5 stars from my 4th grader who says, "The writing wasn't the most amazing, but the message was really 4 stars is the average of my children's ratings:
5 stars from my 4th grader who says, "The writing wasn't the most amazing, but the message was really good, that just because someone is a bully doesn't mean they can't change and be a better person."
3 stars from my 6th grader who says, "I guess I liked it. It was okay, but it wasn't really my kind of book."
As a mom, I thought the message was good, even if the premise was a bit far-fetched:a bully has amnesia that allows him to remember all the general things about life, but forget his personal memories....more
Ms. Hakim does a great job of giving a balanced account of the war (while slavery was terrible, the North was not blameless), without focusing too mucMs. Hakim does a great job of giving a balanced account of the war (while slavery was terrible, the North was not blameless), without focusing too much on the individual battles. ...more
No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.
As a haunted house tale, this is delicious, but I really love about this novel is Ms. Jackson's LADIES.
Obviously, there's Eleanor, who has spent her entire life being what other people want her to be and finds herself, at 32, with nothing of her own. She has nothing better to do than accept an invitation to spend the summer observing paranormal activity at a purportedly haunted house. Eleanor, in all her tormented awkwardness, is clearly our heroine. But what's a heroine without a frenemy?
I've known many Theodora's -- instafriends, as long as they get all the attention; light and breezy, until anything reflects poorly on them. Ms. Jackson so perfectly captured the little narcissist and her relationship with Eleanor. I find the critical speculation about (view spoiler)[Theodora's sexuality (is the roomate more than just a roomate? is there something between Theodora and Eleanor?) (hide spoiler)] interesting, but don't find it fundamental to the story.
The other female characters -- rigid housekeeper Mrs. Dudley and the delighfully self-obsessed Mrs. Montague -- are just there for atmosphere and comic relief, but they are both highly entertaining. In comparison, the male characters (primarily Luke and Dr. Montague) are just there. They're the "straight men" who also happen to be straight men.
I've read "The Lottery" several times (and maybe other Jackson short stories?), and finally read We Have Always Lived in the Castle a few years ago. I'm still scratching my head, wondering "why did it take me so long to read this one?"
Imagine you are living a quiet life, teaching photography at your local vocational school in Australia, still mourning the death of your beloved motheImagine you are living a quiet life, teaching photography at your local vocational school in Australia, still mourning the death of your beloved mother, but close to your step-father and half-sister. Then a stranger from halfway across the world shows up and tells you he believes you were kidnapped from a family in Kentucky when you were two years old, and your entire life has been a lie. Initially, he says he's a friend of your biological family, but then (view spoiler)[ after showing you DNA test results, he reveals that he's actually your biological brother. (hide spoiler)]
In alternating chapters, we follow Kim's journey to discover the truth about her past, while also learning about the events surrounding the 1990 disappearance of Sammy Went. The Went family was already falling apart before the youngest member disappeared without a trace from her upstairs bedroom, and every family member is hiding something. Mother Molly is a member of a fundamentalist church ::cough, cult:: and pretty obviously suffering from postpartum depression, father Jack is finding affection elsewhere, teenage sister Emma is running wild, and middle child Stuart is completely lost in the chaos.
Mr. White has written a really strong debut that contains everything I look for in a mystery/suspense novel: complicated, believable characters; an original plot that is logical without being predictable (several times I thought I knew what was going to happen next, but was happy to find myself wrong); and twists that left me saying, "oh!" instead of feeling manipulated. In the last 50 pages, the drama gets turned up to 11, which doesn't entirely match the pacing/tone of the rest of the novel, but it's definitely not anti-climactic.
The Nowhere Child, which has already been released in Christian White's native Australia, won't be availabe in the U.S. until January 2019, but I received an Advance Reader Copy through a Goodreads giveaway....more
There's so much I want to say about this book, but so many things I don't want to give away.
"I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entityThere's so much I want to say about this book, but so many things I don't want to give away.
"I think marriage is nearly always an unfathomable entity, even to the people inside it."
It's about marriage -- the reasons people end up together, the reasons they stay together (or, eventually, don't), the ways others interfere.
“He was a rich white Conservative male...and he felt the corridors of power were best populated exclusively by rich white Conservative males. He sought, in everything, to restore a status quo he remembered in his youth. In pursuit of that objective, he was frequently unprincipled and certainly hypocritical.”
