Nose in a Book

Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls

After reading The Glass Castle, I wasn’t sure I would like this book but I actually really did.  This is kind of a prequel to The Glass Castle.  Half Broke Horses, called a true-life novel by the author is Walls’ maternal grandmother’s story.  Lily Casey Smith was born in 1901 in a dugout in Texas.  At five, she started helping her father train carriage horses, and at fifteen, she rode 500 miles on her horse all alone to teach in a one room school house.   And that’s just the beginning!

I loved this book!  As soon as I finished I knew I had to have my book club read it and I can’t wait for the discussion we’ll have.  Lily lived an incredible life, through two world wars and the Great Depression, and she did it with amazing style.  Some pretty awful things happened to her and she just kept right on without feeling sorry for herself.  The story was amazingly upbeat because of the way she dealt with hard times.  Her father taught her that if she was going to help him break horses, she would have to learn how to fall and she applied this wisdom to her whole life.

Lily was a woman I would like to meet.  She was such a character.  Because she was a woman she was constantly being underestimated but she never backed down.  She was fired from more than one job because she wasn’t willing to compromise her values.  My favourite line in the book come when she approaches a pilot about taking flying lessons.  The pilot has never taught a woman before and isn’t sure if the “little lady” can handle it.  Lily responds with “Don’t you ‘little lady’ me.  I break horses. I brand steers.  I run a ranch with a couple dozen crazy cowboys on it, and I can beat them all in poker.  I’ll be damned if some nincompoop is going to stand there and tell me that I don’t have what it takes to fly that dinky heap of tin.”

It was particularly interesting to read about the life she and her husband led in the deserts of Arizona, first on a huge ranch and then in remote towns.  They ran the ranch through the Great Depression and made it because of their tenacity and resourcefulness.  During this part of the story, I found myself comparing the book to The Grapes of Wrath and the differences are quite amazing.  Half Broke Horses had none of the bleakness of The Grapes of Wrath even though they were dealing with the same hardships.  It could be argued that Jeannette Walls didn’t live through the Great Depression while Steinbeck did, so maybe her depiction is less accurate but I think most of the difference comes from Lily’s attitude.  She just refused to be beaten.

Another thing I enjoyed about the book was the imagery.  Most books I’ve read about the desert make it seem to bleak, dreary and lonely, but not this book.  Lily and her family were happy to be living in such a remote area and they found the landscape beautiful and by extension so did I.  It made me want to move out into the middle of the desert and work the land.  Walls definitely romanticized this hardworking lifestyle, but not so I thought it would be easy.  Just that it would be well worth all the hard work.

I really could go on and on about why I loved this book but I think I’ll leave it at that and let you all discover it for yourselves.  Also, if you’ve read The Glass Castle, reading Half Broke Horses is a must.  I found I gained a better understanding of Rosemary Walls and the choices she made.

Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

In the 9th century, education and literacy were very rare.  Very few men learned to read and write and even fewer women.  Joan yearns to read and write and learn but finds that her sex stands in the way.  When her brother is murdered in a viking raid she seizes the opportunity and assumes his identity.  As she works her way up the ranks in the church she finds ample opportunity to pursue her love of learning.  Eventually, Joan is elected pope, where she serves for a very short time before she is exposed as a woman.

I had never heard of Pope Joan before I read this book so I’ll give you the condensed version in case you’re as ignorant as I was.  There’s a legend about a female pope who rose to power in the mid-9th century.  There is some evidence to support this legend but just as much, if not more, that does not support the theory of a female pope.  Apparently, historians have not able to reach an agreement on whether or not Pope Joan actually existed.

I found this book to be so-so.  My biggest complaint is that it was a little heavy on the details.  I just found there were far too many descriptions of places, things and ceremonies.  I realize that as historical fiction it’s to be expected but it was just too much for me.  In some parts I really felt that it took away from the story and made it seem drawn-out and boring.  When I was able to get past the extra detail and really get into the meat of the story, it was actually quite engaging.

And what an intriguing subject.  True or not, it’s definitely a fascinating idea.  And whether or not Pope Joan existed, there are certainly other examples of women who impersonated men in history.  It made me wonder how many others there were that we don’t even know about.  And who could blame them?  It made me realize just how lucky I am to be living in the time and place I do.  I don’t think I could handle being treated the way women were in Pope Joan’s time.  (Or the way they are in other parts of the world today, for that matter.)

