Review: The Weird Sisters

GoodReads Summary:The three Andreas sisters grew up in the cloistered household dominated by their Shakespearean professor father, a prominent, eccentric academic whose reverence for the Bard left its imprint on his daughters' names: Rosalind (As You Like It), Bianca (The Taming of the Shrew), and Cordelia (King Lear). The siblings eventually left home and escaped their ponderous monikers with nicknames, but their mother's medical maladies brings them back. Before long, their unwelcome reunion reveals that they all have problems: Rose is force-feeding a troubled relationship; Bean is entangled in a big city case of embezzlement; and unmarried Cordy is pregnant. Eleanor Brown's first fiction has justly won praise as "thought-provoking... poignant... sparkling and devourable."

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I have to admit when I first started reading I was confused by the narrating style. Then I realized it was a first person plural style and it made perfect sense. The way the story is told you get the sense that the events have already happened and the sisters are re telling it along with their new insights. It was the perfect way to tell this story.

The author selects something that a majority of people, especially women, can relate to. The sisters come home because in one way or another they are not where they want to be in life and decided to return home in the hopes of finding their way. The fact that their mother has cancer is just a superficial reasons that they used to hide the real reasons from each other and themselves. As many people do they lose their way in life and have to find a way to go on. They book has illustrates how what we imagined is not what we have planned but sometimes the way things work out is exactly what we need.

The author poignantly uses sister relationships to describe ultimately human relationships in candid honesty. The relationships reflect how people keep secrets and attempt to hide them but ultimately through sharing and exposing oneself you can  find redemption. But at what cost does this redemption come? Does it mean being more free and having to give up a dream and settle into a new life? If you give up something is it worth the cost or is the alternative even better?

There are many  surprises in this book that keep the reader engaged. The reader should be able to feel a bond with one of the sisters and relate to how things are going and how things ended. I myself could relate to more than one and was invested in how the story ended. It kept me turning the pages until the end.

Review: Swallows of Kabul

We have all heard about the hoours of the Taliban. What about ordenariy people? We don’t get much glispe of them and how they manage to surrive under such an oppressive regime. Swallows Of Kabul aims to do just that.

This book showcases people as they go about their lives in Afghanistan. In this book the Taliban blend into the background while the characters attempt to lead their lives.

It is difficult enough to lead a life with out any extra adversity thrown in. To throw in a regime as strict and totalitarian as the Taliban make things even more difficult.

Even something as simple as wanting to go for a walk as a woman is rife with perils. As one part of the story illustrates one woman's husband  wanting to take a nice romantic walk with his wife. Things go fine until they run into some Taliban Guards. They assault the man for laughing. Then force him to endure preaching while his wife has to wait outside alone. The woman is never the same.

With these stories we are allowed a glimpse into the life of living under the Taliban. What we see on TV and hear on the radio only gives us a superficial view. We can see that not everyone feels oppressed. There are some who go on about their lives with the politics in the background. This offers a window into those lives.

The writing itself is beautiful. The author is skilled at creating imagery that makes the reader feel as if they have been transported to Kabul and is actually witnessing the events. We get a taste of how the people who live there used to see this ancient city and how the views change with modern Kabul.

The characters are real and believable. The reader becomes invested in what the characters do. They are fully developed and act in what one would expect in the circumstances that they find themselves in. There are plot twist and turns that will leave the reader wanting to see what happens next.

This is a beautiful story. If you are interested in getting a taste of a culture not your own then this book will give you that. This is a highly recommended read.

Sunday Salon

Happy Mothers day to all the Mothers out there!

First  a couple of good news. I had been having issues with concentrating for a long time now. I was lucky if I could get through two books a week. The Dr finally decided to try Strattera with me and I am glad to say it worked!  I can now concentrate for hours at a time. I even read 5 books last week! I am hoping even my blogging habits will improve now that I can focus on something for more than 30 minutes at a time. So look for more frequent blog posts and more comments from me.

Second I finally got what I like to call a reading and a blogging chair. It was an early birthday present from my family. It is really a recliner chair and I love it now I can read and blog in super comfort.

Right now I am reading  A Sport and a Pastime. It was published in the 60’s but it still a good book. I am loving it so far. I am attempting to read more classics.

Coming up for review:

Swallows in Kabul

The Weird Sisters

Cub Dead book 4 in Sookie Stack house seris

A Sport and a Pastime

Let the Great world Spin

That’s is all for now!! Have a Happy Sunday reading!

Review:Signs Of Life

This book was sent to me by the publisher for review

Can you imagine going on vacation and being pregnat then getting a phone call saying that your husband has died? That is exactly what happened to Natalie Taylor.

Signs of life starts with Natalie vacationing in Miami with her family sand her husband. Then the phone call that drew them all back to Michigan where Natalie had to face the inevitable. In mere seconds her life as she knows it is over. She is now a widow and soon to be single mother. This memoir is based on the journals that she kept and details coming back to the living.

