Sunday Salon – Back ups.

There used to be a time in my life when I read only one book at a time and I finished every single book I read.  There were no DNFs, ever.  Unless I lost the book or had to return it to the library before I finished it, I was determined to read a whole book no matter how long it took me or how much I hated it.  I have since changed my ways.  Now I might be reading several books at once and if a book doesn’t keep my interest, I will gladly put it away and try again later (or get rid of it for good!).  I love having options when I’m reading.  If a book just isn’t doing it for me, but I think it’s something I’ll want to return to, I put it in a pile and it becomes a back up.

Sometimes I go straight back to the back up after a short break, but I have a small collection of books that are good, but don’t always keep my interest for long.  I don’t want to quit them, but I don’t seem to want to read them for extended periods of time.  When the mood strikes me, I pick them up right where I left off and haven’t had too much trouble remembering what’s going on. I  have two back ups that I’ve been reading for over six months in one case, and closer to 8 months in another.  One is The Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and the other is Looking for Alaska by John Green.  Both are fine books and I like reading them, but I also like having them in progress.  I like having them there to read when I need them and I don’t really feel the need to  finish them anytime soon.

What about you?  Do you keep a couple back up books around?

______________________________________________________________________

Quick question!  I really want a great fantasy or science fiction series to read.  All kinds of fantasy and science fiction series, but I’ve really been in the mood for one and haven’t found a great one.  I appreciate it!

Review – I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb

So I know I’ve told you this story before, but I’ve always had this prejudice against Wally Lamb because  my grandmother and my aunt, who read a lot and whose opinion I trust very much, both read She’s Come Undone and hated it with a burning passion.  But then The Hour I First Believed came out and something about it made me have to read it. And I read it, and I liked it, though I thought it could have been cut down a lot.  Now that I’ve read I Know This Much is True I think the same exact thing is true here.

I Know This Much is True is about Dominick Birdsey and Thomas Birdsey, identical twins. Thomas has schizophrenia and Dominick does not.   That alone is a fascinating set-up, but of course in a Wally Lamb novel I have learned that one trauma is never enough.   Even though I don’t like to begin a review with my complaints, but my complaints about I Know This Much is True are so Wally Lamb-ish you probably already know what they are.  The book is too long, to start with.  The story-within-a-story weighs the entire novel down.  But most of all, just too many awful things happen to Dominick that it stops being believable, a problem I also had with The Hour I First Believed.

As for the good, I Know This Much is True explores a truly fascinating relationship, the relationship between identical twins, and what happens when one twin is ill and the other isn’t.  The family history presented in the novel is sweeping and interesting, though I thought the novel-within-a-novel, Dominique Tempesta’s account of his life was mostly uninteresting to me, until the last few sections.  Dominick and Thomas’s grandfather Dominique’s story is integral to the novel, but it ended up taking away from Dominick’s story.  The ending of I Know This Much is True was very satisfying, and even though I slogged through the middle of the book, I never stopped being fascinated by the Birdseys.  Like all Wally Lamb books (well, the two I’ve read), the middle 200 pages are really inconsequential and could have been removed all together.

I know it sounds like I’m railing on this book pretty hard for how much I actually liked it.  Lamb’s books are clearly well-researched.  They are well-loved, every aspect of these characters’ lives are planned out perfectly.   But I hope someone knocks on Lamb’s door and tells him, “Hey, you know, you don’t have to write so much.  Maybe then we’d see your next book faster.  And really, no one’s lives are that bad.”  Finally, I’m left thinking, in the end, could I really tell Dominick apart from the hero of The Hour I First Believed, Caelum?  Probably not.

So go read this!:  now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR

Also reviewed  by: Hey Lady Watcha Readin’?, Musings of a Bookish Kitty, caribousmom.

PS. After writing this review, I really started thinking that I would have liked this book a whole lot better if I had never read The Hour I First Believed. THIFB used all the same tricks, but less successfully, and therefore I was sick of said tricks before I could even enjoy them.  Ya know what I mean?

Nerds Heart YA – THE DECISION

And the winner of this round is…

I admit that a lot of the decision is based on my own personal preference, but I think that Say the Word was my favorite because of its honesty and the difficult situation it presents.  I still think Once You Go Back is a wonderful novel and I hope everyone will read it!

