Tag Archives: fiction

Ugh Book Review: The Rook by Steven James (Patrick Bowers Series)

books poetry lit August 17, 2015 1 Comment

The Rook Steven JamesThe Rook by Steven James

FBI Special Agent Patrick Bowers has been investigating a series of arsons when the latest strike hits a research facility at a U.S. naval base. With his own criminology research being turned against him and one of the world’s most deadly devices missing, Bowers is caught up in a race against time to stop an international assassin before it’s too late.

I won’t get into the plot; it’s pretty much the above except with lots of symbolic rubbish thrown in to make this book feel weightier and more serious than the mediocre populist fiction that it is.

We’ve got all the tropes: the family member Patrick has a difficult relationship with (in this case his teenage stepdaughter), the criminal who doesn’t brush away spiders that land and crawl on him in his warehouse (get it?? he’s EEEEEVILL), the criminal mastermind who offers a lowlife the choice of walking through two doors (yes they are actual doors, I’m not messing with you guys) titled “Freedom” or “Pain” and the lowlife chooses “Pain” because he’s TWISTED kids, the repetitive, pseudo-menacing references to a grand master plot without any coherent criminal activities being described…Oh and let’s not forget the random migrant storyline, because what transforms a book into a “real” crime novel is some local, urban flavor so for Pinocchio to be a real boy you need to include a shoutout to the California setting.

It’s all so terribly cliched and imitative of other, somewhat better crime novels of the past 50 years. I appreciate that Steven James was trying – but if psychological darkness and the sense of menace and adrenaline contingent upon wide-ranging, shadowy criminal plots aren’t your strengths, for heaven’s sake stick to a more traditional crime-followed-by-investigation plot, and keep it low concept. Many male crime writers don’t seem to realize that you don’t need to have the government and/or the fate of the world involved in every plot.

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Pop Culture Love Letter: Books, Kdramas, and more I’m Excited for in 2015

books poetry lit, film & television February 26, 2015 Leave a comment

books kdrama paper towns collage

Books

  • Queen of Fire, Anthony Ryan (Raven’s Shadow trilogy)- July 2015
  • Doors of Stone, Patrick Rothfuss (Kingkiller Chronicles) – 2015
  • Brown-Eyed Girl (Travis Family #4), Lisa Kleypas. Kleypas is one of the reigning queens of American chick lit, and her Travis Family series is her best: lightning-quick plots, a depth of character development and emotional complexity that’s rare in the genre, and giddy romance. I generally engulf these in one sitting and cannot wait for this next one
  • Vanishing Girls, Lauren Oliver – March 2015 – Oliver writes incisive, heady YA romance and sci fi, this should be another engrossing read
  • God Help the Child , Toni Morrison- April 2015 – A mother learns about the damage adults do to children and the choices children make as they grow up to suppress, express, or overcome their shame.
  • The Buried Giant, Kazuo Ishiguro- Set in Arthurian England, Ishiguro’s first novel since Never Let Me Go follows an elderly, ailing couple making a journey to their son’s village.

Music

  • Wilder Mind, Mumford and Sons’ third album, dropping May 4th

Kdrama

  • Jeju Island Gatsby. The Hong sisters, who write some of the most addicting, funny, character-driven dramas of the past ten years and are pretty much the reigning queens of dramaland as far as fandom, have another drama out in May 2015. We don’t know cast or plot yet but we do know they’re pairing up with production director Park Hong-kyun, who worked with them on my favorite of their dramas, Best Love
  • Falling for Innocence – a drama with Kim So Yeon and Jung Kyung Ho? I am on this like a rabbit to carrots. Jung Kyung Ho is an investor looking for revenge against his uncle, who took over the family company and caused the death of his father when he was a boy. Kim So Yeon is the woman he falls in love with (there’s also apparently some nonsense about him getting a heart transplant and his new heart “remembering” Kim So Yeon’s character)

Film

  • Insurgent – March
  • Fast and Furious 7 – April 3
  • Far From the Madding Crowd – May 1
  • Age of Ultron – May 1

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4 Books For People Who Like Character Driven Novels

books poetry lit October 8, 2014 Leave a comment

4characterdrivennovels2Broke and Bookish launched this book theme for the week, so I thought I’d participate. They did 10 but I’m lazy and write longer descriptions because I get carried away so you’re getting four.

