Mini Review - Inkheart Trilogy by Cornelia Funke

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Once upon a time, I went down to my local Indie bookstore to find a birthday gift for my mom. After roaming around the place for a good hour ( I can never spend less than an hour in a bookstore), I took a pile of books up to the desk and asked the clerk's opinion on them, telling her a bit about my mom's taste in literature. Inkheart was among the books in that pile, and it was the first one that she grabbed. She looked at it in disdain. "I definitely wouldn't pick this one," she told me. "I didn't like it at all."
"Really?" I was surprised. "I've heard such good things about it."
She shrugged. "I thought that it was awful. Really awful. Of course, the book was originally written in another language. German, I think. Perhaps there was something lost in the translation."
So I put down Inkheart that day, got my mom a book by Fablehaven author Brandon Mull, instead, and Inkheart got bumped a few spaces down on my TBR list.

I should never have listened to the clerk that day, even if she HAD been a reliable source in the past, and has continued to be a reliable source even now.

It makes me wonder. What else have I missed out on based on a bad review from a trusted source?

Because I have since read all three books, and fallen in love with them. I now consider this one of my very favorite fantasy series. The child in me identifies with Meggie, the girl who lives more fully inside of her books than she does in the physical world. Mo and Dustfinger have joined the ranks of my most beloved fictional characters. This is a series that I absolutely MUST own, so that I can share it with my children in years to come.















The Good
Wonderfully imaginative. A fair mix of happiness and sorrow. Fabulous characters.

The Bad
the last book in the series requires the most suspension of belief. It feels as though rules are broken too often, as though absolutely anything goes and what's to stop the story from careening off of the page completely?


But overall I love the story, and I think it ends wonderfully.

My Rating

Read it. Read it read it read it.
I give it a 9/10

The Dystopian Challenge

Saturday, February 6, 2010

I've decided to join my very first blog challenge!

Dystopian novels are my favorite, and I just can't resist a good post-apocalyptic story. Some of my all-time favorites are The Road by Cormac McCarthy, The Giver by Lois Lowry, and Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. So I just couldn't resist the urge to join this challenge.
I'm going for level 3 - Junkee , so my goal is to read 20 books by August 24th, which is the release date for the 3rd book in the Hunger Games trilogy. (And if you haven't read The Hunger Games, I suggest that you do it!)
Here's my (tentative) list for the Challenge

1. The Knife of Never letting Go – Patrick Ness
2. The Ask and the Answer – Patrick Ness
3. Genesis – Bernard Beckett
4. How I live Now – Meg Rosoff
5. The Declaration – Gemma Malley
6. The Resistance – Gemma Malley
7. The Dead And the Gone – Susan Beth Pfeffer
8. This World we live in - Susan Beth Pfeffer
9. Bones of Faerie – Janni lee Simner
10. The Maze Runner - James Dashner
11. The Year of the Flood – Margaret Atwood
12. Battle Royal – Koushun Takami
13. The Adoration of Jenna Fox – Mary Pearson
14. Boneshaker – Cherie Priest
15. Uglies – Scott Westerfield
16. The Forest of Hands and Teeth – Carrie Ryan
17. The Dead Tossed Waves – Carrie Ryan
18. The Children of Men – P.D. James
19. Gone – Michael Grant
20. Hunger – Michael Grant
21. Neuromancer – William Gibson
22. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

This list is subject to change, as it depends on whether I can find many of these books at my local library, or borrow them from someone. But I'm pretty sure I'll be able to read 20 books without too much problem.
Good luck to everyone that's joining the challenge!

Book Review: Nectar in a Sieve

Sunday, January 31, 2010

(This post was supposed to go up on Saturday, but my Internet hasn't been working properly, and blogger hates me!)

Nectar in a Sieve by Kamala Markandaya

Plot Overview
When Rukmani is twelve years old she marries a man that she has never met. She moves away from the village where she grew up and becomes the wife of a tenant farmer named Nathan. Nathan is kind to her and their love for each other quickly grows into a strong, genuine bond. Rukmani respects him for his hard work and his skill at working the land, and Nathan respects Rukmani's ability to read and write ( skills that are not often found among the villagers), and her determination to learn the tasks required of a farmer's wife. Nathan has never learned to read or write, and as Rukmani's husband he has the right to forbid her from using these skills, but he never does. Instead, he praises her cleverness and calls her 'the best of wives.'
The main theme in the story is Hardship, and it comes in many forms: hunger, poverty, death, infertility, prostitution, infidelity. Day-to-day survival is often a struggle for Rukmani and her family.


The Good
Rukmani has an amazing fortitude, and she does her best to adapt to the situations that she faces. Instead of giving up, she chooses to 'bend like the grass, that you do not break.' Through every hardship she continues to hope and plan for the future. She says to herself 'and what if we gave in to our troubles at every step! We would be pitiable creatures indeed to be so weak, for is not a man’s spirit given to him to rise above his misfortunes?"
This was a lovely, well-written story, and Rukmani's faith was inspiring.

The Bad
Some will find this story too melodramatic for their tastes, as the majority of the book is focused on the hardships that the family faces. There is also little in the way of plot. The story is simply about the day-to-day survival of a family facing hard times. There is also very little character development. I would have liked to learn more about the personalities of Rukmani's children.

My Rating
I thought that the book was lovely, and often poetic. It was a simple story, told in simple language, but it left a lasting impression. 8/10

(P.S. sorry about the random bold script up there, but I don't know how to fix it. like I said earlier - Blogger hates me.)

Audiobook Review - The Palace of Illusions

Monday, October 12, 2009

The Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banarji Divakaruni is a retelling of an epic Indian poem called the Mahabharata. I've never read the Mahabharata, so I can't tell you whether or not it was a good retelling, but I definitely enjoyed the story. I would like to get my hands on a good translation of the Mahabharata now, so that I can compare them.
The Palace of Illusions follows the life of princess Panchaali. She is literally born from fire and told that she is destined to change the course of the world. She is determined to fulfill her destiny, but doesn't realize that she might not like the way this change is brought about. The funny thing is that when she does begin to change history, she doesn't seem to realize what she's doing.



The Good
I liked the star-crossed-lovers bit of the book, even though I could see the surprise ending coming from a mile away. There's just something about doomed romance that catches my attention in a story, as cheesy as it can be. And there were times when I thought Panchaali's inner dialogue on the matter was a bit much, but I can live with it.
I also liked the questions raised about fate, and whether you can change or fight your destiny. I thought it was interesting that Panchaali made mistakes even though she had been warned about them in advance.
The audiobook was read by Sneha Mathan, whose voice I loved. She did a wonderful job and had a wide range of voices and accents that she used, which was definitely an enormous help when it came to keeping the various characters straight.
The Bad
It was difficult to keep track of the characters, because there were so many of them, and many of the names were very similar. Not to mention that some of the characters went by more than one name. It got a bit confusing at times.
There were also many stories inside of stories, and the timeline was often a bit hazy. The narrator would often jump backward or forward in time, which I found irritating. I thought there was some very heavy-handed foreshadowing, as well.

The Ugly
I can't think of anything that I thought was really awful in the book. Some clumsy moments, a bit of heavy-handedness, but nothing terrible.

My Rating
7.5/10 - pretty good. I would definitely read another book by this author if I came across it.
I would like to find more good books based on Indian culture, so if you have any recommendations, let me know. But please, don't recommend anything like A Fine Balance. I think that was the most depressing book I've ever read. And on that note, I've noticed that there isn't as much of a focus on happy endings in other cultures as there seems to be in American culture. Do you agree?

Review- Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

I finally finished it! What (you may ask) took me so long? Well. It's not that the book was dull, exactly, but neither was it riveting, and I picked it up at a time when I had too many other things vying for my attention.
I mentioned before that the only reason I picked up Prodigal Summer was because I had been told that I MUST read The Poisonwood Bible. But when I stopped by my local library, this was the only Kingsolver book on the shelf.
...To be honest, I hope that The Poisonwood Bible is not as pretentious as this was.
So. let's sum it up:

The Good-
Now, I've got to admit that the writing was lovely. Kingsolver has a way with words, that much is apparent. The writing is really what redeemed the book in my eyes. I will also admit that I thought many of her ideas about man's impact on nature were interesting (though, at times, inaccurate) and I was glad to see how the seemingly unconnected storylines converged in the end. The story was really just one intricate web built of the characters' lives.

The Bad -
It seemed that every character in the book had a soapbox that they were standing on. They all wanted to preach at you about one thing or another. Kingsolver obviously has a very 'green' agenda that she's trying to push with this book, and I found her delivery a bit annoying. I'm all for exploring serious issues through fiction, but you don't have to do it by hitting me over the head with a hammer again and again and again. Yes! We understand what you're trying to say! Pesticide bad! Hunters bad! logging bad! Enough already.
My other problem was that the only openly religious character in the book was a flat, stereotypical boor. It felt as if his only purpose in the story was to show the arrogance and self-righteousness of Christians. He couldn't ever seem to formulate a coherent argument. Actually, neither could any of the other 'antagonists' in the book, now that I think about it.

The Ugly -
There was one really weird sex dream. There was also a ridiculously awkward bit where a recently widowed woman admits that she's attracted to her 17 year old nephew. Um. Ewww. There was actually quite a lot of frank discussion about sex in the book, so definitely don't pick it up if that sort of thing bothers you.

My Rating -
Eh. This is a hard one, because the writing really was lovely, but I didn't care much for the book overall. Overall I'd give it 6/10 but I think that Kingsolver's prose deserves closer to an 8/10
Not the dialogue, mind you, just the descriptions.