Category: book review

Book Review | Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

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Out of the new Christmas books I found for this December’s reading, this is the one I was looking forward to the most. For those of you not familiar with the book, or the movie based on it, Christmas with the Kranks, it follows the Kranks and their decision to forgo Christmas in lieu of a cruise, as their daughter won’t be home. They find that bucking tradition might be harder than they think.

The premise is interesting. I think everyone’s had those moments, faced with the stress of the holidays where they just want to throw up their hands and be done with the whole thing. The thoughts of ‘what if we did something different this year’.

Thus the reason I feel disappointed by this book. I really wanted to like it, especially since I found the movie amusing- not my favorite holiday film, but I don’t turn it down if someone else wants to watch it. Unfortunately the detractors from the film are here in the book and even more noticeable.

Take the characters. I didn’t like any of them, but Luther especially was often unsympathetic, which is strange given how easy it would be, as previously stated, to make the reader feel for them. He’s so very often smug, self-centered, money-focused and, to be quite honest, racist (as is Nora, his wife with at least three comments throughout the book between them). And yes, character flaws make for realistic characters, but I struggled to find moments where I found him to be a normal human being instead of a scrooge caricature. 

And the neighbors aren’t any better. Seriously, who are these people that they think it’s a great idea to spend the season harassing their neighbors over a 6 foot plastic snowman? 

The story itself, once you get past the premise is… well bizarre. Everything is exaggerated, from the reactions to the Kranks’ decision, to their daughter’s hyper-whirlwind romance. This translated decently to the big screen, with the humor fairly clear, but in Grisham’s prose it misses something, never quite sticking the landing. 

Ultimately, it wasn’t one of the worst books I’ve read recently, but it does seem to be one of those rare books where the movie might just be a better choice.

Book Review | Dune by Frank Herbert

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You know you’ve had an unpleasant experience with a book when you dread even typing up a book review for the thing. When you don’t even get the visceral ‘this book is trash and I need to scream to the heavens (and the internet) my displeasure’, but are thoroughly stuck in the ‘do I really have to pull thing thing out again?’ duldrums.

For those of you not familiar with Dune, it’s a bit of a space epic- centering around Paul Atreides, the son of an aristocratic family that is tasked with the management of the dessert planet Arrakis (otherwise known as Dune), which is the only source of a drug which extends life and provides mental abilities. The story is full of political intrigue and conflict, as various factions seek to control the planet and its resources.

Now, I will say, to start out, that the world building here can be fantastic. There is no way to disagree with this being a foundational piece of modern science fiction literature, because it feels so different than its contemporaries- ahead of its time. The culture of this world, its people and history, is fascinating. The author did an interesting job picking out pieces from actual cultures to build off of.

Unfortunately, the book is presented in such a way that making sense of the world building is a headache. Normally I don’t mind being dropped into a world a being left to figure out some of the mechanics myself, in this case however I spent a good portion of the early part of the book in varying levels of ‘what is going on here, again?’ When you have to look up the cultural concordance in the back of the book at least twice a page for the first fifty or so pages there’s something wrong.

Additionally. The dialogue really leaves something to be desired. At times its good, and feels pretty well normal, and then there’s portions that are so unrealistic, where you can’t help but think ‘nobody speaks like that’. It’s overly stilted and formal, as if they’re actors in a play. This feels especially so when encountering what I can only compare to thought-bubble. Oh, how I hated the thought-bubbles, which often feel intrusive and, in the worst cases, completely take away some of the intrigue the author was (I am assuming) going for. Revealing some character details and thoughts, fine, but when it gets to the point of spoiling what would essentially be a plot twist otherwise… not good.

So, long story short, yeah, I can appreciate the affect that Dune had on modern science fiction. I really do think you can call it a science fiction classic, and I really think it would be up some people’s alley. Does that mean I liked it, or ever want to read it or anything in the series, again? Nope. I’ll be quite happy to never have to interact with the story ever again.

Book Review | Good Omens by Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman

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Title: Good Omens
Authors: Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
Publication date: 1990
Length: 412 pages
Genre: fantasy-supernatural, humor, horror
TW- racism, sexism, homophobia, slurs, maggots, violence, gore, blood, death,  corpse, language, referred to sexual content (fade to black)

Despite my love for this book I’ll be the first to admit, it’s a headache to try to sum up. Essentially though you have a mixup of cosmic proportions when the anti-christ goes missing, a witch with the only completely accurate book of prophecies ever written, and an angel/demon duo who would rather be drinking a nice glass of wine thank you very much can we stop with this whole apocalypse thing already? 

The humor is on point. I rather doubt anything touched by Terry Pratchett could fail in that regard. I don’t often laugh aloud while reading, but there are several parts of the book where I couldn’t help myself. The humor is wonderfully weird and smart (not high-brow by any means, but smart), absurd and wry.