1. Eleanor and Park, Rainbow Rowell. I’ve mentioned my love for Rainbow Rowell several times before, if you haven’t read her yet, she practically defines character-driven works. Eleanor and Park is a linear novel in that there are almost no characters featured at all beyond the central two; it’s a deep dive into the minds and personalities of two intelligent, outcast teens. Eleanor is a curvy loner with a unique clothing style and a troubled home life. Aloof Park is respected but left mostly alone due to being one of the only Asians at the high school. After a first, tentative connection on the bus, Eleanor stars reading along with him on the comic books he reads every day on the way to school. They forge a slow, tender, passionate connection over a shared love for music and comic books. It’s one of the best love stories I’ve ever read, and Rowell isn’t afraid to show the push and pull, tension and release, the intense obsession and curling joy and turbulence that comes with that epic first love.

2. The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James. You didn’t really think I could answer this without including the book featuring Isabel Archer, one of the most complex and also identifiable female heroines ever, right? I don’t like most of James’ other works, but this – it feels as though James is sitting behind me reading my thoughts. Isabel Archer is an American of good birth and no money until an elderly acquaintance spontaneously leaves her a huge fortune. She finds love, misfortune, and a lot of societal complications as she travels between Europe and England and finally settles down in Italy. It’s the most perceptive book I’ve ever read about how women think, in the same way that Nick Hornby captures how men think in his funny, piercingly accurate prose.

3. A Murder for Her Majesty, Beth Hilgartner. Who read this as a kid? One of the most re-readable books I’ve ever come across, this incredibly engrossing book is technically written for younger/teen readers but it so beautifully plotted and captures the atmosphere of 16th-century Tudor London so vividly, you’re immediately drawn in. Orphaned Alice Tuckfield is on the run, penniless in the rain, having left behind her country home after the sudden murder of her father. She stumbles upon a cathedral and is taken in by a group of choirboys who befriend her and allow her to join them if she masquerades as a boy. Mystery, plots, a gruff tutor who becomes a father figure, and plenty of banter and friendship light up the book. The boys all have distinct personalities and interact with Alice differently, becoming her family, brothers, and friends, and she, plucky, well-educated, and a gifted singer, leaps off the page. Most of the Goodreads reviews of this are from adults who report they couldn’t put it down, and there’s a reason why. So good.

4. Sunshine, Robin McKinley. I am not certain if this is the only adult book Robin McKinley ever wrote, but it’s certainly one of the few. Sunshine has always known there’s something a little different about herself, but since she doesn’t know what it is, she continues living her life as a baker in her small town. One day, however, she’s grabbed and wakes up chained to a wall next to a similarly shackled human-ish creature named Constantine. Things for from there. Sunshine is flawed, and funny, and snarky, and even as she very (very) reluctantly falls in love with the vampire whom she’s been thrown together with and who winds up protecting her from his own kind, she gives him all kinds of hell. This book is immutably gripping and so much better than I can describe, mostly because Sunshine is amazing.

Five Literary Journals with a Genre Bent

books poetry lit September 23, 2014 Leave a comment

MB9

1. Treehouse – this online magazine with a particular bent for shorter work (and by ‘shorter’ I mean a page or less, not three lines) is great for slam-style poetry and prose poems

2. Beloit – this venerable Maine-based magazine has been around for 65 years, and has a particular love for social awareness poems – i.e. poems dealing with real-life issues such as family traumas, domestic abuse, war etc. 

3. Monkeybicycle – this one publishes only fiction and nonfiction, not poetry, but I had to highlight it anyway as it has a very fresh, modern aesthetic (without requiring the fictional setting to be modern), and features exceptionally good work

4. Strange Horizons – most publications that seek sci fi and fantasy work are rubbish, groups that are interested only in genre and have no concern for literary merit. Strange Horizons is none of these; a long-running publication, it’s widely respected as a destination on the web for serious science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction. One has only to read the poetry staff’s list of favorite poets- A.E. Housman, Albert Goldbarth, Alexander Pope, Amal El-Mohtar, Anna Akhmatova – to see that they take this seriously.

5. Snakeskin publishes a themed issue every month. Past themes have included “Monsters” and “Poetry Comics”.

CoffeeGirl Reads: The Snowman

books poetry lit September 5, 2014 Leave a comment

thesnowman book

 

I started my first Jo Nesbø, who is probably the greatest Nordic crime fiction writer alive now that Mankkell is no longer writing and Stieg Larsson is dead. Thus far it is very broody and suffused with a tone of depression that matches what the main character Harry Hole is experiencing, but the prose is slowly drawing me in, particularly this gem.

