June Wrap-Up

Days spent reading: 25
Books read: 10
...in fiction: 9
...in science fiction: 2
...in mystery: 2
...in non-fiction: 1
...in thriller: 1
...in short stories: 1
...in fantasy: 1
...in graphic novels: 1
...in young adult: 3

Series reads: none

Favorite book: Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (Review) 9/10
and Woman With Birthmark by Håkan Nesser (Review) 9/10

Challenges
Countdown Challenge: +2 books for 42/45
Summer Lovin' Challenge: +0 books for 0/10
Chunkster Challenge: +1 books for 5/6
The Baker Street Challenge: +0 books for 0/3
My Year of Reading Dangerously Challenge: +1 books for 1/12
Support Your Local Library Challenge: +4 books for 50/50 Completed!
Orbis Terrarum Challenge: +2 books for 8/10

Musing Mondays (29 June)

This week's Musing Mondays asks... "Now that we’ve come to the middle of the year, what do you think of your 2009 reading so far? Read anything interesting that you’d like to share? Any outstanding favourites?"

I was actually just starting to put together my June wrap-up post yesterday, which led to starting the end of year wrap-up post (because I wanted to do it before I got lazy again, and because it was good for procrastinating studying), so I can answer this question pretty easily!

My highest-rated (and, coincidentally, favorite) book of the year so far is Elantris, by Brandon Sanderson. I mentioned last week that I had actually returned this book to the library unread, so I'm very lucky that Scott read it while I had it the first time and coerced me into reading it. Sanderson writes some kick-ass female protagonists, so if that's your cup of tea, you should check this one out.

I also want to pimp The Manual of Detection, a great book that I don't think I've seen other reviews for outside of the one in BookPage that got me interested in the first place. This is a great mystery novel on so many levels and Berry just sucks you into this fantastical world he's created with his brilliant writing.

Summer Lovin' Challenge

I'm a week late on starting this, but that's cool, right? The Summer Lovin' Challenge asks participants to re-read some favorite novels over the summer (21 June — 21 September). Considering I haven't re-read a book since... a long time ago, I think this is the perfect challenge for me. I'm going to try to re-read 10 books in the next three months out of the list below.

Book pool:
Harry Potter books 1-7, by J.K. Rowling
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
In the Woods, by Tana French
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy", by Douglas Adams
Wicked and Son of a Witch, by Gregory Maguire

Actually read:
1. Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi (Review)
2. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster (Review)
3. Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone, by J.K. Rowling (Review)
4. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, by J.K. Rowling (Review)
5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, by J.K. Rowling (Review)
6. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, by J.K. Rowling (Review)
7. The Bad Beginning, by Lemony Snicket (Review)
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams (Review)
9. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (Review)
10. A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L'Engle (Review)

The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (20 June — 24 June)

Wow. What a book. I have to admit that I'm still not exactly sure what happened in this book, but in this case I think that's a good thing!

Zafón takes us to turn-of-the-century Barcelona to meet David Martín, a writer of crime stories first in the newspaper and then as part of a ridiculously long contract for monthly novels. After his first story is published, Martín receives a note from an Andreas Corelli congratulating him on his talent and expressing a wish to work with him in the future. These sorts of notes keep popping up until one day Martín and Corelli meet under odd circumstances and Martín decides to take Corelli up on his offer. This would be all well and good except it seems that Corelli has more than a few tricks up his sleeve and that Martín's life — his health and his world — may be in a bit of danger.

This novel is a bit fantastical but still reads like something that could happen to someone you know someday. I was never really sure what was going on with Corelli or with Diego Marlasca, another mysterious character in the novel, but I was with Martín 100 percent... until near the end, when all of the novel's truths are thrown up in the air like a deck of cards and I was turning pages furiously to see which cards would land face-up. (How about that metaphor?)

The ending was sort of a let-down; I thought it could have ended earlier, but I may be missing something. I'll have to read this through again in the future.

Rating: 8/10
(Chunkster Challenge, Orbis Terrarum Challenge: Spain)

Bookhunter, by Jason Shiga (20 June)

These graphic novel things are starting to grow on me. I don't think I'm ready for any big-kid books, like Watchmen and the like, but I'm getting there!

