Really?
I don't update again until May???
And the sad thing is, I haven't actually done that much reading since my last post. I also haven't done quotes or page counts on my last few books. I'll find them before my end-of-the-year list.
I've read a lot of partial books. I'm still working on the Piper book I've been going at for a while (but I lost it), and I've started reading Dune at long last, but other priorities (such as my new job) have gotten in the way.
Regardless, here's what I've read the last few months:
The Descendants
by Kaui Hart Hemmings
Starring George Clooney (not really)
As I read The Descendants, two thoughts kept popping to my mind. 1) I would love to live in Hawaii for a year or two. 2) I don't want to see this movie. Not because I didn't like the story. (I did like the story, though I wasn't crazy about the pacing in points) Because I love the way the story was written, as a book, and the strength of the novel wasn't in the dialogue or the story or even necessarily the emotional pull. It was in what was going on in the character's mind. The things that didn't have to be said. The subtleties as he realized that everybody was pretty messed up. And I'm sure all these things come across just fine in the film. I'm sure it's a good movie (it was nominated for BP, after all). But I was so thoroughly satisfied with it as a novel, I just don't care to see it done another way.
I like books as books. It's actually been a while since I heard about a film adaptation upcoming from a book I've enjoyed and been excited about it, The Hobbit excluded. I just don't get as much from two hours with a set of characters as I get when I spend, say, a week with them. When I see a film version of a book I've enjoyed, I almost always leave feeling disappointed, at least when it's a straight adaptation (which is why Moneyball worked so well for me).
That said, if I see a movie based on a book I wasn't all that excited about, I often end up liking it.
But I digress. The Descendants is about a man (it's been so long I've forgotten his name, but George Clooney plays him in the movie) whose wife is in a coma in the hospital after a boating accident. He keeps telling himself she'll be okay and their family will go back to normal, but it turns out she won't recover, and Clooney has to deal with the fact that he'll now be a single parent to his two girls, ages 10 and 17 (or thereabouts). As he goes about the business of telling his wife's family and friends the bad news, he begins to uncover some details that suggest that force him to examine his family life and realize that it wasn't as great as he had told himself it had been, and through the story he resolves to make a more concerted effort to enjoy his life and love his daughters than he has before.
And then there's also this really intriguing subplot about selling some ancestral land. It seems a bit insignificant at the beginning of the novel but gets pretty dang hot by the end. About eighty pages into this book, I was about ready to write it off, but as the story unfolds it really does just keep getting better.
The Jungle Book
by Rudyard Kipling
The Jungle Book is NOT what Disney cartoons would leave you to believe! While many of the characters from the book are in the Disney classic, the story itself is vastly different. Which isn't unusual for Disney adaptations, or animated film adaptations in general. I only mention it here to illustrate how I was met with surprises at just about every turn of this book.
For one thing, this is not really "a" story, but a collection of short stories, only a few about Mowgli and friends, and several of which don't even take place in a jungle. The first three stories focus on Mowgli, Baloo, Bagheera, and the like. Shere Khan is a total wimp. Mowgli gets cast out of the jungle and goes to live in the man's village, but ultimately they chase him out, too. Then there's a story in the middle about monkeys kidnapping Mowgli and Bagheera and Baloo coming to his rescue (one of the best stories in the book).
But then, the next story is about a white seal trying to find a beach where his people won't be clubbed to death. (Pretty brutal scene, by the way) And the next story is Rikki Tikki Tavi, about the mongoose that kills to cobras to protect a human family. After that, you have a really neat story about a boy named Toomai and a secret gathering of elephants. And finally, you've got a quirky little exchange between the military animals of the British army stationed in India, comparing their lives. And each story ends with a song or poem.
The surprising thing for me was that, in my mind, the Mowgli stories were actually the least interesting parts of The Jungle Book. I kind of wish Disney had made the White Seal movie instead (Rankin Bass did one, I believe).
I just learned recently there's a Second Jungle Book, so I'm working through that right now.
American Gods, 10th Anniversary Edition
by Neil Gaiman
I always love Neil Gaiman's imagination, and his ideas, and his plots, and yet I almost always feel let down by the end of the book. So it is with American Gods. It's important to note that I was reading the expanded 10th Anniversary Edition, and I don't know what of the things I didn't like may have been omitted originally. The whole thing felt too long, and it felt like there were too many things that really didn't add much to the story. The idea was fantastic: all the gods of the peoples who traveled to this country are alive, though weakened through lack of worshipers, and the new gods of America--gods of television, Internet, workaholism--are hunting them down to exterminate them. And our hero, a man called Shadow, has been hired by Odin (who goes by the name of Mr. Wednesday) to try to recruit all of the old gods for one final war against the new gods. A very cool idea, and it clips along pretty well up until Shadow stays in Lakeside. At that point, the story gets kind of monotonous for a while. They go off, try to recruit another old god, come back, Shadow hangs around Lakeside, they go try to recruit another old god. After a while, the book becomes more a who's who of mythology and less of a coherent plot. Once the story picks up again, though, it really kicks it into a high gear, and it's hard to put the book down for the last hundred pages or so...until you get to the climax, which is extremely anti-climactic. The major conflict resolves so suddenly you have to wonder what the point of the first 500 pages was.
And while that is, I think, part of the point of the story, it left me with a bit of a negative vibe.
In addition, there were interludes between chapters that had nothing to do with the story. They served as stories of how other gods came to America, or what they did there. If you're geeking out about the myths in this book, then you probably loved these interludes. Once I realized they were about characters we weren't even ever going to see, I started wanting to skip them.
