I've been meaning to read Life of Pi by Yan Martel for a couple of years now and never seem to get around to it, so I picked it for "my" month at our book club. While there are parts I still don't quite understand even after a lengthy discussion, I still liked it a LOT.
The first section of the book was hard to read and to be honest bordered on boring at times. I wasn't overly interested in Pi's life in the zoo or his odd religious affiliations. I mean, they were OK and definitely contributed to his character development, but I kept waiting for something to happen. So, I was quite relieved when something finally did happen! And what a happening.
I'm still confused on the meaning of the meerkat island and the blind guy. Was the blind guy his brother? Or the cook? Were the meerkats cannibals? Something he'd repressed? Why didn't it make it into the second story? Or were all of the above just hallucinations?
So, overall, I'm not sure the book gave me a reason to believe in God, as the author suggests at the beginning, but it did give me alot to think about. To me, it's a good thing when a book leaves you wanting more rather than feeling relieved that it's over!
Monday, April 14, 2008
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Daughter of the Forest
Daughter of the Forest captivated me right off the bat and kept me spellbound from start to finish. It's the first of a trilogy and I can't wait to read the other 2 books. Juliet Marillier is a master of description and really made the scenery and people come alive for me.
Sorcha, the daughter of an Irish warlord, must complete an arduous task in order to save her 6 brothers from a terrible spell. In doing so she comes face to face with her families greatest enemies and learns much about herself.
In the course of her journey, she tells and retells Irish legends and learns about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. She loses her voice but keeps an ability to communicate with ehr brothers and her true love in other ways. The ending is a little predictable, but one can't really expect the heroine to die in the first of a trilogy, can one?
Sorcha, the daughter of an Irish warlord, must complete an arduous task in order to save her 6 brothers from a terrible spell. In doing so she comes face to face with her families greatest enemies and learns much about herself.
In the course of her journey, she tells and retells Irish legends and learns about good and evil, love and hate, life and death. She loses her voice but keeps an ability to communicate with ehr brothers and her true love in other ways. The ending is a little predictable, but one can't really expect the heroine to die in the first of a trilogy, can one?
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Free Food For Millionaires
This book was OK and an easy summer read. I picked it up from the new books section at the library because the title Free Food for Millionaires caught my eye and I was curious about this free food for millionaires!
Author Min Jin Lee does a wonderful job of developing several characters who interact with Casey Han as she makes the transition from Princeton to the real world. Basically Casey finds that the real world is HARD and people without wealthy parents have to work for what they get. Actually all kinds of terrible things seem to happen to Casey and everyone she knows.
I found the characters interesting and for the most part the plot was good. It drug on here and there. But, the ending fell flat and left me irritated that I'd read the whole thing for no real conclusion. Perhaps Lee will write a sequel and satisfy my need for closure. Or perhaps the point of her book is that there is no closure.
Since it's an easy read I'd recommend it. You could read it 10 times in the amount of time it'd take to read something like Weaveworld!
Author Min Jin Lee does a wonderful job of developing several characters who interact with Casey Han as she makes the transition from Princeton to the real world. Basically Casey finds that the real world is HARD and people without wealthy parents have to work for what they get. Actually all kinds of terrible things seem to happen to Casey and everyone she knows.
I found the characters interesting and for the most part the plot was good. It drug on here and there. But, the ending fell flat and left me irritated that I'd read the whole thing for no real conclusion. Perhaps Lee will write a sequel and satisfy my need for closure. Or perhaps the point of her book is that there is no closure.
Since it's an easy read I'd recommend it. You could read it 10 times in the amount of time it'd take to read something like Weaveworld!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Your Eight Year Old: Lively and Outgoing
As with other books in the popular Louise Bates Ames series, Your Eight Year Old is right on about so many things you'd think she was peeping through my windows and writing specifically about my child.
What I took most from the book is that eight year olds have "complicated" relationships with their mothers, which actually explains a LOT of what's been going on around here. Furthermore, they are lively and outgoing, but also can be mouthy and just plain annoying.
There are a few parts that make it evident the book was written in the 70s, but their summary and explanations of children's behavior makes me feel sooo much more normal.
Once again a great book. I recommend all the books in this series to parents.
What I took most from the book is that eight year olds have "complicated" relationships with their mothers, which actually explains a LOT of what's been going on around here. Furthermore, they are lively and outgoing, but also can be mouthy and just plain annoying.
