Month: January 2011

The Sunday Salon – Non-Fiction

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I’ve been reading a non-fiction book all week.  In general, I find it takes me longer to read non-fiction than fiction I guess because I’m paying more attention to facts, forcing myself to slow down so as not to miss an important detail that will be critical to the master plan later on.  Not really sure but I think I have pinpointed one problem with reading non-fiction — I must not read about the same topic twice.  I should probably explain that rather broad statement.  Follow me if you will…

Last year I read a book about the Jamestown settlement.  The book focused on several people and a specific shipwreck that was being sent to provide provisions for the settlers, and due to the ship being wrecked and its passengers being stranded on Bermuda, when the ship’s crew and passengers finally arrived (on a different ship the first being wrecked; see what I mean about important details in non-fiction?) in Jamestown, they sort of saved the place.  Not entirely saved, Jamestown was a debacle but you don’t need me to tell you that.  Anyway, the current book, Savage Kingdom.  It’s more about everyone and everything involved with the Jamestown settlement.  So not only am I getting information about the settlement itself, the Native American tribes (very interesting and part of the reason I wanted to read a second book on said topic) already inhabiting the Chesapeake area, but also goings-on in England and Spain.  It’s a rather far-reaching and all encompassing book and though I’m finding it interesting, I feel as though I’ve already read great parts of this.

Also, I feel like I’m listening to a lecture and it’s a bit disjointed as if the professor keeps jumping around saying things like: “Oh, before we talk more about Captain John Smith and his dealings with Powhatan, let’s go back to England for a minute and talk about what was going on with James II and his negotiations with the Spanish who had already setup house in Florida and were a little peeved about the English double-talk about Jamestown.”  This is where I would normally say, quietly and to myself, “What?!  Did I miss something?” and start wondering how I could go about transferring to another class.  Also, in the picture in my head, this professor keeps running his hands through his hair and he starts to look as if he’s been electrified.  Also, he’s a man cuz the author of the book is and for no other reason and have no idea why I needed to point that out but I did.

Let’s say I’m not feeling it this time around.  Did I mention that already?  Felt I should again just in case you didn’t get that from the long, rambling above section punctuated with generalized boring class behavior.

A goal of mine in 2011 is to read more non-fiction, once a month if I can.  My next non-fiction book is called Spook and is about the afterlife.  It’s by Mary Roach who wrote Packing for Mars which I absolutely loved and you should read it.  No, really, I mean that.  You should totally read it but don’t read it while eating because there’s a lot of talk about bodily functions.  Fair warning, it’s all I have to offer.  She also wrote a book about cadavers and when I mentioned that to my husband he looked at me weird and I’m pretty sure he was having a silent conversation in his head that involved taking away my library card.  There’s also a book about Cleopatra roaming around that I want to read so maybe I should mention this to him so he doesn’t wonder anymore about my reading.

If you made it his far, thanks for sticking with me till the end of paragraph six today.  Happy Sunday fellow readers.

PS — Next time I promise not to be so disjointed in my Sunday Salon.  Feeling inspired this week I guess.

Review – A Game of Thrones

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A Game of Thrones: Book One of A Song of Fire and Ice

By George RR Martin

Bantam Spectra
eISBN: 978055389784-5

5 stars

A Game of Thrones has been on my radar, way out there, but it was there.  I thought about reading it a few times but never quite found the time.  Then HBO announced it would be producing a series based on the book, and yet, I still put it off.  So in December I finally got around to picking it up and what can I say other than I am completely and utter in love with this book, the world, and the characters.  Without me listing, and believe me when I say it would be a long list, let’s just say everything about it is great.  Yes, it’s that good.

