Finding the Dream, by Nora Roberts (1997)
This is my first Nora Roberts book, and I read it because I read somewhere else that in the world of romance novels Nora Roberts is in her own class. I've read my quota of formula romance paperbacks, so I'll be the judge of that. I reluctantly agree. I'm not saying she doesn't write a formula romance paperback, because she certainly does. All the plot elements are there, including the Bad Boy who is actually a wonderful father and faithful husband underneath and just needs a Good Woman to bring him out; the Independent Woman who has been mistreated by former men and has never had decent sex; the silly sex scenes ("...lancing heat from breast to loins until her body was a bucking, writhing mass of sensation"); the mentioning of a slightly unusual eye color at every opportunity (yes, I get it, she has grey eyes, how interesting); and the inevitable proposal at the end. However, there is much less of the flashing eyes, the "I hate you, Lance DeBouvier!," the raven tresses, the heaving bosom, and the borderline rape found in most romance novels, and the writing that comes between the sex scenes and ridiculous misunderstandings is of a higher quality than most. The characters and the plot had dimensions beyond the too-good-to-be-true romance. I'm not converted to romance novels, but if you're going to read them anyway I suggest you try Nora Roberts.
The Dead Zone, by Stephen King (1979)
My favorite Stephen King books are the ones that go easy on the gratuitous yuck. I don't like the ones where there's an insane idiot inexplicably gunning down everyone in sight and then doing gross things with corpses. The reason I like The Dead Zone is that for the most part Stephen King avoids the yuck/insanity. The plot is that a man is in a car accident, goes into a coma for nearly five years, and emerges with psychic abilities. He touches a woman and tells her that her house is on fire. He touches a graduating student and tells him not to go to the graduation party because the building is going to burn down and everyone will be trapped inside. He touches a military scarf and knows how the owner died. It's a fun talent to read about; it lets the reader imagine what he or she would do with it. Two subplots touch on the yuck/insanity, but they're mild: in one, a crazy man restrains/hides his violent impulses while moving up in the political ranks (in one case, though, you should skip several paragraphs if you love animals: it's the part where he feels a dog isn't giving him enough respect); in another, a man rapes and strangles a series of victims while remembering abuse he suffered as a child. The main character resolves both subplots and the book has a sad but satisfying ending.
The Light of Other Days, by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter (2000)
Perhaps you, like me, have the occasional paranoid thought that something you just did might have been caught on tape. I blame this on various hidden-camera shows which make a person feel as if every skirt-flip and every nose-pick might be shown on network television in a competition for $10,000. In this book, it's worse than that: anyone can look at anyone at any time. Scientists discover that "wormholes" in space can be stabilized so that people can tap into them to view the private moments of anyone in the world, not only right this minute but way back into the past. The only way to avoid observation is to live in total darkness. Otherwise, you could be surrounded by little invisible cameras every time you go to bed or use the potty. Every awkward date, every time you lost your temper, every illicit affair, every minor or major crime, all accessible by anyone who wants to know about it. It's the ultimate nightmare for some people; a freeing excuse for total exhibitionism for others. It also allows researchers to go back in time to straighten out certain historical issues: who killed Kennedy? was there really a Robin Hood? did the government cover up a UFO landing? The end of the book is a cop-out (why not just make the book longer if you have more to say?), but the story is great and the concept will stick with you.
Tuesdays with Morrie, by Mitch Albom (1997)
It's difficult to be critical of the dying words of a beloved old man, but that doesn't mean I liked the book. Morrie is a teacher, and when he's old and dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (aka "Lou Gehrig's disease" or "isn't that the thing Stephen Hawking has?"), one of his old students, now a late-30s ambitious workaholic sports writer, starts visiting him every Tuesday to learn from an old man's wisdom. Morrie is obviously a wonderful, caring, compassionate man and probably an exceptional teacher--but his words of wisdom are a letdown. All of them are of the "love is important and material goods are not" variety. On the other hand, if the student learns something, the teacher has done his job.
Lipshtick, by Gwen Macsai (2000)
There I was, enjoying every page of this book, until I got to page 255 where I was unaware a massive betrayal of my love awaited: the author hauled out the theory that because a pregnancy is 40 weeks long and a month is 4 weeks long, therefore a pregnancy is 10 months long and not 9. Apparently this rumor is spreading so quickly I'm going to need to buy commercial time on Friends to correct it.
If 40 weeks is 10 months, the remaining 12 weeks of the year would have to fit in the remaining 2 months of the year. (I'll pause while you say the "30 days hath September" poem to scan for any months with 42 days.)
