Title: I Am the Messenger
Author: Markus Zusak
Publisher: Listening Library
Published: September 26th, 2006
Where I got the book: Library

From the back cover:

Meet Ed Kennedy—underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted dog, the Doorman, and he’s hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That’s when the first Ace arrives. That’s when Ed becomes the messenger. . . .

Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary), until only one question remains: Who’s behind Ed’s mission?

I am the Messenger is a cryptic journey filled with laughter, fists, and love.

Review:

I’ve had The Book Thief by Markus Zusak sitting on my bookshelf for a couple years now. Every now and again, while looking for my next book to read, I’ll pick it up and read the cover before putting it back on the shelf. I’ve heard nothing but good things about The Book Thief, but it just doesn’t sound appealing. When I asked for audio book recommendations, @booksandmovies told me to give I Am the Messenger a try. At this point I had not heard of the book but, after reading briefly about it, it sounded like something I would be interested in.

I Am the Messenger is the story about a slacker who gets a sudden wake-up call when playing cards start arriving in the mail and instruct him to do things. The tasks set forth involve helping random people in his city. How he helps them turns out to be a little more complicated and people end up getting hurt, both physically and emotionally.

I really liked the pacing of this book. It’s quick, one thing after another; the story is fast and made it hard for me to put down (or in my case hit pause). Since the premise of the book is Ed being forced to help people, it never feels like it spends too much time in one spot. It’s fun being the reader and trying to figure out along with Ed what is the problem that the card led him to and how is he going to fix it. At times, the solution will seem obvious while there are occasions where things aren’t as they seem. For me Another thing I really liked about the book was the people Ed helped in the past are not simply forgotten. Since he has helped them, they continue to be a part of his life.

I feel the ending is a subject people will either love or hate. You see, Ed wants to know who is the one sending him the cards in the mail. When the time comes for all to be explained, there are going to be readers who do not like the explanation. I, however, enjoyed the ending. It was nothing like I expected and now that I’ve had time to think back upon it, any other ending would had cheapened the book.

Closing Thoughts: I really liked this book. It was a fast read because the story and mystery were constantly progressing. It never feels repetitive or dull.

Question: If you’ve read this book, I would be interested to hear your take on the ending…

Title: Ivan and Misha: Stories
Author: Michael Alenyikov
Publisher: Triquarterly / Northwestern University Press
Published: October 2010
Where I got the book: Electronic Review Copy, part of TLC Book Tour

Synopsis:

In Ivan and Misha, Michael Alenyikov portrays the complexities of love, sexuality, and the bonds of family with boldness and lyric sensitivity. As the Soviet Union collapses, two young brothers are whisked away from Kiev by their father to start life anew in America. The intricately linked stories in this powerful debut, set in New York City at the turn of the millennium, swirl about the uneasy bond between fraternal twins, Ivan and Misha, devoted brothers who could not be more different: bipolar Ivan, like their father, is a natural seducer, a gambler who always has a scheme afoot between fares in his cab and stints in Bellevue. Misha struggles to create a sense of family with his quixotic boyfriend, Smith, his wildly unpredictable brother, and their father, Lyov (“Call  me Louie!”), marooned in Brighton Beach yet ever the ladies’ man. Father and sons are each haunted by the death of Sonya, a wife to Lyov, a mother to his sons. An evocative and frank exploration of identity, loss, dislocation, and desire, Ivan and Misha marks the arrival of a uniquely gifted voice in American fiction.

Review:

I am breaking some rules by reviewing this book. First, I accepted a digital copy of the book to read. I do not have a Kindle or iPad so my time spent reading this book has been in my uncomfortable desk chair. Second, I agreed to have the review up by a certain date (today). I don’t like feeling like i’m a slave to the blog. I like posting when I get around to it.

I know I’ve started out on a negative note, but stay with me. The reason I agreed to accept an digital review copy and the reason I agreed to post my review today was because the book sounded really appealing to me. If you’re a fellow book blogger then you know what it’s like to get review requests for books that sound like something you would never in a million years be interested in read. With Ivan and Misha, however, it sounded exactly like something I would like to read.

There have books i’ve read in the past (Blue Boy, Quarantine) that have explored what it’s like to be different (in a queer sense) and to come from a country with different traditions. Both of those books I greatly enjoyed, so I was looking forward to reading Ivan and Misha.

