Read 1,000 books

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Xiaolu Guo
Finished: 05/16/09

My feelings on this book are totally mixed, and I am choosing to interpret that as a good thing. On the one hand, I have a very strong soft spot for Chinese and Chinese-American/English literature, and this book fulfills my expectations in that area beautifully. I love the pacing, I love the connectedness to history and simultaneous tumble into modernity that is such a trademark of modern literature from China. In this book particularly, I liked the use of language, both the definitions as chapter-headings, and the places where the narrator, Z, reverts back into her native tongue. Also, the torturous slow crawling improvements of Z’s use of language—her choppy way of speaking at the beginning of the book, versus the complex ideas she expresses towards the end—were stylistically very well done, and fit very well within the plot and context of the novel.

That said, the plot of the novel (and this should not come as a surprise, given the title) is a love story. I am not a fan of love stories, and would probably not have picked up the book at all, if it hadn’t been the book-club pick for my local independent bookstore. The male character’s role in the story felt flat—her difficulty with language never gave the reader a clear sense into who he was. Which may have been deliberate, a way of showing that Z herself didn’t understand him as well as she thought or wished to have. But what did seem clear about him was not a very appealing picture: a man who couldn’t settle down, and who wasn’t taking steps towards his own happiness, but rather continuing to slide into anger and depression at all that he had not yet accomplished in the world. That Z would cling to him as hard as she does made me angry at her naivety, at the things she did not seem to see through the cultural and language barrier she was working with. That it was circumstance, and her own fatalistic attitude, that eventually caused them to part left me with a very unsatisfied feeling at the end—that, if there had been a point to this whole story, it had been entirely lost on the characters involved.

It occurs to me that I had a similar reaction to Ha Jin’s “Waiting” and that, just perhaps, I am too impatient in regards to stories that center around love. It certainly made me think; I know it’s best not to complain about that.

The Suicide Club
Robert Louis Stevenson
Finished: 05/08/09

Although having (still!) never read Treasure Island, I’ve had a soft spot for Stevenson ever since I stayed up all night once while staying at my grandmother’s reading Jekyll and Hyde as a child. I also devoured A Footnote to History; Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa about 5 years ago, and if anything, enjoyed the nonfiction accounting better than the fantasy.

The Suicide Club in no way disappointed, then, from the high expectations I had going in to the tale. A trio of short stories, the first one, “Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts” was by far the best of the bunch, the other two being largely just concluding the suspense and chase introduced in the first story. And while the lead characters—Prince Florizel of Bohemia, and his trusty sidekick Colonel Geraldine, are excellent romantic heroes in their own right, I must admit that I was most taken in by the stunning character of Mr. Malthus, who is, alas, only present for the first story.

And while it doesn’t have the shock-and-gore horror effect that the magical transformation of Dr. Jekyll into Mr. Hyde does, The Suicide Club is, if anything, a better horror story, more visibly evil, and with plenty of room for debate until the very end on whether the President of the Suicide Club was even human himself, or something far more sinister.

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat
Lynne Jonell
Finished: 04/17/09

I must admit to buying a book for its cover, something my elementary school library often warned us about. But not just the cover, but the internal art by Jonathan Bean—the flip book effect of the rat falling out of the tree and being caught by an unidentified hand—how could I say no?

That said, though, I must now admit that I found the art to be the strongest part of the piece. The characters themselves unfortunately remained rather flat, and while the spells were amusing and interesting, the villains because less villainous as the story progressed. By the time Miss Barmy is trying to capture a shrunken Emmy in the playroom, she seemed much less than the initially terrifying individual with engraved children’s faces on her cane that she had seemed at first. So when the Rat calls out “Get lost Barmy baby”—it reads less like the bluster of a truly frightened individual refusing to show weakness and much more like a general annoyance at having to deal once again with her meddlesome ways.

However, there was one really strong idea from the book that it took me a while to put my finger on. Since reading Fortress of Solitude (to be reviewed later), I have been thinking a lot about the parallel worlds that children and adults inhabit, and Jonell did a fabulous job of basing her plot around the idea of present-but-emotionally-empty parenting, and a child’s search to be seen and loved.

Pure
Terra Elan McVoy
Finished: 04/09/09

As is obvious from my reviews of various books in the True Colors series and Blue is for Nightmares collection, I have a soft spot for religious teen literature, even as I critique it for the problems so often found in the genre.

I picked up Pure blindly, as I often do. There was going to be a reading at my local independent bookstore, and even though I didn’t think I was particularly interested in a story about purity rings, I still ended up pleasantly surprised and unable to set the book down for the last several chapters.

