how it ended, but it took a while to get there.

As You Like It / William Shakespeare / 263 pgs / Audiobook / Movie Adaptations

I'm in the process of reading all of Shakespeare's works, roughly one a month so far, and I just finished As You Like It. I like reading them in print and then listening to an audio version. This is a great Shakespeare production in performance, but I was underwhelmed reading it. The circumstances give the Bard quite a few opportunities to comment on gender, especially when Rosalind is dressed as Ganymede. She has many more freedoms as a man and knows she’ll be giving up a lot when she goes back and again when she marries. There’s also some muted commentary on race and station which I didn’t catch until reading background information. Celia and her friendship with Rosalind is my favorite part about this play. As one of my friends pointed out to me, this is “beach read Shakespeare” and best experienced in visual or audio form!

Star Wars: The Princess, The Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy / Alexandra Bracken / 317 pgs

A great retelling of "Star Wars: A New Hope" adapted for children.  It was even more exciting to listen to the audio recording as there were added sounds for the special effects.  Alexandra Bracken stayed very close to the source material, but gives insight into what the characters are thinking, which cannot be conveyed on screen.

Highly recommended to get your kiddo ready for the next Star Wars movie.  Or, if they are already a fan of Star Wars this easy read would be a great way to introduce them to novels.

Odd Thomas / Dean Koontz / 480 pages / Horror

Mr. Odd Thomas is indeed one of the nicest characters you will meet in the world of fiction. The young man is humble, a talented fry cook, head over heels in love with his girlfriend, and his only ambition is to move on from frying eggs to selling new tires at the local tire store. By today's standards, he would be considered a first class loser in anyone's book. But there is something special about Odd Thomas, and that is the fact that he can see and communicate with the dead.

As he explains in the narrative, sometimes the departed have a hard time moving on to the next world, whether it be because of unfinished business, a sentimental attachment to the living, or an unawareness of their deadness; Thomas is always there to help if his help is required. In fact he believes it is his moral duty to aid the dead, otherwise why would he have this gift in the first place? The plot unfolds when he spots a strange looking individual who enters his place of work, the Pico Mundo Grille, and orders breakfast.

Surrounding the stranger are bodachs, entities that appear like swimming shadows, which only manifest when death, chaos, blood and destruction will occur sometime in the future. Odd's sixth sense, including the swarm of bodachs, tells him that something is terribly wrong and he begins his investigation. What Odd discovers is chilling and continues to be chilling to the very last page.

Odd Thomas is a wonderful piece of storytelling with some astute observations about the human condition and our culture in general. The story's ending is very moving for the obvious reasons. An excellent read.

Labor Day / Joyce Maynard / 288 pages / Mainstream Fiction

I read "The Usual Rules" by Joyce Maynard years ago and just loved it. I thought then what a gift this author had for teen-age voices. Now in, "Labor Day" her prowess shines brightly and poignantly.

Henry, our 13 year old narrator, shares a most remarkable story of a Labor Day weekend. His fragile, sensitive, and deeply troubled mother, Adele and he accept an escaped convict into their minute, reclusive lives. Harboring, Frank, deepens Henry's insight into the world that exists outside four walls. Improbability may conjure, but irony plays their lives like a fine violin. Adele, Frank and Henry are all imprisoned by grief, loss, tragedy and heartbreak, but within each other find elusive freedom to hope. To try again. To explore possibilities. I will not share more as you need to read this book to interpret your own understanding of human nature and all it's idiosyncrasies.

Beautifully written descriptions, profound understanding of the human condition, irony, and a flowing story make this a book I must recommend. I know long after this book resides on my shelves, I will remember Henry and all a thirteen year old had to teach this aging skeptic.

Lovely job, Ms. Maynard.

Perks of Being a Wallflower/Chbosky/213 pages

This is one of those books that is never on the library shelf. If you are lucky enough to find a copy, it is ragged and probably falling apart: the sign of a good book! Even though is was written in the late nineties, it has remained a favorite among teens for many years. Last year when the movie was released with Emma Watson, of Harry Potter fame, the book was in high demand again. "Perks of Being a Wallflower"  does have its critics, and because of the content it is probably more appropriate for high school readers. The main character, Charlie, is a freshman and is trying to find his place among his peers, he is trying to "participate" in life.  Charlie is very sensitive and  dealing with psychological issues, which are revealed throughout the story in letter writing narrative. This book has been compared to "Catcher in the Rye" which was a coming-of-age story for many of us that grew up in the 1960s. The content is mature, dealing with alcohol and drug use, sex and abortion. This would be a great book discussion book.

Beautiful Creatures/Kami Garcia/563 pages

Lena Duchannes is struggling, she is counting down the days until her sixteenth birthday. On that date, according to the family curse, she will either claim evil or good, dark or light. This curse has haunted her family for generations and now that she has fallen in love with Ethan Wate, time is moving much too quickly. Ethan has been having nightmares of a beautiful girl that he is trying save, we soon learn that the nightmares are flashbacks from history when Lena and Ethan's ancestors, a mortal and a caster, are in love and can't be together. I really struggled with this book, never really felt anything for the characters or the story. Beautiful Creatures is book one of the Caster Chronicles, a paranormal romance type book that will appeal to fans of Twilight and City of Bones.

The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald / 218 Pages

I found it very hard to follow this book. Of course I was pregnant at the time I started reading it and it took me months to finish, so that could have something to do with it. In any case, I still don't quite understand what it's completely about, though I got the gist of it. I never do this, but I really think I will read the ClifNotes of this so I can understand it better before I see the movie. Even without my raging hormone issues the storyline did seem to jump around in ways that were hard to follow, like you didn't always know exactly who was talking or what was going on or if it was present or past tense.

