Review: Magyk: Septimus Heap, Book One

There are a lot of books out there angling to be the next Harry Potter, aren't there? That's certainly how the Septimus Heap series was being advertised when I picked up the first volume, Magyk (last year, when the sixth novel was published). There are a few parallels - there's a magical boy and his friends - but not a lot.

The series is about a boy who is the seventh son of the seventh son and therefore has extra special magic powers. His best friend is secretly the heir to the castle, which is ruled by the bad guy. Book 1, Magyk sets up the series and not much else. I felt that, as a stand alone book, it was pretty thin. Maybe this is one of those cases where I'm not the target audience and a middle grade reader would love it. Then again, why should we assume kids need to be talked down to? If I can see the "twist" ending telegraphed from page one, I think my 8-year-old nephew could too. It's not a terrible book - the characters are interesting, the premise is fine - but it certainly doesn't make me want to read the rest of the series.

Review: The God Engines

This book - The God Engines by John Scalzi - was intense. Normally, half of my review of a novella or short story is kvetching that the story was too short, the author should have delved deeper, etc, etc. Sure, Scalzi probably could have gone more in depth and revealed more about the world he's built here but I'm not sure I'd want to go any deeper. This is a book about unpleasant people doing unpleasant things. It was intriguing and a good read, but not something I think I'll read again.

Review: Dreams from My Father

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance is a memoir by President Barack Obama, written after he was the first African-American elected president of the Harvard Law Review. It was first published in 1995, before his first political campaign, and was republished in 2004, during his U.S .Senate race. So while there are politics in this book, it is not about his life as a politician. And unlike so many of the books politicians put out during a campaign, it is still interesting to read when the race is over.

The outlines of President Obama's life are well-known: his white mother from Kansas and his black father from Kenya met in college in Hawai'i, married, and had him. Soon after, his father left, first to go to Harvard, then back to Africa, and only returned for a month when Barack Jr was 10. Barack Sr. died without his son having gotten to know him as an adult.

Dreams from My Father can be read on two primary levels: one is simply as a man's life story. Obama's young life was somewhat unusual - growing up in Hawai'i and Indonesia, time as a community organizer in Chicago, family in Kenya - but not, I think, so extraordinary as to be incomprehensible. (It's not like he grew up on Mars, after all.)

The other way one can read this book is as a meditation on race in America. Obama explores what was like to grow up as a black man, even though his white mother and grandparents raised him. Along the way, he discusses how race effects the way a person is viewed in this country and what it means to straddle different cultures, not just brown vs. white, but African vs. American.

I found Dreams from My Father to be an interested, thought-provoking read. Would it be as interesting if you didn't know this young man would grow up to be President? I believe so.

Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Review: Outliers

I really enjoyed Outliers: the Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell. The premise of this book is, what makes high-achievers (and low achievers, really) different? Gladwell argues that the answer lies much less in their innate talent (or faults), and more in the atmosphere surrounding them - their culture, family, upbringing, etc. Some of these factors may be obvious - your parents education level has a huge impact on you, which makes sense - and many are not. I was particularly interested in his examination of the "Culture of Honor" and why the famed Hatfield-McCoy feud was not the rarity I thought (for more, here's an excerpt from Outliers).

I will say that I had heard Gladwell interviewed about this book several times, so some of it didn't feel fresh to me. For example, I had heard quite a bit about the part of the book dedicated to exploring why almost no star hockey players are born in the fall. Still, I thought it was interest and it certainly confirmed my thought that the birthday cutoff for kindergarten should be moved up from the typical December deadline (something our local school system has started doing for budget reasons).

Some readers might complain that Gladwell is oversimplifying complex social issues. They may be right. But I found this to be a fascinating look at a complicated question.

Outliers: The Story of Success was released in paperback today (June 7).

