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 48. Bewitching Season. I was looking for a light and distracting read after a long week, so this was exactly what I needed. It's a YA romance/fantasy: Twins Persephone and Penelope have spent their childhoods being tutored in magic, among other things, by their governess Ally, but it's time to go to London for their first season. Penelope (Pen) is looking forward to it, while Persephone (Persy) wishes she could stay at home and study forever. Meanwhile, Ally has mysteriously disappeared.... The plot of this book was entirely predictable (complete with one bad-horror-movie urge to shout at the silly characters not to go that way), but I still read it in one sitting and came away satisfied. Persy, with her love of books and learning, was an easy character to relate to (and only occasionally did really dumb things), and Pen was much more likeable than I'd expected; it would have been easy for the more social twin to seem flat and stereotyped, but that wasn't the case. Plus there were some great minor characters. So, while this wasn't great literature, I enjoyed it for what it was, and I may even read the sequel eventually. Message edited by its author, Oct 3, 2009, 11:50am. Even at my slow pace, I've managed to fall behind in updating my thread!  49. The Good Pirates of the Forgotten Bayous: Fighting to Save a Way of Life in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina. I found this book in Linda (Whisper)'s thread, and I'm glad I did. It's a very interesting account of some of the people who stayed behind during Hurricane Katrina and how they managed to survive, both during and after the storm. Many of the stories are amazing, or amazingly sad, or both. My only complaint is that there were sometimes too many descriptions of boats for my liking and comprehension.  50. Betraying Season. I said only a week ago that I might "sometime" read this sequel to Bewitching Season, and I guess "sometime" has come sooner than I thought. I wanted to recapture the feeling I had while reading the first, of deliberating relaxing and losing myself in a light, not-serious book. But I wasn't quite able to do it. I wasn't as feeling as tired and deserving of a break, which meant that I spent more time noticing the story's flaws. The main one is the passivity of the main character, Pen, and her willingness to believe anything good while disbelieving anything bad, regardless of what's true. The doctor is a bit concerned about the mysterious medicine that makes the governess sleep for 20 hours a day? Oh well, it's probably all good. There's a mysterious man sneaking around the backyard at night? Well, that adds to the nice Gothic atmosphere of the place. (Possible spoilers) It still wasn't a bad book; I chose it as a light read, and that's what I got. I still liked the main character, too. But I didn't enjoy this as much as the first one. Message edited by its author, Oct 10, 2009, 12:00pm.  51. A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier. I just finished this book about an hour ago and need a bit of time to let it sink in. It's not at all the kind of thing I usually read--too depressing, especially at first when he was just roaming around the country trying to survive. I actually liked it more once he became a soldier, which is probably the wrong attitude to have. Anyway, I think this was a worthwhile read, and it made me want to find out more about what went on in Sierra Leone. Despite the fact that this is a memoir and the author was young at the time, I would have liked to know more about the politics behind everything. Pretty much all we learn is that the rebels, while supposedly fighting for freedom, murdered civilians in horrible ways, and it made me wonder how a situation like that could come to be. Message edited by its author, Oct 16, 2009, 2:20pm.  52. Letters to a Young Mathematician. As the title suggests, this book is written in the form of letters to a "young mathematician", offering advice and generally discussing what mathematics is and what it means to be a mathematician. The back cover promises that it "tells readers what world renowned mathematician Ian Stewart wishes he had known when he was a student", and I was intrigued because I had a mixed experience with mathematics in university and always wondered what I could have done differently. I have to say, my experience with this book was also mixed. First of all, lest the title mislead, I think it's actually more suited for a general non-mathematical audience than for someone who's actually in the process of becoming a mathematician--which wasn't a problem for me, since I read it for general interest and not as an aspiring mathematician. Stewart raises a lot of interesting points here, but he often doesn't discuss them in as much detail as I would have liked. I think this is part of a series, and it was probably a requirement that the book be barely 200 pages long, but there are times when a bit more depth would have been nice. It was good in a way that the book left me wanting more, and it did include references to other interesting reading throughout, but it wasn't quite satisfying enough in itself. Many people will probably appreciate the brevity, though. A more serious concern for me was the fact that I just didn't agree with some of his more important points. I know, he's the mathematician and I'm not, but still. The book got off to a bad start, in my mind, with the initial chapter entitled "Why Do Math?". Stewart's reason, briefly, is that math is everywhere. There's a bit too much focus on