Two Gentlemen of Verona

2 Comments

by William Shakespeare
ages: adult
First sentence: “Cease to persuade, my loving Proteus: Home-keeping youth have never homely wits.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I picked this one because our local Shakespeare company is doing it this month (we’re going this weekend to see their production). And, because it was a comedy. Though — to be completely honest — I kind of got this one mixed up with The Merchant of Venice. I kept expecting Shylock to show up…

As for this one (no merchants) the plot goes thusly: A couple of rich, pampered boys from Verona (the two gents of the title) — Valentine (which my girls — who watched/read with me — said that’s a really stupid name) and Proteus — are basically hanging out.  Proteus has a girl — Julia — and is giving Valentine a hard time for not having one. So, when Valentine leaves to go see the world (oh, bully for him), he ends up in Milan at the court of the Duke/Emperor (Shakespeare couldn’t decide) and falls head over heels in love with Silvia (who kept coming in amid fanfare and flower petals in the version we watched). Everything is all happiness. That is (cue sinister music here), until Proteus gets sent away to Milan to the Duke/Emperor’s house and meets Silvia and falls head over heels in love with her.

At which point we were all like: “DUDE! You just professed your love to JULIA. You GAVE HER YOUR RING. Which has to be ALL kinds of serious in Shakespeare, RIGHT?? WHAT are you THINKING???”

So, Proteus decides to get Silvia — who, to her credit, is really in love with Valentine — to like him honestly. Failing that, he decides to go to her father, make up some slanderous story about Valentine, and get him exiled. Which wins him the award for Worst Best Friend EVER. After which, Valentine goes to the forest and becomes king of the outlaws.No joke. No, we didn’t understand that, either.

Proteus tries again with Silvia the Old-fashioned Way, by singing a terrible sonnet at the foot of her balcony at midnight. Hey, if it worked for Romeo… However, since Silvia really is True To Valentine, she runs into said forest (it is a Shakespeare comedy, after all). Whereupon Proteus chases her and tries to force himself on her.By this point, Julia, who Can’t Live Without Him, has disguised herself as a boy and ran off to Milan in search of her True Love. And discovers him singing to Silvia.That doesn’t go over well with her. Heart broken, she runs into the forest as well.

Yep. It’s a Shakespeare comedy were everyone ends up in the forest. Didn’t see that coming. At all.

Anyway, Proteus is out being a total douchebag, when the outlaws catch him and drag him to Valentine, who decides to get all (rightly) ticked off at Proteus. And Julia’s there — in a very bad disguise by the way — heart breaking, and Silvia’s crying, and it’s just a mess. Somehow it all gets straightened out, and Julia gives Proteus his ring back by accident whereupon he remembers her (WHAT?!?) and she FORGIVES him (WHAT?????) and la-di-da everyone lives happily ever after.

If you didn’t get it from reading this far, we were kind of MEH about this one. There’s so much not right with this play. Maybe the local company will make it work for me, but we’ll see. Go see Much Ado About Nothing instead. It’s SO much better.

The Key & The Flame

Leave a comment

by Clare M. Caterer
ages: 9+
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Eleven-year-old Holly Shepard isn’t extraordinary. She isn’t that bright, and is often chided for being off-task at school. She’s not good at anything much, not like her brother Ben. So when her family moves for a summer to a small village in England, she doesn’t expect anything extraordinary; it’s all just more of the same. That is until the landlord of their cottage gives Holly a old key that opens a door. In an oak tree. Which turns out to be a portal to another world, Anglielle, where Holly is someone extraordinary: an Adept come to save the country from the oppressive King. She’s also tasked with rescuing her brother Ben and friend Everett – both who came through the portal with her, and were immediately captured.

Much of the charm of this book comes from Holly’s discovery of her powers: it isn’t an easy path for her and the magic doesn’t come easily. There are fits and starts as she tries to get the confidence and the skill to work the magic that her friends and supporters in Anglielle believe she has. There are other bumps as well: Ben and Everett attempt to escape, and fail miserably. As a result they fall in with a less-than-honest crowd, working for their freedom through jousting.

Overall, it had a feel of one of the old fantasies from the 60s — Narnia, maybe, or Half Magic. And there is something for everyone: swordfights and adventure was well as magic. Additionally, while there is conflict and danger, those who fill the role of “bad guys” aren’t terribly bad, and the book, in the end, doesn’t have an overly dark feel. Maybe the lack of tension will turn off some readers, but I do hope that there are those – like me – who find Caterer’s return to a more classic fantasy adventure refreshing.

