Tag: Books

2011 Reading Challenges – Update

On By cherylmahoneyIn Ruminations6 Comments

It’s just past the end of March–we’re about a quarter of the way into 2011, and it seems like a good time to update on my reading challenges.  Any links will take you to my review of the book.  Some of these may get reviews later on, I just haven’t got to them yet!

I decided not to count rereads, except for the library challenge; I’ve still listed relevant rereads, because I thought people might be interested (especially for the fairy tales retold and the classics), but they’re denoted with an R rather than a number in the list.

Here’s what I’ve read so far:

Hosted by A Few More Pages.  Goal: “Series Expert,” read 12 books that are first in a series.  I don’t know exactly what defines a series, but I’ve decided a minimum of three books.

R) Sarah’s Story by Ruth Elwin Harris

R) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis (first by one numbering theory!)

1) Foundation by Isaac Asimov

2) The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Boston

3) The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

4) The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig (really it’s a review of a later book in the series, but I mention this one too)

5) The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

 

StilettoStorytime

Hosted by Stiletto Storytime.  Goal: read fifteen “classic” books (and I have it direct from the organizer that sci fi and children’s count!)

R) The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis

1) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

2) Foundation by Isaac Asimov

3) Trilby by George du Maurier

4) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

5) The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

 

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Hosted by Among the Muses.  Goal: Enchanted level, read 6-9 books that are inspired in some way by fairy tales.

R) Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley (Sleeping Beauty)

R) Beauty by Robin McKinley (Beauty and the Beast)

1) Ice by Sarah Beth Durst (Cupid and Psyche / East of the Sun)

2) The Rose Bride by Nancy Holder (The White Bride and the Black Bride–it’s in Grimm)

3) Castle Waiting by Linda Medley (Sleeping Beauty)

R) The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde (Rumpelstiltskin)

4) Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde (Little Red Riding Hood)

5) Straw into Gold by Gary D. Schmidt (Rumpelstiltskin)

 

Hosted by Home Girl’s Book Blog. Goal: read 100 books from the library.

1) Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier

2) Palace of Mirrors by Margaret Peterson Haddix

3) Spindle’s End by Robin McKinley

4) Looking for Marco Polo by Alan Armstrong

5) Stolen by Vivian Vande Velde

6) Enter Three Witches by Caroline B. Cooney

7) The Blue Shoe by Roderick Townley

8 ) Skating Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

9) Beauty by Robin McKinley

10) The Twisted Window by Lois Duncan

11) Ice by Sarah Beth Durst

12) Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson

13) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen

14) Golden and Grey: A Good Day for Haunting by Louise Arnold

15) The Rose Bride by Nancy Holder

16) Castle Waiting by Linda Medley

17) The Rumpelstiltskin Problem by Vivian Vande Velde

18) The Umbrella Man and other stories by Roald Dahl

19) Familiar and Haunting by Philippa Pearce

20) The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig

21) The Girl with the Silver Eyes by Willo Davis Roberts

22) The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Boston

23) The Gun Seller by Hugh Laurie

24) Cloaked in Red by Vivian Vande Velde

25) Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones

26) Little Sister by Kara Dalkey

27) The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett

28) Straw into Gold by Gary D. Schmidt

29) The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig

30) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

31) The Heavenward Path by Kara Dalkey

Obviously I’ve been focusing a bit on the Fairy Tales Retold… 

The library one, I must admit, I viewed as almost a non-challenge, since my regular pattern of reading is to go to the library.  This could be more difficult than I thought though, going forward.  I’m fine on numbers right now, but I have somehow managed to pick up a good dozen never-read-before books in the last month or so.  I don’t know how it happened, I never buy unread books!  But I had the chance to buy some super cheap classics, and then my book club had a book swap (free books!) and now I have a whole stack of non-library books to read…so we’ll see how that turns out going farther into the year.

The First in a Series Challenge was worrying me a bit through February, which may be why I jumped farther ahead with it in March, adding 3, 4 and 5 in the last couple of weeks.  I had felt like I wasn’t getting to the point of the challenge yet, to find new series (what’s the plural?  Serieses?) to read.  But I want to read the books that follow The Wee Free Men, and I’m completely mad about The Pink Carnation series.  I’ll probably read the rest of the Foundation series too, although I originally read that one thinking more about the Classics challenge.  And I didn’t realize The Eyre Affair was part of a series until I got to the end and found the part about the author’s other books.  Undecided yet whether I’ll pick any up.

