I luv my Kindle!

Posted on April 1, 2011 by jackieinpdx

I ordered a Kindle around the first week of August 2010. I got a couple of emails from Amazon that said they had no estimated ship date for my order. Apparently they were caught short and had a real backlog. I finally got the Kindle on September 15th. I immediately began to order books for my Kindle using the $155 Amazon gift card I got from co-workers as a retirement gift. I purchased this Kindle cover with a light on it so I could read on dark planes and in dimly lit restaurants.

I have been on three beach/pool vacations taking my Kindle with me. I was recently laid up for a few weeks after foot surgery so I have probably read more than I ever have in the past. Certainly more than when I used to work long hours and only read on the weekends. To date I have read 34 books and have 23 unread that are loaded on my Kindle.The cost of a Kindle book is less than the price of a new release hardback so I tend to buy books that I might not have pre-Kindle and I am reading new authors more often. I do still buy some “real” books if I think that my daughter or a friend might enjoy and pass them on.
From my account on Amazon I can go to the Manage My Kindle page and see all of my orders by book, author and date.

My Kindle reading list and a few real books as posted on my Facebook Notes page.

If I have read it there is a * rating based on my personal reading enjoyment. **** is a really good book. The few that have ***** are some of the best books I have read in the last year.

212: A Novel

Burke, Alafair

***** A Dog’s Purpose

Cameron, W. Bruce

* A Scattered Life

McQuestion, Karen

**** A Secret Kept

de Rosnay, Tatiana

*** Bitter in the Mouth: A Novel

Truong, Monique

Blood Vines

Spindler, Erica

Bone Cold

Spindler,Erica

** By Nightfall: A Novel

Cunningham, Michael

**** Do They Know I’m Running?: A Novel

Corbett, David

*** Done for a Dime

Corbett, David

* Easily Amused

McQuestion, Karen

* Falling Home

White, Karen

** Georgia Bottoms:A Novel

Childress, Mark

*** Georgia’s Kitchen

Nelson, Jenny

Girl in Translation

Kwok, Jean

***** Greyhound

Piper, Steffan

Healer

Cassella, Carol

Heartwood: A Novel

Plain, Belva

** Her Last Letter

Johnson, Nancy C.

Home in the Morning

Glickman, Mary

**** Honolulu

Brennert, Alan

***** Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel

Ford, Jamie

** Hothouse Flower and the Nine Plants of Desire: A Novel

Berwin, Margot

**** I Still Dream About You: A Novel

Flagg, Fannie

I’d Know You Anywhere: A Novel

Lippman, La

If I Stay

Forman, Gayle

In Silence

Spindler, Erica

Labor Day

Maynard, Joyce

*** Lake of Dreams

Kim Edwards

Local Knowledge

Gyllenhaal, Liza

*** Lost in Translation

Mones, Nicole

Love at First Flight

Force, Marie

Love You More: A Novel

Gardner, Lisa

Minding Frankie

Binchy, Maeve

*** Moloka’i

Brennert, Alan

Now You See Her

Fielding, Joy

Oxygen

Cassella, Carol

**** Saving CeeCee Honeycutt: A Novel

Hoffman, Beth

*** Secrets to the Grave

Hoag, Tami

* Such A Pretty Face

Lamb, Cathy

The Book Thief

Zusak, Markus

**** The Brightest Star in the Sky: A Novel

Keyes, Marian

*** The Confession: A Novel

Grisham, John

** The Devil’s Redhead

Corbett, David

*** The Girl Who Fell from the Sky

Durrow, Heidi W.

**** The Last Chinese Chef

Mones, Nicole

** The Love Goddess’ Cooking School

Senate, Melissa

*** The Mountain Between Us: A Novel

Martin, Charles

*** The Owl & Moon Cafe

Mapson, Jo-Ann

The Tiger’s Wife: A Novel

Obreht, Tea

The Usual Rules

Maynard, Joyce

Tick Tock

Patterson, James, Ledwidge, Michael

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Hillenbrand, Laura

*** Where the River Ends

Martin, Charles

* While My Sister Sleeps

Delinsky, Barbara

White Tiger, The

Adiga, Aravind

** World and Town

Jen, Gish

 

~ Non Kindle books that I have recently read and enjoyed:

***** The three books by Tana French. In the Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place

***** Cutting For Stone by Abraham Verghese

**** Blood Paradise by David Corbet

2/6/11 Non Kindle books recently ordered so I could give them to my daughter to read when I am finished with them:

The Weird Sisters

Eleanor Brown

The Red Garden

Alice Hoffman

10th Anniversary

James Patterson, Maxine Paetro

The Peach Keeper

Sarah Addison Allen

Lambs of God

Marele Day (older book, no Kindle version)

The Informationist

Taylor Stevens

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Blood of Paradise – book review

Posted on October 19, 2010 by jackieinpdx

Blood of Paradise – I had this book on my “to read” pile for a very long time.  I finally decided to read it. It was great. I really liked the narrator Jude who told the story of his life in El Salvador and his disillusion of his father the bad cop 10 years earlier. Intrigue, murder, sex and wondering who is the bad guy and who is  the good guy.

I liked the author so much that I purchased and downloaded three other books by him for my Kindle.

