The Odd Sea

The Odd Sea by Frederick Reiken is the story of a family coping with the disappearance of one of their own: a son and brother named Ethan. The Odd Sea is narrated by Ethan's younger brother, Philip, an observant young man who, maybe even more than anyone else, is having trouble accepting that Ethan won't be returning and that there aren't any answers to explain his disappearance.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting much from The Odd Sea. It's Reiken's debut novel, and I bought it at a library sale for $2.00 with a green "mystery" label on the side in goosebumps handwriting--not exactly a stellar recommendation. So, I've been putting off reading it for a while, letting it get lost in the back of my bookshelf while I read more well-known novels. However, I was pleasantly surprised when I finally got around to reading it.

The "mystery" label the library stuck to the spine is really a misnomer, more of an indication of the story's compelling narrative and the drive the reader feels to know and to understand than because of any actual mystery plot or tropes. Like Ethan's family and friends, the reader desperately wants to know what happened to Ethan. Reiken tantalizes the reader several times throughout the novel with possible solutions, each time hammering home the point that there is no solution. The mystery in The Odd Sea then isn't some formulaic story with all the facts outlined neatly at the end (as much as I love Agatha Christie, it does get a bit old sometimes), but an acknowledgement that life's questions about loss, death, and absence in all forms cannot be explained or made better, but must be accepted as part of life in order to move on.

Watching the characters deal with Ethan's disappearance was one of the most touching parts of the novel for me. I found especially heartbreaking the way Phillip and his older sister Halley had to assume the role of a comforter and almost parental figure while their mother was being treated for depression and their father was feverishly working to build a timber house. There were numerous touching scenes showing a broken family working to heal together in whatever way they can, which rang true to me.

I suppose one of my only faults with the book is with Ethan's characterization, though I'm not entirely sure whether to hate or love it. Ethan is inhuman in The Odd Sea, both in his ghostly presence weaving through the pages and the characters' lives, but also in the way his actions are so...contrived might be the right word. There was one scene in particular in which Ethan suddenly smashes a perfectly good guitar against a tree. It's a beautiful, startling moment, but it feels a little forced in that Reiken is trying to make Ethan appear mysterious. This could also just be a side-effect of Phillip, the narrator, idealizing and de-humanizing (forgetting about his "living, breathing, visible human body") Ethan, which is valid, but I also find characters like Victoria and Melissa to be equally contrivedly-unique.

Overall, The Odd Sea was an enjoyable and very fast read. I would recommend it, though if you're easy to cry have a box of tissues ready. Also, there are some...questionable sexy-times scenes, so anyone who finds cheating or large age-gaps between partners to be icky might want to steer clear.

The Reading List of My Life

Let's ignore the fact that I haven't posted in months, shall we? I'm in Italy.

I watched this video by Zefrank on Youtube not two seconds ago. He basically gives a rundown of all the books that meant something to him in his life. Just the ones that stood out. I felt an immediate calling to make some kind of written reading list of my own, partly so that I can remember all the good books I've read in my life, but mostly because I don't understand the message of most of Zefrank's videos and I was happy I seemed to get this one.

I've always assumed that I love to read now because my mother read so much to me when I was a child. I have stacks of picture books at home, each with a loving message from my mother written on the inside cover in her first-grade-teacher print. My favorites were Dr. Seuss and one book about a girl who's dolls come to life in her closet, the name of which I can't remember for the life of me. There was a little blonde doll in a pink and white dress that was to me the prettiest.

At some point I reached the age where I could read on my own. I don't remember when this happened although I assume it was around first grade. I've been able to read for as far back as my memory goes. I read the entire Magic Treehouse series crouched in the back of my mother's classroom while she graded tests and rearranged desks. I read Junie B. Jones, Little House on the Prairie, Amelia Bedelia, and the American Girl Doll books and the Boxcar Children--Oh the Boxcar Children! For the longest time I was convinced that the greatest joy in life would be to live alone in an abandoned boxcar with my siblings. I conveniently forgot the fact that my brothers and I could never get along.

Then I grew up a little bit and evolved into longer chapter books. I tackled the Chronicles of Narnia much to young to appreciate The Magician's Nephew (which is much better now that I've read it again, though still not my favorite). The rest of elementary school is a bit of a blur for me. I spent a lot of time in the library--so much so that she often gave me stuffed animals as presents. But for all the time I spent reading I remember very few of my elementary school books. One of my all time favorites was My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George followed closely by Harriet The Spy, both of which inspired me to do things my parents disapproved of. Namely running away to live in a hollowed tree and spying on my neighbors. Then there was Bridge to Terebithia and The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, which I still reread every year. I remember Fever by Laurie Halse Anderson, and that is mainly because I never returned it.  I stole it from the librarian who was so kind to me.

