Books finished in October 2017

Here it is December and I never even got around to blogging the rest of our trip after the first week, and we were gone for nine weeks altogether. Maybe I eventually will, but don't hold your breath.

All but one of the books I read in October were on my Kindle, all of the Kindle books being free. We were in the U.S until October 2nd, when we flew to Costa Rica via Guadalajara and Mexico City. We had a ten-hour layover during which we just hung out in the airport, because after our flight leaving at midnight and having virtually no sleep, we weren't up to trying to leave the airport, especially since when I looked for ideas on-line as to what to do in Guadalajara, most of the suggestions were to go someplace outside of the city. Various members of the family slept at various times throughout the day and I read a lot of the day. We were then in Costa Rica for three weeks (well, about 18 hours less than three weeks), returning to San Francisco via Mexico City. (That's another long story, but it worked out very well, and we even went into the city for the afternoon, which was pretty cool.) One night in California at my sister's house, then on to Germany, where we stayed until November...so maybe I'll mention more about that if I blog November's books...

In the meantime, here are the books I read in October this year:

The Wisdom of Walt, Jeffrey A. Barnes  This wasn't a very long book and had some interesting tidbits about Walt Disney, but the overtone of obsession with making money and with Disneyland was kind of off-putting.

The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger  This was the one paper book I read in the entire month, gleaned from the bookcase of my host sister, Cristina. It was quite a fascinating idea, with a man who time traveled, but had no control over when or where. He often met up with himself in other times, but especially often met up with his wife-to-be, from when she was about six years old. There were many poignant and a few tragic moments, but not, really, a whole lot of story. That each chapter started with a date and the respective ages of the two main characters (or three, if Henry was represented twice), which really helped to keep it all straight for me. Then on the flight from Mexico City to San Francisco, I was able to watch the movie. It was surprisingly well-done (I actually approved of some of the changes they made, for various reasons, but they of course left out far, far too much), but there is no way I would have been able to follow it at all without having read the book first.

Triple Creek Ranch, Book One, Unbroken, Rebekah A. Morris  Umm...I had to think about this for a minute. If I remember correctly, it was a totally predictable Christian romance, not a genre I favor...

Okay, I just looked it up (and, incidentally, it's still free at amazon), and it's not actually a romance. But it is totally predictable Christian fiction, where the good guys are too good and the bad guys are too bad and there's one terrible character who becomes perfect. Still not a genre I favor.

Thomas Jefferson, Hourly History  Like the other Hourly Histories, able to be read in about half an hour, with a good overview of Thomas Jefforson's life, and with a few details that were new and interesting to me and which I have completely forgotten in the intervening two months.

Amish Faith Renewed, Becca Fisher  Well, now, that was interesting: I had to look it up, and the description did not spark any memories. Amish romance. I started looking at the reviews to see if they would say something else interesting, and I found a one-star review with the title "Reads like a summary" that I thought might be apt to copy and paste, and then noticed the name of the commenter: it was me, in August 2015. So I actually read the book in October 2017 for the SECOND time, and still don't remember it. With no concern about copyright or plagiarism, since it's what I wrote, here it is: I'm just glad this "book" was free and that it took less than ten minutes to read. I kept hoping that the introduction would end and something approaching character development and a story would happen, but they didn't.

The Author Startup, Ray Brehm  This was all about marketing a book for the purpose of making money. In fact, it was even about writing a book for the purpose of making money. And the author must know about that, since he's apparently written lots of books about how to write books to make money, and he links to them over and over again. He seemed rather obsessed with making money. This one was free, the others aren't. I didn't buy any of them.

Angels Watching Over Me, Michael Phillips  I actually enjoyed and remember this book. I think it was a little unrealistic for the white plantation owner's daughter and the black slave girl to both be so utterly clueless about the realities of the society around them, and to so easily become friends, but it was still a good story. It's set in the South of the United States just after the Civil War. Unfortunately, it ends rather abruptly, my assumption being because then the author hopes that it will make you buy the next book after getting this one free. It wasn't a bad book, but not good enough for me to spend money on the sequel.