Category Archives: book review

The Tenth Gift by Jane Johnson

More historical fiction……I love it!

I find it to be a painless form of accidental learning where I often retain information better than completely non-fiction sources.

Like all the best historical fiction it includes a part in the back that says what is fact and what isn’t, important when used as an accidental learning source!

Then of course there was the actual substance of the book, involving two different times (current and past, love that) two different countries (culture comparisons, always good) and a willful woman in a time when that was not encouraged (gotta love that).

Oh, and pirates, they always make life more…”interesting.”

Would I recommend it? Yes, it dealt with a small part of  history I’d never heard of before.

The Farfarers by Farley Mowat

After finally finishing this book my only overwhelming feeling is…

HA!

Perhaps final conquest isn’t the best of reviews…

Parts of the book I found completely fascinating and surprisingly, for lack of a better term, relevant. I’d have thought that a book about the first Europeans that may have made it to North America (predating the Norse) and the why’s and hows of how they got here would be information that would be filed away in my brain as interesting but mostly useless and ultimately forgotten.  As it has turned out I’ve found relate-able material  in all sorts of areas since I started reading it. After all when you span Scandinavia to Newfoundland from 5000 bc to the 1400’s that’s a lot of history and  a lot land covered, I guess it’s bound to come up somewhere!

On the down side the book has a tendency to be a bit of a dry history book at times. Contrasting this was a fictional account following a group of people, the Farfarers, as Mowat takes you through the times. I expected this part to be much better than it was,  and it turned out that that was my least favorite part of the book.  As more of a glimpse of what life was like than an actual story line  I found it just to be annoying. Also it had a tendency to be ridiculously graphically violent for no apparent reason. I never need to read descriptions about heads being chopped in two, ever.

Would I recommend it? Not for the average evening read but if you’ve any interest in this part of history or even seafaring history in general, it’s an interesting worthwhile read. However I would not recommend you leave it in your child’s room and read it while nursing her to sleep, this will cause it to be read in snippets over a ridiculously long period of time so that when you finish it all you’ll have to say is…

HA!

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

I might have been living in a box but I had no idea this was the legend of King Arthur.

No idea that it was actually four books in one.

No idea the first one was The Sword In The Stone.

But now I do!

I liked it.

It was far funnier than I thought it would be and had far more philosophical ponderings at the edges than I expected.

When it comes down to it :

Would I recommend it? Yup, it’s Arthurian legend, it’s a classic, gotta read it!.

The Fairy-Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley

Book one of The Sisters Grimm, totally my kind of a book. A young adult fantasy book where fairy tale creatures, or “everafters” as they are called in the book, are everywhere and not quite what you remember from the stories, there is a Great Dane and Prince Charming is sort of a cad.  I think young adult fiction is my own personal book candy. Quick to read, sweet, fun and slightly addictive. I’m off to order the next one from the library, and if anyone asks it’s research for recommend books for when my girls are older, yeah that’s it, research…

Would I recommend it? Yes, although I suspect an actual young adult would find it more enjoyable. Of course if you are also an adult doing research of your own I’d pick it up!

Bubble Gum, Bubble Gum by Lisa Wheeler and Laura Huliska-Beith

Where is a good editor when you need one?  Truthfully I’m not exactly sure what an editor does but with a very small amount of changes this would go from a great book to an excellent one.

-Toads are not green, this looks like a frog to me. And every kid I’ve ever known thinks that  green= frog, brown=toad, why mess with that?

-Bees do not have stinger noses, I dislike improper anatomy on animals (or bugs) for no good reason. Cowboy boots, fine but get that stinger on the other end.

-And finally, if the books follows the same rhyming pattern the whole way through why do you mess it up on the last page?!?!

road-toad

goo-shrew

loose-goose

free-bee

go-crow

stuck-truck

air -bear

stuck-hen — WHAT?!!?

Those problems aside this book has a great chanty, jaunty, rhymey, rhythmy, flow to it (that’s a technical term).

I like the pictures (other than above mentioned problems) and Ivy likes it enough we’ve been reading it multiple times in a row.

So even with the above problems…

Would I recommend it? Yes, unless you are one who reads books in a flat monotone, this requires that chanty, jaunty, rhymey, rhythm in order to be great.

Dealing With Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede

This is quite possibly my all time favorite book and it is, without a doubt, the book I have read the most often over the most number of years. I have given it to friends to read, I have read it out loud to two different people, I have even had my book club read it. Did I mention I love it?

