Mr. g, by Alan Lightman. I am embarrassed to admit that I have no idea how this ended up on my holds list… a search of Google Reader brings up no mentions and, I mean, it’s not like I get my news anywhere else. So… yeah. But I know why it’s on my list — this is a novel about the creation of the universe (a universe?) as told by the dude what created it. It promises to be a little… heady? Philosophical? Fancy-pants?… but I’m definitely intrigued to see how this goes.

The Bookman, by Lavie Tidhar. I actually cataloged the book that comes after this one, Camera Obscura, and was intrigued by the cover (which is similar to this) and the description of a steampunk London and a locked-room murder. I’m not sure if it’s necessary to read them in order (it doesn’t seem quite like a sequel thing), but, I mean, it’s got the word “book” in the title. I’m not going to say no.

Books Burn Badly, by Manuel Rivas. I mean, again, look at that cover! I love covers. And titles with the word “book” in them. And yes, I was like, “A book about books? Sold,” but then I looked at the back and I guess it’s not really about books. It has a book burning in it, though, which intrigues me, and is actually about the Spanish Civil War, which I know almost nothing about and therefore should look into. And while I’m not really a historical fiction buff, if you wind the story around books and hidden libraries (see The Book Thief), I’m in.

The premise was promising. It’s a western, which is something I’ve never read before. There are two brothers from Oregon City, Eli and Charlie Sisters, who are the hired hit men, basically, for a figure called the Commodore. They’re off to off a guy with the unlikely name of Hermann Kermit Warm who has done the Commodore wrong in some unspecified way (is there any other way?). I’m intrigued.

Maybe if that had been the story, I would have liked it better. Again, I don’t know from westerns, so I don’t know if that’s how one usually goes, with the shooting and the killing and all. But the real story of the Sisters brothers is that Eli is a bit over the shooting and the killing and all, and so he, as narrator, reflects on his ways and the life he leads, while he continues to lead said life.

And I guess that could also be interesting, but DeWitt’s story just did not work for me, especially the characters. I didn’t care about Eli or how he was so done with killing people, because he starts the story not really wanting to kill people but killing them anyway and ends it the same way, with no change seeming forthcoming and no real insight into why he does what he does. Thrilling? Charlie I liked better, because he’s a guy that likes to shoot things and so he shoots things and I appreciate that sort of consistency. Hermann was probably the most interesting character of the bunch, but that may just be because he wasn’t in the story long enough to get boring?

The story was whatever, too… I expected guns and violence and I got them, including a scene with an eye and a spoon that made me a little queasy, but I also got long stretches of Charlie being drunk and Eli whining about it, and Eli making love-eyes at various ladies who gladly took his money, and Eli getting a tooth pulled and discovering toothpaste (tooth powder? Whatever they had back then), and Charlie threatening various people with guns and killing some of them. All of these scenes are about as exciting as I make them sound.

It’s possible, and maybe probable, that if I had any prior experience with westerns I would find this book more enjoyable – I’ve certainly seen enough love for this book that there must be something that redeems it. Maybe it’s like a “how a western would really work” novel? I have no idea.

On the plus side, or something, no one else in my book group had any idea what was going on either, so I didn’t feel so alone about it! Have you read this? Please tell me what I’m missing!

Recommendation: For people who have any idea what’s going on in a western?

Rating: 5/10

I’ve taken a turn with the ol’ young adults here and there and while I don’t like every YA book out there, there are quite a few that I absolutely love. Really, it’s hard to answer a question like “Why do you like YA books?” because that’s like asking “Why do you like books?” They come in all shapes and sizes just like books for kids or books for adults.

I think part of why I still read a good bit of YA even though I’m practically an old woman (this is not true) is that even though I was in the young adult age range just ten years or so ago, I wasn’t reading YA then. I pretty much skipped from The Babysitter’s Club and Sweet Valley books straight into the adult section, because there weren’t a lot of options in my library that were at both my reading and age levels. So I started going back to see what I’d missed, and found a lot of great new stuff while I was at it.

Probably the other thing that makes me like YA is that it tends to reflect my own life better. So much adult fiction centers around relationships or marriages that are dysfunctional or falling apart or whatever, and (knock on wood) I simply don’t relate. I haven’t had, and hope never to have, these experiences, and so I just spend most of my time complaining at the characters for being so stupid. It gets tiresome. But high school? I can totally relate to dysfunctional and stupid high schoolers, that is easy.

Speaking of YA, I got my copy of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars the other day, but I haven’t cracked it open yet because I’ve been told it will make me cry my poor sad eyes out, and I do not have the will or the tissues to get through it just yet. But I’m excited for the day that I do have those.

So, job title, awesome. And it doesn’t hurt that I’ve had this since my first day:

It’s an office! With a door! And a window! And my name on it! Eeeee! AND I got a box of business cards so large that there is no possible way I will ever run out of them, unless I start using them for origami or something. This is a good idea. I will look into it.

So, fancy things, awesome. But how am I liking the job?

