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Buddy read for Book of Names and/or The Hidden Palace
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That’s absolutely what happens Kate! But it’s super fun. So thrilled you’ll join us!
So excited Kate! You will love the first book, the golem and the jinni. I have to get the book of lost names out of my car and it’s raining outside. So sometime later today I will be able to rescue it, and the hidden palace.
So, just an update on my reading status. Sadly, I have not read in a month. As Amy knows I'm at a new job which is super stressful and al consuming. Between that and family stress my reading has been nonexistent. I have been trying to read Daughter of Fortune for a month. I love Isabel Allende. With two school breaks coming, I'm hoping to make up for lost time. So, all that said, as soon as I finish Daughter of Fortune I will join in the buddy readsi
I'm wrapping up reading The Night Watchman, I'll try to start The Hidden Palace but have a few others, I'm trying to get to as well.I read The Book of Lost Names a couple of years ago and will jump into the discussion of what I remember of that. I do remember(view spoiler).
I read The Book of Lost Names earlier this year and enjoyed it, so it will be interesting to see what you all think.
That’s wonderful Hannah! Sally, hang in there. We miss you but are so proud of your new job! Lucky students you have!
I just tried to reserve the. Book of Lost Names and was startled when I was told my library card ecpired
Did you get a new one? If you get into trouble getting the book, I will Amazon it to your house! I do have your address!
Amy wrote: "Did you get a new one? If you get into trouble getting the book, I will Amazon it to your house! I do have your address!"I'll go get it at the library this week. Isn't it strange. I didn't realize library cards expire. I can't even conceive of life without being able to reserve books!
I just got a new library card AND found The Book of Lost Names on the shelf !!!
Sallys wrote: "I just got a new library card AND found The Book of Lost Names on the shelf !!!"Score!
You know, you can set it up that you get an email when your card needs to be renewed. That's how I knew last year so I got to the library before it expired with confirming address info to renew it.
And of course spotted a book on the shelf I had been looking to read...
**** Guys, I wouldn't even pick it up. I feel like I need to text Sally with a warning today. There's no need. I am moving straight to the Hidden Palace! I feel like I just took one for the team.Honestly, I didn't like it. Many of you know I am a strong purveyor of WWII novels, so there is stiff competition and they had better be good. The bar is very high these days. This one didn't reach that for me. I felt it had more than a few problems.
First, the writing wasn't great, lets just say the story wasn't great, but more importantly, it wasn't believable. I could stretch the imagination if there was one thing that wasn't believable, but everything was unbelievable. Particularly the mother in the book. She was awful - a serious piece of work, and she was written as if we were supposed to take her character seriously. But her stance to me didn't even make sense. Nothing about her character fit.
I;ts true that I am getting tired of the trope of the old man or woman who never told their children or grandchildren their secrets of the war, although I can stomach this to a certain point. But in this book, I'm not sure the son ever knew his mother was French, or had even lived through the war. Forgetting having a role in the resistance. It just felt completely unbelievable to me that the subject even of the adult man's grandparents and family would have never emerged. This makes no sense.
I'm glad to be done with it. It had been on my list for a while, and now more room is made for other things. Excited to start the Hidden Palace.
Oh wow. Good to know Amy. Ill pass on it and reserve the Hidden Palace. I'm hoping for time to read since Thankgsgiving Break is coming up.
While I was kinder than Amy, I said in my review " I wish she had developed Eva's mother into a more sympathetic character, because I think that would have made the book stronger.The book wrapped up nicely if not realistically."
My main memory from the book was how awful the mother was.
But Amy jogged my memory about how unrealistic the modern story was. I wish that at some point we would just drop the need for historical fiction to have the dual storyline, it is becoming beyond tiresome.
That being said I'm half way through Hidden Palace. I'm not feeling the magic I did with The Golem and the Jinni, but it is still a possibility.
Cate, well I’m sorry that it didn’t work for you either, I’m glad we shared a common experience. I hope we both do feel the magic with the Hidden Palace. So thrilled you have joined PBT and the buddy reads.
