The Book of Speculation

The Book of Speculation
By Erika Swyler
2015
St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 978-1-250-05480-7
Hardcover
(Not Sure where I bought it)
Plan to swap away/sell

So The Book of Speculation had some bookstore and book blog buzz when it came out, and it has a lovely cover design. (Upon reflection, I am sure that the cover was designed in part to attract exactly the sort of reader that I am, someone who loves a good book about old books.) I'm not sure when I picked it up, but it looked like something that I would find entertaining.

And I did find it entertaining, but in a way that was disappointing. I was expecting something magical and complex (Think: The Historian or The Shadow of the Wind) and instead found something predictable and merely diverting. It was a fun way to spend a couple weekend days, but I saw the end coming from a million miles away, which is not something you want in a book that's supposed to be something of a mystery. Overall, just OK. I might have enjoyed it more had I been expecting less. I think there's much better work out there in the same general class, and despite the lovely cover art, I'll be letting this one go.

Gretel and the Dark

Gretel in the Dark
By Eliza Granville
2014
Riverhead Books
ISBN: 978-1-59463-255-6
Hardcover
Impulse buy at Joseph Beth, Date unrecorded
Stamped and keeping forever

I love fairy tales. I love them more as an adult when I am free to know that the original fairy tale stories are far darker and more gruesome than those that I was familiar with as a child. I love the casual magic. I love how adaptations and retellings of fairy tales help us to see the universality of human stories.

Gretel in the Dark is a beautiful example of an adaptation of fairy tales to a human story that is hard to talk about. In it, we alternate between the story of Lillie, a mystery woman who claims to be a machine on a mission to kill a monster in late 19th century Vienna, and Krysta, a young girl who ends up in the Ravensbruck concentration camp. It is unclear at the beginning how these two stories are connected, but both are compelling.

I found the beginning of the book a little difficult to get though, at first I wasn't sure where either of the stories were going, and I found Krysta to be a singularly unappealing narrator in the first couple of chapters in her voice. However, it was worth the work to get into it, because once I got involved in the story I was completely consumed. I couldn't put it down.

The beauty of this book is in what is not said. Once you get over the fact that Krysta is initially an unlikable child, the fact that the horrors of the concentration camp are represented only though her incompletely comprehending eyes make them all the more visceral and disturbing. The sense of magic, covert and just beneath the surface, leaves you wondering if you are just seeing this story with the innocence of a child, or if you are in a parallel universe where the rules are just slightly different. As the parallels between the two tales emerge, you wonder who has cast the spell that makes them both possible.

And in the end, you are left a deep sense of storytelling as a driver of humanity. As a way of understanding both the horrors and triumphs of our complicated lives. As a uniquely human magic with a real and significant power.

2016 is a young year, but I have a sense that this one is going to stick with me. I wouldn't be surprised if it's on my best reads of the year list come December.

The Smartest Kids In The World

The Smartest Kids in the World

By Amanda Ripley

Along with the rest of America, I have been thinking this weekend about things that I am thankful for. My education is one of the things that came most prominently to mind. There are a couple of reasons for that: (1) I had a fabulous Thanksgiving dinner with fellow medical students hosted by two professors and (2) one of my former professors, who was a gifted and kind teacher, passed away this past week. These two events made me think about how much the tendrils of my education have reached into all areas of my life, shaping my attitudes and my worldview, introducing me to wonderful people that I truly love, and allowing me to find work that is challenging, rewarding, and exciting. It's hard for me to imagine who I might be without the influence of the people and places that have educated me through all these years, and this weekend, I felt very grateful for their time and teaching.

Although, being honest, I spend a lot of time thinking about education in general, and my education specifically. Perhaps this is a side effect of being in the 23rd grade. Perhaps it's the residuals of that summer I spent in Teach For America training. Either way, education is a topic that I've been interested in for a long time. I've had my eye on this book for quite a while, so when it turned up on a bargain table and I had a gift card, I picked it up.

The Smartest Kids in the World takes the conversation about education away from local politics (that so often dominate the conversation in America) to look at differences from an international perspective. Ripley follows three American exchange students: one each in Finland, South Korea, and Poland. Through the experiences of these students, Ripley talks about the differences in educational systems around the world, and the corresponding differences in international test scores. She focuses primarily on the PISA, an international test that requires critical thinking as opposed to wrote memorization.

The author is a journalist, and the book feels more like an (extremely) long form article than anything else. It skims the surface of these issues rather than going into great depth. There is not much here that even a peripheral watcher of education like myself hasn't thought about before. She doesn't tell nearly enough of the stories of her representative students to make them feel like real fleshed out characters, squandering an opportunity that could have allowed her to say something new about these issues.

So, read this book if the following ideas sound new or interesting: Teachers in Finland are more rigorously screened and trained than those in most other nations, and their work in the classroom reflects this intellectual strength. The extreme high pressure end-of-high-school exam in South Korea is associated with a lucrative test prep industry, stressed and sleep-deprived students, and parents who think of themselves as "educational coaches." Expectations and peer attitudes influence school performance, and tracking students early leads to poor outcomes for the lowest track. Grit, hard work, and a willingness to stick with it when things get hard are all as important as pure brains. Most other nations in the world do not have nearly the focus on athletics that Americans do, and in many nations, there is no such thing as a "school team." Rigor and high expectations lead to better student performance around the US and around the world, regardless of socioeconomic factors. (Shout out to TFA! I recognized that one.)

Overall, The Smartest Kids in the World is an acceptable general interest read. But for me, the most enlightening thing in the book was Ripley's repeated observation that no nation is satisfied with what they've got. (Apparently one of the things that you hear traveling the world talking about education is people from all around the world complaining about their local educational system). If you've thought about this a lot, this volume is too slim to offer anything new. However, if you haven't thought about education much before, this is an accessible introduction that gets to some serious issues not always mentioned in discussions focused on the American system alone.

And yes, it left me feeling extremely grateful for a number of things: parents who read to me as a child and encouraged my love of books and words and science from the first, what little bit of grit I've got, and Miss Porter's - a place where I was truly challenged in ways that made me a better thinker. I am extremely grateful for all 23 grades of my education so far, and for the long weekend off that allowed me to read something about education in between all the education I'm still getting in pediatrics and neuroscience. Appreciation for the process is sometimes the best motivator... so back to work I go.

Missing Microbes

Missing Microbes
By Martin J. Blaser
2014
Henry Holt and Co.
288 pages
ISBN: 9780805098105
LibraryThing Early Reviewers Program

I am a neuroscientist, but I've found myself thinking a lot about microbiome science (traditionally the realm of immunologists and microbiologists) lately. There are a couple of reasons for this. (1) It's one of the areas that has gotten a lot of coverage in the media lately. The communication of scientific results in the popular media is one of my areas of interest,  soI have read a few primary papers in the past couple of months to compare the actual results to the stories in the popular news media. (2) Dr. Jeff Gordon (the microbiologist, not the NASCAR driver) gave a (fantastic!) talk at the annual MSTP retreat that left me with a bunch of questions to do follow up reading on. (3) I have been thinking a lot about non-invasive interventions that influence emotional regulatory brain systems, and it turns out that there is some evidence that probiotics may fall into that category (Curious? Read the abstract here.) Anyway, I was very excited to get a free review copy of this book from the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.

