Silent Waters by Jan Coffey

An adventure in a nuclear submarine....The hijackers are taking it out to sea and  up the coast toward New York,  and the captain and a woman  submarine expert are locked in one of the rooms..My kind of book.....

Below Stairs by Margaret Powell

The classic Kitchen Maid's Memoir  that inspired Upstairs, Downstairs, and Dowtown Abbey
It's a true story of a maid who was born in 1907..She describes her life as a parlor maid, cooks helper, and finally s cook.   It's a way of life that is gone forever...

Last Train to Elkmont by Vic Weals

It's a history of the mountains when men were cutting timber and taking it out by train through Elkmont....A look at life on the Little River in the Great Smoky Mountains...Lots of old black and white pictures taken       in the early 1900's .

Bible

 I just read the Bible from cover to cover.  I read the New Testament first in the Phillips Modern English version.  Then I read the Old Testament in the Living Bible Paraphrased edition.  Both were easy to read in the modern English. The Old Testament was a surprise to me.  I expected it to be mild and sweet like the New Testament, but I discovered otherwise...I would read a book every morning at the breakfast table and then discuss it with JMB ( my bible expert). He has read the Bible over and over for many years.  Now I'll start again  with the New Testament....

Lilibet

Lilibet... the Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II,  by Carolyn Erickson.     .Lots of books out right now about Elizabeth 11.  I liked this one. It portrays a highly spirited woman who loves her dogs and her horses and most of all her country .She doesn't see her children much when they are young....their grandmother keeps them....Phillip doesn't look good in this book...He isn't home much..he's out partying. 

The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

I checked out this book because it mentions Knoxville as one of the places the author lived.  It's a biography of a girl growing up in Liberia.  She lived through Liberia's sad history as a child living in the wealthy class of the country then...Her life gets harder as the country changes.She comes to America and then goes back to Liberia years later....Sad...

Meigs Line by Dwight McCarter and Joe Kelly

I saw this book at the Sugarlands Visitor Center and I ordered it from the library...It's written by retired ranger McCarter and it describes journeys he and his friend made in the mountains to find the original boundary between the United States and the Cherokee Nation...The line went through the Smokies and into South Carolina and over the Blue Ridge Parkway.  The two men did not follow trails, they "shot" the historical line and walked through bushes and rhodendron hells and over bluffs and caves and through rivers...Reading the book is like taking a hike in the mountains....I loved it......

Smoky Mountain Magic by Horace Kephart

I saw this book at the Sugarlands Visitor Center...a book by Horace Kephart that I hadn't read, so I checked it out of the library.  It is fiction that he wrote in 1929, and his great  granddaughter inherited the manuscript .  She published it  with proceeds donated to Great Smoky Mountain National Park....It's about a man living in the mountains...semi-biographical.

Must Love Dogs by C...Cook

A funny little paperback I picked up at McKays...She is trying to find a husband in the lovelorn ads...

I just read Robin Cook's newest....Death Benefit...I like his books there  is always a lot of action and this one was good. 
The heroine is a beautiful med student named Pia who solves a mystery at Columbia Med School...

Dog On It

Spencer Quinn's first book about Bernie and Chet and the Little Detective Agency...A fun book to read

The Dog Who Knew Too Much by Spencer Quinn

If you like dogs, you'l like this dectective story about Bernie and and his dog, Chet.  They solve the mytery of a lost boy from a summer camp overnight trip.  You get the dog's perspcetive as well as the humans.  It's humorus and a big adventure.  I enjoyed it...  

The Litigators by John Grisham

I was number 319 on the waitng list for this book and I finally got it last week.  It is John Grisham's laterst , and I think each book he does get better than the last one.  It's all about sleazy lawyers who chase amublances and barely make a living.  They finally got a big case about a medicine that killed their client and the book is all about the trial and things leading up to it..Lots of personal interest in the characters...I really really liked the book...Now I have to wait for him to write another one.....

A Walk for Sunshine by Jeff Alt

I read every book I can find about the Appalachian Trail since we walked more than 800 miles of it a few years ago. The first book that got me interested was Ed Garvey's..We even named our dog after him. Jeff Alt is a good writer and he covers the trail fast enough to keep the reader going with him.  I relived the miles to Skyland Drive, and discovered that the miles in Pennsylvania are rocky and in the White Mountains the trail is like a rock climb..Maine has many rivers to cross.  Mount Katahadin is a mountain climb.  The book is an enjoyable easy chair hike..

False Impression by Jeffrey Archer

An exciting adventure from New York to England to Romania.  It involves a stolen Van Gogh painting and the woman trying to return it to the rightful owner...Jeffrey Archer writes so that you feel that you are in the middle of the  action...It's fast moving like a good adventure movie... You learn a lot about great art and how it is valued...

Into the Great Solitude, An Artic Journey by Robert Perkins

This is the  travel adventure of one man in a canoe  on the Black River which flows through the northwest territories of Canada from Great Slave Lake to the Artic Ocean He went in summer time so  he had light for 24 hours...He liked to travel at night when the sun was just on the horizon.  I am halfway through the book and I am enjoying the beautiful descriptions of nature.  He had a camera with him and the trip was made into a PBS documentary.

Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua

I read this one after hearing about it from one of my fellow music teachers.  It is about a Chinese immigrant mother married to a Jewish dad and they have two daughters.  It is more of a memoir/recollection of how she tried to raise her girls to be less "American." In stereotypical Asian fashion, she decides to accept nothing less than perfect schoolwork and required them to practice piano (and eventually violin) for many hours a day.  She ends up butting heads with her youngest daughter's strong spirit and is challenged to change her ideas about how to raise her daughters. This was a particularly thoughtful read for me, since I've taught many Asian students who fit the stereotype. I also ended up feeling a little bad because I never practiced that hard or that much growing up, and I know I could have been better if I had. The author is extremely type A and the fact that she is wrote this book about how she is trying to be less controlling seems, ahhh, what's the word??? Controlling and attention-seeking? I don't know.  It really was a good short read and one that may leave you with more insight into the thoughts of mothers like her.