The Classics challenge is the one I think will require the most concentration–in picking up the books, I mean, not necessarily in reading them (thought that could be true too).  I find Dickens more intimidating than, say, Robin McKinley.  I’ve been on good momentum for the classics in the last month, but I don’t know how long that will last…

So far I’m really enjoying all the challenges.  It gives me a nice feeling of accomplishment when I finish a book that can go on a list.  It’s also giving me incentive to seek out certain kinds of books…and since I love retold fairy tales and have been wanting to read more classics, it’s made for good reading!

A Shy Heroine, and a Hero Named for a Vegetable

On By cherylmahoneyIn Historical Fiction, Reviews2 Comments

I had The Mischief of the Mistletoe by Lauren Willig on reserve at the library since before Christmas.  I added it when I saw it on a list of Christmas novels, and decided I wanted to read a good Christmas story.  Apparently other people had the same idea, and it didn’t reach me until mid-February.  But I’m so glad I didn’t decide to cancel my hold on December 26th, or even after Epiphany, when Christmas stories stopped really feeling appropriate.  For one thing, this wasn’t that strongly a Christmas story.  And more importantly, it was excellent!

The book is set in Regency England, what I can only think of as Jane Austen’s England.  Jane herself is in the book as a supporting character, as the sympathetic friend of the heroine, Arabella.  Arabella is the lead character of the book, but has clearly been a supporting character all her life.  A shy, unassuming wallflower, she’s the one at the party whose name no one can remember.  I have a soft spot for characters who think they’re unimportant.  I love watching them discover their inner depths and come into their own, and I loved watching Arabella find new strength and confidence.  Here we have the extra bonus of watching the other lead, Turnip, also discover Arabella’s value.

Reginald “Turnip” Fitzhugh…where to begin?  The name, I suppose.  I can’t tell you how much I love it that the hero has a vegetable for a nickname.  And not even a tough vegetable (I don’t know what vegetable would be tough–asparagus spears, maybe?–but I’m pretty sure turnips are not the heavyweight champions of the vegetable world).  It fits him–and he’s a wonderful character!  Endlessly well-meaning, charming and gallant, not a brilliant intellect, capable of throwing a punch when the situation calls for it, but not really all that good at derring-do and dashing exploits, frequently bumbling, very thoughtful, addicted to outlandish waistcoats.  Somehow, it works so well and is so much fun.  I love dashing heroes, but this time I really enjoyed a hero who stumbles more than he dashes–but rushes forward anyway, well-intentioned and grinning.

So you can check off the first requirement for a good book–great characters.  If you couldn’t tell already, lots of good humor too.  Occasionally this book tries a little too hard to be witty, especially in the dialogue, but most of the time it succeeds.  Third, we’re given a very sweet romance.  So, check, check, and check!

Fourth, there’s an engaging plot as well.  If it had been up to me to name this, I would have called it The Puzzle of the Pudding (to keep some nice alliteration).  Mistletoe barely features, while the plot is mostly set in motion when Arabella and Turnip discover a hidden message in the wrapping of a Christmas pudding.  This launches a series of intrigues and efforts to uncover the truth, which kept me and the characters guessing until the end about whether they were dealing with international spies and a threat to England’s security,  or with pranks among schoolgirls–or both.  Turnip staunchly believed the former, while Arabella mostly leaned towards the latter.

It turns out that this is actually Book Six, in the Pink Carnation series.  The Pink Carnation is England’s most elusive spy (in the style of the Scarlet Pimpernel).  As near as I can tell from reading plot summaries, the books are all set in the same social circles, but focus on different characters.  It’s obviously possible to start with the Mistletoe and enjoy it, since I did!  I probably missed a few things, but I don’t think it seriously impacted my reading. 

I read The Secret History of the Pink Carnation afterwards (it came much more quickly at the library) and enjoyed it as well–not quite as much, as I liked Turnip, Arabella and their romance better.  Good enough that I will definitely go on to the rest of the series though!  And if you go look up a plot description for the first book, every one I’ve read has been wildly misleading–it looks like it’s about a modern-day character doing historical research, and it is, but she’s only a very small part and most of the book is set in the past.

Since I normally review young adult books, one note I should make: this series is in the grown-up section, and while Mischief of the Mistletoe has a discreet,  Austenish feel that I think keeps it appropriate for younger readers, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation is not so discreet.  Fair warning given.

The Mischief in the Mistletoe was dedicated in part to “everyone who asked for a book about Turnip.”  I completely understand where those requests came from.  If I do a round-up of favorite characters met in 2011 at the end of the year, I expect Arabella and Turnip to be strong contenders.