Nerds Heart YA Round 1 – Once You Go Back by Douglas A. Martin

The novel Once You Go Back by Douglas A. Martin begins with the sentence, “Pretend you are my sister.”  What follows is a stream-of-consciousness account of growing up in the US South.   We listen diligently, sometimes asked to be his sister, as he tells his story of what it was like to be a young gay boy and man, while living with an abusive step-father.

I have to step in here and be completely up front – I have never liked books that are told in the second person.  The narrator was talking to us, asking the reader to be the ears of his sister, but never do we get any accurate characterization of that sister.  I have to say, this book was one of the more successful second-person narrations I’ve read, it still bothered me a lot of the time and I thought a more traditional narration would have been better suited to the story.

One of the things I did love about this story was its fluidity.  The stream-of-consciousness worked well and while I would have liked more concrete details about the life of our narrator, it gave a certain importance to the details were given.  Because we are to read this narration as a man remembering his childhood, the stream-of-consciousness reflected this well.

Ultimately, my biggest concern with Once You Go Back is that I’m not convinced it is a novel for young adults.  I don’t want to get into the debate about what a young adult novel actually is, because all I mean is that I don’t know that the majority of young adults to whom a book like this is marketed would enjoy reading this book.  If I think back to when I was a young adult, I’m fairly certain I would have passed by this book or if I had started reading it, I think I would have given it up.  Part of it is the distance of the narrator from the time period he is narrating.  He is too old, he has too much insight.  He might be difficult to relate to.  Or maybe I’m projecting my own feelings on the potential readers of this book.

Ultimately,  I’m not disappointed or sad that I read Once You Go Back, I think it is extremely successful and a beautifully told novel.  It is a glimpse, and that is all it really is at 140 pages, into a difficult and tragic life.  It’s such a stark incongruity, the ugliness of everything that is being told and the beautiful language.

I read this book as part of the tournament of books Nerds Heart YA.  Check back here at 8:00pm for my decision between Say the Word and Once You Go Back.

Nerds Heart YA Round 1 – Say the Word by Jeannine Garsee

I’m going to start this post off by saying I read this book in one sitting and I cried the entire time.  There was not a break from the tears, even when this book was not stabbing your heart with sadness.

When Shawna was 7 years old, her mother left without a word for another woman, Fran and Shawna has never been able to forgive her.  But now, her mother has died of a stroke, and suddenly Fran and her two sons have a much bigger part in her life than ever before.  Shawna, always perfect and always doing the right thing, doesn’t quite know how to handle all of this and everyone starts to see sides of Shawna that have never made it out into the open before.  To top it all off, her dad is extremely controlling and can’t stand to see this side of his perfect daughter.

This book has so many wonderful things about it, I’m finding it difficult to know where to start.  First there is Shawna, who puts on this perfect face but as a narrator hides absolutely nothing.   She says things she shouldn’t, she does things she shouldn’t and she is so realistic it felt like I was talking to a good friend.  I was honestly sad that when I closed the book after reading it, I was never going to get to talk to Shawna again.  I loved loved loved her.  Even when she did terrible things.  Even she made huge mistakes.

My life is completely different from Shawna’s and was when I was in high school, and I’ve never had to go through a lot of what Shawna had to deal with, but I really connected with everything that happened.  There were moments when Shawna would explain a feeling or do something and I would just think, “YES that is exactly how I would think!”  Or, “That’s exactly what I would do!”  Garsee does such a remarkable making this book not about all of the terrible things that happen in Shawna’s life but about Shawna and how she reacts to them.

I feel like when we talk about YA, we often talk about the “issues” or what “issues” a book deals with.  So, Say the Word tackles homosexuality and how society makes that difficult.  That’s fine, but that’s not all this book talks about.  It also deals with body image (hello! Shawna’s best friend LeeLee?  Size 14.  I love LeeLee, I want to be best friends with LeeLee.  LeeLee is amazing), racism, sexual assault and verbal abuse.  It’s done artfully and the book never feels like it is a vehicle for talking about issues, but just a story.  A story that happens to include all of these things, just like life.

