current reads.

Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
A Poisoned Season by Tasha Alexander
One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus
Daughter of the Saints by Dorothy Allred Solomon

What are you all reading?!

Love the one you're with by Emily Giffin

Love the one you're with is the third novel by Emily Giffin I've read in the past month or so.  This book does not have the same characters as the other, which was somewhat disappointing and somewhat of a relief.  Giffin writes a lot about infidelity.  People cheating, people thinking about cheating, or people wondering where that line is between cheating and not cheating.

Ellen runs into her former love, Leo, on a New York street.  Leo, a journalist, lands Ellen, a photographer, an awesome work gig.  Ellen doesn't tell her husband, which is the beginning of the snowball that continues with lies, deceits, secret meetings, and a move out of NY.  Motherless Ellen moves back to her husband's hometown of Atlanta and finds herself disenchanted, lonely, and bored.  Family and old money don't make anything perfect, and Ellen realizes everything she thought she wanted don't fulfill her at all.

I think this is the last Giffin book I'm going to read.  I need a break!  These books masquerade themselves has chick lit, but they hide deeper issues that are hard to read sometimes.

Under the banner of heaven by Jon Krakauer

I've recently become quite the Krakauer fan.  I bought this book at the airport in San Diego, and had a hard time putting it down once I started.  Under the banner of heaven is essentially an expose on fundamentalist Mormons and their practice of polygamy.  Not being Mormon, I just don't get most of their belief, rituals, or practices.  But the book was fascinating nonetheless.

After a woman and her infant daughter were killed by her brother-in-law claiming to have been told by God to commit murder, Krakauer attempts to reveal secrets of what men and women will do in the name of religion.  It brings up the age old debate of faith versus science.  People of all religions can find religious justification in religious texts to explain almost any types of behavior.  Taking that macroscopic view, Krakauer narrows that concept down to just Mormonism.  The result is interesting.

I enjoy reading about different religions, especially facets of certain religions like polygamy that are so alien to me.  One of the benefits of reading Mormon history is that most of it happened in the US.

Something Blue by Emily Giffin

After getting sucked into the hype of this book's prequel, Something Borrowed, I fell in love with the characters and therefore had to read this one.  Something Blue picks up right where Something Borrowed leaves off.  So much so that the books could have been one long book. 

Something Blue is about redemption.  The popular girl in high school grows up  to realize her manipulative, bossy ways won't let her survive as an adult, even if it did get through most of her twenties.  In Darcy's case, it took her fiance to leave her for her best friend for her to begin to reevaluate her life.  Even though Darcy is a beautiful, vivacious brunette, it's harder to hate her than you'd think.  After revealing she's pregnant, taking a leave of absence from her glamorous job, and moving to London, Darcy becomes a "real person."  She realizes the behind her pretty face, she actually has empathy, kindness, and the ability to form real, lasting friendships with other females that aren't based on competition.

Even "perfect" women screw up.  Even bratty, self-absorbed women can remake themselves.  The book's ending actually surprised me.  I didn't see the lead-up to it that I guess actually started in the first book.  At first I was disappointed that Dex and Rachel didn't show up more in this book, but as I kept reading, I found myself interested in Darcy.  During book 1, she seemed like such a superficial bitch that I didn't feel that bad that her fiance was cheating on her. 

I actually just finished another one of Emily Giffin's books, but I'll save that for another day.