#RIPXI: 4, The Book of Speculation

I was hoping that The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler would be something special but, sadly, I found that it fell short in the details -- starting with the cover that is so strangely photoshopped. I feel like the impossible stack of books with two that should be different but aren't should have clued me in that this book was going to be slightly off. There are a lot of people who loved it and found it magical. I, however, was too distracted by impossible dates, improbable coincidences, and undefined magic to fall under its spell.

This is a dual narrative book, moving back and forth between the present and the late 1700s. The two are connected by a book, a journal that was kept by Peabody, the owner of a traveling show. The book ends up in the modern-day hands of Simon, an orphan with a home on the northern coast of New York's Long Island, a house that is in imminent danger of falling off a cliff. The house is symbolic of Simon's life as he's about to lose his job and his whole sense of reality. The truths that are held in the book--the facts about people that may be Simon's ancestors--are not easy to deal with but do explain some of the things he knows/fears about his own family.

I really did want to love this story but I found myself getting stressed and/or annoyed far too often. From the spoken and internal dialogues that were written in a confusing way to the impossibility of the timeline based even on generous generational spreads, I had to fight through the rough stuff to see the glimpses of good. I love magical realism but this one had very little rhyme or reason to the magic. Last night was the worst though when I started complaining about plot details to the husband and it perfectly mirrored what was annoying us about the season 4 episodes of Gilmore Girls that we had just watched. It was off-putting and made this original tale seem a bit predictable.

I know I tend to be overly critical of RIP reads. I save some of them for months and months and I can only read so many of them and so I put pressure on the poor books to be stellar. Some will only be perfectly fine, which would be okay at other time of the year. This one was indeed fine -- but not for me, not right now.

Traveling on,

K

The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton got a lot of attention in the last year or so and rightfully so. There aren't many English novels written about Amsterdam in the seventeenth century. This is the story of young Nella Oortman, eighteen years old and from the country, brought to Amsterdam to be the wife of an older merchant. When she arrives, she is given a beautiful room and grand possessions but is immediately left alone in his home with his ill-tempered sister. While her husband continually delays his husbandly duties in favor of business, her attention is drawn by his wedding gift -- a cabinet replica of their home that she feels compelled to furnish. She looks through a directory of craftsmen and finds a listing for a miniaturist. So, while her husband is away on business, she starts building a new home that is uncannily like their own, but without the secrets.

This was a slow-paced, rich story with unexpected facets to the characters. It ended in a somewhat vague manner but that is usual in the case of magical realism. It's a story of manners and culture and the constraints of civilization. However, I will say that there wasn't anything in the story that stayed with me much past the ending of the book. It left an overall satisfying feeling but, a month later, I had almost forgotten that I had read it. Still, Burton's writing was strong and I look forward to her second novel.

Dealing honestly,
K

New Release: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

When you set out to read a Salman Rushdie novel, you can assume you will encounter a few things -- extraordinary characters (and ordinary characters, of course), history, philosophy, and irreverence. Rushdie does not disappoint in Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights, a tale of rivalry -- that of evil versus good, religion versus reason, and fear versus knowledge. Our narrator lives in a world one-thousand years from now, where a War of the Worlds--our world and the supernatural world of the jinn--has happened now, in our time, to bring about an age of enlightenment.

What you will encounter in this book are strangenesses: people who float and others who are crushed, human lie-detectors and human lightning rods. You will also find many normal people--poets, philosophers, landladies, and wives--who are drawn into the fantastic by those around them and are brought to their knees, some at the whims of evil Ifrits, others by the hands of their own fellow men, and finally some by mere chance. And finally, you will find love -- some true and original, some mere shadows or facsimiles of those loves.

If you are familiar at all with Rushdie's views and novels, you will probably guess what event, what change in the hearts and minds of men, could bring about peace and enlightenment for centuries. It will not be a viewpoint popular with all readers but his reasoning and his use of modern-day examples of corruption and failings in humankind are undeniable. This book made me sad about the world we live in and left me wondering if there is an actual way that we could eventually attain a world of peace and brotherly love without the intervention of supernatural forces. I enjoyed this read, however painful it was.

Without much faith,
K

p.s. I received an advance reader's edition of this book from LibraryThing.

The Land of Laughs

After I read and loved The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll in January, Chris said I had to read The Land of Laughs next because it is his favorite Carroll. It took me a couple of months to buy it and a couple more to get to reading it (I finished it at the end of August) and now it's taken me a couple of months to get around to reviewing it. Normally this would be an issue because I have a very short book memory but not in this case because I literally haven't stopped thinking about it since the summer.

faux cover by Charles Vess

The Land of Laughs is a children's book by author Marshall France and it is Thomas Abbey's favorite book. Abbey, son of a movie star, is obsessed with the late France and his books and eventually decides to visit France's hometown of Galen, Missouri where his daughter still lives in order to research a biography he would like to write about France. What he finds in Galen boggles the mind and blurs the lines between fiction and reality.

It has been three months since I finished this book but I can't stop thinking about it and I already want to read it again. I can't explain exactly why I loved this book so much because it's really rather strange and sometimes violent and disturbing and the relationships are very dysfunctional and it's about books that I can never read. But it's also about the magic that is in the best stories and what would happen if that magic escaped and took form and that's pretty awesome if frightening.

Now that I've read Carroll's first and last (for now) books, I have to figure out which of his middle books to explore. Neil Gaiman recommends all of them so I guess I'll just grab whichever one I see next! I have a feeling that I'll love it.

Drawing out the goodbye,
K

Long-Awaited Reads Month: The Ghost in Love

I believe that this book, The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll, made it on to my TBR years ago after a rave review from Lena (who I don't believe is blogging anywhere at the moment). I guess I never picked it up in the interim because I had forgotten exactly what it was about. It turns out that it's about many things and it's hard to describe but believe me when I say that its uniqueness makes it fresh and thought-provoking and beautiful, all in an unusual way -- because this is definitely a strange book and it's not ashamed to be that at all.

This story has a ghost and the man whose ghost she is, and a dog (of sorts), and an ex-girlfriend and a complete stranger, and angels and many other characters that come together in an ensemble that causes one to reflect on the tenuous border between life and death, the essence of each of our beings and the things that allow us to love each other past all our faults and flaws.

I'm very excited to explore more of Jonathan Carroll's work and, as Chris has highly recommended The Land of Laughs, it will be my next read of his -- and I promise that it won't take me years to get to it.

With love and ghosts,
K

Long-Awaited Reads Month: Miss Hargreaves

If you've followed Simon Thomas' blog for any amount of time, you'll have probably noticed him mentioning Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker. Well, mentioning is a bit of an understatement ... peddling, singing the praises of, extolling ... those might be better word choices. (There are, in fact, over 15 references and posts about the book on his blog!) And so, dutifully, I grabbed the book as soon as I saw it on the used shelves at my local indie. Then, as so often happens with highly anticipated books, it sat on my shelves because I was nervous about reading it and not having it live up to expectations. Luckily, Long-Awaited Reads Month inspired me to finally pick it up.

Norman Huntley and his friend Henry are on a trip when they decide to visit a local church. When inside, they are less than impressed by the building so they start having a little fun. Part of this fun is to invent the elderly Miss Hargreaves, friend of the former vicar, poet and musician, owner of a parrot and a portable bath. They take the joke a bit too far and actually write a letter to the fictional Miss Hargreaves and are utterly surprised to receive a letter back, stating that she is on her way to visit her "dear Norman" at his home. Norman and Henry now have to figure out why Miss Hargreaves exists and if there's anything they can do to change that (or if they even want to).

First, I need to thank Simon for championing this book. I'm not sure I would have picked it up otherwise. And if I hadn't, I would have missed a unique and thoughtful read full of magic and humor. My favorite character was actually Norman's father, a somewhat scattered but intelligent man whose ramblings sometimes turned out to be timely advice. And the thought that one's imaginings could become reality if you were the right kind of person is, well, enticing but still frightening. I think the only thing that kept me from completely loving the book was my inability to understand Norman's attraction (not in that way) toward Miss Hargreaves, even when she was at her most infuriating. I guess the relationship was guided by values both British and 1940s-ish that I just couldn't quite relate to. Still, the quality of the story and the writing was enough to make this an exceptionally amusing and thought-provoking read. I do hope that it finds many more readers and that Simon continues to be its biggest cheerleader!

Awaiting the next stellar read,
K

New Release: The Oracle of Stamboul

Michael David Lukas' novel, The Oracle of Stamboul, is the extraordinary story of a young girl living in the Ottoman Empire in the late Victorian era. It's a simple, somewhat cozy read that is nevertheless thought-provoking and fuels a desire to learn about the interesting city of Stamboul and its history.

Eleonora Cohen is born during a Russian attack on the city of Constanta (in Romania) and her arrival is surrounded by some strange signs, including a flock of purple hoopoe birds that takes up residence outside her home and follows her wherever she goes. Her mother dies in childbirth and her aunt moves in and marries her father. Eleonora turns out to be something of a prodigy, learning to read and do sums at a very early age. Her aunt, Ruxandra, is not supportive of her learning and demands that she hide her gifts from the world. Under this oppression, Eleonora dreams of escape and her chance comes when her father plans a trip to Stamboul to sell some of his textiles. She stows away in one of his trunks and embarks on a life-changing journey that leads to an audience with the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire.

I rushed through this novel in two days. It has wonderful pacing and language and Eleonora is a charming young heroine. The characters around her are also quite engaging, including her host in Stamboul, the charming but fatherly Moncef Bey. This is a fascinating point in history -- the slow disintegration of a once all-powerful empire. The character of Sultan Abdulhamid II was intriguing and I would love to learn more about him at some point.

