Normally the holidays don’t allow much time for reading. Being off work takes care of that problem! Even though we travelled back and forth to three Thanksgiving dinners, there was plenty of time for books.The first book I read for the week was The Mill River Redemption by Darcie Chan, which I mentioned in an earlier post. I struggled to write one pleasant post about the book so I am going to leave it at that.
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Even though The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton has only been out a few months, I feel as if it’s been on my list of books to read forever. That said, I had no idea what to expect from the book and was very pleasantly surprised. The Miniaturist is historical fiction but, unlike so many of the books in that genre that I read, focused much more on the storyline and than the history, which I think gives it a broader appeal.
Burton writes of Nella, a young bride who goes to her husband’s town and has every expectation she had of married life dashed. Her husband isn’t interested in her physically, her sister-in-law runs the home that Nella thought she herself would head and the household servants take liberties that don’t seem proper. What starts off as feeling like a horrible twist of fate gets more interesting when Nella orders items for the miniature house (dollhouse) her husband gave her as a wedding gift. The items for the tiny house, made by the local miniaturist, are too good … too accurate. The miniaturist has a gift.
I read this very quickly and am excited to pass it on to friends and family.
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The Messenger by Lois Lowry is the second companion novel for The Giver and proves me a little wrong from last week. The books aren’t standalone – the story lines are starting to connect!
I’m trying not to do any research into these books until I finish the quartet, but I do have some questions. I like how each novel has a definite lesson it’s teaching (preaching?). I’ve admired how the stories seem straight fiction and it takes some interpretation to see what the moral of the story is. For The Messenger there seemed to be lots of parallels to the immigration discussions occurring here in the United States and that had me kind of laughing as I read. But at the end … did it get kind of Jesus-y? That’s what I want to read up on, and I will after I’ve completed the last book.
I’m not against books with religious connotations. I love the Narnia Chronicles and conversely, His Dark Materials. But, admittedly, I’d prefer a book that can be a little more agnostic in its teaching.
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