Tales From Sliver Lands

Title: Tales From Silver Lands

Author: Charles J. Finger

Pages: 225

Genre: Children's Fiction, Newbery Award, Short Stories, Fairy Tales

Grade: B

Synopsis: This book is a collection of 19 tales that the author collected and compiled from Central and South America.  Many of the fairy tales are similar to fairy tales that we're familiar with, while others are more unique.

My Review: I was a little nervous for this book, but it exceeded my expectations (or rather, my judging the book by it's cover).  First off, I couldn't find the book at any of the libraries close to my house, so I requested it through an interlibrary loan and it ended up coming from BYU's library (an book from the original 1924 printing, no less).  Secondly, the book does not have very many reviews on goodreads (at least for being a Newbery Award winner) and most of the reviews were fairly critical.  I didn't love the book, but it was an easy read, most of the stories were only 10-15 pages long and they weren't all that bad.

You Are Not a Stranger Here

Title: you are not a stranger here

Author: Adam Haslett

Pages: 240

Genre: Short Stories, Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis:  This book is a collection of 9 short stories, some of which have previously been published in The Atlantic or other magazines.  The topics the stories covered is quite varied ranging from mental illness and estranged families to homosexuality and death.  Each story was unique and short enough to read in one sitting.

My Review:  Every once in a while I find it refreshing to pick up a book of short stories.  Most of the short stories in this book left me wanting more, which I often find to be a hallmark of a good short story, although at other times it can be frustrating.  Most of the stories in this book left me thinking for a few minutes at the end of the story.  Both about things that may have happened next and about things in the story itself.

King Solomon's Mines

Title: King Solomon's Mines

Author: H. Rider Haggard

Pages: 264

Genre: Adventure, Classic

Grade: B+

Synopsis: This book was written in the space of just a couple of months as a result of a 5 shilling wager between two brothers. Haggard had bragged to his brother that he could write a better novel than Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. At first rejected by a few publishers, it was finally published in 1885 and became the year's best selling book with the publisher unable to keep the shelves stocked. With that preface, I was fairly intrigued by this book that I had never even heard of (it was a random pickup from the library shelves).

Allan Quatermain was an adventurer living in Durban (now a part of South Africa), he is approached by another white man with a request to help him track down his brother who had left on an expedition to try and find the fabled ancient mines of King Solomon. The excursion requires a dangerous trek across a long desert (remember, this is long before motorized vehicles or other modern conveniences) and the travelers are required to defend themselves against the natives, many who have never seen white men before.

My Review: I was surprised by this 19th century gem. It was surprisingly good for being the first African adventure book published in English.  The book was very engaging and imaginative and fulfilled my need for a good adventure book.

Divergent

Title: Divergent

Author: Veronica Roth

Pages: 487

Genre: Science Fiction, Young Adult

Grade: B+

Synopsis: The novel takes place in a future Chicago, that has been transformed into a dystopian city where everybody lives in one of five factions.  When Beatrice Prior turns 16 she, along with all other 16-year-olds, must choose which faction in which to spend her life. The majority of youth choose to stay within their own faction as find a place within another faction is challenging, but Beatrice feels the pull of something greater.

My Review: This book is in a similar vein as The Hunger Games where teenagers are growing up in an imagined world that is both similar and different to our own.  I didn't find myself loving the book or the writing style, but I did enjoy the story and became attached Beatrice Prior.

The Fault in Our Stars

Title: The Fault in Our Stars

Author: John Green

Pages: 7 discs

Genre: Fiction

Grade: A-

Synopsis: Hazel Grace is a kid with terminal cancer.  Whenever her cancer flares up her treatments have been able to provide her with some additional time on this earth.  When she is filling up to it, Hazel attends a Cancer Kid Support Group and meets Augustus Waters, a boy that will soon become her boyfriend.   This is the story about their friendship and how they navigate their cancers together.

My Review: If you haven't yet read this book, you may be in the minority. I've been surprised by how many people have read this book so far.  The book is well-written, enjoyable, heart-breaking and funny. It's probably hard to write a book about cancer kids. At times, it's a hard one to read.

