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I don’t get it.

American Gods has been one of those books i’ve heard about for years. It’s a Hugo and Nebula award winner. Fantasy fans everywhere have sung its praises. Neil Gaiman in general has gotten a lot of praise. Not knowing what it was about, I proposed this as a book for my book club, figuring it might be a good read.

One of our book club members emailed the group last month saying, “Is anyone reading American Gods yet? I’m on p. 132 and i really need to talk to someone about what is going on.” Several not-good signs there, in particular the part where she’s 20% through and doesn’t get it.

A few weeks later, i hit p. 132 and had the same reaction.

I kept with it, though – the story was interesting enough for me to finish it. I kept thinking i would find some deeper meaning, though i never did.

Here’s the story: this guy named Shadow gets out of jail a few days early because his wife has been killed in a car accident. On the plane home, he meets a mysterious figure named Wednesday who offers him a job. After he buries his wife (who doesn’t exactly stay dead, by the way), he takes the job with Wednesday, and they go meet a whole bunch of different people. Most of the people are gods of some sort, mostly old, forgotten gods. Wednesday is a god, too. These old gods are dying out because people don’t believe in them anymore. Wednesday is trying to rally the old gods to stage a war between the old gods and the new gods.  The new gods are people who represent things like TV, internet, money, etc, who have a lot of people “worshiping” them in modern times.

You can see why i might think there was a deeper meaning.

<Spoilers below.>

But by the end of the book, there is no war after all, b/c Shadow discovers that Wednesday was in cahoots with one of the new gods to destroy the world. Or something. Wednesday turns out to be Shadow’s father, which at least answered the question of why this ex-con is getting so much attention in the first place. Wednesday dies. (I kept trying to find the Darth-Vader-there-is-some-good-in-you-father-i-know-it parallel but it just isn’t there.) Shadow never develops much of a personality. The story is disjointed with all the different gods we meet. I never quite figured out how some of the characters fit into the story. I read the Wikipedia entry and it seems i might have gotten more out of it if i had been more familiar with mythology, as a lot of those gods are represented.

The thing that really make me fall in love with a book are the characters, and that’s what fell flat for me here. None of them had any depth. Certainly there were a lot of interesting, different characters/gods, but that falls more into the category of world-building, which doesn’t matter to me as much as connecting to the characters. Shadow and i never connected.

I still feel like maybe i’ve missed something. Someone please explain it to me.

Tags: book club, books

Can i just say, i want to name my first child Tatiana de Rosnay.  What a beautiful name.

Sarah’s Key is two stories: the first is about a 10-year old French girl (Sarah) in 1942 Paris, the second is that of a 45-year old American woman (Julia) in 2002 Paris. For most of the book, the chapters alternate between each character. Both are good, although Julia’s story gets more interesting later, while Sarah’s will grip you from the very start.

Sarah’s parents are Jewish, and on the night of July 16, 1942, the French police come knocking. Sarah’s little brother is scared, and he hides in a hidden cupboard. Sarah locks him in and promises to come let him out when everything is sorted out and they come home. Of course, you, the reader, know that she is *not* coming home. It is very sad.

Meanwhile, in 2002, Julia is a journalist doing research on the Vel D’Hiv roundup that happened in Paris 60 years prior. Thousands of Jewish men, women and children were taken from their homes and held in a large warehouse for several days without food or water. It is a very dark time in French history, because it was French police who did this, not the Germans. Under German orders, perhaps, but the French did this. At the same time, Julia’s family is remodeling an apartment that she discovers came into her husband’s family in July 1942. It will turn out to be Sarah’s apartment with the hidden cupboard.

Julia goes about unraveling this history in the present, while we read about what happened to Sarah. Sent to a camp outside Paris with her parents, she is first separated from her father, and then wrenched away from her mother. Both of her parents are sent to Auschwitz and executed. Sarah escapes and is helped by an old farm couple. She is desperate to get back to her apartment in Paris and save her brother.

In 2002, Julia struggles to put together clues about the Jewish family who lived in her family’s apartment before they obtained it. What happened to Sarah? And why is her family so reluctant to talk about how they obtained the apartment?

It is an excellent story. Very well written, although it saddens my heart to read it. The characters are fictional, but the story is very real. We all know about the terrible events of WWII, but this book brought the sadness to a new level for me, as told from the perspective from a child.

