Booking Through Thursday: Flaps

I've decided to join in on the Booking Through Thursday meme that I've seen on so many other blogs. For other responses to today's question, go here.


Suggested by Prairie Progressive:
Do you read the inside flaps that describe a book before or while reading it?

My answer: Yes, I read the flaps/backs of books before I read a book. If it strikes my fancy, I'll pick it up. If not, I won't waste my time with it, especially since there are so many other books out there I could be reading!

What about you? Do you read the flaps/backs of books?

Review: Rabbit Is Rich by John Updike

Title: Rabbit Is Rich
Author: John Updike
Pages: 432
Challenges: 451 Challenge; Read 'n' Review Challenge

From Wikipedia:
This third novel of Updike's Rabbit series examines the life of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a one-time high school basketball star, who has reached a paunchy middle-age without relocating from Brewer, Pennsylvania, the poor, fictional city of his birth. Harry and Janice, his wife of twenty-two years, live comfortably, having inherited her late father's Toyota dealership. He is indeed rich, but Harry's persistent problems — his wife's drinking, his troubled son's schemes, his libido, and spectres from his past — complicate life. Having achieved a lifestyle that would have embarrassed his working-class parents, Harry is not greedy, but neither is he ever quite satisfied. Harry has become somewhat enamored of a country-club friend's young wife. He also has to deal with the indecision and irresponsibility of Nelson, his son, who is a student at Kent State University. Throughout the book, Harry wonders about his former lover Ruth, and whether she had ever given birth to their child.

My Two Cents:

While Rabbit Is Rich is much better than Rabbit Redux (See my review of that here), both in characterization and story, there's just something about the sequels to Rabbit, Run that irks me.

Where Rabbit was disturbing in an overly voyeristic and sexual way in Redux, I found him to be much more enjoyable this time around. He was actually funny and somewhat sympathetic, something I hadn't felt for him since Run. In fact, I actually liked Rabbit this time around.

Nelson, his son, however, I wanted to slap across the room and into next Tuesday. He was whiny, lazy and spoiled. I had to keep reminding myself that he was 23 instead of 13 because he acted as if he was nothing more than a put-upon teenager (You all know the type!). He quits college because it doesn't "do anything" for him, and thinks he can just come home and work at the car lot his grandmother and parents co-own. Janice and Bessie, her mother, try to push Rabbit to give Nelson "a place" there, because it's what Janice's father would have wanted, even though he is nowhere near ready for the responsibility. He whines, complains and bullies his way onto the car lot against Rabbit's better judgment, and eventually Rabbit's skepticism is rewarded.

Updike is still that fabulous, present-tense writer he's always been. I especially liked his description of Janice and Rabbit's plane ride to the Caribbean.

I know this is supposed to be an "everyman" kind of novel, and the characters aren't supposed to be heroic or really even likable, but I still have a hard time with a novel in which I hate nearly every character (With the exception, this time, of Rabbit). It just doesn't do much for me.

My rating: 6/10

Review: Swimsuit by James Patterson

Title: Swimsuit
Author: James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
Pages: 391
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (#6 - Genre Switch-Up); Read 'n' Review Challenge

From Publishers Weekly:

A serial killer with an urge to break into print propels this thriller from bestseller Patterson and collaborator Paetro (4th of July). Ben Hawkins, a former L.A. cop turned reporter and author, travels to Hawaii to look into the disappearance of model Kim McDaniels, who has fallen victim to a sadistic fiend who calls himself Henri Benoit. Ben meets with Kim's distraught parents, but the investigation soon runs into dead ends, even as the body count rises. Back in Los Angeles, Henri gets in touch with Ben, and offers the story of his life and the reasons he continues with his murderous spree. As part of the deal, Henri asks the reporter to write his tell-all book. Ben can't refuse given the killer's threat to his life as well as his girlfriend's. In just one of many clever twists, Henri proves to be the consummate storyteller. Patterson fans will devour this one in a single sitting.

My Two Cents:

Since this book fulfills the "genre switch-up" portion of the TAC Challenge, I will just start out by saying I am not a fan of thrillers. Never have been and never will be.

I know James Patterson is a really popular author (If he weren't, he wouldn't come out with a novel every other month! But I digress...), and he can tell a good story, but there were some glaringly annoying things about this book. Mainly, I wasn't too fond of the way his main character, Ben Hawkins, wasn't particularly consistent.