the utility and not enough on the beauty of it. The same is true even in his chapter on proofs: "it would be silly to suggest that this agreement (with experiment to an accuracy of nine decimal places) is an accident, and that no physical principle is involved.... (but) it is equally silly not to try to find out the deep logic that justifies the calculation. Such understanding... will surely advance mathematics." So even proofs are presented not as necessary, but merely as useful (a view that he steps back from slightly in the following chapter, but to my mind, the damage was done). Another point that left me wondering is his claim that not everyone can be a mathematician, because "originality is one of those things that you either have or you don't." I really appreciate the fact that he expressly disagrees with the politically-correct view that everyone can be good at everything, but I think he simplifies the issue a bit too much. In particular, I'm just not convinced that originality is the key. He compares it to the attempt of a tone-deaf person to become a great musician, but there's nothing in there to make me think that creativity is the problem rather than some more basic musical/mathematical aptitude. His explanations about how he excelled at math without effort from the time he was 10 didn't convince me either; the mathematics that one does at age 10 is so different from "real" mathematics that it can barely be called the same subject. Creativity certainly isn't the main factor there. I wonder whether Stewart's various unconvincing arguments are a direct result of the book's extreme brevity; maybe I would have been more convinced if he had elaborated his position further. On the other hand, I think the fact that I have so much to say about this book speaks in its favour. Regardless of whether I agree with everything Stewart says, he makes plenty of interesting and provocative points in a short space. And there's a fair bit of humour, too, including a whole chapter on what not to do as a tenure-track professor that consists mainly of humorous anecdotes about various mishaps ("I was once abandoned inside a Dutch mathematics building when my hosts went off to the parking garage to go to a restaurant. I had to make my escape through a window, setting off a burglar alarm.") So in the end, I think I would cautiously recommend this book, as long as you don't take Stewart's views as the be-all-and-end-all when it comes to what mathematics is.  53. The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind What an amazing story! I can't remember the last time I read such a gripping work of non-fiction, if ever; I tore through this book yesterday afternoon/evening despite having other things that I should have been doing, and came away thoroughly satisfied. Even before I read the book, I was hooked by the premise: a Malawian boy, living in the midst of poverty and famine and with limited educational opportunities, reads about windmills in a library book and decides that electricity is the solution to his family's problems. So, using various scraps of metal and relying heavily on the book's diagrams, he goes ahead and builds his windmill. And it works. It was so nice to read a positive book about Africa for a change. The problems aren't hidden; there's plenty of talk about famine in particular, including good explanations of the reasons behind it, but the overall outlook is optimistic. I also liked book's the writing style (it was co-written with a former journalist), found Kamkwamba easy to relate to, and generally enjoyed the whole reading experience. I have a feeling this will end up in my Top 5 for the year.  54. The New 50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth. This was an Early Reviewer book, which I chose because I thought it might be useful in my role as a Girl Guide leader. I can't quite get over the feeling that reading it was a chore rather than a pleasure, though. I think in future, I'll choose ER books that are more fun and less practical, because the combination of practical and "required reading" was a bit too much. (I got this in the April ER batch, and put it off until now despite the fact that it wasn't long or difficult.) I've written a proper review as required for ER, but I don't have much to say about it on a personal level. Message edited by its author, Oct 27, 2009, 8:30pm.  55. The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and the Struggle. L.J. Smith was one of my favourite authors when I was about 12, and I never lost interest in her books because she just stopped writing them, leaving everyone anticipating the final volume of a popular series. Now, ten years later, she's finally writing again, and her old books have been re-released. The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening and the Struggle consists of the first two books in what was originally a trilogy, then expanded to a tetralogy(?). She's in the process of writing another trilogy focusing on some of the secondary characters, so I wanted to reread these books first. Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy them quite as much as I had in the past. Still, these were some of her earliest books, and were never my favourites even when I was younger. I'm definitely planning to read more--I've actually already reread the third book in the trilogy, and found it very satisfying. Which makes me think that maybe she should really have ended the trilogy there, rather than adding a fourth book. We'll see how it goes... I can't actually remember what happens in it. I would recommend LJ Smith to people who like YA supernatural stories, but I don't know that The Vampire Diaries are the best place to start. Dark Visions was the trilogy that I reread over and over again. Message edited by its author, Oct 31, 2009, 9:31am.  56. The Vampire Diaries: The Fury and Dark Reunion Continuing my re-read of a favourite childhood author in anticipation of reading her new books at last. I enjoyed this book more than the last one, though it did confirm my doubts about adding on a fourth book to a trilogy. I think the ending of The Fury was just about perfect; everything was resolved satisfactorily if not entirely happily. I didn't find the resolution of Dark Reunion as convincing, but I enjoyed the book anyway. It will be interesting to see what I think of The Return: Nightfall. Message edited by its author, Nov 2, 2009, 1:27pm.  57. Castle in the Air. After doing a bit of heavy reading last night and this morning, I ended up finishing my light read in the afternoon anyway. This is the "sequel" to Howl's Moving Castle, though the characters from the first book don't appear until pretty close to the end (there is a third book that's apparently a sequel in the more traditional sense). I'd heard from a lot of people that Castle in the Air wasn't as good as Howl's Moving Castle, but I actually enjoyed it more. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this book renewed my faith in Diana Wynne Jones. She was one of my favourite authors as a child, but recent attempts to read her books had left me a bit disappointed. Conrad's Fate, The Game, and even the popular Howl's Moving Castle left me feeling that something was somehow missing, and even a reread of my old favourite The Lives of Christopher Chant couldn't recapture the magic. I'm not sure what changed here--possibly just the fact that I read it in pieces on the subway rather than going straight through--but I came away very satisfied. Castle in the Air is reminiscent of Aladdin, which is a good thing in my eyes. Abdullah starts out as a carpet merchant in a crowded bazaar and goes through plenty of adventures with a wish-granting genie in a bottle and a magic carpet, all in pursuit of the Sultan's daughter. There are bandits in the desert and evil djinns and all that good Arabian Nights stuff. The best part, though, is that the author doesn't take these themes (or herself) too seriously; she sometimes plays up the familiar concepts to the point of the ridiculous, and I found myself laughing on more than one occasion. If you like the Arabian Nights or DWJ's other work, I would definitely recommend this one.  58. Beast. I can't say that I really enjoyed this book. It's a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, a story that I love, but in this case I didn't find that the retelling improved on the story at all. The premise is intriguing enough: this is Beast's story, starting from before he met Beauty and explaining how and why he came to be a Beast. Unfortunately, I thought the reason for his transformation was unsatisfying, the descriptions of his time as a beast were distasteful, and he was a pretty unlikeable character overall. Beast is set in Persia, and the protagonist is a prince. As his servant is preparing a camel for sacrifice at a religious festival, he notices that the camel has a scar that makes it unfit for this sacrifice. The servant has no alternative camel ready, an oversight that could result in a severe penalty, possibly even death. The prince, who has a good heart and a dislike for the suffering of others, weighs the risks and benefits and decides that the camel should be sacrificed despite the flaw. This will save the servant and help the people, who receive portions of the meat. And, he reasons, God is merciful. It's not entirely clear why this reasoning breaks down. The prince is turned into a beast (a lion, in particular) not by God, but by the angry spirit of the camel. I can't honestly say why the camel was angry, because it wasn't explained what exactly happens to an animal that is sacrificed inappropriately. For whatever reason, though, the prince is punished for his attempt to do good by being turned into a lion, and the curse will only be broken if he wins a woman's love (this part is explained by the camel being female, though again, the logic here isn't entirely clear to me). Needless to say, if the goal is to bring the Beast to life by providing his backstory, the backstory needs to make sense. I wasn't exactly satisfied in this regard. So then the prince is a lion, and does lion things. Although as a man he has never laid eyes on a women other than his mother, his first act as a lion is to mate with some female lions in the palace hunting grounds. This wasn't described in very much detail, but I still could have done without it. I just didn't need to hear about his “thrusting”. Also, note that this is a YA book, or possibly even children's. The prince also spends a lot of his time hunting, which I didn't find very interesting. Basically, I wasn't really into the story until the requisite scene where Belle's father encounters the beast while seeking shelter from the storm; i.e., until Napoli's story converges with the traditional version. Unfortunately, this didn't happen until more than halfway through. I did enjoy the development of the Beast's relationship to Belle, but I couldn't fully like him because of the way he treated her pet fox. This fox was possibly the best character in the story; he was loving, playful, loyal, forgiving, and basically wonderful all around. And the Beast constantly thought things along the