Shelly's Book Shelf

Comments I Don't Publish

2009-10-18T02:19:00.000-04:00

I got a comment on the previous post that had nothing to do with the book, but everything to do with promoting a blog listing kind of site, or so it said. If someone has an interesting link to offer that will enhance a post or add to a discussion, that's fine, but I don't publish comments that are just link dropping. That's really spam. Here's a cleaned version of the comment:

Hello I would like invite you to add your blog to [redacted]. You have a realy nice Blog, show it. I am not a blogger but what is the purpose of having a blog if nobody see's it?
Add [redacted] to your blog and share links with your visitors and friends.
[redacted]: is a Free service that lets you add your blog link to multiple blog sites. ...

Actually, I post my book reviews over on Facebook and Library Thing as well as here and link to here from my other blogs. Most of my blogs, including this one, are listed with blog lists and Technorati, and this one is in a blog ring (I hope an active one still). So, I think I'm doing fine without the unsolicited "advice." I won't comment on the typos/misspellings (more in the part I deleted).

Please do not spam my blogs with advertising in comments. I won't publish them.

The White Russian

2009-09-14T00:57:00.000-04:00

TITLE: The White Russian
AUTHOR: Tom Bradby

A historical mystery set in St. Petersburg on the brink of revolution, the novel opens with the discovery of a brutally murdered couple near the winter palace of the tsar. The chief investigator, Sandro Ruzsky, comes from a privileged family; his father is a government official and his younger brother is a soldier. Sandro, just returned from exile in Siberia, is somewhat of a black sheep in his family, separated from his wife and longing to see his young son. He's also a man out of touch with the current political reality and his unwillingness to let go of what turns out to be a politically charged case that involves the secret police and reaches into the tsar's household, puts everything Sandro holds dear at risk.

Nor can Sandro let go of his near obsession with a beautiful ballerina and his pursuit of her leads him to learn things he'd rather not know. Bradby weaves what seem to be separate plotlines into a singular fabric as Sandro pursues the truth, and his attention to detail and careful research put me into St. Petersburg of 1917. The poverty and anger of the city's working class and unemployed, the growing desperation of Russians worn down by lack of adequate food and supplies and the continued fighting of the Great War is brought to life in these pages.

In his determination and with his flaws, Sandro is a very human character, one you can feel for even while fearing he's doomed. The political intrigue is well done, even if I figured out who was probably the killer before the reveal.

I loved Bradby's earlier book, The Master of Rain, and I can't wait to see what's next.

Choosing the Next Book

2009-09-09T17:54:00.000-04:00

Choosing the next book to read is one of the hardest things for me to do. I dread finishing a book because it means I'll need to make a decision on the next one. I like variety in my reading, but somehow, as often as not, end up reading a book similar to the previous one. Historical fiction after science fiction? Both had an eerily similar mystery at its heart. A humorous book following a literary classic? Characters with the same or similar names. So often, a book echoes the previous one read.

And still, what to read? Which genre? Which time period? How deeply should I consider the plot? What mood am I in? Long or short or something in between? And then, what's the font like? Easy to read on the subway? Or on the treadmill at the gym (should I ever get back in that habit)?

I have hundreds of books at home to choose from and my list of books to buy, maybe, someday, is now 15 typed pages long. I keep buying. I keep weeding what I lose interest in reading. And still, it can take hours to decide on something.

I've finished reading The White Russian by Tom Bradby. Review to follow later this week. I've selected its successor: Chasing the Devil's Tail by David Fulmer. It has a lot to live up to, both in comparison to its predecessor and in its need to engage me. It's set in New Orleans. In 1907. There's a killer. Hmmm.... not all that much different than The White Russian, set in St. Petersburg in 1917, which places a series of killings in the center of a Russia on the brink of revolution. So similar. So different.

Does anyone else have trouble picking their next book to read?

Action Packed

2009-08-17T16:46:00.002-04:00

Had to post this here. And it sorta fits. Except it's more what I'd write, rather than reflect my life.

You Are Action Adventure

You are lively and spirited. You like to be in the middle of the action, and you have a ton of energy.

