Book Awards Reading Challenge

Book Awards V Rules and Sign-up

2011-11-30T23:42:00.001-05:00

Thanks to all those who participated in the first four book awards challenges!! Are you up for a fifth? The challenge for Book Awards V will last for 10 months, from February 1 through December 1, 2011.

Rules:

Read 5 books from 5 different awards during February 1, 2011 through December 1, 2011.

Overlaps with other challenges are permitted.

Choices don't have to be posted right away, and lists may be changed at any time.

'Award winners' is loosely defined; make the challenge fit your needs.

Read your books and then, if you wish, come post your reviews into Mr. Linky at http://bookawardschallenge.blogspot.com.

Have fun reading!

Book Awards IV Rules and Sign-up

2010-03-01T11:51:00.002-05:00

10 months. 10 awards.

Thanks to all those who participated in the first three book awards challenges!! Are you up for a fourth? The challenge for Book Awards IV will last for 10 months, from January 1 through November 1, 2010.

Rules:

Read 10 books from 10 different awards during January 1, 2010 through November 1, 2010.

Overlaps with other challenges are permitted.

Choices don't have to be posted right away, and lists may be changed at any time.

'Award winners' is loosely defined; make the challenge fit your needs.

If you'd like to be a contributor on the Book Awards blog, email me at 3m.michelle at gmail and reference your blog address if you have one. (I must have your email address, so comments to this post won't work.)

Have fun reading!

1. Lu
2. Laura (Musings)
3. raidergirl3
4. Samantha
5. alisonwonderland
6. Katie
7. Lisa Hill (ANZ LitLovers)
8. 3m @ 1morechapter
9. Kim: (page after page)
10. FleurFisher
11. Lindy
12. Wendy (Caribousmom)
13. Jillian B
14. Chica
15. Kari @ Through a Glass, Darkly
16. Jennifer (Reading with Tequila)
17. Tricia (Library Queue)
18. Joseph
19. Nicole

20. Nely @ All About {n]
21. Tiny Librarian
22. Lauren
23. Renee Stead
24. Matt (Buffalo Savage)
25. Kristen (BookNAround)
26. Caitlin (chaotic compendiums)
27. Mee (Books of Mee)
28. Alicia
29. anne rubin
30. Debbie Rodge @ Exurbanis
31. Liza
32. Laura
33. Tracey (A Book Sanctuary)
34. debnance at readerbuzz
35. Kimmie
36. Black Sheep
37. Rose City Reader
38. Awaris

39. Sea
40. Lesley (A Life in Books)
41. Free Stuff
42. Natalie Wadel
43. The Literary Dilettante!
44. pinuccia
45. Not So Well Read
46. Ashley-Dior
47. Ashley-Dior
48. kdreader
49. Short Poems
50. Melissa
51. Elisabeth (Dirigible Plum)
52. DiscipulaDC
53. Matt (Changes in the Land)
54. Matt (The Great Pandemic)
55. Matt (Walk Golden Horn)

2010 Reviews

2010-02-28T16:51:00.002-05:00

You may enter your 2010 reviews here if you don't contribute to the blog (or even if you do).

1. Nebula Award - Dune by Frank Herbert (Caitlin @ chaoticcompendiums)
2. Matt (War Trash)
3. Wolf Hall (Lisa Hill)
4. Mee (Waiting)
5. Mee (Flowers for Algernon)
6. Pacific NW Booksellers' Award - Boneshaker (Caitlin @ chaotic compendiums)
7. Library Queue (A Curse Dark as Gold)
8. Library Queue (Fire)
9. Library Queue (The Boy Who Dared)
10. Library Queue (Secret Letters from 0 to 10)
11. Newbery Medial - Roller Skates (caitlin @ chaotic compendiums)
12. Joseph (A Thousand Acres)
13. Nat'l Book Award - Slaves in the Family (caitlin @ chaotic compendiums)
14. Bootlegger's Daughter (Lesley @ A Life in Books)
15. Someone Knows My Name (Lesley @ A Life in Books)
16. Joseph (The Old Man and the Sea)
17. Matt (King Solomon's Ring)
18. Tiny Librarian (Olive Kitteridge)
19. Kimmie (Lisey's Story)
20. Booker Prize - Wolf Hall (Caitlin @ chaotic compendiums)
21. The Museum of Innocence (Nobel Prize) (Lisa Hill)
22. Wolf Hall - 2009 Booker (Caribousmom)
23. Morte d' Urban, Natl Book Award (Musings)
24. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao @ The Literary Dilettante

25. Ysabel (Caitlin @ chaotic compendiums)
26. World's Fair (Caitlin @ chaotic compendiums)
27. Library Queue (The Ask and the Answer)
28. Library Queue (A Year Down Yonder)
29. Library Queue (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
30. Swimming to Antarctica (Lesley @ A Life in Books)
31. Fleur Fisher (The Tin Kin)
32. The Road Home (Lisa Hill)
33. Jane Eyre (Katie)
34. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Lesley @ A Life in Books)
35. Skim by Mariko and Jillian Tamaki (Bookie Mee)
36. The Arrival (Wendy @ Caribousmom)
37. Fleur Fisher (The Well and the Mine)
38. Awaris
39. Mee (The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas)
40. Black Sheep (Eisner Award)
41. Amazing Maurice and his educated rodents
42. Blue Heaven
43. The Rabbits by John Marsden and Shaun Tan (Bookie Mee)
44. Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon
45. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
46. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter (Bookie Mee)
47. Caitlin (Skellig by David Almond)
48. Matt (The Late George Apley)

49. What Was Lost by Catherine O' Flynn (Samantha)
50. Let The Great World Spin (Caribousmom)
51. Tinkers (Caribousmom)
52. Kimmie( White Noise)
53. Mudbound (Caribousmom)
54. To Kill A Mockingbird (Bookie Mee)
55. Tender Morsels (Bookie Mee)
56. Matt (Selkirk's Island)
57. What I saw and how I lied (Tiny Librarian)
58. Trap (Miles Franklin award) Lisa Hill, ANZLit Lovers
59. Kimmie (All the Pretty Horses)
60. 3 girls and their brother (Tiny Librarian)
61. The Graveyard Book (@ The Other Lives)
62. The Shadow Year (@ The Other Lives)
63. When You Reach Me (Tiny Librarian)
64. Still Life (Tiny Librarian)
65. Matt (Timbuktu by Mark Jenkins)
66. Matt (Spn Civil War by Anthony Beevor)
67. Tiny Librarian (Her Royal Spyness)
68. Tiny Librarian (When you reach me)
69. Tiny Librarian (Airborn)
70. Tiny Librarian (The Outcast)

Sept/Oct/Nov 2009 Reviews

2009-12-01T12:27:00.001-05:00

You may enter your Sept/Oct/Nov '09 reviews here if you don't contribute to the blog (or even if you do).

1. Steven (The Ghost Road)
2. The Winds of Dune at The Great Geek Manual
3. Nancy Posey
4. Laura (The Long Goodbye)
5. alisonwonderland (The Graveyard Book)
6. AF Heart
7. Snake Dreams
8. Angel's Advocate
9. alisonwonderland (Unwind)
10. The Oxford Project
11. Flash Forward
12. Mee (Strangers)
13. Isis at The Great Geek Manual
14. Cam (epi Bloguer)

15. Laura (Disgrace)
16. alisonwonderland (Kissing Games of the World)
17. Kimmie (The Bridge on the Drina)
18. Laura (Wolf Hall)
19. Mee (American Born Chinese)
20. Tracey (The Bone People)
21. alisonwonderland (Worth)
22. alisonwonderland (Rules)
23. Cam (How I Live Now)
24. Tracey (A Golden Age)
25. Lisa Hill (Crow Lake)
26. Cam (The Blind Assassin)
27. Kimmie (Possession)
28. Farm Lane Books (Perdido Street Station)

29. Farm Lane Books (De Niro's Game)
30. Farm Lane Books (Persepolis)
31. Farm Lane Books (2666)
32. Elizabeth (Wolf Hall)
33. Cam (The Hours)
34. Tracey (Eye of the Needle)
35. Kimmie (Flowers for Algernon)
36. Yellojkt
37. When You Reach Me (Tiny Librarian)
38. Tiny Librarian (Her Royal Spyness)

Finished Book Awards III? Give a link!

2009-11-30T22:07:00.001-05:00

If you've finished Book Awards III, please give a link to your wrap-up post.

1. Alyce (At Home With Books)
2. Laura (Musings)
3. alisonwonderland (So Many Books, So Little Time)
4. Mee
5. Farm lane Books

6. Kimmie
7. Jessica (The Bluestocking Society)
8. Elizabeth (As Usual, I Need More Bookshelves)
9. Cam (epi Bloguer)
10. Heather @ Book Addiction

11. raidergirl3
12. Tricia (Library Queue)

Book Awards III Rules and Sign-up

2009-10-30T10:35:00.002-04:00

5 months. 5 awards.

Thanks to all those who participated in either or both of the first two challenges!! Are you up for a third? The challenge for Book Awards 3 will be slightly different. First of all, it will only last for 5 months, from July 1 through December 1, 2009. That is because Book Awards 4 will be from February 1 through December 1, 2010.

Rules:

Read 5 books from 5 different awards during July 1, 2009 through December 1, 2009.

Overlaps with other challenges are permitted.

Choices don't have to be posted right away, and lists may be changed at any time.

'Award winners' is loosely defined; make the challenge fit your needs.

If you'd like to be a contributor on this blog, email me at 3m.michelle at gmail and reference your blog address if you have one. (I must have your email address, so comments to this post won't work.)

Have fun reading!

1. Lezlie (Books 'N Border Collies)
2. Amy@ The Sleepy Reader
3. raidergirl3
4. Jackie (Farm Lane Books)
5. Sharon (Ex Libris)
6. Lizzy Siddal
7. Jaimie (Bell Literary Reflections)
8. Heather @ Book Addiction
9. Jessica (The Bluestocking Society)
10. Cam
11. Gini
12. Laura (Musings)
13. alisonwonderland
14. Kristi (Passion for the Page)
15. Steven

16. Tracey
17. Matt
18. Becky
19. K
20. Katrina
21. Alyce (At Home With Books)
22. Trendy Brandy Kids
23. Thebluestbutterfly
24. Shona
25. Elizabeth @ Suzy Q Homemaker
26. Jan aka booklover777
27. Bonnie
28. Kimmie
29. Shannon
30. Nise'

31. Samantha
32. Mee
33. Tammy
34. Elizabeth
35. Maike Thies
36. Leya
37. Veens
38. Tricia @ Library Queue
39. Chaucey
40. Katie
41. Jessica (The Bluestocking Society)
42. Chica
43. Lesley (A Life in Books)

The Jewish Husband (Review by Becky)

2009-10-05T14:01:00.000-04:00

Levi, Lia. The Jewish Husband. 209 pages. (Originally published in Italy in 2001 as L'Albergo della Magnolia. Translated into English by Antony Shugaar. Published in 2009.)

Tonight, unexpectedly, I've decided to write to you. I probably won't mail it. At least not for now. But if I can bring myself to begin, I know I'll keep writing you, and for a long time. Maybe you'll read this all in one piece; perhaps these words will never reach you. Fate will determine that, or I will, if I decide to ask fate to lend me some of its power for a little while.
There was a war here. I imagine you know about it.

Who is our narrator? Who is he writing? I'll gladly answer the first one. But I hope to leave you guessing on the second! Our narrator is a young professor, Dino Carpi, his parents own a great little hotel, the Albergo della Magnolia, in fact, the family lives there. True, his childhood may not have been that typical. With hotel guests coming in and out all the time. Perhaps he's a bit more bookish than he might have been otherwise. But, all things considered, things are good. Then he meets Sonia. And wow. He's in love. Oh, he's in love. He finds himself changing--and fast--just to please her, to please her family. His parents and friends aren't all that happy with this new Dino, but, whatever makes him happy, right? The problem? He's Jewish. She's Catholic. It's Italy. In the 1930s. Mussolini rules. And he's getting chummier and chummier with Adolf Hitler. Will Hitler's master plans for the Jewish race become the new policy in fascist Italy? Can love survive these odds? Will Dino have his happily ever after?

I liked it. It was a compelling story. Well-written. I found this narrative approach interesting, his letters kept me hooked. Especially trying to figure out where the story was going...and who he was sharing his heart with. The details are intimate, in a way, but in a way that's raw and honest. (By intimate, I mean personal. Not sexual. Though there is some of that.) I didn't think the emotions were ever over-the-top. I didn't feel manipulated. Or cheated. Dino was not a political man. He was not an activist. (Though some of his friends were.) But he didn't need to be in order for his story to matter to me. This was his story of how the war interfered with his life, his marriage. A boy meets girl story with obstacles on a larger scale.

This one won the Moravia Prize for fiction.

Other reviews: Bookslut, The Front Table, Jew Wishes,

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Pride and Prometheus (Becky's Review)

2009-09-08T13:56:00.000-04:00

Kessel, John. 2008. Pride and Prometheus, from The Baum Plan for Financial Independence. (Winner, Nebula in Novellette category)

"Had both her mother and her sister Kitty not insisted upon it, Miss Mary Bennet, whose interest in Nature did not extend to the Nature of Society, would not have attended the ball in Grosvenor Square."

Pride and Prometheus focuses on Mary Bennet, the often under appreciated sister of Elizabeth and Jane. Kessel describes her as, "Awkward and nearsighted, she had never cut an attractive figure, and as she had aged she had come to see herself as others saw her."

Kitty and Mary are the only unmarried Bennet sisters, and it isn't all that surprising that Mrs. Bennet won't be truly happy until Kitty finds a husband. (I doubt Mrs. Bennet has high expectations for Mary.)

At one of the ton parties, the two Bennet sisters are introduced to two gentleman: a Mr. Victor Frankenstein and a Mr. Henry Clerval. Mary's first impressions of Victor: "He had the darkest eyes that Mary had ever encountered, and an air of being there only on obligation. Whether this was because he was as uncomfortable in these social situations as she, Mary could not tell, but his diffident air intrigued her. She fancied his reserve might bespeak sadness rather than pride."

What does Mary think of Victor? What does Victor think of Mary? Can he find a sympathetic listener?

If you've read Frankenstein, you might be wondering where this fits in. The action of this story takes place AFTER Victor Frankenstein has had a heart-to-heart with his creation and promised 'the monster' a wife. This makes him sullen and cross, for the most part, but before he begins his work in earnest, he goes on holiday with his best friend, Henry Clerval. As to how this fits in with Austen, the action would take place several years at least after the close of Pride and Prejudice. (We do visit Mr. and Mrs. Darcy at Pemberley, and they already have children.)

What did I think of this one? It's complicated. Which isn't a fair answer, I know, but a true one. Kessel's Mary is intelligent and thoughtful. I liked that. Kessel's Kitty, well, it made me think at the very least. I hesitate to say too much. After all, if you've not read it, I don't want to spoil it for you. But I'll never look at Kitty quite the same way again. Is that a good thing? a bad thing? I don't know. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on the matter if you've read this short story. I'm not sure what to think about Kessel's Frankenstein and his monster. I haven't decided if he captured their voices right or not. But I did *like* the conversation Mary has with the monster.

You can read this one online or download an audio file of the author reading this story.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Feed by M.T. Anderson (Review by Becky)

2009-09-07T13:54:00.000-04:00

Anderson, M.T. 2002. Feed. Candlewick Press. 300 pages.

We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.

Feed is both simple and complex; original and unique. Perhaps Titus sums it up best,

"it's about this meg normal guy, who doesn't think about anything until one wacky day, when he meets a dissident with a heart of gold...set against the backdrop of America in its final days, it's the high-spirited story of their love together, it's laugh-out-loud funny, really heartwarming, and a visual feast" (297).

Titus is our narrator and Violet is his love-interest. It all starts during spring break. On the moon. At a club. Titus, Violet, and a handful of other partying teens (mostly Titus' friends and classmates) are 'touched' by an old man. Their feeds--internal feeds--are hacked by this rebel. They broadcast--against their will--a doomsday message:

We enter a time of calamity. Blood on the tarmac. Fingers in the juicer. Towers of air frozen in the lunar wastes. Models dead on the runways, with smiles that can't be undone. Chicken shall rot in the aisles. See the pillars fall. (39)

They are taken into custody. Hospitalized. Examined to make sure that their feeds are fixed before they are fully reactivated. And all seems to be well..at first.

The feeds are responsible for so much. They deliver non-stop entertainment (music, movies, etc), non-stop advertisements and shopping opportunities, and instant connections with the world. Features such as chat and messaging, for example. Of course, with all this built into humanity--right inside the human brain--many things are being lost. Most importantly the ability to think critically, to make observations, to understand and perceive reality.

But as Titus interacts with Violet, he begins to think. And this scares him in a way. Overwhelms him. I'll be honest, Titus isn't always a lovable guy. He can be a real jerk. And Titus and his friends don't keep it clean. (So if 'bad' language offends you, then this is not the book for you.)

I'm not quite sure what to think of Feed. On the one hand, I think it's a smart novel. It challenges readers to think. To perhaps take more of an interest in the world around them. To think about cause and effect. To consider the big picture. Furthermore, it's well-written. Never for a minute do you doubt that this is Titus speaking. That this is Titus's world. The language. The dialogue. The style. Everything helps to establish this world Anderson is creating. But on the other hand, it's a bit of a downer. It's a bit sad, a bit cynical. Did I expect a happy ending? No. Would a happy ending work on this one? Never. I wouldn't think of changing it. This book tells the only story that it can tell.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Old Man's War (Review By Becky)

2009-09-06T13:52:00.000-04:00

Scalzi, John. 2005. Old Man's War. TOR. 311 pages.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army. Visiting Kathy's grave was the less dramatic of the two.

John Perry, our narrator, is a great guy to get to know. He's seventy-five, but his life is just beginning. Or should I say, just beginning to begin again. John and Kathy--like so many other senior citizens--decided upon reaching the big 6-5 to volunteer for the army. (They have ten years to change their minds. They're called into service when they're 75.) What does this mean? It means that as soldiers they'll be leaving Earth behind forever. They're not allowed to return...ever. But it also means--in a way--longevity. Though no one knows quite how, they know that *something* will be done to their bodies to make them young and strong and vibrant again. Sure, to get this vitality, this new youth, this health they have to pledge themselves to serve in the army, to fight to protect human colonies on other planets. Two to ten years. That's what it will cost. If they survive, they'll have a second life, a second chance. (Just remember that a younger body doesn't make for a younger soul.)

John doesn't know exactly all that he's in for. But he knows it's bound to be better than just growing old and dying. He figures that he can adapt to just about anything.

War. It's inescapable when it's in the title. John Perry will have to fight to survive, to stay alive. He'll have to learn to follow orders. (Not all of his fellow soldiers do, you know. Some pay for this with their lives.) And John has the makings of an excellent soldier. He's good at surviving. Suspiciously good at surviving if you ask some folks. Unlike most soldiers, John is going to have some close encounters with the Special Forces. Actually serving alongside them for a while. And what he learns is a bit shocking...to him at least.

Old Man's War is an engaging read. It has just the right blend of humor and action to make it worthwhile.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

To Be A Slave by Julius Lester (Review by Becky)

2009-09-05T13:48:00.000-04:00

Lester, Julius. 1968. To Be A Slave.

This book is a 1969 Newbery Honor Winner. And it's easy to see why. What should you expect from this one? Why should you read it? Well, Lester has woven together compelling primary sources into a book that is powerful and moving. The thing that impresses me most about the book is its richness. It presents first-hand accounts, primary sources. Accounts from both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Stories from slaves and ex-slaves. Stories from men and women. These stories don't need a lot of dressing up. They don't need to be sensationalized. In their very simplicity, they speak volumes.

