Thursday, August 29, 2013

Review: The Well of Lost Plots

The Well of Lost Plots
(Thursday Next #3)
By Jasper Fforde
Viking 2004
375 pages
From the library

The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3)

Warning: This review may contain spoilers for the first two books in the series. 


Thursday Next still hopes to get her husband back. But it's perhaps best for a very pregnant and very wanted woman to lay low for a while. So Thursday decides to hide out in the Well of Lost Plots. The well is home to unpublished books, half-baked ideas, and plot devices up for grabs. Thursday takes up residence in a poorly written detective novel, taking the place of a vacationing character. But all is not well in Bookworld. Someone is after the agents of Jurisfiction and the new version of Ultra Book has secret repercussions for everyone.

Jasper Fforde is writing an amazing series. The man seems to have an infinite amount of ideas, endowing both Thursday's world and Bookworld with endless possibilities. But The Well of Lost Plots doesn't live up to its predecessors. I think part of it is the loss of continuity. In the first two books, the arc was about Thursday fighting Goliath to regain her husband. But Thursday makes the decision to go underground and so we get no interaction with Goliath and just a minor storyline about Thursday and Landen. Many readers say that this book is actually set-up for Fforde's Nursery Crime series, instead of a true continuation of Thursday's adventures.

The second issue is that Fforde seems to start exploring hundreds of new ideas, but none of them are fully developed. We learn that characters begin as blank slates and then go to school to learn to become either a main or minor character. They are imbued with the appropriate character traits for cops, love interests, or heroes. We also find out that there is a thriving industry of plot devices for the stories in the well. Characters will pay a pretty penny for a twist that will propel their story to publishing.

His plot ideas are fascinating, as usual, but they leave your head spinning with their sheer volume. Most of the pages are taken up with description, to the detriment of a real plot. For a character who goes into hiding because of her pregnancy, it gets very little page time. Thursday doesn't seem particularly concerned with her child or what kind of mother she will be. I wanted more character development and especially more time devoted to the relationships between Thursday and her grandmother, her mentor Miss Haversham, and her new housemates Lola and Randolph.

The Well of Lost Plots is a fun and interesting read. I'm certainly not done with this series. I am excited to see what else Fforde can do with Bookworld and the indomitable Thursday Next. This was not my favorite book of the bunch, though. 

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Review: Half the Church

Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
By Carolyn Curtis James
Zondervan March 2011
194 pages
From my shelves

Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women

After reading Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book Half the Sky, Carolyn Curtis James was inspired to take action. She read of the horrific abuse still perpetrated upon women around the world and wondered if we were doing any better as the Christian church. How do we treat women? What place do women have in the modern church? Does God call his daughters to submit to men or are they called to partner with men in order to radically change the world?

While reading through the first few chapters of this book, I felt as if it should really be marketed as a companion book to Half the Sky. James spends a lot of time writing about how inspired and grieved she was by that book and sharing the stories that impacted her the most. I was similarly wowed by Half the Sky, but spending forty pages waiting for original content is not a good start. 

However, she does some very good analysis further into the book. She makes great points about the church zeroing in on a woman's calling as a wife and mother and ignoring many women who have different callings. The widow, the unmarried, the single mother can all be marginalized by a church culture that praises the perfect wife and mom. She argues that the Gospel must be for all women, regardless of their marital status, and that God empowers all women to do great things. James analyzes the concept of ezer, which is translated as the word "helper" and used by many complimentarians as reasoning for women to submit to their husbands and other male leaders. But she argues that ezer is defined as a strong helper and is used most often in a military context. God created women to fight for each other - just ask any woman whose loved one is in danger. 

