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Kraken: An Anatomy

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Kraken: An Anatomy

By China Mieville

Ballentine Books

eISBN: 978-0-345-52185-9

4 stars

Billy Harrow is boring and nothing much happens in his life.  He’s a curator at London’s Natural History museum and has an uncanny ability to make creatures look alive in formaldehyde.  Giving a tour one day to a small group of people, a normal occurrence that comes with the job, he finds the museum’s most famous exhibit, a giant squid, missing.  The cops are called, interviews granted, and no leads emerge.  Billy goes home and tells two friends about the missing squid, or squidnapping if you will, and his odd day.  What follows is a strange tale of squid worshippers, encounters with Londonmancers who predict the city’s future, magicians, gods, familiars, gunfarmers, chaos Nazis, and Star Trek fanatics.

I’m at a loss as to how to describe this book.  In genre terms, it’s fantasy.  It’s a caper of sorts, but it’s really not.  It’s a mystery, but it’s not exactly.  There’s so much going on in this book that I feel that if I talk only about one portion, then I wouldn’t be doing it justice.  On the other hand, if I don’t tell you about it all, then I won’t make it come alive.

My first experience with Mieville’s writing was The City & The City.  It’s a dark, detective, police procedural and even though it wasn’t my regular reading, I enjoyed it.  I thought this would be somewhat the same but it’s not at all.  It’s funny, witty, strange, downright weird, and chaotic in parts.  He takes you to the story’s abyss and pulls you back in.  (Oh, come on, I couldn’t resist.)  There’s a long list of characters that range from the most bland to the oddest of people and one who actually is what his name suggests — a tattoo.  He talks by moving around on a man’s back, slightly creepy but very effective.  There’s a god who flits back and forth into stone statues and the odd Star Trek figurine trying to help Billy track down the stolen squid and at the same time he’s also trying to put down a strike by familiars.  Then there are soothsayers who cut holes in the skin of the city (the asphalt serves as the city’s skin) to read its guts and predict the future.  There are otherworldly hit men and a police force that deals in the supernatural.

Here’s the hard part about this review — I enjoyed this book.  A lot.  Thanks to this book, there are many new words that I want to incorporate into my vocabulary — Google-fu, Krakenists (people who worship the Kraken god), and squipnapping to name three.  Although, admittedly, squidnapping is going to be much harder to slip in during normal conversation.  It amused me, made me think of paperback thriller books you can buy at the grocery store, and made me add Mieville to my list of must-read authors but the books itself is impossible for me describe.

What I can say is that Mieville is a master story-teller able to incorporate a wide range of pop culture along with numerous religious arguments you never really knew you’d find yourself thinking about while reading a book about a giant squid that has been kidnapped.

I spent several days ruminating over this review and I still don’t think I’ve provided anything useful.  It’s strange book but a good mix of everything.  It’s fantasy (the story takes place in an alternate London) but offers so much more.

Here’s what I will say to wrap this up and staunch the bit of a love fest I have going on — if you’re looking for something completely out of the ordinary, try this one.  It won’t disappoint, just make sure you go in with an open mind and a good bit of, “Oh, OK, that’s where we’re going with this.  Then lead on,” attitude.

My Favorite Reads – My Life in France

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

My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme.

From the inside cover: In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found her “true calling.”

From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre in the fall of 1948 and Julia watched the well-muscled stevedores unloading the cargo to the first perfectly soigné meal that and her husband, Paul, savored in Rouen en route to Paris, where he was to work for the USIS, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn’t speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu.

After managing to get her degree despite the machinations of the disagreeable directrice of the school, Julia started teaching cooking classes herself, then teamed up with two fellow gourmettes, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, to help them with a book they were trying to write on French cooking for Americans. Throwing herself heart and soul into making it a unique and thorough teaching book, only to suffer several rounds of painful rejection, is part of the behind-the-scenes drama that Julia reveals with in inimitable gusto and disarming honesty.

Filled with the beautiful black-and-white photographs that Paul loved to take when he was not battling bureaucrats, as well as family snapshots, this memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so wholeheartedly. Above all, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became.

