Back from the land of no internet

I hate moving.

Anyone else with me here?

Sorry to start out on such a downer, but can I get a Heck Yea on that one? Let's just say a week and a half spent moving to the Middle of Nowhere* with toddler in tow and not getting internet set up until a week later is enough to leave me with the shakes. Turns out when you live in The Boonies* you have to bribe the service technician with homemade oatmeal coconut cookies just to get him to drive the 45 minutes to come and install a DSL modem. Who knew? But it's all good now - we are settled, I have internet (YAY!), and with all that free (internet free, that is) time, I made a real dent in my TBR pile. All very good things.

Thanks so much to Holly (isn't she just great?!) for holding down the fort over the last week and for all those who made her feel welcome - I know I've added both The Bride's Farewell and The Lost Conspiracy to my TBR pile *sigh* Thank again!!

* Don't believe me? Think I'm exaggerating? Well, here's picture proof. I give you: The View from my Backyard:

The Elusive Question: What to Read Next

Holly here!

Have you ever felt like you would have had a completely different reaction to a book if you’d read it after a different book? Just a few months ago I had a relatively unfamiliar and unpleasant experience with one said decision. This summer I read the The Actor and the Housewife by Shannon Hale and I had a very strong and unfavorable reaction to it. Thinking any book I was giddily looking forward to would both restore my loss of book-faith and placate my usual need for a compelling read, I eagerly followed it up with Fire by Kristin Cashore, a read I’d highly been anticipating since reading Graceling last year. Though undeniably well-written and better than its predecessor, I found myself nick-picking and being easily offended by elements of the story and characters that normally wouldn’t faze me. (FYI loyal readers: Michelle saw it more clearly than I did and LOVED it.)













So I’m tempted to think that my dissatisfaction with Fire was just a coincidence, but the fact that I remained so unsettled after only a book’s length away from The Actor and the Housewife definitely smelled fishy to me. Realizing my mistake, I immediately sought to remedy the situation by sitting down and seriously pondering not which title from my TBR pile I was most anxious to get to next, but what kind of story I really needed in the fickle, jaded reading mood I was in. And the descriptions which emerged surprised me. Happy Ever After, sweet, predictable; even fluffy. Luckily I knew exactly which slightly (and cozily) formulaic author would fit the bill. After studying in Oxford, traveling to the Amazon, performing Swan Lake and falling in love with the dark and mysterious Rom, Eva Ibbotson’s A Company of Swans successfully brought me out of my funk.
Anyone else have a similar harrowing but happy-ending book choice they'd like to share? How do you go about deciding which book you should read next, particularly after an especially brilliant or glaringly awful read?

The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge

Holly here again!

Have I said I love my job? Besides working for and amongst the love and hobby of my life right now – books - I’m surrounded by coworkers that are also avid book readers. What this also means is that I have the privilege of hearing about excellent books that I never would’ve otherwise. So when the children’s librarian claims a book to be the best she’s read all year (and she’s read a lot of good ones), you better listen. Because The Lost Conspiracy is just one of those under-the-radar books that deserves any hype and shout-outs it can get.

The Lost are special, rare people who are born with the ability to send their senses away from their body, like dust carried by the wind. They essentially control Gullstruck; bringing tributes to towns and acting as the communication network for the volcano-laden island.

The Lace are the native brown-skinned islanders of Gullstruck. Decades ago when the Calvalcaste invaded the island, claimed it as a sanctuary for the ashes of their dead, and built cities on top of their sacred temples, the Lace fought back by human-sacrificing the colonizers. As punishment they were banished to the Coast and the Caves of the Hollow Beasts where food was scarce and shelter from the daily jungle rains was negligible.

