66. Alexandria

By:  Lindsey Davis
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

LIBRARY REVIEW:  Even spies age, but fortunately Marcus Didius Falco-"informer" for the Roman emperor in the first century C.E.-is aging with grace. What makes Davis's long-standing series so indelible is the expert blend of Falco's wisecracking observations and crazy family life with some masterly suspense. In this latest, Falco has taken his pregnant wife, two daughters, and brother-in-law to Alexandria on what is ostensibly a vacation. (They're staying at the house of his wayward uncle and the uncle's partner.) In fact, Falco is charged with keeping his eye on things, and indeed trouble brews right away-the Librarian of Alexandria's great library is found dead in his sealed office. There's been plenty of controversy surrounding the Librarian already, and the controversy over who will succeed him turns bloody. Who knew that the race for a top library spot could be so intriguing? The mystery is intricately plotted, the characters are well drawn, and Falco is as engaging a protagonist as ever, still tough but wiser and more reflective, too.

65. Elmer Gantry

By:  Sinclair Lewis
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

Sometime way back in my past life I saw the movie but only have vague memories of it.  Good thing that I saw it though because I can now picture Elmer Gantry as Burt Lancaster instead of - oh maybe that smarmy Jimmy Swaggert or one of those other con artists like Jim Bakker or Jerry Falwell.  Sinclair Lewis was either a prophet or else had a window into the future because he certainly nailed those guys.  It's amazing.

Elmer Gantry is such a despicable character that I had to stop and let my blood pressure settle down every now and then.  But it is such an accurate portrayal of the times and such a good reminder that the stupid and the gullible with be with us always that I continued on.  It's like being mesmerized by a cobra or something.

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION ON AMAZON:  ELMER GANTRY still reads like a story of our times. Though it covers a period roughly stretching from 1902 to 1926, and America has been transformed since then, the basic idea of the novel---how a man, selfish, ignorant, bullying, and posing as a 'regular guy', can fool most of the people most of the time---is still very much relevant to us. Business was the heart of America in Lewis' day, and it still is. But a career model drawn from that sphere could be used in many other walks of life. ELMER GANTRY is about a man who uses religion and a Protestant church to rise socially, to get and abuse power for his own ends. From Elmer's evangelical college days with his drinking, womanizing, total lack of ability or interest in studies, and his lying and maneuvering to get what he wants, to the stunning but realistic conclusion to the book, Lewis paints a vibrant portrait of an unprincipled climber ; a man who will change any opinion, betray anybody, and do anything to get ahead. If we consider the sagas of TV evangelists in our days, the difference between their revealed hypocrisies and those written by Lewis is startlingly small. The sole difference was that in the 1920s, there was no television for Elmer Gantry to exploit.

64. Vision in White

By Nora Roberts
Rated 4 Stars
From:  Library

It looks like Nora Roberts has returned to her roots with this new series.  I am so happy that she has because I think she is a much better Romance writer than she was with whatever it was she was trying to write with all the paranormal, mystery mish mash that she has been writing for the last several years.  It seems like she has finally got her groove back just when Mary Balogh appears to have lost hers.  Oh well, as long as I have one Romance writer at a time to read I will be happy.

PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION:  Mackensie “Mac” Elliot had the perfect job and the best friends in the world, Emma, Laurel, and Parker. Together, the four were Vows, Connecticut’s hottest wedding-planning company. So what if Mac hadn’t found her own Mr. Right yet. Then Mac literally bumps into shy, scholarly, yet surprisingly sexy Carter Maguire when he turns up for his sister’s wedding-planning meeting, and Mac quickly discovers exactly what is missing from her up-until-now satisfactory life. After blending paranormal and fantasy elements in her last four romance trilogies, consistently engaging Roberts returns to basics and her literary roots. The result is a thoroughly charming contemporary romance that neatly showcases this reigning romance author’s flair for sharp, clever writing and realistically complicated characters in a compelling celebration of the power of friendship and love. --John Charles

63. Scandalous Risks

By Susan Howatch
Rated 5+ Stars
From:  My bookshelves

Book 4 in the Starbridge Series this re-read has turned into a long leisurly visit with a well loved series.  I will have to add though that finishing it up at the same time when I am getting into Elmer Gantry has been . . . interesting.  Not that Neville was anything at all like Gantry was there is enough hypocrisy in both books to remind each one of the other at times.  Neville does so much damage to the people whom he loves but he means well.  Gantry was just plain bad through and through.

