A Change in Altitude: A Novel, by Anita Shreve

Read and reviewed in May, 2013. Released later.

I just finished this yesterday, an excellent book! Very well written. The characters were believable and the setting was beautifully described. A young couple is in Kenya where the husband is researching equatorial medicine and conducting clinics, while the wife looks for worthwhile and fulfilling employment. They are invited to climb Mt. Kenya with new friends, a trek for which they are ill prepared. Many life lessons learned, some at tragic cost, and a second trek is planned to bring closure to many questions and perplexities.

A Wedding in December, by Anita Shreve

Book image courtesy of Amazon.com

Read, reviewed, and released July-September, 2010

I started reading this book a few days ago, and am already more than halfway through. It is a fascinating, multi-layered novel. A group of old prep school friends gets together 27 years after graduation for the wedding of former classmates. The bride-to-be is suffering from late-stage breast cancer.

Each person in the novel has his or her own story, sometimes interlocked with one or more of the others. Present in everyone's memory is the young man who died while still a student.

A most interesting feature is the story-within-the-story - a novel one of the group is writing based on the Halifax explosion of 1917 - an event of which I had not heard. I have googled it, and found many references online, including the: Wikipedia article and: Canadian Broadcasting site

Books I like very much are given the rating of 8. This one has a 10, and I'm not even finished yet!