10. The Distant Land of My Father: A Novel of Shanghai

By:  Bo Caldwell
Rated: 5 Stars
Kindle

I rated this book 5 stars for the fact that it made me think so much about the characters and what motivated them.  This would be an excellent book for a group as there is a lot to talk about and it would be interesting to what others thought about the book.

My reaction is that Anna's father Joe is one of the most conflicted, yet charasmatic characters I have read about in a . . . .  well I can't remember when a character made me like him, deeply dislike him and at times felt very sorry for him.   In fact in spite of flashes of intelligence I though he was really rather dumb, self absorbed and certainly clueless and insensitive about how his actions effected the people who loved him.  Still, I had to like him. sigh

Where this book really shone for me was in time and place.  Bo Caldwell did a marvelous job of putting the reader in Shanghi during WW2 and the years leading up to it.  I think she accurately  described the mind set of the international community during those days.

This was not an easy read for me in that my emotions were engaged on  almost every page.  Even when the action was slow I could feel the tension and undercurrents swirling around the characters and the feeling of waiting for the shoe to drop.  I highly recommend this book.

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2001

For Anna, the narrator of Bo Caldwell's richly lyrical and vivid first novel, growing up in the magical world of Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s creates a special bond between her and her father. He is the son of missionaries, a smuggler, and a millionaire who leads a charmed but secretive life. When the family flees to Los Angeles in the face of the Japanese occupation, he chooses to remain, believing his connections and luck will keep him safe. He's wrong. He survives, only to again choose Shanghai over his family during the Second World War. Anna and her father reconnect late in his life, when she finally has a family of her own, but it is only when she discovers his extensive journals that she is able to fully understand him and the reasons for his absences. With the intensity and appeal of When We Were Orphans, also set in Shanghai at the same time, The Distant Land of My Father tells a moving and unforgettable story about a most unusual father-daughter relationship. 

130. Robinson Crusoe

Rated 4.5 Stars
Unabridged Audio Book
13.3 hours long
From libravox

I can't remember if I already read this book or not.  If I did it must have been in a greatly abridged version.  Anyway it mostly felt first time to me.  It did yet preachy and prosy sometimes but overall it was a great story.

PRODUCT DESCRIPTION

One of the first novels ever written, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), the classic adventure story of a man marooned on an island for nearly 30 years, is part of our culture. From Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) to the recent movie Castaway, the elemental situation of the person suddenly alone, who must make a life in a dangerous environment, continues to enthrall all ages.

The story begins with the universal quest: the young man in Britain, torn between his safe home and his hunger for adventure, breaks away from his loving father and sails away into the unknown. After a series of harrowing escapes, he's shipwrecked on a desert island. His lively first-person account shows how his intelligence and education help him survive for many years, and how he uses technology, including guns and tools salvaged from the ship. He sets up home, reads the Bible, finds a parrot as a pet, and even devises a calendar to keep track of time. Then one day he finds a human footprint: "Was it someone who could save me and take me back to civilization? Or was it a savage who landed here?" When some "savages" arrive in several canoes, he uses his guns to get rid of them, and he rescues one of their captives, a handsome fellow with very dark skin. Delighted to have a companion at last, Crusoe names the newcomer Friday (since Crusoe found him on Friday). Crusoe teaches "my man Friday" to speak English, fire a gun, carve a canoe, and clothe his nakedness, and they live happily together. Later they rescue a white man and Friday's father from a group of "savages," and, eventually, they all return to their homes.