And of course, for those of you on Goodreads and Facebook, this is probably old news! But I love to hear about good books, so I'd like to share my recommendations too. You can see all of my comments and lists at goodreads.
My Favorites over the Last Month
Loved the writing, pace, and characters.
Goodreads description - After four harrowing years on the Western Front, Tom Sherbourne returns to Australia and takes a job as the lighthouse keeper on Janus Rock, nearly half a day’s journey from the coast. To this isolated island, where the supply boat comes once a season and shore leaves are granted every other year at best, Tom brings a young, bold, and loving wife, Isabel. Years later, after two miscarriages and one stillbirth, the grieving Isabel hears a baby’s cries on the wind. A boat has washed up onshore carrying a dead man and a living baby.
Recommended by friends whose opinions I trust, but I hadn't heard about this book anywhere else.
I couldn't put it down. Not at all what I was expecting. Young adult, but for much older teens or adults.
Goodreads description: When Jacqueline follows her longtime boyfriend to the college of his choice, the last thing she expects is a breakup two months into sophomore year. After two weeks in shock, she wakes up to her new reality: she's single, attending a state university instead of a music conservatory, ignored by her former circle of friends, and failing a class for the first time in her life.
This was such a great Young Adult series, for tweens and teens. I loved the world of the Gallagher Academy. Girl power, strong role models and friendships. A great series, and I enjoyed this final 6th book.
Goodreads description - Cammie Morgan has lost her father and her memory, but in the heart-pounding conclusion to the best-selling Gallagher Girls series, she finds her greatest mission yet.
I read all of Dan Brown's books, but some keep me far more engaged than others. This one I flew through, and I more than ever want to travel to Italy!
Goodreads description - In the heart of Italy, Harvard professor of symbology Robert Langdon is drawn into a harrowing world centered on one of history’s most enduring and mysterious literary masterpieces . . . Dante’s Inferno.
Others I'd Like to Recommend
Goodreads Description - Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart--he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season's first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone--but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. This little girl, who calls herself Faina, seems to be a child of the woods. She hunts with a red fox at her side, skims lightly across the snow, and somehow survives alone in the Alaskan wilderness. As Jack and Mabel struggle to understand this child who could have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, they come to love her as their own daughter. But in this beautiful, violent place things are rarely as they appear, and what they eventually learn about Faina will transform all of them.
Goodreads Description - Art history is more than just a collection of dates and foreign-sounding names, obscure movements and arcane isms. Every age, for the last 50,000 years has left its unique imprint on the world, and from the first cave paintings to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, from the Byzantine mosaics of the Hagia Sophia, to the graffiti-inspired paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat, art history tells the story of our evolving notions of who and what we are and our place in the universe.Whether you're an art enthusiast who'd like to know more about the history behind your favorite works and artists, or somebody who couldn't tell a Titian and a De Kooning--but would like to--"Art History For Dummies" is for you.
Goodreads Description - With unflagging suspense and pitch-perfect period detail, The Bone Garden deftly interweaves the thrilling narratives of its nineteenth- and twenty-first century protagonists, tracing the dark mystery at its heart across time and place to a finale as ingeniously conceived as it is shocking. Bold, bloody, and brilliant, this is Tess Gerritsen’s finest achievement to date.
These Were OK
Goodreads Description - Jane is a young New York woman who can never seem to find the right man-perhaps because of her secret obsession with Mr. Darcy, as played by Colin Firth in the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. When a wealthy relative bequeaths her a trip to an English resort catering to Austen-obsessed women, however, Jane's fantasies of meeting the perfect Regency-era gentleman suddenly become more real than she ever could have imagined.
*Didn't Finish*
Goodreads Description - When Charlotte Kinder treats herself to a two-week vacation at Austenland, she happily leaves behind her ex-husband and his delightful new wife, her ever-grateful children, and all the rest of her real life in America. She dons a bonnet and stays at a country manor house that provides an immersive Austen experience, complete with gentleman actors who cater to the guests' Austen fantasies.
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