The Dispossessed - Ursula K. Le Guin

I have been very unorganized and lazy about blogging lately. Not because of a lack of books getting read, good grief! Right now, my "finished" pile is taking over my desk, eeeck! And between the unorganized stacks of books, there are magazines that I've bookmarked with articles I want to share, wedding invitation samples, loose leaf papers with writing scribbles, printed curriculums from Canisius College and Colorado State U., and the occasional half finished bag of trial mix with mostly raisins left in. This is my place to be sloppy and unorganized, my getaway, my cubbyhole, my cave. Heh heh, it really is time to give the old desk a good pick up and dust though!

I finished this particular story back in March. If you are familiar with Le Guin, you know she is a master writer of the sci-fi/fantasy genre. And this story is a masterwork. It is set somewhere in the distant future. Shevek is a brilliant, thoughtful physicist born and raised on the planet Annares, which is the mostly barren moon of the planet Urras. About two hundred years before the time of this story, revolutionaries led by Odo the anarchist philosopher left Urras to start a new utopian society on Annares. Except for bare essential trade, there is no communication between the two planets during the next two centuries. In Le Guin's anthropological goggle wearing style, you are introduced to a race of people living on two different planets, living in two different societies that are heading in different directions. Urras is a lush paradise being treated indifferently by those driven by greed for wealth and resources, on Annares the society is based on communal sharing and voluntary cooperation, in a barren bleak landscape that barely supplies their needs. Le Guin's words strongly point out how human ideals and human nature are frequently at odds.

"It was easy to share when there was enough, even barely enough, to go round. But when there was not enough? Then force entered in; might making right; power, and its tool, violence, and its most devoted ally, the averted eye." Page 256

Shevek's life's work as a physicist has been to make instantaneous communication possible across space, by uniting the principles of Sequency and Simultaneity. He travels to Urras' main city of A-Io to look for ways in which to reach and accomplish his scientific goal, when he is shunned on his home planet for his ideas being a result of "egoism". He learns on Urras that egoism is the generally accepted way to view the world. His journey becomes not only a quest as a physicist, but also as an ambassador of Annares. Through Shevek, the reader sees both societies' pros and cons, flaws and virtues. He is a man coming from a communal society and trying to negotiate his way through a capitalist one, one which ultimately makes him feel trapped.

Another recurring theme that features in Le Guin's writing is gender and cultural bias. This passage is from just after Shevek and his partner, Takver, have a little girl. It gives you a peek into the society Le Guin is writing into existence.

"An Odonian undertook monogamy just as he might undertake a joint enterprise in production, a ballet, or a soap works. Partnership was a voluntarily constituted federation like any other. So long as it worked, it worked, and if it didn't work it stopped being. It was not an institution but a function. It had no sanction but that of private conscience." Page 244.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story. It wasn't a fast read; the writing reflects a lot of different political issues from the time it was written and gets heavy sometimes, but is very thought provoking and enjoyable. Like every Le Guin book I have read. Next up, not sure when I'll get to it, is The Word for World is Forest.  I'm looking forward to it for simply being a Le Guin novel, but I already know some of the plot and the issues it tackles are again heavy ones.

Mirror, Mirror - Gregory Maguire

"The thing about a mirror is this:  The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective", page 52.  Nothing like a clever mind narrowed by vanity to create evil, and evil is what you find in the mind of Lucrezia Borgia, the wicked witch of this tale.  Bianca de Nevada, "of the snowy slopes," is our Snow White.

Are you a fan of twice told tales? I've come around to them mostly after reading Maguire's writing; the Wicked books are absolutely wonderful!  You get into this story the same way, already aware of certain fairy tale events to take place, but the world itself is completely Mr. Maguire's.  You just can't NOT get into it!

Part historical fiction and part retold fantasy, this story begins in the year 1502, in Italy. Our heroine is Bianca, seven years old when we meet her and because of her father's extreme protectiveness she never leaves the farm (Montefiore).  She remains innocent to the outside world of war and power struggles until Lucrezia and her brother (a powerful, pious, and dangerous bull of a man and also Lucrezia's lover) sweep into their quiet lives like a natural disaster and bring the problems of the outside world with them.  Bianca's father, haplessly caught in a religious and political scheme, is sent on a quest that deprives her of his protection and leaves her at the mercy of La Borgia.  As the story of Snow White goes, Bianca survives numerous attempts on her life through the grace of her own innocence and the help of those who've been inspired by her purity.

