The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
My mom brought this book up for me. I probably wouldn't have picked this one up on my own from the description. A boy, living in Afghanistan, is forced to flee with his father after the Soviets invade. They establish a new life in America until the son is called back to Kabul on a mission to right old wrongs.
What a beautiful, beautiful book. I cried. I ranted. I was totally engulfed by this story.
Don't be turned off by this subject matter. Read this book. It will haunt you.
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
What a beautiful and sad book. Set in China during the 13th century, we follow the lives of two girls from childhood to motherhood during a time when daughters where nothing but extra mouths to feed. The two girls are paired together as "old sames" which is a type of soul mate. They learn and grow from eachother until they leave to marry into a new family. Snow Flower ends up the wife of a butcher while Lily marries into the powerful Lu family. Misunderstandings and circumstances come between the two women and Lily is left with nothing but the rules and regulations governing women as her sole comfort.
This is a beautiful but sad story. The description of a woman's place and foot binding is torrific. At the end of the book, the author does a little postscript which I wish I had before starting the story. In it, See explains that although American women have much more freedom and liberty, we are still trying to be heard. Something Lily and Snow Flower struggle a lifetime for.
The Penelopaid - The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus - by Margaret Atwood
In The Odyssey, Penelope has a minor role as the faithful wife of Odysseus who waits quietly for the return of her husband from the Trojan War. She's merely a side character to the great battle and subsequent adventures of her husband. In this novel, Atwood fleshes out Penelope's life and writes a novel where she is the main character and her husband merely a supporting actor.
I like the premise of this book - the idea of retelling a myth from another perspective. When done well, the result is mesmerizing. See The Mists of Avalon. Unfortunately, this book didn't quite work. The voice is Penelope herself from the underworld and she's a bit of a bore. Most of the story is a long monologue full of complaints. There is almost no dialogue and aside from Penelope, no other characters are fully developed. Atwood also throws in a chorus of 12 maids and I wish she had actually made each maid a character instead of lumping them together. I thought their story would have been much more interesting. This idea just fell flat and was a terrifically boring read. Ah well. It was worth a try.
Makai by Kathleen Tyau
The author caught my eye. She grew up on Oahu but now lives in Oregon. Her book follows the life of Alice Woo who grows up in Hawaii. She goes to Priory for school and meets her best friend Annabelle. Together, they survive the attack on Pearl Harbor, fall in love and grow apart. This is a true family story and most of the plot involves poor Alice living in the shadow of her best friend. And the food! Oh my goodness. I was horribly hungry all through this book at all the delicious foods of the islands were mentioned. My only regret with this book was that the ending just pettered out. It almost felt like the last few chapters were forgotten. Nothing signalled "the end". Instead, the words just stopped without tying up any ends. That was a bit disappointing but the rest of this novel was a wonderful story.
A Miracle for St. Cecilia's by Katherine Valentine
I picked this one up because it looked like a book in the Mitford vein. Unfortunately, it was a very pale imitation. It just couldn't capture the charm and fun of the Mitford books. Instead, it came of forced and preach-y. The priest here is catholic and trying to revive an ailing church. There's the required local characters and religious conversions but nothing that caught my attention.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
I've had this on my to-read shelf for years but never picked it up. Quite a few friends told me they didn't like this book so I was in no rush to give it a go. Perhaps because I had such low expectations, I was surprised how much I liked this book. Diamant takes a few lines from the bible about Dinah and fleshes out her story to cover her whole life. Her father, Jacob and brother, Joseph, are merely sideline players in this novel. I thought Diamant made Dinah a great character. Her portrayal of a woman's life and role in life was wonderful and sad at the same time. I really liked this book. Surprise, surprise!
A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
I can't decide it I like this book. I have a feeling I missed something important while reading it. Or maybe it's because it's a translation. I never seem to have much luck with translations.
Anyhow, this book is all about finding one special sheep. A man going through a mid-life crisis meets a woman with beautiful ears. He publishes a picture at the request of a long lost friend called the Rat, is contacted by a Big man, and sent on a chase into the cold mountains of Hokkaido to locate a single sheep from the photo. If he fails, everything he has or ever cared for will be stripped from him. This sheep inhabites people and takes over their mind leading them to greatness. Or something like that. I can't even summarize this book properly. I think it may be a "guy" novel as there was quite a bit of mid-life crisis and loss of selve throughout. But there was something interesting in this bizarre storyline and I just couldn't stop until the end.
