Mansfield Park

Title: Mansfield Park

Author: Jane Austen

Pages: 381

Genre: Classic, Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Fanny Price is invited to live with her rich aunt, uncle and Bertram cousins at Mansfield Park when she is 10.  Her own mother married a drunk below her level and has been living in poverty with loads of children ever since.  Fanny was invited to Mansfield Park to help out and to help convince Mr. and Mrs. Bertram that they are good people who do good things. While Mr. Bertram is away with business dealings in Antigua, Mary and Henry Crawford arrive in the area and bring with them a culture of flirting and sometimes questionable actions.

My Review: I'll be honest, this was one tedious book to complete.  I began reading more than 2 months ago and although the book was only 381 pages, it felt more like 700.  This was my first Jane Austen book and went pretty much like I expected.  Big estates, rich people who sit around gossiping, paragraphs that span 2 pages, dinners, balls, carriage rides and everybody judging each other.  Let's just say that I am so glad that we are more easily able to forgive mistakes in this modern day, and that we are not judged on the actions of our siblings, although most of mine are O.K...

From the Book: "(pg.359, the first paragraph of the last chapter) Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody, not greatly in fault themselves, to tolerable comfort, and to have done with all the rest."

if i stay

Title: if i stay

Author: Gayle Forman

Pages: 201

Genre: Young Adult

Grade: B

Synopsis: Mia is 17 years old and is planning to attend Juilliard Music School to continue studying her the violin music that she is so passionate about.  On a day off from school Mia is driving with her family when they are in a terrible accident.  Mia doesn't realize it at first, but she has an extensive out of body experience where she watches everybody who loves her trying to help save her. 

My Review:  The premise of the book is interesting.  We all have beliefs about what happens after we die, but I had never really considered that we may have a say in whether or not we get to stay here on earth.  I didn't love the writing or even care too deeply about the story, but it was intriguing.

Peace Like a River

Title: Peace Like a River

Author: Leif Enger

Pages: 312

Genre: Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Reuban Land is an asthmatic 11-year-old living in Minnesota.  Reuban's father is a janitor at their school, his younger sister Swede,  loves writing about Western outlaws and his older brother Davy is their protector and kills two men who broke into their house and are threatening the family. As Davy runs from the law, Reuban and his family load up in a trailer and travel across the Dakotas looking for his outlaw brother.

My Review:  This is a book that I actually liked more and more as the story progressed.  The characters are all different and their individual characteristics make them all very likable and relatable. The book puts the reader in a quandary.  Do you cheer for the likable outlaw and hope that he makes his escape or are you pulling for justice and the law?

Inferno

Title: Inferno

Author: Dan Brown

Pages: 461

Genre: Fiction, Thriller

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Our favorite art history and symbology professor is back to save the world yet again.  I'm not sure what we would do without Robert Langdon.  This time Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence, Italy with no memory of how he got there.  He has a bullet wound in his head and finds out that somebody is trying to kill him.  Lucky for him, there is a hot young doctor who was treating him and is conveniently interested and able to join him in the clue hunt to backtrack his steps and to find out what is going on and how he can stop a worldwide plague.

My Review: First things first.  I am a total sucker for Dan Brown's novels.  Sometimes the story is a little silly and a stretch to believe, but I just love the geographical, architectural and art descriptions that fill the books.  I often find myself with google open next to me to look up maps of cities, street views of locations, photos of the artwork and wikipedia articles on the locations that make their way into these books.  The world will be in a world of hurt when Robert Langdon retires.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Title: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet

Author: Jamie Ford

Pages: 290

Genre: Historical Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The book takes place in Seattle during World War II.  Seattle had a strong Chinese and Japanese presence with areas of the city known as Japantown and Chinatown where people of these ethnicities generally lived.  Henry Lee was a Chinese child who attended the white American/English school where he befriended a Japanese girl, Keiko Okabe.  His friendship was kept in secret as his father hated the Japanese because of the destruction they were causing in China during the war.  When all of the Japanese families in Seattle were gathered and sent to Japanese Interment Camps, Henry works hard to still maintain his friendship with Keiko.

My Review: There are so many books that use WWII as a backdrop, that I sometimes find it exhausting to read another.  However, I found this one interesting and unique because it deals with the Japanese Internment Camps, which is a part of the war that is a black mark on the United States.  That said, it is unfair to judge the nation's response without having been there during Pearl Harbor and the rest of the war. Hopefully, though, we will always remember these mistakes and learn from them. Ok, enough digression on that vein.  It took me a good chunk of the book to get into it.  The story flips back and forth between the 1940s and the modern day and it was sometimes confusing.  Otherwise, a pretty decent book.