Sunrise over Fallujah

Sunrise over Fallujah
by
Walter Dean Myers
read by J D Jackson
young adult audiobook

Robin enlists in the Army during Operation Iraqi Freedom.  His unit is to serve as liaison between civilians and military.  What kind of impossible task is that?  Myers brings his brilliant style to this book. 

Words in the Dust

Words in the Dust
by
Trent Reedy
YA fiction

Inspired by events that happened to the author when he was stationed in Afghanistan this book is contemporary and highly readable. Zulaikha is an Afghan girl with a birth defect - a cleft lip. This makes eating and talking difficult for her, but most importantly, it affects her marriageability. She is mocked by the village boys and her family is not so sure what her future will hold. The American soldiers notice her one day and come up with a plan to have the American doctors help her. Will her dreams of a normal life come true? Is it too much for a poor girl to dream?

The author ties in all kinds of facts about current life in Afghanistan and references to the past that made the country what it is today. Another theme that runs throughout is the role of women in society, the love of poetry that Afghans have traditionally held, the aftermath of war, the lack of literacy among the young people, and many more discussable topics.

It reminds me of "Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind" but more up to date.

The publisher has included a glossary, which was very helpful. There were many words that the author used that were rather foreign. There is also a discussion with the author, a bibliography of other books about Afghanistan, and a note about the poetry that is referenced in the book.

This book deserves to go on a number of reading lists - books for teenaged girls, books about current events, books about the role of women, books about world culture, etc.

It is touching that the author says that the best person to write this would be an Afghan woman, but the literacy rate among females in that part of Afghanistan is only about 1 %. Heartbreaking! The author is donating money to a charity that supports the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan and there is also a link to a group that starts and runs schools for girls in central Asia.

Reading this book reminds me how grateful I need to be that I am an American woman instead of a poor, illiterate Afghani.

Son of a Witch

Son of a Witch
by
Gregory Maguire
audiobook read by the author
12 hours long
adult fantasy fiction
second in a trilogy
1. Wicked
2. Son of a Witch
3. A Lion among Men

I love Oz books and have since I was about 7 years old. I have read many, many Oz books and seen just about all the movies except for a few silent films. I read "Wicked", the first in this trilogy and thought it was an insightful look at a much travelled path. I saw the musical based on "Wicked".
In this case, I opted to listen to the audiobook instead of reading the print book. I knew I would be in the car quite a bit and would have the time to read it. The book is read by the author who does a commendable job at giving voice to different characters. One has a British accent, another a Southern accent, another is as old as dirt with a shaky voice. The big problem that I had with this book, however, is that it dragged on and on and on. I do not anticipate EVER AGAIN listening to 12 HOURS of a book. It seemed like it would never end! Twelve hours is longer than a mini-series and about as long as an entire season of a BBC television program. My library has shelf upon shelf of audiobooks LONGER than this one. I have seen some on the shelf that are up to 30 hours long or so. Who can listen to something that long? I think I have a fairly good attention span and have read books that are 650 pages long or so, but now I find that I can not STAND audiobooks more than 6 hours or so.
I think the only time I might contemplate listening to something this long again is if it has a full cast of characters, an orchestra, and recaps the previous night's episode at the beginning of each disc. Even then, I don't think I would want more than 8 hours at best. I have found that I much prefer the 1 hour radio dramas to these drawn out productions. I am going to stick to the young adult and children's sections of audiobooks for a while - but even there I see that there are extremely long volumes of 10 hours or more. Yikes!
Back to the content:
I am fairly certain that I would have enjoyed this book more in the printed format. It was a mere 337 pages long. That is just an average size for a book. It did have some drawn out philosophical parts that I probably would have skimmed or read quickly. As I reached the end I realized that the author had no intentions of tying up loose ends as he intended this book to be number two of three books. That was also annoying.
Here is the plot:
Liir lives his life as a drifter. He doesn't know for sure, but he and some others suspect that his mother was the Wicked Witch of the West and his father was a statesman who cheated on his wife. After the witch's death Liir eventually finds himself joining the National Guard for something to do. He finds a sense of belonging there, but still has serious gaps in his education, his sense of morality, and sense of being. Animals come to him hoping that he will help fight for their rights like his mother did. He is constantly insisting that he is not magical like Elphaba and he can't help - or can he? He learns to fly on her broomstick and becomes a revolutionary like the witch.
I don't think this is the Oz that L. Frank Baum imagined, but it is thoughtful and original. I wish the author would have resolved some more mysteries in this book, but instead he lives the audience in suspense for book three. Eventually I will get around to reading book three IN PRINT.