The Stinkers

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Belladonna asked a good question in her comment on my last post. And it got me thinking: what are the worst books I’ve ever read?

I could come up with two right off the top of my head: Zel by Donna Jo Napoli and The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell. I don’t remember why I had such a loathesome reaction to Zel. But I did. I hated it. And because of that, I’ve never read another book by Napoli becasue of it. The Sparrow I enjoyed for most of the book, but the end turned overly disturbing and explicit. I just felt nasty after finishing it. There are ways to do provocative that doesn’t have to be gross.

There are books I don’t like because of the language and/or explicit sexual content: High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffengger and Neuromancer by William Gibson (though I didn’t finish this one) are three that come to mind in this category. Often I can look past the language, if the story or characters are sufficiently compelling. But in both of these cases, the language overtook the story and ruined it for me.

Interesting side note: much adult science fiction/fantasy falls into the worst book category. I love fantasy books, but too often the author spends too much time on the world and not enough on the story.

There are those chick-lit books I didn’t like because I just thought they were dumb: Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants by Ann Brashares, The Princess Diaries by Meg Cabot, and The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington. I know “dumb” is a subjective thing. What I find “dumb” might be really compelling to another person. And, admittedly, it might be compelling to me on another day. It took me years to get through Pride and Prejudice. I always thought it was “dumb”. Likewise, I found Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley to be really compelling the first time through, but by the third, it was pretty dumb.

Notice all those were chick lit. Hmm…

I could go on. But I won’t. What’s your worst book ever that you finished?

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

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Not being a complete die-hard Monty Python fan, I didn’t get the reference in the title of this book by Sarah-Kate Lynch. Completely missed it (Hhubby, on the other hand, picked it up immediatly). The opening quote clued me in: “What’s so special about the cheesemakers?”

Unfortunately, this kind of warped my expecations of the book. I guess I expected it to be a bit sillier (I mean, it’s Monty Python folks. They’re not exactly serious) than it was. Granted, it wasn’t a straight up anything, so I guess I wasn’t too far off the mark. I guess I wanted more belly laughs, though.

The basic plot is a bit convuluted. There’s Corrie and Fee (who has a tendancy to “know” what’s going to happen) who make Coolarney cheese in Ireland. There’s Avis and the pregnant vegetarian singing milkmaids (that’s a funny concept) who help run the cheese farm. (Well, they milk the cows, and thereby are the “secret ingredient”.) There’s Abbey, who’s Corrie’s granddaughter, and running from a real schlep of a husband. There’s Kit, who’s trying to dry out after going on a drinking binge after he “lost” his wife. There’s Jesus, Mary and All The Saints, the three cats. Who really don’t have much to do with the story, except for their funny names. And somehow, they all come together and make cheese.

When Hubby asked me how I liked this book, I said that it wasn’t great but it didn’t suck. I know that’s a wide range there, but really, that’s how I felt. It’s not the worst book I’ve ever read, but it’s not the best. Maybe more silliness would have helped.

Selling out

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This is just wrong.

I was going to go on a long rant about how terrible it is that Katherine Paterson has sold out and allowed this movie to be made. But, it’s late and I’m tired. Still, some movies just shouldn’t be made. At least not like this.

East

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I had a hard time finishing this book by Edith Pattou. Not because of the book, though. Because my life wouldn’t let me sit down and just savor this book like a wanted to. I finally did, about 3/4 of the way through, because it was just too compelling. So, I let the home and Christmas stuff wait for a night. 🙂

The story is a retelling of the old fairy tale East of the Sun and West of the Moon. When I first read about this book in Chinaberry, I had no idea about the fairy tale, so we checked it out from the libarary as well. It’s a simple Norweigan fairy tale, one I think I’ve heard before. A white bear takes a girl from a poor family in exchange for wealth. He then takes her to live with him in his enchanted castle. It’s a fairly uneventful time, except that every night, someone comes to sleep with her in the bed. After a while, she aches to go home, and the white bear relents, with one condition: she must not be alone with her mother. She breaks this condition, tells her mother about the stranger in the bed, and her mother gives her a candle. Back at the castle she lights the candle and sees that it’s a man in the bed with her. Unfortunatly, though, with this act, she seals his fate: he’s taken away to marry the troll queen in the castle east of the sun and west of the moon. The girl then sets out to search for the man (whom she realized, too late, was the white bear). She walks for ages, picks up a golden spinning wheel, loom and harp, until the north wind takes her to the castle. There she trades the wheel, loom and harp for visits to the prince, finally succeeding in waking him up and breaking the troll queen’s curse.

