A thousand years ago evil came to the land and has ruled with an iron hand ever since. The sun shines fitfully under clouds of ash that float down endlessly from the constant eruption of volcanoes. A dark lord rules through the aristocratic families and ordinary folk are condemned to lives in servitude, sold as goods, labouring in the ash fields. But now a troublemaker has arrived and there is rumour of revolt. A revolt that depends on criminal that no-one can trust and a young girl who must master Allomancy – the magic that lies in all metals.
This is my second Brandon Sanderson and don’t you love that feeling when you just know you have found an author for keeps? His writing and the story isn’t perfect, it has in my opinion some niggling flaws that irritate me slightly, but the fact is I enjoyed reading it all the way through.
I read Elantris last year and I loved it so I have been excited to read the Mistborn trilogy for a long time. I enjoyed it – but maybe more so to do with mood then anything, I found it hard to emotionally invest in the characters or story until towards the end.
I felt the beginning was good, in the middle it slowed down a bit but by the end I was so enveloped in the story that I’m considering rushing out to buy the second book… oh an that has just reminded me, The Book Depository is having a 10% off everything offer until 14th May… Oh yes, where was I?
I must begin by saying that I did actually really enjoy this book. It is I feel a slow burner, one that builds up to a greater story that will (hopefully) take part in the next two books. Sanderson does not hand you up everything about the world or the characters on a plate. At the same time I felt there was something lacking in development. The political system and the the society felt weak and tacked on around the main storyline rather then something that has existed for one thousand years.
The skaa peasantry are ruled and practically owned by the nobility. They were poor and oppressed. The nobility were part of different houses who attended numerous balls, manoeuvring and politicking with each other. It all just felt rather too simplistic and clichéd. I felt we were supposed to just accept what Sanderson told us about the world and the characters without questioning it.
However, I don’t want to give a negative impression of this book. Sanderson is a brilliant story-weaver. Despite the criticisms, I enjoyed the story, I grew to like the characters and it left me wanting to find out more about this world.
The first book leaves you with many questions – what is the mist, what more is there to discover about the magical system of Allomancy – which has never been fully understood. The magical system – where the consumption of metals provides the user with different powers – is the most intriguing and well developed part of the plot. A whole world is left open to be discovered by the end of book one and Sanderson writes in such a way that makes you want to carry on and find out more.
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Book Review: Maurice–E.M. Forster
Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless finds himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Through Clive, whom he encounters at Cambridge, and through Alec, the gamekeeper on Clive’s country estate, Maurice gradually experiences a profound emotional and sexual awakening. A tale of passion, bravery and defiance, this intensely personal novel was completed in 1914 but remained unpublished until after Forster’s death in 1970. Compellingly honest and beautifully written, it offers a powerful condemnation of the repressive attitudes of British society, and is at once a moving love story and an intimate tale of one man’s erotic and political self-discovery.
Forster finished writing Maurice in 1914, but it was not until 1971 that the book was actually published for obvious reasons. Homosexuality was not legal until 1967 in the UK and even so, such an open and positive story about a gay relationship wasn’t something that would have been accepted at the time.
Maurice is the story of a young man from childhood as he slowly discovers who he is and his growing acceptance of what he is. It is an incredibly brave story. His feelings for other men he knows would cast him out of society and to act on them would make him a criminal. Religion would not tolerate him and so he gave up his fate. He has to hide himself from all those around him and feels intense fear lest anyone find out who he is.
At the time of reading this book, there was a controversy about buses in London running adverts for ‘gay therapy’ in order to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality. Interesting as I was reading a book written in a time when homosexuality was treated more like a disease and yet here we are, in a modern day and age with some people (the minority I would hope) who still believe in this and would take us back to a time when people were forced into denial, into marriages and isolation. The advert was pulled after public out-cry. It is strange that often I am reading something and something similar is going on in the ‘real world’ that takes on a deeper meaning to me then other times, perhaps.
