Book Reviews Archive - Page 48 of 79

On Writing by Stephen King: Book Review

Stephen King sits down to share his thoughts on the writing process. No matter what you think of his books personally, you have to admit that he's a master at drawing in legions of fans. He prefaces his work with an explanation of what prompted him to write it. He was talking with author Amy Tan when he asked her what one question she wishes somebody actually would ask her at an author Q-and-A. "Amy paused, thinking it over very carefully, and then said: 'No one ever asks about the language.'....But Amy was right: nobody ever asks about the language. They ask the DeLillos and the Updikes and the Styrons, but they don't ask popular novelists. Yet many of us proles also care about the language, in our humble way, and care passionately about the art and craft of telling stories on paper. What follows is an attempt to put down, briefly and simply, how I came to the craft, what I know about it now, and how it's done. It's about the day job; it's about the language." Divided into three main sections, King actually covers a lot of ground in this short book. The first section is a mini-memoir of his life and the events that influenced his writing. The second part is the mechanics, and the third is about his life-changing accident (which happened in the middle of writing this book). I enjoyed the section about his life. I would never claim to be King's "Number One Fan," but I do enjoy reading his work. I can't say that I know anything about his life. He was run over about 10 years ago, Joe Hill is his son, and Tabitha King is his wife. That's about it. Oh, and that he was pretty strung out on drugs…

Watchers by Dean Koontz: Book Review

Travis Cornell is a man for whom life has lost all meaning. But on a hike one day, he runs into a golden retriever, somewhat battered, obviously friendly, but determined to protect him from something. Travis, a former member of the elite Delta Force, finds himself running in a blind panic with the dog. He takes the dog in and, after the dog displays absolutely amazing intelligence, names him Einstein. The two eventually become three when Travis meets lonely Nora Devon through Einstein. She joins with Travis in trying to protect Einstein from the mysterious being known as The Outsider. Unfortunately, The Outsider isn't the only one looking for the group. Can they all protect each other? Okay, this was Dean Koontz, so it almost naturally follows that I couldn't put it down. I fell in love with Einstein. The humans? Honestly, I could take them or leave them. But a dog with a sense of humor and a clear way to express it? Sign me up. Koontz usually does a good job with this, but I really liked the way that not everything was black and white in this novel. As scary as The Outsider is, he's not always the villain. In fact, he's postively heart-breaking in some scenes. Probably the only thing keeping me from giving this five stars was the huge amount of coincidence involved in Einstein managing to find an independently wealty Delta Force guy to live with. Aren't the odds better that he would find just a regular joe who would lack the knowledge, money and experience to protect him? Really, that's just a small thing, but it did periodically bug me. Overall, I recommend this for all Koontz fans, and really, for dog lovers who have ever wondered what their companions would say given…

Magic Study by Maria V. Snyder: Book Review

Yelena is now in Sitia, where she meets her long-lost family and starts to learn how to control her magical powers. But life isn't really any easier for her here than it was in Ixia. Sitians believe she's a spy from the north, sent to pave the way for the Commander's takeover of their country. Others believe that her magic is too powerful and think she should be...neutralized. While she's trying to acclimate to her new surroundings, a serial killer starts preying on young women, and Yelena is next on his list. Too much. Just too much. I still love Yelena, and I was a little lost without Valek (although I still dislike his name). But this book seemed to lack focus. I know that life is rarely neat and tidy with only one thing going on, but there are so many people out to get Yelena for wildly different reasons that it just got a little ridiculous. I did enjoy seeing Yelena learn to interact with her family and her tribe again. She's so endearingly awkward and uncomfortable that you can't help but feel bad for her. It's nice to see that she's not perfect! Her relationship with her brother is not what I expected and it bothered me at first, but it's explained toward the end of the book. But Yelena is still Yelena with all that implies. I loved watching her kick some butt and readjust some nasty attitudes. The Sitians really don't know what to make of her. I liked that she has a big heart and will do pretty much anything to help someone out. It can be small, like helping beggar children, or big, like laying her life on the line for someone else. She stays true to herself no matter the external pressures…

