The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown **

I was loaned this book by someone I work with, or else I probably wouldn't have read it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being a snob or anything, it's just that these kinds of books start to all seem the same. And since I've read The Da Vinci Code, I have to say that I was right.

I like The Da Vinci Code. It was fast paced, interesting, and the ending was great. Dan Brown wrote a great thriller when he wrote that one. So not surprisingly, he stayed with the same model when he wrote The Lost Symbol.

Here are some of the similarities: same main character, smart woman in distress that then helps the hero, classic architecture, big crazy scary guy that likes to kill, a secret that most people don't know but which is right under their noses.

Even with all those similarities, I was still flying through the book trying to find out how it ends. Well, it ended quite lamely. The ending was just not very good. It was anticlimactic and didn't make a lot of logical sense. For example, if you'd gotten your hand cut off and been tortured all day, wouldn't you want to take a nice rest around 2 AM? I know there are a lot of cool things you'd like to tell the hero, but you've had a rough day and to top it all off you found out a very disturbing bit of family info that would make most people collapse in pain and horror. But no. You'd like to take the hero on a little tour of Washington D.C. in the wee hours of the morning. Why not.

Also the massive revelation at the end of the whole sha-bang is just kinda...okay. I'm saying if I were the big scary guy that likes to kill and I was still running around at the end of the story, I'd be killing. Just cause I would have found out that none of this was really worth anything. And cause I'd like to kill.

So while this was an interesting and fast read, I don't recommend it very highly. I have only read these two Dan Brown books, though, so if his other writing gets off this same pattern I would be more than glad to give it a try. But if it uses the same format...I think I've already been there.

Found by Mararet Peterson Haddix ***

I'm going to reveal something about this book that you might not want to know if you haven't read it yet, so don't read any further if you don't like having your book spoiled!!

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I used to really like time travel books--I have always been fascinated with the past and I'd love to be able to go back in time to see what life was really like, especially the clothes! But as I've gotten older I have a hard time dealing with the paradoxes that present themselves when you try to actually think of time as fluid. That's the only reason I haven't given this book 4 stars. I guess I'm just getting to where I don't want to have to get a headache when I read anymore!

A plane load of babies mysteriously appears 13 years ago, with no pilot or crew. The 36 babies are adopted out, with Jonah and his friend Chip being two of them. And now someone is coming back to find them all, but what are they going to do with them? Jonah, his sister Katherine, and Chip must try to figure out what's going on before they're stopped...or worse.

This was a great page-turning read, and if it wasn't for my brain not being able to grasp all the complexities of time travel I would have liked it even more. I'm not sure if I'm going to read the next book in the series or not...we shall see! But certainly do recommend this book if you like suspense and sci-fi.

Margret and Flynn by Kathleen Duey ****

I'll admit to my low expectations for this book. I'd prejudged it, simply because it seemed to be a stereotypical "girl and her horse" tale. And it is just that. But the story was much more arresting than I'd assumed and now I can certainly see why this was nominated for the Mark Twain Award.

Twelve-year-old Margret and her older sister Libby have been living a transient life ever since losing their parents many years ago. They would live with and help do the chores for different families and then move on when Libby sensed it was time to go--usually in the middle of the night during a full moon. But the girls have been living with lonely Mrs. Fredriksen in Colorado territory long enough for Margret to want to stay this time. Mrs. Fredriksen cares for the girls and wants them to live with her, but Libby's skittish ways are pushing them out again. Just in the nick of time a horse shows up after a terrible storm, and Margret must use her gentle nature to help heal the horse and make it shine in the 4th of July race, while also helping her sister to be healed as well.

Besides the main story line, I really enjoyed this book also because of the ending. I'll only say that it was more realistic than I thought it would be, which made it refreshing.

I recommend Margret and Flynn, even if you aren't a horsey-girl!

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende ***

The only other book I've read by Isobel Allende before this was Daughter of Fortune, which I liked a great deal. She writes of strong women in her books, women who have to overcome severe adversity to find happiness. In general I like that theme, I'm sure most women do--we all feel that though our lives in developed countries are much easier now, we still have adversity we must overcome in order to find some meaning in our world.

For that reason I thought I'd like Island Beneath the Sea very much. It tells the story of Tete, a Haitian slave in the late 1700's (Haiti was called Saint Domingue at this time). Her life is the result of a rape on a slave ship, and her own mother rejected her at birth because of this. Raised as a house slave in a life of extreme hardship, she knows that it could be worse--she could be a field slave, who's lives were worth so little to their owners that they barely fed them, just worked them to death and then purchased more.

Tete's main challenge in her life is to stay alive and care for her children. She includes Maurice, her master's son by his wife, as her child and loves him as much as her own. Living through the slave uprising in Saint Domingue and later finding her own place in New Orleans society, Tete always keeps her pride and continues to love and care for those around her, despite the cruelty that is heaped on her.

I loved the descriptions of life at this time and in this place. Haiti has always fascinated me, and it's interesting to see the extreme violence that this impoverished country has sprung from. When you read about the evil that humans perpetrated on their fellow man in this place, whether it be the Arawak Indians or the slaves, it leaves you feeling like Haiti is a country that deserves to finally have some peace.