Dr. Martin Blaser is one of the leaders in the field of microbiome research, and this book serves as an excellent introduction to the biology of the human microbiome, and how and modern medical practices are changing human-bacterial interactions. As a physician-scientist and someone who has done some in depth reading in the field, I found the first few chapters overly simplistic, but I suspect that they are at the right level for the general science reader. (General science readers, please tell me if this impression is correct.) Overall, I think that Blaser's summary of the ongoing research in this field is well-written and clear.

Dr. Blaser's basic thesis is that many modern ailments, including obesity, asthma and allergies, and inflammatory bowel disease, may be related to the alterations in the human microbiome, and that these alterations have been brought on by such practices as overuse of antibiotics and the increased frequency of Cesarean section births. Microbiome studies is a developing and active field of research, with new findings being published practically every day. Blaser's review is fairly comprehensive, and he does a good job describing the methods and findings of specific studies to allow the readers not only to hear the conclusions, but see how those conclusions were reached.

However, I do think that Dr. Blaser is sometimes a little overzealous in his presentation of potential human clinical applications of preclinical (animal) research findings, sometimes taking things one or two steps further than the data specifically supports. My work in science communication has led me to be very wary of stating the potential future implications of work without carefully emphasizing the potential aspect, and Blaser sometimes falls on the wrong side of that divide. To me this is doubly unfortunate because he also misses the chance to describe the future research needed to translate the basic science findings into actual human heath applications. In this time of limited science funding, this is a missed to present the process of translational science to the general public in what I suspect will be a widely read book. A better explanation could have gone far to garner support for research funding, especially in this increasingly "hot" topic in human health.

Overall, this is a very strong book. Perhaps most importantly, it presents one of the more well-articulated and accessible arguments for limiting antibiotic use that I have ever encountered. As a health professional, I can only hope that many of my patients will read it and come to the office ready to engage in an informed discussion of the risks and benefits of choosing antibiotic treatment.

Note: I received a free review copy of this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. The opinions expressed here are my own, and were not influenced by the publisher aside from the fact that I read this book sooner than I might have otherwise because I wanted to write a timely review.

Buzz Books 2014: Young Adult

So I recently joined a site called NetGalley.com, which gives free digital galleys of soon-to-be-released books to "professional readers," including bloggers and people that write reviews for websites. My chance of getting free books increases if my blog is more active (and if I get more people to actually read this). Getting free books that I want to read before they even come out is extra motivation to write more, which is something that I wanted to do anyway. I'm hoping that checking in here will help me keep in touch with my reading life as I dive into the third year of medical school. Think of this post as the first in a revitalization of this blog. I am committing to posting at least once a week going forward. Right. 

Anyway, one of the first things I downloaded is a thing called Buzz Books 2014: Young Adult. This is a book that has previews of around 20 forthcoming young adult books. For each one I got 10 pages or so, mostly from the very beginning of the book. I think this is particularly cool because while I often enjoy YA, I also find that it's the highest risk of the genres that I read. I love some books that are called YA, but others are too childish, poorly written, or just not great. Digging through an increasingly crowded field to find The Book Thief can be hit or miss. Plus, I don't have sources of reviews and recommendations that I trust the way I do for "adult" novels. However, these short previews are enough to help me decide what I want to take the time to read, and what I can skip. I've put the books into four main categories (1) Want to read, (2) Not for me, but good enough that I can see imagine suggesting to the right audience (3) Intriguing, but not for right now (4) Probably just skippable.

Now, obviously these books aren't out yet as I write this, and these are impressions based on only about 2 chapters of each. You should take everything I say here with a grain of salt. Really, I'm mostly doing this as an exercise for the compulsive book-finisher. (I can count on my fingers the books that I have actually given up on, but the books I SHOULD have given up on is a much longer list.)

The preview format actually forces a decision-point; I read a little bit and then decide if what I have read so far makes it worth making extra effort to read more. There's no inertial force to keep reading because the whole book is already in my hands. We'll see how it pans out between this and the other Buzz Books edition of adult reads that I also downloaded. So far, I think that I find it liberating. It's also an exercise in reading eBooks, not my favorite thing, but something it might be useful to accept in some situations.

So with that, my impressions of the books in Buzz Books 2014: YA

Want to read

Zac and Mia By A.J. Betts
This one is about kids in a cancer ward (perhaps a relation of The Fault in Our Stars, but I haven't gotten to that one yet.) Separated by a hospital room wall we have a long term ward resident in isolation as he recovers from a bone marrow transplant (Zac), and a new arrival who plays Lady Gaga loudly and on repeat (I assume Mia, although that wasn't revealed in the excerpt.) The writing is good, the characters, not just Zac, but also his mother and one of the nurses on the floor, have the feel of real people in only a few short pages. I can't completely explain why I want in on this one, but it got me.

Vivian Apple at the End of the World By Katie Coyle
A young girl living in the world where a predicted rapture has gained cultural power far greater than Harold Camping ever warranted. Even Vivian's parents have become "believers," and she herself is clearly conflicted. The strength of this is good world building even in the first few pages, especially with the quotes from magazines that present a religion that appears an interesting mix of conservative social rules and consumerism. I want to know what happens after just one chapter, so I'll take the time to find out.

Lies We Tell Ourselves By Robin Talley
This one is the story of one of the first black students to integrate a high school in Virginia (and supposedly also one of her white classmates, although that character doesn't obviously appear in the excerpt.) The writing is powerful and emotionally charged, and frankly, with all the coverage of the 60th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education in the last couple of weeks, I find myself curious about integration. This book seems like a cool jumping off point to explore.

The Accidental Highwayman By Ben Tripp
This one, supposedly based on a collection of documents pulled out of an old trunk, has a feel like The Gates By John Connelly, which I truly love. From the excerpt, it seems that a somewhat hapless 16-year-old-servant is about to be sucked into a series of misadventures due to the secret second life of his master. Dryly funny, and I think worth reading.

Afterworlds By Scott Westerfeld
A book that switches back and forth between the life of an 18-year-old author, who defers college for a life in New York City, and the novel that made that choice possible. I am more intrigued by the story within the story so far, (I found the sections of the author signing her contracts and bickering with her sister a little bland). However, the beginning of that story was quite gripping, and I want to read the whole thing, so I am willing to take this one on and hope that the other component picks up quickly.

Not for me, but good enough that I can imagine suggesting to the right audience

Press Play  By Eric Devine
Here we have an overweight teen boy who finds himself in possession of evidence that the lacrosse team that torments him is conducting brutal hazing rituals with the consent of the principal (who has contributed to his position as an outcast.) The first couple chapters seemed to me vaguely reminiscent of The Chocolate War, a book similarly about school politics, the fraught interactions between high school students and faculty, and the power of gang rule in schools. I loved The Chocolate War and found it powerful as a young adult, but haven't read in probably 20 years. I expect from the quality of the writing and the characterization in the first pages of this one that this might represent a timely update, although "the bad guys" might be a little too explicitly bad for there to be much nuance. Either way, I can see how this book would appeal to middle and high school students, but I think that I am past the time when I personally would enjoy a trip back into the sordid politics of high school.

