Book Review: As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley

Fiction.  This is the 7th Flavia de Luce mystery novel, and I was waiting desperately for it to come out.  I waited a bit of time for my library to get it in eBook format and then had a marathon of reading it.  It is the first of the Flavia books that does not take place in her home town, the little English village of Bishop's Lacey.  This time she is away at the same boarding school her mother attended, Miss Bodycote's Female Academy, which is across the pond in Toronto.  It follows suit with most of the Flavia works, where after a little bit of time there, we are suddenly presented with a corpse out of nowhere, and Flavia is the girl to solve it all.

Since it is not in Bishop's Lacey we have a different cast of people to deal with, but it still has the same charm of her running around where she is not supposed to go, people who you are not sure if they are on the side of good or are perhaps involved in some larger conspiracy, and of course it includes Flavia's usual obsession with chemistry and her rapier wit.  We also get to learn a bit more about her legendary mother and a secret group in the process.  While I was a bit sad to see her leave the little English village, there are only so many people who can die mysteriously in such a small town.  I am happy with the broader story line opening up since it leaves us the possibility of having more novels about Flavia and more tidbits about her mother's mysterious life.

If you are a fan of the Flavia de Luce mysteries you will enjoy it, and if you are not, you should get reading, she is a pint-sized Sherlock with a lot more wit, humor, fun, and a lot more knowledge of chemistry, she is a total hoot!

And so it goes...

Book Reviews: Odd Thomas Series by Dean Koontz

So the boyfriend of a woman I sing with in my church choir and I were having a conversation about books at a choir party.  He told me that if I liked Stephen King (I love his works) that I should check out Dean Koontz.  I then looked the author up and found out that he has published hundreds of works.  I had no idea where to start, so I turned to Goodreads (www.goodreads.com/) because I find it helpful reading reviews by others when deciding if something looks good or not, and it also helps me to remember all the stuff I have read.  It seemed that most people recommend starting with this series, and rather than writing a separate review for each one, I am simplifying it to one review for the series.  I have only read the first five so far, and the last one (#7) is not out yet so this is only up to but not including the last two of the series.

#1: Odd Thomas

Introduces us to Odd Thomas, the short-order cook from a small desert town who can see the dead.  They seek him out for help, usually with trying to pass on to the next world.  They cannot harm anybody in this world and they do not speak, but if they get mad enough they can go poltergeist and move stuff around.  The books are not really scary, they are like detective type novels where he solves what happened to these people, or often he deals with something bad that is about to happen and tries to stop it, that is the case with the first one.  The ghosts he sees are sometimes famous (Elvis, Frank Sinatra, etc.), sometimes they are even pets (he has a ghost dog), but he also sees some sort of evil black shadow things that like to come around when a lot of people are about to die, this is the case with the first novel.  I liked it well enough to read the series, but I consider it light and not very challenging at all.  He dabbles in the supernatural and character analysis through these odd events like Stephen King, but believe me his writing is nowhere near the level of Stephen King.  He does not develop the characters as well, the work does not flow as well with loads of filler text, and their is nowhere near the level of trying to understand and explain the human condition like there is in all of Stephen King's works.  So, if you are looking for a light or diet version of Stephen King this is for you.  Like I said, it is entertaining and fun, but it is not deep writing.  Odd is a very sweet and funny character, his dialog is often the best part of each book, and the mysteries involved are quite entertaining.

#2: Forever Odd

This one involves a nutty woman who wants Odd to conjure ghosts for her, something he cannot do, and when I say nutty I mean psychopath in every sense of the word.

#3: Brother Odd

This one is set in a monastery and involves an unstable scientist with a secret lab, a snowstorm, and an endearing young man with mental development issues.

#4: Odd Hours
In this one he is drawn to a coastal town and meets the character Annamaria who is young, pregnant, vague, and has some sort of powers (does a nifty flower trick and can speak to coyotes).  There is also some plot involved with corrupt townspeople and nuclear weapons.

#5: Odd Apocalypse
This one involves an old mansion called Roseland, very disturbing secrets involving lots of dead women, and a time-traveling device created by Tesla.

#6: Deeply Odd
I have not read this one yet.

#7: Saint Odd
This is supposed to come out 12/09/2014.

And so it goes...