Twelve-year-old Hathin is the invisible attendant to her sister, the Lady Lost Arilou. Though Arilou, as the only Lace Lost and supplier of much-needed food and provisions to Hollow Beasts village, she is not the prophetess and oracle a Lost is supposed to be. She seems to speak only gibberish and requires Hathin to attend to her every physical need as well as act as her “translator”. What is not known is how much Hathin actually understands and how much Arilou can comprehend. When the Lost Inspector Skein and his assistant Minchard Prox show up for Arilou’s Lost testing, Hathin couldn’t feel more helpless. How will Arilou pass the tests if she cannot speak coherently? With the life of her village at stake Hathin must find a way to keep the fraud a secret. But even as Hathin’s plan unfolds, she’s unknowingly caught up in a murderous island-wide conspiracy which points to her and her people. On the run and with no one to turn to, Hathin must find the determination to go over volcano and mountain and do absolutely anything and everything to protect Arilou.

I still can’t get over what an odd but inventive fantasy The Lost Conspiracy was. Not only that but the writing is singularly poetic and deeply-laden with meaning it’s difficult to find many YA novels that compare. It takes more than a few pages to find your bearings in this fully-lit world and metaphoric-heavy writing (I had to use my 100-page rule) but once you do it sweeps you off your feet and rather than getting lost in the complex world of peoples, languages, and politics; an entire personified physical world; the changing third-person narrative; and the sometimes distractingly poetic language with which it’s written it’s swept you off your feet and 576 pages feels like nothing. This doesn’t represent the book justly as a whole but here’s a small taste of what I mean:

The winds shifted again, the ashen clouds puckered and plummeted, and everyone glimpsed something enormous plunging through the valley and the town below: sleek, gray-brown, and muscular like an enormous serpent, its back strewn with timber and trees that it did not notice. Not fire but water, a dragon of scalding, murky, terrible water. As they watched, chunks of slope below them vanished as though bitten away by a vast, invisible maw. Bite after bite, working its way up the slope…

See what I mean? Frances Hardinge is both intimidatingly brilliant and limitlessly imaginative. This book is not capable of being hated. You’ll either love it or it will simply not be your cup of tea. I adored it, not only for what I already mentioned but because of the characterizations. Hathin grows so much and learns how to make her life what she wants it to be. Sorrow, the white volcano; the King of Fans, her tall neighboring mountain; Lord Spearhead (another volcano) and other topical features also become dear characters that have a larger role to play in the story than the usual mountain or volcano. I even came to enjoy the confusing dialects (such as Doorsy) and the many tribes and people such as the Sours. The bounty hunters called Ashwalkers – who literally gain power from wearing their victim’s ashes - were again, pure brilliance. Loved, loved, loved this book! These images will stay with me for a long time.

Because Everyone Likes a Second Opinion:
Young Adult and Kids Books Central review
School Library Journal review

The Basic Book Meme

Holly here!

Since I (as of yet) don’t have a book blog of my own, I couldn’t resist filling out a book meme for the first time. I found this meme at Dovegreyreader Scribbles awhile back and just loved it.


The book that’s been on your shelves the longest.

I don’t know. j/k I’ll have to ask my mom about that one.

A book that reminds you of something specific in your life (a person, a place, a time).

This is hard, because there are so many. First Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Northanger Abbey because I read them for the first time while I lived in London. I’ll never forget grabbing my bag and iPod, passing Waitrose grocery and government housing, and finally reaching the small but quaint Fulham City Library. That was one joyful errand. I also have to mention The Time Traveler’s Wife. DH and I had been trying to conceive for over a year and I had just had what may have been an early miscarriage. I balled and balled and balled in the car, in my bedroom, in the kitchen - wherever I could sneak in a few pages. In fact I don’t think a day will go by where I will not think of that book. And wait, Harry Potter in the Goblet of Fire. I read the English version while riding in a rented van from London to Scotland, Dramamine and all.

A book you acquired in some interesting way.

I don’t own enough books to answer this question properly. It would have to be Orem Public Library’s former copy of Cecilia by Fanny Burney. After a week-long houseboat trip of careful handling on Lake Powell it fell out of the back of the car while luggage was being rearranged and straight into a dirty puddle. What’s worse than water damage? Black water damage.

