The Soldier's Holiday Vow by Jillian Hart

I love Denise Anderson, a marvelous and powerful woman whom I got to know working in the temple. I asked her one day what she liked to read. She said she likes clean, get-away-from-it-all reading and suggested an author. I forgot about that conversation until she brought me this little paperback.

I should have known from the cover that this would be a lightweight book. It looks like a Hallmark movie set. I don't have the patience for Hallmark movies either, unless I'm in a certain mood. I obviously wasn't in the right mood for this because it made me ANGRY. What's up with that?

I think it's because these characters were not only shallow and predictable (as was the plot), but they the author kept repeating to the point of nausea, the same thoughts over and over and over again. So frustrating. So redundant. Yuck. Why did I stick with such shallow junk? Because I was hoping to be able to say SOMETHING positive to Denise when I return it to her. After all, this is one of her favorites. What I do I say to her? Yes, it is a get-away-from-it all book. And yes, it was squeaky clean. I guess that's all I can say.

And I will keep asking people for their suggestions, and hope I will find a good book buddy soon!

The Heart is a Lovely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Why do I keep finding stories set in such dismal environments? I'm not sure why, but here's another depressing time and place. However, the characters are fascinating, and the story portrays life in the 1930s as very hard and hungry. These are people who struggle and work and still don't get ahead. I almost gave up multiple times, but then there would be some eloquent speech by one of the characters, primarily the maid Portia's father, the black doctor in this small mill town. And then I would try to follow the thinking and the pain that this man was living. Fascinating.

The other fascinating character was Mister Singer, a deaf mute, who was completely embraced and revered by the other characters. He listened so sympathetically and meaningfully...It was perhaps intended irony that this character couldn't respond, and the ones who revered him projected his responses. At any rate, that was interesting. Also, the 13-year-old Mick was a girl with great musical power and memory...another interesting character. But these characters were in a story and setting so bleak and without any visible hope, that I almost stopped reading several times. The story ends without any hopeful rays apparent, or any resolve.

I did marvel at the sophisticated thinking and speaking of the characters since McCullers was only 23 when she wrote this. I picked this up at the used bookstore, thinking it was a classic. Maybe it is, or maybe it isn't...but I won't be picking it up again. It will go into one of the Little Library boxes around Bismarck.