So this Spring Break, I decided that it would be nice to not do anything. And by "decided" I mean "procrastinated to the point where there was no point in planning anything." So, I was home, and really didn't want to spring clean my apartment, so I pulled out some books and started reading.
Procrastination at its finest.
I reread an entire series of books called The Song of the Lioness, because I was feeling very nostalgic and wanted something easy. There are four books in the series (Alanna: the First Adventure, In the Hand of the Goddess, The Woman who Rides Like a Man, and Lioness Rampant), and they follow the story of a young girl named Alanna who hides her identity in order to become a knight in a fantasy world where there is magic and sorcerers and gods and goddesses of everything. She makes unlikely friendships along the way and gets into all kinds of trouble and foils plots against the king and generally runs around being heroic. I love it.
It certainly doesn't hurt that there's a magical talking cat.
So, after I finished those four, I started in on the sequel series, The Immortals Quartet, but I only read the first one of those, Wild Magic, because after a while I get a little tired of reading books by the same author, even if I love Tamora Pierce more than almost anything. And then I realized that these books have been out for longer than I've been alive, and that's funny to me because when I read them for the first time, I was in middle school, and I could have sworn they were newly published then, but boy was I wrong on that one.
Then I started reading this other fantasy series by Sharon Shinn called The Twelve Houses, and I read the first couple of those: Mystic and Rider, and The Thirteenth House. Super engaging stories about magical people living in a kingdom where you have kings, and feudal overlords and all that good stuff. I've read the whole series before and I don't know why I didn't feel like I wanted to read something new, but sometimes there's just a real comfort in knowing where a story is generally going to go, even if you don't remember the exact details.
Good reading!
Caitlin
Monday, March 27, 2017
Book Talks
For extra credit, I give my students additional works to read and then we discuss them in small groups after school.
Because we are doing a unit on non-fiction, specifically relating to war and its impact on young children, I gave them titles of memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies of young people impacted by the same conflicts, or similar conflicts.
Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children, Why It Matters and What You Can Do
by Faith McDonnell and Grace Akallo
This was some propogandist BS, and I'm a little sorry that I had my students read this. The review seemed really good, but it was really poorly written, and the narratives were confusing and occasionally inaccurate.
Way too much emphasis on Jesus and Christianity, and the history of Christianity in Uganda.
Grace's story, of a girl kidnapped from her boarding school and sent to fight was compelling, but it was split up with historical chapters that didn't really relate well to the content of her own. Although her story would have been heart-rending, I just didn't care.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
I'd read this before, and recommend it all the time to my students. This is what I was hoping for from Grace's story. It's horrific, and you feel his struggles and difficulties, as well as his hopes for the future.
This book really brings home to my students that these things could happen to anyone, and that people around the world are really more similar to them than different.
Good reading!
Caitlin
Because we are doing a unit on non-fiction, specifically relating to war and its impact on young children, I gave them titles of memoirs, biographies, and autobiographies of young people impacted by the same conflicts, or similar conflicts.
Girl Soldier: A Story of Hope for Northern Uganda's Children, Why It Matters and What You Can Do
by Faith McDonnell and Grace Akallo
This was some propogandist BS, and I'm a little sorry that I had my students read this. The review seemed really good, but it was really poorly written, and the narratives were confusing and occasionally inaccurate.
Way too much emphasis on Jesus and Christianity, and the history of Christianity in Uganda.
Grace's story, of a girl kidnapped from her boarding school and sent to fight was compelling, but it was split up with historical chapters that didn't really relate well to the content of her own. Although her story would have been heart-rending, I just didn't care.
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier
by Ishmael Beah
I'd read this before, and recommend it all the time to my students. This is what I was hoping for from Grace's story. It's horrific, and you feel his struggles and difficulties, as well as his hopes for the future.
This book really brings home to my students that these things could happen to anyone, and that people around the world are really more similar to them than different.
Good reading!
Caitlin
Monday, February 27, 2017
Restarting
Ok
So, this is embarrassing, but sometimes you just have to take a break from a thing even if you really love it.
Also, there was that year and a half where I didn't read a single book that wasn't for work.
So, here we go.
Take two.
Is this thing still on?
There's this thing at work where we're supposed to do something for Lent, and I'm certainly not about to give up my lattes and soda, so I'll just start reading and blogging again.
I mean, this goes hand in hand with my podcast with Liz, bsbookreports.com but this will also include anything that I read for work and all the other stuff.
So, hi world!
I've got like 18 drafts of blogs that I never wrote 5 years ago, and I think I'm just going to delete them and move on with my life.
Good reading!
Caitlin
So, this is embarrassing, but sometimes you just have to take a break from a thing even if you really love it.
Also, there was that year and a half where I didn't read a single book that wasn't for work.
So, here we go.
Take two.
Is this thing still on?
There's this thing at work where we're supposed to do something for Lent, and I'm certainly not about to give up my lattes and soda, so I'll just start reading and blogging again.
I mean, this goes hand in hand with my podcast with Liz, bsbookreports.com but this will also include anything that I read for work and all the other stuff.
So, hi world!
I've got like 18 drafts of blogs that I never wrote 5 years ago, and I think I'm just going to delete them and move on with my life.
Good reading!
Caitlin
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
6: The Weird Sisters
By: Eleanor Brown
Finished: March ?
Pages: 369
I bought this book at Book People in Austin, because I can't go to that bookstore and not buy something. This was a New York Times bestseller, which seemed like a good thing, and the tag line "See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much." made me giggle.
I did, however, think that it was going to be more, well, Shakespeare-y? I mean, yes, there were lots of quotes from Shakespeare, thanks to the scholarly father, but I wanted a little bit more thematic connection and less superficial chick lit. I finished it, but mostly because I felt obligated, and I mean, it wasn't terrible. Definitely not my cup of tea.
That is not to say, however, that there were no redeeming qualities, regardless of the fact that they weren't followed through in a way that I would have liked.
"Our family's vices-disorder and literature-captured in evening tableau. We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sort of logical order. We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour."
What really irritated me the most was that half the time I couldn't figure out exactly who was narrating the book, since in regards to the sisters it was sometimes from one specific sister's point of view, but at other times a weird "our" and "we" as if all of them were speaking at once that made me want to throw things. It certainly kicked me out of the narrative in a way that present tense never does.
A few other good things:
"She didn't think about God a lot. None of us did. He was just there if we needed him. Kind of like an extra tube of toothpaste under the sink."
Though, let's be honest, do you see what I mean? Who the hell is talking?
One of the sisters talking about how she broke up with a boyfriend after he asked her how many books she read in a year, and her reply was "A few hundred"
"How do you have time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in available reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging.
This conversation, you will not be surprised to know, was the impetus for their breakup...Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well, let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put." (78)
It's witty and amusing, and touching at times, but I got tired of the sisters, and I got tired of their problems, and I just think that I am just not the kind of reader that these sort of books are written for. And that's okay.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: March ?
Pages: 369
I bought this book at Book People in Austin, because I can't go to that bookstore and not buy something. This was a New York Times bestseller, which seemed like a good thing, and the tag line "See, we love each other. We just don't happen to like each other very much." made me giggle.
I did, however, think that it was going to be more, well, Shakespeare-y? I mean, yes, there were lots of quotes from Shakespeare, thanks to the scholarly father, but I wanted a little bit more thematic connection and less superficial chick lit. I finished it, but mostly because I felt obligated, and I mean, it wasn't terrible. Definitely not my cup of tea.
That is not to say, however, that there were no redeeming qualities, regardless of the fact that they weren't followed through in a way that I would have liked.
"Our family's vices-disorder and literature-captured in evening tableau. We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sort of logical order. We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour."
What really irritated me the most was that half the time I couldn't figure out exactly who was narrating the book, since in regards to the sisters it was sometimes from one specific sister's point of view, but at other times a weird "our" and "we" as if all of them were speaking at once that made me want to throw things. It certainly kicked me out of the narrative in a way that present tense never does.
A few other good things:
"She didn't think about God a lot. None of us did. He was just there if we needed him. Kind of like an extra tube of toothpaste under the sink."
Though, let's be honest, do you see what I mean? Who the hell is talking?
