I am reviewing this book for Tyndale publishing and received this book for free for an honest review. Grace's Pictures tells the story of a young Irish immigrant in the early 1900's to America. Her mother and stepfather are still in Ireland. It told of the thoughts and some stories of people arriving to a new land, which I thought was interesting. Grace with the help of an agency that tries to arrange jobs with newly arrived Irish immigrants gets a job becoming a nanny to children whose own mother isn't interested in them. Grace also is intrigued by photography and gets her own small camera to take pictures of New York City. This then lands her into trouble when some people think she took a picture of something she shouldn't have. Grace has a large distrust of police officers which goes back to her childhood in Ireland. However, she becomes somewhat friends with an Irish officer in NYC. I like those parts of the book, the part I didn't enjoy were the people who supposedly thought Grace was a threat, I thought that part of the story was usually in the background, almost to the point that I would forget about it. The few times they were in the forefront I thought it was not believable once they found out more information about Grace. I did have a hard time finishing this book, I would read a few pages but it down for quite a long time and then eventually pick it up again. I think this book would have been better if it just focused on the coming to america story. I never did quite understand Grace's fears of police officers as an adult, ok as a child I could understand.
I rank this book 2.5 out of 5
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This book was chosen by a member of the book club that I belong to for us to read in Jan, and I am just now writing my book review. I had never read this book or known anyone who had, but it did sound intriguing to me. I like nature or walking on country roads, and the adventure of camping out in the woods, although I would probably never be so couregeous as to decide it would be a good idea to walk on the trail of the Appalachian mountains. This just happens to be what the author Bill Bryson does in this book, along with bringing a old time friend Stephen Katz, who he hasn't kept in touch with for several years. Does this sound like a disaster waiting to happen? Yes, especially when Bryson decides not to bring certain food because he does not like it. Unbeknownst to the him, Katz dumps some supplies along the trail because of the heavy load of it, this only occurs though after he decided to walk ahead and lost site of Katz (who couldn't keep up). Previously, they had both hiked around Europe, so I would have thought they would know no matter what do not get rid of supplies, especially those that are essential to survival. I did think that Bill Bryson in his book anyways, comes off as being a jerk in that he automatically it seems judges other people without knowing them. Putting that aside the stories of the other hikers and the history of the Appalachian mountains was very interesting. The second part of the book isn't as good though. Overall I give this book a 4 out of 5.