Bookish Thoughts

Between the craziness of Thanksgiving, physical therapy, and the impending holiday season, it took me nearly a month to read this book, which it really shouldn't have. But when I'm not commuting by train, I have a hard time finding time to just sit and read. Especially with everything else going on. Because of that I ended up reading Angela's Ashes in fits and starts and never really got as absorbed into it as I might have otherwise. Back when I started it, I noted that for a tragedy, the book has a lot of humor in it. Not necessarily laugh out loud humor, but the sort of wry humor that seems to me to be typical of Irish literature. It's an attitude that acknowledges that life is shitty so you have to find your silver linings where you can. For example, this book is full of the death of children. They drop like flies, and Frank himself loses 3 siblings to various sicknesses. One of his classmates loses nearly all of his siblings, but he's okay with ...

Helen Oyeyemi's novel White is for Witching is one of those books that get better the more I think about it. This could be because I struggled a bit while reading it. The book is a mystery, and I didn't have a firm grasp of the plot until 150 pages in to this 200 page book. But once I figured out what was going on, a lot of other stuff fell into place. Given that, it's really hard to talk about this book without spoiling anything, except to say that it's beautiful and different. It deals with a wealth of issues, from eating disorders to immigration, racism to sexual identity, family legacies to obsession. These themes are mostly subtle, but once the truth of the mystery is revealed, they become a lot more powerful. Like I said, the more I think about this book, the more layers I see. One of the most interesting things about this book is that I cannot tell you, with any confidence, how many narrators there are. Miranda is the central character. Both he...

I can't very well be expected to resist a title like that, can I? September, like so many other heroines in so many other stories, finds herself traveling to a magical land where she makes friends with interesting creatures and has wonderful adventures. She learns a lot along the way, and I love the way the lessons pop up throughout the text. The narrator is incredibly self-aware. This is one of those books that I had to fight not to read out loud. The language is just so much fun. The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making has elements of all the childhood stories I loved growing up. September receives a pair of special shoes. She falls down a hole and travels by boat to an island full of one-legged creatures. She meets a girl who arrived via a wardrobe in an attic. She is warned to stay away from fairy food, but munches on pomegranate seeds anyway. But it has it's own charms too, setting itself apart from the other books by not forcing...

I continue my recently renewed interest in non-fiction works with Rosalind Miles' Who Cooked the Last Supper?: The Women's History of the World . I'd seen a few excerpts floating around the internet and, honestly, who can resist that title? This wasn't the greatest book I ever read. There's a lot of anger in these pages, and an uncomfortable amount of flipping some Freudian theories to accuse men of womb envy and natural inferiority to account for their oppression of women over the millenia. Additionally, while individual women are referenced a great deal, their struggles tend to be painted with a single brush. Intersections of gender with race or class are largely ignored and glossed over. There is a chapter about imperialism that touches on some of these issues, but Miles also misinterprets Sojourner Truth's famous "And Ain't I A Woman?" speech as being about the virgin/whore dichotomy rather than race relations. Despite that, ther...

You already know whether or not you'll enjoy this book. If you've been reading Allie Brosh's blog for the past several years like I have, then buying her new book is really a no-brainer. And if you've never heard of Allie Brosh or Hyperbole and a Half, then you need to fix that right now. Go read about The Alot , which I believe was my introduction to her genius. The book is nearly 300 pages of stories in Brosh's unique style. It's color-coded, so you can easily flip to a particular story and it looks really cool on your shelf. I may actually have to display it with the binding towards the wall. Assuming it ever makes it off my coffee table, that it. While there are a few classics included in this compilation (like The God of Cake and This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult ), it's mostly new material. Material that you will speed through and then return to over and over again. This is one of those books that I may have to buy and electronic ...

NK Jemisin's debut novel The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms  is different from the majority of fantasy I've read lately. There's no grand adventure or epic battle.At it's heart, this book has more to do with family politics than anything else. Some millenia before this book begins, the three main gods got into a fight that escalated into a war. Ultimately one was killed, one was enslaved in human form, and the third took it upon himself to be the grand ruler of all. The world has been a little off-balance ever since, as exemplified by the cruel and twisted ruling family, the Arameri. But this story focuses on Yeine, newly named heir of the current ruler, Dekarta, despite the fact that her mother was disowned for marrying her father. She finds herself summoned to the capital city, where she must navigate not only her own family politics, but those of the gods who are kept as slaves. The story isn't entirely linear, which I usually love. It mostly works...

