Well, obviously I've stopped posting regularly here to the Hungry Brain. For one, most of the books I've been reading are for review on GeekDad, so I just post them there. I got tired of duplicating my efforts and copying everything here, although maybe that'd be a good way to keep track of all my book reviews in one place. (Maybe I'll do that yet.)
But I stopped double-posting in April. I also decided to give Goodreads a try, and I've been tracking books I've read there, but those aren't full reviews either. Just one or two sentences sometimes.
So, which ones were the best of the year?
In adult fiction, these four were all fantastic and quite different from each other:
The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier is gorgeous and haunting. It's the most serious of the three, but still has an element of fantasy in it. The less I tell you about it, the better, because the slow realization of what's happening is part of the draw.
Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion is a zombie book, one that has been mistaken for a young adult paranormal romance novel. Which it sort of is, but not really. It's narrated by a zombie, and really gets inside the heads of these shambling creatures. Surprisingly, the book actually has some significant things to say about humanity and survival despite what you may expect.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline is just a fun read, particularly if you're a child of the '80s who loves computer games. If not, well, you may not get most of the references. It's kind of a big mashup of the Matrix, World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, and 1980s culture.
Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson is a novel about first contact: when the aliens show up. What makes this one fascinating (aside from the way the aliens are imagined) is that it's told from the point of view of Ariel Blum, a videogame developer/reviewer/blogger. What he's interested in is: what sort of videogames do the aliens play? But it becomes a much bigger story than that.
In non-fiction, just one book really stands out: Welcome to Utopia by Karen Valby. Valby spent a lot of time in Utopia, Texas, a tiny town that (at the time she first visited for Entertainment Weekly) was about as removed from popular culture as you could get in the United States. After spending more time there, she came to know the residents, and it's an engaging portrait of small-town life, particularly dear to me from my time in Tribune, Kansas.
Three young adult novels make my list this year:
Plain Kate by Erin Bow is one I read earlier in the year, as part of my "Stories About Girls" series on GeekDad. It's a fantasy novel, about a woodcarver girl who is suspected of witchcraft. It's beautifully written and will break your heart, but it's so worth it.
The Apothecary by Maile Meloy is set in post-war London, and is another gorgeous book. But this one is about magic (alchemy, really), spies, and being open to possibilities. A great story with some fun adventure to it.
The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler is about Facebook. Yeah. But it's set in 1996, years before Facebook will exist, before most high schoolers are using the Internet. Two friends get a sneak peek at Facebook, at their own lives 15 years into the future, and it's a fascinating look at how the choices we make affect us later ... and also how knowing about our futures can affect the choices we make now.
Probably my favorite kids' book of the year is Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier. It's just a bizarre fantasy story that goes all over the place, with some clever wit and some absurd characters. I'm reading it out loud to Robyn now, who says it's kind of like something created by Terry Gilliam. I can see that.
Two other kids' series were pretty fun this year as well: The Secret Series by Pseudonymous Bosch is reminiscent of Lemony Snicket, but (1) it's only five books long instead of thirteen, and (2) you don't feel like you're getting strung along with a bunch of clues that don't lead anywhere. Also, the Far-Flung Adventures by Paul Stewart and Chris Ridell were a new discovery. I found a copy of the first one used and read it to my older daughter, who absolutely loved it. So we got the next two. I love the zany inventions and the colorful characters. But I also like the fact that the three books, while set in the same universe with some interweaving, aren't just sequels. Each book has its own storytelling style and set of characters.
Finally, some comics: Zita the Spacegirl by Ben Hatke is a delightful story for kids, with wacky aliens and a little Earth girl trying to save her friend. Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? by Brian Fies is an excellently-illustrated tale about the history of the future. It tracks the space program over several decades, but with a fictionalized father and son who age more slowly, growing up along with our ideas of space.
And one more: Daytripper by Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon is a wonderful story (for adults) about living and dying. There's a gimmick to the book which I won't give away here, but they put it to great use. When I talk about comics being serious literature, Daytripper is a prime example of it.
Well, there you have it! My best books of 2011. Happy reading in 2012!
And, just for the record, here are the books I've read this year (after The Year of the Bomb, the last one I posted here):
Makers - Cory Doctorow
Superman/Batman Vol. 5: The Enemies Among Us - Mark Verheiden
Level Up - Gene Luen Yang and Thien Pham
Scott Pilgrim 1-6 - Bryan Lee O'Malley
Kick-Ass - Mark Millar
Nerd Camp - Elissa Weissman
Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow? - Brian Fies
The Reading Promise: My Father & the Books We Shared - Alice Ozma
Prince Caspian - C. S. Lewis
The Mysterious Howling (Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place 1) - Maryrose Wood
Crazy Love - Francis Chan
Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites - Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson
The Hidden Gallery (Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place 2) - Maryrose Wood
Voyage of the Dawn Treader - C. S. Lewis
The Storm in the Barn - Matt Phelan
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother - Amy Chua
Isle of 100,000 Graves - Jason
The Silver Chair - C. S. Lewis
Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
Feynman - Jim Ottaviani and Leland Myrick
Warm Bodies - Isaac Marion
Americus - M. K. Reed and Jonathan Hill
Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes - Jonathan Auxier
Anya's Ghost - Vera Brosgol
The Apothecary - Maile Meloy
Love Wins - Rob Bell
Toy Dance Party - Emily Jenkins
The Familiars #1 - Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson
The Familiars #2: Secrets of the Crown - Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson
Habibi - Craig Thompson
The Secret Series 1: The Name of This Book Is Secret - Pseudonymous Bosch
The Secret Series 2: If You're Reading This, It's Too Late - Pseudonymous Bosch
The Secret Series 3: This Book Is Not Good for You - Pseudonymous Bosch
The Secret Series 4: This Isn't What It Looks Like - Pseudonymous Bosch
The Secret Series 5: You Have to Stop This - Pseudonymous Bosch
All Your Base Are Belong to Us - Harold Goldberg
Far-Flung Adventures: Fergus Crane - Paul Stewart and Chris Ridell
Far-Flung Adventures: Corby Flood - Paul Stewart and Chris Ridell
Far-Flung Adventures: Hugo Pepper - Paul Stewart and Chris Ridell
Bake Sale - Sara Varon
The Brick Bible - Brendan Powell Smith
Bad Island - Doug TenNapel
The Future of Us - Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
The Mad Mask (Archvillain #2) - Barry Lyga
Dominic - William Steig
Constellation Games - Leonard Richardson
99 Ways to Tell a Story - Matt Madden
Note: This review originally appeared on GeekDad.
