A book update. Books 30-36
Book #30: Grimm's Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, 58 pages
A small collection of 9 Grimm fairy tales. These are the shortened condensed versions.
It was a nice quick enjoyable read. I'd never read any of the brothers Grimm fairy tales. They are dark and I rather liked them. I might have to find the more detailed/lengthy verions!
Book #31: Breath, Eyes, Memory (Oprah's Book Club) by Edwidge Danticat, 236 pages
"I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to." The place is Haiti and the speaker is Sophie, the heroine of Edwidge Danticat's novel, "Breath, Eyes, Memory." Like her protagonist, Danticat is also Haitian; like her, she was raised in Haiti by an aunt until she came to the United States at age 12. Indeed, in her short stories, Danticat has often drawn on her background to fund her fiction, and she continues to do so in her debut novel.
The story begins in Haiti, on Mother's Day, when young Sophie discovers that she is about to leave the only home she has ever known with her Tante Atie in Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti, to go live with her mother in New York City. These early chapters in Haiti are lovely, subtly evoking the tender, painful relationship between the motherless child and the childless woman who feels honor bound to guard the natural mother's rights to the girl's affections above her own. Presented with a Mother's Day card, Tante Atie responds: "'It is for a mother, your mother.' She motioned me away with a wave of her hand. 'When it is Aunt's Day, you can make me one.'" Danticat also uses these pages to limn a vibrant portrait of life in Haiti from the cups of ginger tea and baskets of cassava bread served at community potlucks to the folk tales of a "people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads."
With Sophie's transition from a fairly happy existence with her aunt and grandmother in rural Haiti to life in New York with a mother she has never seen, Danticat's roots as a short-story writer become more evident; "Breath, Eyes, Memory" begins to read more like a collection of connected stories than a seamlessly evolved novel. In a couple of short chapters, Sophie arrives in New York, meets her mother, makes the acquaintance of her mother's new boyfriend, Marc, and discovers that she was the product of a rape when her mother was a teenager in Haiti. The novel then jumps several years ahead to Sophie's graduation from high school and her infatuation with an older man who lives next door. Unfortunately, this is also the point in the novel where Danticat begins to lay her themes on with a trowel instead of a brush: Sophie's mother becomes obsessed with protecting her daughter's virginity, going so far as to administer physical "tests" on a regular basis--testing which leads eventually to a rift in their relationship and to Sophie's struggle with her own sexuality. Soon the litany of victimization is flying thick and fast: female genital mutilation, incest, rape, frigidity, breast cancer, and abortion are the issues that arise in the final third of the novel, eventually drowning both fine writing and perceptive characterization under a deluge of angst.
Still, there is much to admire about "Breath, Eyes, Memory," and if at times the plot becomes overheated, Danticat's lyrical, vivid prose offers some real delight. If nothing else, this novel is sure to entice readers to look for Danticat's short stories--and possibly to sample other fiction from the West Indies as well.
I enjoyed this book but wasn't really able to connect with any of the characters. Still, I found it interesting, but it just isn't one of my favorite Oprah books. With that said, I feel a little more enlightened about the Haitian culture than I did before I read it.
Book #32: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 302 pages
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love--a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
I loved this book! It was well written. A great debut novel. This is one book I'd meant to read for years and was finally get around to reading. I really liked the characters. They were so unique and I felt like I knew them. Highly recomend this book!
Book #33:Coyote Dream by JESSICA DAVIS STEIN, 364 pages
For Sarah Friedman the chance to journey to the southwest to buy Native Indian art for her family's successful New York store comes at a time of personal transition. Determined to put aside romantic disapointments, she seeks new perspectives in the serenity of the vast desert landscape. Then her car breaks down near the home of a solitary artist on the Navajo reservation....
After years of turmoil, Ben Lonefeather has finally gained control of his life. He devotes his days to his work and caring for the coyotes he rescued as pups. When Sarah Friedman shows up stranded, he grudgingly offers her a room. Their practical arrangement deepens into a connection that leaves them both passionately alive, profoundly changed...and shattered by circumstances that will separate them. As Sarah and Ben seek to build meaningful lives, they will be forced to choose between love and duty, commitment and freedom-and learn to fight for what matters most...
I really enjoyed this book. It took me longer to read than normal (about a week) only because life got in the way almost every single day. I'd be lucky to read more than 10 pages most days. It was well written and I can't wait to read something else by this author! I really wish that I could have seen the art and necklaces in the book! Nothing but praise for this book!
