Back in May, Kristin reviewed this book; I promptly added it to my wishlist, eventually managed to win the wishlist race (yay! :-)); and finally got around to reading it this month.
I have to say I agree with Kristin: I truly loved this book. It's clever, original, and brilliantly executed.
Quick plot: Ella Minnow Pea lives on the island of Nollop, where the creator of the pangram sentence "The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" is revered. Disaster strikes when letters begin falling over the monument to Nollop - the government, in a fit of bureaucracy to rival none, declares that if Nollop had wanted those letters to remain in the language, they would not have fallen from the monument. Therefore, the fallen letters will be banned from use in speech or written form, with draconian punishments meted out to those who offend - the first offence receives a warning; the second a choice or whipping or exhibiting in public stocks; the third banishment.
The first letter to fall is z; surprisingly common once it's no longer allowed, but after all, not so great a loss. However as more and more letters fall, communication - and the remaining population of the island - become more and more strained. Eventually, the High Council - forced to rename themselves through the loss of 'C' - issue a proclamation: if a new pangram, shorter in length than Nollop's infamous sentence - can be found by a given deadline, all letter-related statutes will be reversed, and life can resume it's normal flow.
It's a quirky idea; and brilliantly executed. As each letter falls, the author banishes it from his own arsenal of letters, so by the time the remaining poor citizens of Nollop are left with a mere five letters, so is Mark Dunn. It's a fun book, a quick read, and a darkly sarcastic satire on the abuses and misuses of government. I enjoyed it immensely.
Link on bookmooch is here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0385722435. It's not currently available (my copy was mooched pretty quickly); but it does come up frequently. Good hunting!
Showing posts with label tarsh's reviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tarsh's reviews. Show all posts
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Dwellings, by Linda Hogan
Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World is an interesting book, lyrical in places, full of the author's impressions of nature and the world, and the spiritual conclusions she's drawn from this. Linda Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, and her view of things is heavily influenced by native american tradition. She's travelled extensively, and very clearly loves her world and believes in the strength of her traditions.
I found this a fascinating read, and a good insight into the author's beliefs and world. Despite that, a lot of this book left me appreciating the beautiful writing and the ideas she was trying to express; but essentially unmoved. I don't think this is a fault in the book. I think this is simply because, unlike Linda Hogan, I'm not an earth person. I don't see the world in the same terms she does. She says it herself, in a chapter on the Voyager spacecraft: "There seemed to be two kinds of people; earth people and those others, the sky people, who stumbled over pebbles while they walked around with their heads in clouds. Sky people loved different worlds than I loved; they looked at nests in treetops and followed the long white snake of vapor trails." If, like me, you trip over dirt because you're too busy watching the sky - well, this is a good book, definitely worth reading, and a very good look into a beautiful world; but it's not going to resonate.
If you're an earth person, fascinated by our world and the creatures who live in it - mooch away. I don't think you'll regret it.
Book available here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0684830337. Please note the condition notes - there's some (minimal) writing in this book, and a lot of marked passages; don't mooch if this will bother you.
I found this a fascinating read, and a good insight into the author's beliefs and world. Despite that, a lot of this book left me appreciating the beautiful writing and the ideas she was trying to express; but essentially unmoved. I don't think this is a fault in the book. I think this is simply because, unlike Linda Hogan, I'm not an earth person. I don't see the world in the same terms she does. She says it herself, in a chapter on the Voyager spacecraft: "There seemed to be two kinds of people; earth people and those others, the sky people, who stumbled over pebbles while they walked around with their heads in clouds. Sky people loved different worlds than I loved; they looked at nests in treetops and followed the long white snake of vapor trails." If, like me, you trip over dirt because you're too busy watching the sky - well, this is a good book, definitely worth reading, and a very good look into a beautiful world; but it's not going to resonate.
If you're an earth person, fascinated by our world and the creatures who live in it - mooch away. I don't think you'll regret it.
Book available here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0684830337. Please note the condition notes - there's some (minimal) writing in this book, and a lot of marked passages; don't mooch if this will bother you.
Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow, by Dedra Johnson
This book takes place over the course of a year or so; and is a harsh, uncompromising view of growing up in New Orleans as a light-skinned black girl, not accepted by her family or her peers, harassed by men on the street, and unwanted, abused, and lied to by her mother and her mother's family. Sandrine is a bright and motivated child, but there's little she can do to please her mother or earn her love - she apparently only notices Sandrine to criticise her and put her to work, and Sandrine learns early that if she wants to remain safe on the streets of 1970's New Orleans, she has to devise ways to defend herself. Her life is anything but ideal.
