Llew's Reviews

As a bookseller, it gets tiring to hear every other book lauded as The Next Harry Potter. Whenever I read the fantasy section of the YA catalogs, my eyes are permanently set on “roll.”

And this one is not the next Harry Potter – but it sure is good. I still haven’t gotten my grubby hands on the second installment. However, the first one works well by itself and is a good recommended read – especially on the middle school level. Also, there’s no way I would drink unpasteurized milk from an overgrown cow – no matter what it allowed me to see.

At least it wasn’t a vampire novel! Although, I don’t know in the fantasy hierarchy where wolverines fall. Perhaps I was taking a step down after all.

A customer bought this book from me two years ago and then tried to return it. She explained to me it was a reading list book (huh?) from Mr. X. I know very well the AP English teacher never assigned this semi-tawdry tale, but I was so very amused and I generally like this customer. Thus, I accepted the return. Then, I read it for myself. It was fun – like the wolverine version of Robin McKinley’s “Sunshine” but not as great.

I finished this series, and I STILL don’t have my own armored bear. CHEATED.

A good side to being behind the times and getting to this series so late is that I could read them all at one time. If I had to have waited for months or years in anticpation for the trifle that book #2 was I would have cut someone in front of their own daemon. “The Subtle Knife” was just a slapped together stepping stone in between two really good books. I was really happy with how the story ended, even though (or maybe because) it wasn’t your usually Fairy Tale/Happily Ever After conclusion.

Before I started, I had heard this series detailed as the “Anti Narnia” which is quite the apt description. At first, I thought I would get annoyed with all of the incredibly obvious parallels but it didn’t turn out to be TOO preachy. It was more than I like, but not insufferable. I still don’t quite understand how it turned into such a bestselling series. It’s OK but I can’t see myself highly recommending it to anyone over something else.

First, I would like to say that if my husband made me type up the manuscript of his novel about how he had an affair with a much younger woman, I would freaking bludgeon him with the typewriter.

Second, Mishima certainly was much better at the HOT Japanese lesbian action. The lesbian happenings in this novel were kind of creepy. And by kind of, I mean if I lived in Japan I’d never leave my house.

Third, I was detailing the plot to Ben and I realized that this story is one big Japanese soap opera. Seriously, it’s crazy!

This is the second title which I’ve taken from the Lit List in the past month, and it was just the luck of the draw as to which arrived to me first that I read it before Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita”.

First off, I have absolutely no knowledge about the background of this story which is the Russian Civil War between the White and Red. Evidently, it was a brief time immediately following WWI and before the Bolshevik Revolution. The main characters are a middle class doctor’s family in Kiev who join the White Guard to help defend their home.

It was good, although I find the book description on the used marketplace where I bought it which said it was, “lovely” quite laughable. It’s your typical war horror novel with all of the bloody horrors and disturbing leaders so how “lovely” fits in there is beyond me. Calling The White Guard “lovely” would be like describing a hunting trip with Dick Cheney as “delightful and heart warming.”

My second summer reading list book was assigned to students who also have to read “The Scarlet Letter” and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.”

It’s quite different than those two as it is a coming of age novel of a young Mexican woman in Chicago that is told in short little literary sketches rather than chapters. It’s quite well written, and I’m definitely happy that I picked this one up. Plus, like all Mexican related things it’s a shorty!

(I’m going to hell for that, aren’t I?)

Guess what everyone is getting for Christmas for this year?

I’ve always been a little wary of short stories until I discovered Lorrie Moore who I adore with a passion. There’s something about the emotional blows she can deliver within the span of one paragraph that jar me so completely that I have to love her. After discovering Moore, I was excited to read other short stories thinking maybe I had just been missing it all these years. However, after searching I just couldn’t find another contemporary author who held a candle to her. That is until I came across this find. I ordered it a year ago (after I finished reading Lahiri’s novel, “Namesake”), but since I’m not in charge of book orders I wasn’t able to get my grubby hands on it until this weekend.

As much as I liked “Namesake,” it wasn’t anything but a mildly interesting tale compared to her skill at the short stories in this collection. Some of them were absolutely breathtaking in their execution. I’m trying to think of my favorite, but am having trouble deciding on one. Just read them all.

This was the first Turkish novel I believe I have ever read, and it was simply intriguing. It made me want to move to a Cappadocian cave house. Well, spending a thousand dollars on my car and having the “service engine soon” light come on the very next day makes me want to move a cave house. The book just pointed out Turkey as a general destination of interest.

I’ll just have to be sure not to fanatically support any foreign team playing a Turkish one in any sport and not refuse to remove a head scarf. Nor can I fall in love with a beautiful Turkish woman who is the former lover of a militant Islamist idealist who promises to run away to Frankfurt with me until she discovers I just had him killed by giving away his secret hiding place to the police. Other than that it should be a lovely vaction!

I stayed home sick yesterday, and when I realized I was having a moment of not being nauseated I moved into action. I stockpiled everything I thought I might need on the coffee table in front of the couch, popped a movie in the dvd player and had it all set up so I’d just have to push a button on the remote control. Then, I got my ipod close, settled my laptop in, and then very quickly selected a handful of books in case I could read.

The funny thing about my book collection (and it is a rather healthy collection) is that I have more books that I haven’t read than I have. Not because I don’t read much that I want to, but because after I finish a book it is rare that I want to keep it. Don’t get me wrong. I will read a book, and then hunt it down in hardback to purchase while giving away the paperback. However, that’s only when I really love a title so most of the books I read get sent on. This unbalance might also have to do with the facts that I rarely reread books, and that my father always taught me that you should have books which you’ve never read around, and I took him very seriously.

“Never Let Me Go” happened to be at the top of the stack of my stockpile. I had tried to start it during Christmas, but to be honest I’m so busy and distracted during that time of the year that I usually can’t even finish the jokes on the inside a gum wrapper much less a novel. Thus, I didn’t give much weight to the fact I had already tried and failed. Plus, I figured this would be only a half-hearted try since the night before, when I started to get ill, I couldn’t stand to read anything because of feeling so poorly.

However, I picked it up again, and was immediately sucked in. That might have to do with the fact that it starts off taking place in a boarding school. I’m such a sucker for books with school as the setting, and I’m not sure why. I do know, however, that it is the reason for my slight obsession for teen books that weren’t meant to be read by teens. This one definitely has a much different angle than most school books, and is no where close to being a YA title. There’s this whole dsytopian situation abound. (Although, I won’t go into the plot. I rarely do on this site, and I’m not sure why. It could be likely because I think that would sound like a book report. However, it’s most likely because I don’t like knowing too much about the plot myself before reading a book. It always seems to ruin it for me. Even the incredibly short Booksense blurb I read about this novel before reading it, altered how I felt about it while taking it in.)

Suffice it to say, it’s the best book I’ve read so far this year, but that didn’t keep it from making me unbelievably sad at the end. Of course, that could have just been the fact that I had to go to work the next day. Either way, it’s definitely a thoughtful, well written, not entirely happy but worthwhile still experience. Plus, I’m always excited to discover a current author who I really like – even if everyone has read something by him except for me.

Carrie bought this book while visiting me, and hearing her laughter while she read it convinced me to do the same. Any book where the names are changed in order to “avoid embarrassment, possible legal action-and to prevent the author’s legs being broken by someone in a Yves Saint Laurent suit” is right up my alley. Heaven knows that if I ever right a book that there are certain women who favor turquoise and purple velour jumpsuits who will have my head.

But at least now I know how to order a normal sized beer in Paris. Surely, that’s going to come in handy at some point.