Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout

Beautiful book. I don't always like books that win big awards, they tend to be too heavy or artsy and just go right over my head, but this winner of the 2009 Pulitzer is a real gem. Heartwarming, familiar, deep - it's not exactly a page turner and yet I couldn't put it down.

Olive Kitteridge is a 'novel in stories', a collection of 13 stories of a community in Maine. Each is about a different person in the town but Olive Kitteridge appears in all. Through the stories where she's the central character we come to see (and sometimes understand) how she views the world and how she's coping with getting older and the associated changes to her life. Through the other storied, the comments of the townspeople, we have a glimpse of how she looks to others, what others think of her. Often, I'd read about Olive in another person's story and I'd think she was horrible. Then when I read a chapter specifically about her, I suddenly understood and forgave her. If only we had such insight into the souls of those around us!

It made me think about the adjustments that we all need to make as we get older and then old. It made me think of my Grandma for example in a different light. It also made me think of my own future, about the kind of old person I would like to be.

Elizabeth Strout is seriously going onto my list of favorite authors ever. Her writing here was amazing. Actually alive. Beautifully chosen words, yet it didn't read like she was trying too hard. It all described life and people's inner life wonderfully. I really felt like I knew the characters, like I understood the very basis of them. It was a nice feeling.

Have you read anything else by this author?

If you haven't read this, go do so right now, you won't regret it!

Challenges: 2010 Countdown Challenge

Odd Thomas

I'm back! :-) Well, I'm not that happy about my vacation being over, but I have another mini one coming up in a week and a half so it's not too bad. I hope that I can get my blogging motivation back up again too. I'll have more time come September, as I'll be working part-time due to some pregancy related stuff - nothing serious, just annoying.

So, Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas... this was a July read for me, I've just been away from a computer since then. I can't say that I loved it, although I wanted to. I liked Odd, but I wasn't completely engrossed by the story, which is what I expected. Odd can see dead people and this ability helps him solve certain crimes. It also obviously seriously influences the kind of life he leads, not always for the better. But he accepts his destiny and tries to make the best of it. In this particular book, he uses his gift to stop an evil man from committing his planned crimes. It works of course, but not without consequences.

I found the idea for the story better than the story itself, for some reason. The only time that I was remotely excited about the book is at the end, after a twist in the story line that I totally wasn't expecting. That part is still on my mind.

I'm kind of curious about the next book in the series, but I'm not sure it's worth it. What do you think?

Challenges: 1st in a series, Celebrate the Author, Suspense and Thriller Challenge

Ombria in Shadow

Ombria in Shadow was my second book by fantasy author Patricia McKillip and I liked it much more than the first one I read, Winter Rose.

The story takes place in the city of Ombria - a city that is changing into a dark, terrible place after the death of the Prince. The new Prince is only a little boy, after all, and there is a powerful witch who controls him. And she doesn't want what's best for the city at all... Thankfully, in the shadows there exists a whole community of beings who can help return Ombria to what it's supposed to be.

I liked the magical feel to this book, it really was like reading a fairy tale. I also liked the characterisation - I had no trouble believing in their existence and motivations. If you like fantasy, you might want to try this one.

Challenges: 2nds Challenge, 999 Challenge, Once Upon a Time III, Support Your Local Library

The Outsiders

I can't believe that the author, S.E. Hinton, is a girl! Well, a woman by now, but you know what I mean. Wow, am I impressed with this book! My friend Elaine lent it to me because it's one of her favorites. It took me a while to get to it, because I thought I wouldn't really be into the subject - the book is about teenage boys, gang stuff, etc. But wow, The Outsiders goes straight onto my favorites of the year list.

The book is narrated by Ponyboy - that's his real name, it says so on his birth certificate. One of his brothers is called Sodapop. :-) Anyway, Ponyboy is a Greaser - part of a group of underprivileged boys known for greasing their hair back and for being rough and tough. These are the boys no one believes in and who always get accused first when something goes wrong. They are in constant conflict with the Socs - the rich kids. 'Socs' is pronouned 'Soashes', short for 'Socials' - I pronounced it 'socks' all the way through and it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the book.

The story is about so much - growing up, being poor, loving your family and friends, being loyal, class differences, tolerance and so much more. Several things struck me specifically:

Firstly, I loved the scenes where Ponyboy and his two brothers hung out together. The warmth of their feelings for one another practically jumped off the pages. Actually friends were family too, so I felt this warmth a lot. It was a lovely opposite to some of the rough behavior.