In fifth grade came THE BOOK for me. The book to end all books. It was The Land by Mildred D. Taylor. It touched me in a way I couldn't describe, making me cry with every reread. It got to the point where I had been rereading The Land over and over again for months. I forced myself to put it down and pick up the companion piece, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, but I found it lacking. To this day I have not read The Land again, because I know I'd never be able to put it down.

Middle school came with so many books. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Inkheart, Eragon, Disappearance by Jude Watson, the Stravaganza series by Mary Hoffman. A Great and Terrible Beauty and sequels by Libba Bray. One of my favorites was the Amulet of Samarkand and it's sequels by Jonathan Stroud; the smart-mouthed demon Bartimeous tickled my funny bone almost to extinction. Then in eighth grade came the whopper: Harry Potter. After that there was an ever-present stack of Harry Potter books next to my seat at the dining room table so that I could read whenever I was hungry (except for dinner because that was family time). That is why there are spaghetti sauce stains all over my copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

In high school I read a lot, and it probably won't surprise you to know I didn't have many friends. I read everything I could by James Fenimore Cooper, Jane Austen, Pat Conroy, and Bill Bryson. I adored Nathaniel Philbricks' In the Heart of the Sea, which was the first nonfiction book that every touched my soul followed shortly after by Cicero by Anthony Everett. My heart still lies with fiction but these two books were miracles. I read simple books like The Nanny Diaries and absurdly presumptuous books like Atlas Shrugged. There were the books I read for school that I enjoyed like On Writing by Stephen King, Life of Pi, Candide, All Quiet on the Western Front, and Frankenstein. Then there were those I hated like Shakespeare's Julius Caesar which I read four times and Mrs. Dalloway, the atrocious Wuthering Heights and The House on Mango Street.

For pleasure I read Dan Brown, Philippa Gregory, Jodi Picoult and other authors that I adored at the time that I cringe at now. Although I still enjoy Dan Brown. I read On, Off by Colleen McCullough and for some reason I trudged through Moby Dick. Senior year I developed and obsession with Agatha Christie--Poirot, not Ms. Marple--and bought every single one of her mysteries I could get my hands on. Then came college.

I didn't have as much time to read in college. I would like to say it's because I got a social life, but really it's because I got a laptop and discovered the joys of Netflix. Still I've read some. In class I've read Wordsworth and Frost and Coleridge but they might as well be in French because poetry means diddly squat to me. The stand outs that I've read on my own are Laura Lippman's Hardly Knew Her which gave me permission to write creepy short stores if that's what I wanted to do. Hannah Tinti's The Good Thief motivated me to read again. A motivation I lost shortly after when I tried to read Dear American Airlines. But then I discovered Neil Gaiman and fell in love all over again. I read Neverwhere first and was entranced. Then came The Graveyard Book and American Gods and then Anansi Boys. These were followed by The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series and the ache when I found out there were supposed to be ten books before the author died. I've read Beloved by Toni Morrison and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. I've poured over Dante's Vita Nuova with disdain and his Divine Comedy with awe.

And right now? What am I reading? I just finished Shadowland by Peter Straub which had great reviews on Goodreads but wound up not impressing me nearly as much as Dreamcatcher by Stephen King did which I read right before. My first piece of fiction by King and it talked about aliens coming out of people's asses. Go figure. And now I am about to start Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas.

What are you reading? What have you read? What do you hope to read?

The Lost Gate

I was at a library book sale when I happened upon this book. I'd read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game and the sequel Speaker for the Dead last year and loved them both, so I decided to give this one a try. Hey, it's only a dollar, right?

Don't pay more than a dollar for this. Maybe it's just because I loved Ender's Game so much, but The Lost Gate did not meet my expectations. 

Fair warning, this review has SPOILERS

The book is about Danny North, a thirteen-year-old boy who is--you guessed it--different, special, unique. He is a member of the North family, one of several families on Earth that originated from a magical-alien-god race from another planet called Westil. Long ago, the people of Westil came through gates (kind of like portals) created by the rare gatemages and frolicked among us. You probably know them better as every god you've ever heard of, such as Zeus etc. 

