Scored an A+ – My Book Report, by Jean Age 20-Something

The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

Title: The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex
Scored a: A+
Status: Finished!

I previously posted about this book before I finished it, I loved it so much. And now I’m done it! And I loved it! And it’s also being made into a movie called Home by Dreamworks that has really pretty animation! For some reason they ditched Gratuity’s puff hairdo, but the new one is nice too. It’s just that puffs are possibly the cutest hairdo in the world.

This book is illustrated! And the illustrations are excellent and in the previous post. There’s way more in the book than in the post. Including explanatory comics, to make exposition fun.

This book starts out as Gratuity’s road trip across America to get where the aliens are relocating all the ‘noble savages of Earth’ (Florida) (and she taught herself to drive as good as Nascar. She just has to wear cans tied to her feet to reach the pedals), the alien she reluctantly teams up with, her very catlike cat, and finding her mom again. And then perhaps the world gets saved.

It’s an expository story, told through essays and eventually a diary by Gratuity, and I confess I really enjoy that kind of story. See: Frankenstein.

The book is full of great lines, much of them coming from Gratuity’s brain or mouth, and it managed to make J.Lo, a member of the invading aliens, perfectly sympathetic without making him act like he wasn’t even part of his people.

That said, this book has some good claws in it. If you know anything about First Nations history, you’ll get a good idea of what I mean. Plus the way Gratuity gets perceived by those around her.

Anyway, great book, very funny, smart, and a great heroine. Aces. Good work.

Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones

Title: Hexwood by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: A+
Status: Finished

Hexwood was my favourite book for years and years. It didn’t fall out of favour with me so much as The Neverending Story fell into favour, but it’s still dear to me.

Hexwood is a book with a lot going on in it. And when you think you know the plot, it turns out you don’t. And even when I was rereading it with that fact in mind, it still totally side-swiped me, because my memory is terrible and I got caught up in believing the narration.

One of the plots is one day a young girl is very sick and notices that people are going into the Hexwood Farm and not coming out again, and she decides to investigate. In the process she gets caught up in an Arthurian legend. Then there’s all the other plots.

Diana Wynne Jones books have one major flaw, and that’s usually their endings. But in this case the ending is pretty solid and all the threads running around the story tie up together pretty tidily.

A problem with stories with a lot of moving pieces is they can leave you frustrated from the feeling things are being kept from you, but in the case of Hexwood you don’t get that feeling at all, as things aren’t kept from you, but things are added instead as things go on. You think you’ve got a stick figure and then it turns out to be an elaborate oil painting. Like pieces clicking into place.

If you forget things like I do, this book has an excellent reread value.

Just a warning though, later on in the book is some pretty intense child abuse. Like Dogsbody‘s animal abuse it makes sense in context, but it’s fairly shocking. When I got to that part I had to stop and look at the ceiling for a while. I’d managed to totally forget that part.

I’m glad a lot of Diana Wynne Jones’ oeuvre has been made available digitally, as it allows me to revisit my old favourites since my paper books seem to continually shift around the house and into hiding.

The Dark Lord Of Derkholm

Title: The Dark Lord of Derkholm by Diana Wynne Jones
Scored a: A+
Status: Finished

When people asked me what I was reading, I said it was a book about a pair of wizards and their human and griffin children. This seemed like a good blurb! And I was right, people were immediately interested after that.

Sometimes I’d go further, and explain that it was about a magical world that had been enslaved by a man from a world like ours, to perform as a sort of magic theme park for tourists to have ‘magical quests’ and that it was actually pretty dystopic, and this was how the wizards and their children saved everyone.

I really really liked this. I needed this book after something terrible happened. I had actually been reading James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small which, given its plethora of dead animals, was the exact wrong book for me at that moment.

Something I really enjoy in stories is unconventional families, and races that are as smart or smarter than us, but look nothing humanoid, and wizards raising griffins hit that exactly. There is also, if this sweetens the pot, dragons.

Diana Wynne Jones is my favourite author for a lot of reasons, and one of them is that she can write a story with a lot of threads that all tie up tidily as the ending approaches. The ending itself can be hit or miss, but the moment where it all comes together is one of my favourite feelings when reading.

I warn you, if you read this, that there is an upsetting scene that could be read two ways, bad and horrifying, that happens to Shona, the older human daughter during the soldier escorting. I had to put down the book for a few moments after that and I had been expecting it.

I had already purchased and begun the sequel, Year of the Griffin, before getting started writing this review. It’s about one of the griffins going to a wizard school. Yessss.

Truckers

To clear the bad taste out of my brain, for book #50 I chose one I knew I’d like: Truckers by Terry Pratchett.

It’s a problem solving book. The Nomes have a problem: their home sucks. So they get on a lorry and see where they end up next, which turns out to be a place full of more nomes. These nomes live in a giant department store and don’t believe in the outside and it’s rather idyllic.

Except it’s going to be demolished.

There’s also a small box from space telling them what to do, and the joy of this book is the solutions the nomes come up to for their problems, in-between their arguing (nomes love to argue).