And finally, parts of the book are just nasty. And descriptive. (Warning: I'm going to tell you almost exactly what I'm talking about here, so you may want to skip to the next paragraph) For example, when Shadow is let out of prison at the beginning, he discovers that his wife is dead. At her funeral, he learns that she'd been cheating on him with his best friend. It wasn't enough to have her just cheating on him, though. No, it turns out the reason she and his best friend were dead was because she was giving him a blow job while he was driving on the highway. Seriously. Now, it may just be that I don't understand the mythological undertones of that particular incident, but it felt incredibly unnecessary to me. Also, in one of the interludes, we see a prostitute who is actually an erotic goddess devour the man who is making love with her through her labia majora. I remember thinking that it was the dumbest thing I had ever read. And unlike most of the interlude characters, we actually do see this woman again. Only for her to be immediately killed.
Now, when this book is good, it's great. It's often hilarious. It's wildly creative. I love the way it ties in old-world style religious faith with modern cultural phenomena. But it often feels like it's lost its way in all the pseudo-philosophical exploration of American identity and love for obscure foreign religion. I honestly didn't dislike this book. I just feel like it didn't deliver all the bang it promised in the setup.
The Invincible Iron Man: Extremis
by Warren Ellis
I've heard that the film Iron Man 3 could be based on this storyline, so I went ahead and checked it out. I hated it. I was pretty darn bored. I did recognize a lot of the elements of the origin story from the first Iron Man film which came from this book. And all of that was okay. But the Extremis storyline itself just didn't make a whole lot of sense. The dialogue wasn't snappy, the action was painfully slow, the villain was bland, the art was gross-out (to the extent that a mainstream comic would be, of course), and there was very little action for six issues of comic book. And maybe the whole Extremis project is explained better somewhere else within the Iron Man canon, but it wasn't really clear exactly what the stuff did. Nor how Tony Stark knew how it would work so well.
That said, the end result (Tony Stark can basically communicate with all of his tech telepathically, or something) was kind of cool, if confusing. The whole book is bloody, though, and none of the characters are very interesting. And you get a LONG debate on science, and ethics, and military funding for medical benefits, and hippies. And man, is THAT ever what you pick up a comic book for, or what???
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Okay, like I said, currently working on a few different books at once, but also got a couple of writing projects and a new part-time job. Something tells me I won't be working through twenty YA novels this summer.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
"Capsule Reviews"
Sorry, book blog.
I've actually been doing pretty well the past two months. I've been averaging a book per week, and that includes another mammoth edition of the Wheel of Time (can't believe I'm not even HALFWAY through this series! I marvel at its sheer length). If I tried to stop and do a full review of everything I've read, I would probably never catch up. So I'll give quickie Capsule Reviews instead and try to do better in keeping up in the future.
Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis (324 pages)
"This shame had nothing to do with He or She. It's the being mortal--being, how shall I say it? ...insufficient. Don't you think a dream would feel shy if it were seen walking about in the waking world?"
When you think C. S. Lewis and fiction, you think Narnia, and then probably Screwtape, and then maybe the space trilogy. You rarely hear anybody talk about Till We Have Faces, and after reading it I have to wonder why. Admittedly, the story itself is nothing special, particularly the middle portion of the book, which feels a little forced. However, the prose in this book is absolutely gorgeous. My respect for Lewis as a prose writer shot through the roof as I pored over the words on these pages. Because it's Lewis, you know you're going to get some appetizing theological issues to think about, but what makes it so interesting in this case is that the story is tied to Greek myth (particularly, the lesser-known myth of Cupid and Psyche) told from the perspective of one of the supporting characters. For a while, I was even wondering if this story had been written before Lewis became a Christian. (As it turns out, his original idea for the story did come in his atheistic days) Lewis does what no modern Christian writer I've seen does: writes the nonbelieving character sympathetically. And that's, to me, what makes the first and final thirds of this book so powerful. While I can see why it's not considered a Lewis classic, I'm still a bit surprised that I've never heard any of the folks in my circle talking about it, because it is a very interesting addition to the Lewis canon and, again, a beautifully, beautifully written book.
Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will by Kevin DeYoung (128 pages)
The conventional approach to the will of God -- where God's will is like a corn maze with only one way out and lots of dead ends, or like a bull's-eye with the center of God's will in the middle and second best everywhere else, or like a Magic 8-Ball that we are supposed to shake around until some generic answer floats to the top--is not helpful. It is not good for our decision making. It is not good for our sanctification. And sometimes it is frankly dishonoring to Christ.
That quote pretty much sums up the book better than I could. Kevin DeYoung has a short, easy-to-read, challenging examination of the popular notion that God's will is something that one must carefully divine before making any decision. I finished this book in a day. It's great for discussion, so read it with a friend. It tells you pretty flatly that you're probably overreacting about something that is currently going on in your life. It tells you straight away that a lot of people find this particular message unsatisfying. Yet it's supported with some very sound logical and theological thought. I'd recommend it to pretty much anybody freaking out about any life choices, whether they be in the past, the present, or the future.
Trust: New Avengers Volume 7 by Brian Michael Bendis (graphic novel)
Oh, um...and I read this comic book. It was okay. Not much happened other than setup for the Secret Invasion storyline. Oh, and Spider-Man rescues a baby.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (529)
"She just don't see em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly."
Aibileen takes a long sip of her tea. Finally, I look at her. "What you so quiet for? I know you got a opinion bout all this."
"You gone accuse me a philosophizing."
"Go ahead," I say. "I ain't afraid a no philosopy."
"It ain't true."
"Say what?"
"You talking about something that don't exist."
