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Reading Wednesday

    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith

    July 20, 2022
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    This is a timeless and beautiful book, that for whatever reason, I have failed to read until now. And despite it being written nearly 80 years ago, the story remains captivating, graceful and engaging. Here is my book review A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

    This coming of age story is largely autobiographical as the protagonist, a young girl named Francie and her family, are based on the author herself. We meet Francie in 1912 when she is eleven years old. Living in Williamsburg, a tenement neighborhood in Brooklyn. Life is very difficult for Francie and her family; Mother Katie a house cleaner is the family breadwinner; father Johnny sings in a restaurant but drinks away most of his earnings; and ten-year-old brother Neely is one of Francie’s only friends.

    Francie is intelligent but shy and her families circumstances make it difficult for her to make friends or do well in school. Francie escapes through books and reads everything she can. She also releases much of her pent up imagination through writing.

    Smith writes the family story jumping between present day (starting in 1912) and back to the early days of courtship of Johnny and Katie. Francie loves her father dearly, and senses her mother loves her brother more than her. But Katie realizes how smart and independent Francie is, and so leans more love Neely’s way.

    Francie and Neely both leave school to help support the family. Alcoholism eventually takes the life of Johnny, just before Katie learns she is pregnant with a third child.

    Francie wants to finish high school and go to college and have a boyfriend, but life is so hard for her and her family and leaving Brooklyn seems like an impossible dream.

    Throughout the book the reader will be drawn effortlessly into the deep feelings and emotions of these characters, and particularly the young girl Francie who goes from age 11 to age 17 – from a child to a young woman. Francie represents an entire generation of young girls like herself, whose 2nd generation immigrant parents give them everything the can for a better life.

    Betty Smith should have had a Pulitzer for this exquisite book. I loved it. It’s not too late to read this American masterpiece. Thanks for reading my book review A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

    See last week’s review The Candy House by Jennifer Eagan.

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    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review The Candy House by Jennifer Eagan

    July 13, 2022
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    Eagan is a remarkable writer and I have enjoyed the three novels I have read by her, most recently Manhattan Beach. Eagan’s earlier novel A Visit From the Goon Squad won the 2011 Pulitzer, and The Candy House revisits many of the characters from Goon Squad. Here is my book review The Candy House by Jennifer Eagan.

    The Candy House

    As I mentioned in last week’s book review The Immortal King Rao, The Candy House is eerily similar in it’s plot. Like King Rao, The Candy House takes us into the not too distant future, a time where living on planet earth has become all about the internet, and how everything we think say and do is connected to an online presence. Not so difficult to imagine.

    As The Candy House begins we meet the brilliant Bix Bouton, a tech demigod who creates a new technology known as “Own Your Own Unconscious”. This technology is a sharing tool, where you can share every memory you have ever had and access all the memories of other people. Just like The Immortal King Rao.

    The story follows multiple characters all looking for something in this world; love, hope, stability, companionship, privacy and even family. Many characters reappear from A Visit From the Goon Squad, but the reader of The Candy House won’t need to have read Goon Squad to follow the story.

    And what a story it is. An imaginative, inventive and sometimes disturbing plot. Eagan’s writing style is phenomenal as she guides you through the character development sometimes writing in first person, sometimes not. One chapter presented all in Tweets. Another all in letters of correspondence. She is one of the preeminent writers of the day and The Candy House is masterful.

    *****Five Stars for The Candy House. A perfect summer read. Thanks for reading my book review The Candy House by Jennifer Eagan.

    Read last week’s review of The Immortal King Rao.

    See this week’s top performing pin here Visit Nashville Music Capital

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    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review The Immortal King Rao: A Novel by Vauhini Vara

    July 6, 2022
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    What a great and unexpected book. I had no idea even what it was about when I picked it up. So glad I stumbled on this unique story. Here is my book review The Immortal King Rao: A Novel by Vauhini Vara.

    dystopian (dis’to pean)

    We seem to be going through a phase of several remarkable books placed in a dystopian time, somewhere in the near future with a focus on a negative world, the result of an online world we have created. For reference;

    adjective – relating to or denoting an imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one.

    Not only does The Immortal King Rao take us to such a place, but the next book I picked up to read (see next week’s review) did the same. The Candy House and The Immortal King Rao were eerily similar. What the what?

    The Immortal King Rao

    Vara introduces us to a child, whose name is King, whose beginnings are simple and modest, whose life is based on a coconut farm in India in the 1950’s. But whose future will change the world forever.

    Through a series of fortunate (or unfortunate?) circumstances and meetings as King grows into a man and travels to the USA to be educated, King Rao will become the most powerful and accomplished tech CEO and leader of the world. Until he is not.

    A World In Disarray

    Technology has taken over the world. Climate change is raging. King is in the middle of it all. The world is run by a corporation rather than a government, and it is only a matter of time until revolt.

    Surprising to me a major part of the story takes place on two islands in Washington State, both just a few miles from where my home is. The island’s, Bainbridge and Blake, have become a shelter for people who have turned against the world order. Including King Rao’s daughter Athena.

    But Athena is more than a normal human being, because through technology created by King, Athena holds in her brain all of King’s memories from his remarkable life. There are many people who would take everything to get a hold of that…everything.

    I really enjoyed this unusual story, somewhat difficult to describe, but totally worth a read. As is next week’s book the Candy House. I hope you enjoyed my book review The Immortal King Rao: A Novel by Vauhini Vara.

    See last week’s book review The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.

