Book Review: Sky Jumpers by Peggy Eddleman

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Sky Jumpers by Peggy Eddleman

Sky Jumpers (Sky Jumpers, #1) If you’re looking for a middle grade novel with a strong female character and lots of action and adventure, look no further! Sky Jumpers absolutely fits the bill.

In Sky Jumpers, we meet 12-year-old Hope Toriella, a spunky, fearless girl living a surprisingly happy life in White Rock, Nebraska. Surprisingly happy — because this book is set some 40 years after World War III, during which the world was destroyed by “green bombs”, which are basically a more environmentally-friendly version of nukes. People were killed by the millions, cities were destroyed, general devastation resulted — and yet Earth itself is still inhabitable, for those lucky enough to survive the initial bombing.

White Rock is a town located in a deep valley formed by a massive bomb crater, surrounded on all sides by huge mountains. Its limited access — only one tunnel in or out of town — gives it an ideal defensible position. And safest of all, the upper skies over White Rock, and indeed, over the entire Earth, have a layer of mutated air known as Bomb’s Breath — thicker than normal air, instantly deadly when inhaled, yet invisible to the naked eye. The Bomb’s Breath sits over White Rock like a cork along the mountain tops, ensuring that no invaders will ever attempt to invade by crossing the mountains.

But… Hope and her friends have invented a thrilling game, carefully hidden from their parents, that involves holding their breath, climbing up above the Bomb’s Breath layer, and then jumping back through it. As the dense air cushions their fall, they are able to do amazing acrobatics, and dare one another to try riskier and riskier moves. Hope is the absolute best at sky jumping, and finally manages to nail a double somersault as the book opens.

In White Rock, the most valued skill of all is the ability to invent. The green bombs changed not only the air but also the nature of certain metals, so that the survivors have to find new ways to make what they need with the materials readily available — largely wood, water, stone, and the products of their fields. Each year, the townspeople show off their new inventions during a big festival, and everyone from age four upwards is expected to participate. And Hope, to put it bluntly, sucks at inventing. Nothing she makes ever comes off the way she intends, leaving her feeling like the town laughingstock.

The action really revs up when White Rock is invaded by a group of armed bandits, intent on stealing the town’s supply of a rare and valuable antibiotic, and willing to kill in order to get it. However, if the town hands over its supply, it won’t be able to make more until the next spring, by which point a recurring disease may kill off a good portion of the town. All seems lost — but Hope is nothing if not a daredevil, and she knows a secret way out of town. Risking everything, she and her friends set off to get help — but will they get there in time? Can children really save the day?

I won’t say whether Hope’s quest is successful — it’s too much fun to find out on your own! Hope is a brave, strong girl, intensely loyal to her parents, her friends, and her community. Everyone around her can see her strength and her leadership qualities, but it takes this threat to the town for Hope to fully realize that her lack of inventing skills doesn’t mean that she has nothing to contribute.

It’s lovely to see a girl take the lead in a physically grueling plan to escape and rescue her town. Hope is a smart girl who knows the risks she’s taking, but also realizes that if she doesn’t try, the town is doomed. Between her courage and her agility, Hope has pretty much the only chance of success, and you can’t help but root for her as she faces challenge after challenge, thinking ahead, taking chances, and pushing forward even when the odds seem insurmountable.

Start to finish, Sky Jumpers is fast-paced and exciting. The world-building is quite good, portraying a post-apocalyptic Earth that’s different and startling, but not too bleak or depressing for the intended audience. This new world feels like a frontier full of challenge, and even though there are bad guys out there, life itself doesn’t seem particularly awful — just different. Characters are nicely defined — not just Hope, but her parents, teachers, and friends are all distinct personalities with talents, ideas, and inner lives that make them feel like real invidividuals and not just faces in a crowd.

Sky Jumpers is a book I’d have no qualms about handing to a boy or girl in the target age range — in fact, although I read this book both for my own enjoyment and for the purpose of reviewing it here, I’d love to have my 11-year-old son read it next. I think it would be right up his alley.

Well-written, with a dynamic story arc, lots of excitement and adventure, a high-stakes climax full of heroic daring — I’d consider Sky Jumpers a terrific choice for kids in the 8 – 13 age range. And who knows? Perhaps this one will even entice my reluctant reader to read past his bedtime.

