Slacker!

So, I did finish the Princess Diaries. A long time ago...and I've even finished my next book club book, but with the holidays and fairy parties and everything, I haven't had time to review it! But I am going to. Soon. And now I have to because I've published that. Soon...

The Book Thief

Powerful.
I loved this book, which I must say is odd for me because I typically only enjoy more light-hearted books (life is hard enough - why add more misery?). But The Book Thief was compelling, heart wrenching, intriguing, thought provoking, even life changing.

Liesel Meminger is a foster child living in World War II Germany. From the very first book she steals, The Gravedigger's Handbook, she is intrigued by words. "I have hated the words and I have loved them..." Her world is impacted by words.
Leisel begins living with the Hubermanns at age nine. Though coarse and gruff, they grow to love each other as much as a real family. Leisel's view of the world is expanded when the Hubermanns begin hiding a Jew (Max) in their basement and the two become friends. The story begins in 1939 and takes you to the end of the war.
One of the most unconventional parts of this book is that Death is the narrator. Not a dark and scary Death, but rather a tired and sickened Death (disgusted by the horrors humans inflict on each other). Death tells the story to prove to himself that humans are worth it (as Markus Zusak explained in an interview included at the end of the book). I loved how every so often Death would interrupt the story with a special "bulletin" to clarify or emphasize a point. Death's last bulletin was my favorite: "I am haunted by humans."

I loved the language in this book; the way Zusak paints a picture with words - not just a picture, but an emotion. I have never read anything like it, so I am including a portion of the book so you can understand what I mean.

From pages 252 to 253

Evidently the mayor's wife was shocked when she saw her again. Her fluffy hair was slightly wet and the wrinkles widened when she noticed the obvious fury on Liesel's usually pallid face. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out, which was handy, really, for it was Liesel who possessed the talking.
"You think," she said, "you can buy me off with this book?" Her voice, though shaken hooked at the woman's throat. The glittering anger was thick and unnerving, but she toiled through it. She worked herself up even further, to the point where she needed to wipe the tears from her eyes. "You give me this Saumensch of a book and think it'll make everything good when I go and tell my mama that we've just lost our last one? While you sit here in your mansion?"
The mayor's wife's arms.
They hung.
Her face slipped.
Liesel, however, did not buckle. She sprayed her words directly into the woman's eyes.
"You and your husband. Sitting up here." Now she became spiteful. More spiteful and evil than she thought herself capable.
The injury of words.
Yes, the brutality of words.
She summoned them from someplace she only now recognized and hurled them at Ilsa Hermann...
..."This book," she went on..."I don't want it." The words were quiter now, but still just as hot. She threw The Whistler at the woman's slippered feet, hearing the clack of it as it landed on the cement. "I don't want your miserable book..."
Now she managed it. She fell silent.
Her throat was barren now. No words for miles.
After a miscarriaged pause, the mayor's wife edged forward and picked up the book. She was battered and beaten up, and not from smiling this time. Liesel could see it on her face. Blood leaked from her nose and licked at her lips. Her eyes had blackened. Cuts had opened up and a series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin. All from the words. From Liesel's words.

My recommendation: READ IT! So good. So worth it.

The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale

Disappointing. I LOVE Shannon Hale's books! But not this one.

I've been thinking...(yes, I do that occasionally) maybe I was expecting too much. I am so not a fan of modern romances (clean or dirty). I don't even watch romantic movies (except the occasional romantic comedy). The Notebook? No way!!! So not my thing. I much prefer the incredibly polite and socially correct romances of Jane Austen or Elizabeth Gaskell. So maybe this is just a typical romance book and therefore, not my thing.

Becky Jack is a Mormon housewife who happens to meet mega-hot movie star Felix Callahan. They quickly become best friends. For a while I felt like the book was just a collection of witty conversations between Becky and Felix. It took a while to get to the meat of the story. Every one tells Becky to avoid even the appearance of evil and stay away from befriending a member of the opposite sex - in fact Becky has this same conversation with every character for the first 2/3 of the book. And then - SPOILER ALERT - her husband dies (which made me SOB! and I never cry at books - just too close to home) and she is confronted with an opportunity to be more than friends with Felix. I won't tell you what happens at the very end, but I was really disappointed.