I came across The Year of the Bomb at my local library in the junior fiction section and I was intrigued by the jacket flap text. Set in the 1950s, the book takes place in Sierra Madre during the filming of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Four teenage boys, obsessed with horror movies, are thrilled that it's being filmed in their town — until they discover that there are undercover FBI agents involved. I got the impression from the blurb that maybe the book would take a turn into sci-fi, with pod people actually making an appearance in the book.
As it turns out, that's not really what happens, but it doesn't make the book any less worth reading. Ronald Kidd, who was obsessed with horror movies as a kid, takes a lot of real events and weaves them into a compelling tale about fear. He uses the pod people as a sort of metaphor (kind of how Shaun of the Dead used zombies as a metaphor, until the literal zombies showed up): there are people who aren't really awake, who look like real people but aren't really living. That's not all, though — the book is also about McCarthyism, the fear of the Bomb, Richard Feynman, movie-making, and a host of other things that you wouldn't think would work in a book for young readers.
Here's the gist of it: Paul Smith (a plain kid with a plain name) spends most of his time with his three friends Oz, Arnie, and Crank, going to horror movies. Oz is the geek who knows bits of trivia about everything, but particularly about movies. Arnie's a bit of a dolt, scared of his own shadow and not too bright. Crank is a big kid who probably would have bullied the other three if it weren't for their shared love of sci-fi and movies. When the news hits that Invasion of the Body Snatchers is going to be filmed in their sleepy little town, they can't wait. They show up on set every day, getting to know some of the filmmakers and a pretty extra named Laura.
Eventually they discover that one of the actors is actually an FBI agent, searching for Communists in Hollywood. And he's also on the trail of Richard Feynman, who worked on the atomic bomb and happens to live in the town next door. The boys get sucked into both the production of the movie and the investigation, taking things into their own hands and getting a lot more than they bargained for. It's a fascinating story, all the more so for the truth it's based on. While Paul and his friends are entirely fictional, the filming of the movie (and some of its principal participants) was pretty accurately portrayed. Feynman was indeed under investigation, and the evidence against him described in the book was also based in reality.
Paul and his friends can't agree on whether Feynman is guilty, and I thought the shifting sands of adolescent friendship was very accurately portrayed here. Oz's dad, a former sound editor, has been blacklisted because of college ties to Communists, so he's not convinced the FBI has everyone's best interests at heart. Crank, on the other hand, believes in the picture of "good guys" and "bad guys" and can't understand how anyone could be uncertain about it. Feynman himself plays a significant role in the book, and his conversations with the boys are fantastic and definitely have a Feynman-esque quality to them.
The Year of the Bomb draws a connection between the fear of nuclear war and annihilation to the monsters and aliens that were so prevalent in movies in the 1950s. Fear was in the air then — fear of the Russians, of Communists, of the bomb, of flying saucers — and it made its way into pop culture as well.
I really enjoyed reading The Year of the Bomb; I sat down to read a little before bed and ended up reading it almost in one sitting. I think it's a great combination: an action-adventure, coming of age, historical fiction, buddy story with a good deal of movie trivia to boot. Oh, and Richard Feynman! What's not to love?
The Year of the Bomb was published by Simon and Schuster in 2009.
]]>Note: This review originally appeared on GeekDad.
Chee choo chee choo chook. That's the sound of an Incredible Change-Bot transforming from its robot form into, say, a microwave oven. Of course, that's also the sound we remember from the old Transformers cartoons — the sound that was conspicuously missing in Michael Bay's movies (among other things). Jeffrey Brown, a cartoonist who may be best known for his semi-autobiographical comics like Clumsy and Undeleted Scenes, has taken all of the stuff we loved about old-school Transformers and cleverly satirized them in comic-book form.
Incredible Change-Bots 2: The Vengeful Return of the Broken picks up a few years after the first book, but for those (like myself) who missed the first installment, there's a handy synopsis at the start of this book. Basically, the Awesomebots and the Fantasticons fought their big war on Earth, which resulted in the defeat of the Fantasticon leader, Shootertron. They joined forces and took off in search of a new home.
Of course, what nobody expected was that Shootertron was still alive, buried deep beneath the ground! Okay, yeah, probably everyone saw that coming, but that's sort of the point. Incredible Change-Bots takes a lot of the tropes of our beloved Saturday morning cartoons and mashes them up into a hilarious take on giant (and not-so-giant) robots battling it out for no really good reason.
When Shootertron comes to, he has lost his memory and has no idea who or what he is. He's adopted by a farmer couple, Edna and Stanley, who nurse him back to health and enroll him in high school. Meanwhile, the military has their eye on him, in the hopes that they can control him and turn him into the ultimate weapon. Oh, and did I mention that — due to some slight miscalculations — the rest of the Change-Bots are headed back to Earth? Naturally, that leads to another big confrontation between the Awesomebots and the newly-re-formed Fantasticons.
The book is hilarious. Brown's drawings have a charming crudeness to them, and the book gives the impression of a couple of kids playing with their toy robots, making "bew! bew! bew!" noises and spouting absurd dialogue. It's also really clever, though. Incredible Change-Bots is a parody by someone who clearly knows his source material well, and it's a delight to read.
If you're a fan of Transformers but were just a bit disappointed in the more recent big-screen versions, pick up a copy of Incredible Change-Bots 2 and get ready for a thrilling (and cheesy) ride! You can buy the book from Top Shelf Comics, Amazon, or check with your local comics shop.
]]>Forgive me if I skip some of the early events in Beatrice's wish. Trust me, I'm not going to tell you what happened in the first months for the same reason I haven't informed you of every snack and every poo. It's simply not crucial.
