Book Forty-eight: Eat, Pray, Love

Book Forty-eight: Eat, Pray, Love
Pages: 331
Finished: September 20

I would like to clear up a few things before I talk about this book. I am a little embarrassed that I read this book. I didn't read it because of the movie, and I didn't really read it because of all the hype. Mostly, I wanted to know what the big deal was, and I can't say that I really discovered it.
The premise seems like something that I should like. A woman writes a book about her journey through Italy, India, and Bali, recovering from a difficult divorce. I should even find commonalities between myself and Ms. Gilbert; we both are independent women, I am also not sure if I will ever really be ready to settle down and raise a family, we both like to travel. But there, I think, the similarities end.
I found the author to be overly sensitive, over-emotional, selfish, and often just grating. I know that many people appreciate her sense of humor, but I often didn't get it. I liked many of her stories, but she often fell back in to period of introspection that made me want to punch her in the face. I would have liked it if she had stuck to stories from her travels and left the deep spiritual conversations out of it. Not because I don't appreciate spirituality, but because I found her to be contrived and fake.
I don't want to read about the conversations that she had with herself written in a journal. They made me feel awkward, and creeped out. I don't want to read about her deep meditation, though I would rather hear about that then her conversations with "The god inside her" or whatever. I don't really appreciate the idea of a bunch of white people thinking that they have to go to India to really experience enlightenment. I find it pretentious.
But there were parts that I really enjoyed. I loved her stories of people that she meets and things that she does. I enjoy stories of difficulties and funny things that happen. I like the characters that she creates.

Last summer, right before I left the States, I went to visit my grandparents in upstate New York. My grandfather's wife...is this really nice old lady named Gale, in her eighties now. She hauled out this old photo album and showed me pictures from the 1930s, when she was eighteen years old and went on a trip to Europe for a year with her two best friends and a guardian. She's flipping through these pages, showing me these amazing old photographs of Italy, Venice. I go, 'Gale-who's the hottie?' She goes, 'That's the son of the people who owned the hotel where we stayed in Venice. He was my boyfriend.' I go, 'Your boyfriend?' And my grandfather's sweet wife looks at me all sly and her eyes get all sexy like Bette Davis, and she goes, 'I was tired of looking at churches, Liz.'

Personally, the book didn't do much for me. I guess I'm glad that I read it, because now I know what everyone is talking about. It's certainly not something that I would really recommend to anyone else.
Good Reading,
Caitlin

Books Forty-six and Forty-seven: Brightly Woven and Dead Until Dark

Book Forty-six: Brightly Woven
Pages: 354
Finished: September 17

Well, surprise, surprise! I read some more young adult fiction. I know, you're shocked! What can I say? It's the beginning of the school year, and I don't really want to read a lot of heavy stuff right now.
This is your basic Young Adult plot: Girl meets mysterious boy with secret. Girl is taken away from everything she knows on wild adventure with mysterious boy. Girl develops secret magic powers. Boy and girl have conflict. Girl runs away/gets kidnapped/gets in trouble. Discovers she is in love with Boy. Boy saves girl/girl saves herself. Boy and girl fall in love. The End.

Whoops, sorry. I just ruined every Young Adult Fantasy novel in existence.

Book Forty-seven: Dead Until Dark
Pages: 336
Finished: Sometime in the last three weeks

Many of my friends are obsessed with Trueblood. So, I decided to take the Charlaine Harris books for a spin. I was also checking to see if these were books that I would want to have in my classroom, since my kids are all obsessed with Twilight. Man, was I wrong on that count! I just don't feel comfortable having my kids read books with that much sex in them. If it had been a couple isolated incidents, I would not have minded, but these are definitely trashy books, with little redeeming value.
Did I enjoy this book? Certainly. When I need a trashy light read I will turn to the rest of this series, but I don't think I'll recommend them to my students.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Forty-five: Fire

Forty-five: Fire
Pages: 461
Finished: September 9

This is a companion to the world of Book Six, that I read back in January, called Graceling. I think that it is interesting how much the author had grown in many ways in the course of just one book. While this book takes place in the same Universe as the first, it isn't necessary to read the other book to know what is going on, and the action takes place many years prior to the first book. I like the character Fire, because she is strong, and independent, and I like female characters who are conscious of some of their faults, and also characters that are not entirely "good" or "bad." Fire has some very good characteristics, but she also has some very bad aspects, as any person with the kind of powers that she has would be tempted by. I like the large supporting cast of characters, and the descriptive quality of Cashore's writing.
It's a well-developed world, with a fight for the kingdom, just like most fantasy novels, and the well-written action means I'll come back to this author again to see where she goes from here.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Forty-four: Year of Wonders

