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
27 December 2008
Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher (20 December — 27 December)
This is the first of Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series, not about wizards for hire but about a fantasy world where people can control the elements through spirits called furies.
In this first book we meet Amara, a Cursor (still not clear exactly what that means) of the First Lord of the Aleran people. She is performing her Academy graduation exercise of infiltrating a rebel camp and finding out what they are planning when she is thwarted by an unexpected source — her mentor, who has been by her side in planning the investigation but also by the side of the rebels in leading Amara into a trap. She escapes to the Calderon Valley, where...
Tavi, a teenager who is well past the age for coming into furies but who does not have any. Tavi has let some of the sheep from his uncle Bernard's farm stay out all night, impressing a girl instead of herding them as he is meant to, but when he and Bernard go to find them in the morning, they find instead a Marat soldier, something not seen in the Calderon Valley for years. Bernard is nearly killed and Tavi must figure out how to survive a violent storm and return to the farm to warn everyone of the impending danger.
Along the way he meets up with Amara, she explains what's going on, and adventures are had, as they are in any good fantasy book.
I quite liked this book. The pacing was decent, the plot connected well, and the characters were interesting. There wasn't any of the "and then Tavi comes into his furies right when he needs them most!" that I was expecting, and little details fell into place really well. I especially appreciated the fact that the book was only 450 pages long, because those epic novels (see next post) can get a little tedious. Butcher cut out the fat but left in all the tasty protein (whoo metaphor!) I was looking for.
Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2004)
In this first book we meet Amara, a Cursor (still not clear exactly what that means) of the First Lord of the Aleran people. She is performing her Academy graduation exercise of infiltrating a rebel camp and finding out what they are planning when she is thwarted by an unexpected source — her mentor, who has been by her side in planning the investigation but also by the side of the rebels in leading Amara into a trap. She escapes to the Calderon Valley, where...
Tavi, a teenager who is well past the age for coming into furies but who does not have any. Tavi has let some of the sheep from his uncle Bernard's farm stay out all night, impressing a girl instead of herding them as he is meant to, but when he and Bernard go to find them in the morning, they find instead a Marat soldier, something not seen in the Calderon Valley for years. Bernard is nearly killed and Tavi must figure out how to survive a violent storm and return to the farm to warn everyone of the impending danger.
Along the way he meets up with Amara, she explains what's going on, and adventures are had, as they are in any good fantasy book.
I quite liked this book. The pacing was decent, the plot connected well, and the characters were interesting. There wasn't any of the "and then Tavi comes into his furies right when he needs them most!" that I was expecting, and little details fell into place really well. I especially appreciated the fact that the book was only 450 pages long, because those epic novels (see next post) can get a little tedious. Butcher cut out the fat but left in all the tasty protein (whoo metaphor!) I was looking for.
Rating: 7/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2004)
18 December 2008
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?
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?
16 December 2008
Looking for Alaska, by John Green (13 December — 16 December)
I'd been pondering purchasing a John Green novel for a certain friend of a certain name, but I didn't want to do that if the book turned out to suck. So I was going to read the book first, but then I found out that it was Green's second book, and you know how much I dislike reading things out of order (lest I read the best things first, Jodi Picoult, cough).
So, even though Looking for Alaska has sod-all to do with that certain other book (okay, whatever, it's called An Abundance of Katherines, like you didn't Google it already), I popped in a request to the library and found out that it's somehow quicker to get books from places two counties to the west of me than from my own friggin' library. A complaint for another time.
Back to the book! The titular Alaska is a girl called Alaska Young, who befriends our hero, Miles Halter (whose name I had to look up because he is called "Pudge" pretty much everywhere else in the novel), who has just arrived at boarding school to seek his "Great Perhaps." Pudge falls in love with this girl, who is kind of bipolar but also super awesome. SOMETHING BIG HAPPENS in the middle of the novel, which you know is coming because the little chapter sections are all labelled, like, "one hundred thirty-six days before" and "the last day" and "one hundred thirty-six days after" (see the symmetry!), but you have (or I, at least, had) no idea what that's going to be until it does happen.
This is definitely one of those bildungsroman novels, and it has one of those overarching morals based on death and dying (Pudge is obsessed with people's last words), and it is really quite good. The book is funny at times, sad at times, and definitely reminded me of coming to college and having to meet all new people and fit in. I just wished I'd pulled a prank or two like these guys. :)
Also, there's a preview of that other book at the end of this one, and I totally have to read that, too.
Also also, John Green has worked for mental_floss and NPR, so really, you know he can't be all bad.
Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2005)
So, even though Looking for Alaska has sod-all to do with that certain other book (okay, whatever, it's called An Abundance of Katherines, like you didn't Google it already), I popped in a request to the library and found out that it's somehow quicker to get books from places two counties to the west of me than from my own friggin' library. A complaint for another time.
