Books #14, 15, 16 & 17

Do you ever have that feeling when you watch a movie that's no longer on the New Releases shelf and after you finish watching it, wonder: Why did I wait SO long to see this movie? I could have been feeling so in love with this movie five months ago! Two years ago! When I was 12! You get the idea. Off the top of my head, I remember having that feeling when I saw Memento and Palmetto. You're probably thinking, Palmetto? I know, I don't even remember what the movie was about, now, but I still remember when I finished watching it, thinking, Why in the name of Elisabeth Shue have I not seen this movie until now? I mean, Elisabeth Shue is in it! And the intro to Adventures in Babysitting is one of my all-time favourite movie openings...

Anyway, I recently read My Sister's Keeper...



...and had that same feeling, only not just at the end of the novel, but nearly every single page of the way through it. It's that good. The story is about a family who has a daughter born with leukemia, so the parents have another baby, whose umbilical cord they can use to help save the first daughter's life, and what happens after that. I remember someone recommending Jodi Picoult to me at least a year ago, and I even borrowed My Sister's Keeper from the library and flipped through the first few pages before getting distracted by another book I wanted to read, and by the time I finished the other book, My Sister's Keeper was due back at the library. Anyway, a few weeks ago I bought the book and could barely put it down. So far, it's my favourite book of the ones I've read this year.





Another book I read recently was for the new bookclub I just joined, which after just one meeting, I'm totally loving. The girls are so smart, so funny, and the best part? You bring a dish for dinner relating to the novel. And drink lots of wine. Does it get any better than that? Initially, though, I wasn't very excited that the first book I had to read was A Thousand Splendid Suns, only because I was hoping my first book would be some obscure title that I'd never heard of, not #1 on the every newspaper's hardcover bestseller list. That said, I'm so glad I read it. It's not a book I would normally read, so in that sense, the bookclub did exactly what I was hoping it would do - get me to read books that I wouldn't typically pick up. (Not to mention that the meal was so fantastic). This is Khaled Hosseini's second book (his first was The Kite Runner), and is set in Afghanistan again, but told from two female perspectives. Hosseini has a talent for weaving the history of the country into a novel to make it interesting without sounding like a history lesson, and while the background, politics and culture affects the people, he somehow manages to make the characters so relatable that you believe the story could've happened anywhere in the world.





A few months ago I read Baby Proof (see post here) and after falling in love with Emily Giffin's writing, I went out and bought Something Borrowed and Something Blue.

I was totally surprised by Something Borrowed. It's a first novel, so I wasn't expecting it to be as good as Baby Proof (Giffin's third). Plus, I really did just think it was going to be about getting married, though after the surprise of Baby Proof (it's not about a woman having a baby), I should've known that Something Borrowed wouldn't be so straight forward either. There are the typical first novel similarities between the heroine and the author, but hello, my book has that same downfall! And the story is fresh, the writing is really smart, thoughtful and funny, and I never knew what was going to happen next - and I love that about a book.



Something Blue is the followup, written from the best friend's perspective, but the problem I found was that I hated the best friend so much after the first book (and I started Something Blue five minutes after finishing Something Borrowed), that I just couldn't get myself to care about her because I disliked her so much. Still, it was a great read and perfect for a Friday afternoon, soaking up the last rays of summer.

And now, because I'm totally thinking about Adventures in Babysitting....