Books I've read
Figured I may as well keep track of them here and share my reviews with folk. My reading interests tend heavily to the YA, especially dystopic, area.
2010
Bold means there's a review below
January
• Flygirl, Sherri L. Smith
• Wild Sweet Love, Beverly Jenkins
• Kendra, Coe Booth
• East, Edith Pattou
• Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
• Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson
• Fever, 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson
• How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, Orson Scott Card
February
• The Green Glass Sea, Ellen Klages
• King Dork, Frank Portman
• Kira-Kira, Cynthia Kadohata
• Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher
• I’m A Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson
• Life Everywhere, David Darling
March
• Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
• Rash, Pete Hautman
• Smooth Talking Stranger, Lisa Kleypas
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• Compound, S.A. Bodeen
• The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, M. L’Engle
• Nancy Drew, #
• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Arnold Bennett
• Just Take My Heart, Mary Higgins Clark
April
• The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
• Stardust, Neil Gaiman
• After Tupac and D Foster, Jacqueline Woodson
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
May
• Polite Lies, Kyoko Mori
• Crashed, Robin Wasserman
• Going Bovine, Libba Bray
• Willow, Julia Hoban
June
• The Arrival, Shaun Tan
July
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
August
• Crocodiles on the Sandbank, Elizabeth Peters
September
• Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
October
• Geisha, Liza Dalby
• Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
November
• Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
• An Offer from a Gentleman, Julia Quinn
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E Lockhart
• Wired, Robin Wasserman
• Love in the Afternoon, Lisa Kleypas
• Avalon High, Meg Cabot
1. The Knife of Never Letting Go. An intriguing, fast-paced read; slowly reveals its mysteries, pretty gruesome. A well-imagined New World, the inevitability of man’s nature-all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again. A great protagonist, who is deeply flawed but you want to forgive. An endearing 2ndary character, and some terrifying villains. It’s a very engrossing read that somewhat suffers when looking back, and it also has some problematic messaging.
2. Willow. This is a disturbing but thoroughly honest story about a teenage girl who starts cutting herself after her parents die. It’s written in third-person but you get every thought in Willow’s head, and you perfectly understand her reasoning, her emotional problems, all of it. The story is one-part emotional trauma to one-part love story, and her love interest is a dear boy whom she really connects with and who helps her a lot.
It’s a difficult read. The reader enters fully into Willow’s psyche, and she is a true teenager, so she’s not able to make the kinds of decisions that you want her to make. Nor is her love interest, Guy, who helps her keep her secret. We see her misinterpret the actions of the adults around her, and while it’s clear to the adult reader that she is mistaken, it’s equally clear that as a teen she just doesn’t have the wisdom (nor the emotional stability) to understand other people.
Willow reminded me quite a bit of Camilla by Madeleine L’Engle, another story about a depressed young woman. Camilla’s narration is much greyer than Willow’s, but Camilla doesn’t abuse herself. Willow uses her cutting to block out reality, and to avoid dealing with her feelings. Both books have a love interest who they connect with on an intellectual level, both struggle with emotionally distant parents or guardians, and both are sort of lost in their own pain. Ultimately I prefer Camilla, which is more life-affirming. But Willow accomplishes something very different by exploring the life of a girl who cuts herself and who is dealing with a much heavier grief than Camilla must.
3. Going Bovine. A story that delights in its own wackiness, to an almost excessive degree, this is the tale of a boy who gets mad cow disease. He embarks on a cross-country journey to save the universe from…well, it’s not clear exactly what, but it needs saving. Time travel, parallel universes, gods and angels all come into play, but in a way that reads more like an acid trip than a fantasy novel. There are lots of laugh-out-loud funny moments, and the ending is quite moving, but on the whole the book didn’t work for me. This kind of tongue-in-cheek storytelling needs substance to balance it out, something that gets you thinking. The narrator has a few discussions on the possibility of alternate universes, but it was nothing new or particularly deep. There are one or two brief conversations on death and what it means to truly live, but in a book of this size I craved a lot more than what we got. Plus, it’s too long and the romance subplot was an unconvincing bore.
