I'm pretty sure my friend Diqui loaned me this book, so it isn't one that I chose myself. However, it was a good read, and I'd recommend it to someone looking for a thoughtful ChickLit selection--perfect for the beach or airplane in particular. The cover of the book quotes Booklist as saying, "A novel about friendship and sisterhood for readers who like Fannie Flagg and Adriana Tragiani," and I'd say that's quite accurate.
The book is set in the early 1970s, when two childhood friends are reunited. Despite the different directions they have taken--hometown, responsible girl versus free-spirited hippie--in the nine years since they last saw each other, Button and Winnalee instantly rekindle a deep friendship. With a cast of other strong women models, and a few men in the background, they forge a partnership to redefine who they are and where they are headed. There are the expected ups and down, with ups winning overall, making this is a slightly sentimental but well-written summer book.
Diqui bought this when she borrowed my Kindle for a trip last year, and Eddie and I have been reading it aloud when we travel or in the mornings when we have some time together on weekends. Finished in April at home.
This is the final book of Westerfeld's Steampunk trilogy and it doesn't disappoint. The WWII-with-a-twist setting continues to fascinate, and this volume brings in additional historical figures from the United States and Mexico in addition to new Clanker and Darwinist contraptions that are sure to please. An added bonus is that Westerfeld continues a thin vein of romance to keep the girls reading, while not letting it overwhelm the plot as so many other (primarily female) teen authors do. You can read more details about the underlying premise in my review of the second book in the series, Behemoth, but be sure to start with Leviathan in order to grasp the underlying concepts--and the kick of of WWII.
In posts 46 (American Vampire) and 92.11 (Full Dark, No Stars), I expressed my admiration for Stephen King's storytelling skill. I have, I believe, read every book King has written, and at times I find myself defending my devotion. When I recently told a friend I was reading 11/22/63, he exclaimed skeptically, "Stephen King? Really?" Really.
I think many of my contemporaries read Carrie and The Shining, and even more saw the movies, but fewer have followed the rest of King's career. I took a 15 to 20-year break myself, until I stumbled upon The Dark Tower series King started in 1982 at age 19 and took 22 years to finish (publishing additional volumes in 1987, 1991, 1997, 2003, 2004, 2004). It's claimed that King intentionally set out to write his own Lord of the Rings epic, and the alternative reality established in The Dark Tower books is just as compelling as anything by Tolkien--although a bit darker, as one might expect of King. The books, inspired by Spaghetti Westerns and borrowing from Robert Browning's poem "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came," follow the tales of Roland Deschain of Gilead (The Gunslinger) as he pursues the man in black (No, not Johnny Cash, alas.) who sets him on a journey to the Dark Tower. This review isn't about the Dark Tower, of course, so I won't go further into it, but what did come out of my reading the series was a new love of King's writing. Add the fact that he managed to weave in story threads from his previous novels--which I was then compelled to go back and read--and I was smitten.
While the Dark Tower series was King's venture into a completely different world/time, the majority of his books are set in contemporary American society. There's a great familiarity to events, people, and places--but with a twist of the unreal, unlikely, or downright insane. 11/22/63 starts off in a familiar 2011, with an average high school English teacher doing typical things. When Jake Epping steps sideways, though, into another time--1958--we're in the realm of Stephen King. There's a lot to this realm, evidenced by the 842 pages it covers, but the main premise is that Jake sets off with the goal of stopping the assassination of JFK, armed with the meticulous notes of a man who set off to do the same but was unable to complete his mission once cancer and age caught up with him. The possibility of taking on a task such as saving Kennedy exists due to the particular characteristics of King's time portal--no matter how much time is spent on the other side, when Jake returns to this side, only two minutes will have elapsed. And, when he travels back, he arrives in the exact same place and time in 1958 as before, essentially resting anything he did during the previous visit.
King always does a remarkable job of making the impossible seem entirely normal, and that holds true in this book as well, mainly because the majority of things that happen are just so average--eating and traveling and driving cars and falling in love. Like Jake, who must live in an alternate time for five years after arriving in America at the end of the 1950s (14 years before he was born) in order to change the history books, readers are immersed in the time period. The past is obdurate, we learn with Jake, and resists change. And, if Jake can change events, what would ultimately come of a world where a watershed moment is remarkably altered? Would saving JFK also save Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, as Jake and his predecessor hope? Would the Vietnam War be avoided, saving thousands of American lives? What of the Civil Rights movement?
