Review of The Silver Linings Playbook by Matthew Quick

I liked the movie but not as much as I expected to.  I loved the book.

The movie was well-cast, well-acted, and rose way above the typical rom-com.  And yet… it was, in the end, a “dance movie”.  Why do movies insist on acting like dancing will heal everyone’s problems?

Without going into a lot of detail about how the book differed from the movie, I’ll just say this: the dance part happens in the middle, not the end.  Pat and Tiffany have issues that can’t just be danced away.

What I loved about this book: Pat Peoples is an amazing character.  He’s not perfect, and he’s not terribly smart, but he’s someone you’ll care about.  I love the way he thinks about literature.  I love that he cries.  And that he loves his wife.  And that he cares about his mother.  And that he’s working towards “being kind, not being right”.  I like that he thinks about what it means to be mentally ill, and how people with problems are treated by society.  And what it means to be a friend.

The movie does a nice job of conveying those things, but the book does it better.

Somehow the book did a better job of not only helping me understand Pat, but also making Tiffany likeable.  She’s not the main character, so you don’t have to love her, and you don’t even have to understand her.  You just have to sympathize.  I found that easier to do in the book than the movie, mainly because the book doesn’t revolve around the dancing quite so much.  Mom is also a more interesting character in the book.

There’s a lot of football in this book, which was a good thing — except while I love football, I hate the Eagles.  Both the book and the movie made me dislike them even more.  Eagles fans seem just fine with beating non-Eagles fans to a pulp.  No, they celebrate it.  Yes, my Redskins have a racist name that bothers the hell out of me – but in general I like our fans.  It’s not easy being a Redskins fan, but at least my life doesn’t revolve around whether they win or lose (although some Sundays it seems to).

This book is funny, smart, romantic and thought-provoking, all in the guise of a rom-com type read.  It never takes itself too seriously even while dealing with serious subjects.  One of my favorite parts is where Pat gives us his version of the dance movie montage (he has to learn the word first from his therapist).

So except for confirming my perception that Eagles fans are basically thugs (the only one that isn’t is the guy who spent years in a mental institution), I liked everything about this book.

In fact, if I wanted to compare this book to something I’ve read recently, I couldn’t.  It’s just different.  You have to like a book where a “dumb jock” reads The Bell Jar and appreciates it.

Pat says he’s living the movie of his life, and he expects it will come out happy.  Only everyone around him says that life doesn’t work that way.  It’s this back and forth about what it means to live in the real world and be a good person, that makes this book so worth the read.

Review of Charlotte Street by Danny Wallace

I picked up a complimentary copy of this book from NetGalley, but really the suggestion came from Bethany at Subtle Melodrama, who said it was nice to read something a little light when most books are so heavy.  And having recently read books about World War II spies, Sudanese civil war, and the blood and gore that is George R.R. Martin, something light sounded pretty damn good.

In some ways, Charlotte Street is the London version of Attachments, by Rainbow Rowell.  By that I mean it’s sort of a rom-com, or at least it’s what you wish passed for a rom-com these days.  In a direct comparison, I think Attachments has a leg up on Charlotte Street but both were fun reads.  I’ll explain.

Jason Priestley (not the actor, as he has to constantly tell people) is a near-30 freelance reviewer for a local free paper in London.  Despite having a very cool job, he’s floundering, professionally and personally.  He finds out from Facebook that his ex is engaged and that sends him into a tailspin.  Until he helps a girl into a cab one night on Charlotte Street and becomes obsessed with finding her again.

The mystery girl drops a disposable camera with 12 photos as she gets into the cab.  Priestley tries to find her to give it back, until his friend Dev talks him into developing the photos instead.

I’m going to start with what I didn’t love about this book.  The main character is kind of an ass.  Not in a stalkerish way like it suggests on the cover; that didn’t bother me.  No, he’s just selfish and annoyingly passive most of the time.  And here’s where my comparison to Attachments ends.  Attachments had Lincoln, one of the most endearing male characters I’ve read in a modern rom-com type story.  Jason is insensitive to his friends and co-workers, and completely unethical at work.  For example, he posts reviews that are overly negative because that gets him more attention as a writer — but those reviews actually hurt people’s businesses.  It doesn’t bother him, but as a reviewer, it bothered me.

One more thing: I think I was supposed to like the ex, but I hated her.  If there’s one person in this book that’s stalkerish, it’s her.  On the other hand I loved Jason’s friends Dev and Matthew.

