Skeleton Key

Title: Skeleton Key
Author: Anthony Horowitz
List: #150 on BBC Top 200
Worth reading? Yes, but more for kids.

Skeleton Key is the third Alex Rider book out of nine published to date. I found that this one started off a bit slow (especially because the cliffhanger at the end of the second book was not resolved) but got more exciting towards the end. I definitely think kids will continue to enjoy reading the series. However, I am starting to find Alex Rider's reluctance to become involved in new missions kind of annoying. In all three books, there are scenes where Alex says he will never help MI6 again, but every time he gets involved with another mission or manages to get himself into trouble by performing spy-like acts. While this seemed to work for the first two books, I now think it has gotten old and hope that this isn't a theme repeated for all nine books.

One thing I enjoyed in this book is that an overt reference was made to Alex Rider being like a young James Bond. And with the adventures Alex has, the gadgets he is equipped with, and his reputation becoming known in the criminal underworld, it is very apparent that Anthony Horowitz is writing James Bond for kids. As for my further adventures with Alex Rider, I think they will be put on hold for now. Because the books are available on my local eLibrary, I might order a few when I need a light read, but for now, I'm switching back to books for grown-ups!

Point Blanc

Title: Point Blanc
Author: Anthony Horowitz
List: #105 on BBC Top 200
Worth reading? Yes, but more for kids.

Point Blanc reprises the adventures of fourteen-year-old Alex Rider and takes place only weeks after the previous adventures chronicled in Stormbreaker. Like Stormbreaker, this installment is a great adventure story, with perhaps a bit more daring for our reluctant, but brave, hero. It is sure to keep kids wanting more Alex Rider, and even ends with quite the cliffhanger! I have already started the third book in the series to see what happens next...

Stormbreaker

Title: Stormbreaker
Author: Anthony Horowitz
List: #107 on BBC Top 200
Worth reading? Yes, but more for kids.

I got a Kindle in December. I love that it takes up much less room in my purse on the subway trek to and from work every day and that it works wonderfully for taking multiple books with me when I travel. I don’t like that our local public library has very limited Kindle offerings and that there are ridiculously long hold queues on the books they do have. When a title finally becomes available, I only have three days to download it and can then choose a one, two, or three week lending period. The problem with this is that when I’m happily in the middle of a free Kindle book and one of my holds becomes available, I have to abandon the book I’m reading and start the library book. This complicates my blogging!

Anyway, Stormbreaker became available over the weekend, and I finished it today during lunch. It is pretty short, only 148 pages, and written for a pre-teen or young teen audience. It reminded me a bit of The Hardy Boys or Tom Swift, but is probably more similar to James Bond for kids. The fourteen-year-old hero, Alex Rider, is recruited by MI6 and sent on a mission equipped with kid-appropriate spy gear. And adventures ensue.

In November, I dismissed Artemis Fowl because I didn’t think it was that creative despite the inclusion of fairies, so I feel a little weird praising this book. But somehow I find that Stormbreaker is a better book. It is still geared for children, but doesn’t seem quite as childish as Artemis Fowl, perhaps because it didn’t resort to the gimmicks of crude jokes and fake swearing. Instead, Stormbreaker is more of a straightforward, classic spy tale, though of course on a shorter and less complicated scale. And I think the book is perfect for its audience. I just hope the next two books in the series are as enjoyable because they are also on the list and already downloaded to my Kindle!

The Colour of Magic

Title: The Colour of Magic
Author: Terry Pratchett
List: #93 on BBC Top 100
Worth reading? Maybe.

I’m not quite sure what to say about this book. I am sure that, no matter what I say, the legions of Terry Pratchett fans will not agree with me. It’s not that The Colour of Magic is a bad book. I just think it’s kind of a non-book. I started it. I read it. I finished it. And now I would be perfectly happy never thinking about it again. So I’ll think about it for the next ten minutes and then stop.

Like Good Omens, which Terry Pratchett co-wrote with Neil Gaiman, this book has a wonderfully humorous tone. Terry Pratchett appears not to take himself or his book too seriously. And, in certain circumstances, I think that works. For example, in Good Omens, I loved the tone. I think the difference is that Good Omens had a plot. The Colour of Magic does not.

