Where Have I Been?

Current Read: Anna and the Swallow Man by Gavriel Savit

Current Listen: The Partly Cloudy Patriot by Sarah Vowell

Hey there, Internet! It's been a minute. A lot of minutes. My bad. 

The short explanation of my absence is that it's Oscar season. My life becomes trying to not become SO behind with work that people notice while seeing two to three movies every weekend and maybe finding one (or two or three) that's on demand to watch during the week. It's basically impossible to see EVERY Oscar nominated film when you live in Indiana, but by Sunday I will have seen all but three foreign films and three short documentaries. (Side note: The fact that HBO has purchased the distribution rights for those three short documentaries and has not released them is driving me UP THE WALL. It's fine.) I'm just as passionate about books, but the Oscar fever is only for about three months of the year and helps combat that winter blues. 

ANYWAY.

I have been reading. Many things. I decided I would just give you short run downs of what's been happening in my reading life, and then I'll start writing longer reviews shortly. 

1. The Selection series by Kiera Cass. I pretty much devoured these at the very beginning of this year. After the Thomas Hardy I needed something a little lighter. These are basically dystopian YA meets The Bachelor. Which sounded very silly to me. But I had heard a bunch of people talking about them (they're pretty highly rated on Goodreads), and they were all sitting there on the shelf at HPB for like three bucks a piece. It happened. They were not deep or super well written, but the main character, America Singer, is quite strong willed and not a doormat, which I liked. And the love interest is dishy. I enjoyed them a lot and will probably read the new series she's written that takes place in the same universe. These would be great for a summer read or just when you need a reading brain break.

2. Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. I FINISHED IT! It took about a month and a half of listening, but I did it! There are still sections that I don't understand (a lot of the setting up of the national bank and consolidating state debt was beyond me), but I thought it was a great listen overall. Alexander Hamilton was a really cool dude who "doesn't get enough credit for all the credit he gave us." The fact that someone who was born into such crappy circumstances was one of our most influential founding fathers is astounding, and it was fun to fit his role into everything I already knew about that period in history. DEFINITELY recommend if you're into the musical Hamilton, since there are many direct quotes from Hamilton's writings that appear in Lin-Manuel Miranda's lyrics. (Best of wives and best of women...) Recommended for musical theater nerds and history nerds. 

3. The 5th Wave by Rick Yancey. WHOA NELLY. This one knocked my socks off. I was not expecting such a gripping book. It's more than a typical alien invasion book. The reader gets a lot of varied perspectives from different sorts of biased narrators, so it was really fun to piece together what was ACTUALLY happening through combining their narratives. Twists and turns and action and adventure and feels all over the place. Pretty much a perfect modern adventure novel. I will read the next book, but probably not for a while. The to-read list keeps getting longer and longer...

4. Stars Above by Marissa Meyer. Lunar Chronicles fans everywhere, rejoice! This is a short story collection set in the Lunar Chronicles universe. The stories are not long (the longest is about 50 pages, and they're all quick reads), but you get some fun accounts of things that were only alluded to in the book. Most of it takes place before the events of Cinder, but she makes sure to include everyone's favorite characters in some way. The last story, though, takes place after the events of Winter, and it made my life. No spoilers. Read it if you've read the others. 

I'm going to stop there for now. I have two other blog posts that will be written (SOON, I PROMISE), about the other things that I have been reading that fit together more thematically. Also just don't want to overwhelm you. Thanks for reading! Please let me know if you want to hear anything about anything! A tag you think I'd like, or even more info on my movie nerdiness. That's all she read! 

