The Vile Village, by Lemony Snicket

Hey, look, another road trip happened! You'll be seeing this and two more Series of Unfortunate Events posts over the next several days. These books are just so perfect for driving — they're simple, they're engaging but not so much that you cause an accident, and they are easy to pick up again after you've taken a pee break. They should clearly list these qualities on the CD case.

Okay, so, we pick up on the V.F.D. thing in this book with a trip to a town called V.F.D., where the citizens have decided to take part in an orphan-raising program based on the idea that it takes a village to raise a child. Yes, you can groan.

The Baudelaires find a friend in the town handyman, who helps them attempt to decipher notes that are clearly coming from the Quagmire triplets but who is too "skittish" to do any good defending of the orphans when Count Olaf comes waltzing into town accusing the orphans of murder. Oh, snap.

In the last book, the series got an overarching storyline (finding V.F.D), but this book radically changes the way that the Baudelaires will follow that storyline, as they go from "orphans being shipped around the greater Earth area to increasingly inappropriate guardians" to "orphans running around the greater Earth area trying to find V.F.D. and also avoid the people who think they're murderers." I don't really remember the rest of this series very well, so I don't know if this is a good shift or not, but it definitely makes the series a bit easier to bear over the next couple of books, as you'll soon see.

Recommendation: I really like this series, even if it's not exactly "good." You should read this if you like sarcastic humor, and you should listen to this if you like Tim Curry.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
[your link here]

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

The Night Bookmobile, by Audrey Niffenegger

Oh, Audrey. I know we've had our differences before, but I was hoping that maybe if you wrote another book with a librarian in it, we'd be good as new. Sadly, I am still ambivalent.

This is a super-duper short story, told in a graphic format, and there's not much I can say without giving the whole thing away. Baaaasically, there's a thing called a Night Bookmobile, which is a sort of mobile library that comes when you need it. Or something. And it holds all of the things you've ever read in your life. And the main character, Alexandra, finds her bookmobile and becomes a little obsessed with it, as I imagine one might.

And so that's an interesting premise, but then the story goes a little crazy at the end, there, and a whole host of issues crop up that would be interesting to address but that do not get addressed. Niffenegger writes in the "After Words" that this is the first installment of a larger work, so I hope that perhaps I will get to see that larger work and that it will tell me what the heck is going on.

Recommendation: Eh, it's a quick read and it's certainly ripe for discussion... probably an interesting pick for a voracious reader.

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.

Mr. Peanut, by Adam Ross

This is a strange, strange book. I'm not sure what I think about it. I liked the concepts that Ross was working with, of Escher and tessellations and Hitchcock and disorientation; I liked the way he built up a million questions and seeming incongruities and then made them all work out, in one form or another, at the end; I liked that he gave me a nudge in the right direction when things got all literary and subtextual. I didn't like the characters, who were by design all very similar and possibly by design all really annoying; I didn't like the interlude with Sam Sheppard that didn't really go anywhere, by which I mean it didn't seem to move the story along and also it didn't seem to fit in with the story, at the end; I didn't like that Ross's nudges sometimes turned into pushes or slaps.

If you had asked me yesterday, when I was about halfway through, what this book was about, I would have told you pretty much what you'll see on the jacket flap: some guy called David Pepin is said, on the very first page, to be a continual day-dreamer of ways that his wife might die. He's a little morbid, that one. And then poof! A few pages later, his wife is dead, and the manner in which she died is either a suicide or a murder and it's pretty much impossible to figure it out. But a couple of detectives, including Cleveland's own Sam Sheppard, are working on it. Slowly. While dealing with bad relationships of their own.

But today... it's odd, because on the one hand I don't want to say too much for fear of ruining the intense maze that is this novel, but on the other hand I'm pretty sure that no matter how much of the plot or conceit I gave away there would still be something in this book that would surprise you. Because there is a LOT of stuff in here.

So I think I will talk about my favorite and least favorite parts: the Escher and the characters, respectively. Bad things first!

The characters are whiny as all hell. In an interview, Adam Ross said that he didn't consider his characters' marriages dysfunctional, because what's functional and also don't all marriages have their ups and downs? I can agree with him on that, and I didn't mind too much that his married characters were sometimes in love and sometimes not — I've certainly seen that enough in my lifetime.

BUT. I have never heard of anyone staying bed for five months to prove a point, what point I'm still not sure. And I swear, if the dead wife in this story were mine, I would be seriously contemplating her death as well. I cannot deal with people who don't use their words, and I especially cannot deal with people who use their words to say, "If you don't know what's wrong, I'm not going to tell you." Ri-freaking-diculous. And all of the female characters, and to a lesser extent the male characters, do this throughout the novel. Scott heard me loudly complain more than once about it.

