Too Close To The Fallls by Catherine Gildiner ✔✔✔✔

I've been thinking about this book for a long time - I believe I heard Gildiner, who is a practising psychologist in Toronto, reading an excerpt from her sequel to this particular memoir, entitled After the Falls - and finally downloaded it to my Kindle, where it has sat for about a year or more.

Since reading Dickens, I've been somewhat anchorless in my reading.  I tried A Tale Of Two Cities, and I do intend to finish it, but there were several others, too, which I attempted but didn't find them speaking to me at all.  I usually flow from one book to the next and I really didn't know why this gap in my reading had occured.  I still don't, but I did decide that going back to non-fiction was probably best, so I picked up Too Close To The Falls, and was instantly captivated.

Catherine grew up  in Lewiston, New York, which is very close to Niagara Falls. Her father was a busy and highly-respected druggist there, her mother was - well, a very different mother - and Catherine seems to have raised herself, even though she had a close relationship with both her parents.  A family doctor thinks Catherine doesn't have enough to do - she's almost ADD, so her Dad puts her to work at the drugstore when she's only four, and this is the first chapter of the book.

The book is her story, of course, but she has a complete chapter for various colorful people in Lewiston, including Roy, her driver when she's delivering prescriptions, her mother, Sister Agnese, as well as some of her friends.  Many times I was laughing so hard I cried - for example, Catherine writes about Elvis' first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, how the sisters told them all it would be a sin to watch him, which only made it even more intruiging, and then how Sullivan announced prior to the show that Elvis would be televised from the waist up only , so the sisters told them they could watch the show with their parents.  So Catherine's watching the show and telling everyone how Elvis is "sinning from the waist down" - she hasn't figured out what sin is anyway, but wants to appear knowledgeable for her guests.

And this was what was so captivating about the book - she's so innocent, and knows absolutely nothing about most things, so it's her reaction to events and people that is so humorous. And she also has a very inoocent approach to matters of faith, and is constantly the despair of the nuns and priests - absolutely irreverent!

I'm looking forward to the sequel - I do know her mother died quite young, so I think the book will focus on that. This was one of the best memoirs I've read since A Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.

Unusual Uses For Olive Oil - Alexander McCall Smith

This was a very light read and quick to get through, which was nice after David Copperfield's 1100 pages!  Olive Oil is the 4th novel in the Professor von Igelfeld series - McCall Smith describes it as an "entertainment novel" and that it was.  Just a turn of phrase is enough to send me into minutes of laughter, as von Igelfeld, author of the eminently respectable, highly intellectual and highly-prized bestseller: Portuguese Irregular Verbs, gets himself into one scrape or another. von Igelfeld has two rather obnoxious colleagues - Prof. Unterholzer and the librarian Herr Huber, who always talks about his aunt in the nursing home - and life is not made easier for von Igelfeld with these two men, but certainly the reader is richer for having met them! von Igelfeld is a rather Walter Mitty-like character himself, and that is his charm. The series is also a gentle poke at academia and the somewhat fuzzy-headed professors who spend their days there.  A good read, lots of laughs, and - as always with McCall Smith - well-written.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

I re-read this 1100 page novel in preparation for April's book club theme.  I was reading Jane Smiley's "Charles Dickens" when I realized I really should read him,too.  Now I must have taught this novel somewhere along the way, or studied it, because the characters were very familiar - David, Peggotty, Steerforth, Dora, Agnes Wickfield et al.  I enjoyed the novel more as an older adult, and constantly marvelled at the complexity of the writing, the fact that it was serialized, and that Dickens wrote this in long-hand!

After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family 1968 to the present by Randy Taraborelli

I've long been a fan of the Kennedy's and this book brought me up-to-date on the family's many mishaps and adventures over the past 40-odd years. Most recently, there was John Jr's death on a flight to Hyannisport, so there were details about that, as well as Jackie's marriage to Onassis, her life after his death, the problems of Joan Kennedy, the children of Ethel and Bobby Kennedy, who had so many problems with drugs, womanizing, etc.

