Category: 2012
The huh where did the time go post
Because I have been reading. And you know, all those other necessities of life. And running after the now too-mobile wee reader. Because of all that and more, I have not been writing about what I read. And it is a pity because some of what I read has been Awesome (capital A there, in case you didn’t notice), of course others were more like an eh. As in, eh, shouldn’t have bothered.
So the Awesome
The Lions of Al-Rassan. The word to describe this book by Guy Gavriel Kay is perhaps not Awesome, but Magnificent. Its swooping soaring battles, its love, its heart, its bro-mance. Magnificent.
Castle Waiting Volume 2. What fun I had revisiting the castle and its quirky inhabitants. And now, dwarves! Or Hammerlings as they are known. And a chance to explore the castle and learn more about Jain’s childhood. Awesome!
The Last Werewolf. And once again, I go into a book written by a new-to-me author with no expectations, and am blown away. Clever, intriguing, kind of exciting. Written as a journal, The Last Werewolf is Jake Marlowe and he is being pursued by World Organization for the Control of Occult Phenomena (WOCOP).
Somewhat Awesome/Not too bad
Empire State: A Love Story (or Not). Cute and kinda geeky, this graphic novel features Jimmy, who works in a library, and whose best friend Sara is moving from Oakland to NYC. Jimmy decides to hop on a Greyhound to go find her and win her back. It’s sweet and awkward.
Scott Pilgrim Vol 1. Another geeky graphic novel, a lot of fun, but first I have to get onto the rest of the series – and then check out the movie – in order to say more.
The Kingdom of Gods. So I gushed about N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms, books one and two of the trilogy, but have yet to say anything about book three. Well, I didn’t really like it as much. Perhaps because the main character is the godling Sieh, the trickster god, the child, and he is (horrors) growing old. It took me a while to get into the story, but it grew on me.
The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. A gorgeous snow-filled setting, a mansion with secret passages, a vile governess and wolves. I wish I had read this as a kid. But I had great fun reading it as an adult.
D’Aulaires’ book of Norse myths. Gorgeous illustrations that fill the page (and they are big pages). And cross-dressing Norse gods! And a one-eyed Odin, and magic apples that revive one’s youthful looks (that illustration of befores and afters is worth the book)!
The eh
Dating Mr December. Read it to fulfill the ‘romance’ portion of the Mixing it Up challenge. What was I expecting? Silly, frivolous, lust-filled. Check, check, check.
There, that wasn’t too bad was it. Just in time for breakfast.
Library Loot (May 23 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
I love how the library has become a place for wee reader to play (and play with books) and meet other young ones (and for me, to meet other mums). Of course there’s that added bonus of books, books and more books!
Locke & Key, Vol. 3: Crown of Shadows
Volume 3! Yay! Or maybe it’s more like Volume 3! Shudder!!
Sam Lesser may be dead and gone, but Dodge still has uses for him, and in the first chill days of October, will make contact with him again. The dead know things the living may not, and Sam’s restless spirit has had time to discover the thing Dodge wants to know most of all… where to find the key to the black door.
Odd and the Frost Giants
So one benefit that comes with wee reader and his new found love for walking is that I get to chase after him down aisle after aisle of children’s books. That means I get to pick up books like these, which I wouldn’t regularly pass by.
In this inventive, short, yet perfectly formed novel inspired by traditional Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman takes readers on a wild and magical trip to the land of giants and gods and back.
In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he’s had some very bad luck: His father perished in a Viking expedition; a tree fell on and shattered his leg; the endless freezing winter is making villagers dangerously grumpy.
Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle—three creatures with a strange story to tell.
Now Odd is forced on a stranger journey than he had imagined—a journey to save Asgard, city of the gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it.
It’s going to take a very special kind of twelve-year-old boy to outwit the Frost Giants, restore peace to the city of gods, and end the long winter.
Someone cheerful and infuriating and clever . . .
Someone just like Odd .
1001 Children’s Books You Must Read Before You Grow Up
Thanks to Buried in Print I had to lug this behemoth of a book home. 
This is the best and most authoritative guide to classic and contemporary children’s literature today. It is the latest in the best-selling 1001 series, and its informative reviews are the key to differentiating the “must-read” books from all the rest in the realm of children’s books. Whether you are a parent seeking to instill a love of reading in your child, an educator or counselor looking for inspiration, or a young reader with a voracious appetite, this guide to the best writing for children and young adults covers the spectrum of children’s literature. It is organized by age group—from board books to YA novels and all the gradations in between. Each entry features evaluations by a team of international critics complete with beautifully reproduced artwork from the featured title. The beloved classics are here, but the guide also takes a global perspective and includes the increasingly diverse contributions from African American and Latino authors and illustrators—not to mention important books from around the world.