But how could she gain the road? Roads were made for young men, not middle-aged women. The poor orphan-boy packed his sack and started off down the road to seek his heart's hope...a thousand tales began that way. She was not poor, she was not a boy, and her heart was surely as stripped of all hope as life and death could render it. As Ista herself points out in the first few pages of the book, this should not be her story. At least not traditionally. According to all the tales, Ista is done. She was raised a princess and married a king. She lived to see her husband and son die and her daughter ascend to the throne. She has recently celebrated the birth of her first grandchild and is now mourning the death of her mother, making her officially a member of the older generation. Now it is time for her to sit quietly in her castle and live out her days, content with the life she has left. But that's not what Ista wants, and it's not what the gods have planned f...

And so we come to the ninth Dresden book. It's a different color than the preceding books, white instead of black, so I was expecting something epic and game-changing to happen. And I suppose it did, with the virtual obliteration of an entire court of vampires (the ones who, in this universe, most resemble succubi and incubi). But the leaders still have power and ultimately, things still feel largely the same. This is possibly because there is just so much happening at this point. Butcher has left enough dangling plot threads over the past several books that they're starting to blur together. On some level this should happen. Things should start to get cleaned up and long-standing enemies should start to die off. The problem is that I can barely remember who anyone is anymore. There were two villains in this book who had appeared previously that I had to look up on Wikipedia. Then I had to read a plot synopsis of an earlier book to figure out what happened with o...

I picked up The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul expecting something light and silly that I wouldn't have to pay too much attention to. And while this book was light and pretty easy to read, it had far more of a plot that I was expecting. There was a mystery to be solved and connections to be made and everything. Apart from the surprise of the plot, I was most struck by how familiar this book felt. Which is to say that I could clearly see the influence Adams has had on some of my favorite authors. Gently reminded me more than a little of Witchfinder Sergeant Shadwell from Good Omens . And I have to wonder if the dying Norse Gods in this book had any influence on Gaiman's American Gods . It took me a little while to get into this book, mostly because I hadn't expected to pay as much attention to it as I ended up needing to. But by the time Kate was investigating the nursing home, I was on board. Things came together a little abruptly at the end, but it was sti...

It's been a while since I read a non-fiction book. I sort of go through phases where I read them a little more often. But as this blog clearly documents, it's been at least 2 and a half years (probably more) since I last picked one up. It really just depends on something actually catching my attention. And when I started to see references to Cordelia Fine's Delusions of Gender it definitely caught my attention. This book is essentially an extended literature review. Fine looks at countless studies the claim to get at the differences between men and women and makes quick work eviscerating all of the supposedly proven biological differences. She talks about how soon in life we are bombarded with gendered information, really from the moment we're born. Or even before. She points out the over-reliance on correlation used to imply causation For example, testosterone levels in the womb are thought to be responsible for fundamental differences in male and femal...

Thanks to a bunch of used book sales in the area, I've been going back and revisiting a bunch of books I first read in high school. The latest one is Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird , which I read in 9th grade. I was surprised both by how little of the plot I remembered and how vividly I remembered some smaller scenes. There are bits in this book, probably parts that my teacher decided had important symbolic value, that I can still picture in full surround sound. The inside of Mrs. Dubose's bedroom where Jem spends afternoon's reading to her while she weans herself off morphine. The courtroom, packed and silent waiting for the jury to return a verdict. And, strangely, the Finch's neighbor peeing out the second story window. At the same time, I'd managed to completely forget the contents of Tom Robinson's day in court, or Bob Ewell's reaction to it. And Boo Radley's part in everything remained as mysterious to me as the first time ...

Good God, this book took a long time to read. It's not that it was particularly bad; it's just that Candy Crush was usually more interesting. This book is silly and riddled with plot holes, but entertaining in its own way I'd been vaguely aware of this trilogy for most of my life. Around the time the prequel trilogy was announced, one of my parents told me the basic plot of what happened after the original movies, at least according to these books. Well, they told me that Leia and Han got married, Leia gave birth to twins, and Luke started a new school for Jedis. Since the new movies were starting to come out, I assumed I wouldn't have to wait long for this trilogy to come out as a movie either. How young and foolish I was. Now that we've been promised new movies, I have very little faith that they will either cover this material or be very good. So when Kevin picked up the first two books of The Thrawn Trilogy at a used book sale, I figure...

I'm not sure why I expected anything different from a book that opens with a death, but I was surprised by how deeply sad and painful JK Rowling's first adult novel was. It wasn't sad in a way that makes you cry - I didn't shed a single tear while reading this book. It goes deeper than that, getting a vice-like grip on your heart and making you wonder if anyone can ever actually be happy. The scope of The Casual Vacancy is incredibly small, focusing on the inhabitants of a single town in England.The lives of the townsfolk are incredibly intertwined, such that all of their actions and decisions seem to affect each other. The death of Barry Fairbrother, beloved town Councillor, creates ripples and triggers a slow unraveling of the fabric of life in this small town. Fairbrother was fighting to keep a rehabilitation clinic open to serve the needs of the low-income addicts in the town. Once he dies, the group that wants to see the clinic closed jumps on the...

