Bookmarks - The Professor and the Madman

Sorry for the late post. I came home for the reading week and have run out of premade posts.

The Professor and the Madman is copyright 1998 by Simon Winchester. Published by HarperCollins.

This is what I would call a "creative nonfiction". It is a book based heavily on the story behind the Oxford English Dictionary.

It tells you the embellished facts about the two main contributors to the dictionary, Professor James Murray who headed the campaign for the majority of its run, and Dr. W.C Minor who submitted more than 10,000 entries to the work.

Minor was incarcerated for murder, and Murray was a professor at Oxford.

It tells their stories, using historical truths and backed up data... and filling in the gaps with narrative.

I like the style of this book, it goes back and forth between narrative and laying out pure fact. It makes everything bite sized. It helps that I am interested in language and dictionaries.

All in all a good gateway book to fiction from nonfiction or vice-versa.

Bookmarks - Cut

Lets follow a theme, I guess. Now don't go getting all worried on me, I've had this book on hold for a while, coincidence brings it so close to the last one (considering I read the last one three weeks ago, this one last week, whatevs.)

Anyway:

Cut, by Patricia McCormick, copyright 2000, published by PUSH, part of Scholastic.

This is another book about self-harm, however Cut takes place almost exclusively in an inpatient environment. Our main character, Callie, spends the first half of the book not speaking to any one. We learn through her internal monologue and description where she is and why.

McCormick gives a pretty accurate portrayal of the desire for self-harm, and an interesting back story for why Callie turned to it.
Not as powerful a book as Scars was, however.

It could still be a triggering story, but I found it less pushy and less disturbing.

It is nice to see a positive portrayal of the inpatient environment though. A lot of people tend to be frightened when they think of being hospitalized for mental health (I blame One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for this, personally.), so it seems like a good thing to show teens that it isn't all bad.

_______

Side note, again I am linking a previous post about suicide/self-harm here for good measure. If you are feeling bad I suggest looking at that and/or finding a resource you consider helpful in order to feel better.

(Thoughts on Suicide)

Bookmarks - Scars

Scars, by Cheryl Reinfield, copyright 2010, published by WestSide Books.

I quite literally just finished reading this book.
Okay, no, because by the time you read this it will be a week or more later, but at the time of writing this, I just spent a bit more than two hours reading this book (and about an hour looking at some of the resources provided at the end).

Normally when I do these things (though I have done so few that I am not sure there is a "normally") I will wait a bit longer between the read and the review, to let my thoughts sit.

But I don't want to this time.

Scars is an incredibly powerful book, and it brought me to tears. And I'm not sure I can say that about any other book. I've been sad, and maybe had a tear or two (looking at you, J.K Rowling...) but this book made me cry.

And at the same time I could not stop reading it.

Scars is about a girl named Kendra who has been sexually abused, and doesn't know who did it.

Or, more precisely, she "knows" but can't remember. She's repressed it, I guess I mean.

So she is in therapy. And she cuts herself. A lot.

This book will almost definitely trigger you, if you have ever self-harmed. So, yeah, watch out for that.

What I loved about this book (other than it is a lesbian character (didn't know that going in) and that it shows a very real side of cutting) were the relationships Kendra had.

She had a therapist who was wonderful to her, a great teacher, a reasonably close gay, male, family friend, and a girl who is helpful to her.

She is an artist, and she sees the world through those eyes.

I quite like this book as it shows how things can go right though. She has a good support system, for the most part, and deals reasonably effectively with her stress.

The author has been through similar situations, and I think that is what lends this story so much credibility, so much believability.

All of Kendra's feelings were understandable, accessible, and (in my experience) true.

I would prompt those who know self-harmers, or abused persons, to read this book. It is... disturbing, yes, but I think it could also be a great way to understand a bit of what is going on in their thought processes.

I would also encourage people who do self-harm, or were abused, to read this book-- IF, and only if, they felt they are in a secure place and have resources available to them.

