Book Review: Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My very first thought upon finishing this book was where was John Green when I was in high school? Of course, if my math is correct, he was likely potty training, but nonetheless, I stand in awe of his
brilliance.

Green can capture the "everystudent" - the one who is not super concerned with being popular, but worries about grades, getting into college, finding a girlfriend/boyfriend - like no other. He writes about the kind of kid that I was - except now I just wish there was a female protagonist.

The book is a fast read - a quick coming of "relationship" story since I feel all these characters are still behind on their actual "coming of age." Instead, the book traces the characters as they learn what it means to love, like, talk and just be. Everyone's life will be changed, but there is a realistic feel that these, after all, are just kids. And high school is but one phase on a long road of change.

The back and forth chapter-by-chapter partnership of Green and David Levithan is terrific. Each Will Grayson has his own voice and the supplemental characters keep their individual voices even through the different author's eyes. The book is funny and moving and a great example of the "it gets better" campaign without ever once uttering that phrase.

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Book Review: Cloud Atlas

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

In the interests of keeping it real, I almost put this book down after the first three sections. The subject matter of the first story was challenging, the second story seemed a bit pointless (although the best of these three) and the third was simply annoying. But perseverance won the day and in the end, the story I liked the least became one of my favorites.

Told linearly yet abstractly, if that is even possible, the book is divided into six stories connected by various threads. You get the first half of five of the stories, then the entire sixth story and then you cycle backwards through the second half of the five stories. Make sense? It does when you are reading, oddly enough.

What makes this fascinating, besides the constant puzzle to figure out connections, is that each story is completely self-contained and a totally different genre than the others. I can only imagine the storyboarding that went into writing this thing.

I would normally write a longer, more detailed review for my blog, but honestly, to reveal more would be a) too spoilerrific and b) plain confusing. To sort of get a feeling for the WTFness of this book, I highly recommend watching the film's trailer. There have clearly been quite a few changes, but it gives a better summary than I can - and you will still be shaking your head at the end.

I am looking forward to seeing how this is adapted when the movie comes out in October.

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Book Review: The Diamond Age

I was one of those kids whose nose was always in a book. Summer vacations were heaven - Lisa and I would check out books by the dozen and plow through them book after book in the heat of the day. Even on vacation to visit my grandparents in Illinois, we would borrow my uncle's library card to feed our voracious book appetites.

I sort of fell away from reading for many years. I don't know why...perhaps it was time or access or maybe I was burnt out after college. But sometime a few years ago, I decided to get back into books by reading one book a month. It was a success and I was re-hooked.

This was my first Neal Stephenson book. Chris is a huge fan and always engrossed in one of his many ginormous trilogies - The Diamond Age had the benefit of being a standalone novel and definitely not as long as the others. The only other cyberpunk novel I've read was Neuromancer by William Gibson which I enjoyed but found confusing. I was hoping that the somewhat simpler sounding premise would prove a bit more accessible.

Since I want to get on with my review, rather than wasting time trying to summarize this intricate novel, I will just borrow from the very simplistic book description on Amazon:

Set in twenty-first century Shanghai, it is the story of what happens when a state-of-the-art interactive device falls in the hands of a street urchin named Nell. Her life—and the entire future of humanity—is about to be decoded and reprogrammed…

Stephenson is a world builder. He drops you into what feels like a story already in progress and uses this structure to guide the reader through the intricate society of this 21st century future. There is lots of technology - most of it nanotechnology which is as common as germs are today. Actually, the nanotechnology has replaced the germs. There is also seemingly magical sounding technology - like paper that automatically populates with your newspaper and/or media choices. Hrm. Sounds sort of familiar already.

There is so much world and major character building happening I found the story starting with a bang only to be bogged down in the mire of description. But through all this, Stephenson is laying the foundation so he can effortlessly take the reader through his world when the action starts. Once Nell finds the Primer (the interactive device referenced in the book description), both she and the story begin to come to life.

The book pleasantly (even if the developments themselves are harsh) meanders its way through what seem to be unrelated events and after a time, I found myself completely engrossed in this world. I was excited to see the next chapter of Nell's life and also how the other young girls of her age reacted to their own copies of the Primer.

However, somewhere along the line, it seems as though Stephenson forgot that along with this crazy world of nanosites, Source Feeds and mysterious hive mind societies that live under the ocean, there is also a plot happening. Somewhere towards the end, he brings into the picture a conflict in the making that (to me) had no foundation laid - nothing like what he had been doing up until that point. In (literally) 50 pages he introduces these new characters, Nell's pivotal moment and also wraps up the whole story. Without spoiling it, a little bit of background on the Fists would've been nice and also would've helped build the tension since apparently Nell's situation was quite dangerous, unbeknownst to this reader. After 450 pages of details and progressive tension, this quick finish felt flat to me. Even the tone changed to sort of a third party objective tone and while the ending is somewhat tidy, I still turned the page expecting a new chapter.

All in all, I would give the book 4/5 stars for great world building and character development and for an original exciting plot. It loses the final star for the sort of haphazardly thrown together ending.

Previous book:  The Book Thief  by Marcus Zusak [not reviewed].
Current book: Left Neglected by Lisa Genova

Twilight v. The Bear

This post is treading on ground that some might hold near and dear...but it is all about keepin' it real, so,

Internet, I confess that I just can't get into Twilight; however, if I am honest, I should preface this by saying that I was starting reluctantly as I am not a fan of vampire stories in any media form, but had received several glowing recommendations with most noting that Twilight wasn't really a vampire story and besides, I needed something light since I had just finished this...

