Adult Fiction

Ivanhoe

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by Sir Walter Scott
ages: adult
First sentence: “In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and vallies which lie between Sheffield and that pleasant tow of Doncaster.”

Oh, Ivanhoe. How I wanted to like you. I like historical fiction, generally speaking, and I wanted, so very much, to enjoy the book that basically defined it as a genre. I love Robin Hood and the legend surrounding him, and I don’t mind the whole Prince John/Prince Richard, early England thing. In fact, I adore Renaissance festivals. So, it’s not the subject matter.

No, it was the language. The best word I can think of was “stuffy”. And I don’t know why that was: I don’t mind, usually, books written in the early 1800s. I can wade through long, complex sentences. But with you, Ivanhoe, I felt like I was looking at the words, reading them, and then they would just slide right out of my brain. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t even tell you half of the main characters, let alone the plot. At one point, I was thinking that maybe I had a bad translation, and if I just found a different one, everything would be okay… then I remembered that Scott was English.

I’m sure you’re a fun adventure story, full of jousts, knights, antisemitism, and silly jesters, but honestly? I’m not sure I care enough to wade through the book again to find out.

I know it’s me, though, and not you.

Audiobook: Water for Elephants

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by Sarah Gruen
Read by David LeDoux and John Randolph Jones
ages: adult
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It’s no secret that I don’t do well with books on the bestseller list. And so it was with much trepidation that I picked this one up. (I say “much trepidation” but really it was curiosity and a sense that maybe the hype had died down…)

For the three of you who haven’t read it: it’s the Depression and Jacob Jankowski is a veterinary student at Cornell, just about to sit for his last final exams when his parents were killed in a tragic accident. This throws Jacob completely off course, and one fateful night, he jumps a train. It turns out to be the train for the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. And in one fell swoop  — and for three and half tumultuous months — Jacob’s life is changed.

First and foremost, this is a circus book. And it’s not a pretty picture. There’s Uncle Al, the ring master, who is vain and malicious. August, the animal trainer who is alternately charming and violent. And because these two are in charge, the whole environment of the circus is not healthy, to say the least. Jacob falls in with a dwarf named Walter; the relationship is rocky at first, but eventually they form a close friendship. And he falls in love with the lovely Marlena, the star of the Liberty Horse act, and August’s wife.

But where do the elephants come in? I have to admit that I was a tad disappointed there; the jacketflap (do audiobooks have jacketflaps?) implied that there was a bond between Jacob, Marlena and Rosie, the elephant the Benzini Brothers show picks up soon after Jacob joins on. But, I never really felt it. Sure, the elephant was the catalyst for much of what happened in the book, but really? I wish Jacob had done more, interacted more with the elephant. It seemed to me he spent much of his time running around, baffled as to what the heck was going on. And I did feel quite cheated by the climax. It was an honest twist, but I think Gruen misled us on purpose, which always gets my hackles up.

What really made the book for me was the present day segments, when Jacob was “ninety or ninety-three.” I have a friend who is currently studying gerontology, and keeps me up to date on her studies. Because of that, I had more sympathy for Jacob’s situation, being in a nursing home, and his concerns about getting old. He was alternately a sweetheart and a firecracker, and I adored him.

That said, I think that audio was the best way for me to experience this one. Both the narrators were excellent (LeDoux read the young Jacob; Jones the older one), and because of that I was able to really “see” the book in a way I don’t think I would have, had I read it.

I’m not sure if my good experience with this one will change my opinion on bestsellers. But I can say that this one was worth my time.

The Snow Child

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by Eowyn Ivey
ages: adult
First sentence: “Mabel had known there would be silence.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy provided by publisher through my place of employment.
Release date: February 1, 2012

I have sat down several times since I finished this quiet and lovely book last week, trying to figure out what to say about it, coming up short every time. I’m not sure I have the words in me to write this, but I’m going to try.

It’s the Alaskan frontier in 1920, and Mabel and Jack — an older, childless couple, from “Back East” in Pennsylvania — are giving the whole frontier experience a try. They’ve been at it for a couple of years, and it’s not going well: Jack can’t seem to make the land work for him, and Mabel is becoming desperately helpless in the face of the cold, the dark, and the silence. Then, in the first snowfall of the year, a bit of whimsey overtakes them, and they build a snow child. It doesn’t seem like much, but the next morning, the snow child is gone, and in its place is a little girl, half-wild and almost unwilling to be tamed.

