Bookish Thoughts

Brandon Sanderson's first publish novel, Elantris , starts out a little slow. It was enjoyable, it just took me a while to really get into it and become invested in the characters. But it picks up speed admirably. I hit a point where I didn't want to continue reading so much as instantly ingest the final 150 pages so I wouldn't have to live in suspense anymore. I started carrying the book with me everywhere, sneaking extra paragraphs on my way to the kitchen or while I was waiting for data to load.  Elantris was the city of the gods until suddenly it wasn't. Ten years before the book starts, the city becomes cursed and the god-like beings who inhabit it go from all-powerful to destitute essentially overnight. The city used to provide food, clothing, medicine, etc for all the people in the country of Arelon, and once the power disappears, the country is forced to figure out how to support and defend itself. The book focuses on three characters. Raoden i...

I first read Maus back in high school (or college? I must have been college, because I'd borrowed the books from a friend and ended up having to mail them back to her) and I've been wanting to revisit it ever since. It is, in some ways, yet another holocaust book. But there's enough of a unique perspective here to make it an important addition to that specific genre. This is the story of Art Spiegelman coming to terms with his father's experienceas a Polish Jew during WWII, with the loss of his mother, and with the strained relationship between his father and his father's second wife. The framing of the story portrays a series of interviews between Art and his father, where he struggles to get the story chronologically, while also struggling with how to present the story. He's particularly concerned with the fact that his father embodies the stereotype of miserly Jew, and he doesn't want to give the fire any more fuel. By addressing it head o...

As a small child I was obsessed with this book and, by extension, unicorns in general. But I can basically trace that obsession right back to this very book. Into the Land of the Unicorns may have been one of my most read books as a child. It was certainly one of the most influential, at least in the early years. There isn't anything particularly special about this book. It's a fairly generic story about a girl who travels to a fantastical land, meets a bunch of cool creatures, and travels through said land on a quest. But it was probably the first time I encountered that formula, and boy did I fall in love. There are your standard unicorns and dragons. But there's also the Dimblethum, who's like a more mature version of Ludo from Labyrinth and the Squijum, a cross between a squirrel and a monkey. There's also a decent sense of history about this world. The main character, Cara, is all tied up in it thanks to her family. Her ancestor believes all un...

A couple of weeks ago, The Toast published a piece called Fairy Tales are Women's Tales . It's about the origins of fairy tales, their original content, and how they were sanitized and infantilized and given to children instead. I mention this because Robin McKinley has made a career of taking these fairy tales and giving them back to women. Making them dark and deep and rich and putting the women (not children, grown women) back in the center of the tales. Rose Daughter is a retelling of Beauty and the Beast . It's actually McKinley's second retelling of this particular tale. The first Beauty was published 20 years previously. I haven't read that one, so I can't speak to it. I can say that McKinley's second attempt at this classic is pretty incredible. Of course anyone will know the bones of the story. Beauty's father stumbles across the Beast's palace one night while traveling and gives offense. The Beast allows him to leave, prov...

Bone occupies an interesting place in the comic book genre. It is, ostensibly, a children's story. It's generally filed in the children's section. Any nudity is reserved for characters who are essentially sexless, the violence manages to avoid gore, and the saltiest language that appears is "fiddlesticks". Despite that, it's considered one of the greats. It gets included on all those same lists and Watchmen and V For Vendetta and Sandman . Really it's one of those rare gems: a book that actually appeals to all ages. I went in expecting a fun, light adventure. I knew the basic premise: The Bone cousins are exiled from Boneville and find themselves in a hidden valley. I expected some fun stories and cute drawings. But it turns into a fantastic epic, complete with hidden royalty, betrayals, quests, destinies, and, of course, dragons. What would an epic fantasy be without dragons? And then there's the rat creatures. The stupid, stupid r...

This book took me forever to get around to. I bought it years ago, after yet another re-watching of Muppet Treasure Island , because I wanted to understand the source material. But I kept getting distracted before I could really get into it. I'd read the first 20 or 30 pages and then receive another book I was more interested in, or forget I'd started, or just lose interest. I was sure that if I could just make it to the boat, I'd stick with the book until the end, but I had trouble making it that far. Having now read Treasure Island , I don't understand past me at all. I made it all the way to the boat while riding the metro home from the zoo last Sunday. This book is not that long, and they really are on the boat before you know it. I'm disappointed in myself. This book is a fun adventure. It was a super quick read, too, which makes it even more strange that I was never able to finish it before. It gets a little dry at times, but for the most part...

My mom gave me Robert Heinlein's Time Enough for Love for Christmas a year and a half ago. Yeah, it took me a while to work up to this one. See, I'd read Stranger in a Strange Land at that point, and I really struggled with that book. I'm deeply, deeply ambivalent about Heinlein, and I was sure this book would be a similar roller coaster of emotion. It's not something you can just jump into lightly. But my stack of books was dwindling, and I couldn't start Treasure Island until June, so I figured it was finally time to give this one a shot. The book has a good frame, the sort of thing that draws me right in. Laxarus Long is the oldest living person with more than 2000 years under his belt. He's finally ready to die but one of his great^n grandchildren convinces him to live long enough to pass on his wisdom. So Long agrees to tell stories of his life so long as he has a willing audience. This results in a bunch of short stories, strung together b...

I started reading The Light Fantastic before I left on my honeymoon. Then I forgot to pack it and bring it with me. So I came back to it two weeks later with only the vaguest memories of what had happened. But that's mostly okay because this is my second time through the book and the plot is sort of barely-there anyway. The second Discworld book is the only one that functions as a direct sequel to what came before. Rincewind and Twoflower spent The Color of Magic traveling farther and farther from Ankh-Morpork in the their adventures. Now they must race back to save the world from a mysterious star that's threatening to crash into the disc. As plots go it's pretty straight-forward. Everyone, including Rincewind, wants him back in the city. But they all have different ideas about how he's going to get there and what he's going to do when he arrives, so Rincewind continues to run away from nearly everyone he meets. Overall this book is a lot better...

As the title indicates, this is the part of The Dresden Files where everything changes. And it's not just that the title is Changes . The one-word title is a distinct departure from the pattern of titles used in this series so far. Each book's title has had two words, each with the same number of letters. Until now. Given all that, I went in to this book with higher than usual expectations. And it did not disappoint. From the opening lines, in which we discover that Harry has a daughter that he did not previously know about and that she's been kidnapped, this book is just relentless. Everything starts to get stripped away from Harry, who is suddenly facing the FBI in addition to the usual supernatural stuff, and the usual supernatural goons have kicked it up a few notches. This book is really brutal. Harry comes as close to losing as he's ever done before. He gets more thoroughly beaten than in any of the previous books, and things look really grim. Bu...