The Good Earth

The Good Earth. Pearl S. Buck. Howard Publishing Co. 1931.418 pages. Audio library.

First line: It was Wang Lung's marriage day.

Plot: This tells the poignant tale of a Chinese farmer and his family in old agrarian China. The humble Wang Lung glories in the soil he works, nurturing the land as it nurtures him and his family. Nearby, the nobles of the House of Hwang consider themselves above the land and its workers; but they will soon meet their own downfall.

Hard times come upon Wang Lung and his family when flood and drought force them to seek work in the city. The working people riot, breaking into the homes of the rich and forcing them to flee. When Wang Lung shows mercy to one noble and is rewarded, he begins to rise in the world, even as the House of Hwang falls.

My Thoughts: Sometimes it's hard for me to wrap my mind around a culture that is so completely different from my own.  When Wang goes to marry his wife whom he has never met or courted he seems alright with his choice considering his status in life is but a farmer.  She works next to (behind really) him at all times on the farm.  She prepared meals and kept the home.  A better wife you would be hard pressed to find.  Until Wang's social status changes after coming into a lot of money.  He starts visiting a brothel.  After a while becomes discontent with his wife and moves in a mistress taken from the brothel.  

After some pour life choices Wang's life begins to fall apart.  His sons don't live up to his expectations.  I can't say that I felt sorry for him by the end of this story.  I don't know if I want to continue with the series yet or not.  Some of the content is for mature audiences so I would not recommend this for anyone under upper teens.

The Remains of the Day

The Remains of the Day.  Kazuo Ishiguro. Faber and Faber Publishing. May 1989.  258 pages.  Source: Audio Library

Plot: In the summer of 1956, Stevens, a long-serving butler at Darlington Hall, decides to take a motoring trip through the West Country. The six-day excursion becomes a journey into the past of Stevens and England, a past that takes in fascism, two world wars, and an unrealised love between the butler and his housekeeper.

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this laid back story of the life of a butler as the end of an era was coming to a close.  I like to read books set in England and about the history of England even if it is fiction. 

The Sound and The Fury

The Sound and The Fury.  William Faulkner. Published by Vintage.  First published 1954.  326 pages.  Source:  Audio library.

First Sentence: Through the fence, between the curling flower spaces, I could see them hitting.

Plot: The novel reveals the story of the disintegration of the Compson family, doomed inhabitants of Faulkner’s mythical Yoknapatawpha County, through the interior monologues of the idiot Benjy and his brothers, Quentin and Jason.

My thoughts:  This one was chosen for my classic club challenge.  I started it once but tabled it.  I pushed through it this time because I just had to.  Wow, there is enough disfunction in my life but to add this family just about made me go crazy! 

This is one messed up group of people.  It took me several chapters to even get the gist of what was going on.  Faulkner's writing style is not my idea of a good time.  Back and forth and who is narrating... Since the story is set in Mississippi the dialect was so very southern it difficult to take at times.

As you can tell I did not enjoy this book and don't really recommend it.  Especially for younger adults.  I only gave it 2 out of 5 stars on Good Reads.

Seduction of a Highland Lass

Seduction of a Highland Lass. Maya Banks.  Ballantine Books. 2011. 323 pages.  Source: Audio Library.

First Sentence: Alaric McCabe looked out over the expanse of McCabe land and grappled with the indecision plaguing him.

Plot: Fiercely loyal to his elder brother, Alaric McCabe leads his clan in the fight for their birthright. Now he is prepared to wed for duty, as well. But on his way to claim the hand of Rionna McDonald, daughter of a neighboring chieftain, he is ambushed and left for dead. Miraculously, his life is saved by the soft touch of a Highland angel, a courageous beauty who will put to the test his fealty to his clan, his honor, and his deepest desires.

An outcast from her own clan, Keeley McDonald was betrayed by those she loved and trusted. When the wounded warrior falls from his horse, she is drawn to his strong, lean body. The wicked glint in his green eyes ignites a passion that will follow them back to Alaric’s keep, where their forbidden love draws them deeper into the pleasures of the flesh. But as conspiracy and danger circle closer, Alaric must make an impossible choice: Will he betray his blood ties for the woman he loves?