It's about the upper class, specifically in the U.K., the distance between them and the middle and lower class they often represent politically, and the lengths they will go to maintain their status and power. (While "Mr. Galbraith" does get in a few jabs at extreme leftists, they are mostly portrayed in a sympathetic light.)
“You can bloody hate someone and still wish they gave a shit about you and hate yourself for wishing it.”
It's about family -- the secrets families keep, both from the outside world and from each other, about the things people can tolerate and the terrible things they can do to each other.
650 pages is a lot, but there's a lot here. One intriguing visit from a mentally ill young man leads to a case that may or may not be connected, but which ties up Cormoran, Robin, and a new agency employee, sending them all undercover. Then, a startling crime sets Cormoran & co. on a completely different investigation, trying to figure out whether C is related to B, while still unsure if B is related to A. Add Cormoran's and Robin's fraught personal lives into the midst and there's plenty to fill 650 pages....more
There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story.There's the story, then there's the real story, then there's the story of how the story came to be told. Then there's what you leave out of the story. Which is part of the story too.
I really liked Oryx and Crake and I loved The Year of the Flood, but Maddaddam was a little problematic for me, although overall I enjoyed it.
Most problematic is the way all the female characters are reduced to pathetic stereotypes: Ren pining over stupid Snowman the Jimmy Toby playing the love-sick, jealous girlfriend Amanda left catatonic by her rape and abuse at the hands of the Painballers "Swift Fox" starring as the man-hungry slut
Ew.
Also problematic is Toby's bedtime story time for the Crakers. I get the irony of Jimmy and then Toby creating a mythology for these "perfect creatures," who Crake created to be without religion. It's just so incredibly annoying to read Toby's attempts at whitewashing history, with her constant requests for the Crakers to stop singing and stop interrupting.
And the way that most of the current plotline is taken up with the hunt for the escaped Painballers. Seriously? 99.9% of the world's population is gone and there's not enough space and resources left for the survivors (who pretty much all know each other)? And the constant descriptions of what they're eating, even though it's basically all variations on pigoon and kudzu.
What I did like was getting Zeb's backstory, which saved this novel from a 1 or 2 star rating. It was a little soap opera-ish with abusive parents, murder, imbezzling, hired killers, assumed identities, etc., but satisfying nonetheless. I like how it becomes obvious that (view spoiler)[Adam is Adam One, but there's never a big reveal that, of course, they're the same person. (hide spoiler)].
While I'd like to say that you could read the first two novels without reading this one, I don't think that most readers will be able to resist seeing how Atwood choses to end the series. Just be prepared for a certain amount of disappointment, because this series ends "not with a bang but a whimper."...more
You can forget who you are if you're alone too much.
In Oryx and Crake, Jimmy/Snowman slowly remembers who he is, as part of his remembering how civiliYou can forget who you are if you're alone too much.
In Oryx and Crake, Jimmy/Snowman slowly remembers who he is, as part of his remembering how civilization ended. The Year of the Flood isn't a sequel, but a retelling of those same events from the perspective of two women, both once members of a cult/religious order/resistance group called God's Gardeners. Ren and Toby have survived inside the places they lived and worked: Ren locked inside a quarantine room at a sex club, Toby barricaded inside an upscale spa. Like O&C, the present tense begins after the gruesome plague engineered by Crake/Glenn has wiped out most of human population of Earth, while flashbacks tell of the events leading up to the end of the world as we know it.
I'm not sure if Ms. Atwood planned to write a trilogy when she first penned O&C, but retelling the same story from a different perspective works so well here. I actually enjoy this second novel more than the first, but I think reading the first contributed to my enjoyment of this one. Jimmy is meh in his own story and becomes even more pathetic when seen through the eyes of the women. And this story is made so much richer by the story of God's Gardeners and their charismatic leader, Adam One, whose sermons and hymns punctuate the novel.
According to Adam One, the Fall of Man was multidimensional. The ancestral primates fell out of the trees; then they fell from vegetarianism into meat-eating. Then they fell from instinct into reason, and thus into technology; from simple signals into complex grammar, and thus into humanity; from firelessness into fire, and thence into weaponry; and from seasonal mating into an incessant sexual twitching. Then they fell from a joyous life in the moment into the anxious contemplation of the vanished past and the distant future.
