Blankets

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by Craig Thompson
ages: adult
First sentence: “When we were young, my little brother Phil and I shared the same bed.”
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I’ve been curious about this one for quite some time. Possibly because I enjoyed Persepolis quite a bit, and this is a similar idea: a graphic novel memoir (even though this one says that it’s fictionalized). It’s basically the story of Thompson’s
childhood and his first love.

I’ve been telling myself that I’ve been wanting to read it just to see what the fuss is about.

And…

I was kind of underwhelmed. While there were elements I did like — like Thmpson’s forced Christianity, that he eventually left; and I appreciated that the True Love didn’t last — mostly I was left unsatisfied in the end. Perhaps it was the fault of the medium, but I didn’t feel connected to anything that was going on; I was more a distant observer of events.  Which means: while it was enjoyable, it lacked the power I wanted from it. (Perhaps, also, it was a case of too high expectations.)

And even though I enjoyed the artwork — it was quite lovely in spots, and I thought it served the story well — it wasn’t enough for me to be truly enthusiastic about the story.

Which is kind of too bad.

June 2013 Wrap-Up

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Yet another month gone, and it’s the dog days of summer (at least here in Kansas). I have more this month because of the 48 Hour Book Challenge. But, I realized that between work, the girls being home from school, and a yard and garden to care for (not to mention Master Chef and the rest of White Collar, season 3 to watch), I don’t get much actual reading done. Which doesn’t bode well for the TBR pile…

My favorite book, hands down, was

The 5th Wave

Gritty, intense, and completely awesome. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Other books read this month:

YA:

City of Ashes
City of Bones
The Lucy Variations
OCD, the Dude, and Me
Okay for Now (reread)
Rebel Spirits
Siege and Storm

Middle Grade:

The Apothecary
Doll Bones
Far, Far Away
The Key & the Flame
One for the Murphys
Paperboy
A Wrinkle in Time (audiobook) (reread)

Adult:

Emma (audiobook) (reread)
The Ocean at the End of the Lane
And the Mountains Echoed

Graphic Novel:

Bone 1 and 2

Non-fiction:

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

What was on your best-of list this month?

City of Ashes

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by Cassandra Clare
ages: 14+
First sentence: “The formidable glass-and-steel structure rose from its position on Front Street like a glittering needle threading the sky.”
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Others in the series: City of Bones

Obviously, there will be spoilers about City of Bones. You’ve been warned.

Clary’s world has turned upside down: her father (previously thought dead) is an ego-maniacal super villain; she’s kind of in love with her brother (whom she didn’t know existed); and she’s discovered that she’s a part of this whole community of Shadowhunters, and that demons, fairies, vampires, and werewolves are real.

It’s not an easy transition to make when two weeks ago your biggest concern was normal high school stuff.

To make matters worse: Valentine has the Cup and is going after the Shadow Sword to raise a demon army, and the Clave won’t listen to Jace about it. Things are not looking good.

Much like City of Bones, I fell head first into this world, and thoroughly enjoyed my time there. Mostly because there is SO much to enjoy. The characters — Clary is a spitfire, and Magnus is awesome, and Simon is amazing (and I’m loving what Clare is doing with his character. The humor is fantastic, and the world-building fabulous. I’m loving all the twists and turns and sometimes painfully slow reveals. I’m more than curious to see where she goes in the next one, but much of that is because M read City of Glass and said it’s her favorite one by far. You’ve got to love a series where the books just get better.

And this is definitely one of those series.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

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by Neil Gaiman
ages: adult
First sentence: “It was only a duck pond, out at the back of the farm.”
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Review copy picked up at Winter Institute and passed on to me by a coworker.

Childhood memories are tricky things. Especially when, with time and distance, the events seem less than real. So, what happens when one is faced with a memory — something do Dark and Sinister — that is unbelievable?

An unnamed man returns to his childhood home in Sussex, England and is drawn to the house at the end of the lane, or more particularly, the pond. That’s when he begins to remember: a suicide, and Letty Hempstock taking him Beyond and the Events that Followed.

