Vacation!

So I’m currently in Florida, near Tampa, visiting my in-laws, and loving every second of it.  It’s not even warm here – in the low 60′s – but SO much better than the negative weather we’ve been experiencing in Chicago recently.  Since I got on the plane Wednesday night, I’ve read three and a half books and two and a half magazines, so I’ve been very productive.

I just wanted to give everyone a heads up that I will not have internet access for the next week.  My husband and I are leaving for a Caribbean cruise tomorrow and I don’t plan to purchase any internet time – I just need to chill out and get away from all my stresses for a bit, which includes blogging.  I love it, obviously, but every now and then we all need a break, even from our passions.

I am taking ten, yes ten, books with me on the cruise, and I really hope to get through at least five of them.  One of them is Outlander, though, so if I actually get into that it will probably take up a significant portion of  my reading time.  So we will see.  I did finish New Moon tonight but I’m really not in the mood for writing a review (short version:  I liked it, and will continue on with the series) so I will get to that when I get back.  Hopefully after my week-long hiatus I will have lots of reviews to post for you guys, including the one for New Moon.

Anyways, have a great week everyone, and I’ll catch up with you all when I get back!

Review: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families

Title:  We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Famlies: Stories from Rwanda

Author:  Philip Gourevitch

# of Pages:  353

Published:  September 1998

ISBN:  978-0374286972

My Rating:  4/5

In April of 1994, the government of Rwanda called on everyone in the Hutu majority to kill everyone in the Tutsi minority.  Over the next three months 800,000 Tutsis were murdered in the most unambiguous case of genocide since Hitler’s war against the Jews.  Philip Gourevitch’s haunting work is an anatomy of the killings in Rwanda, a vivid history of the genocide’s background, and an unforgettable account of what it means to survive in its aftermath.

Wow.  This is an extremely powerful book.  I had read some about the genocide in Rwanda before, I knew the basic story and the most general aspects of what happened, but I had nowhere NEAR the amount of knowledge about it that is packed into this book.  This is a fantastic book to read for people who enjoy history and/or politics, as well as world events in general.  There is so much information in these pages that truthfully I feel like I should read it again because I know it didn’t all sink in.  I’m not going to lie to you guys, We Wish to Inform You… is not an easy read.  Not even close.  It took me quite a while to get through it, just because of the sheer depth of information presented here – I had to read much more slowly than I normally do to make sure everything sunk in.  But I think it’s an important read… this does happen.  This did happen, and something similar is happening in Darfur as well.

One thing that makes this book different from many others in the same genre is that it specifically points out all the opportunities the world, the United States in particular, had to intervene in the genocide and stop it from happening, and every time nothing was done.  It is difficult to fully grasp the fact that not only did the world know this was happening, the major world powers did everything they could to deny that it was an actual genocide and to point blame at everyone but their own governments for not helping.  This information is not easy to read about, but at the same time, very important to know about.  The book also goes into extensive detail regarding the aftermath of the genocide, when Hutu killers were living in “refugee” camps and receiving foreign aid, and when surviving Tutsis had to go back to their homes, and carry on their lives living next door to the murderers of their parents, spouses, and children.  Can you imagine – having to look EVERY DAY at the face of the person who murdered every single person you love?  It is absolutely unbelievable.  Yet very few of the killers were put to justice, and the book covers a lot about the broken country of Rwanda after the genocide was “over” (I am putting “over” in quotation marks because there were plenty of killings for a long time after the genocide was thought to be over by the world).

Gourevitch is an amazing journalist – the way he brought this time to life for the reader is stunning.  He did a great job mixing politics with stories of genocide survivors – although there is a LOT of politics in this book.  His language is fantastic and kept me interested even when I wanted to put the book down because of how sad I was feeling.  I am very interested to see what else he has done, or what else he is currently working on.

Highly recommended.  We Wish to Inform You is not a peaceful, easy read by any means, but one that is absolutely worth your time.

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• Natasha at Maw Books Blog
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Friday Friday!

1. I’d really like something from Jamba Juice right now.

2. Damn it! is the word you’d most often hear me say if I stubbed my toe.

3. Possession is a very unhealthy element to some people’s relationships.

4. I quite enjoy Captain Jack Sparrow.

5. Marshmallows and fire go together like salt and margaritas.

6. When customers at my work complain, they usually just go on and on and it drives me nuts… I got it the first time, no need to repeat yourself!!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I’m looking forward to a quiet evening visiting the in-laws, tomorrow my plans include meeting my sister-in-law’s boyfriend and Sunday, I want to leave for our cruise (I’m SO excited)!

