Category Archives: Book Review Blog

My book reviews and fun bookish news as a book blogger. All about other people’s books, and not my own. :-)

Recap: 50 Book Pledge 2012

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Have you signed up for the Savvy Reader 50 Book Pledge, from Harper Collins Canada? The idea is simple: pledge to make reading a priority, and read at least 50 books in one year (one book a week, with two weeks left over). The point isn’t so much the number of books you read, as it is about incorporating reading into your life, and as a lifelong book addict, I’m totally up for that! Find out more about how to sign up on the Savvy Reader blog.

As I mentioned, I’m a lifelong book addict. Remember Belle from Beauty and the Beast? That’s me. Without the romance and adventure and talking appliances, but definitely, the part about always having my nose in a book. Taking public transit, waiting in long lines, catching a coffee break — I usually have a book in hand.

More than that — I love talking about books! Do you ever approach random strangers and ask about the book they’re reading? I usually don’t, unless it’s a book I absolutely absolutely adore, but I do admit to sneaking a peek every now and then, and wondering what about the book the reader finds so fascinating. Point being, I just finished the 50 Book Pledge, and I thought of writing a blog post about my favourite books of the year so far. Then I realized I’d been really fortunate this year — I’ve read so many good books that I couldn’t choose any favourites!

Now, each of the books I’ve read touched me in different ways. If you’ve read any of them, I’d love to know what you thought of them!


Book I’ve recommended the most: Among Others, Jo Walton

Love, love, love this book! Dan from Raincoast Books called it a novel for book nerds, and I think that just about says it all. Seriously: if you love reading, if you love libraries, most especially if you love science fiction and fantasy — read this book.

Book that made me cry: A Monster Calls, Patrick Ness

I was an emotional mess the entire time I was reading this book. I did have a personal reason for being so affected by it, but from what I’ve heard, it’s touched a lot of others as well. Beautiful, haunting, and powerful.

Book I am most proud to have finished: War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

Seriously, I’ve tried to read War and Peace several times over the past few years, and have never gotten past the first couple of chapters. So this year, I decided to hunker down and finished the damn thing. Main difficulty: I couldn’t read any other books while reading this, nor could I take too long a break between reading sessions, or else I would get completely lost about the characters. Good news: once I got to know the characters a bit better, I really got into the story. Enjoyable book.

Book that made me laugh: Dead Kid Detective Agency, Evan Munday

One of the most fun books I’ve read this year, this book kept me giggling throughout. Granted, it doesn’t take much to make me laugh, and I think there’s something geeky about Munday’s humour that just strikes a chord with mine. But seriously, any book with a glossary that includes Jackie Chan and tells anyone who doesn’t know who Jackie Chan is to “drop this book immediately” and rent “the Hong Kong stuff” is a total win in my book.

CLASSIC TREATS:

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, John Le Carre

Loved the movie, and am actually glad I saw it before reading the book. Remembering the movie and the actors helped me keep things straight. That being said, both book and movie are incredible.

Gathering Blue and Messenger, Lois Lowry

I’m a huge fan of The Giver but have never read its sequels. Now, with the final book in the series, Son, coming out in Fall 2012, I thought I’d give them a shot. Gathering Blue is amazing — not as magical as The Giver, but I love how it’s all about the power of art to shape a society’s future. Lovely message, especially for an art enthusiast like me. Messenger has some interesting points about selflessness and immigration policies, and was sadder than I expected. Personally, I wish the ending hadn’t left quite so many questions unanswered, but it seems to have been a conscious decision on Lowry’s part. On her site, she says “Of course every good book leaves one wondering, and the conclusion of the trilogy will, as well.”

Agatha Christie!

I love Agatha Christie’s mysteries, and reading a Christie is a total treat for me. This year, I’ve so far read three that I haven’t read before: 4:50 from Paddington, Crooked House and Dead Man’s Folly. Also a treat re-reading favourite Christies Death on the Nile and Murder at the Vicarage. And I’m only just realizing that a full tenth of the books I’ve read this year are Agatha Christie titles. Yikes!

