Bookish Thoughts

My love for this book is in direct opposition to how long it took me to read it. I heard about it years ago, and I knew that I had to read it. Fairy tales and nested tales and Catherynne Valente are three of my favorite things. There was no question that I would love it. But other books always seemed to take precedence. And then the pandemic happened and Valente started reading this book a bit at a time in a nightly video. So I bought it, fully intending to read along with her. Except that in March of 2020, my life was even crazier than most peoples and committing to a 45 minute video every day was out of the question.  And so the book sat on my shelf for nearly two years. I knew I would love it. I also knew I'd want to be able to sink into it. And I could never quite find enough time to devote to it. Finally, at the beginning of this year, I decided to start watching Valente's videos. They were great, filled with behind the scenes info about the book itself. Not to mention the...

It's probably because I've watched Labyrinth more times than I can count, but that's the touchstone my brain kept returning to as I worked my way through this book. What if Sarah had been a little more clever and a little less kind? What if Jareth had been more insistent, more seductive? What if the magic had been irresistible as well as frightening and Sarah had left her life behind to become the Goblin Queen? It might have turned out something like this book. Deathless is a dark fairy tale. A retelling of a classic Russian tale about Koschei Deathless and his death at the hands of Ivan. Except this one twists it around, makes Ivan's wife Marya Morevna the protagonist and gives her the magical journey. It examines why she makes her choices, what she gains and what she gives up. And it interweaves this tale with modern Russian history, taking the reader from the Russian revolution through the siege of Leningrad. Valente's command of language is what makes this...

This is one of those stories that imprinted on me. I was slowly becoming obsessed with Neil Gaiman when I first read it, and I hadn't quite realized that you could do stuff like this, yet. Remix fairy tales, mix and match genres, change the perspective and the story so completely and yet leave it wholly recognizable. It helps that I've always loved vampires. But really, Snow White as a vampire just makes so much sense. When I first read this story, I couldn't believe that I hadn't thought of it first. And I loved and hated Neil Gaiman a bit in equal measure giving me this beautiful, horrifying tale. This is about the recent graphic novel version of this story, though. It's gorgeous. The art is amazing and the perfect complement to this lovely story about a demon and the woman who tried and failed to save her kingdom. It's always haunted me, and now it can haunt me in technicolor.

The cover of this book shows a creature that's half woman, half octopus and has an unsettling number of teeth in a slightly too large mouth. My son was obsessed with it, and kept stealing the book while I was reading it or requesting to see the monster book. At one point he attempted to use it to threaten his dad into giving him a cookie. It was a pretty great use of the book. The stories within the book are classic children's stories with a twist. Ortberg has an uncanny ability to hone in on the most horrifying aspect of any given children's story and expand on it. Without changing much at all, he can take a story from comforting to terrifying and leave you questioning everything. As with any short story collection, I was more drawn to some stories than others. But everything in here really forces you to contend with the default point of view. What do we mean when we talk about daughters or love or abuse or redemption? Where is the line between good and evil and how do...

I wasn't as immediately engrossed by Spinning Silver  as I was by Uprooted . It starts a little slower, and it took me a while to really get into the book. But by the time I was halfway through I was completely engrossed and couldn't wait to see how it all came together in the end. Novik switches the narrative between six characters, though three have them have significantly more chapters than the other three. And it takes a while for all the different points of view to show up. Still, she does an impressive job of giving everyone a distinct voice. I was never confused about whose head I was in, even without obvious clues like chapter titles. This is probably the most subtly impressive part of the entire book. And the three main women are all fascinating. Miryem is ruthless, first in her pursuit of money for her family and then in trying to escape from her captor-husband. Wanda is brilliant and strong and I only want good things for her. But my favorite character by far was...

I've been meaning to read The Changeling  since I first heard about it. And I'm so glad I finally got around to it. I hesitated because the premise seemed genuinely upsetting - a woman kills her baby and then disappears, leaving her husband wondering what the hell happened and trying to track her down in an increasingly magical New York City. Probably not the sort of book you should read when you've just had a kid, or when you're pregnant again. But I clung to the hint in the title and decided to take the plunge. And I'm so glad I did. I've read a lot of books over the years that claim to be similar to American Gods , but this is the one that comes closest to hitting that mark for me. It is very much about America and how the tales we tell shape our lives, how we do and don't repeat the mistakes of our forefathers, how we don't always interrogate our traditions when maybe we should, how this country has been shaped entirely by immigration. Like that bo...

Red as Blood  answers the burning question: What if the Disney Princesses were all Satanists? That's probably not fair. Especially since this book was written before Disney Princesses became a thing. But it retells a bunch of fairy-tales and twists them around so that the good guys become bad guys, and the bad guys become misunderstood underdogs. Mostly by making the princesses worship Satan. Like most short story collections, this was a bit of a mixed bag. There were a couple that I really liked. Anyone who makes Snow White a vampire has my heart forever. And the Beauty and the Beast tale was fun, even if it didn't seem like it belonged in the book. It's a science-fiction romp about falling in love with an alien, rather than a more traditional creepy fairy tale. But it was fun. Some of them never quite came together. The Sleeping Beauty story was so ambiguous that I was just confused. And the Red Riding Hood tale, which admittedly had a great idea (Grandma is a werew...

