No! I Don't Want To Join A Book Club

Either by accident or on purpose, or "accidentally on purpose" as Mom used to say when I answered "it was an accident" when she asked why I had hit my little sister, I have been trying to break out of my reading comfort zones - trying new authors, different genres, etc.
Ordinarily I pass right by these stylized "fun" book covers - I don't want to read fun. But this one I picked up (probably because of the title and my track record with book clubs) long enough to read the blurb on the inside cover. "A delightful novel about letting go of youth and embracing the sassy curmudgeon within", I read. Curmudgeonly - that could describe my attitude lately. Reading on: "A wonderfully astute novel based on the author's own experiences, No! I Don't Want To Join A Book Club is the funny - and often poignant - fictionalized diary of an older woman a decade or two past her prime and content to have it all behind her."
Virginia Ironside currently writes the "Dilemmas" weekly advice column for The Independent in London. The heading of her website is "The Virginia Monologues". I've added it to my favorites list.
I laughed aloud so many times while reading her book and kept regaling Bud with passages too funny to keep to myself. I really identified with the 60+ year old diarist and her attitudes. Perhaps I should read more fun books.

I first read John Hart when I picked up the paper back version of his second novel, Down River, when we were on a trip. I liked it so much I came home to read his first novel, The King of Lies, which was the only book of his our library had at the time. Iron House is Hart's fourth book. The title comes from an orphanage in the mountains of North Carolina. Two brothers, the older, strong, the younger, weak, struggle to survive cold, hunger and brutal bullying from a gang of older inmates. When the gang leader is accidentally killed in self-defense, the older brother, Michael, flees the orphanage so the blame will be placed on him. Timing couldn't be worse, as the wife of a rich senator is on her way to adopt the two boys. She rescues the younger brother, Julian, but Michael can't be found.
For two decades, Michael has been an enforcer for one of New York's biggest mob bosses. Michael has met a woman and fallen in love. He wants out of the business and the mob boss has given his blessing. But the old man is dying and his son is intent on making Michael pay for his betrayal. Determined to protect the ones he loves, Michael takes his girlfriend back to North Carolina to the place he was born and the brother he lost so long ago. There he encounters a whole new level of danger, deceit and violence that leads inexorably back to the place he's been running from his whole life - Iron House.
There are some pretty gruesome torture scenes in this book. Why I can read some author's graphic descriptions and not others, I don't understand. Perhaps it is because Hart's scenes don't seem gratuitous. Perhaps he is just a better writer - he did win back-to-back Edgars for Down River and The Last Child - which is now on my 'find and read list'.

Elizabeth Adler is an author to read if you want to escape to Malibu, Amalfi, Venice, Tuscany, Paris or Monte Carlo - as in It All Began in Monte Carlo. I've read many of her novels and they do all provide a wonderful 'escape' from Midwest reality. Who wouldn't want to be in a fabulous hotel on the Mediterranean? This book has it all: romance, mystery (who's robbing top class jewelry stores of all their diamonds?), private jets, lots of champagne drinking, a movie star, a TV detective, and a mysterious Indian woman. It is a quick, fun, read - good for transporting one from winter in Iowa to sunny beaches in Monte Carlo.