To Kill a Mockingbird

Synopsis:

Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
My Thoughts :

I liked this book a lot, it expresses a lot of racial / social problems happening in the world. It's actually a simple story with not much going on but a short climax nearing the end, but I enjoyed it altogether.

The Secret Life of Bees

Synopsis :
Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her harsh, unyielding father, Lily Owens has shaped her entire life around one devastating, blurred memory--the afternoon her mother was killed, when Lily was four. Since then, her only real companion has been the fierce-hearted, and sometimes just fierce, black woman Rosaleen, who acts as her “stand-in mother.” When Rosaleen insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily knows it's time to spring them both free. They take off in the only direction Lily can think of, toward a town called Tiburon, South Carolina--a name she found on the back of a picture amid the few possessions left by her mother. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters named May, June, and August. Lily thinks of them as the calendar sisters and enters their mesmerizing secret world of bees and honey, and of the Black Madonna who presides over this household of strong, wise women. Maternal loss and betrayal, guilt and forgiveness entwine in a story that leads Lily to the single thing her heart longs for most.
My thoughts :
I really enjoyed this book though it wasn't very exciting at first. After a while I couldn't put it down. I liked the way Sue Monk Kidd expressed the emotions of each character in this book. And the power of women is very strongly described here. It's a must read!

Tuesdays with Morrie & The Five People You Meet in Heaven

Synopsis :

Tuesdays with Morrie :

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.
For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.
Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?
Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class": lessons in how to live.
Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world

The Five People you Meet in Heaven:

Eddie is a grizzled war veteran who feels trapped in a meaningless life of fixing rides at a seaside amusement park. As the park has changed over the years -- from the Loop-the-Loop to the Pipeline Plunge -- so, too, has Eddie changed, from optimistic youth to embittered old age. His days are a dull routine of work, loneliness, and regret.
Then, on his 83rd birthday, Eddie dies in a tragic accident, trying to save a little girl from a falling cart. With his final breath, he feels two small hands in his -- and then nothing. He awakens in the afterlife, where he learns that heaven is not a lush Garden of Eden, but a place where your earthly life is explained to you by five people who were in it. These people may have been loved ones or distant strangers. Yet each of them changed your path forever.
One by one, Eddie's five people illuminate the unseen connections of his earthly life. As the story builds to its stunning conclusion, Eddie desperately seeks redemption in the still-unknown last act of his life: Was it a heroic success or a devastating failure? The answer, which comes from the most unlikely of sources, is as inspirational as a glimpse of heaven itself.

My Thoughts:

These small books by Mitch Albom are two of the most interesting books I have ever read. Tuesdays with Morrie makes you want to get to know Mr. Morrie because he's such a unique and pleasant character..this book was sad but you don't want to cry cause Mr. Morrie wouldn't want you to.

The Five People you meet in Heaven makes you wonder on life and how it all works..are there people in your life that you will meet again on your way to heaven?

The Food Trilogy by Joanne Harris

Synopsis - Chocolat

Chocolat begins with the arrival in a tiny French village of Vianne Rocher, a single mother with a young daughter, on Shrove Tuesday. As the inhabitants of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes clear away the remains of the carnival which heralds the beginning of Lent, Vianne moves with her daughter into a disused bakery facing the church, where Francis Reynaud, the young and opinionated curé of the parish, watches her arrival with disapproval and suspicion.When he realizes that Vianne intends to open a chocolate shop in place of the old bakery, thereby tempting the churchgoers to over-indulgence, Reynaud's disapproval increases. As it becomes clear that the villagers of Lansquenet are falling under the spell of Vianne's easy ways and unorthodox opinions, to the detriment of his own authority, he is quick to see her as a danger. Under Vianne's influence an old woman embraces a new life, a battered wife finds the courage to leave her husband, children rebel against authority, outcasts and strays are welcomed... and Reynaud's tight and carefully ordered community is in danger of breaking apart. As Easter approaches, both parties throw themselves whole-heartedly into the preparations; Vianne for the chocolate festival she plans to hold on Easter Sunday, Reynaud into a desperate attempt to win back his straying flock. Both factions have a great deal at stake; the village is bitterly divided; and as the big day looms closer their struggle becomes much more than a conflict between church and chocolate - it becomes an exorcism of the past, a declaration of independence, a showdown between dogma and understanding, pleasure and self-denial.

