5 Titles

     As promised here are snippets about the five books I read in bed while laid flat with the pinched nerve in my lower back.  These are all books from my own shelf, required reading from exact same reading challenge hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea and they all needed the same qualities-easy to read, low level of comprehension needed so I could understand it in my vicodin swirly, twirly brain as I napped and read and napped and read. 

My feel-good-five

Home to Italy by Peter Pezzelli:  A friend gave this to me last summer with the warning that it was easy fluff reading and she was right.  Sweet story though about Peppi exploring a new life in Italy after the death of his beloved wife, Anna.  He moves back to the same village he grew up in and stays with an old friend who runs a candy factory.  Peppi meets the old friend's daughter and Italian sparks fly!!  3/5 stars

Never Change by Elizabeth Berg:  Myra Lipinski (what a classic name) is a fifty-one year old self-proclaimed spinster who almost happy with her quiet existence.  As a visiting nurse she is assigned a new patient who she knows from high school.  Chip Reardon was the bmoc (big man on campus) and Myra adored him (along with the rest of the class, I'm sure) now she has a chance to meet him on her level as he becomes her patient with a brain tumor.  This one actually had some amazing life lessons.  4/5 stars  Click on the author's name above-she has a website worth exploring.

The Mysterious Edge of the Heroic World by e.l. konigsburg:  My favorite book in my pre- teen years was From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.   I reread it two years ago to make sure it truly was good  and I still loved it.  Because I loved her other books I picked up this one publishished in 2007-a time far removed from my pre-teen years.  This story, while different, gave me a little deja vu feeling as I read (maybe it was the vicodin)  Amedeo Kaplan is new to town and looking for a friend and a mystery.  He wants to find something that means something; a discovery noone else has made.  He finds both as he meets William Wilcox, William's mother and Amadeo's neighbor, Mrs. Zender and what they find dates back to Nazi Germany and the artists that were forbidden by Hitler.  3.5/5 stars

The Girl's Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank:  Okay I had deja vu reading this one also but I think it was because I had read parts of it years ago.  This is a work of fiction that reads more like a hilarious memoir. It tells the nonlinear story of  Jane Rosenal, first as a teenager befriending her older brother's older girlfriend to her own affair with an older and famous editor in New York, and all told with  incredible wit!  The part that affected me most was her relationship with her father and his illness which took me sweepingly back to my own father's pneumonia.   Curious  about what Bank has written more recently, I  came up with The Wonder Spot, published in 2005.  4/5 stars

Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen:  I grabbed this one off the shelf because I knew I could rely on Dessen to take me away and it did.   Abandoned by her alcoholic mother, Ruby is hoping to stay  under the radar for a few months until her 18th birthday liberates her.  She keeps it all balanced until the dryer breaks and the landlord comes to fix it and turns her in to social services.  Social Services sends her to live with her next living relative, her sister, Cora, who left the house 10 years ago without looking back.  Cora and her husband, Jamie, have money and provide Ruby with a much easier life. This new life shows her things are not always as they seem even in the nice part of town.   Dessen's books are a joy to read because she has a good grip on the dynamics of a teenager, from which great characters are born.  I've read almost all of her collection with just two left; The Truth about Forever and Along for the Ride.   4/5 stars

     I love how books can sweep you away into someone else's life and your own life can be forgotten just for a few moments of reading-I needed that last week so a deep thank you to books and the beautiful shelf near my bed so they could be close at hand for easy grabbing!!  I hope in this list you maybe find a title or an author to try...