“The Bell at Sealey Head” by Patricia McKillip
First - If you’ve never spent an hour staring in awe at the book cover artwork on McKillip’s novels, then you’re missing out on life. I pity you!
Now: Considering that the majority of this book was build up, the pay off occurred very quickly and with little satisfaction.
McKillip has a wonderful talent for worldbuilding. Her setting and characters kept me intrigued no matter where the chapters’ focus jumped. From Sealey Head to Ysabo’s castle to Gwyneth’s story, I was genuinely interested in finding out how each plotline developed. McKillip’s ability to maintain that balance between all three, not to mention the different points of view within Sealey Head, was masterful.
Yet the novel’s ending felt unfulfilling. The bell itself was discovered suddenly and had very little connection with the rest of the story. From there, the bell’s influence (for lack of a better spoiler-free term) felt far too spontaneous and neat. I expected to see a more exciting ending where each of the story’s threads were tied together. Instead, what I got was a quick fix. The last few chapters were dull in comparison to the mystery that surrounded them.
Overall, I’ll gladly continue reading McKillip’s work. Her highly detailed version of fantasy is something that I’ve always enjoyed. But I feel that this is one of her weaker works. It’ll likely collect dust on my shelf while I reread “Alphabet of Thorn” over and over again in the coming years.
3/5 stars
First book of 2013: “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” by Charles C. Mann
Mann presents three main arguments that contradict the textbook version of Pre-Columbian history that many of us are familiar with. First, he states that Indian societies were larger and more populous than previously believed. Second, he states that they were older and more sophisticated. And lastly, he states that they had a greater impact on the environment. These main propositions paint a version of history that is vastly different from the sparse tribes and pristine wilderness that tends to be associated with Natives.
Overall, it works in Mann’s favor that he is a journalist instead of a historian or cultural anthropologist. His writing style makes this book an enjoyable and personal read. He manages to include his own anecdotes in a way that both complements and reinforces the factual points he seeks to make. This is something that’s difficult to accomplish for even the most seasoned non-fiction writer.
However, his background also means that this work cannot be viewed in a strictly academic sense. This is not a historiographic text, nor should it be used as one. Mann simply glosses over the past histories written about Native civilizations. He provides us with the basic information while assuming that his audience is well-versed in Indian stereotypes. And this works for him. It makes his book accessible to the casual reader and history buff. Yet since his background is that of a non-specialist, this book can’t be used as a serious academic resource. It provides a thorough introduction, a good jumping point and presents a basic structural argument, but it’s still only meant for popular consumption. “1491” cannot replace actual research or academic reading in this field.
For those who are interested in starting to learn about indigenous history, or for those who feel that their American history textbooks had some horrible plotholes, then I highly recommend picking this up. It’s well worth your time. Even if you only glance through Mann’s bibliography, this book has the potential to open up a realm of historical studies that 99% of Americans won’t get within a public school.
4/5 stars
I’ve had roughly a year to mull over this book since I last posted about it. While I don’t entirely disagree with what you’ve said, this novel has way, way too many problems for me to ever feel comfortable teaching it. It’s a nightmare.
The entire novel is based upon a gross set of cultural appropriations. Basically, a young white boy is adopted by Tlingit elders who use the wisdom and spirituality of Native Americans in order to solve his emotional troubles and force those same teachings onto the people that he deems worthy.
99% of the Native American concepts in this novel are made up on the spot. Seriously –Oyate.org recently removed their “Books to Avoid” page, but this topped their list. From the animal dancing to the totem pole to the ancestor rock, Miklaelsen blatantly made up Native traditions in order to keep his protagonist busy. Even the concept of Circle Justice was exaggerated to the point of lying. All of his decisions to include Native “culture” ignores any actual cultural significance that may be attributed to these items and actions. The result is that this book presents the reader with a fill-in-the-blank fantasy sort of culture that has no basis in reality.
