The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold
I previously read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold two years ago and really, really enjoyed it, so I decided to give her another chance and picked up (or rather borrowed from my mother) The Almost Moon.
From beginning to end the book covers a span of 24 hours, during which the main character, Helen, murders her elderly mother by suffocating her with a hand towel on the back porch of her childhood home and then trying to deal with the consequences. Helen's mother, Clair, spent her entire life battling demons. Be it mental illness, be it depression, you're never really sure. Sebold makes hints regarding what her mother's real problems were, but ultimately leaves it up to the reader to decide what could possibly cause such bizarre behavior from a person. Behavior such as not being able to leave your own house without a blanket wrapped around you to protect you from the world. Behavior such as witnessing a small child get hit by a car and not being able to move from your sidewalk to either see if he's ok or call for an ambulance. The latter of which resulted in an almost lynching by the angry neighborhood fathers.
Helen's father was not without his own demons as well and committed suicide in front of Clair after Helen was married with her first child. This caused the burden of caring for her mother to fall on Helen's shoulders for the rest of her mother's life. Theirs was not an easy relationship and Helen spent the majority of her life feeling like a slave to the entire situation. Thus, the one day where she had reached her breaking point and took a towel to her mother's face.
I have a little bit of a love/hate relationship with this book. The first couple of chapters moved very slowly and felt like they weren't really going anywhere that I, as a reader, wanted to travel. Then the pace picked up and I really started to enjoy the experience of reading this book, until the very last chapter. I'm not sure what happened, but it just sort of unraveled in the end and was very, very anticlimactic. I had a very similar experience reading The Lovely Bones. Both were good books until the end and then the stories just got lost in the shuffle.
I did enjoy Sebold's character development as far as Helen was concerned. You watch a woman who has spent her entire existence supporting and caring for a mother she can't even say with conviction that she truly loves, go through this horrible transformation from bitter daughter, to murderer and the recklessness with which she begins to make choices afterwards. The problem is, Helen is really the only character that has any depth to her. The other characters involved are very superficial, but I have a feeling that wasn't an accident.
Of Sebold's two novels I've read, The Almost Moon is most definitely the weakest but still a fairly enjoyable read.
Book Rating: C+
Vanishing Acts by Jodi Picoult
I was recently given an entire sack of Jodi Picoult books to read. I think I've gone through 4 or 5 of them so far, the most recent being Vanishing Acts.
After reading several Picoult novels, I've discovered that her novels follow a formula. Most of them are written where the different chapters are the different characters telling their stories as they go. There are positives and negatives to this style of writing. A positive being that it allows you to see things through all of the main characters' eyes and get multiple viewpoints on the situations happening in the story. However, a big negative for me in reading several books written in this style is that it tends to get old book after book after book.
That being said, I did enjoy Vanishing Acts moreso than some of the others I've read (i.e. Change of Heart and Picture Perfect), It's essentially the story of Delia Hopkins, a 32 year old woman who finds out that she was kidnapped by her father at the age of 4 and moved from Arizona to New Hampshire in order to escape her alcoholic mother and various other bad influences in her life. She hires her fiance, who is conveniently and coincidentally also an alcoholic and a lawyer, to represent her father in his trial and she struggles with her anger toward her father for letting her believe her mother has been dead for 28 years, and her anger toward her mother for being an alcoholic and forcing her father's hand.
The book was entertaining, but not amazing. I tend to judge books based on how I feel when I finish. With Vanishing Acts i felt no sense of grief...no sadness knowing the book was over, which lets me know this one wasn't at the top of my best read list. It was a fairly predictable outcome and, like most other Picoult novels, had a big twist at the end that was supposed to be shocking but in the end didn't really come as much of a surprise.
And a note to the men out there: Jodi Picoult's novels are most definitely "chick books," aka the equivalent of a "chick flick." Therefore, you have been warned.
Book Rating: C+/B-
When You Are Engulfed In Flames
When You Are Engulfed in Flames is the fourth book I've read by David Sedaris, and although I'm in the minority of most reviewers, this book is arguably one of, if not my favorite. Sedaris is an author of memoirs; stories about his life that are "mostly" true. Each chapter is a different story...a different moment in his life put to paper in a comedic fashion.
