The Surrendered by Chang-rae Lee

A few months ago I went looking for a new book via my library's website.  They listed some top reads by category and I thought a book from their Asian section could be interesting.  I looked at the descriptions of several books and The Surrendered caught my eye the most.  Here is the description that the library gave:


This spellbinding story of an orphaned girl, a young GI, and a missionary whose lives collide at a Korean orphanage weaves a profound meditation on heroism, sacrifice, and love, and possibilities for mercy, salvation, and surrendering self to others.


I'll start with the story: I liked it.  I was really interested to see who the characters were, where they came from, and how they got to where they were.  It was hard to follow at first.  It opens up with the main character, June, on top of a train with her two siblings.  Then there is a flashback, then the story progresses, then another flashback, then we go to another character and they have flashbacks, then their story progresses, then you see how the first two characters are intertwined, etc, etc, etc.  If I put the book down for too long (which happened once or twice, it is several hundred pages long - like over 800) I couldn't immediately remember whose story I was reading so I'd have to go back a few pages to catch up.

I was pretty annoyed with all the moving around at first but once I got into it there was allusion to a certain event and I got to the point were I was seeing what led up to the event and what happened after the event and I got pretty anxious to know what the event actually was.  Turns out this event was the climax and once I got there I was glad that I already knew what happened after the event because if everything had been chronological, the last half of the book would have been a bit boring.

Side note: books like this make me wish that literature came with a warning label or a rating systems like movies.  There is a lot of sex in this book.  Honestly, if I had known how much sex was in the story, I probably wouldn't have chosen to read it.  Sometimes a steamy scene can be interesting and add to the story but there was just so much that it got to the point were I was thinking "Ok, I get it, they're getting it on.  Can we move on already!"  Anyway, just be aware of that if you decide to read The Surrendered.

Overall, I enjoyed the book.  It was a little long, a little difficult to figure out the flashbacks, and had a little too much sex but pretty good.

Peak by Roland Smith

While rifling through a box of books I still need to unpack, I found Peak, a book I think I acquired for free at one of my literature classes at BYU. I honestly don't remember it at all. But for whatever reason it appealed to me (I think it's because of the oncoming winter weather).

The book details the experience of a teenage boy who climbs Everest. The back of the book says:

When fourteen-year-old Peak Marcello's long-lost father presents the opportunity for them to summit Everest together, Peak doesn't even consider saying no--even though he suspects there are a few strings attached. And if he makes it to the top before his birthday, he'll be the youngest person ever to stand above 29,000 feet. It's not a bad turn of events for a guy who's been stuck in New York City with only skyscrapers to (illegally) scale.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this book. The characters are well-rounded and interesting--enough so that when the action slows to a near stand-still I was still enjoying what I was reading. The mountain climbing aspect of the book was also very intriguing. I am not a mountain climber and have no aspirations to become one, but the descriptions of the climbing experience were so detailed that I assumed the author must be a real climber. (After googling and perusing his website, I am still unsure.)

Peak was chosen as an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Adult Readers (among several awards), and I can see that this book could really appeal to teens who are interested in outdoor activities.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for an interesting, feel-good, quick read.

The Orphan Sister by Gwendolen Gross

The Orphan Sister is not what I expected. The back of the books says,

Clementine Lord is not an orphan. She just feels like one sometimes. One of triplets, a quirk of nature left her the odd one out. Odette and Olivia are identical; Clementine is a singleton. Biologically speaking, she came from her own egg. Practically speaking, she never quite left it.

Then Clementine’s father – a pediatric neurologist who is an expert on children’s brains, but clueless when it comes to his own daughters – disappears and his choices both past and present, force the family dynamics to change at last. As the three sisters struggle to make sense of it, their mother must emerge from the greenhouse and leave the flowers that have long been the focus of her warmth and nurturing.

For Clementine, the next step means retracing the winding route that led her to this very moment: to understand her father’s betrayal, the tragedy of her first lost love, her family’s divisions, and her best friend Eli’s sudden romantic interest. Most of all, she may finally have found the voice with which to shape the inside story of being the odd sister out.

So after reading the back, I imagined the story starting out with the birth of the triplets and then going into their childhood, showing Clementine’s struggle as the odd sister out. I figured the story would climax with the disappearance of their father, probably somewhere around their teenage years when Clementine discovers what she needs to about herself. I was very wrong.

The story starts out with Clementine in her late twenties and her dad had just disappeared. It continues from this point with Clementine constantly flashing back to her past. Her father returns (before reading the book, I didn’t think that he was going to return, another instance where I was wrong) and must face the family with why he left without telling them where he was going. Only at the very end does the family figure out how to live without Dr. Lord and only some have come to terms with why he disappeared.

