This Will be My Undoing: Morgan Jenkins

It was interesting how the author chose to write this, in stream of consciousness where she talks about things as they come to her and it is all over the place. I am not sure if she intentionally wanted to alienate her readers but she definitely works the shock factor. Everyone who reads the book knows waaay more about her vagina then they wanted...I started the book thinking it was about racism, but once finished was just sort of...lost? I know you can only view the world through your eyes, but a lot of the experiences she has are just human, not because she is black. She is very opinionated and seems to only grabs facts that support her claims (which I guess is normal for a non-scientific read) and you feel like if you don't agree with her, she would continue talking until you did or you would be wrong. I am not sure how I felt walking away from the book, there were some interesting points and I did learn some things, but I guess it wasn't as impactful as it could have been. I felt several chapters took away from the book and could have been omitted.

Orphan Train Rider: Andrea Warren

This was an interesting story of an event in history I didn't know about. Once orphanages started on a large scale and adopting became "acceptable". There was the practice of shipping trains full of orphans to the west to have the children adopted help with farming and housework. The story followed the story of 1 family where the mother died and the 2 eldest children were kicked out of the house and the baby was given to family, the two middle children were put in the orphanage. Once the 2 middle children were getting shipped west, the dad brought the baby and told the older one to keep everyone together. Of course that didn't happen and the 3 boys were given different homes, no one seemed to want the older boy. The people that adopted the older boy did arrange for the brothers to all spend a week together every summer so at least they would still know each other. By the time the entire family got back together the sister, father and one of the three boys(Vietnam) had died. I wish the story was a little bigger as it just provided a speckling of what happened and left me more curious, but the people involved are almost all nearly dead.

Darkness At Noon: Arthur Koestler

A Russian political prisoner spends his time between interrogations using Morris code to talk to his cellmates and thinking back on all the lives he ruined in an attempt to either save himself or for the "good" of the party. He is told of his next mission, that he will die as a scapegoat for the party, though he hasn't done anything wrong really. He does die for the party.

Oroonoko: Aphra Behn

This was an older text I had never heard of about a slave being brought to South America. He was a prince and was betrayed by his own grandfather, who took his love he was going to marry and sold her into slavery, telling Oroonoko she was dead. Years later He was tricked onto a slave boat and he and his men became slaves. By chance he was sold to the same area as his love and they met up, they were both still mourning each other. They get together though they are still slaves and he kills his love and unborn child so they won't lie in slaver, they tries to kill the slavers, but is tortured to death.

Games of Thrones, The Noble Houses of Westeros

This was a guide to the major families in game of thrones, where they were located, what they contributed to the kingdom and included a family tree. It was pretty interesting, but the latest seasons have changed the trees a bit.

Find You in the Dark: Nathan Ripley

This was an original and thrilling! I especially loved the line about the types of creeps, some write scary books, some commit murders etc, as I have wondered how thriller writers can come up with such stuff :P Although I read them, so I guess that also puts me in that category. Since retiring early, a man has started looking into old murder cases with the help of a cop who sells him interviews the police have had with the killers. With this information he is able to find where the young girls (victims) bodies are and gives the families some closure. As the story progresses you learn the protagonist is a bit creepy himself. He stalked his wife (and has a police file for doing the same to some girls n school)before marrying her because her sister was the victim of one of the serial killers he is working to uncover the victims. His good deeds make him the target of a serial killer as he uncovers the body of a fresh murder on top of the victim he was unburying. Unknown to the police 2 decades ago, the killer they sent to jail was working with a partner who has been quiet until now. The protagonist's daughter is kidnaped by the killer and he does end up killing 2 men in trying to keep his family safe.

Greetings from Colorado: JC Leacok

This was a collection of historical facts and a travel guide for Colorado. I learned a lot and have a list of places I now want to visit.

Lady Be Good; Amber Brock

This book was set in the 1950's. The only child of a hotel mogul is told she can ether learn the business and inherit it or marry the manager of the business and just be supported by the company's earnings. She ends up falling in love with a Jewish musician, which is taboo in her elite circles. She has dedicated her life to trying to marry above her station because her mother died when a DR claimed to be out of town, but later that day she saw him entering the town of a wealthy family. She learns who she is after trying to manipulate everyone's life to suit her own and losing her best friend. This was a coming of age novel set in a time where it would work, semi-modern Romeo and Juliet...not really my thing :P

The Girl in the Well is Me: Karen Rivers

This was a kids book and an excellent introduction into stream of consciousness for young readers. Usually not taught until "The Tell Tale Heart" or "The Sound and the Fury, which are more middle- to high school reads, it was really cool to introduce it to younger readers. A little girl starts telling her story while she is stuck in a well and between her thoughts and panic we learn her story and how she got in the well. Her father went to jail for embezzling from a children's miracle organization and they are living in a trailer in a new town near the prison. Desperate to find friends, the girl goes through "initiation" into the cool group, which entailed one of them chopping off her beautiful hair and then she had to stand on a rotting board above the well and sing a song, of course the board broke and she fell in. While forced to sort through her thoughts she realizes she doesn't want to be friends with the girls any more and is stronger than before since she now knows herself.

Back from Tuichi; Yossi Ghinsberg

I watched the movie first, but really enjoyed the book. Especially knowing that I probably wouldn't have survived a couple days. I appreciated the honesty through the whole book and how the author didn't look back at the experience with bravado, but with how he was actually feeling so you can feel how frightening the experience was. The part with the jaguar...well and the worms...and termites were TERRIFYING. I should probably recap. A young man makes 2 new friends in Bolivia and when he is approached by an Austrian convict who wants to lead them into the forest on the adventure of a life time. Halfway through the trip they realize they aren't going to have the supplies to make it all the way and Marcus's feet are in too terrible of shape with a fungus to make it all the way. Karl's stories keep changing and the plans keep getting altered as well. Kevin and Yossi take the raft and plan on coming to a village and coming home from there, Karl and Marcus were going to walk back. Karl and Marcus are never seen again. Yossi and Kevin get separated. Kevin goes back into the river and eventually drifts down the village meeting a hunting party, who bring him back to town. Yossi encounters all sorts of animals, sinkholes, and weather phenomenon and believes he is further down the river than his is. After the flooding everything is unrecognizable and Yossi is weak and spends a day trying to repair his feet and dry out...he hears a buzzing on the river and Kevin comes out of a boat with some locals he talked into helping him search for Yossi. Marcus then shares his survival story and they spend the rest of their lives looking for Marcus.