AtomicKnits

Speaker for the Dead

Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card, the second book of Ender's Saga was really awesome!! I thought it had a completely different feel than Ender's Game, but it was just as compelling.  This story takes place about 20 subjective years later than Ender's Game.  Ender is in his 30's, but the rest of the worlds are about three thousand years into the future.  He's still carrying around the hive queen cocoon and traveling around both speaking various people's deaths as a Speaker for the Dead, and trying to find a good place for the hive queen's next generation.  He is asked to speak several deaths on a world called Lusitania. There is another native species living on this planet called the piggies. Political and cultural issues abound and things get all stirred up with Ender's arrival. At times I do think Ender's character is too perfect, but I also think that it's kind of the point. I did enjoy learning about the piggies and the things revealed about them toward the end of the story. Some of the things were predictable and some of them were not. I have to say, though, that I did not like Novinha's character at all. I'm reading Xenocide now, and I still don't like her. I don't believe that she loves her family enough to want to protect them from obvious harm that she could totally prevent.  She also never tries to get to know them as their own people. I believe she feels like the harm that's done to her children is somehow a punishment for HER to make up for all of the things she's done in her past, so she lets it happen. She's kind of the worst. HOWEVER, I think I liked this book a little bit better even than Ender's Game, and I'm excited to read the rest of the series.

The Whistling Season

The Whistling Season by Ivan Doig was another book club pick. I wasn't really looking forward to reading this one, just because I didn't feel like it was up my alley, but I ended up enjoying it for the most part.  It did get to the point, about 2/3 of the way through, when I knew a secret would be revealed (he laid the foreshadowing on pretty thick here, I don't think I am spoiling anything), and I just wanted to be done.  Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable read centered around a very likable family. The story was told from the perspective of the oldest son, Paul. I liked getting to know Paul, his father, and his brothers a lot. Rose and Morrie, the out-of-towners that come in and disrupt their lives were also kinda fun to read about. I did wish the story had a little more drama, though. I guess I would recommend this to anyone who likes homesteading olden times, and who doesn't want to be disturbed or depressed, like, AT ALL during their reading experience.

Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen was a pretty cute book. The main character, Jacob, is very old and in a nursing home, and he's revisiting the time during his youth when he traveled around as a vet for a circus. I really liked all of the old timey circus themes - the fun stuff and also the really disturbing stuff too. I really liked August's character - the schizophrenic show director, and the twist at the end was really good too. It wasn't completely a surprise, but I was satisfied with it. This book also had photos from the old circuses before every chapter, and those were fun to look at.  I don't really have any super strong feelings towards this book, it was just a enjoyable, fast, good read.

The Unnamed

I was lucky enough to win a copy of Joshua Ferris's new book The Unnamed from a Goodreads giveaway.  I read Joshua Ferris's first book, and I really liked it, so I was excited to get started reading this one.  I really like his writing style, and I think the pacing of this book is really good, but the main character totally infuriated me.  It's about this dude - a totally rich lawyer with a wife who loves him SO MUCH and daughter that also does.  Life is a crazy chore for him, and somehow he ends up with this "disease" that makes him just leave whatever situation he's in and start walking.  After he's done walking, he falls asleep somewhere and his wife goes and picks him up. Of course the doctors can't diagnose him with an actual disease so he's in this constant struggle between walking all over the place for no reason, and also convincing people that he has an actual disease. AND THE WHOLE TIME HIS WIFE STAYS WITH HIM. Ugh. The whole time reading this I was like "dude, you do NOT have a disease, you're just a douche who likes to go in your 'cave' all the time." This was a good read, but I did not like main character, and I really thought his wife should have left him a long time ago.

That Old Cape Magic

I was the host for this round of my book club, so I chose That Old Cape Magic by Richard Russo. Russo is one of my favorite authors, and I have been meaning to read this one (his newest) for a while now. I thought it was a good pick for book club, and I didn't want to pick anything too fantasy-ish, afraid that that would not go over well at all. This was not my favorite Russo book, but I did really like it a lot.  The story is about a marriage that's on the verge of collapse. The main character, Griffin, is tasked with attending two weddings and also spreading the ashes of both of his parents.  The story takes place mostly on the New England coast and Cape Cod. I thought it was interesting how a couple members of my book club didn't understand why a place like Cape Cod would hold such a stigma and cause people to care a lot about what other people think about their lives. If you've been out there on vacation, or lived around there, you'd get it exactly, and that feeling is definitely something I thought everyone had about a place like the Cape or the Hamptons. It makes me feel really glad that I live out here now, and that the people that live here, for the most part, place emphasis on their own lives and happiness instead of constantly comparing their lives to others.  Here, Griffin in stuck in a crazy prison that he built for himself, and in the process alienated his family and everyone close to him.  His challenge is to shake the heavy influence of his parents and come to terms with the fact that he doesn't have a crappy life.  This story and the characters here are a bit darker than other Russo books, but I thought it was certainly still an enjoyable read. Russo is such a master of character development, that you can't help but feel for the them, even though you may not necessarily like their personalities.

