A Tale for the Time Being. A Moment in Time

I finally have access to my account and to a working computer!  I haven’t been posting anything because I forgot my password for a while and my computer decided to stop working.  Anyway…  a while ago I finished A Tale for the Time Being and I loved it.

This book was written from two different points of views and although it was a little confusing at first, it worked.  There are many books with multiple view points and there are many that don’t really work in terms of clarity.  But this one was able to pull it off nicely and actually kept me hanging on until the end.  The characters were all great and I was able to relate to them all even if it was only a little bit.

Ruth’s character was probably the most developed character in the book.  Even though the book is mostly about Nao and her life and how she wants to do right by her grandma by writing down her grandma’s life story, RUth was the only one who we really got to get into.  Nao’s life was pretty awful and I am amazed that she was able to do the things that she did with the strength and will that she had.  Definitely not for the faint of heart though.

I think what has stayed with me the most was the ending.  I loved how it was left a little open so that there is room for the imagination to figure out what happened.  You can kinda make up your own ending on what happened.  I want to say that they finally met each other and they had their own friendship from it, but who knows.

I recommend this one to anyone who can handle some disturbing scenes.  Like I said, Nao has a really rough life and she goes into detail about her father’s attempted suicide and what she went through for school.  Not exactly the easiest thing to read for everyone.  So if you can stomach some pretty gnarly scenes then I would recommend it to you.  I thought it was a great read.

Deer Mr. Es-aye RIghter Guy!

I finished this lovely book the other day and I have to say it was pretty funny.  I loved the examples he used to “write good” and some of his explanations really hit home.  I love that he used examples from his own life.  The one where he was in Madrid was particularly eye opening.  I think my favorite section had to be “Four Essential Tips for Telling the Truth in Memoir and Securing That Blockbuster Book Deal.”  Not only were there hilarious grammar mistakes (which were made on purpose to make a point) but the overall idea to not take things too seriously was just a great thing to read.

This was written almost like an advice column with some of his own works put after he answered a letter.  I thought this style of book was pretty unique and I haven’t read anything like it yet.  If you love humor and not taking things too seriously, this is a book I would recommend to you.  Definitely check it out if you plan on writing non fiction and need a break from writing.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review

I am thinking about Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

I have been neglecting my blog to an extent that makes me wonder why I still have a blog in the first place…

I finished this the other day and I am still wondering what I am feeling about this book.  When I first saw it on The Book Club of Instagram’s page (I scrolled all the way down to see what some of the first books were and this was one of them since the owner of the page is taking a break from Instagram) I thought it would be better than the other book that I also requested from the library (which was also on The Book Club of Instagram’s page) A Tale for the Time Being.  I was waiting for the book anxiously and I actually ended up getting A Tale for the Time Being first.  Eventually I did get the book and the first thing the librarian said to me was, “I just finished this one. It’s…. Interesting. I’m not sure how I feel about it.”  Uh-oh that’s not something that I want to hear when I am checking out a book.  So I took it home and cracked it open.  I must say there are not too many books that I’ve read that are in present and future tense.  It definitely threw me off.  And wait it just gets weirder.

This book is about a strange bookstore in San Fransisco that is both a bookstore and a weird book club.  And I do mean a weird book club.  The members all have a card and are part of something called The Unbroken Spine and they bring in one book and request another book in a part of the store that isn’t meant for other customers.  This store, like most of the members of the book club, are outdated and old.  I don’t think many of the people have ever used technology after the 1980’s.  Which makes the main character’s girlfriend an interesting twist in the story.  She works for Google and wants to take the book club books and figure out what they are and what they mean.  Confused?  Don’t worry it’s probably just the way I summarize things.  Though the book itself was slightly confusing.

I think I liked this one?  The characters didn’t have the same arc as most books I’ve read.  For the most part they stay kind of the same throughout the whole story.  They also weren’t really relatable in any way to me, which didn’t detract from the writing, but I didn’t care for any of the characters the way I thought I would. The story line, to me, was pretty original and was interesting enough to read it all the way to the end.  The future and present tense was really off-putting however and I don’t think that I really enjoyed this point of view.  I know that writing in present tense is supposed to be a more “refined” way of writing, but it didn’t work for me for this one.  I know that for some people this book will be amazing, but for me, a book about a bookstore, I thought I would be able to connect to the characters better than I did.