Final note: According to the author’s website, Sky Jumpers #2 will be out in Fall 2014. But have no fear! Even though this is apparently an ongoing series, Sky Jumpers is a fully realized story, with a beginning, middle, and end, and stands on its own just fine. But I’ll happily check out book #2 — I’m sure there are great adventures ahead for Hope and for White Rock, and I’d love to see what happens next!

Okay, really the final note: I see from the author’s blog that she’s a Joss Whedon fan. And now it all makes sense. ***happily geeking out…***

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The details:

Title: Sky Jumpers
Author: Peggy Eddleman
Publisher: Random House Children’s Books
Publication date: 2013
Genre: Middle grade adventure
Source: Review copy courtesy of Random House via NetGalley

4Oct2013

Book Review: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

What ever happened to Danny Torrance?

Ever since Stephen King’s 1977 novel The Shining, people have wanted to know what became of the little boy with the special gifts and the murderous father. Stephen King himself, in the author’s note at the end of Doctor Sleep, states that he was asked this question at a book signing in 1998, and it’s been on his mind ever since.

And now, finally, 36 years after the publication of The Shining, King’s new novel Doctor Sleep is here to answer the question.

Danny Torrance, for those who need a refresher, is a very special five-year-old at the time of the events of The Shining. Son of an alcoholic father down to his very last chance at redemption, Danny has a remarkable gift — dubbed “shining” by his friend and protector — which include telepathy, precognition, and a talent for seeing the unseen. Danny and his parents head up to the Overlook Hotel high in the Colorado Rockies, where Danny’s father will serve as caretaker during the long winter months when the hotel is snowed in and cut off from the outside world. Let’s just say, it doesn’t go well.

Danny survives, but life hasn’t been easy… and he’s never managed to completely escape from the terrors of his childhood. Now grown, Dan is haunted by the same demon as his father was — alcoholism. Dan has discovered that drinking dulls the impact of the shining — especially the recurring visits from the malicious spirits of the Overlook.

In Doctor Sleep, Dan manages to eventually climb out of his alcohol-fueled darkness thanks to a couple of good men who offer him a place to work and, even more importantly, introduce him to the world of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is presented here in a practically religious light, and while Stephen King doesn’t typically go easy on pop cultural reference points, he does not portray AA in anything but flattering terms, no sarcasm or dissing allowed.

Dan finds solace and refuge in a small New Hampshire town, where he uses his shining in the service of others. He works as an orderly in a hospice, where the residents refer to him as “Doctor Sleep” thanks to his talent for helping the dying make their final crossing into whatever lies beyond. Dan’s quiet life is rocked when he’s contacted by the precocious Abra Stone, a girl so full of the shining that it manifests itself from birth. Abra establishes a telepathic connection to Dan, but it’s not until danger looms that their lives truly collide.

So who is the Big Bad in Doctor Sleep? Two answers, really. First, there’s the True Knot, a seemingly innocuous band of RV people who travel the highways and byways looking for sustenance. The True Knot feeds off the essence of children who “shine” — the dying breaths of these children, especially when the death is prolonged and painful, produces “steam”, which enables the True Knot to live seemingly forever and maintain their youth and their health.

Stephen King’s descriptions of the True Knot are hilarious, referring to every annoying road trip you’ve ever taken where you’ve been stuck behind slow-moving campers, and the crowds of old folks and their RVs that you encounter at every rest stop across America:

How many times have you found yourself behind a lumbering RV, eating exhaust and waiting impatiently for your chance to pass? Creeping along at forty when you could be doing a perfectly legal sixty-five or even seventy? And when there’s finally a hole in the fast lane and you pull out, holy God, you see a long line of those damn things, gas hogs driven at exactly ten miles an hour below the legal speed limit by bespectacled golden oldies who hunch over their steering wheels, gripping them like they think they’re going to fly away.

Well, guess what? Behind the grandma facades are some truly ferocious — and hungry — people, and you’d better hope that you don’t attract their attention.

The second Big Bad in Doctor Sleep is, of course, the curse of alcohol addiction itself. The never-ending thirst, even for those with years of sobriety under their belts, is presented as the most damaging of evils, a nightmare without escape, a force to be combated with one’s whole being. There are many reasons why Dan ends up who and what he is, but it’s clear that the drinking — and the battle not to drink — is what truly defines him.

