The All-Girls Filling Station Reunion by Fannie Flagg

This book was sent to me by my dear Aunt Mary and she was right, I absolutely loved it! It was one of those books that makes me sad when I near the end of it because I'm so enthralled with the story line and the characters that I never want it to end! It also had so many twists and a surprise ending. The plot alternates between two sets of characters that come together in the end. One set is a 69 year old woman named Sookie and her family who live in present-day Alabama, the other is an immigrant family named the Jurdabalinski's who live in Wisconsin during the 1940's. Sookie is a very sweet, very Southern woman, who unexpectedly finds out she was adopted as a baby and that "Winged Victory" (her eccentric mother) is not her mother at all. Through various covert contacts, Sookie discovers her mother was a WASP (Women's Airforce Service Pilots) during WWII, the first women in history to fly America's military aircraft. This is quite a surprise for kind, soft-spoken Sookie to be directly related to such brave women. As she discovers more about her past, Sookie is able to redefine her view of herself and gain the confidence she has always lacked.

Nefertiti by Michelle Moran

I'm cross-posting this one with my other review site because I thought this was a pretty interesting book that not too many people had heard about! It wasn't my favorite but was still a decent read.

Title: Nefertiti
Author: Michelle Moran
Genre: Historical fiction
Publisher: Crown, 2007
Source: Borrowed from my sister-in-law

The untimely death of the pharaoh's oldest son leaves the kingdom wide open for Amunhotep, the ambitious and heretic second son. Nefertiti, the beautiful and intelligent niece of the Queen of Egypt, is a logical choice as his chief wife. However, as Amunhotep (later Akhenaten) pushes his new religious ideas on his reluctant subjects, the political climate of Egypt grows more and more unstable. Nefertiti's cat-eyed sister, Mutnodjmet, is thrown into the center of it all as she struggles to escape the tumult of royal life and establish a peaceful family life of her own.

This book sat on my nightstand for months, and I'm not sure why. I think it was one part my overwhelmed feeling with everything I had to read, one part my lack of interest in Egypt in general, and one part my reluctance to get into historical fiction. This is kind of laughable to me now, because since reading this book I have read practically nothing but historical fiction since.

To me, Nefertiti was mildly entertaining. The setting, however, was fantastic. In my mind I had a preconception that I wasn't interested in Egyptian history, but once I became swept up in the story I found the scenery and daily-life tidbits fascinating. Moran inserted little details of culture that made the events more believable. Her scenes were vivid - I could picture the city Nefertiti and Amunhotep were building and Mutnodjmet's herb garden.

I had mixed reactions to the characters. Mutnodjmet herself was an enjoyable character to read. She only wants to enjoy her life as a loved and fulfilled woman, but her family expects her to be willing to sacrifice everything for their social status, The Other Boleyn Girl -style. While she does have a few weak moments enjoying a triumph of beauty over Amunhotep's Second Wife, Kiya's, ladies in waiting. She has interests beyond the family's status, growing medicinal herbs and setting up a business to help women with various problems. She wants to have a family and enjoy a life married to a man that she loves. My one complaint with Mutny was that she was too perfect - she never made a mistake, never showed a dark side. She was consistently either devoted and dutiful or righteously indignant.

Nefertiti and Amunhotep, on the other hand, were selfishness personified. They ignored all political life and cut a pathway of destruction, debt, and death through Egypt. Their horrible deeds, which could have been entertainment for shock value, become predictable. You know that Amunhotep will do something stupid and selfish, and you know that Nefertiti will go along with him to keep power over him. Their story, presumably the central story, was occasionally tiresome because of the endless tirade of horrible acts.

However, the pace picks up in the last hundred pages as Nefertiti and Amunhotep's misdeeds escalate to a horrible climax. The story becomes like a train wreck (please realize I'm referring to the horrific events, not the writing). I knew just what would happen, but I had to keep reading. I was originally thinking that perhaps I wouldn't read the sequel, The Heretic Queen, but the last 100 pages convinced me to stay invested in Amunhotep and Nefertiti's tragic story. Be warned, however, that the first several hundred pages are a slow ebb and flow of Mutnodjmet trying to assert her right to happiness and Nefertiti and Amunhotep wreaking havoc.

This was an enjoyable read, perhaps not quite living up to my expectations or the time invested in the high page count, but nevertheless one that is staying with me still. I am still looking forward to reading Michelle Moran's other works, although I am hoping her next books hold my attention a little better.

3 stars

Gone with the Wind Anniversary Edition

So I realized this morning that you guys would think this is cool.

I am a huge Gone with the Wind fan. I love the book. I love the movie. I didn’t love the sequel, Scarlett, written by Alexandra Ripley, but I have read it more than once. Usually when I’m super depressed and want that happy ending, even though I love the real ending most.

Anyway.

This year is the 75^th anniversary of the publication of Gone with the Wind. Per my google reader feed, I discovered about six weeks ago that there was a library in Southport, Connecticut that had an exhibit of the last four chapters of the typed manuscript on display for a month before they sent it to Atlanta with all the other GWTW paraphernalia. As I love this story so, so much, I desperately wanted to go. I easily convinced my roommate and her not-yet boyfriend, and we convinced another friend to come as well. He was more hesitant, but I’m pretty sure what sold him was the argument that he “needs to pay homage to the book that inspired the first movie that ever used a swear word.” It worked, and he enjoyed the exhibit.