To be a slave. To be owned by another person, as a car, house, or table is owned. To live as a piece of property that could be sold--a child sold from its mother, a wife from her husband. To be considered not human, but a "thing" that plowed the fields, cut the wood, cooked the food, nursed another's child; a "thing" whose sole function was determined by the one who owned you.
To be a slave. To know, despite the suffering and deprivation, that you were human, more human than he who said you were not human. To know joy, laughter, sorrow, and tears and yet to be considered only the equal of a table.
To be a slave was to be a human being under conditions in which humanity was denied. They were not slaves. They were people. Their condition was slavery.
They who were held as slaves looked upon themselves and the servitude in which they found themselves with the eyes and minds of human beings, conscious of everything that happened to them, conscious of all that went on around them. Yet slaves are often pictured as little more than dumb, brute animals, whose sole attributes were found in working, singing, and dancing. They were like children and slavery was actually a benefit to them--this was the view of those who were not slaves. Those who were slaves tell a different story.

Highly recommended.

July/August 2009 Reviews

2009-08-31T23:46:00.001-04:00

You may enter your July/August '09 reviews here if you don't contribute to the blog (or even if you do).

Laura's Review - Home

2009-08-14T20:44:00.000-04:00

Home
Marilynne Robinson
325 pages

At 38 years old, Glory Boughton has returned to Gilead, Iowa to care for her aging father, the Reverend Robert Boughton. Boughton is a retired Presbyterian minister, and a good friend of the Congregationalist minister, John Ames (the main character in Robinson's Pulitzer-winning book, Gilead). Glory is recovering from a failed relationship and is simultaneously resentful of and thankful for her new routine. One day, her older brother Jack comes back into her life after 20 years away from the family. Jack had a troubled youth in Gilead, and his years away not been much better. He has been in jail, he has an alcohol problem, and there is a lingering issue regarding his relationship with a woman named Della.

It's not clear just why Jack decided to return to Gilead, but both Glory and his father decide to give him a chance. The story moves along at a leisurely pace, much like a lazy summer day. Jack finds much-needed stability, tending to the garden and minor repairs around the house. Glory finds companionship, love, and understanding that she didn't think possible from Jack. And yet, Jack's demons never completely leave him. His status with Della is uncertain. While he achieves a kind of reconciliation with his father, tensions do flare from time to time as Robert is unable to completely let go of past hurts. Jack's relationship with John Ames is also tenuous. Eventually, Jack takes the only reasonable action to alleviate his pain, although as the reader we know it will never really go away.

This is a sad, moving, and yet also surprisingly uplifting book of family relationships, redemption, and grace. Highly recommended. ( )

My original review can be found here.

Laura's Review - Olive Kitteridge

2009-08-14T20:39:00.001-04:00

Olive Kitteridge
Elizabeth Strout
270 pages

Elizabeth Strout's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel centers around Olive and Henry Kitteridge, an older couple living in a small town in Maine, grappling with aging and the changes in the world around them. Good friends have died; young people are a mystery. Their son Christopher has married and moved away. The novel is actually a baker's dozen of short stories, each featuring Olive in some way. Sometimes the story is all about Olive; at other times she is but a passing figure seen on the stairs or on a balcony, or a casual observer of another's life story.

Olive is a former middle school math teacher both feared and respected by her students. She's a large woman, grown even more so in her sixties and seventies. She has difficulty showing her emotions, keeping her son's estrangement to herself rather than sharing this grief with friends. She can also be a bit brusque and abrasive. But despite this I couldn't help liking Olive. The stories flow chronologically through Olive's later years. I found a few especially memorable:

Pharmacy: This is the first story, and introduces Olive and Henry and is also the only story focused primarily on Henry's thoughts and feelings. The reader meets Olive first from Henry's point of view.
Starving: An amazing story of Harmon, who is in a lifeless marriage with Bonnie and befriends another woman named Daisy. She helps him discover himself, and he takes a significant decision in hopes of happiness, but the story ends a bit unresolved.
A Different Road: A traumatic incident disrupts Olive and Henry's peaceful lives and has a lasting impact.
Security: Olive visits her newly-married son after a long time apart. They have difficulty relating to one another as adults and this further strains their relationship.

While each of these stories can stand on its own, this book is wonderful when read cover-to-cover, as a novel. Full of rich characters and emotional impact, it will remain with me for some time. ( )

My original review can be found here.

Laura's Book Awards III Challenge List

2009-08-14T20:37:00.002-04:00

The book awards challenges are a favorite of mine, and 3M is just devious enough to "raise the bar" each time, encouraging us all to rise to new heights in reading prizewinners. And I keep taking the bait ... In the original Book Awards Reading Challenge , any 12 award-winners would do, and I read Booker and Pulitzer winners like there was no tomorrow. For Book Awards II , 3M expected us to read 10 books representing 5 different awards. Well, OK, still plenty of options there , and plenty of room for overlap with long-term challenges.

Book Awards III is a shorter challenge than the first two, but this time we must read 5 books from 5 different awards. This required a bit of thinking, but I found some books in my reading plan and on my shelves that fit the bill:

1. Home, by Marilynne Robinson (Orange Prize) - review
2. Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout (Pulitzer Prize) - review
3. The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler (Edgar Award)
4. Disgrace, by J.M. Coetzee (Booker Prize, Commonwealth Writers' Prize)
5. 2009 Booker Prize winner (Booker Prize)

Alyce's Review - The Giver

2009-07-08T20:34:00.003-04:00

The Giver
by Lois Lowry
Publisher: Laurel Leaf
Publication Date: 2002 (Mass Market)
ISBN: 978-0440237686
192 Pages
Fiction: Young Adult

Summary (from the publisher):

Jonas's world is perfect. Everything is under control. There is no war or fear of pain. There are no choices. Every person is assigned a role in the community. When Jonas turns 12 he is singled out to receive special training from The Giver. The Giver alone holds the memories of the true pain and pleasure of life. Now, it is time for Jonas to receive the truth. There is no turning back.

My Opinion:

The Giver is an amazing novel that lays out the details of a whole world in only 192 pages. It is so well crafted that every sentence and section work together not only to explain this strange world, but also to create an emotional impact upon the reader.

Jonas seems like any normal boy from our day and age, but the main difference lies in his surroundings. But not all is as it seems, and one by one the reader's assumptions of what is normal are stripped away as different aspects of the society are revealed.

At first those differences don't seem that strange. Things like yearly ceremonies where each age group advances to the next level of learning are similar enough to modern graduation ceremonies that they wouldn't raise an eyebrow. Other aspects (which I won't list here because I don't want to spoil it for anyone) are more surprising.

What I liked the most about this book was that it encompassed a whole world in such a short span of pages, and it made me feel deeply about the people of that world. I was hopeful for Jonas and his friends, and heartbroken over the lot of the Giver.

There were some aspects of the story that were not fully explained and so the reader is left to wonder how certain processes work (such as the transfer of memories). As long as you are able to accept that some things work a certain way without having an explanation of why they work that way, then it is no obstacle to enjoying the plot.

I highly recommend this book to everyone! It is going on my list of all time favorites. When I finished it I found myself thinking about it for days; pondering the ending and what it really meant. I found out that there are two sequels called Gathering Blue (which is a story with all different characters) and Messenger (which ties all of the books together) that clear up some of the ambiguity about the ending. I'm sure I will read them at some point, but right now I'm still mulling over and savoring the story of The Giver.

Rating: 5/5

Awards:

WINNER 1994 - Newbery Medal Winner
WINNER 1994 - ALA Best Books for Young Adults
WINNER 1994 - ALA Notable Children's Book
WINNER 1996 - New Jersey Garden State Teen Book Award
WINNER 1995 - Virginia Young Readers Program Award
WINNER 1995 - Arkansas Charlie May Simon Master List
NOMINEE 1995 - Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award
WINNER 1996 - Illinois Rebecca Caudill Young Readers Award
WINNER 1996 - Kansas William White Award
WINNER 1995 - Kentucky Bluegrass Master List
WINNER 1994 - Maine Student Book Award
NOMINEE 1997 - Colorado Children's Book Award
NOMINEE 1998 - Colorado Blue Spruce Young Adult Book Award
FINALIST 1994 - Massachusetts Children's Book Award

Author Information:

For information about Lois Lowry and her writing please visit her website.

Have you finished Book Awards II? Post your link here!

2009-06-30T23:35:00.002-04:00

Congrats, and thanks for participating!

1. Teresa
2. raidergirl3
3. Nicola
4. Lauren
5. Robin
6. 3m
7. Sandra (Fresh Ink Books)
8. Laura
9. Alice
10. Matt
11. Joanna
12. Lightheaded

13. Tammy
14. Sheri @ A Novel Menagerie
15. Rhinoa
16. Becky
17. Tricia (Library Queue)
18. Lezlie (Books 'N Border Collies)
19. Jackie (Farm Lane Books)
20. Jessica (The Bluestocking Society)
21. Kim (page after page)
22. J
23. Kristi (Passion for the Page)
24. Cheli

25. Lizzy Siddal
26. Mee
27. Caribousmom
28. tanabata
29. Kimmie
30. Mrs. V (Mrs. V's Reviews)
31. K
32. Tiny Librarian
33. alisonwonderland
34. JLS Hall (Joy's Blog)
35. Nise'
36. Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog

Eisner Award

2009-06-02T13:07:00.005-04:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisner_award#Best_Graphic_Album

1991 Elektra Lives Again, by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley
1992 To the Heart of the Storm, by Will Eisner
1993 Signal to Noise, by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean
1994 A Small Killing, by Alan Moore and Oscar Zarate
1995 Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde Vol. 2, by P. Craig Russell
1996 Stuck Rubber Baby, by Howard Cruse
1997 Fax from Sarajevo, by Joe Kubert
1998 Batman & Superman Adventures: World's Finest, by Paul Dini, Joe Staton, and Terry Beatty
1999 Superman: Peace on Earth, by Paul Dini and Alex Ross
2000 Acme Novelty Library #13, by Chris Ware
2001 Safe Area Goražde, by Joe Sacco
2002 The Name of the Game, by Will Eisner
2003 One! Hundred! Demons! by Lynda Barry
2004 Blankets, by Craig Thompson
2005 The Originals, by Dave Gibbons
2006 Top 10: The Forty-Niners, by Alan Moore and Gene Ha
2007 American Born Chinese, by Gene Luen Yang
2008 Exit Wounds, by Rutu Modan
2009 Swallow Me Whole, by Nate Powell
2010 Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli
2011 Wilson by Daniel Clowes (tie)
2011 Return of the Dapper Men by Jim McCann and Janet Lee (tie)

Kiriyama Prize

2009-06-02T12:51:00.002-04:00

http://www.kiriyamaprize.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiriyama_Prize

2008
Lloyd Jones - Mister Pip (fiction)
Julia Whitty - The Fragile Edge: Diving and Other Adventures in the South Pacific (nonfiction)

2007
Haruki Murakami - Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (fiction)
Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin - Three Cups of Tea (nonfiction)

2006
Luis Alberto Urrea - The Hummingbird’s Daughter (fiction)
Piers Vitebsky - The Reindeer People (nonfiction)

2005
Nadeem Aslam - Maps for Lost Lovers (fiction)
Suketu Mehta - Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found (nonfiction)

2004
Sa Shan - The Girl Who Played Go (fiction)
Inga Clendinnen - Dancing with Strangers (nonfiction)

2002
Rohinton Mistry - Family Matters (fiction)
Pascal Khoo Thwee - From the Land of Green Ghosts (nonfiction)

2001
Patricia Grace - Dogside Story (fiction)
Peter Hessler - River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (nonfiction)

2000

Michael Ondaatje - Anil’s Ghost (fiction)
Michael David Kwan - Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A Childhood in Wartime China (nonfiction)

1999
Cheng Ch’ing-wen - Three-Legged Horse (fiction)
Andrew X. Pham - Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Journey through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (nonfiction)

1998
Ruth L. Ozeki - My Year of Meats (fiction)*

1997
Patrick Smith - Japan: A Reinterpretation (nonfiction)*

1996
Alan Brown - Audrey Hepburn's Neck (fiction)*

(*)Note: only one Kiriyama Prize, for fiction -or- nonfiction, was awarded in the first three years of the award, 1998, 1997, and 1996.

May '09 Reviews

2009-05-31T23:59:00.004-04:00

1. Samantha (In The Woods)
2. Farm Lane Books (Theory of War)
3. Farm Lane Books (The Secret River)
4. Kimmie (Rendezvous with Rama)
5. Erin (Dune)
6. Amy@TheSleepyReader(The Stones Cry Out)
7. Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog (The Senator's Wife)
8. tanabata (The Graveyard Book)
9. tanabata (Skim)
10. alisonwonderland (Rapunzel's Revenge)
11. J (Small Island)
12. TheChicGeek (The Blind Assassin)
13. Jill (Interpreter of Maladies)

14. K (The Graveyard Book)
15. JLS Hall (The Optimist's Daughter)
16. Bellezza (Mudbound)
17. Amy@TheSleepyReader(A Proper Pursuit)
18. Jill (Mudbound)
19. alisonwonderland (Bridge to Terabithia)
20. alisonwonderland (Savvy)
21. alisonwonderland (The Full Cupboard of Life)
22. K (Amsterdam)
23. Kimmie (The Sound and the Fury)
24. Caribousmom (Midnight's Children)
25. Cath (The Circle)
26. Cath (The Circle)

27. tanabata (Still Life)
28. tanabata (Looking for Alaska)
29. tanabata (No Great Mischief)
30. Tiny Librarian (A Wrinkle in Time)
31. Tiny Librarian (Millions)
32. Kimmie (Breathing Lessons)
33. K (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas)
34. Tiny Librarian (Graveyard Book)
35. Amy@TheSleepyReader(The Worst Hard Time)
36. Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
37. JLS Hall (Great Victorian Collection)
38. JLS Hall (The Master)

A Proper Pursuit- Lynn Austin

2009-05-21T20:46:00.002-04:00

Lynn Austin
432 pages

Violet Hayes has always thought that her mother, who left when she was nine years old, was in a hospital somewhere struggling to recover and return to her family. However, upon announcing his intention to remarry her father tells her that her mother didn’t want to be tied down and that she left and divorced him. Violet discovers that her mother is in Chicago and since the World’s Fair(the year is 1893)is in town, Violet convinces her father to let her go there, stay with her grandmother, and see the Fair. She has intentions of searching for her mother and finding a little adventure. She also hopes to find love. Everyone seems to have their own agenda for Violet but she must do some soul-searching and discover what she truly wants as well as God’s will for her life before she is ready to fall in love.

Lynn Austin is one of my favorite authors. I have read several of her books and loved them all. Since A Proper Pursuit is a Christy award winner, I decided to read it for the Book Awards Challenge. As I mentioned this book was set at the turn of the century. In the past, this hasn’t been one of my favorite time periods to read about but since I have loved everything else written by Lynn Austin, I didn’t let that deter me. Violet is headstrong and beautiful as you would expect from our heroine. She is proposed to no less than three times in one week. However, each gentleman that has proposed has done so for his own selfish reasons and has not mentioned love to Violet. It takes her a while but Violet sorts out her life and reaches a satisfactory conclusion. It seemed to take her a bit too long, in my opinion, but she gets there eventually.

Overall,I enjoyed reading A Proper Pursuit. I found it a bit predictable and not my favorite Austin book but still very sweet. (3/5)

Firefox Problem (Nevermind--problem solved)

2009-05-20T02:54:00.000-04:00

Problem solved!

Due to some Mr. Linky problems, this site is temporarily not working with the Firefox browser. It will work with IE (Internet Explorer) or Chrome. I'm sorry for the inconvenience. If you are having problems with another browser, please let me know!

Small Island ~ J's review

2009-05-17T12:52:00.000-04:00

"But for me I had just one question - let me ask the Mother Country just one simple question: how come England did not know me?"

This is the question asked by the baffled Gilbert, one of the protagonists of Small Island, Andrea Levy's award winning tale of the first wave of Jamaicans to come to England after World War II. Gilbert is confused, because while any young student in Jamaica can recite the canals of England, the roadways, the ports, the railways, the docks, while they memorize the Parliaments and the laws that were debated there, while they take great pride in their mother country, the English that they meet have no idea of where Jamaica is. Most people guess Africa, probably because Gilbert is black. Gilbert is shocked, because Jamaica is part of the mighty British Empire, and so he imagines that all of the countries in that Empire would be part of a large family.

Small Island is told in four alternating first-person narratives that switch between a "present-day" story set in 1948, and flashbacks that establish the narrators' backgrounds. Gilbert and Hortense have come from Jamaica to London with high hopes of making it big in their fine and welcoming Mother Country. Queenie and Bernard are their English landlords.

Gilbert served in the Royal Air Force, with dreams of fighting for his country, dreams which are squelched by the brutal reality of racism in England. Nevertheless, he is frustrated by the slow life in Jamaica, and hopes to go to law school in England, and make his fortune there. Unfortunately, he does not have the money for passage over to England. Enter Hortence, a school teacher with dreams of her own. She wants to leave Jamaica as well, wants to experience the high style and sophistication of life in England. So, even though they don't know each other very well, they marry. She gives him the money he needs to go to England, he goes, finds a job and rents a room, and then sends for her to join him. Her disappointment at the shabbiness of post-war London is quickly eclipsed by her disappointment at the racism she experiences.

Queenie grew up on a dairy farm, and marries Bernard in order to escape that life, even though she finds him extremely dull. When he goes off to war, she begins to take in boarders to their oversized house. She doesn't see herself as being racist at all, though she does make comments like, "Don't worry, I don't mind being seen with you" when on a shopping expedition with Hortense. When Bernard returns from the war, he is horrified to find 'Coloreds' living in his house, and immediately begins plans to get them out.

Author Andrea Levy's father was among this first wave of immigrants from Jamaica to England, and Gilbert and Hortense's stories ring the most true. Their relationship is the most interesting, the most moving. Bernard seems more of a caricature, and a plot twist near the end of the book strains credibility. Nonetheless, this is a wonderful read, and I would recommend this book to anyone, especially those who have come from the Caribbean, as Gilbert's voice is so true to the region.

Small Island is being made into a mini-series for the BBC. It has won the Orange Prize, was the Whitbread Book of the Year, and also won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

The Stones Cry Out - Sibella Giorello

2009-05-14T14:31:00.003-04:00

Also posted on my blog.

In the middle of a hot Richmond summer two men(one white and one black) fall from the top of a warehouse during a racially-charged rally. Though there are hundreds of people at the rally, no one sees anything.

Raleigh Harmon is an FBI Agent who specializes in forensic geology. She is assigned to investigate this case as a civil rights case. Her supervisor considers it a waste of time and manpower and she is breathing down her neck to wrap it up quickly. Raleigh wants to do it right but can Richmond’s racial unrest be contained while she solves this case?

The Stones Cry Out falls into the mystery category but it’s also Christian Fiction. I wouldn’t say that it’s a thrill ride or grabs you and won’t let go but I would say that it’s steadily paced to keep your interest. Raleigh’s field of geology is interesting and I thought that it was handled well. It’s the type of information that is interesting in small does but could easily be overdone if it was written in minute detail. That’s not the case in this story.

Raleigh is a Christian and there are definite elements of faith in the story but, once again, they are handled nicely and don’t come off as pretentious or preachy.

My only problem with The Stones Cry Out came during dream sequences where Raleigh’s dead father directs her investigation. It just seemed sort of been there, done that, to me. Yet, on the other hand, it’s very sweet to think of her father helping her even after his death. It’s a bit contradictory but I guess I both liked and disliked the dreams.

I would recommend The Stones Cry Out if you enjoy good, clean, mysteries. It’s an enjoyable read and it also won the Christy Award for Best First Novel in 2008. (3.5/5)

The Boat by Nam Le

2009-05-14T07:29:00.001-04:00

A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling.

In the magnificent opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam—and what seems at first a satire of turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. “Cartagena” provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In “Meeting Elise,” an aging New York painter mourns his body’s decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees, where a young woman’s bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.

Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating a jaw-dropping versatility of voice and point of view, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.

Last year there was a great deal of excitement around this collection of short stories, culminating to being awarded at least one major literary prize (The Dylan Thomas Award). The author, Nam Le, was born in Vietnam, came to Australia as a child, and has lately been splitting his time between Australia, America and soon in the UK as well. We definitely claim him as an Aussie!

Nam Le has a chameleon like quality to his writing. In one story he is a struggling writer dealing with the visit of his father, in another he is a teenage assassin in the barrios of Columbia, and then again as a young woman visiting her friend in Tehran. He really doesn't miss a beat no matter whose voice he is telling the story in.

In Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, the voice is that of a writer in his late 20s who is struggling to meet the deadline for an essay that is due, and with the visit by his father. Despite being of Vietnamese our writer has chosen to try and avoid telling the refugee stories that he knows, but during this visit by his father he gets to hear at least one more story of how his dad came to be living in Australia.

Having read that first story, it was something of a surprise to realise that the next story, Cartagena, is told from the point of view of a 14 year old hit man from the barrios of Columbia who needs to face up to the consequences of at least some of his actions.

Meeting Elise is another complete change of pace. This time the story is written from the perspective of an older man who is fast coming face to face with his mortality. He is hoping to meet up with his estranged daughter, but there is nothing at all certain in the arrangements.

The fourth story is probably my favourite, Halflead Bay. The main character is a young boy who is trying to deal with his mother's serious illness, and with the budding attraction he feels to Alison, who just happens to be connected with the town bully. My teaser from Teaser Tuesday came from this story.

If I had to pick my least favourite of this collection it would probably be Hiroshima. Le once again assumes a female voice, this time a young girl who is living in Hiroshima in the days before the end of WWII. Despite saying that it was my least favourite it was still a very poignant story, especially as the young girl comments about being able to differentiate between a squadron of planes flying overhead, and the war time slogans such as "do without until victory". One question that this story did make me think of is whether there are any historical fiction novels that are out there that speak about the Japanese WWII experience. There are a few that are set in Germany, but I don't know of any set in Japan about the normal Japanese persons experience.

In Tehran Calling, a young woman is trying to escape her broken romance and goes to visit her best friend who is now living in Tehran, and who is agitating for women's rights. Sarah and her friend Parvin had been somewhat estranged, but Sarah sees this as a chance to rectify that, but her visit to Tehran surprises her in many ways.

The final story in this collection, The Boat, is the story of a young girl who is trying to escape from Vietnam as one of the boat people. The boat is barely seaworthy, and very overcrowded, and it isn't long before the journey becomes perilous in many ways.

If you are looking for a short story collection, then this is certainly one to consider.

March & April '09 Reviews

2009-04-30T21:38:00.003-04:00

1. The Long Goodbye (Lightheaded)
2. Matt (Great World)
3. Farm Lane Books (Blindness)
4. Mee (The Book of Lost Things)
5. Matt (Interpreter of Maladies)
6. Alice (Get a Life)
7. Matt (Passage to India)
8. Kimmie (Water for Elephants)
9. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (Erin)
10. Cath (The Reaper)
11. Matt (Good Man in Africa)
12. Kimmie(The Stranger)
13. Alice (Finding Nouf)
14. Tiny Librarian (Mystic River)
15. Pipedreamergrey
16. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist (Lightheaded)
17. TheChicGeek (TheBridgeofSanLuisRey)
18. Matt (Untouchable)
19. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Lightheaded)
20. Matt (Tracks)
21. The World According to Garp (Tammy)

22. Mee (The Complete Maus)
23. Mee (Fables 1001 Nights of Snowfall)
24. Coraline (Desert Rose)
25. Alice(Homestead)
26. Caribousmom (Offshore)
27. Mee (The Graveyard Book)
28. Corinne (People of the Book)
29. Matt (Journey of the Dead)
30. Mee (Snow Country)
31. Cath (A Fatal Inversion)
32. Amy@The Sleepy Reader (The Whistling Season)
33. Mee (The Color Purple)
34. Elizabeth (Infinity in the Palm of Her Hand)
35. Alice(Years of Grace)
36. J (The Graveyard Book)
37. Matt (Colour of Blood)
38. Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog (A Long Way Gone)
39. Amy@The Sleepy Reader(Mudbound)
40. Tammy (Atonement)
41. Tiny Librarian (How I Live Now)
42. Mee (Fables Vol 1: Legends in Exile)

43. Lightheaded (The Graveyard Book)
44. Mee (A Thousand Splendid Suns)
45. Cath (The Graveyard Book)
46. Sheri @ A Novel Menagerie (Atonement)
47. J (The Fifth Child)
48. Kimmie (Middle Passage)
49. Cath (The Sedgemoor Strangler)
50. The Great Geek Manual's Review of Turn Coat by Jim Butcher
51. Corinne (Dune)
52. JLS Hall (The Way Through the Woods)
53. JLS Hall (The Age of Innocence)
54. Elizabeth (Midnight's Children)
55. alisonwonderland (The Book Thief)
56. Kimmie (The World According to Garp)
57. Cath (The Handmaid's Tale)
58. alisonwonderland (An Abundance of Katherines)
59. Mee (Ethel & Ernest)
60. Kimmie (Beowulf)
61. Jill (The Tenderness of Wolves)

The House of the Scorpion

2009-04-29T14:25:00.001-04:00

Farmer, Nancy. 2002. The House of the Scorpion. Simon & Schuster. 380 pages

In the beginning there were thirty-six of them, thirty-six droplets of life so tiny that Eduardo could see them only under a microscope. He studied them anxiously in the darkened room.

If you haven't read The House of the Scorpion, you really don't know what you're missing. It's as wonderfully complex and beautiful and thrilling as Frankenstein. (Which, if you remember nothing else about me, remember my love for Mary Shelley's monster.) The House of the Scorpion is science fiction. Set several centuries in the future, it revolves around the Alacran family, rulers of the empire of Opium which borders the United States and Mexico. Well, what used to be called Mexico. Our hero, Matteo Alacran, has an unusual upbringing. His first five or six years are almost spent in complete isolation. His only interactions being with his caregiver--not his mother, who was sacrificed--a woman, a servant, named Celia. But one day, in his cabin, he hears voices. He sees two children. A boy and a girl. And despite Celia's warnings, his curiosity gets the better of him. And he springs through the window--the doors and windows being locked--freeing himself, yes, but bloodying himself up in the process. What this teaches him--among other things--is that he is different. Not just a little different, but DIFFERENT. His very existence seems to repulse people. Why? What did he ever do to them? Thus Matt's struggles begin.

The book traces his childhood from birth through age fourteen or so. As I said, it's a unique one. The household being darkly twisted and as dysfunctional as can be. The few friends Matt make cannot ever overcome his great disadvantages. Though small threads of hope remain. Matt's future remains uncertain. And his present is full of dangers as well. Life is not easy, but it's all he knows. His very life depends on the conclusions he will come to draw, the observations he continues to make.

The House of the Scorpion is a thrilling science fiction novel that is intelligent and intense.

The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

2009-04-27T08:14:00.002-04:00

Bod (short for Nobody) Owen's lives in a graveyard with only ghosts for company. When he was a baby a strange and evil man named Jack killed his parents and older sister. Bod was a curious child and managed to let himself out of the house in time and crawl to safety. He has the unusual gift of being able to see ghosts and he is given free reign of the graveyard and all it's secrets.

Time passes and Bod has a series of mini adventures on his way to manhood. When he is 5 he meets Scarlet and they go exploring some of the more ancient graves, he meets three ghouls who try to kidnap him and he tries to do a good thing for a young woman who was killed for being a witch. All of this leads him closer to finding the man who killed his family and being ready to enter the more usual world of the living.

A moving tale with some great characters and mini stories that all come together for a great conclusion. This was the first book I read using the song ereader and it was a very enjoyable experience. It had all the Dave McKean illustrations in it (beautifluly drawn) and I was able to make the print larger at night time when I had more sleepy eyes. Definitely recommended for kids of all ages and do consider getting an ereader (recommended by a real book lover).

Doing It by Melvin Burgess

2009-04-20T12:38:00.002-04:00

Burgess, Melvin. 2004. Doing It. (Originally published in UK in 2003.) Henry Holt. 326 pages.

You should be able to tell from the start if Doing It will be to your liking. If the title doesn't clue you in, then surely the first chapter will leave you with no doubts. Doing It is "YA Romance" from the male perspective. (Well, if you can have it be a "romance" without it being particularly romantic.) I'd classify it as humor--and believe me I'm sure there will be some that find it quite humorous--but well, some of the jokes are a bit mean, but perhaps even more importantly it is so much more than bawdy humor. (For me, the elements of humor falls more into the cover-the-eyes, it's so embarrassing kind. You know the sort where you laugh at someone else's misery or humiliation or pain.) There is a substance hidden under the first thirty layers of teen guys talking about sex--the sex they want to have but aren't always getting. It's a story of friendship, in a way, three guys: Dino, Ben, and Jonathan. And each guy is at a different place in their lives. Dino is a player pure and simple. He is dating, Jackie, a tease of a girl who will only go so far with him. She's always promising more...and more...and more. But always chickening out, getting angry, running away. Ben is a strange one. He's a guy with more than a few secrets. One involving an inappropriate relationship with a teacher. Jonathan is mostly a good guy. Not perfect by any means, he listens to his friends more than his heart I think. He has a friend, Deborah, that is "plump" to some people but out and out fat to others. He's drawn to her. He wants her, there's no denying it. But he's afraid that everyone will laught at him if he dates a fat firl. Dino especially can be harsh. So he's torn between his feelings--both like and desire--and his "reputation" as one of the guys. Some of the narrators are more likable than others. Jonathan was the one I liked best, generally speaking.

Katrina's Review: Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan

2009-04-12T14:45:00.001-04:00

Before you even start reading this I'm going to let you know that I'm still thinking WHAT?!?! about this book, I finished it an hour ago and have read what a few of the papers had to say about it.
Gould's Book of Fish is set in Tasmania, Australia. An 'antique' dealer (faker) finds this book in a junk shop and becomes obsessed with proving that it is geuine. The little book is described as containing paintings of fish, with dense script surrounding the images and trapped on scraps of paper tucked into the book, the handwriting is crabbed and a mix of colours as the writer has had to make ink from whatever he can find around him.
Up untill then everything is clear, then you get to actually read 'The Book of Fish'. Gould is a convict, imprisoned on the island. He is sent each day to work for one of the wealthy men of the island, a scientist who claims he wants to categorise the fish in the area, with a limited ability to paint Gould sets to work. We then hear Gould talkig about his paintings and his growing obsession with fish, as well as his afairs with a local black woman, the murder of aboriginies, and the treatment of the convicts among many things far more confusing.

The Graveyard Book ~ J's Review

2009-04-05T15:51:00.001-04:00

Nobody "Bod" Owens is the protagonist of Neil Gaiman's newest story, The Graveyard Book. The book starts with the murder of Bod's family, and his unknowing escape as an 18-month old toddler. Bod climbs out of his crib and down the stairs, and, finding the front door open, takes the opportunity to explore, unaware that his parents and sister are being ruthlessly stabbed inside. He ends up at a nearby graveyard, where he is taken in by the dead (and undead) residents.

His story is told in a series of episodes, some seeming more like short stories than part of a larger tale. He grows from a toddler to a teen under the watchful eyes of his ghostly parents, the ghost of a witch, a werewolf, and a vampire. The 'man named Jack' who murdered his family is still out to get Bod, and brings continuity to the main story of the book. But mostly, this is the story of how a young human child makes his way in a world populated by those who are so very different than he, much like Kipling's The Jungle Book, which Gaiman said was his inspiration.

The Graveyard Book is emotionally honest, and serves as a wonderful allegory of childhood. Bod's adventures into ancient burial chambers guarded by jealous spirits and the trip he takes into full on danger by entering a ghoul gate juxtapose nicely with his adventures amongst the living, dealing with middle school bullies and greedy antique dealers.

I enjoyed The Graveyard Book quite a bit, and I'm looking forward to reading more of Gaiman's work. This is primarily a children's book, most appropriate for readers aged 9-12, but I suspect young teens might enjoy it as well. The Graveyard Book was this years winner of the Newbery Medal.

Book Awards themed Bookworms Carnival #26

2009-04-05T14:41:00.006-04:00

The theme of the 26th Bookworms Carnival is book awards and prizes.

It can be found here:
http://1morechapter.com/carnival

There are some great articles, featured book reviews, and a chance to win a $10 Amazon certificate, so come visit!

The Whistling Season

2009-04-02T21:46:00.001-04:00

Ivan Doig
352 pages

Oliver Milliron is a recently widowed farmer in Montana who responds to an advertisement that says “Can’t cook but doesn’t bite.” In need of a housekeeper, Oliver hires Rose Llewellyn who brings along her brother, Morris Morgan. When the town preacher elopes with the teacher and Morrie is pressed into service as the new teacher, he and Rose begin building a relationship with Oliver and the Milliron sons, Paul, Damon and Toby that will stand out in Paul’s memory years later when as Superintendent, he is reminiscing and deciding the fate of one room schools.

I found The Whistling Season to be a book that I could only read in small chunks. It was slightly wistful and nostalgic in places, making me wish it were possible that way of life still existed so I could explore it, if only for one day.

On the other hand, I often found myself wondering what the story was about: Paul, one room schools, Rose and Morrie, Montana, or the Milliron family? Yes

The Whistling Season is definitely not a page turner. Yet, I found that I always wanted to get back to the characters. The storyline didn’t develop at all like I expected which is good( I like that it wasn’t predictable) and bad(I felt lost at times.) I enjoyed the descriptions but found some other areas a bit plodding. In the end, I felt it was worth reading but not one of my favorite Alex Award Winners. (3/5)

Laura's Review - The White Tiger

2009-04-01T13:02:00.001-04:00

The White Tiger
Aravind Adiga
276 pages

See, this country, in its days of greatness, when it was the richest nation on earth, was like a zoo. A clean, well kept, orderly zoo. Everyone in his place, everyone happy. ... And then, thanks to all those politicians in Delhi, on the fifteenth of August, 1947 -- the day the British left -- the cages had been left open; and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart and jungle law replaced zoo law. Those that were the most ferocious, the hungriest, had eaten everyone else up, and grown big bellies. (p. 53-54)

Balram Halwai lives in "the jungle" that is 21st century India. The book is organized as a lengthy letter from Balram to China's Premier, shortly before the Premier's visit to Bangalore. In the letter, written over several days, Balram describes how he left his rural village to work as a driver for the son of the village's wealthiest man. He landed this position completely by luck, and used it to rise up in Indian servant society, and eventually become an entrepreneur.

But this is no rags-to-riches story. It is instead a sometimes humorous, sometimes scathing account of contemporary Indian society. Adiga vividly describes the stark contrasts between "haves" and "have nots," and is resigned to this remaining as status quo for years to come:

An Indian revolution? No, sir. It won't happen. People in this country are still waiting for the war of their freedom to come from somewhere else -- from the jungles, from the mountains, from China, from Pakistan. That will never happen. (p. 261)

The White Tiger explores many of the same themes as A Fine Balance, but I found the latter better-written and far more moving. This was an OK read, but disappointing compared to other Booker Prize winners. ( )

My original review can be found here.

New feature - The Book Awards Shop

2009-03-31T18:53:00.001-04:00

If you look at the top right hand tab at the top of this home page, you will see 'SHOP.' This will take you to The Book Awards Shop, where you can shop on Amazon by different book award categories. Not all the awards listed on the sidebar are there yet, but I'll be working to add them all eventually.

I hope you'll like this new feature -- happy shopping!

Maus by Art Spiegelman

2009-03-26T18:32:00.000-04:00

Spiegelman, Art. 1986. Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds History.

This is a true-must-read of a book, well, a graphic novel to be exact. But still, must-read at all accounts. I loved the format of this one. No, not just the graphicness of it. But the framework of the story. How this novel is just as much about a father-son relationship--in all its complications--as it is about Jewishness, about the Holocaust. I also love the exploration of the psychology of it. So often with "Holocaust" books the issue of long-term effects, of psychological and emotional trauma that persists through the decades following such a horrific event, doesn't come up. It's a non-issue. Often memoirs are about a specific period of time. Liberation comes from either the Americans and the Russians. And voila. Horror over. But life isn't that easy.

In this first volume, we meet Artie, an artist, and his father, Vladek, a Holocaust survivor who is grumbling his way through a second marriage to a fellow-survivor, Mala. (Artie's mother, Anja, committed suicide in the late 1960s.) Artie seeks out his father in this volume wanting to hear his story, his past. Seeking answers to questions not only about his father, but his mother as well. Questions about the Nazis, the war, the Holocaust, how these two survived despite the odds. We, as readers, follow two stories, the contemporary setting where a son is asking some hard questions of his father and getting inspired to write about them in graphic novel form, and the historical setting--1930s and 1940s--where we meet his parents and learn their stories and backgrounds.

His father isn't in the best of health, and their relationship is strained. The book addresses the question of if parents ever really understand their children and/or if children can ever truly understand their parents. Can stressful tensions--ongoing issues and conflicts--ever be resolved peacefully? The drama is just as much about healing as it is the Nazis. And I think that is one of the reasons it's so powerful, so resonating. These characters--represented as mice in the novel--feel authentic. They're flawed but lovable. Their stories matter. (By the way, the Nazis are cats. The Polish are pigs. The French are frogs.)

The story is continued in Maus II.

Spiegelman, Art. 1991. Maus II: A Survivor's Tale: And Here My Troubles Began.

If Maus I was great, Maus II is even greater. If you thought the first one was heart-felt and moving, wait until you get to this one. Everything is more intense. The sorrows and griefs are even deeper; the actions even more troubling. For here we get to the heart of the story. The darkest place of all. Artie's father and mother have been captured by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. (In this graphic novel, the name is "Mauschwitz" instead of Auschwitz.) In the contemporary story line, we see that Artie's father isn't doing well; in fact, it becomes obvious, that he's dying. This complicates things tenfold. More guilt. More anger. More frustration. Even in fine health, Artie had a difficult time getting along with his father. Now, when his father perhaps needs him more than ever, he's crankier and grouchier and meaner than ever. Life isn't easy. Never easy. This is a complex novel--graphic novel--with heart and soul. Highly recommended.

Sunshine - Robin McKinley

2009-03-23T06:54:00.000-04:00

Sunshine is the nickname of Rae Seddon. When she was younger her mother left her father and she has been raised to be her mother's daughter. This becomes more apparent as we learn her father was a sorcerer from the famous Blaize family. Sunshine works in a bakery where she is famous for making her delicious cinnanmon rolls among other pastries and deserts. Everything changes though one day when she takes a drive up to the lake and doesn't hear the vampires coming (well you don't do you).

She wakes up surrounded by the creatures and is taken to a house where she is chained to the wall to be food for another vampire Constantine who is an enemy of their Masters. Con is trying to beat Bo by not eating Sunshinee. Sunshine on the other hand knows that no one escapes alive from vampires. All she has to help her is a small lock knife tucked in her bra.

During her incarcaration she remembers time spent with her grandmother, her father's mother, when she was young after her father left. She taught her transmuting, how she could change an object into another eg a feather into a leaf. Although she has been raised her mother's daughter, she still has the powers of her fathers line and she must be prepared so they do not suddenly express themselves. This could be her way out of her current situation although what to do about the trapped vampire as it doesn't seem fair to leave him behind. After all he didn't eat her, but it is sunshine outside.

I think this has had mixed reviews on the blogsphere, but I have to say I enjoyed it immensley. I loved Sunshine and reading her thought patterns which were at times a little jumbled as they would really be. I also really liked the supporting characters of Charlie, Con, Mel, Yolanda and Pat especially. There are so many vampire books around at the moment and this really does give you a different twist on the genre. My only random note was that was a random nearly sex scene in the middle of the book that seemed very out of place, but it did set up some conflict in the story which worked well. There could definitely be a sequel which I would most definitely rush out to get and read.

