The Name of the Wind

The Name of the Wind Patrick Rothfuss 4.5 / 5	Published 2007 First Sentence "It was night again."
Publisher's Description: Told in Kvothe's own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen. The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature. A high-action story written with a poet's hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.
Dear Reader, I am kind of stunned that I am finally done with this book. You'd think that once I got really close to finishing the 28+ hours of audiobook (!),I'd be anxious to speed through it, wouldn't you? Well, I started getting scared of having to write this review, and so I put off the last half hour for a few days! (Well, that and I also the files I downloaded from Audible had gotten a bit wonky, so I had to listen on my tablet - because I dropped my phone down a storm drain a few days ago - and that was awkward and difficult to deal with. But! All that is a story for another day....) In any case, I think I was so scared to review this (and yet so eager to read it) because this is one of the highest-rated books I've ever encountered on Goodreads. The highest-rated with hundreds of thousands of reviews, I should add. That means something. When you get a book with that many reviews, you tend to see a lot of love vs. hate in the reviews, but a 91% rating is almost unheard of for most books with more than a few readers! Needless to say, I had to check it out. (Apparently, Troy had also recently read & loved it, but...I had no idea at the time I picked the book out for myself.) Maybe I should actually talk about the book in this review, huh? (See how I'm putting it off?!) Well, it was a very solid, well-told fantasy story. I liked the strong weight it had on reality more than fantasy; the fantastical parts which came from Rothfuss' imagination were seamlessly written into the story, so that the reader never felt jarred by anything odd or out there. If someone ever wanted to be introduced to the fantasy genre, I think this would be a great stepping stone. A very beautifully woven story. Kvothe (the narrator) is not necessarily likable, and can often be annoying in his arrogance, but his biography rings true and his circumstances believable. From difficult beginnings and loss at an early age, the start of his life story (which this book encompasses) is full of adventure and uncertainty. It was an enjoyable book to read, despite its length. I think I would, however, have preferred to read it than listen - the narrator wasn't the best I've ever encountered, although he did a very good job with voices and accents and strange pronunciations. In any case - I actually don't really know WHAT to write about this book. I can recommend it, but I honestly don't have much to say about it. Perhaps that's because I've been so engrossed in it for over a month. Perhaps I need to step back a bit before I can really assess the book. I think I'll do that. I will try to come back to this review, I promise. When I've had a little time. 18 November 2014 Okay, I am giving this another go. Let's see - I have to say I really enjoyed the parts of the story which took place in Cote's tavern; they framed the story well and gave the reader a nice "breather". I also thought the story of Kvothe's idyllic childhood was quaint and charming. His parents seemed perfect, which of course they were in a young child's eyes. His work with Ben and how quickly he learned everything was an enjoyable diversion. I suppose that I felt the story itself kind of went south when Kvothe's life did, but I don't know why. I didn't enjoy the narratives of Kvothe dealing with the Chandrian or surviving in the big, bad city. I didn't love how he entered the university, nor how cocky and self-assured he could be. I was, however, charmed by the people he encountered and all of his stories regarding the taverns and his attempts at earning the Pipes, as well as his back-and-forth with Ambrose. Overall, I DID think the book was quite good; it was a comprehensively strong story and there were almost no parts which I tired of reading (the only one that comes to mind are the sidebar sagas which relate the stories of the gods - I didn't yet understand their importance in the grand scheme of the story). There was just something that kept me from LOVING it wholeheartedly. I wonder if that would change were I to continue reading the story in the sequel; perhaps as more things become fleshed out and connected to one another, I could really see the whole picture. I'll have to see... Thank you for your patience with me, Reader! Yours, Arianna

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The Rabbit Back Literature Society