I think my favorite part of this story is the dwarves and their part in narrating.  In this telling of the tale, the dwarves are something very old and elemental.  They live in time a different way than human beings.  Decades of human time are a blink of an eye to them.  They can take shape, but sometimes they have no shape.  As I read, I imagined them to be something like the claymation of the Gnome King in Return to Oz, slowly morphing into something more homo sapient.

(*Photo found at http://www.waltdisneysreturntooz.com/Will.htm)

I love Maguire's writing for its raw edge...what's the word I'm looking for?  Nothing is sugarcoated; whether it's emotions or natural bodily functions, he serves it to you with spicy adjectives.  I thought it was brilliant of him to connect the poison apple of the age-old fairy tale to the real life Borgia family's infamous use of poison to dispose of their enemies.  And I learned a new word: cenobite.  Never came across it before.  A cenobite is a member of a monastic community.

Happy birthday, hobbits!

Good gravy, I'm embarrassed about what a bad blogger I've been.  Sorry for the silence!

I wasn't previously aware before coming across THIS ARTICLE that Bilbo and Frodo shared the same b-day.  Oops, maybe I need to reread the series!

❦ Wild Kingdom Book Challenge! ❦

Hello, fellow book and animal lovers. I'm setting myself an animal studies/ anthrozoology based reading challenge and I would love it if you'd join me! Any genre counts, as long as it pertains to the human-animal bond. Anthropomorphic stories can count too, i.e. Alice in Wonderland and her waistcoat wearing white rabbit. Possible reads can include fiction, non-fiction, rereads, children's stories, textbooks, wildlife journals, whatever you'd like. Remember, you don't have to have a blog to participate and leave comments, and you can join anytime during the challenge.

- The challenge will run from January 1st-December 31, 2012.

-Books may count toward other challenges.

- Choose where you want to go:

1-3 books = The Hundred Acre Wood

4-6 books = Rikki Tikki's Bungalow

7-9 books = Best Friends Animal Society

10 or more = The Jane Goodall Institute

-If you'd like to follow this challenge on your own blog, first create a signup post and then use one of these banners to link your post to the Mr. Linky at the bottom of this post. Remember to add the link of your sign-up post page, not your blog's main address.

- Here are some possibilities:

Black Beauty - Anna Sewell

City of Ravens - Boria Sax

Megan's Mare - Lynn Hall

The Ten Trusts - Jane Goodall & Marc Bekoff

The Animal Manifesto - Marc Bekoff

Putting the Horse Before Descartes - Bernard Rollin

Incident at Hawk's Hill - Allan W. Eckert

Charlotte's Web - E.B. White

The Yearling - M.K. Rawlings

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

Spoken in Whispers - Nicci Mackay

The Man Who Listens to Horses - Monty Roberts

Out of the Mist - Pat Lyne

Horsekeeping on a Small Acreage - Cherry Hill

Animals As Teachers and Healers - Susan Chernak McElroy

The Animal Within Us - Jay D. Glass

Never Cry Wolf - Farley Mowat

Gorillas in the Mist - Dian Fossey

Stories Rabbits Tell - Davis and Demello

Uncle Wiggly's Storybook - Howard Garis

Fury and the Mustangs - Albert G. Miller

The Black Stallion novels - Walter Farley

When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals - Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

The Art of Racing in the Rain - Garth Stein

Buffalo Gals and Other Stories- Ursula K. Le Guin

King of the Wind - Marguerite Henry

Misty of Chincoteague - " "

All Creatures Great and Small series - James Herriot

The Midnight Fox - Betsy Byars

My Friend Flicka - Mary O'Hara

The Philosophy of Animal Rights - Mylan Engel & Kathie Jenni

Bunnicula - Deborah & James Howe

The Darkness is Light Enough: The Field Journal of a Night Naturalist - Chris Ferris

Wild Minds - Marc D. Hauser

Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat - Hal Herzog

The Man Who Talks to Whales: The Art of Interspecies Communication - Jim Nollman

The Jungle Book - Rudyard Kipling

Thought to Exist in the Wild: Awakening from the Nightmare of Zoos - Derrick Jensen

In the Shadow of Man - Jane Goodall

Watership Down - Richard Adams

Hope you join me. Looking forward to hearing from other animal enthusiasts!

