Double Indemnity, by James M. Cain

Another Cain! I really like this guy's work.

This book is more like The Postman Always Rings Twice than Mildred Pierce, because there's more murder plotting, but it of course still has that don't-trust-charismatic-people aspect to it. So good.

And the murder plotting here is EXCELLENT, because the murderer fellow, who is again offing a lust-object's husband, is an insurance agent and he knows what has to be done to make a murder play out like an accident. So there is lots of planning and trickery and secrets.

But of course there are more secrets than just this planned murder, as our murderer discovers AFTER he's done all this work, and those combined with the fact that he works with at least one good insurance agent who has totally figured out that there was a murder but can't quite prove it make this novel wonderfully suspenseful.

The ending is great as well; it combines a few excellent surprising endings that I've read before and makes them more interesting. It's just a good time all around!

Also, just a few pages into this book I realized that I had watched the movie version in my freshman English class, though I didn't remember it terribly well because I'm pretty sure the noir voice-over aspect put me to sleep. Definitely a more gripping book.

Recommendation: Good for those who like suspense and slowly unveiled evil characters, and also those who would like tips on planning a perfect murder.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James M. Cain

I read Mildred Pierce for my book club a little while ago and loved it, so the fact that I had a couple other Cain works sitting in anthology form turned out to be an excellent thing.

Of course, The Postman Always Rings Twice isn't really anything like Mildred Pierce. In Mildred, Cain writes a moderately creepy story about the power of especially charismatic people, while in Postman... no, wait, it's still about the power of especially charismatic people. But here there be MURDERERS. That's the difference. Not such a big one, really.

Postman is about a drifter fellow who very quickly falls in love (well, lust) with a married woman and just as quickly they are planning her husband's death. They try once and fail, then try again and succeed, but of course murdering someone isn't really something you can get away with so easily, especially when an insurance company is involved.

The trial bit is what I think I liked the best... my husband's in law school so he's always coming home with very strange hypothetical and real cases, but this one takes the cake, especially in the way the lawyer uses all sorts of lawyer-y tricks that baffle and confuse and amaze me in the end.

I also liked that the narrator turns out to be possibly unreliable (not even definitely unreliable, how cool is that), and also the way the whole ending plays out, from the betrayals to the justice.

But it is a short book (~100 pages), so really you should just go read it.

Recommendation: Not for people who love their characters, but definitely for people who love their plots. Also for budding lawyers who want some true genius to aspire to, but not for those who want to have, like, integrity.

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

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, by David Sedaris

I got to this book in a somewhat roundabout way... my Mary recommended it to me as a Read-a-thon possibility, but then my library didn't have it and I had a whole host of other books to read anyway and I figured I'd get to this one eventually. Then I went up to Pittsburgh for a weekend to visit Scott's family and one of the first things I hear from Sister-in-law the Elder is, "Do you like David Sedaris? Have you read his new book? No? I will lend it to you!" Amazing how these things work.

I busted it out on the plane ride back to Jacksonville, which was both awesome and terrible because dude, the pictures in this book are not all safe for work. I was moderately concerned that my seat neighbor would turn out to be some sort of PETA member who would throw red paint on me after seeing a picture of a dying lab rat or a lamb with its eyes plucked out.

Ugh, right? The stories in this book are, I think, meant to be like human mythologies as told by animals. Some of the stories are a little banal, like the title story which tells of a budding relationship between a squirrel and a chipmunk that goes poorly when jazz is mentioned. Some are tales of really stupid animals, like "The Mouse and the Snake," in which a mouse thinks that a snake will make a very good companion for her, or "The Toad, the Turtle, and the Duck," in which being incredibly mean to someone is fun until racism gets involved. And some, including "The Sick Rat and the Healthy Rat" and "The Crow and the Lamb" are kind of disgusting.

It's a short collection, just about 150 pages of large-type stories and cool illustrations, and while I'm not over the moon about all of the stories I think that they work well taken together, and of course you don't spend too much time on the ones that flop. And it's probably perfect for that plane ride where you really don't want to talk to your neighbors.

