Gilead.

GoodReads Synopsis: In 1956, toward the end of Reverend John Ames's life, he begins a letter to his young son, an account of himself and his forebears. Ames is the son of an Iowan preacher and the grandson of a minister who, as a young man in Maine, saw a vision of Christ bound in chains and came west to Kansas to fight for abolition: He "preached men into the Civil War," then, at age fifty, became a chaplain in the Union Army, losing his right eye in battle. Reverend Ames writes to his son about the tension between his father--an ardent pacifist--and his grandfather, whose pistol and bloody shirts, concealed in an army blanket, may be relics from the fight between the abolitionists and those settlers who wanted to vote Kansas into the union as a slave state. And he tells a story of the sacred bonds between fathers and sons, which are tested in his tender and strained relationship with his namesake, John Ames Boughton, his best friend's wayward son.

This is also the tale of another remarkable vision--not a corporeal vision of God but the vision of life as a wondrously strange creation. It tells how wisdom was forged in Ames's soul during his solitary life, and how history lives through generations, pervasively present even when betrayed and forgotten.

My Thoughts:  This is my second Pulitzer Prize winning book in the last two years, and each of them have left me wondering who in the world gives out this award.  It only took me 150 pages into this 247 page book to find a plot.  I know it was supposed to be a journal from a dying father to his son, so it was going to ramble and not follow a typical storyline.  However, it was incredibly non-linear at many times jumping from scene to scene, character to character then back again that frustrated me immensely.  What saved this book from one star was a lot of the wisdom that was present in Reverend Ames's musings and the story with John Ames Boughton that finally went somewhere in the last twenty pages.  Two stars.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald.

GoodReads Synopsis:  When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

What comes, here at the dawn of the Jazz Age, is unimagined attention and success and celebrity that will make Scott and Zelda legends in their own time. Everyone wants to meet the dashing young author of the scandalous novel—and his witty, perhaps even more scandalous wife. Zelda bobs her hair, adopts daring new fashions, and revels in this wild new world. Each place they go becomes a playground: New York City, Long Island, Hollywood, Paris, and the French Riviera—where they join the endless party of the glamorous, sometimes doomed Lost Generation that includes Ernest Hemingway, Sara and Gerald Murphy, and Gertrude Stein.

Everything seems new and possible. Troubles, at first, seem to fade like morning mist. But not even Jay Gatsby's parties go on forever. Who is Zelda, other than the wife of a famous—sometimes infamous—husband? How can she forge her own identity while fighting her demons and Scott's, too? With brilliant insight and imagination, Therese Anne Fowler brings us Zelda's irresistible story as she herself might have told it.

My Thoughts:  Despite already knowing about Zelda and Scott's life, I was absolutely riveted to this story.  I listened to this on audiobook, and it was one of the absolute best I've ever listened to.  The story was beautifully written by Therese Fowler and and magnificently read by Jenna Lamia.  Z is definitely a novel, but yet also very well researched and based on actual events.  I absolutely fell in love with the Zelda that Fowler and Lamia created and felt immense sadness for her as she struggled through adulthood.  Five stars! 

The Secret Life of Violet Grant.

GoodReads Synopsis-- Manhattan, 1964. Vivian Schuyler, newly graduated from Bryn Mawr College, has recently defied the privilege of her storied old Fifth Avenue family to do the unthinkable for a budding Kennedy-era socialite: break into the Mad Men world of razor-stylish Metropolitan magazine. But when she receives a bulky overseas parcel in the mail, the unexpected contents draw her inexorably back into her family’s past, and the hushed-over crime passionnel of an aunt she never knew, whose existence has been wiped from the record of history.

Berlin, 1914. Violet Schuyler Grant endures her marriage to the philandering and decades-older scientist Dr. Walter Grant for one reason: for all his faults, he provides the necessary support to her liminal position as a young American female physicist in prewar Germany. The arrival of Dr. Grant’s magnetic former student at the beginning of Europe’s fateful summer interrupts this delicate détente. Lionel Richardson, a captain in the British Army, challenges Violet to escape her husband’s perverse hold, and as the world edges into war and Lionel’s shocking true motives become evident, Violet is tempted to take the ultimate step to set herself free and seek a life of her own conviction with a man whose cause is as audacious as her own.

As the iridescent and fractured Vivian digs deeper into her aunt’s past and the mystery of her ultimate fate, Violet’s story of determination and desire unfolds, shedding light on the darkness of her years abroad . . . and teaching Vivian to reach forward with grace for the ambitious future––and the love––she wants most.

