The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing by M.T. Anderson
Category: Young Adult Fiction Grade: C+
This is an interesting one. Ultimately not very good, but interesting. First, I found it in the teen/young adult section of the book store where I tend to shop for good fantasy. This sounded like a serious, but different, fantasy. The opening premise is that the lead character, Octavian, and his mother live a pampered life in the "Novanglian College of Lucidity". They're the only occupants who have names; everyone else is known by their number. Octavian spends his days being classically educated and his evenings entertaining guests with his beautiful mother. Great start - now what?
(Spoiler alert -- since I'm not particularly recommending this book, I'm giving away the plot below so if there's any chance you'll read it, just go read it.)
As the story develops, it becomes more real-world as it tries to teach lessons about slavery and capitalism. As it turns out, Octavian is a slave living a pre-revolutionary Massachusetts. He is the subject of an experiment to determine if a classically educated black can reach the same levels of "intellectual sophistication" as similarly educated white children. About half-way through the book, the college's patron dies and his family brings in "investors" who want to change the experiments to produce products and answers that will serve them economically. With a very heavy hand, the author then proceeds to show that, capitalism screws up everything. The experiment with Octavian changes in to "let's prove a black can't be educated". The head moneyman comes in a makes a pass at Octavian's mother. When she refuses, she and Octavian are basically turned back in to house-slaves. At this point, the author gets to show the brutality of slavery and the hypocrisy of the revolution against England while maintaining slavery.
The book is also written in the languages styles of the 18th century and about of a third of it is told in the form of letters home from soliders - both things I don't really like in a book. It's also the first volume of a pair of books but I probably won't bother with the next one.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Saturday, September 16, 2006
The General & The Jaguar
The General & The Jaguar by Eileen Welsome
Category: History Grade: D
I tried - I really tried. This book about Pancho Villa and the tail end of the Mexican Revolution should have been good. Its a really interesting period of history. Villa is one of the those larger than life figures that everybody knows but nobody really knows much about. To some, he was a Mexican hero, but his vanity, gratuitous murder and destruction leads to a different opinion. So when I saw a book about Villa and about Pershing's hunt for him, written but a former Pulizter Prize winner, I jumped at it.
Well, I lasted about 125 pages. This book is so filled with totally meaningless details that it gets boring. The writer is trying hard to be "literary", but her prose comes across as just plain silly. I'll give you one example and then not waste any more of your time. Apparently, then night that Villa decided to cross the border and attack an American city (Columbus, NM), the weather was dry. Instead of just saying "it wasn't raining", Welsome says "No mediating layer of moisture existed between the troops and the night sky...". I mean, come on!
Enough said.
Category: History Grade: D
I tried - I really tried. This book about Pancho Villa and the tail end of the Mexican Revolution should have been good. Its a really interesting period of history. Villa is one of the those larger than life figures that everybody knows but nobody really knows much about. To some, he was a Mexican hero, but his vanity, gratuitous murder and destruction leads to a different opinion. So when I saw a book about Villa and about Pershing's hunt for him, written but a former Pulizter Prize winner, I jumped at it.
Well, I lasted about 125 pages. This book is so filled with totally meaningless details that it gets boring. The writer is trying hard to be "literary", but her prose comes across as just plain silly. I'll give you one example and then not waste any more of your time. Apparently, then night that Villa decided to cross the border and attack an American city (Columbus, NM), the weather was dry. Instead of just saying "it wasn't raining", Welsome says "No mediating layer of moisture existed between the troops and the night sky...". I mean, come on!
Enough said.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
The Known World
The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Category: Novel Grade: B+
This book was really popular about a year, even winning a Pulitzer Prize. I avoided it since its about one of the subjects that I usually avoid reading about - slavery. Typically, books about slavery take the approach of rubbing the readers nose in the horrors. They're usually full of floggings, lynchings and the like and, frankly, the gruesome isn't necessary to prove that slavery was a terrible institution. Consequently, first time around, I skipped this book.
