BOOKS AND GOOFY

Healthy Brain, Happy Life by Wendy Suzuki My rating: 3 of 5 stars Blurb (from Goodreads) : Dr. Wendy Suzuki one day woke up and realized she didn’t have a life. As an almost-40-year-old award-winning college professor, world-renowned neuroscientist, she had—what many considered—everything: tenure as a professor at New York University; her own very successful neuroscience research lab; prizes for scientific discoveries on cognition and memory; articles published in prestigious scientific journals. As a woman and a scientist, she was the envy of her peers and lauded by her superiors. On paper, she had a stellar career and an impeccable record. What could she possibly be missing? Everything else. Suzuki was overweight. She was tired. She was lonely, had strained work relationships, and for the first time in her life, completely without direction. So she resolved to change her life. The first step--get moving. Everyone knows that exercise makes you feel better—that when you hit the ...

Thicker Than Water by Brigid Kemmerer My rating: 4 of 5 stars Blurb (from Goodreads):   On his own. Thomas Bellweather hasn’t been in town long. Just long enough for his newlywed mother to be murdered, and for his new stepdad’s cop colleagues to decide Thomas is the primary suspect. Not that there’s any evidence. But before Thomas got to Garretts Mill there had just been one other murder in twenty years. The only person who believes him is Charlotte Rooker, little sister to three cops and, with her soft hands and sweet curves, straight-up dangerous to Thomas. Her best friend was the other murder vic. And she’d like a couple answers. Answers that could get them both killed, and reveal a truth Thomas would die to keep hidden… My thoughts: Halfway through this book, I was feeling disappointed. I thought I was reading some cheesy teen romance - the genre said 'paranormal romance'; where was the paranormal ! But then things started to fall into place and I started to...

Present Danger by Stella Rimington My rating: 3 of 5 stars Blurb (from Goodreads): MI5 intelligence officer Liz Carlyle has just been despatched to Northern Ireland to monitor the brutal breakaway Republican groups who never accepted the peace process and want to continue their 'war'. The situation becomes perilous when her informant turns tail. My thoughts: This was a pleasant thriller/crime novel to read. I would give 4/5 for plot. I think what let me down a bit was the characterisation. Sometimes the characters felt stiff and a little too clichéd for my liking.

Time and Again by Jack Finney My rating: 3 of 5 stars Blurb (from Goodreads): Transported from the mid-twentieth century to New York City in the year 1882, Si Morley walks the fashionable "Ladies' Mile" of Broadway, is enchanted by the jingling sleigh bells in Central Park, and solves a 20th-century mystery by discovering its 19th-century roots. Falling in love with a beautiful young woman, he ultimately finds himself forced to choose between his lives in the present and the past. A story that will remain in the listener's memory, "Time and Again" is a remarkable blending of the troubled present and a nostalgic past, made vivid and extraordinarily moving by the images of a time that was...and perhaps still is. My thoughts: I didn't quite like the writing style of this book but the storyline was alright. I always pictured time travel to include a time machine but the method employed in this book seemed feasible enough. In reference to the plot...