Monthly Archives: December 2009

I bought my Kindle a few months ago and have had the opportunity to play with it. It’s filled in for “real” books a number of times.

A few  advantages (there have been no disadvantages …yet!):

1. It’s very, very easy to travel with. I found myself getting lost in reading the books I have (I’m up to around 90 now) in busy airports while waiting to board, on the plane, in the car while my mother is shopping when I’m home on vacation. I was reading in the comfy chairs in stores while my mother tried on clothes…you get the picture.  (Love you, Mom!!)

2. Use it as a supplement to real books. I’m an avid speed reader. I can read up to 40 books in a month. Now, if I were to do this buying books, it’d cost me a fortune. So of course, I use the great library system here in Atlanta. However, sometimes books I really want by authors I trust have an incredible wait time at the library. I buy those on my kindle. Sometimes I want to read a book that’s 1200 pages long. That, too, I buy for my kindle. Why? Because as much as I love the smell of real books, I cherish my hands more. They hurt when holding up that many pages for the length of time it takes to read a book of that size… even at the speed I read.

3. My Kindle encourages my six year old nephew to read. He loves gadgets and electronics and he’s always begging me for a chance to read the Kindle. I downloaded several books for him and next thing I know he’s losing himself in them as well – and giggling because instead of turning a page, he gets to press a button.

4. The battery is incredibly long lived. I am horrible at charging things and one of the things I was worried about was having to wait for my battery to charge when I, inevitably, forgot to charge the kindle. I just keep my wireless turned off (unless I need it for some reason) and I can go for weeks without having to charge. So, there’s no wait period for my Kindle. I was worried about that.

5. It looks like paper. There’s no glare. Really. It’s not a gimmick! In fact, I think Amazon should give me royalties. Every time I go to the coffee shop or store and read my Kindle I make at least 2 sales of it. After having read about 5000 pages on my Kindle I can tell you my eyes are no more strained than if I read real books (and my hands are considerably less strained). And.. I don’t have to search for bookmarks or dogear pages (gasp). It saves my spot, right there, for me. Oh, and that passage that I loved so much that I wanted to share with my friends and family, there’s a clipping of it. I made that and it’s so much easier to find then stammering as I search dramatically through the paper book I’m reading. A friend said it best. The Kindle is a supplement to real books. Is it expensive? Sure. It’s pricey. But I was paying $30 round trip 4-5 times a year to bring books home to read. I was juggling 2 books when close to the end of one and I wanted to take the kids to the park. How often can you stand in line somewhere and pull a book easily out of your purse to read without having to fiddle with keeping it open? It seems silly and like these are little things, but they all add up to making that $260 price tag worth it. My kindle has already paid for itself in new books, travel expenses and experiences enjoyed.

As a side note: Why didn’t I go for the Sony E-Reader or wait for the B&N Nook? Simple. I don’t want to touch the screen I’m reading, so touch screens were out. I wanted wireless capabilities, so Sony was out. And I didn’t want to be distracted by flashy, color pictures at the bottom of my screen, so the Nook was doubly out. I wanted simple, functional, a use-able keyboard, wireless and compact, and the Kindle fulfilled everything I was asking from it.

I’ve read a fair share of Holocaust novels, some good, some bad, and I was hoping to lump Skeletons at the Feast by Christ Bohjalian in with the good ones. Unfortunately, this story of four main characters struggling through the latter parts of WWII and caught between the Russians and the Germans was disappointing.

So why did I read the book through? A few months ago I read The Double Bind by the same author and had many of the same struggles I dealt with in this book. Chris Bohjalian has a way of slowly gaining pace with a character in his stories, then switching to the next character just when you feel the momentum has picked up. However, in The Double Bind, the last chapter of the book completely rewrote my opinion of it and boosted the book from a lowly 2 stars to 4 stars. I was hoping that this book would have a similar redeeming factor about it. It did not.

Skeletons at the Feast deals with four characters and those who are close to them. There is the Scottish, Callum, who is being held as a PoW by Anna and her family, a young refugee woman who is shown to be his lover in the first few pages of the book. I have read that this book is supposed to show the struggles that Anna deals with in coming face-to-face with seeing what the Nazi army has been doing, but I saw very little of this in the book. Instead, her focus seems to be more on keeping Callum and her horses.

There is also Uri. A Jew who escapes his fate and jumps from the train transporting his family. He assumes various identities and goes on his own private mission against the German army.

And finally there is Cecile, a young French woman caught in the hell that is the concentration camp and struggling to survive. This character was the only character in the book that seemed alive and not cut from a cookie-cutter. It was easy to sympathize with her and cheer for her, unlike the other three characters.