The Wright Brothers

Title: The Wright Brothers

Author: David McCullough

Pages: 320

Genre: History, Biography

Grade: A

Synopsis: Orville and Wilbur Wright are known to the world as the inventors of powered flight.  To those of use living today, with airplanes, helicopters, drones and other flying devices all around that may not seem like such an amazing scientific achievement, but as it turns out, it required a substantial amount of original research, design, development, trial and error for the Wrights to accomplish this feat.  Orville and Wilbur Wright were extraordinary gifted geniuses and were able to devise solutions to all sorts of challenges that had stumped those who had tried to fly before them.

My Review: Another triumph by probably my favorite author, David McCullough.  He's quite old, and I'll be sad when he stops writing because he has a gift for bringing people, engineering feats, accomplishments and tragedies to life.  As is typical with his books, The Wright Brothers is based upon pages and pages of letters, journal entries and writings of journalists.  I was especially interested in this book as I started reading it while we were spending the week on the Outer Banks in North Carolina (just up the shore from Kitty Hawk, where the first flights took place) and I spent a few years growing up in Dayton, Ohio, best known for being the birthplace of the Wright Brothers.

Never Let Me Go

Title: Never Let Me Go

Author: Kazuo Ishiguro

Pages: 288

Genre: Fiction

Grade: B

Synopsis: Kathy grew up attending Hailsham, an exclusive boarding school in England.  All while growing up Kathy and her friends were reminded about how special they were, but it took years before any of the students understood why the teachers thought them so special.  In her adult years, Kathy is a caretaker and the book flashes back often to her time growing up with her friends at Hailsham during their formative years.

My Review: Once again, this was a book that took me a while to get into and I had a hard time following the plot for the first few chapters.  Looking at others reviews of this book, it appears that most people either love the book or hate it, I fall squarely in the middle.  I didn't love it, I didn't hate it and I enjoyed reading it and thinking about the ethical issues that are brought up in the book.

Outlander

Title: Outlander

Author: Diana Gabaldon

Pages: 28 discs

Genre: Science Fiction, Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Claire Randall is on a second honeymoon with her husband just after the end of World War II.  She had served as a combat nurse during the war and was now happily reunited with her husband.  While in Scotland, they visited a rock formation similar to a small version of Stonehenge.  Upon touching one of the rocks Claire was instantly transported to the same spot back in time to the year 1743.  She joins up with the Clan MacKenzie and becomes intimately familiar with the studly man of James Fraser...

My Review: This was an enjoyable book.  While the basic premise is unbelievable (a time traveling young wife), the rest of the book is written to be completely believable and you find yourself thinking what if?...

Disclaimer: While Claire is still happily married to her 20th century husband, while living in the 18th century there are a few love scenes, that did not come across as dirty, but were certainly steamy.

Ender's Game

Title: Ender's Game

Author: Orson Scott Card

Pages: 324

Genre: Science Fiction

Grade: B+

Synopsis: Andrew (Ender) Wiggins was born from decades of genetic experimentation in an effort to breed a human who is capable of leading humanity's battles against the Buggers.  Ender is selected for battle school and while there he spends his life learning the Buggers tactics and figuring out how to beat them.

My Review: I read the Ender's Game series back in Junior High and I had remembered that I had quite enjoyed it, but I couldn't remember much else about it.  Most of the book is dedicated to Ender's experiences and growth in the battle school, including numerous training battles and that can get a little tedious, but I found that I enjoyed it. Now I can watch the movie and re-read the rest of the books in the series.

Of Mice and Men

Title: Of Mice and Men

Author: John Steinbeck

Pages: 103

Genre: Classic

Grade: B+

Synopsis: George and his friend Lennie have nothing in the world besides each other. They find work on a ranch in California's Salinas Valley where they plan to work in order to save money to one day have a small farm of their own.  However, as always seems to happen, they get into trouble because Lennie doesn't understand his own strength and has a heart bigger than his brain.

My Review: I'm surprised that I had never read this book.  Had I realized that it was a book that would be easy to read in a day or two I probably would have read it sooner. It's a great story, and one that will leave you thinking about it long after you put the book down.

An Inconvenient Truth

Title: An Inconvenient Truth

Author: Al Gore

Pages: 328

Genre: Science (or is it science fiction?)

