More Books

I can't believe how quickly I am ripping through the books this year. I'm going to easily be able to finish my 50 book challenge this year. I have been a little lazy on the reviews but I'll try to get to rectifying that in the near future. But, for the time being ....

41. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Greogry
fiction/historical, (c) 2002, 672pp
rating: *****

The Other Boleyn Girl is probably Philippa Gregory's most often read book and the only one that was turned into a (terrible) movie. It is about the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn told through the eyes of her less famous younger sister, Mary. When I picked out this book, I thought it would take me a long time to read as it is quite long, but instead I plowed through it in under two days. The writing is great and extremely absorbing. Telling the story through an unfamiliar narrator gives it a certain freshness such that even though we all know how the story ends (off with her head!) it still made me want to see how we were going to get there. And that is the mark of a great book. I highly recommend it.

42. Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
fiction, (c) 2008, 480pp
rating: ****

Jodi Picoult is an extremely engaging author. Though I am not usually a fan of general contemporary fiction, Picoult has a way of tackling issues that is absorbing and draws the reader in. Nineteen Minutes is about a school shooting and the way that the ramifications of that shooting echo across the entire town. In the book, the shooter is 18 year old Peter Houghton - a loner and a geek who has been subjected to years of bullying in school. Also at the center of this book is Josie Cormier, Peter's former best friend who left him (and happiness) for the popular crowd once they entered middle school.

The book is told through alternate time frames, skipping from the time that Peter and Josie are born up through the shooting and the subsequent trial. The flashbacks work well in this case as it is easy to see the way that the events of these two people's lives shaped the way that things happened in their futures. A good portion of the book is also devoted to the parents of Peter Houghton who constantly question what mistakes they made in Peter's upbringing that led him down this path.

It sounds like a downer of a book and it kind of is. But it is also extremely engaging and unlike the other two books by her that I've read, it ends in a way that is more satisfying. (Unlike My Sister's Keeper which made me want to toss the book across the room and The Pact which just left me vaguely unsatisfied). If you are new to Picoult's writing, this would be a good one to start with.

43. Christy by Catherine Marshall
fiction, (c) 1967, 511pp
rating: **** (and that fourth star is mostly for my fond memories)

When I was in high school (I think?), I loved the television series Christy with Tyne Daly and Kellie Martin. My mom told me that it was based on a book and that she had a copy, so I read it and read it again and read it again. I loved that book when I was younger. But unlike some of the other books that captured my imagination when I was young, it didn't make it into my small stack of books that I read over and over again to this very day. I was thinking about it not too long ago when I saw the DVD set for sale on amazon.com, so I found a used copy for a dollar and re-read it - probably 10-12 years after the first time.

Christy is about a nineteen year old girl who leaves Asheville, North Carolina to teach a one-room school house in Cutter Gap, a remote section of the Great Smoky Mountains. Once there, she meets: Miss Alice, a Quaker and a spiritual leader; David, a preacher; Neil MacNeil, a doctor come back to his mountain home; and many school children. These people all make an indelible impression on Christy's life as she comes to grips with reality in the backwoods. And of course, there is a love story which was given a lot more air time in the series than in the book.

I definitely liked this book a lot more when I was younger. Somehow I missed all of the obvious preaching and religious rhetoric. Or maybe I was just less sensitive to it when I was younger. The book is really about Christy's spiritual quest and the way that she makes peace with God and biblical stories and questions about faith make up a substantial part of the writing. i guess when I was younger I was better at ignoring all of that or just seeing it as one aspect of the story. The story itself is still good, but just not quite what I remembered.