4. Crashed. A sequel worthier than its predecessor. Wasserman’s first book was a failure, IMO, but this sequel is a great improvement. The narrator, now fully embracing her mechanical identity, gets drawn into some real high-level political drama, and along the way she explores two fascinatingly different dystopic communities, falls in love with a great guy, experiences wrenching personal betrayals, discovers shocking secrets from people on all sides of the cyborg controversy, and moves closer to becoming the hero we want her to be. On top of this, the writer really dives into the meatier issues of how to define humanity, at what point artificial life is just life, how divinity plays into all of this, and whether the purpose of AI should be to become human or something else entirely. My problems with the first book were 1) Wasserman barely touched the surface of these deeper questions, and 2) not much happened, and the story ended about two feet from where it began. Obviously she improved on the first point; this book still suffers from some of the latter-more than one chapter begins with “everything went back to normal,” which is frustrating. But luckily the ending leaves us in a very promising place for the third novel, after a lot of action that built up for an exciting finale.
5. Polite Lies. A beautifully-written but overwhelmingly negative memoir of a woman who grew up in Japan but pursued her adult life in the United States. The book struggles to find a balance between personal memoir and essays on the differences between two cultures. It presents itself as the latter, but the author’s personal experiences color her vision of Japan in a very negative light, so it becomes an unfair-although convincing-comparison. It works better as a memoir or personal essay, and the writing is really beautiful, but I read it as a way to learn more about Japan so it disappointed me in that regard.
6. When You Reach Me. A short but slow-moving novel with a lovely, moving ending. A young girl growing up in 1970s NYC starts receiving messages from someone who claims to be from the future, saying he needs her help to save someone’s life. It has some good, if unremarkable character development and sketches of the protagonist’s relationships with her mother and some classmates. But the book really comes together at the end, when every loose thread and throwaway detail is used to reach an emotional, surprising, and beautiful conclusion. I sobbed, and would recommend the book just for its ending. Plus, it’s kind of an ode to A Wrinkle In Time, which is nice.
7. The Arrival. A beautiful graphic novel, with no words, this tells the story of an immigrant's arrival in the United States. He encounters a baffling world full of incomprehensible writing, strange sights and animals, and a tough job market. During his journey he meets other immigrants who share their stories through image, as well. Overall it's a stunning book that puts the reader in the place of an immigrant, and universalizes the immigrant experience. I loved it.
8. Who Fears Death is well-written and takes place in an intriguing world. Set in a fantastical Africa, where magic is a part of every day life, it was certainly different from what I normally read. While the story was fast-paced, the feminism pretty strong, and the plot was engrossing, I was ultimately put off of this book by the protagonist. She is unlikeable and commits horrible acts, and never even atones for them. So while it was an exciting story, I just hated the "heroine."
9. Crocodiles in the Sandbank. A mystery novel that takes place in Victorian-era Egypt. Basically a couple of Egyptologists trying to uncover secrets and are blocked by what appears to be mummies and ghosts and stuff like that. The heroine, Amelia Peabody, is pretty badass for a Victorian spinster. Very no-nonsense, brilliant, and yet compassionate. But the more mysteries I read, the more I respect Agatha Christie. This was incredibly weak as a mystery, with a predictable resolution. There's a romantic subplot for Amelia that's fairly lame, too. She's a popular character, though, and there's a whole series of books about her. I won't be seeking them out, however. Ohhh, ALSO, the book kinda goes overboard on the racism. Like, I realize these were Victorians and you want to be authentic, but does there need to be some insulting comment made about Egyptians (or Italians) on every other page? Yuck.
