Book review: Les Miserables

A few weeks ago I celebrated the accomplishment of finishing reading Les Miserables by posting it as my Facebook status.  I thought it was definitely an accomplishment that needed to be celebrated because 1) it was the longest book I've ever read and 2) it took such a long time to make it through.  But both of those things make Les Miserables sound as though it's a tough book to get through and while it did feel that way at times, I have to say that I really, really enjoyed it.

Image found here.

While it felt long because there were some extremely descriptive parts that had very little to do with the plot and seemed to drag on and on (I don't think I'll ever need to read another word about the Battle of Waterloo), I actually liked that Les Miserables was a book that I was invested in for a long time.  I felt like I really got to know and care about all of the characters in a way that I haven't with many other books.

I originally started reading the book so that I could see the movie that's coming out on Christmas day.  When I started reading, I knew almost nothing about the storyline.  Though I'm a huge fan of musicals, I've never really liked Les Mis and I haven't actually listened to all of it or seen it performed.  The fact that I didn't know what was going to happen ahead of time kept me extremely interested.  The book had so many twists and turns that kept me guessing at what was going to happen next.  (And also so many characters that I had a hard time keeping some of them straight.)  I actually got so excited about what was going on in the book a few times that I started explaining the plot to Andrew, which he tolerated remarkably well considering most of my plot explanations took about 15 minutes...

Overall, I would definitely read this book again and recommend it to anyone who's willing to commit to reading it.  I will admit that there are several parts that I found incredibly boring, but I was able to make it through those parts because I knew that something spectacular was sure to happen after that.  And I was not disappointed.

Breaking the "don't judge a book by its cover" rule

I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover but this version of Jane Eyre has kept me thinking about it for days.  I read the book this summer and didn't really like it, but I'm telling you, this cover does a great job of making it sound a lot better than it actually is.  The front cover looks like this:

And on the back cover has the quote,  "Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt!  May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine.  May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love."  I mean, come on!  That quote would definitely make me want to read the book.

I finally committed to reading the book because I've had the movie saved on our DVR for weeks and I hate watching movies that are based on books without reading the books.  I always try to read the book In this case, I thought the movie was SO much better than the book because of moments like this...

Image from here

...that happen several times during the movie.  There was only one part of the book that I thought they left out of the movie, which wasn't that important and probably wouldn't have worked as well in the movie as it did in the book.  I would definitely recommend the movie; I'm not so sure about the book. 

Young adult literature

I finished my first of the two graduate classes I'm taking this summer.  The class was about young adult literature and I wasn't sure how much it would apply to me since I've never really been one to read or teach much young adult literature.  But I was pleasantly surprised!  Not only did I meet some really awesome people in my class, I got to meet some really great books.  I will definitely be recommending some of the books that I read to my students, if not teaching a few of them in my classes.

We did A TON of reading in this class.  Here's a quick list of the books I read  and what I thought about them.

Shakespeare Makes the Playoffs by Ron Koertge Of all the books on the syllabus, this is the one I thought I would enjoy the least mostly because it was about a boy who's obsessed with baseball.  But I have to admit that I LOVED this book.  It's so cleverly written.  Ron Koertge does an amazing job of working different forms of poetry into this book, everything from sonnets to sestinas, while making it fun to read.  We Skped with with the author and he was just as clever and creative to talk to as you would expect from reading the book.  I will definitely be using parts of this book with my creative writing class.  I plan on reading Shakespeare Bats Cleanup, which is the book that came before this one.

Split by Swati Avasthi This was a difficult book to read, not because of the writing but because of the subject it deals with.  Split is the story of a boy who grew up with an abusive father.  He leaves the house to go live with his older brother who left several years before, but is still tied to his old life because of his ex-girlfriend and his mother who is still living with the abusive father.  The characters are extremely well-written and stick with you.  This book kept me wanting to read more to find out what would happen.  We Skyped with the author and she was really interesting.  She told us that she was surprised by what her characters ended up doing when she was writing it, which was a strange thing for me to try to understand as someone who doesn't write.  I plan on using this book in my class that deals with monsters next year because it's a great example of how people deal with "monsters" they encounter in real life.

