You are currently browsing the daily archive for May 6th, 2008.
Confession: I started my last set of reviews yesterday but didn’t post them til today, so technically not Twofer Tuesday.
Reviews for Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah and Hush: An Irish Princess’ Tale by Donna Jo Napoli.
Well it was bound to happen so I figure why not do it as one. My first set of nonAwesome books came back to back. And I read both of these. I tend to be more critical if I just listen to something unless the performer works some crazy voice magic. Not to say these were horrible books, they have their merits. But one left me underwhelmed and the other intensely frustrated. Which brings me to a point, what I am looking for when I read a book.
First I’m looking for characters. I don’t really care what they look like or what they are doing. But if I don’t know the characters like I know one of my own friends then I don’t care what happens or what they have to say. Hush sounded good as a blurb, medieval Irish princess gets kidnapped by slave traders and must learn to survive. Wow, I thought. Not so wow as I began to read. At the end I did not know enough about the main character to care whether she got home or stayed a slave. Why did I not care? Because nothing that happened in the book seem to matter to her. The events were just things that happen. The reader never gets to see how she changes, grows because of these things. We never know her enough. And since the point of view is through her eyes we get description of her world but never a feeling, emotion, perception. Hence even the setting feels flat and dull. It’s medieval Eruope!! I’m giving it a Whatevs (2 of 4) and that’s being generous.
Second I need a good plot. Something must happen and then something else must happened because that thing happen and so on. I don’t need epics, pretty bow endings or even a linear story line. So Does My Head had great characters. Amal makes the decision to wear the hijab full-time even though she attends an ultra-conservative and snobby Australian prep school. I like Amal, I like her family, and I love her friends. It was easy to see Amal’s world and those she interacts with. What bugged me was that I felt much of the story was a lesson on what it means to be a young Muslim growing up in a non-Muslim society. I get this story is somewhat autobiographical and I know the name calling, the ignorance, the outright discrimination happens and far more than it should. But at times it was like reading Intro to Modern Muslim Culture. Which might not be bad for some readers who have no interaction with this culture or its people. But I felt the plot wasn’t there to show us the characters’ lives, but rather episodes designed to teach something. Yes, it felt preachy. There I said it. But maybe this lesson needs to be preached. It gets a solid Cool (3 out of 4) but I still highly recommend it. I would not recommend Hush.
Double Down!! It’s a review for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and Jesus Land by Julian Scheeres.
So I do this crazy thing where I’ll be listening to an audio book that will in someway echo the book I’m reading at the same time. Like when I was listening to The Ghost Map, a nonfiction account of the cholera epidemic in London and YA gothic lite The Sweet Far Thing. Both mentioned the muckrackers of Victorian London and how they eked out their life on the garbage and filth of others. It was kinda weird to read two accounts of basically the same period. So is the some phenomenon with these two titles.
On the surface these books have little connection, Oscar Wao about a Dominican immigrant and his nerdy life growing up shunned by girls and friends alike and Julia’s memoirs of her adopted brother and their crazy religious upbringing. I did start to link these two until Julia is sent to Christian Reform school in the Dominican Republic in the 80’s while Oscar’s story has as much to do with his family’s past under Dominican dictator Trujillo as his own experiences. Where Oscar Wao’s voice comes from a ghetto and sometimes vulgar world, Jesus Land invokes the anger, fear and disappointment of a rebellious teenager. But what really connects the two worlds is the underlying theme of families and their legacies.
What makes Oscar Wao such a big, epic, Lord of the Rings story is the included histories of Oscar’s cursed family, his martyred grandfather, his much abused immigrant mother and my favorite, his rebellious sister. I love Lola’s story, possibly because the performer who read her was awesome, but also her story helped to explain Oscar’s more than the others. Besides stringing the idea of shared curse the story also shows the legacy parents leave unintentionally to their children.
Oppositely Julia’s story is more intimate and personal but no less moving. The book is focused tightly on her and her brother David’s relationship. As much as it is about their being raised devout Calvinist it is also about their struggles growing up in Indiana and dealing with racism they faced. I found it amazing, reading this and also Oscar Wao, the damage and violence we can inflict on other people. All for a cause or a leader or an escape. The way people can be used and discarded. It makes for very moving and heartbreaking reading.
An Awesome to both titles. Wish I would have read Oscar Wao though instead of just listen to it. I feel it is one of those fiction books that is not just read, but studied.
