Book Review: The $64 Tomato

Author: William Alexander

Pages: 265

Genre: Non Fiction/Memoir

Personal Rating: 3/5

From the back cover:

Bill Alexander had no idea that his simple dream of having a vegetable garden and small orchard in his backyard would lead him into life-and-death battles with groundhogs, webworms, weeds, and weather; midnight expeditions in the dead of winter to dig up fresh thyme; and skirmishes with neighbors who feed the vermin (i.e., deer). Not to mention the vacations that had to be planned around the harvest, the near electrocution of the tree man, the limitations of his own middle-aged body, and the pity of his wife and kids.

When Alexander runs (just for fun!) a cost-benefit analysis, adding up everything from the live animal trap to the Velcro tomato wraps and then amortizing it over the life of his garden, it comes as quite a shock to learn that it cost him a staggering $64 to grow each one of his beloved Brandywine tomatoes. But as any gardener will tell you, you can't put a price on the unparalleled pleasures of providing fresh food for your family.

I waited a long time for this book. I had it on my wishlist at paperback swap. I was number 1 (finally) and then somehow accidentally moved it to my reminder list and got shifted to spot 24. So I waited some more. Perhaps that explains my disappointment with this book. Or maybe reading about someone gardening just isn't is funny as or as entertaining as I thought it would be. The book had its moments and it was decent overall, I was just expecting something far greater. I'd heard raves about this book. It came recommended from so many different people online...it had to be good. It was fair. It was a decent book. That's it. Just OK, not bad, not great, just OK. The best part of the book to me is still the review on the front cover from the New York Times Book Review "Gardening as Extreme Sport." I will also say the the section of Superchuck the groundhog is pretty funny. This book just didn't do it for me, it may do it for you. I wouldn't say stay away from it, it just wasn't all I was hoping it would be.

Book Review: When We Were Gods

Author: Colin Falconer

Pages: 494

Genre: Fiction

Personal Rating: 3/5

From the back cover:

Arrestingly beautiful and fiercely intelligent, Cleopatra VII of Egypt was barely more than a teenager when she inherited the richest empire in the world--one that stretched from the scorching deserts of lower Egypt to the shining Mediterranean metropolis of Alexandria, with its famed libraries, storehouses, and treasuries. Imperiled at every turn by court conspiracies and Roman treachery, the young queen was forced to flee Alexandria and live in exile while a foreign army overran her city and her own siblings plotted her downfall. With nothing to lose, Cleopatra brazenly sought a partnership with the only man who could secure Egypt's safety: Julius Caesar, a wily politician and battle-hardened general with a weakness for women. The result was a passionate love affair that scandalized Rome and thrust Cleopatra into the glittering but deadly world of imperial intrigue and warfare-- a world that she would mesmerize and manipulate even after Caesar was gone.

At the height of her power and fame, Cleopatra fell in love with Caesar's protégé and successor, Marc Antony, a handsome general known as much for his drunken hedonism as for his victories in battle. Brash, irresistible, and fatally unreliable, Antony's once-strong hold on the Roman Empire was slipping fast, and with it slipped Cleopatra's fortunes. When the tide had finally, irrevocably turned against her, the proud queen plotted a last, spectacular maneuver that was to save her children, her empire, and her place in the pantheon of gods.

Colin Falconer's bold, sensuous prose takes the reader inside the walls of Alexandria's great palaces and into Cleopatra's very heart, creating a vivid portrait of an unforgettable woman who thrived and triumphed in a world ruled by men. This is the story of a legendary woman's most glorious time, a story that blazes through thousands of years of history to capture the imagination of readers today.

This novel was OK. It was well written and interesting. I did not know much about the history of Cleopatra so I did find it informative (realizing that the autor I'm sure took liberties to make the story more exciting). After awhile it just became very repetitive, which maybe her story was. Cleopatra gets it trouble, she gets out of it, barely...only to find herself in trouble again. Until finally she found herself in trouble she could not get out of. The end.