10. Ender's Shadow. A wonderful, captivating, brilliant book. Not anywhere on par with Ender's Game, of course, because Bean is no match for Ender. But this retelling of Ender's story from his acolyte's POV is beautifully done. Bean is developed into his own, endearing character, a pretty far departure from the Bean we know in Ender's Game. Bean is a genius--a savant, inhumanly smart-- and the nicest thing about this book is being privy to his thought processes. It's an honor, almost, to follow his mind as he deciphers different situations and strategizes on the best way to respond. It is also a pleasure to witness him falling in love (hero-worship) with Ender, and to be able to share my love of Ender with this character. The climax is disappointing-- it is the same climax as Ender's Game, and Card didn't do a good job of making it the climax of Bean's story. But on the whole this is a FANTABULOUS read. Note that you must read Ender's Game first. No exceptions.
11. Mockingjay. Well. Everyone knows how much I loved The Hunger Games. That said, I pretty much hated this final entry to the trilogy. My review is here: http://imelda72.livejournal.com/202206.html#cutid1
12. Geisha. This is actually a master's thesis written by a Western woman who became a geisha in Kyoto. It is narrative, thoroughly readable, and a revealing glimpse into the secret world of the geisha. Although I would've appreciated something a tad more personal and even more narrative, this is filled with great details and anecdotes, and is probably the best English book out there on geishas.
13. Memoirs of a Geisha. A classic most of us read in junior high. I'll be honest, I hated it. Aside from some beautiful metaphors, I think it has little redeeming value. It is sexist, shallow, implausible, and not terribly engrossing.
14. Sister Carrie. Ooh, this is a good one. A turn-of-the-century (20th) classic about a young woman who moves to Chicago from the country to seek fame and fortune. It is a melange of pure realism and allegory. Carrie's story is gritty and Dreiser's portrayal of the characters is both unforgiving and sympathetic. Unforgiving in the sense that he shows everyone at their worst, but sympathetic in that he heaps plenty of blame on society for its role in their fates. Grah. I could rave about this novel for hours, but I won't-- just read it!!
15. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. A highly precocious boarding school student discovers that her boyfriend is part of an all-male secret society. Frustrated that she can't be a part of it, she hatches a plan to infiltrate and finds herself directing them from behind-the-scenes. The book is riotous fun, with Frankie leading the boys to conduct all kinds of awesome pranks at the school. She's a really funny character, too, and incredibly smart, but the best part of the book is her emerging feminism. Watching her consciously resist the defined feminine roles her friends and family have prescribed for her is so empowering. I highly recommend this book, although if I ever hear another "neglected positive," it'll be too soon.
16. Wired. This trilogy finale didn't disappoint. Lia continues to grow as a heroine and actually makes admirable decisions, for most of the book. The story is both exciting and, in a way, realistic-- the revolt of the mechs Lia, Jude and Riley seems like something a bunch of teenagers would come up with in the face of overwhelming odds. And the odds are overwhelming-- they're going up against everything that's wrong with our society today: religious fanaticism, corporatism, a corrupted media, etc etc. Although the ending devastated me, and I think the story could have gone a lot further and resolved a whole lot more, I was glad that Wasserman came through with a reasonably strong end to this trilogy.
17. Avalon High In high school I read The Once and Future King and, for a couple of years thereafter, I actually believed in King Arthur. By which I mean, I earnestly believed that some day he would rise again and do great good for our world. So I was delighted to find this book, in which Meg Cabot invents "The Order of the Bear," a group of folks who believe and actually work for Arthur's return. This book doesn't focus on them, though; it focuses on a group of students who seem to be the folks at Camelot reincarnated: A(rthur) William Wagner, his best friend Lance and girlfriend Jennifer, and our narrator, Elaine Harrison, who likes to float in her pool and whose mother is writing academic papers on "The Lady of Shalott". The book works well on 2 levels: that of a teenage girl adjusting to a new school and crushing on a totally swoon-worthy boy, and that of a mythical plot unfolding. The climax is a bit far-fetched and I disliked that Elaine disavowed any connection with Camelot at the end, but on the whole this was a fast and enjoyable read.