The first of this year's Best Picture Nominated Books. I know some folks who have discounted this book (and the movie based upon it) because it's another story about black women in the Deep South. Or because it was on Oprah's Book List. Well, those folks are missing out. I loved this book. I loved (and, when appropriate, hated) the characters. The book is written from the perspective of three different women, two black housemaids and one white newspaper columnist. Each section is written in that character's voice, too, and while it's a bit tricky to get your mind comfortable with Aibileen's dialect at the beginning, I think it ultimately lends a lot of power to her story. The "villain" of the story goes on my list of most despised literary characters. And yet she remains perfectly believable. One of the most appropriate comments I read on this book was that it was like a To Kill a Mockingbird for this day in age, and I can see that. It really brings to life the difficulty of that time period without making everyone a hate-spitting demonic Klansman. The heroic characters have faults, and (most of) the bigoted employers have redeeming values. There's a lot of wrestling for power and lots of struggling to overcome societal norms. It's a surprisingly down-to-earth and relateable take on this particular conflict. I found myself really invested emotionally in the highs and the lows of the tale.
I will say, however, that the book featured two particular scenes which seemed to be there for shock value alone. The graphic nature of the incidents in question really added nothing to the story, and that was a disappointment. Even if the scenes themselves did serve a purpose, the length to which they were taken just to be disturbing seemed, to me, to be in pretty poor taste. It's not like you don't have enough shock value in a story where folks are being beaten and jailed, etc, due to racism. Really, though, that was my only complaint. Overall, a book that I'm surprised I enjoyed as much as I did.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (533 pages w/ pictures, 249 w/o)
"As I look out at all of you gathered here, I want to say that I don't see a room full of Parisians in top hats and diamonds and silk dresses. I don't see bankers and housewives and store clerks. No. I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers."
There were a lot of pictures in this book.
It's hard for me not to compare this book to the movie because I did see the movie first. Actually, I saw the movie before I knew it had been based on a book at all. Large portions of the novel are taken up by full-page sketches, which is kind of a neat way to tell this particular story. While the movie portrays young Hugo and his friend Isabelle as surprisingly noble and mature for their ages, the book lets them be a bit more more...well, like kids. They bicker a lot, and they're both stubborn with one another through half the book, and whenever they argue Isabelle pretty much beats him up, which is pretty funny. At its heard, however, the story is the same, and it's positively charming. The drawings are likewise pleasant and, as I said before, a neat storytelling device rather than simple illustrations. Due to lots of drawings and small pages, it's a quick read, a fun YA mystery, and a heartwarming tale.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (326)
"Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.
It's always necessary.
I love you"
Here's an example of a great book that I just didn't care for all that much. It's good, it's innovative, it's gripping and emotional, but I just couldn't get into it until I was already halfway through. The story follows a boy who is looking for clues to a message he is convinced his father left for him before his father died in 9/11. Interspersed with the chapters from the boy's perspectives are a series of letters written from his grandmother (to him) and his grandfather (to his son, the boy's father). Oskar's grandfather walked out on his wife before his child was born, so he never knew him. He also had a strange ailment where he gradually lost his power of speech. Anyway, all three voices are very different in tone, style, and substance. Several pages were also torn from the grandfather's note bad (which he used to communicate since he couldn't talk, essentially giving the reader half of a long-ago conversation) or Oskar's scrapbook. It was fascinating to see the way the author used the book itself as visual art (rather than relying solely on the words). However, it became somewhat of a distraction to me as I was reading. It was difficult for me to read the grandfather's chapters, as he almost exclusively used commas for punctuation. Very few periods. Again, an artistic choice, but one that started hurting my brain.
Once I was about halfway through the book and I started to see where it was going, I started to really get into it. But I wasn't really invested from the beginning, so the payoff, while satisfactory, didn't have as much punch as it otherwise would have.
Again, I recognize that this was just a matter of personal preference. It's a great book, and it never uses the shock of 9/11 to try to coerce more grief out of the reader than we already feel from the fact that our protagonist is a child who is trying to deal with a lost parent. I'd actually recommend it to anybody looking for an interesting read. I just didn't get too into it myself, that's all.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (304)
At no point were the lab rats informed of the details of the experiment. They were praised for their walks, and criticized for swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. But they weren't ever told that the front office had reduced offense to a science, or thought they had. They had no idea that their management had reduced them to their essential baseball ingredients and these did not include guts or heart or determination or anything else that ordinary fans, or their mothers, would love them for. The players were simply aware that some higher power guided their actions.
This book is about half math (obscure statistics and equations) and half baseball. If you know me very well, you know that this is the perfect recipe for a book I'm going to enjoy. I actually wondered how they were going to make a good film out of this, since so much of it was statistics and theory and not necessarily throughline, but the filmmakers made a solid adaptation that was still highly entertaining. Now, as with all sports nonfiction, the language in this can get pretty bad, so if you're offended by F-bombs then stay away. Otherwise, if you like intellectually stimulating baseball reading, this is probably the book you're looking for.
Fun fact: Baseball People hated this book when it came out. Small wonder why.
Oh, and a post-script: a big part of manager Billy Beane's theory for putting together and efficient baseball team relies on taking pitches and getting walks while not using risky plays such as stolen bases or sacrifice bunts (there are statistics in the book to back this theory up). He also considers defense to be a low priority on his position players. Yet the team that did win the 2002 World Series was the Anaheim Angels, a team whose hallmarks were: base-stealing, positional defense, and well-placed bunting. Interestingly, Beane's A's have yet to win a Series. Now, that's not to discredit anything in the book, because I think Beane's plan is intriguing and yes, for a number of years a lot of those Oakland teams won a lot of games, but the book doesn't really point out that, if the bottom line is success, there may be some credibility to traditional baseball thought after all.
The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan (703)
The thoughts that had had him staring up into the blackness still ran through his head. Men would die today. A great many men, even if everything went perfectly. Nothing he did now would change it; today would run out according to the Pattern. But over and over he mulled the decisions he had made since he first entered the Waste. Could he have done something different, something that would have avoided this day, this place? Next time, perhaps. The tasseled length of spear lay atop his sword belt and scabbarded blade besidehis blankets. There would be a next time, and one beyond that, and beyond again.