Now for the dilemma — how do I describe this book?  It’s epic fantasy, it’s long (over 700 pages on my Nook), it’s also violent at times but so fantastically told that it’s almost impossible to put the book down.  I don’t want to give too much away (which is very hard for a person who loves spoilers) so my description will be short and somewhat vague.  The story takes place in a medieval world that resembles England.  Kings, queens, knights, court politics, and drama infuse the story with a richness that rivals any good bit of historical fiction.  But there’s something more.  In the world of the Seven Kingdoms, the king rules from the Iron Throne.  When King Robert calls upon Lord Eddard Stark of Winterfell to act as his councilor, all hell breaks loose in the realm and no matter what Stark does, there will be no way to keep a war from starting.  The political struggle for the throne is the main story which all others revolve but there’s also a Wall that looms heavy in the background.  What lies beyond the Wall that was built to keep the realm safe is an army of the dead and while not much is offered up on what and who they are, they add a dark overtone to the story that can only be bad.  In the Seven Kingdoms, winter can last decades so when people say winter is coming it adds a foreboding to the amazing world that makes you want to dive into the next book immediately.

So, are you confused now?  Maybe a little frustrated with me for not offering more?  Please don’t be.  I’m a person who loves spoilers but I think this a book that has to be read to understand the amazing world created by Martin.  Yes, it holds true to basic fantasy (witches, spells, and dragons) but the weight added by the political drama brings the story to a new level.  Each chapter is told from the perspective of a single character which I’ll add was a little daunting in the beginning because the cast of characters and references is long and complicated, and while it may take a minute to adjust, it flows smoothly from there.  From Eddard Stark who is called to court to be the Hand of the King, to understanding the dreams and persistence of his daughters who came to court with him, to his wife Catelyn who suffers heartache over their young son’s injury, to his son Robb who must rule in his place, to the annoyances of the King, the lives of Queen’s brothers, to the brothers who protect and patrol the Wall, and the life of a forgotten ruler’s daughter who is poised to attack to regain a lost kingdom.

Yes, there’s a lot going on in this book but don’t let that deter you.  Martin manages to walk a fine line that threatens to spill into overindulgence, but it never happens.  What does happen is pure enchantment.  His world building is amazing and it doesn’t take long to get sucked into it.  It’s dark, violent, and bloody, but fits with the story and never feels overdone.  If you’re looking for a great fantasy novel, A Game of Thrones is it.

Today’s Book – Savage Kingdom

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I wanted to read more non-fiction in 2011 (goal is about one non-fiction book a month) and decided to start with a topic I have some interest in, the Jamestown settlement.  I read a book about the settlement last year, The Shipwreck that Saved Jamestown, and loved it so thoroughly I thought why not more.

Savage Kingdom is moving a little slow for me and it maybe that I’m feeling I already read this (reoccurring problem I have with non-fiction books of the same or familiar topic) but it does have one thing going for it — more information about the Native Americans and the role the tribes played in the settlement’s history.  The last year’s book had very little about the tribes the settlers came in contact with and that portion of the book is filling the gap I felt I missed last time.  I actually tried to find a book about the Native Americans settled in that area but had no luck with the library but this one came up on the search which is the reason why I picked it up.

Review – Jane Eyre

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Jane Eyre

By Charlotte Bronte

Barnes & Noble Books

ISBN: 1442168528

5 stars

Jane Eyre is a book I’ve owned for many years.  My mother bought it for me as part of a boxed set of classics that included Wuthering Heights, Great Expectations, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Well meaning that I can be sometimes, I wanted to read it, but something new always appeared on the shelf and I never got around to it.  A few weeks ago I decided that I would read it, and assuage a little guilt as well since I was starting to see it each time I looked at the shelf and realized that once again I hadn’t read it.

Jane is a young orphan being raised by an aunt who can’t stand her.  After an incident with her cousin, her aunt sends her off to Lowood School where Jane finds a life as a teacher.  Wanting a new experience, she sets out to find a governess position and unexpectedly finds a home, a life, love, and heartbreak.  In the midst of her most heartbreaking moment, she stumbles upon unknown family members, rebuilds herself but knows that in the end she must follow her heart even if it means ruin for her battered feelings.

