Book Addiction

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

From Amazon.com -

Jacob Jankowski says: “I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other.” At the beginning of Water for Elephants, he is living out his days in a nursing home, hating every second of it. His life wasn’t always like this, however, because Jacob ran away and joined the circus when he was twenty-one. It wasn’t a romantic, carefree decision, to be sure. His parents were killed in an auto accident one week before he was to sit for his veterinary medicine exams at Cornell. He buried his parents, learned that they left him nothing because they had mortgaged everything to pay his tuition, returned to school, went to the exams, and didn’t write a single word. He walked out without completing the test and wound up on a circus train. The circus he joins, in Depression-era America, is second-rate at best. With Ringling Brothers as the standard, Benzini Brothers is far down the scale and pale by comparison.

Water for Elephants is the story of Jacob’s life with this circus. Sara Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which he finds himself. The animals are mangy, underfed or fed rotten food, and abused. Jacob, once it becomes known that he has veterinary skills, is put in charge of the “menagerie” and all its ills. Uncle Al, the circus impresario, is a self-serving, venal creep who slaps people around because he can. August, the animal trainer, is a certified paranoid schizophrenic whose occasional flights into madness and brutality often have Jacob as their object. Jacob is the only person in the book who has a handle on a moral compass and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. He is the self-appointed Protector of the Downtrodden, and… he falls in love with Marlena, crazy August’s wife. Not his best idea.

The most interesting aspect of the book is all the circus lore that Gruen has so carefully researched. She has all the right vocabulary: grifters, roustabouts, workers, cooch tent, rubes, First of May, what the band plays when there’s trouble, Jamaican ginger paralysis, life on a circus train, set-up and take-down, being run out of town by the “revenooers” or the cops, and losing all your hooch. There is one glorious passage about Marlena and Rosie, the bull elephant, that truly evokes the magic a circus can create. It is easy to see Marlena’s and Rosie’s pink sequins under the Big Top and to imagine their perfect choreography as they perform unbelievable stunts. The crowd loves it–and so will the reader. The ending is absolutely ludicrous and really quite lovely.

My thoughts -

Hands down, one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.  I was utterly captivated by this story, by Jacob’s story, by the amazing animals, especially Rosie the elephant, the crazy Uncle Al and the even crazier August, and the enchanting Marlena.  This is obviously a story about a circus in the midst of the Depression, but it’s more a story of a young man’s coming into his own, a young woman scraping for her independence, and the absolute and total love and loyalty an animal can show for a human being, and vice versa.  Parts of this book were difficult for me to take in, I have a VERY difficult time reading about animal cruelty, and Gruen spared nothing in her descriptions of how some of these animals were treated.  But at the same time, those descriptions were important to the story because they made the whole thing that much more realistic.  Of course I know nothing about circuis life, or the 1930’s, but I truly felt like Jacob was a real person, narrating his real memoir of his life as a young man. 

And the ending… man, what an ending.  This novel tied up so neatly I almost couldn’t believe it… but it was so beautiful that I could, because I wanted so badly for things to turn out right.  I strongly recommend reading this book, it will captivate you as it did me, you will fly through it, and you will be glad you met Jacob and heard his story, because it is such an amazing one.

10 big, bright yellow stars.

Read Trish’s review here, Julie’s review here, Care’s review here, Kristen’s review here, Natasha’s review here, Di’s review here, and Jaimie’s review here.

I have officially completed the 2008 TBR Challenge!  This is the first challenge I signed up for when I started blogging in January, and the first challenge I have completed.  I changed my selections a few times, but here’s the final list (reviews can be found by clicking to the “2008 book list” tab):

1.  The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan

2.  Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes

3.  Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

4.  Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

5.  Prozac Nation - Elizabeth Wurtzel

6.  In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

7.  Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress - Dai Sijie

8.  Housekeeping _ Marilynne Robinson

9.  Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

10.  Gap Creek - Robert Morgan

11.  Cane River - Lalita Tademy

12.  ‘Tis - Frank McCourt

Overall, I would say my favorite on the list was Never Let Me Go, and my least favorite would have to be a tie between Cane River and Sense and Sensibility… and Housekeeping.  Wow, there were a lot of books I didn’t enjoy so much.  Oh well… at least I finished them.