Oh man, if I were to write a review of this book I'd probably be writing for another hour.
It's another Wheel of Time book. You can check my comments on the previous four and they'd mostly apply to this one. I liked it more than the last one I read, though I found the climax to be less exciting. Still, this is an incredibly solid saga, and I'm still all in. I actually started this book right after I finished Till We Have Faces and came back to it on and off over the past two months, not because it wasn't gripping, but because the other books were due back at the library. Plus, I wanted to read the Best Picture noms before I saw them when possible. But Fires is another great chapter to a great story. There wasn't a single character arc or story arc I didn't like this time around, and that's impressive given the number of arcs you get in one of these beasts. It clocks in at 702 pages, but trust me, it feels like a lot more than that. These books are marathons, and I love them. Even if I do have to take a break between them. (I won't wait a whole year this time, though)
Holly, feel free to call, and we can discuss in depth :-)
The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan (312)
"Five shall go west to the goddess in chains,
One shall be lost in the land without rain,
The bane of Olympus shows the trail,
Campers and Hunters combined prevail,
The Titan's curse must one withstand,
And one shall perish by a parent's hand."
This is the third entry in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and these books are just fun. They're not masterpieces, but they are very good. If you like YA fantasy adventure, and especially if you like monsters, you need to check these books out. The setting is Greek mythology, and Riordan pulls from every corner of the mythos he can get his hands on. The characterizations of the gods are usually fun and clever. The protagonist's voice is usually amusing in that 14-year-old-boy sort of way, and the battles are always well-written. I'm afraid this series will always be compared with Harry Potter due to the similarities in the posters for the first Percy Jackson movie and the HP franchise, and that's unfair. HP is obviously the superior series. But PJ isn't trying to be HP, nor should it. It's more a series of epic quests for preteens, and it's still pretty dang entertaining throughout.
Then again, I just really like monsters. So maybe that's why I dig them.
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Hoorah, all caught up. About to come to the end of the short-list I had to begin the year. Maybe I'll go back and hit up my old Reading List after that. As long as I don't wait until I have more than five books at a time to review. Cuz this post took forever. Glad the baby took a long nap.
I've actually been doing pretty well the past two months. I've been averaging a book per week, and that includes another mammoth edition of the Wheel of Time (can't believe I'm not even HALFWAY through this series! I marvel at its sheer length). If I tried to stop and do a full review of everything I've read, I would probably never catch up. So I'll give quickie Capsule Reviews instead and try to do better in keeping up in the future.
Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis (324 pages)
"This shame had nothing to do with He or She. It's the being mortal--being, how shall I say it? ...insufficient. Don't you think a dream would feel shy if it were seen walking about in the waking world?"
When you think C. S. Lewis and fiction, you think Narnia, and then probably Screwtape, and then maybe the space trilogy. You rarely hear anybody talk about Till We Have Faces, and after reading it I have to wonder why. Admittedly, the story itself is nothing special, particularly the middle portion of the book, which feels a little forced. However, the prose in this book is absolutely gorgeous. My respect for Lewis as a prose writer shot through the roof as I pored over the words on these pages. Because it's Lewis, you know you're going to get some appetizing theological issues to think about, but what makes it so interesting in this case is that the story is tied to Greek myth (particularly, the lesser-known myth of Cupid and Psyche) told from the perspective of one of the supporting characters. For a while, I was even wondering if this story had been written before Lewis became a Christian. (As it turns out, his original idea for the story did come in his atheistic days) Lewis does what no modern Christian writer I've seen does: writes the nonbelieving character sympathetically. And that's, to me, what makes the first and final thirds of this book so powerful. While I can see why it's not considered a Lewis classic, I'm still a bit surprised that I've never heard any of the folks in my circle talking about it, because it is a very interesting addition to the Lewis canon and, again, a beautifully, beautifully written book.
Just Do Something: A Liberating Approach to Finding God's Will by Kevin DeYoung (128 pages)
The conventional approach to the will of God -- where God's will is like a corn maze with only one way out and lots of dead ends, or like a bull's-eye with the center of God's will in the middle and second best everywhere else, or like a Magic 8-Ball that we are supposed to shake around until some generic answer floats to the top--is not helpful. It is not good for our decision making. It is not good for our sanctification. And sometimes it is frankly dishonoring to Christ.
That quote pretty much sums up the book better than I could. Kevin DeYoung has a short, easy-to-read, challenging examination of the popular notion that God's will is something that one must carefully divine before making any decision. I finished this book in a day. It's great for discussion, so read it with a friend. It tells you pretty flatly that you're probably overreacting about something that is currently going on in your life. It tells you straight away that a lot of people find this particular message unsatisfying. Yet it's supported with some very sound logical and theological thought. I'd recommend it to pretty much anybody freaking out about any life choices, whether they be in the past, the present, or the future.
Trust: New Avengers Volume 7 by Brian Michael Bendis (graphic novel)
Oh, um...and I read this comic book. It was okay. Not much happened other than setup for the Secret Invasion storyline. Oh, and Spider-Man rescues a baby.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett (529)
"She just don't see em. The lines. Not between her and me, not between her and Hilly."
Aibileen takes a long sip of her tea. Finally, I look at her. "What you so quiet for? I know you got a opinion bout all this."
"You gone accuse me a philosophizing."
"Go ahead," I say. "I ain't afraid a no philosopy."
"It ain't true."
"Say what?"
"You talking about something that don't exist."
