The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

2 Comments

by Jennifer E. Smith
ages: 13+
First sentence: “There are so many ways it could have all turned out differently.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Hadley Sullivan is being forced to go to her father’s second marriage. To a woman (That British Woman) she’s never met. In London. It’s not a happy idea, and when all sorts of little things go wrong, she ends up missing her flight. Which means making it to the wedding will be tough.

Then she meets Oliver. In the airport. They strike up a conversation, and it turns out that they’ll be sitting next to each other on the plane.  They end up talking on and off the entire flight, and by the time they land in London, Hadley’s starting to wonder: could this attraction be something… more?

For long-term readers of my blog, you know that I have Issues with True Love and Love at First Sight and Fate. And this book deals with all three. So, by any measurement, I should have hated it. But I didn’t.

I think it was possibly because the book isn’t wholly about True Love. Sure, Hadley meets Oliver, they fall into… something… but it’s really about her relationship with her father, whom she hasn’t forgiven for divorcing her mother a year ago. It makes the book a bit angsty, but for me, her struggles to understand and accept her father’s decision, to realize that he’s not Evil (and neither is her stepmother) balanced out the sappy of the True Love.

Except, it wasn’t sappy. It felt more natural — and even though Hadley’s hunting down Oliver when in London seemed improbable, I could still believe it — and because the book only took place over 24 hours, it made it less cloying. It was really a book about beginnings, sweet and tender. Sure, maybe Hadley and Oliver’s relationship will work out for Forever, or maybe it’ll fall apart once school starts, but that’s immaterial. It’s a beginning. It’s a story.

And that’s honestly the best part.

Sunday Salon: State of the TBR Pile 8

Leave a comment

A new month: a new pile.I do have to confess, that my pile was down to three books (She Walks These Hills, The Sherlockian, and My Life as an Experiment), and so I picked up any and all books that looked interesting the last time I was at the library, so my pile didn’t look so lonely. Yes, I am hopeless.

Yes, Chef, by Marcus Samuelsson (because I was in the mood for something foody, and I happen to have this ARC from work)
Breaking Stalin’s Nose, by Eugine Yelchin
The Book of Three, by Lloyd Alexander (because I’m due for a re-read)
She Walks These Hills, by Sharyn McCrumb (no longer for my in-person book club — we abandoned because of one f-bomb — I’m still curious about it.)
The Returning, by Christine Hinwood (because I like the cover)
Ghost Knight, by Cornelia Funke (because Charlotte liked it)
The Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows, by Jacqueline West(because it’s about bloody time I read these)
The Books of Elsewhere: Spellbound, by Jacqueline West
Sloppy Firsts, by Megan McCafferty (because Sya in my book group said it was good, I think.)
The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore (this poor book; will I ever read it??)

What’s on your pile?

Audiobook: Cinder

6 Comments

by Marissa Meyer
Read by: Rebecca Soler
ages: 12+
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Cinder is a cyborg — part human, part machine — which puts her at the fringe of the New Beijing society. She’s just a mechanic, even if she is a good one, and just barely tolerated by her stepmother and stepsisters. (Well, one of her stepsisters, Peony, is her friend. The other, not so much.)

Then, once day the crown prince Kaito shows up at her booth, dragging an android that needs to be fixed. And Cinder’s world — for better and for worse — is changed forever.

I should get this out of the way for all of you who haven’t read it: yes, this is a first in the series. I somehow missed this fact, and so by the end of the book, when it was clear that it wasn’t going to be wrapped up in one story, I was pretty frustrated. I think, if I had known this would go on longer, I would have been less impatient with the story.

Because, really: it took too long to tell. I know it didn’t help that I figured out the twist a little ways into Book 2, but really: this story could have been told sufficiently in one book; making it a series just felt forced to me.

That said, there were elements I did like: I liked Cinder’s android friend, Iko, and Cinder’s relationship with her. I liked Cinder, and the way her cyborg elements helped, enhancing her as a character. I liked the doctor (I don’t remember his name; since I listened to it.), and his role in the story. I liked the world that Meyer built: part dystopian, part fairy tale. I did like the way she was morphing the Cinderella story into something else: the basic elements were still there, but melded quite well with the world that Meyer created. I loved the reader: she was brilliant, and her reading made the story pop.

