WWW Wednesdays (February 22)
(WWW Wednesdays is a meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Click on the image to join the fun!)
To play along just answer the following three questions:
- What did you recently finish reading?
- What are you currently reading?
- What do you think you’ll read next?
Recently finished
Finally forced myself to skim through the rest of The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities. Review is coming up soon, but the basic gist is that I don’t think I got it.
Currently reading
I’m balancing time between The Hangman’s Daughter and Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey. The former is freaking amazing; not too far into the Brontë, but we’ll see.
Coming up next
My book order finally came in, so I’m trying to decide between these guys:
What are you reading this week? What book should I read next?
Top 10 Tuesday: Books I’d Save Were My Home on Fire
(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to make your own list? Clicking the image will take you to this week’s post. Happy listing!)
I love my books, and would do all manner of things to save them. If my apartment was on fire—and assuming Best Friend and my important paperwork were out—here’s ten books I’d grab.
1. My Sacred Harp song book - I have a 1907 song book that my grandmother gave me when I started getting into singing Sacred Harp. It’s in pretty bad shape, but it’s the first book I’d save.
2. My current journal - I have a thick blank book I’m using as a journal. It covers some of the best, hardest, and most important parts of my life.
3. Spook (Mary Roach) [Signed] - I love Mary Roach, and my signed copy of her second book is a great keepsake.
4. Eragon (Christopher Paolini) [Signed] - Not one of my favorite stories ever, but a signed copy is valuable.
5. Twilight (Stephanie Meyer) [Signed] - I got a signed copy from the Chicago Book Fair the year after the novel came out. It was a steal at $20.
6. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J.K. Rowling) [Signed] - A British edition as well.
7. Graceling (Kristin Cashore) - One of my favorite books of 2011. I wouldn’t leave without it.
8. My favorite copy of Pride and Prejudice - A shabby little green paperback that leaves ink on your fingers as you read. Picked up from a shop in Prague, Czech Republic.
9. My Czech copy of Pride and Prejudice - Yes, I have a copy of Austen’s novel in Czech. No, I can’t read it.
10. The Wee Free Men: The Beginning (Terry Pratchett) - My favorite of the Discworld so far. I love Tiffany, she’s got chutzpah.
What books would you save if your house were on fire?
More Top 10 Tuesday
Review: The Ugly Dachshund
Tono is frustrated. While the other Dachshunds get delicate meals, he gets raw meat. While the others are picked up and carried and loved on by the people (known as “the Legs”), he is never praised or petted, and spends a lot of time in trouble.
But Tono feels blessed in one way: he, unlike the others, has seen the Great Dog. Once he spotted Dog in a pond’s reflection, and once—much more clearly—in something the Legs called a “mirror.”
Can Tono rise above the Legs’ apparent preference for the other Dachshunds, or will be forever be ashamed?
Well worth reading
I’d seen the Disney film adaptation (staring Dean Jones and Suzanne Pleshette) about a dozen times, but until recently I had no idea that the 1966 film was based on Gladys Bronwyn Stern’s short novel The Ugly Dachshund.
The film incorporates more of the humor and slapstick situations that would happen around a Great Dane who thinks he’s a Dachshund, but Stern’s novel reads almost like a fable.
Tono does not understand who he truly is, and so spends a great deal of his time trying to be what he thinks he should be. He feels like his owners love him less because he’s not a good Dachshund.
It is only by going on some adventures, as well as meeting a wizened Griffon named Voltaire, that Tono begins to wonder if he might perhaps be more than he thought.
There’s just enough zany situations, perfectly-described animal personalities—the Dachshunds in the book behave just like Dachshunds in real life—and lots of little “moral” nuggets to make The Ugly Dachshund a great read at any age. Highly recommended!
More animal stories
Review: Eragon
(I read this book as part of the Pay it Sideways Challenge. Join in anytime, we’d love to have you!)
Eragon has spent his first 15 years in the village of Carvahall, farming with Garrow, the man who raised him when his mother vanished, and hunting in the Spine, a mysterious and dangerous mountain range. It is while in the Spine that Eragon discovers a large blue stone. He brings it home, hoping to sell it for meat, but before he can do so the stone hatches. And inside is a dragon — the first dragon to be seen outside the tight control of the evil King Galbatorix.
