Bookish Thoughts

I struggled with this book. It was interesting, and I think it's important. But it also felt a little shallow and contrived. Things were a bit too perfect, whole passages felt like they'd been lifted from a textbook. So while this book was certainly affecting (and yes I cried) it also left me feeling manipulated and distrustful. Which is a shame, because I think there's important information here. But the presentation has me questioning everything. The book follows Alice, a fifty-year old professor of cognitive psychology at Harvard, who is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's. My only other reference point for this disease is that one of my favorite authors, Terry Pratchett, had it. So I can't claim to be an expert in any way. But after watching Pratchett struggle for many years, and continue to work and fight and speak out, this book felt rushed. The titular character, Alice, goes from a lecturing professor to unable to recognize her own children in less tha

Speak  is already considered a classic, appearing in high school classrooms across the country. After reading it, it's easy to see why. This is a short, easy to read book that speaks powerfully about depression and isolation. It's specific in a way that makes it very easy to relate to. The story follows Melinda through her freshman year of high school. Shortly before the year began, she was abandoned by all of her friends. She enters the year as a pariah, shunned by nearly the entire student body. This, coupled with her parents' neglect, causes her to retreat into herself. She doesn't speak unless it's necessary. She doesn't engage with her classes or her teachers. She's just trying to survive, to get through high school and out the other side where things will hopefully be better. Of course, four years is an awfully long time. Especially for a teenager. As the book progresses, she starts to find small ways to move forward, to heal from the trauma she ex

At it's core, this is a story about a family curse. The book alternates between two timelines. The past timeline details the events that led to the family being cursed and its immediate repercussions. In the present, the latest descendant discovers this curse on his family and takes steps to break it. But breaking the curse might break him. Woven around this skeleton are any number of fantastical elements: a travelling circus, mermaids, and tarot cards. Tying it all together is a book, handed down through generations, lost and found, until it shows up right where it needs to be. This book was slow and atmospheric. There isn't a lot of action, it's more about relationships that are built up and tested, strained and repaired and sometimes broken entirely. It's about the ways your family and history can trap you. The things you need to do to break free and live your own life. I really loved this book. The family saga is epic, and the magic is woven in so subtly you c

Anne's House of Dreams  was a million times better than Anne of Windy Poplars . I think the latter suffered from a whole lot of nostalgia and a poor balancing of ideas. But this book gets back to what I loved about Anne in the first place. She and Gilbert get married and move into their first home together. They meet their new neighbors and begin to make a life for themselves. This book felt like an actual novel rather than a series of vignettes. It let Anne be human again. A wonderful, irrepressible human who charms everyone she meets and finds ways to solve every problem she comes up against. But it let her be wrong. It let her be disliked (temporarily). It let her experience tragedy and come through the other side. More importantly, this book introduced Miss Cornelia Bryant, who is officially one of my favorite literary characters ever. A spinster who never has a nice word to say about a man or a mean word to say about a woman. She spends all of her free time sewing clothes

I liked The Book Thief  so much that I decided to give Zusak's other popular book, I Am the Messenger , a try. First things first, the two books are absolutely nothing alike. I Am the Messenger  is a feel-good coming of age novel with a happy, if strange, ending. The story follows Ed, an under-aged cab driver with no direction in life. Until he starts receiving obscure messages on playing cards that encourage him to perform acts of kindness around his city. Along the way he makes some friends, becomes more involved in his community, and discovers a sense of purpose. There are a few things that I think could have been handled better. A handful of things that made me cringe. But for the most part, this was a surprisingly uplifting and affecting journey. Some of the things Ed does are as simple as buying someone an ice cream cone. Others as complicated as restoring a sense of family duty to a pair of brothers. And through it all is the mystery of who's sending Ed on these miss

The Outlaws of Sherwood , Robin McKinley's take on the legend of Robin Hood, was a fun bit of escapist reading that I stretched out over Thanksgiving. Unlike her other books, there's no magic or fantastical element here. Which makes sense. Robin Hood isn't a fairy tale so much as a folk hero, and as such he's much more grounded in reality. McKinley attempts something akin to historical fiction here (while acknowledging that some things that are key to the legend aren't exactly historically accurate). I think she mostly succeeds, and I think where she didn't meet my expectations it's my expectations that were wrong. She really does spin an interesting tale, taking into account real concerns and hurdles. She increases the number of female characters, and gives them all interesting stories. (And love interests, because even though this isn't a fairy tale it kind of is). Mostly I liked this book right up until the end, which just didn't work for me.

This was a fun collection of short stories for kids, from the very beginning of Terry Pratchett's career. He was still a teen-aged journalist when he wrote these stories for the paper he was working for. The collection was something of a mixed bag. I really liked some of the stories. Others never quite came together for me. Part of that is because I can't help but judge Pratchett's work against his later stuff. Comparing where he was in the beginning of his career to the heights to which he would eventually soar isn't fair, but I can't quite help it. On it's own, this is a wonderful collection of stories that I'll be thrilled to read to my kid in a few years. You can see the seeds of ideas and themes that Pratchett would go on to wrestle with later in life. The stories are cute and funny and often manage to subvert expectations. It'd be nice if there were more girls, but that's something Pratchett eventually got a lot better about.

