The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, 498 pages

Beautiful epic story that anyone who loves books would enjoy. The world the author created was so fantastic I've not wanted to live in a book since HP and Hogwarts. The first I've read from this author, but definitely want to read her first book as well. She writes with this sense of wonder that I have never experienced before. It was like reading magic.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland/ Lewis Carroll/ 96 pages

         In this classic novel, Alice finds herself to have fallen down a rabbit hole into a very interesting land. Here she meets many well know characters as well as stumbles into many unusual situations. This was a fun story that quickly moved from one adventure to the next.
         Glad I finally was able to get around to reading this story and I am eager to see how the series continues. I just adored the dialogue at times and had a good time just absorbing the story. It is one that you just have to go with the flow of things because it takes away from the enjoyment if you ponder and question "why?" too much.  Definitely would be a great read-aloud.

The Book That Matters Most / Ann Hood / 358 pgs

At times I felt pretty suckered into this book. I wanted to find out how the drug-addicted Maggie would pull herself out the mess she was in. I wanted to see if Ava would start up a relationship with the recently widowed John. I wanted to find out if Ava would ever find the author of the book that mattered most to her, From Clare to Here, which ends up being the only fake book mentioned in this story. And, lastly, I wanted to read other people's thoughts on classics like The Great Gatsby and Slaughterhouse-Five.

In the end, there wasn't enough talk about these great books, and there was far too many coincidences in the story for me to take it seriously. The ending was another "throw it across the room" moment for me. 

Premise: Ava's marriage falls apart after 25 years and she joins an exclusive book club to reignite her old passion for reading and to meet new people. Meanwhile, her daughter, Maggie, is studying overseas in Italy when she is seduced by an older man and succumbs to her old drug addiction. The story alternates between both characters.

A Death in the Family / James Agee / 320 pgs

Gosh, what a boring book. Seriously, most of the book is just people sitting around waiting to find out if the dad in the book is alive or dead after suffering a car crash, and then, sitting around grieving after finding out that he did, indeed, die. This isn't a spoiler. The name of the book already tells you that someone dies. If you thought that perhaps there's some sort of twist in the book, that someone else besides the dad dies, well, you'd be mistaken. There's no twists. There's no character development. There's no real story.  I only finished the book because it is on my list of 100 classic novels to read before I die.

The Storied Life of A.J Fikry / Gabrielle Zevin / 260 pgs

I read this book solely because a friend of mine said it was her favorite book ever. I wasn't sure if our tastes exactly aligned, but it was a wonderful book. I highly recommend it to anyone. It has so many great quotes in it, that I find I want to make some sort of cross stitch pattern and stitch all of my favorite quotes.

The book is about a 39 year old widower, A.J. Fikry, whose wife died in a car accident the year before. He is old and grouchy before his time. He owns the only bookstore on the fictional Alice Island off the coast of Massachusetts, and lives in an apartment above it. One day he finds a 2 year old girl in his bookstore with a note from the girl's mom. The mom can no longer care for her child and wants the girl, Maya, to be raised among books. What A.J. decides to do afterwards changes his life and makes him a better man and a better bookseller.

Here are some quotes from the book that I loved:

“Sometimes books don't find us until the right time.” 
"We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. "
“We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end, we are collected works.”
“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”
“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.” 
"Someday, you may think of marrying. Pick someone who thinks you're the only person in the room.”
“Every word the right one and exactly where it should be. That's basically the highest compliment I can give.”
"And I like talking about books with people who like talking about books."

The Little Paris Bookshop / Nina George / 392 pgs

I just finished this book for my next book club meeting, and honestly, it was really ho-hum to me. Perhaps I'm not such a lover of French sensibilities and would have preferred the setting of England and a bit more of an uptight Englishman as the main character. Perhaps I just didn't have much empathy for a guy who had an affair with a married woman who left him over twenty years before. Perhaps I could barely relate to the books and authors mentioned in Ms. George's book. Many of the titles and books mentioned were fake, not even real, and that annoyed me. I think I'm being generous giving this book three stars. I should probably give it less, but I can't say it was the worst book I've ever read, just one that I never care to pick up again.