My thoughts: Book two in the Highlander series was just as exciting as the first.  A young lass done wrong by her family member  and banished from the clan but justice (of course) is served in the end.  The McCabe men are dreamy and loyal to their clan and family. They are rule their clan with a firm but just hand and they expect the same from other clans.  This series does contain adult content.  I have book three on hold!

The Book Thief

The Book Thief. Markus Zusak. Alfred A. Knopf. 2005. 550 pages. Source: Audio Library

First sentence: First the colors.  Then the humans.  That's usually how I see things.

Plot: It is 1939 Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath.

Death has never been busier, and will become busier still.

By her brother's graveside, Liesel Meminger's life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Grave Digger's Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor's wife's library, wherever there are books to be found.

But these are dangerous times. When Liesel's foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel's world is both opened up and closed down.

In superbly crafted writing that burns with intensity, award-winning author Markus Zusak has given us one of the most enduring stories of our time.

My thoughts: There are lots of books about WWII from different points of view.  The Nazi soldier, the sympathizer, the Jew, the decendents but never have I read it from Death's point of view.  With Death being the Narrator you can be sure it doesn't have an especially happy ending.

I don't take these subjects very lightly but this was a great read.  Two children, Liesel and Rudy, are for the most part the main two characters in the story.  They have a strong friendship and they share just about everything.  Everything except a hidden Jew in Liesel's basement.  The children survive through this awful time the best way that they can.  That sometimes has them stealing food.  Liesel also steals books. Probably because it helps her to get through each day with something to read.

Then comes the day when Death visits very close to Liesel.  She is left to start over again at the age of 14 with another "foster mother". 

One Hundred Years of Solitude

One Hundred Years of Solitude.  Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Harper Publishing. Originally published in June of 1967.  457 pages. Source: Audio Library

First sentence: Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonial Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Plot: The brilliant, bestselling, landmark novel that tells the story of the Buendia family, and chronicles the irreconcilable conflict between the desire for solitude and the need for love—in rich, imaginative prose that has come to define an entire genre known as "magical realism.

My thoughts:  My mind is numb from this one.  It was the longest most drawn out nothing that I can ever remember reading.  I know I have vowed not to continue reading a book I didn't like but I thought at some point it had to get better.  IT didn't.  

Generations and generations, seven I believe, in a town founded by patriarch Jose Arcadio Buendia, live really messed up lives. This story didn't really seem to have much purpose.  I wasn't sure what I was supposed to take away from it.  

The Thirteenth Tale

The Thirteenth Tale. Diana Setterfield. Atria Books. September 12, 2006. 406 pages (Source: Purchased from BetterWorldBooks.com)

First sentences:  It was November.  Although it was not yet late, the sky was dark when I turned into Laundress Passage.

Plot: All children mythologize their birth... So begins the prologue of reclusive author Vida Winter's colletion of stories, which are as famous for th myster of the missing thirteenth tale as they ae for the delight and enchantment of the twelve that do exist.

The enigmatic Winter has spent six decades creating various outlandish life histories for herself - all of them inventions that have brought her fame and fortune but have kept her violent and tragic past a secret.  Now old and ailing, she at last wants to tell the truth about her extraordinary life.  She summons biographer Margaret Lea, a young woman for whom the secret of her own birth, hidden by those who loved her most, remains an ever-present pain.  Struck by a curious parallel between Miss Winter's story and her own, Margaret takes on the commission.

As Vida disinters the life she meant to bury for good, Margaret is mesmerized.  It is a tale of gothic strangeness featuring the Angelfield family, including the beautiful and willful Isabelle, the feral twins Adeline and Emmeline, a ghost, a governess, a topiary garden and a devastating fire.

Margaret succumbs to the power of Vida's storytelling but remains suspicious of the author's sincerity.  She demands the truth from Vida, and together they confront the ghosts that have haunted them while becoming, finally, transformed by the truth themselves.

The Thirteenth Tale is a love letter to reading, a book for the feral reader in all of us, a return to that rich vein of storytelling that our parents loved and that we loved as children.  Diana Setterfield will keep you guessing, make you wonder, move you to tears and laughter and, in the end, deposit you breathless yet satisfifed back upon the shore of your everyday life.

My thoughts:  I don't know where to begin with this one.  This is an amazing author.  She kept me on the edge of my seat the entire time!  Once I thought I had the mystery solved but I was wrong.  I like that in a good story.

