SJ's Bookclub
Finished "Cry the Beloved Country" a couple weeks ago but have yet to write a review: First picked this book up about a year ago. Found the beginning slow and boring. It was basically this preacher traveling from his little African village to Johanesburg, S.A. and trying to find his son, but it was the damndest thing because he looked everywhere and could not find him. Chapter after chapter he could not find him and I was bored. Then I picked it up again and began reading about six or seven months after the initial phase. A few chapters later I was hooked. Really hooked. The saga of this man retrieving his ignorant, small village son who was in trouble with the law, got a girl pregnant, was a thief, and a drunk, and last of all had killed a white man, but not just a white man, a white man who had advocated help to the native Africans and was famous for it. And the death, the shooting was an accident. And this poor father, a God-fearing preacher, having to pick up after his son and feel that horrible shame. And his son being convicted and sentenced to die. But the book goes on from there about the real problems that led his son down this path. About the dying village, the dying cows, the dying people, the lack of respect and education and opportunities and that beautiful, beautiful blessed country. I cried at the end. I cried for this beloved country. It was a masterpiece!
Am now reading Ernest J. Gaines "A lesson before dying". Don't know what it is with me and heart-wrenching, destitute black people, make-you-cry-your-eyes-out Oprah Bookclub picks these days...I've told myself eventually I'm going to re-read Atlas shrugged (I didn't exactly finish it the first time), and commit to not being bored, or biased in my opinion of it. Seriously, though folks the scenario's are figments of her imagination and the problems and people have much more depth than what is in that book. But I will try and keep an open mind the second time.
The end (of the SJ Bookclub review...for now)
Am now reading Ernest J. Gaines "A lesson before dying". Don't know what it is with me and heart-wrenching, destitute black people, make-you-cry-your-eyes-out Oprah Bookclub picks these days...I've told myself eventually I'm going to re-read Atlas shrugged (I didn't exactly finish it the first time), and commit to not being bored, or biased in my opinion of it. Seriously, though folks the scenario's are figments of her imagination and the problems and people have much more depth than what is in that book. But I will try and keep an open mind the second time.
The end (of the SJ Bookclub review...for now)
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