Karen’s Blog

The Book of Joby by Mark J. Ferrari

I loved this book. I didn’t pick it up right away, as I remember the biblical Book of Job not to be a rollicking good time, and this book also has a dragon on the cover. My brain has a hard time reconciling the two.



Turns out to be an excellent book. It combines a wager between God and Lucifer with Arthurian legend, and is set in present day. But it works, honest! The main characters are three kids who grow up together - Joby Peterson, his best friend Ben, and their friend Laura who becomes the only girl to join their “Knights of the Round Table” club after falling from a tree and breaking her arm trying to be part of the games. Joby bases the club on a book his grandfather gave him on arthurian legends, and they try to do good deeds, and help kids in trouble around school.



Of course Lucifer has his own minions at play, and the book follows the kids as they grow, change, grow apart when they leave high school and come back together as adults after a tragic event in Joby’s life in San Francisco.



The cool part is that these characters are actually Arthur, Lancelot and Gueneviere, but it is done so subtly that they never suspect, and they don’t follow the same paths the original versions did, either.



As for the dragon, well, there’s quite a bit of “magic” that happens, particularly in the town Joby remembers visiting as a child and moves back to, where, unbeknownst to him, they are invisible to Lucifer, and many of the residents are former followers of Lucifer, fallen angels but no longer on his side, or descended from them, so have abilities beyond normal humans.



It’s a long book, over 600 pages, but is amazingly good and complete. It tells the whole story, and is interesting, satisfying and well-written. And not at all pedantic, either, which is cool.



I highly recommend this book to just about anyone who enjoys a good read and something to think about.

The White Mary by Kira Salak

Okay, it is a novel, and has nothing to do with Rudyard Kipling’s classic, but the most striking part of this book is the very real and very difficult journey the protagonist undertakes through the jungles of New Guinea.


That protagonist, Marika Vecera, is no Victorian princess, and not always entirely likable. But you have to admire her perseverance and heart. She’s not someone accustomed to an easy life - in fact, not someone even comfortable with one. She’s a journalist who survived growing up first in Communist Czechoslovakia, then as exile living in America with her schizophrenic, suicidal mother. Her father, a dissident Czech journalist, died when she was 6. Shuffled off to foster with her American cousins whenever her mother was hospitalized, she basically has been fending for herself since 13. Having made it through school, she becomes a journalist specializing in the hard stories in dangerous places, priding herself on being truthful even when it is politically unpopular.


Settled in Boston, thinking of writing memoirs and forming a relationship with Seb, a sweet, understanding guy who happens to be a recovering addict and a doctoral student in psychology. Long a fan of her articles, they meet at a conference, and her life seems to be, for once, settling into something that passes for normality. Then she receives word that her idol, a journalist named Richard Lewis, whom the world thought had committed suicide, has been seen in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, and she feels compelled to find him.


The book bounces back and forth between the journey and the events leading up to it, but the characters and atmosphere of the jungle seem quite real, very visceral and not always pleasant. It is fascinating to learn more and more about Marika - whom the natives refer to as the [i]wait meri[/i] - the white mary - the crazy pale blonde woman who insists on being guided further into the jungle, despite the injuries, annoyances, sickness and very real dangers she encounters.


It is all quite engrossing, and learning from the cover that the author was the first woman to traverse Papua New Guinea makes it all even more interesting. Watching the dynamics of her relationships - with Seb and with Richard Lewis, unfold as the books goes on is just as interesting, and I heartily recommend this book to anyone who wants an unflinching look at humans - both the “civilzed” kind and the more “primitive” and nature.

Babylon Rolling by Amanda Boyden

Set in New Orleans in August of 2004, Babylon Rolling is a good story full of well-developed characters, and a rich tapestry of ethnicities and origins and attitudes that populate one neighborhood in the storied city.


The main characters are all neighbors in one of those neighborhoods that was both old and new, with black, white, and Indian families. Their lives begin to intersect in more than a normal, casual way, and events and circumstances snowball gradually into the climax of the tale, and beyond.