The Collected Stories
I heard Yiyun Li reading McGahern’s story The Wine Breath on the New Yorker fiction podcast and wanted to read it for myself – as well as the other short stories that McGahern (a new-to-me author) has written.
These 34 funny, tragic, bracing, and acerbic stories represent the complete short fiction of one of Ireland’s finest living writers. On struggling farms, in Dublin’s rain-drenched streets, or in parched exile in Franco’s Spain, McGahern’s characters wage a confused but touching war against the facts of life.
Castle Waiting (Vol. 2)
A discussion with a friend about graphic novels made me realise that I’ve yet to read this volume. An interlibrary loan from the Sacramento library.
With its long-awaited second volume, Linda Medley’s witty and sublimely drawn fantasy eases into a relaxed comedy of manners as Lady Jain settles into her new life in Castle Waiting.
Unexpected visitors result in the discovery and exploration of a secret passageway, not to mention an epic bowling tournament. A quest for ladies’ underpants, the identity of Pindar’s father, the education of Simon, Rackham and Chess arguing about the “manly arts,” and an escape-prone goat are just a few of the elements in this delightful new volume.
The book also includes many flashbacks that deepen the stories behind the characters, including Jain’s earliest romantic entanglements and conflicts with her bratty older sisters, the horrific past of the enigmatic Dr. Fell, and more.
Wee reader’s loot:
Wee reader’s new favourite thing is walking around while holding things like a ball, toy, playing cards, and yes, books. He didn’t want to let go of this one so we had to take it home with us.
American Babies (A Global Fund for Children Book) 
Wee reader also picked out these books:
Little Critter Numbers
Yum Yum, Baby Bundt: A Recipe for Mealtime
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
Locke and Key
I like to think I am a person who doesn’t scare easily. At least when it comes to books.
Movies though are a whole other story, and I refuse to watch horror movies, especially those of the Japanese variety!
But novels about vampires, zombies, witches etc? Sure, why not.
So I never thought that a graphic novel would creep me out. And one with a whole bunch of keys at the centre of it.
Locke & Key, written by Joe Hill* and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez, is spine-chilling. It opens with a murder and the family’s attempts to come to terms with that as they move to Lovecraft, Massachusetts.
It is such an incredibly painful and tragic beginning. The teenaged Tyler and Kinsey cannot help but replay those horrific moments in their head, in their sleep, and as they slowly try to readjust to going back to school and all the mundanities of life, while Bode, who is much younger, discovers the secrets of the keys in the gothic house, and that echo from the well…
The gem of the story isn’t that dastardly evil (but oh, what an evil it is) but that family, and how concrete their story and their pain is (despite that Lovecraft of an island and spooky keyhouse). You just want, just wish that someone would reach out to them and help them and make all their bad dreams go away.
An exceptional series! I’m currently reading Volume Three: Crown of Shadows and there are two more volumes to go (at least that’s what my library’s catalogue is telling me). Apparently a pilot was made, but it seems that the series hasn’t been picked up as yet.
*Apparently his name is actually Joseph Hillstrom King. King as in Stephen King’s son.
On another note, I am completely clueless about H.P. Lovecraft and his works. Any recommendations on where to begin?
Library Loot (16 May 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
And here’s the loot!
Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand
I thought this sounded like an interesting read, and I’m curious to see what else Henson had in that imagination of his.
Jim Henson died in 1990, but his fertile imagination lives on in The Muppets and his other creations. Not all his many projects had been completed by the time of his tragic death. One of them, the basis of this graphic novel, was an unproduced, feature-length screenplay by Henson and his frequent writing partner Jerry Juhl. Tale of Sand follows the unplanned adventures and struggle to survive of a man marooned in the Great America Southwest.
A Wrinkle in Time
This month I’m hoping to read some of the children’s book I’ve missed out on. And erm, I’m never quite sure if I’ve read this one or not….
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract”.
A tesseract (in case the reader doesn’t know) is a wrinkle in time. To tell more would rob the reader of the enjoyment of Miss L’Engle’s unusual book
Wee reader’s loot:
Yawn
Animals Go (Touch, Look, and Learn!)
