Kay's Bookshelf

This is a book very hard to sum up in just a few words (there are many subplots, political satire, references to just about anything, and a cast of many bizarre characters). It is, nevertheless, pretty much as any reader of this series has come to expect: a wild ride through a world of strangeness.

As usual though, the details are too funny to be ignored. Such as the translating carbon paper named rossetionery (a reference to the Rosetta stone) and the fact that last year’s Booker speed-writing winner was stripped of his award when he tested positive for Cartlandromin (a reference to the very prolific romance author Barbara Cartland). Some of the politically correct names for various states are also funny, such as (the currently non-existent) Landen being referred to as having “an existence problem“, whereas the dead people are called “spiritually bereft“. My favorite example of such wooden language being the part where the president went missing, so his security people called Thursday and explained her that “We find ourselves in a head-of-state deficit condition” :)

Throughout the series Thursday is very much like Kinsey Milhone from the Alphabet series: resourceful, courageous, and smart. These days I can hardly think of one of them without being instantly reminded of the other. And yet there are parts (in this particular book most of all), when Thursday has another dimension: she is a loving wife and mother. While a bit hard to reconcile with her tough exterior, her new-found side doesn’t diminish her strengths, just makes her all the more interesting. I was a bit disappointed to see that my other female favorite character, Granny Next, was too old in this book to actually do something memorable, but it was nice to see her nevertheless. And Hamlet, well, he is worried about his being perceived by people as a ditherer, but he has trouble making up his mind even when faced with an easy decision like what kind of coffee he wants (“To espresso or to latte, that is the question“). He does nevertheless try to fix this, attending Conflict Resolution classes, but luckily for all of us he realized in the end that people enjoy his play precisely because of his moral issues, not despite them.

Another thing I likes was the light shed over some things mentioned long ago, in Book 1. For example, we finally get to know who the much-mentioned Millon De Floss is (we already knew he was Thursday’s biographer but he makes his first actual appearance in this book). Also in Book 1, Thursday is mentioned to have left a weapon hidden near her own self sometime in the future; in this book we get to witness that particular scene. And, my favorite, there is a reference of a young man seen at Thursday’s wedding (I had to go back and check, the young man is indeed there and he tells Thursday that “If you ever have a son who wants to be in the ChronoGuard, try and dissuade him.“, while both Thursday and Landen thought he looked a bit familiar) — and that young man is now revealed to be a grown-up Friday :)

A quote about BookWorld:

The chaotic nature of the real world that gave us soft undulating hills and random patterns of forest and hedges was replaced within fiction by a landscape that relied on ordered repetitions of the author’s initial description. In the make-believe world where I had made my home, a forest has only eight different trees, a beach five different pebbles, a sky twelve different clouds. A hedgerow repeated itself every eight feet, a mountain range every sixth peak.

Thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most: show spoiler

What I liked least: show spoiler

Recommend it to? This book is the fourth in what I understand to be a series of eight (five books have currently been released, while a sixth is scheduled to be published in January 2011). As such, although I have found the book very enjoyable (my favorite in the series so far), I can only recommend it to people who have read the previous three.

This book is a sequel to:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots

Written by the same author:
Shades of Grey

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Prepare yourselves to be amazed. Mr. Fforde has created a very original world where everything is based on color. While I was somewhat aware of that, having read some reviews previous to reading the book, I was nevertheless very pleasantly surprised to discover the actual thing.

The world has changed after Something That Happened. Even the people have evolved (or rather devolved) into Homo coloribus, people who can see nothing at night and only a certain set of colors by day. According to colortocracy, the highest ranked people are the ones who can see the most colors, for example a Grey (someone with no color sight to speak of) is lower than a Red (someone who can mostly see red, and very little of the rest), who is lower than a Purple (someone who can see lots of red and blue).

