Sunday, April 20, 2008

Darfur Diaries

The concept of this book was interesting enough; three people go on a mission to Darfur to make a documentary about the lives of the people who live there. I have to say, I didn't even finish this book. I had such high hopes! But I found the book very biased and honestly a bit boring. I think I would find the actual documentary much more interesting. These three had a lot of guts to sneak into the area, but I found they were a bit arrogant about the whole thing. Like, what they were doing was so great and wonderful. They could have died. There is a reason that people don't go there, and people are being forced to leave. Don't get me wrong, the stories of the people they met were indeed fascinating. I think actually seeing these people on camera might be a lot more powerful than their stories told through than these authors. But, I just didn't like the writing style of the book. That being said, I did enjoy the history aspect of the book. I admit, I hardly knew where Darfur was when I started reading this, so I found all of the historical, political and geographical information very useful.

Sunday, April 13, 2008

Special Topics in Calamity Physics

This book took me ages to read! I couldn't believe it.. but I dug it. Yes, I found it overly wordy. (As I would assume almost everyone who reads this would). I found myself skipping whole pages trying to get to the actual storyline or plot. I did like all the references to the many different books, but at times it did get a bit old.

Throughout the book I found Blue's relationship with her father very strange. I I couldn't really figure out where it was going, of course until the end. Even then, I could have done without some of it. I realized in the end that it was all basically a long drawn out mystery, that honestly, I didn't see coming. All the references throughout the book I thought were strange, but assumed it was all part of her writing style. I realized it was more than that. Almost a set up. I don't read mysterys much and I am not even sure if I would consider this a mystery, but I really liked it.