The wheels of fate have started to turn, and there’s no going back. Garrow is murdered, and Eragon, his dragon Saphira, and a storyteller named Brom—who knows more about the dragons than he should—embark on an adventure that will alter the course of history.
A strong beginning
I first read Eragon in 2002, right after its publication. I’d just gotten into the fantasy genre, and thought Paolini’s book would be a great addition to my reading list. I read it, and Eldest (the second in the series), but then just kind of gave up. The story was good, but it wasn’t great. It didn’t hold my attention the way I hoped it would.
I’ve been meaning to give the series another try, and the Pay it Sideways Challenge was a good excuse.
My thoughts about this book the second time around mirror my thoughts on it the first time: it’s good, but it’s not great. Now that I’ve got some more years and experience under my belt, though, I can appreciate Eragon for what it is: a first in a series written by a 15 year-old.
The story itself—boy goes on adventures, companions join him, new enemies, a love interest—is nothing new. The writing itself is relatively plain.
It’s the world building that really saves this novel, and causes it to excel. Paolini has built an incredibly complex world, complete with political intrigue, multiple races with different languages and cultures, and a fine plot that I can see is about to get thicker.
I gave away my copy of Eldest some time back, but I’ll definitely be borrowing a copy soon.
About the recommender
Alternate Readality is a blog I started following as a result of the Top 10 Tuesday meme (beginning to notice a pattern in the blogs I follow?). The resident blogger, Jenny, is a big fan of Young Adult literature, but I also like reading about her obsession with television shows and soccer.
She’s doing a books-for-adults-only thing in February, and I’m interested to see what she’s reading. Paolini’s series is one of her favorites though, and I can’t blame her for it. Check out her review of Eragon here.
I love a blogger who can make me smile, and Alternate Readality definitely makes that happen. Swing by sometime when you get a chance!
More YA fantasy
WWW Wednesdays (February 15)
(WWW Wednesdays is a meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Click on the image to join the fun!)
To play along just answer the following three questions:
- What did you recently finish reading?
- What are you currently reading?
- What do you think you’ll read next?
Recently finished
I’ve spent the last couple days thumbing through Erin Blakemore’s The Heroine’s Bookshelf, wherein the author catalogs some of the lessons we can learn from great female writers and their most popular characters: Ambition from Jo March and Louisa May Alcott; steadfastness from Jane Eyre and Charlotte Bronte; magic from Mary Lennox and Frances Hodgson Burnett, etc.
Currently reading
Switching between The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities and The Hangman’s Daughter, depending on the time of day (the latter gives me nightmares). I’m still not sure exactly where the former is going, but I’m liking it so far.
Coming up next
I’m planning on ordering several of what I call my “sex books,” so soon I’ll be digging into The Mistress Contract, Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality, and The Sex Diaries Project. I know, can you believe I can’t find these just sitting on the shelves at my local Barnes and Noble?
What are you reading this week?
Top 10 Tuesday: Books That Broke My Heart a Little
(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to make your own list? Clicking the image will take you to this week’s post. Happy listing!)
I try to avoid sad books, but sometimes they sneak by — and they’re almost always worth the heartbreak they cause. Here’s ten books that broke my heart (a little or a lot).
1. Love You Forever (Robert N. Munsch, illus. Sheila McGraw) - A “children’s book” that follows a little boy’s growing from needing to be taken care of to caretaking. Bring tissues.
2. Hurt Go Happy (Ginny Rorby) - So hard to read. But so important.
3. The Boy Who Loved Anne Frank (Ellen Feldman) - The rumor that Peter van Pels, one of the people who shared the attic with Anne, escaped the Holocaust alive. It’s not true, but what if it were? What if Peter had lived, and gone on to have a family? And how would he feel when The Diary of Anne Frank was published?
4. The Giving Tree (Shel Silverstein) - Again, bring tissues. I hope I could be as selfless.
5. Beloved (Toni Morrison) - I read this in high school, and nearly threw up several times. It was so horrible and scary, but ultimately hopeful.
