SomeReads

I don’t think a day goes by when I think, “I need to update my blog.” There’re just not enough hours in the day, though. Today’s my day off, though, and I am determined to catch up on book reviews. I’m behind by 4…

I received The Swan Thieves from Library Thing Early Reviewers. I was very much looking forward to this book, as I really enjoyed The Historians. There were some similarities between the two books, but for the most part they were very different. The main similarities were the inclusion of letters as a form of storytelling and the jump from the present to the past.

It’s been a month since I finished the book, and I am having a hard time remembering what I wanted to say. More than anything, The Swan Thieves is a character study of Robert Oliver, an artist who tried to attack a painting in the National Gallery in Washington, DC, who has been institutionalized and will not speak. It is narrated by Robert’s psychiatrist, who goes to great lengths to figure out Robert’s “story” and why he felt the need to attack a work of art. The book is not at all plot driven, and it can be a bit slow at times. It took me over 2 weeks to read and there were times when I wanted to abandon it.

Kostova’s writing is fantastic, and the characters really come to life. I felt bad for the women in Robert’s life and for Robert, as well.

Overall, I’m not really sure how I felt about this book. I wasn’t sorry I read it; in fact, I’m glad I read it. It just left me with kind of a “hmmm.”

I read Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead because it is on our short list of books to nominate for the Dublin Literary Award and was strongly recommended by a coworker.

While billed as a novel, Sag Harbor reads more like a series of essays about a middle class African American boy’s experiences during summers (particularly the summer of (I believe) 1985) in Sag Harbor, NY.

Whitehead’s characterization and ability create a sense of place is incredible. However, nothing ever really happens. Sure, there are incidents around which each chapter centers, but plot is non-existent. This kept me from thoroughly enjoying the book.

First of all, I am sad that I am just now writing a review of The Help, which I finished over a week and a half ago. It really deserves a post of its own, but I’m afraid I’ll never get to it. I may have to revisit it in a separate post at some point.

I was born in 1972, 55 miles away from Jackson, MS, where The Help is set. I KNOW these characters. I have read reviews that say they are caricatures. No they are not. That is not to say that everyone living in MS in the time period was like this (or was like this 10-15 years later, the time period I am familiar with), but the society from which these ladies (I specifically mean the white ladies) came was filled with people like this. I suspect it still is, to an extent. I’ve also read reviews that say the dialect was wrong or asked why the black women’s narratives were written in dialect while the white women’s weren’t. Maybe those people were prickled by it, or maybe they couldn’t make the words on the page do what Stockett had intended. For me, I could HEAR those women. I could hear the difference between Aibileen and Minny. And there absolutely was a dialect written for the white women. I could hear THOSE women, too. Especially the difference between Celia (who came from poor, white trash) and the society women.

This book swooped in and took me right back to my childhood. Our family didn’t have “help” (it wasn’t as common in the 70s/80s as it was a decade before) but my grandparents had had domestic help, for sure. There’s a story behind that one, my claim to “fame,” if you will. I used to be very proud of this link to a certain very famous woman who was born in my town in MS, but over the years I’ve realized that isn’t necessarily something to shout from the rooftops. My best friend’s family did have help. The book made me wonder about how she felt. How she was treated.

The Help ranks in the top 2 or 3 books I’ve ever read, and I have become an evangelist for it. If you haven’t read this one, do it. You won’t be sorry!

On to lighter things. Lights, Camera, Amalee is the 2nd book by singer-songwriter Dar Williams. This one picks up the year after the first book, Amalee. I didn’t like this one as well as the first one, but it was still enjoyable.

After inheriting a huge champagne bottle of coins from a grandmother Amalee only met once, on her deathbed, she decides  to make a documentary film about endangered species. It’s one of those books that mixes science in with fiction, makes you learn things without being preachy. In the book, Amalee also deals with her feelings about having never known her mother (the daughter of the grandmother who left her the coins) and also her first crush. Cute book.

Got a bit of a backlog here, but I’ve been busy, busy, busy!

The Light Fantastic is the 2nd in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. This book picks up where the first (The Color of Magic) left off, with Rincewind’s and Two Flower’s adventure. I thought this one was funnier than the first, and I’ve heard they get even better. I have Sourcery (the 3rd in the series – I know you don’t have to read them in order, but I’m anal like that) sitting on my nightstand to read soon. My reading “plan” (read: obsessive list-making) has been a bit thrown off lately due to receiving 3 Library Thing Early Reviewer copies in the space of a week, plus trying to get in some work-related reading.

