Bookish Thoughts

It's almost hard to know where to being with this book, the sixth in Jordan's  Wheel of Time  series. There's a lot that happens. Tons of characters and plot threads all over the place. There's also a bunch of repetition and some of the flaws are becoming either more glaring or just more grating with time. I should be clear that the good still far outweighs the bad. I'm enjoying this series, and I'm glad I decided to read it. It's epic and amazing. The plot is fantastic, and Jordan does a good job of showing ripple effects. He also does a good job of yanking the carpet out from under you with sudden plot twists. He keeps battle scenes short and to the point, which I greatly appreciate. He builds up the chaos without losing sight of the smaller moments or the characters motivations. I'm happy to be spending thousands of pages (and what will surely become hundreds of hours) hanging out in this world. But Jordan has a gender problem. It's sneaky and...

My mother swears by this book. She picked up a copy back when it first came out and used the strategies and knowledge within as the basis for her own savings and investment plan. She's been trying to convince me to read it for the better part of a decade now, and I'm glad I finally did. The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need  is fairly easy to read, considering the difficulty of some of the material. It's short and straightforward. And if I skimmed some of the sections, that's mostly because the information wasn't currently relevant. It's a good reference, though. One I'm sure I'll be coming back to again and again. Most of the information contained in this book is common sense. Though it's possible I just think that because I recognize so much of my mother's advice as coming from this book: Save at least 10% of every paycheck and don't ever touch that money. Mutual funds are the cheapest, easiest strategy for long-term investment...

Signal to Noise  is probably the closest I'm ever going to get to a musical in book form. (Well, until ebook technology and creativity mesh in exciting new ways that have to happen sooner or later). The story is about Meche, who is obsessed with music and, thanks to her DJ father, has a deep knowledge of a number of genres. She plays music constantly, flipping around to find a song that matches her mood. I knew most of the songs she referenced well enough to hear them in my head. More than once, I put the book down long enough to pull up the appropriate song on youtube so it could be the background for the scene I was reading. It made the whole experience much richer. The story is split into two timelines. In 1988, Meche is a high schooler in Mexico City, hanging out with her fellow misfit friends and discovering the magic of music. And I mean literal magic. When they find the right record, they can make things happen, punishing their enemies, healing their friends, and coming ac...

I really ought to have read this book years (decades?) ago. It's short and simple and perfect and important. Important the way  The Little Prince  is important, and that was once described to me as the most important book in the world. The Giver  goes by fast. It took almost no time at all to read, partly because it's so short and partly because it's so straightforward. The messages it relays are clear: good times make the bad time worth it. Choice is important. We need to remember our mistakes so we can learn from them. And they way the arise, as a a seeming utopian society is slowly revealed to be a complete nightmare, is wonderfully organic. There's really not much to say beyond: read this book. And skip the movie. Even the trailer made me angry.

The Robber Bride  is a horrific book full of people doing terrible things to each other. More than  Mr. Fox , it drove the horror of this tale home, and I felt genuine concern for what would happen to some of the characters, particularly Larry. But this book also has something that I didn't think existed in Margaret Atwood's work: a happy ending. This book tells the tale of four women who met in college, when three of them lived in a boarding house together. Over the years, Zenia has hurt the other three. She's a con artist and a compulsive liar and she seduces men away from Toby, Charis, and Roz. And while she is definitely a terrible person, she's also a bit of a scapegoat. None of the women are ever really comfortable with the imbalance in their relationships, so they just blame the dissolution of them on Zenia. By the end, it's clear that it's not nearly so black and white as they would like to believe. I really enjoyed this book, which takes turns telli...

Like a lot of people, I first heard about Noelle Stevenson when her " Broship of the Rings " fanart series exploded on the internet a few years ago. I kept following along as she continued to post fanart and comics of other geeky movies. It wasn't too long before she started posting her own characters and artwork, mostly her homework assignments. Then she started her own webcomic,  Nimona  (which you should definitely read). Since graduating college, it seems like Stevenson has been everywhere. She's done some cover art, most notably for Rainbow Rowell's  Fangirl . She wrote one-offs for Sleepy Hollow and Wonder Women comic books. She's a staff writer on a children's show called  Wander Over Yonder . And she has an ongoing comic called  Lumberjanes  through Boom! Comics. And she seems to be announcing more projects every month. Lumberjanes  follows five girls having adventures and fighting monsters at summer camp. They earn badges for things like a...

Every now and then you come across a book that seems like it was written just for you. Helen Oyeyemi's  Mr. Fox  is, as I mentioned, a retelling of the English folktale, Mr. Fox. It's more than that, though, bringing in elements of Bluebeard and Fitcher's Bird. Reynardine makes a significant enough appearance that I went to look him up. There are probably other, similar folktales woven through that I didn't recognize. Oyeyemi is amazingly well-researched. And her ability to weave together all these tales, to find the common threads, is amazing. Although the structure of the book certainly lends itself to a multitude of related tales. Mr. Fox  centers on a famous author, St. John Fox, who has a habit of of killing the women in his stories. He has a wife named Daphne, who appears passive at first ("I fixed her early", Mr. Fox claims. "I told her in heartfelt tones that one of the reasons I love her is because she never complains. So now of course she ...

With the fifth  Wheel of Time  book, I feel like I'm settling in to this world. I know a few of the major plot points coming up, because sometimes I just can't help myself when it comes to spoilers. Okay, most of the time. It helps, though. For instance, I went into this book knowing that Perrin wasn't in it, and that kept me from spending a lot of time wondering when he was going to turn up. I'm also able to sit back and enjoy the journeys of these characters. Watch them become the kind of people who are going to save the world. The Fires of Heaven  mostly splits its time between Rand and Nynaeve. We get a few chapters from the points of view of the people around them: Mat and Egwene and Elayne. And there's a subplot concerning the former Amyrlin Seat and the exiled Aes Sedai. Another about Queen Morgase losing her throne. But mostly this book is all about Rand and Nynaeve. Rand is beginning to come into his own. He's hardening himself in preparation to lea...