Book 68- Little Bee

Insurmountable frustration is how I felt over Little Bee, by Chris Cleave. And I've checked this out from the library about 4 times since June and I swore this time I was going to read it; and now I wish I hadn't. But it came recommended from a friend with brilliant taste in books, who's never steered me wrong, until now, that is.

Little Bee, the name she gave herself when she found herself detained in a British detention center for refugees for over 2 years, has seen nothing but tragic events and heart ache. As I read this book, with one tragedy heaped up on another, all on this young girl, one after the other, I knew there would be a happy ending, some sort of goodness, some sort of retribution or redemption. There had to be.

Even when she got out of the detention center and found the only character in the book that had a heart, the only person who could save her, the only person who loved her... circumstances were manipulated, so bad stuff continued to happen.

I was frustrated and I tremendously disliked this book. It's not written in some Orwellian era of Britain and her lands, but now, modern times. I also found it difficult to read in the dialect of the detention center detainees. I also found it irritating that within the plot Cleave kept making reference to something that happened "on the beach" and the reference to a missing finger. That was supposed to be a mystery but it just was so overplayed that by the time Cleave got to the reveal, I was ready to chuck the book out the nearest window.

I did not enjoy my Little Bee reading experience. This was so sad and depressing that I planned how to kill myself with this book as I was reading. If you read this novel, you'll get the irony of the statement. Otherwise, as a fellow blogger said, it's books like these- so overwhelmingly, all encompassingly depressing with no happiness in sight- that it should come with a razor blade for the reader.

Feh.

What was I thinking?

Okay in theory it seemed like a good idea to read a whole bunch of books with the same theme: memoirs written by women who turned to cooking careers. I checked out several of these from the library and started reading and... it's not the fun I thought it would be,

I read Julie and Julia last year and it was awesome, and I loved it. I also read I Loved I Lost I Made Spaghetti and loved it as well. Ditto the recently read The Sharper the Knife, the Less You Cry. I also read a few others so that's what nudged this project along for me. I thought since I tend to gravitate to these books and enjoy them, reading several for a theme month would be fun. I was wrong.

First, I screwed up because I ended up with books that weren't exactly what I was looking for. While Spaghetti, Knife and Julie were about just regular women doing cooking, the books I found were a bit different. I read Garlic and Sapphires which was about a woman who was a food critic for the NYTimes. While it was interesting, it wasn't what I wanted, exactly. I read The Recipe Club which was a fictional story of the friendship between two women told through letters and recipes. While it wasn't what I wanted, I did, however, REALLY enjoy it, and was glad I found it (thanks for the recommendation from a fellow blogger who pens Food for Thought!)

Then I found a book called Spoonfed about a woman who turned critic and something about her messed up life and blah blah blah. I have to admit I didn't even finish it! Spiced was about the alleged drama in the life of a new pastry chef. And it wasn't that dramatic as it claimed to be; I read it cover to cover waiting for the spiciness.

I wanted more of a feel like Julie, Knife and Spaghetti, I guess. Or maybe I read too many of the same genre all together. Whatever my problem, I just know it wasn't my best plan. So now, I'm back to mixing it up a bit. I'm got lots of good books in my stack:

• a new Greg Rucka book with the Atticus Kodiak character
• The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
• State Fair (a Bennie Harper mystery) by Earlene Fowler
• Beachcombers

So with that failed projected off my plate, I can turn to my waiting list of books, which is about 100 right now. Until I come up with another harebrained scheme!

Happy reading!
Mags

I didn't like it

So I decided I was going to read a bunch of books with the theme of women, cooking, food and memoirs. I think I should be more specific. I should've said I want to read about women who love to cook so they do cook. Sometimes they go to school to cook and other times they cook for fun and pleasure. I also like that the cooking is tied to their lives, to love, to fun stuff, to laughs and tears.

I ordered a bunch of books from the library with what I thought was going to be what I wanted. the first book I read was fiction but I really liked it. I knew it was fiction when I ordered it but I did like it. The second one was a memoir, non-fiction called Spoon Fed: How 8 Cooks Saved My Life. This is not what I was wanting to read at all. I guess the author liked to cook but she's actually a food journalist. So she writes about food like articles as well as restaurant reviews. This particular book wasn't about her love of cooking influenced her life.

It was about a bunch of people who did food stuff that she admired. And it was boring. Each chapter read like a mini bio of these 8 folks with a small blip about how much she admired these people.

I didn't finish this book. I read about 80 pages and stopped. I feel bad when I don't finish a book. I also think if I've read about a third then I should finish it but I just couldn't. I was finding about 300 other things to do than read this book. So I gave up and returned it to the library. It's the first book of the year- I think- that I started and didn't finish.

Now on to the next one...

Why can't I like them, too?

Do you ever read a review or many reviews of the same book, then can't wait to get your own hands on a copy and then.... it happens?!? You hate the book.

Everyone you personally know loves it. It's been on all sorts of best seller lists. It's a huge seller and the everyone from Leno to Oprah to your neighbor loved this book but no matter how hard you try, you hate it.

I've had that happen. Actually, it's happening to me right now with a book I'm reading but I'll come back to that. I'm supposed to write a review of something I'm reading so I'll save it for later.

But I find that I'm often a person who just desperately wants to like a book, just like everyone else and I just can't get into it. I was that way with The DaVinci Code. I didn't even finish it, but I really wanted to LIKE it. Everyone, even people who don't read, liked it. And I, who am a complete bibliophile, just couldn't get into it. The same thing with The Shipping News. I wanted to read it and I tried to pick it up several times, to no avail. And now a blogger friend of mine that I really admire, and who's book reading tastes are FANTASTIC, loved it. I want to LOVE it too, but it just isn't working for me. I can also add Angela's Ashes to the list. Don't even get me started on books that are considered "classics." I was an English lit. minor in college and taught English for 10 years and the list of "classics" I've read is terribly small. They just don't interest me. I've bought them in hopes they would at some point speak to me but to no avail.

So here I am, in a little club all my own, a person who just doesn't like the IT books. Grrrr!