a lot of my list has to do with reading. i think, in fact, there are 4 (possibly 5, depending how you count #25) that each involve reading upwards of 10 books.
i've decided that in order to keep y'all updated on the progress (if you care), i'm going to tell you a little about the book i've read. i started almost right after i wrote the list...i mean, that's a lot of books to read on top of reading all the ones i want to re-read. so here you go:
the way the crow flies, by ann-marie macdonald
y'all. i've had this book for a few years, i'm sad to say. but its description is very serious. and i have to be in the right kind of mood to read a serious novel. plus, it's super long.
here is the description on the back cover:
"the optimism of the early sixties, infused with the excitement of the space race and the menace of the cold war, is filtered through the rich imagination of high-spirited, eight year old madeleine, who welcomes her family's posting to a quiet air force base near the canadian border. secure in the love of her beautiful mother, she is unaware that her father, jack, is caught up in a web of secrets. when a very local murder intersects with global forces, jack must decide where his loyalties lie, and madeleine will be forced to learn a lesson about the ambiguity of human morality -- one she will only begin to understand when she carries her quest for the truth, and the killer, into adulthood twenty years later."
i've decided that in order to keep y'all updated on the progress (if you care), i'm going to tell you a little about the book i've read. i started almost right after i wrote the list...i mean, that's a lot of books to read on top of reading all the ones i want to re-read. so here you go:
the way the crow flies, by ann-marie macdonald
y'all. i've had this book for a few years, i'm sad to say. but its description is very serious. and i have to be in the right kind of mood to read a serious novel. plus, it's super long.
here is the description on the back cover:
"the optimism of the early sixties, infused with the excitement of the space race and the menace of the cold war, is filtered through the rich imagination of high-spirited, eight year old madeleine, who welcomes her family's posting to a quiet air force base near the canadian border. secure in the love of her beautiful mother, she is unaware that her father, jack, is caught up in a web of secrets. when a very local murder intersects with global forces, jack must decide where his loyalties lie, and madeleine will be forced to learn a lesson about the ambiguity of human morality -- one she will only begin to understand when she carries her quest for the truth, and the killer, into adulthood twenty years later."
looking at it now, i can't for the life of me figure out why i thought i would like this book, aside from the fact that it is somewhat of a mystery. plus, it was probably bought at target and i wanted to spend some money.
first of all, this book is very well-written. the author weaves together different parts of the story in such a way that you want to finish reading to find out how they all fit together. and when they do all come together, it is done in a beautiful way. told from the point of view of the little girl, the view of the crows, and other family members, the author keeps the story (for the most part) engaging. there are parts that she tells as one page fairy tales -- bedtime storyish -- that tell history in a way a little girl can understand it. later, as the little girl has grown up, the stories turn into truth, and you see the author's gift.
this book tells a very moving story of family, innocence and childhood -- and the loss of childhood and innocence, of relationships, of actions and consequences, and it has the potential to challenge your definitions of loyalty, honesty, and your sense of justice. the author pulls you into the characters both through the actual story, but also through the way she uses point of view: it is a 3rd person narrative, but often seems as though it is written in first person (there may be a name for this, but i don't know it...and couldn't find it when i looked). this makes the story personal and detached at the same time.
however. i can't wholeheartedly recommend this book to you.
it is a long book. and although it is beautifully written, it's also very wordy in more than one place. the male characters going on and on about war and bombs and secrecy almost everytime they get together -- so much so that i began to skip those parts. also, when the little girl grows up, i skipped over much of her story too -- skimming until i found an important part. it would be easy to feel lost in these places and they have the effect of making the story drag.
but mostly i cannot recomment it because there are some parts in it that are not worth reading, that are mostly of the disturbing nature....and let's just leave it there. in fact, there was a point where i decided that if i came to another part of the story like that, i was not going to finish reading it. and by that point, there weren't any more. i know that some of you may say that that kind of stuff (by this i mean murder, sex, abuse or inappropriate lanuage...i think you could make this argument about a whole lot of things, but that's another discussion for another time...) doesn't affect you, because you've told me as much...and its fine that you think that. but i've come to see that, more often than not, these things do affect us whether we realize it or not.
therefore, i think the bad in this book -- through the specific scenes i'm referring to, some of the overarching themes and the tendency to drag -- more than outweigh the good.
all that said....i'm glad i read it because now it's one less book on my shelf that i have to read!
and ps....everytime i tried to type the word 'story', it came out 'sotry' and i had to retype it...it was quite frustrating!!
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