July Reading
49. The Help
by Kathryn Stockett
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 444
50. And She Was
by Cindy Dyson
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 287
51. The girl she used to be
by David Cristofano
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 241
52. Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace
by Ayelet Waldmen
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 208
53. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
by Judith Levine
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 257
54. PornLand: How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality
by Gail Dines
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 165
55. A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 415
56. Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust--A new history in the words of the men and women who survived
by Lyn Smith
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 340
I’m getting so bad about doing this. I enjoyed The Help by Kathryn Stockett a lot. It’s set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. Skeeter is a white woman who has recently graduated from college. She starts a project of interviewing African-American maids about their experiences working for white families and writes a book based on their stories. The book is told from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen (a black maid who has raised 17 children), and Minny (another maid who has trouble keeping jobs because she can’t tolerate the abusive treatment). My favorite character was Celia, a white trash woman married to a rich man that Minny goes to work for. As Skeeter interviews more maids and finds a publisher for the book, the women face real-life consequences and even danger.
I do believe that there is some merit to the accusations that the book is racially insensitive--Skeeter, the white woman, sets the project in motion, and the black characters speak in accents and the white characters don’t, although they should all have had Southern accents. The characters were a little bit of stock characters, not as developed as they could have been. But the story grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I read the book in about one day. I also liked that Stockett wanted to show that there was love as well as hate between white and black people in the 1960s South.
And She Was by Cindy Dyson wasn’t great but wasn’t bad, either. In the 1980s, trashy blonde waitress Brandy has followed a man to the remote Aleutian Islands. Her story is intercut with tales of Aleutian women in the past. I found it difficult to connect with the characters.
I felt so ripped off by The girl she used to be by David Cristofano. Melody Grace McCartney has been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for twenty years, since she was six and her family witnessed a brutal Mafia murder. Her parents were killed by the Mafia. Melody is so bored and distanced from her life that she pretends to be in danger just to be transferred. Then a member of the Mafia family, Jonathon, shows up and she finds herself falling for him.
The idea of a novel about identity and how being in the witness protection program would warp it sounded interesting, but Cristofano doesn’t pull it off. And call me crazy, but I think that I would hold something of a grudge against someone who played a part in my parent’s murder, even if it was indirect. But this biggest rip-off was that the book cover promised “sizzling love scenes” and there weren’t any. There are literary books that can get away with no or discreet love scenes, but who writes a “romance” novel with no sex? It seems like letting the Melody character get laid was the least the author could do for her.
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine is about the year the author spent not buying anything except for what she deemed essential items. Levine had her own definition of “essential” since she purchased newspapers and the Internet. I thought the book might have some good tips for cheap living, but it didn’t. The book was written in 2004, before the recession. It’s not fair, but I was repulsed by the idea of someone playing at being poor in today’s economic climate.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, about the lives of two women in Afghanistan, isn’t nearly as good as The Kite Runner. Hosseini doesn’t write as well from the female perspective, and the story is unrelenting bleak.
Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust by Lyn Smith tells Holocaust survivor’s stories in their own words. It’s an important work, but I did not like how the author structured the book in terms of time periods (pre-war, ghettos, concentration camps), instead of sticking with each individual’s story. It made it hard to keep up with any one person’s story, which would have been more powerful to me.
I did my college honors thesis on pornography and obscenity regulation, which was pretty boring. Male friends are constantly disappointed to find out that my thesis was not actually pornography. I came to the conclusion that there was no legal justification to restricting pornography that didn’t involve children, which doesn’t mean that I approve of all pornography. I picked up PornLand: How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines because of my thesis. Dines looks at pornography from a more sociological point of view, how it affects both men and women’s views of sex. Some of the commonplace pornography that she describes is violent and absolutely misogynistic and vile. It was so disturbing that I wondered if I was wrong to reject restrictions, even though I’m hardcore freedom of speech. Because of the Internet, many young men are exposed to this type of pornography when they’re children. It’s an interesting book and Dines makes many valid points, although I would have liked to see more explanations/theories of why men seek out extreme pornography.