After a few chapters of in-depth research and compelling arguments, she seems to hit a wall. Her premise is that God created men and women to comprise a whole, not that women are made to support or assist men. But James draws back and refuses to name her argument for what it is. She has clearly argued for an egalitarian church, one where "the blessed alliance" between men and women enables them to do more than they ever imagined. But she won't name it. She writes that "taking sides in the debate seemed an unnecessary distraction that would take me off mission and cost me half my audience - something I am unwilling to do." She doesn't seem to realize or be willing to acknowledge that the half an audience she would lose by calling herself an egalitarian is the same audience she is bound to lose when they read passages like "rich, collaborative, interdependent relationships between God's sons and daughters are vital to both genders and to make the body of Christ stronger."

Carolyn Curtis James has taken up the cause of women in the church. She advocates for them, calling the church to be a beacon of hope to women trapped in patriarchal and cultural cruelty. She calls us to become a church of men and women working for mutual causes instead of getting caught up in technicalities. I wish she had been better able to separate her book from Half the Sky and that her argument had been more cohesive. I agree wholeheartedly that we need to present a full gospel for all people, one that includes the widow, the single mother, the child bride, and the woman who was trafficked. But I'm left wondering how she proposes that we do that. In spite of that, Half the Church presents a lot of good answers and perhaps more importantly, many vital questions. James' research is sound and her call for women to rise up and become the ezer-warriors that God created them to be is one that cannot be ignored. 

Sunday, August 25, 2013

It's Monday and I'm not ready for September!!


Hello there, my fellow bibliophiles! How are things going?

I thought this week would be a bit calmer. But that didn't exactly happen. We took a family trip to see the Planes movie, my best friend came to visit, and I ended up filling in for the church pianist for a second Sunday. We also got all of David's information for kindergarten. We have the name of his teacher and orientation is scheduled for next week. If you need me this week, I will be the one looking at his baby pictures and trying to figure out where the time went...


Read This Week:
The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession
The Bookman's Tale
By Charlie Lovett

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
By Anthony Marra


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Reviews of The Illusion of Separateness and The World of the End


Reading Now:
Fin and Lady: A Novel
Fin and Lady
By Cathleen Schine

Up Next:
The Light in the Ruins
The Light in the Ruins
By Chris Bohjalian

What are you reading this week?

Friday, August 23, 2013

Review: The World of the End

The World of the End
By Ofir Touche Gafla
Tor Books June 2013
368 pages
From the library

The World of the End

Ben Mendelssohn is used to thinking about endings. He works as an epilogist, crafting the perfect endings for stories. But when his beloved wife Marian dies in an accident, Ben finds an ending that he cannot bear. Instead of continuing to grieve, Ben decides to join his wife in the afterlife. He finds himself in the Other World, a place that defies every notion that he held about the afterlife. While acclimating to his new surroundings. Ben sets out to find Marian with the help of a quirky private investigator. Their search is more complicated than Ben ever imagined - does Marian not want to be found or is she not in the Other World at all?

This is the sort of book that you really have to pay attention to while reading. The narrative begins with Ben, but several other characters take over at various points. We also meet a reclusive pair of brothers, a slightly unhinged nurse, and a couple who meet online as fans of an author. As with many dual narratives, we are left waiting until the last moment to find the connections between these characters. 

The World of the End raises a lot of interesting questions about life and death. How do we deal with losing someone we love? What is there after death? Is everyone happy after they die and what kind of existence will we have? In this version of the afterlife, there are a lot of rules and a lot of surprises. To start with, Ben discovers that everyone is naked. Each person is assigned an apartment based on the date and time they died and everyone communicates via godgets around their necks. A video of your entire life is provided, so that the residents of the Other World can relive the best (or worst) moments whenever they wish. 

At first glance, this story sounds sort of familiar but Gafla has done some very inventive things in his tale of life after death. While the intertwining storylines could be confusing. I was very interested by the ways that the characters and events connected. At its heart, though, this is a love story. Ben is relentless in his quest to find his wife, regardless of the consequences. While there were many twists and detours on his journey to find Marian, the ending felt somewhat trite and predictable to me.

