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)

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 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.

The Quickening Maze, by Adam Foulds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

See also:
[your link here]

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

Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters

Fingersmith is an odd sort of book. It is really spectacularly long (500-ish pages, which is a lot to me), and for long stretches there isn't much in the way of action, and there's not a ton of character development or anything, but I'm still kind of in love with it.

This is probably because it is Victorian-inspired and therefore a little ridiculous and also crazy. The book is split into three parts, and the first is fairly boring and took me a long time to get through. But basically there are some thief-types, and one of them convinces another, called Sue, to do a sweet little undercover gig that'll earn Sue a bazillionty twelve dollars (I think that's the exchange rate on 3000 pounds circa 1900, yes?), and she goes to do it. Yay. But all the while, Sue is like, "I did this and this and this other thing, and if only I had known then what I know now!" and I was like, tell me more, but she doesn't, and then at the end of the first part it's made relatively clear and I was like, "Damn."

Seriously. An excellent finish... and then there's more! Two whole more parts! And there are more crazy twists and turns and scandal and babies and knives (not together) and madhouses and escapes and if this run-on sentence isn't intriguing you in the least bit, you're probably not going to like the book.

But I did very much like it, and in fact while looking for the image for this post I found out that there is a BBC adaptation of this book and I immediately added it to my Netflix queue. I am very interested to see how some of the scenes in this book get adapted to the screen, and how much of the first part gets cut in favor of scandal and pretty dresses.

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

See also:
The Written World
Trish's Reading Nook
things mean a lot

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

The Pox Party, by M.T. Anderson

I've had this one on my shelf awhile, and it almost went back to the library unread except that it's one of the books on my summer YA class reading list. I'm a big fan of getting things done early if they're things I want to do... just don't ask me about my final project due tomorrow!

Anyway... I have to say that if this hadn't been on my reading list, I probably wouldn't have finished it. It's very different from the books I usually read — it's historical fiction, it's partly epistolary, it's written in the tone of the 18th century, it's more of a narrative than a plot-driven story. It has a really long series title: The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation. But I did finish it, and I didn't hate it, but I didn't really like it.

Here's the plot: There's a kid called Octavian who lives with a bunch of nutty scholar-types who are performing experiments on him because he's a Negro and they want to know if he and his "homo afri" brain are as good as them with their "homo europaei" brains. These aren't painful experiments; they consist of lessons in music and classical languages mostly and are just meant to see if Octavian is actually able to learn them. Not a big deal... well, until the scholars' main benefactor kicks the bucket and the new guy in charge decides to prove that Octavian can't. Then Octavian runs away and we are told his story through the letters of others as he tries to have freedom in Revolutionary War-era Boston. How fun.

I liked Octavian, and rooted for him as he slowly discovered the truth behind his living arrangments and the world around him. I liked his sympathetic friends, and I even felt for some of the not sympathetic characters because Anderson did a good job showing the flip side of the whole slavery thing. I didn't really like the long stretches of nothing happening, but I know that Anderson was making a point and I appreciate it. I guess that's how it is with more literary novels, for me — I might not really like them, but I appreciate how they're built and executed and I'm glad I've read them. Unfortunately, I think my favorite part of this book was its presentation — deckled edges and an 18th century-style title page. Lovely.

Basically, don't go into this novel expecting excitement. The full title may include the words "astonishing life", but that might be just the tiniest bit hyperbolic. :) Maybe in the second book it gets more exciting?

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2006, A to Z Challenge, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

See also:
Blogging for a Good Book

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

The Madonnas of Leningrad, by Debra Dean (14 October — 18 October)

Sigh. I just don't even know what to say about this book. Remember People of the Book? That was a good book, but I would have liked it better if I didn't have to read about Hanna Heath in the present. Madonnas suffers from the same problem, only I don't even care about the parts in the past. Sigh.

