Book Reviews

This is a post I've been meaning to make for a while. You may have noticed my reading list over on the right sidebar. Listed there are the novels I wanted to read last year, and crossed off are the ones I made my way through amid my sometimes hectic schedule. Below you'll find my undiluted thoughts on some of the ones I was able to investigate in 2009.  Very soon the sidebar list will be changed to reflect my reading goals for 2010.

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First up, of course, was the last installment in the (somewhat infamous these days) Harry Potter saga, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling.  Everyone has at least heard of this series, so no introduction is really necessary.  I read this book for the second time in 2009, two years after I originally finished the series.  It was every bit as magical as I remembered and then some.

I was in fifth grade when I first fell in love with the Harry Potter novels, and I have since remained enthralled.  Rowling has the unique ability to write for multiple age groups simultaneously.  Her earlier novels do deal with simpler themes and conflicts because of the heroes' youth, but the complexity and maturity of the books grow with each novel until the wizards and witches of Hogwarts come of age.  However, throughout the entire series, adult readers are keener to catch the seemingly insignificant clues that their children are likely to overlook, and mature audience members are more likely to pick up on a deeper subtext to the fantasy.

Like any hero legend, Harry's story is one that encompasses much more than himself.  It speaks to the enormous power of human love, the omnipresence of evil, and the constant struggle to distinguish what really is for "the greater good."  The prejudice and propaganda that Harry and his friends struggle against in the books echoes similar struggles in our "muggle" life, and the lessons learned are universal. 

There is more than might first meet the eye in this teen series, and I whole-heartedly recomend you give it a chance to prove itself.  You might just decide those "crazy kids" have the right idea after all.

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Second on my list was Jodi Picoult's novel My Sister's Keeper.  This book's popularity sky-rocketed when the movie hit theatres last summer.  This was also a re-reading for me.  I picked up the novel for the first time while in high school, and ventured into it again when I heard about the movie deal.

Picoult weaves an intricate and heart-wrenching tale of two sisters with lives that have been forcibly intertwined.  When Kate is diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia her parents are given an opportunity to save her, but at the cost of condemning a second, unborn daughter to a life in and out of hospitals as well.

Little sister Anna is a "designer baby" created for the sole purpose of acting as a donor for Kate.  Her whole life she's been looking out for her big sister, putting off Kate's death one surgery at a time.  It's all she's ever known, and she never questioned her duty to her family.  That's why it come as such a shock when Anna decides to sue her parents for medical emancipation:  the right to make her own medical decisions; the right to stop carving out pieces of her body for her sister.  As she and her parents battle in court, Kate is slipping away, badly in need of a kidney transplant only Anna can provide.

Picoult eloquently pens the tale of a family ripped apart and stitched back together by illness, and gives us a stunning ending we couldn't have saw coming.  This book is a masterpiece, highly deserving of its acclaim, and better than its film adaption by a long shot.  I am literally proud to have it on my shelves.

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Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife is a story about waiting.  Gripped from page one, readers are pulled into a world where the impossible has become a stark reality of loneliness, fear, magic, and sometimes miracles.  The book follows Henry, an unwilling, time-traveling librarian, and Clare, a girl who has known who her husband would be since the age of six, across a life-long star-crossed romance that can be called both beautiful and tormenting.

Henry has the unique privilege of being able to zap into other times, but it's a talent that comes with a high cost.  He cannot control his coming and going.  He is literally pulled from one page of his life into others without warning or any notion of how long he'll be there, and what's worse, he doesn't seem to be able to change anything.  He's simply a bystander, another face in the crowd, observing his own life from the outside.  He misses much of the present because he is called elsewhere, and Clare is left behind to wait as patiently as she can for him to make it home.

The two seem to be soulmates brought together against all odds, but this novel isn't a neat and tidy tale of lovers meeting.  It explores the dynamic problems of their relationship:  how although Henry's traveling is the very thing that brought them together in the past, it is what pulls them apart in the present.  Niffenegger focuses on how the two deal with the constant separations.  She details what things Henry has to learn to survive, what Clare does to stay strong, and eventually, what heartbreaking lengths the two are willing to go to in order to have a family.

In a time when fantasy novels are all the rage, this one finds a way to stand out from the crowd.  The Time Traveler's Wife puts a unique spin on an old motif and renders us speechless by its close.  My hat's off to Ms. Niffenegger for crafting such as story.  I most certainly recomend it, but only if you have a hearty stack of tissues nearby.

