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| from goodreads |
I am a firm believer in holding a book in your hands and manually turning the pages and experiencing the full joy of an actual real book. That being said, having an e-reader has its place. Like, if you are going on vacation, or you travel a lot for work. In order to read this book for my book club I read it online. Project Gutenberg is a site that has over 42 000 books that you can download. You can also just read it online. That is super cool. Libraries can only hold so many volumes and copies so this is a great way to read hard to find books. And it's free! Can it get any better? I also found this book here. Google is truly amazing.
Synopsis
It's the 60s and Dave Mitchell is fourteen and living in Manhattan. He is discovering the changes that occurs in relationships with parents, friends and girls. He meets some pretty interesting people all because of his cat named Cat.
My Thoughts
Even though this is a Newberry Award winner, it is not what you would typically expect from a Newberry Award winner. Usually Newberry's make you think and questions things. It rubs people the wrong way and usually has rich language and storytelling. This book is very straight forward and simple. There are no grand descriptions or life changing revelations. Yet, it seems to work. You truly believe that it is a 14 year old boy narrating.
I found it to be a bit disjoined and found some of the characters were flat. It would have been nice to see a bit more of the actual family dynamics and understand Dave's father more. You sort of get hints and whispers, but nothing concrete. Was his dad decent or not. It is hard to tell.
I don't think it is one of those life altering books, like the Giver. Though, a reader can take comfort in the ordinariness of Dave's life. He lead a ordinary life just like most people. We can identify with misunderstanding parents, hard friendships, how to handle the opposite sex.
I think this a book that would be best appreciated if you were a teen in the 60s. You would understand more about life at that time. It was a more simple time in a lot of ways and this book reflects that.
So to me, It's like This, Cat, was a meh book. There really wasn't that much to get excited about, but it wasn't so bland that you couldn't read it.
Seeing as how I am a member of your book club and grew up in the 1960s, I totally get this book. It was a time of great change in major ways, from the assassination of Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr. The uprising of Rosa Parks, the Bay of Pigs, etc. etc. etc. The father was a decent guy but like many men during this time didn't "get" family life. Men focused on work and that was their beginning, middle and end. Women were defined on their husbands position in the working world. For me, the mother really fell down in characterization. She left me totally flat.
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