I guess, in the end, the positives of the book outweigh my frustration at the story taking too long to tell.

Ilium

1 Comment

by Dan Simmons
ages: adult
First sentence: “Rage.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

There are books and then there are Books. Ones that throw their heft around, demanding things (heaven forbid!) of you as a reader. This is one of Those Books.

To be fair: I don’t think I’m smart enough for this book. For starters, there’s just so bloody much going on. It’s got Greek mythology, dystopian post-apocolyptic societies, Proust, Shakespeare (in more ways than one!), magic, technology, robots, some weird species called morovecs, and Little Green Men on Mars.

The plot, you ask? Well, there’s three:

  • On Mars, the Gods of Olympus are re-enacting (possibly) the Iliad, using dead 20th- and 21st- century scholars to observe and predict the action. 
  • On Earth (possibly), there is a group of friends who end up setting off to find the post-humans (no, I’m not quite sure what they are, either) and end up meeting a 1400-year-old Jewish woman who leads them to an asteroid above earth where the post-humans are supposed to be. Along the way, one of the party gets eaten by a dinosaur (or maybe that happens first?) and they meet Odysseus.
  • There are two moravecs (robotic entities, mostly scholars of Earth, that live on the moons of Jupiter) sent on a mission to figure out why Mars has been terraformed.

 For me, the Iliad one was the most interesting, and really what kept me reading the book. Then came the dystopian-human-Earth one. I do have to admit, that for a good half of the book, I skimmed the moravec chapters. I can only take so much Proust. That said, I kept hoping the three plots would converge and start to make sense. They do end up converging — and honestly, about two-thirds of the way through, it got really interesting — but I’m not sure about the making sense part.

See, the entire book, all 570 pages of it, was an elaborate set up for the next book, Olympos. (I’ve never read the Iliad: is it just a huge set-up for the Odyssey?) Which really, really frustrated me. I wanted some sort of ending, some sort of resolution, and I’m left hanging in a major way. So, I’m torn: do I want to read yet another Book (it’s 690 pages, for heaven’s sake!) just so I can figure out what the whole story was about? Or do I just cut my losses and walk away?

I’m leaning toward the latter.

May 2012 Round-up

4 Comments

It’s the end of May??? Already????

Sometimes, I really do wonder where the time goes.

The kids are out of school, the weather’s heating up (well, not today; it’s a lovely sort of coolish today), and my reading is turning to, well, fluff.

Oh, and if you haven’t signed up for Mother Reader’s 48 Hour Reading Challenge, what’s keeping you?

And if you’re off to BEA this weekend, have a fantastic time!

And for this months reading:

My favorite, hands down, no questions:

Bitterblue

I waited nearly three years for this one, and Kristin Cashore didn’t disappoint.

And the Middle Grade:

Cold Cereal
Searching for Dragons

Summer of the Gypsy Moths

And the YA (mostly fantasy!):

Demonglass

Hunger Games (reread)

Insurgent

Purity

Spell Bound

Between Shades of Gray

Girl of Fire and Thorns

Adult fiction/Non-Fiction (because there’s only one of each):

Drop Dead Healthy
True Sisters

Audiobooks:

The Lady of Rivers (audiobook) (DNF)
Sports from Hell (audiobook)

And… Graphic Novels:

Amulet: The Last Council
Around the World 
Fables: Deluxe Edition, Book One

What were your favorites this month?

Audiobook: The Lady of the Rivers

1 Comment

by Philippa Gregory
Read by Bianca Amato
ages: adult

So, I have loved Philippa Gregory in the past. The intrigue, the sweeping historical drama, the women behind the kings. And, this one has such a pretty cover (though I like the hardcover one better). So, I got the audiobook and started to listen to it, hoping for that same grandiose, sweeping world that I love from Gregory.