Doctor Sleep has some disturbing moments, powerful and frightening characters, and mind-bending action sequences, but I wouldn’t say the book itself is scary. It’s a long book (over 500 pages), and the action does seem to sag a bit from time to time. There are early stretches, covering Dan’s recovery and Abra’s early life, that are interesting from a character perspective, but don’t do much to move the story forward.

At the same time, both Dan and Abra are fascinating characters, and I think King strikes a homerun here in terms of their development as fully realized people. We absolutely get Dan’s life and what makes him tick. In Abra, we see a child full of light and power, with a loving family that is kind of freaked out by her. She’s strong and sure of herself, but that doesn’t mean that she’s not still a child to be protected and shielded. When Dan and Abra finally come together to combat the True Knot, their ingenuity and deep-seated goodness are what enable them to fight hard and fight together.

I never really felt that the outcome was in question, but how we get there is inventive, unpredictable, and full of twists and turns. As in many Stephen King books, I felt that the narrative got a little more convoluted during the climax than was strictly necessary — but as always, King is master of his domain and makes it all work out in a way that serves the overarching story as well as each character’s own development and story arc.

All in all, I’d call Doctor Sleep a no-doubt-about-it success. As a sequel, it nicely references the earlier book, stays true to what we know of the characters, and yet moves the story forward in new directions that are engaging and compulsively readable. And as a stand-alone novel, Doctor Sleep convincingly establishes teams of good guys and bad guys and builds the suspense bit by bit until we get to the dramatic showdown.

Should you read The Shining first? Well… yes! Of course you should! I suppose you could read Doctor Sleep on its own and understand enough to appreciate it – but really, why would you want to?

I first read The Shining years (decades) ago, and in the excitement leading up to the new book’s release, realized that my memories of The Shining were dim at best, overshadowed in many ways by the movie version. I re-read The Shining last month, and let me tell you – I’m so thrilled that I did. First of all, it’s an amazing (and terrifying) read. Second, moving from The Shining to Doctor Sleep with only a few weeks in between, I felt so connected to Danny and so invested in his story that it was easy to become absorbed in grown-up Dan’s challenges and struggles. Reading Doctor Sleep was almost like finding out about a little boy that I’d known long ago: I remembered little Danny Torrance fondly, wished him well, and really did want to know what ever happened to that poor little boy who lived through such a terrible experience.

And now I know.

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The details:

Title: Doctor Sleep
Author: Stephen King
Publisher: Scribner
Publication date: 2013
Genre: Horror
Source: Purchased

3Oct2013

Flashback Friday: The Hunt For Red October

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

Other than that, the sky’s the limit! Join me, please, and let us all know: what are the books you’ve read that you always rave about? What books from your past do you wish EVERYONE would read? Pick something from five years ago, or go all the way back to the Canterbury Tales if you want. It’s Flashback Friday time!

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy

(published 1984)

Please don’t think I’m a military fanatic! I realize that this is my second week in a row picking a Flashback Friday book with a naval/military setting. I was originally going to go in a completely different direction this week, but in light of the sad news about Tom Clancy’s passing, I thought I’d highlight his very first book, The Hunt for Red October:

From Goodreads:

Somewhere under the Atlantic, a Soviet sub commander has just made a fateful decision. The Red October is heading west.

The Americans want her. The Russians want her back. And the most incredible chase in history is on …

Here is the runaway bestseller that launched Tom Clancy’s phenomenal career. A military thriller so accurate and so convincing in its accuracy that the author was rumored to have been debriefed by the White House. Its theme: The greatest espionage coup in history. Its story: The chase for a top secret Russian missile sub. Its title: THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER

According to the Wikipedia page, Tom Clancy originally sold The Hunt for Red October to the Naval Institute Press for $5,000. The Naval Institute Press’s first published original fiction work, The Hunt for Red October leaped onto the bestseller lists when President Reagan mentioned it during a press conference and said that he couldn’t put it down.

The Hunt for Red October was hugely popular, fitting right in with the Cold War era and the mood of distrust between the US and USSR. Red October was perhaps the first (and certainly most prominent) book of the time to focus not just on plot but on military hardware — to such an extent that it supposedly had the military intelligence community in quite a tizzy over the amount of sensitive information contained within the book.