AMAZON:  A commanding novel of substance and heart, Howatch's fourth in her Church of England series (following Ultimate Prizes ), is narrated by Venetia Flaxton, a young woman of intellect and means but no direction, and centers around her strange affair in 1963 with 61-year-old Neville Aysgarth, dean of Starbridge Cathedral. Related mainly through their letters and conversations, the progress--and explosive dissolution--of their relationship is set in the context of a real-life theological controversy in England crystallized by the publication of Honest to God , a bestselling, situational-ethics view of God's relevance to modern man. Neville and Venetia's mutual needs and fantasies are masterfully revealed by Howatch, who treats romance, sex, love and religion with the seriousness and humor of the best 19th-century novelists. Perfectly limned lesser characters, familiar from the earlier books, include Neville's superior, Bishop Charles Ashworth, and his wise enigmatic wife, Lyle; Canon Eddie Hoffenbach, who adores Venetia; the mystical, sensible Father Jon Darrow and his son Nicholas; Venetia's bumbling wonderful father and Neville's best friend, Lord Flaxton. An affirmation of the printed word, this thumping great, richly nuanced novel of ideas, morality and deep compassion offers itself as a counter to Venetia's observation that "faith had been wrecked, trust destroyed, love annihilated."

62. To Say NOTHING of the DOG

By:  Connie Willis
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

I loved this book.  It was deliciously quirky, full of tongue-in-cheek humor and had a satisfying, if unexpected ending.

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  In her first full-length novel since her critically acclaimedDoomsday BookConnie Willis, winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, once again visits the unpredictable world of time travel.  But this time the result is a joyous journey into a past and future of comic mishaps and historical cross-purposes, in which the power of human love can still make all the difference.

At once a mystery novel, a time-travel adventure, and a Shakespearean comedy,To Say Nothing of the Dogis a witty and imaginative tale of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and a chaotic world in which the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line, and the secret to the universe truly lies "in the details."

61. The Moonflower Vine

By Jetta Carleton
 Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

 This was a surprise book that I can't remember who recommended but I think it must have been Kathleen.  It's just recently been reissued after being out of print for many years.  But the writing isn't dated and it has a twisty surprise ending.  Or at least it surprised me anyway.  I loved it.

On a farm in western Missouri during the first half of the twentieth century, Matthew and Callie Soames create a life for themselves and raise four headstrong daughters. Jessica will break their hearts. Leonie will fall in love with the wrong man. Mary Jo will escape to New York. And wild child Mathy's fate will be the family's greatest tragedy. Over the decades they will love, deceive, comfort, forgive-and, ultimately, they will come to cherish all the more fiercely the bonds of love that hold the family together.

DNF - Home Safe

By Elizabeth Berg
Rated - DNF
From Library

Elizabeth Berg has gone from a hit and miss author to a mostly miss author for me.  The characters and story in this book were so uninspiring that after about 40 pages I just gave up.  I did try skipping to the middle and then to the ending to see if I could salvage something but it just wasn't there for me.

 Helen Ames–recently widowed, coping with loss and grief, unable to do the work that has always sustained her–is beginning to depend far too much on her twenty-seven-year-old daughter, Tessa, and is meddling in her life, offering unsolicited and unwelcome advice. Helen’s problems are compounded by her shocking discovery that her mild-mannered and loyal husband was apparently leading a double life.

DNF - Walking the Trail :

One Man's Journey along the Cherokee Trail of Tears 

By Jerry Ellis
Rated - DNF

There was just  something about this guys writing style that really put me off.  On top of that it was mostly about himself, what he was thinking and feeling and not enough about the actual experience of hiking this historic trail.  This was a shame because I was really looking forward to reading this book.

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  One fall morning Jerry Ellis donned a backpack and began a long, lonely walk: retracing the Cherokee Trail of Tears, the nine hundred miles his ancestors had walked in 1838. The trail was the agonizing path of exile the Cherokees had been forced to take when they were torn from their southeastern homeland and relocated to Indian Territory. Following in their footsteps, Ellis traveled through small southern towns, along winding roads, amid quiet forests, encountering a memorable array of people who live along the trail today. Along the way he also came to glimpse the pain his ancestors endured and to learn about the true beauty of modern rural life and the worth of a man's character.

