It counts when it's during this year!

Leah thought I might be cheating because I read a book that I read last year. I think that if I've read it during this year then it should count. When you're reading epics it's going to take a few times of reading through the books to capture everything. Robert Jordan, Tad Williams, and Glen Cook are all exhaustive. However, the Glen Cook books that were read this year were new, but that doesn't mean that I won't go back and re-read the first few this year. I guess that I really like reading the books that I've read 10,000 times.

That brings me to this latest book. I just finished reading I Am Legend by Richard Matheson which I read a couple years ago after the movie came out. It's a short book about the end of civilization as we know it. Fancy that, I've been reading a lot of post-apocalyptic books. ;-) Robert Neville is the last man alive, but he's not alone.....

The book is a great little read. It's to the point. And nothing like the movie. This isn't a movie review site, but I cannot believe that a director/producer cannot figure out how to do a movie based strictly off of this book! I guess there's a fear that it's going to be too bleak, or too quiet, but viewers have shown that they can enjoy movies like that(see that crazy Tom Hanks movie where he's on an island). The book keeps you interested from beginning to end even when Robert is out doing simple scavenging. Matheson did a good job of bring your attention to the book, and then not allowing the book to get drawn out.

Rating: 7 CB's - The Boogey Man, Wolfman, and Dracula all have the same thing in common with Robert Neville. Thank you Matheson for naming aptly.

Top of the Heap

Whilst reading this week's book, I felt so old!  No it was not the latest vampire thriller set in a teen-angst filled world of swooning hearts and longing looks.  It was a book I read for the first time when I was 15.  When I told Drew this little fact, I realized that was almost 15 years ago.  I have lived half of my life since reading this book - wow! 
Drew, in a previous entry, reviewed a book he had first read in his teens and so I thought it would be ok to revisit one of my favorites from "back in the day."  As the Crow Flies by Jeffrey Archer is ridiculously readable, so it is hard to call it literature, but it is nonetheless well written enough not to get the editor in me raging at the stupid errors (although I think I located one).
It follows the life of a man from barrow boy to tycoon beginning in 1900 and finishing up in 1970.  It travels the globe from Whitechapel to Chelsea Terrace (about two miles away as the crow flies) with stops in WWI France, post WWI India, post WWII America, and Australia.  The characters created by Archer (as in all of his books) are fully realized and yet slowly revealed.  They are layered against one another in a structure that lends itself to storytelling magic. 
Archer is known for the red herrings in his books and they are here indeed.  Although I read this one 15 years ago, I found myself somewhat familiar, yet fully surprised at each turn.  I think this is only due to the storyteller's yarn Archer spins.  I actually dreamt all night last night about how the story could turn out.  Of course each of my crazy twists were not even close, but I was happiest with the written ending. 

Rating: 6.9 (It doesn't get much better)

-L

The Drawing of the King

Late last year I decided that I'd try out an author that I had no real desire to ever really try out. Stephen King ended up surprising me with The Dark Tower series and Gunslinger, the first book in the series. I'm sure I'll have some *bonus* books near the end of the year so I'll save that review for then. This year I finally picked up book two of that series: The Drawing of the Three.

A little backgound is going to be in order. Roland, the gunslinger, has finished the first part of his quest for the Dark Tower. While he has traversed his world to the very ends of it, he's still without the clarity to know his next move. All he knows is that he must reach his goal. At the onset of this book, things are not going well for him. Let's just say that Roland and Lobsters do not mix. Fortunately for the gunslinger, the man in black(neither Johnny Cash or the gunslinger) knew that life was going to get really strange..... in the form of a door in the middle of a beach.

Now, this was definitely not what I was expecting from a fantasy novel. You have the gunslinger which feels like it's out of a western. In fact, the first book is about 90% western w/ 10% fantasy. The characters that join Roland end up being a junkie, a woman with a dual personality, and a killer. And that's not even the weirdest part!

Stephen King does an excellent job at keeping the pace up in the book compared to the last. He made interesting characters, furthered the story, and presented a story with incredible depth. King doesn't create a book that's terribly difficult to read. You get what he's trying to say, and his humor is pretty enjoyable in this series(tooter fish!). This isn't a book for one who's sensibilities are offended by crude language. The aforementioned characters are as gritty as they sound. If you don't mind, then you'd probably enjoy it.

-D

Rating: 8 CBs! It's a great read - great book two... and it's not scary!

Wonderland

In a this world which could be aptly discribed, a la the Kinks, as a mixed-up, jumbled-up, shook-up world, certain books offer a necessary respite.  I found Alice to be the wonderful delightful world through the looking glass or down the rabbit hole escape that literature ought to be, but rarely ever is.  There is no point to the madness, no explanation, no tidy ending.  It is just wake up and it is over, just like a dream.  Having never read Alice in Wonderland or Through the Looking Glass as a child, I was unaccustomed to such sheer escapism, at least not in books.  But after pondering the world Lewis Carroll created and the path he forged, I realized he has forged a path very few artists have ever fully trodden since.  Sure, many of them have thought outside of the box (I thought of the Kinks (Muswell Hillbillies album in particular), probably some Robert Jordan, and yes Tim Burton), but very few have experience for the sake of experience.  In our modern world there has to be a reason, some psycho-analyitical background for the story (and many critcs try to do that to Carroll), but what I got out of it was exactly what should be gotten out of it: finishing a story to turn to your bedfellow and say, "I just had the most strange read.  It was missing an 'M'." 

