What I Read Wednesday

I somehow managed to sleep through my alarm this morning and was shaken awake by Shane who realized it. Ten minutes before I had to leave the house. Thus, I didn't get this posted this morning.

The Noticer: Sometimes, all a person needs is a little perspective
I have no idea how this book ended up on my library request list, but it did. The premise sounded good. The author's life was changed by a man named Jones, when the author was living homeless beneath a beach boardwalk. Except that it was the biggest bunch of garbage I've ever read and I don't know how this book was labeled non-fiction because it was basically a bunch of trite stories that we've all heard before, all centered around a mystical man named Jones who shows up in this town when people need him. He already knows their names and their problems and how to save them. Oh, and he's only Jones if you're white. If you're Asian, he's Cheng. If you're Hispanic, he's Garcia. If you're in to, say, Chicken Soup for the Soul books, you'll love this one, but I only finished it because I started it and really just wanted to throw it at a wall.

Casebook: A novel
Fortunately, this book removed the bad taste in my mouth that was left by the previous book. Told from the point-of-view of Miles with occasional interjections from his best friend Hector, this book spans years but does it so fluidly that you don't even realize that you're watching Miles grow up. It begins just before Miles' parents announce that they're getting a divorce and follows along the path of Miles' mom's new relationship, as Hector and Miles act as amateur spies to try and uncover the truth behind his mom's boyfriend.
The voice in this book was perfect, but it was also the type of book where you could see how it could change when told from so many different point-of-views. It is a coming of age story, but it is also the story of a family, a story of lies and half-truths and of sometimes finding out more than you've bargained for--and in the end, I was in tears. Read this one.

What are you reading?

What I Read Wednesday

This is one of those weeks where I'm buried under research papers to grade and I've been struggling to finish the same book for days, but I keep falling asleep while reading it. I hate those weeks.

The Walking Dead: Compendium Two
This is the second compendium of the Walking Dead graphic novels. This picks up where the current season picked up, too, so I really enjoyed seeing the ways the story arc was the same and the way it was different. Of course, it continues beyond where the TV show is now, so there may be possible spoilers, but honestly, there are vast differences between the novels and show. I really, really liked the direction in which it went, so I hope the TV show at least follows some of it!

In Paradise: A Novel
This was an interesting novel. A group of very diverse people embark upon a concentration camp retreat (this is a real thing, by the way, I googled it) and spend a week at Auschwitz touching upon matters of personal and national spirituality. They share why they're there, some more angrily than others, some not sure why, others still discovering. This is one of those slow-moving character driven novels. I really enjoyed it and found the subject matter itself fascinating. I have visited a concentration camp and found it a life-enhancing experience, but would I want to go on a concentration camp retreat? Probably not.

What are you reading?

What I Read Wednesday

Dreams of Gods & Monsters (Daughter of Smoke and Bone)
This is the third--and final--book in The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy. If you haven't yet read it and want to, you're lucky because you can read it all the way through, instead of having to remember who the characters are in the first fifty pages are as I did. The premise is that angels and chimaeras and other other-wordly creatures exist and some of them are about to wage an all out war on humanity. After all, if angels arrived in our world, wouldn't we welcome them with open arms and not think that they have any ill intents? This conclusion definitely strongly carried the other two books. I would love to re-read them all at once, maybe this summer, because they were so good.

The Here and Now
Prenna is an immigrant. Not from another country but from another decade. She lives in a community of time travelers, governed by rules to keep them from being discovered as such. They traveled back in time to escape a ruined, plague-filled future. One rule is that members of her community can't fall in love with "time natives," those who haven't traveled back in time. Prenna, of course, does and together she and Ethan must work to change the future. The ending and certain parts felt a little rushed to me, but I still really enjoyed this book and it was an easy read.

The Land of Steady Habits
I love a coming of age story where those coming of age are middle age (see: American Beauty). Anders asks his wife Helene for a divorce, after a long marriage, after their children are grown, and after he's retired from his important job in financing because he just doesn't want to do it anymore. Put off by a year while Helene undergoes breast cancer treatment, Anders deals with the scorn of their old friends who paint him to be the bad guy. But as the novel unfolds and exposes the world behind the perfect suburban life through Helene's perspective and eventually their son Preston's, Anders isn't as awful as he first seems--or maybe he is, but everyone else is just as awful. I loved this one. It was an easy read, the characters were engaging and flawed and somehow so very human.

What are you reading?

What I Read Wednesday

The Walking Dead: Compendium One
I've been checking the library website for this one for quite awhile now. Although I've never read a graphic novel before in my life, I've heard that this is really good, better than the show. So I was super excited when I saw that our library purchased two copies of this and two copies of compendium two. The whole graphic novel format took a little bit for me to get the hang of, but once I got into it, I breezed through it (even though this book is huge!). I loved the differences and similarities between the TV show and the graphic novel (the graphic novel came first), as well as character differences. The artwork was also pretty stunning, too. It was a little grittier than the TV show, which I enjoyed and which makes sense because it is a zombie apocalypse, after all.

