Author: booknutgirls

booknutgirls http://thebooknutdotcom.wordpress.com I read. I blog. I sell books. I chauffeur my kids. What more do you need to know?

Audiobook: Fragile Things

1 Comment

by Neil Gaiman
read by the author
ages: adult
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I decided, upon finishing listening to this, that I wouldn’t mind if Neil Gaiman came and narrated my life. He has such a wonderful reading voice, spellbinding on its own, that he could be reading my grocery list, and I would listen, captivated.

But, thankfully, I didn’t have to listen to my grocery list, which would have gotten quite tedious after a while. Rather, I got a collection of some fascinating, some entertaining, some disturbing Gaiman stories. I didn’t love them all, but the ones I liked, I really liked. I think, perhaps, that I like Gaiman in short doses — I absolutely love his stuff for kids — rather than his long novels. So, a collection of stories and poems was just about my speed.

Some of my favorites? “A Study in Emerald,” his take on a Sherlock Holmes story which is weird and wild, and has an absolutely brilliant twist at the end. Or “October in the Chair,” a delightful story personalizing the months of the year and their gathering where they each take turns telling one story, and the story that October (it’s his year) tells. Or “How to Talk to Girls at Parties,” which is a mundane awkward boy party until you realize that they crashed a party of alien girls. Or “Sunbird” which is about an epicurean club who have basically tried eating everything there is to eat. Except for the sunbird. Or, the poem “Instructions”, which is one of my favorite picture books.

Sure, there were some missteps (I had issues with ” The Problem of Susan” and another story, where the sex just felt gratuitous), but for the most part, I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this one. Then again, it may have been because I’d listen to Gaiman read anything.

State of the TBR Pile 15: April 2013

6 Comments

And currently on the nightstand:

One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich (lent to me by a member of my in-person book group)
Apothecary, by Maile Meloy (for my work 3-5th Grade book club June selection)
The Little Way of Ruthie Lemming, by Rod Dreher (my husband knows him, read this, and says I need to read it so I  know why he wants a cow)
Orleans, by Sherri L. Smith (because it sounds interesting, though C was freaked out by it)
A Tale for the Time Being , by Ruth Ozeki (because it sounds interesting)
The Different Girl, by Gordon Dahlquist (Ms. Yingling piqued my interest in this one)
Where’d You Go Bernadette, by Maria Semple
Last Days of Summer, by Steve Kluger (Because I adore My Most Excellent Year)
Eleanor & Park, by Rainbow Rowell
The Blind Side, by Michael Lewis (this was initially for the library winter challenge, but I didn’t get to it in time. I’m still interested in it, though.)
Here Where the Sunbeams are Green, by Helen Phillips (I liked the cover…)
The Fire Horse Girl, by Kay Honeyman (Charlotte blogged about it, and I liked the idea)
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Alire Saenz (it’s been on my radar since the ALA awards, I’m just now getting around to reading it)

And two more, unpictured:
Unlucky Charms, by Adam Rex
Hold Fast, by Blue Balliet

So, what’s on your pile this month?

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made

Leave a comment

by Stephan Pastis
ages: 9+
First sentence: “It’s harder to drive a polar bear into somebody’s living room than you’d think.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by the publisher.

Timmy Failure is the founder, president, and CEO of Total Failure, Inc. Detective Agency (“We won’t fail, despite what the names says”), the only other employee being his pet polar bear, Total. (Hence the name. Total insisted.) They haven’t had many cases, but as long as his friend Rollo or The Evil One (her name is Corrina Corrina) don’t interfere (they’re always interfering), he just knows he’ll become Famous. He’s got the brains for it.

Except… well… Let’s just say that The Diary of a Wimpy Kid made dorks loveable. And in some ways, this buys into the whole loveable dork thing. Timmy is full of bravado, but it’s not loveable dork as much as Completely Clueless and Delusional.

See — and I’m not sure kids will get this while reading it —  but there’s an undertone (I’m not quite sure it’s intentional or not) of pure Pathetic here. Timmy’s younger than Greg is (9 or so), and his litany of things going wrong is long. He’s failing school, because he doesn’t want to work. He has to move into an apartment because his mother (his father isn’t explained: Divorce? Death?) can’t hold onto the house. His mother is dating someone he really doesn’t like. He’s no good at catching things. He obsesses over Corrina Corrina. He’s friends with a polar bear, but you’re never quite sure if it’s real or if it’s imaginary. I felt bad for the kid.