The Zoo At The End of The World By Eric Kahn Gale
This book is about a kid that stutters but can talk to animals. To me this one felt a little more upper middle grade than YA, but the writing was good for that demographic. Overall, the idea is cool, the central character is appealing, and I can see it being a good fit for my younger cousins that fall into that in-between demographic. I imagine that what is clearly going to be a banner cast of animal characters will only make this more appealing for the upper middle graders. I might be buying copies of this one as Christmas gifts.

Bombay Blues By Tanuja Desai Hidler
This is the sequel to a book I haven't read, so it loses something but is not really at fault. I do want to say that it is great to see a well-developed young woman of color as a central character in a mainstream YA book, especially one that seems to deal explicitly with issues of cultural conflicts. Still, I doubt this one is worth reading if I haven't read Born Confused, and I am not sure that I am interested enough to go back.  We'll see, maybe some other time. Either way, for fans of Born Confused this starts strong.

Talon By Julie Kagawa
This is the first in a series about dragons who can take human form and are living among us, hiding from soldiers of the Order of St. George out to hunt them to extinction. The concept is cool, but the execution in the first chapters felt a little juvenile. I'd be willing to bet this one will hit with kids, (again, some of the cousins come to mind) but I doubt it will translate to adults as well as The Hunger Games or Divergent did. I certainly didn't love it enough to commit to a series.

Clariel By Garth Nix
This is a prequel to a completed trilogy. The writing is good enough that I'm sure readers of the other books will like it, but I am not one of them, and don't plan to become one.

King Dork Approximately By Frank Portman
Another second in series which seems good enough that I'd bet those that liked the first one will enjoy it, but not good enough to make me want to read the first one. 

Falling Into Place  By Amy Zhang
This is a book about the events leading up to the suicide (attempt?) of a popular high school student. The writing was just 100%, completely, all out teen angst. I'm sure that middle and high school girls all over the  country will love it, but I have (thankfully) aged out of that demographic, so I'll pass. 

Intriguing, but not for right now

Endgame  By James Frey and Nils Johnson-Shelton
The concept here is interesting. Basically, this is a book that is going to have an interactive real world component that extends outside the book, with some sort of video game build by the google people and puzzles for readers to solve. However, the writing felt choppy. That might just be an artifact of switching between two radically different character's perspectives in a short excerpt without the flow that might be achieved by returning to either. Basically, I can see this one going either way: it might be a seriously awesome idea that changes what teens expect from books, and it might totally flop. Clearly the publisher is putting a ton of resources behind it to push it into the former category. However, it seems to me that the experience will depend on the social component of how other readers are interacting with the book and the game as a whole. So I'll make my choice closer to the October release date when I have a better sense of how that is going to play out. This might be cool enough to get me to voluntarily engage with a series before all the volumes come out. We'll see.

Skink No Surrender By Carl Hiaasen
The beginning of this one mostly just made me curious about the back story on Skink, who is clearly a character of monumental proportions. Apparently he also appears in some of Hiaasen's adult novels, so I think that I will attempt those first. I can see myself coming back to this one, because I suspect that Skink is exactly the kind of character that I am going to fall in love with.  
I'll Give You The Sun By Jandy Nelson
This is a story about twins, that supposedly has a before-and-after format with some life-altering event in the middle. The beginning was good, but for some reason, it didn't completely grab me. I'll wait for reviews on this one, and see if it pops once it's out rather than leading the charge.

The Scavengers By Michael Perry
Another dystopian teen novel. The first couple chapters were OK, and I am moderately intrigued, but the dystopian fiction genre is so very overcrowded and full of duds, that it would take an extremely power opening to get me on board. This was just fine, so I'll wait and see if someone else tells me that I have to read it.

Belzhar By Med Wolitzer
This one is about a young girl sent to a boarding school for emotionally challenged teens after losing her boyfriend. It really could go either way. We all know that I love a good boarding school book, but I'm not sure how much I can take of the life-ending trauma of losing a boyfriend at 15. There just wasn't enough in the excerpt to decide if the good things are going to outweigh the bad, so I'll wait to hear more from readers that I trust.

Probably Just Skippable

Ghost House By Alexandra Adornetto
This one starts with a teen girl wandering in the woods, and coming across a devastatingly handsome fellow who is dressed inappropriately for the times, and who creeps her out a little bit. We're led to believe by the end of the preview that this gentleman might have supernatural origins. The characterization is fine, not obviously bad writing, but I am not sure that the world needs more paranormal teen romances, and I am sure that I do not. I suppose, if you are a lover of paranormal romance, this might be worth looking into, as the writing was fine. However, I don't know anyone that falls both into that category whom I might buy books for or actively recommend books to, so I doubt that I'll ever interact with this one again.

Black Ice By Becca Fitzpatrick
A teen girl going on a camping trip with best friend and ex-boyfriend in the middle of nowhere. This started with the main character running into the ex in a convenience store. She's trying to convince him that she's moved on, so she tells him that the handsome, older stranger pumping gas is her boyfriend. Much to her surprise, the stranger plays along when he comes into the store, but seems to know (or guess) creepily much about her. I can see where this one is going, and I don't really want to go there.

Rumble By Ellen Hopkins
A novel in poems is a very interesting concept, and some of the little plays on language in this excerpt show the potential of the format. Still, this just didn't do enough with it to be worth my time. The poems weren't anything special, and while the line structure changes often, there weren't enough differences between them in meter or language or voice to make them feel like separate pieces of writing. Overall, this seemed like a traditional prose novel with random bold titles and line breaks. I suppose that I might have been really into it if it came out during my bad-poetry-writing-phase in 8th and 9th grade. I suppose also that there is a whole new generation of bad-poetry-writing 14- and 15-year-olds, although I don't know what do they do without livejournal and bolt.com. They might make it a hit, but it's not worth my time or the time of other adults. 

Five Kingdoms: Rogue Night By Brandon Mull
Like Bombay Blues this is the second in a series, and I didn't read the first one. Here though, much more was lost for not having read the first book, and I was largely confused. I suppose there might have been a lot of beautiful world building in the first book, but what they gave me of this felt thin and disjointed. There was nothing compelling enough to make me even consider wanting to go find the first book. Overall, choppy and young, and more upper middle grade than YA. I won't be coming back to it.

Note: I think that it's obvious, but I received a copy of this book free from NetGalley.com. Aside from the freeness, I received no compensation for writing this review.

The Giver Quartet

I am of the opinion that not much useful information came out of NPR's list of the top 100 best young adult books, which was released this summer. For me, the fact that they excluded Ender's Game  from consideration because it is "too violent" is reason enough to think that the entire list must be crap. First of all, I don't think that Ender's Game is too violent for young adult readers, especially not those at the higher end of the age range they mention (12-18 years old). In fact, I believe that Ender is perhaps at his most powerful right in the middle of this range, for the 15- and 16-year-olds of this world, and I would recommend that book without reservation for any interested high school reader, and mature middle schoolers as well. Of course, the real absurdity is excluding Ender's Game for violence from a list that leaves behind The Hunger Games (and ranks it #2). But really, all this is another blog post. My central complaints are: (1) the list is a pure popularity contest (2) some of what I would consider the true classics of young adult literature were excluded from consideration (3) imagining that 12-18 year old kids represent a single reading population is frankly insane.

