A Countess Below Stairs

Now, Eva Ibbotson is one of my favorite authors, but this book just didn't cut it for me. I'm not the type to read historicly based novels on royalty, they kind of bore me. Anything past The Other Boleyn Girl is a bit much. And A Countess Below Stairs was a little dull (no offense, Cara). But whatever, the story was basically about a countess (Anna) that escaped the war and became a housemaid in England. She slowly falls in love with the head of the house, Rupert, who is getting married to this beautifully evil lady named Muriel. Of course, everything turns out all right in the end, so la de frickin' da.
I recommend this book only if you like Girl in a Cage by Jane Yolen (which I didn't) or things like that. It was okay, but the best part for me was that it was relatively short and the font was huge.

Dear John

This book was by the same author as the Notebook, Nicholas Sparks. I haven't read The Notebook, but now I want to. Dear John looks like a war survival story, especially since 9/11 has a major impact on some of the characters in this book, but it's not. It's a wonderful story about loving, losing, and caring about someone so much you'll let go of them.
The main character is John Tyree, and while on leave from the marines, he falls in love with Savannah. They're deeply in love and he visits her on his leaves, but whrn 9/11 rolls around he reenlists and gets sent to Kuwait. Savannah falls in love with another man, and John is heartbroken. Meanwhile, he's trying to keep his relationship stable with his father, which is hard considering his father may have Asperger's...

This book is so great, but it's one of those ones that when you get to the end, you go, "Crap, such a good book, such a sad ending." But then you think that if the book had a happy ending, it might not be as good.
And so ends all the books I read and finished at Bass Lake.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape

This is another one of my favorite books. It has so many great characters, starting with the family.

Gilbert: Takes care of his retarded little brother, dreams of getting away, can't cry, is having an affair with his insurance man's wife.
Amy: Gilbert's sister who has an Elvis obsession, cooks for the family and is starting to put on weight which worries her.
Arnie: The retarded brother mentioned above. He snaps the heads off crickets using the mailbox, climbs the water tower every now and then, loves crunchy peanut butter, and is about to turn eighteen when the doctors said he wouldn't live past ten.
Ellen: The youngest sibling in the family who has recently become the prettiest girl in the small town of Endora, works at the Dairy Dream, and loves to bring religion into every argument she has with her big brother Gilbert.
Momma: Is the mother of all the Grape children, just wants to see Arnie turn eighteen (is that too much to ask?), eats enough for an entire family, rarely leaves her chair and watches TV 24/7.

Then throw in a couple of minor characters, such as Becky, a girl who perplexes Gilbert and tries to help him in strange ways, Mr Lamson, who owns the grocery store where Gilbert works, and Tucker, Gilbert's best friend who just became assistant manager of Burger Barn, and it makes for an interesting story. I'm going to post some excerpts, because I can't help but love this book.

This conversation is between Gilbert and Arnie:
"Good night, Arnie."
"Good-bye."
"Good night, Arnie. It's not good-bye. It's good night."
"Yeah."
"Good-bye is for when you're going away. " He mixes those words up. "And you're not going anywhere."
(pg. 48)

A conversation between Momma and Gilbert:
"One day you might understand what it means to create. To know the feeling of looking into a person's eyes and know that you are the reason for those eyes." Momma thinks a second. "I'm going to say something I'm not supposed to say. I see you and I know that I'm a god. Or a goddess. Godlike! And this house is my kingdom. Yes, Gilbert. This chair is my throne. And you, Gilbert, are my knight in shimmering armor."
"Shining, Momma, is what you mean."
"No, I know what I mean. You don't shine, Gilbert. You shimmer. You hear? You shimmer. Now good night."
(pg. 187)

I love this book so much, it's a must-read and one of my favorites. I like reading it at Bass Lake because it has that feeling of simplicity that everyone loves on vacation.

TRISTAN AND IVY FOREVER

So I just finished Kissed By An Angel, which is actually three books in one... Kissed by an Angel, The Power of Love, and Soulmates. It was such a sweet love story!

In Kissed by an Angel, Ivy and Tristan start going out, then he dies in a car accident because their brakes were cut. Ivy was in the accident, but she survives. As she tries to get over losing her boyfriend, her stepbrother Gregory turns out to be a great source of comfort. Meanwhile, Tristan has become an angel and he and his friend Lacey are watching over Ivy even though they can't do much. At the end of this book, Tristan figures out that the accident he died in was not an accident... it was attempted murder, and it was aimed for Ivy.
In The Power of Love, Tristan continues to watch out for Ivy, and he talks to her through Will and Beth even though she doesn't know it's him doing it. Also, Ivy starts to see some romance with Gregory, her stepbrother, and Will, he friend. The killer gets closer and closer.
Finally, in Soulmates, Tristan saves Ivy... from Gregory! It turns out Gregory thought Ivy saw him murder his mother, which he did, and decided to kill her too. He also killed his best friend Eric, who was going to tell Ivy.
This was a good murder mystery, as well as romance... Just like Harper's Island, you didn't see who the psycho killer was until the very end and then it may have been too late. This book is like 700 pages, but it's well worth it. (And the print's kinda big, and the margins are kinda small.)

Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!

I'm back from Bass Lake! Yes, I had a great time, thanks for asking... I went tubing, slid down a waterfall, ate my weight in Tootsie Pops and Blow Pops, sang freecreditreport.com commercials, and it was fun. I also read a lot, too. So this post is about a book I read...

Yeah, it's a Sue Grafton A to Z Mystery. I've read a couple of others and my long-term goal is to read them all. They all star detective Kinsey Milhone, who lives alone, eats a Quarter Pounder almost every day, runs three miles in the morning, and has an 80-year-old landlord who gives her cheap rent. This book also featured a very prissy old lady and her dead cop husband. I'll just write the summary the book gives on here, since it's as accurate as I can find:

Tom Newquist had been a detective in the Nota Lake sheriff's office--a tough, honest cop respected by everyone. When he died, the townfolk were sad but not surprised. Just shy of sixty-five, Newquist worked too hard, drank too much, and exercised too little.
Newquist's widow, Selma, didn't doubt the coroner's report. But still, she couldn't help wondering what had so bothered Tom in the last six weeks of his life. What was it that had made him prowl restlessly at night and brood constantly? Determined to help Selma find the answer, Kinsey Millhone sets up shop in Nota Lake, where she finds that looking for a needle in a haystack can draw blood--very likely, her own...


Yep, that's the book.