Livre du Jour: My Book of the Day Blog

Horse, Follow Closely by Gawani Pony Boy

2009-07-05T16:23:00.000-06:00

One of the reasons it took me so long to finish The Other Boleyn Girl was because I took a break midway through to read a couple of horse books. One I haven't finished yet, but the other was a training book called Horse, Follow Closely by Gawani Pony Boy.

I've reviewed this book over on my Pony Tales Blog, so I'll let you go over there to read it!

The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

2009-07-03T14:33:00.001-06:00

Last year, my husband and I watched The Other Boleyn Girl (the movie), and I loved it so much that I promptly put Philippa Gregory's book on my stack of books to read. I'd bought the book a few years ago, but I have so many waiting to be read that I hadn't gotten to it yet. In fact, even moved up to the "short" stack, it still took me months and months to get to it, if that tells you anything!

Anyway, in the meantime we'd also watched the first two seasons of the TV series The Tudors, and I'm now very glad I'd waited to read the book. I'm not usually a fan of watching the movie first, but in this case whatever you do with the movie you also ought to do with the TV series: Either watch both before you read the book, or read the book before you watch both.

This is because there is A LOT that wasn't included in the movie, but was definitely present in the TV series. The major difference is that the TV series cuts Mary out of pretty much everything, so none of the events are shown from Mary's point of view. But since it's a TV series, there was also more time to include many of the complicated events that led up to Anne's beheading.

I have to say one more thing about this book. It's a perfect example of how sometimes hastily flipping through a book won't really tell you anything about whether you'll like it. When I flipped through it after watching the movie, I wasn't sure I'd like it, particularly the writing style. But I was quite wrong: I loved it! It's hard to say what makes us decide to read certain books, but apparently judging a book by its cover isn't the biggest danger. I'm glad I decided to read this one anyway!

The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

2009-06-12T16:03:00.002-06:00

This was actually my second time reading Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees. I read it for the first time several years ago, probably just a year or two after it came out.

I liked the novel the first time I read it, but I actually think I had more appreciation for it the second time I read it. I was motivated to read it again because I saw the movie with my mom several months ago, and loved it.

I'm not usually a big fan of movie adaptations, but this is one of several recently that I think was fabulously done. First of all, it has my favorite young actress in it, Dakota Fanning, and I think she played the role beautifully. (You ought to hear the breathless, nonstop way she rolls out Lily's lies in the movie. Perfect!) All of the older actresses were perfect, too, but especially Queen Latifah as August. I found that I was imagining these two in the roles as I read, and not in a bad way, either!

It's not often that I say this, but I actually think the movie made me appreciate the book more. It is a perfect visual counterpart to the novel, which is excellent in its own right too. An unforgettable story of a poor white girl growing up during the Civil Rights Era — definitely worth reading... and watching!

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income by Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett

2009-06-11T15:59:00.003-06:00

This is actually the original book I was reading on our vacation in March, before I got distracted by several other books. I started out reading it on the airplane, but that was about it. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted after we got back, so although it's a short book and formatted so that it's a very easy, fast read, it took me until just a few days ago to finally finish it.

However, the reason I really picked up this book was as a writing/career book, so you'll find the review on Reading 4 Writers:

ProBlogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income

I just have to say, though, that this book is not really just for career writers. If you maintain a blog and you are interested in how to make it better — or even earn some money from it — you will probably benefit from the information provided!

The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein

2009-06-10T19:58:00.001-06:00

I finished this book days ago, actually, but lately I've gotten a little behind on blogging. In other words, expect a couple more reviews in the coming days — I have some catching up to do!

My husband, Michael, has been bugging me to read Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain for months now. He bought this book at Starbucks, of all places, and read it almost right away (a rarity for him). He's quite the dog person, so he loved it.

Basically, this novel is told from a dog's point of view — a very funny, very dog-like dog's point of view. It's amazing how easily you can picture the narrator's voice coming from a dog. It sounds just like what certain dogs I know would say if they could.

As Michael said, the heart of the book is some rather serious subject matter, but man does this dog have a good sense of humor! The witty comments provide excellent comic relief in all the right places.

