Month: June 2010

My Favorite Reads – The Fate of the Elephant

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

The Fate of the Elephant by Douglas H. Chadwick.

From Amazon.com: On assignment for National Geographic magazine, Chadwick spent most of two years observing elephants in American zoos and throughout Africa, India and southeast Asia. He also followed the ivory trade, visiting carvers and shops in Tokyo, Delhi, Hong Kong and Bangkok. His marvelous account depicts elephants at work and at play, profiles the people who work with them and sadly notes that their habitat is in decline. Chadwick’s description of his African adventures covers much of the same ground as Ian and Oria Douglas Hamilton’s Battle for the Elephants; his report on the Asian elephants is especially welcome, since their story has been generally neglected. Chadwick visits an elephant reserve and a training camp in India; an expert on white elephants takes him to see the King’s herd in Bangkok; in Malaysia, he watches a rescue team capture and relocate a wild elephant. In addition to telling many fascinating stories, Chadwick reminds us that the elephant’s future is bleak: too many people, too little land and unstable goverments all threaten the animal’s survival.

My thoughts: I have always had a thing for elephants. There is something so regal, commanding, and majestic about them. Each time I go to the zoo, I stand captivated by their size and, frankly, odd shape. When I finally stop being mesmerized, and finish memorizing the elephant facts board, I become sad. There are many programs going on to save the habitats of elephants. They are a vital part of the eco-system and a species that needs to find balance with its human neighbors. I know that I may only ever see an elephant in a zoo and that is especially disheartening. I would love to one day see an elephant in person in Africa but I know that may not happen, so while the zoo does not suffice, it is a place I can admire them and be awed.

ANYWAY, back to this amazing book. The way Chadwick depicted these animals you would have easily thought them human — the way they play, love, and socialize are just amazing. This book was published in 1993 and many of the facts are out of date but I think it is still a good read. It’s important to be reminded of the world we share.

Library Loot – Re-Reading Authors

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The library, oh, the library. It seems each time I try to pick up a book, confusion reigns. I may love my library (really, who doesn’t) but lately we seem to be having a battle of wills. This week, I won. If you can call several trips back and forth to pick up promised books that, in fact, were not actually available, winning. I call it winning because I came home with more books than I originally planned to. This happens to me frequently. I was only planning to bring home one…

Here are my goodies! While getting my books together for this post, I realized these are all authors I have read before. I need to start keeping track of my author re-reads and my reactions to their different books. Blog post in the making me thinks.

Fire by Kristin Cashore. This is the companion novel to Graceling which I adored. It’s not a sequel and not exactly a prequel but I fell in love with the world Cashore created and couldn’t pass this one up when I found out the library had it. This one centers around the last remaining human monster named Fire.

The Divine Sacrifice by Tony Hays. This is the second book in Hays’s Arthurian mystery novel series. I generally don’t read many mysteries but I have been trying to branch out a bit. I enjoyed the first book, The Killing Way, and saw this one on the new releases shelf and decided to give it a try. In this sequel, the trusted counselor to King Arthur is off to Glastonbury Abbey to investigate reports of rebellion. Really, did anyone think I would pass up a book with King Arthur? 🙂

Benighted by Kit Whitfield. I recently finished In Great Waters by Whitfield, and while I won’t say that I loved it, there was something about her writing that made me want to read another of her books. While In Great Waters introduced the reader to a world of mermaid like beings, Benighted is a world full of lycanthropes. Yes, werewolves. I know, I know. More werewolves. I wasn’t sure either but after reading a few pages, this one looks good. My hopes are high.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Teaser Tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

Play along: Grab your current read; Open to a random page; Share two teaser sentences from that page; Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

This week, I’m reading The Conquest by Elizabeth Chadwick.

“As you said earlier, you warned us about what your Duke would do. I heeded your words above those of my own son and I had our people take all of our winter supplies and animals into the woods and hide them. When the Normans arrived, they found the village already deserted. Al they had to burn were our empty houses.” (195)

The Conquest

What are you teasing us with this week?

In Great Waters

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In Great Waters

In Great Waters

By Kit Whitfield

Del Rey

ISBN: 978-0-354-49165-7

3 stars

In an alternative, middle ages world where people are ruled by Deepsmen, mermaid type men and women that can walk on land, the royal family is in danger of breeding itself out of existence. Few choices are left for members of the royal family, and while they hang onto the throne precariously, even they begin to wonder what is left. That is until Henry, a bastard child found abandoned on the shore and kept hidden by those that would like to see him in power, is not only able, but willing, to fight to rule.

