The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (audio)

Posted on August 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Edit – Update! I’ve just linked up to The Stephen King Project blog, where we’re being encouraged to read King (or listen!) and share our reviews. Thanks Natalie for the reminder. I didn’t join on purpose with a plan or anything, but I’m happy to be here now. …and back to the book review.

My word, this is lovely. I have never been disappointed in Stephen King, but this is definitely my favorite of those I’ve read. The Wind Through the Keyhole is part of the Dark Tower series, to which I am new, and therefore I appreciates the introductory remarks, in which King notes that it is not necessary to have read others in the series, but it would help to know a few facts about MidWorld, which he then relates. It’s true: I didn’t have any trouble following the action or keeping track of the rules of this alternate world.

King employs the story-within-a-story format here, and puts it inside another story for good measure. I got so immersed in the innermost story, about young Tim and his frightening journey into the forest in the starkblast, that when it ended I expected the book to end! I suppose it might have been jarring to then return to the story of young Bill and the skinman (which is in turn being told to the characters of the outermost story), but it wasn’t. I was just relieved that there was more to hear.

Stephen King reads this audiobook himself, and does it beautifully. I have listened to a handful of author-narrated audiobooks, and they have all been great. The actors, or professional narrators, are often wonderful as well, but some of these authors do amazing jobs too. Barbara Kingsolver’s reading of The Lacuna was extremely impressive, because of all the different accents necessary. It makes me marvel that a person can be such a talented artist in two different media! But I’m getting off track. Stephen King does a great narration, everything felt very real, and I was comforted knowing that the names of his imaginary lands and people were pronounced just as the author imagined them in his head.

So what is this book about? It opens with Roland Deschain and his traveling companions, chatting on the road to who-knows-where (presumably this is part of a larger storyline that I would know if I were reading the series). A particularly strange and threatening storm called a starkblast is coming, and they seek shelter, and find themselves up all night in the howling wind; so Roland agrees to tell them a story. This is where we leave the outermost story and enter the middle-layer story.

Roland is a young man and a novice gunslinger. I quote Stephen King’s foreward: a gunslinger is “one of a small band that tries to keep order in an increasingly lawless world. If you think of the gunslingers of Gilead as a strange combination of knights errant and territorial marshals in the Old West, you’ll be close to the mark.” He has just lost his mother – killed her, in fact, in an obviously traumatic incident that is only alluded to in this book – when he takes a trip with fellow youngster gunslinger, Jamie, to solve a mysterious series of bloody murders in a small mining town. It is theorized that the murders are being committed by a skinman, a shapeshifter. Roland befriends a young boy, Bill, who has witnessed his father’s murder, takes pity on him, and sits down to tell him a story Roland’s mother used to tell him when he was a little boy. This is the innermost story, and it is called – what do you know – The Wind in the Keyhole.

Once upon a time, in an ironwood-logging town called Tree, Big Ross is killed by a dragon in the woods. His partner, Big Kells, marries Ross’s widow Nell, and becomes stepfather to the boy Tim. Tim’s story is an adventure and sort of a dark and frightening fairy tale. He finds out a sinister secret about his stepfather and takes a journey deep into the treacherous forest where his father was killed; he encounters strange creatures, dragons, fairies, tigers, good magic and bad magic. This innermost story is the one we spend the most time with, and is set in a marvelous otherworldly world, fully developed, filled with creatures and characters and conventions and rules, fascinating and glorious and strange and scary, but also rather sweet.

Roland concludes the telling of The Wind Through the Keyhole to Bill, and then concludes the telling of Bill’s story to his companions, so that we close the stories we’ve opened and finish back with the elder Roland and his companions weathering the starkblast. There is a sense of circularity, and completeness.

The outermost story, of Roland and his fellow travelers, is engaging and also set in another world (MidWorld) I found interesting and would like to hear more about. The middle-layer story, of the young Roland seeking the skinman, involves some good old-fashioned detective skills and has a satisfying conclusion. But the story of young Tim and his quest through the forest was clearly the star. I was entranced, and sorry it was over. I shall be searching out more King, without a doubt! And I appreciated his narration, as I said earlier; I hope he’ll continue to narrate his audiobooks.

Stay tuned: tomorrow I’ll tell you about the teaser chapter for an upcoming book that was included at the end of this one.

Rating: 7 puppy dogs.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 17 Comments »

Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Posted on July 18, 2012 by pagesofjulia

My paperback copy of Blackbirds instructs me (on the back cover, at the top, near the spine) to “file under Urban Fantasy.” I am a fan of these labels, not least as a librarian (!), especially with a book like this one that deviates from my usual genres a little bit. (My usual genres, if you’re a new reader, are mystery/thriller and various nonfiction, especially biography/memoir and nature writing.) So, this is fantasy. Urban. With paranormal aspects. And a very dark tone.