East follows the basic fairy tale fairly well, but since I wasn’t attached to the original tale, I had no problems with Pattou’s changes to the story. She fleshes out the family, giving them reasons and motivations behind the departure of the girl (Rose, in the book). The relationship between Rose and the white bear is fleshed out. And the whole journey to find the bear is completely different. Rather than relying on magic, Rose relys on friends, common sense, and plain old inginuity. And, yes, she finally succeeds in the end, and it’s a completely satsifying success. Even the little (mostly unecessary) epilogue in the end doesn’t detract from the great ending to the story.

It was a wonderful book. Perhaps it was good that it took me so long to read. Maybe I enjoyed it more that way.

March

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First. It’s been a whopper of a week. We closed on our house on Monday, the 20th, and then spent the rest of the week prepping the house for our move on Saturday. Carpet people, vinyl/laminate people, cleaning (if you EVER sell a house, PLEASE clean it for the next owner. It SUCKS having to clean a house just to make it livable, and it’s still not done!), painting (the room was such a mess, M refused to move in until it was painted), packing, moving, hauling trash, and unpacking. Which gets us to today. Things are mostly unpacked. I’m happy to see our books, which have been in storage for the last four months. It makes me feel like I’m finally settled.

On top of all that, I tried to read Geraldine Brook’s March. I was excited about this one: she takes Mr. March from Little Women, imagines a backstory and fills in for the time that he’s missing in the book, until he gets ill and Marmee comes and gets him. Granted, I only got about 5 chapters in (it was a busy week), but I never could get into the book. It just didn’t feel right. I know, I didn’t exactly love Little Women. Still. I think it’s one of those books that everyone has their opinions about, and reactions to, and to… well, mess with the book is just wrong. Mr. March was too extreme in his views — too vegetairan, too abolitionist, too… too! — to make him the loving, caring, quiet father of the March girls. And Brooks tried to weave in the story line from Little Women, and it just didn’t fit with the wartime scenes, and the flashes of backstory that she gave him.

In the end, I put it down. It didn’t hold my interest, and at the end of some very long days it wasn’t what I wanted to be reading. Maybe someday I’ll try again. But probably not.

At the Sign of the Star

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I am completely ambivalent about this book by Katherine Sturtevant. I didn’t love it. I didn’t hate it. It was just there.

The plot’s simple enough. Meg, the daughter of a bookseller in 17th century London, is upset because her father remarries, and she will lose her inheritance if/when her step mother has a baby. She has to learn to deal with the fact of a new stepmother (after 4 years of being alone with her father). She has to learn to deal with her life as a young woman (she’s 12 for half, 13 for the otherhalf) and learning all the “wifely arts” (she’s a reader, and would much rather work in the bookstore).

The most fascinating part was the talk of writers in London in the late 1600s. The plays, the books, the fact that there were woman authors. But, there wasn’t enough of it for my taste.

Maybe I’m just suffering from good book let down. The book after a really good one is never great, right?

Sad News (and The Game)

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Sad News.

The Game.

Ah.

I left Michigan 16 years ago (to go to college in Utah), but my (football) heart still bleeds Blue and Gold.

This was taken Christmas morning in 1989; cut me some slack. The sweatshirt was in honor of Bo’s last Rose Bowl as a coach. They lost. Sigh. My mom called it the “California Factor.”

Here’s hoping they win today. It would do honor to Bo’s memory.

Uptdate, 11/19: They lost. But they put up a good fight, and it was a good game. To heck with Bo’s memory. 🙂 OSU is a great team. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next with the BCS and the national championship. But really, is there any need to play another game? OSU deserves the championship. And that’s coming from a Michigan fan.