Just because it’s a funny story however, doesn’t mean it isn’t, at times, messed up and creepy as all get out. One of the authors is, after all Neil Gaiman, and his signature darkness is all throughout the story. The horror elements aren’t overwhelming, but they’re used efficiently, like an unexpected dagger. 

The fact that they balance their two styles so well is one of my favorite things about the book really. 

Now there is one thing to keep in mind- not a criticism, but rather an observation. If you dislike bouncing around from character to character- preferring one central protagonist- this might not be a book for you. The story is fast-paced; there are a lot of players here and a lot going on. Gaiman/Pratchett managed to balance all the voices wonderfully, but in doing so they never dwell on a single part of the story for overly long before moving on to another perspective.

Long story short, I love this book. Funny and creepy and weird, it’s a unique story. It’s written by two of my favorite authors and it’s like having the best of both worlds. If you’re a fan of either Pratchett or Gaiman you need to try this book out.

Book Review | I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak

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Title: I Am The Messenger
Author: Markus Zusak
Publication date: 2002
Length: 357 pages
Genre: Ya, contemporary, speculative
TW: weapon- gun, abuse-verbal (from parent), strong language, rape, abduction, violence, blood, sexual content, threatened murder, alcohol, gambling, death imagery-hanging

I have found, at times, that anticipation can be my worst enemy when picking up a new book, especially when written by an author I’m familiar with. That was, unfortunately the case here.

I Am the Messenger is the story of a 19 year old cabdriver whose life seems to be going nowhere. That changes, however, after stepping out of his comfort zone and helping to catch a bank robber. That event is not a one-time deal, as he would have preferred, suddenly sucked into a series of tasks sent to him of playing cards- a person to help or hurt- but either way to make a change.

I loved the writing style of the book, which some however may not be as fond of. It’s a little outside of the norm, with short sentences and paragraphs, the result being that the story can move quite quickly at times. In addition, the author’s descriptions are colorful without being flowery. 

Additionally, Zusak does wonderful job of getting the reader into the protagonist’s head, Ed having very clear voice. The protagonist pulls the reader along in his questions of what exactly is going on. The question, however, is will you like it there.

Ed’s thoughts, concerning his best friend and crush Audrey are sometimes icky at best with the all-too-often appearing thought of ‘she’ll sleep with anyone else, why not me?’ Following that up eventually with ‘I’m doing all this good stuff; I deserve something’. A lot of his interactions with women feel strange throughout. 

A lot of the interactions in general feel off, and not quite real. The secondary characters closest to our protagonist are mostly fine, but past that a lot of them start feeling very cookie-cutter. To be honest, I kept waiting for some sort of reveal letting the reader know that it’s all been in his own head, or the people are actors, or something similar. There was a weird twist ending, but it wasn’t that at least.

Perhaps it was partially to do with the fact that I absolutely loved The Book Thief but I felt a little let down by this book. I know it’s best not to compare the two, but seeing what Zusak can do made the flaws in this story stand out all the more, though I Am The Messenger does have a certain charm of its own.

Book Review | Selected Poems & Tales by Edgar Allen Poe

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Really, what sort of an introduction can you make for Edgar Allen poe? His horror feels, at times, ubiquitous. It’s difficult to escape references, at least this time of year. Still, that exposure seems reserved, commonly for a select few stories and poems. This is, admittedly, an older anthology of his poems and stories- one I’ve had for a good many years but had yet to read cover to cover, instead picking out bits as they caught my interest. I wish I had been less picky before now.

If you are familiar with the work of Edgar Allen Poe, you’ll know it’s wordy, but ultimately elegant, his horror a creeping thing, claustrophobic and unsettling, with themes including insanity, premature burial,illness, and the unknown. There is plenty of that in this anthology, with ‘The Raven’, and ‘The Masque of the Red Death’, and ‘The Tell-tale Heart’ all included, but you’ll also find some of his other writings, his science fiction and mysteries. Almost all (with perhaps the exception of two adjoining stories) flow into each other, connected by some thread or theme within the pieces, making the collection a journey rather than a patchwork quilt.

Secondly, the quality of the book itself is very nice. It’s a large one, not something you’d carry around in a book bag, but due to that the font is a very accessible size and the illustrations are large enough that details aren’t lost. It’s a sturdy text, cloth-covered hardcover with glossy pages. Additionally, the forward by Neil Gaiman isn’t the dry and academic prose one normally expects from a ‘classics’ anthology, but rather something readable in and of itself.

One thing that can be said of Poe, however, is that his writing is not always the most accessible. His narrators run the gamut from academics to sea-farers to madmen and certain pieces feel the weight of those narrative choices. They can be overly-verbose and rambling at the worst of times. Heck, the verbosity is often just as prevalent in his easier stories. Sometimes you just want to dip into the story, take the narrator by the collar, and growl ‘get on with it already’. This anthology held several stories that left me feeling that frustrated.