Guys, it was SO COOL. They had the manuscript in a glass display case and you could see the copyediting marks in the margins, which was amazing. I loved being able to read it right there, and I know the book well enough to pick up on some text that changed between the manuscript and the final printing. They also had copies of foreign covers in many, many languages, which was really cool to see.  A lot of the covers were done after the movie came out and had excellent likenesses of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. They also talked about how in America we see it as this great tragic love story, but in Europe it was read much more for the political undertones. Apparently it made a big impact on them in the way the South handles the Reconstruction and stuff, and it was even banned in Spain (I might have the country wrong) during a war for fear that the people would rebel. I had no idea it was so influential in Europe. It made me want to read the book all over again.

I took some photos on my phone to text to my mother (who loves GWTW as much as I do), so they aren’t particularly high quality. But they are still cool.

GWTW in Hebrew and Arabic

GWTW in Danish

Part of the typed manuscript. The last line on the bottom of the right-hand page is Rhett Butler's famous, "My dear, I don't give a damn."

Chains

Middle school book club success! I'm always happy to read books that have received the Scott O'Dell book award, I feel like you can't go wrong. This is a good young adult fiction book about slavery during the Revolutionary War. It was an interesting take, because usually you don't learn about those two things together, slavery goes with the Civil War. I also liked it because as a slave, the main character heard a lot from both sides of the conflict and really neither side truly supported what she really needed in life- freedom. I believe it's the first book in a series, and I liked it well enough to hopefully read the next one(s).

The Power of One

Oh my goodness I loved this book. It's probably going into my list of top 5 if you take out all the Harry Potter books. It's about a boy growing up in South Africa, starting when he's five years old in about 1935 and taking the reader through his childhood and teenage years. It's historical fiction, so you learn about the Apartheid and WWII, but I mostly loved it because of the great characters that are portrayed. There are so many people to love and hate! Read it, please do.

Disclaimer though... this has terrible language. Bad enough that I can't actually recommend it to anyone without putting that out there. I almost feel like a heathen for loving the book so much.(but let's justify it here: it's a cultural thing, not an "I'm the author and I just want to swear" thing)

Another thought- The book is 500 pages long, which to me is super long, but not a hard read. However, there is a young reader edition you could look into that doesn't have the swearing (or half the story).

The Book Thief

So I actually have a blog for reviews of the books I read. But I thought maybe I couldt post little blurbs about the books I read, and if you want to read more about it you can visit my book review blog.

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
5 out of 5 stars (8 out of 5 stars?)

I LOVE THIS BOOK! It was a huge surprise to me - I had no idea what to expect from it, except that it was narrated by Death (and that doesn't exactly tell you anything - it is just confusing until you read the book). If you want a more detailed summary and rantings and ravings go here. But for now, I will just tell you all to read this book. Make it next on your list. It's a winner.

The Help

I LOVED this book. Some books take me a few pages or chapters to get into, and that was not the case with The Help. I was totally invested from beginning to end. The characters felt so real and wonderful to me.

The Help is set in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s. I've read books before from that era, but this is a different perspective of the Civil Rights movement. Some of the chapters are from the perspective of "the help," two different black ladies, Minny and Aibileen, who are maids/cooks/baby-sitters in white ladies' houses, and some are from the perspective of a white girl, Skeeter, who just graduated from college and has come back home.

Skeeter decides to start a project collecting stories from the help in their town, to find out what it's REALLY like to be employed in a white person's house. So Minny and Aibileen get the ladies in town to tell Skeeter their stories.

If you haven't read this already, please do. I can't imagine anyone not loving it.

Ladies who have read it--what do you have to add? What did you love the most about this book?

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

So it's been a while now since I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, but it is such a cute book that I think it really deserves a spot on this blog.

It might help you gain a better picture about the nature of this book if I tell you that it is one that I was referred to and borrowed from my cute 82-year old grandma.

The book is written as a series of letters between friends. I remember feeling a little bit overwhelmed at first and thinking that I would never be able to keep all of the corresponders straight, but by the end, all of the writers and recipients of the letters become some of the dearest people that you think you won't ever be able to forget.

Back cover:

"January 1946: London is emerging from the shadow of the Second World War, and writer Juliet Ashton is looking for her next book subject. Who could imagine that she would find it in a letter from a man she’s never met, a native of the island of Guernsey, who has come across her name written inside a book by Charles Lamb….
As Juliet and her new correspondent exchange letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of this man and his friends—and what a wonderfully eccentric world it is. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society—born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were discovered breaking curfew by the Germans occupying their island—boasts a charming, funny, deeply human cast of characters, from pig farmers to phrenologists, literature lovers all.
Juliet begins a remarkable correspondence with the society’s members, learning about their island, their taste in books, and the impact the recent German occupation has had on their lives. Captivated by their stories, she sets sail for Guernsey, and what she finds will change her forever.
Written with warmth and humor as a series of letters, this novel is a celebration of the written word in all its guises, and of finding connection in the most surprising ways."

One of my favorite quotes from the book:
“I wonder how the book got to Guernsey? Perhaps there is some sort of secret homing instinct in books that brings them to their perfect readers.”

Five out of five stars.