How Green was my Valley

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I can’t find enough good to say about this book. It was simple, poignant, honest, beautifully written, and totally engaging. However, when one asks, “What is this book about?”, it’s hard to say. It’s about a boy becoming a man. It’s about love. It’s about family. It’s about the disadvantage the worker has with the owners. It’s about coal mining. It’s about… life.

I felt a real connection to this book. My “people” as my grandmother calls them were coal miners in England. In fact, that’s why my mother’s side of the family came to America. Things weren’t going so well in the mines in England (something which Richard Llewellyn touches on in the book), so they immigrated to America to work in the mines in Wyoming. They were probably much like the characters in the book. At one point, Huw (don’t ask me how to pronounce that; in fact, if someone could tell me, I’d appreciate it), loses his chance at a scholarship to Oxford because he beats up a teacher. (Long story. Read the book to find out). His father laments because he wanted something “better”. Huw wants to work in the mines. His mother supports him in that: it’s been good enough for her husband and all her other sons, why not Huw? I got to thinking about how my family got out of the coal mines. Accidents, illness… I wonder if any left by choice?

My only complaints were the lack of information about time passing, but I think that’s nitpicking on my part. That, and I felt like it just petered out at the end, rather than having a good solid ending. But the rest of the book was so wonderful, I can forgive the little things. A great book.

A Plain and Simple Manhunt

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I meant to write these separately, but I figured, since I finished the second book before I had a chance to post the first I’d just combine the two.

So, Manhunt by James L. Swanson. The subtitle gives it away: The 12-day chase for Lincoln’s killer. Interesting, I suppose. But Swanson’s writing is really… odd. Maybe he thought that since it’s a sensationalistic topic — I mean who wants to read a book about the “bad guy” after all? — he’d write a sensationalistic book. It reads like a really bad Gothic novel in parts. Here’s one example:

Marooned in this desolate place, did Booth reminisce about happier days, when he ad his beloved sister, Asia, played as carefree teenagers in the forests of Bel Air, Maryland? Once upon a time, before he became a famous actor and a denizen of America’s great cities, Booth loved to commune with nature… Booth and Herold murmured quietly, most likely talking of their crimes and speculating on their fate. What would they do? What would tomorrow bring? When would they cross the river and find rest on the other side? When Booth smelled the forest scent of the thicket, did its sweet, piney odor take him back to a time of youthful innocence and allow him, briefly, to forget murders and manhunts?

Do I really care?

On on level, albeit a voyeuristic one, I found this book fascinating. I didn’t know it took 12 days to find, and kill Booth (that’s a priceless scene: burning barns, bumbling army sergeants, simpering sidekicks, Booth as the tragic actor, and God-inspired snipers). I didn’t know that before his assassination, Lincoln was only considered a middling president (amazing how history changes itself). But, in the end, I still didn’t really care.

Plain and Simple, by Sue Bender, is a sparse, quick narrative of her journey to Peace and Understanding of Herself. I shouldn’t make fun. She needed it: in the early 80s, she was a teacher, therapist, artist, and — as she says herself — spinning too many wheels in too many directions. She was drawn to some Amish quilts and dolls that she saw, and began to think that life might have Meaning outside of Achievement. She found some Amish women who were willing to send her dolls and became a pen pal with one of them. She also, for two summers, found Amish families to live with. She learns Life Lessons (and writes down nine of them), and discovers that the Amish are 1) not all alike — the first family she stays with is much stricter and less healthy than the second; and 2) they find ways to be accepting and joyful about their life situation without pining for what is missing.

I’m not the target audience — I suppose I’ve already made that journey. Most days I’m happy with my life choice to jump the career track and stay home with my kids. Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t something “more”: I’d like to go back to work someday, but only if I can do something I enjoy. I do recognize that it is a luxury, because we can live off my husband’s income. Granted, that means living with less, but I think it’s worth it. I do agree with what she learned: Home and Community are supremely important; Living in the moment is better than pining for what has gone or what is to come; work and play are the same, if you make it so, and life can be art; there is freedom in limitations; and making a choice isn’t the same as having many choices. I could go on about the last one — it feeds into my belief that we’re totally off base in this country about rights, freedoms and choice, and that more isn’t always better. And in the end, that’s the message of the book (and the Amish): more isn’t better. More is… more. And sometimes the best lives are the ones that are lived simply.