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
Geek Love
“A carnival in daylight is an unfinished beast, anyway. Rain makes it a ghost. The wheezing music from the empty, motionless rides in a soggy, rained-out afternoon midway always hits my chest with a sweet ache. The colored dance of the lights in the seeping air flashed the puddles in the sawdust with an oily glamour.”
“The sky above Molalla was aching blue but I walked from Arty’s tent to our van in the same air I’d sucked all my life. It was a Binewski blend of lube grease, dust, popcorn, and hot sugar. We made that air and we carried it with us. The Fabulons light was the same in Arkansas as in Idaho – the patented electric dance step of the Binewskis. We made it. Like the mucoid nubbin that spins a shell called ‘oyster’, we Binewskis wove a midway shelter called ‘carnival’.”
What is a geek?
For me, the TV series Big Bang Theory pretty much sums it up. And that’s what I kind of imagined this book to be – a relationship between nerds, or perhaps a love story between a erm, non-nerd and a nerd. Or something along those lines.
And then I read Geek Love and I realised that ‘geek’ has another meaning – a carnival performer. And in the end, while I was completely thrown off at the beginning, I too was all about the geek love.
That Katherine Dunn. What an imagination. What a crazy, messed up world she has conjured up.
There’s Crystal Lil, the “star-haired mama”. And Aloysius Binewski or Al or Papa, who inherits the traveling carnival he was raised in and lands on that brilliant idea of breeding his own freak show. How? With drugs, insecticides and radioisotopes.
They begin with Arturo/Arty/Aqua Boy, whose hands and feet are flippers. A fascinating, evil genius kind of character.
Electra and Iphigenia, Siamese twins sharing one set of hips and legs. Completely absorbed in themselves.
Then Olympia/Oly, our narrator, a disappointment with her “commonplace deformities” – a bald albino hunchbacked dwarf. A bit of a pushover. Utterly devoted to Arty.
Then Fortunato/Chick, who looks normal but later reveals his own specialty. Innocent, sweet.
By this point you’re either completely turned off or intrigued. At least that’s what the reviews on Goodreads seem to suggest.
And for me, it was just complete absorption into this bizarro, freaky world. I mean, what a cast (and these are just the main ones), what a show!
Beauty
Ugh.
So apparently I wrote a couple of paragraphs about Sherri S. Tepper’s Beauty not too long after I read it. And I just read it and now have no idea where I was going with it.
And the problem is, the indifference, the disinterest. Because with a book you love, it’s so easy to write a gushy, full-throttled love fest. And with a book you hate, it’s also pretty easy to fling it against a wall and rant your head off. But with the indifference, there’s a struggle to move the cursor forward and fill that page. So what happens is that drivel such as this is used instead.
So.
Beauty is the story of well, Beauty, that is, of Sleeping Beauty fame but manages to escape her fate and does some time traveling. There’s some bits in the land of Faerie, the future, and even melds into some other fairy tales. So it pretty much fits the Once Upon A Time categories.
It was an ok read, as you can probably guess by now. It was a little weird, but a little clever how the rest of the fairy tales fit into the bigger story. And there was just a little too much heavy-handedness as Tepper tries to put her agenda across. However, Tepper has some interesting ideas and I’m curious to see what her other books are like. Perhaps more SF and less fairy tale-ish?
Ah the neutral review. Never very interesting to read, is it?
So this is my fifth read for Once Upon A Time VI
Library Loot (9 May 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
Oof, I am just so tired today that I really struggled to put up this post! But I think I picked up a pretty good haul this week. A little bit here, a little bit there. That will make for some interesting reading.
Girl Reading
Thanks to Buried in Print
Seven portraits. Seven artists. Seven girls and women reading. A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena. An artist’s servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. An eighteenth century female painter completes a portrait of a deceased poetess for her lover. A Victorian medium poses with a book in one of the first photographic studios. A girl suffering her first heartbreak witnesses intellectual and sexual awakening during the Great War. A young woman reading in a bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture. And in the not-so-distant future a woman navigates the rapidly developing cyber-reality that has radically altered the way people experience art and the way they live.Each chapter of Katie Ward’s kaleidoscopic novel takes us into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be, and as the connections accumulate, the narrative leads us into the present and beyond. In gorgeous prose Ward explores our points of connection, our relationship to art, the history of women, and the importance of reading. This dazzlingly inventive novel that surprises and satisfies announces the career of a brilliant new writer.
Dating Mr. December
So not my cup of tea, but I’m trying to finish more categories for the Mixing it up challenge.