Why We Broke Up by Daniel Handler  I liked the concept of this book more than I liked the actual book.  It is basically a letter written by a girl to the guy she's breaking up with, but she tells the story through the box of stuff that she drops off on his doorstep.  There are pictures of each of the things in the box throughout the book and she explains what each thing had to do with their relationship.  I wanted to like it, but would have liked it better if it had been half as long as it was because it got old towards the end.

The Vespertine by Saundra Mitchell I thought this book was really easy to get into and to keep reading.  It is considered a paranormal book, but the paranormal part was so naturally woven into the book that I would not limit it by describing it that way.  It involves a girl who grew up in Maine, but was sent to Baltimore by her brother so that she could make a good match and get married.  In my head, I kept comparing it to a Jane Austen novel, but when our class talked to the author, she said she was aiming more for it to be closer to a Bronte novel.  The characters were interesting and the plot had several twists that surprised me.  I have the second book of the series The Springsweet and I will definitely be reading it soon.


Nothing by Janne Teller I had a really hard time with this book.  I thought the concept was really interesting, trying to deal with the meaning of life by making a pile of the things that were important to them, but as I kept reading I got more and more horrified.  The book is gruesome and didn't seem to have much of a point to me.  It was compared to Lord of the Flies in most of the reviews I read, but I don't think it was a good comparison because this book seemed much more forced.  Of all the books Ir read for class, this one really bothered and disturbed me and I would not recommend it to anyone.

Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys  This book tells the story of a Lithuanian girl and her family starting in 1941.  They are taken from their home and made to go to a work camp, eventually ending up in Siberia.  It is a completely different holocaust story than the ones that are typically told and I learned so much by reading this book.  In the beginning of the book, the author states that the countries of Lithuania and a few others disappeared from maps for a while and the people who lived there had nowhere to go.  This book was difficult to read because of the subject, but I would definitely recommend it.   I am thinking of using it in my genocide/holocaust class if I can manage to work another book into it.

The Book Thief by Markus Zuzak I had listened to this book on cd a few years ago and I was excited to get to actually sit down and read it.  This was the longest of the books I read, but one of the most interesting.  The book is narrated by death and tells the story of a girl living in Nazi Germany.  It is not at all what you would expect.  Death is compassionate and the characters are extremely interesting and all seem to have great senses of humor, which is hard to make work in that setting, but somehow the author manages to make it work.  This is one of those books where the characters really stick with you after you are done reading it.  I have been wanting to teach it for a few years, but I might have to have one of my students read it and give me their opinion before I totally commit.

Ungifted by Gordan Korman We read this aloud during our class and I loved it.  It was so funny.  The characters are great and I loved how the author switched narrators every chapter.  It is so different from what I usually read because this one is a definite young adult book, but I loved it.  The basic plot is that a boy who is kind of a class clown smacks a statue of atlas holding the world on the butt and the world comes loose and rolls into the middle school gym during a really important basketball game.  The superintendent catches him and writes down his name, but it accidentally gets mixed in with the students that are being transferred to the school for gifted students.  What happens from there is so funny and cleverly written.  I will definitely be checking out some of the author's other books.

So that's a run down of what we read in the class.  I have a lot more reading ahead of me because the professor gave us a bunch of galley copies of young adult books that she had so I have a stack of about fifteen new books to read!

Book review: Columbine

I wasn't sure that I actually wanted to read the book Columbine by Dave Cullen.  Obviously it covers a difficult topic and I knew that it would be difficult to read.  But as much as some parts of it were hard to get through, there were others that were strangely comforting, such as the description of SWAT team members who were patting down the students  as they were coming out the school to make sure they weren't armed and then hugging them.  It's amazing how much this book expands your thinking of the Columbine shooting and the people involved.  It really explains the difficulty that everyone involved (the survivors, the killer's parents, the local churches, the police, the SWAT teams) had with how to handle the shooting and the aftermath.

Before reading this book, I didn't realize how much of what people think they know about the Columbine shooting is wrong.  The killers were not involved in the Trench Coat Mafia. They were not targeting specific groups of students. They were not planning on shooting in the school at all, instead they planned on blowing it up using homemade bombs, shooting students as they ran from the school, and then driving their cars (which had more homemade bombs in them) into the groups gathered around the school trying to assist the injured and survivors.