I don't see how this book would appeal to a non-Mormon audience. There is an underlying theme of God's guidance throughout the book and lots of Mormon vocabulary. It was a quick, easy read, and I did find myself laughing out oud quite a bit, but overall - I would give it a thumbs down.

If modern romances are your thing - read it. If not, skip this one and read Jane Austen instead.

Middlemarch by George Eliot

Can I just say that the first 600 pages were tedious? I mean it wasn't awful, but definitely not compelling. In fact I had to watch the movie first to get into the story at all (great movie by the way - love that Rufus Sewell). But the last 200 pages were SO WORTH IT! I can't believe I hung in there that long, but I am so glad I did. I loved this book.

Middlemarch reminds me a lot of The Way We Live Now, by Anthony Trollope. It starts out with lots of characters' individual stories and you don't really see what they have to do with each other except that they all live in the same town (Middlemarch). But at the end, all of their stories twist together and you see how they are all connected. The plot was way too complicated to summarize but the gist is: two of the main characters (Dorothea and Dr. Lydgate) make imprudent marriages and they either overcome or give in to this challenge.

My sister recommended Middlemarch to me and told me that Dorothea reminded her of me. What a compliment!!! I love Dorothea and wish I could be more like her. At the beginning of the book I was annoyed with her for choosing to marry such an icky man, but I think it served her well, in spite of the hardship. She became even more charitable and selfless as a result. I have to say that I feel genuinely inspired by her. She was always looking for ways to help others, even when everyone else told her it would be unwise. In the end, she was the only person to stand up and help Dr. Lydgate, even though doing so would help the person (Lydgate's wife - the self-centered Rosamond) who had hurt her most.

My favorite characters were Dorothea (because I want to be just like her), Will Ladislaw (because he continually placed his good character above an easy life), Caleb Garth (because he had more sense than the entire town of Middlemarch), and Fred Vincy (because he changed the most to deserve the woman he loved).

My least favorite characters were Mr. Brooke (because he was annoying, you know), and Mr. Bulstrode (because he was the biggest hypocrite ever written).

In all I give this book two big thumbs up! If you choose to read this, watch the movie first, skip the long political statements, and hang in there! The last is SO worth it!!!

The Lesson I came away with:

"...the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs." (what a great ending line.)

I Love Book Club!

I have a book club. It started a few years ago when a good friend and I had great discussions about books we've read or wanted to read but hadn't found a book club we wanted to join. Book clubs are so much pressure: you have to read the book (even if it's one you're way not interested in), read it on time, and come up with clever and insightful comments about what you read. TOO MUCH PRESSURE! So, we decided to start our own and call it The Casual Book Club. A few of my coworkers joined, then another friend, and her friend, and we've been meeting ever since.

Here are our "casual" rules:
1. We only read classics
2. These classics should have a happy ending (life is hard enough)
3. You can opt out of reading if you'd like, and you can still come to the meeting
4. You don't have to say ANYTHING about the book
5. We vote on the books we are going to read so we generally read only things that are interesting to us

Here's how we select what we read:
Everyone submits their suggestions and I compile them on to one master list. When we're all together, everyone gets a list and rates each book on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being not interested in reading and 5 being when can I start reading?). We add up all the points and the five books with the highest numbers are the next five that we read. This has worked really well for us so far - we haven't read many books that we didn't like.

We have read some great books. Here is the list:
Persuasion, Jane Austen
The Woman in White, Wilkie Collins
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexander Dumas
Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen
Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde
The Way We Live Now, Anthony Trollope
Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper
East Wind West Wind, Pearl Buck
The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Far From the Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Defoe
Dr. Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
Mansfield Park, Jane Austen
North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell
Middlemarch, George Eliot

So far our favorite, hands down, is The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. We read The Woman in White first and loved it so much that we decided to read The Moonstone too - and loved it even more!
Our least favorite ( I really mean the one we HATED!!!) was The Picture of Dorian Gray...waste of time!!! HATE HATE HATED that book.
In my next post I will review the one I just finished reading, Middlemarch. Stay tuned!