 But, I do have to admit that I laughed sometimes. Sometimes, Timmy was funny in his pathetic delusions. And Pastis does capture those delusions quite well with his text and art. In fact, my favorite thing about this was the drawings. If you’re at all familiar with Pearls Before Swine, then you’ll know what to expect. More often than not, the illustrations are what made me laugh.

I’m not quite sure how kids are going to react to this, or if they’re going to eat this up the way they do Diary of a Wimpy Kid.  I was kind of lukewarm about it all, but maybe that’s because I’m an adult. I’m curious to read the next volume, though, just to see where Pastis takes Timmy’s story.

Dark Triumph

1 Comment

by Robin LaFevers
ages: 14+
First sentence: “I did not arrive at the convent of Saint Mortain some green stripling.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by my place of employment.
Others in the series: Grave Mercy

For a year, I have been trying to handsell Grave Mercy to customers here in Wichita by telling them it’s a book about very awesome, kick-butt Nuns of Death. (Because, seriously: why wouldn’t  you want to read a book about a kick-butt nun of death??) But I have not had a single success: no one has bought the book. (So much so that we haven’t gotten Dark Triumph in.) After finishing this one, though, I think I need to change my tactic: while the main characters are assassins, these are rich, layered, fascinating works of Historical Fiction, with adventure, passion, and politics (not just country politics, but those between men and women), at every turn. For the adult readers, who don’t normally go for the YA stuff: if you liked Discovery of Witches or Outlander or any Phillippa Gregory book, you will love this one.

The overarching story of Duchess Anne’s attempt to hold on to Brittany in the late 15th century picks up where it left off in Grave Mercy (not necessary to read, but helpful): she’s holed up in Rennes trying to figure out who’s trustworthy, while her main adversary (and vile human being) d’Albret is in Nantes, plotting against her (he wants the kingdom any way possible, and she turned him down for marriage). The nominal story, however, is not Duchess Anne’s but rather, Sybella’s, one of those assassin nuns. She’s been sent to infiltrate d’Albret’s household, get information, and possibly kill d’Albret, if she can get close enough. D’Albret’s house is not a happy place for any woman (all five of his previous wives from less-than-natural causes), but Sybella has one more layer to this madness: she is d’Albret’s daughter.

I’ll just wrap this up by saying this: it’s dark — there is evil in Sybella’s world, and that doesn’t make for an easy read — but it’s not so dark that it’s unreadable. I loved the romance; it came on slowly, and for once the romantic interest wasn’t Tall, Dark, and Handsome. I loved how LaFevers played with the politics of men and women, and how Sybella used everything she had to work with in her favor. She is smart, yet she doubts herself and her mission, making her a wonderfully complex character.

I can’t wait to read the next one.

Rump

2 Comments

The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin
by Liesl Shurtliff
ages: 9+
First sentence: “My mother named me after a cow’s rear end.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by my place of employment.

Rump lives in the Village on the Mountain in the Kingdom, a place where there are two surefire things: names have power (which is why they don’t name living things), and the king loves his gold. The second is vital to the Village’s survival: it’s their duty to find gold in the Mountain for the king. Except their supply is dwindling. The first is Rump’s curse, or so he feels: he’s only got half a name. He doesn’t really believe his mother — who died shortly after giving birth — only meant to name him Rump. But as to what the rest of the name is, he has no clue.

Then: his grandmother dies, and Rump’s slowly starving because he’s too sad to work. That, and the miller — who’s in charge of the rations — is becoming stingier. Then, one night, he finds his mother’s old spinning wheel, and Rump discovers something: he can spin straw into gold.

If you’re familiar with the fairy tale at all, you pretty much know what’s going to happen next. Except, Shurtliff does some fun, fresh things with the tale while staying true to the basic story arc. The most unique, I think, is the idea of a “rumple” — magic that catches a person in it’s tethers — and a “stiltskin” — powerful magic that can break the rumple. I liked how she played with the name of the fairy tale character, giving it meaning, which also fit into the world she had built.