All that aside, I did get one piece of information that interested me out of the whole thing: Lois Lowry had returned to the world of The Giver for subsequent books. In fact, Lowry had returned to that world even more than the list gave her credit for, as the fourth and final book in The Giver Quartet was released just after the booklist came out.

Let there be no question that The Giver is one of the greats of children's/young adult literature. It is a beautiful, powerful story that is one of the only books that I can specifically remember the experience of reading as a child. (While I am not 100% sure, I believe that I read it shortly after it won the 1994 Newbury Medal, which would have made me about 12 at the time).

So I was curious, so I went back to The Giver and read on through the rest of the series over about a month this fall. What follows are my notes on this experience.

The Giver
By Lois Lowry
1993
Laurel Leaf
192 pages
ISBN: 0-440-23768-8
Cincinnati Public Library

I'll repeat myself, because this is important: The Giver is a giant among books targeted to a younger audience. Adults that have not read it should go get a copy and look forward to a wonderful afternoon. All parents should be anticipating to the compelling and challenging experience of reading it together with their middle-grade-ish child. Every serious child reader needs to spend some time with this one.

I was just such a serious child reader, and I remember reading The Giver  as a child because the premise made me deeply uncomfortable, and then the ending even more so. I remember really thinking about the larger implications of this book, the way that my world fit with the world that it was set in. I remember being uncomfortable in a way that I don't think I really had before. I remember thinking the ending could have been "better," which in my mind at the time most likely translated to "more explicit." I remember wondering for weeks and weeks "what happened" to Jonas and Gabriel. I remember adults telling me that I was free to imagine what had happened, and finding that unsatisfying.

We're talking about something that happened close to 20 years ago now, I've read probably thousands of books since I first picked this one up, yet I still think of The Giver as something that mattered in my development as a bookworm, as the first book with an adult-like impact on my thinking about the experience of being a reader. It's important to me.

And really, it has lost almost nothing over the years. I have revisited it several times, including as the topic for a philosophy paper my freshman year at Boston College. I have found the story lovely, moving, troubling, and powerful each and every time. This reading was no exception. Sure, the story seems a little short now, but overall, still something wonderful, truly exceptional. A tough, perhaps impossible act to follow.

Gathering Blue
By Lois Lowry
2000
Houghton Mifflin Company
215 pages
ISBN: 0-618-05581-9
Cincinnati Public Library

The "tough act to follow" nature of The Giver is perhaps why Lowry waited so long to do so. Gathering Blue, the second book in the series, appeared in 2000. That's seven years after The Giver, and well after I was no longer aware of the newest middle-grade books.

And it's fine, good even, but it's nothing compared to The Giver. The world is just weaker.

That being said, the characters are a particular strength. Kira rendered with a gentle touch, and Matty is a revelation and a delight. The story felt a little predictable for me, but I imagine it would be far less so for readers in the target age range. Even when I clearly saw some of the "twists" coming, I still found myself compelled to read on and learn what happened. In the end, I was moved by Kira's final choice.

The "sequelness" of this book is quite subtle. Indeed, looking at some young adult book review websites, the connection appears to be lost on many readers. I'm not sure that this is a bad thing.

Overall, I thought that Gathering Blue was entertaining, but The Giver is in an entirely different league.

Messenger
By Lois Lowry
2004
Houghton Mifflin Company
169 pages
ISBN: 0-618-40441-4
Cincinnati Public Library

I admit that I was delighted when I realized in the first few pages that Messenger focuses on Matty, by far the most enjoyable, well-crafted character from Gathering Blue. Unlike the connections between Gathering Blue  and The Giver  the connections between Gathering Blue and Messenger are clear from the first. The two middle books together represent a more classic series, you would miss a lot reading them out of order, and you gain something by reading them back to back. Here too, the connections to The Giver become overt.

Overall, I thought that Messenger was better than Gathering Blue: the world was more finely rendered and more foreboding. The nature of the conflict was more elegant and more challenging, and the plot was faster-paced and more compelling. I think that this is a better book for young readers than Gathering Blue and has some of the same elements that make The Giver such a powerful read for individuals in the target age group: the presence of significant and uncomfortable moral challenges, and an ending that, while far less ambiguous, will leave them wishing for something different.

Better, but still not as good as The Giver.

Son
By Lois Lowry
2012
Houghton Mifflin
393 pages
ISBN: 978-0-547-88720-3
Cincinnati Public Library

There is another long publication gap between Messenger and the final volume in the quartet, Son, which was published earlier this year. I wonder again if Lowry thought she might be done before deciding to return to the world for a final visit.

Son is significantly different in structure than the previous three books. It is split into three distinct sections. In the first, we return to the community of The Giver and see events occurring about the same time as Jonas's story, but through different eyes. These eyes belong to Claire, the birthmother who gave birth to Gabriel. Unlike other birthmothers in the community, who never see or know the children they carry, an unusual turn of events allow Claire to build an attachment to her son. This first section ends with the same events that lead to the conclusion of The Giver, and Claire also leaves the community in the chaos that accompanies Jonas's departure. This section was the strongest, and I enjoyed seeing some of the familiar events and characters from a different perspective. In the second section, we see Claire in her new community, a small, close-knit, and profoundly isolated seaside village, and watch as she trains and attempts the grueling journey out to find Gabriel and learn what happened to him. This section is lovely, especially watching Claire learn to live in the world outside the rigid boundaries and controlled environment of the community she knew.  In the third, and in my opinion, weakest section, we see the outcome of her search, and I am going to go into no more detail than that, for reasons I will explain below.


While I was excited to discover that there was more from the world of The Giver to read, I also had significant hesitance about the fact that these sequels existed. The ambiguity of the ending, the wondering about what happened to Jonas and Gabriel, was one of the most powerful and challenging components of my early experience of reading The Giver. I wasn't sure that I wanted "to really know what happened."

And in the end, I think that maybe I didn't. Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son are all fine, well-developed works of children's literature, and in another situation, I would be recommending them to kids as good, thought-provoking reads for late elementary and middle schoolers. But I don't recommend them, because The Giver is an impossible act to follow.

In fact, I think that The Giver is an act that shouldn't have been followed. Young readers may very much enjoy the opportunity to spend more time in this world. They almost certainly will find it satisfying to learn how things "turned out" for Jonas and Gabriel after they headed down that snowy hill on their little red sled. Yet, I think that they are losing something for having that answer spelled out for them. The Giver is as glorious, beautiful, and compelling as it is in no small part due to the ambiguous ending. Taking away that ambiguity and giving an answer in its place takes something away. I think detracts from the potential of the story as a important moment in the life of a young reader.

I make no claims that this opinion isn't entirely shaped by my strong memory of my experience of reading The Giver as a child. It is. That experience was valuable to me, and I think that it would have been less powerful and less important if I had just been able to read on and find the answers that I wanted. Even now, there is a part of me that wishes that I didn't have those answers, that I had left well enough alone.

