Tag: Books

Blog Hop: Book Club Edition

On By cherylmahoneyIn Blog Hop, Ruminations5 Comments

book blogger hop

First of all, Happy Friday the 13th!  I’m definitely going to have to find something spooky to read or watch today…how appropriate that it came during the RIP challenge!

Now then, this week’s Book Blogger Hop question: Are you in a book club? How does your book club choose books? How far in advance do you choose?

I am in a book club!  Have been for…wow, about three years now, and I’m happy to say I met some of my closest friends through my book club.

How we choose our books…well, that’s a bit complicated, because it’s changed at times.  Originally, one person would volunteer to bring several options to each meeting, and we’d vote for the next month’s book.  Then we tried voting all at once for six months in advance.  That seemed like a good idea…until we ended up feeling locked into the choices for far too long.  It really wasn’t so good as new people joined, or people who had originally voted dropped out.

Then for a while one member devised and ran a very elaborate and impressive system.  It involved nominating books on Facebook and doing a five-book poll each month, randomly selecting books to vote on from the larger pool of suggestions.

That method eventually got too complicated and time-consuming…so we’ve pretty much reverted back to a more informal method of choosing books for the next month at each meeting, though there’s still some elements of nominating book ideas online.

So there you go–if you’re thinking about running a book club, there are lots of ways to do it! 🙂

Thieving Through a Mythical Landscape

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult14 Comments

ThiefI’ve read The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner at least four or five times–and I feel like I see something new every time.

The story is about Eugenides (Gen for short), who claims to be the greatest thief in the world.  It appears there is only one thing he can’t steal–himself, out of the king’s prison.  He finds his opportunity, though, when the king’s advisor, the Magus, selects Gen for a mysterious quest, with something to steal at the end.  Joined by the Magus’ two apprentices and a body guard, the party travels through three countries and a landscape rich in mythology.

Gen is a splendid protagonist, apparently a crude thief but with undertones of thoughtfulness and depth.  He also has considerable pride in his art and a healthy belief in himself.  He’s in some ways an unlikely hero–small, apt to laze and complain, and with few indications of the nobility and honor you might expect from a fantasy hero.  But as I said…there’s depth!

I don’t want to give too much away here–but Gen is also an absolutely brilliant unreliable narrator.  He doesn’t lie so much as he omits…and sometimes he tells very revealing truths, but in such a way that the reader will most likely misread them and not learn anything after all.  It’s so well-done that I’m not too worried about spoiling it, because I doubt even someone watching for it will be able to spot what’s really being said!

The Magus also develops increased depth as a character, as he and Gen come to a wary–but by no means certain–respect for one another.  I have less to say about the rest of the traveling party, but suffice to say we get them to know them all as well, and there’s generally unexpected depth going on all around…

Apart from Gen and the secret twists of the book, the best aspect is the setting–something I rarely say about a novel!  The three countries of Sounis, Eddis and Attolia are clear and distinct.  The book manages to paint the economic and trade situation for the three countries, and situate it in the picture of the larger world…none of which are things I would expect to find interesting, yet here are plot-important and easy to understand.

There’s also the mythological landscape, which adds an extra layer.  Gen and the Magis tell a few mythological stories along the journey–and eventually the gods come to have a very active role in the current story as well.  The mythology is loosely based on Greek, but not in a one-to-one kind of way.  For one thing, the head of the pantheon of gods is female!  Despite the all-male traveling party we’re with most of the book, there are some strong women in here too, goddesses and humans.

The Thief is actually the first book in a larger series…which is something I try to forget.  I know there are people who love the rest of the series just as fiercely, but I simply don’t.  I really, really tried–I read the second book TWICE.  Unfortunately, I just can’t wrap my head around some of what happens to the characters later on–and especially some choices Gen makes.  So far, I haven’t been able to bring myself to read the following books.

However–I love the first book.  Read it.  Then go get some other opinions and decide whether to read the rest.

