62. Oxygen

By: Carol Cassella
Rated 4 Stars
From Library

"Dr. Marie Heaton is an anesthesiologist at the height of her profession. She has worked, lived and breathed her career since medical school, and she now practices at a top Seattle hospital. Marie has carefully constructed and constricted her life according to empirical truths, to the science and art of medicine. But when her tried-and-true formula suddenly deserts her during a routine surgery, she must explain the nightmarish operating room disaster and face the resulting malpractice suit. Marie's best friend, colleague and former lover, Dr. Joe Hillary, becomes her closest confidante as she twists through depositions, accusations and a remorseful preoccupation with the mother of the patient in question. As she struggles to salvage her career and reputation, Marie must face hard truths about the path she's chosen, the bridges she's burned and the colleagues and superiors she's mistaken for friends." "A quieter crisis is simultaneously unfolding within Marie's family. Her aging father is losing his sight and approaching an awkward dependency on Marie and her sister, Lori. But Lori has taken a more traditional path than Marie and is busy raising a family. Although Marie has been estranged from her Texas roots for decades, the ultimate responsibility for their father's care is falling on her." "As her carefully structured life begins to collapse, Marie confronts questions of love and betrayal, family bonds and the price of her own choices. Set against the natural splendor of Seattle, and inside the closed vaults of hospital operating rooms, Oxygen climaxes in a final twist that is as heartrending as it is redeeming."--BOOK JACKET.

61. The Unthinkable

By Amanda Ripley
Rate 4 Stars

Nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality--anything we've ever learned, thought, or dreamed of--ultimately matter? Journalist Amanda Ripley set out to discover what lies beyond fear and speculation, retracing the human response to some of history's epic disasters. She comes back with wisdom about the surprising humanity of crowds, the elegance of the brain's fear circuits, and the stunning inadequacy of many of our evolutionary responses. Most unexpectedly, she discovers the brain's ability to do much, much better, with just a little help.--From publisher description.

60. Give us this Day

By R. F. Delderfield
Rated 5 Stars


I read all three of these books in one gulp and I have to admit that by the time I got about half way through with this one I was started to go a little cross eyed. Had this not been such a good book I would have put it down. But it wouldn't let me do that.

FROM AMAZON:

Weaving the fortunes of the patriarchal Adam Swann and his family into the pageantry of English history in the years following Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897, this sweeping historical novel takes Swann's four sons and daughter into the perilous reaches of government and commerce and the army. As this younger generation of Swanns strives to wed personal dreams to national values, the rumble of the guns of August 1914 signals the end of the world as they and imperial England have known it.

59. Thier's Was the Kingdom

R. F. Delderfield
Rated 5 Stars


This is the second of Delderfield's Adam Swann during the late 1800s and features his children growing into their various interests including the family haulier business established during the British industrialization age 1860+ Adam's wife, Henrietta, had taken the business reins while Adam fought in a war and lost his leg. Now she is attending their 9 children while they choose schools and vocations.

58. God is an Englishman

By R. F. Delderfield
Raed 5 Stars

I cannot imagine how I have managed to not read these books before. If anyone had asked me I would have bet money that I had. But, better late than never I guess.

The story traces the development of a haulage firm that serves all of England, Wales and eventually part of Scotland. While that is the major focus, the family life of the founder of "Swan on Wheels" is very much a part of it. In fact, all the characters involved are well presented with divergent and believable personalities.

57. Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh
Rated 4 1/2 Stars

This story has been made into a movie that is just out or soon to be out so I thought I ought to read it before I decided whether or not to stir myself to go see it. I think I will pass on the movie. The theme is too cynical for me to consider it to be entertainment. However the book is beautifully written and I love the way Waugh puts the reader right into the story. That is why I gave it a high rating.