I really like following up long epics with shorter books. And since I've been meaning to re-read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 for several years now, it seemed like the perfect book to dive into after the Mistborn trilogy. It actually did end up being perfect, sine the Book People at the end reminded me more than a little of Sanderson's Keepers of Knowledge, and I love finding little literary connections like that. I first read Fahrenheit 451 in high school as part of our unit on dystopia (which also included 1984 and Brave New World ). I remembered the basic plot and themes, since you tend to when you've spent a long time with a single book, but a lot of the details had escaped me. There is one scene, though, that has stuck with me through the years. One that became so vivid in my mind, I'd nearly forgotten which book is came from. When Montag is on the run from the cops, he has to cross a wide street. This is at a time when the speed limit, even ...

The third Mistborn novel, The Hero of Ages , is a mostly fantastic book with one glaring error that I can't really get over. I'll start with my complaint so I can end this on a positive note. The world in Mistborn is ruled by two opposing god-like forces, Preservation and Ruin. The choices of these two gods makes thematic sense in the first two books. The evil emperor, the Lord Ruler, took his power from Preservation and then ruled over a society that was largely stagnant for a millenium. There were virtually no advancements made in technology, architecture, government, even fashion. And this was done largely to quench though and allow the Lord Ruler to maintain control. All in all, it makes sense that his power is a product of Preservation. But in the third book Sanderson digs into these gods a bit more and things start to fall apart. Mostly because, at least as far as I'm concerned, Ruin and Preservation don't actually balance each other out. If you ...

I probably should have written this before I finished the third book. At this point, the trilogy is all kind of blurring together, and the second book was definitely upstaged by the third one. It's a little hard to talk about The Well of Ascension without leaking into The Hero of Ages , but I'll try. The Well of Ascension definitely started out a lot slower than the first book. It took nearly 150 pages for me to really become engaged with the story. Sanderson has spent a lot of time fleshing out his world at this point, so mostly we're meeting new characters. But since everyone spends the majority of the book besieged inside a city while I was (mistakenly) waiting for them to escape and head north, it was hard for me to keep going. It certainly didn't help that the cover depicts a scene from the third book. Mostly this book suffers from the same things as almost every second installment in a trilogy. The pacing is a bit off and most of the book exist...

All of those people who were telling me to check out The Name of the Wind a few years ago spent the last year telling me I needed to pick up Mistborn . I knew I'd get around to this series eventually, especially after the last novel won a Hugo. What I didn't realize was how entirely the book would manage to take over my life. I accidentally stayed up until one in the morning reading, which is something I very rarely do. Mistborn is excellently paced with a lot of really cool action scenes and some interesting characters. But the best part is the system of magic, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. The main character, Vin, is an allomancer, someone who can extract special powers by swallowing and "burning" different metals. I really like how much thought Sanderson put into allomancy, from pairing pure metals with alloys to create similar powers to placing realistic restrictions on those powers. The book also operates a bit like a puzzle. The ...

After half-starting a half dozen books in July, I finally decided that I needed to just give my brain a break. No more dense plots or complicated characters. Just some good old-fashioned magical adventures. Harry Dresden was just the thing to pull me out of my summer slump. Like the other books in The Dresden Files , Proven Guilty is a quick, easy read. Some demon is taking the form of movie monsters at a horror convention and feeding off the fear and panic of the convention-goers. Dresden has to figure out who it is before anyone else dies. Along the way he reconnects with his old mentor and picks up an apprentice of his own. The war with the vampires remains stubbornly in the background, and I've just about given up hope that it will be addressed before the final installment in the series. But there are interesting goings-on with the fairies in the meantime that will have to sate me. And I'm pretty excited about Harry's new apprentice, who should have a ...

I'm getting closer and closer to the end of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series.  It's a good thing there's another forthcoming book to look forward to. That book is even set to continue to story of Moist von Lipwig, the protagonist of Making Money . Though I think his story may be played out. The problem with Lipwig (and Making Money ) is that's he's a reformed con man, but he's far more interesting when he's conning people. So all of his growth from Going Postal has to be reverted in the first half of this book to make the second half interesting. And even then, things spiral out of his control more than I would have liked. He's ultimately saved by a blindingly obvious Deus Ex Machina (you can see it coming from the first few pages). For all that, the book does tackle some interesting themes, namely banking, and the changover from the gold standard to a much more elusive standard: trust. The book pulls back from really sticking to th...

