35: The Kitchen House

The Kitchen House, by Kathleen Grissom, was one of those books that was recommended to me a while ago (thanks, Sarah!) and I kept putting off reading it because I knew I was not going to like it and whoa. I was wrong. I FLEW through this book, hardly remembering to feed my child or leave the house every day. I think I finished it in a day. Seriously. I sat in a parking lot and read it just to get a little farther. I absolutely devoured this book, and while it’s not happy (it reminded me of Little Bee with the sadness), I still loved this book.

The Kitchen House is the story of a white girl, Lavinia, who is orphaned on a ship coming from Ireland. Instead of moving into “the big house” with the other white people when she arrives at the plantation, she is sent to live in the kitchen house with the black women. She learns about family and love and of the incredible differences in lifestyles between these two groups of people in this time.

This book completely follows the “what if” questions. What if Lavinia had married someone else? What if the papers had been served earlier? What if… what if… what if?

I give this book a 9/10. While the book is depressing and overwhelming at times, I absolutely devoured it and would think it’s a fantastic book for a book club to read, because the questions that could be asked about what could have been are absolutely amazing.

21: The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the timeless story of love, loss and the eternal green light. It’s really hard to recap such a classic story, so I’m not going to try, since I have to be in the 5% of people who have never read this book until now (How? I have a Masters Degree in READING!). Anyway, I was not disappointed. 

I loved the language in this book. It was so vivid and just flowed so well. I reread the last sentence at least ten times, just soaking it in, because it was so well-written: “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” What a great line to describe the fight of life, the fight we all have every day in different areas of our lives. 

It was neat reading about the Jazz Age. I don’t know much about this Era, but the overwhelming abundance of money and parties and stuff was very neat to read about. 

I did really like this book. It was not my favorite, I did not devour it like I do some books, but it’s an American classic for good reason, and I’m glad I read it. I give it a solid 8/10. 

PS: I am STILL thinking about that last line! Gah, it gets to me!

6: Outlander

Outlander is written by Diana Gabaldon and tells of the tale of an English woman, Claire, who is taken from her current world of 1940’s and into the Scottish Highlands in the late 1700’s. And… that’s all I have to summarize it with.

I wanted to like this one. I wanted to like it SO MUCH. And yet, I did not in the SLIGHTEST. It’s unfortunate I did not like it considering it is six HUNDRED pages long. This was my Everest.

I found the whole time travel thing to be hard to deal with. Not the travel itself, but the way Claire reacted to it. She was thrown into a new world and she just… accepted it. She went along for the ride, outhouses and killings and all. She’s married off to Jamie (which is interesting because you know, she has a HUSBAND in the “other world”), who beats and rapes her and she ACCEPTS THIS. She says she deserved the beatings! DESERVED THEM! There is a lot of description around sex – male/female and male/male. It was… a lot to read.

The book drug on and on and seemed to never end. And then! There is a sequel. I for one, will not be reading it, and will be throwing this book (and all six HUNDRED pages) at the next person to recommend it to me, or maybe even at the person who recommended it to me to START WITH. I give it a 2/10. Which is partly just because IT IS OVER.

Honestly? I’d like to go back in time and not read this book.