Mini Reviews

Last week my computer wasn't working, so surprise-surprise I got tons read! It's shocking how much of a time-suck the Internet is. I'm just posting mini-reviews about these books otherwise I'll never get around to them, and to be perfectly honest I'm not sure how I could write full length posts about some of them *War and Peace*.

Baltasar and Blimunda by Jose Saramago read for my around the world journey (the countries have to touch and I aim if possible to read at least 2 books from each country).
This book has a Gabriel Garcia Marquez feel to it, which was great for me as I love him. In the foreground of the story was the love between Baltasar and the seer Blimunda - she has the ability to see 'inside' people if she hasn't eaten in the morning. Their love exists through the Inquisition and the creation of a flying bird capable of transporting humans.
No matter what happens it is their love for each other which wins over the whole story, and it isn't a mushy type of love, although one which is all consuming.
I loved this and would happily recommend it to other readers of magical realism.




War and Peace by Tolstoy I've been reading this as part of a read-a-long on goodreads since new years day, and although I got lost in the middle when I went on holiday I finally managed to catch up and get it finished.
I was shocked at how much the 'Peace' sections read like a soap opera. I was expecting a huge cast of characters but these sections focused primarily on three families and their interwoven love lives, tangles and disputes. You saw families grow, change and develop with the war creeping up in the background.
The 'War' sections I found a little harder at the start, as their seemed to be tons of characters in these bits and I couldn't figure out who was who. These sections became more manageable and enjoyable as I got to know characters and as the war seemed to be more localised so I had a firmer idea of how things were progressing. The pace also picked up.
I gave this read 4 stars as I really enjoyed it, but thought that Tolstoy should lecture and make less direct social comments, and I was disappointed in the second epilogue. We read the Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky translation which I really liked, I had started with a different translation before and gave up after 5 pages! Next up for the group read-a-long is Les Mis, which I started yesterday.




Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kids by Oe this book was sent to me as part of my reading through the 1001 list/s (in fact all 4 of these reads were 1001 list books) and I'm sad to say I really didn't enjoy it.
A group of delinquent children are evacuated out to Japanese villages to escape the impeding war. Once their rumour of a plague spreads and the villagers abandon them so they are left to fend for themselves - similar to Lord of the Flies.
This book got great reviews from other people but for me it didn't hold together, it seemed that the author tried to hard to write as a teenage boy - they were obsessed with genitalia, which I know teenage boys are, I teach enough of them, but not to this extent. And some of the language just seemed to modern and the pace plodding.



Last but by no means least The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid my favourite read of the week. Most people have already read and raved about it so a very quick summary: the book is spoken as if it is part of a conversation, but you only hear from one speaker. He tells is from Pakistan but tells of his time in America and all that it offered to him. And all that changed after 9/11.
His voice and syntax perfectly create the voice in your head; his relationships, successes and views create him as a 3 dimensional character in a way that I haven't read in ages. And your uncertainity about a few areas of the text and style create a book you'll be thinking about long after.
This is one of those books I'll probably end up recommending to everyone and buying people as gifts.

My Thoughts: Afghanistan, Where God Only Comes to Weep by Siba Shakib

It has been a couple of years since I have read anything about Afghanistan, for a while it seemed you couldn't move for books about Afghanistan and Iraq, this one I read as it will help my tick off another country for my Olympic Challenge, (which I'm failing miserably at).

This is a non-fiction account written, by a journalist, of the life of Shirin-Gol. From just three years old the life of other people are put into Shirin-Gol's hands for her to look after. She starts off as a todler looking after, feeding and caring for her twin brothers. When Russia invade the country she is sent to school where she gains a passion for learning which stays with her her whole life.
Married off at a young age to a soldier husband she falls pregnant within days, he leaves to go back to the war, whilst she stays and raises their children whilst still gaining her education just days after their birth.
When trouble starts in Kabal, Shirin-Gol and her family are forced to flee. First she goes to the Pakistaini border, where she is forced into prostitution to feed her kids and tend to her sick husband. From then on she travels with the family from village, to towns, to other countries and back. She faces sickness, poverty and her husbands drug addiction face on. She is an independent woman who is determined that her children and other women should not live the life that she has been forced to, she educates and looks after others on her journey.
This book worringly wasn't all that shocking, firstly because I've read many other books about women lives in other coutries, but also because it felt like a novel, I had to keep reminding myself that this was non-fiction. The book shows a great example of women, in coutries in which we assume they have no power, taking power and leadership into their own hands to fight for a better future.

