Review: The Walking People

The Walking People
by Mary Beth Keane

The Walking People is the name for the gypsies of Ireland in the 1950s. As the word gypsy implies, they traveled from place to place to make they're living, never settling in one spot for long. Michael Ward's people are Walking People but he is different. He longs to settle in just one place. So at the age of 17 he travels with the Cahill sisters, the vibrant and restless Johanna and the quiet and resourceful Greta, to America where he settles down and starts a family.

There is so much more to the story than that but I couldn't really tell you what the book was about. It never seemed to get anywhere. Even the dramatic scene where Michael is in a mining accident failed to excite any interest in me. I did like the characters in the beginning but that faded once they arrived in America. It was dull from beginning to end. If the point was to represent the Irish immigration process of the 1950s then I believe it failed at that. I would have been more interested by reading a non-fiction about it. I'm disappointed. I had higher hopes for this one.

Review: Home

Home
by Marilynne Robinson

Jack has not been home in 20 years. He was the wayward son, the misfit in a household of good, God-fearing people, the Boughtons. Rev. Robert Boughton has prayed for the day his son would return so he could offer his long suffering forgiveness with open arms. But Jack returns beaten down and unable to let anyone in except his youngest sister Glory who was too young to remember much about him, and thus, mostly ignorant of his faults and offenses. Glory offers Jack acceptance in a place full of cold shoulders and constant reminders of the careless and reckless childhood that has haunted him for so many years.

I have mixed feelings about the audio version of this book. On one hand I'm glad to have listened to it because I'm not sure I would have finished it otherwise. It's long and seems like it could have been boring. I've read other bloggers who have complained about that. After spending a while with it I am glad to have gotten to the end and found it fit just right with the character of the story. Though she did a good job of capturing the slow paced, meandering style, the reader of this audio book really irritated me. Her "drawl", for lack of a better description, grated on my nerves even while she gave each character they're own personality. She succeeded in the essence. I just didn't like her way of drawing out the sounds. It was a personal thing I suppose. Coincidentally, Maggi-Meg Reed is also the reader for my latest audio book, Prayers for Sale. Thankfully the part that irritated me is left out of this one.

I think there is much to chew on in Home. Theology is discussed amongst the characters. The questions of how deep forgiveness really runs seems to be the central theme. Those who claim to forgive us most are the ones who never let us forget by the very nature of how much they know about us. Can a difference in world views be forgiven or can it destroy all hope of relationship? What about forgiveness of self? Is there any truth to the saying that you can never go home? These are tough questions and I'm not sure if they were answered or if they were left open for the reader to figure out for themselves.

I liked this book but I wouldn't call it a favorite. It would be worthy of a reread(I'm not sure what you call it if you listen to it and then read it later) in order to try to catch some of what was elusive the first time around. If you like slow and thoughtful reading then you might want to give this one a try.

The Sunday Salon-Vacation Edition

This Sunday Salon is brought to you from the large state of Texas. Yeehaw! My internet access is intermittent but I thought I'd grab a minute to let y'all know what I'm up to. I'm up to vacation. A nice long visit with my sister and her kiddos and her boyfriend and his kiddos. So far it's been relaxing and pleasant.

Despite a house full of children and adults I managed to finally finish reading The Walking People. I found it boring. To find out why you'll have to look for a review later this week. I am now reading Tuck Everlasting and then The Embers. I also finished listening to the audio book of Home. There is so much there to digest. I'm not sure how that review will go.

Well it's that time of day, where we all sit outside to let the mosquitoes feast on us and listen to the locusts. They sound like spaceships; or is that just me?

Review: The Blue Notebook

The Blue Notebook
by James Levine

Here I am, once again, reviewing a book that half the bloggers in existence have already reviewed. I am feeling really uninspired and have such violent feelings for this book so I will make this short.

For a well written summary of the story you can go to Linus's Blanket. I will simply share my opinion about a few points. The writing is wonderfully done. Levine is successful at depicting the inner thoughts of a 15 year old prostitute in India. It felt like I was reading the diary of a real girl. She is both innocent and corrupted. I liked Batuk.

The book is written for a good cause. It shines a light, too painfully at times, on a terribly unjust and inhumane way of life for too many of India's orphaned/disposed children who are forced into prostitution with no hope of escape. This is a cause that deserves some acknowledgement. We cannot fix what we don't know is broken. Best of all:
"All of the U.S. proceeds from this novel will be donated to the International and National Centers for Missing and Exploited Children (http://www.icmec.org)."