Recommendation: Good for the not-squeamish and those who have some schadenfreude. Also good for those who like Sedaris.

Rating: 8/10

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

The Dead-Tossed Waves, by Carrie Ryan

So I kinda sorta rather enjoyed The Forest of Hands and Teeth, to which this book is a companion (not so much sequel). Forest was full of interesting zombies and deep dark secrets and a trial of faith and although I didn't think it a particularly good book, I thought it was very entertaining.

This book... less so. At first I was all excited because the main character here is Gabrielle, not Mary of the first book, and in the first book Gabrielle is the zombie chick that caused a lot of problems. I thought perhaps this was going to be a sort of companion book that talked about Gabrielle's life and how she ended up in Mary's town. Then, crushing disappointment when I found out that the Gabrielle in this book is actually Mary's daughter.

So we have fast-forwarded many years to the future. And nothing much has changed. Mary has settled in by that ocean she had longed for, where Gabrielle — Gabry — has learned all about the Mudo (previously the Unconsecrated) and how lame they are and how they want to nom people. Nonetheless, she sneaks out with a bunch of people to go play in Mudo territory and of course the Mudo attack and Gabry's boy-thing is bited and she runs away and her friends get caught and sentenced to a Really Bad Rest of Their Lives and then Gabry's bff blackmails her into going out to rescue said bff's brother slash Gabry's boy-thing. But of course, this is not very easy, especially when Gabry starts falling in love with another boy.

And that is where I got distinctly displeased with this book. It was like the Hunger Games books all over again, with the indecision and the boys mooning and FOR SERIOUSLY it needs to stop. Bring me more zombies!

But the zombies are mostly lacking in this book, at least until the end when there are a disgustingly large amount of them, and the love story was certainly not as compelling as the deep dark secrets of the first book. Like the Hunger Games before it, I am sure I will read the third novel in this series in the hopes that it will be as awesome as the first book. I hope I'm not disappointed again!

Recommendation: Not for the zombie lover, or those with an allergy to dramaful love stories. At this point, I would definitely stop after The Forest of Hands and Teeth.

Rating: 6/10
(RIP Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Chrisbookarama
Shhh I'm Reading...
Book Addiction
Persnickety Snark
Devourer of Books

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Musing Mondays — How Many?

Today's Musing Mondays question is... "About how many books (roughly) would you say you own? (If you don’t have a clue how many, do you care to know? Why, or why not?)"

Well, my GoodReads "owned" tag tells me that I have 72 books, which seems a little low... a quick count of my shelves puts it at more like 95, on account of I don't track my reference books on GoodReads just yet. Perhaps I should?

But really, I don't care too much about how many books I own, just which ones I do, so I don't go buying duplicates at book sales and so that I remember what I've lent out. And actually, I'm surprised to know I own so many books! I guess that explains the new bookshelf we just bought...

Word Freak, by Stefan Fatsis

I picked this book up a while back, started reading it, and then forgot about it in favor of made-up stories. Word Freak wasn't boring, exactly, but it wasn't as exciting as other books that I had piled up, and so off to the side it went. And then I discovered it was due back to the library, with no chance to renew it, and the book proved its interestingness by popping right back into my hands rather than going back to the library unread.

I picked this book up because it promised, right on the cover, to be about "Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive SCRABBLE Players," and I am nothing if not a giant nerd for all things words. I don't play Scrabble very often, but I used to play the Yahoo! Games version constantly in high school and I've always been a pretty okay player against my friends, largely because I know a lot of words.

But dudes. I would have no chance against any of the players in this book, even the author. I sort of knew that there was a competitive Scrabble community, but I did not realize the extent of the memorizing and calculating and sheer mental strength having that members of said community possess. Playing upwards of 10 games in a tournament on a fairly regular basis? I would be bored after, like, three. All of which I would have lost due to not knowing really really really obscure words and anagrams and how to manage a rack or the board or my brain.

Fatsis plopped himself into this world ten-ish years ago, first to write this book and then because he was obsessed. So about half the book is Fatsis talking about other players and their strange, Scrabble-obsessed lives and the other half is him talking about omg why is his rating so baaaaaad? Which it's not, of course, but people who are really good at things are also really good at thinking they're bad at things.