Okay, good things. I wrote on the Twitter that the title page of this book is decorated with Escher, who is one of my favorite artists ever. This predisposed me to like the novel, and it also helped me get through a lot of the novel. See, it's broken up into bits and pieces, with some dude-wanting-his-wife-dead over here and some detectives-investigating-the-mystery there and some oh-hey-I-should-probably-explain-who-Sam-Sheppard-is-because-it-turns-out-he's-just-like-that-guy-that-wanted-his-wife-dead right in the middle. And then these pieces, they're sort of thrown up in the air and land wherever they want and there aren't any chapters and you just sort of have to hope that when you get to a new paragraph you'll be able to figure out what's going on. And that is SO Escher.

Oh, and one of those smacks to the face that Ross doles out is all but breaking the fourth wall to tell you that you should read this book to figure out the plot, then read it again to take notes on it, and then discuss it with people. And so I will do this! Thanks goodness for a book group.

Recommendation: Read this if you like or are at least intrigued by movies like Memento or Primer. Also very good for Hitchcock fans, I think.

Rating: 8/10 -- Most of this rating comes from the novel's structure. If it were just the murder-mystery plot or those darned characters it would be much lower.
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Devourer of Books

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

One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich

The other day at the library, I asked a woman if I could help her find anything. She was standing in front of the "new mysteries" section, and she said that she'd read all of these already and asked if I could help her find a good action or adventure mystery. I was like... um...

Because I haven't read an adventure-y mystery in a really long time! Most of my fare is either classics or literary-style mysteries, neither of which would probably have appeased this woman. And in fact, I realized that of all the mystery authors who get multiple shelves with multiple copies of each book? I've read exactly zero. I decided I ought to rectify this, so I grabbed a copy of One for the Money and went to town.

Well. I suddenly remember why I like the classics and the literaries. Stephanie Plum is not a detective; she's an unemployed lingerie-buyer who conveniently has a bail bondsman cousin who, with a little blackmailing, is willing to let her "shag" (you would not believe how happy I was to discover the 1994 definition of that word!) a bail jumper for a cool ten grand. And this jumper is none other than some guy who diddled her in kindergarten and then again in high school. And he's a cop. Who killed someone. And Plum is totes going to get him. Somehow.

I will grant that it was interesting watching Plum be a complete idiot (V.I. Warshawski she is NOT) about... everything related to nabbing a bail jumper, and also to watch the strange cat and mouse game that she and the guy were playing. But the whole story just required this drastic suspension of disbelief that I just could not manage. Many things were incredibly convenient, many people were conveniently very stupid and/or bad at their jobs, and Plum seemed pretty much devoid of common sense and yet still managed to get her man.

It makes the brain hurt.

Please, suggest to me another popular mystery author, and perhaps a title of his/hers that won't make me want to cry over the inanity?

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.

Y: The Last Man Book 4, by Brian K. Vaughan

I ended up reading this one pretty quickly after the last because I seem to have gotten Scott interested in the series and thus I didn't want him stealing this before I got a chance at it. Because I'm territorial like that. But now I think Scott's going to end up reading them first...

Okay, so, book the first was all exposition-heavy and kind of annoying, but then book the second was a lot better with the action and the plot moving forward, and then book the third was pretty equally okay. But then I got completely squicked out and a little derailed by this book, and I can only hope the squicky stuff NEVER COMES BACK AGAIN.

I'm sure it was at least a little on purpose, but these weird scenes in which repressed sexuality is made unrepressed and some odd form of torture happens really made me cringe. It was just so... weird and awkward and so seemingly completely irrelevant to the story (which is actually how I feel about the Israelis in this series, too, now that I think about it) that I just wanted that half of the book (yes, half) to be over now!

Luckily, once it's done you can see that there was, in fact, a point to all the awkward and it actually makes me feel a little less annoyed with Yorick because he becomes a slightly less annoying person. So that's a plus. And the second half of the book is fairly interesting, with yet another set of crazy people and an equally crazy throwdown between them and our heroes (who are still Yorick, Mann, and 355).

So... I think I'm going to put this series away for a little bit and come back to it once I can repress those unrepressing scenes. Makes perfect sense, yes?

Recommendation: Ehhhhhh... let me get back to you on this. If it makes sense in the overall story, I'll give it a thumbs up.

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

See also:
[your link here]

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

Booking Through Thursday — Borrowing

Today's Booking Through Thursday asks... "Who would you rather borrow from? Your library? Or a Friend? (Or don’t your friends trust you to return their books?) And, DO you return books you borrow?"

That's a lot of questions! First, I tend to prefer borrowing from the library, because even though the library lets me keep things for a while it eventually wants them back or I have to start paying some serious fines (it's $0.20 per day, here!). With friends, there's usually not a set date for returning books except "as soon as you're done"... and so unless the book is something I am already interested in reading (like Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, which I read the day I borrowed it), that might take a while.

