Baking Cakes in Kigali by Gaile Parkin (O.T. #7 of 10)

Angel Tungaraza and her husband moved from Tanzania to Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, a few years after the end of the genocide. Angel has a talent for making cakes, and not just ordinary cakes either. Angel has to know enough about the person the cake is for to make it special whether that means making a cake in the shape of a cell phone or a 3-d airplane. And while each of these cakes celebrate something, each person who orders one has had incredible pain in his or her life. Angel's customers have lost family members to AIDS and the genocide. They are relief workers and prostitutes. But Angel's compassion and goodwill touches each of them as her life has also been filled with sorrow and with joy.

I loved this book. Loved it. Angel's voice is beautiful. She wants to be a good mother and grandmother and sometimes just doesn't know how. She loves her husband but sometimes doesn't know how to talk to him. She is so aware of those around her and always wants to give but sometimes struggles with the decisions she makes.

I have never read a book about Rwanda or the horrors that existed for so long in that country. This book touches on those difficult subjects in a way that allowed me to feel more than sorrow for such huge losses both from AIDS and all out slaughter - Baking Cakes is about people, about individuals and how they survived so much suffering. I will be coming back to this book again I think.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth-Grahame Smith

I honestly can't think about this book without cracking up. Who is this guy?! Seriously. Seth Grahame-Smith who "once took a class in English literature" has given Jane Austen's classic romance a bit of a twist. Just a bit. You really have to have read the original to appreciate this enhanced version. For example, in the very beginning of the story as Mr. and Mrs. Bennett are talking about their daughters,

"Consider your daughters!"
"I am considering them you silly woman! I would much prefer their minds be engaged in the deadly arts than clouded with dreams of marriage and fortune as your own so clearly is! Go and see this Bingley if you must, though I warn you that none of our girls has much to reccommend them; they area all silly and ignorant like their mother, the exception being Lizzy who has something more of the killer instinct than her sisters."

It is the classic story of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr. Darcy. And there are lots of zombies thrown in too - called by many awesome names, "unmentionables, the undead, and dreadfuls There are also and "the stricken, "humans who have caught a sickness that will make them zombies, before they actually die. Regular zombies apparently just crawl out of their graves. The Bennett girls were trained in China in the "deadly arts" and Lady Catherine de Burgh has vanquished more unmentionables than any other woman in England.

Much of the text is lifted right from Pride and Prejudice. There are some hideously gory descriptions, so much so that they aren't even gross! I'm sorry, I think this book is hilarious. A great laugh. I am absolutely sure this isn't for everyone, but I laughed out loud, a lot.

O Pioneers

I found out a few days ago that my new book club was reading this book and having a discussion on Thursday. I managed to wrangle a library card from my new library and found quite the oldish large printish copy they carried. But it worked. I sat down and read it in a few hours. I quite liked My Antonia so reading another by Willa Cather was a fine prospect.

Alexandra was a strong woman. She was a strong teenager. The story is set on the prairie, a hard Nebraska prairie that has not yet become profitable to many farmers. Alexandra's parents, Swedish immigrants, are barely scraping by, and that was before her father became ill. Being the most level-headed and business minded of her father's children (Alexandra had two older brothers and a younger brother) she was trusted with holding the homestead together after her father died.

It is the homestead, the land, that is Alexandra's constant focus. She is very capable and independant. She takes care of her younger brother Emil as well as others, including "crazy" Ivar, an old man also living out on the prairie. Also playing a role in Alexandra's life are her long time friend Carl, and Marie, a young Bohemian who is full of life and who is a huge part of Emil's life as well.

O Pioneers portrays the many faces of prairie life. Alexandra loves the land and sees the potential in it -she is she is such a great character. I have to say that I did not see the ending coming which was a nice surprise. Good book club choice.

Alas, Babylon (End of the World Challenge II #3 of 4)

What would have happened to America if the Soviets had actually dropped atomic bombs all over the country? It is this question that Pat Frank explores in his apocalyptic novel Alas, Babylon. Reading this book here in 2009 is a little scary...the threats are a bit different but still read. But this book was written in 1959, during the arms race with Russia and only a few years after Sputnik was launched.
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The story revolved around Randy Bragg, a bachelor living in a small Florida town. When his brother Mark sends his family to live with Randy, Randy know that Mark's warnings about an imminent nuclear attack were no overreaction. And it comes. And it is devastating.

