Bond, Gabriel Bond

“‘Remind me to never get on your bad side.’” Truth.

7.14 The English Girl

I think this is the 13^th book in the Gabriel Allon series, and I have read every one.  I know the characters from descriptions without needing names; I know where they have friend and where they have enemies.  I know that they fight the good fight against very bad guys, and I know that they basically do it the same way every time.  The Allon books are familiar and familiar is good, but sometimes familiar needs a bit of shaking.

As I started The English Girl I was a bit shocked to see things take a bit of a different route.  This is not the typical case that Allon is used for, and he goes it somewhat alone (even getting his hands dirty with an ex-foe).  And I liked that.  I liked him doing the actual work without having everything he needs at his fingertips, it was good to see why he is known for being so good at what he does, but I also wondered why he was doing it. Why did he care?  And when the plot takes a supposed shift – along with reverting back to the tried and true plot structure of books past – I still didn’t get why he would care.  Why would any of them really care?  I still don’t really get it. 

But what I do know is that seeing Allon in new circumstances was exciting, much more exciting than seeing him do again what he has always done before.  I mean, after a while we all know he is going to do it every time right?  Where’s the fun in that?

Bribery

“Before he lost his sight, the maester had loved books as much as Samwell Tarley did. He understood the way that you could sometimes fall right into them, as if each page was a hole into the other.” Truth.

5.14 A Feast for Crows

I came to the A Song of Fire and Ice series late.  I discovered it through a New Yorker article about how impatient George RR Martin’s fans are becoming for him to finish the series, and many fretting over the fact that he may die before he manages it.  I was amazed by the article and asked my brother who is a huge Fantasy fan if he had read the books.  He hadn’t… three weeks later he had and he was hooked.  So I decided to delve in. 

I have made no secret of the fact that I have grown tired of the new trilogy/series fad.  Mostly because I think it leads to over written ideas that really don’t need to be dragged out, and after finishing book four of the series I have hit true fatigue.  As I read, my attention wandered away from the story more often than not and I kept thinking that while I understand that Martin has created a world and characters that he loves, and I can understand why he wants to see where they may go and what they may do, that in the end I bet it was a pretty simple story he intended to tell.  I imagine that when he wrote that first book he knew how it all would end, but then got lost in all the planning and imagining and thus we end up with (supposedly) seven books that will, once complete, still bookend that same simple story line.  Is that a bad thing?  No necessarily.  He is a great writer and people love the books so have at it.  I just hope it finishes up at some point for those fans.

By the way, I had to bribe myself to finish this book with promising myself the purchase of the only book I have been really, really excited about in a long while. Very excited.

Best Laid Plans

"I watch her go, envying the certainty of her youthful confidence - the confidence of thinking that everything will go according to ones plans." Truth.

4.14 Arcadia falls

When I got back into reading, and began blogging, I never thought that I would lose my footing again. And then last year I lost all my footholds at once and I was shocked to see the salvation I had found in reading fade into the either of daily drudge. It also didn't help that my son stopped napping.

I made lists, I made stacks. I read the old blog posts to remind me how much the reading had helped me normalize the last time my life felt listless. I finally stormed through a book and thought I was cured only to languish again. In 2011, I read 67 books; in 2012, 23. My brain has felt the effects, and so has my soul.

As the 2014 started, I saw tweets about Goodreads already scolding participants of their reading challenge that they were behind. I'm not great at accepting scoldings but I thought joining the group might give me the right kind of push. I set my goal at 25 books, not lofty I know but I'm still feeling a bit fragile. And so far I am on track having just finished my fourth book - on track but certainly not burning up the highway - but what I love is that I am picking books based on the challenge instead of what I see going on in the reading world. Fact is, some books can be read in two days and not need to be anguished over and analyzed to death. So if I start falling behind it's time to pick something quick. Arcadia Falls fits that bill perfectly.

I read a lot of Carol Goodman when I was teaching high school. Mainly because a good escape was needed but also because the older girls liked to read them as well and I never recommended or lent out anything without reading it myself first. The blueprint here is the same as her others: Eastern boarding school, new teacher, some sort of literary mystery leads to a modern murder, final twist that I see coming a mile away. And a book read for my challenge in three days while feeling the awesome sensation of looking forward to finishing it.

Great literature it may not be, but turns out Goodreads doesn't judge.

Old School

This post disappeared but it was for Nancy Drew's The Bungalow Mystery.  This is what I said on Goodreads.

I picked this up at the library because it said it was the original story printed in 1930. I’m sure I read the 1957 reprinting.