I finished Hidden Palace and while it starts out slow it builds and finishes nicely, but I think with possibilities for sequels.
Now that was indeed a five star read! I am always a bit worried when a sequel to a beloved book arrives close a decade later. But for anyone who loved the first book, the Golem and the Jinni, the author writes so the important elements of the first book are slowly revealed so that nothing is lost and the stage is set. And what a beautiful stage and set it is. The book was filled with a continuation through another 15 years that allows history and old and new characters to develop. I rather thought the relationship between the golem and the jinni that had begun in the first book, resembled a modern day marriage and partnership. Where the love is there, but it's hard work. There are arguments, misunderstandings, resentments, and unfulfilled desires. That their love was the most human part about them, bringing them into the world in an entirely human far from divine kind of way. That they needed to learn about human love and its limits and frailties, along with what makes it so divine and magical. I thought the character development of each of them trying to confront the truth of their realities, alone and together, was somehow sort of perfect, if not extremely well done. The story continued to be both magical and psychological. This can be contrasted with the more immature experience of the new young jinniyeh who has to confront her own beginning journey of exile and mesh with humans and other spiritual creatures. She too is going to have to craft and and confront a blended reality.
One knows that the book is going to bring all of these questions and characters and experiences together somehow, but the ride is so wonderful. Equally wonderful that ties it together not just in the experiences that bond all the characters together as a somewhat family, but that the "mind-meshing" allows them all to truly experience and connect the dots for each of them from their own narratives. That only all of them together, and we the readers hold the whole story, with its many different tales, takes, languages, and endings. There is an incredible beauty to this book. An amazing story weaved. One of growth, depth, honor, loyalty, loss, search for meaning and purpose, family, faith, storytelling, imagination, art - and always of love.
Lots of my friends reviews are saying that the book felt like a second of a trilogy, which it is, whether the author chooses to write the third one or not.
Amy, you liked it more than I did. The lengthy setting the stage brought it down for me.As you said I think it will be at least a trilogy. I am excited about some of the new characters.
I just finished it this morning, so I was kind of excited to talk to you about it. I had to go back and find your review, and I also found Anna‘s and Barbara’s. I really did love it. I got swept up in the magic and story of it. I remain curious about the young jinniyeh and Sophia. Also about what would happen next. Loved it about Toby and Kreindel.
Amy wrote: "I just finished it this morning, so I was kind of excited to talk to you about it. I had to go back and find your review, and I also found Anna‘s and Barbara’s. I really did love it. I got swept up..."The stories of Jinniyeh, Sophia, Toby and Kreindel are all intriguing and it will be interesting to see if they are developed.
I like how this is a historical fiction, so we are following history and what happens in these times. (view spoiler)
I'm sooooo excited to start it. I'm finishing Daughter of Fortune and plan to start within the week!
I think you will love it Sally! I wonder where Kate is. I think she hadn’t read the first one. I love how you have dived your Ally in Kate with so many things.
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Books mentioned in this topic
The Book of Lost Names (other topics)The Night Watchman (other topics)
The Book of Lost Names (other topics)
The Hidden Palace (other topics)
I'm pretty sure that the folks who expressed interest in these books are pretty much the same, although anyone is welcome to join either conversation. I just thought it might be easier to have a thread for both, since Sally, Fran, and I were reading both this month, and HayJay, the Book of Names, which I am starting today.
Oddly enough, and this is a first, I have FIVE Buddy Reads this month. My book club at home is doing Remarkably Bright Creatures and the Firekeeper's Daughter, and I have an online discussion with the author of RBC this Tuesday night. I have the buddy read for Trim for Once There Were Wolves, and the belated Trim Buddy Read for The Hidden Palace. Plus!!!! The Jewish Book Club is doing Mr. Perfect on Paper, which I expect will be a raucous discussion on intermarriage. So perhaps it saves me and my convenience to host a double here. But... I'm going with it. What a month to have Book Club be the monthly tag? I am certainly knocking a lot off the priority list and am having lots if interesting discussions.