Her only refuge is summers with her father's mother, Mamalita; but these are abruptly taken from her when one summer her father remarries, and instead of going to spend the summer with her father and Mamalita, she ends up slaving for her new stepmother and watching out for her younger stepsister, Yolanda. What nobody bothers to tell her, including her distant doctor father, is that Mamalita is sick, and in no shape to have her visit - although given how self-sufficient Sandrine is, if anybody had bothered to mention this to either Sandrine or her Mamalita, I suspect that would have been no barrier to visiting. We learn why Sandrine's lost her only refuge when she does - long after she's given up hope and run away back to New Orleans for the remainder of the summer - when Mamalita dies. Then to make matters worse, her new stepmother sends her new stepsister Yolanda to New Orleans on the bus; and it's obvious very quickly that Sandrine's mother prefers the far-more-disobedient Yolanda to her own daughter. Now Sandrine's left with a bleak existence; left to care for Yolanda, who despite being only a year younger is far less self-sufficient; and with no hope of a way out any more. Unsurprisingly, she starts to rebel.
This is a beautifully written book, but emotionally draining. The setting is a very bleak one; her one friend suffers a fate that could easily have been Sandrine's own, but effectively abandons Sandrine to her own devices in the process. Sandrine however maintains a core of courage and strength through a litany of horrible situations and dawning revelations about herself, her mother, and her life, peaking when she realises that, if she wants to get out of her situation and of New Orleans, then she's just going to have to do it herself.
Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow is enthralling, and despite the horrific events, manages to impart some good lessons: decide for yourself what you are worth; rely on yourself, but don't lock yourself away from trusting other people; the world can be what you make of it.
It's also one of the most disturbingly racist books I've read in years. Many of Sandrine's problems stem from the fact that she is black, but could 'pass' for white if she chose to - and that everyone (including her mother) then assumes she chooses to, when in fact all she wants is to be allowed to be who and what she is and not be ostracised for it. This part is explicit in the text. More subtle, and therefore more disturbing, is an underlying 'white people are bad' theme, which Sandrine herself - despite mentioning that all she knows of white people is what she's seen on a television she's rarely allowed to watch - subscribes to. One wonders how, with such an attitude so prevalent and unnoticed, our world will ever cease to judge people by the colour of their skin.
Book is available for mooch here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0978843126. Note it's an uncorrected proof edition.
Her only refuge is summers with her father's mother, Mamalita; but these are abruptly taken from her when one summer her father remarries, and instead of going to spend the summer with her father and Mamalita, she ends up slaving for her new stepmother and watching out for her younger stepsister, Yolanda. What nobody bothers to tell her, including her distant doctor father, is that Mamalita is sick, and in no shape to have her visit - although given how self-sufficient Sandrine is, if anybody had bothered to mention this to either Sandrine or her Mamalita, I suspect that would have been no barrier to visiting. We learn why Sandrine's lost her only refuge when she does - long after she's given up hope and run away back to New Orleans for the remainder of the summer - when Mamalita dies. Then to make matters worse, her new stepmother sends her new stepsister Yolanda to New Orleans on the bus; and it's obvious very quickly that Sandrine's mother prefers the far-more-disobedient Yolanda to her own daughter. Now Sandrine's left with a bleak existence; left to care for Yolanda, who despite being only a year younger is far less self-sufficient; and with no hope of a way out any more. Unsurprisingly, she starts to rebel.
This is a beautifully written book, but emotionally draining. The setting is a very bleak one; her one friend suffers a fate that could easily have been Sandrine's own, but effectively abandons Sandrine to her own devices in the process. Sandrine however maintains a core of courage and strength through a litany of horrible situations and dawning revelations about herself, her mother, and her life, peaking when she realises that, if she wants to get out of her situation and of New Orleans, then she's just going to have to do it herself.
Sandrine's Letter to Tomorrow is enthralling, and despite the horrific events, manages to impart some good lessons: decide for yourself what you are worth; rely on yourself, but don't lock yourself away from trusting other people; the world can be what you make of it.
It's also one of the most disturbingly racist books I've read in years. Many of Sandrine's problems stem from the fact that she is black, but could 'pass' for white if she chose to - and that everyone (including her mother) then assumes she chooses to, when in fact all she wants is to be allowed to be who and what she is and not be ostracised for it. This part is explicit in the text. More subtle, and therefore more disturbing, is an underlying 'white people are bad' theme, which Sandrine herself - despite mentioning that all she knows of white people is what she's seen on a television she's rarely allowed to watch - subscribes to. One wonders how, with such an attitude so prevalent and unnoticed, our world will ever cease to judge people by the colour of their skin.
