The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Chapters 3, 4 & 5

To say the truth, I have just finished to book. It didn't feel right just to put it down, because lots of things were happening, so I didn't. However, this post will be no spoiler, so you can read it and relax, I won't be telling the secrets.

Talking characters, I believe that all the characters make sense. I do like La Inca as many of you, but maybe my favorite is Lola, for her strength and consistency, as well as Yunior, for his sincere way of talking.

Many of you have said that you don't like the long footnotes, but I believe they are essential to the story, it's a practical way to incorporate the history with the very personal touch of Mr.Diaz or Yunior, who is the leading character, the one that tells the story. I have learnt a lot of things about the Dominican Republic that I had never even thought about, because, yeah, apart from the fact that Trujillo was one of the tiranos of the XXth century, not much else was in my personal wikipedia.

And I did enjoy also the spanglish, even though at times, not being dominican, I didn't know the exact meaning of certain words, but you get it from the context.

The nerdy stuff, well, I didn't get all the references, but it's fun and coherent with the character.

I think the book is really fresh, direct, originally written, hard to put down and at the same time, you get to learn things. No easy task. Bien hecho Sr.Díaz!!!

The Help, already in theaters!

Are you the kind that likes to see the movie after reading the book?
For your information:
http://thehelpmovie.com

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Chapters 1 & 2

So here we go with the first impressions!

I'm surprised! That's the first thing that comes to my mind. I like the book so far (I'm in the middle of chapter 3), it intertwines recent history (yes, I had heard about Trujillo, but didn't know the details) with a very contemporanean story, inmigration. I enjoy a lot the language Mr.Diaz is using, combining very informal expressions, English and Dominican Spanish, but I guess maybe for the non Spanish speakers is not so much fun, because in the Kindle version at least, there is no foot notes explaining. And I like the characters, from La Inca to Oscar, I think that very quickly you get the feeling of what they are going through. And Oscar, even though he is totally nerdy, I have the feeling that he's going to turn into some kind of hero, what do you think? And what about the bad luck thing? He says something like "every caribbean family believes it is haunted", can that really influence the fate of a country? As we all think we are haunted, why should we try doing something better? Something bad will come for sure!!! It's a hard idea if it's really on everybody's psyche. So what are your thoughts so far?