Cal Stephanides, narrator of Middlesex, tells the story of the past three generations of his family. He begins with his grandparents' incestuous escape from war-torn Asia Minor, through his parents' all-American courtship, and then through his own childhood. Cal was born Calliope Helen Stephanides, believed by everyone to be a girl until adolescence began to reveal the truth. Cal intersperses the epic of his family's story with updates on his adult life working for the embassy in Berlin, commenting on the world's view of him, and meeting someone to whom he finally might be able to tell his secret.
I read Middlesex for school. In the past year, I have read five books for fun and eleven for school. If you follow IWMCW regularly, then you've probably noticed... But I actually enjoyed Middlesex and have had to do only a bit of work with it so far, so I haven't yet wrung it out. When I had to pick my novel for summer reading, I was down to this one and Cider House Rules by John Irving. My mom said that she thought I'd really enjoy Jeffrey Eugenides' writing style, so I got Middlesex (also, it was the slightly shorter one).
Cal Stephanides, narrator of Middlesex, tells the story of the past three generations of his family. He begins with his grandparents' incestuous escape from war-torn Asia Minor, through his parents' all-American courtship, and then through his own childhood. Cal was born Calliope Helen Stephanides, believed by everyone to be a girl until adolescence began to reveal the truth. Cal intersperses the epic of his family's story with updates on his adult life working for the embassy in Berlin, commenting on the world's view of him, and meeting someone to whom he finally might be able to tell his secret.
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I remember when this book began to appear in the world; it was published when I was seven. I had friends who read it then or shortly after, and I always meant to read it, too. I didn't acquire it until Christmas 2015, and didn't read it until this month. (I really don't have time for anything anymore.)
Nobody Owens, called Bod, has lived most of his life in a graveyard. After his whole family was murdered by a strange man called Jack, the baby Bod was adopted by a ghost couple and a mysterious person who is neither alive nor dead became his guardian. Bod grows up in the graveyard, befriending the ghosts, discovering ancient and hidden treasure, just avoiding the clutches of ghouls, and making eventual forays into the world of the living. But when he leaves the graveyard, he always finds himself in danger--small dangers, and then the larger danger of the man Jack, who is still out there and looking for him. I'm trying a new thing on my reviews: a read more button! From now on, you'll get to the end of my plot/subject matter description/blurb thing and see that there is no more review. To get to that, click the little teal "Read More" link on the bottom right (I'm annoyed that Weebly won't let me make it more visible...) and see the rest of the review! I'll also implement the button in my old reviews. I'm doing this to make it easier for you to find the reviews you want to see. It's so much broader than looking in tags, but doesn't force anyone to scroll through a huge, great post after determining from the blurb (how I hate that word) that they are really not interested in that particular book. It might also make my site load faster, with less text per page. Let me know in this review's comments how you feel about the button. Does it help you find what you want to see? Does the page load faster? Is it hard to find the button? Do you feel discouraged from reading further? Do let me know!
Now. Onto the book that this is actually about. Since Behemoth is the second book in a series, I'd recommend you check out Leviathan first--the review for context, and the book itself to avoid spoilers. Prince Alek and Deryn Sharp are now aboard the Leviathan together, and they are headed for the Ottoman Empire--Istanbul, specifically. This land at the edge of Asia and Europe has so far stayed out of the war, but can it last? The Clanker Ottomans are furious after a ship promised to them by the British was snatched up before delivery by a nervous Churchill. However, Dr. Barlow claims that her mysterious mission will somehow keep the Ottomans out of the war. Of course, nothing can possibly go that smoothly. From the beginning, diplomatic excursions are plagued by disasters--and there's the small matter of Alek's tutors feeling the need to escape the airship ASAP. Behemoth introduces new places, new people, and new creatures for the next installment of Deryn and Alek's adventures in an alternate WWI universe where countries fight with genetically engineered creatures or huge, moving machines. Despite having read this book for school, I haven't yet had to work on the accompanying assignment, so I've still got the energy to review it!
