113. The Help - Kathryn Stockett

Without a doubt, this book has jumped to the number one spot of my "best fiction books" list. My blog followers know that I hate reading books that are more than 400 pages long - but I couldn't put this 458-pager down. It was worth every page!

The story follows black maids and the white families they work for in Jackson, Mississippi during the 1960's. It's told from the perspective of three different women. Skeeter Phelan is a white, college-educated woman who wants to be a writer, but her mother won't be happy until Skeeter's frizzy hair is tamed, she keeps lipstick on, and she finds a husband. Aibileen (my favorite) is the maid for the family of Skeeter's friend, Elizabeth Leefolt. Aibileen is an amazing and brave woman who has raised seventeen white children, but who still feels pain over the loss of her own son several years ago. Minny is Aibileen's best friend, and has a mouth on her that's gotten her fired from almost twenty different jobs. But she can cook better than anyone, so with some finagling from Aibileen, she manages to land a job working for Miss Celia - a busty blond who "wears more goo on her face than a hooker" and who the other white women in Jackson can't stand.

When Skeeter has a shot at writing a book that could get in front of the eyes of a New York editor, she decides to write anonymously about the experiences of black maids in Jackson. After the difficulty of convincing these black women with families to share their stories with an inexperienced white woman during the tumultuous '60's, Skeeter hears stories of the pain behind them being forced by their employers to use separate bathrooms - usually, out in the garage - because of "Negro diseases" and the white children they raise who call them "mama" and then grow up ordering them around and accuse them of stealing. The maids risk a lot to come together and share their stories with Skeeter, who has her own problems with her friends in the Junior League finding out what she's doing and accusing her of being an integrationist, her ailing mother, and her relationship with the son of a prominent state senator.

The dialect in which most of the book is written; the depth of the characters; the detail with which Stockett writes ... when I was at work for the past few days, all I wanted to do was run home and read this book! I couldn't recommend anything any more highly. I know this book came out last year, but Stockett lives in Atlanta and so I hope she makes a stop for a reading/signing at a local Borders; and it's already being made into a movie, so I will be first in line for tickets when it comes out!!

112. Addicted - Zane

This was definitely the most disturbing book I've read in a while.
I've been hearing about the infamous Zane for years, and after going the slightly more edgy route with A Reliable Wife, I decided to give her a try.

The main character, Zoe, is a beautiful woman with the perfect life: perfect husband, children, and job. But the one thing she's missing is sexual satisfaction. Her husband, Jason, is unwilling to do more than two minutes of missionary style sex. Despite her attempts to get him to try new things and to communicate her dissatisfaction with him, Jason won't budge.

And here begins Zoe's affairs. Zoe ultimately has three affairs going on at the same time, all while she's still married to Jason. My faithful blog readers know that I usually share passages that jump out to me, but I can't even go there with this book. My mom might read this! I had heard about Zane's infamous sex scenes, but those scenes along with the anger, violence, and flat out dysfunctional people actually gave me nightmares for two nights. This book was extremely graphic (note: my best friend tells me I'm "soft," so take from that what you will). But I have to admit, the book is incredibly suspenseful - the foreshadowing is great and there are new twists and turns in every chapter. It took me a while to stop being irritated by Zane's writing style (I'm not used to a narrator saying things like "I wish that nucca would" and "Lawd only knows," but hey, I'm open) - but once I did, it was an easy read.

I'd be willing to try another Zane book down the road - but I'd need a recommendation of one that's not so violent and traumatizing.

110. A Reliable Wife - Robert Goolrick

Don't be fooled by the chaste title and conservative cover of this book! Set in a small Wisconsin town in the early 1900's, A Reliable Wife tells the story of Ralph Truitt, a wealthy businessman who places an advertisement for a wife in newspapers across the country: "Country businessman seeks reliable wife. Compelled by practical not romantic reasons ..."
The woman he ends up choosing is Catherine Land - a woman who describes herself as "a simple, honest woman," though she is far from that. I don't want to give away too much, but her past is haunted by sex and lies that all tie in with her choosing to move to Wisconsin to become Ralph's wife. The crux of her plan in moving there was to slowly poison Ralph with arsenic and then to become a wealthy widow - she did not count on actually falling in love with him. But Ralph certainly harbors some twisted secrets of his own.
The plot keeps this book interesting, but the writing makes it amazing. Here is an excerpt from when Ralph is waiting for Catherine to arrive in Wisconsin at the train station:

Standing in the center of the crowd, his solitude was enormous. He felt that in all the vast and frozen space in which he lived his life- every hand needy, every heart wanting something from him- everybody had a reason to be and a place to land. Everybody but him. For him there was nothing. In all the cold and bitter world, there was not a single place for him to sit down.