48 Hour Book Challenge Finish Line

8 Comments

Every year when I do this, I start all excited and geared up and ready to go. And every year I do this, I limp across the finish line, worn to pieces. Who knew sitting and reading all day could be so exhausting?

My start time: 8:30 a.m. Friday
My end time: 8:30 a.m. Sunday

Time spend reading: 22 hours 10 minutes. (yeah, I know. The uneven number bugs me, too.)

Which was a lot more than last year (I know. I went and checked). I took breaks, but they were shorter, aside from the 4 hours I put in for my kids’ book groups at work yesterday. By the way: they went better! We had two people (aside from A) show up for the 3-5th grade one, and 3 people (aside from C, though one was C’s friend we dragged along) show up for the 6-8th grade. And we had good — if shortish — discussions for both. Yay!

I also had better luck with books this year. Aside from Rebel Spirits, I really liked everything I read. Though I need to remember not to pick books that make me cry. That gives me a headache, and then I get tired, which makes it hard to read.

Books finished: 7 1/2 — the half being 5th Wave, which is just as awesome and intense as everyone says it is, though I think I have it in the wrong section at work (it’s now in the YA which is 12-14, and I think it should be in TEEN, which is 14+. I have no objections to a 12 year old reading this, but I don’t think it should be broadly recommended to 12-year-olds.)

Total pages read: 2403

Time blogged: 2 hours (which I think fits in the 1 hour for every 5 rule, right?)

Total time: 24 hours 10 minutes.

Woot!

Thanks to Ms. Yingling for taking the helm this year. I don’t know what June would be without this challenge.  Her efforts are MUCH appreciated.

Now, to go pick up the house…

One for the Murphys

2 Comments

by Lynda Mullaly Hunt
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Sitting in the back of the social worker’s car, I try to remember how my mother has always said to never show your fear.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Carley has lived with her mother in Vegas her whole life. It wasn’t terrific — they scraped by mostly — but they did okay the two of them. But then, Dennis came into their lives, they ended up in Connecticut, and after a horrible, horrible night, Carley has ended up in foster care.

Enter the Murphys — husband, stay-at-home-mom, three boys — who are everything a Perfect Happy Family should be. Carley has no idea what to do with that, or how she fits in this situation. She wants to go back to her mom, but she’s not sure how to make that work. And yet, the appeal of  the strength of a happy family and a “normal” life is huge.

I only  have one thing to say about this: it’s wonderful. I loved that there was a strong, amazing mother figure in the story, someone who knew how to love and understand and wasn’t all drugs and alcohol and neglect. Sure, there was that, too, and sometimes I hated Carley’s mother for that. But I was glad for the normalness of the story. And the quiet strength that comes from giving so completely to another human being.

In fact, it made me cry, which caught me off guard. But a child who is well and truly loved? That’s a beautiful thing. And this is a beautiful book.

The Little Way of Ruthie Leming

1 Comment

by Rod Dreher
ages: adult
First sentence: “
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy was sent by the publisher to my husband, who then passed it on to me.

I’ve been hearing for years from my husband about Rod Dreher, with whom he’s had a passing internet “relationship” for quite some time. I’ll be up front: Hubby loved this book. And when he (Hubby, not Rod) passed me this book he said, “You need to read this so you can understand why I want a cow.”

The book, simply, is Rod’s memoir about his growing up in a small Louisiana town, and his relationship with his younger sister as she battled cancer.

Writing that sentence made this book seem really trite, when it actually wasn’t. There are a lot of layers to this — I can see why Hubby enjoyed it — about the the good and bad in individual people, about tension within families, about the tragedy of an early death. Rod has a good story here, and is (thankfully) honest about the good and the bad in all situations. But, mostly what comes through is the love that he has for his sister, Ruthie, and the love that the town had for her.

I was grateful that he showed the tension between the positive and the negative; Ruthie was never deified (even though he considers her a Saint, in the traditional religious sense), and came off as a very good, very human person. I appreciated that he acknowledged the importance of place in a person’s life, and how good it is to belong somewhere. I appreciated, too, that he recognized that living in a small town (especially a small Southern town) is a double-edged sword: there are equal measures of generosity and backbiting involved.

The only drawback was the kind-of clunky writing style. Rod’s a columnist, and many times this read like a really, really long newspaper column or blog post. But, once I got used to that, I could sit back and enjoy the story he had to tell. I don’t know if it was a great one — and I’m still not sure about the whole cow thing — but it was a good one. And I appreciate my husband wanting to share that with me.

