Graceling

I read both Graceling and Fire last year. I read Graceling in September and Fire in November. I loved them both, and I’m totally bummed that I didn’t get a chance to review them until now, not the least of which is because these reviews will just be a thumbnail sketch of the plot and then me gushing. I know, you’re like And how is that different from your regular reviews? I dunno. Just is.

Anywhoodle, in Katsa’s world, some people are born with a crazy good skill, called a Grace, and those graced with a Grace are generally exploited and sometimes killed. Katsa has the Grace of being an awesome killer, which is totally exploited by the King, and she ends up being his minion, which she hates. She secretly tries to counterbalance the bad stuff she has to do for the King (who is also her uncle), and she hopes one day she won’t have to be the King’s minion and can just do good stuff. Then Katsa meets this guy, Prince Po, who is graced with combat skills, and well, he’s as bad ass as Katsa, and she totally meets her match in him.

I was totally into this book and couldn’t put it down. I loved the world that Cashore created. I’m certifiably cynical, and will sniff out a ridiculous romance and talk about how dumb it is. Sometimes, though, an author can get around my cynicism by, oh, I don’t know, having a love story that doesn’t feel fake and contrived (I know, weird, huh?), and Cashore did this fantastically. Not perfectly, but even my heart of stone got a little weepy at the love story in Graceling.

I totally loved Graceling, and I was really excited to read the prequel, Fire.

Rating: 93 out of 100

Fire

I was stoked to finish Graceling and then start on Fire shortly thereafter because Cashore creates amazing worlds that suck me right in. I don’t normally use other summaries, but I really want you to read this book, and I think this summary from School Library Journal is great:

This fantasy, shot through with romance and suspense, is set in the same world as Graceling (Dial, 2008), but on the far side of the mountain barrier in the kingdom of the Dells. Here there are monsters, enhanced and exceptionally beautiful versions of various animal species. Fire is a human monster, so beautiful that she has to hide her hair for fear of attack by both raptor monsters and human men. She is able to enter other people’s minds and exert power over them. It is a tumultuous time in the kingdom, as various lords are preparing to overthrow the king, and Fire is drawn into the fray. With a larger cast and a more complex canvas than Graceling, the story begins slowly and takes its time establishing itself. Fire’s path is not immediately clear, and although full of action, her quest is largely internal. While the plotting is well done, there are a few quibbles about Cashore’s world-building and about the role of a major character from Graceling, Leck. But, this is Fire’s story, and readers will fall in love with her as she struggles with her pivotal role in the war effort as well as her complex relationships with her oldest friend and lover, Archer; with Prince Brigan, whose mind is closed to her and who becomes central to her life; and with her monster father’s fearsome legacy.

I really loved Fire. I loved going back in the world that Cashore created, and I loved that Fire isn’t exactly a prequel to Graceling, but, as the cover suggest, it’s more of a companion book, with one common character in each book. I was happy that Cashore followed up Graceling with such a fantastic book. Sometimes authors nail their first book, but lose a little of their je ne sais quoi for the second book.

I didn’t like Fire as much as I liked Graceling, though I seem to be in the minority for that. Don’t get me wrong, I totally loved both books, but if I had to choose one to take on a deserted island, I would choose Graceling over Fire.

I’m eagerly awaiting Cashore’s third book, which appears to be about Bitterblue, one of the characters from Graceling. Whenever the book comes out, I’ll be reading it right away, probably in one sitting.

It’s books like Graceling and Fire that remind me what it’s like when reading is fun.

Rating: 90 out of 100

Kristin Cashore’s blog.

Other reviews:

Graceling:

Semicolon

Beth Fish Reads

Bart’s Bookshelf

bookshelves of doom

Fire:

Steph Su Reads

Jen Robinson’s Book Page

At Home With Books

Semicolon

(There’s many, many more reviews, but in the interest of time (mine, of course), I just gave you a sampling.)

Book source: I bought Graceling myself, but I picked up Fire at BEA 2009…I think.

And one more thing? If you click on one of the Graceling or Fire links and buy something from Powell’s, I’ll make a commission! But no one ever does that, so this disclosure is kind of pointless.

The book that I wanted to tell you about this week came recommended from Ann Kingman from Books on the Nightstand, who is a favorite Twitterer of mine (@AnnKingman). I was asking for some great book recommendations for upcoming books and she happened to tackle me and insist I read this book. Unbeknownst to her, I’ve had a fascination with surfing ever since I can remember, so tackling me wasn’t even necessary! (She didn’t really tackle me…but she should have! I’m very ticklish.)