I think the best parts of this book were the games themselves; I enjoyed seeing strange words score lots of points and especially to see an interesting board layout. But I also thought it was interesting to see what sorts of people are the high-rated experts in competitive Scrabble... Fatsis focuses on some of the craziest people, though he insists that there are sane people who are good at Scrabble. These crazy people tend to have no jobs or lives outside of the game, and yet somehow their weird quirks and whatnot start to seem normal as the book goes on.

And now I'm itching to break out my Travel Scrabble set, except that those tiles are so hard to pop into the little holders! I should really get a real board.

Recommendation: Read this if you like to read interesting stories about oddly interesting people, or if you think you're good at Scrabble, because you're probably not.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Booking Through Thursday — Foreigners

Todays Booking Through Thursday question is... "Name a book (or books) from a country other than your own that you love. Or aren’t there any?"

Oh, there definitely are.

The Shadow of the Wind (from Spain) is a book I read what feels like forever ago, but that I'm still pretty in love with. I need to find the Cemetery of Forgotten Books someday.

Its prequel, The Angel's Game, is also good, if more confusing than its predecessor.

Who Slashed Celanire's Throat is an intriguing book, one of those where there's not much plot but there are plenty of interesting characters.

And of course no list of anything is complete without my beloved Thursday Next series, out of Wales, which is a completely oddball series about a literary detective in an alternate-universe England where time travel is real, people have cloned dodos for pets, and books are not just for reading.

Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh

When I was in elementary school, I had a Spy Club. My two best friends (at the time) and I would go out into the neighborhood and write down what was going on, no matter how boring it was, and then we would meet in my room to discuss. I don't know for certain, but I can only imagine that this was brought about by me reading Harriet the Spy.

As such, I have very fond memories of this book, in which one Harriet M. Welsch spies on people for fun, writing down everything she thinks about them from the mundane to the mean. Then, as these things go, Harriet's notebook gets picked up by her schoolmates, who find out just what Harriet thinks about them (focusing on the mean things, of course) and completely shun her. Then, in my memory, Harriet does something nice and everyone is friends again.

Spoiler: that is totally not the case! Oh my goodness. I had completely blocked from my mind how terrible of a person Harriet is. When her notebook is revealed to everyone, her first stop is the stationery store (this is an old book) to get a new notebook for writing down even more vicious things than before. And what brings her back to her friends is lying. Lying! She gets told by her former nanny that little white lies are very important for getting along in society, and so she just tells everyone j/k, lol, she was totally lying about all of those things she said. And apparently the other students believe her, even though they've been reading Harriet's mean screeds about other people in the school newspaper. Mmmmmmmmhmm.

So now, on the one hand, I feel very differently about Harriet. I'm even a little scandalized. But on the other hand, I have different fingers, and also I love this book a little more because it is so honest about how life tends to be. Granted, I'm not sure that Harriet would ever actually be accepted back into her old circles, but I can certainly believe that her friends would at least try to forgive her. I definitely see the Harriet of seven days after this book ends already getting in trouble again.

Recommendation: Perhaps this should be read by older kids, or at least ones mature enough not to take the ending as a license to lie all willy-nilly. Also good for adults who have a disposition toward schadenfreude.

Rating: 9/10
(Flashback Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut
Bermudaonion's Weblog

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Matilda, by Roald Dahl

Oh, Matilda. This was my first-ever Dahl book, and in fact the only one I'd read until reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this January. Good thing I bought that boxed set, so I can catch up!

Anyway, I read this in fifth grade as part of the not-yet-awesome Project Plus gifted program in my elementary school, and it was pretty much the greatest thing we did all year, or at least the most memorable. What smart 11-year-old doesn't wish for super powers beyond just being good at math and reading? Not me, that's for sure. I tried for weeks to move pencils and whatnot off of desks before realizing that my life wasn't quite crappy enough for making magic happen.