Year's End - Four Final Reviews

Current Read: The Selection by Kiera Cass
Current Listen: Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow

"We learn that it is not the rays which bodies absorb, but those which they reject, that give them the colours they are known by." - Thomas Hardy, Far From the Madding Crowd

With Far From the Madding Crowd, my literary 2015 has ended. And what a way to go. I had heard that Thomas Hardy was one of the more difficult authors to read, so I was very nervous about binge reading this book. I had seen the movie beforehand. I know that I "cheated," but I had never heard of the book until seeing the trailer and didn't even contemplate reading the book until AFTER I had seen the movie. So no hate please :-P

That being said, it was a great book. I was able to get through the majority of the book in about three days. It was nice to read something in the public domain, since that meant I could have a copy of the e-book on my phone as well as the physical book for ease of reading at the gym. The book chronicles the life of Bathsheba Everdene, a young, headstrong woman attempting to manage a large farm in male-dominated rural England. It's a pretty straightforward 19th century English romance, but it is the first one I have ever read written by a man. I've read all the Austens, plus some Gaskell, Eliot, and Charlotte Bronte, and this one did seem a bit different. There was a lot less social commentary on the role of women in society and in English courtship. Bathsheba said things regarding being a woman that would have made Elizabeth Bennett cringe. But I did appreciate that it was darker in tone than anything I've read of this genre, which seems typical from what I know about Hardy and Tess of the d'Urbervilles. More poverty and death made for what is probably a more realistic picture of rural England than Sense and Sensibility, and the characters were a few rungs lower in the social order as well. I'll definitely read more of him.

Next, a few brief reviews of some easier (but still great) things I've been finishing up during this winter break. First, I decided to take on the Holiday BookTubeAThon, which is a 3-day reading stint filled with challenges that many booktubers take part in. There's a longer version in October, but this one is more convenient since it's during a break from school. These were the three challenges:

1. Read a follow up to something else you read this year.
2. Read a book with white on the cover.
3. Read a book that was a gift (not necessarily from Christmas).

For the first, I read Winter by Marissa Meyer, which is the final book in her AMAZING Lunar Chronicles series. I read every book in the series this year and then proceeded to buy the first three since they're in paperback. These are fairy tale retellings with an awesome dystopian spin. They follow Cinder, a cyborg from New Beijing, who finds herself wrapped up in a conflict with Queen Levana of Luna. With each subsequent book three more major female characters, each representing their own fairy tale, are added to Cinder's story. The plot is inventive and well-constructed, and there are FOUR awesome romances. Me gusta mucho. Just please read them. They're awesome.

Secondly, I read Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson, and Lauren Myracle. This fulfilled the "book that takes place during Christmas" portion of my reading challenge, and with this book I have officially read everything John Green has published to date. It was a sweet little book of three related short stories that take place during a Christmas Eve snow storm. My personal favorite story was Maureen Johnson's, entitled "The Jubilee Express." All three were sweet and easy to read, and I will probably read it every Christmas.

Finally, for the third challenge I read The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. This is a book that was given to me by a fellow teacher, and it was much more impactful than I was anticipating. It is a middle reader book written in short free verse poems. It is a fictionalized account of a real gorilla, Ivan, who was kept in a cage in a mall in Washington state for 27 years. You read that correctly. 27. The coolest part of the book is that it is written from Ivan's perspective as a gorilla with memories of growing up in Africa and then being raised more or less like a human child. It was heartbreaking in places and really funny in others. It will take you only an hour or two to read, so I highly recommend it.

Well, with that, this year is done. It was a great one. Stayed tuned very soon for an overview of my 2015 in reading and some reading resolutions for 2016. For now, that's all she read!

Happy Holidays!

Current Read: Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Current Listen: Alexander Hamilton by Rob Chernow

Hello friends! Happy holidays! It's been a crazy time (just did my fifth performance of the weekend), so I thought I'd get you caught up on how my reading life is going.

First, a little while ago I finished Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt. This is a nonfiction book about Savannah, Georgia in the early 1980's. This book was later adapted into a movie starring John Cusack and Kevin Spacey (two of my absolute favorites). The book portrays Savannah as a town that is very resistant to both outsiders and change, which, according to Berendt, is the perfect atmosphere for eccentricities to flourish. My personal favorite character (and I think most people's favorite) is the Lady Chablis, a larger than life drag queen who is a tourist attraction in Savannah with her outrageous personality and even more outrageous gowns.                                          
                                            

The book focuses on a murder that took place in Savannah in the early 80's. Jim Williams, quite the character himself, is accused of murdering his assistant, Danny Hansford, who may or may not have also been his lover. Berendt befriends Williams, giving him total access to the inner workings of his home, Mercer House, which is filled with invaluable objects such as an extensive Fabrege collection and is still a tourist attraction in Savannah today. Savannah is incontestably the main character of the story, and Berendt does a wonderful job of telling that story while also incorporating Jim Williams' four trials (the record in Georgia for the most trials for the same crime). This book completed the "book with antonyms in the title" portion of my reading challenge.

