Bookish Thoughts

This book was super disjointed, jumping between several different stories and spending a long time with each one before moving on to the next. As such, I'm going to split this up by character so I don't miss anything Perrin The book starts with Perrin and, frankly, he becomes a very frustrating character in this installment. He spends a lot of time resisting his wolfish side, which I didn't understand at all for a hundred pages or so. He's worried that he'll lose his human side, and Jordan takes far too long to confirm that this is a legitimate worry. I still think he should just embrace it, and I'd like for him to take off and spend some time with Elyas. It's the most obvious solution to his problem, and it takes him entirely too long to realize it and not nearly enough time to just dismiss it. Beyond that, I like the addition of Zarine/Faile to his story. She asks a lot of questions, which is always refreshing. Even if Moiraine refuses to answer any o

Back at the turn of the century, journalist Barbara Ehrenreich spent some time working low wage jobs as part of an experiment to find out, first hand, how people living in poverty make do. She chose three different cities (Key West, FL, Portland, ME, and Minneapolis, MN), where she attempted to work and live for a month. Then she wrote about her experiences in this book. I'm not sure I would have picked up  Nickel and Dimed  if it hadn't been chosen for my book club. I was a little hesitant going into it. Though this book was written 15 years ago, the premise of it has become something of an insulting fad. People regularly engage in these experiments, wearing hijabs or turbans to the mall, dying their skin a different color, or attempting to feed themselves on $2 or $3 a day in order to see for themselves how the other people live. But built into this experiment is an inherent distrust of that other. Why not just ask people who live these experiences every day and then believ

Remember when I said I wouldn't have time for much reading in January? Yeah, I'm laughing at past-me, too. I'd forgotten to factor in my complete lack of social life this month. I purposely don't make plans with anyone, as a way of recovering fully from the holidays. Add in the lack of alcohol (Kevin and I don't drink between New Year's Day and his birthday, also to recover from the holidays) and I end up spending many a weekend night reading into the wee hours. It also helps that Atwood's  The Year of the Flood , like  Oryx and Crake  before it, is a really quick read. There's a lot here, but something about the format makes this book just whiz by. It's broken up into small sections that alternate between characters and timelines. Each section is only a few pages long, so it's easy to squeeze in "just one more" throughout the day.  Oryx and Crake  followed a similar pattern, and I hope in continues through the finale. It will make it

Once upon a time there was a young boy who lost his mother and in turn became lost himself in the books they both loved. His father remarried too soon, as far as the boy was concerned. Before he had time to properly mourn he was moved to a new house with a new stepmother and half brother, both of whom he resented and despised. He turned more and more to the stories in his books until, one day, he fell right in and found himself in a story. The Book of Lost Things  is an incredibly dark book. There's death and war, loss and betrayal. A lot of the deaths are horrifyingly brutal, in their fairy tale way. Some are, perhaps, more brutal than the crime warrants, while others seem a tad more just. All the same, I was constantly surprised at how dark and twisted the story became. I wonder if the fairy tales I loved as a child were half so dark, if I would have even noticed. Some things that seem deserved when the world is black and white become a lot more gruesome when you're aware o

Like the first book in  The Wheel of Time  series,  The Great Hunt  took a little while to get going. Action happened more quickly, but it still felt like everyone was hanging around until Jordan managed to get all his pieces in place. And then it was off and running. Once the plot really kicked in, the book became pretty thrilling. There's a lot going on in this series. It's not just that there are tons of characters (I looked it up and there are 147 pov characters over the course of the series) with their own subplots. The story really does encompass a whole world. The bulk of the book follows Rand, Mat and Perrin, as them attempt to recover the Horn of Valere which gets stolen in the early going. Rand does recover it, then it gets stolen again. Meanwhile Egwene and Nynaeve begin their Aes Sedai training, where they meet and befriend Elayne and Min. On top of that, there are two nations at war by the end of the book, and a couple that seem on the brink of it. This story i

