2014-2 Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Author: Laini Taylor
Title: Daughter of Smoke and Bone
Themes: family, belonging, love

Plot: From Amazon "Around the world, black handprints are appearing on doorways, scorched there by winged strangers who have crept through a slit in the sky.

In a dark and dusty shop, a devil's supply of human teeth grown dangerously low.

And in the tangled lanes of Prague, a young art student is about to be caught up in a brutal otherwordly war.

Meet Karou. She fills her sketchbooks with monsters that may or may not be real; she's prone to disappearing on mysterious "errands"; she speaks many languages--not all of them human; and her bright blue hair actually grows out of her head that color. Who is she? That is the question that haunts her, and she's about to find out.

When one of the strangers--beautiful, haunted Akiva--fixes his fire-colored eyes on her in an alley in Marrakesh, the result is blood and starlight, secrets unveiled, and a star-crossed love whose roots drink deep of a violent past. But will Karou live to regret learning the truth about herself?"

My Thoughts: First of all. I found Karou obnoxiously perfect....almost manic pixie dream girl status with the incredible artistic talent, blue hair, beauty, etc. But at the same time rather flat as a character. There were a few times I liked her and wanted something good to happen...but most of the time I was wondering when we would get to the cliched love triangle or love at first sight or whatever.

Taylor did a great job building the elseworld with chimera and seraphim duking it out through eternity. I felt like the little details built into that story were rather fascinating, and I adored the chimera characters who raised Karou-they were absolutely fantastic.

SPOILERS AHEAD

The love angle with Akiva was also a little flat. Taylor tried to make it less "omg love at first sight" by building into the reincarnation thing...but it just seemed a little...silly. I doubt I'll continue the trilogy (?) but this was a fast, light read.

Rating: **

2014-1 The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray

Author: Mitzi Szereto
Title: The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray, a Novel
Themes: immortality, youth, searching for new physical experiences, violence, rape, sex, debasement

Plot: From Amazon "Inspired by Oscar Wilde’s classic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, Mitzi Szereto’s Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray continues where Wilde left off with the Faustian tale of a man of eternal youth and great physical beauty who lives a life of corruption, decadence and hedonism. The story begins in the bordellos of Jazz-Age Paris, moving to the opium dens of Marrakesh and the alluring anonymity of South America. In his pursuit of sensation and carnal thrills, Dorian’s desires turn increasingly extreme and he leaves behind yet more devastation and death. He ultimately settles in present-day New Orleans, joining with a group of like-minded beings known as The Night People. They inadvertently return to Dorian his humanity when he falls in love with a young woman he rescues from becoming their victim. She will be his redemption, but she will also be his final curse."

My Thoughts: Szereto's The Wild Passions of Dorian Gray was a surprising "sequel" to Oscar Wilde's classic. I was not expecting erotica. I was certainly not expecting such violent erotica. Of course I can see where the author was coming  from with this idea, and I can see how it could be a logical continuation of Dorian Gray's story. I'm not sure it made for a great story, and the violence made me extremely uncomfortable through the entire book.

I appreciated the different locations Dorian has to run to to escape anyone noticing his eternal youth (Paris, Marrakesh, Brazil, etc.) and how quickly the decades seem to pass for him.

I did find the ending rather abrupt and less than convincing. It seemed a rather forced end, as though the author simply did not know how to wrap up Dorian Gray's escapades.

Rating: 1/2 star....

2014

I read 120 books last year. And only managed 8 posts. Sad! I doubt this year will be more productive, but let's try.

The Wet and the Dry by Lawrence Osborne

Title: The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey
Author: Lawrence Osborne
Themes: travel, alcoholism
Rating: **1/2

Plot: From Amazon.com "Drinking alcohol: a beloved tradition, a dangerous addiction, even “a sickness of the soul” (as once described by a group of young Muslim men in Bali). In his wide-ranging travels, Lawrence Osborne—a veritable connoisseur himself—has witnessed opposing views of alcohol across cultures worldwide, compelling him to wonder: is drinking alcohol a sign of civilization and sanity, or the very reverse? Where do societies and their treatment of alcohol fall on the spectrum between indulgence and restraint?

These questions launch the author on an audacious journey, from the Middle East, where drinking is prohibited, to the West, w

An immersing, controversial, and often irreverent travel narrative, The Wet and the Dry offers provocative, sometimes unsettling insights into the deeply embedded conflicts between East and West, and the surprising influence of drinking on the contemporary world today."
here it is an important—yet perhaps very often a ruinous—part of everyday life. Beginning in the bar of a luxury hotel in Milan, Osborne then ventures to the Hezbollah-threatened vineyards of Lebanon; a landmark pub in London; the dangerous drinking dens on the Malaysian border; the only brewery in the alcohol-hostile country of Pakistan; and Oman, where he faces the absurd challenge of finding a bottle of champagne on New Year’s Eve.  Amid his travels, Osborne unravels the stories of alcoholism in his own family, and reflects on ramifications of alcohol consumption in his own life.

My Thoughts: Osborne's short memoir on Drinking, predominately in the Middle East and North Africa, is rather rambling but full of interesting historical and societal facts. I enjoyed the sporadic inclusions of alcohol-in-history that Osborne peppers through his travels through the Middle East-searching for illegal alcohol.

