27 « January « 2009 « Medieval Bookworm

TT: Open Shelves Classification

Today’s question from Wendi: Prior to today, were you aware of Open Shelves Classification? Have you helped to classify any books yet? Is this something you are interested in? Did you know that if you classify any books, it will also show you who else has classified the book?

I am indeed aware of it! I saw the blog post on it when it was first added to the bottom of pages. (I love the blog). I’ve since classified a few books. I usually try to whenever I visit a book’s work page, which doesn’t happen all that often. I did see that other people can classify the book too, but usually very few have done so. Overall, I think it’s pretty cool. I’m cycling through my list of possible jobs that do not involve PhDs (for my forthcoming time off) and I think I’d quite like to work in a library, so this is fun for me. It just annoys me that there is only one category for fiction. I think it would be more useful if it was more specific. Although some books cross genre boundaries, I think most of them are firmly in one spot or another, and I know the library in my parents’ town puts little stickers on the book lamination to show which genre the book is. It’s very helpful.

Review: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Jamie Ford

While walking one day, Henry Lee spies a crowd of people around a closed down hotel, marveling at the artifacts discovered within – remnants of those who were rounded up and sequestered in concentration camps during World War II. Henry, sore from losing his wife, Ethel, can hardly contain his hope as these belongings may just provide a link with his past, when he loved a beautiful Japanese girl and was convinced that everything would work out.

I loved this book. It’s always fun to start a review with that sentence, isn’t it? I can’t say I was hooked from the first page, but somewhere around when Henry meets Keiko, I fell in love and couldn’t wait to read more. I really didn’t, I finished it in only two days. Ford’s writing is lovely and he gives us a lot of history to think about. The Japanese internment during World War II is one of those murky areas of American history that, to be honest, was skipped over throughout my education. I only knew about it because a friend’s grandmother was imprisoned at first and have since come across it in other novels. It’s always appalled me; rounding up American citizens just because of their ancestry is disgusting. I was very interested in the exploration of it here, particularly the concerned Chinese citizens trying not to get arrested themselves.

Anyway, enough with the history! I really loved this book because it had a wonderful mix of sadness and hope, perfectly capturing bittersweet. It made me feel nostalgic for a past so distant from my own life that it’s like they lived in another country, even though I’m sure I wouldn’t want to have lived it. The title is so appropriate. Watching the story unfold is like listening to beautiful music, but with that edge of tension in it. I wanted to know what happened and I raced through it. I can’t wait to read this one again and savor it.

Highly recommended. Beautiful, bittersweet story and fascinating, important history.

Buy Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet on Amazon today.