Reading the World

A book blog, with a slight emphasis on non-fiction.

[readingtheworld]

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata

Kira-Kira by Cynthia Kadohata I'm wondering if I have a knack for picking up children's books that have labor union issues on the periphery. This one does it really well (as did Esperanza Rising, but it was more minor in that book). This was a wonderful read, beautifully and smartly written. Katie, the middle child of first generation immigrants narrates the story, which takes place mostly in Georgia where they've recently moved (from Iowa). The older sister, Lynn, is smart and good while Katie doesn't work hard at school and is prone to getting into trouble. The main focus is on Lynn becoming ill. It covers many issues though, and Kadohata writes from a childhood perspective so well. She also amusingly inserts discussion of school book reports and Katie's difficulty understanding what the teacher means by theme. That really amused me, but it wasn't just shunted in for a joke. Highly recommended.

[readingtheworld]

The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett

The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett A quiet novel of royalty and adventure, originally published in 1915. It features a fictional eastern European country, Samavia, and follows three ex-patriots of the country (father, son, servant). The boy, Marco, is raised to blend in, to hide his Samavian roots, and to be highly observant and intelligent. He meets a street boy who becomes his friend and they play a game of preparing for the lost prince of Samavia and spreading the word for an uprising in the country before living out the game for real. It's a very pleasing children's book that will still greatly appeal to the young ones. It has undertones of Buddhism and deals with a physical disability relatively well (while there's the typical idea of overcoming the disability, it's done through the use of mobility aids rather than a cure, and isn’t a 100% ‘fix’). There was this hilarious bit talking about "well only the lost prince was born a king and these other people are so inferior because they weren't born kings." Oh, Burnett... I admit I got rather wrapped up in the story and found myself booing the baddies, telling the heroes to run away, etc... Of course Marco is the lost prince, which was obvious in the beginning only then towards the middle Burnett throws you a bit of a loop so I was going "Wait, surely it's him, surely she wouldn't make it someone else..." Lovely book, certainly recommended.

[readingtheworld]

The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis

The Ides of April by Lindsey Davis Well, for the first time in 22 books, I have been disappointed in Lindsey Davis. I suppose it had to happen eventually. This book is a spin-off of the Falco series, and in it Falco's adopted daughter, Flavia Albia is a detective. Falco was getting rather old for those adventures and of course he and Domitian were enemies, but perhaps more importantly, Davis’ editor moved to another publisher and she could not transfer over the Falco series. She’s such a great historical fiction writer in general that I think it’s a shame the new publisher pressured a move to another Falco-esque series. However, Flavia Albia herself wasn't right for me. She didn't act like a daughter raised by Falco and Helena. She was too trusting and just... Not right. This was a general thing but there were also some jarring lines, some mention of silly thing a young girl had done leading her to say "I was silly once, all girls are silly." Helena would have pointed out that all children are silly at heart but girls are held to a different standard. If she were 21 in this book, then fine, but she's 29 in it, plus grew up on the streets before she was adopted and was widowed at 21. It wasn't terrible, it just didn't seem like the narration of anyone raised by Falco and Helena. I'll still read the next in the series, but now I know what to expect. It also didn't have the humor level of the Falco series.

[readingtheworld]

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu

All Our Names by Dinaw Mengestu I received this audiobook through the Early Reviewer program. The readers were good (Saskia Maarleveld and Korey Jackson), one for each of the main characters, reading their various sections, but I wonder if there wasn't a more appropriate choice for Helen's sections. The reader is a woman raised in New Zealand and France, known for her ability with accents. I will always prefer that readers naturally have the accent the book demands or have some connection to that accent, rather than just be good at mimicking it. I could not find a profile of Korey Jackson. They were both good readers, though. The book follows two young men involved in the revolution in Uganda during the 1970s, who take different paths, and a young woman in Kansas. One becoming a more and more ardent revolutionary and the other seeking asylum in the guise of an exchange student in the American midwest. There he and his social worker Helen form a passionate but rocky relationship amid racism and ignorance of the other's true self. It was an excellent book, one about the world and our lives and interactions with others, without a huge climax or firm conclusion. Our lives so rarely give us neat plot arcs, and I enjoys books without them. Both characters were written so well and felt completely real. It is neither a book that you will want to race through, eager to see the conclusion nor a book that you will need to take slowly. A good medium read to make you think.