The idea of the gods of long ago still being around today isn't exactly unique nowadays. Off the top of my head I can think of American Gods by Neil Gaiman (which blows this shit out of the water) and the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. In fact, the whole book is very un-unique if you ask me. The beginning especially reminded me of a YA book called Graceling by Kristen Cashore. In that book there are also people who have special powers or talents, made distinguishable by the fact that they have different colored eyes. The protagonist of the book is thought to have a killing Grace and is despised (much like Danny is despised for being drekka) but in the end it turns out she had a survival Grace, which is a supremely awesome thing. Read The Lost Gate and you will find very similar ideas.

Anyway, as long as the magical-alien-gods in The Lost Gate had a way back to Westil, they remained powerful. But a gatemage, Loki, mysteriously closed off all the gates leading back to Westil, stranding everyone and weakening their powers over time. Ever since then, the families have promised to kill any gatemages they come across to prevent further disaster.

Danny is a smart, precocious, and seemingly useless boy. He is the only son of the two leaders of the North family, but rather than being a great mage like his parents, he isn't even able to make a clant. (You are probably wondering what a clant is. To answer your question, as far as I can tell it is a golem. If you are wondering what a golem is, you should google it.) Everyone looks down on him because they assume he is a drekka (someone without mage capabilities), but oh-so-conveniently forget that one of the signs of a gatemage is that they are unable to produce a clant. They also show a great affinity for languages (which Danny has demonstrated by showing off in school) and like to play pranks (again, Danny has made this obvious). So I don't really understand why it comes as such a surprise that Danny is a gatemage, but whatevs.

Anyway, Danny flees, and the book basically tells the story of how he comes to learn about and control his gatemagery while on the run from his apparently brutal family. He meets friends and enemies, but mostly friends. Actually, one of my main problems with the book is the marked lack of trouble for Danny. Sure, he keeps thinking about the constant threat of his family finding and killing him, but they never do. Not even close. Years pass and he has no encounters with his family. Plenty of other people find him, sure, but they miraculously don't want to kill him. They followed him to help him. I think my English teacher would call this a lack of stakes.

The book as a whole feels rushed. The layout is odd, in that we pass so much time with Danny, actual time, like years, that aren't covered in scene in the book. Maybe it's just me, but because so much of Danny's life was in summary, I didn't get to see him interact enough with people. Or at least I wanted more interactions, because that's where I really learn about the characters. Instead we just get a sentence like: "Danny trained with the Silverman's for three years without getting anywhere." And then the Silverman duo go from contemplating whether or not to kill him to getting teary-eyed when he calls them "mom" and "dad." That was just one example of where the passage of time was too much of a leap for me. Was that a pun? Almost, right? hahaha I'm so punny.

I didn't much care for the protagonist, Danny North/Silverman/Stone. Most of the time his jokes and smart-mouth came off as obnoxious (which Card does point out, so I guess I can't really blame him for) instead of funny. Like that kid in the back of the class you is always cracking jokes when you just want to punch him so he'll shut up and let the teacher talk already. I would say he is funny about 20% of the time. But when I did find him funny, I cracked up, man. Lemme tell ya. My favorite line in the book was probably:

"I don't want to go to high school for the classes, I want to go to high school because that's where they keep the girls."

In fact, the whole concept of Danny wanting to go to high school was one of the most interesting aspects of the book for me, and I wish it was explored more. It could have taken up its own book in this series, rather than all the awkward time jumps happening--but whatever. I found it especially charming that Danny prepared for high school by ready YA fantasy lit. I did not like how Danny handled high school. He promises himself he is going to keep his head down and just get a normal, high school experience, and then creates a gate his very first day that heals people's acne and bullshit like that. Not exactly subtle, Dan.

I admire and enjoy reading about uber-intelligent and analytical characters, such as Andrew "Ender" Wiggen and Lisbeth Salander. But Danny's intelligence combined with his sense of superiority and obnoxious sense of humor that often ignored people's feelings was the opposite of endearing.

This was so frustrating because I know that Card can write. Ender's Game was fantastic, and the protagonist, Ender, was a precocious, intelligent, analytical child just like Danny, except he was actually likeable. I don't know here Card went wrong with this one, because I know he can do better.

The ending is a great example of how Card could have done better. In the last chapter, after Danny has managed to create a Great Gate and defeat the Gate Thief, there is a reunion between Danny and the North family, where we see his parents for the first time. I think Card should have left this encounter to a later book. Well, what he really should have done is introduce us to the parents before Danny ran away so we can actually form an unbiased opinion of them and see how dangerous they are instead of just hearing it secondhand. Then he should have given us a confrontation earlier in the book where Danny had to escape from the North family scouts that finally caught up with him, and the final encounter should have been saved for a sequel.

