Fables Vol. 1, by Bill Willingham

Man, I really wanted to like this book. I tried to like it, all the way through, but save for a few moments of amusement I was largely unimpressed. This is not The Unwritten, sadly, and maybe my love for that comic colored my view of this one? I'll need to do some SCIENCE to find out.

In the meantime, let me tell you why this book should have been awesome:

First, I mean, fables. I have really grown to enjoy satires/homages of fairy tales and the like, and that's exactly what this is. In this comic series, the inhabitants of, like, any imaginary story have been exiled from their respective homelands by some mighty Adversary and now live mostly in NYC, except for the non-human ones (or non-able-to-pretend-to-be-human ones) who live on a farm upstate. Which sounds kind of ominous, actually, I hope they're okay. In this particular volume we have Old King Cole as the mayor of Fabletown, Snow White as his deputy, the Big Bad Wolf (aka Bigby) in pretend-human form as a cop/detective-type, and lots and lots of other favorite characters doing many and varied things. Oh, and Bluebeard shows up and I totally know who he is this time! Thanks, Neil Gaiman!

Second, it's a murder mystery. Bigby's case here is the mysterious disappearance slash probable murder of Rose Red, whose apartment is covered in blood almost like that one episode of Dexter and whose man-friend Jack (of Beanstalk fame) is eager to find out whodunnit. I love murder mysteries, and in this case I get to actually see the crime scene for a change! Graphic novels are cool like that.

So, fables and murder. Fantastic. But, here's why it failed for me: the writing. It was very comic-book-y with the emphasis on all the important words but also sometimes on words that seemed to be fine on their own and I was like, wait, what? He said that sentence how? Does he speak English? (Does he speak English? Does he speak English? I could do this all day...)

Ahem. And then also Willingham tried to be all cutesy and self-aware with the dialogue and it comes out instead all verbose and clunky and awful and like absolutely no one anywhere would actually talk, and I am like, omg chill out, which is easy for me to say from this end of an extremely run-on sentence but WHATEVER. It's a comic book! I want to look at the pictures!

Example: Bigby says to Snow White, "This isn't about Prince Charming. It's about your sister, Rose Red." And of course no one talks like that unless they're Expositing, and so Snow White calls him on his BS and says, "This may surprise you, Mister Wolf, but I'm not entirely an idiot. I actually know my sister's name." Unfortunately, this is ALSO not how anyone talks unless they're putting on a show for a listener, of which there are none that are not the reader. A simple "Yeah, that's her name, what about her?" or "Do I have another?" would easily have sufficed, but no-oooo, and that's how the whole rest of the book goes and it is tiresome.

The concept and the general execution are so good, guys, and if you are more forgiving of terrible dialogue than I am you will probably really like this series, which I imagine goes on in the same vein. But I can't do it. Let me know how it goes?

Recommendation: Fables, MURDER, pretty pictures. Is this your bag?

Rating: 5/10

Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman

Yeah, I know we've been through all these stories together already (see parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8), but I want to have a nice little place where I can summarize my thoughts, so bear with me here!

First note: I've read a few short story collections in my time, but only a few, and with this read-along I think I've figured out why — short stories are meant to be read on their own, not all at once. It's just more cost-effective to lump them into a big book and call it a day. For most of the read-along I listened to one story a day, four days a week, and it worked amazingly better to have that 24-hour period to think about the story before moving on than it ever had to mainline a whole book of them. I am going to follow this slow-reading practice in the future, for sure.

Second note: I read each of these stories twice, once with my ears and once with my eyes, generally in that order. This turned out to be a pretty good practice, especially with Gaiman narrating his own stories, because some of the stories and the poems in general were much better when I could hear the cadence and the word patterns that Gaiman had written in, and others were better when I could see how he formatted them or see the sentences to parse them correctly. And of course, the second time around I could get a better appreciation for the story as a whole since I already knew how it ended. That worked out really well for writing up the stories every week, but I probably won't do that in the future unless I know I'm going to discuss the stories!

Third note: I don't usually read story collections that are comprised of such very different stories, and it was really just amazing to me how large the gap was between the stories I loved and the stories I disloved. I don't think there were any I absolutely hated, but there are a few I don't need to ever think about again, and also there are a few that I would like to have metaphorically tattooed to my body so I could read them every day. It also intrigued me to see that the kind of stories Neil Gaiman writes are not always the kind of stories I think that Neil Gaiman would know how to write. I like that Gaiman is willing to write things that are so outside of the pattern of his popular stuff and just let you like it or not.

Okay, I think that covers it! I hope you guys that did the read-along with me enjoyed the experience as much as I did, and I hope that those of you who didn't are at least moderately interested in picking up this collection, because there really are some fabulous stories. I think my Top Five list would be, in rough order, "Goliath," "Sunbird," "A Study in Emerald," "Feeders and Eaters," and "October in the Chair. I think. Care to share yours?