So this is a nice, short, simple-drawing book about the library police. No, really. I saw this description of it while plowing through the Unshelved archives (excellent comic, p.s., you should also go plow through the archives), and I was, to say the least, intrigued. Library police? Concentric locked-room mysteries?? Library police??? How can I join?

And, happily, it was a good time. We get what seems to be a cold open with the library police tracking down a guy who is stealing all the copies of one particular book from the Oakland Public Library. Agent Bay and his team bust in and totally get the guy, but then we don't care about him anymore and we move on to the main story. In this, there's a Bible missing and the OPL needs Bay to recover it before it has to be returned to the Library of Congress. Only... it was stolen from a safe that has not been obviously cracked. And the book is only in the safe at night, but there's also no sign that the thief broke into or out of the library. Which means the book must have left during the day, but without triggering the anti-theft alarms at the doors. An exhausting riddle!

Best of all, the book is set in 1973, so Bay solves the mystery with the help of microfilm and a giant card catalog. Can't go wrong with that.

Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2007)

Musing Mondays (22 June)

Today's Musing Mondays question is very appropriate for me: "Do you restrict yourself on how many books you take out from the library at a time? Do you borrow books if you already have some out? Do you always reborrow books you don’t get to?"

Restrict myself? Ha. No, no, no. This is mostly because I get a lot of books through the holds process, so I'll get an e-mail one day that says, "You have three books to pick up!" and then by the time I get to the library a day or two later there are two more to pick up as well! And then, after I've grabbed the five books and put them in my back, I'll go browse the new fiction shelves and see if anything looks good there.

As to the second question, I borrow books 99 out of 100 times that I go to the library. I'm lucky in that my library has an e-mail system that lets me know when my books are two days away from being due, so I always know what of my giant fluctuating pile of books has to go back to its mommy library.

This also helps me renew books that I haven't read within the borrowing period (usually three weeks). It often surprises me how many books I end up renewing; it's probably around 20 percent. This is because I constantly have ten or so books checked out that I read in order of interest, not due date. Of course, this causes problems on non-renewable books — new books, books with holds on them, books I've renewed five times already. If I can't renew a book that I really did mean to read, I'll put a hold on it right away, but mostly I figure I'll find them again when the mood strikes me. The new Jodi Picoult was one of those (has anyone read it? I haven't seen a review yet!), but another was Elantris, one of my favorite books ever. It took me a few months to decide to check it out again, but I'm certainly glad I did!

Housekeeping Notes

First, because I forgot to mention this when it happened, I've completed the Support Your Local Library Challenge! I said I'd read 50 library books this year, and I have. In less than six months. Hmm. Considering I said I'd read 60 books total this year.... Well, that just goes to show you what unemployment will do to a girl. We'll see how classes and homework affect this reading rate for the rest of the year.

Also, I'm trying to fix up my Blogger template because I did a rather hack job of turning it into three columns a while back. I've found a 3-column version of this template done by someone cooler than me, but I also might go with something different, who knows? Basically, if you visit this site more than once today, you might see some construction going on. If you've got any suggestions for things I should add or take away, sidebar-wise, let me know!

Minority Report, by Philip K. Dick (18 June)

I put this book on hold at the library a while ago when I realized I'd never actually read anything by Philip K. Dick. I figured a book of short stories would be a good start, but I managed to misread the record. (An aside: I would never do that now! My first library science class has taught me more than you ever wanted to know about every field in a catalog record, and I've only had eight hours of class so far.) I'm kind of glad I did — this may be just one story, but it's presented as a top-bound notebook like those I used for reporting. I felt really cool sitting around flipping pages super-quickly for an hour, and you will, too!

Hanyway. I've not seen all of the movie version of this (just the beginning and the creepy part with the eyeball), but Scott says this book is nothing like it. John Anderton is the commissioner of the pre-crime unit, which, like other government departments, uses psychic "idiots" to see the future. People who are seen committing crimes — from felony to murder — are brought in and contained before they can do the deed. On the day when Anderton's new assistant, whom Anderton is training to take over the department eventually, arrives, Anderton's own name shows up on a punch card as the murderer of a guy he doesn't even know. Anderton, thinking new guy is framing him, decides to undermine the system by running away and hiding for a week, but before he can he is kidnapped by the guy he's meant to kill and has a reader-headache-inducing couple of days before figuring out the plot and making things right.

