Doggone it!

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I’m not a fan of talking animals.

I love animals (I have a pure white shorthair cat named Missy, and a shih tzu- maltese mix named Macky), but in books, they’re usually one of three things: a) sickeningly cutesy, b) wise and all-knowing, or c) sarcastic and wisecracking.

The persona in Peter Mayle’s A Dog’s Life (book #72 for 2009) belongs to that third category, unfortunately.

Now I’m a big fan of Peter Mayle, but this is probably my least favorite book of his, not that it isn’t well written (he’s one of the best contemporary writers I’ve read), but because I just couldn’t get myself to buy the fact that it was a dog talking to me.

A Dog’s Life is about Boy, the Mayles’ dog, and how he goes from unwanted puppy to abused servant to thieving stray, and finally as a member of the Mayles’ Provencal household. In all fairness, the idea of a dog narrator is quite original, and Boy is very eloquent (with an astoundingly sophisticated vocabulary!), but I got the feeling that he talked too much.

Boy was going on and on and on about well, dog stuff — going after the mailman, getting a girlfriend, jumping on the bed, knocking down a glass of wine, chasing cats, chewing shoes, and all other things dogs do — and some of it is amusing, but it gets tiring after awhile. I mean, just how long can a person stand reading about the excruciating details of a dog’s life?
I love dogs, but this book still fails to sustain the interest for me.

***
My copy: trade paperback, local mooch

My rating: 2/5 stars

***
Postscript

By the way, this was the only book I finished during the trip I took up to the mountains (Sagada, Mountain Province and Bontoc, Mountain Province) with some book club friends.

Caught reading on the bus

I brought along four other books but between the long hours of travel (mostly on zigzagging roads), the seven-hour spelunking and the various other treks we made, I didn’t even make a dent in them. But it was a great trip, and my reading ratio can afford to slack off a bit. Here are some photos, just so you know what I’ve been up to:

Squeezing through
in front of a mushroom-shaped rock

on top of a frog-shaped rock

by the waterfalls

what locals refer to as taplod (top load)
giant bamboo

the rice terraces

More photos here:
http://sumthinblue.multiply.com/photos/album/271
http://sumthinblue.multiply.com/photos/album/272
http://sumthinblue.multiply.com/photos/album/273
http://sumthinblue.multiply.com/photos/album/274
http://sumthinblue.multiply.com/photos/album/275

I’m off on an islandhopping trip next week, hopefully I can get some reading done then.

Family Ties

Have you ever wished you were born to a different family?

The thought is something most of us have probably entertained while growing up, especially during the not so few times our family drives us up the wall. But no matter what we do, family will always be family, and there’s not very much we can do about it.

This is the theme behind Get Real by Betty Hicks (book #71 of 2009), a young adult novel that explores the concept of family.

The neat freak Dez feels ill at ease with her eccentric, messy and geeky family, while her best friend Jil feels constricted by her affluent, cultured and picture-perfect parents, and both would have loved nothing more than to switch places. Jil, an adopted child, and grabs at the opportunity to meet her birth mom and sister, and Dez cannot understand why Jil is so eager to trade in her perfect life.

I actually just mooched this book from a local moocher and it was one of those filler mooches that I made to help the owner economize on shipping (2-mooch minimum).

While there was nothing really outstanding about the book, it wasn’t half bad, I was actually amused at Dez’s bewilderment towards her Rennaissance poetry-quoting dad, muumuu-loving scientist mom, and disaster-prone younger brother. I think this is something everyone goes through, that moment of incredulity when you actually wonder if you come from the same set of genes as the rest of your family.

I like how it tackles family issues realistically, and how it is a fresh and healthy voice in contemporary young adult literature, which I’m afraid right now is oversaturated with skanky novels and empty special effects.

Plus points go to the cover design also, its seventeen-style treatment is very appealing to the age group for which the book is intended.

***
my copy: hardcover with dustjacket, local mooch

my rating: 3/5 stars

Idyllic Ibbotson

(I’m baaack! Please bear with me as I get through the backlog of reviews.)

I actually started reading Eva Ibbotson’s children’s books -first – Which Witch?, The Island of the Aunts, The Secret of Platform 13, The Haunting of Hiram, Dial-A-Ghost, etc., and really enjoyed them. Her children’s books are crisply British, and often involve supernatural creatures, and they’re humorous and delightful. I’d have to advise you to read them separately and far between, though. There comes a point when you’ve read so many of her ghost stories that they tend to feel like you’re reading the same story all over again.

