Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

Year of Wonders

3 Comments

I was skeptical about this book. While I have enjoyed Geraldine Brooks’ writing in the past, I doubted that a book on the plague could be interesting. (Granted, I’d forgotten that I’d really enjoyed Doomsday Book, which is essentially a book about the plague.) Okay, so I was wrong to doubt. Year of Wonders is, while not an exquisite book, a very engaging one.

It follows Anna — a servant in the rector’s household in a fictional English mountain town (based on a real town, Eyam, in Derbyshire) — for a year, from the fall of 1665 to the fall of 1666, while her town battles the plague. Nothing new here, except that the rector — Mompellion — convinces the town to quarantine itself from the neighboring communities, thereby controlling the spread of the plague. And the book deals with the aftermath of that decision. There’s heartbreak (no mother of an infant should read the chapter where Anna’s baby dies. Much too hard.), there’s greed — both taking advantage of the ignorant and the weak; there’s anger; there’s more heartbreak. But in the end, there’s life and hope. Remarkable.

And Anna is an incredibly sympathetic main character. She’s strong, but she doubts. She does good by others, but not all the time. And she has desires, the biggest one being the will to live. Okay, I admit that she was probably more modern than the time period warrants, but for some reason this didn’t bother me. The ending — which was a bit abrupt — did bother me either. Perhaps because I’m lowering my historical fiction standards? Or maybe it was because the storytelling was so vivid that I didn’t let the little things nag at me like they sometimes do.

At any rate, it’s worth the read.

The Great Big Leap

8 Comments


We’ve finally found a house! We close on November 20th… It’s the first house we’ve ever bought, and I’m still a bit anxious about the whole thing. I keep expecting something to go really wrong, but nothing has (so far!). What has happened is that it’s sucked up a lot more of my time, making phone calls, talking to inspectors and sub-contractors, signing papers. (In addition to Halloween — and we’re probably moving Thanksgiving weekend!)

The location is great: close enough to the church and elemenatry school to walk, and not too terribly far for Russell to still bike to work. It needs work — landscaping in the back, lots of painting (I’ll be danged if I EVER look at a white wall again), and the basement needs new carpet (and the dining room and two bathrooms need the carpet to come up). But it’s nothing we can’t handle. Right? Right??

123rd Page

4 Comments

I got it from Amira. It’s too much fun to resist.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the next 4 sentences on your blog along with these instructions.
5. Don’t you dare dig for that “cool” or “intellectual” book in your closet! I know you were thinking about it! Just pick up whatever is closest.

Then suddenly he remembered a story which Christopher Robin had told him about a man on a desert island who had written something in a bottle and thrown it in the sea; and Piglet thought that if he wrote something in a bottle and threw it in the water, perhaps somebody would come and rescue him!

That was nearly the entire 123rd page; the rest is taken up by a very lovely drawing. And yes, it was the closest book; hubby was reading it to C last night before bed. 🙂

Small Steps

1 Comment

The perfect antidote to Holocaust books: simple, little, light Louis Sachar ones. Several posts back, Inkling asked if I’d read his new one. Well, I have now. (What did you think about it, Inkling??)

Armpit (from Holes, remember him? I didn’t) is now home from Camp Green Lake, and trying to make his way in the world. He’s got a job (digging for a landscaping company), is making up school, and is good friends with his next door neighbor, Ginny, who has cerebral palsy. Life is good. He’s taking small steps. Then X-Ray shows up (remember him? I didn’t. Been a while since I read Holes.), offering a quick money making scheme: scalp concert tickets to a Kaira DeLeon concert. From there life not only changes, but falls apart. At least, temporarily.

It’s not as good as Holes. That’s not to say it isn’t good. It is. I thoroughly enjoyed it. But, Holes is better. More surreal, more magical, more… well… better. This one has it’s charms: I liked the relationship between Armpit and Ginny. I liked the whole portrayal of the teen celebrity, though I admit that it was a bit cliche at times. And I liked Armpit. He was a good, honest, likeable character. I suppose there could have been more teen angst, but I think it would have been out of place (in fact the couple of times when Armpit clashed with his parents felt awkward). It was a good story about starting over, and trying to make something of yourself. A good little book.

