This book is clearly great and the topic is extremely interesting. Not one to be read in bits and pieces, however, so I had a hard time loving it because I couldn’t ever read enough at once.

While allconsuming was down, I wrote about this book, forgetting that I’d done so already:

Paton’s book finds it on my list of all time favorites. It’s always odd to add a new favorite when I’ve been saying my favorites are X, Y, and Z for the last few years (one of Kazuo Ishiguro’s – because two of one’s favorite books can’t be by the same author, Tess, Gatsby… mostly things that have been favorites since high school). Cry The Beloved Country was moving. Paton’s style is different than most things I have read and do read. The language was frank, blunt, honest. The book lacked luster and pizazz. The characters experienced a range of emotions, all of which were believable. I am more inspired than ever to read The Grapes of Wrath, as Paton was inspired by Steinback to abandon quotation marks and replace them with extra long hyphens. I find one author’s inspiration inspiring (for lack of better words).

Borrowed from Mike J.

(completed 4/1/05)

Incredible. Brilliant description of both landscape and society. Paton succeeds in creating a multitude of likeable characters, though each has his own flaws. This book now lies on my list of all time favorites. It is inspiring, hopeful, and insightful.

Fabulous so far!

I didn’t like this book at the start, but by Book 2, it had won me over. And somewhere around the middle of Book 3, I got all teary eyed. It was great. (As a note, I did not read the Oprah’s Book Club edition of this book. I’m sick of Oprah’s stupid book club and the stupic Oprah’s book club stickers and banners on the covers of perfectly decent books. Ugh.)