I’ve never been one to ride the wave of a trend; which is why I’m just now getting around to this book, by Kahled Hosseini, at least two years after it made a splash in the blog world. (I’m still waiting for my turn at Twilight; that’ll be the closest I’ve ever gotten to reading a trendy book.) But I’m in between library piles right now (I need to get to the library today and pick up the eight books that are waiting for me) and needed something to read. A friend had loaned me this one a while back, and so I decided to give it a try.

Going in to this book, the only thing I remembered about it was Julie’s assertion that if you liked Life of Pi (which I did), that you wouldn’t like Kite Runner. And then, there’s the Chinaberry description: “It is at once spellbinding, tender and heart-opening. A remarkable story of love and courage. It is one of those books that make you a better person for having read it.” (Um… gag.) So, perhaps I was biased against it from the start. (Granted, some review of Life of Pi claimed that it would make one believe in God, which is pretty outrageous if you think about it.)

I found it troublesome, depressing and formulaic.

I’m not one for facing all the depressing and disturbing aspects of life (but I’ve been over that before). I do read books that throw all of humanity’s evils in my face, but I’m never a better person for it. I do ask this: is there a book out there about Afghanistan that doesn’t include horrible things?? Perhaps not. It’s been a horrible 25 years for the country, and the fiction will most likely reflect that. It did pull my guilt-strings; perhaps I should be giving money to some sort of organization (like the Central Asia Institute) that is helping make the horrible situation over there somewhat better. (But given the corruption over there, would it help?)

On top of reading horrible things (well, okay, one horrible thing at the beginning, three horrible things at the end), it was just plain formulaic. It was an easy read (I started it Monday night, and I really only read a couple hours a day, if that); nothing terribly long or difficult or demanding to get through. But on top of that, I knew the ending before I got there. I hate that. I knew (sorry — spoliers here, but since I’m the last person to read the book… 🙂 that Hassan would die and that Amir would take Hassan’s son back with him. I new that the Talib that was so brutal would be the same bully that was so brutal in the beginning. I knew that when Amir finally got good news, that something horrible would happen (that’s the way these things work). It’s about atonement and forgiveness, but it’s not really effective at that. I liked Amir, as a character, but not really enough to care what happened.

So in the end, perhaps Julie’s right: I would recommend Life of Pi to anyone. But Kite Runner just isn’t that good.

First. It’s been a whopper of a week. We closed on our house on Monday, the 20th, and then spent the rest of the week prepping the house for our move on Saturday. Carpet people, vinyl/laminate people, cleaning (if you EVER sell a house, PLEASE clean it for the next owner. It SUCKS having to clean a house just to make it livable, and it’s still not done!), painting (the room was such a mess, M refused to move in until it was painted), packing, moving, hauling trash, and unpacking. Which gets us to today. Things are mostly unpacked. I’m happy to see our books, which have been in storage for the last four months. It makes me feel like I’m finally settled.

On top of all that, I tried to read Geraldine Brook’s March. I was excited about this one: she takes Mr. March from Little Women, imagines a backstory and fills in for the time that he’s missing in the book, until he gets ill and Marmee comes and gets him. Granted, I only got about 5 chapters in (it was a busy week), but I never could get into the book. It just didn’t feel right. I know, I didn’t exactly love Little Women. Still. I think it’s one of those books that everyone has their opinions about, and reactions to, and to… well, mess with the book is just wrong. Mr. March was too extreme in his views — too vegetairan, too abolitionist, too… too! — to make him the loving, caring, quiet father of the March girls. And Brooks tried to weave in the story line from Little Women, and it just didn’t fit with the wartime scenes, and the flashes of backstory that she gave him.

In the end, I put it down. It didn’t hold my interest, and at the end of some very long days it wasn’t what I wanted to be reading. Maybe someday I’ll try again. But probably not.

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.

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.

I have given my opinion of Orson Scott Card before. And I’ve come to the following conculsions: 1) he just can’t let things end. Rachel and Leah is the third in a series, and there’s going to be a fourth (for the good reason that the story was just too much for one book). Still. He does tend to draw things out. 2) I really like the first book I read in one of his series (Rebekah this time; I read them out of order), but the more I read, the less I like them. Maybe because they’re often the same story retold? 3) Card can’t write ancient women. Just can’t. I don’t know what they’re supposed to “really” be like, but I really doubt they had conversations with their betrothed about bearing children (and how it’s akin to the preisthood). He takes modern women and dresses them up in sandals and calls is Biblical. I felt The Red Tent was more authentic. And I didn’t even really like that one.

The good points: I liked how he balanced the four women. That’s a hard task, one that he did manage to pull off (in spite of my complaints). In my opinion, he tilted the scales in favor of Leah and Zilpah, rather than Rachel, as expected. I liked Leah, in the end, more than Rachel (perhaps that’s what he was going for in order to explain the whole wedding deception thing?). She was more honest, more forthright, more interesting. Maybe that’ll change in the next book.

In the end, I don’t know how I really think about this book. Nothing seems to leap to mind. Which is sad. Because Card can be a vibrant, exciting writer. I guess not just about Biblical women. (Maybe it’s that whole men writing about women thing again…)

I feel like there should be some sort of exclamation point: Zorro! It’s not something you just casually say.

This book by Isabel Allende has made the rounds (well, a couple other people have read it): both Allison and Lisa have reviewed it. In fact, it was Allison’s review that sent me searching for the book. I figured it fit right in with my light and fluffy regiment. And, I was right.

