Book Thirty-eight: The Knife of Never Letting Go

Book Thirty-eight: The Knife of Never Letting Go
Pages: 479
Finished: 4:25 a.m. July 28

So, you guys? I'm a little overwhelmed. This book is CRAZY. Seriously. Because, you guys? I totally just read it in two and a half hours. The WHOLE BOOK. That's 479 pages of normal sized Young Adult book text in less than three hours. You know how I read Catching Fire in one night because of how good it was? and how I can't read the last Harry Potter in anything less than 5 and a half hours straight through, don't call me I won't answer the phone, must cry for Snape insanity? This was like that, but a different kind of intense, plus there is a talking dog. Let me repeat that: There is a talking dog in this book and it is endearing as hell. It is pretty much exactly the way I picture dogs talking. Like in UP but cuter because I get to give the dog whatever voice I want.
PS. I've only read one other book all the way through in the past three weeks, and I don't understand why we can have all these really easy to read interesting books for young adults, but I feel obligated to slog my way through Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali to make myself feel guilty about being an American who didn't have to go through difficulties.
Issues with the book were not completely absent. Pretty much half the book is misspelled. This bothered me for about forty pages, and then I just tried to think of it like Huckleberry Finn, and it was fine. It makes sense that if you have a narrator whose words you can see, you would see them misspelled if he doesn't even know how to read. P.S. Super adorable when he tries to read. I mean it.
The premise of the book is also interesting. Human settlers leave Earth (or I'm assuming it's Earth) and land on a new planet. The new planet causes everyone to be able to hear all the thoughts of all the men. Different groups of people have different reactions. The story goes on from there. The way that they give you these bits and snippets of history and "truth" is also very vividly written.
Probably not for fans of sci-fi, but an enjoyable read, so maybe you should try it anyway.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Thirty-seven: Garden Spells

Book Thirty-seven: Garden Spells
Finished: July 21
Pages: 290

Obviously, I have been remiss in my posting. So, you'll have to stick with me as I try to remember what I wanted to say about a book that is now living at my mother's house, hopefully being read.
I liked this book. It was sweet, and light, and everything that you want in summer reading. It wasn't too realistic, it had that magical hint that can either make or break a light summer read. Okay, maybe it wasn't a hint of magic. Maybe there was an apple tree who was my favorite character. No, it didn't walk, or talk, or anything else, it was just a charming tree.
The story is reminiscent of other chick-lit-y books: two sisters separated by years and choices come back together in their home town and deal with all the drama that comes from that separation, both between each other, and between the family and the town.
I liked the interesting magical details: scorching hand prints, a man so full of love and lust that he glows at night...it was the little things that really made the story so delightful.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Thirty-six: Nine Parts of Desire

Book Thirty-six: Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
Finished: July 2
Pages: 239

When I was in Borders the other day, I was looking for another Geraldine Brooks book to read. Having read People of the Book, I wanted to read her other novels, so I grabbed this one. At the time I thought it would be similar to People, a fictionalization of real events. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a book that is a work of non-fiction, based on Ms. Brooks' experiences as a foreign correspondent living in the Middle East for 6 years. Her look into the lives of Islamic women of all different backgrounds and opinions gives a remarkably even-keeled informative look into this world, a world of which I am sorely lacking information.
I like learning about different cultures, and while all books, even ones written with journalistic integrity cannot help but be biased towards whatever beliefs the author holds, I feel that Ms. Brooks tried very hard to be open-minded and come with honest questions seeking honest answers. I must be honest, I was impressed by the obvious scholarship shown in her meticulous research, as well as being impressed by the caliber of interviews she was able to have over the course of her time in the Mid-East. There are conversations in the book with the wife of Khomeini, as well as his daughter; King Hussein of Jordan and his wife Queen Noor; as well as her ability to get regular women and men to talk to her, those people who are not in the spotlight but dealing with the same issues. She quotes the Koran and the hadith (stories about the life of the Prophet that are not strictly in the scriptures of the Koran, as well as the laws and regulations of a number of different countries, cases that have come before the various courts and the reactions of the people.
This one quote, to me, sums up the eloquence with which she speaks candidly about all her subjects:

It wasn't until I went to Cairo and started seeking out Muslim women that I realized I hadn't made a close female friend since I left school.
I'd forgotten how much I liked to be with women. And yet there was always a sourness lurking a the edge of even the sweetest encounters. Squatting on the floor of a Kurdish friend's kitchen, helping the women with their bread making, I realized what an agreeable thing it was to be completely surrounded by women, to have a task that was ours alone. As the women's deft fingers flung balls of dough under my rolling pin and the fire roared beneath a baking sheet of blackened metal, I felt contentment in shared work well done.
But an hour into the labor, as my shoulders ached and scalding sweat dribbled down my back, I began to resent the boy toddler who kept ambling up to the steaming pile of fresh bread and breaking off tasty morsel in his fat little fists. His sister, not much older, was already part of our bread-making assembly line. Why should he learn so young that her role was to toil for his pleasure?
The nunlike clothes, pushed to the back of my closet, remind me of all those mixed feelings. Every time my hand brushes the smooth fabric of the chador, I think of Nahid Aghtaie, the Iranian medical student who gave up an easy life in London to go home and work at low-paying jobs to advance the goals of her revolution. I remember her, in Qum, drifting toward me over the marble-floored mosque to tell me that she'd prayed for me "to have nice children." And then I think of her beautiful face-the small visible triangle between brown and lip-radiant on the morning of the murder of Rushdie's Japanese translator in July 1991. "This," she said triumphantly, "shows the power of Islam." I told her that, to me, it no more showed the power of Islam than an Israeli soldier's shooting of a Palestinian child showed the power of Judaism. Why not, I asked her, cite the "power of Islam" in the humanitarian work that Iran was doing for the flood of Iraqi refugees that was then pouring over its borders? "Because nobody notices when we do such things," she said. "But every news report in the world will note this execution."
Eventually I became worn out by such conversations. Friendships with women like Nahid were an emotional whipsaw: how was it possible to admire her for the courage of her convictions, when her convictions led to such hateful reasoning?

The title of the book comes from a quote said by Ali, the husband of Muhammad's beloved daughter Fatima and the founder of the Shiite Islam. He said, "Almighty God created sexual desire in ten parts; then he gave nine parts to women and one to men" (39). In the Catholic school of thought, she goes on to say, girls are seen as the less sexually active gender and so must therefore always be careful around those sex-crazed boys. Islam is the opposite, women must be careful because they are the sex-crazed ones. There are also a lot fewer rules in the Koran than in the Bible regarding sex. It is interesting to see how different and yet still repressive so much of any society can be.
Anyone who wants to learn about the different ways that Muslim society views women should read this book. It is exceptionally well-written and eye-opening.
Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Thirty-five: Five Quarters of the Orange

Book Thirty-five: Five Quarters of the Orange
Finished: June 21, 2010
Pages: 336

I have read one of Joanne Harris’s other books, Chocolat. That book is certainly similar in a number of ways to Five Quarters. Both set in France, with strange names for many of her characters, and food. Food always plays a huge role in her books. Little wonder that she has put out a couple of cookbooks.
Set during the German occupation of France, this story deals with the lives of three French children, their mother, and their interactions with a German soldier. The children (Boise is nine at the time, the eldest, Cassis is not even sixteen) spy on their neighbors in order to gain favor with Tomas: “We were wild animals, just as Mother said, and we took some taming. He must have known that from the start, the clever way he set out to take us one by one, making each feel special…Even now, God help me, I can almost believe it. Even now” (108). Over the course of the book, the relationships between all the various characters come to light as Boise, now an old woman, discovers her mother's recipe book and all the secrets it contains.

Woke at six this morning, for the first time in months. Strange, how everything looks different. When you haven’t slept it’s as if the world is sliding away bit by bit. The ground isn’t quite in line with your feet. The air seems full of shiny stinging particles. I feel I’ve left a part of myself behind, but I can’t remember what. They look at me with such solemn eyes. I think they’re afraid of me. All but Boise. She’s not afraid of anything. I want to warn her that it doesn’t last forever.

Many of the issues the characters face are ones that are of their own making. Although you would think that I would place the blame on the Germans, and the secrecy that didn't allow for free expression which led to the tragedy in the book, but I don't. I place the blame on the shoulders of all the characters, especially Boise. She causes a lot of the trouble in the book through her own choices to be trouble herself. Although in the end she regrets some of these actions, “Of course, by then there were to be no more oranges, ever again. I think even I had lost my taste for them” (222), I felt that she was not as remorseful as much as avoiding blame and consequences.

Good Reading,
Caitlin