I received The Bad Book Affair by Ian Sansom as a Library Thing Early Reviewer. This book is part of the Mobile Library Mystery series, but as a mystery it is very disappointing. I was more than 100 pages into the (368-page) book before the mystery appeared, and even then it didn’t play a large part in the book. The book was more about the main character, Israel Armstrong’s, depression over a break-up and turning 30. That said, the book made me chuckle more than once, and I did enjoy the characters. It just wasn’t what I expected.

I received Spinning Forward by Terri DuLong as a Library Thing Early Reviewer, also. This isn’t the type of book I typically read, but I did very much enjoy it. I found the dialogue to be a bit stilted and the Southern dialect to be unrealistic. Maybe it’s regional, but I don’t know very many people who use “it sure nuff is” or call people Miss So’n'So as often as Ms. DuLong inserted those two Southernisms into conversation. However, as she lives in Florida and I don’t, I could be wrong! The plot is very predictable, but that’s ok. The relationships between the characters were very well-done. I particularly enjoyed the Blue Moon scene near the end, and, as a knitter, I enjoyed the knitting references, too. I will pass this one on to my mom, who I think will really enjoy it, and I have already recommended it as a choice for her book club.

It’s been over a month since I posted any reviews, but that’s mostly because I’ve only finished one book during that time! GASP!

After Good Things I Wish You, I started Sunnyside by Glen David Gold. This one is a chunkster, and while I was interested, it just dragged and I had to move on. I haven’t completely given up on it, just put it aside for a while.

Then I grabbed The Color of Magic, my first book for the Pratchett Challenge. I had attempted to listen to this on audiobook a few years ago and it didn’t grab me. However, I have since read 2 other Pratchett books and really enjoyed them, so I decided to give it another try, this time in print. I enjoyed it much more this way! I’m really looking forward to reading more for this challenge (in fact, I am currently reading the 2nd in the discworld series).

After The Color of Magic I picked up American Rust by Philipp Meyer. I tried so hard to like this book. I made it more than halfway. But I really didn’t like it. So I gave up. It’s a “good” book, in terms of writing style, etc., but I just wasn’t enjoying reading it. Life’s too short to read a book you don’t enjoy.

I’ve only got 2 mini-reviews today.

Clara’s War: One Girl’s Story of Survival is Clara Kramer’s memoir of her experiences during WWII in Poland. Reminiscent of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, the bulk of Clara’s story is of her time spent in a bunker beneath a home, hiding with her family, where she kept a diary. I read an ARC, which was full of copy-editing issues, but the story itself, full of hope, tragedy, many close calls, was incredible. This one is very highly recommended.

Good Things  I Wish You, by A. Manette Ansay, is a story within a story. The main character is an author, who is writing a book about the relationship between Clara Schumann and Johannes Brahms. The secondary story (but really the main story) is Schumann’s and Brahms’ story. As the book progresses you realize the book you are reading is the book the main character is writing (if that makes any sense at all). It sounds convoluted, but it really isn’t. This book is a couple of hundred pages long, but it is a very quick read. Recommended.

I am so bad about posting reviews. I’ve finished 4 books in the past couple of weeks that I haven’t reviewed, so I’ll play catch-up with mini-reviews.

Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson: I just love Bill Bryson. I started with A Walk in the Woods many years ago and have read 3 others since then (and all of them are on my t0-read list). In this book, Bryson travels through Britain before moving his family to the United States. The book is laugh-out-loud funny in many places. Highly recommended.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: This one has been on my to-read list since it came out. I have to admit that, despite all the good reviews I had read, I was wary going in. I am generally not a fan of dystopian literature. I had nothing to worry about, though. This book was excellent! Another highly recommended book.

Border Songs by Jim Lynch: I read this one because I am on the committee at work for nominating books for the Dublin Award, and this one is on our “long list” of books to read and rate. Had I read the back of the book, I probably never would have picked it up, but I happened to get a review copy at work, so I thought “what the heck.” I was very surprised how much I liked it. This book had the strangest combination of elements: drug trafficking, birding, immigration, terrorism, dairy farming, Alzheimer’s, art. But somehow they all managed to come together in a very enjoyable book. Recommended.

The Disappeared by Gloria Whelan: This one was an ARC I picked up at a library conference about a year ago. It was a quick read (took me less than a day), but overall I found it unsatisfying. The subject matter was quite mature – political unrest in Argentina in the 70s, torture, imprisonment. But the level of the writing seemed much younger than what I would consider the intended audience – I would guess 5th/6th grade level. The format of the book was strange, too – each chapter was written from the point of view of 1 of 2 main characters, either the older brother or the younger sister, in the form of a letter to the other character that would never be received. It seemed very disjointed. I don’t recommend this one.