What I liked about the book: Wallace keeps the plot interesting and fairly original.  It’s cleverly written and the side characters (most of them) are really the entertaining ones.  There’s also a level of detail in the writing that brought this book to life.  For example, Dev owns a used game shop and he’s a gaming expert.  Jason writes reviews and we get to see the ups and downs of the life of a reviewer, and we also learn a lot about his life as a teacher.  And I love all things British, so to be honest, just reading about the guys going to get a pint or kebabs after work makes me happy (even though we have those in the U.S. too).

An example of what makes this book engaging comes when Jason takes out an “I Saw You” ad in his paper.  Those are the personal ads (in big city papers, at least) where people hope to contact someone they ran into and liked but didn’t have the nerve to actually say something.    When I first moved to DC, I was semi-obsessed with the “I Saw You” ads.  It’s a fantasy – we want to think that momentary bump into someone cute on the Metro actually meant something.  We want to think that somewhere, someone made eye contact with us for a minute and really liked what they saw.  Of course the bigger fantasy is thinking that person might actually read your ad among the thousands of other ads, recognize themselves in it, and actually want to contact you.  Still, it could happen, right?

No eyes meet across a crowded room, no two people think precisely the same thing, and if only one person actually has that moment, is it even really a moment at all?

We know this, so we say nothing.  We avert our eyes, or pretend to be looking for change, we hope the other person will take the initiative, because we don’t want to risk losing this feeling of excitement and possibilities and lust.  It’s too perfect.  That little second of hope is worth something, possibly forever, as we lie on our deathbeds, surrounded by our children, and our grandchildren, and our great-grandchildren, and we can’t help but quickly give one last selfish, dying thought to what could have happened if we’d actually said hello to that girl in the Uggs selling CDs outside Nando’s seventy-four years earlier.

In my opinion Wallace hits this dead on.  The “I Saw You” ad is like a microcosm of all our hopes, insecurities and desires, all wrapped up in 28-words.  And this is the kind of detail I appreciated in this book.

So in the end I have to give this a mixed review.  Points given for cleverness, creativity and a fun story, and points taken for an annoying main character and some fairly obvious lessons (like valuing the friends around you more than some girl you saw in the street one day).

And now for a steamy romance novel… Highlander Most Wanted by Maya Banks

Every once in a while, I get a craving for a romance novel (this is me trying not to be defensive about what I read).  If I’m going to read a romance novel, what better than a good Scottish Highlander romance?  That seems to be the big thing right now – blame Diana Gabaldon, maybe, or Felicia Day.  But really, who doesn’t want to read about broad-chested, kilted Highlanders as they battle feuding clans and sweep Scottish lasses off their delicate feet?

Maya Banks’ novels look deliciously trashy and she’s very popular on Amazon, so I was happy to receive a copy of her newest book through NetGalley, even though it means coming in mid-series. Highlander Most Wanted is the second novel in the Montgomery and Armstrong series.

This novel wasn’t quite what I expected.  In fact its storyline is decidedly less trashy than most romances.  This novel tells the story of Genevieve McInnis, a woman who was kidnapped from her clan and imprisoned for a year by the McHugh clan.  The laird’s son, Ian McHugh, keeps Genevieve as his slave, forcing her into a life of destitution and humiliation.

What I liked about this book was Banks’ handling of this situation.  This isn’t sexual slavery in a Shades of Grey kind of way, and Genevieve’s situation isn’t minimized or too easily wiped away.  Our hero Bowen Montgomery doesn’t ride into town on his big steed and immediately bring Genevieve back to life.  No, Genevieve still has to suffer with the millions of reminders of her year of torment.  She still has to suffer from the scars, physical and emotional, and the disdain of the McHugh clan.  For a light read, this actually wasn’t a light read.

Genevieve is a great heroine, although I wish Bowen had been a little more layered.  His only flaw seems to be his lifetime of casual sex with hordes of willing females.  He’s sensitive and caring at all the right moments but Banks could have given him more personality by making him a whole lot less perfect.

I like to compare modern day historical romances with the ones I grew up on in the 80s, namely those of Kathleen Woodiwiss (Shanna, The Wolf and the Dove, Ashes in the Wind).  Novels of the 70s and 80s followed a lot of conventions: the heroine never has sex with anyone other than the hero, despite coming perilously close to being raped or married off to someone else.  The heroine and hero, despite their love for each other, encounter numerous misunderstandings that keep them from coming together.  The heroine and hero always end up married and with child – although not always in that order.

In modern day romances, it seems the authors have gotten rid of the “misunderstanding plot.”  When a character wants to know something, they just ask.  Instead of waiting until the end to say they love each other, they just come right out and say  it.  It’s a refreshing change, but it leaves the relationship a little lacking in conflict.   Bowen and Genevieve have tons of reasons to distrust each other.  She has no idea whether he’s using her and doesn’t seem to care.  He should be worried about whether she’s manipulating him, or he should be worried that she has no idea what love is (she’s simply fallen in love with the first man who didn’t beat and rape her).  He does question her feelings a little but that doesn’t stop him from trying to get her into bed.

So the big weakness for me in this book is the lack of conflict in their relationship.  True, there’s plenty of conflict elsewhere in their lives, but even the objections raised by their families are pretty toothless.

Another interesting thing about modern day historical romances is how much more sensitive the men are.  Bowen is ridiculously sensitive; he feels bad about his lifetime of sexual conquests, completely ignores Genevieve’s scarred face and sexual history, and seems only to live to make her feel better.  Kathleen Woodiwiss’ heroes were usually bastards who took first and later came around to understanding what it means to love.  As a modern woman I guess I should prefer the sensitive guy – but really I’m looking for a middle ground.

So, yes, I do like a good historical romance from time to time, even though I usually don’t write about them.  I know this post won’t get many comments as most people don’t read this stuff (or don’t admit to).  If you do, please share!  Favorite romance writer?  Favorite hero or heroine? What makes a good romance novel?

Note: I received an advance copy from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

Review: Ready Player One by Ernest Cline

So much has been said about this book, I’ll keep it short.  That said, it was a great read and I highly recommend it to anyone who grew up in the eighties.

Ready Player One is set in the near future, when mankind has pretty much given up on preserving the Earth and now spends most of its time in OASIS, a virtual world.  Wade Watts attends a virtual high school and is fixated, like most people, on one thing: winning a challenge set by the now-dead James Halliday.  Halliday created OASIS and became the richest man alive, and before he died he created a contest: to find three keys hidden deep in OASIS.  The first to complete the puzzle will win his fortune.

Wade is poor, and mostly family-less except for his aunt.  He lives in a trailer and is lucky to have the basic equipment he needs to log into OASIS.  Without resources he can’t possibly travel to the many worlds inside OASIS to look for the keys.  What he can do, though, is learn everything he possibly can about Halliday’s history and favorite things, which all come from Halliday’s childhood during the eighties.  Just as in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, it’s unrealistic to think that starving little Charlie Bucket is getting a ticket to the factory when every rich parent in the world is paying people to open candy bars.  But if Charlie doesn’t get in, we don’t have a story.

Unlike Halliday, and clearly Ernest Cline, I didn’t like the eighties.  I don’t have warm fuzzy memories of John Hughes movies, Cyndi Lauper, arcade games, etc.  So I thought I wouldn’t enjoy this book, but I did.  Maybe because the eighties pop references are so integrated into a fantastic story.  Maybe because everything in this book was so intricately detailed, I couldn’t help but be impressed.  Reading this book felt like you were part of the puzzle, because everything in it triggers a memory of something you forgot you knew.  Cline doesn’t go for the super-obvious, but for the slightly, more obscure references, like the movie WarGames.

My husband read it first, and he thought all the game references would leave me bored or confused.  It’s true I didn’t get most of the D&D and video game references.  But the cool thing about this book was that somehow Cline makes the story perfectly clear.  And one thing I liked about this book was that even if I wasn’t reliving my childhood, I was at least reading about my husband’s childhood.  And seeing the world through his eyes is always something that makes me happy.

At any rate, if this book was just one long collection of pop culture references, I’d have gotten bored pretty quickly.  But it’s not.  Wade is competing against all the other people trying to win this prize, and he’s also competing against the evil corporation, IOI, which has employed people (the soulless Sixers) who spend their days trying to win this contest so that OASIS can end up under corporate control.  Wade and the other contestants are fighting to keep IOI from ruining their beloved virtual world.

If it sounds a little formula, it is.  It’s predictable, but it also reminded me of all those oh-so-cheesy 80s movies that pitted one smart individual against the evil corporation (think Working Girl or The Secret of My Success or Wall Street).  It’s pop culture clichés piled on top of each other.

But the twist on the solve-the-puzzle, fight-corporate-greed story is this: it’s mostly happening in a virtual world.  So the cool thing about this book is that Cline really thinks about how his story goes in and out of the real world, and what it means if in the future, most of our interactions are through avatars rather than in-person.