The first of this year's Best Picture Nominated Books. I know some folks who have discounted this book (and the movie based upon it) because it's another story about black women in the Deep South. Or because it was on Oprah's Book List. Well, those folks are missing out. I loved this book. I loved (and, when appropriate, hated) the characters. The book is written from the perspective of three different women, two black housemaids and one white newspaper columnist. Each section is written in that character's voice, too, and while it's a bit tricky to get your mind comfortable with Aibileen's dialect at the beginning, I think it ultimately lends a lot of power to her story. The "villain" of the story goes on my list of most despised literary characters. And yet she remains perfectly believable. One of the most appropriate comments I read on this book was that it was like a To Kill a Mockingbird for this day in age, and I can see that. It really brings to life the difficulty of that time period without making everyone a hate-spitting demonic Klansman. The heroic characters have faults, and (most of) the bigoted employers have redeeming values. There's a lot of wrestling for power and lots of struggling to overcome societal norms. It's a surprisingly down-to-earth and relateable take on this particular conflict. I found myself really invested emotionally in the highs and the lows of the tale.
I will say, however, that the book featured two particular scenes which seemed to be there for shock value alone. The graphic nature of the incidents in question really added nothing to the story, and that was a disappointment. Even if the scenes themselves did serve a purpose, the length to which they were taken just to be disturbing seemed, to me, to be in pretty poor taste. It's not like you don't have enough shock value in a story where folks are being beaten and jailed, etc, due to racism. Really, though, that was my only complaint. Overall, a book that I'm surprised I enjoyed as much as I did.
The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick (533 pages w/ pictures, 249 w/o)
"As I look out at all of you gathered here, I want to say that I don't see a room full of Parisians in top hats and diamonds and silk dresses. I don't see bankers and housewives and store clerks. No. I address you all tonight as you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers."
There were a lot of pictures in this book.
It's hard for me not to compare this book to the movie because I did see the movie first. Actually, I saw the movie before I knew it had been based on a book at all. Large portions of the novel are taken up by full-page sketches, which is kind of a neat way to tell this particular story. While the movie portrays young Hugo and his friend Isabelle as surprisingly noble and mature for their ages, the book lets them be a bit more more...well, like kids. They bicker a lot, and they're both stubborn with one another through half the book, and whenever they argue Isabelle pretty much beats him up, which is pretty funny. At its heard, however, the story is the same, and it's positively charming. The drawings are likewise pleasant and, as I said before, a neat storytelling device rather than simple illustrations. Due to lots of drawings and small pages, it's a quick read, a fun YA mystery, and a heartwarming tale.
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (326)
"Here is the point of everything I have been trying to tell you, Oskar.
It's always necessary.
I love you"
Here's an example of a great book that I just didn't care for all that much. It's good, it's innovative, it's gripping and emotional, but I just couldn't get into it until I was already halfway through. The story follows a boy who is looking for clues to a message he is convinced his father left for him before his father died in 9/11. Interspersed with the chapters from the boy's perspectives are a series of letters written from his grandmother (to him) and his grandfather (to his son, the boy's father). Oskar's grandfather walked out on his wife before his child was born, so he never knew him. He also had a strange ailment where he gradually lost his power of speech. Anyway, all three voices are very different in tone, style, and substance. Several pages were also torn from the grandfather's note bad (which he used to communicate since he couldn't talk, essentially giving the reader half of a long-ago conversation) or Oskar's scrapbook. It was fascinating to see the way the author used the book itself as visual art (rather than relying solely on the words). However, it became somewhat of a distraction to me as I was reading. It was difficult for me to read the grandfather's chapters, as he almost exclusively used commas for punctuation. Very few periods. Again, an artistic choice, but one that started hurting my brain.
Once I was about halfway through the book and I started to see where it was going, I started to really get into it. But I wasn't really invested from the beginning, so the payoff, while satisfactory, didn't have as much punch as it otherwise would have.
Again, I recognize that this was just a matter of personal preference. It's a great book, and it never uses the shock of 9/11 to try to coerce more grief out of the reader than we already feel from the fact that our protagonist is a child who is trying to deal with a lost parent. I'd actually recommend it to anybody looking for an interesting read. I just didn't get too into it myself, that's all.
Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis (304)
At no point were the lab rats informed of the details of the experiment. They were praised for their walks, and criticized for swinging at pitches out of the strike zone. But they weren't ever told that the front office had reduced offense to a science, or thought they had. They had no idea that their management had reduced them to their essential baseball ingredients and these did not include guts or heart or determination or anything else that ordinary fans, or their mothers, would love them for. The players were simply aware that some higher power guided their actions.
This book is about half math (obscure statistics and equations) and half baseball. If you know me very well, you know that this is the perfect recipe for a book I'm going to enjoy. I actually wondered how they were going to make a good film out of this, since so much of it was statistics and theory and not necessarily throughline, but the filmmakers made a solid adaptation that was still highly entertaining. Now, as with all sports nonfiction, the language in this can get pretty bad, so if you're offended by F-bombs then stay away. Otherwise, if you like intellectually stimulating baseball reading, this is probably the book you're looking for.
Fun fact: Baseball People hated this book when it came out. Small wonder why.
Oh, and a post-script: a big part of manager Billy Beane's theory for putting together and efficient baseball team relies on taking pitches and getting walks while not using risky plays such as stolen bases or sacrifice bunts (there are statistics in the book to back this theory up). He also considers defense to be a low priority on his position players. Yet the team that did win the 2002 World Series was the Anaheim Angels, a team whose hallmarks were: base-stealing, positional defense, and well-placed bunting. Interestingly, Beane's A's have yet to win a Series. Now, that's not to discredit anything in the book, because I think Beane's plan is intriguing and yes, for a number of years a lot of those Oakland teams won a lot of games, but the book doesn't really point out that, if the bottom line is success, there may be some credibility to traditional baseball thought after all.
