Self-Made Man by Norah Vincent

Norah Vincent's witty and compulsively readable memoir tells how she dated women, joined a bowling league, visited strip bars, retreated to a monastery, got a job in sales and even infiltrated a men's therapy group. Norah did not predict how crucial the relationships Ned forged would be and how the burden of being an impostor would became almost too much to bear. The result is a constantly surprising and humane account of what it is to be a man - and a woman - in the modern world.

It was a fairly interesting read. I read some really bad reviews from guys on the Amazon site, but was curious to read it non the less. I believe in making up my own mind about books & movies.

Anyway, I think it the whole concept of what she set out to do is novel and whether or not you agree that she discovered the truth about men & how they interact and just how different that is from us girls, well that's up to you. It's not a scientific thing at all, it's all about her personal experience and interactions. And she certainly put herself in some interesting places, like a monastery! So, if you're curious, I suggest you read it otherwise, leave it alone.

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Keeping Faith by Jodi Picoult

When seven-year-old Faith White and her mother, Mariah, swing by the house on the way to ballet class, they find that Daddy is home and he's brought a playmate. This is not the first time he's been caught cheating. After the fuss and feathers have settled and Dad has moved out, Faith begins talking to an imaginary friend who, it seems, is God. And God is not male but female. Faith is able to effect miraculous cures and is also occasionally afflicted with stigmata. When the media gets wind of this, the circus begins. The local rabbi takes an interest (Faith and Mariah are technically Jewish), and the local Catholic priest pays several inquiring visits. There is also a gaggle of psychologists. Throw in a professional atheist for the romance angle and a vicious custody fight with an egomaniacal lawyer, and you have a riveting read. Picoult gets better and better with each book. If you can suspend disbelief on one or two points, this is an entrancing novel.

I really enjoyed this one, especially since I didn't have many expectations of it. I didn't enjoy her book The Pact at all and she has definitely become the season's 'it' writer - which puts me off instantly. But I did enjoy this one. The conclusion isn't earth shattering and she doesn't even bother to explain what is really going on, but that wasn't necessary and I'll forgive it ;) Besides, I'm sure if she did try the book would become ridiculous - kinda like when you get to see the aliens at the end of M. Night Shyamalan's Signs and it just becomes completely silly because they don't look scary at all, in fact they were rather comical. Sometimes it's best to leave things to people's imaginations ... the trick is knowing when.

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Chill Factor by Sandra Brown

Lust, jealousy and murder suffuse Brown's crisp thriller (after White Hot), set in the snowbound mountains of North Carolina. Lilly and Dutch Burton's marriage didn't withstand the loss of their three-year-old daughter, despite their attempt at a fresh start with the purchase of a vacation cabin in bucolic Cleary, N.C., where the novel opens on the divorced couple discussing its sale. Dutch is now Cleary's chief of police, and Lilly is a magazine editor in Atlanta. As she races back to the city to beat a blizzard, her car skids out, striking a hiker emerging from the woods. Turns out he's a man she knows: handsome freelance writer Ben Tierney, whom she met and flirted with the summer before. With no choice but to wait out the storm in the cabin with Ben, who is injured, Lilly calls Dutch, but he can't reach her via the now impassable mountain road. Meanwhile, Cleary is haunted by the case of five missing women - all now feared dead. With Lilly still stranded, Dutch goes ballistic when the FBI arrives in town with evidence that Tierney is the serial killer.

I quite enjoyed it. I didn't guess whodunnit till just before she let you in on the secret, which I particularly enjoy since it is rare. But, it was mostly just a light read for me, so I think I was clearly under-estimating the possibility that it wasn't just going to be the most obvious person. A little bit of romance, a little bit of crazy and of course a murder mystery thrown in the mix.

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Past Mortem by Ben Elton

With old friends like these, who needs enemies? It's a question short, mild mannered detective Edward Newson is forced to ask himself having in romantic desperation logged on to the Friends Reunited website searching for the girlfriends of his youth. Newson is not the only member of the Class of '86 who has been raking over the ashes of the past. As his old class begins to reassemble in cyberspace, the years slip away and old feuds and passions burn hot once more. Meanwhile, back in the present, Newson's life is no less complicated. He is secretly in love with Natasha, his lovely but very attached sergeant, while comprehensively failing to solve a series of baffling and peculiarly gruesome murders. A school reunion is planned and as history begins to repeat itself, the past crashes headlong into the present. Neither will ever be the same again. In Past Mortem, Ben Elton - previous winner of The Crime Writers' Association Gold Dagger Award for Popcorn - delivers both a heart-stopping thriller and a killer comic romance.

I read some bad reviews on Amazon about it, but I quite enjoyed it. True, it had some hectic bits and true, I managed to predict whodunnit well in advance. Although he did occasionally make me wonder if I'd guessed correctly as I read but, I did. It was a fairly quick, easy read. I still liked it. Admittedly my fav book of his so far is High Society.

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We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

A number of fictional attempts have been made to portray what might lead a teenager to kill a number of schoolmates or teachers, Columbine style, but Shriver's is the most triumphantly accomplished by far. A gifted journalist as well as the author of seven novels, she brings to her story a keen understanding of the intricacies of marital and parental relationships as well as a narrative pace that is both compelling and thoughtful. Eva Khatchadourian is a smart, skeptical New Yorker whose impulsive marriage to Franklin, a much more conventional person, bears fruit, to her surprise and confessed disquiet, in baby Kevin. From the start Eva is ambivalent about him, never sure if she really wanted a child, and he is balefully hostile toward her; only good-old-boy Franklin, hoping for the best, manages to overlook his son's faults as he grows older, a largely silent, cynical, often malevolent child. The later birth of a sister who is his opposite in every way, deeply affectionate and fragile, does nothing to help, and Eva always suspects his role in an accident that befalls little Celia. The narrative, which leads with quickening and horrifying inevitability to the moment when Kevin massacres seven of his schoolmates and a teacher at his upstate New York high school, is told as a series of letters from Eva to an apparently estranged Franklin, after Kevin has been put in a prison for juvenile offenders. This seems a gimmicky way to tell the story, but is in fact surprisingly effective in its picture of an affectionate couple who are poles apart, and enables Shriver to pull off a huge and crushing shock far into her tale. It's a harrowing, psychologically astute, sometimes even darkly humorous novel, with a clear-eyed, hard-won ending and a tough-minded sense of the difficult, often painful human enterprise.

I think the best book I've read this year was definitely a "surprise entry" in We Need To Talk About Kevin. It arrived at our book club and didn't sound any more or less impressive than any other book. But once I started reading it, I was hooked. It is a definite can't-put-down book and is brilliantly written. It is also one of the most frightening things I've read - and books don't scare me. Quick warning, it may put you off kids for a bit ... which at this point in my life doesn't bother me one bit.


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