Books

Over 100 people voted. None of them voted for The White Hotel by DM Thomas. Most of them voted for either Gone Girl or The Amazing Advenures of Kavalier and Clay and they were neck and neck right up to the final hour or so when this book just poked its head in front. Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay will be our social reading experiment starting on Bank Holiday Monday next week. Hopefully that gives everyone time to pop to their local bookshop, order it online or download it to their modern reading device. If you are taking part, do please leave a comment to say hello below.

Title: The Office of Mercy Author: Ariel Djanikian Genre: Dystopian fiction, science Publisher: Viking Rating: 4 out of 5 stars Source: ARC from the publisher First line: The sun sank behind the trees, and the blue-black shadows of the forest encroached farther down the sloping beach. Goodreads blurb: Twenty-four-year-old Natasha Wiley lives in America-Five—a high-tech, underground, utopian settlement where hunger and money do not exist, everyone has a job, and all basic needs are met. But when her mentor and colleague, Jeffrey, selects her to join a special team to venture Outside for the first time, Natasha’s allegiances to home, society, and above all to Jeffrey are tested. She is forced to make a choice that may put the people she loves most in grave danger and change the world as she knows it. In The Office of Mercy, author Ariel Djanikian has created a possible future for North America, a possible future that is chilling and all too believable. The Alphas, who created America-Five and other outposts like it, have taken logic and rational thought to their ultimate, merciless end. The acts that are carried out by the Office of Mercy are anything but, and yet the citizens have been trained in “ethics” that cause them to accept horrifying things as good. Natasha is an intriguing character, one of the few citizens in America-Five who has reservations. She works in the Office of Mercy, and yet struggles against the actions her department carries out. She tries to construct “The Wall,” a mental barrier that all citizens are taught to build in their minds when they are tempted to feel empathy for those who need to be given “mercy.” (It is difficult to go into too much detail without giving plot points away.) Natasha’s questions, and an encounter Outside, lead her to rebel against everything she’s been taught – and her rebellion comes at a very high price. I read a lot of dystopian fiction, and so when a work in that genre truly stands out, and makes me want to keep turning the pages faster and faster, like this one did, it is a rare thing. This book is still in my head, and has me thinking about the kinds of decisions our government makes – or could be capable of making – that could lead us down the same path. Highly recommended. If you are reading this anywhere other than Books and Movies or a feed reader, then this content has been stolen. Please read the original Books and Movies and help stop content thieves. Books and Movies is an Amazon affiliate. Purchasing through Amazon links from Books and Movies will pay me a small percentage in commission. © CarrieK for BOOKS AND MOVIES, 2013. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us Post tags: dystopian fiction, science fiction Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

Now that BEA is officially here, the excitement is starting to grow! I'm so excited to talk with everyone about books and to meet new and old friends! I'll be sharing my tips each week until the big event! The last few things to talk about:Phone: The wireless in the building is terrible - it will eat your battery. Double check that you have your charger because you WILL need it! Also think about taking the wireless capabilities off of your phone for the day. It will save your battery - somewhat. Manners: Don't forget these at home. It's hard when there are so many people, but we're all book people and we all just want to talk about books. Treat everyone with respect and don't push your way through. Fun: Have a blast there! It's meant to be fun. Yes it can be exhausting, but it's also like Christmas - getting to meet so many awesome people and talk about so many books!Get your face out there: It's a week away! A lot of peoples' names I might not recognize, but I know your blog name. Add your blog name to your name tag. Add a photo of yourself to your blog:This is me, say Hi if you see me, and I'll promise to do the same!

In my grubby hands. Grouse County all over again. Utter joy.

