Nose in a Book

Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth

Ok, so who’s sick of the vampire books?  I am!!  But this one has s a whole new take and it works.  The vampire part of the book is just an interesting side plot which adds to the main plot rather than takes away.  It’s kind of a Tom Clancy type political thriller.  Cade, the vampire, is a top-secret government agent who reports directly to the president.  I can’t say much more about the plot without giving too much away, but basically there’s a plot against the White House (which involves more undead – a “biological weapon” as it’s called in the press release) and Cade is called in to fix things.

Maybe I’m just slightly giddy because this is the first free book I’ve received that I actually liked, but it was good!  It was entertaining and exciting and intriguing.  I also liked the way Farnsworth handled the vampire bit.  I can’t help but compare him to the vampires in Twilight (I know, I know, not the same genre at all but still) and Cade is so much more likable and believable than Edward et al.

Anyway, if you like political thrillers you should definitely check this one out.

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge

Hmm…I’m not really sure where to start with this one.  At first, I didn’t think I liked it, but as I thought about it more and read about it, it’s starting to grow on me.

So, Henry, an author, published a book a few years ago – a super famous, well loved book about animals (coincidence?  I don’t think so…)  Anyway, he’s got his second book all ready to go when the publishers shoot it down because it’s a little unconventional (ok, a lot unconventional).  It’s two books in one – an essay about the Holocaust and a fictional story about the Holocaust.  He wants it published as a flip book.  Meaning that you would read one part of the book from the beginning to the middle and then you’d flip the book to read the other part of the book from the beginning to the middle again.  (Guess who else wanted to write a flip book?)  After this disappointment, Henry decides to quit writing and move away to some unnamed big city.  There he meets a taxidermist who is writing a play that on the surface is about a donkey and a monkey (Beatrice and Virgil) who live on a shirt just talking, but is actually about “The Horrors” – the holocaust (and other similar “Horrors”).

I’m still not sure I liked the book but I think that Martel accomplished what he set out to do in spite of his publishers not enjoying his original idea (I don’t know the whole back story – I’m just going on other reviews I’ve read -and of course a lot of assumption based on the actual novel).  And I like that.  And I think that makes it a successful book.  It was also pretty short and besides that it was a quick read which also works in its favour.  Also, apparently Martel’s original story was about a talking monkey and a talking donkey and it seems he was able to get a lot of their conversations published anyway as they were part of the taxidermist’s play.  I love that.  (And, honestly, I don’t know if the publishers really did tell him that his flip book idea sucked but I’m assuming because that’s what happened in the book.)

It’s also a smart book, almost to the point of pretentiousness.  In fact, it is pretentious but not overly, annoyingly so.  There is one scene from the play (the first one Henry reads) where Virgil describes a pear to Beatrice because she’s never seen one before.  I really liked it, it was very well written, but somehow it knew it was well written and it came through in the writing.  (Make sense?)

I guess I would reccomend it but not as a fast paced, can’t put it down, gripping type of story.  More as a story that says something important and also happens to be entertaining.

The Alexandria Letter by George R. Honig

A young scholar, Nathan, stumbles across an extremely old manuscript while doing research on Hebrew poetry.  He translates the manuscript and finds that it is a letter written by a man who was a disciple of John the Baptist and Jesus.  The contents of the letter “threaten to turn long-held principles of Christianity on their heads.”  According to the book summary Nathan “finds himself thrown into an agonizing struggle against powerful forces committed to discrediting him…As he races to verify the authenticity of the letter, he faces rejection by his fellow scholars and sinister opposition from within the Church that aims to stop him at any cost.”

I really didn’t like this book and here’s why:

The story lacked flow.  The story was told in three alternating parts: the letter, Nathan’s narrative and the story of a shady priest who’d spent at least 30 years murdering, stealing and plotting.  There was way too much unnecessary detail in the letter and it was so boring.  The part of the book that told Nathan’s story was too impersonal and the writing was stilted.  This part of the story didn’t have enough detail.  As a result the characters were not adequately developed and I never got to know the characters.  Because I didn’t know them, I didn’t care about them or the outcome of the book.  The shady priest parts of the book were so random.  I think the author was trying to show us what a bad guy he was but so much of what he did was so completely unrelated to the rest of the novel that it was confusing.

