The mermaid chair - Sue Monk Kidd (USS Book Club)

Superbly written; I think I found one word in the entire book that I would change (and in case you haven't realized it by now, I'm incredibly picky). I do wish that the husband had been more likeable, it would have increased the conflict and my empathy for him and would therefore have improved the book and made the main character's later decisions make more sense and feel less like sheer laziness. I have a feeling that the husband's main purpose in the book, since he was a psychologist, was the following contribution:

“When a person was in need of cataclysmic change, of a whole new center in the personality, for instance, his or her psyche would induce an infatuation, an erotic attachment, an intense falling-in-love. Falling in love was the most ruthless catalyst on earth. But typically you fall in love with something missing in yourself that you recognized in the other person.”

The Salmon of Doubt - Douglas Adams

Compiled posthumously by his wife this novel is a bit backwards in that the whole is less than the sum of it's parts, perhaps because it was not assembled by the hands of the master.

Note to self: contains many excellent motivational quotes on writing. Remember this for next year's NaNo.