I loved Glitter and Glue. Reading it made me feel as if I were talking to my best friend who was telling me her story about the five months when she launched herself far from home into a country – and family -- she didn't know. It is an honest and heartfelt memoir about her experience caring for children who had lost their mother, children who pretended not to need her, but did ultimately need her. It is funny, endearing and loving.

I loved Glitter and Glue. Reading it made me feel as if I were talking to my best friend who was telling me her story about the five months when she launched herself far from home into a country – and family -- she didn’t know. It is an honest and heartfelt memoir about her experience caring for children who had lost their mother, children who pretended not to need her, but did ultimately need her. It is funny, endearing and loving.

I loved Anna Quindlen’s latest book. From the first paragraph “First I was who I was. Then I didn’t know who I was. Then I invented someone and became her. Then I began to like what I’d invented. And finally I was what I was again.” I thought she was talking about me and as I read – sentence after sentence, word after word -- I was convinced she was writing my thoughts, my feelings. Her series of wise and wonderful essays depicts perfectly what it is like to travel, as a woman, through life. A delicious memoir that I will read over and over.

I really wanted to love this book and requested it because a review said it was in the same category as Time and Again and The Time Traveler's Wife, two books I loved and read more than once. How mistaken that reviewer was! It was nothing like those two classics. Keeping track of the two main characters (Sean and Michael) what they were all about and what they wanted to do as well as understanding the language was a struggle. I had to keep flipping back to find out who was the subject of the chapter I was reading. I had such high hopes for this book and am disappointed that it wasn't what I expected.

All it took for me to fall in love with Tom Perrotta’s “The Leftovers” were these first two lines: “Laurie Garvey hadn’t been raised to believe in the Rapture. She hadn’t been raised to believe in much of anything, except the foolishness of belief itself.” Perrotta creates instantly believable characters placed in an unbelievable situation and carefully weaves a story that under the pen of any other writer might sound implausible. Last night at 1 a.m., with 30 pages left, I reluctantly headed to bed, but a half hour later, I had to get up and keep reading to find out “what happens” to people I had grown to know and love. Even when I read the last paragraph, I didn’t want it to end. That’s an amazing book!

I began reading Ten Thousand Saints with great hope. The opening two sentences -- "Is it dreamed?" Jude asked Teddy. "Or dreamt?" Beneath the stadium seats of the football field, on the last morning of 1987 and the last morning of Teddy's life, the two boys lay side by side, a pair of snow angels bundled in thrift-store parkas." -- grabbed me. But sadly, as I read further, the story kept losing me; it seemed overly wordy. I'm not saying it wasn't well written. But the subject matter -- the traumas of teen age boys in 1980s New York City -- simply didn't inspire me and it was a struggle to finish.

After reading “Radio Shangri-La” by Lisa Napoli, one thing I can say is “I wish I could visit Bhutan!” But sadly I’m afraid that as Bhutan opens up to the world, it will cease to be the same unspoiled country that Napoli discovered.

As I read about Napoli’s adventures, I felt as though I were traveling with her, getting acquainted with her Bhutanese friends -- Ngawang, Pema, Pink and the others – and sharing their lives. Although I haven’t lived in another country, I traveled throughout the world for many years in my job for a non-profit organization. Reading this book brought back lovely memories of my experiences and the people who changed me by giving me a different perspective on my life and values.

However, partly because Napoli kept us at arms length, only teasing us about her problems and experience instead of bringing us into the heart and soul of her changed self and partly because I was more interested in Bhutan and its people, I didn’t enjoy Napoli’s personal musings as much as I did her descriptions of this beautiful country, these delightfully open-hearted people and their lives. All in all, though, it was an enthralling book.