Curses!

11.12 The Magician King

I am a bit OCD about things in my life, particularly my reading life.  I buy books at an alarming rate.  In fact, there is simply no way I will read all the books I have in my lifetime, but I get some sense of relief from just owning a book I want to read.  I also NEVER give up on a book. I read to the end every time. Admittedly, I do know of one that I haven’t finished, but I also know exactly where it is and where I left off, so I am destined to pick it up again simply so I don’t have to think about not thinking about it any more.  I have a system of stacks that is silly, and many lists to make it all seemingly more manageable.  If I start a series I finish a series, even if I didn’t really like the first, and I have to read any book I borrow from the library cover to cover and within the check out time.  I never renew, it just seems so rude to the others waiting.

So it is because of my reading OCD that I subjected myself to The Magician King, both second in a series, AND a library loaner. I didn’t love The Magicians but one thing that was left hanging, and that I wanted to know, was what happened to Julia.  She is there for just moments on the book but it is clear that something was happening to her that we weren’t privy to, and we get her story here.  It is all sorts of fucked up.  I think my friend Carol said it best, “He doesn’t really like women.”   In The Magicians, Alice was such an underdeveloped character that it was annoying, and all the other females were just sexual conquests and bitchy, but Julia was out there and undiscovered.  Turns out she is just another sexual conquest in the most horrible of ways and she loses her soul, literally.  So, I got the story of Julia like I wanted but it just wasn’t a story that I wanted to read.  Oddly, in this book, Grossman introduces Poppy, another possibly interesting female character, but again does nothing with her.  Let me guess – book three?

The main plot of this book follows our cast of characters as they try to rescue the magical land of Fillory, and thus, magic itself.  And this was a big issue for me. The characters love Fillory because they read about it in a series of books as kids.  It was their escape and sanctuary from the real world and while us readers are familiar with that experience we aren’t given any insight into what makes Fillory so special to the characters and so it remains un-special to us. So this book’s plot is all about saving Fillory but I don't care about Fillory, and I still don’t care about the whinny characters. Plus, like in the first book, every plot development is just hinted at instead of really being hashed out. Big things are supposedly happening but it feels to the reader like nothing happens at all.

So please, for my OCD sake, don’t write a third book that I will force myself to be subjected to.

Deja Vu

After reading Game of Thrones, I wanted to read something more modern and was excited to find that I had a Kindle library book waiting for me, The Magician King. I thought it would fit the bill perfectly since its predecessor was very modern. 

The opening paragraph is about kings and queens riding on horseback.  FML. I am suddenly wondering what their sigil is... Actually, I wonder what mine is???

House Beasley

House Hoff

I believe I traded up on the intimidation factor, non?   Swans are mean.

Winter is Coming

10.12 Game of Thrones                                   

This book came to my radar when I read an article about the uproar of the series fans over the long wait between books four and five in the series.  Apparently they are worried that Martin is getting on in years and may kick it before he is able to finish telling his story - Aren’t people lovely?  Since it is fantasy I asked my brother if he had read them, he said that he had never even heard of them.  I dropped it.  A few weeks later Peter called in a frenzy – "These are AMAZING!!!"  I think he was already on the third book and he didn’t stop until he read them all.  That was last summer, and he has been on me to read them ever since.

I kept putting it off because it just so doesn’t seem like my thing.  I am not big on fantasy, I need to start another series like I need a hole in my head, and it just seemed like a bunch of dudes and their horses and their swords and… ugh.

I was enthralled early on.  This is not really fantasy at all, it is more like alternate history and for some reason I really liked reading about all these different ruling families and how some had become more powerful while others had been destroyed.  I liked that the point of view changed just because it kept things feeling fresh, and I liked that the bad guys are far more interesting than the good. Plus, I have to give any story whose twists make me gasp aloud its due. 

I wasn’t meant to like this book, but I did, and I find it hard to explain why except that sometimes timing is everything.  This past week was one that I needed an escape from and Game of Thrones fit the bill perfectly.  I didn’t want to deal with anything that felt familiar to my own life.  I wanted to get away.  I did, and I found myself wanting to stay in the book as much as possible.  It isn’t a great book, it doesn’t ask a lot of you as a reader, but it is certainly a yarn and I know exactly where to go the next time I need another escape – I can’t imagine it will be very long.

Umm...

I just sent this text to my brother:

"BTW, I am pretty smitten with Game of Thrones even though they threw that kid out the window!"

What is this book doing to me?  Not to mention what the other four will do...

Oh, My Heart...

9.12 The Fault in Our Stars

I loved this book.  How could I love a book about two kids with cancer that made me cry a lot? Because it was beautiful and honoring in its honesty.  Is it also because I am a bit emotional about it? Abso-fucking-lutely.

John Green writes YA books that have the most amazing narrative voices.  They are ridiculously easy to read, very realistic, and usually, on one hand, painfully sad while also amazingly funny. He writes both male and female voices very well and most of his books follow a formula wherein a ridiculously funny and handsome teenage boy meets an equally ridiculously witty and self-confident teenage girl and together they take on some grand adventure that one or the other simply has to do in order to find their meaning.  This is the formula and I have to say I was growing tired of it, but he nailed it in this book.  These kids can pull off the seeming more grown up bit because they have to.  They can pull of the immediately in love bit because they have to.  Their parents give them ridiculous amounts of leeway because they have to. 

Is it a cancer book? Yes.  Is it a love story? Yes.  Is it sad? Yes.  Are those all reasons that some people won’t want to read it?  Yes.  Are they good reasons?  Maybe; but I hope people read it just to see that behind all the pink ribbons, Live Strong bracelets, and the “fighting cancer,” there are kids, parents, brothers, sisters, and friends simply putting one foot in front of the other just like everyone else and they aren’t looking for heroics.  Life is quite unfair, but it is all we have; and Augustus and Hazel are amazing examples of how to simply be good.