The Rabbit Back Literature Society Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen, Translated by Lola M Rogers 3/5	First Published in Europe 2006 U.S. Translation Publication Date Jan. 2015 First Sentence "The reader was at first surprised, then shocked, as the criminal Raskolnikov was abruptly slain in the middle of the street, right before her eyes."
Publisher's Description: Only nine people have ever been chosen by renowned children’s author Laura White to join the Rabbit Back Literature Society, an elite group of writers in the small town of Rabbit Back. Now a tenth member has been selected: a young literature teacher named Ella. Soon Ella discovers that the Society is not what it seems. What is its mysterious ritual known as "The Game"? What explains the strange disappearance that occurs at Laura White’s winter party? Why are the words inside books starting to rearrange themselves? Was there once another tenth member, before her? Slowly, as Ella explores the Society and its history, disturbing secrets that had been buried for years start to come to light. . . . In Pasi Ilmari Jääskeläinen’s chilling, darkly funny novel, The Rabbit Back Literature Society, praised as "Twin Peaks meets the Brothers Grimm" (The Telegraph), the uncanny brushes up against the everyday in the most beguiling and unexpected of ways.
Dear Reader, My first impression after starting The Rabbit Back Literature Society was "yes, another book about books, writing and all the bookish awesome you could think of!", I do love these. However, as interested as this book kept me, it wasn't enough to love it... only "like" it. Before I can tell you what I liked and didn't about the book, I think you need a little more background. I usually try not to go into the plot but for my opinions to be clear, you have to know the basics. Ella Amanda Milana is a substitute teacher of Finnish language and literature at the Rabbit Back school, where she finds a discrepancy in a "Crime and Punishment" edition brought to her attention by one of her students. When she return the book to the Librarian, Ingrid Katz, she inquires about the plot changes to that particular edition. The Librarian snatches the book away and tells her it must be a misprint and these things happen. Ella feels the Librarian acted strangely and decides to investigate the situation a little closer. This brings her amongst the Rabbit Black Literature Society, founded by famous Author Laura White. We also learn this society plays something called "the game" and this reveals secrets within each member. As you may notice, the plot sounds super intriguing right? Well, the book IS/WAS but the main character fell entirely flat for me. As the other characters grew around Ella, and you started to feel connected with them... you lost that connection with her. The mystery of the society, the game, the Authors, all this held my attention and kept me reading to the end, I'll give it that. I also loved when the Author introduced each new character, how they came with a revealing personal trait or story. For example, Ella with her defective ovaries or Winter getting so fat that he loses sight of his Mister Peter. I haven't yet experienced a book or Author that exposes the character before anything else. It's almost like imagining the crowd before you naked (while on stage) or maybe this is how it feels to be a part of a support group like AA?! The style is very unique and I liked how the Author also embraced this concept and embellished upon it with the societies "game". Overall, this book had some interesting style to it. This might be attributed to the cultural differences between Finland and the United States, I haven't picked up many Finnish books or maybe this is truly a style the Author is known for. I have to say, if it weren't for that little bit of uniqueness, I might have rated this book even lower. I'm not going to lie, this will be a book I'll recommend to any writer and maybe even some book lovers, the society itself is a nice magical concept that might sparkle in the eyes of those aspiring for literary greatness. The Rabbit Back Literature Society also focuses on one of my favorite concepts about art, that we create the best art when suffering and emotional, not when life is perfect. I can't knock any book that delves into that topic, but that's my personal opinion. Happy Reading, AmberBug P.S. - This ARC was sent to me by the Publisher & BookBrowse. A shorter version of this review will be posted on BookBrowse for their "First Impressions" program. Please check out the site and consider becoming a member, I love getting the monthly updates from them.

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The House Girl

The House Girl Tara Conklin 3.5 / 5	Published 2013 First Sentence "Mister hit Josephine with the palm of his hand across her left cheek and it was then she knew she would run."
Publisher's Description: Virginia, 1852. Seventeen-year-old Josephine Bell decides to run from the failing tobacco farm where she is a slave and nurse to her ailing mistress, the aspiring artist Lu Anne Bell. New York City, 2004. Lina Sparrow, an ambitious first-year associate in an elite law firm, is given a difficult, highly sensitive assignment that could make her career: she must find the “perfect plaintiff” to lead a historic class-action lawsuit worth trillions of dollars in reparations for descendants of American slaves. It is through her father, the renowned artist Oscar Sparrow, that Lina discovers Josephine Bell and a controversy roiling the art world: are the iconic paintings long ascribed to Lu Anne Bell really the work of her house slave, Josephine? A descendant of Josephine’s would be the perfect face for the reparations lawsuit—if Lina can find one. While following the runaway girl’s faint trail through old letters and plantation records, Lina finds herself questioning her own family history and the secrets that her father has never revealed: How did Lina’s mother die? And why will he never speak about her? Moving between antebellum Virginia and modern-day New York, this searing, suspenseful and heartbreaking tale of art and history, love and secrets, explores what it means to repair a wrong and asks whether truth is sometimes more important than justice.
Dear Reader, This book felt like it took me an age to get through, although that might have been because it was requested by another patron at the library before I had even had a chance to start it, and therefore the entire reading of it felt a bit as if I were under pressure. However, this was also because the beginning was SLOW, and the story took quite a while to pick up. I am glad I stuck with it, though, because it was such an interesting concept. I enjoyed the way the story was told by several different people, from several different viewpoints. It echoed the complexities that enmesh real life. The story centers mostly around Josephine, a young slave in rural Virginia who is the eponymous house girl; she serves her mistress and master personally, fixing their meals and tending to their illnesses, which means she also holds a relatively special place which includes higher standards of living than the other slaves. This includes learning to read, write, and - most importantly - paint, which turns out to be one of her few escapes from servitude. However, she also suffers more than her fellow slaves in many ways, living so closely alongside her captors.Thus, she yearns for freedom, and plans to run.  Over 150 years later, a young lawyer named Lina is asked to look into a reparations case for the many trillions of dollars denied African Americans because of their enforced lives in the antebellum South. Lina becomes more engrossed in the case than she expects, and realizes she cares more about this one than many which have come before. At the same time, she is questioning other parts of her life, as well - especially that of her relationship with her father, the only parent she has ever really known, and the loss of her mother at a young age. Many influences converge upon Lina during this time in her life, which makes her story very engaging. I felt as if Lina's search for the truth, and what she ultimately learns about Josephine Bell - the many mistakes both the slave and others around her made in their lives - is what helps her come to terms with her own issues. I liked that everything came full circle at the end; understanding the flaws that others admitted to is what allowed Lina to forgive the flaws in those around her - and in herself.  One passage which many have complained about is the list of slave names which the author chooses to spend an entire page (and a bit more) listing. While I understand how strange and annoying that can be in a novel, my hope (although as yet unconfirmed) is that Conklin actually listed the names of real slaves who had been unjustly considered property before the Civil War. The legal case which the book centers around is all about making those names known; it is pointed out that we know many of the names of the famous white slaveowners to this day, but very few (if any) of the names of their slaves, who were the true workers behind those successful men. Wasn't Conklin simply making a step towards rectifying that imbalance in her own small way? Of course, she couldn't have sold a book which listed hundreds of pages of names. Almost nobody would read a novel like that. But I made sure to spend the time to read every name printed on that page. I thought that was the point of it. I truly hope so. Yours, Arianna