This book was published almost a decade ago in Israel, but it is just now available to those of us reading in English. While it deals with serious issues, it always examines them through the lenses of grace and humor. The World of the End is a meditation on life and death, a zany mystery, and a love story all wrapped up in one. 

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Review: The Illusion of Separateness

The Illusion of Separateness
By Simon Van Booy
Harper Collins June 2013
208 pages
From the library

The Illusion of Separateness

Thank you, Simon Van Booy for restoring my faith in literary criticism. Several times this year, I have picked up a book that was "written by the greatest writer since sliced bread" or "the long awaited new story from the greatest writer of our age" and was terribly unimpressed. I was starting to think that either I was missing something or the literary vanguards and I were reading very different books. But then I read your newest book, The Illusion of Separateness, which has been heralded as "masterful" and "poetic." And they are so very right.

The Illusion of Separateness is a slim, quiet novel that reminds us that our decisions can have far-reaching consequences and that none of us are quite as alone as we might imagine. In this book, we meet a man who works at a retirement home while wondering about his past, a young soldier about to go to war, and a blind woman who has a special bond with her grandfather. Each of them come to a moment when their decision will change the course of their lives forever. Some of them are aware of the importance and others are not. Their choices reverberate through their lives, the lives of the people they love, and people they will never meet. 

Van Booy's writing is sparse, but it manages to convey so much. He beautifully captures the glories of love and the depths of fear and grief. It is evident that he views writing not as a job or a hobby, but as a craft. He finds the nuance and grace in each word and sentence to create a book that is so heartfelt and striking that you find yourself reading the same passages over and over again.

For example:

"He must die and come back to life. He would recite the Bible, the Koran, the Talmud by simply declaring the name of someone he loved. He would trap the contents of his life in the safety of a single word, like a bubble in the sea."

"He stood over the small boy and touched his hair. But the boy did not move - could not feel that he was being remembered.
Danny sat on the bed and traced the outline of cartoon shapes on the duvet. He stared at the plain sleeping face and felt the churn of dreams within.
And then Danny felt a sensation he had never before known, an intense pity that relieved him of an incredible weight. And the boy he reached for in the half dark, the head he touched was not his - but the soft, wispy hair of his sleeping father, as a child, alone, suffering, desperate, and afraid."

"I went to sleep thinking about it. I wondered who would live in our house now if I hadn't been born? I wondered who would have my seat on the bus every day into the city, who would sit next to Philip in his truck on long drives?
One day Philip and I will be old - and this flight home to New York will be a silent flickering, something half imagined. Grandpa John will have been dead for many years.
After Philip and I die, there will be no one left to remember Grandpa John and then no one left to remember us. None of this will have happened, except that it's happening right now.
There will be no Amelia, yet here I am.
I wonder how our bodies will change as we get old. I wonder how we'll feel about things that haven't happened to us yet."

In a lesser writer's hands, this idea would feel stale and overdone. We have all read many books where people have hidden connections, spanning generations and continents. But The Illusion of Separateness reminds us of these connections with gorgeous prose and unforgettable characters.

This is the sort of book that you want to gently slip into the hands of everyone you know and love so that they too can see this beautiful and painful life we all share through a new lens. The Illusion of Separateness is a novel that will be finding a home on my bookshelves and I look forward to reading the backlist of this truly talented writer. 

Sunday, August 18, 2013

It's Monday and life is calming down?


I hesitate to title this post like that because I worry that the second I hit publish, things will get crazy again. Oh well. The husband and I got away for a few days to the fair state of Wisconsin where we learned that the people are incredibly friendly. Even going through airport security was a lovely experience. Who knew? Husband spent a lot of time in conferences and I spent a lot of time catching up on my reading and getting some work done. Also, Wisconsin looks like this sometimes:



After filling in for the pianist at church this Sunday, I am ready to breathe a bit and take in a week with no traveling and no frantic practicing. It sounds good right now...I will let you know how it turns out!