The book summary was one of the things that bothered me the most about the book.  I thought the story was going to be exciting, and suspenseful, and controversial.  But it wasn’t!  The book moved so slowly, I didn’t find it to be suspenseful at all.  And controversial?  I don’t think so.  You’d think with the subject matter of the letter that it wouldn’t be that hard to find some controversy but I suspect that if the letter had been real most Christians wouldn’t be all that bothered by it.  I wouldn’t anyway.

After trashing a book like that, I usually like to find something good to say about it but in this case I just can’t think of anything.  I always feel badly, saying I didn’t like a book because I know a lot of blood, sweat and tears go into writing a book.   I’m sure there is someone out there that would enjoy this novel, it just wasn’t for me.

The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge and What’s in a Name Challenge

In Sarajevo a cellist is sitting at a window watching his friends and neighours in line for bread when they are all killed by a mortar.  He decides to go out into the streets every day at the same time for 22 days to play and Adagio for each person killed in the attack.  The novel tells the story of three people living in Sarajevo during the siege in the 1990′s.  Each of them is affected by the cellist and his actions.  I actually found that although the book was named after him, the cellist wasn’t actually the focus of the book.  It was more about living and surviving in the city during the siege.

It was interesting (that’s not quite the right term but it’s the best I’ve got right now) to read about living in Sarajevo at the time.  In the past few months I’ve also read Left to Tell about the Rwandan genocide and A Thousand Splendid Suns about the Taliban in Afghanistan (and last year The Book of Negroes about slavery).  I’ve known that these kind of things were happening in the world but reading about them inspires me to find out more about what really happened and why and because they are so much more modern than books I’ve read about WWII or other conflicts they hit so much closer to home.  I am consistently amazed at the incredible cruelty that human beings have the ability to inflict on each other.  It’s really disgusting.

I think it’s really important to read books like this and feel that disgust and anger about the atrocities that occurred.  We need to remember so we can try to prevent these kinds of things from happening in the future.  A common theme in these books is the people who never thought it could happen to them.  That really hits close to home because that’s what I’m constantly thinking as a I read these novels.  “That could never happen in Canada.”  But who knows, maybe it could?

Anyway, back to the book!  I thought it was well written but sometimes I felt it was a little contrived.  It just didn’t feel completely sincere to me at times.  Possibly that’s because it’s impossible to write a book about something you don’t know.  It sounds like Galloway did all the research he could but I just don’t think it’s possible to really understand what it’s like to go through something like this unless you’ve actually experienced it.  (Not that you’d ever WANT to!)

The thing that’s cool about this book is that there really was a Cellist of Sarajevo.  The details aren’t exactly the same but there was a man, Vedran Smailovic, who played Albinon’s Adagio during the siege.  Apparently Smailovic wasn’t too pleased about the book though!

She-Rain: A Story of Hope by Michael Cogdill

I’m not really sure what to say about this book.  I gave it 100 pages but I just couldn’t finish.  Perhaps it’s just timing but I could not get into this book.  It was really just too wordy.  Every time I’d start to get pulled into the story, like something was actually happening, I’d find myself bogged down again by all those words!

It really is well written though.  I’m sure at a different time in my life I could sit down and enjoy what this book has to offer but right now I only get short moments to read and I think this is a book that is better read if you have an hour or two at a time to devote to it.  I’m also operating on small amounts of sleep which makes it hard to concentrate on anything that’s even slightly complicated!  So, I’ll put this one back on the shelf and perhaps come back to it in a few years when I’m done with small children demanding every other second of my attention.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Read for: Book Club

I wasn’t sure about this book when I first found out we were going to be reading it for book club – I wondered why I’d be interested in reading about Alzheimer’s.  But I really enjoyed it.

Alice is a super smart, famous Harvard professor of linguistics when at 50 she is diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.  The book is really just about her struggle with her declining memory.  It shows a little bit about her family’s struggle as well but what I liked most about the book was that is was told from Alice’s point of view.  It was really interesting to see inside her mind and hear her thoughts as the disease progressed.