My Thoughts: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth

A Suitable Boy has sat glaring at me on my shelves for a good 8 years. On at least 2 or 3 occasions I have started it and given up quickly. I'm one of those people who love the sense of satisfaction of finishing a book, so a 1500 page book is always a struggle. Determined to finally read it I organised a read-a-long on bookcrosing.com where we read a section a week (sections are on average 70-100 pages long. I'm not only excited that I finished the book but that I also managed to host it on time each week.

A Suitable Boy is set primarily in the fictional city of Brahmpur, but travels across Delhi, Calcutta and various other parts of India along the way. The novel's central core is the search for a suitable husband for Lata, the youngest member of the Mehra family. Yet Lata's search is just a segment of the rich tapestry of this novel. The novel reaches out and tells us the stories of her family members and friends, her suitors and also of those who they know. In this way the book becomes more than just a love story, but also a tale entwined with politics, society, relgion and life in the various castes.

There is far too much in this book even to try and explain the plot line(s). But, I have to say that I loved it. Each section managed to vary, to keep you wondering what would happen next, and how else all the characters would be related to each others lives in someway. Some characters I loved from the very beginning such as Malati, her outspoken bestfriend and Kabir, the man she loves but who is of the wrong religion for her family to consider a marriage. There were some characters I grew to love and some who I continued to dislike until the very end. The writing was fresh and poetical (in places) ensuring that things never became dry.
I'll certainly be looking out for more of Vikram Seth's work in the future, I've read that he is a poet so I'll be searching out some of his poetry as well as his novels.

My Thoughts: Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai

Having sat on mount tbr for a good six months this ovel had to come top of the pile for my reads for the GLBT challenge.
Set in Sri Lanka this coming of age novel tells Anjie's story. At seven he loves playing with the girls, always the lead role in Bride-Bride their fantasy game. He loves dressing up in Saris and being made much of, until the da that he is revealed to the adults in all his glory. His father quickly blames his mother and declares if he turns out a 'funny boy' it will be all her doing.

We then follow Anjie through his childhood, much of which is dominated by the Tamil/Sinhalese conflicts. He watches family friends torn from lovers, beaten for their race, and the riots spill out. He also faces being Tamil, in school and at home, but only speaking Sinhalese as his parents desperately try to give their children a chance to make something of themselves in this country of seperation.
The politics and his identity, both sexual and social and mingled side by side in the novel which deals with serious issues but is a great read. As Anjie grows older the tone of the novel becomes more serious as he begins to understand the world around him.
I'll certainly be checking out more of Selvadurai's novels in the future.

Challenges:
GLBT: The Challenge the Dare Not Speak its Name
Twenty Ten (Who are you, again?)

Other reviews:
Book Nook

Sorrow Mountain by Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelley

I must be on a roll today finishing two part read books in one afternoon :D

I read Sorrow Mountain for the Social Justice challenge, this month was focused on Religious Freedom. This memoir is written by Ani Pachen a Tibetan nun. Growing up the only child in the family Ani is expected to follow the conventions of a woman and also be ready to take over from her fathers estate. Early on we realise her determination and strength when she refuses an arrange marriage and runsaway from the family until her parents bend to her will. She then spends 6 months in a monastry with her mother, a place that she feels she belongs, until her father insists on her return.
Soon after her return Tibet is engulfed by the Chinese. Life changes as the Chinese try to take control of the country enforcing laws and new ways of life. The Tibetans fight back. Ani is taken along with her fathers people to fight the Chinese. Saying the she loves Tibet so much she will kill for it she is given a gun and travels through the Tibetan landscape trying to escape from the hands of the Chinese.
As the years pass Ani's father is killed and she spends 21 years in prison. Despite all of her suffering, the butality and starvation she sees and experiences in the prison one thing remains stable and that is her faith. This faith pulls her through and allows her to help others, even if all she can do is keep them alive for a few days longer.
I found that this book also fit in perfectly for the Woman Unbound challenge as Ani Prachen not only fights and overcomes the limits placed on women but also fights to save and help others.