One of the sisters talking about how she broke up with a boyfriend after he asked her how many books she read in a year, and her reply was "A few hundred"
"How do you have time?" he asked, gobsmacked.
She narrowed her eyes and considered the array of potential answers in front of her. Because I don't spend hours flipping through cable complaining there's nothing on? Because my entire Sunday is not eaten up with pre-game, in-game, and post-game talking heads? Because I do not spend every night drinking overpriced beer and engaging in dick-swinging contests with the other financirati? Because when I am waiting in line, at the gym, on the train, eating lunch, I am not complaining about the wait/staring into space/admiring myself in available reflective surfaces? I am reading!
"I don't know," she said, shrugging.
This conversation, you will not be surprised to know, was the impetus for their breakup...Because despite his money and his looks and all the good-on-paper attributes he possessed, he was not a reader, and, well, let's just say that is the sort of nonsense up with which we will not put." (78)
It's witty and amusing, and touching at times, but I got tired of the sisters, and I got tired of their problems, and I just think that I am just not the kind of reader that these sort of books are written for. And that's okay.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
5: The Night Circus
By: Erin Morgenstern
Finished: February 27
Pages: 387
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." -Oscar Wilde
I fell in love with the packaging of this book a long time before I actually read it. I suppose it should come as no surprise, since the covers are lined in black and white striped paper, and the intervening pages between chapters and sections look as if you were staring up, out of a striped tent, at the starry sky. This novel is a feast for the senses and the emotions. It fascinates me that a book taking place in a world that is almost entirely black and white can have such detailed and inspired imagery. This is the story of a game, a challenge between two opposing forces, to the death. Okay, that might be a little spoiler-y, but I figured this out really early on and I don't feel bad about saying it. The circus is a world of black and white, even the ground is magically painted, and everything in it, and all the decorations and tents and fascinating illusions are equally white, black, and shades of grey, populated with imaginative and fantastic people, costumes, acts, like Cirque du Soleil on steroids but with magic.
I read this in two sittings, half each time. It reads quickly and poetically to its surprising yet heartwarming conclusion.
"The circus arrives without warning. The black sign painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that reads:
Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn"
The circus has a huge clock, which tells not only the time, but stories, and changes just as magically as the rest of the circus. It is a beautiful dream of a clock, made by Herr Thiessen, who becomes just as involved int he circus as any outsider can be. Writing about his experiences, he brings together strangers who love the circus as much as he does. "We add our own stories," he says, "each visitor, each visit, each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared." (223)
The varied cast of characters is my favorite thing, next to the imagery, but the two are intrinsically tied.
There is Celia, the illusionist and one of the two combatants. "She lifts her hand in a delicate gesture at the raven. In response it caws again and spears it s large wings, taking flight and swooping toward the state, gaining speed as it approaches. Descending quickly it dives, flying directly at Celia and not wavering or slowing as it reaches the states, but approaching at full speed. Chandresh jumps back with a start, almost falling over Marco as the raven crashes into Celia in a flurry of feathers. And then it is gone. Not a single feather remains and Celia is once again wearing a puffed-sleeve black jacket, already buttoned over her black-and-white gown. Celia bows, taking the opportunity to retrieve her gloves from the floor" (77)
While her relationship with Marco, the other combatant, is perhaps the more romantic one, I feel that the relationship between her and Herr Thiessen, the clockmaker, is more heart warming and sweet. Communicating through letters and writings about Le Cirque des Reves, they become friends, but do not meet. When they finally do, Freiderick surprises Celia because he doesn't ask about her tricks.
"'Why haven't you asked me how I do my tricks?' Celia asks, once they have reached the point where she is certain he is not simply being polite about the matter.
Frederick considers the question thoroughly before he responds.
'Because I do not with to know,' he says. 'I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.'" (183)
Then there is Marco, whose studious exterior belies his temperamental and passionate nature. He grows to love Celia even knowing that someone terrible must happen to one of them.
Isobel, the fortune teller who is both Marco's lover, and the circus's temperance.
The twins, born the night the circus opened, with special talents all their own. Poppet who can see the future in the stars, and Widget who can tell the stories of the past, and read the past in people's eyes.
Tsukiko, a mysterious, secretive woman who is the circus's first performer, and a contortionist.
When one of the characters dies, Marco creates a place for Celia, so that she can feel comforted even when he is gone from the circus. It is one of my favorite places in the circus, and one that I wish was real enough to visit.
"The Pool of Tears
Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of our mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness.
Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.
The stone feels heavier in your hand.
When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones, you feel lighter. As though you have released something more than a smooth polished piece of rock." (283)
I think that it would be difficult to read this book and not want to visit the circus. I am so impressed by this first work by what seems to be an up and coming great writer.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: February 27
Pages: 387
"A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world." -Oscar Wilde
I fell in love with the packaging of this book a long time before I actually read it. I suppose it should come as no surprise, since the covers are lined in black and white striped paper, and the intervening pages between chapters and sections look as if you were staring up, out of a striped tent, at the starry sky. This novel is a feast for the senses and the emotions. It fascinates me that a book taking place in a world that is almost entirely black and white can have such detailed and inspired imagery. This is the story of a game, a challenge between two opposing forces, to the death. Okay, that might be a little spoiler-y, but I figured this out really early on and I don't feel bad about saying it. The circus is a world of black and white, even the ground is magically painted, and everything in it, and all the decorations and tents and fascinating illusions are equally white, black, and shades of grey, populated with imaginative and fantastic people, costumes, acts, like Cirque du Soleil on steroids but with magic.
I read this in two sittings, half each time. It reads quickly and poetically to its surprising yet heartwarming conclusion.
"The circus arrives without warning. The black sign painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, the one that reads:
Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn"
The circus has a huge clock, which tells not only the time, but stories, and changes just as magically as the rest of the circus. It is a beautiful dream of a clock, made by Herr Thiessen, who becomes just as involved int he circus as any outsider can be. Writing about his experiences, he brings together strangers who love the circus as much as he does. "We add our own stories," he says, "each visitor, each visit, each night spent at the circus. I suppose there will never be a lack of things to say, of stories to be told and shared." (223)
The varied cast of characters is my favorite thing, next to the imagery, but the two are intrinsically tied.
There is Celia, the illusionist and one of the two combatants. "She lifts her hand in a delicate gesture at the raven. In response it caws again and spears it s large wings, taking flight and swooping toward the state, gaining speed as it approaches. Descending quickly it dives, flying directly at Celia and not wavering or slowing as it reaches the states, but approaching at full speed. Chandresh jumps back with a start, almost falling over Marco as the raven crashes into Celia in a flurry of feathers. And then it is gone. Not a single feather remains and Celia is once again wearing a puffed-sleeve black jacket, already buttoned over her black-and-white gown. Celia bows, taking the opportunity to retrieve her gloves from the floor" (77)
While her relationship with Marco, the other combatant, is perhaps the more romantic one, I feel that the relationship between her and Herr Thiessen, the clockmaker, is more heart warming and sweet. Communicating through letters and writings about Le Cirque des Reves, they become friends, but do not meet. When they finally do, Freiderick surprises Celia because he doesn't ask about her tricks.
"'Why haven't you asked me how I do my tricks?' Celia asks, once they have reached the point where she is certain he is not simply being polite about the matter.
Frederick considers the question thoroughly before he responds.
'Because I do not with to know,' he says. 'I prefer to remain unenlightened, to better appreciate the dark.'" (183)
Then there is Marco, whose studious exterior belies his temperamental and passionate nature. He grows to love Celia even knowing that someone terrible must happen to one of them.
Isobel, the fortune teller who is both Marco's lover, and the circus's temperance.
The twins, born the night the circus opened, with special talents all their own. Poppet who can see the future in the stars, and Widget who can tell the stories of the past, and read the past in people's eyes.
Tsukiko, a mysterious, secretive woman who is the circus's first performer, and a contortionist.
When one of the characters dies, Marco creates a place for Celia, so that she can feel comforted even when he is gone from the circus. It is one of my favorite places in the circus, and one that I wish was real enough to visit.
"The Pool of Tears
Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of our mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness.
Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.
The stone feels heavier in your hand.
