Monday, October 22, 2007

Grayson

Since I left A Thousand Splendid Suns at my boyfriends house and I didn't feel like going to get it, I had to read something else this weekend

I just finished Grayson by Lynne Cox. This was a super quick read. Though, I am unsure how I feel about this book. The story was very interesting, though I felt like it may have been a bit exaggerated. It's hard to say. Cox wrote this book many years after the actual event happened. Because of this, I feel it may have been overly done in story form. And that being said, how could she possibly be remember so much about what happened in just a short three hours?

No matter, the story itself is incredible. Cox has a way with words that really make you feel like you a right there in the water, with her and the whale. What an experience it must have been. I have never been a swimmer, so I really have no clue how she was able to stay in the water and swim that long with the whale. I can't even imagine. But I guess that is what she was training to do....

Despite a tad of arrogance, the book was a very touching portrait of man and how it can interact with wild animals

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Falling Man

I tried with this book. I really did. I couldn't finish. I just didn't care anymore. For one, the use of pronouns in this book drove me crazy! Half the time I just spent trying to figure out which He or She DeLillo was referring to. The basic story line was okay. A family intertwined after the events of 9/11. The story line was a bit hard to follow at times. A couple brought back together, a couple torn apart. A child scared and making up ideas of what actually happened, or not believing what actually happened. In the end, I just gave up. I didn't care about the characters anymore. I liked Windows on the World or Extremely Loud and Incredibly close much more.

Next up:

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Monday, October 8, 2007

Desert Dawn

I just finished Desert Dawn by Waris Dirie

What a beautiful, touching story. I work with Somali refugees on a daily basis, so I found this story particularly interesting. I was able to connect with a lot of the traditions and ways of thinking in this book after working with my students. I was able to pick out some of the Somali words in the story and apply it back to my work. Some of the words I even recognized.

Living in an area with a high population of African immigrants, the information about the drug Khat was useful, because I learned not only is an issue in Somalia, but it is becoming an issue here in our city with all of the refugees.

This book was very powerful. Her traveling experiences were incredible. I can't imagine trying to get half way across the world to try and find my mother and family in such a war-torn country and not even knowing if I would be allowed to enter the country, yet safely. I am looking forward to reading Dirie's previous book about how she was able to escape Somalia and become a U.N. Ambassador as well as a super model. It sounds fascinating. Her work against Female Genital Mutilation is also to be commended, though I wish there would have been more about this in the story.

The writing in this book was decent, but not perfect. It was obvious that Dirie is not a native English speaker, but that was part of the charm of the book for me.


For those of you wondering, I tried to finish Rumspringa -- but got bored. It was just so repititve. I also started House of Leaves -- but got totally lost about 70 pages into. I tried to follow what was happening... but no luck. Maybe I will try again later.

Next up: Falling Man by Don DeLillo.