Book: The Night watchman

 Book: The Night Watchman

Author: Louise Erdrich

Pages: 464

This is my 226th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Thomas Wazhashk is the night watchman at the jewel bearing plant, the first factory located near the Turtle Mountain Reservation in rural North Dakota.  He is also a Chippewa Council member who is trying to understand the consequences of a new "emancipation" bill on its way to the floor of the US Congress.  It is 1953 and he and the other council members know the bill isn't about reedom; Congress is fed up with Indians.  The bill is a "termination" that threatens the rights of Native Americans to their land and their very identity.  How can the government abandon treaties made in good faith with Native Americans "for as long as the grasses shall grow, and the rivers run"? Since graduatin high school, Pixie Paranteau has insisted that everyone call her Patrice.  Unlike most of the girls on the reservation, Patrice, the class valedictorian, has no desire to hear herself down with a husband and kids.  She makes jewel bearing at the plant, a job that barely pays her enough to suppoer her mother and brother.  Patrice's shameful alcoholic father returns home sporadically to terroize his wife and childre.  But Patrice needs every penny to follow her beloved older sister, Vera, who moved to Minneapolis.  Very may have disappeared, and is rumored to have had a baby.  Determined to find Vera and her child, Patrice makes a fateful trip to Minnesota that introduces her to exploitation and violence, and endangers her life.  Thomas and Patrice live in this impoverished reservation community along with young Chippewa boxer Wood Mountain and his mother Juggie Blue, her niece and Patrice's best friend Valentine, and Stack Barnes, a white high school math teacher who is in love with Patrice.  

This book is hard to review.  Overall I think the story was good.  But it takes a lot of concentration to follow this book.  It is all over the place as far as tying all of these characters and stories together.  I am not sure why the author just didn't tell the story of Thomas - who is based on her own grandfather.  There are a zillion characters.  A lot of minor characters have storylines.  Lots of rambling and loss of relevance made it just not an overall enjoyable read for me.  Trying to peace out what she was talking about took too much work.

Stars: 3

Book: Sheltering Rain

 Book: Sheltering Rain

Author: Jojo Moyes

Pages: 450

This is my 225th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Estranged from her mother since she ran away from her rural Irish home as a young woman, Kate swore a future oath that she'd always be a friend to her daughter, Sabine.  But history has a way or repeating itself, and Kate now faces an ever-widening chasm between herself and her daughter.  With Sabine about to make her own journey to Ireland to see the grandmother Kate abandoned, Kate is left wondering how they ever made it here, and what she can do to close the gap between them.  For Joy, seeing her granddaughter is a dream come true.  After the painful separation from Kate, she's looking forward to having time wiht Sabine.  Yet almost as soon as the young woman arrives, the lack of common ground between them deflates her enthusiasm.  And when SAbine's impetuous, inquisitive nature forces Joy to face long-buried secrets from her past, she realizes that perhaps it's time to finally heal old wounds.

This was not a good book.  I think I read that this was her first one, or one of her first, so I will give it a pass if that is the case.  I did not like any of the characters.  The three main women characters were the worst.  It isn't well written, and it was so up and down with love/hate that I just lost interest.  In the end I didn't care what happened to them and good thing because the ending wasn't good either.

Stars: 2

Book: We Are The Brennans

 Book: We Are The Brennans

Author: Tracey Lange

Pages: 288

This is my 224th read for the year

What Amazon says:

When 29 year old Sunday Brennan wakes up in a Los Angeles hospital, bruised and battered after a drunk driving accident she caused, she swallows her pride and goes home to her family in NY.  But it's not easy.  She deserted them all - and her high school sweetheart - five years before with little explanation, and they've got questions.  Sunday is determined to rebuild her life back on the east coast, even if it does mean tiptoeing around resentful brothers and an ex-fiance.  The longer she stays, however, the more she realizes they need her just as much as she needs them.  When a dangerous man from her past brings her family's pub business to the brink of financial ruin, the only way to protect them is to upend all their secrets - secrets that have damaged the family for generations and will threaten everything they know about their lives.  In the aftermath, the Brennan family is forced to confront painful mistakes - and ultimately find a way forward, together.