A little background: My older brother is a surfer, and when I was younger, I idolized him and everything he did. Thus, I loved surfing without thought or reason. When I was around 21 years old, I was down in Malibu, California vacationing with a friend, and took a surf lesson from a life guard (who was really freaking hot) I met while down there. He was really nice and gracious, refusing payment since he was technically working, even though the beach was empty. He gave me an hour lesson, during which I spent more time under the water than on top of it, but at least I learned how to swim under a wave. When the lesson was over, we were chatting and drying off, and after about 10 minutes, my nose gushed water. It was as if someone turned on a faucet in my head because there was no warning, my nose didn’t feel weird, nothing. It was just all of a sudden I had a bloody nose, except it wasn’t blood, it was water. He must have seen the look of utter embarrassment on my face because he said, “That’s totally normal. That’s happened to me after I was surfing and then went on a date. We were sitting at a restaurant eating dinner and water just came out of my nose!”

(Sexy! amirite?)

The second time I took a surf lesson I was in Hawaii, and I took it from this Hawaiian lady who was very tough, and who made me feel like an out of shape wuss (which I was) (but swimming in the ocean is HARD).

During that same Hawaii vacation, every morning I was calling the phone number that gave you the surf status. The Triple Crown of Surfing competition was finishing up the week I was in Hawaii, but the surf was too rough for almost all of the days I was there, so the day that I called at 6am to get the surf report and they said the competition would go that day, I jumped out of bed so I wouldn’t miss the Triple Crown. It was so cool to walk onto a beach with everyone focused on one guy in the ocean. I plopped down at the front of the crowd between two professional photographers and watched the surfers tackle huge waves. That is hands down my favorite memory from that trip. I even have the hoodie I bought there that’s never been washed since it still has sand granules from North Shore, where the competition was held.

(I hardly ever wear this hoodie, so I promise it’s not dirty.)

(This hoodie should be a lucky hoodie since I haven’t washed it for TEN YEARS. You know how people don’t wash their lucky shirt or socks or whatever? Yeah, this is kind of like that, except my hoodie isn’t lucky, it just has sand in it that I don’t want to lose.)

So to say I was excited to hear about this book is an understatement. I’m fascinated by waves, surfers, and any stories that involve the two.

The Wave by Susan Casey

Hardcover: 352 pages
Publisher: Doubleday (September 14, 2010)

From Susan Casey, bestselling author of The Devil’s Teeth, an astonishing book about colossal,  ship-swallowing rogue waves and the surfers who seek them out.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100­foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves—from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast.

Like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious.

*waves*

Hi! Remember this feature? Yeah, I’d forgotten about it too until I was digging around in a drafts folder. Whoops! Good thing I found this, because I’d forgotten all about this super cool button. Woot!

Hey, if you have a book club and would like to answer these questions below, send me an email at trish at heylady dot net. If you don’t have a blog, that would be even BETTER.

Today’s book club interview is with my friend Leslie, who I’ve known since high school. Unfortunately, we don’t live very close anymore, but Facebook has kept us in contact and she graciously agreed to answer my questions about her book club!

How long has your book club been in existence?

5 years and I have been a member for 4 years.

Does your book club have a name?

No name.

How many people are in your book club?

6

Is your book club open to new members? How do new members end up in your book club?

It is always open to new members and new members are often friends of the ladies on the book club who are interested in joining our group

When do you meet? Is it a set day every month, or do you work it out so it’s on a different day but convenient for everyone?

We try to meet once a month and often meet on Thursday nights over dinner and drinks or on Sat or Sunday’s around 11am for brunch!

What kind of books do you read?

We have read all sorts of books from bestsellers to the classics

How do you choose books?

We rotate among us whose turn it is to pick. When a new member comes we add them into our rotational list.

Which book generated the best discussion?

Good question, it is hard to pick just one, I would have to say The Red Tent, The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Do you invite authors to join your discussion when you discuss their book? How do you handle having the author in on your discussion if some or all of the members didn’t absolutely love the book?

We have never invited an author or even thought about it.

Do you have one person who moderates the discussion?

No we all just talk about what we liked and didn’t like, etc. We are a very informal book club.

Have you ever had a professional moderator moderate one of your meetings?

No.

How long does the discussion last?

We don’t talk about the book too long, maybe 1/2 hour and then talk girl talk the rest of the time. Again, we are an informal book club.

Do you eat food at your book club meeting?

Yes! We always meet over food and drinks!

How do you decide where the meeting will be held?

We rotate locations based on where we all live so we rotate among Sacramento, Roseville, and El Dorado Hills.

Is there anything else about your book club you’d like to share?

I mentioned our book club is informal and we love it that way. We all enjoy reading and I think this group gives us that and gives us our need for girl talk too!

