The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs

Rating: 6 out of 10
Summary: Raised in a secular family but increasingly interested in the relevance of faith in our modern world, A.J. Jacobs decides to dive in headfirst and attempt to obey the Bible as literally as possible for one full year. He vows to follow the Ten Commandments. To be fruitful and multiply. To love his neighbor. But also to obey the hundreds of less publicized rules: to avoid wearing clothes made of mixed fibers; to play a ten-string harp; to stone adulterers.

Jacobs’s quest transforms his life even more radically than the year spent reading the entire Encyclopedia Britannica for The Know-It-All. His beard grows so unruly that he is regularly mistaken for a member of ZZ Top. He immerses himself in prayer, tends sheep in the Israeli desert, battles idolatry, and tells the absolute truth in all situations – much to his wife’s chagrin.

Throughout the book, Jacobs also embeds himself in a cross-section of communities that take the Bible literally. He tours a Kentucky-based creationist museum and sings hymns with Pennsylvania Amish. He dances with Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn and does Scripture study with Jehovah’s Witnesses. He discovers ancient biblical wisdom of startling relevance. And he wrestles with seemingly archaic rules that baffle the twenty-first-century brain.Jacobs’s extraordinary undertaking yields unexpected epiphanies and challenges. A bookthat will charm readers both secular and religious, The Year of Living Biblically is part Cliff Notes to the Bible, part memoir, and part look into worlds unimaginable. Thou shalt not be able to put it down. 

My Thoughts: This was fun, education, and entertaining. Posed some good questions.

Ten Cents a Dance by Christine Fletcher

Rating: 8 out of 10
Summary: With her mother ill, it’s up to fifteen-year-old Ruby Jacinski to support her family. But in the 1940s, the only opportunities open to a Polish-American girl from Chicago’s poor Yards is a job in one of the meat packing plants. Through a chance meeting with a local tough, Ruby lands a job as a taxi dancer and soon becomes an expert in the art of “fishing”: working her patrons for meals, cash, clothes, even jewelry. Drawn ever deeper into the world of dance halls, jazz, and the mob, Ruby gradually realizes that the only one who can save her is herself.  

2nd Summary: Just 15 and saddled with the responsibility of supporting her ailing mother and younger sister, Ruby Jacinski quits school to work in a meatpacking factory but is soon dazzled by the prospect of earning big money as a taxi dancer (professional dance partner)—an idea she picks up from her neighborhood crush, mobster wannabe Paulie. Fletcher sustains the narrative with the ongoing tension between Ruby’s buttoned-up family persona and her desire for a real romance, the glamour of dressing up and dancing to jazz, and baiting “fish” (customers) for dinner dates and money. 

My Thoughts: I really enjoyed this one. Ruby was a very realistic protagonist–she had her flaws and those flaws had consequences. Very vivid depiction of 1940s-era Chicago and the poverty as well as the music and mob scene in the area. The feel was very gritty and, again, realistic. Good read.

Impossible by Nancy Werlin

Rating: 6 out of 10
Summary: Lucy Scarborough is seventeen when she discovers that the women of her family have been cursed through the generations, forced to attempt three seemingly impossible tasks or to fall into madness upon their child’s birth. How can Lucy succeed when all of her ancestors have tried and failed? But Lucy is the first girl who won’t be alone as she tackles the list. She has her fiercely protective foster parents beside her. And she has Zach, whose strength amazes her more each day. Do they have enough love and resolve to overcome an age-old evil?

Inspired by the ballad “Scarborough Fair,” this spellbinding novel combines suspense, fantasy, and romance for an intense and masterfully original tale.  

2nd Summary:  Lucy Scarborough, raped on prom night, is pregnant. Committed to keeping the baby, she nonetheless sees disturbing parallels to her mentally ill mother, Miranda, who had Lucy as a teen, then left her in the care of the Markowitzes-Soledad, a nurse-midwife, and her husband, Leo. Boy-next-door-type Zach, home from college and living with the Markowitzes, happens upon Miranda’s teenage diary, which outlines a curse placed on Lucy’s family generations earlier by the evil Elfin Knight: the women all give birth as teens before descending into madness. Lucy can break the curse only by performing three impossible tasks set forth in a variant of the ballad “Scarborough Fair.” 

My Thoughts: This was a fun, and had great suspense and ups and downs, although of course the ending is never in question.

The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

Rating: 8 out of 10
Summary: The Winter Rose begins in London in the summer of 1900. Reformers, moved by the plight of the poor, work to better their conditions. Among them is an idealistic young woman named India Selwyn-Jones. Newly graduated from medical school, India joins a practice in Whitechapel and tends to its people. With the help of her influential fiance Freddie Lytton, an up-and-coming Liberal MP she works to shut down the area’s opium dens that destroy both body and soul. Her selfless activities better her patients’ lives and bring her immense gratification, but unfortunately, they also bring her into direct conflict with East London’s ruling crime lord Sid Malone.