I’m not sure that I would recommend this book. There is some bad language, although I can understand why it is used, and Clementine is often bringing up sex, in her past and in the present. The story of triplets where 2 are identical and one is not is an interesting concept. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more without my preconceived ideas. If you’re interested give it a try.

Deerskin by Robin McKinley

I have enjoyed many of Robin McKinley’s children’s novels, so I got on amazon.com to find more of her books to read.

Deerskin is NOT a children’s novel. The story starts off just like any good fairytale talking about how the king married the most beautiful woman in 7 kingdoms and how they were so happy together until the queen dies and the king is filled with an uncontrollable grief. Before her death, the queen makes her love promise to only marry again if he can find a woman that is more beautiful than she ever was and the queen also has a portrait made to remind the king of her beauty.

Honestly, the first part of the novel made me think that this was going to be like a Snow White type of story. In a way, it is, but it’s not a wicked stepmother that drives the daughter away. The king brutally rapes his own daughter (I guess because she grew up to be as beautiful as her mother), and the rest of the book is how the princess (Deerskin as she later calls herself) recovers from such a brutal and utterly wrong experience.

I was somewhat disturbed with what happened in this story. I still like Robin McKinley as an author, but I think I’ll be a little more careful with her future books.

The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen

I was playing around on amazon.com when this book was recommended because of other purchases that I had made.

I enjoyed reading The False Prince. I did find it a little predictable, but that is probably because a 30 year old adult is not the intended audience. This book is probably for a 5^th grader or higher.

It is the story of an orphan boy who is chosen, against his will, to be trained to impersonate a prince. The actual prince was lost at sea and presumed dead, but when the entire royal family is murdered, one man tries to gain control of the throne by bringing back the “lost” prince.

I really liked this book. It was a refreshing read. It is also the first book in a series and I look forward to reading the others.

Howards End by E. M. Forester

This is one I picked up at the library.  The back of the book says:


What makes this masterpiece a pure delight for contemporary readers is its vibrant portrait of life in Edwardian England, and the wonderful characters who inhabit the charming old country house in Hertfordshire called Howards End. This cozy house becomes the object of an inheritance dispute between the upright conservative Wilcox family and the Schlegel sisters, Margaret and Helen, sensitive and intuitive women loved by men willing to leap wide social barriers to fulfill their ardor.  Through romantic entanglements, disappearing wills, and sudden tragedy, the conflict over the house emerges as a symbolic struggle for England's future.  Rich with the tradition, spirit, and wit distinctively English, Howards End is a remarkable novel of rare insight and understanding. As in his celebrated A Passage to India, E. M. Forster brings to vivid life a country and an era through the destinies of his unforgettable characters.


Sounds interesting.  After reading the back of the book I expected there to be a lot of drama surrounding Howards End throughout the whole book.  The truth: there isn't much of an inheritance dispute, there aren't very many social barriers for the Schlegel sisters and they weren't really loved by very many men, the "will" that "disappeared" had no legal bearing so it wasn't really a will at all and because of that truth there isn't really any conflict over the house to create any symbolism anyway.

The back of the book makes Howards End seem a lot more dramatic that it really was.  In fact, most of the drama is created by Margaret and Helen anyway and even then it is mostly in their heads - as drama in the lives of rich, female, bored characters from Edwardian England usually is.  Don't get me wrong, there is some drama, even some juicy drama, but overall it is a pretty tame story.

One thing that really bothered me was the wordiness.  There were a few places were E. M. Forster seemed to use the same sentence three or so times in a row but just rewrote them - like he needed is book to be a certain number of words for a homework assignment.

It also felt like the author was trying too hard to create a female character that wasn't typical.  He seemed to try to make Margaret a progressive thinker but really, to me, she came off as being confusing.  She'd go on and on about her ideals but they really didn't make any sense making her feel less like a progressive thinker and more like a dumb woman who was trying to pretend to be a progressive thinker.

I know I haven't said a lot of good things about Howards End so far but I did think it was worth a read.  After getting past the wordiness and Margaret being confusing, the story line was solid and interesting with a few unexpected twists and few more expected twists.  If you like reading stories from this era of England then you'd probably enjoy it.

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

I read The Lovely Bones. It took me well over a month to finish it - not because it was long but because every time I picked it up, I never felt like I had to keep reading.

That sounds like a negative but in this case it really wasn't a bad thing. It was nice to be able to read a book for just a few hours once a week and never feel like when I picked it up again I might be lost or I might have forgotten what had happened since the last time I read.

