The Magicians

by Lev Grossman

I have several different layers of reactions to this book.

Started reading it when it was first published and didn’t quite manage to get too far.  I was sufficiently intrigued by the premise and the tone (smart and snarky and somehow languish as well — there’s a definite “drawl” in the sentence delivery here) to pick it up again and finish it this time around.  And gosh, how much I HATED parts of the book!!!

Good things first: Grossman definitely knows his fantasy tropes and knows how to subvert some of the conventions.  Magic isn’t easy.  Magical lands can really hurt/kill you.  Being a magician might not be as glamorous as one think.  And he definitely delivered some cool inventive magic powers in the book.  I love the transformation from human to geese, the various elemental and physical magic spells and powers, and the time/space travel scenarios, among many other minor and interesting magic tricks.

But.. but… but…. Quentin is SUCH A BORE. Such an angsty whiny little man that I simply couldn’t muster any compassion for him and his predicaments.  The constant search for happiness and the disappointments, the high school and college romantic affairs that turn out to be just petty relationship drivels.  And Alice as a super-magician was just a convenient device so she could save the day and sacrifice herself so that Quentin can somehow have a revelation (a bit too little too late) at the end of the tale.

Grossman managed to create a really unattractive fantasy book that makes me want to cry… in making sure that the readers realize that magic and the fantasy world is Real and is Hard and is Dangerous, he also made sure that much of the charm of a great fantasy novel is destroyed by his words.

Upon discussing this book with my teen readers, though, I realized that perhaps it’s just me being a middle aged reader who is tired and sick of anything dealing with relationship conflicts. These high school readers sense and fantasize about all those college romances as  something to ponder and to look forward to and to experience in their near future.  So, those quarrels, sex partnering, betrayals, loyalties, etc. add to the attraction of the book, not diminish it.  I heard that the sequel is better.. should I continue??

Batman: Arkham Asylum (15th Anniversary Edition)

by Grant Moorison, art by Dave McKean

To some readers, namely my 12-year-old students, this book is a total disappointment.  It has the brand name Batman on the title.  It IS a sort of origin story — of the Arkham Asylum which houses many infamous villains, including the Joker, of the franchise; and it does have segments with Batman in them.  But, they feel somehow cheated because there is almost no treatment of the fight scenes during the Hide and Seek game on the Asylum Ground.  A couple of pages, with McKean’s signature dream-like artwork hastily showing Batman  dispensing of all the Asylum inmates, are all they got out of these fight scenes.  And as super hero comics readers, they were not satisfied.

I felt differently.  As a McKean art adorer, I enjoyed all the panels, both the really detailed close-ups and the dream-line distanced treatments.  And I am totally ok with not “watching” longer sequences of the fights.  I enjoyed the psychoanalytically inspired (albeit superficially so) back story of Doctor Arkham more than my students.  However, I won’t say that this is one to highly recommend to either Graphic Novel enthusiasts or novices.

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V for Vendetta
by Alan Moore
art by David Lloyd

I really appreciated the intricate storytelling and some of the truly dark moments in this complete collection of the V stories. It’s great to finally know what this classic graphic novel is about and to have read something by the famed Alan Moore. At the same time, I’m not sure that I bought all the philosophical and political views underpinning the characters and the plot line: it seems to run too straight and too narrow down one singular line and everything worked out all according to V’s plans. That said, it is a rewarding read that demands quite a bit of focus and now I have to ponder hard about the ending: is it a brilliant treatment or does it too abrupt and unresolved? I’d love to hear others’ opinions on the series’ ending…

Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Finally finished it… and after 545 pages (in the ARC) I want it to keep going… so the wait begins, again, for the next installment.

How does an author touch one’s heart so profoundly? What did she do that’s just right? The pacing is perfect – without much battle or fight scenes. I knew the general direction that the story must follow and felt rewarded, rather than bored, when the story arc falls neatly where I anticipated — but, also surprised along the way with many little bits and pieces that Cashore masterfully inserted into the story to make it even more intriguing and the world even more realized.

The book is, though, filled with so much sorrow that one can almost not bear reading through. I hope young people (14 and up?) will not be as horrified as us older readers by Leck’s astrocity on his victims and his forced accomplices. I am amazed at the sympathy I felt toward him — the pure evil embodiment through the 3 books — and how damaged a mind and what a torture chamber that mind is for himself.

Glad to see the other beloved characters from Graceling and Fire and can’t wait to see what the next, culminating kind of story Cashore will bring us.