It is not just the radiation that is terrifying, it is the loss of electricity, the onset of disease, the lack of food, the lawlessness. Randy and the people he cares about have to navigate a completely new society, hoping that eventually they can create one in which they are not fighting for survival every day.

I loved this book. I loved it and was frightened by it and appreciated it what it must have been like to read this book back in the 1950s/60s. It is an apocalyptic story that depicts a fairly plausible series of events - and that's why it is so alarming.

Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America (End of the World II Challenge #2 of 4)

My brother Chris told me I should read this book. It had been on my TBR shelf for a while but when the End of the World Challenge II came up it fit perfectly.

Brian Slattery has created a United States that has collapsed...a United States that has returned to slavery, that is no longer unified but partitioned into regions, none with a true rule of law. Marco, one of the members of the criminal gang known as the "Slick Six," breaks out of prison and attempts to reunite his group and fix (or begin to fix) the disaster the United States has become.

The alarming thing about this novel is its plausability. Not necessarily the characters, but the result of social and economic collapse doesn't seem that far fetched. It was difficult to read at first because the author switches the character being focused on without any sort of break...at all. Just a new paragraph and all of the sudden you're in a new place with a new person. It threw me for a while but I got used to it and it wasn't too bad after that. It was a heavy book...so many things happening, almost all of them horribly sad. People sell themselves into slavery so they won't starve, people live their lives completely high so they don't have to deal with the reality around them. Thrown in with all of this damage and chaos is a bit of the supernatural as well. It is a terrifying end of the world idea.

Garden Spells

Garden Spells was another Itunes purchase that I listened to as I drove around New York. It was an interesting story by Sarah Addison Allen...real and difficult situations with a funny sort of magical twist thrown in. It is the story of the Waverley sisters - Claire who cooks with edible flowers that affect the moods and thoughts of those who eat them, and Sydney's manifests itself in her gift with hairstyles. Seriously. But Sydney actually hates being a Waverley - she doesn't want to be strange. She hated it enough to run away from home and when she returned it was only because she feared for her life and the life of her daughter - her daughter's father being an angry and abusive man.

As Claire and Sydney reconnect, they both figure out how to be "Waverley's" and still be open to other people and each other. Bay, Sydney's daughter, was a cute character. Another interesting character in the story was the apple tree. The apple tree whose apples let a person see the most important event in his or her life. The Waverley's try to keep anyone from eating them because the consequences are almost never good. But the tree wants its apples to be eaten and takes to throwing them at people. It's kind of fun.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Wow. Wow wow. I am completely thrilled with this book. Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows are awesome. This book was a gift given to me by a dear friend and I had been saving it for the right time. Stuck in a hotel and needing something fabulous to read was for sure the right time and I blew threw it, stopping only when necessary because I just was so interested. It is told in a series of letters between Juliet Ashton and a number of different people in her life.

It is January 1946 in England and Juliet is an author without a subject for a book. As she casts about for an idea, she receives a letter from a man named Dawsey Adams who lives in Guernsey, one of the British Channel islands that was occupied by the Germans during World War II. Adams has found a copy of a book by Charles Lamb and Juliet's name and address were on the front cover. He is interested in reading more by Lamb and, as there are no bookstores in Guernsey, he asks Juliet for help in finding another b.ook. She quickly replies and thus begins a correspondence with not only Dawsey, but many of his friends in Guernsey, many of whom will profoundly affect Juliet's life.

I thought Juliet was a great character. She was intelligent, witty, and determined but certainly flawed. She always tried to do the right thing and had a really good heart without being self-righteous. The letter format made things interesting - I have read actually quite a few books like this lately and like it. It is another book about World War II which brings a whole different aspect into the public eye - I knew nothing about the Channel Islands or their occupation. This book was a hit for me.

Old Men at Midnight (Jewish Literature Challenge #4 of 4)

Chaim Potok is one of my favorite authors. He wrote The Chosen, The Promise, the Asher Lev books, and Davita's Harp. I actually wrote a paper about The Chosen when I was in high school and I liked doing it. Old Men at Midnight is a book of three short stories connected to Ilana Davita Dinn from Davita's Harp. The stories are not about Davita, but rather about some of the people she comes in contact with through her life. In "The Ark Builder," seventeen year old Ilana meets Noah Stremin, the only survivor of the Nazi destruction of his village in Poland.

