26. The Library at Mount Char - Scott Hawkins

I read the real honest-to-goodness hardcover book
2015, Crown
390 pgs.
Adult fantasy
Finished 4-24-16
Goodreads rating: 4.05
My rating:  5
Setting:  Contemporary anywhere-in-suburbia USA

First line/s:  "Carolyn, blood-drenched and barefoot, walked alone down the two-lane stretch of blacktop that the Americans called Highway 78."

My comments:  This book was a total mind f**k.  That's the only word ] I can think of that describes it.  It was sitting innocently on a table at the library and when I saw the word LIBRARY in the title - I had to, of course, pick it up and check it out.  It's certainly not about any library I've ever encountered!  I couldn't put it down.  I was pulled into it immediately.  I realized you weren't supposed to totally "get" what was going on at first, and that it would all come together at the end.  It pretty much did.   What an imagination this guy has!  I'm blown away.  I was meant to read this book.  I've gone back and forth clicking the *4*, then clicking the *5*, then back to the *4*.  I'll remember this book for a long time and I really loved it.  I'm going all the way with the 5!   (And I can totally understand why some people don't like this book at all, it's not for everyone, that's for sure!)
    Oh - and the humor.  I didn't mention how funny it can be!

Goodreads synopsis:  Neil Gaiman meets Joe Hill in this astonishingly original, terrifying, and darkly funny contemporary fantasy. 
          Carolyn's not so different from the other human beings around her. She's sure of it. She likes guacamole and cigarettes and steak. She knows how to use a phone. She even remembers what clothes are for.  After all, she was a normal American herself, once.  That was a long time ago, of course—before the time she calls “adoption day,” when she and a dozen other children found themselves being raised by a man they learned to call Father.  Father could do strange things. He could call light from darkness. Sometimes he raised the dead. And when he was disobeyed, the consequences were terrible.
          In the years since Father took her in, Carolyn hasn't gotten out much. Instead, she and her adopted siblings have been raised according to Father's ancient Pelapi customs. They've studied the books in his library and learned some of the secrets behind his equally ancient power.  Sometimes, they've wondered if their cruel tutor might secretly be God.
          Now, Father is missing. And if God truly is dead, the only thing that matters is who will inherit his library—and with it, power over all of creation.  As Carolyn gathers the tools she needs for the battle to come, fierce competitors for this prize align against her.  But Carolyn can win. She's sure of it. What she doesn't realize is that her victory may come at an unacceptable price—because in becoming a God, she's forgotten a great deal about being human. 

17. Shine Shine Shine - Lydia Netzer

Audio read by Joshilyn Jackson - beautifully!

9 unabridged discs

2012 St. Martin's Press

309 pgs.

Adult CRF

Finished 11-24-2015

Goodreads rating:  3.48

My rating:  4 Liked it a whole lot

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Virginia (but many flashbacks to Burma and rural Pennsylvania)

My comments:  This is a really difficult book to rate.  It was read beautifully by Joshilyn Jackson, one of the wonderful things about the book.  The characters were over-the-top quirky - I love quirky but are these characters just a little too-too far....every single one of them? Maxon, the husband, is awesome and believable; utterly and wonderfully autistic, I wanted more of him. Emma, the mother, sickening so quickly and refusing to die, having played such a huge part in teaching Maxon how to fit into a world that was different - and not so understanding of - a person like him.   But this is Sunny's story, and Sunny is the one I had the most difficulty with. One minute I though I had her pegged, but the next...?  The story is pretty cool - fanciful and unbelievable (as well as believable) and exotic and different and funny, too. Whew!  I guess I really liked almost all of it.  