Emma Tremayne leaves her high-powered PR job and moves to the Lake District looking for peace, quiet–and celibacy. So perhaps it’s not the best idea when she agrees to help the local mountain rescue team raise funds by putting together a “tasteful” nude calendar.
D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths
We recently rewatched the movie Thor, and I was curious about the actual myths behind the comic/movie.
The Norse myths are some of the greatest stories of all time. Weird monsters, thoroughly human gods, elves and sprites and gnomes, with grim giants nursing ancient grudges lurking behind—the mysterious and entrancing world of Norse myth comes alive in these pages thanks to the spellbinding storytelling and spectacular pictures of the incomparable d’Aulairse. In this classic book, the art of the Caldecott Award—winning authors of d’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, a longtime favorite of children and parent, reaches one of its pinnacles. It offers a way into a world of fantasy and struggle and charm that has served as inspiration for Marvel Comics and the Lord of the Rings.
Locke & Key, Vol. 1: Welcome to Lovecraft
A friend recommended this series. And I was just so pleased that the library actually has it that I went out and grabbed what I could find.
Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them…. and home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all…! Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (Heart-Shaped Box) creates an all-new story of dark fantasy and wonder, with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez.
Locke & Key, Vol. 2: Head Games
New York Times bestselling writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez, the creators behind the acclaimed Locke & Key: Welcome to Lovecraft, return with the next chapter in the ongoing tale, Head Games. Following a shocking death that dredges up memories of their father’s murder, Kinsey and Tyler Locke are thrown into choppy emotional waters, and turn to their new friend, Zack Wells, for support, little suspecting Zack’s dark secret. Meanwhile, six-year-old Bode Locke tries to puzzle out the secret of the head key, and Uncle Duncan is jarred into the past by a disturbingly familiar face. Open your mind – the head games are just getting started
Empire State: A Love Story (or Not)
Ok so I also did some browsing of the graphic novel shelves too…
Jimmy is a stereotypical geek who works at the library in Oakland, California, and is trapped in his own torpidity. Sara is his best friend, but she wants to get a life (translation: an apartment in Brooklyn and a publishing internship). When Sara moves to New York City, Jimmy is rattled. Then lonely. Then desperate. He screws up his courage, writes Sara a letter about his true feelings, and asks her to meet him at the top of the Empire State Building (a nod to their ongoing debate about Sleepless in Seattle).
Jimmy’s cross-country bus trip to Manhattan is as hapless and funny as Jimmy himself. When he arrives in the city he’s thought of as “a festering hellhole,” he’s surprised by how exciting he finds New York, and how heartbreaking—he discovers Sara has a boyfriend!
Jason Shiga’s bold visual storytelling, sly pokes at popular culture, and subtle text work together seamlessly in Empire State, creating a quirky graphic novel comedy about the vagaries of love and friendship.
Wee reader’s loot:
Don’t Throw That Away!: A Lift-the-Flap Book about Recycling and Reusing (Little Green Books)
Daisy’s Day Out
Mangia! Mangia! (World Snacks)
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
Villain
So the first couple of pages of Villain don’t exactly make you want to jump into the fray. Because it reads like a rather boring travel guide, written by somebody who is rather into transportation and roads. You can know all you need to know about the tolls for vehicles between Nagasaki and Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Hakata.
I went along with it, and then comes the trigger. The last paragraph (of the first section) tells the reader of an arrest, of a crime, essentially spelling it out for you.
And that’s the thing I realise about Japanese crime fiction, at least the three that I have read so far (Out, The Devotion of Suspect X). That it is not about the mystery, it’s not technically a whodunnit, because you already know whodidit. Because it’s right there in your face, in the first few sections, the first few pages even. These books are more about the ‘why’, and the effect the murders have – on the murderers themselves, the victim’s family and friends, the other suspects.
Villain, by Shuichi Yoshida, brings out a different part of Japan, one of love hotels and online dating, and ageing seaside villages full of elderly residents. It is a quite ugly, rather lonely view of Japan.
“The scenery flowing past changed, but they never seemed to get anywhere. When the interstate ended, it connected up with the prefectural highway, and past that were city and local roads. Mitsuyo had a road atlas spread out on the dashboard. She flipped through the maps and saw that the highways and roads were all color-coded. Interstates were orange, prefectural highways were green, local roads were blue, and smaller roads were white. The countless roads were a net, a web that had caught them and the car they were in.”
Told from multiple viewpoints especially towards the end of the book, Villain shines when the focus is on the victim’s father, who struggles to come to terms with his daughter’s death, and his painful realisation that he didn’t really know his child at all.