When you drop it in the pool to join the rest of the stones, you feel lighter. As though you have released something more than a smooth polished piece of rock." (283)
I think that it would be difficult to read this book and not want to visit the circus. I am so impressed by this first work by what seems to be an up and coming great writer.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Thursday, February 23, 2012
4: Remember Ben Clayton
By: Stephen Harrigan
Finished: January 12
Pages: 368
Wendy was so very right about this one. This is a book of heart break, war, and loneliness, and the different ways that parents can fail their children. I haven't read a lot of books in my day that make something as boring as sculpture making a fascinating read. I find sculpture beautiful, but I also feel that it would make a deeper connection if there were pictures. However, this novel discusses the art so clearly that the artwork comes to life upon the page.
It is sometimes difficult for me to think that Comanches roamed the plains of Texas little more than a 100 years ago, and that there were people who lived through that time and saw the advancement of Texas to its own country and then a state of the union is a fascinating and fast history. This story follows the lives of three families and how the mutual drive towards a sculpture to remember a boy named Ben also becomes the drive to reconnect the past with the present, and keep the past alive. The first family is a father and daughter pair of sculptors, the father, Gil, a successful but arrogant and prideful man whose choices lead his family to tragedy. His daughter, Maureen, is trying to make it as a sculptor in her own right.
The second family is the aforementioned Ben's, living with regret and loneliness in the hills of west Texas after the war, disagreements, and death separate a man and his son forever.
The third isn't a family. The third is Ben's friend, Arthur, who survives the battle that killed Ben, with horrifying superficial and psychological scars. After the war, he stays in France, helping to fix what had been broken in the war. The task of restoring the soil of France to productivity gave him an abstract satisfaction, but it was not as deep or a genuine as another feeling he could not hold on to for more than a few moments at a time, let alone define. This sensation had something to do with not really wanting the trees to grow again or the birds to be sweeping across the blank gray sky or rising from the reborn fields. he had taken some sort of comfort in the complete deadness of everything, in the silence, in the understanding that the world had been seeking an end for itself and had finally found it. He had been content to share in that stasis of oblivion, and he rested that life was starting to surge on." (82) Arthur has already lost his family back home in Ranger, Texas to influenza, and losing Ben seems to break him. " The last thing he remembered was...staring in stupefaction at Ben's already dead body. He remembered the feeling of betrayal as well, the sense that Ben had purposely left him for some plane of experience that was more interesting...Even the death of his family, which he know should have left him howling with sorrow and shock, was something he seemed to have accepted with fatalistic understanding. It was not that he had ceased to feel, only that he had ceased to be impressed." (91)
Maureen's difficulties with her father originate from a number of problems, mostly her independence, and one of them is her on again off again suitor, a professor from the University of Texas who comes to visit. Vance is an amusing man:
"I don't know, a rough character like myself, lurking around his daughter."
"You're hardly a rough character."
"As if you would know. You didn't see me get into a saloon brawl the other day over Spenser's use of the Petrarchan sonnet." (145)
The most tragic figure, yet the one I understood the least was Ben's father, Lamar, who survived living with Indians, and carving a hard life for himself out of the desolation that is the West Texas Plains, and I both wanted to hug him and smack him upside the head.
"All his life he had treated the things that brought him pride and comfort as if they were shameful secrets--even his love for his own son. There were times when Ben was older, when they were riding fence together or camped out during the roundup, that he had felt such contentment in being with him that he thought he ought to say something out loud about it. But he never had, not that he could recall. he had expected Ben to know his own value to his father just as he had expected Gilheaney tonight to know the quality of his own work. You shouldn't have to tell people what ought to be plain to them already." (189)
The book is staggering in the depth of emotion and sorrow that can be felt from chracters that, at the time, seem like pictures. Thinking back on it brings a tightness in my chest because it is just so real. Listen, you have to read this book to really understand the emotional punch behind the random quotes I stick up here because they stuck out to me while I was reading.
"It was different from the model he had seen in Gilheaney's studio that first time, the one that had startled him so much he had forgotten who he was and where he was. It wasn't like Gilheaney was trying to steal Ben away anymore. Ben was there, in the statue, all by himself. It wasn't like he was put there by the artist, like he was shaped by Gilheaney's hands; it was like he and Poco had just showed up on their own.
It was there in the face, whatever it was: the quality that made Lamar believe that the sculptor had succeeded. He saw the innocence and trust that had been in Ben's eyes when he was a boy, when he had been so proud to ride and work alongside his father. He saw some kind of wanting in that face too, not a lack of anything but an expectation, the bright sort of yearning that Sarey used to have when she talked about what it would be like to see Europe or some other such place.
But there was anger too, and you couldn't miss it. Lamar didn't know how Gilheaney had got it into Ben's expression, but it was there. It was the fury that had been in Ben's face the last time Lamar had seen him, a fury Lamar had never been able to erase from his memory and that Gilheaney had somehow seen and understood and sealed into the sculpture.
The funny thing was that from one moment to the next you did not know what you were looking at: the innocence of a child, the buoyant expectation of a young man, or the anger of a betrayed son. They were all bound up together, like they might be in a living face, impossible to pin down or pry apart." (328)
"If Lamar Clayton had had an artist's vision, if he could have detected the fate of his son as it slumbered in the stone of his own tragic life, there might have been a better ending than this forlorn monument. But even an artist's eye, as Gil had learned, could not necessarily detect what was buried in the hearts of the people the artist was supposed to love." (329)
I leave you with the image as I see it in my mind. Driving on a pretty deserted two lane highway through west Texas. Surrounded by rolling hills, and mesas, and gullys, to the side there is a man standing next to his horse, looking out at the wide free land, one hand resting against the saddle. It seems as if in a moment he will put foot to stirrup, shove off the ground and into the saddle, and ride back into the past from whence he came, but instead the statue that tells no one to remember Ben Clayton stands forever looking into the sunset, and into heaven.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: January 12
Pages: 368
Wendy was so very right about this one. This is a book of heart break, war, and loneliness, and the different ways that parents can fail their children. I haven't read a lot of books in my day that make something as boring as sculpture making a fascinating read. I find sculpture beautiful, but I also feel that it would make a deeper connection if there were pictures. However, this novel discusses the art so clearly that the artwork comes to life upon the page.
It is sometimes difficult for me to think that Comanches roamed the plains of Texas little more than a 100 years ago, and that there were people who lived through that time and saw the advancement of Texas to its own country and then a state of the union is a fascinating and fast history. This story follows the lives of three families and how the mutual drive towards a sculpture to remember a boy named Ben also becomes the drive to reconnect the past with the present, and keep the past alive. The first family is a father and daughter pair of sculptors, the father, Gil, a successful but arrogant and prideful man whose choices lead his family to tragedy. His daughter, Maureen, is trying to make it as a sculptor in her own right.
The second family is the aforementioned Ben's, living with regret and loneliness in the hills of west Texas after the war, disagreements, and death separate a man and his son forever.
The third isn't a family. The third is Ben's friend, Arthur, who survives the battle that killed Ben, with horrifying superficial and psychological scars. After the war, he stays in France, helping to fix what had been broken in the war. The task of restoring the soil of France to productivity gave him an abstract satisfaction, but it was not as deep or a genuine as another feeling he could not hold on to for more than a few moments at a time, let alone define. This sensation had something to do with not really wanting the trees to grow again or the birds to be sweeping across the blank gray sky or rising from the reborn fields. he had taken some sort of comfort in the complete deadness of everything, in the silence, in the understanding that the world had been seeking an end for itself and had finally found it. He had been content to share in that stasis of oblivion, and he rested that life was starting to surge on." (82) Arthur has already lost his family back home in Ranger, Texas to influenza, and losing Ben seems to break him. " The last thing he remembered was...staring in stupefaction at Ben's already dead body. He remembered the feeling of betrayal as well, the sense that Ben had purposely left him for some plane of experience that was more interesting...Even the death of his family, which he know should have left him howling with sorrow and shock, was something he seemed to have accepted with fatalistic understanding. It was not that he had ceased to feel, only that he had ceased to be impressed." (91)
Maureen's difficulties with her father originate from a number of problems, mostly her independence, and one of them is her on again off again suitor, a professor from the University of Texas who comes to visit. Vance is an amusing man:
"I don't know, a rough character like myself, lurking around his daughter."
"You're hardly a rough character."