My Eva Ibbotson stash
I was delighted to discover Eva Ibbotson’s book The Star of Kazan, a wonderful, old-fashioned story about the orphan Annika set in the time of the Austro-Hungarian empire. I found a depth and sensitivity to Eva Ibbotson’s work that I did not find in her children’s books, and I found that I liked this side of her better.

Last year, on my birthday, Dianne gave me a copy of A Song for Summer, my first foray into Ibbotson’s romance novels, which I find I really enjoy. I was actually a bit surprised to find out it had a lot of mature content, because I was expecting a typical young adult novel, but they’re only classified as young adult; Eva Ibbotson herself considers them as adult novels.

Set in Austria in the 1940’s, A Song for Summer is about Ellen, a young girl who grows up in a feminist and liberal household dominated by prominent suffragettes. While her mother and aunts are engrossed in intellectual pursuits, Ellen is the ultimate domestic goddess, who enjoys cleaning, cooking, and household chores.

When Ellen quits university to become a housemother at the Hallendorf School, she finds comfort in tending to wayward children, eccentric teachers, folk artists, a lame tortoise on wheels, and the mysterious gardener Marek.

Marek turns out to be no common gardener, however. Aside from being a part-time fencing, tea Marek is also a world-famous musician who is involved in Resistance groups that have been smuggling Jews to safety.

Marek and Ellen fall in love, but the war is breaking and their lives are in danger, and they must overcome the shadow of war to fight for their love.

Meanwhile, The Morning Gift (book #70 for 2009) is about Ruth Berger, the bluestocking daughter of a Jewish-Austrian professor. When the Bergers flee Austria for the safety of England, Ruth accidentally gets left behind.

Her father’s dashing young colleague Quin Somerville finds her alone and bewildered, and offers to reunite Ruth with her family. To ensure her safe passage into England, Quin and Ruth decide to have a marriage of convenience, to be dissolved once they get to safety.

In England, however, measures are in place that prevent them from easily getting a divorce or an annulment. Things get more complicated as Ruth enrolls in Quin’s university, and in the class he is teaching.

The more Quin and Ruth try to protect their secret marriage from public knowledge, the more they are drawn to each other, and staying married becomes more appealing.

I’m not exactly sure what I like best about these two books. Like the best romance novels, the theme of Eva Ibbotson’s adult novels is “love conquers all,” enacted by characters that are often good to be true — the female protagonists smart and sassy, and the male protagonists noble and heroic — but lovable all the same. The books remind me of older works of Judith McNaught and Julie Garwood, the historical ones they wrote before they jumped into the whole romantic suspense genre (ugh!), minus the blatant sensuality, which makes it readable for young adults (hence the classification).

Eva Ibbotson is considered a British author, but she was actually born in Vienna, fleeing to England with her family as the Nazis rose to power. I like how her own memories of Vienna and her experience as a refugee weave a lot of sincerity and sensitivity into her work, painting a vivid picture of idyllic pastoral life, making the reader want to live there, goats and all. There’s something very lyrical about her books that make reading them so enjoyable.

The books also give a great insight into the lives of people — not necessarily those that were in the line of battle — during the war: the academia, craftsmen, musicians, women, and children. The books are full of interesting and quirky characters (other than the protagonists) that really grow on you, whether it’s Achilles the tortoise, Professor Chomsky who likes swimming naked on the lake, Verena the scholarly spoiled brat, or the feisty, aristocratic Aunt Frances.

I also like the rich cultural references in the novels, including music (Beethoven, Liszt, Bartok, Chopin, etc), philosophy (Goethe), and especially food and cooking — all those Nordic recipes!

I am having A Countess Below Stairs angel-mooched from the US and I can’t wait to read it, and I am just restraining myself from buying A Company of Swans from Fully Booked, although I don’t know how much longer I will last. I want to complete the whole set soon.

***
My copy: A Song for Summer and The Morning Gift, both trade paperback

My rating: A Song for Summer, 4/5 stars; The Morning Gift, 4/5 stars

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

I’m really not a big fan of the drama genre. I’m escapist by nature, and straight drama (*coughoprahsbookclubcough*) is really not my cup of tea.
This is why there are books in this genre that have been languishing in my TBR, because I’m reluctant to read them and I have to space them out.

I picked up Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (book #68 for 2009) because it’s not very thick and I figured I’d make a dent on this sector of my TBR.

I’d been forewarned by my Flipper friend Islandhopper that the book was highly dramatic, so I was prepared for the worst when I picked it up.