First and foremost, this is a problem because Ben Miklaelsen is not Tlingit. He isn’t Native American at all. The guy is actually of Danish descent and was born in Bolivia. His decision to base a novel on Tlingit culture was due to the fact that he enjoyed travelling and once spotted a white “spirit” bear too. Oh, and he was inspired by the Columbine massacre. Not really a great connection to the culture he insisted on writing about.
When discussing this novel in both guides and interviews, Miklaelsen speaks as though the Tlingit don’t exist anymore. He outright states that they aren’t a modern culture. Every time he discusses the Tlingit, he pits them against “American society” and the American audience, as though they exist at opposite ends of the spectrum. This only reinforces the idea that Native Americans are some magical group that are spiritually and ancestrally linked to nature. It stops us from thinking of them as actual people.
But moving along from the cultural side of it:
I am not a fan of the way that Peter, the boy who was brain damaged from Cole’s attack, was treated within the story. His case is one of “tough love,” where he was forced to spend time with his abuser in an isolated setting because it was supposedly for his own good. His concerns and fears are ignored, his own desires to leave and never see Cole again are brushed off and his violent outbursts are hailed as a wonderful show of recovery. This is a young boy who attempted suicide twice since he was attacked. Somehow, despite the fact that he still suffers from vivid nightmares about being beaten, every adult in this situation agrees that learning how to forgive is what he needs the most. Forget that he needs to feel mentally and physically safe, forget that he currently has no trust of the outside world, forget that he is still coming to terms with the fact that his body will never again be fully functional: Nope, the only thing that will “fix” this teenager is if he forgives the boy who nearly killed him.
This is not safe and it is not healthy. That is not a message that I am comfortable sending, especially since there is a good chance that many students have experienced abuse in their own lives. This book essentially teaches that they must ignore the voice in their head that preserves their personal safety and keeps them out of danger. It’s the comfort and happiness of their abusers that supposedly matters the most.
Just typing that out makes me angry.
So during the past year, my opinion about this book has gotten much more harsh. I’ve talked about it with other professionals, I’ve been a part of the discussions that it provokes in the classroom and I’ve seen the misinformation that it spreads among students. If I can avoid this book for the future, I’ll be much better off.
Pictures in the Words: Persuasion (Review)
Title: Persuasion
Series: N/A
Author: Jane Austen
Pages: 188
Rating: ★★★
Summary: At the center of this novel is Anne Elliot’s thwarted romance with Captain Frederick Wentworth, a navy man Anne met and fell in love with when she was nineteen. At the time, Wentworth was deemed an unsuitable match and Anne was forced to break off the relationship. Eight years later, however, they meet again. By this time Captain Wentworth has made his fortune in the navy and is an attractive catch. However, Anne is now uncertain about his feelings for her. But after various twists and turns of fortune, the novel ends on a happy note.
Review: I was exactly thrilled with this book in the beginning. I was pretty bored for the first twenty or so pages, but I always managed to get excited when Captain Wentworth decided to show up. There was a lot of extra stuff in this book that really didn’t need to be there, and only about a fifth of the whole thing concentrated on Anne and Wentworth at all–which I thoroughly disliked, because I read the book to read about them and not a bunch of other random people. However, it was all in all a decent read, short and fun, and even more so for me because I got to buddy read it with my mom! This isn’t an Austen gem, but still worth the time.
What I Liked: Spoilers!
- I can believe why so many people say Anne is the best of Austen’s heroines. She’s a perfect lady, although she doesn’t let anybody make decisions for her; not anymore. I appreciated that she made that mistake once and she doesn’t let it happen to her anymore. I feel like so many heroines, whether in classics or young adult novels, automatically know what to do, automatically make the right choices. There aren’t enough flaws these days. Anne had a flaw; she was easily persuaded and made the wrong decision, letting go of her love. But she didn’t regret it, which is another thing I admired. She admitted that maybe it was the wrong choice, but that she would have done it again if she had the chance because of all the places it did bring her. And even though we didn’t see as much of their romance as I would have liked, I was still rooting for her and Wentworth to make it out together in the end.
