A Good Year

I haven't finished a book since I turned the last pages of Donna Tartt's The Secret History a handful of days back. The characters of that book, Henry in particular, still haunt my thoughts every so often. Thing is, I can't get around to posting those thoughts either. I'm letting them simmer first, as I still have more than a handful of backlog would-be posts of stuff I've read prior to it. I'm also letting my thoughts on those stew for a bit. Let's hope I put out something tasty in the future. Hahaha.

So yes, future. All posts will be in the future and hopefully I have added other books from among these in the mix:



Yep, that's my bedside book pile. I have been reading It's Superman by Tom De Haven for the better part of the week now, one chapter at a time, if I feel like it. I'm halfway through and it's pretty much engaging. A different take on Clark Kent's life. It sure as hell feel different from reading the comics or watching the different adaptations onscreen. I'm also stuck somewhere in Miss Clack's narrative in The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Oh, the book is obviously not among the pile. I tend to get copies of classics via Project Gutenberg. I mean, what's the point of having books as part of the public domain if I go out and get myself a dead tree copy, right? But that's just me.

If this is your pile, what would you read? Do you even like the books I have here? Have you read and would you recommend any from among them? Could you even identify all the books? Oh wait, I'm not having a quiz here or something. Hahaha.

My problem with the pile is that I can't seem to pick a book to read from among them. Tsk tsk tsk. It's not really a problem, I know. It's just a matter of moods. Thing is, am packing some books to take with me for the holidays and I can't seem to pick one. So maybe I'll resort to the shelves for that. If you think my pile is messy, wait until you see my shelves! Oh goodness, that's why I didn't take a picture! I do have a hankering for rereading either Small Gods by Terry Pratchett or American Gods by Neil Gaiman. I think I need a little faith. And rereading them again would be fun, I hope.

Or maybe I should just wing it and select a book blind. Either way I probably won't be able to post again until next year and this is more like my goodbye post for the year.

I've read a lot, not as much as last year, but I've been remiss at posting. Hence I won't come up with a book mosaic this time around. Still, it was a fun reading year. Thing I remember most is that I read a lot of comics. All Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8. Most of Angel. Fables. Trese. Serenity. Batman RIP. Probably other titles I can't remember now. So much for having a yearend review if I can't remember them. Hahaha!

Next year I'm looking forward to the Terry Pratchett 2010 Challenge. I mean I'm sure to read a Pratchett book next year so why not join, right? Or I could start this month if I reread Brutha's story again. Hahaha!

Other than that I'm pretty much open to anything worth reading, as always.

Have a peaceful holiday on your end, my fellow book bloggers. I'll catch up with your posts sometime in the future!

The Good Stuff

Does She or Doesn't She?
Alisa Kwitney

Delilah raised her eyebrows. "And is that all I am to you, Ford? A tasty snack?" She stroked fingertips over the taut muscles of his abdomen. "I might just have to make you pay for that..."

Every so often I feel the need to read something blush-worthy. Remember the time when you were straddling that thin line between naivete and worldliness a story could make your cheeks burn and automatically go to virtual confession of sin to an imaginary priest, at least if you were raised a a Catholic? The kind of stories you borrow from friends in high school with scantily-clad women in passionate embrace with tall, dark and handsome men on the covers? The kind you don't exactly show your parents that you were reading way back then?

Every so often I miss reading them. Hence this book albeit this one's slightly different. I guarantee a treasury of those "good stuff" moments with this one. I know that you know what I'm talking about.

I've read Alisa Kwitney before and had fun with that so instead of going blind on my chick-lit moment of weakness, I got this.

Do you even care about the story? Of course! Well, not that it's the priority but a well-written tale is always welcome, hahaha! This one however is as improbable as other girl-meets-boy stories I used to read then. Hahaha!

Delilah is married with a young kid. She's also under contract to write a soap opera and she's hoping her pages get the approval of top honchos. And she daydreams a lot. A lot. Lest you think she daydreams of her husband who's getting more distant each day, she's fantasizing about the sexy plumber named Ford who's fixing the bathroom. And what passionate daydreams they all are! Hahaha!

Hence, the title of the book. I won't discuss other stuff further as I myself didn't like the fact that the back-of-the-book blurb practically spoiled a major storyline so yes, there's more to the story than just the daydreams.

And the daydreams are the best part. Well, until of course the question asked in the book title is resolved. Short of saying it's not exactly a typical romance.

But still, I bought this for the good stuff so it's merely a consolation that it was not exactly a typical romance. And the good stuff are good indeed. Oh I have to stop now lest I blush further. Then again, you can't see me.