The Devil’s Arithmetic

4 Comments

The plot of the book by Jane Yolen first, this time: Hannah hates Passover. Hates going to her grandparent’s house. Hates that her Grandpa Will has fits of anger every time he sees pictures or hears about World War II and the “death camps”. But this year, when she opens the door to check for Elijah, she’s transported back. To 1942. Poland. And, yes, she ends up in one of the Nazi concentration camps.

I won’t tell you what happens after that.

Is this a good book? Well, yes. And no. It’s a book everyone should read. Like Schindler’s List is a movie everyone should see. And the Holocaust Museum is a place everyone should visit. It’s a powerfully written story. Simple and not graphic, yet you feel the weight of it. But, is it enjoyable? No. It’s disturbing. It’s haunting. It left me lying awake last night facing all the things I fear, which I usually push back into some far recess of my mind: driving, sending my girls to school, Russell being away, flying, running at 6:30 a.m. by myself, being attacked at night, having burglars break into the house while we’re home… I hate being confronted with the evil in the world. If I didn’t push my fears away — and that takes a lot of effort and prayer sometimes — then I would never leave the house! And I don’t like being confronted with them.

There are people who are inspired by stories of heroism like this one. I’m not one. I’m one of those who, while they acknowledge atrocities like this (and Rawanda and Darfur and Bosnia and…) happen, would much rather believe that the world is a happy place and that people are basically decent and kind. I want to stay in my happy place. And yet, I send my children out into the world, which, whether I like it nor not, is not a happy place. Yes, I’m conflicted by that. And I do try to prepare my children, though talking about strangers and kidnapping and abuse is hard for me (again, problems with confronting the evil in people).

Anyway… enough rambling. You should read this book. Everyone should, if only to acknowledge that these atrocities happened. But, I’m not sure this is one of those books to be read over and over. I know I won’t read it again.

Katherine

2 Comments

I think I picked this up from Guusje. She mentioned a while back (not going to find the post) that it was one of her favorite books. And, I have to say, it’s not a bad little bit of historical fiction. It’s one of those instances where I actually learned somthing from a fiction book. But, then, the amount of research that Anya Seton did to write this novel was admirable. (Okay, I’ll admit that I don’t have the book in front of me — it was due yesterday — so I’m going off the top of my head.) Reading Middle English, making sure even her minor characters were real people, having someone translate Latin. It made for a very authentic book. (We’ve talked about authentic books here before…)

The basic story: it’s the love story between John, Duke of Lancaster and Katherine Swynford. “Who?” you ask. It takes place in the mid- to late-14th-century, time of Chaucer (who shows up) and the black plague (which also shows up). John and Katherine have a 10 year affair, while John is married and after the death of Katherine’s husband, which results (in the long term) in children who become the parents of several kings of England. Not bad.

It held my interest and I enjoyed it for a long time. But… it’s a long book. And I’m short on time these days. Which adds up to me skimming the last 1/3. It all ends happily for John and Katherine, I’m happy to say. But I didn’t have the time to savor it. Or maybe I was just bored with all the plot twists and uprisings and courtly behavior. Whatever. Maybe I’ll come back to it someday.

Julie and Julia

3 Comments

First off, a couple of observations about this book:

1) Julie Powell has a tendency to use the f-word with abandon. It’s really not a big revelation: she admits that she has a total sailor mouth.

2) It’s not really a food book.

With that out of the way, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this book. Julie turned 29 (which makes her a year younger than me, since the book happens in 2002), and is stuck in a dead-end secretarial job working for a “government agency” in New York City. Depressed, she’s looking for… something… more. Her husband suggests a cooking class. She scoffs and said that she could learn as much from cooking through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And thus, the “Project” is born. 365 days, 524 recipes.

It’s a funny book, though I thought that there was something missing. Perhaps it’s because I thought there’d be more about the food (it’s subtitled “My year of cooking dangerously” after all…). It’s mostly about her life (and her friends’ lives) with some witticisms about blogging, cooking in a tiny kitchen, killing lobsters, and eating calf livers. And I can totally relate to her wanting to accomplish something (even if it is “only” cooking her way through a Julia Child book) with her life. So, if you can get past the first two observations, it’s a pretty fun little read.