Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

Genre: historical fiction

Well. I finished it. If you haven't attempted reading this book, then you may not appreciate what an accomplishment this is.

Imagine the world of knights and maidens, Robin Hood and the bratty Prince John, an England that is not yet the unified blend of Norman and Saxon that it is today. A contentious time, where allegiances guide lives, battles and the tide of a country. As much as this book is a story, it also plays at being a sort of history of the period.

Ivanhoe is a disinherited son, a distinguished soldier and an honorable friend to King Richard. He loves the beautiful Saxon Rowena, whom he is unable to wed. There are all kinds of villains, jousting (of course), a fierce and bloody battle, woodland warriors, as well as all kinds of wicked church-men. Either you are for the defeated Saxons, you fear John enough to support him or you are holding out for King Richard. Whichever you choose, you'd better be ready to die for that loyalty or be ready to get out of the country quick.

Really, only about three major interesting things happen, unfortunately. And even those things are so drawn-out and so heavily-laden with bigotry, anti-semitism and just plain egocentrism that sometimes it was all I could do to keep reading. I get that Scott was trying to be true to the time period, but caricature without depth is just annoying to read. On the other hand, though, the Jewess Rebecca is a very interesting and sympathetic character. Her beauty and conviction just weren't enough to carry all the boring parts. Also, Scott just tended to use twenty words when five would have sufficed and when you have to read that for 400+ pages, it gets exhausting.

I just didn't appreciate it. Maybe if I hadn't already read and absolutely loved The Once and Future King, I might have appreciated it more. I can absolutely tell TOaFK looks to Ivanhoe as its forefather - I thought of it often, especially with both novels' present-and-commenting-narrator style (which I like). I DID like that in Ivanhoe I found so much familiar lore - this book and its portrayal of that period of time is truly something that's become a part of our English culture's fabric, and that's SOMETHING.  However, If you have to pick one of these really long medieval books to read, I personally would recommend The Once and Future King instead.


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War Horse by Michael Morpurgo

genre: middle grade

When I sat down to read this book to my nine year old, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I was hopeful that it wouldn’t be TOO graphic for my boy, and I was also hopeful that it wouldn’t bore me. I lucked out on both accounts.

War Horse is the story of Joey, a beautiful and unique creature who becomes completely attached to a British boy named Albert. As Albert comes of age with Joey by his side, they create a wonderfully reciprocal relationship, a relationship whose course is drastically changed by the advent of The Great War.

What I particularly liked about this story is that it is told from the point of view of our horse, Joey. It’s Joey’s journey that we follow as he becomes a cog in the wheel of the great British War Machine. His experiences throughout the war in France give us as readers the unique opportunity to learn about the war from the point of view of a creature without political or cultural views. All our narrator wants is a warm place to stay, some good food to eat, and a job that he is able to do without pain – and anyone who treats him kindly is a character to be appreciated.

Rarely do we get to read about “the bad guys” and feel sympathy for them, but I loved that this book shows us that there are good and kind people on both sides of any conflict – and that war makes no judgments about who gets killed. Reading War Horse really made me think about how, horse or human, a life is a life is a life, the loss of which is always a tragedy.

Yes, there is wartime violence. Yes, there is death and mean dads and barbed wire. This book is not for people who will be upset by bad things happening to good people (note that there are a few curse words that I edited out in my read-aloud). But there are these beautiful and touching moments, where Morpurgo really captures the amazing ability of animals to be a peaceful influence and a common denominator. I was brought to tears more than once. My darling boy begged for more at the end of every single chapter, and we read the last pages with me on the floor, leaning against his bed with his head on my shoulder. When we finished, he asked me, "has this author written anything else??"

That’s a winner for me.


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two new picture books for the Chinese New Year

Well, my six year old son is home from school with pink eye, bless his heart.  We have, however, had a wonderful day together, of course with a storytime -  including two books that were recently sent to me by Candlewick Press.

The first one we read is called Crouching Tiger by Ying Chang Compestine.   It's about a little boy named Vinson who is getting to know his Chinese grandfather, who has recently arrived for a visit at Vinson's home.  He sees his grandfather doing tia chi in the backyard and wonders why he can't do more COOL stuff, like kicks and punches.  It's sort of embarassing, right?  All that slow moving and standing around?  Slowly, though, Vinson realizes all the cool stuff his Grandfather CAN do - and creates a relationship with him in the process. 