Societies are problematic things. Empires, too. They never seem capable of locating that moment of stolid clarity, when all is good on God’s earth and everyone can get about his or her business without being inordinately harassed by barbarians or the taxman. Either they’re on the ascent and nervous about keeping up appearances, or the downward slide has set in and everybody’s yelling to hang on. Civilizations, by definition saddled with a commentariat that likes to opine about such things, can be like patients eternally on the analyst’s couch. Things aren’t going well, they might say. It all seemed fine a few years ago. And then…things just changed. I’m not sure when it happened, or how. This colors how we look to the past. Most analyses of the Roman Empire skip past the glory days and settle in for a good long Gibbon-quoting look at how things fell apart. That’s the good stuff, it would seem. The United States is thrashing through a rough bout of self-analysis, the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the doom-saturated 1970s. Most of today’s agita stems from a legislative and executive branch whose dysfunctionality could make Italian politicians sigh in relief at for once not being the worst on the scene. Faux-libertarian partisans scamper over each other to tear down every institution or rule that impinges on their narrowly-defined “freedom” while fatally indecisive progressives bleat from the sidelines. Both sides withdraw into self-selected ideological ghettoes. A miserable economy, terrorism, and a sense of the inevitability of environmental collapse don’t help matters. Why else the flood of apocalypse fiction and films? A sign of just how bleak the country’s sense of the future is can be found in Max Brooks’s World War Z. Although the speculative novel — which rather cleverly reimagines Studs Terkel’s The Good War as an oral history of a world-spanning zombie onslaught — spends much of its time in rather bleak scenery, it also contains a clear trumpeting of hope. Because after Brooks gets done reporting how different nations respond to the assault of the undead, the interviewees (particularly the Americans) talk about how they fought back. Not only do they restructure a shattered nation, they recapture the concept of purpose, of collective action, of citizenship. It’s a kind of hope that is almost nowhere to be found in George Packer’s awe-inspiring X-Ray of the modern American soul, The Unwinding. It’s a big and unwieldy book with outsize aims and somewhat foggy construction. The book — a couple sections of which have appeared previously in The New Yorker — tries to grasp at the ineffable, to get the patient on the couch to dig deep into their subconscious and say how that makes them feel. By the end of everything, the book may not have achieved one great breakthrough in the manner of cinematic shrinks, but it has illuminated a lot of dark corners and diagnosed a host of concerns. The cure, that’s something else. Packer takes a similarly broadminded view of his subject as he did in 2005’s The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq, his last substantial work of nonfiction. There, his reportage covered everything from the corridors of power and ineptitude in the Pentagon and the Green Zone to the dust- and shrapnel-littered streets of Baghdad. Here, the sweep is just as big, but with potentially broader implications: the unraveling of American society: If you were born around 1960 or afterward, you spent your adult life in the vertigo of that unwinding. You watched structures that had been in place before your birth collapse like pillars of salt across the vast visible landscape…When the norms that made the old institutions useful began to unwind, and the leaders abandoned their posts, the Roosevelt Republic that had reigned for almost half a century came undone. The void was filled by the default force in American life: organized money. The structure of The Unwinding is a curious on

