Gap Creek by Robert Morgan

Another snoozer. This was such a one-note book...when I read the dialogue in my head, it was all in monotone. This girl gets married young, leaves home, goes to live with her new husband who got fired from work but somehow, miraculously, they manage to survive a year without spending any money and living off the food that they found around their rented house. She gives birth alone, the baby ends up dying, the creek floods and they have to leave their house and find somewhere new to live. Oh, and he resents her and stifles her because she happens to be a lot smarter than him, in addition to being a harder worker. It's boring, pointless, and not worth reading. These last two picks of Oprah have been real doozies.

On another subject, the book club ended up not working out. I was so excited about it and I was excited about the interest that I had gotten. So I was quite disappointed when no one showed up to the second meeting. It was just me and the lovely woman who had offered to host it. What bothers me isn't that nobody showed up...people lead busy lives and I would never expect everyone to show up at every meeting. What made me sad is that no one said that they weren't coming. The minutes just ticked away and I never got a message, a call, or an email from any of the women letting me know they wouldn't be able to make it, and I just felt kind of duped. I love books and I was so looking forward to reading books that I may not have read otherwise and discussing thoughts and feelings. Oh well.

What I did read after Gap Creek was Sing You Home, by Jodi Picoult. I absolutely love her books and I read through it in less than a week. It was another amazing story, though it did include almost every big ticket controversial issue in the book, which I found kind of funny. It did make for a lot of drama and an interesting story. So I recommend that one, at least!

I hope you all are reading something worthwhile :)

Tara Road by Maeve Binchy

Yes it took me about 3 months to finally finish Tara Road, but I finally did finish it 2 nights ago. I anxiously sped through the last 50 pages, sure that everything that needed to be resolved finally would. Well, when I got to the last page, I didn't even want to read it because I knew that that wasn't going to happen. In fact, I had to keep myself from throwing it out the window becuase it was just so awful! There was not one likeable character in that entire book. None. Most of the characters were weak and spineless and never lived up to the potential that the author should have given them. Friends betrayed other friends and no one ever found out about it, no one ever told anyone off that needed to be put in their place...it's like everyone was just happy in their ignorance and the author let them! I wanted to go into the story and yell at EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER.

In summary, I don't recommend this book to anyone and I may never read another book by this author. I don't think I've ever read a book that has made me so mad. I don't know what Oprah was thinking!!

In the meantime, while trying to get through that book, I did manage to finish Cutting for Stone...which I liked very much, although I was a little upset by the ending. It was a very interesting story, it just ended rather quickly and pointlessly. I am now reading The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows for the next book club meeting. I am rather enjoing it! It is told from the point of view of letters, and I find that I am always interested in what the next letter has to say. It's very cute so far, and definitely worlds away from Cutting for Stone. At the first book club meeting, only 2 other girls came and we never even got to talking about the book until the very end! Such is the world of a group of women. Our next meeting is in a couple weeks and I hope more girls show up! And if not, I'm looking forward to another small chatting session :)

Update

I have no excuses for why it is taking me so long to finish my next book! I’ve had to renew it twice already and I’m only a little more than halfway through Tara Road by Maeve Binchy. While it is a thicker book, its length is not the reason it’s taking me so long to get through it. While it is an interesting story…honestly, I’m a little bored. It’s getting to the point where I really don’t care what happens to these characters, and I very much want to care. It’s just a story I’ve read before: Woman falls in love, than woman and man fall in love with big beautiful house, they move in, have kids, man tells woman he had an affair with another (much younger) girl and now she’s pregnant. It’s still an interesting story line, I just don’t think it’s being told very well.

BUT, if I had just finished it in a timely manner like the other books, than I wouldn’t be in the situation that I’m in now! For a long time, I’ve always wanted to join a book club. And the Borders near my apartment has a book club, but I kept hesitating to check it out because I wasn’t going to know anyone there. Since I’m a part of the squadron newsletter, I brought up the idea about starting a book club. No one has started one, so we put a little blurb in the newsletter, asking people to contact me if they were interested, and I got a couple emails! We picked a book, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese and we will be meeting at my place to discuss it on July 20. So now, I have to finish this book club book first, because I need to make sure I can discuss it for the meeting. I’m hoping to finish it early so that I can spend a couple days catching up on Tara Road. Plus, I’m in the process of knitting a cardigan-vest, a scarf from left-over material, and I also started another cross-stitching project. And with these crafting activities, I can also watch various shows I’ve DVR’d. The only real reading I’ve been doing lately has been before I go to sleep and during my lunch break at work. I just have too many hobbies now!!

I am going to see if I can integrate some of Oprah’s book pics into the book club repertoire. She has so many amazing choices, I’m sure the girls are bound to want to read some of them!

Book Fair!!

I love book fairs!!

I'm in Connecticut for the week to do some wedding stuff, and my dad informed me a couple days ago that he saw signs for a book sale that the public library was putting on. It started today, so I got some cash and headed on over to the library that I used to work at back in high school. There were three adjoining tents set up with tons and tons of used books, from children's to old classics and self-help to science fiction. I browsed aisle to aisle, constantly bumping into and getting in the way of other browsing patrons, as they did the same to me, all of us lost in our book tunnel vision. I realized it would be a great place to buy some of Oprah's Book Club books on the cheap! There were many different books on the list there, and I ended up choosing three books from the book club (Where The Heart Is by Billie Letts, The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve, and Gap Creek by Robert Morgan) and two more books that I just wanted to read (Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay and Barefoot by Elin Hilderbrand).