What I Didn’t Like:
- I felt like this dragged on longer than was necessary. We were introduced to so many characters that never ended up playing much of a role, and were only present for idle gossip. More of the story should have focused on Anne and Wentworth, but their relationship felt more like a side note than the main plot. And without them, it was hard to distinguish what the plot actually was.
- I simply wasn’t as interested as I would have liked to be. I didn’t feel a huge investment in Wentworth and Anne, and certainly not an attachment to any of the other characters. Also, I didn’t appreciate how Anne and Wentworth got together in the last ten pages. There was practically no build up to Wentworth’s revelation of his continued love, and there were only matter-of-fact conversations between the two of them about their feelings. Then the book ended. I just wasn’t satisfied with it.
Overall: Reviewing classics is honestly one of the hardest things to do. They can either be magnificent, or just really not be your cup of tea. So it’s difficult to give reasons as to why I didn’t like it that I feel would be valid material for a review. I just didn’t enjoy Persuasion as much as I would have liked, although it was still an excellent read. Just not my favorite, it seems.
It’s been way too long since my last book review.
“An Artist of the Floating World” by Kazuo Ishiguro
Ishiguro is the master of creating an unreliable narrator. I noticed this in his novel “When We Were Orphans” as well - There are slight discrepancies in what the main character tells us and how he interprets the events surrounding him. Ishiguro has a delicate method of making the reader aware of these small problems and contradictions without constantly beating us over the head. It’s all a matter of nuance, not power.
This narrative viewpoint is part of what makes this novel so striking. The story follows the moral hemming and hawing of a middle aged man, Ono, who is forced to deal with the political and ideological actions he took against his peers in World War II Japan. Ono is an artist who lived through the highly jingoistic propaganda movement of the 1940s and into the changing social attitudes of post-American occupation Japan. He often moves back and forth between vigorously supporting his right-wing choices during the war and occasionally questioning whether his past is something he should be hiding. The guilt of being seen as a traitor balances with his own personal moral compass, making Ono both obstinate and suspicious in his old age.
Ono’s past and present are melded together in a way that gives the reader enough information to understand his current dilemma. We’re told about his rise into fame as an artist, how he came to become a police informer, and what effect those actions had on his life afterward. All of this is put into the perspective of current events, which primarily revolve around his youngest daughter’s engagement negotiations. Using an engagement to highlight Ono’s history was a wonderful way of setting up this plot - This conflict already allows for the compromise of private vs public lives, as well as the combination of the private lives of two separate families. It’s exactly the sort of personal event that would make a father silently wonder if he had done enough in life to give his daughter everything she needed to succeed. Ono’s mind doesn’t settle on money (like many of us would probably think about), but rather on how his reputation and social status might serve as a black mark against his family.
In all, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about Ono’s journey of self-reflection. The story is not action-filled or particularly exciting, but it promotes a sense of introspection that few novels can accomplish. That, combined with Ishiguro’s ability to capture his main character so fully in the narration, makes this one of the better books that I’ve read this year.
4/5
The new movie has brought this up in way too many conversations, so I’ll put it out in the open: I absolutely hate The Perks of Being a Wallflower
It’s nothing more than a modernized rip-off of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. If you break apart all of the plot elements, the characters, and the general themes, they are exactly the same. Chbosky simply dumbed it down so that teenagers could understand the deeper aspects of the story. Throw in a couple of contemporary references for kids to identify with and think are cool, and he made himself a best seller. Hell, it was even published by MTV. The novel’s marketing is openly based around selling an idealistic vision of youth to teens.
Let’s take one moment to look at the characters we’re dealing with. I’ll leave names out and let you guess who it is:
- The deceased character who the audience never meets, but who was very emotionally close to the main character. This death has a great impact on our hero mostly during the beginning of the story and serves as a catalyst for the plot.
- The sister who our main character tries to protect from the effects of a young, burgeoning sexuality.
- The older brother who exhibited great talent at a young age but sold out in search of an easier lifestyle
- The teacher who mentors the main character and eventually provides him with a safe home atmosphere. This teacher symbolizes how adults and authority figures have their own lives and problems to work through, despite how much the main character may trust them.
