29 posts tagged “book review”
The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner's Dilemma by Trenton Lee Stewart is the third book about a group of four extraordinarily gifted and adventurous children who call themselves the Mysterious Benedict Society.
Since this is the third book in the series, I won't say much here about the plot. I've enjoyed all three books, and while the first will always be my favorite, I think Prisoner's Dilemma is the second best. I enjoyed that they were back home at Mr. Benedict's mansion for most of this one, and the action built up nicely.
The MBS books in general are fabulous - they have it all: great characters, illustrations that are a bit Gorey-esque, a formidable group of bad guys, logic puzzles, brain teasers, and pie.
This series is outstanding, and is a perfect gift for kids (boys or girls) from about 5th grade through 9th. It's also a series that adults who enjoy YA & kid's novels will love too; my mom and many of my friends have read and loved them.
For anyone wanting to give this series a try, I recommend starting with the first book, The Mysterious Benedict Society, which is available in paperback from The Book Depository for only $3.49.
Look at the Birdie is the second posthumous collection by Kurt Vonnegut. The first was Armageddon in Retrospect, which came out last year.
I thought this collection was a lot better than Armageddon in Retrospect. Armageddon had some good stories, but there were a few I wasn't crazy about. I really enjoyed every story in Look at the Birdie. It's a very solid collection.
Here's one of my favorite passages, from the story "A Song for Selma" -
Ernest Groper, the physics teacher, joined the group. He was a rude, realistic, bomb-shaped man, at war with sloppy thinking. As he transferred his lunch from his tray to the table, he gave the impression that he was obeying the laws of motion voluntarily, with gusto - not because he had to obey them but because he thought they were darn fine laws.
I read somewhere that one of the next posthumous books by Kurt Vonnegut will be a collection of letters. I'm excited for this, I've read some of his letters and I really enjoyed them.
Look at the Birdie is currently available from The Book Depository for 50% off.
One of these additions was Margherita Dolce Vita by Stefano Benni. I mentioned this in August's Polysyllabic Spree - I first heard about this book from Amanda's great review.
I was not disappointed at all. Margherita is one of the funniest, most likable characters I've encountered in my reading this year. I couldn't help laughing loudly during so many parts of the story.
Here's the short summary from Europa's site:
Fifteen-year-old Margherita lives with her eccentric family on the outskirts of town, a semi-urban wilderness peopled by gypsies, illegal immigrants, and no end of bizarre characters: a reassuring and fertile playground for an imaginative little girl like Margherita. But one day, a gigantic, black cube shows up next door. Her new neighbors have arrived, and they're destined to ruin everything.
This novel is original, hilarious, and well worth the read. The ending is intense! This would be a great novel to discuss in a book group.
There are so many wonderful lines and passages in this book, but here are just a couple to give you a taste:
She is a good housekeeper and an excellent cook. Her specialties are Melodious French Fries, Desperation Omelet, and in particular, Remembrance of Things Past Meatloaf. (page 21)
I thought to myself: when a woman makes you change the way you live, you can laugh it off. But when a woman makes you change the soccer team you have always loved, the situation is serious. (page 131)
He stroked my hair and my heart pounded so hard and I thought: if he kisses me, I'll die.
Unfortunately, he decided to let me live. (page 167)
Links to buy Margherita Dolce Vita:
Indie Bound
Book Depository (free shipping worldwide)
I've been interested in this book for a while, and after having my love of Julia Child reignited by the movie Julie & Julia, I put The Tenth Muse: My Life in Food on my birthday wish list.
For those who don't know, Judith Jones was Julia Child's editor, and her experience and skill at editing and marketing cookbooks is one of the big reasons Mastering the Art of French Cooking attained the status it deserved.
This is an extremely lovely memoir, and it's a treat to read how she developed her love of food and cooking and her stories about all the wonderful chefs and food world celebrities that she's known. They include James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Fernand Point, and, of course, Julia.
It was also lovely to learn more about Edna Lewis, the author of The Taste of Country Cooking. By coincidence, her cookbook was also on my birthday wish list. I heard about The Taste of Country Cooking from Laurie Colwin's two food essay collections - she was a big fan of Edna Lewis. I had no idea that Judith Jones was her editor, too.
A great bonus: the last 80 pages of the book are full of recipes from her collection. I found many that I want to try for myself soon.