Back to the book! The titular Alaska is a girl called Alaska Young, who befriends our hero, Miles Halter (whose name I had to look up because he is called "Pudge" pretty much everywhere else in the novel), who has just arrived at boarding school to seek his "Great Perhaps." Pudge falls in love with this girl, who is kind of bipolar but also super awesome. SOMETHING BIG HAPPENS in the middle of the novel, which you know is coming because the little chapter sections are all labelled, like, "one hundred thirty-six days before" and "the last day" and "one hundred thirty-six days after" (see the symmetry!), but you have (or I, at least, had) no idea what that's going to be until it does happen.
This is definitely one of those bildungsroman novels, and it has one of those overarching morals based on death and dying (Pudge is obsessed with people's last words), and it is really quite good. The book is funny at times, sad at times, and definitely reminded me of coming to college and having to meet all new people and fit in. I just wished I'd pulled a prank or two like these guys. :)
Also, there's a preview of that other book at the end of this one, and I totally have to read that, too.
Also also, John Green has worked for mental_floss and NPR, so really, you know he can't be all bad.
Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2005)
11 December 2008
Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi (7 December — 11 December)
I'd seen this book making its way around the various blogs I read, and everyone seemed to like it, so I picked it up from the library. It's not quite what I was expecting, but it was definitely good.
This is a book in Scalzi's Old Man's War series, but I haven't read those so I can't comment too much on how it fits in, except that Scalzi writes in his acknowledgements that the book runs parallel to the events of The Last Colony. Sweet, I guess?
This novel is the story of Zoë Boutin Perry, a teenager who is part of the first colony of colonists — where her planet was settled by people from Earth, she and a bunch of people from other planets are settling a new one. The problems start when the Colonial Union, who is sanctioning this colonization, informs the travellers that they are being hunted by a group called the Conclave who don't want anybody but themselves colonizing anything.
Things get worse from there, with all of the colonists forced to give up on electronics (gasp!) and the weird animals of the new planet — Roanoke — trying to kill the settlers and vice versa. Zoë is also told by her bodyguards (read the book!) that she may personally be being hunted, so she has to step up for some intensive combat training in addition to school and founding a civilization without a PDA.
I liked the book quite a bit; it was very light-hearted and definitely sounded like it was narrated by a teenager. And Scalzi really makes the characters real. I had cried twice by the end of the book, and I don't care what you think! I will definitely have to pick up Old Man's War at some point in the future.
Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2008)
This is a book in Scalzi's Old Man's War series, but I haven't read those so I can't comment too much on how it fits in, except that Scalzi writes in his acknowledgements that the book runs parallel to the events of The Last Colony. Sweet, I guess?
This novel is the story of Zoë Boutin Perry, a teenager who is part of the first colony of colonists — where her planet was settled by people from Earth, she and a bunch of people from other planets are settling a new one. The problems start when the Colonial Union, who is sanctioning this colonization, informs the travellers that they are being hunted by a group called the Conclave who don't want anybody but themselves colonizing anything.
Things get worse from there, with all of the colonists forced to give up on electronics (gasp!) and the weird animals of the new planet — Roanoke — trying to kill the settlers and vice versa. Zoë is also told by her bodyguards (read the book!) that she may personally be being hunted, so she has to step up for some intensive combat training in addition to school and founding a civilization without a PDA.
I liked the book quite a bit; it was very light-hearted and definitely sounded like it was narrated by a teenager. And Scalzi really makes the characters real. I had cried twice by the end of the book, and I don't care what you think! I will definitely have to pick up Old Man's War at some point in the future.
Rating: 8/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2008)
07 December 2008
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (2 December — 7 December)
This book was on my "To Read" list two summers ago, but didn't make it onto this year's list, probably because I couldn't remember why it was on my list in the first place — that's the problem with having so many good books out there! But, fortunately (or was it fate...), I saw it again on another blog and was reminded that I wanted to read it because it was a book about books. So brilliant, right?
Very right.
So our protagonist is Daniel Sempere, a boy living in Barcelona just after the Spanish Civil War. His father, a bookseller, takes his almost-11-year-old son to a place called the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, where Daniel is told to select a book that he will adopt to make sure it never disappears and will always stay alive.
Daniel finds a book called The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, which turns out to be pretty much the best book Daniel's ever read. When he learns that Carax's books have been forgotten not just because of their limited publishing but because a mysterious stranger, going by the name of Shadow's protagonist, has been collecting and burning the novels, Daniel sets off to find out the truth behind the rumors of Carax's life.
I very much liked this book. It is a translation from the original Spanish, so a few of the turns of phrase are a bit awkward, and a couple things don't quite line up, fact-wise, but all in all the book has a solid plot and an excellent story. I have to say also that I had the big twists figured out from the beginning, but I still had an excellent time finding out just why those twists happened. There are so many lives intertwined in this story, and all of them are interesting.
