The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks

This was a nice shorter story to read.  I'm a huge fan of Nicholas Sparks, so when I had some Amazon gift cards to use this was one of my first purchases.

The book is an extension, in a way, of The Notebook.  It revolves around Jane and Wilson Lewis.  Jane is one of the children of Noah and Allie.  In this book, Allie has passed away, and Noah is still living at Creekside (so a bit of a departure from The Notebook).  Wilson is an estate lawyer, and is a very organized, rational man that doesn't do romance.  On their 29th wedding anniversary, he forgets about all the hints Jane has been dropping and has his assistant buy her a nice, expensive tennis watch.  It hurts Jane, and she ends up spending some time away from Wilson with their son.  After two weeks she comes back home and life continues on.  A week away from their 30th anniversary, their oldest daughter Anna gets engaged and decides she wants to get married in one week, even though it's their anniversary.  The book covers that week and all the planning involved to make the wedding happen.

This is one of those beautiful romance books that makes you look at your husband and say "why don't you do this kind of stuff for me?!"  It's beautifully written (in true Sparks style) and has enough plot twists to keep the story going.  The way Sparks shows Wilson trying to be more romantic is inspiring.  It is also written in a way that takes the entire story to develop, instead of one day doing a nice gesture and their relationship returning to normal.  That gives the whole story a more believable sense, since relationships don't get fixed in a day.  It's a beautiful reminder that love is work, and to treat your marriage as anything other than something to continually work on and polish is to let that love go.

<3, jacq

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

A good friend recommended Life of Pi to me.  It's unlike the books I normally read, but I try to read any book considered inspiration for our time or award winning.

In the book, a young boy named Piscine (Pi) becomes stranded in the ocean when his ship crashes.  His father had sold the animals in their zoo, and they were traveling with the animals to Canada on an oil tanker.  When Pi is thrown from the boat, he finds a life boat and watches the ship sink.  On the lifeboat is a zebra with a badly wounded leg, a hyena, and an orangutan.  It's not for a few days that he realizes there is a full sized tiger underneath the tarpaulin.  Eventually, due to the natural evolution of things, the only two left are Pi and the tiger, and they hold on for a 227 day ocean adventure.

The story itself was very well written.  In the beginning you learn a lot about Pi and his family.  You learn about the zoo, and his parents and brother.  You also learn that Pi is very spiritual.  At one point, he is practicing Christianity, Muslim, and Hindu.  His parents try to get him to choose (they are non believers) but he states that they can all operate together.  He finds the strength of the gods in Hindu and Muslim inspiring, and the humanity of Christianity humbling.  This theme is continued throughout the book.

It's an incredible story about survival, spirituality, bravery, and adventure.  The book has become even more famous since the movie was made, but I highly recommend reading the book.  You never know what the movie might be missing :).

<3, jacq

Private: Berlin by James Patterson

So I read a few books over the snow days, and then work picked up so quickly that I never got a chance to post on them.

Private: Berlin is the next in the Private series from James Patterson.  There are (as usual per Patterson) multiple plots, but the main story is about one of the Private detectives going missing, and the rest of the team trying to solve his case.  The main investigator, Mattie Engel, is Chris's ex which adds some more emotion to the search.  During the search they start to find other acquiantances of Chris's go missing or get murdered, and it all seems to lead back to the orphanage where they were adopted.

This was one of my favorite Patterson books of the ones I've read lately.  I felt like it was a mix of Private and a little bit of Alex Cross.  There were turns until the end, and it became difficult to guess what would happen next.  Which keeps you turning the pages and invested in the story.  Too often, Patterson's more recent books have become a little "typical" where it is easy to guess what will happen.  So I appreciated the plot turns.  The sub plot of Chris being Mattie's ex also added to the story, because during the investigation you learned about Chris's disappearance as well as the ending of their engagement.  The character of the main police investigator also added some mystery, since his father seemed to have something to do with the disappearance (even though we didn't discover how until the end).

Great Patterson book, fun snow day read.  It was a quick read and I finished it in one sitting.  If you are a fan of Patterson or mystery, I highly reccommend it.

<3, jacq