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 This short story collection contains “five stories of music and nightfall”, revolving around some similar characters and locations.
“Crooner”
This story features a Hungarian musician in Venice who sees his mother’s favorite singer, Tony Gardner, at a cafe where he is playing. When he rushes over to greet Mr. Gardner, he is surprisingly invited to accompany the famous man in a serenade for his wife. As their barge circles Mrs. Gardner’s window, the musician learns that the married couple is not what he originally thought.
“Come Rain or Come Shine”
The narrator, Ray, goes to visit two of his college friends, Emily and Charlie, whose marriage is breaking up. Charlie asks Ray to help him save it, but Emily has hated Ray for years, only appreciating his taste in music. When Emily leaves, Ray finds himself accidentally peeking in her diary, tearing out a page. In an attempt to save the day, Charlie tells Ray to pretend the neighbors with the dog have come by and ruined everything.
“Malvern Hills”
A young man goes to visit his sister and her husband for the summer after a number of failed attempts to join a band. While there, he meets a European couple who have performed all over the world. The man, an eternal optimist, and his wife, a much more negative person, have a few lessons to teach the narrator about his music.
“Nocturne”
Both Steve’s marriage and his music career are failing. His wife’s new lover offers to give him a facelift, which according to his manager will re-launch his career, as he’s quite an ugly man. When Steve takes the offer, he discovers that he is next door to Lindy Gardner, Tony Gardner’s ex-wife, and together they have a series of adventures at night in the recovery hotel.
“Cellists”
The only story to be told mostly in third person returns to Venice, where cellist Tibor meets an older American woman who considers herself a virtuoso on his instrument. Through a series of lessons, Eloise teaches Tibor that he is a great cellist and that he deserves more than a place in a restaurant band. Eloise, however, is holding something back.
For the most part, these stories were a little disappointing. While they are still beautifully written, they just didn’t have the impact that Ishiguro’s novels do. There isn’t enough time for that slow emotional build-up, nor to even get to know the characters. I felt a few of them were almost insufferably arrogant when it came to their musical talent, which didn’t help. While these stories did make me think, particularly about relationships and identity, and had some smaller revelations, overall Nocturnes was just not up to my expectations.
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this collection from the library.
 This is book five in the Sookie Stackhouse series. I’m in part reading these for the challenge over at Beth Fish Reads. Do not read if you want to avoid spoilers for the previous books!
A sniper is shooting to kill the shapeshifter population and Sookie is worried for her brother and her friends. It isn’t enough that Jason has become a werepanther and is about to endure his first change, but now he’s suspected of the crimes. After all, he’s just been changed, and it’s the shapeshifters’ fault. Can Sookie find the true villain before it’s too late?
This was another fun novel in the series and I really enjoyed reading it during the Read-a-Thon. By now I have tabs on all of the characters and I look forward not only to each book’s individual plot but to seeing how things grow and develop in each book. This one doesn’t disappoint. Sookie has all of her usual love interests and then some. It’s remarkable that one girl could have so many men decide they love her, but it does keep the story interesting even if I have to suspend my disbelief a little bit.
The plot in this book itself was okay. I’m obviously not really reading these books for the plot, but I didn’t really guess who the culprit was until he/she was revealed. I don’t think there were really many clues at all, and if there were any I completely missed them. I much prefer to read and see what happens to Sookie. She is just such a charming character; in this one she even went to the library and worried about messing up her books before other, perhaps more important, issues. How could you not love a character that goes home with a bag of books from the library, when she’s also great in a lot of other respects?
Anyway, I don’t really have much else to say about Dead as a Doornail. It was a read-a-thon choice, and while a great one for it, I don’t remember all that much in the mix of the other five books I read. So I’ll just say I continue to enjoy this series, Sookie is a fantastic character, and I hope you’re reading it too!
I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from my local library.
 Humanity has been devastated by a virus and Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy, is perhaps the only human to have survived, for all he knows. With him are his friend Crake’s perfect creations, people genetically modified to become more perfect than ordinary human beings. They have better ways of sustaining themselves, go into heat like animals to avoid difficult romantic situations, and can even purr to heal injuries. Snowman, however, is having a much more difficult time surviving, and juxtaposes his struggle to find more food with his personal history, his love affair with Oryx, and how he found himself to be alone.
