Wildwood

Wildwood by Colin Meloy

Wildwood is Meloy's first foray into novel length prose. His talents are usually at the helm of the Decemberists. The book is also illustrated  by  Carson Ellis. Over all, the book is good. The story is captivating, the characters are solid, and it wraps up nicely. Also, my fears of this being a vanity project were set aside. Due to the style of the novel, it is rather obvious that Meloy has been sitting on this story for a while. My hope is that Meloy is able to keep the momentum to write. If so, this could be an amazing YA series.

Wildwood clocks in at around 500 pages. As intimidating as that is, the book reads at faster than average pace. I could see in areas where the author had written himself into a corner and tried to get his way out. All novels have those traps, some are adept at getting out of them and some aren't. Meloy was better than average. It's easy to over look that when one realizes that the author is constructing a new world of magic, and I absolutely fell in love with that world. I'm a complete sucker for talking animal books, and Wildwood filled my quota. It's head nod to Wind in the Willows and Charlotte's Web were lovely. The structure of the world made me happy as well. It lends itself to expansion. Meaning, I hope a sequel is on the way.

Walking away from Wildwood I'm smiling. I've read 110 books this year (it may end up being 111), and I started this blog. I'm glad I could bring my musings about books to the fine folks that read this. 2012 is going to bring great things. First, the reading project. That starts tomorrow. Second, graduate school, my applications are due by Feburary 15th. Lastly, I'm going to be moving again, so I'll have to pack my life into boxes and purge things I don't need. 2012 is going to be a year of transition for me. I can feel it.

My next read is Blankets by Craig Thompson. So far it is astonishing.

The Book of Three

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

I've decided to reread this series though out 2012. My dear readers may know it as The Black Cauldron or The Chronicles of Prydain. Essentially this series of books is a way to have a child cut his or her teeth on epic fantasy. It moves swiftly, has engaging characters, and has satisfying resolutions. Also, seeing as the books have been out since the 1960s they are readily available at any used book store for around .50 a book. 

The book clocks in at around 200 pages. It can be read in an afternoon if there are little distractions. The characters are sweet, fully realized, and endearing. I'd linger on a page simply because the writing style was so much fun to read. Taran, the Assistant Pig Keeper, is so sweet that I wish the series was longer.

I'm moving onto Wildwood. So far I'm really enjoying it. I'll more than likely be done with it by the end of the week. Also, if you are in the Austin area, BookPeople is having it's customer appreciation day on January 1st. 20% off almost everything in the store. I save my gift cards all year. Second, I just recently purchased The Great Gatsby from Novel Poster. It looks fantastic on my wall. Also, there customer service is excellent. Lastly, remember that January's reading project is 1984 and 1Q84. Reading will begin on January 1st. I hope everyone has had a lovely holiday. May the new year bring new reads.

 

Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs by Anne Usru

I came across this book while listening to NPR. They are doing a Backseat Book Club* for young adults. I've decided to read along with them. My review, in short, buy this book. It's lyrical, beautiful, well written, and flat out one of the best YA books I've read since The Book Thief. I can't sing praises high enough. I should have told you this prior to Christmas, but seeing as most of my dear readers received  gift cards to bookstores, I can direct you on how to spend it. Go. Now. Buy this. Give thanks in the comment section. Trust me.

Usru's book is very much a coming of age story, but it's also a love letter. Hazel has to find her best friend, and is sent on a magical journey. The woods that she walks though are familiar. I've walked through them before, I've talked to some of the same characters Hazel has, I know their stories. Usru uses well established characters to draw the reader in. Then she uses Hazel, a  breath of fresh air, to move the story along. As familiar as everything is, Usru's characters make everything seem brand new.

Breadcrumbs is a book that opens doors to others. It's heavy influence on Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales makes me want to pick them up again. I have this strong desire to remember what those stories were like. I remember the magic they held when I was a young girl, I wonder if they still hold the same, or if it has changed now that I'm an adult.  I may buy a compendium of them this year, and read the stories when I have time.

Moving on I'm reading Lloyd Alexander's The Book of Three. It's short, so I should be done with it soon. Then I am moving on to Wildwood. Remember the January Reading Project starts soon so pick up your copies of 1984 and 1Q84 soon. I will start blogging 1984 as of the 1st of January.

*Here is a link for the podcast of December's Backseat Book Club, it includes an interview with the author.
'Breadcrumbs': Young Readers Follow A Wintry Tale

  

The Night Circus

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I shouldn't have liked this book. Honestly, it's not my thing. The plot was weak, the characters were flat, and the justification around the main conflict in the novel was like bland rice. But, I couldn't put it down. I suppose it's a testament to the prose. Morgenstern's ability to tell a story bypassed the fact that the story she was telling wasn't very good.

