Devourer of Books

Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan

Mary lives in a world that is like our own in many ways.  It differs, however, in much more dramatic ways.  During the Return the human race began to be threatened by the Unconsecrated.  As far as Mary knows for sure, her village is contains the last humans in the world and nothing lies beyond the fence but the Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Mary isn’t satisfied with her life in the village, though, and clings to her mother’s stories about the world outside their village and the forest, places that seem almost mystical, like the ocean.  Longing to leave the village and search for the ocean and other humans, Mary eventually gets her wish – although not for a reason she would have chosen.  Now Mary is stuck outside the village on a narrow, fenced in path through the Forest of Hands and Teeth looking for a place to exist unthreatened by the Unconsecrated.   Just to make things more complicated, she is accompanied by her fiance Harry, his brother Travis who she loves, and Travis’ fiance (and Mary’s best friend) Cass, as well as her brother and sister-in-law, a dog, and a small boy.

There has been a lot of love going around for “The Forest of Hands and Teeth,” and it really is well-written.  The story was interesting, but it just never really grabbed me.  For some reason I never really connected with Mary, so I’m sure that had something to do with it.  Another reason it may not have really resonated with me is that I read it while in the middle of listening to the audio of Guillermo del Toro’s “The Strain,” which includes zombie-like vampires determined to feast on human flesh and turn their victims.  Although the plots of these stories are very different, this similarity may have made me less interested in “The Forest of Hands and Teeth,” since I was already engrossed with “The Strain.”  Alternatively, it could be that I couldn’t connect because I was reading while my 2 month old napped, and each time he woke up he was crying, as he’d received 4 shots from the pediatrician earlier that day.

Whatever the cause, this was a good book that just didn’t click for me.  I found it entertaining, but didn’t love it.

Buy this book from:
Powells.
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.
Amazon.

City of Refuge by Tom Piazza

How far in the past must something have happened to qualify as historical fiction when someone writes about it?  Fiction about World War I and II are historical fiction, Vietnam-era, sure.  What’s the cut off?  The 1980s?  1990s? What about late 2005?  Really good historical fiction gives the reader a feel for the time and place, helps them feel that they lived through the events being discussed.  “City of Refuge” does all of these things and it does them powerfully and impeccably.

“City of Refuge” follows the lives of two families from just before Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans through months of the aftermath, until the first Mardi Gras after the devastation.  SJ lived alone in the Lower Ninth Ward with his sister and often in trouble nephew near by; his father built the house he lives in, and he enjoyed many happy years there with his now-deceased wife.  Craig lives in a nice neighborhood near a good school with his  wife and two children; he adores everything about New Orleans, although his wife is becoming more and more annoyed by the many challenges of living there and wants to leave.  Both families make it through the storm and out of New Orleans alive – a feat in and of itself – but then have to deal with survivor stress and trauma, trying to survive in their new situations and keep their families in tact, and the question of whether or not to return to New Orleans.

Piazza’s story was somewhat personal for me.  Although I did not know anyone living in New Orleans at the time of Katrina, I was teaching in Englewood on the South Side of Chicago when the storm hit.  Many families in areas like the Lower Ninth had friends or family in Englewoods and other neighborhoods on the South Side of Chicago and our school received more than a few students who fled the devastation with their families, one into my classroom.  I was teaching in that area as a member of Teach for America and we also got two teachers who had originally been assigned to New Orleans moved to our group for placement in the Chicago schools.  The teachers had only been in New Orleans a short time, but my student had lived their all her life.  She seemed to adjust fairly well – 2nd graders are resilient – but I’m sure it wasn’t easy leaving everything you’ve ever known, even if she didn’t talk about it.

I found myself thinking about my student, Kimari often as I was reading “City of Refuge.”  This was made particularly easy by the fact that neither SJ nor Craig is actually the main character or main focus of the book.  “City of Refuge” is really about New Orleans, Katrina, the flooding, and the fate and character of New Orleanians.  I almost wouldn’t even categorize this as a novel or fiction, but as history or current events with a fictionalized aspect to it.  I went through “City of Refuge” with a stack of post-its next to me and left strips of them scattered throughout the book.  If I listed even half of them this review would be FAR longer than you want to read, but here are a couple:

If you are in it you don’t see the news coverage, the anchorman, the commercials for Dodge trucks, any more than Job saw God and Satan make their wager at his expense.  The mind cannot process all the disjunction, the endless din echoing in the Superdome halls and the Superdome halls and the sour itch in your clothes, the booming echoes overhead in the Dome, with its patch of sky visible, the intolerable hallways clogged with people sitting on the floor, waiting for the bathrooms, through the endless stretch of ruptured time, on lines that wind off into the gloomlight as if following the curve of the rings of hell, but a perverted inferno, set up by the guilty for the innocent.
- p. 168

The writing is so disturbingly powerful, it made me feel, if not like I was there, at least that I was watching from a vantage point just beyond the chaos.

