Water for Elephants

I read this book for a couple of reasons. First of all, my best friend recommended it quite highly and reminded me it was only $4.99 on barnesandnoble.com for the Nookbook. Secondly, the movie is about to come out, with Robert Pattinson playing the lead role of Jacob. Inevitabley, my best friend and I will be among the first people with our butts in a movie theater seat waiting to watch this movie, and she is going to want to talk about the book. So I decided it was in my best interest to go ahead and read it, even though I typically prefer to see the movie first, and then read the book.

I have to say that I enjoyed the book, but hope they take some creative liberties with the movie. There were times in the book where I found myself getting a little bit bored. Picturing Jacob as Robert Pattinson usually helped me pull through it though! The last 75 or so pages were great! I just couldn't put it down. I also really enjoyed the note from the author at the end. It's always nice to know what parts of a historical book are real, and where those stories came from.

The best thing about this book for me was that you could actually imagine what it was like to be in a travelling circus during the depression. The details were vivid and I feel like Gruen did a great job at filling in the holes that other authors might have left empty. I do wish we got to see a  little more of the storyline between Jacob and Marlena though. It's nice that we know what happened to them, but I would have liked to read at least some of it from Jacob's point of view, as we did the rest of the book.

In reading the questions for book club discussions at the end of the book, I learned that one layer of the story follows the book of Jacob from the Bible. I am not a religious person, so I did not make that connection, but I'd love to hear from any of you who did realize that. Maybe you can fill me in!

Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris

I finally read book #4 in the Sookie Stackhouse series, Dead to the World. I would probably have read the entire series by now if I had them all on my Nook. Unfortunately, I borrowed the books for the rest of the series in paperback, and I keep forgetting that I have them. When I finish a book on my Nook, I tend to start another one right away...so the rest of this series may have to wait a bit. The good news is that it's only going to be a a few more months before True Blood is back on TV! That alone will encourage me to keep reading!

So I enjoyed this book, mostly because I already know that Sookie doesn't end up with Bill, so I was happy to see her and Eric finally connect. I had been forewarned by my friends that this book was one of their favorites because of the sex scenes between Sookie and Eric. Now if you're looking for a lengthy, explicit sex scene, you need to find a romance novel. Charlaine Harris gets the job done with few words and even fewer details. It works though, and the scenes in this book are no exception. I really hope to see a few of them play out in the TV series though. Alan Ball has the ability to give readers what they were missing in the books.

Aside from the short, vague love scenes, I feel like Harris leaves a lot of other stuff out of this book too. It is in this book that we meet witches for the first time, and I don't feel like she gave us enough description and background. That part of the book lacked depth and I really think the book could have been better if she had gone deeper with those characters and that plot line. I'm guessing that she kept it to a minimum to keep the book at a similar length to the previous books. I would have been much happier with a longer book that did a little more explaining.

That said, I did enjoy this book and look forward to book #5!

The High Heels Series by Gemma Halliday

I have read the first two books in this series; Spying in High Heels and Killer in Heels. Both books were fun, easy reads, and kept me interested from start to finish. I though they were a bit long, but otherwise, really enjoyed both of them. The premise for this series, is a completely average shoe designer gets caught up in the middle of different murders, partly by accident but mostly because she can't let anything go. She is fun and quirky and definitely a little nuts, but very likable. She meets a very charismatic policeman and their attempt at a relationship plays into each story. They have a lot of heat between them, and eventually there is implied sex, but no explicit love scenes.

The thing I loved about these books is I could totally see Katherine Heigl or Drew Barrymore playing the lead character in a romantic comedy movie based on the books. Her best friend would be someone like Cameron Diaz and the cop would be any really hunky Hollywood actor who could pull of a slight Spanish accent. 

I haven't decided if I'm going to read the 3rd book in the series. While I enjoyed the first two, I am worried that the 3rd will be a little too predictable. My best friend already downloaded it to her Nook though, so I may ask her to "lend" it to me. I guess I'll let you know! :) 

Catching Up

I've done quite a bit of reading in the last few weeks, but not a lot of writing. I find myself engulfed in other peoples' blogs and it takes away from my allotted writing time. I also seem to have a lot less allotted writing time these days, since my son is no longer going to preschool (financial decision) and I am now working 4-5 nights a week. I have a lot less down time!

Anyway, the books I've read since I last wrote here are (in no particular order):
Water for Elephants
Killer in High Heels (#1 in the High Heels series)
Spying in High Heels #2 in the High Heels series)
Club Dead (#4 in Sookie Stackhouse series)
Christmas Stalking

I really thought I had read more than that! Hmmm...I'm about 10 weeks/books behind where I should be. Time to buckle down! :)

I don't necessarily have a ton of things to say about each of these books, so I'm going to lump the obvious ones together in the next few posts. The book I am currently reading is Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert. It's the book that followed Eat Pray Love and I'm having a tough time getting through it.  It is nowhere near as interesting to me as its predecessor, but I am a little more than half way through, so I should be done soon.