And here's an example of why I said this book is not as chaste and conservative as the title and cover may make it seem:

Her blood was water. Her eyes were blind. She was not Catherine. She was not anybody. Nobody knew where she was ... She stood in the kingdom of touch, and it was ecstasy to her. They made love as if someone were watching ... She was on his bed, her clothes in ruins on the floor, and he was naked too, she lying sideways on the bed, her bones gone, he moving above and on and at her, his tongue expertly bringing her to climax so fast and so deeply that she went on rolling with warmth and pleasure as he entered her and brought himself to coming, letting out a cry as he did so, his only sound. It was his own masculinity he was making love to, which drove him as he rode inside her, rapture at his own skill, his own pleasures, the tenderness, the savagery, ripping through her as though for the first time ...

Yeah - I wasn't ready for all of that, either! I wish I could have seen my facial expressions as I was reading this book - Goolrick paints such a beautifully detailed picture of each and every scene. The only reason I'm not putting it on my top 10 list of fiction books is that many parts were too obviously written by a man. Some of the passionate scenes were beautiful, but Goolrick simply didn't capture them from a woman's perspective. If he was writing for men, then that's great - and I'd be interested to hear men's views of this book. But for me, there was only about an 80% connection. Nonetheless, if you're looking for a tasteful yet slightly edgy fiction book, this is it.

103. The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver

This is a great novel by Barbara Kingsolver about a missionary family (the Prices) that goes to the Congo in the 1960's. The story is narrated by the five women of the Price family: the mother, Orleanna; Rachel; Leah and Adah (twins); and Ruth May.
Each girl goes through her own struggle as she tries to adapt to the African village and to her father's issues with women and borderline narcissism. I could relate to the girls' struggle based on my experiences when I went to live in Benin when I was in seventh grade (in the story, the girls actually visit Benin and go to some of the same places that I did - I was thrilled, it was quite accurate). This part in particular made me smile - Rachel is upset that her father, the overzealous Baptist minister, seems to want to stay in the Congo forever. It reminded me a little of myself back then, melodrama and all:

I screamed and kicked the furniture until one whole leg came off the table and threw a hissy fit they could probably hear all the way to Egypt. Listen, what else can a girl to but try. Stay here? When everybody else gets to go home and do the bunny hop and drink Cokes? It is a sheer tapestry of justice.

This part made me laugh out loud (also, from Rachel):

I stood and prayed to the Lord Jesus if he was listening to take me home to Georgia, where I could sit down in a White Castle and order a hamburger without having to see its eyes roll back in its head and the blood come spurting out of its corpse.

The girls' father is determined to stay in the Congo and "dunk the head of every last person in that village into the river." But after the youngest daughter (Ruth May) dies, and the women realize that they have worn out their welcome in the village, they give up and each go their separate ways.
To me, this is where the story got the most interesting. Rachel stays in the Congo - though she seems to have the most contempt for Africa out of everyone in the family. She is very beautiful and conceited - characteristics that probably ultimately help her run the hotel that she opens in the Congo.

Of course you have to look the other way when the train goes by the townships, because those people don't have any perspective of what good scenery is, that's for sure. They will make their houses out of a piece of rusted tin or the side of a crate - and leave the writing part on the outside for all to see! But you just have to try to understand, they don't have the same ethics as us. That is one part of living here. Being understanding of the differences.

Adah ends up going to school at Emory and becomes a successful epidemiologist. Leah marries a Congolese named Anatole and has four boys with him. Leah works tirelessly with Anatole to improve the lives of the Congolese and, of the four daughters, she is the most upset about the cultural arrogance of the West.

I wake up in love, and work my skin to darkness under the equatorial sun. I look at my four boys, who are the colors of silt, loam, dust, and clay, an infinite palette for children of their own, and I understand that time erases whiteness all together.

At one point, Leah and Anatole visit Adah in Atlanta. Being in Atlanta now, I had to appreciate this part:

[Anatole] laughs out loud at the nearly naked women on giant billboards, and befriends the bums who inhabit the street corners of Atlanta, asking them detailed questions about where they sleep and how they kill their food. The answers are interesting. You might be surprised to know how many pigeons roosting in the eaves of Atlanta's Public Library have ended up roasting over fires in Grant Park.

Classic - don't you love the alliteration in "roosting" and "roasting"?! The character development of Rachel, Adah, and Leah is wonderful. The only bad thing I can say about this book is that it was waaaay too long. Almost 550 pages! But if you have the time and/or the patience, it's a wonderful work of fiction - one that really makes you think.

98. Memories of My Melancholy Whores - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The first line of this book shows how absolutely bizarre it is:

The year I turned ninety, I wanted to give myself the gift of a night of wild love with an adolescent virgin.

Wow. The unnamed protagonist has never been married or been in love, and has had a relatively sad, lonely, and unexciting life in Colombia. In fact, when he was twenty, he started keeping a record listing the name, age, place, and "a brief notation of the circumstances and style of lovemaking": by the time he was fifty, there were 514 women with whom he had been at least once. (I was amazed at how similar this was to what Florentino Ariza did in Love in the Time of Cholera by the same author). He approaches Rosa Cabarcas, the "madame" at the city's best brothel, to help him with his wish. He meets a fourteen year old girl with whom he becomes infatuated, and ultimately makes arrangements with Rosa to continue seeing her outside of the brothel.