What Should Be Wild  is a dark fairy tale about a young girl coming of age and dealing with a family curse. It's moody and atmospheric, and it was a great way to get in the mood for Fall. The book centers on Maisie, a young girl who can't touch anyone. Contact with her skin instantly kills anything that's alive. It also brings back to life anything that's dead, which is handy when her father is first starting to understand her strange powers. He isolates her, for everyone's protection, and conducts experiments in the hopes of finding a cure. But as Maisie gets older, she starts to chafe at the restrictions placed on her. And when her father goes missing, she decides to head into the wider world and find him. Meanwhile, the book follows several of Maisie's ancestors who have, for one reason or another, become trapped in the wood behind the family estate. They don't age and nothing in the wood dies. But the birth of Maisie (and her dark shadow who's gr...

This collection of Japanese Fairy Tales that Kevin got me for Christmas was world better than the collection of Hawaiian myths. The stories had actual plots and mostly sensible characters. As sensible as any fairy tale characters are anyway. It helped immensely that this collection was written by a Japanese woman who was deeply familiar with both the stories and the English language. The collection wasn't perfect. I enjoyed reading it, but I still struggled a lot. That said, I'm more willing to attribute those struggles to my lack of familiarity with the culture rather than the authors. Every now and then a turn of phrase or a plot point would catch me completely off guard. It made reading a bit difficult, but the good kind of difficult. My favorite stories were the ones that involved the Dragon King of the Sea. He pops up every now and then to aid good people, punish evil people, or just lead them astray. But he's so completely alien that he was a lot of fun to read ab...

I came to write this review and I'm suddenly realizing that I barely remember this book. Which is weird. It hasn't been that long since I read it. I expected it to stick with me longer than this. Oyeyemi's work generally does (I'm still haunted by certain sentences in Mr. Fox ). And I guess that ought to inform this review. There were a few stories in here that stuck with me, for good or ill. The first one, Books and Roses , was amazing and deserves a re-read to untangle all the different layers. Is Your Blood as Red as This? is also lodged in my memory, but more because it's weird than because I enjoyed it. And other stories have escaped my memory completely. I know that I enjoyed reading this book. And maybe it was just that I was too tired, or trying to fit it around caring for Gavin in a way that didn't work. The stories weren't really long enough to sink into completely, but they were too long for me to read any of them in a single sitting. Except ...

This book seemed to be all anyone was talking about last Spring. I heard fairy tales. I heard Beauty and the Beast. I heard Baba Yaga. That was enough to convince to me to stop listening until I could get my hands on the book. This book has elements of both of those stories, and other fairy tales besides, but it is very much it's own thing. Any resemblance to Beauty and the Beast or Baba Yaga is nothing more than an homage, an acknowledgment of the classics. And Uprooted  is well positioned to become one of those classics. The story follows Agnieszka as she becomes apprenticed to the local wizard lord. The relationship is contentious, and their magical styles are completely different. Watching them bristle and snipe and eventually grow to a grudging respect, and then something more, was a lot of fun. But the heart of the book is Agnieszka's relationship with her lifelong friend Kasia. Their bond is strong and beautiful. The two take turns saving each other and growing clo...

The final book in Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles was everything I wanted it to be and more. Not that I wanted much from it beyond everyone getting their happy ending. Which I fully expected to happen. It's a fairy tale, after all, and what good is a fairy tale if it doesn't end "happily ever after"? But it was the road to the happily ever after that really impressed me. The book acknowledges what a difficult task it will be for a bunch of teenagers and young adults to overthrown a queen and end her tyrannical reign. It doesn't seek easy answers, though there are a fair number of happy coincidences. The book relies on the populace being ready for an uprising, and makes use of overwhelming numbers against the queen's mind control powers. The ending was nicely realistic, too. Queen Selene neé Cinder doesn't have much experience running a nation, and it shows. She relies heavily on advisers, lays all her cards on the table in negotiations, and immed...

One of my first encounters with Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series was a review of this book, the prequel novella. I'd been strongly considering diving in at that point, but the review, whose opinion I tend to agree with, hated this book. So I backed off. For about a week, at which point Sarah started reading the series and fell in love with it. Which was all I needed to get back on board. Still, I was a bit worried heading into this book. I shouldn't have been. I actually loved it so much that I'm reconsidering how I view the reviewer who hated it. The story follows Levana, the evil stepmother queen of the story proper, and her rise to power. Levana is evil, and has always been evil. But villains never think they're villains. Levanna grew up spoiled and sheltered in a family without love. Her parents were both openly having affairs. Her sister was even more cruel than her. Add in Levana's supernatural manipulation abilities, and there was really no ot...

