Month: October 2008

The Graveyard Book

Posted on by Dana

I finished listening to Neil Gaiman’s latest novel, The Graveyard Book, at Neil Gaiman’s official site for young readers.  On his recent book tour, Gaiman read a chapter (or in the case of chapter 7, a half a chapter) at each stop on his tour.  Videos of his readings were posted on the site.  I’m not sure how much longer they are available, or if they are permanent, but do yourself a favor and enjoy Gaiman reading his work.  He does it very well, and it’s a gift not all authors have.  For instance, I have heard J.K. Rowling read her work on video, and while she wasn’t bad, she wasn’t a particularly good oral interpreter.  Gaiman changes voices for his characters, giving them different dialects and accents, and his emphasis in the right places draws out much of the humor of the book.  And there is quite a bit of humor in the book.  He’s a wonderful reader.

The Graveyard Book is the story of Nobody Owens — called Bod for short, a young boy who wanders into a nearby graveyard after his parents are murdered and is raised by the spirits who inhabit the graveyard.  We should all have such an education!  As Silas, Bod’s guardian says, “It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will … take a graveyard.”  Gaiman’s novel is a nod to Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book.  Bod is given the freedom of the graveyard by the spirits, and until he is grown, they promise to look after him, for the man who killed his family is still out there, waiting.

The book was a pleasure from start to finish, and more so as a result of Neil Gaiman’s superb oral storytelling skills.  I plan to purchase a copy for my classroom library and will recommend the book to my students.  I think it very generous of Neil Gaiman to share his book in this manner, and I am grateful for the experience of hearing him read the book, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Related posts:

Review: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams
Re-Reading Harry Potter: Hermione and House Elves
Review: Are You My Mother?, Alison Bechdel

Neil Gaiman Reads

Posted on by Dana

I never outgrew a fondness for being read to, and if you didn’t either, you might want to check out this site, which features videos of Neil Gaiman reading his new novel The Graveyard Book in its entirety.  You can browse inside the book at Harper Collins’s site, and you can check out an NPR story about Neil and Neil’s blog.  Neil is one of the most accessible authors, and really seems to care about his fans.  What more perfect book for Halloween than a tale of a boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard?

What are your favorite Halloween books?  Are you participating in the RIP Challenge this year?  I couldn’t because I didn’t feel I should commit to a reading challenge with grad school taking up extra time.  I really wanted to do the challenge this year, when the chill in the air is the perfect accompaniment to a gothic novel.  I also really enjoyed my selections from last year, though I still haven’t finished Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.  I honestly did enjoy what I read, and I do want to finish it, but I found it was a challenging and very long book, and perhaps would be best to read when I feel I have time.

Related posts:

Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Review: The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova
Kindle TBR Pile

Breaking Dawn

Posted on by Dana

Earlier this evening, I finished the final book in Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga.  Breaking Dawn was not, in my estimation, as good as its predecessors.  I felt the book had a variety of problems that boil down to one main issue.  I expect books about the supernatural to stretch my credulity, but this book went over my credulity line.

Spoilers follow, so stop reading now if you intend to read the book and don’t want plot details revealed.

In this novel Bella, Meyer’s protagonist, marries her Edward (who was a little too bossy and controlling — and yes, he may be from a more patriarchal era, but I still don’t like it) and inexplicably gives birth to a half vampire/half human child.  The birth would have killed her except Edward is able to heal Bella’s injuries by making her into a vampire.  As a vampire, much of the quirks that make her personality accessible to teenage girls — her insecurity and clumsiness — fall away in the face of her superhuman powers.  And she defies the mold by displaying amazing self control and powers, considering she is a newborn vampire.  Meanwhile, Jacob inexplicably imprints on Edward and Bella’s daughter Renesmee.  Never mind she’s not part of the Quileute tribe.  See what I mean?  Finally, another vampire glimpses Renesmee and thinks Carlisle’s coven has done the unthinkable — created a vampire out of a child.  Supposedly it’s a crime to create child vampires because they have vampire strength and no control.  The Volturi — the guardians of the vampires’ secret — descend upon Bella and her family, but she’s not about to give up without a fight.

I believe the best book in the series remains the first, although I liked parts of each of the others, even this one.  However, Breaking Dawn was easy to put down for long periods of time, and it was difficult to pick up again sometimes.  I had eventually read through too much of it to put it down.  Once I invest in a book by a certain number of pages, I tend to plow through.  Overall, I was disappointed with this book, but the series as a whole is a satisfying, fun read.

Related posts:

Review: The Final Revival of Opal & Nev, Dawnie Walton
Review: The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
Review: Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Posted on by Dana

First, the good news is that I was able to generate quite a lot of interest in a book club among the teachers at my school.  They graciously allowed me to select our first book, and I chose Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows’s The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  It’s a perfect book for book clubs, and I believe I had read as much somewhere, but I’m not sure where.  I was taken by the title.

The book is populated with memorable characters who tell their story through letters.  As this is one of only a handful of epistolary novels I’ve read, I’ll call it a unique storytelling device that works well to reveal the plot.  Much better, in fact, than I think a straight narrative would have because it allows for the otherwise risky device of multiple narrators to work much better.  The novel is the story of a writer named Juliet Ashton, who reminded me of Dorothy Parker.  I’ll be curious to see if my book club members thought of her, too.  By chance, Dawsey Adams, a pig farmer on the Channel Island of Guernsey comes upon one of her books in a used book store, and he enjoys it so much that he writes to her.  Over time, Juliet develops friendships with Dawsey and his friends, who formed the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society during Germany’s occupation of the island during World War II.

Any book focused on a setting ought to leave the reading feeling a desire to visit, and that’s precisely how I felt.  I have never thought even once in my life of going to Guernsey, but just like John Berendt’s characters in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil bring the city of Savannah to life and have caused a cottage industry around tourism related to the book, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn something similar happens to Guernsey; however, increased tourism will likely depend on how popular the book becomes.  My favorite books — the ones I couldn’t put down even if they were not literature with a capial L — were all populated with memorable, realistic characters I wish I could know in real life, and now I have one more book to add to that list.

Related posts:

Grendel
The Flight of Gemma Hardy, Margot Livesey
Review: Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly, narrated by Emily Janice Card and Emma Bering