Review: Twilight

Title:  Twilight

Author:  Stephenie Meyer

# of pages: 544

Published:  October 5, 2005

ISBN:  978-0316015844

Rating:  4/5

Ok, I finally caved.  I finally read Twilight.  I really have been meaning to for quite some time, but just hadn’t gotten around to it – I wasn’t in any kind of hurry.  For anyone living under a rock, let me explain the basic plot – Bella Swan moves from Phoenix to live with her father in a tiny town near Seattle, called Forks.  She meets and is instantly attracted to the gorgeous and mysterious Edward Cullen, who ignores her for a few days before saving her life and subsequently deciding that he likes her too.  A short while later, after Edward saves her life one more time (Bella is pretty accident-prone) he discloses to her that he’s – gasp – a vampire!  And, being the completely irrational person that Bella is, this doesn’t scare her one bit, it only makes her like him more, and become even MORE obsessed with his gorgeousness and mysteriousness.  The majority of the book is them mooning over each other, Bella constantly describing how amazing Edward really is, with some action and craziness thrown in toward the end of the book – including a vampire fight.  Oh, and she gets to meet and fall in love with Edward’s amazing family of vampires.

So I have to say that I did enjoy reading the book.  It absolutely kept me entertained, I gobbled it up in two days, and I totally get the hype surrounding it.  I mean, come on.  Vampires and teenage love – what more could a 16 year old want in a book?  And yes, Bella and Edward’s relationship borders on obsessive, but I remember what it was like to be in love for the first time – it tends to get a little obsessive.  You want to be around the person all the time, you don’t care about the dangers involved (who hasn’t dated a “bad boy” at some point in life, especially in high school?), and you definitely feel protective of that person and worry that they’ll find some sort of danger around every corner.  Combine that with the ups and downs of dating a vampire, and you’ve got Bella and Edward in Twilight.

It’s not quality literature or anything, but Twilight is enjoyable.  And yes, I already went out and purchased New Moon.  I’m curious to find out what I think about that one – I hear Edward isn’t around as much… could be better, could just be annoying, we shall see.

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• Trish at Trish’s Reading Nook
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Review: The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

Title:  The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things

Author:  Carolyn Mackler

# of Pages:  304

Published:  July 3, 2006

ISBN:  978-1844282937

Rating: 3/5

Virginia Shreves is a fifteen-year-old, overweight, blond-haired teen with no specific talents or gifts, a complete opposite to the rest of her beautiful, dark-haired, intelligent and talented family.  Her best friend has just moved all the way across the country, and Virginia feels completely alone at her upscale, Manhattan private high school.  She starts fooling around with Froggy Welsh on Monday afternoons – when it’s convenient for him – in secret (the fact that it’s a secret is part of her “fat girl code of conduct”), which is strange and new and exciting for Virginia.  The reader gets glimpses of Virginia’s “perfect” parents as they struggle to deal with her weight while balancing their very full social and professional lives, as well as her brother and sister – one in the Peace Corps, the other an amazing student and athlete at Colombia.  One phone call to the Shreves residence changes everything for Virginia – suddenly, everything she thought she knew about her family – especially her brother, who she idolizes – suddenly is turned on its head.  Nothing will ever be the same for Virginia.

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things was a decent book.  It was good.  Not great, but good.  Virginia is a very likeable character and it is easy for the reader to feel sympathy for her as her family basically ignores her, kids at school talk about her behind her back, and she tries to navigate her first attempt at a relationship.  For me, the book picked up quite a bit after the big event in the story – which did turn out to be a major turning point in Virginia’s life.  After she got over the shock of what happened, I felt that she really came out of her shell and became a character I could really appreciate.

I found her parents to be slightly unrealistic – I mean, I know there are people like them in real life, but to me they just seemed a little over the top.  But, generally, the book was entertaining and I did enjoy it.  The story moved along pretty quickly and definitely kept me interested the entire way through.  I think this book would be a fantastic choice for a middle school or early high school student, especially those who may have some trouble fitting in or who may have some self-esteem or body image issues.  I would absolutely recommend the book for that age group, a little less so for adults, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

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Review: Night

Title:  Night

Author:  Elie Wiesel

# of Pages:  128

Published:  March 1, 1982

ISBN:  978-0553272536

Rating:  5/5

For anyone not familiar with Night, this is Elie Wiesel’s memoir of his experiences in the Nazi death camps.  Wiesel and his family were living in Transylvania when the Nazis came to power, and although they were Jews, they never thought they would be too affected by what was going on around them.  Even when they were forced to live in the ghettos, the family kept a positive attitude.  But when Wiesel was a teenager, in late 1944, everyone in his ghetto was rounded up and taken to Auschwitz.  Immediately upon arriving, he was separated from everyone he knew except for his father.  From then on, it was just him and his father, in a terrifying every day struggle just to survive.

