The Red Tent - Part 1

Sorry I forgot to tell you what was up next at the end of my last post.  I am currently about a third of the way through The Red Tent by Anita Diamant.  This book was recommended to me by two people: First, a nice lady at the book sale last year who was browsing right beside me, and second, Heidi Montag.  No, Heidi was not at the book sale, but she did tweet about this book and said it was great.  Guess she had plenty of time to read when she was recovering from all those plastic surgeries...

Anyway, I'm not so sure I would agree with Heidi that this book is great.  It is the story of Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob.  Dinah apparently gets a few sentences of fame in the Bible, and this is the rest of the story told in her voice.  I have just finished Part I, which is Dinah's retelling of the stories of her four mothers (well, she only really has one mother, but her father is married to her mother and her three aunts so she calls them all her mothers - weird).  There's not too much action in Part I - Jacob shows up at Dinah's grandfather's home, having apparently run away from his strained relations with his father Isaac and brother Esau, promptly marries the 4 sisters as soon as they've all started their periods, and then has 13 children.  So lots of sex (with women and with sheep - also weird) and lots of births.

I think the most interesting part of this book so far is the snapshot of life in biblical times - the food they ate, the medicine they used, the different gods and goddesses and idols they worshiped, the possessions they valued, family dynamics with polygamy.  I've been thinking for a while about trying to read the Bible because I never have, so this book has made me wonder how much we actually know about how people lived back then.  Another thing I loved is the family tree in the front to help keep track of all the different wives and whose kid is whose.  I always get excited when I start a book and it has a family tree, although sometimes it can be a bit of a spoiler.

This is the second book in a row that I've read with very strange names - Gad, Zilpah, Bilhah, Beor, Naphtali, Issachar, Re-nefer, Shalem, Oholibama - but for some reason, I don't find these names as distracting as the ones in The Hunger Games.