Summer Reading Book 6

Title: The Secret Life of Bees

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

My Response: I really enjoyed this novel, I started apprehensibly, not knowing really what I was going to be reading. When I began to read I knew Lily and I were very similar in that I have often wondered about things that I was too old to even understand. My example being in this story, Lily has always wondered why her mother had left her and if she really had a part in her mother's untimely death. I will not disclose whether or not she did because I do not want to ruin the whole story for those who decide to read this book. My grade is a 95/100. The only problem I had with the story is how fast everything seem to happen. I did enjoy the beautiful imagery of the bees and the bee hives. The parallelism between Lily and the bees was also a great addage to the story.

Plot: 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their South Carolina peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother.

Grade: 95/100

Summer Reading book 5

Title: Flowers for Algernon

Author: Daniel Keyes

My Response: I absolutely adore this novel! It is my favorite of the whole summer reading list I composed. It is a heartbreaking and eye opening novel that I could relate to in absolute way. The main character Charles Gordon, also known as Charlie, is a very sad, resolute character that I loved even when everyone around him seemed to hate and fear him. I give the novel 100/100 because I could not find a single element to this story that did not have me hooked from the very beginning.

Plot: Algernon is extra-clever thanks to an experimental brain operation so far tried only on animals. Charlie eagerly volunteers as the first human subject. After frustrating delays and agonies of concentration, the effects begin to show and the reports steadily improve: "Punctuation, is? fun!" But getting smarter brings cruel shocks, as Charlie realizes that his merry "friends" at the bakery where he sweeps the floor have all along been laughing at him, never with him. The IQ rise continues, taking him steadily past the human average to genius level and beyond, until he's as intellectually alone as the old, foolish Charlie ever was--and now painfully aware of it. Then, ominously, the smart mouse Algernon begins to deteriorate.

Grade: 100/100

My Summer Reading book 4

Title: The Nanny Diaries

Authors: Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus

This novel really had me at a cross-road of emotional deficit. While I really loved how Nanny's relationship with Grayer, her charge, greatly improved and at times had funny scenarios with great endings, I still found the main basis of the plot to be weak. Her name Naminia was a much better name than her nickname, which is ironic given her profession, Nanny. Wow! How creative. I would have preferred her to use her real name as opposed to the nickname.

The story itself, which is where my issue really lies, is a good idea but, I feel the authors, who were nannies themselves, could have put more effort as to the plot. They could have written that the wife does find the mistress's panties and had a complete nuclear meltdown. That would have been much more entertaining to read as opposed to the wife just living in denial. However, I did like that the wife did indeed know but, still chose to act like nothing was wrong. Which most cheated on spouses do in reality. So, I guess I just contradicted myself, but I digress.

My favorite character had to be Grayer. The driving force that held the novel together for me. If would not have been for him I probably would have given up on the book in its entirety. I thought the way he treated Nan at the beginning was genius and hilarious. I hated his mother and father for leaving their child raising to a nanny they barely knew and did not fully trust. Also, the way they treated their help appalled me and I wanted so badly to just smack them up side their thick skulls with a teddy bear and yell until my head exploded.

All in all, the book was o.k. It did have me laughing and crying at times but, most of the time I was bored and wanted the story to have more plot to it.

80/100

My Summer Reading Book 3

Title: The Joy Luck Club

Author: Amy Tan

I enjoyed this novel by the fabulous Amy Tan. All the different stories from the four Chinese-American families really had me feeling a different pathos for the majority of the novel. My favorite stories came from the mothers who I felt were more interesting than their daughters. However, the one mother I wanted a background story from was Jing-Mei's mother Suyuan Woo. All the other daughter's mothers had very beautiful and at times hard tells that had me feeling great sympathy. The daughter's stories just seemed immature and at times pety. The mothers' stories definitely had my attention alot more than their daughter's stories. I give the novel itself an 88 because my attention did falter a bit and at times I felt the stories were too drug out. Overall, this novel and it's story is a classic that everyone should read atleast once.

88/100