My boy REALLY liked this one.  Twice he lept up from the couch while I was reading because had to try out a tia chi pose.  We talked a bit about Chinese culture as we read, about how you can show respect with a bow and some of the New Years traditions.  I think Vinson and his initial lack of enthusiasm about his grandpa makes him very relate-able - lots of great discussion points in this book. I'd say good for 5+.

The second one we read is A New Year's Reunion by Yu Li-Qiong.  This is a story of a family whose father has to be gone at his work all year, only able to return for a week at the New Year.  I was very interested in this one because of a documentary I saw recently called Last Train Home, about all the millions of people who migrate from the city back to their home villages for the New Year. 

When Papa comes home, it's time for traditions and celebrating - the foods and excitement of his homecoming are beautifully illustrated.  I love, especially, an illustration of the little girl snuggled up in bed between her parents.  It felt so secure and beautiful.  I love how this family is just making it work - that Papa works hard and loves his family, even if he can't be with them all the time.  I think there is a lot of heart in this story, and could be a wonderful resource for children whose families might be in a similar situation.  My boy didn't love it as much as the one about tia chi, of course, but I don't think he is who this was necessarily written for, the text is a bit young for him.   I highly recommend it for 4+, maybe younger if your child has some familiarity with Chinese customs.


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Liar's Moon by Elizabeth C. Bunce

genre: young adult fantasy

If you haven't already read Starcrossed, you should.  Then come back and read this review of its sequel, which I liked just as much.

Digger is back in the city and in a heartbeat, she's in back in the thick of things - this time, she's been roped into helping her old friend Durrell.  He's been imprisoned for killing his wife.  Only, he says he didn't.  And Digger believes him.  So with the help of friends old and new, Digger starts to do what she does best - dig.  Dig for information, clues, and not a little trouble.  Soon enough the Durrell's murder case turns into something even bigger and involving way more than just one dead woman.  Why is there traces of magic around Durrell's house?  What sort of work was Durrell's wife INTO, anyway?  The things Digger learns not only bring her closer to helping Durrell but reveal to her how high the stakes really are in a city on the brink of war, where magic is a death sentence.

I am not generally a mystery fan, but this blend of mystery and fantasy really hit the spot for me.  I liked how I never even knew who to believe or what lead to follow.  Digger is still a great and complicated character and Durrell is a charmer, that's for sure. I really do like this fantasy world Bunce has created, all the different moons and their gods - the culture of the city adds to the depth of the story.  I think a few things at the end tidied themselves up a BIT too quickly and nicely - I expected the war to be a bit more a part of it, but I didn't actually MIND that  I was wrong.  And wow, if there was ever an ending to make you want to read more!  I'll be following Digger wherever her story takes her.

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Starcrossed by Elizabeth Bunce

genre: young adult fantasy

Digger is a thief.  A pickpocket.  A young woman that can satisfy any of your thieving needs - for a price.  But when she is horribly separated from her partner, she has to flee the city before she gets caught by those who are willing to kill for the packet of letters she managed to hold on to.  Quickly making up a new name and a new past, she manages to connect herself to a noble family as a companion for their daughter - but Digger's secret skill, combined with her sticky fingers, gets her embroiled in far more dangerous exploits at the castle than she'd bargained for.  In a world where the use of magic leads to a sure beheading, Digger knows how high the risks are.  She just has to decide if she really can care enough about these "nobs" to want to help them.

This book was so incredibly fun.  I think it's been a long time since I read a real fantasy - where it takes a long time to remember all the strange names and places and there is a whole history you get to learn.  It took a while to get into this one, I'll be honest, but about 50 or 75 pages in, I was completely hooked.  I thought the characters were fresh and interesting, the political intrigue had me completely going and I liked all the little mysteries throughout.  In fact, I liked it so much that I put this one down and immediately began the sequel.  4.5 stars, only because it took me a little long to get into it.