The outstretched neck she clove asunder, and the hewn head fell like a stone. Backward she sprang as the huge shape crashed to ruin, vast wings outspread, crumpled on the earth; and with its fall the shadow passed away. - Return of the King, JRR Tolkien

and going from that to...

The meadow, so spectacular to me at first, paled next to his magnificence. - Twilight by Stephanie Meyers

was jarring and boring (I hate to say it), but since I wanted to give Twilight a fair shake, I put it down to read, at the request of a friend, The Bear by William Faulkner all the while expecting, to be honest, to hate it and harboring the hope that that perhaps I could alternate the heavier reading with Twilight remembering that

I had avoided Faulkner like the plague in college although I think now, that I was confusing him with James Joyce, but even so, I'd heard that there was a sentence, one sentence, that was SIX pages long, but I hardly even noticed, so riveted I was by the startlingly deep beauty of the prose, the feeling that I am alongside this deeply involving drama that isn't just about a hunt for a bear, but the hunt for a past and redemption that isn't easily forthcoming and by the time I hit the climax of the hunting scene, I found myself reading faster to pace with my breath and my heart was pounding when I put the book down...now that's some good writing:

He watched it for the next two years from that moment when Boon touched Lion's head and then knelt beside him, feeling the bones and muscle, the power. It was as if Lion were a woman - or perhaps Boon was the woman. That was more like it-the big, grave, sleepy-seeming dog which, as Sam Fathers said, cared about no man and no thing; and the violent, insenstive, hard-faced man with his touch of remote Indian blood and the mind almost of a child.

I think Twilight's going to have a wait a little bit longer.

Best Books of 2009 (part two)

Part Two! Let's get right to it, shall we?

Best Classic

- Beowulf: Okay, I sort of cheated and read David Wright's prose translation instead of the poem, but nonetheless, I was hooked from the first "chapter." Plus there are some great footnotes with plenty of historical information and context. Such heroism! Such drama!

Most Disappointing Book

- Life of Pi by Yann Martel: This book was beautifully written so no quibbles there, but I think maybe I missed all the allegory and symbolism that is supposed to be there. Anyone who has read it out there? Maybe you can clue me in.

Best Series

- Harry Potter by JK Rowling: Holy cow. I'm afraid few years will be able to beat 2009 in the book department. It was the year I caved and read the entire series - nonstop. I went from "meh, the movies are pretty cool" to "OMG I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY DIDN'T INCLUDE [insert trivial point here] IN THE MOVIE!" Yes, I turned into a giant Harry Potter nerd. The kind that can quote, discuss and now scours the internet for spoilers on anything. Anything! I loved the depth of the characters and the cleverness of the writing. Total fan girl.

Best Book of the Year - A Tie!

- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling: A complex satisfying ending to a great series (see above).

- Return of the King by JR Tolkien: Oh, the joy of following The Deathly Hallows with Return of the King. I found myself re-reading over and out loud sections to my poor husband. Lovely character drama and heart-pounding battles made this another satisfying end to a marvelous series. And the scene with Eowyn (you know the one) - killer.

Best Books of 2009 (part one)

In 2008, my new year's resolution was to read a book per month. I know that doesn't sound like much, but at the time, I was reading about two books per year. To my surprise and delight, I actually kept that resolution. In 2009, I upped the ante to 24 books - and, on New Year's Eve, I finished book #25.

To keep it interesting,I follow a loose pattern of reading a fiction book, a non-fiction book and a "classic" - because I have multiple books going at once there is much overlap in the order as well as overlap in the genres (classic is usually fiction too), but it works to keep me from getting into a rut.

So without further ado, the (first part) of the Best Books of 2009.

The Best Non-Fiction Book

- Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan: A politically charged manifesto on how our food gets to our table. I seriously changed my eating/food purchasing habits after reading this book to include taking part in a CSA as well as stopping my consumption of commercially processed beef.

Honorable Mentions: A Year of Living Biblically by AJ Jacobs and Elements of Cooking by the passionate Michael Ruhlmann (if you love from-scratch cooking, then Ruhlman's blog is a must)

Best Blog-to-Book

- The Daily Coyote: A Story of Love, Survival and Trust in the Wilds of Wyoming by Shreve Stockton: A rare book from a blogger that isn't just a compilation of blog entries. Instead, the book is a full narrative of the story of a woman and her coyote - all against a blazingly beautiful Wyoming backdrop.

Honorable Mention: Rockabye: From Wild to Child by Rebecca Woolf. I think this may have been one of those blog-entry-compilations, but since I was a recent convert to her blog, it was all new to me.

Best Non-Fiction Subject Matter with the Worst Writing

- The End of a America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot by Naomi Wolf: The subject matter detailing steps from democracy to fascism is provocative, relevant and scary. Everyone should know what this book says. It's a shame that the writing presented only statements backed up by sources in a series of footnotes. I struggled to finish even though I was anxious to know the ending.

Funniest Book

- Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris: Simply the funniest book I'd read in a long time teaching me the valuable lesson that exercise and belly laughing don't necessarily work at the same time. The first part about Sedaris's youth and drug use is pretty raw, but second part describing Sedaris's adventures to learn French in France with his longtime partner is hilarious.

Next up...Most Disappointing, Best Classic, Best Series and Best Book of the Year!