Flames tends to be devoted more to his adult life than his previous novels. There are more stories about his relationship with his longtime partner, Hugh and their life in France than in any of his previous books, while his other books focused more on his dysfunctional childhood family life. While I enjoy those stories, I also enjoy the stories of David as an adult dealing with day to day relationship issues with his boyfriend...or the story about fighting a war with the evil birds who attack his apartment every day at the same time...or the story about moving to Japan to quit smoking and miserably failing Japanese language classes.
While I don't think David Sedaris is my favorite memoirist (if that's even a word), I always find his books entertaining and humorous. Even if the stories aren't 100% true, (and come on...who COULD remember every event in that great detail?) his books always keep me coming back for more.
Book Rating: B
Juliet Naked
I'm a huge fan of Nick Hornby's work and his latest book Juliet Naked came out this week. I haven't read it but if it's anything like his other work, it's good, so you all should go pick it up.
The Time Traveler’s Wife
I just read The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger for the second time. I decided to re-read it after seeing the film because I couldn't quite remember exactly how everything happened or what they added or took out from the book. But, this isn't about the film. This is about the book. A book that I loved even more the second time around.
The Time Traveler's Wife is the story of Henry, a man with a genetic disposition that causes him to time travel unwillingly, and Clare, Henry's wife, who has had her entire life laid out before her since age six. For Henry, he and Clare meet when she is 20 and he is 28, but for Clare, they meet 14 years earlier when Henry, as a 35 year old man, appears to a 6 year old Clare in the meadow behind her childhood home.
Confused? You should be. Time means nothing in this novel. Well, nothing....yet everything. This is the story of two people whose lives are intertwined through time and who are almost held prisoner by it. Free will is no longer a possibility for either character, seeing as how they both spend their lives being told, by one or the other, what the future holds. For example, Henry tells Clare at an early age that they will be married, and Clare tells Henry at 28 that they will be married. Neither questions this or tries to go against it because they both understand that at some point in time this has already happened. And so, this is their life and we, the readers, are taken on the journey with them, experiencing every high and low point, every frightening moment and every happy occasion.
The thing I love about this book is its originality and it's ability to evoke emotion and force you to picture yourself as these characters. How would you handle having to witness the death of your mother over and over and over again, such as Henry does throughout his life? Or, how would you feel if you were Clare, knowing your entire life how the future was going to unfold and not having the ability to make any decisions for yourself because time has already made them for you?
One thing I would like to say is that I've heard several people say "oh I thought this was a chick book," but this is most definitely not the case. The film version might be considered a chick flick, but the book? Not so much. So, if you're a man reading this, don't get swayed thinking you'll be reading Danielle Steele. I've read Danielle Steele, and Danielle Steele this is not. Thankfully.
In summary, go pick up this book. It's tragic. It's joyous. It's sexy. It's funny. It's just a good read, and, as I found out, it's an even better read the second go-round.
Book Rating: A
Harry Potter: The Series
First book review: Harry Potter. All of them. I know this may seem like an odd choice to start a book review blog with, and I struggled with the idea of not writing about them and starting with the next book I read, but I've just spent 2 months of my life reading all 7 books and quite frankly, they moved me enough to devote my first review to the series. So here we go.
To put it bluntly, I feel like I've just gone through a hard breakup. I read the series back to back over a 2 month timespan and reading that last sentence on that last page in the last book felt strangely like closing a chapter in my own life. You know those feelings you get when you take your last exam in college...or walk out the door on the last day at a job...or even moving out of your home and taking that one last look around before closing the door knowing you'll never call that place home again. That's how I felt.