If you haven't read Matilda, I highly recommend it — it's the story of an incredibly precocious girl whose parents couldn't care less about her, who ends up at a school with a terrible headmistress but a wonderful teacher who helps Matilda realize her potential, both in school and in a bit of magic.

Of course, if you have kids of your own you might want to keep this out of their hands for a while, because Matilda isn't a little angel... she is very good at exacting revenge on those who make life difficult for her. At the very least, make sure that your peroxide and superglue are well hidden for several months after any nearby children read this book!

Recommendation: Excellent for precocious children, or former precocious children, or people who like to read about precocious children. Now precocious doesn't look like a word anymore.

Rating: 10/10
(Flashback Challenge)

See also:
Book Nut

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles, by Kira Henehan

This list of Novels I Don't Understand, Not One Bit is getting longer by the week! I picked this one up primarily because of the title, but also because the jacket copy made it sound like it could be a long-lost cousin of the Thursday Next series, which I adore.

However, Finley (the heroine of this story) has nothing on Thursday. Nothing at all. Unless she does, which I wouldn't know because I know next to nothing about Finley! She's a detective, of some sort, and she may or may not be Russian, and she may or may not be an amnesiac, and she definitely does not like puppets except for tiny ones, and... that's it, I think. That's what I've got.

And I might have given up on this book, except that unlike The Quickening Maze, there seemed to be at least some sort of discernable plot line — specifically that Finley was meant to be investigating a guy who makes puppets. I don't know why, even now, but it seemed like I might find out. But I didn't. I got to the end and there was a "reveal" that revealed NOTHING and I really have no idea what happened in this book. Like, at all. It is possible that I went temporarily insane during the read-a-thon and forgot how to read and that's why I don't understand this book... but it's probably actually the book's fault. Can someone come explain this to me? Please?

Recommendation: Read this book if you've ever thought to yourself, "I like Samuel Beckett, but there's just too much meaning in his works. I want something more abstract."

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Death Note Vol. 5, by Tsugumi Ohba

Another one of these Death Note books... in this one things get rather more wonky than they have been previously, which is to say VERY WONKY.

Light gives up his Death Note (that thing that lets him kill criminals), and with it his memories of using said Note, which leaves him wondering if he could ever have been Kira — could he kill people in the name of justice? He thinks probably not. Mmhmm.

And he does it in a pretty strange fashion... he lets L (the guy trying to find Kira) see him locked up, with no one dying, then after he doesn't remember anything anymore a third Kira starts killing people, so now L thinks maybe the power just gets passed around? And maybe Light was Kira but now he's not? Which seems like not the right way to go about it, but okay. Also, L is a jerk and spends too much time testing people and eating cake and not enough actually solving crimes, so far as I can tell. What will the next book bring?

Recommendation: Um, well, you'll want to start at the beginning. But I would definitely recommend this series to anyone who is intrigued by ethical dilemmas and doesn't mind being very confused very often.

Rating: 7/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby is one of those authors whose work I see everywhere but never get around to reading. But rather than letting him languish in a TBR pile somewhere, as I end up doing to most such authors, I decided to actually possibly read one of his books. I recruited my Mary friend to tell me all about his books and which one(s) I should read (verdict: all of them) and ended up starting at the beginning with this, his first novel.

And I didn't really know what to expect... I knew only that Hornby had sort of a thing for music, and that Mary really liked him. But when I opened the book to find a list staring at me? I love lists. Lists and I are very good friends. Rob and I could probably not be friends because of our differing tastes in music, but if we could be, I would like to be friends with Rob. And his lists.

Of course, there's more to the story — that first list is about Rob's top five most memorable split-ups, and he's writing it as part of a letter of sorts to the woman who's just broken up with him after several(?) years of dating. And he's generally mopey about the split, and trying to figure out how to move on, and the reader soon finds out that Rob's not exactly a completely innocent party in this whole thing, and also he's stuck in a career rut after the fallout from one of those top five relationships, and it's sort of a mid-life coming of age novel.

