Back Cover of Dating da Vinci

A gorgeous young Italian, with nowhere to go…

His name just happens to be Leonardo da Vinci. When he walks into Ramona Elise’s English class, he’s a twenty-five-year-old immigrant, struggling to forge a new life in America—but he’s lonely, has nowhere to live, and barely speaks English…

She knows she shouldn’t take him home…

Picking up the pieces of her life after the death of her beloved husband, linguist and teacher Ramona Elise can’t help but be charmed by her gorgeous new student. And when he calls her “Mona Lisa” she just about loses her heart…

Three Quick Points About Dating da Vinci

• Point 1: Leonardo da Vinci is hot. Really hot. I have to admit that his character was well-crafted to make the ladies (and possibly some men) drool. Drool like a rabid mangy mongrel and make no apologies for it. Up until he peed the bed.
• Point 2: Unfortunately, the remaining characters (except a few) had trouble finding their voices. For the most part, they’d be traveling along quite nicely when a piece of stray dialog that rang absolutely false for the character would present itself.
• Point 3: Feel good at its finest. Despite the ending being highly predictable, it still elicits that warm and fuzzy feeling inside.

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Back Cover of Sky Burial

As a young girl in China Xinran heard a rumour about a soldier in Tibet who had been brutally fed to the vultures in a ritural known as a sky burial: the tale frightened and fascinated her. Several decades later Xinran met Shu Wen, a Chinese woman who had spent years searching for her missing husband Kejun, after he disappeared in Tibet; her extraordinary life story would unravel the legend of the sky burial. For thirty years she was lost in the wild and alien landscape of Tibet, in the vast and silent plateaux and the magisterial mountain ranges, living with communities of nomads, moving with the seasons and struggling to survive.

In this haunting book, Xinran recreates Shu Wen’s remarkable journey in a grand story of love, loss, loyalty and survival. Moving, shocking and finally enriching, Sky Burial paints a unique portrait of a woman and a land, both at the mercy of fate and politics.

Three Quick Points About Sky Burial

• Point 1: There is a 99% chance that you will need a box of tissues nearby.
• Point 2: You will almost certainly be left wondering whether or not such profound and enduring love can even exist in our generation.
• Point 3: The story of Shu Wen will likely haunt you long after you’ve read the final sentence.

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From the back cover of Wake

She is floating. Not the falling dream again, she thinks. She is sick to death of the falling dream.

The scene changes immediately. Now Janie is outside. It’s dark. She’s alone, behind a shed, but she can hear muffled voices. She’s never been alone before, and she doesn’t know how people can have dreams that they are not in. She is curious. She watches nervously, hoping this isn’t somebody’s nightmare about to explode through the wall of the shed, or from behind the bushes…

Three quick points about Wake

• Point 1: It’s rather short. With abrupt, sometimes awkward, sentence structures.
• Point 2: This is either a ‘love it’ or ‘hate it’ book, yet somehow I managed to be squarely in the middle, loving some aspects, craving more definition, and hating others.
• Point 3: The characters remind me of Bella Swan and Eward Cullen in their inexplicable love that just somehow seems to work for the story.

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From the Back Cover of Can You Keep a Secret?

Meet Emma Corrigan, a young woman with a huge heart, an irrepressible spirit, and a few little secrets:

Secrets from her boyfriend:
I’ve always thought Connor looks a bit like Ken. As in Barbie and Ken.

Secrets from her mother:
I lost my virginity in the spare bedroom with Danny Nussbaum while Mum and Dad were downstairs watching Ben-Hur

Secrets she wouldn’t share with anyone in the world:
I have no idea what NATO stands for. Or even what it is.

Until she spills them all to a handsome stranger on a plane. At least, she thought he was a stranger…. Until Emma comes face-to-face with Jack Harper, the company’s elusive CEO, a man who knows every single humiliating detail about her…

Three Quick Points About Can You Keep a Secret?

• Point 1: Emma Corrigan bears a striking resemblance to Bridget Jones–not necessarily in appearance, but personality, deed and sheer life circumstances.
• Point 2: This book redefines the statement laugh out loud funny. From beginning to end, I found myself pausing to have a good belly laugh at some of the antics and situations in which Emma found herself.
• Point 3: The British quips and expressions were rather charming from my Americanized viewpoint. Although I’m still not entirely certain what a jumper is, am still unsure whether snogging is kissing or having sex, and it took me a few pages to recognize that having a row meant having an argument, I found reading through it all added to the amusement.

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From the back cover of Literacy and Longing in L.A.:

In a wickedly funny and sexy literary debut, we meet the beguiling, beautiful Dora, whose unique voice combines a wry wit and vulnerability as she navigates the road between reality and fiction. Dora, named for Eudora Welty, is an indiscriminate book junkie – from Tolstoy to Twin, from Flaubert to bodice rippers – whose life has fallen apart. She’s coping with a painful separation from her husband, scraping the bottom of a dwindling inheritance, and attracted to an aspiring playwright who seems to embody all that literature has to offer – intelligent ideas, romance, and an escape from her problems.

Joining Dora in her odyssey is an assortment of memorable characters, including an elderly society hair-brusher, a heartbroken young girl, a hilarious off-the-wall female teamster, and Dora’s apologetic mother, an ex-alcoholic now on the wagon, trying to make amends. Along the way, Dora faces some powerful choices. Between two irresistible men. Between idleness and work. And most of all between the joy of well-chosen words and the untidiness of real people and real life.”

Ms. Bookish’s Quick Take:

Shortly after I finished reading Literacy and Longing in L.A., as I was rummaging around in one of my to-be-read piles, I discovered another, pristine, copy of the book, which goes to show the idea behind it really appealed to me. My quick take? This is one of those books where I didn’t want the story to end – I wanted to follow Dora as she moved into a new era of her life. If you love books, feel like you’re in heaven the moment you step into a bookstore or a library, and you love funny, quirky and literate protagonists, this book is a Must Read, worth five stars here at Today I Read. Continue reading »