in lieu of a cover shot, since mine is a plain hardback missing its dust jacket, I give you one of the fine illustrations from within.
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Thanks to Rose City Reader 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.
in lieu of a cover shot, since mine is a plain hardback missing its dust jacket, I give you one of the fine illustrations from within.
I’m doing it backwards again, since I’ve not read Watership Down, sigh. I look forward to getting my hands on a copy! The first story in this follow-up volume of Tales, entitled “The Sense of Smell,” begins:
“Tell us a story, Dandelion!”
It was a fine May evening of the spring following the defeat of General Woundwort and the Efrafans on Watership Down.
And so we start with several clues as to the history of those gathered around to hear a story; and who amongst us readers doesn’t enjoy storytime? I think it’s an auspicious beginning.
What are you reading this weekend?
Filed under: book beginnings | Tagged: children's/YA, short stories | 10 Comments »
Not being a big reader of YA, or time travel, or fantasy/alternate realty/insert-concept-here, it surprised me how much I was drawn to this book. But I was.
Before I tell you about this story, here’s a funny detail I noted right off: the translator, Anthea Bell, also translated the last book I read from-the-German, The Stronger Sex. This title is YA where that one was decidedly adult material, but I guess a strong German-to-English translator is the same across the board. I hadn’t really thought about it before. Just as I said about The Stronger Sex, Bell gets full credit for making the translation invisible. If anything, the language here is a little more awkward; but having read that other example of Bell’s translation, I think this awkwardness comes from the original. If I hadn’t known, I wouldn’t have suspected translation issues – I would have assumed just what I have come to feel is a common YA writing issue. It feels a little bit effortfully simplified, if that makes sense. It’s something I’ve encountered in YA before. I guess it’s a reading-level thing. Like in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, it bothered me slightly when I focused on it, but the story ended up engrossing me enough that it faded into the background. I don’t read a lot of YA. If you don’t, either, this little issue may irk you as it does me; if you read a fair amount of YA, chances are good it won’t faze you.
Gwen is trying to live a normal teen existence in present-day London, but her obnoxious cousin Charlotte’s destiny is difficult to ignore. Charlotte has inherited the family’s time-travel gene, and any day now, she’s expected to take her first trip. She’s been trained all her life in languages, history, the mannerisms of different periods, fencing, dancing, and music. But when the first uncontrolled time travel occurs, it’s not Charlotte, but Gwen – of all people! – who finds herself in an unfamiliar era. She’s thrust unprepared into a complicated world, and finds herself partnered in adventure with Gideon de Villiers, the time-travel-gene-carrying teen of his own family. He is snotty and bossy… and sooooo handsome…
I enjoyed the intrigue, the plots and codes and ancient documents and secrets and mysteries. I enjoyed the world Gier builds. I even enjoyed, mildly, the juvenile romance. But I didn’t get enough of any of it. I felt like the set-up for the story took 3/4 of the book, and then the story began and –whoosh– please buy the sequel that comes out in 2012. Is this a YA thing? I was frustrated and unsatisfied; but I’m also intrigued enough to seek out Sapphire Blue, the aforementioned sequel. Sigh. I guess she got me.
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: children's/YA, in translation, time travel, what's in a name? | 5 Comments »
I had a patron approach me in the library to ask my feelings on this issue.
The background is… more than a month ago, the Wall Street journal published this article by Meghan Cox Gurdon, which immediately became a huge deal. I would encourage you to go read it, because that’s the best way to know what it says, but in a nutshell, this children’s-book-reviewer lady notes an increase in “darkness” in young adult (YA) literature, and comments that darkness is not good for our young adults. While she has some supporters, there was overwhelming indignation among bookish/literary/librarianlike internet dwellers. They have mostly said, in a dark world, kids can actually benefit from reading about situations that are like those they are facing. Also, you shouldn’t censor. The author of the original, offending article has since published, also in the WSJ, a rebuttal.
I resisted entering the fracas, mostly because I feel my opinion is unnecessary (because I’ve read some other excellent responses) and because I don’t feel terribly well-qualified to have an Important Opinion, not being a YA librarian or really much of a reader of YA. Even when I was a YA. But on the other hand, this blog rather exists for the publication of my Not Very Important Opinions, and so I’ll throw it out there.
So. I had a patron approach me here in my (definitively adult) library and ask for my thoughts. I tried to tell her why I’m not qualified to have one but she pushed. So, I told her I agree with those opinions that say, children in rough positions need to read about said rough positions. The cited instances of “darkness” include stories about rape, prostitution, violence in general, poverty, and cutting (self-mutilation). Young people living these situations are in a position to benefit from having them handled wisely in literature, and I appreciate that such things are available. My patron turned out to be (as I understood her position) arguing that children living in darkness need to read about light – happier, brighter situations – to which I say, sure! Great! Let them read that stuff, too! She proceeded to argue that there is too much dark and not enough light; the proportions are wrong; at which point I have to beg off, because my very limited knowledge of current YA doesn’t allow me to debate this point. I don’t know the proportions, quite frankly. I support the idea of diverse options, for sure – in all things, in fact. (For example, there should be more than two political parties in our electoral system.) Lots of options, please. But if you prefer for your YA to read only happier, lighter books, I don’t think that should necessarily limit others – who might be interested in those “darker” ones – in their access to those choices.
I have to take issue with one of Gurdon’s conceptions (from the original article).
In the book trade, [guiding what young people read] is known as “banning.” In the parenting trade, however, we call this “judgment” or “taste.”
I’m afraid she’s confused about “banning.” Or maybe she’s just being imprecise in the phrase, “guiding what young people read.” There are several ways in which parents, guardians, or whoever can guide what young people read. For example, they can pay attention to what their children read, and direct those choices. The Maryland mother whose personal experience begins Gurdon’s article was doing just this. She wasn’t banning anything; she was exhibiting judgment and taste, and guiding her daughter’s reading choices. This is the kind of guidance I recommend; I encourage parents who are concerned about what their children read to pay attention to what their children read, and limit it as they find appropriate. Banning, on the other hand, is what parents and various community members attempt when they submit complaints to public libraries (for example) requesting that certain books be pulled off the shelves. I am in favor of “judgment” and “taste” – I may not agree with yours, but that’s fine as long as your judgment applies only to your child. I am against “banning,” which involves limiting other people‘s access to books. See the difference? Banning is not synonymous with parenting.
I don’t think rape or cutting in books leads to rape or cutting in life. I think it has the potential to offer some relief or catharsis or therapy. Certainly some children don’t need therapy for these traumas; absolutely Gurdon is correct that not all teens are rape victims, thank goodness! But I’m not sure that reading about even those traumas that are outside their experience isn’t necessarily instructive and good, too. (I wasn’t involved in teen violence or gangs, but still found S.E. Hinton’s oft-cited The Outsiders amazing; it was one of my favorite books.) I won’t push these books on your child, certainly, but I fail to see how the availability of these options is a bad thing. Again, I’m all for more options. If I accept my patron’s thesis that there is too much dark and not enough light in YA today, then by all means, let there be more light, in the interest of a multiplicity of options.
But, the vampires I could take or leave, actually.
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: blogs, children's/YA, reading as education | Leave a comment »
What an odd, fun, creepy little romp this was! I had been fascinated by the idea of this book months before it came out. The story is this: our first-person narrator, Jacob, has always been close to his grandfather. Grandpa Portman has told him stories all his life of the peculiar, magical children he grew up with, in a home for orphaned refugees during World War II. He even has pictures: a levitating girl (on the cover); an invisible boy; a skinny boy lifting a giant boulder. As Jacob grows up a bit, he begins to understand that perhaps Grandpa’s stories were just that, stories; but when Grandpa dies in a mysteriously disturbing fashion, in Jacob’s arms, and with the strangest of last words, he begins to wonder again. Under the care of a psychiatrist, Jacob travels with his father back to the tiny Welsh island where Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children was located. The story he begins to unravel… well. I don’t want to ruin anything for you.