Next, I finally finished Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, one that has been on my reading list for a very long time. Now I can finally see the movie! The story takes place in a dystopian future in which humanity is fighting off an alien race. Ender is a young boy who is chosen at age 6 to be trained for military command at the Battle School. He must grapple with growing up in a world in which most children are not given the chance to do so. He struggles to maintain his humanity and empathy when everyone around him needs him to become an alien-killing machine.

This book started a bit slow for me, but as the story went along I became very interested in the way Card immerses his readers into this alternate future and into Ender's mind. It was difficult to read this book from the perspective of a teacher, since most of the "teachers" in this book are abusive and manipulative. The book was published in 1985 and has been really influential in the further development of dystopian novels written for young people.

Finally, last night I finished the final installment of the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series, Library of Souls. I love, love, love this series by Ransom Riggs. Riggs began collecting old, strange photographs, and he uses them to create a story about children with supernatural abilities.                                            

The resulting story about Jacob Portman, a boy who discovers that he, too, is peculiar, is a wonderful adventure story filled with incredible characters that are for the most part based on these strange photographs. I plan to eventually read them again.

Alright. It's getting very, very close to the end of the year, and I have a few things left to read that are stressing me out a bit. I still need to read Let It Snow, but that one I've been holding off on on purpose. I have started Far From the Madding Crowd, and that's going better than expected so far. The problem is that it's really hard to focus on that when the last Lunar Chronicles book is also sitting on your shelf and will not renew from the library, so that's happening presently. I'll get it done, though, since it's break. Youtube is also still happening, and you can check out my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/user/eleanorrigby7390/videos

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, and for now, that's all she read!

Rainbow and Robert

Current Read: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Current Listen: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Hello all! It's December, so things are getting intense in terms of me finishing up my reading goals for the year. It's looking like I will read at least 80 books this year. I'm at 76 after today, which is definitely the most I've read in a year since I've been keeping track. Some thoughts on what I've read:

Over Thanksgiving weekend I finished Landline by Rainbow Rowell, which was the last of hers I had to read! This was in the same category as her book Attachments in that it was for adults rather than teens. It is about a woman named Georgie who writes for a sitcom in Los Angeles. She knows her marriage is in trouble, especially when she has to cancel going to her in-laws for Christmas to attend a meeting about a new TV show. Here is where it gets weird. As she struggles to decide what to do, she discovers that when she calls her husband from her childhood landline she speaks to him as he was when they were in college. It's essentially a time traveling phone. It sounds totally bizarre, which is why I was so hesitant to read it.

But I should not have doubted her. Rowell is great at avoiding writing the flat, static characters that are so common in chick lit. All of her characters, major and supporting, developed and changed through the course of the novel. There was much crying and #feels, and it turned out to be a really great read. Not my favorite of hers, but everything she writes is really easy to relate to, even with the semi-magical premise.

Then today I finished the third Cormoran Strike novel by Robert Galbraith, Career of Evil. This is a series written by J.K. Rowling under a pseudonym, and I do not think that these novels get enough credit. They are just solid, dependably good crime novels. Cormoran Strike is a really great character (who I'm sure will get a movie at some point in the near future). All three of them have had great premises, complex twists and turns, and CREEPY suspects. In Career of Evil, Cormoran's assistant, Robin, is sent a severed leg in the mail with a letter referencing Blue Oyster Cult lyrics, lyrics that were tattooed on Strike's mother, a famous groupie who died under suspicious circumstances. Strike must sift through the list of enemies he has made during his career as a military policeman and private investigator while fearing for Robin's life.

Though I loved every second of this book, I do feel the need to give a trigger warning. This book heavily references domestic violence, rape, and sexual abuse against children. I KNOW. Some deep, scary stuff and some huge creeps for suspects. Just FYI. Probably not for everyone.