Mabel and Jack take to the girl — who may or may not be a fairy child; in many ways that question is irrelevant to purpose the book. For whatever the jacket copy may say, this is not a fantasy —  whose name is Faina, and slowly adopt her into their family, even though she never lives with them. Even though she disappears each spring, returning with each snowfall. By knowing Faina — and for us, by following hers, and Mabel’s and Jack’s stories — Mabel and Jack come to know and appreciate and love the wildness of Alaska, with all its joys and pains.

In many ways this is two books in one: yes, it’s a story about a childless couple coming to terms with both the hardship of a new life (which they chose), but also the hardship of the loss of their only child as an infant. But, perhaps more importantly, it’s a love story to the wilderness; from the breathtaking descriptions of the snow-covered landscape, to the brutal way in which the animals are hunted for food, Ivey captures life in the Alaskan outback with meticulous detail. I almost wanted to go see it for myself.

It was a soft and poetic book, something substantial enough to curl up with and enjoy on a cold winter’s night and yet magical enough to provide an escape from everyday life.

The Heroines

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by Eileen Favorite
ages: adult
First sentence: “I was so angry with Mother!”
Review copy sent by the author’s publicist. 

The pitch: a literary fantasy in which heroines of beloved novels (most of them tragic) escape to a bed and breakfast in rural Indiana in 1974.

The heroine: thirteen-year-old Penny who is at odds with her mother, Anne-Marie. Mostly because her mother won’t let her interfere with the heroines, but also because she’s 13 and that’s what 13-year-olds do.

The plot: I don’t know. I never got there. Seventy pages in, and I was still struggling to figure out what the heck was going on. I got that there was tension between the mother and daughter, and there was something about not running through the woods, but that’s really all.

The reason I abandoned this one: It was boring. Painfully so. I think it was meant to be cute and pretentious, but honestly? It put me to sleep. Multiple times. I don’t even have anything clever to say about this one because I didn’t even actively dislike it.

I hate to say this, because I did like the idea of the premise, but this one just didn’t work for me.

Audiobook: The Eyre Affair

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by Jasper Fforde
read by Susan Duerden
ages: adult
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

When I finished Jane Eyre a few years (well, five) back, someone told me that now I needed to read The Eyre Affair. I said okay, and stuck it on the TBR list, and then promptly forgot about it.

As I finished up my last audio book, I was looking through my old lists for a good audio book to read, and this one stood out. Why not give Jasper Fforde and Thursday Next a try?

I can safely say I’m torn about this novel. On the one hand, it was weirdly brilliant: why not create an alternative world, where in 1985 there’s time travel and interesting inventions; where planes aren’t used for commercial travel, and there’s a questionably moral corporation — Goliath — basically running England, and where the ending to Jane Eyre is that she goes off with her cousin to India. In this world, there are people called Litera Techs, SpecOps-27, who deal with crimes on literature. It’s a pretty mundane job, for the most part, especially for Crimean War veteran (the Russians and the English have been fighting this war for more than a century) Thursday Next. Then evil mastermind Archeron Hades steals the manuscript for Charles Dickens’ Martin Chuzzlewit and all hell breaks loose, and it’s up to Thursday to put it right.

The other really brilliant thing in this book was the names: from Archeron (and his brother Styx) Hades, to Thursday’s partners Victor Analogy and Bowden Cable and her ex-boyfriend Landon Parke-Lane (not to mention the Goliath head honcho Jack Schitt. Yes, that is exactly how you say it.) they are all brilliant. No, I didn’t get all the British references, but I got enough to find it amusing.

But, in the end, that’s all the book had: a great premise and some funny literary illusions. It took much too long in set up, getting around to the point of the novel; why was it called the Eyre Affair, when it was such a small part of the whole novel? I enjoyed the Shakespeare debates, but felt they didn’t really serve much purpose in the overall arc of the story. In fact, I could say that for a lot of the novel: it took too much time building the world, which was only sometimes fascinating, and then it took too much time wrapping up (and setting up the next one) in the end. It was just… too long.

