Now What?

I am coming to the end of a long, long road, the path to a Ph.D.  Amid all the excitement of accomplishing this goal, probably the most time-consuming of my life to this point, I’m starting to spend some time wondering how I will spend my time once I don’t have to be reading book after book about rhetoric and composition and revising, revising, revising. Before Vincent was born, the great joy of my life was playing the French horn, and I was pretty good at it. I was a member of the best small-city municipal band in the world, and played in a college/community orchestra. I got called for gigs at churches and community theater fairly often. I loved it. After we moved to Florida, though, I lost all of that. The only municipal band that I have found here, well, the hearing aids prevent precise tuning, I’m afraid. There is a pretty good community wind ensemble, the Hollingsworth Winds, but they already have 12 horns and I feel like a complete outsider. I imagine that those same 12 horns are on call for the Imperial Symphony, which I probably wouldn’t be good enough for anyway. I suppose I could play with the Southeastern wind ensemble, but I don’t feel like I fit in there, either. Here’s what I really need. A fairly decent pianist, and a fairly decent violinist who are willing to meet with me once a week and practice the Brahms horn trio --just for fun. Apply below!

Book Review: Glow

Author: Amy Kathleen Ryan

Title: Glow

Description: Two spaceships left a deteriorating Earth to colonize New Earth. Both were equipped with all they would need for a decades-long journey, but one was secular and one was religious. Kieran and Waverly were born aboard the secular ship, the two oldest of the next generation of space colonists. After years of no communication from the other ship, their ship, the Empyrean, was attacked and the girls were taken captive. The story is told from Waverly’s point of view, as she struggles to rescue her mother and to return to the Empyrean, and from Kieran’s as he struggles for control of the ship after the adults leave to rescue the girls.

Review source: ALA

Plot: The plot was pretty interesting. The idea of separating colonists by religious belief was a new one to me, and it certainly comes into play. Because the book is the first in a series, though, basically nothing is resolved at the end.

Characters: I’ve heard this book referred to as “the next Hunger Games,” and it certainly seems like that author had it in mind as she chose her characters. We have the main character, a girl, who is quite tough, and two boys who like her. Neither of the boys are especially sympathetic, as they fight one another for control of the ship.

Writing style: One of the main reasons I’m not a science fiction fan is that the authors can never seem to tell a story in a reasonable amount of time. Other genres, they can manage it! But sci-fi, even a three-book series is short. I don’t like books that don’t resolve.

Audience: It’s a YA, sci-fi, Hunger Games clone.

Wrap-up: As I mentioned, I’m not a big sci-fi fan, so I’m not going to go out looking for the next book in the series. 2.5/5*

Part of a Meme

Just to switch things up:

What was the last book you…
• borrowed from the library? Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Thaler & Sunstein. Then I realized I had it on my bookshelf!
• bought? The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings, for our book group
• cried over? Goodbye for Now. A five-star read
• disliked and couldn’t finish? Don’t remember the title. It was a Harlequin cowboy romance that I picked up at ALA
• read & loved? Cry, the BelovedCountry—another one for the book group

• got for review? The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle, from netgalley

• gave to someone else? The LincolnConspiracy by Timothy O’Brien
• stayed up too late reading? I never stay up late

From http://shouldbereading.wordpress.com

Book Reviews: Goodness Gracious Green & The Glory of Green

Author: Judy Christie

Title: The Glory of Green, Goodness Gracious Green, 

Description: Books 2 and 3 in the Green series, set in rural Louisiana. Lois has determined to keep the paper and stay in Green, but the good ol’ boy brothers who sold her the paper are experiencing sellers’ remorse and have filed suit to get the paper back. Meanwhile, mysterious fires at the paper are causing damage and frightening the staff.  In book three, a wedding opens the book, but a tornado hits Green during the reception, causing death and destruction and unsettling the town for months afterward. Lois and the News-Item staff rally to keep their town alive.

Review source: ALA

Plot: Small-town life.

