Chapter Fourteen: American Gods

Neil Gaiman's American Gods is a book I've been meaning to read for months, ever since Gaiman came to Bard and did a reading of a short piece he was still working on.  Many of my fellow reading-attendees were shocked and dismayed to hear that I hadn't read American Gods, so I dedicate this post to them (they know who they are, unless they've forgotten...).  I am definitely glad that I finally got around to reading this book, although (unlike other Gaiman books I've read) I can't see myself reading it again, at least not any time in the near future. It was a really interesting read, and it definitely kept my attention--I liked the main character and the supporting characters, the mythology was interesting, and the U.S. geography was fun--but on the whole this novel was a little too dark and intense, and Gaiman's characteristic humor was a little too sparse, to become one of my absolute favorites. Still, I would certainly recommend reading American Gods, especially if you're a fan of mystery or suspense. (Although there are elements of fantasy or sci-fi, it felt more like magical realism to me, and I wouldn't recommend it if someone said they were looking for a good fantasy or sci-fi read.)

Chapter Thirteen: Room

Although I was a bit nervous about reading a book that promised to include some fairly dark content (it's about a woman who has been kidnapped, kept in captivity for years, and is trying to raise her son in the small room where they're kept), I found myself really gripped by this novel by Emma Donoghue.  It was hard to put down!  I think a big part of why I found it so absorbing and readable was that Donoghue narrates in the voice of the five-year-old child who has been born and raised in this room: this choice of narration allows a lot of the heaviest information to be filtered, in the sense that the experience of captivity, which seems absolutely atrocious to readers used to living outside of captivity, just seems normal to the narrator, so while his accounts of his mother allowed me to glimpse the horror of the situation, I didn't feel the horror pressing directly on me as I read.  Still, it was a bit of a heavy read, but I liked it a lot.

Chapter Twelve: Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog

As one might guess from its title, Three Men in a Boat, to Say Nothing of the Dog by Jerome K. Jerome  is a humorous read.  It's not children's fiction, but its flights of fancy, style of humor, all-male cast, riverine setting, and of course all of the messing about--simply messing about--in boats reminded me a lot of The Wind in the Willows, one of my all-time favorites.  This book doesn't have much of a plot, but I was too busy enjoying the narration to mind!  This light, delightful read was able to carry me away from a harsh New England winter into a mild English boating trip, and I was thoroughly pleased!

Chapter Eleven: A Kingdom Far and Clear

It is thanks to my grandmother for giving me a visually beautiful edition of Mark Helprin's Swan Lake trilogy, illustrated by Chris Van Allsburg. (Those of you familiar with picture books may know Van Allsburg from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs and The Polar Express.) I had never read this story, but apparently it's a classic! Overall, I enjoyed it, but I could have done without the references to God, and although the very end was, thank goodness, hopeful, the final installment generally was rather heavy and hopeless. So I'm not sure if I'll be rereading this book, but I did enjoy reading it this first time through!

Chapter Ten: Welcome to Lizard Motel

This was neither children's/YA fiction nor was it fiction at all!  But I heartily enjoyed this memoir, which I felt was as much about motherhood as it was about an adult's perspective on children's literature.  Of course, given how concerned children's literature is with adult conceptions of childhood, it isn't surprising that author Barbara Feinberg's experiences as a mother ended up being so entwined with her views on children's literature.  I didn't agree with everything she wrote, nor all of her judgments on the specific books she critiqued.  (For example, she disliked Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons, which admittedly I haven't bothered to reread probably since sixth grade, but which I remember liking very much between then and when I first read it, probably in third or fourth grade.)  However, it was truly refreshing to read a published account by another adult validating what I felt as a kid about most of what I had to read for school--it wasn't what I wanted to be reading, and it wasn't enjoyable to read.  (Like her, or rather her son, the books we both dislike are the sorts of books I read maybe in fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades--we didn't read much before that, or at least not as a class, and after that we were pretty much in the realm of (adult) classics.)  I don't know if someone not familiar with the books Feinberg focuses on (mostly written and taught from the 1970s onward) and not interested in children's literature would find this book interesting, but I definitely enjoyed reading it!

Chapter Nine: The Amulet of Samarkand

So, first, my apologies for not having written in more than a month!  I can lamely say that I was busy with school and then the holidays, but I was at least reading for fun, even if I didn't write about it right away!  So, The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud...  I honestly didn't enjoy this read nearly as much as I'd expected to.  I generally quite like YA fantasy, but something about this left me feeling lukewarm.  I did bother to finish it, and I found the last few chapters more interesting than most of the rest of the book, but I didn't end the book feeling that I absolutely must read the sequels--in fact, I ended thinking that I almost certainly won't bother with the sequels.  I think a lot of my problem with this book stemmed from the fact that I had trouble identifying with and liking the main child character.  He was both cold and whiny, I found, and I had trouble sympathizing with him.  I rather liked the other main character better, who is a wise (or so he thinks of himself) djinn, although I'm not sure how much I was supposed to like him.  The villains weren't compelling enough to really hate or fear, so they didn't help spur me on, either. On the whole, I wasn't terribly impressed by this book, but I've certainly read worse.

Chapter Eight: Passarola Rising

So this one isn't a children's book, it just caught my eye while I was browsing the school library's Australian Fiction section.  It wasn't quite as captivating as, say The Hunger Games, but I enjoyed reading it in a calmer way.  It's a fun little piece of historical fiction with just a note of science fantasy in the titular airship (the Passarola), which is designed like a boat and propelled by wind in its sails, but which is held aloft by vacuum-pumped copper spheres.  Peppered with a bit of Portuguese and French, as well as some old-timey wording, the book's language itself was fun as well.