This isn't a book so much as an extended essay. Framed as a letter to his teenaged son, Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about what it means to be black in America. About the boundaries he had always assumed were firmly in place in his life and the ways he's grown past them. About friends he's made and friends he's lost and his anger at the injustice that seems to plague everyone he knows. About his hopes and fears for his son and the things that he both does and does not want to change. This wasn't written for me, but it's one of those pieces that it's important everyone reads. It's probably even more important that the people it wasn't written for read it. It provides a very different view of America than the one I've had my entire life, one that needs to be integrated if we're ever going to make this country great. That said, there were things I could identify with deeply. The way college can help you find your tribe and expand your worldview,

Years ago I read a short story by Aimee Bender ("The Color Master") and fell deeply in love with her writing. I don't usually become quite so attached to an author based on such a small sampling of work. But that story was just that good. It made me miss my metro stop, which has only happened to me two other times in my life (Patrick Rothfuss and Brandon Sanderson. So that's the kind of company she's in in my mind). I wanted to read more of her work, but I was also scared. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake  was always there on the shelf at the bookstore, taunting me. It couldn't possibly be as good as that short story I read. Maybe that short story wasn't even as good as I remembered. But I re-read The Color Master, and I still loved it, so when I saw her novel at the library sale, it finally felt like time to pick it up. I shouldn't be surprised that I loved this book, which is about family and sorrow and expectations. It went in a very differe

I was long overdue for a re-read of The Name of the Wind , which remains one of my favorite books. Even if the third book is never released, the first two will probably stay in my favorites list. They're so rich and dense, packed with magic and music and the mundanity of life. But the thing that really makes these books sing is Rothfuss' masterful use of language. The tenth anniversary of this book just came out, and if it takes another ten years to get every word perfect in the third book, I think it will be worth it. I have plenty of other books to read in the meantime. And I can always re-read this one, looking for new clues and soaking in the incredible world Rothfuss built. On this re-read, I took particular note of the dialogue. Throughout the book, characters often fall into rhyming or metered language. It's subtle, and hidden well in the paragraphs, but once you know to look for it, this book brims over with poetry. It was a lot of fun to pick up on it this time t

I've mentioned this before: I don't read books in order. I flip back and forth. Re-reading passages and looking to see how long is left in a chapter or a scene. How long before a certain character goes away or comes back. I almost always read the last page before I'm even a quarter of the way through the book. And then I check out the acknowledgments and supplemental materials. So I quickly discovered that the last page of this book just says [this page intentionally left blank]. It was a little weird, but this whole book is a little weird. There are flow charts and diagrams peppered throughout. I didn't think much of it. A little more than halfway through the book, the main character starts reading the book while also writing it because of a crazy time paradox. Like I said, this book is weird. Anyway, he quickly gets tired of reading the book like a chump and jumps ahead to the end to see where his life ends up. But he knew he was going to do that, and he's not

Alan Cumming's memoir, which focuses on his relationship with his father, is absolutely stunning. It's heartbreaking and hard to read, absolutely devastating at times. But Alan Cumming is a man of grace and kindness, and his writing positively pulses with it. The book is also funny and heartwarming and forgiving. Cumming flips back and forth between two timelines. He explores his childhood, growing up with an abusive father. Interwoven with this is his time filming an episode of Who Do You Think You Are , during which he learned about the life and death of his maternal grandfather. Cumming does an amazing job jumping back and forth between the two timelines, allowing them to inform and enrich each other. Ultimately, this book is Cumming's journey to acceptance. He learns more about his family, lets that inform who he is, discards the things he doesn't want. The most amazing thing is his ability to forgive his father for everything he put him through and continued to

Landline  is a fun, low-ish stakes story with an interesting twist. There was never much doubt that this book would  have a happy ending. But sometimes you just want to dive into a story with a known ending so you can enjoy the journey. Georgie is an ambitious television writer. She and her writing partner are working on a top-rated sitcom that they hate but that is opening doors for them. They finally get a meeting to launch their dream TV show - the one they've been working on since college. But to prepare for the meeting, Georgie is going to have to miss Christmas with her family. And when she chooses her job, it puts a whole lot of strain on her relationship with her husband. I will say that I had a hard time relating to Georgie's husband here. If Kevin had to miss Christmas because something came up at work - an emergency or a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - we'd deal. He's missed Christmas before, and while it may be different with kids in the equation, it

After reading this book, I want more than anything to be friends with Lindy West. She's smart and articulate and funny in a very specific way that I associate with Mallory Ortberg and the-toast. But more than that, she's kind. She's kind in a way I aspire to be, always believing the best of people and willing to talk to them and seeing the victories in small, incremental changes. This book was billed to me as a collection of essays, but it flows so much better than most essay collections. The transitions are seamless, and it's almost a memoir. West's writing is so personal and passionate, her personal so politic, that it's hard to distinguish between the two. She lays herself bare as a way of forcing her opponents to acknowledge her humanity. And that certainly takes a toll, but she does it with such grace that you almost miss how hard it is for her to be so naked and raw all the time. West writes about being a fat feminist, and all that entails. She details