If I had any complaints, sometimes it felt like so many terrible things were happening in Shawna’s life that it was almost  unbelievable.  I must highlight the almost because it did not cross that line, though it came close.  The ending was satisfying and there was hope for the future.  My next concern really brings up a much larger debate about what I want my YA to do: do I want my YA to be realistic?  Or do I want my YA to be more than that?  Do I also want it to be a vehicle for education?  Is it too much for it to do both and maintain its realism?

So, the first issue in the book that really concerned me was that Shawna drinks and drives.  As for reality points, yes, I know this happens.  I know people often have a drink or two and then drive somewhere and no one gets hurt and no one gets caught.  For me, though, I had a really hard time with the fact that this was never mentioned as being bad.  Now, when Shawna is driving and drinking at the same time, it is very clearly a BAD THING, but when Shawna drinks and then drives home not too long after?  No big deal.  Not even mentioned.  Not even a concern.  She’s not even worried about it.  Should my YA take a stand on something like that?  I would have liked it to, yes.  I’m not saying take up much room, just a line or two.  She doesn’t have to get in trouble, because that wouldn’t necessarily be realistic, but at least something to show that it’s not okay.

The following paragraph is going to contain minor spoilers.  It won’t ruin the book if you continue to read, but if you’re a purist about these kind of things, skip to the next paragraph.  After the drinking and driving, the next part that really bothered me about this novel was how a sexual assault and later a rape are dealt with by Shawna.  I know it is very realistic that she wouldn’t tell anyone about what happened (both did not happen directly to Shawna, but she was involved), but should Say the Word have taken a stand on this too?  At least shouldn’t it have explored why Shawna didn’t tell anyone?  Should the novel have to become a vehicle for that discussion, simply because it happens in the story?

So what’s my answer?  I don’t know.  I would never question an adult book for not dealing with an issue like this, but do authors have more responsibility when they’re writing for teenagers?  I am so totally of two minds about this, that I have no idea to what the right answer is.  I think that sometimes yes, sometimes a book intended for teenagers does have that responsibility, but I would never want an author to sacrifice story, plot or character for the issue.  So these two things really do not change how I felt about the book overall, though I would have liked to see more exploration of the situations or they shouldn’t have been included in the novel.

The biggest strength of Say the Word, above all the others, is its honesty.  Nothing about this book was easy.  I absolutely loved the journey Shawna went on, because it was realistic - fueled by her mother’s betrayal, Shawna has deep prejudices that she finally begins to explore throughout the course of the  novel.  Fortunately she has people in her life who are able to turn those prejudices around.  Even if people aren’t as fortunate as Shawna, maybe Say the Word will be what changes their perceptions and consequently their prejudices.

I’m reviewing Say the Word as part of Nerds Heart YA.  Check back this afternoon for a review of the second book I’m reviewing – Once You Go  Back by Douglas A.  Martin.  Then come back around 8 pm for my decision!

The great return – two missed tour posts!

I’m going to try and make my great return to blogging!  I hope it sticks because I have seriously missed you guys.  Where have I been you ask?  Well!  First, after school ended, I traveled far and wide.  I spent some serious time just recuperating from the past semester and didn’t do very much reading.  Then I got home and realized I really needed to find a job.  I applied to over 50 jobs and got one… but I wasn’t too excited about it.  Then I went on another trip to a wedding in Rhode Island.  I have never been to Rhode Island and it was GORGEOUS.  Amazingly beautiful, just like the wedding.  I was all excited to return to blogging when the most terrible thing happened – my computer crashed.  By my computer crashed I mean I spilled water all over it and it refused to turn on.  It was tragic and I really felt like there was someone out there who did not want me to continue blogging.  As you can see, however, something must have happened because I am posting!  Well, I did not buy a new computer.  Instead of trashing mine and throwing it out the window and smashing it until it was unrecognizable as a machine a la Office Space, I let it rest.  Let it have its me-time.  And guess what?!  It turned on!

It was a truly magical experience.

In all of this mess, I have two tour stops I missed for TLC Book Tours.  I really apologize!  I hate missing book tours!  It’s something I’ve never done before and I just feel awful.  But here they are, better late than never (I hope!).

The first is Black Water Rising by Attica Locke.  I was so excited to read this one, because it is a thriller, which is something I’ve recently discovered, and it was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.  So did it live up to all of my expectations?  Yes and no.