I got an advance copy of Geek Fantasy Novel in the mail, unsolicited, but since another GeekDad had already spoken for it, I just read it on my own. The hero of the story, so to speak, is Ralph Stevens, a mild-mannered geek from New Jersey who wants nothing more than to get a job working at the software company MonoMyth. But when his job application was rejected (they recommended he finish high school first), he ends up taking up his British Aunt Gert's offer to stay at their castle over the summer to work on getting their Internet connection wired up.
Ok, so that's the "geek" part of the title. The fantasy part comes in when his other aunt shows up, the one who's a famous duchess selling exercise equipment on late night TV. It seems she wants to grant some wishes to Ralph, but first (according to the rules) she has to grant three wishes to his cousins. It'll take some convincing, though, because the three kids have been forbidden to have any interactions with Aunt Chessie (and in fact some magical provisions have been made to prevent said interactions).
Eventually, though, the wishes happen, but not exactly as planned, and Ralph is there throughout it all.
Here's a minor spoiler, so if you haven't read the book you can just skip down to the end. One of the fun things about Geek Fantasy Novel is the intrusive narrator. At first he just steps in occasionally to make some small comments, but as the story progresses he becomes a more and more significant character. It really reminds me of some of the stuff I used to try to write in high school, playing with meta-narratives and inserting the author into the story. Archer does this quite well, and it's pretty funny. Suffice it to say that this is not your typical young adult novel. It's more like Computer Geek in Monty Python-land.
All in all, I had a lot of fun reading the book. It's cute and funny and I really didn't know what to expect as I read. That's a good thing, by the way.
]]>This review was originally published on GeekDad.
Tesana is a big girl — think Lauren Zizes from Glee, but without the self-confidence. She just doesn't fit in with her high school classmates and seems destined to be an outsider. Her two coping methods seem to be escaping into her daydreams or getting violent. But then she finds a little bunny that lays colorful eggs and, convinced that she's found the Easter Bunny, sets out to get it back home.
A Home for Mr. Easter by Brooke Allen was published last year, but I didn't read it until recently—just in time for Easter! Now, this is definitely not HOP — it's a book for teens and adults, not little kids. As Tesana attempts to track down Mr. Easter's home, she encounters a host of unsavory characters: Uri (of Uri's Discount Pets); a bunch of scientists at a cosmetics factory and the mob of protesters picketing it; Masamilliano, Magician Extraordinaire! Meanwhile, Tesana's mom and the local cops are out looking for her missing child.
It's a bizarre, trippy comic book. For much of the book, you really don't know how much of this is all in Tesana's head. After all, one of the first scenes you're treated to is a rainbow-farting unicorn that whisks her away to school so she doesn't have to ride the bus ... but that turns out to be simply a daydream. When Mr. Easter starts laying eggs and talking to Tesana, you really have no idea what's real and what's entirely in her head, which makes for some interesting tension.
I won't spoil the ending for you, but if you're looking for a funny adventure with some off-kilter humor, check out A Home for Mr. Easter. I can pretty much guarantee that it's not like anything else you've read yet. Check out a short preview on NBM Publishing's website, and then pick up the book from NBM or Amazon.
Disclosure: NBM provided a review copy of this book.
]]>This review was originally published on GeekDad.
When I was young, all I knew about author Salman Rushdie was that he'd written a book called The Satanic Verses which caused a whole lot of controversy. Of course, I knew very little about the details of the fatwa and had no idea of the content of the book itself—that it was offensive to Muslims and not to, say, Southern Baptists like twelve-year-old me. I filed Rushdie away under "people to avoid" and pretty much forgot about him. In college, however, I had a roommate who was a big fan of Rushdie's writing and had actually read several of his novels—and since I trusted his taste in many other things I figured maybe it was worth a shot. My roommate recommended Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is a brilliant children's book filled with adventure and bizarre characters, a little reminiscent of The Phantom Tollbooth but with a distinctly Indian flavor to it.
Haroun was written for Rushdie's older son Zafar when the 9-year-old boy had said that his dad ought to write books for kids. There is a more than passing resemblance to the Rushdie family: Haroun is Zafar's middle name, and the character in the book is the son of Rashid Khalifa, the "Shah of Blah" who is a prolific storyteller. But when his father is suddenly unable to come up with a single tall tale, Haroun goes on an amazing journey to set things right. Well, when Rushdie's younger son Milan (now 13) was old enough to read Haroun himself, he wanted to know when he would get a story, too. So Rushdie wrote Luka and the Fire of Life, featuring Haroun's younger brother Luka, off on his own quest to rescue his father.
What's interesting about Luka is that it was written for a boy who grew up with video games—and also that Rushdie himself is getting older. Both of these things find their way into the book. Rashid Khalifa's powers seem to be lessening with age and he's slowing down—until one day he slows down so much he stops altogether, falling Asleep with a smile on his face. Nothing can be done to rouse him, until Luka finds himself transported into the World of Magic, a place that is well-known to him from his father's stories.
Inspired by his son's video games, Rushdie turned the Magic World into a sort of sandbox game for Luka—he can see a life counter in his field of vision, as well as a level counter. And as he travels through the world, overcoming obstacles and defeating enemies, he also encounters Save Points where he can save his progress. In the meantime, though, the world is a mixture of all sorts of myths and legends and old gods that only live on in the memory of Rashid Khalifa. Rushdie has an encyclopedic (or maybe Wikipedic?) knowledge of these various entities and their stories, but he also throws in a slew of characters of his own creation, with plenty of puns and wordplay.
Luka is told that the only thing that can save his father is the Fire of Life, which he must steal from the very heart of the World of Magic. But of course it's never been done before, and even with the help of his trusty dog, Bear, and faithful bear, Dog, it's going to take a miracle or two to complete his task. Luka and the Fire of Life is chock-full of over-the-top characters but Rushdie expertly wrangles them into a cohesive story that's a lot of fun to read.
I should note that Rushdie's grasp of video games is apparently somewhat shallow—I imagine he's watched his son play them but may not have played them as much himself—because the video game conventions in the story can be a little bit odd. Still, it's fascinating to see a writer of his caliber using extra lives and save points in this manner. Also, if you're contemplating this for your own kids, I should mention that there's a character who is nicknamed "Rats**t" so you may want to be prepared for that.
