Book Nook Club: international

Showing posts with label international. Show all posts

February 10, 2012

Telesa- The Covenant Keeper, by Lani Wendt Young

I'm sure you've read Twilight, so let's slip back into that world for a moment. Back to the first time you read it, before the very word "vampire" made you roll your eyes and sigh. Oh, it doesn't do that to you? Well it does to me, especially as I follow Pixel of Ink, where every other book is either paranormal YA or features simpering Amish maidens.

Now imagine that it wasn't Edward with the special powers, but Bella. And Bella isn't as annoying, doesn't snarl as often or stick her nose up at everything and everyone around her. And instead of a dark forest in the Pacific Northwest, they're in the tropical paradise of Samoa, with muscular tattooed rugby players and exotic beauties and a conflicting mixture of devout religious observation and violence.

Leila is the daughter of an American Peace Corps volunteer and a beautiful Samoan native. But after her mother is reportedly killed in a hurricane, her father brings her to live with his wealthy mother on the East coast. As a biracial teen Leila has a hard time fitting in, especially in the posh all-girl schools her grandmother insists upon. When her father dies suddenly, his last wish is that Leila will never attempt to return to Samoa. This request seems so nonsensical and mysterious that Leila becomes even more curious about her Samoan heritage and decides to visit.

Upon reaching the land of her birth, Leila is surprised by the cold welcome she receives from her remaining family there, but is determined to prove that not all American teenagers are wild, and also to find out about her mother. She enrolls in school and is unfailingly obedient and mannerly. One day a frighteningly beautiful woman arrives claiming to be Leila's mother. Leila's aunt tells her the woman is "Telesa," a sort of elemental goddess of Polynesian lore. It sounds crazy, but when kissing a local rugby star causes her to burst into flame, Leila must face the idea that there's more to the myths -and to her mother- than most people realize.

What makes this book stand out is the Polynesian element. The islands of the Pacific have long held a romantic appeal for millions. This book takes the reader away from the chain hotels and tourist traps into the real Samoa, a proud and beautiful culture. The author is herself from Samoa, and teaches there, and has seen how little is out there in pop culture that Polynesian youth can relate to. She did an outstanding job. In any other setting this book would be just another of hundreds of Twilight fan fiction novels, but Young made it her own. Her love for the people and culture of Samoa really shines through.

According to this review / interview, Young has been in touch with people in the film industry. If they do translate this book into film, I hope Samoa is prepared for the influx of rabid women that will descend upon it!

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June 28, 2011

Title Intentionally Withheld

I am withholding the title of this book for the moment because I believe it is a confusing one. I will reveal the title shortly, I promise.

This book is a chronologically arranged collection of short biographies of Historical figures, 365 of them to be exact. Each biography is one page long, with footnotes of interest and occasional illustrations. From Khufu to Bhutto, they're categorized as Leaders, Philosophers, Innovators, Villains, and more. Many are familiar, some not so much, but all are fascinating. The writers were fairly objective with controversial and religious figures.

I keep this book on my nightstand. I don't read it daily, but I do pick it up frequently and often use it as a reference tool. It came in especially handy when I was watching the series Rome. I've found it to be fascinating, helpful, and enlightening.

So what is this book called? The Intellectual Devotional: Biographies, by David S. Kidder and Noah D. Oppenheim. I withheld the title because while it is technically a correct title, I'm afraid it gives the wrong impression. People are accustomed with seeing the word "devotional" attached to books offering religious meditations, and there is nothing religious about this book. I didn't want this aspect of the title to cause anyone not religiously inclined to skip this post.

I received a copy of this book for the purpose of review.

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May 11, 2011

The Swan Theives by Elizabeth Kostova

I'm always excited to see a big fat book I've never read before, doubly so if it's by a writer I'm familiar with. I grabbed this almost without thought during my last trip to the library, registering the writer's name with a mental golf clap, and salivated at its juicy width without actually knowing anything of the contents.

I reviewed The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova nearly two years ago. It was a compelling yet somewhat disturbing read, because it took a familiar myth, the story of Dracula, and made it seem plausible. It was psychologically dark, and several times its darkness made me feel I ought not to be reading it, but I am not one to put a book down unless it is phenomenally bad.

