The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion is the follow up to The Rosie Project. Don Tillman, the Australian geneticist, with Asperger’s syndrome, now living in New York with his wife Rosie, finds out she is pregnant. As he approached the problem of trying to get Rosie to marry him, he now approaches the problem of how to become a good father, very scientifically and with slightly odd methods that land him in trouble with the law. Both books are laugh…
Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran is a thin novel set in a small town in Ireland where three Persian sisters open a cafe. Each chapter starts with a different recipe. The book is mildly interesting and the recipes pleasing, but it is over before the characters are developed enough to really care about any of them. An entertaining, yet forgettable read. It did give me a craving for pomegranates.
The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo is a novel set in 19th century Malaysia, about a Chinese family whose daughter is supposed to marry a recently deceased man. Although not common, this was practiced by some Chinese families at that time. What follows is a fabulous exploration of Chinese myth, folklore, superstition, and intrigue, as the reader is taken on a journey into the afterlife where a parallel world exists and young Li Lan tries to find her way in…
Light of the Moon by Luanne Rice is a very romantic novel set in the French Camargue. Full of white horses, saints, gypsies, full moons, ancient cave paintings, love at first sight and more, the novel is full of mystery and romance as only Rice can write it. Susannah Connolly is on a journey to France that she promised her late mother she would make. Little did she know it would change her life. There she meets Grey Dempsey, his…
The Toss of a Lemon by Padma Viswanathan is a family saga tracing four generations of a Southern Indian Brahmin family during the first half of the 20th century. The family is headed by Sivakami, married at ten, widowed at eighteen, and left alone with two small children. She sticks to her conservative Brahmin customs throughout her life, even as her own son and the world around her begin to change and shift away from the caste system. A fascinating,…
Peanut Butter and Naan, Stories of an American Mom in the Far East by Jennifer Hillman-Magnuson, is a memoir of one family’s journey to India for 6 months while the Dad was transferred there for work. I should have put this book down as soon as I read the title, since when is India considered the Far East? Being an American that has spent a lot of time in India, I really wanted to like this book, I hoped it…
Turn Right at Machu Picchu, Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time, by Mark Adams is an interesting and funny travelogue written by an adventure magazine writer who finally gets out from behind his desk and onto the trail. He retraces the steps of Hiram Bingham, who has the claim of being the “scientific” discoverer of Machu Picchu. I enjoyed reading about Adams’ Ausrtalian trail guide, John Leivers, who brings to mind Crocodile Dundee, as well as all…
What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty, is a novel about a 39 year old woman, Alice, who falls at the gym and bumps her head, wakes up with a concussion and no memory of the last ten years of her life; she believes she is 29 years old and pregnant with her first child. She soon finds out that she has three children, she is getting divorced, and is estranged from her sister and her neighbor and has no idea…
The Bolter, The Story of Idina Sackville, who ran away to become the chief seductress of Kenya’s scandalous “Happy Valley set,” by Frances Osborne is a book written by “The Bolter’s” great-grandaughter. Osborne never knew the story growing up, as her mother told her ” you dont want to be known as the Bolter’s gandaughter.” Lady Idina Sackville, with little black dog Satan by her side, cigarette in hand, and wearing only the most fashionable clothes, created quite a stir…
Saving the World by Julia Alvarez is historical fiction based on the voyage made by Dr. Francisco Balmis at the turn of the 19th century to bring the small pox vaccine from Spain to the New World. Twenty-two young orphan boys were brought on the journey to be live carriers of the vaccine, accompanied by one woman, Isabel, who was their rectoress. Alvarez weaves a present day story in with this account, of a writer named Alma, whose husband goes to…