[readingtheworld]

Over to You by Roald Dahl

Over to You by Roald Dahl An astounding book of short stories about flyers and flying, drawn from Dahl's service during WWII. The stories are intense and heartbreaking, and the writing puts you into those situations so successfully. A few of the stories are linked to each other or involve the same characters. Some put me in mind of Johnny Got His Gun. Well worth reading, highly recommended. Not something you want to shoot through in a couple sittings though.

[readingtheworld]

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss

The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss This is a pretty ridiculous book. I know it was intended as a teaching book for his sons, a guide to good morals and using the natural world, but I don't think it would have really been very helpful. Mainly it made me think his sons were psychopaths, the way they constantly attempt to kill everything that moves. Page after page of animal death, seriously. If my parents had read this to me when I was 9 or so, I probably would have liked it. I loved books about self-sufficiency and wilderness survival (still love them), but I think the window of true enjoyment for this one would have been short. I probably wouldn't have been willing to read it myself until I was 11 and by then I think the ridiculousness would have been too apparent.

[readingtheworld]

Master and God by Lindsey Davis

Master and God by Lindsey Davis Lindsey Davis is one of my favorite writers, and by far my favorite for ancient Rome. She manages to pack her books full of historical detail without making it feel like a school lesson. In her Falco series you truly feel you are in Rome, as her grip on social/domestic history is like a vice. Master and God takes place in the reign of Domitian, the third Flavian emperor. She largely goes with the Seutonian view of Domitian, as an increasingly paranoid and cruel leader, though points out some falsehoods. It's now believed that Domitian was a pretty good emperor (though ruthless against the Senate), basically a benevolent despot, and that the ancient writers were pressured to portray him badly due to working for Nerva, Trajan, and Hadrian, the emperors that followed Domitian (who was assassinated and thus they couldn't make him sound at all good). The book revolves around a vigile turned Praetorian guard and a freed-woman, and is encircled by Domitian's reign and events in that period. Davis will sometimes throw a more "here's some historical background" chapter into things, but I enjoyed that. I always love the way Davis writes relationships and this was no exception. It was a wonderful read for me. Recommended if you enjoy the Falco books or historical fiction in general. There was a line in it which made me laugh like a hyena for a few minutes: "Do you know any Greek?" "Enough to be xenophobic."

[readingtheworld]

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil by Alexander McCall Smith

Unusual Uses for Olive Oil by Alexander McCall Smith The fourth Professor von Igelfeld novel, and just as funny as the first three. They are at times, hysterical. This was such a nice treat after listening to The Plantagenets. The audio editions are good, though annoyingly the American editions are read by Paul Hecht whereas the Brits get Hugh Laurie. I've heard bits of the Laurie reading and did prefer it (though Hecht is still good). From Wikipedia: "The protagonist is a bitter German professor, Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld, who feels that he is not accorded the scholarly recognition and veneration he deserves. Von Igelfeld is an extremely tall philologist at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, Germany. His closest peers at the institute are professors Dr Dr Florianus Prinzel and Dr Detlev Amadeus Unterholzer. Von Igelfeld is plagued by envy and suspicion of them." I would advise against reading these out of order.

[readingtheworld]

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan

Esperanza Rising by Pam Muñoz Ryan A privileged, rich girl finds her life completely changed by the death of her father and the uprooting of her family from Mexico to the United States. It takes place during the Great Depression and also deals with labor unions and the difficulty in organizing strikes when it was already so hard to live and feed your family (and when the company owned your house). I really loved this little book, which is slightly based on the author's own abuela (grandmother) who went from rich in Mexico to poor in the US. I would happily read an entire series about her, taking her from childhood to adulthood (akin to the Betsy Tacy books). This is certainly one I would have really enjoyed as a child.