Series Thoughts: Anne of Green Gables

While I was out on maternity leave, I re-read the entire Anne of Green Gables series. I really enjoyed reading the series but something struck me that I'd never thought of before: these books are kind of sad. Maybe its that I was just recently a mother myself but the shear quantity of dead people (especially mothers and babies) struck me. After my husband found me crying while reading for about the fourth time (granted, postpartum hormones were probably not helping), he asked me "are you sure these are supposed to be kids books?" None of this is to say that you shouldn't read Anne of Green Gables or its sequels yourself or to your child. They really are quite charming and I love Anne as much now as I did when I first read the series.

I was surprised by how much I loved the last book in the series, Rilla of Ingleside. This book focuses not on Anne, but onto Anne's youngest daughter Rilla. It takes place during World War I and has a more serious tone than the early books. Maybe this is just me, but I know so little about WWI that I had to look up many of the references in this book - this could have been annoying, but I enjoyed getting the history lesson. (Per Wikipedia, Rilla of Ingleside is "the only Canadian novel written from a women's perspective about the First World War by a contemporary.")

There's something else that I realized for the first time on this go-round through these books: the chronological order is not the same as the published order. For example, Rilla of Ingleside was published sixth, but is the last/eighth book chronologically. Normally I am a firm believer in reading books in publication order (see Chronicles of Narnia, etc) but I liked reading these chronologically. It was like getting to watch kids grow up. There were some odd moments by reading them this way. For example, the love letters between Anne and her beau (my lame attempt to not spoil something that everyone in the world knows anyway) were published in the (mostly-epistolary) Anne of Windy Poplars. Chronologically, this book is fourth in the series, but it was the seventh book published. Those love letters are referenced in Anne's House of Dreams (book 5) in such a way, I think, to make them sound private, which was weird since I had just read them. But that is a pretty minor point. What do you think? Should you read these books in published or chronological order?

Find books by L.M. Montgomery on Project Gutenberg or Amazon.

Review: My Man Jeeves

My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse is one of those books that everyone says is funny, but I'm always suspicious that it actually is. So, get this - it is! My Man Jeeves is a collection of eight short stories by Wodehouse -- half feature the perfect* butler Jeeves and his employer, Bertie Wooster, while the others are about Reggie Pepper, an early prototype for Wooster. While I definitely preferred the Jeeves stories over the Pepper ones, the whole book is quite amusing. And short! Just the perfect thing to read between diaper changes and late night feedings, when your brain is too frazzled to read anything more serious. Or maybe that's just me.

Buy My Man Jeeves on Amazon or download free at Project Gutenberg.

*Edited for bad writing!

Review: The Cookbook Collector

The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman is about two sisters, one a successful, practical-minded business woman, and one a somewhat flighty perpetual grad student, as they navigate life and love during the dot-com boom/bust and the 9/11 attacks. It is, I believe, a modern day retelling of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility (not having read the Austen, I'll take everyone's word but the plotline seems very Austen-y to me.) This is the second book I've read by Goodman, after Kaaterskill Falls, and I much preferred it to the earlier work. Maybe that's because it is set in Berkeley, CA and Cambridge, MA, two places with which I am quite familiar.

I read this book for my book club and we had an interesting discussion about it. One of the women in my group had experiences that were very similar to the book's main characters - MIT, Berkeley, worked at a start-up, and so on. She said that at first, she liked that someone had written a book about these experiences, but as the book went on, it was all just a little off - just not quite right about what that time and places were like.

I didn't really love The Cookbook Collector in totality - it tried to do a lot with its big cast and broad scope and just ended up being spotty. But there were pieces - little moments, like someone eating a peach - that I did love. It was a worthwhile book, though not one I'd call a classic.

The paperback will be released on July 12, 2011. Pre-order The Cookbook Collector: A Novel or buy The Cookbook Collector: A Novel on Amazon now.

Review: Heidi

Yodelay, yodelay, yodelayheehoo! There's no actual yodelling in Heidi, the classic children's novel by Johanna Spyri. Nor does a cherubic Shirley Temple pop out to say all the charming platitudes that the little Swiss girl spouts during the book. But otherwise, it was much like I remembered it from reading it in my younger days.