Book #34:The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks, 289 pages
Sparks's 1996 debut novel, The Notebook, was a fast and easy read that sold millions upon millions of copies. Other bestselling love stories followed (Message in a Bottle; A Walk to Remember; The Guardian), but Sparks's fans have from the very beginning eagerly anticipated a sequel to the romantic tale of Allie and Noah Calhoun. The wait is now over. Attorney Wilson Lewis has been married to Noah and Allie's daughter, Jane, for 30 years. Wilson and Jane have raised three children and lived a satisfying and prosperous life in the bucolic town of New Bern, N.C. After forgetting his anniversary, Wilson realizes that the passion and romance have gone out of his marriage and fears his wife no longer loves him. Being a methodical man, he decides to embark on a yearlong program to renew his romantic ties to his wife, seeking out the advice of Noah, who now spends his days in a retirement home feeding a swan he is sure is the reincarnation of his beloved Allie. In the midst of Wilson's machinations, his daughter Anna announces she is getting married. The upcoming wedding provides Wilson with the opportunity to bring his elaborate plan to fruition. Sparks tells his sweet story competently, without sinking too deeply into the mire of sentiment; a gasp-inducing twist comes at the very end. Satisfied female readers will close the covers with a sigh and a wish that a little of the earnest, too-good-to-be-true Wilson might rub off on their own bedmates.
I enjoyed this book but I liked the Notebook better. I just found the ending to be a bit predictable, but maybe it was me. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, just think that the Notebook was a better book.
Book #35: The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, 211 pages
A solitary New Jersey librarian whose favorite book is a guide to suicide methods is struck by lightning in Alice Hoffman's superb novel, The Ice Queen. Orphaned at the age of eight after angrily wishing she would never see her mother again, our heroine found herself frozen emotionally: "I was the child who stomped her feet and made a single wish and in so doing ended the whole world‹my world, at any rate." Her brother Ned solved the pain of their mother's death by becoming a meteorologist: applying reason and logic to bad weather. Eventually, he invites our heroine to move down to Florida, where he teaches at a university. Here, while trying to swat a fly, she is struck by lightning (the resulting neurological damage includes an inability to see the color red). Orlon County turns out to receive two thirds of all the lightning strikes in Florida each year, and our heroine soon becomes drawn into the mysteries of lightning: the withering of trees and landscape near a strike, the medical traumas and odd new abilities of victims, the myths of renewal. Although a recluse, she becomes fascinated by a legendary local farmer nicknamed Lazarus Jones, said to have beaten death after a lightning strike: to have seen the other side and come back. The burning match to her cool reserve--her personal unguided tour through Hades--Lazarus will prove to be the talisman that restores her to girlhood innocence and possibility.
Hoffman's story advances with a feline economy of language and movement--not a word spared for the color of the sky, unless the color of the sky factors into the narrative. Among the authors who have played with the fairy tale's harsh mercies (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter), Hoffman has the closest understanding of the primal fears that drive the genre, and why, perhaps, we never outgrow fairy stories, but only learn to substitute dull, wholesome qualities like personal initiative or good timing for the elements that raise the hairs on our neck and send us scrambling for the light switch.
It has been awhile since I've read one of her books. I have to agree with PoeticGoddss about the beginnings being so detailed and then ending quick. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. it was unique and different. I'm glad that I got the chance to read this book.
Book #36:The Bishop at Sea (Blackie Ryan Novels) by Andrew M. Greeley, 287 pages
Bishop Blackie Ryan--who spends more time troubleshooting and solving crimes than he does on spiritual matters--is back in action in a paperback original that's sure to delight Father Andrew M. Greeley's faithful fans. Sent by his boss, Cardinal Cronin, to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Langley ostensibly to perform a confirmation, Blackie finds that his detecting talents are more in demand than his devotional ones. ("Those of you who have seen the film Pulp Fiction will doubtless remember Harvey Keitel. He was a sweeper, a person designated by God and his betters to sweep up the mess left by higher-ups in the outfit. That's what I am, Sean Cronin's sweeper") Disappearing crew members and other strange occurrences have led to talk of the new ship being haunted, a situation that dedicated debunker of demons Bishop Ryan can't resist.
Picked this book up at a good price and it looked interesting. I had no idea that I'd end up really liking this book. It was easy to get into and I liked the characters. It was over before I realized it. I've had it sitting around and it was at the bottom of my pile of books to read for other Bookcrossing members. I'm glad that I finally read it. Wish I'd done so sooner!
A small collection of 9 Grimm fairy tales. These are the shortened condensed versions.