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Shatter me by Tahereh Mafi

genre: young adult sci-fi
 
Don't touch Juliette.  Bad things happen when you touch her.  Things so bad that she's thrown into prison, alone in a cell until the day that Adam arrives.  Adam who looks shockingly familiar.  Adam who is going to play a big part in her story as she suddenly has to choose if and how to use her own strangely-X-men-type powers.  In a world we've destroyed where survival depends on listening to orders and not making any ways, Juliette has to find someone she can trust before she doesn't have any options left.

So.  I didn't love it.  The plot is interesting enough that I read it in a day (although, at the end I had a slap-the-forehead-COME ON kind of moment) but the writing style pretty much drove me crazy.  The author does all these "strikeouts" that are supposed to tell us Juliette's inner thoughts but WOW I was not a fan.  There are a lot of textual things that just grated on me - the repetition of thoughts, the CONSTANT, and I mean every page, discussion about some point of Juliette's body - her heart, her lungs, her mind, how overwhelmed it is or how terrified or pounding with love - and maybe the author is trying to point out that because Juliette has never touched people that she's super body-aware but it got really annoying. 

For a young adult novel, it is steamy, for sure.    I liked the romantic plot line, in that the development of their relationship felt authentic and I liked Adam as a sensitive bad-guy/good-guy, but Juliette. The juxtaposition of her amazing strengths and her serious weaknesses just fell flat for me most of the time.  Surely there will be a sequel and I'm actually on the fence as to whether or not I'll try it.  The ending felt like she was really shoving so much at us in a super short time so that the sequel could start where she wanted it to.  We'll see.

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Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo

genre: nonfiction

The subtitle of this book is Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. I find that term, Undercity, an interesting one, since this book is about a community of people who literally live under the shadow of the wealth and power that resides in this financial capital of India, but also the fact that those who live there are the underneath of society, those whose earning capacity and material wealth are at the bottom of the heap. 

Annawadi is the name of the slum where Katherine Boo attempts, for us Westerners, to breathe some life into what people, right now, are living through.  She is a completely omniscient narrator - the fact that she is THERE, either watching or hearing the story from someone who was, must be assumed by the mind of the reader because this book reads like a fictional narrative.  There are several main characters that we get to know and at the end of the book, the author gives a bit of discussion as to why she chose to focus on these people (and I had to keep telling myself, these are REAL PEOPLE, who could live on my street if life had dealt them a different hand). 

I shall be honest: this is a harsh book.  It hurt my heart.  It made me want to pretend it wasn't real.  Sometimes I was so frustrated that I had a hard time believing people could be THAT corrupt, that false, that desperate - I almost became cynical.  But then there were these moments when you could see that these people wanted so much more than they were able to procure for themselves - that to be absolutely poor in a sense that I cannot even fathom, will do things to you that until we've experienced it, we can't understand.  There IS hope there, but it is hope that has to be fought for so hard, against forces so beyond your control, that the fact that there is any at all is a miracle. 

The complete lack of sanitation, medical care and basic necessities can lead to unfortunate choices - theft, prostitution, bribery, embezzlement, suicide, you name it.   People will do amazing and horrible things to survive.  You might have a job sorting through stolen trash to find things you can sell to a recycler.  Or you might steal the trash yourself.   We get a hands-on look at the justice system among these lowest of the low - and I guarantee you'll want to hit your head against the wall just reading it.

It's hard to give any kind of rating to a book like this. Is it well-written, cohesive?  Yes.  Does the author include relevant factual information when appropriate to flesh out the story?  Yes.  Was it fun to read?  No.  Do you feel good when you're done reading?  No.    Am I glad I did?  Yes.  Am I still thinking about it?  Absolutely.


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Fearless by Tim Lott

genre: middle grade/tweens

In a world where rules and blind obedience have taken the place of good judgement and compassion, there lives a girl named Little Fearless.  She spends all her days in The Institution, where she's taught to listen and obey. Problem is, as much as they try to teach it, she's not really learning it.  Little Fearless knows that she, and all the other nameless girls at the Institution, deserve something more.  Deserve families.  And freedom.  Of all the girls, Little  Fearless has the guts to find a way.

