What I'm Reading

2012-02-17T09:45:00.002-05:00

Book # 6 - The Sleeping Dragon by Joel Rosenberg

This was sort of a trade off with Evan, you read my favourite 'universtiy students go into another world fantasy books and I'll read yours'. So he obliged me by reading the Fionavar Tapestry, and I'm now starting The Keepers of the Flame series with The Sleeping Dragon.

It should be noted that while I used to be an avid table top RPGer, I never really played D&D much. My group's genre of choice was mainly superheroes, and when we did move into fantasy, we used GURPS as our game system. But, even though I never played D&D much, I still have an understanding of the system and it's tropes.

Which is ultimately what drove me a little nuts about this book.

The central conceit of this series is that a group of college kids who get together for a weekly D&D game are somehow transported into their D&D world and inhabit their characters. While I have no problem with this idea (heck, it's fun), it was the... D&Dness of the world that I didn't like. Oh, you're coming into this city? What are your job descriptions? Your'e a warrior, you're a wizard and your'e a cleric? Great. And the replenishing of the spells and trying to get gold to go buy stuff... yeah, I know it's a staple, but I felt there was too much D&Dness and not enough world building. (although Evan assures me that's coming with the next book)

I also felt the characters were too insular. They didn't really interact with the world, it was still just a setting for them to move through. Which, considering they only wanted to get home, did make sense, but it made for a hollow world. I wanted something more epic I suppose.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I hated it or anything, but right now it felt a little shallow and I'm more than willing to move on if there is depth coming.

2012-02-14T09:49:00.003-05:00

Book # 5 - Bite Me by Christopher Moore.

I love Christopher Moore. He is irreverent, smart, funny and completely twisted sometimes. Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is also one of the most beautiful books I have ever read.

Bite Me is the third of Moore's vampire novels centering around Jody (vampire newbie), Tommy (Jody's boyfriend and even newer vampire newbie), Abby Normal (goth girl extrordinaire) and the crazy cast of the San Francisco they inhabit. There's a nice progression of character in the books (particularly Jody as she definitely embraces being a vampire), and a nice lack of progression (Abby is entrenched in being Abby). This time, they're up against vampire cats, which is just bizarre. I loved all the dog inner dialogue we get, and the Emperor remains one of my favourite characters.

I always find Moore's books a quick read, but not because they're fluffy, but mainly 'cause they're just so funny it's easy to plow right through them.

2012-02-09T08:48:00.001-05:00

Book #4, Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik

This is the second book in the Termeraire series. It's a fine sequel; nothing spectacular, nothing horrible. Basically it boils down to Laurence, Temeraire and crew go to China as a delegate from the Chinese Emperor have returned to take Termeraire back to China since he's a valuable Celestial and those are usually only given to members of the Imperial family.

So there's a freaking long sea voyage (with assassination attempts, storms, feasts, and of course, a battle with a sea serpent). They get to China (where there's assassination attempts, court intreguie, feasts and lots and lots of dragons).

Novik's world building is interesting as she portrays China as a place where dragons are treated as citizens. They have freedom to do with as they please, they are taught to read and write, they have jobs and are paid for doing these jobs. Temeraire of course notices this freedom and wonders why dragons back in England do not enjoy the same.

So I'm assuming next book we're going to have some dragon emancipation or something.

Oh, and people give GRRM a hard time about the over description of what his characters are eating? Novik certainly goes for that time honoured fantasy tradition as well in this book too.

2012-02-05T17:24:00.001-05:00

Book # 3: How Shakespeare Changed Everything by Stephen Marche.

I'm a Shakespeare groupie. Not only do I like (or love) reading his plays, but I've always been very interested in reading about them and about him. So I grabbed this book during my last trip to Stratford (Ontario) last summer as it looked fun.

It's... ok. Marche's ideas are sound; yes, Shakespeare introduced more words into the English language than any other writer before or since, yes he challenged social attitudes of the time with controversial characters such as Othello and Shylock, yes his plays were the basis for a lot of Freud's work... but the problem with this book is there's just not enough depth to any of these. You could (and there have been) entire books on their own written on these topics. And the problem is, I've already read quite a few books written on these various topics.

I admire Marche's passion for the subject, that comes through very obviously, but I can't get past how shallow this book is, especially as I know there's so much more depth. And some of the chapters, like the one on Tolstoy, while amusing, didn't really fit into the overall theme of this book.

Not to sound like a snob here, but this is a nice book for someone who'd like a nice introduction on the length and breadth of Shakespeare's influence and his life and his writings... but that's about it.

2012-02-03T20:28:00.003-05:00

Oh dear. I didn't even do an end of year post this time round. I have been SO caught up in re-reading the Song of Ice and Fire extravaganza again that I really didn't read many new books last year.

So for first post of this year, I have two new books done:

Book #1 is His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik

This is one of those books I kept hearing about, that it was pretty good and I should check it out, but I just never got around to doing so. However, finding the first three novels bundled together for my e-reader made finally reading it simple.

So, the story of Will Laurence and his dragon, Temeraire (question for anyone else, how would you say that? Silent e at the end, or pronounce it so it's more like Temer-airy? Just curious), British captain and dragon during the Napoleonic Wars.

Yes, this is Sharpe meets the Dragonriders of Pern, and as I like both those things, I liked this book too. The plots not overly complicated or anything, but Novik has created a nice, parallel world where dragons are common place and used for war, complete with combat crews aboard them. It's fun. She writes a nice battle sequence, and has managed to not make Temeraire too precious, which is definitely a good thing.

I'm glad I have a couple more of these to go through, they're pretty popcorny.

Book #2 is Before They Are Hanged by Joe Abercrombie.

This is the second book of Abercrombie's First Law Trilogy, so we're back with our main characters from The Blade Itself, but the nice thing here is that there's less introduction and the characters are knee deep in action this time round as the threat of the wars introduced in the first book explode here.

We follow Inquisitor Glokta (quite possibly an even more cynical character than Tyrion Lannister) to a doomed city as he tries to uncover a treasonous plot. Major, no sorry, Colonel West is far in the North trying to keep the ridiculous Union army from imploding on itself before they can meet the enemy in battle; and the strange group of Logen, Bayaz, Ferro, Jezal et all continue on their quest for a weapon of supposedly great power. So we have all the lovely trappings of a regular fantasy novel, but what Abercrombie does best is making these seemingly unlikeable characters quite likeable; as they grow on each other, they also grow on you. His dialogue is sharp and cynical itself, and in a lot of places, incredibly, darkly funny. This is some good stuff.

2011-11-13T07:45:00.003-05:00

Number 20 is Possession by A.S Byatt. I really, really liked my first foray into Byatt's novels (The Children's Book), so I thought I'd give her 1990 Booker Prize winner a shot.

It's a complicated piece of work with multiple narratives and authors. Ostensibly, the 'hero' of the book is Roland Mitchell, a bit of a sad-sack scholar, an expert (but not THE expert) on a fictional Victorian poet, Randolph Henry Ash. One day Roland is going through a pretty much ignored collection of Ash's mundane papers (bills and such), and comes across the draft of a letter that points at something unknown before now; that Ash may have had a relationship outside of his marriage.

And so begins the literary mystery that is the heart of this novel. Mitchell sleuths out the identity of Ash's lover, another poet named Christabel Lamotte, and with the help of a Lamotte scholar, Maude Bailey, they find a packet of letters between the two poets and unfold a hidden love story.

This book isn't as easy a read as The Children's Book was as the narrative shifts from Roland and Maude to the letters between Ash and Lamotte and includes their poetry as well. I can certainly appreciate Byatt's artistry here as she does an excellent job in writing as two separate Victorian characters, both their private correspondence and their published poetry. Of course though, this book has also reminded me that yeah, I'm still not a fan of poetry.

I found though, that because of the letters and the poetry, while we really get invested in the relationship between Ash and Christabel, it leaves the modern characters a bit ... lacking. We're supposed to see progression in the relationship between Roland and Maude as well, but it never seems as natural a thing. Roland still seems to be a spectator in life, and Maude is still only defined by being 'cold'. They started off being defined more as characters, but by the time the Ash/Christabel correspondence is uncovered, the modern characters are given short shrift as their entire raison d'etre is to investigate further into the lives of the two Victorian poets.

All that being said though, I found the ending actually a little sad, so obviously some of Byatt's characters did resonate with me.

2011-10-16T22:51:00.003-04:00

And now we take a brief pause in our fantasy reading to bring you a little bit of non-fiction. Number 19 is The Jaws Log by Carl Gottleib.

I admit I had a moment of indecision when thinking about whether or not to include this book because I don't do re-reads on this blog, and technically, I have read this book before. But that was... 30 years ago? And honestly, I'm not sure I read it so much as just looked at the pictures.

This book details the making of one of my all-time favourite movies, Jaws. I mean, I already know a lot of the history of this movie and the trials and tribulations they went through making it, but this book was chock full of details that I still didn't know and once gain, I am amazed that this movie even got made, let alone be the increadible movie that it is.

I heard a nasty rumour not long ago that someone was thinking about re-making Jaws, and if anyone ever does, they need to be forced to read this book so that they know they will be shitting all over an amazing, hard-wrought, finely crafted movie that became a block-buster almost in spite of everything that happened. And there should then never, ever be talk of a remake.

2011-10-16T22:44:00.002-04:00

Number 18 is The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Yes, I broke down and read it.

I'm a little surprised at myself, mainly because I don't deal with post-apocalyptic-type stuff. But... I found this didn't bother me too much that way.

I'm not going to say too much about this book. I enjoyed it actually. As far as popular teen-lit x-over stuff, this is VASTLY superior to that sparking vampire series. The writing is a zillion times better, and we won't even compare the two protagonists. Hell, I'm sure Katniss could do away with awful old Edward with no problem.

Not too sure if I'll continue on, if I can track em down in the library, perhaps so.

2011-10-16T22:26:00.003-04:00

Number 17 is Wise Man's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss. This is the sequel to The Name of the Wind. We pick up the story pretty much where it left off. In fact, it started the exact same way as the last book and I had to double check I'd bought the right one. But I had so off I went. We're back at the University with Kvothe. Of course he continues to get in trouble and eventually, he's in so much trouble that he has to take a leave of absence from the school. Funny enough, when this happened, I had been thinking that we need to get out of the University, and voila. Kvothe's lone noble friend has finally managed to attract what could be an extremely powerful sponsor for him. So off Kvothe goes to try and impress a man who's close to a king. I liked this part of the novel. There's some nice court intreigue, and quite a bit of romance as Kvothe also manages to run into his unrequited love, Denna, as well as help his patron woe an appropriate bride. The action then moves to the countryside as Kvothe is charged with to rid the neighbouring woods of bandits who are stealing tax money from his patron. With the usual fantasy small band of misfits, they manage to do so. I liked this part too. It was the next part I didn't. We then get this... diatribe where Kvothe follows a legendary creature of the Fae and becomes her lover for awhile. I don't know. I found this part rather boring. And trite. And annoying. And repetative. However, once he leaves and goes to the homelands of one of his comrades, it gets interesting again.

For the most part, I truly enjoy Rothfuss' world builiding, he's doing a lovely job overall, but I found so much about his foray into fae to be a mistep. It just came across as... too much.

We return to the University and I found by that time, that, like Kvothe, it was good to be back on familiar ground.

I'd also like to move the story forward in the narrative framing plot too. I'm sure we will, but right now, it's moving a little too slowly.

2011-10-05T09:02:00.002-04:00

The next book, number 16 of this year, will have a very important footnote added to it. The book, The Magician King by Lev Grossman, is the first book I read in digital form. That's right, for my birthday, I got a Kobo e-reader. I won't talk about my feelings on the Kobo here as I'm still working those feelings out, but as I got it last Thursday and finished the book on Monday... I guess I don't hate it as much as I thought I might.

Of course, the speed with which I read it can also be attributed to the fact that The Magician King is a good book and a worthy successor to The Magicians.

When we catch up with Quentin and the other king and queens of Fillory, they're living the high life of... well, not doing too much at all. This lifestyle really suits some of them (Eliot and Janet), but Quentin seems bored and Julia, she's still broken. After a rather scary hunt for the Wishing Hare, it is revealed that things are not all right in Fillory and Quentin seizes upon this to go on a Quest. For he believes that a quest is just what he needs.

The narrative of this book is different from the last, and I found it an excellent departure. While most chapters deal with Quentin and his quest, the others focus on Julia, who was only a minor character in the first book, and tells the story of what happened to her and her journey to becoming an extremely powerful hedge witch. Of course, her story ends up being important to the main narrative as well, and it does all tie nicely together.

The Quest itself is simple, but not, just as all good quests should be. There is a lot of... coincidences, but that being a rather large trope of fantasy, it didn't bother me even if it did become predictable a couple of times. Grossman obviously knows his heroic quests, heck, there's even a harrowing of 'Hell' at one point.

The book ends up at a surprising place though. Well, it was a suprise and wasn't. It puts Quentin in a VERY unhappy place (whereas all those closest to him are very happy) and I'm not sure what that means. I don't know if there's another sequel coming or not, but if there is, I'm wondering if Quentin might go the Martin Chatwick route and if so, man that'll be a helluva read.

2011-09-18T21:17:00.003-04:00

Number 15 this year is The Magicians by Lev Grossman. This book really is Harry Potter x Narnia but written for adults. I know that probably sounds really banal, but did I love this book? Damn right I did.

The main character, one Quentin, is such a perfect study of 17 year old teenaged ennui that it's almost hilarious, but not. Just like real teenaged ennui. He's incredibly smart and incredibly unhappy, and obsessed with a series of children's books about the imaginary country Fillory (this would be the Narnia stand-in). When Quentin finds himself suddenly accepted to a school for learning magic called Brakebills (this would be the Harry Potter part), Quentin thinks that finally, he can be happy, he'll be learning something few learn, and maybe, maybe he can go to Fillory.

But unlike Hogwarts, Brakebills comes across as much tougher. Cause you see, in The Magicians, magic is more like computer science or advanced chemistry or electrical engineering. You have to be prepared for long, hard study and practice to master, complete with incantation, confounding variables, deep thought, passionate virtuosity, and great precision. It's kinda awesome.

The first parts of the novel deal with Quentin's time at Brakebills and the weirdness that goes on there (the 4th year trial is particularly wicked), and the various characters. Quentin doesn't really find himself much happier, despite everything. He still hangs on to the idea that maybe one day finding their way into Fillory will make him happy.

Fillory, when they get there, is everything that they never thought it would be. It was brutal and and dangerous and in their arrogance, everything goes completely wrong. Once again, also awesome.

I have to go out and the sequel to this right away.

2011-08-26T12:55:00.003-04:00

Hey guess what? Number 14 is more fantasy! I don't think I've read this much consecutive fantasy novels that weren't all part of the same series in a very long time. But anyway, number 14 is The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. This came suggested from a number of sources, so thought it was time to give it a try.

Glad I did. So since this is the first book of a trilogy, this is our introduction. We meet the cast ; Barbarian Logen Ninefingers, crippled Inquisitor Glotka, selfish-spoiled pretty boy Jezal; the commoner who made good Major West and of course the powerful and enigmatic magus, cause you always need one of those.

I liked all the characters, even when they were made to be unlikable. Jezal is a complete pratt, West is a little too moral, Glotka is so very cynical (with good reason though), and Logen, well he's not as barbaric a barbarian as he's been in the past.

So not only do we meet the characters, but Abercrombie does some very successful world building too as he takes us through a few countries and their history and the wars that all of the main characters (except Jezal) have lived through. It's nicely done.

I don't have much to say other than I did enjoy this book a lot and will definitely be forging ahead with this crew, especially as they were finally heading out on the quest that that aforementioned powerful and enigmatic mage had enlisted them for.

2011-08-11T10:12:00.003-04:00

Number... crap, what number am I on? Oh yeah, lucky number 13. And it is The Dragon's Path by Daniel Abraham. I picked this book up because it got a good review from the AV Club, invoking a favourable comparison to GRRM no less, so I decided to give it a shot.

I could immediately understand the GRRM comparison as Abraham structures this book exactly like GRRM structures his Song of Ice and Fire books; each chapter is told from the POV of a main character. The difference is that Abraham has less main characters than GRRM does. There are three main characters, Marcus Wester, Cithrin and Geder. Then a few other lesser characters who also get POV chapters.

I found this a little... hard to get into. It wasn't bad or anything, it just didn't really reach out and grab me. I found the worldbuilding a little... I don't know, pedantic? I just didn't find the unfolding of the world's history to be that interesting. Perhaps because I felt it was somehow disconnected from what the characters were going through? Geder has an almost unhealthy interest in history, but since his interest is put forth as almost frivolous and child-like, I found it hard to take all of it seriously. And I just found all the different races kinda Star Trekian and a little difficult to keep track of.

Abraham's court intreigue is definitely not on par with GRRM's. Now, the comparison is a mite unfair because that is the sort of thing that GRRM so excels at, but at this point in fantasy writing, if you're going to approach court politics, you have to bring your A game. I think we have a B game going on here. One of the other POV characters (Dawson) is knee deep in this, a nobleman mover and shaker who is convinced he is saving his king, and he brings some of the other characters into the fold whether they want to or not.

I have no problem with characters being far flung from one another, but other than at the very beginning, I just wasn't seeing connections between their storylines and that kinda annoyed me. I'm sure it will come back around again and be tied together, but the sense of... urgency isn't there? I dunno.

Not to say that there aren't some very good parts to this book. Geder makes an incredibly huge, dire decision that I definitely didn't see coming, and his character is growing very interesting. He's almost doing a reverse Jaime and I can respect that. In fact, I think I found Geder's plotline to be the most interesting of them all.

All this being said, I felt the book did considerably pick up in the second half, so it is enough to make me want to continue on when the next one comes out.

2011-07-25T09:44:00.002-04:00

Since this is about books and concerns two of my favourite authors, I thought this would be a good place to post it for posterity.

Wednesday of last week, I did an interview with the CBC for a piece they were doing on George R.R. Martin. They wanted to talk to a fan, and my friend who works for the best sci-fi/fantasy bookstore in Toronto immediately thought of me and put my name forth.

The piece aired on Sunday, on The National no less. I'm on it for like 30 seconds, and they got my name wrong, but still, there I am along with interviews with George himself and Guy Gavriel Kay, who is undoubtedly, my favourite author. Supreme geek moment as far as I'm concered :)

Here's a link to the piece: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2068554409

2011-07-24T18:50:00.002-04:00

Number 12 this year is The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Thanks to all the follow up to A Dance With Dragons I'm on quite the fantasy kick right now.

So I came to this book in a funny way. Two years ago, I voted in the silly cage match on suvudu.com where they pit various characters from different fantasy series against one another in mock battles. I started voting because one of the characters involved was Jaime Lannister. Jaime had a solid voting block and moved all the way through the competition to the final, where he was defeated by Rand Al'Thor from the Wheel of Time saga. But... the character Jaime defeated to get to the final was someone I'd never heard of before, a guy named Kvothe (pronounced close to 'Quothe'). Didn't think much of him didn't bother to look him up, I just voted for Jaime (and by this time, GRRM himself had gotten in on the fun and was doing little writeups of the battles himself, which definitely helped Jaime in the voting). I even remember thinking that Qvothe was a stupid-sounding name and basically dismissed it summarily (I have this rather strange bias that I usually have to like the names of the main characters I'm reading about in order to have full enjoyment)

A week before ADWD came out, I was browsing in Chapters and one of the employees recommended The Name of the Wind to me. I immediately recognized Kvothe's name, and was all set to dismiss it again, but then I realized; not only was this fellow recommending it to me, but on the strength of one book, this character had garnered enough votes in a contest voted on by fans of the genre, to get to the quarter finals. Hmm. Maybe there is something to this story. So I took the advice and the book came home with me.

I actually started it just before ADWD came out, but then set it aside in order to deal with that incredibly anticipated monstrosity. I picked it up the moment ADWD was finished and... I enjoyed it.

It's an interesting narrative, with Kvothe, now a simple innkeeper called Kote, basically telling his life story to a Chronicler. It seems that Kvothe has lead an extrodinary life, the life of a hero, and there is some mystery surrounding his disappearnce.

As with many fantasy heroes, Kvothe 'suffers' from disgustingly perfect syndrome. He's incredibly intelligent, the son of wandering musicians, playwrites, etc. So he can sing, he can play, her can perform, and he learns so very very quickly. When his family and troupe are killed by a seemingly mythical group of bad guys, Kvothe's comfortable life is (of course) thrown upside down. He spends three years living on the streets of a large city before he takes control of his destiny and goes to learn at the University, a place that teaches what passes as the world's magic.

The book, and Kvothe himself would get tiresome after awhile due to his incredibly gifted intellect, but fotunatately Rothfuss does balance this nicely with Kvothe's penchant for getting into trouble. It is, of course, a common problem of those who are so much smarter than most everyone around them, but in this case it does work. It's not so much you want to see Kvothe taken down a peg or anything like that, you actually do want him to succeed.

Rothfuss has done an excellent job of giving us a protaganist who might have tilted towards unlikable, but there is enough strength and depth to this charater that you do want to know how he went from poor child prodigy to hero and then fell to lowly inkeeper. And since this book revolves around the one character (told from his POV pretty much), that's pretty freaking important.

The sequel to this has just come out. And yeah, I'll probably end up picking it up.

2011-07-17T17:04:00.003-04:00

I'm so excited about number 11 this year. It is a book that I (and many other) have been waiting for SIX years to come out now. That's right folks, number 11 this year is A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin.

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! :)

In 1996, my then-roommate Karen tossed me a book with the words "Read this. I mean it." Karen and I had gone through university together and a lot of our reading tastes meshed quite well. So read it I did. And then I immeditately went out and bought my own copy of A Game of Thrones. So yeah, I've been with this series for a long time now.

I'm afraid to say too much about this book because I realize I blew threw this behemoth (900-odd pages long) in 5 days, so great was my NEED to read it, and I realize that not everyone has read it yet, and there are those who are coming to the books after having watched the series on HBO...