My favorite thing about e-publishing is the sudden proliferation of novellas. It lets authors of longer series pause between books to release shorter character studies. They enrich the world, even if they have no place in the proper novels. And since they only cost a few bucks, I happily gobble them up. This one comes after the fifth book in The Expanse  series, though it serves as something of a sequel to events of the first book. But since it hints at some pretty major spoilers in the fifth book, you gotta wait to read it. And then remember back to that first book to figure out who these characters are. Which is another fun way that characters who have been sidelined can suddenly pop back up again. The Vital Abyss  is told from the point of view of a sociopath, one of the researchers who was jailed in the wake of the attack on Eros. His justifications for what he did, his total lack of regret or empathy, his desire to do it all again and push forward is harrowing to read. He'

This book was greatly redeemed by it's thoroughly stunning ending. It came out of nowhere and was not at all how I expected this book to wrap up. But it was so fitting and perfect that I ended this book feeling much better about it than I had been while I was reading it. The truth is that I struggled with this book a bit. Which has a lot to do with my lack of interest in contamination stories in general. It's not that I dislike them, but they aren't my go-to. They have to be really special for me to get excited about them (as opposed to vampires, where I am all in, regardless of the quality of the story-telling). And there were some really great things in this book. But there were some not-great things that served to drag it down. First, the bad. It mostly comes down to the tense. This book is written in the present tense, with flash backs happening in the past tense. Which makes sense when you say it like that. Except that most books are written in the past tense with

I was never really in to Archie comics as a kid. I knew the names of the main characters, but I never sought out or read the comics. Which means that, even though I watched Sabrina the Teenage Witch religiously when it was part of ABC's TGIF lineup, I had no idea there was any connection between it and those comics. But with the success of Riverdale , a dark, edgy Archie, Sarbina's getting a similar makeover. My familiarity with the TV show helped me orient myself in this comic. I already knew most of the major players: Aunts Hilda and Zelda, Salem the Cat, Harvey the boyfriend. But the comic takes that cast in a very different direction. The series is set back in the 60s, and it is straight-up sensational horror. This presented a bit of a problem in the first issue in that I didn't really connect with any of the characters. These are horrible people (literal Satanists) doing horrible things. Things improve as Sarbina grows up and becomes slightly more ambiguous, being

This was a long book. And yet, when I turned the page and saw that it was over, I actually said "no" out loud. I've fallen deeply in love with The Expanse  over the past year or so. Now, in the fifth book, we're officially past the point of objectivity. I love these characters and this world. I love hanging out here and seeing all the ugly, beautiful innards of humanity put on display. There is jaw-dropping evil and moments of incredible grace and caught up in the middle of it all are four humans who have finally found their family and will fight like hell for it. I was ecstatic to discover that the four points of view in the book are the four crew-members of the Rocinante. Sure, Holden always gets a point of view, and there was a novella that centered on Amos. But digging into the psyches of Naomi, Alex, and Amos, learning the backstories and what makes them tick, was an absolute treat. Less of a treat was the fact that, with the Rocinante undergoing repairs, t

Tana French has a way of getting in my head and under my skin. I love her books, but they consume me. When I'm reading one, it's difficult for me to engage fully with the rest of my life. I come up for air as needed, because I do have a life outside of books. But French's books make me struggle with that. I want to linger over them, make them last as long as possible. I also find myself racing to the end, hoping that when I finally close the book I'll get myself back. That I'll be able to return to the rest of my life. Broken Harbor  was no exception. In fact, it got to me even more than usual. This book terrified me. It actually gave me nightmares. These books are not fantastical. There's nothing supernatural here, not even a whiff of magical realism. But the way French plays with your perception makes you doubt that. Just as I called The Likeness  a ghost story, on some level this is a book about a haunted house. A house haunted by all the crumbling hopes an

The premise for this book was really interesting. It's sort of a cross between a gothic novel and a choose you own adventure book. Jane gets invited to a party at a secluded mansion by a friendly acquaintance shortly after her aunt dies. But there's a lot going on at the mansion. After hinting at a variety of mysteries, Cashore puts Jane in a room with the option of following one of five different characters, each promising enlightenment about a different question. And then the book breaks into five different stories, one for each choice, with the remaining stories playing out in the background. It's the sort of experimental thing that I've gotten more and more interested in lately. But I think Cashore threw one too many elements into her mixing bowl. Each of the five stories is a different genre. This worked fine for the first few: a mystery, a thriller, even a horror story. The fourth story is science-fiction, and it's here that I think the book jumped the shark

