33 & 34

Oy! I just finished reading my very first non finance or weight loss related non fiction book EVER! I know, this is tres exciting!!

The Zookeeper's Wife by Diane Ackerman is about the couple who owned/ran the Warsaw zoo just before and during World War 2. You should have heard be trying to tell my book club about this book. I had them thinking the Nazis were herding Jews into cages at the zoo and putting them on display. Not so. But maybe you should read the description here just to be safe!

Now, I could just be really dumb (this is my first non fiction after all) but I found the non linear way she told the story quite confusing. If I had been organizing the book I would have done it a lot differently. Even so, I would recommend this book. A very good read and very interesting (also, not too heart wrenching - I shed no tears).

Next I read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley. LOVED IT! I would love for my ten year old niece to read and love it as much as I did. I think it's kind of a universal appeal type o book and a great beach read.

31 & 32

The Best Man to Die by Ruth Rendell: Unbelievably, this is one of the books that I had to return before I was finished. It was heartbreaking - but then it came back to the library pretty quick so not so heartbreaking. Oh, and the novel...

It was one of Rendell's earlier books and set in the 60s. I didn't realise that at first so it was weird reading something so...antiquated? But the story was good. Of course.

Next, I read The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin. I got a notion that I'd like to read the book. And it was very good. I'm glad I've never seen the movie so I had no idea what was supposed to happen. Though, it was pretty easy to figure out. I think I might order something else by him.

29 & 30

The other day Andrew and I were in Chapters. I never know what to do with myself in there anymore. I have a hard time window shopping. But eventually I went and grabbed Andrew's blackberry and started looking at books. I made a list of all the ones that looked interesting to me.

First, I remembered Lawrence Hill, author of Book of Negroes. I looked him up and saw that he had two books I hadn't read yet. I finished Any Known Blood this week. Unfortunately, I didn't find this story as gripping as Book of Negroes (well, actually, the last 200 or so pages were good, but that might be because there was finally some action in that part of the story). Mostly this was the story of someone trying to uncover his family history.

Which is kind of funny because the next book I read, also a Chapters find, was Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah. Wow, I loved this book! I can never decide whether books would be good for my book club. This is just a love story. But I devoured it, and cried almost the entire time I was reading it. Does that make it book club worthy?

Here's how the dust jacket describes the book:

Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her children and manage the family apple orchard; the other followed a dream and traveled the world to become a famous photojournalist. But when their beloved father falls ill, Meredith and Nina find themselves together again, standing alongside their cold, disapproving mother, Anya, who even now, offers no comfort to her daughters. As children, the only connection between them was the Russian fairy tale Anya sometimes told the girls at night. On his deathbed, their father extracts a promise from the women in his life: the fairy tale will be told one last time—and all the way to the end. Thus begins an unexpected journey into the truth of Anya’s life in war-torn Leningrad, more than five decades ago. Alternating between the past and present, Meredith and Nina will finally hear the singular, harrowing story of their mother’s life, and what they learn is a secret so terrible and terrifying that it will shake the very foundation of their family and change who they believe they are.