My Favourite Wife by Tony Parsons

p203 `What if the problem was not trying to meet someONE great but, that you would meet a LOT of great people?  What if the problem was not finding someONE worthy of love, but meeting an ENDLESS number of people who were worthy of love?
What then?  Blueprint for a happy life? Or recipe for disaster?'

I never expected to like the book or maybe I would but only a little bit; but I was wrong.  In a good way!

This is a story about a friendship between a lonely foreign family man and a neglected mistress which you could guess turn to something more.  He wasn't looking for an affair.  Is it love? Pity? Compassion?  I believe its every expat wives nightmare ...

This is my first novel by Tony Parsons and I'm happy to say its going to be the first of many.  The book engaged me almost immediately which was a welcome alternative.

'You hate everyones corruption except your own'

ps/ finish reading on Jan 21, 2012

Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

I thought I have read Harlan Coben's book before.  But after looking through my read booklist apparently I have not.  Hmm .. wonder why did I think I have read one before. 

Anyways, my first thought of this book was cliche'.  Some dialogues or plots were just too obvious for me.  I'm not sure what I was expecting.  Perhaps a complicated investigation story?  Maybe it was due to my recent read title which force me to fully concentrate that I'm expecting the same for this one.

Tia and Mike Baye never imagined they'd become the type of overprotective parents who spy on their kids. But their sixteen-year-old son Adam has been unusually distant lately and after the suicide of his classmate Spencer Hill - they can't help but worry. They install a sophisticated spy program on Adam's computer, and within days they are jolted by a message from an unknown correspondent addressed to their son - 'Just stay quiet and all safe.'

Meanwhile, browsing through an online memorial for Spencer put together by his classmates, Betsy Hill (mother) is struck by a photo that appears to have been taken on the night of her son's death and he wasn't alone. She thinks it is Adam Baye standing just outside the camera's range; but when Adam goes missing, his parents and Spencer's mom expect the worse. 

When Adam confessed to Betsy that he and Spencer (Betsy's dead son) were fighting over a girl, I kept wondering ... which girl?
But on pp 349-350 I suddenly thought ~ maybe it was not over a girl? but a boy perhaps?

The book implied that we (normal people) like to assume or deduct our judgement from our obvious surrounding - especially in the case of the police enforcement in this story.  But didn't Sherlock Holmes did the same? Or maybe not.

The book was read somewhere in Jan 2012.  It was an okay read for me.  I guess maybe I was expecting more (... usually that's the problem).

ps/so it wasn't about a boy after all ...

The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson

This is the second book from Stieg Larsson's dark trilogy.  Continuation of Lisbeth Salander's aka the Wasp saga in her web hacking world.  To say I love the book is an understatement.  Lisbeth gives new dimension to common female protagonist in novels.  She is so complicated, brilliant and weird which is so REFRESHING.

I did struggle with the first book The Girl with the Golden Tattoo but not The Girl who Played with Fire.  Maybe because I already mentally prepared to tackle the foreign Swedish character names which is lesser in this second book compared to the first one.

p482 Lisbeth Salander can turn into Terminator Mode ~ I like this

p506 `I can feel that she's close ... wait a minute, I'll check my telepathic power ' said Cilla Noren, lead singer of the group Evil Fingers ~ she's hilarious.

p545 onwards ~Miriam Wu was kidnapped by the giant man - I cant read.  Have to stop.  My heart was racing. Too scary.

p602 As Bjock revealed to Mikail Blomkvist who Zola is ... I have a feeling perhaps ... he is .. (I'm not gonna spoil it for you ;)

p624 YES! I was right (for the above guess)

p633 `Daddyyy, I'm coming to get youuu' - payback time

I find the book very fast pace and enjoyed it immensely. Third book ... here I come

Lady's Maid by Margaret Forster

I read the book about 17 months ago.  Yup you read me right.  So I'm gonna skip my usual excuse of why I'm not updating frequent enough etc etc and straight to the book.  

Lily Wilson arrives in London in 1844 and become a lady’s maid to the fragile, housebound Elizabeth Barrett. Lily is quickly drawn to her mistress’s childish curiosity and intelligence, her poetry and her deep emotional need. It is a strange intimacy that will last sixteen years.

From page 169, how accurate the writer observed and wrote about matters of the heart especially on woman's indecisive feelings towards a man who fancy her but she feels entitle to a better candidate (yeah, sometimes we feel that way); not allowing to trust herself to be totally in-like or in love with a guy. And in the guy's absence, finding it very hard to phantom the lost or empty feelings we experienced. The usual what is wrong with me question.

Back to the book - it is Lily who smuggles Miss Barrett out of the gloomy house, witnesses her secret wedding to Robert Browning and flees together with them to Italy. 

I must confess that I'm not familiar with neither poets Elizabeth Barrett nor Robert Browning.  However I'm familiar with this quote:

'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways' 

Little that I know it was penned by Elizabeth Barrett.  So now you and I (well maybe its just me) know *smile*

'Mrs Browning refused to acknowledge that she is carrying a child' (pregnant).

I wonder is it because she doesn't want the baby or is it because she's not ready to become a mother (especially the way she likes to be mothered for) or is she afraid of the delivery process since she is always so sickly and fragile.  Anyways, as a result of not being careful with herself, she had a miscarriage at 5 months.

At pp 230, the book described the foetus ~ 'a liver like' appearance.  Remind me of my own experience.

