Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

    George and Martha are at once despicable and pathetic. They make you cringe while you pity them. This book is the play and not written in narrative form, it makes all the difference. If you've watched the movie like me then you might start out seeing Taylor (NOT Lautner, Swift or Meshach [was that last one just me?]) and Burton, but their faces fade and the characters become themselves. I loved the format; George, Martha, Nick and Honey came alive in a way that belongs more to the readers because the characters' voices create their images.

    Miserable and miserably in love, George and Martha tear each other apart. It would have been easy for them to be one dimensional characters that the reader would only be able to abhor, but Mr Albee makes them people that you wouldn't want to spend two minutes with yet you find yourself rooting for them to take it all back and love each other.


Overall Opinion:

I loved it! I think I loved it even more because it was a play that I could create in my mind and not a narration that looked reflected the author's description.


Rating:

9
 

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

   Meet Kambili and Jaja, a Nigerian sister and brother of privilege. Their father is the publisher of The Standard, the only newspaper that speaks boldly and truthfully, a factory owner and the sponsor of their church and many of the families in their towns. Their privilege is false.
   Meet Kambili and Jaja, a Nigerian sister and brother who speak in whispers, who live by their schedules, who have no friends and whose lives are unknown. Their story is...
  

Favorite Quotes:

"My hair was too thick; it always tightened back into a dense bunch right after she ran a comb through it. Trying to comb it now would enrage the monsters already in my head."

"The chickens rushed at the pieces of bread Sisi threw to them, disorderly and enthusiastic. My cousins rushed at Father Amadi's words in the same way."


Overall Opinion:

Complex, richly woven, beautifully and wonderingly told Purple Hibiscus is a gem on the library shelves.


Rating:

Must Read

The $66 Summer by John Armistead

  Children's Selection

   It was beautiful. It made me cry.


Overall Opinion:

   Have your children read this book.


Rating:

8

Th1rteen R3asons Why by Jay Asher

Teen Fiction Pick

   Read, read, read this book. When you're done reading it, buy it. After you buy it give it to the nearest 9th-12th grader you know. Then buy another one to keep for yourself. Until you find another 9th-12th grader. In between buying and giving tell every adult who even knows a kid to read it.
   Th1rteen R3asons Why is one of the best books I've ever read. Period. The narrative, the style, the language, the characters, the suspense, the drama, the first page, the last page; everything. I picked it up today at about 1pm and read it until I finished it (it's 8:20pm).
   Jay Asher tells the story in a dual first person narrative. His narrators are Clay and Hannah. Clay is listening to Hannah's story as she tells it on tape; while he listens, he remembers her and learns about her. Clay doesn't want to know this story, but he must listen and learn. He must listen because Hannah is dead and he's one of the reasons.
   Their story is amazingly told. Hannah's reasons, small ones by themselves, are overwhelming together. Clay's anguish and desperation as he learns about them is crushing. I understood Hannah, but I felt Clay. His struggle to change her course, knowing that it was over, and still trying to stop it was so real that I felt myself mimicking his reactions before I realized it. Just as I was ready to stop reading because I didn't want to see what was coming next, Clay would want to stop the tape. And just like Clay, I had to finish the story.
   Read, read, read this book. When you're done reading it, buy it. After you buy it give it to the nearest 9th-12th grader you know. Then buy another one to keep for yourself. Until you find another 9th-12th grader. In between buying and giving tell every adult who even knows a kid to read it.


Favorite Quotes:

"Around the opposite sex, especially back then, my tongue twisted knots even a Boy Scout would walk away from."

"At school there are few loves that compare to the one between Tony and his car. More girls have dumped him out of car envy than my lips have even kissed."


Overall Opinion:

It is hauntingly desperate and vibrant in its desperation.


Rating:

Read, read, read this book. When you're done reading it, buy it. After you buy it give it to the nearest 9th-12th grader you know. Then buy another one to keep for yourself. Until you find another 9th-12th grader. In between buying and giving tell every adult who even knows a kid to read it.

Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa

   Mornings in Jenin is at once a beautifully written, tragically told story of Amal and her Palistinian family after the 1948 establishment of Israel. The author's telling is almost poetry; her turn of phrase and descriptive use of language create perpetually moving imagery that draws you into Amal's world allowing you to be an invisible witness in their daily lives. The use of both first and third person perspective is never jarring and only adds to the experience as you switch from observer to participant.
   Susan Abulhawa is a skilled and talented author whose writing convincingly proselytizes. Her personal perspective is clearly in evidence. I am not sure if her goal is to win converts to the Palistinian cause or to just convince her readers to consider its causes and reasons (though I have my suspicions). Either which way, I believe she succeeds in some measure of each.
   Herein lies the challenge her book was to me. My sympathies have never leaned to Ms. Abulhawa's and yet her book leads me to the desire to learn more. There is probably some truth to her story, but I believe in her description of a pre-Israeli Palestinian paradise like I believe in a pre-European Native American paradise; which is to say that I don't. However, I am curious to educate myself on the geopolitical history of the time as well as the actual events that occurred during the timeline of her Amal's story.
   An author who inspires their readers to want to learn more through the sheer force of their fiction is someone to talk about.



Favorite Quotes:

"The women laughed goodheartedly. 'Come, daughter. Come back to the world of women.' "

"It was a rotten quietude, devoid of fury, love, despair or even fear."

"One garment at a time, he dressed himself in vintage dignity..."

"Even when my body grew to big for his lap, the sun always found us cuddled together with a book."

"We hugged to seal our promise."

