Review: Sea Glass by Anita Shreve

Title: Sea Glass

Author: Anita Shreve


Pages: 376

Source: The library where I work

Rating: 10/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge; 451 Challenge

First Sentence: "Honora sets the cardboard suitcase on the slab of granite."

Summary (From book flap):

It is a house on the beach. Honora doesn't mind renting -- despite its age and all its flaws, the old house is the perfect place for a new marriage. She and Sexton throw themselves into their new life together. Each morning, Honora collects sea glass washed up on the shore, each piece carrying a different story in its muted hues.

Sexton finds a way to buy the house, but his timing is perfectly wrong. The economy takes a sickening plunge, and as financial pressures mount, Honora begins to see how little she knows this man she has married -- and to realize just how threatening the world outside her front door can be.

Like those translucent shards that Honora finds on the beach, Sea Glass is layered with the textures, colors, and voices of another time. There is Vivian, an irreverent Boston socialite who becomes Honora's closest friend even as she rejects every form of convention. McDermott, a man who works in a nearby mill, presses Honora's deepest notions of trust -- even as he embroils her in a dangerous dispute. And there's Alphonse, a boy whose openness becomes the bond that holds these people together as their world is flying apart.

My Two Cents:

This was my first experience with Anita Shreve, and I can definitely say it will not be my last. Unfortunately, the rest of my book club didn't feel the same way. Of the four of us who were able to make it to the meeting, two hadn't finished it and one didn't like the book. Oh, well.

Shreve's writing is really high-caliber. She paints a picture, not only of the people about whom you're reading, but also of the times. I felt as if I was really there on the beach, at the strike rallies, etc., when she described them. On the back of my copy of the book, she's compared to Edith Wharton and Henry James. I can't speak much for the James comparison (I've read so little of his work), but when it comes to the ability to make the reader see the time period and the characters, she's on par with Wharton.

I thought that the situation in which Shreve set this novel -- on the cusp of the Great Depression and in the midst of a labor strike -- was great. It really brought together characters from all social levels, from Vivian on the top all the way down to Alphonse and McDermott on the bottom, together and showed them reacting to things they had never experienced before.

With the exception of Sexton, I can't think of a character I didn't like. I think I saw some of myself in Honora, a woman who just wants to keep her nice home and have her quiet life and her husband. Vivian made me laugh often, and I loved how she finally hits her stride and steps outside her normal experiences to get involved with the striking workers. McDermott had to grow on me a bit. I didn't like him at first, but I really came to like and admire him as a character. My favorite character, though, was Alphonse. He's the little boy that everyone wishes they knew and I felt so sorry for him. He was, as someone at my book club said, the only character who had no control over his situation. I spent the entire book hoping things would turn out well for him.

The only problem I had with this book, and it was very minor, was that the chapters flipping among all the different characters for each chapter was a little disarming at first. It's not an unusual route to take in narrating a novel, but it just took a bit longer for me to get used to it because there were so many characters who had their own chapters. But, once I got past that, it was a really easy read.

Teaser Tuesday: March 30, 2010

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

Grab your current read

Open to a random page

Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page

BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)

Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Here are my teasers:

Dr. Seraphina turned to me and took my hand. "You were very brave, Celestine, and one day you will make an excellent angelologist." Angelology by Danielle Trussoni, p. 431 (Large print edition)










Joseph and Dietrich dying similar deaths had to mean that Dietrich was killed to keep him from discovering something (or to keep him from sharing something he'd already discovered). The two men didn't travel in the same circles, didn't have similar hobbies, hadn't joined the same clubs, so it was unlikely they'd attracted the killer's attention the same way. No Hope for Gomez! by Graham Parke, p. 113








"He is going to bring you up to my rooms, and I shall ask you for a true account of the matter. You must make a clean breast of it, for if you do I hope that I may be of use to you." "The Sign of Four," Sherlock Holmes Selected Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, p. 169

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?: March 29, 2010

Hosted by Sheila at One Person's Journey Through a World of Books, It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly bookish meme whereby bloggers share their reading for the past week.

This week, I read:

Sea Glass by Anita Shreve

Columbine by Dave Cullen

The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw

The Cricket on the Hearth by Charles Dickens

Gone With the Wind (Chapters 28-36) by Margaret Mitchell

This week, I reviewed (Click on the title to read my review):

A Century Turns by William J. Bennett

The River Kings' Road by Liane Merciel

The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Columbine by Dave Cullen


Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

This week, I'm reading:

Claude & Camille by Stephanie Cowell

Angelology by Danielle Trussoni


Sherlock Holmes Selected Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle


Gone With the Wind (Chapters 37-45) by Margaret Mitchell


This week, I hope to begin reading:

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

No Hope for Gomez by Graham Parke

What are you reading this week?

