Twenty-two (23,twenty-four), 25

Tears of A Tiger (teen fiction) - Set in Cincinnati - it's for teens. Definitely heavy - a good read. I read it fast and was intrigued the whole time. Really tough subject matter and at times made me skirm. I definitely would suggest reading it with a teen - it helps address some major life issues: death, racism, guilt, family, and suicide. There is a lot there - no wonder Sharon Draper is an award winning author (and Cincinnati teacher).

When Gerald was a child he was fascinated by fire. But fire is dangerous and powerful, and tragedy strikes. His substance-addicted mother is taken from him. Then he loses the loving generosity of a favorite aunt. A brutal stepfather with a flaming temper and an evil secret makes his life miserable. The one bright light in Gerald's life is his little half sister, Angel, whom he struggles to protect from her father, Jordan Sparks, who abuses her, and from their mother, whose irresponsible behavior forces Gerald to work hard to keep the family together.

As a teenager, Gerald finds success as a member of the Hazelwood Tigers basketball team, while Angel develops her talents as a dancer. Trouble still haunts them, however, and Gerald learns, painfully, that young friends can die and old enemies must be faced. In the end he must stand up to his stepfather alone in a blazing confrontation.

Sharon M. Draper has interwoven characters and events from her previous novel, Tears of a Tiger, in this unflinchingly realistic portrayal of poverty and child abuse. It is an inspiring story of a young man who rises above the tragic circumstances of his life by drawing on the love and strength of family and friends.

The death of high school basketball star Rob Washington in an automobile accident affects the lives of his close friend Andy, who was driving the car, and many others in the school.

I also read (quickly): The two other Sharon Draper books in this series Forged by Fire and Darkness before Dawn... they were both out of this world. Great books - awesome conversation starters and good books to enjoy with a teenager. I am definitely going to have my nephew read this series - they are written on a seventh grade reading level - but the issues are big and are important for everyone to discuss. My students loved all the books in this series - their favorite (as a whole) was Forged by Fire.

A Thousand Splendid Suns- AMAZING. AMAZING. AMAZING. MUST READ. MUST.READ. But only when you are emotionally ready. It takes you to that place deep down in side. To be honest, I think that I am missing about two books in between this book and Tears of a Tiger, but after reading A Thousand Splendid Suns, I literally cannot remember anything else....incredible.

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today.

Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.

Born a generation apart and with very different ideas about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other, and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love, that is often the key to survival.

A stunning accomplishment, A Thousand Splendid Suns is a haunting, heartbreaking, compelling story of an unforgiving time, an unlikely friendship, and an indestructible love.

Lazy Review: Books 19, twenty, 21

Color Me Beautiful - Incredible. Sad. Heart Wrenching. Definitely "must-read" status - but be ready for tremendous heart break. All in one paragraph - there is tremendous hope and hopelessness.


Summary:
Inspired by a true story, Color Me Butterfly follows four generations of mothers and daughters—haunted by a common specter of domestic abuse—as they discover the strength, hope, and courage to survive.

The last thing Eloise Bingham wanted was to leave the comforts of her South Carolina home and family. But at the end of World War II, the young wife follows her husband, Isaac, to Philadelphia—only to experience his sinister and violent temper. Eloise’s children—and their children and grandchildren—will face their own trials over the next sixty years: Mattie, who has lived in her mother Eloise’s shadow, finds it takes a life-changing tragedy to help her break free; Lydia, Mattie’s strong-willed daughter, summons the resolve to rise above the cycle of abuse; and finally, Treasure, Lydia’s lively daughter, has the chance to be the first to escape her family’s destructive legacy.

It will take unconditional love, old-fashioned family values, faith, and fearless determination—already embedded in each woman’s DNA—to triumph over a life plagued with unspeakable pain.

Yes, Chef - LOVED THIS (nonfiction/memoir) of Chef Marcus Samuelson. Now everytime I go into Macy's I have a bright spot in my heart - I know his hustle and his struggle. There is death, trials, triumphs, and soooooo much culture. It's a realistic look into the world of food. I definitely recommend this book!