The Fires of Heaven by Robert Jordan (703)
The thoughts that had had him staring up into the blackness still ran through his head. Men would die today. A great many men, even if everything went perfectly. Nothing he did now would change it; today would run out according to the Pattern. But over and over he mulled the decisions he had made since he first entered the Waste. Could he have done something different, something that would have avoided this day, this place? Next time, perhaps. The tasseled length of spear lay atop his sword belt and scabbarded blade besidehis blankets. There would be a next time, and one beyond that, and beyond again.
Oh man, if I were to write a review of this book I'd probably be writing for another hour.
It's another Wheel of Time book. You can check my comments on the previous four and they'd mostly apply to this one. I liked it more than the last one I read, though I found the climax to be less exciting. Still, this is an incredibly solid saga, and I'm still all in. I actually started this book right after I finished Till We Have Faces and came back to it on and off over the past two months, not because it wasn't gripping, but because the other books were due back at the library. Plus, I wanted to read the Best Picture noms before I saw them when possible. But Fires is another great chapter to a great story. There wasn't a single character arc or story arc I didn't like this time around, and that's impressive given the number of arcs you get in one of these beasts. It clocks in at 702 pages, but trust me, it feels like a lot more than that. These books are marathons, and I love them. Even if I do have to take a break between them. (I won't wait a whole year this time, though)
Holly, feel free to call, and we can discuss in depth :-)
The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan (312)
"Five shall go west to the goddess in chains,
One shall be lost in the land without rain,
The bane of Olympus shows the trail,
Campers and Hunters combined prevail,
The Titan's curse must one withstand,
And one shall perish by a parent's hand."
This is the third entry in the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, and these books are just fun. They're not masterpieces, but they are very good. If you like YA fantasy adventure, and especially if you like monsters, you need to check these books out. The setting is Greek mythology, and Riordan pulls from every corner of the mythos he can get his hands on. The characterizations of the gods are usually fun and clever. The protagonist's voice is usually amusing in that 14-year-old-boy sort of way, and the battles are always well-written. I'm afraid this series will always be compared with Harry Potter due to the similarities in the posters for the first Percy Jackson movie and the HP franchise, and that's unfair. HP is obviously the superior series. But PJ isn't trying to be HP, nor should it. It's more a series of epic quests for preteens, and it's still pretty dang entertaining throughout.
Then again, I just really like monsters. So maybe that's why I dig them.
**************
Hoorah, all caught up. About to come to the end of the short-list I had to begin the year. Maybe I'll go back and hit up my old Reading List after that. As long as I don't wait until I have more than five books at a time to review. Cuz this post took forever. Glad the baby took a long nap.
Monday, January 16, 2012
It's true, wherever there's bad art, it feels like Chriiiiistmaaaaaas!
***Editor's note: I actually wrote this blog a while back and forgot to post it. Oops!***
Seeing as how I already posted my annual reading list on my other blog, I ought to at least offer short write-ups of the Month of Christmas Reading.
Remembering Christmas
by Dan Walsh
This is about as "standard Christian fiction" as you can get. (Interestingly, I didn't know anything about this book when I reserved it. I just caught the title and said, "Hey, I'm reading books about Christmas this month, why not?") You have the kind, older parents who run the little Christian bookstore beneath the church. You have their only other employee, the single mom with three jobs and a faith that can move mountains. There's our protagonist, the prodigal son who is highly successful in the business world and dreads the annual call home for Christmas time. And when Step-dad has a sudden aneurism at the beginning of the book, Skeptical Son has to run the little Christian bookstore over the holiday season! All these church people are so weird and nice. He doesn't know how to process it! And his Step-dad actually gave books away and fed homeless people? What kind of person does that?? But wait...Skeptical Son appears to be falling for Single Mom! Oh, noes! She has a kid. He can't fall for her! For her part, Single Mom likes him, too, but she doesn't want to pursue her feelings because she just isn't sure about his faith life. And, of course, there's deep resentment causing rifts in the family due to some history.
There aren't a lot of surprises in this story (well, scratch that, right about page 200 there's a real lulu. It's sort of the book's Nuke The Fridge moment, but I have to credit the book that it caught me by surprise!) and most of it is kind of boring. The dialog is often awkward, as every conversation is sort of forced into making the author's point, but again, this is Christian fiction and, sadly, most modern Christian fiction kind of fits that mold. All in all, this book isn't very good, but it isn't terrible, and I'm sure its target audience really loves it.
The Nine Lives of Christmas
by Sheila Roberts
So, this was a romantic comedy for single cat ladies. Well, part of the purpose of Christmas Reading Month was to broaden my horizons, genre-wise. And, of my original CRM selections, this was the most enjoyable. That doesn't mean it's a good book, of course. Oh, heavens no. The romance is shallow and doesn't really make any sense. The mousy girl at the pet store wishes she could hook up with the hunky firefighter, who must be her dream guy because he took in a stray cat. He likes her because she's hot. But he doesn't want to date her, because she's not the messing around type, she's the settling down type, and he doesn't want to end up with that kind of woman. Freedom and all. Oh, and deeply-rooted scars from family history. (Christmas is the season for deeply-rooted family issues) He keeps having odd fantasies about her. And by "odd," I mean many of them involve her wearing a Santa hat. I don't know why that's a turn on. However, some of the scenes between the two of them are thoroughly enjoyable. They do make a cute couple, even if their reasons for getting together are vague at best and shallow at worst.
