Book Reports

Remarkable Utah Women

by Christy Karras

This is a collection of short biographies of over a dozen remarkable women from Utah's history. I should have expected it, but I was surprised how much polygamy played a leading role in the lives of most of the women. Really interesting and a quick read. I highly recommend for book clubs!

The Postmistress

By Sarah Blake

This was a really interesting work of historical fiction and I'm not really sure how to even describe it. It takes place as World War II is beginning but before the United States becomes involved. But the story is really more about several people on both sides of the Atlantic, as they come to terms with the violence erupting in Europe.

Packing for Mars

By Mary Roach

A quirky look at space travel. What I learned was that I do not want to be an astronaut! I don't really like to go camping because of the inconveniences involved. Space travel is a million times worse! Seriously, though.....weightlessness does still sound kinda cool.

Priceless

By Robert Wittman

This is an autobiography about an FBI agent that specialized in art crimes. I listened to it, and it was okay. An interesting mix of "Burn Notice" and "White Collar"...without the really cute guys (so maybe a little pointless).

The Passage

By Justin Cronin

This book was totally not what I was expecting. The first section really made me think of "The Road" in all it's post-apocolyptic glory. But later it becomes a really exciting adventure story with a little romance and a whole lot of super terrifying vampires. Certainly not for everyone, but I really liked it. Looking forward to the next one in the trilogy.

Book of Awesome

By Neil Pasricha

This book is a collection of posts from a blog called 1000awesomethings.com The author writes about the simple but beautiful joys in life like pealing an orange in one piece, going to bed right after shaving your legs, waking up and realizing it's Saturday, and the smell of freshly cut grass. My only real complaint was that every single entry ends with the word "Awesome". Guess what!! The word awesome can be over used. Eventually, I started putting my hand over the last line of the post so I wouldn't have to read that annoying final AWESOME!

The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise

By Julia Stuart

I don't even want to talk about this book. Other than the little bits of fascinating history about the Tower of London this was a complete waste of my time! It had been compared to "Guernsey" but it was soooooo not! Don't read this book!

Blind Descent

By James M. Tabor

Deep cave exploration is a very dangerous hobby. This book talks about a number of teams of spelunkers who were trying to penetrate the deepest cave in the world. I listed to this book on CD, so this may just because of the narrator, but the author seemed to have written each sentence as a cliffhanger and the cavers almost died so many times I could barely keep from rolling my eyes toward the end. But, it was an interesting look into an area of science/extreme sporting that I NEVER want to explore. Logan cave was enough for me!