The Book Challenge discussion
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Amanda's Book Challenge 2013
(1) 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami 4 starsThe taxi’s radio was tuned to a classical FM broadcast.
And so the craziness begins. Calling 1Q84 "complex" and "surreal" is an understatement if there ever was one. And of course it's also Murakami's "magnum opus". So obviously it would be a difficult thing to describe this almost 1000 page "love story", published in three parts, in which our lovers take much of those almost 1000 pages to meet for the first time in twenty years. And the craziness has only just begun.
In the year 1984, Aomame, fitness instructor/hired murderer of men who commit crimes against women, grabs a taxi, gets stuck in a traffic jam, and climbs down an emergency stairway although the driver warns her this may change the nature of reality. She eventually starts to notice things are a bit off, concludes she's living in an alternate reality, and calls this new world "1Q84". Meanwhile, writer Tengo is approached by his editor to rewrite a promising manuscript by a young author who calls herself Fuka-Eri. The book, "Air Chrysalis" is about a girl living in a commune who encounters a group of beings she calls "Little People", and over time Tengo begins to suspect these mystical events are actually more fact and fiction. Eventually, their parallel worlds begin to come closer, even more weird things happen and the big question is, will they or will they not meet one another and escape this freaky 1Q84 world so they can live happily ever after (or at least not be hunted down and killed).
Alternate realitites! Religious cults! The mysterious "Little People" who construct an air chrysalis out of threads of, well, air! Literary subterfuge! Murder by tiny ice pick! Bizarre dream sequences! An extremely unattractive private investigator! and other, weirder, stuff. This was my first Murakami experience, so I'm not sure if a tale of star-crossed lovers + a detective story + shifting realities + a ton of other fantasy elements is his usual offering. But, strange as it sounds and is, 1Q84 is an excellent hunk of writing, even if it's sometimes just a little too strange. Seriously, who can resist love that transends deminsions?
It's just that you're about to do something out of the ordinary. And after you do something like that, the everyday look of things might seem to change a little. Things may look different to you than they did before. But don't let appearances fool you. There's always only one reality.
Wasn't it better if they kept this desire to see each other hidden within them, and never actually got together? That way, there would always be hope in their hearts. That hope would be a small, yet vital flame that warmed them to their core-- a tiny flame to cup one's hands around and protect from the wind, a flame that the violent winds of reality might easily extinguish.
(2) A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks 2.5 starsWhen I was seventeen, my life changed forever.
Of the several Nicholas Sparks novels I've read this was the only one I particularly liked. Yes it's sappy and full of cliches, but it's also a passibly realistic romance, where one person, at first, found the other to be incredibly annoying. No love at first sight here.
Average high-school boy Landon has enough flaws to balance out the Preacher's daughter perfection of Jamie, who's obsession with religion annoys the crap out of him. Their completely different personalities are thrown together enough that Landon eventually sees how awesome Jamie is even though she's a dork and Jesus freak and you think they might live happily ever after and that this was actually a pretty good book until we all discover *gasp* she has leukemia and since it's like 1960 she's going to die. Enter all the sappy, cliche, annoying Nicholas Sparks bits. Still, not a bad romance to secretly like and re-read when you need a good romantic fix.
It wasn't that long, and it certainly wasn't the kind of kiss you see in movies these days, but it was wonderful in its own way, and all I can remember about the moment is that when our lips touched, I knew the memory would last forever.
"You have to promise you won't fall in love with me."
(3) The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks 1.5 starsWho am I? And how, I wonder, will this story end?
I know lots of people have an obsession with this book. But I think it's one of those instances where the movie is far better. The elderly man reading an old notebook to the wife who has lost her memory to try and bring her back for a few moments is sweet and everything, but Sparks, as usual, takes the sap to the max. The character of Noah and Allie are almost nonexistent, just vehicles for a squishy romantic backstory that is almost unbearable at times. Seriously.
