book beginnings on Friday: The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood

Posted on November 11, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

This is a dystopian story, or perhaps even post-dystopian. I’m enjoying it very much and finding it thought-provoking, which is certainly what I expect from Margaret Atwood. It begins:

In the early morning Toby climbs up to the rooftop to watch the sunrise. She uses a mop handle for balance: the elevator stopped working some time ago and the back stairs are slick with damp, so if she slips and topples there won’t be anyone to pick her up.

There is no one there to pick her up because Toby is virtually the last person left alive in this odd world, as far as we know at this point. It’s a very spooky concept.

What are you reading this weekend?

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The Broker by John Grisham (audio)

Posted on November 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s been a few years since I read any Grisham. (As a kid I remember repeatedly rereading The Client and loving it.) He may not be a genius of proper “high” literature but he can be relied upon for a solid legal thriller every once in a while. In fact this one was rather short on the legal part, more of a proper thriller with elements of international intrigue. It made for a great road trip “read” for Husband and I.

Joel Backman was known as “The Broker” in his former life as high-powered Washington, D.C. attorney, lobbyist and power broker. He had connections, he had the big firm, he had the BIG money, and he was known to be rather unscrupulous in the pursuit of the mighty dollar and his clients’ victory. But when the story opens, he’s six years into a prison sentence, serving in isolation. The outgoing president is convinced by the CIA in the final moments of his presidency to pardon Backman – but not for his own good. The CIA is still trying to answer all the questions relating to the Backman case, and they hope that upon his release, they’ll get to sit back and watch who assassinates him, thus resolving a question of national security.

I’ll leave the international espionage parts vague for now – I could spend all day trying to detail this fairly complicated case. If you go check out this book yourself it will all be explained. For now you should know this: Backman is shipped overseas by the CIA and set up with a new identity as Marco Lazare, an Italian raised in Canada and thus just now furiously studying the Italian language. He eventually ends up going on the run, escaping his CIA handlers, dodging possible assassins of a variety of nationalities, and fleeing back to the US to blow the cover off the security concern involving spy satellites and jamming software.

The techies among us will, I daresay, be dissatisfied with the tech details of the case; I think it’s fairly simplistic and a little dated by now. But if you can put this aside (it’s not sci fi, after all), it’s a fun story of intrigue. We have to wonder along with Backman/Marco where the threat is coming from, who he can trust, and what he should do with the information he carries. What he once hoped to make a fortune off of now endangers his life, and The Broker for the first time is concerned with Doing The Right Thing rather than Making The Buck. The greatest sort of plot development is in Backman/Marco’s growth from The Broker into a decent human being.

Husband was disappointed that there wasn’t more blow-em-up gore and bad-ass action (in other words, Backman is no Jack Reacher). But this is just a slightly different kind of book, that’s all. I found it engrossing and entertaining; it did its job. It’s light reading but as such, I thought it was successful.

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Stationary Bike by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on November 9, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I’m going to call this one a short story, at only an hour and a half, unabridged. It made for a nice short entertaining story during our drive up for a bike race a few weeks ago.

Richard Siftkitz is a freelance commercial artist, making his living by drawing and painting commissioned works for advertisements, pamphlets, movies posters, record covers, and the like. He’s 38 years old when the story opens, and his doctor is concerned about his cholesterol level (Richard likes to eat a lot of fast food). The doctor explains the issue with a metaphor: he tells Richard that there is a little team of workmen, of the hardhat-and-work-boots variety, living inside his body, working hard to keep his arteries clear of the junk Richard is putting into them. If they are made to work too hard for too many years, they’ll get tired, start doing sloppy work, and eventually quit or be overcome.

Richard takes this concern to heart, and goes out and buys… that’s right, a stationary bike. He sets it up in the basement of his apartment building and paints a mural on the wall, of a road through a forest. This road represents both the road he pretends he’s riding down, and one of the roads that his little tiny interior metaphorical workmen are keeping cleared for him. He pins up maps on the wall and considers himself to be riding down real roads in upstate New York, eventually achieving the Canadian border and riding onward deep into the Canadian forests. Richard’s very active imagination simultaneously creates full lives for the team of four men he envisions working inside his body. He gives them names and backgrounds and families.