Challenges
Social Justice Challenge
Twenty Ten Challenge
Woman Unbound

My Thoughts: Fox Girl by Nora Okja Keller

I spent my snowy afternoon watching TV and then finishing the novel Fox Girl. The novel is set primarily in America Town in Korea. Sookie and Huyan Jin are best friends from two different parts of the town. Sookie's mum has lots of American GIs as 'boyfriends' whilst Huyan Jin's father dotes on her whilst running a corner shop which sells both Korean and American sweets and drinks. When Sookie's mum suddenly disappears the world her mum works in suddenly becomes apparent. Sookie is soon forced to work the clubs and look for American GIs to be her boyfrind. After a revelation Huyan Jin soon finds that the world of America Town which she had always looked up to is fast becoming her only possible means of escape.

The novel created a world for me which we know exists but tend to shy away from. The girls in the novel have to stoop to the lowest levels to finds means and ways to stay alive, creating women and men who are hardened to their loved ones. The myth of the fox girl runs throughout the novel - a fox who had it all but wanted to become human.
Read for my Olympic Challenge.

My Thoughts: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

I brought this book when it very first was released and was a feature of many reviews, it then sat on the shelves looking lonely since.
The book is a journal of a Chinese student, Z during her year long visit to England. As the book starts she is entering England and is shocked by the things around her - the expense, the food, the lack of friendliness. One night sitting alone in the cinema she is smiled at by a man, by the end of the evening she has falle in love and she has invited herself to live with him. This relationship then adds to her mix of emotions, not only does she have to fit into a new country but also a new relationship in which nothing is certain, for she has fallen in love with a drifter, a man who can make no commitment.
The language starts off in very stark broken English, but as the book progresses her English improves vastly with only a few mistakes popping up. She also has a dictionary definition at the start of each chapter and it becomes apparent how words we use everyday are not clearly defined in a dictionary - they have nuances which cannot or have not been defined.
A great read.
Challenges:
Orbis Terrarum
999 (TBR)
Rescue Challenge

The Sunday Salon: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers bu Loung Ung

I haven't posted a book review on here in ages - I seem to be distracted lately when reading or I'm too busy to actually get to a book. This is the first nook I have finished in a while, but I have a poetry collection and another non-ficion half read so they should be coming up for review shortly.

I picked this book about Cambodia off of the shelves as I'm planning on travelling there next summer (5 weeks to explore Cambodia, Laos and south Vietnam - I've done the north already and loved it) and also my ex is there at the moment and he has been raving about it in his emails.
First The Killed My Father is a memoir, Loung Ung was just 5 years old when the Khmer Rouge stormed Phnom Penh causing thousands to escape from the city in search of safety. Coming from a rich family bacame both a danger but also a blessing as this family went on the run. Escaping first to families homes and then to distant villages they had to be careful at every moment to hide the father's past work with the old government. The Khmer Rouge a Communist Extremist group forced families to live in camps on meager rations, for children to work in rice fields and vegetable patches to help feed the armies. Her brother is forced to face bullying by the generals children as a means of keeping the family alive with a few extra scraps of food each night. As Loung gets older she witness the death of her sister and the disappearance of her father. She then is sent to a Children's Camp where the kids are taught how to attack the 'enemy' with the tools they use in their jobs.
The stories of what the families went through and the seperation of the families is harrowing, the political side of things is very sketchy so I'll be searching out a few non-fiction texts to find out more about the place before I go - the ex has already recommended one, which I'll borrow when he arrives back in the UK.

Challenges:
World Citizen Challenge
A-Z (Author)
In Their Shoes

Sunday Salon: Travelling from the Sofa

Africa - Sudan
Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

A young man returns to his village after many years and finds that a stranger has moved into town and managed to work his way into the tightly knit community who are normally wary of strangers. In this place where each persons heritage is known the stranger is a rarity, it isn't even known from which village he comes from.
When he finally meets the stranger he becomes obsessed, the stranger suddenly talks to him in well-spoken English,revealing at first a small part of his past.
The past is revealed in more detail when we discover that the stranger had been taken to court and held on the charge of murdering his own wife, and being the named cause of the suicide of many of English women. When the stranger suddenly disappears into the floods one night, feared dead, the obsession doesn't end it only becomes stronger.
Challenges:
999 (tbr + Arfican reads)
Orbis