Book Review: Inferno by Dan Brown

     I read this is three sittings, I thought it was excellent!  If you like the other Dan Brown books with Robert Langdon in them, then you will like this one.  It follows the same M.O. except he starts out with amnesia in this one.  I won't say too much else because it is a mystery book where he solves puzzles; what I will say is that the characters spend quite a bit of time in Florence, and although it does reference Dante's Inferno throughout the book, I do not think it would be necessary to have read Dante's work or the other Langdon books by Dan Brown in order to read this one.  The main character, Robert Langdon, is the sort of India Jones of symbols and art.  Each adventure can stand on its own and does not stem from previous events in the other novels.  The only nod to the other books is when he mentions the Vatican "doesn't like him either" to another character.  Since I am an art historian myself, I did know where they were heading for the various locations by the hints provided; however, I was still very surprised with the twists and turns in the plot and with the characters.  It was an enjoyable leisure read! 

And so it goes...

Book Review: Still Alice by Lisa Genova

I read this book 11/2011. I think this book is one of the most interesting and clever novels I have read in some time. I loved this book and was completely heartbroken at the same time.

The story centers around Alice, a 50 year old Harvard professor of cognitive psychology, so her life is as an academic who focuses on how the mind processes language and its uses. The novel begins right at her 50th birthday, as she begins to slowly notice little hiccups in her memory and its function. It is nothing that people do not experience everyday, including me in my early thirties. These occurrences start to become a little more frequent than she likes since she has such a razor sharp memory and impressive intellectual prowess (we would expect nothing less from any professor but, especially one who has tenure at Harvard).

At first she believes these instances are related to menopause, since she fits neatly into the 48-52 year old age bracket, and because slight memory issues or forgetfulness are common side effects of going through menopause. So she visits her family physician who tells her as such and she goes on for a little while somewhat confident/hopeful that this is the cause of her memory hiccups. Then she has a few incidents that make her visit the physician again and cause her to request to see a neurologist. After a bunch of neurological tests she is familiar with (teaching), the result is that she has early onset Alzheimer's disease, which she initially keeps from her family and colleagues. Eventually she must bring her husband in to the doctor's office since she soon will not be a reliable judge as to how much she is deteriorating.

The element in the novel that stuck with me the most is her blackberry. It is one of the things that carries us through her painful memory loss and mental deterioration the most because it reoccurs throughout the remaining chapters. Early on in her loss of mental acuity she makes a list of a few questions which chime in via her device every morning at 8am with instructions telling herself that if she cannot answer these questions than she should open a file on her computer called "butterfly." The questions ask her to answer: 1.What month is it? 2.Where do you live? 3.Where is your office 4.When is Anna's birthday (one of her daughters) and 5.How many children do you have? At the beginning the answers are clear and detailed, but as the chapters progress we see them become much simpler as she forgets, has trouble reading and typing, and eventually cannot read or type anything at all because it is too difficult to process. In an incident that was devastating for me, she loses the blackberry in a way that destroys its functionality, so she no longer gets her daily reminder, and therefore, forgets her "butterfly" file exists and forgets her ultimate plan, which is eluded to but not stated outright, that she will kill herself when her "self" is gone. And since she no longer has that reminder she has lost her plan and herself.

I connected to this book personally since I am also a college instructor in a field that requires me to remember and instantly recall a plethora of facts (art history). If I were to suffer from the same degenerative mental disease my career would also be over. As professors we define ourselves, in large part, by our mental prowess and ability to communicate with our students and colleagues. This book helped me feel what it would be like since we read it from Alice's point of view and not an outsider or caregiver.

I also learned a bit about Alzheimer's from this book. I did not know that there were three genetic markers for this disease which can be tested for, that early onset is hereditary, nor did I even realize that one could suffer the effects so early on in life. I, probably like many people, thought it was a disease of the elderly, and that memory loss was just a part of getting older. I am glad I now know more but, am equally frightened that it can happen at the pinnacle of a career.

I would recommend this book to learn more about the human side of suffering from a disease. It is a powerful novel, albeit a scary and sad one, but well worth reading. Sometimes it is easier to confront these issues through a novel because it becomes more personal than just reading statistics or medical language that the average person cannot understand. But, we can understand Alice, the fierce intellectual who controls every aspect of her world eventually having to live satisfied with loving chocolate ice-cream and only referring to her children as "the mother" and "the actress" because she doesn't know who they are anymore.

And so it goes...

Book Review: Wicked by Gregory Maguire

I read this book 11/2011. I really loved this book! I initially checked it out because it is the source material for the Broadway musical of the same name. I would like to one day see the musical, if I like say win the lottery and have the money to go, so I wanted to read the book first in case it is like most film adaptations of books where people always say "it was good but the book is better."

This is definitely not your children's version of Oz right from the beginning pages of the novel. There is a lot of sexual material in the book right from the start, often too much and I found that off-putting, and a fair amount of political matters as well. However, the story is a clever twist, especially if you are most familiar with the land of Oz via the classic movie The Wizard of Oz (1939) starring Judy Garland, or the children's' novels of L. Frank Baum. This is Oz for grownups.