Admittedly, this is a somewhat strange selection for me, as I don’t typically read thrillers, much less military thrillers with lots of technical jargon and big things going boom. But at the time, I found it fascinating, and learned a huge amount about life on board submarines, what a sonar array is, and how all that underwater listening actually works. Plus, it’s a tense, compelling story — so yes, I’d have to agree with President Reagan on this one: Hard to put down!

I promise to move on to more “literary” selections next week for Flashback Friday. But consider this one a tribute to a man who was a huge influence in the world of popular fiction. Even though it’s been years since I’ve had the slightest interest in reading a Tom Clancy book, I’m still happy to acknowledge that this was an author who knew his audience and knew how to tell a story. RIP, Tom Clancy.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

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!

2Oct2013

Thursday Quotables: Sky Jumpers

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!

This week’s Thursday Quotable:

You would think I’d never jumped off a cliff before, based on how long I stood there. Not jumping.

Of course, I’d never made this jump before.

Sky Jumpers (Sky Jumpers, #1)

Source: Sky Jumpers
Author: Peggy Eddleman
Random House Children’s Books, 2013

Now that’s one catchy way to start a book!

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

If you’d like to participate, 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!
Click below (next to the cute froggy face) to link up your post! And be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables too.
Have a quote to share but not a blog post? Leave your quote in the comments.
Have fun!

1Oct2013

Wishing & Waiting on Wednesday

Posted in Wishlist Wednesday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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, I’m focusing on an upcoming release that I heard about for the first time just a few days ago:

My Real Children by Jo Walton
(release date May 20, 2014)

Synopsis:

It’s 2015, and Patricia Cowan is very old. “Confused today,” read the notes clipped to the end of her bed. She forgets things she should know—what year it is, major events in the lives of her children. But she remembers things that don’t seem possible. She remembers marrying Mark and having four children. And she remembers not marrying Mark and raising three children with Bee instead. She remembers the bomb that killed President Kennedy in 1963, and she remembers Kennedy in 1964, declining to run again after the nuclear exchange that took out Miami and Kiev.

Her childhood, her years at Oxford during the Second World War—those were solid things. But after that, did she marry Mark or not? Did her friends all call her Trish, or Pat? Had she been a housewife who escaped a terrible marriage after her children were grown, or a successful travel writer with homes in Britain and Italy? And the moon outside her window: does it host a benign research station, or a command post bristling with nuclear missiles?

Two lives, two worlds, two versions of modern history. Each with their loves and losses, their sorrows and triumphs. My Real Children is the tale of both of Patricia Cowan’s lives…and of how every life means the entire world.

Why do I want to read this?

I love dual narratives in which either version may be true — if the narratives are both plausible and the writing is engaging. In the hands of Jo Walton, I have no doubt that My Real Children will be excellent. I loved Among Others, which is a beautiful book that is so very hard to describe (fairies and twins and science fiction, oh my!).

What are you wishing for this Wednesday?

So what are you doing on Thursdays and Fridays? Come join me for my regular weekly features, Thursday Quotables and Flashback Friday! You can find out more here — come share the book love!

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

30Sep2013

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Book Turn-Offs

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 theme is Top Ten Book Turn-Offs. A few months ago, I wrote a list of the Top 10 Words/Topics That Make Me Run For The Hills, which focused on all the reasons why I wouldn’t pick up a book in the first place. This week’s theme is a bit different: There you are, happily reading a book, when — boom! — you come across a topic, a character, a situation that is just a total turn-off, and turns a decent reading experience into a big “ugh”, “argh!”, or “oh, yuck”. (I have the vocabulary of a four-year-old, it would seem).

My top 10 book turn-offs are:

1) Designer name-dropping: When the labels on the characters’ clothing become more important than the plot, I’m out.

2) Magic in a non-magical world: More specifically, magicians. Magicians drive me batty. I love magical/fantasy worlds, with great world-building and where the magical elements have rules and make sense. I can’t stand books set in our world that feature magicians who can just do… whatever it is that they can do. Magicians in non-magical worlds always leave me feeling that all stakes have been removed — since the magician can do anything, then nothing is really a risk and there’s no situation that someone can’t escape from… BY MAGIC. Just no.

