Anybody Out There?

Anna is in Dublin staying with her parents while she recovers from some serious injuries, however her mind is back home in New York. At first what happened to Anna is a mystery, with the occasional mention of her husband Aidan who doesn't seem to be around anymore. When she moves back to New York the story starts unveiling through Anna's painful thoughts. She tries to appear as everything is fine but in reality she is willing to do anything to hear from Aidan, even lose her glamorous job as a PR for a makeup line. While Anna is learning to deal with the truth she also discovers something that she never expected. At first this made her furious at Aidan however in the end it turned out to be what she needed to move on and the closest to Aidan she could get now that he is gone.

This is the first book I have read from the unofficial "Walsh Sister Series" by Marian Keyes. At times it does get sad but I also loved the humor in this book. I am really liking Keye's style and can't wait to read the other books in this series to get to know the other sisters' stories. All in all it's a relaxing read with an interesting story.

Two Caravans

A 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.

The Other Side of the Story

This book is written from the perspective of Gemma, Lily and Jojo, three women striving to be successful. Gemma and Lily used to be friends, until Lily stole Gemma's boyfriend Anton, although it's debatable whether she really stole him since Gemma and Anton broke up prior to them getting together. Jojo is the sexy agent at Lipman Haigh involved in a complicated love affair with Mark, one of the partners at the company while she herself is striving to become partner. The three women connect when Jojo agents both Lily's and Gemma's book and as the story evolves, everything gets more complicated, from their love life to their jobs. This is typical 'Chick Lit' but Marian Keyes did a great job at making the story enjoyable where you get to both laugh and cry. It's a great book for a relaxing read with nothing too intriguing to figure out and very easy to go through. For some reason I found myself really rooting for Gemma and was a little disappointed with how her book turned out, but on the other hand was pleased that everything else worked out for her. Knowing how each of the women perceive the situation made me connect with the three of them, and although at times I didn't like Lily in the end I really wanted her to get back with Anton. I also found the three different characters to be real, with a little extravagance thrown in to make it more interesting but I can easily see how anyone can feel the way they did given the circumstances. Definitely need to read a book like this every now and then.

Gerald's Game

What was supposed to be a romantic weekend away with her husband turned out to be a horrible nightmare for Jessie. She is fed up of his sleazy sex games but she comes to regret the moment she kicked him in his crotch, causing him to have a fatal heart attack and leaving her handcuffed to the bed, all alone at their cabin where her screaming is heard by no one. During the hours she spent attached to the bed, Jessie is haunted by the voices in her head which represent different personalities and eventually help her get out of the situation she got into. Other than the voices in her head, her only other company is 'Prince', the dog which comes inside the cabin to feed on Gerald's body, and 'The Space Cowboy' which is her visitor at night, except she doesn't know if he is real or her mind is playing tricks on her. This is a psychological novel and although King includes some gruesome bloody details, the horror lies within Jessie's thoughts and her fight for survival. It keeps you wanting to know what happened next and although it's not the best I've read by Stephen King it did keep my interest. The voices of Ruth, Goodwife Burlingame and Punkin are real in a situation like this, where the brain isn't entirely functioning well and when in fear the conflicting voices represent your own thoughts and speculations. King also explores the doubts one encounters when in fear, where you can't distinguish between reality and your imagination running wild due to the state of panic you are in. The ending has an interesting twist. When you think you can breathe a sigh of relief that Jessie made it, you learn that perhaps her 'The Space Cowboy' wasn't just a figment of her imagination and there might be more to it than that.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

The book starts with Mariam, a young girl living in Herat, Afghanistan, with her bitter mother. Mariam was born out of wedlock when Jalil, a wealthy man slept with his servant. She spends her days eagerly waiting to see her father, which visits once a week. She loves him dearly and her mother always warned her that he doesn't treat her as his other children. One day Mariam went to her father's house but he wouldn't see her, and after spending the night outside his house she went back home only to find her mother had committed suicide. Mariam's story continues when at 15 years old, Jalil and his wives marry her to Rasheed, a widow which is much older than herself and lives in Kabul. Things didn't turn out right for Mariam in Kabul either. After she had a miscarriage Rasheed turned into a violent man but Mariam was strong and went through it. When Rasheed married Laila, a much younger girl, Mariam feels threatened but eventually they become the best of friends and help eachother to endure Rasheed's bad temper. They plan to run away to Pakistan together but this doesn't work out and when they return home Rasheed locks them up both. This was a very sad story during the Soviet occupation and then the reigh of the Taliban in Afghanistan and the author paints a true picture of the unimmaginable sorrow that the people in this country had to go through in these times of war as well as how women are treated by men like Rasheed. I was appalled by Mariam and Laila's unfortunate story and I was hoping that in the end everything turns out right for the two. I was dismayed when I found out Mariam's fate after her selfless act to save Laila from Rasheed. On the other hand I was happy that Laila finally got married to her childhood friend Tariq and together they had a family and were helping to fix up the orphanage in Kabul. This is another book by Khaled Hosseini that I enjoyed reading thoroughly. I like how Hosseini's writing seems to just flow and how the ending of this book was happy and sad at the same time. I hope we will be seeing more books of this kind from this author written with the same passion that The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns holds.

The Kite Runner

An emotional story based in Afghanistan about a boy, Amir, and his struggle to live up to his father's expectations. The 12 year old Amir is so determined to win his father's affection that he even turns his back on his best friend Hassan when he sees him being raped by the neighbourhood bully. Amir can't live with his actions and what he did haunts him until he is a grown man. When Rahim Khan, his father's long time friend, asks him to return home, Amir sets on a mission "to be good again" and is determined to make things right this time. I felt this story is told with such passion and it gives a true picture of the lives in Afghanistan. By showing the situation in Afghanistan and Amir's life after he moved to America, this book makes you realize how little you know about this country that you hear so much about. It is beautifully written and I was hooked right away, wanting to know what happens next. It is heartbreaking reading how loyal Hassan was to Amir, only to be betrayed by him. What captured me was that throughout the whole book the author managed to keep my interest the whole time, from the very beginning starting to know about Hassan up until the end finding out how life changed in Afghanistan and what happened to Hassan's son Sohrab. It also contains a surprise factor where in some situations I never expected things to happen that way, this is one thing that makes a book so appealing for me, when the things that happen aren't so predictable. I could read this book all over again and I would enjoy it just as much as the first time.