It is hard to believe that summer is over with this beautiful September weather and tomorrow already October 1^st!!  I hope everyone had a wonderful summer and that you read some good books.  I had a great summer which included a cruise to Alaska the first week of July.  I took a few books with me but did not do a lot of reading!!  However the rest of the summer I read!!!  I love sitting on my deck reading until the sun goes down.  Some of the books that I read were:

The Ten Year Nap by Meg Wolitzer is about a group of educated women who decide to raise their children and not work outside of the home. It is the story of four friends who live in New York.  They have been stay at home mothers for ten years.  They left jobs as corporate lawyers, investment bankers and film scouts.  They really did not plan to be out of  the work force for a decade and now at age forty they feel a bit lost without professions and must confront the choices they made.  It is an entertaining book.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Heidi W. Durrow tells Rachel’s story.  She is the daughter of a Danish mother and a black G.I.  Her parents have split up and her mother brings her and her siblings to America to live.  Rachel is the only survivor of a family tragedy.  Her African American grandmother who she has never met gets custody of her and she moves cross country.  Rachel lives her childhood hoping her father will come and take her to live with him.  She now lives in a mostly black community and struggles with the question whether she is black or white, plus she is struggling with all the unanswered questions surrounding the tragedy.  It is an interesting book.

Strangers at the Feast by Jennifer Vanderbes takes place on Thanksgiving day.   It is not a normal Thanksgiving for the Olson clan.  Ginny has decided that she would like to host the meal instead of the traditional meal at her parent’s home.  Ginny has just adopted a young girl from India, which surprised the family. This will be the first time the family meets their new member.  Ginny also has just purchased an older home, which needs a lot of work.  The holiday falls apart when the family finally discovers that the oven is not working and in the early evening they move all of the food over to Ginny’s brother’s home.  The reader learns a lot about each member of the family throughout the book.  There is a bit of a mystery about the adoption.  The brother Dennis and his wife are having marital problems due financial troubles.  The parents Eleanor and Gavin both reflect on their changing lives.  Meanwhile there is a second story about a young man named Kijo and his grandmother who has lost her home.  This of course ties in with the Olson family and moving the Thanksgiving dinner to the brother’s home turns the holiday into a tragic event.  This is a book that is hard to put down!

The Hundred Foot Journey by Richard C. Morais  begins in India and ends in Paris.  Hassan Haji is born in Mumbai.  His family owns a restaurant.  They are forced to leave India. They settle in London but there are more problems and they eventually end up in the French village of LumiEre.  Here they meet Madame Mallory, a French chef, who is not happy that they open a restaurant across the street from hers.   Eventually she realizes the talent that the young Hassan has and takes him under her wing.  This is the story of  Hassan’s life in the culinary world.

The Red Thread by Ann Hood is the story of six couples adopting baby girls from China.  Maya runs the adoption agency after losing her baby daughter.  She wants to bring happiness into other peoples lives.  This tells the stories of the adoptive parents and also  the heartbreaking stories of the mothers who must give up their babies. The Chinese legend of the red thread is that our children are connected to us by an invisible red thread.   A good book and a fast read.

This is just a few of the books that I read and enjoyed this summer.  I hope that all of you had a great summer discovering new books.