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The Resurrectionist by E. B. Hudspeth: Book Review

Dr. Spencer Black was a brilliant doctor whose career was derailed by an obsession with mythological creatures. He believed that anatomical deformities were not so much mutations as throwbacks to earlier days in the evolutionary timeline. He believed he could prove this by recreating creatures from fable and myth. If he could make them viable, they must have existed, right? He left behind a body of work that is incredible for its detail of beings that have only been seen in imagination--for centuries anyway, if Dr. Black's theory is correct. I want to give this 5 stars, I really do. I gravitate more toward words than pictures though and the story in this book was not quite as strong as the art. I feel like I fumbled through my synopsis but that's because I was never entirely clear what Dr. Black was supposed to be trying to do with his work. It was a bit awkward and flimsy but I was mostly able to let it go because I knew there had to be a payoff in the illustrations. There were some genuinely creepy moments though. The part where Dr. Black's wife and brother find out what he's up to left me worried that I wouldn't be sleeping that night. It was that disturbing. It had a Frankenstein feel to it without Victor Frankenstein's histrionics and hysterics so I really liked that aspect as well. The last--oh, let's call it 2/3--of the book were gorgeous anatomical illustrations of mythical creatures. I tried hard to take my time through them and look at them closely and fully appreciate them. I can sometimes tear way too fast through pictures in a book. These were genuine works of art. I was amazed at the amount of detail that went into them. I was…

Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck: Book Review

John Steinbeck and his poodle Charley take off in a modified RV for a trip around the country. Will the real Jennifer G please stand up? I seem to have lost myself somewhere along the way. When did I become a fan of Steinbeck? Because I now have to admit that I am. I held a grudge against him for years because of The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, both of which I was forced to read in high school. I've been in denial for a couple of years but I just re-read Grapes and actually liked it. And looking back through all the passages of this book that I flagged, I realized that I love the way this man writes. I still don't forgive him for Lennie and can't imagine that I ever will, but if we both ignore that, we get along just fine. Better than fine. It's been almost two years since I read this, but I do remember that Steinbeck's observations, conversations, and chronicles of daily left held me pretty much spellbound. I'll even let you in on a secret: the man had a sense of humor. Steinbeck! Dark, depressing Steinbeck! I literally laughed out loud several times as I read this. I remember a passage about hunting in New England (I think) that had me in stitches. Another section I had forgotten but flagged was about introducing Charley to sequoias and redwoods. "But from the start I had withheld from him any information about the giant redwoods. It seemed to me that a Long Island poodle who had made his devoirs to Sequoia sempervirens or Sequoia gigantea might be set apart from other dogs--might even be like that Galahad who saw the Grail. The concept is staggering." Originally published in 1962, many…

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: Book Review

Calliope Stephanides is born to a family of Greek immigrants living in Detroit. She tells the story of how she came to be by starting with her grandparents in their isolated village. As the Turks and Greeks were fighting, they managed to flee to America and start a new life there. Calliope then moves on to her parents' courtship and then her own life, up into her teen years. What makes Calliope's story so different though, is that she's a hermaphrodite. Thanks to a less-than-thorough family doctor and parents with a bit of a "hands off" policy, no one realizes that Calliope is different for years and years. For her part, she's pretty happy as a girl until she hits her teens. Then her hormones start raging and her life changes forever. I wish I had reviewed this immediately after I read it. I really liked it, but I've forgotten a lot of details. For the purposes of simplicity, I'm mostly going to refer to Calliope as she throughout my review because she's living as a girl for the vast majority of the book. This is not a spoiler; the first sentence spells this out. "I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michgan, in August of 1974." I liked Calliope and her eccentric family. She's a great narrator, being almost painfully honest. She's never very judgmental of the choices her parents and grandparents made along the way. She just tells her story the best way that she knows how. I'm sure other people rattle on about gender identity, race relations, the callousness of medicine and serious stuff like that. All of that is definitely present…