The book centers around the life of Elphaba, who will eventually come to be known as "The Wicked Witch of the West," from her birth to her death. We get a peak at a few years of her childhood out in the country with her preacher father and loose mother who came from a titled family. Then we spend a year or so with her at college, which surprised me, and we learn how she came into contact with Galinda (eventually goes with the nickname Glinda we all know) who will become her friend and find Elphaba becoming a strong advocate for Animal rights (the difference between a mere animal and an Animal is explained in the book). This is also how she comes to be in the Emerald city, which is the next section of the book, in a secret group determined to take down the ruthless dictator of the city. Here the "wonderful wizard of Oz" is not so wonderful but a corrupt politician in every sense of the phrase. Eventually she takes a lover (some very adult content) and tries to be a young and strong-willed political activist. Things don't work out too well, so we flash forward to a few years later where she is in a kind of convent and leaving for the far west with a boy to rectify some of the tragedy surrounding the events of her and her lover whom she met in college and who was a prince. That is how she ends up in the castle, creates flying monkeys who talk (she is working on it), and eventually ends up meeting Dorothy and her ultimate demise via water, by accident.

The great quality of the book I think is that it makes Oz quite similar to real life. Elphaba is a young woman who is a bit different (green skin, allergic to water) and engaged in a spirited youthful drive to rid the world of cruelty to Animals and fight for Animal rights, beginning in her college years, which I think a good many of us can relate to: youthful enthusiasm and the desire to change the world. She then goes through a few bumps and bruises along the way while trying to live a good life, but things just don't quite work out for her.

Oz is more of a mix of power hungry politicians and the social elite instead of a land where good and evil are clearly defined. Elphaba was not a wicked person nor was she born a "witch," that was a chosen and respected profession in the book, to become a sorceress. In actuality she was following the path of science and the study of how Animals acquired the higher intelligence that they had which separated them from the mere barn animals that were sources of food. And her death was not the great and justified quest to rid the world of evil as it was in the film. It was a mere accident in the tower, which I will leave for you to discover when you read this interesting contemporary novel.

Needless to say I think this book was excellent and causes you to look at Oz as another world, one that is a fantasy where magic is common but, not with the simple and clearly defined epic quest of one chosen good person struggling against a token tyrant, at least not in the way the movies always make them in an Arthurian sort of way. As in real life, what is "wicked" is sometimes a matter of perspective and intentions. I am now reading the second book in the series Son of a Witch, and it is revealing even more about the story of Elphaba and the crazy land of Oz, hooking the readers with bits and pieces about the mysterious character of Mother Yackle and her role in the events of both books. There seems to be a much larger conspiracy afoot...

I would recommend this book to fans of the Oz story who want a more true-to-life idea of the land and those who like fiction in general, but definitely not to a youth audience, this is not a children's version of Oz.

And so it goes...

Book Review: The Rope Walk by Carrie Brown

Read for book club (11/2010) at Crystal Lake Public Library. I found this book to be touching, sweet, and introspective. I really enjoyed it!

The main character is Alice, and the novel takes place around Memorial day, her 10th birthday. She is the lone girl in a house with her father, a Shakespeare professor, and 5 older brothers. She is a bit of a tomboy but quite smart and kind. During the summer she meets and becomes friends with a few special people. The first is Theo, a mixed-race boy from NYC, who ends up becoming a good friend of hers after a little time. The second is Kenneth, a "cool" artist who makes nifty mobiles (reminded me of Alexander Calder a bit) and is unfortunately sick and has lost his site.

This brings the three of them together because Alice and Theo end up visiting Kenneth daily to read to him from books, which begins a great friendship and a love for Lewis and Clarke. The two children end up creating a rope walk for Kenneth so he would be able to go for a walk in the woods and not get too close to a dangerous waterfall (where the book title comes from).

You definitely feel a sense of childhood wonder and innocence while reading this book (like Alice dreamily looking at the beautiful mobile in the library). Eventually you see some of the realities of life creep in and how the children have to deal with the mistakes of adults. It is endearing and hopeful though, and I would certainly recommend it to those who enjoy a good story!

And so it goes...

Book Review: One Vacant Chair by Joe Coomer

A selection for the book club at my local library (Crystal Lake Public Library) that I read later on my own to catch up (orig. they read it for 4/2010). I enjoyed this book thoroughly! The main character Sarah is a bit of a Smart Alec and is going through some interesting middle-age issues: a loss of a not-so-loved relative, an impending separation/divorce?, and reconnecting with a quirky and fun relative, her aunt Edna, who only paints chairs. I enjoyed thinking about how simple objects like chairs can reveal so much if we examine them more closely, and the connection between the women in the novel despite their different personalities.