Tags: book club, books

I think we can all identify with the feeling of going into another room to do something, arriving in that room, and now you don’t remember what you came into the room for.  Doesn’t it feel weird?  To know that you had something in your brain, but then it vanishes?  Still Alice explores the effect that Alzheimer’s has on a woman and her family, as she experiences those lapses more and more and in more and more severe situations.

From Amazon:

…a realistic portrait of early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Alice Howland is an esteemed psychology professor at Harvard, living a comfortable life in Cambridge with her husband, John, arguing about the usual (making quality time together, their daughter’s move to L.A.) when the first symptoms of Alzheimer’s begin to emerge. First, Alice can’t find her Blackberry, then she becomes hopelessly disoriented in her own town. Alice is shocked to be diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s (she had suspected a brain tumor or menopause), after which her life begins steadily to unravel.

Still Alice is a wonderful yet distressing book.  Wonderful writing, wonderful portrayal of family and relationships and the day-to-day that makes up this thing called life.  Wonderful because i read it in two days – definitely a page-turner.  I said “distressing,” but that isn’t the right word; it was just a very difficult book emotionally, in my opinion.  The book is told from the perspective of Alice, who is losing her mind to early onset Alzheimer’s at the age of 50.  You’re right there, identifying with her, realizing that something is clearly wrong.

The most heartbreaking moments to me were the ones where her husband can’t deal with it.  There are several encounters they have that are just too real – Genova really nailed the intimacy between a couple that has been together for 30+ years.  They know each other so well, and yet here they are at a point where they don’t know each other at all.  It’s not because they’ve grown apart (though maybe they have a little); instead it is because she can’t remember who he is, while the woman he fell in love with is no longer there.

I cried a half dozen times at least.  Tender moments.  Angry moments.  Unfair moments.  I can get caught up in a story.  And i’m still thinking about it – it’s one of those books that had an impact on me.  That’s what makes the book “distressing”.  But it is wonderful, too.

Tags: book club, books

This book has been wildly popular, and i was looking forward to reading it when our book club chose it.  However, it wasn’t at all what i expected.  I think i expected something more like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, if only because of the word “dragon” in the title.

It was good.  I definitely got into it. Though i didn’t identify with any of the characters.

It’s basically a mystery which takes place in Sweden.  Mikael Blomkvist is a middle-aged journalist who is part-owner of a confrontational magazine named Millenium.  He investigates and writes a nasty article about a business gangster named Wennerström, but is later convicted of libel after it turns out Wennerström fed him false information in order to embarrass and discredit him.  Feeling demoralized and beaten, he accepts an assignment from the patriarch of a rich and power family, Henrik Vanger.  Henrik wants Mikael to look through a decades-old police investigation of the disappearance of his beloved niece Harriett.  She disappeared and is presumed dead, but the killer was never caught.  Henrik has been obsessed with her disappearance ever since, and in his old age he wants a trained journalist to take one more very thorough look with fresh eyes.  As an incentive to accept, Henrik dangles information that will put Wennerström’s head on a platter if Mikael can deliver.

Mikael accepts the assignment and gets caught up in the Vanger family politics as he digs into a past which no one else wants him to uncover.  He eventually teams up with researcher-for-hire Lisbeth Salander, who has the aforementioned dragon tattoo on her back.  They are both drawn into the family mystery and manager to decipher new clues about what happened to Harriett.  The ugliness that emerges from the family closet are dark and riveting.

The dragon tattoo plays absolutely no role in the book, and Lisbeth is not the main character, though she eventually does play a large role.

The book was well-written and quite interesting, and my fellow book club ladies should have no problem devouring this book.  However, it didn’t leave me wanting more.  There are two more books in the series, and i’m not at all interested in reading them, despite the mild cliff-hanger at the end.

Overall i enjoyed it, but this type of story doesn’t “do it” for me.

Tags: book club, books

All i can really say about this book is, Myeh.

This is our book club book for November/December – obviously i’m “reading ahead”.  There was talk of changing the book, but one of our members said she definitely wanted to read it, so i assume she had some good recommendations.  Then one of my bridge friends, with whom i seem to have a similar taste in books, saw me reading it and told me it was one of her favorite books this year.