Ifemelu lives a frustrated life in Nigeria, her college classes constantly cancelled due to strikes. Seeing no end to the tumult, she joins her cousin in America--and discovers race. Suddenly she is black, and that fact has a total effect on her new life. It changes her relationships, her job prospects, the way she relates to her family back in Nigeria. Ifemelu's college boyfriend, Obinze, finds himself struggling to make a life in the UK where, despite his intellectual inclinations, he is forced to work for shipping company after shipping company, never able to stay in one place for long and hoping that his employers never discover his undocumented status. Fifteen years later, Ifemelu prepares to move back to Nigeria, where Obinze has long since returned to live a wealthy, superficial life among corruption and loveless relationships. Over the course of years, Adichie follows the breaking of her protagonists' connection, and the process of trying to reforge it, all amongst the twisted, centuries-old, beautiful, horrifying mess of race in America from the unique perspective of an outsider upon whom this complex burden has been forced without context. Didn't I say I was going to review A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man? Well. When I have to write about a book for school, I tend to feel less inclined to review it after, I find. I'll give you my In Short anyway: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is weird. The internal monologue is insane in a great way; the character evolution is also quite wonderful. It's dense and takes a lot of thinking. It's a straight white guy book, but it's still worth it if you've got the time and energy.
But! Leviathan! I haven't read a good fantasy-ish bit since February (The Lazarus Gate does not quite qualify as "good", I'm afraid). And it hasn't been an adventure since January or so. I've enjoyed everything I've been reading lately but how I have missed this stuff! After his royal parents are killed in Sarajevo, Aleksandar finds himself piloting a mechanical walker through the forest with a small band of men who will tell him nearly nothing, trying to outrun the forces of his own country who pursue him. Meanwhile in England, Deryn Sharp vies for a place in the Air Service, hoping her disguise as a boy will fool all the boffins, middies, and bosuns and keep her in her home, the sky. War is coming to Europe, and tensions between the mechanical-engineering Clanker countries and the bioengineering Darwinist countries are worsening. But aboard the huge airship Leviathan, Darwinist Deryn and Clanker Alek are both pursued by Germans and must ally to save themselves and their countries. Well, okay. I was at Powell's and wandering through the fiction section, and came across this book--I think not even in the right place--on a shelf. It looked interesting, and so I bought it.
Yeah, well. Interesting is one word. I really wanted to like this book. I mean, secret societies, alternate universes, and mysterious pasts? I'd like to read about that! Except it utterly flops when the person doing the writing does it badly. I read it quickly to get it over with, I think. In 1890, Captain John Hardwick is finally released after years of captivity and interrogation in Burma. He returns home to London (in a rather John-Watson style, I noticed), confused and addicted to the opium that his torturers used on him as part of their evil acts. But the hope for a quiet civilian life, possibly as the writer he never was able to become before, is squashed when John receives summons to the Apollonian, a gentleman's club. There, John is informed that the anarchist bombings that have been happening all around London for the past several months are something much more sinister--and John, with his exceptional military skills and the endurance demonstrated during his captivity, must find out the truth and stop the explosions. Jonathan Stroud appeared in the world of books for kids and teens fairly recently, and he's absolutely wonderful, and getting better with each book. His first novel, Buried Fire (1999) sounds great but falls a bit flat. Heroes of the Valley, published while Stroud was in the midst of the Bartimaeus series, is stellar. I find that Stroud's series (Bartimaeus, Lockwood & Co.) feature more interesting main characters who you actually want to spend several books with, and nothing can beat Bart's snark or Lucy's dry teenage cynicism, but Heroes of the Valley is still utterly hilarious, well-written, and all-around delightful.
In a sort of alternate-universe medieval Scandinavia, Halli Sveinsson grows up hearing the tales of the heroes, just like everyone else in the valley has for generations. The time of swords and bravado-filled quests is over, and this now-peaceful land has no need for great men, their feuds, or their weapons. But Halli loves the stories more than most children, which is not advantageous for the House leaders' second son. He spends his days concocting and carrying out tricks and practical jokes on his fellow descendants of Svein. His jokes get more and more outrageous and daring. One cup of bad ale served to the snide, swaggering Ragnar Hakonsson leads to disaster and a quest of revenge. With (the extremely fabulous) Aud of the House of Arne by his side (or sometimes far ahead of him--he's got rather short legs), Halli faces monsters, robbers, and angry villagers, and discovers the valley's ancient secrets. Wow, ladies, gentlemen, and those of you not clearly falling into either category (borrowing that line from Night Vale), it's been nearly a year since In Which Much Concerns Words launched itself into the sky and landed comfortably in the Internet, muttering something about The Apothecary, An Abundance of Katherines, and Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. Now, I've got 37 reviews and counting. Since I don't have a premium Weebly plan-face-thing, I have literally no idea where any of this blog's traffic is coming from, or if it's even real. Who knows--maybe I only think that IWMCW got 95 page views from five unique visitors yesterday, January 1st, and Weebly has been fabricating the data all along. It's kind of a weird experience. I post these reviews blindly. I hope you enjoy them...whoever you are. They're a little more infrequent now, often coming--when they do come--in sets of two or three, due to finished books piling up with reviews not usually possible in my busy schedule. Again, since I don't know where you all are coming from or who you are, I don't know if I have a collection of regulars, but if I do and you are one of them, many many thanks for hanging around and withstanding my weird new reviewing habits. High school is time-consuming.
