Tag: Review

Why did I want to read (listen) to this book?  Is this tomorrow sounded like a great “what happened?” style read when three close childhood friends one day come home not knowing what happened to the third…  Police are involved and people are suspiciously but nothing comes of the disappearance.  But the question is – did Lewis and Rose possibly know what did happen to Jimmy?  And if so – why have they waited so long to tell?

Synopsis:  It’s 1956 and Ava Lark is both beautiful and single.  She rents a home for herself and her twelve-year-old son Lewis in the Boston area.  Lewis finds friends within the neighborhood brother and sister Jimmy and Rose and the three become inseparable.

When one day Jimmy goes missing the neighborhood falls apart.  Ava is watched with suspicion as she had a boyfriend Jake at the time who had a record, unknown to Ava…. and Lewis and Rise go their separate ways as they grow older and find it hard to be around one another without Jimmy, but both still carrying the broken pieces of the unknown. 

When years later Rose and Lewis find their way to each other again a decision much be made to tell the truth or to leave well enough alone knowing enough hearts have been broken over this whole ordeal.

The story line behind what makes Is This Tomorrow is captivating.  Of course, I as the reader want to know what happened to this young boy who disappears without a trace.  As the story opens and the setting is put into place you can get the vibe of the book – an almost Jodi Piccoult feel as is unrolls page after page. 

While the story played out and I enjoyed it I never had a strong feel for any of the characters – they all felt a bit vague to me… not three-dimensional.  Due to that lack of feeling for the characters it affected my over all feel of the story.  Basically while I felt bad about Jimmy’s disappearance, I was not emotionally charged by this event.  I hung in there as I really did want to know what happened to Jimmy.

I listened to Is This Tomorrow on audio as Xe Sands is the narrator and that is almost always a win.  Almost always.  One thing that I picked up on was the tone of voice that was given to each of the characters… Ava always sounded weary.  I thought about that a lot during the listening of this book.  It bothered me that she never sounded strong or confident, or even happy… weary was actually a word I thought about while listening to the audio which in hind sight, probably took away from some of my enjoyment of the book.  Lewis as well always sounded weary… and the boyfriend…..  while weary is a perfectly acceptable emotion for the book – I had trouble getting beyond the weary of the entire book…

in the end – when all was said and I done… I too felt weary.

Note – that I am in the minority on this one.  I looked at Amazon and there are gushing reviews.  This may be one that came across better in book format than audio but certainly please check out other opinions on this one.

Leslie Carter and her husband Wesley have enjoyed many years of the upper class Atlanta society. But times are changing when two of Wesley’s long time buddies trade in the mothers of their children for younger models.  Leslie, in her later 50’s finds she can not relate to these young women with their modern taste in clothing, music, and childish (in her opinion) ways.  When Wesley seems to be more engaged in golfing and his buddies, Leslie takes a good long look at her life and realizes that Wes has always put his own needs and wants above hers.  As she tally’s up the sacrifices she has made through the years she comes to realize she has given up way too much of herself.

With two adult children that can not seem to get it together, and Wes acting as though Leslie is lucky to have him, Les decides enough is enough.  When a discovery is made that Wes has been keeping something very big a secret, it is the final straw.  Les packs her bags and returns to her home town of Sullivan Island in Charleston where she stays with her brother, Harlan (who Wes couldn’t stand because as he put it “Harlan was a little pink”).

When Les finds a connection with Johnathan a long ago boyfriend, Les rekindles the friendship between them and finds that life did not have to be as hard as she had made it to be and decisions on how to move forward from here were now what needed to be thought through. There are obligations to her husband of many years and to her children – but exactly what those obligations are clearly needed to be changed.

Oh how can I even describe how much I enjoyed this book?  Told in alternating chapters between Leslie and Wesley (yes the matchy matchy names bothered me at first) you as the reader get a first hand look at what is happening through each of their eyes and opinions.  It was actually enjoyable to go from reading Leslie;s matter of fact smooth dialogue to Wesley’s more demanding, almost pout like tone of what he felt should be the ideal wifely duties and what he felt was due him. 

Definitely a hard to put down read that I enjoyed very much.  I liked that it had a different twist to it than other “returning home” reads.  And let me say – Harlan, who in my mind felt like Rupert Everett (George in My Best Friends Wedding).

Gush worthy!

Additional format note:  Due to time restraints I read part of this book and then downloaded the audio book and listened to it -which is a rave!  Fantastic narration – I loved the voices of the smooth southern flow talk of Leslie and then the harsher whiny tone of Wesley – definitely a treat for the ears!

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for letting me try Dorothy Bentown Franks books

and making me a HUGE FAN as a result! 

Successful real estate agent Hildy Good (age 60+) has lived in the Boston area for well, all her life.  She considers herself not only a wonderful agent, but also a good friend, mother, grandmother, and confidant.  Why if Hildy were to tell you, she would say that she is the center pulse to the town and all things start and stop with her.

