Jane Austen Made Me Do It edited by Laurel Ann Nattress- Book Review

Dec 072011

Jane Austen Made Me Do It edited by Laurel Ann Nattress
Published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House

The past few years in particular have seen a plethora of Jane Austen retellings and adaptations. Many of these adaptations are beloved almost as much as Austen’s original stories are. It is gratifying to see an author who has been dead nearly 200 years inspiring such love and devotion that an entire subgenre has developed out of her work. Laurel Ann Nattress, a lover both of Austen’s original books and the “Austenesque” novels, decided to bring together some of the very best authors in the Austenesuqe subgenre – as well as some other authors who have been heavily influenced by Austen’s work – for a collection of original short stories: Jane Austen Made Me Do It.

Sometimes I’m not sure if there has ever been a review written of a short story collection that does not include the word “uneven.” Unfortunately, there are few short story collections that manage to avoid needing such a designation. That reality becomes particularly obvious when the collection is pulled together from the stories of twenty-two different authors. With the exception of Brenna Aubrey, a new writer whose story was included after she won the Jane Austen Made Me Do It short story contest, most of the featured authors are beloved in their genres.

However, though they are incredibly well-respected, these authors are primarily novelists, and many of them did not transition well into the short story form. The second story in particular, Waiting, read as if it were a scene from a novel, rather than a story in its own right. Waiting stood out the most for this issue, but it was evident in other stories to a lesser degree as well. Interestingly, Aubrey’s story, the one submitted through the short story contest, was one of the best.

Certainly, though, there are bright spots in Jane Austen Made Me Do It, in addition to simply Aubrey’s story. Lauren Willig and Jo Beverley’s stories stand out in particular. The casual fan of Austenesque stories might do better to pick a novel by one of these generally esteemed writers, but die hard fans will find enough to love in Jane Austen Made Me Do It that it is worth buying.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher for an episode of What’s Old is New.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault – Book Review

Nov 172011

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault
Published by Bantam, an imprint of Random House

Billy Webb is somewhat aimless after graduating from college, but at least he has a decent job as an editorial assistant at Samuelson Company, helping to create the next edition of the Samuelson dictionary. Honestly, it is a pretty boring job, even if it does seem to have a certain nerdy glamor. Or, at least it is boring until Billy begins to find a series of puzzling citations, citations that claim to be from a book or publication called The Broken Teaglass, a work which does not actually exist. It becomes clear that someone at Samuelson must have placed the citations in the cit files in order to tell some sort of story, but what? And why? Billy and his equally bored coworker Mina are determined to solve the mystery.

Perhaps I’m a huge dork, but my first reaction when I saw that this is a dictionary mystery was excitement. Of course, I worried that it might end up being incredibly boring, but the concept was intriguing enough that I went for it anyway, and I’m extremely glad that I did.

The Broken Teaglass is a very smart novel, there is a mystery, but that is simply part of the plot. Billy is a fascinating character, as he falters in his post-collegiate life. He doesn’t know where he wants to be, or how he wants to get there, all he knows is that Samuelson will pay his bills for now. He is searching for purpose, and for companionship, and he finds both when he discovers the mysterious citations. Suddenly, he has a reason to spend time with Mina, whom he likes both as a person, and as a potential girlfriend. More than that, though, he has something to do with his life beyond simply dragging himself to and from work.

That being said, Aresnault did not skimp on the mystery while making Billy an in-depth character. The citations come together in an extremely appealing way, creating a feeling of excitement and anticipation as Mona and Billy gather together the pieces to the puzzle. Still, the reader cares about the mystery largely because Billy and Mona do, and Arsenault gives us a stake in their lives.

A very smart and (literally) literary mystery. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, via Netgalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka – Book Review

Nov 032011

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka
Published by Knopf, an imprint of Random House

In the early 20th century, many immigrant men living and working in the United States desired wives from their native lands. Matchmakers, armed with pictures of the men who were unable to travel home to find a bride and recommendations from family members, paired couples and sent the girls, frequently referred to as “picture brides” to America to meet their mates.

It is a group of these picture brides whose lives form the basis for Julie Otsuka’s anticipated second novel. As with her debut, When the Emperor Was Divine, Otsuka follows the fortunes of persons of Japanese descent living in the United States in the first half of the 20th century. Interestingly, her trademark style is very impersonal. In When the Emperor Was Divine, most of the story is told in third person limited omniscient. The Buddha in the Attic is told in first person plural, attempting to convey the variety of responses of the picture brides to their new life, resulting in passages such as the one below, which describes the women’s first nights with their husbands:

That night our new husbands took us quickly. They took us calmly. They took us gently, but firmly, and without saying a word. They assumed we were the virgins the matchmakers had promised them we were and they took us with exquisite care…. They took us greedily, hungrily, as though they had been waiting to take us for a thousand and one years. They took us even though we were still nauseous from the boat and the ground had not yet stopped rocking beneath our feet.

