Turn the Page.....Thursday?!

September snuck right up on me and Turn the Page Tuesday hosted by Adrienne came right along with it. I believe that August is playing hide 'n seek with me and I may still find it yet. What do you think my chances are? Not real good, I'm guessin'.

Without further procrastination, here is my Turn the Page...well, whatever day it is.

Instead of focusing on just one book this time, I thought I'd take you along to all of the places that my reading took me this past month. Above you'll see a gorgeous English country garden, similar to the garden the I visited thanks to author Sophie Kinsella in The Undomestic Goddess . We got to meet Samantha Sweet, a high-powered London attorney, and along with her, we had made a high-powered mistake that cost our clients MILLIONS, so a melt-down happened, as those things do, and we boarded a train to nowhere, which turned out to be a sweet country village outside of London. Because of a couple of misunderstandings, Samantha took a job as a housekeeper, not even knowing how to make a piece of toast. It was a funny, delightful read that I enjoyed much more than I thought I was going to. I'd even read it again, which is very rare.

Then, up to the Himalayan mountains, to a remote village called Viscos we go. there we watch a stranger arrive in town with a backpack full of gold bars. Miss Prym is a bartender, the youngest adult in town, as everyone leaves as soon as they are able. The stranger tries to tempt Miss Prym to lead the village in an act of evil in order to prove that no place and no person is all good and that bad will always win out. A very interesting book about the struggle between good and evil. Who will win out in the end? Join author Paulo Coelho to find out in The Devil and Miss Prym.

My daughter, Shilo, had brought me over the Twilight series a month or so ago. I had said that I wasn't going to read them ~ to much hype surrounding that series ~ but she insisted and I finally cracked up Twilight. Oh My Goodness! I loved it, reading it in just about 2 days. Bella is a junior in high school when she moves from Phoenix to Forks, Washington to live with her Dad. There she meets the beautiful and intriguing Edward Cullen and his equally beautiful foster family. Turns out Edward's a vampire. His family live in this area (and when I say this, I mean this. It's set right here in the Pacific Northwest that we call home. The movie was filmed in and around Portland) Danger and romance ensue, making for a great, fun read. On to New Moon....

Then last, but not least, (come to think of it, none of them were least this month!), comes Four Souls by Louise Erdrich. In this novel, we meet Fleur Pillager, walking with her from her native Ojibwe reservation to Minneapolis where she is determined to take revenge on the lumber baron who has stolen her families tribal lands, destroyed them and left them. Fleur doesn't count on finding this man a cripple in his own body or the compassion that she feels for him. This story goes back and forth, told through the eyes of the man's sister-in-law and also through the eyes of Fleur's family back on the reservation. Written very well, it has it's moments of heartbreak and stark reality, as well as humour and fun. One of my favorite lines from this story is below, about the love of a woman for a child who was not hers, but can also be said for many, maybe any, other type of love.
"I'd never had the experience of this awed foolishness, this trance. I seemed quite brainless. I heard myself give out coos, hoots, burbles - noises I had never before uttered, animallike and almost desperate. Sometimes I gazed so long into the baby's face that I forgot my own face. Or I touched the shining hands and forgot my own borders, melted skin through skin. As I made my way home each night, I had to remind myself that he was birthed of Madame and Mauser, that I was nothing and no relation. Yet I had given away my own heart, and once that is done there is no easy way to take it back."

Yes, there is no easy way to take it back. So true.

Whew, feel like I just ran a marathon. Four books down in 2.2 seconds. And the crowd goes wild. (Maybe I'm a bit delirious and just need some sleep?)
Where has your reading taken you this month?