So, like the librarian who handed me this book, I am also at a loss as to how I feel.  It was short and sweet and left no questions unanswered, but it was also weird.  If I could describe this book in one word it would be this: Interesting…

Armada!!!! The cake is a lie. Or is it? Apparently, for most, it is.

Armada is a great sci-fi novel that I enjoyed immensely.  I loved all the references to movies, songs, pop culture.  I didn’t think it was rammed down my throat, but then again, I really enjoyed Ready Player One which also had a lot of 80s references.  This book was almost your typical alien invasion book, movie, short story etc and I thought it was great.

Although I wasn’t able to connect with the characters, I was able to enjoy the story none the less.  I cried at certain parts and I was almost glad that I flipped ahead and saw a slight spoiler because it saved me from a few more tears.  There were some parts that were predictable and there were some parts that were not.  I think my only main complaint about it was there was no really focused “bad guy” first it was one guy then it was the aliens and then it was someone else and it just jumped around too much for me to enjoy it.

I wasn’t left with feelings of an unfinished story line, and although there were some things that weren’t wrapped up in the end, I thought it was a solid ending.  That being said, I saw so many disappointed reviews on GoodReads claiming that it was such a bad book and that it was a disappointment and I really didn’t agree.  To me, this book was either hit or miss.  You either loved it like I did or you hated it like so many other people.  I think Ernest Cline is just an author that is a specific taste.  You’ll either love his writing style with all the pop culture references, or you won’t.  I think it really just depends on the reader.

Check it out if you have time and let me know your thoughts whether you agree or disagree.

Some links for more info:

Author Bio

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I received this book from Blogging for Books for review.

Dark Places. Dark Book.

I was told to read this by a friend.  She had just finished the book and she said it was really good and that I should read it.  Well for the most part our tastes in books hasn’t matched up all that well.  Some of the books that she loved, I ended up hating.  Some of the books that I loved, she ended up hating.  So I wasn’t sure how this book was going to turn out.  But I ended up loving it.

I will give everyone the same warning she gave me.  TRIGGER WARNING: if you are suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts, you may want to skip this book.  There is a lot of mention of suicide and death and overall there are some graphic scenes.  I really appreciated the warning before hand and I hope others take the warning seriously.

Now I loved the book.  I thought the detail that went into it was dark, but the book itself was dark so it worked.  I thought that most parts were believable and although I wasn’t able to relate in any way to any of the characters, I was able to sympathize with the main character.  It has a few flaws, like the main character is in her 30’s but she doesn’t act like it (though it’s debatable that she is only like that because of her past.) and she can be frustrating at times.  I was glad that she made a friend, and that I was wrong about who the killer was.  The most disappointing part of the book was the killer.  Although it was kind of leading up to a “who done it” kind of feel, the person who was the actual killer was something of a let down.  It was so obscure that it left me feeling like I was cheated out of a better answer.

BUT, mystery is a genre I love and this was a great read.  I read it in two days and I’ve been in somewhat of a book slump since.  So, if you read the trigger warning and you feel up to reading this book, I highly recommend it for mystery lovers.

Do I dare write about Night Film? I do.

Hmmmm.  So I saw this was a book for a book club on Instagram and I am always interested in book club books; so I gave it a shot.  How’s that for weird grammar???

Anyway… this book is about this reporter, I can’t for the life of me remember his first name I think it was Scott but I could be wrong, last name McGrath who is looking for more information about this girl, Ashely, and her apparent suicide.  Ashley is the daughter of the very famous Cordova who is a super secretive director that everyone seems to want to know more about.  Cordova used to make films for Hollywood, but eventually went underground to do some really heavy, hardcore movies that were banned for the general public.  Basically, in order to have seen some of his underground work you had to have seen it in one of those underground theaters or know someone who has a copy.  McGrath doesn’t think that Ashley killed herself on purpose and the more he uncovers the weirder things get.  He teams up, unwillingly, with two “kids” one named Hopper who is a drug dealer and Nora who is an aspiring actress, both want to know what happened to Ashley and both have some things they are trying to hide.