That's right, headache-inducing. Dick doesn't dick around (hah! I'm so witty) with much exposition past the idea of pre-crime; after spending a few pages on that suddenly Anderton is figuring out things left and right and is like, "This is the truth! No, this is, for some reason I may or may not tell you later!" and you're like, "Buh?" and Dick's like, "Hahahahaha." Srsly. But in the end you sort of get it and then you write your congressperson a long letter against the use of mentally retarded people (no, really) as psychic crime-stoppers because it would confuse you. Or something.

Rating: 7/10

Paper Towns, by John Green (12 June)

When I saw that John Green had mentioned Scott Westerfeld in his acknowledgements as part of a writing group, I was surprised but not surprised. I love them both! And now I'm going to have to search out the works of the other authors in the group, because I imagine they are also swell.

But back to the book at hand. Paper Towns is the story of Quentin Jacobsen and his quest to find Margo Roth Spiegelman, his erstwhile best friend. Margo showed up at Q's window one night after several years of non-speaking-ness, took him on a grand revenge-getting and trouble-making adventure, and then disappeared. When Q hears from her parents that Margo likes to leave clues when she runs away, he gathers up his friends to decipher the ones it seems she's left for them. It takes him a while to make sense of what she's left, and all the while he starts to realize that he doesn't even know who Margo Roth Spiegelman is, let alone how to get into her head and find her.

It's a good time and a fast beach read. (But be careful on the beach — you'll get so caught up in the book you'll get a sunburn. [Yes, this did really happen to me.]) Green's characters are always so very, and these guys are no exception, but I feel like I could have known these people as a larger group in high school. And they're fun, so that's good. And [spoiler alert?], Green evens out all the ridiculousness inherent in the road-trip-on-a-deadline at the end with a punch of reality to the face, and I for one appreciated it.

Rating: 8/10

The City and the City, by China Miéville (9 June — 11 June)

When I finished up this book I turned to Scott and said, "What a weird book." His response: "I thought you said you liked it." Me: "I do. But that doesn't mean it's not weird."

The City and the City is a mystery novel but also a bit of... not science fiction, per se, but maybe "weird situation" fiction? I'm not sure what to call it. Basically, a girl is found murdered in a city called Besźel. Inspector Tyador Borlú is called in to investigate. For some reason, however, no one in Besźel seems to know what's going on or who this mystery girl is. Borlú gets an anonymous phone call sort of identifying the girl but also making his job harder — she's an American who was living in Ul Qoma, a... "neighboring" city that doesn't quite play nice with Besźel. After an attempt to pass the case to a higher authority fails, Borlú goes over to Ul Qoma to help their police with the investigation and finds out rather more than he wanted to about the histories of the two cities and the higher authority that presides over them.

So that was good! But it's that "neighboring" thing that makes this book so weird. Besźel and Ul Qoma don't really neighbor. Rather, they share the same geographical and sometimes physical space. I know. Imagine your town. Now imagine that your neighborhood/development is in Your Town A, but the next neighborhood over is in Your Town B. Also imagine that there is another neighborhood wherein two next-door neighbors live in Your Town A and Your Town B, respectively. Now also imagine that these towns are actually different countries and for those next-door neighbors to call each other would cost a pretty penny. Now, finally, imagine that those next-door neighbors would never actually call each other because if they met outside their front doors they would have to actively not see each other. That is Besźel and Ul Qoma, and it's baffling! Miéville does a lot of explaining about how the city and the city (see it now?) work, or don't work, with each other, but in the end you're still like, "But how could that happen? Who would do that?" So go ahead and start suspending your disbelief now, you won't need it for a while.

Of course, the separation of the cities is what really drives the true mystery of the novel, which is not who the murdered girl is or who killed her (though those are important), but why someone would want her dead. What does she know? What has she shared with others? And, of course, how on Earth did she put up with such crazy rules?? (That one's mine, obviously, not the novel's.)