On a side note: if you have never read an Agatha Christie, check out And Then There Were None, quite possibly my favourite Christie of all time.

Review | Ichiro, Ryan Inzana

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Raised by his mother in New York City and knowing very little about his Japanese heritage, Ichiro doesn’t feel like he fits in anywhere. He idolizes his father, a soldier killed during a war, and in his honour wears a shirt saying “Kill ’em all. Let God sort ’em out,” which his Grandpa Benny tells him is an army slogan. Grandpa Benny is racist, adding to Ichiro’s conflicted sense of self, being himself half-Japanese yet seeing his grandfather’s anger towards other immigrants. When Ichiro’s mother arranges a business trip to Japan and leaves Ichiro in the care of his Grandfather Sato, Ichiro learns a lot about that part of his heritage. More importantly, he learns that there is much more to war than a strict divide between a good side and an evil side. Ryan Inzana‘s Ichiro is an imaginative, textured graphic novel about the nature of war, and about the need for tolerance and open-mindedness.

I love that Ichiro explored the horrors of World War II from the point of view of the Japanese. Ichiro’s grandfather explains the historical context behind Japan’s belief in the emperor’s divinity, and tells Ichiro stories about victims of the atomic bomb. Inzana contrasts the horrific effects of the atomic bomb with a scene of teenage boys playing a war video game. “Waste that guy!” a boy exclaims, his friend happily pumping more virtual bullets into a soldier’s torso. This occurs right after images of Ichiro’s visit to a museum about the Hiroshima bombing, and, like Ichiro, we lose our appetite for such a form of entertainment. I have long been aware of the Japanese legend of the paper cranes — if a sick person can fold a thousand, she will be healed — yet, like Ichiro, I never knew that it originated in the historical figure of Sadako, a young girl afflicted by atomic radiation.

From identifying himself as primarily American, Ichiro is shaken at what he has seen and reacts by rejecting his American heritage. “How can you not hate America?” Ichiro asks his grandfather, to which his grandfather responds with a Buddhist saying, “Heaven and hell are in the hearts of all men.” That, ultimately, is the point behind Ichiro, that while there are two sides in any war, both sides are equally human, and equally capable of horrific destruction. The point, for Ichiro, is not to choose to be either Japanese or American, but to accept both sides of his heritage.

Inzana takes this subject a step further, and infuses his story with Japanese mythology. While trying to trap a persimmon-stealing raccoon, Ichiro is taken underground, into a land of Japanese gods and monsters. The Japanese-American war and its ensuing years of distrust and discrimination are mirrored in the underground war between the mythological lands of Ama and Yomi. Here, the injustice of war is even more pronounced, because we see how so much suffering was caused by a relatively minor misunderstanding. The parallelism turns somewhat didactic after a while, and I sometimes felt that Inzana was trying too hard to get his point across.

That being said, I love this imaginative way of portraying how senseless and unavoidable war is, and how horrible its consequences can be. In this land, Ichiro is viewed as a potential spy, making the experiences of Japanese-Americans in World War II all too real and immediate. As Ichiro begins to understand the complexity of his Japanese-American heritage, he faces the threat of being executed as a spy and worries about how he can get back to his real life.

I do wish Inzana handled his subject with more subtlety, perhaps by keeping it mostly mythological or mostly realistic rather than creating two parallel, yet equally weighty story lines. However, I do applaud his creative approach at tackling such a disturbing, emotional subject matter in the first place. I don’t know if Inzana’s story about Ama and Yomi are based on actual Japanese mythology, or if Inzana created it to parallel Japanese-American history. Either way, Inzana’s tale reminds me of how and why mythology is created in the first place — to attempt to make sense of situations that seem beyond understanding. With so much horror in history, how better for Ichiro to come to terms with his dual heritage than through mythology?

Ichiro is a rich story about a very troubling, emotional past. With so many stories about World War II, it is troubling to imagine how much in common we have with the teenagers happily killing soldiers in the arcade without reflecting on how real such horrors could be. Great graphic novel for anyone who wants to learn more about Japan, or about the Japanese side of World War II history.

