A Plea for Percy Jackson

Listen, I know the movie came out more than a year ago--which, if we're honest, is like two decades in pop-culture these days--but I have something to say about Percy Jackson.

Read the books. DON'T watch the movie.Hollywood representations of books are bad as a rule. But this one was actually abysmal. I did both and felt like the movie was unrecognizable as a representation of the book. Like, more than Hollywood usually messes books up. Which is saying something.

Anyways...as for the books:

The pacing is relentless, the characters are dynamic, and the mythology is everywhere. Really, I think I learned more about Greek mythology while reading these books than in my "History of Ancient Greece" class that I took in college. (Dad, not really, thanks for picking up the tab on that class, by the way. I learned a ton!)

Here are some useful interesting things I learned while reading the Percy Jackson series:

• Artemis, though completely kick-ass is a little full of herself--as she should be.
• Conversely, I think her brother got a bad rap and is the one god I would befriend without hesitation. And not just for his awesome sports car. Okay, partly for the car. But he's also snarky and funny.
• Hellhounds are actually rather cuddly and endearing.
• There is an entrance to Daedalaus' labyrinth so freakishly near my house that I'm tempted to go poke around on private property to find it.
• I'm even less into Titans than I was before. Especially Kronos.
• I want a Pegasus and not in the 6-year-old girl kind of way--they're WAY more convenient than driving like normal mortals do.
• I'm pretty sure I know an Empusa. She's my husband's ex-girlfriend.

See! There are all sorts of useful interesting things to be learned by this series. I read each of them in no more than three sittings, so you can't tell me that they're too much of a time commitment.

Besides, if you have any Empusa in your life, you should at least be able to recognize them for what they are...

And if that's not enough for you, Percy is one of the most adorable heros...well, ever. See? Maybe the movie wasn't a complete waste...at least we have Logan Lerman in all his resplendent cuteness.

When Angels Fall, Sometimes They Go: SPLAT

 I am so super-duper way ahead on my reading for 2011. Yay me. Part of the reason that I’m ahead is because I’m not tackling books like The Decline and Fall of the Roman empire or anything like that. Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock was quite fluffy and sweet. Don’t get me wrong, it’s everything that a YA coming of age in Wisconsin should be, but it was a very quick read. Hush, Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick was also a quick read. However, unlike Dairy Queen, I did not feel like this novel lived up to its potential.

***BLOGGER’S NOTE***

I think this blog is going to be a bit spoilery. I tend to do that with books I don’t like because I don’t want anyone wasting their time on it. No, I mean it—once, a girl updated her facebook to "omg, so excited to start reading Breaking Dawn!" So I posted the entire plot in the comments section. I ended my message with something like “There, now you don’t have to waste your time. You'reWelcomeVeryMuch”

Yeah, I was in cyber-purgatory working that one off for a while. But in this blog I will try to warn you if spoilers are headed your way. You'reWelcomeVeryMuch.

***END BLOGGER’S NOTE***

Nora Grey (I really just sat here staring at my screen trying to come up with the main character’s name for about 45 seconds. I’m sure that speaks to how memorable she was since I finished the book 2 days ago and it should still be fresh in my mind.) Nora Grey is as normal as any other Mary Sue at the beginning of a paranormal YA romance girl in her high school. She is uninterested in boys, gets dragged around by her cartoonish best friend, and is about as dynamic as a paper clip.

Nora's pesky Biology teacher (who is also a basketball? Coach, thereby “Coach” to the kids in the class) suddenly forces the students to rearrange their seating to sit with someone completely random. The purpose of this exercise? To use the powers of investigation (which is “all science is”) to get to know someone new. The chapter that they are studying that would predicate this activity? Sex-Ed. Someone please explain to me what teacher would encourage students to cozy up to a stranger better as a method of teaching them about sex. Anyone who has spent time with teenagers wouldn’t touch that one with a 39 ½ foot pole.