Orphaned at an early age, Heidi is sent to live with her curmudgeon of a grandfather high in the Swiss Alps. But Heidi soon finds that things are not always what others say they are, makes friends with her grandfather, and happily runs wild in the glorious mountains with the goat boy, Peter, and his goats.

Suddenly her aunt returns, and Heidi finds herself confined in the city to be companion to the invalid Klara. But Heidi is bitterly unhappy away from her grandfather and the outdoor life she has grown to love.

There's actually a lot in common between this book, which I enjoyed, and The Secret Garden, which I did not (link goes to my recent review). I don't know what the difference was. For example, where I found Colin in The Secret Garden to be insufferable, I thought Klara was quite sweet. This is definitely a kids' book - I don't expect to see it suddenly become hot beach reading - but I thought it was charming to read again. Buy Heidi on Amazon or download free at Project Gutenberg.

Review: Bird by Bird

It seems like Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott took me forever to finish. I started it eagerly - I had heard so many good things about it and the beginning was great. I just loved the story that inspired the title:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he'd had three months to write. It was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother's shoulder, and said, 'Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'

But after that great start, this book felt very scattered, like a series of unconnected essays rather than a coherent thought. It was easy to read just a little bit then put down - unfortunately, it was just as easy to forget to pick up again. As I said, I loved the story behind the title, but the rest of the book didn't live up to that promise.

Buy Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life on Amazon.

My apologies to those of you who accidentally saw this in your feed reader last week - I had some bumps in trying to get it to publish correctly!

Review: The Secret Garden

Here are my thoughts on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett in one sentence: Not as good as I remembered it. Doesn't that suck?

For those of you who haven't read it, or read it so long ago you can't remember it: Contrary little Mary is sent to live with a relative on the Yorkshire Moors after her parents and household die in India. The spoiled girl has never even dressed herself and is quite friendless. But with the help of two boys, a gardener, and an abandoned garden, she becomes a new person.

Clearly, I have become a jaded, terrible person, one who can't even enjoy such a magical story. I felt terrible for Mary and was happy about her transformation - but found angelic Dickon to be annoying and Colin to be insufferable. That said, I loved this book when I was a girl so hopefully someday, if I read this to my little M, I'll be able to enjoy it through her again. Until then, I think I'm too old to enjoy this one.

Buy The Secret Garden on Amazon. Or do what I did, and download it free via Project Gutenberg.

Review: The Order of the Odd Fish

Before I even start the review, I'll make a disclaimer that my sister gave me The Order of Odd-Fish and it was written by a friend of hers, James Kennedy. I don't think I've met him, though, so no bias here. Moving on...

Jo Larouche, age 13, was found as a baby with this note: This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a dangerous baby. Despite the warning, Jo leads as normal a life as possible with her eccentric Aunt Lily- until she's transported to the bizarre world of Eldritch City. There, now installed as a member of the Order of Odd-Fish, Jo learns the truth about who she is and why she has to confront the Belgian Prankster, who is either a villain or the world's scariest comedian.

When my sister gave me the book, I didn't know what to think, actually. The cover was cute but strange, the title was definitely offbeat and the first chapters decidedly weird. It was, no doubt, an odd book. But as I kept reading, I found myself pulled in, really wanting to find out who Jo is and how she will handle the truly awful circumstances thrust on her. Despite the bizarre trappings of the story, at the heart there is a sweet girl making difficult decisions in an unfamiliar context. I rather enjoyed it.

Buy The Order of Odd-Fish on Amazon.

Review: Rampant

I loved unicorns when I was a little girl. I was convinced - 100% convinced - that somewhere out there, unicorns were real. I remember going to see the circus one year when they were showing a unicorn. Despite the skepticism around me (from my older, wiser sister), I was sure that this was proof that unicorns were real. I don't know when I finally grew out of this belief, but I was probably much older than I should have been.*


Given this, it's actually surprising to me that it took me this long to get around to reading Rampant by Diana Peterfreund.

Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed at her eccentric mother's stories about killer unicorns. But when one attacks her boyfriend — ruining any chance of him taking her to prom — Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient Cloisters the hunters have used for centuries. However, all is not what it seems at the Cloisters. Outside, unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from bone-covered walls that vibrate with terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to her growing attraction to a handsome art student ... an attraction that could jeopardize everything.

Did I like it? Absolutely! The book was much darker than I expected - the unicorns were really bloodthirsty, the battles with the girls were high-stakes, and the threats from outside were disturbing. But Astrid and the other girls were take-no-prisoner heroines and I loved reading their story. I can't wait for the sequel.

Buy Rampant by Diana Peterfreund on Amazon.

* So, obviously, Team Unicorn, people. Team Unicorn all the way. And in case you have no idea what I'm talking about: Zombies vs. Unicorns.

Review: The Magicians

Right off the bat, I'll say that I really liked The Magicians. Yes, it feels a little like the author, Lev Grossman, took a dozen popular books and mashed them together. But, at least for me, I thought it came out delicious and not derivative.

The Magicians is the story of an ordinary high school student, Quentin, who finds out he has magical abilities and goes to a school for magic (see: Harry Potter, et al). Once there, Quentin meets up with a group of like-minded students, all equally interested in magic and fun. They learn that there are other worlds (hints of The Chronicles of Chrestomanci by Diana Wynne Jones, perhaps?) and, after some aimless young adult wandering, decide to find out if the magic land of their favorite childhood books (clearly The Chronicles of Narnia) is real.

Unlike these books, however, The Magicians is decidedly written for an adult audience. For one thing, the group of friends reminded me more of the murderous Bacchanalians in The Secret History by Donna Tartt than Harry and his buddies. For another, there is a distinct pathos about all of them. What's the point in trying when everything can be gotten by lifting a finger?

I think that anyone who read the Narnia books as voraciously as I (and Quentin, under another name) did will really enjoy this book. Or you might find it to be derivative garbage and hate it. But it's worth the read to find out.

Buy The Magicians: A Novel by Lev Grossman on Amazon.

Review: Complications

COMPLICATIONS by Atul Gawande is about surgery, written by a resident surgeon. It is also about how humans learn, make mistakes, learn more, make decisions, learn something new, make another mistake, learn about something else, and then, when things go right, make really good decisions that just maybe save another person's life.

This book is incredibly intense - especially the last story in the book, which made me nervous for days - but not too gory or graphic. I don't normally do well with anything that even has a whiff of gruesome about it, but I generally wasn't grossed out. (I will admit that I skipped one chapter, "The Dead Baby Mystery." I checked with my medical professional husband, who read this book years ago, if this chapter is really about a dead baby. It is, so I decided that in my present, about to be a new mom state, I didn't need to read that.)

Instead, I found COMPLICATIONS to be a fascinating look at something I'm not familiar with. It matters, of course, that Gawande is an excellent writer. It's not perfect, of course, but it is excellent.

Buy Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande on Amazon.

10 Random Books (with mini reviews)

The horror! I missed a day yesterday. Oh, well. While I won't have an unblemished posting record this month, I am definitely moving back into the swing of things. I still need to power through the backlog of reviews I need to write, though.

This is inspired by the meme I see around all the time, where one puts your iPod on shuffle and writes down the first 10 (or 25, or what not) songs that come up. Instead, I used the LibraryThing app I have on my blog (top right column) and picked the first 10 books that came up. I did cheat a little and exclude my husband's textbooks that came up, as I have nothing to say about them!

Uncle Shelby's ABZ Book: A Primer for Adults Only by Shel Silverstein: I think I got this from a friend years ago. It's just a silly funny book. And yes, adults only, even though it's Shel Silverstein.

Flying Colours (Hornblower Saga) by C. S. Forester: This is my husband's book - he has the whole series - and I've never read it. But I watched the Horatio Hornblower miniseries with him and loved it. It doesn't hurt that I have a bit of a crush on Ioan Gruffudd in it.

