This book has everything I love -- a Southern setting, secrets, family tragedy, religious zealotry run amok, and strong narrative voices. If I had reaThis book has everything I love -- a Southern setting, secrets, family tragedy, religious zealotry run amok, and strong narrative voices. If I had read it, it would have been an easy four stars. But because I listened to it, and the audio version is one of the best I've ever heard, it's getting five stars.
This is a debut novel -- is it flawless? No. But you know what? I didn't care. I don't think you will either. I got so swept up and carried away by the story I was being told I was living it. I was right there in that small town watching it all go down with a flutter of anxiety in my stomach, and a lump of sadness in my throat.
What really made me love this story as an audiobook is that we have three narrators read by three different readers-- 1) Jess Hall, a precocious nine year old who has a penchant for spying and will eventually see something he wishes he hadn't that will change his life and the life of his town forever 2) Adelaide Lyle, a feisty old woman who has born witness to much of the town's history and dark secrets and 3) Clem Barefield, seasoned Sheriff with a painful past who must confront the evil that has taken hold of his town like a cancer.
Getting the story from these three very distinct voices and points of view is fantastic. It makes what is essentially a simple and straight forward story feel richer, more layered and emotional. I loved the reader for the Sheriff. What a fantastic performance. That voice married to the author's prose is a match made in heaven. In the best ways it reminded me of Tommy Lee Jones's performance in No Country for Old Men.
A Land More Kind Than Home is set deep in the heart of snake-handling country where you better hope that when the preacher arrives in town, he ain't the devil in disguise.
Read this book -- and if you do the audio thing -- listen. You won't be able to stop, I promise.
And since I have a thing for book trailers, this one does a great job of capturing the edgy, southern Gothic mood of this novel that's so portent with revelation, betrayals, and tragedy.
Jack Torrence thought: officious little prick ~The Shining (1977)
**Note: I chose not to put this review behind a spoiler tag. Below I discuss both the
Jack Torrence thought: officious little prick ~The Shining (1977)
**Note: I chose not to put this review behind a spoiler tag. Below I discuss both the book and the movie assuming if you're reading this, you're familiar with both.
Even though Stephen King's primary reputation has been 'America's boogeyman', I can count on one hand the number of pure horror novels I feel he's published (and they all come early in his career) -- 'Salem's Lot, Pet Sematary, It, Misery and of course, The Shining. King is most famous as master of the macabre, but fans know he is also a keen observer of human behavior and emotions. He knows what makes us tick, and he's just as likely to make us laugh and cry as he is to scream. These five books? These he wrote to make us scream – and shiver, and look over our shoulder, peek under our bed, bar the closet door, and leave the lights on. He wrote them – to put it bluntly – to scare the shit out of us.
His tale of the doomed Torrence family and the sinister Overlook Hotel is in many ways a classic ghost story with its roots firmly planted in Gothic literature, Anne Radcliffe, Henry James and Edgar Allen Poe. More than these however, King is clearly writing under the influence of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House and Richard Matheson's Hell House. The notion of a malevolent house, seething from within with awareness and intent, was far from virgin territory by the time King came to it in the 1970's. Yet, King brought his own distinct brand of terror to the table and the result has left an indelible mark on not just the genre, but on contemporary literature.
Is The Shining scary? You're goddamn right it is. And I think I never really thought about how scary until I listened to the audiobook. Actor Campbell Scott does an outstanding job, and like all the best ghost stories going all the way back to caveman times, this one is meant to be told, you kennit? Not merely read – but listened to -- surrounded by darkness, hunched around a dwindling fire. There are tropes and themes embedded in The Shining that penetrate to the very lizard part of our brain where fear and anxiety make their home.
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In regards to the movie, Stephen King has not been shy over the years voicing his discontent with Kubrick's cinematic interpretation of his novel. I love the movie for many reasons (even though it's been around for so long and parodied so often it's hard to take it seriously anymore). But it pays to remember that Kubrick chose to tell an entirely different story from King.
The beating heart of King's novel is the sundering of the family unit, the destructive forces of alcoholism, the legacy of domestic violence and the incipient guilt and self-loathing it can bestow. If I have one complaint about the movie is that it fails to show any tragedy. King's version is not only terrifying, but heartbreaking. It is the story of a flawed but decent man in the process of clawing his way back into the light when all that he loves is ripped away from him. Whereas Kubrick's film focuses purely on a man losing his shit (in other words, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).