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    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

    June 29, 2022
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    Maggie O’Farrell wrote the phenomenal Hamnet, my favorite book of 2021. And I am on pins and needles for her new book, The Marriage Portrait, due out this fall. I have read two other O’Farrell works, Instruction for a Heat Wave and I Am I Am I Am, neither as good as Hamnet, but this one…ah this one was really good. Here is my book review The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell.

    Not unlike another story I read a couple years ago, The Women They Could Not Silence, O’Farrell takes us back in history to a dark time when husbands, fathers and even brothers could commit women to asylum’s…often for absurd reasons.

    This is the basis of the plot of The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. When Iris Lockhart learns she has an aunt she never knew existed, who is being released from Claudstone Hospital after being locked away for 61 years.

    Iris begins to unravel the story of Esme Lennox, sister to her grandmother Kitty – a grandmother who has never mentioned Esme and has always claimed to be an only child.

    The author takes the reader back and forth between the viewpoint of multiple characters (Esme, Iris and Kitty) and through the past and the present day as she magically weaves the plot and the sad story.

    I didn’t love the ending…it kinda leaves you hanging. But nonetheless I really enjoyed this book. I hope you enjoyed reading my book review The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell

    Read last week’s review Night

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    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review Night by Elie Wiesel

    June 22, 2022
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    Elie Wiesel survived. Millions did not. I have known about this book most of my life, but for some reason it never made it into my hands, until I picked it up when I was in New York at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. Here is my book review Night by Elie Wiesel.

    There are many World War II and Holocaust survivor books worth reading. I have read many. But this short and even simple story is so personal, so heartbreaking, so real. It took Elie ten years from the time he was liberated from the Nazi death camps to even talk about the experience. And in 1956 he finally did, in the book Night.

    When Elie was 15 years old, he was deported with his family (father, mother and sister) from Hungary to the Auschwitz – Birkenau camp in Poland. Elie’s mother and sister were likely killed shortly after their arrival, but he never knew. Elie’s father died a horrible slow death. Elie was the only one to survive.

    Over the years the book has had it’s critics questioning its factuality. Of course it has. There are those who think the holocaust is a hoax. But the pages of Night tell a nightmare of a young boy pulled from his studies in his home in Hungary and thrust into unimaginable horrors.

    Night was a watershed moment for the holocaust literature. It has been translated into thirty languages and is often on the syllabus at universities. It contains profanity, violence and horror, as told through the eyes of a young man living it. Wiesel would live the rest of his days (he died in 2016) with regrets. He would go on to write dozens of books and in 1986 he would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Wikipedia writes –

    “The Norwegian Nobel Committee called him a “messenger to mankind”, stating that through his struggle to come to terms with “his own personal experience of total humiliation and of the utter contempt for humanity shown in Hitler‘s death camps”, as well as his “practical work in the cause of peace”, Wiesel delivered a message “of peace, atonement, and human dignity” to humanity. The Nobel Committee also stressed that Wiesel’s commitment originated in the sufferings of the Jewish people but that he expanded it to embrace all repressed peoples and races.”[6] 

    I am so glad I finally read this masterpiece. Thanks for reading my book review Night by Elie Wiesel.

    Read last week’s book review of The Maid by Nita Prose.

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    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review The Maid by Nita Prose

    June 15, 2022
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    This is a fun and easy read with an oddball character who reminded me a bit of Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine. Here is my book review The Maid by Nita Prose.

    Molly Gray struggles in social situations, and always has. She never knows the right thing to say or do and she realizes people find her strange. Until a few months ago, Molly’s gran was the center of her tiny universe, always helping her understand situations and simplifying the world. But now gran is gone.

    And so is most of the money, and Molly Gray is working hard as a maid at the prestigious Regency Grand Hotel trying to make ends meet. Molly’s obsessive compulsive tendencies actually make her an very good maid…she loves perfection. But when Molly discovers one of the hotel’s wealthy guests dead in his room, all hell will break loose.

    Not only does Molly’s orderly world start to crumble, but she finds herself the main suspect in the murder. Her strange personality is misread as suspect and before she knows it she has lost her beloved job and is in jail.

    But out of the shadows comes friends Molly never even knew she had, and slowly things start to become clear. Who is the real murderer? What other sinister things will be found out? And will sweet Molly find happiness and stability?

    Well they are making a movie so, yeah, you can guess some of that. But read the book before you see the movie. Always do that! Thanks for reading my book review The Maid by Nita Prose.

    *****Five stars for The Maid by Nita Prose.

    Read last week’s review of The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

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    Reading Wednesday

    Book Review The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

    June 8, 2022
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    Well I’m a big fan of Kate Quinn. She has a wonderful way of taking real life heroines and creating fictional stories. I’ve listened to four of her books now over the last several years, and I also really love the voice of her books on audible whose name is Saaskia Maarleveld. Here is my book review the Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn.

    Like Quinn’s other books; The Rose Code (2021), The Huntress (2019), and The Alice Network (2017), The Diamond Eye is based on a real life World War II female heroine named Lyudmila Pavlichenko (Mila). When war breaks out Mila is a young mother, studying at university and trying to make a better life for her and her son in Kyiv.

    But war changes everything, including Mila’s life as she finds herself thrust into service in the war against Hitler. But unlike most women who end up in nursing or administrative positions, Mila becomes a sniper, an unlikely national heroine known as Lady Death.

    Although Mila is a real person, most of this story is fictional, as Quinn merges fact and fiction and a beautiful writing style that pulls the reader into Mila’s life, her loves and her fierce and determination to survive.

    Mila will find herself thrust into the spotlight, meeting President’s and First Ladies, all while grieving her own losses and unwittingly changing the course of history.

    I hope you enjoyed my book review The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

    *****Five stars for The Diamond Eye by Kate Quinn

    Read last week’s review of The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd

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