The Bean Trees & Chocolat

Hey ya'll, we haven't really been doing this, because most of you just rate your books on Goodreads, but I don't really do that... Anywho, I borrowed a whole stack of books from Lisa, and then she gave me some for Christmas, so I'm gonna be reading all sorts of good books. I read The Bean Trees and Chocolat, and I'm now 100 something pages into The Power of One.

The Bean Trees I thought was excellent. It's the only book by Barbara Kingsolver that I have read, so I don't know how to compare it, but I liked it a lot. It's a really great story about independence and motherhood. One reviewer said, "[It's] as random and unexpected as real life... Whimsical, yet deeply insightful." 

About Chocolat...it was wierd and a little confusing. Nothing gets resolved, either. I like the movie a lot better. At the end of the book, she gets pregnant again and leaves town again. It's just a circle, no happy ending or resolutions. It was still good, but pretty odd. :)

And The Power of One, I have a question. Apparently I need to know a bit more about South Africa and apartheid or something, but I don't really get why the kids at his school hated him, and such. He's English...were they German? It was more confusing because I assumed that a book about apartheid would be about a black kid, but then I realized he wasn't black... Anyway, anyone who knows anything, tell me stuff! :)