An Inquiry Into Love and Death by Simone St. James Saturday, May 25, 2013

This book is TOO stupid!

What makes you stop reading a book?  Language?  Sex?  Violence?
For me, it's stupidity.

I hate stupid plots.  Even worse are stupid characters.  Especially stupid girls!  When I find myself inwardly screaming at the main character in frustration because she can't see what's right in front of her face, it's time for me to put that book down. Or, when the dialogue between characters is so inane and poorly written that I find myself gritting my teeth, I know I won't be finishing that particular book.

I also hate bad writing.  If an author's voice isn't authentic and doesn't ring true, or if they try to be too clever in replicating some imaginary dialect...forget it.  I can't go there.

Everyone has a breaking point and stupidity in a book is definitely mine.  The last Mary Higgins Clark book I ever read was the one where the main character went to an abandoned warehouse in the middle of the night, in search of a killer, without telling anyone where she was going; I thought she deserved to get buried alive.  I haven't read Clark since.  I guess I have a low tolerance for dumb.

What about you?  What makes you stop reading a book?
Posted by Lark at 5:00 AM 5 comments: Labels: a bookish rant, Reasons to stop reading a book, Stupid books

Reading & Art & Mary Cassatt Revisiting Girl Reading I recently purchased my own copy of Girl Reading by Katie Ward and when I got it home I couldn't resist opening it up and reading a few pages.  Only, once I started, I couldn't stop.  This book combines two of my favorite things:  Art and Reading.  Each chapter tells the story of the woman behind 7 different works of art.  It is also a journey through time, the first woman's story taking place in 1333, the last in 2060.  At first, none of these stories appear to be connected...until you get to the last chapter.  Then it all comes together in an unexpected way.

Katie Ward is an amazing author.  Her writing will definitely keep you reading.  It's hard to choose a favorite story line, but one of my favorites is the second one that revolves around the painting Woman Reading by Dutch artist Pieter Janssens Elinga; it's really the story of his deaf maid, Esther, and her place in the artist's household.  But all of the women in this book, and their stories, are equally memorable.  I really like that Girl Reading isn't formulaic or predictable.  In fact, I think it's this book's uniqueness that I love most of all.

Posted by Lark at 5:00 AM 10 comments: Labels: Art and Reading, book review, Girl Reading, Katie Ward

Got Mail?

epistolary - adj.  contained in, or carried on by letters Saturday, May 11, 2013

Prisoner B-3087 The Jewish ghetto, the Wieliczka salt mine, concentration camps, death camps, the gas chamber, a death march ... Birkenau, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau ... No one could survive them all.  Yet somehow Yanek Gruener did.

Sound unrealistic and unbelievable?  It's not.  Although Prisoner B-3087 by Alan Gratz is a fictionalized YA novel, it is based on the true life story of Jack Gruener, who at the age of 13 decided that he was not going to die at the hand of the Nazis.

"In the place of my pain, I felt the stirring of determination.
I would not give up.  I would not turn myself in.  No matter
what the Nazis did to me, no matter what they took from me,
I would survive."

And he did.
I loved this book.  Like The Hiding Place and The Diary of Anne Frank, this is a book everyone should read.  It's that good.

Other, similar books you might want to check out:  Destined to Live by Ruth Gruener and The Girl in the Green Sweater by Krystyna Chiger.  Both are amazing stories of hope and survival. Labels: book review, Holocaust, Jack Gruener, Poland, Polish Jews, Survivor, World War II, Young Adult Fiction

Books and Baby Showers Sunday, May 5, 2013

If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch

Kidnapped at age 5 by her own drug-addicted mother, Carey has spent the last 10 years living in a camper in the Tennessee woods with her younger sister, Jenessa.  But now Carey and her sister have been found and taken back home.  Only Carey isn't sure any place will ever feel like home again. "Inside, I hurt in that empty-puzzle-piece way ... The tears flow, hot as the creek in the summer time ... I'm alone in a foreign land, this kingdom called New Bedroom, so clean, it makes my brain hurt ... I've been a world of tired, clear down in my dusty bones."

Not only does Carey have to reconnect with the real world, but with her father and new stepmother and stepsister, too.  And she has to learn how to accept and deal with everything that happened to her in the woods.  This is a moving and powerful story, one that will break your heart more than once, and make you smile through your tears.

Similar Read: Labels: book review, Emily Murdoch, Survival, Tennessee Fiction, Young Adult Fiction

Thursday, May 2, 2013

The Magic of Books...

"I believe in the magic of books.  I believe that during certain periods in our lives we are drawn to particular books--whether it's strolling down the aisles of a bookshop ... and suddenly finding the most perfect, most wonderfully suitable book staring us right in the face.  Or a chance meeting with a stranger or friend who recommends a book we would never ordinarily reach for.  Books have the ability to find their own way into our lives."
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