3.5 Stars. I'm finding this hard to rate. On the one hand, it is well-written and exciting and everything that I expect from this series. On the other hand, it's Levana. Oh my gosh! I despise this character! I tried hard to find something to like and to see her as more of a victim than a victimizer and that worked for maybe the [...]
The Story of Land and Sea opens with young Tabitha contracting yellow fever on her tenth birthday. Her father and grandfather, having already lost her mother in childbirth, are desperate to save her despite the limitations of 18th century medicine. Her father takes to the sea with her in tow, thinking that the sea air will cure her. After all, he took her mother to the sea when they first married and she blossomed into the woman he loved with all his heart. Flashing back 20 years, Tabitha's mother Helen is a young girl receiving her first slave on her tenth birthday. Helen is a serious, bossy soul, teaching the neighborhood slaves on Sunday and becoming perfectly poised to take the reins of her father's turpentine business. And then she meets a soldier. Hmm. That story I just described is exciting and I'd like to read it. This book is not that book. This book is much more Literary-with-a-capital-L. Instead of the action-y love story I was hoping for, I found a book that explores the holes that grief leaves in the lives of those left behind. It is well-written but I somehow felt removed from the story. I didn't feel like I really knew any of the characters; I only knew their grief. The book does have a strong sense of place, which is what I was hoping for. I'm a North Carolina girl and we always spent our summer vacations on the coast when I was growing up. I was really excited when I realized that the book is set in Beaufort. We always spent a day exploring the town, eating ice cream at the marina, checking out the maritime museum, and choosing which yacht would be ours if we ever won the lottery. This post-Revolutionary War Beaufort…
I don't even really know what I read here, but I do know that liked it. Part love story, part coming-of-age novel, part environmental warning, Habibi covers a lot of ground. Dodola and Zam meet as children when they're up for sale in a slave market in what appears to be the Middle East. Events unfold and they find themselves living alone in the desert with only each other for company. Thompson explores the changing nature of relationships as they grow older. Dodola has always cared for the younger Zam as a mother would, doing whatever it takes to keep them both alive. As Zam ages, he outgrows the self-absorption of youth and starts trying to care for Dodola in turn. Their lives keep twisting and turning but their love is always selfless. The way the story seemed to span through time bothered me at first. I first thought the story was taking place in ancient times but then little things crept in and I kept adjusting the time frame forward until I decided that they were living in the modern world. I interpreted that to be a reflection of the timeless nature of love. The world changes but human nature doesn't really change, for better or for worse. Bits of stories from the Koran were sprinkled throughout the larger story, reinforcing that timeless feel. Speaking of the Koran, I have to speculate on why this story is set in that particular part of the world. The audience is going to be Western. Maybe the author is reinforcing what we should already know--cultural differences aside, people are still just people, wherever you go. If this book were set somewhere else, a lot of superficial details would change, for sure, but the heart of the story would still be the same.…
Fereiba lived a lonely childhood in Afghanistan. Her mother died in childbirth and her stepmother never treated her like a real member of the family. Her stepmother does eventually arrange a marriage for her and it becomes a love match. Three children later, the Taliban are in power, Fereiba has had to give up the teaching job she loves, and their lives are shattered when the authorities knock on the door late one night, taking her husband Mahmood with them. Suddenly Fereiba finds herself alone with her children, fleeing Afghanistan and trying to reach family in England. I like books like this. They always make me more thankful for the things I take for granted every day. It's easy to forget that not everyone is as fortunate as I am. I'm free to wear what I want, worship as please, marry whomever I want, work at any job I'm qualified for, and get an education. I have access to healthcare, a nice home, clean water, electricity, indoor plumbing...the list goes on. Not everyone has even the most basic of these. I particularly enjoyed that the book starts before the Taliban were in power. Fereiba is a teacher, wearing stylish clothes and meeting her friends in public. The change to the Taliban regime is pretty abrupt in the book, I guess in the interest of time, but suddenly she can't teach and she can barely leave the house. When she does she has to wear a burqa and be accompanied by her husband. I've read widely enough to know that these changes have happened within my lifetime but it's good to remind those of us who are aware of it and to open the eyes of those who don't. I felt so bad for the family as they traveled. They fought…
Caitrin is on the run from a bad situation at home. With only the clothes on her back, a few coins, and her box of scribing tools, she just wants to get away. Her money runs out late one evening in the middle of nowhere. She finds her way to a village called Whistling Tor. She's eventually allowed through the fortifications and the innkeeper and his wife fill her head with terrible tales of a mysterious host that was unleashed on the territory about 100 years ago. It still leads travelers and locals alike to their deaths. The next morning, Caitrin, desperate, overhears a man from the keep at the top of the hill asking the innkeeper to send him anyone who can act as a scribe to work for the summer. Caitrin jumps at the chance. The innkeeper warns her that it isn't safe, but anything would have to be better than what she's left behind. She makes her way to the keep and meets a strange group of people. Strangest of all is the chieftain, Anluan, a man who's had an illness that's left him lame on one side and with a mercurial temper. Caitrin realizes that a terrible tragedy played out in the keep's past and vows to help bring the residual effects to an end. I forgot how much I love Juliet Marillier's books. She writes re-tellings so well! This one is based on Beauty and the Beast but set in Ireland. From the wild and rugged landscape to the damaged hero and heroine saving each other, I pretty much loved every page of this book. Caitrin has been badly hurt. She's lost herself in her recent tragedy. As she finds that she cares for the motley group of people she's living with, she starts to…
4.5 Stars. Mostly what I took away from this book is humor and grace. Somehow Rick Bragg's first memoir is the last one I've read and I have literally laughed 'til I cried in every one. I've read my family members bits here and there and retold stories I remember and made everyone listening to me laugh too. Maybe they're just [...]
