Bookish Thoughts

I first read Slaughterhouse Five for an assignment in high school. Afterwards, the only parts that stuck with me were the time travel and the aliens. I was actually confused the first time I saw it referred to as an anti-war book, because I honestly didn't remember there being anything about war in it at all. The fact that I read it as part of a literature on war assignment didn't quite register with me. Most of the other kids read  Catch-22  or  The Things They Carried  or  A Farewell to Arms . My teacher actually recommended that I read  Slaughterhouse Five ; I don't think it was on the approved reading list. So I read it, and I do remember liking it. Some of the philosophical musings about time and free will stuck with me, even if the war bits didn't. The only part of the book that I really remembered was this passage describing Billy's limited perspective of time: The guide invited the crowd to imagine that they were lookin...

A Feast For Crows requires a bit of a shift in expectations. The first three books largely focused on the Starks and Lannisters. Sure, there were Dany chapters that took us across the Narrow Sea and Jon Snow chapters on the Wall and north of it. We occasionally got to see what Stannis was up to in the second and third books; although the Baratheon family is pretty firmly entwined with both the Starks and the Lannisters via the late King Robert. The second book also shed a bit of light on Theon Greyjoy. But again, Theon was so tied to the Starks that this hardly seemed like a major departure. This all changes in the fourth book, when the world doubles in size while simultaneously narrowing in scope. Over half of the book is dedicated to three characters: Cersei, Jaime, and Brienne. Arya, Sansa, and Sam each get a few chapters, but several key characters are missing (Tyrion, Bran, and Jon). Instead, GRRM introduces two new kingdoms with all new casts of characters and co...

Sometimes I think Neil Gaiman is a bit too clever for his own good. Having read Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book , Gaiman's Graveyard Book makes a lot more sense. And with The Jungle Book to compare to, I find that I'm liking The Graveyard Book a lot more. Both stories follow a young boy being brought up in extraordinary circumstances. Mowgli is raised by wolves, with a panther and a bear to teach him. Bod is raised by ghosts and receives similar tutelage from a vampire and a werewolf. Mowgli is plagued by the tiger, Shere Khan, who has been trying to kill him since he was a baby; Bod has a similar relationship with the man Jack. The Graveyard Book is more linear than The Jungle Book . It also sticks with (what I assumed to be) the main character for longer. The entirety of The Graveyard Boo k is about Bod, but Mowgli is only featured in the first three of The Jungle Book's seven chapters. That actually confused me a great deal, and I spent most of the ...

The Graveyard Book is cute. It's a children's book written by Nail Gaiman, and it's definitely a children's book. The plot is barely there and doesn't matter nearly as much as the story of Bod, told in a series of vignettes. Nobody "Bod" Owens' family was murdered when he was a year old. Somehow he escaped and toddled up to the graveyard where the ghosts adopted him and kept him safe from this man who was still trying to kill him. From there we meet the first living friend Bod makes, watch him get kidnapped by ghouls, see him befriend the ghost of a witch and obtain a headstone for her unmarked grave. Bod participates in the Danse Macabre. He attends school for a short time, but eventually has to drop out because he's drawing too much attention to himself and the man who killed his family is still out there trying to finish the job. In the final chapter, all of these stories feed into the climactic battle between Bod and the man ...

Terry Pratchett's 26th Discworld novel, Thief of Time , has almost the same plot as one of my favorite episodes of Angel. Sort of. It's the end of the world (this happens almost as much on the Discworld as it does in the Buffyverse). This time, it happens to be caused by a clock that freezes time. So once it starts to tick, it never will again, and neither will any other clock. Everyone will be be stuck in a single moment that lasts forever. The details are different, but the stories are similar enough that I went to look up which one came out first. It turns out both were released in 2001, so this is a bit like Leibniz and Newton coming up with calculus at the same time. Okay, maybe this plot isn't quite as genius as calculus. But it's certainly enjoyable. Time paradoxes and apocalypses are always fun. This is definitely one of my favorite Discworld novels so far. Of course, the Death books tend to be among my favorite so there's no real surprise...

In the climax of Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass , the final book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, two twelve year olds save the world by having sex and declaring their undying love for each other. This is something that I do not like. I find it weird and uncomfortable and it keeps me from re-reading this book. I probably would have continued to ignore it, if not for the Mark Reads project, though it is nice to reaffirm my own view of this book. It's a shame, because there's a lot about The Amber Spyglass that I really like.Dr. Mary Malone is a great character. The mulefa and their world are endlessly fascinating. I love all the thought and detail that goes into this completely alternate evolutionary chain. Lyra and Will's journey through the underworld is great and manages to bring some Greek mythology into play with all the Christian mythology that dominates the trilogy. Unfortunately, as interesting as the bulk of the book is, the ending is e...

Who doesn't love The Phantom Tollbooth ? People who've never read it, that's who. The plot is fairly simple. Milo is a chronically bored young boy who can't find anything worth being interested in the world around him. One day, a mysterious tollbooth arrives in his room. With nothing better to do, he constructs it and drives through. He quickly finds himself beyond expectations, journeying through Dictionopolis (where he learns the importance of words) and Digitopolis (where he learns about numbers). He also makes stops in the Valley of Sound and the Forest of Sight. Eventually he and his newfound friends, Tock the Watchdog and the Humbug, brave the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the Princesses Rhyme and Reason and restore peace to the realm. I first read this book for school in the sixth grade for a school assignment. It's one of those books where the little details just sort of stick with you. Like the dodecahedron, or the Giant/Dwarf/Fat Man/Th...