So it you want to try something a little different, than perhaps this sheep chase will be right up your alley.
Light From Heaven by Jan Karon
Ah, Father Tim. I just love these books. They are sweet, and uplifting and kind. Just what I needed. Father Tim and Cynthia are starting up a new church and meeting a new host of funny back woods characters. Faith, truth and compassion are the touchstones of this book. One of my favorite quotes from this book runs along the lines of, if you want to know a man's heart, tell me not what he reads, but what he re-reads. (Or something to this effect.) Well, this book is one I would re-read for it's sweet and uplifting message about faith. There's lots of praying and saving and hallelula-ing in this book so be warned! But sometimes, that's just what the soul craves.
A Private Hotel for Gentle Ladies by Ellen Cooney
I found this novel in the new arrivals at the library and the excerpt enticed me to give it a try. In 1900, Charlette Heath has just recovered from a wasting illiness that left her bedridden for the last 10 months. Healthy at last, she harnesses her horses and heads to town to find her husband. When she finds him, he is kissing another woman. Startled and hurt, Charlette heads to Boston to stay at a hotel with a her aunt. What she discovers is that this hotel, for ladies, employs a host of young and handsome young men. These men "entertain" various high class wives discretely in the hotel. Charlette finds comfort and romance as she tries to come to terms with the status of her marriage.
It took a while for this book to get going. Charlette spent a great deal of time "confused" about what went on in the hotel even thought it was quite clear to everyone else what was happening. Once she caught on, the book picked up interest and pacing. My biggest complaint was by the time the story got interesting, the book ended. I wish the author had spent a little less time on the set up and more time developing the resolution to Charlette's love triangle. This was a work of fiction with a heavy dose of romance. Always a good combo in my book!
Plain and Simple: A Journey to the Amish by Sue Bender
I picked this off the shelf at my mom's house. The cover was a photo of an Amish quilt that caught my eye and the back flap arosed my curiosity. This is a story of a woman, caught in the fast lane of everyday life, who sees an Amish quilt and decides to live with an Amish family to try and learn to live plain and simple. It's a story about trying to re-center yourself and purge the materialistic desires and stresses of the modern world. The author lived with two Amish families and although she learned how they lived, she had a very hard time adapting their lifestyle to her own. I liked her experiences with the Amish. The idea of giving equal attention to everything you do was stiking. They take as much time and pride in cleaning up after dinner as making a quilt of tending a garden. Every task is important. Nothing is rated as better or worse. It truely is a whole other world. I think I would have liked to read this book with a group. There was a lot I would have liked to discussed and mulled over a bit more. It's a small book but there were quite a few things that hit home with me. I may pick it up and read it again a little slower next time. If you are tired of the rat race, give this novel a try.
Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner
My mom-friend lent me this book. She said it was a fun "beach read" and I'd have to agree. It's very "Desperate Housewives" in that it's set in a seemingly ideal suburb with perfect moms and families. One mother is murdered and as you look closer at these seemingly perfect lives, you discover lots of dark secrets keep in very large walk-in closets.
The heroine is Kate who has recently moved to Upchurch with her husband and three kids. Her husband is gone travelling most of the time and she is totally overworked and stressed out at a mom trying to keep up with the Jones' of her new community. For example, when she takes her kids to the local park and snack time rolls around, all the other perfectly styled moms pull out home made flax wheat muffins while poor Kate scrounges around her old gym bag only to find two old breath mints and half a stick of gum.
There was a very sad undertone to this novel. Kate is a lost soul stuck raising her kids in what seems a loveless marriage. While reading Goodnight Moon to her daughter, there's one page that says, "good night noboby.... good night mush". Her daughters askes who is "nobody" and Kate thinks to herself, "I'm nobody." This book definately pushed the idea that moms who leave their careers and stay home with their kids lose their identity and are basically unhappy and underappreciated. Kate spends most of the book longing for her old job, old boyfriend, old wardrobe and counting the minutes until her kids are in school and she is free. Rather sad really.
While I could identify with some of the pressure to keep up with other moms and the mystery of "whodunnit" was good, I found the book a little too depressing over all. It sure makes staying at home with your kids seem like the worst thing ever. Which is kind of sad, really. Ah well. I suppose there are two sides of every coin.
The Other Side of the Sun by Madeline L'Engle
This book was given to me by a friend long, long ago. Back when I was still a working stiff and I just now unearthed it. It reminds me of the novel Rebecca in many ways and I definately enjoyed it as a nice suspenseful novel.
