I normally dismiss historical-fiction because I fear that it will be really, really boring and that I might accidentally learn something. So when I got The Fiddler’s Gun I was conflicted. On the one hand I hate history and on the other, I love pirates. I was conflicted until finally my love of pirates won and started to read the book.

It was pretty awesome.

There was the initial culture shock from reading about people who didn’t know what a large hadron collider was but then I realized historical-fiction isn’t that much different from science-fiction and was able to continue reading with no problems.

Anyway, The Fiddler’s Gun (which takes place somewhere around 1755) is about a Fin, a tomboyish girl who lives at an orphanage in America. She in constantly defying the nuns and getting in to trouble. That trouble causes her to be banished to kitchen duty where she befriends Bartimaeus, the book with a mysterious past. One thing leads to another and Fin kills some English soldiers and is forced to run away. She is mistaken for a man and joins the crew of the Rattlesnake. Luckily she feels right at home aboard a boat full of men. Then they become pirates and fight people who don’t like pirates.

Like I said, it’s pretty awesome.

I know my description above probably wont sell you on this book. But it is a very beautifully written book that is chock full of adventure, drama, and romance.

My one complant, and it’s a major one, is that after 300-ish pages of rooting for Fin to get the happy ending she deserves, I find out that this is a two book series. And the second book, Fiddler’s Green, isn’t out yet. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Anyway, I don’t think I can recommend this book enough. I went in to it with low expectations (again, historical-fiction) and, like a ship being hit with a cannonball, I was blown completely away. You should pick up a copy at The Rabbit Room or even get the Kindle version for less than the cost of a gallon of gas.

Second Opinions:

Booking Mama, Book Journey, My Friend Amy, Pick of the Literate

Death is a hot topic right now. Seriously, if you are a writer quit whatever you’re writing and switch to a death story. Don’t believe me? Consider The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Her Fearful Symmetry, and Spooky Little Girl. Ghosts may be the new vampires.

Speaking of Spooky Little Girl by Laurie Notaro, this is Laurie’s eighth book and her second fiction novel. In SLG, Lucy returns from a Hawaiian vacation only to discover that all of her possessions have been tossed out on the front lawn and her fiance isn’t answering his phone. With nowhere else to go she movies in with her sister.

She then proceeds to get hit by a bus and is killed.

When she wakes up Lucy discovers that she must complete ghost school before being sent back to the world of the living to complete her unfinished business. When she gets back, she is forced to haunt her ex-fiance and his new domestic partner (who is female).

I really like Laurie Notaro’s writing. Sure, I am the completely wrong target audience and when I went to her reading at Powells recently, I may have been one of the only few guys in the audience. But Laurie’s writing is funny regardless of your gender.

One of the perks of writing fiction as opposed to non-fiction/memoir like Laurie’s previous books is that she is allowed to exaggerate the characters she uses in the story. This helps make them more memorable like Nola who is obsessed with gross reality TV shows or Martin, the fiance, who is obsessed with his job in at the produce department. Each character stands out on their own and help SLG have a great cast to follow.

Anybody who read Laurie’s first fiction novel, There’s a (Slight) Chance I Might Be Going to Hell, should recognize the character of Ruby Spicer who met an unfortunate demise by spontaneous combustion at the end of the first novel. She is back in SLG as a ghost teacher who serves as a mentor to ghost Lucy. Ruby seems a lot more mellow in this book. Maybe death does that to people.

While I de prefer Laurie’s memoir books to her fiction, her second fiction novel has shown real improvement of her first attempt at fiction. Spooky Little Girl is as a well-rounded, light-hearted ghost story about getting closure and haunting people you hate by deleting their TiVo. If you ever get a chance to see Laurie Notaro read, do so! She is hilarious in person.

Also, can we drop the term chick-lit? It’s emasculating.. to dudes.

Second opinions:
Book Divas, Bewitched Bookworms

Updating this blog is kind of like reading Generation X by Douglas Coupland. I started it a while ago but had to put it down when I got busy with school. While finishing Generation X is low on my list (I wasn’t really enjoying it), regularly updating this blog is something that I would like to do. Having said that, I have a bunch of books I want to talk about. Starting with…

I had to read this book for a class on British women writers. Of the books we read, White Teeth was probably the most modern of them all.

The story of White Teeth centers around three difference families over the course of many generations. The novel starts with the history of how Samad and Archie became friends during world war 2 and how each of them eventually married and had children. Their offspring are the stars of the story because most of the novel revolves around them and their search for cultural identity. Samad tries to raise his two sons, Millat and Magid, in the muslim tradition. However, as they grow old the sons lean towards ideologies vastly different from their father. One son becomes a scientist, and more shockingly to Samad, an atheist. The other son joins a fundamentalist group the believes in the most extreme measures to promote their ideals.

One of the main ideas this novel puts forth is the of how kids get raised and identify with the culture that surrounds them regardless of what their parents would like. Is it possible to identify as both Muslim and British? Muslim and Atheist? There is cognitive dissidence between many of the ideas brought up and what the characters are trying to do is find some sort of common ground where they are content with who they are.

This book was long, 448 pages long. Reading it in a two week period and quickly turning out an essay about didn’t leave me much time to sit down and process it. However, I did find the characters in this novel interesting because it centers around cultures and classes that I can not easily relate to. I’m also a fan of novels with multiple characters and story lines that all come together at the very end and you see how everybody’s actions and decisions effect everybody. That to me is good story writing as it demonstrates that Zadie Smith knew what she was doing while she was writing.

I’d probably go ahead and recommend this book, but I a

cknowledge that not everybody will enjoy it. It’s long and, at times, a little boring.

For the class we also watched the BBC adaptation of the book which you can to on Hulu.

Second Opinions:
Panorama of the Mountains,  Life Wordsmith