This is really a YA (young adult) book, for two reasons: 1, the reading level, and 2, the young adult protagonist. Jacob is 16 or 17 years old. I found it very enjoyable, though, and I don’t read YA very regularly. It was a quick read, partly because of the rather basic reading level. But here’s the unique bit: there are quite a few pictures mixed in with the text. Grandpa Portman had a collection of pictures; Jacob has a few of his own; he discovers a cache of pictures in his explorations of Cairnholm Island. And every one of the pictures mentioned in the story is included, so we get to do our own examining of them alongside Jacob. This was very cool, because the oddness (or perhaps, the peculiarity) of these pictures is a large part of the point of this book. And here’s the kicker: while this is a work of fiction, and the impossibility of the photos is obvious, I found an interesting detail at the back of the book. The author writes, “All the pictures in this book are authentic, vintage found photographs, and with the exception of a few that have undergone minimal postprocessing, they are unaltered.” I don’t know what “minimal postprocessing” might entail, but it made me go back and reexamine the pictures all over again, knowing that they each have a real life mysterious story behind them. I love it: an additional facet to this curious tale.
This is a paranormal story, even one of time travel. I don’t necessarily spend a lot of time in these areas, but I found Jacob to be a likeable (if doofy – is this a regular facet of YA, too?) protagonist, and his Grandpa was a real hero. The peculiar children were extremely likeable and fascinating. I had a lot of fun with this diversion from my more normal reading.
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: children's/YA, misc fiction, time travel, what's in a name? | 3 Comments »
This week I read Inkheart by Cornelia Funke. This is a children’s book, but I’ve had several (adult) patrons here who have enjoyed it, and also some that haven’t; so I’ve been interested to see what it was like. I can occasionally enjoy children’s lit, although I generally need to follow it with something with a little harder or sharper edge to it. NoveList recommends Inkheart for grades 4-12; our heroine is 12 years old, so that probably tells us who it’s intended for. But again, plenty of adult fans exist as well.
I enjoyed this book. It’s fantasy set in our real world, although our real world doesn’t interact much with that of Mo and Meggie. Mo is a bookbinder and, along with his daughter Meggie and aunt Elinor, general bibliophile. Books are an important element here, which of course I appreciate. There are good guys and bad guys and fairies and fire-breathers, and Meggie gets to be a hero. It’s enjoyable, with good imagery and satisfying good vs. evil action, and it’s the first in a trilogy, so it won’t be giving away too much to say the ending doesn’t leave everything tied up too neatly! I liked it. I would certainly pick up the second book if it crossed my desk at the right moment, but I won’t go requesting a hold at my local library or anything. That’s about a B score, same with J.D. Robb’s series. I’d pick up another but won’t go seeking them out.
When I finished Inkheart I picked up Cormac McCarthy’s The Road because, duh, everybody raved, so it must be good! Wrong! As I like to tell my patrons when they ask “did you like it?”… there’s room for all kinds of tastes in this world. How boring would it be if we all liked the same things? And how long would the lines be? There would have to be like two bands playing the same concert 6 nights a week to crowds of thousands. I think that sounds dull. So, we don’t all like the same things, and The Road is not for me. I was immediately upset by the sentence fragments, and McCarthy’s disregard for certain elements of punctuation. (Maybe he’s the next ee cummings, but I’m not impressed.) I failed to get involved with the father and the son in a few pages, and started skipping around throughout the book to see if I could find some action or interest or chapters or structure or quotation marks or commitment to complete sentences. None of the above. I spent about 30 minutes skimming cover to cover, read the beginning and the end and some parts in between, and I’m ready to say I don’t like this book. As one of my volunteers here at the library says, we’re adults now, we don’t have to finish books we don’t like!
Perhaps the enjoyment of this book lies in considering it as a poem (a la cummings, again, poetic license) or as inspirational fiction; a few reviews have pointed out the elements of faith and love as an important message, but I’m not looking for McCarthy’s version of either. This is a popular and highly reviewed book; clearly there’s a time and a place and a mindset for it. But I’m not there, and that’s ok.
So what’s next? I’m considering Secret Historian: the life and times of Samuel Steward, professor, tattoo artist, and sexual renegade by Justin Spring, or else Running the Books: the adventures of an accidental prison librarian by Avi Steinberg. Enjoy your weekend and I’ll tell you what I chose next week! Thanks…
Edit: Logged onto Librarything and asked it to predict whether I would like The Road or not and it said I probably would not, with very high confidence. Very good Librarything!!