This is only my second Margaret Atwood novel, and after loving The Handmaid’s Tale, I’m really wondering why it took me so long to read another. I adore dystopias and Atwood has created another intriguing world here, if not quite as plausible. When Jimmy was a child, the Corporations ruled supreme, essentially acting as one big government. The world outside of the Corporations was unimportant, the people only used as test subjects and cash cows as medicines were infused with illnesses to keep the market booming. If any worker betrayed insider secrets, they were killed. This was the world of Jimmy’s childhood, and while he wasn’t brilliant enough for a high position, his best friend Glenn, later known as Crake, certainly was. It is Crake who sets out to change everything and puts in motion the events that destroy the world as everyone knows it.
While I couldn’t say I actually liked any of the characters, which was the book’s weakest point, it was hard for me to tear myself away from this book. I was fascinated by the development of the plot; we know early on that the world has changed drastically, but finding out just how and why was riveting. I didn’t like Jimmy/Snowman all that much, due to his escapades with women and his irritating obsession with Oryx, but I loved the curiosities of his world. His struggle to find more food allows us to relate to him even as we dislike him, but it also serves the purpose of guiding us through more of the world.
For me, the best part was the Crakers, the genetically altered beings that Crake created. What I liked about them was that even though they were modified to escape supposed human foibles, they still exhibited that humanity. This was mainly through their acceptance of a god-like story featuring, as expected, Oryx and Crake. Even though they’re reportedly hard-wired to miss out on all mistakes, they are still people and it’s almost as though we can see their mythology evolving. Snowman doesn’t know how else to explain it to them and they latch on remarkably easily. Fascinating stuff, and that really cemented the entire book for me.
Atwood is a remarkable author. Oryx and Crake* has convinced me that I really need to get reading more of her work. I certainly recommend this, especially to those who enjoy dystopias and science fiction.
*I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from the library.
 Frank and April Wheeler are desperately unhappy. Married for the sake of their children, living lives that they believe are meaningless, in a suburban town full of similar ordinary couples, they are both clamoring inwardly for a change. They believe they are superior to their neighbors and are determined to prove it. April comes up with the genius idea of uprooting and moving to France, where she can work and Frank can find the intellectual fulfillment that he’s always longed for. Unfortunately, this plan sets the couple on a path to their own personal tragedy.
This is a deft, amazing book. Frank and April despair at the ordinariness of their neighbors in the suburbs, lamenting the blandness and sameness of their lives, but the reader knows better. Yates treats us to an inside view of the Wheelers’ closest neighbors, and we learn that one of their friends mistakenly believes he is in love with April, while the other older couple has a son committed to a mental institution. When that son starts to espouse the same views that Frank and April have, we begin to realize that everyone is slightly off-kilter here. Everyone is unhappy and dissatisfied. Frank and April are deluded by their own aspirations into thinking that they’re better than their neighbors, when really they quite simply belong. They believe they’re extraordinary, but over the course of the novel, we realize that they are perfectly ordinary. They fit right in.
It is certainly those ordinary characters that succeed as the huge draw for this novel. Their humanity is overwhelmingly real. Frank, for example, is insufferably arrogant at times, and totally misguided about almost everyone he interacts with, but few people set him straight. Worse, he says one thing and thinks another. He claims to want to go to France and find himself, but it becomes clear very early on that he’s actually quite satisfied with his job. He’s bored but he doesn’t want to disturb the status quo; he believes he is special, but he isn’t going to put forth the effort to actually prove it. Perhaps he knows it isn’t true, even as he’s unwilling to admit it. April seeks to recapture something with her acting and briefly succeeds, only to become an embarrassing failure when she doesn’t actually prove to be as spectacular as she’d hoped. Their lives are empty and they are always seeking, but never finding.