We dangle by a flimsy thread, Our little lives are grains of sand: The Cosmos is a tiny sphere Held in the hollow of God's hand.
Give up your anger and your spite, And imitate the Deer, the Tree; In sweet Forgiveness find your joy, For it alone can set you free.
So read Oryx and Crake first, but then read this, because it's even better and ties everything together (perhaps a little too conveniently, but it's a novel). Just don't get your hopes too high for the final installment, MaddAddam....more
Arthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-fiveArthur Less is the first homosexual ever to grow old. That is, at least, how he feels at times like these. Here, in this tub, he should be twenty-five or thirty, a beautiful young man naked in a bathtub. Enjoying the pleasures of life. How dreadful if someone came upon naked Less today: pink to his middle, gray to his scalp, like those old double erasers for pencil and ink. He has never seen another gay man age past fifty, none except Robert. He met them all at forty or so but never saw them make it much beyond; they died of AIDS, that generation. Less’s generation often feels like the first to explore the land beyond fifty. How are they meant to do it? Do you stay a boy forever, and dye your hair and diet to stay lean and wear tight shirts and jeans and go out dancing until you drop dead at eighty? Or do you do the opposite—do you forswear all that, and let your hair go gray, and wear elegant sweaters that cover your belly, and smile on past pleasures that will never come again? Do you marry and adopt a child? In a couple, do you each take a lover, like matching nightstands by the bed, so that sex will not vanish entirely? Or do you let sex vanish entirely, as heterosexuals do? Do you experience the relief of letting go of all that vanity, anxiety, desire, and pain?
Less is pretty much 300 pages of Arthur Less's midlife crisis. At almost 50 (but still 49!), Arthur is a mediocre author whose younger lover is getting married. To avoid the wedding, he decides to accept a number of invitations he's previously ignored: to interview another (much more successful) author in NYC, to attend an award ceremony in Italy, to be a guest professor in Germany, to join a trek through Marrakesh for someone else's 50th birthday, and to research an article in Japan. Through all these adventures, we slowly piece together a picture of Arthur, through his own memories, but most accurately through the perceptions of others.
While the story as a whole is entertaining, with Arthur alternating between a comic and tragic figure, I never really connected with him.
To escape their hot and noisy NY apartment for the summer, a couple rents an isolated, deteriorating mansion that comes with an occupant -- a reclusive (as in, never seen) old lady who must be brought meals thrice daily.
The discontented high school English teacher (is there any other kind?) and his materialistic wife are not likable characters, although their 8-year-old son and his elderly, slightly eccentric aunt are decent, but not fully fleshed out. The plot builds very slowly, but the sense of dread is solid. There's never any doubt this will end badly....more
“Then the Lord must be mightily displeased with you, because he has led you into the valley of death. Make peace with your Lord before it is too late,“Then the Lord must be mightily displeased with you, because he has led you into the valley of death. Make peace with your Lord before it is too late, because the hungry ones are coming for you.”
As if the actual story of the Donner Party wasn't horrifying enough, Alma Katsu decided it needed a retelling in which "the hungry ones," (known as Na'it to the local Washoe tribe (view spoiler)[ --a werewolf/Wendigo-inspired monster transformation that is hereditary, but spreads virally (hide spoiler)]) are stalking the doomed pioneers. Using the basic historical outline, including the names and backgrounds (albeit embellished with secret backstories) of the group members, Ms. Katsu seamlessly blends historical fiction and horror.