There are a few parts that make it evident the book was written in the 70s, but their summary and explanations of children's behavior makes me feel sooo much more normal.
Once again a great book. I recommend all the books in this series to parents.
Weaveworld
I can't decide if I love this book. like this book or hate this book. Not exactly in that order. I read Weaveworld for my book club and if I didn't know that someone else liked it enough to choose it for the club I would have quit in the first 200 pages. It was slightly intriguing, but a little hard to follow and the characters were not endearing at ALL.
For the next 200-some odd pages, I liked the book. I didn't love it, but it began to have some appeal and make me start to wonder what was going to happen and how it all would end.
Move on to the NEXT 200 or so pages and I LOVED the book. I loved how it all came together. The ending was meaningful. It was GREAT
Still, if it were a short book it'd be worth it to read 1/3 before you started to like it, but to slog through 200 pages before it becomes interesting seems torturous unless you're locked up somewhere and need something to pass the time and keep your mind of something awful. To do that in the middle of summer vacation just sucked!
For the next 200-some odd pages, I liked the book. I didn't love it, but it began to have some appeal and make me start to wonder what was going to happen and how it all would end.
Move on to the NEXT 200 or so pages and I LOVED the book. I loved how it all came together. The ending was meaningful. It was GREAT
Still, if it were a short book it'd be worth it to read 1/3 before you started to like it, but to slog through 200 pages before it becomes interesting seems torturous unless you're locked up somewhere and need something to pass the time and keep your mind of something awful. To do that in the middle of summer vacation just sucked!
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally
OK, I have to admit here that there is no way I would have picked up and actually read a book with a title as long and serious-sounding as Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but Not Literally if it weren't what the new Bible Study class I'm going to was reading. I started the class when they were 1/2-way thru the book, so I read the last half of the book first, then found it interesting enough to go back and read the first half on my own.
This is NOT light reading. This is the kind of book where you read a chapter, think about it for a few days, then read the next. Sometimes you read 2-3 pages, think about it for a few days, then finish the chapter. Unless you have a lot of free time to think, but since I don't it took me a few days to do the thinking.
So, if you are an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian who has no interest in seeing other views or considering anything to not be black or white, stop reading here. This is NOT the book for you. For the rest of you, Borg's basic premise is that the Bible is not a literal, historical work and is not to be taken as such. It is a *sacred* work of literature and IS to be taken as such. Did God create the world in a literal seven days or are we to take into account the face that "God's time isn't our time" in the Genesis account. Doesn't matter. Borg's not even sure there really were an Adam and Eve. What he is sure of is that these stories do carry a message about the sacred traditions of our faith. Instead of trying to figure out what was a historical fact and what was an allegorical story, Borg focuses on looking at what the stories MEAN. Both for the Hebrews who wrote them and for us in post-modern America.
What I personally find interesting is that this is apparently an extremely "liberal" view of the Bible since, well, this is kind of how I've always seen the Bible. Lately I've been wondering where I got this viewpoint I have, so it was nice to see someone else sees it the same way. The Bible's primary importance is as a a sacred work of guidance for our lives, not as a history book.
This was a hard to read but worth it book. I can't go thru everything the guy says, but will say it's worth the effort if you have even a passing interest the Bible.
This is NOT light reading. This is the kind of book where you read a chapter, think about it for a few days, then read the next. Sometimes you read 2-3 pages, think about it for a few days, then finish the chapter. Unless you have a lot of free time to think, but since I don't it took me a few days to do the thinking.
So, if you are an ultra-conservative, fundamentalist Christian who has no interest in seeing other views or considering anything to not be black or white, stop reading here. This is NOT the book for you. For the rest of you, Borg's basic premise is that the Bible is not a literal, historical work and is not to be taken as such. It is a *sacred* work of literature and IS to be taken as such. Did God create the world in a literal seven days or are we to take into account the face that "God's time isn't our time" in the Genesis account. Doesn't matter. Borg's not even sure there really were an Adam and Eve. What he is sure of is that these stories do carry a message about the sacred traditions of our faith. Instead of trying to figure out what was a historical fact and what was an allegorical story, Borg focuses on looking at what the stories MEAN. Both for the Hebrews who wrote them and for us in post-modern America.