Those few sentences were so difficult to write.  I realize many people already know the story so I didn’t want to drone on about the plot and I also didn’t want to give too much away for the few of you out there that were like me and kept putting it off.  There are so many wonderful moments in this story that in order to truly appreciate how lovely, haunting, and beautiful it is, you must read it.  Which brings me to a new dilemma — how do I talk about this book without getting all saccharine and sloppy on you?

You see, I adored this book.  I adored Jane.  She’s feisty, stubborn, generous, loving, understanding, and loyal.  As a child she hates her family, with good reason as they are abominable people, but when she arrives at Lowood School, despite a cruel headmaster, she flourishes.  She finds friends who believe in her, her kindness shines like a beacon, and she’s adventurous wanting to experience life outside of the comfortable walls of the school.  When she arrives at Thornfield to become a governess to a young French girl, she’s strict yet fun making Adele fall in love with her.  The servants at the house become a family of sorts to her and for the first time in her life Jane enjoys being at home.  The master of Thornfield, Rochester, however, is another issue.  Jane explicitly describes him in a way that makes him seem revolting but she herself is in love with him.  You see through her descriptions to the love she feels but when it ends in heartbreak, she leaves and you want to cry with her.  In her darkest moments, she still feels loyalty to those she loves and I wanted to yell at her.  She’s too smart for her own good but that’s why she is so likable.  When things are most horrid, she somehow perseveres and that staunchness is something you come to appreciate.

Characters are what make a story for me and Jane has found a place in my heart as a favorite character.  There are so many things in her path but she still finds the good in people, even ones that have hurt her, and she has incredible strength.  I admired her for her ability to calmly make decisions and stick with her convictions even when it meant living with nothing but the clothes on her back.  When Jane finds her happy ending (don’t worry the spoiler lover in me won’t say more), I also wanted to cry for her.  She had been through too much for it to be any other way.

Jane Eyre, a book that I will be reading again and probably sooner rather than later.

Teaser Tuesday

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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.

I’m starting Savage Kingdom: The True Story of Jamestown, 1607, and the Settlement of America by Benjamin Wooley today.  I’m trying to read at least one non-fiction book a month in 2011 and this is book one.  I don’t know that non-fiction makes for the best teasers but let’s play anyway.

“On the morning of 20 September 1565, the sixty-year-old carpenter Nicolas le Challeux awoke to the sound of rain pelting down on the palm-leaf thatch overhead.  It had not stopped for days, and a muddy morass awaited him outside.”  (pg. 3)

The Sunday Salon — Book Madness

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It was a quiet week for me blogging but I did get some reading in and came across something interesting on the LA Times book blog, Jacket Copy, that made me think about my own reading habits.  The article, The Morning News Announces Tournament of Books Contenders, is about a book tournament modeled on the men’s NCAA basketball tournament.  It starts with a pool of 16 books, one person judges two books and advances one narrowing the books down from 16 to eight to four to two, and finally one winner.   The champion book of the year is awarded The Rooster.  There’s more information on The Morning News site if you want to read the rules.

The books were chosen because they were hyped, celebrated, or someone lobbied passionately for them at some point.   What I found so interesting about the list was that I hadn’t read one of the books.  A few are on my list but I haven’t picked up one on the list, at least not yet anyway.  I have an almost obsessive compulsion not to read books on bestseller lists.  Is it because I don’t like being told what to read?  Or that I don’t like to read what everyone else is reading?  If I do read books off these lists is it akin to drinking the kool-aid?  Maybe.  Then maybe I’m thinking about it too much.

I do like recommendations, let’s face it, thanks to book bloggers my TBR has grown from something manageable into a monster that has taken on a life of its own.  It’s not that I don’t like to read popular books because I do read a lot of them but I tend to stay away from really popular books when they’re being hyped.  I don’t know the reason for this but it’s the way I am when it comes to reading.  If it’s on a bestseller list, I won’t touch it, even if I really want to read it, until it falls off the list or people forget about it.  It’s the reason you don’t see many big books reviewed by me.  It also got me thinking about being well-read.  Eva at A Striped Armchair has some interesting thoughts on the subject which is probably what brought me to the conclusion I came to about the Tournament of Books.  I usually don’t judge my reading against others simply because it’s not a fair comparison.  I read what I like, I always have, and will continue to do so.  It’s not a matter of worrying about how many books I read, I keep track but for no other reason than to drop some books off my TBR, and I don’t worry about hitting certain numbers.  I guess it got me wondering as to how and why I pick certain books.  I don’t have a system for picking books.  I finish one and look around at what’s available to me at any given point in time and make a choice.