I am completely in awe of Dave Cullen and the research he did for this book.  He spent ten years of his life researching and interviewing people involved with the shooting.  Reading the book was difficult enough for me and that only took me a week and a half.

For me, I think the book was summed up in two quotes.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places."
- Earnest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms


"You can't really teach a kid anything: you can only show his the way and motivate him to learn it himself."
 -Frank DeAngelis, principal of Columbine High School

To keep reading or not to keep reading?

When you start reading a book and don't like where it's going, do you stop reading or do you continue reading hoping that the book will eventually get better? 

Image from here

I am definitely the type that continues reading.  I feel bad giving up on a book.  In fact, I can only think of a few books that I have given up on.  I always hope that something will happen that will change my opinion of the book, though that rarely seems to happen.

The times I've been most disappointed, have been when I read a book that is the second one the author has written and absolutely love it.  After that, I do a little research, find out some more about the author, and realize that he or she had already written a book before the one I read.  Then I go find the first book that he or she wrote thinking, 'If I loved the second one of course I'll love the first one, right?'  Wrong.

This has happened to me twice now.  First, it happened with Jane Hamilton.  I read several of her books, my favorites being A Short History of  Prince and Disobedience.  (Both of these are particularly good because they are told from the point of view of teenage boys, which Jane Hamilton manages to do beautifully.)  And then I decided to read her first book, The Book of Ruth.  It was really well reviewed and was an Oprah book club book, which of course was high praise at the time.  Sadly, not only did The Book of Ruth not get better as I read, it actually got worse.  It is one of the few books I can actually say that I hated.  I mean, really hated.

And now it's happened again with Nicole Krauss.  I read The History of Love and loved it.  Then I bought her first book, Man Walks Into a Room, when I was in Powell's bookstore in Portland, Oregon.  (Which is an experience.  If you haven't been, you need to go.  It's amazing!)  The book had been sitting on my shelf for over a year and I finally took the time to read it.  I thought the whole time, 'I don't really like this character or this plot, but it's got to get better.'  And I read all the way to the end and it didn't...

I guess writers do change a lot from their first book to their second book.  I'm just glad I've managed to find the second books first in both of those author's cases so I can appreciate their talent for writing.

Prompt 3

What books did you read this year?

This year I read a lot of books.  I mean a lot.  I had been keeping track of the books I read using the virtual bookshelf from Living Social until I received this message from them.

It's not you.  It's us.
First of all, thank you for your enthusiastic support over the past four years. Your continued engagement with our these applications means a lot to us here at LivingSocial, and we're sad that we haven't been able to dedicate the time and effort you deserve to keep this community alive and thriving.
It's not you. It's us. You see about two years ago we tried a new idea, which has taken our team and company in a new direction. This community needs tools and products that are fully supported and continually improved, and unfortunately, this is something we just can't support right now.
We know your data is important to you. Before we discontinue the service, we gave you 30 days to save it.

They then suggested that I switch my list of books over to Goodreads, which I am loving.  Not only does it let you keep track of books that you have read, are currently reading, and want to read, it also lets you track (and share) your progress as you read books.  As someone who loves to check things off and visuals, this is a great feature!

Now to get to my list of books.  I'll only list my favorites because I have read a bunch this year!

• The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

• I didn't like this one that much while I was reading it, but I haven't stopped thinking about it since.  It's told from the perspective of a dog, and that fact alone makes it awesome enough to read.  Add to that the fact that the dog is obsessed with racing cars, because that's what his owner does for a living, and that he likes to watch races on TV and you have a great book.
• Imaginary Jesus by Matt Mikalatos

• This is a hilarious book.  The basic plot is that there is a guy who lives in Portland, Oregon and hangs out with Jesus or at least someone he thinks is Jesus until he meets the Apostle Peter who shows him that the Jesus he thought was real is really imaginary.  They then begin a chase to find and confront his imaginary Jesus and, along the way, they meet a lot of other imaginary versions of Jesus, such as King James Jesus and men's retreat Jesus.
• The Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins

• I don't think I need to write about these books.  If you haven't read them, you should.  I really liked these books, though I'm someone who loves a good dystopia book.  I couldn't put these books down.
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak

• This is another book that I wasn't sure I liked while I was reading it.  (Well, actually I listened to this one...)  I had a really hard time getting into this book because it is narrated by death and it is set during the Holocaust.  That's right.  I promise it's not nearly as depressing as it sounds.  The characters in this book are AMAZING.  I seriously loved (or hated depending on which one it was) them all and they stuck with me for months after I finished reading it.
• Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford






• Of all of the books I read this year, this is the one that's the most important because my grandma and I had a long conversation about it the day before she died.  The book had been on my to read list for a while and she read it with a book group and loved it, which inspired me to read it.  I always think of her when I think of this book.  It's about a Chinese boy growing up in Seattle during World War 2 and deals with the Japanese internment.  There are so many different aspects to this book: the internment camps, racism, jazz, and the huge issue of deciding what is right and wrong.

Book review: Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India

Image from here

This was an interesting book about a woman who moved to Delhi, India and lived there for six years. It's part memoir and part commentary on some of the Indian customs, including arranged marriages, the caste system, and the differences between India and America. It was funny and quirky and kept me reading. I thought it did a great job of summing up some of the best and worst and most confusing parts of India.

"If India had been a man, we would have had a very unhealthy relationship indeed.  The place overwhelmed and infuriated me; sometimes, after a hot day of frustrations, I felt as though it was taking blood from me to feed itself.  In the mornings, though, waking up with India beside me, I was a girl newly in love.  I'd lie very still, blinking into the bright white light.  I could hear Radha moving around in the apartment, and I'd pray that she wouldn't intrude.  I like to let the outside cacophony wash over me, as though it was a part of my dream.  If I lay perfectly still, I imagined, it would stay with me for the whole day."

- Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India by Miranda Kennedy

Book review: The Hunger Game series

I feel like all I've been posting on here lately have been book and movie reviews, but that's because that's most of what I've been doing with my time this summer.  I promise I'll post about something other than books.  Eventually.

I don't usually read books simply because everyone else is reading them.  I usually have to have another reason to read them, either that they interest me or they've been highly recommended.  Part of my resistance to popular books is because there are many of them that end up as series of books.  And I am not the type to read only one book of a series.

So I resisted reading the Harry Potter series, but ended up reading the first one and then the rest of them when a friend dared me to read the first one and not like it.  I read it and liked the concept, though I thought the writing could have been much better.  My husband will tell you that one of my biggest complaints with the Harry Potter books is that the first few all started the same way - with Harry and friends going back to Hogwarts and waiting around until the action started, usually around or just after Halloween.  That's not to say that I haven't been swayed by the series.  I have read all of the books and seen all of the movies.  I'm actually going to see my first and only midnight showing of a Harry Potter movie for the last one.

I resisted reading the Twilight books until some friends convinced me to go see the movie with them and I usually try to read the book before seeing the movie.  I read it and liked it enough to read the rest of the books.  The main thing that kept me reading the Twilight books was the love triangle.  I think they're basically like romance novels for young adults - there's not a lot of substance to them other than the relationship between the characters.  The writing is definitely not very good (she uses the same descriptions over and over again) and neither are the characters.  Bella basically spends all of the books waiting around for either Edward or Jacob to save her and doesn't seem to have much going for her on her own.

Which brings me to The Hunger Games books.  I had several friends that highly recommended them.  I didn't know much about them and I didn't really resist reading them because I had heard such good things about them.  I read the first book and was hooked.  I could not put it down.  I thought the concept was really interesting.  The series is set in a post-apocalyptic society that is made up of a capital and twelve surrounding districts.  To keep the districts under their control and to remind the citizens of what happens when they fight each other, the capital created the hunger games.  Each year, a boy and a girl are chosen from each district, placed in an arena, and forced to fight to the death until only one remains.  I thought that the idea of the hunger games alone was enough to keep most people reading, especially in a time where the majority of our entertainment involves either competition or violence.