Rating: 8.5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2009, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

The Oxford Project, by Peter Feldstein and Stephen G. Bloom (8 June)

I saw a bit about this book on the NPR website (here) and immediately put this book on the hold list at the library. I thought it would be neat to see some pictures taken 20 years apart of people in a small town in Iowa. I was right, but be warned! When I tried to find the book on my library's holds shelf, I couldn't — it was too big and was stacked elsewhere where it could fit. This is a large book. Almost 300 pages, something like 10" by 13" in size... I needed a bigger bag. :)

But it is really cool! If you didn't check out the above link already, here's the deal: Peter Feldstein, a professor at the University of Iowa, set up his camera in his adopted hometown of Oxford, Iowa in 1984 and asked all of the residents to come in and get a picture taken. Six hundred seventy did. Feldstein had a small showing, then threw all the photos in a cabinet and forgot about them. In 2005, he decided to track down all of his subjects and photograph them again, this time with the help of Stephen Bloom to take down the residents' stories and put them all in this giant book.

The stories range from fairly boring to scandalous (stripping in Phoenix, Arizona?! Oh my!). They are organized more or less by family, though not everyone is chronicled (and thank goodness, that would be a lot of anecdotes!). It's interesting to me, being the suburb-dweller I am, that so many of these families are deeply connected and that many of the people interviewed were glad simply to graduate high school.

Also, the scary buckskinning-guy-cum-preacher makes me giggle every time I see his picture.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Woman With Birthmark, by Håkan Nesser (7 June — 8 June)

Finally, a great book! I've been lacking them for so long....

I read this mystery without even looking at the jacket flap and I'm very glad of it; the flap would certainly have ruined a few interesting developments for me. So: go read it. Now. If you need more convincing, read on.

Woman With Birthmark is a mystery novel in which we meet the murderer in the first chapter but have no idea who she is, why she's doing it, or even whom she's going to kill. A few chapters later, we meet a man called Ryszard Malik who has been receiving odd phone calls that are simply a song recording being played over and over. Malik thinks he recognizes the song, but doesn't understand its significance until it's too late — so late that his wife comes home one night to find him dead in the entryway with two gunshot wounds to the chest and two to the, ah, groin. The police are called in and they do their best to solve this odd, improbable murder, but of course can't make any connections until another man is found dead.

This is a Swedish novel from about ten years ago recently translated to English, so I'm not sure how much I'm missing due to a lack of Swedish culture — if you've any insight, you should let me know.

Rating: 9/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge, Orbis Terrarum Challenge: Sweden)

Cause for Alarm, by Eric Ambler (3 June — 6 June)

Generally, I follow the good ol' 50-page rule for books, but something told me that this book could be good if I just gave it a few more, and sure enough, I was totally invested around page 75. So don't give up on this little book!

It's 1930s England, and Nicky Marlow's just been laid off from his engineering job. It takes him longer to find a job than he'd expected (boy, do I understand that feeling! I need employment!), so he ends up taking a job in Italy as a business manager for a firm that sells machines that make weapons. From the start, the Milan job is a bit dodgy — odd people in the office, even more odd people striking up conversations with him, his passport being "mislaid" by the government. When one of his odd acquaintances tells Nicky that he'll be getting an interesting proposition from another, Nicky discovers a whole new side to engineering.

I really liked this book once I got into it. Because of the way the book is written, you know that Nicky's going to be mostly all right in the end, but Ambler still makes it interesting to find out just how he gets out of the scrapes he makes his way into. And in proper thriller fashion, there are some good chase and deception scenes. I'm rather surprised that this was never made into a movie, though other Ambler works have been. I'll have to check those out.

Rating: 8/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Booking Through Thursday (4 June)

Doing today's Booking Through Thursday because I actually have an answer!

“This can be a quick one. Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”

1. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster
2. My Sister's Keeper, by Jodi Picoult
3. The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (et al.), by Douglas Adams
5. Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides
6. Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
7. Invisible Man, by Ralph Waldo Ellison
8. The Giver, by Lois Lowry
9. The Baby-Sitters Club (plus all spin-off series), by Ann M. Martin
10. The Secret of the Old Clock (and all Nancy Drew books), by Carolyn Keene
11. The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton
12. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (et al.), by J.K. Rowling
13. In The Woods, by Tana French
14. The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russell
15. Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson

Books, books, books!

