Another reading list update

Mrs. Fyton's Country Life. Mavis Cheek. Starts off yucky, only gets worse. The story of a lady who find herself 20 years into marriage when her husband up and leaves her for a younger woman. So she leaves her selfish teenagers with him, his new wife and baby and heads to the country to start a new life. It's a bit depressing but at least you think you know where this book is going and how she is going to get her happy ending. Then you think, well maybe the author is going to go in this other direction that is a little on the morally sketchy side but might possible work, but then no, she goes in an even worse direction and you want to chuck the book out the window. Plus, the side characters are a bit confusing and she's a little too subtle in her implications sometimes which meant poor naive me was completely confused and feeling like she didn't get the inside joke at times. Don't read this.

An accomplished women. Jude Morgan. I loved the characters in this book. I also loved how I didn't really know how this book was going to end until the last chapter. But, unlike the book above, I was okay with that because I had faith in Morgan. She would not end the story with the heroine main character being the weekend mistress to her ex-husband while his new wife pretends to ignore the situation because she doesn't want to be a single mother. (Oops, I guess I revealed the ending :-) well, if you even felt remotely curious to read it, I hope you don't now.)

And only to deceive. Tasha Alexander. Found through Amazon's "Customer's who bought this also bought..." when looking at the Deanne Raybourn books I mentioned last time. I've had those things recommend some really odd products to me in the past but this time it actually made sense since this is another victorian mystery with a bit of romance. It has all the great characters and mystery elements of the Lady Julia Grey Series without the few things that bothered me about those books so of course, I really enjoyed it. If I had to choose, my first allegiance would still be to Julia over Emily but luckily, I don't have to choose between them and can love them all.

A Poisoned Season. Tasha Alexander. The sequel to the above. I'm still a fan and I'm excited to read more of those but I have to wait as they are all currently check out.

Summertime. Raffaella Barker. A British woman struggles to keep her life and children under control when her live-in boyfriend who has been managing everything moves to the amazon. This was amusing but weird. I enjoyed reading it but I'm not really sure why. I think I might have liked it even more if I had first hand experience with out of control but lovable children and the general struggles of motherhood but maybe not. Do mothers like to escape real life by reading books about other mother's crazy lives? I don't know.

1000 days in Venice. Marlene de Blasi. Autobiography of de Blasi's whirlwind romance and marriage to a Venician she met on her travels. (Is that really not how you spell Venician, Blogger is telling me I'm wrong but it is not offering any good alternatives so I think I'll ignore it.) In theory, I don't believe in love at first site and think moving across the world to marry an almost complete stranger is a bad idea but in practice, I knew I was going to marry Craig the second day I knew him. We still did things the old fashioned way (i.e. dating, engagement and wedding occurring over a span of time) and I'm glad we did but part of me likes reading about someone who took the risk. Perhaps that is because I know it's her real life story so she did get as much of the happily ever after that anyone ever does, but perhaps it is because I know I would have done the same if I had to in order to keep him. Plus, she is a chef so she talks a lot about food. I love books that talk about food.

Murder on Astor place. Victoria Thompson. I'm on a bit of a historical murder mystery kick if you haven't noticed. This one was average. Not the best but I'll probably try the next in the series anyway. The heroine is a intelligent and brazen midwife. I love intelligent and brazen mystery solvers and midwives so how can I not appreciate that combination?

Friendship Cake. Lynn Hinton. A lesbian, an african american women and a female minister walk into a church basement. No, it's not a joke but the actually storyline of a women's church club trying to stay afloat by putting together a cookbook. I could tell it really wanted to be a charming sweet story of friendship in the South filled with loveable characters (i.e. the Mitford Series). Instead it was cliche filled and confusing because she switched from around from 5 different first person viewpoints without really explaining who was talking ( I figured out later is was whoever wrote the recipes preceding the chapter but it was not obvious). Then I got to the second half of the book and she switched to third person and I just gave up which was probable a good thing since when I looked it up on amazon.com to find the author (I had already taken it back to the library) the reviews said it was good to start out with but ended badly. Since I didn't think it started well, I don't even want to imagine the ending.

Inkheart. Cornelius Funke. I saw a preview for this movie and thought it looked interesting and then when perusing Karen's book reviews I remember being intrigued so I actually put effort into getting it. I agree that is interesting. It was almost really good, it just needed something but I'm not sure what. How is that for an insightful review? I actually just now saw that it is part of a trilogy, maybe that makes me feel better about the ending less than perfectly wrapped up which is almost always how I want my books to end. It also made we wish I remembered more of what I was supposed to learn in those years and years of German so I could read it in the original language.

Don't Throw It Out. Lori Baird. Non-fiction about reusing and repairing things you own. It had a surprising amount of new information but was geared more towards people who own their own home and all the appliances that come with it which alas, is not us. But it did tell me how to unwarp my rotary cutting mat. I'll be trying it out and if it works, I bet you'll be seeing it in an upcoming WFMW.

How the pro-choice movement saved America: freedom politics, and the war on sex. Cristina Page. This book that was "supposed to be" about abortion but was really about birth control got its own post.