Bookish Thoughts

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...