Obstacles
Alcott is quite the chatty narrator. He shares his every thought and emotion, often multiple times. The whole thing reads like a teenager with a thesaurus who found inspiration while on vacation in Florida. Everyone acts like a teenager, their reactions strangely amplified. People aren’t pleased; they’re ecstatic. Irritation becomes fury. Nervous becomes terrified. Everything is the most superlative it’s ever been, and everyone’s always yelling, yelping, or wailing.
In short, I think this book was published too soon: it needed to go through another few rounds of edits first.
Also posted on BookCrossing.
by Katherine Pancol: When Josephine’s husband leaves her to go start a crocodile farm in Kenya with his mistress, she finds herself scrabbling to make ends meet. Her beautiful sister Iris lies about writing a book, and rather than admitting her fib, she convinces Josephine to write a 12th century romance under Iris’s name. (Josephine is a historian who specializes in that time period.) In the meantime, there’s some drama between Josephine’s stepfather and his mistress, and Josephine’s best friend and her lover, and in the end I noticed that absolutely no one finds love within their own marriage. Despite my prudishness, though, I did enjoy this bit of light fiction. It’s a good beach read, and I felt like I even learned a little something about 12th century France.
by Neil Gaiman (unabridged audiobook read by the author; 6 hrs on 5 discs): The more I like a book, the less I have to say about it, so expect this to be short. It’s the story of a man finding his childhood was different from how he remembered it, but more than that, it’s a story of old gods and hidden spirits and all those kinds of things that Gaiman really excels at. He makes the ordinary world magical.
by Steven Johnson (unabridged audiobook read by Alan Sklar; 8.5 hrs on 7 discs): In 1854, London suffered a terrible cholera epidemic in the area around Broad Street. This is the story of its investigation, primarily by anesthetist Dr. John Snow and local curate Rev. Henry Whitehead. This took place before the germ theory of disease had really caught on, with many believing in the miasma theory – that is, that disease was caused by bad air. Snow’s assertion that cholera is a waterborne pathogen was met with heavy resistance. In addition, Snow’s map of cholera deaths was groundbreaking in the fields of information design and epidemiology. There were definitely parts of this book you don’t want to read while eating – cholera is a nasty disease and sewers aren’t exactly the most appetizing of subjects – but all in all it’s a fascinating discussion of the event and subsequent study. Books like this are my favorite mode of learning.
by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (unabridged audiobook): It took me an incredibly long time to get through this book. It starts with some bits about Hugh the Hand, an assassin saved from execution with an assignment to kill the young prince. Then there’s some stuff about revolutionary dwarves, who find a guy and his dog, recently escaped from the Labyrinth. And somehow elves are involved, and an evil wizard, and possibly some people more powerful than the evil wizard. The stories eventually intertwine, but I had difficulty figuring out what happened to whom. Reading the wikipedia summary confirmed that I hadn’t actually missed anything plotwise, but I think the main problem was that there were a lot of races and I had trouble keeping track of their individual politics and histories. The fact that several of them call each other by differing names (Dwarves vs. Gegs, for example) didn’t help either. The only reason I pushed my way through to the end is because I was told that this first book is by far the worst in the series, and once you’ve gotten past it (and the requisite backstory), the rest of the series is excellent. Let’s hope so.
by Kirsty McKay (unabridged audiobook read by Amy Shindler; 7.25 hrs on 6 discs): New girl Bobby is on a ski trip with her high school class to Scotland. Shortly after they stop at a cafe in the middle of nowhere, her classmates all turn into zombies. From there they all run for their lives, and it’s actually quite clever and funny. Bobby has typical teenage girl concerns without being obnoxious, the zombies are gross and scary without being gory, and the scenery changes more frequently than your average horror movie. The humor had me laughing out loud in places, and there were a couple moments of actual suspense. In short, I really enjoyed it, and now I want to read the sequel.
by Jeanne DuPrau (unabridged audiobook read by Wendy Dillon; 8 hrs on 7 discs): We begin not too long after City of Ember ended, with the Emberites having emerged from their underground home for the first time in many generations, and descending upon the first settlement they encounter: the village of Sparks. This tiny village cannot support these hundreds of refugees who have nothing to trade and no skills to take care of themselves, and tensions between the two groups steadily build. To be perfectly honest, I spent a good part of this book being angry at everybody. I know it’s supposed to be an allegory, but not a single person in Sparks showed any interest whatsoever in learning about Ember or its inhabitants. These people have been cut off from the rest of civilization for so long that they have never seen an animal and don’t even know what the moon is. I’d never stop asking them questions and answering theirs. Luckily, everything does eventually get resolved and I finished the story feeling more or less satisfied. I don’t think I’ll be continuing the series, however. From what I understand, the latter two books focus more on some mysterious prophecy (which is kind of annoying since part of the attraction of these books, for me, is their plausibility) and hardly feature Lina and Doon at all. This one ends in a good place, though, so I am happy to continue the story only in my imagination.
by Mark Young: Tom Kagan is haunted by the death of his young son, and to cope he throws himself into his work as a cop in the organized crime unit. His latest case involves a string of murders among Hispanic gangs in Northern California. I’m not sure what all I can say about this. It’s a cop thriller. There’s the evil gangster, the good gangster, the gangster who could be good but can’t seem to extricate himself from the gang. The main villain, Ghost, is truly scary. There were points when I honestly wasn’t sure if everybody was going to be okay. I liked Mikio, loved Garcia, and kind of wanted to punch Gato in the face a few times. In short, it was good, but not in a way that lends itself to a lengthy review. If you like cop thrillers, you’ll like this one.
by Cassandra Clare (unabridged audiobook read by Daniel Sharman; 15.5 hrs on 13 discs): And here we are at the end of the trilogy. I have thoughts and they are all disjointed, so, bottom line up front: I really enjoyed it. I found this trilogy to be far better, both in story and in mechanics, than The Mortal Instruments. The characters have far more depth, and thus are far more interesting to read about. However, I do still believe it was helpful to read The Mortal Instruments first because of how fun it was to see the origins of many things that pop up in that series.