Handling the Undead
When I read Harbor by this author, a blurb on the back said he was Sweden's Stephen King, so I was interested in reading more of his books. This book was not what I expected, but I really loved it. When the dead begin to come back to life in Stockholm, everyone is gripped with the question of what to do and the ethics of how to handle the dead. Unlike your usual zombie lore (see above), they aren't biting and infecting others (for the most part). They're simply reanimating and attempting to find their way home. And then what? What do you do when your dead husband, son, wife has returned? But they're not quite the same? This wasn't necessarily a horror story, to me, but it was absolutely unnerving and hooked me from the beginning.

Let Me In
Or Let The Right One In, if you're familiar with the movie version. The two titles confused me until I realized that the movie and later editions of the book changed the name. Like Handling the Undead, Lindqvist gives a twist to vampire genre where the vampire in question is a child who fluctuates between innocence and evil. In the midst of this is a boy named Oskar, bullied at school and thinking he may be in love with his new neighbor who only comes out at night and can't come into his apartment unless invited. Like Handling the Undead, it's a horror story, in a way, but there are also a lot of statements about human nature buried within the horror genre.

Astonish Me: A novel
This book is neither about zombies nor vampires. It's about ballerinas. Joan is a ballerina who is talented enough to dance professionally but never beyond the corps. Her fame comes when she helps a Russian ballerina, Arslan, defect to the United States. Shortly after, Joan becomes pregnant and only dances as a teacher in a ballet studio. Years later, she's pushed back into the professional ballet world when it seems her son has professional level talent.
I loved this book. I was worried that I'd be bored, but I was drawn into the story of Joan and all those around her. The book itself wasn't entirely chronological and would sometimes skip forward and backward in time, which really added to the story because you would get bits and pieces of the conflicts in the lives of the characters and what led to the challenges they were facing. Some of the story was predictable, but the characters were incredibly real and very enjoyable in their flaws.

What are you reading?

What I Read Wednesday

Last Wednesday snuck up on me. It was halfway over before I realized it was Wednesday. Then I realized that I'd of the four books I'd read, they were all from the same series… which is kind of boring for a blog post.

The Gatekeepers #1: Raven's Gate
I read this entire series, all five books. I'm not going to link to all of them because that would be redundant. The premise of the series is that there are five Gatekeepers who exist throughout time to keep the Old Ones (evil forces) from returning and bringing forth devastation on the world. The catch is in present time, they don't know that they're Gatekeepers and must discover not only each other but their powers and their role in this task.
I started reading this series because I noticed many of my male students reading it, and I always try to pick up on YA books that may be interesting to boys since they're a more difficult group, typically, to get reading. I really enjoyed this. It was well-written, with each book initially building on a different character, until they were all brought together. I also liked that the books got longer as they progressed, but they're still a lower lexile level, so they could be tackled by all readers.

Siege and Storm (Grisha Trilogy (Shadow and Bone))
This is the sequel to Shadow and Bone, which I reviewed two weeks ago. It continues with Alina using her sun summoning forces to fight the powers of darkness and attempt to bring unity in the magic world. This one was a little darker than the first, but still an easy enjoyable read.

Blood Will Out: The True Story of a Murder, a Mystery, and a Masquerade
This book was fascinating, albeit a little chilling. How well do we really know people? In the true (this is non-fiction) case of the author and Clark Rockefeller, not well at all. Walter Kirn first made his acquaintance when Clark wanted to adopt a crippled dog from the Humane Society. Walter drove and flew the dog cross states, delivering it to the mysterious Rockefeller. Although Clark had traits and quirks that bothered him over time, he attributed it to the oddness of money and his reclusive ways. Until the news broke that his name wasn't really Clark and oh, he wasn't a Rockefeller, and the author met him again in a courtroom as he was being tried for murder. As his many aliases and lies unfolded, the author questions just what it is that makes a person create a life and what makes one susceptible to such a con man.

Savage Harvest: A Tale of Cannibals, Colonialism, and Michael Rockefeller's Tragic Quest for Primitive Art
Unlike the previous book, this one is about an actual Rockefeller. In the 1950s and 60s, Michael Rockefeller traveled to New Guinea in search of primitive art. All goes well, until a boat he and a companion were on capsized. The companion stayed with the boat and was rescued. Michael swam to shore and was never seen again, even after an exhaustive search (after all, he was the son of Nelson Rockefeller). The family's and government's official statement was that he drowned, but for years, rumors persisted that he made it to shore safely, where he was killed and eaten by a tribe of Armat men, who believed still that cannibalism held powers.
The author of this novel sought to retrace Michael's steps and solve this mystery, so the novel juxtaposed history with the author's present day observations in what is still a very primitive culture. This was a fascinating read about an event of which I was unaware. I enjoyed it anthropologically and for the story the author wove.

What are you reading?