The book concerns a 50 year old man named Jean Perdu who runs a Literary Apothecary on a barge on the Seine in Paris. Mr. Perdu has the ability to be able to ask a few questions of a customer and instantly figure out which book will cure what ails them, even if they don't know that they have an ailment. However, Mr. Perdu's ailment is that he still grieves the woman who left him 20 years before without saying good-bye. When he finds a letter she wrote him that he never opened, he discovers that things were not as they seemed two decades before. Along with some new friends, Mr. Perdu unmoors his bookshop barge and takes it down the canals and rivers of France all the way to the Provence.

The Girl You Left Behind / Jojo Moyes / 369 pgs

This is one of those books that I would have never read if it were not a book club book. It's also a book that I would have probably given up on if it were not a book club book, because it was a bit of a snorefest. I will put in a disclaimer and say that this is the first Jojo Moyes book I have ever read. Having already been spoiled a year ago or so on the ending of Me Before You, I decided that I would prefer not to read that book, nor its sequel.

In 1916, a French town is occupied by German troops during WWI. Sophie and her sister run a bar/restaurant/hotel and must cook daily meals for their occupiers. Both of their husbands are fighting in the war, both leaving their young sons with their moms. Sophie's husband, Edouard, is an impressionist artist. The Kommandant becomes enamored with a portrait of Sophie that her husband painted of her, but Sophie is arrested and sent away on a train. Seventy years later, a young widow has the portrait, now entitled "The Girl You Left Behind" but soon finds herself embroiled in a fight to keep the painting when the descendants of Edouard and Sophie sue to get the painting back.

I think this may be the third book I've read in as many months where the action flip flops between the past and the present, and every time I find myself not at all caring about what is occurring in the present. I guess I just prefer my historical fiction to stay in the past. The only time the present ought to be mentioned is if time travel is somehow a factor.

The Ice Queen / Alice Hoffman / 224 pgs

I feel a bit like I just got off of a roller coaster. This book started out so slow and pessimistic and biting. The main character, who is also the narrarator just sounds like she has the biggest chip on her shoulder. Obviously, she had to deal with a lot of loss, but I've never heard as much bitterness in someone's voice as I did listening to the narrator (who by the way, is actress Nancy Travis).  The story got good as the mystery surrounding Lazarus Jones built, but the answer to the mystery was a bit of a let down. Still the story got good again towards the end when it turned towards the narrator's brother and sister-in-law.  In all, the title of the book is very apt.

The main character is a small town librarian in New Jersey who has lived the existence of an icy woman, one who never feels and is obsessed with death, ever since her mother died on an icy road when she was little. The librarian is invited to move to Florida to be near her brother and his wife, both college professors. There, she is struck by lightning and has to live with the permanent feeling of ice in her chest and the inability to see the color red. She meets a fellow survivor, a man called Lazarus Jones, who was dead but came back minutes later. He is her exact opposite, all fire and heat, and she is fascinated with his ability to cheat death. Will their romance be enough to melt her icy heart?

Whiskey and Charlie / Annabel Smith / 336 pgs

I read this book because it is next month's book club book and I doubt I would have picked it up if not for that fact. However, I really enjoyed the book. I loved the set up of the chapters. There are 26 in all, for each letter of the alphabet, but not just the alphabet - the international phonetic alphabet. I learned that alphabet when I was a kid because I got my ham radio license at the age of 10. The phonetic alphabet starts with Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, Foxtrot, Golf, Hotel, India.....

Each of those words show up somewhere in that chapter, and it's that alphabet that ties the story of twin brothers, Whiskey (William) and Charlie. In the story, Whiskey is in a coma in present day, but the book goes back to the beginning to tell the story of Whiskey and Charlie, their relationship as brothers, from childhood to adulthood. Along the way, their relationship fractures and breaks. The reader is given reasons why. My only complaint is that although we are told that they were nearly inseparable as kids, the reader is not given a whole lot of a glimpse into their happy childhood. It seems that Charlie was jealous of his brother from nearly the very beginning.

Nevertheless, this book will speak volumes to anyone who has ever had a less than perfect relationship with a sibling, so I do recommend it highly.

