Month: September 2017

This was an interesting prompt since it was pretty specific while still allowing room for genre choices. Unfortunately the book I really wanted wasn’t in the library system at all. It ended up being lucky for mey though.

A book set in a hotel – The Grand Hotel by Scott Kenemore

A group of tourists stumble into what appears to be a dilapidated and closed hotel at night. The interior is dark and gloomy with only a hint of past grandeur remaining. This group is an odd mixture of men, women and a single red haired child of undisclosed age.

As they walk through the lobby they notice a man sitting at the front desk. All in the group become awkward – is this man homeless? Surely he can’t be working in this place?

The group draws near to the desk and the man rises, introducing himself as the night clerk and offering up a tour of the Grand Hotel and its occupants. They murmur agreement and what begins is a trip through reality, secrets and riddles.

Along the way the night clerk begins to be drawn to the red haired girl. Could she be the one to open up all the deep truths about the hotel? Will she be able to handle it?

The tour takes the group to visit a series of permanent hotel residents. The first one is a corpse. A very dead, very decayed corpse. While this first visit does set the tone of the rest of the book, after the entire story comes to light it really doesn’t fit in and I was left feeling uncertain why the author included it except for the shock value.

From there the tour group gets introduced to various people, all having a strange tale to tell of how they came to reside at the Grand Hotel. After each story, the night clerk who you learn is named Vick, turns to the girl in the red hair and asks her a pointed question about the story. If she answers correctly, the tour continues. If not, it ends for everyone.

I won’t ruin the book as it is important to keep guessing throughout. The novel is classified as a horror book and while there isn’t any gore or outright terror in it, the residents’ stories are fantastical and with a bit of dread thrown in.

The novel was easy to read and caught my attention from page 1. It is told from the point of view of Vick except for the residents’ stories which are all told in the first person from the  story teller. You do not get to know any of the tour group members except for the girl and no names are mentioned. As such, the experiences of each visit is a bit subdued as you get the impression that Vick has heard these stories numerous times. It left me feeling a certain longing to hear the stories as the guests experienced them.

The ending caught me off guard, which doesn’t happen that often, and was a great way to fold it all together. I highly recommend reading this novel.

5/5

Back to the mothership for this choice! I had never heard of this book, which is odd since it was apparently a really big deal when it was published and there is a movie about it.

A book with the month or day of the week in the title- Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Morrie has been diagnosed with ALS. There is no cure and while many assume he would fade away in self pity and remorse instead the lively sociology professor embraces his last days with a vigor few live their best days with.

Mitch was one of his favorite students when he was a student at Brandies university in the 1970s. The feeling was mutual and upon graduation Mitch promised to keep in touch. Like many people though, life got busy and in the way and Mitch finds himself sitting with Morrie after a 16 year absence trying to squeeze in as much time as he can as Morrie’s days run out.

Mitch spends every Tuesday for 13 weeks at Morrie’s home, speaking to him about the meaning of life and trying to find answers to all his burning questions. This is his last class with his beloved professor and the lessons he learns are far more important than any form his university days.

The book is broken down into each topic the two men discuss. As it progresses, the ALS that is taking over Morrie’s body also progresses. Morrie maintains a love of life, passion for people and an against the grain attitude towards culture and the world. He helps Mitch face death directly and in the process helps him face his life as well.

The book end with Morrie’s life with all proceeds from the publication going to his medical bills.

This book is meant to be very thought provoking as Morrie’s theories on a life well lived are laid out. It was easy to read from a time stand point although the concepts were heavy. It is laid out in a way to allow you to think over each topic and digest it as you go. It is worth the read if you haven’t already.

4/5

The next prompt was back to me and I have found that finding the book is nearly as much fun as reading it. These later prompts are reminding me that earlier picks may have fit better in these categories as well.

A book set in two different time periods – The Wedding Dress by Rachel Hauck

1912, Emily. 1929, Mary. 1968, Hillary. Present day, Charlotte. Each bride finds themselves in the possession of a magical wedding dress made with gold silk that shines in the light, never fades and never needs altered.

