"The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeno Society Jubilee" By Carolyn Brown

A fun, easy read. It would be easy to spin off other stories on the characters in this book since each had a well developed story. I don't think the other books in this series are available for kindle from my library, so I will have to do an alternate plan to read them. This book was not as steamy as her other novels I have read; think chick-lit not romance. I enjoyed how the small town gossip traveled in the small town. If you like reading or watching social drama playing out while not being a part of it, you'll probably enjoy this book.

"The Big Over Easy" By Jasper Fforde

I read this with my book club. We were looking for something light to read. While I found the references to nursery rhymes and other stories/subtitle suggestions to be clever, I found the writing style to be sort of distracting. I finally got use to it 1/3-1/2 of the way through the book and fell into a reading rhythm from there. The newspaper clippings at the beginning of each chapter were sometimes relevant, sometimes funny, and other times annoying since they didn't add to the story. Overall, I was happy with the main story and I'd read a sequel probably. I'd say that everyone in the book club had fun with the book whether they liked it or not.

A very secondary character in the book was the 1 year old son of Inspector Jack Spratt (a main character). The boy, Stevie, really had nothing to do with the main story, but since I currently have a 1 year old, I found these lines in the book to be amusing and true-to-life:

“Da-woo!” screamed Stevie, waving a spoon as he scattered food around the room, much to the pleasure of the cat, with whom, it was generally agreed, Stevie had an “understanding.”

“Da-woo!!” yelled Stevie, jumping up and down. In the absence of anything more productive to do, he grasped large handfuls of scrambled egg and squeezed until it oozed between his fingers like yellow toothpaste.

Stevie then stared at Prometheus with all the seriousness that one-year-olds can muster, which is quite a lot. “Da-woo,” he said at length.

Stevie screamed “Da-woo!” enthusiastically and hurled his spoon on the floor because he could.

"Left Bank" By Kate Muir

(Thanks for the book loan again Laura) :)

Wow.
This book is not what I thought it would be (from reading the back cover). It sounds sort of nice & pretty with a hint of suspense. It is actually more gritty, rough & satirical with a sense of bursting from a cocoon.

This book is not for someone that upsets at reading about poor morals. (The book goes rather into depth with the husbands affair.) However, there is always a silver lining in the cloud... not going into much detail on that.

Not really light reading, but not heavy either. Overall enjoyed the more serious nature of the book & would recommend it. Especially to those people who'd understand philosophy a bit more than me. I suspect that, if one were reading this book in a literature class, one would get more out of it than myself.

A quote of a quote in the book...

"To have been always what I am; and so changed from what I was"