Book: Girl Factory

 Book: Girl Factory

Author: Karen Dietrich

Pages: 272

This is my 40th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

It's 1985 in a small factory town near Pittsburgh.  8 year old Karen's parents are lifelong workers at the Anchor Glass plant, where one Saturday, an employee goes on a shotting spree, killing four supervisors, them himself.  This event splits the young girl's life open, and like her mother, she begins to seek comfort in obsessive rituals and superstitions.  This memori chronicles the next 14 years as Karen moves through childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood.  It illuminates small-town factory life; explores a complicated mother-daughter bone; thoughtfully unfolds a smart, but insecure girl's coming of age; achingly recounts her attempts to use sex to fit in; and ultimately uncovers the buried secret from her childhood - a medical file with an unbearable report.  The book travels the intersections of memory and origin.  Karen'ts body remembers details her mind has tried to control.

I want to start this review with saying that I knew this author through my childhood..  I grew up with her and her older sister - she went to my same small elementary school, junior and senior high schoool, and was a good friend of my brother.  She changed the names of just about everyone but herself, but I knew the people she spoke of.  The teachers she mentions were ones I had an loved as well and was happy to see their names.  But Karen'ts childhood was a termoil one.  This book is not badly written, but it is choppy.  There are a lot of uncomfortable parts - for me - that were heavy on sex.  She did not have much good to say about her mother and the story was quite sad.  I picked up the book because in 1985 when the book takes place was the year our town had its one and only mass shooting where a gunman shot 4 people at Anchor Hocking Glass and then himself.  We knew one of the people very well - he has a good friend of our family.  I thought it was going to circle around that more because her parents worked there, but it was just a small part.  I am glad I read it, but I would not recommend it.

Stars: 3

Book: The Signal Moon

 Book: The Signal Moon

Author: Kate Quinn

Pages: 57

This is my 39th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Yorkshire, 1943.  Lily Baines, a bright young debutante increasingly ground down by an endless war, has traded in her white gloves for a set of headphones.  It's her job to intercept enemy naval communications and send them to Bletchley Park for decryption.  One night, she picks up a transmission that isn't code at all - it's a cry for help.  An American ship is taking heavy fire in the North Atlantic - but no one else has reported an attack, and the information relayed by the young US officer, Matt Jackson, seems all wrong.  The contact that Lily has me on the other end of the radio channel says it's 2023.  Across an eight-year gap, Lily and Matt must find a way to help each other:  Matt to convince her that the war she's fighting can still be won, and Lily to help him stave off the war to come.  As their connection grows stronger, they both know there's no telling when time will run out on their inexplicable link.

This was an okay book.  I like Kate Quinn, and I liked the idea of the book.  I think the short 50+ pages made it hard to put this level of story in place.  A "time travel" book in 50 pages?  It is hard to pull off.  The beginning was actually a little slow, but the ending was good.  It was a clever idea, and I liked the two main characters.  I would have liked to have had more.

Stars: 3.5

Book: The Collapsing Empire

 Book: The Collapsing Empire

Author: John Scalzi

Pages: 336

This is my 38th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

Our universe is ruled by physics.  Faster than light travel is impossible - until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars.  Riding The Flow, humaity spreads to innumerable other worlds.  Earth is forgotten.  A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others.  It's a hedge against interstellar war - and, for the empire's rulers, a system of control.  The Flow is eternal - but it's not static.  Just as a river changes course, The Flow changes as well.  In rare cases, entire worlds have been cut off from the rest of humanity.  When it's discovered that the entire Flor is moving, possibly separating all human world's from one another forever, three individuals - a scientist, a starship captain, and the emperox of the Interdependency - must race against time to discover what, it anything, can be salvaged from an interstellar empire on the brink of collapse.

This was a great book.  I am a Scalzi fan, no doubt, but I was worried this one might be too heavy on the Sci Fi.  It was not.  It was not a complicated read, had a cheeky character, and a clever story.  The characters are well developed, and the story flowed well.  I was kept on the edge of my seat once the main "problem" was brought to the front of the story, and read late into the night to see where it was going.  This is the first book of a trilogy, but I did feel that it wrapped up well.  Not a big cliff hanger that would make you feel like you would need to continue if you didn't want to.  Easily a stand alone for those who are looking for a good story, but not a contiuing one.

