Books Without Limits

We went to Stephen King for his thoughts on the final Harry Potter book before. Now that he’s read it, have his thoughts changed? You can see for your self in his fantastic write up of the book for Entertainment Weekly.

But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it’s probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ”literary novels” each year. While the bigheads have been predicting (and bemoaning) the postliterate society, the kids have been supplementing their Potter with the narratives of Lemony Snicket, the adventures of teenage mastermind Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman’s challenging His Dark Materials trilogy, the Alex Rider adventures, Peter Abrahams’ superb Ingrid Levin-Hill mysteries, the stories of those amazing traveling blue jeans. And of course we must not forget the unsinkable (if sometimes smelly) Captain Underpants. Also, how about a tip of the old tiara to R.L. Stine, Jo Rowling’s jovial John the Baptist?

I began by quoting Shakespeare; I’ll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they’ll kill the damn thing.

It’s good make-believe I’m talking about. Known in more formal circles as the Ministry of Magic. J.K. Rowling has set the standard: It’s a high one, and God bless her for it.

I love what he had to say over all. He had some of the same criticisms of the book I did, with the extended camping scene being an issue, and the occasional odd sense of time. He left the ending alone, which disappointed me, because I’d love to know what he thought. However, he mentioned in his other write up before the book came out that he knows you can’t please everyone with an ending to a series, using his own Dark Tower series as an example. He gives Rowling high marks for reaching both children and adults, and I agree. Above all else, Harry Potter brought the magic of reading back for me.

Tags: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Stephen King

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Books and a scalpel – the thought makes my heart pound with agony, but that doesn’t make these artist any less talented or these photos any less beautiful. Take a look.

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Stephen King talks about Harry Potter’s final chapters at Entertainment Weekly today.

Did you think I meant the final Harry Potter tale? Don’t be a sillykins — not even your Uncle Stevie gets that one in advance (although I’m sure you agree that he should, he should).

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Are you living in the “Harry-est” town in America? Amazon hopes so. It is tracking sales of the last installment in the Harry Potter juggernaut series and will award the winner with a $5000 monetary award to be donated to the charity of their choosing. They are tracking the results weekly here. The contest end July 15th, 2007 at 11:59 PM. See how your town ranks!

Want to play too? Pre-order the 7th Harry Potter book and your town is automatically entered.

Click the link under the cover image to preorder:

PREORDER YOUR COPY HERE

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Every budding writer has visions of the impact of their first novel. Often these visions of glory are unfounded, but in Kim
Edwards’ case, her first novel was a writer’s dream come true. Her portrayal of a family torn apart by secrets and memories resonates. I found myself unable to put this book down once I started reading it.

Edwards pulls you in and wraps you up in her characters and their lives. You find yourself wincing in pain at the lies and betrayal and your heart unfolds in the small triumphs and beautiful moments of these vivid characters. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter paints portraits in words of each character that makes them seem so real, so alive that you find yourself muttering words of advice to them throughout the book.

Especially moving is Edwards’ unflinching portrayal of Downs’ syndrome. The enchanting Phoebe lives a full and loved life with Down’s, and Edwards shows readers that Down’s doesn’t have to be a death sentence without having to preach. Through Phoebe and Caroline, we see how perserverence and love can overcome all obstacles and allow for a normal, happy life.

Illustrating the flip side of the coin, the damage that secrets, lies and betrayal can do to a family, is Phoebe’s biological father, Dr. David Henry. His deceptions and withdrawal scar his wife, Norah and his son Paul (Phoebe’s healthy twin) and eventually tear his family apart. Each rip in the fabric of love that once bound the family feels like a burn on the reader’s skin.

The dislocation of Norah, a mother ripped from one child and too wrapped up in the life of the other, is heartrending. We watch her struggle with addictions, from alcohol to sex to work, constantly filling the hole left by a daughter she never got to know. Eventually, Norah finds love again, but the journey is long and full of loss.

Dr. Henry becomes a hard, distant man. He is the only one in his immediate family who knows the truth behind the great lie he told, and he spends his years trying to capture on film the family he lost in real life. He sends money to Caroline for Phoebe, to still his own guilt and fear about the past. He constantly adds secrets and lies to the one big betrayal. Norah doesn’t know what keeps him away emotionally, but his compounding secrets eventually cause her to leave him.