And — Kristin, please don’t worry about publishing the next book right away. We can wait. And if you are having trouble telling the next story, go do something else. Go write something else. Go present your insights on Fantasy world building, on character development, on capturing emotional truths, etc. to the world. Thank you so much for a most affecting story!

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

I absolutely enjoyed the many separate pieces in the book — thinking that each chapter can be treated as a short story since there is always a beginning and an end and not too much set up is needed to comprehend most of them. There are some really intensely gory and cringe-inducing scenes and a couple tales border on horror. Some are heart-warming, too.

One thing that I couldn’t quite get over, though, was the unevenness in keeping to the rules that the author set up for himself: That, supposedly, each piece in the book is a “translation” of something the “narrator” gathered from a massive electronic archive with audio, video, text, etc. — recorded history of various participants in the Robot Uprising and the global warfare afterwards. However, instead of using a 3rd person, observational tone, Wilson chose to tell many of these heroes’ stories from a first person point of view — EVEN if the recordings themselves are from an exterior angle. (And I just noticed that the first few stories are more in keeping with this framework — some stories are from a third person viewpoint while others are supposedly “narrated” by the participants themselves as interviewees or writers, etc. — but that consistency gradually fell apart and at the end there is a lot of “I” and how “I” felt even though the gathered records couldn’t have provided those perspectives.) And some of the voices are not quite in keeping with the characters themselves — or at least, not quite distinctive to be discernibly different from each other, even though some of these characters are drastically different in backgrounds and should probably have different tones. — Although I guess I can accept it because many of them are told from the reporter/archivist’s “voice.” (However, then why are they told from the “I” perspective?)

Still, I can see many readers enjoying the stories and gobbling up the scenes with relish!  And, I am so enamored with the cover design!

Daytripper

by Gabriel Ba & Fabio Moon

I really enjoyed the lyrical atmosphere and some of the intense scenes in both the text and the art and am glad that the final chapters tie the whole narrative structure together. Of course, because if this tidy conclusion, the narrative ceases entirely to be original or fresh with the previous segments being but the potentials of a person’s life as experienced in the “land of fate and possibilities.” The magical realism quality becomes but possible, but not true, device. That is mere quibble of an otherwise string of very strong and moving narratives. Highly recommended!

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by Brandon Sanderson

Feeling quite reluctant to write something about this book because I was annoyed as I read (slowly since it didn’t pull me in as the first volume did.) But, I have to keep a record and now am writing a brief note on it: Sanderson does not seem to trust that the readers would remember details from earlier in the same book so there is an unnecessary amount of recaps that just distracted me from enjoying the plot line. I thought most of the device to hide crucial information from the readers was effective but also quite obvious. Besides, although I understand that Sanderson didn’t want to follow the fantasy hero novel tropes to have a huge and triumphant payoff at the end of the novel, especially since this is the middle volume and, hopefully the victory will eventually come at the end of Book 3, I was quite disgusted by the “trickery” and the demoralizing defeat at the end of this arc. (And this is from someone who usually appreciates an author’s realistic rendering of events, even in a fantasy novel with powerful magical beings.) I have to wait for a while to read the final installment and it had better be worth my time then!

Days Gone By: #1 of The Walking Dead

by Robert Kirkman

The first installment in the long series focuses mostly on the relationships of the living with the backdrop of extreme hardship of the zombie plague. I imagine that that will be the flavor for the rest of the series. The author does a great job capturing the characters’ traits and presenting the interplays between characters with conflicting interests. The tension is high, the dialog realistic, and the artwork is well executed. Now I have to read the rest of the series!

Never Let Me Go

by Kazuo Ishiguro

This Science Fiction reads like a lulling memoir, from a young woman’s view point, who had an almost idyllic boarding school / well-run orphanage experience growing up. The book is full of anecdotes about her friendships with two classmates and their somewhat odd and entwined past. Since I knew that the book is SciFi and there are enough hints and clues embedded in the incidents, I was never surprised by the way the story progresses.

Yes, like many readers, I was questioning “how is this possible?” and “how can they just take it and take it and no one rebels?” For me, that is what differentiates this alternative history/scifi from many other of genre that treats this topic: the young people who are inculcated since birth of their “uses” in the world would not question the system and would not want to organize anything remotely like a movement to gain rights for themselves. They donate, they care, and then they “complete.” For this, I greatly respect and admire the author.

Did I absolutely love the book? Not exactly, since it is perhaps too quiet and introspective, and the too minute examination of characters and their motivations is too “well done” (and thus dry and tough, not quite juicy and supple) to my taste. I wonder if this is told from Tommy’s point of view and how he might have acted if he had different encounters and friends at the “school.” That said, I believe this is definitely a great conversation starter and a worthwhile read.

