Book Review: The Lace Reader

The Lace Reader

By Brunonia Barry

385 pages

Oh, Brunonia, you have a strange, strange name and perhaps an even stranger story. But I like it. I picked up this book because it was the chosen one for this month at the township library book club (which I've been wanting to join last month, but I completely missed the meeting in April). I made it this month though! And what a fine group of ladies...I'll come back to them...let's talk about the book first.

The first lines of the book draws you right into the story:

My name is Towner Whitney. No, that's not exactly true. My real first name is Sophya. Never believe me. I lie all the time.

This opening paragraph ends up being SO important to the story because by the end, most of it is a lie. Towner grew up in Salem, Massachusetts, where her Aunt Eva lived, and just off the coast of Salem on Yellow Dog Island, where her mother May and Aunt Emma lived and worked a shelter for battered women and children. All the Whitney women were Seers, or psychics who could read the future in a piece of lace. She spent her life going between the her Aunt Eva's place in Salem and Yellow Dog Island, but when her twin sister committed suicide and her Aunt Emma's husband, Cal, beat Emma so badly that she ended up brain damaged, Towner ended up in the psychiatric hospital and opted to undergo shock therapy. Once released, she opted to get as far away from Salem as she could and headed off to California. She then returned to Salem when she found out that her Aunt Eva was missing. Towner was forced to remember the past and see the future once again, which she had been trying so hard not to do.

The ending of this book hits you like a ton of bricks. I never saw it coming!! Of course, looking back, I realize that there were little clues all the way through the book. This would be a good one to reread knowing the ending because you could pick up on all the little pieces that you missed the first time around.

This was a really fun book for a book club. Everyone had different opinions about it and being able to discuss everything that happened in this book in particular helped to piece it all together. I walked into book club really liking this book, and I walked out liking it even more because everything that didn't make sense before, suddenly made a lot more sense. Everyone seemed to pick up different tidbits of info from throughout the story and it really made everything come together nicely. I'm definitely going to be going to this book club next month and not just because there are cookies (really good cookies at that) but because it was really fun, and the next book is Persepolis, which is a graphic novel and I've been wanting to try out reading a graphic novel for a while now.

So The Lace Reader gets an 8.5 out of 10 from me. It was exciting, thought provoking, and had a lot of twists and turns that really had me guessing.

BTT: A Second First Time

I've been totally slacking in blog-world lately (but really doing a lot around work and the house!) so I'm going to do this week's BTT and last week's just to make up a little :)

5/21/09: What book would you love to be able to read again for the first time?

This one's kind of a tough question! One obvious one would be To Kill a Mockingbird. It is just such a fantastic book that I'd love to be able to read it for the first time again, not knowing how it was going to end. I'd also like to read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time again because I was young and innocent, and saw it for an awesome adventure, not for all the symbolism. More recently, I would love to be able to read Outlander for the first time once again. The main characters, Jamie and Claire, just pull you into the story and I'd like to experience falling in love with them all over again! (Lucky for me I still have books 4, 5, 6 left to read!!)

5/14/09: Book Gluttony! Are your eyes bigger than your book belly? Do you have a habit of buying up books far quicker than you could possibly read them? Have you had to curb your book buying habits until you can catch up with yourself? Or are you a controlled buyer, only purchasing books when you have run out of things to read?

Ugh, yes! A thousand times yes! I have so many books piled up around the house that I'm excited to read but there's only so much time in the day. And lately, that reading time has been less and less since the weather has been nice enough to do some work to the outside of our house. I have a really bad habit of buying new books when I find ones at book sales, garage sales, or the bargain section of the bookstore. Just last week I had an extra 15% off coupon for B&N and of course I couldn't let that go to waste! (even though my husband was sitting there going "Don't you have enough books to read???")

I have really been trying to curb the book buying for a while so I can get a little more caught up on the books that I have, but then PBS is there saying that books are available from my wishlist and I have 8 credits just burning a whole in my pocket! Oh, what's a girl to do!? Maybe I could quit my job and read for a living?? haha...well, maybe not...

Teaser Tuesday: The Lace Reader

• Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
  
  
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My Teaser for today:

I don't want to tell her about the voices.
"She knew I was coming," I say. "I'm pretty sure."
Ann considers. "Well," she says, "Eva was a reader. She knew a lot of things, didn't she?"
From page 213 of The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry.

**Don't forget about my book giveaway!**

A week late-a review and giveaway!

So I was supposed to post this LAST Monday, but unfortunately life got in the way and I didn't even finish this book until late, late Saturday night (as in two days ago). I don't remember the last time it took me that long to finish a book that was just over 300 pages! But this past week was so busy that I went two, three days in a row without reading! That's just unheard of for me. But, without further ado, here's my review:






Enduring Justice
by Amy Wallace
313 pages



Official Summary:
In Enduring Justice, Hanna Kessler’s childhood secret has remained buried for over two decades. But when the dark shadows of her past threaten to destroy those she loves, Hanna must face the summer that changed her life and the man who still haunts her thoughts.