I also really appreciated the fact that the main character (the dog's owner) is a race car driver who lives in Seattle. It's amusing and appropriate because before I was born, my dad was a race car driver who lived in Seattle. He never got into the big time stuff, of course, but still — it was a nice touch. Also, since my dad (naturally) was the one who taught me to drive, and since I've heard a lot of his racing stories, I was familiar with some of the concepts mentioned in the book (though by no means do you have to in order to understand and enjoy it).

The Art of Racing in the Rain is a pretty fast read, and I highly recommend it, particularly for dog lovers. The personality and voice of the narrator is so true to life — you'll love it!

Official New Moon trailer!

2009-05-31T23:38:00.000-06:00

Okay, so it's not a book, but since I recently blogged about the book it is based on I thought I'd share the New Moon trailer that was just released this weekend. They've been holding out on us for a while — whether to heighten the anticipation or just because it wasn't ready yet I don't know, but it looks awesome! I can't wait!

Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult

2009-05-30T12:17:00.002-06:00

Please note: This review contains spoilers! I don't usually write about what happens in the end, but this time my review of the book isn't complete without spoiler commentary, so read at your own risk!

It's been a while since I've read a Jodi Picoult novel. You may remember from My Sister's Keeper and a couple others that I tend to lose sleep over these books (kind of like I did lately with the Twilight saga).

I didn't pull any all-nighters with Harvesting the Heart, but I did read it in just a few days. I've been back up to my old reading speed lately, and it's been kind of nice. I'd forgotten how good I feel when I read a lot — it seems to recharge my batteries, so to speak.

Harvesting the Heart confronted several controversial issues, as Picoult's books usually did. Abortion was sort of a sideline issue in this book, though the story didn't actually deal as much with the moral issues of abortion as much as the issue of a woman's and mother's responsibilities versus a man's and father's.

It was a good book, but I have to say I wasn't as thrilled with the way it ended. I personally couldn't understand the main character's decision to go back to a husband who had marginalized her as much as he had. Going back to her child, yes, of course — but her husband? Perhaps he would have been different, after three months of doing all the childcare himself — now that he knows what it was like for her — and I think that's suggested, in a way... But I still can't understand it.

Regardless of how it ended, though, this book was quite captivating. It's definitely more of a woman's story, but it's a well-written look at what it costs a woman to give everything up for a husband and a family.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

2009-05-26T13:34:00.000-06:00

I bought Maggie O'Farrell's The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox ages ago — so long ago I don't remember getting it, though I most likely got it from the bargain shelf at Barnes & Noble. My mom even read it before I did, and she loved it so much that she has been bugging me to read it ever since.

The book is fairly short, just under 250 pages, and is written in a style that is fairly fast and easy to read. It's extremely well written, so that the writing style changes depending on which character the story is focusing on. There are no chapters, only section breaks, usually dividing the changes in perspective.

The story is a mystery of sorts — who this woman really is — and the answers are given slowly, through each change in perspective. It's also a very sad story, of how just being different can set into motion things that change one's life. It's also a story of how the repression of women that used to be commonplace has the power to affect us even today.

I know I'm not doing this book justice in how I'm describing it. All I can say is that it is a sad, powerful story about the skeletons in one family's closet, and how those skeletons changed the lives of three separate generations.

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

2009-05-24T12:25:00.000-06:00

As I expected, it didn't take me long to read Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga. I actually stayed up pretty much all night to read it Friday night, slept a little bit Saturday morning, and then finished it Saturday evening while I was babysitting.

I mentioned in my post about Twilight that my NaNoWriMo companions had had a lot of negative things to say about the saga. They particularly criticized Breaking Dawn, claiming it was a train wreck of a plot. I have to say I disagree. I thought it was fabulous. Meyer had been building up to something big for three books — there's no way she could have ended it with anything less... astonishing, in my opinion.

Anyway, I am not going to say too much, because I don't want to give it all away, but let me just say that certain plot developments that seem kind of weird at first actually work quite well. Everything falls into place at the end, which is pretty impressive considering how complex the plot is throughout the three books. It is a fantastic conclusion for a fantastic series of books!