The tricky part to The Night Circus is explaining the plot out loud makes one look like an idiot. There's a circus, and there are magicians, and the magicians fall in love, but are bound to the circus, and then there are these twins. See? It's difficult to boil the plot down into it's specific elements. As much as Night Circus wants to be a love story, it's also very much a story about magic. However, and this is not the best way to go about it, the book attempts to deny that the system of magic it is using is indeed MAGIC. This becomes a bit frustrating as time goes by.

Another issue is that Morgenstern's characters are really flat. As a novel progresses I expect some sort of growth. Not in the Night Circus. The characters end where they began. Their flaws are still glaring and they don't appear to have learned a thing. This is equally as frustrating as the magic denial.

With all that being said, The Night Circus is compelling. Morgenstern knows how to construct a novel. She doesn't linger in areas and chapters are kept short. What really saved Morgenstern is that she decided to construct her novel out of time sequence. So, as the reader gets frustrated in one area the chapter ends and then one is thrust into another. It really saved the entire story from tedium. Honestly, the whole thing read more like a movie script or a play. I can absolutely see this story being adapted by HBO or by a budding film maker. It could easily be spun into a series or a film.

My next book is Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse. This book has recently been translated into English, and has been a cornerstone of Japanese Science Fiction since the 1960s. I'm so excited to read it.

Link Round Up

Book Riot did a cute post on, Holiday Villain Throwdown: Grinch vs. Scrooge

We Like Big Books (When They’re Fiction?) I think this is simply the experience people have had with longer non-fiction. In an academic setting, long non-fiction is dull. I challenge my regular readers to pick up a longer non-fiction book and give it a go. Suggestions for this will be at the end of the post.

Andrew Sullivan asks, Is Amazon Killing Literary Culture?. In short, no. Amazon is not killing literary culture. It's simply reacting to a market that wants what it wants. Literary culture is bound and determined to catch up. The same arguments have been made about literary culture after each new innovation. We need to stop worry about it and start figuring out what the new literary culture is going to look like.

An Against Amazon Tumblr. Some of the arguments are good some of them are bad. We'll see how this works out.

Finally, Booze And Prose. Does drinking make for a better writer? In my experience I've found that drinking distracts me from writing. I'm not able to focus.

Suggested non-fiction readings:
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

A Great and Terrible Beauty

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray

 I'm ever so glad that I read Going Bovine and Beauty Queens before I picked up A Great and Terrible Beauty. Bovine and Queens have made me a champion of Libba Bray. I've recommended them more than once and will continue to do so. Terrible Beauty just didn't do it for me. It's 350 pages of set up and 50 pages of payoff. And the payoff isn't that satisfying. I found myself wanting to abandon the book, and now that I'm done with it, I think that may have been the smart move. Bray's take on the Gothic novel  left me shaking my head and wondering aloud if she was purposely ignoring aspects of Victorian England. Her characters seem more like time travelers that were plopped in the middle of an English finishing school rather than girls who grew up in the era. The woman of that time didn't wish for more than marriage because the options outside of being a Mrs. Soandso were terrifying. Her modern feminist take on a girl who would have been raised to be a brood mare made me want to scream. I realize Bray was taking creative license, but at times it felt like she was shoehorning characters into their respective archetype. 

As much as I am ripping apart A Great and Terrible Beauty, it does have it's moments. Bray's ability to give characters flaws that are both loved and hated is fantastic. Gemma may be a young selfish girl, but then again so is everyone else. Bray's characters seem very real. They aren't cut from the sackcloth of the Twilight novels, wherein Bella is so under-described that she could be any girl, they stand up on their own. I appreciate the strong female, and Bray's ability to make her beautiful, endearing, and flawed all the same time is a testament to her talent.

Next up is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. Before I start I'm wondering if we have a feminist take on Something Wicked This Way Comes. Bradbury made the basis of the creepy circus book, I hope Morgenstern expands on it.

The Scorpio Races

The Scorpio Races by Maggie Stiefvater

Stories like The Scorpio Races appeal to my inner 12 year old. When I was that age, finding strong female characters was a bit of a challenge. They were either babysitting, making out with their boyfriends, or living in Canada. Girls like Puck didn't exist. Apparently, Puck and I also have the same ability to make life altering decisions within a nano second. She decides to compete in a murderous race to save her house within the span of less than a paragraph. I decided to move over 1300 miles in the same amount of time. She and I could be sisters.

Stiefvater writing style lent well to this story. Her imagery was fantastic, and she drew me deeply into the story. However, the book takes about 100 pages to get going. Also, it's told from multiple perspectives, and at the beginning it's a tad difficult to tell them apart. As the story goes on, they become more distinct. This seems like a story that has been brewing for a long time. The characters were fully realized and I kept thinking that they were going to walk off the page. Reading this book made me immensely happy. Stiefvater is a young author, and I can't wait to see what she does next. Pick this up for a nice winter read. It may clock in around 400 pages, but it reads fast.