Without ruining too much for you, I will say that Richard’s imagined workmen take on lives of their own, and his imaginary ride through the Canadian woods takes on proportions larger than he meant for it to have. He finds himself in danger.

I found this short audiobook entertaining and spooky. The tension built nicely. There were little clips of music that played in between chapters; it started off sort of Musak-ish, but as the story got creepier, the music got creepier, growing with the mood. It was well done. Luckily (since I’m not real good with horror!) it wasn’t unbearably scary but it did give us some creeps. I liked it.

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Challenge Update: “uncle!”

Posted on November 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

As we’ve reviewed earlier this year, I did *complete* both the Classics Challenge and the What’s in a Name? Challenge, both with relative and unexpected ease. The Where Are You Reading? Challenge has been most interesting, and I’ve enjoyed keeping track of where all the books I read are set. Click on my map below to see my notes.


A month or so ago I realized I was going to have to start making special efforts to read books that cover certain locations. I’ve done some of that. Some of those books have been good, too; but some of them I’ve been only half-heartedly interested in, and haven’t impressed me.

So, I’m giving up. My review of Love Medicine is still to come, filling out North Dakota (and that was a very enjoyable book!). But aside from that, I’m done chasing states. I have to prioritize. Mostly I like to read what I like to read – whatever I feel like at the moment; or whatever I’ve been looking forward to or planning on or been interested in lately. And then there are the books I’m sent for review, which are in theory skewed to my interests – and in practice, too, my editor at Shelf Awareness does an awesome job of sending me good stuff! And sometimes I undertake to read books I might not like, in the interests of expanding my knowledge of what my patrons at the library are reading. On top of all this, to read books based on location for this challenge has turned out to be more burden than fun. This blog is for fun and enrichment and is not intended to be a source of burdens! So, I’m done with the challenge.

But I have no regrets. It’s been not only fun but and interesting and informative to see where I read. And I didn’t do too poorly! So far, I’ve read in 35 of the 50 states, and 24 foreign locations. You never know, I might even find myself reading something set in Rhode Island by the end of the year. But I doubt that it will be on purpose. 🙂 Then again, 59 unique locations (35 + 24) isn’t so hot considering I’ve read well over 100 books this year so far. It was interesting to see how many of the books I read are set in a few big US cities (Los Angeles, Chicago, NYC), Texas, and London (or England generally).

2011 has been my first full year of blogging. (I started in October 2010.) This was my first year joining challenges. It was fun; it made the blogging experience more interactive, for one thing, and made reading kind of playful and purposeful. I like challenges, and I’ll sign up for more again. I just want to be careful not to find any extra stress where I don’t need it! Also, let me mention the readalongs – those have been so great, too! First I did the Mad for Maisie Readalong, of the entire Maisie Dobbs series. (Recommended!) Next was the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong, which was educational and fun. And because that one went so well, I’ve just signed up for the Their Eyes Were Watching God Readalong, hosted by The Heroine’s Bookshelf as was the Gone With the Wind one.

So, today’s challenge update in a nutshell: great fun, challenges! But, uncle!

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Teaser Tuesdays: Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich

Posted on November 8, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

I’ve been really enjoying this story involving several generations of Native Americans in North Dakota. For your teaser today I’ve selected a passage I found amusing (if sad), that illustrates one family’s struggle with overpopulation!

[The babies] were all over in the house once they started. In the bottoms of cupboards, in the dresser, in trundles. Lift a blanket and a bundle would howl beneath it. I lost track of which were ours and which Marie had taken in. It had helped her to take them in after our two others were gone. This went on. The youngest slept between us, in the bed of our bliss, so I was crawling over them to make more of them. It seemed like there was no end.

I thought this was a good example of Erdrich’s ability to be funny even while telling a serious story.

What are you reading today?

