My lousy week and some books I wish I had

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This has been a pretty lousy week* and all I want to do is crawl into bed and spend the weekend under the covers with a good book. Unfortunately this probably won't happen due my wonderful but demanding kids who seem to think that my sitting (or lying) down means that I'm available to carry out one of their many requests. Except for my four year-old who sees it as his opportunity to get done  things done that he knows I wouldn't approve of (which is pretty much everything, from bringing rusty pipes into the house to build with to painting the walls with chocolate milk). Ah, the joys of motherhood.


Unfortunately it's also been a while since I acquired any new books, not in electronic format** so if I do manage to get my weekend in bed I'll probably have to settle for a reread. But I have come across some new books recently which I'm very eager to get a hold of and jump into bed with ;)


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Ammonite by Nicola Griffith


Change or die. These are the only options available on the planet Jeep. Centuries earlier, a deadly virus shattered the original colony, killing the men and forever altering the few surviving women. Now, generations after the colony has lost touch with the rest of humanity, a company arrives to exploit Jeep–and its forces find themselves fighting for their lives. Terrified of spreading the virus, the company abandons its employees, leaving them afraid and isolated from the natives. In the face of this crisis, anthropologist Marghe Taishan arrives to test a new vaccine. As she risks death to uncover the women’s biological secret, she finds that she, too, is changing–and realizes that not only has she found a home on Jeep, but that she alone carries the seeds of its destruction. . . .


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The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D.: A Novel by Nichole Bernier


Before there were blogs, there were journals. And in them we’d write as we really were, not as we wanted to appear. But there comes a day when journals outlive us. And with them, our secrets.


Summer vacation on Great Rock Island was supposed to be a restorative time for Kate, who’d lost her close friend Elizabeth in a sudden accident. But when she inherits a trunk of Elizabeth's journals, they reveal a woman far different than the cheerful wife and mother Kate thought she knew. The complicated portrait of Elizabeth—her troubled upbringing, and her route to marriage and motherhood—makes Kate question not just their friendship, but her own deepest beliefs about loyalty and honesty at a period of uncertainty in her own marriage.


The more Kate reads, the more she learns the complicated truth of who Elizabeth really was, and rethinks her own choices as a wife, mother, and professional, and the legacy she herself would want to leave behind. When an unfamiliar man’s name appears in the pages, Kate realizes the extent of what she didn’t know about her friend, including where she was really going on the day she died. Set in the anxious summer after the September 11th attacks, this story of two women—their friendship, their marriages, private ambitions and fears—considers the aspects of ourselves we show and those we conceal, and the repercussions of our choices.


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City of a Thousand Dolls by Miriam Forster
(Expected publication: February 5th 2013) 


The girl with no past, and no future, may be the only one who can save their lives. Nisha was abandoned at the gates of the City of a Thousand Dolls when she was just a child. Now sixteen, she lives on the grounds of the isolated estate, where orphan girls apprentice as musicians, healers, courtesans, and, if the rumors are true, assassins. Nisha makes her way as Matron’s assistant, her closest companions the mysterious cats that trail her shadow. Only when she begins a forbidden flirtation with the city’s handsome young courier does she let herself imagine a life outside the walls. Until one by one, girls around her start to die. Before she becomes the next victim, Nisha decides to uncover the secrets that surround the girls’ deaths. But by getting involved, Nisha jeopardizes not only her own future in the City of a Thousand Dolls—but her own life.


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This isn't my usual fare but Michael's review of it, on Books on the Nightstand, sold me on it anyways.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn


 "'What are you thinking, Amy? The question I've asked most often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I suppose these questions stormcloud over every marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?'"


Just how well can you ever know the person you love? This is the question that Nick Dunne must ask himself on the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, when his wife Amy suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy's friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn't true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren't his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what did really did happen to Nick's beautiful wife? And what was left in that half-wrapped box left so casually on their marital bed? In this novel, marriage truly is the art of war...


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* Yup, more job rejections.  Plus my son got two of his teeth knocked out which totally freaked me out though I had to pretend it didn't because I'm the responsible adult (which can be such a drag). Thankfully they turned out to be baby teeth but he now looks like mini-vampire.


** As an Orthodox Jew I can't use my ereader on the weekends, which is the Sabbath.  This means that when I get a "real" book I save it for the weekends and if I read slowly I can make it last for several weeks. A book by Brandon Sanderson or Patrick Rothfuss can last me a month!