A Column of Fire is the third book in Ken Follett's Kingsbridge series. It's not so much a sequel as the events in this book take place two hundred some years beyond the events of World Without End, which in turn took place hundreds of years beyond Pillars of the Earth. And to that end, Column of Fire seems hundreds of years short of the mark set by the earlier books in the series. Both of the earlier volumes dealt directly with the people of Kingsbridge and the drama contained within one town. There were clear simple villains and heroes and heroines to root for. The same is true in CoF, but instead of the character development driving the plot, here we had plot driving the characters and not much development. Characters were introduced and summarily killed off, or just never mentioned again as their narrative seemed to be tied up conveniently. Perhaps it's a necessity of the time period described that the scope of the novel would expand so much wider than Kingsbridge, but in the end, the narrative tension fell a bit flat. When you use plot points that are easily searched on google and the outcomes so easily found, then narrative tension cannot be maintained. Will the bad men succeed in their assassination attempts of Queen Elizabeth? Of course not. In the earlier books, the tension and climax happened to fictional people and the outcomes were unknown. Each character was in danger and suffered real harm. None of that occurred here and the novel was the worse off for it. I feel a little bit like Follett phoned this one in.
3/5 Stars.
“You must resist the common urge toward the comforting narrative of divine law, toward fairy tales that imply some irrepressible justice. The enslaved were not bricks in your road, and their lives were not chapters in your redemptive history. They were people turned to fuel for the American machine. Enslavement was not destined to end, and it is wrong to claim our present circumstance—no matter how improved—as the redemption for the lives of people who never asked for the posthumous, untouchable glory of dying for their children. Our triumphs can never compensate for this.”In February, I try to focus my reading on black authors and black history. Between the World and Me has been on my list for quite some time. I've seen Ta-Nehisi Coates in videos and on the daily show, and I've always appreciated his perspective on issues and the way in which he presents them. A letter from a father to a son. A letter from a black man to a black teen. A letter from a black man to white America. A letter from the soul of a person, to the unending silence that answers us in return whenever we share something so deep that no response is adequate.This is a very moving and illuminating look at race and racism in America. In the way that the belief in American exceptionalism requires an ignorance of the policies and practices which have propelled the American experience for centuries. “And they are torturing Muslims, and their drones are bombing wedding parties (by accident!), and the Dreamers are quoting Martin Luther King and exulting nonviolence for the weak and the biggest guns for the strong.”It would be wrong to say Ta-Nehisi Coates is the only voice discussing race, politics, and intersectionality in America. He is however, one of the most powerful voices to recently take up the conversation. It would also be wrong to assume that his view is representative of all African Americans. Or that he can speak for black women who have not gained the name-recognition, but still have powerful and illuminating stories all their own. But anytime we take a step outside ourselves and our known world to try to really hear and understand the experience of someone else, without judgment - whenever we are really open to listening with our ears and mind open, then the collective experience of being American is all the better. All the better that this audio version was narrated by Coates himself. I was moved by this book, truly moved. And humbled. And thankful.
5/5 Stars.
I give up. I'll admit it. I love Neil Gaiman. I seem to like everything he writes. Ever since American Gods was my top book of 2015 (you can read that review here), I've delighted in the bizarre and funny stories he weaves. Neverwhere was no exception. The result is a look into "London Below" - a place where the forgotten live parallel lives to those in London Above, the paths never really crossing.Poor Richard Mayhew is going nowhere in life. Engaged to a domineering woman with whom he has nothing in common, and plodding along in an everyday job, it seems that Richard will continue on his life of mediocrity until one evening, as he's walking to work with his terrible fiance Jess - sorry, Jessica - he happens upon a bleeding semi-conscious girl on the street. Richard, being a meek, but overall good person, decides to help the girl, despite Jessica's protestations that they are going to be late for dinner. In picking up the girl and choosing to help her, Richard tumbles into the confusing and disorienting world of London Below. Pursued by two incredibly creepy assassins, Richard must help the girl, Door, get in contact with someone she can trust. And because he's useless, Door aims to leave him behind and hope that she hasn't caused too much damage to Richard. Unfortunately, Richard becomes unrecognizable to those in London Above and must search out Door in order to regain his life. Along the way he meets with very interesting people and creatures of all kinds. What a rich, vibrant other world Gaiman has created. I can't wait to go watch the BBC series. You can read my review of Ocean at the End of the Lane here.
5/5 Stars.
