Book Review: The Martian by Andy Weir

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

This is yet another book that makes me want to write a review that simply says:

Loved it. Read this book.

But that’s not terribly helpful, is it? Unless you trust me so very much that you’re willing to take my word for it, just because. No? Okay, I’ll tell you just what I loved about this smart, funny, dramatic, and utterly entertaining book.

As you’d guess from the cover image, The Martian is the story of an astronaut. Mark Watney is part of a crew of astronauts participating in NASA’s third manned exploration of Mars. Six days into their mission, a massive dust storm prompts an evacuation of the planet, during which Mark is struck by flying debris and believed to be dead. With only minutes to spare before their emergency launch, the mission leader makes the tough call to leave Mark’s body and get the heck off the planet. The world mourns.

Surprise! Mark isn’t dead… but he may be soon. Mark is the sole human on all of Mars, left with the mission’s habitation structure and equipment, a 100-something day food supply, and no means of communication or rescue. The next mission to Mars won’t arrive for another four years. So what’s Mark to do? He has no intention of giving up, and sets about figuring just what it will take to breathe, drink water, and not starve to death in the years he’ll have to wait before he has a shot at returning to Earth.

When NASA finally realizes, thanks to satellite imagery, that they left a very much alive Mark behind, the entire world becomes obsessed with Mark’s survival, and it takes all the brains of NASA and then some, plus the determination of Mark’s crewmates, to figure out a rescue plan with any chance of success.

Ultimately, though, it’s all up to Mark and his incredible brain. As with all NASA missions, the crew members serve multiple roles, and Mark is the mission’s botanist/mechanical engineer. With his knowledge of botany, Mark figures out how to grow crops to sustain himself when the stored food runs out, and with his engineering skills, he’s able to jerry-rig solutions whenever equipment breaks — which is often.

You’d think a book in which the main character spends time calculating the square footage of arable soil needed to produce enough calories for survival or figuring out how to use rocket fuel to create water might get a little weighed down by science-speak… but you’d be dead wrong. I’ve never been more fascinating by geeky science talk. Stuff like this:

I can create the O2 easily enough. It takes twenty hours for the MAV fuel plant to fill its 10-liter tank with CO2. The oxygenator can turn it into the O2, then the atmospheric regulator will see the O2 content in the Hab is high, and pull it out of the air, storing it in the main O2 tanks. They’ll fill up, so I’ll have to transfer O2 over to the rovers’ tanks and even the space suit tanks as necessary.

The point is, the narration here is super-smart yet super engaging. Mark is in battle for survival — but he’s so extremely funny that even in his direst of straits, there’s plenty to make you laugh. Everything that can go wrong, does go wrong, and half the fun is seeing how crazily creative Mark’s solutions are.

One thing I learned after reading The Martian is that author Andy Weir created his own programming in order to figure out things like trajectories and orbits, and his need to make sure that the science works results in a book that’s full of compelling and weird details — which, strangely, don’t weigh down the narrative, but instead let us feel like we’re right there next to Mark, trying to figure out how to rig a heat supply without blowing things up. (I loved Entertainment Weekly’s recent write-up about Andy Weir – check it out here.)

Bottom line? I loved this book. With never a dull moment, The Martian is a treat for the brain as well as providing plenty of laughs along with true suspense and a nail-biting battle for survival. Mark’s voice is what makes reading The Martian such a fun experience, so I’ll leave you with a few choice selections from the logs of astronaut Mark Watney:

If you asked every engineer at NASA what the worst scenario for the Hab was, they’d all answer “fire”. If you asked them what the result would be, they’d answer “death by fire.”

About the e-mails that come pouring in once the world realizes Mark is alive:

One of them was from my alma mater, the University of Chicago. They say once you grow crops somewhere, you have officially “colonized” it. So technically, I colonized Mars.

In your face, Neil Armstrong!

In other news, it’s seven sols till the harvest, and I still haven’t prepared. For starters, I need to make a hoe. Also, I need to make an outdoor shed for the potatoes. I can’t just pile them up outside. The next major storm would case the Great Martian Potato Migration.

The airlock’s on its side, and I can hear a steady hiss. So either it’s leaking or there are snakes in here. Either way, I’m in trouble.

If you at all enjoy reading about space exploration, scientific discoveries, or incredibly inventive men with senses of humor, read The Martian!