So i was disappointed when i just never really got into it.  It was not as hard to read as Special Topics in Calamity Physics, but in some ways they are similar.  The first half of the book was the most interesting part.  A college student, Richard Papen, leaves his small hometown in California and transfers to small Hampden College in Vermont.  He has taken Greek, and pursues Greek at his new school, only to learn that the Greek teacher only accepts a handful of students.  Richard wins his way into this exclusive group, and it turns out the six students have nearly all of their classes together.

At the outset, we’re told that there was a murder.  Bunny Corcoran, one of the select Greek students, dies midway through the year, murdered by his classmates.  The first half of the book is kind of a reverse murder mystery, because you know the murder is going to happen, but you don’t know how or why.  The second half of the book deals with the remaining five students and how they cope with their crime, and how they dodge the authorities.

The events that lead to the murder are bizarre.  They decide they have to do it when it becomes clear that Bunny is going to rat out four of them for another murder.  It was an accident, on a night when the four students (excluding Bunny and Richard) are out in the country performing a strange Bacchanal ritual to try to experience God.  Bunny wasn’t there, but figures it out and begins blackmailing the others.  But he has attacks of conscience, and when he confides in Richard (who has already been let into the loop by the others), it becomes clear that he will probably tell others.  In order to avoid the consequences, they arrange to get rid of Bunny.

The events after the murder are less bizarre, but not particularly interesting.  There is a lot of drinking and drugs, and people being secretive.  The group is not as harmonious as it once was, and they become suspicious of and in some cases, possessive of, each other.  This builds to another climax where one person commits suicide.

I don’t understand the suicide.  I didn’t really like or identify with any of the characters.  One of the themes of the book seems to be that life is never quite what you want it to be; things are not quite as beautiful as you want them to be.  I suppose for me, this book wasn’t as good as i wanted it to be.

Tags: book club, books

The Unseen is on our book club list for October.  Since read the September book last year, i figured i would get a head start on this one.

All i really knew about the book was that was supposed to be a little bit about the paranormal.  As i got into it, it immediately became clear that the book is set nearby in Durham.  A psychology professor, Laurel MacDonald, decides to move all the way from California to start a new life after she had a dream about her world collapsing around her, and then it happens exactly as she had dreamed it.  In a brand new place, she describes North Carolina through an outsider’s eyes.  I was delighted with her descriptions of both the environment, and the people who live here (with their southern ‘charm’ in some cases).

Laurel teams up with another professor to recreate the parapsychology experiments done at Duke in the sixties to explore the possibilities of ESP.  They conduct some of the same experiments, using the student population of Duke, to find some talented individuals.  They also discover a well-buried case about a house that was haunted by a poltergeist, and set out to see if they can recreate the poltergeist effect with two students who scored well on the ESP tests.

I started reading the book when i got home on a day when Lance was out of town.  So there i was, alone in the house, and wouldn’t you know it, Laurel and her crew DO recreate the poltergeist effect.  And then i started hearing things in my own house.  It was about midnight when things started to get scary in the book, so of course i had to stay up and finish the book or else i would have never been able to sleep!

The paranormal stuff in the book was approached in a scientific way so that i could almost believe that this stuff was really possible.  The idea is this: some people have heightened abilities in the “sixth sense” area of the mind.  A poltergeist isn’t a real thing, but instead it is a physical manifestation of the anxiousness of a person or persons who have these strong mental abilities.  Especially when you get several of them together, they can create the poltergeist effect, with the sounds and weird things happening.  OK, yes, it is far-fetched but the book approaches this concept slowly and you can suspend disbelief enough to go along with it.

The book lost me at the very end though.  Suddenly, the poltergeist (which i thought was supposed to be something the students’ minds were conjuring) became a separate and malevolent spirit force that was trying to “get out” of somewhere.  And then Laurel, the professor, suddenly has strong psychic powers also, and is able to communicate on a spirit level with the young spirit-selves of the students who performed the same experiment forty years ago… It’s just too much.

I enjoyed the story and it was certainly a page-turner.  I just felt that toward the end i was no longer able to suspend my disbelief, and it left me feeling flat because of that.

There aren’t many complex themes in the book, so i’ll be interested in what we discuss at book club.  I wonder if anyone will have some ghost stories to share?

