Laura's Album

Author: William Anderson
Genre: History
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishing, 1998
Pages: 80
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Though best known as the author of the Little House books, Laura Ingalls Wilder led a full, rich life that spanned almost a century of American history. All through her life Laura saved mementos of her past, including early writings, letters, drawings, and photographs, which have been lovingly preserved in private and public collections across the country.

Now, for the first time ever, these photographs, writings, and memorabilia have been gathered together in one incredible volume by noted Little House historian William Anderson. Each gorgeous page of Laura's Album is a doorway into the private world of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and offers a unique glimpse of what her life was like. Here is the fascinating true story of this remarkable pioneer woman's life as well as an unforgettable tale of our own American past.

Review: I couldn't believe there was a book published about Laura Ingalls Wilder that I hadn't read yet. My obsession with her began decades ago when my mom read aloud the Little House books to my sister and I before bed every night. I credit those books with forming my love of history as well.

Titans

Author: Leila Meacham
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2016
Pages: 608
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: Texas in the early 1900s, its inhabitants still traveling by horseback and barely familiar with the telephone, was on the cusp of an oil boom that, unbeknownst to its residents, would spark a period of dramatic changes and economic growth. In the midst of this transformative time in Southern history, two unforgettable characters emerge and find their fates irrevocably intertwined: Samantha Gordon, the privileged heiress to the sprawling Las Tres Lomas cattle ranch near Fort Worth, and Nathan Holloway, a sweet-natured and charming farm boy from far north Texas. As changes sweep the rustic countryside, Samantha and Nathan's connection drives this narrative compulsively forward as they love, lose, and betray. In this grand yet intimate novel, Meacham once again delivers a heartfelt, big-canvas story full of surprising twists and deep emotional resonance.

Review: I had been waiting for another family saga by Meacham since I read Roses back in 2011. It was so good that I'm considering re-reading it, which is something I don't do. Anyway, this is about Titans, not Roses.

Meacham is a fantastic historical fiction writer. I can only imagine what goes into writing sweeping novels like she does; the time, the editing, the research.

Titans does not disappoint, and was well worth the wait. Get it. Read it. Love it. That's an order.

My Name is Lucy Barton

Author: Elizabeth Strout (read by Kimberly Farr)
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2016
Pages: 208 pages (4 CDs)
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy’s childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy’s life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.

Review: I had tried to read the hardback version and it just didn't grab me. My coworker, the one who recommends books to me all the time, suggested trying the audio version. She was sure it was one I'd like. To be honest, I only reconsidered because it was published in 2016, a line item on my 2016 Reading Challenge.

It took a few tracks to get into the rhythm of the narrator's style, but this actually ended up being interesting and easy to "read." I don't get why this is such a popular book because it's more in the three star range for me.

Here's where I found it lacking, I wanted more. More of everything. More details, more introspection, more answers, more juicy family gossip. 

I guess what's good about it is that any one of us could have been Lucy Barton. Her life wasn't extraordinary. She seemed real and likeable. Just a child who grew up and as an adult had to come to terms with her childhood.

Elizabeth Strout will never be a favorite author, but her writing is solid.

I read Amy and Isabelle, also written by Strout, in 2011. I remember reading it, but not much else about it.

A Long Way Gone

Author: Ishmael Beah
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2007
Pages: 240
Rating: Recommend

Synopsis: This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts.

This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

Review: A book without a conclusion; that's a new one for me. It's a major strike against this memoir, but there's still something to take away from it as a whole.

This takes place primarily between the years of 1993 and 1997, and it was impossible for me to ignore what was going on in my world at the same time Ishmael was living in his hell. I graduated from high school in 1995 so I lived in my parents' bubble for the first half of his nightmare, and then lived it up in college for the second half. My biggest worry was what dress to wear to the next school dance, or whether or not I should get up for my 8am class or send my roommate to take notes (yes, that happened).

Americans really are isolated and sheltered from so much. Now that I have children, I selfishly hope it stays that way. 

This is my 2016 Reading Challenge's political memoir.

The Girl Who Came Home

Author: Hazel Gaynor
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harper Collins Publishers, 2014
Pages: 384
Rating: Highly Recommend

Synopsis: A voyage across the ocean becomes the odyssey of a lifetime for a young Irish woman. . . .

