The Book Pirate

One of my literature weak spots is the pulp fiction/noir genre which is why I am a big fan of the Hard Case Crime series. When HCC debuted back in 2004 I immediately scooped up their initial offerings and submerged myself in their gritty world of dames, gumshoes, and murder. It was a welcome change from the CSI crime solving style that I fear is slowly taking over mystery novels. When Portland Noir was released back in June, I had to have it simply because I love Portland and I love Noir. Really this is just basic math. Put two good things together and you get something even greater. This book seemed perfect.

Portland Noir spans 16 stories that each take place in a different Portland neighborhood. From the pretentious, dog filled Montgomery Park area to the shady 82nd Avenue where the women walk the streets. Each story has a distinct feel to it and none of them feel as if they are telling the same story.

One of the defining characteristics of Portland Noir is that it features all local authors/illustrator. Some of these authors I am familiar with, some are new to me but I now I want to check out in the near future.

I worry that this book will only appeal to Portlanders. Luckily, the publisher (Akashic Books) has put out many books in the Noir series that take place in other big cites like Las Vegas or Seattle. But those books don’t interest me because Portland Noir was filled with so many little references to the city that I call my home. The authors don’t spend much time going in to detail about the locations but because I am familiar with them, I can picture them in my mind. It’s pretty much a given that Portlanders will get the most out of this book while readers who have never been visited this fine city wont know what a Burnside is.

On that note, I now feel compelled to read Portland Confidential.

Second Opinions:
Feminist Review

Blurb for the back cover:
“Pleasant”

The City of Ember assumingly takes place in the future after something horrible happened to the surface. To save mankind, a city was built underground and came with instructions on what to do when the time came to leave the city. However, over the years those instructions were lost and the people kept on living in the city and soon the surface was forgotten. Now that the city is falling apart from old age, Lina Mayfleet and Doon Harrow discover a mysterious box and a faded note that may be the answer that the city is looking for.

Originally I wanted to read The City of Ember because I saw the movie that it was based on and thought it was really good. It’s a great family film that I found to be fun. Plus it has Bill Murray. The book however feels very much like a children’s book and that’s because it is. I like Young Adult fiction as much as the next book blogger, but this book was possibly the youngest book I have ever read. Maybe I went in to it expecting it to be more advanced.

Other than that, I thought the book was pleasant and the movie was relativity faithful to the book. I would recommend the book if you are a fan of children’s fiction or if you are looking for a book to buy a younger child. I believe there are three additional books in the Ember series, but I do not think I will be reading them.

Second Opinions:
Book Dweeb
Final Haven

Blurb for the back cover:
“Over the top”

Further Tales of the City is book Three in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City series. In this book Mary Ann Singleton pursues a career in reporting while trying to get the inside scoop on two lesbians who escaped the Jonestown Massacre. Micheal Tolliver continues to be gay in San Fransisco and Anna Madrigal watches over her children at 28 Barbary Land.

More Tales left a slightly sour taste in my proverbial mouth. Luckily, I found Further Tales to redeem the series. Sure, the plot is just as ridiculous and involves the Jonestown Massacre, an impromptu trip to Russia to catch a kidnapper, and a local anchorwoman locked in the basement of 28 Barbary Lane. These characters who I have been following for three books have grown on me and now I actually care about them. In a single novel I know that when it is over, I may never run in to those characters again. But with series I know that I have a couple more books that will tell the story of the cast I have grown to enjoy. If something bad happens to one of them I know that I am going to see that play out for a longer period of their life.

Mary Ann’s plot is pretty much the forefront of Further Tales. Rightfully so because I always saw her as the main protagonist. She moves the story along as she uncovers the mystery and suspense surrounding DeDe and her children. It’s over the top but it kept me reading.

Micheal Tolliver, however, I felt had the best character development in this book. Recently singled, he explores life in San Fransisco and people there while possibly reconnecting YET AGAIN with his on-again, off-again boyfriend Jon.

