My most recent reading:
The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by James Ford. This is really two stories separated by forty years. During the second World War, Henry Lee is a young boy living in Seattle. His two friends are a Jazz musician working the streets as he waits for his big break and a American-Japanese girl. It is the second friendship that causes problems with Henry's Chinese family. Forty years later, he has just lost his wife to cancer after caring for her himself for seven years and he is trying to restore a relationship with his own. son. The two stories weave together and we know at least one of them has a happy ending and we are left to speculate on the ending of the other.
The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik is subtitled A Memoir of my Mother's Hidden Life and tells the story of her mother's life in Iran based on tapes that her mother sent to her. It's told in the third person so it reads like fiction except that there are things that go on that one just cannot make up. Some parts were easy to skim over.
Neither one of these books has made it to my all time favorites list, but I did find them interesting. They shine a certain light on how different cultures can impact outward lives while the universality of human nature simmers underneath.
The Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by James Ford. This is really two stories separated by forty years. During the second World War, Henry Lee is a young boy living in Seattle. His two friends are a Jazz musician working the streets as he waits for his big break and a American-Japanese girl. It is the second friendship that causes problems with Henry's Chinese family. Forty years later, he has just lost his wife to cancer after caring for her himself for seven years and he is trying to restore a relationship with his own. son. The two stories weave together and we know at least one of them has a happy ending and we are left to speculate on the ending of the other.
The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik is subtitled A Memoir of my Mother's Hidden Life and tells the story of her mother's life in Iran based on tapes that her mother sent to her. It's told in the third person so it reads like fiction except that there are things that go on that one just cannot make up. Some parts were easy to skim over.
Neither one of these books has made it to my all time favorites list, but I did find them interesting. They shine a certain light on how different cultures can impact outward lives while the universality of human nature simmers underneath.
I read the Bitter and Sweet on last summer. I'm like you. I liked it and learned some things, but it's not my recent favorite. My recent favorite is The Art of Racing in the Rain. I'm not the least bit interested in car racing and I'm not a huge dog person, but this story narrated by a dog and about car racing was just wonderful.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes! I loved that book.
ReplyDeleteI almost got the Hotel one on my Kindle. Maybe now I will get it.
ReplyDeleteNow I will have to check out marcia's recommendation. So many books, so little time.
Just when I needed some recommendations!
ReplyDeleteThe last 2 books my book club read were "Unbroken" a true story of a prisoner in the Pacific in WWII and "The Paris Wife" about Hadley Hemingway. I enjoyed both of them but waited a long time on the library list. It as worth it.
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