Bookish Thoughts

Another of the translated books Amazon was giving away, this one is a contemporary Japanese novel about finding your passion. The book follows a group of rather awkward people working to make a new dictionary. It's a lifelong dream of two older men, who are nearing retirement and take a young man under their wings. They mentor him and help him learn to interact better with the world around him. He, in turn, helps usher their dream project (which quickly becomes his dream project) to fruition. There wasn't a ton of conflict in this tale, which is mostly about good-natured and well-intentioned people becoming friends and helping each other out. It can be a nice change of pace to read stories like that. The biggest drama is whether or not they'll meet their deadline. It's something I can relate to, but it's also not like the stakes are all that high. At worst they'll have to push the release back. It was interesting to learn about the process of making a dictio...

The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home  is a nearly perfect ending to a nearly perfect book. I have a small quibble about September's age, which seems terribly inconsistent. But then again time passes differently in Fairyland and even moreso when you get aged up and back down. And the story resonated a bit better with her being older. But it never quite felt fully explained. The rest of the book is so good, though, that I can't be too mad. It does a great job of bringing back all the characters and places we've fallen in love with over the series. September ends the book firmly in adulthood, having taken her destiny into her own hands. She's not the queen, but where she ends up is even better. And of course this book has all the lovely narration of the previous books. It's paced a bit better than them, too. And it was nice to actually spend time with September's friends in the beginning before the adventure kicked off. And then during the adventure, t...

Mara Wilson is one of those child actors who hit puberty and more or less disappeared. For a while it felt like she was everywhere, though she really only had a couple of big movies. But man were they big movies. Matilda  and Mrs. Doubtfire  were definitely staples of my childhood. And then she grew up and I grew up and I honestly didn't give her much thought until she resurfaced in the public eye a few years ago. She didn't make a big splash the way she did as a kid. She wasn't even really acting this time around. She was writing and becoming active on twitter. I started reading some her work and admiring her more. And then she wrote one of my favorite articles on the-toast (about Rizzo and Sandra Dee) and once I realized that I knew I had to get my hands on her book. Reading her essays was a joy. She's a fantastic writer with a subtle humor that I really appreciate. The book runs the gamut from growing up on film sets to dealing with mean girls in high school to le...

Man, reading this book was stressful. At least part of that is because of what was happening in the world when I was reading it. It turns out that dystopian fiction (and especially the second novel in a trilogy when everything gets really bad) is not great escapism when real life is starting to feel like a dystopia. But that doesn't mean it was a bad book. There was a lot to like about it. Mostly, I appreciated the fact that the narration was split between Todd and Viola. Todd is a frustrating protagonist. He was raised in a toxic environment and kept ignorant. This makes him easy to manipulate and means that he spends most of the book following the bad guy's orders and trying to justify it to himself. Viola, on the other hand, is everything I want from a YA heroine. Intelligent, eager to learn, and able to see the bigger picture. She has a strong moral compass, and while she's willing to concede that other's might know more than her, she keeps coming back to what s...

The Question of Red  is another of Amazon's translated works that I picked up for free on world book day. This one was actually translated by the author herself, who is bilingual, and I think that helped retain a lot of the poetry of the original story. Pamuntjak has an incredible gift for language. It was easy to get caught up that language, which made the rest of the story go down easier. Because this tale is deeply tragic. It centers on Amba, a woman named for a character in the Mahabharata who was twice scorned and doomed to a life of bitterness and vengeance. The modern Amba doesn't really believe that her fate is so tied up with that of her namesake. But when she finds herself engaged to a man named Salwa and in love with a man named Bhisma, just like the Amba of the stories, she begins to have her doubts. And to self-sabotage. In attempting to escape her fate, she might just bring it down upon herself. This is a book about stories and how they shape our lives. We tel...

The Word for World is Forest  is a quick little story that reminded me of nothing so much as Avatar . That comparison feels a bit unfair to LeGuin. After all, Avatar  was a movie with a mostly forgettable plot and characters that achieved huge success mostly because it looked cool (and because it tricked us all into shelling out for the more expensive 3D tickets). LeGuin's novella does a whole lot more than look cool. But the bones of the plot are the same. Humanity has discovered a planet with a valuable resource (wood, in this case, which Earth has run out of) and has determined to take it all for themselves, ignoring the local life who are seen as so primitive that our only choice is to either exterminate them or force them into slave labor.The book switches between three points of view: Captain Davidson is heading up one of the logging camps, and he provides the most heinous voice as he keeps finding new ways to justify the atrocities he commits. Raj Lyubov is an anthrop...

Sometimes you just want to be happy and know that everything's going to be alright. Especially with everything going on in the world right now, there's comfort in a formulaic, happy story. I've never read a proper romance before, and I've been meaning to rectify that for some time. Now that I finally have, well, I have half a mind to jettison my current to-read list and read nothing but romance until Trump is out of office. I'm not going to do that. But I'm definitely going to start reading more romance novels. They provide a fantastic anti-dote to the bleakness of the world at large. The one I read, The Rogue Not Taken , was funny and steamy and uplifting. It's about Sophie and King and their journey from enemies to lovers. Sophie and King only know each other by reputation. She's a "Dangerous Daughter", the youngest of a newly-minted Earl who bought his title and whose daughters are doing their utmost to land titled husbands and secure ...