So all I will say is that for the most part, I loved it. It's been 10 years since we've heard from Tyrion (who had last been seen performing a rather incredible murder), Daenerys (who was staying put in the city of Mereen to try and learn to rule) and Jon Snow (who had just been made Lord Commander of the Wall). Much of DWD is devoted to these three, and it's so wonderful to read about them again. One of the few misgivings I had was of a new travelling companion for Tyrion. Not sure why Penny didn't sit right with me, but yeah... no. Dany's dragons are growing up and, in standard Martin form, they are not cute and cuddly, sage-wise dragons of much other fantasy. They have loyalty and love for Dany, but they are very large, VERY dangerous creatures that no one really knows how to train. And Jon... he has to deal with the resident king-claimant in Stannis, his rebellious brothers who aren't exactly in favour of Jon's dealings with the wildings, the wildings themselves, and the unrest caused by Roose Bolton's 'rule' of the North. He has his hands full and also has the book's first true "FUCK YEAH!" moment.

Disappointments? Not many. Biggest one for me is only one Jaime chapter, and a chapter that obviously puts him in some danger, so now I'm really wondering what happened to him.

More new POV characters, some I didn't really care about (as usual, I'm finding it hard to be interested in any of the Ironborn, with the exception of Theon though. Oh Theon, karma is a harsh, harsh mistress for you isn't she?), but a certain exiled ex Knight of the Kingsguard also becomes a POV character, and it was nice to read of him. He's a class act.

The endings leave some major characters (and some minor but those we've seen for a very long time) in pretty dire straights again, whilst some seem to be trucking along fine and others seem to be improving their lot from previous, and of course, the shifting power is shifting again, especially with the revelation of another Targaryen, one that Dany knows nothing about.

Overall? It's bleak and hard and dire with moments of cunning and heroism and just enough fantasy elements thrown in to make things just that much more intersting. In other words, it's perfect and like we haven't been away for 6 years (although, in preparation for July 12th's release date, I did re-read the other books).

So, how long before The Winds of Winter? :)

2011-05-26T09:36:00.003-04:00

Place holder for books 9 Origin of the Species by Nino Ricci and 10, The Constant Gardner by John Le Carre.

2011-04-29T13:35:00.002-04:00

Number 8 is Tigerheart by Peter David. I've had some ups and downs with Peter over the years (well, ok, really only one down, so nevermind) but overall, I've always enjoyed his stuff, and he is mentioned a few times in this blog due to his Arthurian cycle. So when I saw Tigerheart on sale for a ridiculously cheap price, it had to come home with me.

I loved this damn book. It's been awhile since a book made me tear up, but this sure did. Tigerheart is a pastiche of Peter Pan. It's not a true retelling, perhaps a bit of a sequel, but whatever it is, I thought it beautiful and I enjoyed it much more than the original.

It's not just that the story is familiar of course, but it's also that David's narrative voice so perfectly captured the narrative voice of so much late 19th/early 20th century children's literature, where the narrator is omnicient and very nearly a character in themselves. It's a voice I don't find that's pulled off well very often (I think C.S Lewis did it brilliantly in his Chronicles of Narnia) and so David should be lauded for this alone.

But he should also be lauded for creating an interesting character in Paul Dear, who holds his own with The Boy and Captains Hack and Slash and sweet Gwenny. And he should be lauded for such a beautiful, moving treatise on what it means to be a child, and what it means to be an adult, and how moving from one to the other is difficult but doesn't always mean they have to be mutually exclusive either.

Well done Peter David, really, really well done.

2011-04-12T10:48:00.002-04:00

Book number 7 is Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro. I have not seen the movie, I picked this up because I loved his novel Remains of the Day.

Never Let Me Go is told from the first person narration of one Kathy H. A "carer" for "donors" who has been at her job for a very long time; longer than most seem to be able to do it in fact.

She reminices about her days at a (what sounds like) very idyllic English boarding school called Hailsham. She's repeatedly told she was lucky to have been there, to have learned and had a good life and been treated kindly by the school's various guardians. She had two very close friends at the school, Ruth and Tommy.

It's hard to discuss this novel without talking about the main 'mystery' that is slowly unfolded through Kathy's narration. These are not typical children who are destined to be typical adults. They have singular purposes, to be donors, and once you realize what they are and what they're to be, this book is all at once sinister, sad and even a little appalling. But it's because it's also beautifully written from the POV of a character who is, first and formost, a person. Kathy is a naieve, empathetic, smart girl who never really rails against what she and her friends are reared for. And as much as you want her and Tommy and Ruth to escape their fate, you also know that they won't. For despite everything they learned at Hailsham, about life and art and the tantalizing rumour of 'deferrment', they weren't taught to question. They were taught to just accept because they don't know any better and really, society didn't want them to know any better.

It's an excellent, sympathetic mystery that leaves you questioning... a lot of things.

2011-03-12T13:31:00.004-05:00

Numero 6 this year is The King's Speech by Mark Logue and Peter Conradi. Let's just get this right out of the way shall we? I loved the movie. Loved it. It was well acted, well written, well done. It was touching and surprisingly funny and all around engaging. And now, upon reading this book, I also realize the movie used a fair bit of 'dramatic license'. Funny enough though, this knowledge does not affect my enjoyment of the movie. It is too well done of a movie for me to feel I've now been cheated or anything. The movie centers more on moving towards one, specific goal, and that is that King George VI (played so beautifully by Colin Firth) is able to deliver his first war-time address to his subjects free of his previously debilitating speech impediment. But according to the book... by the time this speech was delivered, the King wasn't as hampered by his speech problems as the movie would have you believe...

Anyway, the book, compiled from the journal entries and scrap clippings of Lionel Logue by his grandson Mark, is a fairly straightforward telling of Logue's life from his initial work as a speech therapist in Australia, to his family's move to England, to the meeting and treatment of his most famous patient who would also become a friend. The book lays out Bertie's treatments much like they are in the movie, breathing exercises, practice, removing of troublesome words from speeches, basically giving the King confidence in his ability to speak, therefore removing his tendency to stutter. The book does also show that there was an honest to goodness friendship between the two men of VASTLY different classes and it is nice to see. But by the time Bertie is crowned King George VI, Logue and Bertie had been working together for quite awhile already and his stutter was much more under control by this point. Yes, Logue still helped and attended the Coronation and whatnot, but by this time, Bertie was not attending regular sessions and whatnot.

The book is an interesting look at what happened through many of Logue's and even the King's own words. It is also a slightly deeper look at the crisis the monarchy faced with the abdication of Edward VIII. But the movie, through some phenomenal performances, manages to give everyone much more warmth and character, if not true historical acuracy.

2011-02-23T10:17:00.005-05:00

Books have been read, but not blogged, so let's do a catch up post:

Number 3 of the year is Some Great Thing by Lawerence Hill. Saw this book for cheap, and since I enjoyed his Book of Negroes, thought I'd give something else by him a shot. This book tells the story of the unlikely named Mahatma Grafton, a young, rather aimless black man who returns to his hometown of Winnipeg and gets a job as a reporter with the Winnipeg Herald. He doesn't partcularly care about the job, nor about Winnipeg, nor about his father's ambitions for him. Hat is like a lot of his generation, he just doesn't really care about much. But that changes over the course of the book as he gets involved with racial tensions and the entire Manitoba language-rights issues. It's a very interesting read because it's something I really knew nothing about. Oh sure I remember language-rights as an issue overall, plus of course the Referendum, but this book is a nice microcosm of the unrest that was happening over a lot of Canada at the time. The characters are all well done, and, despite being a large cast, quite memorable. There's some oddities that make it really fun (the exchange reporter from Cameroon for one) and overall, it's a very clever novel.

Number 4 of the year is Gwenhwyfar by Mercedes Lackey. Not a bad book. I definitely like books where Gwen isn't a whiny bitch, but this also felt like Lackey had watched that horrendous King Arthur movie (y'know, the one with Clive Owen) and decided that Warrior! Gwen needed some backstory. So yeah, this Gwen is a warrior, which is fine and dandy but doesn't really bring that much new to the character. I did like that Lackey brought the idea of the 'three Gwens' that Arthur marries into one tale (this is something that isn't dealt with much in most of the Legends) and I liked that she gave Gwen some interesting sisters. But overall, the 'Arthurian' part of the story isn't dealt with at all so the book actually feels strangely disconnected from what it should seemlessly be a part of. As a look at gender roles and equality in early Britain, it's a great book, as an Arthurian tale? Not so much.

Number 5 of the year is Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore. This is the first book of his tale of Jody and Thomas, and the one I should've started with rather than You Suck. So it was nice to get the backstory down and how it all got started. Fun as always, Moore is rarely disappointing. Best line? "He's doing rather well for a non-swimmer".

Ok, gotta get reading some more it seems.

2011-01-17T13:16:00.002-05:00

Book number 2 for the year is The Sword of Albion by Mark Chadbourn. It's a fun historical fantasy set in the Elizabethan years (well, 1588 to be exact) and concerns the exploits of England's most famous spy, Will Swyfte. And yes, that is rather odd, for one would think that by being well known to the world at large as being a spy, that you wouldn't actually be very good at your job, but in this world, as with Will Swyfte, what you see isn't what you get. Swyfte and his comrades are not the main source of information against the mundane enemies of England such as France and Spain, no, they are employed against a far more fearful, nefarious and older Enemy; the Unseelie Court.

Chadbourn builds a nice world, familiar but with overtones of the unfamiliar, his characters are good (Swyfte is a bit too much out of the James Bond mold, but hey, it kinda works) and he does dread and excitement well. I could've done with a little less sea warfare, but given the context of when this novel is taking place, I guess there's not much way around it.

If there's more Will Swyfte books, I'll continue on.

2011-01-05T16:16:00.002-05:00

Brand new year, brand new page. Book number 1 of 2011 is Sleepwalk With Me by Mike Birbiglia. This was tossed to me by my husband, as Birbiglia is one of those stand up comics that Graig knows about but whom I've never heard of before. Sleepwalk With Me is the book-version of Birbiglia's one man show of the same name. It's a funny look at his life, and the main thread in it is that he suffers from sleepwalking (or the more clinical REM sleep disorder), to such an extent that he actually endangers his life during it. I liked Birgibglia's style, very self-depricating but funny.

On a personal note, I think I found this book kinda scary-funny from the point of view that my dear husband has some of the same sleepwalking type episodes. Fortunately they've not escalated to the point of Birbiglia's, but still... a lot of it sounded mighty familiar.

2011-01-02T10:17:00.004-05:00

It's January 2nd now, so time for our 2010 Year End post. In a lot of ways, it wasn't a very diverse year as I read quite a few things by the same authors. And of course, there were my usual tomes about Shakespeare in there. So what did I read this year? The list is as follows:

The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill
Shakespeare's Wife - Germaine Greer
Dead Until Dark - Charlaine Harris
Fool - Christopher Moore
Under Heaven - Guy Gavriel Kay
Privilege of the Sword - Ellen Kushner
Dead in Dallas - Charlaine Harris
Mythago Wood - Robert Holdstock
The Torontonians - Phyllis Bret Young
A Gentleman's Game - Greg Rucka
The White Queen - Phillipa Gregory
The Children's Book - A.S. Byatt
The Court of the Air - Stephen Hunt
Contested Will - James Shapiro
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Elfland - Freda Warrington
A Cure for All Diseases - Reginald Hill
Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thakeray
The Wordy Shipmates - Sarah Vowell
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Steig Larsson
The Red Queen - Phillipa Gregory
You Suck - Christopher Moore
Of Human Bondage - W. Somerset Maughm
Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind
Let the Right One In - John Alvide Lindqvist
Her Fearful Symmetry - Audrey Niffeneger
Dead to the World
Dead As A Doornail
All Together Dead - Charlaine Harris
Definitely Dead
From Dead to Worse
Dead And Gone

Grand total? 32. Damn, one shy of my best record so far. Of course, part of the problem was in November I got completely sidetracked and did a slew of re-reads, but oh well.

Favourite book this year? Of course we have to go with Guy Kay's latest, Under Heaven. A truly gorgeous book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Also right up there was A.S Byatt's The Children's Book. And for best non-fiction, I'm going to go with Contested Will because I like any book that shoots down the 'Shakespeare didn't author his plays' conspiracy as well as this one did.

I read a freaking lot of vampire books this year, 10 all together. The best one being, by far, Let the Right One In. You Suck was rather... toothless (disappointing for a Christopher Moore novel) and the Sookie Stackhouse extravaganza is just light fare that's easy to burn through.

Tried to get into an author two of my cousins adore, but found myself disagreeing with their worship of Terry Goodkind.

Overall, I am pleased with my tally. Library plus starting to take the subway again in the latter part of the year helped bump the totals up.

I've already started my first book of 2011.

2010-12-31T17:24:00.003-05:00

Ok, last one, really. Number 32 of the year was Dead and Gone by Charlaine Harris. The last of the Sookie Stackhouse books my Mom gave me. I think I'm good for awhile. So this one? More developments with Eric, the Weres come out of the closet and there's a Faerie War. S'ok really. I didn't mind Harris' Faerie lore, and a lot of it was usual stuff, but, in all my (IMHO) vast readings, I've never heard of Fey being harmed by lemon. That was a new one. I shall have to research this. Oh, and pretty insignificant detail that I knew was wrong and so drove me nuts? She said the name Niall means 'Cloud'. I know darn well it means "Champion". Yeah. That bugged me. I know I'm picky.

Stay tuned for our Year End review.

2010-12-30T19:04:00.004-05:00

Squeaking one more in under the wire. Number 31 is From Dead to Worse by Charlaine Harris. I've only got one more to go before I'm out of the ones my Mom gave me. Whew.

Anyway, this one isn't bad. It deals with the aftermath of the disasterous vampire summit and we learn more about Sookie's Fae heritage. Mainly where it came from. Some old characters are gone, some dead, some broken up with. New people are introduced as a shift in power in Louisiana happens.

So uh... not much to say about it really. It was fine. Nothing earthshattering. Let's face it, I can't really delve too deep into the literary merit of these books; they don't really have any. They are fun for what they are but that's it.

I will say this though, these books sure did let me pad my total for the year, and that's just awesome :)

2010-12-29T15:54:00.002-05:00

Numbers 29 and 30 for the year, are, respectively, Definitely Dead and All Together Dead by Charlaine Harris. Between getting ready for Christmas and the disaster (due to sickness) that it was, more of these silly Sookie Stackhouse books have hit the spot; they definitely don't require a lot of brain work. Except they are starting to all blur together...

In fact, I had to go back and look at the back of the book to remember what happened in Definitely Dead. Sookie travels to New Orleans to gather the belongings of her dead vampire cousin Hadely, and gets mixed up more in the world of the Louisiana Queen, Sophie-Anne Leclerc. Sophie is about to get married to the King of Arkansas, and well, the vampire wedding goes as well as most superhero weddings do. The usual suspects are there, Eric, new boyfriend Quinn, and a couple of new characters in witch Amelia, but yeah, fun enough to read, but not substantial enough to really remember.

All Together Dead actually had some slightly more interesting meat to it, with a journey to the big vampire summit (which I think has been talked about for like the last three books), and of course, all sorts of shit goes down, including a big terrorist plot perpetrated by the Fellowship of the Sun. Lots of intreigue and suspicion, as well as Sookie having to get closer to Eric.

I'm not sure how many more are left in the pile my mom gave me, but I'm thinking it's finally getting low enough to see the light at the end of the Stackhouse tunnel.

2010-12-22T21:00:00.002-05:00

Numero 28 of the year is, yes another Sookie Stackhouse book. Dead as a Doornail by Charlaine Harris. She definitely tried for a bit more plot this time, what with snipers shooting shifters and werewolves electing new leaders and someone trying to kill Sookie again... but it still didn't really leave much mystery. It's falling into the 'oh, new characters. They must be the ones behind it." The mystery's basically as sophisticated as something from Murder She Wrote. I've also realized I'm a wee bit tired of the vast majority of the supernatural males trying to get Sookie into bed with them. It's getting predicatable. Vampire Bill wants her back. Eric the Viking Vampire wants her. Sam the Collie wants her. Alcide the WereWolf wants her. Calvin the were-panther wants her. Now I'm assuming Quinn the were-tiger wants her. We get the message. Sookie's different. Although, I will give her this, that for all this attention, Sookie remains fairly chast and hasn't yet devolved into Anita Blake territory. But still... yawn.

But, as I still have a few more of these kicking around and they don't take long to finish, and I'm not hating them or anything... I might as well just keep plowing through 'em.

2010-12-21T09:32:00.003-05:00

Well, I went and did a WHOLE bunch of re-reads instead of reading anything new, so my tally has now suffered. I'm not sure what came over me, but I re-read Tamlin (for the zillionth time) and then, because I'm completely obsessed with it due to the upcoming HBO series, I launched into the Song of Ice and Fire books again. Finished A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords, still have to start A Feast of Crows. Which I think I'm actually kind of putting off becuase once I finish that one, I've got nowhere to go again because GRRM still isn't finished the next one and, I hate to say it, the wait has gotten a little frustrating (since Crows was published 5 YEARS AGO!).

But re-reads are not why I'm here. Number 27 of the year is Dead to the World by Charlaine Harris. Yep, another of the Sookie Stackhouse books. My mother came over last week and dumped a stack of these books on me. So I started reading. They're like popcorn, where basically each one takes me a little over a day to finish. My mother gave them to me with the caveat "They get progressively worse written." And yeah, I'm only 4 books in and she's right. The plot on this one is pretty darn thin. Evil witches move into Shreveport to take over uber-vampire Eric's business interests. And in doing this, they curse Eric with a nasty bout of amnesia so he doesn't remember a thing. Sookie finds poor lost Eric wandering, and takes him home with her, for his own protection. As this Eric is much more to her liking (i.e. he's not an ultra-arrogant prick), she ends up sleeping with him. As she broke up with Bill in the previous book, hey, why not.

But basically, whilst there is some interesting world building still going on (the town of Hotshot which is completely populated by were-cats was interesting) and we get to see more of the inner workings of were-wolf society, she didn't build enough about the bad guys to make them seem like credible threats. They weren't really on-screen much until the big showdown with them, so I found them very underwhelming. The meat of this book is pretty much Sookie dealing with Eric in various states of undress. Not terribly interesting really. Had I felt the bad guys were more of a threat, I probably would've liked this book better.

Oh, she also introduces fairies, and I'm not sure I like where she's going with it. Especially her insistence in using the word 'fairy'. Yes I'm a snob, but really, Fey should be the way to go, it always sounds more ominous.

But anyway, I'll plow ahead to the next one, they're a quick read that will at least get my total up a bit more before the end of the year. Heh.

2010-11-23T10:11:00.002-05:00

Number 26 is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I (surprisingly) enjoyed her first book enough to give her second one a shoot.

Yeah, Sophmore Jinx happening here all right. Did not like this book too much at all.

It wasn't that I was expecting the same sort of thing from this book as her first, but I sure didn't expect to really not like ANY of the characters here. Well except for poor ol' OCD Martin, he was really the most sympathetic character of all.

Because the other characters? Twins Elspeth and Edie, twins Valentina and Julia, and poor grieving Robert? Man they suck. They're weak and manipulative and kinda downright stupid in a few cases.

Overall, this is a ghost story, and yes, ghost stories can be about a malevolent ghost, which I think is the case here, but its a passive-agressive malevolence, which just gets boring once you realize where it's going.

I also expected more out of her use of the cemetery next door. It's like she tossed it in just because she felt she needed something 'gothic' as she was trying to write a ghost story. It really didn't lend to the atmosphere though.

I found the ending rather depressing overall, not because I cared enough about these characters to feel bad on their behalf... actually, I'm not even sure why I found it depressing other than there seemed to be so much wasted potential in this book, where it could've been a powerful tale of loss and grieving and relationships, but as the characters were so thin and unlikeable, I didn't feel any depth to their emotions for the most part.

2010-11-16T21:34:00.002-05:00

Number 25 this year is Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. (Side note, I've read more Swedish books this year than I've ever read before in my life. That's right, a whole 2!)

It's been a looooong time since I've read a good vampire novel. In fact, I'm not sure I remember when it was I last read a good one. But this is a damn good novel. Centered around Oskar, a lonely, bullied 12 year old boy, and his new friend and next door neighbour, Eli. Who just happens to be a vampire.

I don't want to go into this book too much because I feel there's so much too it. Loneliness, brutality, loyalty, the cruelty of children and the cruelty of a predator, child abuse... it's all there. And yet despite all the ugliness, there is a strange beauty to the friendship of Oskar and Eli.

It's also a truly creepy vampire novel, which just makes it all the better. Eli is a fascinating creature, but she sure has hell doesn't sparkle. Thank the gods.

2010-11-11T14:00:00.002-05:00

Number 24 this year is Wizard's First Rule by Terry Goodkind. I picked this book up because my one cousin is a fanatical Goodkind follower, and so, even though I'd been... ehn about reading his books in the past, I thought I would pick this one out of the library and see what A is so devoted to.

I'm afraid I'm still not sure...

I wanted to like this book. I truly did. In fact, I did, for about the first quarter of it. I liked the main characters, Richard Cypher and Khalan, and I liked the supporting characters, and I liked the mystery, and the world building (the part where they cross the boundary was really, really well done).

But eventually I felt it just sort of devolved into cliche and pointless subplots. It became unrelentlessly bleak. Now, I know that bleakness is something that goes with a lot of high fantasy, afterall they're often dealing with end of the world scenarios, but skilled writers (be they fantasy or not) can balance the bleakness, whether with lightness of humour, or lightness of the characters succeeding in a task. Tolkein was particularly good at this, and I've always though Kay excelled at it as well. But Goodkind doesn't. He heaps impossibility and obsticle after obsticle onto the characters that after awhile I just wanted them to get the hell on with it. Some of these obsticles drew out into completely unneeded, undesired subplots that really didn't have anything to do with the main plot (even though they supposedly did). The one sado-masichistic-torture plot really just had me thinking... uh why? I don't need torture porn in my fantasy thank you very much (yes, I also know rape is a common theme in fantasy. Even my beloved Fionavar Tapestry gives into that trope. But at least there there was a REAL purpose, and the character rises above it and gets revenge in such a magnificent way. In WFR, well, there just seems to be some Stockholm Syndrome going on. Ugh).

I wanted more out of this than I got. The reluctant hero was cliche. The love story was cliche. The SOOOOOOO evil badguy was cliche (as were his SOOOOO evil henchmen), the hero's unreveled-until-the-last-minute-but-not-really-a-surprise parentage was a cliche. There are some interesting ideas burried in this book, but perhaps if Goodkind had slowed down and not thrown eveyrthing thing but the kitchen sink at his characters (and perhaps written less soapy dialogue), then maybe those interesting ideas could have shone through a bit more.