It was a nice quick enjoyable read. I'd never read any of the brothers Grimm fairy tales. They are dark and I rather liked them. I might have to find the more detailed/lengthy verions!
Book #31: Breath, Eyes, Memory (Oprah's Book Club) by Edwidge Danticat, 236 pages
"I come from a place where breath, eyes and memory are one, a place from which you carry your past like the hair on your head. Where women return to their children as butterflies or as tears in the eyes of the statues that their daughters pray to." The place is Haiti and the speaker is Sophie, the heroine of Edwidge Danticat's novel, "Breath, Eyes, Memory." Like her protagonist, Danticat is also Haitian; like her, she was raised in Haiti by an aunt until she came to the United States at age 12. Indeed, in her short stories, Danticat has often drawn on her background to fund her fiction, and she continues to do so in her debut novel.
The story begins in Haiti, on Mother's Day, when young Sophie discovers that she is about to leave the only home she has ever known with her Tante Atie in Croix-des-Rosets, Haiti, to go live with her mother in New York City. These early chapters in Haiti are lovely, subtly evoking the tender, painful relationship between the motherless child and the childless woman who feels honor bound to guard the natural mother's rights to the girl's affections above her own. Presented with a Mother's Day card, Tante Atie responds: "'It is for a mother, your mother.' She motioned me away with a wave of her hand. 'When it is Aunt's Day, you can make me one.'" Danticat also uses these pages to limn a vibrant portrait of life in Haiti from the cups of ginger tea and baskets of cassava bread served at community potlucks to the folk tales of a "people in Guinea who carry the sky on their heads."
With Sophie's transition from a fairly happy existence with her aunt and grandmother in rural Haiti to life in New York with a mother she has never seen, Danticat's roots as a short-story writer become more evident; "Breath, Eyes, Memory" begins to read more like a collection of connected stories than a seamlessly evolved novel. In a couple of short chapters, Sophie arrives in New York, meets her mother, makes the acquaintance of her mother's new boyfriend, Marc, and discovers that she was the product of a rape when her mother was a teenager in Haiti. The novel then jumps several years ahead to Sophie's graduation from high school and her infatuation with an older man who lives next door. Unfortunately, this is also the point in the novel where Danticat begins to lay her themes on with a trowel instead of a brush: Sophie's mother becomes obsessed with protecting her daughter's virginity, going so far as to administer physical "tests" on a regular basis--testing which leads eventually to a rift in their relationship and to Sophie's struggle with her own sexuality. Soon the litany of victimization is flying thick and fast: female genital mutilation, incest, rape, frigidity, breast cancer, and abortion are the issues that arise in the final third of the novel, eventually drowning both fine writing and perceptive characterization under a deluge of angst.
Still, there is much to admire about "Breath, Eyes, Memory," and if at times the plot becomes overheated, Danticat's lyrical, vivid prose offers some real delight. If nothing else, this novel is sure to entice readers to look for Danticat's short stories--and possibly to sample other fiction from the West Indies as well.
I enjoyed this book but wasn't really able to connect with any of the characters. Still, I found it interesting, but it just isn't one of my favorite Oprah books. With that said, I feel a little more enlightened about the Haitian culture than I did before I read it.
Book #32: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, 302 pages
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love--a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.
I loved this book! It was well written. A great debut novel. This is one book I'd meant to read for years and was finally get around to reading. I really liked the characters. They were so unique and I felt like I knew them. Highly recomend this book!
Book #33:Coyote Dream by JESSICA DAVIS STEIN, 364 pages
For Sarah Friedman the chance to journey to the southwest to buy Native Indian art for her family's successful New York store comes at a time of personal transition. Determined to put aside romantic disapointments, she seeks new perspectives in the serenity of the vast desert landscape. Then her car breaks down near the home of a solitary artist on the Navajo reservation....
After years of turmoil, Ben Lonefeather has finally gained control of his life. He devotes his days to his work and caring for the coyotes he rescued as pups. When Sarah Friedman shows up stranded, he grudgingly offers her a room. Their practical arrangement deepens into a connection that leaves them both passionately alive, profoundly changed...and shattered by circumstances that will separate them. As Sarah and Ben seek to build meaningful lives, they will be forced to choose between love and duty, commitment and freedom-and learn to fight for what matters most...
I really enjoyed this book. It took me longer to read than normal (about a week) only because life got in the way almost every single day. I'd be lucky to read more than 10 pages most days. It was well written and I can't wait to read something else by this author! I really wish that I could have seen the art and necklaces in the book! Nothing but praise for this book!