Storyteller

Man in the Dark
Paul Auster

There's no single reality, Corporal. There are many realities. There is no single world. There are many worlds, and they all run parallel to one another, worlds and anti-worlds, worlds and shadow-worlds, and each world is dreamed or imagined or written by someone in another world. Each world is the creation of the mind.

If there's one thing I totally adore about Paul Auster it's his way of making a story-within-a-story books compulsively readable. At least for me. I know someone who has given up on him. That or vowed never to read a single word of him ever again. I can attribute that to one other thing that I love about the man: he can totally skewer your thoughts and make you wish you haven't read his stories because you'd definitely see the world in a different light.

Oh wait, maybe I should say all that at the very last end of this post.

This slim book is such a short read and yet packs a wallop. I think I can say that for every Auster I've finished. But what's in this book again?

The story seems simple enough. A retired book critic named August Brill is recuperating from a car accident in the house of his daughter who has gone through a painful divorce. With them is his granddaughter Katya, a big movie fan, also going through a very difficult time in her life after the murder of her boyfriend. It's one sad house with all three people in the midst of something in their lives.

Brill spends his day watching movies with Katya and it's one of the loveliest parts of the book. The impact of their discussion is so forceful you can't help but imagine the different scenes they describe to each other. And you start looking for similar occurrences in some of your favorite films.

But mostly this is Brill's story. Since he couldn't sleep, he conjures stories in his head, a story of a different USA. A story where the 9/11 attacks didn't happen, where some states seceded from the Union, a story of war. Like I said earlier, I adore his stories-within-a-story almost-trademark, haha. In this one, a man wakes up and finds out he's trapped in an alternate USA where the Iraq war didn't happen. The man suddenly finds himself enlisted in the army with a simple task of killing someone. And yet, it's not that simple. Because the target is not in the alternate USA.

Of course I'm not explaining it well. Heck, I shouldn't even have gone that far. And I was more than a little apprehensive on that war story given that Auster can write stories that will stay in your head. I mean I still can't forget that man trapped inside a room in Oracle Night, for goodness' sake and that's just one thread of a story within a story. But I digress.

What I'm trying to say in this book is that while he can make you imagine and reflect on things that could have been, considering that part of the war story is probably a scenario that could have happened, in the end he reminds us that we all tell stories of our own when we share about ourselves with our friends, loved ones, families. And it's in the manner of our telling those stories that show how things are remembered, how we hold certain memories dear to our hearts, and the moment we finally share them is a revelation in itself on what we care to share and what we withhold. I think that's too clinical a description. Given that the main character, August Brill is seventy-two years old, he obviously has a lot to share.

I love Auster a lot. Read this. And his other books as well. He's one of the best writers out there.

Other interesting points of view:

Asylum
Literary License
Punkadiddle
Reading Matters
Regular Rumination
The Book Catapult

Melancholy Baby

The Magicians
Lev Grossman

The premise is simple if not familiar to at least half the world's book-loving population: there's a magical school out there teaching magical basics, theories and applications to those admitted inside its gates. They only select the best crop of intellectually gifted individuals out there. Here comes Quentin Coldwater, one of the nerdiest of nerds set to graduate high school and preparing for his interview with an Ivy League school. Instead, he discovers the dead body of his would-be interviewer and eventually found himself taking the exams for Brakebills, that magical college located in New York.

To make the story more familiar, Quentin loves a series of magical books set in Fillory, an enchanted place one visits through uh, let's start with grandfather clock for now. He doesn't want to admit that he hadn't outgrown the need to escape to those pages and pages of magical places and adventures where siblings get to visit and rule Fillory, albeit for a brief time. You see, Quentin is one unhappy kid.

I should be happy, Quentin thought. I'm young and alive and healthy. I have good friends. I have two reasonably intact parents - viz., Dad, an editor of medical textbooks, and mom, a commercial illustrator with ambitions, thwarted, of being a painter. I am a solid member of the middle-middle class. My GPA is a number higher than most people even realize it is possible for a GPA to be.

But walking along Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn, in his black overcoat and his gray interview suit, Quentin knew he wasn't happy. Why not? He had painstakingly assembled all the ingreadients of happiness. He had performed all the necessary rituals, spoken the words, lit the candles, made the sacrifices. But happiness, like a disobedient spirit, refuses to come. He couldn't think of what else to do.

Where do I start? I love stories. I love reading a good, story no matter what genre. Either the plot gets me and I applaud the author for conjuring twists and turns that make your insides go awry without having to use anything except your brains, emotions, what-have-yous, or the characters feel like I've known them all my life and I have this hankering for meeting them or reviling them for the rest of my life. When both my love for the plot and the characters fuse into one then it's like finding the perfect song to match my moodiest of moods.

This is more of reviling-the-characters type. Hahaha! If you haven't read the book I suggest you stop reading this post like right now.

To say that it's a combination merely of the Harry Potter series and the Chronicles of Narnia set in New York is missing the point altogether. It is not, even though the author heavily borrows from the ideas of those books. The book anchors on that though. The easy familiarity not to mention reference to Harry Potter is unmistakable and yet the author takes a shot at Hogwarts by making a slight at wand use. It's just one sentence, easily forgotten, but it's there alright.

If you don't take into account the magical element of the first part of the story it's simple enough; college life. How the nerdiest, most intelligent crop of young men and women spend their time inside the gates of an exclusive school; like not knowing what to major, the tentativeness of making new friends, the alienation with one's parents after a term from school, the awkwardness in seeing old friends and realizing you don't share anything in common with them anymore, and since they're all bright of course the need to be on top.

Since the entire four or so years in college are compressed into a handful of chapters of course you get a short version. Except that there was a major supernatural death swept under the rug in the process.

And then, for a bunch of graduates from magical school they discovered that the magical world of Fillory is indeed real. Oh goodness, really? Like gee, I've been waiting for that revelation from the time Quentin found an unpublished installment during the first few pages of the book! You'd think that a school which prides itself for having the best of the bunch, whose graduates would get a demon embedded in their back as protection, would somehow mention to their students that indeed there are lots of magical worlds out there, Fillory included, so be careful. But no. So off they went to Fillory, heigh-ho!

One can find lots of topics for discussion after reading this book. Let's see; there's responsibility or lack of it not just from the part of the Brakebills students but from the teachers as well depending on how you'd view the journey into Fillory, striving to be the best of what you can do with the magic that you know, the meaning of sacrifice, adventure as a form of escape or metaphor, and more but I'd probably save that on those who might like to discuss the book with me. Or not.

Thing is, I cannot find a single character to like but know this: I intensely disliked Quentin, the lead. You know that feeling when you start reading a book and on the very first few pages you get that part where the character is being introduced (see the quoted parts above) and you so much want to like him or find a certain similarity (though not exactly the part being the nerdiest of nerds) and hope for the best only to come up short somewhere before the middle part of the book? That's the sad feeling of disappointment. I wanted to like Quentin, really. He was this selfish, intelligent, bored guy going through college with his head in the clouds. And more than three hundred pages later he barely even changed. I mean, what do you expect from a bright guy who'd rather get high than be responsible? One guy who believes he's deserves happiness? One guy who's now an adept at magic and yet still bored to the very core?

Gee, I mean even Spiderman learned his lesson after a major heartbreak, that whether you've seen the movie, read the comics or learned of the story offhand. Oh sorry, I likened Quentin to Spiderman (Peter Parker) during the first parts of the book, particularly when he was accepted to Brakebills and started doing a few magical card tricks for show. But for a bright guy like Quentin, I feel that everything that has happened to him barely scratched his emotional surface. Oh wait, he doesn't have an emotional surface. He's just a guy with a certain sense of entitlement and nothing more. Such a waste of gray cells, really. That while he felt devastated with the consequences of the trip to Fillory, I cannot escape that last scene and his last choice. Then again, that's the problem with the brightest, the nerdiest of nerds everywhere: I think they think they are gods. Ah, hasty generalization. Hahaha!

But the writing, goodness. Flawless writing, I cannot complain. Well, I can. The book dragged somewhere before graduation when I was eagerly anticipating the Fillory revelation. By then I was getting fed up with Quentin anyway. Still I kept on reading. I mean, I've always enjoyed reading Grossman on Time. There are more than a handful of quotable quotes, memorable scenes and all that if I set my mind to it but right now I can't bear to open the book yet as I'd rather not encounter Quentin again. One moment of pure brilliance for me was when the students transformed into a flock of geese. I loved that part. It was probably the only time I enjoyed Quentin's thoughts excepting the first few chapters into the college.

And yet, the sad thing about Quentin and his school mates altogether is that they're very much real. The nerdy, bright, bored, petty, irresponsible guys and girls who think the world is their playground. Maybe that's why I disliked them a lot. Good job, Grossman!

Other interesting points of view:

A Dribble of Ink
Asking the Wrong Questions
Beyond Books
Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog
Bookshelves of Doom
Fyrefly's Book Blog
Jenny's Books
Madgirl
Normality Restored
OF Blog of the Fallen
Pajiba - Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People
Reading the Leaves
She is Too Fond of Books
S. Krishna's Books
Stephanie's Written Word
The Celebrity Cafe
The Mad Hatter's Bookshelf and Book Reviews
The Wertzone
Wordsmithonia

Katniss Returns

Catching Fire
Suzanne Collins

Could it be the people in the districts are right? That it was an act of rebellion, even if it was an unconscious one? Because, deep down, I must know it isn't enough to keep myself, or my family, or my friends alive by running away. Even if I could. It wouldn't fix anything. It wouldn't stop people from being hurt the way Gale was today.

Life in District 12 isn't really so different from life in the arena. At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.

We're back in Panem, in Katniss' world. Only this time she's a champion of the Hunger Games together with Peeta, the boy who loves her. She should be enjoying her status now; her mother and sister live with her in a far bigger house, they have plenty of food so she doesn't have to hunt. As winners of the Hunger Games, her district will get more than their share of the loot. But Katniss is worried. She should be. Because in winning the Hunger Games with Peeta she had to defy the Capitol. And defying the Capitol is not a very good thing in this dystopian setting.

Happiness, of course, is a complete absurdity at this point, since at the rate things are going, I'll be dead in a day.

Obviously I read the sequel, about a couple of months ago too but it's only now I'm posting about it.

After reading the first book and realizing that it's part of a planned trilogy I wondered how the author would incorporate the Games with Katniss' life after. You see, the Hunger Games is central to the plot. It's where the characters battle it out for the chance to win and do their district proud, on the one hand and for the Capitol to quell possible rebellion by requiring tributes from each district. And now that Katniss is a winner, the only way she could get back to the arena is as a coach or mentor, same with Haymitch, right?

Wrong. Very, very wrong.

Because the 75th year of the Hunger Games is special. Oh wait, you mean you haven't read the first book? Go now, shoo!

I won't spoil it anymore as I mentioned enough. But this second venture into the arena is very much different from the first. Because Katniss is now a symbol of rebellion. A rebellion she didn't want any part of because the lives of her loved ones are in danger this time from the President Snow himself after he personally threatened her.

Ok enough.

I tore through the book the same way as the first one, that much I could say. It's different from the first book in the sense that we get a feel of the uprising this time around. Well, not just a feel. You have to read the book and be surprised at the turn of events.

In every given dystopian world, an uprising is always in the offing, right? And the second book paves the way for the struggle in the third book. We see a lot of that here: Rue's district giving their respect to Katniss on their tour of all the districts, Cinna's dress, the presence of a far tougher Peacekeeper force in the districts, the lack of food to quell any rebellious thoughts.

And then there are stuff similar to other dystopian settings; like the surge or body reconstruction that somehow reminds me of Westerfeld's Uglies Trilogy, the profligacy of the people in the Capitol, the drink to make you retch. Those stuff bothers me and yet you see a semblance of those in our world now.

Since those familiar with the first book already know the main characters by heart, it's the arena which attracts attention this time as well as the other players in the Hunger Games. While I like the first book better, mainly because this installment I think is necessary for the final encounter with the authorities, bits and pieces of the past Hunger Games are revealed and all these had an impact on Katniss. And she is evolving into a very lethal weapon out there in the arena indeed.

Oh and I won't go into Team Peeta or Team Gale argument. Hahaha!

Of course I'll read the next book. It will be out next year. I hope that won't disappoint. I'm waiting for the resolution with bated breath after that cliffhanger of an ending for this book.

Other interesting points of view:

Book Girl of Mur-y-Castell
Booking Mama
Books I Done Read
Dear Author
Devourer of Books
Karin's Book Nook
Lesa's Book Critiques
Linus's Blanket
My Favourite Books
My Friend Amy
One Person's Journey Through a World of Books
Persnickety Snark
Presenting Lenore
Reverie Book Reviews
Rhapsody in Books
Stephanie's Written Word
The Bluestocking Society

Quote Away

The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Stephen Chbosky

"You see things. You keep quiet about them. And you understand."

There are books that make you want to redo your life over again; the kind that makes you wish you had a certain bit of wisdom at a certain age you thought you needed it. I'm not saying that this book is one of them, hahaha, but it sure comes close to being something like a huggable real friend at a time you most certainly need one. Of course instead of a hug we are offered with bits and pieces of little truths from a freshman kid named Charlie writing to an anonymous recipient about his life within the school term or so.

I walk around the school hallways and look at the people. I look at the teachers and wonder why they're here. If they like their jobs. Or us. And I wonder how smart they were when they were fifteen. Not in a mean way. In a curious way. It's like looking at all the students and wondering who's had their heart broken that day, and how they are able to cope with having three quizzes and a book report due on top of that. Or wondering who did the heart breaking. And wondering why.