That's it for now. I'm halfway through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is very interesting reading, and I have both the last book in the Mrs. Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children series AND the last book in the Lunar Chronicles series. There also might be some sort of haul post soon, since I picked up some things at the friends of the library sale and on black Friday. Happy reading to me! That's all she read.

Powering Through

Current Read: Landline by Rainbow Rowell
Current Listen: Career of Evil by Robert Galbraith

Hello internet! I've read many things, and also purchased/received some things. BETTER GET READY.

First, I finished the second book in Marie Lu's Young Elite series, The Rose Society. You'll recall that I was a little skeptical about the first book. It's a very ambitious series that is completely fantasy (as opposed to the Legend trilogy, which is dystopian and set in America) and that also has a sometimes-almost-even-a-little-bit-evil heroine, Adelina.

It's hard to give too many details without spoiling plot points from the first book, but I was happy with new developments and new characters. Adelina is continuing in her quest for revenge against the government's Inquisitors, who are trying to rid the land of Kenettra from malfettos like her. Malfettos are young people who suffered from a past plague, and some malfettos have developed strange powers after surviving the illness. LIKE I SAID. It's a very ambitious story. But in this second book Adelina also encounters many new, intriguing characters, such as Magiano and Sergio. The reader also gets to know Adelina's sister, Violetta, as well as just get a better handle on Adelina. She's a very complicated girl, and it took me awhile to figure her out. Actually, I think Marie Lu does a fabulous job of conveying the fact that Adelina does not have herself figured out. It was a great read, and I can't wait to see how the series continues. I think it will be hard to just stop it at a trilogy, but I haven't heard about what her plans are for Adelina. It better not be over, though. There is an unresolved love triangle, and that just won't do.

Next was M.T. Anderson's Symphony for the City of the Dead, which was about Shostakovitch's 7th Symphony, known as the Leningrad symphony. I know basic facts about Shostakovitch, since I was required to take music history courses in college, but I LOVED learning more about him in the context of Soviet Russia. M.T. Anderson does a nice job of balancing the Soviet Russia/Stalin stuff with the music stuff and the Shostakovitch personal life stuff, if that makes sense. I learned a LOT about the context for many of the great composers, musicians, and writers of early Soviet Russia, and it was some scary stuff. There were many times where Shostakovitch could've been killed or exiled by Stalin. Many of his friends were. The book talked a lot about the siege of Leningrad, also, which I knew almost nothing about. The Leningrad Symphony did not get performed in Leningrad for a long time because he radio orchestra, the only one left in town, had too many members who were dead or dying. They ended up recruiting other musicians still in the city with extra rations, and even then many died while rehearsing the piece. I've been listening to Shosty 7 a lot since I read that book. And a lot more Shostakovitch in general. Not sure why it's taken me this long to figure out that nonfiction is my jam. Especially enjoyed the audiobook of this, since they interspersed some passages of the music that they were discussing.

Finally, last night I finished the Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet. Took a month and a half, but I did it. This was the book that I used as my "book I should've read in school but didn't" on my Popsugar reading challenge. I was told to purchase this book for a freshman writing seminar, but we never actually read it and did poetry instead. Saul Bellow has a Nobel Prize for literature, which makes sense, but that doesn't mean that this book was easy to read. It was quite difficult for me.

It is set in New York in the 1970s and is told from the perspective of a man named Artur Sammler. Sammler is a Polish Jew and a survivor of the Holocaust. Sammler feels that he has a unique perspective on humanity, particularly the brand of humanity found in New York City, because of his experiences. At one point he says of himself, "What Sammler was he could not clearly formulate. Human, in some altered way. The human being at the point where he attempted to obtain his release from being human...Petitioning for a release from God's attention." He wanders around New York City thinking about modern America and the modern world in general, which is what made it so hard. There was not a lot of action in this book, but a lot of very interesting philosophical ideas. Most of the novel takes place in his head. I think this would've been a great book to discuss with classmates, and there would have been a wealth of material for a paper. Sammler was personally very hard to relate to for me, since I am neither old, in the 1970's, nor Jewish, but by the end of the book I appreciated his perspective and unique outlook on the normal lives of the people around him. The vocabulary is quite advanced, and there were some cultural references that were beyond me. If anyone has read it, please feel free to message me to discuss it. I think that would be enlightening. I'll leave you with a long quote, but a very interesting and representative one:

"Sammler, from keeping his own counsel for so long, from seven decades of internal consultation, had his own views on most matters...there were mental dry courses in his head...small ravines made by the steady erosion of preoccupations. The taking of life was one of these. Just that. His life had nearly been taken. He had seen life taken. He had taken it himself. He knew it was one of the luxuries. No wonder princes had so long reserved the right to murder with impunity. At the very bottom of society there was also a kind of impunity, because no one cared what happened. Under that dark brutal mass blood crimes were often disregarded. And at the very top, the ancient immunities of kings and nobles. Sammler thought that this was what revolutions were really about. In a revolution you took away the privileges of an aristocracy and redistributed them. What did equality mean? Did it mean all men were friends and brothers? No, it meant that all belonged to the elite. Killing was an ancient privilege. That was why revolutions plunged into blood."

The whole book is like that. Rambling, very eloquent, but very dense and sometimes hard to read or understand the first time. That being said, I marked many pages with intense, important quotes like that. It's quality, just not what I normally gravitate toward.

In other news, I only have three books left in my challenge! And it's currently Thanksgiving break which means I'll finish at least one more this week (hopefully) in addition to the Rainbow Rowell. I also have Ransom Riggs' Library of Souls waiting for me at the library, which is very exciting. ALSO I got to go to a giant library giveaway and got a ton of books for free, which was basically the greatest thing. PHEW. That was a long one. Thanks for taking the time, and that's all she read!

Carry On, Ursula Todd

Current Read: Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow and The Rose Society by Marie Lu
Current Listen: Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovitch and the Siege of Leningrad by M.T. Anderson

It's been a bit since my last update, but I'm still here! Still STRUGGLING by way through the Saul Bellow, though I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. It's just hard to move toward that light when you can read Rainbow Rowell instead.

I just finished Carry On by Rainbow Rowell, which is her newest release (again my reading schedule is determined by whether or not things will renew at dear old IMCPL). Carry On follows the story of Simon Snow, who is a variant on the Harry Potteresque "Chosen One" idea. This book exists because of a previous Rainbow Rowell book, Fangirl, about a girl who is a popular Simon Snow fanfiction writer. I was skeptical about it for that reason, but Rowell does a really excellent job filling you in on the world of Simon Snow that has, in Fangirl, existed for seven books before Carry On. That's confusing, but I liked that it was a fictional book that became a real book. NOW John Green just needs to do that with An Imperial Affliction. That'd be great.

This book also did a good job of distinguishing itself from the Harry Potter series. I particularly liked that in the world of Carry On many people who are magickal live their lives among Normals and have Normal jobs. Also, the spells in Carry On are well-known phrases from nursery rhymes, songs, and other common aphorisms. That was really neat. I don't want to spoil all the fun little surprises in the world that Rainbow Rowell created, but suffice it to say that it was compulsively readable but also contained a surprising amount of emotional and philosophical depth. Rainbow Rowell is truly a master of her craft.

On the listening front, I finished Kate Atkinson's Life After Life. When I finished it, it took about 15 minutes of intense reflection for me to decide that I really, really liked it a lot. But it was definitely a lot to take in and was not a perfect book. It took a LOT of stamina to get through the first third of the book (spoiler alert: the Spanish flu was a really terrible thing that happened), but I'm glad I fought through it because it was a very rewarding, thought-provoking read.

The book is the story of a girl called Ursula Todd, who is born during a snowstorm in 1910. The umbilical cord is wrapped around her neck and she dies. Then she is born again in the same storm, but this time her mother is able to find surgical scissors and she is saved. And so Ursula's multiple lives begin. She has the same family, but lives through the early 20th century in many, many different ways. We watch her grapple with the Great War, the Spanish flu, and finally the Blitz. There was some intense, intense stuff. It made me appreciate the London blitz, especially. I also liked that she experiences the war both living in England and in Germany, and both ways from the perspective of an every day citizen of the country.