Anyway, I need to turn around writing about the Tales of the City books before I jump in to the next book. I’m starting to get them confused and the plots and events in the character’s lives are starting to mash together.

Blurb for the back cover:
“Feels as if Maupin was just trying to make things as crazy as possible”

More Tales of the City picks up shortly after Tales of the City. Everybody is still going about their daily routine. Mouse and Mary Ann go on a cruise and meet a mysterious stranger while Mona impulsively travels to a brothel in Nevada and discovers her past and one of Mrs. Madrigal’s secrets.

The format of this book is still the same with each chapter only taking up roughly three pages. This again makes this book very easy to pick up and read only for a few minutes before putting it back down. This could also lead to the classic “just one more chapter…” problem and several chapters later you find yourself still reading the book.

Sadly, there were a few occasions where the book got just so ridiculous that I had to put it down and walk away from it for a few days. The major difference between the first book and this one is that More Tales of the City takes more of a soap opera approach. There is amnesia, sex changes, characters that you thought were gone reappearing, and the revelation of who is Mona’s father. With the first book I thought it took just showed the lives of people living in San Fransisco. But this book feels as if Maupin was just trying to make things as crazy as possible.

I didn’t really like More Tales of the City because I had just come off reading Tales of the City and had such high expectations. After thinking about it some more post-reading, I’m pretty indifferent towards this one. As of writing this I have finished the third book in the series (Further Tales of the City) and I am glad to say that Further was much better but more on that later.

Blurb for the back cover:
“A fantastically enjoyable book”

Tales of the City, the first book in a current seven book series, centers around the inhabitants of 28 Barbary Lane in San Fransisco in the 1970’s. We enter the drama already in progress as we follow Mary Ann Singleton as she bids farewell to Ohio and extends her vacation permanently. Anna Madrigal is the landlady of 28 Barbary Land and acts as mother figure to the tenants often offering them advice and comfort in the form of marijuana. The other tenants include: Michael, the novel’s token gay man; Mona, Michael’s roommate and sorta-lesbian; Brian, former lawyer, current womanizer; and Norman, the mysterious stranger who lives on the roof and starts a relationship with Mary Ann. There are so many more characters in this book but to try and list them all here would be ridiculous.

Speaking of the characters, I would like to address one of the problems I had with this book. It seemed to me that all the characters knew everyone else and never ventured out of their social circle. If one character knew Jon, then so did everyone else and at least two people were sleeping with him. In the city of San Fransisco I would imagine that people knew other people that their friends did not know. That is not the case here. However, to try and include even more people in this novel would just make it harder to keep up with what everyone was doing. Instead I grew to view the characters not as people but as archetypes (the gay man, the cheating husband, girl who moves from small town to big city). Maybe this isn’t exactly what Joseph Campbell had in mind back in the day, but it works.

The way Tales of the City is written may at first seem a little odd. Each chapter is only three pages long and tend to focus only on one or two characters. This probably goes back to the fact that originally the text was originally serialized in the San Fransisco Chronicle. Maybe each chapter was published once a day. I don’t see the short chapters as a bad thing. This made it incredible easy to pick up and put back down if I needed.

Tales of the City is a fantastically enjoyable book that I quickly read and just as quickly purchased the second book in the series, More Tales of the City. My goal this summer is to read all seven books.

Blurb for the back cover:
“The shear amount of poetry contained in this book is daunting and you can’t help but love some poems but hate other”

What would my week long celebration of National Poetry Month be without a review of some poetry?

Tin House was nice enough to send me a review copy of their poetry anthology Satellite Convulsions a few months ago, and in my spare time I have been slowly reading it. Poetry for me is a hard thing to just sit down and read. I find it easier to enjoy in short little burst like when eating breakfast before work or waiting for a class to start. Unlike a novel, if I sit for a long period of time trying to read poem after poem, my brain will shut off and I will be reading the words but not processing them. I’ll zone out, if you will.