I love a good oral history. Not only for the different viewpoints and opinions of events that happened, but all the tidbits we otherwise would never have heard about. I’m thinking of books like PLEASE KILL ME and WE”VE GOT THE NEUTRON BOMB, both of which covered the punk scenes in New York and Los Angeles, respectively. Now, Steve Miller (not the singer) has gone one step above with DETROIT ROCK CITY by condensing five decades of the Motor City’s rock scene. Let me stress the rock aspect; there is no Motown to be found. There already are plenty of fine books about that subject. One thing DETROIT ROCK CITY readers will notice is that it seems that everyone who was ever involved in the scene in some function is interviewed. Not all interviews are new; notably, the Bob Seger portions are reprints from two 1970s interviews, while The Stooges’ Ron and Scott Asheton are also from a previously published interview. But you would have no clue, since their stories fit in perfectly. Of course, the book starts off with tales of the development of old rock ballrooms and the bands that would play there, including MC5 and The Stooges. But they were not the only bands around; stories of Alice Cooper and Mitch Ryder are included, plus the development of what would become the influential CREEM magazine. There is nothing really groundbreaking or new here, as many of these stories have been told before. Still, it’s a blast to relive these times through these passages. What you will learn mainly is that everyone — and I do mean everyone — agreesupon one thing: Ted Nugent is and has always been a giant asshole. The second section of Miller’s book focuses on the 1970s to the early 1980s, when CREEM would flourish while also losing one of its more opinionated writers, Lester Bangs, to a drug overdose. People would say the magazine lost a step once he was gone. This is also where we get nothing — and I do mean nothing — but nice things said about Seger. Everyone who ever played with him at this time has respect for him, saying that he went well above what was required. For example, including band members in the royalties of albums they barely had any involvement in. Seger comes off as just a hard-working musician who busted his ass. Even if you’re not a fan of his music, you will respect his ethics. This section of the book is also where it delves into passages that could have been edited tighter or just cut, because when it moves into discussions about clubs coming and going, some readers’ eyes will glaze over. Same about tales of musicians’ drug habits. To say heroin was prominent in the Detroit music scene is like saying a lot of beer is consumed on St. Patrick’s Day. Miller provides interviews that lay it all out there, with no sugar coating. Everyone is called out on his or her actions. This is also where we find some of the 1960s’ heroes falling upon hard times, be it jail time or drugs, but also just trying to scrape by. At this time, Iggy Pop constantly dangled a Stooges reunion in front of his former bandmates (but this would not take until the 2000s). The final section takes readers from the ’80s to the present, with whole sections dedicated to the development of punk clubs, hardcore shows and Touch and Go Records, which would be responsible for a variety of acts to reach a wider audience. We get an inside look at The Gories, a promising band that imploded. Fans of Mick Collins will find this of great interest. And where would a book about Detroit be without The White Stripes’ Jack White? We learn that from the start, he was a only looking out for himself. In his first band, he didn’t want to sign away his material to a label like Sub Pop. No one goes into the gossipy bits that have circled White, like his marriage to his former bandmate, but we get full details of what was nothing more than a bar fight with a former friend. No one’s opinion of W

A Feast Of Snakes is a stunning novel. It’s set in Mystic, Georgia during the build up to a Rattlesnake Roundup that’s become a little too successful for the small town to handle. Joe Lon Mackey is an ex-football player whose career is over at a young age. To take the edge off his sense of failure he’s turned to the bottle and still tries to maintain his top-dog status in the area. He has a hard-nosed father (Big Joe Lon) who has a talent for dog-fighting, a damaged sister who stays in bed all day watching TV, a sheriff friend who likes to play with young girls, a saintly wife and two children and a hot lust for an ex-girlfriend who has returned to Mystic from college. The opening at a football game is full of energy – sexual, violent and disturbing – and pregnant with the bizarre. It’s clear from the off that this book is going to be out of the ordinary and that understanding is powerfully underlined as it continues. There are some very strong elements that a reader can hold on to. There’s the subtle depiction of racial relations and the way people work within the boundaries of time and place. There’s an existential slant to the examination of purpose and the implications of losing direction whether that be through age or accident. There’s a view of the power within relationships on a small and larger scale and that damage that can be done when power is the only tool one has in the box. There are thoughts on madness and the thin ice that we all tread upon. We also get to see the extremes of complete control and absolute anarchy and the dangers of each extreme. The plot is a gently meandering one is some ways. I read the book slowly even though there was a page-turning element to the writing that might have had me jumping on to find out what was about to happen. Taking my time seemed important as there’s so much to savour. In tone the words and the dialogue seem simple, yet there’s a wonderful subtlety to it all that means it might be better not to miss the gems on each page by rushing. I was really struck by the parallels between the old dogs coming to the end of their fighting lives and Joe Lon. They’ve all been bullied by Big Joe in ways that no creature should be. It might be that Big Joe feels this is the right thing to do, but his clarity is hugely misguided. The fates of the dogs and the son are sealed and have been for a long time; it’s a shame none of them had other strings to their bows. The dog fighting and training scenes are fully developed and hard-hitting. They’re gritty as they could be. I’m pleased I only read this after writing ‘Smoke’ otherwise I may not have felt up to the job. There are also a couple of scenes and situations of bullying that are so profound as to be hugely disturbing. What Crews does here is rather special. Instead of laying the violence and the harshness of the acts of cruelty bare with no supporting frame, he manages to bring out a huge empathy with the victims. Whether it’s Lottie Mae suffering under the sheriff’s weight or Joe’s wife putting up with the most humiliating treatment or the retired salesmen who runs into the wrong people at the wrong time, they’re all flinchingly well-written. The book really struts to its conclusion and feels like it has put on many pounds of muscle along the way. By the end it has the strength of a powerful beast and, like Goliath, there’s only one way for the beast to go. There’s a line early on from cheerleader Hard Candy as she feeds a rat to a snake that puts me in mind of what Crews can do to a reader: ‘Nobody’s going to hurt you, little rat. We just gone let the snake kill you a little.’ Be warned. This was my second read of a Harry Crews story. The first time around, I really didn’t manage to get beyond the beauty of some of the prose. A Feast Of Snakes is something else altogether and now, at last, I can see why the author is so widely hailed as a talent and a huge influence upon more contemporary writing.

