Persuasion by Jane Austen

I'm not a romantic type of person. I don't read romance novels, swooning and clutching my bosom and wishing for Prince Charming. Which is why I never really read Jane Austen. Life isn't a happily-ever-after and I don't enjoy reading that it is.

I gave Pride and Prejudice a try a year or so ago and it was ok. Austen IS a good writer and her characters do have some serious flaws, even the characters you are supposed to be rooting for/swooning over. While listening to a CraftLit podcast, the podcaster announced we'd be listening to Persuasion. Ugh, I almost passed them all by.

While there is swooning and happily-ever-after, Persuasion turned out to be incredibly good and interesting and, might I say, exciting. Persuasion was Austen's last novel, published after her death. The main character, Anne Elliot, is a girl from a desired family, wealth and all. But she isn't a horrid person. In fact, she is much maligned and ignored by her own father and sisters, unless they needed something from her. She spent a good deal of time in the shadows, being helpful and ignored.

She was persuaded by her stand-in mother, Lady Russell, to not marry a certain Mr. Wentworth because his status would bring hers down. Years later, when she is 27 years old, she meets up with the now Captain Wentworth and finds she is still in love.

Drama drama drama and happy ending. But still in all, an excellent story with a heroine who is kinda normal for the times.

The Universe in a Single Atom by His Holiness the Dalai Lama

I will admit it took me a long time to read this. Even though I'm a science geek, a lot of the concepts do go over my head. It doesn't make it less interesting, it just takes me longer to try and grasp the concept or just give up and move on.

HHDL takes some of the concepts of science and compares and contrasts them to Buddhist practices. If you are interested in either, then this is probably a good book for you. We're taken through the Big Bang vs the Buddhist beginningless universe, Quantum physics and relativity vs Buddhist emptiness, evolution vs karma, several chapters on sentient consciousness vs neurobiology and finally into genetics vs the entire human race.

In the concepts I did grasp and make notes on, HHDL makes excellent parallels between the scientific world and the spiritual world, something that the majority of religions maintain cannot happen. HHDL is all to happy to point out the similarities and encourage scientific progress, but with warnings of keeping the human compassion and ethics along for the ride.

HHDL has often said that every human on this earth is the same, and should all be treated with compassion. He was essentially proven right when the human genome was finally sequenced.

In his own way, he implores (nicely and gently) for society to get better educated about science so that we don't fear it and so that we do not cross a line. "We must be willing to be revolted when science - or for that matter any human activity - crosses the line of human decency, and we must fight to retain the sensitivity that is otherwise so easily eroded."

Stealing Buddha's Dinner by Bich Minh Nguyen

I picked this up through Bookmooch because it sounded interesting. Frankly, anything involving food is interesting to me. I read cookbooks for fun.

This is a memoir, an account of Nguyen's escape from Saigon to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her dad made the decision to flee, in order to allow his 2 daughters a future that didn't involve bombings and war. They ended up in Michigan with grandma Noi and eventually, a stepmother Rosa and step sister Crissy. This is Nguyen's story - told through the lens of the 80's and the food of 3 cultures: her Vietnamese heritage kept alive by her grandma, her desire to be fully American and eat at McDonalds, and her stepmothers Mexican heritage, complete with tamales and sopa.

The 80's were an embarrassing decade, I know, I grew up in it. And I got a little secondhand embarrassment from reading this book. If only because I pretty much did the same things and tried to wear the neon and poof my hair up to the sky as well.

Nguyen was shy and "not pretty" so she kept to books. I related well, my best books were the Little House books and the descriptions of food from Ingalls kept me entranced as much as it did Nguyen.

Nguyen reconciles her childhood, understanding now all of the things that she couldn't grasp back then, like most people do when they grow up. It's a fairly quick read but satisfying...like McDonalds.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

As an audiobook, this was extremely well read by Stephen Briggs. Kept me entertained while knitting. Good Omens is about the Anti-Christ, good vs evil and prophet witches.