Kevin got me this book for Christmas because there was a dragon on the cover and the blurb mentioned fairies. It turns out that this is a pretty good metric for determining whether I'll like a book or not. It helped that it also combined elements of historical fiction, making for a pretty cool book overall. Marie Brennan's A Star Shall Fall is actually the third book in a series about the fairies who live under London. I was a little wary about jumping into the series midway, but I ultimately don't think I missed too much. This book does a pretty good job of recapping the important information from the previous books, and it stands on it's own very well. The previous books apparently dealt with a war between the fairies and a dragon, which resulted in the Great Fire of London in 1666. The fairies managed to disable and trap the dragon. However, they weren't able to build a strong enough cage to hold it forever. So when Halley's Comet came by in...

It's not often that I rush out to buy a book the day it's released. For the most part I'm content to wait until the paperback to comes out. But I've been eagerly awaiting Neil Gaiman's new book since I heard him read the first chapter at the Fall for the Book Festival last year. So I ran out to pick it up on my lunch hour the day it came out, and read the entire thing that evening when I got home from work. My only real complaint about The Ocean at the End of the Lane  is that it wasn't long enough. Not that the story felt rushed or anything. The book was exactly the right length for the story within. But after waiting so long for a new novel from Gaiman, I was a little disappointed to have finished it in a single evening. That said, the book was fantastic. One of the scarier stories I can remember reading for a while. Unlike Coraline , which deals with the fear of your parents being replaced, this book's main character sees his parents betray ...

When I was two years old, my dad broke his leg. He shattered his femur while skiing. He was in a cast for over six months while it healed. I don't really remember any of this. There are pictures, of course. But it happened when I was so young that it just became a bare fact. Something that had no real impact on me. When I was 14, we read A Separate Peace for school. My dad was excited about the assignment; it's one of the only times I can remember him being excited about a book. It wasn't until I finished it that I understood why. Finny breaks his leg in exactly the same way my dad did. Well my dad had a skiing accident rather than falling out of a tree, but both of them shattered the bone. Unlike my dad, Finny dies from his injury, during complications in the surgery. After I read the book, my dad told me that the whole time he was lying in prep for surgery he was thinking of Finny, terrified he would meet the same fate. This was one of the first tim...

My mom got my Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion  when I was in high school. I read most of it then, but I put it down and never finished it. All I can think is that the next Harry Potter book was coming out, because now I can't imagine putting this book down. Especially since my bookmark indicated that I'd made it nearly 3/4 of the way through. Wait, I need to show you the bookmark I was using in high school. It makes me really happy. So back to this book, which is high fantasy and has magic, but is also inspired by Spanish history. In fact, the map of this world is supposedly the map of Spain, with north and south switched. It's more concerned with politics than action, which is possibly why I less interested in it as a teenager. But now I find that sort of thing fascinating. Cazaril is the main character. At the opening of the book he is trudging home after escaping from slavery aboard a galley ship. When he makes it home, he finds a s...

While the fourth volume in Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets  series made feel like I was finally figuring things out, the fifth volume has left me more confused than ever. Everything I thought I knew has gone out the window, and it's becoming more clear than ever that there are no good guys in this tale. I'm not even sure there are bad guys and worse guys anymore. Everyone is awful in a way that I hardly know who to root for. I love it. Like the Esiner-winning third volume, this one has a single, longer, story, instead of several very short ones. A character I'd thought (hoped) that I'd never see again turns up to wreck havoc with no clear motivation. The protagonist of the tale, Milo, barely sees it coming, though he does his best to stop him. He can't help but be one step behind everyone around him, though. Which is interesting because at this point the reader can almost keep up with the antagonists. Seeing the destruction coming makes it even hard...

Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees is a fantastic book. It manages to be both sad and uplifting at the same time. I wept through a whole section of it, in a good way. The main character, Lily Owens, reminded me strongly of Huck Finn. Their stories start off similarly, both adolescents escape from abusive fathers and traveling south to find refuge. But where Huck keeps traveling, Lily quickly settles in with the Boatwright sisters who she knows has a connection to her deceased mother. The two books also explore race relations, as seen through the eyes of a white teenager who doesn't quite agree with society at large. Unlike The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , The Secret Life of Bees is very much a female story. Lily's coming of age is anchored by the many women around her, acting as mothers and sisters. On a spiritual level, her relationship with Mary becomes incredibly important, too. Lily has to learn to come to terms with her relationship with her...

It's summer again which, for me, means comic book season. One of my favorite things to do on a hot, lazy Saturday afternoon is hang out in the backyard with a beer and a comic book. So now that the weather's heating up it's time to return to the series I started last summer: Brian Azzarello's 100 Bullets . The fourth volume of this series is about as thick as the first three put together. There's a lot going on in here. Mostly it focuses on the central conspiracy. Everyone's motives and plans are still a mystery, but this volume at least introduces all the players and more or less indicates which side they're on. There's still one guy who I cannot get a handle on, but that's exciting. I can't wait to find out if he's being played or if he's the ultimate puppet-master. Having everything explained (finally) (sort of) really helped me make sense of some of the things that happened in the previous novels. There seems to be a...

