City of God, or, why I need things spelled out for me.

Sometimes you just don't get it.

There were parts of City of God that I really enjoyed.  The narrative of the young Jewish boy in the Lithuanian ghetto was interesting and compelling.  And I liked the story of how the cross wound up on the roof of the synagogue, and the relationship between Pem and Sarah.  I could not, however, figure out how all of the different stories fit together.  About three-fourths of the way through the book, I had the idea to look at the book jacket and the lightbulb finally went on.  The novel is actually in the form of a writer's "workbook" where he records different story ideas and things, and the parts that I liked and got interested in were story ideas.

So.  A little convoluted, to say the least.  But, it didn't diminish the interesting parts.  It just made everything a little more confusing for me.  I think I just need a more traditional novel where I can basically follow what is going on from beginning to end!

Imagine...

The Book of Daniel is based on a really cool premise. The book imagines that the Rosenbergs had children, and follows Daniel, the older son, as he grows up through the 1950s and 60s and deals with his parents' deaths. The idea of it was so great, I was really excited to read this one.

It turned out not to be my favorite book, though. The way it was written was really confusing and there were a lot of flashbacks and jumping around points. I can definitely tell it is good literature, but for a casual reader like me, it wasn't the greatest. I'm sure I missed a lot of important stuff. So I was a little bummed out - I really wanted to like this more than I did.

Before the Sopranos...

...there was Billy Bathgate. This is a really interesting story about a young kid trying to get into a life of organized crime. I normally don't really enjoy crime and violence in books but this one really was good and the violence, while definitely there, didn't ruin the story for me.

It was weird, as I read the book I kind of realized that something was going to take place, that the characters weren't all going to continue to live their lives as they were doing so, so there was this sense of foreboding. Was the main character going to get knocked off?

I really enjoyed this one and even though it was long, I went through it really fast!