6. Deerskin (Robin McKinley) - What happens to Deerskin is horrible. Reading about her dealing with it broke my heart.
7. Peter Pan (James M. Barrie) - Extremely bittersweet, this growing up thing.
8. Lucy (Laurence Gonzales) - The ethics and morality of human experimentation and the first human-ape hybrid.
9. The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove (Susan Gregg Gilmore) - A story about a teenage white girl who falls in love with an African-American teen boy. In the 1960s. In Nashville.
10. March (Geraldine Brooks) - The story of Mr. March, the father in Alcott’s Little Women. Grotesque and beautifully written.
What books broke your heart? Is it any of these? Can we hug it out?
More Top 10 Tuesday
Review: Hurt Go Happy
Thirteen year-old Joey is used to being left out of conversations. She’s been deaf since the age of six, but her mother’s refusal to let her learn sign language has forced her to rely on lip-reading — a practice that any deaf person will tell you is always difficult, and sometimes impossible.
But an accidental meeting with Dr. Charles Mansell and his chimpanzee Sukari changes Joey’s life forever. Her new friends speak with sign language; excited to communicate, Joey begins teaching herself sign in secret.
But even as her horizons expand, those of her new friends contract — and soon Joey must embark on a journey to save Sukari from the worst of enemies.
Imagine a silent world
My heart ached for Joey. Hurt Go Happy begins in 1991, by which time there was fortunately a good deal of understanding of the mechanics of deafness, and our main character at least receives speech therapy and uses a headphone/microphone system at school that allows her to hear the teacher.
It’s the lack of understanding of deaf culture that is the really sad part. Joey’s lack of communication skills makes her a target for bullies. Even her friends are only “friends” in the loosest sense, and her classmates’ ignorance forces her to shy away from using the headphones to hear her teachers. She doesn’t like to read aloud in class because her voice doesn’t sound right. She lives in a mostly silent world, unable to communicate with almost anyone but her mother.
Joey’s mother behaves the way—so I’m led to believe—many parents behave when they have a deaf child: she doesn’t want Joey to learn sign because she thinks it will make Joey stand out, and make people pity her. Her fear comes from a good place, but it has left her 13 year-old in a silent world, closed off from friends and opportunities.
It is merely by happenstance that Joey meets Charlie Mansell and Sukari. It is these two that finally bring light and communication into Joey’s life, and there is trouble from the start.
Joey’s mother is dead-set against Joey’s friendship with Charlie and his “monkey.” But what exactly is she afraid of, Joey’s standing out and being pitied, or the anger that will inevitably turn on her for her own part in Joey’s deafness?
My kind of heroine
I loved Joey. She begins the story as a small, quiet, shy little thing, and it was amazing to see her grow and strengthen and bloom into the young woman with whom I would love to be friends.
Were Joey a real person, I don’t think she would consider herself brave, but that’s what she is. It’s what she always was, and her willingness to defy her mother and learn to sign gives her just the push she needs to be brave when another’s life depends on her being so.
Read this right now
I can’t go into much more detail without giving the plot away, but suffice to say that Joey’s rebellion, unlike many teens’, is something that saves her life — and Sukari’s.
I wish I could remember from which blogger I heard about Hurt Go Happy, so I can hit them as hard as possible, and then we can hug each other and weep. This book was excellent and painful and hopeful, and left me a soggy pile of tears at the end. If you haven’t read it, you should.
More like this
Review: Oink! My Life with Mini-Pigs
When author Matt Whyman gets the chance to move his family (wife Emma, four kids, three nervous chickens, one needy dog, and a cat that despises everyone) out to the country, he’s excited about the prospect of being able to get more freelance writing done.
But Emma has other plans. She’s decided that the missing ingredient in their already-hectic family is pigs — mini-pigs. Oink! My Life with Mini-Pigs chronicles the life of a writer driven to near insanity by two digging, eating, escaping, stealing, havoc-wreaking pigs.
A great read
As a kid, I loved reading stories about animals and their crazy antics. I must have read veterinarian James Herriot’s and Earl Hamner’s books dozens of times (All Creatures Great and Small and The Avocado Drive Zoo being two of my favorites), so when I heard about Whyman’s book, I was excited.