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another readlong! Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

Posted on November 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

It’s that time again! I so enjoyed the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong that I couldn’t resist the next event at The Heroine’s Bookshelf. This time we’ll be reading Their Eyes Were Watching God together. I read it when I was a kid, but I don’t think I really grasped it; I didn’t get much out of it and don’t much remember it now. When I read The Heroine’s Bookshelf (the book) I knew I needed to reread, and I got a copy, but I haven’t gotten around to it yet. So this sounds like a great opportunity! I enjoyed the way Erin wrote up some backstory, links etc. in the earlier readalong. So now’s the time! If you want to join us, you can sign up here. The schedule is…

November 28: Chapters 1-6
December 5: Chapters 7-13
December 12: Chapters 14-20

See you then. 🙂

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Black Sun by Edward Abbey

Posted on November 7, 2011 by pagesofjulia

I love Edward Abbey for Desert Solitaire, and for his reputation (compounded of course by my love of Fire Season too). My Pops has gotten into him this year, and has brought me quite a few of his books, and I’ve been excited to pick them up. I confess I chose this one for its setting as I’m now working on completing the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, and it covers Arizona for me. But oh! this book has value all on its own. Those 3-4 other Abbey books that are sitting on my shelf right now just moved up the list a little bit. He wrote more nonfiction than fiction, and his best-known novel is The Monkey Wrench Gang; this lesser-known novel involves a fire lookout, which was my attraction (see again Fire Season).

The story is this. Will Gatlin has abandoned his life as college professor and husband to become a reclusive fire lookout in the Grand Canyon National Park. He is mostly alone up there, but does get a few visits and letters from his friend Art Ballantine, who still teaches college but expends more energy on chasing women. To say he is obsessed with sex, breasts, the female anatomy (he uses the c-word), young girls in every application, would be putting it mildly; his letters are raving and silly and self-deprecatingly intellectual. And very funny. In between Ballantine missives Will does his fire-lookout work, observes nature – these parts are poetic, loving and appreciative – and carries on a love affair with a girl named Sandy. I’m not sure we ever learn Will’s age, but he is probably old enough to be nineteen-year-old Sandy’s father. She is a virgin when they meet, and engaged to another man, but none of this stops them from cavorting the wilds (desert, river, canyon and forest) in the nude, wittily teasing one another and having wonderful sex. Here Abbey falls into that lamentable and oh-so-distinctive habit that older male writers sometimes fall into (Papa included!) of creating nubile young beauties who want nothing more than to have endless sex with old men. It’s unfortunate in that it seems to give away the author’s own dirty-old-man fantasies (I don’t know this about Abbey in particular but it is my reaction to the cliché). But if we can move past this issue, Will and Sandy have a great time running around the wilderness, la dee da. That is, until Sandy disappears and her fiancé shows up to accuse Will of disappearing her and punches him in the face.

Abbey writes beautifully, lyrically about nature and about love or at least attraction. The letters from Ballantine (and others) are amusing. The story is tragic, but it requires a certain overlooking of the older man’s fantasy before we could really sympathize with Will’s sense of loss. If you can move past this, it’s a beautiful little story with flora and fauna of the Grand Canyon painting the background. I was only partly successful in that requisite overlooking, but enjoyed it all the same. I have great hope for the other Abbey books waiting on my shelves.

I thought I could clearly see connections in Abbey’s writing style and subject matter to Keruoac, as well as Philip Connors, who in Fire Season acknowledges the debt. I recommend Black Sun, unless of course you’ve had too much euphoric losing of teenage virginities to much older men, in which case perhaps start with Desert Solitaire and I’ll let you know how the rest of them go, too!

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Into the Silence by Wade Davis

Posted on November 6, 2011 by pagesofjulia

An epic history of adventure and adversity, of one man and a nation’s quest for redemption.

In Into the Silence, Wade Davis (The Wayfinders, The Serpent and the Rainbow) portrays several attempts to climb Mount Everest during the 1920s within the context of the state of the British Empire after the First World War. With the benefit of new access to primary sources, he begins with visceral descriptions of the Great War in all its horrifying violence, as seen through the eyes of several players in the later Everest drama, and then follows these men through the postwar numbness of a Britain that had lost the bulk of a generation. Davis makes a convincing argument that the assault on Everest was “the ultimate gesture of imperial redemption.”