A Sister to Honor / Lucy Ferriss / 387 pgs

A Sister to Honor is the book that my Brown Bag Discussion Group will be talking about at this month's meeting. It is the story of Afia, a young Pakistani woman who is a sophomore at a college in New England. Her big brother, Shahid, is a squash player for a nearby college, in his senior year. He has been charged to care for and look after his little sister by their family back home, but when pictures that most Americans would consider benign and hardly PG, of Afia and another male student surface online, Afia finds herself in the middle of her family's backlash and Shahid has to choose between honoring her shamed sister or honoring the rest of their family.

When I read Orphan #8 a couple of months ago for my book discussion, I thought that was a tough book to read. A Sister to Honor is at least a hundred times harder. This book also fits one of my PopSugar book challenges, "Read a book that features a culture that you are unfamiliar with," and I will admit that the Pashtun culture of Pakistan was one I was completely unfamiliar with. Read this book if you would like to learn more about honor killings and the kind of culture that gives rise to such phenomena. Don't read this book if you are looking for a light read. It is anything but!


The Tragedy of Arthur: A Novel / Arthur Phillips / 368 pages / RA - Literary Fiction

The Tragedy of Arthur is an emotional and elaborately constructed tour de force from “one of the best writers in America” (The Washington Post). Its doomed hero is Arthur Phillips, a young novelist struggling with a con artist father who works wonders of deception. Imprisoned for decades and nearing the end of his life,  Arthur’s father reveals a treasure he’s kept secret for half a century: The Tragedy  of Arthur, a previously unknown play by William Shakespeare. Arthur and his twin sister inherit their father’s mission: to see the manuscript published and  acknowledged as the Bard’s last great gift to humanity . . .unless it’s their father’s last great con. By turns hilarious and haunting, this virtuosic novel, which includes Shakespeare’s (?) lost play in its entirety, brilliantly subverts our notions of truth, fiction, genius, and identity, as the two Arthurs—the novelist and the ancient king-- play out their strangely intertwined fates.  Comparable titles suggested:   Big Fish by Daniel Wallace and Theft by Peter Carey.

THE STORIED LIFE OF A. J. FIKRY / Gabrielle Zevin / 258 Pages

Received an Advance Reading Copy (ARC) of this title from the publisher. Gabriell Zevin is known for her YA novels, including the science fiction 'Birthright' series. Her newest book, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry is a heart-warming story of a despondent and self-destructive bookseller coming to terms with what live can offer when an unusual package is left in his store.

Loved the personalized shelf-talkers which introduce each chapter. Made it feel like I was wandering the aisles of a small but cozy bookstore and brought a number of stories to my attention as well. My personal reading will continue beyond Zevin's book ...  :-)

Fans of literary fiction and the world of books should enjoy this.

Seven (7) Books Read / Six (6) Readers / 2,379 Total Pages / Literary Fiction

RAteam Reads for January 2014

The RAteam learned about LITERARY FICTION in January, with book talks being presented on Wednesday, January 29th. There were seven (7)  participants for the Literary Fiction book talks (one person read two books!) with the following titles being read:




The Snow Child / Eowyn Ivey / 389 Pages
       

   The Art of Fielding / Chad Harbach / 512 Pages 

  Swamplandia! / Karen Russell / 315 Pages

This Is How You Lose Her / Junot Diaz / 213 Pages

  The Tragedy of Arthur / Arthur Phillips / 368 Pages

The Forgotten Waltz / Ann Enright / 263 Pages 

  The Dog Stars / Peter Heller / 319 Pages

Annotations for these seven (7) titles will be posted on the Tales from the RAT Queen blog.

RAteam Reading for January 2014 / Literary Fiction

4 - Readers
4 - Books
1,772 Total Pages

THE RETURNED / Jason Mott / 346 Pages

I read an Advance Reader Copy (ARC); publication set for September 2013.

All over the world, the dead are coming back! They are not zombies or ghosts or even part of some secret government experiment. Amazingly, they are living breathing, talking people who have come back exactly as they were before they died. They are 'The Returned.'