So where do I start?  This was an interesting book for me because there is an interactive app that goes with it and if you use the app it shows you a bunch of stuff that is “extra” to enhance the book or whatever.  That being said, I really liked the interactive app.  I think that some of the pictures and some of the verbal accounts were “scarier” than the book itself.  One of the last things that I scanned from the app was a diary and the entries in it, particularly the last one, was creepy to say the least.  BUT, at the same time, the app also pulled me out of the story to stop and listen to what ever was playing or read whatever picture was connected to it.  It kinda dulled my reading experience and actually made reading the book a lot slower.

On to the actual book!  Let me start with all the things I didn’t like and move on from there.  I didn’t like the number of characters.  There were SOOOOOO many characters in the book I was tempted to pull out a notebook to keep track of all the characters.  I read a review from someone on GoodReads saying that they felt the author was trying so hard to make the world of Cordova that all the characters were swept under the rug, and for the most part I believe that.  Except when it comes to Nora, Hopper, and McGrath, I feel like they were pretty fleshed out.  To me, a character doesn’t have to change from the beginning to the end and for the most part McGrath stayed the same.  There was so much running around and so much speculation at the end that it was left open to you to decide what really happened.  Which some days I like and some day I wish the author had kinda finished.  There were also some minor racial remarks toward Asians, but I didn’t write down exact quotes nor do I remember what was said exactly other than it annoyed me slightly.  But other than that I pretty much enjoyed the book.

I loved the world of Cordova.  I love the mystery that surrounded Cordova and I actually liked that McGrath was such a nosy ass sometimes.  McGrath embodied a nosy reporter, desperate to get a new story, especially about the man that ruined his career and I really admired his tenacity.  Nora was a sweet girl who was grounded yet believed in the supernatural which was interesting.  Hopper was the aloof asshole who tried to keep everyone in their place, but not around enough to care to much about.  I think the thing I really liked was there was not really a major love story.  This was basically just a thriller, mystery and it didn’t stray too far away from it.  I liked the writing style and voice.  Overall not a bad story.  Do I dare?  I do.

Hyperbole and a Half. The book not the blog

WOW this book was amazing.  Filled with hilarious pictures and great story telling, Allie Brosh made me laugh, cry, and read most of this book out loud to family because I had to share some of her stories with others.  I have already made it a point to actually buy the book the next chance I get.  Seriously, I was able to relate to the explanation of her depression and I was laughing about how I can relate to how she gets disappointed about things that are not in my control.

I saw this quite a few times on my Good Reads feed and I always saw really good ratings for this book and ended up putting it on my list.  I normally don’t follow the hype that follows most books, so when I saw that this had great ratings I was skeptical that I would feel the same.  But I was wrong, and I am glad that I am wrong.  I love this book.

There are very few books that I would urge anyone to buy.  This happens to be one that I would.  I even read some of the passages to my younger sister, she’s in high school, and she loved it so much that she wants to buy it now.

In all seriousness, this book isn’t just about funny things that happened to her, it also gets incredibly personal when she opens up about her depression.  Most of the people I know have hit depression in some shape or form, some being just mildly sad and others I ended up going to the hospital to visit because they just didn’t see a point in living anymore.  It’s a shitty situation and it’s never fun or something that anyone would want to go through.  I was able to connect with the author when she described her depression and I ended up crying when that chapter ended.

This is a must read and a recommendation that I give to everyone who stops to read this review.  GO READ IT

The Miniaturist. Wait who? Where’d they go?

Alright so a little back story before I get into the review.  I put my name down on the wait list for this book in February after seeing someone put a picture of it on Instagram.  It was a gorgeous cover so I wanted to read it.  Yes, I judge books by their cover.  That’s how and why I read most of my books.  ANYWAY.  I waited and waited, eventually it was a book for the BookClubOfInstagram and that came and went and still no book.  I finally got the book about two weeks ago and finished it yesterday.  What an interesting story.