Synopsis

El Salvador: America’s great Cold War success story and the model for Iraq’s fledgling democracy–if one ignores the grinding poverty, the corruption, the spiraling crime, and a murder rate ranked near the top in the hemisphere. This is where Jude McManus works as an executive protection specialist, currently assigned to an American engineer working for a U.S. consortium.

Ten years before, at age seventeen, he saw his father and two Chicago cop colleagues arrested for robbing street dealers. The family fell apart in the scandal’s wake, his disgraced dad died under suspicious circumstances, and Jude fled Chicago to join the army and forge a new life.

Now the past returns when one of his father’s old pals appears. The man is changed–he’s scarred, regretful, self-aware–and he helps Jude revisit the past with a forgiving eye. Then he asks a favor–not for himself, but for the third member of his dad’s old crew. 

Even though it’s ill-considered, Jude agrees, thinking he can oblige the request and walk away, unlike his father. But he underestimates the players and the stakes and he stumbles into a web of Third World corruption and personal betrayal where everything he values–and everyone he loves–is threatened. And only the greatest of sacrifices will save them.


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Book review – Cutting For Stone

Posted on October 11, 2010 by jackieinpdx

I read a lot especially when I am on vacation. However Cutting For Stone is a big novel. (534 pages) and it took me almost all last week to read it. I did have company on my vacation to Isla so I didn’t have as much time as usual to just read.

I got totally wrapped up in the lives of all the main characters. For his first book of fiction Abraham Verghese’s Cutting for Stone is a tremendous accomplishment with gorgeous writing, interesting and sympathetic characters, fascinating setting, gripping narrative. One of the twins is the narrator of the story but that doesn’t take away from really getting to know the other characters in the novel.

Read it, I think you will like it!

“The story is a riveting saga of twin brothers, Marion and Shiva Stone, born of a tragic union between a beautifulIndian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, and bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.But it’s love, not politics — their passion for the same woman — that will tear them apart and force Marion to flee his homeland and make his way to America, finding refuge in his work at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches up to him, wreaking havoc and destruction, Marion has to entrust his life to the two men he has trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.”

I came across a blog titled “All the Books I can Read” where the blogger has a ton of book reviews. Many of the books she has reviewed are books that I have read and enjoyed or now have on my list of “to read”.

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Recommended reading – three books by Tana French

Posted on September 15, 2010 by jackieinpdx

I have finished the third book by Tana French. I don’t remember when I was last so taken in by an author and the characters. Oh, yes I guess I was as taken by the Millennium Trilogy. But these stories are of a very different kind.

Here’s my recommendation if you think you might be interested in reading her books.

Read them in the order they were written They all are certainly stand alone stories but if you read them in order you meet the character who will be the first person narrator in the next book.

In the Woods – Murder Detective Rob Ryan tells the story about a young girl murdered in the woods. Coincidently it is the same woods where 20+ years earlier 12 year old Ryan was found in a catatonic state gripping a tree with blood filled tennis shoes and his two friends never were found. Rob is the main character but his partner Cassie Maddox plays a big role in the story. Cassie used to be an undercover agent before transferring to the murder squad. Detective Sam O’Neil works a side angle of the case.

The Likeness – Story told by Detective Cassie Maddox who is brought into a murder case by her ex undercover boss Frank Mackey. Murder detective Sam O’Neil has the case but because the dead girl was flagged to Frank in the Dublin police database  Frank is jointly working it. The dead girl is a ringer for Cassie and is using an alias that Cassie used when undercover. BTW Sam and Cassie are now a couple.

Faithful Place – Told by Frank Mackey. When Frank was 19 he and his girlfriend were planning on secretly leaving Ireland to go to England. The night they were supposed to meet up to sneak out of the country the GF never showed up. For 22 years Frank thought that she had dumped him. The GF’s suitcase shows up and Frank is pulled back to his family and the place he grew up where he hadn’t been back to since that night 22 years ago. Frank unofficially works on solving the mystery from 22 years ago as well as the current murder of his younger brother.

All of the books were really good. I hope Tana has another one in the works.



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Eternal On the Water – a book review

Posted on August 8, 2010 by jackieinpdx

I am no longer updating my Have Read and Future Read pages. I found it to be too tedious to copy and paste links and synopsis of what I was reading. I haven’t deleted those pages because I may go back to updating them.

So anyway here is my book review.

Eternal On the Water by Joseph Monninger.

This is a story about two well educated individuals. Cobb is a teacher at a prestigious New England prep school. Mary is a PHD teaching biology at a university. They meet the night before they are going to kayak down a river. There is an instant attraction. They spend time together on the river experiencing new wonders and some of Mary’s history.

Without giving too much away you pretty quickly find out that Mary has the possibility of having a bad genetic gene that will cause an early death. Mary has chosen not to have testing done to determine if she has this gene. She doesn’t want to know how or when she will die.

The story is full of wonderful things like a trip to Yellowstone to study the environment once packs of wolves had been re-introduced. A trip to a small Bali island where Mary’s brother is a hero for the diminishing turtle population.

This is a true love story. It’s a feel good story and ultimately a story of faith, love and un-selfishness character.

Read the book!

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