Restart

Restart by Gordon Korman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I loved this funny tale of a bully who falls off a roof while doing something illicit, then wakes with near total amnesia and is pretty horrified to find out what a jerk he's been. I enjoyed reading from the other characters' points of view as well as from Chase's, and I loved watching him choose to be a better person the second time around. It was a little unbelievable that losing his memory would have instantly transformed him into a kinder, better person, but I'm in no way an expert on head trauma, so I will totally give Gordon Korman the benefit of the doubt on this one and hope he did his research.

The other thing that kept this book from being a 5-star middle grade story for me was Chase's dad's abrupt switch from being a grown-up bully into a supportive father at the very end. That didn't ring true. I would like to think he, too, could change! But probably not without a lot of therapy. Dude was a jerk for a very long time, and he didn't have the benefit of amnesia. Otherwise, though, I loved this book!

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What Alice Forgot

What alice forgot by Liane Moriarty
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I checked this book out because I'd read the cover in the course of designing a Readers' Advisory training, and the concept caught my attention: imagine waking up on the floor of your gym having forgotten the last 10 years of your life, including giving birth to your three children and separating from your--the last you remember--beloved husband. But this story turned out to be so much more absorbing than I even expected!

I would almost categorize it as a mystery, since Alice has to piece together tiny fragments of memory and search for clues in an attempt to reconstruct her missing decade. She's appalled by the sharp, unpleasant woman she seems to have become and devastated by the disintegration of her relationships with her friends and family. They, in turn, don't know what to make of the "new Alice" and are uncertain how to react. Which is the real Alice, and what will happen as her memory returns?

So often I wished I could jump into the book and tell Alice to go online and sign up for Alison Armstrong's workshops at http://understandmen.com/ because the disintegration of her marriage was a perfect case study of what happens when men & women don't understand each other. (I also wanted to tell Nick to go to the same website and sign up for the Understanding Women workshop.)

This would be a great book group choice, and there are some excellent discussion questions at the end of this book. What would your 10-years-ago-self think of your current self? What happened in your life, what choices did you and others make over that timespan, that led to the person you are today?

Now that I know what an outstanding writer Ms. Moriarty is, I'll be putting myself on the hold lists for her other books.

For readers' advisors: character doorway is primary, story secondary. There is some kissing and mention of sex. I've forgotten whether there is much swearing, although there probably is some (my checkout expired yesterday, so I can't double-check). No violence.

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