Read This Week:
The World of the End
The World of the End
By Ofir Touche Gafla

The History of Love
The History of Love
By Nicole Krauss

The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3)
The Well of Lost Plots
By Jasper Fforde

Half the Church: Recapturing God's Global Vision for Women
Half The Church
By Carolyn Curtis James


Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Reviews of Spell It Out, The Dark Road and The Shining Girls


Reading Now:
The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession
The Bookman's Tale
By Charlie Lovett

Up Next:
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
By Anthony Marra


What are you reading this week?

Friday, August 16, 2013

Review: The Shining Girls

The Shining Girls
By Lauren Beukes
Mullholland Books June 2014
375 pages
From the library 
The Shining Girls

Harper Curtis believes that he has a mission. He must kill each of the shining girls, young women whose eyes hold a special spark. But Curtis is not your run of the mill serial killer. He can travel through time to find each one of his victims. Kirby Mazrachi was not supposed to survive his vicious attack. But her faithful dog and determination kept her alive...barely. Now Kirby is using her tenacity and burgeoning journalistic skills to track down the man who tried to murder her. 

This book is obviously fiction. The idea of someone traveling through time via a magical, seemingly living house seems preposterous. But it also gives Kirby's story an added layer of terror: if your stalker can travel through time, how will you find him? And how can you ever escape him?

Lauren Beukes has a skill for writing multiple time periods well. The "shining girls" are a diverse group of women, each talented in a certain way. One of them is a brilliant scientist, another is a woman who literally shines as she dances, and another is an African American mother who is shattering racial stereotypes. We really get to know each of these women, although we know that none of them will have a happy ending. Beukes is an author who excels at writing historical fiction or writing a thriller and by mixing them seamlessly, we readers get the best of both worlds.

In the midst of the craziness, we get a small, quiet story of a friendship becoming something more. As Kirby searches for answers, she becomes an intern at a newspaper under the tutelage of Dan. He was the reporter who covered her case, but he now works at the sports desk because he went too far trying to figure out what happened to her. These two characters seem incredibly real - Kirby has been wounded both physically and mentally by her attack and she is simultaneously tough and extremely vulnerable. Dan begins as a sort of big brother figure, guiding her through the ins and outs of reporting and trying to keep her out of trouble. Of course, he eventually realizes that his motives are much different from those of a big brother, but he cares enough to not want to cause her more pain. Their tentative relationship is one of the highlights of a carefully created story.

There are a lot of "whys" that are not explained in this book, which can be a positive for some readers and a negative or others. Curtis stumbles upon this magical house and never really finds out why it works the way that it does, why he is the one the house has chosen, or who or what is behind the magic of time travel. The why is not necessarily the point of the story, but having so much time from Curtis' point of view without any real explanations can become frustrating.

The Shining Girls is a hybrid of all the stories you love best - friendship becoming something more, a meticulously detailed historical story, and a creepy thriller that makes you keep the lights on when you go to bed. Lauren Beuekes is a very talented writer and Kirby's story is one that I will not soon forget. 

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Review: The Dark Road

The Dark Road
By Ma Jian
Translated by Flora Drew
Penguin June 2013
375 pages
From the library

The Dark Road

Meili is pregnant with her second child. What should be a time of celebration is overshadowed by danger. Meili and her husband Kongzi live in China and they don't have a permit to have a second child. Kongzi is determined to have a son and continue the proud line of Confucius. When family planning officials start to close in on their village, the couple flee with their daughter Nannan. They travel down the Yangtze River, living in deplorable circumstances and always looking over their shoulders for the authorities who will rip their family apart. 

This is the first book in a long time that I actually had to convince myself to keep reading. This book is incredibly graphic and dark. The knowledge while that Meili may be fictional, her plight is not makes it even more difficult to stomach. Family planning officials have the ability to take you off the street to sterilize you, insert an IUD, or perform a late term abortion. They will then send you on your way...with the bill, of course. 