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

2009-05-23T12:27:00.001-06:00

Well, for a couple of days at any rate, this really has been a "book of the day" blog. I wish I had the time to read like this all the time and read (and blog about) a new book every day, but to tell the truth I've been shirking work a bit to get through the Twilight Saga so rapidly. I haven't genuinely had the time for this amount of reading since I was on my summer vacations in high school.

I guess that ought to say something about how compelling these books are, though — that they can get me to ignore my other responsibilities, something very few books manage to do anymore.

I mentioned in my last post that I wasn't as keen on New Moon as I had been Twilight. I still did love New Moon, but I felt something was missing without Edward around. The suspense in these books does depend quite a bit on the chemistry between Edward and Bella.

Eclipse, luckily, kept Edward around the entire time — and it was excellent. I'm actually not sure which I liked better, Twilight or Eclipse. I definitely love the way Meyer paces the new relationship and new discoveries in Twilight, but I like the new developments in the plot line in New Moon and Eclipse. And since Eclipse has Edward and new developments... Well, you get my drift.

Anyway, I am very excited about reading Breaking Dawn, the fourth and final book in the saga. I started it yesterday afternoon, and I expect to finish it quite soon.

My husband commented Thursday evening, when I was almost finished with New Moon, that I was going through the books really quickly. I responded, "Good — that way I can go back to my life sooner!" That's pretty much the way I feel — if they are going to be this addictive to me, I might as well just give in and read them nonstop, so that I can go back to my work and my hobbies that much sooner, without the desire to read distracting me from everything all the time!

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer

2009-05-22T20:21:00.000-06:00

I'm almost reading these books too fast to keep up with them on my blog. I finished Twilight late Wednesday night (or should I say early Thursday morning?), New Moon early Thursday evening, and Eclipse early this afternoon.

The bad thing is that they are all running together, and it's making it difficult for me to write reviews of each book individually. The good thing is that they are all such a continuous story so as to run together like that, and keep me hooked the entire time.

I do know that I didn't enjoy New Moon quite as much as the first book. I think it was partly the budding romance in Twilight that made it so compelling. It was so well written, it made me remember exactly what it was like to be a teenager and be infatuated with a new boyfriend.

New Moon, on the other hand, reminded me of what it was like to go through a really bad breakup. Maybe that's why I didn't like it as much, but I could totally empathize with the depression and the rebound relationship that Bella went through.

I also have to admit, I really like Edward's character and the sexual tension that Meyer maintains between them. It has to be one of the most compelling things about the books. And because Edward wasn't in most of this book, it felt very different from Twilight. Still compelling... but different.

I liked Eclipse much better... But I'll save that for my next post!

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

2009-05-21T13:51:00.000-06:00

It wasn't until recently that I even considered reading Stephenie Meyer's popular Twilight Saga. The people in NaNoWriMo with me last year made fun of it a lot, and unfortunately I listened.

What changed was that my husband rented the movie from Netflix. His brother had really liked it, so I grudgingly agreed to watch it.

And you know what? I loved it! So much, in fact, that I insisted on watching the movie a second time before we sent it back — something I don't often do.

I then decided that I needed to read the books. We went to our favorite Barnes & Noble, but a helpful girl behind the cafë counter told us to order the set from the website, because they were much cheaper that way — about $13 per book for all four hardbacks. (The first two are $11 a book for the paperback, but the last two are only available in hardback right now.) So then I had to wait for them to arrive... and, once they arrived, I made myself wait until I'd finished The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, even though I've read it before, simply because I don't like not finishing books.

So I finally started Twilight a few nights ago, just after finishing Tenant. I read only a few pages the first night, and about 40 or 50 more the next night. And then I read all the rest yesterday!

My friends in NaNoWriMo are so, so wrong about this book. I loved it, every minute of it. I couldn't put it down. I read it while babysitting, and stayed up for nearly five hours last night to finish the remaining 450 pages.