So there it is. It's not often that I say this, but the advice that comes from my heart and my gut is that you avoid reading these books. Or at least that you avoid reading them until wondering what happens to Jonas and Gabriel no longer holds mystery and value for you. I wouldn't be surprised if the lack of awareness of these books that is mentioned in several of the child-written reviews that I read is part of a plot on the part of children's librarians to keep that mystery alive.

If you haven't read The Giver you should. If you have children, you should read it with them. And when you are done, under no circumstances should you mention that these sequels even exist. Leave them to ponder, leave them to wonder, leave them with the challenge and the catalyst of that delicious uncertainty. I believe it will help shape them as readers, and I think in time, make them love reading more. All these years later, I can say that it did that for me.

Broken Harbor

Broken Harbor
By Tana French
2012
Viking
450 pages
ISBN: 978-0-670-02365-3
Cincinnati Public Library

Tana French's "Dublin Murder Squad" series isn't a true series in the typical sense of the word. While all the books are murder mysteries set in Dublin and the surrounding area and investigated by members of the same police detective unit, each book is really a self-contained narrative. Throughout the series, French has taken one of the squad member characters from the previous book (some more minor than others) and made them the focal point (and the first person narrator) of the next mystery. While the largest connections are between the first two books, In the Woods and The Likeness, really any of the books in this "series" can be read on it's own without missing much in the way of background, and missing nothing at all in the way of critical information for the plot at hand. This is why I have continued reading these books as they come out rather than "waiting for the series to be finished" as I so often declare I must.

French is a great mystery writer, all her books match more traditional police procedural with psychological thriller to some degree, and Broken Harbor is no exception. There are certainly some flaws in this book, but none of them serious enough to even consider putting it down... I found myself arranging my days around having time to read this one.

In Broken Harbor, we are faced with the gruesome murder of almost an entire family in a creepy half-finished housing development that tanked halfway through construction in the economic collapse. The father and 2 children are dead, and the mother lies in critical condition.Oh, one more thing... The housing development just happens to be located on the spot where our narrator, Detective Mick Kennedy, spent his summer vacations as a child. And where his mother killed herself.

The mystery is a good one, with layers upon layers of deeply creepy and troubling complexity. It does suffer from the Law and Order syndrome: "That person that gets arrested halfway through the hour can't possibly be the murderer, or at least not the whole story, because there's still 30 minutes left." When a deeply creepy suspect is arrested fairly early in the book, you know that he's involved somehow, but also that he can't be the whole story, because there are a couple hundred pages left to solve the thing. Still, even knowing there must be one, I didn't see the final twist coming, and I really enjoyed getting there. I did think that a portion of the complexities of Detective Kennedy's family interactions were a distraction, but not so much that they took away from the central narrative. Nobody's perfect.

French however, has been closer to perfect in the past. While I do recommend this book to her fans and other mystery lovers, if you haven't already read her other books, I liked The Likeness far better than this one.

In Search of Memory

In Search of Memory
The Emergence of a New Science of Mind
By Eric Kandel
2006
W.W. Norton & Company
510 pages
ISBN: 978-0-393-32937-7

Eric Kandel entered the field of Neuroscience research in 1955 as part of  medical school elective. In 2000, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "discoveries relating to signal transduction in the nervous system." Basically, his work was the first to establish how memory works at the cellular level, through alterations in the strength of individual connections between neurons. Today, at 82 years old, he maintains an active research lab at the Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons. He's kind of a big deal.

And on October 3, he came to the University of Cincinnati to give a talk. So I read this book, which I already owned, but moved up the "to read" list in honor of the occasion.

The cool thing about this book is that Kandel's career as a neuroscientist parallels the development of the field. He began do research when Neuroscience was just beginning as a science separate from biology/physiology, and has continued to work in the field as it has developed over the last 60ish years. Kandel does a wonderful job in this autobiography of weaving in his personal story with the emergence and progress of the field as a whole.

But you don't need to be working on a PhD in Neuroscience to understand and enjoy this book.  Kandel's writing style is approachable, and he does a rather elegant job of explaining some very complicated experiments in clear and accessible language.  Anyone with the most basic biology background should be able to follow his descriptions and learn about some of the very cool discoveries that are the foundations of cellular and molecular neuroscience.

I however, am working on a PhD in Neuroscience, so the part of the book that were most interesting to me involved Kandel delving into his personal career development and describing his scientific thinking. Everyone beginning a career in biological science should probably read this book.  Although there are some things that maybe don't apply any more (Kandel did not have to worry at all about funding), there's a lot of rich material here. I was especially struck by his decision to leave clinical practice and focus exclusively on research (something I personally do not plan to do, but it was good to read his rationale). I also found inspiring his willingness to learn new techniques and dive into new subfields as his career progressed, and the moments he describes when thinking about research in other areas of science led to inspiration and progress in his own work. I know that I am not the only graduate student who tends toward laser beam focus on her one little area (at least at this stage of my career), but some stories in this book served as a powerful reminder of the reasons that I want to stay aware of creative and groundbreaking work in other areas of science. And of the joy of thinking about science, which I admit sometimes gets lost in the nitty gritty of trying to make it from student to scientist.

Because I'm in the Neuroscience Graduate Program, I had the opportunity to attend a special question and answer session, just for the students and faculty in the department. Kandel in real life is awesome. He's sharp, thoughtful, honest, and incredibly excited about science. This sounds condescending, but with the combination of his clear joy talking about neuroscience and his bow tie, he's completely adorable.I really enjoyed the conversation that morning and his interesting talk on the potential for the use of his more cellular and molecular approaches to research in psychiatry. We have a long way to go, but if I learned anything from reading this book, it's how far our field can move in a relatively short time. If the next 50 years or neuroscience are as exciting as the last 50 years, I have an amazing career to look forward to.

It

It
By Stephen King
1980
Signet Books
1093 pages
ISBN: 978-0-451-16951-8

Since I got my iPhone this past spring, I have been listening to books from the Cincinnati Public Library using the Overdrive app. I freaking LOVE the fact that I can do this. Especially because listening to an audiobook makes my commute more pleasant, whether I am walking or taking the shuttle. My main complaint about the system is that I have found the selection of books a little limited (not only because there actually aren't too many books available, but also because there are limits on the number of people that can be using a file at any given moment, so things that I want to listen to are often "checked out.") But overall, I love the system, and I totally recommend it to anyone that (like me) wants to be reading during times that they really need to be doing activities other than reading.

This book popped up in the Overdrive list one day when I was browsing, looking for the next thing to "read" and I thought that it would be fun. And so I downloaded it and started listening.

Stephen King, like myself, is a purist about these things, and therefore doesn't allow abridgments of his work for audiobooks. I love that about him, indeed, I don't listen to abridgments, but it was a problem in this case. When I decided to listen to this through the overdrive program, I didn't really think about the fact that this book is huge. The audio is 44 hours long. Unfortunately, I only had two weeks. You can theoretically renew audiobook files, but you can't ACTUALLY review audiobook files, because there is pretty much always someone that has the book that you are reading on hold. I got through about half of the story in those two weeks, and I was VERY sad to see the files expire. But I was hooked enough that I decided that reading the rest of the book was the best course of action, because there was no way that I was going to wait for the file to be "returned" by the person after me. So I went and got the paperback version and read the rest in the more traditional way.