I didn't really like this book as much as the first one. I'm not sure if it was the premise, the characters, or just my mood, but this book didn't do much for me. It's a good thing it was such an easy read, or I may have abandoned it. In The Marvelous Land of Oz , an army of young girls, led by General Jinjur, decide that they've had enough of men ruling things. So they conquer the Emerald City and kick the Scarecrow off his throne. Around the same time, a young boy has come to visit the Scarecrow with his own wooden man, Pumpkin Jack. They set off to collect the Tin Woodsman (now named Nick Chopper) and reclaim the scarecrow's throne. I think the whole thing was just a little too silly for me. And everyone falls all over themselves to be so nice and accommodating that the stakes never really felt that high. I understand that most of this is probably because this is a children's book, but it still seemed a lot sillier than the first book. Th...

I've been wanting to read L Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz for years. I've seen a ton of adaptations, from the 1939 Judy Garland movie, to Gregory Maguire's Wicked and the musical based on it, to the Syfy mini-series Tin Man . But somehow I kept missing the original work, even after my mom bought it. I finally picked it up when I discovered a collection that combines three books in the series into single printings. And I'm happy to report that I thoroughly enjoyed the original tale. There was a lot more adventure and character development that I expected. It was fun to see so much more of Oz when the characters traveled south to meet Glinda (the witch in the north is an entirely different person). I also liked how much the book emphasized that the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman, and Cowardly Lion all already possessed the very things they wanted from the wizard. The scarecrow is nearly always the person to provide solutions to any problems the group...

The Nanny Diaries is not great literature. But it is fun and light and exactly the palate cleanser I need after binging on Harry Dresden for a few weeks. The book follows Nanny, a senior at NYU, as she takes care of four-year-old Grayer X. She finds herself juggling Mrs. X's impossible demands with her knowledge of Mr. X's affair, and eventually the demands of his mistress as well. All the while she is attempting to shield Grayer from his parents, finish her thesis so she can graduate, and negotiate a blossoming relationship with one of the X's neighbors. There isn't a lot to this book. It's a fun look at the insanity of the incredibly wealthy. Mostly it made me appreciate my own life and work a lot more, as I'm not trying to juggle a slew of absolutely ridiculous demands. But the ending is rather abrupt and leaves a lot of loose ends. The greatest part about reading this book is my discovery that they made a movie out of it starring Scarlet...

I've made it to the halfway point of The Dresden Files series. I'm still a little worried about completing this in time for my book club. Especially since I am now constantly being distracted by wedding planning things. But if I buckle down, I think I can still do it. Thankfully, the seventh book is way better than the sixth book was. This one deals with necromancers, and it returns to the style of the second book. Rather than dealing with three different plots simultaneously, Harry has to face a single problem with multiple enemies. It gives the book a nice sense of focus. Not that I'm complaining about all the plot heads butting heads in previous books; that was exciting in its own way. But it was nice to get something a little different. Not that there was nothing else going on. This book continues with some threads from previous books that will likely show up again in the future. The war with the Vampiric Red Court is still going on off page, and we g...

It turns out that the sixth book of the Dresden Files does not turn its attention to the war between the wizard's White Council and the vampire's Red Court like I was hoping. The red vampires aren't even in this book, though there is a brief conflict with the Black Court vampires. And the White Court vampires, who really have more in common with incubi and succubi than proper vampires, have a huge role. But mostly, this book deals with the porn industry. Someone is targeting a guy who owns a studio that turns out adult films by killing all the women around him. Between Harry's knee0jerk judgement of porn and everyone involved in the industry, the women who died every so often, and the truly incompetent villain who (spoiler alert) was trying to kill her ex-husband's next wife, this book was a complete disaster. But at least Dresden got a cool dog out of the deal. Here's hoping Butcher stays far, far away from these topics in the future.

The fifth book in The Dresden Files turns its eye to Christian mythology. And in doing so, it brings some mere mortals back into play in some cool ways. Dresden is tasked with finding the Shroud of Turin, which has been stolen from Italy and brought to Chicago. But a group of Fallen Angels are looking to recover it first, and they're a lot stronger than anything Harry's faced before. Luckily he also has some Knights of the Cross on his side to even things out. Butcher does an interesting thing in this series. Thanks to he Knights of the Cross, and particularly Michael Carpenter, the Christian God seems to be a fact in this universe. But Butcher still allows for other religions. One of the knights even identifies as an atheist, claiming he simply wants to do good however he can. And he's allowed to maintain that atheism through the story, which is actually pretty refreshing. See in this world, it's faith that gives power. Not necessarily whatever the ...

