Book Reviews: 36 - 40 of 2017

To Rise Again at a Decent Hour was a bit of a wild card books I picked up at random without knowing anything about it. The story follows Paul O'Rourke - a somewhat boring dentist. Life is going on normally until one day Paul finds out that someone has started a website and Facebook page under his name and is commenting with strange religious sounding posts on various articles around the internet. In his quest to discover who is making these odd posts, Paul discovers an ancient civilization and how he is connected to it. This book was kind of all over the place for me. To start with every time I started to think main character has something like-able about him, he would say something inappropriate or awful that made me just not care what happens to him. Also from where this story begins to where it ends up is just a big say wha? It would've been interesting if I cared about Paul O'Rourke, but with it odd segues into the main point of the story I was kind of glad to get this one finished and move on. I give this book 3 out of 5 stars.

Winesburg, Ohio is the classic novel mentioned by classic novelists. I picked this up because authors like Ayn Rand, Ernest Hemingway, and William Faulkner all have listed it among their favorite books, so I had to see what all the fuss was about. The book is a collection of short stories about a town called Winesburg, Ohio around the turn of the century. There are love stories, rascal fathers, town revenges, and much more in the stories as they show how they are all connected. As far as my own opinion about this book ... I feel like I must have missed something? While this gave an interesting view of life at this in a small town, I really did not enjoy reading this and it was a bit of a slog. I managed to finish it, always hoping that the big moment would be coming that makes everyone love it so much. For me this never came. Maybe I will read it again one day and figure out what others seem to see that I don't. I give this book 3 out of 4 stars.

You Are a Badass at Making Money is a branch off of You Are A Badass, which I read earlier in the year and loved. I really hoped for the awesome pep-talk to connect with me like it did in the first book, but this one just didn't entirely get there. A lot of the advice is to stop saying you hate money and send out the good vibes by having faith that money will somehow appear. When I'm struggling to buy a sandwich for lunch verses making one at home, I find the sheer obscenity of the sums mentioned in this book unfathomable. Sorry but it's not a good personal decision to commit to an $85,000.00 purchase when you can't afford to even fix your $1000.00 car. I get where Sincero is coming from - the "if you build it, they will come" mentality, but while she may have been the 1% success story with that amount of money, there are many people who make very sound investments and still lose it all. Maybe I'm just not there yet, but I just can't let go of rationality quite that much. I do still like her style, and I did enjoy most of the book. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

The Light Between Oceans is the story of an Australian couple who take in a baby that washes ashore at the lighthouse they tend. The story develops from an altruistic action into the selfish desperation to have a child very quickly. The Sherbournes have tried several times to have children, and all of them were miscarriages, their last one being born dead just a few weeks before finding this baby on the beach. Isabel is so elated to find a baby and convinces her husband, Tom, not to report the finding so they can pass the baby off as their own. Eventually, the family returns to the mainland and discovers the real family the baby belonged to and the desolation her loss caused.

This was just one of those awful situation stories. Definitely a true test of whether the characters would do "the right thing" when the wrong thing is so much what they want. I really enjoyed this story - it's very sad, but in a very good way. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.

The 5 Love Languages was recommended to me by my husband and once I read it I could see all the small things he had changed in what he does for me in "speaking my language". I feel like this is one of those books that has been around long enough that most people (especially if you've been in any counselling) know the premise. To cynical me I was hesitant, but I now recommend this book all the time. It's such a simple idea - treat people how they want to be treated to show that you love them - but this can be ground breaking in a relationship that has lacked this type of interaction. I definitely recommend anyone in a relationship (or who hopes to be one day) read this book. I give this book 4 out of 5 stars.