What I read this week...

Happy Friday, All!

Hooray, it is "Book Club" day! Link up too with Heather!

This week I read two books...

Wendy Walker's Four Wives

(from her website)
In Wendy Walker’s debut novel, the picture-perfect lives of four wives and mothers begin to unravel against the backdrop of outrageous suburban wealth.
On the outside, Love Welsh, Marie Passeti, Gayle Beck and Janie Kirk seem to have it all – marriages to handsome, successful men, beautiful children and the kind of affluence most people dream of. But in the gilded suburb of Hunting Ridge, appearances mask a deeper truth. Behind the façade of contentment they struggle to maintain, each of these women must confront her own crisis. From infidelity and abuse to malaise and the haunting ghosts of a troubled past, their not-so-perfect lives are slowly exposed. And as springtime draws to a close, the women come face to face with the most difficult challenge of all – to reconcile their innermost desires with the path that each of them has chosen.

I will admit that even though it was a relatively quick read I didn't enjoy it as much as I initially hoped. I had second thoughts about even reading it because I figured it was the usual housewife/rich people/failing marriages story lines, and for the most part, that is true...but the ending made me smile; it just seemed more realistic and plausible. And the characters rope you into their lives and problems. I give it a solid B.

Next, I quickly devoured Anderson Cooper's memoir, Dispatches from the Edge

(from Harper Collins' website)

Few people have witnessed more scenes of chaos and conflict around the world than Anderson Cooper, whose groundbreaking coverage on CNN has changed the way we watch the news. In this gripping, candid, and remarkably powerful memoir, he offers an unstinting, up-close view of the most harrowing crises of our time, and the profound impact they have had on his life.

After growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Cooper felt a magnetic pull toward the unknown, an attraction to the far corners of the earth. If he could keep moving, and keep exploring, he felt he could stay one step ahead of his past, including the fame surrounding his mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, and the tragic early deaths of his father and older brother. As a reporter, the frenetic pace of filing dispatches from war-torn countries, and the danger that came with it, helped him avoid having to look too closely at the pain and loss that was right in front of him.
But recently, during the course of one extraordinary, tumultuous year, it became impossible for him to continue to separate his work from his life, his family's troubled history from the suffering people he met all over the world. From the tsunami in Sri Lanka to the war in Iraq to the starvation in Niger and ultimately to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans and Mississippi, Cooper gives us a firsthand glimpse of the devastation that takes place, both physically and emotionally, when the normal order of things is violently ruptured on such a massive scale. Cooper had been in his share of life-threatening situations before -- ducking fire on the streets of war-torn Sarejevo, traveling on his own to famine-stricken Somalia, witnessing firsthand the genocide in Rwanda -- but he had never seen human misery quite like this. Writing with vivid memories of his childhood and early career as a roving correspondent, Cooper reveals for the first time how deeply affected he has been by the wars, disasters, and tragedies he has witnessed, and why he continues to be drawn to some of the most perilous places on earth.

I was already an Anderson Cooper fan (go ahead, blame it on his occasional guest hosting gig on Regis and Kelly) so I was looking forward to reading his memoir. It is quite a read, and it is super fast at just over 200 pages. I learned a lot more about him as a person and reporter and my heart broke for his family tragedies that occurred early on in his life.  It makes me appreciate his job more and he doesn't take no for an answer; he is one determined and strong man! I liked learning about why he is a reporter and why he reports all the rough and tough stories; along with how he deals with all that he has has seen and been a part of. Even if you don't like him, or have never heard of him, just read this. I give it a solid A.

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What have you been reading?