Now, full disclaimer. I haven’t finished the book. I have about twenty pages left to go, but I need to get this review up. Maybe once I finish the book I will update this review. I make no promises (other than to post this review on time). Ivan and Misha is made up of about five sections that follow different characters. The stories are connected to each other and offer a different perspective on the other characters or events that had transpired in past sections. These stories are not presented in a chronological fashion. It was weird at first to have a character die in one section then to have the next section start from his point-of-view. Since I already knew what was going to happen to that character, I lost a little interest thinking the events of that section were going to lead up to his death again. They didn’t. Instead it offered a different perspective of that character. He turned out to be completely different from how he was made out to be in the previous section. I know I’m being vague; it’s a delicate balance trying to encourage you to read this book and, at the same time, trying not to spoil it for you.

Now the title characters of this book, Ivan and Misha, are twins but complete opposites. They were brought to America at a young age by their father, Louie, who believed America to be a better place than Kiev. Misha’s boyfriend, Robbie, has complicated feelings about his family and is constantly changing his name in attempts to re-invent himself.

This book explores some depressing themes such as being accepted by family members, AIDS, loneliness and love. I’ve really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend that you check it out.

I agreed to review this book as part of a blog book tour put together by TLC Book Tours. While I haven’t read every other blog’s review, I did notice that a couple blogs that I follow featured reviews of their books. I highly recommend that you check out Regular Rumination and Stuff as Dreams are Made On because I like their blogs and you should too.

Closing Thoughts: I should really buy a Kindle or a more comfortable desk chair.

Question: Is it okay for a book blogger to review a book when he still has twenty pages to read?

Title: Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War
Author/Artist: Clive Barker
Pages: 512 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: October 2004
Where I got the book: Purchased

From the back cover:

Candy Quackenbush’s adventures in the amazing world of the Abarat are getting more strange by the hour. Christopher Carrion, the Lord of Midnight, has sent his henchman to capture her. Why? She wonders. What would Carrion want with a girl from Minnesota? And why is Candy beginning to feel that the world of Abarat is familiar to her? Why can she speak words of magic she doesn’t even remember learning?

There is a mystery here. And Carrion, along with his fiendish grandmother Mater Motley, suspects that whatever Candy is, she could spoil their plans to take control of the Abarat.

Now Candy’s companions must race against time to save her from the clutches of Carrion, and she must sold the mystery of her past before the forces of Night and Day clash and Absolute Midnight descends upon the islands.

A final war is about to begin. And Candy is going to need to make some choices that will change her life forever….

Review:

(For my review of the first book in the Abarat series, click here)

A lot of things happen in this book. It starts off with Candy and Malingo being followed by Christopher Carrion’s bounty hunter Otto Houlihan, aka the “Criss-Cross Man”. But Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War doesn’t solely follow Candy and her adventure. John Mischief and his brothers join a dragon slaying crew to discover the whereabouts of Finnegan Hob, the man who was engaged to Princess Boa before she was killed by a dragon on their wedding day.

If Abarat 1 was about Candy discovering the Abarat, then Abarat: DOMNOW is about her understanding the world around her. The book devotes a good amount of time in to the events that took place before Candy was even born. In particular, the relationship between Christopher Carrion and Princess Boa and the events leading up to her death. It kind of tragic and, as a reader, I began to feel sorry for Carrion who had become my favorite character in the series. Yes, Carrion is my favorites. That’s like saying that I liked Lord Voldemort more than Harry Potter, but there is something about Carrion in this novel that leads me to believe he is not really a bad person, just misunderstood. There are moments, particularly when he and Candy final meet, that I let my guard down and began to feel sorry for him.

The most epic part of this book is the final chapter when, literally, all hell breaks loose and Candy decides to return to Chickentown only to be pursued by Carrion and his grandmother, Mater Motley. There is an epic battle between all forces and it is truly epic.

One thing Clive Barker clearly has no problem with is killing off characters. I wont go in to much detail, but I will say I was shocked nearly every time a character died.

Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War is not a book you’re going to enjoy without reading Abarat first. It spend very little time catching the reader up on the events of the first book and you’ll spend a good chuck of time being confused. But for those who have read Abarat, DOMNOW is a fantastic continuation of the story already in progress. It add a lot of depth and reveals many mysteries surround Candy and the characters in Abarat. As with the last book, Clive Barker painted all the artwork featured in this book and it really makes this book stand out.

Closing Thoughts: I’ve read this book twice now, and I am still amazing on how captivating the final chapters are.

Question: Many. Like “Did _________ really die?!”. I’ve spend the last seven years wondering.