Shurtliff made this into a journey story as well: in order for Rump to figure out his own True Name, he has to leave the Village and travel to Yonder and Beyond in order to figure things out. On his way he meets several other characters that were clever and endearing, most notably: the trolls, who find magic items and hide them from humans; and his three aunts, who weave and spin marvelous things.

It’s a tight, clever little book, one that captures what’s best about middle grade fantasy (indeed: I picked this one up because both C and A raved about it, and I thought it sounded delightful), and what we love about fairy tales.

Unchangeable Spots of Leopards

3 Comments

by Kristopher Jansma
ages: adult
First sentence: “I’ve lost every book I’ve ever written.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I’ve been wondering about  how to blog about this ever since I started it, really.  See: it’s not a book where you can tidily sum up the plot, giving you a character arc and a climax. It’s not really a book where the author divulges secrets or sucks the reader in with thrills.

No, it’s more a book of ideas: of lies and truth and the nature of stories.

The things you need to know before going in: 1) the narrator remains nameless, and you never learn his true name. And 2) he’s incredibly unreliable. It’s not like in Code Name Verity, where you learn one side of the story, and then have the second half throw everything into question. No: after the first chapter, you start wondering where the Lies end and the Truth begins. Or, if even there is a Truth to be told.

In fact, about half way through, I ran across this passage, and it struck me that this is the heart of what Jansma was trying to illustrate:

Ours is a new generation of plagiarists. Armed with Wikipedia and Google, we can manufacture our own truths. What else should we expected in an age whenever the real reporters, off in the Middle East, sent back only government-approved messages? Move over Jennings and Murrow. No need for the cold, uninterpreted facts. Make was for Stewart and Colbert! In our era, truthiness is in the dictionary, and Dan Rather got fired for not authenticating the Killian documents. And in his wake we’ve found, twisting and shouting, the Bill O’Reillys and the Chris Matthewses, spinning us sugar-sweet falsehoods. Plagiarism, class, is the new American art form.

He takes this idea — of spinning us what we want to believe — and takes pushes it to the edge, giving us an narrator who is constantly changing the story, the names of the characters themselves, the basic facts. What are we, as readers, to believe?

Well, only one thing: that you won’t be able to put this fascinating novel down.

First Sunday Daughter Reviews: April 2013

Leave a comment

On this cloudy Sunday in April (may it rain!), where we’re all kind of dragging because of the WSU Shockers loss last night (I know: we’re not really basketball fans, but it was WICHITA STATE in the Final Four. That so rarely happens, that one has to watch the game. Though, truth be told: I’m glad I don’t have to choose between them and Michigan in the final), my daughters still have a few books they’ve recently read (and/or are reading) that they’d like to recommend.

K, who turned 7 this week, is reading The Secret Garden with her dad, and loving it. I have to admit that I bullied her into this one: we had just come back from vacation, and she wanted to read some Grand Fantasy, but I talked her into reading this one. She says, “It’s fun and I’m really glad that Mary Lennox became nice. I really like the robin, too.” I love it when I can share books I loved as a child with my children, who love them, too.

I also kind of bullied A into reading her book this month, The One and Only Ivan. See, I’m starting a book group for 3rd-5th graders at work, and this is the first month’s choice. And, since I’m mostly requiring my daughters (who can) to come, I suggested A read this one. She really liked it, enjoying the fact that the chapters were short (she kept commenting on that), and the humor in it. She didn’t cry at the end, but she was touched by Ivan and his story.

C was into rereading this month, and in between a couple of other books picked up an old favorite: Savvy. She did comment on finishing the book that she’d forgotten how good it was. Even though Mibs’ lack of awareness about her savvy drove C batty this time around. She kept wanting to shout at the book: “You know it already!!” But, still: she plowed through the book.

Nothing from M this month: she’s knee-deep in The Invisible Man, attempting to understand what it all means, and trying not to have an existential crisis in the process.