60. The Forgotten Garden

By:  Kate Morton
Rated 4 Stars
From:  Library

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  In 1913, a little girl arrives in Brisbane, Australia, and is taken in by a dockmaster and his wife. She doesn't know her name, and the only clue to her identity is a book of fairy tales tucked inside a white suitcase.  When the girl, called Nell, grows up, she starts to piece together bits of her story, but just as she's on the verge of going to England to trace the mystery to its source, her grandaughter, Cassandra, is left in her care. When Nell dies, Cassandra finds herself the owner of a cottage in Cornwall, and makes the journey to England to finally solve the puzzle of Nell's origins. Shifting back and forth over a span of nearly 100 years, this is a sprawling, old-fashioned novel, as well-cushioned as a Victorian country house, replete with family secrets, stories-within-stories, even a maze and a Dickensian rag-and-bone shop. All the pieces don't quite mesh, but it's a satisfying read overall but it's still a good read.

59. The Accidental Time Machine

By Joe Haldeman
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

Science fiction is another one of those genres that I am fond of saying I never read.  I need to learn to keep my mouth shut since this is the second book I have read in that genre this month, both of which I enjoyed.  It's getting to where I can't believe a word I say anymore. *sigh*

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  "Since H. G. Wells' heyday, the time travel scenario has undergone so much variation that it's easy to envision the river of ideas finally running dry. But here the ever-inventive Haldeman offers a new twist: a device that travels in one direction only, to the future. Lowly MIT research assistant Matt Fuller toils away in a physics lab until one day he makes an odd discovery. A sensitive quantum calibrator keeps disappearing and reappearing moments later when he hits the reset button. With a little tinkering, Matt realizes that the device functions as a crude, forward-traveling time machine. With visions of Nobel Prizes dancing in his head, he latches it to a car and leaps into the future. The interesting wrinkle here is that each jump ahead is 12 times longer than the last. Matt's successive futures involve jail time, unwelcome celebrity, and assorted holocausts in the earth's climate. He begins to long for his native era. As usual, Haldeman's ingenuity delivers cutting-edge technological speculation and irresistibly compelling reading."--"Hays, Carl" Copyright 2007 Booklist

58. Seducing an Angel

By Mary Balogh
Rated: 3.5
From Library

Mary Balogh is my fall back light reading author.  She generally writes plesant. feel good regency romance books that are well writen and make me smile.  This particular series, not so much.  This is the fourth book in this latest series and only two of them have been remotely readable.  I abandoned the one before this one because It was so silly that I could not finish it.  This one is marginally better.  I am looking forward to the fifth one however as it is supposed to address the story of Constantine, the only really interesting secondary character in the series.  Lets hope Balogh gets her grove back.

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  "Here Stephen will risk his reputation and his heart as he enters a scandalous liaison with the infamous beauty intent on seduction. But when passion turns the tables on them both, who can say who has seduced whom? He must be wealthy, wellborn, and want her more than he wants any other woman. Those are the conditions that must be met by the man Cassandra Belmont chooses for her lover. Marriage is out of the question for the destitute widow who stands accused of murdering her husband and must now barter her beauty in order to survive. With seduction in mind, she sets her sights on Stephen Huxtable, the irresistibly attractive Earl of Merton and London’s most eligible bachelor. But Stephen’s first intriguing glimpse of the mysterious, alluring Lady Paget convinces him that he has found the ideal woman to share his bed. There is only one caveat. This relationship fueled by mutual pleasure must be onhisterms. As the two warily circle each other in a sensual dance of attack and retreat, a single night of passion alters all the rules. Cassandra, whose reputation is already in tatters, is now in danger of losing the one thing she vowed never to give. And Stephen, who wants Cassandra more than he has ever wanted any woman, won’t rest until she has surrendered everything—not as his mistress—but as his lover and wife. . . ."

57. Replay

By Ken Grimwood
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

This was a re read for me.  I first read it about 5 years ago and recently someone on one of the groups mentioned they were reading it and I decided it would make a nice change of pace for me to "Replay" for myself.

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  The possibility of traveling back in time to relive one's life has long fascinated science fiction writers. Without a single gesture toward an explanation, this mainstream novel recounts the story of a man and a woman mysteriously given the ability to live their lives over. Each dies in 1988 only to awaken as a teenager in 1963 with adult knowledge and wisdom intact and the ability to make a new set of choices. Different spouses, lovers, children, careers, await them in each go-round of the past 25 years, as well as slightly altered versions of world events. Their deep commitment to one another continues through the centuries of their many lifetimes. This delightful and completely engrossing story will appeal to a wide variety of readers