Because this book IS TRIGGERING. There are explicit accounts of self-harm, and less explicit, but still disturbing, memories of sexual abuse. Kendra's mind is in turmoil, and it is a bumpy ride.

If nothing else, I suggest picking this book up for the resource list at the back, which is pretty thorough and interesting.
_________

Side note, I am linking a previous post about suicide/self-harm here for a rounded out thing, if you are feeling bad, I suggest looking at that, or finding a resource you consider helpful in order to feel better.
(Thoughts on Suicide)

Bookmarks - False Memory

Another Dean Koontz book, False Memory is copyright 1999, and published by Bantam (Random House).

False Memory follows Martine (Martie) Rhodes and her husband Dustin (Dusty) as well as some people they know as Martie quickly deteriorates into an extreme case of autophobia. They become suspicious of a person who lends them help as everything wrong in their their memories starts leading back to singular-gender-neutral "them".

"Autophobia is a real personality disorder. The term is used to describe three different conditions: (1) fear of being alone; (2) fear of being egotistical; (3)fear of oneself. The third is the rarest of these conditions."

Mr. Koontz did a fair amount of research for this book into phobic disorders, and the book shows it well. All the panic attacks and other psychological things seem very real and entirely plausible.
Everything that is put forward in the novel seems entirely possible, if not even likely, while reading the book, and the characters seem real (though making some bad decisions).

Definitely recommend this book to everyone. Though be warned, you may well be questioning your own brain and memories after you read it.

Bookmarks - The Taking

The Taking: written by Dean Koontz, copyright 2004, Random House published.

A couple wakes up to torrential rain outside their California mountains home and realises something is wrong when the TV starts giving strange news and eventually cuts out.
Leaving their house the couple encounter many strange creatures and organisms as they try to gather and save children with the help of a pack of dogs and some other people.
People are dying and going missing all over the place.

Definitely an apocalypse novel. And a darn good one.

Suspenseful with some truly creepy parts, this is a horror story with some possible religious overtones.

I would recommend this book to everyone, except if you are prone to nightmares about the world ending.

Bookmarks - Blindness

Blindness, written by José Saramago is copyright 1995, though I read the English translation copyright 1997 (Prof. Juan Sager). First published in English by the Harvill Press, and originally written in Portuguese.

A man suddenly goes blind in the middle of an intersection and sets off a chain of events in which everyone (or very nearly) in the world is going blind for no apparent reason.

Camps are set up to quarantine the White Blindness and we are in the first of these following the story of the man's wife, the only (known) person who has not gone blind.

An apocalyptic novel as we watch the degradation of human dignity and decency, as well as society.

I don't know whether it is because this book is translated, or that Portuguese writing is inhereantly difficult (though I will go with the former), but this book was a chore to read.
The idioms and phrases (as would be expected) were unfamiliar to me, the spacing was just wrong.
I don't care what you are trying to prove, an exchange of dialogue should not be done all in one sentence.

Imagine two people talking:

"Hello, it is nice to see you."
"And you too, a lovely day we are having."
"Quite! And did you catch the game on the telly last night?"
"No, I'm afraid I missed it. Who won?"

Logical. It switches back and forth between the two speakers with clear distinctions, even without explicit he-said she-saids (though that would be nice, as it can get confusing it someone were to pause and not say anything, throwing off the balance.)

But in the story it is written such:
Hello, it is nice to see you, And you too, a lovely day we are having, Quite, and did you catch the game on the telly last night, No, I'm afraid I missed it, who won

And this will go on for (quite literally) a page or more.
Nothing to break the speakers except capitals(sometimes) and commas. No periods, no quotation marks, no spacing.
I think the most annoying times are when (as shown above) someone has a comma in their speech. Did the person change, or just part of the sentence?

Regardless of these technical issues, the story was engaging (enough for me to keep fighting the book) and was well written (as far as pacing and plot points go).