Crimes Against Children FBI Agent, Michael Parker knows what it means to get knocked down. And when the system fails and a white supremacist is set free, Michael’s drive for retribution eclipses all else.

A racist’s well-planned assault forces Hanna and Michael to decide between executing vengeance and pursuing justice. When the attack turns personal, is healing still possible?

This thought-provoking novel deals with healing from sexual abuse, the balance of justice and mercy, and maintaining mixed-race friendships in the midst of racial tension. Readers who enjoy investigative thrillers by Dee Henderson, Colleen Coble, and Catherine Coulter, and who watch crime dramas like Law & Order: SVU, Criminal Minds, and Without a Trace will love this book—and the entire series.



My thoughts:



This book definitely had a lot going on. There was a lot of action, some technical FBI-style jargon to keep it real, and a lot of emotion coming from the characters. The characters themselves, well first, there were a LOT of them. Lots and lots of characters which I think would have been much easier to keep track of if I would have been able to read this book in a few days, rather than over an expanse of 7 or 8. But it was fairly easy to get them all straight again once I got back into it.

Different sections of the book were written in the point of view of three of the major characters. This was kind of interesting because you got the POV of Hannah, the woman surrounded by FBI guys her whole life who gets the sacrifices they make for the job, but who can't quite understand why, Michael, the FBI guy just trying to find some justice in the world, and Sean, the white supremacist. Switching the POVs ended up being a really good tool for Amy Wallace to use to create several different story lines, get the reader invested into each one, then bring them together at the end.

I felt like the back story to the characters was really important, but very slow to come out. I think that I would have liked to have known more about the past of the three main characters in larger chunks. For example, Sean kept referring to his father and finishing what he had started but then you'd only get a little snippet of what his father had done, then maybe another little snippet a couple chapters later. The same went for Hannah and Michael's past relationship, how they met, and what had happened between them. I feel like I would have liked to know MORE! But, regardless, I did find myself really rooting for Hannah and Michael, and hoping the Sean got caught sooner rather than later.

What I didn't know when I read the summary of this book was that there was going to be a Christian theme to it, which is something that I really don't normally read. I lot of times, I feel like they can tend to get a little preachy. But, this one really wasn't at all. There were several mentions of God, and praying, but it was pretty much all things that I could expect in any storyline involving a character dealing with the intense stuff in this book. So, it ended up being a good reminder of how difficult it can sometimes be to "keep the faith" and believe that everything will come out right and that justice will prevail, and sometimes things are just out of your own hands. It definitely didn't come off as preachy, and really most of what was mentioned could be applied to any religious background since you don't have to be any particular religion to have faith or pray that things will work out. (I guess the only exceptions in this book being a mention of a christian singer and Veggietales, but hey, can't blame someone for a pop-culture reference).

Overall, I'd give this book 7 out of 10 stars. I know there are certain people that I would recommend it to, and others that I probably won't. But, it was a good read especially if you are into to crime-FBI style dramas.

Now, I'm giving away a copy of the book Enduring Justice by Amy Wallace! Just leave a comment for this post for one entry, follow this blog for an extra entry, or blog about this giveaway in your blog for another entry (please post extra entries in the comments as well)! Contest ends Friday at 4pm EST. Thanks all!!

And if you don't win the book, you can find it here.

Bad Blogger Reading Recap

Hey! I'm alive!!! I haven't posted reviews in SO long and have been a bad, bad book blogger, but I hope to get back on track this week with these two catch-up reviews today, a catch-up Musing Mondays in a few minutes, and another review (and giveaway!) later this week! So, watch out for that, since it's my first. :) ooooh, I'm a giveaway virgin! Anyways, on to the reviewin'.




A Wrinkle in Time
by Madeleine L'Engle
203 pages
Juvenile Fiction

I first read this book when I was in 6th grade and I HATED it. Ugh, I can still remember the angst of having to talk about this book and right a report on it when I just loathed it. I don't remember what I was interested in reading at that time in my life, but this book definitely wasn't it. So, when the challenge category of reading a book with The Nest Book Club and participate in the monthly discussion came up, and this was the chosen April book, I for some reason decided that it would be a good idea to read it again because there's a chance that I was just an angst-filled 6th grader who didn't see the wonderful qualities in this book...but then again, it really could just not be my cup of tea.

Unfortunately, it ended up being the latter. I guess that I didn't really hate it as much as my 6th grade self did, but I definitely didn't enjoy it. And, if I would have remembered the ending more clearly, I probably wouldn't have finished it this time around. But, I stuck with it, and was still pretty unimpressed.

