Book: The Secret

Title: The Secret

Author: Rhonda Byrne

Thoughts: Well, I've read this before and I will read it again.  Because even though I sometimes feel glum, it's amazing how much a little positive thinking can turn the tables.  Anything that makes me feel so good is FINE BY ME!

Book: The Bell Jar

Title: The Bell Jar

Author: Sylvia Plath

Thoughts: Of course I've read The Bell Jar before, but it was several years ago, and I had forgotten much of it.  Sometimes what strikes me most is the sheer sadness of having been deprived of such talent.  Plath died so young, it makes you wonder what she might have produced in her later years.  I guess we will always wonder what a second novel might have looked like.

Book: Garden Spells

Title: Garden Spells
Author: Sarah Addison Allen
Thoughts: I loved this book! Sarah Addison Allen does in this book the same thing that makes (most of) Alice Hoffman's books work so well for me: beautifully realizes a world of magic realism. Some day I would love to write a book using magic realism really well, but for now I will just stand back and watch and admire these masters of the genre. Everything about Garden Spells is lovely. I can't wait to read her second book.

So Behind: the last 8 books I've read:

Too many books! I should be recording them as I finish, but I plead the stress of moving, etc.

That Charming Man by Marian Keyes
I always like Marian Keyes. This book took me a little getting into, but as soon as I was in it, I couldn't put it down.

Sweet Love by Sarah Strohmeyer
I loved this book!!! Really loved it. I think it's my favorite chick-lit/women's fic book in recent memory.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Oh book. I have read you before, but I adored you even more this time. Scary, creepy, all-too-plausible.

The Dog That Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat
Night time reading, so I think I was only awake for 2/3s of it.

The Just-So Stories by Rudyard Kipling
Have been read before, and are guaranteed to make me sleep, for some reason, even though I think they are great and not boring in the slightest.

Sleeping Arrangements by Madeleine Wickham
I ... cautiously liked this one. I always like her better when she writes as Kinsella, and I kind of hate adultery as a plot device, so...

Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
Lovely and heartbreaking and so much more careful and less "Hollywood" than the movie.

Bidding for Love by Katie Fforde
I really enjoyed this one.