Jones has recently published a book of short stories that continue the stories of some of the people in The Known World and, because of that, has been back in the news and the book review journals. As before, the book is a little controversial, but there are reputable reviewers out there who are calling this one of the best novels of the last couple of decades. So I finally gave in and picked the book up.
First, let me warn that this is not an easy book to read. Jones definitely plays fast and loose with both time and place producing a decidedly non-linear book. He's constantly doing brief asides -- he'll be talking about some character and flash forward fifty years to the circumstances of that person's death. Sometimes, he'll introduce a flashback that'll last fifteen or twenty pages. He's telling the stories of dozens of people and, at times, it can be hard to figure out who and when he's talking about.
That said, this is a pretty powerful book. The plot vehicle he uses is to tell the story of a family of free blacks in the South who went on to own a dozen or so slaves of their own. This incongruity of blacks owning blacks is the centerpiece that lets him tell, in some ways, a very mundane story about the lives of slaves and the rigid rules that divide slaves from masters, even when they're both the same race. Surprisingly, the fact that there aren't a lot of histrionics emphasize the moral repugnance of slavery. Jones definitely shows that "gruesome" doesn't have to involve blood and violence -- its just as apparent in the everybody life of a slave.
OK - that sounded really preachy, but, while a difficult read, this book was pretty good. Good enough that, even though I tend not to read about slavery or read short stories, I'll definitely pick up Jones's followup.
Category: Novel Grade: B+
This book was really popular about a year, even winning a Pulitzer Prize. I avoided it since its about one of the subjects that I usually avoid reading about - slavery. Typically, books about slavery take the approach of rubbing the readers nose in the horrors. They're usually full of floggings, lynchings and the like and, frankly, the gruesome isn't necessary to prove that slavery was a terrible institution. Consequently, first time around, I skipped this book.
Jones has recently published a book of short stories that continue the stories of some of the people in The Known World and, because of that, has been back in the news and the book review journals. As before, the book is a little controversial, but there are reputable reviewers out there who are calling this one of the best novels of the last couple of decades. So I finally gave in and picked the book up.
First, let me warn that this is not an easy book to read. Jones definitely plays fast and loose with both time and place producing a decidedly non-linear book. He's constantly doing brief asides -- he'll be talking about some character and flash forward fifty years to the circumstances of that person's death. Sometimes, he'll introduce a flashback that'll last fifteen or twenty pages. He's telling the stories of dozens of people and, at times, it can be hard to figure out who and when he's talking about.
That said, this is a pretty powerful book. The plot vehicle he uses is to tell the story of a family of free blacks in the South who went on to own a dozen or so slaves of their own. This incongruity of blacks owning blacks is the centerpiece that lets him tell, in some ways, a very mundane story about the lives of slaves and the rigid rules that divide slaves from masters, even when they're both the same race. Surprisingly, the fact that there aren't a lot of histrionics emphasize the moral repugnance of slavery. Jones definitely shows that "gruesome" doesn't have to involve blood and violence -- its just as apparent in the everybody life of a slave.
OK - that sounded really preachy, but, while a difficult read, this book was pretty good. Good enough that, even though I tend not to read about slavery or read short stories, I'll definitely pick up Jones's followup.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Summing up the Summer List
Well, summer in Colorado is over so the, while I'm going to keep posting reviews, the pace will definitely slow down since things are a little busier in Texas than, saw, nothing in Colorado! I thought I'd take a minute a highlight the books that I'd recommend the most from the summer reading.
And the winner is.....
Two books over the summer got A+ ratings - one fiction, one nonfiction. Both will require a little commitment - the fiction because its weird; the nonfiction because its long - but you'll definitely be rewarded with these two amazing books. The best fiction book of the summer, hands down, was The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Winning with just as much ease on the non-fiction side - Taylor Branch's extraordinary first volume of his "America in the King Years" series, Parting the Waters.