Jake spends most of the book pondering these thoughts, which allows readers the same opportunity. It's exhilarating, and difficult, and a bit scary. It's King at his enduring best.
In my last book entry of 2011, I discussed my penchant for buying books, many of which go unread for some time, and my resolution to stem the tide of book buying in 2012. My first book of 2012 nicely represents this new effort. In the case of The Monsters of Templeton, I have concrete evidence that the book has been languishing on my to-be-read shelves for some time: a receipt for Powell's Books, dated 4/12/09, was tucked in the front cover. I'm not sure how many points I can score for waiting 2 years and 9 months to read this book, but it does represent one fewer tome gathering dust (only partially true, I suppose, since it will still be gathering dust--just in its properly alphabetized location on the already-read shelves).
Like many of these neglected volumes, Monsters turned out to be a very good book. Set in a small city in upstate New York, pretty clearly modeled on Cooperstown because of the baseball museum, Templeton is staged as idyllic America. Nestled on a lake amidst the rolling, forested hills, the town flourished early on and regained its importance with the establishment of the museum. The book's main character, Willie Upton, is a descendant of the town founder, raised by her ex-hippie mother in the sprawling home he built on the lake shore. Now finishing her PhD in archeology, she returns to Templeton in self-described disgrace on the every day that Glimmey, the monster rumored to live in the lake, has died and floated to the top.
Of course, the book's title implies that there is more than one monster to be found in Templeton. In the search to find her true father--whom her mother now admits is a town citizen and not one of three possible men from the free-love San Fransico commune she left upon the death of her parents--Willie digs into the past to uncover who the mysterious man may be, unearthing a few monsters along the way. The only hint her mother provides her with is that Willie's father also shares a bloodline with the founding father--although of a less legitimate nature. The stories of these family monsters are told through a series of letters as well as invented narratives, uncovering a rich history and, ultimately, Willie's heritage. It's a historical take on an early American settlement, and I'm happy I finally pulled it from the shelf.
I have the bad habit of buying the majority of the books I read in hardcover. I could come up with any number of excuses, but it comes down to laziness and impatience: I don't want to wait for the paperback version, and I don't want to take a trip to the library. The worst thing about this habit is that I don't just buy as many books as I can read at a given time. Instead, I simply buy books when I encounter them, and I worry about reading them at a later time. You won't be surprised to hear that this results in a large number (dozens might be a modest figure) of unread books gracing my shelves at any given time.
The reason I'm making this confession is two fold: it is a habit I would like to change, and it sets the premise for this book, which has sat on my shelf for two years since its purchase. When she came by to borrow some reading for the holidays, my friend Diqui saw me reading The Lacuna and exclaimed, "You're just reading that now? I read it over a year ago." The ridiculous thing about this is that Diqui read my copy--borrowed from the very shelves she was perusing. My bad habit is such that this is not an uncommon occurrence, I must confess, and I won't even get into the problem of purchasing duplicate copies of the same book. (My friend Marsha can give you the details there, should you be curious.)
The reason I put off reading The Lacuna is obscure at best. I am, in fact, a big fan of Kingsolver--and of her two most recent novels in particular. I even recall eagerly waiting to get home from the store to read it, and it made it to my bed-side reading stack--a sign of favor in my book hierarchy. However, at some point in time--likely when clearing surfaces for a gathering at our house--the book made its way back to the library shelves and just never reached out to me again. Why I pulled it from the numerous other books awaiting my attention right now is likewise unclear--although partially attributable to me goal of buying fewer books--but I'm glad that it did.
Like The Poisonwood Bible and Prodigal Summer, The Lacuna explores a time and place through the eyes of a primary character: a fictional man interacting with real figures from 1930s-50s Mexico and the US. Harrison Shepherd (who seems so realistic that I had to look him up to make sure he didn't exist), son of an American father and Mexican mother, arrives in Mexico in 1929 with his mother and follows her through a number of living situations--with one two-year stint at a military school back in the States--until he finds himself mixing plaster for Diego Rivera, serving as cook to Rivera and Frida Khalo, and acting as personal assistant to Lev Trotsky. Upon Trotsky's death, Shepherd returns to the U.S. in 1941 and eventually becomes a popular author of novels featuring the Aztec and Maya, at least until the Committee on Un-American Activities catches wind of him. The entire story is told through Shepherd's fictional diaries, fabricated book reviews, and created letters--with 8-10 actual articles and documents mixed between them to add to the realistic tone. It's a riveting read, and it provides one of my favorite ways to learn about history: through the lens of excellent fiction. If you have been thinking about reading this book and somehow, like me, just never got around to it, I'd recommend you do so now.
