43, 44, & 45

So, I am trying to get caught up on my reading as well as my reviewing-- obviously. With just 4.5 weeks to go in 2012, I need to go pretty quickly if I'm to accomplish my goal.

Books 43 and 44 were Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and the Half Blood Prince. As I've said before, I've really gotten into this re-reading of the HP books. I like to call OOTP the book of Harry's angst, and HBP is a punch in the gut. Both excellent. I may change my mind at some point, but I'm pretty sure HBP is my favorite of the series. I love seeing all the scenes in the Penseive of Tom Riddle's past. I love that Harry and Ginny finally find each other. I never get used to Dumbledore's fate. Well done, JKR. 4.5 and 5 stars.

Book 45 is Finding Nouf by Zoe Ferraris, quite a departure from most of the books I've been reading lately. This book was recommended to me by a woman in my RS book club, after I mentioned that I'd read and loved The Kite Runner. We were discussing how that book had helped us to learn more of a region of the world that is pretty foreign to most Americans, and she said she'd recently read several books by Ferraris and had really enjoyed the setting of Saudi Arabia.

Zoe Ferraris moved to Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War with her then-husband, a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin. She lived in a very conservative Muslim community with his family, experiencing a side of the world that is totally unfamiliar to my American mind. The same area she lived in is the setting for Finding Nouf, which is a murder mystery/detective novel. The main character is a very devout Muslim man, and most of the book is told from his perspective-- which I found very enlightening. I obviously don't share his beliefs, but it was very interesting to me to get a glimpse into his thoughts and views, particularly on the very strict rules and laws regarding the conduct of women in that society and male-female interaction.

This book was rewarding for me as I am constantly on the lookout for ways to expand my understanding of the world and viewpoints that differ from mine. I want to know how and why other people believe things and live in ways that I can't fathom. I don't expect to be persuaded, I just want to understand. A lot of the things I learned from the book about how women are required to live over there made me sad, but I'm grateful to have a better understanding nonetheless.

I give the book 3.5 stars. While fairly well-written with some interesting plot twists, it is Ferraris' first novel and it shows. She has written two other novels in the same setting, both in the same genre as this one, and I would like to read at least one of them.

I'd sure love to read some more reviews, contributors. What have you been reading?

Ellie's books 14-17

So. In the interest of catching up (really this time), I'm just going to post a few thumbnail-type reviews.

14. The Moonspinners, by Mary Stewart

****

I love this book, and re-read it every year around Easter time (yes, that's how far behind I am with my reviews) and then spend the next few months dreaming of Mediterranean holidays. This book chronicles the adventures of Nicola Ferris, a secretary at the British embassy in Athens, who takes an Easter holiday with her cousin in an out-of-the-way village in Crete. She promptly stumbles into a mystery involving a pair of brothers, kidnapping, thievery, boats, crab-pots and both attempted and accomplished murder. The action is great, but what I love best about this book is the feeling of place that the descriptions evoke. I can easily picture myself into the landscape and always come out of the book slightly bewildered and disappointed that I'm no longer sitting on a patio in the Greek sunshine sipping mint drinks. Four stars.

15. How We Decide, by Jonah Lehrer

***

This was another Kindle Daily Deal which I picked up on a whim because I thought, looking at the title, that it might help me with some of my less-decisive tendencies. In fact, in the author's note on this book, he explains that he decided to write it because he was tired of spending fifteen minutes in the cereal aisle trying to decide between Apple Cinnamon and Honey Nut Cheerios every time he went grocery shopping. However, this book isn't a how-to guide like you might expect, but more of a how-do guide to the brain and its inner workings. Lehrer opens each chapter with a fascinating story of a real-life situation in which a type of decision was made (such as the Mann Gulch fire, which Megan talked about in her review of Young Men and Fire), and then talks about what parts of the brain and which brain functions influenced, prevented, or made such a decision possible. Most of the time it was fascinating, although sometimes I admit I got bogged down in the super-scientific parts. But if you are interested in the ways the brain works and affects such things as panic, intuition, gambling, autism, serial killers, memory, addiction, etc., then you'll enjoy this book. The writing style is clear and coherent so that even the super-technical parts are understandable, and the storytelling parts are, quite simply, riveting. Unfortunately, though, it didn't help with my cereal selection process. Three stars.

