The Missing Review

People!  You will never believe the enormous oversight I have just discovered in my own reviewing history.  Fellow book bloggers, have you ever gotten so absorbed in the routine of reading and reviewing that you somehow forgot to ever write a review for one of the books that left the greatest impression on you of the whole year?!  Somehow, I managed to never review The Hunger Games!  Because I was taking part in The Hunger Games Read-Along at the time and had to post my review of a specific chapter, I seem to have somehow overlooked my usual habit of posting a full review for the book. Considering how much screen space I dedicated to it, however, I think we can consider my view of The Hunger Games well and truly explored--I found it fascinating and thought-provoking, and gave it 4.5 stars.  Having now corrected that mistake, let us dip once again into my Review Backlog Files.

April 10, 2012

Catching Fire

by Suzanne Collins

After seeing the recently released film of the first Hunger Games book, I was even more determined to read the rest of the trilogy ASAP (even though I'm sure I've got a few years to wait before THOSE movies are released).  I scarfed both of them down very quickly, staying up to unholy hours with each because I couldn't put either of them down until I finished.

Having now read this second book, I have to agree with the Tweet of one of my fellow book bloggers, which said that this book contains too much rehash of the first book.  After all, we go to another Hunger Games, we see the preliminary work of Cinna and Co. again, watch the Tributes settling into their domiciles again, being dangerously defiant before the Gamemakers again, and undergoing their training again. 

It seemed a bit lame to me at first, too, but I pretty much got over that when I reached the quite literally explosive ending, which was very effective and couldn't have happened at all if Collins hadn't taken us back into the arena.  Oh, the cliffhanger!

Reviewing My Way to Joy

Friends, unless I'm just going to lie to you all, I have to say that it's only Tuesday and already I've had a shitty week.  I hope and pray that it can only get better from here, that my doctors will continue to make progress in finally diagnosing my mystery illness, that my daughter will be able to overcome her new and worrisome addiction to playing games on my iPod Touch, and that I will stop feeling a bit like Chicken Little, running about screaming, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"  I'm going to take an important first, optimistic step toward this week looking up, and share another review from my Review Backlog Files, which always makes me feel like I've accomplished something worthwhile.  New posts instantly make me feel a bit more chipper, especially when you lovely people stop by and leave encouraging comments.  It's a beautiful circle of blogging friendship, really. 

*I'd like to teach the world to sing/
In perfect harmony* 

Ahem...sorry...moving on...

April 8, 2012

A Light in the Window

by Jan Karon

[I must warn you that there are SPOILERS in this review, but since the book was published in 1998, it's kind of fair game at this point, don't you think?]

So, the second of the Mitford books, and our sweet, kindly, fusty little vicar is engaged, of all things!  Or at least, by the end of the book he is, but there's an extraordinary amount of hemming and hawing about it before he and his lovely next-door neighbor finally get it sorted out.  In other words, when it comes to romance, Fr. Timothy is a scaredy cat!

Of course, you can hardly blame the man, as he's highly distracted by the machinations of a nauseating female parishioner.  She's recently widowed, and as she was never very fond of the poor blighter who was stuck with her for all those years, she's now determined to drag the poor old vicar into her bed by any means necessary!  Naturally, he would rather eat carpet tacks, and on top of everything else, he also has to find some way to keep her from driving the local diner out of business.  Never a dull moment for the harassed, well-meaning clergyman.

Honestly, these books are about 6 parts Mayberry, USA, 3 parts tent revival, and only one part believable plot, but they're soothing to read.  They're not total escapism--the characters do actually have some problems and heartaches--and though I didn't like this one as much as the first, I can still recommend it to anyone who needs something as cozy as an old bathrobe and fuzzy slippers after a long day in a busy, care-worn world.

A Review, or Back to Basics

Photo by Andewa

Yes, dear friends, despite a flood of posts lately about mental health, physical health (and the lack thereof), new favorite British comedies and the wonders of the fountain pen, I do consider myself a book blogger in the sense that I do read books--frequently! Constantly!--and I do review each one I finish, even if it takes me a while to get those reviews posted.  The blog is called "The Beauty of Eclecticism" BECAUSE I have all these varied interests, because I'm more than a "one-trick pony," but it's still nice to get back to basics every now and then and just review something.  Here's another golden oldie from the Review Backlog Files, the collection of hand-written reviews that I'm slowly getting transferred to the blog.  I hope you find it informative.

