Carrie's 40 Books for 2012 Reading Challenge

[Carrie]

Read 11/18/12 *****

This was my first Agatha Christie novel and definitely won't be the last. What a great book. I need to re-read it and see what I notice the second time around. I was convinced I knew who the killer was very early on in the book, but was shocked to find out who actually did it. The amount of time it must have taken to plot out this novel, not to mention actually write it! I loved how Christie was able to get inside the mind of ten very different characters and show them through their evolution of terror. Great read!

[Nathan]

whoo! Another Christie fan recruited. ;) lol.

[Carrie]

Read 11/30/12 ****

I listened to the audio book version of this, and I'm very glad I did. Hearing a memoir read by the author himself I think is so much more powerful than reading it in my own voice. And Barack Obama is one of the most inspirational speakers on top of that, so it made for an emotional read. I teared up near the beginning when he was talking about how he lost his mother, and what he thinks she might think about his success. He discusses how he thinks she would be most proud of his success as a father, because she knew what a loss it was in his life to have not had a very visible presence of his father. I really related to his sense of loss of as it related to his mother.

I found the story of his life to be so interesting. I kept thinking about how lucky we are as a country to have as President someone with such unique experiences and multi-culturalism in his upbringing. I believe his background to be such a positive influence on his ability to critically analyze situations from a unique perspective.

I look forward to reading his memoir from during his presidency. I am interested in hearing his thoughts on this time period.

[Carrie]

Read 12/12/12, ***

I picked this book up based on a recommendation from a friend who had attended a conference at which the author spoke on this topic. I found the "imposter syndrome" to be quite interesting and related to the syndrome very much. It was interesting to read about some of the symptoms that I know I personally display, but hadn't realized were caused by this. So, from that perspective I found the book to be helpful.

What I didn't care for was the dry nature of the text, and the fact that the author didn't particularly offer up much in the way of suggestions on how to change behavior. That may be because simply being aware of the behaviors and understanding the motiviators may be enough to affect change. Or, it may be because the author doesn't have any good ideas on improvement. Either way, a better resolution of that would have probably earned this book more stars from me.

[Carrie]

Read 12/24/12, ***

This is one of those books that I have a gut feeling may get more stars from me after another read. I wanted to like this book, and I very much connected with and liked the character of Jonas, but I never quite got there with it. I think it's probably more indicative of the fact that I was distracted and a bit preoccupied when reading it, rather than indicative of a bad, or not well-developed book. I plan to give it another try at another time, perhaps after reading the rest of the series, and then I'll write a true review

[Carrie]

Read 12/28/12 ****

This is an interesting book. Written about the author's actual family and family events, it tells the story of an Italian family's immigration to the United States during the early 1900's and the struggles they faced here as they carved a space for themselves in their new country. It also touches on the struggles their family in Italy faced, which were arguably worse than those of the immigrants, because they were left without the promise of the American dream.

Had the book been a work of fiction entirely, I would have had some issues with it. The coverage of the kidnapping seemed to take over the last third of the book, and seemed to change the direction of the story. But, that's what really happened, so it's hard to argue with her retelling of it.

I would read other books by Fabiano, especially if they were about her great-grandmother Giovanna, who was a particularly interesting and inspiring character. If my great-grandmother were that interesting, I probably would have written a book about her too.