Mini - Comments

I've recently read two more books in Portuguese and I don't feel like saying much about either, but since I've appointed this as a diary kind of blog, I like the notion I've summarized all the books I read in the year.
Each book belongs to a different genre and was written by a different author. I've read the children's book for a challenge and the library is quite handy when I feel like I want to finish a task but don't own any suitable choice. The other book I remember I bought years and years ago, when I was still an university student and anything that caught my eye was fascinating but now I realize some aren't really so.

Histórias para os Avós Lerem aos Netos by Isabel Stilwell is a children's book. Literally translated as "stories for grandparents to read their grandchildren" and it was the first book by the author I've tried. She is mostly known here for her work fictionalizing with a heavy amount of historical facts the lives of important historical figures of the country but this book was available and it fit the challenge's theme quite nicely. 

It was OK. I've found the several stories cute but not charming and personally I would not pick them over classical ones for instance. I think only one was truly emotional for me.

Still, it's meant fro children, so the aim might be seen as successful by the actual public target and some grandparents might find it cute too, since the author used her own experience as the base. 

The book also includes illustrations by the artist Marta Torrão but again, I feel I'm being unfair in saying this since I have no talent for drawing, but her style or the style she chose for this book was not sweet enough, for my taste.

All in all, it fit the goal of what I wanted but I won't think of it fondly.

Grade: 5/10

Charlotte Gray by Sebastian Faulks is the sort of sequel to Birdsong, which I've read last year and wasn't too thrilled with, but since I already had this one I decided I wanted to read it and get it out of the TBR. Charlotte is the obvious main character in this story set during WWII and she decides to train for suitability so she can be sent to France and help with the war efforts, at the same time she hopes to find a pilot who crashed and with whom she is in love.

I liked this book more than the other because the violence and the terrible things weren't as graphically detailed and some situations weren't really a novelty after so many books on the theme I've read so far. The writing here was as kind of poetic and interesting as in the other but the style just doesn't captivate me! The characters were also not very special and I've found the writing style not a good one for me to feel empathy with what they went through. It felt easy to maintain my emotional distance from what was happening.

I also wasn't very impressed with the amount of useless details vs important development sequences, which made me think parts of the story were boring. The end also felt a bit inconsequential for all the main characters had gone through. It is true I've found this one easier to read but not enough to look for more things by the author, no matter how factual and pertinent some of the information he uses in his work.

Grade: 6/10