Cry, the Beloved Country

Cry, the Beloved Country is so beautiful. I have had it on my shelf for a long time. I like reading about Africa so I knew I should read it, but kept not picking it up.

Luckily, I finally did. Cry, the Beloved Country is set in South Africa during the 1940s. At this time, society in South Africa was very unequal. Blacks in South African society had so little in comparison to whites.

Cry, the Beloved Country is about a young black man who kills a white husband and father in racially charged South Africa. The story follows the men's fathers in the aftermath of the crime.

Some might find the the moral of the story a bit heavy handed, but I thought it was beautiful.

The Handmaid's Tale

Stop what you are doing and go read this book.


I was serious. Go read this book, then you can come back and goof around on the internet.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood is a book that I've heard people rave about for years. I have this thing about dystopian books so it wasn't on the top of my list. I read it for the seasonal online challenge for the category of a Canadian author. It was a great example of how the book challenge gets you to read things you might not otherwise pick up.

The Handmaid's Tale is set in an alternate future where a conservative Christian group has taken over society and the environment has been severely degradated. The laws in society divide women up into different categories. The narrator is a handmaid whose job it is to produce children. Handmaids are not allowed to read and are only allowed out of the house once a day.

There were so many things to love about The Handmaid's Tale: the idea that such a society isn't that remote of an idea, the writing, and the ending. I won't say anything about the end, other than it was brilliant. Freaking brilliant.

This was one of the best, if not the best, books I've read this year. It's one of the best books I've ever read.

Shine

I loved Shine. Loved.

I think Lauren Myracle is a very cool person, so I was prepared to love it and was thankfully not disappointed.

Shine is the story of a teenager trying to solve the mystery of who severely beat her gay friend. The sheriff and town don't seem too concerned about the crime so Cat, the main character, sets out to find out who did it.

Shine is set in a rural southern town, a place that is struggling with drugs, a lack of jobs, and the belief from outsiders that they are just a bunch of "mountain niggers." The book is set in Transylvania County, NC, which is a real place. The specific town in the novel doesn't exist. My parents have a house in the mountains in Transylvania County, so I was really interested in reading this book.

Photo taken down the hill from my parents' place:
Complete with trailer, confederate flag, ex-con owner, and mean ass dog.

E and I visited my parents' place earlier this summer and I read Shine while I was there. My parents don't stay at the house full-time and right before we got there someone kicked in the front door and stole all the alcohol. The person they were pretty sure did it was an alcoholic with no job and a criminal history (not the guy who lives down the hill.) So the real side of this small town with lax law enforcement was very much what we were experiencing. I could picture the story in the exact setting.

I loved Shine. I am sure my biased view helped, but I thought it was a wonderful book. I thought it was a great mystery with lots of insight to many social issues.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is one of those books that is so inspiring. I have enjoyed Michael Pollan's books about food, so I wasn't surprised to enjoy Kingsolver's addition to the genre.

Last summer, Evan and I got a CSA share and drowned in the amount of food we received. This year we decided not to do it, but our local farmers' market will be starting soon so we can buy local veggies at it. My dad has had a garden for more years than I've been around and I've been experimenting in my own. I was interested to read about Kingsolver's gardening.

Kingsolver's book is a memoir about how her family ate local for a year. This included meat. They were living on a family farm and were able to grow a significant amount of food, both for immediate use and to store for the winter. They also bought food at their farmers' market.

One of the criticisms of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that I read before reading the book said that Kingsolver's experience was totally unrealistic and that she was preachy about it. To say it is unrealistic totally misses the point. Obviously we don't all live on a farm and can't grow food like she was able to. Duh. I've read plenty of memoirs, most commonly travel memoirs that are totally unrealistic for me, but are still fun to read about and put ideas in my head. This book made me think about what I could do. I didn't think Kingsolver was preachy. She laid information out in a clear, readable way.

I loved Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. It was inspiring. If you are interested in food, you should pick it up.

The Boyfriend List

I really liked this book. Really really liked it.