Synopsis - Blackberry Wine:

What if you could bottle a year of your past? Which one would it be? Which time of year? What would it smell like? How would it taste?
These are the questions which began Blackberry Wine: the second volume of my "food trilogy" and the story of Jay Mackintosh, a writer of pulp fiction with one literary success to his name and a dwindling grasp of reality. Trapped between an unresolved past and a humdrum present, suffering from writer's block and the beginnings of alcoholism, Jay has lost his bearings.
But the accidental discovery of six bottles of home-brewed wine, a legacy from an old and vanished friend, seems to hold the key to a new beginning, a means of escape, and a final reconciliation. For there is something magical about this wine; something which brings the past to life, an agent of transformation. Under its influence, time can work backwards and the dead return to life - as Jay finds, when, on impulse, he gives up his glamorous London lifestyle and escapes to a half-derelict farmhouse in a remote village in Gascony, where two mysteries await him; a ghost from the past whom no-one else can see, and Marise, a reclusive widow with ghosts of her own...

Synopsis - Five Quarters of the Orange :
This completes the "food trilogy" (Chocolat, Blackberry Wine) and explores some of the same themes, although this third book is much darker than the previous two. Set in a small village near Angers on the Loire, it deals with the fortunes of a widow and her three children, Cassis, Reine-Claude and Framboise, against the background of the German Occupation. With no father and only their harsh and overworked mother to care for them, the three children inhabit a strange and brutal world in which adults are a different race, and which works according to a completely different set of moral values. Into this circle comes Tomas Leibnitz, a German soldier who secretly befriends the three children and leads them step-by-step into a world of betrayal, blackmail and lies.

A lifetime later, Framboise, the last survivor of the ill-fated group, returns under a different identity to the village in which she was born, meaning to make a new start as the proprietor of a small crêperie-restaurant. But she is still haunted by the past and by an unresolved mystery, recalled once more to life by the encrypted writing in her mother's old book of recipes.

My Thoughts :

The movie - Chocolat - was what made me want to know more about other books from the same author. The other books proved just as tasty - Blackberry Wine and Five Quarters of an Orange..both are delicious, made me hungry reading them.. She really knows how to capture the taste and beauty of France and the countryside.. I found out that most are based on her personal experiences..some of the characters are actually real people in her life. I just love books by Joanne Harris!

His Dark Materials

Synopsis - The Northern Lights (part 1):

The Northern Lights forms the first part of a story in three volumes. The first volume is set in a world like ours, but different in many ways. The second volume is set partly in the world we know. The third moves between many worlds.
In The Northern Lights, readers meet for the first time 11-year-old Lyra Belacqua, a precocious orphan growing up within the precincts of Jordan College in Oxford, England. It quickly becomes clear that Lyra's Oxford is not precisely like our own - nor is her world. In Lyra's world, everyone has a personal dæmon, a lifelong animal familiar. This is a world in which science, theology and magic are closely intertwined.

Synopsis - The Subtle Knife (part 2):

The Subtle Knife is the second part of the trilogy that began with The Golden Compass. That first book was set in a world like ours, but different. This book begins in our own world.
In The Subtle Knife, readers are introduced to Will Parry, a young boy living in modern-day Oxford, England. Will is only twelve years old, but he bears the responsibilities of an adult. Following the disappearance of his explorer-father, John Parry, during an expedition in the North, Will became parent, provider and protector to his frail, confused mother. And it's in protecting her that he becomes a murderer, too: he accidentally kills a man who breaks into their home to steal valuable letters written by John Parry. After placing his mother in the care of a kind friend, Will takes those letters and sets off to discover the truth about his father.

