This book will make you cry. Maybe even in the first paragraph, because that’s where you find out your narrator is a dead little girl, killed violently by her stepfather.
I have two problems with this book; first, the use of the word “buggering” and then the description of the event (made me want to puke, and the fact that a 10 year old girl is telling you the story makes it even worse). Second, the way the concept of forgiveness is crammed in your face in the end. You can’t tell me about the beating this little girl had to endure and then have her blathering on about how you gotta let go, because it wasn’t Ray’s fault, his daddy done mean to him and it made Ray mean, he couldn’t help it, and blah blah blah. Listen to me!! Ray deserved what he got. And you know what? So did the girl’s mom. She failed her daughter, and for that she deserved to be punished. She redeems herself, actually, with what she does to Ray and with how she accepts her end. She sure didn’t pull a Ray and decide it was anyone’s fault but hers, and I liked that.
I liked the book, even though some stuff bothered me. I like books that affect me like this one did, make me feel different emotions: I cried, I got mad, and (lol) the damn thing had me thinking in the little girl’s accent for a few days. I’d put the book down and find myself saying crap like “I need to do them dishes a’fore it gets to late!”
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The Good Thief, by Hanna Tinti
The Good Thief, by Hannah Tinti
I read the inside flap at the library, thought: sounds good….
I tried to read it and couldn’t. It’s one of those things I can’t really explain…it just failed to hold my attention. So, I put it up and read something else. Or played a lot of video games. Something. However, Ma read it and I made her tell me what it was about—EVERYTHING. I made her spoil the entire thing for me. Even though I could not make myself read the book, I still felt the need to know the entire story. And you know what? It totally made me want to read the book.
And I did.
And it was good.
Very short synopsis: Orphaned Ren is taken in by a pair of thieves, has adventures, ends up actually finding out why he’s orphaned and why he lost his left hand as a baby.
Favorite characters:
Mrs. Sands, the boardinghouse owner who’s lost most of her hearing—she shouts, she’s very brusque, and rough with the main character, Ren, but she’s also very caring. She has a big heart without being all gushy.
Dolly—he’s a murderer, he tells you that right off. He’s also mildly retarded, but that takes you longer to figure out. When the character is introduced he’s just gone through a pretty traumatic experience, so I kept blaming his faults on that, but nope, he’s a little retarded. Dolly is nearly unstoppable, and he’s strong and single-minded, and fiercely loyal to Ren, which is why he’s one of my favorites. Ok, the favorite. Yes, he killed people, but he’s practically a giant, and very stupid, so using his physical gifts is the only way he’s going to make it in this world, and although they never go very deep into his past I’m betting if they did you’d find out that he didn’t just start out as a hitman because he liked it. I bet you’d find out the poor dude stumbled into the profession and didn’t know any better to stop. And, furthermore, he DID stop it, for Ren, because he cares for Ren and Ren asked him not to. After meeting Ren, he only killed out of necessity.
Tom is way down on my list, but I felt I needed more than two characters or it would look like the book didn’t offer much. Tom decides, with his drunken wisdom, that Ren needs his pals. Boys need their mates! He says it many times. So he disappears for a few days and comes stumbling back home with Ren’s friends from the orphanage, and he makes them call him “Pa” and it looked like a huge mistake at first, but by the end I felt there was genuine affection between the 3 of them. I just thought it was cute.
If I cared to, I’d put some passages from the book in here because some parts of this are pretty funny, but I’m too lazy. So trust me, some parts are pretty funny.
Ooooooh, some parts are sad, though. So, warning. The part with the horse just made me feel sick.
I read the inside flap at the library, thought: sounds good….
I tried to read it and couldn’t. It’s one of those things I can’t really explain…it just failed to hold my attention. So, I put it up and read something else. Or played a lot of video games. Something. However, Ma read it and I made her tell me what it was about—EVERYTHING. I made her spoil the entire thing for me. Even though I could not make myself read the book, I still felt the need to know the entire story. And you know what? It totally made me want to read the book.