The back of the book reads:

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

With the above description I figured it would be some kind of murder mystery type book but we find out who killed Susie on the second page. That's when I thought that maybe it isn't a mystery to the reader but it will be a murder mystery to the characters in the book who are still living. It wasn't that either. The whole book is written from Susie's point of view - which was a little different (in a good way) considering she was dead the whole time - and was basically just Susie watching the lives of her family and friends from heaven.

You'd think that a big climax of the book would be the fate of her murdering, but it was really anti-climatic, just a little blurb toward the end - it was written in a way that made it hardly seem important. Any maybe, given everything else that happens, it wasn't important - I still thought it was strange that so little emphasis was put on it when a good chunk of the beginning and middle of the book focuses on the murderer.

The back of the book also indicates that the story might contain some humor, but to be honest, I don't recall thinking anything in the story was funny at all. It is actually a quite disturbing story at times and it was on the sixth or seventh page when I went "Oh, that's why the movie was rated R."

Overall I'd say The Lovely Bones was good. Not great, but good.

Midnight in Austenland by Shannon Hale

            What Jane Austen fan wouldn’t want to spend a few days or longer vacationing in that era of romance and intrigue?

            If you enjoyed Shannon Hale’s first book, Austenland, you are sure to enjoy this one as well. Some of the Austenland characters are the same: Mrs. Wattlesbrook, Captain Andrews, Miss Charming, and Sir John. There are also many new characters to add twists and turns to the plot, including the new heroine, Mrs. Cordial.

            This time Pembrook Park is stuck in the midst of a murder mystery: 21 nuns mysteriously drop dead with no marks on their bodies and a dead body is found in a secret room. Are these murders real, or are they a part of the Austenland experience. Charlotte Cordial must find the truth.

            Shannon Hale does a really good job on this Austenland sequel. The story doesn’t really have the feel of a sequel and the reader need not read the first Austenland to enjoy the second.

between shades of gray by Ruta Sepetys

This book is about the Lithuanian deportation to Siberia by the Soviets during WWII. Although this book is a book of fiction, it is based on the stories of many survivors of these deportations.

            I remember learning about WWII in high school, but it was from the American point of view. We learned that Hitler and the Japanese were the bad guys in the war. I don’t remember learning much about the Soviets. They fought against Hitler, so they must have been good, right. Actually they were not. I’ve learned from reading this book and others about WWII and other wars, that there are really no set good guys and bad guys. There are good and bad people on both sides of any war.

            This book was a real eye opener. Stalin was just as bad as Hitler in many ways. He conquered the Baltic countries: Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Within these countries he deported many of the educated people because they could teach others and spread ideas that would be considered anti-Soviet. These individuals went through many of the same hardships and torture as the Jews did under Hitler’s regime.

            between shades of gray is a well written book that shows the cruelty of war, the will to survive, and the generosity of those that tried to help the deportees.

            If you can not handle the graphic telling of what happens during war, then this book is not for you. If you are interested in learning a little more about what some people went through during the horrors of WWII, then give this book a try. It is an easy read, there were places where it was very difficult to put the book down.

Additional Review:  After reading Jennifer's review I decided that I really wanted to read this book.

If I didn't know any better, I would have thought this book was about how Nazi's treated Jews because the parallels were right on.  I always new Stalin was a bad guy (even though Russia and the US were technically allies in WW2) and I knew that he treated people like crap and had even heard that he was responsible for more deaths than Hitler but I didn't realize that the treatment of the people who died (and survived) was so similar.

I'm a big fan of WW2 survival stories.  There can be a lot of gruesome stuff in these books but there is usually one underlying message in all of them: people in need help other people in need.  After some background information is one of my favorite excerpts from between shades of gray: 

A little background, these people were living in the arctic circle during the winter (the sun didn't rise for months) with absolutely nothing.  The narrator and a friend found a dead owl and determined to take it back to their living space (their "jurta" made out of sticks and mud) to cook it (on a stolen stove) and eat it.  The owl was too big for the narrator to hide under her coat (had to be hidden because it would have been taken away had the Soviet army seen her with it).


"People I didn't know formed a circle around me, sheltering me from view. They escorted me safely back to our jurta, undetected. They didn't ask for anything. They were happy to help someone, to succeed at something, even if they weren't to benefit. We'd been trying to touch the sky from the bottom of the ocean.  I realized that if we boosted one another, maybe we'd get a little closer."