Footsteps in the Dark by Georgette Heyer: Book Review

Peter, Celia, and Margaret have inherited a country estate, complete with an old priory and chapel. The house has been uninhabited for years, but the group, along with Celia's husband Charles; their aunt Mrs. Bosanquet; and their loyal retainers, move in to have an adventure. They get more adventure than they expected. The locals believe the house is haunted by a spectral figure they call "The Monk." The extended family laughs it all off, until they start seeing the Monk themselves. This was pretty forgettable and the parts that weren't forgettable were irritating. Let's start with the irritating. This family moves out to the country and then has a grand old time laughing at all the country people around them. The "upper crust" of the little society gets off relatively unscathed, but everyone else is an ignorant dumbass. Being from the country myself, this stereotype got old for me a long, long time ago. Moving on to the forgettable... There was not one character that was well-developed. In fact, I never could remember which man was the husband and which was the brother. It mostly didn't matter since they all just acted like besties anyway and there was never any husband-and-wife chemistry between Celia and Charles. Both of of the guys were flippant little smartasses who thought they were much more intelligent than they actually were. I did have Margaret and Celia straight, but that's only because Margaret was the one who was developing a love interest. Mrs. Bosanquet did amuse me though. She was very good at putting Peter and Charles in their places. The romance was of the type that suddenly appears out of nowhere, and I generally dislike that kind of thing. I never really cared what was going on with the Monk. I had an idea…

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon: Book Review

Joe Kavalier is a Jew living in Prague just as the Nazis are taking control of the city in the late 1930's. With the aid of his escape artist teacher, Joe smuggles himself out of the country and all the way to New York City. Joe is just what his cousin, Sam Clay, has been looking for. Sam is a New York boy with a love of comic books and a huge imagination. Unfortunately, his artistry doesn't live up to his stories. Joe immediately gets a feel for the comic book form and the two form the comic book duo, Kavalier and Clay. Through the medium of the comic book, Joe takes on the Nazis years before America gets into the war. He also saves up money to try to bring the rest of his family to safety. Despite his best intentions, Joe lives his life while trying to fight the bureaucratic forces of Germany and America to bring his family to safety. I was a little torn about the rating for this one. It was four stars right up until America finally entered the war (about 2/3 of the way through). After that, I just didn't care anymore. I can't explain why without giving anything away. So three stars it is. I liked the characters of Sam and Joe. They were well-developed and believable. I don't know much about comic books, but I liked the chapters that gave the setup for their more popular comic book heroes. I read in the praise for the book that it's supposed to be funny. I must have not gotten those parts. There were a few parts that amused me, but mostly I found the book to be quietly heart-breaking. Reviewed August 31, 2008 Read an excerpt. Find author Michael Chabon on his…

Room by Emma Donoghue: Book Review

Five-year-old Jack has lived his entire life inside Room with his Ma. At night, Old Nick comes to visit while Jack sleeps in Wardrobe. Jack's life is strictly regimented. Breakfast, Lunch, Phys Ed, TV, and Screaming are at certain times throughout the day. In his world, there's himself, Ma, and Room and that's pretty much it. Old Nick is sort of real, but everything else is just TV. Other kids, grass, fancy toys, dads, everything. Shortly after his fifth birthday, Ma starts telling Jack stories about Outside. He thinks they're only stories like "Jack and the Beanstalk" at first, but when Ma insists that they're true, he first gets upset and then tries his best to believe her. He just can't conceive of the outside world. When Ma tells him that they have to try to escape from Room, he falls apart on her. Wow. This was tough. Emotionally, I mean. It's written from Jack's point of view, and while he's an extremely intelligent little boy, he is still only five. But realizing how small his world is, and how he and Ma came to be inside Room was nerve-wracking and exhausting. Realizing that the game that Jack calls "Screaming" is Ma's desperate way to try to draw attention to themselves and their prison is heart-breaking. Speaking of that, I thought the author did a very good job of letting Jack tell what he innocently sees while letting her adult readers figure out the darker meaning of what he doesn't understand. There's the Screaming thing, and there's the way he says something like, "Old Nick always goes to bed and then creaks it. I count it. Tonight it's 217 times." Jack doesn't understand, but readers know exactly what's happening to Ma. I'm glad that it wasn't spelled out any more…

The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany

The twelve men making up the parliament of Erl go to their ruler one day and ask for a magic lord. The ruler agrees to grant their request and sends his son to steal and marry the King of Elfland's daughter. But of course finding her and keeping her can't be that easy. In the introduction to this edition, Neil Gaiman compares Lord Dunsany's writing to the King James Bible. I honestly wouldn't have thought of that, but the description is perfect. The language is beautiful, but, for me, dense and a little hard to wade through. I kept thinking of those old fairy tale books by Andrew Lang, like The Orange Fairy Book. As I remember it, those books had very little dialog and just describe the story happening. That's how this was. I also mentally compared it to a beautiful, old silent movie. You're watching this beautiful story unfold, but there's no dialog. I guess I like a lot of dialog. As I read the book, I kept thinking of a phrase my yoga teacher uses: "like you're moving through honey." That's the pace at which this book moves: like you're moving through honey. I normally tear through books so I never quite got my mind slowed down enough to fully enjoy and understand this book. When I did manage it, for a couple of paragraphs at a time, I could see what all the fuss is about. But the rest of the time, I just wished we could get on with the story. That is, if I didn't fall asleep first. By the end, Lirazel had gotten on my nerves. She wanted to have her cake and eat it too. Who doesn't, really? But asking her father to use his last all-powerful rune to give it to…

