Reading Challenge 2008--Post 1

Alex at BesoMami posted some dismal statistics about how many books adults in the US read every year and then issued a challenge to her blogging friends to write a post about each book they finished in the New Year.

I'm going to try to keep up with that challenge, so here are the two books that I have finished since January 1.

Birds of a Feather (a Maisie Dobbs mystery) by Jacqueline Winspear. Babs got me started on the Maisie Dobbs series and gave me this book for Christmas. I love the series, which is set in post-WWI Britain. The themes of the books involve the aftermath of the war on individuals and society in Britain and are historically accurate. The heroine is symbolic of the era--a plucky servant whose employers recognized her intellectual gifts and assisted her in getting a university education. She was a nurse in the war and lost her fiance' in a tragic accident that also injured her. After the war she became a psychologist and private investigator. The solution to the mystery in this book is found in the social history of the era of the Great War. Babs gave me another Maisie Dobbs mystery that I'm reading now.

Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil by Deborah Rodriguez and Kristin Ohlson. I picked this one up on a whim at Barnes and Noble. This is a true story about an American hairdresser who volunteered to go to Afghanistan to help rebuild the country and ended up founding a beauty school in Kabul which trained local women in hairdressing and other beauty techniques. It's a quick read and suffers from an obvious "as told to" style. Debbie Rodriguez is a memorable character--honest about her own shortcomings and the mistakes made because she didn't understand the Afghani culture very well. Ultimately she fled the country because she feared for herself and her son, but says she wants to return. Although I admired her defense and advocacy of the Afghani women she befriended and taught, she was also impetuous, hard-headed and reckless in ways that its hard not to criticize. It's an interesting book.