I was very excited to read this book. I liked the idea of an alternative world ruled by Deepsmen — the possibilities seemed endless to me and I enjoyed several aspects of the story. The history of how the Deepsmen rose out of the waters to rule was particularly good and the politics of the court were exciting, but there was one thing that held me back, and that was Henry. He’s unlikable and he’s supposed to be. He’s a child a mother didn’t want, he fights all his life to survive in the water only to be thrown onto land, taken in, hidden, and taught about a world he doesn’t care about and doesn’t want to be a part of. He’s bitter, angry, and brutal but you don’t blame him. He should be that way but it made him infinitely unlikable for me. It threw the story into havoc and I had trouble recovering.

Whitfield does give you people to like. Anne for example. She’s the youngest daughter of the current king and queen who does her best to hide herself. She’s clumsy and has odd Deepsmen qualities, but is smart which becomes her only salvation. Unfortunately, when her story collides with Henry’s, I still couldn’t find sympathy for these characters.

I realize that my review has become more about the characters than the story itself. The story in this book is very imaginative and has some great fantasy elements that do make it worth the read. For me, unfortunately, I also need characters to join on the ride and here I had trouble becoming attached which stopped me from getting fully immersed in the story. Whitfield does a great job of bringing the court to life and the way she tells the story of how the first Deepsmen queen rose out of the waters in Venice is, dare I say it, believable. The politics of the world are complicated and add a lot to the story but it wasn’t enough.

Here’s the thing about it though — there was some very strong draw that kept me reading and wanting to know how this was all going to turn out. Would war break out, would Henry be accepted by the people, would Anne find it in herself to step up and rule? If you’re looking for something different, this might be a book for you. I liked the plot, setting, and the writing but had trouble with one character that made my loving this book a little hard. However, I plan to give Whitfield another shot and have her other book, Benighted, on hold at the library. There’s something about her writing that made me want to read more even if this book wasn’t a great fit.

The Sunday Salon and How the World Cup is Stopping Me from Reading

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Did I ever think there would be anything that would stop me from reading? No.

Have I found something that has stopped me from reading? Yes.

Am I being dramatic? A bit.

I haven’t actually stopped reading but the time I would normally spend curled up with a book has instead been spent in front of the TV watching proper football. My husband loves his soccer, and I do too. We even took a half day off of work on the opening day so we could procure bar seats to watch a game. 🙂 Yesterday, the US and England played and we glued our butts to the couch, with the butts of several friends as well, to watch our boys. All I have to say is, thank god for the fumbling hands of the English goalie. But, hey, a goal is a goal! Today was much the same and I only spent a short time with my book. I expect the next few weeks to sort of be the same. So don’t be too surprised if you end up hearing about a game instead of a book. 😉

I did want to take a minute to talk about Book Blogger Appreciation Week (BBAW) before I wrap up this week. I started my blog last August, shortly before BBAW 2009, and was amazed by the sense of community it created and the sharing that went on. I was blown away. This year, I think I will register for it and see if I can participate a bit. It’s always hard to know how busy the summer is going to be but I think this will be worth it. If you’re interested, click on the logo below for more info.

There are several things I wanted to talk about today but since it’s a late post for me already, I’m going to hold off and post a few of the bookish things I have in mind later in the week.

Have a good one!

The City & The City

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The City & The City

The City & The City

By China Miéville

Del Rey

ISBN: 0345497511

4 Stars

In the far reaches of Europe, the citizens of two cities strive to unsee each other. The cities, Beszel and Ul Qoma, are crosshatched sister cities divided for and by political reasons which even it’s own citizens cannot always understand.

When a woman turns up dead in Beszel, Inspector Tyador Borlu of the Extreme Crime Squad is called in to investigate. The young woman turns out to be a foreigner studying in Ul Qoma. When he cannot take the case any further without causing an incident that might give him reason to see someone in the other city, he tries to turn the case over to Breach, the agency that deals with crimes that cross city lines. When his request is rejected, he is ordered to cross into Ul Qoma to investigate the murder himself. The investigation causes him to question many of his own beliefs and those of his own government.