Books! So many books! Today was the last day of the CWRU book sale, which meant it was box day, which meant we grabbed a box and hiked down the hill to fill it for $5. We didn't have a very big box, but I figured we'd only grab, like, ten books at the most... so wrong! So, so wrong. We ended up with 34 books and a new box that we grabbed from the extras they had lying around. Of course, we left them ours in trade.

Five dollars for 34 books apparently works out to about 14.7 cents per book, so huzzah for that! I suppose we could have filled the box up more, but it was already 22.8 pounds (yes, I weighed it once we got home) and it was tough enough to lug up the elephant stairs as it was. Scott did most of that. :)

Also, I managed to snag a copy of a book I already have, Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos. Anyone want it?

Here is our haul, in pictures!


Scott is already tired of lugging the box, and we're not even to the stairs yet!


The books in this pile are cookbooks:
Sherlock Holmes Cookbook, by Sean Wright and John Farrell
2003 Taste of Home Annual Recipes, ed. by Jean Steiner
The Cooking of India, by Santha Rama Rau (and no, you can't read the title up close, either)


Books that Scott picked out:
I Marry You Because, by Peter McWilliams
The Black Hole, by Alan Dean Foster
Back to the Future, by George Gipe
The Red Badge of Courage, by Stephen Crane
Halo: The Fall of Reach, by Eric Nylund
Anvil of Stars, by Greg Bear
The Portable Curmudgeon, ed. by Jon Winokur
At Least Our Bombs are Getting Smarter, by Tom Toles
2010: Odyssey Two, by Arthur C. Clarke
Kites: How to Fly Them, How to Build Them, by Ambrose Lloyd, Charles Mitchell, and Nicolette Thomas


Books that I picked out:
A Swiftly Tilting Planet, by Madeleine L'Engle
Many Waters, by Madeleine L'Engle
The Chocolate War, by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain
The Iliad, by Homer, tr. W.H.D. Rouse
A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
Tess of the D'Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy
Silas Marner, by George Eliot
Manhattan Transfer, by John Dos Passos
Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: A Month of Mystery, ed. by Alfred Hitchcock
Spider's Web, by Agatha Christie
The Novels of Dashiell Hammett, by Dashiell Hammett
The Woods, by Harlan Coben


Books I grabbed for my little brother:
Chamber of Horrors: Amulet of Doom, by Bruce Coville
Space Cadets: Jerks-in-Training, by R.L. Stine
The Pigman, by Paul Zindel
Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Secret Mirror, by Brad & Barbara Strickland
The Bailey School Kids: Bogeymen Don't Play Football, by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones
Number the Stars, by Lois Lowry

He'll probably get the kids books from my pile when I'm done with them, as well.

All in all a great day for books!

Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (1 June)

I got this Hugo-nominated novel for free from Doctorow's site, you should, too! Right now. Go do it.

Without an e-book reader, I was stuck staring at my computer for HOURS reading the book in .pdf form. I took a couple of breaks to check e-mail and whatnot, but otherwise I destroyed my eyesight in the name of this novel. This is probably fitting, as the story is about some computer-hacking kids who get in a weensy bit of trouble with the law.

No, no, I guess weensy isn't the right word for it. Marcus (aka w1n5t0n) and three of his friends are out on an ARG adventure (while skipping school, of course) when a terrorist attack hits the Bay Bridge in San Francisco. This is bad, obviously, but worse is that the friends are caught outside after the event and taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security, where they are all sorts of interrogated. Of the four kids, only three make it back out of jail, where they are threatened into silence about where they've been the past few days. Marcus returns home, keeping his silence, but when he finds his laptop (left at home all this time) bugged, he decides to take some underground action against the DHS and what they stand for.

The best part of this book is that Doctorow explains interesting things about hacking computers and the history of protesters and how his not-so-distant future rules and technology work without making you feel stupid about it. I was kind of glad to be reading it on a computer, eyeballs be damned, because I could verify his facts on Wikipedia (and then, of course, other sites) without leaving the story for too long. There's also a bibliography at the end for those eager to learn more.

Also, Doctorow dedicates each chapter to a bookstore, giving me interesting places to go in my travels!

Rating: 9/10