Reasons that you will love Dealing With Dragons:

1- Chapter titles – For instance chapter one is titled: In Which Cimorene Refuses to Be Proper and Has a Conversation with a Frog.

2-Cimorene (the princess and heroine of the story) often refuses to be proper.

3-Dragons uses princess to cook and clean for them.

4- A sign above a door that reads, “NONE OF THIS NONSENSE, PLEASE.”

5- Other princesses are just as dull and ditsy as you could hope they would be.

6- King of Dragons is just a title, nothing to do with gender.

7-Dragons like Cherries Jubilee.

8- Princes also have to follow proper protocol.

9-A bucket of water won’t melt a clean witch.

10- Cimorene’s happily ever after involves being interested and busy and has nothing to do with a protocol following prince!

Would I recommend it? Yes! Technically it’s a young adult book, please ignore that and read it anyway.

Gil's All Fright Diner by A. Lee Martinez

“Reality is like a fruitcake: Pretty enough to look at but with all sorts of nasty things lurking just beneath the surface.”

That’s it, that line up there. That’s as good as it gets, you’d think with a vampire, a werewolf a couple hundred pound waitress, ghosts, a horny teenage boy, zombies and the end of the world, not to mention undead cows there would be something more to say, but there isn’t.

Would I recommend this? No. This was Martinez’s first book I have read In The Company Of Ogres and A Nameless Witch and enjoyed both of them, they do have a dark, snarky sense of humor but they were good. This one was not.

Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb

Better, much better.

I still think that there are too many characters being followed, I still wasn’t as impressed as I was with her others that I have read but I liked it. I liked it in a couldn’t put it down lost hours of sleep over it kind of liked it. I’d be all sleepy and planning on just reading one chapter then suddenly I’d be sucked into sailing and dragons and battles and I’d be wide awake and reading far too long into the night. Now the fact that the first book, was lame makes sense, but that was a big book of lameness to make it through to get to this one!

Would I recommend it? Yes, but of course then you have to read the first two (here and here) or this wouldn’t make sense and I didn’t like those near as much. So as for the whole trilogy I’d say it was good, not great, but good. I think my full recommendation is to start with Assassins Apprentice and read those, then if you liked theme come back to these. Plus technically these fall between the Farseer Trilogy and the Tawny Man Trilogy so you should read them first anyway, but you could skip these three altogether and still understand everything in the Tawny Man books.

Whew, apparently I’ve got nothing succient in me about this book… check out the next review I’m not confused on my feelings coming up for that one!

Screamfree Parenting by Hal Edward Runkel

I don’t read very many parenting books, but this one kept cropping up everywhere so I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about.  I admit I did not read this slowly and thoughtfully while answering all the “reflection questions” at the end of the chapters, it was more of a skimming, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, hmm that’s interesting, sort of read.

My issue with reading it was my own avoidance of parenting books problem, it breaks down something like this:

one part,”I’m doing just fine thank you very much,”

one part  “If I read all the parenting books, I’ll probably start thinking that I need to do everything different, they will all say different things and then I will go insane which would have the opposite effect I was hoping for.”

and one part “I’m half Finnish and I don’t think that half of me is interested in reflecting on my inner feelings, thank you have a nice day.”

I read it anyway, and tried to stifle my eye rolling on the bold texts that said things like,

“Pain is often the greatest catalyst to powerful change.”

and

“Screamfree Parenting is not a problem-solving or behavioral modification model; it is a growth model.”

Not that these things aren’t true, it’s just that my aversion to books like this was in control of my eyeballs.

My point, I did have one…

This was better than I thought.  For the most part I liked what he said (it helped that I also do/believe many of the things already) and it did give me some stuff to ponder in daily life with my three year old. Hopefully my Finnishness will subside and I can even implement a bit of it. And I liked the basic message of the book. While the author multiple times mentions his disapproval for “what works for fideo will work for your kid”  type books, I’d say, what I took out of it sounded an awful lot like Caesar Milan. The dog whisperer and this guy have the same basics.  Calm assertive pack leader and calm consistent parent aren’t too different when you get right down to it.  I know it works on the dogs, I’ve seen it help with the kids, but knowing it will help and actually being calm are not always the same thing!

Would I recommend it? I’m not recommending any parenting books. Not because how I feel but because what you want to read in that area is completely up to you, I’d hate to add to any insanity (see avoidance issues above).