This week’s edition of Weekly Geeks is about childhood favorites.  I read a LOT as a kid, so much that most of my reading sort of blurrs together.  I would go to the library on a Saturday, spend 2-3 hours there, check out 20+ books, and read them all throughout the week, then repeat the following weekend (as you can probably guess, I had very few friends and no other real interests besides reading.  Luckily, that improved in middle school).  Although I have a hard time remembering too many favorites in particular, a few really stand out, as I kept coming back to them over and over throughout my childhood.

Addie Meets Max - this was a picture book that for some reason, I couldn’t get enough of.  If I remember correctly, it was one of those golden books that you can buy in packets as gifts.  I really cannot remember anything about the story, but I read it over and over as a little kid.

The Barenstein Bears - I would always read these books when I went to my cousin’s house, he had a HUGE collection in his bedroom and we didn’t have any of these at our house, so it was always a treat to go over there and see if he’d received any new Barenstein Bear books that I could read.

The Baby-sitters Club - I was always pretty far ahead of my grade level with my reading, so I probably started reading these way before my time.  In any case, I read them for years.  I thought these girls were just the absolute coolest people ever (that says quite a bit about my social life at that age, doesn’t it) and I wanted to be friends with them desperately.  The next best thing was reading about all their adventures, which I definitely did my fair share of.

Harriet the Spy - Another book that I read SO many times.  As I said in my recent review of this book, I even spent a brief time as a kid writing in my own “spy notebook” and trying to be just like Harriet.

The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank - I was so mesmerized by Anne Frank’s story.  Even when I was very young, I was an extremely empathetic person (at times, TOO much so) and this one always, always, always made me bawl my eyes out at the incredible injustices she had to deal with.  Even so, I loved this book, and still do.

Well that’s about all I can think of for now.  I had a long day at work and my brain can’t think much more tonight.  But tell me… what were YOUR childhood favorites?

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstressby Dai Sijie

From the back cover -

In this enchanting tale about the magic of reading and the wonder of romantic awakening, two hapless city boys are exiled to a remote mountain village for reeducation during China’s infamous Cultural Revolution.  There they meet the daughter of the local tailor and discover a hidden stash of Western classics in Chinese translation.  As they flirt with the seamstress and secretly devour these banned works, they find transit from their grim surroundings to worlds they never imagined.

My thoughts -

I found this book to be just kind of ok.  Honestly, it really dragged for me in the beginning and if it wasn’t so short I don’t think I would have finished it.  But since it’s only 180 pages, I figured I might as well see how it ends.  I really love the concept of this book, and the description made me feel like I would just fall in love with it.  But I think perhaps it just fell flat for me - I didn’t feel close to any of the characters, and the writing style simply did not draw me in the way I need a book to do.  I finally started caring about what happened in the story when I only had about 50 pages to go, so that made it easy to finish up, but for the majority of this novel, I was pretty much underwhelmed.

5 stars.

Read Kimbofo’s review here.

Ok, I was tagged for this one by Trish, so here goes… six random things about me…

1.  I have a group of girlfriends that I’ve been friends with since 7th grade (we are all 23 or 24 now).  We consider each other one anothers’ best friends, although after middle school we went to two different high schools between the six of us, then five different colleges (one of the girls and I went to the same school), and now we live in four different states.  We are still really close friends even though our lives have taken six completely different paths.

2.  I am married, but we don’t have any kids yet and aren’t planning to for at least another 4-5 years.  That said, my younger sister has a 7 month old daughter, and I am basically obsessed with her.  I love my niece like you couldn’t believe.  It’s actually kind of nice that I don’t have kids of my own yet so I can really give her time and attention and spoil the heck out of her.

3.  I put myself through college by waiting tables and bartending.  Working in the restaurant business is crazy like none other, it is some of the most fun I’ve had in my life in addition to some of the most stressful days/nights/hours/minutes of my life.  I’m so glad I don’t have to deal with that kind of unpredictability anymore, but sometimes I really miss doing it and seriously consider getting a part time bartending job just for the heck of it.

