Bookish Thoughts

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...