You are very driven, and not just with your career. You like to play hard as well!

You are bold and brave. You're always looking for the next great adrenaline rush.

It's likely that you are athletic or at least pretty physically active. It's hard for you to sit still.

What Kind of Book Are You?

Behind the Scenes at the Museum

2009-07-20T22:50:00.000-04:00

TITLE: Behind the Scenes at the Museum
AUTHOR: Kate Atkinson

Before she introduced readers to PI Jackson Brodie, Atkinson wrote this book, her first, and to say it's brilliant would be an understatement. I can understand why it won the Whitbread Book of the Year award. A novel that reads like a surreal memoir, the book is narrated by Ruby Lennox, who starts her tale at the moment of her conception. The family she's born into is dysfunctional at best, and Ruby relates her life and that, in alternating chapters, of key members of her family tree, filling in the family history in what she calls "footnotes." The passages covering relatives who fought in the World Wars, were especially well done.

But Ruby is, as many narrators are, unreliable, albeit unwittingly, and in her quest to make sense of her family, she finds herself.

Atkinson's prose is fluid and in turns humorous and moving, in a way that kept me reading (even if it took me a long time). The words sucked me in and I came to fully believe in these characters. They became real, especially Ruby. This is definitely going to make my list of all-time favorite books.

Library Thing Collections

2009-06-15T09:20:00.000-04:00

Library Thing has added Collections. I am so going to love this. I can enter my Reading Journal there now and keep it separate from my personal library, which is good because a lot of books I've read are books I don't own.

The Chameleon's Shadow

2009-05-17T15:48:00.000-04:00

TITLE: The Chameleon's Shadow
AUTHOR: Minette Walters

A new book by Walters is a treat. This one focuses on Charles Acland, a British soldier badly injured in Iraq. Back in Britain, he suffers from severe migraines and personality changes due to his head injury. He refuses plastic surgery for the badly scarred side of his face, nor does he want a false eye to replace the one he lost, preferring to wear a patch. He's suspicious of doctors and becomes agressive, especially toward women. Moving to London, he just wants to be left alone, but after getting into a violent altercation at a pub, he comes to the attention of police investigating the murders of three older, gay or bixsexual men, and a vicious attack on a fourth. When they discover Acland and the fourth victim crossed paths, he becomes their number one suspect. The only people who seem interested in helping him are a psychologist friend of his shrink at the hospital where he'd recovered, and the no-nonsense lesbian doctor who owns the pub with her partner.

The odd respect and almost friendship that develops between Acland and Dr. Jackson becomes the key for Acland to prove his innocence, something he seems almost reluctant to do. This time, the psychology is more central to the story than the mystery, but Walters keeps the story moving briskly and by the end, I'd come to care a great deal for the physically and emotionally wounded Acland.

Now, how long do I have to wait for her next one? :)

Falling Boy

2009-05-13T23:54:00.000-04:00

I've fallen behind pretty much everywhere. Been sick the last few days. Thought it was allergies, but it looks like a bad cold. But I did finish reading a couple of books, so I owe some reviews here.

TITLE: Falling Boy
AUTHOR: Alison McGhee

I liked her earlier book Shadow Baby, so thought I'd give this a try. The prose isn't as mesmerizing as that book, but it was very appealing, focusing on a teenaged boy (Joseph) crippled in an accident he won't talk about, the boy (Zap) he works with at a bakery and who thinks Joseph is a superhero, and a precocious nine-year-old girl (Enzo) who tries to bend reality to fit her needs and desires. Joseph has moved from upstate NY to Minneapolis to live with his father after his accident. The whereabouts of his mother are unclear, something else he won't talk about. Enzo and Zap keep trying to discover the truth about Joseph's paraplegia, unmindful of how painful the past is to Joseph. The characters are quirky and entertaining and the book reads like a young adult novel for adults. Both Zap and Enzo have secrets of their own and in trying to get at Joseph's story, these three characters heal each other and themselves in this short (194 pages in trade pb) novel.