Charlie is a very sensitive kid and you get that feeling from the very beginning. He had no real friends at the start except with a classmate who later on committed suicide. After that is where he basically went out and befriended siblings Patrick and Sam, both upperclassmen.

I don't know if you've ever felt like that. That you wanted to sleep for a thousand years. Or just not exist. Or just not be aware that you do exist. Or something like that. I think wanting that is very morbid, but I want it when I get like this. That's why I'm trying not to think. I just want it all to stop spinning

It's hard to talk about plot when there is none, so to speak, given that all things happened in the past and Charlie is merely sharing them with someone. But there's this: he's an engaging narrator if you're the intended recipient, that is, the one who would understand the need to vent out his feelings, to rant or be consoled if needed. That while Charlie shares his life, he also makes you remember your younger self - your own tentativeness, naivete, your passions, your secrets, your past - in whatever form. To a certain degree we all have a little Charlie in our past, the Charlie who's loyal to friends, the Charlie awed in the presence of a beloved, the Charlie willing to try new things, the Charlie reading so much books and at the same time the Charlie who compiles a mix tape of songs that speak to one's heart.

So I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

It's a moving and hopeful book you see, despite a certain sense of sadness pervading the whole thing.

I just need to know that someone out there listens and understands and doesn't try to sleep with people even if they could have. I need to know that these people exist.

Except that I don't care much about The Smiths' song Asleep, which Charlie adored to death.

"Charlie, we accept the love we think we deserve."

I liked it a lot. I really liked it a lot. Some did, some didn't. Other interesting points of view:

Bart's Bookshelf
Bending Bookshelf
Books are King
Book Lists Life
Books I Done Read
Eclectic/Eccentric
Hello, My Name is Alice
Piling on the Books
Reading Thru the Night
Thing Mean a Lot

Bad Guys Rule!

The Vampire Diaries Volume II: The Struggle
L. J. Smith

So the cliffhanger of an ending in the first book gives way to a confrontation with Elena and Damon at the start of the second book. Damon Salvatore. Gosh, the name alone makes my knees turn to jelly. And I'm not even Elena!

This is the second installment of the vampire romance novels written more than a decade or so ago collectively known as The Vampire Diaries, also the source for TV's highest rating new show of the year (well, that's what I heard). I've said previously that the reason I picked the first book up is that the series bored me (save that I so love Ian Somerhalder who fortunately plays Damon Salvatore). Well, I've seen only a couple of episodes and stopped from there so maybe teen angst is getting to me. Hahaha! And the book version is simply better. I like Elena's character more in the books. In the show she's far too uh, nice and tentative. In the books she's more like Blair Waldorf of Gossip Girl. Seriously. Yeah ok, I just contradicted myself with that one. I'm bored with the tv version of this book and yet enjoy the show Gossip Girl (the book version of which I haven't touched). Hahaha!

Anyway.

The brothers had a fight in the previous book and at the start of the second book Stefan is missing. And only Elena knows that he's in trouble because of her confrontation with Damon in the first few pages of the book. Thankfully, she had friends, particularly Matt who helped rescue Stefan and gee, I think that pretty much is a spoiler so I'll stop that line of thought for now.

Basically it's this: the brothers fight for Elena's affection. While Elena loves Stefan, a part of her is drawn to Damon. Well, drawn isn't exactly apt. Like she had no choice since Damon is such an evil, evil bastard who'd do anything to get Elena and that includes tricking her. Fortunately, that also includes ensuring her safety. Because in this book, Elena's diary has gone missing and she gets taunted by pieces of her own writing in school. It's a diary that might put Stefan in a very bad light with the people of Fell's Church if the contents are disclosed to the public. And Stefan isn't exactly a much loved student in the community considering the suspicions cast upon him from the first book.

But enough of the cliffhanger ending! Kidding!

Still a fun read for me. A dark romance indeed. Hey, anything with vampires as leading men is probably dark anyway. But the two books so far are good reads because they are more like a study in obsession. In the first book, both Stefan and Elena are obsessed with each other for different reasons but ended up falling for each. This one we see Damon's obsession with our spunky Elena and how the latter balances her need to protect Stefan and quell her attraction to the handsome, evil brother. Of course that's how I intellectualize it. Hahaha!

Besides, it's not everyday you get to profess your love to someone you've seen drinking the blood of a crow once. That probably would be a deal breaker for me. Thank goodness I'm not Elena!

Other interesting points of view:

Bogormen
J. Kaye's Book Blog
Love Vampires
Maryse's Blog
Michelle's Bookshelf
Mom - Musings
The Story Siren