Extra Book: Empty Mansions

Book: Empty Mansions
Author: Bill Dedman
Pages: 496

This is my 123rd read for the year

There is going to be a review for a few "off challenge" books in a row.  We were recently on vacation and I decided to take along a few books I have been wanting to read.  This book was recommended to me by a family friend.  The Clark family originated from Connellsville and that is where I grew up.  It is always amazing to me to see our little corner of the world in a book.

This is the true story of Huguette Clark and her family.  The Clark family made their millions on copper in the late 1800s.  Huguette was the youngest child of W.A. Clark.  She was born in 1906 and lived until the age of 104.   Even thought Hugette had several houses all over the country, and over 300 million dollars to her name, she spent the last 20 years of her life living in a small, hospital room at a local hospital in New York City.  Even though she was healthy, she refused to move back to her sprawling New York City apartment.

The book covers the years from when W.A. Clark was a child, through how he made his money, his two wives and his many children.  W.A. Clark was on par with the Rockafellars and Carnegies in terms of wealth and eventually built a 121 room house in NYC.  The family owned valuable paintings from famous artist, several stradavarius violins, and countless priceless items.  

Huguette spent a large part of her life living as a recluse, yet being generous with giving her money away.  She gave away large amounts to her favorite nurse and people close to her.  She gave her most expensive Violin away (priced at 6 million dollars) to someone she knew who wanted to start a string quartet.  The amount of money she had in liquid cash, not to mention in real estate and valuables, was mind blowing.

I really enjoyed this book.  I had a hard time putting it down to do other things.  I became invested in the story.  The book is well written, and well told.  Huguette lived through so many things - the sinking of the Titanic (which she and her family were supposed to be on once it reached the United States), two World Wars, 9/11.....just an incredibly long life.  And one where she was clear and generous until the end.

I did feel like she was taken advantage of, especially by her nurse and her family, her lawyers, and even the hospital administrators.  Huguette had interest that many would consider immature - or even concerning - late into her life.  For example - she collected dolls, and doll houses.  Spending 100s or 1000s of dollars on them over the course of her life.  For those of us who cannot ever fathom seeing that much money in our lifetime, it is hard to understand spending it on things we might consider frivolous.

I encourge you to read this book.  It was really wonderful and I am so glad our friends introduced it to me.

Stars:  4 1/2

Extra Book: The Art of Racing In The Rain

Book: The Art of Racing in the Rain
Author: Garth Stein
Pages: 321

This is my 122nd read for the year

I listened to this book.  It was very short, and I finished it while I ran a few errands

This story is told from the point of Enzo the dog.  His owner, Denny Swift is a race car driver who is working to make it big.  Enzo is there through Denny's ups and downs with life, marriage, death, legal issues, custody battles, and finally making the biggest decision of his life.  The book shows what it is like from a dog's perspective - to watch someone they care about from the sidelines and never really be able to intervene like they want to.  

This was a pretty good book.  Told from the point of view of the dog, it made me wonder what our own dog is thinking as he watches our lives unfold.  How what we do or what happens to us effects him.  It is a sad story, but the ending pulled it together for me.  It is predictable on a lot of levels, but it didn't take away from me enjoying the book.  I am glad I read it.  I think I will check out the movie.

Stars: 3 1/2

Read The World - Qatar - The Glass Palace Illusions of Freedom and Democracy in Qatar

Book: The Glass Palace Illusions of Freedom and Democracy in Qatar
Author: Nasser M. Beydoun
Pages: 248
Book takes place in the country: YES
Author is from the country: NO (but he lived there)
I have visited: NO

This is my 121st read for the year

This is the author's personal story of his time in Qatar.  He went to Qatar for a job and ended up being detained.  His company accused him of stealing and would not let him leave the country until he paid a large fine or admit to wrong doing.

He spent several years, and a lot of money fighting the charges until he was finally released.  This books talks about his trials and also a back story of Qatar's work-sponsorship program.

This was a very short book and it was okay.  It was a lot of talk about his troubles in Qatar and meeting with lawyers and all his effort to get out of the country.  I would have liked to have learned a little more about Qatar inter mingled with his trials would have made it a better read, in my opinion.  Overall, I learned a lot about Qatar that I didn't know before.  And I feel for this author - he had to spend several years away from his family because of what happened to him.

Stars: 3

Read The World - Turks and Caicos - Water And Light

Book: Water and Light
Author: Stephen Harrigan
Pages: 287
Book takes places in the country: YES
Author is from the country: NO (but he was there for awhile)
I have visited: NO

This is my 120th read for the year

I have surpased last year's reading total for 118 books by the end of September (my blogging is a bit behind when I am actually finishing the books).  Pretty good!  I am hoping to make 150 books by Christmas - I think I can do it.  Sometimes with the holidays my reading slows down, so we shall see.

This is the story of the author's time in Turks and Caicos.  He went there for a deep sea diving expedition and had a chance to really explore the Caribbean waters.  He talks in depth about all of the creatures he saw, the people he met on the island, and of the importance of protecting the wildlife of the sea.  

I liked this book more than I thought.  I was worried it was going to be mostly about details of scuba diving, and it was a bit, but it was written well.  It is interesting in the fact that it talks about the history of scuba diving and the scuba gear that was invented so that people could explore underwater at greater depths.  This book was written in 1992, and I know that scuba gear has even progressed further since then and allow divers to go deeper still.

He talked a lot about the island and the people, and the wildlife that lives there.  He shared a lot of interesting personal anecdote that kept the story alive and moving.  His love for diving and the ocean is apparent in his story telling, and I am glad I found this book.