Recommendation: Fantastic reading, a must for Gaiman-lovers and a should for people who like their stories short and a little fantastic.

Rating: Oh, gosh. I'm going to just throw out the stories I disloved and call this a 9/10.
(RIP Challenge)

The Unwritten Vol. 1, by Mike Carey and Peter Gross

I don't remember where I first heard about this series... one of those blogs or podcasts or something that tells me what's good. I don't remember what I was promised, either, but whatever it was I liked it enough to give it a shot.

That forgetting posed a bit of a problem in the first few pages, which I read and thought, "Whaaaaaaaaat is this? This is not very good. What's with all these words? It's a graphic novel!" And I really almost gave it up right then, but I said to myself, I said self, you've done this before and maybe you should just give it a little bit longer.

And of course, I was right. The second time, with the reading just one more page. Because it turns out that first three pages or whatever are meant to be pages from a not-graphic novel series that is like Harry Potter et al. and therefore is written as a send-up of Harry Potter et al. And once I figured that out, I was much happier!

The real novel, the graphic one, is about this fella called Tom Taylor whose father wrote the aforementioned series that instead of Harry Potter is Tommy Taylor. Tom is emphatically not Tommy, but is still making a living going around to all the cons and whatnot signing Tommy Taylor signatures and talking about his father's work, which his father can't do because he's gone mysteriously missing, or possibly just abandoned everyone. And right now Tom has two opposing problems causing him no end of trouble — a group of people who think he's not really Tommy Taylor but some kid his father absconded with to make himself look good, and another group that thinks he's totally Tommy Taylor, magical wizardry and all. And some people in that last group would really rather him dead...

There's so much to this story, I've barely cracked the surface of it, which makes sense considering these are just the first 5 comics of an ongoing series. But other interesting things so far are Tom's obsession (given to him by his father) for literary locations, a mysterious staircase that has more stairs going down than coming up, people possibly made of words, and some revisionist-history backstory involving Rudyard Kipling.

I may or may not have gone right out the day after reading this volume to get the other two that currently exist. I might have to track down a comic shop if I get through those too quickly...

Recommendation: So far, I'd recommend for people with a good sense of humor about fantasy conventions and a slightly strong stomach.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge, A to Z Challenge)

Death Note Vol. 8, by Tsugumi Ohba

Nrrrrrrt.

That's about the only sound I was capable of making after this book EXPLODED MY BRAIN. If you've read any of my other Death Note reviews, you're going to be like, "Yeah, yeah, I get it with the brain explosion, get a new phrase, lady." But I can't. Because my brain has exploded. Again.

Okay, so. Light's sister has been kidnapped, and the kidnappers, led by a chocolate-loving mini-L want the notebook in trade. Light comes up with a plan to not do that last part, but the kidnappers are way wily-er and they temporarily hijack a plane and take Light's dad out to the desert where they're keeping his daughter underground in some crazy revolving door trap and there's no choice but to give up the notebook and now the kidnappers are like, sweet, and go killing all the people they don't like.

But of course there's still another notebook, and a person who can see people's names to write them down in it, and so Misa is still useful and Light still hangs out with her, even if her sexy underpants do absolutely nothing for him. Poor Misa.

AND Light is working with the American special ops team headed by the other mini-L, who at first acts like he's never heard of the first mini-L and then is like, "Oh, no, I totes know him. And must defeat him."

Oh, also, there's a third Shinigami who apparently owns one of these notebooks? I don't remember this from the previous books but I remember so little that I will go ahead and believe it, and he totally messes everything up.

And then a bunch of people die, and then Light contemplates killing, like, everyone else, including Misa. Because that's what you do to the people who love you, right?

This is all very confusing, I'm sure, because the book is super confusing, and there are still like five books to go and I might suffer a mental breakdown before I finish them. But I still want to finish them. There is something very wrong with me.

Recommendation: Probably you should NEVER read this series, because you're just going to get sucked in and your brain is going to explode and you're going to think it's a good idea to keep reading them. But still, you should read them.

Rating: 7/10
(RIP Challenge)

Street Gang, by Michael Davis

Street Gang is a fine example of what my friend Mary would, I think, call a worthwhile audiobook — one where ears-reading is an improvement over eyes-reading. (Examples: Bossypants, things read by Michael York.)

I tried to eyes-read this book when it first came out, but got bored real quick-like and sent it back home to the library. But then I saw it on, what else, OverDrive, and I figured I'd give it another shot. I'd never heard of the narrator, Caroll Spinney, but I quickly discovered that he just so happens to be the voice of both Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch. He sounds a little Big-Bird-y in his speaking voice, and it was this wonderful cadence that helped me get through the book. Extra bonus: after the book proper is done, there's an extra hour of interview between Davis and Spinney that is, if not exciting, very interesting to listen to.