Coming from most authors, this would be distancing, but from Otsuka it is universalizing. We see a variety of responses from the different women in different situations that shows both their individuality and the commonalities between them. The result is a beautiful and surprisingly emotionally work culminating with World War II and the “Instructions to all Persons of Japanese Ancestry.” Highly recommended.

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Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Library.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh – Audiobook Review

Oct 282011

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, narrated by Tara Sands
Published in audio by Random House Audio, published in print by Ballantine Books

Synopsis:

Abandoned at birth, Victoria Jones has been a ward of the State of California her entire life. She has, of necessity, learned to be hard and guarded, expressing her feelings – typically of hate and misanthropy – through the Victorian language of flowers, taught to her by Elizabeth, the one women who was nearer than anyone else to being her mother. Now that she has aged out of her last group home, Victoria must learn to live life on her own. She finds she can make a living arranging flowers; her bouquets are imbued with meaning as she chooses flowers based on the hopes each customer has for the effect of the arrangement. Just when she thinks she is gaining stability, however, she is forced to both let down her guard, and remember in excruciating detail what went wrong in her life with Elizabeth.

Thoughts on the story:

Vanessa Diffenbaum has created in The Language of Flowers a beautiful and moving story that nearly gave me a heart attack more than once. Victoria is a worrying character, initially, seeming very hard and closed off, but it is not long before the reader is sucked into her life, experiencing her 18 years of pain, and the slim hope that she has for the future. Her growth is really, it happens organically and, although it experiences setbacks, it produces beautiful results. The language of flowers is woven perfectly into the story, enhancing both plot and character development, and giving the book an extra something special to really set it apart.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Narrator Tara Sands was perfect for this part. For one thing, she sounded age appropriate for Victoria, which is always something that worries me in audiobooks with young protagonists. More importantly, however, she was able to capture the contradictions in Victoria’s character, the fragility under her crusty veneer. For more information on the audio, please see my review for Audiofile Magazine.

soundbytes picture Overall:

This was a beautiful book and an lovely audio production. Enjoy it in print or in audio! Highly recommended

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Audiofile.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Zone One by Colson Whitehead – Book Review

Oct 192011

Zone One by Colson Whitehead
Published by Doubleday Books, an imprint of Random House

Everyone has a Last Night story, and now that the world is rebuilding, people have the time and energy to share them. The man now nicknamed Mark Spitz has even figured out different levels of his Last Night story to tell depending on his acquaintance with the listener. The government in Buffalo is looking to the future, though, and part of that means reviving New York City. Mark Spitz is part of a team of civilian sweepers clearing New York of the last few remaining straggler zombies.

Zone One is, without a doubt, the most introspective of the zombie novels I have read. Mark spends a good deal of time dwelling in the past, resulting in occasionally choppy transitions between the present zombie search-and-destroy mission and the past, both before and after the traumatic events of Last Night (Mark, like essentially every other survivor has PASD: Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder). Interestingly, actual zombies played a relatively small role in Zone One, Spitz comes into contact with them only rarely, either in the present or in his memories, with Whitehead focusing more on the psyche of the survivor than the actual end of the world.

This is a fascinating approach to a post-apocalyptic novel, but it is one that would have worked better had Mark Spitz been a more compelling character. Certainly part of the issue is the stress disorder associated with the end of the world, something like that does not make for a terribly personable character. Spitz’s extreme mediocrity is drilled into the reader, however. We are told over and over that he is exactly average, even painfully average, never any grade but a B, never excelling in any way, other than perhaps his aim in killing zombies. The real problem is that Colson Whitehead – 2002 recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship – doesn’t write ‘extremely average’ well, as is evidenced by this reminiscence of Mark’s about the apparent normalcy of his home on Last Night:

Normal was the unbroken idyll of life before. The present was a series of intervals differentiated from each other only by the degree of dread they contained. The future? The future was the clay in their hands.

A thoughtful and beautiful passage, to be sure, but not one that is particularly believable from the head of someone without any great mental ability. Passages like this are also not rare, one could open to almost any page and find one. This fairly significant flaw in characterization makes Spitz a two-dimensional and therefore less interesting character, which in turn lessens the emotional impact of the attempted rebuilding of our world after devastation by such an insidious plague.

