Sand Omnibus by Hugh Howey

From Goodreads.com:

   The old world is buried. A new one has been forged atop the shifting dunes. Here in this land of howling wind and infernal sand, four siblings find themselves scattered and lost. 

   Palmer has never been the same since his father walked out twelve years ago. His elder sister, Vic, is trying to run away from the past; his younger brothers, Connor and Rob, are risking their lives to embrace it. His mother, left with nothing but anger, is just trying to forget.

   Palmer wants to prove his worth, not only to his family, but to himself. And in the barren, dune-covered landscape of his home, there is only one way to earn respect: sand-diving. Plunging deep below the desert floor in search of relics and scraps of the old world. He is about to embark on the most dangerous dive of his young life, aiming to become the first to discover the rumored city below.

   Deep within the sand lies the key to bringing his family together - and tearing their world apart.

   This is a surprising read. I found it through one of the many sites that send me daily emails of free or bargain Kindle books, because you can never have too many books. I admit I was first intrigued by the cover (shame on me,) it's beautiful and the words, "No one will come for us. No one will save us. This is our life." How could I not be interested? I read Sand. almost immediately.
   Sand. takes place in a barely recognizable world. Pieces of the old world, of our world, are salvaged from beneath the ever shifting sand, they are the keys to survival in this new landscape. I continually wondered what happened to make such a sandy wasteland of our world. I was intrigued by sand diving. Scuba diving is the only thing I could compare it to, but (and having never been diving I can't say for sure) I think it's a poor comparison. The diver has to control the flow of the sand around them which allows their movement and also relieves the pressure from tons of sand.
   I wouldn't put this up there with the best books I've read. However, once I started I did not want to put this down. I became attached to every member of Palmer's family. As with most books, the need to know what happens kept me going at a fast pace. I was even surprised a couple times.
   If you're a fan of science fiction this book is for you. If you like some dystopian, maybe give this a try. It is not dystopian but it has a post-apocalyptic feel to it. I know I will be reading more of Hugh Howey's work. 

The Princess Bride by William Goldman

From Goodreads.com
   What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be...well...a lot less than the man of her dreams?
   As a boy William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad's recitation, and only the "good parts" reached his ears.
   Now Goldman does Dad one better. He's reconstructed the "Good Parts Version" to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.
   What's it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.
   In short, it's about everything.

   I did not watch this movie growing up. A tragedy, as I understand it. But not watching gave me a fresh view on the book. First I must say, the story inside a story, inside a story (that's right three!) was a little strange at the beginning. It really threw me off. The part of the synopsis that says Goldman claimed to love his father reading The Princess Bride is a part of the story. After a little research, a friend and I realized S. Morgenstern never existed except in the mind of William Goldman.
   William Goldman created something like I've never read. It is written like he is telling S. Morgenstern's tale to his grandson. He interrupts the story of The Princess Bride, telling us what has happened in the pages left out of his father's telling, with the occasional interruption of his grandson. To complicate matters more, at the end of the book Stephen King pops up, in discussions of the making of the film's sequel. It definitely left me wondering how much was actually true.
   The tale itself is quite entertaining. It's about a girl, who loves a man, very deeply, with every fiber of her being. He leaves to make his fortune only to meet disaster on the sea. Hopeless of ever loving anyone again, Buttercup becomes betrothed to a prince, and is kidnapped by an odd trio.
   I watched the movie after reading The Princess Bride. So many details of both Fezzik's and Inigo's background were left out (of the movie.) I'd recommend this book to those who grew up loving the movie. If you're a fan of Fezzik or Inigo you won't be able to help but fall more in love with them through the original book.

Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge Book Jar

   A friend and I have been reading books together for about a year, just randomly choosing books we both wanted to read. We found the idea of a book jar on Pinterest and loved it. No more choosing at random (well relatively speaking.) We just had to decide which books to put in our jar. 

   Pinterest is my favorite way to find book lists, so I started looking. I saw a list of the 339 books mentioned or referenced during the seven seasons of Gilmore Girls. Perfect, I used to watch Gilmore Girls and introduced her (years later) to the beauty that is Gilmore Girls, the quick dialogue, the mother/daughter relationships, growing up, and the literary and movie references. All 339 titles are now in our book jar. 

   After talking about it we decided that we couldn't have it truly random, neither of us wanted to get stuck reading a lot of nonfiction or classic after classic after classic, so I color coded the titles. Nothing too specific, and it's probably not as accurate as it could be, but for our purposes it'll work just fine. I just used some Mod Podge to stick the key on one side of my jar to help us when drawing our next read. 

   The first book drawn is The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. Some of the books look dreadful (A Monetary History of the United States anyone?) but we plan to give each book a chance. 