While it's not exactly a sequel to Haroun (you can read it without having read the first book), there are some references and allusions to the earlier book and it's not a bad idea to read them in order. I think I may prefer Haroun and the Sea of Stories slightly over Luka and the Fire of Life, but both are excellent tales for people who love wordplay and storytelling.
Wired: Another children's story from master storyteller Salman Rushdie; Luka's quest is turned into a video game of sorts.
Tired: You might not want to read the name "Rats**t" aloud to your kids; Rushdie's grasp of video games is slightly off.
Disclosure: Random House provided a copy of the book for review purposes.
]]>This review was originally posted on GeekDad.
Picture a place that is removed from popular culture — a place with no bookstores or music stores or movie theaters, a place where cable TV and internet access aren't the norm.
Can you do it? Unless you live in such a place yourself, it's pretty hard to imagine.
That's the sort of place Karen Valby found in Utopia, Texas, back in 2006. Valby, a writer for Entertainment Weekly, wrote an article about "an American town without popular culture," one in which the people hadn't yet fallen under Hollywood's influence. Of course, even then, Utopia had recently discovered broadband Internet and satellite TV, and things were changing.
Later, Valby returned to Utopia to dig a little deeper, to "get past the mythology of the small town and understand it as a real place where actual people live." She spent a lot more time there over the next two years for months at a time, getting to know the people and their stories, and even getting welcomed as a "Geniune Old-Timer" despite the initial stigma of being that reporter from New York. Welcome to Utopia: Notes from a Small Town is a record of Valby's time there and I think it's an excellent book. But I may be biased — I, too, moved from a larger city to a small rural town and I found a lot of similarities between my adopted hometown and Utopia. Maybe the personalities of the town have some differences, but we share a lot in common as well.
But why would you read a book like this if you live in a big city, if your life is nothing like this? I think Valby makes a good point in her introduction:
No matter how sophisticated or righteous we believe ourselves to be, we're all so clueless and careless when confronted with the idea of a world we know nothing about.
She notes that just as Utopians had no idea what it was like in New York, imagining that Valby must have witnessed shootings and that all her friends were "Eye-talian," her friends in New York assumed that she'd be invited to book burnings and surrounded by meth labs. It's so easy to dismiss the world we don't understand, and Welcome to Utopia helps, at least in part to bridge that gap.
The book gives you a good overview of Utopia — the regular chapters alternate with shorter sections about locations in town like the cafe or Erma's Beauty Shop or the "new gym," a former water-bottling plant that got bought out by Perrier and then shuttered. But in most of the book Valby focuses on four individuals and their families, painting a picture of the small town through the lives of these people. Ralph Boyce is the retired former owner of the general store, who's still the first one in town every day, waiting on the new owner to come open up so he can take his post in the back by the coffee pot. Kathy Wiekamp was a waitress at the cafe and had four trouble-making sons, three of whom joined the Army and were overseas fighting in the war simultaneously. Colter Padgett graduated from high school but college never quite took; he's a hipster kid in a cowboy town, and while he doesn't quite fit in he's not sure how to get away. Kelli Rhodes is one of the few African Americans in town, and she makes a three-hour round-trip drive every week to San Antonio for a thirty-minute guitar lesson in the hopes of pursuing a career in music.
Valby spent countless hours getting to know these four and many others, and from her stories you can tell that they became good friends. She got up early and joined the coffee drinkers at the general store, made the long drive to Austin with Kelli and Colter to attend a My Chemical Romance concert, visited the Padgett ranch. Even if you don't know anyone from a tiny town — or perhaps especially if you don't — Welcome to Utopia helps you see life from their perspective. I don't mean that you'll suddenly change all your long-held beliefs and opinions, but I do think it humanizes a population that might up until now have been just a stereotype for many.
For me, personally, I know a lot of people like the ones Valby describes and I recognized some of the same attitudes and traits in people I interact with on a daily basis. I know many kids either in high school or recently graduated; some of them can't wait to get away, some of them can't wait to come back home, some of them see the military as their only path to something greater. Valby shows us the people of Utopia, warts and all, but it's clear that she has a deep affection for them and it makes for a compelling story.
Welcome to Utopia reminds me of another similar book: A Place Called Bird (sometimes called Bird, Kansas) by Tony Parker. Parker was a British oral historian who went to Stockton, Kansas, in the late '80s and interviewed many of the residents there. His method was to let the people tell their own stories — in the book he generally just gives the interviewee's side of the conversation. He must have been very good at asking leading questions because the book reads as if all these people are just sitting and talking to you about their lives. I first read Parker's account about three years ago, shortly after I moved to Tribune (population: 800). A Place Called Bird was written before the arrival of high-speed Internet and widespread cable TV so it certainly feels dated to some extent, I was also surprised at how much of it still felt familiar.
One of the things that I find in small towns — whether it's Utopia or Stockton or Tribune — is the strong sense of place and roots that people have. Valby relates a conversation with Sid Chaney, former president of the Cemetery Association, who can tell you the whole history of many of the people buried in Utopia, and quietly mourns the gradual disappearance of familiar family names. Here in Tribune, the joke is that you aren't a local unless you have grandparents buried in the cemetery, so there are residents who have been here for forty years or more but aren't yet "locals." I got a particular glimpse of this a couple weeks ago: our church is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, and as part of that they recognized many of the families who have been in the church or the community for five, six or seven generations, some of whom were in the original membership when the church was founded. When our high school basketball team won the state championship for their division this year, many of the 1968 basketball team (the last time we won at state) were still around and attended the championship game.
That long sense of history is something that I don't find much these days. I don't live near my parents, and they're an ocean and a continent away from where they grew up. I don't know where my kids will go when they're grown, but somehow I doubt we'll all end up in the same place. It's easy for us to talk about the world as a small place when we're connected digitally and even physically with air travel. We have conversations with people from around the country and the world; heck, I played Carcassonne this week with friends in England, Boston and Portland. But if you want to hear some great stories about a truly small place, expand your horizons and check out Welcome to Utopia.
Disclosure: Spiegel & Grau provided a review copy of the book.
