Truth and Beauty

This book was brilliant. After reading Autobiography of a Face, I thought it only appropriate that I read this as a follow up. I am glad I did. It really brought everything home. I think I actually enjoyed this book even more. I think it shows the power of friendship. Maybe I am a bit biased, because I have had a lot of emotional relationships with friends that many people never understood. I admire Ann for being Lucy's friend through everything. Lucy really put her through a lot, yet she stood by her no matter what. I admire that and I strive for that in my own life. She was not judgemental (for the most part) and really understood what it meant to be a friend. I think that is one of life's most important and hardest things. This book was beautiful. I plan to send it to two of my friends who I think it was also hit home with. Some people may wonder why Ann stood by Lucy the way she did, but I never questioned it while reading this book. Lucy's life was an amazing one, but I think this story of their friendship is even more amazing.

Autobiography of a Face

I really enjoyed this book. It was extremely well written and I found it quite beautiful, even though the content was heartbreaking. I know it's easy for me to say, but why not just stop having all the operations and just move on? I know she was young and I don't know what happened after she wrote this book. (I intend to read Truth and Beauty next.. and that might give more insight). It seems that she was finally able to accept herself for everything she was, which made me feel good. I can't even imagine going through everything she did at such a young age. But above all, this book kept me interested and was very well written.

Sweetness in the Belly

This is the best book I have read in a long time. I really enjoyed it and it flowed wonderfully. It was such a great story line. I loved how unique it was. I didn't know much about Ethiopia's history, so this was a great introduction. I liked how the history didn't overbear the story. The characters were fantastic! I loved Lilly. She was just beautiful. I loved her relationships with the other characters. This book was so well written that I wanted it to so badly to be a true story! I can still hope. I also really liked the ending. Nothing is perfect and I was happy that it wasn't a perfect ending. It made the story more real. Just wonderful.....

Take the Cannoli

I desperately want to like Sarah Vowell. This is the second book I have attempted to read by her and it's just not working. I have never been a big short story fan and this book didn't help. She tries too hard to be funny and in the end it's just annoying. I keep hoping that I am going to find something amusing, but I don't. I don't care about her family or her weird quirks. Somehow her writing just doesn’t help me to care. I don't know why. Usually I dig stuff like this. I made it about 3/4 of the way through this book and was done. I didn't even finish. I was bored and I felt like I was just wasting time.....

Wonderful Tonight

This book was just alright. The way she jumped around so much really made it hard to follow. It seemed like one minute we were in 1965 talking about George and then 3 paragraphs later we were in 1970 talking about Eric... it was kind of annoying. I was hoping for some new information about the Beatles that I hadn't already read somewhere else, but was disappointed. The relationship with Eric I found more interesting, I guess maybe because I didn't really know much about it to begin with. Sometimes I felt like she was overly wining wa-wa... poor me. I glad the book didn't end like that, but come on, you know? Don't get me wrong, there were a few interesting tid-bits here and there, but I found myself bored through a lot of it. I didn't care for all the name dropping that this book was full of. I got bored with all the talk of modeling in the beginning (I had no idea, and don't really care who all those people were). It was just so-so for me. She has, indeed lived an interesting life, though.

Darfur Diaries

The concept of this book was interesting enough; three people go on a mission to Darfur to make a documentary about the lives of the people who live there. I have to say, I didn't even finish this book. I had such high hopes! But I found the book very biased and honestly a bit boring. I think I would find the actual documentary much more interesting. These three had a lot of guts to sneak into the area, but I found they were a bit arrogant about the whole thing. Like, what they were doing was so great and wonderful. They could have died. There is a reason that people don't go there, and people are being forced to leave. Don't get me wrong, the stories of the people they met were indeed fascinating. I think actually seeing these people on camera might be a lot more powerful than their stories told through than these authors. But, I just didn't like the writing style of the book. That being said, I did enjoy the history aspect of the book. I admit, I hardly knew where Darfur was when I started reading this, so I found all of the historical, political and geographical information very useful.

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

This book took me ages to read! I couldn't believe it.. but I dug it. Yes, I found it overly wordy. (As I would assume almost everyone who reads this would). I found myself skipping whole pages trying to get to the actual storyline or plot. I did like all the references to the many different books, but at times it did get a bit old.

Throughout the book I found Blue's relationship with her father very strange. I I couldn't really figure out where it was going, of course until the end. Even then, I could have done without some of it. I realized in the end that it was all basically a long drawn out mystery, that honestly, I didn't see coming. All the references throughout the book I thought were strange, but assumed it was all part of her writing style. I realized it was more than that. Almost a set up. I don't read mysterys much and I am not even sure if I would consider this a mystery, but I really liked it.