Author’s Site: http://www.laurenwillig.com/index.php

Chasing After Ghost Children

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

I wanted to like The Children of Green Knowe by L. M. Boston.  It’s usually not a good sign when a review begins that way, is it?  You see, I saw it reviewed on a blog I follow, and it sounded intriguing.  Well…while I still respect that blogger’s opinion 🙂 I won’t be adding this to my list of favorite British children’s fantasy classics (a long list I ought to post some time!)

The book is about Tolly, a little boy who goes to live with his great-grandmother at his family’s ancestral home, a castle called Green Knowe (or Green Noah).  His great-grandmother tells him stories about his ancestors who lived in the house, especially three long-ago children, Toby, Alexander and Linnet.  Tolly quickly realizes that the children are still at Green Knowe, as ghosts.

I really like the concept, and I liked the setting.  I loved one small bit, when Tolly first meets his great-grandmother, and she’s eager to see who in the family’s past he’ll resemble–because all the faces return to her eventually.  I rather enjoyed the family stories the grandmother told.

But Tolly’s story fell pretty flat for me.  It might have helped if I had known his age sooner.  I finally figured out most of the way through that he’s six or thereabouts, when he comments that six-year-old Linnett is as big as he is.  Prior to that, he seemed sometimes older, sometimes younger, making his more childish moments disconcerting.  For that, and in a general way, it was hard to get a handle on the character.

But my bigger problem was the ghost children.  They seemed to have no depth at all.  They’re not creepy, scary ghosts; they’re not ghosts with unfinished business; they’re not ghosts who need something from the living, or even who want to do something for the living.  They’re perfect paragons who never struggle.  Gail Carson Levine, on her blog, often writes about the importance of making your characters suffer sometimes, and these characters never do.  They simply wander through the book as happy ghosts who spend all their time playing.  Their favorite game seems to be hide and seek, which doesn’t even facilitate getting to know someone.  Even when they make themselves more available, I never felt that Tolly or I could really enter a friendship with them.  I don’t think Tolly saw it, but they seemed to me to be just too self-sufficient unto themselves.  They were friendly to Tolly, but they never seemed particularly interested in him either, simply taking him for granted as a new playfellow, if they felt like playing.

And the animals.  You know that scene in the Disney Snow White when she makes friends with the entire forest?  It was like that.  The ghost children have a horse, and a deer, and a fox, and a rabbit, and a fish, and a hedgehog, and a whole flock of birds, including a peacock, and possibly one or two other animals I’m forgetting.  It was a bit much.

It may be that I came to this book too late in life.  If I had picked this up as a child, maybe I wouldn’t have seen some of the character issues, and to be honest I probably would have thought the menagerie was neat.  But I had trouble coming to this book at an older age.  My apologies if I’m pulling apart a beloved childhood favorite of anyone else–and by all means, tell me what you love about it that I managed to miss!

RIP Diana Wynne Jones

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews7 Comments

I saw yesterday on a blog I follow that Diana Wynne Jones died this past weekend.  For those familiar with children’s literature, you probably know the name already.  For those not, I’ve heard her described as “the queen of British children’s fantasy.”  She was an incredible and prolific author–I’ve read more than twenty of her books, and they are truly excellent.  If I’m browsing at the library and not turning up much, I’ll often wander over to her shelf.  There aren’t many authors I do that with, and she’s probably the most reliable that I’ll find something sitting there I want to take home with me.  She was still publishing–with one more due out later in this year–and it’s a wrench to realize there will be no more new books.  She’s an author I will definitely miss.

By weird coincidence, I already had a review of one of her books planned for this week.  It now seems especially appropriate.

Witch Week was the first book I ever read by Diana Wynne Jones, and I read it long before I discovered her as an author.  I read it when I was young enough to not know who Guy Fawkes was when he came up (more reading of British classics solved that gap in my knowledge!)  Years later I happened across another Diana Wynne Jones book–though now I can’t remember which–and started searching for her others, thinking I had found a wonderful new author.  And she is wonderful–but not so new, as I discovered that I had already read Witch Week.  Which only leaves me to wonder why I hadn’t looked for more of her books earlier!

Witch Week is set in a world very like our own, except that some people have magic–and witches are routinely burned at the stake.  The story occurs at a boarding school, where an accusation has been made that someone in a class is a witch.

Laying out the plot makes it sound all very dark and grim, like The Crucible, perhaps.  But that’s not how it is at all.  There are a few serious moments, but the book is a comedy.  The boarding school does create a more bleak backdrop than most of Diana Wynne Jones’ books (which tend to be set in a quaint village or a lordly manor or some truly fantastical other world), but the plot is predominantly funny.