[readingtheworld]

Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka

Cloud of Sparrows by Takashi Matsuoka This novel is set in Japan in 1861, about seven years after the 'opening' of Japan to the west.. A local lord has opened the way for some missionaries to establish church, angering many. While the novel is full of Big Bloody Events - assassination plots, battles, a bombing, conspiracies, etc... it was really quite a calm, lovely read for me. It felt more character and culture driven than plot driven even though there are all those plot events. When the book came out it was praised for cultural and historical accuracy, which I'm not knowledgeable enough to really speak to. Definitely a good read. The writing was nice (Matsuoka is a first generation Japanese-American so there was no translation involved in this book, in case you were curious). The book flips back and forth from events in the past to visions of the future to the present day quite a bit, but it wasn't hard to follow at all (and I listened to the audiobook)

[readingtheworld]

The Ghosts of Ashbury High by Jaclyn Moriarty

The Ghosts of Ashbury High by Jaclyn Moriarty (Australian title Dreaming of Amelia) This is the fourth in a not-quite series of books focusing on Ashbury High, a private school in Sydney Australia (or a suburb thereof). They are all written completely in letters, notes, e-mails, memos, and in this last one, essay exam answers, blog entries and comments. I read the first one, Feeling Sorry for Celia in high school and the second one pretty soon after graduating, absolutely loving both of them. They were sweet and funny and believable. The characters have so much depth and the parents do too. Also the first especially was just beyond funny, it was hilarious, particularly the mother-daughter relationship. This one follows the three main characters from the second book (The Year of Secret Assignments/Finding Cassie Crazy), best friends Lydia, Cassie, and Emily. They're in year 12 and two new students have joined their class after winning a scholarship. The minutes from the scholarship committee meetings are quite fun. The two new students are quiet, not interacting with anyone but each other. Emily gets a bit obsessed with them and finding out their story as well as becoming focused on a ghost haunting the art rooms. Some people might find Emily annoying, but I was a total Emily in middle school and high school (excluding her poor vocabulary skills). Like her other books, this is funny and interesting and the characters are brilliantly composed. It is pretty believable and realistic barring one element. However, this and the third book (The Murder of Bindy Mckenzie/The Betrayal of Bindy McKenzie) are weaker specimens and Bindy's plot gets majorly ridiculous/unbelievable if I recall (it's been a good few years since I read it). I know it's sacrilege, but the US title for this book is so much better than the original, likewise for The Year of Secret Assignments. All four books and interesting and fun, but I really really recommend the first two.

[readingtheworld]

The Potter’s Field by Ellis Peters

The Potter's Field by Ellis Peters An excellent Cadfael mystery! This one was especially good in the mystery department, I think, my favorite of the last few books. Unusually it didn't feature a spirited and independent young woman as a really major character, but you get a couple toward the end. Peters wrote a character who was in severe chronic pain and I got a little misty eyed at how accurately she portrayed that. Books rarely deal with long term chronic pain (unless it's the main theme, which I haven't encountered in fiction) and often get it wrong, I think.

[readingtheworld]

The Canterbury Tales

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer I listened to a really nice audio production of the Burton Raffel translation of this. It was really a joy to listen to all around. Some of the stories weren't as enjoyable as others, and I got very tired of hearing about penitence in the last section, which I think anyone would. However, it was enough to I'll probably give it another go later. If I could find an audio edition of the middle English that would be the best.

[readingtheworld]

The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio by Lloyd Alexander

The Golden Dream of Carlo Chuchio by Lloyd Alexander I love many of Alexander's books, grew up with them, and I wanted to love this one but it just didn't happen. The plot was meandering, the adventure wasn't gripping, the characters weren't all that interesting, none of them experience much growth throughout the book, and his Middle Eastern-ish (it's technically a fantasy book) characters struck me in an uncomfortable way. One character was named Baksheesh, a word that means tip in Arabic but was widely used by anyone begging for money from foreigners (at least in Egypt in the 1960s). This character is lazy, ungrateful, conniving, etc... It really rubbed me the wrong way. It also has the only western character, Carlo (who I took to be from a fictionalized Italy), as the one to help change the 'backwards' culture of one of the desert groups they encounter. Include that kind of thing, but it could at least have come from one of the Middle Eastern-ish characters. And this was Alexander's last book, written in 2007! I'm so depressed by it. He's rather more even-handed towards other cultures in his Vesper Holly books. I know this is supposed to be fantasy, but it's our world in there. This was apparently published posthumously, so perhaps he wasn't done editing it or perhaps it was written much earlier in his career and then set aside. It certainly didn't feel like Alexander.