16. Bridget Jones' Diary, by Helen Fielding

***

It had been several years since I'd read this, and flying out of my home state and hometown to move to a new city across the country called for something light-hearted. My Kindle offered me this. And it did what it needed to, in that I was distracted and diverted, but I was a bit disappointed to find out that I didn't enjoy it quite as much as the first time I'd read it. Maybe it's that I've gotten older and don't have the patience for as much juvenile-type behavior as Bridget engages in. I don't know. Despite my impatience with some of her antics, though, Bridget did manage to get in a few great lines, for which I must give her (and Fielding) due credit. My favorite lines this time around (in no particular order):

On the end of a relationship:

It's no good. When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed-over British Rail sandwich?

On trying to set the VCR record function:

Feel exactly the same as feel when trying to follow signposts on roads. Know in heart that signposts and video manual do not make sense but still cannot believe authorities would be so cruel as to deliberately dupe us all. Feel incompetent fool and as if everyone else in world understands something which is being kept from me.

And of, course, the classic:

It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.

All in all, a fun read. Three stars.

17. The 39 Steps, by John Buchan

****

In the interest of full disclosure, I "read" this in audiobook format, which I still think totally counts, while pushing a napping toddler around the apartment complex. This book follows expatriate Scot Richard Hannay, who has recently returned to London from southern Africa and is about to die of boredom. He has determined to leave the country again when he is approached by a stranger claiming to hold information vital to the security of the nation, and who pleads for Hannay's assistance in hiding him until he can contact the proper people. Hannay puts him up for the night but ignores the wilder flights of his guest's tales of political plotting. However, when his guest is murdered, leaving Hannay his notebook, Hannay finds that he must not only believe the wild tales of his guest, but must also dodge both the British police (who suspect him of being the murderer) and a formidable force of foreign spies bent on silencing Hannay before he can thwart their nefarious plans.

Bottom line: great book. Lots of action, lots of intrigue, lots of close calls and lots of fun. I'd seen several film adaptations of this story so was excited to get the chance to discover the original. I think the original is of course the best, but was surprised by just how many universal elements from the adaptations were missing from the original book. For example, I kept waiting and waiting for the beautiful woman to appear so they would be forced to run across Scotland handcuffed together and outwitting dangerous spies and . . . nothing. No woman at all other than one or two throwaway characters like farmers' wives and the like.

I was pleased to find, however, that the resourcefulness, daring and general awesomeness that characterize the Richard Hannay of the adaptations were all there and more. Definitely a character you enjoy spending time with, and certainly one you'd want to have on your side in a pinch. Four stars.

I loved the version I listened to (done by BJ Harrison of The Classic Tales Podcast). I highly recommend checking out his podcasts and audiobooks if you haven't yet done so.

Re-reading continues.

For my 37th read of 2012, I reread Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I'd definitely say that out of the first three HP books, this is the one I had forgotten the most about. It was so fun to read.

And Blogger managed to lose the post I just wrote. It was nothing profound, but ugh, I hate redoing these.

**Note: I didn't skip 36. That was Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson, the book I received at our last Book Exchange Party. It was wonderful, but Kristen read it before I did and has kindly agreed to review it on the blog; thus, I will say only that I give it 5 stars.**

But back to HP. Re-reading HPatPOA was almost like reading it for the first time. Some awesome plot points, like the story behind the Whomping Willow and the Shrieking Shack, for example, had faded from my memory. I love Professor Lupin, and I really love Sirius Black, so being reintroduced to them was wonderful. And, as much as I love the HP movies, it was good to get back to the original story, just as JKR wrote it. I guess that's it for now. I just love HP.

More re-reads and a few nearly-dones.

This is going to be a quick catch-up post. Life has been a whirlwind-- I feel like it's still the beginning of August in my mind, and yet here we are on September 14.