It is on these grim streets where India meets – and saves the life of – London’s most notorious gangster, Sid Malone. Hard, violent, devastatingly attractive, Malone is the opposite of India’s cool, aristocratic fiancé, a rising star in the House of Commons. Though Malone represents all she despises, India finds herself unwillingly drawn ever closer to him – enticed by his charm, intrigued by his hidden, mysterious past.

My Thoughts: I believe this is the second novel, the sequel to The Tea Rose, the first novel that Donnelly wrote. I haven’t read the first one, and I had no problem just jumping into the story with the second book. 

While at times the novel could get a little preachy and cliche (especially with India’s idealism), the overall effect was very epic and sweeping and really immersed you in the story. The narration follows the characters throughout their lives, and it could easily have ended at several points but Donnelly twisted the story unexpectedly, and boom, you are off on another adventure. 

I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t very affected by the chemistry between India and Sid–I was rather sidetracked and more enamored with the plight between a pair of younger characters, Sid’s brother and another heroine who I suspect might be the stars of Donnelly’s next book. Overall a good, long read.

Perfect Chemistry by Simone Elkeles

Rating: 6 out of 10
Summary: When Brittany Ellis walks into chemistry class on the first day of senior year, she has no clue that her carefully created “perfect” life is about to unravel before her eyes. She’s forced to be lab partners with Alex Fuentes, a gang member from the other side of town, and he is about to threaten everything she’s worked so hard for—her flawless reputation, her relationship with her boyfriend, and the secret that her home life is anything but perfect. Alex is a bad boy and he knows it. So when he makes a bet with his friends to lure Brittany into his life, he thinks nothing of it. But soon Alex realizes Brittany is a real person with real problems, and suddenly the bet he made in arrogance turns into something much more. In a passionate story about looking beneath the surface, Simone Elkeles breaks through the stereotypes and barriers that threaten to keep Brittany and Alex apart. 

My Thoughts: A modern update of the Romeo & Juliet story. It was a little contrived and improbable at times, but it was entertaining and had a good message.

Forever Today by Deborah Wearing

Rating: 8 out of 10
Summary: The man who lost his memory: the story of an English musician crippled by total amnesia, and the wife who tried to find a cure, then ran away to start her life over, and finally came back to him.

Clive Wearing is one of the most famous, extreme cases of amnesia ever known. In 1985, while at the height of his success as a conductor and BBC music producer, a virus completely destroyed the memory part of his brain, leaving him trapped in a limbo of the constant present where every conscious moment was as if he had just woken from a ten-year coma. For seven years he was kept in the general ward of a London hospital while his wife Deborah campaigned for better conditions and searched hopelessly for a cure. As damaged as Clive was, the musical part of his brain was unaffected, as was his passionate love for Deborah.

Finding there was no way to bring Clive back, Deborah eventually fled to America to start her life again. Then, miraculously, in their transatlantic phone calls she noticed Clive starting to recover some of his memory, and she was pulled back to England. Today, although he still lives in care, they are closer than ever.

This is the story of an extreme condition that is a reminder of what it means to be human. It is also a woman’s quest to understand, control, and escape from a nightmare. Finally, it is insight into a bond that runs deeper than conscious thought, a love overcoming the most tragic handicap.

My Thoughts: Wearing is a good writer, something I’m always a little skeptical about when I first pick up memoirs. The narrative was good and she explained her husband’s condition and their subsequent life changes very well. Touching, tragic, and romantic.

Gambit by Karna Small Bodman

Rating: 3 out of 10
Summary: American planes are being shot out of the sky, and no one knows how or why. Three commercial jets have gone up in flames. In each crash, nobody reported seeing anything in the sky and nothing showed up on the radar. No planes. No missiles.

Dr. Cameron Talbot, a world-famous expert on missile-defense systems, believes that a new stealth technology is being used in these attacks. With the country in a panic and the economy taking a nosedive, the White House orders the beautiful young scientist to protect America’s endangered airways. The assignment places Cammy in mortal jeopardy as she finds herself stalked by nameless assassins.

Who is behind the threat? Islamic jihadists? The big drug cartels? None of the usual suspects have claimed responsibility for the crashes. As Cammy races against time to develop a defense against the mystery weapon, she comes to suspect that the downed planes are only the opening gambit in an ambitious campaign of conquest that could change the world’s balance of power forever.

My Thoughts: This was really, really bad. Don’t read it.