The Next Book On My List

Number the Stars by Lois Lowry            Annemarie Johansen is a ten year old girl, currently living in German occupied Coppenhagen. The year is 1943. It has been three years since the Germans took over her country. Three years of seeing soldiers at the corners. Three years of steadily decreasing food rations. Her sister Kirsti, doesn't remember a time before war, but Annemarie does. It's the Jewish New Year and Annemarie was going to celebrate it for the first time with her friend Ellen Rosen, whose whole family is Jewish. But plans change. Ellen is going to stay the night with the Johansens. The Rosens expect there may be a raid and the only way they can be safe is to separate and hide.            Number the Stars is a well-written, easy to read, children's historical fiction novel. Lowry focused on the occupation in Denmark and built a story around the escape of the thousa...

The Woman I Wanted To Be by Diane Von Furstenburg The “Wrap Dress” made its debut in 1974. This dress changed the life of Diana Von Furstenburg. It was a simple, yet elegant and beautiful dress that cinched at the waist, was made out of jersey material, hugged the body and usually boasted amazing, vibrant prints. It was also Diane’s key to financial independence.  The Woman I Wanted To Be  is the memoir of the woman behind the dress. It is the story of her dedication, her drive, her losses, her loves, her struggles, her triumphs.           Let me start off by saying that I was completely biased the entire time while reading this memoir. I am obsessed with Diane Von Furstenburg and her wrap dress. I have been a huge fan of her work for years, ever since seeing it for the first time on Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw in “Sex and the City.” I love it! I love the way it holds the body, framing even the most petite woman’s frame. I a...

Bossypants by Tina Fey What would you like to know about Tina Fay? Would you like to know about her dreams and aspirations? Would you like to know about her childhood woes and life as a young girl? What about high school, friends and relationships? Well, you’ll get it here but I’m not sure if it will be what you expected. This comedian takes her life and in a very entertaining way tells her story. You do learn about her life and the experiences that brought her into the position that she is in today: a successful writer, producer and director. Tina also talks about her family and what it is like to be a working mother. But it’s lighthearted and hilarious. I’m not sure if it will be to everyone’s taste but I found it entertaining. Personally, I guffawed (I love that word) often while reading Tina’s story. I was in the mood for something fresh, funny, and easy to read. Check. Check. Check. I picked this book up, dived right in and giggled throughout. Tina Fey is a comedian an...

Rod: The Autobiography by Rod Stewart                 The opening pages of this autobiography were written in such a hilarious form that I knew instantly that I was going to enjoy this book. When Rod Stewart announced in the first paragraph of the first chapter that he knew he was a mistake because his parents were “forty two and thirty nine with four children to feed, the youngest of them already ten” I laughed. Then he took it further to justify these feelings by also announcing that his birth happened during World War II, though near the end. Rod Stewart set the stage early on that he was going to make fun of himself, many of his situations and be honest. He was all of those things throughout the pages, which takes us through his untimely birth, his youth in London, his many trials and tribulations with bands, his solo careers and his marriages, turbulent as they may have been.    ...

The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen Hannah never wanted to remember what happened to her grandparents and aunt when they were children in the Holocaust. Now that she is experiencing it for herself, she realizes that the memories are all they have. All of their possessions and many of their loved ones are all gone and all that remains are the things they can remember. Hannah isn’t sure how she ended up in a village in the 1940’s. She was (not really) enjoying the Passover Seder at her grandfather’s house when she opened the door for the prophet Elijah, per tradition, and found herself in Poland. People were calling her Chaya, her Hebrew name, and she could understand Yiddish. Hannah also understood when she saw the line of officers near a distant village that they were Nazi’s. The memories of her real life that she was clinging to forced her to warn the others of what was to come but they wouldn’t listen. It was too late. As Hannah was loaded into the trucks, and eventually i...

The Sound of Glass by Karen White                 When Merritt Heyward moved to South Carolina she was hoping to start a new life far away from her hometown in Maine. Her husband Cal was a fireman who had died on the job. His grandmother Edith had left him the home that had been in the Heyward family for generations. Since he was also deceased the home passed to Merritt, who had never been to South Carolina and didn’t know anything about Cal’s family. Moving to South Carolina would change Merritt and her outlook on life. Not just moving to a new home, meeting Cal’s brother Gibbes, and realizing a cycle of abuse. But meeting her half-brother, Owen and her stepmother Loralee, the woman who had damaged her relationship with her father.                  The Sound of Glass is a well written, enjoyable, fascinating story about ...

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood                 A plague has destroyed mankind leaving Jimmy with the Children of Crake, Crakers as he calls them. Crake is dead. Oryx is dead. It’s just Jimmy, the Crakers, and the genetic experiments like, pigoons, wolvogs, snats and rakunks. People had been pushing the boundaries with playing God for decades. The pleeblands had become cesspools for disease. Those who lived on compounds or modules were relatively safe because of the air purifiers. The vaccines were being created almost as fast as the diseases were spreading. Crake had theories about why that was before he died. That was before he created the Crakes, a species immune to diseases that held none of the human weaknesses. This is not a world I know. This is not a future I want. This is a world that envisions man at its breaking point because of the actions of man. We are to blame. This was highly inter...