Second, I'm pretty sure my friends trust me not to, like, lose their books or burn them or something, but I think they know it's going to take me a while to return them. :) I know that's how it is with books I've lent out, one of which I have been itching to read and am thisclose to checking out of the library. And third, of course I return them! I want mine back, so my friends get theirs back. Just sometimes it takes a while. Like how I'm returning a tape next weekend that my friend lent me... a long time ago. I would say possibly two years. And that I still haven't watched, but can no longer even attempt to do so because we got rid of our VCR. But I have kept diligent track of it, so I think that counts for something!

Y: The Last Man Book 3, by Brian K. Vaughan

More Yorick! Good times! Well, good for me. Not Yorick. Or anyone else, for that matter.

Let's see, who's a player in this book? We're still following Yorick, his monkey Ampersand, 355, and Dr. Mann on their journey to California. But there's a quick detour in Kansas when a terribly accented Russian shows up ready to rescue some male astronauts (well, one is obviously a cosmonaut) on their Houston-unsupported return to Earth. Which would be going fine, except...

The strange Israeli army people are back, apparently following the orders of Yorick's mother who thinks that 355 is going to do something terrible to Yorick... or something. It's not terribly clear. What is clear is that the Israelis' leader is bent on kidnapping Yorick for herself... not like that. Maybe like that? Okay, not as clear as I thought.

Who else, who else... there are some geneticists, which is cool. Oh! Right! And a troupe of actors who stage a play about the last man on Earth, make meta-commentary on this series ("If there's one thing I hate, it's crappy works of fiction that try to sound important by stealing names from the Bard"), introduce me to a work by Mary Shelley called The Last Man (which is on my TBR pile effective immediately), and piss off a bunch of Kansas ladies who really just wanted someone to continue their stories (you know, soap operas) for them.

OH. And then there is someone called Toyota who for some reason wants Ampersand. I imagine that will come back again quickly.

So all in all the series remains on a high level of ridiculousness tempered by an intriguing question and some fine illustration.

Recommendation: Yeah, you should probably pick up this series. It's pretty cool.

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

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

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

Earth (The Book): A Visitor's Guide to the Human Race

I haven't read The Daily Show staff's other book, America (The Book), but I've heard good things about it and also Earth, so when I saw the latter in the library browse area while shelving the other day, and most importantly when it was still there when I was leaving, I felt compelled to snap it up. And, because it was a 7-day loan book, I was even more compelled to read it right away!

Of course, "right away" doesn't mean "in one sitting," and so it took me the better part of five days to get through the 240-odd pages of insanity that is Earth. The book and the planet.

Part of that I blame on the conceit of the book — it's set up as a textbook for use by aliens who come to visit us but find that we've already killed ourselves off in some fashion. It's full of pictures and captions and "educational information" and even, wonderfully and nostalgically, one of those stamps on the inside front cover that we all had to fill out every year for all of our textbooks, with our name and the condition of the book. I had completely forgotten about those. Oh, how wonderful college would have been with free books.

Anyway. The other thing that I was made to remember about my grade-school textbooks is that they can be INTENSELY boring, even if the information is good, because it's just fact after fact, and in this case joke after joke, and it gets tedious after a while. I might suggest you get this on a 14-day loan, at least. Your brain will thank you.

When taken in the proper dosage, the factoids in this book are delightful and come in several flavors:

Amusing Truths
"This is Barb. She's the best. If you need to know where anything is, just ask her. Or call or IM her, or just email or send a text. Barb's great. Oh, but don't fuck with her yogurt in the shared fridge or she will cut you."

"It was a sad but universal fact of human life that any technology — no matter how incredible — eventually came to be seen as cumbersome. For instance, the first cordless telephone inspired awe. One year later, using the very same phone could only be seen as an ironic tribute to a time when we were forced to lug around comically giant cordless phones."

Depressing Truths
"[P]igmentation was a quick and convenient way of judging a person. One of us, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once proposed we instead judge people by the content of their character. He was shot."

"While millions of us died of starvation and thirst, millions of others were so sated they could afford to use pies — round fruit or cream-filled pastries with enough fat content to sustain a human being for several days — as comedic projectiles, and water as giant slide lubricants."

Flat-out Lies
[On Monopoly money] "While not legal tender, this $100 bill was still widely used by hats, racecars, thimbles and Scottish terriers to buy property, pay taxes and post bail from the jail in which they were sometimes arbitrarily incarcerated."

"After winning seven gold medals Geraldo Rivera went on to become one of the world's most prominent reporters."

So... basically it's pretty much like The Daily Show. In book form. And without those "special reports" I dislike so much. If you can get through the pop-culture references and the sarcasm, you might even learn something!

Recommendation: If you like The Daily Show and you like reading very short tidbits of information, this is for you. If you are even slightly ambivalent to the comedy stylings of Jon Stewart et al., you should probably skip right over this.

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

See also:
[your link here]

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

Musing Mondays — What to Read

Today's Musing Mondays question is a thoughtful one...