FROM AMAZON: Evelyn Waugh’s most celebrated novel is a memory drama of extraordinary richness and depth. The novel Waugh thought of as his magnum opus, it is the story of the intense entanglement of a young, middle-class Englishman, Charles Ryder, with a wealthy, eccentric Anglo-Catholic family, the Marchmains: in particular, with Sebastian, the flamboyant young man Charles meets at Oxford in the 1920s; and Sebastian’s sister Julia, who will become the great and unrequited love of Charles’s life.

Written during World War II, the novel mourns the passing of the world of Waugh’s own youth, but it is also a story about religious and secular love, about the notions of sin and judgment, guilt and punishment and how, almost unaccountably, they can give shape to one’s life. By turns romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh’s familiar satiric exploration of English society and mores, revealing an elegiac, lyrical writer of the most lucid and profound feeling.

56. In The Bleak Midwinter

by Julia Spencer Fleming
Rated 4 Stars

For me the main appeal of this book was that it established the characters and set the scene for the latter books which I enjoyed more.

BOOK COVER: Spencer-Fleming's award winner for Best First Novel is now available in this special value edition. When a newborn is abandoned and a young mother is brutally murdered, Clare Fergusson, the new Episcopal priest in Millers Kill, New York, must pick her way through the town's secrets. Reissue.

55. The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

By Vincent Bugliosi
Rated 5+ Stars

BOOK JACKET" In The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses - a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world."

54. Service included

By Phoebe Damrosch
Rated 4

This was a quick little read that I skimmed through parts of. It was mildly entertaining. It would probably appeal more to someone who had worked in the food service industry.

"While Phoebe Damrosch was figuring out what to do with her life, she supported herself by working as a waiter. Before long she was a captain at the New York City four-star restaurant Per Se, the culinary creation of master chef Thomas Keller." "Service Included is the story of her experiences there: her obsession with food, her love affair with a sommelier, and her observations of the highly competitive and frenetic world of fine dining."--BOOK JACKET.

53. The Blackstone Key

Rated 4 Stars
From: Jani

It is 1795, and Mary Finch sets off to meet her wealthy uncle, hoping to heal a bitter family estrangement and perhaps to avoid a dismal career teaching at Mrs. Bunbury's school for young ladies. Eager for an adventure, she is soon embroiled in one of frightening proportions, for war is raging across Europe, England faces the threat of invasion, and some secrets are more valuable than gold.

As she uncovers a complex and deadly plot involving ruthless smugglers, secret codes, and a dangerous network of spies and traitors, Mary must learn quickly whom she can trust. The apparently stalwart Captain Holland? The dangerous yet attractive Mr. Déprez? Perhaps the mysterious Hicks or even Mrs. Tipton, who knows what is best for everyone, especially Mary? The price of failure may be her life and the safety of all England.

52. A Fountain Filled with Blood

By Julia Spencer Fleming
Rated 4 Stars
From: Library

A series of gay bashings, the discovery of PCBs in a local elementary school playground and a brutal murder heat up the Adirondacks town of Millers Kill, N.Y., hotter than the July weather. Clare, rector of St. Alban's Episcopal Church, and the very much married police chief Russ Van Alstyne, who have spent the last six months avoiding each other in hopes of dispelling their mutual attraction, find themselves working together on a perilous murder investigation. With eloquent exposition and natural dialogue, the precisely constructed plot moves effortlessly to its dramatic conclusion. The poignant reflections of Clare and Russ as they examine their own hearts and struggle with their feelings never detract from the crime solving. Amid a host of memorable characters, Clare stands out, whether daring to drive a sports car instead of a safer four-wheel-drive vehicle or donning her vestments to perform the evening service of Compline in an empty church lit with candles.

51. What happened : inside the Bush White House and Washington's culture of deception

By Scott McClellen
Rated: Disgusting
From Library

Or, how about - When Thieves Fall out, or more accurately - "How I hope to save myself from going to jail like the rest of these crooks."

"The former White House press secretary examines how and why the Bush administration went awry, providing a look at George W. Bush and his top aides in terms of such crises as Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq war, and Washington's political infighting"