"As if you would know. You didn't see me get into a saloon brawl the other day over Spenser's use of the Petrarchan sonnet." (145)
The most tragic figure, yet the one I understood the least was Ben's father, Lamar, who survived living with Indians, and carving a hard life for himself out of the desolation that is the West Texas Plains, and I both wanted to hug him and smack him upside the head.
"All his life he had treated the things that brought him pride and comfort as if they were shameful secrets--even his love for his own son. There were times when Ben was older, when they were riding fence together or camped out during the roundup, that he had felt such contentment in being with him that he thought he ought to say something out loud about it. But he never had, not that he could recall. he had expected Ben to know his own value to his father just as he had expected Gilheaney tonight to know the quality of his own work. You shouldn't have to tell people what ought to be plain to them already." (189)
The book is staggering in the depth of emotion and sorrow that can be felt from chracters that, at the time, seem like pictures. Thinking back on it brings a tightness in my chest because it is just so real. Listen, you have to read this book to really understand the emotional punch behind the random quotes I stick up here because they stuck out to me while I was reading.
"It was different from the model he had seen in Gilheaney's studio that first time, the one that had startled him so much he had forgotten who he was and where he was. It wasn't like Gilheaney was trying to steal Ben away anymore. Ben was there, in the statue, all by himself. It wasn't like he was put there by the artist, like he was shaped by Gilheaney's hands; it was like he and Poco had just showed up on their own.
It was there in the face, whatever it was: the quality that made Lamar believe that the sculptor had succeeded. He saw the innocence and trust that had been in Ben's eyes when he was a boy, when he had been so proud to ride and work alongside his father. He saw some kind of wanting in that face too, not a lack of anything but an expectation, the bright sort of yearning that Sarey used to have when she talked about what it would be like to see Europe or some other such place.
But there was anger too, and you couldn't miss it. Lamar didn't know how Gilheaney had got it into Ben's expression, but it was there. It was the fury that had been in Ben's face the last time Lamar had seen him, a fury Lamar had never been able to erase from his memory and that Gilheaney had somehow seen and understood and sealed into the sculpture.
The funny thing was that from one moment to the next you did not know what you were looking at: the innocence of a child, the buoyant expectation of a young man, or the anger of a betrayed son. They were all bound up together, like they might be in a living face, impossible to pin down or pry apart." (328)
"If Lamar Clayton had had an artist's vision, if he could have detected the fate of his son as it slumbered in the stone of his own tragic life, there might have been a better ending than this forlorn monument. But even an artist's eye, as Gil had learned, could not necessarily detect what was buried in the hearts of the people the artist was supposed to love." (329)
I leave you with the image as I see it in my mind. Driving on a pretty deserted two lane highway through west Texas. Surrounded by rolling hills, and mesas, and gullys, to the side there is a man standing next to his horse, looking out at the wide free land, one hand resting against the saddle. It seems as if in a moment he will put foot to stirrup, shove off the ground and into the saddle, and ride back into the past from whence he came, but instead the statue that tells no one to remember Ben Clayton stands forever looking into the sunset, and into heaven.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Year in Review: 2011
Best Voice: Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
Biggest Waste of Time (that I actually finished): Someday my Prince Will Come
Hardest Read: The Passage by Justin Cronin (not because it was long!)
Most Recommended: Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
Best Young Adult Book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Most Amusing: This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Shortest Book: Light Boxes (174 pages)
Longest Book: The Passage (766 pages)
Book Total: 48 (ugh)
Pages Total: 16,971
Best Month: April with 11 books
Worst Month: October with 1 book
Biggest Waste of Time (that I actually finished): Someday my Prince Will Come
Hardest Read: The Passage by Justin Cronin (not because it was long!)
Most Recommended: Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
Best Young Adult Book: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
Most Amusing: This is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper
Shortest Book: Light Boxes (174 pages)
Longest Book: The Passage (766 pages)
Book Total: 48 (ugh)
Pages Total: 16,971
Best Month: April with 11 books
Worst Month: October with 1 book
2: The Paris Wife
By: Paula McLain
Finished: January 10
Pages: 314
A word of advice, my friends. When you are feeling blue, if you don't want to sink deeper into that despair, to let your feelings of sadness and loneliness and general blah surround you, do not, I repeat, do not read a book that you know ends in divorce and suicide. It's just not smart.
If however, you do want to sink into that pit, at least read a book like this one, so that the sadness and the divorce and the suicide are well written.
The story of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, who married him when he was nobody and divorced him when he became somebody new. When success had driven him to think that he could be a person that she was not able to be with him. I would like to say that I have never felt as much kindness towards Mr. Hemingway as I did while reading this book. For, although I pretty well dislike him for a number of reasons, I didn't dislike this man that she describes. I could see why she would fall in love with him, and I could see why she would stay longer than maybe I would. I could see what drew all four of his wives to him.
Although fictional, the story is very well researched and you can feel it, but not in a Dante Club kind of way. McLain's turn of phrase is quite nice at times. When in Paris, poor and lonely while Ernest works, Hadley buys fish from a street vendor "The nest of fish was crisp under a coarse snow of salt and smelled so simple and good I thought it might save my life. Just a little. Just for that moment" (79). I can certainly connect myself to a girl experiencing the world for the first time. I remember eating baked potatoes in London and thinking the same thing.
Hadley is there when Hemingway meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and although she has met countless other famous people, she still has the same nervous shyness that any normal person would have, and Fitzgerald is as charming and asinine and ridiculous as any biographer would want him to be, the big baby. "An hour or so later, Ernest and I poured Scott into a taxi. 'I don't like a man who can't hold his liquor,' he said when the car had pulled away" (202).
The true tragedy of the story is that Hadley is friends with the woman who will eventually become Ernest's second wife and with whom he has an affair right under her nose. While talking with a mutual friend, I think they come up with a rule all girls should certainly follow: "'Love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.'
'I still love Pauline, God help me, but she's very wrong in this. Freedom is one thing, but you draw the line at a friend's husband. You have to'" (263).
Hemingway doesn't necessarily come out on top in this novel, Hadley certainly is luckier in her relationships in the end, but he does seem to be much more human, rather than the mythical hard-drinking, lion-shooting, death-defying man that I had through of him as. "He was such an enigma, really-fine and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn't one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true" (311). Hadley certainly got the best of him, or at least the fictional Hadley seemed to. Like so many people, once fame and celebrity hit, it is hard to ignore all the things that people say about you and continue to be the same person. Having an artistic temperament certainly doesn't help in that regard, and Hemingway, with his war-scarred psyche and inevitable mental instability would have been hard placed to defy it.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: January 10
Pages: 314
A word of advice, my friends. When you are feeling blue, if you don't want to sink deeper into that despair, to let your feelings of sadness and loneliness and general blah surround you, do not, I repeat, do not read a book that you know ends in divorce and suicide. It's just not smart.
If however, you do want to sink into that pit, at least read a book like this one, so that the sadness and the divorce and the suicide are well written.
The story of Ernest Hemingway's first wife, Hadley, who married him when he was nobody and divorced him when he became somebody new. When success had driven him to think that he could be a person that she was not able to be with him. I would like to say that I have never felt as much kindness towards Mr. Hemingway as I did while reading this book. For, although I pretty well dislike him for a number of reasons, I didn't dislike this man that she describes. I could see why she would fall in love with him, and I could see why she would stay longer than maybe I would. I could see what drew all four of his wives to him.
Although fictional, the story is very well researched and you can feel it, but not in a Dante Club kind of way. McLain's turn of phrase is quite nice at times. When in Paris, poor and lonely while Ernest works, Hadley buys fish from a street vendor "The nest of fish was crisp under a coarse snow of salt and smelled so simple and good I thought it might save my life. Just a little. Just for that moment" (79). I can certainly connect myself to a girl experiencing the world for the first time. I remember eating baked potatoes in London and thinking the same thing.
Hadley is there when Hemingway meets F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and although she has met countless other famous people, she still has the same nervous shyness that any normal person would have, and Fitzgerald is as charming and asinine and ridiculous as any biographer would want him to be, the big baby. "An hour or so later, Ernest and I poured Scott into a taxi. 'I don't like a man who can't hold his liquor,' he said when the car had pulled away" (202).