I’ve never had any experience with Alzheimer’s.  My family has a strong cancer history but I’ve never had any family member with Alzheimer’s.  It was quite an eye-opener for me to read this book and really understand how frustrating and depressing this disease would be to have or watch a family member struggle with.  In the book, right after her diagnosis, Alice states that she would rather have cancer than Alzheimer’s.  I had actually thought that myself before she even said that.  The thing about Alzheimer’s is that there is no fighting it…and there aren’t really any amazing treatments either.  The other thing that would be tough is that if you have the particular gene that Alice has, you have a 100% chance of getting the disease.  The gene that is inherent in my family only carries an 80% chance of developing the disease (which isn’t great statistically but I’ll take it over 100%!).

At first I had a couple of complaints but I think I’ve resolved them.  First, the book became increasingly choppy and less detailed toward the end and it seemed almost like Genova had just gotten bored and just wanted to get it over with, but then I realized that because the story was told from Alice’s point of view, it totally made sense.  Of course things would be more choppy and less detailed because her life probably seemed like a series of small moments – she was basically living entirely in the present with really hardly any memories of the past.  The second complaint I had is that is seemed like there was a lot of technical stuff.  Normally, I don’t think this would have bothered me but I was trying to read the book quickly (I forgot about book club and didn’t start reading the book until the morning of – oops!) and I just didn’t need all that extra.  But it wasn’t overly complicated or in depth so I don’t think it would bother most people.

The other thing about reading this book is that it’s made me oversensitive to lapses in my own memory.  I’ve been very sleep deprived lately so there are a lot of gaps in my memory and after reading this book I started to realize just how many things I was forgetting but I also noticed where the strengths are in my mind.  I’m really good at remembering dates and appointments (I have a calendar but hardly ever look at it) but I’m terrible with names (which as a teacher is a terrible thing!) and my vocabulary is definitely suffering lately.  It also reminded me of a migraine I had once.  I get regular migraines with no memory loss but once I had one and I couldn’t remember people’s names, including my cousin, a colleague, Tylenol and my own son!  It was really scary not being able to remember my own son’s name, I can’t imagine going through that on a regular basis.

Overall it was a great book – I learned a lot.  The book club discussion was great.  There was a lot to talk about.  There are several people in my club who have family members with Alzheimer’s and they all thought it was very realistic.  I can’t wait to read her next book, Left Neglected, about a woman who suffers a brain injury and no longer perceives information coming from the left.

Generation A by Douglas Coupland

Read for: Canadian Books Challenge

It is in the future (the near future according to the book jacket) and the bees have all disappeared.  Then randomly (or not as it turns out) five people across the globe are stung.  Each of them are then brought into special isolation rooms to be studied to find out why they were stung and how this information could be used to bring back the bees.  I found this part of the book interesting but then it took an odd turn.  After the stingees are sent back to their normal lives, they are again gathered up, and this time brought together on a remote island and told to tell stories to each other.  Then there are a bunch of their short stories in the book (which I’m sure had some deep meaning to the story but it wasn’t readily apparent and I just didn’t feel like thinking that hard to figure it out).    Then after all that weirdness, there’s some zombie references and then you find out why the bees disappeared and how the scientists plan on getting them back.

So, how did I feel about this book?  I’m still not sure.  It’s taken me a while to get to this review because I’m still deciding what I think.  I did enjoy the first half and I was satisfied with the ending, but the middle part was strange.  And I can’t decide if the beginning and the ending make up for the strangness of the middle. you know?

As always with Coupland, though, there were definitely parts that made me laugh out loud and many of his characters were pretty witty which made for enjoyable reading even in the weird parts.  I think overall it was a decent book and it wasn’t too long or deep so I can see past the middle part (which wasn’t bad – just different and isn’t that just typical Coupland?)

Note: I’m labelling this as dystopian fiction because it kind of has that feel, but it’s not typical dystopian either.

Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman

Read for: Global Reading Challenge 2010 – US, North America (I chose to include this as one of my NA books because I haven’t read that many books about the South and that seems to be a major theme in this novel.) Reviews by Lola’s review

Cecelia (CeeCee) Honeycutt has a crappy life.  Her mother suffers from psychosis and her father has pretty much washed his hands of the whole situation when her mother is killed by a car while crossing the street.   Her great-aunt Tootie shows up to rescue her.  She takes her to live with her in Savannah, Georgia.

First, what I liked about the book.  I really enjoyed the writing.  Hoffman can write!  I actually felt like I was sitting in the lush gardens and beautiful homes with the CeeCee.  The way she describes the scenery was amazing.  Every time I opened the book I felt like I’d been scooped up and plunked down right in the middle of Savannah.

