Notes from a bibliophile

No, this is not Harry Potter, although you can almost see glimmers of the characters in this novel. It's a novel of the Dursley's world, with Dursley-ish characters. Pagford is any small town, filled with the same small-minded, petty individuals you would find in any small town in America or, evidently England. One man's sudden death sends ripples through this town that no one would have imagined. It is funny, reading these people's lives and seeing the silly things that they find so important. However, Rowling is proving herself to be a master of menacing characters. Several scenes in this novel are so atmospheric and tense, I felt uncomfortable for the characters involved. The effect is kind of jolting as the reader is catapulted from a rather benign or even amusing scene to one of despair or one with an undercurrent of threatening to boil over. Then at one point, Rowling quietly flips a switch and suddenly you see the reality of what she's writing

At the end of every year, everyone and their dog posts best-of-the-year lists, so why should I run against tradition? This is a list of every book I have read this year. Only the first and last places will be what I actually believe to be the best and worst books I've read this year. everything in between will be ranked in no particular order, except all the 5 stars will be together, etc. 5 Stars 1. The Weight of Water by Laura McHugh:   I got this as an advanced reader's copy from either a Random House giveaway or Bookreporter.com, I'm not sure which. I can't remember the last time I read a book so quickly or the last time I had to force myself to go to bed at 1:30 or 2:00 in the morning because I had to be at work in a few hours. I didn't want to put this book down. There are so many truly twisted twists and turn in the story and the author doles out nuggets of information expertly throughout so you don't feel like she's hoarding all the gol

I am not the biggest fan of James Patterson, so when I picked this book off my pile, it was mostly because I thought it would be the quickest read in my TBR pile. I'd only read one Patterson book previously; that was Against Medical Advice with Hal Friedman, a nonfiction about Friedman's son's struggle with sever Tourette's and OCD. Patterson has a strange structure to his books that annoys me. His chapters are so short - some starting half-way down one page and ending half-way down the next. It creates a really staccato feel and is very nonsensical, especially when the next chapter is merely an extension of the one before it. Maybe it's the old ad-man in him. So it was with trepidation that I cracked open the book, knowing that annoyance was lying in wait for me. And I was annoyed...for maybe the first 10 or so chapter-ettes. Then I just stopped caring about the chapters and got lost in the story. This is the 11th Alex Cross novel. If you've never read any

Meet Marc Bowman. He is an analyst at a company called AmeriTel, or at least he was, but he gets fired as the book begins. This sets off a dizzying spiral of events that have Marc running around at a break-neck speed. The plot is very intricately woven an so twisty-turny you have no idea who the good guys are. But that is obviously what Marc is feeling too, and being able to identify with the main characters is what makes a good novel. I did have some reservations, though. The beginning, where Marc is talking about his job, gets so jargony I felt kind of dazed. There's a bit about Lichtenstein, which I suppose is meant to make you understand the depth of his love for his original painting Marc bought and displayed in his office. It was a bit over-much, though. It's a mystery, not an art treatise, so it felt strangely misplaced. Then there is the art gallery owner, Troye. I honestly saw very little point in this character at all. I suppose he was an example of how people aren&

This was a Borders Classic bargain book set. I love young adult and kids books. I remember when I was a kid, every Christmas The Wizard of Oz was on TV. I honestly can't remember if I've seen the thing all the way through or not. I know the story, though, and so I thought I'd read the books. This is definitely NOT the way to read them, though. The stories get more and more tedious as you keep reading. Baum inexplicably gives Dorothy some sort of speech impediment that keeps her from pronouncing all the syllables of words. The puns get worse and worse. You get the sense that even Baum wants desperately to stop writing, but I guess as part of his deal with Satan, he doesn't. Every book starts with how he wasn't going to write any more, but "the children" begged him. Even when he told them it was impossible for Dorothy to tell him any more of her stories, "the children" found a way around the problem. I began to suspect "the children" to b

It soothes my soul to read a favorite author writing a beloved character. For a few moths now I have been slogging through a couple of tedious books, promising myself that as soon as I finished one I could start the new Lady Emily mystery. As I finally read the first line, I could feel something in me relax. It was as if I was suddenly curled up in a soft blanket in a comfy chair by a crackling fireside with a mug of hot chocolate in one hand and a purring kitten in my lap. I felt like I was home again. This is the ninth Lady Emily novel and it's still as fresh as the first. In this one she and her husband, Colin Hargreaves, investigate the murder of a young woman who was impersonating an eccentric Frenchwoman who was known for traveling the world. All the novels have a delightful wit about them. The barbs Emily reserves for her mother, a very traditional Victorian woman, are excellent. The novels take place in lovely locales, which seem painstakingly researched by the author. Th

Have you ever wondered if the people who write the blurbs on the back of the book read the same book you are reading? This one said I would be laughing out loud. Here are several reasons why this novel didn't even elicit so much as a mild chuckle. First, I am a grammar nerd; I want my books to be grammatically correct. However, there are two exceptions to this rule: 1) When it's used to illustrate character. I'll admit it, I'm a sloppy speaker. There's just so many subjects, verbs, objects, contractions, consonants, vowels, diphthongs - and when you're from East Texas like I am, there are about 500 more acceptable diphthongs than in the rest of the English-speaking world. It's just a matter of expediency. Let's say you and I are kicking back, drinking a couple of margaritas, having a bit of a chat. I hardly expect either of us to be fastidious in the grammar department, especially when the margaritas have been flowing for a while. So the way a chara