Masklin, the main character, suffers a bit from the sort of ‘good, but just kinda there’ lead problem that Pratchett’s books sometimes have, but I liked him a lot anyway. But my favourite part of the book was that unlike A Spell for Chameleon, women were suddenly people again.

And just for that, this book makes me so happy. I blew right through it, I was enjoying myself so much. It’s part of a series, the Bromeliad Trilogy, and the next book is Diggers, followed by Wingers.

When You Reach Me and The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane

Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop being mean. It’s like how turning on a light makes you realize how dark the room had gotten. And the way you usually act, the things you would have normally done, are like these ghosts that everyone can see but pretends not to. It was like that.

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

Decided to read something by a new author, and went with a kid’s sci-fi book. It’s not terribly sci-fi except for one big part, and takes place in 1978 New York. It follows a young girl named Miranda who has three problems: Her best friend Sal has decided to stop being friends, there’s strange laughing homeless man by her apartment, and she’s getting notes from the future.

It’s a clever book, but what I really liked about it was all the relationships that go on throughout it. Her world really opens up in the few months in the story.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo was a book I had to take a near-month break from. It was the one that made me start crying on a plane, and I’ve been waiting for a nice private moment to see how Edward the porcelain toy rabbit’s journey ends. I cried more. I think Kate DiCamillo has it out for me.

It’s a beautiful book, with great imagery, sweet characters, and a fair bit of injustice but it’s about love. And a toy rabbit that didn’t love or care about anyone at the start. Then shit goes down.

This is the second book by DiCamillo I’ve read and they were both excellent. Looking forward to reading the other books by her I’ve bought.

The Carpet People and Pokemon: Diamond and Pearl vol 1

The Carpet People written by Terry Pratchett age 17 and Terry Pratchett age 43.

This book was originally published when Terry Pratchett was 17 and then once the Discworld series started picking up in popularity, they went to him and said ‘hey, we’re going to publish that book you wrote when you were a teenager’ and Pratchett wisely did what I’ve wanted to do with my old stuff: He rewrote the fuck out of it.

I’m pretty curious what the original one was like. In the author’s note he says that it was written back when he thought fantasy was all about kings and battles, and the book I read was a lot of musing on civilization and the difference in people. Also, everyone living in a carpet. The biggest city in it is the size of a period.

It’s a thinky book mixed around trying to survive an incoming group of people/animals called the Moul (which means ‘one true human’) who eat animals. Look at their name. In-between this, there’s a roving natural disaster called The Fray that is followed by Moul attacks. The Munrungs, a hunter tribe, must survive and generally find a nice place to live after Fray hits their home.

It’s a decent book, but I wish there’d been more women in general. There’s a good effort near the end, but more speaking parts/doing parts is always appreciated in a book.

In other news, on the recommendation of Ann Larimer and the fact that Pokemon Adventures won’t have another volume out until September, I ordered the 8-volume set of Pokemon Diamond Pearl Adventures, which is a different continuity (Pokemon Adventures follows the trainers of the game in order with their own adventures) and is a lot looser in writing and style than the main series.

But so far I’ve learned that Professor Rowan, who is not actually the main character Hareta’s grandfather and I have no idea how he has custody, is the worst person to have custody of a child ever. Please look at the pictures below to see what I mean.

Just gonna leave a toddler in the woods and walk away. It’s all good.

PS: Read Castle Waiting vol 2 by Linda Medley and it was glorious. Excellent comic.

Earwig and the Witch and The Vile Visitors

Earwig and the Witch by Diana Wynne Jones and illustrated by Marion Lindsay

On a rainy day (streets flooding and trapping me at someone’s house rainy) I read three Diana Wynne Jones stories, Earwig and the Witch and The Vile Visitors all illustrated by Marion Lindsay.

First off, Marion Lindsay’s art is adorable and charming, so that’s what I chose to post instead of quotes.

Earwig and the Witch was a major disappointment, and I don’t know how much of that is because it’s a posthumous book. It feels like two thirds of the book is missing, and that it was setting up for a series. Little is explained, characters are introduced significantly, only to never appear again, and the conflict vanishes suddenly. I was disappointed, because the start was very clever.

Almost forgot: The plot is Earwig lives in an orphanage and enjoys it very much. One day a witch takes her out to make her the witch’s slave. Hijinks start to ensue, then don’t.

The second book, Vile Visitors is a combination of two stories (see? I didn’t forget one when I said I read three above) which are Who Got Rid of Angus Flint? and Chair Person which have an unexpectedly large furniture presence. As the title suggests, it’s about vile visitors. The first is Angus Flint, a friend of the children’s father who shows up and decides to stay, making life hell. The second is about a horrible old sitting chair that a family decides to take out to put on a bonfire that… turns into a human and things go very wrong from there.

Vile Visitors was lots of fun, plus Marion Lindsay’s artwork really brought the characters and situations to life. Skip Earwig and the Witch.

Chair Person from the short story Chair Person by Diana Wynne Jones and illustrated by Marion Lindsay

American Born Chinese

American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang was picked up on a whim and it’s excellent. It has three main characters: Jin Wang, a Chinese boy who wants to be All-American (which means white, at least in his eyes and his classmates eyes), the goddamn Monkey King who has his own problems, and Danny, who is ‘All-American’ and suffers from visits from his cousin Chin-Kee that end so badly he has to constantly keep transferring schools.

They’re three separate stories that came together in a way I really was not expecting.

There’s parts of this where kids are cruel enough that it hurts to read, especially on the tail of something that I’d just read in Johnny and the Bomb by Terry Pratchett (gonna be done that today) and it’s a good example of how kids can be horrible for no good reason. And it’s placed so expertly you can see why Jin makes the decisions he does.

Plus any scenes with the Monkey King are great. Gene Yang draws him with the best face.

Art was excellent, and the story was great. I recommend this without reservation.

Castle Waiting

In my last post I briefly mentioned Castle Waiting by Linda Medley and I think it deserves more than a quick shout.

A few weeks ago, I was visiting my friend Ann and what is now customary we went to the bookstore and I aske her for comic recommendations, and this is one of the things she handed to me.

The plot is, essentially, what happened to the castle after Sleeping Beauty left with her prince. In Castle Waiting, it’s become a sanctuary and in volume 1 (volume 2 is shipping its way to me right now. I’m sort of dreading it because 1 was a paperback, weighed two pounds, and made my hands shake when I read it. Volume 2 is a hardcover) we follow the adventures of a new resident, Jain who has come to have her baby, and in the latter part the adventures of Sister Peaceful, who is part of a sect of bearded nuns.

Lots of jokes and character humour, and except for the Sleeping Beauty opening, not especially fairytale oriented, besides everyone living in a world where those sorts of stories do take place, just not to these characters.

There’s some strong Christian elements (because nuns) which seem to be less about Christians and more about bearded women, which I did not object to. Skeeter, the little novice with the huge mustache is adorable.

There’s a rough, racist bit about Roma in the first third, which is mostly redeemed in the last third, but be on alert for that.

Castle Waiting is sweet, easy fantasy with a lot of charm and the art is fabulous. My biggest regret is that I could not get a good picture of Nessie (Sister Peace’s good friend) that was on one of the covers for this post.

Gnomes

I’ve been reading a lot lately! Just haven’t been talking about it.

First off, I read Dinotopia and Dinotopia: The World Beneath by James Gurney. Both have art that just makes me feel happy all the way through. I preferred the first one as it was more of a journal exploration of the world and the switch to prose in the second was a bit awkward, but in the end I enjoyed them both very much. There’s two more, First Flight and Journey to Chandara, and while I have Chandara, I’m missing the one in-between, but I SUSPECT my dad is getting me it for Christmas! So I’ll resume them. As a result of wanting to read more picture exploration books, I’ve picked up Faeries by Brian Froud (and some other guy?) and Gnomes by I forgot already I suck. I did, however, make gnome icons:

I’m still in-progress with Gnomes, but it’s loads of fun. Great art and cute worldbuilding, my only complaint being a reliance on gender roles so far. And a bit about ‘bad blood’ as a reason for bad gnomes.

Now onto Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I made an off-hand comment to someone on Twitter about the original canon, realized I wasn’t sure myself and downloaded a copy off Gutenberg to confirm what I thought. And then I thought, it’s only three hundred pages and I’ve got a few hours free. Why don’t I read it all?

And I’m glad I did! First off, and I realize this is probably totally obvious to everyone, it turns out pop culture totally lied to me about the contents of the book. Victor was nothing like how he’s portrayed in the movies, the monster was a freakin’ genius (and a hypocritical whiner), and there was a whole other narrator that was surprisingly gay where I wasn’t expecting it. And given Mary Shelley knew that chap Lord Byron, that may have been a ‘this exists!’ conscious thing.

Our conversations are not always confined to his own history and misfortunes. On every point of general literature he displays unbounded knowledge and a quick and piercing apprehension. His eloquence is forcible and touching; nor can I hear him, when he relates a pathetic incident or endeavours to move the passions of pity or love, without tears. What a glorious creature must he have been in the days of his prosperity, when he is thus noble and godlike in ruin! He seems to feel his own worth and the greatness of his fall.

–Walton, the first narrator, on Victor. There’s other close male friendships in this book and Walton’s… well, I’m pretty sure only the fact Victor was pretty much about to die (and presumably straight) prevented the makeouts.

And! Another quote I liked and the reason I was reading the book in the first place, to know exactly what the monster looked like. This part isn’t in the quote, it’s mentioned elsewhere, but the monster? Eight feet tall. Victor dreamed BIG.

How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

–Victor on his creation. Apparently the monster’s main problem was he was eight feet tall of corpsey uncanny valley.

Anyway, LOVED it. I’m so glad I read it! I’ve got people encouraging me to try Les Mis next, but I’m working on Little Women again because I finally got another copy after losing my last one. Oh Beth, your time is so short…