The Man In the High Castle

2009-03-17T23:58:00.000-04:00

Dick, Philip K. 1962. The Man in the High Castle. 272 pages.

For a week Mr. R. Childan had been anxiously watching the mail.

What can I say about this one? Really. An alternative reality is created, a reality in which the Axis powers won World War II. The United States? Not so united. They've been divided--some being more occupied than others--between Germany and Japan. Life isn't all bad--well, unless you happen to be Jewish or black. For this reason, it is better to be on the Japanese side of the border. (Don't even ask what the Germans did to Africa.) This nightmarish reality is all too real for the handful of characters the reader meets. (Yes, a few of the characters are Jewish.)

Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. This book is all about choices--ethical and moral questions that these characters have to answer. It isn't easy to be the person you want to be, should be. Life is too complex to be simplified into wrong and right...or so it appears. Some decisions change your life forever. Some change who you are. Some hasten the inevitable...death itself. How much of yourself would you be willing to sacrifice to be "safe" in this nightmare-of-a-world?

One of the fascinating aspects of this one is how the novel revolves around a book or two. Specifically, the novel revolves around another novel and its author. A science-fiction novel that in itself is an alternate reality. A novel imagining what life would be like if the Allies had won the war. This novel is by Hawthorne Abendsen. It's called The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. And this novel weaves its way into the stories of the many characters and narrators. As you can imagine, this novel isn't all that popular with the powers-that-be. It's outlawed on the German-occupied side of the country. But that doesn't stop people from reading it. Giving this novel power. If anything, it makes it all that more popular.

This one is definitely interesting! It's a bit more philosophical and ideas-oriented than action-packed. But I enjoyed reading it.

Plot summary (from the publisher?)

It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some 20 years earlier the United States lost a war--and is now occupied jointly by Nazi Germany and Japan.

This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to awake.

Laura's Review - Schindler's Ark

2009-03-17T20:13:00.001-04:00

Schindler's Ark
Thomas Keneally
428 pages

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist who saved thousands of Jewish people from death in World War II Poland. His story is well known, thanks to the film adaptation of this book. The book is a realistic, factual, stark portrayal of real human drama. Keneally portrays Oskar as a compassionate savior, but not a saint. He was a womanizer and a heavy drinker. After witnessing violence in a Polish ghetto, he was moved to establish a camp on the premises of his factory, with better conditions for his workers. Still, his workers were not immune to the random acts of violence and murder. During the last year or so of the war, through deft negotiation and subterfuge, he managed to transport thousands of Jews to safety, ensuring their liberation when the war came to an end.

Even though I've read several books about the holocaust, I've been able to distance myself from the reality -- not denying these events occurred, but not facing the brutality, either. This book was different. I'm sure my mind was not as graphic as the film, and I unconsciously protected myself from the worst of it, but I still had to take frequent breaks. There were so many individual, heartbreaking stories; I found myself wondering how it could be classified as fiction. The author's note reads,

"To use the texture and devices of a novel to tell a true story is a course which has frequently been followed in modern writing. It is the one I have chosen to follow here; both because the craft of the novelist is the only craft to which I can lay claim, and because the novel's techniques seem suited for a character of such ambiguity and magnitude as Oskar. I have attempted to avoid all fiction, though, since fiction would debase the record, and to distinguish between the reality and myths which are likely to attach themselves to a man of Oskar's stature. Sometimes it has been necessary to attempt to reconstruct conversations of which Oskar and others have left only the briefest record. But most exchanges and conversations, and all events, are based on the detailed recollections of the Schindlerjuden (Schindler Jews), of Schindler himself, and of other witnesses to Oskar's acts of outrageous rescue. "

Seems like nonfiction to me ...

I suspect this book won the Booker Prize more on the basis of Schindler's story; the writing itself was not as fine as I'd hoped. And Keneally was rather repetitive regarding Schindler's appetite for women and alcohol. Was he portraying him as "merely human," or admiring him? I found it tiresome, so a book I would normally have rated 4 stars ended up with only 3. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai

2009-03-16T08:06:00.000-04:00

The 2006 Booker Prize winner set in the foothills of the Himalayas and part of the time in New York. We follow Sai the orphaned gradaughter of the judge she lives with. He treated his wife terribly and disowned his daughter, but his one love is dog Mutt who he completely spoils. Living with them also is Cook whose son Biju has been sent to New York to find a better life.

Sai has fallen in love with her maths tutor Gyan and he feels the same until their world is shaken up by the Nepalese community uprising. Gyan is Nepalese and is torn between his love and his loyalties. In New York Biju is struggling to make his own way as an illegal immigrant. Back home all anyone wants to do is get to the West where everything is better, they can make more money and get ahead in life. Sadly things are very different from the perception and Biju has some terrible experiences living in a cramped basement and changing jobs often to avoid being caught out.

To be honest I don't have too much to say about this. I enjoyed the style of writing, but I wasn't really taken with the story. I wasn't too involved with the characters except the charming Mutt and I spent most of the book hoping nothing bad would happen to her. Desai was the youngest woman to win the Booker Prize, but I am not sure I would make the effort to read more of her novels in the future.

The Winter Of Our Discontent

2009-03-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

Steinbeck, John. 1961. The Winter of Our Discontent. 304 pages.

When the fair gold morning of April stirred Mary Hawley awake, she turned over to her husband and saw him, little fingers pulling a frog mouth at her.
"You're silly," she said. "Ethan, you've got your comical genius."
"Oh say, Miss Mousie, will you marry me?"
"Did you wake up silly?"
"The year's at the day. The day's at the morn."
"I guess you did. Do you remember it's Good Friday?"
He said hollowly, "The dirty Romans are forming up for Calvary."

Despite it's rather odd opening, The Winter Of Our Discontent held my interest. It is the story of a man, Ethan Hawley, and his family, his good wife, Mary, his son, Allan, his daughter, Ellen. It's a story of the conflict between ambition and honesty. Ethan has always found himself to be a good man, a just man, an honest man. A man who plays by the rules.

Ethan comes from a legacy, a family with a long history in the area. He's as "established" as he can be. But he's not wealthy. Not anymore. His father lost the family fortune. And now Ethan finds himself--a grown man with two kids--a clerk in a grocery store. He's embarrassed that it's come to this. A Hawley, a man who just twenty years--give or take a few--would have been the big man, the boss man, sunk to working for another man--and not just another man, but an Italian immigrant. Marullo.

But Ethan is noticing the world around him. Noticing that businessmen--including his banking friends--are more concerned with money, with making a profit, than by doing right by their customers. Dollar signs have got them mesmerized. They don't see their family, their friends, their neighbors, their acquaintances. They've lived in town their whole life--know practically everyone--yet when it comes down to it--money comes first and foremost over being kind and compassionate and concerned. Everyone is looking out for their selves. Everyone is greedy. Everyone is selfish. If it's good for you--financially beneficial--then it's right for you no matter who else gets hurt. So Ethan begins to contemplate joining them. If everyone does business this way, lives this way, then maybe it's time he joins them, enters the so-called real world; maybe if he does then his wife will have something to be proud of. She wishes--the children wish as well--for more money. And her friend, Margie, says its in the cards. Her tarot card readings have shown that Ethan is about to strike it rich. With this "prophecy" Ethan decides to go for it...step by step. But will this descent into the "real world" be his undoing? Will his ambition lead to a happily ever after ending? Will his actions--some quite cutthroat when you think about it--be something he can be proud of at the end of the day?

The writing is quite good. Better than good when you think about it. I marked passage after passage. The subject matter is interesting--complex. The hard examination of life, love, marriage, and friendship in a community. I can't say that I "loved" this one; but I did appreciate it. The writing. The language. The complexity and substance.

A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects...(514)

"Way I look at it, it doesn't matter about believing. I don't believe in extrasensory perception, or lightning or the hydrogen bomb, or even violets or schools of fish--but I know they exist. I don't believe in ghosts but I've seen them." (560)

A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders. (569)

What a frightening thing is the human, a mass of gauges and dials and registers, and we can read only a few and those perhaps not accurately. (576)

Sometimes I wish I knew the nature of night thoughts. They're close kin to dreams. Sometimes I can direct them, and other times they take their head and come rushing over me like strong, unmanaged horses. (587)

It's hard to know how simple or complicated a man is. When you become too sure, you're usually wrong. (634)

I wonder about people who say they haven't time to think. For myself, I can double think. I find that weighing vegetables, passing the time of day with customers, fighting or loving Mary, coping with the children--none of these prevents a second and continuing layer of thinking, wondering, conjecturing. Surely this must be true of everyone. Maybe not having time to think is not having the wish to think. (676)

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - J's Review

2009-03-03T13:59:00.000-05:00

Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha is the story of a ten-year-old Irish boy in 1968. The book is told in Paddy's voice, and Roddy Doyle captures the confusion and attempts to make sense of the world that go along with being 10, suppositions and extrapolations that children make. Paddy on death and religion:

When Indians died - Red ones - they went to the happy hunting ground. Vikings went to Valhalla when they died or they got killed. We went to heaven, unless we went to hell. You went to hell if you had a mortal sin on your soul when you died, even if you were on your way to confession when the lorry hit you. Before you got into heaven you usually had to go to Purgatory for a bit, to get rid of the sins on your soul, usually for a few million years. Purgatory was like hell but it didn't go on forever.

It was about a million years for every venial sin, depending on the sin and if you'd done it before and promised that you wouldn't do it again. Telling lies to your parents, cursing, taking the Lord's name in vain - they were all a million years.
-Jesus
-A million
-Jesus
-Two million
-Jesus
-Three million
-Jesus

Robbing stuff out of shops was worse: magazines were more serious than sweets. Four million years for Football Monthly, two million for Goal and Football Weekly. If you made a good confession right before you died you didn't have to go to Purgatory at all; you went straight up to heaven.

Most of the book is little bits like this, short vignettes about Paddy's adventures with his friends. Paddy's perspective seems spot on to me, though I've never been a small boy.

Interspersed amongst Paddy's adventures and fights is a more serious story line, that of the crumbling marriage of his parents. They fight, increasingly often, increasingly loudly. At the beginning of the book, Paddy's little brother, Sinbad, is able to pretend that there's nothing wrong, but by the end, there's no pretending anymore. In my mind, the section of the book that is dedicated to this storyline was stronger than the somewhat rambling nature of the rest.

But it took two to tango. He must have had his reasons. Sometimes Da didn't need reasons; he had his mood already. But not all the time. Usually he was fair, and he listened when we were in trouble. He listened to me more than Sinbad. There must have been a reason why he hated Ma. There must have been something wrong with her, at least one thing. I couldn't see it. I wanted to. I wanted to understand. I wanted to be on both sides. He was my da.

The poignancy and sadness of this last section made the rest of the book worthwhile to me. Getting into Paddy's head first did help to give weight and depth to the more serious part. But I will admit that I had some trouble getting through the majority of the book, because I kept waiting for something to happen beyond random tellings of steeplechases through the neighborhood and kids beating each other up.

January/February '09 Reviews

2009-03-01T00:34:00.001-05:00

1. The God of Small Things (K)
2. The Curious incident of the dog in the night-time (K)
3. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Nely)
4. The White Tiger (Caribousmom)
5. Out Stealing Horses (Caribousmom)
6. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
7. raidergirl3(Amsterdam)
8. raidergirl3(The Road Home)
9. raidergirl3(Mercy Among the Children)
10. Blindness (Nely)
11. Never Let Me Go (Becky)
12. Challenge Wrap-Up (Nely)
13. Among Other Things, I've Taken Up Smoking (lesley)
14. Tricia (A Wrinkle in Time)
15. Tricia (Because of Winn-Dixie)
16. Becky (Anubis Gates)
17. The Glass Castle (Rebecca)
18. My Sister's Keeper (Rebecca)
19. Small Island (Jill)
20. alisonwonderland (Water for Elephants)

21. Life of Pi (At Home With Books)
22. TheChicGeek (The Wood Wife by Terri Windling - Mythopoetic Fantasy Award)
23. Erin (Seeker)
24. Erin The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay)
25. Erin (Monster)
26. Erin (Keeper of Dreams)
27. Erin (Dancing on the Edge)
28. Middlesex (Lauren)
29. J (Tamar)
30. Farm Lane Books (We Need to Talk About Kevin)
31. Tricia (A Bride Most Begrudging)
32. Matt
33. Tiny Librarian (Out Stealing Horses)
34. Life Of Pi (TheChicGeek)
35. Jill (We Need To Talk About Kevin)
36. K (A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry)
37. J (Criss Cross)
38. Samantha
39. Alice (The Gates of theAlamo)
40. TheChicGeek (March)

41. lupingirl (Cold Mountain)
42. BooksPlease (White Noise by Don DeLillo)
43. Matt (Hunting)
44. K (Dead Until Dark, Sookie Stackhouse)
45. Kimmie (Ironweed)
46. Erin (The Name of the Wind)
47. Life of Pi (A Novel Menagerie)
48. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (A Novel Menagerie)
49. Of Mice & Men (A Novel Menagerie)
50. An Artist of the Floating World (tanabata)
51. Jill (Peace Like A River)
52. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (The Book Lady's Blog)
53. Robin (The Devil's Arithmetic)
54. Robin (To Dance: A Ballerina's Graphic Novel)
55. Mee (Kafka on the Shore)
56. Mee (The Tale of One Bad Rat)
57. Beloved (Desert Rose)
58. Elizabeth (The Graveyard Book)
59. JLS Hall (Hotel Du Lac)

Book Awards II Rules and Signup

2009-02-28T00:17:00.001-05:00

10 months. 10 award winners.

The challenge for Book Awards II will be slightly different. First of all, it will last for 10 months instead of 12. Since we had over 100 participants last time, there wasn't room for everyone on the blog site due to blogger's limitation of only 100 contributors. Taking off those two months will allow me to clean up the site and set up the next challenge. On July 15th, I'll be deleting the participants from the first challenge UNLESS you've signed up for the new challenge. Your reviews won't be deleted, you just won't be able to post at the blog site anymore.

Rules:

Read 10 award winners from August 1, 2008 through June 1, 2009.

You must have at least FIVE different awards in your ten titles.

Overlaps with other challenges are permitted.

You don't have to post your choices right away, and your list can change at any time.

'Award winners' is loosely defined; make the challenge fit your needs, keeping in mind Rule #2.

Have fun reading!

Please use your SPECIFIC LINK to your post about the challenge if you're a blogger. If you don't have a blog, sign up with your name leaving the link field blank.

1. LizzySiddal
2. Amy(The Sleepy Reader)
3. Joy ("Thoughts of Joy...")
4. Laura (Musings)
5. Lezlie (Books 'N Border Collies
6. Suey
7. 3m
8. Becky (Becky's Book Reviews)
9. Carolyn
10. Holley T
11. raidergirl3
12. Vasilly
13. Tiny Librarian
14. Intergalactic Bookworm
15. Kim:page after page
16. Deborah Bloom
17. katrina (katrina's reads)
18. jessi
19. Debi
20. Jan (in Edmonds)
21. Teddy Rose
22. LisaG
23. Callista (SMS Book Reviews)
24. Samantha
25. Wendy (Caribousmom)
26. Tammy in FL
27. Beth
28. Darcie (Reading Derby)
29. Susan (You Can Never Have Too Many Books)
30. Kristen
31. Debbie
32. Redhead
33. Flo
34. jlshall (Joy's Blog)
35. Shauna
36. Juli (Can I Borrow Your Book?)
37. Jennifer
38. Fay (Historical / Present)
39. Valerie Harms
40. Matt Todd
41. Molly (Restless Reader)
42. Dewey
43. Tara
44. Christine (She Reads Books)
45. bethany (B&b ex libris)
46. Kara in CA
47. Elizabeth (Need More Shelves)
48. Elizabeth
49. Kim H
50. Linda Sawicki
51. David
52. Allen
53. Meghan
54. unfinishedperson (justareadingfool)
55. Kate V.
56. Mini
57. Dewey (my specific link, sorry)
58. Darcie (Reading Derby)
59. Athena
60. Ally
61. Kristi (Passion for the Page)
62. tracy
63. Malagueta
64. Jill (The Magic Lasso)
65. Marg
66. joanna
67. Nicola
68. Hope (Hope's Bookshelf)

69. Bobbi's Book Nook
70. Sycorax Pine
71. Lizzie
72. Mee
73. Kimmie
74. Jessica (The Bluestocking Society)
75. Juliann
76. alisonwonderland
77. tanabata
78. SueC
79. Robin
80. Krista
81. Lightheaded
82. Cath
83. Kelsey
84. BooksPlease
85. Rhinoa
86. Daniel
87. Janelle
88. gautami tripathy
89. Jan (Sweet Serentiy of Books
90. Corinne (Book Nest)
91. Terri B. (Tip of the Iceberg)
92. Erin
93. unfinishedperson @ Just A (Reading) Fool
94. Alice
95. Lesley (A Life in Books)
96. Framed
97. Quiltgranny Sharon
98. Kim in Rhode Island
99. Kim in Rhode Island
100. Anand Silodia
101. Teresa
102. Alisia (Book Haven)
103. diane
104. Mrs. V
105. Paige Dollinger
106. Ma Titwonky
107. Carra
108. Christy Helton
109. Girlsgood@aol.com
110. Vivek Tejuja
111. Kathleen
112. Rebecca
113. Kristi in Illinois
114. Nise'
115. Beanie
116. Leya (Wandeca Reads)
117. Kathy
118. Leila
119. M
120. Annie
121. kathie1215
122. Katie
123. LibraryGirl
124. Becks Chan
125. Cynthia Fellowes
126. Rebecca @ Readerville
127. KC
128. Lourdes
129. Jane Hotchkiss
130. Debbie
131. scard
132. JulieDC
133. Brooke (Brooke's Book Blog)
134. Rebecca (The Book Lady's Blog)
135. Lake Oz Fic Chick
136. Alyce (At Home With Books)

137. Bee
138. Ke Li-An
139. Sara
140. Tiny Librarian (Hotel Du Lac)
141. Tricia (Library Queue)
142. Connie
143. Connie
144. Teddy
145. (Judy) Intergalactic Bookworm
146. Jess (mango missives)
147. Gina
148. Gina
149. Kristi in Illinois
150. Gracie
151. J
152. cheryl eash
153. Sanddancer
154. Peter at Flashlight Worthy
155. Popin
156. Michele
157. Ivyco
158. Pezeke
159. Carmen
160. Sheri (A Novel Menagerie)
161. Jenny
162. Jaime (Confessions of a Bibliophile)
163. Lauren (Reading Comes From Writing)
164. Sandra
165. Random Train of Thought
166. Cath (Mister Pip)
167. Nely S.
168. Joseph
169. clara
170. Jackie (Farm Lane Books)
171. Lauren (Water for Elephants)
172. lupingirl
173. DeSeRt RoSe
174. Terren Woodfin
175. DeSeRt RoSe
176. K
177. Grain de Beaute
178. Karen
179. Steven Teasdale
180. Rebecca @ The Book Lady's Blog (The Time Traveler's Wife)
181. Callista (SMS Book Reviews)
182. Bellezza
183. suzanne
184. Silvana
185. Susan Whelan
186. akagracie
187. Lisa Hill
188. debnance
189. margo
190. k
191. Callista (SMS Book Reviews)
192. Matt
193. Cecile
194. Kristi (books and needlepoint)
195. Rebecca
196. TheChicGeek
197. Briony
198. Lillian
199. Rema
200. Nebz
201. Nan
202. Antonia

Journey to the River Sea - Eva Ibbotson

2009-02-11T14:48:00.000-05:00

Rating : 5.0/5
Number of Pages : 296
Format : Teenage Fiction Novel
Reason for Reading : Book Awards Reading Challenge II

Maia is an orphan whose guardian takes her out of boarding school to go and live with distant relatives the Carter's in Brazil. They live up the Amazon and after reading up on the area (Manaus) Maia is excited to go. She imagines lovely, welcoming family who love and embrace the mixture of cultures, but she finds the reality sadly very different.

