Bookish Thoughts

The second book in the Farseer trilogyis a lot like the first one: meandering and tragic. Fitz is a bit older. He's been through some tragedy, and he's anxious to carve out some sort of life for himself. Meanwhile his loyalties are shifting ever so slight, from the King to his eldest living son. The book starts off with a bit of a jolt. It backs up to just before the epilogue of the previous book. For the first few chapters it seems like it's going to go in a different direction altogether. But it's just an internal crisis that Fitz has to work through before reaffirming his loyalties and returning to court. After that it get right back into the thick of war and court politics. There's a fun, shadowy treason plot that threatens to tear the kingdom apart from the inside while raiders continue to attack from without. Fitz is doing his best to thwart both plots without betraying his loyalties and getting himself killed and while attempting to carve out some sort of...

The Paladin Prophecy  was one of my Christmas gifts from Kevin this year - the books he buys at a discount store based on their covers. They tend to be hit or miss, but this one landed somewhere in the middle. The book follows Will West, an extraordinary boy who has spent his life attempting to hide his talents at the behest of his parents. But then a shadowy organization comes after him, and after they capture his parents, Will flees to a hidden boarding school for other exceptional teenagers, where he starts digging into the mystery of who's after him and why. All while the forces of darkness are closing in on him from various sides. The book was enjoyable, but I had a hard time trusting anyone. Though the school seems (and ultimately is) benevolent, there's no real reason for the reader, or even Will to be comfortable there. Everything is too suspicious and shadowy, and I felt like I was off balance more than I was meant to be. On the bright side, the plot moved fast, ...

This book was amazing. I shouldn't be surprised, since I've been hearing about NK Jemisin for years, and I really enjoyed The Inheritance Trilogy . But I had such a hard time finding this book and it's sequel that I was worried it had gone out of print. Which isn't always the best sign when a book's been out for less than five years. Then again, who knows how the book industry works and why stores decide to stock what they stock. Jemisin takes a slightly different approach to fantasy than I'm used to seeing. Most high fantasy, especially most popular high fantasy, draws it's inspiration from European history and mythology. At least in the United States. But Jemisin makes an effort to draw inspiration from different places in the world, and to be as respectful of those sources as possible (She actually has some great commentary about JK Rowling's recent foray into American Indian folklore). I'm sure there are other authors who do this, but very few...

I picked this book up because it cost $0.60 and was less than 200 pages long. One of the reasons I've gotten into celebrity memoirs lately is that they tend to be really cheap at used book stores and very quick to read. It's fun to learn a bit more about the celebrities I admire, though I'm often left feeling a little meh after I finish them. That was the case with Carrie Fisher's memoir. Parts of it were interesting, but most of it left me confused and a bit put off. The book was adapted from her live stage show, and I think a lot of the jokes would have worked better in that setting. Many of the punchlines felt rather ambiguous; I was left wondering who exactly was being made fun of and it really could have gone either way. Being privy to Fisher's body language and tone would have cleared that up and made me more comfortable. (Or possibly significantly less comfortable.) That said, it was an interesting look into her life which was certainly dramatic and fraug...

The first thing that you need to know about this book is that the dog dies. And not just one dog either. Dogs keeps showing up and dogs keep dying. Okay, so I think there were only two dog deaths, but it feels like more. Especially because this book toys with your emotions like Jurassic Bark, leaving you but a shell of a person crying for a dog that isn't even real. My dog had better live forever. With that out of the way, I will say that I really enjoyed this book, though it may not be for everyone. It follows young Fitz, bastard of a prince, as he is introduced to court life and trained as an assassin for use by the king. The story takes a while to get started. It's slow and it jumps around a lot. It's almost episodic rather than a single story, as Fitz proceeds through different phases of training in sequence. And the ending is thrilling, though also a bit of a letdown. I suppose if all the plot threads had been tied off, there'd be no need for a trilogy. But thi...

Every now and then you come across a perfect book. Alison Bechdel's graphic memoir, which has since been turned into a Tony-winning musical, is one of those times. It's a close examination of her relationship with her father, jumping back and forth through time to examine it from multiple angles, always revealing a new layer. Bechdel does a great job of capturing an immensely complicated relationship, one that has left its mark long after its conclusion. Bechdel's father gave up a glamorous overseas life to run the family funeral parlor when his own father died, shortly before Alison was born. He was strict and eccentric, clearly filled with regrets but bound to his family and hometown by duty. He died when Alison was twenty, and though the circumstances are blurry, she concludes it was suicide. It came on the heels of her decision to come out as a lesbian to her family, which was overshadowed by the revelation that her father was also gay. Her reflections on her childh...

Probably the best thing about this book is that I now have Warren Zevon's Werewolves in London stuck in my head. I won this book in the Worldbuilder's Lottery this past year. Every year, Patrick Rothfuss does a big fundraiser to raise money for Heifer International. There are auctions of donated items, and there's also a pile of stuff that goes in the lottery. Ever $10 donated earns you one drawing for the lottery. There's a lot of good stuff in there. There are also a few duds. This isn't a book I ever would have picked up on my own. And even after I won it, the main selling point was that it was short. I could read it in a couple of days. Which I did. I was half-distracted the entire time, because this book never quite captured my attention. But it relies so heavily on well-worn tropes, that even that half of my attention span followed along with the plot pretty easily. Technically this is the first book in a trilogy, which appears to be part of a larger wo...