Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

Talk about reader the polar opposite of "Year of the Flood." What can I say, the flu season was getting the best of me. Dan Brown's latest work was entertaining, but I kept having the nagging feeling that the publisher told Brown to stop referring to elements in Europe and appeal to his core audience -- Americans. He did that in spades. I wonder if tourism to Washington D.C. will increase as a result?

In short, entertaining but forgettable.

Here is the publisher's blurb:
As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object -artfully encoded with five symbols - is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long - lost world of esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon's beloved mentor, Peter Solomon - a prominent Mason and philanthropist - is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations-all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

As the world discovered in The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, Dan Brown's novels are brilliant tapestries of veiled histories, arcane symbols, and enigmatic codes. In this new novel, he again challenges readers with an intelligent, lightning-paced story that offers surprises at every turn. The Lost Symbol is exactly what Brown's fans have been waiting for . . . his most thrilling novel yet.

Year of the flood.

Nope, I couldn't do it. I gave up on Atwood's latest. I even read the last chapter before putting it on the shelf because the reviews said it is hopeful in the end. Again, the brutality depicted is just too much for me. Maybe at a different time or stage in my life, but I just don't need to have horrific images floating around in my mind right now.

What's next? I'm not sure... I'm sure something will grab my attention. Something a lot lighter.

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

I just started this work and was horrified to discover that the pigs from Oryx and Crake are back. Those swine give me nightmares! Thankfully, a hold came in from the Library so I switched to Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning. I only have two weeks to read it. What a change! I went from "literature" to pure entertaining bubble gum. We all need that now and then... I will return to Ren and Toby, though. I liked their characters immediately. If I were a more patient person, I would re-read Oryx and Crake before returning to Year of the Flood, but I doubt that will happen.

The Year of the Flood -- From the Publisher
The long-awaited new novel from Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood is a brilliant visionary imagining of the future that calls to mind her classic novel The Handmaid's Tale.

Adam One, the kindly leader of God's Gardeners - a religion devoted to the melding of science and religion - has long predicted a natural disaster that will alter Earth as we know it. Now it has occurred, obliterating most human life. Two women have been spared: Ren, a young trapeze-dancer, locked inside a high-end sex club; and one of God's Gardeners, Toby, who is barricaded inside a luxurious spa. Have others survived?

By turns dark, tender, violent, thoughtful, and witty, The Year of the Flood unfolds Toby's and Ren's stories during the years prior to their meeting again. The novel not only brilliantly reflects to us a world we recognize but poignantly reminds us of our enduring humanity.

Mama makes up her mind by Baily White

I have no idea how this book came my way... It must have been recommended to me, and for some reason I read it. I read it all. It was mediocre and still I finished it. I blame it on the summer time. How did it reach the best sellers' list? It was obviously not the Globe and Mail's best sellers' list. I'm sure people from the south love its down home, folksy charm just as Canadian's love the Vinyl Cafe, but give me Stuart McLean any day... I'm aching for a good book.

From Publishers Weekly
White is known to fans of National Public Radio's All Things Considered for her endearing true stories about rural South Georgia where she lives and teaches the first grade. Her first book, which brings together some 50 of these short pieces, rich in humor and folksy charm, should delight her listeners, as well as readers new to her storytelling. Many of the selections deal with White's mother, who has never seen a movie as good as Midnight Cowboy, and other relatives and friends with similar eccentric wrinkles in their personalities. Other pieces are culled from the events of White's everyday life--gardening, her school's annual Christmas Party.

Consequences by Penelope Lively

This is a beautifully written novel, however, it was not very satisfying. After the first two main characters died, everyone else seemed somewhat the same and sadly, forgettable. Maybe I never forgave the author for killing off Matt and Lorna. I had to slog through to finish. I'll have to try the Book Award winner...

Here's the publisher's blurb
A chance meeting in St. James's Park begins young Lorna and Matt's intense relationship. Wholly in love, they leave London for a cottage in a rural Somerset village. Their intimate life together-Matt's woodcarving, Lorna's self-discovery, their new baby-is shattered with the arrival of World War II. In 1960s London, Molly happens upon a forgotten newspaper-a seemingly small moment that leads to her first job and, eventually, a pregnancy by a wealthy man who wants to marry her, but whom she does not love. Thirty years later, Ruth, who has always considered her existence a peculiar accident, questions her own marriage and begins a journey that takes her back to 1941-and a redefinition of herself, and of love. Told in Lively''s incomparable prose, Consequences is a powerful story of growth, death, and rebirth and a study of the previous century-its major and minor events, its shaping of public consciousness, and its changing of lives. "Her greatest gift, though, is her ability to see beyond mere cultural ephemera and grasp the unchanging essence of life.." - The Wall Street Journal "Her characters are beguiling, and her blend of romance and stinging social commentary is tonic." - Booklist (starred review) "A flawlessly constructed mini-epic." - The Telegraph "A beautifully written novel." - San Francisco Chronicle "A fine novel: intricate, heartbreaking and redemptive." - Publishers Weekly

Incident Report, by Martha Baillie

Initially, I thought this book would only appeal to people in the library field. The majority of"incidents" are Library examples, but as the book develops, other incidents surface and a complex and rich story develops.

The cover is painfully plain -- the death knoll for many works -- but it works for this work.

Publisher's blurb:
In a Toronto library, home to the mad and the marginalized, notes appear, written by someone who believes he is Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester from Verdis opera. Convinced that the young librarian, Miriam, is his daughter, he promises to protect her from grief. Little does he know how much loss she has already experienced; or does he? The Incident Report, both mystery and love story, daringly explores the fragility of our individual identities. Strikingly original in its structure, comprised of 140 highly distilled, lyric reports, the novel depicts the tensions between private and public storytelling, the subtle dynamics of a socially exposed workplace. The Incident Report is a novel of gestures, one that invites the reader to be astonished by the circumstances its characters confront. Reports on bizarre public behaviour intertwine with reports on the private life of the novels narrator. Shifting constantly between harmony and dissonance, elegant in its restraint and excitingly contemporary, The Incident Report takes the pulse of our fragmented urban existence with detachment and wit, while a quiet tragedy unfolds.

The Gargoyle, by Andrew Davidson

I walked past this book many times and noted its cover. There was something very compelling about it, but the title was off putting. The word Gargoyle is so connotative and takes me back to childish fears of the dark.

One day, though, I actually picked it up and read the publishers blurb -- actually, the inside back jacket -- and discovered that Andrew Davidson is Canadian AND from Manitoba. I was enticed and took it home.

I have to admit that it took me awhile to become engaged. Firstly, the opening seemed contrived and I didn't appreciate the narrator speaking directly to the reader. Reading about the pain and disfigurement of the horrific burn actualized those childish fears of the dark. The fact that the author was Canadian encouraged me to read on, and I'm so glad I did. Yes, there were times when I rolled my eyes, but I was hooked and couldn't put it down. I guess am truly drawn to aspects of the world that are outside the classical rigours of symmetry and proportion prescribed as beauty. I may come to see Gargoyles as beautiful, after all.

I think this review from the Edmonton Sun sums it up nicely, “A wild page-turner and a boldly impudent work that flirts with the trappings of gothic romances, historical novels and fantasies while skirting their clichés and remaining defiantly unique.”

I would recommend this book to most, and especially to those who enjoyed Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet.

Publisher's Blurb:
An extraordinary debut novel of love that survives the fires of hell and transcends the boundaries of time. On a burn ward, a man lies between living and dying, so disfigured that no one from his past life would even recognize him. His only comfort comes from imagining various inventive ways to end his misery. Then a woman named Marianne Engel walks into his hospital room, a wild-haired, schizophrenic sculptress on the lam from the psych ward upstairs, who insists that she knows him - that she has known him, in fact, for seven hundred years. She remembers vividly when they met, in another hospital ward at a convent in medieval Germany, when she was a nun and he was a wounded mercenary left to die. If he has forgotten this, he is not to worry: she will prove it to him. And so Marianne Engel begins to tell him their story, carving away his disbelief and slowly drawing him into the orbit and power of a word he'd never uttered: love.