Instead, the focus of the novel is on the characters. And mostly because they are just outrageous. The main characters are Rincewind, a failed magician, Twoflower, a tourist, and The Luggage, a giant sentient wooden box that sprouts legs and follows his owner Twoflower around no matter where he goes. Sounds promising, right? But alas, it’s really not. They are just kooky characters who meet other kooky characters in their travels and don’t develop or grow in any way. And to all of this there is no point and no plot and no real conclusion. To be fair, there is a vague back plot of the gods playing a dice game where the characters are the pieces in this game, but that doesn’t really lend a cohesiveness to the story. And, again, that is a concept that I think has more potential in theory than in practice.

Maybe the point is that Terry Pratchett is making fun of the fantasy genre? In that case, I’m not quite sure why he wrote a total of 39 books (and counting?) in the Discworld series. Which reminds me, the story takes place on Discworld, a giant disc carried by four giant elephants on the back of a giant turtle traveling through space. And I think the 39 books are tied together because they all take place on Discworld.

In any case, I don’t understand the hype. Maybe this is one fantasy series that I’m just not geeky enough for. Or maybe I’m too geeky and this book isn’t enough of a fantasy? Who knows. But count me among the unconverted. On the bright side, the book was only 285 pages, so I breezed through it! As for reading the other thirteen Discworld books on the BBC list? I don’t know... maybe if they’re the only books off the list available on my local library’s eBook site…

Oliver Twist

Title: Oliver Twist
Author: Charles Dickens
List: #182 on BBC Top 200
Worth reading? Yes!

I have to admit I was getting a little bored with the books on my list. I was yearning for a book with a fast-paced plot and a thrilling adventure. I was not completely sure what to expect from Oliver Twist, but because I generally like Charles Dickens and the story has been dramatized so often, I thought it would be worth opening. And was it ever.

Dickens is widely known as a brilliant storyteller, but I have found that some of his novels tend to have their slow patches where he gets lost in detail and description. Not so with Oliver Twist. Oliver tumbles from one adventure into another and Dickens makes sure the reader shares all of Oliver’s joy, terror, and sadness along the way. At times I found myself laughing, while other times I almost did not want to read on because I could not bear the misfortune that Oliver faced. But unlike other novels (ahem, The Jungle), Oliver Twist is one with a happy ending and one that embraces the concept of good triumphing over evil.

Of course, because this is Dickens, there are lessons to be learned from the novel as well. Or, perhaps more accurately, there were lessons aimed at readers in the 1830s. Dickens expertly employs sarcasm to publicly expose numerous problems of the day, such as the ridiculously inadequate and damaging law providing for the poor, the danger and prevalence of child labor, the widespread problem of homeless orphans in London, and the recruitment of children as criminals. To modern readers, the shocking part is that the things Dickens makes fun of were actually happening.

Oliver Twist is definitely worth the read. It is an absolutely marvelous story expertly rendered by a fantastic author. And it even teaches readers a little bit about London in the first half of the nineteenth century.

The Jungle

Title: The Jungle
Author: Upton Sinclair
List: #45 on Radcliffe’s Top 100 20th Century Novels
Worth reading? Yes.

I think The Jungle is one of those books that everyone who was educated in the United States either heard about or read in high school. I remember it being thoroughly discussed in my American History class as the start of “muckraking” journalism and as the book that led to reforms in the food industry. What I didn’t realize was that, instead of being a journalistic non-fiction account of the Chicago Stockyards, the book is a work of fiction that describes the struggles of a family of Lithuanian immigrants.

The novel starts out on a high happy note describing the whirlwind of commotion that is the wedding of the main character, Jurgis, to his wife, Ona. However, even in that scene of happy tumult, there are signs of stress as Ona worries about the expense of the wedding feast, and the other female family members worry about the guests who came and ate but did not contribute any money to the new couple during the money dance.

After this scene, the author jumps back in time to describe how Jurgis and Ona, with Jurgis’s father and nine of Ona’s family members immigrated to America with hearts full of hope and minds dreaming of comfort and riches. Unfortunately, they soon find that all is not rosy in America because high wages are joined with high prices, and they fall prey to the wiles of con men. Their lack of English and overall illiteracy, as well as a series of bad decisions, contributes to a growing debt that they cannot possibly pay off.