Sure, people have their public personas, the ones we show when we're on-duty at work, but the thought process going on behind all that doesn't change that dramatically. Or, it shouldn't. Ben is all business while at work, and it shows in his narration -- Taught sentences, quick images. Then, when he talks about his girlfriend, Amanda, it's suddenly a big Ben puddle of love. His thoughts get sloppy and he fawns constantly. Yeah, you could chalk it up to the whole "crazy in love" thing, but it bugged me.

That being said, this was an engaging story. If I had been able to sit down and read it straight through, I think I could have pounded it out in a couple of hours. As it is, I finished it in less than a whole day. And the psychopathic killer, Henri Benoit, is very believable as a delusional killer. He really did creep me out.

I like Patterson's young adult series, Maximum Ride and Daniel X, and I went into this book hoping to see much of the same funny, snappy narration. I didn't really get that, and I was disappointed. But, I do have to give the man a lot of credit: He can tell a really compelling story.

Part of my prejudice against thrillers comes in that they are just so popular. They're full of action and suspense, so they make great movies. I prefer a little more cerebral work with my reading, thank you, so I have never thought twice about picking up a thriller. They fly off the shelves at my library, but I usually just smile and say I haven't read it when someone asks.

If you're a fan of thrillers, you'll love this. As for me, I think I'll stick to Patterson's young adult series and steer clear of anything with the thriller label from now on.

My rating: 5/10

Reviews: The Lightning Thief and The Book Thief

Note: I am writing two reviews in one post today because they fall into the same category in the Take Another Chance Challenge.

Title: The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians Book 1)
Author: Rick Riordan
Pages: 400
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (#9 - Same Word, Different Book); Read 'n' Review Challenge

From School Library Journal:

At the outset of this fast-paced tale by Rick Riordan (Hyperion/Miramax, 2005), it would seem that Percy Jackson is just another New York kid diagnosed with ADHD, who has good intentions, a nasty stepfather, and a long line of schools that have rejected him. The revelation of his status as half-blood offspring of one of the Greek gods is nicely packaged, and it's easy to believe that Mount Olympus, in modern times, has migrated to the 600th floor of the Empire State Building (the center of Western civilization) while the door to Hades can be found at DOA Recording Studio, somewhere in LA. With his new friends, a disguised satyr, and the half-blood daughter of Athena, Percy sets out across the country to rectify a feud between Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. Along the way they must cope with the Furies, Medusa, motorcycle thug Aires, and various other immortals. Mythology fans will love this take and kids who haven't been inculcated with the Classical canon will learn aspects of it here while having no trouble following a rollicking good–and modern–adventure.

My Two Cents:

This book was such a refreshing change from a lot of young adult literature; it was a HUGE breath of fresh air. Most young adult books either have pathetically one-dimensional characters (I'm looking at you, Twilight) or their characters are stereotypically awful kids (Gossip Girl, et al) that no amount of great storytelling is going to make up for it.


Riordan, however, manages to not only make Percy Jackson, a demigod (But I won't tell you whose son he is!), a likable character with just the right amount of teenaged sass (He knows who to mouth off to, but shows proper respect to his mother), but he also tells an enthralling story filled with hilarious allusions to Greek mythology.


The writing here is also solid, neither talking down to the target audience nor too over their heads, and Riordan sucks you in from the very beginning. I can't wait to read the rest of the series.


My rating: 8/10


Title: The Book Thief
Author: Markus Zusak
Pages: 550
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (#9 - Same Word, Different Book); 451 Challenge; Read 'n' Review Challenge


From School Library Journal:

Zusak has created a work that deserves the attention of sophisticated teen and adult readers. Death himself narrates the World War II-era story of Liesel Meminger from the time she is taken, at age nine, to live in Molching, Germany, with a foster family in a working-class neighborhood of tough kids, acid-tongued mothers, and loving fathers who earn their living by the work of their hands. The child arrives having just stolen her first book–although she has not yet learned how to read–and her foster father uses it, The Gravediggers Handbook, to lull her to sleep when shes roused by regular nightmares about her younger brothers death. Across the ensuing years of the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Liesel collects more stolen books as well as a peculiar set of friends: the boy Rudy, the Jewish refugee Max, the mayors reclusive wife (who has a whole library from which she allows Liesel to steal), and especially her foster parents. Zusak not only creates a mesmerizing and original story but also writes with poetic syntax, causing readers to deliberate over phrases and lines, even as the action impels them forward. Death is not a sentimental storyteller, but he does attend to an array of satisfying details, giving Liesels story all the nuances of chance, folly, and fulfilled expectation that it deserves. An extraordinary narrative.