Book is available for mooch here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/0978843126. Note it's an uncorrected proof edition.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Talking With Serial Killers, by Christopher Berry-Dee
Christopher Berry-Dee researches serious crime: specifically, in this book, serial killers. He's apparently spent a lot of time corresponding with them, and for each of the killers he profiles in this book, has interviewed them in prison. The book is set up with a chapter per serial killer (or serial killing team, as a couple operated in pairs), and attempts to cover the killer's history (childhood, etc), crimes, capture, and possible motivations.
To be honest, I was disappointed with this book. I'm not quite sure what I was looking for from it - I don't normally read true crime - but whatever it was, I didn't find it. There's no real insight here - all Berry-Dee manages is to recount (badly) some fairly horrific crimes, and push a couple of pop-psychology buttons. If any of those years of letters and interviews have told him anything about these people, it's not evident here. There are a handful of excerpts from them, but they're the exception, rather the rule. In a book subtitled 'The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories", this is definitely a disappointment.
The writing itself is uninspired, and could use a good editor - one who knows how not to abuse commas would have been a plus. The chapters themselves are either too ambitious or not ambitious enough - he either glosses over details, or goes into so much detail he manages to turn what should be shocking into merely tedious.
If you already know the stories of the serial killers he covers here, there's nothing new added. If you don't and are interested in such things, Berry-Dee does cover the basics. That's about *all* he does, and he doesn't remain unbiased - he clearly thinks two of them are innocent (of the particular serial killings they're accused of) and framed by police, and he spends the last few pages of the chapter on Aileen Lee Wournos attempting to make excuses for her - but if you want a short and unimaginative rundown of a dozen or so serial killers and one mass-murderer, this is the book for you.
Talking with Serial Killers is currently available for mooch here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/1904034535. Note the condition notes. ETA: now mooched
To be honest, I was disappointed with this book. I'm not quite sure what I was looking for from it - I don't normally read true crime - but whatever it was, I didn't find it. There's no real insight here - all Berry-Dee manages is to recount (badly) some fairly horrific crimes, and push a couple of pop-psychology buttons. If any of those years of letters and interviews have told him anything about these people, it's not evident here. There are a handful of excerpts from them, but they're the exception, rather the rule. In a book subtitled 'The Most Evil People in the World Tell Their Own Stories", this is definitely a disappointment.
The writing itself is uninspired, and could use a good editor - one who knows how not to abuse commas would have been a plus. The chapters themselves are either too ambitious or not ambitious enough - he either glosses over details, or goes into so much detail he manages to turn what should be shocking into merely tedious.
If you already know the stories of the serial killers he covers here, there's nothing new added. If you don't and are interested in such things, Berry-Dee does cover the basics. That's about *all* he does, and he doesn't remain unbiased - he clearly thinks two of them are innocent (of the particular serial killings they're accused of) and framed by police, and he spends the last few pages of the chapter on Aileen Lee Wournos attempting to make excuses for her - but if you want a short and unimaginative rundown of a dozen or so serial killers and one mass-murderer, this is the book for you.
Talking with Serial Killers is currently available for mooch here: http://www.bookmooch.com/m/detail/1904034535. Note the condition notes. ETA: now mooched
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry
Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way has received a lot of good press, and it was short-listed for the IMPAC award administered by Dublin City Libraries this year. So I picked it up not sure what to expect, since I tend to find literary book award nominees to be either excellent reads or excellent sleep aids, and it's pretty much a complete coin toss as to which road any given book takes.
A Long Long Way is an excellent sleep aid. Unfortunately, I was trying to read it on the bus, where falling asleep just makes you miss your stop, rather than in bed, where falling asleep gets you a good night's rest.
This book is the story of young Willie Dunne, born in the closing years of the 19th century, son of a Dublin policeman. We get the story of his childhood in a few short pages at the start of the book; then we jump straight into Willie's volunteering to go and fight in the British trenches in 1914. He then proceeds to spend an interminable number of pages (and years) sitting in trenches scratching lice and seeing fellow Irish die. This appears to be interspersed with randomly spaced visits home, where he argues with his father over the events in Ireland at the time - the Easter Rising, and all the political tension both leading up to and arising from the British screwups handling it. Although to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how that impacts the storyline, because by the time it showed up, I was skipping fifteen to twenty pages at a time, skimming through to try and pick up any threads of storyline that might actually be worth reading through the intervening pages for. I didn't find any.
If you're looking for a good read, don't pick up this book. If you're looking for a cure for insomnia - might as well try it, it's surely not good for much else.
I'd put it up for mooch, but I got it out of the library.
