Milkweed - Jerry Spinelli

I was attracted to Milkweed just for the cover, but when I started to read it I was immediately sold. This is a book that grabs you from the first few lines.Its tells the story of a young street boy living in Poland in 1939. With no family or friends he believes he is called 'Stopthief' and does not know his name or if he is a Jew. He is taken under the wing of an older boy and gradually he learns more. This book shows the lead up to the holocaust for Jewish people in Poland from the eyes of an uneducated, naive bystander.

The prose is innocent and sparse, the short chapters move through the events so quickly that it is often a few pages on when it hits you what he has seen.

In my opinion even better than The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

Tatty - Dwyer Hickey

Hailed by the critics as a masterpiece, Tatty is a devastating, yet hilarious,
depiction of a troubled Dublin family told through the lively, charismatic voice
of a little girl. With brutal honesty, Tatty tells the story of her life with
her beloved, feckless Dad, her tormented Mam, her five siblings and the booze
that brings them down. This not just an entertaining tale, but also a
heartbreaking account of a disturbed childhood that makes for compulsive
reading. From Amazon.

I randomly picked this up from a display of Orange Prize Nominees in the library. I'd seen it mentioned elsewhere earlier this week, though I have no recollection of where.This was a superb, though very short read. The author creates the childs voice superbly, although I could never get to grips with which narrative voice she was using, sometimes it appeared to be in the second person, sometimes in the third and sometimes I felt like the child was talking about herself in the third person. This would normally irritate the hell out of me, yet in this book it didn't matter. I was transported to a world of a five year old; trying to get to grips with the intricacies of the pub and her Dad's workmates, a 7 year old watching her mother struggle to get her disabled sister into a normal school, a world of many Aunts who bad-mouthed your father and the escape of boarding school. The charatcer is loveable, standing out from her tumbled family, dealing in her own way with her parents alcoholism and abandonment.If you liked Carry Me Down, My Sister's Keeper or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time try this.

If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

The World Unseen - Shamim Sarif

Maybe I'm ignorant but I had no idea that there was a large Indian population living in South Africa, let alone that this community were part of the heirarchy of races in 1950s South African race issues.

A really enlightening and informative read for me. This book discusses the lives of two Indian women who have recently moved to Indian areas of S.A. The women have to battle against the rules of their own culture, whilst finding themselves in a country where they are regarded as superior to black people yet inferior to white people. A really good read, a book which has sat on my TBR pile for far to long.

If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

The Night Watch - Sarah Waters

As a lover of two of Waters' other books, Tipping The Velvet and Fingersmith I was kind of apprehensive about reading this new novel. I had heard others, who loved her previous work, criticise this book, a few having put this down without having finished it.

Yet, I loved it. It had everything I love about her writing. Fantastic characters. The ability to transport the reader back to another age, and for the reader to feel that they are almost there, standing in the periphery watching the characters in action.

The book is disjointed, it deals with the lives of several young people in WW2 struck London. Each story gradually being built upon, all slightly touching one another, yet never in too corny a way. She has of course her customary lesbian relationship, but various other relationships also exist.

A MUST READ!

If you have read this book feel free to comment or leave a link to your own review.

A-Z Challenge

I saw this on 3Ms site and I'm taking the liberty to borrow the idea. This is a personal challenge for me to be completed by December 31st. Hopefully it will also help me tackle the overly large TBR pile and encourage me to read the ones nearer the back rather than just the ones brought recently. I'm going to try and stick to this list and try and read it in order as much as possible around my other challenges and book group reads. If any one has any inspiration for Q I'd be glad to hear it.

Authors:
A-
BALLARD, Empire of the Sun
COETZEE, Waiting for the Barbarians
D
ESQUIVEL, Like Water for Chocolate
F-
GAARDER, The Ringmaster's Daughter
HOEG, Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow
I-
J-
K-
LEE, As I Walked Out One Summer Morning
McEWAN, Black Dogs
N-
O-
PAMUK, Snow
Q-
RABINYAN, Persian Brides
SOUEIF, In The Eye Of The Sun
TOWNSEND, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole
U-
V-
WOOLF, The Years
X-
YEN, Falling Leaves
Z-

TITLES
A SPOT OF BOTHER, Haddon
BLACK DOGS, McEwan
COLD COMFORT FARM, Gibbons
The DEVIL and Miss Prym, Coelho
EMPIRE OF THE SUN, Ballard
FALLING LEAVES, Yen
G-
H-
IN THE EYE OF THE SUN, Soueif
J-
The KITE RUNNER, Hassein
LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, Esqivel
MISS SMILLA'S FEELING FOR SNOW, Hoeg
The NOTEBOOK, Sparks
The ORCHARD ON FIRE, Mackay
The PASSION, WINTERSON
Q
ROOTS, Haley
SNOW, Pamuk
The THIRTEENTH TALE, Setterfield
U-
V-
WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS, Coetzee
X-
The YEARS, Woolf
Z

Non Fiction Challenge

I'm joining this challenge in which I have t0 read 5 non fiction books between May 1st to September 30th. You can join or find out more by clicking on the button above.
My preliminary list (subject to change) is:

A Short History of Everythingby Bill Bryson

The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Balderdash and Piffle by Alex Games.

And I'm going to search out a book on Indian culture hopefully.