March 28, 2012

The Third Reich in Power

by Richard J. Evans

So, this is the second installment in Evans' trilogy, chronicling the Nazi movement from its antecedents to the unmitigated human tragedy it left in its wake before it was finally defeated.  The horrific saga of human depravity continues in this volume, as the author takes us inside the daily lives of Germans ruled by a newly triumphant Nazi party.

In reading about the Nazis' program and how it developed in The Coming of the Third Reich, I greatly appreciated the fact that, unlike so many historians these days, Richard Evans attempted to tell a single, unified story, presented in as chronological a fashion as possible.  Historical surveys tend to be heavily compartmentalized by subtopic--economic trends, cultural developments, social mores and so forth--and are only arranged chronologically within each of these categories.  It's a format that frankly annoys me, even though I can understand why it is useful or in some cases even necessary.  I so enjoyed the fact that the first volume of this trilogy was NOT arranged in that way.  Unfortunately, this one is arranged in precisely that fashion.

Still, I found that to be the book's only major detracting feature, and as I said, I can understand why Evans felt the subject would be too unwieldy otherwise.  This book is very thorough, and though it would no doubt be boring to those who really dislike non-fiction or have no interest in reading histories, I was absolutely spellbound by it.  Art, literature, films, music--virtually every aspect of human life, the Nazis attempted to control as much as they possibly could, even sex.  This book only covers the period between Hitler's rise to chancellor of Germany and the moment he began annexing other territories, so it really doesn't touch upon the Nazis' treatment of non-Germans, though it certainly covers the early development of their anti-Jewish policies.  The subtlety, the insidious and deceptive--even, at times, self-deceptive--nature of Nazi propaganda was breath-takingly terrifying, something I didn't fully understand until I read this book.  As in the first volume, the subject matter Evans has chosen to cover is chilling, but his handling of it is brilliant.

"The Coming of the Third Reich"

The next block of reviews from the backlog files represents a reading project that took up most of my spring this year, and captivated my brain the way few things have in quite a while.  It was certainly gruesome reading at times, and a warning from history par excellence, but as so many historians of sheer human lunacy have discovered, it has a terrifying, mezmerizing quality of its own, the account of a mass hysteria something like that which I imagine gripped the noose-wielding citizens of Salem, Massachusetts, who were victims as well, whether they realized it or not.

March 20, 2012

The Coming of the Third Reich

 by Richard J. Evans

This book possesses all the eerie, morbid fascination of a car crash that you can see coming from where you're sitting in your own car across the intersection, and since you know that there's nothing you can do to prevent it, you indulge your curiosity, telling yourself that you're doing so in order to give the police an accurate witness statement when they arrive.  Though you know full well what the outcome will be, you still experience the adrenaline rush and suspense of reading a thriller, or at least, I did.

Since my very first viewing of The Sound of Music at the age of about 10 (before which I'd been completely ignorant of Nazism), I have wondered where on earth this insane movement came from, and exactly what kind of occult powers it was able to exercise that allowed Hitler to surge into power, while the entire world stood by dumbfounded.  I was also curious to learn how Adolf Hitler cooked up his psychotic ideas about the Jews.  This is the book on the subject that I was waiting to read.

How disappointingly mundane the facts of the Nazi rise to power proved to be.  No magic--just Hitler and Goebbels discovering how to herd people's mental processes around like so many unruly cattle.  In early 20th-century Germany, and much of Europe generally, Hitler's antisemitism was unusual only in its level of vitriol.  Basically, the whole world just really was that gullible, and Hitler really was that bitter because no one had ever decided he was a genius and given him a glittering career as an artist.  How pathetic. 