Of course, the book is very well written, and in the one instance that I’d have loved to share passages, the book had to go back to the library. Regardless, I could easily place myself in these characters’ shoes and there wasn’t anything that threw me out of the story. The eeriest part about it is that Revolutionary Road makes us think about our own lives and those of our neighbors. Frank and April are still very relevant almost fifty years on as people consistently search for meaning in their lives. It often seems that we are all on a quest for fulfillment and in that respect, this book’s message is haunting, reminding us to seek happiness in what we have and not what is constantly out of reach.
*I am an Amazon Associate. I borrowed this book from the library.
 This haunting graphic novel depicts the Holocaust through the eyes of Art’s father, a Polish Jew called Vladek who suffered greatly but survived the concentration camps. Starting with the meeting of his father and his mother, The Complete Maus carries their story through to the end of the horrors, juxtaposed with Art’s present-day life and struggle to appease his elderly father while recording his history before it’s too late. By using animals to represent groups of people (Nazis are cats, Jews are mice, French are frogs, and so on), the author strengthens his allegory and makes this book into an unforgettable and horrifying piece of art.
I hesistated for a few weeks before writing this review. Another review is surely excessive because I’ve seen tons out there. Still, my thoughts wanted a place, and when it comes down to it, this graphic novel hasn’t left me alone yet.
Perhaps what’s most striking about this particular tale is that Vladek is an ordinary old man. In some way, Holocaust survivors are expected to be supernaturally brave, intelligent, and in essence heroes. They are that, but they are also normal people thrust into the worst situation imaginable and forced to cope or die or both. Vladek has undoubtedly been shaped by his experience but not in the best ways. He hoards food, he hoards money, because his world is still uncertain and he knows what deprivation is like. This irritates everyone around him but the saddest part is that he is so normal. It brings home to us the fact that ordinary people were suffered and died for no reason. Vladek is startlingly like my grandpa and that makes the real story even more horrifying than it would have been without the frame. It reminds us how lucky we are, as does Art’s constant struggle with his guilt over his role in his father’s life.
As I’m sure many others have, I have heard a lot of Holocaust stories over my lifetime. I was taught about it in school, given books about it, and chose on my own to read about it on numerous occasions. That doesn’t lessen the impact of this one. Since this one is set in Poland, and there is a lot of running around and hiding before Vladek and Anya are caught, I felt it was a little different than others. The fact that it’s a graphic novel also made a difference. Even in cartoon form, seeing the wasted bodies of the mice is upsetting. The few real pictures added just make a huge impact, reminding us that these were real people.
Overall, this graphic novel is carefully crafted and deeply moving. I don’t want to say something so horrifying is “good”, because that is impossible. Rather, its power and stunning capacity to portray humanity and inhumanity through selected text and drawings makes it worth noting, remembering, and reading.
 In Katsa’s world, people with Graces, or extraordinary skills, are feared and sometimes exploited. They are distinguished by their dual colored eyes. Unfortunately for Katsa, she has a killing Grace, and has been used by her uncle to do his bidding since she was eight years old and accidentally murdered a man with her bare hands. When Katsa seeks to rescue the father of the King of Liend, she stumbles upon a mystery and on Po, a man who can fight almost as well as she. Katsa decides to defy her uncle the king and set off to solve the mystery, the curious Po at her side.
I love fairy tales, especially fairy tales expanded into novels. While this is a completely new story, it feels very much like a fairy tale. It is a once upon a time fantasy with a darker edge in that Katsa’s Grace is so violent. The closest I can compare it to in style is Robin McKinley, who I recently discovered and loved. Thus it’s not at all a surprise that I really enjoyed this book too.
For Katsa, this is completely a coming-of-age story. She is disgusted with herself, with her uncle, and with the world. She knows so little about both her Grace and the wider world, though, that even as a teenager she essentially goes on a journey of self-discovery. She realizes how much she herself is a product of the kingdom in which she grew up and takes steps to become a strong, confident woman. Add in a little bit of budding, confusing romance and Cashore has the perfect combination for a teenage girl. Although I enjoyed the adventure that Katsa went on, I appreciated her believable and steady character growth much more.
Cashore’s pseudo-medieval world is also very well considered. The kingdoms that we see are distinct and interesting, especially Po’s, and the idea of Graces is beautifully developed. It’s fascinating that even people with Graces shy away from others who have them, because no one knows what particular skill might be lurking behind blue and brown eyes. Everything feels organic and natural and it’s very easy to lose yourself in this world.
