6 down, 44 to go! (PUSH by Sapphire)

I just finsihed reading the novel PUSH by Sapphire. This is the novel that inspired the movie that just came out on DVD, Precious. WOW...it was absolutely crazy. This author kept my complete attention and this book did not leave my side for two days. Yes, I finished this book in two days. It was kind of like a car wreck, it was so crazy and obscene that I wanted to find out what else could possibly happen to this woman. I experienced so many emotions while reading this gripping story; love, hate and everything extreme in-between the two.

Amazon does a great job of summarizing the book:

Claireece Precious Jones endures unimaginable hardships in her young life. Abused by her mother, raped by her father, she grows up poor, angry, illiterate, fat, unloved and generally unnoticed. So what better way to learn about her than through her own, halting dialect. That is the device deployed in the first novel by poet and singer Sapphire. "Sometimes I wish I was not alive," Precious says. "But I don't know how to die. Ain' no plug to pull out. 'N no matter how bad I feel my heart don't stop beating and my eyes open in the morning." An intense story of adversity and the mechanisms to cope with it."

http://www.amazon.com/Push-Novel-Sapphire/dp/0679766758

It is written in a ghetto dialect so at times it is hard to understand. Also mixed in are some of Precious' poems that were written during her time in a pre- G.E.D. program.

VERY, VERY GOOD read. Next: watch the movie.

5 down, 45 to go! (The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff)

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

I bought this book with Stolen Innocence. They both are about the lives of people in the F.L.D.S. This book was...okay. It took me quite awhile to get done which says a lot for a reader like myself. I have a harder time following novels than other books because they do not seem to hold my attention as well as say, historical fiction or non-fiction books. Here is what the author has to say about the book:

Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.

Sweeping and lyrical, spellbinding and unforgettable, David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife combines epic historical fiction with a modern murder mystery to create a brilliant novel of literary suspense.

It is 1875, and Ann Eliza Young has recently separated from her powerful husband, Brigham Young, prophet and leader of the Mormon Church. Expelled and an outcast, Ann Eliza embarks on a crusade to end polygamy in the United States. A rich account of a family’s polygamous history is revealed, including how a young woman became a plural wife.

Soon after Ann Eliza’s story begins, a second exquisite narrative unfolds–a tale of murder involving a polygamist family in present-day Utah. Jordan Scott, a young man who was thrown out of his fundamentalist sect years earlier, must reenter the world that cast him aside in order to discover the truth behind his father’s death.

And as Ann Eliza’s narrative intertwines with that of Jordan’s search, readers are pulled deeper into the mysteries of love and faith.

borrowed from http://www.the19thwife.com/about.html

I do not think I would recommend this book to avid readers nor will I read it again. Hey, I can't always pick out the best books.