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: children's/YA | 2 Comments »
Hello! I’m home early from my vacation; some bad weather ran us off the trails at Tyler 😦 and it was so beautiful, too. I got plenty of reading done, though, and now I’m here to tell you about it.
I finished The Cases That Haunt Us by John Douglas and read Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, The Reversal by Michael Connelly, and Look Again by Lisa Scottoline. (I also picked up a copy of J.D. Robb’s Fantasy in Death at a big-box store in Louisiana but didn’t need it since we came home early.) And I listened to about half of Ian McKellen’s reading of the Odyssey in the car. So, you’ll have to forgive this long post!
In order:
I finished The Cases That Haunt Us, which I’ve been taking in bits and pieces for some time now. Because it’s a compilation of Douglas’s notes about various cases, it reads well this way. I got a little impatient with his style occasionally, but to be fair, this is not a professional writer, but a criminal profiler. I found his analyses very interesting and it was well worth my time. I now have a longer list of serial killers that I want to look up and read about. Is that weird? Thanks Douglas for interesting stories and facts. I’m not sure why this subject is so fascinating to me!
I picked up a copy of Bridge to Terabithia on impulse, having read about it somewhere. This children’s read is not a new book, either, but I think stories like this one stay current. It reminded me of the 1991 movie My Girl with Macaulay Culkin, in which a girl full of her own issues and problems has her perspective widened by the death of her best friend. Bridge to Terabithia involves a 5th-grader short of friends and positive moments in his life, who makes a new best friend and loses her in an accident in which he feels some responsibility. I think it’s an age-old story about friendship, society/rejection (so important especially to kids), and loss. It’s a coming-of-age story, too, because we grow a little bit older when we experience tragedy. I’m not involved with any kids’ reading choices, so this was just a diversion for me… but even an adult can enjoy a quick-read high-quality kids’ story like this one.
Then the main event: Connelly’s latest release, The Reversal. I think I can handle this one without any spoilers, staying within the bounds of the blurb you’ll find online or on the dust jacket. In this book, we have a convergence of characters: defense attorney Mickey Haller teams up with his prosecutor ex-wife Maggie McPherson (“McFierce”) to work for the people this time, and they take Harry Bosch on as their case investigator. I find it exhilarating to have these three in the same room! And we get their daughters together, too, which several of us besides Haller have been looking forward too. As expected, family connections further develop the characters on a personal level. Earlier in the series, Bosch was much more “just” a police detective, but all this personal-life-material has really developed him into a full and complete human. I love it. This is what I read Connelly for.
As expected, we get a full dose of Hollywood society and L.A. setting in this high-profile case. Also, as I’ve come to expect from the Haller books, we get extra courtroom-procedural drama; I especially like the jury selection and analysis. (Here I find a parallel to the criminal profiling I also like.) The case is interesting and convoluted, of course; that’s not optional. But to me, the personal connections and family drama amongst our 3 chief characters is what really makes the book.
I have to file one complaint: I found the ending to be a little anti-climactic and unsatisfactory. I was looking for more answers, just like Harry Bosch was. I guess maybe this is realistic; maybe this is the way cases like this do end. It’s also not the first time Connelly has done this to me, and I still love him and will keep reading. But I guess it ended a little bit abruptly for me. Maybe I’ll come back and reconsider this later, more fully, when others have read the book. If there’s any interest shown. (Chime in here.)
This is where I ran out of reading material, gasp, and stopped off at the above-mentioned big-box store in Ruston, LA. (That’s an experience.) I picked up the J.D. Robb that I never got to (maybe that’s next) along with Lisa Scottoline’s Look Again. I’ve never read her, but I’ve read about her work and it sounds interesting.