2010-11-08T13:51:00.002-05:00

Oh dear, been awhile again... Number 23 is Of Human Bondage by W. Somerset Maugham. This book, discovered in my in-laws basement, is supposed to be rather autobiographical, and I think I can see that even though I know little of Maugham's life. The nearly whimsical tone of Razor's Edge isn't here, even though both novels deal quite a bit with the theme of finding oneself. But while I was fine with the journey in Razor's Edge, I found myself impatient with Philip Carey's journey to find something to do in his life.

Philip didn't have an easy life, born with a club foot and orphaned at a young age, he was sent to live with his childless uncle (a rural pastor) and aunt. The uncle is a rather stern man who has no idea what to do with a child. The aunt, loves him completely, but she doesn't so much inspire love from Philip (she does seem to inspire his pity though) and seems to have no idea what to do with him.

Philip doesn't seem to know what to do with himself either. He hates grammar school (he is of course, bullied about his club foot) and develops a rather prickly personality in defense of the bullying. He decides not to go to university, but rather go to Germany and study there. He returns home, tries accounting for awhile (hates that and quits before he's fired pretty much), decides to go to Paris and be an art student, loves it but isn't quite good enough, returns home and decides to be a doctor, goes about it hap hazardly (he invests in South African minds, but of course the Boer War makes that a non-venture), is broke, finally completes his doctorate and becomes a doctor and retires (and marries) to practice in a small town.

This is all fine and dandy because sure, sometimes it takes young people a long time to figure out what they want to do with themselves, but Philip's attitude is just so... annoying it was hard to get past. When it comes right down to it, I didn't like Philip as a character. He's one of those characters you just want to shake and yell "Get on with it!". He comes across as ungreatful, spoiled, and rather callous. But I must admit, when he gets his heart broken by a woman even more callous than him, I didn't feel good about it, more like 'gods he's so stupid...'.

And I didn't really like the ending. It feels like Philip 'settled'. That he gave up his dreams to just be a doctor and be married to a girl who (for some bizarre reason) loves him and to have a quite life. I'm not sure what dreams he gave up, because I was never really sure what he was striving for, or if he was striving for anything. I guess I just wanted the ungreatful little bastard to sound like he was happy with his chosen life, rather than resigned to it.

2010-10-20T09:01:00.004-04:00

Number 22 is You Suck by Christopher Moore. I picked this up mainly because it was cheap and because I like Christopher Moore. I like his books a lot. Problem is, I didn't realize this was a sequel. Oops. I'm not sure if that's why I didn't like this one as much as I've enjoyed his other books. I definitely felt like I'd missed a lot as there is a lot of reference to what happened in Bloodsucking Fiends and that's also where most of the characters were introduced. For some reason I felt the... danger in this book lacking. The main bad guy didn't come off as all that scary.

However, there were still fun moments and I especially liked the chapters told from the POV of trying-to-hard-to-be-Goth teenager Abby Normal.

Guess I'd better go and read Bloodsucking Fiends at some point.

2010-10-06T10:18:00.002-04:00

Number 21 is The Red Queen by Phillipa Gregory. This is a sequal to the her White Queen that I read earlier this year. The Red Queen in question is the heiress to the House of Lancaster, one of the two ruling houses (the other being the House of York) embroiled in the War of the Roses. Lady Margaret Beaufort (later Tudor, Stafford and then Stanley) is the mother of the future Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs. She is (in Gregory's tale) an increadibly pious and ambitious woman. She feels it is her destiny to be important (else she would not have been born to such a high station in life) and if she cannot be Queen of England herself, then she will at least be mother to the King. Married at an extremely early age in order to bring forth the heir to the House of Lancaster, Margaret decides that this is her God given destiny (she has 'visions' of Joan of Arc and whatnot that prove the righteousness of her cause to her) to raise her son to the throne in place of the upstart Yorks. Basically, the be all and end all of Margaret's existence is seeing this through.

It's not a bad book. It's an increadibly quick read. The problem is the main character of Margaret is increadibly unsympathetic. I know that this is undoubtedly a stylistic choice on Gregory's part, but it made it rather difficult to be truly engaged in the book. Margaret is a vain, hateful, zealot who desperately wants power. When someone wants power that much, they probably shouldn't have it. She is also frighteningly un-self aware, ascribing vanity and hubris to everyone else but herself. She's obvioulsy smart (and historically she was said to be extraordinarliy leaned for a woman of the time), but you almost want her to fail (despite knowing very well that her son does triumph to defeat Richard III and start the House of Tudor) becuase she is so freaking insufferable.

It is an interesting look at the uses of the power of the women during the War of the Roses, but because Margaret was so unlikeable, I almost needed more focus on some of the male characters (or just other characters in general) to make the book more palatable.

2010-10-01T14:00:00.003-04:00

Number 20! Whoohoo! The twentieth book of the year is The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Cause yes, if I have an opportunity to read a blockbuster novel for free, I will generally take it. (I borrowed it from my Dad).

It's a huge, rambling, thriller and it's... ok. It's also pretty uncomfortable in parts, and I gather that it's because Larsson himself was very much against violence against women. But if he is, then I must admit I find it strange there's so much of that in here. And like, there's A LOT. But perhaps that's his way of proving his point... I dunno... but I didn't really feel like he was taking a stand against violence against women, it really did feel like he was rather... sensationalizing it.

Anyway, I don't want to get too much into this novel, it's kinda too big to do so. The main characters are ok, although I do think I find Lisbeth a little annoying after awhile. Her 'schtick' gets a little boring and all the repeat of her being a 'victim' just makes me wonder about some of her sudden feelings later... Blokvist is also fine, a strangely innocent version of a hardened reporter, but I did find his sexual prowness a little off-putting.

Not sure if I'll bother moving forward in this trilogy or not... jury's still out.

2010-09-28T11:09:00.003-04:00

Number 19 is The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell. I'm actually not familiar with the author's work as a radio personality, and in fact, I ended up reading this book because my father had asked for it as a birthday present, and I just found myself flipping through it and being engaged in the first few pages. Early American history is a time period I'm woefully uninformed of (of course, I'm equally uninformed about early Canadian history, having forgotten most of it at this point), so I thought what the heck, I'll read about the founding of the American colonies. Vowell makes it easy to be interseted though. Her writing style is definitely quirky as she flips back and forth between the history of the 1630s era settlers of the Boston and Rhode Island areas, and present day parallels. The book is often humourous in following the Puritan leaders and their often unbendable views of religion and law, but they are definitely not the boring, uptight individuals we've been pretty much made to think they were. Of course, the book also goes into not humourous times, with the Pequot War being particularly brutal and upsetting. Vowell's thesis for this book is that the Puritans are not exactly who we think they were. They were religious and hardy, but they were also highly literate and were big into education, which is something Vowell feels the modern US of A has lost sight of.

2010-09-21T10:25:00.003-04:00

Number 18 took me a looong time to finish. It's not that I didn't enjoy it, it's that it is a dense, 800-page book written in 1848, so they tend to take a little longer. Book 18 is Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray.

This book is subtitled "A Novel Without a Hero", which is pretty much true. Most of the main characters are not 'hero' material. Definitely not the main character, Becky Sharpe. Becky is a scheming, manipulative social climber, desperate to elevate her station in life from orphaned child of (ugh) artists, to become a respectable (and of course wealthy) Lady. She moves through the eschelons of society with such purpose and cunning that Machiavelli himself would admire. Of course, her house of cards all does finally come crashing down on her and she is ruined for awhile, but she ends up pulling herself up at the expense of another character.

The other characters aren't really much better than Becky. There's George Osborne, self-obessesed but rather dashing, he's the one that Becky's school-mate, Amelia Sedley falls for. Amelia is a sweet girl, kind and good natured, but you also get the idea she's none too bright. And her obsession over George nearly kills her a couple of times. Not too bright and not too strong either. Amelia's brother Jospeh is plump, vain and increadibly gullable. It is he that Becky pretty much ruins at the end of the book. And then there's the man who becomes Becky's husband, Captain Rawdon Crawley, a card shark and a wasteral who counted on inheriting from his rich aunt, but when he marries Becky, he is disinherited because he married so far below his station. And then there is the one, and pretty much only fairly noble character in the book, William Dobbin. George's best friend, but he harbours an unrequited crush on Amelia, and seems immune to Becky's charms. He always tries to do his best for those around him, and is without a doubt, the most sympathetic character of them all (although, as Rawdon becomes more and more aware of his wife's shortcomings and is increasingly fond of his little boy, there is some redemption for him as well).

The Napoleanic Wars interrupt the novel for a bit, with repercussions for all. Becky rises through the ranks of society, but she leaves a trail of financial ruin in her wake. The Crawleys have no money, and never pay anyone anything they owe. Becky is cold towards her own son, and basically flirts and holds court of her own with many male admirers, whilst pretty much ignoring her husband. It's during this time that Rawdon begins to realize she's not the loving wife she pretends to be.

It's an interesting novel in that it's actually quite dark, and gets moreso as the novel progresses. The characters are pretty much all despicable. Money and the pursuit of it is pretty much the be all and end all of some of their existences. And those who do end up in poverty do so because of someone's foolishness with money. No one's really evil though (well, maybe Becky), but they are all fairly unlikable. Of course, this novel is hailed as a satire of society, and it certaintly does its job. Overall, I quite liked it, it's certaintly an interesting look at society warts and all, and in Becky Sharpe, he created one hell of an anti-hero.

2010-08-30T19:32:00.002-04:00

Number 17 this year is a book (literally) tossed at my by one of my aunts. We don't really share the same tastes in reading material, but what the hell, I (used to) read fast enough that I'll try just about anything once. So, here we have an honest to goodness whodunnit in A Cure for All Diseases by Reginald Hill.

I don't read a lot of honest to goodness mysteries. I went through my Agatha Christie kick when I was 12 or 13. But I never progressed past that. A few years ago I tried some actual noir detective stories by reading some Dashiell Hammett (The Maltese Falcon, The Thin Man) and I really enjoyed those, but that was it. And it's strange I don't read more of it, considering how much I love old 80s detective shows and police procedurals such as L&O. But anyway...

This book is obviously one of a series surrounding the adventures of Superintendent Andy Dalziel (aka The Fat Man) and DCI Peter Pascoe. Of course, having never read any of their books before, I had no idea they'd been around for so long. Seems in the previous book Dalziel had been shot and left for dead (or something), so this one starts with him convalesing at a private clinic in the picturesque town of Sandytown. Of course, not everything is so picturesque, and as we meet the town's residents, eventually there is a murder (of course) as the oft-married town matriarch, Lady Daphne Denham, turns up dead at her own hog roast.

Of course there's a plethora of suspects; Lady D's young relatives; her nephew and niece and a young distant cousin she has taken in. All three are vying for a place of honour in her will, and Lady D took great delight in making them dance for her favour. There are other relatives from her other marriages, including a very disgruntled former brother-in-law, plus business partners/rivals such as Tom Parker, who is working towards making Sandytown a well-known spa town, and then there are others whom Lady D has taken a uh... romantic interest in. Basically, everyone in the town has had some sort of relationship (familial, business, romantic) with Lady D, and many have some sort of motive to kill her.

The tale though is told for the most part from the perspective of two outsiders to the town, Dalziel himself and young Charlotte (Charley) Heywood, a psychologist in training who accidentally gets mixed up with Tom Parker's family and so comes to Sandytown to work on her thesis. We get Charley's impressions of the events through a series of one-sided emails to her sister. And we get Dalziel's impressions of events through a one-sided dictation into a dictaphone (or tape recorder or something).

All in all, I found those two methods of narration to be extremely annoying after awhile. It felt a little too gimicky. In fact, I was ready to give up the ghost when finally, after the murder, the book resorts to a normal narrative once Pascoe shows up with his team of investigators to ... well investigate.

The characters were fine. Dalziel is quite a character, a big, rolicking, VERY British fellow. But of course, his borgeouise bluster masks a very keen mind, which is kinda always the way, isn't it? Pascoe is of course the counterbalance, a by the books, smooth gentleman. I'm sure they make a good team, but they weren't really together for much of this book.

I think I found it the book a little too predictable. I figured out who did it pretty early on, even with all the red-herrings, there just didn't seem like any other likely suspects. There is a little bit of a twist at the end, but it didn't really change my feeling of the outcome. There's also an 'inappropriate' relationship I saw coming a mile away.

I felt it was a bit overlong, too much setting up of the setting and the characters and the cutesy narrative went on for WAAYYY too long. It picked up a bit after the murder (so the narrative gets back to normal), but it was an entertaining enough read. For once I mean, I doubt I'll be picking up any more in this series.

2010-08-18T15:49:00.004-04:00

Number 16 this year is Elfland by Freda Warrington. I'd never heard of this author before, but as this book seems to be her first released in N.A (she's had a few others released over in Britian), guess that shouldn't be too surprising. I picked it up because well, I like elves :)

The book revolves around the relationships between the members of two families, the Wilder and the Fox families. They are neighbours in some pastoral-like part of England and are both rather well to do. The Wilder family, headed by Lawerence Wilder is the more mysterious of the two, living in a big, scary, gothic sounding mansion, isolated from the village and with the two boys Sam and Jon attending schools. The Fox family, headed by the genial Auberon, are open, warm, family orientated members of the community and their three children Rosie, Matthew and Lucas go to the local public schools.

But of course, there is more to both families than it seems, for they are the "elves" elves of the title, or rather Vaethyr, Earth dwelling Aetherials. Turns out there are several other Vaethyr families living nearby and there is a also a nearby Gate to Elfland of which Lawrence Wilders is the gate keeper.

When the novel starts several dramatic events happen: Lawrence refuses to continue opening the Gate due to unnamed dangerous things on the other side waiting to break onto Earth, while his wife Ginny seems to have a breakdown and later leaves him. Some years later, Lawrence returns with a new wife, Sapphire, a human this time and it seems that things will return to normal but Lawrence still refuses to open the gate and the Vaethyr villagers grow more and more impatient and angry with him, so only Auberon' trust and support keeps them from trying to "depose" him.

The book is mainly through Rosie Fox's POV, and as she starts out young but matures into a young woman, we learn much about Aetherial customs and their Otherworld as she does. She goes through the usual unrequited crush, but eventually falls in love with Sam Wilder, which you kinda saw coming considering how much she hated him for most of the novel.

I liked Elfland, it's well written and her characters are well done. She's done a good job of world building her fantasy world, but weirdly, it's the real world that seems to have suffered at the expense of her 'other' world. Warrington's Britain seems almost too pretty, too perfect, too... unreal. Perhaps that is the point though, that the Aetherials do unconsciously influence their world around them, and bring part of Elfland to the mundane (there is much talk of shifting into the layers of Elfland that inhabit the surface very near the mundane plane). I mean, the Aetherials definitely have an effect on the humans nearby them, often to the detriment of that human. So, a small quibble really, but had Britain felt more real, perhaps I would've understood why a whack of Aetherials chose to live there, unless it really was just because they enjoy the trappings of living extremely comfortably on good ol' materialistic Earth.

I'd be curious in checking out more of Warrington's stuff.

2010-08-11T19:24:00.003-04:00

Number 15 this year is Atonement by Ian McEwan. Not really sure why I picked this novel up; the premise did sound kinda interesting, but I never wanted to see the movie as I felt it looked overblown and overwraught. But anyway, saw it in the library and figured what the heck.

The plot is simple enough; 13-year-old Briony is witness to a burgeoning affair between her elder sister Cecilia and Robbie Turner, their housekeeper's son. Briony first reads a letter meant for Cecilia only (a rather descriptive letter of what Robbie envisions doing to Cecilia, and one that was mistakingly sent), and then finds the two in the midst of an embrace in the library. But because of the words she has already read, Briony decides Robbie is a brute and his attentions towards Cecilia are unwelcome, so later, when Briony and Cecilia's cousin Lola is attacked, Briony is mistakenly, and yet totally convinced, that Robbie is the culprit. He is arrested, tried and sent to prison, later to join the army and be sent to serve in WWII in exchange for a lighter sentence. Cecilia, furious and completely convinced of Robbie's innocence, leaves her family to become a nurse and does not speak to them again for many years. Briony, as she gets older, realizes that she was wrong and wants to make atonement for her actions.

I started off liking the book. Even though Briony is an insufferable character (she's obviously supposed to be) and you know darn well who the actual culprit behind Lola's attack is right away, the characters are fine, the descriptions nice and there is a good flow to the novel. The narrative switches to Robbie's POV in France, fighting the war, and the horrors of the front line (and specifically the retreat and evacuation of Dunkirk). The narrative shifts again, and then we are with Briony, training to be a nurse, and witnessing the horrors of the front line in a different way. It is in this section that we find out Briony knows she was wrong, knows she destroyed Robbie's life and that she must make amends for this.

Which is all well and fine, but then... then we come to the part I hated.

People who know me know that I hate the movie Saving Private Ryan. I hate it for one particular reason; the story has been told (as the viewer watches it), from the POV of the men in the unit sent to retrieve Private Ryan. This was fine and dandy. What I hated was the end of that movie, where we find out that no, this is Private Ryan himself relating the tale. What??? He WASN'T THERE FOR MOST OF THE MOVIE!! This destroyed the narrative for me and stripped any reliability from the narration for me (an aside; I have nothing against unreliable narrators. I rather like them. But I don't want to be surprised by one. An unreliable narrator should still be present for the events, just putting their own, unreliable spin on them. Not someone who is now telling shit they heard about second or third hand.) Anyway, the end of Atonement for me, is another Saving Private Ryan. The narrative as we have become accustomed to is pulled out from under us and basically, (although we're told it is true), fictionalized. I'm not even entirely sure why I disliked it so much, but I did. I felt cheated I think.

Which is too bad, it wasn't a bad book overall.

2010-07-27T09:47:00.003-04:00

Ugh. This one took me awhile. Re-watching all of Lost is not conduscive to getting anything done other than re-watching all of Lost...

Book number 14 (only 14! ouch) is Contested Will by James Shapiro. As you may have gathered from this blog by now, I'm a bit of a Shakespeare groupie. Not only do I love reading and watching his plays, but I also really enjoy reading scholarly works about him and his plays. Yes, this is a hold over from my university degree of choice. I'm usually open to all sorts of theories about Shakespeare, or different interpretations of his plays, but if there is one thing I refuse to believe, or give much credit to, it is the (various) theories that someone (or someones) other than Shakespeare wrote his plays. And that is what this book is about.

Normally, I wouldn't have given a book like this a second look, my dislike of the authorship question is so great, but I knew Shapiro was coming at it from a place I could comfortably get behind: Shapiro himself believes that Shakespeare wrote his plays (and yes, some of them were collaberative, but he still had his hand in them), but he gives the history and some of the reasoning why people believe that there is no way a 'simple man from Stratford' could have written all those magnificent works.

Shapiro goes through the main candidates; Francis Bacon, the Earl of Oxford, Christopher Marlowe, etc., and also talks about some of the famous people who have bought into the authorship controversy (such as Freud, Helen Keller, Mark Twain and Henry James) and lays out their evidence (or rather the lack thereof as far as I'm concerned) and the history of each of these movements. I did find it interesting on how the arguments really do lack any hard proof (which is usually also a main resoning of why they believe William of Stratford didn't write the plays; there's no 'proof'), and that they refute Shakespeare because 'he just couldn't have'. Even though I thought Shapiro was being as fair as he could be towards these theories, they still sound like crackpot theories often devised by crackpots. Despite all the evidence Shapiro lays out, I came nowhere near believing that Shakespeare didn't write his plays.

Shapiro also gives, of course, a defending chapter on Shakespeare. It actually seems remarkably slim, and that's because there isn't a lot of hard evidence that the detractors seem to want. But there are poems from contemporaries such as Ben Jonson who basically tell us that William Shakespeare of Stratford was the playwrite. Shakespeare's place in the world of Elizabethan/Jacobean theatre was well assured. He had powerful patrons (including James I) and obviously made a good living from the theatre. His plays were collected after his death and published in a manner that few things were published in at the time (an expensive folio edition), because the publishers knew the plays had to be preserved and that there was a market for them. Also, these were men who knew Shakespeare personally.

Overall, for me, this book just reiterated what I always believed, that no one else but Shakespeare could've written his plays. So I will continue to be endlessly annoyed when anyone brings up the whole 'what about the theory that such and such wrote Shakespeare's plays?' Pure bunk as far as I'm concerned.

2010-07-01T20:10:00.002-04:00

Lucky number 13 has been reached. (Note to self, never start three, very large books nearly simulataneously. You don't get any of them done quickly, and one you had to return to the library before you finished it because you couldn't renew it...) Book 13 is The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt. This book didn't grab me at first, but it became so... brutal that it basically bludgeoned me into liking it. It is a very Dickensian by way of steam-punk kinda novel. Hunt's world feels very much like Victorian England, mixed with magic and ancient Aztek-like gods trying to make a comeback under the guise of a communist (or rather communityist) type uprising. It's all terribly intricate and quite intreguiging.

The main characters are two young orphans, Oliver Brooks and Molly Templar. Both seem, at first glance to be unremarkable, but both are being hunted for unknown reasons. The reasons are later revealed, and both are extremely important to, not only the survival of their country (the Land of Jackals), but basically the entire world. A revolution has begun in Jackals, one of increadible brutality and bloodshed, and it is up to the two youngsters to help end it, along with the motley crue of allies they've picked up along the way. There is, like with any Victorian-type novel, a huge cast of characters. Some were quite interesting and I wished they'd stuck around more.

Sometimes I find steam-punk buckles under it's own technobabble, but I didn't find it too bad here. There is still quite a bit of technobabble, especially when it comes to the sentient steammen machines who alive in their own right, but it fits the world and doesn't seem too bad.

There is a lot of political upheavel in this book, and one would think Hunt is definitely not a fan of communism, or else he just took it one hugely off-kilter step further.

The bad guys in this book are all terribly bad, there are no shades of grey here, and when they are defeated, it is a big relief.

The book wrapped up a little too quickly in my mind; I would've liked to have understood some of the more immediate aftermath of the revolution, but Hunt didn't really explain it. Ah well, maybe he's thinking sequels.