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The details:

Title: The Martian
Author: Andy Weir
Publisher: Broadway Books
Publication date: 2014
Length: 369 pages
Genre: Science fiction
Source: Purchased

22Nov2014

Adventures in Audio

Posted in The Reading Life by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

If you’d asked me about audiobooks about three years ago, I would have said (more or less): I understand that some people enjoy them, but they’re definitely not for me.

I now officially eat my words. (Yum, yum)

Maybe it’s because I was never read to as a child… but I’ve always associated listening to stories with boredom and/or falling asleep. When I used to attend summer camp eons ago in my youth, our counselors would read to us at night after lights-out, and I never did manage to stay awake until the end of the story.

But then, as an adult, I started meeting people who swore by audiobooks, and I could see the appeal. For example, a doctor I know described listening to Lord of the Rings on his daily commutes between the two cities where he practiced. Another friend only allowed himself to listen to A Song of Ice and Fire while on the treadmill — and ended up getting in great shape as a result! Hmmm. Might work for me, perhaps?

Well, I never did follow through on my resolve to work out more with audiobooks as an incentive. But I have started listening to books in the last two years, and I’m hooked!

My first attempt was a big fail. I got a book that I’d been wanting to read and decided to listen to it while walking. Maybe it was the narrator (he was kind of drone-y), but I could not keep my attention on the book no matter how hard I tried. I’d be walking along, listening to the story, and all of a sudden — hey, seagull! Look, crack in the sidewalk! I’d realize that I had missed minutes of the narration because I just couldn’t concentrate. I was pretty amazed to discover, when I picked up the hard copy of the same book, that what felt like a massive amount of story that I’d heard only added up to about ten pages. I ended up loving the book itself, but the audiobook was a complete disaster.

Cue my Outlander obsession a short time later, and I thought I’d give audio another try. This time, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, so I decided to listen to books I’d already read, and since the community seems to be wild about Davina Porter’s narration, Outlander seemed like a good place to start.

Success! I was completely sucked into the audiobook, which I listened to during my daily drives back and forth to work and my kid’s school… and soon I found myself looking for excuses to keep driving, or even circling the block one extra time so I could finish the scene or chapter before turning it off for the day.

Since that experience, I’ve been convinced that audiobooks are the way to go, at least while in the car or while on my daily walks, but that they’d only work for me if I’d already read the books once before. That way, I wouldn’t have to worry so much about momentary distractions (like while trying to avoid suddenly swerving drivers or fighting to find a parking spot), and could just enjoy experiencing a story I already loved through a new medium.

I found that most of the time, the audiobooks enhanced the overall story for me — when presented by a talented narrator. I mostly loved Davina Porter’s version of the Outlander books (I’ve now listened to 5 of the 8 books, each one averaging about 40 hours of listening time), and she does a remarkable job (except for her American accent for one character, which is just a bit odd and flat and doesn’t sound like any American accent I know!).

I broke away from Outlander world for a bit and listened to The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and loved every minute of it. The narrator’s intonations and speech patterns made me feel like I was really in the main character’s world, and added so much to my enjoyment of the story.

But two books really epitomize the audio experience for me, and here’s why:

First, although I love the Outlander audiobooks, the truly magnificent audiobook versions of Diana Gabaldon’s works are the Lord John books, narrated by Jeff Woodman. Lord John Grey is a supporting character in the Outlander series, who then became the star of a spin-off series of books of his own. I liked him on the page, but was always anxiously awaiting the moment when I could get back to the world of Jamie and Claire. John was an interesting guy, but I didn’t quite love him… yet. In the audiobooks, Lord John simply sparkles. Jeff Woodman’s narration perfectly captures John’s intensity, his understated dry humor, and his constant attention to propriety and social nuances. If you’re an Outlander fan and you’ve been on the fence about reading the Lord John books, go straight to audio. It’s a treat, plain and simple.

My second audio experience that was really eye-opening for me happened just this past week, when I decided to break from my safe routine and give a listen to a book that I hadn’t read already. I picked up Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle when it was an Audible Daily Deal recently, but thought I’d read a hard copy first before listening to it. That never happened, and when I found myself looking for the next audiobook to start, I figured I’d give it a whirl, despite almost psyching myself out by focusing on how hard it can be for me to concentrate while listening.

Guys. Wow. I’m so glad I went ahead it with it.