My Two Cents:

Wow. This was one powerful book.

When I first began reading it, I had read several glowing reviews touting this book as "life-changing," but I wasn't so sure. I was intrigued, especially since the book is narrated by Death, so I kept plugging along.

Then, I fell in love with Liesel. She is one of those adolescent characters who is wise beyond her years and that I always wish I had known when I was a kid. She is strong, mostly by virtue of her situation, and her tenacity pays off when she learns to read and write through a series of late-night sessions with her foster father, Hans.

Hans is another character I simply adored. He has a deep-reaching kindness in his heart, a love of music and a tender nature that anyone would be lucky to have in a father or friend. He's also one of those people who is so committed to doing what is right, he is willing to put himself and his entire family in danger by harboring a Jew in his basement.

I could gush all day about the characters in this book, or Zusak's unconventional narrative style, but I am still in a little bit of shock from the incredibly emotional ending. I kid you not, I was sitting in the library with tears streaming down my face, choking back sobs, as I neared the end of this book. It's that good.

My rating: 10/10 

Review: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Title: The House of Mirth
Author: Edith Wharton
Pages: 320
Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge


Amazon.com Product Description:

The House of Mirth tells the story of Lily Bart, aged 29, beautiful, impoverished and in need of a rich husband to safeguard her place in the social elite, and to support her expensive habits - her clothes, her charities and her gambling. Unwilling to marry without both love and money, Lily becomes vulnerable to the kind of gossip and slander which attach to a girl who has been on the marriage market for too long. Wharton charts the course of Lily's life, providing, along the way, a wider picture of a society in transition, a rapidly changing New York where the old certainties of manners, morals and family have disappeared and the individual has become an expendable commodity.


My Two Cents:

Although I love Classics and read them more often then contemporary fiction, I'm not usually one for American fiction. I'm not quite sure why, perhaps it's just the latent Anglophile in me, but I've never much liked many American authors (Although I have found favorite authors in F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sylvia Plath and, now, Edith Wharton), so I always approach an American Classic with a bit of trepidation.


This book, however, drew me in right away.

I instantly liked Lily Bart, even when she seemed a bit shallow and dense. She's like America's version of Mrs. Dalloway -- A woman you don't think much about in passing because you think you know her just by looking at her, but there's something much more complex lurking beneath the surface.

Lily is one of those rare women in the late 19th century -- unmarried and in her late 20s. She begins the book planning to marry the puritanical Percy Gryce, a wealthy man with a large collection of Americana books handed down to him by his uncle -- but her penchant for gambling at bridge scares him off. In an attempt to earn more money (Lily's parents are both dead and neither was ever rich, but they taught her to live as if she was rich), Lily becomes embroiled with a "friend" who ultimately causes her downfall.

Wharton's writing just jumps off the page. I was able to see Lily and the others at every step of the way, right down to the last stitch of clothing. She also has the ability to make you feel sorry for Lily while, at the exact same time, mildly condemning her for her actions.

I'm not going to give away the ending here, but I will say that, even as surprising as it may seem, you will realize it was there, hiding beneath all the baubles and bridge games all along.

My rating: 9/10

Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry

Title: The Giver
Author: Lois Lowry
Pages: 192
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge (Challenge 4: Prize Winner Book - Newbery Medal, 1994); 451 Challenge; Read 'n' Review Challenge


From Publishers Weekly:

In the "ideal" world into which Jonas was born, everybody has sensibly agreed that well-matched married couples will raise exactly two offspring, one boy and one girl. These children's adolescent sexual impulses will be stifled with specially prescribed drugs; at age 12 they will receive an appropriate career assignment, sensibly chosen by the community's Elders. This is a world in which the old live in group homes and are "released"--to great celebration--at the proper time; the few infants who do not develop according to schedule are also "released," but with no fanfare. Lowry's development of this civilization is so deft that her readers, like the community's citizens, will be easily seduced by the chimera of this ordered, pain-free society. Until the time that Jonah begins training for his job assignment--the rigorous and prestigious position of Receiver of Memory--he, too, is a complacent model citizen. But as his near-mystical training progresses, and he is weighed down and enriched with society's collective memories of a world as stimulating as it was flawed, Jonas grows increasingly aware of the hypocrisy that rules his world. With a storyline that hints at Christian allegory and an eerie futuristic setting, this intriguing novel calls to mind John Christopher's Tripods trilogy and Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Match Girl. Lowry is once again in top form--raising many questions while answering few, and unwinding a tale fit for the most adventurous readers.

