12, 13, 14 The Last Apprentice, by Joseph Delaney

Hey, I'm back! I started a bunch of reviews 4 months ago, so I'll finish some of those and then skip around, probably not reviewing much of what I read this summer. Oh well. At least this blog is alive again.

I lost the piece of paper I used to take notes on this book, and I finished it ages ago, but we'll see what I can remember (the entire point of this blog...oh well) about what I wanted to say.

This book is the first in a series. I'm actually up to book 4 in this series now, since I started this entry early last May. So Technically this entry can be about Revenge of the Witch, Curse of the Bane and Night of the Soul-Stealer. Anyway, the series is about a kid named Thomas Ward who is the seventh son of a seventh son, which means he is eligible to apprentice as a Spook. A spook lives a solitary and terrifying life, wandering around the country and getting rid of evil things that plague everyday society. It's not any sort of secret, though. Everyone's aware of ghosts and boggarts and witches and things, and they need a spook's knowhow on defeating this kind of thing to live peacefully.

I am kind of a wimp when it comes to scary things and I will admit that I read this in my bed at night with my bankie wrapped around me tightly. It wasn't too scary, though. I really like the art in this book, too. There is a whole page for chapter art, not just below the chapter titles, so that's neat. Lots of crosshatching and sketchy linework or whatever it is that art stuff is called.

Something that is kind of annoying, though, is how the back covers proclaim that this is the ideal series for kids who've outgrown Harry Potter. Sunday Times Review, please! These books are cool, and they have neat, creatively imagined monsters and an intricate enough plotline, yes. But there's no way it's even close to as scary or complex or sad or risque as HP. I wonder how many books in this blog I compare to Harry Potter? Maybe I should read less YA fantasy. Or maybe not.
Pages: 340-500, depending on which book
Time: may-july
Rating: 7

10. Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman

This is one of those books that everyone and their mom seemed to be checking out. I figured out that it was partly because it is a Battle of the Books book, but still. I eventually got around to reading it recently (I am typing this one up out of order, but other people want to read it so I need to turn it back in) and man, all the talk is not for nothing.

I have read a fair amount of fantasy in my day. I'm not much for the medieval sort of fantasy with robed princesses with staffs and jeweled headbands holing back their flowing locks on the covers. But the more contemporary sort, you know, with the kid who stumbles upon a secret world and somehow ends up really special. The genre is pretty large, though, and full of not very good books. It is difficult to make something fresh and not done a million times in any genre of fiction, but I feel like it is the most glaringly obvious for fantasy. Some books (Harry Potter, obviously) can be original and well written enough to break through all the millions of predictable plotlines and characters with stupid names. The Graveyard Book pulls it off.

A Man Jack (you find out bit by bit that he's a part of this governmental conspiracy group of Jacks thing) breaks into a house, kills a mom, dad, sister, and the baby escapes (okay yeah that does sound a bit like HP, but it is different because the family is normal and the baby is normal and it just wanders away; it doesn't get saved by magic). The baby wanders into the graveyard across the street and the spirits living (residing?) there, upon figuring out his situation, decide to raise him themselves.

They name him Nobody, call him Bod for short, and give him the protection of the graveyard, meaning he's invisible to the typical mortal, just like they are. He grows up, gets into many kinds of trouble, meets a lady, deals with the Jacks as they try and finish the job, etc.

So as much fun as I've been having reading the fluffy YA fantasy lit (I will review a book called Skulduggery Pleasant that fits into this category perfectly soon), it was really cool to read a book that is what the genre is supposed to be about.

It has a really creative interesting story, good writing, an array of lovable and hatable characters (my favorite being Silas, Bod's semi-mortal caretaker), and an ending that really gets you. It ends at a perfect place in a perfect way, but it still makes me want a sequel. Badly. Nice job, Gaiman.


Pages: 312
Time: Apr 22-24
Rating: 9

8. Fables Vol. 1 by Bill Willingham, etc

I apparently like graphic novels a lot more than I thought I did. Owen gave me this one and neglected to tell me the premise, so it took me a second to figure out exactly what was going on. And then I was a bit skeptical, but not for too long.

Basically every character from any fable that didn't have creative rights restricting it is in this series. Snow White is more or less running this exiled kingdom of fables, who are all living in our world, as some Opponent that you don't learn much about in book 1 has invaded their homelands and kicked them out into our dimension. Other characters of note are detective Bigby (big bad) Wolf, Prince Charming (the womanizing douche), Beauty, The Beast, Jack (as in the beanstalk), etc.

The plot revolved around Rose Red (Snow White's sister, ya know)'s mysterious death. I'm not ususally much for mysteries, but it was fun. And well drawn. I especially like the art between chapters. I know it sounds lame. But it wasn't really. With everyone being immortal and all, they've all had time to sleep with everyone, create grudges, have lots of tension of all kinds, etc.