In Summer Knight , Harry Dresden's past starts to catch up with him. There have been hints in the previous three books that Harry's past is not so pretty. He was orphaned at six and taken in by a wizard who trained him in magic. He fell in love with his foster sister* and, when the wizard turned out to be a practitioner of black magic, killed them both in a fire. Then he struck a bargain with a rather powerful faerie and has been trying to get out of it ever since. This was all peering in at the edges of the previous books, but now it becomes far more important. The faerie Harry had initially struck a bargain with ends up selling her end of the deal to the Winter Queen, Mab. Mab uses this influence to convince Harry to investigate a murder in Faerie and prove her own innocence. If he fails, the two sides of Faerie (Summer and Winter) are likely to go to war with each other. The wizards are also on his back to succeed so that they can procure Winter's help wi...

The third book in The Dresden Files is equal parts ghost story and vampire story, with some faeries thrown in for flavor. There's even a brief cameo by a dragon. I really like that Butcher's getting more comfortable with the supernatural and is willing to throw so many things into the mix. He does a good job of delineating the various creatures, giving them their own social and political structures, desires and abilities. For everything that's in this book it never feels too cluttered. The mystery is also really well constructed. I didn't quite solve it before Harry did, but as soon as he figured out who it was I saw all the clues I'd missed during my read. I hope I get better at figuring out who the bad guy is. Then again, I appreciate that these books do a good job of keeping me on my toes. My only complain about this book is the way Butcher introduces some new characters. Grave Peril  takes place over a year after Fool Moon  and in that time Dresd...

In the second book of The Dresden Files , a werewolf is on the loose in Chicago and appears to be targeting the local mafia. Meanwhile, Dresden is on the outs with his cop-friend, Murphy, and the tension between them doesn't make solving the case any easier. Like the first book, this one had plenty of twists and turns that kept me guessing. I didn't quite solve the mystery before Dresden, but as soon as the book gave me the answer I saw how all the clues added up. I think that definitely speaks to a well-constructed mystery, and I'm looking forward to more of this. Dresden continues to be rather sexist. He hides behind his chivalry to excuse a lot of his behavior. Sometimes the text seems to be calling him out on this. For example, Harry has a tendency to withhold information from women "for their own good" or "to protect them". But this almost always backfires and he realizes that he should have been more forthcoming from the beginning....

I've been meaning to read The Dresden Files  for a few years now. I remember a friend of mine in high school being very excited when one of the books was released. In the time since then, I've been hearing more and more about the series, and it always seemed like something I'd be interested in. When a member of my book club suggested a book from The Dresden Files for our meeting next month, I was excited to for a chance to check out the series. Unfortunately, the book he picked is the thirteenth in the series. When I realized this, I decided to go ahead and try to read the series through the 13th book in time for the book club meeting. Which gives me five weeks. That's doable, right? Considering that the first book only took two days to read, I definitely think I can meet my goal of reading the next twelve before May 28th. In the meantime, this blog is going to get a bit Dresden Files heavy, though. This series, written by Jim Butcher, follows a wiz...

The Other Wind is the final (for now) book in the Earthsea series. And it is easily the best. The plot moves along at a good pace and is satisfactorily resolved. There are a ton of characters with interesting relationships that shift over the course of the novel. LeGuin even managed to devote an entire chapter to sailing without boring me. On the contrary, that time was used quite well for the development of various characters and the history of Earthsea. This book manages to pick up plot threads I'd thought long abandoned, like the dismal afterlife, and make them relevant again to the lives of both new and old characters. Many of my disappointments with the earlier books were addressed and resolved in this one. As rocky as the series has been, it honestly may have been worth it just to get to the end. The series as a whole has, unfortunately, left me wary of LeGuin's other work. I'll probably read The Left Hand of Darkness at some point, but I'm not s...

Emma Donoghue's Room isn't the kind of book I normally gravitate towards. But after hearing Kevin's mom rave about it, and then finding it for a mere $1 at a used book sale, I decided to take a chance. And I'm really glad I did. This book is intense and disturbing and almost impossible to put down. It's a pretty quick read, partly because the language is very simple and straightforward and partly because it's such a page-turner. The story is narrated by five-year-old Jack, who has lived his entire life in an 11 x 11 square foot room. The room is set up like a studio apartment, with a bed, toilet and bathtub, and a small kitchenette. Jack's only exposure to the outside world is through the television. But as far as he's concerned everything outside of Room is a fantasy. Room is his entire world. Jack's mindset has been aided by his mother, a twenty-six year old woman who was abducted seven years earlier. She does her best to shield ...