]]>Ideally I would convince you to read The Illumination by Kevin Brockmeier without telling you anything about it so you could experience the story as I did—without any sort of expectations or assumptions going into it. But I understand that’s not how book reviews typically work and you’re probably looking for just a little more reason to invest the time it takes to read a novel. And although the premise of the book—the event for which it’s titled—is not really a huge secret (you get a hint of it on the second page and it’s revealed by page eight), it’s an interesting phenomenon to discover as you read those first few pages rather than having it explained before you’ve even cracked open the book.
That said, I’m going to try to do at least a portion of this review without telling you what the Illumination actually is, in case you’re like me and you’d like to save some surprises for yourself. First, a short pitch: The Illumination is a novel, probably of the sort that would be categorized as “literary fiction.” It’s set in our modern-day world and it’s mostly straight-forward realism, though with some beautiful passages that will have you stopping to read them again. (I even marked a few—keeping up with my New Year’s Resolution!) If you’re the sort of reader that appreciates the writing itself and aren’t solely interested in moving a plot along, then you’ll find a lot to love here; if not, then you might want to skip it.
The book is broken up into six large chunks—almost novellas—each focusing on a different person. What ties these six very different people together is a journal: a collection of little one-line love letters that a husband left for his wife.
I love listening to you pick out a song you don’t know on the piano. I love the way you’ll try to point out a star to me over and over again sometimes: “That one. Right there. Can’t you see it? Just follow my finger.” I love the lines that radiate from the corners of your eyes when you smile, and I’ll love them even more when they’re permanent, honey. I love how you roll your eyes but can’t help smiling whenever I call you “honey.”
Each person comes into possession of the journal at some point and although the journal is not the main point of the book, the little love notes are scattered throughout and form one of the underlying themes. It’s a way to paint a picture of this relationship between a husband and a wife without the actual presence of the couple themselves. The messages made an impression on me, as you can see from my Valentine’s Day letter to my wife, and there’s even a Tumblr page where you can submit your own notes.
The six main characters each have their own tale to tell. Carol Ann Page slices open her thumb while opening a package—a silly mistake which has unexpected repercussions. Jason Williford is a photographer who wants to lose himself in his pain. Chuck Carter is a 10-year-old autistic boy, and his chapter is told the way he would tell it, surprisingly complex despite his father’s perception that Chuck is an idiot. Ryan Shifrin is a missionary who isn’t sure what he believes—as he goes through life narrowly avoiding disasters he questions what exactly God has in store for him, if anything. Nina Poggione is an author who incorporates pieces of the journal into her own short stories. Morse Putnam Strawbridge is a homeless man, selling books on the sidewalk outside a Chinese restaurant.
Although Brockmeier’s voice carries throughout the entire book, there are subtle shifts in each chapter that shape it to the various characters. It’s not a new idea to write from an autistic child’s point of view (remember The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time?) but Brockmeier does something really amazing with Chuck’s chapter that had me going back a few pages to start the chapter over again. When Ryan’s mind starts to go (it’s not explicit but it seems he develops Alzheimer’s), time seems to become fluid as he moves from the present to the past in the space of a single sentence. The section about Nina was split between the story about her and one of her own short stories which was sort of a magical fable but almost felt like it was part of our world. Morse’s chapter ended up being about several people, because of a somewhat mystical ability he has to see into other people’s thoughts, these “occasional episodes of deep understanding.” There’s something broken in his mind that prevents him from communicating clearly with people, but at the same time he knows them at a level that only an omniscient narrator can.
Brockmeier plays with the language in a way that seems like he’s winking at the reader. When Chuck reads over his vocabulary list, the next paragraph uses almost all the words in the various sentences. A reader asks Nina what words she overuses, and she mentions “lambent, but I love that one.” In the next chapter I came across “lambent” at least once.
Okay, so here’s the reveal.
Again, it’s probably not something that’s a secret if you’ve read anything at all about The Illumination (including the jacket flap). At the beginning of the book, a worldwide phenomenon occurs that nobody can explain: pain becomes visible. Physical pain lights up: headaches show up as flickering lights at the temples or forehead, cuts bleed out light, bruises can be seen shining underneath clothing. While the occurrence is never explained, it’s apparently there for good. Brockmeier explores the ramifications of such a world—what would an emergency room be like if you could immediately tell who was more hurt? The front pages and television news are filled with images of the light of the wounded. Teenagers discover they can cut glowing tattoos into their skin. Video games incorporate eruptions of light and blood.
The world changes—and yet it doesn’t.
You would think that taking the pain of every human being and making it so starkly visible—every drunken headache and frayed cuticle, every punctured lung and bowel pocked with cancer—would inspire waves of fellow feeling all over the world, or at least ripples of pity, and for a while maybe it had, but now there were children who had come of age knowing nothing else …
The thing that sticks with you after reading the book is that even something as striking as the Illumination would not permanently change the world, but individuals could be changed—lives are affected and our actions have ripples across the universe that we may never understand. The Illumination, like the light that spills from the wounds, is both beautiful and devastating.
Note: this review was originally written for GeekDad.
]]>But what is our fascination with pirates, and why do we treat them differently than we do other lawbreakers? For instance, pirates are the only type of criminal after which it is acceptable to name a sports franchise.
Dr. Cuthbert Soup is back with a sequel to A Whole Nother Story, which I read a year ago and then just re-read to refresh my memory. (Note: it's still quite funny and I enjoyed reading it again.)
Spoiler alert: if you haven't read the first book yet, you should probably skip this review since I can't really discuss the plot without giving away the ending of the first book.
At the end of the first book, scientist Ethan Cheeseman along with his three smart, polite, and relatively odor-free children and pirate Captain Jibby and his crew, hopped into the LVR and vanished into the past. Jibby and his crew were returning to 1668 to return the stolen White Gold Chalice (and hopefully reverse its curse), and then Ethan and kids were going to save their mom's life. Unfortunately, the LVR fell apart as they landed in 1668, so they were stranded until they could get supplies to repair the LVR.
Of course, being in 1668 presents some problems, particularly if you're dressed in clothing from today, carrying a cell phone and chewing gum. The Cheesemans are taken for witches, for instance.
Meanwhile, the dastardly Mr. 5 has managed to travel back to the past as well, posing as the assistant to Professor Boxley, who has built his own LVR in order to rescue the Cheesemans.
