We're an Open Book
Jess and I did a book swap as a way to force the other to read and review a book. The theme for our first book swap was 5-star reviews; we gave each other a book we’d previously reviewed as five stars. Jess gave me The Golem in The Jinni and I gave her Fangirl.
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I generally get most
of my Adult literary fiction recommendations from podcasts and one I’ve heard a lot
about is Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake. I picked this up at my Indie book
store (shout out to Fountain Bookstore) after the bookseller told me how much she loved Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale which I have but haven’t read yet….
When I finished reading Max Barry’s 2013 novelLexicon I went to Barry’s site to learn more about him. From what I can tell Barry seems to have a thing for writing and satirizing the culture of corporate America and marketing. I had mixed feelings about the female characters in Lexicon, so the synopsis and title to Jennifer Government caught my eye….
Hey, did you read Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus? Did you fall all over the magical aspects, charming side characters and nonlinear narrative? Well, I did and if you need something to fill that hole I highly suggest TheGolem and The Jinni. I grabbed this off my library’s Overdrive after seeing so many people reading it on vacation and it was just my kind of book.
Drenched in Kabbalah and Arabic folklore Wecker’s debut novel is the unlikely story of two creatures believed to exist only folklore finding their way in the immigrant neighborhoods of 1890’s New York.
The Golem is a newborn woman made of earth, who is quickly abandoned as soon as she is bought to life. Hiding out in the Jewish populated Lower East Side, her only solace is trying to meet the wants of others without revealing herself first.
Once free to roam the deserts of Syria, the Jinni is now selfish, arrogant creature made of fire and smoke, who is bound to human flesh, and has inexplicably awoken in New York City’s Little Syria.
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At first these two books seem worlds away, one a much-praised modern literary classic the other a backlist YA contemporary climbing its way up the NYT bestsellers list with a film release weeks away.
I found myself reading both books at around the same time and the more I thought about writing the individual reviews, the more I realized these books have a lot in common. Both main characters, Kathy H. in Never Let Me Go and Mia in If I Stay, are young women trying to figure out their future. While Kathy’s path has been laid out since birth Mia gets the opportunity to decide hers.
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At first these two books seem worlds away, one a much-praised modern literary classic the other a backlist YA contemporary climbing its way up the NYT bestsellers list with a film release weeks away.
I found myself reading both books at around the same time and the more I thought about writing the individual reviews, the more I realized these books have a lot in common. Both main characters, Kathy H. in Never Let Me Go and Mia in If I Stay, are young women trying to figure out their future. While Kathy’s path has been laid out since birth Mia gets the opportunity to decide hers.
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