Well, it wasn't the best day yesterday, so I needed some family time last night. That means I didn't finish my book.School let out here on Wednesday. So, for kids it's the start of summer vacation. How many of us think of summer as starting on Monday? So, I have a topic for today. What books are you looking forward to reading this summer? Here are four at the top of my reading list.Chris Grabenstein, author of the Ceepak mysteries, takes us into an unusual library in his juvenile book, Escape From Mr. Lemoncello's Library. Some of the staff at the library are even using Chris' game this summer. When the world's most famous game maker designed a town's library, he sends out special invitations for a lock-in. But, getting in is the easy part. Grabenstein's puzzler makes it harder to get out. (June release)How about a debut epistolary novel? Letters from Skye by Jessica Brockmole spans two continents and two world wars. In 1912, a wartime correspondence blossoms into friendship, and then into love. In 1940, a young woman falls for a pilot in the Royal Air Force. Her mother warns her against falling in love during wartime, and then disappears during an air raid. A letter is the only clue as to her mother's whereabouts, and the only clue to the past. (July release)And, then there are the two August mysteries I'm waiting to read. They're both written by Canadian authors, and set in Canada. Vicki Delany's A Cold White Sun is the latest Constable Molly Smith mystery. When a middle-aged teacher is gunned down on a hiking trail in Trafalgar, British Columbia, Sergeant John Winters calls on Molly to assist with the investigation. However, he's bothered by the thought that there may be another murder.In Louise Penny's How the Light Gets In, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache faces his nemesis and investigates a case that draws him even deeper into Three Pines as he seeks a safe place for himself and his remaining loyal colleagues after most of his best agents have left the Homicide Department and Jean-Guy Beauvoir hasn't spoken to him in months.There are so many other books for summer reading, but those four top my TBR pile. (It looks like a blue season, doesn't it?) What books are you planning to read this summer?