Memorable Books Meme

2009-05-07T22:20:00.000-04:00

I need to write a review or two, but I've been lazy and still recovering from the nasty bacterial infection that I caught back in November. So, until I get those reviews up, someone posted this meme over on LiveJournal and I liked it a lot, so here are my answers, here, because it's a book meme.

"This can be a quick one. Don't take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you've read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes."

In no particular order, and in longer than 15 minutes because I couldn't remember titles and drew a blank on one author's name and had to Google it:

Watership Down by Richard Adams
The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue
Cat trilogy by Joan Vinge (Psion, Catspaw, Dreamfall -- I think of them as one long book)
Spares by Michael Marshall Smith (the first of his I read and it spurred me to read everything by him)
The Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters (the first of hers I read and I've devoured every other book she's written that I can get my hands on)
2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke
Shardik by Richard Adams
The Church of Dead Girls by Stephen Dobyns
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
A Canticle for Liebowitz by Walter Miller
Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens
Nancy Drew, The Dana Girls, and Trixie Belden books. Some of them are among my all-time favorite books, especially The Clue in the Crumbling Wall and The Ghost of Blackwood Hall (Nancy Drew) and The Secret at the Hermitage (Dana Girls).
Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy (assigned in school, my fave of Hardy's books)
Midnight Nation by J. Michael Straczynski (A comic book maxi-series, it came out in trade as a graphic novel, so I'm counting this awesome work.)
Under the Skin by Michel Faber

There are so many more, but this is a nice, eclectic mix. I keep thinking there are 3 or 4 others that should come before these, but their titles are just beyond my reach for the moment, so this list will suffice. Good books all.

And Amazon Responds

2009-04-14T22:29:00.002-04:00

What's being called Amazonfail was a glitch. Read about it on Seattlepi.com.

Amazon Mess

2009-04-12T23:13:00.000-04:00

By the time I spotted the "Adult" content filtering in Amazon searches that singled out homosexual material for exclusion, it was all over my Twitter feed and my LiveJournal friends list. Here's an article about it on Publishers Weekly. I don't think they would delete content they sell from searches, or so the posts said. The main issue seems to be sales rankings, which still would affect what people might buy. That's bad for business. If they decide to not sell such content, that's another issue. But they do have the right to sell what they want. And in the age of the internet, this blew up fast and furious. And I post the info here in case there actually is someone reading this who hasn't heard about it.

Library Thing Widget

2009-04-01T01:09:00.002-04:00

I'm trying Library Thing's new animated widget in the sidebar, but it's taking forever to load. If it works out, it'll be cool. Otherwise, I'll swap it out for the old one. If anyone can let me know if it's loading properly or not, I'd appreciate it. It's in the right sidebar. Thanks.

One Good Turn

2009-03-22T12:24:00.000-04:00

TITLE: One Good Turn
AUTHOR: Kate Atkinson

It is now clear to me that these Jackson Bodie books are not traditional mysteries. They're suspenseful novels with a group of characters and Brodie gets sucked into interacting with most if not all of them on some level, and things that look unconnected will likely connect or be revealed as being connected by book's end.

Which is fine, because I really like Brodie, even when he's acting like an idiot, because he's so human about it, and because Atkinson is a fine writer, good with words and character development. She can also thread together seemingly disparate plot points as well as anyone.

In this, an incident of road rage in a Scots town in the midst of a fair, sets things in motion. Brodie, there with his lover Julia, from the earlier Case Histories, who is performing in a play there, ends up a witness to the incident. He also finds and loses the body of a young woman who might've drowned, meets a tough-minded woman detective who has a teen son who might or might not be in legal trouble, and finds himself the target of the attacker in the road rage incident. Throw in a murder (in a case of mistaken identity) and a housing/real estate scandal, and you end up with a complex tale well told. Just don't expect Brodie, supposedly the main character, to be the focus. He is, at times, but he has to share the spotlight.