Summary:
It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother’s house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations.
Marcus Samuelsson was only three years old when he, his mother, and his sister—all battling tuberculosis—walked seventy-five miles to a hospital in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis Adaba. Tragically, his mother succumbed to the disease shortly after she arrived, but Marcus and his sister recovered, and one year later they were welcomed into a loving middle-class white family in Göteborg, Sweden. It was there that Marcus’s new grandmother, Helga, sparked in him a lifelong passion for food and cooking with her pan-fried herring, her freshly baked bread, and her signature roast chicken. From a very early age, there was little question what Marcus was going to be when he grew up.

Yes, Chef chronicles Marcus Samuelsson’s remarkable journey from Helga’s humble kitchen to some of the most demanding and cutthroat restaurants in Switzerland and France, from his grueling stints on cruise ships to his arrival in New York City, where his outsize talent and ambition finally come together at Aquavit, earning him a coveted New York Times three-star rating at the age of twenty-four. But Samuelsson’s career of “chasing flavors,” as he calls it, had only just begun—in the intervening years, there have been White House state dinners, career crises, reality show triumphs and, most important, the opening of the beloved Red Rooster in Harlem. At Red Rooster, Samuelsson has fufilled his dream of creating a truly diverse, multiracial dining room—a place where presidents and prime ministers rub elbows with jazz musicians, aspiring artists, bus drivers, and nurses. It is a place where an orphan from Ethiopia, raised in Sweden, living in America, can feel at home.

With disarming honesty and intimacy, Samuelsson also opens up about his failures—the price of ambition, in human terms—and recounts his emotional journey, as a grown man, to meet the father he never knew. Yes, Chef is a tale of personal discovery, unshakable determination, and the passionate, playful pursuit of flavors—one man’s struggle to find a place for himself in the kitchen, and in the world.

The Shape of Mercy - Not a must read. Intersting and entertaining, but very frustrating. I wasn't able to connect with any of the characters in this book. Although one character was nice - the other ones just didn't quite touch me - heck, they did nothing for me.

Summary:
Leaving a life of privilege to strike out on her own, Lauren Durough breaks with convention and her family’s expectations by choosing a state college over Stanford and earning her own income over accepting her ample monthly allowance. She takes a part-time job from 83-year-old librarian Abigail Boyles, who asks Lauren to transcribe the journal entries of her ancestor Mercy Hayworth, a victim of the Salem witch trials.

Almost immediately, Lauren finds herself drawn to this girl who lived and died four centuries ago. As the fervor around the witch accusations increases, Mercy becomes trapped in the worldview of the day, unable to fight the overwhelming influence of snap judgments and superstition, and Lauren realizes that the secrets of Mercy’s story extend beyond the pages of her diary, living on in the mysterious, embittered Abigail.

The strength of her affinity with Mercy forces Lauren to take a startling new look at her own life, including her relationships with Abigail, her college roommate, and a young man named Raul. But on the way to the truth, will Lauren find herself playing the helpless defendant or the misguided judge? Can she break free from her own perceptions and see who she really is?

CSBL - Books 19, twenty, 21, twenty-two, 23

CSBL - Coming Soon Book List...

Here are the books that are on my "MUST READ" list.

My mom recommended Color Me Butterfly and A Thousand Splendid Suns (a highly recommended book that I've been putting off)...

Look forward to their reviews. 

Pray for me Saints. 

P.S Thank you so much for all the book recommendations - keep them coming!

Not on track...

AAAUUUUUUGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH....I should be on book 20... according to my calculations. Yikes.

Books 17 and Eighteen

17. Broken: When Special Agent Will Trent arrives in Grant County, he finds a police department determined to protect its own and far too many unanswered questions about a prisoner’s death. He doesn’t understand why Officer Lena Adams is hiding secrets from him. He doesn’t understand her role in the death of Grant County’s popular police chief. He doesn’t understand why that man’s widow, Dr. Sara Linton, needs him now more than ever to help her crack this case.

While the police force investigates the murder of a young woman pulled from a frigid lake, Trent investigates the police force, putting pressure on Adams just when she’s already about to crack. Caught between two complicated and determined women, trying to understand Linton’s passionate distrust of Adams, the facts surrounding Chief Tolliver’s death, and the complexities of this insular town, Trent will unleash a case filled with explosive secrets—and encounter a thin blue line that could be murderous if crossed.