I love the quote she includes at the end of the book:
As Brillat-Savarin wrote: "The pleasures of the table are for every man, of every land, and no matter of what place in history or society; they can be part of all his other pleasures, and they last the longest to console him when he has outlived the rest." (page 197)
And here's a great place to end this review - with one of her Julia tidbits:
"Another memorable Julia moment of truth came when I was on the set as she was preparing suckling pig. She was explaining how the ears and tail could easily burn while the piglet was roasting in the oven, so the thing to do was to wrap a piece of foil around each. Then she paused, looking at the creature in front of her, and said that there was an even easier method for the tail. Fortunately, she pointed out, there's a natural little hole below the tail, so just tuck the tail into that and it won't burn." (page 71-72)
Links to buy The Tenth Muse:
Indie Bound - find an independent bookstore close to you or buy from one online
Book Depository - free shipping anywhere in the world
Gourmet Rhapsody is the first novel by the author of The Elegance of the Hedgehog, Muriel Barbery. The english translation was published in the US in August following the success of Hedgehog.
Several of my friends thought that Gourmet Rhapsody is a sequel to Hedgehog, but it's not. It's also not really a prequel, the events are actually happening concurrently to the events of Hedgehog. It could be considered a companion novel, since it's set in the same building and involves many of the same characters.
The main character of Gourmet Rhapsody is Pierre Arthens, the food critic from Hedgehog. It's set in the hours before his death, as he travels through his memories searching for a single remembered flavor that's eluding him. He is desperately trying to identify the particular flavor haunting the back of his mind before he passes on.
It has a unique structure - Pierre relives certain food memories on his quest to identify the mystery flavor, and interspersed are small chapters told from the point of view of various people who knew him throughout his life. Some regarded him fondly, others...not so much.
I love food writing, and Muriel Barbery's descriptions of food and eating in this novel are delectable. Don't read this book when you're hungry. It's an interesting story, too. It's not as powerful and wonderful as The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which I thought was incredible. (My review is posted here.) But it's an enjoyable experience, and fans of Hedgehog will enjoy being back in that world and reading Barbery's beautiful writing again.
If you're interested in getting a copy of this book, it's currently available on Book Depository for 50% off - only $7.49.
Here are my favorite lines/passages:
The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you. (page 54)
The second reason I like Monsieur, it's kind of hard to put into words... it's because he farts in bed! The first time I heard it, I couldn't figure out what it was I'd heard, so to speak... And then it happened again, it was seven in the morning, it came from the corridor to the little salon where Monsieur sometimes slept when he came home late at night, a sort of detonation, a false note, but I mean really loud; I'd never heard anything like it! and then I understood, and I couldn't stop laughing, I laughed till I cried. I was bent over double, I had a bellyache, but at least I had the presence of mind to go to the kitchen, I sat down on a bench, I thought I'd never catch my breath! From that day on I've felt particularly well-disposed toward Monsieur, yes, well-disposed, because my husband farts in bed, too (but not as loud, all the same). A man who farts in bed, my grandmother used to say, is a man who loves life. (page 67)
Childhood exaltation: how many years do we spend forgetting the passion we breathed into any activity that held a promise of pleasure? Why are we now so rarely capable of such total commitment, such elation, such flights of charming lyricism? There was so much exultation about those days spent swimming, so much simplicity... so soon replaced, alas, by the ever increasing difficulty of finding pleasure in things... (page 87-88)
Summary from the back of the book:
The Dud Avocado follows the romantic and comedic adventures of a young American who heads overseas to conquer Paris in the late 1950s. Edith Wharton and Henry James wrote about the American girl abroad, but it was Elaine Dundy’s Sally Jay Gorce who told us what she was really thinking. Charming, sexy, and hilarious, The Dud Avocado gained instant cult status when it was first published and it remains a timeless portrait of a woman hell-bent on living.
Sally Jay Gorce is a memorable character. She struck me somewhat as a possible cross between Holden Caulfield and Bertie Wooster. Yes, that's an odd mix. But she's an odd girl. She might have been a slightly annoying character, but it's forgivable when you keep in mind the time period she's in. While most young women in the late fifties were expected to marry and become good housewives, Sally Jay Gorce is off on her own in Europe, living fairly selfishly. Most of the book club members also agreed that we wish we could have had a few years on our own in Paris, paid for by a rich uncle.
This is a great story, and I can see why it became a cult classic. She's been compared to Holly Golightly and Bridget Jones, and I think she's a character all her own - worthy of mention among the great troubled female heroines. Her story is written with such a clear and unique voice that you almost feel like you know her by the end. Elaine Dundy is a great writer, and I need to read some more of her work.
