State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

I'm not sure how I came upon this recent work -- it certainly wasn't from the book's cover.  I do remember reading Bel Canto a number of years ago and enjoyed it.  This books did not disappoint and it would be a good book club title as it deals with a number of issues. 

Book club topics of discussion could include:

• Western medicine versus "shaman" cures. 
• The role of well meaning groups who interact with indigenous peoples. 
• Pharmaceutical research practices
• When is a woman too old to be pregnant? 

Then there are the issues about people's actions in the book.

• Who  had Easter's best interests?  Did Dr. Eckman, Dr. Swenson or the main character, Dr. Marina Singh?  Did Easter best belong with the Lakashi people or with the Hummocca
• What about Dr. Swenson's statement that one does not give the truth to strangers?

And the book moved me.  It was heart wrenching when  Marina had to give the news to Karen, Dr. Eckman's wife, that her husband died in Brazil.  And the ending (I almost gave away the ending) was also poignant.

Best Laid Plans by Terry Fallis

One of my favourite books.

Summary:
Selected as the 2011 CBC Canada Reads Winner! This book beat out work by Douglas Coupland and Will Ferguson because it is very, very good -- a terrific Canadian political satire. Here's the set up: A burnt-out politcal aide quits just before an election -- but is forced to run a hopeless campaign on the way out. He makes a deal with a crusty old Scot, Angus McLintock -- an engineering professor who will do anything, anything, to avoid teaching English to engineers -- to let his name stand in the election. No need to campaign, certain to lose, and so on. Then a great scandal blows away his opponent, and to their horror, Angus is elected. He decides to see what good an honest M.P. who doesn't care about being re-elected can do in Parliament. The results are hilarious -- and with chess, a hovercraft, and the love of a good woman thrown in, this very funny book has something for everyone.

The Hundred-yar-old man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

What an engaging and funny romp through history. I thoroughly enjoyed this work and its interwoven tale.  So much fun and engaging.  Even the following reviews

Library Journal


Swedish author Jonasson received rave reviews in Europe for this first novel, a best seller there. But this picaresque tale with its deadpan humor is not your typical American--style blockbuster. Allan Karlsson, the centenarian who sneaks out of his nursing home, is an expert on explosives who has led an outsize life. In his travels, he has not only met just about every famous and infamous world leader but has inadvertently played a significant role in many world events. The book has been compared to both Forrest Gump and Zelig, but while this novel is not sentimental like Forrest Gump, neither is it as funny as Zelig. Chapters alternate between Allan's big adventures in the past and in the present, where he gets mixed up with a zany bunch of Swedes and a former circus elephant as they try to avoid both cops and gangsters. VERDICT This quirky novel is a sly, satirical look back at international relations in the 20th century through the eyes of an old man who has seen it all.


Publishers Weekly

Jonasson's laugh-out-loud debut (a bestseller in Europe) reaches the U.S. three years after its Swedish publication, in Bradbury's pitch-perfect translation. The intricately plotted saga of Allan Karlsson begins when he escapes his retirement home on his 100th birthday by climbing out his bedroom window. After stealing a young punk's money-filled suitcase, he embarks on a wild adventure, and through a combination of wits, luck, and circumstance, ends up on the lam from both a smalltime criminal syndicate and the police. Jonasson moves deftly through Karlsson's life-from present to past and back again-recounting the fugitive centenarian's career as a demolitions expert and the myriad critical junctures of history, including the Spanish Civil War and the Manhattan Project, wherein Karlsson found himself an unwitting (and often influential) participant. Historical figures like Mao's third wife, Vice President Truman, and Stalin appear, to great comic effect. Other characters-most notably Albert Einstein's hapless half-brother-are cleverly spun into the raucous yarn, and all help drive this gentle lampoon of procedurals and thrillers.

Home by Toni Morrison

Once again, Toni Morrison demonstrates her ability to weave a tale that is so strong and moving that it envelops you.  Her prose is like poetry, and I love to linger over the pages.  I would not, however, suggest you listen to the book on CD.  Morrison narrates and although I love her soft, slow paced voice, and introduction to the work would have sufficed.  I found it frustrating to listen to her for the entire book and abandoned the attempt. Keep to the written word and be filled with this story.

From Publishers Weekly:

In Pulitzer and Nobel Prize–winner Morrison’s immaculate new novel (after A Mercy), Frank Money returns from the horrors of the Korean War to an America that’s just as poor and just as racist as the country he fled. Frank’s only remaining connection to home is his troubled younger sister, Cee, “the first person [he] ever took responsibility for,” but he doesn’t know where she is. In the opening pages of the book, he receives a letter from a friend of Cee’s stating, “Come fast. She be dead if you tarry.” Thus begins his quest to save his sister—and to find peace in a town he loathed as a child: Lotus, Ga., the “worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield.” Told in alternating third- and first-person narration, with Frank advising and, from time to time, correcting the person writing down his life story, the novel’s opening scene describes horses mating, “[t]heir raised hooves crashing and striking, their manes tossing back from wild white eyes,” as one field over, the bodies of African-American men who were forced to fight to the death are buried: “...whatever you think and whatever you write down, know this: I really forgot about the burial. I only remembered the horses. They were so beautiful. So brutal.” Beautiful, brutal, as is Morrison’s perfect prose.

The Dressmaker by Kate Alcott

I always feel that it's a good practice to try new authors but I consistently show a weakness for a book with a pretty cover.  This book, The Dressmaker does indeed have pretty cover.  Unfortunately, the cover was the most artistic and intriguing part of the book.

Summary:
Just in time for the centennial anniversary of the sinking of the "Titanic" comes a vivid, romantic, and relentlessly compelling historical novel about a spirited young seamstress who survives the disaster only to find herself embroiled in the media frenzy left in the wake of the tragedy.

Shadow of Night, by Deborah Harkness

I'm still in the process of reading book two of this series.  I have to admit, I'm not loving it as much of the first one.  It seems to go on endlessly, but I am invested to see what happens in the end.  

Here is the publisher's summary:

The first novel introduced Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and reluctant witch, and the handsome geneticist and vampire Matthew Clairmont; together they found themselves at the center of a supernatural battle over an enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782.

Now, picking up from A Discovery of Witches' cliffhanger ending,Shadow of Night plunges Diana and Matthew into Elizabethan London, a world of spies, subterfuge, and a coterie of Matthew's old friends, the mysterious School of Night that includes Christopher Marlowe and Walter Raleigh. Here, Diana must locate a witch to tutor her in magic, Matthew is forced to confront a past he thought he had put to rest, and the mystery of Ashmole 782 deepens.

Deborah Harkness has crafted a gripping journey through a world of alchemy, time travel, and magical discoveries, delivering one of the most hotly anticipated novels of the season

Bossypants, by Tiny Fey

There were some definite gems in this book.  I particularly like her comments regarding the prevailing sexism she continues to have to deal with as a working woman -- no one asks Donald Trump if he finds it difficult to be the boss.  I also like her approach to work by using the analogy of working in improvisation.  If you work in improv, you are always trying to add to the act and we should all be trying to add something to our role in work.  

Yes, it was an entertaining albeit like work -- just as the cover promised! 

Publisher's summary:  
From her youthful days as a vicious nerd to her tour of duty on Saturday Night Live; from her passionately halfhearted pursuit of physical beauty to her life as a mother eating things off the floor; from her one-sided college romance to her nearly fatal honeymoon -- from the beginning of this paragraph to this final sentence.

Tina Fey reveals all, and proves what we''ve all suspected: you''re no one until someone calls you bossy