BUT...there were several disturbing scenes in The Blue Notebook. The "situations" start off somewhat mild but they slowly become more graphic. By the end there is no detail withheld. I can take alot. I have a pretty strong constitution while I'm reading but this made me want to throw up. I went from hating it to appreciating the beauty of the writing to wanting to throw it away to wanting to help further the cause. But I cannot recommend this book without first letting you know what you are in for. There is alot of s*x and violence. There is also a beautiful and tarnished soul that lives within the covers of this novel that speaks for thousands of real children who cannot speak for themselves. Can you handle it?

Review: The First Part Last

The First Part Last
by Angela Johnson

Wow! That was an incredible experience. I followed the suggestion of Michelle at 1 More Chapter and listened to this on audio book that I got from my library. I am so glad I did. I won't say anything about it because I'm afraid of giving away important plot spoilers but go read Michelle's review and check out the book right away. I agree with her 4 1/2 star rating because there is some language but it is an example of "appropriate for the context" even if it didn't really further the storyline. Reserve judgment until you have listened to the entire thing. Then come back here and tell me what you thought.

Has an audio book ever moved you in a way that reading the novel may not have? What are some of your favorite audio books?

The Sunday Salon

Some people dread the moment that they close the back cover of a book they've thoroughly enjoyed. They slow don't as they come to the end so it will last just a little longer. And a few even turn right back to the first page and start all over again. Then there are people who get great pleasure at finishing a good book so they can savor the feelings it has stirred in them, let those feelings swirl around and turn into a fine mist, and start again hopeful that the next story will be just as splendid.

I sit in the latter group. I tend to not finish things I start, like quilts and chores, so when I do finish something I get excited. I feel proud and accomplished. So it is no wonder that I am feeling so good tonight. Yesterday I finally listened to the last of the audio book of Home by Marilynn Robinson which I started at the beginning of the year. And tonight I listened to the audio book of The First Part Last by Angela Johnson. My joy is mixed with the feelings of wonderment that I feel for that last satisfying read. I can't wait to review it.

I am still getting through The Walking People. It's been a slow start but I am finally gaining some interest in the story. I picked up The Soloist, the book that the movie is based on, at the library but I leave for a major vacation soon so I hope I can get through it before I leave. Then I have 2 other ARCs to get through before I am free. I'm keeping my promise to myself; I haven't requested anything new lately.

I hope all have had a restful weekend and are ready to start fresh again in the morning. Night all!

Review: Doctor Faustus

Doctor Faustus
by Christopher Marlowe

The young Dr. Faustus was of lowly birth but was awarded a doctorate because of his profound knowledge. But he is not satisfied with the knowledge of this world anymore. He decides to learn necromancy, black magic. In order to gain a thorough understanding of this subject he makes a pact with Lucifer, knowledge for his soul.

For those who don't know about the Shakespearean authorship debate, it is speculated that Shakespeare was not actually the author of the plays attributed to him. Christopher Marlowe is one of the possibilities thrown around as the real author of Shakespeare's plays. You have to ignore the fact that Marlowe was dead before Shakespeare's first play was produced to come to this conclusion but some say Marlowe faked his own death. This doesn't seem likely to me. At least, it seems like you have to do more logical gymnastics to come to this conclusion than you have to to say that Shakespeare really wrote his own plays. But that's a debate for another time.

The language of Doctor Faustus was much like Shakespeare, difficult to understand at times, but I didn't think it held the same magic behind it that I've seen in Romeo and Juliet, Midsummer Night's Dream, Taming of the Shrew, and others that I've read. It certainly wasn't as funny. It was just about the pact made with Lucifer and then 20 years later when Lucifer returns to claim Faustus' soul. As Faustus is making decisions about selling his soul and again about turning back for salvation, there are the good angel and the wicked devil sitting on his shoulders advising him. The tension of the play is all at the end when we watch to see whether he will go to Satan or to God.

It was an interesting play. It was controversial during its time and, I'm sure, for a while after. It was based on the German legend of Faust who sells his soul to the Devil in order to gain more knowledge. I would rank it just below The Merchant of Venice. Of the Shakespeare that I've read so far Merchant is my least favorite, which isn't saying much since I love anything Shakespeare. But Doctor Faustus was in no way a bad play. It was thought provoking and solemn. The attempts at levity were lost in the depth of the main plot. But, as most plays are, it was short and so worth the effort to squeeze it in for an understanding of history, drama, and the issues of the time.

