Anna Quindlen Books

Okay, so I've read only two of her books. The first, "Blessings", was for book club and the second, "Rise and Shine" I bought at the same time because her books were so highly recommended. It took me months of picking up, reading something else, picking it up again, etc. to finally make it through "Rise and Shine". Blessing I read quicker so I would be done in time for book club. Would I recommend either, probably not.
There was one part in "Rise and Shine" that made me laugh because it reminded me of Andrew. The young man in the book (Leo) tells his aunt when she asks him, "you speak street". "Can. Won't. It's so lame. Look at me. I am what I am. It's insulting for me to talk to these people that way. It's doubly obscene for some white kid like me to pretend it's my first language. It's like Americans in Europe, when they act as though if they speak English really, really loud, Czech people, or Spaniards, or Greeks will be able to understand them."
The other part I will quote from "Rise and Shine" is directed at Brian. "The problem is that when most people think of having children, they think about having other people's children. They look at a bunch of four-year-olds screaming on the playground or some nasty teenager snarling at his parents and think, Not me. And then someone hands them their own child. And all of that other nonsense is forgotten. Irrelevant. They change in an instant."
Blessing is about a caretaker of the property known as Blessings. Someone drops a baby off at the doorstep, thinking that rich people would take care of it. The caretaker finds the baby and tries to secretly raise the baby. Real parents want it back. Caretaker loves the baby he has deligently taken care of.......therefore, the conflict. Probably the better of the two books.