140/200

Push by Sapphire


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I read this in an afternoon at Barnes and Noble. This book was really vulgar. If it is really based on the author's life, then I truly feel sorry for her and am proud that she made it as far as she has. I suppose the story is uplifting in the end, but really it just makes you doubt humanity and it's hard to recover from that in such a short book and after such terrible transgressions.

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139/200

The Color Purple by Alice Walker


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I feel like a bad person for saying this, but I didn't enjoy this book at all. Having just read Push, I felt like it was the same story in a lot of ways. I suppose unfortunately this kind of thing happens more than many would like to realize, and does in fact occur. But the rest of the book just seemed boring and hard to get through for me. The ending was inspiring but to me it wasn't worth the journey.

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138/200

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is the story of a family of missionaries that move to the Congo to try to preach Christianity. The trip is spearheaded by the Reverend, and the book is told through the eyes of his four daughters and wife. The family arrives in the Congo with items like cake mix packed into their clothes. They at least have some sense of how they will make a couple of sacrifices and then change the lives of these people for the better. The women quickly begin to realize that the sacrifices they are making are not small at all. And the people of the Congo don't necessarily want to convert to Christianity and the ways of the white man. The father in this book absolutely disgusts me. I think I would have liked the book better if it was a little shorter. I was a little dispointed in the end, but I think disappointment is to be expected in this book because of the grave injustices portrayed.

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137/200

Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card


My rating: 1 of 5 stars
I read this book because I needed to read a sci-fi book and I heard that it had a "Hunger Games" vibe. Ugh. I HATED it. After reading reviews from other people, I guess you have to be a certain type of person to enjoy this. I am not that person.

I don't even know where to start. I just don't think I have the type of brain to deal with this kind of book. It just didn't interest me. And to be honest, I wasn't really grasping what was going on a lot of the time. Who were we fighting against? Are the older men trying to make the kids fail? Is this a real battle or a fake one, or a real one pretending to be fake?? Ugh.

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136/200

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
This was the first book that I ever read on The Nook. I am glad to have had such a great book to start with.

Henry is a young Chinese American. His father insists that he go to American school and wear a button that proclaims he is Chinese. His parents speak little to no English but force him to speak it at home. Henry hates his life in America until he meets Keiko, a Japanese girl also forced to work in the cafeteria at the American school. It is obvious that the two fall in love but they are so young that they don't realize it and don't know how to deal with it.

The book takes place shortly after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Reading the accounts of what happened to AMERICANS of Japanese descent makes it hard to stomach being an American. It is truly revolting. Through flashbacks from this period and the present (1986) Henry tells his and Keiko's story.

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135/200

The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs


My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This was not a book that I raced to finish. But it wasn't one that I dreaded picking up either. It was just kind of there. Georgia owns her own knitting store and is single mother of Dakota. Get it? Dakota? Georgia? Yeah.

Anyway, I found something to dislike about just about all of the characters. I mean, tricking some random guy into getting you pregnant? Kinda weird. Writing a thesis about knitting? Well maybe. But as someone who has never knitted and seems to hate women, is that really the best idea?

I feel like things were wrapped up a little too wholesomely, with dead-beat dad James coming back into the picture but being a perfect angel, and everyone's problems getting tidied up with a nice neat bow, but then WAIT! Bam! Cancer and death. WTF? Where did that come from? I walked away feeling pretty shocked. Someone described it as Steel Magnolia with knitting and I laughed because that was a perfect description.

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