update -- a multi-book review
it's been slow going and at this rate i just KNOW i will not finish my goal of 'books to read in one year'. this is due mainly to procrastination, the addition of more books to the queue, and my falling prey to many shiny distractions. but i have an overdue fee at the library now, and a lengthy opinion on a handful of books and so here i will share them, for whatever innocent passerby happens upon my page these days -- mostly the spam-bots, who will almost undoubtedly find whatever information i post to be a "invaluable resource". :)
bad news first...
here be the abandoned works. they be just two, and for drastically different reasons, but it distresses me to know that there are two failed attempts on my record. seems shameful...
and the shame be fully on the first book: "i am number four" by (the faker and english class drop out) pittacus lore.
first of all, i am able to endure any pseudonym for the sake of a good story. lemony snicket anyone? amazing good reads, the series of unfortunate events is. thirteen miserable tales of irreverent importance. but i digress. so, good story = whatever fake name you feel like giving yourself, insane writer. yet! i am not, however, above the art of mockery when the work the fake-named-penman has shoved upon the reading world is complete and utter rubbish! it is simply beyond understanding how a publisher like harper collins was tricked, cajoled, and hornswaggled into printing such an abuse to the english language, sentence structure, and general storytelling. not to mention the utter disrespect to the trees that were hacked apart and made into paper so that this terrible book could have something upon which to be mass-produced. am i being clear enough? i hated the book. not the general story mind you, nor the characters yearning to be given depth and emotion and a third grade comprehension level. no, not those, poor things. but the writing itself. is this pittacus lore even allowed in a bookstore without adult supervision? more than likely not, if his storytelling abilities are anything to judge by. i honestly felt intelligence diminishing... not to mention my six-year-old-nancy-drew-reading dignity, which took a well-meaning swing at my judgement; a much-needed slap of clarity i add. a handful of chapters in had me returning the book to target and grabbing my refunded money with a smug look of appreciation. i am sure that i then went and spent that seventeen dollars on teeth-rotting candy. and if so, it was money well spent. to its only testament, "i am number four" knocked an impressive home run out of hollywood park: the film was brillant and took all that the book could not deliver and made it sparkly and fulfilling. where was good writing before hollywood came along, pittaful? this was one sad failing of the written word to cinema. sad, sad day.
the next abandoned attempt is: "the gone-away world" by nick harkaway
it's not for lack of story or character or anything beholden to a fantastic novel that i turned away from nick harkaway's paperweight of a tale. it is the sheer scope and brilliance of the novel that had me first daunted and then defeated.
to read "the gone-away world" is alike to reading the sun. it hurts after a while and leaves the reader feeling sunburned and dehydrated. forty pages into its five hundred twelve pages width i felt as though i had crossed the sahara without a camel. i felt surely i was near to the end only to find that time had suspended itself and i was lost among the dunes, with no escape but that of a fevered mirage. it was a beautiful journey, those forty pages of back story and intrigue but it was sadly just too much of an adventure for me. nick has a wondrous habit of packing approximately seven tons of story into a single page and while i enjoyed ever minute, i am ashamed to say that i broke under the pressure. perhaps another day i shall take up my abandoned path. but not, i suspect for a very long time.
i highly recommend "the gone-away world" to more weathered travelers as it was a beautiful creation, filled with rich detail, spunky characters... and the promise of ninjas, which i departed too early to encounter sadly.
i do love ninjas.
good news!
here are a few words about the tales i did finish!
"fallen" by lauren kate
it's a mystery and a romance. a mysterious romance. the romance and the on-going mystery...
while lauren kate's book started with promise it floundered before the finish. i was moderately impressed with her way of unfolding the tragic events that lead luce to the reform school. it was slow and natural. yet, my praise of kate's prose mostly ends there (and after a fantastically written prologue, full of emotion and care that isn't seen in any future chapters) and loses me further with the ever building mystery, of which only the bare minumum is explained with virtually no pay-back for the long and arduous journey taken to get there. relying entirely upon the 'history' of daniel and luce we are expected to be strung along down a confusing road of allies and enemies and the ever-present and still confusing black shadows and to accept the over-used invisible line that draws the two together, despite any odds and continuing jerk behavior.
simply this: i felt the story was too cut and dry, and we, the reader, were given too little to invest any real heart into the microwave dinner of a tale of supernatural romance. there are sequels coming... i will not be reading them.
"the magic of ordinary days" by ann howard creel
i had the good fortune of stumbling upon a beautiful hallmark movie of the same title. after shedding a few tears i immediately ordered the book from the library and was not disappointed.
livvy is a young woman of great wit and knowledge that has found herself in the most dire of circumstances: pregnant and unmarried in the middle of world war 2. but the details of her current situation are slow to be revealed as her marriage of convenience to a lonely colorado farmer takes the foreground. ann howard creel shares a beautifully written tale of loneliness and forgiveness and love. it creeps into your heart and just warms you. of course, we fall in love far more quickly than she with the shy and kind ray singleton, but it is therein that we are able to urge livvy to shed the remnants of hope still clinging to a long-gone one night stand with a soldier and do the same. and there is the heartbreaking sweetness of creel's story. a real true heartfelt tale that makes all other trivial tales of love pale in comparison. i encourage everyone to watch the film and then to read the book. you will love it completely.