A Long Long Way is an excellent sleep aid. Unfortunately, I was trying to read it on the bus, where falling asleep just makes you miss your stop, rather than in bed, where falling asleep gets you a good night's rest.
This book is the story of young Willie Dunne, born in the closing years of the 19th century, son of a Dublin policeman. We get the story of his childhood in a few short pages at the start of the book; then we jump straight into Willie's volunteering to go and fight in the British trenches in 1914. He then proceeds to spend an interminable number of pages (and years) sitting in trenches scratching lice and seeing fellow Irish die. This appears to be interspersed with randomly spaced visits home, where he argues with his father over the events in Ireland at the time - the Easter Rising, and all the political tension both leading up to and arising from the British screwups handling it. Although to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how that impacts the storyline, because by the time it showed up, I was skipping fifteen to twenty pages at a time, skimming through to try and pick up any threads of storyline that might actually be worth reading through the intervening pages for. I didn't find any.
If you're looking for a good read, don't pick up this book. If you're looking for a cure for insomnia - might as well try it, it's surely not good for much else.
I'd put it up for mooch, but I got it out of the library.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Do White Whales Sing at the Edge of the World? by Paul Wilson
I admit it: I mooched this book purely for the title. It's a totally awesome title.
But, you know? This is maybe my best mooch to date. That includes a couple of books I've been looking for for a couple of years now, and a few wishlist books I still don't believe I won the race for. Those were great to get; but this... this is the perfect present you didn't know you wanted. I love this book. The writing sucked me in on the very first page; it's beautiful, lyrical and just sings.
So, the story is this: Gabriel Emerson is a resident in a colony for the feeble-minded somewhere on the Cumberland fells. The colony is in its final days; the residents are slowly being shuffled out and reintegrated into the outside world, and only the hardcore cases are left. As the last weeks of the colony draw to a close, Gabriel embarks on an epic journey: in a disused icehouse on the edges of the colony he sets out to re-imagine and re-trace the steps of the doomed - and disputed - discovery of a Northwest Passage by his namesake two centuries earlier.
Intertwined with Gabriel's dream - a dream powerful enough to carry three of his fellow residents through the Arctic ice with him, and be clearly visible to a fourth, watching from above and narrating the story for the rest of us - is Gabriel's story; and that of his family (unorthdox as it was); and the story of the mining town of Laing, that bore and shaped him; and that of four internees bound to the town by the detention acts for foreign nationals during WWII; and of the ways these all rubbed against each other and exloded one night in a tragedy horrifying enough to haunt Gabriel straight into the colony in the first place.
Ultimately, this is a book about dreams. It was a dream that built Laing; it was dreams that kept the internees going; it was the lack of dreams that cursed the town; it was a dream that Gabriel and his fellows followed in the last days of the colony. In Paul Wilson's own words: "But we were men who, like most poor men, fought and fought, and scrapped for life -- for pieces of the stuff in crevices and dreams. Our story is not in the leftover bones of our lives to be found bleached here in a heap on some shelf of ice, but our hearts that brought us here, and the dreams that drew us on."
I really can't recommend this book highly enough. If I ever find any more copies (priced reasonably!), I'll be buying them up to mooch out, because this definitely deserves to be out there - but this one I'm keeping for me :-).
But, you know? This is maybe my best mooch to date. That includes a couple of books I've been looking for for a couple of years now, and a few wishlist books I still don't believe I won the race for. Those were great to get; but this... this is the perfect present you didn't know you wanted. I love this book. The writing sucked me in on the very first page; it's beautiful, lyrical and just sings.
So, the story is this: Gabriel Emerson is a resident in a colony for the feeble-minded somewhere on the Cumberland fells. The colony is in its final days; the residents are slowly being shuffled out and reintegrated into the outside world, and only the hardcore cases are left. As the last weeks of the colony draw to a close, Gabriel embarks on an epic journey: in a disused icehouse on the edges of the colony he sets out to re-imagine and re-trace the steps of the doomed - and disputed - discovery of a Northwest Passage by his namesake two centuries earlier.
Intertwined with Gabriel's dream - a dream powerful enough to carry three of his fellow residents through the Arctic ice with him, and be clearly visible to a fourth, watching from above and narrating the story for the rest of us - is Gabriel's story; and that of his family (unorthdox as it was); and the story of the mining town of Laing, that bore and shaped him; and that of four internees bound to the town by the detention acts for foreign nationals during WWII; and of the ways these all rubbed against each other and exloded one night in a tragedy horrifying enough to haunt Gabriel straight into the colony in the first place.