Rating: 8/10
Very right.
So our protagonist is Daniel Sempere, a boy living in Barcelona just after the Spanish Civil War. His father, a bookseller, takes his almost-11-year-old son to a place called the Cemetary of Forgotten Books, where Daniel is told to select a book that he will adopt to make sure it never disappears and will always stay alive.
Daniel finds a book called The Shadow of the Wind, by Julián Carax, which turns out to be pretty much the best book Daniel's ever read. When he learns that Carax's books have been forgotten not just because of their limited publishing but because a mysterious stranger, going by the name of Shadow's protagonist, has been collecting and burning the novels, Daniel sets off to find out the truth behind the rumors of Carax's life.
I very much liked this book. It is a translation from the original Spanish, so a few of the turns of phrase are a bit awkward, and a couple things don't quite line up, fact-wise, but all in all the book has a solid plot and an excellent story. I have to say also that I had the big twists figured out from the beginning, but I still had an excellent time finding out just why those twists happened. There are so many lives intertwined in this story, and all of them are interesting.
Rating: 8/10
01 December 2008
The Tenth Circle, by Jodi Picoult (29 November — 1 December)
You know, I really don't know why I keep reading Jodi Picoult. I mean, My Sister's Keeper was awesome, and so were a couple other of her novels, but after reading something like six or seven of them those fancy plot twists are getting a little predictable and also contrived and annoying.
And yet I still enjoy them. I think it's the same love I have for watching Law and Order on Sunday nights... I know that I'm probably not going to learn anything in the end, but it's just so nice to let the story flow over me.
This one, though, I don't know. It's about a 14-year-old girl called Trixie (no, really) who gets dumped by her boyfriend, Jason, and then has some breakup sex with him at her friend Zephyr's (no, REALLY) party, after not playing a game of "let's be whores and give everyone blowjobs."
That's where the bad started, I think. The book was written in 2006, so this girl and her schoolmates would be around my brother's age, and unless things really changed in three years or that's just how they do it up in Maine, I can't really be convinced that giving blowjobs is a party game. I guess maybe my brother and I just weren't popular enough to be whores. Crying shame, that.
But! Taking that as fact, we then have Trixie coming home and declaring that Jason raped her. Okay, that sucks. And since Jason is the star of the hockey team, everyone (including 13 anonymous teachers at their high school) supports Jason over Trixie. That's also bad news.
Oh, and at the same time, Trixie's dad, Daniel, is coming to terms with the fact that his wife had an affair and also penning a comic book/graphic novel (not really clear which) called The Tenth Circle about a dad who loses his daughter to hell and has to find her with the help of Virgil. Did I mention that his wife is teaching a class on Dante? And, of course, Daniel is also worried that his wild, ass-kicking past is going to come back in full force if he ever has to see Jason.
There's just... there's a lot here. And while the story is definitely engrossing, as are all of Picoult's stories, it's just not satisfying in the end.
Well. Anyway. To be honest, I really should have stopped reading when Picoult claimed there were yellow Pixy Stix. Let's get some fact-checking up in here, people.
Rating: 5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2006)
And yet I still enjoy them. I think it's the same love I have for watching Law and Order on Sunday nights... I know that I'm probably not going to learn anything in the end, but it's just so nice to let the story flow over me.
This one, though, I don't know. It's about a 14-year-old girl called Trixie (no, really) who gets dumped by her boyfriend, Jason, and then has some breakup sex with him at her friend Zephyr's (no, REALLY) party, after not playing a game of "let's be whores and give everyone blowjobs."
That's where the bad started, I think. The book was written in 2006, so this girl and her schoolmates would be around my brother's age, and unless things really changed in three years or that's just how they do it up in Maine, I can't really be convinced that giving blowjobs is a party game. I guess maybe my brother and I just weren't popular enough to be whores. Crying shame, that.
But! Taking that as fact, we then have Trixie coming home and declaring that Jason raped her. Okay, that sucks. And since Jason is the star of the hockey team, everyone (including 13 anonymous teachers at their high school) supports Jason over Trixie. That's also bad news.
Oh, and at the same time, Trixie's dad, Daniel, is coming to terms with the fact that his wife had an affair and also penning a comic book/graphic novel (not really clear which) called The Tenth Circle about a dad who loses his daughter to hell and has to find her with the help of Virgil. Did I mention that his wife is teaching a class on Dante? And, of course, Daniel is also worried that his wild, ass-kicking past is going to come back in full force if he ever has to see Jason.
There's just... there's a lot here. And while the story is definitely engrossing, as are all of Picoult's stories, it's just not satisfying in the end.
Well. Anyway. To be honest, I really should have stopped reading when Picoult claimed there were yellow Pixy Stix. Let's get some fact-checking up in here, people.
Rating: 5/10
(Countdown Challenge: 2006)
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