The family hate everything that isn't English. Mrs Carter has an obsession with killing bugs, the windows are always closed even in the hottest weather and the twins barely leave the house. They take an instant dislike to Maia and one of them goes so far as to dig her nails into Maa's hand the first time the meet. The family need Maia though for the upkeep money she brings. Maia takes her pleasures spending ime with the governess she journeyed from Englan with Miss Minton (Minty). She has a trunk full of books and devises ways for Maia to leave the house and befriend the Indian servants.

On on e of her journeys Maia meets a local boy and the friendship with him and struggling young actor Clovis change her life forever. This is very much an adventure and an awakening. t was impossible not to put it down once I got into the story. It also really made me want to visit Brazil which I hadn't really thought about before! Fantastical yet very realistic with a perfect ending. It isn't often I give a full 5 star rating.

2009-02-09T14:59:00.000-05:00

Rating : 4.5/5
Number of Pages : 282
Format : Fiction, Novel
Reason for Reading : Book Awards Reading Challenge II

In 1956 seventy six year old Reverend John Ames begins writing a journal to his young son who is not yet seven. His first wife died in childbirth and his daughter very shortly after and he does not fall in love again and remarry until he is in his late sixties. ONe of his biggest regrets is not being able to get to know his son before he dies and he has been diagnosed with a heart condition

Life changes when fellow minister and close friend Boughton's black sheep son and John's namesake comes back into town. There was a scandal when the he was a young man and he left somewhat in disgrace. John is torn between warning his family about young Boughton as he is worried he will take his place at the head of his family after he dies. As both stories unfold you learn John's reasons for being fearful as he compares their two lives and what could have been if young Boughton had been his own son.

This is a slow novel that really captivates the reader. Very descriptive and beautiful and I got really into it the mre I read and was unable to put it down. It's hard to put down my thoughts even though I finished this a week ago, it's such a hard novel to pin down. It is definitely one that will linger in my mind for a long time to come.

Criss Cross ~ J's Review

2009-02-02T23:27:00.008-05:00

"Wanna go to the movies?" he asked.

No one had ever asked Debbie this question before. She had imagined, often, being asked this question, but not by Lenny. He was the wrong person. Wasn't he? She had never felt that way about him.

Had she?

His question caught her off guard, and she didn't know what to do with it. The part of her that was open to the universe was facing in another direction just then. She felt disoriented and uncomfortable and there was Lenny, waiting for her to say something back.

"I think it's better if we're just friends," she said.

To her relief Patty arrived with a lighting bug. As she flicked it into the jar, Lenny said to her, "Do you wanna go to a movie?"

"Okay," she said, "What movie?"

Debbie wasn't sure what had just happened. She didn't know if she had gotten out of an awkward situation or invented one. Or missed an opportunity. She felt an impulse to say, "Can I go, too?" Instead she handed Patty the jar and said, "Can you hold this for a while? I'm going to go catch some."

But when she had walked away into the darkness, she just stood there.

Criss Cross is Lynne Rae Perkins' Newbery Award winning story of Debbie, a girl waiting for something good to happen in her life, and Hector, a boy who decides to take up the guitar. Through the course of the story, both make decisions, some significant, some not, which decide the course that their lives will take.

I felt like the story started of fairly slowly...I wasn't sure where it was going, or if it was going anywhere at all. It was more of a slice of life type story, which is, of course, how life mostly feels, especially at 14. Criss Cross seems to be the antithesis of the type of story where houses burn down, siblings and friends die from cancer, parents divorce or suffer from alcoholism. This is more of an average story, more the kind of story things that happen in reality than so many young adult stories. About half way through, I felt like the story really hit its stride...not that a lot more happened (though some things did), but just that the slices of life that sometimes intersect, sometimes miss, are more poignant in the second half.

I would recommend Criss Cross to teens and tweens, and to any adults who enjoy young adult fiction. I very much enjoyed it.

Tamar ~ A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal ~ J's Review

2009-01-24T20:53:00.002-05:00

"He was not what you'd call a lovable man, my grandad. It wasn't that he was cold, exactly. It was more as though he had a huge distance inside himself. There's a game I used to play with my friends. One of us had to think of someone we all knew, and the others had to work out who it was by asking questions like "If this person was a musical instrument, what would it be?" I used to think that if Grandad were a place, it would be one of those great empty landscapes you sometimes see in American movies: flat, an endless road, tumbleweed blown by a moaning wind, a vast blank sky. And after Dad disappeared, he withdrew even further into this remote space."

Tamar is the name of a winding river in England, between Devon and Cornwall. It is also the code name of a resistance fighter in Nazi-occupied Holland during the Second World War. It is also the name given to this resistance fighter's granddaughter. When her grandfather commits suicide, several years after the disappearance of her father, he leaves behind a box of clues for Tamar, a box that takes her on an adventure of discovery, where she learns the answers to questions she hadn't even known to ask.

British Author Mal Peet takes you back and forth in time in this novel, between Tamar's search for clues to her grandfather's suicide, and his adventures 50 years earlier as a resistance fighter in the Netherlands. Tamar the resistance fighter is a Dutch man, trained in England, sent to Holland to unite the many factions of rebels fighting the Nazis. Dart is the code name of his colleague, the wireless operator posing as a doctor in a local insane asylum, popping amphetamines to stay awake for transmissions back and forth to England. Marijke is the woman whose farm is the base for Tamar's missions, and both men are deeply in love with her. She is also the modern day Tamar's grandmother.

Tamar, A Novel of Espionage, Passion, and Betrayal, is a Carnegie Medal winning novel that will appeal to adults and young adults who enjoy stories of espionage, war, and historical fiction. It was a very well written book, and one that I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm not generally much of an espionage fan (I always fear I'll forget some vital clue), nor am I a fan of war stories. But this story was told in such a way as to keep me interested, as Tamar discovered hidden realities about her grandfather and his past, and about herself as well.

I read Tamar for the Book Awards Reading Challenge, though I'm pretty sure it was suggested by my late bloggy friend Dewey, so I could have read it for her reading challenge as well.

Laura's Review - A Fine Balance

2009-01-21T08:10:00.001-05:00

A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry
603 pages

This beautiful novel, set in India in 1975, expores the notion of "fine balance" in several different dimensions: the fine balance of keeping people in their caste; the fine balance of prosperity vs. poverty; the fine balance between love and loss. There are four principal characters: Dina Dalal, a widow with unconventional views; Maneck, a college student; and Ishvar and Om, two tailors from a remote village. To achieve financial independence from her brother, Dina takes in Maneck as a boarder, and hires the tailors to run a clothing business. The tailors were the most fascinating characters in this novel. Their chosen profession did not come without some cost to their family: What the ages had put together, Dukhi had dared to break asunder; he had turned cobblers into tailors, distorting society's timeless balance. Crossing the line of caste had to be punished with the utmost severity...(p. 147) To make their way in the world, Ishvar and Om lived in severe poverty, and repeatedly overcame obstacles necessary for basic survival.

The caste differences were, at first, a barrier between Dina, Maneck, and the tailors. But as the four spent more and more time together in Dina's small flat, they came to appreciate one another. They provided both tangible and emotional support. Dina, in particular, found a way out of the loneliness that had plagued her since becoming a widow. The deep relationships between the characters were uplifting, and formed their own "fine balance" against the many sad and depressing scenes in this book.

I loved the structure of this novel. It begins with a prologue, that shows how the characters come to know one another. Then Mistry takes the reader deep into the lives of each character, beginning with Dina, exploring her childhood and marriage. Mistry vividly describes Maneck's parents and the rural setting of his childhood. A full understanding of the tailors comes by going back a full generation to reveal their parents' life and values. Mistry relates each character's story up to the point where their lives intersect, sometimes presenting the same events from different points of view.

A Fine Balance is a must-read! ( )

My original review can be found here.

Laika by Nick Abadzis

2009-01-19T07:21:00.002-05:00

Laika by Nick Abadzis

Pages: 203
First Published: 2007
Genre: graphic novel, history
Awards: Eisner Award
Rating: 2.5/5

First sentence:

I am a man of destiny...I will not die...

Comments: This is the true story of the Russian space program in it's infancy. They stunned the world when they sent up the first satellite, Sputnik. The Premier wanted to send another one up within a month on the celebration of the October Revolution. So this time they decide to send a dog into space but because of the short time frame they cannot work out a plan to bring the dog back, she will die in space.

The book concentrates on the scientists and dog handlers working on the program within a 'know what you need to know' atmosphere. No one knows the reality of the situation until the end. The book particularly centers on a woman who is newly hired to work as the dog handler; she is a great animal lover and becomes attached to the dogs, especially the one who will eventually die in space.

Honestly, this book did nothing for me. The story did not tell me anything I did not already know. I found the fact that the dogs talked to the woman to be rather disconcerting. I realize it was supposed to show that she felt she was communicating with them, but still....talking dogs in a true story put me off. I also found the pages very cramped. There were way too many frames per page for the size of the pages and everything felt squished on the page, leaving the print rather small to read. You need a good light when reading this book. In all it did what it was supposed to do, retelling the story from a human point of view but it left me bored. Obviously it is a sad story and perhaps if I was a dog lover I may have enjoyed it more. If you like books like Old Yeller perhaps this might be more your style than mine.

The Road Home - Wendy's Review

2009-01-17T12:10:00.002-05:00

He tugged out the photograph, tugged with trembling hands, and set it down on the bar top. And he looked at it and saw that it had faded. All the once-bright colors were vanishing, leaving only a trace of themselves, tinged with green, with the bluish green of the sky…when evening was coming…the sky behind Auror… - from The Road Home, page 237 -

Lev is 43 years old and forced to leave his rural East European town to seek work in London. He has been widowed (his young wife Marina having died from Leukemia) and must support his daughter Maya and his elderly mother who remain behind in Russia. Lev barely speaks English and is at first bewildered by London. But Lydia, a woman he meets on the train, helps him find a job working in a posh restaurant where he meets the sexy Sophie. Lev eventually finds lodging with an Irishman named Christy Slane who is also experiencing loss.

Then he looked at Christy, standing in the doorway, as though not wanting to come into the room, his hands held at his sides in a helpless way, and Lev was transfixed for a moment, recognizing something of himself in the other man, some willingness to surrender and not fight, some dangerous longing for everything to be over. - from The Road Home, page 77 -

He was gradually coming to understand that the Irishman’s loneliness was nearly as acute as his own. They were the same kind of age. They both longed to return to a time before the people they loved most were lost. - from The Road Home, page 80 -

Lev’s story is painful at times. He misses Marina - cannot seem to get past the loss of her - and struggles to save money to send home to his daughter and mother. His future seems hopeless and he misses his country and his best friend, Rudi - a gregarious man whose love affair with an American Chevy and his fondness for life make him immediately endearing.

Rudi was everything this story made him out to be - and more. He was a force of nature. He was a lightning bolt. He was a fire that never went out. - from The Road Home, page 277 -

It is largely Lev’s friendship with men like Christy and Rudi which elevates him past his grief and imbues him with hope. When Lev recalls a hiking trip with Rudi to an isolated cave shortly after Marina’s death, the reader begins to see there will be a future for him after all.

It was at this moment - with Rudi halfway up the ladder - that he heard himself whispering to his friend, “Don’t look down…don’t look back…” and he felt that he suddenly understood why Rudi had brought him here and that the thing he had to embrace was the idea of perseverance. - from The Road Home, page 127 -

The Road Home is a character driven novel about loss and identity. It is a novel which reminds the reader that the past must sometimes be left behind in order to move forward. Dreams are the fuel for overcoming obstacles in this story of a man who must leave his home in order to find it again. Lev is a dreamer and a romantic. He is a character who readers want to see succeed, a man whose flaws are surpassed by his kind and vulnerable heart.

Rose Tremain has yet to disappoint me - I’ve read Music and Silence (reviewed here) and The Colour (reviewed here) and found them both outstanding. Tremain’s novels are written with sensitivity and insight into the human condition - and The Road Home is perhaps her finest work. This novel won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2008.

Highly recommended.

The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

2009-01-15T14:12:00.000-05:00

Powers, Tim. 1983. The Anubis Gates.

The Anubis Gates is a pleasantly weird novel. Stealing directly from the back cover, "The Anubis Gates is the classic, Philip K. Dick Award-winning time travel novel that took the fantasy world by storm a decade ago. Only the dazzling imagination of Tim Powers could have assembled such an insane cast of characters: an ancient Egyptian sorcerer, a modern millionaire, a body-switching werewolf, a hideously deformed clown, a young woman disguised as a boy, a brainwashed Lord Byron, and finally, our hero, Professor Brendan Doyle."

When two men--under the direction of a seemingly evil Master--invoke a spell from an ancient Egyptian book, it creates holes in time--among other things. Amenophis Fikee and Doctor Romany are the two men responsible. Fikee suffers worse--in my opinion--in that the spell transforms him into a werewolf. Fortunately for him, unfortunately for nineteenth century England, he's now got the power to switch bodies with others. Which wreaks havoc, of course, because Fikee is a murderous monster with ever-changing identities.

Enter Professor Brendan Doyle. He's a twentieth-century professor (1980s) down on his luck. When the DIRE company offers him a unique job, he's quick to take it. They want him merely to give a lecture on Coleridge. Now Coleridge isn't his poet of choice. No, he's spent most of his adult life studying the more obscure poet--a contemporary of Lord Byron--William Ashbless. There are so many puzzles in this life that are unsolved. He seems to show up out of the blue in England in 1810. No details are known about where he was born, who his parents were, where he went to school, etc. Doyle would love to solve the mystery of this little-known poet. And the good money that DIRE is offering may just be what he needs to fund his project.

Doyle has been employed by Mr. Darrow to give a lecture about Coleridge to a very select group of people--all wealthy and willing to pay huge sums of money. What he discovers is that this is a once-in-a-lifetime, out-of-this-world experience. For the group will begin in 1983, travel back in time to 1810 to actually hear Coleridge give a lecture in a tavern, and then return to 1983--all in a period of four hours. Doyle is ready to dress the part and have some intellectually stimulating fun.

Sounds like fun, right? Well, for Doyle, things don't go quite according to plan. He's kidnapped by Dr. Romany and separated from the others. Though he manages to escape his initial capture, now, Doyle is trapped in 1810--without money and street smarts--and danger abounds everywhere. That's all I have to say about that.

This novel had many individual elements that intrigued me: ties to Ancient Egyptian culture, ties to the British Romantic poets, time travel, werewolves, etc. I liked it. I did find it a bit confusing at times with all the body-switching going on. I'm sure a second reading would probably clear up a few of my lingering questions. But overall, I liked it.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2009-01-12T13:51:00.001-05:00

Ishiguro, Kazuo. 2005. Never Let Me Go. 288.

My name is Kathy H. I'm thirty-one years old, and I've been a carer now for over eleven years. That sounds long enough, I know, but actually they want me to go on for another eight months, until the end of this year. That'll make it almost exactly twelve years.

Sounds like a confession, doesn't it? Like she's apologizing for being alive. And in a way, that's true, I suppose. Because although it's set in England in the late 1990s, the novel is anything but realistic fiction. No, the world created by Kazuo Ishiguro is frighteningly surreal. Kathy--and others like her--exist for one reason, and one reason only. But I suppose some won't want to go there. To know the ending before they've got acquainted with the beginning.

Kathy, our narrator, is reflecting back on her life--her childhood, her teen years, her young adult years before, during, and after "becoming" a carer. For most of that time, she had a secluded life, a privileged life considering the truth of the matter, in a boarding school called Hailsham. The book is about her life and her relationships. Primarily the book is about her relationships with two people: Ruth and Tommy.

Never Let Me Go is a good example of the distinction between adult and young adult fiction. Though the book is about teenagers--Kathy and friends--the book is for adults. It's tone is reflective, contemplative, distant. It never felt like a child was telling the story. Or a teen. The perspective was all grown up, all the time. (Then again, I think you'd grow up pretty fast if this was your reality.)

And this distance serves a purpose, mostly. Kathy is a strange narrator, an odd woman, a woman eerily comfortable with the truth: what has happened to her friends, her acquaintances, everyone 'like' her... and what will happen to her in the days, weeks, and months ahead. It's hard to know just what is the most disturbing in this book--the truth itself or the fact that there is no reaction, no horror at the truth. The matter-of-factness of it all. The cold acceptance.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

2009-01-10T08:28:00.003-05:00

The Doll People by Ann M. Martin & Laura Godwin
Illustrated by Brian Selznick
First in The Doll People series

Pages: 256
First Published: 2000
Genre: children's fantasy
Rating: 4.5/5
Awards: Maud Hart Lovelace Award

First sentence:

It had been forty-five years since Annabelle Doll had last seen Auntie Sarah.

Comments: The Doll Family has lived at 26 Wetherby Lane for 100 years being passed down from mother to daughter all these years. Forty-five years ago Auntie Sarah simply disappeared and no one speaks of her anymore but Annabelle Doll finds Auntie Sarah's secret journal and decides she will leave the house and start to search for her. Along her searches she finds another doll family that has come to live with the youngest daughter of the family. The Dolls now have some fun neighbours and Annabelle finds a friend with the Funcraft Family.

This book was pure delight! It was very reminiscent to me of The Borrowers, though the little people here are dollhouse dolls. The characters are simply charming and this is really a wonderful, fun, adventurous story to read. Brian Selznick's illustration bring the characters and setting to life as they decorate every third or forth page and sometimes the text stops for a whole two page spread illustration. Highly recommended for Grades 4 to 6, or as a read aloud for youngers. I wish I had daughters to read this too, but I, who am well past Grade 6 age, loved the story and will read the next two books in the series.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

2009-01-08T16:22:00.001-05:00

I knew only the basic premise of this book when I chose it for several challenges. I knew that it fit into the WWII category, that it is categorized as YA, and that it was Jewish Literature about the Holocaust.

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas is the story of Bruno, a nine-year-old boy, who comes home one day to find that his family is moving due to his father’s job. Bruno is the son of a German officer who will be the Commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. From his bedroom window he has seen people in “striped pajamas” behind a fence. Curious about why they are there as well as lonely, Bruno sets out exploring. He goes to the fence and he happens to meet a boy named Shmuel who is very similar to Bruno in many ways. They even share the same birthday. However, their lives are obviously very different.

As I was listening to this book, I kept thinking that I was really enjoying the fact that I was hearing this from the perspective of a German child. I have read about concentration camps from the perspective of a Jewish child. The horrors are unimaginable. But to gain some insight as to how it is possible that people stood by and allowed this to happen is definitely different.

Bruno is pretty naive. He is just a little boy who counts on his parents to take care of him. He figures they know best and doesn’t worry too much about the rest. In fact, I thought that Bruno’s cluelessness was a bit unrealistic until I listened to the author’s interview at the end of the book. He spoke about the fact that The Holocaust is hindsight for us. We look back with the perspective that we know this happened. It is part of the landscape of our past. However, during the time that this was going on and when the concentration camps were liberated, even adults believed that the stories of the atrocities were just rumors and that something this monstrous could not be happening. He also talks about complacency and the fact that victims of the concentration camps were marched through neighboring villages and people did nothing. That is something that I hadn’t considered and changed my opinion. I do think that Bruno was immature for a nine-year-old by today’s standards. I did have a hard time believing that he couldn’t catch on to the names of Auschwitz(Out With) and the Fuhrer(The Fury). However, I concede that it’s possible that without some of the outside influences we have today in the picture, nine-year-olds were much more innocent sixty or so years ago.

At any rate, those things were minor for me as was the fact that I figured out what was going to happen pretty early on it the book. There were no shocks and though the convergence of the events seems improbable, stranger things happen every day and ultimately, I was willing to suspend disbelief for the message that was conveyed.