Review | Croak, Gina Damico

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Lex Bartleby’s parents send her to live with her Uncle Mort for the summer in the hope that hard farm labour will help her with her anger issues. It turns out that Uncle Mort isn’t actually a farmer, but a Grim Reaper, and he is going to train Lex to be a Reaper herself. Gina Damico’s Croak has a funny premise and a cast of colourful characters. It starts off very weak, in my opinion, but the story gets better as it goes on, and I loved the ending.

My main issue with Croak is that Lex’s anger issues were just overdone. The book begins with her in the principal’s office for having bitten (literally!) a classmate because he’d called her a vampire. She’s sixteen. She’s also been a straight-A model student until a couple of years ago, when, for no apparent reason, she starts beating up practically everyone she meets. Her parents take her home and say they need to talk. “Are restraints really necessary this time?” Lex asks. I thought it was just another snark until I read that the mother really did bring out jump ropes to tie Lex to a chair, just so she won’t punch her parents when she learns she’ll be spending the summer with Uncle Mort.  Lex’s twin sister Cordy wonders if the ropes amount to child abuse, and by this point, I’m already picturing Lex as a rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic. I’m also wondering, if her parents are that scared of her, why they didn’t just ship her to a psychiatric facility at any point in those two years. For that matter, why didn’t the school do anything? Just because Cordy is still acting normal doesn’t mean that Lex’s parents are immediately cleared of all suspicion.

Over the next few chapters, Lex throws a shoe at a bus driver, stabs her uncle with a stick and threatens to beat a stranger with his sunglasses. The romance in the book kicks off with Lex giving the boy a black eye and him giving her one back. I’m not generally queasy about violence in books, and to be honest, Lex’s antics are too exaggerated, cartoon-style, to even make her scary. Still, Lex is beyond bratty. When Uncle Mort cuts off one of her rants and orders her to grow up, I wanted to hug him.

Her discipline problems are explained somewhat — apparently, all born Reapers have serious rage issues until they enter Croak, the town where Uncle Mort lives and one of the Grim Reaper centres in the US. Still, I don’t see the connection. In the Percy Jackson series, Rick Riordan explains that demigods are dyslexic because their brains are hard-wired to read Greek, and that they have ADHD because their bodies are designed to react quickly in battle. I love that, because I can understand how such characteristics can signal that one is a demigod. In Croak, however, I have no idea how wanting to beat everyone up is directly linked to being a Reaper, especially since the Reaper’s job is actually one of mercy — freeing the soul trapped a body that’s already dead.

Fortunately, it gets better. Once Lex begins training and realizes how much she enjoys being a Reaper, her anger issues fade a bit, and the book gets much more interesting. Lex and the other junior Reapers have noticed some mysterious deaths, possibly at the hands of someone from Croak, and investigate. It’s an interesting mystery, and it takes us right into the world of Grim Reaping. I really like the other junior Reapers, especially Elysia, whose bubbly personality adds some welcome cheer to the group. The whole world of Grim Reaping is very well fleshed out, and I loved learning details such as their use of jellyfish and their version of alcohol. The story just kept getting more interesting, as the mystery deepened, leading up to a powerful climax. Good on you, Ms. Damico. Brave, emotional twist, especially in what I presume is just the first book in a series, and I admire you for raising the stakes this early.

I also love that Croak raises an interesting moral dilemma. The most important rule for Reapers is that they can only take the souls of their targets. This seems fairly straightforward, but what if they enter the scene of a murder? What if they have to take the soul of an innocent child and see the man who killed her just a few feet away? In my review on Loss, I complained that the author played it safe and kept her protagonist from really exploring his dark side. In contrast, I love that Damico shows how torn up Lex is about letting murderers go. Surely it’s only justice to take the murderer’s soul as well, or at the very least, turn him in to the police. Yet such justice is beyond a Reaper’s jurisdiction, and there are dire consequences for any Reaper who disobeys this law. Lex is torn, and I love that Damico isn’t afraid to explore this subject. It’s a slippery issue, with no straightforward answer, and I enjoyed reading about it.

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