I Take this Man

I think that this book was meant to be funny.

While there were times that I did laugh, those times were few and far between.

I can stretch my imagination pretty far, however, to read this book the suspension of reality that is necessary is a bit more than I can do, heck it's more than I want to do.

The plot device that we see used here is pretty familiar, girl gets left basically at the altar. Penny Frankel's fiance sends a note to her about fifteen minutes before their wedding is to begin to tell her that he can't do it. I don't mind a familiar idea, but I want to see that plot develop in a way that is fresh, interesting, and believable. For me what happens next was new and original but as the story progressed, not too believable.

I have to say that it is hard to really feel that you know these people. They seem more like caricatures than actual people. It is also hard to feel interested or sympathetic toward them.

As the book progressed, I rolled my eyes so much that I finally had to catch myself in case did myself lasting harm. One or two unbelievable occurrences in a book is probably acceptable but page after page we find people behave in ways that just are not reasonable. I would love to give examples but it is hard to without throwing out spoilers.

There is a love scene in this book that comes, for me out of no where. No real people would feel at all disposed to sharing any type of intimacy with so many unresolved issues on the table.

This book is supposed to be funny and light I am sure but I was annoyed for most of the time that I was reading. I kept saying to myself no reasonable person would be have this way. One of the characters is kidnapped, KIDNAPPED and neither he nor his father seem to harbour any real feelings about that fact. They are able to move on rather speedily with no real thoughts of revenge or even justice. I mean who are these people and on what planet do they exist??? Even in the world of novels that I generally inhabit, I expect to see emotions and thoughts that actually correspond to the events in people's lives. Not here.

I know I was supposed laugh when I read this book. However, I am telling you, if you have any ability to reason laughter is not possible. I finished it but God only knows why.

Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I am always interested in how other people live and what they are thinking.
When I read Infidel, I was hoping to get an idea of what it is like to grow up Muslim. This book was so much more than that for me.

Ali, strips herself and her family bare to give us a glimpse of her world and the life forces that brought her to a way of thinking that was cataclysmic for herself and her family relationships.

I expected a book that would tell me about what being Muslim in Africa might mean to one woman. I did not expect to catch glimpses of some of my own family members while reading. At the beginning of this book, Ali is describing what it was to have to recite her family line back many generations, while I have no experience that mirrors this exactly, I do remember hearing and being asked so many times, as a child and young woman, darling who are you? Who are your people? Who is your granddaddy? Where are they from? I still feel the pressure of not giving answers that would be satisfactory to the elders that posed these questions. I know that this experience is not quite the same as what was asked of Ali by her grandmother but for a moment I had to stop reading and gather myself and wonder, if the questions that I had been asked all my life were some deep ancestral questions that were as much a part of who we are as a people, as other inherited traits.

Anyway, I digress, Ali allows us to witness what it was like to grow up as a practicing but not very observant Muslim. We then witness her transformation, as a young lady, into a more devout Muslim. Finally, as she begins to really understand herself as a woman and the free thinking adult that she has been fighting to be, we see her put away her long held beliefs.

We see what civil unrest and integration to another country are like through the eyes of someone who actually experienced those things, as well as what it was like for Ali to become immersed in another culture.

This book will remain with me for years to come. If not the actual content, then the heart of what it meant to me. I have told many people read Infidel, it is not what you think, it is so much more.