Gripping! I cannot tell you the emotions this book will bring you. This is a true story, an emotional account written by one of the survivors of a plane crash back in October 1972 in the Andes Mountains. Honestly, I had never heard of this before? Granted when the story unfolded I was merely 6 years old and even if over the many years that have transpired, if mention of it was on the news of an "anniversary", I had no recollection of the initial happening to make it memorable for me. Now...now, I will remember this story for the rest of my life.
Just a quick sentence or two of the overall tragedy. A plane, mainly carrying passengers that made up a Rugby team from Uruguay, was heading towards Chile. The weather conditions where not ideal and perhaps they shouldn't have taken off, either way, while over the Andes Mountains in literally blind conditions the unthinkable happened. The plane made contact and the tragedy quickly unfolds, this was October 13, 1972. There had been 45 passengers on the plane, 29 survived. There were varying degrees of injuries, some mere cuts and bruises, others had injuries so severe it was a waiting game until their final breathe.
The plane had been torn in parts, the weather at 11,000 feet was inhumane and unsurvivable, these people had no provisions. Their hopes were that rescuers would find them and soon. Days turned into weeks and as circumstances grew more dire so did hope of rescue. Seventy-two days later due to the determination of two men, Nando and Roberto who traversed time and distance as a last resort to either help rescue themselves and the remaining survivors or die trying, the sixteen remaining men were all brought to safety.
What this book details is from the perspective of one of those men, Nando Parrado. It is more than a factual account of what happened and how they survived, although you will be transported into some of those grisly and unimaginable details as you read. This is true human fear, despondency, hope, anger, drive, determination and all those things that when you have nothing else you still have love and that may be the last and only thing that you are living for - and it pulls you through.
Would I recommend this book! A definitive YES! It will leave you speechless and in awe.
Read more about the author on his webpage by clicking the photo of the front cover of the book to the left of this posting.
Saturday, August 27, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
Rooms by James L. Rubart
Wow, not sure what I want to say about this book that I just finished up? I guess I will start with my first anticipation....
Rooms was toted as being similar to "The Shack". I loved "The Shack"! In fact I think during the time that book was in my hands all I wanted to do was read it and nothing else. It was fantastical (fantastic, fantasy, mystical - all rolled into one word). When I happened across Rooms at the bookstore, it was the cover that first drew me in. Yes, I am one of those people who judge books by their cover! :) The cover appears that the story will be foreboding, possibly filled with turbulence. After reading the backcover and reading over the "Praise for Rooms" contained in the first couple of pages, I was anxious to open the book up and dive in.
The story line was intriguing, it captured me fairly quickly. However, somewhere midway in this book the overwhelming preachiness and really hard to believe types of things going on in the story started irking me a bit. By the time I was finishing the last 100 or so pages, I just wanted to finish reading the book and be done.
There are aspects about Rooms that I really enjoyed, but it is so overwrought in what I think of when I think of crazy tele-evangelists that it lost a whole lot of glamour the longer the story went on. This is just one for you to decide for on your own if you want to pick it up. I'd advise to read online reviews prior though. You will find 5-star raving reviews and 1-star critiques, whichever your heart leans more towards will decide if you want to read Rooms. I'd say both the 5-star and 1-star type reviews are accurate, it's just a preference to what extent and lengths you want to have Christianity in your fictional literature. For me this was too much.
I will include a link to the author's webpage that you visit by clicking the photo of the front cover to the left of this blog post.
Rooms was toted as being similar to "The Shack". I loved "The Shack"! In fact I think during the time that book was in my hands all I wanted to do was read it and nothing else. It was fantastical (fantastic, fantasy, mystical - all rolled into one word). When I happened across Rooms at the bookstore, it was the cover that first drew me in. Yes, I am one of those people who judge books by their cover! :) The cover appears that the story will be foreboding, possibly filled with turbulence. After reading the backcover and reading over the "Praise for Rooms" contained in the first couple of pages, I was anxious to open the book up and dive in.
The story line was intriguing, it captured me fairly quickly. However, somewhere midway in this book the overwhelming preachiness and really hard to believe types of things going on in the story started irking me a bit. By the time I was finishing the last 100 or so pages, I just wanted to finish reading the book and be done.
There are aspects about Rooms that I really enjoyed, but it is so overwrought in what I think of when I think of crazy tele-evangelists that it lost a whole lot of glamour the longer the story went on. This is just one for you to decide for on your own if you want to pick it up. I'd advise to read online reviews prior though. You will find 5-star raving reviews and 1-star critiques, whichever your heart leans more towards will decide if you want to read Rooms. I'd say both the 5-star and 1-star type reviews are accurate, it's just a preference to what extent and lengths you want to have Christianity in your fictional literature. For me this was too much.
