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?

Loving Will Shakespeare

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I picked this up on a whim at the library a month or so ago, partially because Erin reviewed it and liked it well enough (at least I remember her reviewing it, but now I can’t find the link) and partially because I’ve read and like some of Carolyn Meyer’s other stuff.

And this one was okay. Nothing spectacularly brilliant, but nothing really bad either. It’s the story of Anne (Agnes) Hathaway, and how she came to marry Will Shakespeare. It’s an interesting enough story, but a less-than engaging one. I liked Agnes/Anne, but I really didn’t feel that connected to her. I was interested in her life at the beginning, but after a while I just got bored. So her mother died when she was little, and her father married a shrew. So she fell in love with a rogue and accidentally set fire to her father’s barn. So a man she was engaged to died from a fever. So she was 26 when she married an 18 year old because he got her pregnant. I really wasn’t all that interested. Which is sad; I should have been. There is so little known (the author’s note, while brief, was fascinating) about Shakespeare and Anne, that this really could have been a compelling love story. But it wasn’t. Maybe it was because of the length of time involved: the book covers 47 years, beginning with Will’s birth and ending when he comes back to Stratford-on-Avon from London five years before his death. Maybe I just wanted more… I seem to be wanting that from a lot of YA books these days. (Well, maybe not “a lot”, but this isn’t the first time.) But it just felt like a very long list: this happened, then this happened, then several months passed and this happened. And that doesn’t make for a very engaging story.

Estella’s Up

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Go check it out! (For the record, and for those — Dad and Mom — who don’t want to browse the rest of it, here are my reviews of Big Fat Manifesto, and Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow. I also interviewed Susan Vaught, the author of BFM. But the rest of the issue is good, too.)

What did you read?

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I popped over to overdue books with the intention of browsing the links for the stacks challenge, when I discovered that michelle created a meme. I don’t know how many others have done this, but feel free to copy and pass it along. Here’s what she wrote: Let’s make this into an end of year meme! Copy and paste this list. Bold the ones that you’ve read. Add an asterisk to those that are “keepers” or favorites. Then add yours [maybe 5 best?] to the end of the list. Might be fun to see what everyone has read this year.

Twilight – Stephanie Meyer*
New Moon – Stephanie Meyer
Eclipse – Stephanie Meyer
The Rest Falls Away – Colleen Gleason
Season of the Witch – Natasha Mostert
The Historian – Elizabeth Kostova
Queen of this Realm – Jean Plaidy
The Other Boleyn Girl – Phillippa Gregory
The Boleyn Inheritance – Phillippa Gregory
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling*
Austenland – Shannon Hale*
Book of Lost Things – John Connolly
Little, Big – John Crowley
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke [I’ve read it, but not this year]
Rebecca – Daphne DuMaurier
The Last Witchfinder – James Morrow
Map of Bones – James Rollins
History of Love – Nicole Krauss
Pomegranate Soup -Marsha Mehran*
Thirteen Reasons Why – Jay Asher*
The Invention of Hugo Cabret — Brian Selznick*
Stardust – Neil Gaiman*
Fairies of Dreamdark: Blackbringer – Laini Taylor*

Go and have fun with this. 🙂 (Let me know in the comments if you do put one up; I’d love to see your list.)

It’s Award time

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Fuse has got her Newbery and Caldecott predictions up… and they’re very interesting. She feels that there’s no hope for Hugo Cabret to win anything. Sigh. I really should win something but I fear she’s right. I’m also feeling a bit ashamed, since I’ve not read nearly as many of the books she talks about as I think I should have. Though, maybe that’s a good thing: I won’t have read the winner already. Right?

What are your thoughts?

The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

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I saw this video over at bookshelves of doom a while back, and I knew I just had to read Sherman Alexie’s book (go take 10 minutes and watch it).

