Book 17: The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life by Rod Dreher

(This review contains spoilers.)

I have to admit I didn't read this book, I listened to the audio book while driving to pick up my son from sleepaway camp. I'm typically not a fan of audio books, mostly because I find it harder to carve out the time to listen to a book, but in this case, I think the audio book only enhanced the novel. My version was read by the author, Rod Dreher, who has a tendency to fall into a Loo-C-Anna dialect now and then.

At its heart, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming documents the life of Ruthie, Dreher's sister, before and after she is stricken with lung cancer. While Dreher left his hometown of St. Francisville, Louisiana, during high school, his sister Ruthie married her high school sweetheart, taught at a local high school, built a home across the street from her parents and raised a family there. With her diagnosis of cancer comes an outpouring of love and support, a showing Dreher laments he wouldn't find anywhere but home. He left home to find personal, professional and spiritual fulfillment, but his search has left him largely empty. He frequently changes jobs and locales, converts to Catholicism and then to Orthodoxy, and struggles with a God who would allow cancer to happen to his beloved sister.

As you can expect the novel is heartbreaking. I found myself in tears more than once. It's also inspirational; it is likely it will make you stop to appreciate your family and rethink your priorities.

Or you might think it is overwrought. While even the most hardened reader will be moved by Ruthie and her struggle with cancer, a great deal of the book - more than I expected - details Rod's struggle with his spirituality after Ruthie passes. If you're not one for philosophizing and proselytizing, this won't be your cup of sweet tea.

Book 16: The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

The Shining Girls is about a time-traveling serial killer. For a reason that really isn’t explained, Harper Curtis is tasked with traveling through time to kill ‘shining girls’ or girls who have great potential. The book jumps from present to past and back again as Harper meets, stalks and kills his victims.

Kirby Mazrachi is the only woman who survives a gruesome attack by Harper. The great potential Kirby promised as a young girl (Harper often meets his victims as girls or young women to give them a token and tell them he’ll come back for them in the future) may have been squashed but now she is determined to find Harper.

Kirby gets an internship at the Chicago Sun-Times and persuades sports reporter Dan Velasquez to help her. Velasquez covered Kirby’s case years ago but moved to the sports beat after years as a crime reporter left him jaded.

As with any time travel book it can be difficult to keep track of Harper’s travels. Since he meets the girls multiple times in their lives I had to flip back and forth a bit to keep track of everyone. The concept is interesting and the story is compelling but it is also extremely violent – think what you will about the fact that all the victims are women, all are intelligent or compassionate or promising, most are also ethnic.

For me, this book suffers for two major reasons. Firstly, there are a number of clichés. Of course there is a simmering romance between Kirby and Dan. Of course Kirby, an inexperienced reporter, is able to track down a serial killer that no experienced professional could find. Of course, there is a vague ending that could lead to a sequel.

Secondly, the book tries to be a science-fiction/horror/mystery and each genre ends up diluted. Add to that some extremely graphic, misogynistic attacks, a couple implausible plot points and a silly, climactic snowball fight and the result is disappointing.

Book 15: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

(Just a note: I haven't stopped reading, just slowed down on posting the reviews. I may have to motor the next couple of months, but I'm still on track to finish 26 books by December 31, 2013.)

I think the word 'meh' is overused, but if someone asked me what I thought of this book, I would say shrug my shoulders and say 'meh.' I hate to say that about Neil Gaiman. And I really hate to say that about a Neil Gaiman book that received so many awards and accolades.

Like many of his books, The Graveyard Book combines elements of fantasy, horror and the supernatural. The premise is clever; a young boy is orphaned as a baby and raised by ghosts in a nearby graveyard. His foster parents name him Nobody Owens or Bod. They could've named him Anybody Owens, because, despite his upbringing, Bod is like any other kid. He is curious, introverted, bullied, love struck and eventually longs for a life beyond the graveyard. For me, the best parts of the book dealt with Bod simply as a boy navigating adolescence.

But there are parallel stories of ghosts and shifters and supernatural tokens and a secret society of killers led by 'the man Jack.' All these elements may have added pages to the story but I don't think they always complemented it.

Sometimes if I don't like a book I dismiss the author altogether. After this book I'm not dismissing Gaiman. I still hope to be a fan. This just wasn't the book that did it.