lines of “What a stupid animal” or “That foolish fox....”, for no particular reason that I could see. I'm not sure how he changed from someone who seemed so compassionate initially into someone who thought badly about innocent animals; and no matter how well he treated Belle, I think his ideas about the fox were more telling about his personality. So, an initially likeable man is transformed into a beast because he made a religious error while trying to help others; once he's a beast, he becomes less likeable rather than learning any sort of valuable lesson. I've enjoyed other books by Donna Jo Napoli in the past, but I think I'll stick to Robin McKinley for Beauty and the Beast. Message edited by its author, Nov 18, 2009, 6:23pm.  59. The Rumpelstiltskin Problem. This is yet another book that I discovered in Linda (Whisper1)'s thread! It's a collection of six Rumpelstiltskin retellings, based on the premise that the classic tale of Rumpelstiltskin doesn't make much sense--Why did Rumpelstiltskin want a baby in the first place? Once he was about to win, why did he give the girl another chance, offering to let her guess his name with no potential benefit for himself? How did he manage to fall through the floor? The introduction, where Vande Velde bitingly points out these flaws, makes for some pretty entertaining reading. As for the stories themselves, I have to say first of all that I'm really not a short story person (I know, so why do I keep reading short stories? That's a good question). I find that they generally don't have enough depth to be really memorable. So I spread out the reading of this book over a couple of weeks, and already I'm having trouble remembering the earlier stories. They were enjoyable enough at the time, though, and there was one that I really loved. The one criticism I would make is that the characters' behaviour etc. still wasn't always satisfactorily explained, something that's especially important here when the whole point is to make the stories more coherent. For example, in the first story, Rumpelstiltskin is a troll who wants a baby to eat, but for some reason he's unable to steal one in a straightforward fashion and therefore has to contrive this whole complicated scheme. I think I may be more critical than usual because I recently read a full-length Rumpelstiltskin retelling, which did explain (almost) everything in a satisfying way, so these short stories paled a bit in comparison--well, all but one of them. Still, it's always interesting to get some new perspectives on familiar stories, and in the end I'm glad I read this book. Message edited by its author, Nov 21, 2009, 10:26am.  60. Once a Witch. This is a cute light YA novel about a girl who comes from a family of witches. At birth it was proclaimed that she would be one of the most powerful of them all, but when her Talent failed to show up at all by her eighth birthday, she became sort of an outcast instead. So when a stranger comes looking for help and mistakes her for her very Talented sister, she isn't too quick to disillusion him, and ends up getting into all sorts of trouble.... I seem to have fallen into a rut of fluffy YA novels. I am reading some heavier non-fiction for school, which may make it onto the list someday....  61. Little Brother. In some ways, this is not the kind of book I usually read--phrases like "techno-geek" on the cover don't tend to appeal to me. But I picked this one up because both my brother and sister really liked it, and I'm glad I did. Doctorow raises a lot of difficult questions about the trade-offs between security and privacy, and tells a gripping story too. Marcus is a high-school student in the not-too-distant future, at a time when surveillance is increasing and school-issued notebooks record every keystroke a student makes. Being concerned with privacy and good with computers, Marcus has hacked his notebook to get around the surveillance features and takes other measures like putting gravel in his shoes to outsmart the gait-recognition devices in the school hallways. He's not really a bad guy, though, more concerned with getting out of school to play games with his friends than with using his abilities for any greater, malicious purpose. Unfortunately, after a terrorist attack in San Francisco, the authorities don't see Marcus' behaviour in such an innocent light. He's grabbed off the street almost arbitrarily by the Department of Homeland Security and accused of being a terrorist. When he isn't immediately willing to give up all his privacy and insists, for example, on seeing a lawyer, the situation only worsens. He's subjected to mild forms of torture until he yields completely, and is eventually released with instructions to tell no one about what happened and a warning that his every move will be watched from then on. Rather than giving in, though, Marcus decides to fight back against the Department of Homeland Security. As more and more citizens' rights are taken away in the name of safety, Marcus develops an underground network devoted to preserving privacy and freedom. Nothing here is completely black-and-white, though, and many of Marcus' friends and family members oppose his actions. The result is a thought-provoking examination of how far you should go in standing up for your beliefs. As a side note, the author of this book strongly opposes DRM and has released all his books in free, unprotected electronic formats at the same time as the print releases. This makes him a good guy in my books. Debug test: your member name is: |
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