Fearless is a dystopian parable, a rather one-dimensional story of courage and how one person's faith can change everything.  I liked it, liked the IDEA of it.  I appreciated the arc of Little Fearless's  story but sometimes it fell into a sort of preachiness that disappointed me.  Certainly there are echos of Nazi-ish hatred and enforced conformity as wells as other dystopian fare.  I did like how clean it was-and I think my 11 year old daughter would be more receptive to the style than I was.

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2011 Round-Up

Hello friends!  I'm shaking down the last year in books for me - I read 85 (not including picture books to the six year old, of course - I don't so much keep track of those).  Here's the numbers based on my tags at shelfari:

young adult: 33

nonfiction: 11
historical fiction:15
middle grade: 6
children's literature: 5

I completed one challenge this year: The Great Book Blogger Swap.  It was great fun and some of my favorite reads of the year came from the recommendations of my friends Book Nut and Library Queue.

I will now list for you the books that I gave 5 stars to.  Five stars means, usually, one of two things.

1. It was so riveting that I couldn't put it down.  Maybe it wasn't the most thought-provoking or meaningful book ever, but I was obsessed with it, so the author did SOMETHING right for me as a reader.

2. It made me look at the world in a new way.  Maybe an idea in it struck a chord with my own personal experience in a way that no other book has.  Maybe it's so beautifully written that I want it to be on my bookshelf forever.  Maybe it was just such an excellently executed good idea that I was satisfied and wouldn't change a thing (since I'm a really picky reader, in case you  haven't noticed).

This year, I read 19 books that I gave 5 stars to.  I shall list them for you now with a link to my review:

adult fiction/non-fiction

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern *****

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner *****

My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme

Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean

young adult

Chime by Franny Billingsly *****

Sabriel by Garth Nix

The Only Alien on the Planet by Kristen D Randle

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Mistwood by Leah Cypess

Dark Water by Laura McNeal

Fallen Grace by Mary Cooper

Delirium by Lauren Oliver

Queen of Hearts: Coming of Age in a Hospital Bed by Martha Brooks

middle grade

Crunch by Leslie Connor

The Wednesday Wars by Gary D. Schmidt *****

I put stars by my top four for the year.  What joy I find in books.  If you read an incredible book this year that I MUST put on my list for 2012, please leave a comment and let me know :)

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

genre: Russian fiction

Having read some Chekov a while ago, I noticed so many different references to Pushkin and Eugene Onegin that I finally purchased a copy of the novel-in-verse so I could have some sense of this Russian classic.

Eugene.  At the beginning of our story, he's a party-going night owl, living a life of ease in the city.  He finds nothing to excite him, so with disinterest and cynicism, he retreats to the country.  Shortly after his arrival he finds himself the love-interest of the intriguing  Tatyana.  Will Eugene reciprocate Tatyana's affections or will there be a typically Russian spurning?  You guess :)

What I liked about this translation is that
1. The verse is rhyming, as it is in the original Russian.  I cannot imagine how much work it takes to create a rhyming and yet contextually accurate translation of another language, but it's beautifully done. 
2. The translator did a great job of portraying the humor of our narrator - he's telling us Eugene and Tatyana's story from the perspective of an active bystander and he sees through what everyone is thinking and feeling. 

There are some pretty significant themes in this book - miscommunication is an interesting piece because all of our main characters either purposefully act stupid to cause trouble or knowingly misunderstand without ever trying to fix it.  Of course, disaster results.  Tatyana's a pillar, though, of speaking how she feels and being true to herself and everyone else.  

Onegin is a selfish little pill, if I just lay it on the line.  But, Pushkin doesn't reward callousness and egotism with happiness and fulfilled dreams.  I always appreciate that.

I loved, also, how much reading, books, and writing are a critical part of the novel.  Everyone either reads or writes when they are discontent or when they are happy.  The idea that the written word is a place of peace and comfort, a restorative, is certainly something I can relate to.

I was glad that I read most of this on a Kindle because there are lots of foreign phrases and outdated words that I didn't know.  Despite that, it really is a lovely piece of work.  When a rhyme seems trite, the narrator actually calls himself out on it.  There are some very heartfelt moments that are artfully described and our narrator's metaphors only add to the emotion.

Yes, it's Russian, with all the drama and strange names that entails.  No, it's not a beachy-type read, but I think that it's certainly a work that will provide a solid foundation when reading more modern Russian classics.

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