In Tales From Earthsea , LeGuin departs from the novel format to tell a collection of short stories set in various places and times in Earthsea. Although short stories is, perhaps, a generous term. Two of the five stories are closer to novellas in length. Overall this book was more successful than LeGuin's previous Earthsea novels. The shorter length gives her writing a focus it definitely needs. There are no lengthy passages about sailing, no extended diatribes about the differences between men and women. Instead we get some neat character studies, woven together with some history of Earthsea. The Finder is the longest of the five stories, taking up over 150 pages in my book. It tells the history of the wizard's school, how it was founded and why. And although I'm not quite sure I understand why the men decided to force their female peers out of the school, or why the women let them, it was fun to see this bit of Earthsea history, and to see what the wor...

A Local Habitation follows Rosemary and Rue to continue the ongoing October Daye series from Seanan McGuire. It's a bit of a step down from the first book but is still a mostly enjoyable read. The thing I like about these books, and McGuire's writing in general, is how well thought-out her worlds are. This series takes place in a San Francisco that has Faerie peering in at the edges. There are several different kingdoms contained in the city with many different races of Fae and the complicated politics that go along with that. Toby has to navigate this confusing world with the added difficulty that she is only half-Fae, resulting in a much-reduced status. As in the first book, the world in which this story takes place is well-realized. The surrounding characters are distinct and interesting. Overall, the book is a fun, light read. The problem is the plot (and I've been assured that this is the weakest book of the series, so there is that). Toby is sent...

Tehanu is the fourth book in the Earthsea cycle and another example of how up and down this series is. It's not quite as good as The Tombs of Atuan was, but it is significantly better than the other two books that came before it. Tehanu was written nearly three decades after the first two books, and it takes place in the winter of Ged and Tenar's lives. Ged has stepped down as archmage and is somewhat lost throughout the book. Tenar is a grandmother now, and trying to redefine herself again since her children have moved out of the house and her husband has died. She adopts a young girl, Therru, who was abused and is disfigured. The bulk of the book is pretty slow. It's mostly musings on feminism and how to start fresh when your life is mostly over. I liked the slow, meandering pace of the book. Although parts of it got preachy and, like Atuan , there were parts that made me wonder if LeGuin lives in the same world as I do. She talks at length about a woma...

I liked Isaac Asimov's I, Robot even more than Foundation , though I'm actually less excited to read the rest of the series. I remember reading somewhere that I, Robot and Foundation actually take place in the same universe, with one set in the near future and the other in the far (very far) future. I definitely had this impression reading the books, especially by the last chapter which seemed to be putting human civilization on track to achieve the Galactic Empire that's falling at the beginning of Foundation . But that could also just be Asimov's voice shining through when creating his version of a utopian society. I, Robot is somewhere between a novel and a collection of short stories. Each individual story is self-contained, but they're tied together by the advancement of robotics through the years and Dr. Susan Calvin's own life as a robopsychologist. The stories are ordered chronologically, and I really enjoyed seeing the scientists work ...

Mostly Harmless is the fifth and final book in Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide trilogy. Which means I finally finished it! I enjoyed this book a lot, but I have to say that I think I would have enjoyed the entire series more if I hadn't spread it over nearly two years. I kept forgetting plot details and trying vainly to remember what had happened in the previous books. Was Arthur still stuck in the past? Did Trillian die in the other timeline or just vanish from the story? Is Zaphod even relevant anymore? So I think a complete re-read is in order at some point. The books are short enough that I can't imagine it taking too long. Maybe once the weather warms up and I can spend my afternoons lazing outside with a book, I'll revisit this series as a whole. Overall, the plot of this book seemed way more cohesive than any of the previous books. That may be due to lack of memory, or it may be because this book was headed, inevitable, for a very definit...

I've been meaning to read Asimov's work for a while now. Ever since I read his autobiography a couple of years ago, I've wanted to dig in to his fiction. So when my brother got me Foundation  for Christmas and my book club chose I, Robot  for March, I had the perfect opportunity to sample some of his work. Foundation  is truly epic in nature, following a civilization across several planets and over 100 years. I wish I'd had more time with some of the characters, but overall I liked the small glimpses we got at various points in human history. It's always interesting to read older science fiction, because it's fun to see what has and hasn't come to pass. In the case of this novel, humankind has achieved interplanetary travel and has managed to both terraform and settle most of the planets in the galaxy. But they never bothered to archive their knowledge in an easily accessible and searchable place. Looking at it today, it's a bit funny tha...

The Farthest Shore  is the third book in Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea  cycle. It's also probably the weakest, which is sad. In reading this series and talking to other people, I'm discovering that LeGuin can be a bit hit or miss. She has some great books mixed in with some not-so-great books. This book really suffered from uneven pacing. Like the first book in the series, there were entire chapters devoted to sailing between islands. Action scenes seemed to come out of nowhere. At one point I had to re-read a page three times before I was satisfied that I hadn't missed anything; an chase had just started without warning. I also had a hard time accepting the philosophy of this book. Ged, the old, wise wizard, spends a lot of time trying to teach his young charge, Arren, that action is bad because it tends to upset the balance. Ged is a very passive character who mostly strives to be rather than to do. This is entirely at odds with the saving the world p...