This book isn’t Shakespeare, by a long shot.  Cline is either ripping everyone off or he’s completely brilliant.  Either way, it’s a fun and clever read and one I was sorry to put down.

Review: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Attachments is a book I wouldn’t have read (or probably even have heard of) if not for my blogging friend Alley over at What Red Read.   When I asked for recommendations for good travel reads, she suggested this one.  And it was perfect.

It’s one of those “it’s not the type of book I normally read BUT…” kinds of books.  It’s a little hard to define.  It’s not romance, it’s not chick lit, but it is a little on the girly side.  It’s lighter than a Jonathan Tropper novel.  It’s laugh-out-loud funny and geeky enough for me to recommend it to my husband.  It has characters you’ll feel like you know.  It’s extremely hard to put down.

It’s not a perfect novel by any stretch – it has kind of a contrived storyline and a somewhat less than satisfying conclusion.  But I still recommend it.

Attachments is the story of Lincoln, a late-twenties night-shift IT guy at a local paper in small-town Nebraska.  It’s 1999 (on the verge of Y2K) and the paper has finally given its reporters access to the Internet, but it’s worried about employee misuse.  The company installs filtering software and since Lincoln works the night shift (and is desperate for more work) it becomes his job to read employee emails that get flagged by the software.

Lincoln is pretty uncomfortable reading people’s email and gets even more uncomfortable when he stumbles into some personal conversations between two close friends, Beth and Jennifer.  He gets sucked into their emails so instead of sending them the standard warning, he just deletes the questionable emails.  Then he develops kind of an e-crush on Beth, but the problem is 1) she’s in a serious though dysfunctional relationship; and 2) if he ever meets her, how can he explain why he knows so much about her?

Here’s how it starts:

From: Jennifer

Subject: Where are you?

Would it kill you to get here before noon?  I’m sitting here among the shards of my life as I know it, and you… if I know you, you just woke up.  You’re probably eating oatmeal and watching Sally Jessy Raphael.  Email me when you get in, before you do anything else.  Don’t even read the comics.

Beth to Jennifer: Okay, I’m putting you before the comics, but make it quick.  I’ve got an ongoing argument with Derek about whether For Better or Worse is set in Canada, and today may be the day they prove me right.

Jennifer to Beth: I think I’m pregnant.

Beth to Jennifer: What? Why do you think you’re pregnant?

Jennifer: I had three drinks last Saturday.

Beth: I think we need to have a little talk about the birds and the bees.  That’s not exactly how it happens.

Can Rowell pull off a book that’s half-written in email?  Yes.  It’s a format that works – the email exchanges are sometimes flip and catty, sometimes long and thoughtful, but you never think, no one talks like this.

Lincoln, Beth, and Jennifer are in their late 20’s and their situations seem pretty realistic for that age.  It’s a time when you’re figuring out your career and your personal life and making lots of big decisions.  You’re an adult but no one thinks you’re ridiculous if you don’t know what you want to do, who you want to marry, whether you want kids or not.

I loved Lincoln.  He’s a mess – he lives with his mother and still pines for the high school girlfriend who broke his heart.  He hates his job and has no idea what he wants to do for a living.  He has a good group of friends that he plays D&D with but otherwise has no social skills whatsoever. (Note: Rowell is not bagging on D&D playing in this book.)

Reading these emails pushes Lincoln to explore his life and try new things, and that’s the thing you’ll like best about him.  He makes himself go to a club to meet women, and while the meeting-women part doesn’t go so well, a new friendship results.  He starts working out and discovers he enjoys it.  He takes a lot of risks with his personal life but still tries to be a good friend to the people who have always been there for him.  He shares his dinner with the vending machine lady.  He’s a mess but he’s a likeable mess.

And while Beth has a good job and good friends, we learn through her emails that Beth might be even more of a mess than Lincoln is.

As the situation gets more tangled and harder for Lincoln to resolve, the story becomes whether they will meet, and what will Lincoln tell her, and can she possibly trust a guy who’s been reading her personal emails.  It’s a knot you know the author will have trouble unraveling, and the fun of this book is in watching her try.

There are a ton of 90’s references – songs, movies, games, etc.  Sometimes that can be annoying in a book but in this one it’s realistic and adds to the humor.  (It helps that I was exactly their age in 1999.)  One of my favorite exchanges goes like this:

Jennifer to Beth:

Subject: Do you want to hang out tonight?

I need a break from Mitch.  He’s still in a funk about our successful use of birth control.

