Kate's Point of View

Do you every stop reading books midway? I generally don’t. I treat books like I do food – one thing at a time and don’t start a new thing before you’ve finished the earlier one. But. I am learning to value my time more than I value the accomplishment of reading a book.

For my book club we read The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta for the month of December. This should haver been a fabulous book – it’s made end-of-the-year top 10 lists. And the idea if really super.

The basic premise of The Leftovers is that The Rapture has occurred and a significant segment of the population just disappeared. Contrary to religious ramblings, the people taken weren’t the most devout and spiritual. Rather, a hodgepodge of people left. This leaves the remaining population to come to terms with losing loved ones, being left behind and having religious expectations challenged. Also, a valuable plus for me, this book is not religious even though it focuses so much on The Rapture.

I think Perrotta started with a really meaty idea for a story and it should have been exciting and dramatic. Instead? Yawn. A woman in my book club described her issue with the book by saying it was all one note. Like a story should have highs and lows and have something that keeps you interested throughout the book. This doesn’t mean that the ploy has to be exciting because the movement can also occur by just keeping the reader engaged or creating an emotional connection between readers and some or one character(s). Instead, The Leftovers was like reading a news article for me. I didn’t mind the story but I didn’t really care either.

And so, I returned The Leftovers to the library only half read and I have gone back to The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett. It’s a enormous book and has taken me a while but since I give a d2mn about the characters, I’m okay with devoting a little more of my time.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

I have a new review online at BookGeeks of The Paris Wife: A Novel by Paula McLain.

It’s a pretty well-known fact Ernest Hemingway was intimately familiar with alcohol. Travel just about anywhere in the world and you’ll find a bar with a sign reading “Hemingway Sat Here.” Some other commonly known facts about the American author include his fame for writing some memorable novels, winning the Nobel Prize in Literature, reputation as a ladies’ man, involvement in an expatriate art movement in Paris during the 1920s and, later in life, committing suicide.

These facts do not tell the true story of the man. Paula McLain gives us a much better glimpse in The Paris Wife: A Novel by focusing on Hemingway’s relationship with his first wife, Hadley Richardson.

Read the full review on BookGeeks.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

I have a new review on BookGeeks.co.uk of 22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson.

Every life contains transformative moments where life is distinctly different afterwards from that before. Marriage, children, home ownership. Illness, death, rape, war. Fallout occurs when people in our lives before these events have to adapt to the version of us that emerges. Sometimes it simply isn’t possible.

22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson centers on Janusz and Silvana, lovers who meet while very young and find themselves in a whirlwind romance leading to marriage and the birth of a son, Aurek. When World War II makes its way to their native Poland, the young family is blown apart.

Read the full review on BookGeeks.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.

Give me a free hour and I’ll make my way up to bed with a good book in hand and be content. Give Wonder Boy a free hour and he’ll dig into a game of Call of Duty. Typically these are very different activities. For the last two weeks I’ve been reading Matterhorn: A Novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes. This hefty book holds a story more lifelike than what Call of Duty presents and is a challenging read in many aspects, but well-worth the struggles.

I am not familiar with war. I cringe at the idea of people fighting to their death over just about anything. I do understand that there are times war is justified and even necessary, but I do my best to remain distant from it. Marlantes takes his readers and plops them right down in the middle of the Vietnamese bush with fighting all around.

While the setting is described in exquisite detail, what Marlantes accomplishes best is creating characters that the reader gets invested in. Lieutenant Waino Mellas makes for a unique main character. He is an ivy league grad with liberal tendencies. When he enlists with the marines and goes to Vietnam, he finds himself surrounded by many men of color and most people of a lower socioeconomic status than himself. The reader accompanies him as he navigates, and at time stumbles, through the different social groups, race relations and mores of the military. And also when he enters into the heat of battle.

Although not something I think about often, I have an idea in my head of what war is like. This vision is likely influenced by what I see on the screen every time I walk by Wonder Boy playing Call of Duty. Matterhorn added a whole other dimension to what I think of war. I don’t think I ever adequately factored fear into the setting. And I know, Matterhorn is just a book. But Marlantes was a marine during the Vietnam war so I imagine that what he’s writing gives at least some insight into war.

Each battle scene in Matterhorn is terrible. Men die violent deaths. Men watch their friends die in front of them and then have to go collect their bodies so families back home have something to bury. Politicians at home make wartime decisions that sometimes result in strategic successes and usually mean the death of someone – be they Vietnamese or American.

I could go further but struggle to do so without seeming to make a political statement, which is not my point. The point I do want to make is that Matterhorn was an emotional read that I found powerful and insightful. I would recommend it to folks, and also think it would make a nice last-minute Father Day gift idea.

This post originally appeared on Kate’s Point of View. © Kate. All rights reserved.