Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith

[helens78]

Title: Flygirl
Author: Sherri L. Smith
Book number/goal: 6/10

Review: Flygirl is the story of Ida Mae Jones, a African-American woman whose father taught her how to fly. When the WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) program starts during World War II, Ida Mae is determined to join -- even though it means passing for white.

This book is excellent; grounded in the realities of the time, full of well-researched (but not dry or over-described) historical details, well-told and well-plotted, and it digs deep into the emotional complexities of passing, as well as the difficulties of being a woman in a highly sexist time and place.

Highly recommended, and I'd definitely look up more books by this author! (The author's blurb says she started writing Flygirl as her master's thesis project after hearing about the WASP program on public radio.)

The Jugurthine War/The Conspiracy of Catiline by Sallust

[telesilla]

Title: The Jugurthine War (Bellum Iugurthinum)/The Conspiracy of Catiline (Bellum Catilinae)
Author: Gaius Sallustius Crispus (Sallust)/ Translated and with an Introduction by S. A. Hanford
Number of Pages: (optional) 233
Genre: non-fiction, history
Book Number/Goal: 24 of 100 to be read in a year
My rating: 3/5

Review: I started reading history back in grade school because I'd read a couple of historical novels and wanted to know what really happened. These days, I still read it for that reason, but also because I find it fascinating in and of itself. Oh, and I often read it for research purposes, usually connected with the never ending Blood Histories vampire saga.

( an absurdly long review of a very short book )

Evening Is the Whole Day by Preeta Samarasan

[torachan]

Title: Evening Is the Whole Day
Author: Preeta Samarasan
Number of Pages: 340 pages
Book Number/Goal: 23/75 for 2009
My Rating: 3/5

This is the story of the Rajasekharans, an Indian family in Malaysia. It jumps around through time through three generations, though the main focus is on the "present" of the story (set in 1980) and several events that happen all around the same time.

I'm really not sure how much I liked it or not, so I gave it three stars, because that's in the middle, and there were things I liked and things I didn't, and nothing really swayed me to the love or hate side. But I did enjoy it over all, so three stars.

My biggest problem with it was that it was slow. It's only 340 pages, but it felt like it took forever to read, and I always had to force myself to pick it up again. This finally changed about two-thirds of the way through, and I found myself eager to read the last few chapters. But I didn't really enjoy the slog to get there, even while I can see why she included everything that she did up to that point.

I loved the language, though. The rhythms of Malaysian English come through so perfectly I can hear it all in my head. And I liked the story, even liked the way it was told, all the revelations, peeling layers back like an onion. Though I thought some of the reveals were pretty obvious. Like Chellam being innocent and Uncle Ballroom being the better of the two brothers and the guy arrested for murder being framed. I was surprised about Appa's second family, though (though I suppose I should have seen the foreshadowing with Kooky Rooky). I also wished there had been a bit more about Uma. We barely get her POV at all, and she's just this perfect girl who is perfectly perfect at everything from birth and has no personality.

If you need your books to be happy, though, this is not the book for you. Nothing happy happens to anyone ever here.