I marked the heck out of my copy, but here are some of my favorite lines and passages:
I could have died of happiness. I went back to Montparnasse and flung myself into a celebration which lasted two nights and from which it took me three days to recover. (page 57)
The waiters at the Select comported themselves with that slightly theatrical mixture of charm, complicity and contempt that one would expect from servants in Hell. All you had to do was sit there at the beginning of an evening, feeling pristine and crisp, combed and scented, and order your very first drink (it could be something as innocent as a lemonade), for them to indicate by the slightest flicker of their merry eyes that they were aware as you that you were taking the fatal step down the road to ruin. By merely clattering up the used cups and saucers onto their trays, flicking their napkins over the table, the better to clear the stage for disaster, and repeating your order precisely as given, they could predict for you the whole miracle that was going to take place four hours later when you - the now transformed, tousled, shiny, vague-eyed you - would emerge, talking the most utter balderdash, spilling beans of shattering truths or equally shattering lies, singing with friends, fighting with strangers, promising favors, promising love, scrambling into bed and clambering out again . . . all this they could predict for you as relentlessly as any Delphic Oracle, while are the same time it all struck them as so irresistibly funny they couldn't help chuckling. (page 87)
Frequently, walking down the streets in Paris alone, I've suddenly come upon myself in a store window grinning foolishly away at the thought that no one in the world knew where I was at just that moment. (page 160)
Now we eat breakfast every day in our bathing suits on the patio, the early morning air pungent with aromatic smells of food and flowers, and the coffee tasting of the sun. (page 169)
I learned something from him, I hope. Lesson 1: No matter what you do you've got to try to do it well. Otherwise it's unbearable. (page 200)
It was a wonderful warm summer's night. Presque parfaite. Everything in the sky that could be was out: Northern lights, Southern lights, milky ways, moons, planets, stars, shooting stars, whole galaxies of solar systems winking and twinkling eons away in their own heavens. (page 203)
What was the use of remembering? If it was unpleasant, it was unpleasant. If it was pleasant, it was over. (page 221)
"Now," he said. "I have to ask you three questions. How old are you? Are you in love? And what in God's name are you doing here?" (page 244)
I've heard amazing things about Graceling by Kristin Cashore for over a year and a half, especially from book bloggers lucky enough to get an ARC of this fantastic novel. Seeing it out in paperback on a weekend when I desperately needed a good fantasy novel to escape in gave me reason to try it for myself.
To be completely honest, the book description didn't really make me want to read the book. It didn't seem like my type of thing:
If you had the power to kill with your bare hands, what would you do with it?
Graceling takes readers inside the world of Katsa, a warrior-girl in her late teens with one blue eye and one green eye. This gives her haunting beauty, but also marks her as a Graceling. Gracelings are beings with special talents—swimming, storytelling, dancing. Katsa's Grace is considered more useful: her ability to fight (and kill, if she wanted to) is unequaled in the seven kingdoms. Forced to act as a henchman for a manipulative king, Katsa channels her guilt by forming a secret council of like-minded citizens who carry out secret missions to promote justice over cruelty and abuses of power.
Combining elements of fantasy and romance, Cashore skillfully portrays the confusion, discovery, and angst that smart, strong-willed girls experience as they creep toward adulthood. Katsa wrestles with questions of freedom, truth, and knowing when to rely on a friend for help. This is no small task for an angry girl who had eschewed friendships (with the exception of one cousin that she trusts) for her more ready skills of self-reliance, hunting, and fighting. Katsa also comes to know the real power of her Grace and the nature of Graces in general: they are not always what they appear to be.
But the great number of positive reviews I've read gave me a lot of hope, and I wasn't disappointed. I was pulled into the plot immediately and could barely put it down until I'd finished.
One of the best parts of this book is that Katsa is a kick-ass heroine. So much of the YA Fantasy I've read lately over the past few years (especially the really popular ones) have had completely annoying female heroines. Girls who make so many dumb moves and decisions that you want to smack them over the head. Katsa is the complete opposite. She's not flawless, but she's a great character and a excellent heroine.
Also, Po is one of the best love interests in YA Lit.
If you liked the Gemma Doyle trilogy by Libba Bray, I definitely recommend Graceling.
Fire, the companion novel to Graceling, comes out October 5th.
I didn’t enjoy the experience of reading the book digitally. I got antsy while reading it on my computer. I wished the book was in my hands. I don’t enjoy reading books on a screen. That is never going to change.
That said, I did enjoy the story itself. Here’s the description from Amazon:
In this inventive, short, yet perfectly formed novel inspired by traditional Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman takes readers on a wild and magical trip to the land of giants and gods and back.
In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he's had some very bad luck: His father perished in a Viking expedition; a tree fell on and shattered his leg; the endless freezing winter is making villagers dangerously grumpy.
Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle—three creatures with a strange story to tell.
Now Odd is forced on a stranger journey than he had imagined—a journey to save Asgard, city of the gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it.
It's going to take a very special kind of twelve-year-old boy to outwit the Frost Giants, restore peace to the city of gods, and end the long winter.
Someone cheerful and infuriating and clever . . .
Someone just like Odd.