I liked it for the most part; the ending gets a little sappy and less than realistic but mostly manages to save itself from becoming, what, syrup? And I definitely cringed a bit when [spoiler alert, if you can have one 15 years after the fact?] Rob and Laura decide to stay together out of what seems to be sheer laziness, but it's definitely an in-character decision so I suppose I must respect it, even if I don't like it.

Recommendation: I would recommend this to pretty much anyone; I don't think it really occupies any sort of reading niche. I imagine you might enjoy it or understand it better if you knew anything about the music and movies and whatnot that Rob likes, but it's clearly not required.

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

See also:
books i done read

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, by Louise Rennison

This is a book that I remember my Laura reading, oh, ages ago, and which I wasn't interested in at the time for whatever reason. But then more recently I kept seeing the book in strange places, popping up seemingly everywhere, and I was like, hmm. Maybe I'll read that sometime. And then I was at the Jacksonville Public Library giant booksale of giantness and there was the book, waiting for me, priced at an alluring 50 cents, and I knew it was fate.

This was my first book for the read-a-thon, and I absolutely loved it. Georgia Nicolson is not someone I would be friends with, because I would be sick of her in a day, but I can definitely spend a couple of hours reading her wonderfully ridiculous diary. Which often has entries just minutes apart.

And it's even pretty much a love story, what with it being centered almost entirely around Georgia's attempts to woo a "Sex God" at the grand old age of fourteen, even though she has to take some kissing lessons first. No, really. And that's what makes this love story business not terrible — it's so over the top with the kissing lessons and the coincidences and the wacky adventures that mostly I just care to know how Georgia's going to react to what happens, not necessarily the what that happens.

Also, it's British, to the point of having a glossary in the back, and now I am going to try to include the phrase "nuddy pants" in my everyday conversation. Though I am going to have to have some funny conversations for that to come up.

Recommendation: Perfect for that time when you just need some brain candy in the form of rapid-fire amusing phrases. Also probably more amusing to people looking back on the "wonderful" age of fourteen, as we know how much everything that happened then doesn't really matter now!

Rating: 9/10

See also:
Book Nut

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Read-a-thon: Hour Tomorrow

Oh, hi, read-a-thon. -yawns- Apparently I am constitutionally incapable of staying awake longer than 23 hours, 45 minutes, because I was chugging along just fine on The Dead-Tossed Waves at 5:30-ish, but was waking up groggily at 6-ish. No warning! And so I moved on to bed, from which I woke up at 9:30. For funsies, apparently.

But! I had a good time reading for the 21-or-so hours that I did, and I finished six books, which is a little crazy, and today I think I will avoid reading and go outside.

Read-a-thon: Beginning of Hour 21

I have now been up for 22 hours. I am 1 hour and 45 minutes away from tying my being-awake record, and four hours from the end of the read-a-thon. Who will win?

Since my last update, I have finished Matilda, which is just as delightful as I remember, and also Harriet the Spy, which is not quite the same book that I remember propelling me into a young spying career. I will have to reconcile this strange jerk Harriet with my warm fuzzy memories.

No mini-challenges this time, as I am again lazy. Instead I shall make some food and then, I think, throw myself into The Dead-Tossed Waves. Wish me love!

Read-a-thon: Middle of Hour 16

Getting a little sleepy over here... I've finished with Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles, which book I think took my marbles a little bit as I am very baffled by it. But I did not find it altogether unamusing. And now I'm starting to talk like the book. We must move on, to delightful fare like Matilda and Harriet the Spy.

The Hour 15 mini-challenge at Reading Through Life is to create a Wordle picture of my blog... it's a little odd because it seems to only take the last few posts from the RSS feed, so some strange words are highlighted (like my feed footer!), but throwing in only one post was boring and I'm not keen on grabbing more than that manually. Because I'm lazy. So behold, my lazy Wordle!



Well, apparently you have to be not lazy and click on it. But I won't make you. :)

Read-a-thon: Middle of Hour 13

Halfway through! I've finished up Death Note and have moved on to the oddly titled and equally oddly written Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles, which is just this side of the Too Weird For Me line, so we'll see how it goes.

