The Last Juror by John Grisham

From Goodreads: In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.
The murderer, Danny Padgitt, was tried before a packed courthouse in Clanton, Mississippi. The trial came to a startling and dramatic end when the defendant threatened revenge against the jurors if they convicted him. Nevertheless, they found him guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison.
But in Mississippi in 1970, "life" didn't necessarily mean "life," and nine years later Danny Padgitt managed to get himself paroled. He returned to Ford County, and the retribution began.

I am on a roll - two good books in a row. I really enjoyed this one. Grisham captured the feel of a corrupt Southern town - small town law thinking they are big stuff, arrogant white men abusing blacks, and the insulated quality that means no matter how long you live there, you are never from there unless you were born there. The narrator had a great Southern accent and just made the audio book work for me. I had not too long ago seen The Lincoln Lawyer so I just couldn't help but picture Matthew McConaughey as the lawyer in this book. And since the lawyer narrates the book he was there for every minute. And since I have a huge crush on dear Matthew that was just. fine. with . me!

These all count for these challenges:

The Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella

From Goodreads: Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of a partnership. Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big, beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as housekeeper. Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer–and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. She can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #@%# ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope–and finds love–is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake. But will her old life ever catch up with her? And if it does…will she want it back?

Seven years ago a friend gave me this book and I read it in about an hour in the airport trying to finish it before my plane boarded so I could leave it and not have the weight in my carry on. I thought it was cute and so later picked up, Can You Keep A Secret by the same author which became and still is one of my favorite Chick Lit books. Flash forward to today and I need a "U" book for the A-Z Reading Challenge and decided to read this one again with a little more attention and see if I still liked it. It was okay - as the very first British Chick Lit book I read, it was unique and fresh and funny but now that I have read dozens in this genre, it's not as impressive.

Audio book round up

I've listened to several audio books without taking the time to post. This time of year is always hectic for me and 2011 has been particularly busy. Some of it in a good way - the tour of homes fundraiser for which I chair ticket sales was a great success but that meant fielding even more requests for me so it sucked my entire November into a hurricane of charge slips and check deposits. The bad way was Youngest getting hurt in basketball requiring two weeks on crutches and a flurry of appointments for x-rays and orthopedics and physical therapy all with a miserable little boy whose armpits hurt and his goood leg hurt and everything hurt because crutches are not nearly as easy as they look! So here's a quick summary of my listens for posterity's sake!

Queen of Broken Hearts by Cassandra King I feel like the wicked witch when I say this but she just doesn't do it for me. I enjoyed bits and pieces of this one but not enough to say I liked it. My biggest regret with this one was that I didn't think to save it for my 2012 Q book!





Strangers in Death by JD Robb I've listened to one other in this series and didn't really care for it but this one sucked me in. I liked all the characters, even the bad ones, and even though we know "whodunit", I enjoyed Eve's unraveling of the crime.






Gone by Johnathan Kellerman Good but not great detective story.










Last Man Standing by David Baldacci Solid Baldacci, his are consistently good listens for me except when he veers off into the romantic (Christmas Train).







Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz I was expecting better. I thought Dean Koontz would be really scary, this wasn't. And I thought it would suck me right in and it didn't. Took two dics before it got interesting, I perservered only because it was audio, a print version would have been set aside.


These all count for these challenges:

Hector and the Secrets of Love by Francois Lelord

From Amazon: Since his first captivating adventure in Hector and the Search for Happiness, Hector the young French psychiatrist has continued to explore the mysteries of the human soul. Having found that love seems virtually inseparable from happiness, he begins taking notes on this powerful emotion. But unbeknownst to him, Clara, the doctor's beloved, is making her own investigations into love. As much a love story as a novel about love, Hector and the Secrets of Love is a feel-good life manual wrapped in a globetrotting adventure, told with the blend of a fairy tale's naïve wisdom and a satirist's dry wit that has won Hector fans around the world.

This one was a win from The Library Thing Early Reviewers program. It was the second in a series so I was at a disadvantage going in but I don't think that is the reason that it didn't "click" with me. I wondered if it was because it was translated from the original Franch and perhaps I don't have the French sense of humor? It was at turns simplistic and then confusing. There were moments, however, when it was witty and I got a sense of what the book might be for those who enjoyed the author's style. And, there were a few characters that interested me enough to want to know what happened to them. So the occasional laugh and the need to know kept me listening until the end but it really wasn't a good book for me.