When Ilana is is working on her doctorate in "The War Doctor", she convinces a former KGB interrogation officer to write the story of his life - the horror of war, the anti-semitism in Russia, and the terror of Stalin's reign.

The final story is a bit more psychological than the other two. It is about Benjamin Walter, who Ilana moves in next door to when she is a woman in her sixties writing fiction for a living. Benjamin sees her as something she is not - a well maintained, beautiful middle-aged woman. But Ilana is really overweight and dowdy. But Benjamin's wife is ill and he has too suffered during World War II as a soldier in the British Army. "The Trope Teacher" was the man who had a lasting and painful effect on Benjamin.

Potok's writing is always impressive. He has a wonderful way with language and while it did not strike me in the same way The Chosen and Davita's Harp did, it was a great book.

People of the Book (Jewish Literature Challenge #1 of 4)

Geraldine Brooks based this amazing novel on the story of an actual book called the Sarajevo Haggadah (a book which describes how the Passover Seder is to be performed). Hanna Heath is an expert in old books - a serious expert. She is invited to Bosnia to analyze a rare volume and try to determine its authenticity and its origin. Using tiny artifacts found in the book (a hair, a piece of an insect wing, salt, and a wine stain) to trace its history.

The story is told backwards with Hanna's experiences interspersed with glimpses into the book's past, the most recent events explored first. The Haggadah survived some of the world's most tragic moments and been protected by some very brave individuals, several of them not Jewish. Hanna's family life has been less than ideal and as she studies the Haggadah she is forced to confront some of her most difficult relationships.

People of the Book was an intriguing and painful book to read. Some of the scenes I couldn't even get through because they were so disturbing. The interweaving of Hanna's life and the backwards progression of the book worked very well. I have enjoyed all of Geraldine Brooks' other books and this was no exception.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia came to the United States from the Dominican Republic in the 1960s when their father is forced to flee from its dictator. Julia Alvarez's novel about how the Garcia girls assimilated into American culture is told in an interesting way - from the point of view of each of the girls but also sort of backwards. It begins with one of the sisters visiting the Dominican Republic as an older lady and ends with that same sister as a child before the family emmigrated. It was an interesting read about the merging of cultures but also about family dynamics.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (Book Awards II Challenge #4 of 10)

I wish I had lots of good things to say about Michael Chabon's novel about comic book creators Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay. It's not that the book wasn't good...it just didn't interest me. It won all kinds of awards and receieved glowing reviews, but I wasn't taken with it at all. I think I read like 6 other books while I trudged my way through this one.

Joe Kavalier escaped from Nazi-occupied Czechsolvakia and made his way to America where he met up with his cousin Sammy Clay. The two of them together create a comic book character called The Escapist who is an outlet for Joe's hatred of Hitler and the Nazis. At once fiction and non-fiction, The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay describes a comic-book obsessed America during the 1940s and the lives of two young men who are trying to make their way in the world.

This novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

The Camel Bookmobile

Fiona Sweeny is a librarian - but she wants to be more. To leave her mark on the world, Fiona decides to start a mobile library to serve the nomadic people in Kenya. In the city of Mididima, Fiona and the Camel Bookmobile provide the villagers their only access to books. But not everyone is happy about the library. Many of Mididima's residents think that literacy will destroy the traditions they have followed for centuries. When one of the library books is not returned, the villagers must decide what they want their future to be.

Being a librarian wanna-be (currently in library school), I was drawn to this book immediately. But while stressing the importance of books and literacy, Masha Hamilton delves into questions about modernization, tradition, and how they affect each other. Highly recommended.

The Woman Who Lives in the Earth

Sarah lives in a time of draught, anger, and fear. Only a child, she finds that she sees things others don't and that terrifies the people in her town. When she discovers she can talk to a fox named Marishan, he helps her learn about the earth and what it means to be living in it.

Many of the reviews I read of Swain Wolfe's book were positivly glowing. I thought it was a good story, a quick read. But didn't feel profoundly changed by it. I was chilled, as I always am, by the institutionalized cruelty and suspicion of Sarah's town. Worth reading, but not one of my favorites.