Reviews, Hauls and Everything Bookish
After the death of her mother, Jessie Sloane, makes an unsettling discovery that makes her question who she is. While suffering from insomnia Jessie goes on the pursuit to find answers. Continue reading “Mini Review: When the Lights Go Out and The Woman in the Window”
I’m back today with my February TBR, I want to keep my monthly TBR’s realistic and in saying that I think the five books I chose might be a stretch but I have been reading more lately so also possible…
I am guilty of buying books simply because my favourite BookTubers hauled them recently and I am probably not alone in this. Raise your hands if you do the same. 🙋 I have toned down my book buying recently and don’t just buy all the books making their rounds on BookTube. It wouldn’t be such a problem if I actually read the books I bought but for some reason I buy them and don’t read them. Continue reading “Books that BookTube made me Buy”
This book is hard to summarize because it has a lot going on and is kind of all over the place but I will do my best.
Our civilization has collapsed after a deadly flu wipes out the majority of the population. We follow a cast of characters, seeing the lives they lived before the flu, what happened during the pandemic and fifteen years after.
This book has soo much love surrounding it, everyone raves about how amazing this book is and I honestly don’t get it. I’m not saying it is a terrible book and I hated it because I didn’t I just thought it was ok. I guess I am just missing what everyone else is seeing and that’s ok, it happens.
One of the things that set me up for not loving this book is that it is quite different than what I imagined. Many people when describing this book is they say it is a dystopian and when I think dystopian I think of a society that is being oppressed by government or an individual. And I thought that individual was going to be this prophet but that wasn’t the main focus of this book and not a lot of time was spent there. I think of it as more post-apocolytic Instead the book focuses on a few characters and their lives before and after the flu. And each of the characters are in some way connected to a famous actor Arthur Leander.
Cons
“If you are the light, if your enemies are darkness, then there’s nothing that you cannot justify. There’s nothing you can’t survive, because there’s nothing that you will not do.”
Pros
“No one ever thinks they’re awful , even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.”
I have to say I am a little sad that I didn’t see what everyone else did while reading this book. Have you read Station Eleven? If you have let’s discuss in the comments below.
Set in the late 1920’s Australia, Tom Sherbourne and his wife Isabel live a sheltered life on a small island where Tom is the light keeper. Being the only people on the Island it is easy to lose ones sense of reality. And when a boat is washed up on shore with a dead man and a crying baby, Isabel sees this as a miracle and wants to keep the baby where as Tom wants to report it. Since, Tom feel he owes Isabel this happiness they don’t report it and raise the child as their own. But when they go back to shore their sense of reality returns and begins to weigh heavily on Tom’s conscience. Continue reading “The Light Between Oceans by M.L Stedman”
Homegoing is a profound generational saga following the descendants of two half-sisters, Effia and Esi. The sisters live in different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana where Effia is married off to British slave trader and Esi is sold into slavery. The British colonization of Ghana and war between villages will shape the descendants of Effia’s and the affects of slavery and racial discrimination will shape Esi’s.
Each chapter is from a different characters perspective, so in total their are 14 characters. Yaa Gyasi is a skillful writer to create such real characters in such a short time we spend with them. Obviously I not going to give an overview and my thoughts on all of them but I thought it is important that I do Effia and Esi.
I listened to the audiobook and read along with the narrator because I wanted to get the names correct, I knew I wouldn’t be able to pronounce them correctly even though it is just in my head. I did like this approach to reading the story even though that is the reason why it took me so long to finish. I started this back in April and finished it in June, for whatever reason I found it difficult to set a time to put the disc in and read. So, it wasn’t because I wasn’t enjoying the book because I did, very much so. I believe this is the type of book you take your time with anyways, to allow yourself to be fully immersed into the story.
Homegoing is not your typical novel, there are two veins to the story, and each vein flows into one short story, following a different generation to the next And even though each descendant’s story is complete and is wrapped up nicely to get to the heart of the story the book must be read as a whole. It is ambitious to write a novel like this for any writer but especially a debut one but Yaa Gyasi executes it like a pro.
“I love my people, James,” she said, and his name on her tongue was indescribably sweet. “I am proud to be Asante, as I am sure you are proud to be Fante, but after I lost my brothers, I decided that as for me, Akosua, I will be my own nation.”
Cons
“The white man’s god is just like the white man. He thinks he is the only god, just like the white man thinks he is the only man. But the only reason he is god instead of Nyame or Chukwu or whoever is because we let him be. We do not fight him. We do not question him. The white man told us he was the way, and we said yes, but when has the white man ever told us something was good for us and that thing was really good?”
Pros
“What I know now, my son: Evil begets evil. It grows. It transmutes, so that sometimes you cannot see that the evil in the world began as the evil in your own home.”
It is hard to believe that this is a debut novel, it is well crafted and a beautiful work of literature. I highly recommend you pick this book up if you haven’t already.
Happy Mothers Day!
What is everyone doing for Mother’s Day? I will be heading to my moms for a visit and to take her to the movies. We are going to see I Feel Pretty with Amy Schumer. It looks funny and I am sure we will both have a good time.
I know I did one of these recently but I didn’t feature any books from April because it would have just been too long of a post, so here we are. 🙂
The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Everything Here is Beautiful by Mira T. Lee
The Women in the Window by A. J. Finn
Never Let You Go by Chevy Stevens
Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel
The Light Between Oceans by M.L Stedman
The Poisoned Crown by Maurice Druon
The Beguiled by Thomas Cullinan
Secrets of Sloane House by Shelley Gray
The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley
There you have it all the eighteen books I have added to my shelves recently.
Have you read any of these?
