Book 23: Ash
Finished; April 25
Pages: 264
Claims to be a retelling of Cinderella, but I would say more that it simply shares some of the motifs of Cinderella: mean stepmother, magic, servitude. I read the first chapters of about 6 books on Monday before I decided to read this one, and then I finished it that day. It was interesting, sometimes confusing, with interesting magic and characters. I particularly liked the fairy tales that were told throughout the book, because they were stories that I had never heard before, and I like when the authors make up new fairy tales but they sound like old stories.
Apparently, according to goodreads, this is a lesbian story, and therefore a big effing surprise. I picked up on the subtle hints that homosexuality was a normal part of the magical world that the author had created. It helps that I am not a teenage girl, though.
Book 24: Chalice
Finished: April 25
Pages: 272
I've read this one before, but it's such a good book I had to read it again. I thought I read it last year, but I can't find my review of it, so maybe I read it back in 2009? There are parts of this story that I loved, and parts of it that I was a little disappointed in. The main character, and the world in which she lives are well developed and interesting. The antagonist seems thrown in at the last minute and not as malicious as I would have hoped for.
Book 25: Penelope's Daughter
Finished: April 26
Pages: 357
Recommended to me by Lydia, this is the story of The Odyssey, sort of. It imagines a world where Odysseus has a daughter born nine months after he leaves for the war. Reminded me a lot of The Red Tent, with an interesting female perspective on a story told formerly only through male eyes. The background information and religious details were interesting and believable. Once I sat down and really tried to read this, I really enjoyed this book, though I will admit it was slow going at the beginning.
Book 26: Perfect Fifths
Finished: April 26
Pages: 258
Another re-read, this is the conclusion to one of my favorite young adult series, and a book that I pick up ever once in a while just to amuse myself for a couple of hours. I really like that it is in five parts, and each part is written in a different style. The first three books are entirely journal entries, and I can't remember how the fourth book was written, but the fifth one starts in third person omniscient, then we get first person, then an entire chapter of dialogue transcript, and then haiku, followed by a return to the first person viewpoints of each character. I dunno, it's not high-brow literature, but I still love this series.
Book 27: The Toughest Indian in the World
Finished: April 27
Pages: 238
Sherman Alexie is awesome. This collection of short stories continues the trend. My favorite story is about a white man who holds us a diner asking everyone for a dollar and for someone to help him believe in love. An old Indian man stands up, is renamed Salmon Boy and they embark on a "non-violent killing spree" across the Southwest.
My favorite quote was from the story "Assimilation", and the relationship between an Indian woman and her white husband, when someone asks about their love:
Love is Love. They knew is was romantic bullshit, a simpleminded answer only satisfying for simpleminded people, but it was the best available defense. Listen, Mary Lynn had once said to Jeremiah, asking somebody why they falling love is like asking somebody why they believe in God. You start asking questions like that, she had added, and you're either going to start a war or you're going to hear folk music (15).
Book 28: Ophelia
Finished: April 28
Pages: 328
Retelling of Hamlet from the point of view of Ophelia. I think that here we have an interesting idea, but I'm not sure how I feel about it. I liked the writing, but Ophelia was at times too wimpy for me, and some of the actions that she takes after the action we know of in the play was a little silly. I did like how some lines from the play were seamlessly thrown in to the dialogue of the novel. Overall, decent, but maybe not my cup of tea.
Book 29: The Graveyard Book
Finished: April 29
Pages: 307
This is an extremely interesting novel for young adults that involves illustrations reminiscent of The Sandman comics that won Gaiman fame. Personally, I love the world that Gaiman has created here, that was inspired by London's High Gate cemetery. Since it's never explicitly stated in the novel, I was merely guessing, until I saw the credits in the back, where he thanks Audrey Niffenegger (of Her Fearful Symmetry fame) for being a tour guide around the cemetery. Since she was a tour guide at High Gate, it all makes sense to me. The premise is that a young child, only one or two years old, barely escapes from a murderer who kills the rest of his family by stumbling out of the house and into the cemetery. There, the ghosts and other protectors of the cemetery vow to keep him safe until such a time as he is able to fend for himself. Named Nobody Owens by his ghostly parents, he grows up hidden in the cemetery, learning how to Haunt, and create Fear and Terror, and other ghostly talents, as well as learning traditional education from 15th century schoolmarms. The reader follows Bod as he discovers the world outside the cemetery and unravels the mystery about his parents' deaths.
