Will somebody please tell me why I spent over a week reading this 850-page book? I had read so many wonderful reviews on this book from the Sonlight Bibliovores forum. Some said that it was their favorite book/series ever. I have been trying to check it out from the library forever! But after reading this first one, I will resist the next 6 or so novels in this series by Diana Gabaldon. The storyline is yet another time-traveler one with absolutely none of the finesse of The Time Traveler's Wife. The rest of the book reads like a Scottish romance novel, with all the components you might expect in such a novel (and I mean all of the components). I kept reading because I had to figure out why so many people love this book. I am left dazed and confused.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Book Review: A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini can multi-task. He is one of those rare authors who can educate and enlighten while telling a heart-wrenching, fully engrossing story—all crafted with a perfect manipulation of poetic prose. Authors that come to mind who have such a gift are Robert Penn Warren in All the King's Men, Richard Llewellyn in How Green Was My Valley, and Abraham Verghese in My Own Country and The Tennis Partner .
A Thousand Splendid Suns takes place mainly in Kabul, Afghanistan and follows the lives of two women: Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy man, and Laila, the beloved daughter of a family torn to shreds by the jihad. Beneath the burqa, these women struggle fiercely to survive, emotionally and physically. Integral to the story is Afghanistan and its people, whipped mercilessly by various power-hungry factions.
I read The Kite Runner not long ago and was absolutely blown away. A Thousand Splendid Suns does not disappoint as some second novels do. My only disappointment is that there are no more Hosseini novels to read--yet.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Booking Through Thursday: Harry
Booking Through Thursday is all about Harry Potter this week. If you want to play, you can leave a comment here or post on your own blog and comment at the BTT site.
1. Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?
Absolutely! Harry Potter can be a taboo word in certain homeschooling circles. I had a friend once who actually hid the HP books on her bookshelf when she was hosting a homeschoolers’ meeting at her home so that she wouldn’t get “caught.” Isn’t that silly? I think the cartoon in my On Being Offensive post should end with: "And above all else, don't admit that you read Harry Potter!" One of my best friends and I laugh hysterically over a time when we had just met, and she started spouting off about the horrible HP books. I just looked and her and smiled, and she said, “Oh. Do you read them?” We love each other anyway…
2. If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties?
No, not right away. Dr. H. has first dibs. Jesse has second. And I will look forward to reading it while I’m on vacation in New York. And no midnight parties. That's just not our thing.
3. And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?
Yes, I think Harry will survive. I am most looking forward to that moment of perfect peace and quiet when I can crack open the book and enter Harry's world.
Book Review: I Capture the Castle
I like this book by Dodie Smith, author of several novels but known most for creating 101 Dalmatians. First of all, the narrator, Cassandra, is wonderfully smart and witty. This is her journal, in which she, at age 17, writes "partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel--I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations." The characters include her family, who live in poverty in a falling-down old English castle; their new American landlords; and various townspeople. Her journals record the amazing events that happen in one short year with the arrival of the American brothers, Simon and Neil.
The family itself is quirky in an Addam's Family kind of way. The father, Mortmain, was once a brilliant author, but for the past decade he has produced nothing (ergo earning no income), preferring instead to read detective novels all day. Older sister Rose longs to escape their poverty but sees no way out; younger brother Thomas goes about living a normal school boy's life. Topaz, the stepmother, makes it her goal to be Mortmain's muse while scrounging wildly to feed the family. And Cassandra observes and analyzes and ultimately steps out of childhood and becomes one of the characters.
I loved the spirit of timelessness captured in this novel. It reminds me somewhat of The Thirteenth Tale in that respect, although the overall mood is light and even romantic in a castle sort of way. It was an excellent novel for a bit of escapism. Also, I'd really like to live in a castle for just a little while.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Book Review: The Diary of Mattie Spenser
This book by Sandra Dallas is just the right thing to read after a month of intense reads, including Holocaust-themed The Book Thief and Night. This is the fictional journal of Mattie Spenser, who receives and accepts an impromptu marriage proposal that requires moving from Iowa to the great Colorado Territory. The Civil War has just ended, and Mattie leaves her family and friends behind to follow this man she barely knows to the frontier. She chronicles their homesteading failures and successes, the people they meet in their tiny settlement, and her many heartaches and triumphs. I was willing to suspend my disbelief about all the tragedies that happened to her and her neighbors because I really wanted to. Yes, the novel could be deemed trite and formulaic, as one tragedy follows another and there was a great deal of dramatic foreshadowing. Still, when one's reading has been heavy, it's good to have something light and totally enjoyable (in spite of the tragedies). This is one of those reads. I'm a sucker for a spunky woman pioneer.
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Book Review: The Nazi Officer's Wife
The book starts with a slice of her life in Germany as a Red Cross nurse known as "Grete" and then tells the story of her previous life in Vienna, where she was just one examination away from becoming a lawyer before the Gestapo forced her family into the ghetto. Until the time when she received the yellow star on her chest, she hardly thought of herself as Jewish. "I think my father knew how to be Jewish, but he did not teach us. He must have thought we would absorb it with our mother's milk." Later in the book she describes one Hanukkah at the labor camp, when she and her fellow workers decided to make a menorah. "But then, to our horror, we found not one of us knew the prayer--not one. Can you imagine? To be so bereft, so ignorant of our own culture, our own liturgy! This was the legacy of our assimilated life in Vienna."
Edith spends a year in a labor camp and is then due to be deported. She decides then that she will risk capture to stay with her fiance in Vienna, and she rips off her yellow star and goes into hiding. Eventually her boyfriend, out of terror, ends things with her, and she flees to Munich with a new identity. Once in Germany, she takes on a whole new self.
This book, which was on my list for Semicolon's Saturday Book Review challenge, is heartwrenching and fascinating. She is a powerful writer and succeeds in relating to the reader how people will do impossible things to survive and to protect those they love.
Book Review: The Nazi Officer's Wife
The book starts with a slice of her life in Germany as a Red Cross nurse known as "Grete" and then tells the story of her previous life in Vienna, where she was just one examination away from becoming a lawyer before the Gestapo forced her family into the ghetto. Until the time when she received the yellow star on her chest, she hardly thought of herself as Jewish. "I think my father knew how to be Jewish, but he did not teach us. He must have thought we would absorb it with our mother's milk." Later in the book she describes one Hanukkah at the labor camp, when she and her fellow workers decided to make a menorah. "But then, to our horror, we found not one of us knew the prayer--not one. Can you imagine? To be so bereft, so ignorant of our own culture, our own liturgy! This was the legacy of our assimilated life in Vienna."
Edith spends a year in a labor camp and is then due to be deported. She decides then that she will risk capture to stay with her fiance in Vienna, and she rips off her yellow star and goes into hiding. Eventually her boyfriend, out of terror, ends things with her, and she flees to Munich with a new identity. Once in Germany, she takes on a whole new self.
This book, which was on my list for Semicolon's Saturday Book Review challenge, is heartwrenching and fascinating. She is a powerful writer and succeeds in relating to the reader how people will do impossible things to survive and to protect those they love.