- Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone by J K Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J K Rowling
- Room by Emma Donoghue
- Every Day by David Levithan
- Mudbound by Hillary Jordan
- Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer
- The Memory of Earth by Orson Scott Card
- TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
- Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold
- Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield
Room is great. Not since The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time have I enjoyed a story told from the perspective of someone who sees the world from a different perspective. This is a serious story told with seriousness but in such a way that you can't help but laugh out loud every now and again.
With Every Day my first reaction was: "oh no I've bought another YA novel". And it is a YA novel more or less. But its one with a premise that really makes you think how much we take for granted in our linear progression of life events. What was more surprising is the end and how it suggests a sequel which is likely to take another quite different turn. I think I'll read that if it ever surfaces.
Mudbound was an impulse buy because it was cheap. But it turned out to be a pretty good tale of tragedy so complicated its hard to say who was at fault (if you like to apportion blame). Mostly enjoyable, which really means that some aspects of the plot were predictable but the journey was still good.
Moonwalking is an odd one on the list. The author decided to apply the principles of memory enhancement to compete in the "memory olympics" inside of one year. He did great which only goes to prove that if we apply such techniques in our own lives we can reverse the effect that modern technology is having on eroding what we choose to remember vs where to find what technology remembers for us. A great treatise on how the skills of recall have changed over the past 2,500 years.
One of my favorite authors is Orson Scott Card and I am as excited as the next person about Ender's Game coming up in the movies. But a while ago I bought the Homecoming series and thought it was a good time to get started on that. Its typical Card stuff and is as enjoyable (so far) as other series he's written, though my favorite is still the Alvin Maker series which I WISH HE'D FINISH! (Hint hint).
TransAtlantic is my favorite book this month. Loved it. Full of loss but also the connectedness of generations in both the US and Ireland. Makes me wish I was Irish but it could almost be about any culture that has ranged out beyond its own initial borders. What makes this story very good is how it integrates the lives of fictional characters with real historical events and real characters, lending itself more credibility in the process. Beautifully written with metaphors that had me stopping to contemplate their fullness and implications to the imagery in my mind.
And then immediately after reading TransAtlantic I read Shards of Honor. Ouch! This scifi book is the beginning of a very successful series of stories that many people love and rave about. Hmm, not me. I found it cliched and dull. I obviously failed to appreciate it and I feel a little guilty about that. But I give myself some slack by being convinced that reading "great" literature is changing my tastes. There is also a growing trend (imo) of "literate" scifi authors who don't resort to a lower standard of writing but are lifting the genre to new heights. I seek those books out now.
As with Mudbound, Garden of Stones is a story of the implications of racial intolerance and this time within the context of the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. I enjoyed it a great deal and was suitably surprised at the twists towards the end of the story.
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