A Tree Grows In Brooklyn by Betty Smith

A very good portrait of a time and place 8/10

I enjoy books like this, the ones that take you to a different time & place and make you feel a part of it. I loved that the tone seemed to stay light even though the subject was dark and heavy. It was very well balanced it was serious and upbeat at the same time, it could have so easily began to drag but it never did.

I saw a lot of my own attitude in Francie and even her family seemed much like mine, the strong characters and links of her female relatives. The way it was the women that pulled together and got through, so very like my own family.

Neither Here Nor There by Bill Bryson

Funny travel book 7/10

This was a rather funny book about traveling through Europe. It had me giggling at some of his observations of the different countries and their people, as they were so similiar to my own experiences.

Thunderstruck by Erik Larson

Interesting 7/10

From the book jacket- "In Thunderstruck, Erik Larson tells the interwoven stories of two men - Hawley Crippen, a very unlikely murderer, and Guglielmo Marconi, the obsessive creator of a seemingly supernatural means of communication - whose lives intersect during one of the greatest criminal chases of all time." "Set in Edwardian London and on the stormy coasts of Cornwall, Cape Cod, and Nova Scotia, Thunderstruck evokes the dynamism of those years when great shipping companies competed to build the biggest, fastest ocean liners, scientific advances dazzled the public with visions of a world transformed, and the rich outdid one another with ostentatious displays of wealth. Against this background, Marconi races against incredible odds and relentless skepticism to perfect his invention: the wireless, a prime catalyst for the emergence of the world we know today. Meanwhile, Crippen, "the kindest of men," nearly commits the perfect crime."

I thought this book was interesting, although not quite as gripping as his Devil In The White City (which I loved). They were both written in the same style and I thought both were well done. I may have just had too high of an expectation for Thunderstruck and while it came very close to meeting it, I wanted just a tad more from it.

Blue Shoe by Anne Lamott

Rather blah and scattered 4/10

From the flap-

"Mattie Ryder is a marvelously funny, well-intentioned, religious, sarcastic, tender, angry, and broke recently divorced mother of two young children. Then she finds a small rubber blue shoe-the kind you might get from a gumball machine-and a few other trifles that were left years ago in her deceased father's car. They seem to hold the secrets to her messy upbringing, and as she and her brother follow these clues to uncover the mystery of their past, she begins to open her heart to her difficult, brittle mother and the father she thought she knew. And with that acceptance comes an opening up to the possibilities of romantic love. In a disarming blend of everyday life and the sublime, of reverence and irreverence, and of humor and grace."

This was a hard book for me to get through, it was just a little on the scattered side for my taste and for all the shuffling around it still seemed to drag and be on the blah side of the fence.