The Hunger perfectly fits my October spooky lit cravings. I devoured every page -- consumed by the tormented characters. Ms. Katsu works in all kind of secrets, many of a sexual nature, which follow the characters as they desperately struggle to leave behind their old lives for a new start in California....more
Once upon a time, Kris Pulaski had beaten entire rooms into submission. Once upon a time she'd walked into strange buildings in faraway states where tOnce upon a time, Kris Pulaski had beaten entire rooms into submission. Once upon a time she'd walked into strange buildings in faraway states where the only people who knew her name stood next to her onstage. She'd stood, surrounded by crowds who hated her in Eugene, and Bangor, and Marietta, and Buckhannon, and calmly tuned her guitar in front of those jostling drunks who put bullet holes in the band van, who tucked notes under their wipers that read "Metal faggots get AIDS," who once threw a shit-dripping diaper onstage, who started fights because they wanted to beat without mercy anyone who came from more than fifty miles away. Kris had stood in front of those cross-eyed, thick-skulled, small-brained cow tippers whose veins flowed with Blatz and Keystone instead of blood, who stunk of Schaefer and Natty Boh, and Lone Star, and Iron City, and she waited quietly for the drum intro to begin, then strummed in lazy on the downbeat and started building her first riff, and then the bass slid in easy behind her, and the other guitar followed her lead before suddenly breaking free and starting to crunch over her rhythms with violent arpeggios, and the first blast beat smashed out of the bass drums and they leaned back into the pocket, thrashing that room without mercy, beating those bearded faces with a wall of sound until their heads started nodding, their shoulders began to twitch, their chins went up and down against their will--until the one with either the least impulse control or the most to prove shoved the person in front of him, and the pit began to swirl in front of the stage. (Yes, that entire paragraph was one sentence. One beautiful, frenetic sentence.) The aggressively casual thrashers in their long-sleeved black tees and long black hair, the old metalheads in their battle vests and beards, the milk-white school shooters, skinny wrists cuffed with underage wristbands--Kris had turned these haters into dancers, fighters into lovers, hecklers into fans. She had been punched in the mouth by a straight-edge vegan, had the toes of her Doc Martens kissed by too many boys to count, and been knocked unconscious after catching a boot beneath the chin from a stage diver who'd managed to do a flip into the crowd off the stage at Wally's. She'd made the mezzanine bounce like a trampoline at Rumblestiltskins, the kids pogoing so hard flakes of pain rained down like hail. Now she stood watching Josh Morrell piss all over the floor of the Best Western at three in the morning, and she was too scared to do a thing about it. When he finished, he shook the final drops off his boneless dong, turned around, let out an enormous wet fart, and marched back through the automatic doors.
This book is everything. Not everything for everyone, mind you. This is a horror novel, with a few really gruesome scenes, and some monster/demon things, and plenty of evil (although entirely human) people, a little overwhelming hopelessness combined with a lot of humor. Also, it's about music, specifically metal and hard rock. I'm not a huge fan, but thanks to my high school boyfriend, I do know a fair amount about a lot of the bands that influenced Kris. And it's a love of music in general, not any specific type, that comes across. For me, it all works. This is my third Grady Hendrix novel and I kind of love him.
First and foremost, the man can write. After reading his first novel, Horrorstör, I likened him to early Douglas Coupland -- sentences so densely packed with language they need to be fully chewed before they can be digested. He blends humor and horror, satire and naked truth seamlessly. I'm caught between laughing, nodding, and grimacing in discomfort, all within a few pages.
Second, he creates characters within campy horror stories that go far beyond stereotypes. They come off the page with their bravery and fallibility. Kris, washed-up guitarist, the only female member of 90s metal band Dürt Würk, blames the former lead singer for everything that's gone wrong in her life. Since she signed a contract giving Terry Hunt (now known commercially as Koffin or as "The Blind King" to his millions of fans) full rights to Dürt Würk's music (including the concept album they'd just finished titled Troglodyte), her life has been a mess. Unable to perform publically, she's given up the only thing that ever made her feel powerful. She's settled for working at a Best Western, living in her mother's basement, and taking antidepressants to cope with how mindnumblingly depressing her life has become. But under all that, she's still a badass. When "Koffin" announces his final concert series, bitterness and vague memories prod Kris into seeking out her former bandmates and trying to discover the truth about the contracts they all signed.
