THE GREAT GATSBY BY F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

I am listening to the unabridged version of the book and it is wonderful!!!!

Bathtub gin, flappers, house parties, Jay Gatsby and Daisy enliven Fitzgerald's classic tale. When I read it in high school, it didn't mean as much as it does now.  

It is a startling literate portrait of Gatsby's search for meaning in his opulent world. 

THREE WEEKS IN DECEMBER BY AUDREY SCHULMAN

  

It tells the story of Jeremy, a young engineer, who leaves a small town in Maine to oversee the construction of a railroad across British East Africa in 1899.  He becomes the reluctant hunter of two lions that are killing his men on nightly attacks on his camp.  Plagued by fear, wracked with malaria and alienated by a secret that he can tell no one, he forms a friendship with a man who scouts for him.

In 2000, Max an American ethnobotonist, travels to Rwanda in search of an obscure vine that could become a lifesaving pharmaceutical. Stationed in the mountains, she shadows a family of gorillas.  Max has a gift for communicating with apes.  Soon the freedom of both is threatened as a violent rebel group from the nearby Congo draws close.

ONCE WE WERE BROTHERS BY RONALD H. BALSON

The author has written a riveting and amazing novel about a Holocaust survivor named Ben Solomon who finds a Nazi named Otto who is "hiding" under the Jewish name, Elliot Rosensweig.  

It is the story of how this Nazi criminal was brought to justice 60 years later.

THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET'S NEST By Stieg Larsson

I listened to this as an audio book.  It made all of the characters come alive and the story of how Lisbeth was finally freed spiritually and emotionally was wonderful.

THE BUDDHA IN THE ATTIC BY Julie Otsuka

Excellent novel!!!   It tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides" nearly a century ago.

THE SANDCASTLE GIRLS By Chris Bohjalian

This is truly an excellent historical fiction novel!!!!!!  The author explores the ways in which our ancestral past informs our contemporary lives in ways that we understand and ways that remain out of reach.

THE DESCENDANTS BY KAUI HART HEMMINGS

This was a very good story with very good descriptions of scenery and characterizations.


I listened to it as an audio book for the FIRST time and it was wonderful!!!  


It was an interesting characterization of a family in crisis.  There was Matthew King who was torn between selling property with his cousins.  This was property that went back generations to a founding Hawaiian Princess and the white man she married.  The children included 10 year old Scottie, who was a smart ass and 17 year old Alex, a former model and recovering drug addict.   Matt's thrill seeking and high maintenance wife, Joanie, had an affair with a man named Brian Spears and now is lying in a coma after a boating accident.  She will soon be taken off life support.


The interaction of the characters was fascinating.