Fearius (real name Daniel) - 15 and just out of lock-up, and his hilariously-named sisters are the children of an African-American family that has been in the neighborhood forever. His family hopes that he is done with the trouble that got him into Juvie in the first place, but he’s still figuring out who and what he’s going to be. Contrasting with him are Ed and Ariel Frank and their two small children - a young white family that moved down from Minneapolis for her job as a hotel manager. Ed is being a stay-at-home parent, and there is tension as Ariel sees him as being too soft, and weak, without ambition. Older neighbors Cerise Brown and Philomene Beauregard de Bruges and their husbands are long-term residents but not exactly friends, but everyone is a united in their suspicious of the Guptas, a perfectly friendly family but with exotic accents and highly fragrant foods that scent the neighbor’s air.


All in all, the struggles of each character and their interactions leading up to the non-event of Hurricane Ivan - which spared New Orleans, unlike Katrina in 2007, and their struggles with mental illness, identity, and how to make their way in the world make an engrossing tale, and a fascinating read.


As the book was published in 2008, there is a brief epilogue concerning Katrina, and that just adds to the feeling that these could be real people, living in a very real neighborhood in the mixed bag of life that is New Orleans.


I do recommend it, it’s a quick read and a satisfying story. And I didn’t review this when I first read it, as we had hurricane after hurrican this summer rolling into the Gulf of Mexico. It really has very little to do with the storms, and I didn’t want to leave that impression. It’s totally about the people, fascinating in their own right. And of course, now Hurricane Paloma is active in the Atlantic.

Yes, I love to read. I read books, magazines, cereal boxes - everything. I love a good book, regardless of subject matter or genre. And if I start a book, I will almost inevitably finish it. I always figure, maybe it will get better next chapter even halfway through a book. But sometimes they just don’t, and sometimes what starts as a good book gets worse.

Two Moon Princess by Carmen Ferreiro-Esteban 

This was a book was okay. But just okay. It starts out in a promising fashion, with the title character, Andrea, a Princess who would rather be a knight. Or at least a squire. The fourth of her father the king’s daughters, she has been allowed to train with the boys, and wins the big Archery competition they have been training for. Andrea, about to turn fourteen, is sure this will convince her father to let her continue with the training, and not to become a lady like her mother and sisters are. Set in a medieval kingdom, it seems a decent start.

And when the book takes a science fiction/fantasy turn, who could complain? By accident she ends up in modern California, and realizes her Tio (uncle) Ramiro travels there regularly when she finds his house not far from the beach she lands on. Still interesting enough, right? We then go through the expected culture shock and transition, and the expected tension when her uncle insists she return to her own world as soon as possible.

But it all kinda goes downhill from there, with Andrea and her sisters dealing with battling kingdoms, a deceitful suitor, princes, soldiers, romance, and what is proper and what is not. And I guess the story disappoints me, because in the course of all this action, Andrea is obviously supposedly falling in love with one character whom she dislikes. And it isn’t until the end of the books that she realizes this, and it just seems too dumb for a girl who is supposed to be strong, smart, and clever enough to get away with all sorts of stuff and travel secretly between worlds, but not to figure out her own feelings at all.

So, eh, don’t bother with this one. I am sure the author meant well, and it appears to be aimed at young teen girls, and is supposed to be empowering, I am sure, but it just loses steam. By the end, I was just mildly annoyed by Princess Andrea’s obtuseness, and didn’t even care if she lived happily ever after.

Oh, and by the way, I have always hated cover art that doesn’t quite fit the story. You can’t see her father’s castle from the beach archway she’s standing in - for goodness sake it’s far from the castle, down a large cliff and at the base of a rocky beach, and as the story begins her hair is short, not long enough for a long braid, and the “golden arrow” is supposed to be large and sharp enough to hurt someone with, and is hidden in her hair, not a cute little ornament like the cover illustration shows. I know, the artist was probably not given the actual story to read, but should have been!