I remember being fascinated by the Salem witch trials when I was a teen, but since then I haven't given them much thought. This novel does a nice job of establishing a believable context for a story about a young scholar who discovers a "lost" Salem witch, never recorded in history books. The witch also ends up being her great-great grandmother, and the story's protagonist follows the chain of succession to the modern day, only to find that she herself is a witch--with inherent witchy powers. (The author bio informs the reader that Howe herself is the descendant of two women involved in the Salem trials--one of whom was executed--although it doesn't, alas, state whether she has special powers.) In addition to a good tale, the novel explores the role of "wise" women in pre-American European settlements, provides background on the witch trials in the 1600s, and encourages the reader to consider the ways in which societies can make something "real" for periods of time.
This is the second Donnelly book I read, and it was as good or better than the first. A troubled American teenager travels to Paris with her father and discovers a journal that takes her back centuries in time--in both a figurative and, eventually, literal sense. It's a great coming-of-age story combining history and fantasy in an engaging manner. There's lots to be learned here, and teen girls will love the romance and angst as well.
Review coming soon. Tell me what you thought!
I've seen this book listed as a top pick in a number of places, but I kept putting it down each time I came across it. I'm less compelled to read TweenLit than TeenLit, and Vietnam-era references aren't my favorite either. It's hard to ignore such regular recommendations, though, and I finally broke down and bought Eli on a visit to my local bookseller. And, the critics were right: this is a charming and compelling novel--a wonderful look into the summer of 1976 and the life of a young boy grappling with the effects Vietnam had on his country, his veteran father, and his family.
I turned nine the August after America's Bicentennial celebration, which gives me a natural affinity for the book's 10-year-old author. While Eli's family and community are different than the one in which I was raised, the period details in the book--fashion, music, social norms--are genuine and richly developed. It's a rare book that can make you feel as if the sun is beating on your back, the strains of Cat Stevens and Van Morrison are ringing in your ears, and the scent of evaporating summer rain is invading your nostrils. House does all this and more, though. I'm reminded of another of my favorite books in recent years, The Mammoth Cheese by Sheri Holman, which also focuses on Americana, celebration, and turmoil.
In a nutshell, Eli the Good is an immersion. Take a dip in this wonderful book, swim through its pages, and emerge both tired and exhilarated.
Several years ago, I read Westerfeld's Uglies series for teens, set in a future where everyone is transformed at age 16 from an Ugly to a Pretty through radical plastic surgery, and was hooked. The man simply knows how to tell a story, drawing the reader into a world intriguingly different, yet hauntingly similar to his/her own. He has published a second, also excellent, teen series called Midnighters, a few stand-alone teen books, and a good sci-fi trilogy for adults. In the Leviathon series, Westerfeld tackles another sub-genre: SteamPunk.
Take a future with Victorian-era morals, behaviors, and dress, mix in one fully-mechanized society a'la the Industrial Revolution, and shake it up with another equally mechanized society--but with mechanics based on biology and the creation of new beings, thanks to Darwin's good work--and you have a rich SteamPunk environment. It's a genre that has been gaining ground among fantasy and sci-fi folk in recent years. And, while I am less taken with it than some other branches of the genre, Westerfeld's story and gift for making the unreal quite normal make this a pretty good start for someone interested in checking out the trend.
The story alternates between two main characters: a teen girl posing as a boy to serve in the English (Darwinist) airforce and a Austrian (Industrial) prince whose parents were recently assassinated in the Balkans. (Why yes, it does sound familiar!) Against this early-WWII-with-a-twist backdrop, the two improbably meet, become unlikely friends (though she longs for more), and eventually fight as allies. In this second volume of the series, the action focuses on Istanbul, which has remained neutral in the war thus far. Featuring helium-powered biological blimps, lizards that serve as verbal messengers, mechanical multi-legged and -armed tanks, sultans, and spices, it's a winning combination for male and female readers alike.
