A quick book review...

So, not this last Booking It 2010 update on Life as Mom but the one prior to that, someone linked up and reviewed The Reserve: A Novel by Russell Banks.  It sounded like a good book so I picked it up.  And then spent the last three weeks struggling to get through it.  It was a fiction novel set in the 1930's but for some reason, I couldn't keep that thought in my head.  I kept thinking it was a more current setting until I'd get to a section about the Hindenburg or something like that.  And four or five times through the book there were short sections (maybe two pages) that were in an italicized font and I have no clue how those sections related to the rest of the book.  I know, strange. 

So - I finished the book.  I'm not normally one to sit a book down without finishing it.  I know for sure that this is a book that I'll never pick up again.  It just wasn't that good to me.  I did note that Russell Banks wrote other books (listed in the front of the novel) and wondered if they were any better (or worse) but didn't take the time at the library tonight to even check one out.

On my list next is a book by Eileen Goudge called Stranger in Paradise.  I read her book Woman in Red last year (maybe the year before?) and another by her (but the title is failing me now) and LOVED Woman in Red.  The second one was good but not as good as the first.  So I'm holding out high hopes for this one!
I've also got two Karen Kingsbury novels - Waiting for Morning and Moment of Weakness.  I think I've read the first one - at least, reading the flap sounded familiar but I don't remember how it ended so I picked it up again.  The other one is the second one in her Forever Faithful series.

I also put a request in for James Patterson's Pop Goes the Weasel, the next book in the Alex Cross series.  I had grabbed one of his books last week when I was there (Where the Wind Blows) but it wasn't an Alex Cross book so I took it back (I read it a long time ago - just like I have all his other books).

And I'm still on the waiting list for The Help by Kathryn Stockett (another recommendation from a LifeasMom link).  I can't wait to get my hands on it.  So for now - I'm off to read Eileen's Stranger in Paradise.

Oh yeah - anyone ever read Robert Parker?  The librarian suggested him but when I read about a character in multiple books, I want to start at the beginning and I wasn't sure which to pick up first so I decided to do some research first.  But - if anyone has read him...good, bad, indifferent?