I also enjoyed the story.  It was a light, cute coming of age story about a sweet young girl who really deserved a better life.  And here’s where I talk about the things I didn’t like.  At times I  found the story to be too sweet and even bordering on cheesy.  I also felt that certain parts lacked depth.  I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly but at times I found myself hoping for more, you know?  I also found some of the characters (and some of the traits of the characters) to be a little unbelievable.  Once again, I can’t exactly pinpoint specifics – I just had a vague feeling of dissatisfaction with some of the characters.  I think the biggest offender was CeeCee.  I found her to be really inconsistent.  Likable, but just a teeny bit unbelievable.

However, my biggest complaint about the book was really not related to the story at all.  There were some major editing issues.  Misspelled words, incorrect punctuation and sentences that were missing words or had extra words.  I know this is not a problem for some readers but it really bothers me when a book has this many errors.  I hope they can get that fixed for future editions.

Overall, I really did enjoy the book.  I know it sounds like I had lots of complaints but really these things were just minor distractions for me.  It definitely wasn’t a book that I couldn’t put down, but I think that goes in hand with the type of book it is.  It has a lilting, lyrical feel to it that just calmed and soothed me whenever I picked it up.

I first read this book last June and reviewed it here.  I chose it for my book club this month and as I am hosting/leading the discussion I thought I’d better reread it.  I enjoyed it the first time around but this time I loved it!  I reread my review of the book and wanted to change some of the things I said but I decided that just isn’t fair so I’ve decided to link to this and just write some of my new thoughts about the book.

First of all – I love, love, love Oskar.  He’s so believable and likable.  He brings the story down to a personal level.  Even though I was deeply effected by 9/11 it was still something that happened to someone else (especially because I’m not American).  But this book personalizes it.  It’s now something that happened to Oskar – someone who I like and sympathize with.  I love that Foer never explained to the reader about Oskar – he just was Oskar.  I really felt like I knew him, like I know him.  There was no character development, because it wasn’t needed, Oskar just exists.

The last time I read this novel, I mentioned that I found the letters written by his grandparents to be distracting and unrelated.  This time around I found the letters actually added to the story and really flowed.   The story is about how 3 different people dealt with the loss of loved ones in different ways.  I found this time that I was more interested in the grandparents story – possibly because I was less confused.  I’m always the last person to get the “aha” feeling in these kind of books, so with previous knowledge of the back story I think I was better able to enjoy what it added to the novel.

Foer also does some interesting things with pictures and even with the text.  I have to admit, the first time around I found it to be a little annoying and just sort of a marketing ploy, but this time I actually liked it and found it to add to the whole experience of the novel.  It allowed me to feel more involved, like I was actually part of the story rather than just an outsider reading the story.

I have a feeling this is going to be one of my favourite books this year!  I know I’m gushing a little but this book really spoke to me this time.  I’ve discussed this with other readers and heard other book bloggers say it, but I think that a lot of what we feel about books really depends on when we read them and how our life in that present time frames what we read.  I think this was just the perfect time for me to reread this book. Are there books like that for you?  What about books that you’ve loved at one time and didn’t  really once you reread them?

The Unbearable Lightness of Scones by Alexander McCall Smith

Read for: Global Reading Challenge – Scotland

This is the 5th book in the 44 Scotland Street novels, which were originally written as a serial in The Scotsman newspaper.  I absolutely love these books.  I love the short little chapters and I love the characters.  They are so entertaining to read about.  I wouldn’t recommend reading this book before reading the first four though.  It’s not that you’d have a hard time following the plot, but there is so much character development that goes on in the previous novels that you’d just be missing out on so much of the fun!

My favourite character is still Bertie – a six-year-old with an extremely overbearing and slightly crazy mother.  He is constantly baffled by her behaviour but because she is his mother, he goes along with her strange ideas.  But there are other familiar faces as well – Bruce, the narcissist, Domenica and Angus who begin to realize they are lonely, Matthew – newly married and Big Lou with her Jacobite boyfriend.

The book is, as always. light and fun and the characters get themselves into some pretty entertaining circumstances.  Anyone who has enjoyed the previous four books will definitely like this one.