Miriam Black knows when and how people will die. All it takes is skin-on-skin contact. Shake her hand, bump her bare arm on the bus, and she sees your final minutes or moments in a flash. This is, not surprisingly, disturbing and traumatic for Miriam, but she’s learned how to make it work for her. She describes herself as a vulture, not a falcon: she doesn’t cause death (indeed, when she’s tried to stop it, she can’t, and often makes things worse), but she feeds off it. At the very least, she’ll rob the corpse.

This has gone on for a number of years at the opening scene of Blackbirds, and Miriam has developed a cynical, detached outlook that allows her to view death without so much internal damage. Of course, she’s experienced trauma in her life, not all of it linked to her unique gift. But then two forces impact the carefully orchestrated system she’s worked out. First, she meets a man – a nice man, in fact – and shakes his hand, and sees something she’s never seen before: a death scene in which she plays a role. Next, she meets another man who knows what she is and what she can do, and wraps her up in his own con.

The chronology of this story jumps around, which is a format not all readers appreciate, I know; but I think it works nicely here. We follow Miriam through “real time” in main chapters, and spliced in between are interludes, in which we hear her story as told to a young journalist, and the stories of other characters as told to Miriam. Chronology is further confused by the time-travel element in Miriam’s vision. Well, it’s not time travel, but it is a brief view of future events: she sees what happens and knows exactly when, without the benefit of knowing where or why. So we know what we’re rushing up to, but not how to get there.

This is a fast-paced, tremendously suspenseful read. I read it through in one sitting. [Warning: make time for this.] The sense of time passing, of momentum, is great. I couldn’t put this book down and halt the progression of Miriam’s fate; the stakes were too high! While there’s a feeling of inevitability, the ending applies a twist. I loved the dark atmosphere, too. Miriam is damaged, foul-mouthed, crude, but good-hearted and vulnerable, like so many great hero-villains. [While not entirely like any of them, Miriam evokes certain elements of Jack Reacher, Dave Robicheaux, Harry Bosch, Lizbeth Salander, and Mallory.*] In fact, my pleasant-surprise-observation is that this book is more similar to some of my murder mystery/thriller favorites than I expected. I think I feared a gothic blood-sucking-evil-death darkness and/or horror elements that would be too much for me, but instead I find this a great crossover read, and will be seeking more Wendig. Apparently there is a sequel coming soon! I am anxious!

*Fictional characters written by, respectively, Lee Child, James Lee Burke, Michael Connelly, Stieg Larsson, and Carol O’Connell.

Rating: 8 deadly daydreams.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | 7 Comments »

Teaser Tuesdays: Blackbirds by Chuck Wendig

Posted on July 17, 2012 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 a fan of Chuck Wendig’s blog for some time, but just now got around to reading one of his books, Blackbirds. And it was fabulous! Here’s a taste:

Miriam’s been walking for a half-hour, and the thoughts that run through her mind have serious legs. Terrible thoughts jog swift laps.

Is that not a great line? This is actually an example of one of the details of Wendig’s writing that I appreciate: the personification of things like, well, thoughts. It’s evocative. Miriam is just the kind of character I find fascinating, too: cynical, damaged, tough but vulnerable, and of course, well-developed. (As a character. Not in her bosom.)

And what are you reading today?

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: , | 5 Comments »

Tales from Watership Down by Richard Adams

Posted on June 25, 2012 by pagesofjulia

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.

As I noted in my book beginning post last week, I am taking this one out of order, since I have not yet read Watership Down. That original is a well-regarded fable or heroic tale about a group of rabbits overcoming odds to start a new life; these Tales are a late sequel (published more than 20 years after the original), and come in the form of a collection of short stories. They include the fables that the rabbits of Watership Down live with (their own cultural mythology, if you will) as well as stories involving the rabbits of the present day. They are sweet and curious; Adams includes a lapine glossary and gives these anthropomorphized bunnies their own societal norms and shared history. Some of these tales resembled some of the other great heroic myths in our own culture’s tradition; I thought of the ancient Greeks, for instance, because there is some question of god’s (or gods’) interference in the lives of mortals (rabbits). The stories were interesting, somewhat familiar in themes but engrossing. In a nutshell, I enjoyed them very much; they made for a quick, easy, entertaining, evocative session. The emotions that the rabbits feel – courage, fear, love, concern, friendship, curiousity – were very real, and I cared about the characters. Oh, and they have such lovely names! That said, I definitely felt the hole left by my failure to read Watership Down first, and think that that would have enriched the experience. Big events are referred to and not explained; I feel confident that’s what the first book did. So, recommended, but probably not until you’ve read the original, which I shall look forward to doing.