In The Boyfriend List, the main character, Ruby, is seeing a psychiatrist because she's been having panic attacks.

Her doctor has asked her to make a list of boyfriends, which is really a list of boys that played a role in her life whether they were boyfriends or not. She goes through her list of guys and her story unfolds.

I felt myself identifying with Ruby and her feelings about the end of her relationship with Jackson. It brought back some long forgotten feelings from my own high school boyfriend. Seriously, I wish someone had put this book in my hands the second that relationship ended. (Of course that would have been impossible since the book was written years after all that, but you get my point.)

I thought the ending was perfect. I thought it fit the story so well and showed a lot of growth on Ruby's part. The Boyfriend List is the first in a series, but stands alone well. As much as I liked it, I am not sure I want to read any more of the series. I thought this book was perfection and am afraid the next books may lessen that feeling. (Hopefully that makes sense.)

I have The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by Lockhart as well. It's got great reviews and received Prinz honor award so I bet it will be awesome too.

The House at Riverton

I finished this book and said, "Wow." Then I put the book down. Then I picked up and reread the last couple pages and again said, "Wow."

The House at Riverton is the story of Grace, once a maid at Riverton, now an old woman, remembering her life at the manor. She tells her story, but she also tells the story of the Hartford sisters, the young women of the house, and what happened the night a poet committed suicide at a party.

I've mentioned before how I like historical fiction mysteries that bounce back and forth between the present and the past. This book had that structure and it was written by Kate Morton, whose The Forgotten Garden I really enjoyed. The past was the more important part of the book, but the story set in the present also offered some interest.

Obviously you can tell I enjoyed The House at Riverton. There was so much to like: the setting of Edwardian and post WWI England, the old woman telling her life story, the mystery of the poet's death. It's a gothic book along the lines of Rebecca or The Thirteenth Tale.

Nothing to Envy

Wow. Just wow.

I knew things were bad in North Korea, but I always pictured it as more of a bad joke with a crazy guy as the leader. I know they have nuclear weapons, but it still seemed not that awful.

Sadly, I was dead wrong.

Nothing to Envy is the story of six North Koreans. The people profiled had all escaped to South Korea. They each had a different life in North Korea and different reasons for leaving, though they had faced the same hardships.

This photo perfectly shows the problems in North Korea. It shows a night satellite view of the Korean peninsula. The bottom half is South Korea. The top is North Korea. The one dot of light in North Korea is Pyongyang, the capital.



North Korea has very little electricity. The people profiled talked about how they lived their lives with so little. They also shared stories of the famine of the mid-90s. People were dying in the streets and scavenging for food such as weeds. One of the people was a doctor. She crossed the border into China and found dogs eating rice--a "luxury" she hadn't had in years. Another woman was a kindergarten teacher whose students died of starvation.

Life in North Korea was so terrible. This is truly an eye-opening book, even for someone who thought she knew about the country. I think it would still be enjoyable for a person who usually doesn't pick up non-fiction. The stories are so compelling and the topic is very relevant. The title is very appropriate.

Powder Burn

Powder Burn chronicles the intentionally set fires on Vail Mountain in 1998. Vail was expanding into new areas. Those areas had previously been wilderness. Lodges in the expansion area were torched just before they opened.

There was a great deal of controversy, some environmentally related, some not, surrounding the Vail expansion. Consequently, the arson suspect list is quite long. Powder Burn reads like a great thriller or mystery. It's an edge of your seat sort of read. You are kept guessing about the true identity of the arsonist. At the time of the book's publication, the mystery had not been solved, which is presumably some of the whodunit of the story. However, since the book's publication, the case has been solved. (Google it once you've read the book.)

I don't think the lack of an answer in the book hurts it. Instead, I think it probably helped it because all sides of the issue are thoroughly explained and explored. If the mystery had been solved prior to the book's publication, I feel like it would have been very easy to gloss over the groups and people who weren't responsible for the arson. Even though they weren't the ones burning down Vail's buildings, they still had plenty of reasons why they might like to see the new lodges gone.