Orca by Steven Brust: I first read Brust when I picked up The Book of Jhereg from the advice of a bookseller (yay! bookstores!). I really liked it and continued on with the series, including this one. (This looks like it's out of print as a stand alone title, but it's available in the The Book of Athyra anthology.) The series gets darker as it goes but it's enjoyable for anyone who likes their fantasy with a heaping dose of magic and swordplay.

Zorro: A Novel by Isabelle Allende: I read this re-telling of the Zorro story by famed author Allende for book club. I remember enjoying it, but that's about it.

Irish Sagas and Folk Tales by Eileen O'Faolain: This looks really out of print, unfortunately. I loved this book when I bought it on a summer school trip to Ireland as a high school student.

Sarah: A Novel (Canaan Trilogy) by Marek Halter: The first in a trilogy, of which I have not read all three. I liked this one quite a bit though. It's historical fiction based on the Bible and well-written.

At Home in Mitford (The Mitford Years, Book 1) by Jan Karon: I think I have confessed my love of Karon's Mitford books here before. They aren't good, by any stretch, but I like them for what they are. There's a new book out in her second series about Father Tim (In the Company of Others), which I keep forgetting to get.

The Brand-New House Book: Everything You Need to Know About Planning, Designing, and Building a Custom, Semi-Custom, or Production-Built House by Katherine Salant: I bought this on a whim one day, curious what I as an architect would think of a book written for the layperson on the subject. I found it to be helpful, actually, though not perfect. Still, if you are contemplating building a house, I suggest finding a copy.

Angelas Ashes: A Memoir by Frank McCourt: Doesn't everyone own a copy?

Intrusions by Ursula Hegi: Another gift, from a college friend who is a huge Hegi fan. It's an odd book, with a novel within a novel and characters that interact with "real" people. I can't compare it to Hegi's other novels, but I thought it was interesting.

Review: Persona Non Grata

Persona Non Grata is the third book in Ruth Downie's Medicus series, after Medicus and Terra Incognita (links go to my reviews).

In this installment, Ruso, a medic in the Roman army, heads home to Gaul in response to a letter from his family, with his "barbarian" lover Tilla in tow. Once home, he finds out that no one really wants him there. Things go from bad to worse, as they always seem to do around Ruso, when the creditor he's trying to negotiate with is murdered in Ruso's home. Further complications arise: Tilla gets caught up with the wrong crowd (aka Christians), Ruso's half-sister falls in love with a gladiator, and his stepmother keeps trying to fix him up with their wealthy neighbor.

I loved the first one and liked the second one, but thought it had lost a bit of its luster. Now with the third book, I was a little bored. It took me a while to get through it, as I kept losing interest (partly due to my own lack of interest in reading in general, I'll admit). For starters, I felt more annoyed by Ruso and Tilla's exploits than intrigued. Ruso is so hapless, it was hard to root for him. And, out of her element, Tilla seemed a little shrewish, not the feisty heroine from the first two books. There were also many, many secondary characters to keep track of. In the midst of this, the mystery seemed to get lost.

Other readers, especially those in a better reading mood than I, may disagree. I still highly recommend the first book and think there was a lot to like in this one (the setting, in particular). I just expected something more.

Buy Persona Non Grata: A Novel of the Roman Empire by Ruth Downie on Amazon.

I did really like this slideshow on the author's website of some of the real places in this book.

Note: I received Persona Non Grata from LibraryThings' Early Reviewer program.

Review: Dissolution

Dissolution by C.J. Sansom is the first book in a new (rather, new to me, but published several years back) historical mystery series set during the reign of King Henry VIII.

The year is 1537 and England is divided between those faithful to the Catholic Church and those loyal to the king and the newly established Church of England. When a royal commissioner is murdered in the monastery of Scarnsea on the south coast of England, Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII's feared vicar general, summons fellow reformer Matthew Shardlake to lead the inquiry. Shardlake and his young protégé, Mark Poer, uncover evidence of sexual misconduct, embezzlement, and treason, but when two other murders are committed, they must move quickly to prevent the killer from striking again.