4.  I love burritos from Chipotle (if you don’t have Chipotle in your part of the country, I am sad for you).  It is probably my favorite food in the entire world.  I could easily eat one every day and still crave them.  I also like Qdoba but I’m not sure I like it quite as much.

5.  I hate, hate, HATE winter.  I hate snow, I hate ice, I hate any temperature below 45 degrees. I live in Chicago, and if you are from or live near this part of the country, you know that winters are cold, windy, and LONG.  In fact, it’s May 8th as I type this and the temperature was only about 50 degrees today.  I get super depressed in February/March and as soon as it starts to get warm, there is a noticable change in my personality.  My husband and I would one day like to move to Miami (or someplace else equally beautiful and warm) and every winter I just think of the fact that one day, I won’t have to deal with this crap anymore.

6.  I got my bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Sociology, and currently I work as a Personal Banker at a large financial institution.  Not exactly my dream job, or anything even remotely close to what I had planned on doing with my life, but for now it simply pays the bills (and pays them pretty well, too, actually).  Eventually I’d like to go back to school and get my master’s in Social Work, but for now it’s just not economically feasible.

Well now you all know a little bit more about me!  I’ll go ahead and tag a few people for this meme, but if you don’t feel like playing, no hard feelings… I’ll get over it.

Sooo… Teale from Teale’s Meals, Lisa from Books on the Brain, Kristen from Book Club Classics, Sadie-Jean from Sadie-Jean’s Book Blog, and Wendy at caribousmom, consider yourselves tagged!

Here are the rules:

• Link to the person that tagged you
• Post the rules somewhere in your meme
• Write the six random things
• Tag six people in your post
• Let the tagees know they’ve been chosen by leaving a comment on their blog
• Let the tagger know your entry is posted

‘Tis by Frank McCourt

From the book jacket -

Frank lands in New York at age nineteen, in the company of a priest he meets on the boat.  He gets a job at the Biltmore Hotel, where he immediately encounters the vivid hierarchies of this “classless country” and then is drafted into the army and is sent to Germany to train dogs and type reports.  It is Frank’s incomparable voice - his uncanny humor and his astonishing ear for dialogue - that renders these experiences spellbinding.

When Frank returns to America in 1953, he works on the docks, always resisting what everyone tells him, that men and women who have dreamed and toiled for years to get to America should “stick to their own kind” once they arrive.  Somehow, Frank knows that he should be getting an education, and though he left school at fourteen, he talks his way into New York University.  There, he falls in love with the quintessential Yankee, long-legged and blond, and tries to live his dream.  But it is not until he starts to teach - and to write - that Frank finds his place in the world.  The same vulnerable but invincible spirit that captured the hearts of readers in Angela’s Ashes comes of age.

My thoughts -

As many of you probably know, ‘Tis is the sequel to Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt’s first memoir about growing up poor in Ireland.  While I liked this continuation of McCourt’s life, it didn’t come anywhere close to living up to his first memoir.  AA was just amazing, I fell completely in love with that book and reading about McCourt’s family and his life completely captivated me.  With ‘Tis… well not so much with the captivation this time.  I mean, I was definitely interested to find out what happened to him after he left Ireland, so it was especially enjoyable to read about all the good that happened in his life.  And McCourt definitely has a way of writing his life that makes it read like a novel; he can obviously understand and relate to all types of people, which is why he can write the characters in his own life so well.  So this is not a bad memoir, by any means, it’s just difficult to live up to something as magnificent as AA and do as great a job.  Just didn’t quite get there, in my opinion.

6.5 stars.

**To continue with Weekly Geeks, if anyone has read and reviewed this book (or any others that I’ve reviewed, including Speak!) please send me your links and I will post them on this page.**

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

From the back cover -

Melinda Sordino busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so her old friends won’t talk to her, and people she doesn’t know hate her from a distance.  The safest place is to be alone, inside her own head.  But even that’s not safe.  Because there’s something she’s trying not to think about, something about the night of the party that, if she let it in, would blow her carefully constructed disguise to smithereens.  And then she would have to speak the truth.

