The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Well, I finished Mary Higgins Clark's I Heard That Song Before and I give it 1 1/2 out of 4 stars. I just feel like Mary (considering I've read every one of her books, I have the right to be on a first name basis with her) has gotten to the point recently where she's just cranking books out to crank them our or God forbid, collect the royalties? Her recent books all have similar plots: Adults who have suppressed memories of events from their childhood that leads to murder and/or their near death. They are all the same and I'm sort of over it. Now that doesn't mean I'll give up on old Mary. I'm just going to pray that she gets a new idea and goes with that - even if it means she doesn't publish within 6 months of her last novel.

So, now I'm on to a really uplifting book: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. This is the true story of how in December 2003, the author coped after her husband died suddenly and before her eyes from a coronary while her daughter, Quintana, was hospitalized and in a medically induced coma as a result of pneumonia and septic shock. Quintana eventually recovered after 4 weeks only to collapse two months later where she underwent brain surgery to relieve a massive hematoma. The novel was also made into a one-woman Broadway play which is currently running in New York, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Though it isn't going to be a "feel-good" book, I'm sure it will make me glad that I have what I have and remind me that life can change on a dime and you are never prepared. (Tragically, right before this book was published in August 2006, Quintana died).

I'll let you know how it was.