This is a parable about setting out on your journey in life to find your true meaning in the world (or fortune). Santiago leaves his life as a shepherd in Spain to travel to Egypt. He was told by an old gypsy that he will find his fortune under the pyramids. Along the way of his journey Santiago meets people who help him on his quest and people who hinder his journey but all the time he follows the omens to reach his true destiny. I enjoyed this book and definitely think it’s worth a read. Maybe we can all follow our omens and meet the alchemist who can teach us to go for it.

Very interesting story around a true event about a flying race across the Pacific Ocean from California to Hawaii.

I really enjoyed this novel. I was inspired to read it after hearing the author speak and read excerpts from her book at EMPL. It is a fast read about why Grace left her family years ago.

Keru and Nate meet in college. Keru, an only child, immigrated from China with her parents. Nate and his brother grew up in a white, rural working class community with their parents. Despite their cultural differences Keru and Nate marry. In this short novel, set in two vacation spots (a rental house in Cape Cod and a rental house in the Catskills) we get a glimpse of how this DINK couple learn to navigate relationships with their in-laws, neighbors, co-workers, acquaintances, and each other. Weike Wang is a Boston University alumni!

Read this book!!! Penn is an author who is a stay-at-home dad; Rosie is emergency room doctor who eventually changes her preferred specialty to accommodate her youngest child. The couple has 5 sons, but at 3 years old the youngest tells them that when he grows up, he wants to be a girl. This book does an incredible job of showing what it’s like when a member of the family was born with the wrong genitalia. The author tells how different family members and community members react, and the impact this has on the child, the parents, the siblings, the grandmother, and friends. It’s also a novel about parenthood in general. I did not want to put this book down. It's insightful, heartfelt, full of quotes that I highlighted, and a must read.

I enjoyed this thriller. I was not a fan of the main character but I did enjoy the ending which I usually don’t with Thrillers.

After watching the TV series on Netflix, I borrowed this book to clarify some of the family relationships. I did not intend to read the book, but after a few pages I was hooked, so decided to continue. The book has many differences from the TV show, so there were still plenty of surprises. Jackie is a teenager from NYC whose parents and only sibling are killed in a car accident. She goes to live with her mom’s close friend, who she does not know. The friend lives on a farm in Colorado and has 10 children, all boys except one young girl. Jackie struggles to get used to all of the changes in her life, and deal with her relationships with each of the people in her new family and school.

This book was just what I needed for a summer read, light and breezy. Twin Olive announces to her very close family that she and her fiancé are going to elope in Hawaii so not to remind her sister, Amelia, of her failed marriage. The family plans to surprise the couple in Hawaii with a full blown wedding. Ami and her cousin Diego set off early to start the preparations. Ami is forced to plan the wedding with charismatic best man Brody and eventually they like each other. Was this whole elopement a ruse to get Ami out of her rut. Read and find out. I also recommend the audiobook, it is read with multiple actors and sound effects.

The glamorous , talented and beautiful Vanessa Chapman sequestered herself on n isolated Scottish tidal island called Eris. She did her art work and besides her philandering, mooch of a husband who vanished decades ago, also had a long-time association with retired doctor Grace Haswell. Although she had several stormy relationships she produced art work of note. Art historian James Becker who is obsessed with Vanessa is the curator of the Fairburn Foundation and after her death loaned some of her works to the Tate Modern. That's where a forensic anthropologist sees one of her sculptures made of objects one of which he believes is a human bone. It is up to Grace to figure out how to mislead these people.

I thought this was a very interesting book. When this book came out, I was too young for it, but I know it was a world wide phenomenon, and I always wanted to read it, so I finally got around to it. Even knowing the spoilers from hearing about them, reading about them, etc. it was still attention grabbing. I enjoyed how it told you parts of history and connected ideas you never thought of before. Even though it was fiction, it made you think about the world around you.