To put it mildly — this book rocks. Bernadette Dunne is just brilliant as the narrator of the audiobook. She voices the book’s point-of-view character, Mary Catherine Blackwood, with a girlish voice that hides all sorts of shades of craziness and delusion, and the other characters — from the hostile villagers to decrepit Uncle Julian — are distinct, recognizable, and just completely spot-on. When I got a few chapters in, I borrowed a hard copy of the book from a friend so I could compare certain passages — and maybe it’s because I was already hooked on the audio, but I just didn’t get the same rich flavor from the words on the printed page. Bernadette Dunne does an amazing job of conveying the sing-song flavor of some the character’s lines, where key words and phrases get repeated and repeated, giving the whole thing a slightly unreal, otherworldly feel, even while describing terrible events and awful emotions. The story of We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an amazing portrayal of the intersection of madness, fantasy, and decay. If you enjoy your books with a touch of gothic creepiness, then there’s nothing better than hearing:

Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea?
Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me.
Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep?
Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!

If you’d like to hear a sample, check out the book’s Audible page, here.

What have I learned thus far from my audio adventures? One, that I love audiobooks far more than I could have imagined a few years ago. Two, that I’d rather listen to books while driving or exercising than listen to music, and that the time just zips by in the company of a good book. Three, that in the hands (or voice) of a gifted narrator, an audiobook can bring the nuances and depths of a story to life in a whole new way. And four, that I am, in fact, capable of enjoying a story entirely through the spoken word — which is a might big revelation for me!

How about you? Do you enjoy audiobooks? Are there any that really stand out for you? Please share your thoughts!

20Nov2014

Blog Tour & Book Review: Us by David Nicholls

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I’m delighted to be participating in the blog tour celebrating Us, the brand-new novel by David Nicholls, author of the amazing One Day. Thank you, TLC Book Tours, for inviting me to participate!

Us is the story of a marriage that may or may not be ending, how it got that way, and what a man in love will do to hold onto what he’s about to lose.

Main character Douglas Petersen is a desperate man. His wife has just informed him that once their teen son Albie leaves for college in the fall, she’s planning to leave too. According to Connie, their marriage has “run its course”, and it’s time for her to move on to the next chapter of life.

Douglas is an odd but determined man. He’s a scientist, very logical, very methodical; the opposite, in many ways, of free-spirit Connie, who was an artist when they first met but has since moved into the business side of the art world. And then there’s their son Albie, a typically sullen 17-year-old with nothing, it seems, but contempt for the father who just doesn’t get him.

The family has a European vacation planned for the summer, the classic “Grand Tour”, and Douglas views it as a last chance to save his marriage and hold his family together. And of course, it’s a complete disaster. Douglas has every step of the trip planned down to the minute, including viewing every piece of important art and historical artifact in Europe, with no time left in the schedule for spontaneity or fun — which pretty much encapsulates his approach to life in general. Finally, there’s a blow-up, and Albie takes off on his own, leaving Douglas to pursue him in a one-man quest to make amends and repair something that may be irreparable. And, Douglas thinks, if he can come home triumphantly with Albie by his side, Connie may see the error of her ways and stay with him after all.

Nothing goes as it should. Douglas is a crazy smart man, but his people skills are sorely lacking. Time and again, he does just the wrong thing at just the wrong time. It’s no wonder Connie wants out and Albie wants away. Douglas must be insufferable to be around — and yet, Us is Douglas’s first-person narrative, which is a wonderful trick on the part of the author. Seen from the outside, Douglas would be awful. But seeing through his eyes, the picture is quite different: Here’s a man, full of awkwardness, madly in love with his wife from the moment he met her, who tries his best, yet always comes up short. His perception of the world around him makes perfect sense; it just doesn’t necessarily mean that the world understands.

Us is a sad story of what happens to a marriage over the course of many years, no matter how much love it starts with and how much true caring exists between the partners. Over time, the newness erodes, and familiarity takes the place of discovery:

Of course, after nearly a quarter of a century, the questions about our distant pasts have all been posed and we’re left with “how was your day?” and “when will you be home?” and “have you put the bins out?” Our biographies involve each other so intrinsically now that we’re both on nearly every page. We know the answers because we were there, and so curiosity becomes hard to maintain; replaced, I suppose, by nostalgia.

The writing in Us is absolutely sparkling. This is one of those books that will make you very annoying to your friends and family, as you’ll be wanting to read the clever and funny bits out loud constantly — and there are clever and funny bits on every page.

She looked fresh, healthy and tasteful, and yet I found myself instinctively wanting to do up an extra button. I wondered if I might be the only man in the world to have dressed a woman with his eyes.

