Tag Archives: fiction

The Taking by Dean Koontz

Posted by melydia on January 3, 2010 3 comments

The Taking by Dean Koontz: Um, wow. This was really terrible. I have no idea why I finished it. Basically, there’s a bunch of sparkling rain and people start seeing weird stuff in mirrors, and everybody immediately assumes that it signals an alien invasion. They’re right, which saves a bunch of time, but I’m still not sure how they knew. The prose is a solid shade of purple, people suspiciously quote T.S. Eliot, and dolls get possessed. And because this is a Koontz novel, there are magical dogs, questionable science, preachy theology, and a serial killer. I saw the “twist” ending a mile away, but thought “No, that would be too silly, even for Koontz” – and was of course completely wrong. Clearly nothing is too silly for Koontz. I’ve liked several of his other books, but this was simply awful.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman

Posted by melydia on December 14, 2009 None comments

The Geographer’s Library by Jon Fasman: Paul Tomm is a smart but somewhat aimless college grad who lands a reporter job at a weekly newspaper in the tiny town of Lincoln, Connecticut. When a professor from his alma mater dies, he is assigned the obituary, but soon finds that there is more to this quiet professor than meets the eye. Soon he is swept up in an unusual tale of murder, greed, and alchemy. A collection of alchemical objects are described in alternating chapters, and their sordid histories are almost as engaging as the main plot. And while the story itself was a very enjoyable read, what really drew me in was my empathy with Paul. His observations and reactions are so familiar to me. It really helped me feel like part of the story. I’ll definitely be on the lookout for Fasman’s other works.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

Posted by melydia on December 8, 2009 None comments

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell: Spent much of the book having absolutely no idea what’s going on. But that’s okay. Basically it’s a series of interconnected stories that go through the diary of an American man in Australia in the 1850s, a British musician in the 1930s, a mystery-solving American journalist in the 1970s, an elderly British publisher in the present day, a clone on trial in nearish-future Korea, a goat herder in post-apocalyptic Hawaii, and back again. I’d hoped there would be a little more connection between the stories – more on the comet-shaped birthmark, for example – but that was not to be. It also got a little preachy in places. My favorite was probably the elderly British publisher who gets committed to an old folks’ home against his will. All in all it’s a decent read, but far too long for the amount of interest it held for me. Which sounds about like how I felt about the other Mitchell book I’ve read, Ghostwritten: great characters, probably could use a reread, but if you prefer less convoluted tales, you might want to skip this one.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire

Posted by melydia on December 3, 2009 3 comments

The Next Queen of Heaven by Gregory Maguire: While I was reading this, I was really enjoying it, but now that I look back, I can’t quite figure out what it was trying to do. There’s a lot of humor and a fair bit of tragedy, but not a whole lot of story. A woman goes mad when she gets clonked on the head by a statue of the Virgin Mary. A trio of gay men befriend a gaggle of elderly nuns. A teenage girl is self-righteously angry but also rather hilariously dumb. A man with HIV gets ill. People mistreat each other. A man is hopelessly obsessed with his married ex. But when the story ends, nothing’s really all that different from when we started. I guess you can assume that everybody gets over their issues and and turns over a new leaf, but who can tell?

On the bright side, Maguire doesn’t trot out the thesaurus quite so often as he does in his fairy tale retellings (Wicked, et al), which made for a less frustrating read. All in all, it’s not bad for a free book, but not something I’d want to read again. I like books that tell a story, and I felt like one wasn’t really told here. I can deal with the open-endedness, but I finished this feeling more like the plot was simply set up and then left as an exercise for the reader.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Fire by Katherine Neville

Posted by melydia on November 25, 2009 None comments

The Fire by Katherine Neville: The long-awaited sequel to Neville’s excellent debut novel, The Eight, and it’s pretty meh. I admit I probably did not come into this in the best mindset: The Eight is just so good, it’s hard not to expect The Fire to be just as engrossing. Then again, it didn’t help that one of my favorite characters was killed off in the freaking prologue either. Anyway, the gist of this story is that The Game has been restarted thirty years after the events in The Eight – both in the present (Alexandria, daughter of Cat and Solarin) and past (Mirielle’s son Charlot) timelines. There’s a lot of random people involved, a lot of talk about Original Instructions which may or may not refer to sexual intercourse, loads of obscure chess references that don’t make a whole lot of sense, and very few loose ends tied up. I was quite clear on the purpose of the Montglane Service at the end of The Eight; now I have no idea. The inevitable love story between the narrator and the mysterious foreigner was all too predictable. The twist ending left me with a bad taste in my mouth, it was so contrived. All in all, just not a very good book. I kept reading, hoping things would pick up, but they never did. Alas.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman

Posted by melydia on October 20, 2009 None comments

My Latest Grievance by Elinor Lipman: 16-year-old Frederica Hatch lives in a tiny on-campus apartment with her professor parents who double as dorm-parents at a small women’s college near Boston. As the daughter of a sociologist and a psychologist, both die-hard unionists, not to mention being raised around hundreds of college girls, Frederica is a little different from most girls her age. Things start to get interesting when melodramatic Rockette-wannabe Laura Lee French shows up as dorm mother for another building. She is not only eccentric but also the first wife of Frederica’s father, a woman Frederica didn’t even know existed mere weeks before. I was reminded a bit of Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl, but I suspect that has more to do with the protagonist being the daughter of a college professor than anything else. The story is funny and a little silly. I got a kick out of it. I particularly enjoyed the bitter and sarcastic Marietta.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

Posted by melydia on October 18, 2009 None comments

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman (unabridged audiobook read by the author): Haunting and atmospheric as usual; whenever I read any of Gaiman’s stories I immediately wish I could visit whatever location he describes. No matter how desolate or bland, he always manages to fill it with a sense of wonder and beauty. I wasn’t, however, quite so impressed with the story-poems, which struck me more like prose with awkwardly placed line breaks. I also wish I’d known so many of the stories would be from collections devoted to authors I’ve never read, such as H.P. Lovecraft. But that’s okay. Maybe someday, after I’ve read some of those stories, I’ll come back and reread these. Speaking of rereading, the final two stories, “Murder Mysteries” and “Snow, Glass, Apples”, I’d heard before on Two Plays for Voices. They’re much easier to follow in prose form. All in all, I think I prefer the other Gaiman I’ve read.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Stranger by Albert Camus

Posted by melydia on October 13, 2009 None comments

The Stranger by Albert Camus: This is not a good choice for audio. First off, it was four discs but only took up about two and a half (the rest was some talk on existentialism I didn’t listen to), meaning that George Guidall said “the end” almost two hours before I was expecting him to. Luckily, I had a paper copy so I reread the last few pivotal pages of the story. I could sum up the story but that’s not really the point. There’s a guy and a murder and lots of absurdity. By and large I think I enjoyed it, though it was quite slow to start. I probably would have appreciated it more as a student, with a teacher there to tell me when to pay attention. Perhaps I’ll read it again someday.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides

Posted by melydia on October 9, 2009 None comments

The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides: I picked this one up because I loved Eugenides’s other book, Middlesex. It certainly doesn’t have the scope of its successor, but it was a decent read nonetheless. The story takes place in 1970s Detroit. Though its focus is the five teenage Lisbon sisters who all commit suicide in the span of one year, the actual subjects are the teenage boys in the neighborhood who are obsessed with them. The narrative is in the unexpected first person plural, which actually works quite well in this instance. I’m having trouble summing up my thoughts; the story was interesting but didn’t really go anywhere. You only get to know the characters – even the boys – on the surface, never delving more deeply into motivation or real emotion. It’s a sad tale, and I enjoyed it on that level, but at the end I felt the same as at the beginning: a little puzzled, a little sad, a little apathetic.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

Posted by melydia on October 4, 2009 None comments

The Hours by Michael Cunningham: Sometimes I wish books came with reading prerequisites listed on the cover. There are very few novels with which one can assume the average person will be familiar. In The Hours, I suspect it would have been rather helpful to have first read Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. Or be, you know, at all familiar with Woolf in the first place. Not that a quick skim of the Wikipedia plot summary wasn’t enough for me to understand the story, but I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it were I able to pick up on the subtle references to Woolf’s characters. All in all, I wasn’t too impressed with this one. It wasn’t bad; it just didn’t really pull me in at all. I didn’t care much about the characters, the depressing bits felt meaningless, and the introspection was nothing I hadn’t heard before. I suspect I might enjoy a Cunningham novel not based on another book. I’m just not sure I’ll ever get around to picking one up.

Also posted on BookCrossing.

© 2010-2025 kate weber All Rights Reserved -- Copyright notice by Blog Copyright