Meili is caught between two forces - her husband's determination to have a son and the government's determination to control their family. While the government may be cruel, her husband is equally so as he puts his desire to have a son over the safety of the family he already has. "When she met him at seventeen, she believed marriage was for ever, that the government protects and cares for the people, and that husbands protect and care for their wives. But as soon as she got married, these naive beliefs were shattered. She discovered that women don't own their bodies: their wombs and genitals are battle zones over which their husband and the state fight for control - territories their husbands invade for sexual gratification and to produce male heirs, and which the state probes, monitors, guards and scrapes so as to assert its power and spread fear. These continual intrusions into her body's most intimate parts have made her lose her sense of who she is. All she is certain of is that she is a legal wife and an illegal mother."

Throughout the book, Jian changes the point of view from Meili to the spirit of her unborn child. This gives him the opportunity to have some omniscient narration alongside Meili's version of events. This technique is jarring and I was often tempted to skip over it in order to get back to the main narrative. However, I can see how Jian thought using the infant spirit would both give a voice to the fetus whose fate is the focus of this book and illustrate the reverence that many Chinese people (such as Kongzi) have for the spirits and their ancestors.

The Dark River truly exhibits the dissonance of life in rural China. While Meili talks about becoming a businesswoman and longs for certain high-end purses and shoes, she also makes dinner by scraping the skins of potatoes with a shard of glass. The contrast between what she sees and the little that she has makes her story all the more heartbreaking. In some instances, modern China looks just like the modern US. But in the darkest moments of this book, readers are reminded of the horrors that are feared daily by Chinese women. The Dark Road is not a book you will soon forget. "If a panda gets pregnant, the entire nation celebrates, but if a woman gets pregnant she's treated like a criminal. What kind of country is this?" 

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Review: Spell It Out

Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling
By David Crystal
St. Martin's Press June 2013
292 pages
From the library 

Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling

Sit tight, beloved readers. I am about to show the full extent of my nerdiness because I found this book fascinating. 


Everyone remembers the importance of spelling in elementary school. We lined up in front of the wall, ready to face the gauntlet known as the spelling bee. One by one, we mixed up some letters or forgot one entirely. Finally, one student was left standing and won the designation of spelling bee champion...at least for that week.

Spelling is important to us. Writing words correctly indicates some level of education as well as competence at your job. But spelling in the English language is notoriously difficult. Because the origin of English words are from so many different countries, rules in our language are almost always (frequently) broken. If words came from Latin, they maintained some of their rules while words from the French language tended to stay close to their original spellings as well. 

In his newest book, Spell It Out, linguistics professor David Crystal argues that spelling is difficult for us because we are studying it the wrong way. "Why don't rules work? Partly because history has produced so many exceptions, but also because spelling has been viewed in isolation from the rest of language. Spelling, however, is an integral part of language, and its forms can be understood only if we see the way they interact with the forces that come from pronunciation, grammar and word-building. We cannot solve the problem of spelling without knowing something about how the rest of language works." 

Crystal takes his readers way back into time to meet the early monks who puzzled over the best way to write down this emerging new language. Writing words phonetically proved to be very difficult, especially when words from all over the world became part of the vernacular. In short chapters, Crystal explains the history of our language and the basics of linguistics. He also utilizes examples from poetry and literature about the difficulties of spelling. 

This author is not content to look at the history of spelling. He speculates about the future as well. One of the most interesting developments is the way computers and the internet are changing the way we spell. Obviously the frequent use of spell check has negated our need to really learn spelling. Perhaps more interesting is the way internet searches are normalizing alternative spellings. If a large number of people "vote with their fingers," as Crystal puts it, and type something incorrectly into a search engine, does it become an accepted spelling? 