The true tragedy of the story is that Hadley is friends with the woman who will eventually become Ernest's second wife and with whom he has an affair right under her nose. While talking with a mutual friend, I think they come up with a rule all girls should certainly follow: "'Love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.'
'I still love Pauline, God help me, but she's very wrong in this. Freedom is one thing, but you draw the line at a friend's husband. You have to'" (263).
Hemingway doesn't necessarily come out on top in this novel, Hadley certainly is luckier in her relationships in the end, but he does seem to be much more human, rather than the mythical hard-drinking, lion-shooting, death-defying man that I had through of him as. "He was such an enigma, really-fine and strong and weak and cruel. An incomparable friend and a son of a bitch. In the end, there wasn't one thing about him that was truer than the rest. It was all true" (311). Hadley certainly got the best of him, or at least the fictional Hadley seemed to. Like so many people, once fame and celebrity hit, it is hard to ignore all the things that people say about you and continue to be the same person. Having an artistic temperament certainly doesn't help in that regard, and Hemingway, with his war-scarred psyche and inevitable mental instability would have been hard placed to defy it.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
3: Falling Together
By: Marisa de los Santos
Finished: January 11
Pages: 358
Like the rest of de los Santos' books, you have the things that make it work in abundance: witty dialogue, likable characters, good description, relationship drama driven plot, and lots of love. While nothing will ever be as good as Love Walked In, Falling Together was a new story from an author who has a good career ahead of her, as long as she doesn't get too trapped in making her characters so witty that they become caricatures. While this one maybe comes close at times, there was still the mistakes and the drama and the realism that kept it from being quite so sticky sappy sweet. I still want to be adopted by the families that she has in her stories, and I want to protective brothers that always seem to be around with the right advice that you don't want to hear but you need to hear at just the right time.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: January 11
Pages: 358
Like the rest of de los Santos' books, you have the things that make it work in abundance: witty dialogue, likable characters, good description, relationship drama driven plot, and lots of love. While nothing will ever be as good as Love Walked In, Falling Together was a new story from an author who has a good career ahead of her, as long as she doesn't get too trapped in making her characters so witty that they become caricatures. While this one maybe comes close at times, there was still the mistakes and the drama and the realism that kept it from being quite so sticky sappy sweet. I still want to be adopted by the families that she has in her stories, and I want to protective brothers that always seem to be around with the right advice that you don't want to hear but you need to hear at just the right time.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Summer Part 3: 45 and 46
45: Truth and Beauty: A Friendship
Finished: August 2011
Pages: 257
I am astonished in myself that I was able to get so far behind in my blogging that I totally forgot about two of the actual good books that I read this summer while I was in Newport, RI. My friend Anna gave me this book for my birthday this year, and I had been putting off reading it for quite some time because I knew the basic premise of the story and didn't really want to read it until I was good and ready. This is the lovely portrait of a friendship from the point of view of Ann Patchett, and discusses the friendship that she had with the writer Lucy Grealy, a woman with a bleak and tragic personal history who, for a while, overcomes the despair and depression and with whom Patchett shares a deep and abiding love. They epitomize the expression that friends are the family you choose. Not an autobiography or a biography, it instead is the story of their intertwined lives, the moments that they share both together and apart, through success, and failure, drugs and alcohol, love and hate, life and death. It was excellent and the ending of the book left me haunted.
46: Graveminder
Finished: August 2011
Pages: 336
An excellent plane read, the story centers around a small town where the dead will rise up from their graves if they are not given the attention that they deserve. As Kathy put it, "Not charming, ghostly poltergeist havoc, but ghastly cannibal zombie havoc."
Obviously some terrible and terrifying things begin to happen when the old graveminder is murdered and the new one doesn't know what to do. It takes a really long time to figure out what is going on, and the supernatural implications. I never really felt like it was explained in a way that I was comfortable. There is also a sort of love story, the relationship between Rebekkah and Byron is one of fate and is more than a little obnoxious as they stumble around each other. The narrative speed was one that I think was helped by the fact that I was on a plane and needed to distract myself from the fact that I was so high up in the air. An interesting premise, I was reading an advance copy that had many typographical errors that I hope were fixed before it was released. I also don't think that it was particularly "adult fiction" but rather normal YA fiction with slightly older, but not more mature, characters.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: August 2011
Pages: 257
I am astonished in myself that I was able to get so far behind in my blogging that I totally forgot about two of the actual good books that I read this summer while I was in Newport, RI. My friend Anna gave me this book for my birthday this year, and I had been putting off reading it for quite some time because I knew the basic premise of the story and didn't really want to read it until I was good and ready. This is the lovely portrait of a friendship from the point of view of Ann Patchett, and discusses the friendship that she had with the writer Lucy Grealy, a woman with a bleak and tragic personal history who, for a while, overcomes the despair and depression and with whom Patchett shares a deep and abiding love. They epitomize the expression that friends are the family you choose. Not an autobiography or a biography, it instead is the story of their intertwined lives, the moments that they share both together and apart, through success, and failure, drugs and alcohol, love and hate, life and death. It was excellent and the ending of the book left me haunted.
46: Graveminder
Finished: August 2011
Pages: 336
An excellent plane read, the story centers around a small town where the dead will rise up from their graves if they are not given the attention that they deserve. As Kathy put it, "Not charming, ghostly poltergeist havoc, but ghastly cannibal zombie havoc."
Obviously some terrible and terrifying things begin to happen when the old graveminder is murdered and the new one doesn't know what to do. It takes a really long time to figure out what is going on, and the supernatural implications. I never really felt like it was explained in a way that I was comfortable. There is also a sort of love story, the relationship between Rebekkah and Byron is one of fate and is more than a little obnoxious as they stumble around each other. The narrative speed was one that I think was helped by the fact that I was on a plane and needed to distract myself from the fact that I was so high up in the air. An interesting premise, I was reading an advance copy that had many typographical errors that I hope were fixed before it was released. I also don't think that it was particularly "adult fiction" but rather normal YA fiction with slightly older, but not more mature, characters.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
1: Run
By: Ann Patchett
Finished: January 9
Pages: 295
Looking over goodreads, it seems that people are of two opinions, you can only either hate or love this book. I can say that I loved this book, and I don't particularly care about the complaints that others have about it. Patchett is a beautiful writer. I think that she could write about anything, and as long as her turn of phrase stays the same, I will probably read it, and I will definitely enjoy it.
Run is poetic and a little stalker-y. I like books that connect characters in interesting ways. The idea of the interconnected character isn't new, per say, but I didn't see all the twists and connections coming. Although I could see where the story drew inspiration from the Kennedys, it didn't distract me from the narrative. I liked the characters. All of them. Even "terrible" Sullivan and all his mistakes had redeeming qualities and tries so hard to do the right thing and still manages to be smarmy and wonderful at the same time. I love tat all these disparate men: ex-mayor of Boston and father Doyle, ichthyologist Tip, loving goof off Teddy and his mentor and role model Father Sullivan, the aforementioned fuck up Sullivan were all drawn back together by the sacrifices of a mothers love and the needs of an unknown sister. I would have been disappointed if the book had turned out any other way, even if it was more than a little obvious from the beginning where it was going.
The language in Patchett's books are what I really appreciate, more than her apparently shoddy discussions of race relations and religion (comments from goodreads, not my own opinion there) and I'm going to put my favorites down so I don't forget them.
Tennessee, the mother, while listening to Jesse Jackson speak:
And then one of the many reasons for the title of the novel:
I love that the book starts off with a family legend. I love that the next paragraph blows the legend out of the water. I like that it's predictable in dealing with the fact that the ex-mayor of Boston adopted two black children, and that it's awkward to talk about. I like that the idea of family is fluid and also a little bit of politics. For the first book of the year, I think I made a good choice. I hope they are all just as good.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: January 9
Pages: 295
Looking over goodreads, it seems that people are of two opinions, you can only either hate or love this book. I can say that I loved this book, and I don't particularly care about the complaints that others have about it. Patchett is a beautiful writer. I think that she could write about anything, and as long as her turn of phrase stays the same, I will probably read it, and I will definitely enjoy it.