I re-read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Book 30) and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Book 31) in the past few weeks. It has been yearrrrrs since I read HPs 1-3. I decided it was time to dive back in and re-read the whole series, and I am so glad I did. I just love it so much. It was so neat to go back to the very beginning, which I haven't thought about in a long time. I wish I could somehow erase the rest of the story from my memory and read them for the first time again. One thing I am especially enjoying is how funny Fred and George are. I kind of forgot all the funny dialog from them that is woven throughout the books. They are so awesome. Both get 5 stars from me.

As for other reads, I am nearly done with A Separate Peace and Young Men and Fire, both of which will be reviewed soon. I am also re-reading The Poisonwood Bible for book club, but I imagine one of the other writers of this blog will finish it and review it before I do, so I may not do a full review of that one.

I should be almost done with my 36th book right now, but I'm only almost to 34. I do have two new library books waiting for me to dive in, though, and I might just be able to get caught up at some point. (Probably not.) If only there were more hours in the day... or Vivian would let me read as long as I want. haha.

What are you ladies reading these days? Anyone?

Ellie's Book #8: The Woman in White

The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins

****

This was a re-read for my book club, but it's a book I love. The first time I read this book, I was reading it online on Project Gutenberg during my breaks at work. My husband and I were getting ready to move around this same time, and the move date (when we'd be without internet for a couple of days) coincided with my reaching the part where Things Start to Get Really Good. I was also going to be taking a couple of days off work for both the move and my little sister's wedding (yeah, I know, we have *great* timing), and I could not bear the thought of waiting that long to find out what happened, so I ended up taking time out from packing to run to three bookstores to find a copy because the first two were out. 

And I'm glad I did. I think this was my fifth read of this book (yeah, I re-read a lot. I'll discuss that in another post sometime) and the first time reading it with the specific plan of discussing it with other people, so it was fun to see what themes I picked up on this time that I had missed before or forgotten about. 

This book is an early mystery novel of sorts, involving a strange woman in white, two half-sisters, a drawing teacher, a brutish baronet, an invalid uncle, assorted old ladies and a sinister count. Add mistaken identities, lunatic asylums, trained white mice, kidnapping, doomed love, sea voyages, attempted murder, arson, forgery, slander, scandal, and opera-loving Italians of all shapes and sizes to the mix and you have the makings of 400-ish pages of a whole lot of fun.

What can I say? I can't really sum up the plot of this book succinctly, partly because Collins is anything but succinct. It's told as a series of first-person narratives, ostensibly so that no part of the story is given second- or third-hand; each part of the story is related by an individual who was actually there to see it or take part. This is great but it means that when Walter is telling the story we have to listen to a lot of extraneous matter about how wonderful and beautiful and perfect Laura is, and when Marian is telling the story we have to listen to a lot of (unconvincing) regrets about how she can't do anything to save them because she is only a weak woman.

Let me take a break here to say the lady doth protest too much. Wilkie Collins, in Marian Halcombe, appears to have created a character he didn't quite know what to do with or how to control. She's smart, she's sassy, she's resourceful, she's basically awesome, but he needed Walter to be in love with Laura instead, you know, for plot reasons, so it feels like he had to keep artificially hobbling Marian to keep her from becoming the main love interest. To do this he specifies that she is ugly (yes, he even goes so far as to give her a bit of a mustache) and keeps having her remind us all that she is only a woman, and what can women do? A heck of a lot, Marian, as you keep showing at every turn. Seriously, Laura's great and all, but you're the heroine of this story in my book and only the VILLAIN has the sense to see it. Yeah, you read that right, the hero is in love with bland and actually-helpless and feminine to the core Laura, while the villain has the good sense to fall madly in love with spunky Marian.  (Actually, in the not-really-faithful-at-all 1930's movie adaptation, the filmmakers DID make Marian the main love interest, kind of the same way that people can't help but tinker with Fanny Price. This was possible because in the movie Marian did not have a mustache.) 