Good Omens

by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

This is just a total delight to read. I marked pages and wanted to record all the humorous metaphors and turn of phrases. Two ingenious literary minds worked seamlessly together to create something that I’d like to just flip to any random page in the future and get either a chuckle or be amazed again. This book makes me want to memorize quotes!

The Witch’s Boy

by Michael Gruber

This is a highly nuanced book, although toward the end the “message” is a bit too spelled-out for my taste. I kept feeling that this is not a book for children, but a cautionary tale for adults who plan to raise children of their own: the do’s and the don’t's, through fantastic settings, vividly portrayed magical characters, and fairy tale re-envisionings. I’m not sure how well received this tale might be to a young reader who had not already loved the high fantasy genre or had not been familiar with the original stories. To me — it is entirely satisfying, being a mother, a fairy tale lover, and a fantasy fan.

What’s so remarkable of the book is Michael Gruber’s finely honed, poetic and yet not at all sappy tone. I thoroughly appreciate the talent and craftsmanship of his writing!

 

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

by Max Brooks

Although I thoroughly enjoyed many many aspects of this book, including its relentless social commentary about our current world and the author’s ability to present a global scene of one disaster that affects everyone on earth, and many of the scenes are haunting and affective. There are a few things that I thought are less successful:

Once in a while, you kind of “hear” some interviewees’ own voices but most of the time, you are just reading the reports from one person and that person is not very good at faithfully capturing the voices he encountered. Instead, most of the segments have the same sentence structures and choices of words or ways to present ideas so there are not the kind of oral history authenticity that one expects and thus lacks refreshing varieties. After 1/3 of the book, you feel like you’re being “droned on.”

The “plot” lacks an emotional arc — it follows a chronology of the war and at the very end some of the characters reappear to give their final says about WWZ but those words of wisdom pack little or no emotional punches. And the book just ends. When I finally finished the last page (after reading it quite slowly for something that’s supposed to be gripping,) my reaction was a plain, “Good, now I can get on to another, more exciting book.” The irony is that in the Introduction, the reporter/narrator specifically claims that he compiled these stories for their emotional values and that this book is not his but those who he interviewed, and how he has “tried to maintain as invisible a presence as possible,” while the whole time you cannot quite get to the emotional core or authentic voices of the interviewed.

I do understand that it is extremely high calling to tell a story via so many voices and Brooks achieved quite a bit in this audacious, imaginative, and oftentimes enlightening, book.

Surrogates

by Robert Venditti

I had high hopes and maybe it was my fault hoping for a really gripping read accompanied by high-level artwork. It turned out to be something of a dud. There is definitely the seed of a great story but it never quite blossomed and the hastily presented resolution is dissatisfying to say the least. The crude artwork is without raw energy often associated with such style and the Surries, perfect and sleek and are such an improvement of “vanilla” humans, do not to be so. I believe the stale look of the panels is largely due to a fairly-uniformed Photoshopping process. Too bad.

Tales from Outer Suburbia

by Shaun Tan

This book reminds of a third grade project that my daughter did: to write a short story that accompanies one picture from Chris Van Allsburg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick. In fact, on Van Allsburg’s site, there is an entire section dedicated to stories from “readers” of the book inspired by the images in the book.

Outer Suburbia has that same absurdity, the same eeriness and outlandish qualities that constantly surprise and delight the reader, even when we feel slightly uncomfortable with what we read and see. It is at times unsettling and other times deeply moving.

I am not sure that this is a book just for children or teens. It seems to me that it is very much a book made to just express the artist’s imagination and to satisfy his own storytelling needs — which, ultimately, benefits the readers who would appreciate this kind of short vignettes. My favorite stories/images are: Eric, No Other Country, Alert But Not Alarmed, Make Your Own Pet, and strangely my top choice: The Nameless Holiday.

The entire book design is so amazing as well. I remember the sense of thrill and awe when I first discovered the Griffin and Sabine trilogy by Nick Bantock. This one comes close.

In Cold Blood

by Truman Capote

Finally got a chance to read this. Excellent beyond belief. No wonder it is such a famous book. Capote is not only a great sentence crafter, he is also so skilled in putting together the whole picture bit by bit with just the right amount of tension as each chapter progresses and as each section of the book falls into place. There is the “cold blood” chilling-ness permeating the book, of course, but there is also so much that is entirely human about each person’s tale. We wonder about these murderers and what went wrong in their lives and in their brains and in their hearts. I feel both a deep sorrow and a real emotional detachment – two highly opposite sensations and yet they co-exist the entire time as I read the book. I’d credit the author for giving a most unusual reading experience.