2010
Bold means there's a review below
January
• Flygirl, Sherri L. Smith
• Wild Sweet Love, Beverly Jenkins
• Kendra, Coe Booth
• East, Edith Pattou
• Reading Like a Writer, Francine Prose
• Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson
• Fever, 1793, by Laurie Halse Anderson
• How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, Orson Scott Card
February
• The Green Glass Sea, Ellen Klages
• King Dork, Frank Portman
• Kira-Kira, Cynthia Kadohata
• Thirteen Reasons Why, Jay Asher
• I’m A Stranger Here Myself, Bill Bryson
• Life Everywhere, David Darling
March
• Sense and Sensibility, Jane Austen
• Rash, Pete Hautman
• Smooth Talking Stranger, Lisa Kleypas
• A Clockwork Orange, Anthony Burgess
• Compound, S.A. Bodeen
• The Summer of the Great-Grandmother, M. L’Engle
• Nancy Drew, #
• How to Live on 24 Hours a Day, Arnold Bennett
• Just Take My Heart, Mary Higgins Clark
April
• The Knife of Never Letting Go, Patrick Ness
• Stardust, Neil Gaiman
• After Tupac and D Foster, Jacqueline Woodson
• When You Reach Me, Rebecca Stead
May
• Polite Lies, Kyoko Mori
• Crashed, Robin Wasserman
• Going Bovine, Libba Bray
• Willow, Julia Hoban
June
• The Arrival, Shaun Tan
July
• Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor
August
• Crocodiles on the Sandbank, Elizabeth Peters
September
• Ender's Shadow, Orson Scott Card
• Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins
October
• Geisha, Liza Dalby
• Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
November
• Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
• An Offer from a Gentleman, Julia Quinn
• The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E Lockhart
• Wired, Robin Wasserman
• Love in the Afternoon, Lisa Kleypas
• Avalon High, Meg Cabot
1. The Knife of Never Letting Go. An intriguing, fast-paced read; slowly reveals its mysteries, pretty gruesome. A well-imagined New World, the inevitability of man’s nature-all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again. A great protagonist, who is deeply flawed but you want to forgive. An endearing 2ndary character, and some terrifying villains. It’s a very engrossing read that somewhat suffers when looking back, and it also has some problematic messaging.
2. Willow. This is a disturbing but thoroughly honest story about a teenage girl who starts cutting herself after her parents die. It’s written in third-person but you get every thought in Willow’s head, and you perfectly understand her reasoning, her emotional problems, all of it. The story is one-part emotional trauma to one-part love story, and her love interest is a dear boy whom she really connects with and who helps her a lot.
It’s a difficult read. The reader enters fully into Willow’s psyche, and she is a true teenager, so she’s not able to make the kinds of decisions that you want her to make. Nor is her love interest, Guy, who helps her keep her secret. We see her misinterpret the actions of the adults around her, and while it’s clear to the adult reader that she is mistaken, it’s equally clear that as a teen she just doesn’t have the wisdom (nor the emotional stability) to understand other people.
Willow reminded me quite a bit of Camilla by Madeleine L’Engle, another story about a depressed young woman. Camilla’s narration is much greyer than Willow’s, but Camilla doesn’t abuse herself. Willow uses her cutting to block out reality, and to avoid dealing with her feelings. Both books have a love interest who they connect with on an intellectual level, both struggle with emotionally distant parents or guardians, and both are sort of lost in their own pain. Ultimately I prefer Camilla, which is more life-affirming. But Willow accomplishes something very different by exploring the life of a girl who cuts herself and who is dealing with a much heavier grief than Camilla must.
3. Going Bovine. A story that delights in its own wackiness, to an almost excessive degree, this is the tale of a boy who gets mad cow disease. He embarks on a cross-country journey to save the universe from…well, it’s not clear exactly what, but it needs saving. Time travel, parallel universes, gods and angels all come into play, but in a way that reads more like an acid trip than a fantasy novel. There are lots of laugh-out-loud funny moments, and the ending is quite moving, but on the whole the book didn’t work for me. This kind of tongue-in-cheek storytelling needs substance to balance it out, something that gets you thinking. The narrator has a few discussions on the possibility of alternate universes, but it was nothing new or particularly deep. There are one or two brief conversations on death and what it means to truly live, but in a book of this size I craved a lot more than what we got. Plus, it’s too long and the romance subplot was an unconvincing bore.