Wilkie, your character was too good for you, and I hope you realize it. (I think you do, because you do have Walter, in his brief pauses between rhapsodizing on Laura's perfections, mention how amazing a person and what a staunch ally and good friend Marian is. And hey, she's the one he takes into his confidence when plotting! Seriously, the only thing keeping this woman from taking over the show is that tacked-on mustache. In my mind I see it kind of like a Mr. Potato Head accessory; just shoved on there as an afterthought once the author realized that he'd painted himself into the corner where his reader was naturally going to be rooting for the hero to get with the wrong girl.)

But even with these flaws, I still really enjoy this book. It's long; it's an investment and fun to curl up with knowing that you'll be taking a long journey together. And the good news is that (other than the aforementioned rhapsodizing and self-deprecation from our respective main characters), there isn't much wasted space (okay, okay, so a few of the landscape descriptions could also have been dropped). What I mean is, all the PLOT elements come back together; even what seem like throw-away bits end up being important to the story later. 

If you can get past some Victorian stereotypes, can tolerate unnecessary facial hair, and like fun mystery-type stories, I recommend The Woman in White. It's worth it, I promise. (Seriously. Just wait till you meet Fosco. He must be seen to be believed.) Four stars.

Ellie's Book #6: The Princess Bride

Yes, I'm back. The cross-country move went well but the dust is still settling so I'll be playing catch-up for a bit. 


The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
*****

This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it.

So begins one of my favorite books, The Princess Bride, by William Goldman. This book has been a source of both happiness and confusion to me since I was a young child.

I should explain. As you may have caught on, I'm a bit of a movie geek. Yeah. I'm the one who can rattle off actor resumes and Bacon scores faster than IMDb. If you don't understand a comment I just made, there's about a 75% chance that it's a quote from a movie (and an 80% chance in that case that it's a movie you've never heard of, let alone seen). I, like my father before me, stay until the end of the movie in the theater, not to see if there are any extra scenes, but to read the credits. (The advent of extra scenes, however, has really helped to convince the people with and around us not to bug us to leave early. True story: my parents were once asked to leave a movie theater. They had gone to a late showing of the Disney classic Alice in Wonderland—the real one, not that Tim Burton nonsense—and were the last people left in the theater because my dad was watching the credits. The cleaning staff just wanted to go home so they asked my parents to leave.)

But I digress.

The Princess Bride was one of the first movies I remember seeing in the theater. There was an old dollar theater near our house called The Arcade, and that's where I remember seeing such movies as The Rescuers, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp (I chose to see that for my birthday movie, probably when I was three or four, and the projector broke), The Little Mermaid and, of course, The Princess Bride. I loved that movie. When it came out on VHS my aunt got it, whereupon she was the most-requested babysitter at our house in spite of the fact that she lived nearly an hour away. One of the best days of my young life was when The Princess Bride had its network TV broadcast premiere and my dad recorded it so that now we had our own family copy (the downside was that this was the copy I was most familiar with growing up and so I was surprised when I went to college and got my own copy of the movie and there were parts in there I didn't recognize because the TV version had been edited to run in the time allotted. I made up for it, though, and three years later actually became the campus champion of Princess Bride trivia. No, I am not kidding. My prize: a Princess Bride frisbee full of gummy worms, which the event organizers called "shrieking eels." The reason I chose that prize was because I already had a copy of the movie, the book and the soundtrack, which is not surprising when you consider how I wound up knowing all that trivia in the first place).

But (coming back to the aforementioned confusion) my mom had raised a question when I was little that had always made me wonder. In the movie, when the grandfather starts reading, he says, "The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern. Chapter One." But in the credits, my mom pointed out that it says it's based on William Goldman's book. Which is the real author?

The real author, of course, is William Goldman. But his book is ostensibly "the good parts version"—that is, he's writing it as though he's abridging S. Morgenstern's longer book, just keeping the good parts and getting rid of all the boring political satire that Morgenstern supposedly stuffed into it. But it's done well enough that when I first read this book in the sixth grade (no, this isn't a children's book), I really did think there was an unabridged version floating around out there. I'm not sure how long it took me to figure out the truth, but much longer than it probably should have. (I'm guessing somewhere around my junior year of high school is when I finally accepted the fact that I would never get to read the hat-packing scenes. It's kind of like learning about Santa.)