The people’s very names are based on this system too, as anyone who can see color gets to pick an appropriate name (like Russet, or deMauve, or McMustard; my favorite name was Floyd Pinken), whereas the Greys have to contend with using their own address as a last name (G-23 or G-8). Even the diseases are treated by showing people certain colors: what we know as doctors are called swatchmen there, and their medicine cabinets have been replaced by swatches of colors. Making me a wee bit dreamy as you have to agree it would simplify seeing a doctor tremendously :)

One of the elements I love in Dystopian books (or other forms of SciFi) is when the author manages to make the reader as familiar with current technology as can be. Mr. Fforde’s ingeniousness has dealt with that very well in this book: the powers that be decide, periodically, to give up some pieces of technology that they deem useless, or subversive, or whatever. The chosen technologies are then Leapbacked, meaning the artifacts are destroyed and no one is allowed to make or use them ever again. The society thus goes backwards and backwards, ending up, at the time the book opens, at a level more or less equivalent, technology-wise, with the beginning of the 20th century. A bit worse actually, since the bicycles have been Leapbacked, the books too, and who knows what else.

The country (world?) is ruled by the Munsell, whose statues are in every village and whose rules are never broken. Everything is constant, from the number of people (carefully guarded) to the shortage of spoons. The rules are incredibly strict, regulating from what outfit can be worn in a certain occasion to the minimum number of meals per day. More on the rules:

“The Word of Munsell was the Rules, and the Rules were the Word of Munsell. They regulated everything we did, and had brought peace to the Collective for nearly four centuries. They were sometimes very odd indeed: The banning of the number that lay between 72 and 74 was a case in point, and no one had ever fully explained why it was forbidden to count sheep, make any new spoons or use acronyms. But they were the Rules—and presumably for some very good reason, although what that might be was not entirely obvious.”

Unsurprisingly, loopholery abounds, people in charge always finding ways to do what they want (usually by declaring some things as being something else; my favorite example is the “chicken is a vegetable” one but there were more).

And the spoons, let’s not forget the spoons. For some reason spoons are missing from the list of items allowed to be manufactured, so the number of spoons is always constant (or even decreasing if we think some may be destroyed, or lost, now and then). So

“Acceptable rules of conduct were suspended when it came to the spoon shortage. The deficit had gotten so bad that prices were all but unaffordable, and dynastic spoon succession had become a matter of considerable interest. Spoons were even postcode engraved and carried on one’s person to eliminate theft, and good table manners, one of the eight pillars upon which the Collective was built, had been relaxed to allow tea to be stirred—shockingly—with the handle of a fork.”

Interestingly enough, although no one can see full scale, color is very important to people. Everything is colored and recolored using pipes with liquid, very expensive colors (colors that can only be obtained from artefacts that have belonged to the Previous, the ones before). And yet, color is going away from the world: everything colored falls prey to the Saturation Dispersion Index (or simply put, is fading). I sort of see a similarity with oil here, as there’s a limited quantity of it, huge yet but still limited, in our world, as are artefacts in theirs, and I thought it a nice touch (and also couldn’t help feeling sorry for those condemned to live in a black and white world after all color is gone).

To speak about the characters a little too (can you see I was head over heels fascinated by the world building?), they too are interesting, most of all by the way they grow throughout the novel. Taking Eddie Russett, he starts out as a naive person, yet with a good heart and always ready to do the right thing. Jane on the other hand is the very opposite: she knows lots of hidden secrets about their seemingly ordered world, and is ready to do anything to reach her purposes (I think I even detected a touch of cruelty in her, given how she treats people who mention her nose). Yet Eddie loves her and gradually she started to grow on me too (not to mention I was so happy to find such an atypical heroine :) )

Thoughts on the ending: show spoiler

What I liked most:
The charm is, as always, in the details. For example I have been wondered for a bit why the people in the book use the word Beigemarket instead of black market. And then it hit me: black is not a color, so it would not exist in a color-ruled world :) (speaking of beige, for the people in the book it is the color equivalent to Hell — I imagine it is so because it is so complete and utterly boring, but I may be wrong).

Other such details I revelled in were (marked as spoilers in case you want to find them for yourself):
show spoiler

What I liked least: I have found nothing to complain about. :)

Recommend it to? Anyone who loves dystopias, anyone interested in quirky worlds. Anyone else should at least give it a try :) (I was bound to say that, I love Fforde in general and I found this book in particular charming).