Ultimately, this is a book about dreams. It was a dream that built Laing; it was dreams that kept the internees going; it was the lack of dreams that cursed the town; it was a dream that Gabriel and his fellows followed in the last days of the colony. In Paul Wilson's own words: "But we were men who, like most poor men, fought and fought, and scrapped for life -- for pieces of the stuff in crevices and dreams. Our story is not in the leftover bones of our lives to be found bleached here in a heap on some shelf of ice, but our hearts that brought us here, and the dreams that drew us on."
I really can't recommend this book highly enough. If I ever find any more copies (priced reasonably!), I'll be buying them up to mooch out, because this definitely deserves to be out there - but this one I'm keeping for me :-).
Monday, July 9, 2007
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
This is one of those books that seems to be everywhere you look - in all the bookstores, mentioned in random publications, etc. So when I saw it at the library, I figured why not? and picked it up.
I'm glad I did. I found the story reasonably compelling and the characters interesting, although often pretentious; their emotional dilemmas were well-drawn, and though plenty of plot-holes abounded, they weren't obvious enough to derail the story for me. The premise was interesting (although not as original as mainstream lit seems to think), and reasonably well-executed.
Basic story intro: Henry is an involuntary time-traveler. His body will reset on a genetic level, and he'll find himself elsewhere in time: naked, sick, and not sure where or when he is until he can find a reference point. He meets Clare when he is 36 and she is 6; they are married when she is 22 and he 30. This book is the story of their lives, together as often as they can be, and trying to make a 'normal' life from one with very little chronological cohesion.
It took me a while to get past the writing style and into the story itself, though. And I don't mean the structure of the story - the flipping around in time didn't bug me, the *writing* did. It's overly simplistic in places, particularly from Clare's point of view; a little sophistication in the sentence structure wouldn't have hurt. And wouldn't have left me struggling through the start while I tried to get over the feeling that I was reading a ten-year-old's english composition homework. Albeit a ten-year-old with a very good vocabulary.
Also, the aforementioned plot-holes? Could've used a decent editor.
All in all, it was an enjoyable read, and well-worth the time, although not exceptional.
I'm glad I did. I found the story reasonably compelling and the characters interesting, although often pretentious; their emotional dilemmas were well-drawn, and though plenty of plot-holes abounded, they weren't obvious enough to derail the story for me. The premise was interesting (although not as original as mainstream lit seems to think), and reasonably well-executed.
Basic story intro: Henry is an involuntary time-traveler. His body will reset on a genetic level, and he'll find himself elsewhere in time: naked, sick, and not sure where or when he is until he can find a reference point. He meets Clare when he is 36 and she is 6; they are married when she is 22 and he 30. This book is the story of their lives, together as often as they can be, and trying to make a 'normal' life from one with very little chronological cohesion.
It took me a while to get past the writing style and into the story itself, though. And I don't mean the structure of the story - the flipping around in time didn't bug me, the *writing* did. It's overly simplistic in places, particularly from Clare's point of view; a little sophistication in the sentence structure wouldn't have hurt. And wouldn't have left me struggling through the start while I tried to get over the feeling that I was reading a ten-year-old's english composition homework. Albeit a ten-year-old with a very good vocabulary.
Also, the aforementioned plot-holes? Could've used a decent editor.
All in all, it was an enjoyable read, and well-worth the time, although not exceptional.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Weather Warden series, by Rachel Caine
I've read the first three (and a half) books in this series over the past week: Ill Wind, Heat Stroke, Chill Factor; and Windfall (that's the half). Joanne Baldwin is a Weather Warden: one of a secret association that keeps the Earth from killing everyone on it with storms, earthquakes, fires... until she finds herself running from her own people, accused of murder, infected with a demon, and hanging out with Djinn....
The series opens into action, and it's just getting going: these are fast-paced books, they're definitely plot-driven, and they're fun; but...
They're *too* fast, I think. There's no time to engage; the characters (and the reader) are shoved from one crisis to the next, the stakes keep going up, and at the end of each book you don't get resolution: you get a cliffhanger and another upward jump in stakes. They're flashy and bright, grab your attention and entertain you; but there's no *depth* to them; nor any time for it. Jo, the good guys, the bad guys, and the ones who can't make up their mind and keep crossing over that good guy/bad guy line; they all have the potential to be far more interesting than they are - except the author keeps them locked into a repetitive loop bouncing from one dramatic denouement to the next, hit by emergency after crisis after disaster, until you seriously wonder why no one just throws up their hands and announces 'fine: solve the next one without me, guys, I'm getting some sleep.' (Or at the very least not dropping unconcsious from lack of sleep and malnutrition.)