Oh, and of course there are some interjections from Dr. Soup himself, offering his hilarious unsolicited advice.
I thought that while the plot of Another Whole Nother Story was fun and action-packed, the book as a whole just isn't quite as funny as the original. Maybe it's because there's less Unsolicited Advice. Maybe there were fewer outlandish characters. Maybe it's just a case of sequel-itis. It's still a fun read, but for whatever reason I just didn't find myself laughing through this one as much as the first.
]]>Berona’s War is an odd beast. It’s about two warring factions, the Ele-Alta and the Cropones, who look like cute cartoony creatures but for their vicious battles. Each artist created one of the factions and did all the artwork and writing for its team: Coffey created the Ele-Alta, who look a bit like short, stumpy dogs; Labbé created the Cropones, who are … um … fuzzy things with big eyes and no noses. It looks like they had a lot of fun trying to out-do each other with crazy weaponry made from wood and stone, bigger-than-life characters and various beasts used by the two sides.
The book is presented as a field guide: the background looks like a worn, lined notebook and there are scraps of paper with sketches “taped” or “paper-clipped” into the book. The font is made to look like handwriting and there are lots of hand-written notes and arrows drawn in as well. The book doesn’t tell a traditional narrative, but instead presents the various creatures and weaponry as entries in the guide in an ever-escalating fashion. At the beginning are archers and re-purposed hunting tools, but by the end the soldiers have developed chemical warfare and spring-loaded splinter cannons.
Of course, what makes the book so fun is that the characters are so darn cute. All of their gadgets and gizmos are made, Gilligan’s Island-style, out of wood and stone and bamboo poles, and it’s the odd juxtapositions that are really entertaining. The biggest thing that bothered me about Berona’s War was the grammatical errors: there are quite a few misspellings that could have been easily avoided by running a spell-check, and even though it’s written as a field guide I don’t think that’s a good excuse for sentence fragments and misplaced commas.
One note: the book is rated as “all ages” and I’m not sure that a book with so much violence is really appropriate for younger kids. If your kid is already playing Halo and Left for Dead, then this is nothing to worry about. But the cover could be misleading for somebody who thinks it’s just about cute creatures playing war—while there’s not a lot of gore, there are a warriors who have been impaled or shot through with arrows.
It’s obvious that Coffey and Labbé had a lot of fun creating Berona’s War. At the end, they show how many of their character drawings were inspired by the stances of their old plastic Army men, and the book is really an extension of playing war. I’d love to see a more traditional narrative involving the characters and weaponry featured in the Field Guide, but for now it’s a fine introduction to this bizarre little world.
Note: this review was originally written for GeekDad.
]]>I’m really enchanted by David Petersen’s Mouse Guard series, as I wrote last year after reading his first two collected volumes. I mentioned in that review that he was working on Legends of the Guard—it was serialized over the year and then collected into a hardcover this past winter. So many comics artist and writers loved the Mouse Guard world so much that Petersen let them in to play. Legends of the Guard was his solution to giving them leeway to create their own stories without having to fit them into his continuity.
The stories in this collection are told by various mice at the June Alley Inn, in Canterbury Tales fashion. June, the proprietress, offers the mice this deal: they can each tell a tale and she’ll pick a winner to have their tab cleared. All the others will have seven days to settle up. She gives three rules: “Tell no complete truths, no complete falsehoods, and tell me a tale I never heard.” Petersen illustrates the framing story and ties the tales together, but then each story is written and illustrated by various others in a wide range of styles. Most of the tales are relatively short; some are nearly wordless. But each has its own flavor and adds a little more to this incredible world.
I really enjoyed Jeremy Bastian’s artwork in “The Battle of the Hawk’s Mouse & the Fox’s Mouse,” which looks like old illustrations down to the aged colors and funny-shaped dialogue balloons. “Worley & the Mink,” written by Lowell Francis and illustrated by Gene Ha, is a wonderful story about a very persistent banker who goes to great lengths to collect a debt. There’s some humor as well: Katie Cook’s “A Mouse Named Fox” is about a mouse adopted by a fox couple who doesn’t realize he’s a mouse; “The Critic” by Guy Davis is wordless and the characters communicate in rebus-like symbols with a humorous result.
The stories (as well as the original Mouse Guard volumes) are set in the middle of the twelfth century, and everything has that sort of medieval flavor to it. However, some of the writers are better at capturing the feel of the language than others. Sometimes it feels like being at a Renaissance Fair with people play-acting and using lots of “thees” and “thous” just thrown in at random. I’m not saying that I’d know how to make it sound better, but I can recognize when it doesn’t.
That gripe aside, it’s a superb collection that helps to flesh out the world of Mouse Guard even though the tales aren’t canonical, and the variety of artwork and styles make it a thrill to read. If you’ve enjoyed the first two volumes and are wanting more, Legends of the Guard will tide you over until Petersen’s ready with more of his own tales. According to Petersen’s site and Archaia Press, Volume 2 is in the works and will be arriving in single-issue form this summer or fall—good news for fans of Mouse Guard!
Note: this review was originally written for GeekDad.
]]>I think it’s safe to say that Return of the Dapper Men is the only book I have (and probably will ever have) with an introduction by Tim Gunn—certainly a dapper man if there ever was one. But the book—despite its dapper men and Gunn’s intro—isn’t just for fans of Project Runway (which I’ve never actually seen myself).
I mentioned that both of these books have a timeless quality to them. In the case of Dapper Men, it’s more than just a figure of speech: the story begins in Anorev, a world where time has stopped. In this land of children and machines, the children just play (underground) and the machines work, and that is all they can remember. The sun never sets and the day never ends, and things just go on exactly as they always have.
But among the clockwork people and the children, there are two who are just a bit different. The boy Ayden and the red-haired robot girl Zoe are friends, and both don’t quite fit in with their own kind. Ayden is despised by some of the children because of all the time he spends above, “up there.” Zoe never speaks, but she seems to have sparks of memory or knowledge that are just coming into focus.
And then something unexpected happens: the old clock tower begins to tick and tock again and sounds its bell, which hasn’t been heard in an eternity, and 314 Dapper Men returned to Anorev, floating down to earth in their striped jackets and green hats and wingtip shoes. Things finally begin to change.
