January Reading

In an effort to blog more (I know, first post of the year), I thought I would try writing about the books I've read each month.  While the January post is a little late, my reading was right on time this month!  I finished five books (of my seven reading categories) and started the two books for the other categories, which are allotted two months to read.

In summary, all of these five books were enjoyable.  I would highly recommend all but one to any reader.  The other one, Pillars of the Earth, might be right for a certain audience.  I will explain below why this was the most disappointing of the books I've read thus far in 2013.


Dead End in Norvelt

The 2012 Newbery Award winner.  My mother gives Jacinda and I a copy of the most recent winner for Christmas each year, and it is usually my January Children/Young Adult reading selection.  The past few years have all been great reads (there was a stretch of quite boring winners so the reversal has been welcome) and I was glad to see the streak continue with this book.  The setting is Norvelt, a tiny New Deal resettlement town, which is in decline post WWII as the "original residents" are dying off and their descendants are moving away.    The narrator is the young boy Jack, who spends most of his summer vacation grounded for simultaneously disobeying his mother and obeying his father (a tractor and his father's Japanese WWII rifle are involved).  His only escape comes from impromptu work as assistant to Miss Volker, his feisty next-door neighbor, an original resident herself and the town's medical examiner/historian.  As each of the original residents die, the duo writes the obituary along with what Miss Volker determines to be important American history which children are not being taught in school.  When some interesting new residents come to town just as the original residents start dying at a rapid pace, a mystery is afoot.

Along with an exposure to a new view of American history (myself I had never heard of these resettlement towns; there were close to 100 of them and were a pet project of Eleanor Roosevelt), this book is laugh out loud funny!           


The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Book Club selection for January. A nonfiction book about how cancer cells taken from an African American woman in the '50s transformed the cell research world.  With the true story suppressed for decades, her family (and the world) finally learn the truth about what happened to the mother they lost, through the help of this author who spent more than a decade uncovering the facts.  A fascinating read, the author makes understanding science and research field easy for laymen, like most of us.   This case made a huge impact not only in the realm of research practices but the privacy laws which have come about since then.




Kisses From Katie

This was actually the book club selection for December, but since I was unable to read it then and it is a devotional type book, I decided to make it my January devotional/spiritual selection.   Although it was published a couple years ago, it seems to be gaining a lot of attention right now; or maybe I'm just paying attention more now that I've heard about it :)

An inspirational read as Katie, in her early twenties, dictates the path that led her to forgo college, move to Uganda and start a non-profit providing food and schooling, and adopt a number of the young girls.  I especially enjoyed how she reinforced that although her path was moving halfway around the world, God has a way to use each of us, although they will not look the same for us all.


Outliers

Nonfiction selection.  I had previously read  Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, and selected this one to enjoy more of his interesting writing.  I am not sure if there is an official genre for his typical topics, but I would describe it as social + statistical nonfiction.  Which probably sounds a little boring, but it is really fascinating.  The subtitle for this is The Story of Success and in it, he is evaluating the different reasons some good people have become great.  He talks about how a person's birth month can help or hurt them in certain sports and musical careers.  He compares why Bill Gates was able to become such a success, while the man with the highest recorded IQ was not.  And on a more "everyday people" level, he presents findings of how social differences can effect educational benefits (the reasons aren't what you might expect) and true to the book's title, presents people who were able to "overcome" what might be seen as educational disadvantages. I'm a lover of nonfiction, but I think anyone would enjoy this one.  And as nonfiction goes, it is a relatively short read as well.




Pillars of the Earth
Fiction selection.  In comparison to the last point about the above book, this one is not short...at all.  The total page count sans appendix slides in just under 1000 pages.  Along with being thick, it is just a big book in all dimensions, so lots of words.  And about 600 pages in, I would have been ready to convince you all to overlook the book's vastness, that you would not even notice its length because of how swift moving was the story; I read those first 600 pages over just one weekend.  However, somewhere after this point in the book is where my opinion drastically changed and I would now say you would be much better off to read the equally long, but much, much better Les Miserables. (Okay, I will admit I would have said that regardless, since it is one of my favorite books.)

Prior to reading it, I understood the premise of the book was a fictional history of the building of Europe's great cathedrals in the middle ages.  A little while into the book, I discovered it was really about the building of one great cathedral in the 12th century.  Always interesting in any architectural type reading, this was fine with me and I was very interested in the details of how the cathedral was to be built.  With a book of this length, it was not surprising that there was a lot of set up before we reach the point of any building occurring.  The backgrounds of the prior (head monk in an abbot), the master builder, and prominent landowners were discussed in length.  Very interesting viewing the 12th century through the varying lenses.

However, just over halfway through the book there was a major shift in focus characters, even setting, and the book went off in an unnecessary tangent (in my opinion).  I'm sure this could be described as character development, the problem was they were developing characters I didn't really care for, while ignoring those characters who had been the focus and steering too far away from the building of the cathedral (the part I in which was really interested).  This is where the book began to feel long for me, and I was mostly finishing it because I had already invested so much into the lengthy novel.

I'm sure those who love this book (I've been told there are a lot of people who do) will be disappointed in my perspective.  I will admit the book is very well written, and some parts were quite fascinating.  I do think my expectations were chiefly the problem, as the cathedral seemed to take a further backseat in the story than I would have liked.


Since this post is so late, I will confess February reading was not as successful, but I will try to post about the few books I was able to read.