In the film version, we see Jack Torrence go stark raving mad and viciously turn on his family with homicidal intent. But King's Jack Torrence doesn't go crazy, or suffer from the proverbial “cabin fever” alluded to in references to Grady, the Overlook's infamous previous caretaker. In the novel, it's the Overlook itself acting with malignant and malicious forethought that uses and abuses hapless Jack Torrence. It manipulates him, it twists his thoughts and controls his behavior. You can look at it as an alien invasion, or an outright demonic possession, but by the end of the novel, Jack Torrence is no longer a who but a what referred to as an it.
It hurried across the basement and into the feeble yellow glow of the furnace room's only light. It was slobbering with fear. It had been so close, so close to having the boy....It could not lose now.
Jack is lost inside of the monstrosity the Hotel has made him, as it uses his body to hunt down his little boy to murder him. A large part of the story's inherent tragedy for me, is watching Danny Torrence -- who loves his father very much -- lose him in such a frightening and grisly manner.
”Doc,” Jack Torrance said. “Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you.” “No,” Danny said. “Oh Danny, for God's sake--” “No,” Danny said. He took one of his father's bloody hands and kissed it. “It's almost over.”
Now this fall, after a wait of almost four decades, readers will finally discover what kind of a man this little boy with his unique ability to shine has become. That's a story I didn't even know I wanted until it became a reality. Now I want it more than I can even put into words. In all of this overlong review where there are still many, many things I could have rambled on about, I failed to find a moment to speak briefly of Dick Halloran. I love this character -- his humour, his kindness, his fierceness and strength. I can only hope that catching up with Danny Torrence will mean crossing paths with Mr. Halloran again too. ...more
1. Setting: Post-Katrina New Orleans. Swampy, sensual, tragic, dangerous. A complete immersion into the si How do I love a book? Let me count the ways.
1. Setting: Post-Katrina New Orleans. Swampy, sensual, tragic, dangerous. A complete immersion into the sights, sounds, smells and tastes of a damaged and depressed city, betrayed and forgotten, seeking its redemption.
2. Heroine: Kick-ass, ruthless, complicated, haunted. Claire DeWitt is much like the city of New Orleans itself: damaged and dangerous, tragic and seeking redemption. Neither needs nor desires your pity or understanding.
3. Language: Hard-boiled dialogue that snaps and shows its teeth, married with gorgeous turns of phrase and a robust philosophy about the very nature of solving mysteries.
The client already knows the solution to his mystery. But he doesn't want to know. He doesn't hire a detective to solve his mystery. He hires a detective to prove that his mystery can't be solved.
4. Mystery: I don't read a lot of "mysteries" where there is a genuine, bona fide puzzle to be solved. I'm not a clue junkie hoarding each item the author throws down in an effort to beat him or her to the big reveal. Here, I really felt compelled to sit up straight and pay attention. It didn't take very long before I became incredibly invested in Claire's investigation and its outcome, no mere detached observer but something akin to an actual participant.
Despite the fact that Claire's methods are anything but conventional -- bordering on mystical and clairvoyant -- the investigation remains firmly grounded in reality and logic. I adore how everything comes together in a satisfying "click" "snap" "lock" way that isn't pretty and predictable, but all the more beautiful for that very reason.
Finally, I can't do this book justice on my own so I'm going to call in the big guns. Without these two reviews I don't think I ever would have found my way to Claire. Take it away Carol and Anthony. ...more
"I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with suc
"I was half asleep but I smiled. In spite of all his irritating qualities, I couldn't help liking a man who despised a fictional character with such passion."
"There isn't any good news. Just because there's bad news doesn't mean there's good news, too."
I loved this book. So much. In fact, I'm in real danger of descending into embarrassing fangirl babble and I really don't want to put you through that. This book deserves so much more than my barely coherent praise I want to heap on top of its modest, unassuming frame. So before I proceed any further I want to draw your attention to two excellent reviews that made me want to pick up City of Thieves and read it in the first place -- Maciek and Steve. Thank you gentlemen.
During my university days, I majored in 20th century military history. To say I was vastly outnumbered by my male classmates would be an understatement. I was -- for a time anyway -- a curious anomaly, one who was more often humored and patronized, than taken seriously. While my interests would eventually bring me to a focus on Ireland and the IRA, I did spend a fair amount of time up to my eyeballs in everything World War II. But with a subject so vast and sprawling you have to pick your concentration or you'll walk away from it having learned nothing of value. So I chose the Western Front because that's mainly where my countrymen fought and bled and died.
But it was so easy to become distracted by this WHOLE OTHER FRONT -- the Eastern Front -- where soldiers and civilians were dying by the millions. While I did my due diligence to keep my attention fixated on the Battles of Britain and the Atlantic, Dieppe and Normandy, I couldn't shake the desire to read more about the 900 day siege of Leningrad -- the starvation, the desperation, the cannibalism. Conditions on every front were a nightmare tableau of death and destruction, but the Eastern Front had the added torture of the bitter, savage cold. Bullets, bombs, starvation were one thing -- that frigid biting air able to cut a man in half and take his fingers and toes on a whim was something else.