Aziraphale and Crowley are 2 angels on earth who quite like humanity and all our screwed-upness. Aziraphale is the angel on God's side, while Crowley is the angel on Satan's side. In the thousands of years of working side by side, they've grown fond of each other. So when it is time for the end of the world, neither of them are happy and make a plan to help avert it.

The child who is thought to be the Anti-Christ isn't, thanks to a mix up at the hospital. The real AC is having a grand time growing up with a normal English family and normal friends.

Things kick into gear when the Four Horsemen (War, Famine, Pollution - Pestilence retired due to the invention of penicillin - and Death) start the end of times. Everyone is on the hunt for the AC, to either stop the Apocalypse or to help it along.

Entertaining fantasy by Gaiman and Pratchett.

Full Dark, No Stars by Stephen King

In the Afterword, King admits that these 4 short stories are harsh and hard to read. Telling us that up front probably would discourage readers from even trying this book. Short stories are where King shines. This book is no exception.

What's noticeable in this book is the lack of the supernatural. No ghosts, aliens, scary creatures that you can only imagine. What we have here is the pure evilness of the human person. And, frankly, that's even scarier than anything supernatural. King delves deep into the black hearts of people, showing how they live normally among us but do deeds we can't imagine.

We have 4 mostly longish shortish stories. We start off with 1922, a story about a farmer, his child and his wife. The wife inherits land from her father and wants to sell it off while the husband wants to try and farm it. What ends up happening is on par with Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.

Next we have Big Driver which was just a horrifying read. An author goes to a book reading and signing at a non-descript library and ends up on a shortcut that was just... horrific. That's the only adjective I can come up with for this story.

Along comes Fair Extension which did have a little help from the devil, but really, the human in this story didn't need the help. He just needed a reason.

Lastly, A Good Marriage shows us that decades of living with, loving and being friends with someone doesn't mean you know the person or the gruesome hobbies they indulge in.

Eek. I think the vampires, werewolves and bogeymen are less scary than people now.

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

Audiobooks make it so darn easy to do other things and still get to read books you have in your "to-read" pile.

Wicked Lovely is a fairy book, and while I normally avoid fairy books, I was curious about this series. This is the story of Aislinn, who is a teenager with the sight to see the fairies around us. It was passed from her Grams to her mother to her. Apparently, fairies are little bastards who get angry if mortals see them, so Aislinn has to keep her sight a secret, even when the fairies are harassing mortals for fun. She is in love with her best friend, Seth, but is being stalked ("courted") by Keenan, the Summer King. He is convinced she is the Summer Queen, and will not take No for an answer.

Supernatural folk are horribly pushy. That might be the main pet peeve of mine with fantasy books. In the real world, this would be harassment and a crime to browbeat a girl into dating you (especially when you threaten to kill her boyfriend). But I guess it all is fair in fantasy land.

I was happier with the outcome, because Aislinn and Seth are two mortals who don't get shoved around. Looking forward to the next book.

Life by Keith Richards

Seeing as how I grew up in the 80s, where synthesized crap was king, I'm jealous of those that grew up in the time of good music. The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Chuck Berry, etc. Of the Stones, Mick has always scared me. The man is just a fright to look at. But Keith fascinated me. He's put voice to dictation (I don't believe he actually *wrote* this book) and is letting us in on his life.

Quite honestly, I don't know how much is true. He swears it all is, and it probably is, but the amount of Zorro-type moments he puts himself in seem....over the top. But I suppose if you carry a big knife around on a regular basis you will have more Zorro moments than the average citizen. Being strung out on drugs and quick to anger probably helps too.

Keith's book was a rough road to follow. I'm sure he didn't even read some of it, what with one page contradicting the very next page. But it was an entertaining path anyways. He has taken the life of a rock star and blazed a path for others to follow. He takes us through his childhood, his beginnings with the Stones, arrests, drugs, and surprisingly only 2 women that he had kids with and pretty long term relationships with. Several times in the book he promises to tell us more about events and stories but fails to do so.

He clears up the rumors of snorting his dad's ashes, climbing trees for coconuts and his drug habits (he had them, just not all the drugs that people said he took).

Maybe there will be a sequel so he can tell us more stories. He is a mighty fun storyteller.