Fall on your knees - by ann-marie macdonald

This book became a little ponderous at times. Yet, it was an Oprah Book club choice. As all Oprah's book seem to have a particular theme, so does this one and that theme is children.

Three "sister" and then a fourth. The book winds it's way through the tale of the Piper's and the ytragic life of the Mom. It was easy to hate the father, and the sister Kathleen - on man, I did not warm to that character at all. Was I suppose to? And the final chapters when all is revealed, yawn yawn. Another character introduced, Rose. And then another, Anthony. The "diary" of Kathleen brings it all together, but it sits like an unbaked lump dough in the mouth. Why are we suppose to care?

I would have like the "child" Lily to have ended up differently, exepted by the "other" side of the family.

Oh well, most of Oprahs books hit the mark.

Will I stop reading them? Hell no. Thought it took me all week to read the 500 pages and at times I fell asleep, it was a good story.

The patience of Rivers

by Joseph Freda

It took me about 10 days to finish this book. I was excited to read it at the beginning because of the subject material. The summer of 1969. Viet nam War. Walking on the Moon. Woodstock. The protagonist was a teenage, just graduated from high school and facing the draft, college, going to Woodstock...

But I could never ever warm to the characters and just plugged along. Woodstock was a back drop, the Moon walk was a paragraph that was also a setting for sitting on some canoes and some moon watching, the Viet Nam war was thrown in as sort of an afterthought another back story that really made little to no substance to the story. It just sat there like an elephant in the room.

And the heart of the story just made my teeth ache. His parents go into business with a real shit head. He puts up nothing, but they put up the family farm!! It made not one iota of sense to me that these people could be so daft! And int he end, the grand parents loose their land and their home. But his family comes out smelling like a rose...

An interesting angle was the mafia coming in and putting the squeeze on the shit heads son....

Drinking at a bar at all ages???WTF!! Even in 1969 this seems a far stretch. I remember my swimming coach taking us into a bar (what was he thinking!!!) and we got thrown out. That would have been around that time...

An okay book, Really wanted much much more out of it. Written too much like an adult remembering his childhood than a book written from the view point of a kid.

Just went to Amazon for the review and I am trulyin the minority. Every reviewer loved the book. Oh well...

The Divide

I have to admit, it took me a long time to get into the swing of things with this book. I did not care for any of the characters for a long time. I could have done without all the sympathy for poor Ben. His wife Sarah seemed an ice queen for most the novel.

Yet, as it progressed I became more interested and wanted to learn how the daughters body was found at the bottom of a mountain frozen forever in youth and pregnancy to be found by two skiers who also almost met their demise at the bottom of a long fall..

Anyway, an okay book. I have read all of Nicholas Evans' books and I think I enjoyed this one the least. For some reason - because I do not remember much of the story lines - the vast outdoors played more of a character than in this book. The Rocky Mountains were just a back drop, like necessary for the frozen grave rather than any other purpose.

Finished with a marathon read this morning, had to find out who killed her and every thing fell into place easily, except how he found them, in the dark, in a place he had never been before in a cabin that was totally unassociated with any of them.

Go figure, but it had to end that way.