Personal History

8.12 Buddha in the Attic

I read this in less than 24 hours and would challenge anyone to not do the same.  But I imagine that it would be challenging for a lot of people because once again Otsuka has played with the narrative voice to create a really original way of presenting history.  There are no individual characters and things just happen, kind of like life.  I am sure there are readers who will say it is just a list of things: this happened to her, and this happened to her, but my god it is so much more.  It is about women and mothers, family and livelihood, neighbors and betrayal.  It is an amazingly powerful little book.

I used When The Emperor was Divine when teaching American Studies, and found that it filled in a gaping hole of our WWII studies: what was happening in this country to our own citizens.  Emperor used alternating points of view to tell the story of fear in California and the ultimate internment of the Japanese during the war.  Buddha goes further back in history and uses a collective voice to show the experiences of young women (mail-order brides (?)) coming to San Francisco to be married and have a better life at the beginning of the 1900s.  It shows how they created lives and families, and it shows how ultimately fear destroyed everything they had worked for.

Frankly, I wish I had the last chapter of Buddha to use when I was teaching Emperor.  It is the only time we see the view of the Americans and is titled, The Disappearance.  It is scary how little responsibility is taken, how quickly things are forgotten, how blasé the adults are and how truly affected the children are.

Realistic Magic

7.12 The Magicians

Side note: I love a book that uses as its title a title of a book that plays a part in its plot, even more when it is a surprise.  It is one of those little secret things that make my toes curl and make me so happy that I am a reader.  Little bits of magic.  Now, back to the book…

I see this described as an adult Harry Potter because they have sex and drink, but wouldn’t Harry have done that if Hogwarts were a college? Ron certainly would have, and that Hermione… Just imagine her letting lose for a bit.  Frankly, the author deals with these similarities by addressing them directly in the text so you have to give some credit to him for that. I saw using the setting of a small magical school as a way to highlight how we grow up going to school to “be something”, then often flounder when that space of “being” isn’t filled up in all of the ways that we expect it to be.  They go to magic school and then what?  Nothing.  They travel in to the world of the books they read as kids (very Narnia) and then what.  They beat the bad guy and then what.  Nothing, nothing, nothing.  Nothing is ever everything we want it to be; nothing ever completes us. Not even when we can do magic.

This is all highlighted by the main, and my least favorite, character Quentin. Coldwater was a very fitting last name for him because he was always bogged down in his own dissatisfaction.  I understand feeling lost as to what your purpose is, but when he was in love he wasn’t happy, when he was with his friends he wasn’t happy, he would get exactly what he wanted (like secret admittance into a magical school) and immediately react to it in a negative way.  Maybe the truth is that I didn’t like that about him because it felt a little familiar, but I am not the hero in a novel.

The story felt kind of empty, pushed through, and not fully developed.  I found I didn’t really care, but I couldn’t stop reading either.  There is a lot going on: finding the school, attending the school, falling in love, graduating, first foray into the “real” world, trip to Fillory, back to the real world.  All of these things are important, but they also felt very black and white instead of full of color because there just wasn’t enough time to do them all really well.  Is there a solution to this?  Not an obvious one. 

I have to admit that I loved the end, and by that I mean the last paragraph, so it rebounded a bit but I am not sure if it was deserving.

Do you Downton?

6.12 The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family

I missed out on Downton Abbey the first time it showed on PBS; I had just watched the Upstairs/Downstairs reboot and wasn’t interested in watching, what felt like, the same show.  Then PBS showed repeats during Christmas and I loved tucking in on those cold Sunday nights to watch Carson and Mrs. Hughes continually try to be hard asses, to watch Mary be insufferably annoying, and, of course, to watch Mr. Bates – my god, Mr. Bates.  Plus, the Dowager – seriously she is the best. I have even sucked Chris into watching the second season, which I like but am not wild about.  Frankly, there are just too many people to keep track of.  Anyway, I have come across many, “What to read if you like Downton Abbey” lists and The Sisters turned up on one.  My mom’s lovely friend gave it to her, she then lent it to me, only to have in languish on my huge TBR pile.

I am glad that it languishes no more!  And my god these Mitford girls! Wow.  How great to read about women who did exactly as they wanted without for one moment fretting over not being treated as equals (granted they were rich so that helped).  Quite refreshing really, even though some clearly should have stepped back a bit.  They are writers and lovers, divorcees and mistresses.  Fascists and Nazis, mothers and aunties.  But mostly they are family and even though they disagree with each other, hate each other, and are quite awful to each other, they are always family.

But I must digress for a moment over the nicknames, my god the nicknames!  Why are there not more nicknames on Downton?

Nicknames:

            David – Farve

            Sydney – Muv

            Nancy – Susan

            Pamela – Woman

            Thomas –

            Diana – Honks, Cord

            Unity – Bobo, Boud

            Jessica – Decca, Hen, Susan (again)

            Deborah – Debo, Little D

*Um, why did Tom get left out of the fun? And poor Pam, poor poor Pam... 

Of all the girls I identified most with Debo, the current Duchess of Devonshire, who as the youngest and kind of missed out on the glory days of her family’s togetherness and instead watched as it all fell apart.  It is hard to watch as older siblings leave home and branch out in to their own belief systems that often include damning their way of growing up.  I am the youngest of six, but also feel very much like an only child.  It has always been an odd place for me to be and has very much shaped who I am and how I treat people.  I approach almost everything with a sense of doom instead of wonder.