Title: Abarat
Author/Artist: Clive Barker
Pages: 528 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: September 2002
Where I got the book: Purchased

From the back cover:

It begins in the most boring place in the world: Chickentown, U.S.A. There lives Candy Quackenbush, her heart bursting for some clue as to what her future might hold.

When the answer comes, it’s not one she expects. Out of nowhere comes a wave, and Candy, led by a man called John Mischief (whose brothers live on the horns on his head), leaps into the surging waters and is carried away.

Where? To the ABARAT: a vast archipelago where every island is a different hour of the day, from The Great Head that sits in the mysterious twilight waters of Eight in the Evening, to the sunlit wonders of Three in the Afternoon, where dragons roam, to the dark terrors of Gorgossium, the island of Midnight, ruled over by the Prince of Midnight himself, Christopher Carrion.

As Candy journeys from one amazing place to another, making fast friends and encountering treacherous foes—mechanical bugs and giant moths, miraculous cats and men made of mud, a murderous wizard and his terrified slave—she begins to realize something, She has been here before.

Candy has a place in this extraordinary world: she is here to help save the Abarat from the dark forces that are stirring at its heart. Forces older than Time itself, and more evil than anything Candy has ever encountered.

She’s a strange heroine, she knows. But this is a strange world.

And in the Abarat, all things are possible.

Review:

The first time I read this book I was in high school. This was back in 2003 when John Maxwell Coetzee won the Nobel prize for Literature and The Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions hit theaters. A year later, in 2004, I would go on to read the second Abarat book, but more on that in a later post. We’re here to talk about the first book in the Abarat series. I’m normally strongly against re-reading books (why bother when there is so many unread books to read?), but this book is one I’ve read three times in the past. I re-read it the first time before reading the second Abarat book and with Abarat: Absolute Midnight coming out next month, I needed to re-read the first two books again because it’s been a couple of years. I would also like to mention that I started reading Abarat before Harry Potter. Abarat is my introduction to YA Fantasy and thus is the book I will forever compare other YA Fantasy novels to.

The story in Abarat is about a girl, Candy Quackenbush, who accidentily gets taken to the world of Abarat, a world made up of twenty-five islands with each representing a different hour of the day. Her arrival in Abarat draws some unwanted attention, particularly from Christopher Carrion, the Prince of Midnight, who has ambitions to rule over Abarat. There are a lot of “bad guys” throughout the series. If it’s not Carrion then it’s the Criss-Cross Man chasing Candy or Kaspar Wolfwinkel music magic to see her thoughts. But for every “bad guy” there are people she will befriend and will travel with her as she explores the Abarat.

The first book really does feel like an introduction to the world of Abarat. The plot really starts to pick up in Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War, the second book. This helps introduce a majority of the cast of characters that will be making frequent appearances throughout the series. It should be noted that this is a very dark book series. We’re talking Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire type dark where people die. It’s not afraid to kill off characters, both good and bad. You can’t have a war without casualties and that series does not shy away from that.

One of the things that really, REALLY makes this book stand out is Clive Barker’s original artwork featured throughout the pages. Barker painted hundreds of paintings to help illustrate the fantastical world of Abarat. I read somewhere that Barker creates the artwork first and then crafts a story around what he painted. It’s a backwards way to write a book, and surely he has some ideas about the direction of the story, but really it does show the importance of the artwork. Without the art, the book would be sorely lacking. The world of Abarat is so fantastical that the artwork might be a necessary component of the books to help the reader understand what they are reading. The art doesn’t prevent the reader from using their own imagination to picture Abarat. Instead what it does is nudge the reader’s imagination in the direction in needs to go to prevent massive amounts of confusion.

This is one of my favorite books EVER. You should pick up a copy of this book (it get’s re-released today) and get caught up before Abarat: Absolute Midnight comes out on September 27th.

Closing Thoughts: I enjoyed re-reading this book for the third time.

Question: Will I have to wait seven years for Abarat 4 to get released?

Title: Men, Women & Children
Author: Chad Kultgen
Pages: 320
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: July 2011
Where I got the book: ARC from Harper Perennial

From the back cover:

Chad Kultgen, cult hero and author of the buzz-generating illicit classics The Average American Male and The Lie, cuts to the quick of the American psyche like no other author writing today. In Men, Women & Children he explores the sexual pressures at work on a handful of troubled, conflicted junior-high students and their equally dysfunctional parents. From porn-surfing fathers to World of Warcraft-obsessed sons, from competitive cheerleaders to their dissatisfied, misguided mothers, Kultgen clicks open the emotionally treacherous culture in which we live—in his most ambitious and surprising book yet.