Greek Classics Challenge

A goal for the upcoming year: to read me some Plato and Aristotle. And anything else Greek and Classic that comes my way. Thanks for hosting, Howling Frog!

Mouse the Messy

Time to clear off my desk! Here is a list of the books I've read or reread in the last ten months or so, I'm not going to get a chance to write about them for a good long while and they need to live on the bookshelf and move off my desk. In no particular order, here are the titles:

Supernatural Stories, 13 Tales of the Unexpected - edited by Jean Russell

Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

Animal Dreams - Barbara Kingsolver

Girl with a Pearl Earring - Tracy Chevalier

A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller, Jr.

Blackbriar - William Sleator

The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood

Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver

The House on Mango Street - Sandra Cisneros

My Side of the Mountain & On the Far Side of the Mountain - Jean Craighead George

Treasure Box - Orson Scott Card

...and also several books that go with the Wild Kingdom challenge including authors Bernard Rollin, Marc Bekoff, and Hal Herzog. Stay tuned! Whew, I can see part of my desktop now.

The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood

In this very complex story, you meet three very different women from Toronto, Canada: Tony, Charis, and Roz. You learn about their pasts and what makes them tick. What they have in common, what binds them, is being manipulated and betrayed by the evil witch of the story, Zenia, The Robber Bride.

The story's title is a reference to the fairy tale, The Robber Bridegroom. The characters themselves are meant to mirror fairy tale characters. Tony is Rapunzel, Charis is Sleeping Beauty, and Roz is Cinderella. Zenia is the wandering orphan, the dangerous rootless wanderer, the prince-less one. The references make perfect sense as you get to know the characters.

Zenia is an enigma. Her past is explained many times, by Zenia herself to the other women. But what parts of her self proclaimed history are fact and which are fiction? Zenia invents herself again and again in different ways for the other characters of the story, but you never know for sure who or what she really is except a disturbed and intriguing personality. At some point in their lives, Zenia has burned each of the main characters; seducing husbands/significant others, lying, betraying, causing general chaos against the other women for her own mysterious reasons. Also at some point, each character dreams of Zenia. Or in Charis's case, has a vision of her. "..Charis's astral body falls to its knees, raising imploring hands to the astral body of Zenia, which burns red, a red crown of flames like spiky leaves or old fashioned pen nibs flaring around her head, with emptiness at the centre of each flame", page 221. Tony, Charis, and Roz end up both admiring, fearing, and despising Zenia at different times, seeing themselves in her in spite of it.

I'm not so sure what a male reader might get out of this story. I loved it myself and identified with different bits of each character. But I have a feeling this kind of feminism might only be able to be understood by women.

"The story of Zenia is insubstantial, ownerless, a rumour only, drifting from mouth to mouth and changing as it goes. As with any magician, you saw what she wanted you to see; or else you saw what you yourself wanted to see. She did it with mirrors. The mirror was whoever was watching, but there was nothing behind the two-dimensional image but a thin layer of mercury", page 509.

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase - Joan Aiken

At last! I finally ordered this the end of last month and finished it while flying to and from Ohio early this month. I enjoyed it, but I was disappointed that Dido Twite wasn't a character in this story. Oh well, Bonnie and Sylvia had some pretty interesting adventures.

The two cousins (one a sweet but high strung personality and one a gentle, timid orphan) are left at Willoughby Chase while Bonnie's parents take a sea voyage for her mother's health. Sylvia leaves her Aunt Jane behind in London to move to the Chase. Even if this book was written for children ages 9-12, anyone any age can enjoy Miss Aiken's writing. She puts her characters in situations that reveal their true colors and does a great job of developing them, even characters like Bonnie's father, who isn't in the story much. You understand he's a kind, loving father but distracted enough with his wife's illness that his judgement is a little off when he asks a distant relation he doesn't know to come and watch the Chase and the children. Miss Slighcarp plots to take over the estate completely. She and her gang of bullies are the real wolves featured in this story, although there are real four legged ones running around the place too and the girls and their friends have some narrow escapes. This is a very enjoyable story with heroes, villians, plots, escapes, cruel situations, and happy endings. The next book in the series is Black Hearts in Battersea, where I believe Dido makes her appearance. Can't wait to get to it!

Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver

I love Barbara Kingsolver. I devour her writing, and it satisfies on so many levels. I just got me a copy of The Lacuna, and will hopefully get to it soon. But the "to read" stacks on my desk are getting out of control. I don't MEAN to hoard books, but every shelf is packed!

Oh geez. I think I've read this novel about a dozen times and gone though about a dozen copies; I always want to share it and pass it on. The first time I read it, I was working in Ireland on the Renvyle coast, as a trail guide for a local stable. The job was challenging and exciting, but I still couldn't wait to get into bed at night to get through at least one chapter. I ended up passing on that particular copy to one of the tourists I went riding with, who told me she was so happy to get out of the city that she didn't want to go back. So anyway, I reread it again this past August. I haven't given this one away yet, maybe I'll hang on to it and let it fight for space on my shelves. Here are some good reviews. This lady is one hell of a writer and a human being, I highly recommend anything she puts down on paper.

Insomniac Rantings

I can't sleep. And I'm so tired, what a drag. I want to call and talk to a girlfriend, but they're all in eastern standard time. It could be because I have so much on my mind that I want to hide under the covers and suck my thumb. It could be because the third floor neighbors are such punks and all night long it sounds like they run a bowling alley in their living room. Or maybe because I'm so homesick for Ohio lately that it wakes me up when I finally do fall asleep. It really doesn't matter I guess, the fact is sleep is elusive tonight and tomorrow's work day is going to be tough and full of coffee. So I'm petting the puppy, who HATES the bumping & thumping noises from upstairs, and watching Star Trek TNG. Geordi is the focus character for this episode....um, "Aquiel". I had a crush on Levar Burton when I was in second grade. And I still know all the words to the Reading Rainbow theme song. "Butterfly in the skyyyy, I can fly twice as hiiiiiiigh..."

Doctor Who and the Android Invasion - Terrance Dicks

If you are not from the Planet Ming Mong, then here's a run down on Dr. Who:

He is an alien. He's a renegade bad boy Timelord from the planet Gallifrey, who has a soft spot for the human race and spends a lot of his time rescuing them. He can regenerate himself, and each reincarnation has its own personality traits & quirks. (Tom Baker by far and away was one of the best and best loved as the fourth incarnation. David Tennant is pretty popular too, he played the Tenth Doctor.) He travels through space and time in his space/time machine, the TARDIS = Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. He carries a sonic screwdriver. This incarnation's personality is "partial to tea and muffins", wears a long dramatic scarf and an overcoat with lots of pockets, has a robotic dog named K-9, and breaks the ice with complete strangers by offering them Jelly Babies.

This story is classic Tom Baker/Fourth Incarnation. I must have watched this one on VHS a hundred times as a kid. Heh heh, and an adult. I finished reading this back in November; incidentally the same day the Bear and I went down to the county courthouse in hoodies and got married. Yep, I was reading Doctor Who on my wedding day. Typical of the Doctor, this adventure starts out by a chance encounter. He is taking his companion Sarah back to the real Earth and when the TARDIS malfunctions slightly, they accidentally stumble into a hostile "aliens using androids" take-over attempt of the Earth by the Kraals where he goes head to head with the Chief Scientist of the Kraal Expedition, the Doctor and Sarah are both put in a bunch of sticky situations that they have to get out of by quick thinking, there are creepy androids, scary militant aliens, and the wonderful & clever Fourth Doctor...love everything about this story! If you are a Who fan, this is a classic you must sample. If you're not a Who fan, it means you haven't met the Doctor yet and you need to.

Eight Stories from the Rest of the Robots - Isaac Asimov

Couldn't find a picture of this edition's cover on the net. And for some reason that I haven't been able to fix, this is the best I can do with my scanner right now. Grrr.