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Watchmen

Author: Alan Moore, illus. by Dave Gibbons
Rating:
Reading Level: YA, Adult

Publisher: DC Comic
Edition: Paperback, 1987

It took me a long time to finish this seemingly slim volume. I took in every word, every image, and every reference as slowly as I could manage. Not that the story is too complex, but its form does demand some attention and appreciation: the interwoven stories of the masked vigilantes and the embedded graphic novel of the Black Freighter (or the Pirate story as my students refer to it) and the various texts of the story-within-the story by one of the side characters and all the other para-”documents.”

I enjoyed all the double-descriptors: words and phrases that convey the meaning for one scene but also aptly describe the situations of another scene. Moore employed this technique through out the novel — it did not get tired for me, just amusing.

The final two “chapters,” however, seem to rely too much on Adrian’s explanation of his whole back story and his reasons behind all the plans and schemes, slowing down the momentum and diminishing the thrilling mystery part of the whole tale. I wish Moore had figured out a more active and exciting way for the exposing of Adrian and his plot.

I also must say that I think the filmmakers did a fantastic job translating the novel into the movie. The only real gripe I have is in the odd casting of Adrian’s role — instead of an athletic superhero, the actor seems fragile and without the kind of commanding presence that this role demands. The movie ends differently from the book — having gotten rid of the entire side story of the vanishing artists, novelists, and scientists with their creation of the “alien being” that devastates half of New York City — but by putting the blame on Dr. Manhattan, the film has added another layer of emotional burden onto a major character and I have to applaud that particular line of changes. And, may I say that I absolutely ADORE Rorschach in the movie — his scenes are most memorable and the actor’s skillful portrayal of this tragic hero is impeccable!

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Swords: An Artist’s Devotion

Author: Ben Boos
Rating:
Reading Level: for all readers

Pages: 96
Publisher: Candlewick
Edition: Hardcover, 2008

I couldn’t believe my eyes, flipping through page after page of beautifully rendered swords from many time periods and many cultures, how visually perfect this book is! No matter whom I showed this book to (HS students, MS kids, other adults) – the reaction was the same: an astounded delight at this Feast of the Artistry of Beautiful and Elegant Swords. I’m glad the inclusion of Asian and African swords and their histories (although would have like a more balanced proportion in treatment…)

This makes a great holiday gift for any child who enjoys this topic. The general and specific notes on various types, their usages, their histories, and those who used such and such swords are easy to read and absorb. But one definitely doesn’t need to read all the text to enjoy the book.

I am so happy of this book’s existence!

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Schooled

Author: Anisha Lakhani
Reading Level: HS/Adults

I read this after hearing lots and reading quite a few reviews about the book, so I am not entirely sure about my reactions – how much was my enjoyment and annoyance colored by these preset expectations? And how much of my secret pleasure and overt disgust came from my having known the author and has been working in the school that this fiction is supposed to be based on? So read on, those of you who are curious to know my opinions about the book, with caution and many grains of salt!

First, I was surprised how the book does not really feature many recognizable students and faculty from the school, nor does it develop the school as a setting fully. In fact, most teachers do not even enter the story. It’s as if this fictional K-12 school has but 50 students and they all go to the 7th grade and there are only half a dozen teachers who come into contact with the protagonist and the children. In short, the setting of the school is not quite fleshed out or rich, and the supporting characters are not 3-dimensional, either. A few incidents or coincidences are probably not identifiable by those who are not intimately connected to the school, either. So much, so much of the story is extremely exaggerated: the characters complete caricatures, and the whole world distorted with the kind of hyper-reality one can only find in Gossip Girls and Sex in the City. (Of course also in the highly manipulated Real Housewives “reality” shows…)

This brings me to say to those who seem to think that this is a truthful portrayal of the Manhattan Private Schools/Ivy League Feeders world, “You are absolutely wrong.” This is fluffy fiction and no more than that.

I don’t think there is even a need to defend my school since there is so little resemblance in SCHOOLED to the actual school — including the physical descriptions and the ways teaching and learning are accomplished throughout the years. Suffice to say that I have encountered scores of most brilliant human beings: readers, writers, thinkers, activists, artists, mathematicians, scientists, all kinds of people — both from its faculty pool and the student body, to feel privileged and proud to be part of this incredible institution.

