Book Number 3: "Withering Heights" by Dorothy Cannell (261 pages)

After a couple of rather "heavy" books, this week I opted for a much lighter-weight read. I enjoy mysteries... especially English ones. On my family's annual trip to Maine this year, we dropped into a sweet little bookstore in Searsport.... The Left Bank. While purchasing a couple of books, I noticed a sign promoting an evening with local mystery writer, Dorothy Cannell. I knew I wasn't going to make it to the reading but I couldn't resist picking up her latest mystery....this one. She's written quite a few books with titles like: "The Trouble with Harriet", "The Importance of Being Ernestine" and "Bridesmaids Revisited". A bit too cutesy.... yes... but exactly what I expected and needed.... likable sleuth (female), with her quirky side-kick, lots of amateur detective banter, and of course the mysterious death of an English gentleman.

A feature in these English mysteries that I simply can't resist is a quaint English village setting.... this one was deep in Yorkshire.... and, to top it off, the whole mystery was hosted in an intriguing old English manor house where the former owner had been murdered and a set of other questionable "accidents" was continuing to occur.

Through a rather odd set of occurrences, amateur sleuth Ellie Haskell and her trusty housekeeper Roxy Malloy..... end up in the manor house of a cousin of Ellie's husband who had recently bought the house after winning big in the lottery. Ellie's husband (a book-writing chef) is recruited to cater the tea the new owner of the house is giving for the village. The original owner of the house has died under mysterious circumstances.... in yet another favorite English mystery feature of mine, a seance is held where the murder victim appears and begs the participants to find his murderer.

This is not ground-breaking work but it is an entertaining bit of fluff. Everything you'd want in an English mystery is here..... attractive female amateur sleuth with her trusty companion in crime solving, beautiful English countryside, satisfying banter between characters - (especially Ellie and Roxy), and after a few little plot twists, (and another murder), a satisfactory conclusion with the mystery solved.

Book # 2 of the Great Book Read Challenge of 2010

Book #2 for me is "Anastasia" by Vladimir Megre', 236 pages -

This is the first of 9 books in the Ringing Cedar series.... yet another "life-changer" book recommended to me by a good friend. This is an extremely difficult book to describe - part travelogue/documentary, part nature/environmental treatise and finally, a large part spiritual/religious.

It begins with the author, Vladimir Megre', a Siberian trader encountering Anastasia, a beautiful young woman, while on a river trip in Siberia. She takes him deep into the taiga (forest), to her home and then proceeds to share her amazing philosophy of life with him which includes the secret of the ringing Cedar trees. She then asks him to write a book to share with the rest of the world.... this book. From this book has sprung Anastasia groups around the world, poetry, websites, and of course 8 more books.

While I found the message of this book inspiring, especially the parts describing Anastasia's relationship with animals..... the writing itself was very stiff and surprisingly uninspiring.... perhaps this is partly due to this being a translation....Still, this was a thought-provoking read and one that I won't forget anytime soon.

Book Number 1: "Half the Sky"

Book Number 1:

"Half the Sky - Turning Oppression into Opportunity For Women Worldwide"

by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

278 pages (including a 26 page very informative appendix)

A good friend with whom I spent the week between Christmas and New Years, strongly encouraged me to read this book. (Her words to me were: "This book will change your life" In fact while we were at a bookstore together, she actually bought it for me.... so, for better or for worse, I was committed to this book as the first of my 52.

The authors are a married couple who received the Pulitzer Prize in journalism for their coverage of the Tienanmen Square democracy protests. Kristof is an op-ed columnist for the NY Times. I have been following his column on-line for quite a while now which made this book more intriguing to me.

"Half the Sky" comes from a Chinese proverb; "Women hold up half the sky" and, as one can tell from the subtitle, this book revolves around the plight of women in countries in Africa and Asia. The descriptions of the lives of these girls/women whose experiences range from sex trafficking/slavery, organized gang rapes, forced prostitution, maternal mortality, genital mutilation(cutting), and more....are both riveting and agonizing to read.

It would have been impossible for me to get through this book if it weren't for the amazing individual stories of these girls and women. Each chapter tells the story of a girl or woman who in some way challenges the culture in which she lives.

One of the stories that was especially meaningful for me was one about a Rwandan woman named Claudine Mukakarisa, who had been a victim of the 1994 genocide which killed her entire family. She and a sister had survived but were taken captive and repeatedly raped and beaten. Her sister was killed but she survived, became pregnant, delivered her baby at age 13 alone in a parking lot, somehow managed to survive, was taken in by an uncle who also raped her so that she had another baby and was then kicked out by the uncle.

Claudine somehow managed to survive by taking odd jobs, even managing to send her two children to school. At this point a woman from the U.S. who had joined an organization called Women for Women International, was matched up as Claudine's sponsor. Along with a regular exchange of letters, Claudine received $27 a month through the sponsorship and with this was able to start her own small business, along with keeping her children in school, and taking classes herself.

This is just one of the inspirational stories of this book which ends with a chapter giving specific ways that we the readers can help, always focusing on education, and grassroots efforts, acknowledging that ultimately the leadership and responsibility for these initiatives needs to come from the women themselves.

Has this book "changed my life" as my good friend said it would? Well, I can see how it could and I have definitely started to explore some of the websites suggested at the end of the book.... the sponsorship idea especially appeals to me so we shall see what becomes of that.......