Teaser Tuesday (78) + Students for the Congo

Teaser Tuesday is a bookish, weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Gosh, it's been a while since I posted for this, since last April's month-long challenge took up all my Tuesday posts. Anyway, it's nice to be back into TT swing.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from Divergent by Veronica Roth. I'd been looking forward to this book--so many people said they liked it, the premise was interesting, and I thought the cover was cool . . . but I'm on page 378 out of 487 and,  frankly, wondering how fast I can get to the end so it will be over with.

I really do not like the world or the main character's attitude toward that world. To me, Tris (the MC) seems like she's willing to overlook corruption in the people around her but is happy to dig it up out of individuals against whom she holds certain grudges, without looking at all of the facts. And it drives me up the wall, not only because that's a bad idea, but because by doing so she seems to be playing right into the "antagonists'" hands. I cannot say she is for sure, of course, since I haven't completed the book, but that's what it seems like right now. (You may see a post about this book in the future, if it's true.)

Peter stops reading, and a few people turn around. Some, like Christina, look at me in a pitying way, their eyebrows drawn in, their mouths turned down at the corners. But most give me little smirks and eye one another suggestively. Peter turns last, with a wide smile.

-p. 243

**********

Now, on a more serious note, I wanted to mention Students for the Congo. It's run by Jen from Inside my head and other students, and their aim is to increase awareness about the Congo. They're also trying to raise money and have reached over $800 (so far) to send over. The more the word is spread the more it helps, hence this shout-out. Be sure to go check out the blog!

**********

Have you read Divergent? If so, what did you think of it, and did you like the main character? 

What are you reading now? Got a teaser from it?


-----The Golden Eagle

Book Review: Krik? Krak!

Title: Krik? Krak!

Author: Edwidge Danticat

Publisher: Vintage Contemporaries

Genre: Realistic Fiction

Page Count: 224

Rating: 4 out of 5

Cover Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Good. Normally, people on the front cover don't really jive with me, but I believe this image fits the story well enough it's not an issue. I wish--once again--that the title font had been bigger than the author's font, but oh well.

Back Cover: 

When Haitians tell a story they say "Krik?" and the eager listeners say "Krak!" In Krik? Krak! Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to the narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty.

My expectations: It was a National Book Award Finalist, so I expected a well-written book.


I got a well-written book.

About the book: Many of the stories in Krik? Krak! are disturbing. Focusing on the lives of women in Haiti, it's not exactly a feel-good collection, because of the way women are treated, by their husbands, by soldiers,  by society.


The stories are, however, realistically portrayed. Haitian culture isn't exactly calm and reasonable under normal circumstances--after reading this, the earthquakes in January are put into a more stark light. I can't imagine what it would be like living in that sort of destruction and society, and surviving.


Edwidge Danticat writes well. The stories--while unusual to what I am used to--flowed along with the words, and I enjoyed her style.

• Plot:

Each of the nine stories is different; the endings are usually unexpected, and most of them are disturbing. Not in a bad way, exactly, but they did sort of startle me. Like when it turned out that one woman had been thrown out of her husband's home because she kept delivering stillborn children, and then, out of some sort of mental breakdown, started taking care of a child--as if it was her own--that turned out to be dead. 


The stories made me wonder at the psychological strains that the characters were going through to commit such acts of suicide and desperation--but also hope.

• Characters:

The characters are diverse, and they are mostly focused on women, although some stories are told through a man's perspective. I did not really like any of the characters, though I did find many of them interesting. What happens to the characters can be horrific; the way they're treated and the way that the others around them deal with the situations is not like what you'd expect in a rational society.

• Setting/Elements:

The first story has an interesting format; it's written in the form of letters two lovers are writing to each other, one out in the sea, the other still living in the violence back at home. (The others are in the third and first person.) I think the way they they put this together as a collection worked well for the book.

Other: Suicide, violence, references, disturbing events, some sex (it's not actively described or anything, but it's on the minds of a few of the characters). Sometimes the actions of the people are strange and out of control (such as witch burning/trials).

Do I recommend this book? Yes, but it's not for the faint-of-heart.

-----The Golden Eagle

Blog Action Day 2010: Water

Today is October 15th, Blog Action Day. Each year on this date, bloggers come together to blog about one global issue, and this year, it's water.

Water is necessary for life. Earth is the way it is due to water, and all animals, including humans, cannot live without this highly valuable liquid--it could become a scarce resource in the 21st century.

Here are some facts about water and its consequences:


The average American uses 159 gallons of water per day, which is 15 times more than the average person in the developing world.

Around one in eight people do not have access to safe water supplies.

3.575 million people die each year from water-related diseases; a child dies of a disease every 20 seconds.

Only 62% of the world's population has access to adequate sanitation.

In Africa, women and children walk a total of 109 million hours to get water, over 40 billion in a year.

It takes half a liter of water to charge an iPhone--and there are over 80 million of those devices worldwide.

It takes 1,514 liters of water to make a cotton t-shirt.

2.5 billion people do not have access to toilets.

80% of the discharged material in developing countries is untreated, and pollutes water resources.

2 million tons of human waste are deposited in water sources every day.

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

I live in the USA--compared to a lot of people, I'm extremely fortunate to have running water within reach almost all the time.

Think about water. We wouldn't be here without it.

{Images found online--I do not own/claim anything}

-----The Golden Eagle