The main premise of the story is that Sarah's grandma has died, the crotchety and unpleasant matriarch of the family, who Edna cared for through a long and vague illness, and now Sarah has decided to stay with her aunt who becomes a sort of guru to her and cope with her husband's infidelity. Sarah is an overweight and unhappy but successful designer of kitschy Christmas ornaments, while Edna is an unmarried school cafeteria worker who is obsessed with painting empty chairs. The two are put together by the strange request of the grandma who wanted her ashes scattered in Scotland, even though she only saw pictures of the country in a book. It is quirky, odd, very funny, and sincerely an enjoyable read! I recommend this book to lovers of fiction who like a good laugh, cry, and introspection all at the same time!

And so it goes...

Book Review: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

This was a book club read for my local library (Crystal Lake Public Library) before I joined in June of 2010 that I read on my own to catch up later on (orig. they read it for 3/2010). This is a very bizarre tale to say the least! If you do not want to know the plot do not read on because I cannot think of a way to talk about the novel without describing what happens in the pages.

You think it is going to be a tale about school chums, and in a way it is, but it is more of a sci-fi tale and one that makes you think about the moral implications of cloning. The characters are essentially that, clones, who are raised in a school and eventually become donors of organs, and are proud of themselves if they can donate four organs before death. The main character is Kathy H., who is a counselor and recovery assistant to these "donors," a profession called "carer" in the book. She is at a crossroads in her life and looking reflectively back at the school where she "grew up" called Halisham. What she is deciding boils down to whether or not she will continue on counseling the other clones as they donate themselves to death, their real purpose for existing, or if she will now become a donor herself.

The book makes you think a lot about human nature and about our rights to exist. Although these characters are clones, I felt bad for them that they didn't have a right to a "normal" life and that there whole existence was to give until they die and that they were brainwashed into believing that life actually mattered to them when they were really just alive to supply parts for "real" people. I am disappointed that I missed the book club discussion for this one because I would have loved to have known what the other ladies thought of this one! We have not read anything remotely like it since and I have been in it for nearly two years now.

It is definitely not your typical novel, and I would recommend it to people interested in books that make you think about what it means to be human and to sci-fi fans as well!

And so it goes...

There's Nothing Like a Good Book

This week was a sick one at my house. My son had his first occasion to be put on antibiotics in his life (he is 6 yrs. old) when he got double ear infections, poor guy. Then, about 2 days later, I could not even swallow water because of a lump in my throat that felt like a golf ball on fire. It turns out that I had contracted strep throat for the first time in my life, oh joy! Then, later that day, I received a call from my son's school because he suddenly had rashes and bumps. During our second visit to the doctors that day, we found out that he apparently is allergic to penicillin! What a week I tell you! The happy result of all this sickness is that I got to spend 4 days in bed reading, and I love to read!

My mother recently sent me a copy of Maya Angelou's book "Letter to My Daughter." I have been reading it slowly over the last month or so, since it is comprised of little vignettes only a few pages each, I could pick it up and put it down whenever I wanted. Usually after I finish a book that I was given I donate it to the local library;but, I am keeping this one. It is filled with so many treasures that I can access again and again that I am hanging onto this one. There are so many great little inspirational passages, as well as quotation opportunities for graduations, weddings, new mothers, etc. that I know I will appreciate it greatly for future references when occasions arise. This also reminded me of how much I love Maya Angelou's writing and sent me forth in search of some more of her works at my local library (conveniently located right across the street).

I had read "I know Why the Caged Bird Sings" in high school and I remember how much it changed my perspective. So I decided to pick up the other 5 books in the autobiographical series by Miss Angelou. While in bed this week I read #2 "Gather Together in My Name" which rather surprised me. This book is set in her teen years after she had her son (at age 16). It was a bit of a shocker to discover via reading this book that she was at some point in her life the madame of a brothel, a prostitute in a brothel, and moved around more times in 3 years than I have probably in my entire life, and I have lived in 3 different states. I am now almost finished with #3 "Singin' and "Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas" which takes place during her 20s in the 1950s-60s. This one is much less harsh in content than #2. In this novel she is developing her career, or rather trying to find her career and calling in life. She was a dancer, nightclub singer, and part of the traveling company of Porgy and Bess. This one is a much more fluid and interesting read, and has more of her reflections on life that I love and adore. She has a way of delivering one sentence that profoundly sums up her experience and makes it relatable to anybody's life experiences.

I highly recommend giving this series a try if you are looking for an interesting read. I plan on another post of the last 3 in the series if you are interested in a general summarization before giving it a go yourself.

Happy reading out there!

And so it goes...