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

56. Silent on the Moor

By Deanna Raybourn
Rated 4 Stars
From:  Library

This is the third book I have read by this author in a continuing series in which she uses Lady Julia Rayburn as an accidental amateur detective to solve crimes set in 19th century England.  She has a very tongue-in-cheek writing style and they are, to me at least, very entertaining.  However I do have to wonder where she is going to go next since she has resolved a major and continuing plot device from the stories.  Guess I will just have to read the next one and find out.

FROM AMAZON:  Despite his admonitions to stay away, Lady Julia arrives in Yorkshire to find Brisbane as remote and maddeningly attractive as ever. Cloistered together, they share the moldering house with the proud but impoverished remnants of an ancient family--the sort that keeps their bloodline pure and their secrets close. Lady Allenby and her daughters, dependent upon Brisbane and devastated by their fall in society, seem adrift on the moor winds, powerless to change their fortunes. But poison does not discriminate between classes... .A mystery unfolds from the rotten heart of Grimsgrave, one Lady Julia may have to solve alone, as Brisbane appears inextricably tangled in its heinous twists and turns. But blood will out, and before spring touches the craggy northern landscape, Lady Julia will have uncovered a Gypsy witch, a dark rider and a long-buried legacy of malevolence and evil.

55. Among the Mad

By Jacqueline Winspear
Rated 4 Stars
From:  Library

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  Maisie Dobbs must catch a madman before he commits murder on an unimaginable scale. It's Christmas Eve 1931, on the way to see a client, Maisie Dobbs witnesses a man commit suicide on a busy London street. The following day, the prime minister's office receives a letter threatening a massive loss of life if certain demands are not met and the writer mentions Maisie by name. After being questioned and cleared by Detective Chief Superintendent Robert MacFarlane of Scotland Yard's elite Special Branch, she is drawn into MacFarlane's personal fiefdom as a special adviser on the case. Meanwhile, Billy Beale, Maisie's trusted assistant, is once again facing tragedy as his wife, who has never recovered from the death of their young daughter, slips further into melancholia's abyss. Soon Maisie becomes involved in a race against time to find a man who proves he has the knowledge and will to inflict death and destruction on thousands of innocent people. And before this harrowing case is over, Maisie must navigate a darkness not encountered since she was a nurse in wards filled with shell-shocked men.

54. Bill Bryson's African Diary

Rated 4 Stars
From:  Amazon

Thank you Beth for recommending this book.  I would not of known it existed otherwise.

All royalties and profits from this book go   to CARE International.  It's short, only 49 pages and in parts it is genuinely funny and in other parts genuinely moving.

FROM AMAZON:  Bryson visits Kenya at the invitation of CARE International, the charity dedicated to eradicating poverty. Kenya is a land of contrasts, with famous game reserves and a vibrant culture. It also provides plenty to worry a traveller like Bill Bryson, fixated as he is on the dangers posed by snakes, insects and large predators. It is also a country with many serious problems: refugees, AIDS, drought, and grinding poverty. The resultant diary, though short in length, contains the trademark Bryson stamp of wry observation and curious insight.

53. Jesus Interrupted

By Bart D. Ehrman
Rated 5 Stars
From:  Library

I'm not quite sure what to make of this book but it certainly was interesting. I do know though that I need to get off this religious reading kick that I have been on this month.  For someone who claims not to read books with a Christian theme it seems like that's all I've been reading lately.

LIBRARY SUMMARY:  Jesus, Interrupted addresses the larger issue of what the New Testament actually teaches-and it's not what most people think. Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed: The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was and how salvation works. The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later. Jesus, Paul, Matthew, and John all represented fundamentally different religions. Established Christian doctrines-such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus, and the trinity-were the inventions of still later theologians. These are not idiosyncratic perspectives of just one modern scholar. As Ehrman skillfully demonstrates, they have been the standard and widespread views of critical scholars across a full spectrum of denominations and traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators, and anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for-a clear and compelling account of the central challenges we face when attempting to reconstruct the life and message of Jesus.