I guess I'm mixed about this series. It's entertaining (if dark); the characters are generally well-drawn and only occasionally slip down into plot-devices; and it's a good series if you're looking for a few books you don't have to think too much about.
Just don't let the hints of depth that never materialise drive you crazy.
The series opens into action, and it's just getting going: these are fast-paced books, they're definitely plot-driven, and they're fun; but...
They're *too* fast, I think. There's no time to engage; the characters (and the reader) are shoved from one crisis to the next, the stakes keep going up, and at the end of each book you don't get resolution: you get a cliffhanger and another upward jump in stakes. They're flashy and bright, grab your attention and entertain you; but there's no *depth* to them; nor any time for it. Jo, the good guys, the bad guys, and the ones who can't make up their mind and keep crossing over that good guy/bad guy line; they all have the potential to be far more interesting than they are - except the author keeps them locked into a repetitive loop bouncing from one dramatic denouement to the next, hit by emergency after crisis after disaster, until you seriously wonder why no one just throws up their hands and announces 'fine: solve the next one without me, guys, I'm getting some sleep.' (Or at the very least not dropping unconcsious from lack of sleep and malnutrition.)
I guess I'm mixed about this series. It's entertaining (if dark); the characters are generally well-drawn and only occasionally slip down into plot-devices; and it's a good series if you're looking for a few books you don't have to think too much about.
Just don't let the hints of depth that never materialise drive you crazy.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
This is an ambitious novel, in terms of structure, in terms of style, and in terms of scope. And for the most part, it really works.
Cloud Atlas is a series of six interlocking stories, each set in a different time and place, and style. We open in the 19th century Chatham Islands, with a diary written by a (rather naive) american notary on a journey from Australia back home to San Francisco, and completely out of his depth.
The second section focuses on Robert Frobisher: egotistical, unstable, manipulative - but nevertheless charming as all hell. In 1931, he finds himself broke and desperate to escape creditors; and hatches a mad plan to apprentice himself to a syphillis-ridden composer in Belgium. We learn his story through letters written to a friend, wry, entertaining, and droll, and not in the least lacking in self-knowledge.
Next we move forward fifty years or so, to where Luisa Rey - daughter of a famous journalist - finds herself trapped in an elevator with an eminent physicist; and as a consequence, receives just enough information about a highly dangerous coverup at a nearby nuclear facility that she can't keep herself from digging deeper, and by doing so, endangering her own life.
The fourth section is the tale of a self-absorbed man who manages to - accidentally - sign himself into a hellish retirement home from which he can't seem to escape again...
Now we hit the future: the next section is an interview with a 'fabricant' - a genetically engineered clone, bred for slavery and engineered to be content with it.
The final story-arc is set in a post-apolcalyptic Hawaii; the style here is a little difficult to read, but once you're in the swing of it, the story beneath is just as engrossing as the remainder. This is the only story told in one complete part; all the rest progress - in the order mentioned - and then, after this arc is complete, regress; you get the second half of tale five, followed by the second half of tale four, three, two, one; and you're back where you started, threads picked up and neatly folded.
It's an interesting structure; essentially you have six separate stories, here, split across a book and interweaving. They're distinct, but not unrelated; references, themes, and characters leap from one to the other like salmon. Much of this book is pretty dark - a common theme seems to be free choice that turns out to be not so free, after all - innocence is doomed to learn wisdom - selfishness reigns in much of the worlds as described - there's betrayal and fear and lost worlds.
Yet there's also unexpected allies, and loyalty, and courage. There's an underlying lightness of spirit that shines, and a complex weaving of melody threading through the whole book.
And it might just be me, and how it resonates in my skull; but the final sentence - that's one of the most powerful expressions of hope I've come across.
I'd recommend this book. If you have difficulty working out what's going up after the first section ends so abruptly and you're catapulted straight into a seemingly unrelated story - stick with it. It really does tie in. And Cloud Atlas is definitely worth it.
And if anyone else has any more of David Mitchell's they wouldn't mind putting up for mooching - let me know. I'll take it :-)
Cloud Atlas is a series of six interlocking stories, each set in a different time and place, and style. We open in the 19th century Chatham Islands, with a diary written by a (rather naive) american notary on a journey from Australia back home to San Francisco, and completely out of his depth.
The second section focuses on Robert Frobisher: egotistical, unstable, manipulative - but nevertheless charming as all hell. In 1931, he finds himself broke and desperate to escape creditors; and hatches a mad plan to apprentice himself to a syphillis-ridden composer in Belgium. We learn his story through letters written to a friend, wry, entertaining, and droll, and not in the least lacking in self-knowledge.
