If you like Sherman Alexie's work or enjoy reading the work of American Indian authors, I recommend Flight. Alexie does a terrific job of giving the reader an overview of American Indian history via a time travelling orphan and juvenile delinquent who goes by the nickname Zits.

What a pleasant surprise to find in the mail after a long, complicated day at work. Thanks to Spanishteach28 from Oceanside, CA for a successful swap...The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is on it's way west from Minnesota. Thanks ST28-I hope you enjoy K and C...I'm very much looking forward to another Sherman Alexie tale from the "Rez" in Flight.

Released to Poobah 1 in Minnesota this week in a book trade.
Enjoy the flight!

Looks like I caught it before SpanishTeach28 released it. I'm so excited for my flight!

I liked it but not as much as I had Sherman's other work. Sometimes it's just the timing and my mood. My plan is to release it somewhere today as I'm running errands. Best wishes on your "flight" little book.

Edited later: The more I think about it the better I like it. Sherman Alexie *does* know how to tell a story.
This is a bit of a time traveler-coming of age story. Good message.

This is an interesting read and it has been waiting on a "flight". This one's to Massachusetts to Nillabreen as a bonus book along with The Screwtape Letters bookring. Best wishes on your flight!

If you enjoy this one then you may enjoy Alexie's other work - I particularly *LOVED* The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian.

This book arrived as a surprise along with The Screwtape Letters. I've never read Sherman Alexie... not any of his books, but I think I read an article or two, and heard him on a radio interview. The issue of Indians is one that I have never read about, one I have never been able to read about, because of the magnitude of the crime and the fact that I am an American and thus belong to the culture that perpetrated a horrendous evil against the Indians. An American reading about what happened to the Indians is like a German reading about the Holocaust, but with more of a cultural disconnect. This book looks like it's a work of character-driven fiction, so maybe it wouldn't be as wrenching as some of Sherman Alexie's other books, but still, I'm just not ready to go there. I should know more about this, at some point..... but for now, I'll bringing this to tonight's Boston BookCrossing Meetup.

RELEASE NOTES:

Released at the Boston BookCrossing March 2008 Meetup.

Picked up at the Boston Bookcrossing Meeting (March). Will record my reaction as soon as I get the chance to read it!

I've held on to this book for eight years! Yikes. Time to let it go! Will release this week!
Three pages in, I was prepared not to like this book. It had all the indications of being a Catcher In The Rye-type novel, and I have no great love for that book. I stuck with it, however, and soon I realized that Alexie had a far different story to tell that was much larger than the angst of his teenage protagonist, Zits. He keeps it edgy without being obnoxious, and the questions that the book invokes are never fully answered but you realize at the end that it matters not. Here is an author that understands that violence is perhaps a universal potential that we conveniently put in racial and ethnic boxes when it suits us to think better of ourselves. Fantastic book!

Will likely leave it on a table when I leave or somewhere nearby.