Seriously, it's adorable and quirky and hilarious, just as I would expect from Gaiman.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Book 22: The Secret History of the Pink Carnation
Finished: April 21
Pages: 428
Well, I read it in a day, so that must say something. Campy romantic fun, with all the flair of The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Three Musketeers, and some Zorro for flair. Certainly expect to see the rest of these written up in the next few months.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Pages: 428
Well, I read it in a day, so that must say something. Campy romantic fun, with all the flair of The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Three Musketeers, and some Zorro for flair. Certainly expect to see the rest of these written up in the next few months.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Book 21: The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate
Finished: April 16
Pages: 340
I checked out five books from the school library to read during my students' fifteen minute reads this last six weeks. I figured it would take me all six weeks to finish them because I wasn't sure about any of them when I started, not because they didn't grab my attention, but instead because I thought I would be too busy to want to read outside of class. Turns out I was wrong.
This is a delightful book, a sort of scientific To Kill a Mockingbird, and I loved every minute of it. Maybe it was trying too hard to have Calpurnia be the next Scout, but that didn't make her less endearing, or her trials and tribulations more trivial.
Taking place in Fentress, Texas in the summer and fall of 1899, this young adult novel gives us a glance into the life of a budding scientist inspired by Charles Darwin, and her relationship with her grumpy but loveable grandfather, who is a founding member of the National Geographic Society, as they strive to discover a new species of plant or animal. Add to this six amusing brothers, young ladies coming to call, a mother convinced that a woman's place is cooking and sewing, and a family cook who strongly resembles Harper Lee's Calpurnia, this Calpurnia struggles to find her place in the world and keep her pinafore clean.
There were several heartfelt moments in the novel, including her grandfather's stories of the Civil War, Calpurnia trying to check out The Origin of the Species at the library and being denied, not to mention the way that Calpurnia talks about the inherent racism of the time period. Obviously that was because the person writing the book is a modern woman who knows to throw these comments in, and she did a good job of doing so.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Pages: 340
I checked out five books from the school library to read during my students' fifteen minute reads this last six weeks. I figured it would take me all six weeks to finish them because I wasn't sure about any of them when I started, not because they didn't grab my attention, but instead because I thought I would be too busy to want to read outside of class. Turns out I was wrong.
This is a delightful book, a sort of scientific To Kill a Mockingbird, and I loved every minute of it. Maybe it was trying too hard to have Calpurnia be the next Scout, but that didn't make her less endearing, or her trials and tribulations more trivial.
Taking place in Fentress, Texas in the summer and fall of 1899, this young adult novel gives us a glance into the life of a budding scientist inspired by Charles Darwin, and her relationship with her grumpy but loveable grandfather, who is a founding member of the National Geographic Society, as they strive to discover a new species of plant or animal. Add to this six amusing brothers, young ladies coming to call, a mother convinced that a woman's place is cooking and sewing, and a family cook who strongly resembles Harper Lee's Calpurnia, this Calpurnia struggles to find her place in the world and keep her pinafore clean.
There were several heartfelt moments in the novel, including her grandfather's stories of the Civil War, Calpurnia trying to check out The Origin of the Species at the library and being denied, not to mention the way that Calpurnia talks about the inherent racism of the time period. Obviously that was because the person writing the book is a modern woman who knows to throw these comments in, and she did a good job of doing so.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Friday, April 15, 2011
Book 20: Kitchen Confidential
Finished: April 15
Pages: 305
If there is anything to say about Anthony Bourdain's memoir, I would have to say that it is a stunning example of author's voice. From start to finish I can hear him say all of these words, and maybe that says more for my obsession with No Reservations than it does for Bourdain's talent, but I'm going for this book is an honest reflection of his time as a cook and chef in and around New York City, and he has taken that personality with him on the road for A Cook's Tour and then No Reservations.
Let me give you some insight into that personality.
" I do have heart, you see. I've got plenty of heart. I'm a fucking sentimental guy--once you get to know me. Show me a hurt puppy, or a long-distance telephone commercial, or a film retrospective of Ali fights of Lou Gehrig's last speech and I'll weep real tears" (248). This just after having admitted to being willing and happy to fire someone who breaks any of the cardinal rules. I would say this is the most inappropriate coming-of-age story I've read in a while. It certainly shows his progression from a young child learning the mysteries of food in France, to a Vassar drop out, to a drug addict cook, ending with his first adventure in Tokyo where you can see the seeds of No Reservations being planted. But I'm not kidding about the inappropriate-ness.