"I was reading Eleanor Roosevelt’s book, “You Learn By Living“, via Google Books the other day, and came across a quote that really struck a chord with me. The quote said this:

“What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through in your own mind; it is the ideas and impressions that are aroused in you by your reading.”
(pg. 7-8, “You Learn By Living” by Eleanor Roosevelt)

What do you think about this quote? Do you believe this to be true? If so, why and how? And, if not, why not?"

I've said a little bit on the subject before, but I will say again that I am a big fan of people reading what they want to read rather than what they think they should read. Reading in general is good, and you're going to learn new things and get new impressions from every book you read, even if you're not reading "literature" or whatever.

But at the same time, I would say that reading widely is what's really important for ideas and impressions. If you like mysteries, say (which is pretty much the only thing I used to read, back in the day), that's great, but don't spend your life re-reading those books, or reading only mysteries by Agatha Christie or Philip R. Craig or whomever. Read stories that are different, try new authors, look at books that are mystery but are for whatever reason shelved in fiction instead (these are now my favorite mystery books!). And move on from there! Even if you don't like everything you pick up (and feel free to put it down if it's not engaging you!), you'll be exposed just that little bit more to new ways of thinking.

Books That Followed Me Home

As noted in yesterday's post, I'm trying out a couple of things I might do for my library's blog, to help people find new books to read. Yesterday I did books that intrigued me but stayed on the shelf, today I'm looking at the books that have a new shelf home for the next six weeks.

Goodness knows I have plenty of books to read at home. Most of them are library books, and most of those find their way onto my shelf because I've heard good things about them from a friend or the Internet (which can often be a friend in these situations!). But sometimes during my volunteer shift, or after, when I'm wandering around the browsing area, something catches my eye and I know it's coming home with me. Here's what followed me out the library door this week; they're mine for now but they'll be back soon!

In the Shadow of Gotham, by Stefanie Pintoff
It was actually the sequel to this book, called A Curtain Falls, that caught my eye, with a dead chorus girl on a Broadway stage and a hint of a ferry disaster. But then I noticed that it was a sequel, and I set off in search of the first book, because I like reading things in order. Luckily, Gotham is no less intriguing, with the book jacket offering a murder taking place in the victim's own bedroom, in the middle of the day. And the victim is a math student at university, which promises some scholarly intrigue. It's also set at the turn of the 20th century, which means I can add some historical fiction to my sadly small pile of such.

The Strange Case of the Composer and His Judge, by Patricia Duncker
I played in bands and orchestras for a really long time, so I was drawn to the "composer" bit of this title, and one of the characters is in fact a musical composer. This is also a mystery novel, which I like, and it promises to interrogate faith, immortality, and passion, which I would like to see. And I really liked the cover. I'm not sure that this will be near the top of my reading list in the very near future, but I'm pretty sure I'll like it when I do.

Killer, by Dave Zeltserman
An admission here — I wasn't really interested in this book for its title or cover, and I probably would have passed it over entirely if I weren't currently attempting to read a book for every letter of the alphabet using titles and authors. Z happens to be a toughie, so I really grabbed this only for the Zeltserman on the cover. But then I read over the back, and I perked up a bit. This book is about a Mafia hitman who turns state's witness and is released from jail, only to find that, you know, it's not paranoia if someone's really out to get you. I read a book along the same lines last year and liked it, so I thought I'd give this one a shot.

The Caretaker of Lorne Field, by Dave Zeltserman
Zeltserman strikes again! This one grabbed me with its blurb from NPR: "There's a new name to add to the pantheon of the sons and daughters of Cain: Dave Zeltserman." I recently read through a few of Cain's best-known novels and I liked them a lot, so I checked out the jacket flap on this book. It promises a slightly different feel than Killer — here we have a caretaker who wants to leave his job, but has to wait (for an unclear reason) until his son is able to take over for him. That's not terribly exciting, but this is: "[If] the field is left untended, a horrific monster called an Aukowie will grow — a monster capable of taking over the entirety of America in just two weeks. Or so it is said..." That's a little creepy. I like it. I might read this one first!

Eye-Catchers

As I've mentioned previously, I'm going to be doing some readers' advisory stuff with the library I'm volunteering at, which is pretty delightful. One of the things they want me to do is put together a "volunteer column" for their blog, which is starting to come into its own. Very exciting. I'm not sure exactly what form my column is going to take, but I figured I'd throw up a couple of "demo" posts, as it were, and see what sticks! You might see what comes next up on the library blog at some future date...

It's one of the perils of volunteering at the library — you've got a cart full of books that you're tasked with putting back in their proper place, but nearly every time you pick one up, you find yourself thinking, "Hmm. That's an interesting title." And some of those times, you think, "That's a really interesting title. Let me just see what this here book is about," and then you're checking out the jacket flap and maybe the first page and then sometimes you even find yourself putting the book right back on the cart, so that you can check it out yourself when you're done for the day!

