My heart was stolen by The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Through the sometimes scary nights of my childhood a book kept me company and helped me fend off bad dreams.  I was grateful to my friends Caddie Woodlawn and Jupiter Jones and the words that brought me comfort and sleep. My troubles were nothing compared to those of Liesel Meminger and her books take on a whole new importance in "The Book Thief by Markus Zusak."


Markus Zusak uses unorthodox writing, characters and perspective to bring to life (or should I say death) the story of a young girl growing up in Germany during WWII.  There is much, much to this tale:

While Death may be the narrator and he collects souls along the way this is a story about living.
This is a story about getting through anyway you can.  Momma Rosa curses at a hard world while Pappa bows and lets life flow over him and he plays the accordion.  Liesel uses her books and words to help keep the nightmares at bay and Max wipes away the ugly to create something new and loving.
This is a story about acceptance but also about fighting when you can't do anything else.
This story is about love and hate.
This is the story of the power of words to heal, to love, to hate and to destroy.


This is not an easy book to read on several levels. In fact the first 20 pages are so strange in style I almost put the book down.  The writing style is very challenging.  Death goes on tangents and in the middle of a thought or description a big bold block of words tells you what he is thinking or wondering about something else.  It was really distracting.  I never did get completely used to it and sometimes I tried skipping the interjections to only go back and read them because I felt I should.  The subject matter is hard and depressing.  I am not really a fan of tragedy.  My life tends to be dramatic enough without the addition of fictional crises that end badly.
This book is sold as a young adult novel for 9th grade and above but don't let that fool you.  This is an adult novel.  Once into the story I was held by the tension and pace of this girl's will to make sense of the senseless.  I turned the pages quickly to find out what they were going to do with Max. I frowned with anger as they marched the Jews through the street to their deaths and no one spoke up.  I smiled and cried when Liesel gets her book back in the end.
There is much to this story and it feels relevant to our times with fears of terrorists and economic collapse always close.  People really just want to get by and usually do even in the worst of times and sometimes a good book can make all the difference in the world.
Read this book.

Other books by Markus Zusak:

Getting The Girl

Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Wilde Hunde

 Underdog.

 Der Joker

C.J.'s Fate by Kay Hooper and Spellbound by Nora Roberts... The past is sometimes best left there

I am annoyed.  I really hate when publishers, authors, whoever re-release novels or short stories without informing the customers.  Why?  Have you run out of authors or product ideas that you must cheat by treating an old book like a new one?
Kay Hooper and Nora Roberts have a wonderful body of work.  I know they have new works on the horizon. They don't need to rehash or republish old books.  Not to mention these books aren't good stories.


C.J.'s Fate is over worked to the point of nausea.  If she used the word "wryly" once she used it 100 times.  Even for 1984 the use of "Indian" to refer to the hero is weird and inappropriate.  The heroine CJ is a research librarian for God Sake!  She would be educated enough to not use this terminology. Then there is the whole premise of her grabbing a strange man and yanking him into her hotel room in front of her life long friends and they let her!  How about no.  He was conveniently a good guy.  They conveniently were instantly attracted to each other.  There was a cabin conveniently available during a blizzard.  She is conveniently wealthy at the end and he is conveniently in touch enough with his feminine side to be ok with it.  I thought I might need an insulin shot to offset the sickening sweetness of this story.  I didn't look at the copyright of the book when I bought it and I wish I had.  I read so much I don't remember most of the fluff books that go through my life.  I wasn't 10 pages into the story when I knew this was an early work.  It just didn't have the polish and power of the Bishop series.  It was satisfying to know I was right.

Nora Roberts, shame on you!  You put out several new titles every year and I read every darn one of them.  There was no reason for Spellbound to be released at all let alone as a stand alone novel.  Why not let us know that it had already been in print once already?  Evidently this was originally part of an anthology in 2005.  I purchased this for my Nook.  Thank God I only spent $2.00 at Barnes and Noble because once you get past the the teaser, forward and publishing pages it is only 70 pages long.  A boring dumb 70 pages at that.  It wasn't as much a short story as it was an incomplete story.  I felt like this was a test story to see if you  would like writing paranormal. I am glad you did because I loved the Sign of Seven and Circle Trilogies.

Is it the economy?  Is it just cheaper to release old books with new covers to get another dollar from your readers?  It isn't the re-releasing of the book I have trouble with.  You can re-publish as many books as you want but in the name of truth and fairness print it on the cover that it isn't original.