This collection of robot stories from Asimov was really enjoyable and scored me a trip to Uranus on the Mind Voyages challenge when I finished it early last month. The stories are:

Robot AL-76 Goes Astray
First Law
Victory Unintentional
Let's Get Together
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Risk
Lenny
Galley Slave

This was the first I'd heard of Dr. Susan Calvin the roboticist, who I'm still not sure I liked or not. I did like how Asimov's style questions the boundaries of human and robot; you get a good look at his robots' "human" sides.

I think my favorite short of this collection was Victory Unintentional. A group of robots are sent to Jupiter to observe the Jovians, who are hostile to humankind but so far not technologically advanced enough to threaten them. And the robots have distinctive personalities and qualities that help tell the story. It's simple, but effective story telling: the Jovians observe the robots performing any number of feats that an actual human would be incapable of and are duly impressed, thinking that they are observing examples of human capabilities. It's not until the end of the story that the robots understand they have probably quelled interstellar war, simply by being themselves.

Very entertaining and insightful writing. Asimov fan? Add this to your list of must reads.

Running to Catch Up

Quick update of our household: the year is off to a hectic start. Lots going on, including planning our wedding celebration this coming fall! I'm behind on everything from the laundry to getting my license plates to blogging. The wee Dee does NOT approve of slacking. No sir, she's giving me the the evil eye.

All of my book challenges finished up on New Year's Eve, and I'm behind in blogging by seven books. Yikes. Time to write some book reports, Mouse. Also, I don't think I'll be joining any new book challenges this year, at least for now. There's just too much going on. I think one solid reading project is all I'm going to have time to handle, hopefully a quasi-anthrozoology challenge I'm planning to host in the spring. I know most of these challenges start on the first of the year, but mine won't because...well, I'm running late. For a white rabbit, Dee Dee looks like she has all the time in the world.

So yeah, very soon, you can expect to see an animal/anthrozoology themed book challenge coming up here. And a ton of book challenge entries!

Cat Among the Pigeons - Agatha Christie

This was my last read for the Typically British challenge (ends on 12/31). I finished it on the 12th. Like every other Christie mystery I've read, you get thoroughly caught up in the characters and local community of the story. Most of the action takes place at a highly exclusive British girls' boarding school. A political coup, international intrigue, hidden jewels, multiple murders, mysterious characters, and Poirot stepping in towards the end, it's all here. Classic Christie. Very entertaining, enjoyable read.

Shadow of the Hegemon - Orson Scott Card

I swiped this copy from my brother when I was visiting in Ohio back in the middle of November. I enjoyed this read, but it wasn't without its flaws. The story stumbled a bit with keeping my attention; sometimes what kept me reading was the fact that I'd read the previous Ender books and was already caught up in some of the characters. I wouldn't recommend this being the first Ender book you read, it will be hard to understand or stick with. The story follows the events that take place after Ender's War, after the Battle School students return to earth and world war seems imminent. The character development is impressive, Bean and Petra especially. And the ending is satisfying. If you are a fan of Card and the Ender stories, you will enjoy this book.

The Stories of Eva Luna - Isabel Allende

Isabel Allende is another author I adore who is very good at putting together characters that catch your attention and hook you. I've read The House of the Spirits, but not Eva Luna yet. (This book was a present from my Aunt Judy and Uncle Gary.) I was excited to finally read this collection, started it last month on the plane to visit my family in Ohio and finished on the plane ride home. This is a collection of short stories that create and involve people from every kind of social background. There is an element of Fantasia to these "mystical realism" stories; the worlds and characters in them are full of magic and unusual possibilities. In the prologue, Eva is lying in bed with her lover Rolf Carle, a European refugee and journalist. He asks her to tell him a story "you have never told anyone before". Eva's answer is in the twenty-three stories that follow. They are romantic, rich, enchanting stories of different people and different places.

We are lead to believe that most of these stories are pure invention by Eva for Rolf. In fact, Allende slyly adds an excerpt about Scheherazade from A Thousand and One Nights before the prologue: "The King ordered the Grand Vizier to bring him a virgin every night, and when the night was over, he ordered her to be killed. And thus it happened for three years, and in all the city there was no damsel left to withstand the assaults of this rider. But the Vizier had a daughter of great beauty, named Scheherazade...and she was very eloquent, and pleased all who heard her."