The main character, Katniss Everdeen, is really well written.  She's witty, sarcastic, and completely believable.  She has definite faults, but there's something about her (probably her fierce love for her family and her sense of justice) that kept me liking her.  The other characters were just as intriguing as Katniss.  I got the sense that I could have heard parts of the story told from any of the character's point of views and found it just as intriguing.

The overall plot was interesting.  There were several plot twists and I didn't see most of them coming.  There were even a few that had me completely in awe about what was going on.  The one complaint I had with the series was the way the plot tended to jump around and left me having to figure out what was going on, though this mostly happened when one of the characters had been injured and had spent some time in the hospital or unconscious I thought it was done too many times.

I would definitely recommend these books.  They were interesting and definitely brought up some good themes such as government control, violence for violence's sake, and maintaining a sense of justice during war.

Book and movie review: Persepolis

Image from here

One of the books I'm planning on teaching next year is Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji.  (I reviewed the book in this post.)  I found a unit that another teacher had done that focused on middle eastern culture.  It includes Rooftops of Tehran and several other books and movies that I hadn't read or watched.  One of the movies is Persepolis, which is baesd on the graphic novel of the same name by Marjane Satrapi.  The book/movie have been on my to read/watch list for a long time so I decided to check them out.  

I started with the book.  I gave it a a chance.  I read for about twenty minutes and managed to decide that it was not a book that I would be able to teach.  There are way too many topics that are covered for me to be able to do them all justice.  

Since I knew I wouldn't be teaching the book, I moved on to the movie.  I figured that it might be easier for my students to understand and would better hold their attention.  I did enjoy the fact that the movie was in French because I think it's so pretty to listen to, but I know that it's really hard to get my students interested in a movie that has subtitles.  Since I figured I wouldn't be using the movie for class either, I decided to watch it and see what I thought of it.  I did find it interesting, but there were parts of it that I found really hard to follow, particularly trying to keep some of the characters straight because the movie was mostly in black and white so the characters had little distinction from one another.  I also thought there were parts of the movie that were way too strange.  The grandma was really blunt and opinionated, but there were several times when she talked about putting jasmine blossoms in her bra so that she would smell good.  Definitely something you wouldn't expect a grandma to be saying to her granddaughter.  The parts of the plot that dealt with the revolution and regime changes were glossed over in some parts and in others given such extreme detail that it was hard to follow.

Overall, I like the concept of the book and movie much more than the actual book and movie.  I would not watch the movie again and I would not recommend it.

Book review: The Reader

I had started reading this book four different times before I started it again this time.  The difference this time was that 1) I had seen the movie so I knew how the book ended 2) I knew that I wanted to read it and 3) I listened to it instead of actually reading it.  The book is really interesting because it is split up into three parts that were extremely different.

Part one describes the relationship between Michael and Hannah.  Michael is a young high school students and Hannah is a streetcar conductor.  They meet one day and begin an extremely passionate romance.  A few weeks or months into their romance, Hannah has Michael start to read the books that he is studying in school aloud tto her every time that they meet.  They continue this pattern of reading and spending time together until one day Hannah disappears without telling Michael where she is going or why she is leaving.








I give away parts of the plot in the rest of the review so you may not want to keep reading!

Part two describes the next time they meet.  Michael is a law student who is participating in a seminar on the concentration camps.  As part of that seminar, the students observe a trial of some of the Nazis who worked at Auschwitz.  One of those Nazis is Hannah.  The Nazi women are being tried for an instance after the death march of the prisoners from Auschwitz where they locked the women they were caring for in a church that later caught on fire during a bombing. The other Nazis pin this on Hannah.  While observing the trial, Michael realizes that Hannah does not know how to answer the questions that are posed to her in court because she has not been able to read the materials for the trial.  He puts the pieces together and figures out that she is illiterate.  If she had revealed this, which she does not, she could have gotten off with a less severe punishment than the life in prison she is sentenced to.

Part three describes the time that Hannah spends in prison after she is sentenced and the way that Michael maintains their connection by taping himself reading books and then sending them to her.  The warden at the prison tells Michael that this is Hannah's only connection to the outside world.  I won't tell you the ending, since I've already given away much of the plot.

