Tonight, my book club meets to discuss In the Time of the Butterflies. I have to tell you, I am not a fan of this book. I was very eager to read it, but at 200 pages in, I’ve decided to divorce it. There are just too many characters and none of them pull me in. I’m disappointed because I have had this book for over a year and I’ve always wanted to read something by Alvarez but this one just didn’t do it for me. My book club may be watching the movie version within the next few weeks and I’m interested to see how the material comes across on film.
Another book that I am giving up on is The Last Song. I read it with Rebecca during her #IHeartTheSpark Twitter read-along and I just could not get through it. Not even for Rebecca and that says a lot. My main issue with this book started with the knowledge that Miley Cyrus is slated to play the lead in the movie version. I like Miley and we watch a lot of her in my house but while reading this one I kept seeing the main character as “Hannah Montana” and I could not for the life of me get that vision out of my head. The writing was so, so…forced. It turned my brain to mush and it took days for me to recover from it. No, I won’t be picking it up again.
So there you have it. Two divorces. I’m a tarnished reader.
Source: The Last Song is a review copy sent to me by Little, Brown and Company. In the Time of the Butterflies was a gift.
Honeymooners Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with the optimism and cultural vibrancy of central Europe of the 1920s when they meet modernist architect Rainer von Abt. He builds for them a home to embody their exuberant faith in the future, and the Landauer House becomes an instant masterpiece. Viktor and Liesel, a rich Jewish mogul married to a thoughtful, modern gentile, pour all of their hopes for their marriage and budding family into their stunning new home, filling it with children, friends, and a generation of artists and thinkers eager to abandon old-world European style in favor of the new and the avant-garde.
But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. As Viktor searches for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, and Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and idealism of 1930 quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor’s Jewish roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves.
The Glass Room was a finalist for the 2009 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. I am thinking about pitching it to my book group for our yearly book selection meeting. What do you think? Has anyone read it? I’d be interested in your thoughts.
Book Chatter 