Done watching? Good. There was a quote on the back by Chris Crutcher that pretty much summed up my reaction to this book: “I know Sherman Alexie is on his game when I’m reading his book, laughing my a** off while my heart is breaking. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian captivates absolutely.”

So true.

Junior is a Spokane Indian, living in Wellpinit on the rez and pretty much the lowest guy around. He gets picked on, beat up, called names… all because he was born with medical problems. But when he discovers his mom’s name in a geometry book (it’s not anything compromising; I wondered, too), he realized he needed a change. He transferred to the nearby (well, 22 miles) town of Rearden to go to high school. This book is the diary of his freshman year and all of it’s trials and triumphs.

The beauty of Alexie’s writing is that he can take the most depressing, pathetic person and situation and make you laugh. It’s actually a joyful book, a hopeful book. But I was depressed, too: so much poverty, so much alcohol, so much death. And yet, Junior is such a likable guy, a good kid, that you can’t help but root for him to rise above his situation. It’s funny and heartbreaking, pathetic and hopeful, depressing and inspiring all at the same time. That, in my book, is amazing writing.

I won’t be going around recommending this to everyone I know, though. It’s definitely for older kids — it’s too old for M — and it’s a bit vulgar. But then, it’s a 14-year-old boy who happens to be surrounded by death, alcohol, abuse, poverty and, well, high school. I don’t think I was really expecting it to be squeaky clean. Still, if you can stomach all that in addition to a few cuss words, then this book is really really worth your time.

My favorite quote is one that was in the video (but there are many others): “Every book is a mystery. And if you read all the books ever written it’s like you’ve read one giant mystery. And no matter how much you learn, you just keep on learning there is so much more you need to learn.”

Ain’t that the truth.

The Hummingbird’s Daughter

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I have had a hard time with Latin@ (see, turtlebella? I do learn!) literature in the past. Magical realism and I have not been good friends. I hear over and over again people loving these books and I read them, and… I think they’re just weird.

But this one, by Louis Alberto Urrea, is different. Maybe it’s because though the magic is there, it’s not nearly as prevalent as in other books. But I think it’s mainly because it’s a work of historical fiction, and more than that: it’s a work of love.

The story is that of Urrea’s great-aunt Teresa. She was the bastard daughter of Thomás Urrea, a patrón of a ranch in Mexico. She flies under the radar for the most part during her early life, living in squalor and unloved by her aunt (her mother left when Teresa was small) until she came under the guidance of the local healer, Huila. Then she learns the secrets of the Indians (of which she is half), and how to heal and dream and guide. Eventually, after the ranch moves north to a different location, he and her father become reconciled (though it’s more like “become introduced”) and she moves in the main house with him. She learns to read, her life is pretty quiet. Until one day, when a vaquero attacks her in her sacred grove of trees. She dies… and is resurrected. And from there, we see the evolution of Santa Teresa, the woman who will help the masses rise in revolution against the dictatorship.

Writing that, it sounds very simple, but this book is anything but. It’s immense. It’s lyrical. It’s funny. It’s sorrowful. The one thing I could tell is that Urrea really cared about his subject. The love and respect he has for Teresa, as well as all the years of research he did, is evident in every page. And because of that, the book (for me, at least) soars. I couldn’t put it down. I hung on every beautiful descriptive word. An example:

Only rich men, soldiers and a few Indians had wandered far enough from home to learn the terrible truth: Mexico was too big. It had too many colors. It was noisier than anyone could have imagined, and the voice of the Atlantic was different than the voice of the Pacific. One was shrill, worried, and demanding. The other was boisterous, easy to rile into a frenzy. The rich men, soldiers, and Indians were the few who knew that he east was a swoon of green, a thick-aired smell of ripe fruit and flowers and dead pigs and salt and sweat and mud, while the west was a riot of purple. Pyramids rose between llanos of dust and among turgid jungles. Snakes as long as country roads swam tame beside canoes. Volcanoes wore hats of snow. Cactus forests grew taller than trees. Shamans ate mushrooms and flew. In the south, some tribes still went nearly naked, their women wearing red flowers in their hair and blue skirts, and their breasts hanging free. Men outside the great Mexico City ate tacos made of live winged ants that few away if the men did not chew quickly enough.