Oh my goodness, it’s fantastic. I’m a librarian! I get to play in a library all day! And I get to show other people how to play in a library all day, because we encourage the professors to bring their classes in for tours and lessons on using the catalog and databases, so I’ve gotten to show a lot of kids where the books live and how to use filters on their search results and how to figure out what they’re actually searching for and you’re probably like, nerd, which is true. I was disappointed on Thursday because I found out that most of the databases my library subscribes to are available through an Android (and iOS) app, but the orientation I thought I had didn’t actually exist so I couldn’t show the app off to the students. So I just played with it myself for twenty minutes. I would strike that last sentence but it amuses me.

I totally love my job. Even when I’m just telling students where to go get a student ID so they can come back and use the course reserves or the printer or whatever, I love that a) they’re asking me that question because b) I know the answer. And I find it gratifying when a student that has come in for a tour or a database lesson comes up to the desk and asks for clarification on a point I made earlier. I’m like, you were listening! And you want to know more! You are my new best friend! I only have a couple new best friends, but that’s more than I was expecting in the first two weeks.

Soooooo yeah! That’s my fortnight, it’s been pretty good. Keep your fingers crossed that all my future ones are equally awesome!

Okay, so, the Baudelaires. When we last left them, they were eating some horseradish. Mmmm, horseradish.

In The Penultimate Peril there is less horseradish, but more AWESOME LIBRARY, so this is a good trade here. This book takes place in the Hotel Denouement, or the tnemeuoneD letoH as it actually says on said hotel, and this building has nine floors and a basement whose rooms are arranged in Dewey Decimal order, which is just fantastic. I had fun trying to guess what numbers Daniel Handler would pick for the various characters’ rooms, which is extremely nerdy but I am totally okay with this. Anyway, library shenanigans aside, this book introduces some new characters (particularly a second set of twins who are actually triplets) but mostly does a roundup of all the surviving characters from the previous books, the conceit being that they’ve all arrived at the hotel to take part in a trial of the Baudelaires. The idea is that they’ll get exonerated of all the stuff they’ve been blamed for but haven’t done, but the orphans have done plenty of bad things themselves (like using disguises!), so they’re not sure they’re really on good footing, here. And then of course completely ridiculous things happen and the trial is disrupted and then the orphans set the hotel on fire and end up out to sea. As it goes.

And so then in The End the Baudelaires wash up on a coastal shelf that is inhabited by a sort of utopian community, whose members are only not quite as stupid as the rest of the Baudelaire’s world in that they can recognize and dislike Count Olaf, who has washed ashore as well. But unfortunately they are all boozed up beyond belief and also completely bogged down in stupid stupid rules, and so they are of no help to the Baudelaires in either staying safe on the island or getting off of it. And then the Medusoid Mycelium shows up again and bad things happen and good things are prevented and more people die whether you want them to or not and then there is an epilogue and then I am like… sigh.

While we were listening to these Scott kept mentioning that Handler must have been being paid by the word because he just gets so incredibly repetitive and tangential and loses track of the plot quite often, and I was like, “Nooooo it’s awesome just enjoy it” but secretly (or, well, not-so-secretly), I totally agree. I enjoyed the heck out of this series when I read it, but I think I must have skipped over these parts or just blocked them from my mind, because damn, those passages are super boring.

I really loved the beginning of this series, but the end is just not the same at all and I’m finding myself really recommending against reading these last books. But I also can’t figure out where you should stop reading the series, because all of the books have their excellent parts that are totally worth it. So maybe you could just skim through the print versions and read the good parts and not the bad parts. You’ll finish in a few hours that way. Or, you could read the series to a member of its target audience, i.e. short people, and then their enthusiasm for the repetitiveness will make you smile instead of bang your head against the wall.

Ratings: Really a 7/10 for both, but PP gets 8/10 for library awesomeness and TE 6/10 for awful awful epilogue

Hwell. I may have mentioned here before that I’m not a big e-book person right now, largely because I do not own an e-reader. And I do not own an e-reader because I’m not really excited about any of the ones that exist. I want something without too many DRM restrictions, so the Kindle is out, and I want something with an e-ink screen, so all those new tablets and such are out, and the few options that I’m left with are just not enticing me to part with a hundred dollars or so. Certainly if one fell into my hands I would embrace it and use it all the time, like I did with the iPod my parents bought for me five years ago and which I still use, but I’m still largely content with my paper reading experience. When they start making books better formatted to e-readers and perhaps give me some reason other than storage density to make the switch, I’ll look into it more seriously.

Of course, I still have read e-books, just on my computer and on my phone, neither of which experience was terribly exciting because it is just difficult for me to read things on a backlit screen for any length of time. I did appreciate the ability to read 13 Little Blue Envelopes while I was standing in lines or sitting in waiting rooms, since it was just right there on my phone, but I tried to read another book on my phone during a practically errand-free spell and I just couldn’t be bothered when I could be playing Cut the Rope instead. Ah, well.