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Suzanne Collins' novel The Hunger Games became ranked among my favorites when I was less than half way through with it.  Collins takes us deep into a dystopian American future where a harsh totalitarian government called "Panem" now resides.  The nation has been divided into districts that lie around a prosperous Capitol, each one with a manufacturing specialty.  In the districts, life is beyond hard.  Food is scarce.  Money, reliable electricity and medication are all but myths among the lower classes.  Hunting outside city limits is prohibited.  The people live in constant terror.

Each year, as a cruel show of power, a Reaping is held.  Two children, one boy and one girl, between the ages of 12 and 18 are chosen as Tributes to represent each district in the nationally televised Hunger Games.  The contestants are forced into an arena with only one rule:  the last child standing wins a year's supply of food to take home to their District, but the children must kill off their competition to reap this award.

When 16 year old Katniss' little sister is chosen as the female Tribute for District 12, Katniss sees no option but to stand in her stead.  In the days that follow, Katniss must harness all her strength and knowledge if she is to survive.  With a love triangle and a plot to overthrow the leaders of Panem thrown into the mix, this is one book I could not put down. 

...Just in case there are any The Hunger Games fan girls out there...Team Peeta, all the way.

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Have any of you guys read these? 

What did you think?
Have any recommendations for 2010?

Eleven

Today is Wesley's eleventh birthday.

It doesn't seem like he should be growing up so quickly.

It seems like if I try, I can take us back to the hospital on the day we brought him home.
Like I can keep him tiny and sheltered.

But every time I see those big brown eyes I know that no matter how old he is,

no matter how tall he becomes,

how many things he learns,

or how much stronger than me he will someday be,

he'll still be my baby brother.

The one for which I have both the deep rooted need to protect,
and the unique privilege of annoying.  ;)

I love you, kid. 

Always.

Happy 11th Birthday, little brother.

Not Your Typical College Girls (CCCE: Round 3)

Carrie's Crazy Cooking Extravaganza is back with a bang, and you can credit it in part to Brianne Elizabeth Mckinney.  She and I have rather snobbish taste in food; we don't settle for the normal college cuisine of Ramen Noodles and pizza deliveries.  Oh no.  Instead we prefer trying out new and sometimes complicated recipes, and having mini dinner parties.  Weird, we know.

Tonight Brianne, Jon Fore, and myself enjoyed this yummy chicken smothered in garlic, peppers, onions and mozzarella cheese, paired with red potatoes roasted with fresh basil, parsley and chives.  It was amazing. 

Also, of course, no meal is complete without a desert.  So Brianne and I improvised and came up with our own "cake mix doctor" recipe.

Wanna know how we did it?  I thought you might.  There are recipes listed below for your cooking convenience.  : )

Smothered Chicken:

-garlic salt

-crushed red pepper

-chicken breast / chicken breast tenders

-one small onion, diced small

-about half a green bell pepper, diced small

-one clove fresh garlic, minced

-2.5 TBSP extra virgin olive oil

-mozzarella cheese slices

1) Begin by warming the olive oil over medium heat.  Add the onion, bell pepper and garlic.  Saute for about five minutes, or until vegetables are tender.

2) Remove vegetables from oil and place in a paper towel lined bowl.

3) Liberally season the chicken breasts with garlic salt and crushed red pepper.  Cook on a George Foreman grill.

4) Place the cooked meat into a baking dish, and completely cover with sauteed vegetables and mozzarella cheese slices.  Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 450/F for about 15 minutes.

Herb Roasted Potatoes:

-2 lbs red potatoes

-1 TBSP fresh basil

-1 TBSP fresh parsley

-1 TBSP fresh chives

-2 TBSP butter

-1/2 tsp salt

-1/8 tsp pepper

1) In a medium sauce pan melt butter, stirring in seasonings and herbs.

2) Add potatoes, coating them completely in the mixture.

3) Fold the potatoes into an aluminum foil pouch, place the foil packet into a baking dish, and bake at 450/F for about 30 minutes, or until potatoes are cooked thoroughly.

Chocolate Chunk Butter Pecan Cake

with Mocha Buttercream Frosting:

Cake:

-one box butter pecan cake mix

-1 cup chopped pecans

-1 1/2 cups chocolate chunks

Prepare cake mix as directed, adding pecans and chocolate chunks last. 

Frosting:

-8 TBSP (1 stick) butter at room temperature

-3 3/4 confectioners sugar

-2 tsp vanilla

-1/3 cup cocoa

-4-5 TBSP coffee, prepared

Beat ingredients together with a mixer until smooth.  Frost cake only after it has cooled completely.