Evans' account of the miserable tale, however, is masterfully written, and I can highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in this time period or just well-crafted histories.  Before you dive in, however, be aware (and the author points this out in the foreword) that this volume covers only the period up to Hitler's election as chancellor of Germany; this is a trilogy, each section of which can stand on its own, in my opinion, if you're only interested in reading about one specific period of Nazi history.  However, I recommend the whole experience, especially if you're fairly new to certain portions of it, as I was.  Chilling, but very eye-opening.

A Review of "At Home in Mitford"

Another review from the files for you today, and one that was particularly satisfying when I was finally able to bury it in my Victory Garden.  Why, you may ask, was I so especially thrilled with myself when I actually finished this book?  First of all, it was the first (and thus far only) book I'd read for Book Dragon's Lair's Getting Lost in a Comfortable Book challenge.  But more importantly, this was my FOURTH ATTEMPT to get into and all the way through this book.  I don't know what stopped me the first three times; I'm just pleased that I finally managed it.

March 8, 2012

At Home in Mitford

by Jan Karon

I really LOVED this book.  I sort of have to laugh at myself for loving it, considering that it's a little meandering, that one of the main characters is a little annoying, and that the whole "town that time forgot" theme is MORE than a little improbable.  But I loved it all the same.  It's just so comfy and cozy and wholesome.  Reading it is kind of like spending an evening soaking in a bubble-laden bath, snuggling up in flannels and hand-knitted socks before a lovely fire, and then slipping away to sleep between cool, clean sheets.  In other words, it doesn't get much snugglier than this book.

Fr. Timothy is an Episcopal priest, the rector of Lord's Chapel in the hills of Mitford, North Carolina.  The tiny southern town has its requisite share of odd and quirky "characters," beautiful gardens and small shops.  "Where everybody knows your name" kind of thing.  There's a bit more Evangelicalism in the book than I would prefer, but I still enjoyed the discussions of liturgical Episcopalianism.  Like so many other things in Mitford, a visit to Lord's Chapel is like using a time machine, with its portrait of the Madonna and Child and its regular application of incense.  Really, that's one of the nicest things about the whole experience.

On a personal note, I found Fr. Tim's struggles to adjust to his diagnosis of diabetes heartening, as I'm still battling with that same adjustment myself.  He gave me some hope to keep trying.

Review of "Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas"

Another of my seriously back-dated reviews, this one for the "Just Contemporary" YA challenge that I've undertaken this year (because my Twitter friend, Basically Amazing Books, is hosting it, and she's several colors of awesome). Hope you enjoy it!

March 8, 2012

Knocked Out By My Nunga-Nungas

by Louise Rennison

Another of my complete fluff YA books.  (Not all YA books are complete fluff by ANY means, let me point out; THIS series, however, certainly is.)  Thankfully, Rennison went back to what this series does best on this one, cutting WAY back on the "things that have never happened to an average person in the history of the world" scale, so I enjoyed book #3 much more than I did its predecessor.

There were some truly, wonderfully funny moments in this one.  As always, Georgia Nicholson's toddler sister Libby stole the show, leaving me laughing so hard at one point that I was afraid I would either wake up MY sleeping toddler or pass out from trying to keep quiet!

In books like these, I'm not accustomed to the author TRYING to make you dislike the boyfriend that the girl has spent three books trying to land, leaving you HOPING that the girl will break up with him and go for the other guy, instead, but that seems to be where we're headed here.  Georgia's "Sex God" (Robbie) is an indecisive, wishy-washy, annoying "wet weed" (as Georgia's calls his ex, Lindsey), and she really needs to dump him and go out with Dave the Laugh, in my opinion.  The Sex God is too old for her, anyway, so she really doesn't have any fun hanging out with him and his college-aged Bohemian friends. 

Ah, the trials of being 14--much more fun to read about than they were to endure.

A Review of "Unnatural Death"

Ah, a day without Lord Peter Wimsey is like a day without food for your brain...