So first, some comments on the audiobook. The reading is apparently performed by Steven Weber, although he was not specifically credited anywhere in the file that I could find. He does an AMAZING job. This is a wonderful performance. He gives life and personality to the stutter of Bill Denbrook, a deeply creepy rasping Pennywise, all the various voices of Richie Tozier, and all the Maine accents a girl could ask for. If you are a fan of audiobooks, and have some time on your hands, I actually think that the experience of listening to this was better than the experience of reading it. I usually don't specifically recommend the audio version of a book, but in this case, I think that it deserves a plug. To be honest, I probably even enjoyed the second half of the book more for having listened to the first half, because I was able to carry on the characterizations Weber created in my own mind as I moved forward.

In short, the audio is great. Make sure that you have access to it for as long as it will take you to listen to 44 hours worth of story.

And what a story. King is great here in a style that particularly becomes him, weaving action in the present with flashbacks to the past. This weaving style reminded me in many ways of Dreamcatcher, but King is FAR more successful in It. Both the present and the past action are deeply compelling, and even though you know that these adults must have gotten away from the monster as children, indeed defeated it somehow, that someHOW? is a roaring question as burning as how it will turn out the second time. Pennywise, It, is a deeply scary monster, perhaps King's scariest, and the bulk of the novel comes from rich detail and beautiful complicated characterizations that allow you to care deeply for a larger cast of characters than most narratives can support.

 There is a reason this novel is famous. There is a reason the vision of the creepy clown on the cover was a picture that stuck in my mind even before I read this book. If you are a fan, this is up there with The Stand. Epic long, and epicly worth it.  

Indian Killer

Indian Killer
By Sherman Alexie
1996
Warner Books
420 pages
ISBN: 0-446-673-70-6
Read: 9/4/12-9/8/12

I was looking forward to reading this book. I have been very impressed with Sherman Alexie, and his collection War Dances is one of the best things I read last year. In particular, I was deeply moved by the short story "Salt" from that collection, so much so that I wrote about it in my (rarely updated) other blog. To be honest though, I was also a little unsure what to expect. Alexie generally writes very lyrical fiction laced with dark humor and deep issues of identity. Many of his short pieces seem to dance along the narrow line between poetry and prose without ever coming down on one side or the other. Because of that, "murder mystery" seemed a break from type. And while sometimes such breaks lead to amazing things, I would be lying if I said that I wasn't a little wary.

But the term "murder mystery" has very little to do with the contents of this novel, and frankly I think that the people that wrote the blurbs do it a significant disservice when they suggest that it is a thriller, even a "literary thriller," whatever that means. Certainly, this novel is "about" a series of murders committed in Seattle by a serial killer known as the Indian Killer, but the actual plot of this novel is only the frame on which beautifully complex characterizations hang sharply cutting commentary on issues of identity, community, and some of the weaknesses of the human condition. While this is certainly darker than what I have read of Alexie's other work, it was hardly a true break from type: beautiful, lyrical fiction with a bit of a bite.

Interestingly, several of the reviews on Amazon and elsewhere seem to have fundamentally misunderstood the story, or at least what I took from it. I hate when people do that.

Shadow of Night

Shadow of Night
By Deborah Harkness
2012
Viking
584 pages
ISBN: 978-0-670-02348-6
Cincinnati Public Library
Read 8/28/12-9/2/12

I read A Discovery of Witches, the first book in Harkness's All Souls Trilogy (this is the second) quite by accident. No, I did not trip over my own feet and stumble through 500 some odd pages, what I mean is, when I picked up A Discovery of Witches, I was completely unaware that it was the first in a series. As a rule, I try to avoid reading any books in a series until the series is complete. There are several reasons for this: (1) I am very impatient, and I have decided that fiction-reading is not the area though which I want to work on this character flaw. (2) As a fiction reader, I am very forgetful, I tend to forget details of characters and events in novels (even as minor details, phrases, and emotions reactions remain vivid in my mind). Therefore, for me, the best experience of reading a series with any continuity that benefits from a memory for details is to start with volume 1, and read book by book straight through to volume N as if the whole thing is one big narrative. (3) I am very compulsive, and in order to achieve my optimal experience, I have, several times in the past, ended up rereading all of the prior volumes in a series when a new one comes out. (I did this recently when a (surprise!) 8th book in The Dark Tower series came out, and you have a very long blog post on the entirety of The Wheel of Time to look forward to in 2013, sometime after the final volume comes out in January.)

I enjoyed, but didn't love, A Discovery of Witches. It's a good story, with a tight plot that kept me involved despite some flaws (including a not terribly likable female lead, and a not very well developed male lead). I was reading happily along, entertained and excited to know what happened, when I came to a sudden, sinking, realization: there simply weren't enough pages left to wrap up the story. Not even enough to do it badly. I was unhappy. Multiple "damnit"s were uttered. Worst of all, my impression at the end of A Discovery of Witches was that this was going to be exactly the worst kind of series to be in this position. The first book was (1) exciting (I really wanted to know what happened) (2) complicated (no way that I am going to remember all the characters and the details of this world) and (3) just not good enough to want to read again. So I decided to do an experiment. I decided just to read the books as they came out, no rereads, and see how that was. You know, like a normal person.

And reading book 2 about 10 months later... Not so bad. There are definitely details that I have forgotten, so I can see where it might have been better to read straight through, but I had only one or two places where I felt really lost, so it wouldn't have been worth it to read the first book again. I find myself curious about what will happen next, although this volume ended on much less of a cliffhanger, at least for me, than the last one did. (This is good, because the author's website currently has no information, at all, whatsoever, on the third book, so I imagine I am going to be waiting quite a while). So yeah, maybe I could read a series as the books come out... maybe. I'm still not sure that I would choose to do it again on purpose.

As for the book itself. I enjoyed it, and it was a great book to have on hand far a very rainy Labor Day weekend, keeping me completely entertained as my husband and brother-in-law killed aliens on Playstation3. Harkness does better with her character development in this book, making Diana more likable, Matthew more fully formed, and introducing us to Philippe, Matthew's father, and one of the more compelling characters we've seen thus far. In Shadow of Night, Harkness takes her characters out of the present day and  into a world she, as a historian, is familiar with, Elizabethan London. I believe that as a novelist, she did well to take things into her intellectual wheelhouse, and her writing thrived in a world that provided some historical constraints to her imaginings.

In short, Shadow of Night is not perfect, but the movement of the plot drives things forward and kept me involved. It's a good read. But not one that will stand alone, if you want to get something out of it, you probably have to read A Discovery of Witches first. That being the case, take my advice... wait until the series is finished.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon
By Gideon Defoe
2008
Pantheon Books
177 pages
ISBN: 978-0-375-42398-7
Cincinnati Public Library
Read 8/27/12-8/28/12

I've been reading Gideon Defoe's hilarious The Pirates! books since my husband first found them, shortly after we saw the movie based on the series, the also-hilarious The Pirates! Band of Misfits. We've both found all four volumes highly entertaining, which is particularly wonderful because there is generally not much overlap in our reading lives.The series is riotously funny, and as all of the volumes are equally slight and slim, won't take up a huge amount of your time.