In City of Thieves, Benioff transports us to the Eastern Front, into the frozen streets of Leningrad in the midst of the German's siege. Here we meet two boys -- Lev, 17 and Kolya, 19. Strangers to one another when the story begins, Lev and Kolya will have just one week filled with peril, misadventure, terror, laughter and tears to forge a bond that normally would take decades. The boys do not have decades however. They have just one week. And what a week it will be.
Lev is the quiet, shy virgin Jew, often serious but with a desire to uncover in himself some level of courage and charisma, to perhaps get a pretty girl to notice him. Kolya, the older of the two, is brash and boisterous, filled with a lust for life and for any pretty girl he can get his hands on. Upon meeting Lev he feels it is his duty to help the hapless virgin find his way into the arms of an accommodating lover. It won't be easy.
The two boys have also been tasked by a high-ranking military officer to head behind enemy lines in search of a dozen eggs. Where does one even begin to look for luscious eggs in the land of the freezing and starving, where sane people are eating book glue for protein and the insane have started to eat each other?
This book is about the horrors of war, and yes, sad and horrific things do happen. But this is mostly a joyful novel filled with heart and humor. I laughed many, many times at Kolya's never-ending antics and stream of profanities, his perpetual teasing of Lev and his insatiable lusty appetites even in the face of war and death.
Big spoiler under tag: (view spoiler)[WHY DO AUTHORS LOVE TO MAKE YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH CHARACTERS JUST SO THEY CAN KILL THEM?! Argghhhh! So angry and heartbroken. I should have seen Kolya's death coming a mile away. He was just too full of life and love to survive to the end of the book. I guess Benioff could not resist breaking our reader hearts. Damn you Benioff!!! ::sob:: (hide spoiler)]
Adding to the utter enjoyment of this book was having it read aloud by actor Ron Perlman. Ron! Where have you been my whole life? If it were only possible, I would make you read all of my books for me from now on. You bring depth and nuance to this story with every breath, every lilt of Russian. You are the man.
Read this book. Or even better, listen to it. It's wonderful.
Hope, I've discovered, is a sad nuisance. Hope is a horse with a broken leg. ~The Gods of Gotham, Lyndsay Faye
New York City, 1845. Helped by an explo
Hope, I've discovered, is a sad nuisance. Hope is a horse with a broken leg. ~The Gods of Gotham, Lyndsay Faye
New York City, 1845. Helped by an explosion of combustible saltpeter, a great fire has once again decimated Lower Manhattan, claiming the lives of four fireman and 26 civilians.
Across the Atlantic, a terrible potato blight is beginning to take its toll, and shiploads of desperate, starving Irish pour into the city despised for their race and religion. Despite having traveled so far, work and food continue to be scarce commodities. Gang violence is commonplace as Dead Rabbits clash with the infamous Bowery Boys.
The city forms its first police department. The men are greeted with a mixture of fear, hostility and suspicion. Pinned to the men's chests is a roughly cut copper star.
Welcome to Gotham, where the streets of Five Points are plagued with filth, prostitution, spilled blood and political corruption. Children are left to fend for themselves hunted by disease, hunger and predators who will draft them into a life of thievery or sexual exploitation.
The Gods of Gotham is historical fiction at its best -- filled to the brim with vivid characters, authentic dialogue, and a sense of place so strong you can taste it in the back of your throat. As an audiobook, it is a marvel, drawing you in, caressing your ear, transporting you back in time.
In one fell swoop, Timothy Wilde is left unemployed, disfigured and penniless. In an attempt to save his brother from utter desperation, Valentine gets Tim a job on the newly drafted New York City police force. One fateful evening walking home to his modest lodgings atop a bakery, Tim crashes into a young girl clad in a blood-soaked nightdress. She is frantic, almost delirious, and murmurs "They will tear him apart." And so Tim is pulled into a tangled and depraved web of conspiracy and unholy murder. It will change him irrevocably, as the streets of New York hold their own council and wait to see what the remaining 19th century has in store.
I loved this story, everything about it. Timothy Wilde is a great character as is his vice-ridden, brawling brother Valentine and the prickly relationship they share, weakened by years of mistrust and animosity. Little Bird Daly, just ten years old, is memorably precocious and heart-breakingly real, a symbol of the abominable acts perpetrated on orphaned children in the years before the law started to identify and protect them in earnest.
And New York City -- how grand and tawdry and exciting and perilous you really are. You've been romanticized as often as you've been vilified. You are notorious, legendary, epic, and any story set in your streets must be all of these things too or become lost in your long shadow. The Gods of Gotham is that story. You two are well-met and well-matched. I cannot wait to return.