Rating: 5 bunny ears (probably more if I had read the first book first).

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey

Posted on November 20, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Yet another hit for Amy, my sci-fi friend. She’s 4-for-4 now, by my memory: first she gave me a (rare!) copy of Thank Heaven Fasting (the non-sci-fi outlier); then lent me The Hemingway Hoax; then recommended Soulless and now Kushiel’s Dart.

This is truly an epic masterpiece of world-building. I will go so far as to mention J.R.R. Tolkien.

I am a little bit challenged to categorize this story further; sci-fi I suppose it is. It is also speculative fiction? These genres are a little out of my league! There is some romance; there is plenty of sex. There is political and courtly intrigue. Think Tolkien for the world-building, and then add Philippa Gregory for the courtly intrigue and playful sex, even Sharon Kay Penman’s attention to detail; but it’s never slow! Oh no, I read these 901 pages (901!) in a two-day weekend. Many long hours and some lost sleep, but well worth it.

I don’t expect to be able to do much with plot summation, but I’ll try and give you a taste. The people of Terre d’Ange worship the demigod Elua and his Companions; the words he gave them to live by are, “love as thou wilt.” Love – or more to the point, sex – is considered a form of worship, and an entire class of men and women are raised from birth to be Servants of Naamah, the goddess-prostitute. They’re trained, then, in courtly manners as well as sexual tricks, which they perform for fees until the House that trained them has been paid off, and then they are free to continue in business for themselves or to pursue whatever path they choose.

Phèdre would have belonged to one of the Houses of the Servants of Naamah, but she was born flawed, or marked, by the dart of Kushiel, the one of Elua’s companions who loves pain. For her, pain and pleasure are forever linked. She is raised by an individual, not a House, and trained for a specialized kind of service, one that combines pain and degradation with sex. Her patron/caregiver/adopted parent is Anafiel Delaunay, and he has more in mind than the profits of her work; he trains her not only as a very high-class courtesan, but as an information-gathering multilingual scholar-spy. It is unclear to the young Phèdre what Anafiel’s political goals are, but she is very talented at playing her own role in his game, and she is deeply committed. Anafiel is a beloved father figure.

All of this transpires in the first third or less of the book, but I’ll stop here. Phèdre gets involved in matters of state much larger than she could ever have expected, and it will take all her formidable skills to protect herself and those she loves – and maybe, to save her nation.

I found Kushiel’s Dart to be incredibly engrossing. I couldn’t put this book down; I just couldn’t bear to leave Phèdre in a predicament. I came to love and root for her companions; I was invested in this story. I recommend it to anyone who likes to get lost in another world – and the world of Terre d’Ange and her neighboring nations is most definitely “other,” although there are recognizable traces of our own.

Amy tells me that this is the first in a trilogy, and there are three trilogies; but she assures us that each trilogy stands alone. This first installment stands alone outstandingly well too, although I won’t say you won’t be tempted to keep reading further! She also assures us that the books, if anything, improve as the series develop. All good news there.

Has anyone else discovered these outstanding epic novels? Anyone tempted to? I recommend!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 5 Comments »

vocabulary lessons: The Great Night

Posted on June 4, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Sometimes I learn a lot of new words from a book. For bookmarks, I don’t use pretty bits that were designed for use as bookmarks; I use scraps of paper (usually, something that’s been printed on one side and discarded, which I then cut into quarter-pages for just this purpose). I try to carry a pen, and I take notes on the bookmark about questions I have, or passages I might want to come back to later. This way, I can look up that reference to a book, movie, or person I wasn’t familiar with; I can quote a passage in a blog post; or I can look up the meaning of unfamiliar words and go back and reread the sentence with a new understanding.

The Great Night was full of learning opportunities – so much so, that I thought I’d share them here.

Monchhichi – okay, maybe everyone knew this one but me. Apparently a Monchhichi doll is a Japanese stuffed monkey with a certain “look” to it, thus the usage: “…might… run into a girl with a Monchhichi hairdo who could demonstrate that it didn’t matter at all…”

cosmesis – the preservation, restoration, or bestowing of bodily beauty. (very appropriate for fairy-land?) “So she did magic instead, scene by scene, working a sort of dual cosmesis upon the players and the play…”

irenic – tending to promote peace or reconciliation; peaceful or conciliatory. “…her wild spasms contrasting with the irenic strains of the music.”

capacitous – having large or exemplary capacity. “How odd, she thought, and how horrible to see them still there, slosh full of tears and regret, but no more capacitous, and perhaps not as full, as her own.”