As frightening and pedophile-ish as this all sounds, the old man really ends up seeming more like a tender voyeur than a sex-starved nonagenarian. He meets with the girl ... and watches her sleep. He says:

This was something new for me. I was ignorant of the arts of seduction and had always chosen my brides for a night at random, more for their price than their charms, and we had made love without love, half-dressed most of the time and
always in the dark, so we could imagine ourselves as better than we were ... That night I discovered the improbably pleasure of contemplating the body of a sleeping woman without the urgencies of desire or the obstacles of modesty.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is such an amazing writer. I loved this part:

I confronted my inner self for the first time as my ninetieth year went by. I discovered that my obsession for having each thing in the right place, each subject at the right time, each word in the right style, was not the well-deserved reward of an ordered mind but just the opposite: a complete system of pretense invented by me to hide the disorder of my nature. I discovered that I am not disciplined out of virtue but as a reaction to my negligence, that I appear generous in order to conceal my meanness, that I pass myself off as prudent because I am evil-minded, that I am conciliatory in order not to succumb to my repressed rage, that I am punctual only to hide how little I care about people's time. I learned, in short, that love is not a condition of the spirit but a sign of the zodiac.

Ultimately, this seems to be a twisted story of love - and also of the old man finally finding himself at ninety years of age.

[whew. two more books to go! ...]

90. The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

[90 down - 10 to go!!!]
Told from the point of view of Claudia MacTeer, an African American girl growing up in Ohio in the 1930's, this story is mostly about a girl that Claudia's parents take into their home named Pecola Breedlove. Pecola is eleven years old and has a hard life: her parents, Paulina and Cholly, are always fighting, and Cholly is often drunk. Pecola's brother, Sammy, often runs away to get away from the family; Pecola, on the other hand, prays for blue eyes. She believes that if she had blue eyes, her life would be much better and people would stop telling her that she is so ugly.

It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights - if those eyes of hers were
different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different .... If she looked different, beautiful, maybe Cholly would be different, and Mrs. Breedlove, too. Maybe they'd say, "Why, look at pretty-eyed Pecola. We mustn't do bad things in front of those pretty eyes" .... Each night, without fail, she prayed for blue eyes. Fervently, for a year, she prayed. Although somewhat discouraged, she was not without hope. To have something as wonderful as that happen would take a long, long time.

Pauline treats the daughter of the wealthy white family (the Fosters) that she works for better than she treats Pecola, her own daughter. The Fosters' daughter has blond curls and blue eyes, and their lifestyle is the closest that Pauline will ever get to having it herself.
Eventually, Pecola goes to live with the MacTeers because Cholly burns down her family's home. Claudia MacTeer and her sister Frieda become friends with Pecola and go through a lot of typical pre-adolescent experiences together (e.g. being fascinated when Pecola is the first to start "ministrating").

It becomes apparent that Cholly, Pecola's father, has a thing for little girls. One day, while Pecola is doing dishes, he rapes her. Morrison's writing is exquisite - and the story is really heart-wrenching.

Following the disintegration - the falling away - of sexual desire, he was conscious of her wet, soapy hands on his wrists, the fingers clenching, but whether her grup was from a hopeless but stubborn struggle to be free, or from some other emotion, he could not tell. Removing himself from her was so painful to him he cut it short and snatched his genitals out of the dry harbor of her vagina. She appeared to have fainted. Cholly stood up and could only see her grayish panties, so sad and limp around her ankles. Again the hatred mixed with tenderness. The hatred would not let him pick her up, the tenderness forced him to cover her. So when the child regained consciousness, she was lying on the kitchen floor under a heavy quilt, trying to connect the pain between her legs with the face of her mother looming over her.

Claudia and Frieda hear that Pecola is pregnant by her father and feel sorry for her. They decide not to sell the marigold seeds they were planning on selling: they plant them and determine that if they bloom, then that would mean that everything would be fine. The seeds do not bloom. The story concludes (from Clauda's point of view):

I talk about how I did not plant the seeds too deeply, how it was the fault of the earth, the land, of our town. I even think now that the land of the entire country was hostile to marigolds that year. This soil is bad for certain kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear, and when the land kills of its own volition, we acquiesce and say the victim had no right to live.

I'm surprised that two common themes in several well-known works of African American literature I've read recently are child molestation and incest (this, The Color Purple, and Push). Though very sad, this was a great book.

89. Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

This is a beautifully written story about four generations of the Dead family, centered around the main character Macon "Milkman" Dead III. Milkman got his unfortunate nickname because he was breastfed for too long and was, in essence, a "mama's boy." His mother, Ruth Foster Dead, is the daughter of the town's only black doctor. She completely idolizes her father and often makes her husband feel inadequate. (side note - this seems to be a common theme several books I've read recently, including The Color Purple and A Raisin in the Sun. Interesting).

Milkman has a sister, Pilate, who does not have a navel (not sure of the significance of that). Pilate has a daughter, Reba, and Reba has a daughter, Hagar - and Hagar is obsessed with Milkman and tries to kill him several times. Milkman's best friend, Guitar, also tries to kill Milkman when he suspects that Milkman has cheated him out of some gold that Guitar is trying to steal to help fund a group of which he is part. The group is called "Seven Days," and their goal is to commit revenge killings against white people in response to the killings of black people. For example, after the four little girls were killed in the church bombing, they go kill four little white girls to "even out" the killings.