Confusing Comment

2009-03-04T13:50:00.000-05:00

I just rejected a comment, submitted twice, about a book by someone named Steve Harvey. The comment was very long and included links and I didn't think it was appropriate for posting, as it was long enough to be a blog entry. However, there was mention of the author using the title of another book. To be honest, I didn't read the whole comment, so don't know what the actual complaint is, but for the record, book titles are not subject to copyright protection. Which is why there are so many books with the same titles, which can drive librarians crazy when patrons ask for a book by title and the title is common, but they know nothing about the contents nor do they know the author and there are 3-5 different books with the title.

Book Meme

2009-02-18T22:07:00.000-05:00

Because I'm long overdue for a post here, I thought I'd do this. I saw it on Pai, a comic blog,

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.

3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X +

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X +

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X +

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X +

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott (an abridged version for children)

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X +

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X +

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (just a few plays: "Romeo and Juliet," "Julius Caesar," and "Hamlet.")

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier X +

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger *

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X +

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George OrwellX +

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy X +

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood *

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X +

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan *

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel *

52 Dune - Frank Herbert X

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X +

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon X +

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X +

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt *

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery X

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams X +

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole X +

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare X

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Case Histories

2009-01-13T17:51:00.001-05:00

TITLE: Case Histories
AUTHOR: Kate Atkinson

This is the first book by Atkinson to feature PI Jackson Brodie, but this is no standard mystery. Told non-linearly, a number of case histories from various dates in the past are presented and Jackson, in the present, ends up investigating or following up on most of them. There's the challenge for the reader to see how they all might intersect or connect, from the murder of an 18-year-old woman to the disappearance of a 5-year-old girl, to the woman who killed her husband while her infant daughter watched. Atkinson feeds the reader information in her own due time, revealing only what she feels important at the time she wants the reader to know it. In some ways, and in lesser hands, this can feel manipulative, but Atkinson is a marvelous writer who pulled me in with her evocative prose. Her characters, from the dysfunctional middle-aged sisters of the long-lost little girl, to the grossly overweight father of the dead young woman, to the sister of the woman who went to prison for killing her husband, come fully to life. Least of all is Jackson, himself, who has to deal with his ex-wife, his young and precocious daughter, attempts on his life, and a painful past of his own.

Nothing is as it seems in this book, which makes the case for never assuming you know what's going on and to never judge a... yeah, I'll say it, a book by its cover. Case Histories is about secrets and human frailties, misconceptions and inner strength and what people are truly capable of, good and bad. Jackson might not get all the answers to be had, but the reader does, in a most satisfying manner. It's rare that I jump into another book by the same author without mixing something different in first, but the sequel to Case Histories is next on my reading list.

Always

2008-12-05T18:31:00.003-05:00

TITLE: Always
AUTHOR: Nicola Griffith

Third book in the Aud Torvingen trilogy. Previously, Aud, a one-time cop and now investigator, fell in love with Julia, only to lose her to a bullet. After mourning her lost love, Aud is ready to move on with her life, but of course, nothing is easy. In this book, two stories are told concurrently, one in the recent past when a tragic event mars the self-defense class she's teaching in Atlanta that shakes her confidence, and the present, when she checks out some property she owns in Seattle and drags her friend Dornan along, where they encounter the movie crew that is renting Aud's warehouse.

The film is being sabotaged and in trying to discover why, Aud uncovers a real estate scam. This book is the longest of the three, partly to cover the two storylines and partly because there is so much detail in this, almost a day-to-day, hour-to-hour accounting. The writing is crisp, the characters fully realized, and Aud is at her best when showing some vulnerability, especially in her reunion with her diplomat mother and meeting her mother's new husband. But her budding romance with one-time stuntwoman turned caterer, Kick Kuiper, could be jeopardized by Kick's secret.

Okay, that doesn't sound like much, but forget the plot. It really isn't as important as the journey Aud is on as she learns more about herself, how to rely on others, comes to terms with her mother, and somehow, without realizing it, starts to actually fit in and socialize for the first time in her life, it seems. Aud is a tough female character full of flaws and she's the heart and soul of this book. I enjoy spending time with her and wouldn't mind seeing a fourth book.

