| Rebecca Makkai | The Hundred-Year House | Nora | C | I didn't get the point of this book. Was it about the creative process where nobody really created anything? |
| John Burnham Schwartz | The Red Daughter | Judy | B- | I just didn't see the point of this book. I thought the writing style was boring, and the characters were somewhere between real and fiction, which irritated me. I might have enjoyed reading Svetlana's original book more. The story was somewhat interesting, but felt Hemingway ex-patish in its tone. I found it hard to read. |
| Esi Edugyan | Washington Black | Judy | B+ | This unlikely journey of a black boy escaping slavery in Barbados was full of intricate scientific details. It was almost like fantasy in parts. It bogged down in the second half as I just couldn't connect with so many eccentric people. |
| Esi Edugyan | Washington Black | Nora | B+ | On the one hand, this seems like a classic picaresque novel (one where the protagonist travels and meets with unlikely coincidences--eg Tom Jones, Don Quixote) but on the other hand, there is no comic relief. In summary, the book is about how we don't really connect, to quote itself "You cannot know the nature of another's suffering." |
| John Burnham Schwartz | The Red Daughter | Nora | B+ | Svetlana Stalin must have been a very torn and conflicted person in real life, considering what she endured, and Schwartz captures that very well. The fact that he knew her and that his father was the one who brought her to the US and was her life-long lawyer and friend gave this fiction a good deal of credibility in my mind. He does a good job of protraying her as the perpetual outsider. |
| John Burnham Schwartz | Northwest Corner | Renee | B+ | Superb writing, but the story was a bit depressing as the characters dealt with difficult events and relationships. |
| Jennifer Clement | Prayers for the Stolen | Judy | B | This was an interesting but painful story to read. These women were so disadvantaged by growing up in a poor mountain community whose men left. Add to that drug lords and poppy fields and bad government. They were in a no win situation. Sometimes the flow seemed off, as if a good editor might have helped as well.
Screen reader support enabled.
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| Jennifer Clement | Gun Love: A Novel | Kay | B | What a sad life this girl and her mother lived in a car parked in visitor parking at a trailer park. It is a wonder it continued for years amid a crazy and sometimes dangerous cast of characters. And when Mom got a boyfriend things went from bad to worse. Hard to imagine. I did enjoy the read. |
| Esi Edugyan | Washington Black | Kay | B | At first I thought...oh, another slave story. But this was different in that it started off in Barbados and GW Black had many adventures in his life going to many different places. I enjoyed it. |
| Rebecca Makkai | The Great Believers | Kay | B | A book that alternates chapters between the 1980's early days of the aids epidemic in Chicago (I expected SF!), and 2015 following some of the same characters in a story of a mother searching for her run-away daughter and granddaughter in Paris. Seemed like an unlikely connection, but I found it well written and interesting. Looks like we have Rebeca Makkai covered. |
| Madeline Miller | Circe | Kay | B | I had never read a book about mythology, and found this a good read once I got into it. It was kind of a soap opera of the gods. |
| John Burnham Schwartz | The Red Daughter | Kay | B | I felt the same as Nora. Given the author's personal knowledge of Svetlana and his father's relationship with her I kept wondering how much was fiction in this historical fiction. I had not been aware of Svetlana's relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright's son-in-law in Phoenix - that was another thread that was fun to follow. The book made me wish to read an actual biography of this woman |
| Jennifer Clement | Gun Love: A Novel | Nora | B | An interesting novel about people we don't think to think about and maybe also our love affair with guns? Got better as I read further. |
| Madeline Miller | Circe | Nora | B | Not being a particualr fan of mythology, I nevertheless found that Miller did a good job of fleshing out the Circe myth and making her human. |
| Rebecca Makkai | The Borrower | Renee | B | A rather enjoyable story about a librarian and her favorite young patron escaping their lives for a road trip together. Lot of literary references. I wasn't sure how it could end well, but it did. Well written. |
| Esi Edugyan | Washington Black | Suzanne | B | I really enjoyed the story of the adventures of GW Black. I especially liked the first half that focused on life on the Barbados plantation and how he escaped slavery. I agree with Judy that the second half was a little slower and not as engaging with his endless drive to find Titch. Still a very interesting book. |
| Madeline Miller | Circe | Suzanne | B | It took me 3 months to finish this book! I kept starting it, getting bored, reading something else, then going back to it again! I finally caught the vision and thoroughly enjoyed the second half of the book. I loved the idea of Circe being a God in conflict with her immortality. |
| John Burnham Schwartz | The Commoner | Suzanne | B | I enjoyed the historical nature of this book about the Japanese royal family. The book was very engaging initially, but kind of ran out of steam about 3/4 of the way through. Still, worth reading. |
| Jennifer Clement | Prayers for the Stolen | Suzanne | A- | I agree that Prayers for the Stolen was a hard topic, but I absolutely was drawn in from the first with the characters and plot. I found the topic so relevant and heart wrenching. I would like to read another of her books and see if I like her writing style, or just happened to find this one book excellent. |
| Rebecca Makkai | Music for Wartime | Judy | A | I picked this book because I thought maybe short stories would be good for me during my chemo. I was right. I could read one and quit. They were not all about music and not all about war. A very memorable one was about a dead elephant. They were well crafted and somewhat linked together in the end. |
| Madeline Miller | Circe | Judy | A | I didn't expect to like this book, but couldn't put it down. It was action packed and interesting. I learned a lot about the god's and enjoyed her interpretation of Circe. |
| The Borrower | The Borrower | Suzanne | C- | A good idea in the beginning, but quickly seemed to lose it's way and direction. I did not like the character or her development, nor did the ending seem in any way realistic. Only redeeming quality I liked was the references to other children books!
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| Esi Edugyan | Half Blood Blues | Renee | D | How do you take two interesting subjects (jazz musicians and WW2) and write such a boring book? Not much plot and not engaging characters. Only finished it because it was a sojourn read. |
| Jennifer Clement | Gun Love | Renee | B+ | Interesting quirky characters, well written. Subject matter could have been depressing, but it wasn't at all. |
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