37. The Thorn Birds

By Colleen McCullough
Rated ★★★★★

This book is part of my Great 2007 Reading Adventure. The first time I read this book I was so engrossed in the story that all the rich details about the Australian Outback just sort of whizzed right by me. This time since I already know where the story is heading I have been sitting back, having a leisurely read and watching the scenery as it goes by.

The book is about the Cleary family, who are struggling to make a living in New Zealand until a rich sister sends for the family to livie on Drogeda, a large sheep ranch in Australia and tells the story of the struggles of the Cleary family, as they battle with, and come to love, the outback country of Australia.

I have been thinking as I am merrily reading along that the Australian Outback during this period of time is sort of like our Wild West at the same period only on steroids. While they didn't have a hostile native population to deal with it seems to me that what these people were doing was comparable to trying make a living raising sheep in the middle of the Mojave desert. I really know very little about Australia, or about the Australians. That's a shame because I suspect there is much to admire about them and their history.

36. Good Things

by Mia King
Rated: ★★½


I put off making this journal entry for about a week and then when I went back even after reading the following blurb I couldn't remember what it was about. I guess I can only say that the book is pretty forgettable. I do recall thinking it was kind of OK though so I will give it a couple of stars.

"In one fell swoop, Seattle's answer to Martha Stewart, Deidre McIntosh, is sent into a tailspin. Her popular show is cancelled and she loses her gay roommate and confidante, William. To top off her bad luck, she has to move because her name isn't on the lease. Amid this chaos appears the hunk of her dreams, Kevin Johnson. After a one-night stand, he offers Deidre the use of his country retreat, which she reluctantly decides to use. As she stays in Kevin's rustic cabin far from her life in the city, Deidre tries to figure out what really matters to her, and how to recapture the experience of helping people that she'd achieved on her show. She would also like to capture Kevin. The bucolic setting and King's interesting characters create a fresh and thoroughly enjoyable story as enticing as the delectable recipes at the end of the book."

35. My Antonia

By; Willa Sibert Cather
Rated ★★★★★

I may be the only person my age on the planet who has not read this book before. For someone who loves coming of age stories and who read all of Laura Ingalls Wilder's book so many times that at some point I probably had them memorized I am amazed that some how I managed to miss this one. Oh well, better late than never I always say.

This is a story of two children of very different backgrounds and situations who arrived in Nebraska at the same time just as the prairie there was just being opened up to farming. The narrator is Jim Burden, an orphan who travels from Virginia to live with his kindly Grandfather and Grandmother. The other child is his friend and neighbor Antonia Shimerda, a four-years-older young woman who is the daughter of Bohemian immigrants who know next to nothing about farming.

Between them, they experience most of the range of farming frontier experiences in the early 19th century. Jim enjoys the happier, more successful side while Antonia finds herself faced with tragedies and setbacks. Yet there friendship becomes firm and is a central foundation of both lives.

During the story, you start on the farm, go into the town and finally end with both of them on the farm again . . . completing the natural cycle of planting and harvesting. The entire book rang very true to me and it is probably an accurate description of what it was like to live in a small town or the prairie in Nebraska at that time.

34. The Breaking Wave

Neville Shute
Rated ★★★★

I'm not exactly sure how I ended up reading this book but it's been a real treat. The book kind of sneaks up on you and you slowly find yourself caught up in the emotions of the characters, all of whose lives have been forever shaped and scarred by their experiences in WWII.

It begins with a mystery- the suicide of a parlourmaid at an Australian sheep station that turns out to have profound implications for everyone involved in her life. A deeply moving and haunting novel, Mr. Shute deftly shows us how "Like some infernal monster, still venemous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it's all over."

Stranger Than Fiction - Movie

Featuring Will Ferrell, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah
Rated ★★★★

Karen Effiel (Emma Thompson) is an author writing her latest novel about an isolated man named Harold Crick (Will Ferrell.) What she doesn't know is that her fictionalized character is real. The real Harold Crick is an IRS agent who has lived a dull existence and one day begins to hear Karen's voice as she narrates what she puts on paper to what Harold has and is doing. Because of this Harold enlists the help of a literary professor (Dustin Hoffman) to find out what is happening and ends up changing things about his life including beginning a relationship with his IRS client, a government-hating bakery owner named Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal.) Harold, however, finds trouble when he hears that Karen plans to kill him.

The Lake House - Movie

Featuring Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock
Rated ★★★


Paranormal light, this was a sweet, relaxed-paced, whimsical romance . When Alex Wyler moves into an unusual glass house on stilts over a lake, he discovers a note from the previous tenant in the mailbox--but no one's lived in the house for years. He replies and soon discovers that he's corresponding with a doctor named Kate Forster who's writing from two years in the future. Their correspondence turns romantic and their paths cross in unexpected ways, but when they try to truly connect, danger looms.

I really like Sandra Bullock even though the only thing I have ever liked her in was Miss Congeniality. This was a nice, light, fluffy little movie that was just what I needed yesterday. The end was way too pat but who expects something like this to make sense anyway.

33. Trinity

By Leon Uris
Rated ★★★★★

The first time I read this book in 1978 I read it through, start to finish without putting it down except for short naps and breaks for food and bathroom. Because I lived in Scotland at the time and the "troubles" were burning hot with riots and hunger strikes the book had an immediacy for me that I didn't have this time with time and distance. But it is still one of the most, if not the most powerful book I have ever read.