I will include a link to the author's webpage that you visit by clicking the photo of the front cover to the left of this blog post.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Line by Teri Hall
Can you believe it, I have finished the book I just started yesterday! This was a really short book (at least for me) about 225 pages and thankfully the sequel "Away" is to be released on September 15th so that will be forthcoming on my reading list.
The Line is categorized as a YA (young adult) novel. With that being said my qualifications on the content are less critical than a book that is geared towards a more mature reader. However, I really don't have any criticisms of this book other than the slower start to lure me in. I'd say I wasn't fully invested in the story until page 70 or so, which was about a third of the way through. But from that point on the story kept building, the tension continued to mount until the final page that left me wanting to know moreand to go further on this journey with the characters. Luckily there was a 7 or 8 page 'tickler' of the next book included.
Although on a different scope, I consider this book a combination of a dystopian society following a mini post-apocalyptic event. Government is in control to the extreme for the U.S. (now referred to as the Unified States), news and propaganda are filtered and changed before being fed out to society. DNA is recorded at birth as a means of keeping track of people. The list of government rules goes on and on, however there is a region of people who are not under this control. They are the Others who inhabit the land on the other side of the Line. They are Away. The Line is a means of border control, keeps people out and keeps people in. The people the Line is keeping, or kept, out though were it's own citizens. Now after many years of being cut off, barely surviving, a young boy makes his way to the Line in order to see if he can communicate with someone on the other side in order to get medicine for his sick and dying father. That's where this story takes off.
Barriers have always existed in our past, continue in our present, so this barrier in the story isn't hard to believe there is a sense of reality. The Berlin Wall, Japanese segregation camps after the Pearl Harbor attack, apartheid in South Africa are all examples of barriers. They seem apalling to us, but at one time they made perfect sense to someone otherwise they would not have existed. And so the Line exists too.
The Line in my opinion represents fear. Fear then builds upon itself and becomes an entity. What would happen if one of the Others crossed over or vice versa? You'll have to read to find out for yourself.
This is Teri hall's debut novel. Again, I have linked the authors webpage to the photo of the book in the post.
Books along the same genre that I have read of recent would include "1984" by George Orwell, "The Year of the Flood" by Margaret Atwood, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ranson Riggs. If you have read and enjoyed any of these, then you will undoubtedly want to read The Line.
The Line is categorized as a YA (young adult) novel. With that being said my qualifications on the content are less critical than a book that is geared towards a more mature reader. However, I really don't have any criticisms of this book other than the slower start to lure me in. I'd say I wasn't fully invested in the story until page 70 or so, which was about a third of the way through. But from that point on the story kept building, the tension continued to mount until the final page that left me wanting to know moreand to go further on this journey with the characters. Luckily there was a 7 or 8 page 'tickler' of the next book included.
Although on a different scope, I consider this book a combination of a dystopian society following a mini post-apocalyptic event. Government is in control to the extreme for the U.S. (now referred to as the Unified States), news and propaganda are filtered and changed before being fed out to society. DNA is recorded at birth as a means of keeping track of people. The list of government rules goes on and on, however there is a region of people who are not under this control. They are the Others who inhabit the land on the other side of the Line. They are Away. The Line is a means of border control, keeps people out and keeps people in. The people the Line is keeping, or kept, out though were it's own citizens. Now after many years of being cut off, barely surviving, a young boy makes his way to the Line in order to see if he can communicate with someone on the other side in order to get medicine for his sick and dying father. That's where this story takes off.
Barriers have always existed in our past, continue in our present, so this barrier in the story isn't hard to believe there is a sense of reality. The Berlin Wall, Japanese segregation camps after the Pearl Harbor attack, apartheid in South Africa are all examples of barriers. They seem apalling to us, but at one time they made perfect sense to someone otherwise they would not have existed. And so the Line exists too.
The Line in my opinion represents fear. Fear then builds upon itself and becomes an entity. What would happen if one of the Others crossed over or vice versa? You'll have to read to find out for yourself.
This is Teri hall's debut novel. Again, I have linked the authors webpage to the photo of the book in the post.
Books along the same genre that I have read of recent would include "1984" by George Orwell, "The Year of the Flood" by Margaret Atwood, "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy and "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" by Ranson Riggs. If you have read and enjoyed any of these, then you will undoubtedly want to read The Line.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
My Name is Memory by Ann Brashares
Despite the fact it took me nearly two weeks to read this rather short book, I can say that it really is a lovely read full of hope, dreams, eternal love and hopefully a sequel.
My Name is Memory is a take on the human soul having the ability to live many lives over the centuries. This is an idea that I had read before a long time ago, not in a book of fiction but in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo back in the 1990's I believe. Sometimes reading about the possibility of having 2nd, 3rd or more chances to make something right is appealing to ponder. What if?
