The Women in the Castle

I don't usually write ....hmmmm that is not true....often I make notes as I read.  But tonight the words caused me to rush to my computer to "get them down" for my memory!

As the women and children spend the night somewhat in hiding as the Russian troops were in their "yard".....

Marianne and Anya sit in the kitchen.....they are waiting for the Russians to come to the door to get the last of the Snapps .....when the knock at the door comes, the women answered it together.....

The horse is on the spit...the men leave with the liquor.  And as the women sat together in the dark, a weird peace descended on Marianne:

She had found a partner and for the moment this was enough.

At this point, there are only two women who have joined her in the castle:  Conny's wife and son and Anya and her two sons.  Conny's wife does not seem to be a partner.....but this woman who Marianne has rescued and did not know before seems to pull her weight.  She cooks....something that Marianne is not well versed in.  She add something to the group!

So I will add one of the reviews or blurbs so that the blog post makes sense:

Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined.....

 Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once-grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resister murdered in the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows.

Olive Kitteredge

I usually put some sort of review into this space.  But none of the reviews that I read tonight captured the essence of this book for me....so no review.

When Olive goes to her son's house to meet her new daughter-in-law who has brought children with her into her new marriage and is now pregnant with Olive's grandchild, I thought to myself:  I DON'T like this woman!  I don't care what happens to her....I am through with the book!

But I turned the phone back on and finished the book.  And was not sorry.  The last scene when Olive decides to climb into bed with her new friend gives one hope that indeed Olive will continue to LIVE and give her new friend reason to live as well.  That is what life is about.  Not living the perfect life, but making one's imperfect life work.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

From a review:  

“Fantasy of the very best.” Wall Street Journal

A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn’t thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she’d claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse where she once lived, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

I read this book because it is the choice for book club this month.  I am not sure that I will be able to attend, but the book was a quick and easy read.....so why not?  I liked the book.  My thoughts as I read this book were:  hmmmmmm...Why do we read?  To be entertained?  To learn?  To have something to do while we knit?  There are a million reasons.  I believe that this book was all about being entertained and listening to a story while I knitted.  That is OK.

The Rosie Effect

I didn't like this sequel to the Rosie Project quite as well as I liked the the Rosie Project.  But I don't finish books that I don't like....and I did finish it.  Don is so likable....Rosie is likable as well.  You can't help but hope that their marriage "makes it" in the long run....with a little help from their friends!