My thoughts: I have always wanted to be able to cook like Julia Child. Her love of food is contagious in this book and the frank almost off-hand way she tells the story is wonderful. It’s as if she’s sitting next to you telling the story. It’s more than just food but the way food becomes such a large and totally encompassing part of her, and her husband’s, life during their years in France and how a woman, who didn’t know how to cook at all, found herself the icon of French cooking.

I have one of her small cookbooks in my kitchen that is ratty, food stained, and dog earned. I reference it often when I’m trying to cook something I bought and realized had no idea what to do with when I got home. It’s called Julia’s Kitchen Wisdom and is by far one of the best cookbooks I ever bought. She has a way of breaking down a recipe so easily and making it sounds as if you can make the most complicated of dishes with ease.

Memoirs are not a genre I frequent but having watched Julia on PBS for years I had to read this book. It’s just as funny as she is on the show and the stories she tells about learning French, learning to cook, and finding her way in a country and culture very foreign to her is unforgettable. Not only a good cook, she’s a great story-teller as well.

This book was finished after Julia died in 2004 by her grandnephew Alex Prud’homme but none of her voice is lost. The photographs are absolutely fabulous as well.

I don’t have copies of The Art of French Cooking but if you were to ask me what two books I covet most in the world, it would be The Art of French Cooking, Volumes 1 and 2. I should admit that I don’t cook a lot of French food and rarely follow a recipe, I mostly look at recipes for ideas, but these are two books I know I would find use for.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

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Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

By J.K. Rowling

Scholastic Press

ISBN: 0-590-35340-3

5 stars

This summer I thought I would re-read the Harry Potter books. A lot of people are talking about them and it reminded me how much I loved this series. I haven’t read the books in so long and I thought it was a good time to start from the beginning again.

I’m not going to do a full re-cap or review of the book. I’m going to say — and yes, it’s a generalized statement but I think also a rather true one — that most people know what the books are about so this is all I’m going to say by means of a re-cap:

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the first book in the series. This is the book where Harry finds out he’s a wizard, goes off to Hogwarts, makes friends with Ron and Hermione, learns to fly a broomstick and play quidditch, makes enemies of Professor Snape and Draco Malfoy, and starts to understand what it means to be the boy who lived.

Good? I am. Now, let’s move on. I haven’t read this book in several years but as soon as I cracked the cover, I remembered how much I loved the world that Rowling created. There are so many wonderfully magical things, creatures, and people that I wonder how someone could not be swept away. There are also a lot of little details that I didn’t remember, for instance, the fact that Dumbledore wears high heeled shoes and is a lot flashier than I remembered him to be. I relished the fact that I still don’t like Snape (I don’t know how anyone can and I still won’t forgive him even in the last book for all the horror he inflicted for an old grudge, among many other things.) and how snarky and cruel Draco can be. Hermione is slightly unlikable at the start but I found it fun to see Harry and Ron become her friends and the three become inseparable. Oh and Ginny. Ginny is one of my favorites and I love her enthusiasm and crush on Harry. I find it so endearing. Ahhh….is all I want to say when she points at him in the train station. Hagrid, oh Hagrid, you big, lovable oaf. A dragon? Really? And who else would name a three-headed snarling beast of a dog Fluffy? Yes, Hagrid would. When Harry’s first year finally comes to an end and he has to return to the Dursley’s I don’t feel disappointed at all. I look forward to opening the next book and continuing the adventure.

The books are not perfect and there are some awkward bits of dialogue and this book, being the shortest in the series, is not nearly as detailed as the later books but the enchanting nature of the story itself makes all of that fade away for me. There is something very endearing about Harry that makes me always want to cheer him on even when he’s being stupid. The world of Hogwarts is an amazing place to fall in to and there are some wonderful characters to take on the journey with you.

My Favorite Reads – Pattern Recognition

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

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson.

From the inside cover: We have no future because our present is too volatile. We have only risk management. The spinning of the given moment’s scenarios. Pattern recognition…

Cayce Pollard is a new kind of prophet — a world-renowned “coolhunter” who predicts the hottest trends. While in London to evaluate the redesign of a famous corporate logo, she’s offered a different assignment: find the creator of the obscure, enigmatic video clips being uploaded on the Internet — footage this is generating massive underground buzz worldwide.