3) Unnecessary grossness: Okay, I’ll read a good thriller or horror story, but that’s not the kind of grossness I mean here. Here’s a recent example: In a book that I enjoyed recently, I almost walked away early on after reading a scene in which the main character not only has a horrible hangover and is quite sick, but in which the author seems to feel the need to describe quite vividly what that being sick looks like. Yuck. (It was a good book and I’m glad I continued, but still. Yuck.)

4) “Successful” people who do stupid things: I just don’t buy it when a billionaire CEO sends inappropriate emails, repeatedly, without more than a passing concern that it’s maybe not a good idea to carry on that way. (See: Every single email sent by Christian Grey in 50 Shades.) (Yes, I read 50 Shades. And yeah, maybe it’s a bit weird that it’s the emails that bothered me, out of everything in the book. But this is my list, and I’m sticking with it.)

5) Stalkerish/controlling behavior presented as romance: I’m sure we can all come up with examples of this. A guy who shows up uninvited in your bedroom, has to know who you’re with 24 hours a day, makes decisions for you to keep you “safe” without your consent — that’s not romance, and I’m sick of books — particularly YA books — pretending that this is somehow ideal, swoon-worthy male behavior. It’s not.

6) Too many characters introduced at once: This is a pet peeve of mine. Give me a chance to get to know who all these people are! When a group of friends or family members is introduced at the same time — on the same page or even in the same paragraph — it becomes difficult (sometimes impossible) to keep them all straight, and I find myself having to constantly go back to try to figure it out. Having to ask “wait, which one was that again?” while reading is not a good thing.

7) Not finding out until the end of the book that it’s part of a series: Those dreaded words: “To Be Continued”. This makes me so mad. If the book isn’t going to be complete in and of itself — you know, with a beginning, middle, and end in between two covers — then I want to know about it up front. There’s nothing worse than getting to the last 20 pages or so of a book and realizing, “Wait a minute! How can the author possibly wrap this all up in the amount of space left?” — and having to face the fact that you’ll be left hanging until the sequel comes out.

8) Coincidences that are just unbelievable: Tons of fiction plots are driven by coincidences — but they have to be more than just slightly plausible in order for the story to work. I read a novel last year in which one woman kills another in a car accident on a deserted country road — and it turned out that they were both from the same town, hundreds of miles away, and both just happened to be on this particular road in the middle of nowhere at the very same time. I didn’t buy it for a second, and it totally detracted from the impact of the story.

9) Unnecessary love triangles: Love stories can work without a third wheel. I was so thrilled recently while reading Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (great book!), when what I thought was being set up as a love triangle turned out not to be, at all.

10) Too many or too right-now pop culture shout-outs: It can be cute when current TV shows, movies, or bands get mentioned in fiction, if the reference feels appropriate to the story — but sometimes the reference feels so NOW that you just know it’ll come across as totally dated within five or ten years. For example, I’m reading a book in which a character is described as looking like Jax Teller from Sons of Anarchy. Okay, that totally appeals to me — but will someone reading this book in 10 or 15 years get that at all?

What turns you off in a book? Have you ever completely walked away mid-book because of one of your reading turn-offs?

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

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

30Sep2013

The Monday Agenda 9/30/2013

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?

The Girl You Left Behind Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2)

Why do I feel like I’ve had no time to read this week? Oh yeah, real life intrudes once again… I’ve been grabbing my reading time in teeny, tiny increments all week, and I’ve made little to no progress in my stacks of books waiting to be read.

Here’s what I managed to read in the past seven days:

The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes: Done! My review is here.

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King: I started it on Wednesday, and I’m just past the 60% mark at this point. I like it so far — just wish I had more time!!

And in kids’ books:

Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo (Leven Thumps, #1)

Leven Thumps and the Gateway to Foo by Obert Skye. My kiddo and I are reading this one together, and so far, he likes it more than I do. I’m finding it kind of dark and scattered, and we’re far enough into it by now that we should have a better sense of what’s going on. If it were just me, I might move on at this point, but kiddo seems to want to continue — so onward we go.

Fresh Catch:

Holy crow, was this a big week for acquiring books! I attended my very favorite annual event, the Big Book Sale in support of our public libraries. Over 500,000 items on sale in a huge warehouse, with avid booklovers crowding around the tables, and everything priced at $3 or less. I wrote about it here last year — so much fun! This year, I showed a bit more restraint than usual, but still managed to come home with 25 books (for a whopping price of $46!).