I'm about halfway through the final Wheel of Time book, but I found myself needing a break. That book is essentially an 1100 page battle, which can be wearing. I'm someone who tends to completely skip over battle scenes in books, so a book, so I've been having a hard-time focusing. I decided I needed a break, and Neil Gaiman's most recent short story collection was exactly the palate cleanser I wanted. I've been a fan of Gaiman since I got American Gods  for my 18th birthday, and a fan of his short stories since college, when I could never find the time to devote to anything longer. So I was excited when he released a new collection. Then I was surprised to discover how many of these stories I'd already read. Not because they're in previous collections (only one appeared in a collection I already owned), but because I follow Gaiman's online presence, and a lot of these have popped up on the web at one point or another. I heard Gaiman perform (is that...

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...

The second book in The Lunar Chronicles twists the story of Little Red Riding Hood into Meyer's futuristic world. But it does this while continuing to follow Cinder's adventures as she escapes from jail and plots her next course and Emperor Kai's political problems. I would have liked for Scarlet and Cinder to meet up a little earlier, but this is still a fun and thrilling adventure that I enjoyed even more than the first one. I like the modifications Meyer made to the story, connecting Scarlet's grandmother to Cinder's past so there would be a reason for both girls to go looking for her. Scarlet is smart and practical and slow to trust, but the devious wold eventually wins her over anyway. I almost started trusting Wolf, even though I knew he would eventually betray Scarlet. That's what the wolf does. But he's more complicated than simple bad guy here, and that makes for a fun and interesting love interest for Scarlet. Meyer does an excell...

It's not a stretch to call  Witches Abroad  one of my most influential books. It might very well be my most influential book. It changed the way I look at the world, especially at stories. This book points out tropes and then picks them apart and undermines them, all while playing by the rules of the narrative. After reading it, I started paying much closer attention to everything else I was reading. I developed a feel for stories and began to really understand how they work and why. On it's surface,  Witches Abroad  is a silly book that combines fairy tales and road trips. The witches travel to Genua to defeat an evil fairy godmother, and along the way they encounter any number of "rural myths", from Sleeping Beauty to Dracula to Little Red Riding Hood. It's those encounters, all leading up to the final encounter that add so much hilarity and richness to the book. Moreso than any other Discworld book, and this is a common theme in the series, this book is about...

I've been meaning to get around to the Lunar Chronicles for a while now. Then Sarah read and loved them, and that pushed me over the edge. The first book,  Cinder , is a wonderful retelling of Cinderella, set in the distant future. Cinder is a cyborg, property of her stepmother and sole breadwinner for the family. All she really wants is to escape her life. But just as she starts to figure out how to do that, she gets caught up in much larger events . This story is incredibly well constructed. It's a classic fairy-tale, so you'll know many of the basic plot points going in. Cinder has an evil stepmother. There's a ball and a fancy dress and a prince. But there are some fun twists, too. My favorite is that Cinder ends up being her own fairy godmother, repairing an ancient car that she uses to get to the ball. She also loses her entire foot at said ball, rather than just her show, because her foot is robotic and doesn't fit very well besides. The series itself wea...

Boy, Snow, Bird  is Helen Oyeyemi's latest book and the third one of hers that I've read. It got a lot of attention last year, and after I fell deeply in love with  Mr. Fox , I had to pick this one up. This one didn't speak to me on quite the level that  Mr. Fox  did, and I really didn't like the ending, but it's overall a good book and an interesting meditation on race and womanhood. This story uses the framework of Snow White to comment on beauty and families and secrets. Boy doesn't set out to become a wicked stepmother, and she sort of redeems herself by the end, but she does send Snow away, jealous on some level of her beauty. Snow was born to a couple who were both from light-skinned black families. They had fled the south for Massachusetts, where they were able to pass as white. And the whole family was overjoyed when Snow was born lighter than anyone else in the family, beautiful and with a life of opportunities ahead of her. Of course her mother die...

Robin McKinley is fantastic at re-imagining fairy tales in a way that puts women and their relationships with each other front and center. This retelling of Sleeping Beauty is no exception. The story focuses on Rosie, her upbringing by two fairies, and her deep friendship with next door neighbor, Peony. On the fringes are the Queen's mourning for her mother and the plans of the vengeful Pernicia. This is very much a comfort read. It does some fun things with mechanics of the traditional story. The gifts from the fairy godparents, things like curling hair, pale skin, and a beautiful singing voice, play out wonderfully. The curse and the country's reaction to spindles is fun. And I loved, absolutely loved, that the kiss that brings the princess out of her cursed sleep is delivered not by the prince (who she does love, truly) but by her best friend, with whom she shares everything. The only downfall of the book is the confusion of the narrative, which jumps aroun...