Dragon Strike

Dragon Strike is E. E. Knight's sequel to Blah Blah Blah, Age of Fire. In this book, the three siblings, AuRon, Wistala and The Copper FINALLY meet each other.  The build-up to the meeting took up almost three quarters of the book, and was SO anticlimactic.  For three and three quarters books you are WAITING for this moment, and when it finally comes, it's like 'no one was there for me' (Copper), 'I'm a forgiving soul, so I forgive you' (Wistala), and 'Huh, I'm not as mad as I thought' (AuRon), and then they just move onto the next stupid thing! SERIOUSLY, the description of this big meeting was only TWO pages and I feel kind of cheated.  There should have been long drawn out family drama and all this stuff going on for the rest of the book and then left open ended so I would want to read the next book (yes, there is another one). It's like waiting your whole entire childhood to go to Disney World and meet Mickey Mouse and then when it finally happens, you find out that it's just some dude in a costume, you take one picture, and then you're shuffled out and onto the next stupid ride that's not as good. This book should have been called Dragon Disappointment.

The Prophet of Yonwood

The Prophet of Yonwood is the third book in Jeanne DuPrau's Books of Ember.  This is a prequel that takes place about a generation or two before the City of Ember is created.  I liked it for the most part, but I was kind of disappointed, because I thought it was going to be about the actual thought process and execution of the City of Ember.  Instead it was about about life in general during a time of global crisis and impending apocalypse.  I did enjoy the themes a lot - how religion can be used to control people and how easily people allow themselves to be controlled while they're in a state of fear.  I liked the idea that there was a Prophet in the town, however, I was also disappointed in the way the prophet just all of a sudden snapped out of her weird sick mumbling state.  I am looking forward to reading the forth book in this series which picks up with the send of the second book left off.  I also still want to read about how Ember was set up and founded and the issues that went along with that.  I'm hoping Jeanne DuPrau chooses to write a book during that time.

The Last Light of the Sun

Disclaimer: Ok, I promise I am going to get back to knitting content soon.  I have strayed from the blog in general and I want to get back to it!  I have finished some things, and also some other things I can't post until after Christmas.  I am pretty settled in my new city (Eugene is the best!) and my new job (also the best!). I am happy, things are steady, and there is lot of fiber related things to be done and blog about!

*Sigh.* The Last Light of the Sun by Guy Gavriel Kay is one of those books that I kind of really like and kind of really don't like at the same time.  It's my second Kay, and I think I had the same struggle reading this one as I had with the last book of his I read.  I feel like I can't really even sum up the story in simple words, which might be a good thing.  It takes place during the time (a long time ago) when the Vikings were invading England.  There are Vikings, so, yes, there is a lot of hacking people to bits.  There are also English royals, so, YES, there are faeries and mystical happenings.  There's some traveling and falling in love.  I think my favorite part of the book was the characters and the way the author sneakily developed them.  As I made my way through the slog that was the plot, I totally ended up caring about what happened to the people at the end.  Also, there were some really cool asides that took you through the lives of passersby of the actual main events.  I really enjoyed these little stories, and I found myself kind of disappointed when I had to go back to reading the main story.  This one was alright. I know a lot of people love this author, but, honestly, I'm not sure if I will pick up any more from this one.

Priestess of Avalon

Priestess of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley and Diana L. Paxon is the forth book of Avalon I have read, and I kind of think it might be my last.  This novel chronicles the life of Helena, mother of Constantine.  She faces the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire, and this super intense theme gave the story potential to be so awesome! But, alas.  I believe that Marion Zimmer Bradley started writing this book and died before it was completed.  Diana L. Paxon finished writing it.  I have to say that you can totally tell!  I haven never read anything else by Diana Paxon, but all I know is that the first part of this book was awesome and the past two parts were not that good.  They were slow, uneventful, and did not have the required percentage of pagan/Avalon stuff required to fulfill my needs.  I think there are more Avalon books after this one, and I am hesitant to give them a go now. Ah well, we had a good run.

Abarat

Abarat by Clive Barker was recommended to me by Beth when I was going on a trip to the library in search of some sweet YA.  I really thought this was an excellent book!  It was really good storytelling, and I found I could easily escape into this world and leave my cares behind.  The artwork that went along with it is great as well and helps you to visualize the world and the characters.  The story is about a girl named Candy Quackenbush from Chickentown, Minnesota (already rules, right?!) who is kind of an outcast.  One day she is wandering is a field and finds herself taken away to a land called the Abarat.  Adventures begin and new characters are met.  I felt like this book was only setting the stage for the next books in the series, and I am really excited to get to read those soon.  I would recommend this book to anyone who likes adventure stories.  This is a fantasy, but I think it's very accessible, and readers who don't really like fantasy still might like this book.