Kennedy’s Brain by Henning Mankell

Released last September in English, this is a novel by the Swedish author Henning Mankell, famous for the Kurt Wallander mysteries. It is always interesting to me to read books from other perspectives than normal. It is a fascinating book, but very, very sad. I’d still recommend, though, as it lingers in your brain after you’ve finished the story, which is always a good sign.

The main character, Louise Cantor, is a Swedish archaeologist working on a dig in Argolis, Greece, has made a career putting together pieces of the past, often quite literally from shards of pottery and bone. Satisfied in her work, long-divorced and content with staying that way, her world is turned inside out when she, travelling for a conference back in Sweden, discovers the body of her 25-year-old only child, son Henrik, dead of no apparent cause in his apartment. The police rule it a suicide, but Louise is convinced it is not.

In trying to understand Henrik’s death, and his life, she begins reading papers in his apartment, and starts to try to piece together events, like her work in archeology has trained her to do. More and more layers of complexity appear, and she travels to Spain, and to Africa, retracing Henrik’s journeys and meeting people who knew him, trying to find answers. The title of the book comes from some of Henrik’s papers, concerning the disappearance of JFK’s brain after the autopsy, and the mystery surrounding it, which puzzles Louise, as she had no idea he had any interest in the American president. She even contacts her ex-husband, who intentionally disappeared years before, but kept in touch with their son.

The more Louise digs, the more complex, and sinister things get. The story involves AIDS, unethical medical experimentation and personal and political tragedies, the realities of life in rural and desperately poor Africa, and the growing suspicion that Henrik was murdered for the work he was doing that was about to combat some of the horrors he had seen. It is a sad book, beginning with a death, and more and more people die as Louise pursues her relentless quest to understand her only child’s death and life. It might be depressing in someone else’s hands, but Mankell keeps his main character interesting enough, and the plot just complicated enough to keep you guessing even beyond the last page. The people she encounters are also multi-layered and deeply drawn, and like Louise, you get the feeling you just don’t know who to believe or trust.

This is not a book for the squeamish, by the way. There is plenty of illness, disease, and blood to turn anyone’s stomach, and enough moral ambiguities to make anyone think. But I do recommend it, especially if you are a fan of mysteries and like figuring things out.

The Lace Reader by Brunonia Barry

This was a really fascinating novel, rife with familiar Massachusetts history, and with a story that is at once simple and complicated. I grew up in Massachusetts, and live here still, so of course studied the whole Salem Witch phenomenon in school, and am even descended from the one accused witch who was not hung.*

This is set in modern Salem, and around a family of women who are lace readers - like fortune tellers, only they look through lace, not a crystal ball, to divine events and visions. They are not witches, nor do they claim to be, though the modern followers of Wicca are friendly to them. The main character is a “Towner,” a mentally-damaged woman, Towner, whose estranged mother lives on a harbor island, and whose beloved Great Aunt has just died. A phone call from her brother brings her back to Salem from her current life in California.

How Towner, whose own memory has gaps after a traumatic incident in her teen years led her to McLeans**, and electroshock therapy. Confronting the town and the home, the memories and the people she fled years before is a continual process of discovery, reminders, and an effort to distinguish reality from visions, it is a struggle for Towner to make her own way through the aftermath of her aunt’s mysterious death, and keep her head above water. Add in her own dead twin, her mother’s agoraphobia, relationships she had run from, her mother’s work helping victims of domestic violence, her uncle’s new status as a religious cult leader, and new relationships, the story keeps you wondering at every turn of the page. And, as one of the founders of DogoftheDay.com I do have to mention that semiferal Golden Retrievers play a significant role as well, and one in particular becomes her guardian and friend.

That in the process you end up learning (or being reminded of) local history and industry - Ipswich lace was a real, quite literal cottage industry at one time, lobstermen still work the Massachusetts coast - and family dysfunction and what it can do to people - is just a plus to what is an excellent good book.

The ending blew me away. I literally finished the book, set it down, then went back and reread the last chapters just to make sure I caught everything. I heartily recommend this book.