I think it is really telling that a group of starving people would help one person hide food.  They could have demanded that she share it with them.  They could have turned her in out of spite or jealousy.  They didn't.  They helped her for the sake of helping, for the sake of having a cause - something to live for.

between shades of gray was an excellent book and an easy read; I think I finished the first 50 chapters in one sitting.  I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to anyone who can handle the more disturbing aspects of war.

Andrea

Reviving Ophelia by Mary Pipher, Ph.D.

The full title of this book is Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls. To begin with, this book has nothing to do with the Ophelia from Shakespeare's play Hamlet, so don't start reading thinking that it is.

Dr. Mary Pipher is a clinical psychologist who has worked with girls for decades. In this book, she seeks to answer the following question as stated on the back of the book: "Why are more American adolescent girls prey to depression, eating disorders, addictions, and suicide attempts than ever before?"


So does she give an answer? Yes and no. Frankly, by the time I was done reading this book, I was not left with much hope. But at the same time I was glad I had read it.

The bulk of the book consists of Dr. Pipher relating stories from some of her patients and other girls she has interviewed. And some of these stories are horrifying. These girls' experiences include dieting, suicide, sexual harassment, rape, and dealing with a variety of family issues, such as divorce, adoption, and abandonment. These stories are written as told by the girls and are brutally honest at times. Be prepared to have your heart broken for them--repeatedly. There are a couple girls' stories in which the girls are confident, high-functioning young women who know who they are and who are not dealing with severe issues, but this is only a couple stories--like 2 out of 25.

The rest of the book consists of Dr. Pipher discussing the various aspects of our society that can negatively affect the girls and young women of today. And this is where the yes and no of answering her original question comes in.

Yes, she answers her original question in that she offers some advice on how to prepare our girls. The main thing I took from the book is that we need to discuss how our society portrays women with our girls. When we see women in advertisements, commercials, movies, and books, we need to talk to our girls about whether or not these portrayals are realistic and good. We need to open up discussions to help our girls actively decide what kind of women they want to become.

No, she does not answer her original question in that she can not offer any hard and fast solution. Each girl grows up in a unique situation and her challenges can not be predicted or always prevented.

Don't I wish we could prevent these bad things from happening to our girls!

As a woman who hopes to one day be the mother of girls, I am glad I read this book. However depressing the book was at times, I think it gave me some good insights into how I can be a better mother to daughters.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

I just finished reading Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman.  Here's what the back of the book had to say:

Twelve-year-old CeeCee is in trouble.  For years, she's taken care of her mother, Camille, the town's tiara-wearing, lipstick-smeared laughingstock, a woman who is trapped in her long-ago moment of glory as the 1951 Vidalia Onion Queen.  When tragedy strikes, Tootie Caldwell, CeeCee's long-lost great-aunt, comes to the rescue and whisks her away to Savannah.  There, CeeCee is catapulted into a perfumed world of prosperity and Southern eccentricity--one that appears to be run entirely by strong, wacky women.  Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Saving CeeCee Honeycutt charts the journey of an unforgettale grils who loses one mother, but finds many others in the storybook city of Savannah.

I'm going to start with: overall, this book was good.  It wasn't great, but it was good.  I was able to set it down and forget about it for several days at a time so it isn't what I would consider very engaging.  But when I did sit down and read it, I enjoyed it.

It is a nice story about a girl who grows up with a hard life, experiences and tragedy, and takes a whole summer to get over said tragedy.  She's not exactly in a depressed state the whole summer because it takes that whole time for her to come to terms with her relationship with her mother and what happened to send her to Savannah.

The back of the book mentions that the town seems "to be run entirely by strong, wacky women" and that is definitely noticable in the story.  There might be four or five men in the story mentioned by name.  Most of the women are widows (one because her husband killed himself because she was so annoying), women who left their overbearing husbands, or women who were left by their no-good husbands.  The story isn't trying to put men down or anything, I just think it is strange that there aren't any strong men mention in the story.  Maybe Beth Hoffman just didn't know how to create male characters - this was her first novel - so she created a story that didn't need them.

On the back cover and the first few pages of the book there is tons of praise for the story but, personally, I think it is all a little over-rated.  One person said "I barely stopped laughing. . . " but I only laughed out loud a few times.  Another person said "I would not be surprised if [this book] becomes an American classic" which I think is a little extreme.

However, a lot of descriptions were thrown around that I do agree with: charming, sweet, delightful.  It was a good, easy read.  If you have some time on your hands, go ahead and read it.  If you are pressed for time, there are better books out there.

The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy

I'm not sure why but this book caught my eye in Costco while my husband was trying to nonchalantly look at video games. I guess I liked the idea of where a fairy tale story could have really come from. So I picked up the book and read the description on the back:


In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel". They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called "witch" by the nearby villagers. Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children.

A haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children, and tells a resonant, riveting story.


Sounded interesting to me. The book started out interesting then had a slow patch. The beginning definitely wasn't a book that I couldn't put down. However, just over halfway through I got really into it and did have a hard time putting it down. It has everything you expect from a Hansel and Gretel story (Hansel, Gretel, a stepmother, bread crumbs, a witch, and ovens) plus everything you'd expect from a World War II Story. In case you don't read a lot of WWII stories, that means that there are scenes in the book that are very (I really mean very) disturbing. If you can't handle the more disturbing aspects of WWII, then don't read this book.

That said, it was a very interesting book and I quite enjoyed it. I'd like to share one of my favorite quotes. It takes place in the forest. There are a group of 'partisans' doing their best to fight the Nazi's out of Poland; they are a mixed group of Polish, Russian, Christian, and Jew. One member of the group was saying that he no longer believes in God because of everything that is happening. Another member of the group says,


God didn't come down and kill us. I don't see God shooting children and priests. None of us met God beating up Jews and shoving them into railroad cars. This is men doing the murdering. Talk to men about their evil, kill the evil men, but pray to God. You can't expect God to come down and do our living for us. We have to do that ourselves.


I thought there were a couple of great lessons in just that one paragraph.

1. Men make their own decisions, God doesn't make decisions for them.
2. God will help us out but he can't do our living for us.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who like realistic(ish) fairy tails and thinks they can handle those more disturbing scenes.

You're Getting a Baby Sister!

This board book, written by Sheila Sweeny Higginson and illustrated by Sam Williams, was a big hit with my 18 month-old son and me.

Why did I like it? This book not only talked about how cute and fun baby sisters can be, it also talked about how horrible they can be—they drool, smell, scream, pull hair, break toys, steal your mom and dad time. What jerks! But when a kid is getting a baby sibling, what good does sugarcoating it actually do? So this approach made a lot of sense to me. But the book doesn’t leave it at that. It goes on to explain why baby sisters are that way—they just don’t know better. So true. And then the book takes it one step further and tells kids how fun it can be to teach your baby sister all that you know.

It’s a great book. Informative on both the good and bad points of having a baby sister, and it leaves the reader with an overall, positive message.

I do, however, have one thing about this book that I didn’t like. When explaining that baby sisters don’t know better, the book says, “she’s not smart yet like you.” And I disagree. Babies are incredibly smart. Not knowing something doesn’t make a person or child not smart. I know, I know, it’s a small matter of word choice, and I am being nit-picky. But if “she’s not smart” does that make her stupid? Anyway, that phrase rubbed me wrong when I read it, but if I were in the market for a book about getting a baby sister (I borrowed this one from the library), that phrase wouldn’t stop me from buying this book for myself or someone else.

Now, why did my son like this book? Maybe it was the colorful pictures, maybe it was the fun rhyming, I don’t know. But an entire week after having returned this book to the library, he is still asking to read it. “Baby sister? Baby sister!” It’s pretty cute.

There is also a book by the same author and illustrator called, You're Getting a Baby Brother!

PS: My mom came over and was reading books with my son. He gave her this book to read, and she read it to him. Afterward, she came up to me, book in hand, and said, “You’re pregnant! This is how you’re telling me!” No. One day, but not today.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I had heard from a lot of people that The Hunger Games trilogy was a good read, so I finally got around to reading the first book. I started reading Friday night. I was done, in tears, Sunday night.

To say The Hunger Games was good would be absolutely true, yet slightly misleading. I found it horrifying and was slightly traumatized by the end. But I LOVED the book.

Here is one brief synopsis from the official website: Set in a dark vision of the near future, a terrifying reality TV show is taking place. Twelve boys and twelve girls are forced to appear in a live event called The Hunger Games. There is only one rule: kill or be killed. When sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen steps forward to take her younger sister's place in the games, she sees it as a death sentence. But Katniss has been close to death before. For her, survival is second nature.

The book takes a dramatic look at the effects of violence on adolescents, and while it is in the extreme (I had to keep reminding myself throughout the book that the society I was reading about was not my society), it raises some interesting questions. The book also begins an examination of politics (again not our politics, but the principles there are true). While the book looks at some pretty serious issues, it is not didactic. The author, Suzanne Collins, perfectly blends an intense narrative with these serious issues.

And while I say I found The Hunger Games horrifying, amid the horror is a delightful mix of humor and wit that balances out the tragedy. All-in-all I’d say this book is practically perfect in every way. If you can only read one book this year, read The Hunger Games.