“Bonded”, by Donna Jo Napoli was on my daughter’s reading list for school. A short book, it is based on the Cinderella story, but revolves around a Chinese girl who never gets her feet bound, and her half sister and her bound feet. Since we are so “Disneyfied”, it came as somewhat of a surprise to me how old the Cinderella story is and how there are several old Chinese “Cinderella” tales. This was a good book to read, even for an adult.
“Duncton Wood”, by William Horwood, must have been sitting on my mother’s shelf for more than 20 years because it was published in 1980. The writer spent several years secluded in the forest and emerged to write this entertaining family-saga about moles. It follows the lives of several moles, their births, their rise to leadership, their deaths, their loves, their journeys and their spirituality.
“Step on a Crack”, by James Patterson. I read this in one day. It has a lot of short chapters and while I was reading it I was wondering why I wasting my time on another book like this. A short murder-mystery and I never did figure out what the title of the book had to do with the story. Sorry, that’s all you get from me on this one.
“Trace”, by Patricia Cornwell. I read this a month or two ago. Frankly, it was so memorable that I have to read the back cover to remember what it was about. Oh yes, another Scarpetta novel about her after she was fired from the Virginia as chief medical examiner. If you are following Scarpetta’s life through all her other books, it’s good to see she landed on her feet somewhere.
“Eat Pray Love”, by Elizabeth Gilbert mostly follows a year in the life of Elizabeth Gilbert. She has a very natural, easy way of writing that makes it easy to fly through the book. She reveals a lot of personal history and personal everything…well, not sure if there is anything personal left that we don’t know about from this year in her life. She runs off to Italy to learn the language and eat, then off to India to hang out in an ashram, and then over to Indonesia where she falls in love. I think I enjoyed reading more about the friends she made in all these places than anything else in the book.