Book #34:The Wedding by Nicholas Sparks, 289 pages
Sparks's 1996 debut novel, The Notebook, was a fast and easy read that sold millions upon millions of copies. Other bestselling love stories followed (Message in a Bottle; A Walk to Remember; The Guardian), but Sparks's fans have from the very beginning eagerly anticipated a sequel to the romantic tale of Allie and Noah Calhoun. The wait is now over. Attorney Wilson Lewis has been married to Noah and Allie's daughter, Jane, for 30 years. Wilson and Jane have raised three children and lived a satisfying and prosperous life in the bucolic town of New Bern, N.C. After forgetting his anniversary, Wilson realizes that the passion and romance have gone out of his marriage and fears his wife no longer loves him. Being a methodical man, he decides to embark on a yearlong program to renew his romantic ties to his wife, seeking out the advice of Noah, who now spends his days in a retirement home feeding a swan he is sure is the reincarnation of his beloved Allie. In the midst of Wilson's machinations, his daughter Anna announces she is getting married. The upcoming wedding provides Wilson with the opportunity to bring his elaborate plan to fruition. Sparks tells his sweet story competently, without sinking too deeply into the mire of sentiment; a gasp-inducing twist comes at the very end. Satisfied female readers will close the covers with a sigh and a wish that a little of the earnest, too-good-to-be-true Wilson might rub off on their own bedmates.
I enjoyed this book but I liked the Notebook better. I just found the ending to be a bit predictable, but maybe it was me. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, just think that the Notebook was a better book.
Book #35: The Ice Queen by Alice Hoffman, 211 pages
A solitary New Jersey librarian whose favorite book is a guide to suicide methods is struck by lightning in Alice Hoffman's superb novel, The Ice Queen. Orphaned at the age of eight after angrily wishing she would never see her mother again, our heroine found herself frozen emotionally: "I was the child who stomped her feet and made a single wish and in so doing ended the whole world‹my world, at any rate." Her brother Ned solved the pain of their mother's death by becoming a meteorologist: applying reason and logic to bad weather. Eventually, he invites our heroine to move down to Florida, where he teaches at a university. Here, while trying to swat a fly, she is struck by lightning (the resulting neurological damage includes an inability to see the color red). Orlon County turns out to receive two thirds of all the lightning strikes in Florida each year, and our heroine soon becomes drawn into the mysteries of lightning: the withering of trees and landscape near a strike, the medical traumas and odd new abilities of victims, the myths of renewal. Although a recluse, she becomes fascinated by a legendary local farmer nicknamed Lazarus Jones, said to have beaten death after a lightning strike: to have seen the other side and come back. The burning match to her cool reserve--her personal unguided tour through Hades--Lazarus will prove to be the talisman that restores her to girlhood innocence and possibility.
Hoffman's story advances with a feline economy of language and movement--not a word spared for the color of the sky, unless the color of the sky factors into the narrative. Among the authors who have played with the fairy tale's harsh mercies (e.g. Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter), Hoffman has the closest understanding of the primal fears that drive the genre, and why, perhaps, we never outgrow fairy stories, but only learn to substitute dull, wholesome qualities like personal initiative or good timing for the elements that raise the hairs on our neck and send us scrambling for the light switch.
It has been awhile since I've read one of her books. I have to agree with PoeticGoddss about the beginnings being so detailed and then ending quick. Overall, I really enjoyed this book. it was unique and different. I'm glad that I got the chance to read this book.
Book #36:The Bishop at Sea (Blackie Ryan Novels) by Andrew M. Greeley, 287 pages
Bishop Blackie Ryan--who spends more time troubleshooting and solving crimes than he does on spiritual matters--is back in action in a paperback original that's sure to delight Father Andrew M. Greeley's faithful fans. Sent by his boss, Cardinal Cronin, to the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Langley ostensibly to perform a confirmation, Blackie finds that his detecting talents are more in demand than his devotional ones. ("Those of you who have seen the film Pulp Fiction will doubtless remember Harvey Keitel. He was a sweeper, a person designated by God and his betters to sweep up the mess left by higher-ups in the outfit. That's what I am, Sean Cronin's sweeper") Disappearing crew members and other strange occurrences have led to talk of the new ship being haunted, a situation that dedicated debunker of demons Bishop Ryan can't resist.
Picked this book up at a good price and it looked interesting. I had no idea that I'd end up really liking this book. It was easy to get into and I liked the characters. It was over before I realized it. I've had it sitting around and it was at the bottom of my pile of books to read for other Bookcrossing members. I'm glad that I finally read it. Wish I'd done so sooner!