Forester explores two of Maurice’s relationships in the book. The first with his Cambridge friend Clive, with whom he discovers what these feelings that have confused him the years before have actually meant. And then secondly with Alec, the gamekeeper.
Maurice and Clive represented two different types of people during the ages. One who would deny his sexuality and the other who embraces it physically and emotionally. It is an incredibly interesting insight into the lives of people who would usually have been hidden from the rest of society, whose voices would not have been openly heard.
The book is quite open and frank and I love Forster’s language. Simple, yet elegant. Rich, yet quietly down to earth. I like how he represents these silly snobbish rich people. Last year or before I read ‘Where Angels Fear to Tread’ which I only thought okay. The story did not inspire me much and I didn’t see why I should care about these silly people he was writing about. Maybe Maurice is different, as he could write about a story that mattered to him – rather then a love story or a relationship between male and female characters.
Later this year, with any luck, I shall be reading A Passage to India by Forster. I am now looking forward to it much more – having been a little apprehensive reading another of his. Maurice has been one of my favourite books of this year so far. I really enjoy books that enable me to have a better insight into a different time, or a different way of life, belief or understanding of the world, that would otherwise be outside of my experience.
Howl’s Moving Castle–Diana Wynne Jones
In the land of Ingary, where seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility do exist, Sophie Hatter attracts the unwelcome attention of the Witch of the Waste and is put under a curse. Determined to make the best of things, Sophie travels to one place where she might get help — the moving castle which hovers on the hills above Market Chipping.
But the castle belongs to the dreaded Wizard Howl whose appetite, they say, is satisfied only by the hearts of young girls…
This is yet another re-read. I can’t remember when I read it first… 2006 around that time, but since then I have read it many countless numbers of times. It doesn’t seem to matter how often I read it, I enjoy it the same each time. I still laugh, I am still charmed, I am still slightly molly-coddled by Howl even though he must be quite annoying to live with.
Diana Wynne Jones if you don’t know it, is one of my very favourite authors. She isn’t one of my favourite children’s, or young adult authors – she is one of my very favourite authors up there with all the rest, not defined by genre or section of the bookshop. I won’t blather on too much about her… I’m sure I have before somewhere on this blog, don’t know where… anyway.
What I love about this book is that is about a young girl who is turned into an old woman. Not an ogre, but a grumpy old geriatric who bosses everyone around. It is light hearted and absolutely hilarious. I love Sophie, Howl and Calcifer – they are such fantastic characters who come alive and mostly, are quite admirable. I’d love to have Sophie’s ability to just come out and say it!
How’s Moving Castle is in typical Diana Wynne style. It is in part a classic fairytale – you have a castle, a wicked witch, a handsome man, a fairytale land called Ingary, but it’s all mixed up into something only she could write. Basically, to say it is written by Diana Wynne Jones is review enough. She’s an author with a special imprint. Her plots sound normal enough, but she adds a zaniness only she can conjure up.
There are two other books that follow this book (Castle in the Air and House of Many Ways), both of which have Howl and Sophie in them but in different forms. Like most of her sequels they do not follow on directly and Howl and Sophie are never again the main characters. Both are very good, but neither really match Howl’s Moving Castle in it’s uniqueness.
I’m glad to have read this again – even though I have read it countless times since the first time, it’s been a few years actually since I’ve read it. It’s so familiar to me that reading it feels like putting on an old comfortable pair of slippers. It’s like second nature – as if the story and characters are always there in my mind and I just have to open the window to let them out again.
In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria.
I first read this book a few years ago… 2008 or 2007 and have for a long time wanted to re-read a Murakami. This was my second Murakami and I was still fairly unfamiliar with him as an author. I remember wracking my brains to think what all this meant. Reading it for the second time gave me the opportunity to just step back and let the story flow over me without worrying about what it meant.
