The Dark Road by Ma Jian What a book. This tells the story of a Chinese family continually on the move escaping population laws. The story begins with the mother pregnant with a forbidden second child. The story is mostly narrated by the spirit of her unborn second child but is told over a period of time of several years. I am really torn on this book. I found it fascinating and a real page turner but it lost me about 2/3rds of the way through. It was all just a bit too much. I think many of the events could have happened to a family but it seemed more to me that they were events that happened to many families and were highlighted by the author to just this one family. It just became too much though and then I was ready to finish the book to see how it ended. I'm still a little confused on the ending too. I loved the culture and found the various tragedies heart wrenching. I also really found this author's writing style to be intriguing so I am excited to read more by her.
The First Affair by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus- I like these two authors and early in the summer I started picking up all their books that I hadn't read to read. This one wasn't really my favorite. Here we have a novel about a strong female lead character, and instead of giving her strength and individuality she gets into an affair with the president and we follow her through the difficulties of this. The book wasn't really that interesting and just didn't hold my attention the way I would have liked. Though I have to say this one was pretty easy to see from the cover and description that it would turn out this way and I should have known better.
The Elephant Whisperer by Lawrence Anthony- Well this was definitely my favorite book of the month. I read this book very slowly because I didn't want it to end. It's been on my list for a long time and it was a holiday present many months ago. I love love love elephants. This book is a non fiction work about the authors experiences raising a wild elephant herd in Africa. The book was the perfect combination of cool facts that I never knew before and really amazing stories. Stories that were heartbreaking and stories that were just wonderful. By the end of it I wanted to empty my bank account and move to Africa and have my own elephants. If you love elephants, or are in general an animal lover, great great great read.
Goodbye Columbus and Other Short Stories by Philip Roth- This read was recommended by someone else possibly for the city name but then it turned out the city wasn't the one I had anticipated. Overall a good collection of short stories that were slightly difficult to get into but then once I did get into them it was easy to flip the pages wanting to know what happened next for each character. Most of the stories were about young people and included some sort of struggling Jewish element.
Eighteen Acres by Nicole Wallace- I read about this book and liked the review and thought it had great potential. It's the story of the 3 women, 3 powerful Washington DC women. One is the first female president of the United States, one is the chief of staff, and one is a white house correspondent. I had such high hopes for this book being strong on feminism and showing women in positions of power. But what it wound up being was 3 stories of women and their love lives and balancing that with their careers. Big disappointment.
The Lost Art of Mixing by Erica Bauermeister- While I keep going back to this author for some reason, I really feel like all of her books are essentially the same with different character names. This one was a continuation of one of her earlier books. Her style is to have a commonality of the characters, in this case a restaurant with cooking classes, that allows them to meet and then each chapter is devoted to a particular character and shares their story. Sometimes the stories are then finished or given a conclusion in someone else's story line. I guess I just feel that the characters are only just developed and then it's time to move to the next. Even in this case where the story lines were continued from another book, there just didn't feel like there was enough time to get to know the character and get invested in what happened.
Insurgent and Allegiant by Veronica Roth- I don't know, I just wasn't impressed by the Divergent series. It's possible my hopes were too high for this as so many people had talked about it. I waited though through all three stories to find out the purpose for everything and to get hooked to the story and I never did. The last two books of the series are typical at war books in these recent trilogies. I'm writing this blog way late and several months after reading them and I can't even remember the very ending of the story. The only thing I can say is that I do think these books were written very visually and I am curious on how the movies are able to portray things and I don't often say this but I do think in this case the movies will be better then the books.
The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser- This is the true story of a woman who escaped the FLDS polygamist cult and her experience within. I was truly impressed by her first hand account and found it wonderful to watch her become such a strong adult. Her struggles as a child and her journey to finding her own way was sad to read about but also so moving to see the courage she had. The title refers to her numerous testimonies against FLDS members which led to their punishment for child abuse and to the fact that red was a "bad" color to wear in their church. Each time she got on the stand she wore red to face these men who had done awful things but would never be held accountable had she not had the strength to stand up for her convictions. A truly inspiring true story.
The Light in the Ruins by Chris Bohjalian- I love this author. His books range from good to great to fantastic so even when they are just good I know a fantastic one is coming. This one was fantastic. I couldn't put it down. It weaves two stories together through time and many characters who somehow all end up intertwining. Part of the story takes place in 1943 while the war is going on in Italy and part takes place in 1955 post war recovery in Italy. For the most part the chapters alternated years and as the reader you get some of the pieces of the puzzle and then get to go back in time to see how those pieces got there. There is a lot of grief and sadness in the story but the novel ends with hope as a message.
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