It was very informative, though quite long.  So what did I learn?  I'd forgotten Ted Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the presidential nomination bid for Carter's second term ( which of course, Carter lost to Reagan), how Jackie was the strong, wise woman in the family and maintained her ties to that family, that the Jackie-Jack marriage was a good one, despite his womanizing, that the entire family is extremely close, that Eunice was a bitch and Pat was an alcoholic, that Ted and his son Ted Jr. hit on women together, that Maria Shriver is Democrat and old Arnold is Republican,  that Carolyn Bessette was so much like Jackie, and that the family never ever truly recovered from those assassinations back in the sixties.

Dear Life by Alice Munro ✔✔✔✔

Dear Life - dear me!!  This is, once again, a book I read over several months, usually one story at a time in between other novels I was reading.  So when I came to it yesterday during a long wait at the hairdresser's, I finally got it finished - but now, I don't remember very much about the stories!!

I just flipped through them all and really - only the ones I read yesterday and tonight have stayed in my mind!  I remember only tiny bits about them - but, not to worry - I do remember that I thoroughly enjoyed each and every story and marvelled at Munro's mastery of the short story - she says so much in just a few words, conveys so much information in a paragraph, and paints such a vivd picture of humanity - especially relationships.

Her first sentences suck you in right away - " On the bench outside the station I sat and waited" - so this person has been travelling, and is waiting for someone to meet her or him.  The fact that he/she is waiting indicates that this is a new situation, a new place, with new people.  I wonder how long she's been there?

Elton John: The Bitch Is Back ✔✔

I only gave this book two stars because the writing is atrocious.  This biographer - Mark Bego - gives every fact possible about Elton John , including most of the names of people who attended his parties, or who he worked with, a listing of all his concerts in any given year - and so on.  Did I find out a lot about Elton John?  Well, I guess I did, but not too much more than I knew already.

I wanted to give it more stars because, despite his many failings, I still think Elton John is an amazing musician, a wonderful pianist and an inventive composer.  But his life was a mess - sex, drugs, ridiculous costumes, over-eating, being a real "bitch", as the title implies.

Fortunately, the role young Ryan White played in his life turned him around from a life of pure debauchery, and he remains a top-notch performer even in his late fifties.

I don't think this was an authorized bio because the author makes no attempt to get right into the story of Elton's life  - it's just a series of press clippings really.

Not only that, the editing was terrible!  It took me a long, long time to read this book - over about four months, I'd say, and the only thing that kept me reading it was that I have such respect for him as a musician- and I'll never, ever, forget how beautifully he sang and played at Princess Diana's funeral.

The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman ✔✔✔✔✔

Book Browse chose this book as the best book of 2012, as voted by its subscribers.  It was available at our library here, so I requested it, picked it up this past Monday and finished it just this afternoon.  It was the first book I've read in some time which I wanted to stay up late and finish it, even though it's not a mystery.

Set on an isolated island off the coast of Australia in 1926, Tom and Isabel have moved there to be the lighthouse keepers shortly after their marriage.  Isabel suffers three miscarriages, so when a boat is washed ashore on the island with a dead man inside and a crying baby, Isabel claims the little girl as her own and persaudes Tom to not record the arrival of the boat, the man or the baby.

When the child is two years old, and a strong family unit has been created, the family returns to Australia to find that there is another claim on the child, and some decisions are made which forever change several lives.

The powerful bonds between a mother and child are explored, and as a mother, I found myself deeply involved emotionally with the women in this story, and identified closely with them throughout.

One of the comments about this novel is that reading it  was an "exquisite" experience, and that sums up my opinion as well.  When I first heard about the novel, I immediately thought of Joan Clark's Latitudes of Melt, a favorite book of mine set in Newfoundland, but this one takes a very different path, and a very successful one, particularly for a first-time author.

Highly recommended - have a kleenex or two handy!