Book Review: The Twelve, by Justin Cronin

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Though I didn’t find myself too impressed with The Passage, the first in Justin Cronin’s apocalyptic vampire trilogy, I ended up reading the second novel in the series, The Twelve , since my hold on a library copy finally came through. (I requested it when it came out in October 2012, so that should give you an idea of how popular the series is!) But the all-too literary treatment of vampires that The Passage offered only continued in The Twelve, with an added dose of forced spirituality and unbelievable coincidences.

This all makes it sound like I hated The Twelve, which I didn’t. It’s a solid three-star read, thanks to Cronin’s ability to inject real fear and tension into the narrative, one or two interesting and pitiable characters, and the desire to know how the heck he is going to wrap this sprawling thing up. Mostly, I think I’m just a sucker for hype. But this series is so fawned over, to the point of garnering a movie deal and getting accolades from writers like Stephen King, that I can’t quite help but feel that I’m missing something.

Book Review: Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes

I have waited a long time to read Lauren Beukes’ sophomore offering, Zoo City–it was one of my first TBR adds on Goodreads–and happily, I was not disappointed! In just a few words, Zoo City is a creative, unique, and un-put-downable entry in the urban paranormal/sci-fi thriller genre.

In a futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa, our protagonist Zinzi December is eking out a living by finding lost objects with her burden and companion Sloth by her side. Like hundreds of other people around the world, Zinzi is ‘animalled’–after an incident of wrong-doing and the ensuing guilt, an animal has appeared and has become physically and psychically linked to the offending human. There doesn’t seem to be any sort of order to the type of animal that becomes linked to each guilty person; there is a brief mention of someone in prison with a butterfly companion, for example.

Top Ten Tuesday REWIND: The Top Ten Books I Recommend the Most

My apologies–I have been absent from the last few Top Ten Tuesdays, for absolutely no good reason! But this week was a great time to get back in the game.

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created to share lists with other bookish folks! For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday list, we’ve got a rewind–we can choose any past Top Ten Tuesday subject that we missed! I chose March 26′s prompt: the top ten  books I recommend the most! (Fittingly, many of these are going to look familiar to you TTTers…)

1. Hyperion, by Dan Simmons
I will never stop talking about this book. It represents everything sci-fi should be: believable characters, fantastic technology, and timeless themes. I try to press this novel on everyone!

2. West with the Night, by Beryl Markham
Whenever the subject of memoirs comes up, I immediately recommend West with the Night. It’s one of the only memoirs I’ve read that is well-written, engaging, and impressive, while still being relatable and truthful. Seriously, read it!

3. A Song of Ice and Fire, by G.R.R. Martin
I successfully got my boyfriend and father to read these, and am now trying to force them on my brother. These are great for seasoned fantasy readers who can spot the tropes Martin gleefully butchers, as well as people who watch the HBO show but haven’t yet read the source material.

4. The Golden Notebook, by Doris Lessing
I recently wrote about The Golden Notebook being one of my heart books, and I meant every word! I passed on my recommendation to good friend J, who also very much enjoyed it, and I tend to want to pass it on to just about every female friend I have.

5. Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel
UGH this book is so painfully good. I mention it in almost every TTT post I’ve done! But I can’t help myself. It’s just so well-written and interesting and chock-full of intrigue and pathos.

6. Passage, by Connie Willis
This is one of those books that I recommend and then get upset if the recommendee doesn’t like it, because it resonated so deeply with me. (Thanks, Dad.)

7. Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis
I could NOT stop recommending this book to friends once I finished it. Willis is great at getting you to care about characters who are marked for death. My boyfriend ripped the cover of my copy and it infuriated me, because now I can’t lend it out anymore.

8. Watchmen, by Alan Moore
This is a classic graphic novel that even non-comic book fans should read. It plays with many well-known superhero tropes and can inspire tons of passionate discussion between friends. A great example of the form.

9. The Sparrow, by Mary Doria Russel
Not for everyone, this beautiful tale of a Jesuit mission to a newly-discovered planet is both harrowing and redemptive. And guaranteed to make you cry at least once.

10. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck
This  is just a straight-up classic that everyone should read. I am continually surprised by how many people, even people who are fans of Steinbeck, haven’t read it. Don’t be intimidated by the length; it’s worth it.

Book Review: A Dual Inheritance, by Joanna Hershon

I’ve been trying to write my review of A Dual Inheritance, by Joanna Hershon, for a while. Not because I disliked the book (spoiler alert: I give it four out of five stars!), but because it spans so many characters, themes, and plots, it is hard to summarize and even harder not to spoil.