This book was okay.  The characters are fine - I really didn't like Sunday.  The story is a build toward a big secret she has, and in the end, they set it up to be much bigger than it was.  Don't get me wrong- it was terrible.  But it wasn't what I was expecting.  I also didn't like the ending.

Stars: 3

Book: Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark

 Book: Scary Stories to Tell In The Dark

Author: Alvin Schwartz

Pages: 368

This is my 223rd read for the year

This is a collection of short stories for grades 3-7.  The stories are short and of course, not scary for an adult, but I enjoyed the book all the same.  I heard a few that I heard as a child myself which was neat.  I read it for a reading challenge, and it was a quick read that I read in an afternoon.

Stars: 4

The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel

 The Eyre Affair: A Thursday Next Novel

Author: Jasper Fforde

Pages: 400

This is my 222nd read for the year

Amazon says:

Meet Thursday Next, "part Bridget Jones, part Nancy Drew, and part Dirty Harry", a literary detective without equal, fear, or boyfriend - and welcome to a surreal version of Great Britain, circa 1985, where time travel is routine, cloning is a reality, and literature is taken very, very seriously.  England is a virtual polic state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wadsworth poem, militant Baconians heckle performances of Hamlet, and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense.  All this is business as usual for Thursday, renowned Special Operative in literary detection, until someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature.  When Jane Eyre is plucked from the pages of Bronte's novel, Thursday must track down the villain and enter a novel herself to avert a heinous act of literary homicide.

This was a very intersting book.  It is not an easy read.  If you can buckle down and focus, it is a fun book.  There is humor in between the chase with a lot of funny named characters (Thursday Next is our main character) thrown in the mix.  This is a world where a criminal master mind that hold a world hostage through literature.  It is a very interesting read and while I don't think I will be continuing the series at this time due to the task it is to read it, I am glad I tried this one.

Stars: 4

Book: Revival

 Book: Revival

Author: Stephen King

Pages: 416

This is my 221st read for the year

What Amazon Says:

In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers.  Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister.  Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform the local church.  The men and boys are all a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend Jacobs - including Jamie's mother and beloed sister, Claire.  With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on a secret obsession.  When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious belief, and us banished from the shocked town.  Jamie has demons of his own.  Wed to his guitar from the age of thirteen, he plays in bands across the country, living the nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock an roll while fleeing from his family's horrific loss.  In his mid-thirties - addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate - Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with proound consequences for both men.  Thier  bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and Jamie dscovers that rivival has many meanings.

This book was okay.  I had a really hard time getting into it and staying interested in where the story was going.  It felt disconncted and it rambled.  It has a slow and steady start but the climax and ending fell flat for me.  The whole build up of the book was less than 20 pages in the end and I was left wanting more.

Stars: 2.5

Book: Zero Repeat Forever

 Book: Zero Repeat Forever

Author: GS Prendergast

Pages: 496

This is my 220th read for the year

Amazon says:

He has no voice or name, only a rank, Eighth.  He doesn't know the details of the mission, only the directives that hum in his mind.  Dart the humans.  Leave them where they fall.  His job is to protect his OFfside.  Let her do the shooting.  Until a human kills her.  Sixteen year old Raven is at summer camp when the terrifying armored Nahx invade.  Isolated in the wilderness, RAven and her fellow campuers can only stay put.  Await rescue.  Raven doesn't like feeling helpless, but what choice does she have?  Then a Nahx kills her boyfriend.  Thrown together in a violent, unfamiliar world, Eighth and Raven should feel only hate and fear.  But when Raven is injured, and Eighth deserts his unit, their survival comes to depend on trusting each other.

This was a pretty good book.  I found it on a search for a book challenge, and was pleasantly surprised with the story.  It is dystopian, so it gets extra points for that being my favorite genre.  But overall the writing was decent.  I liked Eighth a lot.  Raven?  Not so much.  Her charcater was all over the place.  I have a few teenagers and know their can be wild swings of emotion, but this seemed to be written to the extreme.  However - I did start to figure out where the story was going, but wasn't quite sure.  The author wasn't keeping the reader in the dark - it was slowly burning to a big reveal.  Which SORT of came at the end, but I think will be clarified in the second book.  I think I will check it out to see where it goes.

Stars: 3.5