Dove Season by Johnny Shaw

From Amazon.com
   Twelve years have passed since Jimmy Veeder set foot in the Imperial Valley of southern California. The only person that could bring him back is his father, Jack, who is dying of cancer. Jimmy is prepared to spend Jack's final days joking and reminiscing, but the old man has other plans. He needs Jimmy to cross the border into Mexico and find a prostitute named Yolanda. It's a strange final request to be sure, but Jimmy's not one to argue with a dying man. With his childhood buddy Bobby Maves in tow, he heads south, looking for Yolanda among the seedy bars and neighborhoods along the Calexico/Mexicali border. Their search leads them to Tomas Morales, a rising star in the Mexican underworld. While dangerous to most, his childhood friendship with Jimmy brings out his loyalty and spurs him to help. But just wen Jimmy thinks his quest has ended, an unexpected murder sucks him further into the violence and danger of Mexicali. In his fight for survival and search for truth, what he uncovers calls into question everything he thought he knew about his father - and will determine just what kind of man he himself truly is.

 
   This book is A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco, the first of its kind and rightly named. Some of the shenanigans Bobby and Jimmy get up to are simply a fiasco. They are an embodiment of Murphy's Law, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong, which makes for a hilarious adventure. I laughed out loud so many times while reading this book. Halfway through I was already recommending it to my friends that read. I like that the story was more unconventional than most. I've not read another book quite like Dove Season.
   I don't have too many things to say about this book, but I did love it. What I liked most was the funny antics. When Johnny Shaw was setting up a situation I would think, "here we go again." I recommend this to anyone who is looking for something a little different with action, adventure, and comedy.

Left Drowning by Jessica Park

From Goodreads.com:
What does it take to rise from life's depths, swim against the current, and breathe?
Weighted down by the loss of her parents, Blythe McGuire struggles to keep her head above the water as she trudges through her last year at Matthews College. Then a chance meeting sends Blythe crashing into something she doesn't expect - an undeniable attraction to a dark-haired senior names Chris Shepherd, whose past may be even more complicated than her own. As their relationship deepens, Chris pulls Blythe out of the stupor she's been in since the night a fire took half her family. She begins to heal, and even, haltingly, to love this guy who helps her find new paths to pleasure and self-discovery. But as Blythe moves into calmer waters, she realizes Chris is the one still strangled by his family's traumatic history. As dark currents threaten to pull him under, Blythe may be the only person who can keep him from drowning.

   Blythe starts out in her own world of grief still dealing with the death of her parents. She has alienated herself from her brother and is drowning herself in alcohol. When Sabin sits down with her in the student union one morning acting like he's known her forever, he's the first person who makes her feel something since. That same morning she walks down to the lake and runs into Chris. She inexplicably feels drawn to these two boys, comfortable with them, like she hasn't felt in years. I liked Blythe, I liked Chris, but I loved the Shepherd siblings, Sabin, Estelle, and Eric. They accept Blythe without question and treat her like she's been a sibling their whole lives. 

   Left Drowning is a little saucier than my normal read. It is ONLY recommended for readers over the age of 17. That being said, read this book. I couldn't care less about the sex in this book. I liked that it has a solid plot. There's actual meat to this story, unlike a few of the other books I've attempted. Overall this is a book about grief, strength, healing, and the people who are family even if they aren't blood. If you are one of the many who enjoyed the Fifty Shades trilogy, I recommend giving this book a try. 

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

From the Hardcover:
   The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, fraternal twins Esthappen and Rahel fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. Their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu, (who loves by night the man her children love by day), fled an abusive marriage to live with their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), and their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt).
  When Chacko's English ex-wife brings their daughter for a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river...

"The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again."

   The God of Small Things made its way around numerous book lists a few years ago and it sounded interesting. I got more than I thought I would from it. It is beautifully written, I fell in love with the sentences. The story took a little getting into, it jumps seamlessly in time. After I became used to the style I was able to concentrate on Rahel and the memories she was sharing. This book has politics, forbidden love, and family drama.
   I also learned a little about the caste system in India that I was somehow ignorant of before reading this book. I love a book that introduces me to new things.
   I'd recommend this book to someone who loves the feel of words, much like Winter's Tale, but this book is less of a time commitment at 321 pages compared to Winter's Tale's 768.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

From the paperback:
   A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.
   A groundbreaking work as delicate as a butterfly's wing and as menacing as a knife in the dark, The Ocean at the End of the Lane is told with a rare understanding of all that makes us human, and shows the power of stories to reveal and shelter us from the darkness inside and out.

   Neil Gaiman has done it again! Captured my attention with a book I didn't want to put down. He writes so beautifully. He weaves a world where names hold power (we never learn the narrator's name) and some things just can't be explained or understood.
   The narrator is a child who has no friends. He escapes in books and stories as much has he can. He meets the Hempstock women after a startling discovery and his world continues to be rocked for the next few days. The Hempstocks aren't witches per-say, they're something else, something more. Something (Old Mrs. Hempstock calls it a "flea") hitches a ride back inside our hero and after he tries to remove it without knowing the full extent of what he does, a new nanny comes to care for him and his sister. Ursula Monkton, who everyone, but our hero, loves. He knows that the Hempstock women can help him get rid of her, if only he can get away.
   If it sounds like a lot of "somethings" are in my description of this book, it's because most of it can only be understood by reading the book. The beings described in The Ocean at the End of the Lane could be monsters but it depends on your definition of the word.
    This is a fantastic book for readers of all ages. I'd recommend it to anyone who has a love of fantasy. Or anyone who just loves to read. The narrator is easy to care for and identify with for lovers of the written word,