The biggest weakness of the book, to my eyes, is how bland the writing is… with few exceptions where the lines are actually funny or effective, such as, “The world could be coming to an end and my mother would still find a way to offer a cookie with the gas mask.” and “It was an all-purpose word, something of a Swiss Army knife capable of replacing all sorts of words, such as do, write, create, and especially finish.” The rest of the book is filled with lines with little crafting or “polishing”. Just a few examples here:

page 124: Anna wonders “if Shakespeare would be … delighted that his work was the cause of such delight to a group of… seventh-graders.”
page 126: “The last comment was like a wound in my heart.”
page 131: “And I was an air traffic controller trying to control fifteen little planes all trying to land at one time.”

To compound the problem of such thin prose is the poor editing. Missing punctuation marks, continuity errors, and misused words, such as “My ears were ringing. And when did faux mitzvah enter everyone’s vocabulary accept mine?” ACCEPT? And this is supposedly written/narrated by an Ivy-Leaguer who studied English in college and teaches English to 7th graders.

The one saving grace is that the readers do not admire Anna (oh, maybe a little bit toward the end of the story when she suddenly has a courageous enlightment moment), and that adds some flavor to the tale of a small fry lost in the world of greasy glitz.

And chatting online with a High School student might shed more light on our views over this book:

Edited for clarity:

fairrosa: Yup… I guess… closer to truth. Nothing is TRUE in this book, though. And it’s so hyper-reality that anyone thinks this has anything to do with reality is delusional themselves, I think.
student: You overestimate that, I think
fairrosa: overestimate how?
student: I think you overestimate how attuned the average reader is to Dalton
fairrosa: Definitely — that’s why I definitely need to write about how this is NOT the reality. But I did like the book enough… it’s better than some other trashy novels, for sure.
student: Wha? O.o
fairrosa: All the flaws aside, Anna Taggert is a main character that does not put on a holier-than-thou air, nor is she pretending to be anything but a corrupted small fry lost in a glitzy world, even though in reality, I have yet to encounter any such real-life teacher.
fairrosa: That’s my last paragraph…now.. do you think my analysis fair?? any other issues with the review?
student: Doesn’t put on a holier-than-thou air? I really don’t think you read this book XD
fairrosa: please let me know if I can post it as is?
student: It’s an okay-written review, it’s just wrong. It didn’t bother you that characters spent the whole time hitting on her? That, somehow, nothing was ever actually her fault?
fairrosa: Hey.. .Anna Taggert is portrayed as a silly, money grabbing, totally lost person. There is nothing there to show that she is better than anyone else…
Everything is her choice — she decided that she needed MONEY … she failed to plan lessons — she is stupid…The character is NOT portrayed as a GOOD person. Did you read the book?
fairrosa: One does not read the book and says to oneself that Anna Tagger is SUCH A GOOD person. Does one?
stuent: No, but she thinks she is!
fairrosa: But the READER knows that she is stupid, spoiled, greedy…etc. and the AUTHOR writes in that way…
fairrosa: she curses. she envies. she receives bribes. she cheats
student: Mmm, yes. But do you really think the point of the book is that she’s bad, or that she was a good person placed in a bad system?
fairrosa: I think she was WEAK… maybe Bad/Good is not a great way to describe her or anyone else.
fairrosa: I think she did not really have moral fibers… of course, the world around her doesn’t seem to have morals either…
student: She’s portrayed as a nice girl corrupted by an evil world. Yes?
fairrosa: Nah… I don’t think she’s portrayed as a “nice girl” ever — her motive of being a teacher is so that she would be LOVED by her students…So, I never got the sense that the protagonist is supposed to be a GOOD person.
student: Not that she would really teach or change students’ lives.
student: That’s absolutely false.
fairrosa: Did you find any of the book funny?
student: no.
fairrosa: Or are you just completely incensed?
fairrosa: Do you think it’s because you’re too close to it? Too protective of our school?
student: I think I might have been okay with it – or at least, not hated it – had it been marketed differently, had it not billed itself as that “look at what a 5-figure tuition really gets you”
fairrosa: Fair.

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Quote of the day

I’m listening to Toole’s A Confederacy of Duncies and have many occasions to chuckle or even laugh out loud — although the many comical situations are also profoundly sad. Here’s a quote for the day to show Toole’s genius in characterization without getting into tedious details:

Miss Trixie was never perfectly vertical; she and the floor always met at an angle of less than ninety degrees.

Come Lady Death

Author: Peter S. Beagle
Rating:
Reading Level: Young Adult/Adult

Edition: Podcast/Podcastle, 2008

This is the first podcastle episode, released on April 1st, 2008. Read by Paul S. Jenkins. It’s a delightfully dark piece that has a very Victorian undertone but it was first published in 1963. Just a fun “listening.” It makes me really want to produce my own podcast stories — not read by me, but produced and directed by me. That will be much fun. Wouldn’t it?