It’s books like this that make me glad I read as much as I do.

Mr. Linky Problems

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Mr. Linky doesn’t like the fact that I put six Mr. Linkys up on the review blog. So, due to technical errors, I’ve had to do away with all of them. Sorry. (hangs head) It was a good idea. Just leave links to reviews in the comments, so we can all read them. Thanks, Robin for the heads up on this one!

M picked the winner…

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of this lovely prize package (I’m sounding a bit like Merv Griffin here):

And it is (drum roll please)….

Dave (Tuko Pamoja)

Congrats! If you could send your snail mail address to mmfraf AT sbcglobal DOT com, I’ll pop it in the mail to you!

Book reviews are slowly starting to trickle in over at the review blog… (since we’re only four days in, I wasn’t expecting a flood!) We’ll have another drawing next month, so C can have a turn picking the name. 🙂

The Golem’s Eye

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Bartimaeus is back. He doesn’t really want to be, but Nathaniel (now 14, and known publicly as John Mandrake) is a bit over his head. The Resistance (which we learn more about) is causing trouble, and Nathaniel is responsible for tracking them down but it’s more than that: there’s a strange entity out there wreaking havoc on London. And, only Nathaniel (with Bartimaeus’s help) can track it down.

Sounds a bit pretentious doesn’t it?

It is… a 14-year-old magician and a 5,000 year old djinn have the power to stop whatever-it-is (a golem) from destroying London. But it works, mostly because Bartimaeus is such a fun narrator. Like the the first book, the chapters flip back and forth between narrators: Bartimaeus, Nathaniel, and this time we include Kitty, a member of the Resistance. Nathaniel is still clueless and arrogant (perhaps even more so), caught up in the pomp and politics of London magic. But Kitty is the real find here. She adds depth and detail to what I felt was a bit of a whim in the first book (there were a couple of times when I wished I had read the two closer together, but it wasn’t often). She was interesting, and her exploits with the Resistance group had some emotional pull. It added a perspective to the whole magical world that was missing in Amulet.

Given all that, though, this book has a really slow start. (As did the first one, if I remember right.) Bartimaeus doesn’t show up until 10 or more chapters in, and the story really doesn’t get really interesting until Part Four. All of which is a detriment to keeping readers, especially younger ones, interested. (M, for all her enjoyment of the first one, bailed on this, and has no interest in picking it up again.) But once it gets interesting, it gets really interesting. There’s a mystery (who’s the government traitor — I guessed it…), there’s a devious plot (but having guessed the traitor, there’s a deeper mystery: the traitor’s a puppet, who’s holding the strings?), the mysterious people that figured in the first book show up again. How on earth is Nathaniel (and Bartimaeus, for you know he’ll show up yet again) going to unravel the underlying plot within a plot? Or is he going to fall prey to it, too? How does Kitty figure into all of this?

I suppose I’ll just have to read the next one to find out.

Expanding Horizons Challenge — And We’re Off!

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Happy New Year!

I like new beginnings: time for new resolutions, time to start anew and time for The Expanding Horizons Challenge. I have to say I’m a bit giddy hosting my first challenge. Maybe too giddy… Anyway. I’ve set up a blog especially for the reviews. There are six posts, one for each category, each with a Mr. Linky. Feel free to link to your reviews there, or if you’d rather, just leave a comment about the book you’ve finished in the appropriate post.

As it stands right now, we’ve got 29 participants with various hangers-on, which I think is terrific (I wasn’t expecting that many!). I’ll leave the sign-up open until the end of the week, when I’ll do the drawing for the first prize (I have realized that I’m going to need to do at least three prizes so M, C, and A can all have their turns drawing for one!)

Until then, happy reading!