Some spoilers might follow.

I am a huge fan of anything miniature.  My mom has a knitted Winnie the Pooh doll that is smaller than my smallest finger nail.  My mom’s love for small things rubbed off on me and I have loved them since I was a little girl.  Now having an entire doll house with miniature things would be awesome.  This book came off as a little spooky when Nella started receiving the miniatures of things in her house as well as the dolls of the people in her family or the people involved in their family.  I almost wish that she had payed more attention to the dolls in the first place and some things might have been avoided.  No guarantees though.  Some things may have happened no matter what.

I really liked the characters in the book.  Marin was one of my favorites because she was such a firm believer that women should have equal rights as men and she fought to have that in her own house.  Even though Johannes was the “man” of the house, she was the one who made sure that every thing ran smoothly, balanced the books, kept everyone in line, and she wasn’t married.  I love seeing such strong female characters who know what they want in their lives and they go for it.  She didn’t need or want a man in her life so she chose not to have one.  Nella grew from the beginning to the end.  At first she believes all the things that are forced into women’s heads about having a family and that having children is all that women are good for and that if she can’t have children she is less of a woman (that bothered me btw. As a feminist it was a little irking to read that.  I know that the book takes place in the late 1600’s but that mindset still bothers me.) and she eventually came to believe that men don’t have to run the household and eventually she did run everything herself without a man in her life.  Johannes’ character was alright.  Although he cared about Nella and such, he didn’t really have the growth and character development that I was hoping for.  He was more of a problem that had to be solved which is interesting when it comes to books because men usually aren’t the “problem”.

I really liked Cornelia and Otto as well even though they kind of seemed more like side characters than a main character and then there is the Miniaturist.  Now here is the part of the story that bugged me the most.  Who was the miniaturist?  Apparently, she shares the same name as the main character, Petronella, and I figured that since she had some prophetic abilities that maybe she was the same person and she time traveled or something to warn herself of what would happen.  But that isn’t the case.  Apart from the first chapter of the book, you have no idea who she really is or why she does what she does.  So why am I annoyed?  It felt like the book was hanging in  the end.  Although some things were solved, there were actually more questions by the end of the book than I had in the beginning.  AND the main question that I had was why the miniaturist does the things she does and STILL there is no answer.  I know that this book was kind of supposed to mimic life in a way where nothing goes as planned and you don’t always get what you want, BUT STILL.

This book pretty much described how things behind closed doors are not always what they seem.  In a way, it reminds me of daily life.  When you go online and you see your friends or people you follow and you look at all the awesome things they are doing or the places they are going and whom they are hanging out with, you see what they want you to see.  But do you actually know what is going on in their real lives?  Probably not for the most part.  It’s the same with this book.  Things and people were not as they seemed and the glimpses that people got were far from the truth.

While I enjoyed this book and how interesting it was to see into a life that was not my own (I can be nosy too…), I was a bit disappointed by the ending.  I understand that not all stories have a happy ending and that sometimes characters have to die, but I wanted to know more about the miniaturist and how they were going to cope with both Marin and Johannes gone.  There were too many questions and it was not a satisfying end.  Overall just okay.

High Lord… Wait what?

I finished The Black Magician trilogy and I’m slightly confused.  It was an interesting ending to a trilogy to say the least.  There might be some spoilers from here on out because I find it slightly easier to talk about if I ruin some things… Sorry.

So we start out with Cery and his secret mission to get rid of the magicians in the city that are killing innocent people for power.  He made a deal with the High Lord to dispose of the bodies once the High Lord is done killing these rogue magicians from Sachaka.  Doesn’t seem like a lot of information, but I just exposed half of the plot of the book in two sentences.

There was so much information in this book that it felt crammed in and rushed when it finally got to the ending.  There were also a whole bunch of things that just seemed forced throughout the entire second half of the book.  For example, Akkarin (High Lord) and Sonea’s really random relationship.  Seriously it popped up out of no where after Akkarin and Sonea are forced into the forbidden land of Sachaka after being tried for using black magic and found guilty of their crimes.  I paraphrased and left a lot of information out, but seriously?  That info was crammed into maybe 100 pages and then you were supposed to not get whiplash?  The love scene was forced probably because of all the information that was supposed to be crammed in to actually move the story forward.