I had read Night in high school, and it has really stuck with me since even though I haven’t reread it at all.  With the WWII Challenge, I decided I should pick this one up again to remember why it had such a huge impact on me.  And, wow, do I remember.  The best single word that I could use to describe Night would be…  haunting.  More than any other book I’ve read in a long time, this book truly will haunt you after you finish it.  The way Wiesel chose to write his story is in sparse prose, cutting straight to the point, being extremely factual in his word choices; and it is definitely an effective means of doing so.  The reader is pulled right into the world he is describing, feeling terror, unbelievable exhaustion, and utter despair right along with him.   

Night is a difficult book to read, but a highly important one.  We are not talking fiction here – this really happened, to millions of people, and not that long ago either.  I had several friends when I was growing up whose grandparents survived the concentration camps – so when I read this book for the first time, it was VERY real to me and VERY eye-opening.  Night is something I believe everyone should read – I feel very strongly that we need to be keenly aware of historical events and their significance, and this is one book that highlights that fact all too well.  We have many dictatorships around the world right now, some more threatening than others, and as a world people we need to understand what can happen in these situations.  So for me, this is a no-brainer:  read Night, that’s really all I can say on the subject.  You should just read it if you haven’t already.

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Review: The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

Title:  The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez

Author:  Alan Lawrence Sitomer

# of pages:  320

Release date:  September 30, 2008

ISBN:  978-1423110729

Rating:  4/5

Sonia Rodriguez is a first generation American citizen – her parents were both born in Mexico and came to the United States illegally.  Her father works three jobs and her mother stays home – mostly watching soap operas all day, leaving Sonia to do the cooking and cleaning and watching over her younger brothers.  When Sonia isn’t being her mother’s slave, she tries to study while avoiding the advances of her alcoholic uncle (“drunkle”).  When Sonia starts to rebel by putting more energy and effort into her schoolwork than she does into her duties at home, her mother decides she needs to spend the summer in Mexico with her grandmother and cousin to learn the importance of la familia.

Although her summer in Mexico is much better than she could have ever anticipated, Sonia comes home to an even worse situation than she left – her mother has given birth to twins, which gives Sonia about three times the work she previously had, leaving absolutely zero time for school work.  Still, she is determined to succeed in school and be the first person in her family to earn a high school diploma.  All she needs to do is balance cooking, cleaning, being a mom to twin newborns, and passing all her classes.  Oh, and she also has to worry about her “drunkle”, whose advances have become much less subtle and more scary by the day.

 I “read” The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguezas an audio book and it definitely kept me interested for my drives to and from work.  I felt a lot of empathy for Sonia and found myself rooting for her throughout the entire book – I started to care about her and was really hoping for the book to end with her graduation from high school and entrance to college (don’t worry, I won’t tell if it happens or not!).  Even though I have no experience living the kind of life described in this book, I had no problem relating to Sonia and her situation; I just felt like she was a very relatable character and seemed pretty realistic.  Most of the other characters (except her father) annoyed me, and I truly don’t know how realistic they were, but they definitely added a more colorful, harder-edged element to the story – especially her “drunkle”.

I have to admit that I did get a little frustrated with Sonia that she never could seem to stick up for herself.  It’s probably just me, and it’s probably a cultural disconnect, but I don’t get how she could let her family treat her so terribly and never say anything about it.  To me, families support each other, they don’t treat one another like slaves, and they certainly don’t verbally abuse one another constantly.  Her family broke her spirit and abused her constantly, yet she never once stuck up for herself – I had a hard time connecting with that aspect of the book.  But like I said, perhaps it is just a cultural disconnect that I simply can’t appreciate.  The book is overall pretty harsh, but it is a very engrossing read and ultimately inspiring.  I would definitely recommend The Secret Story of Sonia Rodriguez.