Villain was an engrossing, thought provoking read, and leaves you wondering, who – or perhaps what – is the real ‘villain’ here.
Reading in May
I was walking wee reader around the children’s section of the library the other day when I spotted the black and red cover of Joan Aiken’s The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. And while I didn’t pick it up that day, it made me wonder what other children’s or young adult books have I missed out on?
Like The Phantom Tollbooth, A Wrinkle in Time, Perks of Being a Wallflower. So I hope to read some of these this month.
Also I’m still chugging my way through the Forsyte Saga – and enjoying it far more than I expected. I doubt I will complete this book in May as the kindle app tells me I’m just 13% through!
Next, I’ve neglected quite a few categories in the Mixing It Up Challenge, so I hope to remedy that in May by finishing at least half of these categories:
Biography
James Tiptree, Jr. : the double life of Alice B. Sheldon – Julie Phillips
The man who loved China : the fantastic story of the eccentric scientist who unlocked the mysteries of the Middle Kingdom – Simon Winchester
History
The secret history of the Mongol queens : how the daughters of Genghis Khan rescued his empire Jack Weatherford
The last empress : Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the birth of modern China – Hannah Pakula
Horror
Full dark, no stars – Stephen King
The last werewolf – Glen Duncan
I, Lucifer – Glen Duncan
Romance
Dating Mr. December – Phillipa Ashley
The Winter Sea – Susanna Kearsley
Travel
Between the woods and the water : on foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland : the middle Danube to the Iron Gates – Patrick Leigh Fermor
Among flowers : a walk in the Himalaya – Jamaica Kincaid
Journalism and humour
Al-Jazeera : the inside story of the Arab news channel that is challenging the West – Hugh Miles
Reporting from Ramallah – Amira Hass
Science and natural history
How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming – Mike Brown
Wicked plants : the weed that killed Lincoln’s mother & other botanical atrocities – Amy Stewart
The sound of a wild snail eating – Elisabeth Tova Bailey
Library Loot (May 2, 2012)
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.
Unintentionally, this week’s loot is largely geared towards Once Upon A Time VI.
Three Hainish Novels: Rocannon’s World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions
It’s been too long since I’ve read Le Guin. That is, anything by Le Guin that is not the Earthsea series because I reread those every once in a while.
Ursula K. Le Guin is one of the greatest science fiction writers and many times the winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards. her career as a novelist was launched by the three novels contained in Worlds of Exile and Illusion. These novels, Rocannon’s world, Planet of Exile, and City of Illusions, are set in the same universe as Le Guin’s groundbreaking classic, The Left hand of Darkness.
The Kingdom of Gods (The Inheritance Trilogy)
Yeah I just had to go for the third book in the series. Because I had such a good time with the first two.
The incredible conclusion to the Inheritance Trilogy, from one of fantasy’s most acclaimed stars.
For two thousand years the Arameri family has ruled the world by enslaving the very gods that created mortalkind. Now the gods are free, and the Arameri’s ruthless grip is slipping. Yet they are all that stands between peace and world-spanning, unending war.
Shahar, last scion of the family, must choose her loyalties. She yearns to trust Sieh, the godling she loves. Yet her duty as Arameri heir is to uphold the family’s interests, even if that means using and destroying everyone she cares for.
As long-suppressed rage and terrible new magics consume the world, the Maelstrom — which even gods fear — is summoned forth. Shahar and Sieh: mortal and god, lovers and enemies. Can they stand together against the chaos that threatens?
Overdrive e-books:
Geek Love
Geek Love is the story of the Binewskis, a carny family whose mater- and paterfamilias set out–with the help of amphetamine, arsenic, and radioisotopes–to breed their own exhibit of human oddities. There’s Arturo the Aquaboy, who has flippers for limbs and a megalomaniac ambition worthy of Genghis Khan . . . Iphy and Elly, the lissome Siamese twins . . . albino hunchback Oly, and the outwardly normal Chick, whose mysterious gifts make him the family’s most precious–and dangerous–asset.
As the Binewskis take their act across the backwaters of the U.S., inspiring fanatical devotion and murderous revulsion; as its members conduct their own Machiavellian version of sibling rivalry, Geek Love throws its sulfurous light on our notions of the freakish and the normal, the beautiful and the ugly, the holy and the obscene. Family values will never be the same.
For wee reader:
Russell the Sheep
Have you read any of these? What did you think of them?
What did you get at your library this week?