Goodreads book summary:  A debut unlike any other, Shine, Shine, Shine is a shocking, searing, breathless love story, a gripping portrait of modern family, and a stunning exploration of love, death and what it means to be human.
          Sunny Mann has masterminded a life for herself and her family in a quiet Virginia town. Her house and her friends are picture-perfect. Even her genius husband, Maxon, has been trained to pass for normal. But when a fender bender on an average day sends her coiffed blonde wig sailing out the window, her secret is exposed. Not only is she bald, Sunny is nothing like the Stepford wife she’s trying to be. As her facade begins to unravel, we discover the singular world of Sunny, an everywoman searching for the perfect life, and Maxon, an astronaut on his way to colonize the moon.                   Theirs is a wondrous, strange relationship formed of dark secrets, decades-old murders and the urgent desire for connection. As children, the bald, temperamental Sunny and the neglected savant Maxon found an unlikely friendship no one else could understand. She taught him to feel -- helped him translate his intelligence for numbers into a language of emotion. He saw her spirit where others saw only a freak. As they grew into adults, their profound understanding blossomed into love and marriage.     

           But with motherhood comes a craving for normalcy that begins to strangle Sunny’s marriage and family. As Sunny and Maxon are on the brink of destruction, at each other’s throats with blame and fear of how they’ve lost their way, Maxon departs for the moon, where he’s charged with programming the robots that will build the fledgling colony. Just as the car accident jars Sunny out of her wig and into an awareness of what she really needs, an accident involving Maxon’s rocket threatens everything they’ve built, revealing the things they’ve kept hidden. And nothing will ever be the same.

65. The Good Luck of Right Now - Matthew Quick

2014 Harper Collins

285 pgs.

Adult Contemporary Realistic Fiction

Finished 10/17/14

Goodreads rating: 3.60

My rating:   3.5 Liked it a lot, with one reservation

TPPL

Setting: Contemporary Philadelphia with a foray to Montreal and Ottawa

1st sentence/s: "Dear Mr. Richard Gere,  In Mom's underwear drawer -- as I was separating her "personal" clothes from the "lightly used" articles I could donate to the local thrift shop -- I found a letter you wrote."

My comments: This book was certainly quirky and fun. And funny.  The protagonist, Bartholemew (love that name!) Neil reminded me a bit of The Rosie Project's Don Tillman. But somehow it's impossible to totally picture a grown man of 38 never having a job, a friend other than the local priest and his mom, a vocation, a hobby, an interest... I tried and tried to conjure an image of this poor guy, but to no avail.  My imagination is usually pretty good, but to totally love a book I need to relate in some way and I couldn't. I wasn't IN this story, I was watching from afar, if that makes any sense.... But I still liked it very, very much.
      Here's a quote that resonated: "Back before she got sick, mom always used to say, "for every bad thing that happens, a good thing happens, too - and this is how the world stays in harmony." Whenever too many good things happened to us, mom would say, "I feel sorry for whoever is getting screwed to balance all of this out,": because she believed that our good meant that someone else somewhere in the world was experiencing bad.  It actually depressed her when our luck was very good.  Mom hated to think about others suffering so that we might enjoy our life."

Goodreads book summary: For thirty-eight years, Bartholomew Neil has lived with his mother. When she gets sick and dies, he has no idea how to be on his own. His redheaded grief counselor, Wendy, says he needs to find his flock and leave the nest. But how does a man whose whole life has been grounded in his mom, Saturday mass, and the library learn how to fly?
          Bartholomew thinks he’s found a clue when he discovers a “Free Tibet” letter from Richard Gere hidden in his mother’s underwear drawer. In her final days, mom called him Richard—there must be a cosmic connection. Believing that the actor is meant to help him, Bartholomew awkwardly starts his new life, writing Richard Gere a series of highly intimate letters. Jung and the Dalai Lama, philosophy and faith, alien abduction and cat telepathy, the Catholic Church and the mystery of women are all explored in his soul-baring epistles. But mostly the letters reveal one man’s heartbreakingly earnest attempt to assemble a family of his own.
          A struggling priest, a “Girlbrarian,” her feline-loving, foul-mouthed brother, and the spirit of Richard Gere join the quest to help Bartholomew. In a rented Ford Focus, they travel to Canada to see the cat Parliament and find his biological father . . . and discover so much more.