After reading all of that you have to be wondering what my point is with all this.  I start out talking about a book tournament and end up talking about how I pick books.  I’m not sure I have a point today other than to wonder aloud at how I pick my books (the well-read part isn’t something I want to get into since it’s something I can only determine for myself but it’s an interesting topic anyway).

So my question is — how do you pick your books?  Do you use bestseller lists?  Prefer recommendations from books bloggers? Another system entirely?

Today’s Book

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Have you ever felt this way — you finish a book you undeniably fell in love with and when the last page is finished, you sigh, reluctantly return it to the shelf, and then wonder what you’re going to read next knowing it isn’t going to live up to the just finished and loved book.  I think Time Travelers Never Die is suffering from this syndrome I will now term book love lag.  I picked this up after reading a book I really enjoyed and sort of felt bad for it in a way.  It was a new genre, which I thought might be helpful, but all it has me doing is wishing it were something different.

It may not sound like it but I am enjoying this book.  It’s good, it’s interesting, and it’s a book I’ve wanted to read.  Right now it’s going very slowly for me.  I know I’ll finish it because it’s fun reading and I like science fiction but I wish I had read it at a different time.  In the grand scheme, it’s not fair to Time Travelers Never Die but I guess it probably would have happened with whatever book I picked up.

Do you ever experience book love lag?

It’s Monday and I got nothin’

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Ok, not entirely true but somewhat.  I’ve been hoping to get back to a regular blog rhythm this year but I seem to have turned into a cold and flu magnet and I haven’t felt like doing much writing.  After two rounds of antibiotics and a few days on the couch, I’m finally feeling good enough to sit up and thought I’d take a minute (a short one) to talk about a few of the books I read last week.

The Last Pendragon: A Story of Dark Age Wales by Sarah Woodbury — This was a Nook read.  I found it while looking at my Nook library online and downloaded it.  My love of Arthurian Legend always compels me to do these things.  It won’t top my best of list but it did help me get out of a slump.  There are some supernatural elements in this one that most Arthurian stories don’t have and while I’m not a huge fan of those additions to this story, it worked here.  It adheres to the basic story and many of the required elements are present — the sword in a stone, love, a merlin-like character, etc.  It was more character than plot driven but I’m all right with that.  All in all, interesting.

 

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill — I love ghost stories and when I found out my library had this one, I wanted it.  It delivered on the creepy front.  It’s tension filled and can make you want to turn the lights on in every room of your house.  On the surface it might seem a bit tame — a young lawyer is sent to handle the affairs of a deceased client who lived on a small, isolated island in the north of England.  What he finds is a town unwilling to share information about the woman whose affairs he’s handling and even less willing to talk about the house and property she owned.  Nothing is explained at first and that adds to the story being this dark spot in a small town’s history.  I loved it.

 

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness — As soon as this book entered my house I wanted to read it.  I put it off at first but then gave in as soon as possible.  I don’t really know what to say about this one because I loved it so so much.  Being sick makes it hard for me to read sometimes but I couldn’t put this book down.  The characters all worked for me, the story was complicated, it mixed science and history, and it was a book about a book.  Books about books always entice me.  It was also about witches, vampires, and daemons.  I thought I was sick of the vampire thing but they worked in this book.  I adored the cover too and yes I mentioned that in another post already.

I think my next book is going to be Time Travelers Never Die by Jack McDivitt.  I have a non-fiction book about Jamestown but I don’t think I’ll be able to comprehend that one in my current condition.  I also have Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen so my next few days are happily covered.