1)
Favorite quote:
“Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”
From Goodreads.com: Long ago, in a time forgotten, a preternatural event threw the seasons out of balance. In a land where summers can last decades and winters a lifetime, trouble is brewing. The cold is returning, and in the frozen wastes to the north of Winterfell, sinister forces are massing beyond the kingdom’s protective Wall. To the south, the king’s powers are failing—his most trusted adviser dead under mysterious circumstances and his enemies emerging from the shadows of the throne. At the center of the conflict lie the Starks of Winterfell, a family as harsh and unyielding as the frozen land they were born to. Now Lord Eddard Stark is reluctantly summoned to serve as the king’s new Hand, an appointment that threatens to sunder not only his family but the kingdom itself.
This book introduced an entire land and a TON of characters without feeling wieldy. I really enjoyed the book and plan to read more. My only problem is that is seems the different "houses" are always fighting against each other. To me if a land really had ten year summers then winters that last a lifetime, people would be behaving differently. They would be focused entirely on growing and putting away food stores and would be fighting over such things as granaries and etc.
2)
Favorite quote: My name is hard like ocean lice grinding at the shore or wind pounding the tundra or sun so bright on the snow. It burns your eyes. My name is all of us huddled up here together, waiting for the sound of that plane that's going to take us away..."
This book was on a lot of the "best picks" for 2012 so I thought I would give it a try. It tells the story of children at a Catholic boarding school in the 1960's in Alaska. They students are a combination of Eskimo and Indian children (with a few white children thrown in). Despite the fact the children are thrown in a new situation fraught with homesickness and adjusting to a "white" world, this is not as heart wrenching as "The Education of Little Tree". The nuns and priest care for the children and are for the most part gentle and kind. The story has a lot of understories such as one of three brothers in the story is sent to the school at too young of an age but rather than being sent home he is "adopted" out to a family in Texas. In another set of sub-stories the government conducts harmful tests on the children without parental permission and is planning to use atomic bombs on their homeland to create a harbor in northern Alaska. While these stories are running quietly along in the background, the book mostly tells of the day to day life of the children.
The book felt a little flat to me... I found I really didn't care what was going on and the author was not able to really achieve any type of emotional tie for me.
3)
True story: I picked this book to read because it has a picture of a BEACH on it. I need a beach. Badly.
And it was a great light story with well formed, realistic characters that I totally would hang out with myself. The main character grows and evolves in a satisfying way. And the ending is of course, perfect.
1 comment:
Come to my beach. I will take you there.
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