Pure succeeds where so many other religious novels fail by refusing to rest on simple formulaic answers. While Tabitha’s relationship with god and her own sense of right and wrong are strong, they are clearly the result of her having thought things through for herself, rather than the dogma thrown at her by either her ultra-religious friend Morgan or her politically leftist secular father.

Other strong parts of the book include a strong and humorous use of language and pop-culture references, and Tabitha’s struggles against her parent’s rules. The latter was especially interesting as McVoy did an excellent job showing how a “good” kid and “caring and involved” parents can still have a difficult time working out the needed high school balance between freedom and parental guidance/protection.

While Pure’s strength might be its refusal to rest on dogma, it’s one shortcoming is that said refusal perhaps does not clearly come through until the reader is already invested in the book. With it’s initial focus and unflattering portrait of Morgan, I was very tentative at first, fearing that it would be a story that not only glorified chastity, but compulsive consumerism and rampant proselytizing as well. To find out that the book was much more than that was a huge relief, but I wish I hadn’t been filled with such immediate and certain doubt in the first several pages.

All Together Dead
Charlene Harris
Finished: 04/05/09

Once again, we’re out of the land of mysteries, as Harris attempts to write a political thriller. The high point of which seems to be the confusion within the Queen of Louisiana’s own party. Harris really nailed the difficulty involved in successfully carrying out a conspiracy.

The subset to that, however, is Harris extends that lack of subtlety to all the conspiracies happening during the vampire summit, and as such, the Fellowship plot seems painfully obvious and intellectually lazy. It’s a shoe-bomb of a plot, one which never should have been implementable, especially not in a place so heavily guarded, so full of vampire VIPs.

I am appreciating Sookie’s realizations about those who would use her telepathic powers, but am surprised at it taking her seven books to start to learn this. I guess the idea is that in rural southern America, people are too scared of what they don’t understand to try to manipulate it. However, that’s a rosy colored view of fearful stupidity that I just don’t buy, as people often wish to control what they don’t understand. Sookie’s surpise, therefore, seems, well, a bit surprising, and Barry’s, the urbanite mindreader from Dallas, even more so.

Also? Watching dead flesh burn gives me the creeps (too many educational videos about nuclear bombs as a child). So that whole ending action sequence? Major yuck. Just putting that out there. Sometimes there is a thing as too much description. And therefore, on that subject, I shall say no more.

Definitely Dead
Charlene Harris
Finished: 04/03/09

Certainly a better put together novel than book five of the series. Only two plotlines weave through this particular novel, and are quite well put together into a singular story, especially when compared to Harris’ earlier attempt at two plotlines in the second novel.

What is most noticeable about this book, however, was the number of beating hearts. For a “vampire” series, all of the main vampire characters thus far (Eric, Bill, even Pam) were mostly absent, replaced with vampires who seemed cold-blooded more their political-mindedness than for their blood-sucking behaviors. Meanwhile, Sookie’s taken up with a live one in the were-tiger Quinn, and even makes a new friend with the witch who owned the apartment where Sookie’s cousin was living before her second death.

At least Harris is back to a good old fashioned mystery story, which is clearly where her strength is. Cousin Hadley is (like Scrooge’s business partner, Marley) “dead to begin with”, and, being an immortal vampire, it’s obviously been a matter of foul play. Meanwhile, there is also missing jewelry, and plenty of political intrigue to provide a number of reasonable subjects. A few red-herrings from the second plotline, and Definitely Dead carries itself well, even as the characters themselves grow tiresome.

The Government Manual for New Wizards
Matthew David Brozik
Jacob Sager Weinstein
Finished: 03/29/09

A Christmas present from Lulubell, I found it excellent bathroom reading of the sort that I hadn’t enjoyed since Word Freak. I recommend it highly for people with a familiarity with modern fantasy literature (Harry Potter knowledge is required, Lord of the Rings basics recommended) and a very high tolerance for horrible puns. Whether it is the discussion about how you get tickets to Witch Side Story or a reminder to never give trolls access to the internet, if there’s a cheap joke to be made, Brozik and Weinstein go for it. That said, they succeed, and nothing is more satisfying than emerging from the bathroom with a merry grin on your face and a wry chuckle in your heart. Makes the whole day better, I do believe, and that’s magic worth buying into.

The Moon Bridge
Marcia Savin
Finished: 03/27/09

One of the questions in children’s books is how we address tough subjects. Some people would suggest not doing it at all—that children should be protected and allowed to keep their innocence as long as possible, and that life as a child is scary enough without having to face those truths that make even adults feel sick or afraid. And while that viewpoint is easily countered by those who point out that true insulation is not possible, that knowledge is better than hushed-over mystery, and that, as much as we would wish otherwise, bad things do happen to children and innocence is no protection from terrifying events—there is still reluctance to present subjects too vividly to young children, especially at the middle grade reading level.