My two cents:

I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. From what I can tell, this book came out when I was in either third or fourth grade, and I would have been in the perfect target range for this book. I read Number the Stars with my class in fifth grade and loved it, but I don't know what kept me from reading The Giver as well.

This is one of those books that everyone should read. It has so many lessons on things we should never take for granted, but often do; on the importance of memory; and on how one person's bravery can change the world.

I will admit: I was crying from around page 50 on. I had a feeling that "releasing" wasn't as joyful and great as it was made out to be, but that made it no less shocking when Lowry finally shows us a release. I think I bawled for five minutes straight, put the book down and tried to regain my composure before someone asked me what was wrong.

The best juvenile and young adult books speak not only to their target audience, but also resonate deeply with adults. This is definitely one of those books. I now want to purchase a copy and keep it in my house for when I have children. No one should miss this book.

My rating: 10/10

Review: The Year of Fog by Michelle Richmond

Title: The Year of Fog
Author: Michelle Richmond
Pages: 369
Challenges: Take Another Chance Challenge ("Read Your Doppelganger"); Read 'n' Review Challenge





From Publishers Weekly:

In this spare page-turner, Richmond (Dream of the Blue Room) draws complex tensions from a the set setup of a child gone missing. Photographer Abby Mason stops on San Francisco's Ocean Beach with her fiancé Jake's six-year-old daughter, Emma, to photograph a seal pup; by the time Abby looks up, Emma has disappeared. Abby, who narrates, flashes back to her growing relationship with high school teacherJake, and sketches its transformation over the course of the search. Emma's mother, Lisbeth (who abandoned the family three years earlier), wants back into Jake's life—even as he is giving up hope on finding Emma. Abby delves into the bereft missing children subculture and into the vagaries of memory. A hypnotist helps Abby unearth promising details of that singular last day with Emma, but the information requires major follow-through from Abby. The book's twist on missing child stories is wholly effective. Richmond develops the principle characters, and Abby's dysfunctional parents make for sharply drawn secondaries, as do local surfers. The book is beautifully paced—one feels Abby's clarity of purpose from the first page. The sure-handed denouement reflects the focus and restraint that Richmond brings to bear throughout.

My two cents:

I chose this book because its author, Michelle Richmond, shares my first name. And, it looked interesting.

I had no idea I was in for one of the most intense reads I've experienced in a long time. It wasn't intense in the thriller kind of way, or the challenging-to-read kind of way, but intense in the, "I-can't-imagine-this-happening-to-me-OMG-I-have-to-find-out-what-happens" kind of way.

The book begins with 6-year-old Emma's disappearance and follows Abby, Emma's father's fiance, through the next year and her search for Emma. It captured me from the first page. Perhaps it's the fact that missing children capture the public's attention on a fairly regular basis, as the situation is a parent's worst nightmare. Perhaps it's Richmond's writing style. Either way, I didn't want to put this book down.

I agonized along with Abby through her long hours of searching and wandering the streets of San Francisco on the ever-dimming hopes that she would find Emma waiting there. I thrilled as she found the possibility of a new lead in the case. I watched as she tried, desperately, to remember every small detail of that foggy morning on the beach.

The sign of a good book, to me, lies in the characters. Do you care about them? Does it matter what happens to them? If you don't, that's usually the sign of a bad book (Although there are a few exceptions). This novel has characters I cared about in spades.

Abby, of course, was the character about whom I cared the most, as she is the narrator. I cared what happened to Emma and Jake, too, as they were directly related to the disappearance. But there were also several peripheral characters of whom I grew fond, and, if you read this book, you'll meet them, too.

This book, obviously, has a lot to do with memory. Abby reads constantly about the attainment of memories and those who have tried to recall past memories. She not only deals with her memories of Emma's disappearance, but also many memories of her life before meeting Emma and her father, Jake.

Richmond has a talent for details and a clear writing style that helps this novel flow along. Sometimes, I would pick it up and in no time flat, realize I had read another 50 pages. That's a sign of an engrossing novel, in my book. And, it's not a difficult read, by any stretch of the imagination.

I would recommend this book with no reservations, although you may find yourself being much more wary out in public with children after reading it.

My rating: 8/10