Book Reviews by Today, I Read…

Title: Broken
Author: Karin Fossum
ISBN: 978-0-1510-1366-1
Story Length: 272 pages
Genre: Adult Literary Fiction

Back Cover of Broken

A woman wakes up in the middle of the night. A strange man is in her bedroom. She lies there in silence, paralyzed with fear.The woman is an author and the man one of her characters, one in a long line that waits in her driveway for the time when she’ll tell their stories. He is so desperate that he has resorted to breaking into her house and demanding that she begin.

He, the author decides, is named Alvar Eide, forty-two years old, single,works in a gallery. He lives a quiet, orderly life and likes it that way—no demands, no unpleasantness. Until one icy winter day when a young drug addict, skinny and fragile, walks into the gallery. Alvar gives her a cup of coffee to warm her up. And then one day she appears on his doorstep.

Three Quick Points About Broken

• Point 1: Where’s the mystery? A quarter of the way through, I realized this wasn’t a traditional whodunit mystery—it wasn’t a traditional mystery in any sense.
• Point 2: It’s about characters under a microscope. Flawed but hauntingly natural characters crafted with aplomb.
• Point 3: Smooth prose and pacing, for a translation. Lost in translation isn’t a cliché for nothing, but if anything was lost in this translation, I didn’t miss it. Continue reading »

It’s been ages since I’ve done a Mailbox Monday post, but it seems fitting since I got a couple more titles over the weekend. (This entire week has been a good one for books.)

The Darwin Conspiracy by John Darton, which I won over at Fyrefly’s Book Blog in celebration of Nicki’s brand new doctoral degree. She says it’s a good read (and I believe her), so here’s crossing my finger and hoping for the best.

Then there’s Emma and the Vampires by Jane Austen (of course) and Wayne Josephson which arrived courtesy of Sourcebooks, Inc.

But I have a tiny confession to make: I’ve been so entranced by Pride & Prejudice that I’ve been unable to move on from it and have not yet read Emma. I’ll add that to my reading schedule this weekend so I have something by which to gauge this new title.

On another note, I have this odd feeling that I’m forgetting something. I’m sure it will eventually come to me. When it does (if it does), then I’ll update. ‘Til then, whaddya get?

Remember how I was saying it’s nearly impossible to leave the house and not come home with a bunch of books? Well, it seems that I don’t even need to leave anymore. The books, they will find me. And I think I kind of like it this way.

Two books came in for review on Monday. First up courtesy of Simon & Schuster is a middle grade fantasy adventure titled Jack Blank and The Imagine Nation by Matt Myklusch. Second is Passing Strange by Daniel Waters (that cover is the UK version, btw), third book in the Generation Dead saga, courtesy of Price Minister.

The next two just arrived two, courtesy of the UPS lady. I ordered them from Amazon after they sat in my “to be ordered later” shopping cart for a few months. Both are a set of short stories for children. First is The Devil’s Storybook by Natalie Babbitt and the second is Half-Human compiled and edited by Bruce Coville.

That, combined with the other books on my shelf waiting to be read should keep me busy for a little while.

Kindle books, according to Mashable, are outselling hardcovers. Over the last three months there was a 30% margin and in the last month there was a 44% margin. Granted, these numbers are skewed since Amazon doesn’t reveal all of its data (i.e. how many books were actually sold) nor does it compare to how many paperback books were sold.

The article, however, did get me thinking about why ebook sales might be on the rise. One thing that comes to mind is the intangible nature of the ebook. With a traditional hardcover, or even paperback, the customer will need to pick it up, hold it in her hands, sniff at it a little bit, figure out where she’s going to put it, and then flip it over to see the heart-stopping amount of money she’ll need to dish out for it.

On the flip side, ebooks are ephemeral. There’s no need to make room for it and it’s (usually) much cheaper than the hardcover equivalent. For the price of one hardcover, you can grab two ebooks (assuming that it’s not a bestseller or renowned author). Plus, it’s easy.

With the click of a couple buttons, sometimes only one, you have a new book waiting to be read. It’s so easy to be caught up in the whirlwind of buying that you don’t realize how many books you’ve just bought…and it all goes back to ebooks having an ephemeral quality. With physical books, you can look at the stacks and say to yourself, I think I’ve picked up too many books, but with ebooks, you don’t have that. Or am I wrong?

I’m curious, if you’re an ebook reader, why? Do you appreciate the books taking up less space? Do you appreciate the blazing speed at which you can have the book and start reading? Is it something else altogether?

Fresh on the heels of finishing both Pharos by Alice Thompson and Stolen by Lucy Christopher (finally!), I discovered another book, Plain Kate by Erin Bow, waiting for me in my mailbox on Saturday and I couldn’t resist starting it.

Pharos was an intriguing read. The best part about the book was the prose. It was evocative, (usually) spare, and eloquent. The story itself wasn’t bad, but I still need to digest it a bit before I try to express my opinions coherently.

Stolen. Oh, Stolen. What can I say about that book? Well, first I’d say that it’s agonizingly slow in the beginning and although it does pick up somewhat around the later middle and end, it’s still relatively slow throughout. That said, I did like the story. Basically, I kinda wish it was written by someone else. But that one is also digesting so I can write a cogent review.

I’m about two thirds of the way through Plain Kate and I’m enjoying the journey. There is so much to love about this book so far: it’s a fairytale without gratuitous sugarcoating, there’s talk of witchcraft, there’s a blood-sucking ghost, and the protagonist isn’t handed all of her heart’s desires on a silver platter—she actually has to work for it. That said, I’ve spotted a couple of (minor) problems which I’ll address in the review, but as of now, this one’s a winner. (I’m totally in love with Taggle, Kate’s cat, because he’s just plain hilarious.)

Assuming I finish Plain Kate today (which I’m positive I will), I’ll take in a few short stories or possibly read one of the new books that came home with me today.

And speaking of new books, I’m now of the belief that it’s darn near impossible to leave the house without coming back with a bucket-load of books. This morning while grocery shopping, I noticed that they were having a 75% off sale, so I decided to rummage through the remains and have now added 3 new books (technically 4, but one of them is a craft book) to my library. I’m not really complaining though because they were only a buck apiece.

I hadn’t realized I’d picked up two books by the same author, but I’m hoping that I really like her style because she’s a new to me author (both of them actually).  Also, I hadn’t realized that The Wire in the Blood is the second book of a series, so I’ll have to scout out the first one before reading it.

If anyone has read Flynn or McDermid or these books specifically, I’d love to hear about your experiences with them.