All this being said, Colson Whitehead’s general depiction of life after zombies seems to be almost painfully on cue, from the cheesy, manipulative symbols put out by the government in Buffalo to the ability of those with significant personal problems to detach from the danger in their everyday lives in order to focus on sensationalized stories, such as a the survival of a set of triplets in a far-off survivor camp.

Zone One is certainly an interesting and realistic take on a post-apocalyptic world, but an unbelievable protagonist makes it less successful than it might otherwise be, and some fans of zombie lit may be surprised and disappointed by the near lack of zombies.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin – Book Review

Oct 172011

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin
Published by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House

In P.T. Barnum’s over-sized world, Lavinia “Vinnie” Bump was both the biggest and the smallest thing around. Born a normal size, both Vinnie and her younger sister Minnie simply stopped growing as young children, Vinnie eventually standing only 32 inches high, and Minnie even smaller. Vinnie, however, was determined never to let her height define her or hold her back and set out to make sure that she had access to nearly everything life could offer.

Melanie Benjamin has a special talent for ferreting out fascinating women who most people would never think to wonder about and bringing their stories to life, first with Alice Liddell, the real Alice behind Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and now with Lavinia Bump. Benjamin’s Lavinia was strong and determined, although fallible and occasionally naive. There were times that her voice seemed a bit too reminiscent of Alice’s in Alice I Have Been, but the women did, at least how Benjamin wrote them, have somewhat similar, at times almost imperial, personalities.

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb provides a much different perspective of the 1850s and 60s than most readers are probably familiar with, but Benjamin makes both her characters and the time period come to life. Recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Audiobook Review

Sep 302011

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, narrated by Wil Wheaton
Published in audio by Random House Audio, published in print by Crown, both imprints of Random House

Synopsis:

In 2044 people are going hungry and electricity is unreliable at best. To serve as a distraction from the constant misery, most people barely even live in the real world any more anyway. Instead, they are plugged almost constantly into the virtual reality called the OASIS. For Wade Watts, the OASIS is basically the only thing he has going. In the real world he is an orphan living with his mildly abusive aunt who steals all his food vouchers. After the death of the OASIS’s creator James Halliday, Wade finally seems a glimpse of hope for his future in the Easter Egg Halliday left for whichever game can solve his puzzles. Somehow, Wade is the first among the millions of Gunters (Egg Hunters) to solve the first riddle and locate the first key, but he can’t rest on his laurels, because the Sixers are right behind him. The Sixers will stop at nothing to find the Egg, and if they do the idyll of the OASIS will be lost forever.

Thoughts on the story:

If you lived through the 80s, were born in the 80s, or have ever watched VH1′s I Love the 80s you are probably going to want to read this book. It is a bit heavy on video games, but the cultural references are accessible to anyone who has ever seen a John Hughes movie, and explained well enough that readers will get the gist of anything they weren’t already aware of, without being annoyed by excessive exposition on things they are well aware of.

Cultural references are all well and good, but what is really important to know about Ready Player One is that it is a really good story. Wade is a wonderful protagonist, extremely kind-hearted, but also flawed and driven. His surrounding cast of characters is diverse and easy to relate to, but epic quest on which they find themselves is the real star of the book. Halliday’s Easter Egg quest is fun, suspenseful, and just complicated enough to really capture the imagination.

Thoughts on the audio production:

Wil Wheaton did a magnificent job narrating Ready Player One. Really just phenomenal. His young American characters didn’t have a huge differentiation in voice, but it was never a problem to tell who was speaking, and he did include accents for some other characters. The best part about Wheaton’s narration was his unending enthusiasm, which made an already fun book an absolutely joy to listen to.

soundbytes picture Overall:

Ready Player One is really great, and I’m sure it would be marvelous in print, but Wil Wheaton’s narration lends it that extra oomph, so get ahold of it in audio if you can!

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss – Book Review

Sep 212011

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss
Published by Random House

Ever since the death of Lucy Derrick’s father, she has been as maligned as the most unfortunate of Jane Austen’s heroines. Her near elopement four years earlier left her with her virtue intact, but her reputation somewhat worse for the wear. It seems lucky, really, that Mr. Olsen seems to want to marry her, for all that he is incredibly dull and the two of them have nothing to talk about. At this point, anything to get her away from her Uncle Lowell and his malicious housekeeper Mrs. Quince.