Crystal argues that we do a disservice to children and those attempting to learn English spelling for the first time when we present them with long lists of words or columns of words that follow the rules contrasted with those that are exceptions. Instead, if we teach new spellers the way that our spelling evolved, spelling will become more intuitive and less of a confusing chore. This is a great resource for anyone who teaches spelling, either to children or to people learning English as another language. 

This delightful author manages to be both light and in-depth as he explores what is obviously one of his favorite topics. This book is often chuckle-out-loud funny. (I know - you don't want to explain that you are laughing about spelling...but you will.) If you have any interest in the way English spelling came to be and how it has evolved, this is a book you won't want to miss. 

Sunday, August 11, 2013

It's Monday and I am out of here!


Well...I don't think this has happened since I started blogging. This week, I didn't finish a single book. It's been a crazy week. My husband is going to a conference and I am going with him for a few days of couple time. The kiddos will be with the grandparents. That means that this week has been filled with packing and planning. And then we dedicated Rebecca in church this morning, so we were busy planning the service and getting ready to have the family over afterwards. Hopefully I will get a lot of reading done during this time away!


Reading Now:
The World of the End
The World of the End
By Ofir Touche Gafla

Posts from this Past Week:
It's Monday
Top Ten Tuesday - Books We Wish Had A Sequel
Reviews of Songs for the Missing and Lexicon


Up Next:
The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3)
The Well of Lost Plots
(Thursday Next #3)
By Jasper Fforde

The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession
The Bookman's Tale: A Novel of Obsession 
By Charlie Lovett

What are you reading this week?

Friday, August 9, 2013

Review: Lexicon

Lexicon
By Max Barry
Penguin June 2013
387 pages
From the library

Lexicon

Emily Ruff is a smart girl. That's important because her wits are the only thing she has as she navigates the tough streets of San Francisco. Emily is performing slight of hand tricks when she is approached by a man. He say that he works for an organization that looks for people with powers of persuasion - people like Emily. With nothing to lose, she accepts his offer to fly to D.C. and go through a battery of tests. If she passes, she will enter a strange world where people are known by the names of great poets and use the power of words to manipulate. 

In places, this book reminded me a lot of Lev Grossman's The Magicians. Both books feature characters who are taken to a school for training in an art they don't fully understand yet. In both stories, the students must harness their powers and attempt to figure out how they work and who they can trust. As often happens to those with a great deal of power, some of the poets are up to no good. The lines are blurry though, especially with the goals of so many characters left unknown to Emily and to the readers. 

The pacing on this story is perfect. Barry utilizes a dual storyline. As we see Emily learning about the power of words and the organization behind it all, we also go on the run with a man named Wil Parke. Parke is kidnapped by the poets, who claim that he is the only person resistant to the power of words. He quickly finds out that the poets are engaged in a war among themselves and he is dragged along for a very dangerous ride. Emily's days of testing and education create a wonderful contrast to the edge of your seat adventure that Wil has unwillingly embarked on. The anticipation of discovering the connection between these two characters will keep you turning pages.

As readers, we are people who love words. Barry plays with that here, creating a book that is both compelling story and a treatise on the way we use words. Although using a string of gibberish to force people to do something is fictional, it doesn't actually seem so far-fetched. With new insights into the brain every day and increased knowledge of psychology and personalities, could words someday be used as weapons? We certainly know that words can be persuasive. That power of persuasion can be used to help and it can be used to harm. In the world of Lexicon, that power can have devastating consequences. 

This book is incredibly imaginative and unlike anything else you will read this summer. Lexicon will grab you from the first pages and not let you go until you reach the end. 

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Review: Songs for the Missing

Songs for the Missing
By Stewart O'Nan
Read by Emily Janice Card
8 CDs, 10 hours

Songs for the Missing

Kim spends her last summer before college working at a local store and going to the lake with her friends. One day, she leaves her friends to get ready for work, but never makes it for her shift. She seems to have vanished into thin air. What happened to Kim? Songs for the Missing follows Kim's parents Fran and Ed, her sister Lindsay, her best friends Nina and Elyse, and boyfriend J.P., as they fight for answers, blame themselves and others, and struggle to find a way to keep living without the girl they love. 