The book did give excellent glimspse into life of the royal court of Egypt. To have such wealth at your fingertips...unimaginable. It also portrayed Cleopatra as a very intelligent woman, she spoke 9 languages and stay up late into the night running the country often outwitting the "smartest" men in country or in the world.

Decent read, just not as good as I was expecting. Perhaps because I had just came off some awesome reads (Uglies, Blind Assassin, Bel Canto). If you enjoy historical fiction, Egypt or Cleopatra I'd say give it a whirl.

If you have reviewed this book and would like me to link to your review please let me know in the comments!

Book Review: Cruel & Unusual

Author: Patricia Cornwell

Pages: 407

Genre: Fiction/Thriller

Personal Rating: 3/5

Awards: Gold Dagger Award

From the back cover:

When convicted killer Ronnie Joe Waddell is executed in Virginia's electric chair, he becomes what should be a routine postmortem case for Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kay Scarpetta. But after Waddell's execution, the murders continue, as everyone connected to him begins to die-including a member of Scarpetta's staff. Then, when crucial records begin to disappear from her files, Scarpetta comes under fire for incompetence. Caught in a web of political intrigue, betrayed by those she trusted, Scarpetta must fight to free herself from murderous insinuations—and threats to her own life, To save her career, Scarpetta soon finds herself retracing Waddell's bloody footprints, following a trail that might lead to long—hidden secrets deep within the state government. Either the truth will set her free—or unleash upon her a punishment both cruel and unusual.

This book was OK! It was just your good old fashion satisfying read. Nothing spectacular. It was interesting enough to keep me going but no so great that I'm going to be running around recommending it to everyone I know. I wasn't able to figure out what was going on (so that was good) and everything was neatly wrapped up in the last few pages.

If you like thrillers/mystery/foresnic reads you'll enjoy this book. It isn't one of the best I've read but it sure isn't a dud!

Book Review: White Oleander

Author: Janet Fitch

Pages: 480

Genre: Fiction

Personal Rating: 3/5

From the back cover:

Everywhere hailed as a novel of rare beauty and power, White Oleander tells the unforgettable story of Ingrid, a brilliant poet imprisoned for murder, and her daughter, Astrid, whose odyssey through a series of Los Angeles foster homes -- each its own universe, with its own laws, its own dangers, its own hard lessons to be learned -- becomes a redeeming and surprising journey of self-discovery.

Take 200 pages from this book and it would have been great! As it was, it went on forever. How much horror can a teenager take? Apparently 480 pages of it. Don’t get me wrong, I found the story very interesting and Fitch is a great write. Overall I liked it. I’m just still hung up on those 480 pages.

I would go into a little detail about everything that happens to this girl and her "strange" mother but really you need to read it for yourself.

Book Review: SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME

Author: Sara Nelson

Pages: 232

Personal Rating: 3/5

From the back cover:

In early 2002, Sara Nelson-editor, reporter, reviewer, mother, daughter, wife, and compulsive reader-set out to chronicle a year's worth of reading, to explore how the world of books and words intermingled with children, marriage, friends, and the rest of the real world. She had a system all set up: fifty-two weeks, fifty-two books . . . and it all fell apart the first week. That's when she discovered that books chose her as much as she chose them, and the rewards and frustrations they brought were nothing she could plan for: In reading, as in life, even if you know what you're doing, you really kind of don't.

I have to admit I did not think I would enjoy this book at all. Reading about someone else reading? It sounded boring to me. I also thought it started slowly and I almost put it down (Nelson actually talks about knowing you’re a grown up when you can put down a book unfinished because you don’t like it). Nelson really doesn’t summarize the plots of the books. She talks more about how they impacted her life or the impression they made or what they reminded her of. It was also interesting to hear her views about other people as readers.

What I Liked: Nelson reminded me of the memories books trigger in you. Where you were, a certain person, what you were doing at that point in your life. Some books you keep going back to like an old friend. She wasn’t afraid to be honest about the good and bad aspects of her life. There is an appendix that lists the books she was planning to read and the books she did actually read. I added several books to my to be read pile

What I Did Not Like: Nelson is a book snob. She seems like she wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere reading a Stephen King novel. She actually picked her books to take on a vacation based on how she thought she would look to the other women on the trip. She wanted to impress them. She considered (or did) ending friendships over bad book recommendations because of what they said about the person who recommended them.