Beth: Can’t.  I’m finally going to see Eyes Wide Shut.

Jennifer: Ech.  I don’t like Tom Cruise.

Beth: Me neither.  But I usually like Tom Cruise movies.

Jennifer: Me too… Huh, maybe I do like Tom Cruise.  But I hate feeling pressured to find him attractive.  I don’t.

Beth: Nobody does.  It’s a lie perpetuated by the American media.  Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts.

Jennifer:  Men don’t like Julia Roberts?

Beth: Nope.  Her teeth scare them.

Jennifer: Good to know.

I immediately turned to my husband to confirm the accuracy of the statement, and guess what?  Absolutely true.  There’s another part of the book where they reference a song by the Sundays and my husband was able to pull up the song and play it for me.  Now it’s “that song” we read about in this book.

There’s a LOT of pregnancy discussion as you can tell from the excerpts I’ve posted.  Not my favorite topic to read about but I can live with it.  After all, pregnancy is a number one concern for most women of that age, whether it’s having a baby or not having one.  Beth wants lots of kids with her commitment-phobic boyfriend.  Jennifer doesn’t want kids but her husband does.   I’m a little mixed about how it all goes down, but it’s still a good story.

I loved this book.  I remember reading this in our hotel in Rome and having trouble putting it down.  That should tell you something.

Review of 11/22/63 by Stephen King

Note: The Book Stop is officially on vacation.  I wrote this ahead of time so I may not respond to your comments (but please comment).  Enjoy!

If you’re a Stephen King fan, especially a fan of his older books, you’ll appreciate this one, because he really gets back to the detailed way he used to write.  A lot of his newer books read like they’re ready to go straight to movie, and that’s understandable since so many of his books HAVE been made into movies.  But I like his old, really get-into-someone’s-head style of writing.

If you’re not a Stephen King fan, but you either love time travel fiction, or you remember the 60s and want to relive them, you’ll also appreciate this book.  I’d be really interested to hear what my parents or in-laws thought of this book, having lived through the time of Kennedy’s assassination.  I know it’s one of those life-scarring moments but haven’t experienced it personally.  On the other hand, I don’t think I’d want to read a book this detailed about 9/11, so maybe this book isn’t for those who were there.  I don’t know but I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read it.

I’m sure you’ve heard the plot of this book already, but it’s about Jake Epping, a guy who discovers a portal that goes back to 1958.  His friend urges him to go back in time to stop the assassination of JFK.  He also has one or two other things he’d like to put right.  Of course this means spending 4-5 years in the past.  Is it worth it?

King puts a lot of thought into the “rules” of time travel, which is important to the story.  What’s unusual here is the automatic re-set rule.  In this book, if the person gets back to modern-day in one piece and then goes back into the portal, there’s a total re-set.  Nothing changed in the first round stays.  So while Jake worries about the implications of going to the past, he’s comforted by the fact that he can always re-do it if it goes wrong.  He can even experiment a few times just to see what happens.

King really immerses you in the history and also the sense of time and place.  I love how much research he did, and it shows. If you’re expecting horror because it’s Stephen King, think again.  This is a lot more drama and history than horror, although King is always good at threading a sense of unease throughout his stories.

This is a book I’d recommend to most people, although I’m not sure it lived up to all the hype for me, for a few reasons.  The first is that at times it gets too slow and detailed, and there were places that could have used a lot of editing.  I learned a LOT about the life of Lee Harvey Oswald, maybe too much (and you know how I like detail).   The history bogs down the story at times –unless you really, really want to know that much about Oswald’s relationship with his mother.

The second reason is that I had a hard time with the premise.  And by that I don’t mean time travel.  Anyone who reads a book about time travel has to be willing to suspend disbelief enough to accept that someone could step outside a diner and into a time portal that takes him to 1958.

No, the premise I struggled with was the “stop Oswald and save the world” idea.  Jake himself raises warning bells about changing the past, but convinces himself that preventing Kennedy’s assassination will be a net good for the world.  He thinks saving Kennedy will prevent Vietnam, but from the very beginning I couldn’t see that this was a rational leap of faith.  More than that, he spends over four years in the past, and while he says he’s going to respect the “butterfly effect” – meaning every little thing he changes can have huge implications for the future – he doesn’t.  Not by a long shot.

So I found myself really uncomfortable throughout the book about what Jake’s doing – I just didn’t get what he was thinking or how he could justify most of what he did.  It didn’t make sense, and that was a problem for me.  But, maybe those of you who lived through Kennedy’s assassination would do the same if you could.