Run is poetic and a little stalker-y. I like books that connect characters in interesting ways. The idea of the interconnected character isn't new, per say, but I didn't see all the twists and connections coming. Although I could see where the story drew inspiration from the Kennedys, it didn't distract me from the narrative. I liked the characters. All of them. Even "terrible" Sullivan and all his mistakes had redeeming qualities and tries so hard to do the right thing and still manages to be smarmy and wonderful at the same time. I love tat all these disparate men: ex-mayor of Boston and father Doyle, ichthyologist Tip, loving goof off Teddy and his mentor and role model Father Sullivan, the aforementioned fuck up Sullivan were all drawn back together by the sacrifices of a mothers love and the needs of an unknown sister. I would have been disappointed if the book had turned out any other way, even if it was more than a little obvious from the beginning where it was going.
The language in Patchett's books are what I really appreciate, more than her apparently shoddy discussions of race relations and religion (comments from goodreads, not my own opinion there) and I'm going to put my favorites down so I don't forget them.
Somewhere along the line Teddy's love for his mother had become his love for Father Sullivan, and his love for Father Sullivan became his love for God. the three of them were bound into an inextricable knot: the living and the dead and the life everlasting. Each one led him to the other, and any member of the trinity he loved simply increased his love for all three. The question wasn't did her ever think of his mother. The question was did he ever think of anything else. (76)
Tennessee, the mother, while listening to Jesse Jackson speak:
She wanted to ask Jackson a question but she never raised her hand...I do appreciate your inspiration and leadership, she wanted to say, but I need some more specific advice. I need to know how to keep my child safe in public schools, safe from guns and chipped lead paint and pushers and bullies who have been bullied too much themselves. I need to know how I can walk her straight to the door of her classroom in the morning and still get to work on time and how she can learn enough to get to college when there are thirty-five other children in the room and half of them did not get breakfast. Can we talk, sir, about those things? All these speeches were so inspiring, yet every time she left the building with no more information than she had come in with. Politicians never mentioned the details of life because of course the details that appealed to one person could repel another, so what you would up with in the end were a long string of generalities, stirring platitudes that could not buy you supper. (114)
And then one of the many reasons for the title of the novel:
She wasn't racing anything but the sight of her mother being hit by the car...It was her plan to outrun all of that, and somewhere in that running she had started to fly. She no longer felt like touching all the dirt and the much she had so patiently submitted herself to so that people would think she was a very nice girl. She was not such a very nice girl. Nobody who was very, very nice would ever work this hard to take something they wanted only for themselves. Nice girls did not demand that everyone stop what they were doing and look at them but that was exactly what she asked for and what she got. All the other runners on the track had stopped now, the way dancers will stop when the soloist steps forward to dominate the floor...Anger and sadness and a sense of injustice that was bigger than any other thing that had happened stoked an enormous fire in her chest and that fire kept her heart vibrant and hot and alive, a beautiful, infallible machine. They were no longer waiting to see how fast she could go, they knew how fast she could go. Now they wanted to see how long it would be before she crashed, and if that was what they were waiting for they might as well sit down and get comfortable. (242)
I love that the book starts off with a family legend. I love that the next paragraph blows the legend out of the water. I like that it's predictable in dealing with the fact that the ex-mayor of Boston adopted two black children, and that it's awkward to talk about. I like that the idea of family is fluid and also a little bit of politics. For the first book of the year, I think I made a good choice. I hope they are all just as good.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Book 47 and 48: Oh yeah, Bookclub...
47: The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters
Finished: November 20
Pages: 272
A slightly transparent narrative of four sisters all named after famous movie stars, each given a gift by their mother: One can tell lies and is always believed, one can help animals, one can give curses, and one can always make people laugh. Through trials, tribulations, and a secret history book, they discover that the secret gifts they were given by their mother is much more than they expected originally.
Mostly, I enjoyed it, but I also got tired very quickly of all the fighting. I'm an only child. This book made me very thankful of that fact. It wasn't terrible, but I spent a good portion of the time wishing that I could punch various characters in the face, just on principle.
It was a bookclub book, and I think I was one of four, tops, who finished it, and I didn't finish in time for the meeting. Whoops.
48: Sarah's Key
Finished: December 29
Pages: 293
tiny chapters make for easy reading. That is my first discovery with this one. While the narrative itself was tight and focused, and a very interesting topic, I found myself emotionally detached from almost all the characters for most of the novel. I wanted to feel for Julia, but I also wanted her to grow a spine and stand up for herself. If your husband is an asshole, you should probably call him on it, rather than just take it and complain about it later. I had absolutely no pity for her idiotic selfish Frenchman of a husband, who was so stereotypical that he seemed flat and pointless.
Oh, I guess you want to know the plot? During the Vichy regime in France, the French police rounded up something like 13,000 Jews in and around Paris and put in the Velodrome d'Hiver (Shortened to Vel d'Hiv in French) for two days in July of 1942. Mostly women and children, they were then taken out of the city to waiting camps, then sent on to Auschwitz, where they were not put to forced labor but simply killed. Because of the French governments complicity in this, the story has been mostly unremarked upon by the French as a whole, and Julia, our heroine, investigates this for a story to mark the 60th anniversary. In the process, she discovers a secret in her husband's family that threatens her marriage, her husband's family, and her happiness. The alternating chapters are the story of Sarah, a young girl who is rounded up in July, and her harrowing tale of a mistake gone terribly, terribly wrong. Sarah is probably the most likable character in the novel, next to Julia's daughter who is constantly spilling the beans about her mother's research.
Although not what I would call an uplifting read, it is a part of history that I had never heard of, and therefore necessary. So much emphasis is placed on the suffering of the Jews in Germany and Austria, but little time is spent on the stories of the Jews in other countries, excepting of course, Anne Frank.
Certainly it is one of those books that is goo to have read because every body and their dog will have read it at some point. Also I think it's being made into a movie and I always like reading the book first.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: November 20
Pages: 272
A slightly transparent narrative of four sisters all named after famous movie stars, each given a gift by their mother: One can tell lies and is always believed, one can help animals, one can give curses, and one can always make people laugh. Through trials, tribulations, and a secret history book, they discover that the secret gifts they were given by their mother is much more than they expected originally.
Mostly, I enjoyed it, but I also got tired very quickly of all the fighting. I'm an only child. This book made me very thankful of that fact. It wasn't terrible, but I spent a good portion of the time wishing that I could punch various characters in the face, just on principle.
It was a bookclub book, and I think I was one of four, tops, who finished it, and I didn't finish in time for the meeting. Whoops.
48: Sarah's Key
Finished: December 29
Pages: 293
tiny chapters make for easy reading. That is my first discovery with this one. While the narrative itself was tight and focused, and a very interesting topic, I found myself emotionally detached from almost all the characters for most of the novel. I wanted to feel for Julia, but I also wanted her to grow a spine and stand up for herself. If your husband is an asshole, you should probably call him on it, rather than just take it and complain about it later. I had absolutely no pity for her idiotic selfish Frenchman of a husband, who was so stereotypical that he seemed flat and pointless.
Oh, I guess you want to know the plot? During the Vichy regime in France, the French police rounded up something like 13,000 Jews in and around Paris and put in the Velodrome d'Hiver (Shortened to Vel d'Hiv in French) for two days in July of 1942. Mostly women and children, they were then taken out of the city to waiting camps, then sent on to Auschwitz, where they were not put to forced labor but simply killed. Because of the French governments complicity in this, the story has been mostly unremarked upon by the French as a whole, and Julia, our heroine, investigates this for a story to mark the 60th anniversary. In the process, she discovers a secret in her husband's family that threatens her marriage, her husband's family, and her happiness. The alternating chapters are the story of Sarah, a young girl who is rounded up in July, and her harrowing tale of a mistake gone terribly, terribly wrong. Sarah is probably the most likable character in the novel, next to Julia's daughter who is constantly spilling the beans about her mother's research.
Although not what I would call an uplifting read, it is a part of history that I had never heard of, and therefore necessary. So much emphasis is placed on the suffering of the Jews in Germany and Austria, but little time is spent on the stories of the Jews in other countries, excepting of course, Anne Frank.
Certainly it is one of those books that is goo to have read because every body and their dog will have read it at some point. Also I think it's being made into a movie and I always like reading the book first.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Monday, January 9, 2012
Book 44: The Passage
So, I forgot a couple of books I read. I'm a genius.