What it did live up to was being an incredibly smart book that took me on an exciting journey.  It was, for the most part, interesting and suspenseful.  The plot follows a young lawyer, Jay, who one night, while out to dinner with his wife on the bayou, gets entangled in a brutal web that goes much deeper into Houston society than he ever thought possible.  Pulled by his natural desire to do what is right, to help people, he gets sucked into this dangerous web out of which there really is no return.  I loved the connections we got with Jay’s Civil Rights past.  I loved how intricate the plot was and I really enjoyed Locke’s writing style.  It’s clear that she has experience in film, because this book read like a movie in the best way possible.

But all of the things I loved about the book, I also in turn disliked.  Often the connections to the past weighed down the plot, when all I was interested in was what was happening in the present.  Similarly, the intricate plot was sometimes too intricate.  When there would be a big reveal, I sometimes wasn’t sure what was supposed to be revealed.  I didn’t always understand the connections that were being made.  There were also times when Locke’s movie-like writing style turned into, “And then this happened.  And then this.”  All of these things worked at one point and then didn’t work at others.

All that says to me that even though I wasn’t Black Water Rising‘s biggest fan, I really enjoyed reading this book and I honestly cannot wait to see what Locke has to offer in the future.  She’s an author to watch and I guarantee you that she has more stories to tell.

The second book I have to tell you about is Dismantled by Jennifer McMahon.  I really wanted to enjoy this book, too, because it has such an interesting premise.  The Compassionate Dismantlers are a group of college friends who have the manifesto, “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart.”  But their senior year, one of the Dismantlers, Suz, dies.  And the other Dismantlers decide they need to cover it up.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish this book.  I gave it until page 50, but really couldn’t keep it up.

At first I had trouble articulating what I disliked about this book, but once I opened to random pages and read paragraphs I realized what it was.  I think the writing style just isn’t for me.  Let me give you an example:

Henry thinks of the mayhem.  The photos.  The ransom note and chair looped with rope.  Suz’s things.  So many of her things lying around the cabin.  Evidence.  What if it’s still there?  And what happens when the private investigator shows up, starts snooping around and finds the cabin?

Someone’s got to go check it out, clean it up.  He promised Tess that someone would be him.

Henry the brave.  Henry who makes bad things go away. (80)

Okay, there’s nothing really wrong with that passage at all, other than the choppiness.  I just could not get into the prose.  Combine that with main characters that I had trouble sympathizing with and you have the recipe for a book that I simply couldn’t finish.  I rarely post about books I don’t finish (and there are a lot of them), so it was really interesting to sit down and figure out what it was about a book that really made me turn away.  It might be an activity I try here and there, even if I don’t always post about it.

Once again, I’m sorry I didn’t get these posts up when they were scheduled, but I should be back in business!  Thank you to TLC Book Tours for sending me these books to review.

Bernardo & the Virgin by Silvio Sirias

When I was contacted to review Silvio Sirias’s book Bernardo & the Virgin, I practically jumped for joy.  I loved Meet Me Under the Ceiba, his most recently published book and it is one of my most successful blog posts to this day.  We had some really great conversations going in those comments and today I hope we repeat that and again on Friday, when we do something exciting! 

Bernard & the Virgin is a sweeping tale about the a real event that happened in the 80s, during the revolution in Nicaragua.  A devout man in the small town of Cuapa is visited by the Virgin Mary.  She asks him to lead his people by telling them to pray the rosary and continue to stay true to what they know from the church.  Reactions to the visions come from all over the country and the story of an unknown campesino becomes intertwined with the history of Nicaragua. 

The novel is divided into short chapters that feature a different character and their experiences with la Virgen de Cuapa.  Each character is connected to Bernardo somehow and the intricacies of this small town were beautifull crafted.  Stories are told and retold through different perspectives and the story covers more than fifty years in the history of Nicaragua and Cuapa.  The history of the Virgin Mary and the Americas is very important.  It is well known that most Central and South American countries are very devout Catholics, but beyond that is la Virgen.  The Virgin Mary has a special place in latino culture; she is the connector between God and human, she is the link that speaks to God on behalf of humankind.  This is something that I understand.  I grew up Catholic and Methodist, though I’m now neither of these things and have no specific beliefs, and for the Catholic side of my family, it was very much about speaking to the Virgin Mary.  She was the one you prayed to when you needed something because she understood.  We said Hail Marys much more often than we ever said Our Fathers. 