Satellite Convulsions is a collection of over one hundred different poets (106 total) and spans 235 pages. That’s right folks, 235 pages of pure, unadulterated poetry. It would be impossible to me to personally share my thoughts on every single poem. Ok, not impossible, but I don’t have that much spare time on my hands. Since I believe poetry is subjective, naturally my enjoyment of the poems contained in this book ranged from really enjoying it to couldn’t wait for the poem to be over. Because of this, the book works. The shear amount of poetry contained in this book is daunting and you can’t help but love some poems but hate other. I would recommend this book for the poetry enthusiast or someone who is wanting to expand their poetry horizon and discover new poets.

20 in 2009 Challenge: 5/20

Blurb for the back cover:
“A coming of age story but with math”

In An Abundance of Katherines, Colin has just been dumped by his girlfriend Katherine. This would make the nineteenth occasion such an event has happened. All his past girlfriends have been named Katherine and all have dumped him. But after the nineteenth time, Colin has had enough and decides to use his child-prodigy status to develop a mathematical theory to determine if when a person in a relationship will be dumped by the other. He hopes that he will be able to figure out a way to get K-19 (the 19th Katherine) to take him back. This is all fine and dandy, but Colin’s best friend Hassan gets tired of his obsessiveness over K-19 and takes him on a road trip that ends in Gunshot, TN. They decide to stay awhile and befriend Lindsey who shows them what life is like in Gutshot.

The problem I faced with this book is that I read it right after finishing Paper Towns. I loved Paper Towns so I went in to this book with high expectations which is a mistake. That’s not to say this book is bad by no means. Paper Towns and An Abundance of Katherines are different books with similar writing styles. AAoK is more of a dramatic piece as it deals with Colin’s struggle to come to terms with his newly single status. This is really a coming of age story but with math involved. The Lindsey character is a catalyst that forces him to view life differently and leads Colin and Hassan on various adventures. Hassan is there for the comic relief and to provide some insight on how Colin’s thought process works.

I liked the book but felt that reading two different books by the same author back-to-back prevented me from reading them without comparing them to each other. AAoK is an enjoyable book and you should probably read it if you are a fan of John Green or are looking for a story about a road trip.

20 in 2009 Challenge: 4/20

Blurb for the back cover:
It’s a fantastic build up of mystery and suspense.

Margo Spiegelman is probably the most interesting person Quentin Jacobsen knows. Since they have lived next to each other for many years, they’ve known each other since they were little. But since high school started they have drifted apart. That is until one night Margo taps on his window and leads him out for a night of fun complete with revenge and danger. The next day at school, however, she is gone. Vanished and nobody knows where she went. The police just believe that she ran away, but Quentin has a feeling that that is not the case. He discovers clues that lead him to believe that Margo has left a trail for him to follow. Convinced of this, Quentin and his friends begin their search to find out where Margo Spiegelman has gone.

Paper Towns is a fantastic novel. I easily read over the course of a couple days and completely neglected my school work (sorry Jane Austen). It reminded me of the pulp fiction stories that I have a soft spot for because essentially this book is a mystery novel. Throughout the book Quentin finds clues about who Margo was and what she was doing. Since the reader is just as in the dark as the protagonist, you try and figure out what happened and why. It’s so much better than the other mystery novels where there are clues discovered but are not revealed until the last moment. It’s a fantastic build up of mystery and suspense. Another compelling aspect of Paper Towns is that there are a wide variety of characters. One of Quentin’s friends is obsessed with correcting vandalism on the Omnictionary website (think Wikipedia) and has parents who collect black Santas. Margo herself is interesting because over the course of the novel it is revealed that she was different things to different people leading Quentin to ask the question of which Margo is the real Margo.

Paper Towns is a fantastic young adult novel. It doesn’t come off as sophomoric and older readers should enjoy it just as much. And look, it comes in two different covers! I came across John Green after coming across his brother singing about Harry Potter on Youtube. Quite possibly the most inadvertent way to discovering new authors yet. John Green and Hank Green can be found over at the Nerdfighters.

20 in 2009 Challenge: 3/20

I decided to participate in the 20 Books in 2009 Challenge. How hard could it be?