The memoir details raw grief. She writes so that you as a reader feels her grief at have so unfair an event happening. She worries that she wont be able to take care of her newborn baby without her husband. When the baby is born it is heim who starts the healing processes for her.

This is a book about coming to terms with the unthinkable and how to resolve it so that you can still see the beauty in life.It is a tale of family love of learning to survive without the one thing you always counted on.

Every day we see her make improvements and we feel like cheering for her. Then she slips back and we find ourselves cheering her on.

having never been married it is hard to fathom what she must have went through. Especially since his death was the result of a freak skateboarding accident. In just one moment her whole life changed.

The book talks of her going to a grief support group and having everyone being older than she is. How out of place she felt. She also goes to a support for single mothers and she felt out of place there also. It wasn’t just her husband that died but a whole way of living that died with her.

Review: The Colony

 

Anne Hatley who is physically disabled go to the colony so that the Drs there can study her DNA. However it becomes clear that the other people in the colony submit to cures for these disorders. Anne holds up as long as she can then breaks under pressure and submits to a procedure that will help her regenerate a leg. The process goes very very wrong.

 

At it heart this is a story that symbolizes the discord between the disabled and the able. The able think they have all the answers but in reality a lot of their cures had negative effects.

This resounds with me because I am Deaf, I had Dr’s try and fix me my whole life but of course nothing worked. I was lucky in that there was no lasting damage but what about those who are not so lucky. There are stories up on stories of cutting edge procedures that were supposed to work but in reality left the person worse off than before.

It is not just the physical aspect of it either. The psychological aspects can be just as damaging. The able people are telling the disabled that it is not ok the way you are so we must fix you. There is a scene in the book that details Anne’s breaking point. It is spot on. After that scene she decides to go ahead with what is supposed to be the cure.

The dialog that goes on between Anne and the rest of the characters seem to be spot on on how describing how a disabled person feels about their disabilities. I know some authors try but Jillian Weise really is talented in this regard. There is no pity overtones. She tells it in its most raw form. That is a skill that many other authors lack.

I was  impressed by the author's use of magical realism to portray what happens in everyday life more accurately. Things that would not be possible in real life but as an allusion are used to greatly magnify what the cure does to the colonist. Weiss turns it into a powerful message for the disabled and against ableleism.

I would recommend this book to everyone. We all need to get in on the fight to equality and one way to do that is to stop practicing ableism. Once we realism the harm that it does we can take steps to correct it. This is a piece of fiction yes but it packs a powerful message.

Sunday Salon

My reading and writing Mojo is back in full swing so I had a busy week blog wise. I reviewed:

Getting Things Done

Project Happiness

Darkness Visible

Be a Better You

Winter Ghosts

Spring comes on and off. I was able to go outside for a while and read a couple days but it been raining and cold the other days.

I have also started to Study for my GRE. I am taking the plunge and going to Libabry school. It something I have thought about for years. Like in my other jobs that I did not like I always asked myself why didn’t I just go to libabry school to start with. So now I am. Wish me luck.

I am reading at the moment Swallows of Kabul. The language is almost poetic and details the lives under the Taliban. It is fascinating.

Well I am going to go read. Hope you all having a happy Sunday!

Review: Winter Ghosts

I received this from the publisher for review.

In keeping with one of my reading resolutions I ventured out into a new genre. This is my first foray into historical fiction. I have to say I liked it. This book made me more curious about the genre so I will check it out. If you have any recommendations leave them in the comments.
Freddie Waston walks into a bookshop to have a letter translated. While translating the letter the man tells the story of how the letter came to be. Which involved the mountains of France and Cather ghosts. The story was also a kind of a love story. Freddie goes to a celebration and meets a woman and she tells the story of how she and her community came to be entombed alive in the nearby caves. The woman turns out to be a ghost but the question remains. Can love at it most pure form bring closure to just about any event? For Freddie was also suffering from the death of his brother in World War 1. He had been in sanatoriums for mental breakdowns. But as he tells the story to the woman he finds a kind of redemption that allows him to move on.
It also brings to mind the need for people to know when wrong has been done. For it may be too late for justice but if people have knowledge of the wrongdoing then maybe the deaths would not have been completely in vain.It also highlights the cruelty of war. For Freddie had lost his brother and the woman had been entombed alive in a cave. It shows the aftermath of the war may be over but suffering remains. For the village where the cave is had lived under sadness for as long as anyone could remember. No one knew what the sadness was. This kind of unknowing could not allow the “winter ghosts” to rest in peace. The ghosts came back and chose Freddie to revel what had happened.
I have to admit I do not know much about the Cather's or the Mountains of France so I could go into this story believing whatever the story unfolded. I also was not sure what a historical Fiction entailed exactly. How much historical and how much fiction? I was pleased to see that there was a good blend of both. This book has made me even more curious about the Cathers..
Overall if you enjoy historical Fiction you will enjoy this book.