First a TV Show, Then a Book

Have you seen the first season of ABC's new TV series Castle? The premise is that Jonathan Castle is a best-selling author who has found a new muse in a tough female cop. He follows her around while she solves cases(actually he solves most of them for her). I've watched it on the internet at ABC.com. It's not as good as Law and Order or CSI; in fact, the cases they solve are rather familiar to the point of being cliche. And yet, I like watching. Jonathan Castle, played by Nathan Fillion from past episodes of Desperate Housewives, is fun in his "class clown" goofiness with a charming smile that will get him out of any scrape.

But the news I have to share is that there will be a book. From the article at THR.com:
"Because the show's protagonist, Richard Castle, is a best-selling author of mysteries, what more appropriate tie-in than to publish an actual mystery novel written by the character?

The network will post the first half of the book, a chapter a week, for 10 weeks. The full novel will be published Sept. 29 by Disney sister company Hyperion. The story apparently is a stand-alone mystery with cross-over elements to the on-screen story."

Am I a total nerd because I'm excited about this?

Hachette's OpenAccess

The Hachette Book Group has just come up with a marketing tool that benefits its readers. It's called OpenAccess. It is a database of some of its titles for free full content. That means you can read the book in its entirety from their website. A quick browse of the 17 books listed revealed these popular titles: Child 44, The Heretic's Daughter, and Gossip Girl book #1. To access it you can follow this link to the main page, scroll down and click on the green button in the right hand sidebar. Choose your book, in different formats like hardcover or large print, and there it is. I tried out The Heretics Daughter and found it very simple to use. The list of titles will change every 30 days.

Newsweek's Top 100 Books

Newsweek just published its Top 100 Books list. Here's how they say they came up with it:
"We crunched the numbers from 10 top books lists (Modern Library, the New York Public Library, St. John's College reading list, Oprah's, and more) to come up with The Top 100 Books of All Time."

Here is Newsweek's Top 100 Books: the meta-list. (I've highlighted the books I've read.)

1. War and Peace
2. 1984
3. Ulysses
4. Lolita
5. The Sound and the Fury
6. Invisible Man
7. To the Lighthouse
8. The Iliad and The Odyssey
9. Pride and Prejudice
10. Divine Comedy
11. Canterbury Tales
12. Gulliver's Travels
13. Middlemarch
14. Things Fall Apart
15. The Catcher in the Rye
16. Gone with the Wind
17. One Hundred Years of Solitude
18. The Great Gatsby
19. Catch 22
20. Beloved
21. The Grapes of Wrath
22. Midnight's Children
23. Brave New World
24. Mrs. Dalloway
25. Native Son
26. Democracy in America
27. On the Origin of Species
28. The Histories
29. The Social Contract
30. Das Kapital
31. The Prince
32. Confessions
33. Leviathan
34. The History of the Peloponnecian War
35. The Lord of the Rings
36. Winnie the Pooh
37. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
38. A Passage to India
39. On the Road
40. To Kill a Mockingbird
41. Holy Bible
42. A Clockwork Orange
43. Light in August
44. The Souls of Black Folk
45. Wide Sargasso Sea
46. Madame Bovary
47. Paradise Lost
48. Anna Karenina
49. Hamlet
50. King Lear
51. Othello
52. Sonnets
53. Leaves of Grass
54. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
55. Kim
56. Frankenstein
57. Song of Solomon
58. One Flew Over the Kuckoos Nest
59. For Whom the Bell Tolls
60. Slaughterhouse Five
61. Animal Farm
62. Lord of the Flies
63. In Cold Blood
64. The Golden Notebook
65. Remembrance of Things Past
66. The Big Sleep
67. As I Lay Dying
68. The Sun Also Rises
69. I, Claudius
70. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
71. Sons and Lovers
72. All the Kings Men
73. Go Tell it on the Mountain
74. Charlotte's Web
75. Heart of Darkness
76. Night
77. Rabbit, Run
78. The Age of Innocence
79. Portnoy's Complaint
80. An American Tragedy
81. The Day of the Locust
82. Tropic of Cancer
83. The Maltese Falcon
84. His Dark Material
85. Death Comes to the Archbishop
86. The Interpretation of Dreams
87. The Education of Henry Adams
88. Quotations from Chairman Mao
89. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
90. Brideshead Revisited
91. Silent Spring
92. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money
93. Lord Jim
94. Goodbye to All That
95. The Affluent Society
96. The Wind in the Willows
97. The Autobiography of Malcolm X
98. Eminent Victorians
99. The Color Purple
100. The Second World War

So that makes 22 that I've read but if I count the authors that I've read(not the listed book but another of the author's works) then my number goes up to 32. As some authors have multiple works listed(4 from Shakespeare but none of the ones I've read) I think I have done alright.

