Salem Falls

The answer I've been waiting for will arrive tomorrow night, so I am still distracted and not really into blogging and commenting... sorry about that and I hope to be back to my normal involved self real soon.

In the meantime, my thoughts about Jodi Picoult's Salem Falls. Basically, it was ok. This was my second book by this author, the first being My Sister's Keeper, which I thought was much, much better, probably because the subject matter was more original and therefore interesting.

Salem Falls are about residents of a small New England town and how a new arrival, Jack, a man who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a minor, changes their lives. A group of local teenage girls, who are witches by the way, accuse him of rape and he ends up the target of a witch hunt, which is what the author of course intended, as she wanted to write an updated version of The Crucible.

Jack's only support comes from newly-found love Addie, but even she finds it difficult at times. She certainly come through in the end though!

The book ends with a long court scene, which I enjoyed. It made me remember that I used to like reading courtroom dramas - maybe I should track some good ones down again.

The book reads like a soap opera, but nothing more. Pleasant no-brain reading, but that's pretty much it. I'm intrigued by some other Jodi Picoult books - are there any that you think are worth reading?

Challenges: 2nds Challenge, Celebrate the Author, Chick Lit 2, Countdown Challenge, Romance Reading Challenge,

The Family Way

I've read Tony Parsons' earlier books, or most of them anyway, and liked them. I picked this one up because the subject interests me at this point in life... the books deals with having kids, becoming a family, whether you can be a family without kids, what happens if your only choice is adoption, how kids change your relationship with your partner etc.

There are many books about these things out there, but I thought that this one was particularly sensitive to all the problems and resulting emotions. I've been reading it on the metro to and from work and I had to hold back tears many times...

I liked all the main characters - three sisters with very different attitudes towards life, love, careers and kids. I thought that each of the characters brought something to the story and they were all realistic. I din't like how some of th plot lines were so neatly worked out, but hey, it's fiction.

If the subject interests you, I recommend this one!

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, Chick Lit Challenge

Life As We Knew It

I can't believe I finally read this book by Susan Beth Pfeffer! Everyone's been talking about it and it's been on my list forever. I'm home sick with a stomach flu this week and was looking around for something that would grab my attention and there it was!

Life As We Knew It is about Miranda and her family as they try to cope with life after the moon gets knocked out of its orbit and ends up closer to Earth. This of course affects tides and weather so suddenly the world sees a lot of tsunamis, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, etc. Add to that the general problems of no electricity, gas shortages, food shortages and isolation and life gets pretty tough.

From day to day, teenage Miranda's life turns upside down. There is no more school and friends and socialising at the mall. Instead, she needs to learn to take care of herself and of others and to do things like do laundry by hand.

The book is pretty grim of course, but the way Miranda and her family handled the situations thrown at them was uplifting, I thought. And since the changes in life and weather were not (in this case) caused by man's selfishness but by natural occurence underestimated by scientists, they really were sudden - just to say that what I took out of it was pretty much 'enjoy life while you can'. Here's a passage that touched me:

Maybe because I don't know anymore if there is a future, I'm grateful for the good things that have happened to me this year. I never knew I could love as deeply as I do. I never knew I could be so willing to sacrifice things for other people. I never knew how wonderful a taste of pineapple juice could be, or the warmth of a woodstove, or the sound of Horton [the cat] purring, or the feel of clean clothes against freshly scrubbed skin.

I'm not pretending to know how Miranda felt, but the passage touched me at this point in time because our heating had been broken for almost a month and temperatures were around zero. I never really thought about heating as a luxury until then. And now that it's been working again for a week, I barely remember what the cold felt like and I'm taking it for granted again.

I think we can all benefit from thinking about all the things that we do have on a daily basis, the simple things. My friend Amy recently told me about something she heard on Oprah about writing down 5 things you're grateful each night before you go to sleep. Might be an interesting thought.

Now, I do want to point out that just because in this book the climate change was caused by nature, we can lead ourselves to the same point anyway. Read The Carbon Diaries 2015 by Saci Lloyd for more on that.

By the way, at the end of my copy a companion book called The Dead and the Gone is mentioned - about the same events but in NYC. Has anyone read it?

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Countdown challenge, New Authors, Young Adult