Grade: A-

Synopsis: This book is about "the planetary emergency of global warming and what we can do about it."  The book is a companion piece to the documentary by the same name.  The contents within the book are pulled from a series of multimedia presentations that Al Gore has been giving to groups and governments for many years.

My Review: [Disclaimer: I fully subscribe to the science of human caused global warming...] I was excited to come across this book at the DI or a garage sale (I don't remember which).  This book was an easy read with lots of photographs, graphs and diagrams outlining the global warming crisis.  I have not seen the documentary, but the book felt like it was rushed to print in order to be a companion piece to the film.  The material in the book is quite convincing and presented in an easy-to-digest way, I find it very unfortunate that such a topic has been twisted into a political discussion, when the science should be able to stand on its own.

Free to Choose

Title: Free to Choose

Authors: Milton & Rose Friedman

Pages: 10 discs

Genre: Economics

Grade: B

Synopsis: Milton and Rose Friedman published this personal statement back in 1979 and many of their beliefs still ring true today.  The Miltons advocate for a free market and smaller government (i.e. fewer regulations) and support their arguments with stories and examples.

My Review: To be honest, it has been a few months since I finished this book and I don't remember a whole lot about it...  What I do remember is that the book is very readable and accessible to the economic layman (such as myself), but that it was a bit on the long side which led it to be a bit boring.  Still, the book gave me plenty to think about.

You Know When the Men Are Gone

Title: You Know When the Men Are Gone

Author: Siobhan Fallon

Pages: 5 discs

Genre: Short Stories

Grade: B

Synopsis: This book is a collection of short stories about the lives of the wives and children left home at Fort Hood in Texas while their husbands are deployed (presumably to Afghanistan or Iraq).  Each of the women deal with their husband's deployment in different ways, or more accurately, struggles with their husband's absence differently.  One finds herself obsessing about her neighbor and how she is parenting or spending her time.  Another struggles to visit the PX without having a breakdown when she gets there.

My Review: I enjoyed this collection of short stories, that all had the common thread of deployment running from one to the next.  There were a number of stories that I would have enjoyed reading for another few chapters.

Left to Tell

Title: Left to Tell

Author: Immaculee Ilibagiza

Pages: 214

Genre: Memoir

Grade: B+

Synopsis: 1994 Rwanda was overtaken by a Hutu majority and in the course of about 3 months over 1 million Tutsis and moderate Hutus were killed in a bloody genocide.  Neighbors were pitted against neighbors and anybody caught hiding Tutsis were killed.  Immaculee Ilibigiza had found hiding in a small private bathroom in a pastor's house with 8 other women while the rest of her family in Rwanda were slaughtered.  During the 91 days that she remained hidden in the cramped bathroom she learned to rely on prayer to help pull her through.

My Review:  It is absolutely shocking that this type of tragedy can still happen in the modern world.  Once the fighting commenced, the UN and Belgium sent peacekeeping troops, but it was too dangerous for them to stay and the world was not willing to send troops in a number that could have stopped the genocide much sooner.  I started reading this book shortly after returning from Uganda (which borders Rwanda to the north).  I loved being able to better understand the types of places that were described in the book.  It helped the book come to life, all the while feeling nauseous that humans can still be so utterly brutish and murderous one to another.

Jamestown

Title: Jamestown

Author: Matthew Sharpe

Pages: 416

Genre: Historical Fiction?

Grade: D

Synopsis: This story is a retelling of the Jamestown story (i.e. the first English settlement in the New World), but it is set in a post-apocalyptic world.  Jamestown seems to be in the same location as it currently is (in Eastern Virginia), and the story spans from the Jamestown area up the coast to New York City, which has mostly been destroyed from how we know the city today.  A group of settlers set out from Manhattan, looking for a place to settle and create a trading post for oil when they come to the Jamestown area.  The groups communications officer starts a strange romance with Pocahontas in an effort to become trading partners with the Indians in the area.

My Review: I didn't really get this book.  It was a bizarre mixture of just about everything including rap and Ebonics and history and politics.  Too much of the humor felt forced and it took me far too long to get into the story.