Before Green Gables, Budge Wilson

Disclaimer: I'm prejudiced against the premise of this story. I don't think an "official prequel" should have been sanctioned and I tremble lest people will henceforth consider it part of the LMM canon.

But I read Wilson's book as judiciously as I could. I believe she writes well - her sentences are well formed. I write rather like her - precise, piercing. I agree that it's not necessary to imitate Montgomery. And yet her writing reads rather dry. I should never want to write like that.

Wilson's caste of characters add dramatic interest, but I find them very two-dimensional. Do good, well-meaning, semi-genteel parents ever sum up their only daughter as Mrs. Thomas's did? "With her looks, she won't last, let's marry her off." Mr. Thomas, Eliza, Jessie, The Egg Man are all archetypes - they each have their own plotline but there's little insight into how they change and grow, and little divine justice for their actions.

Montgomery writing is replete with mathematical errors, but I have a harder time condoning Wilson's logical inconsistencies. Why didn't Mrs. Thomas give Anne to Jessie when her husband died? Why didn't the Egg Man and Miss Henderson adopt her? Why does Anne hate her hair if Mrs. Archibald praised her for her beautiful red hair? If Anne was so loved by Eliza, why did she never talk about her to Marilla?

Overall, I had a hard time holding my interest in this book. It was too long and too consistently doleful. I cannot imagine myself reading it if it weren't for the Anne connection. I especially wouldn't have enjoyed it as a young adult.

Persepolis, Marijane Satrapi

i love Marijane - the vividness of her childhood memories make me want to tap into my own. I was a child like her, blunt, imaginative, inquisitive. The book awakes that old desire to rewrite my memoirs, childhood memories remembered photographically, with poignant social-political implications.

yeah.

The ending - I want to know what next in Marijane's life. I like that the return wasn't the answer, as I don't believe it always was... but there are idealisitc overtones in Marijane's mother's prediction that she won't be back. Did she ever go back?

Once Upon a Time in the North

I love Lee Scoresby - how much like Lyra he is! and York Burningson! fantastic.

But I daresay Pullman has stopped writing books. This is a commercial product, with its antique cover, pictures, and a pull-out board game.

And of course, spread out your short stories in separate collector's volumes. Why make an anthology?

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

what i loved:> the history; i didn't know much about what life was like under the Soviet Rule and/or prior to the Taliban; i've only ever been exposed to post 9-11 war-on-terrorism Taliban outrage. all very interesting because it's current history; titanic from a different perspective, etc.

what i disliked:

the hollywood ending. GRRR. did they really have to find a bag of money?

plus the implications that - what - reconstruction is only possible if you have a pile of gold stashed away for your somewhere? i'm sure the overthrow of the taliban doesn't mean a happily-ever-after ending, and not that i want to read anymore hardships, i'm glad the love story of laila and taliq worked out, but this just seems too easy.

Jalil and Rajeed are both very 2-dimensional characters; Jalil especially - his repentence at the end just doesn't sound very convincing and sounds very soap-opera-sy. Rajeed is too consistently cruel.

I don't get Aziza's stutter and "t"'s - what is that about?

it's moving alright but rather gruelling to read.