***For anyone interested, BBC America has created the series Copper set in 1860's New York featuring a young Irish cop tasked with policing in the Five Points. I haven't seen an episode yet, but you can bet I'm going to give it a try....more
I've put off writing a review for this book because I always struggle with the great ones and Woodrell's Winter's Bone is one of those (with a capitalI've put off writing a review for this book because I always struggle with the great ones and Woodrell's Winter's Bone is one of those (with a capital G). It's craft and heart and drama and beauty. It's poetry and grit, entangled in an embrace of love and hatred.
Woodrell offers up a stinging portrait of impoverished life in the Ozarks, where kin saves as often as it condemns. The hill people of Ree's world live by their own laws separate from that of the state -- of paramount importance, don't be a snitch and mind your own business. Bad things happen to anyone who talks too much or asks too many questions. Unfortunately, sixteen year old Ree has a lot of questions that need answering with only her to ask them. Left on her own to protect a shattered mother and two helpless kid brothers, Ree is desperate to uncover the whereabouts of her meth-making father. She must venture into the cold and ice and pass over hostile thresholds where she is neither invited nor wanted.
Ree’s fierceness and courage stole my heart. She ranks as one of my favorite literary characters OF ALL TIME. Her stubbornness and smart mouth made me smile as much as it made me fear for her safety. Ree has her own set of rules to live by that include, stepping in to do for her brothers where her parents have failed and “Never. Never ask for what ought to be offered.” Ree is an old soul, mature beyond her years, forced to grow up fast and smart in a world that has teeth and a taste for blood.
This is a harsh story, one where the author pulls no punches. Woodrell is not out to romanticize this hill life or the hardscrabble characters living it. He wants us to see the ugly, to feel it in our bones, but for all of that there is tremendous beauty here as well, not just in the prose that SINGS but in the simplicity of a proud people who do what they must to survive in an environment that does not forgive weakness or stupidity lightly.
I cannot recommend this book enough. I am also going to recommend Kemper’s review here, because he does such a wonderful job capturing the book’s honesty and intensity. If I haven’t convinced you to read Winter’s Bone, he will.
***A note on the audio version: Outstanding! Emma Galvin captures Ree’s strength and vulnerability perfectly. Woodrell’s prose is so gorgeous it soars when read aloud.
Love and hate hold hands always so it made natural sense that they'd get confused by upset married folk in the wee hours once in a while and a nosebleed or bruised breast might result. But it just seemed proof that a great foulness was afoot in the world when a no-strings roll in the hay with a stranger led to chipped teeth or cigarette burns on the wrist. `Winter's Bone
Ah Jesus. This really is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story. My one piece of advice? If you do the audio thing, then that's how to do this one. Sile B Ah Jesus. This really is a beautiful, heart-wrenching story. My one piece of advice? If you do the audio thing, then that's how to do this one. Sile Bermingham is the perfect reader, her soft lilt a gorgeous accompaniment not just to the lyrical prose that will make you shudder when it's read aloud, but delivering on the Irish accent transporting you to a very particular time and place.
It should have been the Irish history content of this novel that brought it to my attention (more on that later), but it wasn't. It was its author - Siobhan (pronounced She-von) Dowd. I discovered Ms. Dowd the summer of 2011 when I read A Monster Calls. That book shattered me on a cellular level. The author of A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness - describes his collaboration with Dowd this way:
She had the characters, a detailed premise, and a beginning. What she didn't have, unfortunately, was time.
Dowd was diagnosed with breast cancer and succumbed to her disease in 2007 at the age of 47. Ness courageously took on the project and the completed novel is both exquisite and a lasting tribute to its progenitor.
So I went looking for something else to read by this woman and came across Bog Child. There was a time in my life when I was marinating in a stew of Irish history. I took an interest in it at University and it became my declared major. My BA Honors essay was on the IRA's guerrilla tactics during the Irish War of Independence. By the time I hit grad school I was practically obsessed. I knew my next step was an even bigger research project and a trip to Ireland, hence my Master's thesis which you can read here if you're ever really desperate for reading material or have a love of the subject yourself.
Even though my subject area was late 19th, early 20th century Irish history, it was unavoidable that I would become consumed by the on-going Troubles that exploded again in Northern Ireland in the 1960's. I eventually did get myself to Ireland on a work/study visa in the fall of 2000 lasting until April 2001, which by pure coincidence coincided with the 20th anniversary of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike.
I witnessed a candlelight vigil along O'Connell Street and listened to Gerry Adams (and the sister of Mickey Devine) speak at a public gathering. It was an emotional affair, but at the same time I remember feeling removed from the entire experience. It felt too raw and personal for me to be looking on like that, a Canadian girl who was only seven years old when ten young Irishmen starved themselves to death in political protest.