One thing that was really cool about this book: early on, Jake finds himself in 1958 Derry, Maine.  And if you’re an It fan, you’ll know that Derry just isn’t a good place to be.  King brings back a few of his It characters and it made me really nostalgic.  In a weird way, since It is one of the scariest books I’ve ever read.

So a little trip down memory lane in more ways than one.

Review of Redshirts by John Scalzi

If you like Star Trek, you’ll appreciate Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas.  It’s a lot like the movie Galaxy Quest — it makes fun of the genre, but in a way that clearly honors it as well.  If you don’t know what the term “redshirts” means, this probably isn’t the book for you.

Redshirts is the story of five cadets, just out of the Academy and beginning work on the Universal Union starship Intrepid.  The Intrepid is an exploration vehicle, which means it travels to strange new worlds and seeks out new civilizations, etc. etc.  It also takes on unusually dangerous missions.  The crew members face possible death with every away mission.

But for some reason, even though the senior officers charge in bravely, it’s always the young and relatively unimportant cadets who die.  And it’s always from strange things like ice sharks and land worms.

Our five new cadets quickly realize that everyone else on the ship disappears when the Captain comes around.  They know the pattern, and they’ve learned to go get coffee every time an away team is chosen.

Redshirts pokes fun at lots of Star Trek clichés – like the fact that the crew members always have to rush to the bridge with whatever mission-critical data they’ve obtained, even though they all carry tablets and could clearly send the information electronically.   And the fact that there’s always a time countdown, and the situation will always be deadly and always resolved within minutes of that countdown.

But while the story starts out feeling a bit like a Galaxy Quest retread, it turns into something else entirely.  Andy Dahl and the other four cadets have to figure out what’s happening on the ship before they all get sent on away missions and die horrible catastrophic deaths.  Scalzi takes the story in fun and clever directions, which I won’t tell you about.  He also has three “codas” at the end that further tell the story from different perspectives.  I found one of the three codas a little pointless but that’s a small complaint.

If you’ve ever wondered if the world is bigger than what you see around you, or if there are parallel realities out there, or if you’re simply playing a part in someone else’s story, this is a book you’ll enjoy.  The story is convoluted and ridiculous and every page of it is a lot of fun – and even occasionally heartwarming in the way your favorite Star Trek episodes were.

(And I’ll admit I do have favorite Star Trek (Next Generation) episodes – like the one where Deanna Troi finds out she had a sister who died as a girl.  Or where Dr. Crusher falls in love with a man who turns out to be a body hosting a parasite – and when the man-body dies the parasite is transferred into the body of a woman.  And the one where Picard has to learn to speak an alien language that’s all metaphor.  Come to think of it, someone DOES die in every episode.)

Like his last novel Fuzzy Nation, Scalzi has a writing style where you almost feel you’re reading a screenplay.  He’s a little light on character development (although so was Star Trek; these are redshirts after all).  But he’s great at telling a clever, humorous, yet complicated story where you really feel like you’re watching it all unfold.  Kind of like it’s a TV show. And you’re part of the story.

Review of Poison Study by Maria Snyder

I’m leaving town for a few days and won’t have much time to write reviews or post anything.  The latest entry in my Fluffy-Summer-Travel-Reading series is Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder (I also didn’t think I could do The Moonstone justice in a short review).

I found a surprising number of different covers for this book, so I’ve copied them at the end of the post.  The one to the right is my favorite, which one’s yours?

Here’s the description from Goodreads (you can see I’m taking shortcuts here):

About to be executed for murder, Yelena is offered an extraordinary reprieve. She’ll eat the best meals, have rooms in the palace—and risk assassination by anyone trying to kill the Commander of Ixia.

And so Yelena chooses to become a food taster. But the chief of security, leaving nothing to chance, deliberately feeds her Butterfly’s Dust—and only by appearing for her daily antidote will she delay an agonizing death from the poison.

As Yelena tries to escape her new dilemma, disasters keep mounting. Rebels plot to seize Ixia and Yelena develops magical powers she can’t control. Her life is threatened again and choices must be made. But this time the outcomes aren’t so clear…

I enjoyed the book and found a lot of it very original, which is rare in a lot of fantasy books.  Yelena is a strong character who has to wrestle with a lot of demons and fight to find her place in the world.  I liked how she develops throughout the book, from someone who is just grateful to be alive and well-treated, even though basically a slave, to someone who has growing power and dignity.  Snyder gives Yelena a well-developed history that makes her a sympathetic and unique character.