The story is a hard one to describe, but there are some wonderful characters. Ayden is a curious sort, not satisfied with the way things are and asking questions that the other children never ask. Fabre is a robot who wants to fly, and has built up a tall tower in the hopes of reaching the Clockwork Angel out in the bay. The Clockwork Angel herself is a mystery—a huge statue with wings, holding some chimes and bits of clockwork but nobody knows her purpose. Most of the Dapper Men are silent, going about their business, but there is one who talks and acts differently, and he bustles about the town turning everything upside-down, saying things that nobody quite understands.
The artwork of Dapper Men is remarkable. The book is sort of a graphic novel, with panels and dialogue bubbles, but the illustrations look nothing like most comics I’ve seen. Everything is hand-drawn—the panel borders are a little uneven, and you can see see the tell-tale lines that Prismacolor markers make when you color with them. Now, I must say that I didn’t always like the drawing style of the people but I really liked a lot of the clockwork environments. But what really stood out is an odd, almost three-dimensional effect in some of the backgrounds, which I didn’t understand until I finished the book and found “The Making of a Dapper Page,” in which author McCann explain’s Lee’s process. It turns out that she draws the pictures and colors them on paper, then actually cuts out large sections of the background and Mod Podges the paper onto painted boards (or sometimes pages of books). Then the whole thing is scanned in and the lettering is layered in.
It gives the whole book a very non-digital quality that stands out in a world of slick, vectorized images; combined with the oversized format, cloth-edged binding and red ribbon bookmark, it makes for a beautiful picture book that is quite impressive.
Dapper Men is suitable for all ages though younger readers may not quite understand what’s going on or some of the more flowery language used in parts. It’s a very fascinating story about finding your place in the world and making difficult decisions. If you’re looking for a book that truly stands out, Return of the Dapper Men fits the bill.
Note: This review was originally written for GeekDad.
]]>I’m always trying to get the most out of my time — as I’m sure many, if not most, of you are as well.
As parents we want to raise kids who are intelligent and kind and courageous and healthy. We want to pass along our own passions and encourage them to find their own. We want to read them our favorite books and get them hooked on our favorite games. All of this takes time — quality and quantity.
As geeks, we all have our obsessions, whether it’s keeping up with our favorite TV shows that are facing cancellation again (curse you, Syfy and Fox!) or playing games or tracking down the latest shiny gadget, our hobbies and passions take time, too.
Of course, some of us balance this with full-time or part-time jobs; others have their hands full with laundry and dishes and cooking. Homeschooling adds another dimension because it’s automatically spending time with your kids but there are specific and definite goals in some of the time spent.
How often have you lamented in the past week — or even in the past 24 hours — that there just isn’t enough time in each day?
Even though my life largely consists of activities that I’ve chosen for myself, I frequently find myself sacrificing sleep to get some more things done. And I’m certainly guilty of snapping at my kids to stop bothering me when I’m in the middle of doing something — even though spending time with my kids is certainly one of my top priorities. Some people have trouble living within their means financially; my problem is apparently living within my means temporally. What I want to do with my life simply takes more than 24 hours per day.
This is where Laura Vanderkam comes in. Her new-ish book (okay, yeah, it was published last spring but it took me this long to finally getting around to reading it) is titled 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, and its main argument is right there in the title. If you feel like you don’t have enough time for everything, then chances are you’re not making the best use of your time.
Now, before you brush this off as just another strategy that will never work for you, hear me out.
I’ll admit that I was skeptical myself: even while reading through the book, there were times when I wanted to respond “But you shouldn’t expect to be able to do everything. It’s not human!” And I bristled every time she pointed out that, however you organize your time, making sure you have time to exercise is a non-negotiable. (Yes, I know I should — but quit telling me that!) Some of the time I found myself frustrated because some of her methods would be impossible for my doctor wife, and sometimes I was disappointed that she didn’t take into account stay-at-home dads.
But despite all of that, I found Vanderkam’s approach to time-management quite attractive in terms of how to think about time. Also, 168 Hours is not your typical time-management book, because it’s not just about suggestions for improving your workflow or helping you keep your inbox at zero. It’s more about the big picture, about figuring out how to focus on your “core competencies” and minimizing the rest. The reason Vanderkam uses the 168 hours figure is that twenty-four hours seems like such a short amount of time to cram everything in, but our lives are often lived out a week at a time. Our natural rhythm and our schedules are often made up of weeks more than individual days, and 168 hours seems like a lot more to play with and is a bit more flexible than a single day.
Core competencies is a concept borrowed from the business world: essentially, it’s the things that you do best that nobody else can do as well as you. For example, as parents, one core competency is spending time with your kids — because although you can hire that out to some extent, you yourself do not get the benefit unless you do it yourself. That’s also why she says exercise is a non-negotiable: nobody can do it for you. Laundry, on the other hand, is not necessarily a core competency for most of us: we do it because we have to, not because we think we’re awesome at it or because nobody else could do it as well as we do.
Once you’ve figured out what your core competencies are (and Vanderkam offers some advice on that), then you ignore, minimize or outsource everything else. This is the part I found most fascinating, at least as it pertains to housework, though she also describes using these techniques at work. In a chapter titled “Don’t Do Your Own Laundry,” Vanderkam makes a pretty compelling argument for outsourcing things like laundry and cleaning and even grocery shopping and cooking. Now, I’m not going to go out and hire a maid or a personal cook now — for one, I live in tiny town where that’s really not much of an option — but it got me thinking about when it makes sense to buy back some of my time so that I can spend it instead on things that really matter to me. Obviously, if your core competencies are not income-generating (playing with your kids, for instance) then it’s not always an affordable option, but Vanderkam also shows some of the areas where it can pay off.
The other option, though, is ignoring things—she describes the decreasing standards of home-cleaning (how many of us still vacuum our drapes?) as a good thing. Sure, the average house today is probably messier than thirty years ago, but the average parent also spends much more time with their kids today.