Terrible, I know. Luckily for me, and you, and the library, I have plenty of books checked out right now, so I can't take home every book that intrigues me. But if you want to head over to the stacks and grab one, I won't stop you!

Here are a few books that caught my eye the other day:

How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill
It can't be overstated how much I subsisted on Starbucks for the greater part of my college career. So I couldn't help but be attracted to this title, though I admit I was hoping it was going to validate my use of caffeine to write last-minute essays and solve last-minute problem sets. I guess not, though, as the subtitle to this is "A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else." Looks like it's more of a riches-to-rags story, which doesn't really pique my interest. I imagine, though, that if you've ever worked at a Starbucks-like company or if you've ever accepted a job just for the money, you'll probably find something to like about this book.

The Trail to Buddha's Mirror, by Don Winslow
I was intrigued here by the visual image I got of myself, trudging along some dirt path, possibly up a mountain even, on my way to find a mirror that was perhaps once used by Siddhārtha Gautama. Well, apparently the mirror is actually a lake, and that trail is probably metaphorical, but the plot still sounds pretty good: "Robert Pendleton, a biochemist and fertilizer expert for AgriTech corporation, has gone missing from a conference in San Francisco where he reportedly became smitten with a beautiful Chinese woman. After locating Pendleton and meeting the stunning Li Lan--and nearly being killed by an unknown assailant when the pair flee from him--Carey soon realizes that more than mere fertilizer know-how is at stake." The Carey mentioned here is Winslow's detective, and this is his second book; if you're the kind who likes to read a series in order, you'll want to start off with the book called A Cool Breeze on the Underground.

Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You, by Sam Gosling
"Does what's on your desk reveal what's on your mind? Do those pictures on your walls tell true tales about you? And is your favorite outfit about to give you away?" I'm afraid the answer to all of these questions is yes. Even worse, there's a book out there that anyone can read to find out just what all that stuff is secretly saying about you! Gosling professes to be able to tell how reliable a significant other is, or how committed an employee is to her company, just by looking at how things are arranged in medicine cabinets or cubicles. I'm not saying that you should start spying on your closest friends and neighbors, but if you're just interested in "getting to know them better," I think this book could help.

First Among Equals, by Jeffrey Archer
This one really only caught my eye because of a book by Jasper Fforde called First Among Sequels that I did not previously realize had taken its title from another book. Unfortunately, I don't think Archer's book is going to have anything to do with a book-jumping, time-travelling literary detective. Instead we have this: "Charles Seymour, second-born son, will never be the earl like his father, but he did inherit his mother's strength-and the will to realize his destiny...Simon Kerslake's father sacrificed everything to make sure his son's dreams come true. Now it is Simon's chance to rise as high as those dreams allow...Ray Gould was born to the back streets but raised with pride-a quality matched by a sharp intellect and the desire to attain the impossible...Andrew Fraser was raised by a soccer hero turned politician. Now it's his turn for heroics, whatever the cost. From strangers to rivals, four men embark on a journey for the highest stakes of all-the keys to No. 10 Downing Street." I'm not terribly keen on historical or political fiction, but if you are, you might want to check this out.

Replay, by Ken Grimwood
I wasn't terribly drawn in by the title or cover on this book, but when it fell off of my cart I caught sight of the back cover copy, which proclaimed that the main character was going to get to live his life over and over again, in a 25-year loop, until he got it right. Yes, I know this was done to a lesser extent in Groundhog Day, but I LOVED Groundhog Day and also Replay did it first by six years and won an award doing it, so I think this book might follow me home sometime soon.

Speaking of books that followed me home, I'll have another post up tomorrow detailing what did find its way onto my shelf full of library books this week.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah Waters

I mentioned on Sunday that I was reading and greatly enjoying this book, and while it took me several days longer than I thought it would to finish it, I did end up retaining that enjoyment throughout. So, yay! Of course, it's no Fingersmith, but I think I was plenty warned about that going in. :)

So this is a creepy little story that I still think is most closely related to The Fall of the House of Usher and The Haunting of Hill House, largely because the house itself is a main character of the book. On the Poe side, you also have a house-going-mad/family-going-mad connection; on the Jackson side you have people being drawn to this house like flies to flypaper (that is, reluctantly at first, but then SMOOSH).

But of course, this isn't either of those books, so many other things happen. The general plot here is that our intrepid narrator, a Dr. Faraday, finds himself the new family doctor of the Ayreses, who live in an awesome house called Hundreds Hall that Faraday has been attracted to since he was a child. It's a beauty — or it was until World War II happened and all the money went away and Mrs. Ayres and her two children and her two servants couldn't keep the thing up properly. Faraday is having fun hanging out in his idolized house and being friends with high society people, right up until things start to go CRAZY. And by CRAZY, I just mean that some bad things start to happen, like dogs biting and war veterans going a little daft, and strange smudges show up and no one who actually lives in Hundreds actually likes being there all that much, but Faraday just thinks that they're all a little touched in the head, there's nothing creepy at all about mirrors walking on their own or the telephone ringing in the dead of night with no one on the other end.

