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This is a list of the books I've read this year, with a few of my thoughts on each.
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4/28/13 |
Shannon Hale
Princess Academy: Palace of Stone |
In this sequel to the award-winning Princess Academy, we're back with Miri and all her fellow Mount Eskel dwellers, watching as she is invited to the lowlands of Asland with some other Eskelites to mingle with nobles, scholars, and artisans. In the beginning, Miri's certainty that she would return to Mount Eskel in a year's time left a pit in my stomach, thinking she would find a reason that she had to stay in Asland and she'd never see her family again, and from that point on I was really ensnared in the emotional turmoil Miri had going in her head. Asland is of course a whirlwind of amazingness for Miri and her mountain-dwelling friends; she attends the academy and learns about the whole world, their history, their politics, and their ethics. I related to her sadness when she thought her own home had lost its history because of its failure to document, and was really impressed by the way the author brought out Mount Eskel's unique way of "documenting"--people of the stone have their own mysterious connections, as we've learned in the previous book. Miri's relationship with Peder is further explored, which was a delight; she found him growing distant as he labored to learn his craft as an apprentice, and in the meantime she finds herself attracted to and bamboozled by a young revolutionary named Timon, whose strong ideas and compelling rhetoric pull Miri into an uprising quite before she realizes she's in over her head. Miri's strength as a character has always been in her vulnerability balanced with her idealism, and in the second half of this book her strength shines again to make us all remember why we loved her so much in the first book. Her doubts and fears are realistically felt as she realizes she has unintentionally helped put her friend Britta--the princess-to-be--in danger by fanning the flames on the revolution, and though scholars insist she must choose her path and cannot "do both," Miri knows there has to be a way. So many choices pull Miri in impossible directions--Peder or Timon? Support the revolution or support her royal and noble friends? Stay in Asland or return to Mount Eskel?--and as usual, she finds her special Miri way to use her personal ties, her warmth, and her words to make things right and make her mark. Shannon Hale is as always right on point with her complicated and realistic characters, her compelling concepts and rich invented history, and her way of keeping big plots delightfully personal and believable. I loved it.
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4/21/13 |
Jen Campbell
Weird Things Customers Say in Bookstores |
This was sort of fun. I worked in a bookstore for six years so my friend Fred thought I would particularly appreciate this, and I did. So many of the things people were recorded as saying were bizarre and off the wall, and many of the requests based on ignorance were chuckle-worthy (e.g., asking if Anne Frank had written a sequel; expecting Harry Potter to have its seventh book split into two because that's how the movies were; Tequila Mockingbird). And of course the customers attempting to use their own beliefs and morals to shame bookstore workers about what they carry or don't carry was familiar territory to me. However, I guess I didn't actually find anything in the collection that bowled me over or had me laughing ridiculously; I kept a blog of my bookstore-working years from 2000 to 2006 and I encountered some customer comments that were way more shockingly ignorant, creepy, scary, or hilarious, so I came out the other end of this book mildly amused by not blown away.
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3/10/13 |
L.A. Meyer
Curse of the Blue Tattoo |
As with the previous book in this series, Jacky as a character is a delight, and the layers of relationships with other characters are refreshingly complicated. I love that Jacky is imperfect, and that I sometimes thought she was being a little jerk, and that she was lovably rebellious without doing it for the sake of being a rebel. I don't mind that Jacky is kind of a Mary-Sue sometimes; it's kind of cute how she embraces her talents and doesn't really seem to know how special she is, though sometimes sure, that's a little unrealistic. So the book's strength is definitely the characters: A+. However, I'm giving the plot a fat C-. It's not that the plot wasn't interesting; it's that it was very contrived this time. As soon as certain people or plot points appeared, I saw exactly where they were going, and to add insult to injury, occasionally the characters made these terribly transparent moves. If you've read the book, you'll probably know what I mean when I say I saw what was coming as soon as a) the preacher had a suspiciously convenient habit of talking to his dead grandfather in order to explicate the plot; b) Jacky met the racing horse and immediately learned to ride him; c) Jacky got walked home by a suspicious character who asked questions about her living space while she responded obliviously; d) Jacky set eyes on her friend's older brother and the plot revealed that he was betrothed to one of her worst enemies. In every one of those instances I saw the introduction and thought "Oh, please, REALLY? You're going to go there?" And the book did, without exception. The only time I was actually surprised by the plot was when the consequences of Jacky getting arrested were revealed. That said, the narration is a lot of fun and I enjoy finding out what nutty thing Jacky is going to do next, so I will keep reading this series.
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1/27/13 |
Jeffrey Eugenides
The Marriage Plot |
This book did a great job spotlighting the post-college indecisiveness with regards to one's relationships in the context of a larger life. Despite having focused on plots ending in happily ever after for her academic career, primary character Madeleine is unsure of the direction of her romantic future. With two men interested in her--both of whom represent different things in terms of stability and passion--Madeleine wrestles with her family issues, her academic future, and what she herself wants out of a marriage. Bachelor number one, Leonard, is brilliant and captivating but marrying him will mean dealing with the lowest of lows along with the highest of highs because he is "manic depressive" (what they called bipolar people then). And Mitchell was frequently exploring his religion and put Madeleine off sometimes with his lack of action and whatnot. What I really appreciated about this book was how complicated Eugenides makes relationships out to be, and how it absolutely is NOT as simple as meeting the right guy and falling in love. Some of the truths discovered by the characters--and the words Eugenides uses to describe them--are really what make this novel special. I preferred his previous book, but I loved how his characters had these layered idiosyncrasies and imperfections that felt so real, and I loved how well it captured the post-college malaise.
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See the list of books I read last year!
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