I was afraid I was being a little too harsh in my assessment until I noticed others, even hardcore fans of the movie version, felt the same way. Tone it down, Sparks, tone it down.
I am nothing special, of this I am sure. I am a common man with common thoughts and I've led a common life. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten, but I've loved another with all my heart and soul, and to me, this has always been enough.
“I love you. I am who I am because of you. You are every reason, every hope, and every dream I've ever had, and no matter what happens to us in the future, everyday we are together is the greatest day of my life. I will always be yours. ”
(4) March by Geraldine Brooks 3 starsThis is what I write to her: The clouds tonight embossed the sky. A dipping sun gilded and brazed each raveling edge as if the firmament were threaded through with precious filaments.
I don't know why I don't enjoy Geraldine Brooks writing more than I do. Her style is beautiful, yet understated and although she writes historical fiction and gives a voice to, in this case, a famous character, March stands on it's own. Others obviously agree: it won the Pulitzer in 2006. Brooks gives a voice to Mr. March, the absent father in Little Women, based on Alcott's own father.
Mr. March simultaneously tells of his past, growing up poor, making his way as a traveling salesman, meeting slaves, slave owners, writers, thinkers and the woman who would become his wife, the strong tempered Marmee, while writing letters describing his Civil War experiences to his family. While there is plenty of action during his time as chaplain on a souther plantation, his struggle is foremost an internal one. It is a good book, but not a memorable one to me. To me, the most interesting voice was Marmees, and although she had far less time in the book than her husband, her story came across stronger I felt.
I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with.
(5) Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia 2.5 starsThere were only two kinds of people in our town. "The stupid and the stuck," my father had affectionately classified our neighbors.
Ah, another young adult phenomenon, this time with witches (excuse me, castors) in the place of vampires and hunger games. 17-year-old Ethan Wate is stuck in a small southern town where people are extremely narrow minded (and this is no exaggeration). Since the death of his mother he's had only his future escape to a far off college to look forward to. Until Lena Duchannes shows up, the "different" and therefore bad, niece of the town shut in. This, plus the fact he's been having dreams about her, draws Ethan to her. A few broken windows and thunder storms later and Lena confesses she's a "castor" and has only so many days before she's claimed for the "light" or the "dark" like her sexy, bad-girl, lollipop sucking cousin. So after discovering this is the result of a curse, Ethan and Lena make it their mission to, of course, break said curse so she dosn't go all sexy-bad like said cousin.
One of those books that's an entertaining read, Beautiful Creatures is solid but typical of other books of it's genre.
(6) The Round House by Louise Erdrich 5 starsSmall trees had attacked my parents' house at the foundation.
Goodreads Firstreads win, thank you to the publisher and Goodreads for the opportunity to read and review.
Narrated by 13-year-old Joe, an Ojibwe boy living on a North Dakota reservation, The Round House is part coming of age story, part fast-paced crime novel and a detailed look at modern Native American life and culture in the 1980's.
Joe's life changes the day his mother is attacked near the round house on the reservation, when she is, as we eventually learn, raped and almost murdered. He is forced to into the adult world as she slips away from her family into solitude alone in her bedroom, refusing to speak of the attack and her attacker. After helping his father, a judge, sort through a few files that may she light on her slow moving case, Joe starts to investigate on his own, with the help of his three best friends. More than a crime mystery, the novel explores life as a Native American on a reservation and the fact that although many women like Joe's mother were raped, few of the attackers were brought to justice. Erdrich introduces the reader to Ojibwe legends, incorporating magical realism into her tale with ghosts, doppelgangers and evil spirts.
We view the events that take place in The Round House through the contemporary eyes of Joe and his friends, who seek guidance from the Native American myths and practices, the Catholic church and its new preacher, Father Travis, and from the the Handbook of Federal Indian Law, which Joe's father often refers to. Togehter they get into trouble and explore more serious issues like sexuality and spirituality. The most touching aspect of the novel, for me, was the relationship betwen Joe and his best friend Cappy, who sticks with Joe when he is forced to make a difficult decision that could have serious consequences for them both. This is my first experience with Erdrich and I'm now looking forward to reading some of her other novels.