I will probably read more of the series at some point.

I am also like 5 books behind on this thing. G'damn. I'll probably write shorter reviews til I can catch up.

Pages: 120
Time: Not sure. Probably around Mar 15-17?
Rating: I am not obsessed with comic books, but for what it was, it was good. So... 7?

7. Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, by Chuck Klosterman

This book was on the Library's sale rack, and Owen told me it was good, so I took it. It is a book of essays (I do read nonfiction!) about pop culture, covering everything there is to cover, more or less.

It's one of those really opinionated essay compilations where you can find yourself calling the author a genius or an idiot depending on how much you happen to agree with whatever it is he's writing about, and I called him both during the course of reading his book. But agree with him or not, he is very funny.

I really enjoyed the ramblings on Billy Joel, The Real World, the Sims, etc. Other parts I found less hilarious, either because we disagreed- he seems to think soccer is the wussiest of sports and is only for nerds, which doesn't make sense to me at all, because (while it is probable that soccer players have a higher IQ than football or baseball players) they have always seemed like the coolest sport players there are. This might be because my concept of "cool" is perhaps different than the mainstream, but so is Chuck Klosterman's, so I don't know why we must disagree so strongly on this topic- or because I simply did not care enough about the topic he was covering to get it (NBA jokes, etc).

Anyway, so it was funny, but also sort of limited in scope, because it was published what, like 2003, and already some things are dated. He spends a large amount of time comparing Pamela Anderson to Marilyn Monroe, and I'm all "Well, sort of, maybe. But isn't Anna Nicole Smith a much better comparison, even pre-sad untimely death?" I guess it doesn't really matter to Chuck, as he prefaced the book with a page or two about time and truth and his initial worry that his book would stop being pertinent after a few years. He concluded (and I agree) that something can be true in the time that you are experiencing it. For a time, the truth of Pamela Anderson being the equivalent of Norma Jean made sense. And any kind of analyzation of pop culture has top be rooted in the moment, because that is what pop culture is all about. So for that, I enjoyed it.

And I also am jealous of people who can just pull out the perfect hilarious reference to a person/movie/character/phenomenon at the right time, and this book was full of that. I am someone who freezes up during Mad Libs, so people (C.L., you are someone who comes to mind as being particularly gifted in the snappy and appropriately funny reference area) whose brains know exactly where to reach in comparing one thing to another impress me. Really, Klosterman could have picked any doe-eyed sensitive apex-of-man icon to blame for the fact that no realistic love can last. But he the fact that picked the John Cusack (or the characters that J.C. embodies) is just perfect. Although it might currently be Edward Cullen or some shit, that is a good joke. Hell, I know I've wished John Cusack (or Lloyd Dobbler, more accurately) would materialize in front of me before.

Reading nonfiction is interesting and different, but he did that thing that David Sedaris does at the end of each essay where everything is wrapped up so perfectly in this bow tie sentence that makes you laugh and go "aww" at the same time. Sometimes my writing ends up like that, but a lot of times it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, and I wonder if it really worked out that beautifully in real life, or if the facts got twisted to make it end so perfectly. And that is one of my whole battles with nonfiction.


Sorry I'm so late, BTW. I had a bout of not caring about anything, and now that I am back I have like 4 books to write about.

Pages: 272
Time: Mar 8-11
Rating: 7.5

3. Coraline, by Neil Gaiman

Coraline was my first Neil Gaiman book. I'd always heard of him, but never wanted to read any of his stuff because I think I lumped him in with Stephen King, which was probably not the right thing to do. It was really interestingly written and very creepy. If I'd been in the intended age bracket when I read it I would probably still be having nightmares.

Coraline is a little girl leading a comfortable (but boring) little girl existence when she stumbles through a door into a world that is a lot like her own, only a little off. All of the characters from her regular life are distorted and seem, at first, to be happier versions of their real selves. Soon enough the differences become more than just the button eyes everyone has, and what starts out as harmless difference slowly slides into a life-or-death race for time against a creepy (and sort of sexist maybe in the GIMME MORE BABIES MORE MORE MORE BABIES! way)pseudo-mother.

What I liked about this book the most was the confrontation of the assumption that what you want and what you need are the same thing. Everyone seeming to have everything they want ends up coming off decidedly creepier than you might think. If the movie they made is anywhere as spine-tingly as the book, I will definitely go see it. I don't like thrillers or murder mysteries or anything like that. This book had some good, old fashioned otherworldly creepy that never felt forced or heavy handed.

I will probably want to read more Gaiman after this. Owen recommended the Graveyard Book. Any others?