Stewart O'Nan writes quiet and beautiful stories. Songs for the Missing is less about what happened to Kim and more about the effect her disappearance has on her friends and family. We think we can imagine the anguish of a family when a child goes missing, but O'Nan looks at the moments that the public doesn't see. Kim's father Ed is spurred to action and spends days driving up and down highways and heading up teams of local citizens, searching for some trace of his daughter. His wife Fran draws upon the composure she learned as a nurse and becomes the family spokesperson. Her life shrinks to updating their website and organizing community events. And Lindsay is left behind yet again - trying to live up to a perfect older sister is nothing compared to a sister whose fate is unknown.

This book does not just look at the days immediately following her disappearance. We follow these characters for years. How does the father feel when he goes to pick up the recovered car? How does the best friend leave town and go to college? Can the sister who was left behind ever escape the shadow of her parents' fear? 

The narration for this audiobook was great. Emily Janice Card reads the book perfectly. She gives distinctive voices to each character and the differences help us identify the characters without falling into familiar pitfalls of narration. The teenagers sound like teenagers without being annoying and she reads as Ed, the father, without resorting to a deep male voice. Card manages to exhibit empathy for the characters while still maintaining the distance of a narrator.

Stewart O'Nan is a master at writing the quiet moments of life. Instead of a flashy mystery, we are treated to a reflective look at fear and grief. While finding out what happened to Kim may keep you turning pages, the real reason to pick up this book is the author's deep understanding of loss. This book is not about the flashy moment when a clue is discovered or a case is solved. Instead, this is about the days after and the painful monotony of having to continue living without answers and without someone you love. 

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Ten Books You Wish Had Sequels (Top Ten Tuesday)



Top Ten Tuesday is the brainchild of the ladies over at The Broke and the Bookish. I've played the top ten game once before and it was a lot of fun. Time for round two!

This week, we are discussing the stories that we wish the authors had continued in another book or two. I didn't come up with ten books, but I am happy with the seven I picked. So many books are a part of a series these days that it's hard to find a great standalone. 


1. Angelmaker by Nick Harkaway
Angelmaker
This is one of my favorite books, possibly ever. The characters are divine and Harkaway sends us whirling around the world to so many places and time periods that I am desperate for more time with them. 

2. March by Geraldine Brooks
March
March is a retelling of Little Women from the point of view of Mr. March. It got me thinking about the rest of the characters. What does Beth think about while she is sick in bed? Is Meg jealous of the drama and romance her sisters experience? Imagine a whole series from the viewpoints of the different family members...

3. Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

This book is about writing and storytelling and I wrote in my review that "the novel seems to start off traditionally, until we break into the stories created by Fox and Mary. Each one is so engaging that I wished it was an entire novel itself." I'm game, Helen Oyeyemi. Make it happen. 

4. Oracle Night (or any book?) by Paul Auster
Oracle Night
Oracle Night has two plots...to start with, anyway. Suffice it to say that in Auster's capable hands, we could have multiple plots going on for a long time, through several books, and continue to be fascinated by each. 

5. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
The Dovekeepers
This novel, based on the Roman siege of the Jewish fortress Masada, was meticulously researched. More than that, the characters were so compelling that I want to spend more time with them and find out what their lives were like before the events in this book. 

6. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
Ok, Erin Morgenstern says she has no plans to revisit the circus in novel form. But I think the world she has created is just begging to be let out to play again. 

7. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
The Imperfectionists
Technically, I suppose I am arguing for a prequel here. This novel uses vignettes to tell the story of the last days of a newspaper staff in Rome. While we get a lot of insight into the end and a bit into the beginning of the paper, I want to know all about the characters and events in the middle - during the newspaper's glory days. 