I think one of the main problems that doesn't work for the book is how powerful Danny is. He has this superpower so that if he ever needs to escape someone he just pops somewhere else and locks the gate so nobody can follow. He has a natural affinity for languages so he can understand ancient texts and speak to everybody in their native tongue. He can heal himself every time he goes through a gate. He is extraordinarily intelligent. And, for some unexplained reason, he is the most powerful gatemage ever heard of. He can create so many more gates than normal people, and without breaking a sweat. Why is he so powerful when the magical-alien-god race is supposed to be weakening? Who knows.

The Lost Gate was also predictable. I guessed that the Greek Girl (Hermia) was good and powerful from the moment we saw her. I guessed who Wad was. All in all, not many surprises to be had.

I would not recommend this book. If I find the sequel at another booksale for a dollar, I'll probably buy it, but not before trying to haggle the price down to 50 cents.

The Millennium Trilogy

I recently read the Millennium Trilogy and would like to inform y'all that I very much enjoyed all three books and would highly recommend them. Seriously, five stars. Go to your nearest library or bookstore or neighbor's house and find these books, because they are captivating and oh so good. I know I'm a bit late to the boat as far as this trilogy is concerned. My mother read the series when they first came out and loved them, but I have some problems with reading books that my mother read first. Especially if sex is mentioned AT ALL. It's just...icky. But I finally caved and I'm so glad I did!

I'm going to try and do this review Spoiler-Free in part because it's hard for me to wrap my head around the scope of these novels at the moment (who needs sleep?) and also because I know there are still plenty of people out there who are planning on reading them, and I don't want to ruin the surprise.

I would like to start off by saying how surprising it is that I like these books, because Larsson has a...unique, style of writing. Let's call it unique. For some reason, he feels the need to be super detail-oriented, going as far as to name what kind of cell-phone people have and mentioning every time someone has a cigarette. I was able to look past it.

So, book one, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I'm not going to lie to you, the book starts out slowly. One of the hardest parts of the first book for me was that Larrsson introduced me to Lisbeth Salander, gave me just enough of her quirky-yet-lovable personality to get me hooked, and then focused on this Blomkvist character a lot. And I hadn't developed any warm fuzzy feelings towards Blomkvist yet. To be honest, he's still not my favorite character, but I've grown to tolerate him more, you could say. It took me until literally half-way through the book until I started enjoying it. I usually don't persevere that much, but I just kept thinking that a book this famous, a book that my voracious-reader mother had recommended, just had to get better. And it did. The suspense (and presence of Lisbeth Salander) in the second half of the novel really brought the book to life for me.

The Girl who Played with Fire was my favorite of the series. In this book, Lisbeth is accused of murder. While there is plenty of evidence against her, Blomkvist is unconvinced and starts his own investigation to prove her innocence. What made me enjoy this book so much was how fast-paced it was--I literally read it in a day. Also--no spoilers--but the ending was freaking fantastic.

I thought The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was interesting because, rather than having a completely different plot as in the first two books, the third installment deals with the aftereffects of book two. I've never read a John Grisham novel, but Hornet's Nest is what I imagine one reads like. It was essentially a courtroom drama--but a courtroom drama with super-hacker Lisbeth Salander kicking ass and taking names. This book is the main reason I've felt the desire to spy on everyone recently. I want to learn how to hack computers and tap phones and find out shit about people and you have no idea how much I want to tail somebody. Anybody, just give me someone to follow around sneakily. I had a similar desire after reading Harriet the Spy, but that's a story for another time.

I also found this book a little odd, because we already knew so much. Some characters would be completely confused about why something happened or how and I'd be sitting in my bed screaming "No! Talk to Bublanski! He found out about that last chapter!" There is a marked lack of communication between the characters in the book, marked by the fact that everybody feels the need to turn their cellphones off all the fucking time. By the time the trial rolls around at the end of the book, we already know everything both sides are going to present and can deduce how it'll all play out. Strange, yeah? I guess that's just an example of how these novels are so character driven as well as having engaging plots. It's Lisbeth I was reading for.

Lisbeth really is a fantastic character. She is a kick-ass girl who should be frightening but instead manages to be endearing. Despite her prickly personality, Lisbeth has managed to make many loyal friends--some of them in ridiculously high places, like Paolo Roberto, a famous boxer. Normally a character with multiple tattoos and a promiscuous sex life would make me uncomfortable, but it works for her. The sex life doesn't work for Michael Blomkvist. For some reason he just rubbed me the wrong way--probably because I was having protective feelings toward Lisbeth and her poor, broken heart.