See also:
Some of the colors featured in the book
Q & A with the author

Written by the same author:
The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten

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From the very moment the book opens (the last day of Egypt as a free country), the characters have fallen a bit flat for me. We get a glimpse of Marc Antony, whom I have rather despised (his last words were about wine? really? I understand he loved wine and horses but this was a bit too much for me), and of Cleopatra (who had too few pages to make any impression on me; she was just there, and then she died, and that was that). Fast-forward eleven months, and there is our first chance to get to know the three children of Cleopatra and Antony’s. We learn that Selene is very talented when it comes to drawing, and Alexander knows a lot about horses. Other than that, they (or at least Alexander) seem to have gotten over their pain at seeing their parents dead and have been transformed into slaves pretty well. The depth of feeling seemed to me lacking all throughout the book, and it probably was one of the reasons I did not enjoy it that much.

Sadly, the fact that I did not resonate with the character affected my relationship with the whole story, because there is very little plot to speak of. Sure, there’s the Red Eagle mystery, but I kept thinking of it more as a tangent to the story, something that didn’t actually affect any of the characters, so I wasn’t particularly drawn into that either. What did give a bit of flavor to the book was the actual historical part: what Octavian did and when, his decisions and the way they affected others, plus the descriptions of Rome in that day and age. It can be said, in a broad sense, that Octavian was the one that made the book worth reading for me (otherwise there were only shopping trips or some other form of entertaining; oh, and Selene’s pining for someone she could never have).

One of my disappointments in the book was the fact that it mostly narrates Selene’s childhood (ages 11-15), a time far less interesting than her adulthood probably was. Even the author mentions, in the afterword, that Selene and her husband had “one of the greatest love stories ever to come out of imperial Rome, and for twenty years they reigned side by side in an extraordinary partnership”; I for one would have loved to know more about that, rather than a few years in the life of a more or less ordinary child.

Speaking of which, sometimes I felt the connection with Cleopatra a bit forced. That was most likely because Selene had no particularity to mark her as Cleopatra’s daughter. She could have been any other child lucky enough to belong to a patrician family. Or so it seemed to me (while she does prefer Egypt to Rome whenever she has the chance, these moments occupied way too little space to actually matter).

It can be argued that at least Selene remained attached to the land of her forefathers. To my surprise that wasn’t the case with her brother, Alexander, who adopted the Roman way in all the aspects of his life. He enjoyed betting on horse races and going to the Circus with his Roman friends, very rarely thinking about his previous life with his mother and father. This may be only an impression of mine, since we only see Alexander through Selene’s life, but I have often wondered how could he adapt so completely to his new way of life (sure, history tells us that Juba did the same, but he was “adopted” by the Romans when he was 4 or 6, not 11 as Alexander was).

I did not yet decide what I think about the fate the author has chosen for little Ptolemy, Selene and Alexander’s brother. There is very little known about him, however there are some historians that state all the three children were at the Triumph, and all three of them were then taken into custody by Octavia. As such, I was a bit surprised to see Ptolemy not being there. I also was surprised to see Antony criticised for sending away Octavia’s daughters with her previous husband, a move clearly intended for the reader to find Rome even more outrageous; however history (or at least some historians) tells us that the two Claudia Marcellas have lived with their mother and Marc Antony for a while, so they were not simply turned away when Octavia remarried.

Thoughts on the ending: I loved the last few pages the most in the entire book. Of course I knew how it was going to end (history tells us who Selene married), and yet there was a surprise twist near the end that I have vastly enjoyed.

What I liked most: The number of real-life characters mentioned in the novel. There are so many people I learned about and I am happy and grateful because of that. (for starters, secondary cast Wiki pages: Juba, Marcellus, Julia, Livia, Tiberius, Vipsania)

What I liked least: Why is the book named Cleopatra’s Daughter yet all throughout the book the name is spelled Kleopatra? There is a mention in the book that the name is spelt thus in Greek — and yet, why should we care about the Greek spelling, since the Cleopatra everyone’s known for all their life is spelt with a C? Or, if it mattered that much to the author, shouldn’t the name have been spelt with a K on the cover too?