Review:

Men, Women & Children is like a train wreck. It’s not good, but I couldn’t look away. On the surface MW&C is all about sex. It’s about husbands cheating on their wives, wives cheating on their husbands, eighth graders losing their virginity, weird porn addictions, becoming anorexic in an attempt to become sexually desirable, pressuring others in to having sex, parents who want to shelter their children from the internet and exploiting your teenage daughter. Oh, and there’s some bits about football thrown in for good measure.

Initially I was excited to get an ARC of this book. I greatly enjoyed Kultgen’s first novel, The Average American Male. TAAM was nothing more than a satirical look at how straight guys perceive the world around them. MW&C is nothing like that. Instead this novel, his third, simply tells the stories of a handful of people who are all experiencing problems with their wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend/crush and the source of these problems is sex, either too much it, not enough it or not kinky enough.

The novel follows a handful of characters, but there aren’t strong differences between them. MW&C jumps from character to character but it starts to all feel the same since all the characters have similar problems and respond to situations the same way. For example, one of the reoccurring themes throughout this book is how bad people are at communicating with each other. On more than one occasion Kultgen writes abouts Character A liking Character B while Character B feels the same way. But because neither Character is willing to admit how they feel to the other, both Characters walk away disappointed that the other didn’t make the first move. If the characters in this novel would just learn to communicate with each other, then they would have the opportunity to grow and develop as characters.

In the end, I can not find a single reason to recommend this book. It’s vulgar, offensive and very uncomfortable to read. I have to wonder what Kultgen was thinking while he was writing this book. On the other hand, maybe I don’t want to know.

Closing Thoughts: I googled other reviews of this book to see if I was alone in my opinion. I’m not the only one who didn’t like this book, but there are some who are giving it serious praise. I don’t understand this.

Question: Have you read a book you found extremely vulgar?

Title: Island of the Sequined Love Nun
Author: Christopher Moore
Pages: 336
Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
Originally Published: August 2007
Where I got the book: Library

From the back cover:

Pilot Tucker Case has a weakness–well, Tuck really has two–and the combination of drinking and sex in the cockpit of the pink Mary Jean Cosmetics Learjet puts him on the front page of papers all over the planet. But he finds another job with a mysterious employer–someone with a brand-new Lear 45– who’s willing to pay Tuck generously and ask no questions about his record. The jet and job are on Alualu, a speck in the Pacific Ocean, and Tucker has nowhere else to go. But first he has to get to Alualu, and once there, he faces a hurricane, Shark People, atypical missionaries, and boredom … and the responsibilities assigned to him by Capt. Vincent Bennidetti, U.S. Air Force, deceased bomber pilot and present-day deity of the Shark People.

Review:
I’m slowly making my way through the remaining books by Christopher Moore that I haven’t read. After this one, I only have Practical Demonkeeping and Fluke, or, I know Why the Winged Whale Sings. I’ll probably read Fluke next, but we’ll see. Anyway, back to the book I did read. This was a pretty straight forward Moore novel. If you are familiar with his other books then you wont be surprised to find that Island of the Sequined Love Nun follows the same formula of a large cast of weird characters in comical situations. The main character is disgraced pilot Tucker Case who accepts a mysterious job on a small island to get away from the media attention. Once there he starts getting bored and, against the wishes of his employers, he begins to interact with the natives only to discover just what type of congo he is transporting for his employer.

Love Nun is a really fun read, a perfect raining spring read with it’s tropical island setting. In fact, I can’t really think of any criticism about the book. It hit all the right notes for me. Then again, there is a reason I consider Moore one of my favorite authors.

Closing Thoughts: If you like Moore’s other books and haven’t read this one, you are probably going to enjoy it. If, however, you are new to Moore’s writing style, this is a good book to start with to get a taste of Moore’s writing style and sense of humor.

Question: Why does it seem I am reading Moore’s book in reverse chronologic order?

Title: Nightmare
Author: Cornell Woolrich
Pages: 191
Publisher: Dell Publishing
Published: May 1964
Where I got the book: Purchased at Murder by the Book

From the back cover:
Vincent Hardy awoke in a cold sweat, terrified by a vision of murder. It was only a bad dream, he thought. But his nightmare had just begun.

In bewildered horror, he found himself drawn to a place he’d never seen before. And there, in the cold light of reality, was the man he’d killed in a dream– very real, and very dead.