It's easy for anyone on the outside of any event to have opinions of it one way or the other -- whether those young men really knew what they were doing, or were just desperate and confused by dehumanizing prison conditions, or whether they had been brainwashed and/or intimidated to "the cause". Some consider their actions a waste and abhorrent, while others see their deaths as an important political event worthy of commemoration as we do for soldiers who die in battle. For me, it isn't the Strikers I think about (as sad and frustrating as their stories are), but their families. How excruciating and traumatic must the whole process have been to watch a son die slow like that.
The worst part? It's within your power to take them off the Strike, against their will, so that the doctors hook them up to an IV saving them from certain death. How does any parent make that choice? It seems easy, right? Of course you would save them. It would be mad to let them die. But ten families made that choice. Other families did not, and ended their son's hunger strike. I've always wondered how each family survived the very different choice they made. Is there bitterness? Doubts? What about the men taken off the Strike by their families...did they forgive them? Did they suffer from survivor's guilt for living when others died in their place? Or was it relief? Relief that they were saved from themselves and the insanity that had taken hold of the times. For a cinematic portrayal of what the families faced I recommend Some Mother's Son.
I haven't thought about Irish history in any shape or form in years. I left grad school in 2005 and I was done with all of it. I had been supersaturated, I had overdosed on it. No more! I cried. Then this book.
In Bog Child, the late Siobhan Dowd is not romanticizing the Hunger Strike. It's not a political book, for or against the Strikers. It's just a simple story of an eighteen year old boy facing manhood. His final exams are in full swing and his dreams of becoming a doctor have never been so close, yet so out of reach. He's falling in love for the first time. He's getting pressured from the local IRA goon to run packets across the guarded border. But most devastating and confusing of all, his older brother Joey is on Hunger Strike in Maze Prison and it's tearing his family apart.
Fergus stole and then broke my heart. All he wants to do is the right thing, but in a messed up world during a messed up time what the right thing is isn't always clear. It's not all doom and gloom. There's light and laughter and hope in these pages too, and an abiding love for the affirmation of life and all the joy and pain that living brings. ...more
I wanted to read this gorgeous book again before the sequel's November release, and went with the audio version just to hear the sumptuous prose aloud I wanted to read this gorgeous book again before the sequel's November release, and went with the audio version just to hear the sumptuous prose aloud. Laini Taylor's epic narrative has swept me up in its arms and carried me away for a second time, despite knowing all of its secrets. I just lost my mind over this book when I read it last year, and I didn't think it would be possible to recapture that initial gush of adoration, but here it is. I'm completely ga-ga all over again.
The fabric of this story is conjured up out of the very elements themselves -- air, fire, earth, and water. And love. For love is an element. The real love story for me here is not shared between Karou and Akiva -- star-crossed lovers of mythological proportions -- but rather Karou and Brimstone. Ah, Brimstone. You are fierce and a monster in the eyes of many, but to Karou you are protector, mentor, father. You may have the head of a ram, but you have the heart of Atticus Finch. You are righteous and wise and honorable. You carry the burden of your dark magic on your broad shoulders so that your Chimera race may survive against the onslaught of the Seraphim, but deep in your soul you carry hope, for the future, for peace. For who else but the Wishmonger can truly know the power of hope over mere wishes?
This second time around I am truly dazzled by the rich world-building Taylor gives us, all wrapped in her sensuous prose. Her imagination is boundless, her ability to show remarkably vivid. (view spoiler)[The land of Elsewhere, the Chimera life and its legends and magic. Brimstone the Resurrectionist, using stolen, ill-gotten teeth to craft new bodies to hold the souls of the dead within them to live again as revenants. The Seraphim -- warrior angels of utter perfection, as beautiful as they are cruel, blinded by arrogance and a steel determination to bend the Chimera to their will. The conquered and the conquerors, the Chimera monsters and the Seraphim angels locked in a 1000 year old battle of poisonous hatred, mistrust, exploitation, humiliation. It is slavery, colonialism, invasion, conquest. It is terrorism and freedom fighter. (hide spoiler)]
And Karou. Sweet, soul-searching Karou. With your blue hair and unanswered questions. Who are you? What are you? You ache for answers, and when they arrive they rip your world to pieces and tear away all that you have come to know and love. My heart breaks for you. But I hope. I hope that all is not lost.
