Currently Reading:

The Subtle KnifeAmerican Gods by Niel Gaiman
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Review: Forthcoming.
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Grade: ?

The Subtle KnifeThe Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman
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Review: Forthcoming.
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Grade: ?

Completed in June:

NeverwhereNeverwhere by Neil Gaiman
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Review: Forthcoming.
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Grade: ?

The Austere AcademyThe Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket
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Review: Forthcoming.
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Grade: ?

Completed in May:

Ascending PeculiarityAscending Peculiarity by Edward Gorey, Karen Wilkin (Editor)
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Review: As some of you may know I am a big fan of the author and illustrator Edward Gorey. His storybooks and black and white line drawings are just terrific and I can never get enough of them. Most of his work tends to be set in the Victorian era and always teeters on the mysterious, macabre and misfortunate. You might recognize his work from the opening sequence for the PBS show Mystery!
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This book is one part literary criticism and one part autobiography all created through piecing together interviews Gorey provided over his lifetime. For me, it is one of the first times I have read about the life of a writer I enjoy, normally I keep to the works themselves.
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What I most appreciated about this book was that it created connections for me that I never saw before. Themes that were relevant in Gorey’s work also were found in other artists I appreciate. I also found myself picking up more of his works to read. A book would be referenced and I would find myself thinking “I don’t have that book – I must get it to better understand what they are talking about”. Edward Gorey has written and illustrated over 100 books most of which are short stories about fifteen pages or less. Thankfully, all of Gorey’s works are slowly being re-released in their originally published style so I am able to scan Amazon.com for particular titles. In the time it took me to read this book I picked up a four more books to add to my collection. Most notably The Sopping Thursday a new favorite of mine.
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My only criticism of the book is that since it is a series of interviews many times the information is redundant. There were a few instances where I was frustrated at the lack of editing. If a question about Gorey’s early years at Harvard was asked twice does it really need to be included it a third time?
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This is definitely a specialty book and is worth the read. In fact, it is only now, after reading this book that I understand why reading information on an artist (writer or otherwise) can provide much more insight into their works. However, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you are highly interested in Edward Gorey’s life and work. Instead check out The Curious Sofa, The Doubtful Guest or The Gashlycrumb Tinies.
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Grade: B

Completed in April:

The Turkish GambitThe Turkish Gambit by Boris Akunin
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Review: I discovered Akunin a few years back when I was scanning the Barnes & Noble bargain bin. I get such joy out of finding a discounted book that turns out to be a good read that I can never pass up those carts that sit just outside the main entrances of bookstores. You should see me in a CD store – I am even worse!
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Akunin writes about the dashing detective Erast Fandorin who travels the globe as a Russian diplomat solving over-the-top and slightly predictable mysteries. Consider Akunin the James Patterson of Russia –writing popular series books about the same character. Usually that style of book does not hold my interest but what brings me back to the “Fandorin mysteries” is the setting; all of the books are set in the mid to late 1800s.
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The Turkish Gambit is the second book in the entire series however, at the time I did not know it and I read books one and three first – both of which are remarkably better.
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In the story, Fandorin is passing as a Bulgarian solider in the midst of a war between the Ottoman Empire and Russia to figure out which Russian military official is sharing secrets with the Turkish army. At least, I think that is what is going on…there are so many useless characters and unnecessary details in this book that it doesn’t make the plot thicken as much as make it a soupy mess. Above all there is this ridiculous character called Varya Suvorova who is supposed to be the lead female character who has a love-hate relationship with Fandorin. However, Akunin makes a very poor attempt at writing from a woman’s perspective and he never quite decides what her motivations are: Is it her modern revolutionary ideas (like cutting her hair short)? Is it her love for her falsely imprisoned fiancé? Is it her secret desire for Fandorin? Is it her demure ladylike sensibilities? Frankly, I have no idea what her character was about and found myself cringing every time the story brought her back into the plot.
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Fandorin is an unrealistic but fun character, like James Bond or Indian Jones. His adventures and crime-solving skills are the reason one reads this series. This is why it is so unfortunate that for over half of this book he plods quietly in the background while Suvorova is the main focus. I was so excited to reach the concluding chapters when Fandorin come back with flair to solve the mystery.
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The old adage is “you get what you pay for” but as I stated earlier I had read two other books in the same series that were highly entertaining. This one just took the focus off of Fandorin and tried to do too much with too little.
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In lieu of The Turkish Gambit I recommend The Winter Queen (book 1 in the series) or Murder on the Leviathan (book 3 in the series).
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Grade: C+

Completed in March:

Mouse Guard Fall 1152Mouse Guard Fall 1152 by David Petersen
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Review: I first discovered this book last year while I was in a local comic book shop. I didn’t purchase it at the time because it had originally been released as a six-issue comic mini-series and I had come upon the third issue. I had thought then that it would be too time consuming to track down the issues I had missed and possibly keep up with newer ones. So I decided to pass. In fact, that is generally why I tend not to read comics; I don’t like missing sections of a story or waiting to find out how a story ends.
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This book is a collected volume of the original mini-series and tells the ‘tail’ of three mice who act as guards protecting the local mouse villages. The story itself is weak and a bit generic (good mice fighting bad mice) but the artwork is stellar. The mice are drawn in a realistic fashion but are anthropomorphized just enough to find their sewing needle swords absolutely adorable. The detailed nature drawings and colors used throughout the book are all complementary which make the entire volume a beautiful book to lazily page through. In this regard it is similar to Nick Bantock’s Griffin and Sabine saga.
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Beyond the prosaic plot line my only is criticism with this book falls with the genre itself. After reading it I have become attached to these characters and do not know how the story will end. I find myself waiting for Winter: 1152 and wondering if good will triumph evil in the Mouse Territories.
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Grade: B

LongitudeLongitude by Dava Sobel
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Review: I may be announcing how much of a geek I really am but after reading this book I have a new appreciation for the lines of longitude and latitude. Never did I consider how important they were to cartography and seafaring vessels. Before there was a means to measure longitude, the amount of destruction that was caused by ships losing direction was overwhelming.
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Sobel’s book tells the story of ‘the longitude problem’, a scientific challenge put forth in 1714 by the English Parliament to determine a reliable method for successfully measuring longitude. The prize was announced as The Longitude Act and offered £20,000 to the group or individual who could create a
‘practical and useful’ method to determine longitude to an accuracy of 60 nautical miles.
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The longitude problem was more than a quest to determine better means of navigation. Over time it became a political fight between those who supported a mechanical method of measurement called the chronometer, and those who supported an astronomical method of measuring called the lunar distance model. Many prominent scientists offered plausible solutions to this problem including Sir Isaac Newton and Sir Edmond Halley but it was a simple clockmaker named John Harrison whose chronometers stood up to the grueling challenges of the Longitude Board.
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I read this book while on a recent vacation and I think the mixture of learning about navigation and travel added to my enjoyment it. There were a few points where I thought Sobel could have added more detail but I find it better to have a concise well-written account than to add too much personal opinion to the re-telling of historical events (see Ghosts of Vesuvius review).
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Grade: B

NightNight by Elie Wiesel
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Review: I had wanted to read this book for a long time but somehow when Oprah made it one of her book club selections I moved it to the back of my bookcase until all of the excitement died down.
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What is so striking about this book is that it simultaneously a long terrible story and a short bleak one. I sometimes find that authors are purposely simplistic in their writing to leave room for the reader’s imagination; poetry is a perfect example of this. With Night, however, this is not the case. It is simplistic because the horrors of the Holocaust cannot be described any other way.
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Once WWII ended Wiesel went ten years without speaking about his experiences; here in a brief 109 pages he tells of the desperation in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Birkenau, Buna-Werke, and Buchenwald. He tells of his family, his religion and his survival.
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I cannot dissect this book for the ‘good parts’ or the ‘bad parts’. There are no good parts, this story is true and all I can do is respect and honor Wiesel for sharing it.
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Grade: A

Completed in February:

Ghosts of VesuviusGhosts of Vesuvius by Charles Pellegrino
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Review: I read this book as part of some ongoing research I am doing regarding the city of Pompeii. By trade Pellegrino is a trained paleo-geologist; in this book however, he ventures into physics, sociology, history and religious studies which combine to create something that is difficult to follow and causes the reader to wander off to read other more straight-forward texts . Yes, more than once I found myself more engrossed in my cereal box and trials of the Trix rabbit versus the correlation between volcanic ash and the 9/11 attacks.
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I do not want to convey that this book is without merit but its density keeps it at ‘okay’ instead of ‘good’. There are two general themes of this book. The first is that explosions follow certain patterns and if scientists can understand these patterns then there can be strategies for reducing the effect of certain catastrophes. With this one Pellegrino does pretty well. There are plenty of fancy graphs, drawings and data tables regarding different explosions and how they compare to one another - including how the 9/11 attacks were only a small fraction of the destruction power of Mt. St. Helens or Pompeii. That fact alone is pretty remarkable to dwell on.
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The second theme is an archaeological and geological review of Pompeii as a city. Again, Pellegrino does well and the ‘Cities in Amber’ chapter is the most notable. However it is in this goal that the sub-title of the book: A New Look At the Last Days of Pompeii, How Towers Fall, and Other Strange Connections begins to fall into play. Apparently the phrase ‘other strange connections’ give Pellegrino carte-blanc to write freely about early Christianity in Rome, Spartacus, the tomb of John the Baptist, Jesus and his relationship with Mary Magdalene, the Titanic, the historian Josephus and the Big Dipper. All of these other musings left me annoyed and confused.
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Lastly, the remainder of the book is devoted to providing a detailed account of individuals who lived and died during the world trade center bombings. Pellegrino may have felt compelled to add a more human element to a very science-heavy book but it came off too poetic for non-fiction and left me slightly frustrated (I didn’t plan to read a memorial text). By the end I felt like I was back in high school being forced to give up a nice summer day for some ‘required reading’; only this time it was for my job and not sophomore English class.
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Overall I could recommend sections of this book, but in general I’d go with the Cliff’s Notes version.
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Grade: C