The Swan Thieves is also dark, but not in the same way. I never felt my soul was suffering for coming back to it every night. It's dark in a more romantic way, the way of impossible love and tortured artists and fascinating spans of History. It centers around painting, Impressionistic painting in particular. I do enjoy art but have never studied it and don't especially want to. I don't want to become one of those people that becomes so cerebral about brushstrokes and geometry and form and self-importance that they can't see the forest for the trees. I think there's a real purity about appreciating art in a state of ignorance. It's not an excuse; I have met too many art snobs that I have no wish to be like.

The Swan Thieves is the story of a troubled artist, Robert Oliver, who paints the same unknown woman in great detail obsessively and repeatedly. In doing so he loses his sanity and his relationships, until he is led to attacking a painting at the Met, resulting in his arrest and institutionalization. His psychiatrist, Dr. Marlow, a painter himself, is determined to get to the bottom of Oliver's issues. But when he is stonewalled by his patient he is forced to investigate on his own.

What follows is an interesting story of a talented female painter living at the time and space of Monet and other great Impressionists. As Marlow uncovers her story the reader finds it mirroring Marlow's own (a bit cliche in my opinion). He unravels a semi-great mystery and we find ourselves in a happily-ever-after scenario.

This was a good book, but not as riveting as The Historian. I had trouble getting into it and staying with it, not really getting interested until about halfway through. The first half reminded me too much of the film Don Juan DeMarco, although it's not at all comical. The mystery once unraveled isn't as climactic as the modern reader has come to expect, and the ending was too easy. Oliver experiences a complete full recovery as soon as Marlow reveals his knowledge of it, even though Oliver already has complete knowledge of it, and is released the next day. I don't like easy explanations or endings that seem to have come together under a looming deadline. I feel this book, while good, could have been better. That being said, I will certainly read whatever Kostova comes up with next, and hope she has learned from this one.

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June 30, 2009

Katka by Stephen R. Meier

Katka is a novella, only 107 pages long, but that was long enough for me. There's not a whole lot to this story. The plot is simple- Gavin, Katka (Gavin's girlfriend), and Simona (Katka's best friend) are involved in a mail order bride scam business in the Czech Republic. Gavin and Katka plan the ultimate scam on an American man by sending Katka with him. She's supposed to get away from him in the airport and doesn't. The book is about Gavin dealing with the aftermath of selling his one true love.

Though the plot is simple, the writing technique is complex. Meier takes the reader back and forth between past and present to build the storyline and fill in any missing gaps, and that itself is fascinating. There's a happy ending, but a predictable. If you can get past the F word every other sentence and all of the sex (these are mail-order brides after all), the story and writing is decent. 2.5 stars.

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June 22, 2009

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

Another vampire book, but of a much different breed. The Historian follows three generations of a family of historians that research Vlad Tepes, or Dracula, as a matter of academics. But they do such a good job that they attract the attention of a sinister force that they must both search for and avoid in order to save themselves.

Anyone that is interested in History will love this book, vampires aside. Kostova's characters roam Cold War era Europe digging through archives and visiting many of History's treasures, like the Hagia Sofia. Yet this is no National Treasure, thank goodness. It was written for people of scholarly leanings rather than for mass appeal, and therefore does not insult the reader's intelligence.

As far as vampires, this book takes the more classic garlic and crucifix approach and doesn't attempt to rewrite myth or history. The downside of that is that there's not much there to surprise anyone. Audiences are more and more difficult to shock, myself included. Kostova seems to have been aware of that, and so relies on the reader's interest in the cobwebs of History rather than a the visceral thrills of violence and blood. Although there's a bit of that too. Somehow it was enough at times to keep me up at night with a racing pulse.

Overall this was an intriguing -and very long- read. I recommend it to anyone interested in History or in the manifestations of myth and legend.

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June 8, 2009

Visions by Jean Koning

When I was first given the option to review this book, I was really excited. The book was supposed to be about Jean Koning's views on the American way of life, and I thought that could be very interesting. I should've looked into the details of the book a little closer as I would've opted out from the review. I am not the person who should be reviewing this book. I'm pretty much the opposite of everything that Koning describes and promotes in his book, and it was really hard for me to get through.

From coffee, to promoting teenange sex, to legalizing marijuana- I just couldn't relate or agree with the book in any which way. The writing was well put together but sounded like someone just wrote down exactly what they were thinking at that exact moment and then tried to piece it all together into a series of "Visions." Pretty much a social commentary on whatever he felt like writing about at the moment.

And that being said, I really can't feel good recommending this book to anyone because it promotes so much of what I'm not. And that just doesn't work for me. If anyone feels they might be more suited to reading and reviewing this book, let me know and I'll send you a copy.

