TashJGirl

8-2008
It looks like I have not read anything since posting the reviews below in September of 2007. In reality, I have read some books. Not as many as I’d like, but I did manage a few. The reviews are coming, but for now, here are the titles:

The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett) – This is a rather interesting book, even if some chapters/subjects border on excessive repetition.  I found it interesting that the main character of the book is not a person but a building.  Treating this object as a living character brought a new perspective to the book and the human characters that interacted with the building.  These secondary characters have several arcs and the author follows several families throughout the book.  This book is very long (about a thousand pages), but worth the read.

Of Love and Other Demons (Gabriel Garcia Marquez) – Surprisingly, I actually finished this one.  Still not 100% sure of the ending, but I think I know what happened.  I didn’t like the writer’s style of writing.  It was hard to follow even if the story wasn’t completely idiotic.  Though, it’s not completely believable/realistic.  Maybe it’s realistic from a pedophiliac standpoint, but to treat that angle (a grown man “falls in love” with a 14-year-old girl) as something normal is almost like sanctioning pedophilia.

One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
Chainfire (Terry Goodkind)
Confessor (Terry Goodkind)

The Other Boleyn Girl (Philippa Gregory) – This book was recommended to me a friend.  His other recommendation (The Pillars of the Earth) was much better. I found this book to be tedious, boring, excessively long, and breathtakingly mindless.  I couldn’t even finish the book.

Yeah, I know, not a lot of books, but the Pillars is over a thousand pages, and the Goodkind books are close to that length.
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9-2007
I’ve been doing a lot of reading lately. It always helps to take my mind off my life. That’s one of the nice things about books, you get to forget about your problems and “deal” with the problems of others. Except that those problems are not always real and are resolved by the end of the book, usually. I’ve been into Historical Fiction lately. History just seems a little more interesting when told by a storyteller.

So, here are a few books I read recently:

The Constant Princess (Philippa Gregory) – (September ‘07) Narrated through Catalina, Princess of Spain and Wales (who was to become Queen Katherine). I cannot get past the main character’s arrogant self-confidence. She speaks of God’s will with authority as if it were explained to her by God himself. This arrogance and blind belief that she, only she, knows God’s will and nobody else (except her mother) demonstrates how Europe ended up where it did for so long. Though she is still a child when the story starts, we see her mature and grow up, but she is dignified and poised and doesn’t let herself sink into a depression as many women in her family have done.

Despite her strength, youth, arrogance, and scheming, she is still a little girl who wants her mother. She’s still a teenager who fell in love with her husband and widowed a few short months after the wedding. She is still a character who invokes sympathy.

Ines of My Soul (Isabel Allende) – (August ‘07) Interesting story, but I wasn’t a big fan of the writing style. Can’t put my finger on what exactly it was about the writing that didn’t sit well with me, but there was something. It was choppy. Can’t explain it more than that.

The Red Tent (Anita Diamant) – (August ‘07) I really liked the writing and the story. Though the story is not really Biblical (Dinah isn’t mentioned a whole lot in the Bible), the characters are Biblical. You get a glimpse of how life was at that time, how things might have been. There is a sense of peace it imparts. The writing is excellent, almost lyrical. Everything flows; the writing brings the imagery to life. I also got the distinct impression of the author’s politics. There was definately a whiff of feminism and liberalism.

Zipporah: Wife of Moses and Sarah (Marek Halter) – (July – August ‘07) This is a trilogy, but I read only these 2 books. I don’t know how much of what’s in these books is in the Bible, but they were great. You get a historical perspective as well as Biblical.