Yeanyway. This has nothing to do with Mort. Carry on! On the Discworld, a boy is growing up, as they do. His name is Mortimer, known to most as Mort. Ungainly and still not used to his limbs, 16-year-old Mort has a father who is eager to find his son an apprenticeship (A.K.A. getting rid of him). Meanwhile, Death (yes, he of the voice like coffin lids slamming, like crypt stone, like ALL-CAPS) is looking for someone to whom he can pass on the business. It's a perfect match, obviously. And so Mort mounts the white horse of the Grim Reaper and begins his training. But after a solo mission to collect the soul of an assassinated princess goes horribly wrong (due to human feelings), the universe appears to be...unravelling. Reality is having a hard time. And, to make matters worse, Death is out discovering the pleasures of life, and hardly has time for his age-old duties--not even when they are more important than ever! After sitting at the bottom of my to-read stack since last Christmas, I finally decided in November to stop saving this fantasy epic, bound between its misty blue covers, and read it already (after all, it's a book. Books are meant to be read).
I must say I can't remember how I read series when I was in elementary school and series were pretty much all I read. A lot of what I read was Warriors by Erin Hunter, and so I believe that I mostly read through that incredibly long series while slipping in other books when I had something else, and not another Warriors. Anyway, I've been reading series totally broken up in the past few years. Not only that, but I've been reading books by the same author not part of the same series! Shadowmarch here is an example. I'm halfway through Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, and yet I interrupt it with a different story by the same person! Not my favorite thing to do. Good thing I can keep stories straight, or else I'd be a bit confused upon starting To Green Angel Tower Part I. Well, Shadowmarch had to be read, and I am glad. I was excited to see what Williams had done after he'd had some more experience with writing. In a stony keep, surrounded by ocean, royal twins Briony and Barrick Eddon have somehow found themselves in charge of Southmarch. With those who should have ruled before them imprisoned or dead, the teenagers are pressed onto the throne to oversee the troubles of their lands at a time when the lands have never been more troubled. In the very near north, hidden by enchanted mists, the strange fae Qar are stirring. They are no longer content to hide behind the defenses they constructed the last time they tangled with mortals... The centuries of waiting in their cold, gray world are over. They want their old homeland back from the sunlanders. Yet it seems that the Qar are not the only thing that should be worrying Briony and Barrick. Powerful human forces from the south press in, not to mention betrayal from within. Wow. Wow. I finished Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore a month ago, and I'm still amazed.
Clay Jannon used to design the website of NewBagel, a San Francisco startup that made the perfect bagel, based on an algorithm. Shape. Texture. Taste. All perfected with NewBagel's recipe. But then the Recession arrived, taking NewBagel with it. Clay was left to online reading and halfhearted searching for job opportunities in his apartment shared by a movie set designer and an android-like PR professional. One night, Clay walks into Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, a building that, in the front, appears to be an ordinary bookstore. But if you walk into the back room, you discover the towering shelves of books, three stories high, each book with a strange title... Mr. Penumbra, the establishment's elderly, sharp-witted owner, offers Clay a job as a night clerk. Clay soon discovers that the bookstore is even stranger than he was expecting--not many people come to the 24-hour bookstore, and when they do, they belong to a small group of eccentrics who check out the mysterious books on the back shelf. Further investigation and help from his friends and acquaintances, including his middle school best friend Neel Shah (who is now, conveniently, the rich founder of a middleware company) and his new Googler girlfriend Kat Potente, Clay begins to get an idea of what's really going on at the bookstore--or so he thinks. |
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August 2017
AuthorI am Fiona, a 16-year-old person. I write reviews of books that I read. I love reading, writing, spoonerisms, word jokes, accents, In Which chapters, parentheses, long dashes, et ceteras, and acronyms. Categories
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