But the last heartbreaking story of the book, "And of Clay Are We Created", is Eva writing about a natural disaster that strikes and that Rolf becomes directly involved in; an earthquake that looses an avalanche that buries a great deal of people, animals, and land. "Much later, after soldiers and volunteers had arrived to rescue the living and try to assess the magnitude of the cataclysm, it was calculated that beneath the mud lay more than twenty thousand human beings and an indefinite number of animals putrefying in a viscous soup. Forests and rivers had also been swept away, and there was nothing to be seen but an immense desert of mire", page 354.

During this last story, Rolf goes out in his television helicopter to follow the story, and befriends a young girl, Azucena (Lily), who is hopelessly trapped in a mire of mud with only her head above ground. Despite his struggles to help her, he fails and he is with her when she dies, watching her sink below the surface. What makes the story especially sad is that there was a very obvious way to help the girl; Rolf is trying to obtain a special kind of pump that will save her from being sucked into her tomb, but help came too late because all the officials and people making decisions had more important things to do. I cried while reading this story and cried again later, when the images and emotions were still in my mind. This is the last passage of that particular story, Eva is observing the changes in Rolf:

"You are back with me, but you are not the same man. I often accompany you to the station and we watch the videos of Azucena again; you study them intently, looking for something you could have done to save her, something you did not think of in time. Or maybe you study them to see yourself as if in a mirror, naked. Your cameras lie forgotten in a closet; you do not write or sing; you sit long hours before the window, staring at the mountains. Beside you, I wait for you to complete the voyage into yourself, for the old wounds to heal. I know that when you return from your nightmares, we shall again walk hand in hand, as before" page 367.

And the book comes to an end, with a small and final excerpt from A Thousand and One Nights:

"And at this moment in her story, Scheherazade saw the first light of dawn, and discreetly fell silent."

Children of the Mind - Orson Scott Card

This is the fourth and last book of the Ender series. Hurray, I've read them all! And although I enjoyed this story a lot, I would probably give it fourth place out of the four. Why?-It was as enjoyable as it was unsatisfying.

A quick premise of the plot: the Starways Congress has decided to destroy Lusitania and all the beings who live on it, human, pequinino, and bugger because the descolada virus could potentially get out and wreak havoc. Good old government. Only Jane, the evolved being who lives in the ansible Net, can save everyone but the Congress is also deliberately shutting down the Net and Jane is losing the ability to move ships outside the known universe and back. Soon she won't be able to help her friends in their mission to find the origins of the descolada virus OR save her life. And while being moved in this way by Jane, Ender's personality/soul/aiua is split into three different beings, himself and his "children of the mind".

Typical of Card's writing, there are multiple interconnected story lines going on, involving a diverse group of people from different species and cultures. While there was a lot of dialogue involving philosophical ideas that I found interesting, not all of it was necessary to get the point across which made it tedious. And there were other characters who interested me, but you don't really get a chance to get all that attached to them. I liked Wang-mu to start off with, but I thought her relationship with Peter was unrealistic and it ruined her for me. My least favorite character was probably Ender's wife, Novinha. Since she was introduced in the story, she's been in dire need of a sharp kick in the butt. Granted, her life was full of tragedies, but in Novinha's case, her personality makes a life long tragedy out of everything. She just seems like such a completely unlikable drama queen, the more so because she's so determined that what she decides is right, that's she's acting out of someone's best interest so the ends justify the means. I have zero patience for this thinking in real and fictional people! You have to wonder what someone like Ender sees in her. She does do the right thing at the end of the story, but she doesn't get there by herself. Valentine has to coach her not to be a selfish cow. Ugh, Novinha.

Card originally planned Xenocide and Children of the Mind to be one cohesive story. And I think he should have gone that route. But despite some lumps, this story is still enjoyable and brings up all kinds of thought provoking ideas, i.e. with the "birth" of the new Peter and Valentine added to the existence of Jane, Card asks the question, do we have to have a physical base to have a soul? And which came first?

Ender's Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Xenocide are well worth reading if you haven't already and I highly recommend them. And while I'm glad I read Children of the Mind, I can't say I wasn't disappointed overall. The ending was left open enough, you have to wonder if OSC is planning to do something else with these characters. After reading this novel though, I hope he just leaves them where he left them.

