Thursday, March 31, 2011

Reading Time: 3 Reviews

While I was away (that is what I am calling my blogging break), I managed to read 3 interesting books, 2 of which were pretty dark.  The 3rd wasn't dark, but it was serious.  Serious enough that I didn't feel comfortable posting my "Literary Life" posts because they weren't stories that solicited a little fun shopping after I was finished with them.  The books I read were Never Let Me Go, The Road and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.  There were things I enjoyed about all books, so I wanted to share them & my thoughts about them with you guys.  This is a long post, so if you have no interest in any of these, feel free to skip!

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro













My Thoughts:

I really enjoyed this book.  I mainly picked it up because I had recently read an old review of the film, which starred Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley & Andrew Garfield.  Maybe I had read something about The Social Network or something & it brought me back to Andrew Garfield, which brought me back to this.  I can't remember.  I had it because my mom's bookclub had read it, although her feelings were that it was "eh."  A few months ago, my cousin, who posts the books he's reading on his Facebook, posted something along the lines of saying it's an awesome book.

I really liked the concept - which I would love to share, but I don't want to ruin it for people - and the author's execution.  I think it was really unique and kind of powerful.  I wish I could elaborate, but I can't.  I do think you have to enjoy a certain type of writing or this kind of story to truly enjoy it.  It moves at a fairly slow pace, the author tends to go on tangents a bit & I think the subject matter could be a bit upsetting.  I mean, at the end of the movie, I had a tear dripping down my cheek, even though I knew the ending from reading the book.  I did feel as though I was in a fog while reading the book - does that make sense?  It took place in a dreary, dark kind of suburb in England, and I had this certain feeling of "something isn't right" and desperation, which I think was intentional based on the subject matter.  So, I think how the author conveys the story & how he shares it with the reader is really successful.  However, at times I did wish I got a bit more from the characters & the story, but I am not exactly sure what exactly it was that I wanted.

Would I recommend it?  Yes, but only if you read the description on the back and are intrigued because it might not be up everyone's alley.

amazon.com's summary/review:
All children should believe they are special. But the students of Hailsham, an elite school in the English countryside, are so special that visitors shun them, and only by rumor and the occasional fleeting remark by a teacher do they discover their unconventional origins and strange destiny. Kazuo Ishiguro's sixth novel, Never Let Me Go, is a masterpiece of indirection. Like the students of Hailsham, readers are "told but not told" what is going on and should be allowed to discover the secrets of Hailsham and the truth about these children on their own.



Offsetting the bizarreness of these revelations is the placid, measured voice of the narrator, Kathy H., a 31-year-old Hailsham alumna who, at the close of the 1990s, is consciously ending one phase of her life and beginning another. She is in a reflective mood, and recounts not only her childhood memories, but her quest in adulthood to find out more about Hailsham and the idealistic women who ran it. Although often poignant, Kathy's matter-of-fact narration blunts the sharper emotional effects you might expect in a novel that deals with illness, self-sacrifice, and the severe restriction of personal freedoms. As in Ishiguro's best-known work, The Remains of the Day, only after closing the book do you absorb the magnitude of what his characters endure. --Regina Marler


The Road by Cormac McCarthy













My Thoughts:

I really had no intention of ever reading this, mainly because it was an Oprah book club book and I think a lot of those books are overrated.  I also think that sometimes this is one of those books that people say they love because it makes them sound smart.  I know both reasons sound incredibly snobby and stupid at the same time, but I can't help it!  My friend's mom ended up lending it to me & several months later, I finally picked it up.  I think because M. & I were having a conversation about making this story I am writing post-apocalyptic, so I decided I might as well read a post-apocalypitc story.

Wow.  This was an incredibly powerful book that made a journey that a father & son takes seem just so terrifying.  I mean, there's really not much more I can say about it.  It was just, wow.  At the same time, M. was reading the Walking Dead graphic novels, which lead to the two of us having a conversation about what we would do if we survived the apocalypse.  This was a date night conversation.  He thinks that he's seen enough zombie movies to enable his survival.  I said, "No, thank you.  I do not want to be involved in anything post apcalyptic.  You are on your own."

Would I recommend it?  Yes, definitely.  However, it is a very dark subject matter and can be disturbing.  It does have hope though.  Even when the world is at its worst, there is hope. 

I am a wimp who has nightmares, and prior to reading, I considered renting the movie.  I am not now.  I have to build myself up to it.

And, I apologize to Oprah for doubting her.  She has had some great books in her book club, including 2 by Charles Dickens & A Fine Balance, which is one of my favorite contemporary books.  I think she also did East of Eden, which is my favorite book.  So, not all her choices are questionable, just some of the ones she chose at the beginning of her bookclub & that stupid James Frey book.  See me being judgemental again?

