My Addiction

I admit it.  I have an addiction.  To reading.  I love books: small books, big books, skinny books, fat books,  trashy novels and great novels.  I love books and I love reading.  During the summer, I can read books all day long if I choose, and you will oftentimes find me at the library checking out a big stack to get me through a couple of weeks.  During the school year, I can only read for "fun" at night because my days are filled with class, textbooks and studying.  So I relish the summer when I'm free to read to my heart's content.


Here's a list and review of some of the books I've been reading lately:

From Booklist: Callie Perry seems to have it all: a handsome husband she adores, two adorable children, and a thriving business as a portrait photographer. A battle with breast cancer four years ago only made her marriage to Reece stronger, but the couple faces a major setback when agonizing headaches and a frightening blackout send Callie back to the hospital soon after celebrating her forty-third birthday. While Callie's oncologist tries to determine if her cancer has returned, her family rallies around her. Her younger sister, Steffi, a successful chef, has recently traded a fast-paced life in New York City for a quieter one in Sleepy Hollow in order to reassess her priorities. Callie and Steffi's father, Warren, has barely been able to be in the same room with their mother, Honor, since she left him; but news of Callie's plight brings him rushing to her bedside. Inspired by a friend's battle with cancer, Green's story definitely has the emotional heart and resonance to hook readers of women's fiction. --Kristine Huntley

My Take: I personally enjoyed this book.  It made me smile and it made me cry.  If you're looking for a good chick flick type novel, then this is for you!

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Cases rarely come much colder than the decades-old disappearance of teen heiress Harriet Vanger from her family's remote island retreat north of Stockholm, nor do fiction debuts hotter than this European bestseller by muckraking Swedish journalist Larsson. At once a strikingly original thriller and a vivisection of Sweden's dirty not-so-little secrets (as suggested by its original title, Men Who Hate Women), this first of a trilogy introduces a provocatively odd couple: disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist, freshly sentenced to jail for libeling a shady businessman, and the multipierced and tattooed Lisbeth Salander, a feral but vulnerable superhacker. Hired by octogenarian industrialist Henrik Vanger, who wants to find out what happened to his beloved great-niece before he dies, the duo gradually uncover a festering morass of familial corruption—at the same time, Larsson skillfully bares some of the similar horrors that have left Salander such a marked woman. Larsson died in 2004, shortly after handing in the manuscripts for what will be his legacy. 100,000 first printing. (Sept.) 

My Take: I'd heard a lot of ranting and raving about this series, but I actually didn't know what the book was about before I started reading it.  The book took me awhile to get into, but once I did, I was hooked.  This is a thrilling tale that has romance, murder, finance and mystery all rolled into one.  I think this book can appeal to a wide-range of readers.  I know you're surprised that I just started reading the second in this series...

Amazon.com Review

James Patterson and Peter de Jonge's The Beach House opens with the death of a handsome townie on Memorial Day weekend in the Hamptons, where being a single-digit millionaire is laughable and being poor is unthinkable. Peter Mullen is a high school dropout who parks cars at the private bashes of the superwealthy Barry and Campion Neubauer. When Peter is found dead on the beach, the Neubauers and their friends insist that he drowned, but his brother Jack, a law student who saw Peter's body, knows he was beaten to death. As Jack uncovers evidence of his brother's secret life, he begins to realize that the very rich are indeed different from the rest of us. Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Jack's patiently plotted payback for Peter's death is one that the Hamptons will not soon forget.

My Take: I'd only read Patterson's lighter novels up until this point (Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas, Sunday's at Tiffanys, etc.), so I was surprised to find out this was his typical line of work.  I can't say I was disappointed either.  This book captured my interest from the very beginning, and once again is the type of novel that has a little bit of something for everyone.  I will be reading more of Patteron's "serious" work in the future.

What good books have you read lately?  I'm always looking for new titles and authors to get into, so let me know what's on your summer reading list or must-read list.