Bookish Thoughts

There are only three stories: someone goes on a journey a stranger comes to town boy meets girl But, really, those first two are the same, it's just a matter a perspective. And the last one is just an emotional journey rather than a physical one. So there's only one story: someone goes on a journey. All stories come down to this, and they're all the same story. Of course, if that were true, it would be a boring old world. In actuality, all stories are different. The details make each journey unique and even if a story has been told a thousand or a million times before, there is still a new way to tell it that makes it feel fresh and interesting. This is the paradox that The Starless Sea deals with: there is only one story and that story is infinite. Morgenstern takes her time exploring this theme, setting up all her pieces and pulling them together or letting them drift. She makes the dangling threads that prevent a story from feeling complete literal. She makes ...

I've read a decent number of romance novels at this point by several authors, both historical and contemporary. They've all followed the same format - alternating chapters between the hero and the heroine - and I started to think that was standard across the genre. Then I picked up my first Lisa Kleypas book and discovered a story that was 90% from the heroine's point of view with only the occasional insight into what the hero is thinking or feeling. It threw me for a curve, and I'm still disappointed that I didn't get to spend more time with Simon. I think he had an interesting arc going from bachelor to husband, and I'm sad that it mostly happened off-page. But I shouldn't expect all books in a genre to conform to a certain style - especially since I often seek out books that play with style and format on purpose. The lack of Simon also gave us a lot more time with the Wallflowers - Annabelle and her friends and their hunt for husbands. This ended up b...

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...

I liked A Man Called Ove , but after finishing Beartown , I am thoroughly impressed with Backman, as both an author and a human. He has an incredible insight into human nature, and he takes the time to examine the tragedy at the heart of this novel from every conceivable angle to paint a picture of how it happened, which attitudes and decisions faded and which ones resonated and why. Although the narrative is clear about who is and isn't a victim, the story as a whole reminded me of one of my favorite Good Omens quotes: It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people.  We tend towards tribalism and confirmation bias.We struggle with change and anything that upsets our world view. And so it takes a Herculean effort to go against the grain and make a difference. Easier to just stay in your lane and tell your...

While I enjoyed this book, it didn't quite grab me the way the first two books in the series did. This one is a fun adventure in which a group of students at Eleanor West's school travel through several worlds in an attempt to resurrect a student who died before her time. It's got a couple of new faces and a couple of old favorites and it delves deeper into the underlying logic (or lack thereof) of these worlds. I think that's the crux really. This story felt more like table-setting. McGuire is currently contract to write eight books in this series (of which five have been released), and there's every possibility that the series will extend beyond that. So she needed to spend some time establishing the rules and the map. It was interesting, and I'll certainly be grateful for it as the series progresses, but in the meantime it slowed this story down a bit. A lot of scenes boiled down to new-girl Cora asking questions and resident-expert Kade answering them with...

It's been years since the-toast shuttered, but back when they were still posting (and I was reading) every day, I loved Gretchen McCulloch's column , in which she analyzed internet slang as a linguist. When the site went down, I lost track of McCulloch (and a handful of other people whose writing I always looked forward to). Happily, she didn't go far. She has her own blog , a column at Wired , and now a book! It took the book release for her to come back on my radar, but now I'm looking forward to reading more about the rise of casual written language and how it interacts with the rest of life. Like all of her writing, this book as a ton of fun to read while also being incredibly informative and helping me shed my prejudices about the evolution of language. It helps that I can easily see myself in the pages (I'm a Full Internet Person, tyvm), and I actually remember a lot of history McCulloch goes through, from early chat rooms and AIM through the proliferation o...

There was a time in my life (before kids) when I actually did a decent job of keeping up with popular culture. I know, from looking at other adults around me, that this time will probably come again. But at the moment, I feel like I'm missing out on a lot because I can never seem to put together 45 minutes to watch a TV show (and forget about doing it 10 or 13 or 22 times to watch an entire season of something). The good news is that I can always find time to read - during my commute, for 15 minutes before bed, those rare times when I manage to get all three kids to sleep at once. Reading is easier, because I can dip into books 5 minutes at a time and easily pause them when life intrudes again. But I miss feeling like a part of something when these popular TV shows arrive and it feels like everyone is watching them except me. My brother got me The Last Wish for my birthday over the summer, because he was excited about the upcoming series on Netflix. I hadn't even heard of ...