Osborne relates his own alcoholism, although the reader is never quite sure how he truly feels about it. Even as he describes the deaths of loved ones who abused alcohol, he never quite connects it to his own alcoholism. He admits that Islamic countries have valid reasons for creating "dry" states, but cannot quite escape the lure of drunkenness...for even a single day apparently. As another reviewer says, it is very morally ambiguous. He seems to worship alcohol, and this is some feeble attempt to praise it's benefits against Islamic practices.

While I found this meandering memoir rather entertaining most of the time, and the "non-fiction/historical" facts absolutely fascinating; I must admit I found the "memoir"-ish parts rather boring and sometimes downright condescending (pg. 32 comes to mind). I think Osborne would make a wonderful writer of social/historical texts, but in this tome I found him self-indulgent, condescending, and plain unpleasant. I have no qualms with alcohol, but the way he glorifies the drunken state rubbed me the wrong way.

Osborne, Lawrence. The Wet and the Dry: A Drinker's Journey. New York: Crown, 2013.

Andrew's Brain by E. L. Doctorow

Title: Andrew's Brain
Author: E. L. Doctorow
Themes: memory, relative reality, stream of consciousness, love, responsibility, sanity
Rating: ***

Plot: From Amazon.com "This brilliant new novel by an American master, the author of Ragtime, The Book of Daniel, Billy Bathgate, and The March, takes us on a radical trip into the mind of a man who, more than once in his life, has been the inadvertent agent of disaster.

Speaking from an unknown place and to an unknown interlocutor, Andrew is thinking, Andrew is talking, Andrew is telling the story of his life, his loves, and the tragedies that have led him to this place and point in time. And as he confesses, peeling back the layers of his strange story, we are led to question what we know about truth and memory, brain and mind, personality and fate, about one another and ourselves. Written with psychological depth and great lyrical precision, this suspenseful and groundbreaking novel delivers a voice for our times—funny, probing, skeptical, mischievous, profound."

My Thoughts: Doctorow gives us a bit of a puzzling tale in Andrew's Brain. This is essentially a monologue between Andrew (who sometimes refers to himself in third person) and what the reader eventually assumes is a mandated therapist. How and why Andrew ended up in this conversation is never explicitly stated...in fact very little is explicitly stated, or linearly stated. This is a rambling story from a troubled man who provides his stream of consciousness. Andrew "The Pretender" seems to bring disaster with him, which provides some interesting anecdotes but leaves the reader wondering what the novel was all about come the concluding paragraph.

Similar Reads: White Noise by Don Delillo, Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger

Doctorow, E. L. Andrew's Brain. New York: Random House, 2014.

Top Ten Books I'd Recommend To X Person

This week's Top Ten is a list of books I would recommend to...a type of person of my choosing! So here are ten books I would recommend to lovers of magical realism....which I have been loving for a few years now.

According to wikipedia: "Magic realism or magical realism is a genre where magic elements are a natural part in an otherwise mundane, realistic environment.^[1] Although it is most commonly used as a literary genre, magic realism also applies to film and the visual arts."

1. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
2. Galore by Michael Crummey
3. Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan
4. A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates
5. Of Bees and Mist by Erick Setiawan
6. The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly
7. Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami

Galore by Michael Crummey

Title: Galore
Author: Michael Crummey
Themes: generational epic, love, family, poverty, small community relationships
Rating: ****

Plot: From Amazon.com "Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Caribbean & Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award; Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Book Award, and the Winterset Award

When a whale beaches itself on the shore of the remote coastal town of Paradise Deep, the last thing any of the townspeople expect to find inside it is a man, silent and reeking of fish, but remarkably alive. The discovery of this mysterious person, soon christened Judah, sets the town scrambling for answers as its most prominent citizens weigh in on whether he is man or beast, blessing or curse, miracle or demon.

Though Judah is a shocking addition, the town of Paradise Deep is already full of unusual characters. King-me Sellers, self-appointed patriarch, has it in for an inscrutable woman known only as Devine’s Widow, with whom he has a decades-old feud. Her granddaughter, Mary Tryphena, is just a child when Judah washes ashore, but finds herself tied to him all her life in ways she never expects. Galore is the story of the saga that develops between these families, full of bitterness and love, spanning two centuries.

With Paradise Deep, award-winning novelist Michael Crummey imagines a realm where the line between the everyday and the otherworldly is impossible to discern. Sprawling and intimate, stark and fantastical, Galore is a novel about the power of stories to shape and sustain us."

My Thoughts: I love the rather "tall tale"-ish feel of this generational epic, which spans from the early 19th century to World War I. It can border on the surreal while still offering a gritty and realistic portrayal of a hard-scrabble "frontier" fishing village in Newfoundland. Struggles between religious denominations, families, and employers/employees highlight the very real struggles of the people in Paradise Deep. Some may be off-put by the lack of linear plot or main character, but Galore is still a compelling read and I highly recommend it.

Similar Reads: A Bloodsmoor Romance by Joyce Carol Oates, Ice Land by Betsy Tobin, Brides of Rollrock Island by Margo Lanagan

Crummey, Michael. Galore. New York: Other Press, 2011.