Recommend it to? Anyone interested in a historical fiction novel set in ancient Rome. As usual, I seem to be the only one not liking this book so I do recommend it despite my own opinion about it.

See also
Michelle Moran’s website
Michelle Moran’s blog
Places in Rome where Selene has been
Q and A with the author about the book

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The book poses some interesting issues: Can one protect people by forbidding them things? Should one do that? If the answer to the last two questions is yes, how does one draw the line? Do all people want a simple, safe life anyway?

It was fun to notice the fact that all the castaways on the island had names inspired from other books. There’s a little girl names Friday, for example. Her mother is Mrs. Caliban. The facilitator of the island is Ishmael (“Call me Ish“). And many more, some of whose origins I did not identify (but Wikipedia did so there’s a list of them here :) )

There are also some religious allusions related to the island. Ishmael acts as their Messiah in a way (and even has a flock of sheep he lives in the same tent with), complete with wonders (predicting weather by “magic”). Keeping with his role of God, there’s also an apple tree whose fruits he forbids eating. And one of those is given to the Baudelaires by Ink the snake :)

The volume is dedicated to Beatrice (and alas, we finally get to know, without a doubt, who Beatrice is), in a couplet that shows off Lemony’s poetic side (or lack of it): “I cherished, you perished / The world’s been nightmarished.”

The usual warning to the reader:

“In this way, the story of the Baudelaire orphans is like an onion, and if you insist on reading each and every thin, papery layer in A Series of Unfortunate Events, your only reward will be 170 chapters of misery in your library and countless tears in your eyes. Even if you have read the first twelve volumes of the Baudelaires’ story, it is not too late to stop peeling away the layers, and to put this book back on the shelf to wither away while you read something less complicated and overwhelming.”

And with this, here I am, at the end of a series that took me a bit over one year to read through. Am I happy I read it? Yes, definitely, because I enjoyed most of the books and their quirky characters (not to mention Mr. Handler’s writing style plus the way he has chosen to insert an alter-ego of his in the story). Was the conclusion worth all the time spent waiting for it? Um…

Thoughts on the ending: While I loved reading this series all throughout, the ending was somewhat disappointing. show spoiler

Another thing I was less than enthusiastic about is the presence of a chapter fourteen. I remember reading somewhere that the series has thirteen books, each with thirteen chapters, and I thought that was cool. Until very recently when I discover the said chapter fourteen. I know it’s supposed to be the epilogue of the book, but I thought that the 13/13 thing was somewhat cooler.

What I liked most: The fact that the Baudelaires, after having all those guardians over the past few months, now end up being guardians themselves (and they do, of course, a much better job out of it than anyone else present in the series) was a nice touch.

Plus the Incredibly Deadly Viper, the one I was sorry to see go at the end of Book 2, is back :)
Not to mention the fact that the island log is named A Series of Unfortunate Events :)

What I liked least: Dare I say the ending?

Recommend it to? Anyone who has read the previous twelve books and is curious what happens next.

See also:
A Series of Unfortunate Events – the website

This book is a sequel to:
The Bad Beginning
The Reptile Room
The Wide Window
The Miserable Mill
The Austere Academy
The Ersatz Elevator
The Vile Village
The Hostile Hospital
The Carnivorous Carnival
The Slippery Slope
The Grim Grotto
The Penultimate Peril

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Subtitled “How I survived my ex-boyfriend’s wedding with my dignity ever-so-slightly intact”, the premise of the book sounded quite promising (or at least that’s why I remember adding it to the TBR pile). It turned out to be just OK. Nice enough but nothing over the top extraordinary, nothing to remember it by in a few weeks.

I am not certain how I feel about Brooke herself. I cannot pinpoint what I do not like about her (or even if there is something about her that I dislike), and yet somehow she failed to draw me in. Maybe because she was quite superficial. Maybe because she kept bragging about the fabulous places she went to, and how much of a big-time lawyer she is. Maybe because she mentioned her salary more times that I cared to hear, especially as she spent quite a chunk of time not doing her work. I do know though what I did like about her: the fact that she took friends and friendship seriously, both when it came to asking for things (see the book summary for an example) and also when it came to giving time and/or attention herself.