Author’s Site: http://meganwhalenturner.org/

Other reviews:
The Flyleaf Review
Christina Reads YA
Caught Between the Pages
Anyone else?

Buy it here: The Thief

Magic in the Tanglewood Forest

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult2 Comments

Cats of Tanglewood ForestTalking cats and Charles de Lint–now how could I resist The Cats of Tanglewood Forest?  This made the rounds of the blogs I follow when it first came out, and I’ve finally jumped in to read it too.

De Lint gives us a folk lore-like story about Lillian, a girl who loves all the creatures in Tanglewood Forest–the real ones, and the ones who may be only stories.  When Lillian is bit by a deadly snake, the cats of the forest turn her into a kitten to save her life.  Lillian is offered what seems to be an easy and complete solution to her problem…but as Rumpelstiltskin would have warned her, magic always has a price, dearie.  When that price turns out to be higher than she ever imagined, Lillian must find a way to change things–even if it means she’ll go back to being a cat.

I finished this book several days ago…and I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about it.  On the one hand, I was a little disappointed to not see de Lint’s usual edge.  It was a different style than I expect from him–but it is a book for a younger audience, and the folk lore style that is here is very well done.  So that’s not really a complaint, though perhaps a warning for de Lint fans who may also have different expectations.

The plot is a little more of a problem.  Everything progresses in a reasonable fashion, but once I got to the end, I felt like the entire midsection–the bulk of the book–was really just a divergence.  That’s especially a shame because that section ends with Lillian deciding to make (what seems to me) a significant sacrifice for a loved one–and I don’t feel like de Lint gave that the emotional power it should have had.  If the midsection had been about Lillian’s growth to be able to make this huge sacrifice, great!  But it didn’t quite read that way for me.

All right, so much for cons.  On the pro side, the book moves along in a quick, easy read (so even a divergence doesn’t take long) that stays engaging.  There are a number of intriguing, folk lore characters that are fascinating to read about, from the comical Fox to the horrid Bear People to the mysterious Apple Tree Man and even more mysterious Father of Cats.  And all cats are pretty mysterious, of course!

Lillian is a likable heroine and I love her love of nature.  She’d fit in beautifully with L. M. Montgomery’s heroines, who love their wild surroundings and leave out milk for cats or for fairies.  Lillian is a little rougher around the edges, a little more hands-on than Montgomery’s heroines, but that probably improves her for a modern reader (with all due respect to Anne, Emily and the rest).

The best part of the book, though?  It’s illustrated, with gorgeous illustrations by Charles Vess.  Every chapter opens with an animal twined around the first letter, and every few pages there’s a full or half-page illustration breaking up the text.  The pictures are lovely soft water colors that give so much warmth and heart to the story.

So consider yourself warned that this is folklore, not urban fantasy, and the plot makes some strange choices…but it’s a good read anyway, and a visually beautiful book.

Other reviews:
A Reader of Fictions
Fantasy Literature
A Book Obsession
Sturdy for Common Things
The Green Man Reviews
Anyone else?

Buy it here: The Cats of Tanglewood Forest

A Trilogy of Non-Oz Oz Books

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews4 Comments

I’ve been doing a slow reread of the Oz series by L. Frank Baum, and blogging on subsets of books as I go.  If you missed them, you can read my reviews of Books 1-3 (The Welcome to Oz Trilogy) and Books 4-6 (The Aimless Journeys Trilogy).  Today, I’m skipping past Book 7 until a later grouping, and looking at Books 8-10–as I like to call them, The Non-Oz Oz Trilogy.

It’s known history that Baum didn’t really want to keep writing Oz books.  He wanted to write other magical adventures, but the public (and I assume his publisher) kept insisting they wanted Oz.  I blame this lack of interest on Baum’s part for the so-so quality of The Aimless Journeys Trilogy.  Fortunately (in my opinion) he found a different solution later in the series, by writing Oz books…that aren’t really Oz books.