The author does try to explain this one away several hundred pages later by throwing a line of “yeah, I put that idea in Coach’s head, because I wanted to sit next to you” from Patch, the luv interest. It just didn’t feel like enough to justify the amount of time that was spent in that stupid class.

So of course, Nora is paired up with the sexy, brooding, and all-too interested Patch. His eyes are black, his skin is olive and his manner is genuinely terrifying at times. He starts to tell Nora lots of things about herself that a stranger shouldn’t know. What kind of music she likes (classical—oh, sorry Baroque), what school she wants to go to (anything snotty: Harvard, Yale etc), and what her greatest fear is (heights). She is, by turns angry about this and sexually drawn to him.

I mean, really, this whole cycle of lust/hate that went on for about 200 pages was riveting. And groundbreaking. And totally unlike anything that already exists in the genre. Like, totally.

Gag.

When I read Nora’s narration, I felt like there were three different versions of her. And those versions never overlapped.

1) There was the Nora who tragically lost her daddy to a random act of violence the year before. I liked this Nora. In fact, it was the only iteration of the character that I connected with. She really missed her dad and had to deal with panic attacks and gripping fear that something similar might happen to her. I wish the author had spent a little bit more time exploring how this affected Nora and her relationships. If it had been done right, I think it would have actually made her a sympathetic character.

The way it read to me was like the author threw her father’s murder into the character’s background and proceeded to forget about it while actually writing the story. Yet somehow, at the same time it was painfully obvious that the death of her father is not because of a random act of violence. I hope that’s a plot point in book number two and becomes something that actually affects Nora. Truthfully, that's probably why the author was avoiding the issue in the first book. Maybe I should go on Amazon and see if that's actually the case with Crescendo...

2) There was the Nora who felt threatened and violated by Patch. I identified with this Nora. If some kid in school had black eyes and knew lots of creepy details about me, I would tell him to take a hike also. Animal magnetism and sex ed class aside.

3) Then there was the Nora who was so super-duper intrigued by this smoldering hunk of man-flesh. I think most of my issues with this character lay here. I guess if you’re prone to panic attacks and you feel threatened and violated by a guy, there’s no reason for you to want to jump his bones. Seriously, if Timothy Olyphant was running around doing half the things Patch was, I would have no problem going to the cops and getting a retraining order against him. His uber-hotness would be completely eclipsed by the fact that HE’S A CREEPER.

And Patch didn’t stop being a creeper when she started hanging out with him alone. She would just trot off to wherever he was and get all giggly and tingly and hot—she got warm and flushed a LOT and I just found that a little weird.

Truly, I’m okay with all of these elements being a part of the character. I like complex depictions of people in the stories that I read, the problem is that none of these pieces seemed to interact. When a new scene started, I never knew which Nora to expect. She was very rarely (if ever) at war with herself or wrestled with the decisions she made.

I’m almost done, I promise:
*deep breath*

I wasn’t crazy about her best friend either. Things start to feel a little too contrived for me if the main character who has no interest in boys whatsoever, mind you, is constantly hounded by their boy-crazy yet slightly less attractive best friend. I don’t buy that Nora and Vee (Yep, just Vee. Not short for anything that I could gather.) would ever hang out. Maybe if there had been a line about explaining some history between the girls, it would have been an easier pill to swallow. They were just incredibly different and seemed to have different outlooks on boys, school, fashion, you name it. Vee was, as I mentioned earlier, cartoonish. She was the type of character that simply ran her mouth for the sake of it. It was a contrived and tired feeling plot-device.

Now that I feel like I have sufficiently blasted what I didn’t like about the book, let’s talk about what I did like:

The sexual tension. Character consistency issues aside, there were some scenes with great chemistry between Patch and Nora. This didn't really feel like romance to me, though, so his giant sweeping gesture of love at the end of the book felt a bit contrived. But this is the section about what I DID like: so the sexy level was good.

