Reading for Me

It was a challenge, but I made it through the 940 pages that make up the second book of The Century Trilogy. Don’t misunderstand, I loved every minute of it. The struggle came with the interruptions that came due to vacations, family commitments, and personal illness. Since this covers an era of history that fascinates me, I found myself slowing down and savoring each word and scene.

Winter of the World is the continuing saga of the families introduced in Fall of Giants. The second volume covers the horrific events facing the world between the years 1933 and 1949. I was appalled as I read of Hitler’s rise to power while coming to a clearer understanding of how the German people would allow such a thing to happen. Tears ran down my face as I witnessed the extermination of handicapped children in an effort to strengthen the Aryan race. I admired the courage of German spies who risked their lives to procure vital information for the Allied forces while English women fearlessly attempted to save as many lives as possible during the nightly bombings on London. Battles at Pearl Harbor, Normandy Beach, and the Russian front became vivid. I watched in horror as the first atomic bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert. The consequences of the bomb’s completion were both riveting and fateful. The creation of the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift filled me with immense pride as an American.

If you find the 20th century as engaging of a century as I do, I strongly encourage you to read these novels! If you’re not a history buff, but you still love a captivating story…..read these books. My only complaint is that I have to wait to see how the story turns out for these families; Follett’s final volume of the saga, Edge of Eternity, is scheduled to be published in late 2014.

Can love be defined solely by a person’s actions? Is it possible that past experiences and pain shape human interaction? These are two of the main questions raised by Kristin Hannah’s beautiful novel. Meredith and Nina are adult sisters reunited by their father’s death. As a dying request, their father asks that they attempt to get to know their unfeeling, distant mother. As she spins a Russian fairy tale that they have never heard in its entirety, Meredith and Nina begin to understand the experiences that have shaped their mother. Strangely, the fairy tale resounds with elements of truth. Who are the characters in the tale? Where does their mother fit in?

Transporting the reader from the winter gardens of the Pacific Northwest to Russian in the early 20th century, Winter Garden captivates from the outset and explores the pain of the human heart as well as the reality of unconditional love. It’s a beautiful story for anyone who has ever loved and lost.

Like most Americans, I clearly remember where I was on that fateful Tuesday morning when I first learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. I was filled with anger, fear, and confusion over the attacks. It was impossible to understand why these things were happening. We held our collective breath as we wondered if these were isolated incidents or the first wave of attacks against our country.

Time has passed and the wounds have healed for many. Many authors have added their voice to the memories through works of fiction addressing the tragic events. The Reluctant Fundamentalist was an unusual review for this American reader. Still, I found the book thought-provoking as it explored the events resulting from the attacks from a Middle Eastern point of view.

The novel is set in Pakistan and is told entirely in first person narrative. Our narrator, Changez, studied at an American university and was in the early stages of a lucrative career when the attacks occurred. Changez finds himself living in dual reality of sorts; he is enjoying the American way of life while remembering his heritage as a Pakistani. The novel is uncomfortable to read at times as Hamid mingles criticisms of the American way of life (some might view these as anti-American statements) with a profound affection for other aspects of the nation that has forever changed him. The novel’s conclusion is both ambiguous and disconcerting; the final act is left to the reader’s interpretation. This is not a novel that I think most readers will truly “enjoy”, but I do believe it will become an important part of the dialogue regarding the American role in the global community and our ever-changing understanding of the modern American melting pot.

First of all, I feel the need to gloat…..I DID IT!!! I survived the 920 pages of this massive novel!

Okay….now that THAT’S out of the way, let’s get down to talking about Fall of Giants. The novel is the first book in The Century Trilogy and was a thrilling read. The story centers around the events surrounding World War I — from the earliest political rumblings and the Archduke’s assassination to the final cease-fire and the earliest appearance of Adolf Hitler in Germany — the novel is amazing in scope. In addition to the presence of historical figures (including Woodrow Wilson and Winston Churchill), the events come to life as we see the crisis through the eyes of six families. The plot is too complicated to attempt to summarize, but let me assure you that it is definitely worth the investment of a few weeks of your reading life. While it was overwhelming in the early stages of the novel to keep up with so many characters, their lives quickly intersected and the saga clarified itself.

I am excited to read the next novel in the trilogy (Winter of the World) and expect I’ll start it in the next week or so. For the moment, I need to come back down to a safer reader altitude and enjoy something not quite as expansive.

Fall of Giants is certainly one of the five best books I’ve read so far this year…..and is the longest of them all, without a doubt!

Let’s start with the reason I postponed this post for a few hours. Even after I finished the novel, I can’t decide how I feel about it. The writing was okay. The story was interesting. I don’t know what the problem was though….