I will admit that I am a book snob. I tend to lose interest in reading something if there is a lot of hype surrounding it. Which is why I just decided now, in 2009, to start reading these books that have been so popular for so long now. I felt like enough of the hype had died down, so it was time. I also decided that I wanted to read at least the first 6 books prior to seeing the 6th film, which opened in July. So in June I set out on a very lofty goal to read 6 large books in a span of 6 weeks or so. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
For those who don't know Harry's story, let me give a brief synopsis. In the first book, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Harry is an 11 year old boy living with his aunt, uncle and his cousin Dudley. He's grown up his entire life being told that his parents died in a car accident when he was only 1 year old, and his aunt and uncle were the only family he had left. He isn't treated well. He's made to sleep in a closet underneath the stairs and the Dursley's treat him more like a nasty little secret than an actual human being. On his eleventh birthday, he receives the news that his entire life has been a lie and that he is, in fact, a wizard and his parents, who were also a witch and wizard, were not killed in a car accident, rather they were killed by the evil Lord Voldemort, the darkest of all wizards. The good news is that he gets taken out of the Dursley's house on Privet Drive and taken to Hogwarts, the only place he ever feels at home, where he meets Ron Weasley & Hermione Granger, his two best friends. The bad news is that this knowledge sets him on a dangerous path of fulfilling his own destiny.
You could argue the first three books, Harry Potter & The Sorcerer's Stone; Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets; and Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban are a bit of fluff. Specifically the first two. They each have a specific structure. They each start out with Harry on Privet Drive with the Dursleys. Then he goes to Hogwarts. Then the tension builds throughout the school year and climaxes with Harry fighting the dark arts near the end and then everyone goes home for summer break. Reading the first two books I didn't mind this so much but by the third book it was beginning to wear on me a little. I was told to have faith and keep reading, because everything was going to change...and it did.
The fourth book in the series, Harry Potter & The Goblet of Fire, begins to delve deeper into Harry's history and the end of the book sets the course for the rest of the series. It was at this point I realized that this was no longer just a book...I was emotionally involved with these characters. We had a relationship, Harry & I, and my days consisted of going to work and rushing home to crawl in bed and spend the night reading.
I spent most of my time with book five, Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix, feeling angry at the misfortune that had befallen Harry. Nothing seemed to go right for him. I spent the last fifty pages of book five crying like a small child. If you're quick to cry over sad things in books or movies, I advise you to keep some kleenex handy in this one. And really, books 6 and 7 (Harry Potter & The Half Blood Prince and Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows) were just more of the same.
Positives: I loved how Rowling was able to incorporate some of the more controversial topics in the world, like racism, in a way where you knew what she meant to convey without being blatantly obvious about it, such as Hermione being called a mudblood because she was of both wizard and muggle heritage. A muggle is simply a person not a witch or wizard - such as you or I. Unless, of course, you are a wizard or a witch...and in that case it's simply such as myself.
I also loved how Rowling was able to breathe such life into these characters to the point where you wonder if maybe somewhere, somehow, Harry Potter might actually exist, because the reality of knowing these characters only exist on paper seems quite depressing. They're all so charming and so interesting and so easy to relate to and to see parts of yourself in. And because of this you find yourself caring so intensely about them and what happens to them. Even the more evil characters, like Draco and Snape, you really want to like, at least at one time or another, because there's just something about them that makes you want to pull for them and hope that maybe they'll come through in the end.
Negatives: Some would argue that the "fluffiness" of the first few books is a bad thing, but I think that it fits right in. Harry is only eleven in the first book and only 17 when the books end. Each book is a little more mature than the last, such as Harry is a little more mature with each book. The only really negative thing I can say is that I wasn't crazy about the ending. Without giving spoilers, the final chapter was put in to give a little closure, but in my opinion it was unnecessary and I would have preferred it to end with the chapter before. But I can also imagine that many other people would have been upset had something like this not been put in. To each his own.
Summary: If you haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, men or women, do yourself a favor and go buy them now. They sell all seven books in a box set. You can purchase it from amazon.com here HERE. You will come back and thank me, I assure you. Word to the wise though...I've heard people say these are childrens books. They are not. Children under the age of 12 should not read these in my opinion. Especially the later books.
Up next on my reading list: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I've read this once but recently saw the movie and am giving it a re-read. Review to follow.
Book Rating: A+
Well, hello there…
For those who happen to stumble upon this page at the moment, welcome. The purpose of this blog will be to write about the many, many books I read. I'm just getting it up and going, so bear with me. I'll be adding lots, and changing lots, so keep coming back, will ya?