Yes Please by Amy Poehler

The only thing I took away from this book is:

Amy knits!

Ok, not really the only thing.... This is a book full of personal stories, funny bits and memories and some advice. I also took away that she loves Pema Chodron, as do I, and she seems to take her advice pretty seriously. Smart lady.

I'll admit to not really watching SNL while Amy was on and I've only caught a few episodes of Parks and Recreations. She seemed like an interesting person, as does Tina Fey (Bossypants), so I wanted to try out her book first. The same thing is happening now with Amy that happened with Tina: after reading the books, I want to watch their shows, their comedy, THEM. Thank goodness for Youtube and Netflix.

I don't have any great review of this book except it's a good one to read and just sit back and enjoy it!

Flesh and Blood by Patricia Cornwell

This is why I get Cornwell's books from the library and why I quit buying them. I am a sucker.

I'm sincerely disappointed in the Scarpetta series now. I spend more time angry at Lucy and Benton and Marino, people who shouldn't even exist in the Scarpetta sphere. They do nothing but keep secrets, be evasive and annoying.

I miss the Scarpetta of old, I miss the medical examiner, I miss the forensics.

This one started off with a decent plot, a decent mystery. Then it just fell apart by pulling in characters (who I still don't care about) from the past. There was no wrap up. There was, I guess, supposed to be a showdown that literally took 1 page and then *poof* we're in the future with no resolution.

*waving white flag*

I give up.

Can't We Talk About Something More Pleasant? by Roz Chast

I think this was my first graphic novel this year. Discovered through Books on the Nightstand, episode 300, I am SO happy my little library had this.

I always find it difficult to review graphic novels, so I will just say the graphic portion is well done.

Now the meat of this book and why I gave it 5 stars on Goodreads:

I cried. I cried like a kid. Chast presents to us a memoir of her parents end-of-life portion of aging and it was heartbreaking. They were the same age, met as kids and married. They had one child, Roz, and lived well into their 90s together, completely dependent on one another and liking it that way. The novel details their decline and their transition from Brooklyn apartment to nursing home.

It is truly a great novel to read and might not affect everyone the way it did me. Reading this brought back many memories of my dad's decline with Parkinson's Disease. His dementia (much like Roz's father - oh, I felt her pain) that led to falls and finally a nursing home. Virtually everything in her book was very familiar as my dad passed away only 5 years ago.

So I cried.

And it was cathartic.

A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

I picked this book from my first postal book club and ...

damn....

I don't think I realized what I was picking!

The first story, A Good Man is Hard to Find, seems simple enough. Family goes on vacation (road trip!) and grandma is nervous about a killer on the loose. The writing is amazing, every word drops into a perfect place, and the story tugged me along until it beat me over the head. Dark, I tell ya. I was surprised at what I read and had to stop.

And then I went back....

The River was another that surprised me at the darkness at the end. Was anything sacred here?

No, not really. I kept on reading: through the strangers encroaching on innocent people and turning their worlds upside down, through women trying to survive on their own with devils on their shoulders shouting at them, through religion being brought up over and over and causing me to wonder if these people would be better off without it.

Dark turns and twisted paths. And, frankly, it all mimics the real world. The Displaced Person actually sounded like it could have come from some members of my family (deceased and/or no longer in touch with). The real world is dark and twisted and O'Connor sums it up quite amazingly in this book.

Revival by Stephen King

I've been looking forward to King's 63rd (!) book and I wasn't disappointed. It was a truly good book that told a wonderfully good story. However.....


It didn't frighten or scare me as much as the hype led me to believe it would. I easily see where some folks will not be able to handle the ending but it was just a good story to me.  As King said in his interview on the Today Show "People with faith have a lot further to fall"

http://www.today.com/books/stephen-king-talks-about-god-afterlife-what-scares-him-1D80281763

I think the Terrible Sermon and the things that are said about faith and religion will be upsetting to some, but I'm on the leaning that no one, not even Stephen King, knows what will happen after death. No One. So why sweat it? Don't be an asshole here on earth and live your best life and where you end up is where you end up.

Pastor Jacobs wasn't content with this philosophy. After a terrible tragedy (written very much in King-style) befalls Jacobs, he changes. Jaime Morton is the young boy who knew Jacobs before the tragedy and keeps ending up crossing paths with him for the rest of his life. The crossings are not happy circumstances.

There are no monsters in this book. Once again, King has made the humans the monsters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/14/books/stephen-kings-revival.html?_r=0

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

I picked this up through Audible.com and loved the narrators. They really made the book, although the book itself was pretty fantastic too.

We are set in 1986 and are following 2 high school students, Eleanor and Park, over the course of a school year. If there was anything to bring back the horror and misery of high school, this is the book.

Eleanor is new to the school, is a misfit with bright red hair and outlandish clothes. Park is a punk Asian kid who listens to Fugazi and knows martial arts. It seems very typical high school until we delve deeper into their lives as they begin to fall in love (over comic books and mixed tapes!).

Park's family is relatively normal, but he still has doubts and misgivings being Asian in a predominantly white neighborhood and school. Eleanor lives with her mother, stepdad, and 4 siblings in a tiny house, doing her best to stay out of the evil stepdad's way (and yes, he truly is evil and I hated this man).

Listening to the book, I remembered the reasons I hated high school. But I was happy for Eleanor and Park because I did not have the booming first love that they experienced.

I don't want to give anything away because you should experience this without knowing anything up front.

Deadline by John Sandford

It's another Fuckin' Flowers book!!!!!!

If he wasn't just a character in a book, I would marry that man.

So Virgil is on a dognapping case, which actually upset me more than the people who were getting killed. Poor pups. Flowers is with his friend, Johnson Johnson, and trying to find the dogs that have been stolen before they are sold off to bunchers for medical laboratories.

But then....

They stumble on to a meth lab operation that means getting the DEA involved and putting the dognapping case on the back burner.

But then....

A body of a local newspaper writer shows up dead in a ditch, shot 3 times in the back


And then more bodies pile up, the school board is unraveling as Flowers gets closer and closer to their embezzlement scheme and, seriously, they have no issues with killing people who get in the way. I hope real life school boards aren't this blood thirsty and money hungry.

Without giving away anything, the action with all 3 cases ramps up to high gear and made me take a longer lunch than usual because I just couldn't stop reading.

I love that Flowers.