Still haunted by the memory of her missing father — a Cold War security guru who disappeared in downtown Manhattan on the morning of September 11, 2001 — Cayce is soon traveling through parallel universes of marketing, globalization, and terror, heading always for the still point where the three converge. From London to Tokya to Moscow, she follows the implications of a secret as disturbing — and compelling — as the 21st Century promises to be…

My thoughts: I’ve read a few Gibson novels and this one is by far my favorite. It’s also set in the present which is a little different since his books are almost always set in the future.

My husband has a soft spot for Gibson and he was the one that brought this book home. At the time, I didn’t have any intention of reading it. I like Gibson but it just didn’t grab me. He kept telling me I’d love it and finally I picked it up one day and didn’t put it down until I finished. I wish I could describe it better, and maybe it’s just that I also have a soft spot for Gibson, but I got pulled into this book and couldn’t put it down. Yes, there’s a lot going on and you’re not quite sure how it all fits together but then suddenly, all the pieces fit and you’re left wondering if any of this will actually happen. In the case of this one which is about marketing and globalization, the answer is probably yes.

If you don’t think a book based on business intelligence can make for an interesting read, well, you’re wrong. It does.

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.

Today’s teaser comes from Kraken by China Miéville.

“Things flew overhead. Edgy birds. He glanced at them, and from where Billy stood, the perspective looked wrong.” (278)

What are you teasing us with this week?

My Favorite Reads – Dusk

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

Dusk by Tim Lebbon.

From the back cover: It is the Year of the Black 2208, and magic has been dead for three centuries. Since the Cataclysmic War, which drove away the Mages, civilization has regressed to a more savage time. But magic is about to be reborn…

Kosar the thief senses that Rafe Baburn is no ordinary boy. After witnessing a madman plunder Rafe’s village and murder his parents, Kosar knows the boy needs help. And now, for a reason he cannot fathom, others are seeking the boy’s destruction.

Uncertain where to begin, Kosar turns to A’Meer, and ex-lover and Shantasi warrior whose people, unbeknownst to him, have been chosen to safeguard magic’s return. A’Meer knows instantly that it is Rafe who bears this miracle of magic. Now Kosar and a band of unexpected allies embark on a battle to protect one special boy. For dark forces are closing in — including the Mages, who have been plotting their own triumphant return.

My thoughts: While this book is fantasy, there is a real horror element to it and parts of it are downright disturbing and disgusting. I know that is probably not the best way to go about adding my thoughts to this one but I wanted to address it first and get it out of the way. This is not a book for everyone, even fantasy lovers may have an issue with the amount of blood and gore in this one. If you like fantasy though, this is a great read, just be warned that the horror element is very strong.

Warning over, let’s get on to why I picked it this morning. The world building, which is so important in fantasy, is phenomenal here. Noreela, the world mages and magic have abandoned, is dark and utterly terrifying and you get sucked in and don’t want to leave even when you’re so disturbed by it you almost want to put the book down. I say almost because there were times when reading this book that I started to skim finding it a bit hard to digest but I was so captivated by it that I ended up going back to read those passages. There’s something about Noreela that I couldn’t escape. In this world that magic has abandoned, all of Noreela seemed to be waiting for something to happen to either make the mages return or destroy them all. I wanted every detail.

Kosar isn’t supposed to be a likable character. He’s a thief and a man not overly concerned with anyone but himself, but he’s ripe for a bit of redemption. And, this book, as a lot of fantasy books are, is a quest. So, man needing a place and quest say hello. The magic here is dark, powerful, and addicting but oh so gratifying. There’s no wand waving fun spells here. The magic is meant for destruction and there’s more than enough of in this book.

If you’re looking for some dark fantasy that’s a little different, take a look at Lebbon.

Dusk is followed by the sequel Dawn.

The King’s Mistress

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The King's Mistress

The King’s Mistress

By Emma Campion

Crown

ISBN: 9780307589255

4 stars

I have a big soft spot for historical fiction, especially stories set in medieval England. I can never get enough of the court intrigue, back stabbing royal courtiers, and the excesses of the kings and queens. I have a particular fondness for stories that are told from the point of view of an outsider, someone that manages to get pulled into the royal orbit and has to adjust to a life they don’t want to live and were never prepared for. In this case, Alice Perrers is that outsider. Campion takes a little known mistress to a king and elevates her story, with a lot of embellishments for the fiction lovers of course, to one that is really fascinating.