*Giles Corey, who was instead pressed to death. Ma, looking at the build of the men in her immediate family, figures he was probably barrel-chested and figured he could stand it.

**Yup, it’s a real place, and still in operation, a world-class hospital for the mentally ill, just one town away from me in Belmont, MA. Most people know of it through Sylvia Plath’s time there, or from the movie “Girl Interrupted.”

I realize that in yesterday’s post, I told you I have only shut three books that freaked me out. Each time I eventually finished the book, but I figure I should tell you what three books they were.

Book one: The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

When I was a child, I always wanted a pet rabbit. I got little stuffed animal bunnies every year for Easter, but Dad said I had to wait until I owned my own house before I could have a pet bunny. (Which I now have.) So when I read the classic children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, and it got to the part where they were going to burn up the beloved stuffed bunny because it had been exposed to the child’s illness, just like the bedclothes, I slammed the book shut. I had been reading it at the school library, so I just left it there. I didn’t finish it until I was 20 years old, and took care of a little girl in exchange for a place to stay. She checked it out of the library, and I had to read it to her. Well, with big hazel eyes hanging on my every word I had to keep going, and imagine my relief when the bunny gets to be real! Whew! 

Book two: The Books of Blood: Book 1 by Clive Barker

I have been a horror and science fiction fan since I can remember, so picked up this book from the “New Releases” section of the Newton Library. I don’t remember precisely the story - it’s a collection of short stories - that made me slam the book shut, but I clearly remember thinking Do the librarians KNOW what is in this book they put on their shelves? Still, the stories were good, if completely gross in parts, and I had checked it out, so finished the book so I could return it to the library. And I have read everything of his I could find since then, and even met him at a BEA signing, and he was a perfectly nice person. Of course then he was signing Abarat, a far nicer story!  

Book three: Misery by Stephen King

 Okay, you’ve probably all seen the movie, but have you all read the book? Like all King’s books that make it to movie form, things get changed. I have never seen the movie, but I have seen snippets enough to now that, in the movie version, she takes a sledge hammer to the author’s leg or legs, so he cannot leave her. But in the book, it’s an axe. I physically jumped when the axe severed his lower leg, slammed the book shut and left the room, horrified. An hour or so later, I picked the book back up, and finished it, but that was the first and last time a book made me jump.

Any books ever freaked you out?

Sold by Patricia McCormick

A compelling cover, with the dark eyes of a young girl staring out from behind her scarf, and I was interested. The book is being marketed by Hyperion Teens, but I didn’t know that when I started to read. Slavery still exists in the modern world.


Sold is the story of a 13-year-old Nepalese girl, Lakshmi. It starts with her simple life on the slopes of the “swallow-tailed mountain” that is her home. She lives with her mother, stepfather and baby brother, and her beloved baby Goat, Tali, who is a friend as well as a pet, and even goes to school with her. They are poor, and the disabled stepfather’s gambling uses every bit of the family’s meager earnings. Though their lives are not a very happy, she and her mother live with hope.


But when drought, then floods destroy their crops, Lakshmi is told she is being sent to work as a maid in the city. So begins her terrible journey, as she has actually, as the title tells you, been sold. In her case, she is sold to a brothel, and the story tells the nightmare so many real girls live.


The book is a quick read, but quite compelling. It manages to tell of the horrors Lakshmi faces without getting so graphic as to get it banned from certain libraries or bookstores. The characters feel genuine, tragically so, and the Author’s Note at the end tells the real and terrible facts of present-day slavery and the sex trade.


A great book, small in size, but powerful in impact. I recommend it to anyone, at least anyone with a heart.

The Vampire Within, The Beginning by Drew Silver




This is the “first book” in a trilogy, and it sure seems like it. As this was a book that I got at the Book Expo, I was surprised to realize it is the actual book, not a galley or a review copy, as it is set in typewriter-like font, which is okay to read, but makes it seem less serious than a traditional font. That’s just one of the reasons it seems less than serious.


