A Book You Love & One You Didn’t

There are so many things wrong with this subject. First of all the words “One” & “A”. Like I could seriously pick just one of each. But I will try.

It’s fairly easy to pick one I love because I just finished it. It kept my attention like few have in the past few years. It was my Book Club’s selection for this month: Fever by Mary Beth Keane.

It’s the story of Typhoid Mary, set in the early years of the 20th century. New York City’s lower east side tenements were teeming with disease and filth & Mary was a cook for some of the richest families of Manhattan. She is an unmarried Irish immigrant with strong opinions & an even stronger work ethic.

Yeah, I know it sounds boring, but I am telling you it is gripping & engrossing enthralling & all the words. She makes it so interesting & causes you to speculate on your own life. Are you where you’d thought you’d be as an adult? Do you think it will always be as it is now? What if you are old & lose your job & no one wants you? What if the thing you love & that you are best at is punishable by law if you practice it? What if the man you love is an alcoholic but you don’t know how to love another? He’s all you know in this country…you’ve been with him for 17 years. What if you are perfectly healthy but accused of killing people by being around them? You are sick in a way you can’t understand & they can’t explain. You are forced into exile & have no contact with your former life, not even to tell them that you’re being help captive of the state? It’s unimaginable.

But it’s not all dark & dismal. Mary rises again & again & overcomes everything that is thrown her way. It’s interesting to me that she remained resilient. I would have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge. And yet…it only mentions her crying once. I cried more than that reading it!

Even though this book is fiction, a mere possibility of the life she may have lived, it seems so real. It is easy to sympathize with Mary. I was captivated from early on.

One I Didn’t:

Priscilla Balleu Presley: The Untold Story.

I wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with Elvis, but I am intrigued by him, & I do like his music. I occasionally like biographies so I thought this would be interesting.

I could not have been more wrong.

I’m not sure what Priscilla ever did to this author, but it must have been really bad. Additionally, the author repeats herself relentlessly & it is clear she didn’t have enough information for a book. It is also evident that Priscilla is a liar, as the author sites sources with every quote. Slow going, a dark pall against every page. I hated it & quit at 40% (it was on my Kindle, thankfully I paid less than three dollars).

So there you go.

Honorable mentions include Gone With the Wind (of course), Lonesome Dove, Peter Pan, Islands by Anne Rivers Siddons, The Paris Wife by Paula McClain, anything by Wendy Webb, Gillian Flynn, Jodi Picoult, Kristin Hannah, & Karen White.

While I will always reach for my southern set favorites, occasionally I branch out & in rare instances am wow’ed. So it’s a marvelous thing I’ve found two in the last month.

I know I can be a bit much if you’ve ever asked me for a book recommendation, & for that I will apologize. But there’s so many good ones to read! Time’s a-wastin’!

Alternately, I hated these that everyone seems to love: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, the Bell Jar, 50 Shades (don’t judge, I had to see what all the hoopla was about), Twilight (same reason. Hey, I  liked Harry Potter!) & the Confederacy of Dunces.

Happy reading!