One of the ways, unfortunately, that writers have decided to deal with this squemishness is through the “happened to a friend” story. The Moon Bridge is a perfect example of this style—with all its usefulness and flaws. Rather than follow the story of Mitzi, the Japanese-American girl sent away with her family to live in an internment camp during world war II, the action centers on her friend Ruthie, who, with her parent’s understanding liberalism, has a hard time figuring out why anyone would want to send away her friend. And since there are no good answers to that question, Ruthie is left just to “get on with her life”, with the nagging doubt that her missing friend is having an awfully hard time doing the same thing in whatever camp they have taken her away to live. From the point of view of addressing the issue of Japanese-American internment, then, Savin’s book raises more questions than it answers. It creates awareness of the issue, but doesn’t share the experience of the situation. Mitzi, at the end, is left to explain “what it was like”—even as she tries to forget—and this glossing over is as much for the audience’s safety as it is true to Mitzi’s character as she attempts to readjust to life outside of the camp.

As a sidenote, I recently ran across a reference to The Moved-Outers by Florence C. Means. As a Newbery honor roll book from 1945 about Sumiko Ohara and her family’s forced moves during the internment, I am hoping to pick up a copy to compare against Savin’s more recent novel. When The Moved-Outers was published, perhaps there was no need yet for Ruthie’s story, as the children of the time had lived it themselves. But I do wonder where that account from the camp has gone, now that Florence C. Means’ book is out of print.

Dead as a Doornail
Charlene Harris
Finished: 03/20/09

You’d think, given my review of these books, that I would have just set them down as opposed to being just as addicted to them as any other mindless twentysomething on holiday. And yet, I went on holiday… and there, at the house where I was staying, Dead as a Doornail was sitting there in the living room, waiting to be thumbed through while sitting in the sun in March getting burned.

I love the review on goodreads that ends her plot summary with the sentence ”Sookie also learns quite a bit more about werewolf politics, learns how to file an insurance claim and what a gunshot wound feels like.” It seems to be an accurate summary. This book felt disjointed, like several different plots trying to weave themselves together, with an overall plot-arch being only incidentally tacked on through the sniper mystery. No real clear beginning, and stopping just because the right number of pages had been reached in order to send it off to the publisher. It flowed acceptably, but in terms of “the story”, this book felt more like a series of short stories that had been woven together than some sort of integrated whole novel.

• the sniper mystery—who’s shooting at weres?
• the unconnected death of the were pack leader
• the introduction of Quinn
• final wrap-up of drama from last book over Eric
• more drama with Bill’s new girlfriend
• Alcide using Debbie’s death to try to manipulate Sookie
• the organizational structure of electing a new were pack leader
• a strange pirate-vampire visit (because apparently just one stereotypical of fantasy creature at a time just isn’t enough anymore: just wait until the next book, when you meet the jackalopeacorn-troll that practices santeria)
• Bellefleur wedding drama
• Tara’s vampire troubles

What do any of these things have to do with each other? Only that they all happen in the same book. In terms of the story, there is no plot tying them together, just wrapping up old storylines, and introducing new dramas to be played out in future installments. A “gap” book—one that can’t be skipped, not because it’s interesting, but only so that the plotholes of the books post and previous aren’t quite so jarring.

Dead to the World
Charlene Harris
Finished: 03/14/09

People review this book well because of the hot Sookie/Eric love action going on after his is found naked and amnesiac by the side of the road. I’m not sure I understand. So the character that everyone loves because he’s a ruthless vampire capitalist politician looses his personality, sleeps with the heroine, and then goes back to normal, and people think this is the best book? It’s not even the same guy! At that point, Sookie could just as well sleep with any generic blond character-less vampire, and it would be the same story. In fact, let’s just skip the whole telepathy/vampire thing, and have a girl (who knows her word of the day) sleep with some all-but-nameless attractive man and presto bestseller. It’ll work, I tell you.

Meanwhile, I was interested in the world building of the witches versus the wiccans… I’ve read plenty of novels revolving around one group or the other, but I think Harris’ series has to be the first that I’ve seen that has dared tackle them as existing in the same world. (If I’m wrong on that, let me know. I would love to read another example of this, to have something to compare it to.) It seems, though, that Harris wants to try to dodge the issue as much as she can… that her attempt to include both in the same world was in order not to get angry letters from neo-pagans, but that, as far as actually doing the requisite world-building, Harris would just rather skip it in favor of a supernatural mêlée in an abandoned storefront. If she hadn’t spent so much time placating beefcake fantasies of sex with mindless (literally) men, she could have had time for both. A shame, really.