Harold and Lucille Hargrave, a devoted elderly couple lost their only child more than 50 years ago. God-loving Lucille believes it is the end of days and thinks 'the Returned' are devils sent here to tempt or kill everyone. Harold, who lost his faith with the death of 8-year old Jacob all those years ago, feels 'the Returned' are just people and should be treated the same as everyone else.

Suddenly there is a knock on the door and a man from the International Bureau for the Returned is standing on their front porch accompanied by a very familiar looking 8-year old boy ... 

Mott's literary debut provides the reader with a number interesting topics for consideration (or discussion): the meaning of life, being human and/or humane, community reaction, and people's capacity for love. 

A (possible) '6 DEGREES OF READING' connection: Mitch Albom's novel The First Phone Call From Heaven (publication date: 11/12/2013) about a small Lake Michigan town suddenly placed in the world spotlight due to it's citizen's receiving calls from the afterlife.

[6 Degrees of Reading is similar to the game '6 degrees of Kevin Bacon' but with books. Select an aspect of the current title which is shared in another title and describe the connection using a single sentence.  Source : http://www.readersadvisoronline.com/ranews/mar2007/cords.html]

THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS / Anton Disclafani / 388 pages

In her début novel, Disclafani has the main character, Thea Atwell, relate the story of how at age 15 she is sent away from home to a girls boarding school in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina. The reader doesn't know why Thea's been sent away, only that her twin brother, Sam, refuses to speak to her, she hasn't heard from her aunt, uncle or cousin Georgie for quite sometime, and her once loving parents have become distant.

The story takes place during the depression with the twins having been raised in practical isolation by their wealthy parents on a large farm in Florida. Thea has never been away from home and the mystery behind her exile is revealed slowly as she learns to deal with the other girls at camp and accept that she may not be retuning home as soon as she thinks.

THE YONAHLOSSEE RIDING CAMP FOR GIRLS should appeal to readers who enjoy coming-of-age stories and literary fiction.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry / Rachel Joyce / 320 pages

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce, the story of one man’s chance to make a difference, is an, at times both funny and moving, account of a spontaneous decision made by a very "unspontaneous" man.

Harold Fry, recently retired, with a failing marriage, little faith, and stuck in a rut for twenty years, on an errand to mail words of encouragement to a dying friend, instead determines to walk the 627 miles to her bedside in a faith-filled attempt to save her life.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry will appeal to those who like literary, character-driven fiction, as well as those who like offbeat or inspiring stories.

The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald / 216 p.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a classic story of love, lust, obsession, and greed.

Jay Gatsby, a newly rich rum-runner/gambler has come to West Egg, Long Island for the sole purpose of winning back (through throwing lavish house parties and ingratiating himself with her friends) his one true love Daisy, the girl who left him for a man with money.

The Great Gatsby will appeal to those who like classic, literary fiction. Similar titles include: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton; Night and Day by Virginia Woolf; An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser; Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos.

The Chemistry of Tears / Peter Carey / 288 p.

 

The Chemistry of Tears by Peter Carey is an intricate story of grief, driven as much by its characters as by its plot.

When her married lover dies and she cannot so much as acknowledge her grief to anyone, Catherine, an horologist, throws herself into a new project, the reconstruction of an automaton, at the museum where she works, and finds herself sucked into the heartbreaking story of how it came to be built.

The Chemistry of Tears will appeal to those who like intricate, literary fiction. Similar titles include: The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk; Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell; Little Bee by Chris Cleave; My Life as a Fake by Peter Carey.

Life of Pi / Yann Martel / 319 p.

Life of Pi, is a story about a teenage boy named Pi, who was in a shipwreck and spends 227 days aboard a life boat and survives to tell his tale.  What actually happens during those days in the Pacific is left up to the reader to decide.  Pi tells two versions of his story, and its my guess that the truth is somewhere in between.  
The point of the story is to ask the reader which version do they personally want to "believe" and hence is a reflection on how they view religion and the world.  I found the novel to be ploddingly slow and I was left feeling frustrated and saddened by Pi's suffering and detachment through his survival ordeal.  If anything, instead of feeling like this book proved "the existence of God" I felt as the movie reviewer, Jonathan Kim, stated in the Huffington Post "[the book] would confirm that if there is a God in control, he's a cruel, sadistic jerk."