There are a lot of complicated characters and themes in this book, so a brief overview really doesn't do the book justice. But I'll share some of my favorite quotes anyway! Here's one from Guitar, from a conversation he has with Milkman:

And black women, they want your whole self. Love, they call it, and understanding. "Why don’t you understand me?" What they mean is, Don’t love anything on earth except me. They say, "Be responsible," but what they mean is, Don’t go anywhere where I ain’t. You try to climb Mount Everest, they’ll tie up your ropes. Tell them you want to go to the bottom of the sea—just for a look—they’ll hide your oxygen tank .... You blow your lungs out on the horn and they want what breath you got left to hear about how you love them. They want your full attention.

This description of Hagar made me smile (and think it's sad that men really talk like this):

She was the third beer. Not the first one, which the throat receives with almost tearful gratitude; nor the second, that confirms and extends the pleasure of the first. But the third, the one you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and because what difference does it make?

(Isn't that passage, crass as it is, so incredibly poetic?!) Ultimately, Milkman ends up in Virginia searching for the gold, and meets a woman who tells him about his family history. There, he learns about his great grandfather Solomon who was said to have escaped slavery by "flying back to Africa."

I won't spoil the ending for those who haven't read it. I think what makes this book so good (and part of the reason why Toni Morrison won a Nobel Prize for Literature!) is how it's not just well-written - it's almost poetic in some parts. She really draws you into the story. The characters are also complex and certainly grow throughout the book. Definitely a good read - thanks to Jessica for the recommendation, Chris for lending it to me, and of course my mom for introducing me to Toni Morrison's books when I was just four years old :)

88. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

This is a very unique story about a 16 year old boy named Piscine ("Pi") Patel who comes from a family of zookeepers. He loves learning about different religions and practices Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity - all at the same time! When Pi's father decides to pack up the family and their business (the zoo) and move to Canada, they board a huge Japanese cargo ship ... with many of their animals. But after the ship sinks, Pi finds himself in a lifeboat with a hyena, an orangutan, a zebra, and a 450-pound Bengal tiger named Richard Parker.
The majority of the story is about the relationship between Pi and Richard Parker, who end up being the last two to survive. They drift through the Pacific Ocean for almost a year, and Pi has to use his faith and training as a zookeeper to fight sharks, hunger, and the elements while keeping himself and Richard Parker alive.

I loved this passage from the beginning of the book when clergy of all the religions that Pi is practicing find out that he is indeed practicing all three religions:

“Piscine, can this be true?” asked the imam earnestly. “Hindus and Christians are idolaters. They have many gods.”
“And Muslims have many wives,” responded the pandit.
The priest looked askance at both of them. “Piscine,” he nearly whispered, “there is salvation only in Jesus.”
“Balderdash! Christians know nothing about religion,” said the pandit.
“They strayed long ago from God’s path,” said the imam.
“Where’s God in your religion?” snapped the priest. “You don’t have a single miracle to show for it. What kind of religion is that, without miracles?”
“It isn’t a circus with dead people jumping out of tombs all the time, that’s what! We Muslims stick to the essential miracle of existence. Birds flying, rain falling, crops growing—these are miracles enough for us.”
“Feathers and rain are all very nice, but we like to know that God is truly with us.”

I also liked this part, after Pi has started fishing (keeping in mind that before being stranded on the lifeboat, he had always been a vegetarian):

You may be astonished that in such a short period of time I could go from weeping over the muffled killing of a flying fish to gleefully bludgeoning to death a dorado. I could explain it by arguing that profiting from a pitiful flying fish’s navigational mistake made me shy and sorrowful, while the excitement of actively capturing a great dorado made me sanguinary and self-assured. But in point of fact the explanation lies else where. It is simple and brutal: a person can get used to anything, even to killing.

It took me around fifty pages or so to get into this book - but once I did, I couldn't put it down. I was so into it, I even forgot how completely implausible the whole story was! ... until the ending, when things sort of came together (I won't spoil it for those who haven't read it).
One thing I don't understand, however, is how the first part of the book about Pi's love for learning about different religions ties in with the second part of the book where he is stranded on the life boat with Richard Parker. Is it just the idea of faith - i.e. what gets him through the ordeal?
This was a fabulous book - thanks to Jade for the recommendation :)

78. A Raisin in the Sun - Lorraine Hansberry

This is a play written by Lorraine Hansberry in the 1950's. It's about a poor black family living in Chicago - Walter and Ruth, their son Travis, and Walter's mom and sister (Beneatha). Walter is barely making ends meet as a limo driver - so when his mom gets an insurance check in the amount of $10,000, he pressures her into giving him a good chunk of it for him to invest. She puts some down on a new house (in an all-white neighborhood), and gives Walter the rest - making him promise that he save some for his sister's education. Walker ends up making some poor decisions with the money and loses it. The family does get to keep the home, however; and they turn down a neighbor's offer to buy it from them to alleviate some of the racial tension that he believes their move will cause.