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The Clarence Principle

The Clarence Principle Writer: Fehed Said Illustrator: Shari Chankhamma 5/5	Published 2007 First Sentence "I was left behind in a dream I once had."
Publisher's Description: Embark on a surreal voyage into an unconventional vision of the afterlife. Clarence wakes to the aftermath of his own suicide and a hidden message spawns his journey beyond. Follow Clarence's twisted tale, as he meets whimsical characters whose fates are destined to intertwine with his. The Clarence Principle is an astounding graphic novel by new talents Fehed Said and Shari Chankhamma.
Dear Reader, Yes, yes, yes. I love the art, the dark comedic style, the quirky characters, and almost everything about this. This was quite some Graphic Novel, completely suited to my tastes. The Clarence Principle is a little bit Anime, slightly dark and mischievous, comical and cartoony with a handful of serious topics thrown in. The main character commits suicide (trust me, this is given to you RIGHT from the first page) and journeys to this dreamscape (a la Wonderland-esque). I love dark comical depictions done in a cartoony style, very Jhonen Vasquez (JtHM). If you don't know Jhonen Vasquez, please turn your eyes to this. I fell in love with his work on Johnny the Homicidal Maniac which then introduced me to the amazing Invader Zim and my obsession with that lovable dog/robot Gir. Bah, I miss all of that. Then I read this, and I remember everything I loved about all of that. Oh wait, I just realized this was published in 2007, which probably means that style I love so much as still "IN", and here I thought this was a comeback. Sad face. The story definitely borrows from "Alice in Wonderland" and takes a very grim topic (suicide and dealing with death) but brings it into this strange dream-like world. Every question seems to be answered with a riddle or another question. The creatures and people (if you can call them that) are so far from the realm of plausibility, it makes you think really hard about what might be going on here. The story doesn't feel cheap, it doesn't seem cliche either. My only complaint would be with the ending, but I won't get into that for fear of spoilers. As much as I liked the story of The Clarence Principle, the art goes beyond just liking it, I loved it. The black and white style worked really well with this one and didn't take away from it at all. I loved the cartoony skull faces, the anime human characteristics, the overly goofy clothing and gothic feel to everything. I could go on and on and on. So yes, this is perfect for me, which means I might be completely biased with this one. I would recommend this to anyone who appreciates a dark comedy, anime and/or that gothic comic style. Happy Reading, AmberBug