This is one of the few instances where the movie that was made from the book was as good, if not better, than the book.  Most of that has to do with the casting of Kate Winslet as Hannah.  She does an amazing job.  As she always does with the roles she plays.  If you are considering reading the book or watching the movie, I would definitely recommend it.  It gives you an interesting view on the Holocaust.

Book review: Day After Night

Image from here

I just finished reading the book Day After Night by Anita Diamante.  I loved The Red Tent and have been waiting for her to write something else that I enjoyed as much as I did that.  I had seen Day After Night at the library a few times, but had been reluctant to read it because it's set during World War 2.  And while I find that time period extremely interesting, I teach an entire class about it the Holocaust so I sometimes get tired of reading about it.

I was completely surprised by this book because it introduced me to a part of history that I had never even thought about: What happened to the Holocaust survivors after they were liberated from the concentration camps?  The book is told from the point of view of four different women - Leonie, Tedi, Shayndel, and Zorah - who meet at an internment camp in Palestine that is run by British soldiers.  During each section that a girl narrates, you find out a little more about where she was during the Holocaust and how she ended up in Atlit, which adds to the characters as you read so you end up caring about each of them as individuals, not simply as examples of Holocaust survivors.

At times, I found it hard to follow all of the plot lines because the narration switches from one girl to the next and because there are several concepts that I didn't completely understand until I looked them up on my own, such as why the British were keeping these people in an internment camp instead of allowing them into Palestine.  After doing a little research, I found out the British limited the number of Jewish immigrants to Palestine by keeping them in camps like Atlit.

At Atlit camp, the men were sent to one side, women to the other.  They were sprayed with DDT, then told to undress and enter the showers.  In 1939-1948, tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants were interned here, men and women separated by barbed wire.  Some interns stayed as long as 23 months.

The fact that I found it hard to follow all of the plot lines when I was reading and the somewhat graphic descriptions of some sexual acts means that I won't be able to teach this book.  (I'm always looking for new books to introduce to my students, especially ones that discuss the Holocaust since so many of them have read The Diary of Anne Frank and Night.)  But I did enjoy this book.  The characters were extremely realistic, the plot was interesting, and it made me think about something that I hadn't thought about before.  I will definitely be rereading this book to see what else I get out of it now that I better understand the historical period it takes place in.

Book review: The Heroine's Bookshelf: Life Lessons from Jane Austen to Laura Ingalls Wilder

Image from here

This was a great book!  I knew I would love it when I saw the books that it talked about because they are some of my favorites.  The author does a really good job of talking about classic books as well as their authors and what we have to learn from them.

With each of the books and authors that are discussed, the author chooses a character trait that they exemplify.  Here are the characters and their character traits:

• Elizabeth Bennett from Pride and Prejudice - self
• Janie Crawford from Their Eyes Were Watching God - faith
• Anne Shirley from Anne of Green Gables  - happiness
• Celie from The Color Purple - dignity
• Francie Nolan from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - family
• Claudine from Colette's novels - indulgence
• Scarlett O'Hara from Gone with the Wind - fight
• Scout Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird - compassion
• Laura Ingalls from the Little House books - simplicity
• Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre - steadfastness
• Jo March from Little Women - ambition
• Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden - magic

This is a wonderful book that made me revisit some of the wonderful books I've read and made me interested in reading some of the other books that I haven't read yet.

Book review: Belong to Me

Image from here.

The book Belong to Me by Marisa de los Santos was every bit as good as her first book.  I listened to both books and I know that part of why I like the books so much is because I really like the woman who reads them Julia Gibson.  The characters are wonderfully written.  They are believable and sound like people you would want to know in real life.  Besides that, they have wonderfully unique names, which

The book is actually a continuation of her first book, Love Walked In, told from the point of view of the main character, Cornelia, and two new characters, Piper and Dev.  Cornelia and her husband Teo have moved from the city to the suburbs, which she's not sure she likes at first.  She meets her neighbor, Piper, who seems completely perfect and put together and judgmental of everyone who isn't also perfect and put together.  Piper does reveal a softer side of her character when she's spending time with Elizabeth, her best friend who is dying of cancer.  Dev is a teenager who is much too smart to be popular with the other students in his school.  The connection between Dev and the other characters doesn't become clear until later in the story, but it's interesting to hear part of the story narrated by a teenager as well as a boy, which contrasts nicely with the narration of Cornelia and Piper.

