Book: Nightmares and Dreamscapes

 Book: Nightmares and Dreamscapes

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 816

This is my 128th read for the year

This three volume collection of short stories all in one book.

There are too many stories in this book for me to write snippets.  I would say I enjoyed about 50% of the stories in this book.  About 20% I thought were pretty good.  And about 30% that were so-so. There are some really excellent ones that pull you in, even though they are short.  Then there are some that I just couldn't get into.  I have read a few of King's short stories novels, (and short storie novels in general) and this always seems to be the case for me.  His more current "Just After Sunset" volume of short stories was better, but this one is older. (written in 1992 I believe).  I listened to it and the cast he got to read the stories were star studed and that made it fun.

Stars: 3.5

Book: Apt Pupil

 Book: Apt Pupil

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 224

This is my 127th read for the year

This is the story of Todd Bowden and Mr. Dussander.  Todd knocks on Mr. Dussander's door one day and tells him he knows his secret.  Todd is an excellent student - an apt pupil - and wants to learn all he can about Mr. Dussander's past.  Mr. dussander wants to keep that buried but agrees to tell Todd about it.  As Todd becomes more and more ingrained in Dussander's life, his grades slip and he becomes seduced to evil ways.  In the end it might be hard for Todd to separate who he was with who he is becoming due to his releationship with Mr. Dussander.

This book was pretty good  It is quite short, so I finished it in 1 1/2 days.  It is well written, but bizaare.  Not that this should be shocking with a King book.  I liked the concept of the book. I didn't like Todd at all. I wish the ending would have wrapped up his story a bit more.  There are scenes of human and animal abuse - the human abuse made the most sense (due to Dussander's past) and needed to be told.  The animal abuse bothered me.  Just a warning.

Stars: 3.5

Book: Malorie

 Book: Malorie

Author: Josh Malerman

Pages: 296

This is my 126th read for the year

This is the story of Malorie.  Is starts 6 years after the world changed when creatures arrived.  If you look. these creatures will make you go mad and hurt yourself or others.  Malorie and her two children, Tom and Olympia, have been living at a School for the Blind in relative safely.  But when that ends, she and her children find themselves back out in the world looking for somewhere safe to call home.  10 years pass where Malorie, Tom and Olympia stay hidding on a campgrounds.  One day a man comes to the door and says he is doing a census to see who is still out there.  He leaves a copy at the camp, and Malorie discovers there are people alive that she must find.  She and her children decide to risk it all to find out if it is true.

This was a pretty good book.  It is a ast read, and a good follow up to Bird Box.  It starts right where the last book (and movie) left off.  I loved that it jumped 10 more years into the future and now Tom and Olympia are 16 years old.  The writing is decent, and I was interested where the story was going.  There is a bit of a twist in the end with Olympia, which was pretty neat.  Characters are well developed. Glad I read this one.  

Stars: 4

Book: Ressurection Walk

 Book: Ressurection Walk

Author: Michael Connelly

Pages: 416

This is my 125th read for the year

This is the story of Mickey Haller - an attorney known as the Lincoln Lawyer.  He is well known for taking longshot cases and winning.  His half brother, Harry Bosch, is a retired LAPD officer who helps him find the tough cases to defend.  He finds a woman who has been in prison for 5 years for killing her husband.  She says she is innocent.  Her husband was a sherriff's deputy.  The first lawyer got her what he believed was a good deal and she plead guilty.  Now she wants to prove her innocent.  Mickey agrees to take the case.  But defending someone who is convicted of killing a cop has its own problems.  The Haller-Bosch team are up against someone who will do anything to stop them from finding the truth.

This was an okay novel.  I really didn't like Mickey Haller.  He is a cocky lawyer who enjoyed grandstanding in the court room to the point of obnoxious.  It was overdone.  I have not read any of the other Lincoln Lawyer novels to know if this is typically how he is portrayed.  I did like Bosch.  I enjoyed the story line for the most part, just not the main character.  Writing overall is fine.

Stars: 3

Book: Booth

 Book: Booth

Author: Karen Joy Fowler

Pages: 496

This is my 124th read for the year

This is a historical fiction book about the Booth family in the early to mid 1800s.  The family of John Wilkes Booth - told in a partially fictionalized version of his family from before John was born through when he shoots Lincoln and a bit beyond.  The Booths were a theatrical family (at least the men) where the dad was a famous Shakesperean actor.  John and his brothers also became famous Shakespeare actors.  As the Booth children grow, change, (and some die), the authro weaves a story of how the ultimate tragedy changed their lives forever.

This was a great book.  It is well written and extremely thorough.  You can tell the author did her research (which she expressed more in the author's note at the end) to try and find out what she could about John's family.  I loved learning about all of his brothers and sisters and his parents.  The story is a long one - that is for sure.  I will say I think she could have shortened it about 150 pages and taken out some of the sections of fiction that didn't really lead anywhere.  But overall - I am so happy I read this one and encourage you to check it out.  You get drawn into the story of this family - one I knew nothing about except for John.  And the author is talented.

Stars: 4.5

Book: Angel Maker

 Book: Angel Maker

Author: Alex North

Pages: 336

This is my 123rd read for the year

Here is what Amazon has to say about this book:

Growing up in a beautiful house in the English countryside, Katie Shaw lived a charmed life.  At the cusp of graduation, she had big dreams, a devoted boyfriend, and a little brother she protected fiercely.  Until the day a violent strager changed the fate of her family forever.

Years later, still unable to live down the guilt surrounding what happened to her brother, Chris, and now with a child of her own to protect, Katie struggles to separate the real threats from the imagined.  Then she gets a phone call: Chris has gone missing and needs his big sister once more.

Meanwhile, Detectie Laurence Page is facing a particularly gruesome crime.  A distinguished professor of fate and free will has been brutally murdered just hours after firing his staff.  All the leads point back to two old cases: the gruesome attack on teenager Christopher Shaw, and the despicable crimes of a notorious serial killer who, legend had it, could see the future.

This was an okay book.  I do like Alex North - I have read his other two books, but this one wasn't as good as those in my opinion.  I liked the idea, and some of the characters.  And I did like the ending - how they wound what seemed like two separate stories together.  But the rest of the book seemed so disjointed that the ending didn't make up for the middle.  

Stars: 3

Book: Red At The Bone

 Book: Red At The Bone

Author: Jacqueline Woodson

Pages: 224

This is my 122nd read for the year

This is the story of a family.  The story opens in 2001 when Melody turns 16 and has her coming of age story.  As her mother, father, and grandparents share in the joy of this day, they recount in their own words what it was like when they found out that her parents were going to have her at the age of 15.  Each grandparent and parent take turns talking about that time in their life and how they each felt leading up to Melody being born and then shortly after.  The story travels even further back with this family tree - back to 1921 and weaves a story of one family memory by memory and even moving beyond Melody's party when tragedy strikes this family and how they will move forward.

I really enjoyed this book.  I listened to it during a long day of yard work and I got it all done in one day.  Each story is well told, and Melody's section is done by one of my favorite narrators for audiobooks - I was overjoyed to hear her voice.  The story has a nice flow, and as the puzzle pieces of Melody's family's past are woven together, you see the relationships of each member pulled in different directions but all leading back to one little girl.  Great read.

Stars: 4.5

Book: West With Giraffes

 Book: West With Giraffes

Author: Lynda Rutledge

Pages: 372

This is my 121st read for the year

This is the story of Woodrow.  In 1938 He is a young man that has been recruited to help get two giraffes across the country to the San Diego zoo.  Accompanied by an "old man" who is responsible for the delivering the giraffes to the first female zoo director, the two find a country in awe as they travel.  They draw crowds whereever they go, everyone wanting a peek of the two.  Followed by a woman who claims to be a photographer for Life Magazine and a dangerous circus master, they race against the clock to get the giraffes to safety before something happens to them.

This is an excellent book.  I have had it on my shelf for awhile and I finally got to it.  It is well written and a fast moving story of two men - both with pasts they would like to forget - taking a long and harrowing journey across the US.  The story is told in journal form from Woodrow who is now a 105 year old man at the end of his life - desperately wanting to get this story down into words before he dies.  There is good character development.  Woodrow and the old man are well developed and you root for them to finish their task before the circus steals the giraffes.  I like that there is back and forth between present and past.  There is a great epilogue where Woodrow's story unfolds and he is reconnected with the giraffes of his past.  Great book.

Stars: 5

Book: Arch-Conspirator

 Book: Arch-Conspirator

Author: Veronica Roth 

Pages: 110

This is my 120th read for the year

This is the story of a family inside the last city on earth.  Outside of this city, the world is a wasteland.  Rules are tight in this city and when someone dies their genes are stored in an Archive so that humanity can continue.  Antigone and her siblings have watched their parents die and now they are in the care of their uncle Kreon.  His is a militant who will kill anyone who rebels to make an example of them.  Antigone realizes that his house is a cage and she and her siblings will be forced to conform.  

This was a really quick book so I really couldn't get into it.  I picked it up at a used bookstore recognizing the author of the Divergent series.  It wasn't a bad book - it was just too short for me to 1) care about the characters), 2) really get invested in the story.  It ends on a cliff hanger which was maddening.  The writing is pretty good  - I personally just needed more.

I read the author's notes at the end and this was a spin off the original Antigone story written by Sophocles written in 400BC.  Maybe I need to read it?  Not sure if it would help but what the heck.

Stars: 3

Book: Gerald's Game

 Book: Gerald's Game

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 400

This is my 119th read for the year

This is the story of Jessie Burligame.  She and her husband Gerald are on a romantic getaway at their summer home.  Gerald handcuffs Jessie to the bed for one of his "games" but has a heart attack and dies before he can uncuff her.  Jessie is trapped with no way to get help.  Voices in her mind carry her through as she tries to figure out how she is going to getout of the house.  As she becomes more and more delirious, she recalls events from her past that are some of her worst memories.  She is sure that there is someone in the house - a threat - and if she doesn't get out soon, she is sure to meet the same fate as her husband.

This was not a top King read for me.  I have made it my mission to own and read all of his books, and for the most part I have been glad I have.  But this one just didn't sit right with me.  Trigger warning for those who want to read his books:  this one has a back story with her dad that borders on incest and brought up over and over in the book.  It was way too much of the story and cringe worthy (in my opinion).  I couldn't get past it and therefore did not really enjoy the book.

Stars: 2

Book: Salt In My Soul: An Unfinished Life

 Book: Salt In My Soul: An Unfinished Life

Author: Mallory Smith

Pages: 336

This is my 118th read for the year

This is the story of the author.  Diagnosed at 3 years old with Cystic Fibrosis, she knew her time would be short.  She was determined to make the best of it and at the age of 15 she started to record her thoughts and feelings in a private journal.  She left instructions that after she died, she wanted her thoughts to be shared to help others living with CF, other families, and also people in general who didn't know what it was really like to live with this disease.  Mallory was an excellent student who excelled at Standford.  When she graduated, she was helping a local environmentalist write a book.  All of this was inbetween constant hospitalizations and treatments and trying to keep her healthy.  When it finally was time for her to get a lung transplant, her family knew this was going to be the last ditch effort to save her life.  She had a dangerous bacteria that made this surgery dangerous, but it was her only hope.

Mallory died in 2017 at the age os 25.  In the end, the infection she carried infected her new lungs and she couldn't fight it.  Her family continues her legacy today hoping that Mallory's story will help others.

This was a pretty good book.  It is the running thoughts of Mallory from ages 15-25.  At the beginning of the book is her instructions she left her parents in sharing her story and she wanted to share the good and the bad (at the discretion of her parents).  They didn't know she was keeping this journal.  What she went through would make your head spin and wonder how this bright young lady ever had time for college and a job with eveything she was dealing with.  She had a loving and very supportive family.  She had a boyfriend.  She had friends and a life.  But in 2017, Cystic Fibrosis was still a life ending disease around the ages of 18-20 for many patients.  (now there is a treatment that is on new that is unbelievable and you can read more about it HERE)

I took care of a lot of CF patients during my nursing career.  Many during my time at Johns Hopkins.  You grow close to them and care for them because they are constantly hospitalized.  And when they die you mourn for them.  It is an unforgiving disease.  With the new therapies there is hope for these patients that can possibly save their lives.  Incredible.  

I encourage you to read this book.  There is also a documentary (you can watch for free on YouTube) called Salt In My Soul that was equally as good.  

Stars: 4

Book: Sociopath

 Book: Sociopath

Author: Patric Gagne

Pages: 368

This is my 117th read for the year

This is the story of the author.  Ever since she was a little girl, she made people uncomfortable.  She did not feel empathy, fear or guilt.  She would take things from people's houses or from friends because it made her feel better.  When her parents caught her, she did not feel bad about it, but did as she was told.  As she grew she realized how she felt wasn't like most people and she started to explore why.  It wasn't until she got to college that she realized she might be a sociopath.  Most sociopaths were criminals but she wondered about those who flew under the radar.  That didn't get caught.  Didn't kill anyone.  She started to do research all while trying to hold down a job in her dad's music business and balance a boyfriend.  She eventually got her Ph.D in psychology and wrote this book because she wanted to help other sociopaths.

This was a good book.  It was eye opening to hear from someone who was a sociopath but was trying to be an active member of society.  She has friendships, she is married now, and she has children.  She has found people who accept her, and she has learned how to live with her sociopathy rather than run from it.  She was frightening as a child and I worried that she was going to take a dangerous path as an adult.  And while she is destructive to a point, she also shows you how you can be sympathetic and compassionate to someone who struggles with Sociopathy.  

My one problem of this book is that parts of it seemed to stretch the truth.  As I imagine most people who write about themselves do - some things did seem unbelievable.  I think she mixed true story telling into her life story to fill the pages.  Otherwise - or if what she wrote was really true - it was a good read.

Stars: 4

Book: A Bridge Across The Ocean

  Book: A Bridge Across The Ocean

Author: Susan Meissner

Pages: 363

This is my 116th read for the year

This is the story of Annalise and Brette.  Separated by over 50 years, their stories merge in a very unusual way.  Annalise is a woman running from an abusive marriage right after the war in Europe.  She takes another passenger's spot on the Queen Mary to escape to America where she hopes she can start over.  50 years later, Brette - who can see ghosts even when she doesn't want anything to do with them - is called on by a friend to visit the Queen Mary.  Now a museum, a little girl of a high school friend thinks she saw her dead mother on the ship.  Unsettled the dad asks for Brette's help.  What happens when she gets to the Queen Mary is that she discover's Annalise's story and need to get to the bottom of what really happened as they crossed the Atlantic all those years ago.

This was a pretty good book.  I am a Meissner fan.  One of my favorite books ever is the Fall of Marigolds, but this one wasn't quite up to that standard.  It is well written for the most part - but I did not like the ending at all.  I liked Brette and Annalise.  There was a 3rd story that was part of this book (and does come together half way through the book) but it didn't make much sense at first.  Meissner usually does a really good job of tying her past and present together and the story is usually a terrific one.  But the ending of this one wasn't for me.  It was too fantastical and I didn't why she went this direction.

Stars: 3.5

Book: Cackle

 Book: Cackle

Author: Rachel Harrison

Pages: 304

This is my 115th read for the year

This is the story of Annie.  After almost 10 years with her boyfriend, he breaks up with her.  She decides to start over fresh and takes a teaching job in a small town outside of Manhattan. She meets a woman named Sophie whom she likes immediately.  Sophie takes a special interest in Annie and teaches her to stop apologize and start living for herself.  The towns people, though, seem afraid of Sophie.  She never pays for anything and they always give her what she wants.  Annie is trying to figure out who Sophie is while also trying to figure out who she is.

This book was fine.  I listened to it, and I really didn't care for the narrator.  Not sure that would have changed my feelings much about this simply written novel, but it might have.  It is an easy, quick read overall and not well written, but entertaining enough.  Annie was annoying and I never really cared for her.  I would think this was more YA than a thriller genre that it is listed as.  Not scary at all.

Stars: 3

Book: The Boy From The Woods

 Book: The Boy From The Woods:

Author: Harlen Coben

Pages: 416

This is our 114th read for the year

This is the story of Wilde.  30 years ago he was found in the woods - living feral with no memory of how he got there and where he was from.  After a lifetime of foster care, and armed services, he has moved himself back into the woods in a small trailer he can move anytime he wants.  He works closely with a lawyer named Hester, and she needs his help to find a missing teenager named Naomi.  Her father and the police think she has just run away.  Wilde feels differently, and he knows in order to find her he is going to have to question people in the community he tried so hard to stay away from.

This was an okay book.  This is my first Coben novel.  Writing is just so so.  The story is a quick, easy read - which is great for summer.  I was mildly curious about how it was going to end, but really never cared for many of the characters.  Wilde's back story remained just that.  I am not sure why this was the "Draw" to the book because it was barely discussed.  I thought it was going to be more about finding out who he was, or tying the current mystery to his past but nope.  And the ending was okay - not that shocking.  

Stars: 3

Book: Just After Sunset

 Book: Just After Sunset

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 555

This is my 113th read for the year

This is a book of short stories.  Here is what Amazon has to say about it:

Who but Stephen King would turn a Port-O-San into a slimy birth canal, or a roadside honky-tonk into a place for endless love?  A book salesman with a grievance might pick up a mute hitchhiker, not knowing the silent man in the passenger seat listens altogether too well.  Or an exercise routine on a stationary bicycle, begun to reduce bad cholesterol, might take its rider on a captivating and terrifying journey.  Set on a remote key in Florida, "The Gingerbread Girl" is a riveting tale featuring a young woman as vulnerable - and resourceful.  In "Ayana" a blind girl works a miracle with a kiss and a touch of her hand.  In one of the longer stories here "N" is a psychiatric patietn's irrational thinking might create an apocalyptic threat in the Maine countryside - or keep the world from falling victim to it.

This was a great book.  If you follow my blog at all, you will know I am not a big fan of books full of short stories.  I need some substance.  But this one was really good.  I loved almost every story.  None were terribly short, and I think that helped.  The stories reach out and grab you and ended well.  Glad I read this one.

Stars: 4.5

Book: The Waltham Murders

 Book: The Waltham Murders

Author: Susan Zalkind

Pages: 343

This is my 112th read for the year

This is a non-fiction book about 3 men that were killed on September 11, 2011 in Waltham, MA.  The author, who was friends with one of the men, spent the next 10 years trying to figure out what happened to her friend and the other men.  A story that barely made the news because the men were known weed sellers, Zalkind set out for closure.  When the Boston Marathon bombings happened a few years later, new leads came to light but still Zalkind did not find out who killed her friend.

This book was just so-so.  I was interested in it because we don't live far from Waltham and I have never heard for these murders.  We had just moved to the area late 2011, and so I had no idea this happened.  The book was a little dull.  There was a lot of side information and stories that just did not move the story along.  Too wordy even for a short book.

Skip

Stars: 2

 

Book: Just For The Summer

 Book: Just For The Summer

Author: Abby Jimenez

Pages: 424

This is my 111th read for the year

This is the story of Emma and Justin.  Justin writes a Reddit peace on how he is cursed in love.  Every woman he dates ends up leaving him and finding true love with the next guy she dates.  Emma reads his Reddit post and reaches out to him because she has the same problem.  Emma is a traveling nurse, and Justin convinces her to come to Minnesota to meet him in person and go on 4 dates to try and break their curse.  The quick fling just for the summer suddenly becomes anything but.  As Emma and Justin start to fall for each other, their current circumstances get in the way of them being truly happy.  

This was a pretty good book.  I don't read a lot of romance novels- they aren't my thing.  But in the summer, I tend to read a few because it feels like the right time of year for something light and fun.  This novel has a lot of ups and downs.  It is pretty well written, and I only rolled my eyes a few times.  I was almost sure that the author was not going to follow the usual romance novel path, and I appreciated that.  A little less Hallmark movie and actual story and good characters in this one.  Bravo. I really liked Justin. Emma ran a close second.  The twist at the end with Emma's mother wasn't something I really saw coming, and while it seemed a little too convenient to twist the story, it didn't bother me much.  

If you are a fan of beach reads and romance - check this one out.

Stars: 4

Book: Wild

 Book: Wild

Author: Cheryl Strayed

Pages: 338

This is my 110th read for the year

This is the story of the author's journey to find herself.  4 years after her mother died, with her marriage falling apart, Cheryl decides she is going to hike 1000 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail.  She has no hiking experience, but feels with her equipment and strong will, she can do it.  She heads out alone and this book covers her journey over several months and all the people she meets along the way.

This book was just meh.  I wanted to like it more.  I was intrigued by the story of a young woman who decided to hike this trail alone.  But Cheryl went woefully unpreprared.  She had no idea what she was doing and she is lucky she didn't get herself killed.  The back story throughout the book got tedious and overly done.  There was almost as much of her past as their was of her hike, and while I understand this was intentional, the back story dragged quite a bit.  We also hear way too much about her feet.  I wasn't a big fan of Cheryl either.  I felt for her - her mother died when she was only 22 and she had quite a tramatic childhood.  But she imploded as a young adult - got into some heavy drug use and cheating on her husband.  

I was hoping for more, but didn't get it.  Although - the last line of this book was actually a good one. 

"It was my life - like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

How wild it was, to let it be.”

Stars: 2.5

Book: Jurassic Park

 Book: Jurassic Park

Author: Michael Crichton

Pages: 466

This is my 109th read for the year

This is the story of dinosaurs brought back to life.  A wealthy man has figured it out and has decided to develop a theme park with newly created dinosaurs.  He invites two archeologists and a mathematician to Isla Nublar to see the park first hand before it opens to the public.  However, a greedy employee wants to smuggle dinosaur DNA off the island for a large sum and when he shuts down the power to the island, the dinosaurs are not longer behind electrified fenses.  The wealthy man's two grandchildren are also on the island to test the park, and when their lives and everyone's lives are in danger, the group must work together to get the power back on and leave the island.

This was a great book.  I have seen the movie a lot of times, but never actually read the book.  There were some differences from movie to book, but not a ton.  It is a well written book and a good read.  Crichton was a doctor, so there is research talk and medical jargon throughout the book, but it wasn't overly done.  I will be anxious to read the next one.  

Stars: 4.5