Julie Garwood's "Sizzle" was a Fizzle for me

Julie Garwood's "Sizzle" was a Fizzle for me

I love a Garwood starting with "Gentle Warrior" and my Favorites being all the Clairborne novels.  When she moved to modern romantic suspense I followed right along.  She writes with gentle passion and love for her romances. Then her modern suspense novels are tightly woven with tension and plenty of action.   Whenever I read a book by her it is always in the back of my mind that she really loves doing this.  Janet Evonovich and Jennifer Cruise are like this.  These ladies really love what they do. 
So I am sure it would be no surprise when I tell you picking up Sizzle was a no brainer for me.  What was surprising, for me, was how big a  disappointment "Sizzle" ended up being.  I am sorry Ms. Garwood.  I really do enjoy your work.  I have read everything you have written but this one just didn't come together.
The idea for this book was really cool.  Young woman finds herself unwittingly in the wrong place at the wrong time, twice!  Handsome FBI agent comes into help.  There are great sidekicks and a strange buffoon for one of the villains.
Wrong place #1:  Lyra Prescott is a film student finishing up her last project before moving onto a great career, she hopes.  Her final project is filming an old park that has turned into an illegal dumping spot.  Someone has found out she has been filming and wants to stop her...permanently.  
Wrong place #2:  While out on a Saturday morning heading to her grandma's house she stops at a strange yard sale where the lady is giving everything away.  Lyra finds a stack of old books that turn out to be collectors' items along with a bunch of cd's she has always wanted.  One of those cds is singing a different kind of tune.
Sounds pretty interesting, right?  I think it would have been a great story if Ms. Garwood had stuck with it but she didn't.  The book starts with the intruduction of a bumbling would be assasin who thinks he is the real James Bond who is working for a bumbling bad guy.  The killer has yet to actually kill anyone because the targets end up offing themselves by falling into a pool and drowning, being shot by a violent spouse and having a heart attack.  When he is sent out to silence Lyra he falls in love instantly with his "Bond Girl" and can't do it.  So the boss sends in 2 other hulking idiots to do the job.  They bungle the job by breaking into Lyra's apartment and attacking her roommate.  Lyra enters during the attack and manages to call 911 while holding off the attackers.  Guess what?  Her roommate just happens to be the sister of FBI Alec Buchanan who calls in a favor from his buddy Sam Kinkaid, another FBI agent who happens to be on vacatiopn,  to play bodyguard to the girls and hopefully catch the assailants. 
To protect the girls they make them leave their apartment so Lyra goes to her brother while Sam and Lyra head to Lyra's Grandmother's home. Enter strange unloving parents and loving but distant brothers all tied together by a wily, little nutty grandmother.  Another plot line begins.
Oh my god I am exhausted writing this synopsis.  It is so convoluted and overdone it stopped being a fun read early on.
Bottom line, while the plot ideas have some merit the story is a yawn.  Of course Sam and Lyra get together and believe me, the usual Garwood chemistry is missing.  Everything is too pat, too contrived.  There was nothing unexpected or exciting. 
Everyone is entitled to an off day whether it is playing golf, baking a cake or writing a book.  This was Ms. Garwood's off day.
Skip "Sizzle" and wait for the next one.  I am sure it will be better...please!

Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly is My DIK Reading Challenge book

Innocent heroine: I can't pay the rent!
Villainous Landlord:  You must pay the rent!
Innocent heroine:  I can't pay the rent!  sigh, Woe is me!
Villainous Landlord:  Then I will do dastardly things to you..muuaahhhh!
Innocent heroine:  Oh no you won't.  I am going to run away and be miraculously assisted by strange and handsome men who think my eyes are the most innocent and amazing blue they have ever seen!  Then I will return an heiress and ruin you!
Villainous Landlord:  I will hunt you down and kill you but only after I ravish you in a most heinous and vile manner!

I loved watching Dudley DoRight and Penelope Purebread battle wits against Dick Dastardly as a kid.  One of my most favorite guilty pleasures as an adult is the soap opera  "Days of Our Lives."  This month's DIK Reading Challenge offering is right up there with these tried and true melodramas.  "Tea Rose" was on Sarai's choices in the book list over at DIK.  It was right there on the shelf in the library just waiting for me to pick it up and so I did.

The story is set in the late 1800's in the Whitechapel section of London.  The Ripper is busy doing his thing.  Enter the Finnegans and the Bristows.  Irish families doing the best they can raising their respective families on pittance a day.  The Finnegans are led by the Da who works on the docks.  Charlie the son kicks in with money from his work while young Fiona helps out with her wages as a tea packer.  Mam, who is raising two more small ones, helps by doing laundry.  Their neighbors and lifelong friends have a son who is the love of Fiona's life. Joe is a handsome young devil who could sell ice to Eskimos.  Joe and Fiona plan to open their own shop and marry as soon as they have raised enough cash to open their place.  William Burton is the man who owns the tea factory where Da and Fiona work.  He is a greedy, shifty and dangerous man.

  Now you have the back story and the rest is high melodrama.  Da becomes an outspoken advocate for the unions and is killed in a supposed accident.  Joe is lured away from his vegetable cart by a wealthy merchant who sees his potential as a salesman and who has a daughter who sees his potential as a sexy mate.  Joe explains that he is only going to work for the man to earn their shop faster but Fiona knows better and he ends up getting the daughter pregnant.  Mam is killed by the Ripper while trying to get the baby to the doctor's and Charlie runs off in grief only to be found drifting face down in the Thames.  He is beaten so badly the only way to identify him is by the pocket watch his Da gave him on his death bed. Fiona runs to America with Seamie after overhearing Burton bragging about killing her Da.  She manages to get a hold of some of Burton’s money and helped aboard an Amerca bound ship.

Are you tired yet? I was and this was only the first 100 pages.

“Tea Rose is a classic high melodrama romance in the style of Barbara Taylor Bradford and Barbara Cartland.  The heroine is constantly escaping one tragedy to only find herself in another pickle.  She is ALWAYS rescued by a handsome stranger and even though she becomes involved with other men she will never be out of love with her first, Joe.  She ALWAYS overcomes with a positive attitude and a quick wit, ala, The Unsinkable Molly Brown.

I did enjoy this story.  It was a real change of pace from the paranormal and heavy suspense genres I have been reading lately.  It took me back to my early romance reading days when I yearned for a perfect love like the girls I was reading about.  Now that I am older, wiser and a little more jaded “Tea Rose” was an overly sweet treat that is delicious in very small amounts.
There is a sequel to “Tea Rose” called “The Winter Rose” and I do plan on reading it some day, just not very soon.