Secondly, I loved how Ponyboy realised that rich or poor, everyone has problems. And that it's humanly possible for him to relate to some of the Socs too.

Thirdly, I loved that not everything ended happily. Some characters go over the problems and some didn't. That's life. In fact, the author herself said that she wanted to write something that showed teen life as it was. Nothing realistic existed at that time (1960s).

This would be the place to mention that, probably because of the realism, The Outsiders has been banned and challenged numerous times. Too much violence, the kids smoke and some drink and (can you imagine?) most of them come from broken homes. The fact that this is primarily a book about being a good, tolerant and loving person doesn't seem to help.

I loved Ponyboy, his brothers and their friends. And I'm amazed by this author - she started writing this when she was 15! I am now very curious about her other books, although I can't imagine how she could ever match this.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Banned Book Challenge, Decades Challenge, New Authors, YA Challenge

Out

I'm a few days too late to count Natsuo Kirino's Out for the Japanese Literature Challenge, which means that I didn't finish that one. Oh well, I have so much life stuff going on that I don't get as much reading done as I'd like. More on that some other time.

What a book! I don't usually read crime novels so this was way out of my comfort zone, but I really enjoyed it. I do love Japanese literature though so maybe that was part of it. It was suspenseful and gruesome at times, but it also had odd moments of clarity about human beings.

The story is basically about a group of women who work the night shift at a factory - they're all different but they all have difficult things they have to deal with and escape from. Then, one of them kills her husband. The others decide to help their friend get rid of the body and this unleashes a whole chain of events and gets a whole string of people involved. Mostly people you'd want to stay away from.

It's also a psychological study of the darkness in human beings. How far into the dark would you go? What would be capable of pushing you there? And what happens when you cross that moral line for the first time? I'm not sure I like the answers... I mean I know that we all have a dark side, but I also hope that it never comes to the surface in most of us. Well, in all of us actually, but that's wishful thinking.

The book read like a thriller - parts were even like watching a thriller. My brain kept saying 'no, don't go there, don't do it, nooooo' during some passages. That's got to be a sign of good writing!

There is one thing that I really didn't like at the end, but I don't want to spoil the book for anyone. Let's just say that I'd hope that hatred is easier to hang on to and that giving in to the dark side isn't that obvious.

I'd definitely recommend this one, whether you like Japanese literature or quality crime writing. Apparently Natsuo Kirino won a prize for another of her books, Soft Cheeks. I now see that it hasn't been translated into English (hopefully yet), but others have. More to choose from, yay!

Challenges: 999 Challenge, A-Z Challenge, Countdown Challenge, Genre Challenge, Lost in Translation, Naming Conventions, New Authors, Suspense and Thriller Challenge, Well-Seasoned Reader

On Beauty

I received On Beauty by Zadie Smith from a friend and since I heard lots of people say they loved it, I was really excited to read it. Plus I've been on a quest to find quality books which aren't miserable and I was told that this was such a book - a happy book. For these reasons and some others, I thought I would love it. I wanted to love it. But as sometimes happens when you hear too much hype, I didn't love it. That makes me very sad but there it is.

On Beauty is basically about the Belsey family and a litttle bit about the Kipps family. The two have a feud going, but some members are drawn to each other despite this. First and foremost there's Howard, head of the Belseys. Intellectual, professor at a liberal arts college, going through a midlife crisis, he loves his family but is dissatisfied with his life in general. I suppose he gets to thinking that there must be more. There's his wife Kiki who has to deal with Howard's crisis, as well as the varied crises of their children and her own disappointments. There are the Belsey children who are trying to find their place in the world. The opposing Kipps family is similar, except that their beliefs are right-wing, so very much unwanted in Howard's liberal arts world.

This book is about so many things that it's hard to know where to start. It's about people - regular people who want to achieve something in life, who want to be happy who want others to think of them in a certain way. It's about belonging, that incredible need to feel part of something, but it's also about the need to be an individual and to follow one's own course.

It's about the differences between men and women, in their actions and their reactions. I love this following thought of a male character: "He had not seen her since that afternoon. And with the miracke that is male compartmentalization he had barely thought of her either."