Summary: The story follows our protagonist, Marina, in the present day and in her past when she was in Leningrad during World War II. Back then, she was a docent at a museum and was kept on to pack up all of the artwork and ship out what could be shipped out to save it from the German bombs. She also lived with her family and many others in the cellars of the museum, where they could save themselves from said bombs. Sometime during that, another museum worker recruits Marina to remember every single piece of art in the museum, even some that were taken away before Marina started there. So she does. Now, in the present day, Marina has Alzheimer's, and instead of being present with her husband and at her granddaughter's wedding, she flashes back to all these scenes of the past.

It's a pretty flimsy narrative device, especially since more time is spent in the past than in the present, and the past scenes don't tie in very well with the present scenes anyway. And, unlike People of the Book, the past scenes aren't very compelling. I understand why she would want to try to remember all of the works in the museum, but it never really pays off (unless "ironically" getting Alzheimer's counts as paying off). Also, there are a couple of magical/mystical/fantastical elements involving [spoiler?] sex with a god and some soldiers "seeing" the paintings that aren't there that just took me completely out of the story and irked me a bit.

Like I told one of my book club members, if it weren't a book club read I'd tell all of them not to finish it. It just wasn't worth it, to me.

Rating: 3/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2006)

See also:
Peeking Between the Pages
Age 30+... A Lifetime of Books

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

The Heretic's Daughter, by Kathleen Kent (1 July — 3 July)

When I opened up this book and saw a letter (the kind you send), I was a little nervous. I'm not a big fan of epistolary novels (Ella Minnow Pea notwithstanding) in general, because the exposition is always unwieldy and annoying. However, the letter soon ended and the book became simply a description of the life of Sarah Carrier.

Sarah is, in the story, a young girl living in Massachusetts near the end of the 17th century. Her family deals with the usual things — smallpox, farming, family rivalries, accusations of witchcraft... well, okay, that one comes a little later. Sarah's mother, Martha, is a bit of an independent woman, which is okay by her family and friends but not okay by really anyone else. When the Carriers move in with Martha's mother, they are not well-received by the town and eventually Martha is accused of being a witch. The book follows Sarah's perspective in all this and gives an interesting look at life in this strange time.

This description is a little weak, and I apologize for that, but I just didn't really get into this book. It was interesting, certainly, and I was happy to read through the end, but it's not some stunning new take on the trials or even on family dynamics. -shrug- If you like historical novels or novels about accused witches, you should give it a read, but everyone else could probably take a pass.

Rating: 6/10

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks (20 May — 27 May)

People of the Book is the fake story of the Sarajevo Haggadah, an illuminated seder text that baffles historians to this day. Brooks took some of the facts of the haggadah's discovery and created fictional characters and situations to explain how these things came to be.

Our protagonist, Hanna Heath, is a young but excellent book conservator who is tapped to handle the restoration of the book. While examining it, she discovers an insect wing, some wine stains, and a few salt crystals that pique her interest and get her asking questions. Although Hanna doesn't get all the answers, we do — Brooks writes scenarios for all of these that give a sense of the "people of the book" and why it is so important and revered.

I quite enjoyed this book, though it was a bit of a slow go as the narrative jumps back and forth between Hanna in the present and the other characters in their respective times. I found these journeys into the past to be more exciting than the present narrative, in which we discover that Hanna hates her mother and doesn't form lasting relationships and works with far too many young but excellent professionals. In the past, we discover the tyranny of religion, the compassion of individuals, and all of the discrete steps that had to be taken to make the Sarajevo Haggadah the complete book it is today. I can only hope that the haggadah's true story is as excellent as its fake one.

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

The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak (1 March — 5 March)

-sniffle- I really wasn't sure about this book. I'd heard good things, but when I picked it up and started reading I was a bit put off by Death's narrative style. Yes, Death is the narrator. Of a Holocaust book. Oh, joy. And Death spouts off about colors for a chapter, and it's symbolic, sort of, but it didn't make a lot of sense while reading it. Death also cuts in all the time with weird, bolded pronouncements like

* * * HERE IS A SMALL FACT * * *
You are going to die

That's on the first page. I was a bit concerned. But then, as I read some more, I got used to the intrusions and even started to appreciate them. That fact seems almost appropriate to this book.