As housekeeper, nursemaid, companion and confidante, Lily is with Elizabeth in every crisis–birth, bereavement, travel & literary triumph. As her devotion turns almost to obsession, Lily forgets her own fleeting loneliness. But when Lily’s own affairs take a dramatic turn, she comes to expect the loyalty from Elizabeth that she herself has always given.

This was not a fast read for me.  Sometimes I'm irritated with Mrs Browning but most often than not my irritation turned to the protagonist Wilson ~ the lady's maid.  To me, she's never fully appreciative of her life or the adventures that she had  with the Brownings.  But she is taught to be ambitious by her employer - is she not?  And the Brownings can be too much too especially when Wilson is denied a pay raise even after a long faithful service without any raise.

I don't completely enjoyed the book but I don't totally dislike it either.  The book marks my last read for the year 2011.

ps/ I was browsing thru E.B.B other  poems and found this one on books.  I can't resist sharing it here.

Books, books, books! 
I had found the secret of a garret-room 
Piled high with cases in my father's name; 
Piled high, packed large,—where, creeping in and out 
Among the giant fossils of my past, 
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs 
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there 
At this or that box, pulling through the gap, 
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy, 
The first book first. And how I felt it beat 
Under my pillow, in the morning's dark, 
An hour before the sun would let me read! 
My books! ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Body Surfing by Anita Shreve

I read this book in Oct 2011.  It has been sometime so here I'm sharing Goodreads summary of the story.

Sydney has already been once divorced and once widowed. Trying to regain her footing, she has answered an ad to tutor the teenage daughter of a well-to-do couple as they spend summer in their oceanfront New Hampshire cottage. But when the Edwards's two grown sons, Ben and Jeff, arrive at the beach house, Sydney finds herself caught up in a destructive web of old tensions and bitter divisions. As the brothers vie for her affections, the fragile existence Sydney has rebuilt is threatened. 

I read Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve before but wasn't impressed by it.  I wondered why it appeared on Oprah's Book Club.  Then I saw this title at my favorite discount bookstore and thought I gave the author another try and bought it.  At pp 48 the story has yet to get me engaged.  Fortunately I wrote too soon.  Take back my words.  It turned out that I enjoyed this book after the initial 48 pages.  Much better than the Pilot's Wife.   Shreve weaves a story about marriage, family, and the courage it takes to love.  

The good experience from this read lead me to another Shreve's novel which now already added into my to read list.  When to read is a different story.

Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

At page 4, a thought crept subcontiously into my mind - I think I'm gonna like this book which I believe is a good sign to both reader's and book.

Arlene has spent the last ten years of her life in Chicago as she tries to forget the events that led up to her departure of her childhood home in Possett, Alabama.  She has changed her life around as she no longer will sleep with any man that walks through the door and has received a great education that will give her a stable future.  So far she has kept her promise and so does God.  Things are about to change for Arlene when her African-American boyfriend Burr is ready to take their relationship to a new level.  He has raised the ultimatum: introduce him to her family or consider him gone. Arlene loves him dearly but knows her lily white (not to mention deeply racist) Southern Baptist family will not understand her relationship.  As she and Burr embark on the long-avoided road trip back home, Arlene digs through guilt and deception, her patched-together alibi begins to unravel and she discovers how far she will go for love and a chance at redemption.

Although Arlene cited many examples of how ruthless her Aunt Flo is but I have a feeling that she's exaggerating it until I reached pp160-161 where Aunt Flo 'wiped clean' traces of Arlene from her shared room with Clarice (Arlene's cousin).  As if she never existed.

But come to think of it, what happened to Wayne's (Clarice's brother) dog and their neighbor's hen as a result of Aunt Flo's rage were equally horrifying too.

This book is full of sassy humor and family dark secrets were revealed one by one.  I enjoyed the book and it was a fast read.

I'm going to leave you with this line I got from the book 'If you keep the truth to yourself, it becomes a lie to everyone else'.  Hmm, think about it.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

If you come to me in company with a purple lion, a green elephant and a scarlet unicorn astride which was the King of England in his Royal Robes, I do believe that it is you and you alone that people would stare at, dismissing the others as minor irrelevances - p113

Picture that.  Seriously!  Somehow the paragraph got me laughing out loud.

It's post - Halloween (by 10 days or so) and I'm posting an entry which fits the occasion though late.  I guess by now it's not a surprise if I were to say that the book was read in early September LAST YEAR.  I haven't been updating my reads for the longest time.  So I'm now depending on my scribbles on the small multicolored (in this occasion they are in bright orange) notepads to remind me of the story.  What I've got so far apart from the paragraph above is that story is about a boy (named Bod short for NoBODy Owen) who was raised by ghosts in the cemetery.  As a toddler, he found his adopted ghost parents & guardians (or was it the ghosts found him?) when he escaped murder in his own house which killed his parents.

There are many interesting ghostly characters in the story.  Many whom initially appear to be scary but actually are good hearted.  But few are soulless downright scary) too.  And how sometimes the real (outside the graveyard compound) world is more dangerous for a growing up boy.  Particularly when there's someone or something out there wants to kill you when you are still a baby.  In many fantasy children's book there's always a character or two (whether willingly or not) that kinda look after the young protagonist and in this story its Silas (like Dumbledore or Hagrid in looking out for Harry Porter).  So Silas trained Bod or granted him special powers to allow him to embrace the graveyard as his home and introduce him to other 'tutors' to prepare him for the outside world.

You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.

This is my first book by Neil Gaiman.  I knew about him after after watching Caroline which to me was pretty scary.  This was an okay book for me.  I'm not really drawn to any of the characters.  Anyways I like the idea of the story.  See how you like it.