2010-06-04T10:09:00.000-04:00

Number 12 this year is The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. I really, really liked this novel, even though it ends quite horribly (and I use 'horribly' because it does end with the horrors of WWI), it starts out so beautifully as we meet a group of familys living in the countryside of England (Kent specifically) towards the end of the Victorian era. The beginning is nearly pastoral; a group of artistically minded, liberal families, their gaggle of precocious children, they put on plays, have revles, tramp around the countryside, and create. Yes, it is perfect. On the surface. For these families all have secrets. Infidelity abounds, artistic genius devolves into maddness, and the beginnings of an anti-Victorian sexual revolution ensnares too many of the younger generation in not positive ways.

The Woodvilles are the book's main family, with Olive Woodville, a writer of children's stories, being the centre. She is a brilliant writer, but in order to tell her stories, she has, almost ironically, had to ignore the rearing of her children. It falls to her sister to bring the Woodville brood up. The closest Olive brings herself to them is that for each child she writes a private tale, tailored to that child, and read only by that child. However, towards the end of the novel she breaks this, and takes the her favourite tale to turn into a stage play. She does not tell her son Tom (whose tale it is), and this invasion of Tom's privacy has distasterous events.

I found this book to be a lovely pastiche of a Victorian novel. It is hugely detailed, rambling and deals with the darkness of society under the bright, civilized trappings of Victorian society. As the world changes, the various generations try to insert themsevles (or not) into the world, learn from it, change it, etc., with variying degrees of success. But the ending overall is quite sad, as WWI comes crashing onto the younger generation, and they pay a heavy price for the changing world.

I borrowed this book from the library, but I'm seriously thinking of buying myself a copy.

2010-05-21T21:49:00.000-04:00

Number 11 is The White Queen by Phillipa Gregory. I've never read any of Gregory's other books, such as the best selling The Other Boelyn Girl. For some reason, I don't find the Tudors all that interesting. Or rather, I don't find the Tudor males all that interesting as I do find Elizabeth I quite fascinating. ANYWAY, so the reason I did pick this book up is because it deals with the Wars of the Roses, which is a point of English history I've long been interested in, probably since I first read the line uttered by Susan in Prince Caspian "Oh dear, this is more confusing than the Wars of the Roses".

So anyway, yes, I picked this up and dived in. The White Queen herself is the wife of the Yorkist king, Edward IV. Edward spies the lovely, widowed Elizabeth Woodville while riding through her family's lands, and they both instantly fall for one another. They marry in secret, and this marriage is not popular amongst Edward's advisors and family. The Woodville's previously supported the Lancastrian claim to the throne, but of course switch allegiances once they are connected to the Yorks.

It's a good look at the use of much of the feminie power struggle in the Wars of the Roses. Elizabeth positions her family and children into places of power to secure the York hold on the throne. The problem is that there is almost as much infighting in the York family as there is against the Lancastrians. And the main figure behind the Lancastrian claim to put the ailing Henry VI back on his throne is through his indomitable wife, Margaret d'Anjou. Another of the central characters is Elizabeth's French, wise-woman mother, who has a bit of magic to her.

It's a fun book, a nice love story and a different look at the Wars of the Roses. It seems to be fairly historically accurate while infusing the characters with enough personality to keep it interesting.

I may go on to pick up the next book in the series, which, I know doesn't really end well for the Yorks...

2010-05-15T19:15:00.000-04:00

Book number 10. 10!! I've finally reached double digits this year!... sigh. Took me long enough.

ANYWAY... Book number 10 is A Gentleman's Game by Greg Rucka. Now, I'm more familiar with Rucka as a comic book writer. Mainly from his run on Batman, and then his relaunch of Checkmate. His Batman stuff I though was... ok, but I really enjoyed Checkmate. But the reason I read this book is that I have read his entire run of his self-created series, Queen and Country. I read Queen and Country because it is basically a comic-book form of the old British series, the Sandbaggers, which was something I'm very glad my husband made me watch.

So anyway, A Gentleman's Game revolves around the same cast and crew as Queen and Country, main character Tara Chase is Minder One, head of the elite covert ops team sent in to do the dirtiest of dirty work Britian can come up with. And after an attack on the London Underground by Muslim extremists, Tara is dispatched to Yemen to kill a Saudi Arabian religious leader, who presumably is ultimately behind the attacks. Tara fufills her task, but the collateral damage she is also forced to assassinate is somewhat politically sensitive, and because of this, Tara finds herself persona non grata and persued by her own government.

I have to give it to Rucka, his pacing is extremely good and his action scenes are well done. I had wondered if the lack of pictures would hinder his words, but he gets his words across to create lovely pictures themselves. The characters are a wee bit cliche (or maybe I just think so because I have seen the Sandbaggers), with your tough-as-nails, more dangerous than any bloke, Tara Chase and the gruff but extremely professional D-Ops, Crocker and the rest of the usual suspects. One of the main characters is an ex-British national who has converted to Islam and we see the terrorist POV from him, which I did find very interesting, but I also felt his story line was tied up too quickly.

Overall, I did enjoy this book. However, I think that I would prefer him to tell more Queen and Country stories in their original, comic book format. That way I can picture the characters as they're drawn, and not as those from the Sandbaggers, which is what, for some reason, I was doing.

2010-05-10T14:05:00.000-04:00

Book 9 is The Torontonians by Phyllis Brett Young.

Ok, the first thing I must mention here is that I am a born and bred Torontonian. I am (on my mother's side) a 5th generation Torontonian. I love this city. I know it has it's problems (as do most large cities), but overall, I am happy and proud to call Toronto my home and my hometown. So you can see why I would pick up a book called The Torontonians.

Published in 1960, this is actually quite the feminist book of suburban housewife ennui and desperation. This is interesting because it really came before a lot of the big feminist manifestos of the 60s. And yet, here it is, a sort of Revolutionary Road set in Toronto and the surrounding (make believe) suburb of Rowanwood. (which I *think* is a Richmond Hill stand in?)

I liked this book a lot mainly because of the setting. It's interesting to read of a Toronto that's similar, but not exactly like the one I'm familiar with. Neihbourhoods such as the Annex and Forest Hill make appearances, and it speaks of the interesting divide of above the hill and below the hill (Toronto has a part of the Niagara Escarpement crawling through it, making a fairly significant climb uphill between St.Clair and Eglington avenues), with the well off spreading above the hill. I found that interesting because the philisophical division of Toronto is not so much north and south, but rather it is East and West, with Yonge St as the dividing line. Native Torontonians are usually from the East End or the West End and cross over with only great difficulty (I am a West Ender).

Anyway, the book itself deals with one Karen Whitney, Toronto born and raised, well-educated, upper middle-class background, house-wife, empty-nester, who is, as we met her contemplating suicide. She is so tired of her empty existence in Rowanwood, which boils down to finishing and decorating her home, throwing parties she has no desire to throw (and attending such things as well), and having to deal with the secrets and numbing lives of her neighbours. She is sick of it all, and unable to articulate why she is not happy with her life, but she's not.

We see Karen's life in flashbacks, juxtaposed with her life now. She still has many of the same friends, and sometimes they are part of the problem with her life. The one thing I did really like about this book was that her husband, Rick, is not part of the problem. He is supportive and loving and not sleeping with his secretary, and that almost seems like a nice change, especially compared with the boorish, stupid, neglectful, cheating men that make up many of the neighbours. Rick isn't sure what to do about Karen's problems, but he's also wise enough to know that she has them and that she has to find a solution herself.

Basically, the solution seems to be to move the hell out of the suburbs and back to Toronto. I could've told you that ;)

2010-05-02T15:26:00.000-04:00

Number 8 for 2010 is Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock. This book is basically a book about the power of creation, both on an individual and cultural level. Set in post WWII England, the main character, Steven Huxley returns to England on news of his father's death. Upon return to his family home, he learns of his father's obsession with the neighbouring Ryhope Wood has now become his brother's obsession as well.

What Huxley the elder discovered, was that every folkhero and legend who had ever been known in English history has an archetype, or mythago as Huxley called them, residing in the woods, whose very existence was tied, not to belief in the legend, but simply to the imagination of the surrounding minds. While some of the mythagos are of popular characters, like Robin Hood or King Arthur, many more of the mythagos encountered by the elder Huxley and then later Steven and his brother Christian, were forgotten except within the confines of Ryhope Wood.

Of course, the obsession gets out of hand when Christian disappears into the woods, looking for his lost, mythago love, Guiwenneth. She being the same mythago their father fell in love with, and who would later also claim Steven's heart. But the thing with Guiwenneth is, is she the same mythago each time, or a little bit different each time depending on whose mythago she is?

Christian's return for Guiwenneth (who has fallen in love with Steven and is basically living with him), is sudden and violent. It also forces Steven to journey deep into the wood in search of her and for revenge on Christian. But once in the wood and dealing with the wood's mythago inhabitants, Steven realizes that he, his brother and his father have become part of the woods' mythos themselves. Does this mean mythagos can create mythagos themselves? Or are Christian and Steven simply made part of the mythos due to their involvement with it? Considering that the wood itself was continuing to grow up to the house and even in the house, it would almost seem like the wood was consuming them or forcing them to join the myth.

It is an interesting book for sure, and I'm definitely interested in reading the sequels to it.

2010-04-28T14:12:00.000-04:00

Number 7 this year is, Dead in Dallas another of the Sookie Stackhouse books by Charlaine Harris. I guess I'm liking these because they are a nice, quick, popcorn read, and I haven't had too many of those this year.

This book builds on Sookie's world. She and vampire Bill Compton are still dating (although they hit a few snags in their relationship here and there) and must journey to Dallas to do a favour for a nest of vampires when she is 'loaned' out by powerful vampire Eric.

An enjoyable read overall. Harris builds on her world nicely, as we see the impact the outing of vampires has made, from anti-vampire religious fanatics to new businesses set up to cater to the vampires. It all makes sense and doesn't seem outlandish.

Harris also introduces more supernatural beings to her world. She seems to be saying that when one supernatural bunch comes out of the closet, more are soon to follow.

The only thing I didn't like about this book, was if the murder that happens at the beginning crosses over into the tv show True Blood, I'm going to be really upset.

2010-04-20T12:11:00.000-04:00

Number 6 is Privilege of the Sword by Ellen Kushner. This is a sequel of sorts to her much earlier novel, Swordspoint, which I read and enjoyed. The only thing about it is that I can't remember a darned thing about it. So when I noticed that PotS wasn't a total sequel but just shared a few characters, well that made it easier to decide to pick up. And true to what it said, I didn't need to remember any of the back story from Swordspoint, and any back story I needed was supplied to me.

The story is about Katherine Talbert, the niece of the Mad Duke Tremontaine (Alec Campion from Swordspoint). The Duke takes her from her home (there had been a family feud going) and decides that she will be trained to be a swordsman, which is something women didn't do. So Katherine is plunged into the strange, decadent world of her uncle, a world she doesn't come to embrace, but she certainly comes to appreciate some of the eccentricities.

The novel moved briskly enough to keep my interest, and is pretty much a character study, especially in the person of the Mad Duke. Alec's madness is of the clear-eyed sort that calls into question all of our basic assumptions. In our terms, he is as neurotic as it's possible to be and still function, but he is also cagey, brilliant, and ruthless, and we're never quite sure where the one leaves off and the other starts. He is also an idealist and a humanitarian, and his clear-eyed vision on the follies of privilege is the starting point for much of the satire in the novel.

Katherine herself is a pretty good against-the-type heroine. She is brave (right from the beginning actually, in leaving her family to do her duty for them) and she becomes a good swordsman enough so to win fights against men and to champion her friend Artemisia who was wronged by her fiancee Lord Ferris. Katherine's naievty amidst all the shenanigans of the Mad Duke's world could be trite, but ends up actually working as it is a nice counterpoint, but it also doesn't make her prudish. She is disturbed by some things, but intreigued by others and I liked that, it seems a more natural reaction. And once the Mad Duke actually does start taking an interest in her and they talk, the book becomes even more enjoyable.

I liked this enough to go dig out my copy of Swordspoint and re-read it.

2010-04-08T14:38:00.000-04:00

There are a lot of authors out there that I love, but I can safely say that of them all, Guy Gavriel Kay is my absolute favourite. So, whenever he has a new book out, I am absurdly happy. I must rush out and get the new book as soon as I can, and then I want my life to basically cease it's usual pace so that all I have to do is sit down and read the new book and get lost in whatever world Kay has created for me this time. So, new book was acquired last Friday, and I finished it today. Number 5 of the year is Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay.

To be honest, I wasn't sure what to expect when I heard this was a book set in a thinly disguised Tang Dynasty-8th Century -type China. I'm not overly fascinated by the Far East, so I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy this one or not. I should've known better and trusted in Kay unquestioningly like I usually do.

Under Heaven is gripping and epic and just an utter pleasure to read. He painstakingly builds the lands of Kitai (China) and it's neighbours, and he weaves court and political intreigue just as well as George R. R. Martin does. The main character, Tai, goes off to honour the memory of his recently deceased father by journeying to a remote battlefield and laying to rest the remains of hundreds of soldiers who died there. He does this for two years, and towards the end of it, he is given a great, and extravegant gift by the princess of Tagur (as Tai was also burying their dead, as it was Kitai and Tagur who fought at this place) that changes his life forever. Tai is a good character, resourceful, witty, a little lost about his place in the world, and just... competent , as many of Kay's characters tend to be. His life becomes a grand adventure, and it definitely puts one in the mind of the old proverb; "may you live in interesting times", as that is exactly what Tai is living in and has become intricately intwined in.

I cannot go into all the details about this book, as it has so many plot threads and characters and what have you, which is pretty standard for a Kay novel. His prose is elegant and descriptive, also as usual. It's a big book, but well thought out. It never comes crashing down under it's own weight, and I didn't even really see the ramifications of some characters actions until it was too late. And that's a good thing, for there are surprises, but they make sense.

The ending is, for the most part, a happy one for Tai, which is a good thing, considering Kay doesn't always allow his characters for a most happy ending. But this time there is one, and it is deserved, for which I'm glad.

I mean heck, I still haven't totally forgiven him for Diarmuid ;)

2010-04-03T14:19:00.000-04:00

They're coming a bit quicker now since I put down the huge book and picked up some fun stuff. Number 4 this year is Fool by one of my very favourite authors, Christopher Moore. When I spied this book at a bookstore in Buffalo (there for a lovely day trip to the Albright Knox Art Gallery), I knew I had to have. Christopher Moore doing a retelling of King Lear? I am there. And he did not disappoint.

Moore's books are often hilariously bawdy, and in this one, he gets completely carried away. There's lots of shagging and snogging (this is England afterall), but of course, most of it is in the darker context of the tragedy that is King Lear. It's a very well done juxatposition, managing to make a comedy out of one of Shakespeare's biggest tragedies.

The tale is told (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead style), by King Lear's fool, Pocket. The Fool in Shakespeare's play doesn't even get a name, but here, he gets a name, a background and one hell of a personality. Pocket is completely immersed in the polictical machinations of Lear's horrid daughters (Cordelia excepted of course) and in fact, it is him that causes much of the action to start and finish. Well, he's partly goaded on and aided by Macbeth's Three Witches (seems those girls get around... like most of the other women in this book. heh)

I started trying to remember where and how Moore deviates from the play, but as the man himself said "that way lies madness" (oh, and Moore quoted that too), so I stopped, because it is indeed pretty impossible. So I just let go and enjoyed the ride for what it was, a journey into the bawdy, hilarious, tragedy laced world of Shakespeare but filtered through the wonderfully wicked mind of Christopher Moore.

2010-03-28T19:01:00.000-04:00

Nearly the end of March and I'm only on book three. I've had to put aside the other book I'm currently reading because it's very large and very involved and takes awhile to get through. I've really been reading 'scholarly' books so far this year, and while being very interesting and enriching, is also slowing my book consumption down to a crawl. So I went to the library and decided I needed something... quick. And upon spying the first of Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse vampire novels, I knew I had a winner.

What really spurred my wanting to read Dead Until Dark was a recent viewing of the first episode of True Blood, the tv series based on the books. I enjoyed the show for the most part and so decided that checking out the book was worthwhile.

I enjoyed the book, I like Harris' world. The supernatural lies very uneasily with the 'real' world as vampires have only recently admitted their existence and 'come out of the coffin'. A Japanese company has created a bottled, synthetic blood substitute that allows the vampires proper sustinance without having to feed on humans. For of course, killing of humans is unlawful, but likewise, quickly enacted laws have also rendered it illegal to kill (or do other bodily harm) to vampires.

Sookie Stackhouse, our heroine, is a waitress, a charming, well mannered, slightly naive (even though one wonders how she could be under the circumstance) southern belle. She also happens to be telepathic. It's a nice addition of Harris', where, if there are vampires, well then why shouldn't there be telepathic waitresses?

One day, an honest to goodness vampire walks into the bar Sookie works at, and she is immediately smitten. But entering the vampiric world is dangerous and exciting, and Sookie isn't entirely sure she's ready to do so, despite her attraction to the 150 year old Bill.

A string of murders in Sookie's town seem to point to those nearest and dearest to Sookie, either her vampire boyfriend, or her man-whore of a brother. And then Sookie herself becomes a target, further turning her already strange world even stranger.

The characters are all quite likeable (Harris' use of Bubba especially was quite funny) and it is a rich world for sure, enough so that I'd definitely consider picking up some more of the books and continuing with Sookie's adventures.*

*Also, Anna Paquin has done such a fine job as Sookie in True Blood that it was quite easy for me to hear her voice and see her mannerisms as I was reading the book.

2010-02-13T12:24:00.000-05:00

Ugh. I'm only finished two books now. Book number 2 for the year is Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer. Yes, that Germaine Greer. Anyway, this book is exactly what it sounds like, it is a 'biography' of Shakespeare's wife, the much vilified Ann Hathaway. But the thing is, and this is the crux of Greer's entire book, it WHY is it popular in scholarly works about Shakespeare, to vilify his wife so? This ill-treatment of a woman who perhaps didn't deserve to be branded so is based pretty much on only three things; that Shakespeare didn't move his family to London when he was there, that we don't know how often he journeyed home to Stratford during his years in London and, finally (and supposedly the most damning evidence), he left Ann his second-best bed in his will.

There is little actual documented evidence left over about Shakespeare, and really even less about Ann. But over the years, it has been fairly widely 'accepted' that Shakespeare and Ann did not have a happy marriage, that she basically trapped him (she was older than he and she was pregnant when they married) and he resented her for this in all their years together, so basically abandoned his wife and children for his career in London.

But Greer does her best to offer plausible arguments to refute this. She painstakingly sifts through records of common lives of contemporaries of Shakespeares’, and she contends that back then there was nothing unusual in a baby’s being born six months after a marriage. She also demonstrates that an unmarried woman in her mid-20s would not have been considered exceptional or desperate. Ann Hathaway, Greer argues, was likely to be literate, and given the relative standing of their families in Warwickshire, she may very well have been considered a more desirable match than her husband. So there all you Ann haters. Greer also puts forth the idea that Shakespeare may not have supported his family financially, and so makes Ann very capable of many domestic tasks that would allow her to be financially independent, which was also not a stretch for the time, according to documents left from the era.

Of course, all this is pure speculation on Greer's part. She does her best to back it up by using all available documents she can find and read from the times, and sometimes this proof does get hard to slog through. The vast cast of characters Greer introduces from Stratford (and other places) gets to be difficult to keep track of, and sometimes, the detail is so overwhelming that I found myself forgetting what it was Greer was trying to use these anecdotes in defense of.

But overall, Greer paints a picture of a woman who is extremely capable, loyal and intelligent. Greer's Ann is much more interesting than anyone has ever given her credit for being in the past, and I found myself hoping that Ann was closer to Greer's thesis, because otherwise, it makes all of Shakespeare's beautiful writings on love seem a little more empty.*

*I've never bought into the idea that some of Shakespeare's sonnets were written to a man, given the way homosexuality was condemned in Elizabethan England. For Shakespeare to have written such blatant offerings to a man would have been incredibly ill-advised. Greer does touch on this in her book as well, and I found myself thinking her explanations made much more sense. Oh, and I also hated the movie Shakespeare in Love. Pure bunk.

2010-01-13T09:55:00.000-05:00

And the first book of 2010 is The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill. This is the book that won Canada Reads in 2009. It tells the tale of
Aminata Diallo, an 11-year-old child, is taken from her village in West Africa and forced to walk for months to the sea and cross the Atlantic where she is sold as a slave in South Carolina. Her life is torn asunder and becomes a matter of survival, but she is bright and a trained mid-wife, and these skills serve her well. Years later, she finds freedom, serving the British in the American Revolutionary War and having her name entered in the historic "Book of Negroes." This book, an actual historical document, is an archive of freed Loyalist slaves who requested permission to leave the United States in order to resettle in Nova Scotia.

It's a tough book to read. Deservedly so though. The sheer amount of suffering and horror the slaves who were stolen from Africa went through is tough to imagine. Actually, I admit, I don't want to imagine it, but Hill spells it out in stark terms, you can't look away from what he's describing. it's hard to read about the filth and the sickness and the degredation and the rape and the children that Aminata had taken away from her. But that would've been par for the course, and even though this is a fictionalized account of a slave's life, you know it's not really fiction at all.

But there is a strange amount of hope in this book. As I said, Aminata is clever, she learns to read and this helps her raise her station in life, even though society makes it very difficult for her to do so.

The ending could be considered a little trite, but upon considering all the hardships and horror Aminata had to face during her life, it was nice there was a happy ending.

This book goes well with Bury the Chains, the account of the abolishionist movement in England that Aminata eventually gets herself mixed up in. They are both books that need to be read.

2010-01-01T20:19:00.000-05:00

Here we are, January 1, 2010, so time to sum up another year's worth of reading. Despite thinking that I wasn't going to be able to read much once the baby arrived in July, it seems the opposite happened and I was able to read more books than I did last year. I'm still nowhere near the elusive 50 books in a year mark, but I did manage 33 all told, and I'm pretty happy with that number. Living very near a library has helped as I've been able to just grab things I've thought looked interesting in the past, but not enough that I'd spend the money on them. I've forgotten how much I like libraries.

So what did I read? The list is as follows:

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt
Wicked by Gregory Maguire
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith
Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maughm
Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon
Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay
The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
The Sound of No Hands Clapping by Toby Young
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel by Susannah Clarke
Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde
Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde
Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
Mad Kestrel by Misty Massey
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
The Book of Mordred by Vivian Vende Velde
Firethorn by Sarah Micklen
The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin
Twilight by Stephanie Meyers
The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen
Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett
Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley
In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F. Cantor
The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret Macmillian
Too Much Happiness by Alice Munro
Peter and Max by Bill Willingham
Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine by Harold Bloom

Looking back on this, I didn't read anywhere near as much new fantasy as I usually do, with really only a few counting towards that (Thief of Time, Mad Kestrel, Peter and Max, The Book of Mordred and Firethorn). However, one of them, Firethorn, was undoubtedly the worst book I read this year, with a boring plot and thoroughly unlikeable main characters.

I read a lot more 'popular' works than I usually do, such bestsellers as The Time Traveller's Wife, The Lovely Bones and yes, Twilight. Twilight was the worst written book of the year, it is such drivel that I can scarce understand why it is so popular.

Another trend of mine this year seemed to be industry tell all books, reading the likes of Toby Young's two 'memoirs', Anthony Bourdain's chef-tell-all and The Nanny Diaries.

My favourite book this year? I have to go back to the beginning and go with The Thirteenth Tale. An astounding piece of work that feels like a throwback to old Gothic-style ghost stories, as well as being a love letter to reading. I've been resoundingly recommending it.

So there we have it, my 2009 in books. I've already started my first book for 2010 and maybe this will be the year that I finally break 50 books. But as I'm going to be working hard on finally finishing writing a book of my own, well... maybe not.

2009-12-31T11:13:00.001-05:00

And I was doing so well... then I ran into my last book of the year... Number 33 of this year is Jesus and Yahweh: The Names Divine by my favourite literary critic, Harold Bloom. As with all Bloom books, I had to think hard while reading this one, which is basically where he looks at Jesus and Yahweh as characters in the bible, and at their inconsistent portrayals throughout. It was very interesting, but since I don't have a very biblical background (in that I've never read the darn thing all the way through or anything), much of it was over my head and difficult to get through. The parts where Bloom compared Jesus to Hamlet though, those I understood.

I did take a bible course in university, as I thought it would be helpful for my English degree. And it was, it certaintly made some of the more well-used allegories easier to recognize, but we only looked at some of the bible, mainly the Old Testament, not much of the New, so the parts of the book dealing with Jesus were pretty much a mystery to me. Which I actually think was part of Bloom's point; because Jesus' personality (such as it is) is so different in the various gospels, we definitely don't get much of a sense of who he was. And Bloom finds this very fascinating especially given the predominance Jesus plays in American religion, where much of it is centered on 'knowing' Jesus and how he 'knows' them. Bloom thinks that is rather preposterous.

He also points out that Yahweh somehow morphed into the Christian's "Father" of the Holy Trinity, but do not seem to be the same God. Yahweh, Bloom posits, is not love, yet the Father is supposed to be love. Also, the Father seems to have been stripped of any personality or humanity, but when you read the older stuff, Yahweh is full of both.

It's a very interesting, but difficult read, but I do find purely literary approaches to the bible rather interesting.

2009-11-04T13:35:00.000-05:00

Number 32 this year is Peter and Max by Bill Willingham. Willingham writes one of my very, very favourite comic books, Fables. It is a comic about fairy tale characters and their like living among the 'mundies' in the real world, after they'd been driven out of their worlds by the Adversary, a conqeror who took over all their worlds and enslaved them. Anyway, Peter and Max is a Fables novel and it concerns the lives of two brothers, Peter Piper and his older brother Max, the infamous Pied Piper of Hamlin.

I thought it a logical idea of Willingham's to max the two characters brothers (one of those logical thoughts that I never would have thought of myself :) ) and he wastes no time in making the relationship between the two brothers go very, very wrong when Peter inherits the magical flute Frost from their father. Max is convinced it should've gone to him, and his envy over this basically drives the boy mad. Things go from bad to worse for the Piper family when the Adversary attacks and they're all separated.

Willingham writes evil very well, and Max is definitely a character who goes down that route and he becomes increasingly power hungry and more and more dangerous. The narrative goes back and forth between modern times and when Peter and Max were children. It's a good narrative overall, and it's nice to see how the Pipers fit in with the rest of the Fable community.

I think my only critcism with this book is how it resolved. It made complete and utter sense (Willingham is very good at making clever resolves, but they almost seem too easy in a way) but yes, just seemed a tad too easy.

But still, overall this was a very worthy entry in the Fables universe.

2009-10-20T15:29:00.000-04:00

I keep meaning to go back and flesh out my last post, but I'm trying to write some other stuff and get reading done, plus you know, baby, so yeah, I've not been able to do that, and I think this post is going to be just as brief for awhile.

Number 31 is Too Much Happiness by the Canadian queen of the short story, Alice Munro. I think the title is a bit of a misnomer, because there is never, ever too much happiness in Alice Munro stories. They are overwhelmingly kinda... not really depressing, but definitely uncomfortable. There is something always off kilter about her stories, which is probably why I like them so much.

2009-10-06T15:11:00.000-04:00

Knocked off a few more; number 28 is Thank You For Smoking by Christopher Buckley and number 29 is In the Wake of the Plague by Norman F.Cantor and number 30 is The Uses and Abuses of History by Margaret Macmillian.

2009-09-20T16:31:00.000-04:00

Number 27 is Thief of Time by Terry Pratchett. Time was I used to read everything Pratchett put out, but the sheer number of books he manages to write actually made that a daunting task, so I slowed down in my Pratchett consumption. Also, I discovered I liked some of his groups of characters more than others. My favourites are the Watch, and my second favourite is Death and his family. Thief of Time concerns Death and his granddaughter Susan.

Honestly, I didn't like this one as much, I didn't find it as... funny as I usually find his books. Discworld's version of Death is usually amusing, but he didn't have an awful lot to do in this book, other than to send his granddaughter Susan to look into the matter of time being stopped and the world ending, and then try and convince the other three, er, rather four, retired Horsemen of the Apocalypse to ride out with him.

I think I didn't like this one as much because there was too much chronobabble, as an impossible clock is built, time is collected and delved out by a group of enigmatic monks, and Time has a son, twice, who is both destroyer and savior. Something about it all just didn't work for me as much as it usually does in Pratchett's books.

2009-09-02T21:27:00.000-04:00

Number 26 is Sick Puppy by Carl Hiaasen. I've previously only read Striptease by Hiaasen (and it is a much better book than movie, even with Burt Reynolds hilarious turn), which I enjoyed, so I decided to give another of his books a shot.

Sick Puppy tells the story of Twilly Spree, an independently wealthy eco-terrorist who one day spots political lobbyist Palmer Stoat chucking litter out of his Range Rover, and so decides to teach him a lesson. Stoat, however, isn't the type to get a lesson, he lives in his own world of wealth and political fixes and fixed big-game hunts. After Twilly abducts Stoat's dog and wife, the fun really begins.

It is a darkly funny novel, and even though what Twilly does is highly illegal for the most part, you definitely cheer for him over the slimy politicos who want to turn a pristine Florida island into yet another condo development with a golf course. Twilly is an angry young man, but with the means and smarts to make things happen. He 'abducts' Stoat's dog, Boodle (renamed McGuinn by Twilly), an affable black Labrador retriever, in order to get Stoat to stop the development on the island. Hiaasen's use of the dog is hilarious, he's obviously owned a Lab before and therefore understands that breed's mindset.

The climax of the story occurs at one of the faux-big game hunts that Stoat embarks on, where he basically 'hunts' poor old animals procured specifically by the owners of the game preserve. Stoat and his toady friends are there to hunt a rhinocerous, but the tables are wonderfully turned and it is a stangely happy ending.

2009-08-17T09:40:00.000-04:00

Number 25 this year is The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. It seems to me that, after having read two of her novels, that Sebold excels at writing what should be gawd-awful depressing stuff, and yet somehow makes it not depressing.

The Almost Moon starts off with a rather shocking act; the main character, Helen Knightley, kills her elderly, dementia ridden mother. You quickly find out that Helen not only views this as a mercy killing for her mother, but also one for herself, as her relationship with her mother has been, shall we say, contentious.

The novel then slowly unfolds, almost like a murder mystery, Helen's family past as she works through what to do in the present. She has killed her mother, she knows the police will figure it out, and she has to decide what to do. Helen's family history is not easy, her contentious relationship with her mother stems from her mother's mental illness and leads to a very deep love/hate relationship.

The book is a fascinating look at a very damaged family. Sebold doesn't make you feel sorry for Helen though; she's much too unloveable for that (and not because she killed her infirm mother), but you do end up understanding why the way Helen is and why she relates (or doesn't relate) to the world around her.

A good, quick read overall.

2009-08-13T18:41:00.000-04:00

Yup, I went and did it; number 24 of this year is Twilight by Stephanie Meyers. A good friend of mine had warned me not to read it, that it really wasn't very good, but as with most publishing 'phenomenons', my curiosity got the better of me and so, when finally seeing it at the library, I borrowed it.

No, it's not very good. It starts off fine, a nice teenaged, fish out of water type tale, but it kinda... devolved from there. The character of Edward is so very insufferable and condesending towards the main character it made me wonder why the hell she likes him so much, other than he's really good looking. Oh and a vampire. A nearly 100 year old vampire, masquerading as a high school student, and so I realized this is probably the most creepy May/December romance ever. Dude, a 17 year old girl is the best you can do? Ick...

And this 17 year old girl, Bella, wow is she passive. She's so awkward and not good at anything except being motherly to her parents, and so once again it's like, why does he like her? Because she's pretty and she smells good. Ok yeah... Most of the novel is about how Edward has to rescue her over and over again. He's more like her bodyguard than anything else. It would've been nice had she been able to rescue herself at some point, but no. Although, she does recognize this and so of course, wants to be turned into a vampire. I'm sure that'll happen in some other book.

I guess that's it, this all felt terribly shallow to me. And juvenille. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised really. As far as angsty vampires go, Edward's got nothing on Lestat.

2009-08-09T13:42:00.001-04:00

Have actually managed to knock off a few more books, mainly due to reading during sleepless nights and when Laurel's feeding. So number 22 of the year is Firethorn by Sarah Micklen. Rather than sum this book up myself, I shall just reiterate what it says on the Chapters website: Before she was Firethorn, she was Luck, named for her red hair and favored by the goddess of Chance. A lowborn orphan, Luck is destined to a life of servitude. But when her mistress dies, Luck flees to the forest, where she discovers the sacred firethorn tree, whose berries bring her fevered dreams, a new name…and strange gifts. When she emerges from the woods, Firethorn is a new woman, with mysterious powers.

And soon, in the chaos of the UpsideDown Days, when the highborn and the low trade places, Firethorn couples with the warrior Sire Galan, whom she follows to camp with the king's army. There she learns that in her new role as a sheath, a warrior's bedservant, she is but one step above a whore. By day she uses her gifts as a healer to earn a place among the camp's women, and by night she shares Sire Galan's bed, her desire equal to his. But the passion they feel for each other has no place in a world ruled by caste and violence. When her lover makes an ill-considered wager that chances her heart, the consequences are disastrous-and Firethorn will learn how hard it can be to tell honor from dishonor, justice from vengeance.

Honestly, I'm not even sure why I finished this book. I did not like it at all. Rather than some grand romance, most of what she and Sir Galan do is fight and argue, and DAMN it is annoying. Nor does anything really HAPPEN in this book. The whole thing takes place at a camp while they're waiting to go to war, and it just gives them opportunity to do stupid things, talk about their (overly convoluted) pantheon and argue some more. I just wanted to smack both characters all too frequently. So yeah, did not enjoy this book much at all.

Number 23, following in the vein of Toby Young and Anthony Bourdain "industry tell-all books" is The Nanny Diaries by Nicola Kraus and Emma McLaughlin. Both authors were nannies for well-healed families in New York City. While this book isn't about a specific family, but rather a pastiche of the various families they worked for over the years. It's a funny book, but also rather heartbreaking story though as she tells of looking after 4 year old Grayer, a smart, loving kid who is basically ignored by his self obsessed parents. His mother does nothing but shop and attend events, whilst complaining that child-rearing is exhausting her. The husband is having an affair, and eventually, the mistress starts asking the Nanny to run errands for her when she's going to be in town for a tryst. The Nanny really wants nothing to do with all that, understandably. Eventually, everything comes to a head when she's on a two week vacation to Nantucket with the family. The husband does not want to be there, the wife desperately wants him to stay (she even goes so far as to invite her mother-in-law to stay with them for a week, without informing her husband first), and the mistress is calling them every hour or so because the husband was supposed to come home a week early and spend it with her. Nanny also finds out they've installed a 'nanny cam' back at the apartment in New York and feels absolutley betrayed (but she should hardly be surprised). But when Grayer falls down and hurts himself and would rather his Nanny's comfort than his mother's, the Nanny's time is up and she's unceremoniously fired and not even given an opportunity to say good bye to Grayer. It's a harsh, but probably rather realistic look at people who probably shouldn't have ever had children, even though they have more than enough money to be able to spend oodles of time with their kids.

2009-07-16T19:46:00.000-04:00

Number 21 of the year may prove to be the last for a little bit as on July 6, our little girl was born, so I find I have time for not much other than staying awake most of the night, feeding a hungry new born. Which is just fine :) Anyway, number 21 is The Book of Mordred by Vivian Vende Velde. This book is aimed at teen readers, so I wasn't expecting too much from it, and it did prove a little frustrating to me. Basically, it centers around Mordred, and three women in his life, the young, magically adept Kiera, her mother, Alayna, and the sorceress Nimue. Now, the story is told from their point of views (kinda a Mists of Avalon-lite) and starts after Kiera is kidnapped, basically because she is magically gifted. Alayna journeys to Camelot for help, and it is Mordred who helps her, and goes with her to a known-wizard's castle.

The plot is ok, but the thing I had the hardest time with was basically the overall point of the book I guess. The author quotes, at the beginning, an excerpt from a letter written by Sir Thomas Mallory, where he basically says that Mordred is the bad guy in the Arthurian Legends, and beyond that, he doesn't need much depth or explanation. So I gathered that we were going to get a better look at Mordred and his motivations through his relationship with these three women. Except I didn't really get any of that. If anything, the three women found him to be just as much an enigma as everyone else does in every other tale. I was a little disappointed nothing was really different. Even at the end, when Mordred was attempting to usurp Arthur's throne (or rather in this case Arthur had agreed to divvy up his kingdom between the two of them in order to keep the peace), there didn't seem to be much motivation for it other than that's what Mordred does, he is a divisive force. Also, why did he take part in the plot to trap Lancelot and Guinevere? I never felt there was much reason given other than he wanted Arthur to be shamed, which is a pretty run of the mill reason as far as the tales go.

So yes, while the characters were all fine and dandy, but I just felt this book kinda missed it's own raison d'etre.

2009-07-03T13:16:00.001-04:00

Number 20 is Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain. My husband is on a bit of a biography/industry tell-all kick right now, having read Toby Young's two offerings. After seeing Bourdain's show, No Reservations and enjoying it the couple of times we've caught it, I questioned who Bourdain was, so after a googling, we found out he was indeed a chef, and had penned a tell all book about the restaraunt business. So, off to the library to get it.

It's an interesting book, but not really a 'warts and all, look how ugly this business is' book. Or maybe it's just because I expected the book to go like it is. Or there are too many chef shows on tv these days with the chefs yelling and humilating all the underlings, so I kinda knew already what Bourdain's main idea is, that you have to actually love food and be willing to sacrifice pretty much everything else in your life if you become a lifer in a restaraunt, especially a high-end chef.

The book is entertaining, and Bourdain himself, while he admits to being a very big asshat at times in his life, and having numerous substance abuse problems, does sort of gloss over this (which is fine actually) to tell about influential people and moments during his long career. It is obvious that there are a lot of 'characters' in the food industry, some good and some bad. Bourdain also gives a lot of helpful hints about what you should and shouldn't do (mainly, opening up a restaraunt is don't do number one, but people are always doing so anyway).

I'm definitely not a foodie, a lot of times I eat strictly because I have to. While there are some foods I do love, I'm not an adventerous eater, but I still found this book interesting.

2009-06-26T10:52:00.000-04:00

Number 19 is Mad Kestrel by Misty Massey. Basically, all I can say about this one is it has pirates, main character is female pirate captain, there's magic, and main character (Kestrel) has pre-requisite "I'm attracted to you but I hate you, I hate you, I don't trust you, I have to trust you, I hate you still, ok, you're trustworthy, I love you" relationship with other character who is sort of one of the main protagonists. Not a great book, but fun enough. I like pirates.

2009-06-24T11:34:00.000-04:00

Numero 18 of the year is The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This is another of those books that keeps getting recommended or I sort of keep meaning to read, but every time I pick it up and read what it's about, all I can think is 'how can this not be gawd-awful depressing?' Because really, what about a 14 year old being raped and killed isn't gawd-awful depressing?

And yet, it isn't. I don't know how Sebold managed to pull it off, but the book's not depressing. Yes it is sad in places as we watch main (dead) character Susie Salmon watch her family slowly disintigrate after her death, but because not every family member collapses completely, there is a sort of... triumph to this book. The grief is heavy, but not insurmountable for some. And of course, we see the different ways in which they all grieve.

And because we get the tale from Susie's POV, she is not a hole of loss in the book; she is still very much a going concern and is, dare I say it, alive to the reader.

I did have some problems with the book though; I admit, I really would've liked it had there been a little more justice for Susie. Also, I wasn't really sure about the ending, but I think it also ties into the wanting more justice for Susie.

Anyway, I did enjoy this book, and my main reason for finally picking it up; reading that Peter Jackson is doing a movie adaptation of it, means I will be checking out the film when it's released as well.

2009-06-14T19:58:00.001-04:00

Hmm, not sure why the sudden increase in getting books read, but I've managed to polish off two more:

Number 16 is the Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden. This is a fictionalized account of a young, Scottish doctor who gets sucked in by Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's charisma during Amin's reign 1971-1979. The book does a very good job of making you understand why the doctor is simultaneously intreuged and repulsed by Amin, but I'm not entirely sure it does a good job of displaying how brutal Amin's regime was. Oh it is shown, but perhaps because the doctor himself seems so... dispassionate about it, it's hard for the reader to feel outrage either. In fact, it really isn't until the doctor is threatened with bodily harm and imprisonment himself that he realizes how bad the situation actually is and decides he needs to get out of Uganda. It's hard to feel bad for him because he doesn't seem to feel bad for those around him. But still, overall, this is a very interesting book and definitely makes Idi Amin a larger than life character; it doesn't glamourize or humanize him, I think it does try to show him for what he was. I would definitely like to check out the movie version now.

Number 17 is How to Lose Friends and Alienate People by Toby Young. I previously read Young's follow up to this memoir, so it was nice to actually read this book, his first 'take' on making it (or not) in the US. Toby gets a chance to work at fabled magazine Vanity Fair, but basically bollocks it up. He has a very entertaining view on the life of upper class New Yorkers and he desperately wants to be part of that elite, but at the same time, he detests it. I've also seen the movie version of this book, and was quite surprised at how... deep the book is compared to the movie. Toby is more interested in the class hierarchy of New York, something he didn't realize was there, and something that he feels is even more restrictive than the supposedly increadibly restrictive class system of Britain. HtLFaAP seems less a memoir and more a sociological thesis of a Brit living and working in New York. Very interesting from that point of view. And the funny thing is, Toby doesn't come across sounding like sour grapes in that he didn't make it as a writer there; I think he was greatful for the experience, and even more greatful to find out that in the long run, it really just wasn't for him.

2009-06-07T15:09:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm remiss in posting again I see. Mainly due to a VERY busy May, and now June is all about getting ready for when the baby arrives...

So just a quick run-down of the last three books I've read:

Number 13 is Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susannah Clarke. Long gone are the days where I can polish off a 1000 page book in a matter of days. Now it takes me a couple of weeks at least. Anyway, this was a book I'd always been meaning to read, but never got around to. The size didn't deter me, but I'd heard a few times that it was really boring, and I guess that put me off. But I finally grabbed it from the library and found that I quite enjoyed it. Taking place during the Napoleonic Wars, it centers on two magicians, the older Mr. Norell and his young 'apprentice' Jonathan Strange. They want to bring back English magic, and put it to work for their country fighting Napoleon. But of course, they have wildly divergent personalities, which eventually clash. Overall, I really liked this book, Clarke's writing style did a nice pastiche of early 1800s novels, and she sets up a very nice internal consistency of how magic works (or doesn't work) in her world, and I very much like her mythology of Faerie and the Raven King.

Number 14 is Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde. Ok, I honestly cannot remember if I'd read this puppy before, as a friend of mine had lent me the first Thursday Next book, The Eyre Affair , but I did enjoy that, and enjoyed this one too. Fforde's world is a strange mix of sci-fi, crime novels and a degree in English literature. Kinda reminds me of the comic book Fables, in that fictional characters have a life of their own outside of the works we see them in. Anyway, I like these books for their literariness, but I find Thursday to be a bit of a cypher herself; somehow I just don't find her that interesting of a main character.

Number 15 is The Well of Lost Plots by Jasper Fforde. The Wuthering Heights anger management self-help group was worth the entire price of admission of this book.

2009-05-19T17:57:00.000-04:00

Number 12 is The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean. This book details the rise and fall of Enron, which earned the dubious title as filing the largest single bankruptcy in US history. Way to go guys!

I work for a company that develops risk management software, and all I could think while reading this book, is how desperately Enron could've used some. Of course, they also probably wouldn't have USED it, they were rampant in their desire to run barely legal end-games around sound risk management and accounting procedures, but still... what they tried to get away with was just wow. And the thing is, working for the company I do, I actually understood some of what they were trying to get away with. I know what credit derivatives and zero return swaps and counterparties are. Makes me feel smart :) I mean, I don't understand everything; it's kinda like knowing enough of a foreign language to get the gist of the conversation, but knowing you're still missing nuances.

Anyway, it is a fascinating, maddening book reading about all these people who got pretty damn rich yet it never seemed to be enough. And that's the problem, no one ever said 'enough', not the banks, not their accounting firm, not their lawyers, becuase everyone was too busy making money off them, until finally, the house of cards couldn't be sustained and no one was making money anymore. Then they were cut loose.