The Master of Rain

2008-09-17T23:27:00.002-04:00

TITLE: The Master of Rain
AUTHOR: Rom Bradby

Idealism meets pragmatism in Bradby's literate historical mystery, and the confrontation ends in a tie. Richard Field, an ambitious and idealistic newly-minted officer appointed to the international police in Shanghai in 1926, has to battle both the demons of his past and barely suppressed anger at the wrongs in the world to help find the sadistic killer of a young Russian woman working as a prostitute.

Shanghai is supposedly controlled by international colonizing forces, but it's a Chinese warlord who really holds the power, through opium, bribes, and prostitution in a city where corruption is the norm, communism is encroaching, and nothing is as it seems and no one can be trusted. When Field falls for the victim's friend, a Russian woman in as much peril as the dead girl, he's drawn deeper and deeper into a maelstrom of lies and deceit. A serial killer seems to be working in the city, someone who likely is being protected by the warlord, if not the warlord, himself.

Bradby has researched his subject (I now want to know more about the time period in China -- my history classes are too far in the past!) and writes in a flowing, literary style that really pulled me in and made me feel as if I were there, across the globe, all those years ago. I hope to read more by this author; I already have his The White Russian here waiting for me.

-----
On a side note, I'm suspending Booked by 3 for the rest of the year, because I can't seem to concentrate on it right now. I've fallen behind on pretty much everything, mostly since falling and hurting my shoulder in July. I'm doing physical therapy for it now, but it still hurts and mobility is still limited and it's been frustrating. At least, I can type! And I finally finished this book, after over a month. Maybe now I can get back on track in that regard, but I don't know that I'll manage an average of a book a month this year. Unless I read some very short ones. ;)

Greywalker

2008-07-27T15:55:00.000-04:00

TITLE: Greywalker
AUTHOR: Kat Richardson

I try, when their books appeal to me, to read books by people I encounter online. Kat Richardson posts occasionally at rec.arts.science fiction.composition, so I was curious about her writing style. Greywalker, which features the usual denizens of dark, urban fantasy -- vampires, ghosts, witches, demon-like critters -- isn't my usual type of book, but it is well written.

Harper Blaine, an independent private investigator, is on a typical case when she's attacked by the guy she's been investigating. The beating leaves her gravely injured, even dead for a few moments, which was, it seems, enough for her to be able to access and be noticed by the Grey and the creatures that live in that place been living reality and the final resting place. She is befriended by a friendly witch who tries to help her understand and control her new life as a Greywalker while continuing to pursue her trade. Two cases have her attention: looking for a missing college student and trying to trace a missing piece of furniture.

Read enough, especially in genre, and you can get a sense of where things are going. The two seemingly unconnected cases will somehow become connected, although Richardson gets props for not having them end up being one case, after all. But there was a level of predictability to the story's development, as one thing conveniently helps with another. And Harper's encounters with powerful vampires leads to some of the overwrought prose that usually keeps me from reading many vampire tales.

Overall, Richardson's prose is solid and the characters interesting enough to keep me reading and I'll be game for a sequel. After all, she dropped enough hints that there's more to Quinton, the local computer geek, for me to want to know more about him.

Book Swapping

2008-07-26T23:28:00.000-04:00

I owe a book review here. I need to update my reading. But I haven't been able to type much due to pain from hurting my shoulder in a fall. Thankfully, it's my left shoulder and I'm right-handed. I'm getting an MRI next week. Blogging in general has been limited because of this.

To tide you over, Newsweek mentioned this neat site for swapping books, dvds, and videogames: Swaptree.

Too Funny Not to Share

2008-07-09T15:46:00.000-04:00

This post on Merged Books over at Miss Cellania had me giggling. You'll probably giggle, too.

Booked by 3 for June: My Answers

2008-07-08T10:09:00.003-04:00

Participation, at least that I know of based on comments here, has tapered off. I know that's mostly my fault, for being so reliable, but after a couple of years, it's gotten really hard to come up with new book-related questions. I'm going to try to keep it up for the rest of this year, then reassess. If anyone has questions to suggest, please leave them in the comments. Thanks.

Now, my answers to the last batch of questions.