Douglas may be a rigid and opinionated middle-aged man, but he’s also funny, smart, and full of love, even though the love he feels never quite translates into dialogue that sits well with his wife and son. They’re constantly amused at his expense, seemingly cool and in the know in a way he can never be.

A humorous (yet sad) ongoing theme is Douglas’s inability to understand art — particularly sad, given that his wife is an artist. He’s always stuck for what to say in a museum, resorting to either parroting the audiotour narration or making inane observations on the colors or details of a painting. “Look at the reflection in his eye!” or “I love the blue!” And the more desperate he is to connect, the more he fails:

They stared and stared and I wondered, what was I meant to take from this? What were they seeing? Once again I was struck by the power of great art to make me feel excluded.

Finally, it takes Douglas’s hitting an emotional bottom of sorts and finding himself completely bereft of his usual resources and coping mechanisms before he’s able to achieve any measure of rapprochement with Albie. The father-son relationship is not easy, but there’s still love there, despite the years of snarkiness and incomprehension.

“Da-ad!” he growled, shielding his eyes against the light. “What’s up?”

“I got jumped. By some jellyfish.”

He sat up. “In the water?”

“No, on the land. They took my keys and wallet.”

Interestingly, towards the very end, the author takes a few pages to show us how the same story might have been told by Connie or by Albie, and of course, it’s completely different. And yet, it’s thanks to Douglas’s narration that the not so very unusual tale of a disintegrating marriage becomes something unique.

Us is funny and sad, familiar in its slice of life approach to ordinary people, and yet with many moments that are surprising and unexpected. Any family has its ups and downs; any long-term marriage has its pain, boredom, and exasperation — but there’s still hope, and tenderness, deep caring, and the possibility that there are still more surprises and fresh chapters to explore.

I recommend Us wholeheartedly. Full of crisp, snappy writing and quirky yet relatable characters, Us is a story of love, how it can change over time, and what it means to be a family. For anyone who enjoys contemporary fiction about people and relationships with a ring of truth, don’t miss this terrific new novel.

Find out more:

Check out the Goodreads link, or watch this book trailer:

Buy the book!

Amazon,
IndieBound
Barnes & Noble

About the Author:

David Nicholls’s most recent novel, the New York Times bestseller One Day, has sold over 2 million copies and been translated into thirty-seven languages; he also wrote the screenplay for the 2010 film adaptation starring Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway. Trained as an actor before making the switch to writing, Nicholls’s previous novels include Starter for Ten (originally published in the U.S. as A Question of Attraction), adapted into a film starring James McAvoy, for which Nicholls also wrote the screenplay; and The Understudy. He continues to write for film and TV as well as writing novels and adapting them for the screen, and has twice been nominated for the BAFTA awards. He lives in London with his wife and two children.

Find out more about David at his website and connect with him on Facebook.

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The details:

Title: Us
Author: David Nicholls
Publisher: Harper
Publication date: October 28, 2014
Length: 396 pages
Genre: Adult contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of TLC Book Tours

For further information, stop by TLC Book Tours to view other blog tour hosts.

19Nov2014

Thursday Quotables: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson
(published 1962)

One passage really isn’t enough to sum up the wonderful oddity and weirdness of this book – so I’ll include a few select quotes this week:

“It was a fine morning,” Uncle Julian said, his voice going on and on, “a fine bright morning, and none of them knew it was their last. She was downstairs first, my niece Constance. I woke up and heard her moving in the kitchen – I slept upstairs then, I could still go upstairs, and I slept with my wife in our room – and I thought, this is a fine morning, never dreaming then that it was their last.”

Another:

I decided that I would choose three powerful words, words of strong protection, and so long as these great words were never spoken aloud no change would come. I wrote the first word – melody – in the apricot jam on my toast with the handle of a spoon and then put the toast in my mouth and ate it very quickly. I was one-third safe.

And one more:

“The Blackwoods always did set a fine table.” That was Mrs. Donell, speaking clearly from somewhere behind me, and someone giggled and someone else said “Shh.” I never turned; it was enough to feel them all there in back of me without looking into their flat grey faces with the hating eyes. I wish you were all dead, I thought, and longed to say it out loud. Constance said, “Never let them see that you care,” and “If you pay any attention they’ll only get worse,” and probably it was true, but I wished they were dead. I would have liked to come into the grocery some morning and see them all, even the Elberts and the children, lying there crying with the pain and dying. I would then help myself to groceries, I thought, stepping over their bodies, taking whatever I fancied from the shelves, and go home, with perhaps a kick for Mrs. Donell while she lay there. I was never sorry when I had thoughts like this; I only wished they would come true. “It’s wrong to hate them,” Constance said, “it only weakens you,” but I hated them anyway, and wondered why it had been worth while creating them in the first place.