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale: Book Review

Miri is a small teenage girl from the mountains. She feels inadequate in her village because she isn't allowed to help in the quarry, the lifeblood of trade. She tries her best to help every way she can, but she just knows that everyone must think she's a burden. One day, with the spring traders, a delegate from the faraway court arrives. He announces that the priests have divined that the prince will find his princess in their village. All girls between the ages of 12 and 18 must go down the mountain to where a Princess Academy has been set up to teach them all that they must know to be fit to be a princess. This wasn't my favorite of Shannon Hale's books (That would be Goose Girl, followed closely by Book of a Thousand Days), but I still liked it. I felt that it had a good message for young girls about learning what you can, speaking up for yourself and others, helping others, and being happy with your own talents instead of focusing on what you can't do. It did all this without being preachy in the least. I liked the girls. Miri was by far the most well-developed, but they all had their little (or big) dreams. They are of course changed by their lessons but they still remain true to who they were before. Miri was a plucky little thing and I admired her courage. I suspected how everything would end up from really early on, but I still enjoyed the journey to get there. I highly recommend this for tween girls. Read an excerpt. Find author Shannon Hale on her website, her blog, Facebook, and Twitter. Buy Princess Academy at Malaprop’s | Better World Books I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop's, my…

Bliss by Kathryn Littlewood: Book Review

The Bliss family has a secret. A lot of bakeries say that their pastries are like magic but their pastries really are magic. Oldest daughter Rose loves helping out in the kitchen but she hasn't been allowed to do much more than fetch ingredients and she's never been entrusted with any magical recipes. But when both parents are called away for a week to help a neighboring town, they leave Rose with a key to the magic recipe book. Coincidentally, their long-lost "aunt" Lily rolls into town just as the Bliss parents are leaving and she seems awfully curious about the bakery... What a cute read! I just loved it! Rose is the responsible one in the family and it's starting to wear on her. She's a little tired of watching her brothers have all the fun while she isn't even allowed to do any real baking. Anyone can bake a scone; Rose wants to bake a love muffin. The misadventures the Bliss children have while their parents are gone just amused me to no end. Their solutions to their problems are more and more creative but they just cause bigger and badder problems. Aunt Lily is just enough of a suspicious character to keep Rose on alert, but she's smooth enough that Rose is able to forget about her for little bits of time too. It's obvious she's up to something, it's just not entirely obvious how she intends to do it. The siblings learn lessons about family and listening to their parents and trusting their instincts and each other, but the book does not beat you over the head with them. This was cute enough that I looked forward to getting on the elliptical machine so I'd have time to read it. Need I say more? I'll be…

Summer Rental by Mary Kay Andrews: Book Review

Old friends Ellis, Julia, and Dorie have rented a beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina for a month. They've realized that their lives are moving along quickly and they want to spend some time together again. Ellis makes the arrangements and they all show up for a lazy vacation for the month of August. But they're all in tough places in their lives. Ellis was recently downsized, Julia's disenchanted with her modeling career, and Dorie's just not her normal perky self. With Ellis and Dorie worried about money, Dorie seizes on the opportunity to rent out the extra bedroom on the top floor of the house to a perfect stranger she meets in a diner one day, Madison. But Madison has troubles of her own. So this wasn't one of my favorite MKA novels (that would have to be one of the Savannah books), but it was still a fun little escape. It was wonderful to hear about August on the Outer Banks as I drove around in the last gray days of winter, wondering if there was really a sun up there somewhere. I loved Ellis, Julia, and Dorie--from a distance. Ellis is a control freak and she was pushing my buttons at the beginning. Julia is pushy in her own way and too nosy for her own good. Dorie is a sweetheart though. And Madison is so bristly and quiet that I even felt like she was pushing me away--and we find out her story very early on. But they felt like a real group of old friends in the way that they laughed and fought and told it to each other straight. Ty, the next-door neighbor, is a dreamboat of a man. He's not perfect either, being entirely too stubborn for his own good,…

A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah: Book Review

Ishmael Beah was about 12 years old when Sierra Leone's civil war found him. He and his brother were visiting friends in a neighboring town and got cut off from their family. Their world descends into chaos and they are left trying to survive on their own. Oh my gosh. This was just heartbreaking. I started reading it one night, didn't even get to anything about him being a soldier, and had nightmares. I was afraid of what Ishmael was in for. In that respect, it was actually easier to read than I was afraid it would be. He tells about his time in the war pretty quickly. There are quite a few flashbacks, but he only tells enough to show what his life was really like. He doesn't relive every waking moment. It was still tough to read, but not as bad as it could have been. He and I are very close to the same age. He's almost exactly a year older than my sister. So when he gives a date for whenever something happened, it was easy for me to compare it to our lives. In 1997 he was on his way to speak to the UN about child soldiers. I was getting my heart broken in college. The war reached him in 1993. I was a freshman in high school, swimming along just fine in my niche. We were practically the same age but our lives were light years apart. It was somehow humbling. It's downright frightening to think this started when he was just a bit older than my youngest cousin is right now. I was frustrated that this group of boys were basically coerced into the army because they were hungry and wanted some sense of community. Oh, there was a lot more to…

