Book Review: The Lovely Bones

I just finished reading The Lovely Bones. It took me well over a month to finish it - not because it was long but because every time I picked it up, I never felt like I had to keep reading.

That sounds like a negative but in this case it really wasn't a bad thing. It was nice to be able to read a book for just a few hours once a week and never feel like when I picked it up again I might be lost or I might have forgotten what had happened since the last time I read.

The back of the book reads:

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her - her friends trading rumors about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unraveling. Out of unspeakable tragedy and loss, The Lovely Bones succeeds, miraculously, in building a tale filled with hope, humor, suspense, even joy.

With the above description I figured it would be some kind of murder mystery type book but we find out who killed Susie on the second page. That's when I thought that maybe it isn't a mystery to the reader but it will be a murder mystery to the characters in the book who are still living. It wasn't that either. The whole book is written from Susie's point of view - which was a little different (in a good way) considering she was dead the whole time - and was basically just Susie watching the lives of her family and friends from heaven.

You'd think that a big climax of the book would be the fate of her murdering, but it was really anti-climatic, just a little blurb toward the end - it was written in a way that made it hardly seem important. Any maybe, given everything else that happens, it wasn't important - I still thought it was strange that so little emphasis was put on it when a good chunk of the beginning and middle of the book focuses on the murderer.

The back of the book also indicates that the story might contain some humor, but to be honest, I don't recall thinking anything in the story was funny at all. It is actually a quite disturbing story at times and it was on the sixth or seventh page when I went "Oh, that's why the movie was rated R."

Overall I'd say The Lovely Bones was good. Not great, but good.

Book Review: The Help

Apparently Costco is my new book store. Whenever I'm there I always end up browsing the books section; my only wish is that it were organized better.

The first time I saw The Help I didn't buy it. It sounded kind of interesting but wasn't what I was looking for at the time. I filed it away in my head as something I might read later. Then I saw a movie trailer for it and figured that if it was good enough to make a movie out of it might be worth reading.

Here is what the back cover has to say:


Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step . . .

Aibileen is a black maid in 1962 Jackson, Mississippi, raising her seventeenth white child. She's always taken orders quietly, but lately it leaves her with a bitterness she can no longer bit back. Her friend Minny has certainly never held her tongue, or held on to a job for very long, but now she's working for a newcomer with secrets that leave her speechless. And white socialite Skeeter has just returned from college with ambition and a degree but, to her mother's lament, no husband. Normally Skeeter would find solace in Constantine, the beloved maid who raised her, but Constantine has inexplicably disappeared.

Together, these seemingly different women join to work on a project that could forever alter their destinies and the life of a small town - to write, in secret, a tell-all book about what it's really like to work as a black maid in the white homes of the South. Despite the terrible risks they will have to take, and the sometimes humorous boundaries they will have to cross, these three women unite with one intention: hope for a better day.


I bought The Help as something to read during down time on vacation. I think it was a good vacation read - not too serious, not too jovial. There were times when I was really into it and times when I wondered if it were ever going to get to the point.

It was interesting to see a little into the lives of the black maids during that time and to hear some of their stories but I wish there were more of their stories. A lot of the book focuses on Skeeter and her relationships with her other socialite friends and a potential spouse, which is also interesting because of the way they treat her after they suspect she has any amount of sympathy for the black population, but I could have done with a little less of the day to day aspects of those relationships.

I also wish there were a little more about the woman Minny worked for, specifically what happened to her in regards to her relationship with the women in town (she wasn't one of the socialites) after a shocking event toward the end of the book. She was an interesting character and I would have liked to know if she ever got what she wanted out of life.

I occasionally found the book hard to follow. The chapters can be from either Aibileen, Minny, or Skeeter's point of view with one of the chapters being from a third person point of view. When the point of view changes, the name of the person whose point of view it is is given with the chapter number but whenever I put the book down in the middle of someone's point of view, when I picked the book back up again I had to start reading to figure out whose point of view it was. I liked hearing the three points of view but I wonder if there could have been a better way to indicate whose point of view it was.

Overall I'd say that the book was good but not fantastic. I can see how it would make a good movie and I suspect the movie might be better than the book because it will all be compacted down to just a few hours, leaving out anything that dragged on a little too long.

Book Review: The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

I'm not sure why but this book caught my eye in Costco while CJ was trying to nonchalantly look at video games. I guess I liked the idea of where a fairy tale story could have really come from. So I picked up the book and read the description on the back:


In the last months of the Nazi occupation of Poland, two children are left by their father and stepmother to find safety in a dense forest. Because their real names will reveal their Jewishness, they are renamed "Hansel" and "Gretel". They wander in the woods until they are taken in by Magda, an eccentric and stubborn old woman called "witch: by the nearby villagers. Magda is determined to save them, even as a German officer arrives in the village with his own plans for the children.

A haunting novel of journey and survival, of redemption and memory, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel powerfully depicts how war is experienced by families and especially by children, and tells a resonant, riveting story.


Sounded interesting to me. The book started out interesting then had a slow patch. The beginning definitely wasn't a book that I couldn't put down. However, just over halfway through I got really into it and did have a hard time putting it down. It has everything you expect from a Hansel and Gretel story (Hansel, Gretel, a stepmother, bread crumbs, a witch, and ovens) plus everything you'd expect from a World War II Story. In case you don't read a lot of WWII stories, that means that there are scenes in the book that are very (I really mean very) disturbing. If you can't handle the more disturbing aspects of WWII, then don't read this book.

That said, it was a very interesting book and I quite enjoyed it. I'd like to share one of my favorite quotes. It takes place in the forest. There are a group of 'partisans' doing their best to fight the Nazi's out of Poland; they are a mixed group of Polish, Russian, Christian, and Jew. One member of the group was saying that he no longer believes in God because of everything that is happening. Another member of the group says,


God didn't come down and kill us. I don't see God shooting children and priests. None of us met God beating up Jews and shoving them into railroad cars. This is men doing the murdering. Talk to men about their evil, kill the evil men, but pray to God. You can't expect God to come down and do our living for us. We have to do that ourselves.


I thought there were a couple of great lessons in just that one paragraph.

1. Men make their own decisions, God doesn't make decisions for them.
2. God will help us out but he can't do our living for us.

Overall, I'd recommend this book to anyone who thinks they can handle those more disturbing scenes. If you are in the area and you'd like to borrow it, just let me know.