Claire Harris is a New York socialite, throwing extravagant parties and softening up her husband's potential business partners for him. Her past comes back to haunt her one night and she flees to Paris on the eve on the German occupation to find an old lover. Their reunion doesn't go well and she finds herself working in a florist shop and reluctantly assisting the French Resistance. I'm not quite sure what to think. On the one hand, I did enjoy the book. I love almost any WWII novels and this is no exception. On the other hand, it was a bit too romance-y for me. It just couldn't quite make up its mind what it wanted to be. I can overlook romance--who doesn't love a good love story?--but when I'm suddenly hit with "Heat flooded her core," my eyes start rolling in my head and I start turning pages faster. "Can we please just get through this already?" To be fair, there were only a couple of those scenes but that was a couple too many for me. I can't put my finger on any examples of this, but I'm also left with the feeling that it needed one more good proofreading before it was published. It's not bad by any means, it could have just been a little more polished. I knew that the love story was going to center around Claire and Grey from their first meeting, so I did buy it. In retrospect though, I wish that part had been more fleshed out. Well, not that kind of fleshed out, but just the slow, getting-to-know-you part of things. Claire hates him at first, they meet a few times and she starts to change her mind, and then we're to the heated core. Quite a bit of time…
Allan Karlsson impulsively leaves his nursing home by way of his bedroom window on the day of his 100th birthday. There was no real decision-making involved; it was just done. So there he is, on the run in his "pee slippers" (so called because 100-year-old men don't reliably miss their shoes in the bathroom) and no real destination in mind. His journey leads him to the bus stop, where he steals a suitcase and then travels by bus as far as his limited funds will take him. It gets crazier from there as he goes from a missing geriatric to a wanted murderer. In flashbacks, we read the story of Allan's life. He meets many, many world leaders during his time, influences world events, and makes a lot of friends in strange places. I try not to read review of books I'm reading too close to the time I start reading them. I don't want others' thoughts to influence my own review. But this title caught my eye and I'd never heard of it, so before I downloaded the audio from the library website, I had a quick look through the GoodReads reviews. I came across many people who compared this to Forrest Gump. I have to agree. But it's like, Forrest Gump to the nth degree. It's just crazy and hilarious. No drama with broken women here. I also have to compare it to the Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man. Allan is an agreeable sort of fellow and he'll do anything to help someone else out, whether it's saving General Franco's life during the Spanish Revolution or giving Stalin the secret to the atomic bomb. Indirectly, in that case. Stalin was one of the few people Allan met that he didn't actually care for. Anyway, his propensity to say…
Young orphan Jim Burden is sent from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. There is a Bohemian family on the train with him. None of them really speak English. They all get off at the same station in Black Hawk. It turns out that the family has just bought the farm next to Jim's grandparents. Neighbors are still far apart back in 1800s Nebraska but Jim still spends a lot of time with the Shimerda family, especially Ántonia, the oldest girl and closest to his age. As he watches Ántonia grow, he realizes that she has an indomitable spirit and admires her for it. I liked Ántonia. A lot. She's smart, feisty, hard-working, loving, and full of life. As she grew older, I got more worried for her. This is a classic after all. I expected it to take a Thomas Hardy turn. I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. More than that, Ántonia embodied the American immigrant spirit. Her family starts out living in a dugout, basically a cave dug into the earth. They were comfortable back home in Bohemia so this is an adjustment for them, but rather than complain about it, as her mother does, Ántonia does her best to help raise the family out of that hole in the ground. She has setbacks of course, and people talk about her and her unfamiliar ways, but she just keeps doing what needs to be done. Ántonia lives in the town of Black Hawk for a while and becomes friends with a group of other immigrants. The wider group shows just how much these new settlers have to offer the country. Some become successful businesswomen, others become farm wives, some are content to just keep working in hotels and laundries. They all make some kind of…
Rory Stewart walked through India, Pakistan and Nepal in 2002, a time that was very unstable given the events of 2001 and the subsequent war. He decided that he wanted to walk through the heart of Afghanistan as well. He met with a lot of bureaucracy, but he was eventually given permission to undertake his journey on the condition that several soldiers accompany him. He sets out across Afghanistan in winter, towering mountains and layers of snow between him and his final destination of Kabul. I was a little disappointed in this and I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why, exactly. I think I expected more interaction with people? He's on foot and relies on the kindness of strangers for shelter and food. It's not like there are Holiday Inns on every street corner in Afghanistan. Heck, for that matter, there aren't even any streets to form corners in the rural areas he travels through. Just spending a night or two in one place, I felt like I didn't get a good sense of what the average people were really like. Which is kind of stupid to say. People are people. Afghans are like people everywhere--mean or kind, religious or not, apathetic or passionate. The one thing they are is crushingly poor. The country has been at war for so long, and I believe there's been a terrible drought that has dried up everything, so there's no chance to grow crops or lead a normal life. Anyway, I guess I didn't get a feel for what an average day in the life of an average Afghan is really like. Mr. Stewart mostly saw other people at night, when they'd settled in the house for what little dinner they could scrape together. What do they do with their…