Synopsis - The Amber Spyglass (part 3) :

The Amber Spyglass brings the intrigue of The Northern Lights and The Subtle Knife to a heartstopping close, marking the third and final volume as the most powerful of the trilogy. Along with the return of Lyra, Will, Mrs. Coulter, Lord Asriel, Dr. Mary Malone, and Iorek Byrnison the armored bear, The Amber Spyglass introduces a host of new characters: the Mulefa, mysterious wheeled creatures with the power to see Dust; Gallivespian Lord Roke, a hand-high spy-master to Lord Asriel; and Metatron, a fierce and mighty angel. And this final volume brings startling revelations, too: the painful price Lyra must pay to walk through the land of the dead, the haunting power of Dr. Malone's amber spyglass, and the names of who will live - and who will die - for love. And all the while, war rages with the Kingdom of Heaven, a brutal battle that - in its shocking outcome - will reveal the secret of Dust.

My Thoughts :

I found out about this trilogy from a friend of mine and luckily got a really good deal buying it. The first book is called Northern Lights, which I really enjoyed. The second book, the Subtle Knife was good too and the strangest and most extreme is the third book, the Amber Spyglass..there's a lot of anti-religious stuff in this third book, so it might not really appeal to you if you're very religious.. I think the most brilliant idea in the trilogy is the fact that everyone has a daemon..your soul in the form of an animal..I heard that they're making a movie of this..it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.. Angels, talking animals, scientific experiments..you have to read it!

The Sword of Shannara & related books

Synopsis :
Long ago the world of Shea Ohmsford was ruined by the wars of ancient Evil. Now mankind must compete for the Earth with many other races-- gnomes, trolls, dwarfs and elves. But Shea, the half-human, half-elven adopted son of an innkeeper, knows little of such troubles. Shady Vale, where he grew to manhood, seems a haven for peace.

Then into Shady Vale comes the giant, forbidding figure of Allanon, possessed of strange knowledge and even stranger Druidic powers. To Shea, he reveals that the evil Warlock Lord, supposedly long dead, is once again plotting to destroy the world. Against this Power of Darkness the sole effective weapon is the Sword of Shannara, which can be used only by a true descendant of Jerle Shannara. Shea is the last living heir: on him rests the hope of all races! When Shea protests that he is no hero, the Druid states that he must reclaim the Sword. In the morning Allanon is gone, leaving behind a mysterious warning note.

Soon a Skull Bearer, dread minion of the Warlock Lord, flies to the Vale, seeking to destroy the last heir of Shannara. Rather than risk destruction for the Vale, Shea and his skeptical half-brother Flick flee, drawing the Skull Bearer after them. Allanon's cryptic orders have directed them to Culhaven, home of the dwarfs. Somehow they must go there to await him, despite the Skull Bearers and other unknown, dire perils. And beyond Culhaven, they must enter the ravaged Northland, where the Warlock Lord holds total dominion.

Thus begins the seemingly hopeless quest of a simple man against the greatest power of evil the world has known. Valiant comrades join him against a host of foes and soul-wrenching dangers. Terrors and wonders increase as the overwhelming armies of the Warlock Lord move toward war. But in the end, Shea alone must confront the Lord of Evil without knowledge or hope to guide him.

My Thoughts :

When I first grabbed this book from the shelf, I imagined something like the Lord of the Rings.. I wasn't wrong, but not entirely right either. The magic and adventures are similar, but there are a lot of different ideas in these stories by Terry Brooks. There's actually a book that came before The Sword of Shannara, which is called First King of Shannara (that's how it all began). Stories that came after The Sword are also just as exciting. This series is one of my personal favourites. In the Sword of Shannara Trilogy there are : The Sword of Shannara, The Elfstones of Shannara, & The Wishsong of Shannara. The following series called the Heritage of Shannara consist of 4 books : The Scions of Shannara, The Druid of Shannara, The Elf Queen of Shannara, & The Talismans of Shannara. After that came the Voyage of the Jerle Shannara trilogy which include : Ilse Witch, Antrax & Morgawr. The last trilogy so far is the High Druid of Shannara, with the titles Jaarka Ruus, Tanequil, & Straken.