Saturday, August 21, 2010

Summer Reading List

At the beginning of the year I set a goal two books a month. I wanted to read one book that would be for fun and one that would fit either in the self-help or educational category. I don't think it is even necessary to say that I am still on the first book that I started in January. I started out with good intentions but I under estimated the power of a new baby.

I have decided that while we are at the beach for our first family vacation I will try and make up for lost time. I highly doubt that I will read the 16 books I need to make up for the first part of the year but I am going to try. There is nothing better to diving into a good book while soaking up the sun and listening to the waves.

Here are a few of my selections so far:


When a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie slowly begins to let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community and becoming increasingly attached to Alex and his family.

But even as Katie begins to fall in love, she struggles with the dark secret that still haunts and terrifies her . . . a past that set her on a fearful, shattering journey across the country, to the sheltered oasis of Southport. With Jo's empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one of riskier rewards . . . and that in the darkest hour, love is the only true safe haven.

 
 
In the tradition of A Walk to Remember, this is a story of a teenage girl and her first encounter with heartbreak and love.
Seventeen year old Veronica "Ronnie" Miller's life was turned upside?down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alientated from her parents, especially her father...until her mother decides it would be in everyone's best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie's father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.


The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story of love on many levels first love, love between parents and children that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that love can break our hearts...and heal them.

 
 
Hannah (On Mystic Lake) goes a little too far into Lifetime movie territory in her latest, an epic exploration of the complicated terrain between best friends-one who chooses marriage and motherhood while the other opts for career and celebrity. The adventures of poor, ambitious Tully Hart and middle-class romantic Kate Mularkey begin in the 1970s, but don't really get moving until about halfway into the book, when Tully, who claws her way to the heights of broadcast journalism, discovers it's lonely at the top, and Katie, a stay-at-home Seattle housewife, forgets what it's like to be a rebellious teen. What holds the overlong narrative together is the appealing nature of Tully and Katie's devotion to one another even as they are repeatedly tested by jealousy and ambition. Katie's husband, Johnny, is smitten with Tully, and Tully, who is abandoned by her own booze-and-drug-addled mother, relishes the adoration from Katie's daughter, Marah. Hannah takes the easy way out with an over-the-top tear-jerker ending, though her upbeat message of the power of friendship and family will, for some readers, trump even the most contrived plot twists.
 
 
 


I also have a slight obsession with war history and the people who fought them. I find war stories so fascinating. Here are few books that I am considering as well. These men were featured characters in the HBO miniseries "Band of Brothers" and "The Pacific"



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