The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag: Book Review

Alba Ashby is mortified. On the cusp of a brilliant career as a historian, she's lost everything, including her hope. Then she finds herself at the house at the end of Hope Street. Peggy, the eccentric caretaker of the home, invites Alba in and starts to regale her with stories of the house's more famous residents. It seems that every woman who has ever been anyone has stayed at the house at a time in their lives when they desperately needed hope as well. Peggy invites Alba to stay, but she only has 99 nights to resolve her issues and leave the house. With a comparison to Jasper Fforde, Lev Grossman, and Sarah Addison Allen in the book blurb, I had high hopes for this. I don't know exactly how all of those authors fit in, but I thoroughly enjoyed the book anyway. The book mostly centers around Alba but it's also the story of Peggy and two other women staying at the house, Greer and Carmen. There were aspects of each woman that I think will resonate with all of us. I couldn't help but root for them, hope they worked out their problems, and wish them all their happily-ever-afters. I want to live in this house, let me tell you. It readily dispatches advice (asked-for or not), has a knack for supplying exactly what you need, and giving you the tools you need to succeed. The walls are lined with photos of past residents who also form a sort of Greek chorus, commenting on events and offering their opinions. When Dorothy Parker, Agatha Christie, or Vita Sackville-West speak up, a wise woman listens. There's also a resident ghost but the only person who sees her is Alba. They form an instant friendship, something sadly lacking in young Alba's…

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith: Book Review

Cassandra Mortmain lives in a castle. Don't let that fool you--the castle is crumbling around her family's ears. Her father had the (mis)fortune to publish an incredible book early in his career and he hasn't been able to write another word since. In other words, the family is practically destitute. But then the owner of the castle dies and his American relatives inherit the property. Two young, handsome, and available relatives. Will one of them fall in love with Cassandra's older sister Rose and turn the family's fortunes around? I think that if I had found this book when I was about 15 I would have fallen in love with it. At 30, I really, really liked it. The story is told through Cassandra's journal, and she is brutally honest and funny. She's one of those characters that you wish you knew in real life. Really, I felt something for every character, whether I was amused by Cassandra's spacey stepmother, Topaz, or frustrated by Mr. Mortmain, they all got a response out of me. The story was enjoyable--funny, sad, reflective, and everything in between--and kept me guessing all the way through. I had no idea how everything was going to turn out. Primarily though, this is a story about Cassandra's coming of age. We watch her go from an innocent child swimming in the castle moat, to a young woman learning about herself and what she's looking for in love. Those parts were timeless and perfect. There can't be many women out there who don't relate to what Cassandra goes through in the course of the story. For that reason, I would recommend this to anyone who wants to relive a little bit of those years, as well as those who are going through that stage of life right now.…

Oral History by Lee Smith: Book Review

The Cantrell family has lived in Hoot Owl Holler in the mountains of Virginia for as long as anyone can remember. They love hard, play hard, and suffer deeply. There doesn't seem to be any in-between for them. Oral History follows...let's call it three...generations of Cantrells, starting with handsome Almarine and his run-in with a witch and going on down to his grandchildren. I loved this. I was thinking that it was my second-favorite book by Lee Smith (Fair and Tender Ladies is far and away my very favorite), but then I remembered On Agate Hill. We'll call it a tie. I say this every time, but I love the rhythm of Smith's writing. She writes in a way that is as familiar to me as an old worn quilt. The words, the syntax, the pronunciation, I just hear every word as if a family member were telling me a story. I loved the way the family events passed into legends in the hollers where they lived. From Almarine and his witch (was she really?) to a family curse to mysterious deaths. Smith never tells more than she should and leaves it up to the reader to decide what is "fact" and what is myth in this fictional family. The story passes from person to person as the years roll by, but the events are never told by those living them. That helps to keep the "reality or legend?" question going. The narrators aren't always sure themselves. I followed along with it just fine but readers who dislike multiple points of view might want to steer clear. There is a streak of something dark in some families in these mountains and I think Smith caught that feeling perfectly. I can't explain it any better that. Maybe it's just that we've…