The purple-and-white hoopoe flock plays an important role in the story and so, of course, I looked them up. They are usually solitary birds who live in Europe, Asia and Africa and they have a bending-wing movement like a butterfly when they fly. They are the national bird of Israel and the state bird of Punjab, India. They are mentioned more than once in the Bible and have been used by many cultures as symbols of such varying things as virtue and death. The flock in this story seem to be a combination of guardians and scouts. They also seem to be companions for Eleanor as she journeys toward her destiny.

This story has a touch of magical realism but it is basically the tale of an extraordinary child whose talents lead her to become entangled in a critical point in history. It's the sort of novel that has you impatiently waiting for the author's next offering.

Consulting the oracle,
K

This book is currently on a TLC Book Tour. You can see other reviews at the following sites:

One Girl Collecting
Confessions of a Rambling Mind
Booksie's Blog
A Book Blogger's Diary
Living Read Girl
Life is Short. Read Fast.

Other reviews will be linked up at the tour page over the next month and a half.

Support our site and buy The Oracle of Stamboul on Amazon or find it at your local library. We received an advance reader's edition from the publisher.

New Release: Light Boxes

For such a small book--about the size of my hand--this little novel is massively different from anything else I've ever read.  Shane Jones originally self-published Light Boxes but eventually it was picked up by Penguin.  There are reviewers who love this book and those who don't. I have thought about it for days and still can't decide how I really feel about it.  I appreciate what he was trying to do but I don't think I liked it very much.

The main character, Thaddeus, lives with his wife and daughter in a town where February has taken hold and hasn't left the town alone for over a year.  The children are disappearing, everything is rotting and the sun never comes out.  The town, led by Thaddeus, decides to declare war against February.

The book uses multiple viewpoints and fonts to tell this short story.  For me, it constantly pulled me out of the story.  Also, there was little difference between the "voices" of the various narrators and sometimes I didn't realize that it had changed point of view.  And honestly, I just didn't always get what was happening.  But I also felt like I had a sense of what Jones was trying to accomplish with the book and I can't say that he was unsuccessful.  Overall, I just think this is one that will appeal to some readers but not others but I'm not sure what the criteria for choosing it should be.

One hundred and eighty degrees from February,
K


Support our site and buy Light Boxes from Amazon or find it at your local library.  We borrowed our copy from the library.

"'To be born again,' sang Gibreel Farishta tumbling from the heavens, 'first you have to die."

I won't kid you. The Satanic Verses is not a quick read. I don't know that any of Salman Rushdie's books are, but this one seemed slow compared even to most of the others. He tends to stack tales and interweave stories through other stories. There isn't a consistent narrative flow through the book. However, each of the tales in this book is engaging. The main characters of the book, Gibreel and Saladin, change in character (and perhaps divine nature) while falling from a plane that has been destroyed in-flight by terrorists. The side tales are based on scenes from the Koran and Gibreel is either dreaming them or participating in them. We don't know which it is and neither does he. The narrator appears to be God and the book uses modified Hindu and Muslim mythologies as the basis for the various plot elements of the story.

I have had this book on the bookshelf for about ten years. I think that T read it when we first bought it. At the time I was reading other Rushdie books and just never remembered to pick up this one but finally I wanted to know what all of the hubbub was about. I would have to go back and read my Koran guide again to know what Rushdie did with the stories that was so blasphemous.

Overall, this is a fantastic book that just takes a while to read. The only complaint I had is one I have with most Rushdie books -- he really likes to kill off a lot of his characters. Even small side characters end up getting the axe. I have wondered if this is his way of gaining a sense of closure. The characters are not going on after the book. Their stories are told. Whatever it is, this is a mind-expanding book that deserves to be read.

Turning the page,
K


Buy The Satanic Verses on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"I was born in the city of Bombay ... once upon a time."

Today, Salman Rushdie was given the 40 year "Best of the Booker" award for Midnight's Children, which also won the Booker Award in 1981 and the 25 year Booker award in 1993. I read this book quite a few years ago and reread it about six months ago. It was still a fantastic book and really represents an entire nation in a critical moment in its history.

Saleem is one of 1,000 children born at midnight on the day of the "birth of India" -- the day it became a nation free from British rule. These children have all acquired some sort of power or talent and Saleem, among other skills, has the ability to connect them all telepathically. The story follows Saleem as he grows up in the new India and comes in and out of contact with these other children and navigates the world that is changing all around him. The adult Saleem is the narrator and he admits that the story is his perhaps deluded interpretation of his own childhood but you want to believe that such a world of fantasy could exist in a modern setting.

I find that many of Salman Rushdie's books use the same sort of "voice" in them. I just started The Satanic Verses and from the start it has felt familiar and comfortable in its language and flow. If you have read any of his books, you should continue on through more of them. He is a brilliant storyteller and is quite accessible. One day I will wax rhapsodic about my favorite Rushdie book, The Ground Beneath Her Feet.

Until next time,
K


Buy Midnight's Children on Amazon or find it at your local library.