Both C and A have read the ARC I snagged from work of The School for Good and Evil (publish date: May 14, 2013), and both have REALLY liked it. (I’m putting this out there because, from what they’ve said, I’m not going to read it.) It’s the story of two girls — 12-year-old friends Agatha (the dark-haired, gothy girl) and Sophie (who’s life goal is to be a princess ) — getting into the School for Good and Evil (is where everyone goes before they get placed into a fairy tale). Except they defy stereotypes: Agatha gets into the School for Good; Sophie into the School for Evil. This is basically the source of conflict between the two friends: neither one wants to be where they are placed. The book follows the school year, as they have adventures and experiences. C says that she doesn’t know why this is slated to be a trilogy: the ending is a pretty solid one. At the very least, it’s a good stand alone. As I mentioned: both the girls have been really talking it up: they like the characters, there’s a slight bit of romance in it, and there’s a great twist ending. In short: it’s a lot of fun.

Now you’ll pardon me as we all get back to our books.

Shadow and Bone

3 Comments

by Leigh Bardugo
ages: 12+
First sentence: “The servants called them malenchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke’s house like giggling phantoms, darting in and out of rooms, hiding in cupboards to eavesdrop, sneaking into the kitchen to steal the last of the summer peaches.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I know I’m not the last person to read this one, but I feel that way. Especially since (even with its myriad of glowing reviews) I was planning on skipping it altogether. Until I got handed an ARC of the second one. Then I figured, sure, why not jump on this bandwagon.

For those of you under a rock: Mal and Alina are orphans in a country vaguely patterned after Russia. They grew up in an orphanage, best friends and companions. As they grew up, they went to school and joine the country’s First Army, Mal as a tracker, Alina as a cartographer. And all is fine, until they cross the Fold — a patch of solid darkness full of Evil Things — and Alina saves everyone by bursting into light. It turns out that she’s a Sun Summoner, someone that the second most powerful man in the country, The Darkling, needs desperately. Suddenly, Alina finds herself thrust in the middle of the most powerful community in the country, that of the magic-maker Grishas, trying to figure out what’s real, and how on earth she’s going to handle herself, let alone save the country.

One of the things I really appreciated about this book was that the magic and the setting were all very unique. I think I’ve read Russian-influenced magic books before, but Bardugo has taken the heart of Russian culture and woven it through her book. That was something I could get behind and appreciate. I also liked that the magic was organic: for the most part, the characters’ magic was something that was inside them, a natural talent. I liked the diversity of magic, and how — when things were going well — everyone could work together to create something greater.

All that said, I didn’t really adore it wholeheartedly. I liked Mal well enough as a friend (and I was glad for the Lets Be Friends First element), but there just wasn’t a strong enough connection for me (showing rather than telling, maybe?). And while I was fascinated with the Darkling, I didn’t like the twist near the end. It felt.. forced… to me.

Even with the drawbacks, I am curious to see where Alina’s story goes from here.

10 Questions for Jennifer Nielsen

2 Comments

I got an inkling to see if I could snag Jennifer Nielsen for my interview series when we shortlisted her for the Cybils Middle Grade Science Fiction/Fantasy award. And then when The False Prince won? I seriously considered it. But then I read The Runaway King last month and that sealed the deal. Thankfully, in between her busy touring schedule (plus moving!) she found time to answer my questions. Obviously, there will be spoilers for both The False Prince and The Runaway King ahead.

MF: Tell us how you came up with the idea for Sage/Jaron and his story. What inspired it?
JN: The seeds for the story had been in my mind for a long time, but I could never find the right hero to bear the weight of the story. Sage (a name I’ll use interchangeably with Jaron) was found in a song by Eddie Vedder called “Guaranteed.” The lines of the song said, “I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me, guaranteed.” And from that line, Sage was born.

MF: I’ve always wondered this about fantasy writers: how did you go about creating a whole world for your story to be set in?
JN: I started with the kingdom of Carthya and knew I wanted to build into the world some factors that would make it harder for Jaron to win. So I wanted it small, landlocked, and surrounded by unfriendly countries. Other details from the map got filled in as I planned for specific plot events that I knew would happen. Some things that may not seem significant from that map become more important later on.

MF: The Runaway King has a slightly different feel to it than The False Prince did. What were the differences and challenges with writing this one (as compared to the first)?
JN: The False Prince is really a game of wits, and challenges Sage mentally. The Runaway King is his physical test, and I push him to his limits there. The challenge I felt in writing this one was to avoid the mid-book slump that sometimes happens in trilogies. So I needed a story that could still stand on its own, but one that also linked the first and third books together.