The biggest exercise in the book is to actually track your hours for a full week. After my scrubbed experiment in record-keeping, I was loath to give it another shot, so I haven’t actually sat down and done this yet. I’m sure it would offer some more clarity in how I’m using my time now and where I’m wasting it. I do feel like I manage to get a lot of things done during a typical week, but there’s always more I want to be doing. I know I spend increasing amounts of time on Twitter or playing Angry Birds that could be spent doing things that are arguably more worthwhile — and in fact more enjoyable.
Here’s the thing: making good use of your time isn’t always easy, and the book doesn’t pretend that it is. There are tough choices to make, and sometimes it means cutting out things you like to make room for things you love. Vanderkam is particularly harsh on TV-watching because that’s where the typical American loses about 20 to 30 hours per week — which, if you think about it, is enough for a part-time job. While I still have my doubts about the idea of “having it all,” I do think that with some practice and attention I should be able to fulfill my responsibilities as a dad and husband, have time to read books and play games, write lengthy posts about things I care about and still get to bed before midnight.
If you frequently find yourself feeling like you simply don’t have enough time for everything in your life, take a look at 168 Hours. Yes, it will take time to read the book and put it into practice, but maybe it’s worth giving up a couple hours of your life in order to get back so many more. For more info, you can check out the 168 Hours website.
Note: This review was originally written for GeekDad.
]]>As Amelia Johnson’s life draws to an end, she reaches out to her two closest friends: Henry Barrons, a celebrated filmmaker, and Jillian Webb, a writer for a prestigious magazine. Although Henry and Jillian don’t know each other, Amelia asks them to deliver her final messages to various friends and family that she can’t travel to see—she’s made some DVDs and wants them to be hand-delivered and for Henry and Jillian to record the reactions for her. The premise is kind of funny—in a world with Skype does it make sense to record a DVD, hand-deliver it, and wait for a recorded reaction?—but it’s an excuse to tell this story.
The story does borrow from Hollywood conventions a bit—it’s not really spoiling much to say that Henry and Jillian eventually discover that they belong with each other, because you sort of get that feeling from the beginning. They bicker at each other and they have very different personalities. As they travel across the country (with Henry’s cameraman and sound guy in tow) they constantly butt heads over how their mission should be carried out.
Meanwhile, Amelia’s story is slowly revealed through the videos she’s created and the recipients’ reactions to them. The six people chosen are pretty interesting, too—former boyfriends, her estranged brother, even Jillian’s ex-boyfriend. Both Henry and Jillian learn things they never knew about Amelia despite being so close to her.
While the premise may seem a bit morbid, the book takes the attitude of celebrating a life rather than mourning its loss, and the book is more about Henry’s and Jillian’s journey than about Amelia herself. The illustration style is interesting: parts of it reminded me of Archie comics but not everyone has the same style of eyes and noses and mouths. The book was actually illustrated by two people—when Dave Valeza was unable to complete the project, Kate Kasenow stepped in. But I didn’t know that until I’d finished the book, and hadn’t really noticed a substantial change in style anywhere in the book, so it was an impressive feat to match the styles together.
I must admit that I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of what I would tell somebody after my own death. It’s the same sentiment that makes a journal like Memento so compelling. So while An Elegy for Amelia Johnson does suffer from some movie-style tropes and engages in some shameless heartstring-tugging, I think the overall story is one that I could recommend for teens and adults. Because of a few profanities and some references to sexual situations the book isn’t intended for younger readers, but it’s probably a mild PG-13 and certainly not R-rated.
Note: this review was originally written for GeekDad as part of my Stories About Girls series.
]]>Fair warning: Mr. and Mrs. Scroggins, the parents in this book, are absolutely despicable. Not funny-despicable like the Willoughbys or more-bark-than-bite like the Dursleys, but nearly-real, hear-about-it-on-the-news despicable. The Scroggins are terrible, never-should-have-had-kids parents who think nothing of abandoning their little girl by the side of the road and driving away. You do see, illustrated on the next few pages, that little sister Honey gets picked up by a mysterious truck full of lollipop-sucking kids, but her big sister Hope doesn’t know that, and spends the rest of the book wondering what happened to Honey and trying to get her back.
Plot aside, The Memory Bank has a fascinating storytelling method. Coman’s text and Shepperson’s illustrations are often paired with each other, as is usual in a chapter book—a page of text with a facing illustration. However, scattered frequently throughout the book are sections of illustrations with no accompanying text, pages at a time. While the prose of the book follows Hope exclusively, the illustrated sections often portray Honey with her newfound gang or Hope’s dreams about Honey. It’s a wonderful way to give us hints about what’s going on but without giving us definite answers, and as the story progresses you can see that the two sides of the story are interconnected.
But back to the plot: it’s just as fascinating as the medium and a perfect match. Hope eventually winds up at the Memory Bank, where memories come pouring in through a giant Receptor (they look like marbles) for sorting, collection and filing. Here she meets various workers, from Sterling Prion—a stiff, proper man who is doing very important work and has no idea how to handle children—to Violette Mumm, head of the Dream Vault who places much more importance on dreams than memories. The Memory Bank is a wonderful, fantastical creation and I loved every bit of it. In the meantime, the Bank is under assault from a mysterious army of saboteurs who apparently would like nothing more than to destroy history by wiping out memories, and Hope hears little bits and pieces about the War as she is shuttled around the Bank.
One thing I particularly appreciated about the book is the dialogue—the adults talk like real adults, using phrases and expressions and referring to things that children don’t quite understand fully; but then we get to see how Hope hears it—clinging to phrases that hold particular meaning for her. As a child who has never been loved by her parents, who spent her life trying to neither laugh nor cry, Hope begins to blossom as she interacts with other adults who pay attention to her and do more than shove her out of the way. It’s beautiful and sad at the same time.
And that’s the way with much of the book—the imagery is wonderful and the story does have a happy ending, but even that is tinged with the awfulness of the parents. Hope is a curious, inquisitive girl whose love for her sister is unquenchable—but she’s still only a child in an unfamiliar world. I found her to be a quite realistic character in a world of fantasy.
The book is intended for middle grade readers, and I do highly recommend this one—for kids and their parents. It’ll make kids appreciate their parents and it’ll make parents want to hold their kids tight.
Note: this review was originally written for GeekDad as part of my Stories About Girls series.
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