I've just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.
It was a Christmas present and I really enjoyed it.
From the author's website:
Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step. Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone. Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken. Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own. Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
I can't pretend to be particularly knowledgable about the civil rights movement in the United States, but I did find it interesting to explore these issues from a different perspective.
The characters were sympathetic and I found it easy to become emotionally connected to the story. It was a good read.
I'm currently reading Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne.
It's one of those classics that I've never read. Having received an iPad for Christmas, I decided to take advantage of the fact that apparently its copyright has expired because it is free to download. I've also grabbed War and Peace, Treasure Island and The Time Machine while I'm at it!
Alana and Josh both received books for Christmas that I'm planning on pilfering once they've finished with them!
I'm particularly looking forward to The Hunger Games trilogy, Shiver, Linger and Foreverand The Vampire Diaries - Stefan's Diaries series.
How about you? What are you reading?
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