Japan
Crossing Midnight by Mike Carey, Jim Fern and Mark Pennington
This fantastic graphic novel tells the story of twins Kai and Toshi. During the mothers pregnancy the father promised a sacrifice in payment for the birth of a healthy child. Unknown to him (and the doctors) his wife was expecting twins.
Boisterous children they quickly learn that Toshi is incapable of coming to harm through knifes and sharp objects. This knowledge leads her to be brave, disobedient and confident unlike her brother Kai.
One night Toshi wakes up to find a large man, surrounded by hovering knives leaning over her, he demands that she is his, the payment for the sacrifice her father made. When she refuses to go with him her dog is dismembered into tons of pieces. The creatures keep returning and the payments for refusal get higher, Kai ends up fighting to save the whole family from the instrusion of these mythical creatures.
This is my first violent graphic novel, I tend to stick to memoirs, and I really enjoyed it. At the back of the book the author writes about Japanese mythology and folklore which has made me want to discover more.
Challenges:
Graphic Novel
Japanese Literature Challenge
Orbis Terrarum


America (and the spiritual world)
A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb

I picked up this book because the cover resembled the fantastic Siobhan Dowd novel
A Pure Swift Cry, I had no idea what the book was going to be about as the synopsis is written in a pale blue against a moss green background making it hard to read.
The ovel starts with Helen, a Light, a ghost trapped on earth. She is doomed to walk the earth following a host - a person she has chosen as a life line, if she moves away from this person she feels herself being pulled into hell.
Helen follows after Mr Brown, an English teacher and is always present in his life, unbeknown to him, until she realises that a pupil can see her. The pupil James, was also a light until he learnt how to inhabit the body of a dead soul.
The pair join up and quickly become tied to each other, they struggle with their own lives plus the lives of the host body they have come to inhabit.
I haven't done this justice at all, this is a great read - its intense, gripping and your pulled right into their world. (YA for older teens).
Challenges:
YA 2009
A-Z (Name)

My Thoughts: The Blood of Flowers by Anita Amirrezvani

Today was a bank holiday in England so rather than doing the planned list of things that are desperately calling my name, I curled up and read this in its entirety.

The Blood of Flowers is written in the first person, the young girl tells the tale of her teenage years living in 17th Century Iran.
The book opens with the fortelling of a bad year brought by the arrival of a comet to the skies. The comet's fate leaves her father dead, and her and her mother fated to live a poor relatives in an unknown city in that vital year that she should be marrying.
After moving to the city of Isfahan the girl ad her mother are fated to servitude and compliance at the hands of distant rich relatives. Whilst their the girl is able to work on her skills as a carpet maker under the guidance of her uncle, the Shah's main carpet maker.
Being headstrong and defiant she upsets the rich relatives and has no choice but to have a sigheh - a 3 month long marriage - to a rich man. A man that helps her discover a world she never knew.
She then has to make that fatal decision stay with the rich man and gain his favours to keep her and her mother from poverty's grip or chance life as a carpet maker.
This tale is gripping and is interspresed with Iranian fables, told to explain the fates, would be good as a holiday read. My only problem with the novel was that the young girl was far too modern, she stood up to men, was defiant and bold all things which surely in 17th Century Iran wouldn't have been allowed, and would have been stopped by her parets long before she got to the age of 14.

Challenges:
Orbis Terrarum
Olympic Challenge
Chunkster Challenge

Characters who annoy/frustrate.

Yesterday I finished Siam: Or the Woman Who Shot a Man by Lucy Tuck, before I make this book sound bad, I'll give you the low down. The book is about a young newly married couple, his job is with the Army and he is posted in Thailand helping in the strikes against Vietnam. The wife moves out to live with him. One evening they go to dinner with the president of the Thai Silk Company, a few days later he goes missing. The wife becomes obsessed with the missing man.

My Rant: Firstly I cannot see why the couple are married, he is obsessed with sex, seeming to need in non-stop. She talks and talks despite the fact that he is not interested, and if you had to listen to it you would't be interested either. In the middle of sex she will be telling him about the Thai royal family and during a car crash she decides to repeast all the Thai she had learnt that week!
She also becomes obsessed with a man she met once at a busy dinner, whom she barely spoke to. She obsesses about whether he has been attacked by Lions, kidnapped by communists, or even the Americans. She is basically a wet blanket, far too young to be married and longing for some way to speed up her lonely days.
I kept reading on trying to figure out when this book was going to get better, when she was going to solve the murder and whe she was going to catch her husband in bed with someone else - it never happened.
Anyway it helped with a couple of challenges
Challenege:
NaJuReMoNoMo book 4/5
A-Z (Title)