Stars: 4

Read The World - Mongolia - Genghis Khan

Book: Genghis Khan
Author: Conn Iggulden
Pages: 403
Book takes place in the country: YES
Author is from the country: NO
I have visited: NO

This is my 119th read for the year

This is the story of Temujin - who became Genghis Khan.  The story starts when Temujin is just a boy.  He and his brothers lose their father, and the boys are left in charge of their mother and sister and getting them to safety.  Temujin and his family endured, and Temujin vows to get his revenge against the people who killed his father.  

Over time, Temujin unites many tribes and starts to build his empire.  His iron will and his ability in battle makes him a legendary khan.

I really liked this book.  I was worried that it was going to be dull or at the very least - dry.  But it wasn't.  It was well written, and very interesting.  It is historical fiction, but the author does a good job at the end of the book letting the reader know what is known from research throughout his book.

I am so glad I found this one.  I understand that this is a 5 book series, so I hope after my challenge is finished, that I can tackle a few more in this series.  It was a truly great book.

Stars: 4 

Extra Book: The Bride Test

Book: The Bride Test
Author: Helen Hoang
Pages: 320

This is my 118th read for the year.

This is the story of Esme Tran, and her opportunity to come to the United States.  A woman approaches her while she is cleaning the hotel and after a small interview, the woman asks Esme to come to the US and becomes the wife of her son, Khai.  There is a large sum of money and a job in it for Esme - both what she desparately needs to help support her young daughter, so she agrees.

Khai - an emotionless man who had no intentions of ever getting married, suddendly finds himself face to face with a girl he knows nothing about.  His mother insists that Esme lives with him for the summer and he helps her get adjusted to America.  His mother is sure that Khai will fall for Esme and they will get married before summer's end.

As the summer moves on - Khai and Esme find an easy relationship with each other.  Khai finds himself opening up and Esme finds herself falling for Khai.  But the summer is quickly coming to an end, and she isn't sure that it is enough to allow her to stay in the United States.

This book is silly.  It was entertaining - the perfect audiobook for running errands or exercising, or doing chores around the house.  It is light and an easy read.  But this is not good literature.  The characters weren't endearing or easy to like.  It moved at a good clip in the beginning of the book, but then it just dragged.  It is like a romantic comedy movie where you KNOW what is going to happen, so just get to it already.  The author just seemed to be filling the last 1/4 of the book with suspense just to make the book longer.  

There is also a lot of sex obsessed talk in this book, so be forwarned.  It was unnecessary.  It was too 50 shades of grey for this type of book (which I am assuming is more of a romantic/love story book).  

The book is cheesy, the characters obnoxious, and the pace slow.  Just pass on this book.  Maybe I wil try her other one (Which people seem to like much better), but after this - I just don't know.

Stars: 2

Six Books - One Post

Someone I follow on Instagram, posted a series of 6 books called "Forward".  They are 6 short stories written by some well known authors, and available on Amazon Kindle Unlimited for Free.

If you have Kindle Unlimited, you should check them out HERE

The stories are between 30-60 pages long - just little novellas, so I thought I would review them all in one post.  They only took me between 30-60 minutes each to read.

How to count these?  I guess you still count them as books read - even when they are short.  So they would be my 112th-117h reads for the year.

Here are the books.  I will just do a short review, but I will not put a synopsis with each one.  Instead I will link to the Amazon page where you can read about it yourself.

Synopsis: HERE

I am a Vernoica Roth fan.  Her Divergent series books were pretty good.  Especially considering she wrote them when she was 24 years old.  

The Ark wasn't my favorite of the bunch.  The ending was unfinished.  I liked the idea of the book, but was hoping for me (even in a Novella).  I never got really invested in the characters.  It could be that I read it first.  Maybe if I would have started with another and got the "Feel" for this collection I would have felt differently.  Not sure.

Stars: 3

Synopsis: HERE

This was one of the best ones of the group.  I am not familiar with this author, but this short story was good.  Makes me want to read more about him.  I wasn't sure where it was going in the beginning, but it was well written, and had a nice wrap up ending.  

Stars: 4

Synopsis: HERE

I have actually just finished a book by Blake Crouch (Recursion).  I have also read Dark Matter and The Wayward Pines series by this author.  

Another great one - this book.  He is a brilliant sci-fi writer, so no surprises here.  Even in 75 pages, he managed to cram quite the story.  You get invested in the characters, and the ending has a twist.

Stars: 4

Synopsis: HERE

This is the author of "A Gentleman in Moscow" - one of my favorite books I read last year.

I would say this was the best of the bunch.  Well - it was the best of the bunch until the ending.  But none of them had good endings, so I am going to judge it on everything else.  I liked this story the best.  It really drew me in and I was anxious to see where it was going.  But - like all of these - it left me wanting more.

Stars: 4 1/2

Synopsis: HERE

This is an author I do not know.  I looked up what she has written, and I haven't read any of them.

This one was just okay.  SUPER short at 33 pages, not really feeling anything about it.  It was writen in a very confusing, continuous thought kind of way, and I just couldn't get into it.

Stars: 2 1/2

Synopsis: HERE

I love Any Weir.  He is probably my favorite author in this group (maybe a tie with Blake Crouch).  Andy is the author of The Martian - one of my favorite novels of all time.

This book is also extremely short, so I don't know if I can judge it appropriately.  It is a smart concept, and I could have used more to make a better review.  It does have pretty good character development, and it is smartly written.  I just wish there was more.

Stars: 3 1/2

The whole series was a great idea (Blake Crouch and a few others thought of it), and I hope they try it again. Or expand on these stories.  I think it was a neat idea that should be explored by more authors.