I know I’m being vague, but that’s on purpose. Much of the charm of this fairy tale — and it is a fairy tale — is watching the events unfold through the child’s eyes. It’s got all the traditional fairy tale elements: an Evil that needs to be Vanquished; a good witch to help our unwitting hero do just that. I’m not a true fan or expert on Gaiman, but I don’t think he’s written something this straightforwardly charming since Stardust. And, in spite of the Dark and the Foreboding, it is a sweet, simple, charming story.
 
My coworker mentioned that she felt like something was missing when she finished, but I disagree: it’s just right the way it is. Not complex, not elaborate, but eloquent in its sparseness. And I admire that.

And the Mountains Echoed

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by Khaled Hosseini
ages: adult
First sentence: “So, then,”
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The hardest part about writing about this book is that it doesn’t really have a plot, not in the traditional sense. The story begins with a folk tale about a poor but happy family who have 5 children. Then one day, a div comes and demands that they give up one of their children, or he will take them all. After much agonizing, the father decides to give up his youngest, his favorite, even though it breaks his heart.

The father goes later to see the div,to see what has happened to his child. He expects something sinister, but the child is happy, growing, thriving in the div’s care. The father is given another choice: take the child home, never to return. Or leave the child, and never see him again. It’s a tough choice.

Finishing that story, I had no idea it’s relevance for the book, but upon closing it, I understood. The story is, simply, about the ripple effect of one person’s decision. In this case, it’s an poor Afghani villager who sells his  daughter to a wealthy couple. It sounds a lot more sinister than it really is. In a series of short stories, really, Hosseini explores the people touched by that act in any little way. From the stepuncle, to the adoptive mom, to the doctor who ended up living in the house, Hosseini explores the ripple effect.

I don’t want to call this book profound, partially because after going to an event with Hosseini, I think he’d be uncomfortable with that label. It is, however, insightful and fascinating exploring lives through time. And while the stories were uneven — some of them ran long, and others weren’t that interesting — I thought the format served the story well. That, and Hosseini really is an elegant writer: I’m not a word person, but the words were just gorgeous.

It wasn’t a gripping read, but it was a thoughtful one. And one that I think will stay with me for quite some time.

The 5th Wave

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by Rick Yancey
ages: 14+
First sentence: “There will be no awakening.”
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We knew the aliens were coming; we saw their ship when it passed Mars. But little did we know what we was in store for us.

The first wave hit: an electromagnetic pulse that cut all our power. The second wave was a bomb that created a tsunami which destroyed the coasts. The third wave was a contagious disease that had a 90 percent fatality rate. And the fourth wave were snipers, picking off the stragglers.

Cassie is one of those: she, her father, and her younger brother Sam all managed to make it through the first three waves intact, only to be separated at a refugee camp. Soldiers took Sam, killed her father, and now she’s on the run for her life. She can’t trust anyone, she’s barely surviving. And yet, she made a promise to Sam: to find him, because family needs to stay together. The only question: will she survive the fifth wave?

Holy crap, this all sorts of intense. Going in, I was expecting it to be scary, and so I was surprised that it wasn’t. The aliens aren’t gross, menacing creatures, but rather distant forces bent on cleansing the planet. I wasn’t terrified of them, bur rather in awe. Amazed. Completely blown away. And even though Yancey uses some tried-and-true humans are resilient and strong and therefore can conquer the world tropes, he does so in ways that are new and refreshing. There are no magical or supernatural powers, no high-tech blow-em-up sequences, no kidnapping. Just good-old-human grit. And there’s a LOT of that. Think Zombieland, but with aliens.

The book made me mistrust everything in it. I was looking for clues, making connections, working hard to figure everything out. And in the end, I was still blown away by the twists and turns.

Awesome.

The Apothecary

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by Maile Meloy
ages: 11+
First sentence: “I was seven and living in Los Angeles when Japan surrendered at the end of World War II, and first vivid memories are of how happy and excited everyone was.”
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Janie doesn’t want to move to London.

She has her perfect (well, of a sort) life in California. Her parents are in the movie business. She adores Katherine Hepburn, she wants to be friends with the popular kids. But that all goes up in flames when her parents get on McCarthy’s Red List and are called into Congress to testify. They decide they can’t sell out their friends, so they uproot and move to London instead.