It’s quite a bit different that his other kid’s books that I’ve read (The Graveyard Book and Coraline). This feels more like a classic fable, a timeless story (because it is - I like that it’s based on Norse mythology). I enjoyed it, but as an adult I didn’t love it as much as I did the stories of Coraline and Nobody Owens. Probably because I’m not incredibly into folklore, although I don’t know why that is.
I do think it’s going to be a great book for kids, which is, after all, its intent. I think my little brother will love it.
I can’t wait until it’s released (September 22). I want to see it in person and look at the final illustrations. (In the ARC only sketches are included.)
George Plimpton is one of my many literary heroes, and I admire his personality very much. I wish I could have met him before he died. I am thrilled that there’s an oral biography about his life (it came out last year), and I finally got a chance to read it last month.
An oral biography is a fun format. It’s different from a traditional biography because it focuses on other people’s thoughts, opinions and memories of the subject.
It’s not edited or arranged into any continuously flowing format. Numerous people are interviewed (in this case 374, 200 of which made it into the book), and quotes and passages are selected from their interviews and then arranged into a book. George, Being George is arranged loosely chronologically into different stages of his life.
The result is fascinating because you’re not getting just a biographer’s view of their subject. You’re getting the direct opinions and memories of many different people who knew the subject well. Some remember him fondly, others not so much. Some people’s memories contradict other people’s.
It’s fitting that that format works so well for George Plimpton, because he did so much for the form himself. He worked on several oral biographies during his career, the most famous of which is Edie. I have his oral biography of Truman Capote, and it’s very interesting.
Here are some of my favorite parts of George, Being George:
“George talked about his family background endlessly. The whole family, his mother especially, had an extraordinary knowledge of the glories of their past generations. As his wife, I heard all the stories many times. One story George loved was “Pull up your bowels, sir!” which is what General Adelbert Ames, “the Boy General,” used to say when reviewing the men of the 20th Maine, maybe at Gettysburg when they drove back Pickett’s Charge. It was George’s way of saying, “Get a grip!” -Sarah Dudley Plimpton, page 9
“George himself was a big part of the appeal of a job at The Paris Review, George as a model of how to live. Most adults, I thought, had a fixed idea of how things ought to be. George was willing to be surprised and delighted by whatever life presented him with from one moment to the next. It might be a remark someone had made to him, the sight of a beautiful girl, a story he’d just heard, or a person he’d just met, even his own responses to things - his own irritation at something, for example. “Golly!” he would cry, or, “Good heavens!” or, “Great Scott!”; people were amazed at the antique purity of his expletives, but what was really amazing was the freshness and openness of the guy who uttered them. Life came at him in little packets of wondrousness. How many times in George’s day did he exclaim, “Marvelous!” and mean it? Certainly more than anyone I knew. -David Michaelis, page 311
“When I was managing editor, I just didn’t have any organizational ability. Several other people said, “Let me show you how you can organize things.” But I think the only organizational tip George ever gave me was “You know, William Pène du Bois has all these wonderful cans in which he keeps his different-colored pencils.” -Fayette Hickox, page 313
“There was always a sense of astonished admiration in George. He was astonished by everything. He would often say, “Could you believe” something. “Could you believe that!” There was a note of incredulity. “How remarkable! How astonishing! I couldn’t believe it!” After which his astonishment would often give way to admiration. George was the greatest, most effective communicator of infectious admiration I’ve ever known.” -Charles Michener, page 373
I’m a bit behind on book reviews, so I’m just going to jump right in and start posting about some of the books I’ve read recently.
We might as well start off with If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino, because I’ve never read anything like it before.
I had heard good things about this book, and then read a great review that Amanda posted. Once I read her review I was sold - I needed to get a copy and read it soon. $5.95 and a trip to Strand later, it was in my possession.
As Amanda says in her review, this is a very odd book. For many reasons. You (the Reader) are a character. The story is about Your experience reading a novel. For many various reasons, the novel You are trying to read gets cut off after the first chapter. I’m not going to attempt to describe everything that happens, but in short You end up reading the first chapter of ten different novels. It’s amazing and it is incredible that it works so well.
This book can be maddening, at times, and confusing at other times. But mainly, it’s captivating. And interesting. And so unique that you don’t want to stop reading because you must find out everything. There are parts that are incredibly beautiful; lines that make you happy to be a reader. It’s very good.
I’d like to post my favorite passage from the book, even though it’s quite long. It’s from very early in the book (since You, the Reader, are just purchasing the book in the store), page 5. I love this because it so perfectly sums up the experience of being a bibliophile in a bookstore. I instantly related:
In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
the Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,
the Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success
the Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment
the Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
the Books That Fill You With Sudden Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily JustifiedNow you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