The thing with chick lit (that I noticed in this book too, of course) is that there usually aren’t that many men present. There’s sometimes a current or ex boyfriend, that turns out to be a douche, but other than him there’s just one single man present. Kinda detracting from the suspense since we can instantly deduct that he is the one our “chick” will end with, even if the odds don’t seem favorable at first (a notable exception to this rule is Shannon Hale’s Austenland). While it’s true that no one reads chick lit for suspense, a bit of mystery would definitely not hurt.

A quote that gives an idea of Brooke’s personality and storytelling (one of her quotes that I liked most):

Even though the breakup was difficult, I remained very dignified. Well, not so much dignified as a screaming crying mess. But it’s not as if I embarrassed myself or anything. Unless you’d call throwing yourself at the tails of someone’s suit jacket embarrassing. Which, luckily for me, I do not. We had a very mature conversation, really, if you think about it. I sweetly said, “Please don’t go! Please don’t leave me!” Okay, so maybe I was screaming it at the time, but you get where I was going with that one.

Thoughts on the ending: Happy :)

What I liked most: I thought it was quite cool that the author has been through Law school herself, working in the same field as Brooke does in the book. If I am not mistaken she has even been to one (or more?) ex-boyfriends’ weddings :)

What I liked least: While Brenda was supposed to be this glitzy but likable character (and most of the time she pulled it off), her ceaseless babble about billable hours begun to annoy me after a while. I am of course aware that this happens somewhere near the beginning and that Brenda is supposed to be immature then (so she’ll have room to grow throughout the book), and yet her mentioning money that often didn’t exactly endear her to me (least favorite quote: “I had a wonderful family and friends. And I volunteered at a nursing home, to boot! Sometimes I forgot how wonderful I truly was. Although, I hadn’t really had time to volunteer much, what with my caseload and all. And that sort of thing isn’t billable.“).

Recommend it to? Anyone who likes books on the fluffy side of chick lit. A light and easy read.

See also
Brenda Janowitz’s website


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Popularity: 6% [?]

I added this book to my TBR after having read somewhere it’s “like Twilight with wolves” (I am one of the seemingly few bookish people who actually loved Twilight). I started reading with this comparison in my head and I couldn’t help noticing there were indeed a few similarities: like Bella, Grace is seventeen, enjoys doing homework and cooking, has parents mostly absent from her life, develops a rather unhealthy obsession for something non-human and even deep down wishes she’d become “one of them”; like Edward, Sam begrudges the change that has been inflicted upon him, writes music and plays an instrument, and, of course, is so head over heels in love with Grace it sometimes seems like she’s the only important thing in his life.

It seems so clear-cut, but I was surprised to discover that what worked for me in Twilight didn’t work as well here. The heroine-meets-hero part, for example. When reading Twilight I thought it very natural for a teenage girl to meet an intriguing boy in school; however I found it a lot harder to relate with a younger girl being dragged off her swing by wolves, bitten, and sort of falling in love with one of them. It is actually a bit amusing how I can suspend disbelief enough to believe in werewolves, but it seems I have a tough time believing a girl stolen and almost eaten by wolves wouldn’t remain pathologically afraid of them for life. And to think that instead of that Grace sleeps with a sweater smelling of wolf instead of a pillow!

Another such thing was that when Bella wanted to become a vampire, I didn’t have trouble at all comprehending that. She stood to gain eternal life, eternal youth and superhuman strength, what was there not to like :) However when Grace thinks the same about becoming a werewolf, I could only wonder “how stupid of her”: obsession with wolves or not, their life was anything but easy, with no visible perks — why would anyone actually want that? I get it that she was enamoured with the very idea of wolfishness (plus Sam), and yet… it just didn’t work for me.