I've been greatly enjoying the Anne books, but man this one got tedious. I wonder how much of that is because it was published later. It's more of a return to Anne's younger days, and you need a heavy dose of nostalgia to swallow it. The book covers the three years of Anne's engagement to Gilbert, when she's teaching school in a new community and he's finishing his schooling to become a doctor. The narrative alternates between letters she writes to him and the familiar third-person narrative of Anne's day-to-day activities. The book is divided into three sections, one for each school year, with summers and holidays (when Anne is with Gilbert) mostly skipped over. Because the focus is on Anne in a new environment, almost none of the Avonlea characters are present. There are a couple of brief visits to Green Gables, with appearances by Marilla and the twins. But for the most part this is an entirely new cast of characters. It was frustrating to not see any

Calamity  was an excellent conclusion to Sanderson's Reckoners trilogy. It's just as exciting and fast-paced as the previous two installments, with tons of new powers and exciting twists. The city it's set in this time, a wandering Atlanta, seems even more implausible than a drowned Manhattan or metallic Chicago. This one is made of salt and crawls across the country, completely rebuilding itself every week. But Sanderson is less concerned about the logistics than the opportunities they present. And he takes full advantage of a half-built city that can never be completely wrecked to create some really thrilling scenes. Sanderson continues to play with the ideas of trust and redemption, while arguing that it's important to face your fears and that most humans are basically good but easily corrupted. Which I can't really say I disagree with. And the trilogy as a whole serves as a nice coming-of-age tale for the main character, who even gets a happier ending than

If I Was Your Girl  tells the story of Amanda, who has switched schools for her final year of high school. She moves in with her father, who she hasn't seen in six years, and sets about trying to make it through her last year of school in small-town Alabama. She starts off with the intention of keeping her head down, just one more year to get through before she escape to college and a large, anonymous city. But as she starts to make friends, she starts to yearn for a normal life. But undercutting the newfound joy in her life is the fear that people will find out about her past. You see, Amanda is trans. And she switched schools after a classmate's father put her in the hospital for daring to use the woman's restroom. There's a lot in this book. Amanda's conflicting desires to stay safe and have a normal high school experience. Her tentative attempts to restore relationship with her father. Her slow discovery that everyone around her has a secret and that even her

In Modern Romance , comedian Aziz Ansari teams up with sociologist Eric Klinenberg to investigate the ways dating has changed in modern times, with shifting social mores and advancing technology. We have more choices than ever before and more time before we're expected to settle down, which means that our goals have changed, as well as how we pursue those goals. All in all, this book made me glad that I'm happily married. Ansari's life sounds exhausting, and not just the dating aspect of it. He's so determined to have the best of everything that he invests most of his energy into researching options. If it takes him most of a day to decide where to go get lunch (only to discover that his restaurant of choice is closed) you can only imagine how frustrating and unsatisfying his dating life must be. There was some interesting information in this book, and Ansari definitely has a gift for presenting it in an interesting way. Reading this book was a lot of fun. But mostl

Most of Brandon Sanderson's books are really long, which helps disguise just how quickly I read his work. Even from myself. I was surprised when I read this 400+ page book in less than two days. But between Sanderson's fast-paced plots and straight-forward language, it makes sense that I would basically inhale this book. The second Reckoners book continues the story from the first one. By killing Steelheart, David and the other Reckoners have changed the world order. And now they have to keep going, lest it all fall apart. They've more or less declared war, and if they don't follow through now things will be worse than they were before. Unfortunately, there's another Epic who knows them too well and is one step ahead of them, which lets her lead them all straight into a trap. Sanderson does a great job of expanding the world here, leaking out enough information to keep me happy and hooked and asking more questions. I'm glad that there is some reasoning behin

This was a bracing memoir about dealing with the end of your parents' lives. Roz Chast, a cartoonist for The New Yorker, reminisces on the last several years of her parents' lives. From her realization that they need her help to the hospital stay that convinces her to move them into assisted living to their eventual deaths, she talks about all of it. And she doesn't sugarcoat anything. It becomes clear, over the course of the book, that Chast has a contentious relationship with her parents. That's probably an understatement. She moved out when she was sixteen. When the book opens she hasn't been home in nearly two decades, despite living nearby. But she does have a strong sense of familial duty. When she realizes how hard things have gotten for her mom and dad, she steps right in to help, and the three of them fall right back into old habits. There's a lot of humor in this book, but it's all gallow's humor. Even after it's all over, you get the s

Someday I will have read everything that Brandon Sanderson has published. Steelheart  brings me one step closer to that goal. While most of Sanderson's writing takes place in his epic fantasy Cosmere-universe, he also has a scattering of novels that aren't connected to that massive series. The Reckoners trilogy, of which Steelheart  is the first novel, takes place on our world, more or less. It's a post-apocalyptic version of our world, where a bunch of people were granted superhero powers. Rather than becoming benevolent guardians of society, they quickly too over the world, transforming it into a collection of city-nations, each with its own tyrannical ruler. David lives in what used to be Chiago, which is ruled by the eponymous Steelheart. He's able to transform nearly anything into steel, which he did to half the city. He's impervious to bullets or any other attempt to kill him. Plus he can fly and shoot energy and he kills at random to maintain his control.