And I bought all 5 books for just $7!

I just love book fairs :)

Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald

This book had me feeling depressed and joyful, horrified and excited, and also grossed out and amazed at the distances that these characters were ready and willing to go to not only for their families, but for their own selfish desires. This novel was dark, intense, and thoroughly gloomy. Don’t get me wrong though, Fall On Your Knees is written beautifully and is cleverly haunting.

In case you want some literary proof about what you would be getting into, should you decide to read the book, the first line is: “They’re all dead now.”

An interesting thing about the he preface is that it’s told from the point of view of someone describing a three dimensional photograph. You see the different rooms described inside the house and what the members of the family were doing at one particular pivotal moment. There are other parts of the book that are described the same way as well, as though life in the story freezes for a couple of moments so the story teller can make sure the reader can truly visualize. This is a subtler passage of the phenomenon:

“The closet beneath the stairs is full of soft dark things. When its door stands open a crack it is possible to discern a thin white stripe interrupting the silver of gloom. That’s Frances peeking out.”

I also wanted to share this passage, which is not only a clear example of the literary portrait, but also a beautiful passage:

“Everything in New York is a photograph. All the things that are supposed to be dirty or rough or unrefined are the most beautiful things. Garbage cans at the ends of alleyways look like they’ve been up all night talking with each other. Doorways with peeling paint look like the wise lines around an old feller’s eyes. I stop and stare but can’t stay because men always think I’m selling something. Or worse, giving something away. I wish I could be invisible. Or at least I wish I didn’t look like something they want to look at. They stop being a part of the picture, they get up from their chess game and come out of the frame at me, blocking my view. What do they see when they look at me?”

I found the story to be divided into three different components, as far as the character development goes. The beginning tells the story of the growing family, and the daughters as little girls, figuring out their own meanings of life. The second part is sort of a plateau, in that it’s all just story telling. No one really gets older, the plot doesn’t really continue, the reader just gets sucked into a regular day-to-day life for a while. Then everyone sort of separates from each other, each sister finding their own paths, venturing in very different directions as they grow older. The sisters can’t understand the other’s directions, and knows they can’t follow anyone else’s path but their own.

As beautiful and interesting this book was, I think I need the next book I read to be a little more uplifting. Maybe even a “happily ever after” thrown in there.

Interlude 1

Are books becoming obsolete?

I mean...why bother reading when there are so many technological gadgets and games around to keep our minds from actually thinking and experiencing the real world. In a way, what I am saying is a bit hypocritical, since I am writing this internet blog, but I am mostly referring to things like the iPhone and iPad. For me, it is still freeing to travel places and not have immediate access to my email or Facebook, and also exciting, as I look forward to seeing what I've missed. Before my fiance had his iPhone, we used to send each other cute little Facebook messages and I knew he would wake up to a message from me wishing him a great day. I can't do those things anymore because his phone is always on him, and I can't send him anything without it being received on the spot.

I'm afraid of all of this advancing technology, and not just because I've seen the Terminator movies. I'm afraid for my books! There is something so special about holding a book in my hands. I love the excitement that comes with opening a book for the first time, and the accomplishment that I feel when I turn the last page. I could (and have) spend hours at a bookstore or library, just looking at all the books, deciding on what story to get lost in. I have never paid for a book that I couldn't hold in my hands. Paying money to read a book on an iPad just boggles me, and makes me sad. And I have absolutely no desire to read a book on a phone.

Now, I'm not against technology. I love my laptop, and staying connected with people on Facebook. And I have definitely played addicting games on my fiance's iPhone. But I like being able to leave those things at home. And instead of burning brain cells for hours on end looking at a tiny phone screen and flinging birds at things...I pick up a book. And I can only hope that that will always be my first choice.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

East of Eden is an amazing story about life in similar forms, starting with one patriarch and ended two patriarchs later. This novel is said to be a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis. The stories of Adam & Eve and Cain & Abel are beautifully intertwined to the point where the men in the family seem to trade off being a “Cain” or an “Abel,” and with that comes the trading off of good and evil, showing that everyone has a little bit of both inside of them.

The Adam and Eve stories are definitely described in a modern way…in fact, the main women in the book are either evil themselves, or harsh, or too beautiful for their own good. Through the majority of the novel, the men were either marrying or giving birth to women who would end up living lives that were quite unfulfilled and unsatisfied, which I found pretty sad. Is this back to the concept that the sins of the world can be traced back to women, and then back to Eve? There are many people in the world today, over 50 years after this novel was written, that live in that same mindset.

The book really isn’t about women though, it is really about Adam and his life being a son, a brother, and then a father to two sons who seem to struggle with the same problems that Adam and his brother had. It was fascinating to read about how he didn’t like the way his father raised him and his brother, but he ended up turning into his father in many ways, and I’m not sure he ever fully realized that.

Anyway, my very favorite part of the book was the naming of Adam’s sons. Adam and two friends sat together for hours, discussing the philosophy and theology behind names. Worrying about what was going to be passed down through blood, how much of it was up to how they were brought up…the basic Nature vs. Nurture debate. An interesting quote from that discussion:

“I don’t very much believe in blood,” said Samuel. “I think when a man finds good or bad in his children he is seeing only what he planted in them after they cleared the womb.”

“You can’t make a race horse of a pig.”

“No,” said Samuel, “but you can make a very fast pig.”

It is hard to really get into depth about the characters because I don’t want to spoil this book for anyone else that would want to read it. I will say that I highly recommend it, as it is very thought provoking and had me going back into the Book of Genesis and seeing it in a new light.