Paul, once a happy child unaware of the great conflict between his parents, is hurt by the eventual discovery ofone of their lies – his mother’s affairs. This creates another landslide of despair in this tormented family .Eventually, Paul finds a way to forgive his mother her pain, but is never to reconcile with his father. Throughout the novel, we are allowed glimpses into Caroline and Phoebe’s bravery and love. Their true love for
each other, respect for each other and crusade for the rights of other Down’s children gives the novel lightness in the midst of the Henry family turmoil. Phoebe has unconditional love in the form of Caroline, the nurse who kept her as her own, all because she couldn’t condemn her for her father’s short sightedness; and Al, the long distance trucker who loves them both without fail.

The one thing that sets this novel apart from others in its genre is Edwards’ refusal to give in to sap and pablum. She looks relationships and struggles in the eye without flinching or glossing over the hard parts. Her novel is miles above the rest because of that. This book is highly recommended.

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Douglas Preston can usually be relied upon to deliver solid, interesting mystery stories. I was surprised when thisone fell short of the mark. The idea behind the story, that there is a full, intact, well-preserved Tyrannosaurus Rexburied in the desert that holds a secret people would kill for is a good one. Good science and archeology basedmysteries are few and far between, so I was quite excited to pick this book up.

The story begins with a moon landing, and is followed by the death of what we think is a prospector. In rapidsuccession we are introduced to two main characters through a solid action scene. So far so good. Then the storyseems to meander off a bit, losing the momentum it had started with. Don’t get me wrong – the story is never “bad”,it just has trouble keeping the mystery tight occasionally.

I think that the story was considerably marred and thrown off track repeatedly by the introduction of one tritecharacter, Detective Willer. How many times must writers abuse the stock “inept rural detective” character beforethey find a new plot device? It felt as if we were being beaten about the head and neck with Willer’s ineptitudethroughout the novel, only to have him suddenly “smarten up” in the last few pages. That messed up the flow ofthe whole book for me, and it’s a shame that it kept derailing such a good plot.

Another twist was the introduction of Robbie without ever really bringing her in as a character beyond a few setpieces at the end. I kept expecting her to appear and be integral to the plot because of the way her name wasdropped, but she never really materializes. Even in the final scenes when she does suddenly appear, she seemsto be the “stock artist” character without the depth I’d been expecting to round out the story.

Overall the book was acceptable but not outstanding for me. I enjoyed the characters Broadbent and Ford quite abit, though they seemed to be working from two seperate scripts at times. The fact that the entire plot wasmasterminded by a scientist on the bottom tier of a museum food chain, including a mysterious parolearrangement, seemed far fetched to me but was easier to swallow than the stock characters and dropped storylines.

All in all I’ve enjoyed other books by this author more. Two that come to mind as recommended reading instead ofthis one would be Relic and The Book of the Dead.

Get your own copy here.

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Detective Nick Petrov is an engaging character from the first page. We watch as he commits perjury to seal the deal in court, treats the people around him like dirt and goes on his smart, abrasive way to solve the next crime. As the story progresses and Nick deals with his memory loss we see him change drastically from a vibrant, angry man to one that is clinging to hope and life by a thread.

His personality changes and the blank spaces in his memory from his brain tumor are written in an entirely believable manner. From cynic to dying old man to someone who sees life in a new way and finds love, each nuance is covered. In a way the murder mystery itself takes a back seat to the mystery of Nick’s illness and how he chooses to handle it. His bargains with nature and God, the way he clings to completing a task as a way to achieve health, his struggling romance with the unlikely Billie – each step is enthralling agony.

Does he solve the murder mystery had set out to solve in the beginning? Absollutely, but not the way he (or the reader) expects. In fact, this story remains engaging from the first page while being nothing that I expected at all. I highly recommend the book. Sure, there are a few plot points that seem to get dropped, but you hardly notice so caught up are you in the character of Nick himself.
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How my mother raised 10 kids on 25 words or less…

This book caught my attention through the recommendation of a friend. I approached it cautiously, knowing that this particular friend loves stories full of pablum and sap. It turns out I was right to do so, as this book tends to beat you about the neck and head with it’s “message”. On occasion I had to put it down and walk away, thinking “we get it, we get it, she survived by her wit and still raised ten kids in the face of her husband’s alcoholism – enough already!”

