The Teaberry Strangler by Laura Childs

Another guilty pleasure! This one is a mystery series set in Charleston, SC with the added fun of a tea shop owner and her buddies planning tea-related events throughout the historic district.  It also includes recipes, although they can be hit-or-miss in terms of my own personal taste (but who doesn't love scones, cakes and tea sandwiches of any combination?).  The Teaberry Strangler had the least amount of actual detective work in the story, but succeeded, as most of the books do, in making me want to do-not-pass-go straight to Charleston.  Or at least sip on some tea.

Couch to 5K: Complete!

After an excruciatingly long period, I finally finished the Couch to 5K program! Some might argue that my on-again/off-again approach was less than orthodox, but all things considered, the goal was to finish and I made it through the week 9 exercises running more than a 5K and feeling pretty awesome about it.  That sounds like goal achieved to me!

I considered going through it a second time since I've had a setback in my general training, but I don't think I need to go back to the start, so I'm going to close this bad boy out and think about new fitness goals for the rest of this year and next.  I still have to work on my yoga and getting to a place where I can knock off the 4x a week workout goal, not to mention the 5K race which is tentatively scheduled for November 21. Stay tuned!

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

The third book in this trilogy is, for me, easily the best of the set.  Larsson picks up where the second book left off (don't listen to anyone who says you can read these out of order! It's a much better experience if you read them through and the last two have to be read in order for sure.) and the story moves at a faster pace than the others.  There are overly detailed digressions as is par for the Stieg-Larsson course, but they flow through the story and keep things moving along (and keep you guessing).

I'm very sad that there will be no more books in this series, but they finished with a bang and I really enjoyed them all.

More Than It Hurts You by Darin Strauss

This book got me thinking about what exactly makes a good story.  Unequivocally, I enjoy a book that completely absorbs me and leaves me wanting more at its end.  I love being surprised and engaged.  And I'm sure there are other things that make up the reasons that I prefer certain books over others, but I don't often go through asking myself why. 

More Than It Hurts You earned itself a spot on the recommendations list, although at times I found myself distracted and wondering if it was more than any other decent modern fiction novel.  It tells the story of a young couple and their infant son going up against a single mother doctor who is handling her own issues with her father.  The jacket sets your focus on the husband, Josh Goldin, and his active choice to be ignorant and happy.  Events in the novel challenge that, as you might imagine, and he rather openly thinks about this issue in a way that is sort of believable but a little heavy handed. 

Darin Strauss uses a few techniques to make this book different than a typical soul searcher or contemplation of your average privileged suburban couple enduring life's hardships.  The first, however, I believe to be more of a distraction (and part of the reason I was reluctant to admit that this really was a good book).  The characters in the novel talk just like you and I do.  That is to say, with abrupt jarring sentences, incomplete sentences and even incomplete thoughts.  Yes, I have read novels where I thought characters were too well planned, too thoughtful in their speech (and that's often the case in movies).  Here, I found it too much of an attempt to be real and distracting from the story.  I understood that these people were just like me, but I didn't need it to be so in my face. 

The other things that Strauss played with include the story structure and how he brings each part of the story to light, the method of story telling (embedding news articles about the characters to get background information in front of the reader) and pacing.  These elements were what set the book apart.  Ultimately, I believe the book is about perspective.  Not just Josh's, but everyone's perspective, including the reader.  As the story moved on, I found myself winking back at Strauss when I realized that he had even played with my perspective based on the choices he made in setting up the story.  Every author does this, but Strauss does it with just a heavy enough hand to punctuate his message and enhance the entire experience. 

So, I can't tell you more without ruining your experience, but this book surprised me, engaged me and definitely left me wanting more. 

The Secret Life of Bees

A few years back, I read The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd and really loved it.  It's really a lovely story about strong and interesting women and love and magic and, of course, honey.  Because I got a lot out of the novel, I'm glad that I waited a considerable amount of time before seeing the movie.

The movie is well-acted, well-written and visually pleasing.  It hits most of the high points and tells a great story.  I even forgot to pick at all the places it departed from the book while I was watching the film.  As far as most book-to-film attempts, I'd say this made a really good effort.

As I thought about it after the movie, there were a number of things missing that could have been built in more.  Like the magic.  I understand that might make a movie harder to sell and that current audiences want either completely fantastic or gritty realist films.  I like stories that are in between, that have the kind of magic you think maybe exists in the real world if you looked hard enough or if you had been able to go to August Boatwright's honey house.

Including more of this in the film would have taken it just a step farther for me and would have helped make more sense of certain aspects, such as Lily's sadness over bringing the real world into the honey farm and the real power of the spiritual community with the Black Madonna.  I'd say this is a solid B or B+, but it could have gone the distance.