2009-05-11T17:43:00.000-04:00

Number 11 is The Sound of No Hands Clapping by Toby Young. This is the sequel memoir from Young, who gave us How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, which was his 'insider's report' when working at Vanity Fair. It was turned into an amusing movie starring Simon Pegg (yes, it seems we really will see him in anything), but I hadn't yet read the book. G tried to find a copy of the book in a used bookstore, but was only able to come up with this one.

SoNHC is about Young's attempt to be a screen-writer. He has no experience in doing so, but manages to land a couple of jobs that require him to crank one out. Of course one of these jobs is to adapt his own book, How to Loose Friends... so that some big-shot Hollywood producer (he never names said producer, nor really gives enough good clues as to his identity, but I took great delight in deciding that the producer was Robert Evans, because frankly, everything is better with Evans in it). But as Young embarks on this career, his family life becomes more complicated as his newly wedded wife becomes pregnant (twice, over the course of the book) and so now he must worry about actually making money from his writing efforts.

It's an interesting look at Hollywood from someone who really had no clue how to play the game, wasn't entirely sure he wanted to play the game (no, no he didn't) and eventually decided that yeah, his family was more important to him than becoming a BIG NAME SCREENWRITER (which really no one becomes anyway). He does become a bit of a playwrite, which makes him some money and makes him happy, so the book does end on a nice, happy note.

I still want to read How to Lose Friends and Alienate People though, because I'm definitely going to read VF editor Graydon Carter as being played by Jeff Bridges. He was a hoot in the movie.

2009-04-27T10:19:00.000-04:00

Number 10 this year is The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.

This is one of those books I've been told to read or have heard recommended by others umpteenth times. Until last week, I've managed to ignore all recommendations because well, it's a romance (and not a cheap, fun romance-novel romance) and it's about time travel. As a trope, I generally really dislike time travel. I find it needlessly complicated and usually annoying. I also don't really consider myself a 'romantic' person, although, as I think about it, I do enjoy the odd love story, and like it even better when it has a happy ending. Perhaps that is why I don't count myself as a lover of Romances; they usually end badly.

So, I admit, I was all set to not like this book. I was wrong. It was a lovely book. I think it helped that Niffenegger kept the time-travel simple; it is a genetic condition main character Henry has. He cannot help but spontaneously move through time, arriving naked and nautious, to witness his life (and that of Clare's, his wife) from different points in time. Henry cannot change time, he just moves through it. That is the sort of time-travel I can handle.

I guess one of the main reasons I liked this book is the narrative. It is told from both Henry and Clare's perspectives in a very nicely done, non-linear format. I love non-linear narratives. Not sure why because they can sometimes be a pain in the ass, but when they're done well, they are a hell of a lot of fun to read. A bit of a challenge, but not too much, until it all comes together almost seamlessly. To pull one off successfully is to be much admired. And this one is quite successful.

Of course, like all good Romances, this one ends bitter sweet, if not downright sad. It is beautiful and uplifting in so many ways, and who am I to argue with the whole, 'there is definitely one right person out there for you, and it may not be perfect, because nothing is, but it will be perfect for you' theme I felt was running through it, but still, I wish there coulda been a happy ending.

2009-04-21T11:53:00.000-04:00

Number 9 of the year is Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsay.

Now, I'm going to start off saying right away that I've been told repeatedly, from different, trusted sources, that this is not a good book. And in comparison to the Dexter television show, no, it's not good. However, nor is it horrible. It's readable, but you can definitely see where the show improved on it. And after having watched two seasons of the show, it's impossible not to compare the book to the show.
So yes, we have one of those (as far as I'm concerned) rarities where the book is NOT better than the other form of media that has spawned from it.

It is also impossible to read this book now and not hear actor Michael C. Hall's voice for Dexter. But the thing is, even with this v/o, I didn't find book-Dexter very... scary. Oh he tells us he's a monster and he tells about how he's killed (and we see him do it), but there's something about the way he's written that makes him seem less than menacing. Perhaps it's Lindsay's overuse of alliteration that does it, I'm not sure. Dexter's inner monologue is nearly flowery, romantic at times, and somehow, it doesn't really work as it makes him less of a monster that he waxes poetic at the moon and whatnot. Book Dexter has none of the... menace that Michael C. Hall so effortlessly portrayed in the series. It was a bit of a let down.

Also, the book does nothing to set up the ultimate identity of the Tamiami Trail Killer (aka the Ice Truck Killer in the show) and by the time you do learn his identity and his connection to Dexter, you're kinda like... what? Where did this come from? The show, on the other hand, built it up brilliantly through flashbacks and Dexter's remembering and whatnot. In the book, Dexter has dreams, but they don't feel connected to his past, rather it focuses on this idea that Dexter could actually be the one physically carrying out the killings, but in a fugue/somnabulastic state. It doesn't really work.

Basically, I can see why the show was made; there's a good idea in here about a serial killer who hunts other serial killers, but the execution of it isn't very good. The show's writer to the initial idea and ran with it, and then were blessed with an extremely good actor who is easy to root for, but still scares the hell out of you while you do so.

2009-04-18T16:46:00.000-04:00

Book number 8 of this year is Speaks the Nightbird by Robert McCammon. It's a historical mystery set in the colonial Carolinas in 1699. We follow legal clerk Matthew Corbett and his magistrate/father-figure Isaac Woodward to Fount Royal, where Woodward has been summoned to decide whether a witch is living in the newly established settlement. The two are immediately thrown into danger, even before they reach the town, stopping off at an inn where the inhabitants basically rob and murder their patrons. They narrowly escape and make their way through a torrential downpour to arrive at Fount Royal with nothing but their pajamas on their backs. Once at the town, they must deal with the inhabitants, some of whom stand to gain if Rachel, the accused witch, is executed. Soon it becomes obvious to Matthew that everyone has secrets, even the magistrate.

The characters are all right; Matthew comes off as rather insufferable sometimes, and there isn't really enough clues laid out through the novel to make you think the ending makes sense, which basically makes for an ok read, but not a great one. Not really much to say about this book I guess.

2009-04-08T15:50:00.000-04:00

Book 7 is Razor's Edge by W. Somerset Maughm. Yes, I seem to be on some sort of American Lit kick all of a sudden.

The Razor’s Edge tells the story of an American, Larry Darrell (yes of course I immediately thought to myself "Hi I'm Larry, this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl"), who, traumatized by his experiences as a fighter pilot in World War I, decides to search for some transcendent meaning in his life. The novel starts its story through the eyes of Larry’s friends and acquaintances as they witness his personality change after the War, but Larry eventually ends up 'narrating' more of his own experiences about halfway in. His rejection of conventional life and search for meaningful experience allows him to thrive while the more materialistic characters suffer reversals of fortune. The other major characters are, Isabel, Larry's erstwhile fiancee, and Isabel's uncle, Elliot Templeton, unrepentant snob and bon vivant. The novel takes place over 20 years, from about 1920 to the late 1930s and changes locations, from Chicago to London to Paris to the French Rivera.

Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a bit. Because of the subject matter, American expats living abroad basically, I couldn't quite help but contrast this book with Hemingway's writing. Maughm is much more descriptive and nowhere near as blunt as Hemingway, but his writing suits his subject matter as Hemingway's suits his. Maughm paints a picture of high society through Elliot, but then immediately gives us a counterbalance through the life of Larry, who is searching for something meaningful and even spiritual in life, but he's not quite sure what. Larry's 'loafing' takes him all over the world, through Europe and eventually to India where he embraces a lot of the eastern teachings. And despite the fact that Larry does 'nothing' (something quite frowned upon by most everyone else), he does seem to be the most peaceable of the characters. I wouldn't say he's completely happy, but he seems to be content. In his own way, Larry does seem to anticipate the Beat writers' generation, but I don't think he's wandering for the same reasons.

One thing that did initially throw me about this book is that the narrator is Somerset Maughm himself, and it took me a couple of chapters in to realize this. At first I found it kinda jarring, but his first person narration did eventually work and gave an interesting perspective on things, as Maughm's status as a successful writer allowed him to move through both the upper class and bohemian worlds, without taking either of them too seriously.

I definitely liked this book enough to venture onto Maughm's other great novel, Of Human Bondage. After that, I may take a break from American lit for a bit.

2009-03-30T15:43:00.000-04:00

Book number 6 for this year is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

Now, a little bit of background as to why this book was chosen... I am a regular watcher of Jeopardy. I'm (not to brag) actually pretty good at it and so I like watching it and feel especially S-M-R-T when I get the Final Jeopardy answer and none of the contestants do. Yes, I take my victories where I can. Anyway! One of the categories a few weeks ago was American Literature, and over two separate questions, two contestants kept trying to give the answer 'A Tree Grows In Brooklyn'. I'd never heard of the book, but didn't think too much of it as my knowledge of American Lit isn't that great, having only had to take one half-credit in American Lit for my degree. So, when I was at the library a couple of weeks ago and spied the novel there, my curiosity was piqued and I picked it up.

First published in 1943, the book is a thinly disguised autobiography, but still, it works. It is the tale of Francie Nolan and her family, who are pretty much dirt poor, struggling to make ends meet in turn of the century Brooklyn. It's not a romanticized tale about being poor, it is pretty unflinching at what the family has to do to survive, and it is this realism that is one of the book's strong points. It is realism told in a beautifully crafted way and I think that's what makes this book just sing.

The female characters in this book are particularly strong, they are the ones who basically make the decisions, get things done, do what they have to do for the family to survive. Francie's mother Katie is the main breadwinner as Francie's father Johnny is an alchoholic and a dreamer. He's tries and he means well, and he is a good father, but he never... succeeds. Katie Nolan, works hard and quickly realizes that education is the key to her children having a better life than hers, and this is something that Katie's immigrant mother tried to instill in her a long time ago. Francie's aunts are also strong women, although you might not think so at first, and her Aunt Sissy is a completely fascinating character in her own way.

When I got to the ending, I at first was disappointed that so many of the strong women characters seemed to be being 'rescued' by men. But after a few thoughts, I realized that wasn't true. Katie Nolan accepts a marriage proposal from a long-time admirer and won't have to work as hard as she did. And I realized that it wasn't a rescue, but something that she deserved. I doubt Katie could ever stop completely working, it didn't seem to be in her makeup to be idle, but it meant she could stop worrying, she found someone who could share her burden and be a partner in the way Johnny Nolan couldn't have. And Francie, off she went to college, where she should be, with a sort of marriage proposal of her own in her future, but I also got the idea that she wouldn't just blindly accept the proposal because she needed a man to take care of her. She would accept it if the proposer still suited her. So basically, all the characters did end up in places that made sense for them and didn't diminish them.

I could go on and on about this book actually, but I won't :) Betty Smith's prose is gorgeous. She also seemed to be a bit of a feminist before her time. I understand why this book resonates so with people and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

2009-03-21T21:51:00.000-04:00

Ack. So bad with updating... Too much stuff happening what with new house and, since getting new house, have also learned that I am pregnant. Which may mean I'll have more time to write during the summer, when I'm up at all hours, struggling to stay awake. Or not. Who knows.

So, what have I read since my 'year end' post in February?

Books #1 and 2 were cheesy romance novels because my brain just wasn't up for anything taxing just after moving. Surprisingly, one of them was pretty good, even though I can't remember the name of it right now.. The other, Once A Rebel, pretty standard romance stuff, but with pirates, so that's a bonus.

Book #3 was The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It's a gorgeous book, a throwback to such tales as "The Turn of the Screw, Wuthering Heights and Rebecca. A 'ghost' story without being a ghost story, and also a love letter to books and reading, I highly recommend this one and should really do a more in depth analysis of it. Truly gripping.

Book #4 was Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. This book is a fabulous companion to Bill Bryson's Shakespeare because it is the complete opposite. Where Bryson's book pointed out how little we actually know about Shakepseare, Greenblatt's book takes what little we know and extrapolates from that. It is essentially historical fiction, but it works. There's long been (silly) questions about how a not increadibly educated man from rural England could've written all those marvelous works, but Greenblatt does a superlative job of taking what we know about Shakespeare and logically extrapolating how he could've written all those marvelous plays. A bit of a heavy read, but an extremely interesting one.

Book #5 was Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I thought this was a very interesting idea, and I generally like famous works told from another view point (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead), but there was something about the execution of this novel that I just found... off. I liked the politicizing of Oz, and Elphaba was made fairly sympathetic (but perhaps not enough so?), but once the story did meet up with the actual Wizard of Oz events, I found it really didn't work. Somehow, Elphaba's actions as the Wicked Witch that Dorothy met didn't match the actions of the person we'd been reading about up till then and I found that jarring. Not a great book, but not too bad either.

I've done a bunch of re-reads as well at this point, but now with having a library right down the street, I'm aiming on going there regularly and so being able to up the new reads this year. Hopefully.

2009-02-06T00:28:00.000-05:00

Due to numerous things at the end/beginning of the year, I've been completely remiss in both my reading and my updating this thing. Holidays and moving make for a busy time, so that's why it's only now that I'm getting around to doing my Year's End.

This wasn't a good year reading-wise as I only managed to read 27 books in total, down from 2007's total. I'm not exactly thrilled with that, but it is what it is. Other achievements, such as getting my husband out of debt and buying a house, were accomplished this year, and that is something to be proud of.

So, what did I manage to read in 2008?

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman. The last book of the His Dark Materials trilogy.
Around the World in 87 1/2 Gigs by one of my mainstays, Dave Bidini
The Children of Hurin by J.R.R Tolkien
Titan, Wizard and Demon all by John Varley
The Shipping News by another of my mainstays, Annie Prouxl
The Language of Stones by Robert Carter
The Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore
The Year of Living Biblically by A.J Jacobs
Thud! by Terry Pratchett
In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan
Hateship, Friendship, Loveship, Courtship, Marriage by one of my favourite Canadian authors, Alice Munro
Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith
Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the Worldby Dan Koeppel
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
Dragon Harper by Todd and Anne McCaffery
The Knight by the Pool by Sophie Mason
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Prouxl
The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean
Orlando by Virginia Woolf
Just Fine the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx
Friends Like Theseby Danny Wallace
America Unchained by Dave Gorman
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Once again, a good cross-section of classics, humour, fantasy, horror and short stories. Annie Proulx distinguished herself as my most read author this year with three books gracing the list. Most depressing book? Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. Best book I read this year? In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan completely changed how Graig and I shop for food. We even joined a local farm share for the summer due to it's influence.

While it may be Feb. and I'm only just writing the year end for 2008, I have already read a few books in 2009 and those will be coming up soon. Now that we've moved into the new house and are pretty much settled, I feel that there's definitely more time for reading again. This year, we'll push past the paltry 27 books.*

*Just to remind everyone, the totals in this blog are NEW books only. I do not write up or keep track of re-reads. Re-reads usually account for another 20-30 books read over the course of a year, but as some are religiously read every year, I don't find tracking them to be worthwhile.

2008-12-05T13:42:00.001-05:00

Numero 27 this year is Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare. Funny enough, this is one of his plays that I somehow avoided reading til now. I know some classes read it in Grade 11, but mine wasn't one of them (we did... wow, I don't think we did any Shakespeare in grade 11 English now that I think about it. Heresy!). This choice was mainly born out of my recently having watched the entire first season of the HBO series Rome and enjoying that immensely. So, I was curious to see how their version stacked up to the Bard's. HBO's Julius at least got an almost full season before he got offed, Shakespeare's exits the mortal coil at the beginning of Act III, leaving two more acts where he only appears breifly and as a ghost.

Strangely, I found Ceasar to be almost a bit player in a play supposedly about him. I didn't find we got to really know too much about him, most of the time is given to the consipirators and their reasoning for wanting Caesar dead. Which is fine, motivation is good, but still, I think I would've liked more knowledge of Caesar as a counterpoint to the conspirators.

Shakespeare does do a lovely job with Marc Antony though. He is brash and angry, but he also does believe in what Caesar did and so his complete condemnation of the assassination was well done.

I liked the play overall, but I think I liked HBO's version better :)

2008-11-18T17:30:00.000-05:00

Annnnnd number 26 of the year was actually finished a couple of weeks ago, but between work being an all-consuming bitch and buying a house, I haven't had much time to say anything about it. So here we are at Shakespeare by Bill Bryson.

I like Bill Bryson's work, I've read a few of them now. I find his interest in the English language very... well, interesting. As my husband often points out, I am a literary geek and that is true. Bryson's look at Shakespeare has resulted in a rather slim tome, since Bryson has resisted extrapolating or even making things up for Shakespeare's biography. Instead, Bryson takes the very little we actually KNOW about the Bard and then mainly debunks a lot of things we don't actually know about the Bard. Which really is a lot.

It's not a long read, but its a good read and a must read for anyone who is interested in the venerable William Shakespeare.

2008-10-31T16:23:00.000-04:00

Number 25 is America Unchained by funny-man Brit, Dave Gorman. You may remember Dave as Danny Wallace's partner in crime in Are You Dave Gorman?. The two may not be doing any more 'stupid boy projects' together, but they certaintly have branched out to do more 'stupid boy projects' apart. I guess that means they're maximizing their 'stupid boy projects'.

Dave's latest grew from a month long comedy tour of the United States. He tried to enjoy it, but he wound up hating it. He hated the sameness, the homoginzation, the... corporateness of America. And he felt bad about hating America. He'd had a completely different idea of the country and when it didn't come true, he was upset and angry about it. So, he came upon the idea of seeing America the way he thought it should be seen; from coast to coast in an American made car as old as he was (so around 35 years old), and not giving any money to 'the Man'. And the Man in the case was anything that could be considered a chain. That meant Dave had to stay in independently run hotel, eat at independently owned restaurants, and fill up at independently owned gas stations. It would be this last that would prove the greatest challenge.

Dave begins his jaunt in Coronado, California (an island just off of San Diego, which I've been to and which is beautiful), where he buys a 1972 Ford Torino station wagon. He loves the car, but she will, of course, prove to be a fickle travelling companion.

We follow Dave on the road, from side trips all the way up to Oregon, to hilarity and maddness in Utah, to losing his first camera person (because he is making a documentary based on his cross-country run) due to excruciating back problems (and boy could I sympathize there), to the friendliness of Kansas, the meanness of Mississippi, all the way to Georgia where they reach the Atlantic coast and call their journey done.

It's an inspiring tale, one that truly shows you America in all her forms; good, bad, ugly, beautiful, but also allows you to see her as she was before all became corporate and chains and nothing but big box stores. It makes one want to set out on a road trip immediately.

2008-10-20T11:45:00.000-04:00

Number 24 this year is Friends Like These by Danny Wallace. It was my husband who first introduced me to Danny Wallace (and his sometimes partner in crime, Dave Gorman) and their 'stupid boy projects', and I've enjoyed all Wallace's capers since then. Some more than others of course, and Friends Like These is enjoyable.

On the cusp of turning 30, recently married and burgeoning yuppie Danny has an about-to-turn-thirty crisis sparked by being asked to be a godparent to the child of some friends. This request galvanizes for him that he doesn't really want to fully grow up, to trade fun for throw cushions, to stop going to the pub, etc. He likes the IDEA of becoming a man, but not the actual participation in it completely.

With the arrival of a box of his old belongings from his Mum, Danny finds his old address book, from his childhood. It has 12 names it, people whom he's long since lost contact with and has only a few times in the past 16 years or so, wondered how these people are doing. Well, when Danny's closest current mates, Ian and Wag both announce that they are going away/moving away, Danny is spurred to track down all those people from his past. Danny also has the blessing of his wife, Lizzie, to do all this and finish it before his 30th birthday, a few months away.

Some are easier to find than others, and so he immediately gets together with them and finds it very rewarding. He also begins writing answers to letters he recieved from one friend 16 years ago, hoping that they will find their way to the sender. Danny ends up going to Los Angeles to meet one friend, and finish playing an elaborate prank upon him (which involves Danny masquerading as a furrie) in retaliation for a prank Danny was the butt of fifteen years ago. Danny also journeys to Australia and Japan in search of friends. All this travelling always makes me wonder how well Danny does off of the writing of his 'stupid boy projects'. And then I realize he's probably making a decent living off his stupid boy projects, and well, that's pretty damn awesome.

As usual, this is a funny, funny book, which also does make you think. In the era of Facebook, it's easy to find old friends online, but never really have to go farther than that. Danny takes it that step further and reconnects in person, and finds it much more rewarding. It's an interesting idea, but one I doubt I'd launch into.

2008-10-03T14:06:00.001-04:00

Not as big a break between the last book and number 23 fortunately. Number 23 of the year is Just Fine the Way it Is: Wyoming Stories 3 by Annie Proulx. As you may surmize from Proulx's rather frequent presence on this list, I'm a fan of hers. I love her blunt, descriptive narrative, especially in her short stories.

Proulx can make Wyoming sound beautiful, but I also don't think she ever romanticizes it; Wyoming's beauty is double-edged, it can take your breath away permanently if you let it.

Most of these stories are quite nearly downright depressing. Most end with unhappiness and anger and death. No matter what some do to appreciate/impose themselves on the landscape of Wyoming, they end up dead for their troubles.

There were a couple of departures here, mainly a couple of short stories about the Devil and his remodelling of Hell. They're quite humourous, especially when Proulx makes mention that she thinks Revenue Canada is FAR scarier than the IRS. She would know, she splits her time between Wyoming and Newfoundland.

Overall, I enjoyed these stories again, and a couple of them really kicked me in the gut, the way Brokeback Mountain did. Which is both a good thing, and a bad thing. Much like Wyoming itself I guess.

2008-09-30T17:33:00.000-04:00

Oh sad, so sad, how little I have to add to this list after nearly two months. The thing is, I had something happen to me that doesn't happen often; I started a book and didn't finish it. It was an Arthurian themed book, but I found it so laden with Celtic references that had little to do with anything except that they're there, that the book dragged on and I just couldn't get in to it. It was written by a very prominent Celtic scholar, but honestly, I felt like he was throwing all the Celtic references in there just to show off, not that they added anything.

But that's neither here nor there. I didn't finish a book, instead I lost myself in some re-reads (which I don't count towards my year totals any longer), and have only read one new book in the meantime. Sigh.

Number 22 this year is Orlando by Virginia Woolf. I picked up this book only because I had heard of it before, and because Orlando was one of those used by Alan Moore in his latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. So, when I saw this novel in a used bookstore in Thunder Bay, I grabbed it.

