Kushiel's Dart

by Jacqueline Carey

It had been awhile since I had delved into a good fantasy series and this book had been sitting on my shelf, patiently waiting for me to get around to reading it, for WAY too long! I'm so glad I finally dove in to this one and I wish I had done it earlier! I really enjoyed. I really really enjoyed it.

For those of you following along on this blog, this was the book I was reading for Readathon 2012. Although I didn't get through as many pages as I had hoped to in 7 hours of reading, it was the kind of book where I could easily sit for most of a day and lose myself. It's completely absorbing and very suspenseful. The action is pretty much nonstop. I don't think there was ever a moment when I thought, "Okay, can we get on with the story already?"

My favorite thing about this book is the world-building. It's something I've never managed to master in my own writing, so I admire it all the more when other people succeed at it. Carey has an entire continent with different countries and states and people. It's obvious where her inspiration comes from for each area, but I don't think that necessarily makes it any less impressive. The city we start out in seems to be largely based on France. Most of the names and titles are either French or very similar to French, with a difference of just a letter or two. La Serenissima and its prominent families are clearly Italian, the Skaldi are reminiscent of Vikings without the ships, and the Albans and the Dalriada are obviously Celtic. There are even more, but those are the prominent players. I did wonder about whoever drew the map, though. As Phedre traveled all over, I found myself constantly referring to the map drawn at the front of the book, but what I saw didn't always quite match up with what I was reading.

My one complaint would be that it runs a little long. It's almost exactly 900 pages and, after about 700, my interest in a book dwindles and I become anxious to get to the end already. Fortunately the second book is closer to 600 pages so, after a short break, I can get back to this series. That's good because there are so many characters and intrigues that I feel like, after too long of a break, I would have a hard time remembering who was who and which character double-crossed whom.

Readathon 2012!

I DID A LOT OF READING!

Well, actually I didn't get nearly as much done as I had hoped. The readathon was supposed to be a full 24 hours but I limited myself to 8, as that's all I figured I could handle and it's double my previous record for amount of time spent reading in one sitting.

As a newbie to the whole readathon event (I hadn't even heard of it until about a week and a half ago) I got some advice from my favorite place: the internet! In this magical place a veteran of the readathon gave advice. 1) To read short books so you feel more productive by the end of the day. I did not obey this rule. I am currently enmeshed in an epic fantasy and had no desire to leave it. It's very well-written and suspenseful so I had no problem reading this one story for the whole day. 2) To alternate healthy snacks with the unhealthy so you don't feel like dying by the end of the day. I had an apple turnover. That counts for both, right? Cuz apples are healthy?

I would like to add to that my own piece of advice. Get up and move around. At least once per hour, even if it's just to stretch or do jumping jacks or something. I'm participating in a walking competition at work so I spent some time walking circles around my living room to get my steps in. Go multi-tasking! I also found it helped because, not only is it just generally healthy and we should remember to do this everyday, but, in the past, the amount of time I could spend reading in one go was frequently limited by how long I could sit still. Making sure to get my walking in definitely helped with that.

So there it is! That was my experience with my very first readathon. Maybe next time I'll extend it to 10 hours *gasp*!

The Prince

by Niccolo Machiavelli

Not a lot to say about this book. I read it for a few reasons: 1) A college professor told me every college student should read it before graduating. Well, I didn't make that goal, but I figured better late than never. 2) It gets referenced a lot and I wanted to have a better understanding of what everyone is referring to. 3) I found it on sale at Barnes & Noble + I had a gift card to Barnes & Noble = impulse purchase.

Overall I found it fascinating. If Machiavelli wasn't right in everything he said, he certainly made a good case for it. Admittedly he backed up his statements with examples from history that I was not familiar with so I find it hard to argue with him. The one thing I will argue with him on is his statement that a prince should study war above all things (by prince he means sovereign. He uses the word the way I would use "king"). While I recognize that this must have been very important for a prince at that time (not so much now), I highly doubt it was the only thing a prince should study. Machiavelli himself listed a plethora of examples of a prince needing to understand people, both the specific people around him, as well as how people operate in groups.

I will even agree with Machiavelli's most infamous statement that it is better for a prince to be feared than loved. His reasoning for this is basically that goodwill in and of itself is not enough to keep men from rising up against you and he's right. Men, in general, are selfish and short-sighted and whatever love they bear for their prince is unlikely to be enough to prevent them from rising against him when times get tough. Machiavelli does not say that it is not good for a prince to be loved and I'm afraid that's how this statement is often interpreted. What he actually says is that, if it were possible to be both feared and loved, that would be ideal but, seeing as how that is rarely, if ever, possible, one must choose and the best choice of the two is to be feared.

According to the notes in my translation, the section of this piece that caused the most offense was the one preceding his famous line about fear vs. love. In said section, Machiavelli discusses the various traits a prince should have. I'm not going to list them all but he basically says that, while it sounds like a good idea thing to possess all those traits men think of as virtuous and to abstain from all traits viewed as undesirable, it's just not possible. Machiavelli goes on to list virtuous princes who were overthrown and princes with less than favorable reputations who maintained solid kingdoms throughout their lives. The fact of the matter is that, while one might wish to be thought of as honest and virtuous, possessing those qualities, particularly in the extreme, can lead a monarch to serious problems. Anyone who has seen the first season of Game of Thrones knows that.

My guess would be that where Machiavelli really upset people was when he said it didn't matter whether a prince was religious or not, although it was usually a good idea to appear religious.

DISCLAIMER: I used the term "men" to mean mankind in general because I didn't feel like writing "men and women" every time. So don't take it personally, guys.

Jazz

by Toni Morrison

I loved this book. I had been reading a lot of light fluffy stuff and was ready for something a little more dense. Even though this only took me a week to get through, it's not a very long book and was much more thought-provoking than anything else I've read lately. This is the kind of book you don't zip through. You have to sip it slowly and really savor it. I will probably need to read it at least once more in order to fully appreciate it.

I adore Toni Morrison's writing. I admire her ability to just ignore the standard laws of writing. For example, while most of us feel obligated to put commas after each item in a list, she feels no such compulsion. Yet it works phenomenally well because commas create pauses in our prose and Morrison doesn't want those pauses. It gives her writing a sense of flow, but it doesn't get out of control. I read once that she tries to make her writing sound like jazz and I think she has mastered that art. Her creative use of grammar gives her writing a musical quality. It seems to carry you along with it as she tells you her story. I found myself completely absorbed by it and angry at the phone for ringing when I was clearly trying to read this book! Rude!

Morrison also feels no need to tell her story in a chronological manner and I'm also totally okay with that. The only problem was I did have trouble in some parts trying to figure out what happened when and how it related to other events in the story. Hence my need to re-read this book. Maybe not right away, but someday. I promise you though, all the events and characters are related to each other, some of them in surprising ways.

I'm also in awe of Morrison's choice of narrator in that she was not omniscient. She would write a chapter where a character explained their thoughts and actions and then the narrator would step back and speculate as to why that character did such-and-such or what they thought about a certain event. And she wouldn't even reach a conclusion. She would merely state that she wondered about it, maybe put forth a few theories, and then move on. I loved that because it made it feel like I was reading this story with the narrator, rather than having the narrator tell me the story. It was as if we were discovering these people and events together.

Divergent

by Veronica Roth

So I read about two chapters of this book and went, "I am so over this whole dystopia thing. So, why am I even reading this?" Well, the answer is threefold. 1) Because everyone else and their mother has started reading it and I want to be part of the in-crowd (PLEASE don't exclude me! I'll read anything! Yeah, sometimes I'm still that shy, nervous little 14-year-old and for that I apologize). 2) A friend of mine whose opinion I respect read it and loved it. Sorry, but on this one we have to disagree. 3) The book was a super quick read and I knew it would only take a few hours of my life to get through.

That being said, I think there are a lot of similarities to the Hunger Games here, both good and bad. First off, we have another 16-year-old kick-ass girl as our heroine. Don't get me wrong, I love a good old-fashioned kick-ass heroine (Buffy is only my favorite show ever). My problem is with the author sticking me inside her head and not letting me out. I'm sorry, I already spent my time as a neurotic teenager, I really don't want to spend any more time in that hell.

Much like Katniss, our heroine, Tris, is pretty good at survival stuff, underestimates herself (actually, in this case, I'm okay with that, with Katniss, it got kind of obnoxious), and is clueless when it comes to boys. Sometimes she's clueless with people in general and that, too, is all normal teenage girl stuff. I just don't want to be stuck in her head for all of it.

My other problem was entering this story knowing that it involved civil war. So I spent 3/4 of the book going "where's the war?" Once the war started, it was awesome. The action scenes were intense and suspenseful and kept me reading. But, again, I have to quibble about being stuck inside the main character's head because, if I hadn't been, it would have increased my suspense. As it was, I knew the narrator needed to stick around and was therefore safe.

So, right now I'm debating whether or not I want to continue reading this series. Now that the war is in full swing, I might ...

Vanity Fair

by William Makepeace Thackeray

I loved this book! I wasn't expecting to. Honestly, I'm not sure what I was expecting. I had seen the movie with Reese Witherspoon and I had heard that she made Rebecca much too sympathetic (which she did) but I wasn't expecting something so satirical. Thackeray makes fun of each and every one of his characters mercilessly and it's great fun! All of his characters are caricatures so don't expect them to be full-fleshed people. They are paper puppets who exist purely for Thackeray to mock and ridicule and watching him do so is immensely enjoyable.

I think this is his version of Trollope's "The Way We Live Now". He's making fun of, not only his characters, but of society and the way it operated in his day. He relentlessly points out and makes fun of all of society's little idiosyncrasies and hypocrisies and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Despite it's size (a mere 800 pages) it's not nearly as formidable as it looks. Thackeray's writing style is very conversational and, therefore, very light and fluffy and easy to breeze through. Before I knew it I was half-way through!

Another thing I hadn't realized before reading this book was that Rebecca is merely one of two main characters. Her friend, Amelia, is the true heroine of the book but I don't think she even appeared in the movie. I can understand why. She's boring. The only reason I kept reading about her was because I loved watching Thackeray make fun of her and the people around her. Without that there is absolutely nothing engaging about her so leaving her out of the movie was an excellent choice. Not to mention there's quite enough material to cover with just Rebecca's adventures (like I said, the book is 800 pages long! It covers a lot of ground!)

Heat Rises

by Richard Castle

I was dubious about these books to begin with. I thought it was brilliant that someone had actually come up with the idea of writing, publishing, and selling the book that Nathan Fillion's character, Castle, was writing during the first season of the show, but I didn't think I actually wanted to read the book.

I was wrong. Clearly, since I've now read three of them. The only reason I waited so long to read this one (I bought it as soon as it came out) was because I like to save these books for the middle of the summer, half-way between seasons of the show when my Castle withdrawal is at its peak. This helps hold me over until the next season. Although I enjoyed the first two books, I thought they'd be the type I'd read once and then give away. Yeah, ... that's not gonna happen.

This book pulled me in much the same way the show has. I started because it was light and fun, not planning on getting emotionally invested in any of the characters. The first two books were pretty typical murder mysteries (which, by the way, I never read, so extra props to them for getting me to read a genre I don't normally like). This one has managed to strike a deeper emotional core. For those of you watching the show, this book incorporates the murder of Captain Montgomery into the world of the books, making sure that, as far as characters go, the show and the books remain on the same page (no pun intended). Not only am I sad that I finished the book (I think my Castle withdrawal might actually be worse now) but I'm not sure I can wait until next summer before reading the next one. I have to find out what comes next.

I think my only quibble with the books is Rook's tendency to blurt out fantastic theories based on his imagination rather than fact. It makes sense that Castle does this - he is a mystery writer after all - but Rook is a journalist and, as a journalist, he would know to look for facts first. However, Castle's exciting, off-the-wall theories are part of what make him so endearing and a part of why we all love him and show, so I'm willing to let that one go.

I do have to mention a moment I loved more than any other. The moment when the agent tells Rook he looks like "that space captain" and Rook says "Malcolm Reynolds?" It made my night. I am so glad that, not only the writers of the show, but also the book's ghost writer appreciate the number of Firefly fans watching the show and reading the books and give us little shout-outs like that. We appreciate it.