Graceling is a compelling fantasy set in a fairy tale medieval world. Katsa is one of the best female characters I’ve come across in YA, with strengths and vulnerabilities in equal measure, and her adventure had me spellbound. Well worth a read for both young and regular adults.
 At first, Mamah Cheney knew Frank Lloyd Wright as the brilliant architect who was going to design her new house. While he did, they developed a close friendship, but on realizing their bounds, stepped away from each other purposely. It didn’t last long and soon they fell headlong into an affair that shocked both their families and the world. Both Mamah and Frank struggle to find their identities in the face of a hostile world and their own love.
I thought I was going to enjoy this far more than I did and to be honest it was a disappointing work that didn’t meet its full potential. The idea of humanizing and developing the love story between one of America’s greatest architects and his mistress, who appears to have been more or less reviled at the time, is at first a great one, and the book starts out promisingly. The characters struggle with the damage they’ve done to their families and themselves in the name of a “free love” which no one can understand but them.
By the time Frank and Mamah start to explore Europe, though, they had lost me. For one thing, Mamah is not a very sympathetic character. She places the discovery of the meaning of her life before her children and before Frank and it’s difficult to agree with her choice when it involves merely translating another woman’s works. Did she really have to seek out solitude and hurt everyone she loved for something that she could have done in their presence? Moreover, I didn’t like the philosophies that Ellen Key espoused and to be honest, didn’t like Ellen herself, and wished Mamah had the fortitude to write herself rather than give a voice to someone else. These are doubts that she herself struggles with, and even that bothered me to an extent. Much of this book is wrapped up in Mamah’s thoughts, regretting what she’d done and who she’d hurt, yet largely failing to right any wrongs she thought she had committed.
Frank isn’t much better, as he is brilliant but something of a wastrel, spending money on extravagances, going to faraway places, and even at times pushing Mamah into his ideal vision. This is a book with characters so flawed that they got on my nerves, and while that may be realistic, it does mean I had trouble going back to the book and concluded my dislike for it. It didn’t help that I hated the ending. Honestly, this is a true story, so I feel like it’s wrong to say that, because it would also have irked me if Nancy Horan had made up something else.
In the end, I didn’t like the characters, didn’t like where the story wound up, and didn’t like the philosophical dilemmas in between. Loving Frank was not a book for me.
 After losing his job and his wife, Lev leaves his little daughter with his mother and sets off for London to find work and support his family. By a lucky chance, he meets a woman on the bus who helps him find a job after a brief period of homelessness. Working in the kitchen of an elite restaurant, Lev learns that he loves to cook and carefully observes the chef and other workers to glean their skills. Through a relationship with his co-worker and a path to success in his new career, Lev begins to understand the wider world while growing to appreciate and love his home even more.
I felt a little uncertain about this book while I was reading it and I still do now. I’m not quite sure how to review it because it’s one of those books that I liked but didn’t really like that much. The best part, clearly, was Lev’s sense of accomplishment and his ambition once he realized what he really wanted out of his life. I love to read about ambitious, goal-oriented, determined people. Obviously life gets in the way sometimes, but I can identify with them the best. Unfortunately, however, Lev also seems to have a somewhat ignorant or cruel streak towards women. He does not want a relationship after his wife, so he rebuffs one woman, but then he finds another, decides he’s in love with her, and ends up treating her quite badly when things don’t end the way he expects. The girl is partly at fault for leading him on, but all of his relationships with women bothered me.
I did like the entire theme of home running through this novel. Even when Lev makes a groove for himself in London, he still misses the people and the place that is his home. Eventually he realizes that it’s the people and not the place itself, but that doesn’t stop him from trying to do his best for his home country and making a difference for his family. The title is really well chosen; even though Lev starts out leaving home, the entire novel is at the core about his journey returning and how he’s going to get there as a more successful man than when he left.
I’m still a little on the fence about whether to recommend this book or not. It is one of those difficult reads that falls in the middle, that I know I’m supposed to love but I didn’t manage it. I think if this review intrigues you, the book is probably still worth investigating.
