April Reads

This month's reading was interesting.  I had one book that just took me forever, and read several, smaller/quick reads either after or while reading the "long one".  Lets start out with good and go to bad...

Small Surrenders: A Lenten Journey by Emilie Griffin
I picked this up on my travels in Boston right around the start of lent.  It was in the bottom of a beautiful Boston church which charged you for pictures/tour of church, or else for free you could go to the bookstore- guess you know which one I chose.  I thought this book was an easy way to feel a little more focused, but not overdone with Lent.  It is a season of quiet, introspection, questions/wonderings, changing, prayer, and I felt this book addressed all of them, but in a way easy to take way.  I highly recommend this book and will likely read it again next Lent as the daily musings are all different and touch on different Lenten subjects/topics/feelings.  Thumbs Up Emilie!

Being Perfect by Anna Quindlen
If you have followed my book lists for awhile you will know I enjoy Anna Quindlen very much.  this book is a perfect book (no pun intended Anna) to read when trying to go through life and do the best you can while also taking check with yourself and realizing no one is perfect.

Ivy and Bean: Doomed to Dance
Book 6- pretty good, but I didn't enjoy this one or laugh has hard with this one.  Looking forward to the next one as it focuses on science. 

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective by Kate Summerscale (audiobook)
This started off pretty good- murder of a 3 year old child and the murderer had to have come from inside the home.  Mr. Whicher a great detective in the Victorian Error- think Sherlock Holmes- takes the case after local detective/magistrates screw up all the evidence.  I won't give it away for those interested in nonfiction/mystery, but lets just say it was a lengthy book for the outcome and some of the details were lost on me.  Now some audiobooks that are 9-10 discs long feel like nothing when I'm training and others make my training hours feel longer than they are. This audiobook was unfortunately the latter. 

The Secret History by Donna Tartt
This has been on my "to read" list for awhile. Then I saw it on a "book club" picks shelf at one of the local libraries and so thought why not now.  Well it was long, drawn out, and just as Schmelzer (bookie) would say "no endearing characters".  It too was a mystery, but I just felt it was poorly written.  There were a lot of drinking going on throughout the book as the murder occurred during the college years of the main players in the book.  Some of the people reminded me of young Hemingway/Fitzgerald type figures- really smart, well to do kids, who drank a lot and did stupid things/behaved badly.  I was really disappointed in this read and more disappointed by how much time it took me to read it, but I finished it and now am moving on to better "reads". Sorry Donna- I'm just probably not high-brow enough to read your work. 

Another month of reading and like life, some "reads"/"days" are better than others.