George, Beneatha's Nigerian boyfriend, is an interesting character: he seems to think he's a lot better than Walter, especially because he is in medical school, and starts influencing Beneatha in many ways. For example, he tells her that she is assimilating herself into white ways by "mutilating" (straightening) her hair; so she starts wearing traditional African clothing and ends up moving to Nigeria with George.

Like the last book I read, this play has a great but complicated plot that I won't bother fully explaining ... but one of the themes does seem to be about relationships. I love this part:

Ruth: Honey, you never say nothing new. I listen to you every day, every night and every morning, and you never say nothing new. (Shrugging). . So you would rather be Mr. Arnold than be his chauffeur. So -- I would rather be living in Buckingham Palace.

Walter: That is just what is wrong with the colored women in this world... Don't understand nothing about building their men up and and making 'em feel like they somebody. Like they can do something.


Ruth: (Drily, but to hurt): There are colored men who do things.

Walter: No thanks to the colored woman.

Ruth: Well, being a colored woman, I guess I can't help myself none.

I also like this part, when Beneatha lets her hair go natural:

George: Oh, don't be so proud of yourself, Bennie - just because you look eccentric.

Beneatha: How can something that's natural be eccentric?

George: That's what being eccentric means - being natural. Get dressed.

Lastly, a tidbit of info: the name of the play comes from the poem "Harlem," a.k.a. "A Dream Deferred," by Langston Hughes ...

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-- And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

77. The Color Purple - Alice Walker

I'm embarrassed that I'm just now reading this ... this is such a fabulous novel!

This classic by Alice Walker is told mostly from the point of view of a girl named Celie in the form of diary entries. Celie is raped and impregnated twice by a man she calls Pa (after reading this and Push, I need to find some cheerier fiction!). The children are taken from her, and she ends up marrying a man referred to in the book as "Mr. ____." Mr. ___ has a mistress who goes by Shug Avery, who comes to live with Mr. ___ and Celie. It seems at first that Shug demeans Celie, like Mr. ____ does; but later, Shug and Celie become intimate and Shug helps Celie to discovery her sexuality.

Celie also has a sister, Nettie, who Celie's husband tries to seduce. When he couldn't, he forces Nettie to leave. Celie doesn't hear from Nettie for years, and so she assumes that Nettie is dead; but eventually it comes out through Shug that Mr. ____ was hiding letters from Nettie in a trunk. Nettie had been traveling in Africa with a missionary couple, Sam and Corrine, and their adopted children ... who turn out to be Celie's long-lost children.

The plot is complicated, so I won't go any further into it, but it is such a beautiful story. Maybe it's just my selection of books, but I haven't read much about homosexual relationships in African American literature - so I was surprised at Shug and Celie's relationship. It seems Shug had shallow relationships and Celie had physically and emotionally abusive relationships - so their relationship with each other was really the first time that they both seemed to experience love.

One of my favorite quotes comes from when Nettie is explaining how Corrine has started to think that the adopted children are really Nettie's children, because they look like Nettie - which would mean that Sam had cheated on Corinne with Nettie. In reality, the children look like Nettie because she is their aunt - but of course they don't know that at that point. But Nettie says, "She gets weaker and weaker, and unless she can believe us and start to feel something for her children, I fear we will lose her. Oh, Celie, unbelief is a terrible thing. And so is the hurt we cause others unknowingly."

I also love the part where Celie has left her husband and gone to Memphis with Shug: she has started her own business and is doing really well for herself, and starts off her letter to Nettie with: "Dear Nettie, I am so happy. I got love, I got work, I got money, friends and time!" It's just so powerful in the context of the story because things have finally started looking up for Celie!

Definitely a beautiful classic piece of literature that I would recommend reading! Now I'll definitely have to see the play ...

76. The Associate - John Grisham

My first John Grisham novel! ... though to be honest, I was only mildly impressed.

This book (legal thriller #20 for Grisham) is about Kyle McAvoy, an impressive Yale law student whose dreams of working a public service job after law school are forced to change when shadowy figures emerge and start blackmailing him with a videotape that revives a five-year-old rape accusation. Kyle does as his blackmailers tell him, and accepts a job at a huge Wall Street firm that represents a military contractor involved in a hefty lawsuit. That client is the blackmailers' reason for blackmailing Kyle: as long as he feeds them information about the $800 billion case, then they won't expose his past.

Honestly ... it's a decent story, but I thought it would be more of an intellectual legal thriller. It was really more of a simple story which happened to take place at a law firm. And it could have easily been told in way less than 400 pages! I think the middle hundred or so pages could be shortened dramatically. Some parts were quite unbelievable, like this part explaining Kyle's experiences growing up with his dad, an attorney:

"Every lawyer and every judge in York knew Kyle, and it was not unusual for him to slip into an empty courtroom, present a motion to a judge, argue its merits if necessary, then leave with a signed order."