And what I got was a petulant, whining brat.The story is of Jacquetta, a French girl married to the Duke of something or other, who wants her for her “powers” (they never really manifest into anything, and peter away after a while; it would have been better had they gone somewhere and did something). They never consummate their marriage, and when he dies, she ends up with his squire, Richard Woodhouse (I think. I never really cared that much.) From there they go to England, have tons of babies, serve the king (who is a total douche), and then I gave up.

I do have to admit that perhaps a lot of my feelings about this have to do with the person reading the book. She. Drove. Me. Batty. Seriously. What may have come off in print as strong, or at least caring, came off as petulant and whiny. And the plot was moving a glacially slow pace; nothing happens for pages and pages and pages. (I checked the print book: I bailed at 190 pages.) I felt the plot spinning in a hamster wheel: going around and around but never moving forward. (I think reading MG/YA books have completely spoiled me for long, complex, SLOW plots. I can’t stand them.)

On the other hand, maybe the 15th century just isn’t as interesting or sexy as the Tudors are, and there’s nothing that Gregory could have done to make it interesting. Which is a distinct possibility.

Either way, I couldn’t hack this one.

Purity

1 Comment

by Jackson Pearce
ages: 15+
First sentence: “When I said it, I didn’t mean it.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

Two things first: I still really like Jackson Pearce’s writing. And I’m completely the wrong audience for this.

Because from the get-go, the premise — a girl, who has made promises to her mom on her death bed, doesn’t want to make a promise of “purity” to her father (at a Princess Ball) and so sets out to have sex in the five weeks before the dance in order to create a loophole — screamed idiotic to me. SCREAMED it.

I kept wanting to shake Shelby: talk. to. your. dad. Okay, sure, I know that most teenagers don’t actually talk to their parents, unlike mine, but really: communication is so underrated. I know the whole point of the book was so that Shelby would learn to Love, and to Understand her father, and there was bumbling and missteps along the way. In no way does this book make sex out to be all that (and then some), but even that didn’t save the book for me.

Because, in so many ways, I felt this was Done. Do we really need another book like this? I wanted Pearce to do something new, something fresh, and I feel like we got a Cliff Notes version of a Sarah Dessen book, which really disappointed me.

That’s not to say people won’t like this one. It’s just not my cup o’ tea.

Insurgent

3 Comments

by Veronica Roth
ages: 14+
First sentence: “I wake with his name in my mouth.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in the series: Divergent

(Warning: if you haven’t read Divergent, go do that now. There will, obviously, be spoilers for Divergent in this review.)

Tris, Tobias and their friends are on the run. After successfully — sort of — stopping the Eurdite faction and their plan to exterminate the Abnegation faction, and the city government, they’re hiding out, regrouping. Their faction, Dauntless, has all but dissolved: half have defected to Eurdite, basically becoming their thugs, the other half is hiding out in the Candor faction. Then there’s the “factionless”: those without a place to belong. In this fight which pits Knowledge and Brawn against Truth and Selflessness, it seems those whom everyone has been ignoring are suddenly quite important.  But the important thing is this: Tris and Tobias (and their friends) make their way through most of the factions, assessing and trying desperately to figure out what Jeanine (the leader of Eurdiate) wants so badly with the Divergent, so badly that she will kill for.

The action picks up immediately where Divergent leaves off which is both a strength and a weakness. A strength because for this story, there isn’t a need for months in between plot lines. The action is too intense, too immediate for that. And Roth finds a way to build on the ideas of Divergent, taking the plot lines in intriguing directions. The weakness comes if you, like me, haven’t read Divergent immediately proceeding. Roth wastes no time on exposition, no time on explanations: if you don’t know what’s going on, tough luck.