The Mermaid ChairThe Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
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Review: After being weighed down with some difficult books I decided to take a break for something lighter and less complicated. I had heard good things about Sue Monk Kidd’s first fiction novel The Secret Life of Bees but since I had just loaned out the copy I had, I decided on her second one, The Mermaid Chair.
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Set on an island off the coast of South Carolina, it is the story of Jessie Sullivan, a woman in her early 40s who is trying to come to terms with how her life has turned out. She heads to the island to take care of her ailing mother and while there finds herself involved with a monk who lives in a nearby monastery.
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I give the book high marks for being well written and keeping my interest. Kidd does a great job when describing the island setting. Since she is a South Carolinian, creating a realistic environment may have come very naturally, regardless, I could quickly conjure up the textures, smells and sights that would be found on ‘Egret Island’.
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It did however, have its share of cheesy parts. Furthermore, all of the story’s secondary characters seemed to lack substance and were left being a bit unbelievable. While I was reading, I couldn’t help but think that the book had a certain ‘made-for-book-club’ feel. A re-coming of age novel that focuses on being in a long-term marriage, dealing with aging parents, and understanding personal independence is just aching to be discussed with a group (hey! there’s something in there for everyone). That isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it, I just want to clarify that portions of the plot were teetering on generic while any symbolism was as transparent as Saran-wrap.
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If a ‘beach-read’ is a half-step up from ‘fluff’ than this one qualifies. It is light and enjoyable but don’t look for anything more that a way to take your mind off of life’s pressing issues.
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Grade: B

Completed in January:

Skinny BitchSkinny Bitch by Rory Freedman, Kim Barnouin
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Review: Okay I admit it; this is not the type of book I would usually read. And I am embarrassed to admit that I did!
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I was at a friend’s house when I spotted the catchy cover design and began reading the first chapter. It had the standard messages about diet, exercise and making lifestyle changes but it was written in such a fun way that I couldn’t put it down. Phrases like ‘cigarettes are so 1989′ and ‘junk food will pitch a tent on your hips and camp out all year’ made me laugh so I kept on reading it.
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By chapter 4 I knew I had made a HUGE mistake. Mid-way through, this ’savvy’ book I discovered the old bait-and-switch technique. The authors, Freedman and Barnouin, advertised a no-nonsense guide to a healthy lifestyle; what I didn’t know was that this supposed ‘healthy lifestyle’ was strict veganism. Yup, here comes the stamp of approval from PETA. This veganism is justified because humans did not evolve to eat meat - it’s true! It says so on pages 42 and 43 where Freedman and Barnouin state early humans used their higher intelligence to make tools to hunt other animals. I had to ask, WTF are these two talking about? As I read on they explained that early tool use was a way to dupe nature into allowing humans to hunt since they were given fingernails and not talons or claws. WHAT!?! I can deal with these former models giving advice about nutrition but stay the hell out of evolutionary biology.
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Once I had gotten over chapter 6 which was completely devoted to reading about slaughterhouses, I read about how protein can be found in other sources besides meat (chapter 7) and how consumers should not trust the FDA or UDSA (chapter 9). After finishing chapter 9 I was still left waiting for the ‘how-to’ part of this diet book. Chapter 11 seemed like it would answer my question of with the title of ‘Let’s Eat’ but instead I got 16 pages of food brands the authors support, 16 pages of menu choices, 11 pages devoted to definitions and the reason for why the authors wrote the book ‘We could not tolerate the cruelty associated with a meat-eating diet’ (duh).
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As disappointed as I was with this book it was the last chapter and the cited references that really sent me over the edge. When page 189 discussed a women who was in an abusive marriage and how she ‘coincidentally’ got breast and ovarian cancer because of the lack of love for her ‘womanhood’ I had had enough. That statement was a bit too new age-crystal-lovin’ for me, or what I like to call ‘woo-woo’.
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A brief glance at the references and endnotes revealed Internet web pages as major resources. Call me an academic snob but if you are going to write a non-fiction book at least try and consult a few science journals and not biased sources like peta.com, milksucks.com and holisticmed.com. C’mon ladies we’re not in high school. If, by the end of the book I had any respect for the authors it was gone after reading their citations.
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I guess I get what I deserve for reading such fluff. But since I was impressed with Let’s Get Primitive (H. Menicucci - see below) I didn’t think this would be so bad. Well, I learned my lesson; in the future I will limit my silly-fluff reading to fiction only.
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Grade: D

Let's Get PrimitiveLet’s Get Primitive: The Urban Girl’s Guide to Camping by Heather Menicucci, Susie Ghahremani (Illustrator)
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Review: I thought this would be a funky perspective on camping with some cool hints on how I could stay “girly” on the trail but no such luck. Bummer. It was more like the Sex in the City women decide to go “roughing it” in Kentucky. Some of the great pointers included “try leaving your mascara at home” “how to make a camping outfit” and “start a nature journal”. I was disappointed that it could not offer me much but it was fun and light and it got me all excited to get out in the woods again. I will admit that it was well-written and had a good resources section. All the silliness aside I would recommend it for any girly-girl who wants to try camping but is not sure where to start.
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Grade: B

Books Completed in 2007