I struggle with reviews on how much to tell without spoiling it for a potential reader.  Margret is what I would consider an introvert.  She helps her father in his book store, she reads, and writes a few books.  She is called upon by Ms. Winter to write the correct version of her life because she has told many false stories over the years.  Come to find out her story isn't one she would have wanted known while she still had lots of life to live.

While listing to Ms. Winter's story Margret is dealing with her own life issue of being a twin.  Her sister dying in infancy.  She feels the loss deep into her bones.  She is grieving for the other half of herself that she never new.

I will be looking for more books by Diane Setterfield!

Before We Were Yours

Before We Were Yours. Lisa Wingate. June 2017. Ballantine Books.  352 pages. Source: Audio library book.  

First sentence: August 3, 1939 My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon.

Plot: Two families, generations apart, are forever changed by a heartbreaking injustice in this poignant novel, inspired by a true story, for readers of Orphan Train and The Nightingale.

Memphis, 1939. Twelve-year-old Rill Foss and her four younger siblings live a magical life aboard their family’s Mississippi River shantyboat. But when their father must rush their mother to the hospital one stormy night, Rill is left in charge—until strangers arrive in force. Wrenched from all that is familiar and thrown into a Tennessee Children’s Home Society orphanage, the Foss children are assured that they will soon be returned to their parents—but they quickly realize that the truth is much darker. At the mercy of the facility’s cruel director, Rill fights to keep her sisters and brother together—in a world of danger and uncertainty.

Aiken, South Carolina, present day. Born into wealth and privilege, Avery Stafford seems to have it all: a successful career as a federal prosecutor, a handsome fiancé, and a lavish wedding on the horizon. But when Avery returns home to help her father weather a health crisis, a chance encounter leaves her with uncomfortable questions—and compels her to take a journey through her family's long-hidden history, on a path that will ultimately lead either to devastation or redemption.

Based on one of America’s most notorious real-life scandals—in which Georgia Tann, director of a Memphis-based adoption organization, kidnapped and sold poor children to wealthy families all over the country—Wingate’s riveting, wrenching, and ultimately uplifting tale reminds us how, even though the paths we take can lead to many places, the heart never forgets where we belong. (Goodreads)

My thoughts: This was a gripping tale from the very beginning.  I loved the flow of this book.  Back and forth from present to past it was easy to follow.  Although the content was not one that I would say I loved.  In fact it was very difficult at times to think that people would actually do such things to families. 

I came to really adore Avery Stafford.  She begins to find herself in searching her grandmother's secret out.  I was so happy when she made the choice to live for herself and not for the sake of a family name.

I was sad to see this story come to and end.  But all goods ones do.  I appreciated the author telling how the tale was based on a true story.  Georgia Tann was the actual lady who ran the home back in the day.  She died of cancer before she could be charged for her crimes. 

I highley recommend this one.  It kept a good pace and read really quick.

The Women in the Castle

The Women in the Castle. Jessica Shattuck. William Marrow. March 2017. 356 pages. Source: Audio library 

First sentence: The day of the countess's famous harvest party began with a driving rain that hammered down on all the ancient von Lingenfels castle's sore spots - springing leaks, dampening floors, and turning its yellow facad a slick, beetle-like black.

Plot: Set at the end of World War II, in a crumbling Bavarian castle that once played host to all of German high society, a powerful and propulsive story of three widows whose lives and fates become intertwined.

Amid the ashes of Nazi Germany’s defeat, Marianne von Lingenfels returns to the once grand castle of her husband’s ancestors, an imposing stone fortress now fallen into ruin following years of war. The widow of a resistor murdered in the failed July, 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler, Marianne plans to uphold the promise she made to her husband’s brave conspirators: to find and protect their wives, her fellow resistance widows. (Goodreads)

My thoughts:  After reading some reviews on this one I couldn't wait to get my hands on it!  If you like World War II stories you are going to love this one!

The story travels back and forth in time from pre-war to post-war.  There is very little coverage of during the war.  But we know all too well the horrible things that occured during that time.  After the war three widowed women live in the castle owned by Marianne along with their children for a short time.

After the war the story goes on to tell the background of each woman and how she came to be where she is.  Then it moves to present day.  The women are in their 80's.  They are being invited back to Germany to the Castle for a dedication of a book about Marianne and her efforts for the resistance.