On the downside, it doesn’t really allow for loot posts like I was doing, so we’ll have to settle for some internet-found covers and vague recollections of why I put things on hold.

I have a lot of stuff held over from last year, so I’ll split those up among the next few weeks’ posts in an attempt to keep everyone whelmed.

Onto this week!

Notes From an Accidental Band Geek, by Erin Dionne. Please. I was and am a less-than-accidental band geek, and the girl protagonist and I both play the horn. And I totally wore those shoes the first year I was drum major/field commander. I didn’t even catalog this — the cover just called to me from across the processing room and I said, oh, this is going on the list.

American Nations, by Colin Woodard. I am a transplant from, if I am looking at this cover map correctly, a Yankeedom/Midlands line-straddling city to the Deep South, which has for the most part been a pretty smooth transition but still sometimes leaves me baffled as to what the heck anyone around here is thinking. I am very intrigued to learn more about both of my regional cultures and see if we can’t, like, gang up against New France or something.

Girl Sleuth, by Melanie Rehak. Speaking of my Yankeedom/Midlands roots, did you know that some of the research for the early Nancy Drew books was done at the Cleveland Public Library? I mean, why wouldn’t you do research there, it’s awesome, but I did not know that the lovely ladies who wrote about lovely ladies solving mysteries even spent any time in Cleveland, so this makes me very happy. And maybe reading this book will make up for my utter failure at the Nancy Drew Challenge?

The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley. This one I didn’t see at the library, but instead over on Whatever as a Big Idea piece. I’m not always sold on these pieces, but I really liked The Rook‘s premise, which involves a woman who has lost all of her memories pretending to be… herself, with all her memories. What. I want this book to be all crazy Inception or Before I Go to Sleep shenanigans, but as long as it does a better job than Face/Off in being remotely plausible, I’ll consider it a success.

I love you so much. Let’s run off together.

Love, Alison
p.s. It’s cool if my husband comes too, right?

I will grant that on its own, this volume was not quite as good as any of the first three, especially that last one with the parodies and the choose-your-own-adventure-ness. Dang, that was a good one. But it’s not really like those other ones anyway… we’re done with the “Is Tom Taylor actually Tommy Taylor? With, like, magic and stuff?” plotline and we are moving fully into “Is the world just entirely made of imagination?” existentialism. And vampires, because why not?

In this collection, aptly titled Leviathan, Carey and Gross treat us to a whale of a party, ha ha! Ahem. There are whales, is what I’m saying. A few of them. Including the ever-popular Moby Dick, whose story Tom ventures into and then breaks and then escapes only to find himself hanging out with Sinbad, Pinocchio, and various others inside an apparently very hungry whale. And then things explode.

Oh, and meanwhile our friends Richie and Lizzie only wish they were hanging out in the belly of a whale, on account of they’ve met up with a mean and slightly magical puppeteer who needs some information out of them. Things go as you might expect, there. And then at the end we meet up again with that foul-mouthed rabbit dude from the second volume, who has not gotten any pleasanter but has gotten some worshippers. Goody.

And there are so many other little things that have me intrigued to see where this story goes. It is clearly epic and intricate and fantastic. But I could also go for some more stories that are just full of awesome brain candy. Either way is good.

Rating: 8/10

New years are generally met with me making grand plans for myself and hoping for the best, but this year is going to be a little different since as you read this I am starting my new job! -flailing Muppet arms- Yaaay! Here’s what you can probably expect from me this year, though I reserve the right to become more ambitious as the year goes on:

Fewer book reviews. Unlike my last new job, this one is not so much going to give me time to listen to audiobooks, so I am preparing myself to read about half the books I read last year (of which there were 94) and aiming for 50. I got a little reading done on my vacation, so I’m off to a good start!

More library-related things. Since I’ll be replacing listening with librarianing, you can expect more stories from the library — I’m hoping to bring you some fun reference questions and more amusing book covers.

Fewer challenges. I made a terrible showing at my year-long challenges last year, and reading less isn’t going to help, so this year I am forgoing those long challenges that get procrastinated in favor of more short-term challenges like RIP. Ideas?

More general awesomeness. There’s a lot of less up there, but I can only imagine that I will make up for the lack of quantity with a huge (well, maybe not huge) influx of quality.

Here’s to an awesome year!

It is true, I am not a fan of the Dickens, but I really can’t not like A Christmas Carol. It’s just not possible, considering how ingrained it is in my childhood with Mickey and the Muppets and HOLD THE PHONE there’s an animated version with Tim Curry as Scrooge AND Michael York as Bob Cratchit? I’m… gonna need to go find that.

Ahem. Anyway, I’d never actually read the book, but I certainly knew the story well enough, and so probably do you — if not, mean guy meets three ghosts who show him how mean he is and he becomes totally nice. Done. It’s not a particularly deep story. But I liked it, of course, and I liked that the story is a bit darker than I remember it being as a child, and I liked that Jim Dale read it to me. Happy Christmas, self!

Recommendation: You’ve probably essentially read it already, but why not do it again?

Rating: 8/10