The TIme Travellers Wife - by Audrey Niffeneger

Ok, I think the fact that I saw the movie halfway through reading the book really colored my view of the book. It seems this happens most of the time. Either I read the book first and am dissappointed in the movie, or I see the movie first and then am either really pleasantly surprised with the book, or the movie gives everything away and the book ends up dragging. In this case, it was the latter.

If you've seen the movie, it only covers about half of the book. Oddly the half it didn't cover (the first half) was the half of the book that I enjoyed the most.

The book alternates from the perspective of both the Time Traveler (Henry) and his wife (Claire), although the first half of the book is set prior to their marriage with small snippets here and there that show their future. The movie shows little of that "backstory", but then again in this story it's not really back-story, since Henry only met Claire when she was younger AFTER he met her when he was older. For Claire it is back-story. She grows up knowing this strange man who appears in her forest naked, beginning when she is 6 years old. However, for Henry none of those visits occurred until after they had met when she was 20 and he was 28. Confused yet? Don't worry it all makes more sense in the book. The author does an amazing job of jumping through time without completely losing the reader.

The movie doesn't include much of that back-story and really starts when Henry meets Claire for the first time, and tells the story of their marriage. Of a woman who gets used to her husband just disappearing in the middle of things and being gone for hours or weeks at a time, with no idea of when he will return. I guess in a way it's much like the life of a wife of an FBI agent or spy, except that at least in those cases the wife usually gets some sort of warning.

Unfortunately, since I watched the movie when I was halfway through the book, I knew how it would end. Of course, they changed a few things for the book, but I was able to see where it was going. In some cases that makes a book easier for me to read, in this case it made it drag just a bit more. The book is rather long to begin with and there are bits and pieces that don't seem to fit, bits of story that seem to not have a reason for being. Many times those bits fit together later to fill in a piece of the puzzle of why something else happened, but often not. The last 50 or so pages I just wanted to be done with the book already, and I was really pissed off with the ending - this is a case where the movie ending was better than the book ending (while not really being all that different).

All in all, it is a good story and it's told well. It's worth reading but I doubt seriously I will read it again.

Run - by Ann Patchet

This is a book about family and about politics and about parents who want you to be everything they weren't. It is about family in so many forms.

Bernadette Doyle wanted children, she wanted many children, so after only being able to have one son she and her husband Bernard decide to adopt. They are happy to adopt one black son but even happier when they hear that the mother does not want her sons separated and offers them her other son, who is 18 months old. Little did they realize that just a few short years later Bernadette would die.

The boys grow up, the real son seems to be a disappointment to his father who goes on to be the Mayor of Boston. But, the younger boys are nothing but joys in many ways, but still disappointing because they are not going into something like medicine or politics.

The story transpires over a 24 hour period of time. After attending a special engagement where they hear Jesse Jackson speak, one of the boys is pushed out of the way of a moving vehicle. He suffers only a broken ankle but the woman who pushes him out of the way is badly injured. Her 11 year old daughter is left standing alone as no one is there to claim her, so Bernard and his boys take her home with them. It is then that she informs them that she knows them much better than they know her. She's been watching them her whole life. This is a book of secrets revealed. Of how a Mother's love never dies whether it's the love for a son she gave birth to or a child that she has taken as her own.

While the book starts out slow and I honestly almost gave up before I was a few chapters in but I'm glad I kept going. It takes a bit to pick up but it did and it was worth it. In the end I finished it in two nights, so it reads pretty quickly. The book promises twists and turns but honestly it's predictable. The few twists you don't see coming are so far out of left field that they don't even really matter in the scheme of things. I like books that really make me think and all I really think about this one is that a month from now I won't even remember having read it.

Same Kind of Different As Me - by Ron Hall & Denver Moore

This book was really not at all what I expected. I picked it up at the bookstore one day on a whim. It looked like it might be interesting and then after I bought it I found it was an upcoming book for one of the library reading groups I was going to. I started it late so I didn't end up going to the book club to discuss it, but it is well worth discussing.

"Same Kind of Different As Me" is written by two men and is the story of their separate journeys that eventually merged. Denver Moore was born in Lousiana on a Plantation to a family of share-croppers. Slavery was long since passed, but share-cropping had replaced it, meaning that the black families still lived in small shacks on the white family's land and still worked the land in exchange for those houses and whatever they needed, but nothing more. They were not paid in money, and were given "credit' at the "The Man"'s store to buy the things they needed. Credit they would have paid off with the cotton they harvested if the harvest had ever been more than what they owed; remaining forever in debt to "the man". Once Denver was grown he eventually jumped a train to Texas where he found himself homeless but felt it was still a step above the life he had previously lead.

Ron Hall, on the other hand, had grown from the son of a poor farming family to a multi-million dollar art dealer, living in the lap of luxury, but kept grounded by his wife. His wife convinced him to join her in her efforts to help the homeless after she dreamt that that was something she needed to do. They began showing up regularly to the shelter and helping to cook and serve meals and it wasn't long before they were helping in other ways. Ron's wife had another dream about a homeless man who would change things. When she first saw Denver, she knew he was that man and tried to convince her husband to befriend him; not at an easy task.

Over time, Ron & Denver did become friends and they taught each other a great deal. This book is their story and one well worth reading. Is is the story of how one person can create great changes in the life of many. It is the story of dreams that do come true and lives that can be changed. I can understand why this book made the best seller list and has stayed there.

I don't know what I expected when I picked it up, but it wasn't the story I found or the way that it touched my heart and made me actually glad I had read. Few books leave you with that kind of feeling.