The Pillars of the Earth - Ken Follett

This was a reread for me. I actually finished it several months ago, I'm still way behind on blogging. I've really been wanting to check out the television series of this story that was made recently with Eddie Redmayne and Donald Sutherland, but first I thought I'd read the original story again so it was fresh in my mind. And I'm all set now to read the sequel, World Without End.

This story has a lot of layers. It spans about fifty years of time in the fictional town of Kingsbridge, in 12th century England. You follow the fictional characters as they live out real historial events. You get a detailed look at the main characters lives and life during the time period. There are social and religious power and political struggles, and the lives and fortunes of the main characters are centered around the building of the Kingsbride Cathedral. What is going on out in the wide world, the struggle for the throne between Maud and Stephen, directly affects small town life in Kingsbridge. I think the characters are well written. Their stories intertwine and affect each other, and the way the book is wrapped up is very satisfying.

Through his writing, you learn about the author's love of medieval architecture and how he projects it onto some of his characters. My favorite characters are Ellen, Jack, Aliena and Phillip. Here is a clip from the t.v. series they made. It looks well done, I can't wait to see it. And I luuuuv Eddie's voice. ^-^

Solace of the Road - Siobhan Dowd

This was apparently Siobhan Dowd's last novel published, posthumously. I first heard about Bog Child over the summer through a friend, but when I went to buy a copy, I decided to purchase Solace of the Road first, after reading a review. It was on a whim, I really liked the sound of the title.
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I loved this story. I immediately got caught up with Holly/Solace and her self discovery quest. She's likable, self reliant, sarcastic, creative, and restless, with a forward looking attitude. She has personality traits and runs into situations that just about anyone of any age can identify with. I loved it when she compared herself to Jane Eyre when she lost her luggage. And as the title suggests, when the open road beckons, there's comfort in moving along it. Sometimes you just need to be moving forward to be able to see things differently.

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Holly's had a tough time with life so far and decides to take fate by the horns. She leaves her current foster parents' home to head for Ireland, where her imagination leads her to believe her alcoholic mother is waiting for her. She's armed with nothing but a tough cookie attitude and an ash blonde wig, calling herself 'Solace'. She's tough enough to hit the road with virtually no money, but she's still childishly naive enough to think she'll be happy at the end of her journey. For me, this was really where the "bittersweet" side of the story comes out; Holly is a fourteen year old girl, and doing her best to cope and do what she thinks is right in a world that just isn't always kind or fair. She meets all kinds of characters along the way that help shape the direction she's headed, as she ultimately learns to accept who she was and is. Like the Bonnie Raitt lyrics say, "We can't change the past, but we can leave it behind."

In the Woods - Tana French

First of all, let me just say that I can't adequately express my feelings for this story without giving a lot away. But don't worry, I'm not in the mood to write spoilers so I'll just be vague.

There are two story lines you follow while reading this book, most of the book focuses on the police investigation of a murdered girl in Knocknaree, Ireland in the present. Detectives Rob Ryan and Cassie Maddox are the partners working the case. But the big complication is that Rob, actually Adam Ryan, is the sole survivor from an unsolved incident that took place in Knocknaree when he was a kid, in which his two best friends end up missing and he has no memory of what happened. He becomes as much drawn up in his past as he is in trying to focus on the Katy Devlin's murder in the present.

Now, I'm a fan of stories that make use of how the past touches the present. And I'm even okay with the fact that not all stories have a satisfying sense of closure. But when I finished the book, my general feeling was "that's it?". Not only because the investigations didn't satisfy me, neither did the way the main characters left things or who they ended up with. It made me sad, actually.

I began reading this book for the Ireland reading challenge armed with the knowledge that this was the author's first published work, so I tried not to be too judgmental. I enjoyed the read, but I also figured out the "whodunit" part maybe halfway through. It seemed kind of obvious. The characters themselves were more interesting to me than the plot. I enjoyed that the author made them human enough to make mistakes and did a good job of exposing what makes them fragile or predatory, but there were still some elements of the unrealistic to their relationships. I'd give you examples of what I mean, but it would give too much away.

In the words of Levar Burton, "You don't have to take my word for it." If you have the chance, give it a read and see what you think. I've been told her novel The Likeness has some of the same characters, so I will probably get to that at some point. But it's going to take a while, I'm going to have to get over feeling depressed about the previous story.