108 posts tagged “read your own books challenge”
Finished Shanghai Girls by Lisa See for the Just4thehelluvit Challenge.
I got this review copy from Random House; it comes out May 26.
I read Snow Flower and the Secret Fan but I hadn't read any of her other books before this one. Snow Flower was definitely amazing, but this one was even better.
It's initially set in Shanghai in the 1930s. Pearl and her younger sister May are "beautiful girls." (They pose for calendars, which enables them to make decent money but is viewed by their parents' generation as basically being two steps above prostitution--and not terribly big steps, either.)
Anyway, their life is still going along pretty well until they learn that their dad has lost all his money (and, incidentally, all THEIR money) and so they've been sold to another family and they have to marry that family's sons. And the wedding will happen the day after tomorrow. And after the wedding, they'll be living in the United States.
So it's basically about having to adjust to a life you never thought you'd have to live.
This book was seriously just fantastic. Lisa See's prose is wonderful and the characters feel like friends by the time the book is over. (I do wish it had been longer, but I think that's just because I loved the book so much.) And like real life, a lot happens that's unexpected, but I didn't think anything strained the bounds of reality.
Everyone should read this. :) (Again, it's out May 26.)
(I feel pretty confident in saying that the people I know who get books for presents should not be surprised to find this one under wrapping paper on their nearest gift-getting opportunity.)
Finished Timothy Keller's The Reason For God for the New Author Challenge.
This book has two sections: reasons not to believe in God (which he then refutes) and reasons to believe in God.
I didn't particularly care for this, because I found some of his reasons suspect. Like, for example, he says, "Well, if you don't believe that Jesus existed, died and was resurrected, explain how the Church managed to flourish." And it's like, well, other religions believe other things that I may or may not agree with, and it doesn't matter if I don't believe, say, that a great flood covered the entire earth and that hence we are all descended from Noah now. I don't need to offer up another explanation.
(That's the first example I could come up with, because I'm not super familiar with Islam or many of the other major religions.)
Ancient Egyptians worshiped cats, and now we know that's not true. So there has to be a better basis than "explain why it isn't true."
But I am still glad I read it because I had an epiphany--it doesn't matter what Timothy Keller says. I have to come to this on my own, and at least I'm thinking about it.
Finished Jesus Wants to Save Christians by Rob Bell for the New Author Challenge.
Okay, this book was amazing. And I'm going to speak in generalizations now, so I'm not saying this applies to every Christian and/or every church. I DO NOT MEAN YOU. :)
The general gist is that modern Christian churches are more concerned with big, fancy worship spaces and preaching that anyone who does not believe or do x, y, or z is going straight to hell. There are debates about whether or not drinking is okay or dancing is okay, but not debates on how best to serve the communities they are set in.
And Rob Bell argues that this is not okay, because--as Christianity is based around Jesus, so it follows that we should do as Jesus did.
One of the things that really resonated with me is the idea that "taking the name of the Lord in vain" may mean being careful how Christians present themselves. As in, if you're a Christian and you're talking to unbelievers and you use fear, like, "You are going straight to hell if you don't believe exactly what I believe," odds are, you're not going to win over many hearts. And instead of people thinking you're a jerk, they may think, "Well, if that's their God, I want no part of it."
Or, to use an example from my own life (and feel free to skip this paragraph, because I know you've all heard it before), I had a huge problem with organized religious groups for a while after I sat in a friend's church one Sunday and heard the pastor condone "hang a homo day." ("Well, maybe we should," he said.) And the fact that nobody stood up and called shenanigans stunned me. (I didn't; I wasn't stupid--I mean, odds are I was the only homo there, and I already knew where he stood on my life and wellbeing.) And I thought, well, this must be what they all believe. And I was raised Methodist (well, Methodist-ish), so I was pretty sure that wasn't what Jesus was about but His followers? Well. No thanks.
So the idea with this book is that we're called to help people--the poor, the downtrodden, the people who aren't fortunate like we are. And that means even people who don't like us or who judge us. The fastest way to overcome hate isn't more hate--it's to love them anyway.
Or in other words, we should just--to quote those two great philosophers of our time--be excellent to each other.
Bell said that doing this isn't easy and it isn't fun. It's incredibly hard, and it will come at great cost. People will judge you and be pretty mean to you anyway. And you probably won't turn everything around by yourself or all at once. But you need to try anyway.
I really, really liked this book. And I am currently too full in my thoughts to discuss it better. Sorry. You should probably just read it yourself anyway.
Finished Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert for the New Author Challenge.
For the three of you who haven't yet read this (and I think it was an Oprah book, so I'm probably not too far off in guessing how many haven't read it), Elizabeth went through an awful divorce and the painful end to a relationship in fairly short order. She decides to take a year off and spend four months each in Italy, India and Indonesia. She basically says that she wants to be able to balance living in the world and being close to God, so she picks Italy (pleasure), India (prayer) and Indonesia (a balance of the two) to help her with that goal.
This is a really, really good book. I've heard that most people love the beginning and end (Eat and Love, basically) and dislike the middle. This may be because everyone eats and most people love, but how many people really pray? As in more than "Please God" about making a traffic light or not bouncing a check or whatever? How many people really take time out every day to just sort of talk to God and not have it be a list of demands or something? (This is probably not a fair question because, as I meant to add in my earlier post, I am the least religious of most of my close friends and honestly, talking to you makes me more receptive of the God idea than I may otherwise be because, whatever else you can say about me, I don't befriend idiots or naive people so...)
Anyway. I was talking about a book. :)
I didn't think the Pray part was as compelling as the other two sections, but I was still interested overall and I think this book is an excellent springboard into my next few books, all of which are about God.