I really got a lot out of this book. There was an almost equal mix of politics and history in with the mystery and I think I learned a lot about the politics of the Anglican Reformation. This is not to say that I "liked" it the whole way through - the politics were dirty and it could be uncomfortable to read about attacks on the church that left the common people bloodied. But Dissolution is well-written and has an excellent story. I think it will appeal to mystery readers and those who like their historical fiction a little on the brainier side (brainier than, say, The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory).

Buy Dissolution on Amazon.

Thanks to Laura at The Infusion for bringing Dissolution by C.J. Sansom to my attention with her review.

Review: Packing for Mars

As I suspected I might when I put Packing for Mars on my Wishlist, I just loved this book. Packing for Mars by Mary Roach is funny, interesting and informative.

Packing for Mars is about what space agencies (mostly NASA, but Europe, Russia, and Japan's agencies as well) do to put humans into space. Launching a rocket seems like the easy part in comparison to figuring out how to get a toilet to work in zero-G. Roach clearly did her homework; she talked to both scientists currently working and those who have worked on these issues for previous missions. Her research took her from simulated missions in the arctic to the infamous "vomit comet" (the parabolic flight that simulates zero-G).

As you can imagine, coming from the author of a book about dead bodies (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers), there are some gnarly bits in this book. There were a few passages, particularly the ones dealing with the corpses space agencies use to test crash safety, that tested my resolve in reading. But Roach handles even these parts with humor and grace.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in science or space. Roach is a terrific science writer and I really enjoyed Packing for Mars.

Buy Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void on Amazon.

Review: Melting Stones

I'll confess that I read Melting Stones several weeks ago and then returned it to the library, so my review may be a little non-specific.

Residents on one of the islands south of Emelan have sent a call for help to Winding Circle temple: Their plants and trees and the animals that live around them are mysteriously dying. From Winding Circle come two familiar figures: prickly green mage Rosethorn, whose plant magic will help her decipher what's ailing the plant life, and Briar's former student, the stone mage Evvy. With them comes the eager, nervous Dedicate Initiate Myrrhflower and Luvo, a being best described as a walking, intelligent rock. All are pulled into the island's mystery when Evvy is caught up by the wild spirits loose in an immense bubble of molten rock. Can they evacuate the island in time--or will they try to shift a volcano?

A housekeeping note to begin with: when I wrote my Tamora Pierce wrap-up I thought that Melting Stones was a stand-alone book in Pierce's Circle universe. I think it may actually be a sequel to Street Magic (The Circle Opens, Book 2) or Will Of The Empress, neither of which I've read. So there were a fair number of references to people and events I knew nothing about. I didn't have any trouble following along, though.

While I found Melting Stones to be an enjoyable book, I did find it to be a little young - while it is classified as Young Adult, I think that Middle Grade readers may enjoy it more than a teenager used to the advanced themes present in much of today's YA. Part of that is that Evvy, the main character, felt very young to me, despite the awful circumstances she's lived through.

In general, I think that fans of Pierce's previous Circle books will enjoy Melting Stones, but that it probably isn't strong enough to pull new readers (particularly new older and adult readers) into the series.

Buy Melting Stones in paperback on Amazon now.

Review: Shadow Bound

I figuratively picked up Shadow Bound by Erin Kellison when it was offered as a free download for my Nook from Barnes & Noble.

Adam Thorne's brother traded in his humanity to gain power and immortality. He became a wraith, one of a growing number menacing the country, and in doing so killed everyone Adam loved. Adam is determined to get his revenge and to take out the wraiths. Talia O'Brien is on the run from the wraiths, against whom she has a mysterious power, the gift of her Fae father. When Adam finds Talia, he rescues her (or was that kidnaps her?) and enlists her in his fight against the wraiths. Sexy times bound, good and bad guys get killed, and it was altogether a fun book to read for summer. I thought the prologue was unnecessary but otherwise enjoyed reading this light book.

Buy Shadow Bound on Amazon.