And I did.
And it was good.
Very short synopsis: Orphaned Ren is taken in by a pair of thieves, has adventures, ends up actually finding out why he’s orphaned and why he lost his left hand as a baby.
Favorite characters:
Mrs. Sands, the boardinghouse owner who’s lost most of her hearing—she shouts, she’s very brusque, and rough with the main character, Ren, but she’s also very caring. She has a big heart without being all gushy.
Dolly—he’s a murderer, he tells you that right off. He’s also mildly retarded, but that takes you longer to figure out. When the character is introduced he’s just gone through a pretty traumatic experience, so I kept blaming his faults on that, but nope, he’s a little retarded. Dolly is nearly unstoppable, and he’s strong and single-minded, and fiercely loyal to Ren, which is why he’s one of my favorites. Ok, the favorite. Yes, he killed people, but he’s practically a giant, and very stupid, so using his physical gifts is the only way he’s going to make it in this world, and although they never go very deep into his past I’m betting if they did you’d find out that he didn’t just start out as a hitman because he liked it. I bet you’d find out the poor dude stumbled into the profession and didn’t know any better to stop. And, furthermore, he DID stop it, for Ren, because he cares for Ren and Ren asked him not to. After meeting Ren, he only killed out of necessity.
Tom is way down on my list, but I felt I needed more than two characters or it would look like the book didn’t offer much. Tom decides, with his drunken wisdom, that Ren needs his pals. Boys need their mates! He says it many times. So he disappears for a few days and comes stumbling back home with Ren’s friends from the orphanage, and he makes them call him “Pa” and it looked like a huge mistake at first, but by the end I felt there was genuine affection between the 3 of them. I just thought it was cute.
If I cared to, I’d put some passages from the book in here because some parts of this are pretty funny, but I’m too lazy. So trust me, some parts are pretty funny.
Ooooooh, some parts are sad, though. So, warning. The part with the horse just made me feel sick.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Invention of Hugo Cabret, By Brian Selznick
I am going to explain to you why cover design is important.
When I first saw this book in the library, it was displayed like so:
When I first saw this book in the library, it was displayed like so:
I saw it sitting on that shelf for, like, MONTHS. Never even picked it up. All those bright colors totally turned me off.
Then Miss Wendy moved it, put it on the shelf with the spine out.
I was on the book IMMEDIATELY upon seeing it. I was a little surprised when I turned it around and saw that eye-raping cover, but I decided to flip through it anyway.
I READ IT FOR 15 MINUTES. It sucks you in, with its drawings and its bare pages and its black borders. It backs that up with a pretty awesome story, too. OOOH about the drawings: seriously half this book is pictures. In 15 minutes I was on page 115. But they are beautiful pictures!!
What really piqued my interest was the automaton. It’s a little machine man that writes, and draws! Wendy told me it actually exists, and gave me the website, and it’s a little creepy, I’ll be honest, but once you see how it works you are blown away. I’m not going to try to explain it, but go here: http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts=instrumentation
I READ IT FOR 15 MINUTES. It sucks you in, with its drawings and its bare pages and its black borders. It backs that up with a pretty awesome story, too. OOOH about the drawings: seriously half this book is pictures. In 15 minutes I was on page 115. But they are beautiful pictures!!
What really piqued my interest was the automaton. It’s a little machine man that writes, and draws! Wendy told me it actually exists, and gave me the website, and it’s a little creepy, I’ll be honest, but once you see how it works you are blown away. I’m not going to try to explain it, but go here: http://www.fi.edu/learn/sci-tech/automaton/automaton.php?cts=instrumentation
Also of interest: integral to the story is one of the very first filmmakers: George Melies. Selznick included stills from his films and drawings that are either by Melies or are based on Melies’ work, I’m not sure. I’m not going into why he’s integral, because if I happen to forget what happens sometime in the distant future, I will totally enjoy reading this little book again.
