Web Robin

Towers of Midnight

Brittney and I had the great pleasure of meeting Brandon Sanderson and Harriet Jordan at the book signing last night at Barnes & Noble.  I was able to get two of the new books "Towers of Midnight" signed by Sanderson.  Harriet was very proud of her vest that she was wearing that was made of Robert Jordan's ties.  She told everyone about the vest several times throughout the night.  This was a very eventful night for us... I love this series and was able to thank Harriet for continuing her husband's legacy.

Sarah at Borders: WOW

Wow. Around every turn, another discovery. Wow.

Sarah looks like she is an extension of the Gray family's addiction to books. Follow along with us from last night's trip to Palo Alto's Borders store for 3 minutes. Wow.

Fun read

If you've ever had a dog - or have a dog - talk to your dog and then sometimes wait a few seconds, thinking he/she will answer you, you should read "Walking in Circles Before Lying Down". It's a fast and enjoyable book by Merrill Markoe. Get it, read it and laugh. Sugar told me to tell you about it.

One of the Best Books Ever!

Fieldwork: A Novel by Mischa Berlinski is a National Book Award Finalist that just came out. It's rare that I read an award-winning book and think I understand why it won.

This one is easy to figure out: it's amazing! It's told from the first person and is so authentic, that I wondered if he was recounting his own experiences.

Setting: Thailand, mostly -- back in the hills

Topic: a mystery surrounding an anthropologist, near current time

Why it's good: the characters and stories within stories seem real, are vibrant, and genuinely interesting. The writing is so good, sometimes I loved sentences simply for their word choice. The story is compelling. Even the author's note at the end is wonderful. I really liked the way the story examines the conflict between the spirituality of Christian missionaries and the native spirituality of indigenous people.

Check it out at Amazon (linked above). And then, share a bit about a good book you've read recently.

Steer away from this too

In my post about Duma Key, I claimed that Stephen King and Orson Scott Card are our country's best storytellers. Well, I need to clarify that.

Their work is uneven. There's a reason I avoid anything they published in their early years. Maybe it's like Babe Ruth, who hit almost twice as many strike outs as home runs; in order to get a bunch of "hits" (great novels), they gotta strike out with a few crummy ones.

Card's book Treason is what brings this to mind. A co-worker heard me say that I'd read nearly everything Card has written. He asked if I'd read this one, and when I said "No," loaned it to me.

It's apparently Card's fourth publication (see the bibliography for the entire list). The original was re-worked, and I have to say, has not been redeemed. It's just plain dumb. In some ways, it's like Gulliver's Travels, for the main character roams from place to place experiencing and learning from people who have bizarre and exaggerated gifts. Unfortunately, it doesn't hang together very well, and I skimmed through just to be able to talk about the book with the friend who loaned it.

From a scholarly point of view, however, it is interesting to consider the themes of the book, for they appear frequently in Card's work: very bright people being ostracized; intellectual gifts having great power; appearance not being reality; the ability of a common man to attain fantastic powers.

Check the bibliography linked above and see how many of his books you've read. I've read 35. (I didn't include The Crystal City, which I own, but was boring so only read the first few chapters.)

King and Queen of Books

Although lots doesn't get done when I'm sick, I do manage to read while lying around. This week I finished off two books worth telling you all about.

Harry Potter Fever

Who's planning to get the new book?

Mine was pre-ordered in February. I thought it would get here ok because I changed my address on Amazon, but just received notice that it's being shipped AND billed to the old house. So I'll get the book late.

(No spoilers, please, from those of you who get the book and read it this weekend!)

Discounts on books

Our company (Pearson) is offering a friends and family 15% discount through June 22.

The discount is available via two websites:

http://us.dk.com  CODE: dkfriends

http://us.penguingroup.com  CODE: friend9

Boring Book Alert

Avoid Robert Ludlum's Ambler Warning. It's boring, sappy, and formulaic. I figured it out early on and only kept reading in the hopes that I was wrong. nope.

Books and trends

Since the first set of our Valley Choral Society Christmas concerts is this weekend, and we've already had three 6:30-10 pm rehearsals this week, tonight is the only night for me to work on my online class. I'm supposed to describe the final in "more detail."

Instead, let me procrastinate a little longer so I can describe to you some of my thoughts about books I've recently read.

The first one, Lisey's Story by Stephen King, is one of the best books I've read in quite a while. I'm fascinated by King's literary style and am pleased to be able to experience the maturation of an author's style as it happens (as contrasted to studying an author from the past in an English class). I read the book as two selves: the reader who was following the plot, and the analyst who noted King's method for transitioning from present to past, the way he parceled out how his characters looked, and  how he managed to make a terrible plot element take a back seat to the dominant love-story theme. (Note: the "terrible" part is no worse than what you read in The Color Purple, but I don't want to give the story away by being more specific.)

As usual for a King novel, there's a hefty dose of coarse language and violence, so if that distracts you from enjoying the book, leave this one alone. Also, as usual, the protagonist is a writer. In typical King fashion, the border between the Real World and an invisible horror is thin. But the great part of this book is how deftly he crafts the image of the endurance of love between a husband and wife. This is the same theme he used in Bag of Bones, which is my other favorite book of his (and which cost me a job, but that's another story). Definitely a departure and an improvement from his earlier blood-and-horror books.

The second book I want to address is one of the WORST that I've read lately, Son of a Witch by Gregory Macguire. The first in this series, Wicked, was amusing and sardonic -- a clever twist on the Wizard of Oz story. It was so successful it was turned into a Broadway show. Later I read his Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister which was ok, but not good enough to make me want to read more, until I was in an airport and needed something, anything more promising than the usual NYTimes "bestseller" pulp.

Son of a Witch is dark, joyless, and rambling. Characters appear and grow nowhere. They're flat. The story line is disjointed and trite. I don't blame him for milking the OZ concept for as many volumes as he can sell, but save your money and avoid this one.