Mid-challenge meme from the official site:

1. What are you reading right now? Ah, Orion, etc. as mentioned above.
2. How many books have you read so far? Three!
3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? I'm really hoping to get to The Dead-Tossed Waves, which I think will keep me up reading into the wee morning hours!
4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? Sadly, no, as I currently have no job or friends outside of my dear husband (who is spending his whole day playing computer games!).
5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? Nope! Unless you count hunger as an interruption, in which case I dealt with it by eating nommy foods.
6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? I thought I would be tired of reading by now; last year I had a five-ish hour break in the middle of my day rather than reading straight through. But I am happy and will continue reading!
7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? None that I can think of right now!
8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? I would have more snacks on hand. :)
9. Are you getting tired yet? A bit, but the aforementioned hubby just ran out and procured me a TON of caffeine.
10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? Make sure you get a change of scenery! Staying in one place all day will give you bedsores. :-/

And for Hour 13, there is a word scramble at Sheery's Place! Here are the unscrambled titles, some of which I am reminded I should put on my TBR pile!

1. Firefly Lane
2. East of Eden
3. Water for Elephants
4. To Kill a Mockingbird
5. The Great Gatsby
6. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
7. The Art of Racing in the Rain
8. The Time Traveler's Wife
9. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
10. Diary of a Wimpy Kid
11. A Wrinkle in Time
12. The Polar Express
13. Love Walked In
14. Where the Wild Things Are
15. The Shining
16. Goodnight Moon
17. Interview with a Vampire [sic]
18. The Secret Life of Bees
19. The Search
20. The Help

Whee! I feel like my brain is all fired up and ready to go back to reading now!

Read-a-thon: Beginning of Hour 9

Finished High Fidelity! Pretty darn good. Also ate some reheated mashed potatoes that I made last night. Pretty darn good. On to something lighter... a little Death Note, perhaps?

The mini-challenge for Hour 8 is at Blkosiner's Book Blog and it is to make a top five list (how appropriate after HF!) of characters that I love to hate. Hmmm...

I'd say that the characters that I most love to hate are the ones that I can use to bother Scott by mimicking. So then, we must have...

1. Dolores Umbridge, from the Harry Potter series. "Hem hem!"
2. Carmelita Spats, from A Series of Unfortunate Events. "Cake-sniffing orphans in the Orphan Shack!"

But then there are also the characters that are just so terrible you have to have a certain respect for them...

3. The murderer from In the Woods
4. Annie Wilkes from Misery
5. President Snow from the Hunger Games series

Oooh, I am frustrated just thinking of them! Well-done characters, all.

Read-a-thon: Middle of Hour 7

Whee! I can't believe six hours have gone so fast! I'm about two-thirds of the way through High Fidelity, and really, Mary, you should just make up a list of books I need to read and I will go read them. Even the ones full of death.

The Hour 7 mini-challenge at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader is to talk about armchair travelling, which is a fun way to spend your days while saving up for real travel. :)

Pretty much every book I read makes me want to go to the place where it's set, whether it's to Paris or Dublin or Montréal or Iowa. I always feel as though being able to see what the author saw when writing a wonderful story would just make that story even more wonderful. I know for sure that I felt like I understood things just a little bit better when Mary Doria Russell mentioned John Carroll University in The Sparrow because I had been there and knew people that graduated from there and lived not very far from there for several years.

And even if I didn't develop some greater understanding of a book, at least I'd be in a new and different place, right?

Now, back to London!

Read-a-thon: Middle of Hour 3

Whee! Just finished Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, and enjoyed it immensely. Good job, Alison!

Up next is High Fidelity, because if there's anything I've learned about books recommended by Mary, it's that I will put off reading them as long as possible. Commence habit-changing!

Mini-challenge for Hour 2, from Miss Wisabus...

"What were some of your favorite children’s books when you were younger? Do you have any new favorites now that you’re an adult? Have you included any children’s or YA titles in your Read-A-Thon stack this year? Leave a comment and share!"

