Salvage the Bones

This ended up being book 60 of  55 Books I Read And Am Willing to Tell People About. I’m pleasantly surprised to be exceeding my goal but I’ll probably keep it to 55 again next year. With any luck, I’m going to end this year’s reading with some brain candy.

Back to my original point: After reading about a dozen reviews that loved Salvage the Bones but didn’t seem to really know how to TALK about it (including Jen Weiner, who I LOVE), when it came up as a Kindle Special Offer for $2, there was no chance I was passing it up.

First, the hype is justified. It’s an incredibly lovely novel, written with equal parts hope and sadness and captures an experience that most will only ever read about. The language is beautiful and the characters painfully well-rendered. For those unfamiliar, it’s the story of an impoverished family’s experience surrounding Hurricane Katrina. Before you jump to the ‘holy depressing’ conclusion, it’s also an amazing story about community and family and how we try to take care of our own. Definitely worthy of the acclaim and awards.

In only tangentially related news, I completed my online FEMA emergency training and while being PAINFULLY DULL it’s actually full of good things which makes me hopeful about our response to further natural and man-made disasters.