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Mar 19, 2013 10:35

Had a nice evening last night catching up with an old friend, Colleen. She always remembers my birthday and forgot to send a card this year so we went to Starbucks in the bookstore for a nice long natter.

Supposed to have that last gasp winter storm overnight tonight. Wonder if i can get away with planning a work from home day tomorrow? Chances are my coworker will as well if her son has no school. I should take the laptop home just in case the busses aren't running though they probably will be. It takes an awful lot of snow and whiteout conditions for our busses to stop.

Nine books finished since last time. One short one, one i'd been working on for awhile, reading it on my laptop now and then. Currently reading 1Q84, I appear to have all three "books" in the one ebook version. Should I count finishing each as a separate book or just wait until it's all done? Maybe I should since each "book" is about 300 or so pages. Delving into a Margaret Atwood as well.


15 Green Angel - Alice Hoffman
this is more of an allegory or fantasy. A teenage girl is suddenly orphaned after a disaster strikes a nearby city and her family is wiped out. We don't find out what happens, whether it's an attack though it seems to be. She then must survive the shock and grief. She closes in on herself, tattooing her entire body little by little and not speaking at all. Slowly, with the friendship of another loner that stays with her, she comes back to herself.

16. The Woman in the Fifth - Douglas Kennedy
Shows the seamy side of Paris. A university professor's life falls apart, due to the affair of his wife with his boss and his own affair with a student. He flees to Paris to write a novel but gets caught up in a shady group of people and has an encounter with a woman who's not what she seems. I liked it up until the twist and I thought that was a bit of a cop out with a very bleak ending.
http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/542242729

17. Gold Digger - Vicki Delany
A woman, a single mother, running a dance hall and casino during the gold rush in the Yukon. I get the feeling there were previous books about this woman who seems to have had an adventurous life living on the legal edge. A man is killed in her establishment. We backtrack a few days to the events leading up to it and then go forward as the Mounties investigate. She's the one that ultimately stumbles into the killer. Not a bad read.

18. The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst
Starts just before WWI at an English country home where the son has brought home a friend from Cambridge. The friend, Cecil, and the son, George appear to be lovers. Cecil also flirts with George's younger sister and writes her a poem that ultimately becomes very famous. Cecil dies in the war, a well known war poet. The next part takes place in the 1920s with a friend writing Cecil's biography and has come to the manor to gather anecdotes, papers and memories of Cecil from his friends and relatives. Cecil's younger brother has married George's sister and has inherited the title that would have been Cecil's. Cecil's real nature has been hidden and nobody's talking about it. Jump ahead to the 50s when we meet a bank clerk and a school teacher who both have connections to Cecil's family through his brother's descendants. The bank clerk eventually decides to write a more in depth biography of Cecil hoping to expose the old family secrets. Good story, well written.

19. Cranford - Elizabeth Gaskell
this is an older book, from the mid 19th century about live in a little English village in that time period. The story is told from the point of view of a friend who visits frequently. There has been a tv series made and I'd like to get hold of it.

20. Wish Come True - Eileen Gouge
The third of the Carson Springs books. This one is about the long suffering sister and employee of a movie star who has been confined to a wheelchair after an accident. She treats her sister like dirt and there is a lot of resentment on the sister's part yet she feels guilty for her part in the accident. She had suggested her sister do a photo shoot on a speedboat which then crashed causing the injury. The former star ends up dead in her swimming pool and her sister is accused of murdering her. It was obvious that the sister wouldn't hurt a fly and the twist at the end was more or less predictable.

21. The Lifeboat - Charlotte Rogan
39 people are stranded in a lifeboat after a ship explodes, just on the cusp of WWI. The story is told from the point of view of Grace, a newlywed, now a widow. There is a crew member who takes "command" vs an older dominant woman who challenges him for leadership and the rest make aliances. It ends up being a fight for survival, to the death. The story is told by Grace who is on trial for murder after they are rescued. Grace is more complicated than she lets on and we can see how she can manipulate situations for her own benefit. Pretty good book, I thought.

2013 books, friends

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