The Daughters of Mars by Thomas Keneally

Certainly a very ambitious undertaking, The Daughters of Mars is the story of two Australian sisters who become nurses and volunteer to serve on the battlefields of World War I.  Keneally used the diaries of actual WWI nurses as resource material for his story and it rings true.

The incredible loss of human life, the ghastly weaponry, mustard gas, shell shock, the absolutely ravaged bodies of the survivors are all masterfully described by Keneally, also the author of Schindler's List.  

All of this is described through the eyes of Sally and Naomi Durance, sisters from Australia's dairyland, and very, very different from one another.  The author gives us an interesting backstory on the sisters that carries through the entire novel, shedding light at times on their actions and reactions to what they are witnessing.

Definitely an encompassing look at an already well-documented world-changing event, and engaging as well on a personal level thanks to the author's thoroughly fleshed out Durance sisters.

Not a page-turner, but a story worth your time.

Rating ** 1/2

Back to Blood by Tom Wolfe

Remember Bonfire of the Vanities? A Man in Full? The Right Stuff ?  Did you love them? I did!
When Back to Blood hit the bookstores, I was right there, looking forward to another great story.  I knew it had received mixed reviews, but I still felt optimistic.  Sadly, I lost that optimism fairly early in the reading.

I simply could not get into the style of writing Wolfe employed in this story:

SMACK the Safe Boat bounces airborne comes down again SMACK on another swell in the bay bounces up again comes down SMACK on another swell and SMACK bounces airborne with emergency horns police Crazy Lights exploding SMACK in a demented sequence on the roof SMACK...

and this continues for entire pages; the flow of the story completely shredded beyond redemption by italics, random capitalizations, sound effects, ridiculous footnotes, etc.

The story takes place in Miami and from the viewpoints of many diverse characters.  My only thought is that Wolfe may have been attempting to mimic the diversity of that city?? If so, it just didn't work for me.

I have very, very seldom stopped reading a book, but Back to Blood qualified for that short list.  And, now that I'm finished posting about it, right into the recycling bin it goes!!

Rating: *

The Circle by Dave Eggers

I was very excited when The Circle was published.  I have long admired Dave Eggers.  He's just so talented and PROLIFIC!! He is always churning out something: a novel, an essay or short story, fiction and non-fiction; he is constantly promoting new and talented writers; he is a force to be reckoned with in the literary world.

I dove into The Circle and was immediately lead into a world where "privacy is theft" and "All that happens must be known."  The protagonist, Mae, finds herself in a transparent world where everything is known, shared, written about, and commented on. She works at The Circle and The Circle becomes her life.

Everything can seem to mean something in an Eggers novel: the jacket design, the names of the characters, the fact that all the buildings on the Circle campus are glass and a major focal point is an incredibly humongous aquarium...for a fascinating analysis of these aspects of the novel, read Margaret Atwood's review in The New York Review of Books (Nov., 2013)

Line to remember:

Your tools have elevated gossip, hearsay and conjecture to the level of valid, mainstream communication...and it's fucking dorky.

Speaking of dorky, my personal rating: ***

Reading Way More Than Blogging Lately!!

Back to the Blog....despite the best of intentions, I'm struggling to keep up with it.  I have an incredibly wonderful backlog of books just waiting for me on my bookshelf and it's hard to take the time in between these tempting treasures to sit down and write about each one before diving into the next! Not a bad problem to have, I'll be the first to admit.

Yet, the point of my bookblog is to record the titles and my reactions to the books I am reading.  Of course, given my overly wordy style, I get carried away and write more than I really need to and it's becomes more time-consuming than I'd really like it to be,

So, I'm going to move to shorter format and see how that works: a much briefer glimpse at the book, a line or two that really, really jumped off the page for me, and a rating of up to 4 stars.  Readers of this blog will probably notice many 3 and 4 star ratings.  Why? Am I an "easy" grader? No, it's not that. It's more likely a result of choosing books that I have read reviews of and/or articles about their release into the literary world being heralded by critics.  I also tend to read books that have received recognition by the National Book Award, The Man Booker, and the Pulitzer for Fiction.  Not everyone likes to choose their books that way, and I get that.  But there's a LOT of writing going on out there and I feel as though I need help in choosing novels that promise to be a worthwhile investment of time. I am still sometimes disappointed, but most often, not. And I do occasionally throw in a mystery or zombie just to mix things up a bit :)

Just a longwinded way of saying that I expect most of the books I read to be engrossing, well-written, and memorable, and most of them do not disappoint.  And that's a good thing.

So here's to more pithy blogging...and I think I'm going to have to work on the pithiness factor :)