Everything changes for Lucy, though, one day as she uncomfortably makes conversation with her intended. Suddenly, there is an unknown voice screaming her name, and a disheveled man tells her that she must not become Mrs. Olsen and she must ‘gather the leaves’ before vomiting pins and losing consciousness. In her attempts to help the mysterious man, who will soon be revealed to be the scandalous Lord Byron, she comes across a woman who will soon be her friend, a Mary Crawford who has some minor skill as a cunning woman, but who recognizes great skill in Lucy. Suddenly, Lucy is embroiled in something larger than herself, something that involves the Luddites and perhaps the entire fate of England.

It isn’t every 400+ page book that can be read in just slightly over 24 hours, even on a holiday weekend. The Twelfth Enchantment is that book. Lucy is an immediately compelling character. She is downtrodden, but determined. She is marrying Mr. Olsen because it is her only option, but she is making that conscious decision because she knows she must eat and her Uncle Lowell will not consent to feed her forever, marriage is, odd as it mean seem in Regency England, a means to a greater measure of independence, as well as escape from her past reputation.

A great character begs for a great plot, and Liss has created that in The Twelfth Enchantment as well. Lucy is thrust into a world she has never known, but one she seems to understand to a degree that surprises even her. The stakes are high, and only get higher, and Lucy must discover who she can and cannot trust in a world where hardly anyone is what they seem.

Magic and historical atmosphere abound, for an incredibly compelling read. Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Embassytown by China Mieville – Thoughts

Aug 302011

Embassytown by China Mieville
Published by Del Ray, an imprint of Random House

I struggled with Embassytown when reading, and I’ve struggled over the past months thinking about it for a review. In lieu of a formal review, I am simply going to add a few of the thoughts that linger after all this time. For some context, here is the description from Indiebound:

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

The linguistics pieces were very interesting, perhaps the most intriguing part of the story. The interplay of language and truth, inability of the Ariekei to lie, or even express abstract concepts unless they had previously been made concrete was consistently interesting.
The descriptions of the more science fiction elements of the story, such as the complexities of space travel, the interstellar political systems, and the systems that kept humans alive on the Ariekei world fell flat for me. They seemed neither interesting, nor well enough explained. I am not sure if Mieville has other works set in this universe in which these things are better explained, but it didn’t work for me here.
I found Avice to be a thoroughly uninteresting and unsympathetic character. I didn’t care who she was with or what she did, and the rest of the plot was not compelling enough counteract that.
My other two experiences with Mieville have both been in audio, narrated by John Lee. I think that audio might be the best way for me to experience Mieville, because talented narrators like John Lee carry me on past these pieces that would otherwise bog me down.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey – Book Review

Aug 242011

Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey
Published by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House

Marie Antoinette is likely the best known, or at least most notorious, of all French queens. She is often reviled as an out-of-touch aristocrat who would flippantly tell her starving subjects to simply eat cake; she absolutely did not say this, by the way, Rousseau recorded them as being spoken by a ‘great princess’ when she was the nine-year-old Maria Antonia, Archduchess of Austria.

Many novels about Marie Antoinette begin at the moment she leaves Austria for France, some even include that tragic moment where she is forced to leave her little dog Mops is taken from her because he is not French. Becoming Marie Antoinette, is, however, the first historical novel I have come across that gives readers a good picture of her life as Maria Antonia of Austria. Seeing Maria in her native land in the time immediately leading up to her travel to France is extremely instructive for those who wish to understand her later actions as Dauphine of France. In fact, Grey is able to give much more attention to questions of motivation and politics than many historical novels due to her structuring of Marie Antoinette’s story in a trilogy. Many readers bemoan the prevalence of series and trilogies, the fact that little seems to stand alone these days, but in this case, it enhances the story being told.

That is not to say that Becoming Marie Antoinette is a perfect historical read. At times our heroine’s voice is somewhat overly modern, particularly towards the beginning of the book. Before long, however, the voice either evens out, the story becomes so engaging that modernity doesn’t matter, or some combination of the two. The chapter headers remain somewhat modern, for example Chapter 8 is titled “The Really Hard Work Begins,” but that isn’t terribly intrusive. Aside from these minor issues, however, Grey seems to have really done her homework with Becoming Marie Antoinette, and presents to her readers an engaging and historically faithful novel.

Overall, a fabulous treatment of Marie Antoinette. I recommend it and personally cannot wait for the sequel.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, via Netgalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries

Devourer of Books

Jane Austen Made Me Do It edited by Laurel Ann Nattress- Book Review

The Broken Teaglass by Emily Arsenault – Book Review

The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka – Book Review

The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh – Audiobook Review

Zone One by Colson Whitehead – Book Review

The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb by Melanie Benjamin – Book Review

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – Audiobook Review

The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss – Book Review

Embassytown by China Mieville – Thoughts

Becoming Marie Antoinette by Juliet Grey – Book Review

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