The Books of Jacob By Olga Tokarczuk

 

The Books of Jacob

By Olga Tokarczuk

 4 stars.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

Image
  The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton One of my favorite book tropes is the adolescent or pre-adolescent boy with psychological or social trauma and self-discovery. Some of my favorite books involve this theme: Catcher in the Rye , I Know This Much is True , and The Perks of Being a Wallflower , to name a few. The Outsiders is another book that carries this theme, following Ponyboy Curtis and a gang of greasers in the mid-20th century. Ponyboy and his two brothers navigate a world of delinquency and violence, though the three of them are smart and savvy in there own ways. The greasers and the socs have turf wars and throughout the story Ponyboy discovers that even though the two groups are very different, they are both beset by there own problems, both societal and psychological, and that they can be taken down by the prejudices of their respective social groups. After a tragic incident involving Ponyboy, his friend Johnny, and two socs, Ponyboy and Johnny go on the run to escape a murde...
Read more

The Cider House Rules by John Irving

Image
The Cider House Rules by John Irving I loved everything about this book! Homer Wells is an orphan growing up in St. Cloud's, a small town in main, under the care of Dr. Larch and his nurses Angela and Edna. Dr. Larch is an ether addict and abortionist, which is illegal in Maine during the story. Homer knows he belongs in St. Cloud's and has several failed foster placements, always ending up back in the orphanage. Dr. Larch decides Homer should be of some use, and teaches him all about obstetrics, how to deliver unwanted babies that will end up staying at the orphanage, and how to provide abortions to those women who want them and are not too far along in their pregnancies. Unlike Dr, Larch, Homer decides, as he is older, that he believes abortion should be legal and women should be able to choose to have them, but that he will not be performing them. As a young adult, still living and working at the orphanage and hospital, Homer meets Candy and Wally who arrive because Candy wa...
Read more

Beneath the Scarlet Sky By Mark Sullivan

Image
  Beneath the Scarlet Sky By Mark Sullivan This story follows Pino Lella, an Italian teenager, who becomes enmeshed in World War II when he is enlisted as the driver for a high ranking German official. Pino is sent to a mountain getaway/school by his parents in order to keep him safe when the bombing reaches his Italian city. There, he helps to get Jews across the border to Switzerland to escape the Nazis. Afterward, when he returns home and is at the age of enlistment to be drafted into the war effort, he is noticed by General Leyers, who asks for Pino to become his driver, taking him around Italy to various appointments and battle positions. Pino saves Leyers's life a couple times, even though Pino himself is against the Nazis and is working undercover as a spy, relaying information to his uncle who is part of the resistance movement. Throughout the story Pino is forming a romantic relationship with Anna, who is the maid to Leyers's mistress, and a woman he asked out on a dat...
Read more