The Tombs of Atuan  is the second book in the Earthsea cycle by Ursula LeGuin. This series is the first (and possibly only?) LeGuin tried her hand at YA. While the first book suffered from some pacing issues, the second book was orders of magnitude better. The second book shifts its focus away from Ged, protagonist of the first book. Instead it follows young Arha, nee Tenar, the head priestess of a dying religion. She's mostly in charge of making sure her gods are still being sacrificed to on a regular basis. But since so few people still worship, her life is pretty boring. This all changes when Ged breaks into her temple in an effort to steal an artifact. The two become friends and end up saving each other. The book is mostly interesting for being a feminist tale from the early 70s. Some themes are familiar, but others are strangely foreign. There are things that are basic facts of my life that LeGuin couldn't even imagine several decades ago. She talks ab...

I ended up liking Blackout , the third and final book in Mira Grant's Newsflesh  trilogy, much better than Deadline . But still not as much as Feed . I think this is going to end up being one of those trilogies where I just ignore the existence of the second and third books. Like His Dark Materials . I am so glad George was back for this book. I actually considered skipping all of Shaun's chapters and just reading George's. But I decided I'd probably miss too much of the story that way. George is ultimately what kept me going through this trilogy. The science is unbelievable to a point that I ended up writing it off as magic so I could accept the story on its own merits. I mean, clones of dead people being nearly exact matches of the people they're cloned from? Memories and everything? Also sexually transmitted immunities? (That is what Grant was getting at with Shaun, right?) Anyway, Grant did a decent job expanding the conspiracy beyond the first ...

I have to say that I enjoyed Lev Grossman's The Magcian King much more than it's prequel, The Magicians . It becomes clear pretty quickly that, once again, Quentin isn't satisfied with his happy ending. Being a king in Fillory has left him bored and restless. The book opens with him wanting something to change. When things do change, he's not terribly happy about the direction they go. But he's able to recognize that this is what he wished for and to make the best of it. Quentin is growing up, and that makes him far more likable than he was in the first book. Interlaced with Quentin's story, is Julia's, which is mostly far more interesting. I like Julia a lot better than Quentin. She's just as miserable, but she's trying to do something about it. And when she finally achieves contentment, she recognizes it, even if it is too late for her to hold on to. The end of the book seemed to be structured a bit strangely. The order of the c...

Wintersmith  is yet another of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. It's the third in Tiffany Aching's arc, the subseries aimed at a younger audience. I picked it up because it was snowing and I was in the mood for something wintry. The more I read about Tiffany Aching, the more I fall in love with her. She's incredibly smart and resourceful. She makes mistakes, because she's still growing and learning, and then she owns them. She does everything in her power to set things right, understanding the difference between something being her fault and it being her responsibility. In this book, inspired by the music, she decides to dance at a winter festival, despite the warnings of her elders. Doing so attracts the attention of the God of Winter, who accidentally falls in love with Tiffany instead of Summer. This happens at the same time as Tiffany is navigating the beginning of something more than friendship with a boy she's known for years. The pitfa...

A Wizard of Earthsea is the first of Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books. It's also the first YA book she ever wrote, according to a note at the end of the book, which may explain some of the issues I had with the pacing of the story. The book follows Ged, a boy who is born with a talent for magic. Over the course of the story he begins to study magic, heads off to a university for sorcerers, graduates, and faces some initial challenges. I think the rest of the series follows the remainder of his life, but the first book is really about him growing up. While the plot is a bit cliched at this point, I imagine it was fairly fresh when LeGuin wrote it back in the 60s. And I really enjoyed the world building. A country made of hundreds of islands isn't something I'm used to, and it was neat that sailing played such a large part in the story. Although there were parts when the sailing went on so long that I felt like I was playing Windwaker. I also really lik...

Deadline , the second book in Mira Grant's  Newsflesh  trilogy and sequel to  Feed , was a really difficult book to get through. I actually walked away from it for a couple of weeks because I had so many issues with the main character. But the plot eventually pulled me back and I actually read the last half of the book pretty quickly (and only partly because I have so much time on my hands right now). Shaun takes over the narration of this book after his sister dies at the end of  Feed . While I liked him fine in the first book, being inside his head destroyed most of my goodwill. It's quickly revealed that George's death has driven Shaun insane. He has vivid hallucinations that she's talking to him and he has violent tendencies, striking out at his employees and friends seemingly at random. I don't think these traits would bother me so much except that Shaun recognizes them both as negative things that are driving away his friends and proceeds to do absolutely ...