“A young woman in the front row stood up unbidden, but without offering a smile. She was very attractive. Attractive without trying, thought Harry. Thin, almost wispy hair hung lifelessly down both sides of her face, which was finely chiseled and pale and wore the same serious, weary features Harry had seen on other stunning women who had become so used to being observed that they had stopped liking or disliking it. Katrine Bratt was dressed in a blue suit that underlined her feminity, but the thick black tights below the hem of her skirt and her practical winter boots invalidated any possible suspicions that she was playing it. She let her eyes run over the gathering, as if she had risen to see them and not vice versa.”

–The Snowman, Jo Nesbø

Bring on the chills.

5 Favorite Gothic Authors

books poetry lit September 2, 2014 Leave a comment

RebeccaBook

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1. Daphne du Maurier. Of course I must start off with the queen herself, the original. Daphne du Maurier is the author of Rebecca, a 20th-century classic and the possessor of one of the more famous opening lines in literary history. Rebecca is a spooky, gothic romance, but mostly it’s just darn addicting – the story will grab you as if you’re a 10-year-old reading Redwall or an Alistair MacLean novel for the first time, and rush you along its irresistible current. If you like Jane Eyre or its lesser-known cousin, Villette, this will be exactly up your alley.

The narrator is never given a name, but she’s a young bride to Maxim de Winter, the charismatic but slightly mysterious owner of a Cornish estate. He’s a forceful personality ala Rochester, proposing by saying “I’m asking you to marry me, you little fool.” When the narrator moves in, however, she finds a home haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, who was killed in a sailing accident. Du Maurier herself always said she didn’t mean this book to be a romance, but I’ve always read and loved it as such: it’s about two people who overcome darkness to stay together. It’s heady and giddy and gripping and rather lovely. It’s never been out of print and is the standard-bearer for Gothic romance.

The opening lines resonate. “Last night I dreamt I went to at Manderley again…”

2. Mary Stewart. I went through a period in high school where I was obsessed with Stewart books – they’re such a deft, gripping blend of complex characters, suspense, and romance. She was one of the most widely read fiction writers of the 20th century, and passed away recently in May of 2014. A British novelist, she wrote both romantic suspense and historical novels and was respected for both. By far and away my favorite of her books, and a good introduction, is Nine Coaches Waiting, which yes, I admit, bears some resemblance to Jane Eyre as well (can I help it that all these Gothic romance writers are tripping on the same thing?).

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Book Review: The Selection

books poetry lit July 16, 2014 Leave a comment

selection cvr

The Selection, Kiera Cass.

America Singer lives in a futuristic America in which, after a series of World Wars, society has been restructured as a class system. There are eight castes who each perform different duties. America is a 5, the artistic case, who earn their money by performing during national holidays and for the wealthier families. Intermarriage between castes is highly frowned upon and America’s mother hopes that she will raise their status and support them financially by marrying into a caste above her. America, however, has been in love with Aspen, the son of a family friend and a caste below her, for her entire life.

The country is governed by a regency and the state announces that it’s time for The Selection, an event in which 35 girls are chosen from a lottery and one of them selected by the Crown Prince to be his bride. America reluctantly enters the drawing at the pushing of her mother, and is shocked when she is chosen. Soon, she and 34 other girls are swept into the palace to live a life of luxury while getting to know the Prince.

This is a light and immensely readable book – I read it in two sittings flat. America is an immediately engaging heroine, mostly the story is told in first person and Kiera Cass makes America spunky and blunt but with believable fragilities and small selfishnesses that make her human. Oddly, however, it’s the first half of the book that’s the strongest – America, her relationships with the various members of her family, and her relationship with Aspen are all well-developed. The romance that develops in the second half, though….there’s exactly enough good romance in this book to make one compelling relationship, not too.

Cass attempts to set up a love triangle between America, Aspen, and Prince Maxon, and several of the scenes with Aspen and Maxom, respectively, are very compelling – but wholistically Aspen and Maxon each feel like half of a fully-rounded character. Aspen is too simple to be completely interesting – the two main drives of his life appear to be to survive and to be with America if he can, and he doesn’t have the complexity to grapple with the changes in America while she lives at the palace, or the broader social and political forces in the country. While Maxon adheres too closely to that “white prince/knight in shining armor” pattern – he’s painfully nice, formal, and innocent for much of the novel. Both male leads would have been more interesting if they had more bite to them, a little more of a rough edge.