These were all so very new to me! (And I had to look up the movie Soylent Green, too. Fairly integral to the plot, actually.) I love learning while I read. Have you spotted any new words lately?

Filed under: musings | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

The Great Night by Chris Adrian

Posted on May 30, 2011 by pagesofjulia

This book is billed as a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which sounds fairly ambitious. The original classic is far too much to mess around with lightly. I find it beautiful, haunting, magical, and surprisingly accessible; I think anyone and everyone should be able to enjoy a production of this play, which might not be true of all the bard’s work, no matter how wonderful. But I have to give Adrian full credit: I feel that he created something new out of it, definitely a recognizable retelling, but something new and beautiful in its own way, very different and very wonderful too.

Three young people, Henry, Will, and Molly, are all (separately) lost in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco at dusk on midsummer night’s eve. All three were on their way to the same party which none really wanted to attend; all three are tenuously connected without actually knowing one another; and all three are quite neurotic in their own ways. Meanwhile, Titania is grief-stricken, having lost her Boy to leukemia (and being unfamiliar with the mortal concept of death), and then having lost Oberon, who left her when they quarreled in their shared grief. In despair and resignation, she releases Puck from his bond of servitude, and he rages as the Beast throughout the park. Also meanwhile, a troupe of homeless aspiring actors meet to rehearse a musical play, but are separated, as the fairies come out to frolic, or flee Puck, or make mischief.

Chapter by chapter we get inside the heads of the three mortal lovers, and sometimes of Titania too. The character development is exquisite; I loved learning more about the histories of Will, Molly, and Henry, and gradually putting together the clues and learning how they’re interconnected and where their respective neuroses might have come from. The depth of these complex, nuanced, disturbed characters might have been my most favorite part of this book.

Titania gets substantially more development, too. The lengthened and deepened relationship with the Boy, and his battle with cancer, allow for her to mature and look outside herself in ways that a fairy queen would not normally be called to do. Even Puck gets a more significant personality, and desires of his own.

Part fairy tale – of course – The Great Night has all the magic and all the lavish scenery that Shakespeare’s Titania & Oberon could have wanted, helped along by the alternately lush & misty San Francisco parkland. As in the play, there are disturbing moments; but these are fully fleshed out. I guess the great difference here is that this is a lengthy novel (~300 pages) with all the exposition that comes with this format, and there is simply less opportunity in a slim play for this kind of development. But Adrian’s work is darker, and more graphic. (There is Sex. Seriously.) The ending is not lighthearted and happy as it is in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Among the mortal characters, we meet a tree doctor; men and women recovering from the suicides of loved ones; and the mess that OCD can make of a life; the lovers are gay and straight but always damaged. But the worlds are so fully realized… and the three youth are so fully developed, I ached for them. When every chapter closed, I regretted leaving that chapter’s focus character, but was happy to reunite with the next.

This was one of those books I was very sorry to see the end of. I wish there were more. Luckily, Adrian has written other books!

I recommend The Great Night. Certainly nothing is taken away from Shakespeare’s masterpiece; but this is a different realization of the same story-skeleton, in a different format, and it is absolutely an accomplishment all by itself.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

Teaser Tuesdays: The Great Night by Chris Adrian

Posted on May 24, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

* Grab your current read
* Open to a random page
* Share two “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
* BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
* Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This is the modern-day re-telling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which three young people wander into a San Francisco park at dusk and have adventures while Titania searches for her lost love, Oberon, who left her when they fought following the death of their Boy. So far I’m finding it to be a beautiful, evocative painting of a book. I like.

From page 146:

There was another, grander room beyond them, a cozier hall than the last, only about half as big, with grass on the floors and flowers on the walls, and a ceiling hung with hundreds of little colored lanterns. It was empty of furniture except for a table the size of a flatbed truck piled with food and surrounded by chairs of every conceivable size, and empty of people except for the girl, who had called herself Eleanor Roosevelt. She was sprawled in a chair with a bottle of wine in her hand.

“You all again,” she said.

Filed under: tuesday teasers | Tagged: | 2 Comments »

catching up: Niffenegger weekend

Posted on January 10, 2011 by pagesofjulia

Hello there. Sorry I’m slow to cover my weekend’s reading for you. Here I am now!

This was a fun weekend because the Husband did a marathon mountain bike race while I watched and supported for a change. He did much better than he had hoped, and seemed to do it pretty easily too, so I’m very proud. I had a good time watching a number of friends do very well, in fact.