Stars: 4.5

Book: How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?

 Book: How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund?

Author: Anna Montague

Pages: 256

This is my 37th read for the year

This is what Amazon Says:

Most days, Magda is fine.  She has her routines.  She has her anxious therapy patients, who depend on her to cure their bad habits.  She has her longtime colleagues, whose playful bickering she mediates.  She's mourning the recent loss of her best friend, Sara, but has brokered a tentative truce with Sara's prickly widower as she helps him sort through the last of Sra's possessions.  She's fine.  But in going through Sara's old journal, Magda discovers her friend's last directive: plan for a roat trip they would take together in celebration of Magda's upcoming seventieth birthday.  So, with Sara's urn in tow, Magda decides to hit the road, crossing the country and encourntering a cast of memorable characters - including her sister, from whom she's been keeping secrets.  Along the way she stubmles upon a jazz funeral in New Orleans and a hilarious women's retreat meant to "unleash one's divine feminine energy in Texas, and meets a woman who challenges her conceptions of herself - and the hidden truths about her friendship with Sara.  As the trip shakes up her careful routines, Magda finally faces longings she locked away years ago and confronts questions about her sexualty and identity she thought she had long put to rest.  And as she soon learns, it's never too late to start your next journey.

This was a decent book.  I was hoping it was going to be more like "The True Story of Tanner and Louise", but it wasn't.  It is a thoughtful story about grief, but  was hoping for a little more humor.  It just fell a little flat for me.  Couldn't really get invested with most of the characters.

Stars: 3

Book: Babylonia

 Book: Babylonia

Author: Costanza Casati

Pages: 448

This is my 36th read for the year

What Amazon says:

Babylonia across the centuries has become the embodiment of lust, excess, and dissolute power that ruled Ancient Assyria.  In this world you had to kill to be king.  Or, in the case of Semiramis, an orphan raised on the outskirts of an empire:  Queen.  Nothing about Semiramis's upbringing could have foretold her legacy.  But when she meets a young representative of the new ASsyrian king, a prophecy unfolds before her, one that puts her in the center of a brutal wrld and in the hearts of two men - one who happens to be king.  Now a risen lady in a court of vipers, Semiramis becomes caught in the politics and viciousness of ancient Assyria.  Instead of bartering with fate, Semiramis trains in war and diplomacy.  And with each move, she rises in rank, embroiled in a game of power, desire, love, and betrayal, until she can ascend to the only position that will ever keep her safe. 

This was another excellent book from Casati.  It is well written and a well developed story.  Great character development.  Her books are not hard reads, but her story lines are captivating.  There are a lot of characters, and they all have complicated names, but it did not distract from the story.  I liked it ALMOST as well as Clytemnestra.  It is a close second.

Stars: 4.5

Book: Warm Bodies

 Book: Warm Bodies

Author: Isaac Marion

Pages: 256

This is my 35th read for the year

What Amazon Says:

"R" is a zombie.  He has no name, no memories, and no pulse, but he has dreams.  He is a little different from his fellow Dead.  Amongst the ruins of an abandoned city, R meets a girl.  Her name is Julie an she is the opposite of everything he knows - warm and bright and very much alive, she is a blast of colour in a dreary grey landscape.  For reasons he can't understand, R chooses to save Julie instead of eating her, and a tense yet strangely tender relationship begins.  This has never happened before.  It breaks the rules and defies logic, but R is no longer content with life in the grave.  He wants to breathe again, he wants to live and Julie wants to help him. But their grim rotting world won't be changed without a fight.

This was a pretty good book.  I have seen the movie a few times and really like it.  The book and the movie are pretty similar so no surprises here.  But it was decently written and the story flows well. I like R and Julie.  There is good character development there.  Story is sweet and this is a first book in the series, so it ends with a "Sort of" cliff hanger, but enough of a wrap up that you could stop here and be satisfied.

Stars: 4

Book: Brigadoon

 Book: Brigadoon

Author: Alan Jay Lerner

Pages: 56

This is my 34th read for the year

This is the musical - yes.  It is on the Rory Gilmore reading challenge, so I grabbed it to "read".  It is mostly the songs, but the story is in there too.  It is one of my favorite musicals, so it was fun.

Stars: 4