George Mallory was the star of three successive attempts to summit a mountain that was at the time a complete mystery–its weather patterns and geography entirely unknown, the cultures that surrounded it viewed by the British with a misguided paternalism. Along with a host of fellow climbers, adventurers and scientists, Mallory was driven toward an accomplishment that the nation came to grasp as an outlet for its frustrations and a hopeful liberating triumph. While he was the principal character in the eyes of his contemporaries and in history, the other explorers also receive well-deserved and detailed attention in Davis’s account.

Into the Silence is a book about mountaineering and a respectable adventure epic with all the alpinist details, but it’s also so much more: a heartbreaking portrayal of war; the story of more than a dozen individuals whose lives were rocked by a war and a mountain; and finally, a history of a nation watching its own imperial era come to an end.

This review originally ran in the November 4, 2011 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

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Definitely Dead by Charlaine Harris (audio)

Posted on November 5, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Definitely Dead is a Sookie Stackhouse book from the Southern Vampire Mystery series. Yes. Southern Vampire Mystery Series. The television series True Blood is based on these books. This is not my standard reading material, but (this is becoming a theme) I picked it to cover Louisiana for the Where Are You Reading? Challenge, on rhapsodyinbooks‘s recommendation. I like James Lee Burke for Louisiana normally, but took this opportunity to expand my knowledge (if not my reading loves) – for professional reasons as a librarian, if for no other reason. One of my first pleasant surprises was the narration; Johanna Parker’s southern accent is fun. (Her Irish accent, for Father Riordan, on the other hand, is a travesty. Luckily we don’t hear too much from him.) The redeeming features didn’t end there; Sookie is a pleasant, likeable enough protagonist. She’s a little bumbling, and she struggles a little bit with her sense of self-worth, but she’s not whiny; she’s just human. Ha – that’s a joke, as her being human makes her fairly unique in Bon Temps, Louisiana, a world full of supernatural beings: were-wolves, were-panthers, were-tigers, vampires, goblins, and sundry shape-shifters.

In this book, Sookie is being attacked by various enemies: one, the family of the Pelt girl that she apparently killed in an earlier book, and two, okay I won’t give it away just yet… The vampire Queen of Louisiana (what a funny phrase, it made me smile every time) marries the King of Arkansas (even funnier!) in a political match, but Sophie’s cousin Hadley is the Queen’s real love. Hadley has just died, and when Sookie goes into New Orleans to clean out her apartment she finds a dead werewolf in the closet – and the intrigue just increases from there. Meanwhile, Sookie begins to date a sexy were-tiger, Quinn; he’s there with her when she’s attacked on several occasions, so they bond while fighting various supernatural beings. There is an unusual sex scene between the two of them that I am still contemplating and finding unlikely, but I’ll let you discover that one on your own.

It’s an odd world that Harris builds here; a number of phrases got me giggling just for their oddity (I wish I’d taken better notes here). It was strange enough to me that the novelty was rather amusing, although I guess regular readers of paranormal whatnot are beyond this. Sookie is relatively charming, and Quinn is an attractive character; I found myself entertained once I got into things. But this book is no literary feat. The dialog can be awkward, and I found enough grammatical errors to be distracting.

In the end, this wasn’t a painfully bad book to listen to. (Well, the cd’s in my audio copy were badly scratched and sometimes that got a little painful, but I don’t hold Harris or Sookie responsible for that.) It had its moments, but it failed to make me care deeply; the world Harris built was more silly than interesting. Unfortunately I don’t care what happens to Sookie next, although I wish her well.

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book beginnings on Friday: Black Sun by Edward Abbey

Posted on November 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Katy at A Few More Pages for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

Black Sun is a novel by Edward Abbey (renowned author of much nonfiction, whose best-known novel is The Monkey Wrench Gang; he has been called “the Thoreau of the West”) about a fire lookout. If you read my earlier review of Fire Season you will understand my interest in the subject. I like it so far. Check out this beginning:

Each day begins like any other. Gently. Cautiously. The way he likes it. A dawn wind through the forest, the questioning calls of obscure birds. He hears the flutelike song, cool as silver, of a hermit thrush.

I love this picture of a day beginning gently, the way he likes it… very evocative, mood-setting.

What are you reading this weekend?

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