Here is the summary from Goodreads:

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1963: two students meet one autumn evening during their senior year at Harvard–Ed, a Jewish kid on scholarship, and Hugh, a Boston Brahmin with the world at his feet. Ed is unapologetically ambitious and girl-crazy, while Hugh is ambivalent about everything aside from his dedicated pining for the one girl he’s ever loved. An immediate, intense friendship is sparked that night between these two opposites, which ends just as abruptly, several years later, although only one of them understands why. A Dual Inheritance follows the lives of Ed and Hugh for next several decades, as their paths-in spite of their rift, in spite of their wildly different social classes, personalities and choices-remain strangely and compellingly connected.

I’m a sucker for collegiate settings, and though we are only at Harvard briefly, I think Hershon does a commendable job using it as a backdrop to the relationship between Ed and Hugh. College is a period where people from disparate upbringings and backgrounds interact, often for the first time, and appropriately, Ed and Hugh could not be more different. However–as again often happens in college–the two become intensely close friends, each grappling with their own similar emotional ‘inheritance’ from their parents.

This section especially reminded me of The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides–and I mean that as a compliment, as I enjoyed both of these books. Both have young people trying to define themselves, their relationships, and their aspirations; A Dual Inheritance focuses more on the impacts, intentional and otherwise, that parents have on their children. It also lacks the pretentiousness that some found so distasteful in The Marriage Plot; indeed, people are consistently and realistically dealing with their weaknesses.

Book Review: Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger

Her Fearful Symmetry is Audrey Niffenger’s sophomore novel, following her popular take on the science fiction time travel trope, The Time Traveler’s Wife. To my mind, the two novels could not be more different–and unfortunately, Her Fearful Symmetry suffers for it. While both nicely and neatly integrate the supernatural, there is something decidedly unnatural about the choices her characters make.

Niffenegger’s attempt at a gothic novel concerns two sets of twins: Edie and Elsbeth, who have not spoken or seen one another in over a decade, and Edie’s children, Julia and Valentina. After Elsbeth’s death (not a spoiler, as it happens within the first few pages!), Edie and the twins discover that she has left her London flat to Julia and Valentina, with a few stipulations–the first being that they have to live there for a year before selling it, and the second that Edie and her husband Jack can never set foot inside. With that, Her Fearful Symmetry is off and running. We follow Julia and Valentina as they attempt to navigate a new country and culture, and not least of all their own identities, as twins and as separate individuals. Oh, and did I mention that Elsbeth’s flat is haunted, by Elsbeth herself? The reader is treated to Elsbeth’s slow realization of her death and her increasing powers as a spirit.

Recommended Reading, Courtesy of George R.R. Martin

For those of you who, like me, are absolutely dying to read the next installment of George R.R Martin’s epic deconstructed fantasy A Song of Ice and Fire, GRMM’s got a little something to tide you over!

The Huffington Post has created a slideshow out of GRMM’s suggested reads. It’s a great mix of fantasy classics and more contemporary novels. (There are even some fantasy novels that I’ve never heard of.)

Visit Martin’s list of recommendations here!

Book Review: The Wild Iris, by Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck has quickly established herself as one of my favorite poets, if not my favorite of all time. Her poems are so lyrical and so dreamy that reading them is an incredibly soothing experience. If I had my way, I would have read The Wild Iris, her Pulitzer Prize-winning poetry collection, lying in a hammock in my parents’ backyard, drenched in summertime sun.  Still, even reading these poems on a crowded subway had me dreaming of flowers, August nights, and dark, rich soil. The power of her words is undeniable!

The Wild Iris consists of a set of poems written from the points-of-view of three narrators. One is a human, I assume Gluck herself. One is a series of flowers in her garden, from the rose to the witchgrass. And the third is an omniscient, omnipresent god-like force. Gluck doesn’t necessarily tell you this; it is only through reading and re-reading the poems in sequence that these narrative voices truly emerge. Each narrator has conflicted thoughts and feelings about the others, and the way in which they question, doubt, and supplicate one another.

There are lots of repeating images and themes here, from death and rebirth to identity to the responsibilities of a creator to his creations. The flower-based poems, for example, both fear death and recognize that death is not the end; their seeds will spread and spring will come for them once more. They also call out feelingly for their gardeners’ help to survive, a sentiment echoed in the poems narrated by humans and addressed to a divine force. I read somewhere that Gluck often introduces elements from the Bible, and some of those stories seem to be present here as well, when the god-narrator speaks (sometimes exasperatedly!) about the needs and fears of his inventions. While I’m not particularly religious, I did enjoy how simultaneously accessible and alien Gluck’s god sounded.