But it isn’t meant to be campy, from what I can tell. Everyone in it is a sincerely drawn character, even if they are all characters you would recognize. They are all college students, so we have the studious ones, the “jerky jocks,” the “devoted couple,” the “party girl,” the “lesbian,” “poor little rich girl,” - you get the picture. And of course the Evil Professor.


I normally like vampire tales, but this one kind of bugs me, as it strains credulity a bit too much. The Evil Professor is turning people into vampires to increase their abilities - strength, intelligence, curing illnesses like asthma, diabetes, acne, etc. This is how he lures students into signing up - that and a paycheck. Oh, and he uses a serum to turn them, it isn’t initially a neck bite, and they are not told they’re going to be vampires. But he’s been doing this for years and no one has noticed? Do none of these people have parents or families? Hello?


So our plucky band of heroes decides to try to infiltrate and take down this Evil Plan, but of course gets caught up in a battle, some get infected, others volunteer, and then the book ends. Sure, usually the first book of a trilogy has some leading questions, but this one just stops like it hit a brick wall.


I guess I’d rea the next chapter - I mean book - if I was given it for free, but it seems more like a cheesy made-for-TV horror movie than a book. In fact, with little effort I could mentally cast current TV personalities to fill each role. Don’t bother with this one!

I pulled these two books out of a box on the same day, and because I didn’t post yesterday, figured I’d give you a two-for-one today. The books sound so similar by their titles, yet are very, very different.

How To Meet Cute Boys by Deanna Kizis

This one is exactly what it seems from the title. It is Chick-Lit in every sense. A fun little entirely predictable story, good for reading on a day when you don’t particularly want to think. The main character is, of course a single, thin, attractive young woman in a “fun” job - she’s an advice columnist for a “girls” magazine. So various excerpts of her “articles” and quizzes are included, all the sort of stuff no one over the age of 14 really takes seriously, you know the kind I mean. Not very deep, but at least it’s a quick read.

******

The Great Husband Hunt by Laurie Graham

So I figured from the title this would be another piece of chick-lit fluff. Don’t get me wrong, I am female, and some days enjoy a bit of fluff. This, however, was not that. This actually counts as a novel. Rather than being just a “girl meets boy, girl pursues boy, girl wins boy” that you might expect, this is a wide-ranging tale of a rather interesting, if not terribly likeable, woman, from girlhood through adult.

Poppy Minkel is a willful child growing up in a wealthy family in New York City, being carefully schooled to wear bands to flatten her ears, spend torturous times trying to tame her wild hair and do other thinks so that she will be able to catch a good husband. She doesn’t attend school, and while she does have an older, about-to-be married sister, Poppy’s world revolves around herself, and her own ideas. Her father is killed when the Titantic sinks, and Poppy’s carefully planned existence - a plan she never intended to follow anyway - is turned upside down a bit.

She goes merrily through life, marries whom she wants without a whole lot of thought, gets pregnancies “taken care of” with little care, and basically does what she wants when she wants, through two World Wars, a couple of husbands - one married then discarded, the second killed in a car accident, and gives birth to two daughters, whom she doesn’t seems to care an awful lot about either. She sends them off to her sister, then takes them back when other people assume she must be missing them. No surprise they grow up pretty miserable.

She lives an enviable sort of existence, I suppose, learning to fly a plane because it seems fun, travelling abroad, going to France, settling in England, tracing her connection to the British Royal family through her second husband, and basically having a good time. But all-in-all, she seems too completely self-absorbed for example even be aware that, because she is ethnically Jewish, though never bothered to learn or practice Judaism, her life is in danger as Germany invades France during World War Two. In that instance, and others, those around her are always more aware, and more careful, and keep her out of harm’s way, without her ever realizing that she was in danger, never mind expressing gratitude for their help. She just seems to live without a moral compass, or morals, and doesn;t even know she’s not normal.

A decent book, but I just didn’t like the main character, or even hate her. So read the book if you want, but it’s like coming away from a decent meal with a lingering unpleasant aftertaste … I can’t really recommend it.