Finished: November 14
Pages: 766
I put this book in the freezer at least three or four times. An excellent read, it is at times heart wrenching and terrifying. The format is an interesting blend of anthropological study, government documents, and narrative. The story started when the author, Justin Cronin, decided to write a book with his twelve year old daughter. She wanted a book where a young girl saves the world, and he delivers in a way that makes me wonder how much his daughter helped, and what that says about him as a father.
Read it, or don't, depending on how much you like putting books in the freezer. Personally, I'll never trust the government again, and I know that this didn't really happen. I mean, I hope they didn't. Effing government experiments.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: November 14
Pages: 766
I put this book in the freezer at least three or four times. An excellent read, it is at times heart wrenching and terrifying. The format is an interesting blend of anthropological study, government documents, and narrative. The story started when the author, Justin Cronin, decided to write a book with his twelve year old daughter. She wanted a book where a young girl saves the world, and he delivers in a way that makes me wonder how much his daughter helped, and what that says about him as a father.
Read it, or don't, depending on how much you like putting books in the freezer. Personally, I'll never trust the government again, and I know that this didn't really happen. I mean, I hope they didn't. Effing government experiments.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Book 39-depressing 43
Book 39: Mischief Under the Mistletoe
Finished: July 1
Pages: 339
I really liked this book, because it showed Turnip in a good light, and finally he gets a little respectability. It was lighthearted and I enjoyed it. I'm writing this review from many months down the road, but I remember enjoying myself.
Book 40: The Forgotten Garden
Finished: July sometime
Pages: 552
One of my favorite books of the year, this follows my trend of reading gothic fiction at the wrong time of the year. It's what has kept me from reading Great Expectations and Jane Eyre each summer, but this book overcame the difficulty of being set in a completely different time and place by being very well written and interesting. A friend of mine, Lynette, emailed me this summer and mentioned this book the day after my bookclub picked it as their next read. It was kismet. Since she also loved the Pink Carnation books, I can only say that her taste in books is excellent. I loved this book, with its tragic twists and turns. A great read.
Book 41: Into the Beautiful North
Finished: September 18
Pages: 368
A much more lighthearted take on a very emotional issue. This is the story of three young girls and their gay friend who travel from their small town in Mexico to find the Magnificent Seven, to save their town from a gang of druglords. Although the novel has quite a bit of Spanish to it, I didn't feel the narrative lost its punch in translation. I really liked the voice of Nayeli, and the interesting characters that she meets along the way are funny as hell. A true hero's journey, we follow Nayeli all the way to her father's front door, before she turns around and heads back to Mexico. I think that we often think of immigrants and the impact that they have on America, but the story of the women left behind, the women who wonder where their husbands, brothers, and fathers have gone, and this story tells us of a woman who tries to get the men to come back.
Book 41: Starcrossed
Finished: September 23
Pages: 359
Nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet, this is a young adult book about a girl named Digger who is a spy and a thief who changes her ways when she meets up with a group of untimely allies.
Book unfinished-doesn't count
I tried to read The Widow's Tale, Boneshaker, Tigerheart, and a couple other books. Everything that I picked up, even books I was interested in reading, I put down because I was either too busy, too tired, or just being lame. I probably started at least five books, maybe more and just couldn't get through them.
Book 42: Fortune and Fate
Finished: October 15
Pages: 448
The latest in the Twelve Houses series that Sharon Shinn writes, this was candy for my brain.
Book 43: The Name of the Star
Finished: December 7
Pages: 372
Young adult book, a ghostly tale of Jack the Ripper told from the point of view of a young American girl from Louisiana who has the ability to see ghosts. It was a little touristy, as far as London was described, but an interesting idea by the end of it. Some of the ghosts were wonderful characters.
And that's about it for 2011. A little depressing, but this semester was just too hard to get any reading done. There's always next year, I suppose.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: July 1
Pages: 339
I really liked this book, because it showed Turnip in a good light, and finally he gets a little respectability. It was lighthearted and I enjoyed it. I'm writing this review from many months down the road, but I remember enjoying myself.
Book 40: The Forgotten Garden
Finished: July sometime
Pages: 552
One of my favorite books of the year, this follows my trend of reading gothic fiction at the wrong time of the year. It's what has kept me from reading Great Expectations and Jane Eyre each summer, but this book overcame the difficulty of being set in a completely different time and place by being very well written and interesting. A friend of mine, Lynette, emailed me this summer and mentioned this book the day after my bookclub picked it as their next read. It was kismet. Since she also loved the Pink Carnation books, I can only say that her taste in books is excellent. I loved this book, with its tragic twists and turns. A great read.
Book 41: Into the Beautiful North
Finished: September 18
Pages: 368
A much more lighthearted take on a very emotional issue. This is the story of three young girls and their gay friend who travel from their small town in Mexico to find the Magnificent Seven, to save their town from a gang of druglords. Although the novel has quite a bit of Spanish to it, I didn't feel the narrative lost its punch in translation. I really liked the voice of Nayeli, and the interesting characters that she meets along the way are funny as hell. A true hero's journey, we follow Nayeli all the way to her father's front door, before she turns around and heads back to Mexico. I think that we often think of immigrants and the impact that they have on America, but the story of the women left behind, the women who wonder where their husbands, brothers, and fathers have gone, and this story tells us of a woman who tries to get the men to come back.
Book 41: Starcrossed
Finished: September 23
Pages: 359
Nothing to do with Romeo and Juliet, this is a young adult book about a girl named Digger who is a spy and a thief who changes her ways when she meets up with a group of untimely allies.
Book unfinished-doesn't count
I tried to read The Widow's Tale, Boneshaker, Tigerheart, and a couple other books. Everything that I picked up, even books I was interested in reading, I put down because I was either too busy, too tired, or just being lame. I probably started at least five books, maybe more and just couldn't get through them.
Book 42: Fortune and Fate
Finished: October 15
Pages: 448
The latest in the Twelve Houses series that Sharon Shinn writes, this was candy for my brain.
Book 43: The Name of the Star
Finished: December 7
Pages: 372
Young adult book, a ghostly tale of Jack the Ripper told from the point of view of a young American girl from Louisiana who has the ability to see ghosts. It was a little touristy, as far as London was described, but an interesting idea by the end of it. Some of the ghosts were wonderful characters.
And that's about it for 2011. A little depressing, but this semester was just too hard to get any reading done. There's always next year, I suppose.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Summer Part Two (Beach Edition) 36-38
36: The Temptation of the Night Jasmine
Pages: 388
Finished: June 27
Seriously? I’m still reading these? You better believe it. This is the perfect beach read. Light, sappy, romantic, full of dashing men in waistcoats saving damsels who aren’t really in distress. I will say that this was a bad choice size-wise, because this damn library book added at least five pounds to my carry-on luggage.
37: The Magician’s Assistant
by: Ann Patchett
Pages: 368
Finished: June 28
I think that this might be my favorite book I have read this summer. It is definitely in the top three. Patchett’s prose is excellent, and the character development was beautiful. Sabine, the titular assistant, had only recently married the gay magician whom she had faithfully worked alongside for twenty years. Parsifal’s sudden death leaves Sabine with many questions about the holes in his past and the family that suddenly appears. My particular favorite part is that Parsifal’s gay lover for many years, Phan, appears in Sabine’s dreams, showing her what death is like for them, and having all the conversations that they didn’t have in life. I read the book on the beach, so when Sabine goes to find this elusive family and discover why Parsifal would change his name and ends up in the wintry desolation of the Midwest, it was a little difficult to wrap my head around.
Since I had all day to read, I enjoyed the lack of chapter breaks. There was never a point that said “ You can put the book down now if you want” so I never felt the need to put it down, and when I had to, it was exceptionally easy to pick right back up where I left off. It was just a constant flow of words that lulled me into another world.
38: This is Where I Leave You
Pages: 339
Finished: June 29
A family of non-practicing Jews are called by their mother to sit Shiva for their father who just died after a long illness. Our narrator has quit his job and separated from his wife after catching her in bed with his boss. His eldest brother is worried about the family business and getting his wife pregnant. His sister has just had her third kid with a husband that it seems she does not love. His youngest brother, a compulsive liar and ladies man tells everyone who comes by the house a different story of where he has been for the last three years. Throw into this mix lies, anger, hilarious outbursts, drug use, and secrets and you have a week in hell with a family that defines dysfunctional. All in all, a quick but delightful read. You can’t help cheering your narrator on, even when he makes one terrible choice after another.