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Winners of All Men Are Cremated Equal

Congratulations Holly, Kathy, and Trisha for winning copies of All Men Are Cremated Equal from author Elizabeth Fournier!  If the three of you could just email me with your mailing addresses so I can send them on to Elizabeth that would be fantastic.  Email is book.addict29@gmail.com.

If I don’t hear from any of you by Wednesday I will draw another name (or names, if I have to).

Thanks and congratulations!

Review: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Title:  Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

Author:  J.K. Rowling

# of Pages:  435

Release date:  September 1, 1999

ISBN:  0439136369

Rating:  4.5/5

For twelve long years, the dread fortress of Azkaban held an infamous prisoner named Sirius Black.  Convicted of killing thirteen people with a single curse, he was said to be the heir apparent to the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

Now he has escaped, leaving only two clues as to where he might be headed:  Harry Potter’s defeat of You-Know-Who was Black’s downfall as well.  And the Azkaban guards heard Black muttering in his sleep, “He’s at Hogwarts… He’s at Hogwarts.”

Harry Potter isn’t safe, not even within the walls of his magical school, surrounded by his friends.  Because on top of it all, there may well be a traitor in their midst.

This is probably the HP book that I know the best.  For some reason, I believe I’ve read it more than the other books as well as seen the movie a few times (and I’m truthfully not a huge fan of the HP movies).  For that reason, this book is a true comfort read for me… I love going back to the familiar story and rediscovering Sirius Black and his contribution to Harry’s history.

The Prisoner of Azkaban has quite a bit of suspense and adventure – definitely more than the first two books.  First of all, there is the terror and uncertainty of Sirius Black being at large throughout the novel – how did he escape?  Where is he now?  What does he plan to do once he finally gets to Harry at Hogwarts?  Also, there is the fact that Harry keeps getting snippets of information about why Black is after him in particular – although he has some knowledge, everything he hears confuses him (and the reader).

I think that one thing I love so much about this book is how much Harry is forced to grow up.  He learns a lot of new information about his parents’ past, about how exactly they were found by Voldemort and who in the wizarding world is truly on the dark side and out to get Harry.  He becomes much more aware of the world around him, and how events that occurred many years ago can still have a great impact on his life.  He still has plenty to learn about his past and about the wizarding world (which he absolutely will do in the next four books), but I think that this book is sort of a turning point where he really begins to grow up.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is my favorite of the first three books in the series, not my favorite overall but my favorite of the first three.  I also think that, when reading this series, if you get to this book you will definitely want to go on to read the rest.  It begins to set off the more sinister tone of the last three books and gives you just a touch of what’s to come with the rest of the series.

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Review: The Awakening

Title:  The Awakening

Author:  Kate Chopin

# of pages:  190

Release date:  1899

ISBN:  0380002450

Rating: 3.5/5

First published in 1899, this beautiful, brief novel so disturbed critics and the public that it was banished for decades afterward. Now widely read and admired, The Awakening has been hailed as an early vision of woman’s emancipation. This sensuous book tells of a woman’s abandonment of her family, her seduction, and her awakening to desires and passions that threaten to consumer her. Originally entitled “A Solitary Soul,” this portrait of twenty-eight-year-old Edna Pontellier is a landmark in American fiction, rooted firmly in the romantic tradition of Herman Melville and Emily Dickinson. Here, a woman in search of self-discovery turns away from convention and society, and toward the primal, from convention and society, and toward the primal, irresistibly attracted to nature and the senses.

Many of you will recall that I have somewhat of a difficult time reading the classics.  Very rarely do I actually enjoy one that I read – it’s more like I can sometimes appreciate their value to the world of literature, can understand their popularity – but I don’t normally LIKE reading them, per se.  The Awakening, however, I liked.  In fact, I’m fairly certain I’ll read it again someday.

I’m not totally sure what exactly about this novel worked for me – definitely the feminism deeply entrenched in the book has something to do with it.  This is a book, written in 1899, that specifically defies the roles women were supposed to conform to in that time period.  The novel is about, very simply, a woman having an emotional affair on her husband – an affair which causes her to examine her life more closely and realize she is not content being simply a wife and a mother… she wants more.  This realization is, obviously, her awakening.

It is actually a very simple story, told in simple but elegant language that draws the reader in and makes it impossible not to care about Edna and what happens to her.  At this point I’d just like to direct you to Cara’s review at The Curvature, which is a fantastic analysis of The Awakening, and a much better review than anything I could come up with.  Suffice it to say, I liked the novel quite a bit and would absolutely recommend it as a relevant and readable classic.

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