***Original review -- November 2011*** Once upon a time, an angel lay dying in the mist. And a devil knelt over him and smiled. ~Daughter of Smoke and Bone (2011)
So. Much. Love. for this book I don’t know even know where to begin. Let me start by saying how happy it made me, how much pleasure I soaked up from each and every page. A lot of this I'm sure has to do with my healthy obsession with Angel lore (and not the airy-fairy, sparkling emo-kind, but the towering, frightening, blood-soaked other-wordly soldiers, beautiful in their grace, terrifying in their mercilessness).
One of my favorite films is The Prophecy (1995) starring Christopher Walken (and Viggo Mortensen as Lucifer!). This movie captures exactly what is so awe-inspiring about warrior Angels:
Did you ever notice how in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone or ... needed a killing, he sent an Angel? Did you ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? A whole existence spent praising your God, but always with one wing dipped in blood. Would you ever really want to see an Angel?
Laini Taylor’s angels are not part of a familiar Christian tradition, but nevertheless are recognizable as creatures of iconic, staggering beauty, mystery and grace (and always with one wing dipped in blood). They are ruthless, unthinking, unfeeling, arrogant in their righteousness, cruel in their certainty.
In other words -- awesome.
In this epic fantasy of worlds colliding, magic, fire, a thousand year war, deep hatreds and monstrous creatures, Taylor weaves a spell on her reader that is truly irresistible. I was enchanted, enthralled, and totally swept up and away -- giddy, delirious, and greedy, never wanting the story to end.
There is so much emotion and pain contained in the pages, so much fear, and love and hope that it will squeeze your heart, make your pulse race and your fingers grip the book for dear life. Part of the magic is Laini Taylor’s GORGEOUS prose. If ever a book deserved to sit on a shelf entitled “prose that sings” it is this one. In one of my updates I compared Taylor’s words to precious stones or black velvet – you will want to drape yourself in them. I know I did. I can’t wait to listen to the audiobook version just so I can hear those words read aloud.
I’m floundering now, and rambling, so I will leave you with READ. THIS. BOOK. Read it!!!...more
Samuel L. Jackson makes everything better in my books. He is the King of All that is Awesome. I can't say it any better than Becky does here. If you hSamuel L. Jackson makes everything better in my books. He is the King of All that is Awesome. I can't say it any better than Becky does here. If you haven't already listened to Mr. English-Do-You-Speak-It tell all the world's children to go the fuck to sleep, do so immediately. I hear it's quite cathartic for parents currently battling the bedtime wars! Here's a working link. Watch it fast because these are being blocked soon after they're posted. ...more
If you haven’t already done so, make time to read (or listen) to this book as soon as possible. It is as unique as it is beautiful, heartbreaking as iIf you haven’t already done so, make time to read (or listen) to this book as soon as possible. It is as unique as it is beautiful, heartbreaking as it is hopeful, filled to the brim with love and ugliness, hope and despair. I absolutely adored this book the first time I read it, and had no idea that experience could be rivaled, but this audiobook read by Allan Corduner took the story to a whole other level of amazing.
Corduner is a remarkable, theatrical voice and perfect as Death, the omniscient narrator, but he also breathes such distinctive life into Papa, Mama, Max, Rudy and Liesel herself. The novel is presented in such an unusual way on the page that I feared there would be something profoundly missing from the audio version, but there really isn’t; if anything Zusak’s lyrical prose just sings in Corduner’s mouth and sounds even better read aloud. What is missing here though, are Max’s sketches which accompany the stories he writes for Liesel. Those you cannot miss, which is why I’m giving the highest recommendation to both the novel and the audiobook.
Corduner’s delivery of the ending is more profound and sad than I could have ever imagined. (view spoiler)[Liesel’s guttural screams for Rudy to wake up left me sobbing, as did her wretched grieving over the broken bodies of Mama and Papa. (hide spoiler)] Highest possible recommendation ever!
Original review of novel (January 2009):
This book left me gutted and absolutely speechless. It is the kind of book that we can only hope to see once or twice in a generation. And that’s if we’re lucky.
Narrating The Book Thief is Death, who confesses he is haunted by humans — our beauty, our savagery, our contradictions. I, on the other hand, will remain haunted by Liesel’s story for the rest of my life (and little Rudy Steiner). There is really no way to describe this book that will come anywhere close to doing it justice. It defies all regular categorization and usual comparisons.
There are only a handful of books that after the reading is done I want to run out and buy copies for everyone I know and plead with them to drop whatever it is they are doing and read it immediately (before they get hit by a bus or a comet smashes into the Earth) — this is one of those books. The words lyrical and profound, spiritual and uncompromising are quite often overused, to the point where we’ve rendered them almost meaningless and that’s too bad -- because I want to use them here and have them mean something.
Zusak’s prose is staggeringly gorgeous both in its simplicity and in its complexity; his choice of words is flawless and inspired. I am humbled by such immense talent. The Book Thief is a gift for the ages, a love song to words, books, and what it means to be human. It is a story that will steal (and break) your heart.
Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews. When their bodies had finished scouring for gaps in the door, their souls rose up. When their fingernails had scratched at the wood and in some cases were nailed into it by sheer force of desperation, their spirits came toward me, into my arms, and we climbed out of those shower facilities, onto the roof and up, into eternity's certain breadth. They just kept feeding me. Minute after minute. Shower after shower (The Book Thief)
In a word ... outstanding. I can't believe I almost missed reading (or rather listening) to this book. Unfortunately, I have this thing where books thIn a word ... outstanding. I can't believe I almost missed reading (or rather listening) to this book. Unfortunately, I have this thing where books that are SUPER POPULAR alienate me off the bat. And when this book first came out, it blasted off into the SUPER POPULAR stratosphere and any enthusiasm I might have had waned to a lukewarm indifference, and the book went on my "maybe someday I'll get to it" pile.
No matter how much I tried to ignore its existence however, the book and I kept crossing paths. Friends were reviewing it so favorably I started to feel like I was missing out on something big and awesome -- and life is too short on the big and the awesome to walk blithely past an easy opportunity for both.
The Help is about race relations in the American South during the 1960s, how even though black women were entrusted to raise white children and prepare the family's daily meals they were still considered "other" and "less than". I cannot speak to whether the author does this aspect of the story justice. I'm a white girl who grew up on a very white island off the coast of Canada, which means I can't say if Stockett's handling of the details is misinformed and/or offensive. I realize there is always a distinct possibility that any story about race can itself descend unwittingly into racism. Such criticism has been launched at this book. For example, this reviewer here.
For me, the story won me over and completely sucked me in because it was a book about women friendships -- how they endure, how they can poison, how they can save. It looks at how mothers grieve the loss of a child, it looks at the complicated, thorny relationship shared between mothers and daughters. It looks at the cold hard face of domestic violence and despair. It looks at loneliness and desperation. In other words, The Help is a historical representation of the lives of women in a particular time and place and to reduce it to an offensive piece on race and race relations is to do it a grave injustice.
I. LOVE. THESE. WOMEN. They are inspiring, strong, funny, daring. I love how they bring out the best in each other. I love their fierceness, their loyalty, their instinct to protect each other. I also love how Stockett shows the "other" side of womanhood, the side that's not so attractive but just as real -- the envy, the bitterness, the vitriol, the peevishness, the manipulation, the bullying. That sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Forget the mens; I can't remember a villain so well-written as Hilly Holbrook. That bitch be cold. I love this observation made by Minny:
Womens, they ain't like men. A woman ain't gone beat you with a stick. Miss Hilly wouldn't pull no pistol on me. Miss Leefolt wouldn't come burn my house down. No, white womens like to keep they hands clean. They got a shiny little set of tools they use, sharp as witches' fingernails, tidy and laid out neat, like the picks on a dentist tray. They gone take they time with em.
I don't know how this book reads textually, but as an audiobook it is truly a marvel. The voices are fantastic, the ebb and flow of the prose and dialect like an angel singing in your ear.
I love books set in the American South; I've never been but the lushness of the landscape calls to me for all the reasons Becky captures here:
"The slower pace, the afternoon thunderstorms, the heat and humidity that makes it hard to breathe, the crickets, crepe myrtles and spanish moss, the old feel and the history... all of it." See Becky's review
More than the landscape, there’s the food. The descriptions of Southern cooking in this book can make a grown woman weep. I sighed, I drooled, I yearned.
Despite its serious and tragic subject matter, The Help is also EXTREMELY FUNNY. I was seriously laughing my ass off in parts – the whole “pecker pie” incident involving Minny and Celia got me to giggling so hard tears were rolling down my face.
Once I popped in the first CD I could not stop listening. I gorged. But unlike eating an entire box of chocolates in one gluttonous sitting, I wasn’t left with a big bellyache of regret. This book will make you cheer. It will uplift you. It will entertain you. If I could marry it, I would. ...more
I can see why this book remains one of the most instantly recognized zombie novels of all time (and continues to be a fan favorite and a darling among I can see why this book remains one of the most instantly recognized zombie novels of all time (and continues to be a fan favorite and a darling among "the critics"). It's cool, it's action packed, it's epic and amongst a sub-genre that is in desperate need of something "fresh", World War Z delivers a gut punch to the solar plexus fueled by a tantalizingly original approach.
Most zombie tales (either literary or cinematic) are told using a very small canvas from the narrowest point of view of a handful of survivors. It's shockingly intimate, immediate, but limited in scope. When there is a zombie outbreak in the heartland of America or in the City of Angels, we never know how the rest of the world is faring. Is it only happening here? Is it happening everywhere?