At the beginning of the book is the inscription, ” This work of fiction is based on actual events – in the eyes of many.”  For so many the apparitions of the virgin are real events and this book does a wonderful job of exploring all sorts of people, from those who believe unconditionally in the visions to those who question them.  I also loved the inscription in the painting on the front of the book, ” Dios encontrara una boca que te diga lo que necesitas oir.”  God will find a mouth to tell you what you need to hear.  That sums up so well what this novel is doing and how I feel about visions like this.  I don’t know if it is god in any sense as we understand the word, but the most important thing was that these people were touched and affected by what Bernardo saw.  Their lives were made better for it and that is what’s important.

I’m sure some people will be wondering if this is a Christian novel and I think that it could be read that way, but it is much more than that and shouldn’t be defined by that.  It is a story of the history of Nicaragua and how religion was intertwined in that history.  It is a story of a humble man and the people he becomes connected with.  I really cannot recommend this novel enough, it’s beautiful, well-written and a delight to read.

So go read this!:  now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR

Some exciting news!  I have an nontraditional giveaway for you today.  We have changepurses to giveaway.  They were made by Kuna artists in Panama, called Molas.  You learn more about them here.  All you have to do is ask Silvio a question in the comments and you will be entered in the giveaway. 

Other exciting news!  Would you like to chat with Silvio Sirias about his book?  There will be a LIVE CHAT on Friday, June 11th from 7-8pm.  If you ask a question in the comments then I will forward them to Condor Book Tours so they can be asked during the live chat.  There will also be the opportunity to participate live.  I’m really excited about this so I hope you will consider stopping by!

Would you like to buy a copy of Bernardo & the Virgin?  Support indie book stores and buy here:

Thanks to Condor Book Tours for sending me a copy of this book!  Here are the other stops on the tour: Latino Book Examiner, When I Was in ‘Nam, Sandra’s Book Club, Sententia Vera, The Tranquilo Traveler, Brown Girl Speaks, The Book Nook, Pisti-Totol Black Bird, La Bloga.

The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff

The Danish Girl is not my first experience with David Ebershoff.  I read The 19th Wife about a year ago and was very underwhelmed; I thought it was good, but too long and I wasn’t convinced that the structure was doing it any favors.  So I went into The Danish Girl with a little trepidation.  I was expecting something similar, since like The 19th Wife, this is a historical novel based in fact about real people, but fictionalized to a point.  I’m happy to report, however, that I much preferred with Ebershoff has done here with The Danish Girl.

This is the story of Einar Wegener and his wife Greta.  Both are painters and one day when Greta’s model cancels, she asks her husband to put on the models stockings and shoes so she could finish the painting.  Lili awakens in Einar and he feels much more complete and confident as a woman.  It’s as if something had been missing his whole life and that something is Lili.  I was so impressed by the way Ebershoff told this story – it was perfect.  He was totally sensitive to Einar and Lili, uses all the correct pronouns and does not make this into a freak show.  It is presented as something natural, though challenging.  When Einar becomes the first man to go through gender reassignment surgery, the times he spends in the women’s clinic is some of the most sensitive writing.

There were many times reading this when it felt almost voyeuristic, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.  I really felt like I was reading about the real Greta and Lili/Einar, not the fictional.  Like with The 19th Wife, I’m a little preoccupied with what is imagined an what is not.  I’ve read a lot about the actual history since then and it’s just amazing how Lili and Greta changed the world they were living in.

Can I recommend this book?  Absolutely.  Will I be reading more of Ebershoff in the future?  Wouldn’t miss it.  I’m also really excited for the movie that’s coming out about this book with Nicole Kidman as Einar/Lili.

So go read this!:  now | tomorrow | next week | next month | next year | when you’ve exhausted your TBR

Also reviewed by: She’s too fond of books, Bermudiaonion’s weblog, Peeking Between the Pages, Book Addiction, The Zen Leaf.

Thank you to TLC Book Tours for sending me a copy of this book to review.