Previous interviews:
Ti from Book Chatter and her Valencia Library Book Group
Michelle
Kelly from Yannabe and her OPRA Book Club
Heather from A Lifetime of Books and her book club Storie delle Sorrelle

It’s been a year and a half since I last read The Likeness by Tana French. A long year and a half. In that time, only two other books have been as good as The Likeness. In that time, I feared I had built Tana up to something that she couldn’t possibly live up to.

In Faithful Place, Frank Mackey (if you read The Likeness, Frank is Cassie’s boss from when she was doing undercover work) is called back to his old hometown when his brothers find an old suitcase that belonged to Frank’s ex-girlfriend, Rosie, stuffed behind an old fireplace. Back when they were 19, Frank and Rosie were going to run off together, elope and start a life. On the night they were supposed to meet, Rosie never showed up, but when Frank found the note that Rosie left, telling him she didn’t mean to hurt him and hopefully he’d understand, he left that town and hasn’t been back. Now, 22 years later, Frank is back to track down Rosie. He’d always assumed she’d just started a new life without him, but now he has to examine the possibility that maybe Rosie hadn’t meant to stand him up, that she’d wanted to leave with him but someone had stopped her. Going back home isn’t easy. The locals don’t trust him, his family doesn’t trust him, and it’s all Frank can do to stay detached from the drama.

Where to begin in this love fest?

French has an amazing ability to carve out her characters. Frank’s emotions and feelings and memories are so real, that I wanted to take Frank aside and give him a big hug. My heart ached for him as I watched him develop like a polaroid picture. As his history began to take shape, his actions today were understandable.

At one point I thought French was going to break my heart. I started reasoning with myself on why it would be okay if she went in this direction, that I could justify and excuse and rationalize why it was okay that this thing was going to happen. But she didn’t break my heart, she took what I considered to be the harder road, and for that I respected her. She didn’t give Frank this moral ‘out’ that I thought she might.

One of the things that I love about French’s books is that the crime part of them are committed by everyday people. She doesn’t have serial killers or scenarios that would only happen to gang members or ex-Marines. These are regular people living regular lives. This kind of setting makes the novel that much more powerful, as I wonder how someone could have taken another’s life.

I didn’t notice this in The Likeness, but I definitely noticed this in Faithful Place: the use of dialect. It really helped me hear the voices and put myself in their city. Tell me you can’t hear a lovely Irish accent here:

Ah, stop; the poor boy had acne. It went away after. I wasn’t bothered about his skin, anyway; I was just delighted I had my first fella. I was dying to him him home and show him off to all of you, but, sure, you know yourself.

I don’t really know what else to tell you, other than if you haven’t read any of Tana French’s books, or if you’ve read one or two, you should buy this book right now. Do yourself a favor and treat yourself to one of the best books you’ll read this year.

Rating: 98 out of 100

PS I had wanted to have a video ready to post for this review, but I’m having webcam issues. I’ve decided I need to sing a song to Tana French to tell her how much I love her. My only problem is: why are the two webcams I have (one internal one external) not syncing the audio and video? Anyone know? The problem happens with both cameras! GAH!

PPS I drew pictures for this video! With stick figures! And crayons!

Tana French’s website

Tana French will be chatting live online on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 1:30pm at the Penguin Watercooler. I’ll totally be there, pretending not to stalk her.

I don’t mean to be a Debbie Downer with all my heavy and dark books, but those are really my favorite books. The darkness in this one isn’t subtle!

This book was recommended by my friend Michele (@readandbreathe) (I know! I featured one of her book recommendations last week too!). I really really really can’t wait to read it.

Elegies for the Brokenhearted by Christie Hodgen

• Hardcover: 271 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (July 19, 2010)

Pushcart Prize–winner Hodgen (Hello, I Must Be Going) builds a stunning melancholic portrait of damaged Mary Murphy in five elegies for people whose tawdry lives have shaped her own. The taciturn protagonist, growing up in a dying industrial town in the 1980s, is dragged from home to home as her beautiful mother serially marries and treats Mary and her sister, Malinda, like so much luggage. In Mary’s wrenching and unflinching voice, we hear stories of people who eventually abandon her: her mother’s deadbeat brother, Mike, who drives the girls to school in a muscle car named Michelle and disappears one day without a word; Mary’s pathetic schoolmate, Elwood LePoer, who inadvertently connects Mary’s family with a father figure and who pays a stiff price for a naiÌêve act of trust; James Butler, a failed gay composer who Mary believes will connect her with her long-lost sister, and finally, her mother, who serves as the book’s selfish, deluded heart of darkness. Each elegy is a riveting trip into dark and essentially humorless territory made especially worthwhile by Hodgen’s gorgeous prose.