Penric's Fox is a murder mystery. Except that in this case, Oswyl is the dogged detective following up on every lead and Penric is the excitable reader who jumps to the answer about a third of the way through the story. So there's not much mystery at all. Still, it's always a pleasure to spend time in one of Bujold's worlds. So many of her characters are genuinely good people. The fact that she seems to care about them even more than the reader guarantees that they'll all come through alright. Everyone has a happy ending waiting for them. Except for the villains, who don't seem quite so cartoonish against the current political landscape and always meet justice in the end. It was also fun to revisit the characters from Penric and the Shaman , the second installment in this series. Bujold does so by going back in time a bit to before Penric's Mission . It's a little disappointing to not find out what happens next after that particular story, but it

It's not often that I run out and get a book right after it's released. I prefer paperbacks, and I buy most of my books used. Which means that I tend to be at least three years behind. But there are times that I have to get my hands on a book right away. In this case, the subject matter was too immediately relevant to the world for me to wait until the book made it's way to the used-book scene. Or even to wait until the paperback came out. What Happened  is Clinton's version of the election. She goes through it step by step, trying to work out what went wrong, what she could have done differently, what she misunderstood or underestimated. Her analysis, while obviously biased, is keen and interesting. She's not one to simplify issues. Rather she illuminates all the different variables, showing how they created a complex series of events that led to President Trump. I cried a lot while I was reading this book. Sometimes it hurt, taking me right back to the days fo

Back when I first read this series, this was my favorite of the books. I was twelve, and Anne seemed so grown up. She was off at college, studying hard and figuring out what she wanted out of life. The description of Patty's Place, particularly Anne's initial conversation with Patty, has remained etched in my mind. Though I've since learned that living with your best girlfriends is not necessarily a recipe for utopia. On revisiting this book, I didn't find it quite as perfect as I remember it being. Nor quite as good as the first two. It's a bit rushed, skipping over most of the college doings in favor of catching us up on how everyone back in Avonlea is growing. And while the first two books were also basically just a series of vignettes, this one suffered by accelerating through time. Entire semesters passed in mere paragraphs, and it caused some of the relationships to get the short shrift. Then again, I'm not sure I could have stood to read any more abou

In Alias Grace , Margaret Atwood tries her hand at historical fiction, speculating about what might have happened in the case of Grace Marks - a young maid who was convicted of killing her master and his mistress (Grace's boss) and sentenced to life in prison. The case is murky, with changing testimonies and contradictory evidence. Atwood did a lot of research to try and get to the bottom of it and tell a coherent story about what happened from Grace's point of view. The problem is that she doesn't ever seem to come to any conclusions. Grace is an enigma wrapped in lies wrapped in misdirection. Even though she told her own story in this book, I left it without any real sense that I understood who she was. Was she lying the whole time? Was she sick? Was she faking amnesia or not? Atwood chooses to leave this all up in the air, which left me frustrated. It didn't help that the book is incredibly slow. It took over a hundred pages to get to Grace's account and even

It was sheer stubbornness that pulled me on to the end of this series. And because of that, I'm not even going to attempt the second Amber arc. But I finished it, and that feels like an accomplishment of some sort. At first I was excited that this series was comprised of such short books. Indeed, I probably wouldn't have finished this one if it had been any longer. But I bet I would have enjoyed the story a lot more had the books been longer. As it was there were so many twists and turns that came so fast I felt like I couldn't catch my breath. And then I got bored because as soon as I accepted one story it changed all over again. So why bother caring? This story needed more room to breath. There were entirely too many characters which meant that most of them got the short shrift. Plenty of relationships were stated rather than ever being explored. And given how many times Corwin had the wool pulled over his eyes, it was hard to really trust his assessments of his sibli

If you think about this book too hard, I imagine it would all fall apart. The concept requires a pretty significant leap of faith, and the science hangs together pretty loosely. It's very far-fetched. But if you can accept the premise - people have started voluntarily ingesting tapeworms as a form of preventative health care and now those tape worms are trying to take over - then you get a fun, well-paced book with a few moments of true terror. The suspense in this book is really top-notch. The book follows Sal, who was in a car crash six years prior and miraculously woke up from her come right when her family was about to pull the plug. She has no memory of her life prior to the coma and has spent the years since as a guinea pig, as her doctors try to figure out how she made such a complete recovery. Her relationship with her family, particularly her father, is one of the best parts of the book, as they all try to navigate the new normal. But all around her people are starting

This is easily my favorite LeGuin book yet. I don't know if that's because I'm more familiar with her work and know what to expect from her (and what is probably asking too much) or if this book really is head and shoulders above the rest (it has been argued that this is so). Regardless, it was fantastic and it made my brain buzz in all sorts of good ways. The book follows one man's journey through two diametrically opposite cultures. The chapters alternate between his life growing up on the moon Anarres, where a libertarian anarchy holds everyone equal, and his time as a professor on the planet Urras, where a highly regulated capitalism maintains strong class and gender divides. All his life he's been told that his home is a utopia, the planet a stand-in for hell. But he's not satisfied until he can see this for himself, and he wants to bring his ideals back to the planet and build a better society there. But he discovers that things aren't quite that sim