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You Should Have Known

You Should Have Known Jean Hanff Korelitz 3.5 / 5	Published 2014 First Sentence "Usually people cried when they came here for the first time, and this girl looked as if she'd be no exception."
Publisher's Description: Grace Reinhart Sachs is living the only life she ever wanted for herself, devoted to her husband, a pediatric oncologist at a major cancer hospital, their young son Henry, and the patients she sees in her therapy practice. Grace is also the author of You Should Have Known, a book in which she castigates women for not valuing their intuition and calls upon them to examine their first impressions of men for signs of serious trouble later on. But weeks before the book is published, a chasm opens in her own life: a violent death, a missing husband, and, in the place of a man Grace thought she knew, only a chain of terrible revelations. Left behind in the wake of a spreading and very public disast and horrified by the ways in which she has failed to heed her own advice, Grace must dismantle one life and create another for her child and herself.
Dear Reader, Wow, it's been AGES since I finished a book! I mean, "ages" in mine & Amber's time, which really shouldn't count because we're kind of obsessed with books. ;) Anyway - I picked this one up because I had received it as a Goodreads First Read back in April, and I'd been meaning and meaning to read it. The impetus that finally did the trick? We found out that the author would be one of the panelists at the Hachette Book Brunch we attended in New York City a few weekends ago. Because of this (and because I erroneously received my complimentary keynote author's book too late to get started on it), I decided to see how much I could get through You Should Have Known before the event. The verdict? About half, which isn't too shabby considering it was a 400+ page book! It didn't take long to get really into the story, though. (Which I am sure helped me fly through it.) I had gotten a very different impression from the book blurb when I entered to win a copy earlier this year, and was entirely blown away by the intensely psychological situation this book explored. I had known the premise was that there was a woman (Grace) who had written an advice book on marriage, just before her own (seemingly perfect) marriage fell apart. I thought it was going to be a book about how a smug know-it-all got her comeuppance (or at least learned about hubris and what it means to be humble). But it was SO much more than that! Because it is the current "it book" to reference, think of the premise I just described, but with a Gone Girl twist: an unexpected and unexplainable mystery is stirred up maybe one-fifth of the way into the book. Many people feel as if the main character is unlikeable, which I can absolutely see. But I found I certainly liked her more than I thought I would. She wasn't really full of herself, she was just blind, and perhaps that was even a self-defense mechanism. Who knows. But she really did manage to pick up the pieces of her life relatively well. (Of course, she was lucky that she inherited not one but two homes, and could afford not to have to work immediately after her life had been entirely upheaved. Most don't have those luxuries.) Don't let yourself get turned off by Grace's seeming materialistic ways, though - the Birkin bag section which made her sound so petty actually comes around full circle in the end. And I think it was a good way of showing that while she was surrounded by people who could afford $10,000 handbags (multiples of them!) she didn't want that kind of excess for herself. She was content to have a small home and a happy family. Finding out she didn't ultimately have the either, and the repercussions of that discovery, is really what the author was trying to convey. And I think she did a great job of writing one woman's reaction to that. Yours, Arianna

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Ham: Slices of a Life

Ham: Slices of a Life Sam Harris No Rating	Published 2014 First Paragraph "When I was nineteen years old, while helping my aunt Betty reorganize her kitchen cabinets, I discovered a beaten and worn plastic Mary Poppins cup and saucer marooned in the back corner of an ignored shelf. They were issued in 1964, the year of the movie's release. My aunt told me they'd been intended for me when I was little, but my father had returned them to her because I was 'too obsessed with Mary Poppins and singing and dancing.'"
Publisher's Description: For fans of David Sedaris and Chelsea Handler, these stories and essays about friendship, celebrity, growing up and getting sober will have you laughing and crying in equal measure.With a wry style that evokes comparisons to Carrie Fisher, David Rakoff, and Steve Martin, Sam Harris proves that he is a natural humorist. Even The New York Times, in a review of one of his musical performances, called his stories “New Yorker-worthy.” Brilliantly written, these sixteen stories span Harris’s life from growing up gay in the buckle of America’s Bible belt to performing on Oprah’s first show after 9/11. In “I Feel, You Feel” he opens for Aretha Franklin during a blizzard. “Promises” is a front-row account of Liza Minnelli’s infamous wedding to “the man whose name shall go unmentioned.” In the title story, “Ham,” he describes how he was upstaged by a young child actor, unknowingly addicted to the spotlight. Taking on issues as diverse as addiction, fame, and parenting with his hilarious and deeply human voice, Harris’s entertaining tales trace an arc of personal triumph that is universally accessible and inspiring.
Dear Reader, I never do this. I could barely bring myself to. But: I had to abandon this book at the 47% mark - it was just too much work for me to finish. I kept forcing myself back to it, and I have so many other books I want to read. It was cute but not really up my alley, and SO not similar to David Sedaris, as it was marketed. I think it was a good memoir and great for someone who is dazzled by stars, but I just wasn't getting much out of it. Perhaps I will return to it someday, but for now - I have to abandon it for the sake of other books. I hate giving up on a book. But I have to be more picky for the time being. When you keep checking the percentage-done on your Kindle, you know you ought to move on... Yours, Arianna P.S. Full disclosure: I received this via netgalley in exchange for an honest review. And I'm not rating it here, since I did not finish it.

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Happy Halloween from Our NYC Adventure with Chuck Palahniuk!

Chuck Palahniuk Book Tour:  Beautiful You New York City October 31st, 2014

   

We're off to see Chuck Palahniuk speak this evening at the Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn! Our best wishes to everyone during this frightful holiday - have fun & be safe during all of your trick-or-treating!

We'll be posting a review of the event on this blog soon - keep your eyes peeled.

With love & spooky wishes,
Amber & Arianna