Play Book Tag discussion

This is a difficult time and reading can take a hit. How Much of These Hills Is Gold is a book, I should have loved, but didn't quite work for me at this time. While it had elements which I love, historical fiction, coming of age, the familiar setting, the immigrant experience, literary fiction with interesting elements, I had to force myself to read it. I kept thinking that it would grab me more.

This story has shifting time frames and while I sometimes enjoy that element, I found myself frustrated at having to travel back in time. I suspect the problem was twofold, one that I was really engaged with the story of Lucy's and Sam's two Chinese-American sisters who are orphaned after the gold-rush in the 1860's and secondly, the shelter in place funk that has effected so many of us was upsetting my reading. I am stuck where I am, but I wanted the book to let me continue on a straightforward journey with these orphaned sisters. I wanted to see their struggle and how they survived and how they maintained their personal integrity, Lucy, the feminine smart daughter and Sam, the mercurial child, who dresses and presents herself as a boy.

This book didn't follow my desires, nor should it. It was offering up something else that I was unwilling to see. I have a feeling that I would have appreciated it far more at another time.

I will admit to being a bit thrown off by the father working in a coal mine, but discovered upon researching that there were coal mines around Mount Diablo at that time.

This book does seem to be highly rated, so I expect it was my unwillingness to follow that is at fault.

That's too bad. It seems to be a popular trend right now to use two different time lines in a book. Sometimes it works, but sometimes it's just annoying because it interrupts the momentum of a good story. It makes it harder to totally immerse yourself in one setting.

My reading has been very haphazard lately. I start one book, and then another, until I find one I can finish right away. I usually go back and finish others, but not always. For a long time I've been selecting books based on tags, but now I'm focusing on my mood. And this month, I'm automatically rejecting long books, because they make me antsy.

When it shifted back, and in this case it was only several years, but it seemed that there could have been another way to provide this information.

I actually usually love a shifting timeline, but not everyone does it well and often, I feel annoyance because one story is so much better than the other.

I used to find these stories with shifting timelines only occasionally, but now everyone does it and it is just excessive. It is not new and bright but is beginning to be tiresome.

Oh-I have this on my shelf-I will leave it for now, but won't be in such a rush to read it. The shifting timelines have really gotten under my skin-so many books with that theme, it has just become annoying.

I read about 30% of this last week BnB and I have a very similar reaction to you. When I first started it grabbed me, but I couldn't maintain my enthusiasm. Something was a little off.