I was thoroughly engrossed in this exciting westward journey of two giraffes, an old man, an orphan boy and a redhead girl. This book what is journey!
I was thoroughly engrossed in this exciting westward journey of two giraffes, an old man, an orphan boy and a redhead girl. This book charmed me, much like water for elephants did. ...more
**spoiler alert** Where to start? First, I'm an avid equestrian and lover of horses. It doesn't mean I navigate to read all things horsey, but this bo**spoiler alert** Where to start? First, I'm an avid equestrian and lover of horses. It doesn't mean I navigate to read all things horsey, but this book was getting a lot of attention and praise. So when a friend loaned it to me to read I was more than happy to dive in.
Not knowing anything about it, I was thrilled to see it dealt with TB horseracing (I've owned an OTTB in my time). And the research put into the book was well done with the story line itself of Lexington, the horse. I loved Jarret and reading about that time period. Learning about the museum and art aspects was also nice.
But the other two time periods just didn't hit the mark for me. While the 1950s art gallery owner thing felt so much like "name dropping" with famous artists, it just seemed far fetched. And the Jess/Theo modern day storyline just seemed like the author wanted to force this book to be a commentary on racism. And I appreciate the sentiment from the author but really - I agree with some of the other readers that don't like the idea of a middle age white woman from Australia writing the points of views of two black men. I'm usually not of that mindset either -( For example, I did not have this reaction to the author of American Dirt). But this book, it just did not work well in my opinion.
And when she decided to kill Theo off. That's when I had had enough. I finished it of course because it was near the end, but it was so utterly predictable once he just had to go for a run... reading it I was like, uh-oh, he didn't put his normal sweatshirt on, it's dark. She [the author] better not be taking this where I think she's taking this. I hate that it was that obvious, because that in essence is what the point of her story was but I was irritated with the author enough by that point that I just didn't care for it. Not to mention the job Jess then went on to do -- go articulate skeletons having sex? -- did I really read that right? And that was supposed to somehow honor Theo? It was just another far-fetched feeling plot line for me.
Finally - I really was tired of the author's overuse of advanced vocabulary. I like to learn new words here and there in a book and expand my knowledge. But I felt this author came across so pretentious with dropping so many words like this, I'm convinced she wrote with a thesaurus next to her as if thinking "I'm a pultizer prize winning author, I must sound intellectual" frame of mind. Halfway through the book I was trying to find an e-book to loan from the library so I could read on my kindle and at least easily look these words up. (sadly, they were all taken).
I was half interested and half annoyed at this book. I saw another reader comment on here that it was "the best book I didn't like". And I thought that was apt....more
Loading...