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May 28, 2009

My Life As Emperor by Su Tong

Last spring my brother and his wife, who is Chinese, went to China for two weeks. An old friend of mine, who had spent several months in China teaching English, asked me if I could have my brother pick up some Olympic mascot merchandise for his collection. He cautioned that in China there is no copyright law of any kind, so my brother had to be careful to make sure he didn't buy any fakes. I was really struck by this lack of copyright law. I guess it makes sense for communism, where everything is owned collectively, but surely it must hamper creativity. Why write a great novel if anyone can copy it and take the credit for themselves with no repercussions?

From the very beginning this book, published in China in 1992, read to me almost exactly like the 1987 Oscar winning film The Last Emperor. And while I hesitate to accuse anyone of plagiarism, I have to wonder if this is a case of blatantly stolen ideas.

In this book, a 14 year old boy becomes ruler of a fictional Chinese empire, enjoying near omnipotence despite his lack of intelligence and maturity. He finds himself being controlled by the women in his family, and commits outrageous acts as much to defy them in some way as to test the limits of his powers. He is the target of numerous assassination attempts. He knows very little about ruling a nation, finding comfort only in his pet crickets and a slave devoted to the point of absolute degradation. In the end this emperor finds himself a commoner after all, poking through the ruins of a palace that was once his, and finding the old cricket jars he owned as a boy monarch. Sound familiar?

In spite of the questionable similarities, I did enjoy this book. It was very well written and engrossing, and I will definitely be looking for more from Tong, although as I read I will wonder about the originality of the content.

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April 30, 2009

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Wow.

I could just leave it at that, but I think you probably expect something in the way of an explanation, eh?

Bel Canto is the story of a hostage situation in an unnamed Latin American country. This is not a crime novel. There is no gritty tragic detective trying to save the day or anything of the kind. The story is not in the crime itself, but in the situation it creates. 200 fabulously wealthy and famous people from around the world have gathered at the Vice President's home for a private concert of great opera star Roxane Coss. There are diplomats and corporate moguls, as well as a translator accompanying his boss and an opera loving priest who was allowed to listen from the kitchen. As the concert ends, suddenly the lights go out and a small army of rebels descends from the air conditioning vents. A standoff follows.

So what happens when a crowd of rich and influential people is forced into close quarters with a pack of teenagers from the jungle for an extended period of time? Again, not what you'd expect.

There are so many beautiful things about this novel. The premise in and of itself is elegant. But there's more. This book is, as people like to say, multi-layered. But it's not layered with the precise and definitive textures of an onion or even a parfait. It's more like a fine chocolate, with so many things to appreciate: the depth of flavor, the sweetness, the bitterness, the texture, the way it melts on your tongue, the aftertaste, the scent.

In the first place there is the writing. I'm from the Stein / Hemingway school of thought. A word is a very pure thing and ought not to be used carelessly. It's easy to see when a writer not only chooses her words with care and taste and precision, but when she really loved that word and savored it on her tongue. That's what poetry is supposed to be, a boiling down of language, a story in a few potent words. And that's the way Patchett writes. Don't misunderstand; she's not one of those horribly annoying people that uses melodramatic adjectives in place of sentences. Rather her sentences are composed of only the most perfect words; nothing more and nothing less.

Then you have her character development. The way the novel begins with a quick sketch of the crowd and its major players is the way many novels simply continue without further development. But Patchett keeps going, gracefully, diving a little deeper each time before letting us up for air. You really get to know and love the characters, in an easy organic fashion.

Then you have the situations she sets up. Usually in a book that involves hostages and terrorists there will simply be a lot of struggling with ropes and halted conversations between clenched teeth about escape routes and weaponry. Patchett is much more realistic. How will these people interact as they prepare meals, wait to use the bathroom, watch television together? Most writers skip over these scenarios, wanting to get at what they see as the meat: escape, rebellion, fighting! But Patchett's drama exists in these very spaces. And it is in those spaces where people fall in love.

And then there's the linguistics. The guests at this party are from all over the world. There are Russians, Germans, Japanese, French, Spanish, Dutch, American, and more. The terrorists themselves speak a local language and only a smattering of Spanish. Enter Gen, the lone translator, who is caught in the middle of negotiations, requests to use the facilities, declarations of love. It's a study of how people can communicate with and without the use of spoken language, what language can and cannot do for us, and more universal languages that transcend words, like love and food and music.