"city of fallen angels" by cassandra clare
well, her fashion sense has improved.
this, the fourth installment to her shadowhunter books, and the beginning itself of a new trilogy, is really a story that urges us a little bit further along and yet brings us nowhere at all really.
and that's ok. because we love jace... but things are really getting annoying with his and clary's hot/cold, pity-to-pubescent-love-scenes romance that apparently, somewhere along the way, failed to keep my attention. mark me, i love romance as much as the next human girl but i have about had it with these two. so my attention sways from the tiring tale of "my God, is moody jace from 'city of ash/glass' back? because i am getting sick of it" to... oh lord, simon. really? does he have to be the focus. i get it, i really do. he's just slightly less whiny this time (moving suddenly into the realm of two-tiring boyfriend and displaced teen) but that isn't enough for me. so... skipping ahead a few pages to... who is this handsome mysterious newcomer? kyle/jordan? be still my werewolf-loving heart. of course, he's got a love stamp too so that's going to be annoying i'm sure down the road yet, he is the bright shining light of this installment of slightly-overheated and border-line boring... until you get to the end where clare again clamps up the whole thing in a neat little package of WTFOMGCLIFFHANGERZ?! the woman is a jerk. for reals.
and finally: "night" by elie wiesel
harsh. that's a word for it. brutal is another. it brings you to tears you cannot seem to shed.
"night" is the mournfully-abridged and slightly-revised retelling of elie wiesel's time spent in the concentration camp of auschwitz... and all that that implies, which isn't much because until his short and painful story, i don't think we even begin to understand what horrors of the imagination auschwitz fulfilled and exceeded. from the sectioning off to the rounding up to the cattle-car-like trip to the gates of hell to the survival of that hideous place, elie takes his readers quickly. as though afraid to stand too long looking at the memories and death and abuse and starvation. it is a story of little hope and much despair and the dredges of human cruelty. it is an open honest window for anyone who wants to look in and see what hatred and ignorance led man to do to his fellow man, and man to do to himself.
it was the foreword with reflections of a once-cynical man (outtakes found in the the previous publication of this memoir) that had me most intrigued, as well as it's side-by-side comparison to the revised more understanding elie present in the edition i read. it was also this line that stuck with me most:
(a hungarian jew to elie on a night in the hospital, of the firm belief that hilter would not let the jews see the eleventh hour; that he would not let the russians liberate the camps)
"i've got more faith in hitler than in anyone else. he's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the jewish people."
bad news first...
here be the abandoned works. they be just two, and for drastically different reasons, but it distresses me to know that there are two failed attempts on my record. seems shameful...
and the shame be fully on the first book: "i am number four" by (the faker and english class drop out) pittacus lore.
first of all, i am able to endure any pseudonym for the sake of a good story. lemony snicket anyone? amazing good reads, the series of unfortunate events is. thirteen miserable tales of irreverent importance. but i digress. so, good story = whatever fake name you feel like giving yourself, insane writer. yet! i am not, however, above the art of mockery when the work the fake-named-penman has shoved upon the reading world is complete and utter rubbish! it is simply beyond understanding how a publisher like harper collins was tricked, cajoled, and hornswaggled into printing such an abuse to the english language, sentence structure, and general storytelling. not to mention the utter disrespect to the trees that were hacked apart and made into paper so that this terrible book could have something upon which to be mass-produced. am i being clear enough? i hated the book. not the general story mind you, nor the characters yearning to be given depth and emotion and a third grade comprehension level. no, not those, poor things. but the writing itself. is this pittacus lore even allowed in a bookstore without adult supervision? more than likely not, if his storytelling abilities are anything to judge by. i honestly felt intelligence diminishing... not to mention my six-year-old-nancy-drew-reading dignity, which took a well-meaning swing at my judgement; a much-needed slap of clarity i add. a handful of chapters in had me returning the book to target and grabbing my refunded money with a smug look of appreciation. i am sure that i then went and spent that seventeen dollars on teeth-rotting candy. and if so, it was money well spent. to its only testament, "i am number four" knocked an impressive home run out of hollywood park: the film was brillant and took all that the book could not deliver and made it sparkly and fulfilling. where was good writing before hollywood came along, pittaful? this was one sad failing of the written word to cinema. sad, sad day.
the next abandoned attempt is: "the gone-away world" by nick harkaway
it's not for lack of story or character or anything beholden to a fantastic novel that i turned away from nick harkaway's paperweight of a tale. it is the sheer scope and brilliance of the novel that had me first daunted and then defeated.
to read "the gone-away world" is alike to reading the sun. it hurts after a while and leaves the reader feeling sunburned and dehydrated. forty pages into its five hundred twelve pages width i felt as though i had crossed the sahara without a camel. i felt surely i was near to the end only to find that time had suspended itself and i was lost among the dunes, with no escape but that of a fevered mirage. it was a beautiful journey, those forty pages of back story and intrigue but it was sadly just too much of an adventure for me. nick has a wondrous habit of packing approximately seven tons of story into a single page and while i enjoyed ever minute, i am ashamed to say that i broke under the pressure. perhaps another day i shall take up my abandoned path. but not, i suspect for a very long time.
i highly recommend "the gone-away world" to more weathered travelers as it was a beautiful creation, filled with rich detail, spunky characters... and the promise of ninjas, which i departed too early to encounter sadly.
i do love ninjas.
good news!
here are a few words about the tales i did finish!