4. Crashed. A sequel worthier than its predecessor. Wasserman’s first book was a failure, IMO, but this sequel is a great improvement. The narrator, now fully embracing her mechanical identity, gets drawn into some real high-level political drama, and along the way she explores two fascinatingly different dystopic communities, falls in love with a great guy, experiences wrenching personal betrayals, discovers shocking secrets from people on all sides of the cyborg controversy, and moves closer to becoming the hero we want her to be. On top of this, the writer really dives into the meatier issues of how to define humanity, at what point artificial life is just life, how divinity plays into all of this, and whether the purpose of AI should be to become human or something else entirely. My problems with the first book were 1) Wasserman barely touched the surface of these deeper questions, and 2) not much happened, and the story ended about two feet from where it began. Obviously she improved on the first point; this book still suffers from some of the latter-more than one chapter begins with “everything went back to normal,” which is frustrating. But luckily the ending leaves us in a very promising place for the third novel, after a lot of action that built up for an exciting finale.
5. Polite Lies. A beautifully-written but overwhelmingly negative memoir of a woman who grew up in Japan but pursued her adult life in the United States. The book struggles to find a balance between personal memoir and essays on the differences between two cultures. It presents itself as the latter, but the author’s personal experiences color her vision of Japan in a very negative light, so it becomes an unfair-although convincing-comparison. It works better as a memoir or personal essay, and the writing is really beautiful, but I read it as a way to learn more about Japan so it disappointed me in that regard.
6. When You Reach Me. A short but slow-moving novel with a lovely, moving ending. A young girl growing up in 1970s NYC starts receiving messages from someone who claims to be from the future, saying he needs her help to save someone’s life. It has some good, if unremarkable character development and sketches of the protagonist’s relationships with her mother and some classmates. But the book really comes together at the end, when every loose thread and throwaway detail is used to reach an emotional, surprising, and beautiful conclusion. I sobbed, and would recommend the book just for its ending. Plus, it’s kind of an ode to A Wrinkle In Time, which is nice.
7. The Arrival. A beautiful graphic novel, with no words, this tells the story of an immigrant's arrival in the United States. He encounters a baffling world full of incomprehensible writing, strange sights and animals, and a tough job market. During his journey he meets other immigrants who share their stories through image, as well. Overall it's a stunning book that puts the reader in the place of an immigrant, and universalizes the immigrant experience. I loved it.
8. Who Fears Death is well-written and takes place in an intriguing world. Set in a fantastical Africa, where magic is a part of every day life, it was certainly different from what I normally read. While the story was fast-paced, the feminism pretty strong, and the plot was engrossing, I was ultimately put off of this book by the protagonist. She is unlikeable and commits horrible acts, and never even atones for them. So while it was an exciting story, I just hated the "heroine."
9. Crocodiles in the Sandbank. A mystery novel that takes place in Victorian-era Egypt. Basically a couple of Egyptologists trying to uncover secrets and are blocked by what appears to be mummies and ghosts and stuff like that. The heroine, Amelia Peabody, is pretty badass for a Victorian spinster. Very no-nonsense, brilliant, and yet compassionate. But the more mysteries I read, the more I respect Agatha Christie. This was incredibly weak as a mystery, with a predictable resolution. There's a romantic subplot for Amelia that's fairly lame, too. She's a popular character, though, and there's a whole series of books about her. I won't be seeking them out, however. Ohhh, ALSO, the book kinda goes overboard on the racism. Like, I realize these were Victorians and you want to be authentic, but does there need to be some insulting comment made about Egyptians (or Italians) on every other page? Yuck.