"As an art form, cook-talk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate. All comments must, out of historical necessity, concern involuntary rectal penetration, penis size, physical flaws or annoying mannerisms or defects" (220). He then goes on to describe, in detail, all of the various words and phrases, both Spanish and English, and their meanings. At times, I was exceedingly glad that I read parts of it at home, but I wasn't really expecting the three pages of cursewords in English and Spanish that greeted me on the next page. I probably shouldn't have read this in class.
This book is full of helpful tidbits: things you should have in your kitchen, things you should look for in a good or bad restaurant, the myriad reasons not to start your own restaurant, when to order or not order certain specials, what days of the week to eat out. The often quoted piece of advice: don't eat fish on Monday, while helpful, doesn't give you the full gamut of insider information that Bourdain happily throws at his reader. I'm not going to lie, don't read this book and expect to want to go out to eat. At some points, yes, the descriptions of the food was mouth-watering, but at other times I never wanted to eat anything that I didn't prepare for myself ever again. A Mexican restaurant full of rats, the hazards of eating vegetarian food at a non-vegetarian restaurant, medical emergencies being handled in the kitchen while still cooking, all this and more horrified and entertained me.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Pages: 305
If there is anything to say about Anthony Bourdain's memoir, I would have to say that it is a stunning example of author's voice. From start to finish I can hear him say all of these words, and maybe that says more for my obsession with No Reservations than it does for Bourdain's talent, but I'm going for this book is an honest reflection of his time as a cook and chef in and around New York City, and he has taken that personality with him on the road for A Cook's Tour and then No Reservations.
Let me give you some insight into that personality.
" I do have heart, you see. I've got plenty of heart. I'm a fucking sentimental guy--once you get to know me. Show me a hurt puppy, or a long-distance telephone commercial, or a film retrospective of Ali fights of Lou Gehrig's last speech and I'll weep real tears" (248). This just after having admitted to being willing and happy to fire someone who breaks any of the cardinal rules. I would say this is the most inappropriate coming-of-age story I've read in a while. It certainly shows his progression from a young child learning the mysteries of food in France, to a Vassar drop out, to a drug addict cook, ending with his first adventure in Tokyo where you can see the seeds of No Reservations being planted. But I'm not kidding about the inappropriate-ness.
"As an art form, cook-talk is, like haiku or kabuki, defined by established rules, with a rigid, traditional framework in which one may operate. All comments must, out of historical necessity, concern involuntary rectal penetration, penis size, physical flaws or annoying mannerisms or defects" (220). He then goes on to describe, in detail, all of the various words and phrases, both Spanish and English, and their meanings. At times, I was exceedingly glad that I read parts of it at home, but I wasn't really expecting the three pages of cursewords in English and Spanish that greeted me on the next page. I probably shouldn't have read this in class.
This book is full of helpful tidbits: things you should have in your kitchen, things you should look for in a good or bad restaurant, the myriad reasons not to start your own restaurant, when to order or not order certain specials, what days of the week to eat out. The often quoted piece of advice: don't eat fish on Monday, while helpful, doesn't give you the full gamut of insider information that Bourdain happily throws at his reader. I'm not going to lie, don't read this book and expect to want to go out to eat. At some points, yes, the descriptions of the food was mouth-watering, but at other times I never wanted to eat anything that I didn't prepare for myself ever again. A Mexican restaurant full of rats, the hazards of eating vegetarian food at a non-vegetarian restaurant, medical emergencies being handled in the kitchen while still cooking, all this and more horrified and entertained me.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Book 19: The Postmistress
Finished: April 7
Pages: 326
I didn't think that I was going to like this book, based on the first few pages. It was a very weird beginning. I mean, who starts a book with a woman at the doctor's office getting a certificate to verify her virginity? The first hundred pages or so didn't hold my interest; though I enjoyed the character of Frankie from the beginning, it was easy to put down.
Then you get to the meat of the story, Summer 1941. You see the connections of the people sitting at home listening to the radio, across the wires to the reporters sitting in front of the microphones, hoping to reach someone on the other end. You see the suffering and the pain that comes from being like Cassandra, you talk and talk and no one seems to hear, or even if they hear, to heed the warnings. I guess it seems likely that there would have been signs of what the Nazis had planned for the Jews of Europe long before the concentration camps came to light.
I have always had a love/hate relationship with journalists, because I cannot understand standing by, watching horrible things happen, and doing nothing to stop it. Yes, I understand that the story itself is important. Yes, I understand that if you help one person, then where do you stop? But I can understand why the things that Frankie saw are things that broke her a little, and I can applaud that she felt obligated to try to help people, even though, in the end we see the consequences of those actions. I can feel angry at Murrow and other journalists who ridiculed her lack of objectivity, her lack of immediate identifiable purpose.