Ah revenge suicide. I'll kill myself and then everyone will be sorry. That's pretty much my biggest beef with Thirteen Reasons Why. It's every middle/high schoolers revenge suicide fantasy. But it's playing out in a way that works for the person who kills themselves. Hannah lives on posthumously through cassette tapes and haunts those she blames for her death. It's wickedly unfair to several people on the tapes, notably the other narrator Clay Jensen. Who's biggest crime was that he didn't "save" Hannah. And as annoying as Clay's sometimes overly descriptive narrative is, he's the only person who really makes counterpoints to the revenge suicide - if you're bothering to listen to him. Eg. - telling Hannah she didn't have a funeral, which I believe would be a big upset for someone looking to have people hand wringing and heart rending at their funeral after their suicide plays out. He also is the only one who consistently fights back against Hannah's assertion that people had a chance to save her and didn't take it. I don't want to victim blame here, because Hannah was an unlikeable character, but it wasn't due to any kind of woe is me mentality. A lot of crappy things happen to her in high school. Things that would be handled in a multitude of different ways by different people. So I'm not down on Hannah for ultimately deciding killing herself was the only option. But blaming other people and going out in a raging audio-taped glory was just a bit much. Since one of the people she blamed was a friend who believed a rumor and thus ended the friendship is then horribly raped while Hannah bears silent witness in a closet, yet somehow Hannah can't get over herself enough to think about other people. So the entire time Hannah is so mad that people aren't seeing the "real" Hannah, but she completely fails to offer the same thing to anyone else in the book. Except Clay. The nice guy narrator of the story. His sterling reputation is deserved. Yet Hannah still makes him listen to about (I'm unclear just how long these audiotapes of Hannah's are supposed to be) 8 hours of blaming others just to tell him that actually she doesn't blame him at all. But he's part of her "story". Overall the premise of the book is so problematic and poorly executed that I had to give it two stars. It's a book intended for the same demographic which currently can't stop eating Tide Pods. It doesn't come with enough nuance or depth to actually get to the heart of the matter or to give young adults the tools they need to digest it.So what did I like about it? (see that's Hannah voice there). Well, the split narrative works pretty well (discounting the sections where Clay's repetitive interjections are awkward). And the timeline works to unravel the story.
2/5 Stars.
If you're a literary or linguistics nerd like I am, then you'll probably appreciate The Mother Tongue as much as I did. I found if fascinating and hilarious at the same time. English as a language, written and spoken, comes from a variety of sources, some legitimate and others, less so. But it's all come together to make the complex rules and pronunciations we love and love to hate today.
It seems that scholars have been predicting a split in British and American English for decades and as yet, the two cultures miraculously can still understand one another. Seems like some predictions just never come true.
The book was published in 1990 and it could use some updating. Why not a whole chapter on how texting has further influenced our Anglophone penchant for shortening words and phrases. Otherwise I loved learning where some of our more familiar idioms and phrases came from.
4/5 Stars.
Every time I read a Laura Markham book I vacillate between thinking I'm a terrible parent, and then that maybe I'm doing okay. As my children are getting older and conflict seems to be inevitable, Peaceful Parent, Happy Siblings was a good resource to find some ways to foster their relationship.Markham begins the book with some of the foundational precepts that made me appreciate Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids (you can read that review here), and served as good reminders of those things I have casually forgotten in the two years since I read the earlier book. I'm thankful to have the reminder and have been trying to put the ideas into practice, even as our post-Christmas euphoria has devolved into the same petty squabbles of finding and equipping ourselves with shoes and coats which make up the most stressful 20 minutes of my morning.
4/5 Stars.
This excellent short book was more poetry than prose. There's no main character in The Buddha in the Attic, which tells the collective stories of young women brought from Japan in the 1930s to wed men they had never met. Promised lives of ease and comfort in America, most of these women were gravely disappointed, but scratched out a life in the fields of California's agriculture industry until they saved enough (or didn't) to buy a piece of land of their own. Or they married shop keepers in the J-towns of the cities in which they arrived and lived their lives serving other Japanese immigrants within a small tight-knit community. Or they served as housemaids to oblivious, or caring, or cruel white people. And they had children that died, farmed, prospered, and left them (or didn't). And then they were awarded for their hard work by being rounded up and transported to camps on suspicion of enemy activity. And there their story ends and is taken up by the white people who didn't notice the Japanese until they were gone, carrying forth a half-hearted effort to get answers from the government as to the disappearance of their neighbors.This little book was so well written and lovely and sad. I really enjoyed it.
4/5 Stars.
