tbr

I gave this book a 6 for the writing style, but ultimately it was a disappointment for me. While some of the descriptions were breathtaking and some of the chapters were deeply engrossing, the whole book was too much. I didn't care for the main character, and I became annoyed by Frazier's forays into details in which I wasn't the least bit interested. What I loved about Cold Mountain, the single minded devotion to the journey home, gave that book simplicity and helped it to achieve lofty heights. This book was scattered, verbose and ended with my remark to myself, Who cares? I did enjoy the describing of the atmospheres in which the characters lived, the turbulent spell of time between the Revolution and the Civil War but the book has left me slightly depressed.

TBR

Well written but depressing. Released back to QueenMummy

Welcome to the Thirteen Moons North American Bookray! If you wish to read this book please PM me with your name and address, so that we can get this underway. I have never hosted a ray or a ring before so please bear with me!
Here is how it works:
1. PM me to be added to the list. Don't forget your name and address.
2. This will kick off once we have five members.
3. You will send the book to the next person on the list, so you need to PM them for their address.
4. Try to read the book within 2-4 weeks as the other people on the list are dying to read it too!
5. Journal when received to let us know where it is - AND - journal again when you have read the book to let us know what you thought of it and to tell us that it is off again to the next person.
6. The last person on the list can do as she or he wishes with it, keep it or continue to share!

Book description from the jacket flap; Thirteen Moons is the story of one man's remarkable life, spanning a century of relentless change. At the age of twelve, an orphan named Will Cooper is given a horse, a key, and a map and is sent on a journey through the wilderness to the edge of the Cherokee Nation, the uncharted white space on the map. Will is a bound boy, obliged to run a remote Indian trading post. As he fulfils his lonesone duty, Will finds a father in Bear, a Cherokee chief, and is adopted by him and his people, developing relationships that untimately forge Will's character. All the while, his love of Claire, the enigmatic and captivating charge of volatile and powerful Featherstone, will forever rule Will's heart.

Participants:

1. grubsneerg
2. perryfran
3. shroffland

Released to grubsneerg yesterday (5-13-08) through the US mail.

This arrived in today's mail and I look forward to reading it. Thanks for sending it, QueenMummy!

I finally finished this book last night, and I can't quite put my finger on why it took me so long to read it. I think it's because it skimmed so many surfaces, but never got the courage or momentum to go any deeper. This may be because of the style it was written in, from the first-person perspective, and if the person telling the story isn't being completely honest with themselves, or the reader, it is going to be an unsatisfying experience.

The story itself was interesting; I certainly learned a little bit about this time period in American history, but I craved a little more depth. The characters were interesting, but were perhaps too one-dimensional, not fully fleshed out because we saw them only from the narrator's limited perspective. I didn't *feel* what they were feeling because the narrator didn't know. I never felt fully immersed in them or invested in their future because the narrator didn't either.

Charles Frazier said he wrote the book because growing up in the mountains of North Carolina, he always wondered and imagined who had lived there before him. Perhaps if I had known that before I started the book, I would have processed it differently.

"Growing up, I lived in a green valley surrounded by tall blue mountains. Not much more than a century earlier, the valley had been filled with Cherokee people, living on farms and in villages all up and down the river. In most outward ways, they lived about like my mountaineer ancestors at the time. Little cabins, gardens, hogs and chickens, hunting and fishing.

"In 1838, those Cherokee people were herded to stockades and marched off to the west on the Trail of Tears. Their land was auctioned off to the highest bidder, and that is the land on which I grew up. We played baseball in a field near where a stockade had stood. A few miles downstream from the hole where we swam was a place where the great red leech had previously troubled the river. On the highest mountain was a bald where a giant lizard once basked in the sun. Potsherds and bird points turned up every spring when gardens were plowed. I knew a place in the woods where a flat stone covered in strange scripture lay hidden under leaves. In a nearby town, I worked for archaeologists excavating a town house and turned up pieces of wall daub with handprints still visible in the dry clay. You couldn't live in the mountains and not be reminded constantly of the land's previous occupants.

"But just one ridge away, a few Cherokee people still lived. Ten or fifteen miles, as the crow flies. They were the most traditional of all their people, east or west. Some of the older folks still spoke no English. It never occurred to me back then to ask how they came to persist there against overwhelming force. In part, Thirteen Moons is my attempt to understand how I came to live where I did, not as history or myth, but as narrative."

I'm putting this in the mail for perryfran tomorrow. Enjoy!

Received in the mail today. Thanks QueenMummy for including me in this bookring. I will try to get to it ASAP but I have a few other rings in front.

7/14/08: I didn't realize that I had another copy of this book so I will be passing this one on to the next reader. Thanks for including me in this bookray. When I read my other copy, I will post more comments here.

RELEASE NOTES:

Sending this on to shroffland in Georgia.

I just received the book in tghe mail today, and am looking forward to reading it! Thanks, QueenMummy, for sharing this excellent hardcover copy.

Contributed to the Anything Goes Virtual Bookbox, and selected by PaulsBooks. Will PM tolet her know I'll send it along as soon as I've read it!

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

This package was languishing in the back seat of the car for weeks before I realized I had not mailed it! Sorry for the long delay, and enjoy the book.

I received this book and will be reading it shortly. Thanks for sharing!