I’m listening to this one on audiobook, and I can’t even begin to tell you how awesomely creepy the narration is. Bernadette Dunne does a brilliant job of shifting voices for the different characters, and the first-person voice especially comes across as an ever-so-slightly unhinged young girl. I listen to books while I drive, and since I started We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I find myself taking the long way home.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

18Nov2014

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday: The Mapmaker’s Children

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

There’s nothing like a Wednesday for thinking about the books we want to read! My Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday post is linking up with two fabulous book memes, Wishlist Wednesday (hosted by Pen to Paper) and Waiting on Wednesday (hosted by Breaking the Spine).

This week’s pick:

The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy
(to be released May 5, 2015)

When Sarah Brown, daughter of abolitionist John Brown, realizes that her artistic talents may be able to help save the lives of slaves fleeing north, she becomes one of the Underground Railroad’s leading mapmakers, taking her cues from the slave code quilts and hiding her maps within her paintings. She boldly embraces this calling after being told the shocking news that she can’t bear children, but as the country steers toward bloody civil war, Sarah faces difficult sacrifices that could put all she loves in peril.

Eden, a modern woman desperate to conceive a child with her husband, moves to an old house in the suburbs and discovers a porcelain head hidden in the root cellar—the remains of an Underground Railroad doll with an extraordinary past of secret messages, danger and deliverance.

Ingeniously plotted to a riveting end, Sarah and Eden’s woven lives connect the past to the present, forcing each of them to define courage, family, love, and legacy in a new way.

I’m always a fan of great historical fiction, and this one sounds fascinating!

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

Looking for some bookish fun on Thursdays? Come join me for my regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. You can find out more here — come play!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Do you host a book blog meme? Do you participate in a meme that you really, really love? I’m building a Book Blog Meme Directory, and need your help! If you know of a great meme to include — or if you host one yourself — please drop me a note on my Contact page and I’ll be sure to add your info!

17Nov2014

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Sequels I Can’t Wait to Read

Posted in Top Ten Tuesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, featuring a different top 10 theme each week. This week’s topic is about hotly awaited sequels… the ones that keep us jumping and down in crazy anticipation.

My choices fall into two general categories:

Sequels coming soon… and we already know when:

By release date:

1) Symbiont by Mira Grant (sequel to Parasite… ick!) – to be released 11/25/2014

2) The Rosie Effect by Graeme Simsion (sequel to The Rosie Project) – to be released 12/30/2014

3) Dead Heat (Alpha & Omega series, #4) by Patricia Briggs – to be released 3/3/2015

4) Epitaph by Mary Doria Russell (sequel to Doc) – to be released 3/3/2015

5a) Fables, volume 21 by Bill Willingham – to be released 3/3/2015

and

5b) Fables, volume 22 (6/2015) … which I’m not really eager for because IT’S THE LAST IN THE SERIES! I’m seriously upset about Fables coming to an end.

not the actual cover…

6) Prudence by Gail Carriger – to be released 3/17/2015 (I know, I know: Technically, this isn’t a sequel — it’s the start of a brand-new series — The Custard Protocol — but since it follows The Parasol Protectorate series, I’m saying it counts!)

7) Lair of Dreams by Libba Bray (sequel to The Diviners) – to be released 4/1/2015… although at this point, it’s been so long since I’ve read The Diviners, I’m not sure how much I really care about continuing with the series.

Since I’m not convinced that I actually want to read Lair of Dreams, I’m including an alternate #7:

7) Stiletto by Daniel O’Malley (sequel to The Rook) – to be released 7/1/2015

Sequels coming eventually… but no actual date has been announced:

8) Peace Talks by Jim Butcher (#16 in the Dresden Files series).

9) The Winds of Winter by George R. R. Martin (#6 in A Song of Ice and Fire)

And last, but not least — and certainly the book that I want to read more than any others on this list (but too bad it’s not written yet!):

10) Untitled 9th book in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon

OK, yes, my top 10 list has 12 books on it… but the more the merrier!