This story reminded me of The Nighingale by Kristin Hannah.  Not exactly how they worked through the war but how they were invited back to their home land to be honored.

It was a good story and considering the content I enjoyed it. 

I Heard The Owl Call My Name

I Heard The Owl Call My Name. Margaret Craven. January 1980 (first published in 1967) Laurel. 159 pages. Source: Betterworldbooks.com

First sentence: He stood at the wheel, watching the current stream, and the bald eagles fishing for herring that waited until the boat was almost upon them to lift, to drop the instance it had passed.

Plot: Amid the grandeur of the remote Pacific Northwest stands Kingcome, a village so ancient that, according to Kwakiutl myth, it was founded by the two brothers left on earth after the great flood. The Native Americans who still live there call it Quee, a place of such incredible natural richness that hunting and fishing remain primary food sources. 

But the old culture of totems and potlatch is being replaces by a new culture of prefab housing and alcoholism. Kingcome's younger generation is disenchanted and alienated from its heritage. And now, coming upriver is a young vicar, Mark Brian, on a journey of discovery that can teach him—and us—about life, death, and the transforming power of love.

My thoughts: The cover of this book actually drew me in however this isn't the version that I actually read.  A white man, a vicar, goes to live among the Natives.  He has a lot to learn of their customs/traditions but he does well.  The Natives send their children to the white man schools to be educated.  They are quickly forgetting their native tongue and the old stories.  They are "Americanized" if you will.  It's really kind of sad to see this happening.

Mark, the vicar, finds himself letting go of the white mans traditions and ways of thinking.  He can see the changes coming in the tribes he serves and it saddens him.  It didn't have the ending that I expected but it was a good one nevertheless.  

Island Beneath the Sea

Island Beneath the Sea. Isabel Allende. 2009. Harper. 457 pages. (Source: Audio library)

First sentence: "In my forty years I, Zarite, have had better luck than other slaves."

Plot: Born a slave on the island of Saint-Domingue, Zarite -- known as Tete-- is the daughter of and African mother she never knew and one of the white sailors who brought her into bondage.  Though her childhood is one of brutality and fear, Tete finds solace in the traditional rhythms of African drums and in the voodoo loas she discovers through her fellow slaves.  When twenty-year old Toulouse Valmorain arrives on the island in 1770, it's with powdered wigs in his baggage and dreams of financial success in his mind.  But running his father's plantation, Saint-Lazare, is neither glamorous nor easy.  It will be eight years before he brings home a bride -- bud marriage, too, proves more difficult than he imagined.  And Valmorain remains dependent on the services of his teenage slave. 

My thoughts:  It took me some time to get into this one but when I did I hated to have it come to an end.  I wanted to know more about Tete and her children.  How they favored in life as free people.  The details of this story weren't always pleasant to read but they are actual things that happened in history, good or bad.  I am not one who wants to pretend that these awful things didn't happen but I hope we learned from the past and that these terrible things stay in the past.  I love stories with a happy ending and this one had a bitter sweet ending.

The Bonesetter's Daughter

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan 2001 G.P. Putnam's 353 pages (Source: Library audio book)

First sentence: For the past eight years always starting on August 12th, Ruth Young lost her voice.

Plot: Ruth Young and her widowed mother, LuLing, have always had a tumultuous relationship.  Now, before she succumbs to forgetfulness, LuLing gives Ruth some of her writings, which reveal a side of LuLing that Ruth has never known.

In a remote mountain village where ghosts and tradition rule, LuLing grows up in the care of her mute Precious Auntie as the family endures a curse laid upon a relative known as the bonesetter.  When headstrong LuLing rejects the marriage proposal of the coffinmaker, a shocking series of events are set in motion - all of which lead back to Ruth and LuLIng in modern San Francisco.  The truth that Ruth learns from her mother's past will forever change her perception of family, love, and forgiveness.

My thoughts: At first I thought this was going to be very boring book.  When the story shifted from modern day San Francisco to early 20th century China my thought began to change.  LuLing's life story is told in this portion and explains a lot of why she is the way she is and why he and her daughter Ruth have a very hard relationship.

Ruth discovers the writings of her mother while staying with her during the early stages of Alzheimer's disease.  It's a journey of discovery.  Finding out who you are and where your family came from.

In the end I found I enjoyed this story very much.