As a side note on the movie created by Tim Burton and starring Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.  There was something missing to the story, or rather something added that did not fit.  Burton attempted to tie this world up in a nice little bow and make it a moral story, a buildungsroman.  Carrol's vision did not have room for this.  He created a complete world and then walked away like it wasn't even there.  That is the difference between him and the artists who followed after him.  It didn't need a reason to exist and yet fully did.  Burton felt he needed to give "Underland" a context, he was wrong.

Rating - 5.5 for the books, 3 for the movie version

 -L

Mini Review: JORDAN

This is a quickie book review since I can't talk about Robert Jordan every other week. The book in question is The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan. It's book eight in the series. It was a pretty smooth read that didn't get any of the plot lines that were going completed while ADDING another two or three. There were a couple slow spots, but enough action that you could keep reading. I.E. finished up about 100 pages the last night(or 1/5th of the book). All in all, on par for Jordan.

"I killed the whole world, and you can too, if you try hard."

-D

Rating: 7.5 beverages. I only got tired a couple times while reading. Most of my book breaks were for other reasons like work, food, or other obligations.

Can you survive the Road?

In was a unique week for Our Year in Books.  Our roads converged, so to speak, and we ended up reading the same book.  Drew read it first and enjoyed it so much he encouraged me to get my hands on it.   The book in question:  The Road by Cormac McCarthy.  As we read through the book separately, I thought it would be a good idea to do a joint post.  The following is the result. 

I should say this is inspired by Inner/Outer Circle from my days in AP English - a practice I enjoyed and loathed with equal passion at the time.  Let's get going:

L:  This reading was inspired, in part, by our love of the movie No Country for Old Men.  Although they are different stories and different mediums, how do you think the style of McCarthy is similar in both works?

D - Considering that I'm basing this off the movie version of NCOM and the book The Road it might be a little off, but we'll see once we get to reading NCOM. I thought that the endings were incredibly similar. They aren't what you would expect from a movie or a book. First read/view, it's almost a let down! You are expecting something different. But after you go back and review it again you begin to see that there's a bigger picture involved. Dialogue felt similar to me - sparse, but enough. It really lent itself well to both novels. Between those two, it felt Cormac.

L:  The book deals with fear in different ways - the boy and the man, but also the reader.  Did you feel a sense of dread while reading?  And how do you think the way the characters dealt with fear pushed the plot along?

D - I don't think I felt a complete sense of dread as a reader. It was definitely creepy at points, and you did feel for the characters. I didn't get too emotional with this book; or as much as I was expecting to considering that it appears to be an emotional journey. The movie might do that more... we'll see. As the book progressed, I thought we saw more courage from the Boy and perhaps more fear from the Man. There was a sense of hope in hopelessness. It was fitting for their plight.

L:  That was another theme in the book - hope.  What do you think "carrying the fire" means?

D - Who knows if I'm right or not! This comes from my thoughts on the last question - I believe it meant that they carried humanities hope. If they thought they didn't need to go on, it was lost. If they resorted to what the rest of humanity had become(or what they saw of humanity) then it was lost. The fire was what carried them that far. Faith in the good guys.

L: To that point, was their hope misplaced?

D - No. I didn't feel that the Man ever lost faith in the Boy. There were points where he might have been helpless in the desolation, but he was always looked after by something greater(perhaps he felt it was coincidence). The Boy never lost faith in the Man although I've read a couple reviews saying that he ended up being alienated by some of the choices the Man made. I never saw that. He always ended up trusting the Man's decision. The Boy also had hope even at the conclusion. It was probably the most redeeming portion of the book. The fire was carried.

L:  Ok, so what about the mention of God in the book?  At one point the man says that the boy is God.  Do you think Cormac's created world has a god?  If so, what kind of god is he/she?

D - I don't know if Cormac truly had a God/god by the end of the book. The Man put all his desires into his kid. He lived for the Boy so it was easy to see why he saw the boy as all there was. In the end, I think Cormac felt that the good side of humanity was a god of sorts. I'm biased though. If you capitalize God there is only one conclusion... I don't think his was the same.

L:  Last one: There is one (ONE) paragraph in the book that is written in the first person (narrator: the man).  Why?

D - I have no clue! I didn't even notice it when I was reading. It was a flashback so maybe he was trying to illustrate the story from someone elses perspective. My guess is that he forgot what he was writing for a paragraph and then forgot that he had been writing in first person when he transitioned back to third. I'm guessing you were the only person that noticed.

Finally, the ratings:
Leah: 5.5
Drew: ^ what the heck? 8.2! But I *heart* all things apocalyptic.

Crown of Getting Better

I'm sure that the blog reader is sick of hearing about Robert Jordan, and we are getting through the series at a decent fashion. We are officially through half of the series after completing book seven this week. That's not to say that we're going to have the best reads coming up, but we'll definitely have some good storyline's.

A Crown of Swords picks up right after the incident at Dumai Well's in Lord of Chaos. Rand is safe again(relatively) and the world continues to move toward the inevitable. Jordan was able to pick it up a bit from the last book. He still enjoys describing the infinitesimal, but that doesn't hold back the story this time. There's plenty of action, or plot thickening. In most epics, you need to have some action to break up the world building and character development. In A Crown of Sword we follow three major story lines with a couple smaller ones thrown in there. They do take prominence and they do keep the flow pretty natural.

I'm finding it a little tough to write a lot about Robert Jordan's series since there are so many books. I'll be saying a lot of the same things for each novel. I'll just leave it at this:

"If you don't know everything, you must go on with what you do know."

Rating: 7.7 out of 10 caffeinated beverages. It's better than book six, but not as good as the first couple.

-D