Tuesday Book Review

While I was recovering my friend Jennifer Mello brought me over a bag with 20 books. I have never had such a good time in my life. She was rather surprised when I had returned them all in less than 2 1/2 weeks but there were some very thought provoking reading in that pile and I had read them all. It wasn't all light and fluff. Surprisingly of the 20 books I had only read 1 and that had been just prior to the surgery. It turns out that Jennifer and I have surprising similar tastes. I even read books that I would never have otherwise. Here are two of them.

The Covenant by Naomia Ragen: This is a book of present day Israel and Palestine and the turmoil that is going on there. It is about a kidnapping of a family. The twist is the 'covenant'. A group of women that had survived the concentration camp during WWII and how they resolved this issue. It ends realistically but not too tragically. It was beautifully written and as I stated before, something I would have never read had Jennifer not had it in her bag.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruis Zafon and Lucia Graves. Jennifer and I think that Carlos wrote it in Spanish and Lucia translated it into English. This is a story of a boy whose family is one that is trusted to 'keep' the books of Spain. He becomes possessed with the book he has been given and tries to find other copies only to discover that his is the only one. It too ends in a realistic but not too tragic way - especially since it is during the Spanish War and uprising. This one was a surprising one. I give a book 40 pages and then if I am not enamored with it I will put it down. I had to give this one about 120 and then I couldn't put it down! The thing is - the whole time I was reading it I kept thinking, Andy and Chris would love this book. I never think things like that. I usually think that about our daughters. But I really think this is a book they might like to look into sometime. Maybe read it in the orginal Spanish. It might be more of a challenge but wouldn't it mean more? It probably has things in the Spanish that were lost in translation. That could very well be why I kept thinking that this would be a book they might like. Plus the boy was not a hero in the knight in shining armor sense. He was just a curious person who needed to know more and things happened because of this.