The book proper, though... eh. It purports to be the complete history of Sesame Street, but it feels more like a hodge-podge of histories — there's quite a bit about childrens's television programs prior to Sesame Street, like Captain Kangaroo and Howdy Doody, some background on the various actors eventually cast on Sesame Street, and of course rather a lot about Jim Henson, to the point where the book starts with his funeral. And all these little vignettes are just sort of tossed around in the book, so I had a bit of trouble reorienting myself with each new chapter. And I get that that's probably the point, that this sort of mixed-up narrative is reminiscent of an episode of Sesame Street, but it was hard for me to hold on to the thread most of the time.

But! For interesting conversational tidbits about children's television? This book fits the bill quite nicely. I learned how Sesame Street got its name (basically: they couldn't come up with anything better), how much intense educational and market research went into the making of even the very first episode, and how Barney almost ruined Sesame Street, if you need another reason to dislike large purple dinosaurs. And I got to hear Caroll Spinney as Big Bird and Oscar, and doing a passable Ernie and Kermit as well! I do think my tiny cousin's impression of Ernie's laugh is much better, though. I might be biased. :)

Recommendation: Definitely worth a read or listen if you've ever spent way too much time watching PBS in the afternoons.

Rating: 7/10

The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion

I'm just going to start with this — I don't think I understood this book. I don't think anyone in my book club (for which I read this book) understood this book. I made this discovery at the book club meeting, during which we found some discussion questions including (to paraphrase) "How did Didion use humor in this book?" and "What parts of this book were exhilarating?"

We couldn't come up with humor. We couldn't come up with exhilaration. We came up with introspection, detachment, plodding...

Which is not to say that I disliked this book. I didn't like it, perhaps, but I found it very intriguing, which is more than I can say for some of my fellow readers!

The Year of Magical Thinking is Didion's memoir about the death of her husband, which happens suddenly if not unexpectedly at the dinner table, and how she makes it through the first year after his death. This is not easy after forty years of marriage and the rocky previous year in their relationship, and it is especially difficult because Didion's daughter is, from five days before the death to the end of Didion's narration, in and out of the hospital herself with mystery ailments that don't bode well for her.

I did not find it an exhilarating book; in fact, Didion seems to go out of her way to make everything very rational and straightforward, even the things that aren't naturally so, and provide a sort of road map to life as a widow. She speaks of being called a "cool customer" by her social worker, of saving her husband's shoes just in case he comes back, of dealing with the panic that is set off by the most innocuous of memories. I haven't lost a spouse of forty years, but I have lost some loved ones in my time, and I can see a lot of Didion's reactions in my own, if scaled down.

I can only think that I would have understood and appreciated it better if I actually knew who Didion was outside of the scope of this book, and knew the context of her life in which to place all of these events. I felt absolutely lost when Didion would mention friends or locations that meant nothing to me, or when she referenced previous novels by her or her husband. I knew there must be a connection to be made, but I had no idea what it was or how to make it.

So on the whole, I found this book fairly depressing and a bit under-explained in places (and over-explained in others), but I did find it an interesting read for the simple honesty of it all.

Recommendation: I really don't know who this was written for. I'm going to say that if you know Didion or have gone through similar troubles, you might be interested. But I'm not sure.

Rating: 5/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Eyre Affair, by Jasper Fforde

I have been meaning to re-read this series since, oh, the first time I read The Eyre Affair almost exactly three years ago. But I really got it into my head to do it over the summer, and by that time I had lent the first book to a good friend who is apparently bad at returning books, and I was all, fret fret fret. But then I realized — audiobooks! So I grabbed this book on audio from the library, and I can now say that it is a rather different experience.

The idea behind The Eyre Affair is actually a complex set of ideas. You have an alternate universe where Britain has been fighting the Crimean War for, you know, 130 years, no big deal, so you've got the pro-war/anti-war/pro-soldier/pro-let's-have-a-nap-instead set of issues. This alternate universe also includes time travel that is constantly re-writing history. Also vampires and werewolves. Also people who really really know you're talking about them. Also reconstituted dodos. Also many other things, and also, primarily for the book's purposes, a Special Ops unit dedicated to solving crimes against books. Which is awesome.

It's a whole big mess of everything, and so when I read it with my eyes, I necessarily imbued a Hitchhiker's/Buffy/Monty Python snark-the-day-away sort of mentality into it. And in fact, the audio book box promises these things. But what struck me within the first chapter of reading with my ears is that the narrator, despite having a fantastic voice for Thursday, does not choose to play the book that way. She is very very earnest and plays very straight off the page, and I felt like I was missing out on a lot of Fforde's wit and sarcasm.

On the plus side, I can now pronounce a lot of things from the book better than I could a week ago. Darn British people and their un-intuitive spellings.

The other thing I found interesting about re-reading this book is that I had forgotten how different the first book is from all the rest, because Fforde had really intended The Eyre Affair as a standalone. The pacing is slower (we don't even get to the Eyre part until practically the end!), there is a LOT of exposition-y stuff, and Thursday is not quite the BAMF she becomes later. And oh my goodness had I forgotten about Daisy. Let me just go jump into this book and punch her in the face.

