A Book a Week

  Charles Dickens' favorite book that he wrote. I expected this book to be about a child, but it takes the reader through the title character's entire life. It is surprisingly humorous (I never realized that Charles Dickens was so funny!) and deeply touching.  One has to settle in and enjoy the meandering style of authors of a previous age, but if you do, you really get drawn meticulously into the story.  The ending (when I finally got to it) was deeply satisfying. There I was, sitting in bed in a hotel room (my husband was taking a shower) bawling as I read the last chapter, dabbing my eyes so I could read.  This is the kind of story that stays with you for a lifetime. 

 This book is an answer to the culture's messages of self-worship.

Finished September 29, 2022 I have developed an intolerance for writing that's stiff, obvious, lazy, woke, pandering, or self-conscious. It's not difficult for me to find a book I enjoy, but I don't run in to modern fiction that impresses me very often.  I think I've found a new favorite author.   I saw this book sitting on a towering table of books at Costco. At the time, our family was in a belt-tightening mode, and I wasn't going to shell out $25 for a novel, especially considering the state of novels nowadays. But I couldn't get the story line out of my mind, and eventually bought the 9-hour audiobook.  Centered around a blended family, the story unfolds as they bribe a couple of dudes in rural coastal Australia to allow them to spend a brief, under-the-radar visit to the family's small private island a short ferry-ride away. Things take a turn for the worse as the husband, a widower and newlywed with his second wife and two teen kids along for a ride, u...

Finished 9/25/2022 

 Finished September 24, 2022 This is a tech/adventure thriller along the lines of Jurassic World, but with more mind-bending time-travel plot twists. Some of the technological explanations about how the scientists figured out how to send someone back in time (and eventually bring them back) were over my head and I had to skim. But overall, an intriguing idea for a book and the story was well-told.  Six scientists (or actually five scientists and one venture capitalist) invent a machine that will deliver packages to consumers instantaneously. But it doesn't work. The packages go to a different time instead. So how to make the technology profitable? Use it in place of the death sentence. Send prisoners on death row back to the time of dinosaurs to fend for themselves and live out their days (however many they might have) in isolation, away from society.  The problem arises when one of the six scientists is murdered and another is accused of the murder. With his teenage daug...

 Finished September 22, 2022

 Finished September 8, 2022