Did any of mine make your list? What sequels are you most eager to read?

Share your links, and I’ll come check out your top 10!

If you enjoyed this post, please consider following Bookshelf Fantasies! And don’t forget to check out our regular weekly feature, Thursday Quotables. Happy reading!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

17Nov2014

The Monday Agenda 11/17/2014

Posted in The Monday Check-In by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Not a lofty, ambitious to-be-read list consisting of 100+ book titles. Just a simple plan for the upcoming week — what I’m reading now, what I plan to read next, and what I’m hoping to squeeze in among the nooks and crannies.

How did I do with last week’s agenda?

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes: Done! My review is here.

The Martian by Andy Weir: Just getting started.

Earlier last week, I spent a good chunk of time binge-reading The Unwritten series by Mike Carey and Peter Gross. Wanna know my post-binge thoughts? Check ’em out here.

Fresh Catch:

I came across someone just GIVING AWAY books (don’t you love that?), and here’s what I got:

The Jason Segel book is brand new and signed, and that makes me really happy. Can’t wait to read it!

What’s on my reading agenda for the coming week?

I plan to start the week with Hello From the Gillespies by Monica McInerney (the November book for Fields & Fantasies!).

And… I’m expecting my copy of Stephen King’s Revival any day now – and as soon as it arrives, I’m jumping in.

I’m also really tempted to go straight to more Jojo Moyes, but I’m forcing myself to read other things… for now.

Ongoing reads:

Shared with the kiddo:

Calling on Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles, #3)

Calling on Dragons (Enchanted Forest Chronicles #3) by Patricia C. Wrede: It’s getting better, but still not as much fun as the previous two books in the series.

Now playing via audiobook:

Just finished: I’ve decided to re-read (re-listen?) to the Alpha & Omega series by Patricia Briggs. I just finished up book #2, Hunting Ground, and loved it even more the 2nd time around. Can’t get enough of Charles and Anna!

Just starting: I’ve decided to give Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle a try, even though it breaks with my usual routine of only listening to the audio version of books I’ve read before. This is one that’s new to me… so we’ll see if I can keep my mind from wandering enough to actually absorb what’s going on.

Book club reading:

Classic read: The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy. (One chapter per week)

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon: Reading and discussing two chapters per week, from now through the end of 2015!

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes: Outlander Book Club’s book-of-the-month for November.

Want to join any of the group reads? Let me know and I’ll provide the links!

So many book, so little time…

That’s my agenda. What’s yours? Add your comments to share your bookish agenda for the week.

Happy reading!

15Nov2014

Book Review: Me Before You by Jojo Moyes

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

I’m a little late to the party here. I know people have been reading (and crying over) Me Before You for a couple of years now. In fact, I’d reached the point where I was hesitant to read it, simply because I’d heard from so many people about all the feels and all the tears caused by this book — and hype is pretty much the enemy of enjoying books, in my opinion.

But thanks to my book group, I finally buckled down to read Me Before You this week… and despite the choked up feeling in the back of my throat that still hasn’t gone away, I’m glad that I did.

Me Before You tells the story of two people who would never have met, had life gone the way they’d expected. Despite coming from the same small town, Louisa and Will could not be more different. Lou grew up in a working class family, where every bit of income matters, and where her super-smart sister was expected to be the first in the family to attend college, until she dropped out to have a baby. Will Traynor is the son of a wealthy family, accustomed to grabbing life and enjoying every moment, whether via corporate takeovers or extreme sports. The only way these two would have met would have been in some cafe, with Lou serving and Will barely looking up to notice the waitress standing by his table.

Yet life can change in an instant. Lou is informed by the owner of the cafe where she’s worked for years that he’s shutting the doors due to a slump in business, and Lou desperately seeks a new job, knowing that her parents count on her pay to keep the household running. But there’s nothing available for a 27-year-old with little education and few skills, other than a job in a chicken plant or working as a pole dancer. Finally, one more opportunity is presented, working as a carer for a quadriplegic. Despite having no relevant experience, Lou is hired to provide companionship and distraction — and meets Will, whose normal life was snatched away from him two years earlier on a rainy day in London in a freak motorcycle accident.