The Bookseller of Kabul by Åsne Seierstad: Book Review

After following the Northern Alliance troops around Afghanistan and reporting on the fall of the Taliban, journalist Åsne Seierstad finds herself in Kabul. She stumbles upon a bookshop and goes in. She and the proprietor, Sultan, hit it off at first and she is invited to spend a little time with his family. She thinks she has found an enlightened Afghan man and asks him for permission to live in his house for a while and write about everyday life in an Afghan household. She finds out that some of his politics and beliefs are more liberal than one would expect, but he still very much rules his family with iron authority. There was one chapter that I loved, "Billowing, Fluttering, Winding." Seierstad sets out to make the reader experience life inside the burka, and I felt that she pulled it off very well. I felt closed in and like I had blinders on. I felt like I had to physically turn my head to see anything around me. I felt lost in a sea of mostly-anonymous burkas. The only way to differentiate between other women was by the bits of their shoes that were peeking out. When the narrator loses track of the other women she's with, I realized how hard it was going to be to find them. It was beautifully, effectively done, and it's worth reading for that chapter alone. I like that the author included a list of the 16 decrees that the Taliban broadcast when they took power. Some of them weren't really all that surprising, but others left me shaking my head in puzzlement. "Prohibition against the washing of clothes by river embankments." What? Are they afraid that women are going to have a "wet burka" contest or something? I don't understand that one.…

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami: Book Review

There's a lot going on in this book. Basically, Toru Okada has just quit his job in Tokyo and all kinds of strange people enter and leave his life while all kinds of strange things happen to him. To say more would give away some things. I finished this book, put it down, and told my husband, "Don't ask me what I just read, because I couldn't tell you." The style of the book is very dreamy, and there are so many dreams and what-might-have-beens that I was never entirely sure what was really happening and what wasn't. Parts of it were a little graphic, both in terms of violence and sex. That didn't bother me too much, but I usually read books that have a more concrete story line. As someone else put it, you don't read this book, you float through it. I kept waiting for everything to come together and get explained, but that never happened. I read this book for the Constant Reader book group on Goodreads. It's not a book I would have chosen on my own. Honestly, if I had chosen it on my own, I would have put it down, probably before I'd even finished 100 pages. I don't regret reading it because I feel like I was pulled outside of my box, and I really think I'll be chewing over a lot of the lingering questions for a long time. But I'm not planning on picking up more of this author's books either. Reviewed September 22, 2008 Read an excerpt. Find author Haruki Murakami on his website and Facebook. Buy The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle at Malaprop’s | Better World Books Friday Flashback Reviews are a weekly feature here on The Introverted Reader. These are old reviews I wrote on GoodReads. Thanks to…

Under the Tuscan Sun by Frances Mayes: Book Review

After many years vacationing in Italy, Frances Mayes and her--husband? I don't think that's ever clarified--decide to buy a home in Tuscany. They search for a while, but nothing really calls to them. Then they stumble upon a home called Bramasole in the town of Cortona. It's a wreck, but they can't get it out of their heads. They go over and over all the reasons that they shouldn't buy it. And then they follow their hearts and move in and get to work. First of all, I just need to say that this book has little in common with the movie except for the title. As she kept writing about "our house" and "our money," I kept looking back to see if I was missing something. She's buying the house with someone? And not just anyone, but a significant other? This was supposed to be about remodeling a house in Tuscany and romance with handsome Italians! What happened here?!? Still, I enjoyed it, even more than the movie. So what if there aren't any romances with Italian men? I got to read beautiful descriptions that left me feeling as if I had just soaked in the heat of a Tuscan August, and left me feeling as if I really had been living life at a slower pace. Mayes is a very evocative writer and I was lost in the Tuscan countryside almost immediately. I didn't envy them the work they were doing, but I loved reading about the connection she was making with the house, the previous owners, and the roots she was growing. She refers often to the nonna that she imagines previously lived in the house, and wonders what she would think of the changes they are making and the food they are cooking. The nonna becomes…