The strongest problem I had with the book was the, uncalled-for at times, descriptions of the atrocities committed. It felt as if Bohjalian had realized that this may be the only chance he gets to write a novel about this subject and so he felt compelled to go into fantastic detail. It’s a fine line to walk, to educate without using the acts for the shock factor. I don’t think he erred on the side of wisdom with how he treated that subject matter. So with all that said, this book gets 2 stars from me. I definitely would not pick it up again, and I would not recommend it to anyone.

I’m really not sure how to begin talking about Marcelo in the Real World. I finished it a few minutes ago and I still am crying. There was so much beauty in this book I hated to have it finish.

Marcelo’s mind is so incredibly pure. There were parts of this book that made me feel dirty, because I could understand the meanings of the things others were speaking of in an attempt to corrupt him. But, the author offers so much hope through the simple struggles of Marcelo.

The other thing I wanted to talk about was the spiritual message of this book. I called my father around Chapter 26 I think it was.. and I read to him the portion of the story told by the Rabbi to Marcelo. The language was so simple and so easy to understand but the message was so profound. Little passages like this are scattered throughout the book.

There is a quiet beauty about this novel. There are no thrills, no passages to make you gasp with excitement or dismay. Instead this story inspired me to listen more to that music inside of me, to pay attention to those signs around me that God is placing. I don’t think a world of Marcelo’s would be a bad thing at all.

Every time the name of this book came up, I would wrinkle my nose and shake my head “no” in response to the question “Have you read it?”. It’s amazing how false perceptions about things can keep something that really is good out of your life.

A few months ago I decided to finally start opening up and reading some of the books that have always been touted as “required reading” for schools. Being homeschooled, I was never required to read any particular books – and as I read quite voraciously, it was never really an issue. A few months ago I read The Catcher in the Rye and did not see what the big issue was. It was okay, but not the best thing I’d ever read and I was far from astounded by it.

With that further prejudice in mind I approached To Kill a Mockingbird with not a little bit of hesitation. I was sucked in almost immediately though. I could picture the town, the setting. I could see Scout clearly and found myself catching my breath and blinking back tears more than a few times. I fell in love with Atticus – what an incredible man he was in this story. I loved the quirks and the twists, the “spooky” nature of Boo, I cried at the story of Tom Robinson and I cheered at the dismal ending to Bob Ewell.

But most of all, I felt ashamed of myself. Shame that I had let something silly like enjoying the shock people had when I told them I hadn’t read this book – keep me from reading this book. Truth be told, I denied myself something pretty special and I plan to make up for it by reading this one again and again.

This review covers City of Bones, City of Ashes and City of Glass.

I’ll put my individual book reviews after this initial impression of the series as a whole.    City of Bones started out interesting, but not really that compelling.  The story was interesting, the characters were okay and it was easy enough to read.  I had to wait a few weeks before the library got in City of Ashes and City of Glass, but I was actually okay with that, because I wasn’t as compelled to continue the series as I was with Harry Potter or The Hunger Games.

But then.. things started changing in City of Ashes.  Twists started happening and although the books pace was still somewhat slow, it feels like in the latter half of the book Clare started to realize what it was she was doing and the story started to seriously progress.

City of Glass was when the trilogy finally made that step up to something I actually want to own.  The last book, well… it made everything worth while to me.  Highly entertaining.  The trilogy as a whole gets a solid 4 stars from me.

City of Bones:

I made the mistake of reading some of the reviews before reading this book – which meant that I kept putting reading this off. Don’t make that same mistake.

I know very little about the author, and frankly don’t care to go find out about her all that much. This book is a fun, exciting read and Cassandra Clare created an interesting and unique world. I was fascinated by the runes, the silent men and the darkness of the creatures surrounding Clary.

The only thing I did not get about this book was the cover. What’s with the half naked guy? How does that fit in? I don’t get it – but it does make for some cool looking cover art, I guess!

City of Ashes:

I think I may have enjoyed City of Ashes more than I did City of Bones. It isn’t often that a book sucks me in so fast and completely that I’m astonished when I near the end of it. Clare’s characters are interesting, complex and diverse and I never know which direction things are going to head.

My only complaint thus far is the villain. Valentine is not that scary – the Clave however.. and Inquisitors. Those are some scary folk. Valentine, as a result, seems like more of an afterthought.

I’d write more but.. I have City of Glass sitting next to me and I’m anxious to start it. I’m such a sucker for these kinds of books.

City of Glass:

So, I wasn’t really sold on this trilogy until this book. Then .. wow, it was like someone hit Clare upside the head and made her realize what she needed to do.

Fast-paced, full of interesting twists and turns (predictable, yes..but still good, all the same), answers given at a great pace (not all at once, but spaced nicely apart), great character development for the main characters.. really fun, interesting, absorbing reading.

This last book convinced me to actually purchase the set. Fun, fun book and good ending* to the series.

*Although I’ve heard now she has a new Mortal Instruments book coming out in 2011. Argh. So far away.