Bookish Thoughts

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...