Finished The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe for the New Author Challenge.
This is a review copy (the book will be released in June). There's a blurb by Matthew Pearl (he wrote The Dante Club and a bunch of other books, including one on Poe that I really want to read) where he said that he and Katherine Howe play poker and she mentioned during one game that she was going to write this as part of NaNoWriMo and that he and the other players demanded she actually do it.
This is about Connie, a grad student who's staying at her grandmother's house so that she can clean it up and sell it ASAP. Her specialty is colonial American history, and so it's pretty awesome that the house is near Salem. While cleaning, she finds a key in one of the Bibles. There's also a scrap of paper with "Deliverance Dane" written on it.
So who's Deliverance Dane? Well, she's a previously undiscovered Salem witch. And why is she undiscovered? Well, maybe she wasn't one of the innocent women who were hanged.
(Dun dun dun!)
It's also been compared to The Monsters of Templeton and to the Da Vinci Code (not in terms of quality, the blurb guy said, but in terms of the effect he expects it will have on readers). Anyway, it was a very interesting book and I recommend it. (Comes out in June.)
Finished Shift by Charlotte Agell for the New Author Challenge.
This is another dystopian novel. I'm pretty sure it's set in the fairly close future. People are living in the aftermath of nuclear (I'm guessing) war. It's been long enough ago that things are more or less okay but recently enough that you still can't eat much of what grows.
So Adrian and his sister Shriek (really named Melody, but everyone calls her Shriek) live with their scientist mother. Everyone's gotten religious after the war, and Christianity is mandatory. (The Jews are currently living elsewhere and aren't allowed to do much of anything and I'm not sure what happened to those who practice other faiths, but I'm guessing a similar or worse fate.)
Their mom suddenly has to go away for a while and so Adrian decides that he's heading north to their old cabin. "North" is scary, because all the radiation headed that way, and it's also generally known that crazy people and zombies ALSO live that way.
Really interesting and scary. Also, it's insanely plausible. It's set up pretty nicely for a sequel and I hope there will be one.
Finished Something, Maybe by Elizabeth Scott for the Just4thehelluvit Challenge.
I really liked this book (even more than Stealing Heaven, which I read earlier this year). I think Elizabeth Scott's books tend to sneak up on you. They're entertaining enough at the beginning but usually (for me) about halfway through, I realize I'm having a really hard time doing anything that isn't reading that particular book.
Anyway. :)
This is about Hannah, who has the misfortune of being the only child of two very distinctive parents. Her dad is a Hugh Hefner-type, a man in his 70s who is surrounded by beautiful women all the time and who has next to no time for her. And her mom? She lived with Hannah's dad when she was 19. Once she was legally able to drink, they ended things. Except her mom (the unfortunately named Candy) was two months pregnant. Now Candy supports herself and Hannah by webchats where she wears very, very little. (It's best not to think about it; I didn't.)
So Hannah works to be invisible. She wears huge, baggy clothes and has a crush on her coworker, Josh. Josh seems to be the exact opposite of her father--he reads and writes poetry and can talk at length on exactly why the world is so messed up and has ideas on how to fix it. She also works with Finn, who is smart and sarcastic and makes fun of Josh all the time.
Very sweet love story. And Sarah Dessen liked it, too. :)
Finished Saving Juliet by Suzanne Selfors for the New Author Challenge.
I wanted something cheerful and easy after Willow, and that's basically what this was.
Mimi (part of a huge acting family) and Troy (bubblegum pop singer and current favorite of teen girls everywhere) are cast as Romeo and Juliet. After Mimi has a meltdown (she doesn't want to be an actress; she wants to be a doctor), they get transported back to Verona and meet the real Romeo and Juliet. Except their presence changes everything. So now they have to figure out (a) how to fix the story--and maybe give it a better ending and (b) how to get back home.
This was entertaining, definitely, but is the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and fries. But there's nothing wrong with that. :)
Finished Willow by Jessica Hoban for the New Author Challenge.
I had the hardest time trying to find this book. Jen and I went to probably at least six bookstores and none of them had it.
Willow is a hard book to read, but not as hard as I thought it would be (if that makes any sense). Willow is a teenage girl who used to focus on boys and shoes and college. Then, one night, she drives her parents home (she has a learner's permit but not a license). It's raining really hard and she loses control of the car and both parents die. She has to go live with her brother, his wife and their baby daughter.
Now she's basically unable to function. She can fake it pretty well (she's learned how to make it look like she's taking notes and paying attention in class, but she really isn't) but really? Things aren't going well. She's ignoring her old friends and the only way she can even remotely cope is to cut herself.
And then she meets a guy who figures out her secret.
I'd definitely recommend this. Willow isn't the most likeable of characters, but it's definitely understandable.
Finished Perfect Fifths by Megan McCafferty for the Numbers Challenge.
It's the fifth (and, according to the author, final) book in the saga about Jessica Darling and Marcus Flutie.
This is possibly the only series that I've been reading since the first book came out, and I'm really sad to see it end. (I am, however, pretty happy with the way it ended.)
Anyway, Jessica and Marcus (another couple in the tortured love category) run into each other--literally--in the airport. Much talking ensues. (Much anxiousness on my part also ensues. Will they finally, FINALLY! get it together?)
I can't really explain (at least based on this book) why I love the Jessica Darling books so much. I think the best I can say (and it's a blurb from someone else) is that it's Judy Blume meets Dorothy Parker. And how can you not love that combination?
So yeah, I'm hoping that Megan McCafferty changes her mind.