Among my finds were 12 ARCs for books that have just been released this year (including Double Feature by Owen King, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes, More Than This by Patrick Ness, and Maya’s Notebook by Isabel Allende), a beautiful hardcover edition of The Book Thief to replace my old battered paperback, and copies of several books that I’ve been meaning to get to, including a few more Thursday Next books by Jasper Fforde and Soon I Will Be Invincible by Austin Grossman.

On top of all that, this week saw the arrival of two eagerly awaited new releases as well as a couple of library books for me to read with the kiddo:

Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2) Shadows Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes The Expeditioners and the Treasure of Drowned Man's Canyon

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

The Incrementalists Sky Jumpers (Sky Jumpers, #1) Charming (Pax Arcana, #1) Before I Met You

Assuming I get through Doctor Sleep in the next few days, I need to tackle the review books that have started to pile up:

First up: The Incrementalists by Steven Brust and Skyler White.

After that, one of several possibilities:

Sky Jumpers by Peggy Eddleman (a middle grade book)
Charming by Elliott James
Before I Met You by Lisa Jewell

We’ll just have to wait and see what strikes my fancy when the time comes to start something new!

So many book, so little time…

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

26Sep2013

Flashback Friday: The Caine Mutiny

Posted in Flashback Friday by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Flashback Friday is my own little weekly tradition, in which I pick a book from my reading past to highlight — and you’re invited to join in!

Here are the Flashback Friday book selection guidelines:

Has to be something you’ve read yourself
Has to still be available, preferably still in print
Must have been originally published 5 or more years ago

My pick for this week’s Flashback Friday:

The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk

(published 1951)

From Goodreads:

The novel that inspired the now-classic film The Caine Mutiny and the hit Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, Herman Wouk’s boldly dramatic, brilliantly entertaining novel of life — and mutiny — on a Navy warship in the Pacific theater was immediately embraced, upon its original publication in 1951, as one of the first serious works of American fiction to grapple with the moral complexities and the human consequences of World War II. In the intervening half century, The Caine Mutiny has become a perennial favorite of readers young and old, has sold millions of copies throughout the world, and has achieved the status of a modern classic.

The Caine Mutiny is the book that brought us the iconic character of Captain Queeg, immortalized on film by Humphrey Bogart and famous for such gems as:

Aboard my ship, excellent performance is standard, standard performance is sub-standard, and sub-standard performance is not permitted to exist.

Is Queeg incompetent? Cowardly? Or mentally unbalanced, perhaps dangerously so? That’s the moral dilemma that the junior officers on board the Caine must confront, deciding whether the safety of their ship demands overthrowing their leader — or whether the fact that Queeg is a poor captain is irrelevant to the fact that military men must obey the chain of command, period.

The Caine Mutiny is an exciting, intelligent read — at once an accurate portrayal of the alternating dangers and boredom of life at sea, an exploration of the inner workings of men under pressure, and a rollicking tale of a band of brothers that isn’t quite as noble and self-sacrificing as most war movies might have us believe. Filled with storms at sea, wartime engagements, and plenty of legal drama, The Caine Mutiny is a modern classic of wartime fiction.

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

26Sep2013

Book Review: The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

Posted in Book Reviews by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

Book Review: The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

The Girl You Left Behind Quick: When you think of looted art and reparations, what do you think of? Nazi Germany? So do most of the bystanders in this novel, which mixes a modern courtroom drama and love story with a devastating glimpse back at a wartime tragedy, with a missing (perhaps stolen) painting serving as the focal point. The twist in The Girl You Left Behind is that the painting in question went missing during the German occupation of northern France during the first World War — but that doesn’t stop popular opinion from tarnishing the main character’s reputation by accusing her of exploiting Nazi theft for her own personal gain. To say it’s complicated is putting it mildly.

In The Girl You Left Behind, we follow two timelines. In 1916, we meet Sophie Lefevre, devoted wife of up-and-coming artist Edouard, who is serving on the front lines with the French forces battling the invading German army. Sophie has been left behind in her home village, helping her sister manage the family inn and struggling to survive with ever-dwindling rations and a hostile German battalion occupying the town. Beautiful young Sophie catches the eye of the German Kommandant, and he is mesmerized as well by Edouard’s portrait of Sophie, which hangs in a back hallway of the inn. Ultimately, Sophie is forced into a decision that pits her own life and honor against the survival of her family and her husband.

