By: Kristin Hannah 4/5
The story of friendship. I had picked out this book to read with my best friend. I wanted us to reconnect over a good novel long distance through email. Unfortunately we have not connected as we both have been super busy.
This is a 479 page book, and I managed to not be able to put it down. This fiction of two girlfriends that in the 1970s are in different social worlds come together in unlikely circumstances. They of course swear to be BFFs forever and ever, and manage to follow each other all the way through college. Like many BFF novels, you know what the issues are going to be between girlfriends, and those are of course boys! The cool sexy one, gets what she wants, unloved and left by her mother Tully is always the center of attention and the life of the party. Kate, coming from a loving supporting catholic family, finds her time during college dating many guys but her main love was books. Then real life starts and one finds true love and they go on through the trails of friendship and life.
The ending is surprising and the reader should be prepared for tissues.
This is a fast read, that many women and girls could identify with a character. Whether you are Ms. Popularity, Tully, or Wallflower Kate, or a grandmother, or a struggling teen, there is a heroine personality in all of the female characters. I though I first I identified with Tully, as her past and her emotions, though I find myself identifying with Kate and her struggles with her friendship of her BFF. I find her same battles and feeling wronged by someone who is very introverted. In the end, maturity takes over and love is the winner!
I thought of this because we all judge a book by its cover, no matter how much we say we don't. We do it in our daily lives continually until we can learn more and decide. So taking this into account, what if we were to take away the cultural constructs of today's society out and put them in the open and discuss them? What would happen? and how would it make people feel?
Monday, March 15, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
The Moonstone
By: Wilkie Collins 2.5/5
The Short Version:
First I was disappointed by this book for many reasons.
First and foremost it was long, so long, especially after having read “The
Woman in White”. I also had this
book as an audio book and it was
downloaded off of librivox.org which is a non-profit with many readers. One
reader didn’t speak English so she couldn’t read and kept stumbling on the
words, another reader, possibly the same one, had cars and horns in the
background recording. Having this in the background is very distracting
considering the book was taking place in 1848!
The book dragged on and on and for a change of pace, dragged
on some more. There where a thousand different characters. This is how I
characterize them:
-Beteridge – Grumpy self concerned old man, that looks down
on women as silly and frivolous. He is the narrator for the better part of the
story.
-Ms. Cluck who apparently is a hag, ugly, and only concerned
with her crazy notions of religion, which is what she preoccupies herself and
her time with. She is so unwilling to back down she forces religion and her
religion down the throats of main characters.
-Rosanna is apparently homely conniving thief, who can’t get
it in her head where her place in the house is…. She is crestfallen to the
point of obsession over a man who could car more for a paint brush than her as
a human being.
-Franklin Blake is obsessed with Rachel, the Miss of the
house, and would do anything like a puppy dog in love for her.
-Rachel, the Miss of the house who always gets her way no
matter what, isn’t amazingly pretty but dresses well so it gives her status.
She can’t seem to know what it is she wants and has the “fickle mind” that
Beteridge accuses women of.
-Gottfried Applewhite is a smooth talker, and a pimp who
is pretender of philanthropic
needs. He is the pimp of today that weasels his way into matters of importance.
-Sgt. Cuff the main policeman is self absorbed and knows he
is a legend.
Friday, March 5, 2010
Three Cups of Tea
By: Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin 5/5++++
I don’t even know how to start my review on this magnificent book! It was so nice and pleasant to read such great book where it shows grassroots organizations are the way to go!
Who would have thought such a change can be made by one man, who found compassion from people all around the world? Who would have thought that compassion can be found in the most horrifying situations and shows that human nature will always care for its children? I loved this story of Greg Mortenson and his journey to change the way we fight terrorism. The book took you on a wonderful journey into the lives or ordinary village life in rural Pakistan and then Afghanistan, where people speak different, look different but in the end have the same compassion for youth and children as it exists anywhere!
I think this book makes you understand a culture from a different angel, other than all Muslims are terrorists, you can sympathize with those people. Like every religion, everyone has fundamentalists and anything that is way over the top, like religion, a craze, a fashion, isn’t going to be good. Those we are afraid of, like those in the villages Dr. Greg visited, are the same people we are all afraid of. They are beyond normalcy or beyond any thoughts of decent human behavior! We can not as Americans class everyone into those people. Like people in other parts of the world classify Americans as heartless, arrogant, bastards and that is not true of all of us.
I do think that everyone needs to read this book. You get such a deep understanding of the needs of these people, their culture and their fundamental way of life that it would be silly not to take these into account when dealing with them.
If you want to help you can reach Greg Mortensen via Facebook, Twitter, http://www.ikat.org/ .
I don’t even know how to start my review on this magnificent book! It was so nice and pleasant to read such great book where it shows grassroots organizations are the way to go!
Who would have thought such a change can be made by one man, who found compassion from people all around the world? Who would have thought that compassion can be found in the most horrifying situations and shows that human nature will always care for its children? I loved this story of Greg Mortenson and his journey to change the way we fight terrorism. The book took you on a wonderful journey into the lives or ordinary village life in rural Pakistan and then Afghanistan, where people speak different, look different but in the end have the same compassion for youth and children as it exists anywhere!
I think this book makes you understand a culture from a different angel, other than all Muslims are terrorists, you can sympathize with those people. Like every religion, everyone has fundamentalists and anything that is way over the top, like religion, a craze, a fashion, isn’t going to be good. Those we are afraid of, like those in the villages Dr. Greg visited, are the same people we are all afraid of. They are beyond normalcy or beyond any thoughts of decent human behavior! We can not as Americans class everyone into those people. Like people in other parts of the world classify Americans as heartless, arrogant, bastards and that is not true of all of us.
I do think that everyone needs to read this book. You get such a deep understanding of the needs of these people, their culture and their fundamental way of life that it would be silly not to take these into account when dealing with them.
If you want to help you can reach Greg Mortensen via Facebook, Twitter, http://www.ikat.org/ .
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