A high school student?? Really?! However, there were other parts that I could totally relate to and smile about, like when Kyle was studying for the bar exam, and this part about billing:

"It took an hour to read every word in the file. One point two hours to be exact, and suddenly he had no reluctance in billing Placid for 1.2 hours, or $360 for the review. Not long ago, say about ninety minutes, he found it hard to believe he was worth $300 an hour. He hadn't even passed the bar! Now, though, he had been converted."

Despite my critiques, I'll definitely be willing to check out the movie when it comes out in 2010 (yes - Grisham must have movie rights lined up while he's still writing!) - and I'm willing to read some more Grisham novels. He's got enough to choose from!

Oh - and many thanks to my buddy Cole for giving me this book to add to my library!! :)

75. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston

The main character in this book, Janie Crawford, is a middle-aged black woman who has just returned to Florida after being gone for a while. The people in the town start to gossip about her and try to speculate what happened to her most recent husband, Tea Cake, after he's found dead, and the plot of the majority of the book is framed by the story as Janie relates it to her friend Pheoby ...

Janie's life can be divided up into three time periods, during each of which she was married to three very different men. First: her marriage to Logan is unromantic and uninspired. She then runs away with Joe, who forbids her to associate with "common folk"; Joe's goal seems to be to shape Janie into what he considers to be the perfect wife through both physical and emotional abuse.

"He wanted her submission and he'd keep on fighting until he felt he had it. So gradually, [Janie] pressed her teeth together and learned to hush. The spirit of the marriage left the bedroom and took to living in the parlor. It was there to shake hands whenever company came to visit, but it never went back inside the bedroom again ... The bed was no longer a daisy-field for her and Joe to play in. It was a place where she went and laid down when she was sleepy and tired."

Joe eventually dies, and Janie seems quite relieved at finally achieving her freedom from him. She starts seeing a man who goes by the name of Tea Cake - a man twelve years younger than her. One part in the book that really shocked me is where Janie is discussing her relationship with a neighbor, Mrs. Turner. Mrs. Turner refuses to have a black doctor see her; she also refuses to go into black-owned business because "colored folks don't know nothin' 'bout not business." Even worse:

"Ah ain't got no flat nose and liver lips. Ah'm uh featured woman. Ah got white folks' features in mah face. Still and all Ah got tuh be lumped in wid all de rest. It ain't fair. Even if dey don't take us in wid de whites, dey oughta make us uh class tuh ourselves."

Apparently this extended exchange with Mrs. Turner received a lot of criticism from Harlem Renaissance writers: many said that it "favored" lighter-skinned African Americans, though I didn't see it as such (I agree with some other critics in that it more "exposed" the division between light-skinned and dark-skinned African Americans).

Anyway, at the end of the story, Tea Cake gets bitten by a rabid dog and gradually gets very sick and delusional. I won't spoil the ending, though I will share one of my mom's favorite passages:

"The day of the gun, and the bloody body, and the courthouse came and commenced to sing a sobbing sigh out of every corner in the room; out of each and every chair and thing. Commenced to sing, commenced to sob and sigh, singing and sobbing. Then Tea Cake came prancing around her where she was and the song of the sigh flew out of the window and lit in the top of the pine trees."

My mom pointed out the alliteration in that paragraph ... true, something that I likely would not have picked up on! I really enjoyed reading this book, though it was very hard for me to get into the phonetic spelling of the dialect spoken by all of the characters. I think I finally stopped having to re-read every page maybe a third of a way through the book. But this is definitely a classic piece of American literature that I wouldn't mind re-reading some other time to try to more fully enjoy all of its symbolism and literary devices.

71. House of Sand and Fog - Andre Dubus III

Instantly a top-5 choice. A simply beautiful story.
The book begins from the point of view of Colonel Behrani, a man who was once wealthy in Iran and is now a struggling immigrant in California. He has blown most of his money trying to keep up appearances in the U.S., and is struggling to make ends meet for his family. He sinks what money he has left into a house that he buys at an auction, not knowing the direction in which the purchase would lead his family ...
The next chapter is told from the point of view of Kathy Niccolo, the former owner of the house that Colonel Behrani bought. Kathy is incredibly emotionally unstable: her husband has recently left her, and the house (an inheritance from her dad) is all that she has left. When the house is foreclosed upon, Sheriff Lester Burdon helps her try to get it back - but ends up falling in love with her. Lester ultimately becomes obsessed with Kathy and with helping her try to get the house back.
For the majority of the book, the chapters alternate in terms of from whose point of view they are told. The author does an excellent job of making the reader feel what the character was feeling. He perfectly captures the way in which Colonel Behrani and his family, as recent Iranian immigrants, speak English; he also does a great job at weaving in a lot of Persian/Iranian culture. I could feel how determined Colonel Behrani is to keep the house: to him, it's his key to the American dream and to redeeming himself as the provider for his family.
In the chapters told from Kathy's point of view, I could feel her desperation and her feelings for Lester. Some chapters later in the book are told in third person, and in those chapters I could feel Lester's confusion and how torn he was between his developing obsession for Kathy and his pain in leaving his wife and children.
While I was reading this, I was so into it that I got annoyed when the phone would ring and interrupt me. I didn't want to put it down! I plan on renting the movie this weekend (it was made into a movie that came out in 2003) - I hope it doesn't disappoint me!