Each bride has a story to tell and it is up to the newest owner, Charlotte, to find out where the dress came from and what it means. As a modern day bridal shop owner who specializes in matching each bride with the perfect dress, Charlotte is up to the task. When she begins to untangle the history of the dress she learns more about herself than she thought possible.

Charlotte is about to get married when the book begins, but she has questions: is he the right man, does she want to get married, will she fit in with his family? She feels unsettled about her own past as an orphan with no family and has been delaying her own wedding plans until the month prior to the date when she finds herself at an auction purchasing a welded shut trunk for $1,000 from a strange man dressed in purple velvet.

The book then flashes back in time to 1912 and introduces the reader to Emily, a well to do young lady torn who has sworn her hand to a man in her social circle while secretly loving another. The city she lives in is separated by race and Emily finds herself longing for a wedding dress made by an African American woman. She frequents the “black neighborhood” to have the dress handmade all the while siting for a hideous dress her mother insists on from the white seamstress in town.

Back to present day and Charlotte has broken up with her fiancee and broken into the trunk to find a 100 year old dress that glows from an inner light and looks brand new. She begins her search to find the original owner and is led first to the last owner: Hillary who helps her find Mary who tells the story of Emily.

What I found interesting about this book is that while it is a basic, easy reading feel good story with predictable turns and a tidy ending, throughout the novel it actually brings to light some deep themes. Emily, back in 1912, is a well to do white woman who is joining the suffragist movement. On top of that, she is fighting the chain gangs that work in the  mines for no pay and constantly extending sentences. Then we find out that she is breaking all the social rules when she hires an african american woman to make her wedding dress and gets arrested for being seen in the wrong neighborhood. These are awfully heavy, and pretty flippantly processed, themes for the book to cover in the midst of finding the history behind a magical wedding dress.

The book is also heavily christian which was not evident from reading the excerpt I had access to. Charlotte herself is very religious and the man in purple who brings the dress to everyone and never changes throughout the century the book spans is heavily hinted at being God.

All in all it was an okay book. Easy to read although a lot of the minor themes don’t really fit into the arc of the novel. I wouldn’t really recommend it.

2/5

I’m so far behind in my review posts!! This topic was another broad one that spans any genre and time period. It was my mom’s pick again.

A book about an interesting woman – Mrs. Sherlock Holmes by Brad Ricca

In the early 1900s, detectives were all the rage with the Sherlock Holmes novels just being published and real life detective hitting the streets. In New York City, the police force is in early infancy with a new, young commissioner at the helm when Ruth Cruger goes missing after leaving her family home to go ice skating, a task she did frequently. This time, however, Ruth does not come home and her father contacts every investigator he can find to locate her. The press becomes involved and the entire city is on high alert for the missing young lady.

Grace Humiston is a prominent female lawyer in New York City taking on the hopeless cases, those of the poor and those of the down trodden. Her storied career took her into the peonage cases of the farms of the deep south working with the US President to take down the system. Upon completion of this task, left somewhat unfinished, she picks up the case of a man on death row which drains her energy until she return to New York to find herself thrown into the case of the missing girl consumed by the fact that something was missing and she was the one who could find it.

The novel tells the real life story of a female lawyer in New York city in the early to mid 1900s. By all accounts she was a tenacious woman who refused to take no for an answer and worked hard for those she felt needed it most. She took no money for the majority of her cases and worked hard to equal the playing field having noted early on that those who could not read or write were easily taken advantage of in the system.

The book itself is a little confusing in how it is laid out. It begins with the disappearance of Ruth Cruger which occurs in 1917 and then back tracks the next chapter to Grace’s graduation from law school 10 years earlier. It continues along this path until the two story lines converge with Grace taking on the Cruger case. The book comes across as very disjointed since the main focus is Grace, however the Ruth case itself takes up more of the book. By the time Grace joins the case, I felt uninterested in much of it having spent so much time reading about her travels in the South to bring down the peonage system of keeping farmers in constant and impossible to overcome debt that now shifting to a lost girl seems to pale in comparison to her accomplishments in the South. Also, since every case presented is figured out by the magnificent Grace, when she takes on the Ruth case it is nearly predictable what the outcome will be.

I found myself disengaged from the book throughout most of it and hoping it would get to the point which is a shame since Grace has a very interesting story to tell about her life.

2/5