And I wasn’t disappointed. Turns out that mini-pigs create exactly the amount of chaos one would expect, and it was fun to read about the craziness; I did a lot of laughing out loud and facepalming.
My Life with Mini-Pigs is funny, but more than that, it’s about a couple struggling to find a balance, and seeing a big family expand further to include—and eventually be completed by—two porkers with a lot of personality.
My only complaint
Maybe it’s just the mood I’m in lately, but Matt and Emma’s relationship really frustrated me at times. Matt tries to satisfy Emma’s need for a big family by giving into her wish to purchase and care for two exceedingly difficult pets, but then Emma heads off blithely to work every day, leaving Matt—who works from home, and needs the time to do so—to be responsible for taking care of the pets she wanted. She doesn’t seem to listen to or care much about his apparent difficulty getting work done, as well as the stress caused by caring for the pigs.
Perhaps I’m chaffing at Emma’s behavior because I’m very different from her. I don’t want a big family, and I don’t feel that need to be surrounded by the comfortable chaos children are said to create. I can’t imagine inconveniencing my spouse to such an extent (and I try hard never to).
Bottom line
If you’re looking for a quick, funny read with a great message about family, definitely check out Oink! My Life with Mini-Pigs.
More reviews
WWW Wednesdays (February 8)
(WWW Wednesdays is a meme hosted by Should Be Reading. Click on the image to join the fun!)
To play along just answer the following three questions:
- What did you recently finish reading?
- What are you currently reading?
- What do you think you’ll read next?
Recently finished
After giving The Three Musketeers the boot I blew through Christopher Paolini’s Eragon. I’m giving it a second change as part of the Pay It Sideways Challenge, but I remembered the basic plot from my first reading several years ago.
Currently reading
I picked up Oliver Pötzsch’s The Hangman’s Daughter, but it gave me horrible nightmares, so I really need to only read it during the daytime. I’ll probably pick up an old favorite to read at night.
Coming up next
Not sure. I’m still feeling a little non-fiction-y, so I’ll have a dig through my Christmas haul and see what comes up.
What are you reading this week? How do you avoid nightmares from scary books?
Top 10 Tuesday: Books for People Who Don’t Like to Read
(Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme brought to you by The Broke and the Bookish. Want to make your own list? Clicking the image will take you to this week’s post. Happy listing!)
Topics like this are tricky; I don’t want to force on someone a book they won’t like, but if they don’t like to read, I don’t have much of a frame of reference for what they might like. I can’t say, “Well, you like mythology, so you should read…” These issues aside, here are some books I’d recommend to people who say they don’t like to read.
1. The Avocado Drive Zoo (Earl Hamner) - One writer’s chronicles of the animals his family has loved. Four words: alligator in the bathtub.
2. Where the Sidewalk Ends (Shel Silverstein) - But this is poetry for kids, they’ll say. Sure it is.
3. Anything by Mary Roach - She’s written about death, life after death, sex, and live in space. Something for everyone, with plenty of humor thrown in.
4. Good Omens (Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett) - British humor. Puns. Sarcasm. General silliness. If someone reads this and doesn’t laugh, we need to revoke their humanity card.
5. Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature’s 50 Greatest Hits (Jack Murnighan) - The title says it all. A good way for someone to see what’s out there, and what’s worth reading or skipping.
6. Cheaper by the Dozen (Frank Gilbreth, Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey) - A funny book about a family of twelve raised by the pioneers of motion study.
7. Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe (Fannie Flagg) - Set in a period no longer considered contemporary, but “young” enough to have modern language. A great, hysterical, meaningful book.
8. Anything by Clive Cussler - Action, adventure, sex, and awesomeness.
9. Graceling (Kristin Cashore) - For anyone looking for a kick-ass heroine and an introduction into the fantasy genre.
10. At Home: A Short History of Private Life (Bill Bryson) - I know, a chunkster seems like a terrible thing to recommend. But this book’s got it all: history, architecture, nature, humor, and all kinds of interesting info.
Well, that’s my list. Anything you’d add or take off? Let me know in the comments!