Next we move forward fifty years or so, to where Luisa Rey - daughter of a famous journalist - finds herself trapped in an elevator with an eminent physicist; and as a consequence, receives just enough information about a highly dangerous coverup at a nearby nuclear facility that she can't keep herself from digging deeper, and by doing so, endangering her own life.
The fourth section is the tale of a self-absorbed man who manages to - accidentally - sign himself into a hellish retirement home from which he can't seem to escape again...
Now we hit the future: the next section is an interview with a 'fabricant' - a genetically engineered clone, bred for slavery and engineered to be content with it.
The final story-arc is set in a post-apolcalyptic Hawaii; the style here is a little difficult to read, but once you're in the swing of it, the story beneath is just as engrossing as the remainder. This is the only story told in one complete part; all the rest progress - in the order mentioned - and then, after this arc is complete, regress; you get the second half of tale five, followed by the second half of tale four, three, two, one; and you're back where you started, threads picked up and neatly folded.
It's an interesting structure; essentially you have six separate stories, here, split across a book and interweaving. They're distinct, but not unrelated; references, themes, and characters leap from one to the other like salmon. Much of this book is pretty dark - a common theme seems to be free choice that turns out to be not so free, after all - innocence is doomed to learn wisdom - selfishness reigns in much of the worlds as described - there's betrayal and fear and lost worlds.
Yet there's also unexpected allies, and loyalty, and courage. There's an underlying lightness of spirit that shines, and a complex weaving of melody threading through the whole book.
And it might just be me, and how it resonates in my skull; but the final sentence - that's one of the most powerful expressions of hope I've come across.
I'd recommend this book. If you have difficulty working out what's going up after the first section ends so abruptly and you're catapulted straight into a seemingly unrelated story - stick with it. It really does tie in. And Cloud Atlas is definitely worth it.
And if anyone else has any more of David Mitchell's they wouldn't mind putting up for mooching - let me know. I'll take it :-)
Monday, May 28, 2007
Wild Design by Katie Fforde
Truthfully, I'm not entirely sure how this book wound up in my TBR pile. It's not what I'd normally read, or pick up, or acquire, but... it was there, and when I started running out of May before I got to my second original choice (Physics & Philosophy, now moved to June), I figured it'd be a reasonably quick read, and not distract too much from the studying I'm supposed to be doing right now.
As it turned out, well... Wild Design *is* better than reading Financial Reporting Standards (that studying I mentioned). But that's about all I can say for it. This book is everything I hate about chicklit, and a perfect example of why I don't tend to read that genre. The 'heroine' is a doormat. She spends most of the book sabotaging herself for no discernible reason, letting her friends and family walk all over her, and laying down so her kids can't help but walk over her whether they want to or not. She loses her job, decides on a new career as a garden designer... and then spends the rest of the book running around like a headless chicken, chasing everything but her dream, except by accident. She can't seem to imagine why the hero would be interested in her, and frankly, the way she treats him, I can't either. Seriously, I wanted to smack her.
The 'hero'... well, I suppose he was okay, all two dimensions of him.
I *did* finish the book, but only because it really was better than memorising FRS.
This one's available for mooching. In fact, please mooch it. You can have it free (I'll return the points for this one, if you tell me you're from the TBR club/blog in the comment).
As it turned out, well... Wild Design *is* better than reading Financial Reporting Standards (that studying I mentioned). But that's about all I can say for it. This book is everything I hate about chicklit, and a perfect example of why I don't tend to read that genre. The 'heroine' is a doormat. She spends most of the book sabotaging herself for no discernible reason, letting her friends and family walk all over her, and laying down so her kids can't help but walk over her whether they want to or not. She loses her job, decides on a new career as a garden designer... and then spends the rest of the book running around like a headless chicken, chasing everything but her dream, except by accident. She can't seem to imagine why the hero would be interested in her, and frankly, the way she treats him, I can't either. Seriously, I wanted to smack her.
The 'hero'... well, I suppose he was okay, all two dimensions of him.
I *did* finish the book, but only because it really was better than memorising FRS.
This one's available for mooching. In fact, please mooch it. You can have it free (I'll return the points for this one, if you tell me you're from the TBR club/blog in the comment).
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Sky Dancer, by Witi Ihimaera
So, this is the first review I've written in a number of years - please forgive me if it's a little disjointed and/or incomprehensible... (but also point it out, so I can hopefully improve going forward!)