I am not sure if the author interview is available in the regular book. However, listening to John Boyne explain why he did what he did with his characters made a huge difference to me. The book and the writing are excellent. The thought process behind them make this book superior.

This is a must-read for anyone who is breathing so that we don’t become complacent again. (5/5)

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography

2009-01-08T12:45:00.002-05:00

Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography by Chester Brown

Pages: 241 + Notes & Index
First Published: 2003 (was previously published as comic books between 1999/2003)
Genre: graphic novel, biography
Rating: 3/5
Awards: Harvey Award

First sentence:

Do you mind if we go over it again? I just want to make sure that my notes are in order.

Comments: Louis Riel is an infamous Canadian personage. His story is very controversial and the story of what happened back then and what is politically correct to say happened can cause heated debate. In brief, Louis Riel tried to form a provisional government and negotiate with the Canadian government even though Canada had bought the land in which he and the Metis (half white/half Indian) lived. He captured English prisoners and executed one causing a furor in English Canada. Riel was eventually hung as a traitor.

This book is very biased to the Louis Riel, hero, side of the story. There are many things that I'm sure the author took license with and made up conversations between the Prime Minister and others to promote the big, bad, conservative, English government view point. However, even though the book is unabashedly pro-Riel, the author did manage to show the opposite viewpoint of him by showing Riel to be the man who thought God had talked to him and told him he would be resurrected three days after his execution. Whether he was a hero of the Metis people or a madman fanatic my person view is that either way he was a traitor to the country of Canada. This is what *I* was taught in school but a more revisionist point of view is taken nowadays to be politically correct.

While I laughed at many parts of the book that I think were supposed to be serious, I did enjoy reading the book. It was fun to read and the Canadian history aspect was great to see in a graphic novel. I'd love to see more in the same vein! If you are already familiar with the story of Louis Riel, I think you'd enjoy reading this. But don't start here if you know nothing of the history. Here's a website with a brief intro and a little video that was part of series shown here on Canadian television.
http://www.histori.ca/minutes/minute.do?id=10646

Nicola @ Back to Books

Laura's Review - Property

2009-01-07T13:04:00.001-05:00

Property
Valerie Martin
193 pages

Set in the 1830s, Property is the story of Manon, the wife of a Louisiana sugar cane plantation owner. Manon despises her boorish husband and is justifiably resentful of his affair with her housemaid Sarah, which has produced two children. She is disturbed by his cruel brutality towards his slaves. And yet, she cannot escape values shaped during her own childhood in a slaveowning family. She holds her own father in high regard for having been a more compassionate owner, but fails to see the injustice of humans as property.

Manon's days of idle leisure are interrupted both by her mother's illness and a slave revolt, Sarah's escape, and the subsequent effort to track her down and return her to Manon. These events provide some movement and force to the plot. The novel provides an unusual perspective -- that of a woman slaveowner -- and it definitely held my interest. However, in presenting Manon's story, the author appeared to maintain a rather neutral position on slavery. It seemed I was supposed to side with Manon in wishing for Sarah's return, when I wanted nothing more than for Sarah to find freedom. I believe this was an accurate portrayal of a certain type of individual during that time period, but I was unable to identify with her, which dampened my enthusiasm for this novel. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Sign of the Beaver

2009-01-06T17:22:00.003-05:00

The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare

Award: Scott O'Dell Award

Pages: 135
First Published: 1983
Genre: children, historical fiction
Rating: 5/5

First sentence:

Matt stood at the edge of the clearing for some time after his father had gone out of sight among the trees.

Comments: It's the mid-1700s and Matt and his father have built a cabin in the Maine wilderness. His father must go back and bring the rest of the family back to their new home, leaving Matt on his own to look after their property and crop. Matt soon learns it's not easy to take care of yourself and an Indian comes to his rescue. A deal is made with the man and Matt agrees to teach the Indian's grandson to read the white man's scratching in exchange for food. As the story progresses Matt learns more from the Indians than the boy learns from him. Matt's father also does not come back as the months go by.

A wonderfully, beautiful story of friendship between two people of different cultures. Matt's misconceptions of the Indians are challenged as he learns a new way of living. The Indian boy is disdainful of the white boy who does squaw work and doesn't know how to do anything. A bond slowly grows between the boys as they learn from each other and prejudices are set aside.

This is not a plot driven story but more of a slow moving story of two people and their cultures. I've read this about three times now and both my older son and the 8yo really were riveted with the storytelling. Speare is a writer who writes beautiful language and weaves a tale that really makes the reader (or listener :-) care deeply for the characters. I think this book will especially be appreciated by boys and I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone. A favourite!

Nicola
Back to Books

Laura's Review - The Road Home

2009-01-03T21:01:00.002-05:00

The Road Home
Rose Tremain
365 pages

Out of work and mourning the loss of his wife, Lev leaves his Eastern European homeland on a bus bound for London. Lev begins life in London homeless and nearly penniless. Lydia, a woman he met on the bus, uses her personal connections to help Lev secure inexpensive accommodation and employment in a restaurant. This is then a springboard for relationships both friendly and romantic, and he begins to develop expertise in food and the restaurant business. His journey is filled with hardship, ranging from typical "fish out of water" scenarios to more serious ethnic prejudice. Whenever trouble strikes, he turns to Lydia for support, but abuses this relationship by failing to realize how their paths have diverged during their time in England.

Lev is also plagued by worry about those he left behind. He is in frequent phone contact with his friend Rudi, a carefree contrast to the conservative and somber Lev. Lev's relationship with his mother is primarily about money, which he sends home regularly to provide for her and his young daughter Maya. One day, Lev learns that his home village is threatened and he must develop a scheme to save his family and friends. The Road Home recounts Lev's struggles as an immigrant, and the inner journey of coming to terms with his past, dispensing with demons, and establishing a new direction for his life.

I was instantly drawn into Lev's story. His loneliness and isolation were palpable. The important figures in his life, both at home and in England, were rich and believable. In some cases, it was a bit too obvious the purpose Tremain had in mind for each character; however, this did not diminish my enjoyment of this prizewinning novel. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Tale of Despereaux - Kate DiCamillo

2009-01-02T13:59:00.001-05:00

This charming tale is split into four distinct parts. The first tells Despereaux's perspective from his birth as the only surviving little mate of his mouse parents. He is born with over large ears, a tiny body and very unusually his eyes open. He isn't like the other mice. He isn't interested in crumbs or eating books, more in reading them and listening to music. He breaks many mouse taboos and the final straw is when he is seen at the feet of the human King and his daughter Princess Pea. He is exiled to the dungeon to be eaten by the evil rats, but things are not so simple.

The second book introduces the rat Chiaroscuro (Roscuro to his friends) who lives in the castle dungeon. Like the other rats he has never seen light and world above, but unlike the others he becomes mesmerised by it and is so enchanted by the light that he explores the upper world. He hangs from a chandelier and watches the Princess Pea in her twinkling clothes and crown below, when suddenly he falls into the Queen's soup with terrible consequences. The King outlaws both rats and soup in the aftermath and Roscuro returns to the dungeon plotting revenge on the Princess Pea.

Enter the final main character, Miggery (Mig) Sow. The poor girl was sold by her father after her mother died aged 6 for a red tablecloth, a hen and a packet of cigarettes. Her new owner "Uncle" regularly beats her around the ears causing her to become partially deaf. On her seventh birthday she sees Princess Pea and her family riding and dreams of one day becoming a Princess herself. When she later moves to the castler, Roscuro is keen to manipulate her dreams to exact his revenge. Can Despereaux the tiny mouse resuce the Princess and save the day?

I loved this children's book. Dark and bitter sweet in places, the ending was just right without being too over the top. The illustrations were beautiful and I loved the way the whole book was presented with torn page edges. Despereaux is a great character enchanted with fairy tales and this blends in elements of many in it's telling. Definitely one I will read again and if we get around to having our own chidlren it will be high on my list of books to read to them.

November/December '08 Reviews

2008-12-31T00:01:00.001-05:00

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Pao (Nely)
2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (Nely)
3. Wendy (Rebecca)
4. Flowers for Algernon (Lauren
5. B isf for Burglar (Lauren)
6. Blindness (Teresa)
7. The Gathering (J)
8. Tricia (An Abundance of Katherines)
9. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Nely)
10. Cath (Mortal Engines)
11. The Kite Runner (Lauren)
12. Alice(The Idea of Perfection)
13. Jill (The Remains of the Day)
14. Dead Until Dark (Nely)
15. Teddy (My Sister\'s Keeper
16. Teddy (The Kite Runner)
17. Jill (The English Patient)

18. Robin (The Bridge of San Luis Rey)
19. Charming Billy (J\'s Review)
20. Teresa (The Sun Also Rises)
21. Tara (Mystic River)
22. Jackie (Farm Lane Books)
23. Rebecca @ The Book Lady\'s Blog (The Time Traveler\'s Wife)
24. Callista (Mixed Up Files...)
25. Sheri (The Kite Runner)
26. Robin (Becoming Naomi León)
27. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Lauren)
28. Teresa (Water for Elephants)
29. Nely (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)
30. alisonwonderland (The House of the Scorpion)
31. Teresa (Offshore)
32. The Time Traveler\'s Wife (Lauren)
33. Inkheart (Nely)
34. alisonwonderland (The Eyre Affair)

35. Susan Whelan (The White Tiger)
36. Teresa (On Chesil Beach)
37. Doubt (Nely)
38. Corinne (The Moon is a Harsh Mistress)
39. Corinne (The Road)
40. alisonwonderland (The Zookeeper\'s Wife)
41. Amy(The God of Animals)
42. Rebecca @ The Book Lady\'s Blog (The Remains of the Day)
43. Tricia (Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!)
44. Tricia (The Hunger Games)
45. Lisa Hill (In a Free State, Booker Prize 1971
46. Lisa Hill, Fly Away Peter, Australia-Asia Award 2008
47. The Ghost Road (Caribousmom)
48. Heart-Shaped Box (lesley)
49. M (The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian)
50. Stiff (Lauren)

The God of Animals-Aryn Kyle

2008-12-29T08:40:00.003-05:00

Audiobook(Read by Lillian Rabe)
Aryn Kyle

Alice Winston is a 12 year-old-girl who is growing up on a Colorado horse farm. Her mother suffers from apparent depression rarely leaving her bedroom. Her sister Nona, the pride of the family and the showing circuit, gets married and runs away leaving Alice alone to help her father run the barn. They are always short of money and her father is always trying to find a way to make ends meet even though it means doing things that they’d really rather not such as boarding horses for rich people.

Alice is walking the painful line where she isn’t quite a child nor is she an adult. She is forced to deal with several difficult things for a 12 year-old: the death of a classmate, her mother’s emotional problems, her sister’s abandonment, and feeling that she will never please her father. Plus, she is dealing with all of the normal 12 year-old things like her first kiss, her first heart-breaking crush, and finding her niche among her peers.

This book didn’t turn out to be anything like I thought it would be. I am not a particular fan of either westerns or horse stories. However, this is a beautiful story of a young girl dealing with the ordinary difficulties of coming of age as well as the individual difficulties unique to her life. I spent a lot of time alternating between wanting to shake the snot out of Alice’s father and feeling really sorry for him for the way his life worked out. I also had the same reaction to her sister Nona. Alice just seemed to be a tumbling along in their wake. She does eventually find her footing though not before suffering a few painful missteps. In the end, I was left admiring them all because even though they made bad choices at times, they made the best that they could from the circumstances of their lives.

I found this book touching and well worth reading. (4/5)

The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

2008-12-29T06:18:00.002-05:00

Famous journalist sentenced to prison.
Mikael Blomkvist, editor of Millenium magazine, is found guilty of slandering billionaire financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom.

Henrik Vanger, C.E.O. of the powerful Vanger Corporation revives hunt for solution to niece's disappearance.
Harriet Vanger vanished 40 years ago from secluded Hedeby Island.

Lisbeth Salander declared legally incompetent

Computer hacker Lisbeth (code-name "was") loses control of her own affairs. The notoriously delinquent 24-year-old surveillance agent could not be reached for comment.

If you were to ask me what types of books are the hardest to write reviews about, normally I would say it was those books that were just mediocre in that they didn't inspire great enjoyment, but they also were not so terrible that you were tempted to wallbang them. Despite the fact that this book is definitely NOT one of those mediocre books I find myself struggling to decide where to start. The main reason for this is that there is just so much going on in this book.

There are in effect three major strands within this novel. The first is the story of Mikael Blomkvist. He is a investigative journalist and publisher who, as the book opens, finds himself on the wrong side of the law, found guilty of libel against wealth financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. Not content with winning his case, Wennerstrom seems determined to destroy the magazine that Blomkvist runs with his best friend and on/off lover Erika Berger. Mikael decides that his best course of action is to make himself scarce to give the magazine the best chance of survival.

Enter wealthy industrialist Henrik Vanger. After conducting his own investigation into Blomkvist, Vanger offers him an unusual opportunity. He wants Mikael to move to the country and live on the island where many of the Vanger family make their homes, and write a family history. The more important task for Mikael is to investigate the disappearance of Vanger's niece Harriet some 40 years prior. This investigation has run into dead ends almost from the beginning and yet on his birthday he receives a gift that can only be from the killer, if there was a killer, seemingly to torment him until the end of his life.

As Mikael investigates it becomes clear that there are many secrets in this powerful family - feuds between family members, fanatical Nazism, abuse, and many other unpleasant secrets. Even Mikael cannot believe what he finds out!

The third major character is Lisbeth, the girl with the dragon tattoo. Lisbeth is a ward of the state due to the fact that she is perceived to be incapable of managing her own affairs. In fact, she has socialisation issues, but is a brilliant hacker who freelances to perform background checks and the like.

As Lisbeth and Mikael come together, events take turns that are difficult to imagine, and in the hands of a lesser writer could become over the top and unbelievable. Luckily for us, Larsson mostly avoids the potential pitfalls in such a dramatic story! That doesn't mean to say that this is a perfect book because it isn't by any means! As you read through the latter pages of the book, there appears to be at least one, if not two, possible natural endings but instead the book carries on for a further 50-100 pages, almost as though the author realised there were too many loose ends to be carried onto into the next book.

Lisbeth is unique. She is someone who skirts on the edges of society and of the law. She is edgy and difficult to those around her with lots of issues that she needs to deal with. Most of the major characters are well defined and there are very few two dimensional characters throughout the book.

Orginally written in Swedish, there are some issues with editing and translation. At one point for example he is talking about a road name where he says it was obviously enough called Stalagatan (or something like that - I've returned the book now so can't check). As someone whose only exposure to Swedish is the product names at Ikea, it was nothing obvious to me, I can tell you!

I noticed on Larsson's website that there is currently a movie being made of this book. For a first book this is an assured, complex, edge of the seat thriller that has so many different themes. Larsson died after handing in the first three books in this series, so his planned series will never be completed. However, I can't wait to read the next books in the series and to enjoy the ride that he was taking me as a reader on for as long as I can!

This book was the winner of the Boeke Prize and Glass Key for the best Nordic crime novel of 2005. In my opinion, these awards are well deserved. I highly recommend this book.

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham, et al.

2008-12-22T20:31:00.001-05:00

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall
Bill Willingham, et al.

I'm a big fan of Fables judging from the fact that I actually read what volume I can find, which somehow translates to my reading the series out of order at times. Yeah, tsk tsk tsk. But this anthology is special indeed. It's not exactly part of any of the ongoing Fable arc but more of a backstory (uh, backstories) that give us a glimpse of the lives of our favorite Fables before they all sought refuge in Fabletown.

And what better way to start the storytelling than to have Snow White sent as an ambassador to the Arabian Fables? All stories therefore follow the route we all know as Scheherazade's plight with the Sultan when Snow White realized that she had to keep her wits with her in order to relay her mission not to mention keep herself alive in the process.

Ten stories in all, eleven if you include the backbone, A Most Troublesome Woman illustrated by Charles Vess, which basically covers Snow White's arrival at the palace and her eventual discussions with the Sultan that goes on until the end of the book. Ten stories? Yes, ten. Some give light to what we know of our favorite Fables. Others are new tales of Fables even I barely know (or I'm not sure if they even appeared in any of the Fable volumes just yet).

The Fencing Lessons is the real story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves in relation to the series, obviously. Remember in the first volume where Snow White was easily angered at the mere mention of the dwarves? Here we meet a very much in love newlyweds - Snow White and Prince Charming - so the question remains, what happened? Well this one sheds some light into the topic and somehow started the breakdown of the marriage. Lavishly painted by John Bolton and well told in fact. Though I think Snow White here pretty much resembled Chinese actress Shu Qi on a handful of angles. Seriously.

The Christmas Pies is a short and sharp story on how the Reynard the Fox outwitted the goblins and helped a bunch of animals escape the homelands.

A Frog's-Eye View is the heartbreaking tale of Prince Ambrose, the frog prince. We are familiar with him as the janitor of Fabletown yet we have no idea of his story altogether. Oh goodness, probably the saddest part of the anthology altogether and ably illustrated by the much-loved James Jean.

The Runt is Bigby's story, of how he came to be the Big Bad Wolf we used to hate in the tales. Again we encounter Mr. North as Bigby's father.

A Mother's Love is a very short tale of loss and enchantment.

Diaspora Part 1 bring us the sisters Snow White and Rose Red around the time they were fleeing the soldier's of the Adversary. Along the way they encountered the Gingerbread House where uh, they find the witch in the oven. Yes, that's Frau Totenkinder. This is where the story break into The Witch's Tale, in which the powerful witch detailed her betrayal and eventual accumulation of power through the practice of her craft. Then Diaspora 2 concludes with the sisters taking the witch with them and ended with a wolf. Oooh and uh that part we all know from the short story included in Fables: Legends in Exile.

What You Wish For is basically a short story telling people to be careful. Hahaha!

Lastly, Fair Division as illustrated by Jill Thompson, is Old King Cole's tale of sacrifice during the time of his and other Fables' escape from the homelands.

Whew.

The stories are all so engaging I didn't want it to end. In fact I reread it just now. I've probably reread it twice since I finished it a month or ago. Well, considering that I can't find a copy of Wolves and I'm itching to ramble about Sons of Empire already I only have this to reread. So yes, I jumped over Wolves. Hahaha.

And I can't seem to choose a favorite from among the stories though I love Diaspora (with The Witch's Tale included) since we see the difference between Snow White and Rose Red more clearly and the sibling dynamics is so real. Plus, I always have a soft spot in me for Frau Totenkinder. And now I know why this witch is helping Fabletown. I adore the drawings done by Tara McPherson. It's whimsical, colorful and so cartoony and somehow brings us back to the times when we were kids and fighting with siblings and such. Or maybe that's just me. Then the shift to Esao Andrew's take on The Witch's Tale is simply unnerving.

Oh poor Ambrose! Now I understand him more! And King Cole as well! And like it or not, even Prince Charming.

Can I stop now before I ramble myself into oblivion?

Oh and people new to Fables can actually pick this up ahead of any of the available volumes as it is a prequel. I can imagine those reading this one first and then pursuing the series altogether. The nuances of characters will make more sense or there's a deeper understanding to them once you've read this one. I mean deeper than your previous knowledge of them through the different volumes obviously.

I'll stop now.

Get this, read this and enjoy!

-----
Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall won the Eisner Award for Best Anthology in 2007.

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan

2008-12-16T11:01:00.000-05:00

Amsterdam
Ian McEwan

There are writers whose stories you forget after you put the book down. Or let's say you enjoy a novel and consider it one of the best reads of the year and yet a few months after that you can barely recall the intricacies of plot or the manner of writing, only the feeling that at the time you turn in the page you were smiling like crazy. Then there are writers whose stories haunt you after turning the last few pages of the book. And not just that, the story nestles in your brain and much as you want to expunge it (oh gee, such a strong word) you can't. You feel like you lived in the story. You know the characters or rather you thought you know the characters and yet the author expertly tricks you to his chosen reality.