What if the soul was born many centuries ago and in that life it found a true love that was unrequited or the fates had suddenly ended a life? Perhaps that soul could be reborn in another body and live again. I think we've all had dreams or the feeling of deja vu and couldn't remotely explain how something we have never seen before seems familiar. What if those glimpses are left over imprints, or like a tattoo on the old soul, that is carried with it and manages to make it's way into our present? Perhaps you are born with a birthmark on your shoulder and think nothing of it. What if in a past life you were shot in your shoulder? Could it be that the birthmark is a way for the body to recognize it's past as well?
In a nutshell these are the ideas that this story is built around. However in this story the main character Daniel has the gift of memory. He remembers his past lives, he recognizes the reborn souls of people in his past lives in his present life. During the span that starts roughly 400 to 500 years after the death of Christ up to present day, Daniel seeks a certain soul. She is now known as Lucy, but in the past she was Sophia and Constance. She was a child who died in his arms, an old woman he sat next to in church, a beautiful woman of priviledge that he could not get close to as he was just a young boy.
This story goes back and forth in time to weave a tale and build the characters so that we not only know them now but then as well, and perhaps why they do the things they do and feel the way they feel. One of my favorite passages in this book reads like this....
"God, Sophia. You aren't anyone. Haven't you heard anything I've said to you? You might think I'm another pathetic boy in your care, and I am. But you are everything to me."
I was sitting up and flushed, and so determined I could barely feel my lungs or any other part of me. Sophia had dropped my hand, and she looked as though she was going to cry.
"Please try to believe me." I said. "This didn't happen by accident. You have been with me from the very first life. You are my first memory every time, the single thread in all of my lives. It's you who makes me a person."
Taken from pages 166-167.
When I read that it gave me something that kinda felt like hope. I know this is just a fictional book and that there is no proof that souls actually move from life to life, transcending time, but what if? What if the person we meet tomorrow at the store, who becomes our best friend because it feels so natural was our sister in a past life or our grandfather (souls apparently don't have to follow gender specific guidelines, as suggested in this story).
This is a book I would definitely recommend. It's thought-provoking, well crafted and leaves room for the reader to make his/her own assumptions and fill-in's along the way, it gives the reader an opportunity to imagine where parts of the stories untold may have led.
Ann Brashares may be a name that is familiar to you, she is the author who penned the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" books. While this post is displayed, if you are interested in learning more about Ann and her books, you may click the photo of "My Name is Memory" and it will take you to the author's webpage.
My Name is Memory is a take on the human soul having the ability to live many lives over the centuries. This is an idea that I had read before a long time ago, not in a book of fiction but in some metaphysical mumbo jumbo back in the 1990's I believe. Sometimes reading about the possibility of having 2nd, 3rd or more chances to make something right is appealing to ponder. What if?
What if the soul was born many centuries ago and in that life it found a true love that was unrequited or the fates had suddenly ended a life? Perhaps that soul could be reborn in another body and live again. I think we've all had dreams or the feeling of deja vu and couldn't remotely explain how something we have never seen before seems familiar. What if those glimpses are left over imprints, or like a tattoo on the old soul, that is carried with it and manages to make it's way into our present? Perhaps you are born with a birthmark on your shoulder and think nothing of it. What if in a past life you were shot in your shoulder? Could it be that the birthmark is a way for the body to recognize it's past as well?
In a nutshell these are the ideas that this story is built around. However in this story the main character Daniel has the gift of memory. He remembers his past lives, he recognizes the reborn souls of people in his past lives in his present life. During the span that starts roughly 400 to 500 years after the death of Christ up to present day, Daniel seeks a certain soul. She is now known as Lucy, but in the past she was Sophia and Constance. She was a child who died in his arms, an old woman he sat next to in church, a beautiful woman of priviledge that he could not get close to as he was just a young boy.
This story goes back and forth in time to weave a tale and build the characters so that we not only know them now but then as well, and perhaps why they do the things they do and feel the way they feel. One of my favorite passages in this book reads like this....
"God, Sophia. You aren't anyone. Haven't you heard anything I've said to you? You might think I'm another pathetic boy in your care, and I am. But you are everything to me."
I was sitting up and flushed, and so determined I could barely feel my lungs or any other part of me. Sophia had dropped my hand, and she looked as though she was going to cry.
"Please try to believe me." I said. "This didn't happen by accident. You have been with me from the very first life. You are my first memory every time, the single thread in all of my lives. It's you who makes me a person."
Taken from pages 166-167.
When I read that it gave me something that kinda felt like hope. I know this is just a fictional book and that there is no proof that souls actually move from life to life, transcending time, but what if? What if the person we meet tomorrow at the store, who becomes our best friend because it feels so natural was our sister in a past life or our grandfather (souls apparently don't have to follow gender specific guidelines, as suggested in this story).