I have always thought re-reading is a worthwhile experience anyway – but some books in particular do benefit from reading a second time. There is no way anyone can pick up everything from reading a book once – some things are just not obvious until you read back with the knowledge what happens next.
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle is made up of many different strands, that all seem to be completely unrelated. Yet, as I carried on reading I slowly began to pick up the threads and somehow draw them together. Somehow, Murakami takes scenes from what happened within Manchuria after the war and ties it together with an ominous character, Noburu Wataya who is Toru Okada’s brother in law. Wataya is a politician, his power over Japan is dangerous and consuming but everyone else but Okada seem to love him and flock towards him, unaware of his true nature.
It begins with Toru Okada. Okada is currently unemployed and staying home as a househusband, whilst his wife goes out to work for a health magazine. Their cat has recently gone missing. One day his wife leaves for work and she too disappears.
Okada is a normal young man. He has little direction in his life, he seems to lack the drive to really take part in society. In fact, it feels as if he lives on the side lines – observing people as they go past. He passively accepts what comes across and let’s things simply happen to him. However, throughout the story he finds himself in a constant battle to find his missing cat, and discover the whereabouts of his wife.
Along the way he meets different characters who he finds a connection with. They tell him their stories. He finds himself making friends with a young and confused girl from his local neighbourhood whilst searching for his missing cat.
Reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle makes you think and feel. What does this mean? And then you let that float over you. It is the way that these parts make you think and feel, I believe, that draws the separate threads together.
There is a feeling of calmness about reading this book – but beneath the still water, deep currents lie.
Anna has grown up as an American and has always found herself at odds with her mother’s ‘Korean-ness’ to the point of rejecting that side of her cultural identity. The story moves from Anna to her mother’s life growing up Korea, when it was governed by Japan and then as she and her family lived and suffered through the Korean war.
After I read The Guest, which was about North Korea, a friend of mine recommended this book as it was one of her very favourite books. So we agreed to read it together at some point. I can say now, that I am extremely grateful for the recommendation because I have really enjoyed reading it. I’d never heard about it before and perhaps, who knows, if I’d ever have got around to reading it otherwise.
As I said in my review of The Guest, I am woefully ignorant when it comes to Korean history as I fell asleep during those parts of history lessons. Unfortunately, when I was a teen I decided that most history that happened after 1945 was boring and thus unimportant so other than the most basic of facts, I knew very little about this period of history.
Reading books like this, though they are fiction, awakes in me a desire to learn more about the Korean war. I often find that it takes a good fiction book to alight in me an extra interest in exploring a particular theme or subject. That is what I love about reading certain books like this, which allow you to see through someone’s eyes, heart and feeling – a certain time, or culture, or way of thinking different from your own.
The story starts off in the modern day from Anna’s perspective. Her mother is Korean and her father American. For most of her life she finds herself wedged between two different worlds. She spends her teenage years wanting to forget that she was Korean and identifying more with her American roots. This rejection of her other side has in part damaged the relationship she shares with her mother, whom for most of her life she does not fully understand.
When her Uncle arrives from South Korea to stay with them for a few years – the differences between her culture and his become even more apparent. Yet as she grows older, that sense of another identity begins to draw her closer to wanting to build bridges with the other side of her family. When her Uncle returns to Korea, Anna realises that a part of herself is missing. She is going nowhere in her life and she finds herself increasingly disassociated from her current life. So, she decides that she will travel to Korea, to discover that part of herself that for so long she has denied.
Most of the book however is not about Anna. It is about Anna’s mother and her family as they grow up in Korea. For so many years, Korea has been attacked and invaded by Japan. The series of atrocities that has happened to the country seemed endless.
The Japanese took their lands, forced them to speak Japanese and tried to wipe out any sense of identity from the people. However, despite the oppressive Japanese rule, the Korean spirit and independence remained underneath, despite the heavy burden.
It is sad to think that after finally coming free from the Japanese, that finally they could be Korean again and speak their own language and be able to display who they were openly, that the Korean war happened and the country was forced in two, where both halves could be no more different from the other.