Normal 0 false false false EN-US JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Last week I had the good fortune to be on the panel that Deborah Heiligman wrote about Tuesday. Preplanning conversations and postmortem drinks at the very literary Algonquin Hotel gave Deb, Marfe’ Ferguson Delano, and me plenty of time to talk about the writing process. These conversations got me thinking about “voice.” Finding the right voice for a nonfiction book fits somewhere in the scheme of things between the research and final draft. You know how writers of fiction and deranged people – that may be an oxymoron – say, “It’s the voices … it’s the voices that made me do it?” That makes perfect sense to me. My books, primarily based on interviews with young people, absolutely must be true to the people featured. So after an interview, I transcribe and replay their tapes over and over again as a way to get their voices into my ears. My journey to understanding “voice” in writing began as an act of embarrassment and humility. My Confession: Once upon a time, long, long ago, after photographing four children’s books, I decided to try my hand at writing as well as illustrating. My first, full book contract was about a thirteen-year-old foster boy who spent a year socializing and loving a puppy that would later become a guide dog for the blind. What made the boy unusual was that he himself was slowly going blind. The book was called Mine for a Year. After the usual gazillion drafts, the manuscript was ready to meet its editor. At that time I knew very few children’s authors and needed a critical read. A magazine editor-cum-good friend, a brilliant writer himself, said he’d take a look at it. Before he could change his mind I was sitting in his office with my beautiful, perfect, gorgeously written first book. He turned to the first page. “WHAT IS THIS CRAP?” He didn’t say crap. “I’m not going to read this! There’s nothing happening here. There’s no voice! It’s not you. It’s not the kid.” I grabbed the pages and flew out of the office. I was devastated, furious, and very embarrassed. Once home I spent weeks trying to figure out how to make this boy read real. What could I do differently? Why didn’t the photographs alone create the boy’s character? And what is this thing called “voice” anyway? A week or so later an Aha moment arrived. Since it was the boy’s story, why not let him tell it? I rewrote everything in the first person, and interviewed the boy again to add material and to make sure what was written matched the way he spoke. We collaborated. We made changes together. After more than a few more drafts, it was back to the mag editor for round two. Wit

Corrigan, Eirann. Accomplice. 1 August 2010, Scholastic Press.Living on the east coast, Finn and Chloe are afraid that their high school academics are not good enough for them to get into elite colleges. After seeing a news item about a girl who was abducted and held for months by kidnappers and then got into the college of their choice, they come up with an elaborate plan-- Chloe will disappear for a while, Finn will help "find" her, and they will both not only get accepted into whatever college they want, but will get scholarship money. Their plan goes well, and Chloe is hiding in Finn's grandmother's house. Chloe's family and friends are understandably upset, especially when she is gone long enough for the local lake to be dragged. When her boyfriend, Dean, becomes a "person of interest" and is later arrested, Finn starts to question their plan and wants to back out, but Chloe wants to stick with it. In the end, their plan costs them more than they get out of it.Strengths: This is a well-paced, unique thriller with a fantastic cover. I think that this will go over very well with my middle school students who always want murder mysteries. Weaknesses: I've never understood the whole "elite college" thing, and my daughter got in to three different colleges, so the whole premise seemed unlikely to me, but then (thankfully) I don't live on the east coast! Martin, Ann M. Better to Wish (Family Tree #1)30 April 2013, Scholastic PressE ARC from Netgalley.comAbby is looking back at her life in the year 2022, when she is 100 years old. In anecdotal chapters, she recalls various scenes from her life that made an impact on her. Raised by a controlling father and a sad, frail mother, Abby and her sister Rose live in a small coastal town and get along as best they can. Strengths: Historical events such as the Great Depression and WWII effect Abby, and details of everyday life are nicely portrayed.Weaknesses: This was possibly the most depressing historical fiction book I've come across. Whatever bad things could happen, did happen. The poor mother. She suffers the father's abuse, has multiple miscarriages, finally has a baby boy who is "feeble-minded" and is sent to an institution and eventually dies. At least Abby manages to break free from her family, but the whole book made me too sad to think about handing it to a student. I was surprised at Martin-- Picky Reader adored the Doll Family books, which are a bit happier!Another review of this at Secrets and Sharing Soda.You Know It's Time For School To Be Over When: I tell a teacher "Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." When the students start to arrive at this time of year, I need to be hunting them down for overdues, not hooking up an LCD projector to a computer, expecially when two days ago I suggested to the same teacher that I could give her better service with a little more advance notice. She replied that it's not always possible to plan. Really? Because I got in to school at 4:30, and you're rolling in at 7:30, so that's not really the thing to say to make me want to help you.I'm normally not that cranky.