Thrown from sunny California to dreary February, post-war London, Janie is feeling hopeless. That is, until she meets Benjamin. Cute boy is a start. And then, the two of them are witnesses when Benjamin’s father goes missing, leaving a mysterious book behind. It turns out that Ben’s father is an apothecary: not just the dispense your pills sort, but a magical/science sort that can do amazing and wonderful things.

Ben and Janie, of course, need to go rescue him. (This is a middle grade novel, after all.) Which means, they need to figure out the Greek (and Latin) of the book, put together the spells (which include turning into a bird and becoming invisible), and unravel the plot Ben’s father was mixed up in, in order to do so.

On the one hand, this was a beautifully illustrated, gorgeously written book. Meloy has a gift with language, and it was a pleasure to read. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was a book that grownups think kids should like. A had some major issues with it, not the least being she didn’t get the historical setting at all. But a couple other kids at the book group didn’t mind it so much, and actually enjoyed the adventure (but not so much the slight romance).

So, I think we’ll just be on the fence with this one.

Okay for Now

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by Gary Schmidt
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Joe Pepitone once gave me his New York Yankees baseball cap.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I reread this recently for my 6-8th grade book group. And everything I said last time still holds. It’s an amazing book, even if the girls in my group didn’t like it. I think it’s wonderful.

Also this

“Mrs. Daugherty was keeping my bowl of cream of wheat hot, and she had a special treat with it, and she had a special treat with it, she said. It was bananas. 

In the whole history of the world, bananas have never once been a special treat.”

Perfect.

Paperboy

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by Vince Vawter
ages: 10+
First sentence: “I’m typing about the stabbing for a  good reason. I can’t talk.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I picked this up when it came into the store a few weeks back mostly because it had been a while since I’d read a good, non-fantasy middle grade book. And the idea of this one — a boy with a severe stutter who takes over a paper route for a month in Memphis in the 1950s — sounded like it could be good.

I’ll be upfront on this one: I bailed. I admire Vawter for telling what was, for him at least, a very personal story about a disability that doesn’t get enough page time. But, a lot of things bothered me about this one. The short paragraphs. The lack of quote marks. The slow pace of the story. And — although it pains me to admit this one — the way he wrote the stutter.

It just didn’t gel with me. Maybe next time.

Audiobook: A Wrinkle in Time

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by: Madeline L’Engle
read by the author
Ages: 7+ (listening)
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I threw in a bunch of audiobooks on our recent trip to Michigan, hoping that we’d listen to a couple as we went. Turned out that we only listened to one, and that this was the one everyone seemed most excited for.

I really don’t have much to add with this reread from the last time. I was expecting the religion, and while I sat musing for a while that the idea of sameness as the Great Evil is a very American idea (though I liked this quote — and I paraphrase — “Alike does not mean equal.” True.), I mostly just let the story flow over me and didn’t engage with it very much.

So, I’m going to give you my girls’ reactions:

K, who is 7, spent much of the book wondering what was going on. She did get the basic content of the book, but often said, “The words don’t mean anything to me.” We had to stop frequently to explain things to her.

A, really enjoyed it. In fact, out of all of the girls, she’s the one who was the most interested in the whole story. She really liked Meg, thought Charles Wallace was charming, and may (or may not; she’s not telling) have ended up with a little crush on Calvin (though he is no Percy Jackson).

C, was the most interested in starting the book, but by the end was complaining that Meg was TOO HYSTERICAL. “Can’t she just shut up and do something already?” That is an interesting perspective: the girls in our middle grade fiction have become more confident and more assertive than they used to be. I’m not saying that Meg is a shrinking violet; just that she does burst into hysterics quite often.

M, who had read it before (“Is this the one with the huge brain?”) was charmed again (“Oh be quiet! Awkward kid flirting; it’s so amusing.”), but not really thrilled.

And Hubby kept comparing it to Harry Potter: Cal is Ron, definitely. But we debated whether Meg was Harry or Hermione. We decided that Meg was probably Harry and Charles Wallace was Hermione. Everything relates to Harry Potter these days, doesn’t it.

Oh, a bit on the narration: I loved hearing Madeline L’Engle — pronounced lengle as opposed to la engle; I didn’t know that — narrate her book. While it wasn’t as mesmerizing as Neil Gaiman’s narrations of his books are, it still was quite charming.

Not a bad way to introduce several of my kids to the series, at any rate.