One Thousand Chestnut Trees is not just about the identity of one person, but about the identity of a whole nation of people. Anna will forever straddle being not truly American, but also, not truly Korean either. At home she is Oriental, but in Korea where she seeks to find some lost part of herself, she is seen as too Western. Korea on the other hand also has its own divide – two halves that for sixty years have not been reconciled. One half is communist, the other half is capitalist. One rejects the west completely, and the other has adopted a more westernised way of life.
The parts from Anna’s perspective were sometimes too wordy and too descriptive. Metaphors and similes were layered on so thickly that it put a distant wedge between the reader and character. Maybe this stand-offishness was the author’s intention though. However, I felt that Stout was trying to hard to make Anna’s voice distinct from her mother’s which was more simple and natural in style.
Overall, this is a really good book, especially if like me you are not well acquainted with this part of history. Stout does not side step around the horrors of war or what happened, but nor does she dwell on gory details – some of it merely relayed as historical fact. I think it is written in mind that the reader will not know very much about the Korean War. The perspective is mostly from that of a child or teenager, so for the most part without any major political understanding or involvement.
Whilst reading this book, as is my usual habit, especially when reading about different cultures – I try to find the appropriate music. I’d already bought an album of Korean folk songs when reading The Guest but this time around I turned to Youtube to see if I could find anything more modern as well.
Here is Arirang – Korea’s National Anthem. It’s my favourite version that I have found online so far.
And some more modern fare… Unfortunately it is all in Korean so I don’t know who they are or what they’re singing. If anyone actually does understand Korean, please let me know!
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The Anglo-Saxon World is an anthology of Anglo-Saxon writings that include the epic poem Beowulf, as well as other poetry, laws, prose, laws, letters and other writings.
I was actually looking for Kevin Crossley-Holland’s book on Norse myths, but in my black hole of a bookcase of course I couldn’t find it and this one popped out instead. In the mood for something a little different, inspired by listening to some music, I decided to read this out of curiosity. I didn’t actually think I would enjoy it quite so much, rather I expected to find it interesting which isn’t the same as enjoying something.
This book contains an eclectic mix of documents that give you an insight into Anglo-Saxon life and their way of thinking. Kevin Crossley-Holland introduces each section in a way that gives you the context of the piece, but without too much information. There are no annotations within the text itself. As a book, it offers a rather simple introduction to reading selected pieces of writing from this era without burdening it with academic discussion. This allows the reader to simply enjoy what they read for what it is.
I never expected to read Beowulf – epic poetry, in fact any poetry has never really been something that has interested me. More so it completely daunts me and initially I thought it would be too deep and heavy for me to understand. The translation of Beowulf in this book is by Kevin Crossley-Holland himself – as well as being the editor of the book he is the translator of the Anglo-Saxon poetry included in this collection. It is very easy to read and actually, immensely enjoyable. I was surprised at how vivid and beautiful the writing was, despite it being over 1000 years old.
I have always had a curiosity about the Anglo Saxon period in the history of Britain, but cannot really say I know too much about it. I have always liked what I’ve heard about Alfred the Great, a truly magnificent king by al accounts. I think reading this book has definitely made me want to go out and read more about this era, especially during King Alfred’s time. The parts I really enjoyed were the writings of Bede and his account of St. Cuthbert’s final days of life. I also enjoyed reading the extract from Asser’s biography of King Alfred the Great. I am I confess, not a great fan of poetry so though I did not enjoy those so much, I did like the heroic poems at the start of this collection.
Christianity was fairly new to England and it was still making it’s way through Europe and a vastly pagan population. The invading Vikings still had their own Gods. Much of the writing in this book is of course to do with the church (considering they would have been the most literate at the time and likely to to record anything.) It is a fascinating perspective into the people of the time and how life must have been like, their worries and concerns.
