What Strange Paradise - Omar El Akkad

 Title: What Strange Paradise (Bookshop.org)

Author: Omar El Akkad

Published: 2022 (first published 2021)

Genre: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary

Edition: Paperback

Source: Surrey Libraries

Thoughts:  I really wanted to like the book, as I thought, and the others in my library book club also thought, that it would be a good read.  And it was a good read; it's just that I couldn't get into it with the two different timelines that the author gave for the book.  The book really needs to be read either closely or multiple times to really understand the two main timelines.  It is definitely a fairly quick read, if you just want to go through it once, but I think that if you really want to understand the book, you may want to read it many times.

Bottom line: A really excellent read that needs to read multiple times to get a complete understanding of it.  I just feel like there was something more to the book that I missed that would have completed my understanding of the book better. Recommended.

Rating: 3.5/5

Description: From the widely acclaimed author of American War a new novel--beautifully written, unrelentingly dramatic, and profoundly moving--that brings the global refugee crisis down to the level of a child's eyes.

More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another over-filled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives in their homelands. And only one has made the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who has the good fortune to fall into the hands not of the officials but of Vanna: a teenage girl, native to the island, who lives inside her own sense of homelessness in a place and among people she has come to disdain. And though she and the boy are complete strangers, though they don't speak a common language, she determines to do whatever it takes to save him.

In alternating chapters, we learn the story of the boy's life and how he came to be on the boat; and we follow the girl and boy as they make their way toward a vision of safety. But as the novel unfurls, we begin to understand that this is not merely the story of two children finding their way through a hostile world, it is the story of our collective moment in this time: of empathy and indifference, of hope and despair--and of the way each of those things can blind us to reality, or guide us to a better one.

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The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt

Title: The Goldfinch
Author: Donna Tartt
Pages: 771
Published: 2013
Challenges: Blogger Summer Reading, Chunkster
Genre: Contemporary, Literary, Ficiton
Edition: Hardcover
Source: Personal

Description: It begins with a boy. Theo Decker, a thirteen-year-old New Yorker, miraculously survives an accident that kills his mother. Abandoned by his father, Theo is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. Bewildered by his strange new home on Park Avenue, disturbed by schoolmates who don't know how to talk to him, and tormented above all by his unbearable longing for his mother, he clings to one thing that reminds him of her: a small, mysteriously captivating painting that ultimately draws Theo into the underworld of art.

As an adult, Theo moves silkily between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty labyrinth of an antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love-and at the center of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. (from Goodreads)

Thoughts:  After reading a number of book reviews over the past few months, I realized that I needed to borrow the audiobook from the library and it was a good decision in the end, as I was able to get through several portions of the book.  When all I wanted to do was to give up, even though there were sections that I really enjoyed reading.

I will say that Ms. Tartt's ability to allow the reader to as though they are actually in the place being described.  I really liked Boris more than Theo, who seemed to be a tad too mopy for my liking.  It's not that the book wasn't well-written, it was very well-written, I just felt that Theo didn't deal with his grief very well and felt that the author could have maybe brought some sort of relief/happiness into Theo's life.  I also felt that the author rambled a little too much for my liking.

Bottom line: I would recommend the book for those that don't mind long books that sometimes tend to be on the rambley side of things.  Recommend.

Rating: 3.5/5

Pages for 2014: 16,305

If you have read it, what did you think of it?