Which of your favorite books should have had a sequel??

Monday, August 5, 2013

It's Monday and August is here!



Sometimes you spend your anniversary going out to dinner at a fancy restaurant. Sometimes you spend it walking around a hysterical baby with a tummy ache. Ah, the joys of parenting small people.

On to the books!

Read This Week:
The Shining Girls
By Lauren Beukes

The Illusion of Separateness
By Simon Van Booy

Posts from this Past Week:

Reading Now:
The World of the End
By Ofir Touche Gafla


Up Next:
The Well of Lost Plots (Thursday Next, #3)
(Thursday Next #3)
By Jasper Fforde

What are you reading this week? 

Friday, August 2, 2013

Review: Eleanor and Park

Eleanor and Park
By Rainbow Rowell
St. Martin's Press February 2013
325 pages
From the library

Eleanor and Park

Eleanor and Park is one of the most popular novels of the year. Park is a high school kid just trying to make it through each day. He is used to keeping his head down and staying invisible, but he can't help himself when a new girl climbs onto the bus one morning. Eleanor sticks out like a sore thumb with her bizarre clothing choices and flaming red hair. Park begrudgingly offers her the seat next to him and a tentative friendship is struck over music and comic books. As their relationship shifts from friendship to love, can their bond survive the cruelty of high school and the pain of Eleanor's broken home?

Since I may actually be the last person on the planet (at least among the book bloggers) to read this book, I am only going to write about the book itself for a bit. I liked this book a lot. Rowell effortlessly captures life in the 1980s and life as a teenager. I appreciated that she gave us a multitude of characters - the popular kids, the outcast, and a character in the middle. Too many authors don't create any characters in between the two extremes. Eleanor is mercilessly picked on. Park has a few close friends but isn't one of the popular kids. Rowell succeeds in making even her tormentors surprising and developed characters. I loved that she showed the nuances of every type of high school kid.

I also loved the relationships between Park and his parents. It's so refreshing to see teens having a good relationship with their parents that doesn't preclude disagreements or discipline. This book strikes the perfect balance of a fluffy teen read and a dark look into young love that faces challenges at every turn. Eleanor and Park is charming and heartfelt and I completely understand how so many readers and bloggers have been won over by it.

That being said, I think I fell prey to the "problem of the popular book." When you hear about a book over and over again, you get very high expectations. Everyone seemed to adore this book and I was prepared to join the exclaiming masses. I did really like this book, but I think the best way to read Eleanor and Park is without preconceived nations. This is the perfect story to discover unexpectedly as surprising gift from a talented writer. If you haven't read this book yet, plan to pick it up. The best way to read it will be in a few months when all of the buzz has died down.  

Thursday, August 1, 2013

July Wrap-up

So July....

You happened, apparently. I'm not really sure when you happened or what happened within your thirty days. Kids grew bigger. Loads of laundry disappeared into drawers and reappeared in piles on the floor. My aunt came to visit. Our former foreign exchange student/sister for life came to visit for the month from Germany. We swam in my grammy's pool and David showed off his American Ninja Warrior moves on the swing set. We went to the library a million times, give or take, to pick up requested books and check in with our summer reading. That summer reading program is something - I love how they sweetly award your child who won't stop reading with more books he will not put away.

August is looming large and there is a part of me that feels like it is just preparation for September. David will be starting kindergarten. I feel so unprepared for him to go to real school, but I know he is ready and I know it will be good. The knowledge doesn't seem to be making it any easier though!


Books reviewed in July: 8
Pages Read: 2,246
Fiction/Non-fiction: 6/2
Female authors/male authors: 6/2
My books/library books: 4/4
Lindsey's favorite book in July: A Guide To Being Born and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks 


Books reviewed with David: 2
David's favorite book in July: Transformers 


And now some pictures for your enjoyment...



Babies, how did you get in the book?!?! I will save you!!


What was your favorite book in July?