I also really enjoyed the political issues raised in the book.  Yelena works for the Commander, who is at first seen as a tyrant who overthrew the last king and killed all his relatives and advisors.  But we gradually come to see the Commander as a more nuanced ruler.  Politics, trade and commerce are important in the country of Ixia, which made it a much more real place.

The side characters in the book – Rand, Valek, and Ari among others – are also well-developed, although I wanted more from  Valek’s character.  Valek is Yelena’s trainer and basically her captor.  She lives in his room (mostly for her protection from thugs who hate her) and he doles out an antidote to poison each day that keeps her alive but enslaved.  Their relationship, based on distrust and power and captivity, is an interesting one.

On the other hand, we hear from the other characters about all the fearful, horrible things Valek has done as chief to the Commander.  We’re not sure what’s true anymore than Yelena does.  But I did think Valek’s character disappointed by the end of the book.  I wanted more moral ambiguity, more of him being caught between his political responsibilities and sympathy for Yelena.  Instead he ends up feeling watered-down.  But saying any more would tell you too much of the plot.

One of the biggest flaws in the book (and it’s still a good read) is that Snyder sets up this really compelling story about what it’s like to be a food-taster.  Yelena has to learn to nibble, swirl, inhale, etc (like drinking a good glass of wine) and use every sense to detect the slightest wrong taste in the Commander’s food.  If she succeeds, she saves the Commander’s life but could die herself.  Her job is to tell the world with her last gasping breath what poison she tasted.  As the title suggests, Yelena has to really study to get this right.

But Snyder leads us pretty far from the Poison Taster story.  Yes, there’s magic and intrigue, betrayal, love, and even acrobatics.  But the story kind of loses focus for me.  Understandably, Yelena’s “job” doesn’t take up much of her day, so she has to do other things.

And the love story is on the weak side.  Okay the very weak side.  I just didn’t get there.

This book had many of the fantasy genre tropes I talked about with Magic Lost, Trouble Found, but it still has a much more original story.

As promised, alternate covers of the book:

If Felicia likes it, it has to be good… Magic Lost, Trouble Found by Lisa Shearin

I picked up this book, despite its super-cheesy cover, because Felicia Day loves this author.  And as a total Felicia Day wanna-be I figured it was worth the few bucks it cost me.

Which is not to say I have entirely the same reading taste as Felicia Day — she reads a whole lot more urban fantasy than I do — but her opinion kinda means something.  You can find her book reviews here.  And see here for her hilarious take on Scottish romance novels (thankfully she liked Outlander or I might have to call it quits).

The other reason I picked it up is that the reviews for this series go way up after the first book, so it’s fair to see this as a starter.  Shearin clearly gets better as she goes.  The problem with that is I really don’t want another long series to read; I’m not finishing most of the ones I’ve already started.

(I’m thinking we need a “Finish the Series Challenge” so I can knock a few series out before I start any more new ones.  Anyone?)

So, hmmm.  This is a pretty cheesy-sounding book with a laugh-out-loud cover, and really the urban fantasy genre seems really tired to me.  I actually tried starting this book three times and it didn’t take until I got stuck on a plane last week for four hours with nothing better to do (this was my “read when they make me turn off the Kindle” book).

The story?  It’s about an elf named Raine Benares who comes from a no-good family in the city of Mermeia.  Raine is a seeker, someone who finds people or things that generally should be left unfound. She’s got fairly middle-of-the-road powers until she helps a friend out and ends up with a magical amulet around her neck which gives her superpowers but can’t be taken off without killing her.  And unfortunately, there are a number of factions, including the goblin king, his evil torture-master, and his disgruntled brother, who want to do exactly that.

This book has all the tropes of the urban fantasy genre: the brave and sassy heroine; the heretofore unknown parent with serious magical power; the sexy non-human love interest (in this book there’s a goblin and an elf); the magical artifact that has to be contained before it’s used for evil and destroys the whole world; and the fight scenes where the heroine faces overwhelmingly bad odds but somehow magically knows what to do.

I’d say if you like the genre, this is a good book to pick up.  It took some getting into, but once I did the story was fun, it moves at a good pace and the characters are likeable although not terribly deep. It never takes itself seriously and never gets too violent, which I appreciated.

On the other hand, I didn’t see much that was original here. Shearin has built a fairly complex world, but once you get past the weird vocabulary (what’s a primaru?) it reads pretty much like the other books of the genre, only perhaps a little more irreverent.

