Books I've read...part 1

I think I'd like to log here the books I've read with a short one sentence description.  Then I could reference it when people ask me for book recommendations.  Or just send them here.  ;)

I wrote a list in August, so I guess I'll pick up from where I left off there.  Then I'll try to remember to do this a few times a year.

1. The Gift of Rain, Tan Twan Eng   A boy from Penang is torn between loyalties to his white family (he is mixed) and his Japanese sensei when Japan takes over his country during WWII.  It was...meh.  Beautifully written, but it was almost like the author was trying too hard to make it deep and thoughtful.
2. Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn.  If you haven't read this you should.  A man's wife goes missing and he is the primary suspect.  Full of twists and turns, the characters and plot in this book are twisted and unpredictable.  A very fun read.
3. Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner.  A historian delves into his grandparents' history in the newly settled west through his grandma's letters.  Narrative switches back and forth from the grandson in the present to the grandmother.
4. Lone Wolf, Jodi Picoult.  A brother and sister fight over whether to take their dad off life support after a car accident puts him in a coma.  In classic Picoult style, there is courtroom drama and the characters take turns telling the story...including the voice of the father through his books.  Lots of interesting facts about wolves, since he studied wolves and even lived with them for a bit.
5. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides.  Probably one of my favorite books this year.  It is the story of a hermaphrodite who is raised as a girl until the age of 15.  But it is so much more than that.  A richly layered story going back 3 generations and in the process showing where the mutation in his genes came from.  Very very well written.
6. The Violets of March, Sarah Jio.  A woman finds a diary at her aunt's house and discovers secrets from her family's past along with weird parallels to her own life.  Kind of boring and not well written.
7. 12.21, Dustin Thomason.  An epidemic linked to the ancient Mayans occurs on 12-21-12.  A doctor and Mayan scholar race to find a cure.  This was fun to read right before the actual end of the Mayan calendar.
8. We Need to Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver.  In letters written to her husband, a woman tells her life story as well as her son's...trying to understand what went wrong to make her son kill 11 people in a school rampage.  Very timely, now.  
9. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving.  Boy tells the story of himself and his friend who is an instrument of God.  I had a really hard time getting through this one.
10. Crow Lake, Mary Lawson.  Story of 4 orphaned siblings and their small, isolated Canadian town that helps to raise them and keep them from getting split up.  Story is told in flashbacks when the girl comes back to the town for Christmas as an adult.
11. The 19th Wife, David Ebershoff.  Two stories told in juxtaposition...Brigham Young's 19th wife's story from the 1800s and a present day 19th wife accused of killing her husband while her son who was kicked out of the cult tries to prove she didn't do it.
12. The Language of Flowers, Vanessa Diffenbaugh.  A girl raised in foster homes learns to live life emancipated and speaks her emotions through the language of flowers and their Victorian meanings.  Lots of flashbacks to the foster mother who taught her about flowers.  I read this for book club, and I liked it more than I thought I would.  Still not one of my favorites, though.
13. The Boy in the Suitcase, Lene Kaaberbol.  A woman receives a phone call to retrieve a suitcase and finds a boy trapped inside.  A thriller as she is hunted for having the suitcase and tries to find out who he belongs to.
14. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Rachel Joyce.  A man in his 60s gets a letter from an old friend who is dying and decides to hand deliver a response...and ends up walking 600 miles to do so.  The story is about his evaluating his life and the people he meets along his journey.
15. The Twelve, Justin Cronin.  This is the sequel to The Passage.  If you liked the first book, you will really like the second.  I felt like he tied up a lot of things that were left hanging, and took us on another adventure...not quite as wild and confusing as the first book's.
16. The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes.  This won awards and stuff.  I really couldn't get into it.  The first part is about this man's childhood friends...and then it flashes to the present when he reconnects with some of them.  Ugh.  Full of philosophical drivel.  Unless you LIKE philosophy.
17. 11/22/63, Stephen King.  This is King at his finest.  This is another of my favorite books this year.  A man from 2011 travels back in time to 1958 through a rabbit hole and decides to try and prevent the Kennedy assassination   And there are layers upon layers to that story as he lives in the past leading up to the assassination.  It is richly layered and full of interesting fun things about the late 50s that make it feel very authentic.  I really recommend this one.
18. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood.  Tale of a future society where fertile women are kept as slaves to propagate the species.  Really weird and a rather unsatisfying ending.
19. The Children of Men, PD James.  In an attempt to get a better ending to a similar idea, I read this book after #18.  Humankind cannot reproduce and society changes as the population ages.  The cousin of the head leader of England is drawn into a rebellion group.  A better ending, but not as well written.
20. The Roots of the Olive Tree, Courtney Miller Santo  This is the story of 5 generations of women who are being researched for their longevity genes.  As the geneticist finds out those secrets, we find out the secrets in each woman's past.  A very satisfying chick book.  I liked it quite a bit.
21. Ape House, Sara Gruen  A bonobo ape sanctuary gets bombed and the apes are sold to an unknown buyer after their handler is harmed in the blast.  She teams up with a reporter to find them and get them back.  This is full of interesting facts about bonobos and well written.  But I didn't find the ending as satisfying as her other book, Like Water for Elephants.
22. This Year It Will Be Different, Maeve Binchy.  A collection of short stories about families at Christmas.  Very typically Maeve Binchy, so if you like her stuff, you will likely like this book.

I'm finishing off the year reading Winter of the World, by Ken Follett.  I just tried The Satanic Verses, because I was curious and it sounded interesting...but I just couldn't get into it.  I'm getting better about putting down books I really am struggling with...but I feel like I need to keep a separate list of those so that I don't just keep re-reading the same books I don't like!