Number. Name of Book
Author:
Read or Listened?
Fiction or NonFiction?
Description and comments:
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1. Fire and Ice
Author: Dana StabenoweBook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A new trooper arrives in a small Alaska town right to a murder at the airport. He spends time getting to know the locals and trying to solve the crime. In the middle of this, a woman he has a passionate affair lives in town and is part of the group of suspects.
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2. The Case of the Flashing Fashion Queen: A Dix Dodd Mystery
Author: N.L. Wilson
eBook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A woman who runs her own detective agency is hired to follow a man whose wife ends up murdered. It was light and funny and good characters. It was very easy to read.
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3. Happiness
Author: Will Ferguson
Book
Fiction
Description and comments:
An editor publishes a self-help book that makes everyone happy and the whole world changes. Its kind of a silly book. Very tongue in cheek and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't
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4. 11/22/63
Author: Stephen King
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A man is shown a portal back to 1958. He is convinced to go back and save Kennedy from being assassinated in 1963. Lots of good detail about the era and about time travel. It's Stephen King so I couldn't wait to return to it.
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5. Loose Screw
Author: Rae Daview
iBook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Helena, Montana. A former reporter, now second-hand store owner finds a dead body and figures out who did it. Very predictable, but the main character was fun. Light, easy read
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6. The Apple Orchard
Author: Susan Wiggs
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A 29-year-old antiquities expert who thinks her only family is her mother finds out that her grandfather is dying, she has a sister and she will inherit half of the family farm. While she goes from her fast-paced (Red Bull and donuts) San Francisco life to rural farm life, she falls in love with the local banker and find a very rare treasure to save the farm from foreclosure. I think I need something with more depth.
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7. Comfort Food
Author: Kate Jacobs
Book
Fiction
Description and comments:
A 50-year-old Cooking Channel celebrity must team up with a Spanish beauty show winner to keep her show alive and resents it. There were a lot of characters, but they were all pretty one-sided. The book kept me interested, but it really wasn't that good.
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8. A Passage to India
Author: EM Forester
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Takes place during the 20s when England ruled India. The story is about the culture clash between the English and Indians.
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audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
9. The Invention of Wings
Author: Sue Monk Kiddaudiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Told from a white and black point of view during the 1830s. A girl and her slave. It felt that the white girl wanted to promote abolition, but didn't seem to help her slave very much except at the end.
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book
Fiction
Description and comments:
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10. The Night Journal
Author: Elizabeth Crookbook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Two stories. One of a woman who comes to work in New Mexico at the turn of the century and her great-grandaughter in present day. The older woman's journals have created the life for her daughter, but there is more going on than the journals reveal.
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11. The Divorce Papers
Author: Susan Rieger
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
All the minutia of a divorce told through the paperwork, memos and emails of all the characters. Lots of numbers and kid of difficult to get through.
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12. Fame Fatale
Author: Wendy Holden
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
Two women in London. One works in publishing and tries to be a good person, but seems to keep getting things wrong especially about the men in her life. The second a "journalist" doing celebrity journalism to find a rich husband and clearly terrible at her job, although she thinks she deserves awards. All the characters seem to share the same cleaning lady. A beach read and very predictable.
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13. The Secret of Everything
Author: Barbara O'Neal
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
The reader of this book almost made me put it down. I did get used to it. A woman returns to a small newly trendy New Mexico town to research a hiking tour. She had been born in the town at the commune years ago. Along the book, she falls in love with a former mountain-biker and his kids, finds out about her past and her father. Another book where everyone seems to know each other. There is a cafe in town and recipes included that sounded really good.
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14. Balancing Acts
Author: Zoe Fishman
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
Four women meet back up 10 years after leaving college. One owns a yoga studio and suggests a yoga class for the women to reconnect. Yoga opens them up and they become friends as they are dealing with how their lives have changed in the years leaving college. Its predictable and a happy ending book.
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15. The Profiler's Daughter
Author:P. M. Steffen
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
I think this is the first book in a series about Sky Stone. There were a lot of story threads going on and some just didn't get resolved or go anywhere. Lots of name-dropping of designers. Too many coincidences with evidence. I don't have a desire to read another in this series.
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audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Scott Adams is the very sucessful author of the Dilbert Cartoons. He has a lot of ideas about how he got sucessful and how it can be mimicked. Some of it seemed pretty forced and lecture-y. However the parts that were the memoir were interesting. He credits luck, optimism and affirmations on his success. He has failed at a number of ventures, but comes out with more knowledge for the next time.
16.
How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life
Author: Scott Adamsaudiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Scott Adams is the very sucessful author of the Dilbert Cartoons. He has a lot of ideas about how he got sucessful and how it can be mimicked. Some of it seemed pretty forced and lecture-y. However the parts that were the memoir were interesting. He credits luck, optimism and affirmations on his success. He has failed at a number of ventures, but comes out with more knowledge for the next time.
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17. Wives Behaving Badly
Author: Elizabeth Buchan
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
A second wife lives in the house of the first wife and feels her influence in the marriage and the home. An interesting idea, but I never got very invested in the characters.
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18. The Goldfinch
Author: Donna Tartt
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A man loses his mother in a terrorist bombing at 13 in a museum. On the way out, he steals the painting "The Goldfinch" that his mother loved. The book describes his growing up and the people around him. I thought that this book was very depressing. Despite some adults trying to help him, he grew up to be a drug-addict and swindler pining for a girl he had seen and fell in love with at the museum at 13. There were too many drug or alcohol-altered scenes. There seemed to be a lot of contempt for people trying to help him whether they were good or manipulative.
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19. Gracelin O'Malley
Author: Ann Moore
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
Grace is a farmer's daughter in Ireland in the 1840s. She marries the evil English Lord who owns their farm. It was an interesting book about the Irish Potato famine and the English as the conquerers of Ireland and the conflicts for independence. I didn't know this history as I should have. There was a lot of death in this novel.
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20. Ranger Confidential
Author: Andrea Lankford
audiobook
Nonfiction
Description and comments:
A memoir of a woman who worked for the Park Service in parks like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite. It depicts several park rangers and gives their stories in the parks. I kept getting confused by who was at what park. It had some interesting insights about being the police in a family-oriented system.
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21. The Little Death
Author: P.J. Parrish
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
A mystery novel about a man who is a "walker" (escort for older, rich women) in an expensive part of Florida who is accused of killing and beheading his friend. The detectives are two men, but it was unclear how they worked together. A third man joined them and I missed how he got involved. The ending was really unsatisfactory.
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22. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World
Author: Randell E. Stross
audiobook
Nonfiction
Description and comments:
The life and times of Thomas Edison. He started out inventing improvements for the telegraph and moved forward from there. He was so highly regarded that reporters did not question is claims and assertions. The phonograph took many years from invention to commercial success. He believed in DC current, not AC. He thought that radio was a fad and wouldn't sell popular music when he sold recordings. Very opinionated.
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23. Remember Me
Author: Cheryl Robinson
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
The story of two women who grow up in the Detroit suburbs as best friends and go their separate ways after college, but end up getting back together later in life after a near tragedy. It was light, easy and predictable. =======================================================
24. Rose Under Fire
Author: Elizabeth Wein
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A young American woman pilot during WWII flies for the ATA in England. She gets the chance to go to France. She mistakenly flies into Germany and is imprisoned in a concentration camp. Its a good story told from a female point of view. =======================================================
25. Crisis
Author: Robin Cook
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
An older woman dies under a doctor's care in Boston and the doctor is charged with malpractice. The doctor's brother-in-law is a medical examiner in New York City and goes to the trial. He autopsies the body and finds some discrepancies. There is a good twist at the end, but there are also unanswered questions. A subplot about the medical examiner's wedding and previous marriage are just a little too much. The doctor is never portrayed very sympathetically in the book.=======================================================
26. The Cuckoo Calling
Author: Robert Galbraith
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A famous fashion model falls to her death and is pronounced suicide. Her brother believes that she was killed. He hires a detective who is just about out of business to look into the murder. The detective is the illegitimate son of a famous musician and groupie. The detective's new secretary loves the work, but is being pressured by her fiance to take a practical job. Another book with lingering questions in the end, but a good thriller.=======================================================
27. Me without You
Author:Jojo Moyes
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A 28-year-old girl in England gets a job care-taking for a quadriplegic for six months. She has never done that kind of work before. She also is stuck in her life about what she wants to do and has been dating the same man for 7 years. The story is very predictable, but the characters are well done. There is a side story about the relationship between two sisters and it is portrayed well.=======================================================
28. Big Little Lies
Author:Liane Moriarty
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Set in a small seaside town in Australia, this is the story of the parents in a kindergarten class. The book tells you there was a murder at the school adult trivia night and then goes back six months and introduces all the characters and what led up to the trivia night. There are three main women. A 24-year-old who has just moved there with her son, a very wealthy insecure woman with twins and a 40-year-old woman whose ex-husband's child is in the class. The characters are well done and distinct. There is a little predictability to the story, but it made me want to keep reading.
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Author: Mark Mathabane
book
Memoir
Description and comments:
A boy grows up in the Johannesburg ghetto of Alexandra, starving in hovels with his parents. He fights to go to school. Along the way, he meets enough liberal whites to help him and give him books and coach him in tennis. His goal is to get a scholarship to study in America and get away from apartheid in his home country. It is a very good book.
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Author: Gail Carriger
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A girls finishing school in the 1800's England teaches espionage techniques instead of traditional subjects. Unfortunately the school floats above the moors and there are vampires, werewolves and robots. Its a bad Harry Potter knockoff for girls. I was glad when it was over because it just didn't involve me.
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Author: Amanda Coplin
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments: A lonely man on an Oregon orchard finds pregnant girls and helps them out. One has her baby and dies. The other loses her twins but lives. She is broken. The man raises the child.
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Author: Jon Katz
audiobook
memoir
Description and comments:
A married man falls in love with a married woman who has a dog that is very viscous. He trains the dog to win her over and researches the dog's past. Its kind of maudlin and he does come off sounding very curmudgeonly. His undying love for the woman gets pretty old.
A married man falls in love with a married woman who has a dog that is very viscous. He trains the dog to win her over and researches the dog's past. Its kind of maudlin and he does come off sounding very curmudgeonly. His undying love for the woman gets pretty old.
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33. Olive Kitteridge
Author: Elizabeth Strout
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
A book about a woman told in short stories about other people in town. Some of the stories are about the woman.
A book about a woman told in short stories about other people in town. Some of the stories are about the woman.
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34. Lock In
Author:John Scalzi
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A futuristic story about the aftermath of an epidemic that leaves many people stuck inside their own bodies, using robots and other humans to be their bodies for them. Murders occur and people have to figure out what happened. It was good, but it did seem pretty short
A futuristic story about the aftermath of an epidemic that leaves many people stuck inside their own bodies, using robots and other humans to be their bodies for them. Murders occur and people have to figure out what happened. It was good, but it did seem pretty short
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35. Behaving Like Adults
Author: Anna Maxted
book
Fiction
Description and comments:
A twenty-something woman runs a dating company and is a pretty positive person until she is raped. She is raped by someone she is on a date with and doesn't even call it rape or tell anyone for a long time. She tries to get beyond it through will, but her life starts to crumble around her. She files a police report, starts counseling and starts getting her life back together. In the beginning of the book, she had broken up with her fiance because he was a slacker, but in the end they get back together. I thought the character was a selfish, unmotivated person she should not have ended up with.
A twenty-something woman runs a dating company and is a pretty positive person until she is raped. She is raped by someone she is on a date with and doesn't even call it rape or tell anyone for a long time. She tries to get beyond it through will, but her life starts to crumble around her. She files a police report, starts counseling and starts getting her life back together. In the beginning of the book, she had broken up with her fiance because he was a slacker, but in the end they get back together. I thought the character was a selfish, unmotivated person she should not have ended up with.
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36. Cryptonomicon
Author: Neal Stephenson
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
Very long book going between cryptography during World War II and the present day. The present day being the 1990s when this was written. I found this book incredibly misogynistic. Every single woman character was not smart. The one woman that was throughout the book was portrayed as strong and therefore might be lesbian, but then she was a virgin for the main character to deflower. I completely lost track of what was supposed to be going on in the present day and by the end really didn't care at all. There was a dentist involved that I never understood.
Very long book going between cryptography during World War II and the present day. The present day being the 1990s when this was written. I found this book incredibly misogynistic. Every single woman character was not smart. The one woman that was throughout the book was portrayed as strong and therefore might be lesbian, but then she was a virgin for the main character to deflower. I completely lost track of what was supposed to be going on in the present day and by the end really didn't care at all. There was a dentist involved that I never understood.
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37. The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
Author: Fannie Flagg
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
A welcome change from the previous book. A sixty year old woman finds out that she was adopted and instead of being a Southern Woman, she is descended from a Polish family in Wisconsin. This book goes back to World War II as well, but is about women pilots (WASPs). The characters in present-day, except for the main character, are one-dimensional. The woman has a crazy mother that, at the beginning of the book, she is taking care of constantly, but when she gets the news of her adoption, falls out of the book. The 40's era is better drawn and the main character, Fritzie is very enjoyable.
A welcome change from the previous book. A sixty year old woman finds out that she was adopted and instead of being a Southern Woman, she is descended from a Polish family in Wisconsin. This book goes back to World War II as well, but is about women pilots (WASPs). The characters in present-day, except for the main character, are one-dimensional. The woman has a crazy mother that, at the beginning of the book, she is taking care of constantly, but when she gets the news of her adoption, falls out of the book. The 40's era is better drawn and the main character, Fritzie is very enjoyable.
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38. The Paying Guests
Author: Sarah Waters
audiobook
Fiction
Description and comments:
This book is set after World War I in London. The main character, Francis, and her mother must take in boarders to keep up their home after the husband/father died without properly providing for his family. They cannot keep up their home anymore. They no longer have servants and Francis must do all the cooking and cleaning. The book touches on the English class system and how trapped women are for opportunities and work. Francis befriends the "paying guests" and things do not end well.
This book is set after World War I in London. The main character, Francis, and her mother must take in boarders to keep up their home after the husband/father died without properly providing for his family. They cannot keep up their home anymore. They no longer have servants and Francis must do all the cooking and cleaning. The book touches on the English class system and how trapped women are for opportunities and work. Francis befriends the "paying guests" and things do not end well.
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39. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
Author: Denise Kiernan
book
Nonfiction
Description and comments:
The city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee was created during World War II to purify components for the atomic bomb. It was a very secret project, but it needed a very large number of people to do it. An entire town was created to do the work. Since many men were serving in the war, this left women at home to do the jobs. The women weren't told what they were doing except that it was secret work. This book follows several women, including one black woman, who worked at Oak Ridge during the war. There are also side stories about women scientists who contributed to the bomb project.
The city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee was created during World War II to purify components for the atomic bomb. It was a very secret project, but it needed a very large number of people to do it. An entire town was created to do the work. Since many men were serving in the war, this left women at home to do the jobs. The women weren't told what they were doing except that it was secret work. This book follows several women, including one black woman, who worked at Oak Ridge during the war. There are also side stories about women scientists who contributed to the bomb project.
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40. This Must Be the Place
Author: Kate Raccula
book
fiction
Description and comments:
A man's wife dies in Los Angelos and he is devastated, but finds a box of stuff she has including an old postcard that seems to leave everything to a childhood friend. He seeks out and finds her in upstate New York and begins to learn all about his wife. The friend owns a boarding house and he stays with her and gets to know her daughter. The book was okay, but I didn't really like a lot of the characters and there seemed to be a lot of holes in the story. How could he know nothing about his wife's past?
A man's wife dies in Los Angelos and he is devastated, but finds a box of stuff she has including an old postcard that seems to leave everything to a childhood friend. He seeks out and finds her in upstate New York and begins to learn all about his wife. The friend owns a boarding house and he stays with her and gets to know her daughter. The book was okay, but I didn't really like a lot of the characters and there seemed to be a lot of holes in the story. How could he know nothing about his wife's past?
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41. Leaving Time
Author: Jodi Picoult
audiobook
Fiction
Fiction
Description and comments:
A girl is trying to find out what happened when her mother disappeared 10 years ago. She enlists the help of a psychic and the former detective. The mother and father were elephant researchers and the book jumps around in time and with different voices. There is an unexpected twist at the end that I thought made the book unpleasant.
A girl is trying to find out what happened when her mother disappeared 10 years ago. She enlists the help of a psychic and the former detective. The mother and father were elephant researchers and the book jumps around in time and with different voices. There is an unexpected twist at the end that I thought made the book unpleasant.