MF: There are so many little things to love in this series. Do you have a favorite character or scene?
JN: In The Runaway King, I really love when Jaron returns to his castle at the end of the book. To me, that’s a profound scene as he realizes that he finally has the respect of his people. When I wrote it, I had the image in my mind of Frodo in the final Lord of the Rings movie, when Aragorn and all the kingdom bows to Frodo. That’s when Frodo finally feels the love for what he’d done. I think the same expression would’ve been on Jaron’s face when he comes home.

MF: If you had to choose one, which would it be: pirates or thieves?
JN:  Thieves. They’re every bit as dangerous, but have to be more subtle, which I find interesting.

MF: Since this is a series, did you have any idea what was going to happen in the later books when you started writing The False Prince?
JN:  I had a general idea for each book that I wanted to write, though most of the details have evolved along the way. That’s a fun discovery though, of knowing where I was going, but getting to figure out how to get there.

MF: Did you always intend to write for middle grade and YA audiences, or did you just fall into it?
JN: No, I actually started out trying to write adult women’s suspense, and it just wasn’t that good. About six months before the final Harry Potter book came out, I saw an online fan fiction challenge to write the last book – to wrap up all the threads in our own story concept. I had been a huge fan of the books and so I took the challenge, just to see if I could do it for myself. I had more fun in those few weeks than I’d ever had before and emerged from the process realizing I’d been writing in the wrong genre. I’d been searching for a long time for my voice as a writer – but to find it, I needed to write for young people
MF: Who, or what, inspires you to write?
JN: Story prompts are with me all the time. I could never write them all, but some stick with me more than others, and if I let them linger, eventually a character will emerge and begin pestering me (such as Sage). For me, writing is like finally scratching the itch in that hard to reach place.

MF: What’s the last book you read and loved, and why did you love it?
JN: One of my favorite recent reads was Robin LaFevers’ GRAVE MERCY. It’s a wonderful book, beautifully written, and steeped in the history of its setting. I am counting the minutes before I can get the next in that series, DARK TRIUMPH.

MF: So, if you can tell us: what’s in store for Jaron in the next installment?
JN: Trouble. Lots and lots of trouble. But knowing Jaron, you wouldn’t expect anything else, right?

MF: Right! Thank you so much for your time!

Eighty Days

2 Comments

Nelly Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World
by Matthew Goodman
ages: adult
First sentence: “She was a young woman in a plaid coat and cap, neither tall nor short, dark nor fair, not quite pretty enough to turn a head: the sort of woman, who could, if necessary, lose herself in a crowd.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy received from my place of employment.

I think I’d heard of Nelly Bly before reading Matt Phelan’s Around the World, but I’m not sure where or why I knew of her. I do remember that I was interested in her story after finishing that graphic novel, so when I chanced upon this ARC at work, I picked it up, curious to know more about Bly and her trip around the world.

It turns out that Bly wasn’t the only one traveling around the world. A competitor of her sponsoring newspaper sent their own reporter — Elizabeth Bislund, who in many ways was the opposite of Bly: elegant, refined, pretty, literary — on a trip in the opposite direction, making it a race not only against time, but against each other.

The thing I liked most about this book, I think, was that Goodman not only thoroughly examined these two women, and their histories and how they became to be newspaper women, but the history of the time. He gave me, as a reader, a sense of this time of anticipation, sitting on the cusp of the modern world. And the fact that both Bly and Bisland could do something like travel around the world in less than 80 days, by themselves.

I found myself rooting for one or the other (I honestly didn’t know, though I could guess, which one won), finding myself liking one or the other at any given time during the book. Bly was more plucky, for lack of a better world, going around the world with one suitcase, and whole lot more drive than Bisland. She was, on the other hand, extremely patriotic — she viewed the world through a U.S.-colored lens, and found everything else lacking, something which grated on me. Bisland was the more open-minded traveler, less determined to “win” and more willing to look at the world on its own terms (which were, admittedly, decidedly British in the 1880s). For that, I think she was the better off.

Perhaps, most revealing, was the epilogue, where Goodman sketched out the rest of these women’s lives. There is a price for fame, fleeting as it is, and Bly paid it.

It’s an interesting work of history, engaging and well-written, and I thoroughly enjoyed spending time learning about both this remarkable time and these fascinating women.