Books Read in February
1. Matchless, by Gregory Maguire
Matchless isn't so much of a retelling, as an expansion of the Hans Christian Anderson tale "The Little Match Girl," interweaving Frederik, a boy who steals fish from seagulls for his and his mother's dinners, into the narrative. While I've always loved "The Little Match Girl," I admit that the story is quite bleak. Maguire's expansion of the story gives a sense that life may still be hard, but it goes on with joy and hope.
2. Walking Dead, by C.E. Murphy
Walking Dead is the fourth book in The Walker Papers series. Joanne Walker has settled more comfortably into her powers as a shaman, but she's still learning, which becomes abundantly clear, when the ghosts and zombies begin to make their appearance in Seattle.
It was wonderfully comforting to be able to return to this series after so many year, especially with the bonus of being able to see Joanne in a stronger place than she was in the last book. The character has grown and so has Murphy as a writer. She does an excellent job of balancing back story with the new information presented in the current plot. She does a good job of presenting a mystery, and then slowly unraveling the details as Joanne discovers them (though I did guess the villain right at the beginning).
This was an excellent addition to the series. It has me excited all over again, and I look forward to when Demon Hunts comes out later this year.
3. Catch-22 (audio book), by Joseph Heller
Catch-22 centers around a bombardier, named Yossarian, who has decided that he is going to live forever or die trying. He is perceived as insane by just about everyone, though his insanity is a clear sign that he is the only sane man in the outfit. The book weaves through the lives and stories of the various men and commanders in Yossarian's squad during the later stages of World War II. Throughout is the kind of bureaucratic illogic (what I've been calling Alice in Wonderland logic), which is able to trap the men with it's various catch-22s.
I was not impressed with the first half of the book. The fragmented storylines, jumping from one character to the next, and the constant address of frayed logic, failed to pull me in. While I could acknowledge that the writing was excellent and the characters quirky and unique, I didn't quite care about them as people (much in the same way I couldn't see the character in Wonderland as people). There was a disconnect for me and I was quite downcast to see that there was so much more of this long book left to read with what I expected would be much of the same.
I couldn't be more happy that I trudge along and kept reading. The characters slowly grew and evolved, and I found myself liking them more and more. I began to really feel for Yossarian and how trapped he is within the military system with no apparent means of escape. By the time I finished the book with it's incredible ending, I was quite in love with the book and I could see why so many others have loved it, too.
4. Kith, by Holly Black
Kith is the second book in The Good Neighbors graphic novel series. It's a modern day version of fairy lore, incorporating classic fairy tropes into an urban setting. Rue Silver is the main character, who finds out that her mother is actually a fairy who has been taken back to the fairy realm and her grandfather is planning to take over her city, and it's up to her to stop him.
The art fluctuates from being just okay to rather nice, but what makes me really enjoy it is Rue's self questioning and wondering where her true nature lies. Is she human? Or is she fairy?
5. My Little Red Book, edited by Rachel Kauder Nalebuff
This is a collection of first-period stories, written by women of all ages from around the world. They are artists, writers, professionals, doctors, and students. Many of these stories have similar themes, for example:
*The author thought she were dying.
*The author was excited about becoming a woman.
*The author got their period in a public situation and bled through her clothes.
*The author didn't know anything about periods until it happened.
And so on.
And yet, despite these similarities than run through, each story maintains a sense of unique experience particular to that author. The story may be universal, but the experience is deeply personal. As I continued to read through these stories, and even as I saw more of the similarities that tied them together, I became more and more fascinated with these people who all experienced a similar event in their own way.
In many ways, I think this is a vital and necessary book, normalizing an experience that is often treated as a secret shame, even today. We need to be more open about these kind of things, to bring them out in the open, to facilitate discussion, and this book does that in a classy and tactful way.
6. This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities, by Jim Rossignol
The title of this book, This Gaming Life: Travels in Three Cities, is both apt and deceiving. While there is some traveling going on, and there are three specific cities spoken of, mostly this book is about video games and their culture. While I was expecting a more travel based narrative, Rossignol's commentary and experiences in the gaming world turned out to be quite interesting.
The essays within this book represent the author's own ambivalence feeling about the gaming. Not about the value of video games, because Rossignol is quite sure that video games are valuable, but as to what form that value is meant to take. One the one hand, he feels that games serve a vital purpose of being entertaining, and that the dispelling of boredom alone is valuable enough. On the other hand, he equally excited about the ways that games can be more.
In terms of physical travel, he takes us to two cities (beyond his home in London, which is the third city). In Seoul, South Korea, we are introduced a unique bubble of gaming culture, in which social interaction takes the place of vivid graphics in terms of importance. In Reykjavik, Iceland, he attends a conference for a game called EVE Online, in which a complex form or freedom and free reign is built into the design itself, so that in many ways users are the co-creators of the game.
Whether he was talking about the cities he's visiting or the gaming culture he loves, Rossignol kept me interested. While I would definitely recommend this book to those interested in games and gamming, I would hesitate to suggest it to those interested in a traveling experience, as I think they would be put off by the mixed focus of the book.
7. Paper Towns, by John Green
I don't know how to summarize this one without ripping off the back cover, so I'll just quote it instead:"Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life -- dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge -- he follows. After their all-nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues -- and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees the girl he thought he knew."
I was compelled to keep reading this book. The mystery of Margo was powerful incentive for me, as well as Green's captivating writing style. As Quentin follows the clues she left behind, we share his experience of not only discovering her, but his realization that everyone in his life is more than how we perceive them. Every character in this book comes across as a flesh and blood human being. All around a fabulous book that I would definitely be willing to read again.