Third, Grady Hendrix is an enlightened man. In My Best Friend's Exorcism, I was impressed by how well he captured the complicated relationships of teenage girls, but this time around he just gets women, in general. There's a scene towards the end of the book (so I don't want to give away too much), where Kris is stuck in another seemingly hopeless situation (of a string of many), when a man pushes her too far:
...and if he'd left right then, Kris would have been stuck. Rob could have just walked out of the room and left Kris to [bad stuff] and then nothing else that happened that night would have needed to happen. But Rob was a man, and men never know when to shut up. "It must be nice to be you," Rob said. "Everything must seem so simple." And then he gave her one of his patronizing smiles. The same one he gave her when he explained the contract... The same one he gave her when he showed up at the hospital while Tuck and Bill were still in the emergency room. The same one he gave her from the other side of her coffee table as she took his pen to sign the contract, pretending to read clauses she didn't understand in a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable. The same smile men had been giving Kris her entire life. Every promoter who'd shorted her on the door because she "didn't understand how clubs work." Every house tech who'd explained to her where her monitor really needed to be, how her guitar should be tuned, what songs she actually should play. Everyone who told her to calm down, who told her no, who told her to wait, who told her to be good, act nice, do what they say, sign a contract, play this kind of music--all of them gave her that same patronizing smile when they explained things to her and here it was again, on the last night of her life, right there on Rob Anthony's face. Kris couldn't help herself. She punched him. As hard as she could.
Be still, my heart.
And finally, Hendrix manages to turn a campy horror novel about a rock band into an indictment of modern society: social media mob mentality, rape culture, the hopelessness of the working class. In a world where people sell pieces of their soul every day, is it really so crazy to believe that the entire thing could be sold away?
As one character says, "It is possible to be crazy and paranoid and totally insane and still be right. Maybe the problem with everyone is that the world has become so insane they're not out of their minds enough to comprehend it."
To say that Richard Mayhew was not very good at heights would be perfectly accurate, but would fail to give the full picture; it would be like describTo say that Richard Mayhew was not very good at heights would be perfectly accurate, but would fail to give the full picture; it would be like describing the planet Jupiter as bigger than a duck. Richard hated clifftops, and high buildings; somewhere not far inside of him was the fear – the stark, utter, silently screaming terror – that if he got too close to the edge, then something would take over, and he would find himself walking to the edge of a clifftop and then he would just step off into space. It was as if he could not entirely trust himself, and that scared Richard more than the simple fear of falling ever could. So he called it vertigo, and hated it and himself, and kept away from high places.
Richard Mayhew is an ordinary Londoner, with an ordinary flat, an ordinary job, and an ordinary girlfriend: Jessica, never "Jess," who is very ambitious and determined to make Richard fit her mold of the perfect boyfriend/fiance/husband. Then one evening, he stops (against Jessica's wishes) to help a strange girl who is obviously injured, and he finds himself plunging off that metaphorical cliff. Soon his ordinary life is stripped away and he finds himself in London Below.
“There are little pockets of old time in London, where things and places stay the same, like bubbles in amber,” she explained. “There’s a lot of time in London, and it has to go somewhere—it doesn’t all get used up at once.” “I may still be hung over,” sighed Richard. “That almost made sense.”
“We have to get the... the thing I got... to the Angel. And then he'll tell Door about her family, and he'll tell me how to get home." Lamia looked at Hunter with delight. "And he can give you brains," she said, cheerfully, "and me a heart.”
This is my sixth Gaiman book, including two that are kinda-sorta for children (Coraline and Fortunately, the Milk) and one that's a retelling (Norse Mythology). Of the three adult novels (The Ocean at the End of the Lane, American Gods, and this one), this is my favorite or tied with AG. I love the way Gaiman writes (and thinks), the way he mixes the dark underbelly of the world with droll humor.
There are four simple ways for the observant to tell Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar apart: first, Mr. Vandemar is two and a half heads taller than Mr. Croup; second, Mr. Croup has eyes of a faded china blue, while Mr. Vandemar's eyes are brown; third, while Mr. Vandemar fashioned the rings he wears on his right hand out of the skulls of four ravens, Mr. Croup has no obvious jewelery; fourth, Mr. Croup likes words, while Mr. Vandemar is always hungry. Also, they look nothing at all alike.
The unrepentantly evil Misters Croup and Vandemar are two of my favorite characters (not in the sense that I'd like to spend any time within 5,000 miles of them ever, but in the sense that they're delightful to read about), but I love them all: bumbling Richard, competent Door (the injured girl that gets Richard in the whole mess), the rakish Marquis, and the cast of supporting characters.
I initially added Neverwhere Illustrated Edition to my to-read shelf, but was given the paperback version by one of my book club ladies, and my local library system does not appear to have the illustrated version. However, I feel like I missed so many little treasures the first time through, and really want to see how Chris Riddell imagined the characters, so I'll probably be buying that version soon. ...more
Loading...
