Book 29 - Feast for Crows by George RR Martin

I finished this but am not going to do a full out review because, quite frankly, one can't be done without massive amounts of spoilers. All I can say is that you have to read these books. Totally the best fantasy books I have read since the "classics."

Book 28 - Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson

I have followed Jenny Lawson's blogforever it seems like so when I saw that she, like a few other bloggers recently, had written a book, I got it from the library to read at my leisure. I think that this book is kind of true in some ways but it's hard to tell because some of the stories that she tells are so odd that I can't imagine them truly happening to anyone (although some of the stories that I have are "quirky" and hard to believe but are true - like getting lost at the age of 5 at Macy's Turkey Day parade in Time Square in Manhattan and living to tell about it - but are most assuredly true, so who am I to judge right?). Anyways, Ms. Lawson aka her highness, the Bloggess, grew up in West Texas and most of the stories that she tells are about her time there and about her attempts to deal with some significant social anxiety.

About one third of the way through the book, I began to get bored bt that's when I met Victor, Jenny's husband, who entered an additional charm and humor to the book that was needed at that point, or the book would have risked dragging. Victor is portrayed as being tremendously sweet and just wonderful - which I'm sure that he is - and the interactions that Jenny describes in her book are hilarious in part because Victor has a pretty good sense of humor in dealing with the things that happen to Jenny (and she's pretty funny herself!). These things being said, I really enjoyed this book - but I wouldn't read it if you are easily offended by lots of things, get freaked out easily and don't like cursing or references to alcohol because this book is chock full of em. I generally liked it and would read it again in a heartbeat.

Book 27 - Skeletons at the Feast by Chris Bohjalian

I have been a fan of Chris Bohjalian's since I read Midwives back in the late 90's and I became even more of a fan when I learned that he, like me at certain points in my life, was living in a very rural community in Vermont. Skeletons at the Feast is his first foray into historical fiction, I think.

Bohjalian writes about the period right before the end of the Second World War. The Emmerich family are leaving their manor house as the Russians approach. The family is comprised of Anna, her mother, nicknamed Mutti, her father, Rolf, her twin brother Helmut, her younger brother Theo and the Scottish POW, Callum Finella, who has been working on the farm. Anna also has an older brother named Werner, that is referred to a lot, but whom we don't see because he is off at the front, fighting for the Third Reich. Rolf and Helmut eventually leave the family and the rest move on in an effort to escape the Russians. They eventually cross paths with a Jewish man named Uri Singer, who poses as either a Russian or a German, in order to escape persecution at the hands of either group.

I loved this book. I can't tell you how much I loved this book, because it is beyond words. I loved and appreciated it because it told a perspective that is somewhat different from what a lot of people think about when they think about WWII - the bombing of Pearl Harbor/Hiroshima and Nagasaki/the atrocities committed against thee Jews and gypsies by the Nazis. However, this novel reminded us that oftentimes average Germans were also targeted and victimized, although not as severely or as badly as other groups (they did have the benefit of being "Aryan" German). The characters in this novel lived in a very rural area and heard rumors of the awful things that their beloved Fuhrer committed against Jews and others but they never personally saw or participated in those awful events. They didn't even witness the mass evacuations of the concentration camps. In fact, when Mutti finds out pretty certainly what her beloved leader has been doing, she is so mortified and shamed, that I thought that she would kill herself.

This book was wonderful, easy to read and quite interesting.

Book 26 - Enlightened Sexism by Susan Douglas

I was trolling through the books that some of my Wellesley profs were reading because a lot of times, I find really interesting and well researched books and this was no exception. This book takes a look at how popular American culture puts forth, what I call, subtle sexism in the guise of female empowerment. In essence, Susan Douglas argues that society tells us that women have achieved equality, at least in the Western world and with regards to things like equal pay for equal work. She deftly takes apart pop culture and in doing so, demonstrates adeptly that sexism is alive and well, albeit in a more subtle form.

There were many persuasive arguments put forth and many interesting topics covered including The Spice Girls phenomenon and the rise of kick-butt female heroes, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I loved how accessible Douglas made this book - it's a book that everyone can read and is completely understandable based mostly on the fact that the examples that she used are things that we are familiar with simply because we live and operate in American culture. I can't wait until my children are old enough to read this book so that I can read it with both of them!

Book 25 - Population: 485 by Michael Perry

This is a memoir, so don't be fooled. It's definitely not a novel. It's Michael Perry's collection of memories about his time as a volunteer firefighter/EMT in a small country town in Wisconsin. And it's mostly about firefighting and EMT work and NOT about small town life necessarily. As background, Michael Perry left his small community to attend college, where he got a degree in nrsing. When he returned, he elected to become a volunteer firefighter/EMT in the community where he was born and raised. It gave him a way to re-connect with the community that he had left and also, gave him a way to learn about and reintroduce himself to his former neighbors. I think that he was under the impression that people believed that he wouldn't return after leaving for college and so, he thought that this disproved them.

What I particularly loved was how Mr. Perry introduced his readers to the colorful characters that all small towns inevitably have. For instance, we meet a man that everyone affectionately calls "The Beagle" - a heavy man that chews tobacco and who has been an EMT/Firefighter since before the world was created. His descriptions were colorful and he really transports the reader to Wisconsin and to the scenes at which he attends. That being said, this memoir seems to follow a bit of a formulaic pattern: Perry strives to be authentic bt at the same time, he strives really hard to convince the reader that he's an educated writer as well, so he'll drop really big, million dollar, "College" words in order to remind s that we're reading something by someone who isn't only a bumpkin from the middle of nowhere. However, if that's the only complaint that I have, then it really isn't a complaint. The stories were interesting and wonderful and worth reading. Please enjoy!

Book 24 - Chastened by Hephzibah Anderson

I was in the library, naturally, and saw this book. It looked intriguing so I picked it up and read the book flap. Essentially, Ms. Anderson (a Cambridge educated 30 something journalist) decided to write a memoir of her year abstaining from sex and trying to withstand the temptation to have sex. She has the oh so difficult task of withstanding the numerous lovers that seem to flock to her in trendy London and this, my friends, is the premise of this book.

The premise of the book was promising, I'll grant you that. But Anderson was a horrible writer. She wasn't funny and her prose was wandering. I didn't feel like the book was organized, although the chapters seem to suggest that it was, probably because the prose was so scattered and things didn't really seem to be connected all that well. She talks about a million things in the process of trying to tell you one and it takes her like 10 pages to do the simplest things, like buy clothing. For someone that practices writing as a profession and who has done much book reviewing, she isn't very good at it. Pass on this one.

Book 23 - Anatomy of Injustice by Richard Bonner

In early 1982, an elderly widow had been found brutally beaten to death in a small town in South Carolina. The woman was white. Nearly immediately, a man named Edward Lee Elmore - a black man that was illiterate and mildly mentally retarded - was arrested. Within 90 days of his arrest, he had been tried and sentenced to seat (CRAZY!!!). Within 11 years, however, Elmore had netted a young attorney named Diana Holt, a spitfire who was convinced that Elmore was innocent and was dead set on getting him a new trial.

I am not shocked at how difficult it was to unring the bell in a capital case - but that's because of what I do. I know that the courts are very cautious in their review of lower court cases and jury trials. So that aspect of the story didn't really surprise me at all. I thought that Richard Bonner had a way with words and a really nice way of telling the story, which made the entire thing fascinating. It was obvious that he had done his homework and his research and in doing so, was able to give us a very thorough and accessible account of Elmore's trial and the appeals process. This book is a must read because it is an educational primer about the criminal justice system, the death penalty and why it could all go so wrong.