Witi Ihimaera is a well-known NZ author; outside of New Zealand, he's probably best known as the author of Whale Rider, made into a film a few years back. He's also one of my favourite NZ authors, although he writes of a world I never saw any more than glimpses of, growing up. I think perhaps that's a lot of what fascinates me; how there could be this whole entire world existing right alongside ours, all the time, and yet all we ever saw were displaced edges, thrust into classrooms and learnt by rote, or glimpsed in passing but never understood. I think probably this sort of thing occurs wherever you have one culture alongside another; even as some merging occurs, some deeper parts just never seem to transfer over.
Sky Dancer is an interweaving of the mythic and the prosaic; on the one thread, we have a portion of the Maori creation myths, where the god Tane opens the gates of Heaven for the birds to claim the land and the sea; and on the other thread, a young woman in modern day NZ fleeing with her mother to small-town Tuapa, trying to escape her mother's problems.
The threads cross in a prophecy written in the Great Book of Birds, and handed down from mother to daughter amonst the handmaidens of Tane: that in the third year of the second millennium as it is counted by Man, Armageddon will come; the sky will open, and birds of the future will stream through to fight once again the Great Battle where the seabirds, the manu moana, will challenge for dominion over the land birds, the manu whenua. However all is not hopeless; as well as this second chance granted to the seabirds, Tane will send to the landbirds a chick to assist in the battle - the young woman, Skylark O'Shea. Who, as it turns out, is contrary, antagonistic, and doesn't believe a word of any of this...
Sky Dancer is the story of how the first battle between birds, but mostly of the second; of how it came to be that it was to be fought at all; of how a reluctant Skylark was dragged along to help fight a battle she didn't believe was anything more than a myth, helped along by an assortment of characters across the length of the country, and hounded by seabirds at every step.
It's not Ihimaera's best book, but it's far from bad. The plot falters here and there - gets a little too caught up in intermissions, and a little too preachy here and there - but overall, it's a good read; and if you like discovering myths and cultures of other cultures, then it's a very good book for this. Don't be put off by the fact that the story switches between human and bird characters - my father, who scorns fantasy of any kind and will usually run a mile if there's any hint of fantastical elements, thoroughly enjoyed this book. (Moreso than I did, I think, and I *do* love fantasy).
Anyway, to conclude; I enjoyed this book. It's a good story, well written, and a very good introduction to some Maori myth, although you'll probably need to watch out for where the actual myths end and the storytelling begins...
Witi Ihimaera is a well-known NZ author; outside of New Zealand, he's probably best known as the author of Whale Rider, made into a film a few years back. He's also one of my favourite NZ authors, although he writes of a world I never saw any more than glimpses of, growing up. I think perhaps that's a lot of what fascinates me; how there could be this whole entire world existing right alongside ours, all the time, and yet all we ever saw were displaced edges, thrust into classrooms and learnt by rote, or glimpsed in passing but never understood. I think probably this sort of thing occurs wherever you have one culture alongside another; even as some merging occurs, some deeper parts just never seem to transfer over.
Sky Dancer is an interweaving of the mythic and the prosaic; on the one thread, we have a portion of the Maori creation myths, where the god Tane opens the gates of Heaven for the birds to claim the land and the sea; and on the other thread, a young woman in modern day NZ fleeing with her mother to small-town Tuapa, trying to escape her mother's problems.
The threads cross in a prophecy written in the Great Book of Birds, and handed down from mother to daughter amonst the handmaidens of Tane: that in the third year of the second millennium as it is counted by Man, Armageddon will come; the sky will open, and birds of the future will stream through to fight once again the Great Battle where the seabirds, the manu moana, will challenge for dominion over the land birds, the manu whenua. However all is not hopeless; as well as this second chance granted to the seabirds, Tane will send to the landbirds a chick to assist in the battle - the young woman, Skylark O'Shea. Who, as it turns out, is contrary, antagonistic, and doesn't believe a word of any of this...
Sky Dancer is the story of how the first battle between birds, but mostly of the second; of how it came to be that it was to be fought at all; of how a reluctant Skylark was dragged along to help fight a battle she didn't believe was anything more than a myth, helped along by an assortment of characters across the length of the country, and hounded by seabirds at every step.
It's not Ihimaera's best book, but it's far from bad. The plot falters here and there - gets a little too caught up in intermissions, and a little too preachy here and there - but overall, it's a good read; and if you like discovering myths and cultures of other cultures, then it's a very good book for this. Don't be put off by the fact that the story switches between human and bird characters - my father, who scorns fantasy of any kind and will usually run a mile if there's any hint of fantastical elements, thoroughly enjoyed this book. (Moreso than I did, I think, and I *do* love fantasy).
Anyway, to conclude; I enjoyed this book. It's a good story, well written, and a very good introduction to some Maori myth, although you'll probably need to watch out for where the actual myths end and the storytelling begins...
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