My Thoughts-- I love love loved Vivian Schuyler.  She was so cute and fun and feisty that I found myself rushing through the Violet story to get back to the Vivian story, even though Violet's was definitely more interesting.  Overall, it was a very well done story with two stories, fifty years apart, woven together seamlessly and beautifully.  I had no idea where Violet's story would end up, and it was a fantastic ending.  The only downfall was how the abuse of Dr. Grant made me cringe a few times.  Plus, the story lagged a little in the middle and lost me for a bit, so I gave it four stars instead of five.

Attachments.

GoodReads Synopsis-- Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder know that somebody is monitoring their work e-mail. (Everybody in the newsroom knows. It's company policy.) But they can't quite bring themselves to take it seriously. They go on sending each other endless and endlessly hilarious e-mails, discussing every aspect of their personal lives.  Meanwhile, Lincoln O'Neill can't believe this is his job now- reading other people's e-mail. When he applied to be "internet security officer," he pictured himself building firewalls and crushing hackers- not writing up a report every time a sports reporter forwards a dirty joke.  When Lincoln comes across Beth's and Jennifer's messages, he knows he should turn them in. But he can't help being entertained-and captivated-by their stories.  By the time Lincoln realizes he's falling for Beth, it's way too late to introduce himself.  What would he say . . . ?

My Thoughts-- I'm not even sure how to review this book.  It was fine.  It was entertaining and funny and cute.  But also a little creepy that some guy is reading your emails and somehow falls in love with you?  A weird concept but done well enough to get three stars from me.  

Pronto.

GoodReads Synopsis-- The feds want Miami bookmaker Harry Arno to squeal on his wiseguy boss. So they're putting word out on the street that Arno's skimming profits from "Jimmy Cap" Capotorto—which he is, but everybody does it. He was planning to retire to Italy someday anyway, so Harry figures now's a good time to get lost. U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens knows Harry's tricky—the bookie ditched him once in an airport while in the marshal's custody—but not careful. So Raylan's determined to find the fugitive's Italian hideaway before a cold-blooded Sicilian "Zip" does and whacks Arno for fun. After all, it's a "pride thing"...and it might even put Raylan in good stead with Harry's sexy ex-stripper girlfriend Joyce.

My Thoughts-- My love for Justified and Raylan Givens led me to pick this up even though Raylan isn't the main character in this story.  I definitely saw some glimpses of the Raylan I know, but otherwise it was quite different.  Elmore Leonard sure knows how to tell a story though.  For a cat-and-mouse story with such high stakes, there's a remarkable amount of humor and wit.  I definitely need to pick up more from Leonard.  Four stars.

Tell the Wolves I'm Home.

GoodReads Synopsis: 1987. There’s only one person who has ever truly understood fourteen-year-old June Elbus, and that’s her uncle, the renowned painter Finn Weiss. Shy at school and distant from her older sister, June can only be herself in Finn’s company; he is her godfather, confidant, and best friend. So when he dies, far too young, of a mysterious illness her mother can barely speak about, June’s world is turned upside down. But Finn’s death brings a surprise acquaintance into June’s life—someone who will help her to heal, and to question what she thinks she knows about Finn, her family, and even her own heart. At Finn’s funeral, June notices a strange man lingering just beyond the crowd. A few days later, she receives a package in the mail. Inside is a beautiful teapot she recognizes from Finn’s apartment, and a note from Toby, the stranger, asking for an opportunity to meet. As the two begin to spend time together, June realizes she’s not the only one who misses Finn, and if she can bring herself to trust this unexpected friend, he just might be the one she needs the most.

My Thoughts:  This book had been on my list FOREVER, and I finally got around to reading it.  It was good but not fantastic.  There were a lot of family dynamics to navigate in this one, so at times it was a little sad.  But I really appreciated the way she tied everything together at the end.  Three stars.

All the Light We Cannot See.

GoodReads Synopsis: Marie Laure lives with her father in Paris within walking distance of the Museum of Natural History where he works as the master of the locks (there are thousands of locks in the museum). When she is six, she goes blind, and her father builds her a model of their neighborhood, every house, every manhole, so she can memorize it with her fingers and navigate the real streets with her feet and cane. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast, where Marie-Laure's agoraphobic great uncle lives in a tall, narrow house by the sea wall. In another world in Germany, an orphan boy, Werner, grows up with his younger sister, Jutta, both enchanted by a crude radio Werner finds. He becomes a master at building and fixing radios, a talent that wins him a place at an elite and brutal military academy and, ultimately, makes him a highly specialized tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels through the heart of Hitler Youth to the far-flung outskirts of Russia, and finally into Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.

My Thoughts:  I know I'm in a very small minority, but I did not like this book at all.  It was a good story, but it took forever for anything to happen.  If you love a book full of beautiful descriptions and long, wordy prose about nothing, then this is the book for you.  It was not, however, the book for me.