March 8, 2012

Unnatural Death

by Dorothy L. Sayers

I cannot believe that a mystery writer can make it ridiculously obvious from the very beginning who the murderer is, make other vital information so clear that I figured it out 150 pages before the detectives did, and make one of the primary opening characters turn out to be utterly annoying and completely inconsequential by the end, and yet STILL keep me riveted--and even still keep my GUESSING!!!--to the very end.  How is that even POSSIBLE?!  I knew who did it, I knew the person's dirty little secrets, I even knew HOW the person did it, and yet Sayers would throw me a little curve ball in plot or wording once in a while that would leave me going, "Well, now, wait a minute...maybe I was wrong..."  It was infuriating, but still a great deal of fun.

The more I read of Lord Peter Wimsey, the more attached to him I become.  He just grows on you, like some sort of good-natured, nonsense-babbling, insidious lichen or ivy.

I Heart Judi Dench! : A Review...

I simple ADORE Dame Judi Dench, and she IS an actual dame of the British Empire.  I think we all know that NONE of us want to get me started on the British honors system (a.k.a. that deal where the Queen goes around "knighting" people every year), the intricacies of how it works and the fact that most people who get referred to as "sir" or "dame," especially by us Americans, don't actually have a right to the title, but sufficeth to say that DAME Judi Dench DOES have a right to the title, and personally, I think she earned it.  She sweated in a lot of Shakespearean costumes and labored to give a lot of theater-goers their money's worth to get that title.  On with the review.

 

And Furthermore

by Judi Dench
(as told to John Miller)

March 8, 2012

 Celebrity memoirs often seem like they will be simply fascinating until you actually start reading them, and then they all develop the same problem--they talk endlessly about a HUGE group of people, none of whom has the reader ever heard before.  Other actors, movie executives, agents, members of various filming crews, acting instructors and countless others are all described in excruciating detail, along with a rough sketch of their impact, for good or ill, upon the person telling his or her own story.  While this book does not entirely escape that pitfall, a couple of mitigating factors made it far better about the issue than most I've read.

First off, as we all know, Britain is quite a small island, so the number of its actors with careers as long-lasting and broad-ranging as Judi Dench's forms a pretty exclusive club.  When we take into account the fact that she has spent most of her career doing Shakespeare on stage in companies like the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company) and the Old Vic, that club gets even much smaller.  So a number of the names she dropped at least rang a bell for me, and some were very familiar, indeed.  Secondly, Judi Dench is just so entertaining, and she so infectiously enjoys life, that I happily read her telling me stories about complete strangers!

Best of all, in this book she finally dedicated an entire chapter just to talking about television series in which she has starred, something she didn't really do in previous publications.  That chapter was all too brief, in my opinion, since I simply ADORE As Time Goes By, but it was a lot of fun to read, all the same.

Review Archaeology

Now that I'm slowly returning to blogging--and to life in general--I'm looking back over my Book Lover's Journal, and finding that I have about a trillion reviews that were recorded there months ago, but never made it onto the blog!  There seems no time like the present to rectify that, especially since I need to link those reviews over to various reading challenges that I do still hope to finish before this year is out.  Anyway, let's give it the old college try, yeah?  I'll keep posting these archived reviews periodically, with the date that I initially finished the book, until hopefully we'll be caught up.

March 6, 2012

Despite my initial hesitation about Lord Peter Wimsey, by the time I was a few pages into this novel, he had made a life-long fan of me.  Dorothy L. Sayers Wimsey books are just so comfortable; never boring, just...comfortable, somehow.  (Hence the term "cozy mystery," right?)  The main characters are the kind of people with whom you could hang out happily in a pub on a long winter evening, so despite the loony circumstances that whirl all around them, they're the bastions of sanity at the center.

In this case, Wimsey's own brother, the Duke of Denver (who is as thick as two short planks and one of the dullest men alive) is accused of murder.  I don't know if the bit about a peer of the realm having to be tried by the entire House of Lords in order to be assured of getting "a jury of his peers" was true--it may STILL be, for all I know!--but it certainly made for great mental pomp and spectacle to read about!  It certainly SOUNDS like something that would true of British law.

The title of this book is hilariously apt, because Lord Peter and his sidekick, Inspector Parker, took forever to find out what actually happened, thanks to the myriad dead-end "leads" provided by an enormous collection of completely useless "witnesses".  Frustrating for our heroes, no doubt, but quite fun to read!