So when there is finally some action, the last 50 pages of the book, all the characters start to die.  Apparently all the rogue magicians are a lot stronger than hundreds of Guild magicians because the Inchani (rogues) use black magic while the Guild does not.  So almost all your favorite characters die as well as some of the main characters.  Akkarin ends up dying by giving all his power to Sonea as she fights off the last of the Inchani in the city.  The end of the book surprises you with Sonea being pregnant with Akkarin’s child and Sonea is one of the main healers for the slums.  All crammed into 50 pages.

BASICALLY, if you want a summed of version of this story it would go something like this: Akkarin is hiding from Inchani who only really want to kill him because he is a run away slave that killed his owner.  Akkarin doesn’t tell anybody and everyone suffers from it.  Oh!  And he could have lived if he just took the power from the dome to add power to himself.

I love fantasy and I love this series, but it had some major issues.  If you really like fantasy I recommend checking it out, but if you are not a big fan then I would just not pick up this series.  It may drive you a little nuts…

The Little Paris Bookshop

[Mini rant: So I was going to post about this yesterday, but I turned off my computer at 12:30 in the afternoon and I finished the book around 4.  I thought that I would be able to turn my computer back on and blog about it, but my computer had other plans.  It was still in the process of shutting down… When did my computer finally shut down?  8.  So yes, it took my computer 7 and 1/2 hours to turn off and by the time that was done with I was irritated and decided to wait until today to blog.  Stupid computer…]

Let me start by saying that I loved this book.  The characters were great, the storyline (slightly unoriginal) was interesting, the details put into this book were fantastic, and there were so many great quotes that I took from this book that I want to share with the world (I do that with a daily quote).  However, I felt like there were some parts that were slightly too similar to other books that I’ve read in the past.

For example, I read The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry for the Book Club Of Instagram last year about this man that lived in his book shop that he took care of ever since his wife passed away.  He was able to tell what kind of books were right for certain people and was also able to recommend books that anyone asked for even if he didn’t think that the book would suit you.  Well that is kind of how the beginning of this book started.  You meet the main character Perdu who owns a book barge called the Literary Apothecary and he prescribes books for people that he thinks will heal your soul.  He sticks to the same routine every day, all day because he is stuck in this “I don’t want to move on ever since my lover left me” stage.  Sound similar?  Well it did to me.

The characters can kind of grate your nerves.  For example, Perdu pretty much sulks all the time because he never moved on from this woman that left him to be with her husband.  Yeah.  She was married and he was the other man.  Yet, he feels that he can’t move on when she leaves him.  She even sent him a letter explaining why she was leaving and he didn’t open it for 20 years only to discover (spoiler) that she had cancer and was dying and only had a few months to live.  She wanted him to come to her to her and her husband’s house to be with her as she died.  Her husband was actually okay with her having a separate relationship with someone else and was willing to share his wife.  Strange.  Interesting but strange.  Another thing about the characters is that there were so many and they had so little to do with the main character that I was kinda confused as to who was whom.  They were almost like a side story that wasn’t really as interesting, yet it all somehow tied in together with the main story.  Confusing?  Yes, very.

I really liked the book though.  There was a lot of self discovery and growth from the main character.  Dealing with the death is never something enjoyable and it never really leaves you, but it can be easier if you love in the process.  I love how the author was able to describe his grief and sadness in such a way that it was beautiful as well as sad.

My last criticism on this book was that some of the details were drawn out and some of the scenes were just a little too long.  I know that detail and imagery is good and that having some time to build up to the ending is something that most author do, but this was just too much imagery and too much filler for my liking.

Overall, I love this book.  It teaches you that there is always life after death and that love is always going to be there to bring you back up when you have lost everything.

4/5

Some links you might find interesting. (I’m just happy I figured out how to insert links properly)

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I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review