I have very little memory of reading  Pyramids  the first time around. I assumed this meant it was just meh. Now that I've re-read it, I'm chalking up that reaction to all the other stuff that was going on in my life at the time. When I opened  Pyramids , an old plane ticket fell out. Checking the date, I realized it was from the first time I flew to DC to visit Kevin. Amongst all the uncertainty in my life at that point (job, relationship, life in general), it's no wonder this book didn't make a huge impression on me. I'm glad I revisited it, because I ended up liking it a lot this time through. I still think it gets somewhat overshadowed by some of the later books in the series (it's neither as good as  Guards! Guards!  nor as bad as  Eric , the next two books), but it stands on it's own pretty well. Especially for a book that actually stands alone. With the exception of Death, I don't think any of the characters in this book ever make an appearance

For years the only thing I knew about  Watership Down  was that it had rabbits. I'd seen it referred to here and there as "the rabbit book", but I never heard any more details. This, coupled with the fact that most people seemed to really enjoy it convinced me that I should eventually read it. I went into it expecting a children's book. And while the plot is pretty straight-forward and the language at a basic level, this book was way longer than I was expecting from something written for a younger audience. I'm a little surprised it wasn't, or hasn't been, broken up into several installments. Watership Down  follows a group of rabbits on their search for a new home after their old one is destroyed to make way for some sort of development. They have adventures along the way and actually end up finding a likely spot much more quickly than I expected. But then they run into other problems. Mainly that they'll never really survive if they don't get

2015 is the year I finally read Robert Jordan's epic fantasy series  The Wheel of Time . Or at least make a dent in it. There are 14 books, each nearly 1000 pages long. I could easily do it in a year if that's all I read. But I want to make room for other things, too. We'll see. For now, I'm off to a great start, having finished the first book,  The Eye of the World , just a few days into the new year. Yes, I read half of it last year. It counts as this year anyway. I was pleasantly surprised by the first book in the series. Yes, parts of it are plodding. The plot takes over 100 pages to show up, and seems to disappear again halfway through the book. Jordan borrows heavily (and I mean heavily) from both  The Lord of the Rings  and the Arthurian Legend. And ultimately it feels like nothing more than setup for the rest of the series. Which, with 13 more books is to be expected. Despite this, I was thoroughly entertained and finished with a strong desire to start the

The second half of Art Spiegelman's  Maus , a comic book about his father's experiences was a Polish Jew during WWII and the lasting effect they've had, mostly concerns itself with Aushwitz. All told Spiegelman's father, Vladek, spent just under a year in the prison camp Aushwitz. He worked various jobs, including as a tinsmith and fixing shoes, trying to stay one step ahead of the ovens. Throughout this he was doing his best to bribe guards, both to secure enough food for himself, and to do whatever he could to keep his wife alive. This story is juxtaposed against the present day, where Vladek has become a stingy man with failing health and serious marital problems with his second wife. Art's tumultuous relationship with his father is the real core of this book. He struggles to understand his father and how he came to be the man he is. He worries about portraying him in a negative light, but also wants to stick to the truth as he understands it. This is a reall

It's always disappointing to dive into a classic, beloved book and discover that it is just not meant for you. I really wanted to like this book. I enjoy magical realism as a genre, and I remember liking what I read of Marquez in AP Spanish in high school. But this book was such a slog that I gave up after about 150 pages. There were a couple of cool things. At one point the entire town is struck by insomnia and slowly begins losing their memories. I enjoyed reading about that, but I wish it had gone on longer. Because the book covers seven generations (100 years), no one episode gets more than a few pages. Anything that was interesting was quickly over and I was left with characters that I didn't care much about. The characters were the biggest problem I had with this book. They were constantly getting in their own way. Creating misery for themselves like they were all suffering from the same stupid martyr complex. One woman falls deeply in love with a man. He eventually f

It is surprisingly difficult to write about the last  Harry Potter  book. Maybe it's because, even though I know I can go back and read them again whenever I want, I'm not entirely ready for it to end. I'm never ready for it to end. Though I did manage to stop myself from charging straight ahead into the epilogue this time. Mostly because I went and signed up for a new Pottermore account instead. This book came out just after my 21st birthday. Nearly everyone who was staying at school over the summer had pre-ordered it, and when they arrived, the wonderful mailman loaded them all up on a dolly and came around to all the dorms to deliver them. Seeing him roll into the courtyard with a huge stack of Harry Potters is still one of my favorite memories. Eveyrone grabbed their books and disappeared into their rooms to read them. Although this time around it took several days, since we had to fit it in around work and my (truly epic) 21st birthday party. Since then I've on