Unfortunately, Stieg Larsson passed away shortly after the publication of the third book. This is especially disappointing because--get this--he was planning to write TEN BOOKS!!! Can you believe that? So much more was going to happen and we will never know what! I've had some time to cool down, but when I first found this out minutes after finished Hornet's Nest I was in a rage. But, big picture, the books are surprisingly well rounded off since there were more planned. The books left the characters in a good place, and all the strings from the 2nd and 3rd book story arc were tied up nicely--but not too nicely, as my English teachers would say.

It's harder to do this without spoilers than I thought, but I hope I was able to at least give you the impression that I loved them and think you should read them for yourself. That's what I was mainly going for.

In other news, I start my internship Monday. Wish me luck. I went to a pathetically small used book sale at a library today (a different library from my usual) and only came away with one book, which compelled me to buy more expensive books at a Books-A-Million later in the day. I can't wait until I'm making money.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks is a nonfiction work by Rebecca Skloot that tells the story of Ms. Lacks, her battle with cancer, the borrowing-kidnap of her cells, the magic those cells created, and her family. There's a lot going on.

Let me start off by saying that nonfiction is hard for me--it's just tough. Whenever I read something that I know is true, when I read about people and events that actually took place I go at it with reverence. With much more reverence than I read fiction with, anyway. Because fiction is made for imagination, it's made for dreaming and making up your own ending and wondering and fanfiction and mixing up the events and times and character names and just having fun with it. But nonfiction...that's a whole different story, now isn't it? When I read nonfiction I feel like I owe it to the subject to focus on their life, to read everything and really try and imbed every bit of information I can about this person or event into my brain. I need to remember the exact day she lost her first tooth, and what her mother's sister's husband's cousin's aunt's maiden name was. Because I have this need to honor the subject by studying their life, it takes me a lot longer to read nonfiction than fiction. And that is true of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it did take me a while. But at the same time, it doesn't read like nonfiction--it's a story, not all about the learning and the science and the dates, but about the people and the story too.

 It's the people that drew me in. I'm going to be honest, I received this book as a Christmas present last year, if I remember rightly, and promptly put it away on the sciency section of my bookshelf and forgot about it. Because I don't do science. I'm an English major. I took Astronomy and Biology in the News and forgot all about cells and atoms and chlorine and the respiratory system as soon as I got handed my high school diploma. I remember unwrapping this book and thinking, "Jesus, Mom, why the hell do you think I would read this?"

But I gave it a chance and I'm glad I did. Skloot (that is such a funny name) doesn't overwhelm the book with science. Of course you still learn, because learning about Henrietta and her family would be impossible without also learning about he cells. The HeLa cells, I mean. These little cells, taken unknowingly from Ms. Lacks when she went in for treatment, have uncomprehendingly kept on surviving outside of her body where thousands of other cells have failed. They have reproduced and done all sorts of things--you know, important things. Like helping to create medicines like the polio vaccine, make advancements in cloning, and assist in cancer research. These little cells have done so much for the world, and have lived so long, giving their donor the illusion of immortality.

So Skloot does tell you about the cells, but instead of overwhelming you with dry sciency umbo-jumbo, she chooses to focus on the people--the characters. And they are characters! Henrietta's progeny have an unreal kind of craziness about them, but crazy in a good way. All the best people are mad (Alice in Wonderland, anybody? No? Okay, moving on) Skloot makes you really care about the characters, telling their faults and failings right along with their triumphs. The Lacks family had no idea how important their mother's cells were to the world until long after her death, and this book tells the story of their struggle to understand what the HeLa cells are, come to grips with the fact that they were taken without consent, and search for who their mother really was.

I mentioned at the beginning of this post the 'magic' of the cells. Magic isn't often a word connected with science, but I chose it specifically. I chose it because this story truly is magical. The cells do amazing things against odds, Henrietta shows a strength of character that can only be described as magical, and, after you've started reading, you'll realize that it was a miracle this book even got written. The story is unbelievable. My friend's boyfriend picked it up and read the back the other day. After he was done he turned to me and said, "Sounds good. It's fiction though, right?" That's how unbelievable it is--It sounds like fiction!

I'm doing a really bad job of this. I'm trying not to give spoilers away (wow, I usually don't think about spoilers in nonfiction) but at the same time tell you a bit about the book. Let me just say that it is good. It will take up a large chunk of time, but you will enjoy it. Probably. If anything, it'll make you look smart reading it.

If you're interested, you should go to the Henrietta Lacks Foundation.
I am listening to Dancing in the Moonlight by Toploader