Ahem. It's a little creepy. And the creepiest part of all of it is that you're never quite sure what's actually going on. I, at least, was like, "Oh, the house is haunted. Or maybe it's not. No, it definitely is. No, that's crazy, everyone else is just haunted," for pretty much the whole book.

And I thought that everything resolved itself quite appropriately (if not terribly informatively) at the end of chapter 14. But then there is a tiny little epilogue chapter, which is something that I hate, and which is not really especially useful here, so I recommend you just go ahead and skip that and know that nothing really happens after the end of chapter 14. :)

Recommendation: For fans of Shirley Jackson, Edgar Allan Poe, other people who do interesting psychologically scary stories. Not for people who like plots wrapped up with a bow.

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

See also:
Book Addiction
Chrisbookarama
things mean a lot

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

Booking Through Thursday — War

Today's Booking Through Thursday is topical... "It is November 11th, known here in the U.S. as Veteran’s Day, formerly Armistice Day to remember the end of WWI but expanded to honor all veterans who have fought for their country, so …

Do you read war stories? Fictional ones? Histories?"

...Not usually with that aspect of the story in mind. I have read plenty of books that take place during wars, but usually I read them because I've heard they're good stories in general, not because I'm seeking out war. And, looking through my blogged books, I can see that I haven't even read that many in the past couple of years. Perhaps I need to work on this! In case you need to work on it, too, here's what I've got for you:

The Pox Party (Octavian Nothing), by M.T. Anderson — American Revolution plus slavery
The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, by John Boyne — Holocaust plus sadness
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak — Holocaust plus intense sadness
The Madonnas of Leningrad, by Debra Dean — World War II in Russia plus Alzheimer's

Got any suggestions to broaden this list a bit?

Y: The Last Man Book 2, by Brian K. Vaughan

This is definitely better than the first collection of the series, mostly because there is nearly 100 percent less exposition. So relaxing to just read a story!

The plot is still generally the same, of course — Yorick is probably the last man on Earth, making him a very hot commodity for many groups who want him in varying levels of alive. A government operative called 355 and a Dr. Mann would like to figure out why he's still alive and possibly clone him, because that would be useful, but the group farthest to the "dead" end of the aforementioned spectrum is hunting this little group down as they travel from Boston to California. They make it as far as Ohio in this book and stir up quite a bit of trouble in the process.

This series continues to provide an interesting answer to the "what if we got rid of all those pesky men" question, though the focus on the Daughters of the Amazon in this set got pretty tedious pretty fast — I get it, they're a cult, they're quite crazy, can we move on now? But of course we can't, because Yorick's sister has gotten herself caught up in the crazy.

With any luck, things will get crazy in a different direction in the next book.

Recommendation: Read the first set; if you like it, read this!

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

See also:
[your link here]

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

The Unit, by Ninni Holmqvist

Dudes. This was a really good book. I love me a dystopian novel, and I thought this one was especially effective because I could really, definitely see it happening. The Hunger Games? Eh, maybe. Shades of Grey? Definitely not. The Handmaid's Tale, which this reminded me strongly of? Not really. This? Oh, I could totally see this.

The "this" I'm talking about is a world where the people we love are no longer dying for stupid reasons like decades-long organ transplant waiting lists... because the older, procreatively-challenged members of society are ready and mostly willing to fork over a kidney, or a cornea, or an auditory bone, or a liver, or a heart whenever there isn't anyone else around to do it.

See, over in that Scandinavia area (if not everywhere), the population is divided into "needed" people — parents, schoolteachers, nurses — and "dispensable" people, with no one to take care of. These dispensable people are taken away at a ripe old age (50 for ladies; 60 for gents, who can sow their seeds a bit longer) to live in one of the titular Units, where they live wonderful lives of comfort and ease, with no need to earn money or cook for themselves or do anything at all that they don't want to, except, you know, participate in medical and psychological experiments and donate an organ here or there until it's time to donate a major organ.

Our dispensable friend is Dorrit, who didn't try terribly hard to become needed and is rather enjoying her time in the Unit. We follow along as she has a relatively easy time of things, makes friends, makes a "friend," and then makes a baby, which sort of throws everything out of whack both in the Unit and in Dorrit's life. And boy, do things get interesting from there.

It's not ever terribly exciting... the story is fairly slow-paced and the focus is really on the emotions of the people within the Unit, which are quite up and down, as one might imagine. And Holmqvist does a great job of this. She also does an excellent job portraying the whole Unit system as a pretty good idea, really, if not a very easily sustainable one.

There is a whole boatload of intriguing in this novel, and I may have to read it again at some point to really appreciate what Holmqvist has done and to look again at the interactions between the characters in a new light.

Recommendation: Grab it if you like a good dystopian novel or a good psychology-driven narrative.