Keeping with the strong girl theme, my next novel is Libba Bray's A Great and Terrible Beauty. From some of the reviews I've seen Bray's Gemma has been compared to Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As far as I'm concerned that's one hell of a comparison. Gemma has a lot to live up to if that is the case. I'm skeptical, but in a good way.

Link Round Up

Genre Kryptonite: Agatha Christie. Blogging about one's love for Christie is fantastic. She writes a lean, mean, amazingly good novel. Pick them up.

Books That I Wish Had Been Better – 2011. I totally understand this post. I absolutely wish When She Woke was a better novel. It had all the rights to be one of the best of the year, but it really dropped the ball.

Friday Reads. I've been participating with this for the last few months, and have completely forgotten to post it here. It's a great project.

The Local Crusade. A lovely post about local bookstores. I'm a huge fan of Powells for online shopping. They also have FREE shipping right now, so you know, buy books for Christmas.

Document: The Symbolism Survey. In 1963 a high school student mailed out identical surveys to a host of  authors. Some replied. The rest is history. I love how delightfully bitchy Ayn Rand's response is, I'd expect nothing less.

Level Up

Level Up by Gene Luen Yang and Thien Pham

I picked this up due to my love for American Born Chinese.* I'm happy to report, Level Up is just as good, and has made it onto my best graphic novels for 2011 list. I enjoy books like Level Up, they showcase new talent and are a great platform for using comics to propel ideas, not just superheros. This is a classic son not wanting to disappoint his father story. In a sense, I've read this before, but Level Up treats the story differently. It's use of watercolor comics all done by Pham bring it out of the stagnate modern comic and into a more modern place. Pick this book up, it's a coming of age story, but with a twist that everyone can appreciate.

When I did more extensive writing about this during Graphic Novel Month I went on and on about the modern state of comics. I believe, with the advent of ereaders and tables, we are going to see a new type of mixed media author. Part graphic, part prose, part chose your own adventure, and part compelling story. It's a medium that cries out for collaboration. The artwork in Level Up lends itself to such works. It's fresh, but with an old soul feel. I'm going to keep an eye on the artist, because I feel like I'll see a lot more of him in the future. He brags about only having 399 fans on facebook, but a few years from now he's going to be more widely known. Pick this up now, watch the growth, it will be amazing.

I'm now moving onto The Scorpio Races. This has been on a bunch of 2011 best of lists, so I've decided to give it a shot. Also, I'm still attempting to study for the GRE so posting may be a bit slow for the next week or so. I can't wait for that to be over.


*American Born Chinese is an astonishingly good graphic novel. Read it. You won't be disappointed.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs

The chatter around this book is immense. It's on so many best of lists, and it has been thrust into my hands on more than one occasion. Miss Peregrin's takes a hybrid approach, filled with creepy photographs. It's a horror YA novel that has collided with an art project. Left in sensitive hands the photos alone could cause nightmares. In tandem with the story they complement a creepy tale. When I was reading I felt the steady influence of Neil Gaiman's Sandman series, and some of the older works of Stephen King playing into the plot. Also, a nice movie companion would be Tod Browning's Freaks (1932).

The book itself fell into some of the classic mistakes that a young author can make. I feel like Riggs doesn't quite trust his audience yet. In places where I wanted more plot I got descriptions of the sky. In places where I wanted more descriptions of the sky I got more plot. It's a frustrating endeavor, but will be easily remedied with time. If put on a scale the good far outweighs the bad with this book. I'd love to see Riggs get into graphic novels, or some sort of hybrid book/mixed media project. The desire is there, and we have the means. In Riggs I think we've finally found the talent to be able to pull something off that would take e-readers/tablet computers to the next level. Björk did it with her most recent iPad app, it's now time for an author to try it. Mr Riggs if you ever read this post, consider this your challenge. You've got the talent. Go use it. Wow me. I dare you. 

Next up is Level Up by Gene Luen Yang. His prior graphic novel American Born Chinese wowed me a few years ago. According to the rumors, this is supposed to be as good as his debut. It will be a quick read, so I'll more than likely have the write up done in the next day or so.

An Abundance of Katherines

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

I picked up this book mainly because of the chatter through the #lit tag on Tumblr. It has a lore around it, and is quoted often. Figuring that I could easily toss it aside if I disliked it, I undertook it during a rare rainy Sunday. I ended up enjoying it a lot more than I thought I would. It's prose comes off witty  and cute.  The plot line was a throw back to many of the 1980s summer adventure movies, and over all the characters were endearing. Also, this book shows the evolution of an author. I read Looking for Alaska a few years ago, and couldn't finish it. Green seems to have come into his own, and has finally found a home in his nerdy but adorable characters.

Young adult lit has a boy problem. Meaning, attracting young men into reading has become more and more difficult over the years. Green's novel is an attempt to bring the non-target demographic into the fold. Using characters like Colin and Hassan, Green crafts realistic dialogue and banter between the two of them. It's good to see two male characters have discussions that don't seem forced, and also are not centered around a love interest. The book spends a lot of time dealing with Colin's love live, but the brief reprieve the reader gets from that are Hassan's jokes. The pop culture references, and ability to simply connect to a male character is lacking. Boys are left out, or are told to go seek solace in the science fiction section. The book world is doing their best to subtract men out, and authors like Green are doing their best to add them back in.

As I walk away from this book, I can't wait to see what Green does next. His books are constantly evolving, and I'd love to see him tackle something more of a challenge. I want to see him write the young adult book that makes him a household name. After reading this one, I know he has it in him.

I'm moving onto Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. This book has popped up on more than one Best of 2011 list, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Also, I'm taking the GRE on December 20th so I'm going to have lighter reads in between now and then.

Link Round Up

The 10 Best Books of 2011. The most trusted list for book lovers.

December Kids' Book Club Pick: 'Breadcrumbs'. NPR's book club for kids is shaping up to be one of the best out there. I've loved all there selections.

Largehearted Boy has compiled a meta-list of all the best of 2011 book lists, yes my tiny blog is on there. Yes, I'm excited about that. It's the little things people. It's the little things. Online "Best of 2011" Book Lists

Another wonderful story I've been following, I'm so excited by this The Library Phantom Returns!

As I lay *&%!!*! dying? David Milch to do Faulkner for HBO. We'll see how this works out.

Upheaval at the New York Public Library, a good article about the modern library.

High fantasy for young adults. This is an interesting read from The New Yorker.

When Used Books Attack: Banana Edition, this is the scariest thing I've seen in the book world all week. A banana shaped penis candle is astonishing.

(Still reading this) 

2012 Reading Projects

The idea for this hit me as I was holding the book 1Q84 in my hands. I realized that I haven't read 1984 since high school. Seeing that 1Q84 exists in the same world as 1984 the two should be read one after the other. Then I looked at my to read shelf* and saw The Feast of the Goat and In the Time of the Butterflies another great pairing about Dominican Republic under the rule of Rafael Trujillo. After that The 900 Days: The Siege Of Leningrad  and Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl popped out at me. Then it struck me, this could be a reading project. 

Two books of a similar theme read one after another. They don't have to be in the same genera or written in the same time period. Here's the list I have so far: 

January: 1984 followed by 1Q84

February: The Feast of the Goat followed by In the Time of Butterflies 

March: Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl followed by 900 Days: The Siege of Leningrad 

If any of my dear readers has further suggestions please contact me. I may even try to get a few movie selections around these books as well. 

*Yes I have a to read shelf. Would you expect anything less? 

East of Eden

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

This write up could have gone so many ways. I could sit here and pontificate about the duality of man, and how Steinbeck's novel is one of the best examples of how that concept is expressed in literature. I could also mention how e.e. cummings' poetry is a direct influence on East of Eden. Or I could bring a modern twist on East of Eden by drawing connections between its themes and the modern comic book hero, because the modern comic book hero is dual in nature. He is in constant flux between good and evil. But, I'm not, because that's boring, this isn't English class, and I'm not a professor. What I am going to do is simply ask people to read it. East of Eden is one of those novels that leaves the reader breathless. The book is a master work by a master author. It's prose is completely accessible, Steinbeck doesn't talk past his audience, and it's one of the best American novels ever written.

Classics have a bad reputation. Books like East of Eden usually end up in a dimly lit corner of a bookstore where the only customers are students and professors. This needs to change. I challenge my dear readers to pick up a classic novel. I also will give an out, if the book becomes dull in the first 50 pages, it's okay to abandon it. Reading should be a pleasurable experience slogging through a book isn't fun. Reading shouldn't feel like a chore. This isn't school and as far as I'm concerned no judgement shall be passed. Hell, I've been trying to read A Light in August for two months, but can't get past the first 50 pages. Faulkner and I are like oil and water. We just don't mix.

The next few weeks may be a bit slow for me because I'm studying for the GRE. My test date is December 20th, so I'm switching to light reads for the next 19 days. Right now I'm reading An Abundance of Katherines a lovely YA novel centralized around a road trip. I am creating a reading project for January, and I plan on posting about it some time this weekend. Look for that post sometime on Saturday or Sunday.