Just After Sunset, By Stephen King
This was my little b-day present to myself this year (it was a bit of a splurge because I bought the “collector’s edition” that included a DVD with an animated/graphic novel adaptation of the short story “N.” [which is kinda boring because it’s not really animated….it’s more like someone took photographs and then converted them to drawings])…..anyways: book was awesome. I LOVE how King puts stories that will scare the living shit out of you in the same collection with stories that just make you feel good, with stories that will just quietly make you uncomfortable—no flash, no bang, you just read it and you’re unsettled. I LOVE BEING UNSETTLED!!!
“N.” is terrifying. Seriously creeped me out. I maybe slept with a lamp on after reading this.
“The Things They Left Behind” belongs in the “feel good” category. It’s a little creepy at first, but then it just made me feel that sad/happy way that I loooove.
“The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” nearly made me cry. In a good way.
When I was 11, my dad got married. That meant that instead of spending a few weeks out of the year at his little apartment, we spent them at my new stepmom’s house. My new stepmom had hundreds of books—whole shelves full on their living room, and more hidden away in cabinets, just stacked up all mishmash because she was out of room. She had every Stephen King book ever made (at the time) and although I *may” have read some King before then, I didn’t really get into him until I started reading it at their house. The first books I can remember reading were the short stories….probably Nightmares and Dreamscapes, but I know it was at her house I read Different Seasons. My point is I started King with short stories, and even though getting into a meaty novel like Insomnia or a lengthy series like Dark Tower is great, I like coming back to the short stories every now and then. They’re special. I do NOT regret buying this book. :)
“N.” is terrifying. Seriously creeped me out. I maybe slept with a lamp on after reading this.
“The Things They Left Behind” belongs in the “feel good” category. It’s a little creepy at first, but then it just made me feel that sad/happy way that I loooove.
“The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates” nearly made me cry. In a good way.
When I was 11, my dad got married. That meant that instead of spending a few weeks out of the year at his little apartment, we spent them at my new stepmom’s house. My new stepmom had hundreds of books—whole shelves full on their living room, and more hidden away in cabinets, just stacked up all mishmash because she was out of room. She had every Stephen King book ever made (at the time) and although I *may” have read some King before then, I didn’t really get into him until I started reading it at their house. The first books I can remember reading were the short stories….probably Nightmares and Dreamscapes, but I know it was at her house I read Different Seasons. My point is I started King with short stories, and even though getting into a meaty novel like Insomnia or a lengthy series like Dark Tower is great, I like coming back to the short stories every now and then. They’re special. I do NOT regret buying this book. :)
Monday, April 6, 2009
Quick Note on Something
I'm reading Stephen King's newest book of short stories, Just After Sunset. In the story "N.", he briefly mentions a landmark in Maine called "Boy Hill". In previous King works, he mentions "the long boy" and "big, handsome boy" (in Lisey's Story and Rose Madder, respectively). For some reason both the latter "boy" phrases have always stuck with me, sort of like songs that you get stuck in your head, snippets of chorus playing over and over again. I do that with phrases, too. When I read "boy hill" in that story I immediately thought of the other two. I beleive I have now inadvertently added a third (oops!).
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Down River, by John Hart
I wish I’d written this earlier when both the book and the book club meeting were fresh in my mind!
The main character is Adam Chase, and the book opens with Adam going home, to North Carolina. He talks a little about why he’s going home, and why he left in the first place, but the author is also careful to not just lay everything out for you in the first few pages. Through the rest of the book you learn why he left (he was accused of murder, held on trial [with his own stepmother as star witness] and acquitted, but the town still felt like he’d gotten away with murder so his father basically threw him out), and why he came back (an old friend called him for help and once the idea of going back was put in his head he couldn’t shake it).
This book is a soap opera, only not as retarded. You’ve got a town torn apart by big land deal that could leave some people very rich, and a family torn apart by secrets, lies, suicide, murder, and one bitch of a stepmother.