But coming to the book itself—it is simply wonderful. The movie, excellent as it is, doesn't half do it justice. I still, to this day, am disappointed while reading the passages from the Zoo of Death because they're not in the movie and it would have been so cool to see them! And then I remember that I don't like seeing pictures or video or real life of snakes or spiders and think, well, okay, the Pit of Despair will do. But I still use the Zoo of Death passages as great examples of suspense and good writing in classes. I also love how much more back story you get with the characters (young Inigo listening to Domingo and Yeste in particular gives me the giggles), and I have to say that it's much, much easier to understand the dialogue in the movie's swordfight scene once you've read the book.

William Goldman is an excellent writer in every sense. You're probably familiar with his work even if you don't realize it—he's an amazing and successful screenwriter as well. Think Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, Misery, Maverick, and of course The Princess Bride. But this book is a marvel of creation and of construction. Everything fits seamlessly together, especially the way he uses the frame story of the abridgment and his father first reading the book to him when he was sick as a child to actually help tell the story. Writers should study this book to see how a master crafts a story.

It's come to the point where I don't know for sure which I've done more, read the book or watch the movie. But it had been a long time since my last re-read (I know because I found a ticket stub to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban tucked inside my copy when I opened it), and I needed something familiar, comforting and lighthearted-but-not-stupid after the emotional wringer that was Wintergirls. The Princess Bride did the trick very nicely, like a long conversation with an old friend, the kind where you both end up laughing so hard you can barely breathe.

All I can say is, if you have never read this book, please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy as soon as possible. It is one of the most well-crafted novels I have ever read, and it's entertaining and witty on top of it, which, really, is everything a book ought to be. Five stars.

Reflections on a Re-Read

In preparation for the film, I purchased and re-read The Hunger Games this past week, making it my eleventh read of 2012. As I'm pretty certain none of the contributors (or readers) of this blog have not read this one, I don't plan on giving it a full review.

I did want to share some of my thoughts after re-reading it, though. First, I actually enjoyed it even more this time, which surprised me. Maybe I read it way too fast the first time-- yeah, that's probably it. I took my time this go round, letting things sink in a bit more, which was really great. I still got just as drawn into the story. Collins did a phenomenal job, y'all. Some of the more emotional parts really got to me.

{Speaking of that, I am very curious how the adaptation will treat certain scenes. Definitely nervous-- I don't want to be disappointed. That said, I am not the type who gets super angry when a book-to-film adaptation diverges from the book. Seriously, folks, they are two completely different mediums. They're not perfectly transferable. I like to go into the movie with the expectation that it'll be good, but I don't hold out hope that they'll get every single scene or my favorite part ever just right. Meaning, of course, exactly how I see it in my head. Yeah. It's just not going to happen. Anyhow. I try to be cautiously optimistic. In this case, I think I may have exceeded that, mainly because every time I watch the trailer-- and see Prim get taken away and then Katniss burst through and yell, "I volunteer as tribute!"-- I tear up.}

But back to the BOOK. Right. My only other reflection is the one thing that left me kind of unsatisfied. And that is the way Katniss seems utterly unable or unwilling to see the reality of Peeta's feelings for her during the Games. Her internal monologue throughout that time was maddening to me, when she'd go along thinking "Hm, I wonder why Peeta is doing all the stuff. Surely it's not because he actually likes me!" over and over. It didn't seem very realistic. I was able to get more into why she had to pretend to be in love with him, and Haymitch's role in leading her to put on the act, but I guess I think I'd rather have had her just accept Peeta's feelings. I don't think a girl in her situation would really have been that oblivious to it the whole time. Such a small thing, but it's what I kept thinking throughout the second half of the book.

I love this book. I'm sure I'll re-read it many times in the future. Here's to the movie in 17 days!