Pages: 192
Time: Jan 19-22
Rating: 7.5
Also, sorry for taking so long to post this. I finished this book forever ago and am almost done with another one.

2. Persepolis, by Marjane Satrapi

Huzzah! I did not give up so soon! I have a more or less constant stream of quality YA lit coming at me from Owen's side of the library, so I was able to finish another one in a relatively timely manner. Sort of.

This is a graphic memoir that spans the childhood of the author. She lives in Iran during the Islamic revolution/Iran-Iraq war. This is another period of history I didn't previously know much about. Chances are, most of history is something I don't know much about. Ok, so that wasn't a very astute statement, but anyway, I was occasionally confused, as it's one of those books where the protagonist is a kid who tells things as they understood them at the time, not with the clarifying benefit of hindsight.

I really liked the hearing of the horrors of war through her lens of inexperience, though, despite the confusion. It reminded me of what I've heard about that Foer book about 9/11 that I haven't read. Occasionally it did leave me wanting more information, but when things got intense (which happened all the time- you barely have time to get to know a few of the characters before they get killed off), it is sobering to watch these things happen through the eyes of a child.

This is one of those books that makes me wish I knew more than 1.5 languages, because I could tell there were things lost in the translation from the original French. Graphic novels are full of short, sometimes disjointed sentences anyway, and the translation was sometimes awkward, but that isn't the book's fault.

I didn't particularly identify with Marjane much, as I was not a particularly political kid. I did think she was pretty endearing, though, mouthing off to her extremist teachers and talking to both God and Marx at night.

The art was cool, too. It would be pretty disappointing to read a graphic novel and not like the art, actually, but I found the simplicity of the black and white appealing. I watched most of the movie version of this book the other day, also. The movie also covered the sequel to the book I read, but I've not read that yet. The movie's art was the same as in the book, except moving, so I liked watching it a lot. The plot moved kind of fast and left things out, which was too bad, but that usually happens with film adaptations anyway. The swirly prettiness of the movie mostly made up for it, but not entirely. I want to read the second one now, but I probably won't do it right away.

I spend a lot of time griping about American politics. So yeah, a lot of things are wildly messed up in my country. But when you're reading about people getting arrested for having playing cards and executed for possibly being maybe a little Communist, and you yourself live in a country in which people can manufacture and sell presidential shaped sex toys on the internet, it sort of puts things into perspective.

Pages: 153
Time: Jan 14-18
Rating: 7

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz

So mostly I started wanting to do this review thing because of how much I was liking this book. Now that I have finished reading it and am sitting here in front of a computer, fingers hovering over the keyboard, I am finding I don't really know what to say. I got this book for Christmas from my Mom, and started reading it shortly after New Years.

This book was so many things at once. It is, on the surface, the story of Oscar, the overweight "ghetto nerd," who spends his time watching Dr. Who, reading and rereading Tolkien, writing page after page of fantasy fiction that never takes him anywhere, and falling in love with any beautiful, unattainable girl he meets along the way. The book follows him through his life from his childhood to his death, narrated by Yunior, his only real friend. It is much more than that, though, because it is also the story of his mother's childhood and youth (or loss of, more like) in the Dominican Republic and his sister's life in the states and in the DR. All three of their stories weave seamlessly (too much cloth metaphor? sorry) in and out of each other, and all of it within the backdrop of Trujillo era Dominican Republic. I didn't know much about that part of history before reading this book, but the pages are covered in footnotes (also written in Yunior's regular street-kid-with-a-vocabulary style) detailing the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo, and the overwhelmingly totality of his effect on the country at that time (and after, through the "fuku" curse that supposedly followed those who opposed him).

Junot Díaz mixes rich, tragic history and the lonesome ache of being too dorky to get laid with such deftness that I am having a hard time picking a passage to type in here. Nothing can stand out when everything is written so vibrantly. here is a link to a summary, actually, so only read the first few pages of it, if you don't want to be spoiled.
The thing that impresses me the most about this book is that, at first, it seems that Oscar's life is far from what you'd think of as wondrous. From his obesity and his devastating lack of social grace or way with women to his general apathy when it came to doing anything about it, his life was not much of a wonder. In contrast, the chapters following the lives of his mother, grandfather and sister are full of guts and action and general stuff stories are made of. In the end, though, it is the realization that his story is inexorably tangled in the unending cycles of fuku and zafa (curse and countercurse) of the previous generations that makes him wondrous. What are we but the shadows of our forefathers?

I really don't have anything negative to say about this book. You should probably read it. It might help to be semi-competent in Spanish or dorkenise, in order to catch some references, but I doubt the effect will be much diminished if you are not. He really catches the astounding importance and still the smallness of existing.

Pages: 335, but full of things you can't even begin to skim
Time: Jan 1-Jan 12
Rating: 9