The Phantom Tollbooth. Favorite book of ever. I also loved The Secret Garden when I was little, to the point where I owned three copies for some reason, but I couldn't tell you what that book is about today except that I think there was something about "Mary, Mary, quite contrary." I could be very wrong. And, of course, I was obsessed with the Babysitter's Club books, like any self-respecting child of the '80s.

Today's read-a-thon stack has two kids' books in it — Matilda, by Roald Dahl, and Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, both of which I've read and loved and need to read again. In YA, I have The Dead-Tossed Waves, by Carrie Ryan; Death Note Vol. 5, by Tsugumi Ohba; and of course Angus.

Hour 3's challenge is to come up with six words to describe the read-a-thon, but I've not come up with anything great yet. Perhaps in another hour or so?

Read-a-thon: End of Hour 1

An hour into the read-a-thon, and 92 pages into the hilariously wonderful Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging. How have I not read this before?

Now that there is sun, let me share with you my reading spot:



And my delightful parking lot view:



And my ridiculous cat:



I've already warned him that if he falls off the balcony again (yes, again), I'm just going to laugh at him. I hope that's enough deterrent. :)

And here is the Hour 1 meme from the official read-a-thon website:

Where are you reading from today? Jacksonville, FL, in general; my balcony in specific.

3 facts about me... Hmm. 1) I am a newly-minted Master of Library Science, though without a job. I am also 2) a newly-minted Floridian, having moved about two months ago from Cleveland, OH. The combination of the latter part of 1) and the whole of 2) leads to 3) that I blog about my new home at An Unlikely Southerner, where you can find many more facts about me, like that I am now terrified of bugs.

How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? -counts- Nine. You can see them here.

Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? Just to have fun and read!

If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? Have fun! Make new friends! Get your old friends to make you a sammich!

Read-a-thon: Hour 0

It is bright and early here in Florida (7am EDT), but also quite warm, considering (~15 degrees C, depending on which weather people you ask), and so I will be spending most of my reading time outdoors! Good work, Florida! I would take some pictures of my reading spot, but, um, sunrise isn't for another half hour. So you will have to wait. :)

But here is my stack of books, whose picture I took last night:

Stylish, no? George is even prepared to shade them from the Florida sun!

I'm starting with the delightfully titled Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging, because a) title! and b) I've heard good things about it from many trusted sources and c) it's short and I'll feel accomplished when I finish it. Who knows where I will move on from there...

Like I said last year, I've never actually stayed awake for 24 hours, and I doubt I'll be making it happen today. But I will do my best! I'll check in here at the blog every couple of hours, and you can expect many Twitter updates from my fancy smart phone, most of which will probably be fun quotes from whatever I'm reading.

The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds

-makes face- -makes another face- -twitches-

I think we're going to have to file this one under Novels I Don't Understand, Not One Bit. My impetus for starting this book was the A to Z Challenge, but then the prologue was just so darn good and I thought, hey, this could be awesome. And then it was confusing and odd and more confusing, but those first three pages! Good! And so I continued on, hoping that maybe the book would start to make any sort of sense and it didn't and it was never as good as the beginning. -pout-

I can't even give you a summary of what this book is meant to be about. There's this guy, right, and he has an asylum, and people... live there? And they go about their lives? And they tend to be crazy? And then this guy what runs the asylum, he has a Plan for going into business, and he gets people to invest, and then it fails. I think. It's going to fail, anyway.

And one of the investors is Alfred Tennyson, whose brother is a patient at the asylum, and another patient is John Clare, who I didn't know was a poet but apparently he was pretty okay, so maybe this book is about poetry, right? And then that makes a lot of sense, because I don't understand poetry, either, usually. There are a couple of poems in the novel. Maybe that's something.

What really bothers me is that part of the Thing of this novel is that it's based on actual things that happened to Tennyson and Clare, but... you know... I feel like there are other, more interesting, things that one could write about the lives of poets. Is that it? Is this book about how even poets live crappy lives and get swindled? But I already knew that. Maybe the whole book is just an asylum fever-dream. I could get behind that.

I will offer again that the first three pages are beautifully written, and in fact much of the novel is made up of pretty words that make pretty sentences and paragraphs and whatnot. But I can't survive on pretty alone.