10. Ender's Shadow. A wonderful, captivating, brilliant book. Not anywhere on par with Ender's Game, of course, because Bean is no match for Ender. But this retelling of Ender's story from his acolyte's POV is beautifully done. Bean is developed into his own, endearing character, a pretty far departure from the Bean we know in Ender's Game. Bean is a genius--a savant, inhumanly smart-- and the nicest thing about this book is being privy to his thought processes. It's an honor, almost, to follow his mind as he deciphers different situations and strategizes on the best way to respond. It is also a pleasure to witness him falling in love (hero-worship) with Ender, and to be able to share my love of Ender with this character. The climax is disappointing-- it is the same climax as Ender's Game, and Card didn't do a good job of making it the climax of Bean's story. But on the whole this is a FANTABULOUS read. Note that you must read Ender's Game first. No exceptions.
11. Mockingjay. Well. Everyone knows how much I loved The Hunger Games. That said, I pretty much hated this final entry to the trilogy. My review is here: http://imelda72.livejournal.com/202206.html#cutid1
12. Geisha. This is actually a master's thesis written by a Western woman who became a geisha in Kyoto. It is narrative, thoroughly readable, and a revealing glimpse into the secret world of the geisha. Although I would've appreciated something a tad more personal and even more narrative, this is filled with great details and anecdotes, and is probably the best English book out there on geishas.
13. Memoirs of a Geisha. A classic most of us read in junior high. I'll be honest, I hated it. Aside from some beautiful metaphors, I think it has little redeeming value. It is sexist, shallow, implausible, and not terribly engrossing.
14. Sister Carrie. Ooh, this is a good one. A turn-of-the-century (20th) classic about a young woman who moves to Chicago from the country to seek fame and fortune. It is a melange of pure realism and allegory. Carrie's story is gritty and Dreiser's portrayal of the characters is both unforgiving and sympathetic. Unforgiving in the sense that he shows everyone at their worst, but sympathetic in that he heaps plenty of blame on society for its role in their fates. Grah. I could rave about this novel for hours, but I won't-- just read it!!
15. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. A highly precocious boarding school student discovers that her boyfriend is part of an all-male secret society. Frustrated that she can't be a part of it, she hatches a plan to infiltrate and finds herself directing them from behind-the-scenes. The book is riotous fun, with Frankie leading the boys to conduct all kinds of awesome pranks at the school. She's a really funny character, too, and incredibly smart, but the best part of the book is her emerging feminism. Watching her consciously resist the defined feminine roles her friends and family have prescribed for her is so empowering. I highly recommend this book, although if I ever hear another "neglected positive," it'll be too soon.
16. Wired. This trilogy finale didn't disappoint. Lia continues to grow as a heroine and actually makes admirable decisions, for most of the book. The story is both exciting and, in a way, realistic-- the revolt of the mechs Lia, Jude and Riley seems like something a bunch of teenagers would come up with in the face of overwhelming odds. And the odds are overwhelming-- they're going up against everything that's wrong with our society today: religious fanaticism, corporatism, a corrupted media, etc etc. Although the ending devastated me, and I think the story could have gone a lot further and resolved a whole lot more, I was glad that Wasserman came through with a reasonably strong end to this trilogy.
17. Avalon High In high school I read The Once and Future King and, for a couple of years thereafter, I actually believed in King Arthur. By which I mean, I earnestly believed that some day he would rise again and do great good for our world. So I was delighted to find this book, in which Meg Cabot invents "The Order of the Bear," a group of folks who believe and actually work for Arthur's return. This book doesn't focus on them, though; it focuses on a group of students who seem to be the folks at Camelot reincarnated: A(rthur) William Wagner, his best friend Lance and girlfriend Jennifer, and our narrator, Elaine Harrison, who likes to float in her pool and whose mother is writing academic papers on "The Lady of Shalott". The book works well on 2 levels: that of a teenage girl adjusting to a new school and crushing on a totally swoon-worthy boy, and that of a mythical plot unfolding. The climax is a bit far-fetched and I disliked that Elaine disavowed any connection with Camelot at the end, but on the whole this was a fast and enjoyable read.