But time and distance notwithstanding, it's more than a book. Uris takes you firsthand into another life. He makes your heart ache with the characters as the Irish struggle develops. The characters, notably Conor Larkin, are with you every step of the way on your journey through British treachery. Although the book centers around this one character, a country of characters bump in and out of your heart, both protestant and catholic, and leave you impacted in a way that you will never forget. I was in tears at the end of the book and my heart still aches for these characters. I highly recommend this book. It is Historical Fiction at it's finest.

32. In An Instant, A Family's Journey of Love and Healing

By Lee and Bob Woodruff
Rated ★★★★★

In January 2006, the Woodruffs seemed to have it all–a happy marriage and four beautiful children. Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.

Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the glorious births of her children and the challenges of motherhood.

Bob in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism “bug” while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news–being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings.

And, for the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery.

31. Alphabet Weekend

By Elizabeth Noble
Rated ★★★

This book was exactly what I needed. I read it while I was reading Trinity as an escape and it served it's purpose.
It was a light, fluffy little book that didn't make a whole lot of sense, and the scenario wasn't all that plausible. In other words, perfect.

The premise is that the main character' s Natalie and Tom, both childhood friends were also best friends. When Natalie was dumped by her boyfriend, Tom decided that they would do an activity every weekend based on an alphabet - starting with A and ending with Z. Tom thought that they could be more than "just friends" and decided that this "game" would help to distract Natalie from her breakup and at the same time proved to her that he could be a potential boyfriend. At the same time, Tom's sister-in-law, Lucy was attracted to her best friend's husband and might consider having an affair. In addition to all this, Natalie's parents, Anna and Nicholas, were also having problems of their own.

30. East of Eden

By John Steinbeck
Rated ★★★★

"Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families -- the Trasks and the Hamiltons -- whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel." - Blurb from library site.

I ended up feeling very ambivilent about East of Eden. There were things about it that I really liked - his ability to put me into the place and time so that I felt like I was right there - and also the fact that it was a big fat family saga because I really like big fat family sagas so that I wanted to give it a five star rating in my journal.

But then there were some things that really bothered me about it. I felt like he belabored the "Cain and Able" anology thing. Maybe it's because I am a glass half full kind of person but I thought he was pretty cynical about human nature and made everyone a little worse than they needed to be.

So if I just looked at that part of the book I could only give it a three. I think I am going to compromise and give it a four.

Patton - Movie

Rated ★★★★★

This is a movie that I first saw when we lived in Galveston in 1970. I was reminded of this movie recently when I was watching a History Chanel movie titled In the Footsteps of Alexander, a bio of Alexander the Great. I decided it was time for me to see it again.

George C. Scott's riveting portrayal of the General Patton is absolutely magnificant. I don't think I have ever seen a movie where an actor is more perfect for the role. In my mind, George S. Patton is George C. Scott. The movie opens with Patton taking command of the tank corp in Africa and moves on to the Sicely campaign where he commanded the 7th Army. The British and the Americans jointly invaded the island of Sicely and the movie gives an unflattering picture of he and British Field Marshall Montgomery locking horns, with each man trying to grab more of the limelight than the other.

It was in Sicily that on a visit to a military hospital that he slapped a soldier suffering from battle fatigue. Patton was relieved of the command of the 7th Army and was brought back to England where he cooled his heels for a while and then was given command of 3d Army, which spearheaded the spectacular sweep of U.S. forces from Normandy through Brittany and N France, relieved Bastogne in Dec., 1944 (see Band of Brothers), crossed the Rhine (Mar., 1945), and raced across S Germany into Czechoslovakia. But sadly, not even Patton's loyal cadre of staff officers can keep him from shooting off his mouth every time there are reporters around and he is once more relieved of command.

Karl Malden's performance as General Omar Bradley is every bit as good as Scott's, presenting a man whose personality is the complete oposite of Patton. I also liked the German intelligence captain who is an expert on Patton and arguably the only person in the film who really understands or respects the American general.

On intriguing aspect of Patton's personality is his belief in reincarnation. In the film he tells General Bradley that he has lived many times before, as Alexander the Great, Hannibal, A Roman Legionaire and French General at Watterloo and others. Remembering this bit about the film from seeing it in 1970 this is what made me remember it when I watched the film about Alexander the Great. Patton wrote the following poem

Through A Glass, Darkly
So forever in the future,
Shall I battle as of yore,
Dying to be born a fighter,
But to die again, once more.

Today Patton is now considered by many military historians as one of the greatest military figures in history. The only serious limitation that the man had was he inability to keep his mouth shut and be a little tactful.

29. Water for Elephants

By Sara Gruen
Rated Rated ★★★½

In a month where I find myself reading big and involved books this was a welcome change of pace. I took the following review from the book jacket.

"Though he may not speak of them, the memories still dwell inside Jacob Jankowski's ninety-something-year-old mind. Memories of himself as a young man, tossed by fate onto a rickety train that was home to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Memories of a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder and pain and anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell." "Jacob was there because his luck had run out - orphaned and penniless, he had no direction until he landed on this locomotive "ship of fools." It was the early part of the Great Depression, and everyone in this third-rate circus was lucky to have any job at all. Marlena, the star of the equestrian act, was there because she fell in love with the wrong man, a handsome circus boss with a wide mean streak. And Rosie the elephant was there because she was the great gray hope, the new act that was going to be the salvation of the circus; the only problem was, Rosie didn't have an act - in fact, she couldn't even follow instructions. The bond that grew among this unlikely trio was one of love and trust, and ultimately, it was their only hope for survival."--BOOK JACKET.