This Is Where We Live by Janelle Brown

Okay, I can't believe how good this book is! I thought it would be a fluffy, girly-girl chick lit book with little substance. A book I could cruise through when I felt like it. Wrong. I ended up reading a chapter here and there throughout the day, every day, to see what Claudia and Jeremy would do next. It was that good.

This Is Where We Live is a timely look at today's crap economy, including the job market and real estate bust, how some people feel entitled and their reactions when things don't go the way they'd planned. And the author spins a good tale of life in Los Angeles, among the fruits and nuts that would personally drive me crazy if I ever tried to live there.

I have Brown's other book, All We Ever Wanted Was Everything, on reserve at the library. Yay! That should take me through the weekend. Get busy, girl, and write some more.

Book Read:  This Is Where We Live
Author:  Janelle Brown
ISBN:  978-0-385-52403-2

The House on Salt Hay Road by Carin Clevidence

The House on Salt Hay Road is a novel about the lives of an extended, makeshift family living on Long Island. Nothing much happens, but normal family stuff, which is to say nothing is normal to all families, so things happen indeed.

I love this kind of book because of the nitty gritty details that unfold about the individual family members. From outward appearances, most of the time nothing special happens but when we get to see what they're thinking and wanting, their worlds are pretty interesting after all.

This novel is set in the late 1930s and just their existence is sometimes hard work, not to mention their inner obstacles. The ending brings more action than anyone could have wished for.

Book Read:  The House on Salt Hay Road
Author:  Carin Clevidence
ISBN:  978-0-374-17314-2

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

Wow! I hadn't heard of this book when I picked it up at the Phoenix Library last week but I'm glad I brought it home. I almost didn't because it wouldn't check out at the self-service area where you have to check out books. I took it to the counter and a librarian checked it out for me. I'm so glad. This is probably the best nonfiction book I've read in years. 

The cover of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot reads:

"Doctors took her cells without asking. Those cells never died. They launched a medical revolution and a multimillion-dollar industry. More than twenty years later, her children found out. Their lives would never be the same."

This book tells the story of a poor Black woman in the 1950s who had cervical cancer, went to Johns Hopkins for treatment, and died at the age of 30. She left behind five children and the HeLa cell. At the time, cells were taken from all patients and Henrietta's cancer cells lived and multiplied unlike any other cells before. The name HeLa was given to the cells by the doctors and scientists taking the first two letters from the patients' names. In this case, He from Henrietta and La from Lacks to make HeLa.

The story of Henrietta's children and her cells are intertwined, making for a fascinating tale. The author spent 10 years researching and writing the story after hearing the name Henrietta Lacks in a science class in high school and being unable to learn anything about the woman whose cells have contributed so much to the science and medical worlds.

You've benefited from HeLa cells. We all have. Her cells have provided cells for scientific researchers to test drugs, vaccines, and much more. Read it. I think you'll like it.

Book Read:  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Author:  Rebecca Skloot
ISBN:  978-1-40000-5217-2

Private Life by Jane Smiley

What a nice surprise I got at the library last week. I saw a new book by Jane Smiley! Private Life is the story of a woman born in 1880s Missouri and her life up till World War II. Like all of her other novels, which I've read except The Greenlanders, Smiley wrote another winner with Private Life. I liked this one in particular but felt total pity for Margaret. She finally realized that everyone thought her husband was a FOOL, affirming her hidden feelings. Whew.

If you've never read any of Jane Smiley's books, I'd say pick one, any one. Do not tarry.

And today when I went to volunteer at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic, I saw My Name is Memory on the bookshelf. How cool! I'd just finished reading it in real life then got to record a few chapters today.

Book Read:  Private Life
Author:  Jane Smiley
ISBN:  978-1-40000-40600-5

My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares

My Name Is Memory by Ann Brashares. This is the first of Brashares' books I've read. She also wrote those traveling pants books and The Last Summer (of You and Me).

Well, this was a different book. The premise is unlike anything I've ever read. Daniel is a soul that remembers all of his past lives from 1,200 years ago. He can't remember when his birthday is (which one?) and pines after Sophia/Lucy, a girl/woman he loves and has loved through the ages. In this case, forever.

This book was totally unique in the premise but so unbelievable that I have mixed feelings about it. Toward the end, I found some of the fantasy elements a little too tricky. But then again, I tend to lean toward the boring, matter of fact novels that could really happen.

Book Read:  My Name Is Memory
Author:  Ann Brashares
ISBN:  978-1-594478-758-3

Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

I borrowed this book, Housekeeping, from my son. He has quite the library of an assortment of books, both fiction and nonfiction. Some books he's read, some he hasn't yet. I've read other books by Marilynne Robinson and the last one I'd read, Gilead, was long and a little like slogging through thick mud in sandals. But I'd seen the movie of the book Housekeeping. The book was published in 1980. And the movie was wonderful. And turns out so is the book.

When I was finishing this book, my mind was on a friend from high school who died this week from cancer. It was shocking. She has a little boy and had been sick more than a year but no updates were posted online for a few weeks so it was a surprise. Not a good one. And then last night as I was finishing this book, I read this passage that made me think even more of Claudia:

"There is little to remember of anyone--an anecdote, a conversation at table. But every memory is turned over and over again, every word, however chance, written in the heart in the hope that memory will fulfill itself, and become flesh, and that the wanderers will find a way home, and the perished, whose lack we always feel, will step through the door finally and stroke our hair with dreaming habitual fondness, not having meant to keep us waiting long."

It was a fitting tribute to losing a friend. A friend I only kept in contact with online and through a few cards I'd sent to her while she was in the hospital, but a friend who was always herself. Always happy, with a smile and laugh that was unmistakable. Farewell, Claudia.

Split Image, A Jesse Stone Novel by Robert B. Parker

I'm a big fan of the Jesse Stone movies on television. You know the ones--Stone Cold, Sea Change, Death in Paradise--with Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone, the chief of police of Paradise, Massachusetts. Or maybe you don't. 

But I don't miss these movies. The spare language delivered so well by Tom Selleck, his mostly gloomy demeanor, his face! Any way, I'd never read any of the Jesse Stone novels, and there are 8 others.

In fact, I'd never read any of Robert B. Parker's books. He wrote the Spenser novels that Spenser for Hire was based on and the Sunny Randall novels, the western Appaloosa that the 2008 movie was based on. He was prolific. And as I usually do, I looked up Parker online. I thought he'd died recently. Yep, in January of this year of a heart attack. Darn. But he left more than 50 books and since I've only read this one, I have some catching up to do.

I liked Parker's writing style. It didn't get in the way of the story, but sometimes his writing is abrupt. Very abrupt. Like the last sentence in this almost flowery paragraph, flowery for him, any way:

After lunch they walked back to the station, where Sunny had parked. It was late summer, and cooler than it usually was in August. The sky seemed clean and fresh, and the air was soft. The houses of the old town were built intimately next to each other and to the street. There were a lot of people walking around.

Book Read:  Split Image
Author:  Robert B. Parker
ISBN:  978-0-399-15623-6