Anyway, I said the book was about the Holocaust, but it's not, really. It's about a young German girl who is sent to live with a foster family during Hitler's reign, and how she grows up amid the tumult. She makes friends, she gets into fights, she steals some books (obviously), she helps hide a Jew, and she generally becomes a fine young woman. Of course, bad things happen all over the place. To paraphrase Death, an admission: I cried for the last 50 pages. It's not a happy book, and it took a bit to really pull me in, but it is a very very good book and you should read it.

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

Pillars of the Earth, by Ken Follett (19 October − 27 December)

Good job, Alison! I finally (finally!) finished this book, which, as you can see, I've been working on for two months. Now, obviously, I've read maybe a few other books since I've started this one, so two months is not terribly pathetic, but it certainly feels like I've been reading this forever.

Pillars of the Earth tells the stories of a whole bunch of interconnected people — Tom, whose life goal is to be master builder on a cathedral; Phillip, a monk in a small cell who hopes to make his priory strong; William, whose marriage to a girl called Aliena is called off by the girl herself and who decides to take revenge on, well, everyone; Aliena, who vows to right the wrongs done to her family; and Jack, who loves Aliena from the moment he meets her. It's all set over many years in the 1100s and brings in a lot of history, like the fighting between King Stephen and Empress Maud and later the murder of Thomas Becket.

It's really very good. The problem I had with it is that it's just so long! At 983 pages, it's definitely the longest novel I've ever read. I just could not focus on it for more than an hour at a time when I started it, so I relegated it to my at-work bathroom reading since the book is surprisingly small and easier to fit in my bag than many of the books I read. Hooray mass-market paperbacks.

Brilliantly, though, and as I would have hated had I read this more quickly, Follett spends more than a few sentences of the novel reminding the reader what has happened in the past. I caught myself a few times going, "Oh, right, Ellen did curse that fellow at the beginning of the novel!" and such.

You should read this if you have a few months to spare, or a long weekend with nothing to do.

Rating: 7/10

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, by John Boyne (18 December)

Well. Hmm. I was home sick yesterday and watched about 12 episodes of How I Met Your Mother (awesome show, btw) instead of starting this book. I felt silly at the time (I haven't spent so much time watching TV since I had finals to procrastinate!), but I think I'm pretty glad I didn't read this until I felt less like vomiting.

Note: John Boyne (the author) thinks that books should be read without knowing what's going to happen in them. In the case of this book, I would agree. If you're planning to read this with or without my notes, please go do that now. It won't take long.

This is a very short book (200 pages of large type, YA reading level, took me 3-ish hours to read), so I can't say much about it without giving away the whole darn thing, but here's a synopsis: our protagonist, Bruno, moves to a place called "Out-With" in 1943 as his father, a newly promoted commandant, has been assigned to a new job there. He's not terribly pleased at leaving Berlin, but learns to get along in his new home with only three floors and not five, especially after he goes on a walk along the fence by his house and discovers a new friend called Shmuel, who wears striped pyjamas* like the rest of the people on his side of the fence. Then the climax happens and the book is over.

When I heard about this book, I didn't realize it was YA (and apparently young YA, at that), so I guess I was expecting a little bit better characterization and plot — the characters are very flat and the plot saves itself all up until the end — but I did rather enjoy it nonetheless. I also would like to see the movie (is it out yet/still?), because I think that might help me out a bit — the author also doesn't do much with descriptions, though I think there might be a point hidden in there about all of us being the same. Subtle.

Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2006)

*So this book is totally supposed to be called The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, but for some reason (the fact that it's YA?) it's been Americanized to "pajamas." Strangely enough, the word "tyre" appears several times, and two instances of "pyjamas" are left unchanged. Is that "y" so difficult?