At this point in the series there are so many lies and half-truths and shifting alliances that it's getting exhausting. No sooner do we learn what someone did and why then it's revealed that half of what they said was a lie. It's getting easier to root for Corwin, if only because he's the only character whose motivations are wholly revealed to the audience. I'm bored by these books at this point. But the ten-book series is actually two five-book series. And the next book, the last in this arc, is less than 100 pages long. So I'll finish it. Then I'll take a break and see if I care enough to try the second series. Which is about a different character and sounds like it might be about something different. And is called Trumps of Doom , which is such an appealing title right now. For now I just can't bring myself to care about Corwin and his family and whether or not they win. I want more from my fantasy. More characterization, more intricate worlds. No

I've only read two of Isabel Allende's books, but I've already come to expect a lot from her as an author. Those two books were so good, amazingly structured and filled with fully-realized characters. I loved everyone from the protagonists to the third-string characters. Even the characters I didn't like felt like complete people, which complicated my feelings in wonderful ways. And The Japanese Lover  didn't quite measure up. I think part of it may be that she was working with a different translator. There were glimpses of the lyrical language I'd become accustomed to, but they were few and far between. But it was more than that. This book felt unfinished. It wandered and jumped didn't flow as well as I wanted it to. It tried a bit too hard to be hip to current culture in the modern-day sections (perhaps Allende should stick to historical fiction?). It felt like whole chapters were missing, chapters that would make me care more about these characters and

There are only so many stories. Or perhaps I should say that there are only so many plots. A person goes on a journey. A stranger comes to town. Two people fall in love. You could argue that there's only one story: a person goes on a journey. You might shift the viewpoint (so he comes to town). The journey might be physical or emotional or mental. It all boils down to a person starting in one place and ending up in a different place, and the story is how they get there. When you read as much as I do, these structures become familiar, comfortable. Stories are interesting because of the details they provide, the different ways they can get you to see the world. Reading about the same people doing the same things all the time gets boring because, as I said, there are only so many stories to tell. But reading about different people doing those same things. That's how you learn and grow. The familiarity of the story makes it easier to learn about different cultures and ways of lif

An argument could be made that all fiction is fantasy, on some level. Hell, an argument could probably be made that all writing is fantasy, but for now we'll stick with fiction. These books about Anne are often considered historical fiction. Actually, they can probably just be called fiction, since LM Montgomery was writing, in some ways, about her own life. They're books for children, morality plays in a way, though they go down a bit easier than Little Women  did. But if I were to ever formally argue that all fiction is fantasy, these books would be Exhibit A. To start with, they are Montgomery's fantasy life. The life she wishes she could have led, had she had a bit more confidence and a bit more education and a bit more luck. Her writing, and Anne's own optimism, makes it so easy to fall into this trap of believing that she lives in a perfect, idealized world. The books are comforting, the writing lovely. It's like stepping into nostalgia. Who wouldn't wan

The Likeness  is a deliciously claustrophobic mystery that skirts up against being a ghost story. It's haunting and lyrical. It got under my skin such that I couldn't think about anything else when I wasn't reading it, and then I couldn't sleep for thinking about it. It's rare that a novel leaks into the rest of my life the way this one did, and I absolutely loved it for it. The premise requires a significant suspension of disbelief. Detective Cassie Maddox, lately of the Murder Squard but currently working Domestic Violence began her career as an undercover agent. During that time she created the persona of Lexie Madison to infiltrate a drug ring on a college campus. When she was stabbed, she got pulled out, but the identity was left live in case they needed her again. So imagine her surprise when, several years later, Lexie Madison turns up dead. With no leads, Cassie agrees to go undercover again, under very different circumstances this time. So yeah, that in

Thief of Time  is a lot sillier than I remember it being. It's not exactly a bad thing. But I remember loving this book, and this time around I only liked it. It was fun and funny. But the past few books have had a depth that this one lacked. So I ended up feeling a bit let down. The thing this book is missing is the biting social commentary that I remember as such a hallmark of the Discworld  series. Of course, it took years for the books to evolve from the silly adventures of Rincewind to the much more hard-hitting advancement in Ankh-Morpork. They're all satire, but some of them are a whole lot lighter than others. The past few books have been heavy, though. Pratchett was tackling more complicated issues, holding that distorted mirror back up to our world and demanding that readers take a good look around. And so Thief of Time  feels like a bit of a regression. It's a good, solid book. But by Discworld standards, it is merely okay. There's a lot to like here. Su

I've made it through the third book in the Chronicles of Amber, and it feels like this story is finally starting. More than the books that came before it, this one felt like a solid beginning. I'm finally caught up with everything that happened before the series started (I think), and I'm ready to see what happens next. Also, the book ends on a hell of a cliffhanger that has me chomping at the bit to dive into the next one. But I'm trying to hold myself back, because I can see myself easily getting sick of this series. Better to keep the anticipation ratcheted up, so I can use it's momentum to get through all ten books. As excited as I am about the third book, I should say that it's basically an extended info dump, punctuated with brief action scenes that mostly serve to keep Corwin from acting on his information prematurely. One by one, he makes his way through various family members, putting together what happened while he was suffering from amnesia and how

Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer  is a lot more accessible than his other books. I liked The Eyre Affair , though I get the feeling that that series requires a PhD in English to be truly appreciated. And Shades of Grey  is one of the most difficult books I've ever succeeded in reading. By comparison  The Last Dragonslayer  is positively straightforward. Which makes sense, as it was written for children. The world he creates is still absurd, a mishmash of high fantasy and modern technology that is a little too unrecognizable to really qualify as urban fantasy. But I felt like I understood most of the references this time around. It's not that his plot require that much brainpower. This is a pretty simple chosen one story about an orphan who finds out that she's the last in a long line of dragon slayers and it's been prophesied that she will slay the final living dragon. There are twists and turns, but nothing too outlandish. No, the absurdity is in the details

I have to admit that the conclusion to this trilogy felt a little flat to me. There were definitely some good things, and I still think the series as a whole is good and tackles interesting questions with some good nuance. I even liked the actual ending of the story. But so much of this book felt like a rehash of the second one that I felt a little bored by the end of it. Once again, Tally has had her brain rewired, and once again she sets out into the wilderness where he solitude helps her figure out what she actually wants. The love triangle sort of fizzles out and the stakes are revealed to be not nearly as high as it seemed. What felt like a worldwide conspiracy is mostly confined to one city, and Tally's role shifts. She does help save the world, but it's more about preventing a war than ushering a grand revolution. Which isn't to say that the revolution doesn't happen. But it's not the complete overthrow of society that the rebels wanted. And that's pr

I love this series so much. I'm so glad it got turned into a TV series and was brought to my attention, or I may never have heard of it. In the fourth installment, the protomolecule has opened the doors to thousands of empty, terraformed worlds. The aliens were also carbon-based, oxygen-breathing beings, so all of the worlds they created are able to sustain human life. More or less. The critters there aren't exactly edible and it's taking some work to figure out how to grow edible food in foreign soil (with all its foreign bacteria), but the vacuum of space is being held at bay and that's a big thing. With all these worlds to explore, two groups of humans naturally decide to fight over the first one they come to. Because no matter how far we go, we take ourselves with us. The refugees just want a place to call home. The scientists want to study the biosphere before it becomes contaminated. The corporations want to get their hands on the huge lithium deposits. And Ho

I'm still torn about this series. I'll keep going, mostly because the books are so short and there's enough here to keep me interested. If nothing else, it's fun to see the things my favorite authors have taken from this series and improved on. The wry language, the periodic breaking of the fourth wall, the fluid dimensions, the god-like protagonists learning about empathy. This series contains the bones of my favorite fantasy. But it's frustrating to know how much better this could be and not see it realized. This is mostly in regards to the women in the series. We get two new female characters in this book, and while they are an improvement over the previous book (five sisters summed up as "bitches, all" and one queen who shows up just long enough to have sex with Corwin), there's still something to be desired here. First there's Lorraine, who at least manages to feel like a person. She seems to be living her life on her terms, tragic as they

At this point, I think I'd consider this series better than The Hunger Games . I'm finding Tally to be a much more interesting protagonist than Katniss. Rather than let herself be made a pawn by whoever wants to play, she questions everything. She's not really on anyone's side, and that's because she's aware that everything is much more complicated than either side would like to believe. On the one hand, you have the evil government. And they are evil, there's no mistaking that. They lobotomize everyone on their sixteenth birthdays to keep the population happy and compliant. They maintain a population of primitive humans with a never-ending blood feud so they can study human violence. They've removed choice from everyone except a select few and they'll do everything in their power to maintain this status quo. But they have managed to stabilize the environment and control human population growth. The rebels, of course, are nominally the good guys.

I downloaded the complete Anne Shirley collection on my phone so that I'd have something easy and familiar to read while feeding my son. It helped that I was able to get the whole series for $1. Though I then discovered that the "complete" series only includes 6 of the 8 books for some reason, so I'll have to buy those other two when I get to them. But I've been meaning to re-read these books for a while, now, and this seemed like a good way to go about it. I don't remember having a deep connection to these books, the way so many other girls and women do. I read them in the 7th grade on the suggestion of a friend. Well, actually, I tore through them as fast as I could. And I liked them well enough. But then I moved on to other things. Mostly fantasy. I was surprised by how well the books stood up to my memory of them. There's always a danger, revisiting a book from your childhood, that you will cringe at your former self. But this book was even better