Right, yes. On the whole I recommend the eyes-reading experience better than the ears-reading, but either way is pretty fantastic.

Recommendation: Do you like books? Mysteries? Sci-fi? Love stories? Dodos? Characters called Braxton Hicks and Jack Schitt? Fun? Go read this series.

Rating: 7.5/10 (lower than last time for the audio sadness)
(A to Z Challenge)

Sun of Suns, by Karl Schroeder

I got this audiobook as a free download more than a year ago and tried to read it then, but I quickly got bored of it and moved on to more exciting things. But for some reason I kept it on my iPod, and so when I ran out of things to listen to at work the other day I decided to give this another shot.

The story is something like this: There's a dude called Hayden who lives in a strange world where nations float through space and create artificial suns to light themselves and their allies. When he's a kid, his nation tries to build its own sun, but the big nation that already provided their sun was like "I don't think so" and came and destroyed the sun and also Hayden's mum, who was hanging out at the sun at the time. Okay? So then years later we meet Hayden again, and he's sort of infiltrated the government what killed his mum with the intent to kill the guy that led the raid that killed Hayden's mum (he's kind of obsessive about this). But then some stuff happens and Hayden ends up going with Killer Guy (who may not actually have done any killing) and a bunch of other people on some weird treasure hunting mission, and Hayden is torn between hating and liking these people.

And there's action and explosions and double-crosses and love stories and it's all pretty standard science fictiony fare. I had quite a few problems with the plot and lack thereof, and with some questionable choices by the characters, but it turned out a lot better than I thought it was the first time I listened. What I really enjoyed was how the universe was structured with the floating nations and all; Schroeder did a nice job with the world-building.

I won't be continuing with the series, but I will be giving this to my husband to listen to because it's totally up his alley.

Recommendation: For the action-adventure-sci-fi lover, and those who like interesting worlds.

Rating: 6/10

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, by Lisa See

This is a book that I definitely would never have read were it not for my book club, so... good job, book club!

Why would I not have read it? Well, it sounds like one of them books for ladies, a group I tend to shy away from, with all its dust-jacket talk of "lifelong friendship" and "the joys and tragedies of motherhood." Barf! Also, it takes place in mid-ish 19th-century China, which means it's all historical and stuff, and also FOOTBINDING. Ladies, history, and a practice that makes my size-11 feet go running off in terror? No thank you!

But it was for my book club, and so I set aside my fears and read it. And I will say that even halfway through the book, I was like, eh. The footbinding bits were awful to think about, and there were a lot of very educational passages about China and the Way Things Were Back Then, and also How Ladies are Totes Worthless, Those Worthless Ladies. Yay. But then there's WAR, and running away, and trying not to die in the snow, and that was exciting, and then the lady-ful bickering began and I cracked open a beer (not really) and enjoyed the fallout.

And it was definitely this last part that turned the book around for me. I'm not a fan of the lady-ful bickering as it exists in real life, but I like what See did with it as a metaphor for the rest of the book and for 19th-century China in general. Our first-person protagonist is traditional, her bickering partner is many decades ahead of her time, and the way See made these opposing viewpoints very very obvious without having to resort to "she did this because she was so traditional and rooted in the old ways" (well, most of the time) was very nice. I could see where both parties were in the right and in the wrong, and I wanted both of them to shut up and make up, but I could see why they couldn't do it and I couldn't fault either of them for it! It's easier to make someone very obviously wrong; I liked it better See's way.

So, now that I've read this, I am much more knowledgeable about seven-centimeter feet, traditional Chinese family values, and hypocrisy. There's a lot of hypocrisy in this book. Lots. Would I read this book again? Proooobably not. But I'm glad I did read it.

Recommendation: For people who like ladies, history, and/or very tiny feet. Also people who would like to like ladies or history (tiny-foot-lover wannabes can stay home).

Rating: 7.5/10

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

Another re-read for my book club! Luckily, since I knew going into it that the last fifty pages or so were going to make me bawl my eyes out, I managed to just cry a whole bunch instead. One tissue only, though! Still so, so sad.

This is a book told by Death, beginning with death, and ending with death, but it manages not to be about death.

The first part of that sentence was really difficult for a lot of my fellow book-clubbers, but I think if you're prepared and/or used to odd narrative styles, you'll be okay. Death is an interesting narrator, with its odd little view of the world that mostly involves dead people but also apparently involves being incredibly and possibly overly poetic about everything. I like Death, but it could tone it down a little.

And what's really cool about Death as a narrator is that hey, how does Death even know this story? Oh, right, because our protagonist wrote a story about her life and called it The Book Thief and then Death found it and read it and is now telling us the story. So you've got a frame story and some unreliable narrators and I am SO IN.