The main error here is assuming that a month is 4 weeks long. A month averages 4-1/3 (52 divided by 12) weeks long, and don't think that 1/3 is so little you can just round it off. Let's also not forget that for 2 of the 40 weeks of pregnancy, you're not actually pregnant: the doctors start counting at the first day of your last period, and it's approximately 2 weeks from then until conception. Now, if you're still with me, do the math again: 38 weeks of actual pregnancy, divided by 4-1/3 actual weeks per month: good news! a pregnancy is actually about 8-3/4 months long, LESS than 9 months.
So I've HAD IT with this "men just say it's 9 months because they're stupid and mean" theory, and I've had it even more with supposedly smart, educated women coming up with this kind of math/logic. It throws us right back to Barbie saying "Math is HARD!" when you pull the string in her back.
Now, was I supposed to be reviewing this book? I thought the rest of the book was funny and interesting, and I laughed out loud more than I usually do while reading alone in a room. I got a little tired of the "yah gotta count on your girlfriends" theme, but it was that sort of book: a GIRL book filled with GIRL things. There are complaints about family, dating, body hair, shopping, men, sex, marriage, pregnancy, children, and aging, among other things, all done so lovingly that it was funny and affectionate rather than bitchy and mean. "Funny and affectionate" should not lead you to expect hearts and flowers, however; bad language, including fluent cursing directed at dates and husbands, is the norm. For me, that increased the comedy; for others, it might be jarring or offensive.
Slow Poison, by Sheila Bosworth (1992)
The author's point is that life is like an Old Fashioned: bourbon ("passion"), bitters ("trouble"), and sugar ("sweet pity"). If you're already concluding that our author is not the cheery sort, a look at her photo on the book jacket will confirm this: a bony, melancholy woman in an antique dress (or possibly petticoat) that probably once belonged to a child. She could easily play the part of Mrs. Rothschild; she looks half-mad in an intensely depressed kind of way. This is a little more personal that I planned to get, but her photo is unpleasantly haunting and so is her book.
The protagonist (to bring out a word you haven't used since high school) is Rory, a woman whose mind is a mystery to us even at the end of the book. Rory has two crazy sisters, a crazy aunt, a dead mother, and an alcoholic father. She falls in love with a man who is unfaithful and inconsiderate; he marries two of the three sisters, and I won't give away which two. Every time you turn a page, someone else is diseased or dying or getting old or going crazy; it doesn't seem as if so much bad stuff could happen to one single family. The writing is good and the characters are well-developed, but the book is like one of those movies shot completely in dim light: frustrating in its gloominess.
Labor Pains, by Kate Klimo (1988)
Because this is a fiction book, the five pregnant main characters each represent a completely different type. One is the busy high-powered executive who has to have fertility treatments. One is the woman cheating on her husband who doesn't know which man is the father of the baby. One is the rich-girl-turned-artist who has deliberately decided to be a single mother. And so on. Each woman has been assigned a different type of husband, too: someone's cheating, someone doesn't want the pregnancy, someone doesn't know he's the father, etc. Then of course the various possible characteristics of pregnancy/labor are divided evenly among the women so that there are no duplicates. One has premature labor and triplets. One has past-due-date labor and a c-section. This no-overlap division keeps things more interesting than if the author said "...and pretty much the same thing happened to the next one" all the time, but it also smacks of poor quality: sitcoms, soap operas, and high school girls who think they're Danielle Steel use the same technique. This book is pleasantly fluffy reading but nothing you couldn't see on TV.
Motherkind, by Jayne Anne Phillips (2000)
It has taken this book to reveal to me that I do not have a poetic mind. This is the kind of book where every thought that goes through the main character's mind turns into a long, aimless reflection about dark waters and stormy cliffs and the first budding flower after a spring rain. Almost all of it is dark and dreamlike and dismal; the main character seems to spend almost her entire life in a state of mild hallucination. Her inner thoughts are the confused and anxious kind I'm relieved to wake up from, so after about 100 pages of depressing reflection and overused italics (page after page after page with every flashback), I gave up. The plot, in case your mind is of the sort that doesn't wander when you hit a long meandering passage, is that a woman named Kate (I'm a little tired of characters named Kate, aren't you?) has a new baby, a dying mother, a live-in fiance who is technically still married to someone else, and the fiance's two gradeschool-aged sons. I can't really tell you what the plot is, actually, since that's as far as it had progressed in 100 pages.