Weaving its way throughout the romance is the plot about the stray cat the man takes in, a tom cat on its 9th life who is rescued by the firefighter from a murderous dog. The cat, who has spent most of its lives taking care of itself, now owes the man somewhat of a life debt and devotes all of its energies to getting him to dump his girlfriend and hook up with the pet store lady. And again, there are parts of this storyline that are pretty clever or entertaining. And, to this book's credit, the big buildup at the end (oh, spoilers, they end up together) isn't the two lover climbing into bed together. Rather, it's a year later, the following Christmas, with the two of them curled up on the couch looking at wedding decorations. Again, the characters are shallow, especially the guy, and the plot is a bit contrived, but there are some nice moments in this book, so it's not like the book was a complete waste of time. Quite unlike...
The Lawman's Christmas
by Linda Lael Miller
My experience with Westerns is limited, but I'd been led to believe they were pretty much all the same. Episodic, adventures, hombres, Indians, storms, stampedes, poor weather conditions, someone gets malaria; it's actually a lot like The Oregon Trail. Basically, a lot of stuff happens. This book taught me that there are actually two kinds of Westerns: the kind where interesting stuff happens, and the kind where the rugged Western man ends up marrying the poor widow who is about to be kicked out of her house by greedy merchants or something. That could be pretty riveting if the characters and prose were any good. But they're not. The whole book is really slow-moving (one hundred pages in, the most interesting thing that had happened was when the new marshal got a dog) and the narrative is repetitive and dull. It's hard to believe the whole thing takes place in about a week because A) that's a LOT of character/mood changing to happen in a week, and B) it feels like you've been reading FOREVER by the time you get to the ending. And speaking of the end....
Okay, keep in mind the entire book has moved slowly, no action, no sensuality, and very little spirit in most of our characters. There was a blizzard, but somehow it was boring. Then these two timid, careful, nearly-strangers get together on their honeymoon...look, I'm not going to get into details, but it was gross. Gross. I mean, I've read sex scenes and have become mostly calloused to them, but nothing I've read has made me as uncomfortable as this scene. And it didn't fit the characters. Not at all. I'm actually getting a little queasy right now just thinking about it. Look, I know there are worse sex scenes out there, but this just comes out of nowhere and blindsides you with ick. Again, however, this is clearly not a book for which I am the intended audience. However, if your audience is waiting for this kind of payoff, then that's just wrong.
Now, all of these books were written by "Best-Selling Authors," so clearly they're much better at what they do than I am. I'm not trying to take potshots at anybody or anything. And I admit, I was looking for cheesy (borderline bad) fiction for this Christmas season because I missed the TV specials this time around. But after these three, I needed a major change in my literary diet. So I returned the last few books I "blindly" checked out and picked up a couple I figured I had a good chance to really enjoy.
The Angel, the Shepherd, and Walter the Miracle Christmas Dog
by Dave Barry
128 pages
Putnam Adult, 2007
I am a fan of newspaper humorist Dave Barry (though I was thoroughly disappointed by the one children's novel of his that I've read), and I'd read a few of his Christmas columns in years past, so I thought this book would be a positive step toward giving myself a merrier PowerCard Christmas. I was right, as Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog is a charming holiday story about a family whose dog dies on Christmas Eve. It's told from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old (I think) boy dealing with 12-year-old-boy problems like girls, siblings, and the annual church Christmas pageant. Surprisingly, this narrative lacks the sarcasm and comic cynicism that I've come to associate with Barry's work. In a way, the tone reminds me of the narrative voice in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, only from a boy's perspective instead of a girl's. So if you're not offended by somewhat crude preteen boy humor (or large piles of bat guano) then this is a book I wholeheartedly recommend for some light, heartwarming holiday fluff.
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits
by Les Standiford
256 pages
Crown Publishers, 2008
I read this book as a recommendation from my uncle's book store's web site. I never got around to reading The Christmas Carol this year, so I figured this would be the next best thing. It's kind of an introduction to Dickens in a lot of ways, sort of a light biography that focuses primarily on his career leading up to and including Carol, then glossing over everything afterward. I enjoyed it, and it made me want to read more Dickens. The purpose of the book was to show how Carol resurrected the dying career of one of England's greatest novelists while showing what an impact Dickens' book had on popularizing the holiday of Christmas itself in Western culture. While I felt like the book did a great job on the first half of that premise and a decent job of setting up the second, I don't know if it necessarily showed as strong of a correlation between the book's success and the rise of Christmas. Still, it was an informative and entertaining read, and a nice way to close out 2011.
Seeing as how I already posted my annual reading list on my other blog, I ought to at least offer short write-ups of the Month of Christmas Reading.
Remembering Christmas
by Dan Walsh
This is about as "standard Christian fiction" as you can get. (Interestingly, I didn't know anything about this book when I reserved it. I just caught the title and said, "Hey, I'm reading books about Christmas this month, why not?") You have the kind, older parents who run the little Christian bookstore beneath the church. You have their only other employee, the single mom with three jobs and a faith that can move mountains. There's our protagonist, the prodigal son who is highly successful in the business world and dreads the annual call home for Christmas time. And when Step-dad has a sudden aneurism at the beginning of the book, Skeptical Son has to run the little Christian bookstore over the holiday season! All these church people are so weird and nice. He doesn't know how to process it! And his Step-dad actually gave books away and fed homeless people? What kind of person does that?? But wait...Skeptical Son appears to be falling for Single Mom! Oh, noes! She has a kid. He can't fall for her! For her part, Single Mom likes him, too, but she doesn't want to pursue her feelings because she just isn't sure about his faith life. And, of course, there's deep resentment causing rifts in the family due to some history.
There aren't a lot of surprises in this story (well, scratch that, right about page 200 there's a real lulu. It's sort of the book's Nuke The Fridge moment, but I have to credit the book that it caught me by surprise!) and most of it is kind of boring. The dialog is often awkward, as every conversation is sort of forced into making the author's point, but again, this is Christian fiction and, sadly, most modern Christian fiction kind of fits that mold. All in all, this book isn't very good, but it isn't terrible, and I'm sure its target audience really loves it.
