"Woman in the Mirror" by Cynthia Bulik was a wonderful self help guide on how not to confuse how you look with who you are. She gives practical advice on how to work through negative thoughts and feelings about yourself to move towards a more positive and healthy way of thinking about yourself. I found her straightforward advice very useful.
"In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larson was one I started reading a few months ago and didn't get to finish before it was due, so I had to borrow it again and read the last 60 pages. William Dodd was an intellectual and historian when President Roosevelt asked him to be the ambassador to Germany in 1933, a role no one else wanted. Dodd took the job, thinking it wouldn't be that taxing and would give him time to finish his multi-volume work on the history of the Old South. Unfortunately, once Dodd and his family arrive in Germany he realizes the job is going to be much more work than he thought. Dodd becomes increasingly alarmed by what he sees going on around him as Hitler rises to power, and tries to warn Roosevelt and others back home, but no one listens to him. It was chilling to think that he tried so hard to be taken seriously and wasn't with such devastating consequences. As usual, Larson's work was well written and highly readable.
I read Jennifer Crusie's "Crazy for You" after reading on the Fiction_L listserv about how funny and light it was. I was in the mood for something that would make me laugh out loud. Well, it definitely wasn't funny at all. There were some lighthearted, funny moments, but the overall tone was so dark and scary that I didn't enjoy the funny parts. It was about a dangerous stalker named Bill, who is so deranged after his girlfriend, Quinn, leaves him that he refuses to even believe they aren't still together. Despite Quinn buying her own home, Bill persists in his dangerous thoughts. He stalks her, breaks into her house, has a copy of her key made so he can walk in whenever she isn't home. He locks her dog outside of the gate and calls Animal Control to pick it up. He tries to have the dog put down several times, and Quinn is able to rescue her at the last minute. She starts dating a new man named Nick, and Bill threatens him. The climax comes when he packs up his clothes and brings them to her house and unpacks his things while she is in the shower. When she gets out and demands that he leave, he attacks. Luckily the neighbor saw what was going on and called Nick, who comes to the rescue. Um...obviously the ladies on the Fiction_L listserv have a *very* different idea of "funny" than I do! Good lord, I was wincing throughout the whole book, praying that Quinn and her dog Katie weren't going to be permanently harmed by Bill. It's not that it wasn't an interesting book, I just would have enjoyed it much more if I hadn't been expecting fun and lighthearted.
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