The stepmother was my least favorite character. Or maybe most favorite, if you consider it a “love to hate” thing. Here are my problems with her: (this is a huge spoiler) she testifies against her stepson in his murder trial. She is the only eye-witness, but all she saw was a dude covered in blood walking away from where the body was later discovered. Throughout the book, we give her the benefit of doubt: she saw a dude, but it wasn’t Adam. She *believes* it was Adam, but I know he didn’t kill that boy! I do not think that she is actively lying; only that she is mistaken. Somewhere in the book the bitch even manages a snooty “Well, I guess this makes me a liar, then!” And at that point I believed that *she* believed he killed the guy. When Adam finally demands to talk to her, she gets all mad, like he has no right to a conversation with her in the house that was *his* before it was hers, she acts like she doesn’t owe him anything, won’t admit to him that maybe she was mistaken, and then bitch slaps him! Still, I thought that she was just a bitch who’d made a mistake.
But finally, at the end, you find out she knew all along Adam had nothing to do with it, she was covering for her own child—and I’m pretty sure that’s when I actually said the words “oh, you bitch!” out loud. Sometimes I wish I could reach into a book and smack the characters around a bit, because she totally deserved it.
The only thing I didn’t like about the book was how the author kept describing everyone’s anger. Because EVERYONE in this book was an angry little ball of anger, I had to read sentence after sentence about how sometime was all “angry, hard lines” or “by the time he’d turned back to me he’d composed his face, but the anger was there, just under the surface”. These are not exact quotes because I’ve already forgotten exact lines.
It was an okay book. Not awesome enough for me to gush over, but not terrible, (haha). And we had one of our best book club discussions (in my opinion) so it totally gets high marks for that.
The main character is Adam Chase, and the book opens with Adam going home, to North Carolina. He talks a little about why he’s going home, and why he left in the first place, but the author is also careful to not just lay everything out for you in the first few pages. Through the rest of the book you learn why he left (he was accused of murder, held on trial [with his own stepmother as star witness] and acquitted, but the town still felt like he’d gotten away with murder so his father basically threw him out), and why he came back (an old friend called him for help and once the idea of going back was put in his head he couldn’t shake it).
This book is a soap opera, only not as retarded. You’ve got a town torn apart by big land deal that could leave some people very rich, and a family torn apart by secrets, lies, suicide, murder, and one bitch of a stepmother.
The stepmother was my least favorite character. Or maybe most favorite, if you consider it a “love to hate” thing. Here are my problems with her: (this is a huge spoiler) she testifies against her stepson in his murder trial. She is the only eye-witness, but all she saw was a dude covered in blood walking away from where the body was later discovered. Throughout the book, we give her the benefit of doubt: she saw a dude, but it wasn’t Adam. She *believes* it was Adam, but I know he didn’t kill that boy! I do not think that she is actively lying; only that she is mistaken. Somewhere in the book the bitch even manages a snooty “Well, I guess this makes me a liar, then!” And at that point I believed that *she* believed he killed the guy. When Adam finally demands to talk to her, she gets all mad, like he has no right to a conversation with her in the house that was *his* before it was hers, she acts like she doesn’t owe him anything, won’t admit to him that maybe she was mistaken, and then bitch slaps him! Still, I thought that she was just a bitch who’d made a mistake.
But finally, at the end, you find out she knew all along Adam had nothing to do with it, she was covering for her own child—and I’m pretty sure that’s when I actually said the words “oh, you bitch!” out loud. Sometimes I wish I could reach into a book and smack the characters around a bit, because she totally deserved it.
The only thing I didn’t like about the book was how the author kept describing everyone’s anger. Because EVERYONE in this book was an angry little ball of anger, I had to read sentence after sentence about how sometime was all “angry, hard lines” or “by the time he’d turned back to me he’d composed his face, but the anger was there, just under the surface”. These are not exact quotes because I’ve already forgotten exact lines.
It was an okay book. Not awesome enough for me to gush over, but not terrible, (haha). And we had one of our best book club discussions (in my opinion) so it totally gets high marks for that.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)