In the end, Life After Life is a testament to the role of the smallest decisions we make in our days and how they can radically impact our lives. It is a story about possibility and perseverance that I would like to read many, many more times.That being said, I'm not sure why the audiobook is so popular. Listening and not reading really took a lot away from the story for me, since I couldn't go back and compare the details of each story line. I'm not sure if I will read the sequel, A God in Ruins, but I would be open to the idea.

Up next is powering through the end of my reading challenge, though I do have to also throw in Marie Lu's The Rose Society (already overdue, oops), and the only Rainbow Rowell I have yet to read, Landline. I'm confident that I'll make it to the end of the challenge, though, which makes me feel really, really great. If you are only a blog reader, please make sure to also check out my Youtube channel, also called Book Buying with Katie! Posted a wrap up for the month of October last week which can be found here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbzQerOimi4

Thanks for reading, and for now, that's all she read!

YA, YA, YA

Current Read: Mr. Sammler's Planet by Saul Bellow
Current Listen: Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Hello all! It's been a bit, but I do have two books to report on. I've been sprinkling in some easy to read YA among the Saul Bellow so I don't drive myself crazy. The Bellow is even harder to read than I thought it would be (I'm not much for modernism), so I needed some romance and action to tide me over. Plus, that thing has happened again where all the new books that won't renew came in at the library at the same time, so they all need to be done in two weeks. I'm scrambling, but I love it.

First, I read The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson. My review of her newer novel, I'll Give You the Sun, Can be found here: http://bookbuyingwithkatie.blogspot.com/2015/09/ill-give-you-sun-and-some-updates.html

Since I'll Give You the Sun was so devastatingly wonderful, I sought out her first book. It is the story of a girl named Lennie whose sister dies unexpectedly. Lennie has to navigate the normal perils of being 17 (read: what is sex what am I doing with my life what is friendship I just can't even) while also grieving her sister's death. Sounds like a run of the mill YA story and not anything special, but the way she writes is just gorgeous. It also had some little twists on the paradigm that were very compelling, at least to me. There are two different love interests (OH WHAT FUN!), and she is a talented musician, so the musical bits kept me very engaged.  I started it at 8 PM and finished it at around 1:30 the next morning. Please just read her books. I own them both now (oops), so if you know me please borrow them. I would also like to point out that I tweeted at Jandy Nelson twice, and she favorited both tweets. I'm twitter famous, basically.

Secondly, today I finished The Young Elites by Marie Lu. The Legend trilogy, her first three books, were some of my favorite reads of this year, so I was very excited to hear that she has a new series. They are more fantasy than Legend, and set in a mythical land rather than a dystopian one. In The Young Elites, a blood fever has spread through the country of Kenettra with disastrous consequences. Some children who survived the blood fever, have developed unusual facial characteristics and even seemingly magical powers and have been deemed the young elites. The story follows Adelina, a girl who has been used and abused by everyone. She is "rescued" by a group known as The Dagger Society, who train her to develop her powers. But everyone wants something for her, and she must figure out who she really is and what she believes in before she chooses a side.

This was a very interesting book. I was not immediately drawn into the story as I was with Legend, but in some ways it is much more complex and therefore more intriguing. Adelina is one of the growing number of main characters in popular culture who is not straightforward in her goodness. She is ambitious and power-hungry to the point of committing evil. But her inner struggle is what made the book so fun to read, since her character made it hard for anything to be predictable. I gave it a 3.5/5, but I'm definitely reading the sequel, The Rose Society, and I'm hoping the Marie Lu can develop the plot and tie everything together a little bit more.

I'm about halfway through Mr. Sammler's Planet, and it is getting better. I was STRUGGLING with the stream of consciousness for the first two chapters, and I definitely think that it would be more relatable if I were a middle-aged Jewish man, but whatever. Also, each chapter is 40 or so pages long, which is discouraging sometimes. The more I read, the more kernels of wisdom I find in it.

If you haven't already, please check me out on Youtube by searching Book Buying With Katie. That's all she wrote!