Tags: book club, books

Well, it’s really too bad that no one else in my book club finished this book.  There would have been a lively discussion.

This book was first recommended to me by my almost brother-in-law Will years ago (three? four?) and was described to me as “Harry Potter for girls”.  I bought it almost immediately and tried to read it twice during the last few years, but i was unable to make it past the second chapter.

When our book club put it on the agenda, i was pleased because i knew it would motivate me to read it.  And, even better, i have been on a reading roll lately, devouring books left and right.

Despite the momentum i had going in, it was still difficult to get into Pessl’s book.  Why?  One of the things that was difficult for me was the length of all the sentences.  Every time a new thought begins, it is interrupted and annotated and parentheticals are inserted, until you forget exactly what the beginning of the sentence was.  I cannot tell you how many times i had to reread a sentence to figure out what was being said.  It was exhausting.  However, that wasn’t the biggest problem.  I could get over long sentences if there was a plot, but the plot for this book does not seem to develop itself until several chapters in.  And even then it seems weak.

Our protagonist and narrator is Blue Van Meer.  Her mother died when she was very young, and she was raised by her very brilliant father, moving 2-3 times per year as he traveled to different universities as a sort of permanent visiting professor.  Blue is recounting her senior year of high school, during which she tries to explain the sudden death of a quirky teacher at the school, Ms. Hannah Schneider.  The book tries to hook you at the beginning with this murder mystery, but it doesn’t work well.  The first 60 pages are quite tedious as we lead up to Blue’s senior year, where her father has promised they will for once stay in one place for the entire school year.

After that, the book does start to get better.  There’s fitting in with the “in” crowd in a new school, rebelling a bit against Dad, a mysterious death, an infatuation with a boy, all kinds of normal teenage stuff.  Once that started happening, i was hooked enough to know i’d make it to the end of the book this time.  However, it all still seemed quite a mishmash of events that didn’t seem important, and you wondered why on earth you were having to sit through all of this.  Can we get to the point already?

It isn’t until p. 330 (of 514) that the book suddenly, finally, becomes a page-turner.  That’s when Hannah Schneider finally dies.  You’ve known it all along, and now you become consumed with what happens next.  Her death is ruled a suicide, but Blue starts finding clues that it was more likely murder, and the clues start adding up and making sense as she begins to solve this mystery.  Many of the events that didn’t seem important in the first 330 pages now start to have a significant context, and i found myself flipping back through the book so i could find those passages and remind myself about them, and in that way perhaps i could help Blue solve the mystery.

The book ends in an open-ended fashion.  That’s what makes it such good fodder for book club discussions.  To any of by book club compatriots who have made it partway, i say, keep going!  And let me know when you’re finished.

Tags: book club, books

I’m really behind on book reviews.  To be honest, i only like writing reviews for books that really grabbed me, or where i had something to say.  So instead of full-blown reviews, i’m going to summarize thoughts from several books i’ve read over the last few months.

The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher Entertaining, light reading.  I have read the first two so far, and have books 3 & 4 ready and waiting.  It’s not my usual fare, and i probably won’t go much further than the four books i already have (i think there are 8-10 books so far).  Good stories, good monsters, thin characters, fairly predictable.

My Sister’s Keeper, by Jodi Piccoult Piccoult always throws a host of issues together in her books, and this was no exception.  The core issue is about a child who was conceived specifically to be a blood donor for her sick sister, who had been diagnosed with lieukemia at age four.  How far should that go?  Where do you draw the line on what you ask one child to do for another?  Do you even ask?

A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin (4+ book series) This is my favorite series of all time.  It’s epic fantasy, and the story is huge, complex, yet wonderfully interwoven.  The characters are all delicious shades of gray.  The setting is another world, 17th century-ish, with lords and ladies, kings and queens, the struggle for power, plots and intrigues, prophecy and fulfillment, swordfights and sex, and dragons.  It will be 7 books before it’s done.

Infected by Scott Sigler Recommended by a bridge buddy, this isn’t the kind of book i would normally pick up.  Think Invasion of the Body Snatchers mingled with Alien merged with Stephanie Meyer’s The Host.  It was a page-turner!