Set in South Carolina after the Civil War, a yound english woman arrives at a house called Illysia to await the return of her new husband. She meets his eccentric family members, unearths secrets and evil plots. I loved the old Aunties and the touch of brush magic thrown in. It was a real page turner and very beautifully written. Nothing like a classic tale of good vs. evil.
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
This book surprised me. This book woke up my brain and shook around my ideas of faith, friendship, and destiny. This book rocked.
I was surprised because I haven’t had much luck with John Irving before. I vaguely remember trying to read the World According to Garp and being bored enough to put it aside unfinished. I saw Cider House Rules and really didn’t like it at all. It seem choppy and ill-fitted somehow. (This could be just because it was cut and adapted to the big screen.) So it was with the smallest amount of enthusiasm that I picked up A Prayer for Owen Meany which was on my reading group’s list.
But by the end of the first chapter, I was riveted. Here’s just the opening sentences....
I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice - not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believed in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.
Now tell me if this one sentence isn’t fascinating.
“I am doomed to remember...” makes one think the narrator, John, regrets knowing Owen Meany. Doomed is usually a negative thing. You are doomed to die, you are doomed to fail, you are doomed to regret. So to be doomed to remember sounds ominous. Not so. John’s whole life revolves around remembering his best friend in life, Owen Meany. His relationship with Owen is so important, it dwarfs everything that comes after - dooms it in the sense that he is unable to escape his memories which will haunt him for the rest of his life.
This one sentence sums up the most interesting aspects of Owen Meany. His voice and his size will strike you first. Both, however, are necessary as you will see. However that is not all that Johnny is doomed to remember. Lastly, but probably most importantly, Johnny is doomed to remember Owen Meany is an instrument. He doesn’t say he remembers Owen Meany because he killed his mother - he says that Owen was merely the instrument that caused her death- which implies someone or something had to weald that instrument. And Owen is the instrument of so may things in this novel. He is the instrument of numerous deaths, of conversions of faith, of life.
And John believes in God because of Owen Meany. He is a Christian because of Owen Meany. Doesn’t this strike you as odd? I mean, wouldn’t most Christians say, “I am a Christian because I believe in the life of Christ”? But not John. Oh no, John is Christian because he witnessed and participated in the life of Owen Meany. Through Owen Meany, Johnny found God.
And there is so much in the book about faith. What is it, how do you attain it, what is it worth. One message that is repeated over and over is that doubt is better than faith based on false assumptions. It’s better to question the truth than the rely upon a lie.
This book....this book I will have to read again very slowly. I will need a copy with wide margins for my notes and thoughts. There is too much I missed this first time through in my haste to finish it and to understand it. I just barely have my arms around this books. Arms. There’s another strange symbol from the book...
But don’t get me started on arms here. Just read this book. At least read the first chapter. If you aren’t completely sucked in then resell it and try something new. But if it grabs you, call me. I have so many thoughts on this one. I’d love your opinion too.
Water Carry Me by Thomas Moran
This book is currently under discussion in my reading group. It’s a beautiful book about a young woman who falls in love. Of course, there is more to it than that but the best bits of this book are really a very sad love story. The party line is....
Una Moss, the gangly innocent who narrates Thomas Moran’s Water, Carry Me, is a fool for love. Although she shows a brashly confident face to the boys she meets in classrooms and pubs, she is in fact a sitting duck for the first sure-shooting romantic to come her way. Una, who is now a medical student in Ireland, was orphaned as a little girl and raised in a small fishing village by her hard-drinking grandfather, and her youthful dreams of being carried away have left her ill prepared for the hard realities of modern romance. These arrive in the irresistible form of Aidan Ferrel, a charming young draftsman who gradually becomes and obsession in Una’s untested imagination.
This book is all about the crazy loveliness of falling in love for the first time. I believe your first love is always the strongest most impassioned love you’ll ever have because its so new and consuming. You feel like your walking through fire - invincible and sexy all rolled into one. Unfortunately most of us, like Una, end up getting burned.