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

See also:
Reading matters
Jules' Book Reviews
At Home With Books

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

Musing Mondays — Buying Books

Musing Mondays is quite interesting today:

"A blog I frequent suggested I check out several articles of interest… one of them which happened to be this one: “Trendspotting: Readers’ Spending On Books“. So — being the avid reader & book junkie that I am — I couldn’t help but click over and read the short piece about readers’ current spending habits.

My questions for today are ones that are asked at the end of this particular article: What are your responses to this report? Does it match with what you –as a reader– have observed? With your own buying habits? When was the last time you bought a book? What did you buy and why?"

The tl;dr of the article is that people are buying fewer books, people are paying less for the books they buy, hardcover sales are down, and Amazon and other e-retailers are up.

And I'm not surprised by any of that. It's a tough economy, books aren't really a need for most people, and of course libraries are doing pretty okay right now lending out to people who need books to breathe. And of course e-retail is up, with its lack of sales tax and often free shipping and especially with the proliferation of free and cheap e-books.

My own buying habits, as I've mentioned before, I'm sure, involve only buying books new when I've read and loved them. I'll stock up on maybe books at a cheap-pants booksale, but my big dollars go to the books and authors that I adore. But right now I don't have a lot of big dollars, so often I wait until I have gift cards to buy anything and then still try to find things on a decent sale so that I can stretch those free moneys.

So most of my books come from libraries. And if I had an e-reader, which I am seriously thinking about once I'm gainfully employed again, it would be of the sort that can read library e-books because again, I don't want to pay for things I don't love, and also the things I do love, I want to be able to lend out to others to read.

The last time I bought a book... I bought Life as We Knew It and Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging from the library booksale a while back — the first is a loved book, the second a maybe that turned out to be awesome. And I've got several moneys in Barnes and Noble gift cards that I am figuring out how to spend. At the moment, it looks like I'm going to grab up John Green's novels, but I'm not sure what else. Time to page through my list of loved books!

Notes on a Sunday

Wow. It is really fall here in Florida now... after many weeks in the 70s and 80s a big storm has taken us into the 50s and low 60s. I will be spending many hours warming up in the solarium, reading and drinking hot chocolate. In fact...

Mmm, hot chocolate. -sips- Much warmer now.

It has been an interesting week for reading. I don't do monthly tally posts anymore, but I do keep a tally in a lovely Google spreadsheet, and I discovered that in October I managed to read 18 books, which is the most I've read in any month this year, including the two months during which I had to read 20 YA novels for a class. This beastly total was helped in part by the six books I read for the Read-a-thon, and also by an unexpected airplane trip and, of course, my general lack of employment.

Of course, I'm not going to get anywhere near that this month... I haven't yet finished a book! This is mostly because I started The Name of the Rose this week, and while I think it is going to be very interesting I found myself skimming through pages and generally not paying any attention to the story. So I am putting it aside until such time as I can actually focus on it. This weekend has found me reading The Little Stranger, which I should finish today or tomorrow and which I am currently madly in love with. I have no idea what's going on, but I can tell that it's the kind of book where you're not supposed to, so I'm not terribly concerned yet. What I do know is that it's quite creepy and reminds me vaguely of The Fall of the House of Usher and also The Haunting of Hill House, which is a good sign for me loving this book.

It's also been an interesting week at the library — I volunteer there, as I've probably mentioned, and so far my duties have consisted of shelving things and also unshelving things that people want to read. It's actually a pretty good time, and I'm sure the library loves that I take many things home with me every time I'm there. But, having one of these degrees in library science, I've been begging to be allowed to do more, and this week I was finally able to present a list of ideas for readers advisory (matching readers with books, basically) that I'd like to help with. Everything has to get cleared through the director, of course, but as of my meeting with the assistant director it looks like I will be doing some blogging, creating fun bookmarks Twinsburg Public Library-style, and possibly helping out with a book group. I am possibly far too excited about this, but it means that I have more things to do! I like feeling useful.

All right, back to reading!

When You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead

This is a pretty spectacular book, not leastly because it references A Wrinkle in Time, one of my favorite books and also a favorite of the main character, Miranda.

There's no real way to summarize this book, because it's largely confusing, but let's look at a couple paragraphs from the opening pages:

"I check the box under my bed, which is where I've kept your notes these past few months. There it is, in your tiny handwriting: April 27th: Studio TV-15, the words all jerky-looking, like you wrote them on the subway. Your last 'proof.'

"I still think about the letter you asked me to write. It nags at me, even though you're gone and there's no one to give it to anymore. Sometimes I work on it in my head, trying to map out the story you asked me to tell, about everything that happened this past fall and winter. It's all still there, like a movie I can watch when I want to. Which is never."

Dude. Love it.