PS -- Brianne announced that I looked like Sue Sylvester from Glee in my green jacket today.  I guess I sort-of-kind-of see the resemblance...

PPS -- Since my camera hasn't been working correctly, I've only just been able to snitch the images from the Post Secret lecture with Frank Warren from Brianne.  I updated that post today with the best of our photos, in case you'd like to see it.  We were in the third row, so our pictures turned out fantastic.  : )

Sharing

For the record, I love my creative writing course.  Below are two of the poems produced so far.  I'd love to hear your thoughts.  Honesty over flattery, always.

Living in the Smiles 

I remember you running beside the train waving good-bye.
Your hand stretches up to mine over and over again like an old movie reel.
Your laughter imparts essential truth, and I smile my sanguine resolve.
We are the happy ending only found in black and white.

I picture you this way. Hold you
in my mind this way: The way I would have had it.

I forget the way tears salted
our last kisses like a wound.
How when I left we could not date
my next arrival, and that memory alone
preserves the tender
moments that splice us together.
The way your reassurance branded deep:
We will meet again.
A film slips over my eyes to salve the sting.

I live in the smiles.
When they run out, I make my own.

Stains

When I was young I watched my mother
scrub oil stains from my father's clothes
early in the mornings.
Sometimes she was a magician
banishing splotches with puffs of detergent smoke.
Other times she was just angry.
The day she deemed his last 'good shirt'
a hopeless case,
she began to bring home black speckled clothing
of her own. She'd scrub
late into the night,
and after a few weeks of this
both she and my father had a drawer
filled with 'good clothes'
they almost never wore.

Once,
when I'd rather have ran free
than be strapped to the table with homework,
she pushed the pen into my tiny hand.
"So you never have to ruin your pretty dresses," she said.
Still I grip that pen,
and it serves me well.
But each night I scrub the ink
from my splattered palms.

PS -- Please don't read too much into the top one.  It is a very overexaggerated version of a real memory that I thought would adapt well into a poem.  I am not a terminally depressed person; I promise.

(First image source.  Second image source.)

Our Handy Man Looks Like Santa (MaDM #18)

I started Making a Difference Mondays as a way for me to use my once minuscule blogging voice to try and change the world one kind deed at a time. Each Monday, I'll post about something I've done to make someone's day a little bit better, and I invite you all to play along by doing the following:

1. Make your own Making a Difference Monday post, explaining to your readers these rules, and sharing the story of some small act of kindness you've performed in the past week. It could be anything...holding a door, helping a little old lady cross the street, or even just stopping at a red light when there's no one around to know the difference.
2. Enter a link to your post in the Mcklinky box below.
3. Link back to my post in yours so that your readers can find the full list of participants.

It is with one person and one action at a time that we change to world. Why not try to change it for the better?

The title of this post says it all.  Really.  But just to clarify (and to link that to MaDM) I will elaborate.

Since I've moved into my new apartment I have learned that I know nothing about home upkeep.  I constantly forget to lock my back door.  I never rememer to clear the snow off my car before it freezes.  I am eaily stumped by clogged drains.  I don't know how on earth I'm supposed to reach the light fixtures to change the bulb.  I stabbed a hole in my wall the first time I tried to hang a picture on my own.  It took me a good thirty minutes to figure out how to wire my VCR and DVD players to the television.  (Yes, you read that correctly.  I am indeed still using a VCR.  No jokes, please.  I love my old-school VHSs.) 

It doesn't help that my apartment seems determined to kill me.  The first time I used the dryer it ripped an article of my clothing in half.  In half, I tell you.  I didn't even know that was possible.  It also broke my key off in the front door lock on move-in day.  I really think the place has renter-resentment issues or something.

I am learning, but I'm getting the hang of things very slowly...  Thankfully, Santa is here to help.  When the apartment and I have been battling, the landlords send him over and he fixes things with his Santa magic.  (I think the apartment likes him better than it does Brianne and I.) 

Today when he came by to fix our toilet (which did a very awful, beastial, thing I might add) I realized that I don't even know Santa's real name.  I mean, he's Santa-with-the-magic-apartment-powers to Brianne and Kylie and I, but who is he really?  It is now my mission to figure that out, and to do something nice for Santa to thank him for taming my monster of a home.  I just might make him cookies.

As per usual, post your own good deed posts in the Mcklinky Box below.



PS -- To those of you following the book club Whitney and I founded, the January discussion is up today! Check it out and leave your thoughts. : )