This is a book I would definitely recommend. It's thought-provoking, well crafted and leaves room for the reader to make his/her own assumptions and fill-in's along the way, it gives the reader an opportunity to imagine where parts of the stories untold may have led.
Ann Brashares may be a name that is familiar to you, she is the author who penned the "Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants" books. While this post is displayed, if you are interested in learning more about Ann and her books, you may click the photo of "My Name is Memory" and it will take you to the author's webpage.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Hmmmm....started this a long time ago
Gosh, to say I started this blog with excitement and anticipation would have an understatement. Soon though my excitement waned, then it fizzled and eventually it was snuffed out. Why? Not sure, perhaps I chose the wrong type of format. I was trying to emulate a blog which I really enjoyed, one that touched on the day to day happening and how it affected you, how you thought it over, the conclusions that came about.
Well by trying to do what I enjoyed reading of someone else's led to two things happening. First, I felt my blog was just another thing on my "to do" list and it became more of a burden than an outlet of expression. Secondly, by trying to come up with this blog it sucked the time I had normally allowed to visit another blog out of my day. Now I could have simply allotted more time, but I spent way too much time online as many of my Facebook friends may know. Sometimes hours a night after coming home from work instead of other things which I know I should be doing. It's double-edged sword. I enjoy the computer and being online and all that comes with that but...I enjoy all the other stuff that happens when you are not clued with a laptop on your lap and keys rapidly pressed under your fingertips.
So that brings me to why am I blogging again today all of a sudden? Last night it came to me what I should have always used my blog for! I am an avid reader and enjoy all sorts of genres and writing styles and that is something I could share. I am not talking about book reviews per se, but maybe more along the lines of what I am reading, what I think about it, what I like and don't like in the book. Are you thinking, "That sure sounds like a review?" With a chuckle, I agree. But here is the thing I hope not to do...
I don't want to give a Cliff Notes version of the book I read, I don't want to fill a few paragraphs with all the nuances of the book or the spoilers that may ruin the whole reading process for another person. This isn't an assignment, I don't have to read a book and write a report in proof that I did read it, like we had to do back in school.
With that, you may notice my blog posting again. The frequency will depend on the book I am reading, some books I rip through because they are awesome and hold my attention and I simply cannot put them down. Other times, a book may take me a month or two to plow my way through. Some people may put a book down if it feels like pulling teeth, but for me I just can't. Once I dive in it feels like an obligation to finish. Ya just never know maybe a story that starts out slow, has weak characters will end with something monumental and life changing.
If you happen to drop by and see my take on a book that you've read and your take on it was entirely different, or deeper or whatever please comment and let me know. Perhaps a story I will read will open a door to one you may not have picked up on your own. This will be my very own one person book club and I welcome you to join if and when the mood hits! Happy reading!
Well by trying to do what I enjoyed reading of someone else's led to two things happening. First, I felt my blog was just another thing on my "to do" list and it became more of a burden than an outlet of expression. Secondly, by trying to come up with this blog it sucked the time I had normally allowed to visit another blog out of my day. Now I could have simply allotted more time, but I spent way too much time online as many of my Facebook friends may know. Sometimes hours a night after coming home from work instead of other things which I know I should be doing. It's double-edged sword. I enjoy the computer and being online and all that comes with that but...I enjoy all the other stuff that happens when you are not clued with a laptop on your lap and keys rapidly pressed under your fingertips.
So that brings me to why am I blogging again today all of a sudden? Last night it came to me what I should have always used my blog for! I am an avid reader and enjoy all sorts of genres and writing styles and that is something I could share. I am not talking about book reviews per se, but maybe more along the lines of what I am reading, what I think about it, what I like and don't like in the book. Are you thinking, "That sure sounds like a review?" With a chuckle, I agree. But here is the thing I hope not to do...
I don't want to give a Cliff Notes version of the book I read, I don't want to fill a few paragraphs with all the nuances of the book or the spoilers that may ruin the whole reading process for another person. This isn't an assignment, I don't have to read a book and write a report in proof that I did read it, like we had to do back in school.
With that, you may notice my blog posting again. The frequency will depend on the book I am reading, some books I rip through because they are awesome and hold my attention and I simply cannot put them down. Other times, a book may take me a month or two to plow my way through. Some people may put a book down if it feels like pulling teeth, but for me I just can't. Once I dive in it feels like an obligation to finish. Ya just never know maybe a story that starts out slow, has weak characters will end with something monumental and life changing.
If you happen to drop by and see my take on a book that you've read and your take on it was entirely different, or deeper or whatever please comment and let me know. Perhaps a story I will read will open a door to one you may not have picked up on your own. This will be my very own one person book club and I welcome you to join if and when the mood hits! Happy reading!
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