More Book Reviews

Hey!  I loved reading those book reviews!  How did you guys get pictures of the covers?  I am part of a Book Club at church and - unfortunately for me - the ladies all like to read "Christian fiction".  Most of which is mediocre at best.  I just finished one whose name I can't even recall that was about the early Christians.  I think it was pretty well researched, so there was interest in that, but it was quite quotidian in its writing.  Perhaps that's an advantage to some readers, but I found it dreary.  (Plus I didn't like most of the characters)  Then, I randomly chose a book for the Kindle and stumbled onto a winner.  It's called "The Hummingbird's Daughter" by Luis Alberto Urrea.  It is set in Mexico in the time just before the Mexican Revolution and teeters towards magical realism (a genre which I really enjoy).  Anyway, the title character learns she has healing powers and later dies and then is sent back to earth by God because she has more work to do.  There is gorgeous writing as well as wonderful musings on the nature of God and faith.  Plus a ripping story and characters that are easy to like.  I had a little bit of trouble getting into the story because I couldn't figure out who was who - too many names for the same person - but listen to this:  "The peaks grew heavy with night, the points flaring orange, then impossible molten copper.  Red like a deep infection crept down the cliffs and the arroyos, heavy and somehow fluid, until it spilled purple across the plain, downing wagon after wagon, crawling up the legs of horses until only their backs were lift in light, like small oblong islands in a shallow sea.  Horse by horse, night conquered the plain.  Fires blinked to life, and soon the stars above and the fires below looked the same, as is a slice of the sky had been stretched out on a drying rack so they could eat it in the morning."  Wonderful stuff!

Love,
Gilly