[readingtheworld]

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan I listened to the audio edition, which is well-read by the author, but I think in general this book is probably better in print. It follows several gay, male characters dealing with different issues, as well as the two boys who are trying to break the world record for longest kiss. It is narrated by a "Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS." Levithan talks, in the afteward, about being part of an in-between generation. After the height of the AIDS crisis (in the gay community) but before the internet was part of childhood and young adulthood. One of the characters is trans, and I think that was a really important inclusion. The books is beautifully written and presented. I was occasionally distracted because trying to kiss for 32 hours sounds like some form of hell (especially since they were supposed to remain standing and couldn't even use adult diapers...). I kept going into "Why on earth would two teenagers decide this would be a good idea?" because it honestly made no sense to me. Two teenagers actually did this and slightly inspired that part of the book, but yikes. I had way more important things to do as a teenager, like wandering aimlessly around town with friends and starting small fires in my bedroom. Definitely recommended, possibly a tear-jerker in the end. I'm don't really cry at books, but the heart-strings were certainly tugged.

[readingtheworld]

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren

Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren Well I don't think anyone can dislike Pippi, or any Astrid Lindgren at all. I consider myself quite lucky to have grown up with so many books by Scandinavian authors, all were excellent. However, I never read Pippi, just watched the movies (the terribly dubbed and smooshed TV series with Inger Nilsson). I don't think I knew there was a book for some time, another thing that goes on my list of "parental reading crimes to fix with time machine." They read us other Lindgren books, just not Pippi. The amusing thing is, to me, that we love Pippi SO much, but most, I think, would find a friend like that a bit annoying and rather tiresome. I was a little know-it-all child, having much-older siblings made me feel rather worldly and superior, anyone telling Pippi's brand of truth and lies would have been a foe. Perhaps it's because we all just want to BE Pippi, not Tommy or Annika. A true classic, always recommended.

[readingtheworld]

The Martian by Andy Weir

The Martian by Andy Weir This book was the BEST! It is exactly what I want in science fiction - believable space exploration, no inter-galactic wars or aliens. Like a lot of kids, I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid, and this book fed that latent desire so much. It is also very funny. I laughed a lot and really enjoyed the audiobook reader (though they should have employed two, someone else to do the third person sections). The whole thing felt realistic, especially the reactions of the main character. His comments on 70s TV (his only tv entertainment) and Poirot books were hilarious. In brief - Mars mission with six astronauts, huge storm means they need to get out, one is hit by debris and left for dead, but he's alive. He works to enrich soil to grow potatoes and to find a way to regain communication with earth. He was a brilliant character. There was one thing I thought conspicuously missing. Edited out: Nevermind! It was just my faulty memory! Absolutely loved this book though. Highly recommended for everyone. I'm not a big science fiction person, because most of it isn't like this. For some reason I thought I wouldn't like hard sci-fi as much, but I was surely wrong. I partly blame Souls in the Great Machine, a book I generally enjoyed but I got bogged down in the computer science sections. I need a second The Martian right away! Oh, there's a great little epilogue at the end of the audio version which they cut off the new print and ebook versions (because someone lost their mind, I can only assume, as it's a perfect and characteristic end to the book). Here it is: 

Leaving the pizzeria he sat on a public bench just outside. Next week would be busy. He'd be meeting the Aries 6 engineer. He'd read her file but never met her in person. He wouldn't get much time to relax after that. The following six weeks would be filled with constant training, as he tried to impart as much knowledge as he could, but that was something to worry about later. Right now he took a deep breath of the fresh air and watched the people walk by. “Hey, I know you!” said a voice from behind. A young boy had strayed from his mother. “You're Mark Watney.” “Sweetie,” his mom said, embarrassed. “don't bother people like that.” “It's okay” Watney shrugged. “You went to mars,” the boy said. “sure did, almost didn't make it back” “I know,” said the boy, “that was awesome!” “Sweetie,” his mom scolded, “that's rude.” “So Mr. Watney,” the boy said, “if you could go to mars again, like if there was another mission and they wanted you to go would you go?” “Watney scowled at him. “You out of your fucking mind?” “Okay, time to go,” the mom said, quickly herding the boy away down the crowded sidewalk. Watney snorted in their direction. The he closed his eyes and felt the sun on his face. It was a nice, boring afternoon.