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Oz 8Book 8, Tik-Tok of Oz, begins in a backwater corner of Oz with Queen Anne of Oogaboo, who decides to gather all the men in her kingdom (eighteen) and go conquer the world.  Meanwhile, Betsy Bobbin and Hank the mule are victims of a shipwreck, which lands them in the magical Rose Kingdom.  Betsy eventually meets the Shaggy Man, who is on a quest to find his lost brother.  They’re joined by Tik-Tok and Polychrome, and eventually the group meets up with Queen Anne and her party, and the whole lot of them go to confront the wicked Nome King, who is holding Shaggy’s brother captive.

The plot is made to sound more complicated than it is by the wide ensemble of characters, but apart from the difficulties of getting everyone together, it’s basically a quest story that quickly becomes an extended confrontation with the Nome King–and features a side-journey through the center of the Earth to a land of Fairies.  Random though it may be at times, I love that there is a goal, and a valid one.  Rescuing a long-lost brother is a much better focus than journeying to Ozma’s birthday party (Book 5).  The confrontation with the Nome King also presents a real villain, and one who interacts with the characters throughout the book instead of merely appearing at the end, as happens in other volumes.

I quite enjoy this installment–there are some lovely images and magic, especially in the Land of Fairies, and the Nome King is an effective villain (more so here than at other times).  Betsy is a perfectly acceptable “sweet girl heroine” (a character-type Baum used often) and I always enjoy Polychrome.

But is this an Oz book?  Well…after the first chapter, we don’t get back to Oz until the last two chapters.  Tik-Tok and the Shaggy Man are the only familiar characters who are from Oz (Polychrome isn’t).  Really it’s more of a Nome King story…with some Oz accents.

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Oz 9Book 9, The Scarecrow of Oz, is really a Trot-and-Cap’n-Bill story.  Baum wrote two previous books about little girl Trot and her sailor friend Cap’n Bill, and then decided to send them to Oz.  The two are sucked down into a whirlpool while out sailing, and find themselves trapped in a cavern.  A series of adventures gets them out of the cavern and leads them to join up with the flying Ork (one of Baum’s stranger creatures) and old friend Button Bright.

They eventually reach Oz–but land in Jinxland, which is cut off by mountains from the rest of Oz.  There they get involved with local politics, fighting King Krewl and an evil witch who stole the throne from…well, either Princess Gloria or gardener Pon, depending how you look at it.  Ozma sends the Scarecrow along to help, and to lend his name to the title.

This is one of my favorite books in the series.  I like Trot and Cap’n Bill quite a bit.  Their friendship is sweet and Cap’n Bill, with his wooden leg and past sailing life, has a little more depth than you see in most Baum characters.  They also tend to have adventures that feel genuinely hazardous.  Not too hazardous–Baum is always light and whimsical–but when they’re trapped in the cavern and low on fresh water, it feels like real danger, unlike when Dorothy fell through the earth in an earthquake (Book 4).

This book also has the benefit of one of the very few romances in Oz, between Pon and Gloria.  It’s not one of the great romances of literature…but hey, it’s there!

But like Tik-Tok of Oz, this isn’t really an Oz book.  Technically Jinxland is in Oz, but for all intents and purposes it might as well not be, meaning we don’t properly get to Oz until the last few chapters.  Really it’s a Trot-and-Cap’n-Bill book, with the Scarecrow in a guest appearance.

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Oz 10Of all the non-Oz Oz books, Rinkitink in Oz is the most strikingly non-Oz.  The story is about Prince Inga, whose tiny island country was conquered and his parents and people taken away to be slaves.  Fortunately, Inga possesses three magic pearls–one that gives great strength, another that grants invulnerability, and a third that speaks wisdom.  With his friend King Rinkitink, Inga sets off to rescue his people, running into a series of dangers along the way, and is eventually forced to confront the Nome King to rescue his parents.

