Picked up from the bookshelf in Sunrise Coffee on Sunset near Eastern in Las Vegas yesterday.

I thought it would be a good idea to read this one. It sits on many "classics" shelves and I hear of it on book radio, so I wanted to know more about it.

The story is mainly of Francie Nolan, a girl born at the turn of the century in Brooklyn, New York. She grows up among the poorest, yet develops a love of reading and learning that sees her through a tough life. The story is full of images from the time and place, a place familiar to the author, who also grew up there roughly during the same time period. Thus the sense of place is genuine, the details authentic.

But the story did not draw me in. I liked Francie well enough but I wasn't exactly cheering for her. Perhaps she never faced enough adversity, at least in her own mind, to set me on the edge of my seat and wonder. I always knew she'd overcome. Perhaps, too, I have read too many Horatio Alger type novels and I've tired of them. True, this one is based on a real life, that of the author, but I don't know how much embellishment was made. I know that when I write of my own life I do not remember many details. Perhaps it is only little details that were filled in; I don't know. I only know that I was not excited by it. It will be nice if somebody else finds this book and reads it and finds what I did not.

Added to the shelf.