Here, Pirate Captain, to the dismay of his crew, decides to give up pirating for beekeeping, and thanks to some scheming on the part of his nemesis Black Bellamy, ends up doing so on the tiny island of St. Helena. He is enjoying his time as the island's "most famous resident" until the arrival of none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the two just don't get along.

The books in the series succeed by maintaining a delicate balance of humor that is alternately smart and frankly silly, and this offering is no exception. All four The Pirates! books are all well worth your time, and to get the most out of the running gags, your best bet is to start at the beginning, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists.

Dreamcatcher

Dreamcatcher
by Stephen King
2001
Pocket Books
882 pages
ISBN: 0-7434-6752-3
Read 8/24/12 - 8/27/12

We spent the last week of our summer vacation in southern Maine, so it seemed fitting to bring a little Stephen King along. The book I was reading before this took a bit longer to get though than I expected, so I didn't get started until the end of the vacation, but I was at least in Maine when I started this one.

I generally enjoy Stephen King's books, and frankly. Dreamcatcher was no exception. It's a fast-paced, plot-driven book that perfectly served its purpose of being a relaxing but riveting escapist vacation read. I had fun with it.

Example conversation with my husband:
Him: Are you OK? You're squirming.
Me: Yeahhhh. A guy's getting eaten by a monster.
Him: Is he alive?
Me: He was when it started. Now shush!

King, as usual pulled me in and scared me good. I admit to staying up reading well after bedtime to finish the story. There were certainly some weaknesses; in particular, I think that King failed to outline the rules of the supernatural world as well as he usually does. I found myself a little confused about what was happening towards the end of the book. So not King's best, but overall a pleasurable read.

I do have to say that after reading it, I am surprised by the fact that they attempted to make it into a movie, and perhaps not surprised that the reviews are bad. I can see where the weaknesses, particularly not-perfectly-defined magic, would just make a movie either confusing and hard to follow or seem to come out of nowhere. So yeah, I think that I'll skip that one and let this story be as it was in the book. Entertaining but not exceptional.

Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention

Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention

By Katherine Ellison

2010

Voice

282 pages

In Buzz: A Year of Paying Attention, investigative reporter Katherine Ellison commits a year of her life to learning more about ADHD and to figuring out how to best help her son, who suffers from the disorder and whom she has given the pseudonym "Buzz" for the purposes of the book.

Now I have to say here that I am completely over the gimmick "a year of _______" as a device for getting oneself a book deal. It was creative, perhaps, at one point in the past, but now it is done. (Unless I can come up with something to do for a year and get a nice book deal. Other Years: A Year of Reading "A Year of" Books by Maggie Reid Schneider.)

That being said, Ellison's project here is somewhat less gimmicky than the rest. She's not plowing through a cookbook or randomly adopting ancient customs. Instead, she appears to be making a commitment to do something that is completely NECESSARY for the life of her family. And good for her for being able to recognize that and put some other things aside to be able to do it. Of course, I do believe that when one makes a decision to become a parent, one make a commitment to spending a lifetime paying attention to what your child needs from you, or at least a couple of decades. In part, what distinguishes Ellison from some other parents taking on this mighty struggle is a more flexible career path and a well padded checkbook. Still, her work here might be a particularly good resource for other parents struggling with some of these issues.

I think that this book might be particularly helpful, because Buzz seems a good example of a child that is severely affected by ADD. He is not an ambiguous case. Buzz is suffering; Buzz's whole family is suffering. In creating an honest portrayal of her challenges with her son, Ellison paints a picture that I think will be both convincing to some that question the validity of ADD as a real diagnosis, and helpful to some parents that are unsure if their child really fits the bill. ADD is, unfortunately, both under and over treated. There are some children that get slapped with the label that probably just need more recess time and a smaller classroom but instead get stimulants, and there are others that are clearly mightily struggling, and though they need help desperately, they get only detentions. In this book we see a clear picture of a child with a real and crippling problem, and thankfully, learn about some of the ways to help him.

Ellison also does well to turn her eye as an investigative reporter on the treatments, tests and organizations that she encounters on her journey. Her writing about their decisions about which tests and treatments to try and which to forgo is particularly compelling because is able to come at these encounters from both ways: as a parent desperate for answers and as a reporter looking to paint a balanced and accurate picture. In doing so, she skips some thing that have been suggested as miracle treatments, and chooses to do some that are not entirely proven. Her honest reflection on the challenges facing a parent in a world where few of the tests and treatments are validated and almost all are very expensive is an interesting read.

I did struggle with Ellison's waffling about her own diagnosis. She has also been diagnosed with ADD, and while perhaps that is part of her problem, I agree with the later assessments that anxiety seems to be her central issue. She is a worrier, and while her concerns about the fate of her children are central to the theme of the book, her concerns about global warming and plastic pollution and the end of the world are reiterated a little too often for my taste.

Overall, Buzz is an interesting read, if not for everyone. It's certainly worthwhile for parents that are struggling with attention issues in their own children, and probably for adults that have been lead to wonder if they might have "adult ADD" themselves. It's probably also worthwhile for educators and those of us, myself included, with an academic interest in attention. It would likely be useful for some people who are unsure if they "believe in ADD," although I suppose those that need it for that purpose are unlikely to pick it up. Overall though, I'm not sure that this is a story that would be compelling to the general reader, so unless you have a specific interest, you could likely give it a pass.

Full Disclosure: I received my copy of this book for free through the Early Reviewers program at LibraryThing.

Catching Fire

Catching Fire
by Suzanne Collins
2009
Scholastic Press, New York
391 pages
ISBN: 978-0-439-02349

So last Friday, I was feeling a little bit tired and not overly motivated when I got home at the end of the day. Andrew and I talked about going to a movie, but really, I just wasn't in the mood. We decided to save the money and go get a DVD from the library, but I couldn't find anything on the massive wall of library movies that seemed appealing either.

I was standing there, in a funk, when I realized that I had gotten an email to tell me that my requested copy of Her Fearful Symmetry had arrived. I went to grab it off the reserve shelf, and found next to it on the shelf, also with my name on the slip, Chasing Fire. And then I knew what I was in the mood for.

I checked it out and brought it home. I climbed in bed, my wonderful husband made me tea, and I read the whole thing, cover to cover, with breaks only to refill beverages and such. After that, I was decidedly no longer in a funk.

I do have to say that there are few pleasures in life as wonderous as a long stretch of time in bed with tea and a good book. Others include: a long stretch of time in a hammock with iced tea and a good book and cozy snow days when you can spend a long stretch of time curled up inside with hot chocolate and a good book. There are other non-beverage-and-good-book related great pleasures in life, but this is a book blog. Let's summarize by saying that I agree wholeheartedly with Carlos Ruiz Zafon, who said, "reading is up there with sex and chocolate in the list of the Top 10 ways to enjoy your time on this planet."

But about this book specifically. The wise and wonderful Jack O'Brien sent me after The Hunger Games Trilogy a few weeks ago, around when the third book came out. I read the first one, and headed to Barnes and Noble to buy the others. But both Chasing Fire and the third installment, Mockingjay, are currently only available in hardcover, and I have made a deal with myself that severely limits hardcover buying. So it's the library waiting list for me. I wish that I could say that I have been waiting patiently, for patience is a virtue. Alas, I am not blessed with it.