- The unattainable girl who is held in high respect and acts as a love interest, yet is wholly unreachable
- The very attainable girl who is slightly too commonplace and brash to really be loved by the main character. She gives him the opportunity and shows desire, yet ultimately gets rejected rather harshly.
- The schoolmate who is worldly (by comparison) and knowledgeable on topics such as sex and intoxicants, who mainly interacts with the main character at parties
- The popular and handsome classmate who leads a secret life unknown to most of the school, yet known to the main character
If you realized that there is a character of this description in both novels, then you can start to understand my frustration with Perks. I could make a highly detailed list of “similarities” that goes on for miles. Plot points, major thematic elements, literary symbols, use of cultural references - just gag me now.
Not to mention that both books are set up so that the main character is writing down an autobiography that ends with him in a mental hospital. The entire method of proving the narrator is unreliable was directly copied, yet Perks treated it as some sort of provoking plot twist instead of a valid aspect of his character. It catered to the audience’s lust for trauma without contributing. Do you know how many teenagers I’ve talked to who have read the book and don’t even realize that Charlie was abused? The situation was handled simply for shock and without resolution.
I just can’t stand it. I’ve read through this thing four times, and it just seems to get worse and worse. This novel was popular back when I was in high school, so it makes me want to punch something to see that it’s still being pedaled as a YA inspiration.
Paolini was really just a kid when he wrote it. He didn’t have enough literary or life experience to truly flesh out his story and characters. The result was a book that isn’t a unique whole, but rather just a dozen different random pieces that have been stolen from other works that he admired.
Paolini took most of his world-building and naming details directly from Tolkein, most of his plotlines and characters from George Lucas, the dragon’s characteristics from McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, and the magic structure from Edding’s Belgariad. These aren’t tiny details that have been adapted, either. They are huge, glaring structures that are an important point to each of the novels.
There’s also the problem that much of his story isn’t realistic. This might seem like a stupid criticism of a novel that’s about magic dragons, but think about elements like geography, characters’ use of language, warfare strategies and government structures. For example: even though the Varden used a very simple battle plan that could be easily tracked (attacking cities closer and closer to Urû’baen), the Empire couldn’t follow their plans and therefore lost every major battle. Neither does it make sense for Angela to single-handedly poison thousands of soldiers by simply walking into an enemy camp undetected, carrying the poison under her clothes.
If you feel like reading more, this page has a good breakdown of most criticisms.
Horrible Book Reviews
“Cut” by Patricia McCormick
Horrible Book Reviews
“A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens
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“The Call of the Wild” by Jack London
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“King Lear” by Shakespeare
Horrible Book Reviews
“Where the Wild Things Are” by Maurice Sendak
Horrible Book Reviews
“Animal Farm” by George Orwell
- The sheep characters lack substance
BRB LOL-ING FOREVER LET ME BRING YOU A COOKIE
lacedtight replied to your photoset
To be fair, the characters ARE all horrible people, and you DO want bad things to happen to many of them. Reviews have been saying this since the book was first published.
Context is everything. ;)
What we have here are a group of people who believe that hating a character is an insult to the novel. They are having a strong emotional reaction to Bronte’s writing and interpreting that as boredom, dismissing the novel because they didn’t like the feelings it evoked in them. “Bad” characters are automatically equated with bad writing. In all, they see these problems (that were put into the storyline deliberately) and think that merits a one-star review.
On the other hand, you have people who hate the characters and wish for their death while recognizing that it takes an extremely skilled author to push them to that point. When the book was first published, many reviewers marveled that someone could pen such a plot without spinning into depression and suicide. They saw it as wild, savage, brutal, and so new that it was impossible not to feel awe towards it. Even those who hated it admitted to desperately needing to finish the book and being struck by the sheer power of each character.
Are you allowed to hate Catherine and Heathcliffe? Oh god yes. Should you want them to die? Probably. But does all that mean your reading experience was wasted, that this is therefore an awful book? Absolutely not. If someone hates Wuthering Heights, I’d hope for a better reason than “stupid characters.” I’d take you more seriously if you felt nothing towards them.