America's Women by Gail Collins

Although it's a cultural history of women in America since the first European settlers, America's Women possesses none of the stodginess or predictability of such chronicles. Former New York Times editorial writer Collins has a keen sense of her subject's richness. The author of Scorpion Tongues moves from everyday details to social generalization without sacrificing the thrust of her narrative or her central theme: "the tension between the yearning to create a home and the urge to get out of it."

I have had this one sliding around on the floor of the car forever waiting until I had absolutely nothing else left to listen to - my expectations for enjoyment were LOW. I went in with such low expectations that my experience exceeded them just by being somewhat interesting. America's Women is a series of essays about women in American history highlighting some names that were familiar and some new to me. Gail Collins actually tells a good story and because this was like a series of short stories with just the tiniest bit of reflection/discussion thrown in, I enjoyed the essays. The essays were in chronological order, that really helped with my weak history background. It was also a good book for the car since they were fairly short essays and could usually be finished in one trip. I would never have made it through in print because it didn't "hook" me - this was a very passive experience on my part. I started the car, it came up through the speakers and I just let it play.

Thinking about the content - the role of women in history and especially the challenges they have faced, this book gave a great overview. Time allows for some of it to seem quaint, the rules from the days of the old west about riding side saddle. But the fights for racial equality are still hurtful to hear about and the idea of the ERA not passing through with ease in my own lifetime is really hard to wrap my head around. I enjoyed the stories and I think I learned a little bit.































And, because it is Audiobook Week, this can count as an entry in all the great giveaways Jen has going on!

What Good is God? by Philip Yancey

From the Amazon product description: Journalist and spiritual seeker Philip Yancey has always struggled with the most basic questions of the Christian faith. The question he tackles in WHAT GOOD IS GOD? concerns the practical value of belief in God. His search for the answer to this question took him to some amazing settings around the world: Mumbai, India when the firing started during the terrorist attacks; at the motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated; on the Virginia Tech campus soon after the massacre; an AA convention; and even to a conference for women in prostitution. At each of the 10 places he visited, his preparation for the visit and exactly what he said to the people he met each provided evidence that faith really does work when what we believe is severely tested. WHAT GOOD IS GOD? tells the story of Philips journey--the background, the preparation, the presentations themselves. Here is a story of grace for armchair travelers, spiritual seekers, and those in desperate need of assurance that their faith really matters.

This was just okay for me. It probably was not a good choice for me in audio and would have been better in print. The book is a compilation of speeches that Yancey has given. Each speech is preceeded by an introduction to the location and situation of the speech; the introductions are filled with anecdotes. Then he reads the speech, the speeches are also also filled with anecdotes. So it was hard for me to keep track of where I was in the book because the feel of the introductions and the speeches were so similar that I would confuse them. They were interesting but they all seemd to run together as I listened. I think in print, it would be more apparent where you were and you could kind of mull over and let one section "settle" before you moved on to the next. My other problem was that it was narrated by the author. His voice was very soothing, really very soothing, so soothing it was to the point that it reminded me of an old Saturday Night live bit, it was just too much. So I was plugging away at it because it was a freebie I won and I always feel like I ought to finish those. i was getting more detached from it and less interested when I bought Can you Keep A Secret? and took a quick six hour break to listen to that. When I returned to What Good Is God? I was ready to listen again, more attentive, and really enjoyed the last few discs. That's what leads me to say it would be better n print when you could read and stop, read and stop, rather than audio where it just keeps coming at you whether you are ready or not.

Thank you to Mason Canyon at Thoughts in Progress for hosting the giveaway that sent this book to me.

Here is the author's website: http://www.philipyancey.com/home/about

Can You Keep A Secret? by Sophie Kinsella

From Goodreads: Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:

Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur.
Sammy the goldfish in my parents’ kitchen is not the same goldfish that Mum gave me to look after when she and Dad were in Egypt.

Secrets from her boyfriend:
I weigh one hundred and twenty-eight pounds. Not one eighteen, like Connor thinks.
I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.

From her colleagues:
When Artemis really annoys me, I feed her plant orange juice. (Which is pretty much every day.) It was me who jammed the copier that time. In fact, all the times.

Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:
My G-string is hurting me.
I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.

Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger.

But come Monday morning, Emma’s office is abuzz about the arrival of Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO. Suddenly Emma is face-to-face with the stranger from the plane, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her. Things couldn’t possibly get worse—Until they do.