This is a wonderful, exciting, suspenseful book that won't disappoint anyone that loved The Hunger Games. It's thrilling. It's engrossing. The characters are powerful and dynamic. The plot is simply unputdownable. And while the language is not anything to call your literature professor over, especially when coming on the heels of The Book Thief, this is more than just a story. It's challenging. It forces you, while you are gripped in the tale, to ask yourself hard questions, like when rebellion against evil is noble and when it is foolhardy. Of course, you don't ask yourself for too long, because you are too anxious to know if there is a rebellion. But that question, and some others (what it means to be in love and what and who is worth dying for, for example) will stick with you. The deeply disturbing situations involved will likely stick with you as well. The Hunger Games is a decidedly dystopian series. I can say that I have deeply enjoyed these books... I can not say that they have left me with pleasant dreams.

If you like fiction and could use a good page turner, read this. Well, read The Hunger Games first, and then read this. And then you'll probably read Mockingjay... and if you buy it, once you're finished you should send it to me, because the library hasn't delivered yet, and I'm dying here.

I can promise that I'll return it quickly.

NOTE: I have not made a deliberate choice to read a ton of "Young Adult" fiction in the last couple of weeks. Really what's happened is that I've been told certain books are good, and been surprised to find that the little sticker on the side tells me that the library shelves them as "Teen." I'm still organizing my thoughts on what that category means.

The Book Thief

The Book Thief
by Marcus Zusak
2005
Alfred A. Knopf, New York
550 pages
ISBN: 978-0-375-84220-7

I can't remember who told me that I should read The Book Thief. I wish that I did, so that I could thank them. It was a nameless, "Oh, I've been meaning to read that." That made me request it from the CPL.

Seriously, this book is beautiful. It is a powerful, poetic novel, written from the perspective of Death. Yes, that's "capital D" Death. He informs us that he doesn't carry a scythe, and only wears a long black cloak when it's cold. He is, in a myriad of other ways, not what you might expect. Gentle, careful, exhausted.

I've started this next paragraph four times. I can't seem to do it justice. What is this book about? I haven't been able to find words that don't seem oversimplistic and dull compared to what you'll find on these pages, and so I've decided not to try, I'm going to let the narrator tell you.

"It's the story of one of those perpetual survivors - an expert at being left behind.
It's just a small story really, about, among other things:
*A girl
*Some words
*An accordionist
*Some fanatical Germans
*A Jewish fist fighter
*And quite a lot of thievery" (page 5)

Zusak does a wonderful job of giving Death a voice: a language and grammar all his own. The language is delightful, musical; it swings effortlessly from subtle to cutting. Death is untethered to time, but attached to colors. While the story has a beginning, middle and end, you will not find pure linear narration here. We know parts of end from the very beginning. It's not subtle. Characters you love will die. This is Nazi Germany after all, and Death is your narrator. He knows this story because he was around a lot.

Yes, characters you love will die, and though you have been warned, by Death himself, you will be surprised. You might find yourself, as I did, trying to cry quietly so as not to wake your sleeping bed mate. It's crushingly sad, no matter how you are warned.

Really though, you should read this. There are hundreds of reviews, if you need more convincing. I am not alone in my praise. You can find the plot summary on the back of the book, or Amazon, or whatever book-summarizing and reviewing website you choose, but it won't tell you much. The book thief steals because she loves books, and gradually, because she comes to understand their power. And in the end, this book, both in form and in tale, is about the power of words over us silly humans.


NOTE: This book has been labeled/marketed/shelved in your local library and bookstore as "Young Adult/Teen/Children" I have thoughts on that. They're going to come up in a later blog entry. I will only say here that if you let that dissuade you, you are doing yourself a disservice.

On Writing

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
by Stephen King
2000
291 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4391-5681-0

I had read most of this book before, at an earlier time when I was thinking about writing in kind of an abstract and distant sort of way, but coming back from last weekend's trip to the AMSA Writer's Institute, I decided that perhaps I should pick it up again. I remembered it containing some good stuff, so it seemed like not a terrible place to revisit.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I like Stephen King. I am not saying that everything that the man has ever written is brilliant (and what's clear in this book is that neither is he), but he can tell a darn good story. Perhaps interesting, (and perhaps not) is that I like him best at the extremes: his short fiction and The Dark Tower. Either way, if you feel the need to quarrel about the idea that the man has talent, I suppose we can, but that's not the point here. The point is that I think that he has enough talent to be willing to get some tips, and I find him charming enough to have actually enjoyed reading them.

This is a good book. Not for everyone to be sure, but good. He makes excellent points about the process of writing that I'm sure have helped more than a few other writers get their work off the ground, but he is also honest about the limitations of what you can get from a book. He can't make you good if you are bad (and neither can anything else), he can't give you the ideas or really tell you where they come from, and it's going to be a lot of work.

But I am fine with all of that. At a moment like this, in my life, On Writing carries with it some reminders that I needed. About the work part, and the time part, and the drafting freely first and then editing part, and the admitting that I am writing, at least in part, to Andrew, so I should let him read things some of the time.

A lot of what's here is only going to be valuable to writer's of fiction (and readers as well.) King is interesting in his approach to character development and plot. He says he doesn't plan the plot beforehand, and is sometimes surprised by what his characters do. I suppose there's nothing to do but believe him, since I am almost always surprised by what his characters do. Still, some of the ideas, especially about drafting and editing ("2nd Draft = 1st Draft -10%") will likely work across genres, and I think that his analogy of the toolbox is universal.

And his notes on commitment, on the process, on the worthwhile effort, and the joy it brings, it's enough to remind you all over again why you might want to.

Two observations, neither really about writing that I especially liked:
On purgatory, I couldn't agree more:
"If I have to spend time in purgatory before going on to one place or another, I guess I'll be all right as long as they have a lending library (if there is, it's probably stocked with nothing by novels by Danielle Steel and Chicken Soup books...)" p. 104

On really smart people, I see it all the damn time:
"No one can be as intellectually slothful as a really smart person." p. 143

But really, it is the writing about writing that shines here. The notes on the process, on the parts of his life that contributed to becoming a writer, on taking rejection with your head held high, and on really really working at it make this a worthwhile read for those of us that want to write.

"you can, you should, and if you're brave enough to start, you will. Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up." p. 270

And so should you fellow writers. So should you.

World Without End

World Without End
by Ken Follett
2007
1014 pages
ISBN: 978-0-451-22499-6
Purchased at Bookman/Bookwoman

The sequel to Follett's excellent The Pillars of the Earth lived up to expectations. This is an excellent historical epic that reads much quicker than its thousand pages would suggest. Follett again sets his tale primarily in Kingsbridge, England, but this time we see it in the 14th century. He succeeds in painting a vivid picture of the challenges of life in this distant past with well placed details. The novel follows the lives of multiple characters, but Follett is very successful in interweaving their stories and passing from one to another quickly enough to allow the reader to keep track of all of them but not so quickly that the story seems fragmented. Overall the book is a delightful read. Highly recommended.