The Farewell Party by Milan Kundera

Ruzena sleeps with a trumpet player one night and then she is pregnant.  His name is Klima and he thinks it’s impossible that he made her pregnant.

His friends threaten to say they are the father just to stir up an even bigger scandal and they all convince him to convince her to have an abortion.  Then it is mentioned in the story that he has a wife.

Ruzena doesn’t even remember much from the night she spent with Klima.  She doesn’t remember what he really looked like or how sex was with him. How sad!

That is story number one.  Ruzena is a nurse working in a fertility spa run by Dr. Skreta who is impregnating his female patients with his own sperm and their husbands believe it is their sperm that was injected…..That is story number two.

Dr. Skreta has a friend, Jakub, who thought at some point in his life, he may want to kill himself.  Dr.Skreta gives him a tiny blue pill for when he is ready.  Somehow that pill ends up in the hands of Ruzena.

I have heard that in most fiction there is a small amount of truth.  Perhaps the author uses experiences from his past to embellish story lines!  This is one crazy story! 

Kundera’s writing is witty, funny and keen!   His symbolism of people and their struggles and politics and the like are quite perceptive. 

Shopaholic to the Stars by Sophie Kinsella

Becky is back with more shenanigans!

She wants to be a “celebrity” so bad but she has no idea what that comes with – paparazzi, invasion into your personal life, needing a body guard, etc…she totally puts her family on the back burner while she tries to attain stardom.

She puts herself in predicaments and then when the **it hits the fan, she swears she is innocent and wasn't intentionally trying to do wrong. Well she does mean well, but she gets so caught up in the moment and then has to finagle her way out of a jam at the end. 

She cannot keep things in confidence and the person that she should tell things to, she doesn't. 

When she sees how cocky and brash Hollywood stars are she wonders if that is how she should think too.

I was not expecting an abrupt end. Will there be more?

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple

Now this is a beach read!  This is # 5 of the 5 best beach reads recommended by Real Simple Magazine (6/2015).  This particular novel should have been number 1!  Where in the world is Bernadette!

A cute, funny, witty story that will have you not wanting to put the book down. 

Bernadette is a mom, wife and famous architect.  She dropped out of the field to be a full-time mom, then something happens to her and she drops out of life!  A great story!  Her pre-teen daughter goes on the hunt to find out what happened to her mom.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

This is beach reads # 4 of 5 recommended. 

This novel begins in 1962 on an Italian Coastline, then spans over 50 years to Hollywood and Seattle.

What does a film producer, an actress, an inn-keeper, Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton have to do with each other?  You’re gonna have to read it.  A great story and even though it flip-flops between 50 years, you don’t get lost!

Pasquale, Dee Moray and Michael Deane have some explaining to do.  Mostly to themselves as their lives cross, lies surface and are covered and resurface again as each person face their demon. 

Side note: There was a quote at the back of the book by author Milan Kundera.  I just finished re-reading two of his novels! 

Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen

Book three of the recommended five “Beach books”.

This one is interesting – a page turner.  Its written with a comedic twist and dramatic flair in the spirit of Elmore Leonard. 

Some weirdo wants to rid Florida of all tourism and residents, if possible, and turn the state over to the animals that were the original inhabitants.

Who is killing high profile people and random residents and tourists?  A maniac who believes he is starting a revolution.  He may have a good point in the fact that a lot of wetlands have been developed into hotels and condominiums and a lot of animals have been displaced from their original habitat, but killing people will not stop development. 

Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

So this is book two of five books recommended by REAL SIMPLE magazine as a “beach read”.  I beg to differ on this selection as a “beach read”. 

I had heard of this book before but was never interested in reading it.  Since I can be “anal” when it comes to lists and completing a reading challenge, I decided to read it just to complete the list of five.

It’s a memoir of Baroness Karen Blixen when she lived in Africa, owning a coffee plantation.  It is filled with stories that bob and weave during the years (1914-1931) that she lived there.

A native of Denmark, she and her husband came to Africa and began to manage a coffee farm.  When they separated, she decided to stay and run the farm. This story is her memoir of that time and she tells tales of animals and people who have come to live at her house, visit her house and die at her house.

The farm was in Nairobi, at the foot of the Ngong Hills in Kenya.  The people she lived near were called Kikuyu.  They came to have a mutual respect for one another.

Along with running the coffee farm, she had an evening school on the farm and also performed as a doctor in cases when someone was sick or hurt.  She also had no fear to use a rifle and hunt.  In between running the farm, she had a love affair with a big-game safari hunter, Denys Finch-Hatton.

She was a story teller.  Denys liked to hear her tell stories.  I must admit that I enjoyed the telling of her story – Out Of Africa – and I also enjoyed watching the movie.