That said, she does weave bits of information into the chapters, enough so that I was able to remember the basic story of Divergent by the time I was half way through. (It’s just getting to that point!) But, eventually, this story kicked in, and I no longer needed past information — admittedly, I did get tired of Tris and Tobias’s clandestine smooching, which lacked both intensity and passion — to carry my interest. The story is very much a middle-of-a-trilogy: things need to happen, pieces need to move, revelations need to come out (though, honestly: I felt the Big Reveal was a bit forced), in order for the story to move forward. There’s a lot of running around from faction to faction (on the plus side: you get to see the insides of all the factions), recruiting people, trying to understand what the Ultimate Purpose is here. Much like Katniss, Tris spends the book trying to recover from Bad Deeds She Did, though she’s a much more pro-active character than Katniss is. However, everything seems too cut-and-dried, too much like jumping through hoops. I wanted there to be more surprises. (There were a few; Roth, I think, revels in making characters who will do both “good” and “bad” things, within the space of a few chapters.)

I’m not sure it’s as good as Divergent was, but since it left us on a bit of a cliff-hanger (Roth does know how to write an ending!), I’ll have to leave my ultimate judgement until the next book comes out.

Fables: The Deluxe Edition, Book One

7 Comments

by Bill Willingham
ages: adult
First sentence: “Once Upon a Time…”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

The fairy tale characters we all know and love — from Snow White and Price Charming down to Jack (of Beanstalk fame) — have been exiled from their country, driven out by “The Adversary.” They’ve been living in New York City (well, the ones who can pass for human, anyway; the rest are exiled to a farm in upstate New York) for centuries, trying to be happy with their living.

In the first of two books in this deluxe edition, “Legends in Exile,” it seems Rose Red (Snow White’s sister, if you didn’t remember) has been murdered. Her boyfriend, Jack, finds the scene and races to tell Bigby Wolf (the Big Bad Wolf, of course, who turns out to be a bit of a shapeshifter), who takes on the investigation. Snow gets involved, not only because Rose is her sister, but because she’s the mayor’s (King Cole) deputy, and as a result, really runs the community.

It’s an intriguing premise, this. It’s a halfway decent murder mystery (I didn’t figure it out; I wasn’t paying enough attention to the details), and what Willingham (and his team) have done with the characters is interesting. But what I really liked was the world-building here. There’s a lot of conflict just within the community, and the fact that they’re in hiding just intensifies those conflicts. It was fascinating. But what I really liked was the second book, “Animal Farm.”

In that, we get to see the non-human characters (the three pigs, the three bears, some dragons and other assorted woodland creatures). They’re sick of being forced into their farm prison for the sake of the community’s security, and want to not only overrun Snow and their government, but want to go back and take their homeland back from The Adversary. The revolution is run by Goldilocks, who is quite ruthless in her vision and execution. It’s fun, it’s fascinating, and it hooked me on the series.

Except: my library is missing all the books between this one and Arabian Nights, so I’m quite at a loss where to get the next installment. I’ll have to do some research…

Amulet: The Last Council

3 Comments

Amulet, vol. 4
by Kazu Kibuishi
ages: 9+
First sentence: “Who are you playing against?”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Others in this series: The Stonekeeper, The Stonekeeper’s Curse, The Cloud Searchers

Emily and her friends and family are on a quest: one to figure out what the stone Emily wears around her neck really means, one to help overthrow the elf king. They’ve found the cloud city, Cielis, where they thought they would find answers. But, instead, there are only more questions. Emily’s friends and family are separated and imprisoned (although the robots, Miskit and Cogsley, find an old, exiled stonekeeper to give us some much-needed backstory) while Emily is taken by the council, and subjected to “testing”: a virtual game in which if you die, you don’t come back.

Things aren’t good in Cielis, and the answers Emily is seeking for aren’t going to be found. Instead, there are just more questions.

I said, after I finished the third book, that I really needed to stop reading this. And yet, when I saw that the fourth one had come out, I went, “OOOOH, AMULET!” and picked it up. And, when I finished this one, I had the same reaction: Kibuishi just isn’t writing/drawing these as fast as I want him to. I want answers! I want to know the rest of the story! I want to know where this is all going! (I couldn’t remember what had happened!) It’s so engrossing, so well-done, amazingly drawn, that I could just get caught up in it, reading until the story is done. Except it’s not there yet.

*sigh* Waiting until the next book comes out.