Despite my interest in the history of this story, I had a hard time with it only because it seemed like Tete was used as a vehicle to tell the history of this time and she was put in one situation after another just to enable it to be told. I know that's the whole point of historical fiction, but I guess I'm saying it was just a little too much for me. I would have liked to have heard more about Saint Domingue after to uprising, and some was told, but she was whisked away in the book to New Orleans so the author could then expound on that place. I think I would have liked this to be two books, or one book with two characters, one in Haiti and one in New Orleans.

Overall the book is very well written and I do recommend it. I just was a little blown away by how much history was packed into one character's life.

Scandalous by Karen Robards ***

Alright! I needed something new to get me going again, & evidently an historical romance is what I needed. I found this book sitting on the break room table at work & figured "why not?"

My maternal grandma always called these kind of books "Bodice Books", because either the picture on the front would show a gal whose ample bosoms were heaving against the restraining enclosure of her bodice, or something like that would be described between the covers at least three times.

For a Bodice Book, this one was pretty good. A young woman takes a chance on fooling society when she pretends her dead brother is still alive so she can marry off her gorgeous younger sister to a rich guy & they can all live happily ever after. Except some guy seems to be pretending to be her brother already...& of course the sparks fly between them. Forbidden romance, lusty glances, you know how it goes.

Look, I know this isn't great literature. But the bottom line is, I respect writing in all its forms. I wish I had the talent & nerve to write a few Bodice Books myself--it brings in decent earnings, you're getting published, & many many people get enjoyment from your writing. Honestly, what more could an author ask for?

And yes, I'll be reading the sequel. Maybe it'll be laying on the break room table at work when I go back Monday!

The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki ****

I read the introduction by A.A. Milne to this short story collection just now, and I shouldn't have. Milne is such a great writer, it's hard for me to come up with a way to describe Saki without using his words now. I'll give it a go, but if you ever read this collection forgive me if I sound like Milne!

First I can say that Saki (H.H. Munro was his real name...hmm, these British gents back then liked to use initials instead of first names!) is one of the most sarcastic and bitter writers I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying! If one of his stories seems to be going along at a good, positive clip, you can be sure it's going to take a sharp turn soon towards irony. His recurring character in many of these stories is Clovis Sangrail, a 17 year old who has seen it all and knows how to use the people around him to make his life more amusing. The rest are about unrelated people and places, but they all have the touch of the dark side of life.

There are 29 short stories in this collection so I won't talk about all of them, but some of my favorites are "The Music on the Hill", "The Hounds of Fate", "The Remoulding of Groby Lington", "Tobermory", ... alright, I'll just talk about those four.

"The Music on the Hill" is the only story from this book that I've read before. It was part of a collection of short stories about weird and unusual phenomenon. It's actually why I thought that all Saki's stories would be like this, but they aren't. It's highly sarcastic, with a young couple living in their country home because the new wife thought it would be nice. It took a lot of persuading to get her husband to make the move, but now he seems to be reluctant to ever leave. There's an ominous feel about the place and the husband is acting strangely. So young wife decides to follow him one day, hears some odd piping music coming from the direction her husband went, and finds a small alter to Pan in the woods. Someone has put an offering of grapes on it, and in disgust she throws them away. The music stops, and her troubles begin.

"The Hounds of Fate" is one of those depressing little gems about how no matter how far you run, fate will track you down. It's well written and again rather eerie, though not as mystical as "The Music on the Hill".

For pure humor "The Remoulding of Groby Lington" is great. It's about a rather retiring man who has a pet parrot whose nephew brings to his attention that he's very similar to his pet. Then his brother brings home a pet monkey for Groby, and he turns from parrot to something else...

And "Tobermory" is just plain evil. It's about a cat who's been trained to speak English. Sounds great, eh? Well, that is until Tobermory starts blabbing about who he's seen doing what with whom...

All in all, a great collection. There are other stories I enjoyed also, but it's hard to go over them all here. Just take my word for it, they're worth the time!

The Awakening by Kate Chopin ****

I've read somewhere that The Awakening is one of the first books about women's lib. I'd have to agree with that, though it doesn't have the positive connotations that later works would have. I do think that it is a very realistic portrayal of what you might call a mid-life crisis, though Edna, the main character, is only 29. I feel like I'm having one of those crises right now and I'm 40, but I've justified the similarities by saying to myself that people didn't live as long back then (1890's) so 29 might have been mid-life, and also that I'm hopelessly delayed in all things in general so this would be no exception.

Edna is, as I said above, 29 years old, married to a man that adores her and has two sons aged 5 and 7. Edna doesn't adore her husband, she just married him because he came along at the right time and was the right man to marry. They live in New Orleans but are on vacation on Grand Isle when the story opens. They are comfortably well off, with a nanny and servants. During the vacation Edna has an "awakening"-she suddenly feels the shackles of her life and wants to throw them off. This coincides with her relationship with a young man, Robert. They fall in love on the island but do not act upon it.

When Edna returns to New Orleans with her family she can't stand her existence anymore. She takes up painting and drawing again, old hobbies that she hadn't indulged in for years. Her husband leaves for an extended business trip to New York and while he is gone, she suddenly finds herself free. Her children visit her mother-in-law and her obligations are only to herself.

I'm sure this book has been analyzed to death and I know many people probably won't agree with me on my interpretation of it, but I thought the book was very good, even the ending. I won't give it away, just that it is true to the time and true to the character. It can't be put in the context of our current social situation--so much has changed in our world in just 120 years. I can empathize with Edna's ennui. I admire her ability to pull herself out of it, even if the struggle exhausts her.