My thoughts -

Like other bloggers have said about this book in the past, it’s a difficult book to say anything about because the main element to the story is something that’s hidden from the reader from the beginning and not revealed until close to the end of the book.  The great majority of this YA novel consists of Melinda’s thoughts and feelings as she goes through her freshman year of high school a complete outcast.  Obviously, as the summary implies, there’s something very big that caused Melinda to become such an outcast, but this something is a secret she’s keeping from everyone, her old friends, parents, teachers, even her guidance counselor.  Personally, I figured out what that “something” was pretty easily but I have no plans to give it away to anyone who hasn’t read the book yet or wouldn’t be able to guess on their own.  Speak is a very engrossing read, Melinda is a painfully real teenager, and above all else, this is a really great book for teens because I think it portrays the way things can happen in high school very well.  I enjoyed it a lot, and best of all, it’s about 200 pages so I was able to read the entire thing in an afternoon!

9 stars.

Read Trish’s review here, Susan’s review here, Muerta’s review here, Stephanie’s review here, and Becky’s review here.

This week’s topic for Weekly Geeks is, in a nutshell, to display other bloggers’ reviews on your site.  I love this idea because, well for one, it gives everyone more exposure, which I know we all appreciate, and for two, it means you can go to one person’s blog and see several differing opinions of the same book (or maybe several of the same opinions).  I will be accepting links to reviews of books I have read from here on out, just leave me a comment and I’ll edit the post to add your review.

For a list of books I have read this year (since I started bloggin) see the Books Read in 2008 tab at the top.  I’d be happy to add reviews to any post I’ve made thus far.

I’ll also be adding a comment on the sidebar alerting people new to the blog of this excellent and fun policy.

Perfect Match by Jodi Picoult 

From the back cover -

In the course of her everyday work, career-driven assistant district attorney Nina Frost prosecutes child molesters and works determinedly to ensure that a legal system with too many loopholes keeps these criminals behind bars.  But when her own five-year-old son, Nathaniel, is traumatized by a sexual assault, Nina and her husband, Caleb, a quiet and methodical stone mason, are shattered, ripped apart by an enraging sense of helplessness in the face of a futile justice system that Nina knows all too well.  In a heartbeat, Nina’s absolute truths and convictions are turned upside down, and she hurtles toward a plan to exact her own justice for her son - no matter the consequences, whatever the sacrifice.

My thoughts -

Here’s the thing about Picoult books.  They’re not incredibly “literary”, they’re not super well written, and they are actually kind of predictable.  But they always have layered, complex, very real characters, and interesting plots that make you think about your own beliefs while reading.  Also, I am very addicted to these books.  I know that I probably have books on my shelves that are better and that I may enjoy more, but I can’t help picking up a Picoult if I have one sitting on my TBR pile.  Anyways.  On to this particular story.

This novel did satisfy me.  Recently I have read a few of hers that I haven’t been as excited about, but Perfect Match was pretty enjoyable.  I appreciated and liked most of the characters (Caleb didn’t really do it for me, but he’s not too major of a player in the novel), and there was enough suspense to keep me interested until the very last page.  One thing I was happy about in this book is that there were several plot twists that I didn’t see coming.  At least twice throughout the book, I was sure I knew how the rest of the book would turn out, only to have a shocker stuck in there that completely flipped around my ideas about what would happen.  Overall, one of her better novels, in my opinion, and I’m glad I read it, but I am starting to get a little tired of reading her books, I think Natasha is kind of right when she says they are pretty formulaic (I think it was Natasha that said that… maybe not.  Now I can’t remember).

(Don’t worry, I’ll soon be reading and reviewing the other two Picoult books I have on my shelf anyway… I really can’t seem to stay away, I simply gravitate toward them.)

8 stars.

Ok everyone, here is my list of books I’ll be reading for Renay’s Herding Cats challenge.  We are supposed to pick a minimum of 3 books from the HUGE master list, but I’m feeling a bit ambitious so I picked 6.  And here they are:

1. Inkheart - Cornelia Funke

2. The Girls - Lori Lassens

3. Atonement - Ian McEwan

4. I Capture the Castle - Dodie Smith

5. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

6. The Road - Cormac McCarthy

And the best part is, these are all books I’ve had on my shelves already and have been desperately meaning to read.  Nothing like an interesting challenge to kick my reading into gear a little bit!