I have been doing quite a bit of "waiting around" and "driving around" in the last couple weeks. Soon to be a trend I understand, as the kiddos get older. More time for reading that way!
These two books by Linda Sue Park we listened to together in the car. Both are historical fiction. When My Name Was Keoko is set in Korea during WWII and describes the life of a family during the Japanese occupation. A Single Shard takes place in 12th century Korea and is the coming of age story of an orphan boy who yearns to be a potter. The kids understood the pottery story and felt more of a connection to it due to their recent experiences with using the potters wheel and shaping clay bowls. I enjoyed hearing another perspective on WWII and realized for the first time that many of the soldiers in the Japanese army were unwilling draftees from conquered lands like Korea.
I felt I had to read Go Set a Watchman, since it was a "new" book by the author of a high school classic. I understand that there is a fair amount of controversy about when it was written, whether it was ever intended for publication, and whether Harper Lee actually approved the deal or not. All that being said, it is worth reading. The last 20 pages in particular are insightful into the human character. I agree that it is less polished than it should have been - some wobbliness in the plot and some incomplete threads of the story are obvious. I think it is reassuring to see that even great classic authors had to work really hard to get their stories right. I felt the same way reading about Hemingway's efforts at writing in The Paris Wife. It is a historical fiction and tells the story of Ernest Hemingway's first wife. This was my second attempt at reading it. The first hundred pages are okay, good story and interesting characters and all that, but I did not really feel an emotional connection to what was happening until the las t third of the book. The author gets the feelings of breaking up just right.
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