I've read Amsterdam at least a couple of weeks ago. I still can't get over it. Let's see why.

There are three ex-lovers of the now-deceased but very much married Molly Lane attending her funeral. One, Julian Garmony, is a politician with high hopes of becoming a Prime Minister in the near future. The other two are friends Clive Linley and Vernon Halliday. Clive is a musician, a composer selected to present his latest masterpiece in a program at the turn of the century. Vernon is the editor of a newsmagazine with a steadily declining readership. All three shared a past with Molly at different times in her short life but she married a rich publisher named George Lane.

After the funeral George contacted Vernon and showed compromising photos of Julian Garmony taken by Molly. Considering Julian's promising political career and the fact that his politics isn't well-liked, Vernon pursued to have the photos published, something that Clive didn't like as he takes it as an affront to the memory of Molly. The rest of the story details the events of Vernon's pursuit, of Clive's struggle to compose music, of Julian's composure in public on the imminent publication of the photos and eventually, of an ending that in part was expected by me and yet the real ending (so to speak) particularly the last paragraph or so was a complete and total surprise it pulled the rug off my feet. Because in that last few sentences of the book you think you know what the story is all about and yet, alas, you're completely off the mark. And once you accept it as that you realized that you've been taken for a ride and you very well understand the reasons why. Irony is a good weapon of choice indeed.

On another layer it is a story of friendship. Molly Lane died of a debilitating disease with such swiftness that the two old friends thinking of a future filled with the pain and suffering similar to Molly's promised each other that they'd help each other end it all if and when necessary. It's the kind of friendship forged in years of companionship, a friendship that never doubts until now, when Molly is dead is everything is not as it should be.

To me it's another delicate handling of a story that could've gone completely wrong in another writer's hands. And McEwan is a masterful storyteller capable of fine-tuning the characters until the feel so real to the point you wish you could wring their necks or scream at them, somewhat.

While the politics can be treated simply as such and the portrayal of news hounds as is, I loved the way McEwan managed to make composing music read like you're listening to it. Well, maybe that's just me. I'm tone deaf and I couldn't sing to save my life (gee, I've been using that phrase a lot lately) but I love listening to music. I love separating different instruments in my mind. I love shielding other sounds and retaining just the melody one time, just the guitars another. Again, it's just me. And McEwan captures composing music in a manner that is understandable to someone like me.

I've read four McEwan stories so far, all four different and yet all managing to disturb me one way or another. Disturb in a good sense, that is. I'm sure to read his other novels and he's elevated now to the ranks of writers I'd follow to death. Or something to that effect.

Not very many people share my adoration of McEwan or this book but to me it's always a case of hmmm, what works for me uh, works for me. Right?

-----
Amsterdam won the Man Booker Prize of 1998.

Charming Billy - J's Review

2008-11-28T19:09:00.001-05:00

Billy Lynch, alcoholic, romantic, kind and loving man, has died. His friends and family come together to comfort his widow, and to celebrate his life. And Billy's life seems to have two stories to it. The sad story of his alcoholism, which his friends and family tried again and again to guide him away from, with no success. And the sad story of his first love, an Irish girl whom he intended to marry, but who goes back to Ireland and dies. At least, that's what Billy is told. The truth is, she took the money he sent her for her passage to America, bought a gas station in Ireland, married someone else, and built a life for herself there.

This cruel twist comes pretty early on in the book, and the rest of the story is the meandering tale of his romance with the Irish girl, his grief at her 'death', his marriage to Maeve and their life together. Her suffering through his alcoholism, her reliance on his cousin, Dennis, to help her when he comes home drunk at 3am, night after night after night.

The story is told by Dennis' daughter, sometimes as told to her by her father, sometimes as though she is telling the story to her husband. I found the point-of-view narration a bit confusing, and somewhat irritating. Sometimes the narration would change within a single paragraph from first to third person. The language is often lovely, and the author captures the way that people talk, the honestly of their voices and grief, their delight in gossip, but desire to protect Maeve from that same gossip. Mostly though, I just wanted to shake Billy and tell him to stop drinking so much, get over his youthful romance, and see if living for today, with the life he has made for himself, might actually be more rewarding than pining away for someone long gone, and trying to drink yourself into an early grave. I wish I had enjoyed this book more than I did. Has anyone else read this book? Agree or disagree with me on my summation? I'd love to hear from someone who loved it, and find out what you got out of it that I missed.

Charming Billy is a National Book Award winner.

Laura's Review - The Conservationist

2008-11-25T17:37:00.001-05:00

The Conservationist
Nadine Gordimer
267 pages

The Conservationist is an in-depth character study of Mehring, a South African businessman-cum-farmer. His success in industry provided the means to buy a 400-acre farm, which serves primarily as a tax write-off. In his quest for material success, Mehring has lost his wife and a mistress. His teenage son attends school some distance away, and has become increasingly independent -- estranged, perhaps -- from his father. Mehring mistakenly views interaction with the black laborers on his farm as a meaningful relationship. In reality, the South African class structure ensures their relationship remains distant.

I found Mehring to be a fairly despicable and pathetic character, which I believe was Gordimer's intent. He is a philanderer, at one point fondling a young lady he'd never met for the better part of a long-haul flight. Yech. And while at times he seems to appreciate the natural beauty of his farm, he has no one to share it with him. His time spent at the farm is empty, a way to pass the weekend or to hide from social obligations.

This was a difficult book to read because the main character was so unlikeable, and it revolved much more around character than plot. However, Gordimer writes some pretty amazing, descriptive prose that brought the South African scenery to life. Despite my rather lukewarm reaction to this particular novel, I will definitely be reading more of her work. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

2008-11-24T02:22:00.004-05:00

An Epic

"Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable and beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara -- a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him." The Kite Runner Unabridged Audio Book (Back Cover)

Told in breath taking prose, this is an epic story of family, friendship, and redemption. Hosseini gives us a good sense of what Afghanistan was like both pre and post Taliban, the good, the bad, and the devastating.

Khaled Hosseini was the reader of this audio book. At first his reading seemed a bit choppy to me however within the first few chapters he spoke pitch perfect. I felt as if I was right there, in the story.

I saw the movie version first, which I liked a lot. If you haven’t seen it, do yourself a favor and see it. However, the even better treat, is this book! Highly recommended. I am looking forward to reading A Thousand Splendid Suns!

4/5

Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris

2008-11-14T22:10:00.001-05:00

Dead Until Dark
Charlaine Harris

Finally I finished a book in just one sitting!

And it's the first in Charlaine Harris' Southern Vampire Series with Sookie Stackhouse as the lead character. The book that started it all for Alan Ball thereafter deciding to adapt it to the small screen. Yes, this is the first book in the series that gave birth to HBO's True Blood.

Sookie Stackhouse is a telepathic waitress in a bar called Merlotte's, in a fictional town called Bon Temps located in Louisiana. In Sookie's world vampires just came out of the coffin (literally) after the development of a synthetic blood for them to drink instead of eh, human blood. Sookie's been waiting for a vampire to show up in Merlotte's. And when a vampire did show, her world turned upside down.

The vampire in question is handsome, enigmatic Bill. Yes, Bill. A normal name. Not as imaginative as Lestat or as romantic as Armand. Bill Compton, a true son of Bon Temps. He served in the Civil War before he became a vampire. Sigh.

For Sookie who had to control herself and put up mental shield not to hear the thoughts of the people around her, the presence of Bill is comforting. She can't hear his thoughts at all! And amazingly enough, she's not affected by his glamor.

So yes, it's partly a love story, partly romance. Yes, it's between a vampire and a human.

It's also a mystery. Women are being killed in Bon Temps and the murderer is on the loose. Two of them are known to have been intimate with a vampire due to bite marks. And Sookie's brother Jason is a major suspect because of his previous relationships with them. Until Sookie's beloved grandmother became a victim as well. People are now suspicious of the vampire mainstreaming with them.

Hmmm.

It's a quick enough read. Enjoyable as well. Just the right combination of humor and horror. Enough to take you away from everyday life for the couple or so hours to read it.

I picked it up because I've seen a handful of episodes of True Blood. The advantage to seeing the adaptation first is that now I read the words with the Southern accent in mind. Hahaha. The disadvantage is that I know now where the series deviated from the book, so to speak. Plus, I also know the killer. I've no idea if the show will retain that ending though, hahaha.

I already mentioned that I like watching True Blood. Here's Sookie and Bill played by Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer.

But the tv series is more graphic. Well, tv is a visual medium so what else do I expect, particularly from a cable channel at that. And I already mentioned that there are changes from the book itself which is understandable. The show amplifies certain characters that make them more interesting, more layered than the handful of lines afforded them in the book. Plus the additional storylines are apt for a one hour show that combines supernatural mystery with a love angle.

I do love the fact that the show retained the tone of the book. So there are moments while watching the show that I have to just laugh at the dialogue. I treasure those moments in the book as well.

Allow me a moment of shallowness by adding that I love the cover. The cartoony drawing of Sookie and the vampire is fun. Plus it's glittery. Ok, moment of shallowness over.

I'm actually reading the second book now. Tsk tsk tsk. What will happen to me after the 12-episode season is over and I finished the rest of the books as well? Tsk tsk tsk.

-----
Dead Until Dark won the Anthony Award for Best Paperback Original in 2001.

The Line Painter by Claire Cameron

2008-11-14T14:36:00.003-05:00

The Line Painter by Claire Cameron

Pages: 232
First Published: 2007
Genre: literary fiction
Rating: 4/5
Award: Northern Lit Award

First sentence:

I turned off the car and sat still.

Comments: This is a very difficult book to summarize as it is best to go into this book with only the knowledge that the book flaps give. Carrie's car breaks down in the middle of nowhere, way up in Northern Ontario. It is the middle of the night and her cell phone is getting a very small, off and on, signal. As anyone who knows Northern Ontario at night there is nothing but thick forests of trees, very dark, animal sounds and no other traffic to be seen. But Carrie does see a large truck slowly coming towards her that pulls over and asks if her car is broke. The man has a menacing aura about him and at first Carrie doesn't want to get in his truck but she eventually does and discovers he is a civic worker and he is on duty, his truck paints the lines on the roads.

Much happens in this story which had a genuine feel of an old B/W classic noir film. There is a sense of suspense and an unnerving feel throughout the book but I wouldn't classify this as belonging to the suspense genre. The book is about so much more. Carrie learns a lot about herself, comes to terms with her past and knows that her future will never be the same. What starts off as a road trip for Carrie ends up becoming the life defining ride of her life.

I really enjoyed this book. The suspense kept me firmly planted on the edge of my seat and as the plot revealed itself I quickly became aware that I was getting into something more than a suspense novel. Though the reader, just like Carrie, never really knows whether her safety is in jeopardy or not. A wonderful portrait of Norther Ontario, small town rural life and the eccentric characters who populate such places. A very satisfying read.

Nicola @ Back To Books

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

2008-11-13T00:50:00.004-05:00

What Lengths Should a Family Go to Save a Life?

Anna was conceived as a bone marrow donor for her sister Kate. Originally it was just going to be taken from the placenta but when that didn’t hold, Anna ended up being a long-term donor for Kate. By the age of 13, Anna had undergone several surgeries and transfusions. Now she is expected to donate a kidney to her sister. Now she will draw a line in the sand. She will fight this.

What length should parents and siblings’ go to save a family member’s life? What is ethical, moral, and legal? What is right for the person who has the disease? Picoult does not give us the answers but leads us through the journey of what one family, lawyers, and the courts go through. In the end, we must decide.

I like how the narrative of the story switches from character to character so that we can get inside what each person is thinking and feeling. Picoult also throws in a few twists and turns to keep the story and plot going.

Several people have recommended this book to me. I must admit I hesitated, blowing it off as "chick lit". Boy was I wrong. This story is not superficial fluff; it deals with deep ethical issues and is well written.

This is the first Jodi Picoult book I have read, but it is certainly not the last. I highly recommend My Sister’s Keeper!

4/5

The Gathering - J's Review

2008-11-12T12:53:00.001-05:00

Two years ago, I had a letter from Earnest. He was writing to tell me that he was leaving the priesthood, though he had decided to stay with his little school in the high mountains....'I have no place left to live but in my own heart,' he wrote, meaning he would conduct his life as before, but on privately different terms.

And I thought this was the stupidest stuff I had ever heard until, sitting on a stool in the Shelbourne bar, I wondered what might happen if I just carried on as usual, told no one, changed nothing, and decided not to be married after all.

And I wondered how many people around me are living with and sleeping with and laughing with their spouses on just this basis, and I wondered how sad they were. Not very, by the looks of it. Not sad at all.

The Gathering, by Anne Enright, is the story of Veronica, and her coming to terms with the suicide of her favorite brother, Liam. It is her unenviable task to travel from Ireland to England to recover his body, and bring it home for the funeral.

Veronica is falling apart following her brother's death. In addition to her grief, she harbors a secret, or at least, she thinks she does. She is hazy on her memory of an incident during their childhood, and fears that perhaps it may have been the first step toward Liam's eventual death. Her struggle with this memory, with trying to remember what did and what did not happen, and to whom, unravels her happiness and further strains her marriage. You get the feeling that she has never been a joyous person, she is too cold and critical for that, but she did have love and happiness, which are currently overwhelmed by her sadness and her memories. She is a woman in the process of falling apart.

Veronica tells the story of her family, going back to the day her grandparents first met, coming forward to her mother's passive life, and then to that of her many brothers and sisters. She harbors both love and disdain for her mother, whose 17 pregnancies, resulting in 12 children and 5 painful miscarriages, Veronica sees as proof of her mother being unwilling to refuse her father's carnal desires. That her mother might have shared these desires never seems to cross her mind.

Already a cold person, Veronica shuts down emotionally in the period following her brother's death. She resents her husband for wanting sex so soon after the death, resents him trying to prove to her that she is still alive. After that first encounter, she refuses to come to bed any more, instead staying awake all night, every night, drinking wine and waiting for him to get up for work before she herself collapses into bed.

The title of the book, The Gathering, made me think this was going to be the story of a family coming together, and of the joys and recriminations that might come to light at such a gathering. But at least 3/4 of the book is told in her meandering way, as she travels through memories and stories, while on the way to and from England on her sad task. Only at the end do we meet her siblings, and find ourselves at a surprisingly muted event.

If I were to read this review up until this point, I would think that The Gathering isn't really worth reading, and that Veronica is a character that I would not like. But Enright's writing is so beautiful, and she is able to bring you into Veronica's mind so well that you feel sympathy for her, for what she's been through, for her upbringing. You hope for her to find peace with her family again, and joy within her marriage. The end is too ambiguous for that, and I walked away feeling someone dissatisfied.

I have seen The Gathering compared to The Dubliners, by James Joyce. One big difference is that The Gathering is a novel, while The Dubliners is a book of short stories. I've only read the most famous story in that book, The Dead, which is a story that touched me very deeply. The Gathering is similar in its prose and imagery, and in that the book seems to meander along until finally you get to the end, and it turns out that the end is what you were waiting for all along. In The Dead, however, that end is a beautiful respite, and a glimpse into love that is not jealous or unkind, despite the jealousy and unkind thoughts that were there moments before...a love that transcends this mortal world, however mortal the players. The Gathering offers no such great reward.

I would recommend this book to people who love beautiful, evocative writing. Enright is a gifted writer in this aspect. I would not recommend this book for anyone seeking an easy, quick read, as the twists and turns and dark subject matter make this a somewhat difficult read.

Rebecca - Wendy's Review

2008-11-08T14:26:00.002-05:00

The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. When I thought of Manderly in my waking hours I would not be bitter. I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear. I should remember the rose-garden in summer, and the birds that sang at dawn. Tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up to us from the lawns below. -From Rebecca, page 4-

She was in the house still as Mrs. Danvers had said, she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning-room, in the gallery above the hall. Even in the little flower-room, where her mackintosh still hung. And in the garden, and in the woods, and down in the stone cottage on the beach. Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs. The servants obeyed her orders still, the food we ate was the food she liked. Her favourite flowers filled the rooms. Her clothes were in the wardrobes in her room, her brushes were on the table, her shoes beneath the chair, her nightdress on her bed. Rebecca was still the mistress of Manderley. -From Rebecca, page 237-

Dapne du Maurier published her gothic novel Rebecca in 1938 to wide popularity. Set on the English coast of Cornwell sometime in the 1920s, the novel centers around the isolated estate of Manderley. A young woman meets and quickly marries Maxim de Winter, a recent widower who is apparently struggling to get over the unexpected drowning death of his first wife, Rebecca. The second Mrs. de Winter (who is never identified by her Christian name) narrates the story. When she arrives at Manderley she is confronted by the mystery surrounding Rebecca’s death. She meets Mrs. Danvers - the weird and frightening housekeeper of Manderley:

Something, in the expression of her face, gave me a feeling of unrest, and even when she had stepped back, and taken her place amongst the rest, I could see that black figure standing out alone, individual and apart, and for all her silence I knew her eye to be upon me. -From Rebecca, page 68-

As the novel progresses, the secrets of the house and its former mistress are uncovered. Moody, beautifully atmospheric and filled with tension, du Maurier’s magnificent writing immerses the reader in a dark tale of love and hatred. Rebecca’s ghost hides in the shadows and hovers in the minds of all the characters, entwined in the corridors of Manderley.

Rebecca is the definitive gothic novel where the house becomes just as much a character as Max de Winter, Mrs. Danvers, the shifty Favell, and the servants who populate its many rooms. Spooky and convincingly rendered, it is a book which enchants from beginning to end.

Harper Collins has re-published this classic novel in a 2006 volume which includes a note from the Author, an essay by du Maurier whereby she describes the real Manderley, and the original Rebecca Epilogue…all of which add insight and interest into the writing of the book.

Rebecca is one of those novels which everyone should read at some point in his or her life. Highly recommended, especially for readers who love Gothic Fiction and classic literature.

The Gathering - Anne Enright

2008-11-08T08:36:00.001-05:00

The 2007 winner of the Man Booker Prize. The story is mostly set in Ireland (Dublin) with some of the tale in Brighton and South England. Veronica Hegary is one of the nine surviving children in her family and at the start of the novel her brother Liam has just died. She dwells on the past, their life growing up and what it was like for her grandparents. It is only about half way through we learn how Liam died and the circumstances surrounding his death.

Veronica does not really love her husband any more although she cares deeply for their two daughters. She suspects he is having an affair as they are no longer sleeping together. She Spends time rewritting the past and imaging the life her grandmother Ada had with her husband Charlie and his friend Lamb Nuggent. Slowly she remembers the past and what really happened. The events she remembers help piece together the truth behind Liam's death.

I didn't really enjoy this novel. It was just too bleak and I don't think I was really in the mood to read it. The ending was slightly more uplifting with some light at the end of the tunnel which helped a little. It was well written, I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for it.

Octavian Nothing

2008-11-01T19:11:00.002-04:00

Anderson, M.T. 2006. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation: Volume 1: The Pox Party.

Let's see...what can I say about Octavian Nothing. It's an award-winning book--winner of the National Book Award, winner of a Printz Honor. It's historical fiction--set in the Colonies right before the American Revolution. It's more literary than your typical teen book--it's heavy in semicolons and rich in detail.

So what is so astonishing about the life of Octavian Nothing? Many things. Many many things. For starters, he's a slave who doesn't quite realize he's a slave. He has little inkling just what he is...or who he is. Who is he? He's a human experiment. He's being studied to determine if Africans are inferior (or equal to) to Europeans. Everything about him is being observed and measured. He's been given the finest clothes, housed in a luxurious way (at least comparatively speaking), taught to play musical instruments, taught in a classical way--learned in many diverse subjects including English, French, Greek, and Latin. He is a child who had a very strange, very odd, very out-there upbringing. Who is raising him the members of the College of Lucidity. Strange men who are fascinated by science, math, philosophy, art, music, etc.