Review: Whew. The police force is quite CROCKED in this book. The reason for the killing doesn't quite add up to the brutality of the murders. But I found myself more interested in Sara and Will and Tommy than our two murder victims. All in all, get ready for some twisted mess if you read this book. I definitely recommend it.  

18. Work Hard.Be Nice: When Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin signed up for Teach for America right after college and found themselves utter failures in the classroom, they vowed to remake themselves into superior educators. They did that—and more. In their early twenties, by sheer force of talent and determination never to take no for an answer, they created a wildly successful fifth-grade experience that would grow into the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), which today includes sixty-six schools in nineteen states and the District of Columbia.

KIPP schools incorporate what Feinberg and Levin learned from America's best, most charismatic teachers: lessons need to be lively; school days need to be longer (the KIPP day is nine and a half hours); the completion of homework has to be sacrosanct (KIPP teachers are available by telephone day and night). Chants, songs, and slogans such as "Work hard, be nice" energize the program. Illuminating the ups and downs of the KIPP founders and their students, Mathews gives us something quite rare: a hopeful book about education.

Review: KIPP school's beginnings. Inspirational. A quick read. Definitely worth the read - especially if you are interested in the educational system.

Books Fourteen, 15, Sixteen

14. Giada's Everyday Italian: In her hit Food Network show Everyday Italian, Giada De Laurentiis shows you how to cook delicious, beautiful food in a flash. And here, in her long-awaited first book, she does the same—helps you put a fabulous dinner on the table tonight, for friends or just for the kids, with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of flavor. She makes it all look easy, because it is. Everyday Italian is true to its title: the fresh, simple recipes are incredibly quick and accessible, and also utterly mouth-watering—perfect for everyday cooking. And the book is focused on the real-life considerations of what you actually have in your refrigerator and pantry (no mail-order ingredients here) and what you’re in the mood for—whether a simply sauced pasta or a hearty family-friendly roast, these great recipes cover every contingency. So, for example, you’ll find dishes that you can make solely from pantry ingredients, or those that transform lowly leftovers into exquisite entrées (including brilliant ideas for leftover pasta), and those that satisfy your yearning to have something sweet baking in the oven. There are 7 ways to make red sauce more interesting, 6 different preparations of the classic cutlet, 5 perfect pestos, 4 creative uses for prosciutto, 3 variations on basic polenta, 2 great steaks, and 1 sublime chocolate tiramisù—plus 100 other recipes that turn everyday ingredients into speedy but special dinners.

What’s more, Everyday Italian is organized according to what type of food you want tonight—whether a soul-warming stew for Sunday supper, a quick sauté for a weeknight, or a baked pasta for potluck. These categories will help you figure out what to cook in an instant, with such choices as fresh-from-the-pantry appetizers, sauceless pastas, everyday roasts, and stuffed vegetables—whatever you’re in the mood for, you’ll be able to find a simple, delicious recipe for it here. That’s the beauty of Italian home cooking, and that’s what Giada De Laurentiis offers here—the essential recipes to make a great Italian dinner. Tonight.

Review: It has amazing reviews for a reason. Simple, delicious, and full of incredible tips. If you enjoy Italian - get this cook book immediately.

15. Happiness Project: Gretchen Rubin had an epiphany one rainy afternoon in the unlikeliest of places: a city bus. "The days are long, but the years are short," she realized. "Time is passing, and I'm not focusing enough on the things that really matter." In that moment, she decided to dedicate a year to her happiness project. 

In this lively and compelling account, Rubin chronicles her adventures during the twelve months she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific research, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. Among other things, she found that novelty and challenge are powerful sources of happiness; that money can help buy happiness, when spent wisely; that outer order contributes to inner calm; and that the very smallest of changes can make the biggest difference.

Review: This was the book that surprised me the most. It's outstanding. Not self-helpy or preachy - just simple. Makes me think - what can I do to make myself happier?