by Kathryn Stockett
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 444
50. And She Was
by Cindy Dyson
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 287
51. The girl she used to be
by David Cristofano
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 241
52. Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities and Occasional Moments of Grace
by Ayelet Waldmen
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 208
53. Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping
by Judith Levine
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 257
54. PornLand: How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality
by Gail Dines
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 165
55. A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 415
56. Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust--A new history in the words of the men and women who survived
by Lyn Smith
Genre: Non-fiction
Pages: 340
I’m getting so bad about doing this. I enjoyed The Help by Kathryn Stockett a lot. It’s set in Jackson, Mississippi in 1962. Skeeter is a white woman who has recently graduated from college. She starts a project of interviewing African-American maids about their experiences working for white families and writes a book based on their stories. The book is told from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen (a black maid who has raised 17 children), and Minny (another maid who has trouble keeping jobs because she can’t tolerate the abusive treatment). My favorite character was Celia, a white trash woman married to a rich man that Minny goes to work for. As Skeeter interviews more maids and finds a publisher for the book, the women face real-life consequences and even danger.
I do believe that there is some merit to the accusations that the book is racially insensitive--Skeeter, the white woman, sets the project in motion, and the black characters speak in accents and the white characters don’t, although they should all have had Southern accents. The characters were a little bit of stock characters, not as developed as they could have been. But the story grabbed me and wouldn’t let me go. I read the book in about one day. I also liked that Stockett wanted to show that there was love as well as hate between white and black people in the 1960s South.
And She Was by Cindy Dyson wasn’t great but wasn’t bad, either. In the 1980s, trashy blonde waitress Brandy has followed a man to the remote Aleutian Islands. Her story is intercut with tales of Aleutian women in the past. I found it difficult to connect with the characters.
I felt so ripped off by The girl she used to be by David Cristofano. Melody Grace McCartney has been in the Federal Witness Protection Program for twenty years, since she was six and her family witnessed a brutal Mafia murder. Her parents were killed by the Mafia. Melody is so bored and distanced from her life that she pretends to be in danger just to be transferred. Then a member of the Mafia family, Jonathon, shows up and she finds herself falling for him.
The idea of a novel about identity and how being in the witness protection program would warp it sounded interesting, but Cristofano doesn’t pull it off. And call me crazy, but I think that I would hold something of a grudge against someone who played a part in my parent’s murder, even if it was indirect. But this biggest rip-off was that the book cover promised “sizzling love scenes” and there weren’t any. There are literary books that can get away with no or discreet love scenes, but who writes a “romance” novel with no sex? It seems like letting the Melody character get laid was the least the author could do for her.
Not Buying It: My Year Without Shopping by Judith Levine is about the year the author spent not buying anything except for what she deemed essential items. Levine had her own definition of “essential” since she purchased newspapers and the Internet. I thought the book might have some good tips for cheap living, but it didn’t. The book was written in 2004, before the recession. It’s not fair, but I was repulsed by the idea of someone playing at being poor in today’s economic climate.
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, about the lives of two women in Afghanistan, isn’t nearly as good as The Kite Runner. Hosseini doesn’t write as well from the female perspective, and the story is unrelenting bleak.
Remembering: Voices of the Holocaust by Lyn Smith tells Holocaust survivor’s stories in their own words. It’s an important work, but I did not like how the author structured the book in terms of time periods (pre-war, ghettos, concentration camps), instead of sticking with each individual’s story. It made it hard to keep up with any one person’s story, which would have been more powerful to me.
I did my college honors thesis on pornography and obscenity regulation, which was pretty boring. Male friends are constantly disappointed to find out that my thesis was not actually pornography. I came to the conclusion that there was no legal justification to restricting pornography that didn’t involve children, which doesn’t mean that I approve of all pornography. I picked up PornLand: How Porn has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines because of my thesis. Dines looks at pornography from a more sociological point of view, how it affects both men and women’s views of sex. Some of the commonplace pornography that she describes is violent and absolutely misogynistic and vile. It was so disturbing that I wondered if I was wrong to reject restrictions, even though I’m hardcore freedom of speech. Because of the Internet, many young men are exposed to this type of pornography when they’re children. It’s an interesting book and Dines makes many valid points, although I would have liked to see more explanations/theories of why men seek out extreme pornography.