The mythology. Patch fell from heaven way-back-when because he was in love with a girl.  Aww. How very Manny Sue of him. I won’t give away too much incase you want to read the book after all of the wonderful things I had to say about it, but the mythology was interesting. Unfortunately, there just wasn’t enough of it to float the wishy-washy narrator and the contrived scenes.

I was underwhlemed ("can you ever just be welmed?")  and I think if Nora had been more consistent and the story had been a bit more mythological, I would have been welmed at least. I might thumb through the next book, Crescendo, to see if it picks up at all.

Then again, probably not...

June is a good month for books. A really good month.

I don't want to ever come across as "I work at a publisher and get books before you do, nanny nanny boo boo." But in the same breath, I will admit to you that I'm the kind of person that isn't good at keeping secrets. My own, at least. Okay, and other people's sometimes too. I grew up with siblings and we were always forced encouraged to share toys, clothes, and information. So it's the sister in me that is going to tell you about this wonderful book that you can't buy until June (nanny nanny boo boo).

Speaking of sisters:

Rosamund Lupton has written a stunning book exploring that exact subject. And murder. And genetic testing. And suicide. And the intricacies of human relationship. And the strength of love between siblings.

If there is genetic testing, compelling interpersonal relationships, cute doctors and a crime scene it usually takes a lot to talk me out of liking a story. But that aside, Sister is breathtaking.

Like, actually. I got to a certain part of the story and gasped. Have I ever shared with you how difficult it is to get me to be stunned by a plot twist?

Case in point: Pretty Little Liars There is a popular YA series that has been made into a TV show. I watched the pilot of the show, decided it wasn't worth my time and promptly ordered the first in an eight book series from the library, just to see if the strong premise was played out any better in the books. Books are always better than the TV interpretations anyways. Halfway through the book, I decided that there was a crazy twin running around making people's lives miserable. Wikipedia to the resuce and EIGHT BOOKS LATER it was revealed that there was, indeed, a crazy twin sister.

Sigh. At least I didn't waste my time on more than 100 pages of it.

Maybe I read too many mysteries as a kid. Maybe I just read too much as a kid in general, but there was absolutely nothing about that series that warrants how popular it is...other than the lack of imagination from pop culture these days, and how they would rather see pretty people running around on screen instead of being told a compelling story.

*Glances backwards and takes a cautious step off soap box. Grins.* I digress...

This book was rich. Texture, grief, weather, relationships, everything described in this book will evoke emotion from you. I walked around for three days feeling like my guts had been ripped out. I wanted to call my little sister every 2.5 minutes just so she was sure that I love her. I highly recommend this book to anyone that has a close relationship with their sister.

I think one of my favorite things about this book was the gradual way that Bee (the older sister) found herself sliding into Tess' life. To the point that their mother even comments on how similar she looks to the little sister. It makes you realize that no matter the seeming distance between you, the bond between siblings is something profound that doesn't exist anywhere else.

Sister from Rosamund Lupton was originally released in the UK and makes it's US debut in June 2011. It's the kind of book that I will purchase simply so I can loan it to people.

The Sweetness of a Very Good Read

This week, I finished The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. This was yet another free Random House ebook. (Yay, Uncle Random House!) But unlike a few other books I have tried to read lately, this one was a home run.

From the flap copy, I was charmed on several levels:

1) It's set in England in the wake of WWII

2) The main character is 11

3) She is a brilliant little chemist

4) She has a giant vocabulary

5) She has a flare for the dramatic. Who doesn't love that in their narrator?

This was one of the very small number of books our there that hooked me from the first sentence: "It was  as black in the closet as old blood." As the chapter progresses, you learn that it is her sisters that are behind this inhumane torture of hog-tying.

I really enjoyed the writing in this book. The characters were relatable. The setting was warm. But the truth is, Flavia de Luce is what makes this book worth reading. She ended up being one of my favorite narrators in a long time time. She was precocious, snarky, transparent, real, and a brilliant little chemist.