City of Bones

2 Comments

by Cassandra Clare
ages: 14+
First sentence: “‘You’ve got to be kidding me,’ the bouncer said, folding his arms across his massive chest.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

For YEARS, I have told myself that I ought to read the Mortal Instruments series. For YEARS, I have looked at these books and said, “I’ll get too them… sometime.”

Well, sometime is now. Yes, I was prompted to pick these up because of the movie  coming out in August (I tell my kids to read the book before seeing the movie. I do practice what I preach, sometimes). But, honestly people: I was unprepared for how awesome it is.

Short version for the other rock-dwellers: Clary Fray is an ordinary NYC teenager until she witnesses what she thinks is a murder in a nightclub. Suddenly, she’s seeing things — and people — that shouldn’t exist. Then, her mother disappears and Clary’s drawn into this world of Shadowhunters: half human/half angels who fight demons. (An aside here: I don’t watch the show, but from what M has told me, this sounds a LOT like Supernatural. I mentioned that to a co-worker today and she said, “Yeah, I can see that. Without the angst and with more humor, though.”) And Clary has to figure out not only how to get her mother back, but how to keep herself alive.

Things I loved: the humor. It was so much fun to read; the witticisms, the sarcasm, the witty retorts. The world building: Clare put all sorts of effort into creating this alternate reality, and the effort comes through. Sure, in parts it was vaguely Harry Potter-esque, but I can forgive that. The fact that the love triangle fizzled. Yay for no love triangles. Jace. I don’t go for blondes or tough guys, but he was pretty swoon-worthy and awesome. Clary herself: considering she had no idea what she was doing half the time, she held her own and was all sorts of headstrong. The climax, but you will have to read it yourself.

And yes, I already put City of Ashes on hold. I can’t wait.

Rebel Spirits

1 Comment

by Lois Ruby
ages: 12+
First sentence: “‘;I cannot believe we’re moving into that creaky old bed-and-breakfast,’ I mutter for about the hundredth time.
Review copy given to me by a manger at work because Ruby’s got a Wichita connection and I think she may be coming…

I kind of wanted to like this one, cheezy tag line (“What if you fell in love with a ghost?”) notwithstanding. The idea behind it sounded very, very promising: a Philidelphia girl, Lori Chase, moves to Gettysburg to run a B&B with her parents just before the re-enactment starts. She sees the ghost of a Union soldier (cute and young, of course), who tells her that he was murdered, and she needs to solve it before midnight on July 3rd, two days away. Of course she can do that, right?

But, even with a creepy/cool premise, the book went NOWHERE. It was a lot more creepy than cool — she fell in instalove with a dead guy? — and absolutely flat. No emotional pull whatsoever. And even though there was a (cute and young, of course) real guy to distract Lori, she fell for the murdered guy. Sure. Whatever.

There was also this weird subplot involving cranky old people who were on a treasure hunt for Abraham Lincoln’s ring, which felt Scooby-Doo-ish and not at all convincing. Not to mention the heavy-handed lecturing about how re-enactors are just playing at this whole War thing and Not Taking It Seriously At All. (Ruby should read Confederates in the Attic. Just saying.) I’m in a pickle now, though. What if she really is coming to the store? Do I go — I’ve been going to all the MG/YA events, in the hopes that they’ll have more?? Or do I stay home?

Because, truly, this was terrible.

OCD, The Dude, and Me

2 Comments

by Lauren Roedy Vaughn
ages: 14+
First sentence: “I should be getting ready for school right now, but I’m not because my mother has thrown off the flow of the morning.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Danielle:
is an adopted only child of successful parents
lives in L.A.
loves classic literature, and dressing up in period clothes
is a senior at an alternative high school, since she has a bad case of OCD
keeps a journal of all her essays, emails, thoughts
feels like an outcast among her peers
feels like she’s fat, which isn’t a surprise, considering where she lives
and is trying to make some sort of change in her life. Though she doesn’t know what.

Told through Danielle’s journals, essays, emails, and letters, this is the story of Danielle’s senior year, and her journey to figure out how to operate in the world. The best thing about it, truly, is the voice: Danielle is a strong, compelling (if not always reliable) narrator, and her story — you have to stick through to the end to find out what it is, fully — is both a heart breaking and inspiring one. There are some awkward and horrible moments, but there are also some wonderful ones, too. (Pot smoking, aside.) She’s a remarkable character, and has a remarkable story to tell, one that made me tear up (in the salon, no less!) a little at the end.

The only real drawback is that I wanted The Big Lebowski and the Dude to play a bigger role. They’re important, they’re there, but they don’t show up until most of the way through. I figure if it lands a mention in the title, it should be a bigger part of the story. That said, it’s a small quibble with an otherwise excellent book.

Siege and Storm

1 Comment

by Leigh Bardugo
ages: 12+
First sentence: “The boy and the girl had once dreamed of ships, long ago, before they’d ever seen the True Sea.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Review copy passed on to me by my manager at work.
Others in the series: Shadow and Bone

If you haven’t read Shadow and Bone first, be warned: there are spoilers.

Mal and Alina are on the run after their little run-in (to say the least) with the Darkling, hiding out in far away places, running from both Alina’s new-found power and the Darkling, whom they know is hunting them. Alina’s gone back to hiding her power — not only that she’s the Sun Summoner, but the collar/amplifier that binds her to the Darkling.

Except they can’t run forever, and the Darkling captures them again. They’re taken north, this time, to find yet another mythical beast, to make yet another amplifier for Alina. Except things don’t go exactly as planned: Alina and Mal end up in yet another player’s grasp, back in Ravka, as Alina tries to figure out her power and how to stop the Darkling once and for all, and still — somehow — remain true to Mal as well as the person she’s becoming.

Okay, yeah, all that is very cryptic. But there are a couple of twists and turns that I don’t want to give away. The relationship between Mal and Alina still bugs me, but I do like where Bardugo is going with it. I just happen to like other characters (who shall Remain Nameless) better. I like what is happening with the magic in the world, and the way she uses mythology and religion and science to support it. I actually like what she’s done with the Darkling as well. He’s still a bit bully-ish, but there is some complexity showing. And the climax is pretty intense.

Again: I’m quite curious to see where she’s going with the final book in this trilogy. Too bad I have to wait a whole year for it!

Doll Bones

2 Comments

by Holly Black
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Poppy set down one of the mermaid dolls close to the stretch of asphalt road that represented the Blackest Sea.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Zach is 12, a pretty good student, on the basketball team, kind of popular. And his two best friends are Alice and Poppy. Having girls for best friends isn’t a terribly unusual thing, except what they did was play games. Specifically: one long, elaborate imaginary game with dolls/action figures.

But they’re too old to be playing those sorts of games, right? Zach’s dad thinks so, at least, and in a fit of bad parenting, he tosses out all of Zach’s action figures. Which sets forth a chain of events that involve Polly unlocking the Queen — a very old china doll her mother won’t let them touch — and then being visited by the ghost of a dead girl. It turns out that the Queen is made from the bones and ashes of a girl long since dead, and who wants to be buried in a nearby town. Which lead to the three friends sneaking out in the night, going on one last, final Quest to fulfill the Queen’s wishes.

I should say, first off, that I was assuming this book would be creepy. Like Coraline creepy. It wasn’t, at least not for me. There are ghosts, there are close calls, and weird circumstances and people, but it didn’t get my spine tingling. I’m actually grateful for that, because I was able to focus on the more poignant story: that of the painful — for some — transition from childhood to young adulthood. It’s not a transition I made easily (I went kicking and screaming, actually), and I’ve noticed the bumps and bruises from that transition in M and C. Black handles it beautifully. The awkwardness, the feeling of being left behind by close friends, the desire to hang on to the things of childhood, the insecurity of facing the future: they’re all there. Dressed up in a Quest, an adventure, a ghost story. Maybe kids won’t pick up on it, but I do hope some do. I would have loved this book as a 10 or 11 year old, loved knowing that I wasn’t alone in feeling the way I did about getting older.

Oh, and as another side note: A and I were talking the other day about how in adventure books they never stop to go to the bathroom. Or get common colds. Or get sunburned. I loved how Black addressed that:

Adventuring turned out to be boring. Zach thought back to all the fantasy books he’d read where a team of questers traveled overland, and realized a few things. First, he’d pictured himself with a loyal steed that would have done most of the walking, so he hadn’t anticipated the blister forming on his left heel or the  tiny pebble that  worked its way under his sock, so that even when he stripped off his sneaker he couldn’t find it. 

He hadn’t though about how hot the sun would be either. When he put together his bunch of provisions, he never though about bringing sunblock. Aragorn never wore sunblock. Taran never wore sunblock. Percy never wore sunblock.

And because of all that, I love this one.