There are several events that change everything for Octavian. That turn his whole world, his whole life, his very being upside down and inside out. Through the course of the book, Octavian goes from a privileged boy who is clueless about the oppression of slavery to a full-grown man who has experienced the oppressive wrath and cruelty of his masters. A man who now longs for freedom.

Even that isn't quite a fair assessment of what this book is about...of what it has to offer readers.

I can't promise you that you'll love it...or even like it. You may, of course, respond that way. But this is a book that requires you to be engaged, to connect emotionally and intellectually with the text. It's a book that requires you to wear your thinking cap.

It's a book that I'd love to use for my Reading With Becky google group. I haven't gotten any response from that group yet whether they'd be interested. But I *do* hope that I can sway some to read it. If you're interested in reading this as a group, come and join the group (email me at my google address blaney1129ATgmail.com)...let's make this happen :)

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

September/October '08 Reviews

2008-10-31T23:35:00.001-04:00

1. Tricia (The Road Home)
2. Jill (Possession)
3. tanabata (Maus I & II)
4. Joy (Last Days of Summer)
5. Juliann (The Optimist\'s Daughter)
6. Mrs. V (The Invention of Hugo Cabret)
7. Teresa (The Lost Dog)
8. Joy (Murphy\'s Law)
9. Teresa (The Omnivore\'s Dilemma)
10. raidergirl3(Last Orders)
11. raidergirl3(The View from Saturday)
12. Mrs. V (Princess Academy)
13. Connie (The Tale of Despereaux)
14. Joy (Year of Wonders)
15. Joy (The Chatham School Affair)
16. Rebecca/The Book Lady (Interpreter of Maladies)
17. Robin (Varjak Paw)
18. Joy (The God of Animals)

19. Sanddancer (The Sea)
20. Joy (Runaway)
21. Sanddancer (Last Orders)
22. Sanddancer (The Gathering)
23. Christine (Alias Grace)
24. Jill (The Road Home)
25. Jaime (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
26. Jessica (American Gods)
27. Jessica (American Gods)
28. RedHeadRamble(A Farewell to Arms)
29. Jessica (The Accidental)
30. Jill (Heart-Shaped Box)
31. Teresa (The Daughter of Time)
32. Teresa (Persepolis)
33. Alice (Wild Swans)
34. The End of the Alphabet (Nely)
35. tanabata (Grotesque - Natsuo Kirino)
36. Rebecca @ The Book Lady\'s Blog (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Tim

37. Nely (The Gathering)
38. Lauren (My Sister\'s Keeper)
39. Lauren (Water for Elephants)
40. Jessica (Watchmen)
41. Jessica (Kafka on the Shore)
42. Sanddancer (Boy A)
43. Tricia (Ender\'s Game)
44. LizzySiddal (Late Nights on Air)
45. LizzySiddal (Catholics)
46. LizzySiddal (Helpless)
47. LizzySiddal (The White Tiger)
48. Tiny Librarian (On Beauty)
49. Tiny Librarian (Murder With Peacocks)
50. Teddy (The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao )
51. teddy (Snow Falling on Cedars)
52. sheri
53. The Tenderness of Wolves (lesley)
54. The Giver (lesley)

Stardust - Neil Gaiman

2008-10-28T17:08:00.001-04:00

Tristran Thorn lives in Wall and is in love with the beautiful Victoria Forester. She says she will give him whatever he wants if he brings backthe star that has just fallen from the sky. To retrieve the star is no easy natter however. First he has to cross the Wall into the unknown magical realm beyond. Turns out the star is a woman who does not want to be given to some random lady as a token of Tristran's love.

Also after the star is a wicked witch who wants to cut out her heart to share with her sisters to regain their youth. There are also two remaining princes who need the necklace she wears to prove they are the next King of the realm. Secrets are revealed about Tristram's past and a true adventure is underway where Tristram discovers way more than he bargained for.

A brilliant story that was adapted well into a film of the same name. The book had a different ending albeit getting to the same point as the film and I enjoyed both versions. One of my favourite Gaiman novels so far, I look forward to seeing what he writes next.

Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson

2008-10-26T02:34:00.004-04:00

Vivid and Beautiful

The year is 1954 and Kabuo Miyamoto a Japanese American fisherman is standing trial for murder in small town in Puget Sound Washington. Up until World War II, his family was growing strawberries and making payments towards owning the land they lived and worked on. With the onset so the war left for the land, they were sent away to a Japanese internment camp. After the war ended they came back to Puget Sound only to find the land that they had struggled for was sold.

The narrator of the story was the journalist covering the trial, Ishmael Chambers. As a child, he played with and later fell in love with Hatsue. When she was sent to the Japanese internment camp with her family, she sent Ishmael a "Dear John" letter. When she returned to Puget Sound, she was married to Kabuo Miyamoto.

Ishmael never stopped loving Hatsue and may be the only one to be able to uncover the truth and set Kabuo free. Will he let his feelings get in the way of doing the right thing? My lips are sealed.

This is a book of love, friendship, betrayal, honor, tradition, and racism. David’s Guterson’s characters ring true to me. His writing flows beautifully as he peels away the layers of the town and it’s inhabitants. This is a fast reading book that I didn’t want to put down. I highly recommend it!

4/5

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

2008-10-25T23:41:00.001-04:00

by Patrick Süskind
Translated from the German by John E. Woods
Winner of the World Fantasy Award, 1987

Survivor, genius, perfumer, killer: this is Jean-Baptiste Grenouille. He is abandoned on the filthy streets as a child, but grows up to discover he has an extraordinary gift: a sense of smell more powerful than any other human’s. Soon, he is creating the most sublime fragrances in Paris. Yet there is one odour he cannot capture. It is exquisite, magical: the scent of a young virgin. And to get it he must kill. And kill. And kill...

I can’t quite put my finger on it but something kept me from really loving this story. I liked it, don’t get me wrong, but I think I expected something more. Too high expectations perhaps? The translation? Actually I loved the beginning, when the story took place in Paris, but once Grenouille left Paris, I lost a bit of momentum in reading and never really got it back.
Grenouille was an interesting character though. He’s despicable and selfish and egotistical but there were the odd moments I almost felt sympathy toward him. I’m not sure I ever really got to know him or any of the other characters although maybe that's the point since for him everything and everyone is defined purely by scent of the lack thereof.

Every human being smelled differently, no one knew that better than Grenouille, who recognized thousands upon thousands of individual odours and could sniff out the difference of each human being from birth on. And yet – there was a basic perfumatory theme to the odour of humanity, a rather simple one, incidentally: a sweaty-oily, sour-cheesy, quite richly repulsive basic theme that clung to all humans equally and above which each individual’s aura hovered only as a small cloud of more refined particularity. (p. 154)

Some of the descriptions about perfumery were quite fascinating. I’d never given much thought to the process of extracting the basic scents before so that part of the story was interesting. Overall, it’s a great concept that just didn’t completely grab me. I’m looking forward to finally watching the movie though and seeing how it compares to the book. (My Rating: 3.5/5)

Read an extract here.
*originally posted at In Spring it is the Dawn

Laura's Review - Kaddish for a Child not Born

2008-10-24T21:36:00.000-04:00

Kaddish for a Child not Born
Imre Kertesz
95 pages

I lived in such a way that the Germans might return at any time; thus I didn't quite live. (p. 45)

This book is a holocaust survivor's first-person narrative exploring the impact of imprisonment at Auschwitz on his adult life.
Then she asked me whether I suffered or perhaps even still suffer from my Jewishness aside from what I had to suffer in the past. I answered ... that I have carried this sin as my sin even though I have never committed it. (p. 56)

As the title indicates, the narrator is mourning the child he never had. His marriage fell apart after he emphatically refused to have children: No -- it should never happen to another child, what happened to me: my childhood. (p. 71)

This is a short book written in a free-form style, and yet was not an easy read. It is probably best read in small pieces and then digested through contemplation. I was not in the mood for this kind of book and probably should have set it aside. Nonetheless, I could see that, if read with proper attention, it could be a quite powerful book. ( )

My original review can be found here.

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - Tammy's review

2008-10-23T12:34:00.001-04:00

Title: The Grapes of Wrath

Author: John Steinbeck

First Published: 1939

No. of Pages: 464

Synopsis (from B&N): Although it follows the movement of thousands of men and women and the transformation of an entire nation, The Grapes of Wrath is also the story of one Oklahoma farm family, the Joads, who are driven off their homestead and forced to travel west to the promised land of California. Out of their trials and their repeated collisions against the hard realities of an America divided into Haves and Have-Nots, Steinbeck created a drama that is intensely human yet majestic in its scale and moral vision, elemental yet plainspoken, tragic but ultimately stirring in its insistence on human dignity.

Comments and Critique: John Steinbeck was a master storyteller. He had the ability to get you interested in the story and to hold your interest for page after page. The story of the Joads is heartbreaking but at the same time shows mankind’s strength of character in the face of overwhelming odds, especially in the character of Ma Joad. Without doubt, she was my favorite – she showed resilience through poverty, hunger, and death, all the while presenting a brave face to the outside world and trying everything she could to keep her family together.

It’s always been difficult for me to imagine what it was truly like to live through the Great Depression. The only family I have that was alive then is my grandmother. She’s told me a little about her life growing up on a central Florida farm as the 2nd oldest of 8 children, but has never wanted to talk much in detail about the experience. I’ve noticed that many elderly people do that, they either don't discuss it or they downplay the hardships that you know they suffered, often with the comment that, “We didn’t have much, but then neither did anyone else.” It’s almost like it wasn’t as bad because so many were suffering right alongside. That was also a theme in this book. Steinbeck really focused on the interaction of the migrants and showed how they looked out for one another, shared their food and lodgings, and provided moral support.

My copy of the book has extensive commentary, which provides a good look at the historical and social context of the story. My next step is to watch the movie version, which I’ve always heard is excellent, and see how it compares to the book.

Interesting facts:: John Steinbeck lived with an Oklahoma family and travelled with them to California as research for this book. The Grapes of Wrath won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1940. John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.

Would You Recommend This Book to Others: Yes

Possession

2008-10-20T03:08:00.002-04:00

This 1990 Booker Prize winner was second only to LOTR on the poll of what books I should take. It seemed to be popular with the visitors and I can understand why. I read this during my unfortunate delay before departure. It was absorbing and while a bit lengthy at over 500 paperback pages, enjoyable. It is complex, literary, stylistically varied, and meta. There are various writing styles employed from poetry, critical academia, memoir writing, fairytales, to epistolary writing. While I found the ending just a tad too maudlin and the modern characters Maud and Roland not as well drawn out as Ash and Christabel, I liked the book overall. Byatt obviously took care in tracing the mystery aspect, and it is certainly not a conventional romance (or romances). It has many themes and interesting implements. It has academics writing not about poets, but also other academics. There's a definite sense of meta literary and commentary beneath the surface. The idea of not only romantic possession, but that which possesses us from the long gone writers. It reminds me of Shakespeare academia and the sheer obsession academics have about him whoever he may be. Just a little thing could just how history views people and how we are enthralled, or "possessed" with the dead and ideas from and of them. I am glad to own this novel as I find that it will be immensely rereadable.

Crossposted from aquatique.net

The Secret River by Kate Grenville (Jill)

2008-10-19T18:36:00.000-04:00

The Secret River
By Kate Grenville
Completed October 19, 2008

The Secret River by Kate Grenville, for me, was a meandering story, winding its way slowly but steadily into a tale of sad success. Will Thornhill, convicted for stealing in England, was sent to Australia with his wife and children to serve out his sentence. Will was a river man and saw the openness of Australia as a way to make a good living –a place where he can be free in every sense of the word.

After serving his sentence, Will claimed 100 acres and settled his family along a riverbank occupied by fellow Brits and (understandably) inhospitable natives. His wife, Sal, a strong-willed, sensible woman agreed to this settlement with a promise that they would return to London in five years. But in Will’s heart, he knew that his 100 acres was the only way to carve a living that would provide for his family without the English societal restraints.

Grenville’s account of the struggles between the colonists and aboriginal people was eye-opening and compelling. In a modern context, we know what happened of this struggle, but it was mesmerizing and suspenseful to see this story play out in an early 19th century setting.

Grenville has an easy writing style and her ability to draw her characters is superb. My only complaint about The Secret River was that it started too slowly for me. I say this with a grain of salt – there was a lot going on in my life when I started this book, which may have ruined my focus. For me, the second half of the book, when Will and his family settled on to their land, was exhilarating and gripping. The ending left me with a sense of sadness that reminded me that colonialism and the greed of a country can leave people heart-broken, even if they seem successful on paper.

This is my first Kate Grenville book but certainly not my last. I would recommend The Secret River to readers who enjoy quality literary and historical fiction. ( )

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang

2008-10-17T15:11:00.001-04:00

American Born Chinese
Gene Luen Yang

Three seemingly different threads of stories actually comprise a whole, only it doesn't look that way at first.

It starts with a folk tale from China called the Monkey King. Aah, the Monkey King. I remember watching a movie or something once starring Thomas Gibson titled The Monkey King. I don't remember much except that it starred Thomas Gibson. And the costumes. Or that some people were in costumes. Darn. But I digress. I'm not familiar with the story of The Monkey King but in this graphic novel it seems we meet him at the start of the tale.

It shifts to the States where Jin Wang, a son of two Chinese nationals who emigrated there, just transferred to a school where he is the only student of Chinese-descent. That until he meets Wei-Chen from Taiwan.

Then there's the panels where it seems we are watching a situational comedy with a Chinese relative visiting an all-American boy named Danny, making the latter totally ashamed.

The three threads somehow make one beautiful pattern in the end which obviously I won't spoil for you. The story is not titled American Born Chinese just because, right?

It's basically a story about fitting in; the Monkey King not wanting to admit he's a monkey but a god, Jin Wang is an American-born Chinese trying to fit in to his new school and his only friend is an immigrant from Taiwan named Wei-Chen, and the Danny thread with his shamefaced thoughts of having his Chinese relative spoil his perfect, all-American life.

Fitting in is difficult everywhere, more so when one reaches adolescence. You don't have to be an immigrant or descended from an immigrant to know that. But it gets more difficult if you try to fit in with a different culture, with a different set of values and this is apparent in Jin Wang's case. There are and always will be stereotypes no matter how much we all try to steer clear from them.

Lovely way to bring all the tension and difficulties of growing up Chinese-American in the States without losing the Chinese identity behind.

-----
This book won the Michael L. Printz Award in 2007.

The Secret River - Wendy's Review

2008-10-13T21:16:00.002-04:00

They call this Broken Bay, Blackwood said. River comes in yonder. He pointed ahead, where Thornhill could see only confusing stretches of water and thickly forested headlands. Best hidden river in the world, Blackwood said with satisfaction. Never find your way in nor you’d been shown like I’m showing you.

Looking inland, where gusts of wind scraped at the water, Thornhill strained to find that secret river. -From The Secret River, page 100-

Kate Grenville’s novel The Secret River was short listed for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and won the 2006 Commonwealth Prize. Once you’ve read this harrowing and gorgeously constructed story, you will understand why.

Set in the early part of the nineteenth century, the novel tells the story of William Thornhill - a boy born into poverty along London’s Thames River who learns to steal early on to ensure his survival. Illiterate and quick to anger, William must learn to sustain himself in the face of hunger and cold. He finds his strength as a waterman, paddling hard against the unforgiving waters of the Thames, and turns away from towering spaces of Christ Church.

It was a place with no charity in its grey stones for a boy with the seat out of his britches.

He could not understand any of it, knew only that God was as foreign as a fish. -From The Secret River, page 10-

Then one day, Will gets caught stealing lumber. After a short trial, he is found guilty and sent to a penal colony (along with his young wife Sal and their infant son) in New South Wales. This new land is as beautiful as it is foreign.

For every one of the years of his life, this bay had been here, filling its shape in the land. He had laboured like a mole, head down, in the darkness and dirt of London, and all the time this tree shifting its leathery leaves above him had been quietly breathing, quietly growing. -From The Secret River, page 80-

For William, the vast and unsettled landscape of New South Wales becomes a place where he believes his dreams may grow.

A chaos opened up inside of him, a confusion of wanting. No one had ever spoken to him of how a man might fall in love with a piece of ground. No one had ever spoken of how there could be this teasing sparkle and dance of light among the trees, this calm clean space that invited feet to enter it. -From The Secret River, page 106-

As Will and his ever increasing family begin to scrape out a space of their own along the secret river, there seems to be only one thing standing between Will and his dreams: the native people.

Grenville shows the wide gap between English and Aboriginal cultures…and the tremendous misunderstanding fueled by an inability to adequately communicate. Her prose is magnificent as she describes the land of Australia and gradually builds the tension between the characters, before bringing the novel to its inevitable and devastating conclusion. I was completely absorbed by this historical piece of work which is evocative, poetic and pulsing with the life of a time far in the past. It is a novel which explores the moral wilderness of a man in parallel with the physical wilderness of a new country. It is a story about choices, dreams and sacrifice. A pioneer tale which translates well in today’s environment of cultural divides and racial differences, The Secret River is a must read.

Highly recommended.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

2008-10-13T18:28:00.005-04:00

Dominican Family Saga

"Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim." - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao(Front flap)

I had some problems warming up to this book. It is not a cozy read. The book starts out telling us about Oscar and his childhood. We learn of his obsessions from a young age with science fiction, video games, and girls. I didn’t really warm up to him, yet I wanted him to succeed in life. I did get quite annoyed with his character at times as with the attitude of some of the other male characters especially. I’m not an old prude, honest, but do Dominican men have sex on the brain or is that just my female interpretation?

As the book progresses we learn about Oscar’s mother Beli and his grand parents coloured history in the Dominican Republic. We learn of the brutality that is brought about on their family and the many deaths. Beli must flee to the United States for fear of her life.

Diaz captures the economic, political and psychological Dominican history and we learn quite a bit about it here. I think this novel was worth the read just for that, but I did like other parts of the story as well. Was it worthy of winning the Pulitzer? I'll leave that up to you to decide for yourselves.

There are many Spanish words in the book with no definitions. Some can be figured out by the reader by the context, however, if you do decide to read it, I highly recommend that you have a Spanish-English dictionary nearby.

3/5

An Abundance of Katherines

2008-10-11T14:27:00.000-04:00

Green, John. 2006. An Abundance of Katherines.

An Abundance of Katherines is about nothing and everything all at the same time. If it has a message at all, the message is that you write your own message, tell your own story. Our hero is recent high school graduate, Colin Singleton. And Singleton's problem is that he's single. He's got a long history of being the dumpee (as opposed to being the dumper). He's been dumped nineteen times--so he says--all by girls named Katherine. We first meet Colin after his nineteenth break-up.

Hassan is the best friend a half-Jewish boy could ever hope to have. (Did I mention he was Muslim?) He is Colin's sidekick. And their relationship--this friendship--is quite the motivating force behind the narrative. Two individuals who on their own might be a wee bit odd, but together they make a great team. A hilarious team. Colin is stuck within himself. As a person. He defines himself as the boy who's doomed to fall in love with Katherines and get dumped. That and he defines himself as a child prodigy (high I.Q) who's bound to grow up and NOT be a genuius, NOT matter. He defines himself as a failure. He hasn't found true love. He hasn't made a difference in the world. Half the time he doesn't even know if it's possible for his life to matter when it all comes down to it. He's stuck focusing on himself. All the time. Worrying about his future. Worrying about who's going to dump him next. Worrying if he's ever NOT going to be dumped.

Fortunately, Hassan wants Colin to get it. To learn that life is for living. So the two embark on a road trip. A road trip that soon takes an unexpected turn to an out-of-the-way town of Gutshot. There he meets Lindsay. A girl who while not a Katherine may just be the best thing that ever happened to him. Maybe. But first, he has to stop and ponder the meaning of the universe and write this unbelievably complex theorem on why his love life is so ridiculously awful.

First sentence: The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath.

© Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews