Book Review

Review: Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk

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5759This is a tough one for me….I almost stopped reading this book a dozen times….almost just flipped to the ending at least another dozen times. I was seriously pissed. I couldn’t follow the story at all. I felt like it did not flow, at all. I sooo wanted to love this book…..I have heard so much about Palahniuk. I have found dozens of quotes that I loved and tracked them back to him. I *needed* to love this book, but I hated it!!!!! It is not often I give up on a book. Especially one I have wanted to read for a long time. This one had me sooo close to doing just that…..

It’s not that the book was too gross (just imagine soup stirred with a stranger’s penis). It’s not that it was too brutal. It’s not that it was too warped. None of those things bothered me. It’s just that it all seemed too jumbled. It felt like I would read a part of the book and then the next page it seemed to go to a time that was prior to the part I just read. I felt very disoriented. I am a reader that usually has no problems following a story. I love the details, but I don’t let the details bog me down either. Sometimes I know this is a very hard thing for readers to do….to let go of not understanding everything….to just let the story take you where it needs to…at it’s own pace….It is human nature to want to understand everything and not wait for answers to be revealed….but even I had a hard time with this novel.

As I said, I was seriously pissed that I was not able to grasp where Palahniuk was leading me. I mean, I knew where it was going, but seriously, why can’t he keep a straight path to it? Foolish me…..going off and doing exactly what I thought I never did…..getting bogged down in the freakin’ details instead of letting the book lead me to where I needed to be….

To not give anything away from someone who might read this book later, I will just say, that as soon as Palahniuk turned on my light bulb moment at about 80%, the madness I was feeling turned into a moment of surreal brilliance. At that point, I was *SERIOUSLY* pissed that I had almost abandoned the book a dozen times… B-R-I-L-L-I-A–N-T!!!!!!!!!!  I mean, seriously, just fucking BRILLIANT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This book was everything and more that I had hoped to gain from reading a Palahniuk book……

~Urania

Buy It Now  Fight Club: A Novel

 

 

 

Review: The Long, Hot Texas Summer (McCabe Homecoming #2) by Cathy Gillen Thacker

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3 stars

Justin and Amanda are unexpectedly thrown together to start a ranch for boys with social service needs. As they work on the ranch, a spark develops, and they spend the rest of the book exploring their chemistry together. That, and working on getting the ranch ready to open on time.

This book was predictable and the characters were underdeveloped. But the plot was cute, Justin and Amanda were likeable (and beautiful, of course), and the writing was good.

All in all, The Long, Hot Summer isn’t really special in any way, but it is a cute, straightforward romance with the requisite three scenes of intimacy.

I received an ARC from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

–Calliope

Buy It Now The Long, Hot Texas Summer

Review: On the Island (On the Island #1) by Tracey Garvis-Graves

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islandSometimes we all need to read a book that doesn’t make you think at all….we need to read a book that makes you forget…..it’s been a while since I stayed up past my bedtime reading a book…one that had me waking up a few times during the night wondering what happened…too excited to remain asleep…..one that finally made me get up early and stay in bed for hours trying to get it read….just so I could see how the characters got to their happily ever after….this was that book! I loved it…..No, it wasn’t life changing. It wasn’t something that makes you change how you view the world…it was pure escapism….something that you needed without even knowing you needed it….it was delightful to be so wrapped up in Anna and TJ’s life that I was able to forget my own for a little while….again, I simply loved this book….sorry I waited so long to actually read it……I hope I don’t wait so long to read her other books…..

I hesitated a very long time reading this book. I kept hearing wonderful things about it, but I read the description (something I rarely do) and it put up a huge mental block for me….the description and my imagination of the subject matter really put me off of this book. I didn’t see how I could ever get past a part of the book and this was before I even started it!!!! However, the subject matter I feared (teacher/student relations) was handled seamlessly by the author. Tarvis-Graves did a wonderful job and there was not a moment I felt uncomfortable with anything in the book. Don’t pick up this book until you have a chunk of time set aside….you’ll be wondering the whole time how it’s going to get to the ending!!!!

~Urania

Buy it now On the Island: A Novel

Review: The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy

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princeNever been both, so happy to see a book end and sad at to finish the last page as I have with TPoT. This is one of the types of books I love the most…so beautiful that you ache with each word you read…yet at the same time your gut is clinched in knots that are painful and your heart is pounding out of your chest because of the horrors you are witnessing. yes, I said witnessing. I did not simply *read* this book….I was there. I experienced it. I witnessed it. I felt it….There were parts I laughed so hard that I almost had tears rolling out of my eyes…there were times where I felt so much pride that I wanted to cry…there were times I felt such righteous anger that I had tears of anger blurring my vision….there were times I felt so lost and hopeless that I could only cry….and there were times that this book actually brought chills upon my skin….Finally, there were times that I had no choice except to put the book down for a while and walk away and try to distance myself from it. At times it was simply too much for me to bear….

The grandparents reminded me of characters from a Fannie Flagg novel. So eccentric, outrageous and lovely that you hate your childhood, just because you didn’t have them in it. There is no way you could not feel pure enjoyment at some of the happenings in the town. At other times, I was so mad I could taste bitter bile in my mouth….so angry, I felt my pulse pounding. But most of what I felt was a sorrow that stayed with me, even after I laid the book down and tried to forget.

I grew up in the South. Besides the ending (which was the only objection I had to this entire book, I felt the ending was just too much….too contrived to be believable), I felt that this novel was not a work of fiction. It was a life that could be found in many many a Southern town. I bet I knew some of these people. I bet some of me can be found in these pages. I felt fierce pride at so many moments in this book. Pride for perhaps the first time at being a Southerner. At other times, I knew for a certainty why I no longer live there. This…Book….Was…..Very….Real to me….

It would be so easy to point the finger at any of the characters in this book and tell them why they were wrong. It would be just as easy to understand why they were as broken as they were.

What one can not so easily explain is how they are still beautiful and how you have no choice but to love each and every one of them. What is so hard to accept about your own self is that you feel sorrow for them. That despite the horrible things that they did, you understand that they are all good people. That they all have a fierce love for family. That they did so much wrong, but that in the end, they honestly did the best that they could in that moment in time.

I like to think we are all above how we were raised. That every bad rotten thing we experienced or witnessed has made us into a better person. I like to think that we all have the power within us to *always* do the right thing. Life however has taught us all otherwise. Can any one of us not think of a single time where we have had wrongs done to us and wish we had behaved differently? No, most of us have not done atrocities to those we love….nor have we had atrocities done to us….but can any one of us look back and not see one instance where we wish we had chosen a different way? A better way. Reacted differently? In the end, they are just people who did what they did and wished that they had behaved differently. They suffered for the choices that they made, because they had to live with those choices. They did not simply act and move on….

We should all take away from this book that the choices we make not only effect other people, they also effect us. There is no running away from the past. The past is a part of you that you always carry with you….No matter how much you deny it or reject it…it is still a part of you. Good or bad, it helps to shape you into the person you are today. No, we do not have to constantly live in the past….but let us all hope that we have learned from our own personal history. It’s never to late to change your life…I sincerely hope that it’s never to late to make amends and try to make it right….

~Urania

Buy it now The Prince of Tides: A Novel

Review: The Dinner by Herman Koch

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The Dinner tells a tale of the dark side of normal. The book totally disturbed me, and I think it was supposed to.

You know how Hannibal Lector disturbed everyone, and no one would ever admit to admiring him, but you just know there are people out there admiring him? Well, Herman Koch made me stand in terrified awe of Paul and Claire Lohman, and their son Michel. And they admired each other for the same reasons I was freaked out.

Paul and his arrogant politician brother Serge, along with their wives, meet at dinner to discuss a crime their teenage sons committed together. One family wants to admit the guilt; the other wants to hide the crime. Instead of working out a solution among the four, Paul and Claire bully their way to protecting their son.

I couldn’t love this book because the nature of the crime and the coverup was too disturbing for me. But I appreciated the brilliance of the plot development, the psychological thrill ride, and the deliberate writing. So often Koch intimated something without spelling it out: instead of reading that the neighbor is a pedophile, we read that Michel and other boys often go to the single male neighbor’s house to sit on the sofa, drink Cokes, and listen to music together. Koch employed this technique often – and I appreciate the effort it takes to describe a situation so precisely that the hints and circumstance tell so very much more than a stark statement of fact.

If you like dark journeys into the disturbed corners of the human mind, join the Lohmans at The Dinner.

-Calliope

P.S. Remember to follow this blog and comment on the Giveaway post to be entered into our August giveaway of Pivot Point and The Sea of Tranquility.

Buy It Now The Dinner

Review: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami, Jay Rubin (Translator)

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windupHow does one review a Murakami book? First I will start by saying, this guy is way too smart for me to grasp all of what he writes. Having said that, I think there was a time in my life that I would have grasped a lot more, but perhaps that time for me has passed….I think to truly appreciate all he expresses in a book that one must read his work over and over. If there is ever a book that you wish to have a dog-eared copy of, with passages underlined 3 times in bold pen, Murakami’s works would be it.

Part of my problem trying to absorb (and this is an author you *really* do absorb…He words sink into your bones, into your very tissue…one does not simply read Murakami, if you do, you are not doing it right….)Murakami is that I often get so enthralled with a single passage that my mind must stay and linger there for a great deal of time. Never mind that I have tried to continue on reading, my mind is still caressing a single passage over and over….so in effect, I often find myself having to go back and re read parts of the book….

Now this book. Many questions are asked here…and in true Murakami style, he leaves much to you, the reader, to decide the answers…I often get aggravated with authors that do this, but not with Murakami. He always ends the books in the only way possible to end them!

Yes, he has the moon and the stars in this book. He has good and evil. He has mysterious women….and he has a very simple, ordinary man, faced with what he knows in his heart to be true, even though everyone and everything is saying different. I think this book had a beautiful, fairy tale ending to it. It was so suspenseful in parts (I usually don’t get my heart pounding so fast as this book did!)….How far would you go for love? How much faith could you put in what your heart knows to be true, even though you mind tells you it is not? Finally, the question is asked is all you gain in the end worth the price you pay to stay true to your own self?

Of course there are many other aspects to this book…Far too many for me to try to explain or even understand, but this is what will stick with me from this book for a long time…..

as is true with any Murakami novel, you should travel this journey yourself to experience all he has to offer….and remember, you *must* stop and enjoy the scenery…the desalination of his books are only that…the end….the true magic lies in just getting there…..

~Urania

Buy it now The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel

Review: Born to Run by Christopher McDougall

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I’m not really a runner. I jog a mile here and there, but I do it because it’s healthy, not because I love it. And here I was reading a book about people who LOVE to run. They love to run so much that they run 20, 30, even 100 miles in a day.

The first half was a little boring. McDougall gave me some science and some anthropology and some history… but nothing exciting. I expected that from non-fiction, so I kept reading. And it got better.

I cried for the village that helped its runners along the mountains and canyons. I thirsted with the guy who gave away his last ounces of water to someone who needed it more. I whooped with the college girl who had so much fun running that her joy and her craft knew no bounds. I sighed in relief for the guy who finished 50 miles of cliff and canyon running in 12 hours — when only 2 years earlier he couldn’t run a mile without pain.

I said before that I don’t love running. But after reading Born to Run, I WANT to love running.

See you on the trails sometime!

–Calliope

Buy It Now Born To Run

Review: The Great Santini by Pat Conroy

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4 stars

After reading The Prince of Tides, I wanted more literature by Pat Conroy. Yes, I said literature. Because that’s how good Conroy’s writing is. He puts so much good stuff into a story that by the time you’ve wrapped your head around it all, he’s punched you in the gut with something unexpected. Conroy uses a lot of fancy vocabulary, so have a dictionary nearby. Sometimes my built in Kindle dictionary doesn’t even have the words he uses.

The Great Santini is about a military man whose ego is so huge that he lives to overshadow his military corps, his airplanes, and his family. He is a mean son of a gun, and his family loves him and hates him, knows him and knows nothing about him.

I’m not into military stories or historical novels, but this book held my interest anyway. There may have been more pages about the Marine Corps, but there was more substance about the lieutenant corporal’s family. They held together while I held my shoulders tense knowing there’d be some abuse in this book. Conroy also comments on coming of age, racism, classism, education, sports, poverty, and the fraudulence of southern charm.

I enjoyed The Great Santini. I didn’t love it as much as The Prince of Tides, but it’s an excellent study in the relationship between a father and son. Even if I did predict the ending. 😉

– Calliope

Buy It Now The Great Santini

Review: The Dirty Streets of Heaven (Bobby Dollar #1) by Tad Williams

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DirtyI’ve been wanting to try Tad Williams for a while now. I just kept putting it off. I am not opposed to fantasy writers. Some of my favorite books are from this genre. However, for whatever reason, I am always intimidated by them before I start. Perhaps I am afraid the story line will be too foreign for me to follow. Perhaps it is because so many of the great fantasy reads are volumes upon volumes of novels…whatever the cause of my hesitation, once I start I am fine….after all, a great story is a great story no matter the genre….and the fantasy world has some totally amazing storytellers. I have always heard that Tad Williams was one of these amazing storytellers….

Having said all of that…some parts of this book were actually very good….however, other parts were just bad….no, not just bad, but very bad! I might give Tad Williams another go, but I don’t think it will be with this series….I do like how Bobby was loyal in the end…not only to his own self, but also to a friend….So Williams gets full props for the main character. The rest of the story is where it fell short for me. It was not exciting. It was not original. I could pick out dozen of instances where certain characters reminded me of another from some other series, by other writers. I knew who the culprit was almost from the start and I know it was supposed to come as a huge shock…..I also thought the same “action packed monster scenes” were very repetitive and hence, very boring…maybe this was all my own fault as I had very high expectations of Williams. Hearing about the subject of the story excited me. It sounded original. It sounded exciting. It sounded so unique and I was expecting not only to be blown away by it, but refreshed by it as well. I mean seriously, even the title was fantastic to my mind! I was super excited going into this book…..I wanted to finish it a full run, excited to hit my next book…..that didn’t happen….I felt as if I hit a brick wall reading it. I lost all interest about halfway through….I found reasons to either put the book down and find more interesting things to do, or a strong desire to just skim over pages and pages to get to the ending I knew was waiting for me.

The one thing I did learn from reading this novel is that even an original concept can end up being told in a very unoriginal way.

~Urania

Buy it now The Dirty Streets of Heaven (Bobby Dollar)

Review: Tell the Wolves I’m Home (Revisited) by Carol Rifka Burnt

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“I thought how that was wrong and terrible and beautiful all at the same time.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home

This quote is exactly how I felt about this book. There is no doubt that this will go down as an all time favorite of mine. What a powerful read for me. I want to go out and buy multiply copies and give it to all the people I love. I want to hand out copies to complete strangers. I want just one person to read it and then turn to me and say, “I understand what this book means to you, I feel it too.”

I usually start a book and it’s easy enough for me to tell if I am going to like it or not. I can tolerate an okay story if the writing is “quote worthy.” It’s no secret to anyone that knows me that I can get lost in words if the author writes them in a lyrical way. This book was no exception. I fell in love from the start. This book sang to me! As I read along I loved the writing I was witnessing. Yes, I was not just reading words on a page….I was feeling as if I was present in Brunt’s imagined world. However, at the same time, I thought, this is a really a pretty cool book and I’m really enjoying it, but there’s no way I will be able to review it. The story was too hard to put into words. Many times, as a book goes along I lose some of my passion for it. As I went further along in this book, I was surprised to find that my love for the book was not easing off. In fact, my love for it was growing in leaps and bounds. My despair at trying to figure out how to start a review also changed. Now the story wasn’t too hard to put into words, it was simply too big! How could I encompass all the emotions that this book evoked from me and put it into mere words?

“Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, if you want them to be there.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Brunt has masterfully given us so many stories on top of stories here. Is this a story about the ignorance of AIDS in the 80’s and the assumptions people made born out of that ignorance? Is this a story of family rivalry? Or of family love? Is it a story about the bond between sisters? Is it a coming of age story of a single young girl? Or is it the story of two lonely people that find a way to hold on to one another to overcome life’s grief? Is it about courage? Or sorrow? Loneliness? Acceptance? Regret? Acceptance?

“She was wired into my heart. Twisted and kinked and threaded right through.”
― Carol Rifka Brunt, Tell the Wolves I’m Home

Brunt has somehow taken these separate amazing stories and twisted and kinked and threaded them right through the reader’s very heart and made them into one…..how does one do that? How is it possible for this to be a debut novel? Surely there must have been bit of magic involved!

What strikes me most about this book is just how well Brunt was able to capture what being a teenager was like for me. I felt as if I had traveled in some time machine….that I was transported back to my own life as a teenager….forced to re-live all those thoughts and fears I had. I remember all those same feelings that June and Greta were feeling. The self-doubt. The selfishness of not being able to see the world beyond how it affects me. Ultimately this was June’s story and we only had her viewpoint to follow. This story could have read so differently if it had been Toby or Greta’s voice that we heard. Some parts of me wish it had been the type of book that was told from multiple viewpoints. That feeling came from my own personal greed. I was so able to climb inside the character of June. I wish I had been allowed to also climb further inside the characters of Greta and Toby as well. How different my life might had been had I been privy to their thoughts and insights at the time…it really is something when an author is able to transport you to another place and time….to make you feel as if you are no longer a reader, but instead, you are present, living this story, just as if it were your own…..

Please don’t let all the hype and the great reviews of this book deter you from giving it a chance. Sometimes you run across a book that not only lives up to all the hype….to a book that truly deserves all the hype….sometimes you also run across that a book totally and completely captivates you and takes you by surprise…..

This is that book! Read it! I dare you to!

~Urania

Buy It Now Tell the Wolves I’m Home