I’ve always loved this. So simple of a response by the grandfather, but still blew me away the first time I read it.

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people. He said, “My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all. One is Evil. It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego. The other is Good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith.”

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked, “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

Or: The Longest Book Ever.

Okay, I may be exaggerating a touch, but it really feels like I’ve been reading this book forever.  I started it over Christmas — it seemed the ideal situation, with lots of time spent in airports.  At 779 pages (not that I uh….) you would have thought I’d have finished it a lot faster than I did.  The Princes of Ireland is one of those books that you read in bunches or spurts, not really all at once.  And it’s perfectly structured for this type of reading.

The book follows the stories of various families and their descendants over hundreds of years, specifically 430 – 1533.  Each section of the book covers roughly a generation.  It’s wonderfully set up that way, as you can read the stories of one generation and leave the book for a while, not really needing to remember the exact plot lines because you’re starting over with the next generation.

It also keeps your attention.  You go into just enough depth in each section to care about the  characters and really want to know what happens to them, but the story never gets bogged down in the tiny details.  Rutherford paints the stories of each family with broad brush strokes, and I am grateful for that.  Some authors really don’t know where the strength of their story lies.

And with The Princes of Ireland (also known as Dublin: Foundation) the strength is in the history.  A stagger work of historical fiction, this book explores not just families over generations, but the changes over time in the city of Dublin itself.  I’m not normally a big fan of historical fiction — ironic considering how much of it I’ve been reading lately — but this captured me because of my trip to Ireland two years ago.  It’s incredibly cool to be able to follow the story and know exactly where the author is talking about.  It helps, of course, that while the characters are generally fictional, Rutherford’s picture of Dublin over the centuries is based on much historical research.

Highly reccommended if you enjoy historical fiction, or even just irish history.  Just know that there’s no rushing this book, it takes its time.  And actually, the story isn’t even finished.  There’s book two in the saga “The Rebels of Ireland”.  It’s sitting on my to-be-read shelf right now.  There is, after all, almost 6 centuries more of Irish history to cover.

A fluffy book I read in the space of three hours much too late at night, as usual.  I picked it up because the movie trailer looked good.  If you’re not expecting much this book is quite good.  It opens with the death of the main character’s husband and follows her through most of her first year after his death.

I didn’t like that this book was so predictable.  You pin the main character’s love interest down instantly, for example.  So it’s cheesy and predictable and it’s total goo, but it’s fun goo.

This book was recommended to me by a friend, and I know it’s been getting a buzz.  Khaled Hossieni is also the author of The Kite Runner, a highly and widely acclaimed novel also about Afghanastan.

I have not read The Kite Runner, so I had no idea what to expect from A Thousand Splendid Suns — assuming of course that there’s some sort of pattern to an author’s writing.  What I found was an incredibly engaging story about two Afghani women as they live through the various political changes in their country.

For an average length novel (I think — it’s hard to tell, as I read the large print version) Hossieni never loses his pace.  While he does tend to skip entire years and chunks of life for his characters (particularly Miriam’s which I actually missed once I was done the book) it’s necessary to the plot.

ATSS is a sad book with a hopeful light at the end of the tunnel.  You not only feel badly for the two main characters, you feel badly for the country as a whole as you “watch” it change.  It’s a timely book that’s changed the way I look at the country.

I read this one for my bookclub next month.  It’s not normally the type of book I would pick up and read, although I can’t put my finger on why exactly.  It looks like it would be similar to those mass market John Grisham novels, which, while not bad, aren’t my thing either.  I think perhaps I’m a literary snob.  Oh well.

Regardless, I enjoyed this book.  It was a fairly quick read, as these things go, and of course the mystery spurs you on.  I was particularly eager to see what would happen at the Swiss Bank.  Although I do question what the point of that piece of plot was.  They find something in the vault, which plays next to no part in the story and certainly has no significance to the case/mystery.

Fatherland takes place in a post-WWII victory Germany, where Hitler is about to celebrate his 75th birthday.  The Nazi party is strong and in power.  It’s an interesting idea, though frankly rather difficult for me to image, given how things actually ended.  This leads to the case, where several high ranking Nazi-party members have been murdered for knowledge they are trying to bring to light.

In the end, we find out what they were hiding, although I admit to finding it rather anti-climactic.  I won’t say what it is, but it’s significantly less shocking than I’d hoped.

On a final note, I don’t think it’s healthy to hate a fictional ten year old boy as much as I do right now, ohmygod.

I watched this movie last night, and I have to say — it’s quite the interesting thing to watch Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mob member.  He looks ridiculously scary in this movie, and quite a bit like Michael Douglas, oddly enough.

Eastern Promises is about the mystery surrounding a Russian girl who dies in child birth.  The midwife on duty takes the girl’s diary (written in russian, of course) and attempts to translate it to find out the girl’s story.

I wasn’t 100% sure I wanted to watch this movie.  Randomly violent plotlines, particularly those involving any sort of mafia, aren’t really my thing.  Indeed, the brutally violent and disgusting opening scene (or perhaps it is the second, but it’s right up there at the front) had me looking away and covering my eyes.  I definitely had my doubts.

But I’m glad I stuck in out.  This movie deserved every award it received and every nomination as well.  It surprised me greatly.  Highly recommended.