What I have heard/read from Flavia's critics is that they couldn't connect with her. That she was cold, selfish, mean, and larger than life. Somehow, they think this makes her unreliable. But I have to disagree. What I really liked were the moments that you remembered that she was a kid. For most of the book, you don't think of her as a 11 year old girl. She's just your narrator. What keeps her from tipping into "unreliable narrator" territory are the moments that her youth shines through. Times that she fights with her sisters, or has the desire to throw herself into her daddy's arms, or for about 40 pages at the end, she really is simply a brilliant 11 year old girl who hasn't fully figured out who she is. (Forgive the cryptic nature of parts of that sentence, but I don't want to give away too much.)

I really liked her relationship with her sisters. It was strained at the best of times, as with most sibling relationships thought adolescence, but even more than Flavia knows, her sisters are a part of her. Not in an overt way, but they flit in and out of her narration in the most charming fashion. Feely (Ophelia) the oldest and the boy crazy one is the brunt of Flavia's calculated wrath through a good chunk of the book. What struck me about this sister was: isn't it so easy for a brilliant mind that has not yet gone through puberty to pigeonhole emotion as "crazy"? Feely's passion for life makes Flavia incredibly uncomfortable.

And then there's Daffy. Quiet and bookish Daphne. She is a direct foil to the chemist in Flavia. Where Flavia is more comfortable in her lab cooking up the perfect poison, Daffy would rather have her nose in a book; in a reality that doesn't truly exist. Through her frustration with her sister's bookishness, Flavia's own hermit-like tendencies are thrown into full relief.

I think what I liked so much is that Flavia is trying to find who she is in relation to them, in spite of herself.

Gorgeous.

So, all of that to say: READ THIS BOOK. It is wonderful.

What a waste of time...

Truly, I don't think that time spent reading is wasted. Reading, even if what you are reading is little better than drivel, uses significantly more of your brain than a passive activity like watching TV. So I guess if I look at the following books this way, I have not wasted my time. But I can't escape the fact that there are three books now sitting on my shelves that I have picked up and put down. *drum roll please* In the order that they were read, then abandoned:

Eat, Pray, Love (Always happy for opinions in the comments section, but keep in mind this is only my opinion--translation: sorry if you l-u-v this book.)

I know that this is probably the most controversial of my recent book-abandoning. It's a worldwide-super-mega bestseller. Most women foam at the mouth at the mention of this book. It was turned into a movie starring Julia Roberts, and the main song was done by Florence + The Machine for pete's sake. I really thought this would be a safe foray into the terrifying world of nonfiction (being that I rarely read nonfiction voluntarily.)

Unfortunately the reason I put the book down was because it is nonfiction. Now I wasn't just biased against the genre, it way deeper than that. Let me explain. No, too much. Let me sum up:

During the first few chapters, the author writes about her horribly long and drawn out divorce from her husband of 7 years. The reason? Not infidelity. Not abuse. Not even something understandable like mental illness or general instability of personhood. She just didn't feel like being married anymore. She didn't want to have kids and felt that since they were both sliding into their mid-thirties, that there was this giant expectation to reproduce. Someone please explain to me why that is anything other than selfish? And is selfishness a reason to call it quits on a marriage?

She did say that they "both had their part" and that her book wasn't the place to slam him or his character, which I found very commendable. But unfortunately for her, it also as a reader made me think she was kind of a bitch. She basically said he had done nothing directly to cause the marriage to fall apart except maybe not be aware enough of the fact she was headed toward an emotional cliff.

I understand that I am a little sensitive because I'm married. Without trying to do so intentionally, I put myself on the floor of the bathroom with her in the pivotal scene in the beginning of the book. I tried to identify with her decision.

Crushing despair? In this economy, I've been there.

Fear of the future? Heck yeah.

A desire to keep her life in tact without soiling it with children? Ugh--don't you wish that you could just transfer fertility from people like her to other women who deserve it? Wonderful, sweet, committed women who were born to be mothers that for whatever horrible twist of fate, can't? (Not sure if she did end up having a kid like that old dude in Indonesia predicted--frankly, I don't care.)

But even through the divorce, I was willing to give Ms. Gilbert my time. I understand that true beauty comes out of the dark times in our lives, so I was willing to hang in there with her. Until she started talking about David. The guy she began a passionate, addicting, and codependent relationship with before her divorce was final.

Book closed.

Here's where the nonfiction piece came into play. If she had been a fictional character, I probably could have swallowed the big pill of relational issues at the beginning. I would have consoled myself with the hope of a strong character arc. But the fact that she is a real person and really made those decisions made me distrust her. She became an unreliable narrator to me. Someone that is that willing to destroy the lives of those around them isn't someone I care to learn from, thankyoumuch.

Truth is, I'm sure she has some wonderful things to say and she comes to some really brilliant conclusions. Why else would the book be so popular? There has to be some serious redemption in the end. And maybe that redemption was all the sweeter for the rocky start that she got off too, but truthfully, there are a lot of other, truly great books out there that will accomplish the same thing. And it's possible that I will actually like those authors. Unlike this one.

Book the second: Super Sad True Love Story

This was my attempt of reading something a little edgier than I normally do. James Franco was in this book trailer, so I thought that was a pretty cool bit of marketing. Also, it was free. Can't say that's a bad price to go out on a literary limb.

Immediately, I was a bit confused, though intrigued, by the setting. It's in a future where people are glued to their information streaming "apparats" and speaking to someone is a rare and surprising instance called "verbal"ing someone. Cool idea, right? The US is in political shambles, and New York feels more like something from a shaky middle eastern country than the Big Apple.

The story centers on two characters that meet in Rome who come from remarkably different social classes and age groups. Lenny is a paunchy, middle-aged man with a fear of growing old, and a plan to monetize the emerging science of immortality. Eunice is a 20-something girl who would rather be partying in Rome than living in New Jersey near her mother, sister, and her physically and emotionally abusive father.

There you are: The first 1/3 of the book summed up in a paragraph. That's really all that happens. You find out that the culture is sex-crazed and things like orgy parties and bras that have openings in the middle to show off women's nipples are the latest craze. I promise, I'm not so easily offended that I put down a book because of a few raunchy scenes. But in that sex crazed culture, even Lenny's "selfless" love and commitment to Eunice (who wants nothing to do with him other than the occasional romp) makes him seem like a dirty old man. I really hate dirty old men.

The political overtones had the potential to be fascinating. I really appreciated the "reentrance exam" that Lenny had to take when he came home to the US because that's kind of how I feel every time I have to go through customs.

Also, some of the brand names were epic. I don't have the ereader in front of me but it was things like "CitiGerberHersheyGM Bank". You got the feel of centuries of Wall Street scuffles and mergers. I just wish those moments of brilliance weren't wasted on shallow and unsympathetic characters.

Another book bites the dust.

And finally: Pillars of the Earth

This book is THICK. The version I have is like 900-something pages. Here's the truth, I like reading a book like that every once in a while. Some people feel accomplished when they climb a 14er (I just wanted to die the one time I did that). I feel accomplished when I read a book over 500 pages.

A sweet woman in my office lent me this book because, as I do, she reads a lot of high fantasy. She said that I would like it, even though it was sans-magic.

Like any good historical novel, it started out slow. That didn't scare me. What I couldn't get over was how remarkably masculine the writing was. I don't have to read books by women, but after a woman who had met the main character (who's wife had passed away hours before) hopped on top of his starving and hypothermic body and had sex with him, I had a hard time connecting with them. They also had sex underneath a cloak when their respective kids were sleeping in the same room. Creepy. And gross. And creepy.

Also, one of the narrating characters kept thinking about how much he liked raping women. That was horrifying a little bit disconcerting. I really hope he turned into a bad guy. Though I didn't have the fortitude to wade through the rest of the book to find out.