The titular thief is called Liesel Meminger, and she's a young German girl who gets sent off to foster care with her brother just before the start of World War II except that she's the only one who makes it to foster care on account of her brother dying awfully on the train there. That's a good way to start off the story, yes? But Liesel keeps going and makes a new sort of family and makes some excellent friends even if she doesn't know it sometimes and even though the war comes and makes everything pretty much absolutely terrible, she still keeps going.

And of course there are stolen books, hence the name, and there's some Hitler Youth fun times and some hiding a Jew fun times and some hiding in basements from the bombs fun times and it's all depressing, really, but you still come out of the book thinking that maybe things aren't so bad after all, and that's really amazing. I adore this book, maybe even more the second time around.

Recommendation: Bring some tissues. And an open narrative mind.

Rating: 9.5/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Death Note Vol. 7, by Tsugumi Ohba

Hey there, Death Note! How have you beeeeeen for the last seven months? Good? Good!

So when last we left off... um... stuff was happening. There was this notebook, and you could write people's names in it and they would totally die, and that was kind of interesting, and then this kid with God-aspirations was like, "I'm'a totally kill all the bad guys in the world" and that was pretty awesome except that there are, like, laws and stuff and so the police decided to go after God-kid, who happens to be the son of the police chief guy, which is all complicated, and then God-kid started having to kill some good guys, which is terrible, and then God-kid made with the crazy-ass LOGIC and PSYCHOLOGY and managed to escape the police largely by forgetting that he ever had this mysterious notebook in the first place.

Yes. That. That's totally what happened.

And I don't recommend forgetting all of that yourself before reading this seventh volume, because right from the start the writers are like, lets have some weird stuff happen that makes no sense but we'll explain it later! Which is good, except when I don't realize that I shouldn't already know what's going on and sit there with a confused look on my face instead of reading the five pages I need to get to the part with the explaining. Not that the explaining is very explainful. I'm still confused.

'Cause basically, in this one, God-kid, aka Light, remembers that he had the Death Note thing, and it turns out that he totally planned to remember this and that he's got some crazy logic/psychology plan to get his Death Note back without getting caught as the killer, and also to kill anyone who might ruin said plan. And it's brain-hurty but also awesome, and it mostly works, except that the killing-people part only encourages NEW people to come out of the woodwork to track Light down, like I didn't already have enough characters to keep straight. Which I did.

Luckily, I have the next two book in my possession now, so I might actually get around to reading them in a timely manner!

Recommendation: Oh, you should totally read this series (if you don't mind things that make your brain explode), but you should probably start back at the beginning. :)

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge, Global Reading Challenge: Asia)

World Without End, by Ken Follett

Yessssss! I'm done! It's done! I never have to read this book again! Woohoo!

Ahem. That... that didn't sound right. Hold on. Let me try this again.

Did you know that thousand-page books turn into 36-disc audiobooks? Thirty-six. Three six. That is a lot of discs. And a lot of audio. And considering it took me two months to get through Pillars of the Earth while actually reading it, I'm happy it only took me five weeks to get through this sequel.

The problem, I find, with Ken Follett's books (well, the two I've read, anyway) is that sure, they are huge sweeping epics of time and place and they are quite beautiful in a big-picture sense. But. On a chapter-by-chapter basis? Soooooo repetitive. I summed up this book to my husband approximately like this:

Stuff. Sex. More stuff. More sex. Treachery and betrayal. Stuff. Awesome uses of logic and reverse psychology. Rape. Betrayal. Logic. Psychology. Sex. Psychology. Dude being flayed alive. Stuff. Sex. Plague. Etc.

The dude being flayed alive bit, I had not predicted. The other stuff? All the same from Pillars of the Earth. Well, not the Plague.

And so the plus side of the audio is that I can zone out while listening and pretty much not miss a thing, because few specific scenes are terribly important and if they are, Follett will, I promise, repeat whatever happened at least six more times, sometimes in the same chapter. The minus side is that I hear repetitions more easily than I read them, and so I couldn't listen to this book for more than a couple hours at a time, hence the taking forever.

Anyway, what's this book about, you say? Um. Well. It's this sweeping epic, right? And so it starts off with these kids and ends with these same kids as old men and ladies. One of the kids is the raping and pillaging and murdering type, two are creative and ambitious but one's a girl so she can't play with the nice toys, and one is of low self-esteem and comes from a ridiculous home life. And... they do their things.

Follett does an excellent job with the characters and how they interact and grow and change or not change, and I cannot say he doesn't bring the action or the drama, see Man Being Flayed Alive. I just wish he could be a bit more concise about it!

Recommendation: For fans of Pillars of the Earth and other sweeping epics, or people who need something to fall asleep to at night over the next several weeks. Definitely best read in small pieces.

Rating: 7/10
(TBR Challenge)

The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins

Soooooo remember when I read The Hunger Games and I liked it and then I read the sequels and I did not like them? If you did, you're better than me, because I totally forgot the first part of that. And so when my book group decided to read The Hunger Games I was like, uggggggggggggggggggggh I don't wanna.