 

Review: Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

Title: Franny and Zooey

Author: J.D. Salinger

Pages: 202

Source: Personal library

Rating: 6/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "Though brilliantly sunny, Saturday morning was overcoat weather again, not just topcoat weather, as it had been all week and as everyone had hoped it would stay for the big weekend -- the weekend of the Yale game."

Summary (From The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature):

Volume containing two interrelated stories by J.D. Salinger, published in book form in 1961. The stories, originally published in The New Yorker magazine, concern Franny and Zooey Glass, two members of the family that was the subject of most of Salinger's short fiction. Franny is an intellectually precocious late adolescent who tries to attain spiritual purification by obsessively reiterating the "Jesus prayer" as an antidote to the perceived superficiality and corruptness of life. She subsequently suffers a nervous breakdown. In the second story, her next older brother, Zooey, attempts to heal Franny by pointing out that her constant repetition of the "Jesus prayer" is as self-involved and egotistical as the egotism against which she rails.

My Two Cents:

This one just didn't do it for me. It took me so long to read those 202 pages, it was ridiculous.

I've met the Glass family before, in a reading of Nine Stories in high school. I really don't remember much about them or the short stories, and I kind of wish I did. I feel as if it might have helped me out with Franny and Zooey in some way.

Much of my problem with this one, I think, was that nothing happens, not really. Sure, in the "Franny" section, there's lunch and some breaks to the bathroom, but the "Zooey" section is largely just a long conversation while he sits in the bath. I usually can handle nothing-happens novels, but this one was just too much for me.

I think a lot of my problem came in the almost relentless repetition of concepts. Franny and Zooey are incredibly bright, and their brothers fed their blossoming intellects with all sorts of precocious ideas; Franny thinks everyone else is shallow; Zooey thinks Franny is being dramatic and needs to snap out of it. Over and over and over. For 202 pages. If I hadn't spent my hard-earned money on this one, I would've thrown it out the truck window on the highway on the way to Nashville. Seriously.

I didn't like anyone in this book, and that's probably another thing that made this a difficult read for me. I thought Franny was just being over-dramatic, and I thought Zooey was a jerk. Plain and simple.

Don't get me wrong, Salinger was a great writer. The prose is about the only thing that propelled me through the book. I knew that there had to be some point to this, even if I wasn't really seeing much of one, because it was the Almighty Salinger. But his writing is as rich as ever.

I think I'll stick to a re-read of Catcher in the Rye if I want anymore Salinger. This was not for me.

Review: Columbine by Dave Cullen

Title: Columbine

Author: Dave Cullen

Pages: 358

Source: Interlibrary loan

Rating: 10/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "He told them he loved them."

Summary (From book flap):

On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. Their goal was simple: to blow up their school, Oklahoma City-style, and to leave "a lasting impression on the world." Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence -- irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting "another Columbine."

When we think of Columbine, we think of the Trench Coat Mafia; we think of Cassie Bernall, the girl we thought professed her faith before she was shot; and we think of the boy pulling himself out of a school window -- the whole world was watching him. Now, in a riveting piece of journalism nearly ten years in the making, comes the story none of us knew. In this revelatory book, Dave Cullen has delivered a profile of teenage killers that goes to the heart of psychopathology. He lays bare the callous brutality of mastermind Eric Harris and the quavering, suicidal Dylan Klebold, who went to the prom three days earlier and obsessed about love in his journal.

The result is an astonishing account of two good students with lots of friends, who were secretly stockpiling a basement cache of weapons, recording their raging hatred, and manipulating every adult who got in their way. They left signs everywhere, described by Cullen with a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists, and the boys' tapes and diaries, he gives the first complete account of the Columbine tragedy.

My Two Cents:

I wish I had a little more time between finishing this book and writing this review to allow what I read to sink in a bit, but I have to return it through the interlibrary loan system and must write my review now.

Disclaimer: There are a lot of conflicting reviews about the truth and validity of the things Cullen presents as fact in this book -- Some people claim that he bends the facts to fit his "mold" for the killers. I can't speak to a lot of these claims for several reasons: 1) I have not examined the evidence myself; 2) Many of the people voicing opposition to Cullen's book are either very close to the incident or are amateur researchers and are in no way experts; 3) The only people who truly can tell us a motive for the killings are dead. As a result, in this review, I will operate under the assumption that Cullen did his due diligence as a journalist and fully vetted things before presenting them as fact.

I was in the eighth grade when the attack on Columbine High School occurred. Even though I watched the TV reports and read the newspaper articles and discussed the incident in classes, there was so much that I missed.

This is the most riveting piece of non-fiction I have ever read. Cullen uses the evidence to propel his narrative, which reads more like the plot of a psychological thriller than reality. I had to keep reminding myself that this really happened; it wasn't a mystery novel. Most of what I read chilled me to the bone.