A note about the reading: it was quite good. I probably had more patience for this book in audio form because Duerden was such a capable reader, creating a world for me with her voice that wouldn’t have otherwise existed. (Plus it helped that she tackled both the Welsh and the French with aplomb, something which I couldn’t have done on my own.)

So, cut 150 or so (just guessing here; a few discs would have been nice), and perhaps it’d be a really great novel.

Rebel Island

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by Rick Riordan
ages: adult
First sentence: “We got married in a thunderstorm.”
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Tres Navarre has finally married his longtime (on and off) girlfriend, Maia, and now they’re off (with Tres’s brother Garrett in tow) to they’re belated honeymoon to Rebel Island: an old haunt of the Navarre family, and not really one that has good memories. And because Tres is who he is, and trouble seems to follow him around, they encounter a weekend like no other: a major hurricane on top of a killer on the loose.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

Except, well, it does. Out of the several things I noticed while reading this, the one that stood out the most was that it really didn’t need to be written. Mission Road was a good stopping point for the series, and while I guess it’s nice to know that Tres and Maia got married, and are having a kid, it’s not really necessary to have a whole book about that point. The other thing was you can tell that Riordan consciously pulled back on these novels; while there’s still language in this book, it’s not nearly as gritty as the earlier Tres Navarre books are. You can almost see him thinking, “Dang! I’ve got kids reading my books. What if they want to read these, too? Better not make them as foul as they used to be.”

On top of that, it just didn’t read as well as the earlier Tres Navarre books. It was a quick read, but unfortunately predicable (at one point, I thought, “Oh, man, I hope he doesn’t make him out to be the bad guy…”), and even the little twist at the end didn’t redeem it for me. It was all ho-hum, formulaic, and not particularly exciting.

It’s not that it was a bad book; I just didn’t feel Tres and company were up to the standard that I’ve come to expect.

Crossing to Safety

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by Wallace Stegner
ages: adult
First sentence: “Floating upward through a confusing of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface.”
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I spent a good portion of the novel trying to figure out how to describe it. And what I came up with was: thoughtful. It was a thoughtfully written work, one that made me thoughtful as I read it.

It’s the story of two couples in the 1930s. The men — Sid and Larry — are both English PhDs, trying to make it in academia. Their wives — Charity and Sally — are instant friends when they meet. It follows their friendship and lives through ups and downs for years, up until the time of Charity’s death. It’s told from Larry’s point of view, and while I intellectually know it’s not autobiographical, I never could shake that feeling that Stegner was telling, somehow, his story. Because, as Larry points out near the end, this isn’t your typical novel.

How do you make a book that anyone will read out of lives as quiet as these? Where are the things that novelists seize upon and readers expect? Where is the high life, the conspicuous waste, the violence, the kinky sex, the death wish? Where are the suburban infidelities, the promiscuities, the convulsive divorces, the alcohol, the drugs, the lost weekends? Where are the hatreds, the political ambitions, the lust for power? Where are speed, noise, ugliness, everything that makes us who we are and makes us recognize ourselves in fiction? 

They aren’t here. What we get is a thoughtful book, a reflection on people — though in the end, I was unsure if it was really about all of them, and not solely Charity’s story — on relationships, on marriage, on work (especially in academia; there was much I recognized there). It was beautifully written, mostly in flashbacks; descriptive enough that I could picture the Vermont woods even though I’ve never been to that part of the country, and yet not overly flowery in its language. Stegner has a poet’s sensibility for choosing the right word for the right circumstance in order to get across a particular feeling. (My vocabulary expanded while reading this. Honestly.)

It’s not flashy and loud, and not much happens. But it moved me to tears and to think and reflect on how I’m interacting with those around me; I saw much to much of myself in Charity, and I’m not sure that’s always a good thing. As I said before: it’s a thoughtful book. And I’m happy to finally have read some Stegner; he’s an excellent writer.

Six Sentence Saturday: Unfinshed Books

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Guys Read
ed. by Jon Scieszca
ages: 10+

It was a good idea to get together a bunch of talented writers and compile a collection of thriller stories. The problem was, in my humble opinion, that none of the stories (that I read; I bailed, I have to admit) were even remotely thriller-y. Perhaps if I were a 10-year-old boy, these would have some appeal. (Maybe it’s just that my humor is more along the lines of a 10-year-olds, that I liked Funny Business better?) Or maybe I just don’t go in for thriller stories anyway. Whatever the reason, this fell flat.