What I personally find interesting is that this is apparently an extremely "liberal" view of the Bible since, well, this is kind of how I've always seen the Bible. Lately I've been wondering where I got this viewpoint I have, so it was nice to see someone else sees it the same way. The Bible's primary importance is as a a sacred work of guidance for our lives, not as a history book.
This was a hard to read but worth it book. I can't go thru everything the guy says, but will say it's worth the effort if you have even a passing interest the Bible.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Fresh Disasters
Fresh Disasters is the latest in the Stone Barrington series by Stuart Woods. This time Stone is filing a lawsuit against NYC mob leader Carmine Datilla on behalf of Herbie Fisher, a lovable ne'er do well. He also has to protect a woman from her crazed ex-boyfriend and gets the privilege of handling a divorce for the wife (soon to be ex) of the lawyer representing Carmine Datilla.
As usual, it's much more complicated than it sounds, involves huge amount of money changing hands and several sexual encounters a day. Once again, it's an exciting, fun book and an easy read.
I think this is the first of the series that I've read that didn't include an appearance by his ex-girlfriend Arrington Calder. I'm still wondering where she was. I finally realized that what I like about Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington series is it's predictability. Not in a boring "I don't need to read this because I know the ending" kind of way, but in a macaroni and cheese with chocolate milk kind of way.
First, you always know that Stone is going to survive. And that every evening in NYC, no matter how action-packed the day, will end with dinner at Elaine's with Dino. Every day that Stone is not in NYC he will call Dino once, if not twice about some police-related matter. Typically he will need Dino to take off work and come help him solve the case.
Stone always has romantic involvement with at least 2 women in the course of the book, usually 3 or more, but always at least 2. Usually at least one will be a client and one will have some sort of involvement with his opposition. One of them will be from Delano, Georgia and Stone will act as if he never heard from the town. How many beautiful, sex-starved women can there be in a town that doesn't even exist according to Google maps?
Stone will always need to make a trip to either his house in Maine or his house in Connecticut to stash someone who needs to be hidden away. And if he only needs to use one of those houses, he will at least casually mention the other.
Large amounts of cash will change hands multiple times. Stone will always start the novel in a financial hole, being chided by his dutiful secretary Joan. Then he will end it a wealthy man. I guess he just blows the cash and doesn't work between books.
But, you don't know how he's going to get the money and it sometimes comes from a surprising place. And you don't know which girl Stone will still be with at the end of the book. Or which one will die or turn out to be in cahoots with the enemy. You don't know how he'll foil the mob bosses, the evil ex-boyfriends and the hired guns. But, you know he will.
As usual, it's much more complicated than it sounds, involves huge amount of money changing hands and several sexual encounters a day. Once again, it's an exciting, fun book and an easy read.
I think this is the first of the series that I've read that didn't include an appearance by his ex-girlfriend Arrington Calder. I'm still wondering where she was. I finally realized that what I like about Stuart Woods' Stone Barrington series is it's predictability. Not in a boring "I don't need to read this because I know the ending" kind of way, but in a macaroni and cheese with chocolate milk kind of way.
First, you always know that Stone is going to survive. And that every evening in NYC, no matter how action-packed the day, will end with dinner at Elaine's with Dino. Every day that Stone is not in NYC he will call Dino once, if not twice about some police-related matter. Typically he will need Dino to take off work and come help him solve the case.
Stone always has romantic involvement with at least 2 women in the course of the book, usually 3 or more, but always at least 2. Usually at least one will be a client and one will have some sort of involvement with his opposition. One of them will be from Delano, Georgia and Stone will act as if he never heard from the town. How many beautiful, sex-starved women can there be in a town that doesn't even exist according to Google maps?
Stone will always need to make a trip to either his house in Maine or his house in Connecticut to stash someone who needs to be hidden away. And if he only needs to use one of those houses, he will at least casually mention the other.
Large amounts of cash will change hands multiple times. Stone will always start the novel in a financial hole, being chided by his dutiful secretary Joan. Then he will end it a wealthy man. I guess he just blows the cash and doesn't work between books.
But, you don't know how he's going to get the money and it sometimes comes from a surprising place. And you don't know which girl Stone will still be with at the end of the book. Or which one will die or turn out to be in cahoots with the enemy. You don't know how he'll foil the mob bosses, the evil ex-boyfriends and the hired guns. But, you know he will.
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