Alice Salisbury is a young girl when she meets, and falls in love with, her future husband, Janyn Perrers. It is an arranged marriage but Alice and Janyn do find much love together, and Alice, young and naive as she is, thinks herself blessed and content happy to live out her days married to a wealthy merchant. Unfortunately for Alice, Janyn’s family harbors a secret that will tear the small, happy family apart and cause a lot heartache that will not end even when the secret that was kept from Alice is revealed.

Janyn’s family has connections to the Dowager Queen Isabella, mother of Edward III, and a woman full of secrets, lies, and the ability to ruin lives. For Alice, this relationship which entranced her and then quickly scared her, becomes a shackle. When her much loved husband disappears, Alice finds a price has been put on her head and she soon becomes a pawn of the royal household. A daughter and wife of a merchant, she is lost at court unable to decipher small gestures that mean so much and not able, and sometimes unwilling, to make and keep friends. She does, however, manage to foster a relationship with Queen Philippa, the wife of Edward III, which becomes her grounding force in the hectic court.

Alice’s relationship with the Queen keeps her safe but she is unprepared for the role for which she is being groomed — she is to become the mistress of Edward III. Alice doesn’t go willingly to the King’s bed and finds her attraction and love for the King scare her. She eventually gives in fully and becomes lost in her all consuming love for Edward. The relationship, which she had hoped would stay quiet, puts her in even more danger than she ever imagined. She decides that while she may not have control of her own life, she will use her position to make a stable and safe life for her children, and in the process, becomes a rich landowner, a position that many people at court do not care for. After the death of the King, Alice finds no reprieve but only more fight ahead of her and, all pretenses of naivety gone, she starts once more to claim her life.

It is obvious that Campion knows her subject and time period extraordinarily well. The details she sprinkles throughout the story are rich and draw you into the world that Alice inhabits. The court scandals, murderous plots, love affairs, and extravagant parties move the story along making you wonder how one person could find so much love and pain in the same life. While The King’s Mistress is fiction, the real life Alice Perrers would probably have been entertained by the story Campion weaves.

This is a heavy read though. While Campion has obviously done her research, there were times when the details felt too overwhelming and slowed the story down a bit. The excesses of the royal family and descriptions of cloth and clothing sometimes brought the story to a halt. Fortunately, the story has more than enough going for it to overcome the details and Alice makes a fine character to follow. For lovers of historical fiction, this has a bit of everything to enjoy.

In addition to this blog, I also do reviews for The Book Reporter website. The above review was done for the Book Reporter which can be found here. The book was provided to me by the publisher.

My Favorite Reads – The Time Machine

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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 Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

From the back cover: When the Time Traveller courageously stepped out of his machine for the first time, he found himself in the year 802,700 — and everything had changed. In another, more utopian age, creatures seemed to dwell together in perfect harmony. The Time Traveller thought he could study these marvelous beings — unearth their secret and then return to his own time — until he discovered that his invention, his only avenue of escape, had been stolen.

My thoughts: I read The Time Machine in 8th or 9th grade and it was my first brush with science fiction. I was fascinated by the idea of time travel and the ability to experience and observe new worlds. Wouldn’t it be amazing to witness firsthand the use of fire and tools by early humans, see dinosaurs roaming vast plains, experience the Ice Age, see humans evolve into what we are today, observe amazing creatures of the sea, see the building of the pyramids, and watch the Great Wall of China emerge stone by stone? Maybe this is why I have developed such a love of historical fiction — it captures a time and place in history and brings it to life.

I’ve read this book several times since my first initial bit of enthusiasm and have liked and enjoyed it each time finding new parts to be excited about. Our version is a bit dog-eared and passages are underlined but it only means that it’s well loved. I also love the cover art work of our little Bantam Classic book. It’s very Salvador Dali-esque. I can’t profess to be a big Dali fan, he creeps me out way too much for me to actually enjoy his work, but I like the starkness of the paining and of course the clock in the background gives it just that little reminder of what you are in for. According to the inside cover, the painting is Gentleman in a Railway Carriage by James Jacques Joseph Tissot.