The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears

I finished The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu this weekend. It's a very beautiful book and the language is gorgeous.

The story revolves around an Ethiopian refugee in Washington DC and two of his fellow refugees. Sheba owns a small store in a "transitional" neighborhood in DC and it's interesting to hear the perspective of an insider as the neighborhood moves from being mostly burned out buildings and prostitutes, to restored homes and a white influx and then shifts back again.

It's a quick read and easy to get caught up in the lyricism of Mengestu's words.

Infidel

I finished Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali this weekend. It was a very interesting book and definitely opened my eyes to different aspects of Islam. I feel like I learned a lot and can understand somethings about Muslims that I didn't understand before.

I thought the firs two-thirds of the book was better than the last third, because it focused on her childhood through her asylum in the Netherlands. The last third was about her political career and viewpoint and I found that more difficult to follow and it was obvious that she had more of an agenda in that portion of the book.

There were also some loose ends that she never tied up. It seems that as a refugee and someone who moved so much in her life, that she doesn't have many long-term friendships/relationships, but that may be a false assumption because she didn't tell us what happened to xx person.

I'm probably the only one who would notice that, so I think it's definitely worth reading.

NPR's Summer Books 2008

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and really enjoying it. Hopefully, I'll have a full review by the weekend, but in the meantime I wanted to share a list of Summer Books for 2008 from NPR.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90995424