The plot has enough twists to keep things interesting without feeling forced.  And I was completely surprised by how everything came together in the end.  I would definitely recommend this book!

Book review: Beneath a Marble Sky

I've had the book Beneath a Marble Sky by John Shors on my shelf for a while.  I'm pretty sure that I got it in the mail from Barb a while ago because it's about building the Taj Mahal.  I had started reading it once before, but gave up a few chapters in.  This time I started it again and eventually got into it.  It tells the story of Princess Jahanara, whose father eventually ends up building the Taj Mahal in honor of her mother.  Jahanara grows up in the royal court and has to learn how to live in a society where women are given little power and little choice over what happens to them.

My favorite line from the story is, "...women are taught that there's no strength in our tears.  But why are tears powerless, if those tears lead to insight, or a sense of peace?"  Mostly because it shows the power that women are given in the story and because it speaks to the power of showing your emotion, which I usually end up doing.

While it wasn't my favorite story I've ever read, it was interesting because of the history behind it.  The other thing I found really interesting about it was that at the end of the book the author includes a letter to the reader.  While it's not completely unusual to address the reader, I like how honest and sincere he was.  It made me like the book that much more.

Book review: Gather Together in My Name

I finished reading Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou.  It is the second part of her autobiography, following I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which I read when I was in high school.  The part of her autobiography was really interesting because she ended up dong a bunch of things that I had no idea she had done.  I absolutely LOVE Maya Angelou so I tend to enjoy everything she writes.

In this book she is raising her son while trying to make a living.  Sh holds a bunch of different jobs all of which she seems to get completely by chance.  She keeps getting involved with men and then having to move because something goes wrong.   She gets a job as a creole cook even though she has no idea how to cook creole.  While working as a waitress, she meets two lesbian prostitutes and then ends up becoming their madam and then leaving town because they are angry with her.

She tries to join the army, but at the last minute is turned away because when she was a teenager she studied dance at a school that was supposedly communist, even though she had no idea.  After that she has a brief stint as a dance partner for a tap dancer, who ends up going back to his previous dance partner.  Then she meets another man, who tells her that he is a man with a gambling problem in an unhappy marriage.  He convinces her that he is going to leave his wife and marry her, but that he has to pay off some of his gambling debt first.  She agrees to help him pay off his debt by working as a prostitute for a month or so.  She eventually figures out that he isn't who he said he is and is instead a pimp with several other prostitutes working for him.

The book ends when she is trying to figure out what to do next to support her and her son.  She briefly considers giving up because she is so frustrated by everything that's happened to her, but realizes in the end that she has too much promise to not use it.

This book was definitely interesting because of everything that happens to her in it (and believe me, I haven't covered it all!) but it wasn't one of my favorites.  I thought that she was really struggling to find herself and her morals during this period of her life.  It was worth reading, but I would read either I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings or A Song Flung Up to Heaven because I think they are much better books.

Book review: An Italian Affair

I just finished reading An Italian Affair by Laura Fraser.  It's a memoir/travel book where a woman who is recently divorced meets a married professor from France and begins an affair with him.  They meet in different countries over the course of several years.  Their relationship is interesting because it can't go anywhere and because the professor is kind of selfish and blunt.

It's  a fun read because you feel like you are traveling while you're reading.  The book reminded me a lot of Eat, Pray, Love because of the travel, romance, and adventures they have during their trips.

Book Review: The Art of Racing in the Rain

I just finished reading The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein.  One of my students finished reading it over winter break and brought it to me to read.  The thing I loved about this book is that it's narrated by a dog named Enzo.  It was a really interesting perspective, especially because the dog could only communicate with the people in the book through its actions.  (In that aspect, it reminded me a lot of The Book Thief, which is narrated by death.)

