The Marriage Spell by Mary Jo Putney
This book was so bad that I’m on my third time reading it….or listening to it as the case may be. I love romance novels. Who doesn’t? They’re adult fairy tales. I picked this one up years ago and gave it a listen and couldn’t stop. I dragged my CD players around with me, not to find out how it ended, because come on, it’s a romance novel, but because it was so unintentionally funny that I didn’t want to miss a bit of it.
The story takes place in regency era England and concerns a woman with healing powers named Abby who is in love from afar with Jack Langdon. He is injured in a hunting accident and nearly dies before she performs a “healing circle” with other people of wizardly powers and heals him. Her price for this is marriage. The added piece to this is that Jack also has powers and he hates wizards. As the story unfolds predictably Jack learns to accept Abby and her powers and his as well as he battles (I LOVE THIS PART) his evil stepfather.
The dialogue is ridiculous and the plot twists are enhanced with Abby using her powers to heal everybody in sight. Enhancing this mix are the vocals by Simon Prebble who puts an overwrought emphasis on such literary masterpieces as “I’m going to make love to you until all your bodily energy is restored”. I can’t even type that line without giggling.
I heartily recommend this book to anyone who finds bad dialogue and an overwrought reading style funny or who just loves grown up fairy tales. This book may be checked out in the audio book section of the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.
Never Shower in a Thunderstorm: Suprising facts and misleading myths about our health and the world we live in by Anahad O’Connor
Raise your hands if you have heard any of the following: Don’t swim until 45 minutes after you eat, soda causes cancer and yawning is contagious. The truthfulness behind that and many other rumors is explored in this book.
O’Connor uses careful research and clever writing to determine that you shouldn’t shower during a thunderstorm, soda does not cause cancer, and you can go swimming right after you eat a meal. As for yawning, it really depends if you are a Democrat or not. Really. I can’t make this one up!
This is an entertaining and light read, excellent for car trips. I read bits of this aloud during a car ride to my husband and son to the delight and entertainment of us all. I highly recommend it.
As for not reading a library book in the sauna: it makes the glue in the binding melt and the book will fall apart. Please don’t do it.
This book is available for checkout at The Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.
While it is no surprise to you, dear reader that I love romance novels, my taste usually runs to the paranormal. I was stuck under the hairdryer….again and picked up this book. I was glad that I did.
Virgin River tells the story of Melina Monroe, a forty-something nurse who takes an assignment in a small town, called strangely enough, Virgin River and through a series of medical adventures becomes the town’s nurse and midwife and falls in love. OK, the plot is rather predictable.
This is what I like about the book, and what has drawn me to read the next five sequels: the characters are realistic. The heroine is not some Barbie-doll ish twenty year old, but a woman in her early forties with a brain and real personality. The townspeople are quirky and likeable and I cared about them. Many of the supporting characters are featured in later books and you find Melinda and her hero in the later books as well.
I recommended this book and the sequels to a library patron. She took the first one out with some trepidation and came back a few days later and took out the rest of them, saying that she would like to live in Virgin River.
Some days so would I. I wonder if they have an opening for a librarian, and a hunky ex-marine for me.
I highly recommend these books. All of the Virgin River books are available to be checked out at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.
Anne Frank Remembered by Miep Gies
Miep Gies died this week. She was 100 years old.
That name probably means nothing to the majority of the people reading this book review. It wouldn’t to me if I hadn’t been forced to read The Diary of Anne Frank in high school. To be totally truthful, the diary isn’t that exciting. Most of the pages are taken up with teenage angst and it serves more to put a face on the six million who lost their lives during the holocaust than to excite the reader. Anne does mention, quite often, a woman named Miep Gies who worked in her father’s company and did the shopping for the family in hiding. She is a peripheral character cast half in the shadow of Anne’s writing and personality.
This is true no longer. Miep Gies wrote and published a biography some years ago. It tells the story from her point of view, the struggles she went through to protect the Franks and the price she paid to do it. The book is well written and interesting and shows clearly the type of person it takes to keep secrets like this and save or try to save families. Miep repeats over and over that she only did what was right and what other people did. It stands to reason then that if Anne is the face of the victims of the Holocaust, Miep is the face of the millions of people who risked their lives to save or try to save the victims of the Holocaust.
It is said that all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Miep, and the other unknown heroes of the Holocaust are proof that there are good people willing to do something.
Anne Frank Remembered is available for check out at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.
Carrie by Stephen King
I recently listened to the audiobook version of this book as I am wont to do as I drive to and from work. I had read this book before, several years ago and remembered some of it so I picked it from the library shelves on an impulse. I’m glad I did. King’s book is a masterpiece and it rightly plucked him from obscurity and put him on the best sellers list. I could go on and on about the writing (excellent), his use of an almost epistolary style (very cool) and his use of foreshadowing (clever), or for that much, the wonderful job Sissy Spacek does of reading the story. But that’s not what I want to write about.
Carrie, for those who have never read the book or seen the movie, is a teenage girl who is the scapegoat of the school and of the town where she lives. She is abused by everyone from her mother on up, she also has telekinetic powers. On prom night she is pushed too far and uses her powers on the town.
What strikes me about this book is how timeless it is. It was written more than 30 years ago, and with a few minor, non-related updates it could be taking place today. Children still bully each other, and while schools try their best to stop it, it continues to happen. As a child, I experienced it and as a teacher, I see it. When I was a child, I remember wishing there was something I could do about it. I would have loved to have Carrie’s powers then, and I’m sure I would have shared her fate. I can certainly identify with her and whenever I read the book, or listen to it, I find myself wishing that the final humiliation at prom night never happened and she could have lived happily ever after, but it is not to be.
This book is wonderful and should be required reading for anyone who has been bullied, or who has bullied someone….or someone who would just like a glimpse into that world. I highly recommend it. It is available in paperback or audiobook form at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.