This was a lovely coming of age story about what it means to be a man. Set in the mid-eighties, it follows Aristotle through two summers, during which everything changes. He meets Dante, who inspires him to start swimming, reading, and questioning the constants in his life. He goes from 15 to 17 years old and also moves from boy to man in a lot of ways. There are a lot of layers to this story, but they kind of sneak up on you. The language is sparse. It's almost off-putting at first. But it makes a lot of sense for a narrator who spends so much time inside his own head and doesn't really like it there. Aristotle has a lot of anger that he doesn't know how to express. He carries a lot of baggage, mostly thanks to the world around him. His father fought in the Vietnam war and refuses to talk about it, or about anything really. His older brother is in prison, and while his mom will talk about nearly anything, she won't talk about that. So Aristotle learns not to talk a

I've been meaning to read Zelazny for a long time now. I read a lot of fantasy and science fiction, and he's always there on the periphery. Most of my favorite authors cite him as one of their favorite authors. I get the impression that he is as foundational to the genre as Tolkien, Asimov, and LeGuin. And so when two fantastic books that I read back to back ( Among Others  and Radiance ) both referenced him, I decided it was finally time to seek  him out. While it may have made more sense to start with one of his stand-alone novels, his epic fantasy series, The Chronicles of Amber  called to me. It helped that I found the entire ten-book saga published as a single omnibus, which saved me money (at the expense of my wrists, but alas). What's interesting is that all ten books published together are the same length as a single book in Wheel of Time, The Stormlight Archive , or The Kingkiller Chronicle . Each individual book is less than 200 pages. So I was surprised when

This is the first of a three-part memoir, written by Congressman John Lewis. It covers his early life, from his childhood raising chickens on a farm, through meeting Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and his work helping to organize and participate in the Nashville sit-ins as a college student. Lewis is a major figure from the Civil Rights movement, and his choice to present his memoir in graphic novel form makes it much more accessible to a wider audience. The story is framed through the present - or the recent past anyway. On the morning of Obama's first inauguration, Lewis meets a pair of young boys in his office and tells them the story of his life. It's a neat way to position him as both hero and human, someone who can and should be emulated. And the framing (and what has happened since) helps drive in both how far the country has come and how far it still has to go. I was really moved by this story, frequently blinking back tears. It went really quick, as graphic memoirs te

I was surprised by how compelling how found this book, and by how much I liked the main character, Tally. It's possible that this is because I entered into this book with reduced expectations, after a decent break from YA dystopia. This isn't one of the greats of the genre, but it is a solid book (and hopefully series) with a more nuanced view of the world than you often find. Uglies  takes place in a future where everyone undergoes plastic surgery at the age of sixteen to make them "pretty". Really the goal is to make everyone look more or less the same in an effort to stamp out prejudice and create a more equitable society. But Tally doesn't know that. She just knows that she's that last of her friends to undergo the operation, being the youngest, and she can't wait to join them in adulthood. But then she meets Shay, who shares her birthday and isn't at all sure that she wants to undergo the operation. She starts talking about a group of people w

I struggled mightily with this book. I very nearly abandoned it (and perhaps I should have). But it's a classic and it's not very long and I was already well over halfway through it. Instead I took an extended break and then picked at it, ten pages at a time, until I finally reached the end. I'm not sure whether or not I'm glad I stuck with it. I am, perhaps, glad I read it. But I can't say that I liked it very much. The language was the biggest barrier to me. It demands too much attention for me to read a paragraph at a time while keeping half an eye on my son. But neither could I sink into it for very long. After twenty pages or so I'd find myself bored. Overwhelmed by the language and trying to hold on to what I'd just read. A more generous person might say that it's a book to be savored. And perhaps it is. If you can find anything in it that you want to savor. See the real problem is that I didn't care for either Therese or Carol. I couldn&

Not only are there no happy endings, she told him, there aren't even any endings  - Neil Gaiman, American Gods When I think about trying to describe this book, the word I keep coming back to is kaleidoscope. It's a shiny, glittery, swirling ride that keeps circling back on itself with slight variations in the pattern. It's dizzying and beautiful and it doesn't want to be constrained by a single beginning, a single ending. It starts over several times, introducing beginnings late in the novel. And while the ending may be a foregone conclusion, it's also blurry and messy and happens a few times in a few different ways. More than that, Valente experiments with style in a way I've never encountered in a single novel before. It steals from just about every genre you can name: noir, gothic, fairy tale, science fiction, murder mystery, western, radio broadcast, and on and on. The blurb on the back of the book begins " Radiance  is a decopunk pulp SF, alt-histo

While the quickest way to get me to read a book is to give it to me and then tell me you want to borrow it (which is what happened with the book I read prior to this), I do eventually get around to all the books people tell me to read. At least the ones I remember. Among Others  came onto my radar nearly five years ago at a friend's wedding. Another guest and I got to talking about books and after comparing notes she told me that I must read Jo Walton's Among Others , which had just come out. The problem is that Jo Walton is surprisingly difficult to find, in both new and used book stores (and I try to avoid Amazon for physical books, even though they're slowly sinking their claws into me with the kindle and my need to read one-handed while nursing my son). And there are a million other books on my to-read list. And so it took a while for me to stumble across this book and pick it up. But I'm so glad I finally did. In fact, I'm glad I waited as long as I did. I