The narration was my favorite part of this book because I thought that the overall plot was pretty depressing.  I kept waiting for it to get better.  It didn't necessarily get better, but it did resolve some...  Maybe I'm being too hard on this book.  I'm sure that it would be more interesting if you were interested in racing because Enzo's owner races cars.  (But let me just say that the ending of the book is a lot like the ending of Marley and Me.  It definitely made me cry.)

Book Review: Rooftops of Tehran

I just finished Rooftops of Tehran by Mahbod Seraji.  It has been a long time since I read (or in this case listened to) a book that I absolutely could not wait to have other people read.  (I think the last one I felt this strongly about was The Book Thief, which you should definitely go read if you haven't already...)  Rooftops of Tehran is set in Iran during the early 1970's when the country is ruled by the Shah.  The main character, Pasha, is seventeen and dealing with typical things such as getting out of high school, figuring out how to tell his parents that what they want him to do with his life is not what he wants to do with his life, and thinking about girls.  But obviously, things are different for Pasha because of where he is growing up.

The author does a wonderful job of making the story realistic, which still making it easy to relate to the characters while they experience the hardships of living under the Shah, most of which we can't even imagine.  The Iranian history and terms are explained extremely well, so don't worry if you don't know a lot of your Iranian history, I didn't either. The plot is suspenseful and surprising.  I can't tell you much else about the book because I don't want to give away any of the plot, but I would DEFINITELY recommend this book.

And a few thoughts on listening to books.  I listen to a lot of books in my car while I drive to and from work.  It lets me feel productive, even when I'm just sitting at stoplights.  There are two problems with listening to books instead of reading them:

1. I usually end up getting really into the book I am listening to, so by the end of the book I end up listening to it whenever I can.
2. I am one of those people that loves to mark passages in books.  I never write in my books with pens, but constantly mark passages with pencil so that I can find them when I am looking for them later.  That is something you can't do when you're listening to the book.

Book Review: The Happiness Project

That's right.  I've been reading it for months and I finally finished it!  It took me a while because I really loved this book and because there was so much in it!

I loved this book!  I originally borrowed it from the library and renewed it as many times as I could before turning it in.  I decided I liked it enough that I couldn't wait to borrow it from the library again so I bought it.  A few of the things I loved about this book included:

1.  The author's name is Gretchen!
2.  She decided to do this project and devoted an entire year to it.
3.  During the book, she's constantly changing her opinion about parts of the project.  If she wasn't enjoying something or it stopped working for her, she stopped doing it.
4.  She packs so much inspiration into this book that I really think it would be impossible to read it and not get anything out of it.  I already plan on reading it again to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Book review: P.S. I Love You

Sometimes instead of simply finishing the book I'm reading, I end up starting a new one and then coming back to the one (or two or three or four or five...) I was already reading.  That's exactly what I've been doing lately.  I'm in the middle of:

• trying to finish reading the entire Bible in a year 
• So far I've read Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth,1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John.  
• Whew!  That's 39 of the 66 books of the Bible, which means I'm more than halfway!!!
• The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun
• I really like this book, but I've been reading it slowly to savor it:)
• Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
• I have to say that I'm not entirely sure about this one.  I like the concept of adding the zombies to get people who would not normally read Jane Austen interested, but I'm having a heard time reading the book because I already know the entire plot of the original.
• For Better: The Science of a Good Marriage
•  I had to return to the library but am going to check out again to finish because it was really interesting
• Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players
• I started this book while we were on our honeymoon, and it's really interesting.  I had no idea how crazy competitive Scrabble could be.

So while I was in the middle of all of those books, I started reading P.S. I Love You and read it start to finish in about four days.  I thought it was an interesting idea because the book tells the story of Holly and her husband Gerry, who dies of a brain tumor before the book starts.  Even though he died, Gerry is still in the book through the letters he wrote Holly before he died telling her what he wanted her to do to continue living her life even though he's not there with her.  I really thought it was going to have a predictable ending where she ended up in a relationship with her friend Daniel who helps her through the grieving process, but she didn't!  I won't give away the ending, but I would recommend it if you're looking for a fun, fast read.  And now that I've read the book, I get to watch the movie!