Waves by Sharon Dogar

I picked this book up not knowing what to expect. It’s an ARC I picked up at the Texas Library Association conference at least a year ago, maybe 2, and it just finally surfaced to the top of my TBR pile (well, randomizer).

The main character is Hal, a 15-year-old boy whose sister is in a coma after a head injury/near-drowning the summer before. The narrative is mostly from Hal’s POV, but it shifts back and forth from Hal now to Hal then, and also Charley (the sister) now and Charley then. Hal and Charley have some type of mental connection that is helping Hal discover what really happened to Charley last summer. Strange, but it works.

While the subject matter isn’t as dark as The Lovely Bones, something about this book reminds of the other. It made me cry, which is an endorsement on my part.

Houston Public Library’s Books on the Bayou  selection for this year is Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and, being a good librarian, I decided to participate. I checked out the book, and I had a hard time getting past the dialog. My friend Sarah, who is coordinating the program, suggested the audiobook, read by Ruby Dee. What a difference! I enjoyed listening to this book over several weeks (don’t have much audiobook time). Ms. Dee truly made the characters come alive.

If you’ve never read this classic, I highly recommend it. Even better, pick up the audiobook!

It’s been a long time since I actually made a blog post (2 months? really?). When I logged in, I saw the little box that says “Remember me” and read it as more “Remember me?” That seemed more appropriate.

I’ve been remiss with book reviews but have several to post about. I’m just going to do a review blast here and will hopefully get back into posting “real” reviews soon.

I try to fill in the “stopped” field in LibraryThing when I finish a book, but I forgot on a couple, so these may not be perfectly chronological.

All Other Nights by Dara Horn: I got this one from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewer program. I’m a big fan of historical fiction, and I am fascinated with the period surrounding the Civil War, so this one was a perfect match. I very much enjoyed this book, although I did feel the ending was lacking. It’s hard to write a review a couple of months after reading, so I’ll just mention that I gave it 4.5 stars in LibraryThing. Highly recommended.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway: Another LT Early Reviewer. This one was literarily very good and it was a quick read. It was, however, quite bleak. It is based on a true story of cellist who played for 22 days in the middle of war-torn Sarajevo in honor of 22 people killed in a market bombing. Told from the perspective for 4 different characters, Galloway brought to life the horror of living in a city under siege. I gave this one 4 stars.

Ringside, 1925: Views from the Scopes Trial by Jen Bryant: This children’s book about the Scopes Trial regarding the teaching of evolution in a Tennessee classroom was written in verse. There were several narrators, and all had their own unique voice. This was a very quick, enjoyable read. I gave it 5 stars.

Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: This book is more of a novella than a full-length novel. It was the first Garcia Marquez book I’ve finished (having started 100 Years of Solitude and putting it aside a while back) and I enjoyed it. The main character is an elderly man (approaching his 90th birthday, I believe) who has never married but has frequented “houses of ill repute” for most of his life. He falls in love with a young girl who he has hired, but cannot bring himself to actually touch. There is magical realism and the book is quite odd, but also rather sweet. I gave it 4 stars.

The Book of Air and Shadows by Michael Gruber: This one is a mix of historical fiction and contemporary fiction. An old manuscript, thought to lead to the hiding place of an undiscovered Shakespeare play, is found. Gangsters are after it, and a few people die. There is romance. There are chases. I enjoyed the book, but it’s just ok. I gave it 3 stars.

The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery: Sigh. I wanted to love this book, because I’ve heard such wonderful things. It just didn’t do anything for me, unfortunately. I gave it a reluctant 3 stars.

Currently I’m reading (and am almost through with) Helen of Troy by Margaret George. I should finish it this weekend and will *hopefully* post a review. Also on the nightstand is (still) The Mists of Avalon, which I’m reading intermittently.

I can’t decide if I liked Tamar or not. I liked the story, and I like the subject matter, but the book just seemed to drag. It took me a couple of weeks to read, and I didn’t feel overly compelled to pick it up instead of, say, knitting. That’s my current gauge. If I’m really enjoying the book, I will choose to read instead of knit. If the book is just so-so, I will often choose to knit instead. I got a lot of knitting/crocheting done while reading this book.

Tamar bounces back and forth between the present and 1944/1945 and between two characters with the name Tamar. One character is the narrator, a young woman recounting the story of her grandfather’s death and the process of trying to figure out a puzzle he left her when he died. The other character was a resistance fighter in the Netherlands during World War II. The stories are intertwined, as the girl Tamar was named by her grandfather, in honor of his experiences in the war. Both story lines are compelling, and the mystery revealed wasn’t a dead giveaway. Still, I felt there was something missing, something that could have made the book impossible to put down. I would definitely recommend it for someone interested in the Dutch resistance or WWII history, in general.