The Power of One
by Bryce Courtenay
ages: adult

This was a case of me just not being interested in the book. I tried; I got about 100 pages in, but this boy’s story just wasn’t to my interest. And the writing wasn’t holding me. And I have a huge pile of other books to read. So, I abandoned it. Who knows, though: maybe someday I’ll come back to it.

City of Orphans
by Avi
ages: 10+

Heaven knows, I enjoy an Avi book. The detail, the characterizations, the plots: all top-notch. But, this one didn’t grab me. The language, while authentic, was off-putting, and the plot was just so dang slow. I gave it 75 pages, and then realized that my time is much more precious than to slog through a book I have no interest in.

Heat Rises

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by Richard Castle
ages: adult
First sentence: “The thing about New York City is you never know what’s behind a door.”
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Nikki Heat is investigating the murder of a local parish priest, found at an S&M studio (is that what they’re called?). The investigation takes her in all sorts of directions, but then she’s called off the investigation, on the orders of her precinct captain. It’s nothing, he assures her. Which only makes her — and her lover, companion, sometimes partner, Jameson Rook — more suspicious. And since Nikki Heat doesn’t give up, she ends up digging into things she really shouldn’t have.

I’m realizing that the books really do follow not only the plots from the season (yes, this one has elements from Castle season 3 episodes), but also the mood. Which means, this book wasn’t as fun as either Heat Wave or
Naked Heat. Not to say that there wasn’t fun moments (like the passing Firefly reference? Cracked me up.) in the book. There were. It just wasn’t as fun as the previous two. (Also: not as sexy or foul; they really pulled back on the language and the sex was entirely off-screen.) It’s still good brain candy, and it was gratifying to see Nikki do so much entirely on her own. She really does rock.

Oh, and if you’ve seen the entire season 3, there’s a nice twist on the ending in the book. Which means, of course, that there will be a fourth. And yes, I will read it. (Hopefully, considering the way season 4 is going, the next book will be more fun to read overall.)

Audiobook: The Help

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by Katheryn Stockett
read by: Jenna Lamia, Bahni Turpin, Octavia Spencer, Cassandra Campbell
ages: adult
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I should probably start by admitting that I’m the last person in the universe to read this book. I’ve been avoiding it for years because, as you all know about me, I really don’t like hyped books. (I should amend that: what I don’t like is the hype surrounding a book. If I catch it before the hype, I may like it just fine.) I figured there was no way this one would live up to its reputation. That, and the subject matter: the relationships between white women and their black maids in 1960s Mississippi just seemed too, well, explosive. Better just to let things be.

Since you all basically know the plot — it’s about two maids, Aibileen and Minny and a white 20-something woman, Skeeter Phelan, and how they come to know each other, and then work together to get a book of memories of black maids published — I’ll just stick with my reactions to the book, as well as the audio production.

First off, this book did nothing to improve my impression of Mississippi. I haven’t had anything good to say about the state since our year there 10 years ago, and the white women in this book — from Skeeter’s overbearing mother to the spineless Elizabeth Leefolt to Hilly Holbrook (especially Hilly Holbrook) — did nothing to make me more sympathetic to the state and the people there.

I also wanted more. I wanted more Celia (and for her to find a friend in Skeeter; I was highly disappointed that didn’t happen), for the main characters to have more spine and stand up (I know: a very 21st-century attitude there), and for Hilly to get some sort of come-uppance (rather than the more true to life “she’ll just have to live with herself for the rest of her life” ending I did get).

That said, I loved the audio book. I think, in many ways, this was the right way for me to experience this book. There were parts that I would have gotten frustrated with if I’d just read it, but I found loving listening to. I adored the inflection the narrators would give to the sentences, the rich Southern accents (and yes, I did find myself speaking Southern more often than I should have), and the voices they’d give to the characters. (Octavia Spencer’s Celia was just perfect.) Because they made the book come alive for me, I was able to connect with it better, and let my objections (and annoyances) slide.

So, am I glad I read it? I guess. It did make for a really good book group discussion, and it was an interesting story. I didn’t absolutely love it, but it surprised me that I liked it as much as I did. Which isn’t a bad thing, in the end.