I was 6 discs in to listening to What Good is God? when I spied this one on the shelf of a thrift store for $1.50. I snatched it right up because I LOVED this book in print. I bought it, read it, and passed it on. Then repeated that whole cycle TWO more times when I came across it at tag sales and such because it just made me laugh each time I read it. As soon as I got in the car, What Good is God? came right out of the CD player and in went Sophie Kinsella. Now, I worry a little bit about what that says about my character that I would so easly turn away from a work of theology and evangalism for some Brit chick lit but that's exactly what I did and I am happy with my choice. The narrator had a great accent that brought the characters to life. The book was abridged for audio and I did notice when they left out one of my absolutely favorite lines but I just added the line back in in my head and laughed aloud remembering it. Enjoying this book again, for the first time on audio, was a joyous 6 hours. If you enjoy the occasional chick lit, this is a great one.

Eclipse Bay by Jayne Ann Krentz

From Goodreads: Jayne Ann Krentz borrows from the legend of the Hatfields and McCoys and throws in a few echoes of Romeo and Juliet in her latest saga of romance and intrigue. Eclipse Bay is the first in what promises to be an exciting new trilogy. Death and desire walk hand in hand in the tiny town of Eclipse Bay, located along the rocky coast of Oregon. The steep cliffs and crashing waves are no less hazardous than the nasty secrets that many in town keep. And at the heart of it all is the generations-long rivalry and hostilities between two families: the Hartes and the Madisons.

I needed an "E" book for the A-Z Reading Challenge and before I had a chance to explore some suggestions, this audiobook fell in my lap and the lazy easy thing to do was just pop it in and listen! Despite being written in 2000, it took me straight back to the early '80's when I read lots of "sweeping sagas" with family feuds and romances. I gave it a 2 on Goodreads because it was fairly easy to tell where things were going with the romance right from the first minute so the convulated path it took just felt contrived. The characters were very soap-opera like - the good girl, the bad boy, the eccentric aunt - no one who I really related to and liked. But, I spend so much time in the car that I am over being picky, it was "listenable" and I enjoyed it for what it was!

In the Name of Honor by Richard North Patterson

From Goodreads: Home from Iraq, a lieutenant kills his commanding officer—was it self-defense or premeditated murder? An enthralling novel of suspense about the high cost of war and secrets

The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two military families, have been close for decades, ever since Anthony McCarran—now one of the army's most distinguished generals—became best friends with Jack Gallagher, a fellow West Pointer who was later killed in Vietnam. Now a new generation of soldiers faces combat, and Lt. Brian McCarran, the general's son, has returned from a harrowing tour in Iraq. Traumatized by wartime experiences he will not reveal, Brian depends on his lifelong friendship with Kate Gallagher, Jack's daughter, who is married to Brian's commanding officer in Iraq, Capt. Joe D'Abruzzo. But since coming home, D'Abruzzo also seems changed by the experiences he and Brian shared—he's become secretive and remote.

Tragedy strikes when Brian shoots and kills D'Abruzzo on their army post in Virginia. Brian pleads self-defense, claiming that D'Abruzzo, a black-belt martial artist, came to his quarters, accused him of interfering with his marriage, and attacked him. Kate supports Brian and says that her husband had become violent and abusive. But Brian and Kate have secrets of their own, and now Capt. Paul Terry, one of the army's most accomplished young lawyers, will defend Brian in a high-profile court-martial. Terry's co-counsel is Meg McCarran, Brian's sister, a brilliant and beautiful attorney who insists on leaving her practice in San Francisco to help save her brother. Before the case is over, Terry will become deeply entwined with Meg and the McCarrans—and learn that families, like war, can break the sturdiest of souls.


This one was kind of interesting. The topic of PTSD is certainly timely, more and more of our service members are plagued with mental health issues when they return from combat. The murder mystery was not riveting so the numerous repetitions needed throughout the story got tiresome. Patterson did a great job nailing the characters, I may not have liked them all but they were certainly people I recognized and could relate to. There was a potential "big twist" and I was ready to listen through the murder scenario a thousand times to have my suspicions either confirmed or denied! That part had me hooked. My final thought is that the narrator was a little tough to get used to - I never really warmed up to his voice but I did get used to it so that it didn't bother me as much as the book went on (weak praise at best, I know!).