And so I sat down and I started reading it, and then I got distracted by other books, and then I decided to just power through it and oh, right, I forgot that this one is actually pretty darn good and so I stayed up until midnight (horrors!) reading it.

In case you also have forgotten this book in the wake of its sequels, the premise is awesome: dystopian future, The Man (well, The Capitol) keeping his subjects down, said subjects unable to rally against The Capitol because they are instead pitted against each other in a yearly deathmatch using children and sadly not claymation. Oh, devious, Capitol. Delightfully evil. Well done.

My favorite parts of this book take place in the arena. Kids killing kids, kids allying with kids who are going to kill them later, kids making up temporary ethics in order to have some semblance of humanity in the midst of all the killing. Watching Katniss devise plans is awesome; watching her carry them out is even more awesome.

The rest? Eh. I had a lot of problems with this book last time I read it because of the love story, which still stinks, and the handful of things that seem super important at the beginning but seem to be forgotten by the end, which still exist and still irk but after reading the whole series I know which ones to just flat-out ignore. I actually got through a lot of the crappier parts of the book that way this time, just remembering that they weren't really important and thus not worrying about them. I highly recommend this course of action.

Another plus side to the re-read is that I could stop being frustrated that Collins chose to create a love story that I find both implausible and annoying and instead just read her story as written. I still found myself rolling my eyes at many turns, but I could appreciate better the interactions and emotions that Collins created. I'm going to maintain my allegiance to Team Katniss Should Grow A Pair, but I guess I can hang out with the other teams if they're having a party or something.

Recommendation: If you like a good (bad?) dystopian future and some excellent fighting and logic-using, you should read this book. Just this one.

Rating: 8/10
(A to Z Challenge)

The Grim Grotto, by Lemony Snicket

This is the second and last of the Unfortunate Events books Scott and I made it through on our road trip... Scott spent too much time sleeping for us to listen more. That's right. I'm blaming him. I'm sure he cares.

Right, so, this is the one, as I recalled before we started it, that features horseradish. And a submarine. I have an excellent memory, you can see. But it is true that there is a submarine, and it is captained by a man who says "AYE!" a lot and crewed by AYE!-man's step-daughter and the optimistic dude from The Miserable Mill. And there is a fungus among us and it is super-deadly except that the deadliness can be cured by horseradish. And so of course it is. Spoiler.

I liked this better than the previous book largely because it seems to have more going on — there's the fungus and the sugar bowl and some capturing and releasing and only a few more questions and a decent number of answers, aye. But overall the series is getting more tedious than I remember and I am really hoping that it picks up in the last two books, or I am going to be apologizing to Scott for the next five years.

Recommendation: I think you know if you're going to read this one or not.

Rating: 7/10

The Slippery Slope, by Lemony Snicket

Another road trip, another journey along the sad, sad path of the Baudelaire orphans! I'm not sure why that gets an exclamation mark, but it does.

Unfortunately (HA), I had forgotten how frightfully boring this installment is. After the violence and sloppy eating of The Carnivorous Carnival, this trip up a snow-covered mountain is just... meh.

What happens is this: Violet and Klaus have been separated from Sunny and are trying to find and rescue her, but they get sidetracked when they meet a wayward triplet and end up going to find the VFD headquarters, which has been set on fire. Meanwhile, Count Olaf is pretending it's The Bad Beginning all over again and making Sunny do chores. Yawn. Various secrets about the VFD are revealed, but of course they lead only to more secrets and more questions, and then in the end there is a very strange showdown that lets the orphans go on their not-so-merry way one more time.

I enjoyed it, certainly, because as always — TIM frickin' CURRY. But there is simply not enough exciting and treacherous in this story.

Recommendation: I mean, if you've read the other nine books already... :)

Rating: 7/10

The Looking Glass Wars, by Frank Beddor

A couple weeks ago, when I had run out of audiobooks to listen to at work (and just one day before a bunch of audiobooks I'd put on hold came in, of course!), I made an emergency trip to the library with my husband to find something to fill my time. I had no idea of what I wanted, so I just told Scott to grab the first thing that looked interesting. It was this, and I must say that Scott chooses very well!

Well, maybe. I adored this book, but from what the internets have told me, this is the kind of book that you're going to love or loathe, so be prepared!

What this is is a retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which I also liked quite a lot, largely because of Michael York. You know how it goes. Anyway, in Beddor's version, Alice is not just the overactively imagination-ed daughter of a friend of Charles Dodgson, but also Alyss Heart, Princess of Wonderland. After her not very nice aunt, Redd, comes out of exile, has Alyss's parents beheaded, and takes over Wonderland, Alyss is secretly shepherded out of Wonderland by Hatter Madigan, a Heart bodyguard and elite fighter. She ends up in late 19th-century London, where her story is mangled by Dodgson, and since no one believes her anyway she decides to forget all about having been a princess once. As these things go, of course, once she's grown up and about to be married, her wedding is crashed and she ends up back in Wonderland, where she has to fight Redd and try to win back the kingdom.