My previous brush with Virginia Woolf took place way back in 2nd year university when I had to read To the Lighthouse for Contemporary Literature. I don't remember much about the book now, I really only remember not particularly liking it very much.

However, I did like Orlando.

Orlando is about a young man born to a wealthy, noble family in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who decides not to grow old. Strangely enough, he does not (and I don't think it is ever really explained why he doesn't), and he passes through the ages as a young man ... until he wakes up one morning to find that he has metamorphosed into a woman -- the same person, with the same personality and intellect, but in a woman's body. The remaining centuries up to the time the book was written are seen through a woman's eyes.

It's an odd book for sure, but I realized I liked it because of it's slightly weird narrative, which is supposed to be written as a 'biography', but of course, Orlando's voice also comes through very clear and loud. The narrative can be almost stream of concious like as Orlando waxes poetic on... well poetry, or love, or life, etc. But the most fascinating thing about this novel is definitely the gender switch, where previously male Orlando begins to live his life as a woman. She doesn't seem to like being a woman for awhile, but also does come to appreciate the feminine, but, he appreciates it from a male point of view. Which seems strange, given that the book was written by a woman. Even when Orlando has a child, the whole pregnancy and birth are given perhaps a page's worth of mention. For someone such as Orlando, who seemed so caught up in the idea of immortality (not aging, writing something grand and profound), you'd think that leaving behind offspring would be explored more as a form of immortality, but nope, nada.

Anyway, this novel is also very tied up in poetry and literature and the creation of both. Orlando desperately wants to create literature and works on a single poem, the Oak Tree, for hundreds of years, but seemingly never feels it is quite good enough. He/she becomes patrons of various poets and usually always ends up disenchanted with those who create poetry, but nonetheless, she is always drawn back to it. Certain real life poets make appearances as characters as well, and it made me wonder if how they're represented in Orlando is how Woolf herself felt about them.

As I said, I liked Orlando. It felt strangely whimsical without being overly weighty and important. Even though I can, through the strange narrative and the gender/feminist issues, see how important this novel is.

2008-08-09T12:15:00.000-04:00

Number 21 is The Dubious Hills by Pamela Dean. Dean wrote one of my all time favourite books Tamlin. I reread that book over and over again. So, because of this long term affection for Tamlin, I've of course read other books by Dean, hoping others have been as good.

They haven't. Basically, I've been pretty disappointed with the rest of her output overall. I wasn't even able to finish The Hidden Country which was about a group of children who find their way into another world (yeah, what SHOULDN'T I like about this conceit?), but the kids are so damn precocious I just couldn't handle them after awhile. So I stopped.

The Dubious Hills also have precocious children, but I was better able to handle them. The main character, Arry is all of fourteen years old and is raising her younger brother Beldi (9) and sister, Con (6). Their parents basically disappeared one day and that was that. Fortunately, the community they live in, the Dubious Hills is a true community, everyone helps everyone and pretty much begrudges no one anything.

This is due to a rather strange spell that was placed on the community ages ago, after a particularly devestating wizards' war. The wizards decided that war could be avoided if no one person had too much knowledge, so they made it that every person in the Dubious Hills would know only about one specific knowledge, or 'province' as they call them. So only one person knows about history, only one person knows about stories, only one can tell if things are beautiful or not, only one can explain the intricacies of language, etc. This makes for a community thoroughly dependent on one another, but strangely, they're not ignorant. They have no problem in admitting they do not know something, because basically, there will be a person who does.

Arry's province is that of pain. Pain is something only she can experience, on behalf of the others, so she can tell them if they are hurt or not. This makes her the Physci, obviously one of the more important provinces of knowledge, and it seems to be a difficult province for one so young to have. But Arry is smart and has had to grow up slightly quicker than she would probably like to, and she is forced to grow up even more when the wolves start coming around.

Like all good fairy tales, there are wolves in this one. And the wolves bring a knowledge of their own, a complete one, where they have lost their specialized knowledge, but now have a wider, more worldly knowledge. One of the wolves, the Hills' teacher, wants everyone in the Hills to follow his path and become a wolf. But not everyone wants this. They are content with what they know. They live in a very peaceful, almost idyllic place. Everyone knows everyone and everyone shares with everyone. This is something the wolf threatens to shatter.

The ending seemed to come from almost nowhere, and I almost wondered how they jumped to the conclusion on how to deal with the wolf, because it was an option that was never really touched on much throughout. Violence wasn't part of their lives (from what I could tell) before the wolves came, so I did wonder how they reached the decision to use it.

Overall though, I did enjoy this book far more than I have her other efforts. Its a well crafted world with an interesting idea (the knowledge provinces) and has that good sense of the familiar but still definitely Other. While I don't love it as much as Tamlin, I may revisit this one again.

2008-08-05T12:20:00.000-04:00

I'm actually a couple of books behind on this, I read two more during my vacation but have yet to write anything. I think that's the first time I've ever fallen behind on the writing, its usually the reading I fall behind on...

ANYWAY! Books 19 and 20 are That Old Ace in the Hole by Anne Proulx and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway.

That Old Ace in the Hole deals with Bob Dollar, originally from Denver, where he was raised by a junk store owning uncle after his parents basically abandoned him on the uncle's doorstep, trying to find his place in the world. He's finished college and rather aimless (yeah, we've all been there), so he takes a job with Global Pork Rind, a big business pork farming company, scouting out big spreads of land that can be converted to hog farms. He's given a list of instructions by his not very symapthetic new boss (ie. find some place to set up base of operations, find out a little history to the town, don't tell them why you're there, befriend some of the natives, etc.) Soon he''s holed up in a tiny Texas town called Woolybucket, where he settles into LaVon Fronk's old bunkhouse for fifty dollars a month, helps out at Cy Frease''s Old Dog Café, and learns the hard way how vigorously the old Texas ranch owners will hold on to their land, even when their children want no part of it.

It's a novel about history and family and all the ways those are intertwined. Bob's personal history is not easy, but isn't bad either. When his parents abandoned him at age 8, he was taken in by his Uncle Tam, who owns a second hand/junk store. They live upstairs from the store, and are pretty poor, but Tam is kind and good to Bob and never makes his nephew feel like a burden. Bob wonders a lot about his absent parents, but they don't figure too prominently into the story. What Bob though is really looking for, is a place where he feels he belongs.

Once Bob gets to Woolybucket, he immerses himself into the culture of the town, and into the town (and surrounding county), listening to countless stories told to him and reading a journal detailing the first surveying of the surrounding county in the late 1800s. The narrative of the novel is told in lots of flashbacks that aren't really flashbacks, as we get to know the colorful characters of Woolybucket.

As always in a Prouxl novel, the characters are slightly off-kilter, there's lots of strange happenings, a little bit of tragedy, lots of good language, and just plain great description of the landscape. Prouxl's just so good at describing surroundings. The ending of this novel left me feeling kinda... unsatisfied at first. It is basically a happy ending, but at first it felt too pat to me, but once I thought about it, it really wasn't, as it was the logical ending that was being proposed from the beginning, and I, like Bob himself, didn't see that right away. So basically, Anne's yet to let me down.

Number 20 of the year is A Farewell to Arms. Even now, a couple of weeks after finishing this puppy, I realize I don't have much to say about it, even though its a great piece of literature, etc. The thing is, found this book wildly divergent in its tone. It takes place during WWI, on the Italian front, and tells the story of American ambulance driver Lt. Henry, and his love affair with English nurse, Catherine Barkley. Despite there being a war on, Henry seems to have a pretty sweet life. He's living in an Italian villa with others (mainly Italians) fighting the war, in particular a surgeon who is Henry's best friend. He meets Catherine and begins wooing her, and much of the first part of the novel is taken up with going to cafes and drinking wine and teasing the local priest; WWI in Italy sounds nearly idyllic here in comparison to dying in the mud of the trenches on the Western Front. I did find the relationship between Catherine and Henry to be almost... pathetically juvenille and even a little creepy at first. Catherine seems so... desperate for Henry's approval and love that it made me uncomfortable. She seems more invested in the relationship at first than he does.

However, about half way through the novel comes a pretty good shift in tone. The war actually intrudes and then we're reminded how Hemingway is one of the best there is at describing war. Henry is driving at the front when he gets wounded. He sees comrades die, and isn't even entirely sure he'll walk again. He is transferred to a hospital, and so is Catherine. Once again, things become almost idyllic as he and Catherine deepen their relationship (and it becomes very, very physical), and so the tone of their relationship switches too, where I felt that Henry was more invested in it than she was. But maybe that's just because he finally arrived at the emotional place she was, while hers remained unchanged. But, the war intrudes again and Henry is sent back to the front.

At this point, the war is going badly for the Italians and they are facing a hard push by combined Austrian/German forces. They cannot hold the line, and so retreat, but the retreat becomes more disorganized and scary than the actual fighting does, with demoralized men and frightened nationals picking out scapegoats from their own army and executing them for deriliction of duty in mock 'trials'. Henry is singled out for this form of 'justice', but manages to escape. He basically goes AWOL and ends up finding Catherine. At this point, he is done with the war and he and Catherine (who is now pregnant with Henry's child) go to Switzerland (after narrowly avoiding arrest) to await the birth of their child. Their idyllic life returns.

However, honestly, the ending of this novel is so gawdawful depressing that I threw it down with those very words. Yes, sometimes Hemingway likes to end on a down note, like in For Whom the Bell Tolls, although that one didn't feel so down, or on a very up note (literally) in The Sun Also Rises. Needless to say, I preferred both of those books over this one. The ending really did make me not like it.

2008-07-28T21:38:00.000-04:00

I"ve been on holidays, so I've managed to read a lot. Yay me :)

Book number 18 for the year is The Knight by the Pool by Sophie Masson. It's a tale of early medieval France, specifically involving the quarrelsome Plantagent family of England, mainly Richard the Lion Heart himself. Although really, this novel is about Marie de France, a young, recently widowed woman who finds herself drawn into the rather magical world of French folklore.

Marie marries kind Hoel of Broceliande (a forest known throught French and Arthurian literature as being extremely magical), a man much older than herself, but loves her deeply and treats her well. Marie is a bit of a dreamer, well educated, with a passion for books. She is fond of Hoel, but does not feel great passion for him. She feels some regret about this, but really cannot figure out how to change how she feels. Their young child dies, and then Hoel himself passes away, and this loss moves Marie into deeper feeling for her family, but that, once again is tinged with guilt.

Deep in the forest though, she comes across a mysterious knight who tells her that she is to be beloved of another, mainly that she will be with Prince Richard of England (he's not king yet). She's not quite certain what to think of this, but does set out to eventually meet up with her brother, and return to her father's lands.

This mystery though, is not the only one surrounding the forest of Broceliande; Hoel's brother went missing in there, and Hoel's family history is wrapped up amongst tales of wolves and transforming beasts. But none of this is really known to Marie.

On her travels, Marie does indeed meet Richard the Lion Hearted, and it is love at first sight for both of them. But embarking on a love affair with a member of the powerful Plantagent family is no easy thing; there is much family betrayal, and Richard is supposed to marry a young, French princess, but none of this matters to Richard, and he swears he will be with Marie. And as far as Marie is concerned, she has found someone who has finally roused her passion.

All in all, this is a rather difficult book to explain, for there are many plot threads, including a betrayal by Marie's cousin, a monestary of nuns, tales of werewolves and shapeshifting and of course, the great French Trickster, Renard.

It is a well done book, the weaving of the folklore and the history of medieval France is very well done. The characters are crisp and interesting, and Masson writes Renard very well. I don't know a lot about French folklore (outside of the French Arthurian connections obviously), so I did find this book very interesting. It's the first of a trilogy, so I would like to find the others and continue on.

2008-07-26T23:04:00.000-04:00

Number 17 is Dragon Harper by Anne McCaffery and her son Todd McCaffery. I've been reading the Dragonrider of Pern novels since I was about 14 years old. My father's friend Ray gifted me a box set of the first three novels (Dragonflight, Dragonquest, The White Dragon) for Christmas, and I've loved them ever since, reading my original copies into near tatters. Later, for my 27th birthday, a friend of mine gave me, for my birthday, a trade paperback, collected edition of those books, signed by McCaffery herself. I was touched. I actually haven't read all of the books done under the Dragonriders of Pern aegis; their quality has fallen off some over the years, and well, my first love will always be for the main characters of those first novels (Lessa, F'lar, Robinton etc.) and none of the characters introduced after that (such as the those in the Harper Hall trilogy) have interested me as much, although I did like the tale of Moreta quite a bit.

Anne McCaffery hasn't written as much in recent years, and as of late, it has been her son Todd who has taken over some of the chores (following in Christopher Tolkien's steps as administrator of his famous parent's literary wealth?). Dragon Harper is Todd's fourth book and its... ok really. It was a quick read overall, taking me about half a day's reading, entertaining enough, but definitely not as resonating to me as his mother's earlier works. I think I didn't like this one as much because the plot seemed to me to bit of a rehash of the plot of Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern in that it deals with a Pern-wide influenza pandemic. The only real difference here is that instead of seeing the pandemic mainly from the Weyr's point of view (as in Moreta), we are seeing it mainly from Hold and Harper Hall's pov, throught the eyes of young apprentice harper Kindan. He's a likeable enough character, slightly more mature for his age than he probably should be, but in Pernese society, I"ve often thought that people seem to mature much faster (Pernese society is not quite medieval in structure and thinking, but its not far off either).

The Weyrs and dragonriders are almost absent in this book, as they cannot risk themselves and their dragons so close to a time when Threadfall will once again happen (the next Pass scheduled to begin in a scant 12 years). This story takes place nearly 500 years after Pern was colonized (a story detailed in Dragondawn), and as always, I do find the slight differences interesting. Some information is known at this time (ie that they WERE colonized), fire-lizards are known and common, as is the practice of timing it (where dragons and their riders can time travel into the past). These things are unknown by the time we get to the original trilogy. But overall, Pernese society hasn't really changed much in the thousands of years between Pern's colonization and the events Lessa and F'lar live through in Dragonflight. While this is probably not very realistic (would society really remain that stagnat?), it is rather comforting; I want to read my Pernese stories as recognizable Pern stories with heroes and dragons and whatnot. A Pern story wouldn't be a Pern story if there's all of a sudden cities and non-dragon powered flight; that's not what I signed up for.

So, Dragonharper isn't spectacular, but its still not a bad sojourn back to one of my favourite worlds.

2008-07-26T23:01:00.000-04:00

Number 16 is I Am Legend and other stories by Richard Matheson. I've seen both I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, and Omega Man, starring the late Charlton Heston, but I've never read the novella both were based upon. I think I hadn't read it mainly due to the subject matter; based on the movies, I had thought I Am Legend dealt with a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombies, and I don't deal well with post-apocalytpic worlds filled with zombies. It's the one horror genre that consistently freaks me out. I don't like the nihilism of it, for even if the film ends with 'hope', I can never get past the idea that any small victory is still a phyrric victory; can the survivors really ever win? Anyway, despite this, I decided to pick up the actual story and read it, mainly based on a fact I'd never realized before; the creatures that Robert Neville, as the last, surviving human faces, are not zombies, but vampires. For some reason, this simple shift in monster made the tale a little more palatable for me.

So, the two movies based on this story are there in spirit, but there are quite a few differences of course. We see Matheson's Neville in different snapshots of his solitary life, the first being three months after the last of the plague victims have turned and risen again, the second a year later, and the final one, three years later. We see him at differing points of despair, loneliness, hope, isolation and then resignation. In the beginning, he drinks a lot, hunts the victims of the plague (whom we learn are of two varities, those who are out and out vampires, and those who simply carry the disease and are really still technically 'alive'), but he must return to his barracaded home every night, to wait out the darkness for that is when the vampires come looking for him. They taunt him to come outside, and sometimes, he wonders why he holds on and doesn't simply join them, die and hopefully be reunited with his dead wife and daughter. But something keeps Neville going, and he begins to research the whole 'plague', which was actually spread by real vampires, and finds out it is caused by a bacteria in the blood stream, that needs blood to survive. Neville tries and tries to figure it out, but he (unlike Will Smith's version) is not a scientist, so he finds his ability to figure out a cure is limited.
The second time we see Neville, not much has changed, except his drive to figure out how to save humanity is obviously what saved him from drowning himself in alcoholic self-pity, but suddenly Neville finds himself consumed with a task; he discovers another survivor, and he must convince this survivor to come to him. The survivor is a mangy dog, who has obviously been on his own for quite some time, and doesn't trust his former 'masters', who, if he was caught by them, would be consumed by them for his blood. But Neville is desperate for the company, and tries again and again to have the dog befriend him. The relation between human survivor and canine survivor was an excellent part of the Will Smith movie, and in the book, it is just as heart wrenching, and it ends just as sadly.
The third time we see Neville, its has been three years since he last saw a person who didn't want to drain him of blood. He has hit a wall; he is (due to lots of experimentation on the afflicted) quite sure of what causes the plague and how it is transmitted, but he still has not been able to cure it. We learn more of Neville's background through flashbacks, but the caring, loving man he once was has disappeared; he has been alone for so long, he's forgotten a lot of those feelings. This is displayed in spades when he sees the last thing he ever thinks he'll see, a woman, in daylight, aparantly healthy. At first he is so shocked (as is she) that he's quite sure she isn't real, but when he figures she is, he chases after her, for she flees him, equally unsure of him. He brings her home, but he is instantly wary of her story, that she and her husband had survived, that he was killed only a week ago, and she had been roaming ever since. Relying on his survival instincts for so long, Neville cannot put them aside and enjoy the company of another person.
I don't want to give away too much, for the ending of the story is at once very different, and in some ways, slightly similar to the Will Smith movie. It is a phyrric victory ending though, leaving me feeling definitely uncomfortable.
The funny thing about this story though, is that reading this, I could easily understand the casting of Charlton Hestin as Neville in Omega Man; Matheson's Neville had a very Hestin-like quality to him.

I also enjoyed the other stories in this collection, especially Prey (which I actually recall seeing a movie version of when I was younger, and the sight of the protaganist hudled in the bathroom while the tribal doll tries to get at her from underneath the door has stayed with me till this day. I got a very delicious tremor of fearful recognition when I realized this was the same story), Dance of the Dead, The Funeral (I loved the notion of vampires and their horror monster collegues wanting to have funerals for themselves) and From Shadowed Places, a lovely collision of Western and African sensibilites that was also a very powerful story on prejudice.

After reading all these, I can easily see why Stephen King lists Richard Matheson as a major influence on his writing.

2008-07-03T20:25:00.000-04:00

Number 15 of the year is about bananas. Like lots of people, I eat a lot of bananas. My husband puts them into our smoothies most mornings and I love to make banana bread. True, I don't really like banana flavoured things, but I do enjoy the actual banana. And like lots of people, I've never really thought about where all these bananas I eat came from.

With the book Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World by Dan Koeppel, I now know exactly where my bananas have come from, and that its not necessarily good.

Once again, I've heard the term 'banana republic' numerous, numerous times over my life. Heck, I've used the term. Heck, I've shopped in the ubiquitous store of the same name. It's a generic term for a small, ill-governed, (usually) South American country. But once again, I never gave much thought as to where the term came from. Well this book educated me in no uncertain terms, and I'm now really, really glad that the bananas I receive in my weekly shipment from the CSA I belong to, are fare-trade.

This book is an interesting companion almost, to Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine and Pollock's In Defense of Food as this book talks about the evils done by governments and corporations (those that became Chiquita, Dole, Del Monte, etc) done to small, South American countries all in the name of growing bananas, and now, how the only way the banana may survive, is by making it entirely dependent on food science.

This book made me think about the genetic manipulation of food more so than anything else, and, as he points out in the book, like most people, I get very uncomfortable with the idea that any food I eat might have been genetically manipulated. But the thing with bananas is that they the kind we eat, the Cavendish variety, is sterile, it doesn't breed like a normal plant, rather it is basically 'cloned', but taking clippings of one plant and growing nearly identical plants from that. This is the only method of banana plant reproduction. This is fine except for a few things, one of the main one being that since the plants are all the same, they are not very hardy and are very susceptible to things. There are certain diseases out there that are busily wiping out banana plantations across the globe, threatening the banana that millions of us eat. What makes it even worse is that, while we (i.e. the Western world) could make due without our daily banana in our cereal, there are millions in countries in Africa who rely on the banana as a sustience staple, as much as some rely on wheat or rice. But this staple is also under attack, and perhaps the only way to save this fruit and the millions of lives that depend on it, is to genetically modify the banana to resist the crippling diseases and other drawbacks. But these bananas would be developed in a lab, and this makes so many uneasy.

This book is packed full of information; the history of the banana, the history of the fruit companies and the countries they helped basically destroy in order to grow numerous, cheap bananas; and of course, the uncertain future of the banana. One thing is for sure, I'll never take another banana for granted again.

2008-06-11T10:07:00.000-04:00

Sheesh. Over a month since my last post. I got completely bogged down by a thick, studious book about the Holy Grail in North America. It's interesting, but a bit of a tough slog. I finally 'gave up' (not really 'cause I'm still reading it) and decided to pick something better (and quicker) to read on the subway and whatnot. So number 14 of this year is Those Who Walk Away by Patricia Highsmith.

I've never read any of her stuff before, but like most, I have seen the movie version of The Talented Mr. Ripley. This book was one of those tossed on my nightstand by my husband when I complained I had nothing to read. I'd forgotten about it for awhile, but found it, realized it wouldn't take me long to read, and gave it a shot.

The crux of the novel is a cat and mouse game between Ray Garrett and his (former) father in law, Ed Coleman. Ray's wife (and Coleman's daughter) has recently committed suicide, and both men are blaming Ray for her death. Ray blames himself in that he didn't recognize signs of her depression and because he was out of the house on the day it happened; whereas Coleman blames Ray as he thinks he was the root cause of Peggy's suicide. Coleman firmly believes that had Peggy not married Ray, she'd still be alive.

Ray wants only to explain his side of things to Coleman. That Peggy was... immature in a lot of ways. She wanted to experience life, but kept thinking there was 'more' to it; more to life, more to painting, more to sex, just more. And whenever there wasn't more, when reality set in, Peggy became more and more disappointed and Ray just wasn't sure what to do with her diappointment as he felt they had a good life. And they did. They had money, happiness (well, at first), and goals. But none of this was enough for Peggy.

