Away by Amy Bloom

I almost returned this book to the library without reading it but something made me renew it and give it one more try. I'm glad I did. With one exception that I will get to later, this was a great book that I enjoyed reading and looked forward to each night.

The story is about a woman named Lillian who leaves Eastern Europe in 1924 after her family is brutally murdered. She lands in America, lives with distant relatives, and tries to start her life over. However, she finds out that her daughter may still be alive, so she begins a dangerous trip across the United States and up through Canada in hopes of eventually reaching Siberia. Along the way, she meets many interesting characters and, like most heroines in journey novels, finds out a lot about herself.

My only criticism of the book is that there is an unusually high number of sexual situations. Individually, each of the encounters served a purpose in the narrative, but put together they seemed egregious rather than appropriately descriptive.

That aside, I did enjoy reading this story and spending time with the characters.

Dreams from my Father by Barack Obama

Several months ago I noticed this in Lib's bookshelf and asked to borrow it. With the election looming, I decided to prioritize reading it sooner rather than later.

This is Obama's first book, following his early life through his matriculation into Harvard Law School. The first third of the book covers his early childhood, including when he lived in Indonesia and subsequently Hawaii. The second third addresses his years as a community organizer in Chicago. The final section of the book talks about his time in Kenya, a lengthy visit with his father's side of the family after his father's death.

What I was most struck by was how honest he was in the book. In a country where just ten years ago we talked about whether our president inhaled, Obama freely admits to a period in his life when he did drugs. He talks openly about race and his confusing feelings associated with being biracial. He is also very critical of his time as an organizer and what he saw in inner-city Chicago.

The book was reasonably well-edited. It was easy to read and held my attention. The one exception was a lengthy family history towards the end of the book. In other places I was surprised to see some 'Joe sixpack' colloquialisms that seemed forced.

This is the first time I've read a book written by a candidate in a current election, so I have little to compare it to. It did not seem to be written by someone looking to be president one day, which I appreciated. Either way, the contents of this book weren't going to change my vote.

Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, CO

Thanks to Dave for recommending the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver Colorado. In Denver for a business trip, I took a few minutes to browse in this great bookstore! It was three stories tall, had great old factory beams holding it up, and was filled with great clusters of books and places to read them.

http://www.tatteredcover.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp

Kind of made me want to make it a tradition to start visiting independent bookstores wherever I travel.

Tomato Girl by Jayne Pupek

This book was okay. It was about an 11-year-old girl growing up in the South. She starts to notice her father's increasingly friendly relationship with the "tomato girl" - the girl who sells tomatoes to his store. As she copes with no longer being the most important woman in her father's life, she also begins to lose her mother to mental illness.

The narrator's voice was memorable...precocious and caught between wanting to take care of her mother and wanting her father to take care of her. She also goes through the pain of discovering the meaning behind the things that she sees going on between her father and the Tomato Girl. It was sad to see how lost the narrator was as an 11-year-old and how she didn't know (as the reader did) that these were not things someone her age should have to deal with herself.

However, I didn't love reading the book. I didn't find myself rooting for the narrator consistently and I didn't think the writing was anything special.

Wally Lamb is back!

I just learned that Wally Lamb has a new book coming out in November. Hooray! I found his recent compilations of essays by women prisoners a poor replacement for his excellent fiction.

Books Galore!

A few weeks ago Jo lent me Devil in the White City which she really loved. I also went on a request-apalooza on the library's website. I took the day off for Rosh Hashonah last week and went to the library after synagogue. Yesterday, Web and I went to Borders and I splurged on a book on the clearance rack by Mario Vargas Llosa and a new book called The Zookeeper's Wife.

So...I have a lot of reading to do all of a sudden!

The Birthdays by Heidi Pitlor

This book was about three siblings all relating to pregnancy. One is a single woman, accidentally pregnant, one has a wife pregnant with twins through IVF, and one has a wife pregnant from a donor. The family convenes for their father's birthday for a long weekend. The book follows their struggles coping with relationships and with their pregnancies. The author did a good job of explaining each of the characters' personalities, incorporating stories of their shared childhood.

It was a quick read and nothing special, but I was interested to know what would happen to the characters.