The quote on the top of the cover is from Outside Magazine. They call Powder Burn "an alpine Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." I think this is an accurate description. Powder Burn gives a great feel for Vail as well as diving into the tension surrounding the ski resort and the fires. It only has a handful of reviews on goodreads, which to me is disappointing because it's a great read.

Dirty Sexy Politics

For those of you who know my political leanings, you might be surprised but I LOVED this book. I read a blurb about the book and thought it sounded good despite the fact she is John McCain's daughter. I downloaded a sample for my Kindle and really enjoyed it, so I bought it.

She's so honest about this-is-who-I-am even how it doesn't fit the Republican party. She's pro life, but very pro contraceptives and is against abstinence only teaching. She's supports gay marriage calling it the civil rights movement of this generation, and is not particularly fond of the conservative Christian movement in the party, wonders why the Reps write off young voters and say silly anti-intellectual things. Plus, she doesn't seem to think very much of Palin. She sounds kind of liberal by my description, but mainly she seemed like an honest, candid moderate.

Even being the candidate's daughter, Meghan was carefully watched to make sure she fit the image that the campaign wanted. She writes, "I needed to be fixed-improved upon or polished up-or sent to Siberia. That was the basic message." She graduated from Columbia, which was maligned as a socialist school by her father during the election, which highlights how she felt she was treated.

She has lots of great insight about politics, campaigns, and the Republican party. It's also a great story about accepting yourself as you are--even when there's lots of pressure that you aren't ok as is.

I want to be her BFF. She's awesome. Her honesty and humor were great!

I'd love to hear what some of my more conservative friends think about it.

Shutter Island

Holy moly.

Many of the girls in my book club read this several months ago and raved. I am a huge wimp, though, and thought it sounded scary so I wasn't interested. A few months later I was looking for a new audio book and figured I'd give Shutter Island a try.

Then I waited several more months after downloading it, still thinking it was too scary. (It isn't scary.)

I finally started listening and was immediately caught up in the story. Teddy Daniels, a US Marshall, is sent to Shutter Island, site of a mental hospital for the criminally insane because a patient had gone missing. I don't want to say any more about the plot because I don't want to spoil anything and because you just need to read it.

I'm not sure if it'll make my top 10 list for the year, but it's definitely in the running. The movie is also really good and a great adaptation of the book.

The Poisonwood Bible

I had been told toread this book several (5!) years ago after seeing a movie about the ill-fated Lumumba and being interested in the history of the Congo during that period. For whatever reason, I never got around to it til a recent trip when I had to time to do some reading. Wow. I should have read this book years ago. The history is really interesting as the story of the Price family envelopes you. Any time a book gets you to feel so much emotion, its a good one. So if you've been like me, hav...more I first read The Poisonwood Bible back in 2007 .

This is my review from back then:

"I had been told to read this book several (5!) years ago after seeing a movie about the ill-fated Lumumba and being interested in the history of the Congo during that period. For whatever reason, I never got around to it til a recent trip when I had to time to do some reading. Wow. I should have read this book years ago. The history is really interesting as the story of the Price family envelopes you. Any time a book gets you to feel so much emotion, its a good one. So if you've been like me, having this book on your to-read list, get to it!"

I reread it recently and still loved it. It is one of my all time favorites.

Flashback Friday: The Westing Game

My friend Jacki, the blogger over at Lovely Little Shelf, has a weekly post named Friday Flashback about books she loved as a kid or teenager.

Not surprisingly, I read a lot as a kid.

Since this is my first Friday Flashback, I figured I'd start with my all-time favorite kid's book: The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. It won the Newbery Award in 1979.

I first read this book in elementary school for a book report. It's a mystery about a millionaire's death. His would-be heirs are trying to solve the puzzle of Samuel Westing's passing so they can receive their inheritance. I loved the mystery and I adore Turtle, one of main characters.

I've reread it several times in the past twenty (yikes!) years. I still love it just as much. I've reread some of the books from my childhood and been disappointed. This one has held up well as I've aged and in the thirty years since it was published.