Of course, the occasional drink is a must in order to celebrate, social occasions, or wind down, or help her sleep, or calm her nerves, or just to take the edge off… or….

after having gone to treatment thanks to her families prodding and an intervention, “meddling” would be Hildy’s words…

“if they invite you over for dinner, and it’s not a major holiday, run for your life” ~ Hildy

…she no longer drinks, going late to party invites just in time to grab a bite of food make small talk and leave as dessert is served.  Yes, Hildy no longer drinks.

Or… more accurately, Hildy no longer drinks in public. 

There is still her hidden wine stash in the cellar at home and who is she really hurting by having a glass or two in the privacy of her own home, or finishing off a bottle because it just doesn’t make sense to re-cork it when there is only a partial glass left, or a glass and a half…

and really, so what if she occasionally passes out in her living room in a chair, or has no recollection of the previous nights events, or phone calls her friends “claim” she made, or the occasional drive in her car that she can not remember where she went or what she did…

no, really – if people would all just mind their own business. Really mind their own business, because as Hildy knows all to well, there’s a lot of things going on in this little town of hers… things that people would not be too keen to have spread around…

The Good House was a book I listened to on audio and right from the start of Mary Beth Hurt’s narration I knew I was in for a treat.  I absolutely loves the voice of Hildy, she was matter of fact, a story-teller, an observing person, and 100% in denial.  Her story is engaging as she observes those in her town as they move in and out of the houses she sells (or hopes to!)  Seeing the world from the eyes of a realtor was a treat – from the inside (“the holes in the walls and the stains in the carpet… it would be a miracle if she would ever be able to sell it!”) to the outside people coming in (“since they moved into town they were by far the richest family in the area – at least as far as money goes…”)

I laughed along with Hildy’s antics and excuses of why she just needed that one drink – just a sip and how irritating it was when people arrived who just by being there delayed her chance to relax with just one glass of wine… just one…

My only tiny thought that does not fall in the “love it!” category is that at some points it seemed to go on and on in a side direction that seemed overly unnecessary. 

While the Good House is full of funny moments, it is also surrounding a serious subject and after a while I no longer found Hildy funny, but a little pathetic – however that is not a negative.  I think as the reader (listener) we should come to that conclusion that Hildy’s excuses for drinking are tiresome and wearing… and in that case, the author hit this subject dead on. 

I would recommend The Good House, I had recollections of Debbie Macomber’s Cedar Cove series, but with a harder edge to it.

If you have not yet had the pleasure of listening to or reading David Sedaris, you are truly missing out.

~Sheila

A book or audio of short humorous stories of David’s explorations as he travels around the world.  Absurd and laugh out loud worthy, this book is sure to keep you picking it up time and again.

A couple of weeks ago I was in a car coming home from a conference in the cities.  I was in the back seat listening to our Library Director and our Out reach librarian chat away in the front seat.  Their conversation was going like this:

Oh my gosh did you get to the chapter yet about his sister in the chlorine water?

Yes, I loved that…. I am at the point now where his dad is hounding him about a colonoscopy. 

Oh yeah!  I laughed so hard at that.   He really is good.

I popped my head up to the front seat and asked one of my favorite questions,  “What are you reading?”  They both responded that they were reading David Sedaris’s new book, Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls.  I admitted I had never read him and they assured me I was missing out.  “I bet he would be wonderful on audio” Jolene said. And so I downloaded this book on audio the very next day.

While never a fan of short stories, this book is filled with delightful true stories of David’s life.  From childhood memories to present life I found David for the most part to be laugh our loud funny.

“Drawing attention to Gretchen’s weight was the sort of behavior my mother referred to as ‘stirring the turd,’ and I did it a lot that summer.”

“Neighbors would pass, and when they honked I’d remember that I was in my Speedo. Then I’d wrap my towel like a skirt around my waist and remind my sisters that this was not girlish but Egyptian, thank you very much.”

“If there’d been anything decent in the house, anything approaching real ice cream, it would have been eaten long ago. I knew this, so I bypassed the freezer in the kitchen and the secondary freezer in the tool shed and went to the neglected, tundralike one in the basement. Behind the chickens bought years earlier on sale, and the roasts encased like chestnuts in blood-tinted frost, I found a tub of ice milk, vanilla-flavored, and the color of pus. It had been frozen for so long that even I, a child, was made to feel old by the price tag. “Thirty-five cents! You can’t get naught for that nowadays!”

No subject is safe around David he touches on politics, crying babies, doctor visits, his fathers lack of love, you name it, he has discussed it.  There is a section (fiction) where he tells stories from other persons views that comes off a little disgruntled and was my least enjoyable part of the book.  However, I mostly found myself listening in wonder of this mans quick wit, and finished the audio while mowing my lawn and laughing out loud, surely the neighbors must think I have lost my mind, all the while contemplating what next to listen to of his.

From other Sedaris fans I have heard this is not his best writing, but for me, a newcomer, it was rather good and enough to make me want to know more about this funny witty man.