Recommendation: I recommend this novel only for perhaps historians who are very well versed in the histories of Tennyson and Clare, or maybe also for people who have been told the secret of what this book is about. If you're one of those people, could you share?

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Booking Through Thursday — Travelling

Today's Booking Through Thursday question is, "When you travel, how many books do you bring with you? Has this changed since the arrival of ebooks?"

Well, I don't have an e-reader, and probably won't until they work out the whole DRM issue, so that's not a consideration.

But the number of books I take does depend on where I'm going and what I'm doing and how long I'll be there and how I'm getting there. If I'm headed out for a vacation, where I don't have to do anything in particular while I'm there, I'll bring one book for every day I'm going. Usually that ends up being just enough; sometimes I have to scrounge for more to read!

If I'm headed somewhere where I plan on being busy, and I'm flying there, I'll just bring a couple of books for the flights and hope for the best.

And if I'm driving, I've learned that I can't really get any book reading done because either I'm driving or Scott is driving and I'm talking to him, so I'll stock up on audiobooks. We've been working our way through the Series of Unfortunate Events books, which are good because they're short and easy to take a break from when it's time for a pit stop. :)

Mildred Pierce, by James M. Cain

I am pretty sure that the moral of this story is that I should never ever ever have children. Because clearly they will either be delightful children, in which case they will die awful and expensive deaths, or they will be evil incarnate and ruin my life all while making me think that I'm ruining theirs. I can't have either of these. I renew my No Babies pledge!

Really, though, that's pretty much how this book goes. Mildred has a deadbeat, cheating husband, who once had money but then the Great Depression happened and he's too proud to go out and find some more, and she (fairly rightfully) kicks him out to go live with his sugar momma, only to realize that now she's going to have to go get a job, which she does as secretly as possible because she is just as proud as that husband of hers. But she does find a job, and things start going pretty well for her, until they start going badly. And then Mildred fixes that, and things go well again. Until they go badly. And then things get fixed again. Then broken again. It is a terrible cycle, one that I am not unfamiliar with in my own life (can I have a job yet, economy?).

Mildred's problem, really, is that she puts too much faith in people who are out to screw her (figuratively and other figuratively), and takes for granted the people who are wonderful to her. And what's worse is that she mostly knows it, but lets herself get dragged into it anyway. But she is amazingly resilient, and while I would not like to have her odd thoughts running around in my head, I would be delighted to have her ability to overcome adversity.

And the last few sentences of this novel just sum up all of my feelings about it, so perfectly.

I may have wanted to punch every character (except maybe two or three) in this book right in the face at some point in time, but isn't that how life is? I think that Cain has really hit on a perfect description of a person with a pretty good life in a pretty terrible time, and all of the characters ring true, whether we'd like to know them or not. I have nothing but praise for Cain's writing, and I'm really glad that I got this novel as part of an anthology of his work so I can delve into some more of it soon.

Blast, this means that the rest of my book club is going to hate this book. I'd better start preparing a defense now!

Recommendation: Read this if you can deal with some incredibly frustrating characters and don't mind a story that doesn't really have a plot.

Rating: 9/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

Pass me yours, if you've got 'em.

Musing Mondays — Cold Weather Reads

Today's Musing Mondays question is, "What’s your favorite “cozy” book — and, by that, I’m meaning “curl-up-on-a-cold-day comfort read“? Or, if you don’t have a particular book, what genre do you most feel like reading when the weather starts to turn colder?"

I'm not sure I have any temperature-based reading habits... I mean, I definitely read more mysteries and such during September and October for the RIP Challenge, but that's not a personal temperature decision (and especially not with living in Florida now!)

But! I will say that if it's the kind of day where all I want to do is curl up with a good book and perhaps some hot chocolate, that book is probably going to be an easier read. I'm not generally one for reading long or difficult books in one sitting — I'd rather have time to digest everything — but I also don't want to curl up with too short a book and have to get up an hour later to find something else to read. So I would definitely pick something more like a classic mystery or YA or fantasy read, where I can float away to Bookland for a few hours without having to think about it too hard. :)