There were sections about the monasteries that were really cool. And it's always nice to get a slice of what life was like in the days of yore. It really is the kind of story that immerses you in the feeling of the time even more than the narrative.

I don't care if I love the setting and the feel of the story, if you can't make me care about your characters, I'm not sticking around. And the truth is, I didn't like any of the characters. Maybe the ginger kid (his mom was the one with the cloak and the inappropriate sexing of strangers). I threw in the towel after 300 pages. I feel like that's a valiant attempt. I should get some sort of cash prize medal or something.

*deep breath*

Well, that was cleansing.

I should go read some Sarah Addison Allen or something to purge my soul from flat characters.

You never write, you never call...but gosh darn it, that gives me time to read.

Every time I come back from a blogging "hiatus" I say something disingenuous like, "OMG, I'm totally going to be better about blogging," yet I never am, so this time I'm going with, "yay me for blogging. What you see is what you get."

The holidays came and went. We survived. That's all I have to say about that.

With the chucking of another calendar and the replacement of a new one, came my perpetual renewal of my four resolutions. You can read about them here. Today, I am avoiding resolution number four. The novel. I really like my story. I like my progress (about 1/3 of the way through) and I like my characters, but I don't have have half a spark of creativity right now. Not even a static electricity kind of spark.

I'm pretty sure the lack of motivation has something to do with the lingering head-cold that bested me last week. Ugh, I haven't been that sick in a long time. For six days straight all I wanted was high sodium canned soup and my mommy. There were a few days in there that I was too sick to even read. Me! Too sick to read! But don't worry, I read straight through three novels as soon as I could hold my head up. My reading list this past week:

Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Peterson

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Foundling by D. M. Cornish

Jacob Have I Loved was a re-read. It's a coming-of-age story set on a small island off the Maryland coast during WWII. Louise is the older, darker, less talented twin and has to come to terms with her sister, her hometown, and most importantly, herself. This book is my personal version of Catcher in the Rye. I think I was 14 when I first read it, and I think it spoke to me more now as an adult more than it did when I was a kid. That's what I love about good writing, it transcends decades and grows more precious with time.

I picked up The Kite Runner mumbling something like "well I guess I oughta see what all the fuss is about". I know, I know, "welcome to 2003, Renee" but I was busy in 2003. I was in places like China and college in 2003. I had a lot of other things to read that year.

There are times where reading that book is almost physically painful--not in the same sense as Twilight--but there are some scenes that were difficult to get through. I've never really found it easy to read about rape or extreme cruelty, but the stark picture of Afghanistan is part of why the book is popular, right? So I carried on, clinging to the heart of the book. For me, that heart was Baba. He was gruff and kind all at the same time. He felt human, tangible.

As I closed the book I couldn't help but feel emotionally manipulated. That I wasn't just supposed to take a "well rounded" picture of Afghanistan with me, but that I was supposed to weep and gnash my teeth for the loss of these characters. That I was supposed to gasp at the revelation that Hassan was Amir's half brother, and that Asef joined the Taliban and still terrorized little boys. But I wasn't surprised, and I felt like the ends were tied up too neatly. It felt too engineered. I think I felt that way because the main character was rather unsympathetic. It's kind of hard to connect with a story if you don't trust or empathize with the main character.

So I guess my final opinion on the book was, "I don't get it...I mean, I get it, but I don't get it."

Foundling was cute. I felt like the story took about half the book to catch its stride, but once it did, it was a great middle grade fantasy novel. Sort of Oliver Twist meets Pirates of the Caribbean meets monsters. With a 125 page glossary in the back.

Oh, and I started Eat, Pray, Love and was so appalled by the reason that Elizabeth Gilbert left her husband, that I put the book down. I don't care to spend an entire book with someone that is THAT selfish. So...all that to say, I have a free copy of Eat, Pray, Love if anyone wants it. It's currently taking up precious space on my bookshelf.