Still, Book One is clearly set-up for the rest of the series, so I may have to pick up Book Two.  The cool thing is, by the time you get to Book 4, the heroine starts looking a lot tougher — and a lot more like Felicia Day.

 

What Do You Read When You’re Traveling?

Woo hoo!  In three days I’ll be on vacation!

The husband and I are taking a LONG awaited and much-needed two week trip to Eastern Europe.  We’re seeing Prague, Krakow, Budapest and Slovenia.  I hope to soak up a lot of history and culture and explore some of my Eastern European roots.  While I don’t have relatives to meet up with, or family history to research, I keep remembering something a friend of mine said about her trip to Eastern Europe: that there was something very cool about being in a place where everyone kind of looks like you.

Will I feel like a native because my father and grandparents come from that part of the world?  Doubtful.  And that’s fine.  Learning new words, foods, and customs is the glorious thing about travel, even if you feel like an outsider.  As I learned when I tried to apply four years of college French in Paris.  The Parisians didn’t appreciate my efforts but I had a great time trying.

We’ve spent months preparing for this trip – we’re not exactly “fly by the seat of our pants” people.  We read guidebooks, scoured train schedules and travel catalogs, debated itineraries, talked to friends.  And still I feel unprepared. I’m the kind of person who packs several days in advance.  And of course I spend a lot of time thinking about the books to take on the trip.

First, the guidebooks.  Do you have a favorite travel series?  We’re mostly following Rick Steves’ Eastern Europe.  I actually like to rip up the guidebook and just take sections.  We’re only using a small part of the book, and this way we can throw the sections away when we’re done.  It bothers me to rip up a book but travel is different.  Once you get home, the guidebook is kind of a waste of space.  I also need to pack Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to Eastern Europe.  A friend lent me her Eyewitness Travel to Budapest and Prague, so we’ll have to decide whether to take those.  It seems like a lot of books to pack, and we haven’t even gotten to the fun reading!

What do you read when you’re traveling?  Do you go lighter, fluffier?  One long book or shorter reads?  When I’m flying I want easier reads — too many interruptions to really concentrate on anything dense.  On the other hand, a “heavier” book makes it more likely I fall asleep – which, on a long, overnight flight, is definitely the goal.

Here’s what’s on my Kindle for the trip:

• Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
• Moloka’i by Alan Brennert
• Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
•  Mercy Blade by Faith Hunter
• The Lovers’ Dictionary by David Levithan
• And of course, War and Peace

I also need one or two paper books to get me through the ascent and descent of four flights.  So I’ve got: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, and The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett.

Will I read all these?  Probably not, but we have lots of long plane and train rides ahead of us, and the husband and I are readers, not talkers.

What I love about reading while traveling, is when I read a book in an unfamiliar location, I often associate that place and time with that book.  Do you? Last year I wrote about reading Return of the Native on the beach in the Bahamas.  I remember reading Outlander for the first time on the beach in California during law school (remembered particularly for the horrific sunburn caused by reading that book).  I’m not sure why those things stick but they do.  Sometimes I’ll remember a certain song I heard while reading a certain book.  Sometimes you remember a smell, or even something eaten while reading.  The mind is a powerful thing.

Do you read things related to the place you’re traveling?  I like to read about places before I go, but not during.  The Invisible Bridge, for example, was a perfect book to read before a trip to Hungary.  But I don’t feel the need to limit my travel reading to travel related subjects.  Maybe it’s weird to read a book about Hawaii (Moloka’i) while traveling in Europe, but why not?  It gives me something to think about for our next trip.

Do you pack more books than you need or plan on buying books as you go?  Most of the time I don’t buy books when I travel – although I like the opportunity to have a version of a book that’s unique in the U.S. For example, I love my British version of Bridget Jones’ Diary, which has all the original text and hasn’t been “Americanized” (ugh).  It also has a much better cover than that horrific two-eyed American cover.  I also cherish my small collection of French children’s books that I picked up in Paris (James et le Grosse Peche and Le Magicien d’Oz, for example). I stick to things that are small and light, that I can’t find back home.

But in a non-English-speaking country you don’t know what you’ll find, which is just one more reason my Kindle makes me very happy.  I can load it up as much as I want.  Most small hotels  and B&B’s have a “leave a book, take a book” shelf, which is a great idea.  You just can’t count on them to have something you actually want to read.

So, we’re off!  I hope I’ll be able to post a few times on the road.  What books do YOU take with you when you travel?