NADA

Can I just say that I haven't read much of anything memorable for months and months. Really. Oh, there have been a few quotes that caught my attention, but mostly in mediocre books. I'm always reading. Stay tuned.

THE HOUSE ON PRAGUE STREET

Love this cover version:

This is the one I bought on Amazon (used books):

Well written and compelling. We've spent a good bit of time in Central Europe as our daughter-in-law is from Bratislava, Slovak Republic. The Armistice did not mean the end of occupation in Czechoslvakia--just a changing of the guard. The deprivations and inhumanities continued until the Velvet Revolution. So, the ending of this book is not a happy one. Lovely story from an unusual perspective.

THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS

Manhattan, New York. May 8, 1940.

Claire Harris Stone breathed in the faint scent of roses from the courtyard garden below as her yielding body swayed to the strains of "In the Mood" drifting out the open French doors. The sounds of the orchestra inside her Manhattan brownstone blended with the late-night rumble of traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Buoyed by the Veuve Clicquot champagne, she felt as though she drifted above her partner as their gliding shoes whispered against the balcony floor. He held her tight, his hands warming her body through her thin silk dress. Her arms were draped around his shoulders.

He was tall. That was nice. And he knew how to dance; even better.

"You're dreaming, Claire," von Richter said.

"Of you." Claire opened her eyes.

The Last Time I Saw Paris
Lynn Sheene


I love, love, love this book. I procrastinated on finishing the last few pages of the book because I didn't want it to end. Ms. Sheene has written a superlative first novel. I eagerly await her second, Under Paris Skies.

I've been recommending this book right and left, have purchased a copy after obtaining it first from the library, and have ordered one for a friend. A very, very good read.

THE LAST GOOD DAY

It was early on one of those powder-blue late-September mornings when middle-aged commuters stand on platforms, watching airplanes pass before the sun and hoping the apex of some great arc in their lives hasn't already been reached.


On the far side of the Hudson from the train station, the Rockland County palisades glinted as if they'd been freshly chopped by God's own cleaver. From the rustling trees along the shoreline came the same sound of money in the wind that the old Dutch trades must have heard when they first rounded this little bend in the river.


The water was brownish and turbulent, as if a low flame were on underneath it. Out by the narrowing of the channel, a forty-five-foot cabin cruiser skimmed across the surface, leaving a broad foamy cape. The ripples spread, pushing the cattails and the submerged bluish-gray mass closer to the crooked-in elbow of land beside Riverside Station.


"Hey, what is that thing?" said Barry Shulman, standing at the platform railing.
The Last Good Day
Peter Blauner

I ran onto Peter Blauner as one of the writers in Nelson DeMille's Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead. I made a list of most of the authors and this one by Peter Blauner is the first I've read from that list.

Excellent book. I was captivate from the first. More suspense than mystery, but that's only good. I'll read more from Blauner's backlist.

THE ARCHITECT

This is the best book I've read in a very long time, and I've read some good books. I read a lot of books--one a day when I'm on a roll. I'll not quote from the first paragraph this time (Even the entire prologue is a bit off-putting, but hang on... It'll be worth it.), but from the opening paragraphs of the second-to-the-last chapter. Brilliant.

Our great romances and triumphs and conquests ultimately do nothing to bind us together, one to another. It is in defeat and tragedy that our souls show through, and we are known.


A person may tell you about a glorious achievement in business, about being promoted or being hired for a dream job, and be saying nothing at all about his core self. But have that person speak to the sinking feeling of once being laid off, the anxiety of scrounging for tuition money and coming up short, the terror of losing a business or a home, and you are on your way to having a real bond, a real friend.


A woman may speak glowingly about finishing a marathon, or building a dream home, or having a child admitted to college, and yet be telling you nothing. But have her tell you about her panic at getting older, about the slow erosion of her body, or the lingering grief of a miscarriage years ago, or her waning passion for the man she still loves, and you may realize that we are, truly, more alike than different in our needs and fears--and much more alone than we need to be.


But perhaps nowhere can we see each other more clearly than in an intensive care unit, under the cold fluorescent lights, exhausted by our vigils, surrounded by tubing running into and out of our bodies and those of loved ones, listening to the constant beeping of cardiac monitors. Because in an intensive care unit, your job doesn't matter, the new addition to your house doesn't matter, your religion and political party and even sexual orientation are irrelevant. The things that define you and those who love you are simply whether you will live or not.


There are no strangers and no enemies in the ICU.
The Architect
Keith Ablow
pg. 283

I'm going to read his backlist. When I finished this book, I didn't want to wait. I wanted to start reading another immediately. I tried to download his first Frank Clevenger book, Denial, but it's not available as an e-book. Back to the library.

ONE FIFTH AVENUE

It was only a part in a TV series, and only a one-bedroom apartment in New York. But parts of any kind, much less decent ones, were hard to come by, and even in Los Angeles, everyone knew the value of a pied-a-Terrence in Manhattan. And the script arrived on the same day as the final divorce papers.

If real life were a script, a movie executive would have stricken this fact as "too coincidental." but Schiffer Diamond loved coincidences and signs. Loved the childlike magic of believing all things happened for a reason. She was an actress and had lived on magic nearly all her life...

And:

...It was Enid thought, simply the human condition. There were inherent questions in the very nature of being alive that couldn't be answered but only endured.

Usually Enid did not find these thoughts depressing but, rather, exhilarating. In her experience, she'd found that most people did not manage to grow up. Their bodies got older, but this did not necessarily mean the mind matured in the proper way. Enid did not find this particularly bothersome, either. Her days of being upset by the unfairness of life and the inherent unreliability oh human beings to do the right thing were over. Having reached old age, she considered herself endlessly lucky. If you had a little bit of money and most of your health, if you lived in a place with lots of people and interesting things going on all the time, it was very pleasant to be old. No one expected anything of you but to live. Indeed, they applauded you merely for getting out of bed in the morning. (pg.17)
One Fifth Avenue
Candace Bushnell

I was looking for a fun, quick read; an airplane book, a beach read. This one was great fun. Candace Bushnell is a fine writer and knows her subject matter--Manhattan and its inhabitants.

I'M A BELIEVER

For the first few days after Catherine's death, I find myself doing all the wrong things--though I'm not exactly sure what the right things are. I'm fairly certain you're not supposed to lie in a bath, listening to ABBA, when your girlfriend's just been killed in a car crash. But this morning, that's exactly what I find myself doing. Singing along with Fernando on the radio. Using Catherine's bubble bath. Mindlessly trying to churn up more bubbles with my hands.

Because what's just happened is so major, anything I do which is minor--and in my life, that's quite a lot--automatically seems wrong. Putting my feet up on the table this morning, reading the sports page, I caught myself thinking: Is this allowed? And making a triple-decker honey sandwich: Is this too frivolous?
I'm a Believer
Jessica Adams

Alright... I'm not ever a fan of mysticism, but still this book hooked me from the onset. This is a seriously fun read--clever, thoughtful, spiritual. Should seem frivolous on many levels but the underlying subject matter--death, grief, loss, love, relationship, friendship, religion, faith, reality... See! This story is chock-full of worthwhile thoughts and conversations.

I love it when a protagonist is self-aware, self-effacing, and intelligent. I love it when the main character does a lot of off-kilter sometimes irrelevant digressing. So much like real life, at least through my over-analytical perspective. Mark is complex, and whether you get him or not, he's an interestingly drawn, very human person. There's nothing shallow or self-deluding about him.

Ms. Adams is a fine wordsmith and I'm definitely going to check out her wittily titled first novel--Tom, Dick, and Debby Harry and also Single White E-mail.