Cullen was on the scene at Columbine from day on, so he has a unique perspective on the incident and has seen it through the last 10-plus years. He lays out many of the myths which arose in the early hours after the tragedy: That the killers targeted their victims; that they belonged to a murderous group called the Trench Coat Mafia; that library victim Cassie Bernall professed her faith in God immediately before she was killed. The myths are brought to the reader's attention, and then Cullen shows why they likely developed.

The central thesis of Cullen's work, and the question everyone is still asking, is the one that is not really answered by the end: Why? The problem, Cullen shows, is that there really was no definable, singular reason. These were two incredibly troubled boys who carefully plotted a heinous attack in order to kill as many people as they could. The killers, especially Eric Harris, believed that they knew something about mankind that the rest of us didn't, and the people in their school would pay for their blindness. One of the first things I really was stunned to learn (Like most of the tragedies that unfolded following Columbine -- 9/11, Virginia Tech, etc. -- I watched for a short time and read the newspapers, but after awhile, it became too much too often, and I didn't read anymore) that the attack was really a failed bombing. Harris and Klebold planted two bombs in the cafeteria with the intent that they would take out upwards of 400 people and possibly collapse the library onto the cafeteria. They armed themselves with guns with the plan to mow down those fleeing the building following the explosions. They planted two more bombs in their cars with the thought that they would wipe out emergency personnel and journalists who had gathered in the parking lot. None of those bombs detonated, and the bombing turned into an improvised shooting rampage.

The differences between Harris and Klebold, as presented by Cullen, are striking. Klebold was a seriously depressed young man who had no ability to see himself as worthwhile. He contemplated killing himself for a long time, possibly years, before actually acting on it. Up until the day of the attack, it even appeared as if he might back out of the plan. Harris, on the other hand, was a textbook psychopath. He could charm anyone and convince them of anything they wanted to hear. He was prone to frightening outbursts of rage, but showed few other emotions. His journals show that he fantasized about doing away with the majority of the world's population, simply because he thought they were unworthy of living and were not as enlightened as he was. He was the mastermind behind the plan, and convinced Klebold to follow along.

This is a hard one, as you can tell, for me to review in terms of the traditional sense. There was so much in here that I remembered and so much I didn't know. These revelations overshadowed much of my usual ability to evaluate a book (Quality of writing, structure, etc.). Cullen is a fabulous writer; this entire book, as I said before, reads more like a heart-pounding horror show than a recounting of a real event. It unfolds not in a linear timeline, but often with chapters showing pre-attack, during-attack and post-attack in alternating chapters. It is a very effective way to lay out a book like this.

I would recommend this book to anyone who remembers the attacks or who isn't sure what to remember. Buckle up and prepare to be rocked. I will say that this is one of the most intense things I have ever read, and can get graphic in places, so if you're at all sensitive to those sorts of things, I would suggest staying away.

Review and Blog Tour: The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen

Title: The Girl Who Chased the Moon

Author: Sarah Addison Allen

Pages: 265

Source: Publisher for the Pump Up Your Book Promotion tour

Rating: 10/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review Challenge

First Sentence: "It took a moment for Emily to realize the car had come to a stop."

Summary (From back of book):
Emily Benedict has come to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother's life. But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew, she realizes that mysteries aren't solved in Mullaby, they're a way of life. Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor, Julia Winterson, bakes hope in the form of cakes, not only wishing to satisfy the town's sweet tooth, but also dreaming of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever.
Can a hummindbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily's backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.

My Two Cents:
This was another stellar read from Sarah Addison Allen. I truly can't say enough good things about her books, nor can I recommend them to enough people.

The Girl Who Chased the Moon has a little more magic than Allen's first book, Garden Spells, but it's still fully believable. In fact, the magic is so believable that I wanted to move immediately to Mullaby so I could know each and every one of these characters.

I have to say that my favorite character in here was Grandpa Vance. At just over 8 feet tall, he is a Mullaby legend in his own right, but an incident involving his daughter 20 years earlier places him even more on the periphery of the people in town. He is certainly a "gentle giant" who doesn't know how to handle living with Emily, but who tries hard. One of the sweetest parts about Vance, I think, is his tendency to check the dryer at random intervals. I'm not going to tell you why, because that's explained in the book, but the explanation brought tears to my eyes.

I also loved Julia. She was sassy and standoffish, but Allen shows you the reason why she tries to keep aloof from others, especially Sawyer. I loved that she was a baker. To me, characters who have a specific identity or hobby, especially one that is deeply rooted in their past, are really interesting. A person's hobbies can tell a lot about them, and I liked hearing the reasons why Julia began baking.