I really enjoyed the first half of the book. To sum up: it’s the Zorro origin story. Deigo de la Vega, the son of a Spanish soldier (who becomes a wealthy landowner in California) and a Native Amerian. He grows up respecting both Spanish and tribal culture, yet sees the injustice in the way the Spanish treat the native populations. He’s educated in Barcelona, makes a couple of enemies, has to vacate quickly, makes a long voyage back to California, and once there, saves his father from prison. Whew. (All in a day’s work, right?)

I enjoyed the childhood of Diego de la Vega. There were strong female characters, Diego was an interesting person, and I liked his relationship with Bernardo. But… as he got older, it got less interesting. The whole escape from Barcelona was just forced, and long. I did like parts, but I found I had to force my way through chapters. And then it quickly wraps up in the end. Too much buildup, not enough pay off. Still, the ride was enjoyable, for the most part.

Lisa said that it wasn’t nearly as good as Allende’s other one, House of Spirits. I’ll see if I can find that one. Because Zorro wasn’t a bad book. I guess I just wanted something more.

I couldn’t resist picking this one by Phillipa Gregory up, since I enjoyed The Queen’s Fool so much. I wasn’t disappointed, really, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I had the earlier book. As far as historical fiction goes, it’s okay — it’s got lots of soap-opera style stuff, from war, to love and lust, adultry and jilted wives, and ambition… gotta love the 16th century, right? Still, it lacked a sympathetic character. Queen Elizabeth was a bit of a pushover — in love with Robert Dudley and completley at loose ends during her first two years of her reign (the time period of the book). Dudley, himself, is a bit of an arrogant prick, and not at all likeable. His wife, Amy, is — probably true to her time — weepy, boring, and garners no sympathy when she ends up dead. The only really likeable character is William Cecil, and even then, he’s not exactly endearing, being manipulative and harsh on everyone (though by the end, he’s the only one acting like an adult, and I was grateful for that). Still, it’s not a bad read — I’ve read, and finished, books I’ve liked less — it’s just that The Queen’s Fool is much better.

Laura mentioned she liked this one a while back; I looked for the specific post, but granted not very hard, so I didn’t find what excatly she wrote about it that led me to check it out. At any rate, I’m glad I did. It’s a beautiful, simple book. There really isn’t much to say about it: it’s a fictional (based on one of the author, Nancy Taylor’s, ancestors) journal of a woman, Sarah Prine, from 1881 to 1901. There isn’t anything really remarkable about the story; it’s just her jottings from life. Yet, she is one remarkable woman. She is honest, just, fair, hard-working, admirable in just about every way. And yet, she isn’t lofty or unreachable. Sarah is a woman I’d love to know and spend time with. And I was with her through all her trials, her marriages (she was married twice; her first husband died!) and loves and births and deaths. And I admire a writer who can capture that.

Books like this are wonderful for the soul.

This was another one of my Chinaberry reads. I guess I was in the mood for some historical fiction, and (surprisingly — I never cease to be amazed) our library had this one by Phillipa Gregory.

It’s set in 16th century England — the time of Queen Mary and Elizabeth vying for the throne. The main character is a girl, Hannah, who also happens to be a Jew (running, with her father, from the Inquisition in Spain) who has the Sight — she can see visions of things to come. She, mostly inadvertently, gets involved with Lord Robert Dudley, who begs her off as a fool to King Edward before he dies. From there, she becomes a companion/servant/fool to Queen Mary and from there a companion to Princess Elizabeth. You see Hannah grow up over the years — following her relationships not only with her masters, but with her betrothed (an arranged marriage). She’s an incredibly sympathetic character, traditional enough to make her fit into the time period, but modern enough to relate to her and her plights and predicaments.

I think I liked this book solely because of Hannah; there weren’t many other sympathetic characters in the book (many interesting ones, though). It’s not a pretty book. It could have very easily gone the way of the train wreck — everyone just falling apart and it’s not very enjoyable to watch. Gregory doesn’t spare the details of life, war, the purging of heretics, tragedy, sex, gossip, animosity, and love/lust at this time. However, she does it in a way which actually adds to the book and makes it more believable. And all the decadence at court was a great juxtaposition to Hannah and her innocence and trust and charity.

In the end, I couldn’t put it down.

I found this one while searching for The Secret Life of Bees; it was right on the shelf where the Bee book (which I will get around to reading, someday; I’ve been meaning to for ages, so many people have talked about it, but it’s never in. I know, I know: why don’t I put a hold on it? I don’t know. ) was supposed to be.

Anyway, it’s a thin book, about two couples in Kabul under the Taliban written by Yasmina Khadra (which turns out is an alias for Mohammed Moulessehoul, who was an Algerian army officer). Sounded interesting. And it was. It’s beautifully written and very evocative. I could vividly picture an Afghan summer and the oppressive heat that mirrors the opressive actions of the Taliban. It’s a great English class image. Where the book fell short was in the characterization. Two couples — Atiq and Musarrat and Mohsen and Zunaria — are dealing with trials, life under the Taliban, and failing marriages. They both manage in different ways, and I’m not sure I got the motivations behind all their actions. Atiq was bursting with rage toward everything, but I’m not sure I understood why. Mohsen was an incompetent and confused. He was a bit easier to understand, but I’m not sure if I fully grasped the meaning of his actions. Zunaria was full of suppressed anger towards the Taliban and took it out on her husband. Musarrat was dying, and was, really, the only humane character in the book.

I think the author was operating on the assumption that his readers would understand more about Islam as a religion and a life than I do. Perhaps if I did know more, I would have enjoyed this book more. Still, I’m not sorry I read it.