Good Reading (with sand),
Caitlin
Pages: 388
Finished: June 27
Seriously? I’m still reading these? You better believe it. This is the perfect beach read. Light, sappy, romantic, full of dashing men in waistcoats saving damsels who aren’t really in distress. I will say that this was a bad choice size-wise, because this damn library book added at least five pounds to my carry-on luggage.
37: The Magician’s Assistant
by: Ann Patchett
Pages: 368
Finished: June 28
I think that this might be my favorite book I have read this summer. It is definitely in the top three. Patchett’s prose is excellent, and the character development was beautiful. Sabine, the titular assistant, had only recently married the gay magician whom she had faithfully worked alongside for twenty years. Parsifal’s sudden death leaves Sabine with many questions about the holes in his past and the family that suddenly appears. My particular favorite part is that Parsifal’s gay lover for many years, Phan, appears in Sabine’s dreams, showing her what death is like for them, and having all the conversations that they didn’t have in life. I read the book on the beach, so when Sabine goes to find this elusive family and discover why Parsifal would change his name and ends up in the wintry desolation of the Midwest, it was a little difficult to wrap my head around.
Since I had all day to read, I enjoyed the lack of chapter breaks. There was never a point that said “ You can put the book down now if you want” so I never felt the need to put it down, and when I had to, it was exceptionally easy to pick right back up where I left off. It was just a constant flow of words that lulled me into another world.
38: This is Where I Leave You
Pages: 339
Finished: June 29
A family of non-practicing Jews are called by their mother to sit Shiva for their father who just died after a long illness. Our narrator has quit his job and separated from his wife after catching her in bed with his boss. His eldest brother is worried about the family business and getting his wife pregnant. His sister has just had her third kid with a husband that it seems she does not love. His youngest brother, a compulsive liar and ladies man tells everyone who comes by the house a different story of where he has been for the last three years. Throw into this mix lies, anger, hilarious outbursts, drug use, and secrets and you have a week in hell with a family that defines dysfunctional. All in all, a quick but delightful read. You can’t help cheering your narrator on, even when he makes one terrible choice after another.
Good Reading (with sand),
Caitlin
Thursday, May 26, 2011
The Summer Part One: 33-35
33: The Masque of the Black Tulip
Pages: 453
Finished: May 26
Entertaining but not quite as amusing as The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I think that maybe I just didn't like the two main characters as much, or appreciate their interactions. I did like the little pieces of character development, like Miles' love of ginger biscuits, but past that, I really just wanted to finish this one and move on to the next.
34: The Deception of the Emerald Ring
Pages:
Finished: May 27
Much better than Black Tulip, I really enjoyed this one immensely. Her parents, the mistaken identity, the general feel of the book, all lead to a more enjoyable read.
35: The Seduction of the Crimson Rose
Pages: 385
Finished: June 11
So, this is the first of the Pink Carnation books that I talked about to someone who wasn’t reading them, and I realized that these are not books you can talk about without sounding like an idiot. For example, the conversation went
“Caitlin, what are you reading?”
“Well, it’s a book about spies in England.”
“You mean James Bond?”
“Well, not exactly…”
“…?” (The raised eyebrow is very difficult to put into dialogue)
“Well, see, Lord Vaughn might or might not be a spy, and Mary Alsworthy is supposed to help him, but right now she’s been kidnapped, and Lord Vaughn has to rescue her without drawing additional suspicion.”
“Uh…what?”
Aside from the awkwardness of discussing this book with others, I really liked this one a lot because I have always enjoyed the dark brooding characters with a dark past and secrets. I mean, Severus Snape is my hero, so Lord Vaughn is right up my alley. I knew there had to be more to him than just being a jerk.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Pages: 453
Finished: May 26
Entertaining but not quite as amusing as The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. I think that maybe I just didn't like the two main characters as much, or appreciate their interactions. I did like the little pieces of character development, like Miles' love of ginger biscuits, but past that, I really just wanted to finish this one and move on to the next.
34: The Deception of the Emerald Ring
Pages:
Finished: May 27
Much better than Black Tulip, I really enjoyed this one immensely. Her parents, the mistaken identity, the general feel of the book, all lead to a more enjoyable read.
35: The Seduction of the Crimson Rose
Pages: 385
Finished: June 11
So, this is the first of the Pink Carnation books that I talked about to someone who wasn’t reading them, and I realized that these are not books you can talk about without sounding like an idiot. For example, the conversation went
“Caitlin, what are you reading?”
“Well, it’s a book about spies in England.”
“You mean James Bond?”
“Well, not exactly…”
“…?” (The raised eyebrow is very difficult to put into dialogue)
“Well, see, Lord Vaughn might or might not be a spy, and Mary Alsworthy is supposed to help him, but right now she’s been kidnapped, and Lord Vaughn has to rescue her without drawing additional suspicion.”
“Uh…what?”
Aside from the awkwardness of discussing this book with others, I really liked this one a lot because I have always enjoyed the dark brooding characters with a dark past and secrets. I mean, Severus Snape is my hero, so Lord Vaughn is right up my alley. I knew there had to be more to him than just being a jerk.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Friday, May 6, 2011
Books 31 and 32
31: Gifts
Finished: May 4
Pages: 274
32: Voices
Finished: May 5
Pages: 341
These books are connected but could stand alone. They were both written by Ursula K. Le Guin, the author of the Earthsea Cycle, which I read years and years ago. Although they are stand alone, the main characters of the first novel are supporting characters in the second. The stories take place in a magical land (surprise surprise) that allows people to have gifts: the ability to do certain magical actions, including talking to animals, and reading minds. For young adult novels, they were interesting and a little heavy handed when it came to the moral lesson of the book, but that didn't keep them from being interesting. Le Guin has a distinct voice that I can still appreciate even as an adult.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Finished: May 4
Pages: 274
32: Voices
Finished: May 5
Pages: 341
These books are connected but could stand alone. They were both written by Ursula K. Le Guin, the author of the Earthsea Cycle, which I read years and years ago. Although they are stand alone, the main characters of the first novel are supporting characters in the second. The stories take place in a magical land (surprise surprise) that allows people to have gifts: the ability to do certain magical actions, including talking to animals, and reading minds. For young adult novels, they were interesting and a little heavy handed when it came to the moral lesson of the book, but that didn't keep them from being interesting. Le Guin has a distinct voice that I can still appreciate even as an adult.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Book 30: Water for Elephants
Finished: May 3
Pages: 331
Water for Elephants is one of those books that I didn't read for years because everyone and their dog was reading it and telling everyone else how awesome it was. Don't think for one minute that I read this book because of the movie coming out, that was not the case at all. I never saw the movie, and never really wanted to, mostly because Robert Pattinson is creepy. The action and love story I found a secondary amusement to the deep sensory details that enveloped you as you read the novel. I enjoyed the feeling of the train, the smells of the circus, even the scenes in the nursing home. I enjoyed the unreliableness of the narrator. He was pretty hilarious, in a crotchety way. Although I had the ending ruined for me, I still enjoyed how the ending came to apss. I relaly appreciate the way the book opens, because it sets up the reader for a wonderful twist at the end.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Pages: 331
Water for Elephants is one of those books that I didn't read for years because everyone and their dog was reading it and telling everyone else how awesome it was. Don't think for one minute that I read this book because of the movie coming out, that was not the case at all. I never saw the movie, and never really wanted to, mostly because Robert Pattinson is creepy. The action and love story I found a secondary amusement to the deep sensory details that enveloped you as you read the novel. I enjoyed the feeling of the train, the smells of the circus, even the scenes in the nursing home. I enjoyed the unreliableness of the narrator. He was pretty hilarious, in a crotchety way. Although I had the ending ruined for me, I still enjoyed how the ending came to apss. I relaly appreciate the way the book opens, because it sets up the reader for a wonderful twist at the end.
Good Reading,
Caitlin
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Books 23-29: TAKS Week
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
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
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
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