~*~ Also has been made into a major motion picture, if you did not know.

Bookmarks - This World We Live In

Hey guys, back with another segment of Bookmarks! I've tried to build up a cushion of posts, so maybe this weekly thing will work out. Who knows.

Next on the docket is a teen novel, it is This World We Live In by Susan Beth Pfeffer, and is apparently the third companion in a series (Last Surviors). Oops.
(Interestingly a quote on the rear cover by the School Library Journal says this: "It is a testament to the author's skill that This World We Live In can be read as a stand alone novel. In fact, new readers might not even realise that the earlier titles exist.")

Regardless, copyright 2010, published by Graphia, apparently an "imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing company". Yep.

Anyway. This was a reasonably good novel.

Set a year after the moon was hit by a massive meteor that altered it's orbit and started wreaking havoc on the earth's various systems.

Yes, it is a post-apocalyptic(PA) novel.

Set in diary format, we are listening to a 16-18 year old girl's life as things change for her and her family once more (as if the world coming to an end wasn't enough change!).
First winter starts to break, and the rains come. Then family arrives and bring new challenges and people into the mix.

The novel reeks of mother-daughter conflict, and left me wanting to yell at both of them to just f'ing talk to each other. A fair bit happens in the novel, and as stated in that quote, it is a perfectly good stand-alone novel.

All in all it was... mediocre. I liked it well enough, and read it through with no difficulty or slogging. But it is not raising any large emotions by any means.

A good read if you need a diary or alt-format book, an acceptable choice for a PA novel, especially for those just beginning to dip into the genre.

~*~ If you are interested in reading the previous two they are Life as We Knew It and The Dead & The Gone, both by Susan Pfeffer.

Bookmarks - Green

Heya~ Got a new segment I hope to run here on the blog.
But please don't get too attached, you know my track record for keeping projects going... Conlanging and You! and the Gooey Browser are still in the works. Just... slowly.

Regardless, this is my new segment, I want to say weekly, but it will likely be a bit less than that at some points (as I have things to do that stop my reading.)

This segment is called 'Bookmarks'. (So named after a pad of bookmarks my stepfather gave me for christmas). It is my way of reconciling with the last blog, Books in My Arsenal. The old blog was started as a way to keep track of things I had read, but I slowly twisted it into something far too formal for me to keep up with. This, I hope, will stay a lot more casual. A book talk, if you will, in text form. Just enough info to get you to want to read the book, but not enough that you know what it is.

So humour me awhile, and lets get this thing going:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First book to come to light is fantasy novel that I keep mistakenly referring to as a teen novel (which it is not).

The book is called Green, and was written by Jay Lake, who also wrote Mainspring and Escapement, two books that I would like to post here later.

Copyright 2009 and published by Tom Doherty Associates.

Green starts out with no real fantasy elements. A girl is bought from her impoverished father and taken across the sea to be educated. She is taught all the things required of being a great lady, as well as some subvert defensive manoeuvres.

Eventually she breaks out of her bonds as a consort-in-waiting for the duke, and it is then that we fall into the major crux of the story.
There are magics and gods loose in this world, and Emerald cum Green is set to squash these powers.

A great adventure that is difficult to pull out of, Green is a novel with no spells or wizardry, but harkens back to a more spiritual and primal force of nature.

There are many sexual scenes, both overt and implicit, mostly lesbian (as well as a semi-interspecies relation, which seems to be a things of Mr. Lake's), and so I would not recommend this book to those who find those things unpleasant.
(I didn't know on picking it up that it was an other-sexual novel, I swear!)

Green is a character of indignant anger, great strength and strong (if varying) values. She fights for what she believes, and protects those she cares for fiercely.
While not the best role model, she is certainly a strong female presence and the novel should not be counted out when looking for a good back-seat lesbian story.

~*~ Apparently there is a sequel! Endurance (fitting title) by Jay Lake came out in hard cover in Novemeber (2011) and the paperback is due August 2012.