And they very likely did not know that this exact scenario had been predicted in detail a year before Hurricane Katrina in a computer simulation dubbed “Hurricane Pam,” conducted by Louisiana State University, nor that the study’s conclusions and recommendations had been shrugged off by most of the officials who should have been listening, nor that the federal finding to implement the study’s recommendations was cut off by President George W. Bush, who needed the money for other things.  And so they couldn’t have known exactly how despicable  lie it was when the president told the news media later that week that nobody could have predicted the levee breaks.

This sort of thing drives me crazy.  The same thing happened in regards to fire safety near my parents’ home in Southern California in the 90s.  Either someone had done a study or someone had written a book (I’m a bit fuzzy on the recollection) about a perfect storm for fire in Laguna Beach.  Surprise, surprise, one year later it happens!  I’m sure there are all sorts of disaster predictions that DON’T come true a year later, but it does seem that perhaps these things should be take a little more seriously, no?

Okay, that last paragraph started to get a little off-topic.  However, it does show the sort of strong feelings that “City of Refuge” brought out in me.  It was depressing, yet hopeful, to the point, yet lyrical.  In short, “City of Refuge” is a really, really fantastic book that I completely recommend for those who are interested in what really went on in New Orleans and the way people dealt with it and continued on with their much-changed lives.

Buy this book from:
Powells.
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.
Amazon.

I read this book as part of a TLC Book Tour.  Check out some of the other tour hosts for more reviews.  Links go to the host’s site, not to their specific review.

Wednesday, August 26th: Rough Edges

Thursday, August 27th: Stuff As Dreams Are Made On

Monday, August 31st: Word Lily

Tuesday, September 8th: Book Chase

Thursday, September 10th: Cheryl’s Book Nook

Wednesday, September 16th: Linus’s Blanket

Thursday, September 17th: Book Addiction

Monday, September 28th: Devourer of Books

Tuesday, September 29th: Lesa’s Book Critiques

Wednesday, September 30th: Luxury Reading

Don’t ask me how it happened, but somehow I had a REALLY good reading week last week, both in quality and quantity.  Here’s what I finished:

(audio)

I’m basically trying like mad to read as many review and library books as possible by the end of the month since the Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge starts October 1.  I’m actually wondering how on earth I’ll choose my books to read during that challenge.  I’m used to having the choice between a few things that either need to be reviewed or returned to the library soon.  I have hundreds and hundreds of TBR books, so that sheer amount of choice may overwhelm me.

And just for fun, a video of Daniel as Rafi and I sing him “5 Green and Speckled Frogs.”  He thinks this song is hilarious.

Funny in Farsi by Firoozeh Dumas

Firoozeh’s family came to the US from Iran for her father’s job when she was in grade school.  Shortly thereafter, they ended up moving permanently because of the revolution.  Being Iranian in America has had many challenges, both before and after the hostage crisis.  In addition, Firoozeh’s family offered some unique challenges of its own.

“Funny in Farsi” was a fun, diverting read.  However, it wasn’t quite what I expected.  I thought it would be more of a cohesive memoir, but it was more similar to a series of essays.  I felt that we got more snapshots than the story of her life.

I thought that “Funny in Farsi” was enjoyable, but not earth-shattering, as I dind’t really feel that I got that much sense of Firoozeh, which is what I expect in a memoir.  It was a great look at her family, though, and I did like her writing style.  If you’re in the mood for a fun look at growing up an immigrant, this is definitely worth a shot.

Buy this book from:
Powells.
A local independent bookstore via Indiebound.
Amazon.

I’m moving along quite nicely on my Harry Potter Reading Challenge. I mean, the thing’s an entire year long, started in August, and I’ve already finished 3 of the books.  Who knows, I might just finish in 2009!  With “The Chamber of Secrets” and “Prisoner of Azkaban” I delved into the world of the Harry Potter audiobooks.  I somewhat intended to do the entire challenge in audio, but needed something else to read while I was at my parents’ house in August, so picked up the print version of the first book.

For years and years I have been hearing how amazing the Jim Dale-narrated Harry Potter audio books are and I figured that this challenge would be the perfect time to give them a try.  His narration is quite good, but I had it over-hyped in my mind.  Basically I think I was expecting unicorns to drive my car for me and all of Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s incantations to actually work as I listened.  Jim Dale is good, but he isn’t THAT good.    Seriously, though, here are some of my thoughts as I listened to Jim Dale:

• Initially it was hard to reconcile the voices of the characters because I’ve seen the movies so many times.  The actors’ voices ARE the characters’ voice for me.
• I HATE his Hermione.  Not all the time, but when she says Harry’s name “Harreeee” and a few other times when her sentence ends with a vowel it gets really drawn out and whiny and drives me mad.
• Listening instead of reading draws out some of the awkward and repetitive phrases Rowling occasionally uses
• The audi0 invites a lot more comparisons to the movies and the movies’ dialog for me than does reading the books because of the auditory nature of the thing

I know those are mostly negative, but although they are what stands out the most, my experience with these audiobooks are mostly positive.  Once I got over the difference with the character voices and got into them, I really enjoyed them (other than the occasional Hermione whine).  I found that listening to this series, which I’ve read so many times, brought out new things I either had never noticed or hadn’t noticed for awhile and helped me catch much of Rowling’s foreshadowing for the later books.