A crime/mystery/police procedural is not part of my regular reading diet and this certainly falls into the not my normal reading fare category easily enough. What drew me to The City & The City was the invention of the two cities that are not supposed to see or acknowledge each other but exist in the same time and physical space. There are subtle differences — clothing, language, architecture — but if one were to look past these differences, they could in fact be the same place. The Breach, which is supposed to deal with infractions that involve the seeing of both cities, is interesting in that it only exists to clean up accidents or punish people who cross the border without going through proper channels. When someone is taken by the Breach, they are never heard from again and people are understanding of this because this is how things are in their cities. As they have been trained to do since childhood, they unsee it and move on with their lives. In some ways it’s frustrating because I started to wonder how the citizens of these two cities could live with this going on around them, pretending that the neighbor they can clearly see is not there because they actually live in the other city. At some point I realized that I had to let go of my annoyance with the unseeing thing and go with it.

The story does take place in modern time but these two cities seem to exist in a world all their own and the entire time I kept wondering how these two places are like they are. There is some explanation but I didn’t feel completely satisfied by it but I think Miéville wants you to feel this way about the cities. Confused by the political, societal, and legal boundaries that are Beszel and Ul Qoma. While the murder investigation pushes the plot along, the story is really about these two cities, the strangeness of their existence, and the politics surrounding them. While it took me a few pages to get into the story and understand what was supposed to be seen and unseen, it was worth it. I’m looking forward to reading another book of his that comes out the summer called Kraken. I think The City & The City was a good Miéville primer.

My Favorite Reads – In the Heart of the Sea

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Alyce from At Home With Books features one of her favorite reads each Thursday and this week my pick is…

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick.

From the inside cover: The ordeal of the whaleship Essex was an event as mythic in the nineteenth century as the Titanic disaster was in the twentieth. Nathaniel Philbrick now restores this epic story — which inspired the climactic scene in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick — to the rightful place in American history.

In 1819, the 238-ton Essex set sail from Nantucket on a routine voyage for whales. Fifteen months later, the unthinkable happened: in the farthest reaches of the South Pacific, the Essex was rammed and sunk by an enraged sperm whale. Its twenty-man crew, fearing cannibals on the islands to the west, decided instead to sail their three tiny boats for the distant South American coast. They would eventually travel over 4,500 miles. The next three months tested just how far humans could go in their battle against the sea as, one by one, they succumbed to hunger, thirst, disease, and fear.

Nathaniel Philbrick brings as incredible story to life, from the intricacies of Nantucket’s whaling economy and the mechanics of sailing a square-rigger to the often mysterious behavior of whales. But it is his portrayal of the crew of the Essex that makes this a heart-rending book. These were not romantic adventurers, but young working men, some teenagers, just trying to earn a living in the only way they knew how. They were a varied lot: the ambitious first mate Owen Chase, whose impulsive nature failed at a critical moment, then drew him to a more dangerous course; the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson, whose long-lost account of the ordeal, written at age seventy-one, provides new insights into the story; and Captain George Pollard, who was forced to take the most horrifying step if any of the men were to survive.

This is a timeless account of the human spirit under extreme duress, but it is also a story about community, and about the kind of men and women who lived in a foreboding, remote island like Nantucket — a pioneer story that explores how we became who we are, and our peculiar blend of spiritualism and violence. Its richness of detail, its eloquence, and its command of history make In the Heart of the Sea a vital book about America.

My thoughts: It’s been a very long time since I read this book but each time I see it on the shelf I remember how captivated I was by this story. It wasn’t just the survival aspect but also the lifestyle that the men who worked on whaleships lived. I don’t need to tell you just how difficult, dangerous, and disgusting the work is. They chase down a monstrous beast in tiny boats and then haul the slaughtered whale aside to dismantle it. The actual work is worse than I could have imagined.

There are some amazing personalities in this book as well that deserve mention. The accounts of their survival and the lengths they went to to survive are terrifying and horrifying. I was reviled by their actions yet couldn’t stop reading because I wanted to know what would be next. I won’t tell you more but if you think about several men living on a tiny boat floating in the Pacific with no food or water, I think you know where the story goes.

In the Heart of the Sea is not a book for the easily queasy. There are things in this book I wish I hadn’t read but, that aside, it was also one of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read. The information about whales, whaling, the community of Nantucket, and the economics of whaling and the impact on the community were facts not be forgotten.

Teaser Tuesdays

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Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. The idea is to give everyone a look inside the book you’re reading.

Play along: Grab your current read; Open to a random page; Share two teaser sentences from that page; Share the title and author so that other participants know what you’re reading.

This week, I’m reading The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart.

“So we waited. The escort must have stayed rather longer than need be in Maridunum, and after that cold damp ride who could blame them?” (351)

The Crystal Cave

What are you teasing us with this week?