11/22/63 by Stephen King

My first (and probably last) Stephen King novel!  And that is mainly because this one was not scary.  The premise is that Jake, a teacher in his 30s, finds a portal in a local diner that goes back to 1959.  Every time he goes back, he arrives on the same day at the same time.  Each trip is a complete re-set and only takes him a minute, no matter how long he stays in the past.  Jake learns that he can change things in the past and affect the future.  He decides to go back in time to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from shooting JFK in 1963, a task that will mean living in the past for four years.

I liked the book overall.  It was an interesting premise and Stephen King is a good writer.  My complaint was the length.  The book was 800 pages and did not need to be that long.  It languished in the middle when you just want it to hurry up and get to 1963 already.  But if you are interested in JFK and don't mind a long book, this is a good one.

Read: March 2012 on my iPad

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

The Night Circus - also called the Circus of Dreams - is the site of a competition between two magicians - Celia and Marco - who are bound to each other as children.  As they struggle to determine the rules of the competition, they create a fantastical circus.  I enjoyed the creative story and the descriptive writing style.  It kept me guessing.  But, as other reviewers have noted, the character development was a little lacking, especially for the two main characters.  I also thought the ending was sort of confusing - you need to pay attention to the dates and I found myself needing to flip back to figure out where I was in the timeline.  People have compared this to Harry Potter and I don't think that is accurate at all.  The Night Circus was an entertaining, creative, well-written book, but not the next Harry Potter.

Read: February 2012 via Kindle

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

I have been reading this book off and on for about a year.  Its a memoir of Hemingway's time in Paris and each chapter is fairly independent from the others.  I had a hard time sticking with it because it never felt like much of a story.  But reading The Paris Wife was the perfect motivation to finish the book and see the same story from his point of view. I am just not much of a Hemingway fan, but this was one of his better books, particularly the chapters on F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I'm glad I read the book (if for no other reason than it gets Brian off my case) but I can't say I plan on reading any more Hemingway anytime soon!

Read (or finished): February 2012

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

My husband is a HUGE fan of Ernest Hemingway.  He has read most Hemingway books and will always order a Hemingway cocktail if there is one on the menu.  He even dragged us to Hemingway's favorite bar in Venice on our honeymoon (which sadly required coat and tie so we couldn't go in).  Anyway, The Paris Wife is a fictionalized account of Hemingway's first wife Hadley and their time in 1920s Paris during the heyday of Gertrude Stein and F. Scott Fitzgerald.  Although technically fiction, the novel is based on real events, including Hemingway's memoir and their letters.  I enjoyed the book - the writing was easy and Hadley was a likable narrator.  It did make me sad because from the very beginning you know that Hemingway was a womanizer and that he had two wives after Hadley so you know how it will probably end.  It was the perfect way for me to learn more about Hemingway without actually reading him.  I think this one is worth reading!

Read: January 2012 via Kindle

P.S. This is Brian outside of Hem's favorite bar in Venice on our honeymoon.  You can see why we didn't fit the dress code!

Rhett Butler's People by Donald McCaig

Scarlett and Rhett are without a doubt one of the most famous couples in literary (and movie) history.  But what about Rhett's side of the story?  Why isn't he accepted in polite society?  What's the deal with Belle?  How did he avoid fighting in the war?  This novel starts when Rhett is a young boy and gives you his background - how he came to abhor slavery, how he was disowned by his family, how he made his name, how he met Scarlett and courted her.  You learn about his motivation for doing certain things and how different events affected him.  The novel ends after Gone with the Wind so you get a little more of the story after that famous line: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.  

Margaret Mitchell's estate authorized McCaig's novel (unlike the other Gone with the Wind sequel - Scarlett) and I thought the novel blended well with Gone with the Wind.  McCaig understood the original characters well and his new characters fit perfectly - providing good insight and balance.  Overall, this was an entertaining read and I'm glad I finally got around to it.  But if you aren't big on Gone with the Wind, this might not be the book for you.

Read: January 2012 via CD from the library

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

I avoided this book for several years!  My mother-in-law lent it to me and Brian recommended it, but I knew it was about vampires (no more Twilight for me, thankyouverymuch) and it was REALLY thick.  In a moment of desperation, I finally picked it up and was instantly hooked.  Three story lines - our narrator's present, her father's past, and his mentor's past - criss-cross through the novel revealing more and more of the history of Dracula, who very well may still be alive.  The book was tense and chilling, but never too gross or scary.  In 600 pages, I only ended up with one bad dream, so that isn't too bad!  It had a few sections of Ottoman/Byzantine history that I skimmed and I didn't love the ending (there were some things that weren't wrapped up neatly enough for me), but overall, this was a very good read and I'm glad I finally picked it up!

Summary from Amazon:

If your pulse flutters at the thought of castle ruins and descents into crypts by moonlight, you will savor every creepy page of Elizabeth Kostova's long but beautifully structured thriller The Historian. The story opens in Amsterdam in 1972, when a teenage girl discovers a medieval book and a cache of yellowed letters in her diplomat father's library. The pages of the book are empty except for a woodcut of a dragon. The letters are addressed to: "My dear and unfortunate successor." When the girl confronts her father, he reluctantly confesses an unsettling story: his involvement, twenty years earlier, in a search for his graduate school mentor, who disappeared from his office only moments after confiding to Paul his certainty that Dracula--Vlad the Impaler, an inventively cruel ruler of Wallachia in the mid-15th century--was still alive. The story turns out to concern our narrator directly because Paul's collaborator in the search was a fellow student named Helen Rossi (the unacknowledged daughter of his mentor) and our narrator's long-dead mother, about whom she knows almost nothing. And then her father, leaving just a note, disappears also.

Read: December 2011 (borrowed from Bette)

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

This was my second Jane Austen novel and it was a little slow at times, but still full of satire and wit.  Mansfield Park is the story of poor Fanny Price who grows up in the shadow of her rich cousins.  In true Austen form, the plot - and the love triangle - twists around several times.  I got a little bit tired of Fanny being overly passive and shy, but overall the novel was worth reading.

Summary from Amazon:

In Mansfield Park, Austen gives us Fanny Price, a poor young woman who has grown up in her wealthy relatives' household without ever being accepted as an equal. The only one who has truly been kind to Fanny is Edmund Bertram, the younger of the family's two sons.  Into this Cinderella existence comes Henry Crawford and his sister, Mary, who are visiting relatives in the neighborhood. Soon Mansfield Park is given over to all kinds of gaiety, including a daring interlude spent dabbling in theatricals. Young Edmund is smitten with Mary, and Henry Crawford woos Fanny. Yet these two charming, gifted, and attractive siblings gradually reveal themselves to be lacking in one essential Austenian quality: principle. Without good principles to temper passion, the results can be disastrous, and indeed, Mansfield Park is rife with adultery, betrayal, social ruin, and ruptured friendships. But this is a comedy, after all, so there is also a requisite happy ending and plenty of Austen's patented gentle satire along the way.

Read: November 2011 (on my iPad)