Now that I knew fear, I also knew it was not permanent. As powerful as it was, its grip on me would loosen. It would pass.
This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next.
(7) Habits of the House by Fay Weldon 2 starsGoodreads Firstreads win, thank you to the Publisher and Goodreads for the opportunity to read and review.
That this book was written by an award-winning novelist and screenwriter for us "fans of Downton Abbey" had me all excited. Habits of the House begins a three book series (the second and third of which set to come out in the spring and fall) detailing the upstairs and downstairs lives at 17 Belgrave Square in 1899. The Earl of Dilberne is facing bankruptcy after gambeling away the family fortunes and the only solution seems to be the marriage of son Arthur to an American heiress with a stain on her reputation.
Even without the comparison to Downton Abbey, Habits of the House disappoints. Downton is loved because of the strength of it's characters. The family in this novel are little more than stereotypes and dull ones at that. The daughter, Rosina, is insecure and arrogant; the son, Arthur, is interested only in himself, his cars and his whore. The Earl is like a spoiled child and his wife, Isobel, a snob. And the downstairs characters are barely even described. Only Lady's Maid Grace is given a character (and not a good one). The Downton characters too, are flawed, but at least are endearing. Did Weldon write these books just to profit from the success of the show? The story and characters are similar enough to make me think so.
(8) The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller 4 starsMy Father was a King and the son of Kings.
What Brooks does in March, Miller does in The Song of Achilles by giving us the life of Achilles as told by Patroclus, his closest friend/partner/lover. What student isn't familiar with the events in The Iliad, which is the subject of the second half of Miller's book. Yet she manages to make the story fresh with a modern voice and the humanization of the hero Achilles.
Patroclus, an exhiled Prince, is sent to the court of King Peleus as a boy, where he meets Achilles. The shame of his status, his lack of skill in battle and unpromising looks make him an unlikely companion for the son of a godess but they form a close friendship that deepens to love, despite the sea-nymph Thetis hatred of her sons choice. Then, of course, he and Patroclus are called to war. And we know what happens next. Worth reading for the description of their relationship and of the Trojan War.
“Name one hero who was happy."
I considered. Heracles went mad and killed his family; Theseus lost his bride and father; Jason's children and new wife were murdered by his old; Bellerophon killed the Chimera but was crippled by the fall from Pegasus' back.
"You can't." He was sitting up now, leaning forward.
"I can't."
"I know. They never let you be famous AND happy."
I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world.
(9) How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster 3 starsMemory. Symbol. Pattern. These are the three items that, more than any other, separate the professional reader from the rest of crowd.
Education is mostly about institutions and getting tickets stamped; learning is what we do for ourselves. When we're lucky, they go together. If I had to choose, I'd take learning.
(10) Ethan Frome and Other Short Fiction by Edith Wharton 3.5 starsI had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story (Ethan Frome)
(11) The Lives of the Muses: Nine Women and the Artists They Inspired by Francine Prose 3.5 starsThe desire to explain the mystery of inspiration, to determine who or what is the "moving cause" of art, resembles the impulse to find out a magician's secrets.
(12) Impressionist Quartet: The Intimate Genius of Manet and Morisot, Degas and Cassatt by Jeffrey Meyers 3 starsIn the last third of the nineteenth century in Paris, the Manet-Degas circle of painters, the greatest concentration of artistic genius since the Italian Renaissance, created a new way of looking at the world. Like all innovators, they had to struggle to achieve acceptance.
(13) Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void by Mary Roach 3 starsTo the rocket scientist, you are a problem. You are the most irritating piece of machinery he or she will ever have to deal with...To me, you are the best thing to happen to rocket science. The human being is the machine that makes the whole endeavor so endlessly intriguing.