"fallen" by lauren kate
it's a mystery and a romance. a mysterious romance. the romance and the on-going mystery...
while lauren kate's book started with promise it floundered before the finish. i was moderately impressed with her way of unfolding the tragic events that lead luce to the reform school. it was slow and natural. yet, my praise of kate's prose mostly ends there (and after a fantastically written prologue, full of emotion and care that isn't seen in any future chapters) and loses me further with the ever building mystery, of which only the bare minumum is explained with virtually no pay-back for the long and arduous journey taken to get there. relying entirely upon the 'history' of daniel and luce we are expected to be strung along down a confusing road of allies and enemies and the ever-present and still confusing black shadows and to accept the over-used invisible line that draws the two together, despite any odds and continuing jerk behavior.
simply this: i felt the story was too cut and dry, and we, the reader, were given too little to invest any real heart into the microwave dinner of a tale of supernatural romance. there are sequels coming... i will not be reading them.
"the magic of ordinary days" by ann howard creel
i had the good fortune of stumbling upon a beautiful hallmark movie of the same title. after shedding a few tears i immediately ordered the book from the library and was not disappointed.
livvy is a young woman of great wit and knowledge that has found herself in the most dire of circumstances: pregnant and unmarried in the middle of world war 2. but the details of her current situation are slow to be revealed as her marriage of convenience to a lonely colorado farmer takes the foreground. ann howard creel shares a beautifully written tale of loneliness and forgiveness and love. it creeps into your heart and just warms you. of course, we fall in love far more quickly than she with the shy and kind ray singleton, but it is therein that we are able to urge livvy to shed the remnants of hope still clinging to a long-gone one night stand with a soldier and do the same. and there is the heartbreaking sweetness of creel's story. a real true heartfelt tale that makes all other trivial tales of love pale in comparison. i encourage everyone to watch the film and then to read the book. you will love it completely.
"city of fallen angels" by cassandra clare
well, her fashion sense has improved.
this, the fourth installment to her shadowhunter books, and the beginning itself of a new trilogy, is really a story that urges us a little bit further along and yet brings us nowhere at all really.
and that's ok. because we love jace... but things are really getting annoying with his and clary's hot/cold, pity-to-pubescent-love-scenes romance that apparently, somewhere along the way, failed to keep my attention. mark me, i love romance as much as the next human girl but i have about had it with these two. so my attention sways from the tiring tale of "my God, is moody jace from 'city of ash/glass' back? because i am getting sick of it" to... oh lord, simon. really? does he have to be the focus. i get it, i really do. he's just slightly less whiny this time (moving suddenly into the realm of two-tiring boyfriend and displaced teen) but that isn't enough for me. so... skipping ahead a few pages to... who is this handsome mysterious newcomer? kyle/jordan? be still my werewolf-loving heart. of course, he's got a love stamp too so that's going to be annoying i'm sure down the road yet, he is the bright shining light of this installment of slightly-overheated and border-line boring... until you get to the end where clare again clamps up the whole thing in a neat little package of WTFOMGCLIFFHANGERZ?! the woman is a jerk. for reals.
and finally: "night" by elie wiesel
harsh. that's a word for it. brutal is another. it brings you to tears you cannot seem to shed.
"night" is the mournfully-abridged and slightly-revised retelling of elie wiesel's time spent in the concentration camp of auschwitz... and all that that implies, which isn't much because until his short and painful story, i don't think we even begin to understand what horrors of the imagination auschwitz fulfilled and exceeded. from the sectioning off to the rounding up to the cattle-car-like trip to the gates of hell to the survival of that hideous place, elie takes his readers quickly. as though afraid to stand too long looking at the memories and death and abuse and starvation. it is a story of little hope and much despair and the dredges of human cruelty. it is an open honest window for anyone who wants to look in and see what hatred and ignorance led man to do to his fellow man, and man to do to himself.
it was the foreword with reflections of a once-cynical man (outtakes found in the the previous publication of this memoir) that had me most intrigued, as well as it's side-by-side comparison to the revised more understanding elie present in the edition i read. it was also this line that stuck with me most:
(a hungarian jew to elie on a night in the hospital, of the firm belief that hilter would not let the jews see the eleventh hour; that he would not let the russians liberate the camps)
"i've got more faith in hitler than in anyone else. he's the only one who's kept his promises, all his promises, to the jewish people."