The book is a lot like the movie — or I guess I should say the movie is a lot like the book. It's incredibly intense and sensual. Wow, just wow. I don't know that I can put much more than that into words — you'll just have to read it for yourself.

Needless to say, I'm already reading the next book, New Moon.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë

2009-05-20T15:24:00.000-06:00

This is actually the third time I've read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. The last time was just over two years ago, and the first time was in the spring of 2004, for a class I took my senior year.

If you know me or read my blogs frequently, you probably know that I have a strong interest in the Brontë sisters. In fact, my husband and I spent four nights in Haworth on our recent trip to England — see pictures from our trip here and here. In fact, I bought a 1920s edition of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall in Paris at Shakespeare and Company, and started reading it on train ride back to London.

I suppose I got only about 30 or 40 pages into the book on our trip, since I had a bunch of other books I was reading at the same time. So when I finally picked it up again after finishing Bad Men, I decided I'd better start over.

The introduction in this particular edition really annoyed me. Granted, it was printed in the 1920s, before Brontë had come to realize how good Anne's work really was — but still, why would anyone write an introduction for a book they so obviously hated?

Here's what I mean:

Anne's novel is not gruesome. It is only dull, unspeakably and lamentably dull. It bores to tears. It bored her to write it. Surely it bored her. Charlotte (in her Preface to the posthumous edition) tells us how all Anne's being rose up in loating of her self-appointed task; how her sisters implored her to drop it; and how in her inflexible rectitude she persisted.

The introduction is short, less than a handful of pages, and at the end the writer concludes that although it is a terrible book, it must be respected for being an early feminist novel. But apparently even that doesn't earn it that much respect.

As for what she said about Charlotte and Emily — well, it's no secret that Charlotte didn't think much of this particular book. In fact, in one of her letters she told a good friend that the book was a mistake from beginning to end, and that was why she wasn't going to issue a second edition. (She didn't, so I don't know what "posthumous edition" the writer is referring to — that of Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights, perhaps, which Charlotte did republish and write a preface to?)

Finally, I'm sure it was a difficult and painful novel for Anne to write — after all, her alcoholic brother had just died — but neither that fact or the novel's moral message make it boring, in my opinion. In fact, I think that although there's no crazy wife in the attic or revenge against future generations, the love story is quite compelling even if you ignore the merits of the fabulous social commentary.

Honestly, I think it's a shame that Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are so often studied without including the third sister's masterpiece. In fact, it was a long time before I even realized that there was a third sister. It's just such a shame that such a talented writer is so often ignored by scholars!

Bad Men by Clive Stafford Smith

2009-05-01T10:44:00.000-06:00

I actually started Bad Men by Clive Stafford Smith on our trip, but only read about 50 pages. I didn't get back to it until I finished The Lord of the Rings recently.

It was when we were having tea in one of the little shops in Haworth that I saw this book. The shop had a lot of used books for sale, and this was one of them. I picked it up and started thumbing through it while we ate, and by the time we were finished with our afternoon tea, I was hooked.

The book is written by Clive Stafford Smith, one of the lawyers defending some of the Guantánamo "detainees" (a nice word for prisoner). In the book, he talks about the horrific experiences of many of his clients. He also talks a lot about the politics behind Guantánamo, but it was the prisoners' experiences that made the biggest impression on me. Smith maintains that the majority of the prisoners who were in Guantánamo actually had nothing to do with terrorism — they were normal people who were implicated by confessions made under torture, who would then be tortured themselves until they implicated other innocent people.

Although I didn't know it until I was telling Michael about the book and he recognized the name, one of Smith's clients, Binyam Mohamed, was released from Guantánamo just before our trip to England. Apparently the torture Mohamed endured was big news while we were in Haworth, around the time that I bought the book, though I didn't know it because I was too excited about being in Brontë country to watch the news.

The book shown in the Amazon widget above looks different than mine, most likely because I have the UK copy. My book's cover is a picture of a pocket on an orange prison jumpsuit. It says "BAD MEN" in white stencilled writing, like what you would see on a real prison jumpsuit, and looking out over the pocket are the images of Osama bin Laden, Bush, and Rumsfeld. I love the implication — that the real "bad men" here are the ones taking away people's basic human rights, regardless of which side they are on.