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 When a little boy’s family is murdered in a horrible raid, an Otori lord saves his life and gives him a new name, Takeo. For Takeo’s family was of the Hidden, a tribe which has been persecuted throughout their country, and Shigeru knows that Takeo’s identity will get him killed. As the story unfolds, Takeo realizes that he has somewhat extraordinary skills; he can hear unnaturally well, be in two places at once, and even draw better than a normal person. He is a born assassin and he is determined to wreak revenge on the man who killed his family. Meanwhile, Kaede is a helpless prisoner, forced into a marriage agreement with Shigeru after years of deprivation and unhappiness. Her marriage offers hope until Kaede realizes just what she’s getting into.
This YA fantasy was a total change of pace. It’s set in a fictional feudal Japan, a beautiful setting that evokes a much different feel than most fantasy set in fiction medieval Europe. It helps that the writing is beautiful; I would quote but unfortunately I had to return the book to the library, so you’ll have to take my word for it. The words of love spoken between the characters, especially Shigeru and his love, were heartbreaking and touching. Even the title, Across the Nightingale Floor, refers to a floor that most of us would refer to as just creaky, designed to alert the occupant to intruders. This is the real name for these floors, but it is still far more beautiful than using just plain English. The book has not only ninjas and samurais and swords, but a feel of history and scope that I loved. Since Kaede and Takeo are from different locations and both travel, we get a feel for this world that is quite breathtaking.
As far as characters are concerned, I liked these, although I do feel we could have gotten to know them a little better. They all have a massive sense of honor and it was fascinating to see how their personal thoughts played out against their real world actions. This is such a polite world even as many of the characters sneak behind each other’s backs and murder one another. If one’s honor is impugned, he or she decides to die. It’s a foreign world view but extremely well played; it doesn’t feel melodramatic, it fits. The special magical skills that Takeo had fit, too, especially given that he’s a scion of a special tribe with many of these skills themselves.
Across the Nightingale Floor was a wonderful read. It’s a different kind of fantasy than I normally prefer but I loved it. I could have done with feeling a bit more emotion towards the characters, but I’m hoping that will come as I continue the series.
 Rachel Morgan lives in a world populated by vampires, witches, werewolves, pixies, demons, and fairies. Forty years ago the supernatural creatures were exposed after a genetically engineered virus, hiding in an innocent tomato, killed half the world’s population of humans. Now they exist in an often uneasy truce. Rachel, a witch, is a runner with the Inderland Runner Services, policing supernatural crime throughout Cincinnati. Unfortunately, the calibre of Rachel’s assignments has vastly decreased recently, and she is fed up. She decides to break her contract with the I.S. and start her own runner agency, scoffing at the rumors of consequences. That’s until she discovers that she has been marked for death and she must find a way to save herself before it’s too late.
In case you haven’t noticed by the reviews which are popping up around here, the end of my dissertation was accompanied by some serious light reading. Urban fantasy is an awesome variant, and this book in particular was a pleasant surprise.
First of all, it’s fairly long and it has an excellent plot, at least I thought so. Once Rachel quits the I.S., it gets going and I really wanted to find out what would happen next. Since she’s in constant danger of her life, she’s often on the run and dealing with difficult situations. She only makes things worse for herself later on by entangling herself in another dangerous plot. It’s a little zany, but it works!
Rachel herself is a character I liked almost immediately. She’s stubborn and doesn’t back down, even when she should, but I felt her reasoning was good and her fears were very human. The secondary characters were also fairly well-rounded. Ivy is a dangerous vampire but with a strangely compassionate side. We never really figure out why she’s so interested in Rachel and determined to back her up, but that must be a story for one of the next installments. Jenks the pixie is a hilarious sidekick and adds just that much more to the book. The third character, who pops up around the middle, is also a welcome addition to this series.
It was also refreshing to find that there isn’t much romance in this installment. I can feel it coming, but I’m getting a little tired of romance at the moment and I’m looking for something else in my fantasy. This book fit the bill perfectly.
If you like urban fantasy, Dead Witch Walking would be a great addition to your library. I’m looking forward to the rest of the series.
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