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Caffeinated Links: Black Widow/Captain America Relationship, Colin Firth, Mindy Lahiri

film & television April 8, 2014 Leave a comment

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Captain America: Winter Soldier was one of the better movies I’ve seen in a while, and easily one of the best superhero movies. I’m particularly loving this article from EW about the Black Widow/Cap relationship. “Which is why it feels weird to take up “Who Will Black Widow Hook Up With?” as a talking point. The answer could totally be “no one,” and that’s fine. But I don’t think I’m the only one who felt the Cap-Widow chemistry in Winter Soldier. There’s a nice bit of mutual dislocation in their characters: He’s a man out of time; she’s a woman without a past. (She’s from Russia, question mark?) He’s pure pre-’60s sincerity, she’s pure post-’90s cynicism. (Evans and Johansson even have an onscreen past: Friends in The Perfect Score, dating in The Nanny Diaries.)” RT

Colin Firth gives a very funny and endearing appearance on The Tonight Show in which he talks about learning to do a somersault. RT

Bill Morris at The Millions writes eloquently about the rise of second novels. “Of course, second novels don’t always flop — or drive their creators away from fiction-writing.  Oliver Twist, Pride and Prejudice, Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and John Updike’s Rabbit, Run are just a few of the many second novels that were warmly received upon publication and have enjoyed a long shelf life.  But until about a year ago, I regarded such stalwarts as the exceptions that proved the rule.  Then a curious thing happened.  I came upon a newly published second novel that knocked me out.  Then another.  And another.  In all of these cases, the second novel was not merely a respectable step up from a promising debut.  The debuts themselves were highly accomplished, critically acclaimed books; the second novels were even more ambitious, capacious, and assured.” RT

TWC Central on The Mindy Project. “Ms. Kaling may have been something of an annoying caricature on The Office, but on The Mindy Project she has written herself a plum role – and become a role model. Her Dr. Mindy Lahiri is based on her late mother, who was also a doctor, and like her mother is a smart, well-educated professional. She is both self-conscious of her weight and other body issues, but also remains proud of her curves, her color and her culture. Her character, like the woman herself, is not the cookie-cutter cuddly cutie pie so often found on sitcoms. She is smart, yet makes many bad decisions, mostly by following her heart rather than her head, and that is just another reason why so many viewers love Dr. Lahiri – and Ms. Kaling herself.”RT

Caffeinated Links, Snark Edition

film & television, this & that August 6, 2013 Leave a comment

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It must be so HARD to receive a free text message that may help save lives. What’s Up with that Amber Alert

Or maybe your movie was just BAD. The Lone Ranger cast slams critics for having an “agenda” in their reviews 

Or really really good, and killed by self-centered merciless film critics. That must be it. “I was just going through my daily life, doing my job, caring for my loved ones, engaging in what seemed to me a perfectly average, everyday routine. But then I saw this video of Lone Ranger stars Jonny Depp and Armie Hammer and producer Jerry Bruckheimer talking about what I, and people like me, had done to their precious baby.” Confessions of a Serial Movie-Killer

Having a woman as the smartest, bravest person in the universe, being able to fix any problem, save the world with her wits, a magical vehicle, and boundless courage–who wouldn’t want to watch that show?The Depressing, Disappointing Maleness of Doctor Who’s New Time Lord

As David Itzkoff noted in 2006, what’s curious about “Dune” ’s stature is that it has not penetrated popular culture in the way that “The Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars” have. There are no “Dune” conventions. Catchphrases from the book have not entered the language.  – “Dune” Endures

Shiny: BBC Drama, Iron Man 3, Neo-Noir Fiction

books poetry lit, film & television May 3, 2013 Leave a comment

Set against the iconic backdrop of the War of the Roses, The White Queen is an adaptation of Philippa Gregory‘s bestselling historical novel series The Cousin’s War. This Summer on BBC One.

 

Iron Man 3 Review. “The problem that then presents itself is that post-Avengers, all of this has changed. The world has changed. Now there are gods and monsters and supermen out of time, not to mention aliens and Hulks and Cosmic Cubes and even death Himself made a brief appearance. The entire game has shifted, and as a result, we’re at a peculiar kind of crossroads with Tony Stark and his invention. Where does one go, in this brave and crazy new world? What will Iron Man’s new enemies look like in this bizarre new landscape, where literal worlds have been opened up to us?” (RT Pajiba)

“What is neo-noir fiction? It’s contemporary dark fiction. It was built on the backbone of classic noir and hardboiled fiction, but it’s evolved to be so much more than that. It is a genre-bending subgenre that includes edgy literary fiction, as well as fantasy, science fiction, and horror. It also touches on niche storytelling like magical realism, slipstream, transgressive, and the grotesque.” –10 Essential Neo-Noir Authors (RT Flavorwire)

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