Bookish Thoughts

I went in to this book thinking how nice it was to finally reach the point of the Discworld series where we get some continuity from book to book. Which speaks to my aggressive blocking out of Rincewind more than anything. Rincewind has, up to this point, essentially had one long adventure broken up over four books. But as they are my least favorite books in the series, I tend to forget them. The witches, on the other hand, are some of my favorite characters. And though this is the fourth book Esme Weatherwax has appeared in, it's the first one to really deal with the consequences of a previous book. Back in Wyrd Sisters , Magrat fell in love with Verence. Then she ran away from the whole thing in Witches Abroad . And now she's returning to discover that Verence has already planned their entire wedding and it's happening soon. There are also elves, set on coming to our world and ruining everything in service of their own entertainment and short attention spans. So Gran...

Out is not a book I would have ever come across on my own. It's a crime novel out of Japan. It was published there in 1997, and it won several awards, leading to it being translated to English in 2003. It was the most recent pick for my book club, and I dutifully read it, even though it turns out I won't be able to attend this time around. I've read a handful of crime novels over the years, most notably Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy, but it's not a genre I generally gravitate towards. When I want those kinds of stories it's a lot easier to flip on Law and Order or one of its descendants. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I am far from a connoisseur of this genre. And I'm not sure this book convinced me that I want to dive deeper into it. The story kicks off when a seemingly timid housewife kills her abusive husband and recruits her work friends to help her deal with the aftermath. They dismember and dispose of the body. But mistakes pile...

Dodie Smith's I Capture the Castle is an absolutely lovely coming-of-age story about first love and family obligation. It's set sometime in the 1930s in Rural England. The patriarch of the family wrote a critically acclaimed novel some ten years before the book opens, and took a 40 year lease on a castle that he thought would inspire his next great work. But that never happened, and the family has slid into abject poverty. The book is narrated by middle child Cassandra, who has procured a notebook and decided to keep a journal as practice for the novel she wants to write. Lucky for her, exciting things start to happen almost immediately, giving her a lot of new experiences to write about and new emotions to suss out between the pages of her journals. The family's landlord - who they haven't paid rent to in years - dies, and his grandsons come from America to take stock of their inheritance. Cassandra's older sister, Rose, becomes determined to marry one of them...

I'm not sure how to begin talking about this book, which is strange and haunting and loose almost to the point of unraveling. I finished it wondering what I had just read, what had happened, what it all meant. But it was definitely very spooky, which is mostly of what I wanted from it. The story unfolds as the journal of Sarah Crowe. In the wake of her ex-lover's death and in an attempt to complete a new novel, she takes up residence in an old farmhouse in Rhode Island. There's an enormous tree on the property with an unsettling history, and strange things begin happening. Except that it's not clear at all whether or not they're really happening. It quickly becomes apparent that Sarah is not a reliable narrator at all. The question really becomes: how unreliable is she? She admits to making up some things. She has gaps in her memory. It's not at all clear whether she's actually being haunted or whether she's suffering a psychotic break i...

I know I just said that The Gathering Storm was likely going to be my favorite book in this series. I have to immediately retract that statement, because Towers of Midnight knocked it out of the park. I had so much fun reading this book that, even though it's the longest book I've ever read (clocking in at 1220 pages) (and barring Bone , a 1300 page comic), I almost wish it had been longer. At least there's one more book after this (followed by everything the amazingly prolific Sanderson has written). The thing that makes this book so great is the sense of hope that permeates it. Unlike the last book, which focused on moving Rand and Egwene into the positions they needed to be in for the last battle, this book widens to include every other character. And it's amazing. Character arcs are finished off as person after person embraces their strengths and sheds their last doubts. Side plots are tied off as everyone heads to the Final Battle. Reunions bring ch...

The Penultimate Peril is the longest book in the Series of Unfortunate Events , and it took me by far the longest to read. Okay, that was mostly the fault of Hallowiener, but still. This book was exciting, with twists I didn't see coming, though I should have. And it actually provides more answers than new questions, though there are still a few mysteries remaining for the last book. The Baudelaires are now full-fledged volunteers, and they spend much of the book trying to figure out who they can trust and what is going on. Of course they're still children and pretty new at this whole spy thing, so they don't figure out much. But they get some answers anyway. The sugar bowl is still mostly a mystery, but by the end of the book its location is known. Olaf's motives are finally revealed and it adds a new dimension to the story, further muddying the waters between right and wrong. The mysterious J.S. is finally revealed, and some of the less awful guardi...

My plan to catch up with the classics continues with Frankenstein , a classic horror story that's considered by many to be the first science fiction novel (and it was written by Mary Shelley when she was 19 years old!) I struggled with the language, as I often do with books this old. But it was short enough that it didn't take me too long to read. And it helped that I'm familiar enough with the story to follow along with the basic beats of the plot. That said, this book was nothing like what I expected. It's framed as a series of letters an arctic explorer is sending to his sister, when he discovers a half-dead Frankenstein who is pursuing his creation across the ice. At one point we dig deeper into the creature's story, outlining his first two years of life. And in the midst of that we learn the story of the DeLacey's, the family from which the creature learns about humanity. I love when stories push in like this, and it was a pleasant surprise t...

This was not my favorite in Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events. It mostly boils down to the gimmick we get this time around. Every book so far has had a gimmick of some sort, and I've mostly been able to enjoy or ignore them. But here it just grated. We meet the captain of a submarine who repeats everything he says 3 or 4 times in different words. And uses "Aye" the way you use "stop" in telegrams - between every sentence. The Count Olaf and his group show up with the most annoying new laugh ever. I skipped whole paragraphs of dialogue because I couldn't stand to read it. Apart from that, it's a good installment. The stakes are definitely getting higher. The Baudelaires meet a new friend only to be betrayed by her. Sunny has a very close brush with death. The whole good vs evil starts to become murkier, as one of Olaf's henchmen reveals hidden depths and motivations. There are still a lot of questions to be answered, but this...

The third book of The Lunar Chronicles brings Rapunzel into the group of fairy-tale heroines going up against the wicked queen Levana. Though she's named Cress (short for Crescent Moon) in this book. True to the science fiction setting, she's been trapped in a satellite orbiting the Earth for the past seven years. She's used that time to hone both her hacking skills and her imagination, and so she joins up as one of the more naive yet skilled allies. This book was a lot of fun. It's thoroughly predictable, both because I'm familiar with the fairy tale and because it's a tad formulaic. But despite knowing what was coming, I had a ton of fun reading this. The action starts right off the bat, with Cress joining our known band almost immediately. This was more satisfying than the last book, which kept Cinder and Scarlet separate until the very end. The characters get to hang out in new configurations, which keeps everything fresh and fun. My only g...