But what I'm interested in is why these books are listed in the original lists. Is it based on importance of subject matter? Is it popularity? Is it longevity? I can see books that fall into all three categories but all of the books don't fit into one category. These are not necessarily classics, but important works. But I have to ask: why was Winnie the Pooh important? There are several books that I wonder about.

Any opinions out there?
How many books have you read?

It's Tuesday...Where are you?

Every Tuesday I'll post about where my reading is taking me. You can join the fun too. Visit An Adventure in Reading to find out more.

I am in the small village of Ballyroan, Ireland in the 1950s and 1960s. I am the younger daughter of some of the remaining villagers after a mass exodus from Ireland, just before the country was rigged with electricity. There is a group of gypsies that my sister and I keep running into.

The Walking People by Mary Beth Keane

There are no good photos of Ballyroan, Ireland so I got this one of its neighbor, Galway.

The Sunday Salon

There are pockets of time when everything seems to be going right. The planets align and the sun shines his rays on everything you do. I feel as if my reading experiences have been living in this place these past 6 months. 84% of the books I've read I would recommend to fellow readers. I'd like the trend to continue to the end of the year.

I have learned to be choosy about my books. I'm a slow reader so even though I devote a chunk of time each week to reading I average only one book a week; this includes small plays and audiobooks. If I could limit my computer usage I could probably double my numbers but that would be a really big deal, like a smoker giving up cigarettes or a soccer-mom giving up her Starbucks. ;) I'm still waiting for someone to invent a time freezing machine.

This past week I crawled through a small book that I didn't care for, Serpent in the Garden of Dreams. Now I'm getting into The Walking People which I'm liking so far. I've also picked up the audiobook of The First Part Last because of the rave review of Michelle at 1 More Chapter. I have a few books in mind for the rest of July but I seem to be getting quite distracted lately. Soon I have a big vacation planned so I haven't a clue what that will do to my reading time.

Does anyone have any special reading plans for the summer?

Review:Serpent in the Garden of Dreams

Serpent in the Garden of Dreams
by Robin Messing

Tildy Glick was a girl obsessed with her love for her mother. Everyone else had to be excluded or was seen as a threat. But Tildy learns the limits of her mother's love the summer she turns 13, the summer her parents split up and her mother starts a fling with a married man. Fast forward to Tildy as an adult. Her obsession with love is now directed toward her boyfriend. His breaking up with her is a trauma that she cannot get over. Over the course of a year she learns to be okay with herself without someone to love obsessively.

If that summary seems uninspired it is because I was left uninspired by this book. I feel that I have given it enough of my time already(one whole week to read a 166 page book!) and it wasn't worth it. I did not connect with Tildy's pain. The reason for her obsession with her mother was unaccountable. I felt bad for the way the younger Tildy was treated by her family but I didn't care a wit for the grown Tildy. Grown Tildy was whiny and childish. She considers her boyfriend dumping her to be a trauma for which she cannot recover for a whole year even though he didn't seem to care much for her in the first place.

The narrative voice was different from younger Tildy, in the third person, to older Tildy, in the first person. Then there was the part that was supposed to be Tildy making an audio tape of her memories about her and her boyfriend. These were supposed to be lyrical(the author is also a poet) but they felt forced and didn't match the personality of either Tildy. The imagery in this last part was confusing when it was meant to be expressive.

While I didn't find much to like inside or outside of this book, like that awful cover design, I did really like the title and the quote that it was extracted from; a quote not written by Ms. Messing. But I still can't figure out what the serpent is in the garden of Tildy's memory. Tildy never realises, at least not in so many words, that her mother is a self-centered attention whore. Grown Tildy never sees that she is really the same as her mother. I never saw where Tildy recognises any betrayal. There is no betrayal since Tildy has set herself up for disappointment by setting her mother on a pedestal. Her mother never promised to be her everything.

I didn't hate this book; I just didn't care for anything in it.

This was my first challenge book for the Take a Chance Reading Challenge, the random book selection. I picked this book from the library using an arbitrary set of instructions that I devised for myself (the centermost book from the centermost shelf in the fiction section). I wish it was more successful but you can't win them all. Next up is either Tuck Everlasting or Tethered.