It's about love and how it survives and changes and breaks. Not only about romantic and sexual love, but also about sibling love. Here is a passage that really touched me, the thoughts of Jerome about his sister Zora and his brother Levi:

"Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel - before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been."

On Beauty also has a political edge, a racial aspect. The Belseys are an inter-racial family and one of the Belsey children wants to be only Black. He wants to belong with his 'brothers'. But Howard is white and a professor and he and Kiki (who once said that she gave up everything Black for her husband) built a regular, white middle-class life for their family. Whether this is actually possible or not is also a theme that runs through this book, as is whether we should help 'our' people. This passage really struck me:

"...but this self-hatred. When I look at Condoleeza, and Co-lin - God! I want to be sick - I see this rabid need to separate themselves away from the rest of us - it's like "We got the opportunity and now the quota's full and thank you very much, adios."

I've gone on long enough, but there is more to say! The book is about so much more but I guess you'll have to read it yourself. And I think you should read it - Zadie Smith's amazingly original use of language warrants it. I didn't enjoy it as much as I wanted to for many reasons - the main one is probably that I really wanted a happy book and this was recommended to me as such. It's Certainly not a happy book - all the characters are dissatisfied with their lives and are struggling to find/accept their place in the world.

Challenges: A-Z Challenge, 999 Challenge, Countdown Challenge, New Authors

Read-A-Thon - Hour 1

Title of book(s) read since last update: One True Thing by Anna Quindlen

Number of books read since you started: 1

Pages read since last update: 61

Running total of pages read since you started: 61

Amount of time spent reading since last update: 40 minutes

Running total of time spent reading since you started: (keep track of this one to be eligible for a prize!) 40 minutes

Mini-challenges completed: 0

Other participants you’ve visited: 0

Prize you’ve won: 0

I finished Anna Quindlen's One True Thing - a beautiful story about a mother-daughter relationship. The mother is diagnosed with cancer and the daughter moves back home to take care of her - and is later accused of her murder. It's about getting to know your mother as a person in their own right and about how that reflects on how you know yourself. Beautifully written. I loved all the characters, inlcuding the minor ones; my favorites were Teresa the nurse and Mrs. Forburg the English teacher. I did have to try not to cry whenever I read it in public, but it was worth the minor embarassment. I recommend it and am curious about other Anna Quindlen books.

Now for the read-a-thon intro questions. If you haven's seen them go visit Dewey.

Where are you reading from today?
My apartment in sunny Brussels, Belgium.

3 facts about me

I'm a singer and actress in my spare time, I'm Polish and I just bought a beautiful house with my partner Joe

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours?

14, but I'm no good at making decisions about books. I'm very well aware that reading all 14 is impossible.

Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)?

No really... I do want to update every hour and I do want to get some sleep tonight so I already know I won't do the whole 24 hours!

If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, Any advice for people doing this for the first time?

It's my first time so I'm only accepting advice! :-)

Oranges are not the only fruit

I like the way Jeanette Winterson thinks. I don't always do this, but I actually read the introduction she wrote to this book and found that she had switched publishers at some point because her first one was bought by a media giant. This alone earned her a lot of points!

And the book... well, it won the Whitbread Award for a First Novel in 1985 (the list of recipients is impressive) and I can certainly see why. I can't quite believe that this was Jeanette Winterson's first novel!

It tells the story of a girl named Jeanette, who is adopted by a devoutly Christian family and told that she is destined to be a missionary in Africa or some other 'heathen' place. She has a girlhood of bible quizes, religious retreats and church events and she really believes in all of it - she doesn't even falter when she goes to school and sees that she is different from the other children. Until what she believes in doesn't come through for her. Jeanette develops a relationship with another girl - and the consequences of this reveal the truth about the God-obssessed people she grew up with.

This is a book about growing up, about understanding yourself and about religious fanaticism. But it's also more than that - it's a beatifully written story, full of symbolism and myth, and it really makes you think about life and people's attitudes towards each other.

It's also full of great thoughts - one that compelled me to find a notebook and write it down is:

"Of course people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things, so there's no need to take it personally."

I can't pretend to have understood all the references in this book, I don't really know much about Christian religion, but I certainly got a lot out of the social commentary it includes. And wow, the beautifully crafted phrasing of certain thoughts and ideas... definitely worth reading!

And I have to add that this is the first book I can cross off my A-Z Challenge list for 2008!