A review found on amazon.com:
Cormac McCarthy sets his new novel, The Road, in a post-apocalyptic blight of gray skies that drizzle ash, a world in which all matter of wildlife is extinct, starvation is not only prevalent but nearly all-encompassing, and marauding bands of cannibals roam the environment with pieces of human flesh stuck between their teeth. If this sounds oppressive and dispiriting, it is. McCarthy may have just set to paper the definitive vision of the world after nuclear war, and in this recent age of relentless saber-rattling by the global powers, it's not much of a leap to feel his vision could be not far off the mark nor, sadly, right around the corner. Stealing across this horrific (and that's the only word for it) landscape are an unnamed man and his emaciated son, a boy probably around the age of ten. It is the love the father feels for his son, a love as deep and acute as his grief, that could surprise readers of McCarthy's previous work. McCarthy's Gnostic impressions of mankind have left very little place for love. In fact that greatest love affair in any of his novels, I would argue, occurs between the Billy Parham and the wolf in The Crossing. But here the love of a desperate father for his sickly son transcends all else. McCarthy has always written about the battle between light and darkness; the darkness usually comprises 99.9% of the world, while any illumination is the weak shaft thrown by a penlight running low on batteries. In The Road, those batteries are almost out--the entire world is, quite literally, dying--so the final affirmation of hope in the novel's closing pages is all the more shocking and maybe all the more enduring as the boy takes all of his father's (and McCarthy's) rage at the hopeless folly of man and lays it down, lifting up, in its place, the oddest of all things: faith. --Dennis Lehane



The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot














My thoughts:

I am so torn about this book.  It received so many rave reviews & I think the heart of it was a great story, great history & a great question about who get the rights to our DNA.  It was fascinating to read about the science that goes into the study of DNA, that has led to cures for cancer, polio and so many other diseases.  And truly, it was fascinating to learn that much of these research was due to the DNA of one woman. 

The author places herself into the story - giving us part history and part present day.  She tells us about her journey to learn more about Henrietta and her family, which leads her to spending a lot of time with the Lacks family, for better or for worst.  Without giving too much away, I really wish that she had spent more time with the history.  At the middle to end of the book, the author's focus on the family just kind of lost control & I think really distracted me from her main thesis.  What I had enjoyed so much in the beginning just lost steam & when I closed the book, I just had such mixed feelings. 

Would I recommend it?  Sure, it seems like the overall consensus about the book is that it's great.  I did partially lend it to a friend (it was a book that had been lent to me), but with the warning that I did not love it like everyone else & that I am interested in hearing her thoughts about it.

As always, amazon.com's review/summary of the book:
From a single, abbreviated life grew a seemingly immortal line of cells that made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. And from that same life, and those cells, Rebecca Skloot has fashioned in The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks a fascinating and moving story of medicine and family, of how life is sustained in laboratories and in memory. Henrietta Lacks was a mother of five in Baltimore, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia, who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951. A sample of her cancerous tissue, taken without her knowledge or consent, as was the custom then, turned out to provide one of the holy grails of mid-century biology: human cells that could survive--even thrive--in the lab. Known as HeLa cells, their stunning potency gave scientists a building block for countless breakthroughs, beginning with the cure for polio. Meanwhile, Henrietta's family continued to live in poverty and frequently poor health, and their discovery decades later of her unknowing contribution--and her cells' strange survival--left them full of pride, anger, and suspicion. For a decade, Skloot doggedly but compassionately gathered the threads of these stories, slowly gaining the trust of the family while helping them learn the truth about Henrietta, and with their aid she tells a rich and haunting story that asks the questions, Who owns our bodies? And who carries our memories? --Tom Nissley

I didn't read much in the month of March, but I am gearing up for my next book.  It's Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.  It's another book getting pretty solid reviews and I am hoping it doesn't disappoint!

Have any of you read these 3 books?  I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Monday, March 28, 2011

Oh, Hello There

I am a jerk and haven't written in almost 2 full months.  Sorry folks.  Honestly, I just haven't felt like I've had much to say.  We've taken a few adventures, eaten delicious food & have had something almost every weekend, but I just didn't feel like anything was particularly noteworthy.  And for that, I apologize for falling off the face of the Earth.  BUT, I am back and I am going to update this bad boy far more.  For those of you who have stuck by me, thank you.  I'll make it worth your while.

Until tomorrow . . . Here is a picture of a beautiful Artic Fox sleeping.  I snapped the picture during one of my photography classes that we had at the Baltimore Zoo.  I loved him.