Other books that I definitely recommend:
Kingfish - excellent bio of Huey Long. Read it before you go see "All the King's Men" this fall.
Sound and Fury - surprisingly heart-grabbing double bio of Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell
A Dirty Job - funniest book of the year
The Rabbit Factory - great first mystery novel (and the author actually posted to the blog!)
The Stolen Child - good fantasy novel for non-fantasy readers
Finally, there's gotta be some really good trash on the list of recommendations! Try Kellerman's Gone or Koontz's The Husband.
Enjoy!
And the winner is.....
Two books over the summer got A+ ratings - one fiction, one nonfiction. Both will require a little commitment - the fiction because its weird; the nonfiction because its long - but you'll definitely be rewarded with these two amazing books. The best fiction book of the summer, hands down, was The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier. Winning with just as much ease on the non-fiction side - Taylor Branch's extraordinary first volume of his "America in the King Years" series, Parting the Waters.
Other books that I definitely recommend:
Kingfish - excellent bio of Huey Long. Read it before you go see "All the King's Men" this fall.
Sound and Fury - surprisingly heart-grabbing double bio of Muhammed Ali and Howard Cosell
A Dirty Job - funniest book of the year
The Rabbit Factory - great first mystery novel (and the author actually posted to the blog!)
The Stolen Child - good fantasy novel for non-fantasy readers
Finally, there's gotta be some really good trash on the list of recommendations! Try Kellerman's Gone or Koontz's The Husband.
Enjoy!
The Art of Deception
The Art of Deception by Laurie R. King
Category: Mystery Grade: C+
With a couple of exceptions, all of Laurie King's fall in to one of two series. The one I read her for is the "Mary Russell" series in which Russell is a young women who, late in his life (around 1900), marries Sherlock Holmes and solves crimes with him. These are really terrific books. The other King series, which I usually don't read, is the Kate Martinelli series -- a current-day San Francisco cop. The Art of Deception, a Martinelli book, caught my eye because the center of the mystery is a supposedly recently discovered Arthur Conan Doyle manuscript that seems to be a lost Sherlock Holmes story. The murdered man and most of the suspects are part of a dinner group of Sherlock fanatics.
I should have stuck to my instincts on King books. Mirroring her overall writing, this is really two books in one since, as Martinelli reads the lost Holmes story, we get to read it too. While the Holmes story is actually pretty good, there's not enough to it to save what is, otherwise, a pretty standard police procedural novel. Like most series books, there's a fair amount about Martinelli's personal life but its not particularly interesting. The murder isn't very interesting, the search for the murder isn't very interesting and the book's ending is especially weak.
While I highly recommend most of King's "Mary Russell" books, there are definitely far more interesting detective novels out there. Skip this one.
Category: Mystery Grade: C+
With a couple of exceptions, all of Laurie King's fall in to one of two series. The one I read her for is the "Mary Russell" series in which Russell is a young women who, late in his life (around 1900), marries Sherlock Holmes and solves crimes with him. These are really terrific books. The other King series, which I usually don't read, is the Kate Martinelli series -- a current-day San Francisco cop. The Art of Deception, a Martinelli book, caught my eye because the center of the mystery is a supposedly recently discovered Arthur Conan Doyle manuscript that seems to be a lost Sherlock Holmes story. The murdered man and most of the suspects are part of a dinner group of Sherlock fanatics.
I should have stuck to my instincts on King books. Mirroring her overall writing, this is really two books in one since, as Martinelli reads the lost Holmes story, we get to read it too. While the Holmes story is actually pretty good, there's not enough to it to save what is, otherwise, a pretty standard police procedural novel. Like most series books, there's a fair amount about Martinelli's personal life but its not particularly interesting. The murder isn't very interesting, the search for the murder isn't very interesting and the book's ending is especially weak.
While I highly recommend most of King's "Mary Russell" books, there are definitely far more interesting detective novels out there. Skip this one.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)