"Pretty Little Secrets" by Sara Shepard is a PLL book that takes place out of order: it's a collection of novelettes about each of the girls in turn, taking place the Christmas after they find out that Mona was the first A but before they find out Real Ali is still alive. Hanna joins a fitness boot camp because she feels fat when her soon to be stepsister Kate moves in, and falls for the instructor. So does another girl in the class, and she ends up beating Hanna to the punch. Aria is home alone at Christmas, and her old boyfriend from Iceland shows up, on the run from the law for trying to protect some wildlife back in Iceland. Aria wants him to be able to stay in the States, so she forges her mom's signature and runs off to Atlantic City with him and they elope. When he goes all eco-terrorist and releases a pair of wild tigers into the population, Aria realizes her mistake and goes back to Rosewood without him. Emily takes a job as a mall Santa in order to infiltrate a group of girls who have been stealing and playing pranks. She finally feels like part of the group when she is exposed as a spy. And Spencer goes to Florida for the holiday where she and her sister Melissa fight over a guy until they discover he's in his thirties and married. Then they work together to get revenge.
Jonathan Safran Foer's "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is his beautiful and surprisingly short book about a little boy named Oskar, whose father is killed in 9/11. Oskar is a strange kid, but sweet. He and his father used to have grand games of exploration, so when Oskar finds an envelope with a key labeled "Black" in a vase up on the top shelf of his dad's closet, he goes on a mission to find out where the key goes. Along the two year journey, he meets a lot of really incredible people and finally does figure out who the key belongs to, but it makes him sad because that means that's the true end of his dad, now he has nothing left. It was very powerful and very sweet, I really enjoyed it.
"Two Truths and a Lie" is Sara Shepard's third in the Lying Game series. Thayer is home and looks like a viable suspect in Sutton's murder, but we learn that it wasn't him: the night of Sutton's disappearance someone stole her car and hit Thayer with it while Sutton looked on. Thayer called Laurel to come pick him up and take him to the hospital while Sutton hid, fearing Laurel wouldn't help if she knew Sutton was involved. After Laurel takes Thayer to the hospital, Sutton is left alone in the desert without her car, and whoever ran Thayer over on the loose. Looks like Laurel is back on the table as a suspect.
I recently read the "Paris Wife", which talked about Hemingway's years in Paris. In the book she mentioned how Hemingway made fun of Sherwood Anderson's book "Dark Laughter" in his book "Torrents of Spring". So I read them both to see what I thought. I liked "Dark Laughter", it reminded me of Faulkner's "Wild Palms" for some reason. Bruce up and walks out on his wife Bernice one day, and ends up in a wheel making factory, where he becomes friends with Sponge, one of the long time workers there. He also starts having an affair with the factory owner's wife, Aline. When she gets pregnant she decides to leave Fred and run off with Bruce, who is now miserable again because he doesn't want to be tied down. "Torrents of Spring" was very short and silly, but it did have a few humorous bits to it. It just seems sad that Hemingway felt the need to skewer his friend like that.
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