This book reads as if more than one writer wrote it – at times mellifluous and at times pedestrian. I got the feeling throughout that parts were heavily edited by a third party and the writer never went back to make sure the “voice” of the piece was still their own. Heavy editing can kill a book’s flow if it isn’t written consistently with the tone of the book as a whole.

The most interesting aspect of the book for me was a glimpse into the lives of women in the era of “contesting”. Writing the advertising jingles for various companies kept more than one woman both sane and afloat in a time when options were few for women in general. Unable to work outside the home with as much freedom and choice as women can today, they seized this chance to be creative, to use their intellect and to make some money and earn much needed things for their children and homes.

One of the other flaws in this book was a tendency to drop characters. I hoped to read much more about the other contesters. The storyline of the bedridden contester was dropped all too quickly, for example. I was genuinely curious to know more about her fight against polio and how she got into contesting in the first place. Perhaps that’s an indirect way of saying I simply was not as drawn to the main character as I should have been.

The fact that I think of these real life women as characters, even knowing this is a non-fiction book, is a red flag that the development of the story didn’t ring true for me. It stayed on the surface, never delving into the simmering emotions and issues behind the piece. This book would have made a much better screenplay, and in fact has been made into a movie. I can tell you that I plan to see the movie because I believe that seeing the book acted out may give it the depth it lacked in the writing.

Recommended
Not really – I’d skip the torture of the heavy handed book and see the movie

Get The Book, Get the DVD

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Cook Books are an often overlooked source of reading material. Sure they have invaluable recipes for your holiday needs, but often they offer much more. A glimpse into a culture long gone, stories from other nations, even novels – Like Water For Chocolate was a cookbook surrounded by a beautiful story.

In honor of Thanksgiving, here are some of my perennial favorites for the holiday season:

• The Book Of Thanksgiving: Stories, Poems, and Recipes for Sharing One of America’s Greatest Holidays

• A Southern Thanksgiving

• I Like You: Hospitality Under The Influence

• The Joy of Cooking: 1931 Facsimile Edition

• The Joy of Cooking: 75th Anniversary Edition

What are your favorite cook books for Thanksgiving? Do you have traditional dishes it just wouldn’t be Thanksgiving without?

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I was first introduced to Martin’s epic world of politics, royalty, fantasy, love, lust, betrayal, war and power when tripping over it (literally) at a friend’s house. At over 900 pages, he had finished reading Game of Thrones and decided to use it as a doorstop – he was feeling frustrated at the two year+ wait for the next installment…. In spite of his frustration, he told me to go buy a copy and read it (he wouldn’t lend me his copy as he was planning to re-read it over and over again until the next book came out). I have never regretted taking his advice, as it introduced me to another world altogether.

This novel is a richly crafted, multi-layered, well thought out masterpiece of fantasy and politics. Not only does the book introduce you to enough characters to require a geneological tree, it gives each and every character depth and purpose, filling them out well throughout. One of my favorite aspects of Game of Thrones is the fact that you become so involved with each character you find yourself rooting for the “bad” guys just as often (and sometimes more) than the “good” guys. Another great thing about this book is that I have finally found an author who is not afraid to kill off a sympathetic character just because the reader likes them. If the character’s demise (or political exile, or lingering disease, or…) is the best thing for the plot as a whole, out they go, sympathetic or not.

Along with the fresh story line, vivid details of countries, worlds, cities, places and people, and fantastic character development, Martin has infused the novel with some of the most diabolical political maneuvering and scheming since Machiavelli’s masterpiece The Prince. I was consistently surprised and enthralled by the twists in the plot, which somehow managed to remain believable in spite of the amazing risks Martin was willing to take with the story.

In short, the novel was a hearty, satisfying escape from this world into Martin’s. I could not wait to read the next book in the series. Fortunately for me, as I came late to the series, I did not have to wait for long. Unfortunately for his other readers, they had to wait two years! Would I recommend this book to a friend? Absolutely. If you enjoy political maneuvering among gorgeous, vivid worlds ranging from colorful and decadent deserts to isolated worlds of ice and monsters while fully developed characters are constantly in motion, then you will love Game of Thrones.

Recommended:Yes

<a target=”_blank” title=”Get Your Own Copy” href=”http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553573403/sr=8-1/qid=1163871698/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-7303942-6047849?ie=UTF8&s=books”>Get Your Own Copy</a>

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