Hey y’all,
Quick edition of Wednesday Weekly Reads this week. I am currently tandem reading two books. The first one being, “When The Moon Is Low” by Nadia Hashimi. She is the same author who wrote the book, “The Pearl Who Book It’s Shell” which I absolutely loved. ( I read it earlier this year.) Here is its quick synopsis:
In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school, and can rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age. As a son, she can attend school, go to the market, and chaperone her older sisters.But Rahima is not the first in her family to adopt this unusual custom. A century earlier, her great-great grandmother, Shekiba, left orphaned by an epidemic, saved herself and built a new life the same way.Crisscrossing in time, The Pearl the Broke Its Shell interweaves the tales of these two women separated by a century who share similar destinies. But what will happen once Rahima is of marriageable age? Will Shekiba always live as a man? And if Rahima cannot adapt to life as a bride, how will she survive? (amazon.com)
I encourage everyone to read this book if they get a chance. It really delves into the plight that many Afghani women have to face.
Her next book also depicts the plight of life in a war torn country. Except this time, the story deals with the hardships that fall on a family, who has lost the patriarch and are trying to escape and make a life for themselves elsewhere. The synopsis of ” When The Moon is Low” is as follows:
Mahmoud’s passion for his wife Fereiba, a schoolteacher, is greater than any love she’s ever known. But their happy, middle-class world—a life of education, work, and comfort—implodes when their country is engulfed in war, and the Taliban rises to power.
Mahmoud, a civil engineer, becomes a target of the new fundamentalist regime and is murdered. Forced to flee Kabul with her three children, Fereiba has one hope to survive: she must find a way to cross Europe and reach her sister’s family in England. With forged papers and help from kind strangers they meet along the way, Fereiba make a dangerous crossing into Iran under cover of darkness. Exhausted and brokenhearted but undefeated, Fereiba manages to smuggle them as far as Greece. But in a busy market square, their fate takes a frightening turn when her teenage son, Saleem, becomes separated from the rest of the family.
Faced with an impossible choice, Fereiba pushes on with her daughter and baby, while Saleem falls into the shadowy underground network of undocumented Afghans who haunt the streets of Europe’s capitals. Across the continent Fereiba and Saleem struggle to reunite, and ultimately find a place where they can begin to reconstruct their lives.( harpercollins.com)
I’m just about finished with this book as its story is so captivating, I can’t put it down. I hope to finish this up by Friday.
Next, I started reading a book entitled, “The Crying Tree” by Naseem Rakha, It is also really good. I picked this book on a whim while perusing the shelves of my local library. The synopsis of this book is as follows:
Irene and Nate Stanley are living a quiet and contented life with their two children, Bliss and Shep, on their family farm in southern Illinois when Nate suddenly announces he’s been offered a job as a deputy sheriff in Oregon. Irene fights her husband. She doesn’t want to uproot her family and has deep misgivings about the move. Nevertheless, the family leaves, and they’re just settling into their life in Oregon’s high desert when the unthinkable happens. Fifteen-year-old Shep is shot and killed during an apparent robbery in their home. The murderer, a young mechanic with a history of assault, robbery, and drug-related offenses, is caught and sentenced to death.
Shep’s murder sends the Stanley family into a tailspin, with each member attempting to cope with the tragedy in his or her own way. Irene’s approach is to live, week after week, waiting for Daniel Robbin’s execution and the justice she feels she and her family deserve. Those weeks turn into months and then years. Ultimately, faced with a growing sense that Robbin’s death won’t stop her pain, Irene takes the extraordinary and clandestine step of reaching out to her son’s killer. The two forge an unlikely connection that remains a secret from her family and friends.
Then Irene receives the notice that she had craved for so long – Daniel Robbin has stopped his appeals and will be executed within a month. This announcement shakes the very core of the Stanley family. Irene, it turns out, isn’t the only one with a shocking secret. As the execution date nears, the Stanleys must face difficult truths and find a way to come to terms with the past.
I’m only about 50 pages into this book. It has the possibility to be a really good book, I hope it doesn’t disappoint me (lol). Hopefully I will finish this up this week.
Other than that, I have a TON of magazines to catch up on and i picked up the book “Red Queen” by Victoria Aveyard from the library. Everybody in the YouTube book world has been raving about it and I want to see what all the hype is about. I’m on day 15 of the Proverbs challenge! I hope this is a successful reading week for you!
xoxo
Just Love Them Anyway 