Too bad that cover wasn't released in the United States, too. I think it really adds to the impact of the book!

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

2009-04-24T23:19:00.000-06:00

I'm sorry for how much I've neglected my blog lately. I finally finished reading The Lord of the Rings about a week and a half ago. It took a while because I have been very busy since we got back from our trip to Europe, trying to catch up on work and generate some income for my two weeks off.

This was my third time reading The Lord of the Rings, and I thoroughly enjoyed it — possibly more than the first two times I read it. The last time I'd read it was after the first movie came out, but before the second and the third. Michael and I watched the trilogy again shortly after I started reading the books, so the movies were fresh in my mind as I was reading.

Having both watched the movies and read the books several times, I think in this case having the movies fresh in my mind actually increased my enjoyment of the books. For one thing, I was able to pick up on several significant changes that they made for the movies, which I had not noticed in the past.

Other than that, there is not much to say, except to comment on the special copy I have: the Millenium Edition. I got these for Christmas from my parents back in 1999, and they have been a cherished part of my book collection ever since. According to a note in the beginning of the books, a lot of errors made by the publishers were corrected for this edition, and they also include Tolkien's changes and additions from the second edition. It is a beautiful edition, and while the recession has taken a toll on its value (at one time a nice set sold secondhand for around $300), I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants a really special set of these classic books.

The Spell by Charlotte Bronte

2009-03-19T12:47:00.002-06:00

Charlotte Brontë's The Spell is one of my treasures from our trip. My copy is a 1931 first edition that I found in one of the bookstores in Haworth. It's a beautiful book, with white vellum boards and a gilt boarder on the front cover.

The book is a short novel that Charlotte wrote when she was just 18, long before she published anything. The main characters and setting are from Angria, the fantasy world she and her brother Branwell created and wrote primarily about.

The manuscript had been bound with two others of Charlotte's early pieces, presumably by an early collector of Brontëana, and was not discovered until 1892, when it surfaced in a used bookstore in Brussels. Almost forty years later, it was published by the Oxford University Press.

I had a difficult time with the book, because of all the alternative names for characters (just like the author of the introduction said some readers do), and I think I would understand it better in a second reading. However, it was also very interesting to me to read an early, unpublished work by one of my favorite authors, and see both the similarities and the differences from her later (published) novels.

The Book of Murder by Guillermo Martínez

2009-03-17T13:30:00.000-06:00

I chose Martínez's The Book of Murder mainly because it was a nice thin book. My husband, his friend and I were traveling in Europe; we'd gone on a day trip to Edinbrough, and I discovered I was short on battery power for my handheld laptop. Since we had a three hour return trip by train, I decided to buy a book in the Edinbrough train station, but I wanted one that was slim and would fit easily in my messenger bag.

The Book of Murder was the only book I saw that answered my criteria, but it turned out to also be a very good read. I read the vast majority of it on the train, finishing it in the hotel room upon our return — but even under different circumstances, I think I would have been motivated to read it quickly, because I wanted so badly to know what happened.

I often find books written about or from the point of view of writers to be quite interesting, and this was even more so because of the suspenseful premise. The writer — presumably the author, since we are never given another name for him — receives a phone call from a typist who briefly worked for him ten years earlier, and who is sure that a competitor of his is killing off her family one by one out of revenge for a decade-old tragedy that he blamed on her.

The answer to the mystery is a bit fantastical, but believeably written. The novel is also fast paced and written in an interesting format, where the bulk of the story is told to the narrator in conversation with the protagonist, first, and the antagonist, second.

I noticed only after finishing the book that it is by an Argentinean author, translated into English. For such a book to be not only translated in the first place, but also to make it onto the bestseller shelf in this store, you know I am not the only one who was impressed!

Books and traveling

2009-03-16T16:19:00.001-06:00

Sorry for the lack of posts lately — my husband and I just got back from a 10-day trip to Europe. We spent nearly half the trip in Haworth — where the Brontë sisters, my favorite authors, lived — so expect to see several of their books reviewed here in the coming weeks.