Will is mean, sarcastic, sullen, and withdrawn, and wants to be left alone. Lou is petrified that she’ll screw up, worried that she’ll lose the only decent-paying job she was able to find, and intimidated both by the wealthy Traynor family and by the silent man in the wheelchair who most emphatically does not seem to want her around. But bit by bit, Louisa, with her wildly colored clothes and ability to say just the wrong thing, starts to crack Will’s shell. She actually makes him laugh, and Will for his part seems to see Lou as a challenge: He’s determined that this small-town girl who’s never gone anywhere or done anything should try new things and expand her horizons. But Lou has set herself a challenge as well: To make Will realize that his life isn’t over, and that there’s still joy and hope for him in this world.

As we (and Louisa) discover early on, there’s a reason that Lou was only hired for a six-month assignment: Will has decided to die via Dignitas, a Swiss clinic offering assisted suicide services. He’s promised his parents to give them six months before proceeding, and in desperation, Will’s mother has hired Lou, hoping that her awkward yet charming demeanor and colorful personality will pull Will out of his despair the way the love of his family hasn’t been able to.

I won’t discuss the plot any further, but suffice it to say, it’s a doozy. It’s not all drama and tears, though. Louisa and Will are both smart and funny, and their interludes are full of laughter and awkward, silly moments. Lou is determined to make Will want to live, and plans a series of misbegotten outings, most of which end in disaster. Will, for his part, forces Lou to spread her wings, through little moments like watching her first subtitled movies or going to the symphony, ordering books from Amazon for her to read, or forcing her to read the newspaper every day so she can debate current issues with him.

Will’s parents are not the most sympathetic people in the world, but I couldn’t help feeling their pain, and while they seem cold and stand-offish at first, through Lou’s eyes we come to see the nightmare of these people who so desperately want to help their son. There are other memorable and wonderful supporting characters, especially Will’s nurse Nathan and Lou’s sister Treena. Lou’s clueless and self-centered boyfriend Patrick, who is so obsessed with triathlons and his fitness routine that he doesn’t see Lou’s needs or feelings, is a comically obnoxious yet cleverly written character. Lou’s parents, who come to play an important role as she makes more dramatic decisions about her intentions toward Will, are equally impressive, as the author portrays them with a convincing sense of heart and history.

But ultimately, this is the story of Lou and Will — how they change each other, and whether they can challenge each other to think differently, and perhaps to feel in new and unexpected ways. A few times, I was sure I knew exactly where this story was going, and yet I ended up surprised by the dramatic developments, the emotional depth, and the final twists of the story.

Because I’d been warned over and over again that I’d cry, naturally, I didn’t. But I did find it a little tough to breathe or talk by the time I got to the last 100 pages or so… and if I hadn’t been told so emphatically to expect tears, then I probably would have ended up a big, soggy mess.

Jojo Moyes is a gifted writer who has a beautiful way with words. She takes ordinary people and conveys the beauty and sadness of their lives and relationships. In all of the books by this author that I’ve read so far, I’ve seen gorgeously drawn love stories, evocative romances, and edge-of-your-seat suspense and dilemmas. The characters in her books feel like real people, and the skill with which she draws us in and makes us care is remarkable.

I’ve read a total of four books by Jojo Moyes by this point, and I’m eager both to explore her earlier works and to read anything new that she writes from this point forward. Meanwhile, my only complaint is that my book group discussion doesn’t start for several more days, and I just can’t wait to talk about Me Before You!

✻✻✻✻✻

Interested in this author? Check out my reviews of other books by Jojo Moyes:
The Girl You Left Behind
One Plus One
The Ship of Brides

_________________________________________

The details:

Title: Me Before You
Author: Jojo Moyes
Publisher: Pamela Dorman Books/ Viking
Publication date: December 31, 2012
Length: 369 pages
Genre: Adult contemporary fiction
Source: Purchased

14Nov2014

Binge! The Unwritten series by Mike Carey & Peter Gross

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

My reading obsession this past week has been the graphic novel series The Unwritten. Between Sunday and Wednesday, I gobbled up volumes 1- 10 of the trade paperback editions, and now I’m all caught up until the final volume is released in May.

What did I think? I’ll be honest: I think with The Unwritten, the law of diminishing returns was in effect.

I loved the sound of the premise when I first heard of it: Tom Taylor is the adult son of the mysteriously disappeared author Wilson Taylor, whose beloved children’s book series about boy wizard Tommy Taylor is the top selling book of all time. A crazy statistic is thrown around in the very first book: Of all the people worldwide who can read, 40% have read at least one Tommy Taylor book.