Max Brooks takes a truly global approach to the zombie apocalypse. He assumes that if there is a zombie outbreak, it's going to spread fast and become a global pandemic. His cast of characters are not a terrified group holed up in the Mall of America -- they are citizens of the world -- Greenland, China, Israel, India, Canada, Germany...never has the zombie apocalypse had such an international complexion.
The other aspect that gives this novel its unique voice are the voices, of which there are many. The great zombie war is over and now the veterans of this war -- the ultimate survivors -- are left to describe how the war was won on all fronts over all parts of the globe. How were the zombies driven into submission? How were their numbers decimated so that humankind could avoid extinction? Brooks doesn't shy away from the minutiae of military tactics and strategy, foreign dossiers, mass exoduses, government corruption, cannibalism ... this is probably as realistic a portrait of the rise of zombies and their eventual defeat as you could ask for.
And it's awesome, so why not 5 stars? While I am humbled by the scope and sprawling vastness Brooks uses here, the nuts and bolts technical aspects of the novel continued to hold me at arm's length from the action. This is an oral history after all -- everything has already happened, so we get the action in the past tense as remembrances. We know how this ends so I felt there was a tension and urgency lacking in the overall experience. I missed the "in the moment happening right now" voice. While the details held me in awe, I didn't feel especially frightened or held in the grip of a terror unfolding -- this was terror that had already unfolded. It was more a clinical experience than an emotional one.
Having said that, the audiobook is WONDERFUL and added a dramatic effect that I think would be sorely lacking by just reading the text alone. It was fun to hear the familiar voices of Alan Alda, Henry Rollins, John Turturro and Rob and Carl Reiner. Mark Hamill definitely has the most memorable part, but he does not sound like Luke Skywalker (thank goodness!). He was great actually. I never would have guessed it was him.
Anyways, despite my inability to give this book five stars, it does come with a huge recommendation. What Brooks does with this is an awesome achievement, and in the zombie genre, it's a game changer. There really is nothing else out there quite like it!
Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to. ~Dolores Claiborne
Meet Dolores Claiborne -- island woman, mother of three, murderess and
Sometimes being a bitch is all a woman's got to hold on to. ~Dolores Claiborne
Meet Dolores Claiborne -- island woman, mother of three, murderess and overall high-riding bitch. And I love her! She is strength and smarts and dignity personified and in my opinion, one of the most vivid and memorable literary creations ever to walk the pages of any book. I don't say that lightly. Yes I'm a fan, yes I'm gushing, but this is also a more tempered, critical evaluation after living with her existence these many years. She has stood the test of time and I have no doubt she will continue to do so long after her creator has passed.
Arguably one of Stephen King's most underrated and dismissed works, Dolores Claiborne remains for me one of his best and most literary novels. The first-person narrative voice is brilliantly executed, the island dialect ringing true, the rhythm of the language making the sense of place so vibrant and tangible. The reading experience is only enhanced by the audio version (which I highly recommend).
Bringing nothing but his A-game, King delves into the life of a poor, uneducated, island woman, who marries young and gets to repent in leisure. I love this story so much because not only does it capture small town life and a woman's place in it, but also the unshakeable bonds of friendship that can be forged like steel between women, and the ferocious love a mother feels for her children.
This book is a powerful and naked look at mother-love, at how desperate, intense, and all-consuming it really is....But mainly this is the story of an unlikely alliance between two hard talkin’, high riding bitches; two women from very different walks of life who find that they have a similar core of bitter strength.
At its heart, this is a book about a desperate woman who is driven to a very desperate act. It is a crime novel built around a detailed confession that's so urgent, so immediate, the story sucks you in like quicksand and does not want to let go. This is not a horror novel, but there are a few moments of unadulterated suspense and terror that had my heart jack-rabbiting in my chest. (view spoiler)[When Dolores returns to the well and Joe has nearly succeeded in climbing out and grabs her ankle, I just about screamed and threw the book across the room! When you have to do such a dirty deed, you want it to happen as fast and clean as possible. It could not have turned out more ugly and terrifying for Dolores and is it any wonder she imagines Joe's face grinning out at her from behind the wheels of Vera's wheelchair on the day of Vera's death? (hide spoiler)]
Dolores Claiborne is not the only high-riding bitch in this story, there is also Ms. Vera Donovan, her contrary, vitriolic employer who explains the facts of life thusly: "Husbands die every day Dolores. Why, one is probably dying right now while you're sitting here weeping....An accident can be an unhappy woman's best friend." Dolores and Vera make an unlikely pair, but over the years they cleave to one another in an unexpected, unforgettable friendship that runs dark and deep.
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