Music! Everyone listens to it, but I wonder how many people really love it. A lot of people casually say they love music, but does that mean listening to the radio on the way to work, or does it mean laying on the grass, tears rolling helplessly down your face as the vibrations of it radiate through you? It's this second kind of love we see in this book. Roxane Coss sings in several different languages that she herself does not speak, but the words don't matter. It's the language of the music itself that resonates and enraptures the hostages and captors. If you've never heard a live performance of orchestra or opera, you may not understand this. Believe me, it is not the same stuff you hear from a speaker. And it's even more so to anyone who has ever played an instrument. The characters' love and awe of Coss' music is transferred to Coss herself, who enjoys attentions no hostage before has ever dreamed of.

There's only one thing I didn't like about this book; then ending. Not just because it was over, which was a very sad event, but the ending just didn't seem to mesh with the rest of the book. It was too final, too decisive, and a little nonsensical.

Even bearing that in mind, I would give this book a thousand stars if I could.

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April 16, 2009

Ultimatum by Matthew Glass

In Ultimatum, Matthew Glass, puts together an eerily possible futuristic scenario. President elect in 2032, Joseph Benton, discovers the global warming problem he was preparing for is more rapidly approaching then he’s prepared for. Political maneuvering ensues.

The action does stall at times giving way to much dialogue and consequential discussion. However, Glasses writing is crisp and the conclusion is dramatic as could be desired. The fear this novel conjures is in its realism. Though disturbing, Ultimatum is not a traditional thriller as expected, but more of a look at cause and effect politics and international policy which to some may be even scarier. Those interested in political and environmental intrigue will surely enjoy this debut.

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April 3, 2009

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Purple Hibiscus is a story told by a Nigerian teenage girl, Kimbili. Kimbili's family is wealthy, and her father is known for his generosity and devoutness to the Catholic Church throughout their community. But the insights of Kimbili, her brother, and her mother into the true character of the man of the house are not shared with outsiders until she and her brother visit their aunt and cousins. Kimbili struggles with relating to her cousins in part because their impression of her as a spoiled, rich kid who looks down on them is ridiculously off base.

Though there are some glimpses at the political upheavel in the country that remind you that this story takes place in Nigeria, it really could have taken place anywhere. It's a story about family loyalties and divisions, hypocrisy and proven faith, reservedness and finding your true voice. Kimbili struggles with her great desire to please her father, who in attempting to help his family does them much harm.

If you enjoy books about families or coming of age, you'll enjoy this book. It's a quick read that's difficult to put down.

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March 24, 2009

Save The Best For Last by Kim Hanks

There are days that I love being sent books to read and review and days that I hate them. Today was one of the days I hated it. This could be one of the worst books I've ever read. Normally I can pick out at least a few good things to save a book, but I almost couldn't finish this one (and it's less than 100 pages). I felt like I was reading a story written by an elementary school kid who doesn't understand how to write complex sentences. It was like the author just wrote down everything they were thinking without thinking about what they were writing. An example- "Some times Zwick would feel as if he was only three inches tall because Kent who was once his friend had behaved in this abominable way to separate him from Whitney." It was seriously just painful to read. The only thing worse than the writing was the plot. Here's the plot.

1. Girl's mom is in a car accident because of an evil curse on the town. Girl is depressed.

2. Girl meets boy whose parents also died. Girl and boy become best friends and like each other.

3. Boy's friends also like girl.

4. Boy doesn't tell girl he likes her. Girl falls for boy's friend, and they get engaged.

5. Girl's father hires boy's other friend (not girl's fiance) to kill fiance.

6. Friend shoots everyone at school and blames on boy who's put on trial for murder.

7. Friend gets caught and is given death penalty.

8. Dead friend comes back and haunts town, killing everyone.

I'm not joking. That's really the storyline. Horrible huh. I'm just glad it was only 100 pages because I couldn't have taken much more. I do not recommend this book to anyone.

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February 10, 2012

Telesa- The Covenant Keeper, by Lani Wendt Young

June 28, 2011

Title Intentionally Withheld

May 11, 2011

The Swan Theives by Elizabeth Kostova

June 30, 2009

Katka by Stephen R. Meier

June 22, 2009

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova

June 8, 2009

Visions by Jean Koning

May 28, 2009

My Life As Emperor by Su Tong

April 30, 2009

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

April 16, 2009

Ultimatum by Matthew Glass

April 3, 2009

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

March 24, 2009

Save The Best For Last by Kim Hanks

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