Great Conclusion

The Thousandth Floor was an accidental discovery for me this year.  A trilogy that was meant to be a trilogy and each book was very fun to read and kept me wanting to find out more about this future world that wasn't too futurey to be not understandable!  The Towering Sky was the last one and I really loved the way that the author told enough of the backstory to make me remember but not enough so that it was boring!  Really good ending.

Things for which I am thankful

are occasions like finding the series The Thousandth Floor by Katharine McGee.  I saw the second book on the shelf at the library and was able to get the first and the second on audio.  Man, I would have been so sad if the second book wasn't out yet!  This is one of those fun (but dark!) series like Private and Privilege.  In fact, this is also from Alloy Entertainment, as these two were.  This one has a sci-fi component to it, set in 2118.  It was SO good!  I can't wait until The Towering Sky which comes out in August!

Not the guy from Rush

J. Paul Getty is not, as far as I know, related to Geddy Lee from Rush.  Still, Painfully Rich:  the Outrageous Fortune and Misfortunes of the Heirs of J. Paul Getty was good!  I have to admit that I thought Geddy was spelled Getty, so that could be why I was confused.  The book is now called All the Money in the World, which is the name of the movie that just came out.  I saw it on Christmas Day with my mom.  I had listened to most of the book prior to seeing the movie so it was a different experience for me.  I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I did fall asleep.  I was tired!  I think reading the book before the movie is a good idea though, because you get a bigger picture.  Also, the kidnapping of John Paul Getty III is just a chapter in the book.  But it does have a lot of detail. It was sad to read about this family.  It was hard to envy them, even though they are super rich.  But it was hard to feel sorry for them, too.  But it was not like I was passing judgement, really.  It was just more or less, well, some people do have horrible lives here on earth.  They do.  But I think that money can make the horrible a little less horrible sometimes.  But it doesn't make it not horrible.  It can be horrible either way. 

Not What I Expected-- Even Better!

When I lived with my buddy Nancy Lou, her son and daughter-in-law and their little daughter lived Morning Side Heights on the Upper West Side. Their daughter went to St. Hilda's and St. Hugh's, then to Spence then to Emory. So to me, a lower-than-average-smart, very middle class suburbanite, I found stories from their lives fascinating.
When I saw Primates of Park Avenue, I thought for sure it would be a fun, guilty-pleasure tell-all kinda book.  And that was great!  But it was SO much more.  Now this book is set on the Upper East Side, and there are so many opinions about which better, and for what reasons.  Just google UES vs UWS to see.
The title wasn't meant to just be provocative, it really IS a primate study, told through a semi-academic lens.  I say "semi" because the author, Wednesday Martin, whom I liked immediately admits she is not a trained anthropologist. Of course there has been controversy over the book.  But all I can say is, I really, really enjoyed this book.

Adult Books

I don't read too many adult books.  I am not in an adult nonfiction book group though and slogging through The Medici:  Money, Power and Ambition in the Italian Renaissance.  I really needed a break!  And so I chose Good Mourning. A memoir about the funeral industry!  Elizabeth Meyer is a socialite! Wouldn't it be fun to be a socialite!  And she is a super-likable one, in my opinion.  My mom is a strong believer in the idea that money can do anything.  Yes she knows that it can't prolong life, but it can make life much better.  Meyer says that the uber-wealthy still grieve.  And that is very true.  But I guess my mom would say it is better to grieve while not worrying about where you are going to sleep that night or where your next meal is coming from, than to grieve as a homeless person.  I think that is probably true.  Still, the wealthy do grieve.  And no one is free of the pain that comes from losing someone they love.  That is true, too.  I do recommend this book and wish we had picked it instead of the Medici!   Meyer worked at the Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on Madison Ave. in NYC.  All of the rich and famous have their funerals at Campbell.  Judy did.  So did Joan.  I probably won't.  I will be at Neely.

Sucked Me Right In...but then got too complicated :(

I am an easy kinda reader.  Political thrillers can be too much for me.  Same with the legal thrillers.  I like easy.  Maybe I am lazy, maybe I am just not that smart.  Probably a combination of both.  Daughter of Deep Silence was great, it was.  It starts out very exciting and keeps on being very exciting, but then...it just gets too complicated for me...well, the end does.  I mean the "reveal" was too complicated.  The descriptions of Frances' passion for Gray were a little too Harlequin for me, too.  But over all, this was worth the read. Totally different from The Forest of Hands and Teeth series.  Totally.  But I liked it just the same!

Totally

A new fan of Paul Fleischman, I was excited to listen to A Fate Totally Worse Than Death.  I had no idea that it was a spoof when I first started listening to it because I hadn't read the description, I just chose it because of the author!  So it was a very shocking start for me!
This book was written when the Scream movies were popular and the Christopher Pike and Diane Hoh books were burning out.  Super funny and fantastic!  Loved it!

Last Year...

I read One Day More and I really enjoyed it and I thought, man, I can't wait to read Life After Theft!  But when I saw it on the shelf at the library, it just looked so so so so so long!  And I do get lazy!  But then a lovely gal I know, the daughter of my friend Theresa, told me that she loved LAT so I looked and there it was, able to be downloaded for free from the library!  So even though it was a year later, I remembered how much I enjoyed One Day More and I started in on LAT.  Man.  I blew through the first 6 1/2 of 8 sections of the audio.  It was so so so good!  I loved it so much!  But my enthusiasm faded a little bit.  I am not sure why.  The cover is totally deceiving.  Like The Disenchantments the cover will most likely turn away guys, but the narrator is a guy!  What a shame!  This is definitely a "good for dudes" but can you honestly see a teen dude carrying this book around?  If I were Aprilynne Pike I would be kinda mad!
It was cool to learn more about Santa Monica, which I have driven through but not spent any time.  Now I know though, that if I had a ton of bucks and any fashion sense, Montana Avenue is the only place to shop.
Jeff is the new kid in super-rich town.  His dad did very well in the whole dot.com thing, so he is new to this world of riches, but it isn't the prep school or the new wealth that are causing him problems, its a ghost.  The ghost of Kimberlee, who was super-rich in life and went to Jeff's prep school, but she had a big problem, she was a kleptomaniac.  Big time.  She hid all of the things that she stole, from her teachers, classmates, stores, in a cave on her private beach.  She's been haunting the school halls for a year now and no one can see her, until Jeff starts school.  She enlists his help to return all of the things that she stole so that her soul can have peace and maybe she won't have to float around in limbo.
I really did like this book, I guess I just wanted it to have a little more meaning.  It could have.  Jeff is an agnostic and I thought maybe he would be moved by his experience with Kimberlee or something, you know?  I don't know...I just thought that this could be a good part of the book, not that it would have to be Christian or preachy or anything.  Or even if his whole experience affirmed his agnosticism (is that possible, given the nature of agnosticism, I don't know!) or something!  But it just didn't seem to impact him at all, for more belief or for less belief, and I found that not very believable.  Interacting with a ghost would impact you in a big way, I think!  It just had a chance to be something deeper, like a Sara Zarr book, but it didn't go that way.  And that's okay!  I mean, I am the gal who loves Stone Barrington and The Fame Game!  I just wanted a little more from this.  Still, I would recommend it.  

Wow

When I first downloaded the eARC from netgalley and read the first page of We Were Liars I thought immediately of We Were the Mulvaneys.  I've never read We Were the Mulvaneys, but I guess it was the title and the whole obsessed with being the picture-perfect family thing and being from New England, that whole deal.  Turns out though, the Mulvaneys were in Upstate New York.
I couldn't wait to read We Were Liars.  I have loved everything I've read by e. lockhart and expected great things.  Even with my high expectations, I couldn't have expected what was to come.  We Were Liars is going to be The Book to Beat in 2014.  Haunting.  Beautiful.  Heart-breaking.  All of those buzz words, they belong to this book.  Characters that are so, so real, you forget you are reading fiction.  Flawed characters, but ones you are still able to love, like family, like real people.  There is a warning at the start of the ARC from Beverly Horowitz, the Vice President and Publisher of Delacorte Press that urges readers to just read the book, not seek out what it is about before doing so.  And she says at the end that you will want to talk about the book once you read it, and oh, oh I do!  So please, please, get ahold of this book.  Fantastic.  What a way to start the new year.