The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanzee in sailor pants'
(14) Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach 3 starsIn 1968, on the Berkeley campus of the University of California, six young men took on an irregular and unprecedented act...I know only the basic facts: the six men stepped inside a metabolic chamber and remained for two days, testing meals made from dead bacteria.
“Think of it", said Robert Rosenbluth, a doctor whose acquaintance I made at the start of this book. 'No engineer could design something as multifunctional and fine tuned as an anus. To call someone an asshole is really bragging him up.”
(15) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 4 starsIn my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
There must have been moments even that afternoon when Daisy tumbled short of his dreams -- not through her own fault, but because of the colossal vitality of his illusion. It had gone beyond her, beyond everything. He had thrown himself into it with a creative passion, adding to it all the time, decking it out with every bright feather that drifted his way. No amount of fire or freshness can challenge what a man will store up in his ghostly heart.
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
(16) Me Before You by Jojo Moyes 4.5 starsThere are 158 footsteps between the bus stop and home, but it can stretch to 180 if you aren't in a hurry, like maybe if you're wearing platform shoes.
'Hey Clark', he said.'Tell me something good'. I stared out of the window at the bright-blue Swiss sky and I told him a story of two people. Two people who shouldn't have met, and who didn't like each other much when they did, but who found they were the only two people in the world who could possibly have understood each other.
(17) Ten Things We Did by Sarah Mlynowski 3 starsI bolted awake. A siren. The police were outside my house. Ready to arrest me for underage partying, excessive flirting, and an overcrowded hot tub.
No one was perfect. But we all did the best we could. I guessed you had to forgive when you could, move on when you couldn't, and love your family and friends for who they were instead of punishing them for who they weren't.
How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck chlamydia?”
(18) Dead Ever After by Charlaine Harris 3 starsThe morning after I raised my boss from the dead, I got up to find him sitting half-dressed in my backyard on my chaise lounge.
I'm Sookie Stackhouse. I belong here.
(19) Why Have Kids?: A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness by Jessica Valenti 3 starsWhether or not we have kids, are planning to have kids, are married, single or are still kids ourselves, the baseline assumption about every one of us is that one day we'll be parents.
And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.
(20) How to Behave So Your Preschooler Will, Too! by Sal Severe 4 starsMost preschooler parents believe that this stage of child rearing may be the most difficult yet the most rewarding job you will ever have.
(21) How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk by Adele Faber 4 starsI was a wonderful parent before I had children. I was an expert on why everyone else was having problems with theirs. Then I had three of my own.
(22) Trial by Fury: Internet Savagery and the Amanda Knox Case by Douglas Preston 2 starsOn November 2, 2007, in the ancient and lovely hill town of Perugia, Italy, a British girl named Meredith Kercher was found murdered in the cottage she shared with several other students.
(23) Playful Parenting byLawrence J. Cohen 4.5 starsWhen I began working as a therapist, my clients were primarily adults. We spent hour after hour talking about their childhoods, and I saw how important it was for a child to have a good connection with a parent or another adult.
(24) A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. Martin 4 starsThe night was rank with the smell of man.
'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies', said Jojen. 'The man who never reads lives only one'.
The Book Challenge
Books mentioned in this topic
Forever... (other topics)The Phantom Tollbooth (other topics)
The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (other topics)
Howl’s Moving Castle (other topics)
Anya's Ghost (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Judy Blume (other topics)Norton Juster (other topics)
Andrew Sean Greer (other topics)
Diana Wynne Jones (other topics)
Vera Brosgol (other topics)
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1) To read at least 100 books
2) To finish past reading group challenge books:
The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho 2011
The World According to Garp by John Irving 2011
On the Road by Jack Kerouac 2011
The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley 2011
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón 2012
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami 2012
The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel 2012
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman 2012
3) and to finish my 2013 challenge:
1Q84 by Haruki MurakamiJanuary 201311/22/63 by Stephen King
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
A Dance With Dragons by George R.R. MartinMay 2013World Without End by Ken Follett
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Alternates:
A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith