Monday, June 16, 2014

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 
It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week.
My comments are not meant to be recaps of the story lines as I include a link to Goodreads for their synopsis of the book. I am merely stating how I felt about the book without giving any spoilers.



59 COMPLETED READS TO DATE!
1 ABANDONED
1 not finished as it expired so I will have to borrow it again. The Nightmare


FINISHED:
The Four Last Things (The Roth Trilogy, #1)


Beautifully creepy, mesmerizing. I will be reading the next two books in the series.

The Madness Underneath (Shades of London, #2)

After her near-fatal run-in with the Jack the Ripper copycat, Rory Deveaux has been living in Bristol under the close watch of her parents. So when her therapist suddenly suggests she return to Wexford, Rory jumps at the chance to get back to her friends. But Rory's brush with the Ripper touched her more than she thought possible: she's become a human terminus, with the power to eliminate ghosts on contact. She soon finds out that the Shades--the city's secret ghost-fighting police--are responsible for her return. The Ripper may be gone, but now there is a string of new inexplicable deaths threatening London. Rory has evidence that the deaths are no coincidence. Something much more sinister is going on, and now she must convince the squad to listen to her before it's too late. 

Fluff, a filler in the middle of a three part series. Second book slump. Disappointing. 
I enjoyed the first book and was looking forward to this.  Now I'm not sure I will read the third book.

Then Again

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.

So begins Diane Keaton’s unforgettable memoir about her mother and herself. In it you will meet the woman known to tens of millions as Annie Hall, but you will also meet, and fall in love with, her mother, the loving, complicated, always-thinking Dorothy Hall. To write about herself, Diane realized she had to write about her mother, too, and how their bond came to define both their lives. In a remarkable act of creation, Diane not only reveals herself to us, she also lets us meet in intimate detail her mother. Over the course of her life, Dorothy kept eighty-five journals—literally thousands of pages—in which she wrote about her marriage, her children, and, most probingly, herself. Dorothy also recorded memorable stories about Diane’s grandparents. Diane has sorted through these pages to paint an unflinching portrait of her mother—a woman restless with intellectual and creative energy, struggling to find an outlet for her talents—as well as her entire family, recounting a story that spans four generations and nearly a hundred years. 

Thoroughly enjoyed this peek into Diane  Keaton's life, an actor that I didn't really know anything about other than Woody Allen and Annie Hall.
But her writing leaves a lot to be desired. The story had me so I put up with the unfinished chapters, lost thoughts, rambling sentences. 
I was surprised how insecure she continued to be even after some fame. I liked her refusal to conform to the Hollywood "rules".
The book is a sentimental journey through the family life and emotional struggles of Diane Keaton. 
Just as her mother spent her time creating collages Diane has given us a collage of her family.

What really held me was her totally accurate descriptions of the life of an Alzheimer patient.  

STARTED:
City of Ice

A college kid in a Santa Claus suit is tortured, murdered, and left hanging from a meat hook on Christmas Eve - a gift intended for one particular cop. This debut thriller set in bone-chilling midwinter Montreal features one of the most compelling new heroes to emerge in crime fiction: Sergeant-Detective Emile Cinq-Mars. A brilliant logician, an eccentric who follows his own rules, this old-style cop is beleaguered by the virulent crime wave that has engulfed his city. While political uncertainty over separatism has damaged Montreal's social and economic life, organized crime has been quick to take advantage. The Russian Mafia, rival motorcycle gangs, and infiltrators from the CIA are engaged in violent turf wars, while the police force - teeming with corruption - struggles to keep the city safe. Even Cinq-Mars, whose stunning arrests have made him a local hero, appears to have been compromised. How has he managed to penetrate Montreal's criminal elite? Who are his informants and how do they acquire their vast knowledge? And who is the young female American operative he seems so desperate to save from the clutches of the mob?




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