Review:
There’s good news and bad news. The good news is this book is fantastic. The bad news is you’re going to have a hard time finding a copy if you want to read it. Nightmare is actually a collection of six different stories written by Cornell Woolrich. The title story, Nightmare, is obviously the longest. The other stories include: I‘ll Take You Home, where a girl walks in to the forest with her ex-boyfriend and only he comes out; Screen-Test where the police are hired to protect an actress who is receiving threatening letters; in IOU a detective’s daughter is saved from drowning by a man who will have a huge favor to ask in return; Three O’Clock is about a man who suspects his wife is cheating on him while he is at work; and, lastly, Bequest where two men inherit another man’s car and get more than they bargained for.

As with the previous Cornell Woolrich books I’ve read (Fright, The Black Angel), Woolrich’s story focus more on the psychological duress his characters go through rather than the pulp fiction cliché of a private detective solving a murder. His take on characters is actually pretty interesting and helps builds the suspense of a story. Take IOU for example. The man the police are looking for has decided the best course of action is to hide in the house of a police offer whose daughter was saved a few years ago from drowning by the wanted man. The officer/father is put in a rather difficult situation. Should he do his duty and turn the man in? Or is a favor owed because with out this man the officer’s daughter would be dead? So throughout the story the reader watches him struggle with this conflict.

Closing Thoughts: Woolrich offers up a non-traditional take on pulp fiction. If you can find a copy and like noir, buy it.

Question: How do you feel about book bloggers reviewing books you’ll probably never find?

I reviewed this book originally a month ago. It get released in bookstores and Amazon today so I am reposting this review.

Title: Quarantine
Author: Rahul Mehta
Pages: 224
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: May 31st, 2011
Where I got the book: ARC from Harper Perennial

From the back cover:

With buoyant humor and incisive, cunning prose, Rahul Mehta sets off into uncharted literary territory. The characters in Quarantine—openly gay Indian-American men—are Westernized in some ways, with cosmopolitan views on friendship and sex, while struggling to maintain relationships with their families and cultural traditions. Grappling with the issues that concern all gay men—social acceptance, the right to pursue happiness, and the heavy toll of listening to their hearts and bodies—they confront an elder generation’s attachment to old-country ways. Estranged from their cultural in-group and still set apart from larger society, the young men in these lyrical, provocative, emotionally wrenching, yet frequently funny stories find themselves quarantined.

Review:

I’m not quite sure what drew me to this book, but I was excited to read it. It may have stemmed from the book Blue Boy by Rekesh Satyal, one of my favorite books in a long while. Blue Boy centered around a young Indian American boy who was different from the kids in his school because he was Indian and outcasted by the other Indian American kids because he acted strange and liked to play with make-up and dolls. Just the descriptions of an Indian American family trying to keep with tradition in America sparked my interest in Indian culture. Now that I think about it, White Teeth by Zadie Smith is another book I’ve read that touches upon this theme is old tradition versus today’s society. Although White Teeth isn’t a book I would recommend reading.
What makes Blue Boy and Quarantine so compelling, at least to me, is the contrasting differences between tradition and today’s modern society. Quarantine, through its collection of short stories, offers different perspectives on the same theme but focuses on the idea of being gay in a culture that may not be accepting of that lifestyle. In the stories the main characters will often get wrapped up in what is expected of them by their family, from taking care of an ill grandparent to moving to New York and becoming successful at a big publication, and have to try to put aside their own personal wants.
In most of the short stories, the main character has a boyfriend/partner who, whether they like it or not, get pulled in to the Indian culture by association. I kind of wish the boyfriends and their thoughts were explored a little more because I would have liked to know what they made of Indian culture and if they had a hard time understanding why the main character had to travel to India to take care of his grandmother.
My favorite story from the book was Citizen. It stuck out like a sore thumb because instead of being about an openly gay Indian American, it told the story of an older Indian women who is forced to move to American to live with her children after her husband dies. Her children want her to become an American citizen but since she is up there in her years, she has a hard time understanding the english language and the questions on the citizenship test. It’s equal parts heartwarming and sad. This woman would rather be back in Bombay than in America but all the decisions about her life are being made by her children who don’t even seem to have time for her. She only spends three months of the year before being passed along to the next of her four children.
Going in to this book I knew it was fiction but it wasn’t until the second story, when the names of the characters suddenly changed on me, did it full set in as fiction. It read like a memoir and that’s how my mind was first interpreting it. Even if it is fiction, I could easily see how some aspects from the stories might be based on real life events for the author.

Closing Thoughts: I really enjoyed this book. It was very well written, and I was able to relate to the characters in the book because conflict between two generations is something, I feel, most people can relate to.