"In that week I see how familiar words can break like glass and reassemble into goblins that waylay the mind with their claws."

"They laughed, one raspy and toothless, the other like a sputtering malfunction."

"The pipe still smelled of the honey apple tobacco that Baba had smoked, the scent of my father's labored breath and tired clothes when he unleashed his love through the pages he turned for me at dawn."

"To the great irritation of Miss Haydar, we became quite fluent in this speech, which we put to use poking fun at her corpulence and nostrils, which started at the human and ended just before the clown."

"There is nothing quite so pure, as if pieces of God live in the faint breaths of babes. In Falasteen's yawn, I caught a whiff of divine promise, bequeathed even to us."

"Rage nominated me to hell."



Overall Opinion:

You may find yourself feeling scorn, disbelief, sorrow, anger and hope. You might wonder how much Abulhawa can expect you to stretch your credibility or feel her character's betrayal . You might believe there is a history you were unaware of. You will, however, feel that you have stumbled upon a book that you must read.



Rating:

9

God Grew Tired of Us A Memoir by John Bul Dau

   What a beautiful story. John Bul Dau is a Lost Boy and begins his story from his village in Sudan until his present day life in America in 2007. He tells the story of his flight and refugee status in different camps in Ethiopia and Kenya. The grueling marches that span a country. Being shot at, beaten, crossing crocodile infested rivers, naked, starving, dying of thirst. And yet, through it all, his spirit, hope, faith, courage and strength shine through.
   God Grew Tired of Us testifies to the enduring legacy that marks a man who is raised with faith, family and character. Throughout the book, John Dau's simplicity and natural curiosity are evident. Having been born in a part of the world that knows little of the outside, modern world; everything is new to him, everything we take for granted as a given, he accepts with appreciation and thankfulness.
   I read A Long Way Gone  by Ishmael Beah, his story is remarkable and heartrending, but it did not move me in such a character shaping way. God Grew Tired of Us challenged me in a way that I believe I needed to be challenged. It made me examine myself and the way I look at my daily "trials".

Favorite Quotes:

"Sometimes all you can do is keep going, even in the face of great danger."

I am ashamed to say it, but in the time of our greatest crisis, most of the people of Duk Payuel turned away from their social traditions and focused on saving their own families."

"That was my first ride in a car or truck. For the first time, I moved faster than the thiang or the lion, and I glimpsed a vision of the modern world: fast, blurred, and chaotic."

"The desert achuil trees soaked up the moisture and started to sprout tiny green leaves. They spread their branches and touched the limbs of other trees, like boys holding hands."

"It was the sweetest thing when I felt the spirit of the Lord moving through me. It was like drinking cold water on a hot day."

"In America, students ask the teachers, "Will this be on the test?" and they try to find out what part of the textbook they don't have to read. Ha! What a piece of cake that is. That is not school. That is not the way to get anywhere in life."

On being asked if he had children or a wife, in that order: "Now why did he ask that? In the Dinka culture, if I had children then I had a wife, and if I had a wife then I had children. I did not know that the two did not necessarily go together in America. That idea still takes some getting used to."

"It violated the Dinka way of life to refuse education, even when more education lay on the horizon."

"We made up a song about a saying among my people, "A human being can never be eaten." The song means the test of a man lies in the good or bad things he does, not in his physical body. A man who brings help to his community proves his worth."

Overall Opinion:

I am glad, glad, glad I read this book!

Rating:

10 out of 10

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

   I started this book yesterday at about 12:30 in the afternoon, and minus a few hours for things to do, I finished it at 11:30 that night. I could not stop reading it. Still Alice impacted me in a way that a book has not in a very long time. When I finished the book I felt, not numb, but very still. It was like I had to let it just sit for a bit before I could move on or I would lose something important.
   Alice is a 50 year old Harvard cognitive psychology professor who discovers that she has early onset Alzheimer's. She is brilliant, loves language and its aquisition, has three grown children and is married to John, a biology professor. Alice and John have slowly drifted closer to their career passions; something Alice notices, but is unable to turn around for them.
   Her struggle to retain herself as she loses the ability to, her frustration, fear, anger; her love, are all wonderfully captured. Alice's family's struggles are painted just as vividly. Still Alice is written in a balanced blending of the first and third person that illustrates the progression of her dementia in way that is both heartbreaking and beautiful. Alice and her family are real, and you want to reach out to her without pity and with friendship to make up for the fear and embarrassment that she is met with.
   Lisa Genova wove a rich fabric in Still Alice that I think all readers should wear on their bookshelves. Her story was just a chance book that I chose at the library, yes, I judged it by its cover. I am glad I did. Writing this review brings back its haunting, sad and beautiful story as though I was in the midst of the tale myself.

Favorite Quotes:

"The clocks in their home rarely knew the real time of day. Alice had been duped too often in the past by their seemingly honest faces..."

"A zealous crowd surrounded and circled a buffet table, aggressively diving in for food like seagulls at a city beach."

"Anna was his older sister. She'd taught him how to snap and blow gum bubbles, and she always gave him her Halloween candy."

"There it was, her Alzheimer's, stripped and naked under the fluorescent lighting, on display for Sarah Something to scrutinize and judge."

"She couldn't wait to smell her delicious grandchildren."

"The tiny, sleeping baby breathed tiny, shallow breaths through tiny, round nostrils."

Overall Opinion:

I know I said this blog was not about self discovery, but I would be a human null if I didn't admit that Still Alice woke something in me.

Rating:

Must Recommend for Reading