Book Reviews

I love reading books on my Kindle.  I actually prefer it rather than reading a normal book because the lettering seems bigger, it's easier to "turn" pages, and it is lighter.

The last week I have just been craving a good read.  I bought my first book for my Kindle which was "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen

Here is the description from Amazon:

"Jacob Jankowski says: "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other." At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn't always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn't a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn't write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob's life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the "menagerie" and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and... he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August's wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there's trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the "revenooers" or the cops, and losing all your hooch."

I really liked this book.  It was so interesting to me that the author put actual true stories from the circus into the book. You really get to know and like the main character Jacob and the book moves fast.  I finished this book in a day.  It's a quick read. There were a couple raunchy parts that I wish would have been skipped but overall a great book.
 
The second book I read this week I also read in one day. "Run to Overcome" by Meb Keflezighi who is a running star extrodanaire.  I loved how it talks about the history of his family fleeing Eritriea in Africa and how they came to the United States.  I also love that he always mentions God and how God has had such a huge roll in his life. You can tell that he really is a devoted man who loves his family and values his relationship with God, even through the tough times.  One of my favorite quotes from the book is this: "Winning doesn't always mean getting first place: it means getting the best out of yourself."
 

Amazon's description:
"When Meb Keflezighi won the New York City Marathon in 2009—the first American to do so in 27 years—some critics questioned whether the Eritrean-born runner was “really” an American despite his citizenship status and representing the USA on two Olympic and several World Championship teams. Yet Meb is the living embodiment of the American dream. His family came to the U.S. to escape from a life of poverty and a violent war with Ethiopia; Meb was 12 at the time, spoke no English, and had never raced a mile. Yet he became an A student and a high school state and national champion. And when he stood on the platform as a silver medalist in the 2004 Olympics, Meb knew his hard work and determination had paid off. How could life be any better?


Then it all came crashing down. Meb, a favorite for the Beijing Olympics, fractured his pelvis during the trials and was left literally crawling. His close friend and fellow marathoner suffered a cardiac arrest at the trials and died that same day. Devastated, Meb was about to learn whether his faith in God, the values his parents had taught him, and his belief that he was born to run were enough to see him through.

Run to Overcome tells the inspirational story of a man who discovered the real meaning of victory, and who embodies the American spirit of overcoming the odds. "
 
Another thing I have been reading is this little gem of a magazine. 
 

 I checked the mail the other day and there it was.  My mother-in-law surprised me and subscribed to it for me! I have already planned next weeks dinner menu using all recipes from this months edition.