I really know nothing about the 9th century and I had to do some research on the politics in the world at the time which was fascinating.  It’s a period of time that I’ve never read about before and every historical detail was new to me.  I’ve always kind of wondered what happened after the fall of the Roman Empire and this book filled in some of those blank spots for me.  I really wish that Cross had included a map of some of the places that were described in the novel.  (It was simple enough to look up online but it just would have been handier if it had been in the book.)

Overall, the book was well written, educational, and entertaining.  I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading historical fiction or women’s literature.

Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran

Finally!  A book I’ve enjoyed.  I haven’t been posting many reviews because I haven’t been finishing any books due to disinterest.  And the ones I have been able to finish, I haven’t really liked either so I haven’t posted that many reviews this summer.

This one is about Cleopatra’s daughter (duh!).  After Egypt is conquered by the Romans, Selene and Alexander, Cleopatra’s twins are taken to Rome and become part of Caesar’s family.  It tells the story from Selene’s point of view, from entering Rome for the first time and adjusting to the different culture and way of life to yearning to return to Egypt and losing people she loves.

This is the first of Moran’s books that I’ve read and I can’t wait to read more.  I’ve read a lot of Colleen McCullough’s books and there is a significant amount of overlap in the time line but McCullough’s books are more epic than Cleopatra’s Daughter is, which I liked. Instead of trying to tell a story that takes place over several decades she stuck to a relatively small time period and it worked.  I love reading books that take place in ancient Rome and Egypt.  It’s so fun to imagine what it must have been like to live back then.

I liked the writing style as well.  Moran didn’t try to explain every little thing about how society and politics worked.  Instead she showed the reader through the plot.  And the characters seemed very real to me (maybe because I know that they were real at some point) but Moran did a good job of bringing these ancient rulers to life.

If you like historical fiction, I would definitely recommend this one.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I know most people have already read this book or at least know what it’s about but I’m going to summarize it anyway.  The story is told in three voices, a white woman, young and idealistic and two black maids.  The white woman, Skeeter, has just graduated from university and would like to be a writer.  The story takes place in Jackson, Mississippi in the mid-sixties, an extremely volatile time and place in white-black relations.  Skeeter has an idea to write a book about the relationships between white women and their black maids – the help.  Aibileen and Minny, two black maids are persuaded to help her with the book.  At a time when black men are being beaten just for using a white bathroom, being involved in this project is extremely dangerous and all three women are taking a huge risk.

I listened to about the first three-quarters of the book on audiobook and read the last bit from the book.  I have no complaints about the audiobook but I don’t have as much time to listen to books as I do to actually read them and I really wanted to find out what happened so I just picked up the book.

The audiobook was amazing.  There were three different readers, one for each woman, and they were all so good.  I loved the accents and the dialect and I actually felt like I was right there sitting across the table from them telling me their story.  I might actually have to go back and listen to those last few chapters because I found it kind of disappointing to read after the listening.  It made the story richer and more real to be able to hear those voices.

As for the book, I loved it.  It was funny, and sweet and poignant.  I’ve never experienced racism and it really bothers me that it even exists.  Books like this are so important because I think we need constant reminders about how hurtful and wrong it is so we can hopefully prevent it from happening.

I will definitely read this book again and I would recommend it to anyone.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

I’ve heard tons about Chabon and this week at the library I just happened to see this book and picked it up.   I’m not sure how I feel about it though.  I kind of feel like this book had multiple personalities or something.

First of all, my summary.  Kavalier and Clay are cousins living in New York City.  Josef Kavalier has newly escaped from Prague where he had to smuggle himself out of the country.  (He’s Jewish and it’s 1939.)  His cousin Sammy Clay happens to see some of his drawings and immediately decides that they are going to draw/write a comic book together.  And that’s pretty much what it’s about.

I loved the first half of this book.  The imagery was amazing.  I could see the pages they were drawing and I felt totally immersed in the comic book world or superheros and secret identities.  It was so fun!  And the story was entertaining and flowing well.  But then something happened.  The whole story changed.  And I just realized something as I was typing that sentence…  The world changed (and with it the comic book world) and that’s when the whole feel of the story changed too.  So, although I still didn’t like it after that, I guess I can respect what he did and why.  It makes so much sense now!

Anyway, the story was really long and although I enjoyed it, it wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down.  I sometimes even had to make myself pick it up again.  I felt that it was almost a tedious read at times.  (The book is over 600 pages of tiny print – there’s a lot of material there!)  And the ending was kind of disappointing.  The way the story was told I was expecting a nice tidy ending to bring everything together but it wasn’t that kind of ending.  And although I can enjoy a book like that, I just wasn’t expecting it here and it kind of threw me off.  The whole book I got the sense that something big was going to happen at the end and then nothing did.  I’m not sure what gave me this idea and I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I hadn’t been expecting some big ending.