68. Animal Farm - George Orwell

What a strange/interesting/hilarious book ...
Animal Farm is a brilliant commentary on the corruption of the Russian Revolution ... in the form of a satire. A barnyard full of animals revolt against their human masters in the hopes of achieving an idealistic state of justice and progress. The revolt is initially a success: the animals meet to debate farm policy and complete the harvest. The pigs are the most intelligent animals and are therefore put in charge; Napoleon (one of the pigs) is initially the leader of all of the animals. Some premises behind the revolt ...

"Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. Whatever goes up on four legs, or has wings, is a friend. And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices. No animal must ever live in a house, or sleep in a bed, or wear clothes, or drink alcohol, or smoke tobacco ... All habits of Man are evil."

They even set forth the "Seven Commandments," one of which is "No animal shall sleep in a bed." Yet throughout the story, when Napoleon and the other pigs start (among other things) sleeping in beds ... the commandment changes to, "No animal shall sleep in a bed ... with sheets."

The farm is doing well, although "it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer ..." except, of course, for the pigs. The pigs start taking on many qualities of their human oppressors, including walking on their hind legs and gambling. The Seven Commandments are eventually reduced to a single law: "All animals are equal; but some animals are more equal than others." The book ends with a drawing (yes, it has sketches!) of the pigs sitting around a table playing cards ... looking like strange pig-human hybrids.

I might have appreciated the book even more than I did if I knew a bit more about the Russian Revolution; nonetheless, I know enough about Communism to have gotten the gist and to have definitely found the book very, very funny!

67. Push - Sapphire

This incredibly sad and moving book was the basis for Tyler Perry's most recent movie, Precious. The story is about Claireece Precious Jones: an obese, illiterate, dark-skinned, HIV positive teenager in Harlem - who had a daughter at twelve by her sexually abusive father, and who was pregnant again with another one of his children by the age of sixteen. It's impossible to read this book and not be overwhelmed with emotion for this poor girl. From one passage, where Precious was describing her life not long after the birth of her first child who has Down Syndrome:

"Sometimes I wish I was not alive. But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how hard I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning. I hardly have not seen my daughter since she was a little baby. I never stick my bresses in her mouth. My muver say what for? It's outta style ... She say I never do you. What that child of yours need tittie for? She retarded. Mongoloid. Down Sinder."

She actually called the baby "Little Mongo" throughout the book ... I was hoping that was some awful nickname that she gave the baby, but no other name was ever shared. From another passage, talking about her son ...

"When he grow up he gonna laff big black girls? He gon' laff at dark skin like he got? One thing I say about Farrakhan and Alice Walker they help me like being black. I wish I wasn't fat but I am. Maybe one day I like that too, who knows."

The author certainly doesn't hold back: some parts were incredibly, incredibly ... raw. I was shocked. Other parts aren't as explicit but make you want to cry:

"I always thought I was someone different on the inside. That I was just fat and black and ugly to people on the OUTSIDE. And if they could see inside me they would see something lovely and not keep laughing at me, throwing spitballs (shit one time nigger at school just spit on me when I was pregnant) and polly seed shells at me, that Mama and Daddy would recognize me as ... as, I don't know, Precious!"

Definitely one of those books that leaves you feeling very emotionally drained; but thankfully, the ending does leave the reader with hope.

61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

Definitely a classic piece of American literature ... that I think I was supposed to read in high school but never did :) This book is about two migrant workers in California - George and Lennie. Lennie seems to be mildly retarded - but is incredibly strong and is thus a great worker. Lennie is also somewhat obsessed with petting soft things; but because of his strength, he often accidentally hurts them (i.e. mice and puppies). Because Lennie dreams of having a farm with lots of rabbits, George tries to protect Lennie and prevent him from getting into trouble by saying that if Lennie doesn't do what he's supposed to do, he won't be able to "tend to the rabbits" on the farm they're going to buy.

However, Lennie gets into trouble when the wife of Curley, the farm owner, starts flirting with him. Knowing that Lennie likes to touch soft things, she tells Lennie to touch her hair; but in doing so, he accidentally breaks her neck. He runs away, and the other farm workers (including Curley) form a mob that starts looking for him to try to kill him. To spare Lennie a painful death at the hands of the mob - and perhaps for selfish reasons as well, the story ends with George shooting Lennie in the back of the head.
I can't seem to figure out why George took responsibility for Lennie to begin with - they don't seem to be related. It's also interesting to note that Steinbeck never gives the name of the woman that Lennie accidentally kills - she is just "Curley's wife."

This is a well-written (and sad!) story. It almost seems like a play - it's really easy to envision the setting and the characters from the way that Steinbeck writes.

59. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

I wanted to read this book to figure out where the term "catch 22" came from. Though it took a very long 400+ pages to get there ... I think I've finally got it :)
The main character of this book is Joseph Yossarian, an American army pilot who is serving off the coast of Italy during World War II. Everyone thinks that Yossarian is crazy because he believes that millions of people are trying to kill him; though I don't think he was really crazy. It seemed more to be his way of avoiding the war - he's angry that his life is always in danger through no fault of his own. Therefore, he keeps trying to rotate out of active flight duty ... but his commander keeps raising the number of missions the men in the squadron have to fly before he will allow them to rotate out. That's where the infamous law, Catch-22, comes in:

"There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn't, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn't have to; but if he didn't want to he was sane and had to."

Because Heller appears to be making a social commentary about the absurdity of war and the ineffectiveness of bureaucracies, I thought that the premise behind Catch-22 had more to do with laws and/or government; but circular logic seems to be a theme throughout the book. There is one part (that almost made me go cross-eyed) where Yossarian is with a woman named Luciana; after he sleeps with her, he decides that he wants to marry her. When he tells her that, she tells him that no man will marry her because she is not a virgin; and when Yossarian tells her that he still wants to marry her, she starts acting crazy and starts telling him that he is crazy for wanting to marry a non-virgin like herself ... and that she can't marry a crazy man!
Heller is a very clever and witty writer. One part I found really funny:

"... Even among men lacking all distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed by how unimpressive he was."

Although this book took me forever to finish! ... I would say it's definitely a classic worth reading.

54. A Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway

My first Hemingway book ... A Farewell to Arms is written from the point of view of Frederic Henry, an American serving as an ambulance driver for the Italian army during World War I. Henry begins a relationship with Catherine Barkley, a nurse for the British army. Although he initially keeps telling himself that he does not love Catherine, but that their relationship is "a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards" ... he does ultimately seem to fall in love with her.
In the course of the war, there was supposedly an act of treachery that led to the Italian defeat. So when Henry realizes that Italian officers are being interrogated and executed because of the defeat, he escapes by jumping into a river. By that point, Catherine is three months pregnant, and she and Henry escape Italy by rowing to Switzerland in a rowboat.
The gender dynamics between Catherine and Henry are interesting ... old-fashioned and slightly melodramatic, but interesting. One passage:

[Catherine]: "How many people have you ever loved?"
[Henry]: "Nobody."
"Not even me?"
"Yes, you."
"How many others really?"
"None."
"How many have you—how do you say it?—stayed with?"
"None."
"You’re lying to me."
"Yes."
"It’s all right. Keep right on lying to me. That’s what I want you to do."

I was rooting for them after Henry seemed to accept his feelings for Catherine, and was sad at the ending! (which I won't spoil).
This is the second war story I've read (the first was Miracle at St. Anna) - and to be honest, both have left me a bit confused. I feel like I might have missed some themes ... and I'm realizing that I prefer nonfiction (over fiction). Nonetheless, an enjoyable book.

46. Bridges of Madison County - Robert James Waller

A beautiful "new romance classic." The story is about Francesca, a farmer's wife in Iowa, and Robert, a photographer for National Geographic. The two meet when Robert visits Iowa to take pictures of several covered bridges and happens to stop and ask Francesca for directions while her husband and two children are out of town. The two have an incredible attraction to each other and end up spending several days together and falling deeply in love. Robert wants Francesca to leave with him, but she ultimately does not because she can't bear the thought of abandoning her family. The story is told from Francesca's point of view 22 years later as she's reminiscing on her time with Robert.

It's interesting to compare this to The Awakening by Kate Chopin - both are books written from the point of view of married women with children; in both books, the women cheat on their husbands; neither can deny the attraction they have toward these men, but they both have feelings of remorse and confusion. But The Awakening was written in 1890's, Bridges in the 1990's; in The Awakening, Edna leaves her husband and then kills herself; in Bridges, Francesca stays with her husband although she never stops loving Robert; The Awakening was written by a woman; Bridges written by a man.

I'm still not sure why this book sold 50 million copies! ... but it was a wonderful story. I'd love to check out the movie.

33. 1984 - George Orwell

Written in 1949, this is Orwell's classic book about an oppressive, totalitarian regime ("the Party") in the year 1984. Part of the regime are the "Thought Police" who use constant surveillance to punish those who even think about challenging authority ("thoughtcrime"). There are constant reminders to citizens that "Big Brother is Watching" - though I couldn't figure out if Big Brother was an actual person or just a way to further the authority's propaganda. The main character, Winston Smith, is a government employee who has the job of falsifying historical records and newspaper articles so that it seems like the government is always right. It's fascinating to see how many phenomena Orwell seems to have "predicted":

"With the development of the television, and the technological advance which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen ... could be kept for twenty-four hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of communication closed." Wow! Cell phones; wiretaps, GPS ... not to mention how we put our "private lives" in the public sphere on Facebook, Twitter, etc.!

I decided to read this book after Chris and I discovered the Latitude application on our Blackberrys that allows us to track each others' exact real-time location. Forget "Big Brother is watching" - Chris Walker was watching me! There is a Star Trek: TNG episode that lifts a torture scene out of this book; also, the movie Minority Report has lots of "Orwellian" elements. I recommend this book not only because it's a great story - but because it's truly a part of cultural literacy.