The Nine Lives of Christmas
by Sheila Roberts
So, this was a romantic comedy for single cat ladies. Well, part of the purpose of Christmas Reading Month was to broaden my horizons, genre-wise. And, of my original CRM selections, this was the most enjoyable. That doesn't mean it's a good book, of course. Oh, heavens no. The romance is shallow and doesn't really make any sense. The mousy girl at the pet store wishes she could hook up with the hunky firefighter, who must be her dream guy because he took in a stray cat. He likes her because she's hot. But he doesn't want to date her, because she's not the messing around type, she's the settling down type, and he doesn't want to end up with that kind of woman. Freedom and all. Oh, and deeply-rooted scars from family history. (Christmas is the season for deeply-rooted family issues) He keeps having odd fantasies about her. And by "odd," I mean many of them involve her wearing a Santa hat. I don't know why that's a turn on. However, some of the scenes between the two of them are thoroughly enjoyable. They do make a cute couple, even if their reasons for getting together are vague at best and shallow at worst.
Weaving its way throughout the romance is the plot about the stray cat the man takes in, a tom cat on its 9th life who is rescued by the firefighter from a murderous dog. The cat, who has spent most of its lives taking care of itself, now owes the man somewhat of a life debt and devotes all of its energies to getting him to dump his girlfriend and hook up with the pet store lady. And again, there are parts of this storyline that are pretty clever or entertaining. And, to this book's credit, the big buildup at the end (oh, spoilers, they end up together) isn't the two lover climbing into bed together. Rather, it's a year later, the following Christmas, with the two of them curled up on the couch looking at wedding decorations. Again, the characters are shallow, especially the guy, and the plot is a bit contrived, but there are some nice moments in this book, so it's not like the book was a complete waste of time. Quite unlike...
The Lawman's Christmas
by Linda Lael Miller
My experience with Westerns is limited, but I'd been led to believe they were pretty much all the same. Episodic, adventures, hombres, Indians, storms, stampedes, poor weather conditions, someone gets malaria; it's actually a lot like The Oregon Trail. Basically, a lot of stuff happens. This book taught me that there are actually two kinds of Westerns: the kind where interesting stuff happens, and the kind where the rugged Western man ends up marrying the poor widow who is about to be kicked out of her house by greedy merchants or something. That could be pretty riveting if the characters and prose were any good. But they're not. The whole book is really slow-moving (one hundred pages in, the most interesting thing that had happened was when the new marshal got a dog) and the narrative is repetitive and dull. It's hard to believe the whole thing takes place in about a week because A) that's a LOT of character/mood changing to happen in a week, and B) it feels like you've been reading FOREVER by the time you get to the ending. And speaking of the end....
Okay, keep in mind the entire book has moved slowly, no action, no sensuality, and very little spirit in most of our characters. There was a blizzard, but somehow it was boring. Then these two timid, careful, nearly-strangers get together on their honeymoon...look, I'm not going to get into details, but it was gross. Gross. I mean, I've read sex scenes and have become mostly calloused to them, but nothing I've read has made me as uncomfortable as this scene. And it didn't fit the characters. Not at all. I'm actually getting a little queasy right now just thinking about it. Look, I know there are worse sex scenes out there, but this just comes out of nowhere and blindsides you with ick. Again, however, this is clearly not a book for which I am the intended audience. However, if your audience is waiting for this kind of payoff, then that's just wrong.
Now, all of these books were written by "Best-Selling Authors," so clearly they're much better at what they do than I am. I'm not trying to take potshots at anybody or anything. And I admit, I was looking for cheesy (borderline bad) fiction for this Christmas season because I missed the TV specials this time around. But after these three, I needed a major change in my literary diet. So I returned the last few books I "blindly" checked out and picked up a couple I figured I had a good chance to really enjoy.
The Angel, the Shepherd, and Walter the Miracle Christmas Dog
by Dave Barry
128 pages
Putnam Adult, 2007
I am a fan of newspaper humorist Dave Barry (though I was thoroughly disappointed by the one children's novel of his that I've read), and I'd read a few of his Christmas columns in years past, so I thought this book would be a positive step toward giving myself a merrier PowerCard Christmas. I was right, as Walter the Christmas Miracle Dog is a charming holiday story about a family whose dog dies on Christmas Eve. It's told from the viewpoint of a 12-year-old (I think) boy dealing with 12-year-old-boy problems like girls, siblings, and the annual church Christmas pageant. Surprisingly, this narrative lacks the sarcasm and comic cynicism that I've come to associate with Barry's work. In a way, the tone reminds me of the narrative voice in The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, only from a boy's perspective instead of a girl's. So if you're not offended by somewhat crude preteen boy humor (or large piles of bat guano) then this is a book I wholeheartedly recommend for some light, heartwarming holiday fluff.
The Man Who Invented Christmas: How Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits
by Les Standiford
256 pages
Crown Publishers, 2008
I read this book as a recommendation from my uncle's book store's web site. I never got around to reading The Christmas Carol this year, so I figured this would be the next best thing. It's kind of an introduction to Dickens in a lot of ways, sort of a light biography that focuses primarily on his career leading up to and including Carol, then glossing over everything afterward. I enjoyed it, and it made me want to read more Dickens. The purpose of the book was to show how Carol resurrected the dying career of one of England's greatest novelists while showing what an impact Dickens' book had on popularizing the holiday of Christmas itself in Western culture. While I felt like the book did a great job on the first half of that premise and a decent job of setting up the second, I don't know if it necessarily showed as strong of a correlation between the book's success and the rise of Christmas. Still, it was an informative and entertaining read, and a nice way to close out 2011.
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