I would like to read more from the writings of Bede and Asser. I’d also like to read more about Viking history and Scandinavia, considering how much we were at war with them back in those days. It’s so interesting reading a first hand account of people who actually lived during these times, many of them actually quite personal and normal-sounding.
Kevin Crossley-Holland is one of my favourite young adult authors and I can see from reading the poetry from this selection, where he has taken his inspiration from for his stories and poetic writing style. His Arthur trilogy, starting with The Seeing Stone is one of my favourite books along with the rest of that series. What I like about him is that his passion and is natural interest in the history of a place, in language and in the wildness of nature, shines through his fiction.
Thanks to him, I would like to re-read Beowulf, perhaps buying the individual edition that would come with notes so I could understand it better the second time around. I would like to read more from this era – more original historical writings not just history books.
At some point I’ll probably look through this again and read some of the poems once more. Admittedly by the end my patience with them was running out. They were all good, but as I said – poetry isn’t really my thing. It has piqued my interest for further reading. I recently bought the Icelandic Eddas which I am now looking forward even more to reading.
Etc., Etc., Etc.
I no longer seem to be in my book block I was a month or so ago, rather I seem to be reading far too many books at once. I have The Wind-up Bird Chronicle (a re-read) on the go and The Anglo Saxon Anthology by Kevin Crossley Holland which I’m enjoying so much more then I expected. Soon I’ll be reading One Thousand Chestnut Trees by Mira Stout with Carin from A Little Bookish. I have dumped Our Mutual Friend which disappoints me because I’d been looking forward very much to that and found that I just couldn’t be arsed with all those bloody useless characters Dickens likes to introduce. Maybe later. I started a Halo book (from the Xbox series) but that too got pushed to the side line and is floating about somewhere here…
Coming up I have my library book group reads – The Sea by John Banville and Maurice by E.M. Forster, both of which I’m looking forward to.
I’ve read one book for the Books in Translation Challenge (see my challenges page) and two books for the 2012 TBR Challenge (one of them by accident) but I haven’t made any headway with my classics challenge or Tea & Books (bricks) challenge. I’m disappointed by this so I must make more of a conscious effort to actually read the books on my challenge lists.
My TBR is looking not too healthy – tumbling in at 490 books it’s just getting worse then ever before. Today I acquired 4 books (The Gormanghast Trilogy by Mervyn Peake and The Good Soldier Švejk by Jaroslav Hašek which I thought would be good for my bricks challege (it’s 752 pages long) and my Translation challenge as the author is Czech. Also, I’ve never heard of it before. Fortunately I got thrown out of Waterstones before I had another accident – it was closing time.
My library pile is also becoming somewhat unruly, made worse by the fact that I lost my library card and have had to pay to have it replaced. It was only £1.50 but a great inconvenience. I don’t know how, when or even if I’ll read any of these books I’ve got out… it’s starting to become a little pointless. I have Red Mandarin Dress by Qui Ziaolong, Miss Chopsticks by Xinran, a biography on Elizabeth Gaskell, some essays and writing on her own life by Claire Tomalin, Hamlet by Shakespeare (for my classics challenge as my copy has gone runabout) and The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Little.
Books are piling up in unruly, possibly quite dangerous stacks, everything is getting chockablock with stuff I haven’t sorted and I’m falling behind with my GR reading challenge because although I’m out of book block, I just seem to be reading so slowly these days. I’m not really bothered by the slow reading, I’m in no rush to read every book in the world and I do not know how some bloggers manage to read up to 300 books in a year!
I feel like I’m drowning in books but I’m not really feeling overwhelmed. I’ve decided to take the relaxed route to reading. I have 490 books piling up, but so what… I don’t feel like reading at a faster pace, but so what books aren’t going anywhere. If we have a nuclear war, I’ll be prepared.
Anyway, this isn’t much of a blog post. I’m just rambling away. I’m going to go and have dinner now. I’ve had such a craving for anything Indian or spicy. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s my new running hobby?
