Two Caravans

Two CaravansA group of eight immigrants from different parts of the world go to England in hopes of finding a better life, but instead they find themselves living in two caravans in a strawberry field, not at all what they had expected. This book deals with how immigrants in England perceive the country before they go there, the high expectations they have and their hope of making a better life for themselves. The immigrants are instead exploited and given jobs that the English people will not do such as strawberry picking and working in the poultry industry. The book is written from the point of view of these eight workers, as well as dog's point which they have named Dog. In the second part this is mostly from Andriy's and Irina's point of view, both from Ukraine but one is a miner's son from the Donbas mining region while the other is a bourgeois girl from the anti-Russian Western Ukraine. Despite being very different they end up being attracted to each other and they both think that in the long run they can change the other's way of thinking. I picked up this book while I was at the airport in London on my way back home because I had seen a couple of people reading it during my short stay there. Initially I thought it would be light reading but Marina Lewycka managed to explore serious subjects such as global capitalism in a way that it will not bore you out.

Things I Learned About My Dad

This is a collection of essays about fatherhood written by various bloggers and compiled by Heather B. Armstrong of www.dooce.com. The essays vary from those written by fathers about their kids or to their kids, to those written about the authors' fathers. I found the essays witten by the fathers quite interesting and enjoyed seeing parenthood from the dads' perspective. My favorite essays were 'Sam I Am' by Matthew Baldwin and 'Day Job' by Heather B. Armstrong. This was a little different read for me as I don't usually read these kind of books but I'm always open to new things so being I follow Dooce I thought I'd give it a try. I was expecting this book to be more funny and deep from the reviews I read about it and from reading Dooce, however I was a bit disappointed to find out that most of the essays aren't really humorous and none of them that deep. I didn't care for some of the essays either, especially ones were the writing is not that good. Maybe I had high expectations for this book and that is why I was disappointed. What I would have liked to see was more essays by Heather herself as I like her style of writing, and in general I think it would have been a better book.