The Paris Wife is the story of Hadley, the first wife of novelist Ernest Hemingway. While filled with historical figures and accurate events from the author’s life, the work is a fictional development of these larger than life characters. Much of the work centers around the writing of Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises (which just happens to be a book that holds a special place in my heart). I suppose it is this seamless movement between fact and fiction that was troubling about the book for me. I am a fan of historical fiction, but I always like to know where fact ends and fiction begins. I thought I knew a lot about Hemingway’s life. This novel just reminded me of how little I actually know and how terribly interesting and tormented Ernest Hemingway actually was.

This New York Times bestseller has been on my shelf for a few months now, but I never got around to actually picking it up. I suppose I was a little intimidated by the cover. It just looks so academic somehow. When I read “About the Author” my intimidation grew.  The bio begins with this sentence:  “Michael Gruber has a Ph.D. in marine sciences and began freelance writing while working in Washington, D.C., as a policy analyst and speechwriter for the Environmental Protection Agency.” Tell me that doesn’t sound like some serious writing is ahead.

When I finally dove into the book, I was thrilled with an intelligent novel about the world’s greatest playwright, William Shakespeare. The premise of the novel is that Shakespeare wrote an additional play about Mary, Queen of Scots that has never been seen by human eyes since the author’s death. The story line waltzes around the law offices of Intellectual Property, the basement of a New York bookstore, and the New York City Library.  Filled with characters — including powerful Russian Jew mob bosses! — the story also provides an entertaining dialogue between Shakespeare and his “cousin” written in Elizabethan English.  Add in a cryptic message and the search for the elusive manuscript and you have a really neat story on your hands.

While I was pleased with the story, what was the greatest joy was the beautiful language that Gruber used to form his tale.  Here are three of my favorite passages from the first half of the book.  These won’t give away anything from the plot, but give you a flavor of the quality of writing that is the strength of the novel.

“Perhaps he had snapped under the strain.  Professors go batty too, perhaps more often than other people, although owing to their profession their madness is less often remarked.”  (p. 44)

“I suppose we can blame Shakespeare himself for starting it, because he made up people who were more real, though false, than the people one knew.  Dick Bracegirdle understood this, which was why he set out to smash Shakespeare and all his works.  I took a history course at Columbia — Haas will recall it too, because I took it on his recommendation — a man named Charlton taught it.  It was English medieval history, and although I have expunged the Domesday Book and all the kings and queens from my mind, I recall very well his take on history in general.  He said there are three kinds of history.  The first is what really happened, and this is forever lost.  The second is what most people thought happened, and we can recover that with assiduous effort.  The third is what the people in power wanted the future to think happened, and that is 90 percent of the history in books.”  (p. 91)

“He ate when he was upset, he knew, and if he didn’t watch it he was going to look like Orson Welles, without that person’s early achievement to balance out the flab.”  (p. 199)

Every February, I anxiously look forward to the release of Jodi Picoult’s newest novel. I have read almost everything she has written and she has become my favorite living author. This year’s novel, The Storyteller, thrilled me while moving me to tears.

Sage is a baker whose face has been scarred by an auto accident that led to the death of her mother.  To deal with her grief, Sage attends a grief support group and so becomes acquainted with a charming senior citizen named Josef. As the two come to know each other, Josef requests that Sage assist him in dying. Sage cannot understand why this man is so eager to die, so she presses him for answers. Josef reveals that he was a Nazi officer in the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp. Sage’s horror is magnified as she begins to understand that it is possible that Josef was responsible for the suffering of her grandmother, a Holocaust survivor.

As the story weaves between the horror of 1940s Europe and modern day America, Picoult explores issues of forgiveness, morality, and justice in a complex tale that is filled with love and tantalizing plot twists. This complex novel is one that I certainly anticipate returning to again and again.

Being sick wore me out, so I’m a couple of days late in posting the review of my most recent read. I thoroughly enjoyed The Light Between Oceans!

The story centers around a married couple who care for a lighthouse on a remote island off the coast of Australia.  After several painful miscarriages, the unimaginable happens: a boat washes ashore bearing a dead man and a tiny baby girl wrapped in a blanket.  The baby is very much alive. The couple find themselves facing a moral dilemma:  report the child’s arrival in hopes of reconnecting her with family or raise this sea-borne child as a gift of Fate.

Lucy grows on the island and becomes the center of her parents’ world as well as the source of constant guilt over their decisions. When the child’s birth-mother is discovered, the novel takes on the question of whether it is blood or circumstances that truly connect us with our family.

The novel got off to a somewhat slow start for me, but I am certainly glad that I decided to stick with it for a few more pages! The Light Between the Oceans was another great read of the year.

I’m discovering that I’m constantly stating how much I’m enjoying the books I’m reading, so I’m going to steal an idea from the blog 101 Books.  After every 10 books completed, I’ll provide a complete ranking…..based entirely upon my opinion and preferences at that moment in time. I think it will be a fun addition to the blog.