BookMarks this Friday 12:00p to 1:00p

This Friday (10/25) CPCC Libraries will present a very scary BookMarks from 12:30 until 1:30 in LR404. The disscussion will focus on any books attendees have read recently, especially the ones that include ghosts, murder, and other frightening things. All are welcome to join in the disscission. This session will feature our own Margery Orell telling a good old fashioned tale that will keep you up at night. Free food and drinks provided.

Book Review: Courting Trouble, by Lisa Scottoline

I think if I ask for one thing from a book, it’s for it to feel authentic. Whatever the genre, I want the characters to feel real, even if the plot doesn’t hold up, even if the story is shaky, even if the characters irritate me. I want them to be written in a way that feels like I could meet them on the street, and they would act like a real person. Authenticity is not a word to describe Lisa Scottoline’s “Courting Trouble”. The plot intrigued me: a lawyer working on a big case goes away for a July 4th weekend then finds out that a woman staying in her home has been violently murdered.

The lawyer, Anne Murphy, is presumed by everyone to be dead. Instead of telling the police she’s alive, she uses her non-living status to work behind the scenes trying to figure out her killer’s identity. Hmm…intriguing. I figured it would be an entertaining legal thriller. And it began fairly well, until Scottoline threw in a crazy stalker who just happened to escape from jail, a complicated lawsuit, a sleazy client, and started writing unlikely dialogue between Anne and basically everyone else in the book.

Anne (who is, of course, devastatingly beautiful), has female coworkers and a boss, who she thinks hate her. Wouldn’t you know by the end of the book they’ll be her best friends. She also has a budding relationship with a character whose declaration of love midway through the book comes completely out of left field. The characters are paper-thin, and their behavior unbelievable. And Scottoline can’t seem to figure out whether her book should be humorous or suspenseful (a la Janet Evanovich, who has a great way of mixing humor and some suspense, along with richly drawn characters) so you feel like you’re ricocheting from one side to the other like a pinball. She’ll take a suspenseful, potentially scary scene and mess it up with an easy joke, like the one where she tries to catch the killer by having her characters dress like prostitutes in silly outfits. It just didn’t gel. If you are a fan of Scottoline’s books (and she has a series), you’ll probably like it…after reading the reviews, I seem to be the only one who didn’t! But if you haven’t picked up one of her novels before, I’d suggest moving on to the next choice.

2 out of 4 Stars

Reviewed by: Erin Payton, Library Services

Book Review: The Time Traveler’s Wife, By Audrey Niffenegger

This is by far one of the most interesting and well written books I have read in some time. It is diverse and stunning with description and with the path it takes you on to follow the story of a man who time travels back to when his wife was a child (when they first “met”) and forward through their entire relationship, marriage and having a daughter of their own. He has no control over this time traveling and this makes for a fascinating story. The chronological order of events was a little hard to follow but the book was so intriguing that I immediately re-read the entire story after reading it the first time. I simply couldn’t put it down and I wanted to try and pay strict attention to the timing of events – only the second time around! I was gobbling up the rich storyline the first time! The author is an artist as well as a writer and I completely enjoyed the references that were clearly made to different elements of papermaking and to college life in general. It is a keeper and remains in my collection of books I can’t let go.

4 out of 4 Stars

Reviewed by: Penny Overcash, Culinary Arts