To me, there was a lot more that could have been done with this book, though. Even as detailed as it was, there were some things I would have liked to see more of. I especially wanted to see more of the interactions between Win and his father. The Coffeys have a huge family secret that Win's father is desperate that no one should know, but we really don't ever get his reasons as to why he's so desperate to keep the secret. It's insinuated, especially based on past events, but I kind of would have liked to see a little more discussion between Win and his father on the matter.

Also, the book ended too soon. I know Allen wanted to leave the reader with a little mystery, even though it's obvious how that mystery will be resolved, but I would have really liked to see how it played out instead of imagining it. But that's just me!

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes books with a little bit of mystery and whimsy. This was a fun, quick read.

About Sarah Addison Allen

Sarah Addison Allen is the New York Times bestselling author of Garden Spells and The Sugar Queen. She was born and raised in Asheville, North Carolina, where she is currently at work on her next novel. You can visit Sarah Addison Allen’s website at www.sarahaddisonallen.com.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in order to participate in the Pump Up Your Book Promotion tour. Receiving a free copy in no way influenced my review.

Review and Blog Tour: The River Kings' Road by Liane Merciel

Title: The River Kings' Road

Author: Liane Merciel

Pages: 388

Source: Publisher

Rating: 9/10

Challenges: Read 'n' Review challenge

First Sentence: "Brys Tarnell was not a pious man."

Summary (From book flap):

A fragile period of peace between the eternally warring kingdoms of Oakharn and Langmyr is shattered when a surprise massacre fueled by bloodmagic ravages the Langmyrne border village of Willowfield, killing its inhabitants -- including a visiting Oakharne lord and his family -- and leaving behind a scene so grisly that even the carrion eaters avoid its desecrated earth. But the dead lord's infant heir has survived the carnage -- a discovery that entwines the destinies of Brys Tarnell, a mercenary who rescues the helpless and ailing babe, and who enlists a Langmyr peasant, a young mother herself, to nourish and nurture the child of her enemies as they travel a dark, perilous road ... Odosse, the peasant woman whose only weapons are wit, courage, and her fierce maternal love -- and who risks everything she holds dear to protect her new charge ... Sir Kelland, a divinely blessed Knight of the Sun, called upon to unmask the architects behind the slaughter and avert war between ancestral enemies ... Bitharn, Kelland's companion on his journey, who conceals her lifelong love for the Knight behind her flawless archery skills -- and whose feelings may ultimately be Kelland's undoing ... and Leferic, an Oakharne Lord's bitter youngest son, whose dark ambitions fuel the most horrific acts of violence. As one infant's life hands in the balance, so too does the fate of thousands, while deep in the forest, a Maimed Witch practices an evil bloodmagic that could doom them all...

My Two Cents:
I love fantasies in the epic, sweeping, Lord of the Rings style, so when I had the chance to review this one, I grabbed it!

This book, Merciel's first and the first in a planned series, is what I call a "quiet" fantasy. It's obviously set in another world, as there's talk of magic and witches and all sorts of other things, but the setting is not so remote that you have to think really hard to conjure up the fantastical elements. In other words, there are no out-there races of beings or green skies or anything. This is a book I could very easily see taking place back during Medieval times, as the overall setting is very similar. 

Merciel has a really strong narrative voice. Her writing is descriptive without being overly flowery. Much of the time, it seemed as if the story was being told to me, perhaps by one of the bards of old. At least, I like to think of it that way.

There are so many characters in this book, it was hard to pick just one as a favorite. After much deliberation, I decided that Bitharn, the young woman often mistaken for a young man due to her archery skills, is my favorite. I liked that she wasn't all tomboy or all girly-girl; she was enough of a mix of both to really endear her to me as a character.

The story was an interesting one: It begins with a mass murder from which a little boy is rescued. A knight must assure the safety of the infant, as the child is the heir to a lordship. From there, the story branches out to encompass several major characters scattered far and wide throughout the realm, and their stations in life range from peasant to knight to Blessed (I think of them as something akin to monks) to lords. It's a sweeping tale, and Merciel leaves enough cliffhangers -- but still answers enough questions -- to make the reader want to read the next book in the series.

The breadth of the story was also one of its weak points, I thought. Since there were so many characters doing so many different things, it was hard to really get to know any one of them intimately. Sure, I liked a lot of the characters and I felt that I knew enough about them that I could make judgments as to what type of people they were, but I really would've liked to have spent more time with a few of the characters instead of seeing the story from so many different viewpoints. I hope that future books in this series focus more closely on specific characters.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy, and those who enjoy tales set in realms of old. This is a really enjoyable read.

Note: This book was sent to me by Simon and Schuster for the purpose of this blog tour. Receiving a free copy in no way influenced my review of this book.