Forty-four: Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
Pages: 308
Finished: September 7

Any book where the title itself tells you it is about the Plague, probably isn't going to be a pick-me-up sort of book. Apparently I am drawn to morbid books. I was probably the most curious as to why a book about something as awful as Plague would have a title that sounds so positive. The title comes from Dryden, who called 1666 "annus mirabilis" which is Latin for Year of Wonders, although this was the year not only of the plague, but also the war with the Dutch, and the Great Fire. It should bring to mind God's words to Moses, "Thou shalt do my wonders," which included the many plagues against the Egyptians.
I like historical fiction that is well researched but not overly obnoxious about how well researched it is. (For a bad example, see The Dante Club.) Geraldine Brooks has yet to disappoint me with her fiction rooted in historical events. There really was a village in England that, when the Plague hit, closed themselves off from the world around them and tried to limit the spread of the disease.
This particular version of events is told through the eyes of Anna, a servant of the rector of the village. There is a lot that I was very familiar with in this story: the fear of witches, the way that people can be easily swayed through fear, but many of the more religious aspects of Puritan beliefs were new to me. It was also interesting to see the changes in Anna, and how her idea of faith changes throughout the book.

As I walked away from the croft, I caught my toe on a loose stone and stumbled, grazing the hand that I flung out to break my fall. My anger magnified this small hurt and I cursed. As I sucked at the injured place, a question began to press upon me. Why, I wondered, did we, all of us, both the rector in his pulpit and simple Lottie in her croft, seek to put the Plague in unseen hands? Why should this thing be either a test of faith sent by God, or the evil working of the Devil in the world? One of these beliefs we embraced, the other we scorned as superstition. But perhaps each was false, equally. Perhaps the Plague was either of God nor the Devil, but simply a thing in Nature, as the stone on which we stub a toe.

The only part of the story that I didn't particularly like was the neat and lovely way that the story wrapped itself up. I didn't really feel that a book that is so harrowing really needed to have a happy ending. I suppose I can't really fault the author for wanting to give her readers a bit of light at the end of the tunnel.

Good Reading,
Caitlin

Book Forty-Three: Little Bee

Fourty-three: Little Bee
Pages: 266
Finished: August 30

Like all bookclub books, I wait to review the book until after we meet. While this keeps my fellow bookclub members from being subjected to my opinions too many times, the downside is that I don't always remember everything that I want to talk about. As I was reading this book, I often found myself thinking of a friend of mine who was living in Rwanda during the violence there. I was shocked by my reaction to the emotion and violence in the book, simply because you would think that by now, with all the books that I have read on the subject, that I would be less surprised by the reality of life in some parts of the world.
I was very impressed with Chris Cleave's skill in writing a female voice. Often when a male author attempts to write in a female voice it comes off strange, or awkward. That was not the case here. Although he is writing as two very different women drawn together by a mutual experience, neither character seems forced or unrealistic. I enjoyed the narrative style of Little Bee, the titular character, for a number of reasons that I have a tough time articulating. Let me just give you an example:

One of the things I would have to explain to the girls from back home, if I was telling them this story, is the simple little word horror. It means something different to the people from my village.
In your country, if you are not scared enough already, you can go to watch a horror film. Afterward you can go out of the cinema into the night and for a little while there is horror in everything. Perhaps there are murderers lying in wait for you at home. You think this because there is a light on in your house that you are certain you did not leave on. And when you remove your makeup in the mirror last thing, you see a strange look in your own eyes. It is not you. For one hour you are haunted, and you do not trust anybody, and then the feeling fades away. Horror in your country is something you take a dose of to remind yourself that you are not suffering from it.
For me and the girls from my village, horror is a disease and we are sick with it. It is not an illness you can cure yourself of by standing up and letting the big red cinema seat fold itself up behind you. That would be a good trick.

This is why I love Little Bee, both the book and the character, because there are paragraphs like this one. Little Bee is a survivor, and there is something in the earnestness of her words that makes me want to take care of her.
I really don't want to talk too much about this book, and what happens in it, because I wouldn't want anyone to be spoiled, even though I've never really cared too much about that sort of thing. One thing I will say, I hope that, if push comes to shove, I am more like Sarah than Andrew. I want to think that I am that sort of person, that I wouldn't rationalize the choices that I make. I worry that I would though.
I leave you with a quote. "I ask you right here please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived" (9).
Good Reading,
Caitlin