Any good bibliophile understands that your favorite books say something about you. So as a (somewhat belated) introduction to myself, I want to talk about some of my favorite books. Some of these really touched me and some kept me up all night, but all of them make me who I am. 1. Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig . I remember this like it was yesterday. I had this little set that was the book and an audio book that had this lovely little tune that played over it, so ephemeral and magical. I now know that it was Camille Saint-Saens "The Aquarium." It added such a lovely quality to the reading experience. The story itself is about being careful about what you do or say because you have to face the consequences. I wish I knew where to find this original set because this is one of the best memories of my childhood. 2. The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss. Oh, those Star-Bellied Sneetches! Every Sneetch wants a star on their bellies and the ones that have stars are s

I have always loved mythology. One of my favorite papers that I wrote in college was comparing different gods and goddesses of different cultures to the classic Greek and Roman gods and goddesses that almost everyone is aware of. Needless to say, all of Riordan's mythology tales, whether Greek, Roman, or Egyptian. I don't know whether to hope for a new series about a new culture (Norse is just ripe for the picking) or if I want a new series incorporating all the cultures that have been written about so far. In this novel, the Greek & Roman heroes - Annabeth, Percy, Jason, Leo, Frank, Hazel, Nico, and Reyna - are trying to get the Athena Parthenos statue back to the Greek Camp Half-Blood in order to stop both a Roman/Greek smackdown and the earth goddess Gaea from rising and destroying all creation. Of course all will end well, but it also seems incomplete. This is supposedly the last book in the series, but it came as a surprise to me. Perhaps it's a lead-in to anothe

"People tell boring lies about politics, God, and love. You know everything you need to know about a person from the answer to the question, What is your favorite book?" Oh, how true! This is almost a love letter to the bookselling profession. There are so many things that only a bookseller or librarian will appreciate. The story itself is a bit maudlin, though. A curmudgeonly bookseller whose wife has recently died is approached by the new publishers rep pushing a book written by an old man whose wife has recently died. Later he finds someone has abandoned a child in his bookstore. This is the beginning of a life. It has a few twists I did not foresee, and that is always pleasant. There's a sort of Tuesdays with Morrie kind of feel to it, but it is still really enjoyable. One last quote that is oh-so-true: "The things we respond to at twenty are not necessarily the same things we will respond to at forty and vice versa. This is true in books and also in life.&

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of this. I want to start with a quote from the book: "Folded into remembrance is the knowledge of all that cannot be recalled: I realized that when my grandparents passed away, I would carry within me not only the memory of them but the memory of their memories, on and on over the horizon of being, back to the tohu-bohu before the waters parted." I love this quote. It's lovely and seems to encompass the whole world. I love the thought that we inherit a past from our ancestors. Plus it's a great intro into what this book is about. To say an antagonism existed between Moullot's grandparents would be an understatement. They met right before the beginning of World War II. Being Jewish, they fled south from the occupied north of France before escaping to Switzerland. The story of their escape is really harrowing. In truth they spent very little time together. At one point they separated - the why of it is never really re

Yesterday I tried to listen to the audiobook of The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. I love audiobooks for so many reasons. First, I spend a lot of time in a tiny room doing mind-numbingly tedious work. Having something - anything - to make the time pass is absolutely necessary. Second, it makes reading longer books much easier. I've never read any Eco, although The Name of the Rose has been on my to-read list forever. Something about him seems intimidating, like Tolstoy ( War and Peace has conquered me numerous times). I thought this would be an easier way around my fear. I couldn't get past what must have been the first dozen or so pages. It was just a litany of racial stereotypes of different European nationalities. It was just too "talky" - nothing happening, just haranguing the Jews, the Germans, the French, the Italians, until I finally gave up. Perhaps this is just one of those books that you have to give your absolute full attention to. Either have it going

This is the sequel to The 5th Wave . In this series, an alien society has decided to take over the earth. As this novel states repeatedly, they could have just hurled a rock at us, like the asteroid that took out most of life on the planet eons ago, and wiped us out like that. Instead, they kill us by killing our humanity. A plague takes out most people, turning them into delirious shells who don't recognize their own families. The survivors are forced to leave their loved ones in order to save themselves, a quality we generally lack. A few aliens have been "downloaded" into particular humans, only to be activated in their teens to who they really are. These few become killing machines, attempting to wipe out the real humans. So now, in a world where humans are becoming scarcer by the second, the human facing you could be the author of your demise. They kill our trust in the familiar, which is fed by our need for society. We want desperately to be around others but can yo

I missed the whole Goosebumps phase. This is the first thing I've ever read by RL Stine. It's an odd little book, too. A writer is faced with writing his second book. His agent is pushing for a sequel, but he wants to branch out on his own. But things spiral quickly into bizarre tangents and it has a pretty interesting little twist at the end. My only complaint is that the grammarian in me was annoyed by all the sentence fragments, but the reader in me understands that it increases the urgency in the atmosphere of the story. But, dude, subjects, please!

I finally finished something! Sure it’s only 88 pages, but a book is a book. This story is about Liam Everett, a preacher’s son, who finds out that his father was into some rather nefarious bookish dealings. It’s a pretty entertaining little read, but you never find the point of the underhandedness. I mean what’s the point of being bad if you don’t benefit from it? It didn’t really bother me at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I find it frustrating. But this makes me wonder; there are many stories out there where the ending is left up to the imagination. Is that infuriating? Freeing? A bit of both? I suppose that does leave readers a lot to discuss, as long as more than one person actually reads the book. And even if this was part of the book of the month read, there just isn’t much to discuss. However, the mission of this story has been fulfilled. I think I may check out some other novels by Bradford Morrow and see if they have the same ambiguity to them, but