So over the next couple hundred pages, Miranda basically lays out the story that this mysterious note-writer is asking her about, which involves normal everyday 12-year-old things like going to school, falling out with a friend, making new friends, avoiding the homeless guy on the corner, getting a parent ready to compete on The $20,000 Pyramid... okay, maybe not entirely normal, but not abnormal, either. And of course it gets even less normal when Miranda starts getting notes from someone who seems to know a lot more about Miranda's life than she's entirely comfortable with.

But the notes and the whole Wrinkle-y sci-fi aspect are practically unimportant for most of the story, which is what I think sells this book to me more than anything. I love a good tesser as much as the next person (or probably more), but I love the time that Stead spends developing Miranda and making me really root for her even when she's doing some stupid stuff. And she weaves the weird notes and such in extremely well, so that when you find out what's going on (well, to the extent that you do), you're like, "Ohhhhhhh, nice!" rather than, "Well, DUH." Which is probably harder to do than I think it is.

Basically, you should just go read this book. Now. Go.

Recommendation: The last sentence, unless you are really against things that make your head hurt a little bit. Just a little. It's more like a tingle. And often like a tickle.

Rating: 9.5/10
(Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Stainless Steel Droppings
At Home With Books
Maw Books Blog
Library Queue

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

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

Shirley Jackson certainly knows how to do creepy well. I read her short novel We Have Always Lived in the Castle for last year's RIP Challenge, so grabbing another book by her seemed very smart for this year's!

The premise of the book is that there is a fellow, Dr. Montague, who is conducting some experiments at a place called Hill House. Basically, he's heard some stories about the house being haunted and basically uninhabitable, and he's hoping to make some notes on any phenomena he might come across. He takes on a couple of assistants, including Eleanor Vance, our protagonist. Eleanor and the others spend several nights in the house, observing some interesting things like something banging on doors, a very cold spot where no draft could come through, and the same or another something writing messages on walls. But even with all of the house's oddities, Eleanor finds herself starting to really love the house... perhaps too much?

Because that's what the book is really about. Eleanor has been essentially a shut-in for 11 years, taking care of her mother, and her sister doesn't respect her, and Eleanor has no friends or self-confidence until she shows up at Hill House. And then she tries a little too hard to be BFF(aeae)s with everyone, and of course it doesn't work quite that well, and so she makes friends with the only thing left to be friends with — the creepy house. Which goes about as well as you might expect.

I'll admit I was hoping for something a little scarier when I picked this up, but I am perfectly content with the psychological creep factor — I certainly understand the feeling of being shut in and having no one to hang out with, though I hope that my friends who have to love me through the Internet would keep me from getting eaten by a haunted house. You would, right? Please?

Ahem. So Jackson hits the interpersonal relations right on the nose, with the "lets be best friends!" attitude of strangers living together that slowly erodes into a "lets avoid each other like the plague!" when the people realize they don't actually like each other all that much, and with the clingy "wait let's still be frieeeeends" Eleanor, and especially with the pitch-perfect passive-aggressive Theo. Jackson also nails the creepy-haunted-house bit with the banging on the walls and the spinning room and the "oh, that's really creepy" moment between Eleanor and Theo. And THEN she offers up an excellent person going slowly and inexorably insane.

Basically I'm going to have to marry Shirley Jackson. Don't tell Scott.

Recommendation: For those who like a bit of psychological creepiness in their cereal, and who don't mind if that's the only kind of creepiness. Not for those who are looking for people popping out from behind doors, wielding knives and severed heads.

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

See also:
books i done read
Reading matters
things mean a lot
A Striped Armchair
Well-Mannered Frivolity

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

Y: The Last Man Book 1, by Brian K. Vaughan

I'm getting smart on this A to Z Challenge thing and picking books to read from my long TBR list on GoodReads. Birds! Stones!

This book is the first volume of the collection of Y: The Last Man comic books. In this set we learn that some mysterious and possibly ooky thing has eliminated all of chromosomally male creatures on earth (humans, monkeys, chinchillas, whatever), except for one human, Yorick, and his monkey, Ampersand. Yorick has no idea why he's still alive, but he's more worried about finding his girlfriend slash possible fiancée than pretty much anything else.

Of course, there are other players in this new world — at the beginning of the comic we are introduced to a woman with an amulet that too many people want to get their hands on, an Israeli army officer who gets a quick promotion after all the dying, a scientist with a cloned fetus that dies during birth (the fetus, not the scientist), a secret agent known only as 355, a group of "Amazons" who cut off their breasts and fight with bows and arrows and generally want to kill men and also women who don't follow their path, and a majority Democratic government under siege by the wives of the Republican congressmen who died.

There is a lot of stuff going on here, and I am intrigued to see how it plays out in the future, but I'm not terribly thrilled with the characters or the storyline thus far, probably because everything is in big-time Exposition Mode. I think I'll give the next volume a chance and see what happens.

Recommendation: Good for fans of apocalyptic and other generally problem-ridden universes, and those with an eye for pop-culture references.

Rating: 7/10
(A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Rhinoa's Ramblings

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