The first page is basically a disclaimer from the publisher saying that readers may be “extremely uncomfortable” with the stereotypes and racial language used. I didn’t see any racial language in this particular story and while I was always impressed by Nancy when I read the books as a child, I had to laugh at the fact that she didn’t do any sleuthing to solve this particular crime. She instead overheard the bad guy, who conveniently spoke out loud to himself and detailed all of his plans. I know these are for younger readers – but come on!

3.14 The Bungalow Mystery

Good Golly Day

“To love anything once extremely well made you vulnerable to another loving attack.”  Truth.  But not so much here.

2.14 Flowers in The Attic

I saw a lot of people rereading this book in preparation for a new movie adaptation coming out on the Lifetime channel.  The movie promised to “go there” and so I saw a lot of readers my age going back to read something we had read as teens to see exactly where they were going to go.  I remembered reading this book and the rest in the series, but I mostly remember liking the Heaven series more.  So I decided to dive in and see how the book compared to the very vague memories – Just an FYI; making the movie for Lifetime should have been all I really needed to know.  Turns out I do remember some parts of the book vividly, mostly the talk of living so lavishly; and the romantic parts I remember turn out to be from the original film adaptation and not the actual book.  But what I really didn’t remember, but very much assumed, was how bad it all was.

The writing is plain bad.  Who says, “Good-golly day”? And quite frankly the dirty parts kind of run the gambit, all the couplings are questionable, not just he obvious, and the fact that the grandmother is set up as the villain is kind of ridiculous in light of the mother’s behavior.  Honestly, the whole thing is totally bizarre and I can’t believe it goes on for three more books.  I can’t even really imagine what I liked about it as a teenager, other than the fact that everyone was reading it.  But now I certainly know why my mother evoked the one piece of literature for every three pieces of trash policy in regards to my book buying.

Historical FanFiction

“It made him vividly aware that nothing was for ever; that pain had its tides, its pauses.” Truth.

1.14 Longbourn

I loved this book.  Reading it with my mom really helped me to get through and stick with it. making it the quickest I have finished anything in months.  And maybe that’s why I loved it so much – I really needed to read again. 

It is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice through the eyes of the downstairs help – basically a fancy fanfiction that falls into all the rage of the recent Downton fad.

I admit that the first third of the book felt like a pretty simple retelling:  We have a maid who likes two men, one who would be the “Wickham” and one who would be the “Darcy”, and so she must make the choice to stay in service or follow her dreams to travel and live unencumbered.  But then the story shifted away from all my assumptions and became a wonderfully heartfelt story about sacrifice and true family.  The additional details to the Pride and Prejudice characters were seamless and the two very different worlds of characters all living in Longbourn seemed perfectly placed and interestingly juxtaposed.  For all the pomp and circumstance of P & P you never really slow down to think of how all those balls and dinners are put together and it was nice to see that being slogged down by all those details didn’t make the characters doing them any less interesting, in many cases they were the better by far. 

If anything, this story was a bit harsh on our dear Bennets, but isn’t that the way life works?  No one really sees anything the same way.  Hence, fanfiction.  And boy oh boy, is the publishing world taking notice.

What It Is Versus What It Appears To Be

“We’re all just in the muck trying to believe we’re capable of greatness, but closer to breaking than we want to admit.” Truth

“The story you walk in to, he has learned, is always more complex than it first appears.” Truth

23.14 S

I loved this book:

This is a book lover’s dream – an old library book whose author is being researched by two students who write all of their notes in the margins as they go.  I have always dreamed of finding a mystery in a book, keeping notes.  It is an amazing piece of work, and quite honestly baffling to think of the process it took to put it all together. I truly loved every page.

I didn’t like the story:

Maybe I read it wrong.  Maybe I should have read the original “book” and then gone back to the marginalia.  Maybe the other way around.  But I know for sure that I generally read as a way to escape the feeling that everything I am doing in life is wrong, so to read a book and feel that way was just no fun. I truly hated very page.

So, what to say?  It’s beautiful, and adventurous, and tedious and frustrating.  In the end it will sit on my shelf to be looked at and never read again.  I will tell friends I loved it but not to read it.  So what’s the point? Not real sure myself.  But it kind of sums up 2013 for me – some huge changes for me and mine coupled with a very strong feeling of what the hell am I doing.  Things looking good on the outside but kind of all over the place on the inside.  So, how about in 2014 we just keep it simple and get back to basics.  I think I’ll start with Longbourne, because if the Bennets can’t get me back on track no one can.