Various students discover throughout the book that they have magic, but that doesn’t mean they’re experts at using their new powers.  Riding a broomstick involves a lot of scrambling to stay on it, and arguments with the broom about where to go.  Casting a spell to summon a missing pair of shoes brings every shoe in the school raining down–thousands and thousands of shoes.  Using magic usually has funny results–and the suspense is kept up because it could have tragic results too.

Witch Week is part of the Crestomanci series, about Crestomanci the nine-lived enchanter, who keeps magic in order across many worlds.  It’s more independent than most of the books in the series though–he only has a supporting role.  And obviously I never realized it was a series the first time I read it.

Witch Week is not a bad place to start with Diana Wynne Jones.  Charmed Life is actually the first of the Crestomanci series, so you might be better served starting there.  Or you could begin with one of her independent ones–a particular favorite of mine is A Tale of Time City.  But whatever you pick up, you’re not likely to go too far wrong.  In all those books I’ve read by her, since the days when I just read Witch Week, though of course I liked some better than others, I think I can pretty well recommend them all.

Author’s site: http://www.dianawynnejones.com/dwjflash.htm

Official fansite: http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/

When Fairy Tale Retelling Fails

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Juvenile, Reviews1 Comment

As you know if you visit here regularly, I love retold fairy tales.  But…not always.  Unfortunately, including fairy tale elements is not a guarantee of a high quality book (just a usually promising sign).  Towards the end of last year, I read a book that made this abundantly clear: The Frog Princess, by E. D. Baker.

On Monday, I mentioned that I could name lots of characters from Patricia C. Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles.  As for The Frog Princess…I can’t think of a single name.  Granted, I only read it once and it was a few months ago…but I don’t think it’s entirely me.

Illustration from "The Frog Prince." Emma's not this pretty.

The princess (I’ll look up her name to make this easier to describe–Emma) is one of a big crop of ordinary princesses who seem to turn up in books often.  She’s not pretty enough and she trips and she doesn’t like dancing.  Without trying, I can think of three other books with princesses like that (plus one Cinderella), and most of them have more going on to make the heroines interesting.  Cimorene, from Enchanted Forest, doesn’t like her princess lessons, so she bullies various people at the castle to teach her other things, like cooking and fencing and sorcery.  That’s interesting.  I’m not sure what Emma does, other than irritate her mother and run off to the swamp sometimes.

In the swamp, she meets a talking frog who claims to be a prince.  After a lot of balking about kissing him (by the way–he’s a talking frog and all he wants is for you to kiss him so he can be human again–just do it, it’s not asking that much and what’s the worst that could happen?) she goes ahead and does.  Only to turn into a frog herself (okay, I guess bad things could happen).  Sound a lot like the Disney movie?  I’m not sure the precise connection, but at least some editions of this have a label saying it’s the inspiration for the movie, so they must have bought rights or something.

Unfortunately, the book only had the one good idea.  Disney, wisely, used that single idea and nothing else.  Emma and the frog (Eadric, I looked him up too) go off to find the witch who enchanted him, and have a series of adventures along the way.  Which is all well and good, but kind of like Emma doesn’t stand out at all as an ordinary princess, the adventures and the world they’re in don’t stand out either.  There was nothing at all distinctive about it.  I’m not looking for Tolkien, who invented entire languages for his magical races.  But when you have a generic princess having generic adventures in a generic magical kingdom…not very memorable.

If all this genericness was the backdrop to something else–funny scenes or interesting relationships between the characters–this still might be passable.  But it’s really not that funny.  A few “help, I’m a frog” jokes.

The relationships were overwhelmingly flat too.  No one had any depths of emotion.  I’d forgotten the characters’ names, but I did remember a scene where they’re talking about something or other, and Emma tells Eadric he’s her best friend.  This should be revelatory.  They haven’t known each other long, they spend as much time arguing as not, it’s not like saying that to an old friend who already knows it.  Yet Emma says it off-hand, and Eadric–doesn’t react!  I think I actually stared at the page for a few seconds wondering if I’d missed something.

Sometimes I’ve heard someone comment that they don’t expect as much depth in children’s or young adult books.  It’s a comment I actually disagree with–children’s and YA books may cover different emotions and perhaps explore them in different ways than books for grown-ups, but the good ones will still have depth.  There is no reason a children’s book can’t sound deeper emotions in the areas of friendship, finding one’s place in the world, dealing with a life-altering situation, falling in love for the first time or going on an extremely dangerous quest.  But I think those people who don’t expect depth are imagining a book just like The Frog Princess.  It’s a kid’s book, so even though all that’s going on, we don’t really need to explore any of it.

I rarely recommend a movie over a book, but in this case, if you want a story about a girl turning into a frog, watch the Disney movie.

Author’s site: http://www.edbakerbooks.com/

Disney’s site for The Princess and the Frog