I did a lot of reading on the trip, but it wasn't very well planned, so I learned a few things about books and traveling.

1) If you are not careful, you may end up reading several books at once. At one point, I had six books started! The problem started because I was partway through The Lord of the Rings at home, but my copy is a collectible edition that I didn't want to risk traveling with. So I started another book for the trip... And throughout the course of our travels, found six other books to start — only one of which I finished before choosing another!

2) Read paperbacks while traveling. While I like the weight and feel of a hardback for normal reading, I chose paperbacks to take with me to Europe. They weigh less, fit more places, and I am not as picky about bent pages or damaged covers on a paperback!

3) Consider buying "throwaway" copies while traveling. If you really want to travel light, or if you think you are likely to buy books while on your travels, take only one book with you to start. If you need another book, you can buy an inexpensive paperback and leave it with the hotel for another traveler when you're finished. From experience I can tell you that would be much easier than trying to find a place in your suitcase for six extra books!

Obviously, with all these books started, I will have a lot to blog about as I finish them up. The first, which I read in a few hours and finished while on the trip, I will review tomorrow.

Hope Rising by Kim Meeder

2009-02-11T10:48:00.002-07:00

I bought Kim Meeder's Hope Rising months ago, but it just joined the stacks of books I have yet to read, and I forgot about it until just the other night. I picked it up Saturday night after finishing Being Mrs. Alcott, and finished it Monday evening — another quick read (yay!).

I have to admit I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would, it being an inspirational book about horses and horse rescue. My problem with it was a very heavy religious theme that seemed to get more prominent and preachy as the book wore on. In fact, the last two chapters were dedicated solely to convincing the reader of God's hand in engineering... well, everything.

There's only so many times I can read, "It happened because the Lord willed it to," before I get really tired of hearing it. And since this book proclaimed that once, on average, per 2-4 page chapter, I was tired of it long before the last two chapters. So, needless to say, they didn't sit well with me at that point.

Since there was nothing on the back cover (or anywhere else) to indicate the heavy religious theme, I think the book was marketing itself in a misleading way, which was probably what irked me the most. I probably wouldn't have bought it had it been marketed honestly.

The final straw was that the book dedicated a full page in the back to soliciting donations. Now, don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with what the author is doing with her ranch — I think saving horses and helping children work through issues are noble purposes, no matter what the religious implications. But by including this page at the back, the author made it seem like her biggest goal in publishing this book (besides converting her readers) was to beg donations. Not a very flattering picture to paint.

All my griping aside, though, the stories in the book were very moving; several of the rescue stories actually brought tears to my eyes. I am therefore giving the book away on my horse blog this Valentine's Day, in the hopes that it will find a home more appreciative of it than I am.

Being Mrs. Alcott by Nancy Geary

2009-02-10T13:43:00.001-07:00

I actually finished this book Saturday night, less than 24 hours after starting it — but I'd gotten behind on blogging about what I was reading, so this post is a little late. It felt good to read a book in one day, though. Although I did that regularly as a teenager, I don't get to do it very often as an adult.

Being Mrs. Alcott was definitely the kind of book that you can't put down. It's a wonderful story about a upper-class woman who marries young and spends her life as a homemaker. She suffers a lot and sometimes seems quite marginalized, but at other times you see her as a very strong woman who is still always there for her family.

What is so addicting about this book is the human-ness of it. All of the characters have their faults as well as their good points, and the book seems to make the point that not everything that happens to us in our lives is necessarily someone's fault.

Against Medical Advice by James Patterson and Hal Friedman

2009-02-09T16:07:00.001-07:00

I wasn't sure what I would think about Against Medical Advice, which is James Patterson's first nonfiction book. He wrote it with his friend Hal Friedman, about Hal's son Cory. Cory grew up with Tourrette's and OCD, and this book is the story of what he and his family went through.

Although Against Medical Advice was not written by Cory, it is told from his perspective. I find that a bit odd, since Cory is still alive. Supposedly, he has approved the book as an accurate representation of what it was all like for him — but since the book isn't ghostwritten with Cory's name slapped on the front of it, I'm honestly not sure what to think of it.