The book that’s been with you to the most places.

Again, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London, Edinburough, Paris, New York, and finally Utah.

Your current read, your last read and the book you’ll read next.

Current: Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Last: The Lost Conspiracy by Frances Hardinge
Next: Beautiful Creatures by Kami Gracia and Margaret Stahl

The most recent addition to your shelves.

Wake by Lisa McMann

The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff

Holly here!

Ever since I read Meg Rosoff's fantastic dystopian YA novel How I Live Now I've planned on picking up another of her books. The desperate, traumatic, and epic-feeling story and the well-drawn characters sparked my interest initially; but it was the lovely, sparse writing which totally engulfed me and urgently pressed me to try another Rosoff novel. And the gorgeously despairing cover, the alluring historical British setting, and the doomed runaway bride premise of The Bride’s Farewell made it just the one.

It's the morning of Pell Ridley's wedding, and she's creeping out of the bed she shares with her three sisters and onto her horse Jack. Although Birdie says he loves her, she cannot marry him or anyone for that matter. She will not be her mother, abused and starved, bearing child after child to her drunken, good-for-nothing preacher father. So without much thought for where she will go or what she will do, Pell's off to the horse trading at Salisbury Fair, but not without the company of her mute younger brother Bean, who follows her out the door.

The open road. What a trio of words. What a vision of blue sky and untouched hills and narrow trails heading God knew where and being free - free and hungry, free and cold, free and wet, free and lost. Who could mourn such conditions, faced with the alternatives?

But being free involves even more suffering than she anticipated, and Pell's hardships are mounting - consequences or not - and she will learn that maybe we can't or don't ever truly wish to be free from our childhood and familial ties.

Like all of Rosoff's novels, I didn't know what to expect when opening The Bride’s Farewell. I made sure I was in the mood for something dreary and possibly tragic but hopeful and totally different than anything I've ever read. I expected to savor the writing, and I did. Certain passages just struck me in their sharp depictions and poetic imagery. At barely over 200 pages it's short but feels much longer and bigger than the few months the story covers. Pell is hard to decipher but likable in her tenacious will and unbreakable spirit. In the face of starvation, exhaustion, exposure, loss, and shame, she is ever patient and submitting in her search for work and a new life. Her kinship with horses and talent for horsemanship is admirable. I have almost no experience with horses but I was interested in all the breeds, temperaments, and delicate grooming techniques. The book also offered me a new picture of 1850s Britain; the lowest of the lower class, the nomadic gypsies, and small rural town culture. Some of these images will stick with me. While the ending to Pell and Bean's story was fitting and offered some closure and sweetness after all that was bitter, the story left me somewhat underwhelmed in its simplicity and regrettably will not stay with me as much as I would've liked. Still, I would recommend it selectively and Rosoff definitely wins a prize for her unique and memorable character names. Daisy, Piper, Pell, Bean, Dogman, and Dicken the dog are all names that strike the perfect chord of uncommon but appropriate and even beloved.

Because Everyone Likes a Second Opinion:
Bookwitch review
Fluttering Butterflies review
My Friend Amy review
Sassy Monkey Reads review
Things Mean a Lot review

The Big Move

So this week the hubby and I are packing up and moving to sunny California (big gulp). Since I'll be sitting in a very large U-Haul with no internet access trying to entertain a toddler, I'm going to be taking a break from from this here bloggy. Never fear, in my absence I'll be leaving you in the capable hands of my good friend and fellow book-addict Holly. I first met Holly while we were both sleep-deprived art history undergrads and as often happens, we ended up losing touch until a few years ago when we found ourselves working together at the same amazing library. Holly is one fabulous reviewer (find her on Goodreads) and an all-around good person to talk books with. I know she's planned a fabulous week chock-full of marvelous bookish moments - so be sure to check back often and make her feel welcome.

See y'all next week!