South of Broad by Pat Conroy

This started out so strong, but lost some of its appeal for me about 100 pages in. Not that I didn't enjoy the book; it was a compelling story, albeit a bit of a soap opera, but it drew me in. First off - the writing...so very good. Conroy's prose is exquisite. His descriptions and metaphors so beautifully drawn and rendered, like paintings. It was the over the top nature of some of the characters that let me down a bit; there was the cliche factor. Too predictable at times; I knew how things were going to turn out. Sine "Prince of Tides" is such a favorite of mine, I didn't expect to feel this way about this book.
But, heck....it's summer and you need some good soap opera fiction for the beach. And I did read a lot of this at the beach. On to more page turning for my week in San Diego. Gotta go pick something up so I can enjoy the incredible beach at Carlsbad this week!

An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin

This is a hard book to blog about. It was pretty intense and thought-provoking, even though on the surface it was an easy read about the "art world" in New York City. It deals with "beautiful objects," including the main character, Lacey Yeager. She is a young woman who takes a job at Sotheby's and learns the business of art.

Lacey is confident and takes risks to get ahead and does succeed and eventually opens her own gallery in Chelsea. Unfortuntately, her gallery opening is slated to occur in Sept 2001; her opening is not the one she expected.

Lacey knows how to make connections, often using her attractiveness and sexual prowess to gain acceptance. And she succeeds, to a point. This is a novel worth reading, especially for those who contemplate art, the art world and its politics.

My New American Life by Francine Prose

This is Francine Prose's newest novel so, of course, I had to put in on hold at the library. The story follows the "adventures" of Lula, a young Albanian working as a nanny for a Wall Street executive. His wife has left him and his son and Mr. Stanley (the employer) needs somone to look after Zeke, who is a high school senior. Stanley is friendly with Mr. Don, a high powered lawyer, who can get Lula her green card.
Lula, bored with life in the suburbs, becomes entranced by Alvo, an Albanian criminal who comes to the house with his two friends. She hides a gun for them and pines for Alvo to come back and take her out, which he eventually does.
Mr. Stanley's wife turns out to be more insane that we are aware of, Zeke is quite disillusioned and morose and Lula editorializes about life in America. This was an interesting read, but not nearly as good as "Goldengrove" or "A Changed Man."

  Prose seeks to show America through the fresh eyes of an outsider with a deeply ingrained, comic pessimism born of life under dictatorship, yet also capable of exuberant optimism, and the results, like Lula, are agreeable enough but not terribly profound. (

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

After I read "Half Broke Horses," I was encouraged to read this memoir by the same author. It took me a while.
Wow, what a book! It's hard to believe that all of the stories in this book are real; some are quite hard to fathom.
Interesting....after I read the book I "googled" it and found an interview with Jeannette Walls. Many of the people who read the book did not feel that it was "depressing," but uplifting.  The obstacles that she faced as a child were overwhelming but she and her sister and brother managed to get out and leave for NYC where they became successful in their own right.

Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner

How funny that I started this book - by Jennifer WEINER - right before the Anthony Weiner story! A book by Weiner, about a male politician who "strays" at the time when the Weiner story was breaking.
Anyway, the book was entertaining, a fast read, with some sympathetic characters.
I especially liked the daugher Lizzie.
It was a good "easy" read and just what I needed!
On now, to more Francine Prose!

A Changed Man by Francine Prose

Francine Prose is quickly becoming a favorite author. I loved "Goldengrove" and now "A Changed Man." So very different books!
At first, the book seemed a little slow. But not the case...keep going.
The characters are painted vividly; the plot interesting, compelling, real.
Here is a quote from the NYTimes Book Review by Lisl Schillinger that sums up the themes beautifully:

"Here Prose uses the exaggerated failings of an ideological extremist to expose the wishy-washy but more pervasive moral failures of contemporary America: detached or absent fathers; frantic, overworked mothers; undernurtured children; checkbook philanthropy; media hypocrisy; the shortage of local heroes willing to help the people around them. But for all of that, the novel isn't a sermon or a lecture. Prose doesn't sit in judgment; instead, she holds a mirror up to her characters, reflecting both their imperfections and their charms."

The ending?
I won't say. I was so curious to see how Francine would wrap it up. I was surprised!

The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons

Boy, did I want to love this book and I just DIDN'T! Actually, I couldn't wait for it to end, and it went on and on and on. (It took me over 4 weeks to read it; I had to renew a 4 week book! That is not normal for me.)
Anyway, perhaps if I had not recently read an excellent novel about the siege of Leningrad, I might have been more favorably inclined to this one. But Helen Dunmore's "The Siege" was such a great novel about this subject and it did not go on for 635 pages like this one did. And the love story in this novel was nauseating, I thought. I did not have to read pages and pages and pages of kissing, caressing, fondling, etc. to get a thrill.
This book was just too long and to me, too trite.
Can't wait to start my new book. Hopefully, I will enjoy more.