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Gosh – I haven't done a proper book report in over a year!  It's not like I haven't been reading or anything.  It's my second favorite past-time.

Here are few notables (good and not so good).

A number of the books I say I 'read' I actually listened to in the car while driving to and fro my father's house.  It's a two and half hour drive and nothing makes the time go by quicker than listening to a good book on tape (or cd or iPod, as the case may be).  

This is one I listened to and I think the narrator's delivery helped enhance the story.  I initially thought that Beth Hoffman's "Saving CeeCee Honeycutt" was a paler version of "Secret Life of Bees" but part of that may have been due to the fact it was narrated by the same person.  

Yes it is a coming of age story of a young girl who loses her mother and has a less than sympathetic father but I think the books stands on its own merit.  All of the characters are immensely likable (or at least understandable) and nicely fleshed out in the story. 

And I love any book that includes house descriptions.  Part (most actually) of the story takes place in CeeCee's great aunt's Savannah mansion and I wanted to move into the sleeping porch with her. 

Oh Anita.  Why do your characters have to be so utterly unlikable? 

Anita Shreve's "A Change in Altitude" is the story of a young couple, living in Africa while the husband, a doctor, is doing research.  A tragedy occurs and by the end of the book you are wishing it had happened to all of the main characters. 

Yet something about Anita Shreve's writing keeps you hanging on until you get to the end and throw the book down with disgust. 

I think the characters are supposed to be understandable or relateable but mostly you just want to slap them. 

I had a big issue with a plot line involving a minor character never being resolved.  It's like the author forgot about him when trying to wrap up the story.  Maybe she was just as anxious to be done with it as I was.

 Amy Stewart's "From the Ground Up" is a little gem of a book.  It is the memoir of the author's first little garden in Santa Cruz, CA.  I picked it up because this time of year I want a little gardening inspiration and because the author was gardening on a small scale in a climate familiar (and in some ways similar) to the one I am in.

The book chronicles her rookie mistakes and her successes in creating a small garden in Northern California.  One of my favorite features of the book is that at the end of each chapter there is a short how-to section, based on her own trial and errors. 

It's a sweet, easy read of one woman's experience getting to know her garden.

This review is more for an entire series, rather than a single title.  I recently discovered M. C. Beaton and her Hamish MacBeth series. The first of which is "Death of a Gossip".

This is a non-treacly mystery series that takes place in the Scottish Highland.  Hamish MacBeth loves his small town of Lochdubh and will do anything, including resisting promotion, in order to stay the town's detective. 

Death of a Gossip is the first in the series but I found that I could skip around the series pretty easily.  M. C. Beaton has charming, reoccuring characters (including MacBeth's cat and dog) in each book. You feel like you are just picking up where you left off no matter which book in the series you are reading.

I would classify this a cozy mystery, yet sophisticated enough to keep you interested. 

One of my favorite things is discovering a prolific author that I haven't heard of before.  When I get through the Hammish MacBeth series I am going to move onto her Agatha Rasin series.