Where, you ask, does Oz come into this?  Well, Baum originally wrote this as a non-Oz book, with no connection at all.  Then he changed it–and this is the one time I think the public’s preference for Oz harmed one of the books.  At the very end of the story, Dorothy shows up in a complete deus ex machina to scold the Nome King and solve all the problems.

I wish I knew what the original ending was, because the existing one is disappointing.  Inga was an effective and likable hero throughout the book, who deserved a heroic end to his story.  Instead Dorothy arrives…and all the tension leaves.  She’s blissfully confident she can handle the Nome King, she brings the Wizard along as back-up, and Ozma is keeping an eye out just in case.  This may point to one problem Baum was having writing Oz stories–he had made his characters too powerful to sustain plots.

Ending aside, Rinkitink is actually one of my favorite “Oz” books.  Prince Inga, his island kingdom, and his magic pearls are as delightful as anything going on in Oz–and like Tik-Tok, the book is driven by a real goal, Inga’s desire to rescue his family.

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Personally, I don’t mind at all if Baum wanted to give us non-Oz stories and stick Oz in the title.  I know some readers object that these books aren’t really about Oz characters (mostly) but I find the characters who are here to be just as engaging–and I can’t say I strongly miss the ones who aren’t present.

I’ve read Baum’s books that really aren’t part of the Oz series, and they tend to be very much the same–whimsical fantasies with strange creatures and kingdoms, and sweet boys or girls making their way through them.  That’s the case for the truly Oz books, and for these three too.  If you’re open to new landscapes and new characters, I find these three to be strong contributors to the series.

Other reviews:

Story Carnivores (Tik-Tok and Scarecrow)

Cavalcade of Awesome (Tik-Tok, Scarecrow and Rinkitink

Tor.com (Tik-Tok, Scarecrow and Rinkitink)

Anyone else?

Buy them here: Tik-Tok of Oz, The Scarecrow of Oz, Rinkitink in Oz

What Are You Reading, RIP Edition

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations, What Are You Reading?9 Comments

What Are You Reading RIPThis past week saw the launch of the latest reading challenge from Carl at Stainless Steep Droppings: the Readers Imbibing Peril autumn reading experience.  This one focuses on the darker side of books, like mysteries, gothic and horror.  Read my launch post here.

I expect my reading to get a bit more shadowy in coming weeks…though not so much just yet, because I have to get some of my shadowy reads from the library still!

Right now I’m midway through The Professor by Charlotte Bronte–because it’s Charlotte Bronte and I madly love Jane Eyre.  So far, I’m not quite sure if I like The Professor, but I like reading it…if that makes any sense!  There’s just something about how Bronte puts words together, and I can’t explain it beyond that.  I’m also reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain.  It’s a little heavy on the science but is still very readable and has really interesting insights, particularly about how society tends to favor the extrovert ideal…which may not be the right fit for all of us who like curling up alone with books!

Next up I plan to reread the wonderful, amazing, incredible The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, to be followed by its sequel, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There.  This, of course, is to prepare for the release of Book Three next month: The Girl Who Soared Above Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two.  I LOVE those titles!!  I’m counting these books for RIP too, with a creepy autumn scene in the first and lots of shadows in the second.

If it arrives soon enough from my library, I think I’ll read Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in between the two Fairyland books.  I’ve been wanting to read it ever since I went to Notre Dame to see Quasi’s gargoyles–and even more since reading Les Miserables.  It’s another good one for RIP too, and for my goal to read more long and intimidating books!

A Hidden Magic by Vivian Vande Velde (new) and The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs (reread) are a couple I have on my shelf that I’ve been meaning to get to–and which ought to keep me busy if I finish the others while still waiting on the rest on my library’s hold list.

Speaking of which–I’m up to #44 in line for The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman.  I was #125 when I joined the list, and it’s since grown to 266…not that I’m keeping track or anything.

So much for me!  Visit Book Journey for other What Are You Reading posts.  And…what are you reading?