Silver Wedding by Maeve Binchy

Silver Wedding
by Maeve Binchy
ebook
978-0-440-33760-7
Delta / Random House

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 3.5
Characters: 3
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.33
       
Comments: I had read a couple of Ken Bruen books in a row and was in dire need of a little Binchy.

Publisher's description

There was never any question that Deirdre and Desmond Doyle would celebrate a gala twenty-fifth anniversary. Naturally, their daughter Anna, would plan their grand affair. Of all three Doyle children, Anna knew exactly what their mother wished--even as she lived her own secret life. Will Brendan, the rebellious son, even bother to return to London? Will Helen, the hapless would-be nun, embarrass them all? This is Deirdre’s day, a triumph for a woman obsessed with keeping up appearances, her silvery revenge after “marrying down” twenty-five years ago. She’s determined to show them all: the maid of honor, still unmarried, still gorgeous, now a successful London business woman . . . the best man, once Desmond’s close friend, now his boss . . . their reluctant priest, who harbors his own guilty secret.

As family and friends gather, a lifetime of lies takes its toll. But what begins as a family charade brings with it the transforming power of love--and truth.

Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy

Firefly Summer
by Maeve Binchy
ebook
ISBN: 978-0-440-33759-1
Dell (Random House)

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 3
Characters: 4
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.5
Comments: This is an older Binchy--from 1987 or 1988--and the parts where she switched perspective or jumped forward in time felt very disjointed to me. I wonder if there were design/typographic cues in the print editions that didn't make it into the ebook?

It was a summer of warmth.... Kate Ryan and her husband, John, have a rollicking pub in the Irish village of Mountfern... lovely twelve-year-old twins... and such wonderful dreams.... It was a summer of innocence... but all that is about to change this fateful summer of 1962 when American millionaire Patrick O'Neill comes to town with his irresistible charm and a pocketful of money... when love and hate vie for a town's quiet heart and old traditions begin to crumble away.... It was a summer of love that would never come again.... A time that has been captured forever in Maeve Binchy's compelling family drama... a novel you will never forget.

Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich

Finger Lickin' Fifteen
by Janet Evanovich
cloth
ISBN: 0312383282
St. Martin's Press

Rating (on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being best)
Plot: 2.5
Characters: 4
Writing: 3.5
Final: 3.33

Comments: Good, silly fun. Not the best in the Stephanie Plum series, but not the worst.

Stephanie Plum is working overtime tracking felons for the bonds office at night and snooping for security expert Carlos Manoso, A.K.A. Ranger, during the day. Can Stephanie hunt down two killers, a traitor, five skips, keep her grandmother out of the sauce, solve Ranger’s problems and not jump his bones?

Palate Cleansers

I have always been a fan of the gross and horrific. My brother and I grew up watching horror movies. When we were little—this would have been in the 1970s—we watched a ton of old black and white horror movies. I can remember a specific conversation we had about how you know it's going to be a great movie if Vincent Price is in it.

Fast forward a few years: One Friday night when I was around 12 or 13 (and my sister was about 5 or 6) I noticed that The Shining was on cable that night. I had seen it already and wanted to watch it again but was too scared to watch it by myself. And my brother had other plans. I'm not proud of what happened next—I made my poor little 6-year-old baby sister watch The Shining with me. I'm not sure she's ever completely forgiven me for that. But! She still loves horror movies.

Of course I also liked to read horror and as I got older it was primarily Stephen King. In my younger days, though, I was crazy about the Three Investigators series by Robert Arthur. Oh how I dreamed of having a PI agency in a trailor in a junkyard! And a skull named Socrates (swoon)!

You may be wondering how I've kept my youthful Pollyanna-ish disposition after all of this horror. The answer is that I've always had "palate cleansers," or what I often think of as "nice books." My first palate cleansers were the Little House Books and three titles by Frances Hodgson Burnett (he edition I had was all three bound together in one volume: The Secret Garden, A Little Princess, and Little Lord Fauntleroy). I throw one or more of these in the mix in between reading things like Stiff, The Speckled Monster (includes photos!), Body Farm books, etc.

Here are a few of my current favorite palate cleanser authors:
Maeve Binchy
Laurie Notaro
Pamela Ribon
Jen Lancaster
Janet Evanovich
Jodi Picoult

The Return Journey and Whitethorn Woods by Maeve Binchy

I read both of these as ebooks from eReader. I didn't realize when I bought it that The Return Journey is a collection of short stories or vignettes. I prefer Binchy's novels—which are pretty vignette-y themselves—so it's no surprise that I enjoyed Whitethorn Woods more.

Good stuff from Whitethorn Woods:

. . . I watched my mam's life and was determined I would never settle for anything remotely like it. She cooked and washed and cleaned up around my dad and the boys every hour that she wasn't working cleaning office floors or washing greasy plates.

"I'm happy enough, Sharon," she would say if I questioned it. "I mean, I love him and we've got to remember that he didn't walk away when I was expecting you."

A lifetime of gratitude that he had acknowledged what was after all his child too. Twenty-four years of saying thank you and calling that love.

The Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death: Reflections on Revenge, Germophobia, and Laser Hair Removal by Laurie Notaro

I finished reading this one a week ago or so. It was one of the first books I purchased and downloaded all on my Treo 700p from m.ereader.com. Previously I had been browsing, shopping, paying, and downloading onto my PC and then uploading to my phone. I'm very pleased with this new ability: browsing is reasonably speedy (especially considering that their non-mobile site is a little sluggish), and the shopping cart and downloading process worked smoothly.

Back to the book! I believe I previously declared Notaro to be
my new BFF (or vice versa). Evidence that we were meant to be:

Hadn't one of my all-time favorite reveries been to become a cranky hermit, live unperturbed in my house, and have things brought to me like a monarch or a tribal lord?

You want more? You got it:

Because, really, who wants to be twenty again, I thought, living in a house with a bunch of dirty guys and a snake? . . . Don't get me wrong. I loved the reckless abandon of my younger, skinnier, prettier, poorer days, but doing all of that once in a lifetime was pretty much enough.