Or, to be brief, what this is is Alice with more action sequences.

And I liked it a lot. I'm always a fan of this kind of "true story" of a popular story, and I think Beddor does it quite well. Some of the conceits are a bit of a stretch (Dodgson inventing the White Rabbit from an anagrammatical counterpart, Bibwit Hare? Alyss and a boy being in love-ish at the age of, like, seven?), but for the most part I was totally on board with Beddor's world. I've seen some complaints about the writing, but I wasn't distracted by any of it while I was listening to this at work, so it can't be that terrible. If I ever get through all of the audiobooks that have subsequently arrived for me, I'm sure I will be dipping back into this series.

Recommendation: For readers of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland who thought, "Not enough heads are coming off, here."

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)

Still Alice, by Lisa Genova

I. Hate. Epilogues. Hate hate hate. Hate. I want to be all "This book is AWESOME" and "Holy heck this is one of the best books I've read this year" and then I remember the epilogue. -muttergrumble-

However, this book is awesome, and it is one of the best books I've read this year, if you stop listening or reading when the story should end. In fact, I was thinking about how sad and awesome that ending was when I heard "Epilogue." come out of Lisa Genova's mouth (she reads the audiobook version). So I'm just going to pretend the epilogue didn't happen and tell you about the rest.

-pretends-

This is definitely the Alzheimer's novel my previous book club should have read. So it is fitting that I've read it for my current book club, which hasn't met yet so I can't tell you what they think. But for me, it was amazing.

Well, not at the beginning. The beginning part, the background part, was kind of boring to me — it sets the scene of a high-achieving Harvard linguistics professor, Alice, and her equally high-achieving husband who is growing more and more estranged from her, and their kids, one of whom has pretty much totally written off Mom and has Dad helping her out behind Mom's back. And it feels like Genova, a neuroscientist by day, is just trying way too hard to be deep and meaningful about everything.

But then we get to the important and scary part of the story, which is that Alice starts forgetting things — a word here, an assignment there, how to get home from practically around the corner. Like anyone (well, I) would, she denies her problem until she can't anymore and finds out that she has early-onset Alzheimer's, at the age of 50. I've seen regular Alzheimer's in my family, and I can't even imagine having it at 50.

Well, no, now I can, because this book is told from Alice's point of view, generally as it happens so that the reader can watch her do something and forget it, and sometimes do it again and forget it, all while being otherwise extremely intelligent and rational. Listening to this book made me incredibly aware of any time I would forget anything, which is a regular occurrence in my brain, and wonder what that would be like on a much larger scale. Terrifying, I think.

And deeply depressing. I had to listen to Alice step down from her job, give up her running, start forgetting her children, and attempt to maintain control of her brain without exploding. I am tearing up a little just thinking about this book, which I finished a week ago, and of course last week at work I was just hoping no one would walk by my desk and see my depressed face. That would have been fun to explain.

I absolutely can't wait to talk about this at my book club, especially with those people who are a bit closer to 50 than I am...

Recommendation: Absolutely recommended, but only when you're in a mood to be depressed and worried.

Rating: 9/10 (I really hated that epilogue.)
(A to Z Challenge)

The Wordy Shipmates, by Sarah Vowell

This is the last Sarah Vowell review for a while, I promise! It turns out that I can only take so much of the same kind of book. Also, I didn't like this one very much, which is disappointing because I actually own the print version, but which is less disappointing because I only paid a dollar for it.

Anyway, this book is Sarah Vowell doing her Sarah-Vowell-iest to describe early Puritan America, specifically the set of Puritans that came over in 1630 to form the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There's lots of stuff about religion, of course, and Indian relations, but mostly what I remember is the politics (of course) and the fine lines everyone had to walk to attempt to make this whole colony thing work.

And this is interesting, sure, but unfortunately it seems that I am less intrigued by Puritan politics in the 1630s than I am about current politics and presidential assassinations, and so I must admit that I didn't pay that much attention to this audiobook. Well, except when Vowell went on her tangents — I will forever be amused by the idea of her explaining to her small nephew why the Puritans were still killing the Indians long after the "first Thanksgiving." Poor kid; his aunt is ruining everything for him!

Also, I may try actually reading this one again in the future; I think that part of my problem here was the fact that I know so much less about this aspect of history than I do about presidents and politics, and so I kept getting all the Johns confused, among other difficulties. Maybe if I can flip back and forth to remember who everyone is, I'll have a better time of it? Eh, give me a year or so and we'll see. :)

Recommendation: For history lovers who don't mind a little whimsy in their historical narratives.

Rating: 7/10

Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell

I mentioned re: The Partly Cloudy Patriot that I thought that Sarah Vowell's sarcastic nature might come across better in audio form over print form, and I think this is where I can say that that's true. I tried to read Assassination Vacation once before, a couple of years ago, and gave it up almost immediately for being odd and confusing. This time, though, I was better prepared and had Sarah Vowell reading it to me as it was meant to be read, and so it went down real smooth-like. Or whatever.