Kelsey on Squeeze Play by Hugh Kelsey This huge monstrosity is actually four books, and i made it through the first one, which is about simple squeezes, including the trump squeeze and criss-cross squeeze.  It is pretty fascinating stuff for me, since i eventually want to master all of it.  Luckily for me, there is more of this book to read.  Unluckily, there were only 20 quiz hands at the end of the section.

Are You There, God, It’s Me Margaret by Judy Blume When i was 11 read this book, it seemed deviant and wicked and mysterious.  I loved Margaret and thought she was my soul in print.  So i was surprised when i picked this book up again for book club and found it a flimsy, short book, and that the characters and plot really didn’t have much substance.  All the bits and pieces i remembered were there, but when i was young, i had projected so much meaning onto them!

A History of God by Karen Armstrong I only made it partially through this book.  It’s pretty dry.  There is some fascinating stuff in there, if you can get past the monotone writing.  Which i obviously can’t, since i have tried to read this book half a dozen times and always get bored.

Practical Magic, by Alice Hoffman I didn’t care for this book.  The characters weren’t deep, and morphed into each other at times.  Entertaining enough, i guess, but it’s not a book that kept me coming back for more.

The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss An amazing book.  This fits into the category of epic fantasy, and is a wonderful story of a magician’s young protoge.  Yet it’s so much more than that.  It’s the first of a series, and we don’t know how big this story will be.

Tags: book club, books

The Book Thief was a beautiful story about a beautiful little girl with a beautiful heart.

Liesel is a young girl in Nazi Germany.  Her mother sends her and her brother to live with a foster family in the town of Molching.  On the way there, though, her brother dies.  At the funeral, Liesel steals her first book, The Gravedigger’s Handbook.  It is the first of several books that she steals in the course of her life.

Liesel’s new parents love her dearly, though they have different ways of expressing it.  Her Mama is always complaining about her, but her Papa sits up with her when she has nightmares and teaches her to read.  She develops the love of words that prompts her to steal more books.

When the Jewish son of one of Papa’s war buddies shows up on their doorstep, they take him in and hide him in their basement.  Liesel and Max form a strong bond, and at its core is a shared love of words.

One thing that makes this book interesting is that it is told from the point of view of Death, who reluctantly collects souls all around the globe as people die.  Death makes for an interesting narrator, and he’s always spoiling his own stories by telling you what’s going to happen before he gets around to that part of the story.

I bawled at least half a dozen times while reading The Book Thief.  It was very good, but in a way that makes your heart heavy.  I liked the portrayal of life for the common people in Nazi Germany.  The ones who don’t really hate anyone, but are forced to say certain things and act a certain way out of fear.  I’m glad i read it.

Tags: book club, books

Our book club’s selection for February was To Kill a Mockingbird.  The first and only time i read this book was in middle school.  I remembered the name Boo Radley.  I remembered asking my dad what the phrase “Jem was four years my senior” meant, as my 11-year old self had never heard such fancy language.  (Dad wouldn’t tell me).  I remembered liking the book.  But that’s about all i remembered.

I liked the book this time, too.  A lot.  Jem and Scout’s adventures in Maycomb as they slowly grew up were fun to read about.  The courtroom scenes when Tom was on trial were as good as any of the modern courtroom thrillers.  And, look at how far we’ve come.  This setting was the 1930s, and a black man was convicted when he was obviously innocent, just because a white girl pointed a finger.  It may be fiction, but it is representative of the times.  80 years later, a black man is President of this country.

There were a lot of great quotes from this book.  But one that moved me was in the final few pages:

A boy trudged down the sidewalk dragging a fishing pole behind him. A man stood waiting with his hands on his hips. Summertime, and his children played in the front yard with their friend, enacting a strange little drama of their own invention. It was fall, and his children fought on the sidewalk in front of Mrs. Dubose’s. . . . Fall, and his children trotted to and fro around the corner, the day’s woes and triumphs on their faces. They stopped at an oak tree, delighted, puzzled, apprehensive. Winter, and his children shivered at the front gate, silhouetted against a blazing house. Winter, and a man walked into the street, dropped his glasses, and shot a dog. Summer, and he watched his children’s heart break. Autumn again, and Boo’s children needed him. Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough.

It’s a defining moment for Scout.  Seeing something from aother’s perspective.  Losing some of her innocence.  But still having faith in people.

Tags: book club, books