Safe Haven / Nicholas Sparks / 340 Pages

Katie is running away from an abusive husband who is also a police detective in Boston. She ends up in a small town called Southport. Though at first reluctant to make any friends, she eventually warms up to the general store owner, who is a widower and father of two children. You gradually get to know about Katie's toubled path and the story switches from Katie's story to her husband's story. The characters were well-written and real. I don't want to give away the ending for anyone who hasn't read it yet, but her husband does eventually find her and in the usual Nicholas Sparks fashion, you are worried about what character will die at the end of the book. I really enjoyed it, though. And the movie was pretty good, too.

Brave/Elle Risco/64 pg

Picture book version of the movie. I don't think my daughter enjoyed the movie as much as I wanted her too, but this book has renewed her interest. And it's way better than Barbie.

The Hunger Games/Suzanne Collins/267 pages

Since I'm the last person on the face of the earth to read this book, what can I say? Everyone knows the story and probably has already seen the movie. Overall, it was somewhat entertaining and I liked it better than Twilight, but I just don't get the over the top adoration for it. I'll read the rest because my daughter insists, but they aren't the greatest. Sorry.

The Help / Kathryn Stockett / 451 Pages

This was an excellent book, one of those where you want to get to the end so you know what happens, but at the same time you don't want it to end.  I really don't know what to say about it without giving the story away.  The characters were well-developed and the story was believable.  Now I want to go see the movie!

Gone With the Wind / Margaret Mitchell / 884 Pages

I have always thought that this book would be hard to read, with long, drawn-out descriptions that were tearfully boring... At least, that's what I was told. 

I found this book to be one of the very best that I have EVER read.  It was amazing, beautiful, and fast-paced.  I have never before read a book in which the characters were so well-developed.  It was hard to believe that Miss Scarlett O'Hara and Mr. Rhett Butler were fictional because you could feel their emotions leap off the page and into your heart as if everything they were feeling and doing and saying had actually occured.  The dialogue was very well-written and a delight to follow, and while there were lengthy descriptions of the goings-on of the war in the state of Georgia and the occasional paragraph that described the character's surroundings, I felt that they added to the credibility of the story, making everything seem so much more real and believable than if they weren't there.  It helped to explain why certain characters did and said the things that they did.  Even though the book is covering more than a decade of time, it didn't feel lengthy.  It was fast-paced and I couldn't put it down. I was sad that it came to an end as fast as it did, and am disappointed that Ms. Mitchell never got around to writing a sequel, because the story was so engrossing that I feel I need to know what happened after the last words. Perhaps I will get around to reading the sequel written by Alexandra Ripley, but I feel that I may be disappointed after how much I loved the original.

Overall, this book was beautifully written, full of character, feeling, intense emotions, and a believable historical background.  I would highlt recommend it to any of my friends who were looking for a historical "romance" that was different from the rest. 

Movie Adaptation

Water for Elephants/Sara Gruen/335 pgs

The circus has come to town and Jacob Jankowski is remembering his past. During his final year in vet school, his parents die unexpectedly and he leaves school and joins the circus. While there he meets the love of his life. Marlena and a very special elephant, Rosie. The story takes place both in his memories of the circus and in the present - his loneliness of living alone in the nursing home, waiting for his family to come and take him to the circus. The book is great and I cannot wait to see the movie now.

The Scarlet Pimpernel / Emmuska Orczy / 267 pages / Adapted Into Movie

Romance, adventure, intrigue, history.  This book has been my favorite for a few years now.

A daring emglishman, known only as the Scarlet Pimpernel, has been rescuing French Aristocrats headed for the guillotine and bringing them safely across the channel to England.  He is nearly worshiped in English society, but is hated by the French.

The beautiful Marguerite Blakeney, the French wife of the very handsome, very rich, but very stupid Percy Blakeney, has been approached by a leader of the French government with an either-or choice that will decide the lives of those that she loves the most:  Give up the location of the Scarlet Pimpernel, or her dear brother will die.

After fearing that she has betrayed her husband, she sneaks over to France to try to save him and her brother from certain death.

The book has well-created characters and lots of background information and details to give the story move believability and spice.  It has been adapted into at least two movies and a musical, and a newer book series by Lauren Willig is also based loosely on the original book.

Sarah, Plain and Tall/Patricia MacLachlan/64 Pages

I have always enjoyed this book, as well as the movie that was made along the same storyline.  It's a fast book to read, and will keep a child's attention.  It's the story of a mail-order bride who moves far away from the ocean to be a mother and wife for a family who has seen tragedy.  With her in their life, they're able to move forward.

Adapted into a movie, it is also the winner of a Newbery Award.

Confessions of a Shopaholic/Sophie Kinsella/350 Pages

Adapted into a movie.

This book was pretty good, and very easy to read.  I was done reading it before I knew it.  It was a nice story, and had several humorous spots throughout.  The characters weren't developed as well as they could have been, and considering the movie was rated PG, I was not expecting there to be so much language in it.  The ending was OK, but kind of left you hanging, but there's several sequels, so I'm sure that will be taken cake of in the next book.  I saw the movie first, and the movie doesn't follow the book much at all, really, except that the main characters have the same names and she has a shopping addiction, debt, and works as a financial journalist.  That was a bit disappointing, because I actually liked the way the movie went with the storyline.  But overall it was a nice book and I enjoyed reading it.