I haven't read anything else by James Patterson, though I've seen Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls. I wasn't sure what to expect, but Against Medical Advice is a pretty easy, fast-paced read — perhaps too much so at times. It does have a nice climax and ending, though. And I like what the authors are implying (and what Hal Friedman actually says in the afterword): that it seems like the constantly changing (and often experimental) medications actually worsened Cory's symptoms, rather than making them better. I'm a firm believer that in our society we are way too quick to medicate, so this book really rang true for me.

The Company by K. J. Parker

2009-02-07T17:52:00.001-07:00

K.J. Parker's The Company is a military fantasty — not my usual choice of reading. However, my husband saw it and had me check it out for him at the library, and ended up liking it so much that he recommended it to me.

I guess it says a lot that even though I don't normally read this sort of thing, I did enjoy it immensely. The world Parker creates could essentially be any world where guns don't yet exist and most common people live in rural areas, and he doesn't waste time with histories of the world or far-reaching descriptions. Only the times and places relevant to the story are described, leaving you with the sense that to the characters, that really is all that exists.

The story itself is very well thought out, with details in all the right places. The tension is well-developed, and keeps you guessing until the very end. It's one of those complex stories where you are not entirely rooting for anyone — every character is portrayed as very human, with signficant flaws as well as significant strengths.

Even if this is not normally your kind of book, I think you might like this one. I certainly did, and I never would have even given it a second glance had my husband not recommended I read it!

Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott

2009-01-24T21:14:00.000-07:00

A popular form of literature lately seems to be nonfiction written in novel form. The Devil in the White City and The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher, which I read and review on this blog some months back, are a couple of examples.

This book was very similar, except I think I might have liked it even better: Sin in the Second City, by Karen Abbott. It felt a little more easily readable than the other two, especially The Devil in the White City, which was an extraordinary book but also required a lot of concentration. Abbott's book wasn't exactly light reading, as it was still pretty heavily researched, but the paragraphs were shorter and the writing seemed to flow a little more easily.

Sin in the Second City is about the downfall of prostitution in Chicago in the early 20th century. Specifically, the book deals with one brothel in particular, the famous Everleigh Club — supposedly, the basis for the term "get laid" — and its madams, Minna and Ada Everleigh (an assumed last name).

The book is an extremely detailed and intriguing look into the world of prostitution, back in the days where the unofficial policy was segregation, allowing brothels to exist even though they were technically illegal. A very interesting glimpse into the history of prostitution, and a book I would recommend for anyone who enjoys these nonfiction novelizations!

Blog problems fixed

2009-01-19T22:47:00.002-07:00

I just noticed that for some reason my blog had reverted back to an earlier version, where the most recent post was dated December 5th. The problem is now fixed, so if you haven't read my most recent reviews, please scroll down!

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

2009-01-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading The Hobbit for the first time. It's such a surprise, because I've read Lord of the Rings several times and loved it from beginning to end each time. I did try reading The Hobbit when I was a kid, but I lost interest quickly and never tried again... Until now.

I have some mixed feelings about The Hobbit. I liked the book, but not as much as The Lord of the Rings. It did lack the long "history of Middle Earth" chapter that I've heard people complain about in The Lord of the Rings — though interestingly I've never had a problem with that chapter. It also moved quickly and was a much shorter story.

However, The Hobbit was also not quite as engrossing for me as The Lord of the Rings. I frequently found myself skimming parts of it, and had to force myself to go back and really read them. It just lacked the ability to interest me as much as The Lord of the Rings.

Every year around Christmas I try to reread some of my favorite books. A couple of years ago, it was C.S. Lewis's Narnia Chronicles, which are some of my all-time favorite books, and have been since childhood. This Christmas I was planning to reread The Lord of the Rings, right after The Hobbit Unfortunately, I took longer to read The Hobbit than I had planned, and I've also bumped up a few other titles I want to read sooner rather than later. But soon I promise I will reread The Lord of the Rings, and then we will see whether my comparisons still ring as true with both novels still fresh in my mind!