I find that there are some books that are very thick but I can read fast, like The Historian, and some thin books that take me forever to finish, like The Reader. The Memory Keeper’s Daughter is somewhere in between, it wasn’t very thick, but it wasn’t moving quickly enough for me.

The novel unfolds in 1964, and Dr. David Henry’s wife Norah gives birth to twins in the middle of a blizzard. The second baby, a girl, has Down’s syndrome, and Dr. Henry decides to spare his wife from the difficulty of raising a special child and instructs his nurse, Caroline Gill, to take the baby to a special facility. Caroline is horrified by the institution she brings the baby too and decides to raise the baby on her own. Meanwhile, the pain of losing a child devastates Norah, adding another layer to the wall that has formed in their marriage, caused by the guilt Dr. Henry feels from giving their daughter away.

I think the premise, up until Caroline raising the baby on her own, is pretty interesting, actually. I imagine this sort of scenario did happen a lot in the past, when Down’s syndrome wasn’t very well understood yet, and I imagine there are still some cases of this happening today.

Mainly it’s the melodramatic development of the story that brings it down, because it’s a drawn out domestic drama, spanning two decades of misery and emotional lashing in the Henry household, with nothing much happening otherwise.

While it wasn’t as bad as I expected — I even cried a bit at the end, but well, I can cry at the drop of a hat so I’ve never put stock in a book’s tearjerking abilities — it was nothing spectacular for me either, and I don’t think there’s a chance that I’ll read it again.

***
My copy: trade paperback, mooched last year

My rating: 2/5 stars

P.S. By the time you read this, I’ll be in the mountains of Sagada soaking up some fresh air, great food, and a whole lot of culture :) I’ve advanced some posts, I hope you’ll enjoy reading them while I’m gone, and I’ll get back to comments when I get back in the city.

I’m not sure it’s a good idea…

… for a rabid book hoarder (such as myself) to get ahold of a book like this: Miller’s Collecting Books by Catherine Porter (book # 67 of 2009), which I found in a pile of bargain books at National Book Store.

I’d been reserving this for a nice leisurely read, and finally grabbed it off the TBR pile during the 24 hour read-a-thon, appointing it my last read for the event so that I wouldn’t be pressured to rush through it.

The book is a nice hardbound volume with thick, glossy pages and lots of colored photos. Published by Miller’s (an antiques price guide that has paved the way for the average person to start collections, or buy and sell with confidence), the book is an excellent guide to all the basic information you need to know about collecting books: the parts of a book, bindings, illustration techniques, printing processes, and finally more than a dozen chapters on what kinds of books you can collect.

The introduction sounds like a call from the mother ship:

“Book-collecting is often associated with academics or dark, musty shops; a secret, inaccessible world for the initiated only — and maybe this was once so. But today these are myths, and this guide seeks to dispel them. It is surprising how many people buy one or two books, slowly, without necessarily meaning to, begin to build up a collection and get hooked.“

I haven’t really particular about old first editions as some people are because my allergies are easily triggered by dust and other particle allergens (among many other things) but I realized the books I have today could be worth more in the future, and so I make a solemn promise to dust (achoo!) my shelves more frequently.

Plus, the book validates my irrational habit of upgrading paperbacks into hardcovers that my book club friends have dubbed as “doing a Blooey”:

“For some rare books it is possible that the only copy to be had will be in poor condition or imperfect, in which case this will be better than nothing. Generally, however, the rule is always to buy the best copy you can find, and upgrade if you find a better one.“

The book also explains why they don’t make books like they used to:

“With the increase of mechanization and the arrival of the iron presses used for printing newspapers as well as books, alongside a substantial increase in literacy and demand for affordable printing matter, the quality of most printing declined. Speed, quantity and cost became key factors. Cheaper paper made by machine and full of acid was used, and stereotyping came into use across Europe..”

And how the dust jacket came to be:

“The dust-jacket as protective covering became familiar in the early part of this century, and was initially plain, featuring only the title and author. Publishers soon began to commission artists to decorate these covers, making the books themselves commercially more attractive.”

Aside from the rich and interesting information it provides about all kinds of books, this book also incorporates a price guide for some collectible books, and even a built-in bookmark with the conversion rate of pounds to dollars. They’re probably worth more today, though, and in Euro, because this book was published in 2001.


The back of the book also showcases a useful glossary of book terms you can throw around so you can sound like those stuffy old gentlemen collecting books!

I got this book for aboutP300 (~$6) , more than I’d usually spend on an impulse buy, but it’s one of the best book purchases I’ve made this year :) Definitely worth every peso.

***
My copy: hardcover with dustjacket

My rating: 5/5 stars