Tom is a more or less shiftless adult, who makes a buck by hitting the convention circuit and signing Tommy memorabilia — until the day a young woman stands up in a Q&A session and asks “Who are you?” Lizzie questions Tom’s true identity, alleging that his documentation and early childhood are elaborate frauds — and the fandom erupts. Suddenly, the lead news story worldwide is Tommy-gate: Is Tom really Taylor’s son? What’s he hiding? And where is his father?

Tom Taylor goes from adored to despised seemingly in the blink of an eye. Mobs are after him. The scandal won’t go away. So Tom flees to his father’s remote Swiss villa to hide away… and finds himself implicated in a grisly mass murder for which there is no reasonable explanation. And that’s the most normal part of the story.

Tom’s father guarded a powerful secret about the intersections between story and the real world, and the deeper Tom investigates, the weirder it gets. There are objects with magical powers, because stories made them so. There’s a bad guy who turns anything he touches into fiction. (Word of advice: Do NOT let him touch your head!) A magical doorknob from the Tommy Taylor stories can actually open portals between worlds, and a secret cabal is intent on stopping Tom and his friends and shutting down their mysterious connections to the world of fiction.

I couldn’t possibly even begin to describe the complexities of this series, because I kept getting lost myself. There’s a stairway that goes on forever. The worlds are all real, even if the people in each world believe other worlds to be fiction. The more widely read and taken to heart a story is, the more power it has — so Tom can use the plastic replica wand he carries because the power of belief gives it the magic it has in the Tommy Taylor stories.

Meanwhile, the series cleverly uses screenshots of websites and 24-hour news channels to convey the weirdness and intensity of our media-obsessed world, showing the demonization of Tom and later his redemption in the public eye, the pop-psychology attributing all sorts of ills to Tommy obsessions, the chat room conversations of the true believers, and even the messianic cults that spring up to deify Tom Taylor as the word become flesh.

Volume 9 is a cross-over with the Fables series, which I love beyond all reason. And actually, it was hearing that there would be a Fables/Unwritten cross-over that first made me look into The Unwritten. So it’s with sadness that I find myself saying that I disliked this volume very much, because a) the story was so convoluted that it didn’t really make sense and b) the Fables world here is an alterna-Fables, where truly awful things happen to some of my favorite Fables characters — and it was simply too terrible to see the fates of Snow White, Bigby, the cubs, Ambrose, and the rest of the gang here.

When I look back at my mad dash through these ten volumes, I see that I went from 4 and 5 star responses to the early volumes to 2 or 3 stars for the later ones. What changed? For me, the further the story moved from the Tommy Taylor origin story into the broader world of interwoven universes, the less compelling the narrative arcs became. By the end of volume 10, I was spending most of my brain power trying to figure out one WTF moment after another. Each plot development and story arc is interesting as hell, and I love the design and artwork. It’s inventive and challenging and not like anything else I’ve read. (Granted, I’m not a huge comics expert by any means…) But as a whole, it’s frustrating to read this much of a series and arrive at a place where I have really no idea what any of it means.

So, will I read volume 11 — the last in the series — when it comes out next May? Yes, I’m sure I will. At this point, I feel invested in Tom’s story, and I really love some of the supporting characters as well, especially Richie Savoy and Lizzie Hexam. On the other hand, because the story is so confusing and convoluted, I don’t feel a whole lot of suspense about the conclusion, since I’ve completely lost all sense of what this story is truly about.

Meanwhile, there’s a prequel volume now available, Tommy Taylor and the Ship That Sank Twice, which I believe tells both the story of the first Tommy Taylor book and how Wilson Taylor came to write it… and yes, I do plan to read this one in the next month or so, although I think I need a break for a while before I’ll be ready to deal with Tommy’s world again.

13Nov2014

Thursday Quotables: Hunting Ground

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!

Hunting Ground (Alpha & Omega, #2)

Hunting Ground by Patricia Briggs
(published 2009)

Werewolf love…

Taking another deep breath, Anna leaned her forehead against Charles’s arm and thought of the way his scent made her feel, of the sound of his laughter and the rumble of his voice in their bed at night. She wasn’t looking for the passion, though there was plenty of that, but for the deeply centered clarity that he brought to her – and she returned to him. Something that she alone could give him: peace.

His muscles softened against her forehead, and his lips came down to brush the top of her head. She opened her eyes and met the fae’s gaze.

“Mine,” she said firmly.

I’m on my second go-round with this book, this time via audio, and I’m loving it all over again.

What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!

If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:

Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
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