I also managed to finish Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveler’s Wife and then Her Fearful Symmetry (finished today at lunch), so it’s been a Niffenegger-heavy weekend. I didn’t intend to read two of hers in row, but was already reading and enjoying Time Traveler when a library patron brought me her personal (autographed) copy of Symmetry, to borrow – thereby making me feel like I should read it next…

So first things first. The Time Traveler’s Wife was very enjoyable! I felt like it had a little lighter feel to it earlier in the book, then gets a little more thoughtful, dark, contemplative, and frightening later in the book. This is actually appropriate, for Clare’s point of view, since she takes her time-traveling husband lightly when she’s younger, only realizing risks & dangers as she grows older. When she is an adult and understands all the implications, things become very frightening indeed. I found all the emotions and reactions pretty human, and was very absorbed in the characters. I also found the novel’s implied questions, about fate, sequence, causality, responsibility, forgiveness, and other issues of humanity, to be compelling. The time-travel construct worked well for me. I was impressed by a beautiful, romantic story with believable characters. I was also impressed with some of the emotional scenes Niffenegger managed to “paint” for us, like the dream sequences on pages 373-4.

And, I found myself crying. Again! Something strange must be happening to me. At least I can say it’s NOT my biological clock 🙂 because I continue to be just a little impatient with all the maternal stuff in several books I’ve been reading over the last several months: The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger; Still Missing, Chevy Stevens; Look Again, Lisa Scottoline; I’d Know You Anywhere, Laura Lippman; My Sister’s Keeper, Jodi Picoult – just off the top of my head. I’m a bit fed-up with motherhood and maternity as themes, and have decided to purposefully avoid (in the near future at least) Emma Donoghue’s Room, which I’ve been interested in for months now, because it sits pretty squarely on those themes.

I give this one a strong rating and am glad I finally picked it up.

With some hesitation, then, I picked up Niffenegger’s Her Fearful Symmetry as my next read. I hesitated because I rarely read the same author, or even theme or style or subject matter, back-to-back. I don’t even think I can remember reading back-to-back in a series. I guess I just feel like my brain likes a break, a palate-cleanser if you will. So with slight trepidation I began the next book; and I think I was right to be a bit nervous, because the first book ends with a death and a partner mourning, and the second book begins with a death and a partner mourning, and really never gets much happier than that. No, they’re not serial, just continue a similar tone.

Plot synopsis: Twins Valentina and Julia do not know their mother’s twin sister Elspeth until they inherit Elspeth’s London flat. There are two conditions: they must inhabit the flat for a year before they can sell; and their parents cannot set foot in it. Upon arriving in London, these ethereal, deeply attached young girls meet their interesting neighbors: Martin is an endearing but very sick obsessive-compulsive; and Robert was Elspeth’s lover, and is having quite a bit of trouble “letting go” her memory. They also get to know their mysterious aunt.

The melancholic, obsessive grief that starts this book doesn’t really let up. Perhaps I simply wasn’t in the mood to be made to feel this way, but I didn’t *love* this book as much as I did Time Traveler. I think it was almost every bit as well-crafted, and the emotions (while disturbing) still rang true; but it was just a bit too creepy. I won’t go any further for fear of spoiling, but this was a creepy book. To be fair, I had trouble putting it down; I think it was well done. But it didn’t feel as good. I think The Time Traveler’s Wife accomplished a feat: it took me through a range of emotions and life stages and, if it didn’t tie things up in a happy cozy way, at least it tied things up in a way that felt very complete. Her Fearful Symmetry, on the other hand, explored dark emotions rather deeply without a great deal of light. The paranormal aspects in the first book were a quirky vehicle through which to experience emotions and relationships and ask interesting questions. The latter read more like a ghost story (more and more so as the story develops), with an ending that was a little Poe-like in its creepiness.

I preferred the first, obviously, although if you were a bit more open to the ghost-story aspect, you might like the second better than I did. I believe even objectively, though, the first was a greater achievement. Or maybe I just shouldn’t overindulge in Niffenegger, hm?

I’ve heard a fair amount about her recent graphic novel, The Night Bookmobile, as well. Librarians and libraries and books play an important role in Niffenegger’s work in general (Henry from The Time Traveler’s Wife is a librarian; Elspeth from Her Fearful Symmetry is a bookseller), and the starring role in this latest. But the consensus amongst the library groups I hear from seems to be that her treatment of the librarian in The Night Bookmobile is downright and absolutely creepy. They don’t seem to like it. Again, maybe we just need to be looking for a ghost story? Or is there really something “wrong” with these stories? Presumably there are readers out there who love them. Any thoughts?

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | 9 Comments »

« Previous Page