spoils… and a princess

Almost all of the books I read and write about here are from the Public Library. I read too quickly to purchase most fiction. I do try to purchase my reference books. If I want a copy of my own within the first five minutes of reading through a book, or I take it out from the library repeatedly or extend my check out time as long as possible, then I try to put a copy on my own shelf.

I often ask for these highly desired books as gifts.

I’ve trained my family well and for my birthday was given Inkle Weaving by Helene Bress and A Second Treasury of Knitting Patterns by Barbara G. Walker. How I survived without the Second Walker book for so long, I will never know. It isn’t insanely expensive, I don’t know why I waited and waited to purchase it. Thank you family!

There are also a small handful of books I’ve won. I sign up for books from GoodReads and Library Thing. I have not (yet) been sent a book by a publisher to write about.

Anyway, below is a book I received recently through the Library Thing ER Program.

A Princess of Passyunk
by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

I received this e-book through the LT Early Reviews Program. It is an interesting story that shows lots of potential but needs polish to make it really enjoyable.

First, the Yiddish spelling choices were not like anything I’ve seen before. While I prefer to read Yiddish written with the Hebrew alephbet, I can generally make my way through romanised text. In this book, I had to stop and think about very common yiddish words, such as shabbos (or shabbes).

Second, unless you have a background to know about yiddishkeit and have studied Western Religions (for me: yes & yes) I really think that many delightful aspects of the story would be very confusing and the reader would be lost and abandon the story.

Third, the flow of the story stopped and started quite a bit. Not just in driving plot elements, but how everything fit together.

I do see a nice story here, just be warned in its current edition it’s a bit rough around the edges. I think it could be a good book to open discussions with an older child about culture and religion and how they all mix up when life is added to the equation; I’m not sure I want to go there…

• Category: books