Look Again is about a reporter in Philadelphia named Ellen who gets a missing-child postcard in the mail. As she goes to throw it away, she’s stopped by the face on the card: it is, uncannily, the face of her three-year-old adopted son, Will. Amidst drama at her tenuous place of employment, Ellen takes off work and flies to Miami to investigate a two-year-old abduction, and look into her adoption. We get a number of surprises, but not perhaps where Scottoline wanted them: I found the major plot revelation to be completely predictable, while the late-book romance and brief gory, graphic violence caught me off-guard. I wasn’t bothered, but I was surprised by the change in tone, after spending so much time on family and babies. Despite all this, I enjoyed the book. It was fast-paced, kept me involved and interested even as I predicted our big “surprise”, and I really cared about Will’s fate. I’d recommend it to someone who wanted a fast-paced, exhilarating suspense-mystery about family and children, even a little romance, in which setting is important (more on this in a moment) and the ending is fully satisfying (unlike Connelly, hmph). It was a quick, easy, satisfying read.
I observed in reading the Scottoline book that significant sense of place is important to me. I really like how Connelly uses the city of L.A. (and sometimes Vegas or other locales) almost as a character; the place is realistic and very important to the action of the book. For this quality, definitely look to James Lee Burke and his depiction of small-town New Iberia, Louisiana, as well as New Orleans and occasionally other places including Galveston, TX. (His main detective character has a lot in common with Harry Bosch, too.) I’ve only read one Nevada Barr book (starring Anna Pigeon): Deep South, set in Mississippi if I recall correctly. I got the same satisfying sense of place from her, and it’s my impression that this is true of all her books. I like it. I liked that Philadelphia and Miami were well characterized in Look Again. When I read Elizabeth George and Martha Grimes, I get a pretty good sense of place too, but their mysteries are set in Great Britain, and I have much less sense of their settings; I can’t judge how hackneyed or evocative their settings are for myself, if that makes any sense. Even though I’ve never been to Miami, I feel more at home in the U.S. settings mentioned here. So, I’m just still making observations about what’s important to me in a good murder-mystery. Sense of place. Wonder if there are any good ones set in Houston out there. I have read some Susan Wittig Albert; hers are set in small-town Texas not far from Austin. But they’re a bit cute and cozy for me.
Sorry about the rambling there – moving on: the Odyssey audiobook. I was excited about hearing it read aloud to me for the first time, after many readings. This work was composed in oral form before the invention of writing, so it’s really meant to be heard and not read off the page. And Ian McKellen seemed like an excellent selection for reader (he’s Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in case you don’t know). The translation makes a big difference, of course, and forgive me for being picky but I prefer Fitzgerald’s to the Fagles one read here, which is still excellent.
It’s been a few years since my last reading of the Odyssey, and one of the first things to grab me was the use of repetition. Homer helps us keep track of who’s who and where’s where by use of repeated phrases: in the Fagles translation (from memory I paraphrase), “when they’d put aside desire for food and drink, they set their mind on other pleasures” and the epithet of dawn, “young dawn with her rose-red fingers” (Fitzgerald uses “rose-fingered Dawn” and maybe just because I was raised on it I find this more satisfying somehow). I enjoyed this repetition, and of course, the poetry of this beautiful work. McKellen does a beautiful, powerful, emotional job of reading. Although I’m not sure why we need a British accent to make poetry beautiful!
On the other hand, I was a little disappointed at some of the pacing issues. Maybe I’ve been pacing myself differently on the page all these years: maybe I skim more quickly over the repetitious or descriptive parts and rush towards the action (I’ve been guilty of this before). They’re such great stories, as well as being beautiful poetry. Maybe on different days and in different readings I prioritize these two aspects differently. The beauty of reading it myself off a page is that the power is mine to rush or linger. Or maybe I was just concerned, once I got the Husband in the car, about keeping his interest – I think for him, the action definitely needed to be prioritized. You can’t speed Sir Ian up.
Maybe I’m just not sold on the audiobook format. I’ve never been a listener as much as I am a reader. And I’ll stick with “real” books over the Kindle/Nook/etc. for now, thanks. 🙂
So, the vacation may not have gone perfectly (rain in Tyler, boo) but the reading was excellent and hopefully I’ve preserved the bulk of my thoughts long enough to get them online for you. 🙂 Thanks for checking in on me. What are YOU reading these days?
Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: audio, children's/YA, motherhood, mystery, nonfiction, thriller, true crime | 5 Comments »
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