This book is similar to The Partly Cloudy Patriot in that it is a) about politics and b) liberally (ha!) sprinkled with Vowell's personal anecdotes. It is, as you might guess, about various assassinated presidents (but not JFK), but it's not so much about the assassinations themselves as about what the assassinations meant at that point in history and mean now and what happened as a result.

So, for example, Vowell talks about her favorite president, one Mr. Lincoln, and how his assassination was meticulously planned by Booth to happen on a laugh line to cover up the whole assassinating bit as much as possible. And then she talks about how Booth ran ostensibly without forethought toward a friend's place, and moves into a personal anecdote about how she and a friend tried to follow Booth's path, failing miserably even in a car with maps from MapQuest, like, come on, this was not an accidental hiding place.

In another amusing example, Vowell talks about Teddy Roosevelt succeeding the assassinated McKinley, and how he was out hiking in the Adirondacks when the whole dying thing was going on, and also how when a messenger from the White House came running up a mountain to find him and bring him back to Washington, Roosevelt was like, "Nah, I think I'll eat some dinner first." Priorities, right?

And then there was the only problem I had with this book as an audiobook... Charles Guiteau. He's the guy what shot James Garfield, whose monument in Lake View Cemetery I adore, and it turns out that he is really really annoying. Every time the voice actor playing him started talking, I found myself moving my headphones away from my ears and just waiting for the annoying to stop so I could listen to Sarah Vowell again. Part of this was the shouty quality of the actor (of Guiteau?) and part just how insane Guiteau's words were. He was a crazy person, I have found out.

But aside from Charles Guiteau, I quite liked this book. Assassinations are interesting creatures, and I liked the many and varied perspectives Vowell brought to them, from first-hand accounts of contemporaries to first-hand accounts of Vowell getting seasick on her way to the Dry Tortugas. Sometimes her tangents got a little out of hand, and sometimes she got too much into the minutiae of politics, but on the whole I think it struck a good balance.

Recommendation: For lovers of politics and murder most foul. Or just kind of foul, I guess, depending on your viewpoint.

Rating: 8/10

Middlesex, by Jeffrey Eugenides

After living in Jacksonville for eight months already (holy HECK), I've realized that I still barely get out of the house except to hang out with my husband, which is not a bad thing in the least but still I need some more friend-type things. So I've joined a book club! Huzzah! And I made it really easy on myself by waiting to join until they had picked a book I've already read, this here Middlesex.

Of course, I read it like seven years ago and so I had to read it again, but if you've ever read this book you will understand that it goes much more quickly and easily the second time.

It's amazing, re-reading a book. When I decided to join in on this discussion, I was like, "Oh, Middlesex. That's the one about the girl with the boy chromosomes who runs away and joins some crazy freak show. And yet I remember liking this?" I do remember liking it quite a lot, but it wasn't until I started reading it again that I remembered the other, oh, 99 percent of the book which is the actual good portion of it.

Because while Middlesex is, in fact, about a girl with boy chromosomes, and toward the end our fine protagonist does temporarily join a freak show after running away, these are not really the things the book is about. It starts off right from the beginning to be a sweeping epic tale of mythology and family and what it means to be any kind of person in a culture predominated by dichotomies.

Obviously I don't remember how I read this the first time, but I can tell you that my fellow book-clubbers were generally dissatisfied with the first half of the novel, which focuses heavily on our fine protagonist's grandparents and parents and the family history that leads to the birth of Calliope Stephanides, she of the XY chromosomes and love for "girly" things. After this opening, after Eugenides gets to talking about Calliope's life, that's when the story starts moving along at a faster pace as we try to catch up to Calliope-the-narrator's present-day life.

But actually I rather liked this first half, maybe because I knew I'd eventually get to the more exciting things and could relax and enjoy the writing. I could see more of Eugenides' work on making a mythology, putting the grandparents up on a hill and the vices at the bottom, setting them off on a seafaring voyage in which they fashioned new lives for themselves, meeting other secret-keepers and shape-shifters and disembodied voices — it was all just so perfectly Greek.

The second half is more like your average novel, as it gets into the more "important" themes of the story, which include the fight between Nature and Nurture and the question of how to be true to yourself. And then there's a freak show, which gets back into that mythological aspect with now-Cal playing Hermaphroditus. And I hadn't thought of it until just now, but it is perhaps fitting that people (including me, re: the freak show) had a harder time accepting the less "normal" aspects of this book.

Overall, then, I think that this book does accomplish what it sets out to accomplish, and does it with some really wonderful writing and imagery (and some clunkers, of course, but that's to be expected). And it's really perfect for a book club discussion.

Recommendation: For fans of mythology, science vs. tradition, and gender and sexuality issues.

Rating: 9/10
(A to Z Challenge)