I loved Una Moss. She was such a wonderful and believable character. The courtship of Una and Aidan was wonderfully romantic. I completely identified with Una as she fell in love. First the fear of opening up to someone who might misuse your trust, then the giddy joy of brutally honest discussions late at night, the strange floating feeling of having a secret that your girlfriends don’t expect, and the simple joy of realizing someone loves you. Una just floated across the page. She was luminous. Every now and then, we saw a hint of things to come and actions that didn’t quite fit the character of Aidan. Even with these hints, I (like Una) refused to believe anything was wrong. I didn’t want to focus on the strange incidents or the quiet secrets because I was enjoying the newly found love story too much. So when the book ended, I was horrified. Shocked even. I suppose I saw it coming but still but I wasn’t ready for the magnitude of it. I don’t want to say more or it will ruin everything. But I was actually angry with the ending for a while. It just seemed so horribly unfair.
So lets just say I loved the everything except the last chapter. But I suppose not everyone lives happily ever after.
The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banergee Divakaruni
Oh my, I have read so many books since AT&T destroyed our website, I hardly know where to begin! When I went home for my reunion waaaay back in November, my mother gave me this book to read. She loved the writing style because the author is also a poet so her descriptions and imagery is quite beautiful. The party line is....
Magical, tantalizing, and sensual, The Mistress of Spices is the story of Tilo, a young woman born in another time, in a faraway place, who is trained in the ancient art of spices and ordained as a mistress charged with special powers. Once fully initiated in a rite of fire, the now immortal Tilo - in the gnarled and arthritic body of an old woman - travels through time to Oakland, California, where she opens a shop from which she administers spices as curatives to her customers. An unexpected romance with a handsome stranger eventually forces her to choose between the supernatural life of an immortal and the vicissitudes of modern life. Spellbinding and hypnotizing, The Mistress of Spices is a tale of joy and sorrow and one special woman's magical powers.
This book is definitely magical and mystical. I loved the personification of the spices. The description of their powers and abilities as if they were little gods or deities.
But, oddly enough, it was the setting that appealed to me. Tilo works in a small, dark, and dusty shop wedged between two other nondescript buildings. From the description, it reminds me of my neighborhood. There is a very large Vietnamese population and the main road that passes my neighborhood and it is dotted with small markets that advertise in mandarin, Chinese, and other foreign languages. I've never gone in to one and really never noticed them. And Tilo's shop could, very easily, be nestled there for all I know. In the book, however, she is placed in Oakland and a seedy neighborhood from the events that unfold. From behind her counter she watches her customers as they try to balance their old, traditional, ethnic selves with the draw and the power of America. In almost every sub-story there is a horrific clash of cultures from a daughter dating a non-Indian to a young boy who runs with the wrong crowd in an attempt to fit in. In each, it appears that America will ground out the ethic until Tilo and her herbs step in. But even Tilo's herbs have limits and so, in a fit of compassion, Tilo leaves the safety of her shop, breaks the rules that create her magical powers, and tries to save the people who have transformed from customer to friend. I don't want to ruin the ending but even Tilo finds herself tempted by America and she too must chose between her past and her magical gifts and the temptations of the present and America.
The author walks the reader down a very narrow line. Neither culture is the "right" one. The Indian belief system does not work with the freedoms of America and the western lifestyle throws out the baby with the bath water. Tilo's remedies attempt to find a middle ground. Somehow melding the best of the Indian culture with the strength of the American dream. I would think this book would touch a cord in any "first generation" American. I've had friends, born in America, whose parents immigrated from another country and the strange dual life they lead. This book focuses on that generation gap with a twist of magic. It's a very good read and a definite recommendation.
Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen
I realized that, although I had watched the A&E miniseries numerous times, I have never read the novel. Actually, I think I might have read it in high school but if so it has slipped from my memory along with differential equations and the ability to conjugate the verb ir.
So I picked up the classic and began to read. It wasn't long before I discover a problem. The miniseries was taken almost word for word from the book. I found myself following conversations like I was a small child and my mom was trying to skip pages while reading me King Tree or the Scary Green Pants With No One Inside Them. I was acutely aware every time the book differed from the movie and I kept seeing the actors instead of the written characters. It took me quite a few chapters to purge myself of the videos to enjoy the book.
And I did enjoy it. I loved the sharp humor and the sly message. Watching Lizzie preach about the dangerous of pride and then falling herself into the same trap. Realizing how quickly we catagorize people based on exterior factors instead of getting to know someone from the inside out. Blinded by pride reinforced by societal prejudices, Lizzie and Mr. Darcy almost miss out on true love. But circumstanced force each of them to walk outside of the path dictated by society and the result is magical. Even though I knew the ending, I still found myself anxious to make sure everything ends happily. I suppose that's the reason it is considered a classic.