The story begins with Meg, a typical, awkward 14 year old girl whose parents are scientists and little brother is "weird" but really is some ahead-of-our-time genius. Meg does poorly in school, even though she's really quite bright, and basically complains a lot about how she's a misfit, awkward, etc. Meg's father has been gone for a few years now doing some top-secret science thing and Meg complains about missing him a lot too. One night, her little brother meets a weird lady named Mrs. Whatsit, and her friends Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which. The three Mrs. tesser (AKA travel through physical space very quickly) Meg and her brother to another planet which is being overrun with evil (a dark cloud around the planet) to find and save her father. Evil-ness occurs, Meg whines, Father is saved, and everyone arrives back at home without making a very big impact on the huge evil.

The one good part about reading this as an adult would be that now I know why I don't care for it. First, I just wasn't interested in Meg figuring things out and defeating evil. I was annoyed by her character's seemingly constant whining and complaining about things that she could change if she just put a little work and effort into it. The other thing that kind of bothered me was that this was a very sci-fi themed book with references to mind reading and control, time and space warping, and rearranging particles yet there were several references to God not just by the Earth people, but by the creatures from other planets. To me, this just didn't really fit because it was basically insinuating that everyone has the same God, when even solely here on Earth, that isn't necessarily the case. The religious God references just didn't quite seem to fit into the theme of the book, in my opinion. I would read a line mentioning religion or God and just think to myself, "huh, that seemed a little out of left field..."

So, I have to give A Wrinkle in Time redo a 4 out of 10. I didn't like it (again) but I'm pretty sure that my sixth grade self would have given it a 0 or 1, so it's a slight improvement over that. I just hope that my someday children won't have to read it...there's definitely better things out there.







Voyager
Book 3 of the Outlander Series
by Diana Gabaldon
870 pages



Ahhhhh, now THIS is more like it!!! After dragging myself through A Wrinkle in Time, a bit of time with Claire and Jamie was JUST what I needed. Voyager picks up where Dragonfly In Amber leaves off. Claire is in Scotland with her daughter, Brianna, and has just discovered that Jamie did not die in the battle at Culloden. She decides that she will find where he ended up with the help of Bree and Roger, and may be able to return to him. The first part of the book alternates between Claire talking about their research to find Jamie's whereabouts after the battle and Jamie actually getting away from the battle alive and what all he is going through. I loved this part because I just ACHED for the both of them. I mean, Jamie knew that Claire was gone and really, he wanted to die at that battle, he really was planning on dying! So they are both just going through life knowing that they will never see their true love again. So. Sad.

Anyways, Claire finally finds where Jamie is at approximately 1768 (since the rocks took her back almost 200 years exactly) and decides to go and find him. I stayed up until well past my bedtime reading this section because I just had to see them reunited!!! And, I almost squee'd out loud when Claire walked into his printing shop and he FAINTED at the sight of her (and I would have squee'd had my husband not been next to me sleeping). Ah, true love! Reunited! And it feels SO good! but of course, the good cannot last because Jamie is always into something not-quite-legal...and this causes Claire to accept Jamie as the man he is now, for the sake of the man she once knew and they embark on a crazy adventure from Scotland all the way to West Indies.

Throughout it all there's love, passion, adventure, and a bit of humor and I just can't get enough! 10 out of 10 stars. Better than Dragonfly in Amber by a smidgen since the newlywed type passion was back.

BTT: When a loved one betrays you...

Which is worse?
Finding a book you love and then hating everything else you try by that author, or reading a completely disappointing book by an author that you love?

Reading a book that sucks from an author you LOVE is the worst by far!! It takes me a long time to determine whether or not I truly love an author mostly because when I find a book that I like, I'm not one to go out searching for everything else that author has written, it takes time for me to decide to read more of their books. I definitely don't think that if one book is good, the rest of an author's books will be good as well. I mean, a good book could just be a fluke or a one-time-idea kind of thing right?

But, when I do find an author that I love and I have read a lot of stuff from (and enjoyed it all) then I wait impatiently for their next book to come out and then....It SUCKS! there's nothing more disappointing than that. My prime example: Stephenie Meyer. Okay I wouldn't say that she's a GOOD writer or that I really love her, but I really enjoyed the first three books of the Twilight series. But Breaking Dawn...UGH. Awful. Horrible. This can't possibly be the build-up-to-nothing final ending to this series can it?! Blech. I have The Host sitting on my nightstand, waiting to be read, so we'll see how adventures in Meyer-land go with something non-Twilight sometime soon.

PS I'm a bad blogger as of late and have two reviews that I need to write! Hopefully I'll be on it tomorrow...

Musing Monday: Non-fiction preferences

Musing Mondays is hosted by Rebecca.

Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about reading non-fiction…

Do you read non-fiction regularly? Do you read it in a different way or place than you read fiction? (question courtesy of Diane)

I would say that probably about 75% of all the books that I read are fiction. I'm not really a huge non-fiction reader. When I do read non-fiction, it's usually memoirs or the occasional book of science-related essays or studies which I find interesting enough or reads like fiction enough that I really don't change my reading habits too much. If anything, I probably just read in bed for a little less time than I might with a work of fiction that has me drawn in.

Review: The Road

The Road

by Cormac McCarthy

287 pages

This book was kind of creepy. Like the part in the beginning of 28 Days Later, before the infected people come out, where the guy is wandering around and there is NO ONE there and everything is deserted and just CREEPY. Yup, it's like that.

So a man and his son (young-ish...maybe 8 or 9? the age is never disclosed) are traveling through the now deserted and covered with ash remnants of America. There's little food, no government, very few people of which most are BAD, and you have no idea what happened. The whole story is just the man and his son trying to find food, shelter, and warmth while avoiding the bad people (who happen to be cannibals because ya know, cows are extinct).

I don't really have a ton to say about this book. I suppose that I kind of liked it. The writing was good (really good actually) and I felt for the man and his son because their situation was just so sad, but it was just so darn CREEPY! Maybe I feel this way because I don't think that it completely out of the realm of possibility that America may some day, with all its ego and pride, burn itself down to a bunch of empty abandoned houses and ash over everything? hmmm...maybe....either way, still just creeps me out! But, I'd probably recommend it to someone who didn't mind if a story had a very sad with a little teeny tiny glimmer of hope ending.

7 out of 10 stars. I wouldn't read it again necessarily, but it was worth the one read.

P.S. I heard that this is going to be made into a movie. BLECH. what a dumb idea! The movie would either have to make up things that weren't in the book to explain what happened to America (because in a book you can be all shrouded in mystery, but not so much in a movie) or it's just going to be a really boring, dark movie of a man and his son traveling down a road and seeing depressing, sad things.

P.P.S. Yes, I need a thesaurus to find a different word for CREEPY. ah well. That's just what it is!

BTT: Where's the symbolism?!

This week:

Question suggested by Barbara H:
My husband is not an avid reader, and he used to get very frustrated in college when teachers would insist discussing symbolism in a literary work when there didn’t seem to him to be any. He felt that writers often just wrote the story for the story’s sake and other people read symbolism into it.
It does seem like modern fiction just “tells the story” without much symbolism. Is symbolism an older literary device, like excessive description, that is not used much any more? Do you think there was as much symbolism as English teachers seemed to think? What are some examples of symbolism from your reading?

Ugh, symbolism. I think that my senior year English Lit teacher, Ms. Rose (yes, Ms. not Miss, not Mrs., MS.!) totally ruined the idea of symbolism for me. She would make us over-analyze every book we read and "find the SYM-bolism!" and then if you were "wrong" should would let you know it with a loud, harsh "NO! That's not it AT ALL!" I think I still have nightmares...Usually I could luck out and go with the easy almost always right answer of light=knowledge, understanding and dark=the unknown, confusion.

I do think that most literature tends to be over-analyzed in hopes of finding all the symbolism. I guess that since now I solely read for pleasure (and of course I gain knowledge through it...but that's not my reasoning behind reading something), I don't even think about finding the symbolism in a book. I'm sure that there's lots there (some that the author put in intentionally, and probably some that the lit crits just SAY is there...) but I just don't need to find it to enjoy the story. I do get some "wow, author, I see what you did there!" moments when I'm reading, but I just don't really go into deep thought about it.

Musing Mondays: Third of the Way Favorites

Hosted by Rebecca. This week's question is:

Coming towards the end of April, we’re a third of the way through the year. What’s the favourite book you’ve read so far in 2009? What about your least favourite? (question courtesy of MizB)

Good question! I just finished my 25th book of the year last night, so I have quite a few to choose from (and I may have to up my 50 books in '09 challenge to 75 at this rate!). My least favorite book so far this year is easier to decide on than most favorite. My least favorite book that I read so far this year is definitely The Shack by P. William Young. I know this book has been at the top of the NYT bestseller list forEVER, but that does not a good book make. The writing was sub-par and at times came across as preachy or cheesy, and while it COULD have been good and there could be a good message in it, I just didn't really enjoy it.

The best book I've read so far...well I can't really narrow it down to one. They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky was the one that I most recently finished and I thought that it was FAN-tastic. I loved it. I'm giving it to my mom this weekend for her to read. Another favorite book of this year is Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. It had action, adventure, romance...just a little bit of everything, and kept me wanting more the entire way. I'll be starting the third book in this series next and I can hardly wait! (Oh, and I gave Outlander to my mom too and she loves it as well. She's the person that I trade books with the most.)