Meanwhile, in modern day London, young widow Liv Halston lives alone in a beautiful glass house built by her late husband David, a remarkable and renowned architect who died suddenly four years previously. On their honeymoon, David had bought a beautiful portrait of an enigmatic young woman as a gift for Liv, and this portrait is literally the only spot of color in Liv’s bleak world. Liv meets handsome, gallant Paul and finally feels a spark of life returning — but Paul is an ex-cop now specializing in tracking and returning works of art stolen during wartime. When he is hired by the Lefevre family to find their missing painting and realizes it’s in Liv’s possession, legal drama threatens their blossoming love — as well as David’s legacy and Liv’s reputation.

The Girl You Left Behind tells both parts of the story quite effectively. The first several chapters are devoted to Sophie, and it was somewhat wrenching to have to leave her once the narrative switched to the modern era. Likewise, Liv’s story is affecting and engrossing, and I soon wanted to know much more about this lonely woman and the husband she’d lost. Sophie and Liv are both strong women dealt a series of painful blows in horrible circumstances, and in both streams of the story we see how their personal strength informs their decisions and actions.

The moral dilemma posed is an interesting one. It would appear that the Lefevre descendants are seeking the painting for its monetary value alone, whereas Liv truly loves the painting and feels a connection and fondness for Sophie herself, despite knowing nothing about her story until the legal case gets underway. So who is right in this situation? Are the artist’s descendants entitled to the painting based on their assertion that it was stolen during wartime? Or, barring convincing evidence, is Liv entitled to keep this artwork that she cherishes, even knowing that it may have made its way to her through questionable circumstances?

The story is compelling and well thought-out, and the alternating timelines prolong the suspense and the mystery. We know that something terrible happened to Sophie; we know that the painting disappeared; but the how and why of these occurences is not revealed until close to the end of the book. Author Jojo Moyes gives just enough detail to keep us guessing (although I’ll admit that I’d made an assumption about a key revelation that turned out to be correct), and both pieces of the story wrap up in a way that feels both right and satisfying.

My only quibble with this book is that I wanted to know a bit more about the relatives who started the legal proceedings. They’re referred to as descendants of the Lefevre family, but the exact relationship to the artist isn’t revealed, and we never actually meet them other than seeing them on the other side of the courtroom. I would have liked to have seen their role in the story fleshed out. While it’s implied that they’re only in it for the money (and I suppose their motivation is immaterial if the painting is in fact rightfully theirs), it would have helped me view their side of the proceedings more sympathetically if I’d gotten to know them in any way.

That issue aside, I found The Girl You Left Behind to be quite moving and well thought out. It reveals a piece of history that doesn’t get much attention, while hammering home a universal truth about the horror of war and the irreparable damage done to so many lives. In the contemporary pieces of the story, The Girl You Left Behind is also emotionally involving and very interesting as well — as a legal drama, as a love story, and as a portrait of a woman who has to figure out how to live again.

I’ve been hearing a lot about Jojo Moyes this year, especially since the publication of her highly praised novel Me Before You. The Girl You Left Behind is the first book I’ve read by this author, but it certainly won’t be the last. Jojo Moyes is a skilled storyteller with a great eye for capturing the small details that make a character feel real, and I look forward to exploring more of her work.

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The details:

Title: The Girl You Left Behind
Author: Jojo Moyes
Publisher: Penguin Group/Viking
Publication date: 2013
Genre: Historical/contemporary fiction
Source: Review copy courtesy of Penguin/Viking via NetGalley

26Sep2013

Thursday Quotables: Doctor Sleep

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!

From my current obsession:

The rational part of his mind told him she was just a fragment of unremembered bad dream that had followed him out of sleep and across the hall to the bathroom. That part insisted that if he opened the door again, there would be nothing there. But another part of him, the part that shone, knew better. The Overlook wasn’t done with him.

Source: Doctor Sleep
Author: Stephen King
Scribner, 2013

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

If you’d like to participate, 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!
Comment on this post with the link to your own Thursday Quotables post. Or… have a quote to share but not a blog post? Leave your quote in the comments!
Have fun!