16. Silver Sparrow: With the opening line of Silver Sparrow, “My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist,” author Tayari Jones unveils a breathtaking story about a man’s deception, a family’s complicity, and two teenage girls caught in the middle. 

Set in a middle-class neighborhood in Atlanta in the 1980s, the novel revolves around James Witherspoon’s two families—the public one and the secret one. When the daughters from each family meet and form a friendship, only one of them knows they are sisters. It is a relationship destined to explode when secrets are revealed and illusions shattered. As Jones explores the backstories of her rich yet flawed characters—the father, the two mothers, the grandmother, and the uncle—she also reveals the joy, as well as the destruction, they brought to one another’s lives. 

At the heart of it all are the two lives at stake, and like the best writers—think Toni Morrison with The Bluest Eye—Jones portrays the fragility of these young girls with raw authenticity as they seek love, demand attention, and try to imagine themselves as women, just not as their mothers.

Review: I read this in one sitting. It's incredible. MY FAVORITE SUMMER READ SO FAR. Get it now.

Books 11, Twelve, 13

All book descriptions are from Amazon. 
11. French Women For All Seasons: From the author of French Women Don't Get Fat, the #1 National Bestseller, comes an essential guide to the art of joyful living—in moderation, in season, and, above all, with pleasure.

Together with a bounty of new dining ideas and menus, Mireille Guiliano offers us fresh, cunning tips on style, grooming, and entertaining. Here are four seasons' worth of strategies for shopping, cooking, and exercising, as well as some pointers for looking effortlessly chic. Taking us from her childhood in Alsace-Lorraine to her summers in Provence and her busy life in New York and Paris, this wise and witty book shows how anyone anywhere can develop a healthy, holistic lifestyle.

Review: I read the first book, French Women Don't Get Fat. I loved it - but by the second installment - I'm over it. I think the difference between the books is that when I read the first book, I'd never been to France. By the second book, I had been to Paris. It is a beautiful place, but a lot of smoking, a lot of VERY thin women, and...not quite as "fanciful" as I expected... I think I'll take some of the advice, but if there is another book that comes out - I will skip it. Read the first book...it's far better.


12. Lemon Meringue Pie Murder: Hannah Swensen, owner of The Cookie Jar and Lake Eden, Minnesota's own amateur sleuth extraordinaire, returns in "Lemon Meringue Pie Murder" to track down the killer of a neighbor with a sweet tooth.It's summer in Lake Eden and Hannah's younger sister Michelle is coming home for a visit. But before the family reunion can get under way, Hannah discovers the body of a local resident in the woman's basement. The only clue is one of Hannah's luscious lemon meringue pies on the kitchen counter with only one slice missing...even though from the looks of the victim's kitchen, she was planning an intimate dinner for two.Includes nine original cookie and dessert recipes for you to try!

Review: Same story as French Women - read the first one. I'm over it. The series reminds me of the Ladies Detective Agency series. Although I liked the LDA series better, both series have simple and sweet lead detectives and the crimes are not brutal and dark. Think Monk television series. The only thing with these series, esp. Lemon Meringue, is that it gets old. I want more from the main character and the people around her. I want to go deeper. All in all, I'm taking a break. It's definitely not a series where I can read the books back to back...


13. Sunday Brunch Club: Meet Capri, an attorney at a top Houston firm. She seems to have it all together all the time until a seductive client topples her self-control. Then there’s Jermane, a devout Catholic who met her husband in law school and has never been with another man. But now her workaholic marriage is threatened by temptation.

Angel, on the other hand, sees men merely as a means to sex. Her scorn for love of all kinds—godly or otherwise—is challenged by a serious health scare. Meanwhile, Jewel bases her dating choices on the size of a man’s bank account until she meets a new flame who causes her to reconsider her requirements.

Finally, there’s Lexi, the link between the ladies, who provides sage advice while praying for Mr. Right. But what happens when depression hits hard?

Through conversation and consolation, these dynamic characters provide one another with divine inspiration—encouraging readers to root for them along the way.

Review: This book was great. You will find yourself frustrated with each one of  the characters at different times in the book. Some compare it to Waiting to Exhale - I haven't read it. But will say that it's definitely better (to me) than Getting To Happy.