Added to these troubles is their naivety when it comes to the world of the Chicago Stockyards. For example, Jurgis is strong and gets a job almost immediately, and he thinks that this strength will continue and allow him to keep his position. However, he has not reckoned with the practice of “speeding up,” whereby the owners and supervisors insert new, fresh workers into the line to speed up the whole process until everyone works faster and faster and faster. As can be imagined, this practice leads to less careful work, which leads to accidents. Even Jurgis is not infallible and ends up twisting an ankle, which does not heal properly, and which causes him to miss several months of work. And, of course, after that he is much weakened and cannot get his old job back. Not to mention that without his wages, the family sinks even further into debt.

Because they are spread in various jobs throughout the stockyards, Jurgis and his family also learn the other secrets of meatpacking, like the practice of using rotten meat in sausage and canning, distracting inspectors so tubercular beef and pork can be used, using the waste on the floor in meat products, and a variety of other disgusting and unhealthy practices. Everything is geared towards making the most profit for the owners. And if someone in any position of power can get a little extra money, for example when he has an opening and the opportunity to hire someone, he takes it.

And so the family suffers along, and even sending the children to sell newspapers and Jurgis’s sick and elderly father to work does not help their situation. It also doesn’t help that no one gets sufficient nutrition because everything they buy, including milk, get doctored so that the products do not have close to the nutritional content that they should have. And because of all these odds stacked against them, family members start to die of causes that, if there was adequate nutrition or money to pay for doctors, would have been preventable.

The novel is a stunning exposé of conditions in the Chicago Stockyards and the food industry in general. It also reveals the plight of new immigrants to America in the early 20th century and the difficulties they faced in escaping the wiles of con men and companies designed to take advantage of naïve and illiterate immigrants. And as you can probably gather from this description, the wedding scene in the first chapter was the only high note of the novel and everything was gloom and doom from that point forward… until the end, when Jurgis finally discovers a reason to hope. But despite the somber theme, the novel is definitely a must read, if only to understand why we have and need government regulation of the things we depend upon to nourish ourselves.

Memoirs of a Geisha

Title: Memoirs of a Geisha
Author: Arthur Golden
List: #62 on BBC Top 100
Worth Reading? Yes!!

I read this book several years ago, really enjoyed it, and would heartily recommend it. However, it has been too long since I read it for me to write a coherent post, so I asked Scott to write a guest post:

I first read Memoirs of a Geisha in 2005 prior to the release of the movie adaptation. When I decided to re-read it, Natalie asked me to write a guest blog and I happily agreed. If you are not familiar with the plot, this book is about a young girl from a small fishing village in Japan who is sent away to Kyoto to become a geisha. I love this book for many reasons but I would recommend reading it for two.

The story begins in the years leading up to World War Two, in the geisha district of Kyoto. In an age where a society is straddling two identities, one firmly set in tradition and one marching onward into the future, the author is able to effortlessly transport the reader back in time. I have no desire to visit the sprawling cities of Japan today, but when I read Golden’s description of the tea houses and ceremonies, the geisha’s kimonos and superstitions, it is sometimes hard for me to remember that the setting he is describing no longer exists. These descriptions make me long to be able to visit the unspoiled, exotic locations of the book, even though that would require time travel.

At the same time, this book has a foreboding shadow hanging over much of the story. The narrator, Chiyo, is very honest about the time period. As the years pass, peace erodes for the Japanese as the Empire invades China and attacks Pearl Harbor, and as the war in the Pacific proceeds. And although many of these events aren’t told by the characters, in my mind at least the peacefulness presented is somewhat tainted by the knowledge that these events are occurring in history. It is like waiting in the calm before a storm: you want to relax and let your guard down, but you know that something dangerous is lurking around the corner.

The second reason I would recommend reading this book is because of the prose used by the characters. Describing a scene in the geisha district, the main character says, “Among the men in Western style business suits and kimono, several geisha stood out in brilliant coloring just like autumn leaves on the murky water of the river.” This book is full of these little tidbits, each of them conveying the scene perfectly from the perspective of this young uneducated girl who is experiencing life fully.

Some might describe this as a romance novel, or a love story, but I would describe it as a story of growth, exploration, and learning. And I would highly recommend it to anyone.