Characters: The characters continue from the previous book. Many of Lois’ co-workers at the newspaper have small subplots of their own, and Lois becomes aware of the needs of the local migrant community.  

Writing style: Folksy.

Audience: Christian chick-lit.

Wrap-up: I’m enjoying this series and reading about Lois’ growth as a Christian. Book three has been my favorite in the series so far. Both books 3/5*

Book Review: Cry, the Beloved Country

Author: Alan Paton

Title: Cry, the Beloved Country

Description: An old priest from rural South Africa goes to Johannesburg to find his sister and his son, with whom he has lost touch. Transplanted from their rural lives, they have succumbed to bad company, temptation, and poverty. While the sister agrees to return to their small village to raise her son, the priest’s son, Absalom, has suffered a different and heartbreaking fate. Meanwhile, a rich white landowner finds that his son has been murdered in a burglary gone bad.

Review source: This was a book group selection.

Plot: I pretty well described the plot above, but the plot is barely important compared to the characters and the writing.

Characters: Stephen Kumalo and uJarvis, Absalom and Arthur, are white and black, young and old, poor and rich. They are both richly drawn characters and representations of South African people.

Writing style: This book is literally beautiful. It’s just poetry.

Audience: everyone.

Wrap-up: One good thing about the book group is that it gets me to read some classics that I should have read by now, but just haven’t, somehow. This book surpassed its reputation and all of my expectations; it was lovely, and it broke my heart. 5/5*

Book Review: The Lincoln Conspiracy

Author: Timothy O’Brien

Title: The Lincoln Conspiracy

Description: Washington D.C. police detective Temple McFadden happens to be at the wrong place at the wrong time; he sees a man murdered and ends up with a couple of documents that two powerful, clever, and possibly lethal men want really bad. Lincoln has just been assassinated, and Booth shot, but the Capitol is still buzzing with the aftermath of the crime and the challenges of reforming a nation after the Civil War. When the documents appear to have information about Lincoln’s assassination, McFadden decides to keep them and try to discover why people are so eager to get them.

Review source: Library Thing Early Reviewers

Plot: I love how O’Brien brought in actual historical characters; the research here seemed meticulous and the characters interact with “real people” in an entirely believable way (check out the story of Elizabeth Keckley).  There are plenty of plot twists; it took me awhile to figure out what was actually going on, but O’Brien ties it all together by the end.

Characters: The characters are probably the reason I enjoyed this book so much. I loved the main character and his wife and their friend Augustus; McFadden seems to have devoted friends all over Washington, and they all add color to the story.

Writing style: O’Brien keeps the plot moving but doesn’t neglect character or historical detail to do it.

Audience: Mystery fans, Lincoln buffs, those who like historical fiction.

Wrap-up: You can probably tell I like this book an awful lot. I would read any books in this series that O’Brien writes in the future.  5/5*

Book Review: Perfume

Author: Patrick Suskind

Title: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Description: Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born in eighteenth-century France with two unusual traits. First, he has no scent (this leads all of his foster mothers to reject him); second, he has the best sense of smell in history. He can smell anything , anyone; he remembers every smell; he desires to create new scents and perfumes and learns everything he can about them. Unfortunately, this, combined with his lack of human emotions, leads him to take, well, rather extreme steps to collect scents that he covets.

Plot: This isn’t a mystery, nor is it a thriller. The best I can describe it would be that it is the book that results when the author asks himself, “What if there were a person who cared only about what he smelled?”

Characters: All of the major characters in the book are repulsive. Grenouille himself does not seem human.

Writing style: What I really enjoyed about this book was the description of smells of all sorts. In this way, it seemed to do for smells what Ann Patchett does for music in Bel Canto.  In other words, sometimes an author can write about one specific thing in a way that seems revelatory to me, and that’s what Suskind does here. Also, I was really interested in the details about perfume creation in the eighteenth century.

Audience: Literary fiction.

Wrap-up: I was riveted by this book for the writing, not for the characters, which is usually the case with me. 4/5*