The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough

I picked this book up purely for the Popsugar Reading Challenge, to fulfill the category "A book your mother loves."  The Thorn Birds is her favorite book, though I don't remember her reading it or even owning a copy of it.  In fact, I would have never, ever guessed that this was her favorite book--except that when we were in Italy for my sister's wedding last September, my mother got a little tipsy (well, more than a little--she was, to be fair, having an extraordinarily bad week) and got involved in a conversation with an Australian tourist who asked us to take a picture for her.  At some point during the conversation, The Thorn Birds came up.  I obviously assumed that it came up because the book takes place in Australia, so imagine my dismay when I began reading it and found the setting was New Zealand!  Did my other actually not know the difference between Australia and New Zealand?  No, it couldn't be true.  Maybe she just hadn't read the book in a while, and was mis-remembering the setting.  That was entirely possible, wasn't it?  But as I kept reading, I became immensely relieved.  Yes, the book starts in New Zealand, but the setting quickly moves to Australia and stays there for most of the book.  Whew!  What a close call!

The Thorn Birds is the story of the Cleary family.  Originally living in New Zealand, they move to Australia to live and work on Drogheda, a massive sheep farming operation owned by the sister of Paddy Cleary, the patriarch of the Cleary family.  The "main" character in this book, if there can be one more so than others, is Meggie, Paddy's daughter, who is only a few years old when the book begins and is in her fifties when it ends.  Throughout the book, Meggie grows up and experiences all sorts of things, most of them focused around a priest named Ralph who is quickly climbing through the ranks of the Catholic church.  Meggie's mother, Fee, also features prominently, and so do her two eventual children, Justine and Dane.  The rest of the family is present, of course, but typically don't feature as strongly as those few.

The Thorn Birds, because of its sweeping scope of time and location and happenings, is a bit hard to describe, except in that it reminded me immensely of Gone with the Wind.  Now, Gone with the Wind is my favorite book, so maybe it's suitable that The Thorn Birds is my mother's.  Just as Gone with the Wind is a love story but also a powerful historical fiction, a story about people who had gumption and people who didn't, so is The Thorn Birds.  They're very different in time, place, and characters, but they still had a similar writing style and feel to them, which was awesome.  I think this a great book for people who liked Gone with the Wind for the feel and artful writing and are opening to trying something set in a completely different locale and era.  I'll definitely need to obtain a copy of this for my own collection, once the library book goes back to the library.  It's not a book I imagine myself reading often, because it's just too long and heavy for that, but much like Gone with the Wind I can see myself picking it up now and then when I need something that's just plain good.

4.5 stars out of 5!

How The Light Gets In - M. J. Hyland

Disclaimer: I have never read The Catcher in the Rye.  I never had to read it for school and I really have no inclination of my own to read it.  I did not pick this book up because it was supposed to be like Catcher in the Rye because, obviously, that meant nothing to me.  It just sounded mildly interesting while perusing the shelves of the used bookstore the boy and I like to frequent, so I bought it.

I have never encountered such a stupid, frustrating heroine in my entire life.  The writing quality was good, but the story revolved completely around Lou's stupid decisions, and since she's supposed to have such an enormously high IQ (though we never find out exactly what it is) it makes it all the worse.

So.  The story revolves around Louise Connor, aka Lou, who moves from Sydney, Australia to somewhere around Chicago in the USA to spend a year abroad.  She never wants to go back to her family because she hates them and thinks they're awful, even though they don't actually seem to be that bad.  Her parents are unemployed, only receiving some sort of governmental stipend, so the family is pretty poor, but they spend their time delivering Meals on Wheels to old people, and there were several anecdotes about how sweet her mother or father could be.  But Lou's real problem appears to be with her sisters.  They do sound like they were mean, but...  Lou didn't have to be involved with them.  She also constantly calls them "sluts," a perception that appears to stem from them being interested in sex (even though neither seem to have a string of guys; one of them has a fiance, the other a boyfriend, and between the two of them only one past boyfriend is mentioned), smoke, drink, and want to have babies.  Erm...what?  And what's even more "what" about it is that Lou acts exactly the same way, except she's apparently afraid of sex for some reason, even though she takes her shirt off and engages in various sexually-related acts throughout the story.  What what what?  She also hates people who are prettier than she is, calling them all "low-IQ witches" when she never even spoke to them to determine their intelligence level.  She's supposed to be quirky, I think, with her fascination for learning new words, singing, writing notes, and sleeping in spare bedrooms to cure her insomnia, but really she just comes across as your typical socially-inept character, with the bonus that she's supposed to be smart but is a total moron.

Also, everyone--and I mean everyone--in this book seems to be out to get her, or at least she thinks they are, when they all actually have perfectly good reasons for what they do.  Except James and Tom, who are just creepy individuals all around.  Oh, and did I mention that I'm not sure I trust Lou as a narrator?  She seems to be a compulsive liar and blatantly contradicts herself at several points.  I'm not sure if this was bad continuity or, what seems more likely, Hyland using Lou as an unreliable narrator.

Anyway, if you want to read a book about a complete moron who spends too much time trying to be "deep" and makes a lot of bad decisions, this would be a good book to read.  The other characters are pretty well done and the writing isn't half bad at all.  But Lou's sheer stupidity, contradictions, and lies made me pretty much hate her.

2 stars out of 5.