Even the book structure is similar to Twilight’s: that is, the majority of the book is dedicated to the love story developing. A part which, I am sorry to say, I didn’t much enjoy, because, as the said love story did not seem at all believable to me, it felt like I had to plough through pages and pages of manifestations that looked exaggerated and lacking a motivation. Luckily for me, there was an extra element, and that made the action pick up in the last hundred pages of so. It was a complete switch for me, as I went from not caring about the characters to being both interested in their welfare and finding it hard to put the book down out because I just had to know what happened next.

Despite my take on the feelings between the characters, I have very much appreciated the new take on werewolves the author came up with: the fact that they change involuntarily, according to temperature was a completely new idea for me, and I liked it because of that. I also liked the science/magic debate, as I am a believer in the fact that a lot of what may be considered magic is actually explainable by science (only the said science may be not that advanced yet), so I very much enjoyed the fact that the characters considered this point of view too.

As for the characters, once again the fact that the premise of the story didn’t work for me shows, as the hero and heroine are mostly defined by their feelings to one another, so a great chunk of “them” was missing for me. I found Grace to be everything people said Bella was: a Mary Sue, with not that much of a personality outside her obsession for wolves (her personality is described as scientific and lacking people reading skills, but I have not found any actual reflection of these traits in her actions; then again, perhaps I just wasn’t looking hard enough, since I didn’t care that much about her). Sam on the other hand is a rather promising character, and I liked the way he analyzed the difference between human feelings and the ones he had in wolf form, and also his attachment to poetry; and yet there were some details that bothered me, not allowing me to fully like him. Some characters I did like were Beck (because he seemed always in control) and Isabel (because she turned out to be a lot more than the spoiled brat she seemed to be in the beginning) — both these were flawed, and yet likable, and I was happy to discover non-2D supporting characters :)

My happiness stops though when it comes to Grace’s parents: I found them to be a plot device rather hard to swallow, because they, both of them, acted more like careless teenagers than parents of a seventeen years old (including the mother once wondering what is that thing in the fridge — namely a pork loin that Grace planned to cook the next day; does a forty year old adult who doesn’t recognize a piece of meat when she sees it seems that believable to you?). While I could understand the fact that they may be busy with work, I find it hard to believe they never checked out on their child when they came back at night — Sam manages to live in Grace’s house for weeks before anyone noticed him. Why didn’t the author just say the parents have left on a trip or something? Speaking of non-working plot devices, another thing I had trouble believing was the fact that an 11-year old would die of overheating because she had been forgotten locked in the car. At 11 one should be able at least to open a car door, right?

Despite my (lots and lots of) complaints, the writing is very good, being able to evoke powerful images at times. A few quotes I liked (sort of random, because I liked so many of them):

“I was suddenly struck by how dissimilar we were. It occurred to me that if Grace and I were objects, she would be an elaborate digital clock, synced up with the World Clock in London with technical perfection, and I’d be a snow globe—shaken memories in a glass ball.”

“Some days seem to fit together like a stained glass window. A hundred little pieces of different color and mood that, when combined, create a complete picture.”

Thoughts on the ending: Wonderful :)
Sure, it was quite predictable, but nevertheless I loved the way it was written.

What I liked most: While I have already complained about most of the premises, there are nevertheless some details that I have liked.

The title for one. I think it is simply perfect for this book: a book of cold weather that our characters desperately try to avoid and yet keeps seeping in at the worst possible moments. The author’s descriptions of cold are at times so powerful that the reader him/herself can almost feel it. Plus a shiver is also a manifestation of shock — and the book contains quite a bit of these too.

The lyrics Sam kept writing, for another. There are many of them; my favorites were “You’re my change of skin / my summer-winter-fall / I spring to follow you“.

What I liked least: did Sam have to sound so happy when he mentioned eating bunnies? Why didn’t he at least say rabbits? I do know wolves too have to eat and so on, but I could have done without having the fact that they eat “bunnies” rubbed in repeatedly.

Recommend it to? This is probably going to seem like a contradiction after everything that I have written above, but I do recommend every young adult lover to at least give this a try. My reason? There is an incredible number of people who totally adore it, a clear sign you never know how someone might view a book until that someone gives it a try :)
Currently 4.10 average rating on Goodreads.

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