Book Review: PLACE LAST SEEN

The Place Last Seen

Author: Charlotte Freeman

Pages: 292

Personal Rating: 3/5

From the back cover:

During an idyllic autumn-day hike in the Desolation Wilderness of the Sierra Nevadas, the Baker family is hurled into a nightmare. Playing hide-and-seek with her older brother, Luke, six-year-old Maggie runs away-and she cannot be found. Her father, Richard, and mother, Anne, search desperately before racing down the mountain to call in a Search and Rescue team. The team arrives with experienced trackers, volunteers, dogs, and topographic maps and begins a thorough search from the place where Maggie was last seen. But the search is complicated by an unpredictable factor: willful and energetic, Maggie baker is also a Down Syndrome child, and there is no telling how she will move as she wanders in the wilderness. Richard, Anne, and Luke can only wait and hope that she will leave a clue, a trail that will lead them to her.

The story is told from two viewpoints, the family and the search and rescue team as they look for Maggie. You never get a chance to personally “meet” Maggie as she is already lost when you begin the story but you get to know her from the emotions and descriptions from her family members. The story covers only a few days and not much happens (they look for Maggie). The focus is on the emotional nightmare that all the people involved face and how it comes at different people from different angles. I really disliked the mother and felt so sorry for the “big” brother (10 years old?). At times I wanted to strangle the mother myself and wondered how do search and rescue teams actually deal with people like her?

I also wondered how people can endure such stressful and terrible situations. How would I react if I was in that situation? I think until you’re there you will never truly know.

The 3/5 rating was given because it was a little slow and boring at times but still a very good read that I would recommend.

Book Review: SISTER INDIA

Sister India

Author: Peggy Payne

Pages: 275

Personal Rating: 3/5

From the inside cover:

The lonely Planet guidebook recommends the Saraswati Guest House in Varanasi and meeting its proprietor Madame Natraja, ' a one-woman blend of East and West', as a worthwhile side trip for the adventurous traveler in India. Over the course of one weekend, several guests turn up at the Saraswati, shocked to encounter a nearly four-hundred-pound surly white woman in a sari. Jill Thornton, thirtyish and single, has come only to rest and see the sights before home from a business trip to New Delhi. T J Clayton, a swaggering southern bureaucrat, has arrived in India on a grant to study the pollution-plagued River Ganges. And Marie Jasper, nearly eighty years old, has ventured to Varanasi alone, after the death of her husband, to find peace by the holy river.

But as happens so often in India, Natraja's guests find more than what they came for. When a series of Hindu-Muslim murders rocks the peace of this sacred place, the entire city is placed under curfew indefinitely - no one may leave his home. Natraja's guests unwittingly become her captives, and the guardians of her secrets. So begins a period of days blending into nights, as Natraja and her Indian cook become entangled in the web of religious violence. And their guests each fall slowly under the spell of Varanasi - both enthralled and repelled by its wandering holy men, public funeral pyres, and pilgrims bathing in the Ganges at dawn. They feel the rumble of their own inner revolutions as they are drawn further and further into the folds of their captive city.

I decided to read this book based on my travel to China a few years ago. Since then I’ve been interested in reading books set in different countries, especially those in Asia. I’m hoping to travel again someday soon hoping to “experience” the different cultures like I did in China. I’ve been enjoying books where the experience of being there is as important as the story. I felt like I was in Varanasi when I read Sister India. It made we want to travel there.

Trying to “pick out” the plotline is difficult because the story wanders back and forth between the past and present and the various people in the guest house. Yes, they are all under curfew but there is no one “goal” everyone is working towards or a unifying idea happening. It’s more each person’s individual experience tied together by the curfew. I think this is fine but it isn’t for everyone.

I gave Sister India 3/5 stars because even though it gave you the experience of being in India it had the potential to be one of those books that LOTS of people would read and enjoy. If it had focused on fewer events in more detail and had better character development I think it could have been a fantastic book. As is it is a “good” book.