Ireland, 1912 . . .

Fourteen members of a small village set sail on RMS Titanic, hoping to find a better life in America. For seventeen-year-old Maggie Murphy, the journey is bittersweet. Though her future lies in an unknown new place, her heart remains in Ireland with Séamus, the sweetheart she left behind. When disaster strikes, Maggie is one of the few passengers in steerage to survive. Waking up alone in a New York hospital, she vows never to speak of the terror and panic of that fateful night again.

Chicago, 1982 . . .

Adrift after the death of her father, Grace Butler struggles to decide what comes next. When her great-grandmother Maggie shares the painful secret about Titanic that she's harbored for almost a lifetime, the revelation gives Grace new direction—and leads both her and Maggie to unexpected reunions with those they thought lost long ago.

Inspired by true events, The Girl Who Came Home poignantly blends fact and fiction to explore the Titanic tragedy's impact and its lasting repercussions on survivors and their descendants.

Review: I loved A Memory of Violets so much that I couldn't wait to read another Hazel Gaynor novel. It's purely coincidental that I read a book about Titanic over the 104th anniversary of it's sinking. That's a little eerie.

It was clear that The Girl Who Came Home was a debut novel. At times the plot was rushed and things just fell together a little too easily. When Gaynor wrote A Memory of Violets, she was a more seasoned, mature author and it showed. Furthermore, it's always challenging to me to read books about Titanic. We all know how it ends, and the author suck you into the characters' lives and you know most will not survive the night. The older I get the more horrific the tragedy of Titanic seems, but like I said, I am determined to read all of Gaynor's books.

I kept a careful distance between myself and this book, whereas in A Memory of Violets, I climbed inside and stayed there long after I finished the last page.

 All of that aside, this is still a fabulous book and one I highly recommend.

Hausfrau

Author: Jill Alexander Essbaum
Genre: Fiction
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 2015
Pages: 368
Rating: Do Not Recommend

Synopsis: Anna was a good wife, mostly. For readers of The Girl on the Train and The Woman Upstairs comes a striking debut novel of marriage, fidelity, sex, and morality, featuring a fascinating heroine who struggles to live a life with meaning.

Anna Benz, an American in her late thirties, lives with her Swiss husband, Bruno—a banker—and their three young children in a postcard-perfect suburb of Zürich. Though she leads a comfortable, well-appointed life, Anna is falling apart inside. Adrift and increasingly unable to connect with the emotionally unavailable Bruno or even with her own thoughts and feelings, Anna tries to rouse herself with new experiences: German language classes, Jungian analysis, and a series of sexual affairs she enters with an ease that surprises even her.
 
But Anna can’t easily extract herself from these affairs. When she wants to end them, she finds it’s difficult. Tensions escalate, and her lies start to spin out of control. Having crossed a moral threshold, Anna will discover where a woman goes when there is no going back.
 
Intimate, intense, and written with the precision of a Swiss Army knife, Jill Alexander Essbaum’s debut novel is an unforgettable story of marriage, fidelity, sex, morality, and most especially self. Navigating the lines between lust and love, guilt and shame, excuses and reasons, Anna Benz is an electrifying heroine whose passions and choices readers will debate with recognition and fury. Her story reveals, with honesty and great beauty, how we create ourselves and how we lose ourselves and the sometimes disastrous choices we make to find ourselves.

Review: I'll start this off by saying, nothing about this reminded me of Girl on a Train, and I actually find it weird that it was even mentioned. I haven't read The Woman Upstairs.

This book was recommended by my coworker who has given me excellent recommendations in the past. This one though was a fail. I didn't enjoy it, and I'm pretty sure that had I been reading the paper version, I would have returned it to the library after the second or third chapters. However, I had the audio version and for whatever reason just kept going ahead with it.

The plot was boring and Anna was an unlikable character. I don't mind insinuated sex or a few details, but this was too much and turned me off from the book as a whole. Pardon the pun.

From the beginning you just knew it isn't going to end well for Anna, and the author's closing paragraph was the best part of the book (and not just because it was over). The chosen closing words were brilliant. 

The author can write; this just wasn't my cup of tea as a whole.