I definitely will try reading another book by Chabon because I loved the writing.  And I would recommend this book but just with a warning about the kind of book it actually is!

Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh

Read for: Orbis Terrarum Challenge – India

This book has been on my TBR list for a long time and I happened to see it on the shelf at the library so I decided to pick it up.  I’ve read mixed reviews so I wasn’t really sure what to expect.  Now that I’ve read it, I’m still not sure how I feel about it and I don’t even know how to summarize it!

Ghosh begins by slowing introducing you to his cast of characters (and it is quite a cast of characters).  And I say slowly because he doesn’t try and include all the characters right from the beginning, which I appreciated because there were so many.  I have to be honest, even toward the end of the book I was still having trouble keeping everybody straight.  Each of these people is destined to become a passenger on the Ibis, a former slave trading vessel, en route to Mauritius from Calcutta, India.

Ghosh takes two-thirds of this first book in a trilogy to get all of his characters onto the ship and the voyage to begin.  I’m still not sure how I feel about this.  On one hand, it seems like a lot of extra leading up to the main event of the book, but on the other hand, it really gives the reader the opportunity to really get to know and understand each of the characters and their motivations.

The book ends basically at the climax.  There is a huge build-up to this final event, but then the novel just ends.  It’s kind of like the season finale of your favourite TV show.  I was just as disappointed as when I read the first book of The Lord of the Rings for the first time.  I think I’ll most likely read the rest of the trilogy when they are available because I really do want to know what happens next.

Besides the confusion of the multiple characters, there are several languages used in the book without translations provided.  The crew on the ship speak a couple of strange dialects that I could just not follow.  In the back of the book there was a glossary, but it seemed to be kind of sporadic in the definitions it contained and I gave up on that early in the book. I could quite often figure out the basics of the meaning, but it was just extremely distracting and tedious to try to pick out some meaning from these conversations.

I’m still on the fence about this book.  I felt like it took a really long time to get interesting and start making sense because there were so many characters that came from so many different places and backgrounds and I couldn’t see how they were ever going to all come together.  (It actually was quite surprising in some cases, how they came to be aboard the Ibis in the end.)  I would have given up on this book altogether around the 250 page mark if I hadn’t already invested so much time in it!  Overall, I think I’m going to give it a 6.5/10, but after reading the rest of the trilogy, I may feel differently about this one.

The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill

Read for: The Canadian Book Challenge

I’m not really sure where to start with this one. This is an incredible  book and one that I think everyone should read.  It’s also an important book.  This book won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for best overall book in 2008 and it definitely deserves it.

Ok, enough raving about the book.  It’s an important book because of the subject matter.  The book is about the slave trade and I think it’s really important that we not forget how truly disgusting that whole period in history was.

But, (and I think more importantly) the book was incredible because it was captivating and interesting.  Aminata, the main character, was lovable and strong and smart and believable.  The novel tells the story of Aminata’s life, from the time she was brutally seized from her family and her life, forced to walk across the country, naked and poorly fed, branded and then pushed onto a ship to cross the ocean.  Once in America, she was sold to an indigo plantation.  After being sold again, she ends up a runaway in New York City, and lands herself in the Book of Negroes, for loyalty to the British Government.

And here’s where the Canadian history begins.  Many Canadians know who the Loyalists were but I had never heard of the Black Loyalists before.  Just before the British left America for good, the blacks of NYC were promised that if they had served the British cause for at least a year, that they would be considered free and would be transported by boat to Nova Scotia, where they would be given land to farm.  3000 blacks were listed in the Book of Negroes (which is transcribed here) and were shipped to Nova Scotia.  Unfortunately, the land was slow in coming and the Black Loyalists lived a similar existence in Canada as they had previously.  Several years later, 1200 of those Black Loyalists travelled back to Africa to found a colony called Freetown in Sierra Leone.

Aminata has always dreamed of going back to Africa so she joins the colony.  Once back in Africa she finds that things aren’t quite the way she was expecting them to be and she travels to England to help the abolitionists.  This is more than just an accounting of the journey Aminata makes.  The book also tells of many of her struggles and the tragedies that befall her as a result of her colour.  This book could have been really depressing but it wasn’t.  It was really a beautiful read.  I just can’t say enough about how much I loved this one!  This definitely gets a 10/10!

Has anyone else read this book?  What did you think?