1. Any summer reading plans? A particular book you've been dying to escape into?
Nothing special. I just want to catch up a bit with everything, especially comics and magazines that piled up when I was away at the end of May.

2. Summer reading: Different than the rest of the year? Or same old same old?
I don't read any differently in the summer. And my stack of unread books continues to grow.

3. Reading goals? By the week? Month? Year?
Right now, I'm happy if I can end up averaging more than a book a month. :)

Another Book Swap Site

2008-06-30T09:15:00.000-04:00

I read about BookMooch in the newspaper of all places, so it must be getting popular. I haven't tried it, but I thought I'd pass the link along.

The Book of Illusions

2008-06-15T17:59:00.002-04:00

TITLE: The Book of Illusions
AUTHOR: Paul Auster

Similar to The Dogs of Babel, this one deals with loss. As in Dogs, here, too, a man has to cope with the loss of his wife, and in this case, his two sons, dead in a plane crash. And here, too, David, the protagonist, is a professor. But where Dogs dealt with the loss directly, recalling how Paul and his wife met and fell in love, The Book of Illusions has something far more complex in mind. In his grief, David spent time watching old movies and became obsessed with Hector Mann, a silent film comedian who managed to break through his defenses and make him laugh. Needing something to occupy his mind, and wealthy thanks to a financial settlement from the loss of his family, he sets out to see every one of the too few films made by Mann who had a brief, but brilliant career before disappearing 60 years ago, in 1929. His research leads him to write a book about Mann, and sometime after it's published, he receives a letter from a woman inviting him to New Mexico to meet Hector who has long been presumed dead.

Much of the book is spent analyzing Mann's films and in doing so, Auster creates a reality that never existed. Hector Mann comes alive, and his films feel real as they're described scene by scene and sometimes, frame by frame. Skeptical, David has no interest in accepting the offer to meet Hector, but he's soon convinced by Alma, a woman sent by Hector to fetch him. Through her, he learns what happened to Hector and the reason for his disappearance. He learns what Hector has been doing for the past 60 years. The illusions of the book come in many forms, in Hector's life before and after 1929, in Alma, in David, himself, as he sifts through realities both tangible and on film.

The book works on many levels. As a straightforward story, it has a nice element of suspense. There is the historical context and the feel of a non-fiction work about the silent film era. There is the question of what is more real, the lives people live in the physical world or the ones they create in film and books. And are those created works real if no one gets to see them? Do they need to be shared? Or is it enough for them to exist for a time? Can art exist for itself or does it need an audience? Does the artist own his or her art or, once witnessed, does it belong to the world at large? Who has the right to decide what to do with it? And underneath it all, as with The Dogs of Babel, is the question of what it can take to heal a wounded heart.

I've believed for a long time that stories, once released into the world, belong as much to the audience as the creator. Each reader or viewer interprets the work, absorbs it, makes it his or her own. And yet, the original remains with the creator. It's as if many versions now exist, the original in the mind of the creator, and all the permutations, editions, versions in the minds of everyone who has seen, heard, or read the work. Perhaps, all of them are illusions.

The Dogs of Babel

2008-06-15T17:50:00.003-04:00

TITLE: The Dogs of Babel
AUTHOR: Carolyn Parkhurst

The moving story about a professor of linguistics whose wife has died in a tragic accident, having fallen from a tree. The only witness was their dog, Lorelei, and Paul, convinced that Lorelei can tell him what happened that day, including why his wife, Lexy, was in that tree in their yard, becomes determined to teach Lorelei to talk.

The story is told in two time periods. In the past, is Paul and Lexy's love story; in the present, is Paul's struggles to find, then come to terms with his loss and the truths he has difficulty facing, including his irrational actions that put Lorelei at risk.

By the end, I wasn't surprised by the things Paul learns, about Lexy and himself and their relationship, but surprises aren't what this book is about. At its heart, it's the story of love and how it can blind you to a person's flaws and how some things are beyond your control and other things are within your control and learning the difference. It's about an amazing love that wasn't quite strong enough and about healing. Parkhurst's prose is compelling and deeply felt. I look forward to reading more by her.