Aspects of the story made me so angry, but it was more the immediate realism of the Blitz itself, of what it felt like to be an American in the face of the suffering of people just trying to get to America that really got under my skin. I've heard stories of the Holocaust, I've heard stories of what it felt like to try to get out, of being a Jew in these countries, but not the perspective of what an outsider would feel. As an outsider myself, I appreciate this perspective. I appreciate the burden that Frankie feels in the face of that story.
"They are just sound. Voices without a story. People need to know why they are listening and what they are being asked to hear."
"Or they won't understand?"
"They won't listen." (118)
The tragedies for me seemed appropriately poetic. That the doctor didn't meet death in a bomb, but looking the wrong way in traffic was perfect because he had to die, and it should have been that kind of death: typically American. An American student studying abroad when I was in London was hit by a bus just this way. It just makes sense to me. Otto facing all the prejudice made sense to me, and was so tragic because other people refused to acknowledge what they were doing, they were so caught up in fear. I am glad, however, that the final tragedy was not something involving Otto, because that would have been too trite. I loved the addition of the story of Theseus and the black sails, I loved Frankie's understanding and response to that story, and the perfection of that tragedy:
And how true it is, that mistakes, looking left instead of right, running into one bomb shelter instead of the other, meeting a friend and stopping to say hello or going on ahead, happen all the time.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Pages: 326
I didn't think that I was going to like this book, based on the first few pages. It was a very weird beginning. I mean, who starts a book with a woman at the doctor's office getting a certificate to verify her virginity? The first hundred pages or so didn't hold my interest; though I enjoyed the character of Frankie from the beginning, it was easy to put down.
Then you get to the meat of the story, Summer 1941. You see the connections of the people sitting at home listening to the radio, across the wires to the reporters sitting in front of the microphones, hoping to reach someone on the other end. You see the suffering and the pain that comes from being like Cassandra, you talk and talk and no one seems to hear, or even if they hear, to heed the warnings. I guess it seems likely that there would have been signs of what the Nazis had planned for the Jews of Europe long before the concentration camps came to light.
I have always had a love/hate relationship with journalists, because I cannot understand standing by, watching horrible things happen, and doing nothing to stop it. Yes, I understand that the story itself is important. Yes, I understand that if you help one person, then where do you stop? But I can understand why the things that Frankie saw are things that broke her a little, and I can applaud that she felt obligated to try to help people, even though, in the end we see the consequences of those actions. I can feel angry at Murrow and other journalists who ridiculed her lack of objectivity, her lack of immediate identifiable purpose.
Aspects of the story made me so angry, but it was more the immediate realism of the Blitz itself, of what it felt like to be an American in the face of the suffering of people just trying to get to America that really got under my skin. I've heard stories of the Holocaust, I've heard stories of what it felt like to try to get out, of being a Jew in these countries, but not the perspective of what an outsider would feel. As an outsider myself, I appreciate this perspective. I appreciate the burden that Frankie feels in the face of that story.
"They are just sound. Voices without a story. People need to know why they are listening and what they are being asked to hear."
"Or they won't understand?"
"They won't listen." (118)
The tragedies for me seemed appropriately poetic. That the doctor didn't meet death in a bomb, but looking the wrong way in traffic was perfect because he had to die, and it should have been that kind of death: typically American. An American student studying abroad when I was in London was hit by a bus just this way. It just makes sense to me. Otto facing all the prejudice made sense to me, and was so tragic because other people refused to acknowledge what they were doing, they were so caught up in fear. I am glad, however, that the final tragedy was not something involving Otto, because that would have been too trite. I loved the addition of the story of Theseus and the black sails, I loved Frankie's understanding and response to that story, and the perfection of that tragedy:
"Theseus could have fixed it. If only he had known. [...] I've never gotten over the waste of that accident," Iris said quietly.
"But the story knew."
"I beg your pardon?"
"The story"--Frankie nodded, still not quite sure what she was saying--"it knew. The story wouldn't have mattered without the mistake. If Theseus had remembered to change the sails, the things wouldn't have been told. The story would have ended, as they all do, with the hero's triumphant return. But that mistake made the story. That mistake is the story. that's why it's told."
Iris stared. "You can really be so coldhearted."
"It's a myth, Miss James," Frankie went on, exhausted. "Mistakes happen all the time."
And how true it is, that mistakes, looking left instead of right, running into one bomb shelter instead of the other, meeting a friend and stopping to say hello or going on ahead, happen all the time.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
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