The book starts off in Rome, with Ray wanting to 'explain' things to Coleman. But Coleman's not really interested in listening to explanations, and instead, takes a shot at Ray and runs off, believing his son-in-law dead.

But Ray survives, and continues to come back for more. The story moves to Venice, and Ray follows Ed there. But Ed, not exactly thrilled to see Ray, consents to meet with him again, but after the dinner party (complete with witnesses as to Ray and Ed talking), Ed pushes Ray out of a boat into frigid water, and once again leaves him for dead.

But once again, Ray survives. He also finally realizes confronting Ed again may not be the wisest idea. He plays 'dead' for awhile, trying to figure out his next move, and starts shadowing Coleman. In the meantime though, Coleman is quite pleased with himself. His complete and utter contempt for his former son-in-law is quite aparent, and he had no qualms of conscience about killing him. He obviously sees Ray's life as (inadequate) payment for Peggy's, and is fine with this. However, Coleman's compainions (including his lady friend) start to wonder if Ed did have something to do with Ray's disappearance. Eventually, Coleman does see Ray tailing him, and the whole thing begins again.

I liked Highsmith's narrative structure, where she basically alternates chapters told from the POV of either Coleman or Ray. This structure really lends itself to the cat-mouse feeling of the book as we get inside the heads of these two men, and no one else really. Its not that the secondary characters aren't fleshed out, its just that really, they're not as important. This is all about what's going through the minds of Coleman and Ray, and I appreciate Highsmith for not straying from that.

The characters of Ray and Coleman are well done and vastly differnt. Ray is a young man, confused about what's happend regarding his wife's suicide and feeling desperately guilty about it. He's not exactly a strong-willed person, he comes from a wealthy family and he smacks a bit of that priviledged helplessnes, but he does seem earnest (although at times overly so). In general, he comes across as very, very lost.

Coleman, on the other hand, is happy to let his grief come out as anger. He wants to lash out at the only person he can see is to blame for Peggy's death, and that's Ray. So when Ray tries to explain that Coleman is partly to blame (due to Peggy's sheltered upbringing), this pushes him even more into the idea that the only way he'll get peace is to kill Ray. Coleman is more of a self-made man than Ray is. He's not overly wealthy, but a painter of some talent, however, he does have a talent for hooking up with wealthy, widowed women (of his own age, obviously) who contribute to his upkeeping. However, as Coleman does have some money of his own, it doesn't feel like he's completely taking advantage of his latest lady-friend. You get the idea though that Coleman was a completely moral person, but his loss has driven him to contemplate (and attempt) a rather un-moral plan of action.

I also liked Highsmith's writing style; its rather economical and definitley a desendent of the hark-boiled approach of early crime writers like Dashiell Hammett. She doesn't go out of her way to describe things (despite the setting being Venice, a place where you'd figure lots of description would be appropriate), and she also manages to make Venice sound way less glamorous than you'd expect, and this ties into the story nicely.

I liked this book quite a bit, and would be willing to check out a few more of her offerings.

2008-05-07T11:14:00.000-04:00

Lucky number 13 is Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage by Alice Munro.

Had a slight problem with this book, got to page 136, half way through a story, when bam, I noticed that the next page was 189. Missing pages! What the hell??? So, I discovered this on the weekend, didn't really have time to head over to Chapters (which is where I bought it and fortunately I did find the receipt), so I would've finished this sucker on the weekend, rather than yesterday, had I not hit this snag. Yesterday after work, headed to the Chapters I bought it at, returned it, and promptly found out that they didn't have any more copies in stock. Sigh. Fortunately, headed over to local bookstore Pages, and they did have a copy. So yeah, went home and finished reading.

As usual, this is a collection of short stories. I love Alice Munro's short stories. There's always something wonderfully off kilter about them, even though they're about pretty mundane things. Her collections often have a theme through them (or at least, I shoehorn one on them), and this one seemed to be marital strife. A lot of the stories had the protaganist divorced, or embarking on an affair, or running away from an unhappy union or, or widowed, or, in the last story, having to suffer through a loved one not recognizing their partner due to the ravages of Alzheimers (and yes, you may recognize this story as the basis for Sarah Polley's recent movie; Away From Her).

As usual, the reactions to these various characters and their various reasons for what they do are mixed; understanding, incredulousness, sadness, pity and even some revultion in one story.

The last story, The Bear Went Over the Mountain, is indeed a bit of a tearjerker. The husband is revealed to be a bit of a cad, but one who does deeply love his wife and had never dreamed of leaving her despite his numerous indiscretions. But due to the Alzheimers, she leaves him. In the home he is forced to put her in, she strikes up a deep relationship with another of the home's residents, and she doesn't remember her real husband at all, no matter how many times he comes to visit her. It's hard not to feel sorry for her husband, so doggedly visiting, hoping for her return, witnessing her 'affair' first hand, but there's also a little bit like, well, why did he cheat on her in the first place though, and is what's happening now almost a little karmic pay back? The story actually does end as happily as it can, given the circumstances.

Really enjoyed this collection.

2008-04-25T19:24:00.001-04:00

Number 12 is In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan. Awhile ago, I saw Pollan being interviewed on George Stombopolous' The Hour, and I was immediately struck by his manifesto, "Eat food. Not too much. Mainly plants." It was a deceivingly simple manifesto, one that makes complete sense, and really, shouldn't have to pointed out to you. But in this day and age, the age of 'nutritionism' (a term that Pollan makes use of again and again) and the complete, industrialization and productization of our food, it is harder and harder to eat 'food', that is, non-packaged, non-synthetic, non-monkeyed with food.

Pollan looks closely at the decline of the Western Diet, and how our scientific approach to it, to the identification of nutrients and our idea that our diets should do without some things (such as fats), has made North Americans very nearly the most unhealthy eaters on the planet. He shows that in trying to analyze food, and in trying to replicate and replace in our diet what our industrialization of our diet has taken out has made us overweight and undernourished. He shows that food companies don't make any money off of whole foods (the kind we should be eating), but have gone through great lengths to prove to us that eating their products will make us healthier. With type-2 diabetes, heart disease and other aliments of the Western Diet running rampant in our population, its obvious that something isn't working and that we are not eating properly.

Its a scary book in some ways, as you realize just how far reaching the industrialization of our diet has gone; even if we do strive to stick to the outer rim in a supermarket (as Pollan says, this is where you will find food, going into the aisles of a grocery store will lead you into non-food territory), even that food is no longer the food our grandmother's or great-grandmothers ate. There are less nutrients in most of the produce and meat we eat today as the produce are bred for their greater yeild, not their nutritional value, and cattle and other animals are mass-raised on poorer corn-based feed, meaning that they're not as healthy as they used to be either. Pollan points out that it will now take eating three apples to gain the iron content of just one apple from our great-grandmothers' era. Scary indeed.

Pollan advocates getting out of the supermarket altogether. He recognizes that this is easier said than done, but also points out, that for the first time since the heavy duty industrialization of our diet became commonplace, that we have more choices. Farmers' markets and ordering boxes of fresh produce to be delivered are excellent ways to ensure that your food is real, is more diverse and is local. All three of which are important. He's also a huge advocate of growing your own, and I can completely understand why.

This book makes you examine your own diet very closely. My husband and I are compulsive label readers. Anything with even a trace of trans fats in it is ignored. We have, for quite awhile now, avoided the aisles of the supermarket. Of course, being the cereal hounds we are though, we cannot completely avoid it, but we're down to buying cereals with less than five ingrediants on the list. With things like Cheerios, Shredded Wheat and even Mini-Wheats, we're doing ok on the cereal front. But other than that, we're pretty good. Oh, we all still have our weaknesses, G's never going to be able to completely give up chips and I'm never going to completely kick my Coke habit, but I've also got him eating way more fruit and veggies than he used to, and he's got me more interested in cooking than I ever was in the past. Pollan also stresses that cooking for yourself, from scratch, gives you nearly omniscient control of what you're eating. You're not adding trans fats or monsaturatedglucose whathave you to your meal (unless you're starting with something pre-packaged, and well, that's not cooking), so you can be sure of what you're putting into your body. Anyway, I know we're not perfect eaters, but we're pretty darn good overall, but this book still made us realize we could be doing more.

Pollan says he knows his manifesto is simple. He never thought he would have to say it as he never thought he would have to defend food. But this book points out that food is under assault, and that unless we do go back to the basics, well, we're under assault too.

Now I'm thinking I must go and start planning a vegetable garden in my backyard.

2008-04-18T11:16:00.000-04:00

Number 11. Thud! by Terry Pratchett. I used to read a lot of Pratchett's Disc World fare. They're fun, have excellent internal consistency and a lovely sense of humour. In some ways though, Pratchett's like the Grisham or King of the fantasy set; he churns them out and they're good, but that's about it.

I haven't read a Disc World novel for awhile. It wasn't that I grew out of them, but I did start to think they were becoming a little... boring. They were also starting to resemble Law & Order 'ripped from the headlines' episodes, where Pratchett would take something topical from our world and fit it into his world. And there's nothing wrong with that; fantasy as a genre (and science-fiction as well) is often about viewing our world through the lens of another; Tolkien himself was often queried if his Lord of the Rings was a thinly veiled allegory of WWII (he denied this).

I've also, through all my Disc World readings, realized that my favourite group of characters to read about are the Watch. Oh sure, I like the witches, and I like the wizards of the Unseen University, the Watch of Ankh-Morpork are my favourite characters. Probably because overall, I do love a good police procedural. I love the character of Sam Vimes, Commander of the Watch. He's a good cop, through and through, but he's also a Duke (through marriage) and a family man and I do like how Pratchett's actually grown the character a bit over the years, yet still lets him remain true to his inner 'copdom'.

Thud! is a bit of an amalgam of influences. There's some Da Vinci Code stuff going on, as well as a lot of racial tensions and religious extremism. It's long been established on Disc World that trolls and dwarves don't get along with one another. There was a historic battle at Koom Valley (where the dwarves may have ambushed the trolls, or the trolls may have ambushed the dwarves) that ended with everyone dead, and it is, unfortunately, celebrated every year. And by celebrate, they mean that tensions between the dwarves and the trolls get ugly, and even in cosmopolitan Anhk-Morpork, there are clashes between the two.

The anniversary of Koom Valley is almost upon Disc World again, and Commander Sam Vimes and his Watch are trying to deal with everything that means. Adding fuel to the fire this time though are the preachings of 'deep-downers', fantatical dwarves who never leave the mines beneath the mountains, and if they do, they swarth themselves from head to toe in black, lest the light corrupt them. They are known as Grags, and they are the foremost interpreters of the stuff Tak wrote, Tak being the dwarven equivalent of a god. One of the Grags in particular preaches for wiping out of all trolls, saying its like doing them a favour because trolls are too stupid to live. Hamcrusher is very vocal, and is gaining a lot of listeners in Ankh-Morpork, much to the dislike of Vimes, and the city's troll population of course. Now, when Hamcrusher turns up dead and the Grags' 'interpreter' Ardent says a troll did it, well, Vimes realized he could be facing an honest to goodness race war in his city. As this could interfere with his daily, 6 o'clock sharp reading of 'Where's My Cow' to his young son, Vimes is increadibly unhappy.

What follows is a very intricate mystery that includes a gigantic painting of the Battle of Koom Valley (which may or may not point to a hidden treasure), a huge mine dug out beneath Ankh-Morpork, missing miners, a drug-additcted troll witness, mysterious and dangerous dwarf signs that have perhaps awoken an ancient, dwarf curse, and a troll made of diamond, who could just very well be the Troll King. I found this to actually be one of Pratchett's deepest (forgive the pun) books as it really does tackle racism and fanaticism very well. Even down to the moments between Sgt. Angua (werewolf) and Lance-Constable Sally (vampire) where they try to overcome their prejudices against one another; all are handled well. And then ending, even if you're like Vimes and aren't into all that 'mystical stuff', is well done and not trite.

I think this is probably the Disc World novel I've enjoyed the most since Hogfather.

2008-04-12T13:38:00.000-04:00

Numeral X. The Year of Living Biblically by A.J. Jacobs.

A.J. Jacobs is a writer for Esquire magazine. He has a previously published book called The Know it All which chronicles his attempt to read the entire Encylcopeida Britannica. He is a man who will go to extremes for his craft. He's a New Yorker, technically Jewish, but he goes through great pains to tell his readers that he is a very secular Jew, one for whom his religion hasn't figured very greatly in his life, he has long labeled himself as agnostic, but one day, he gets it into his head that for one year, he will live his life by taking the Bible as literally as possible.

His idea grew from a story he was told about an ex-uncle of his, uncle Gil, a man whom the family treats as a bit of a boogey man, someone whom has dabbled in many religions (Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism), and has in fact been a leader of a couple of honest to goodness cults. He was married to Jacobs' one Orthodox Jew aunt, and the family is overall very happy that Uncle Gil is no longer in the family. But Jacobs hears that one day, Uncle Gil decided to live the Bible literally, and from this story, A.J.'s decision is born.

It's harder than he thought, especially since some of the laws make no sense whatsoever, and some are very exclusionary. Of course, he finds all the big ones (the 10 commandments), but he finds a lot of smaller ones, about not wearing clothes of mixed fibres and wearing tassles on your clothes, and of course, all the various things you can not, or should not eat.

He has help of course, and consults all sorts of people; rabbis, Christian preachers, Creationsists, even (in a visit that is funny but also a little disturbing) the infamous Uncle Gil.

He grows his beard, he begins to wear only white, he starts to resemble those that get stared at regularly in NYC. And yet, through it all, he definitely starts to feel more spiritual, and he starts to feel kindred with those who are also spiritual; there's a lovely moment where he's on the subway, and across from him is sitting a Buddhist Monk, and they exchange a knowing nod; they understand where the other is coming from.

Of course, A.J. isn't perfect. He has problems getting rid of all the little white lies we tell daily. He doesn't like the whole treating your wife as unclean during her period (nor is his wife a big fan of this), but as someone who is a bit of a germ a phobe, he's ok with the not touching people he doesn't really know for fear of their being unclean.

He has a harder time with the New Testament section, he comes to admire Jesus and his teachings, but of course, he doesn't come to accept him as his saviour, but he thinks the man had some good things to say.

It is a very fascinating journey he's on and it does affect him in positive ways. He learns to let go of a lot of the anger we all have at small things throughout our day. He feels more peaceful. He becomes a big fan of the thanksgiving type prayers. He comes to a greater understanding of why people worship. He doesn't always agree with it, but he starts to understand it more. And through his journey, I think we do too. He makes the Bible sound like a very interesting place, where lots of good things are said, but well, he also points out how things are interpreted or misinterpreted. He cannot seem to fully grasp fundamentalism because we can never fully grasp the intent of God's words.

By the end of it, A.J is still agnostic, but he has become what one of his advisors calls a 'reverent agnostic', that whether or not there is a God, he does believe in the sacred. He believes in the sacredness of Life, the sacredness of the Sabbath and the ritual of prayer. It makes the everyday more transcendent.

And I think that's a nice way to look at it.

2008-04-06T15:10:00.000-04:00

Number 9 of 2008 is The Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore. You got to hand it to Moore, he comes up with the greatest titles.

The other thing you have to give to Moore is that, despite writing really funny books, he also manages to imbibe them with some rather dark moments that don't manage to completely wreck the tone of the book, but rather contribute to the overall sense of zany. And Moore's books are zany. They're zany but strangely plausible. The man's brilliant.

In this book we meet Tucker Chase, 'geek in a cool guy's body'. Chase seems to be a bit of a loser, a womanizing drunkard who's background story sounds strangely like Hamlet's (but without the whole Danish royalty thing); a good looking guy who seems to just float through life. When we meet Tuck, he's romancing a girl in an airport bar. Tucker's managed to find a gig as a private pilot for the head honcho of a cosmetics company (Mary Jean a thinly veiled Mary Kay), but within the first chapter, he completely blows this as he takes the girl for a tryst on the company Learjet, crashes it and gravely injures his man parts in the process. Mary Jean, not wanting to deal with the negative press Tucker has so kindly provided for her, 'disappears' Tucker to a tiny island in Micronesia, where he will now be a pilot for a Methodist missionary, flying medical supplies to and from Japan.

So Tucker, after surviving a typhoon in a row boat with only a (talking) fruitbat and the last navigator, a transvestite named Kimi, finds himself on his new home, a tiny island called Alualu; home to Dr. Sebastian Curtis and his wife Beth, a bunch of ninjas and the island's idingenous folks, the Shark People.

The Shark People are a little primitive, living on a rather sequestered island, but the Western World forcibly forced itself on them during WWII, when the Japanese built a small outpost and airfield on the island, and then the Americans took it from them. Due to these experiences, the Shark People have become what's called a 'cargo cult', the worship the American airman (a flyboy named Vincent) as a god who delivered them from the Japanese, and who gives them treasures from the Sky Priestess (Vincent's plane).

But it doesn't take long for Tucker to see that all is not right on AlauAlau. He is paid an exhorberant amount of money to take Beth Curtis to Japan where she drops off a small cooler and then heads right back. And when Tucker sees Beth's performance as the Sky Priestess (the Sequined Love Nun of the title), where she 'chooses' one of the Shark People, well, Tucker knows he has to figure out what's going on. Of course, this urge to know also stems from the fact that he's not allowed to drink and he's bored.

But somehow, Tucker knows that the Shark People are being exploited, he's just not sure how. He and his navigator Kimi befriend the Shark People, and he soon discovers just how badly the Curtis' are exploiting the Shark People, they're harvesting organs from them and selling them in Japan. Something awakes in the normally selfish, sodden and pitiful Tucker, and he realizes that he must help these people.

And help them he does. In an extremely over the top ending (which is something Moore does so very, very well), Tucker steals a 747 (no, he doesn't hijack it, there's an important distinction) and relocates the entire tribe of Shark People. It's all terribly satisfying.

Tucker Chase is a great character in the mold of 'pretty normal guy that has all sorts of weird shit happen to him and still manages to come out all right'. His exploits are fun because they are so bizarre and you really can't help but wonder how he's going to get out of it. True he's a pilot, but that really is the only remarkable skill about Tucker Chase. He's not a spy, he's not a ninja, and other than his ability to get into trouble, he's pretty unremarkable. But still, by the end of the book, he has grown as a character. Not hugely so, but just enough.

It's a fun book, like all Moore's books, complete with good lines, laugh out loud sections and improbable action scenes. They're always a good read.

2008-03-24T11:23:00.000-04:00

Ick. Number 8 this year took me far too long to slog through. It was The Language of Stones, by Robert Carter.

This is a slightly off-kilter telling of a re-born Arthur, one who shows up at the beginning of the War of the Roses in the 1300s. It has a Merlyn-type character, called Gwydion here, who has hidden away his reincarnated Arthur, a boy called Willand, in an unassuming place in what sounds like the north of England.

Now, the thing is, aside from using some actual dramatis personale from the War of the Roses (i.e. Henry VI), Carter doesn't use any real place names, and I found this hugely distracting as I was constantly trying to figure out WHERE the hell they were in this place. Had I known that the author explains this and gives you a bit of a 'key' in an afterword, I would've read that first and not been so distracted. Damn.

Carter also has a hate-on for the Catholic church. Not that he calls it the Catholic church, but that's definitely what it is. He states that it 'enslaves minds' and 'keeps the poor poor and enthralled to promises that never come true'. Which is all very true. He makes the Church sound truly scary though, and I did appreciate that.

So basically, the gist of the story is that Willand is a Child of Destiny, a reincarnation of Great Arthur (who has come back twice before) destined to save the world basically. In this case though, Willand doesn't seem destined to be king, nor to be a warrior, he is more... wizard like than anything. But, Willand does seem to have a natural harmony with the land (a theme often seen in Celtic and Arthurian legends, where the king is a relflection of the land itself), and he hones this and uses it to find the 'battlestones' that Gwydion says are scattered throughout the land. These battlestones (and their opposing 'good' stones) have been corrupted over centuries, by having the mana flow through the natural ley lines disturbed (mainly by the building of Roman roads, cutting off the natural flow) and these battlestones are now holding a great deal of harm, and projecting this harm so that the country itself is poised on the brink of war. So Gwydion and Willand traverse the country trying to find and neutralize these battle stones before war starts.

They aren't quite successful, for there is a huge battle at one point where the rebel troops (those of the house of York, the rightful ruling family) massacre the troops of the king (the house of Lancaster, the family of the usurper Henry IV), but Willand manages to shatter the Doomstone and avoid the worst of it.

Its an interesting book and the dynamic between Willand and Gwydion is a good one, Willand being quite reminiscent of Wart from a Once and Future King, and the idea of mana flow and ley lines is done very well, but it does start to suffer from techo-babble syndrome after awhile, where they go into so much detail that I just skip over it and block it out. It might actually be magical, but its still babble after awhile if you get bogged down in the details.

There are other books in this series, but I haven't decided if I want to read them yet.

2008-02-26T14:36:00.000-05:00

Last night, I blew through a silly Harlequin romance novel (and I use that word lightly) in about an hour, so I admit, I am loathe to count it towards my tally. Not only was it very short, but I also wasn't reading it very closely, more like... scanning the pages. And no, I wasn't rushing to the sex scenes, I kinda scanned through those too.

So, why did I bother reading it? Because Nat lent it to me, it was on my bedside table and I was too lazy to get out of my nice, warm, cozy bed to get the actual book I'm reading, which was in my purse in the living room. Yup, I'm THAT lazy :)

Therefore, A Night With the Boss, written by Natalie Somebodyorother (sorry, forgot her last name) will be book 7.5 for the year. Heh.

It's your basic Harlequin, girl meets boy, girl has all sorts of reasons not to be with boy, they end up together anyway, break up for awhile and (here's the twist!) girl ends up pregnant, but they plan to get married at the end and live happily ever after. Nothing ground breaking or earth shattering happening here.

I admit, it did amuse me on the level that, well, I also dated someone I worked with. No, not my boss, but still, I did find some... universal similarties in the whole idea of inter-office dating. The keeping it low key thing, the whole trying to avoid the office gossip but knowing full well people are talking anyway thing, yeah, we had all that too. And yes, I did end up marrying my workplace romance, and we are living happily ever after. Heh.