Still, as a whole, it’s a nice grouping, with a nice variety to choose from. If you are a Poe fan looking for a new anthology, you’d be well-served if you managed to find this collection.


Book Review | The Collection by Bentley Little

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Title: The Collection
Author: Bentley Little
Publication Date: 2002
Length: 449 pages
Genre: Horror, short stories
TW– weapons, violence (extreme), gore, cannibalism, dismemberment, decapitation, death, murder, blood, corpse, death of an animal, pregnancy, birth, sexual content, incest, molestation, rape, domestic abuse, child abuse, slurs (mental capacity, little people, ethnic), racism, sexism, ableism

Well, turns out my luck from last week hasn’t held out. When I saw this book at a thrift store a couple of months ago I was rather excited- it’s not every day you see a horror anthology around my neck of the woods. There were a few reservations- I’d tried one of Little’s novels a couple of years back and his style of horror just didn’t do it for me. Still, I figured that short stories and novels were different enough beasts that I might really enjoy this. You can probably already tell how that went. 

The collection is just that, a collection of unrelated stories- only bound together by their genre- horror, or perhaps in some cases dark speculative fiction. You’ll find stories ranging from the discovery that George Washinton was a cannibal, to a sex-cult surrounding a tire-iron once touched by James Dean, to revenge-filled zombies. Despite the description, that last one is probably one of the most down-to-earth stories in the bunch. 

I will say, despite my issues with the book, there’s one thing that Bentley Little has in spades, and that’s imagination. The book is full of fantastical scenarios and bizarre what-ifs, implausible though they may be (i.e. George Washington’s thing for human flesh). If you can let go of your suspension of disbelief well enough there are some really interesting ideas that he played around with here.

That if, however, is a big if. A humongous if. Because it seems to me that Little doesn’t really know when to quit. The strongest stories, in my opinion, were the ones that didn’t try to be scary, because it didn’t feel forced. While at times Little has a good handle on his horror, often he winds up in wtf-land, and not in the good way either, hopping straight out of the realm of horror and winding up in the absurd instead. Now, I admittedly like absurd, most of the time, but this book elicited more eye-rolls from me than anything else. There’s only so many stories you can read with cannibal-cults and incest and sentient rapist pillows before it’s all just too much. 

This is, I think, partially due to the fact that I never felt myself invested in the characters. And while I know it can be difficult to build that connection in the amount of space a short-story lends, everyone felt vaguely cookie-cutter-ish. They rarely seemed to lose the sense of being figurines, moved around solely for the sake of the plot. 

So, that being said, if you’re already a fan of Bentley Little’s style of horror, you may enjoy this one. If, one the other hand, you prefer your horror a little more subtle or insidious, or just not full of some of the items mentioned in the trigger warnings section, you may want to go elsewhere. 

Book Review | Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery by Deborah & James Howe

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Title- Bunnicula: A Rabbit-Tale of Mystery (#1 in Bunnicula series)
Author- Deborah & James Howe
Illustrator- Alan Daniel
Publication Date- 1979
Length- 98 pages
Genre- middle grade, paranormal, animal story, humor
TW- threatened violence, mention of alcohol, attempted murder, starvation, slur (for Roma)

Normally, when I write a book review, I try to cover a book I haven’t read before and, aside from a few exceptions, I lean towards at least YA reading Level- this one is neither. I first ran into the Bunnicula series when one of my older cousins gave me Howliday Inn when I was a kid, and at this point it’s an old favorite. But after The Shining I needed something a little lighter.

The story begins when the lives of two family pets, a dog named Harold and a cat named Chester, are disrupted by a new addition, a small bunny found one stormy night. All seems normal, until dried white vegetables, with two tiny fang shaped holes, begin to show up in the kitchen and Chester pins Bunnicula as the prime suspect. 

Bunnicula is a fun story, one that doesn’t take itself too seriously, more along the lines of The Munsters rather than something by Stine or Pike. It’s thoroughly lighthearted in tone, beginning with the premise of Harold being the books author and extending to Chester’s attempts to thwart Bunnicula (which includes a vampire pantomime and the results of confusing ‘steak’ with ‘stake’).

What really drives the story, in many ways, is the interactions between sarcastic, paranoid Chester and down-to-earth Harold. The authors succeed in leaning into animal stereotypes without it being overdone, the result being a bickering that bounces back and forth like a tennis ball.

If I had a complaint, it would be the fact that Bunnicula, the titular character, is a silent figure and largely passive. Of course, rabbits aren’t known for being vocal animals, still in a world of (at least among each other) talking animals, the silence feels strange, and I’m left wandering how an active Bunnicula would affect the story.

Initially, I wasn’t sure how the story would hold up under an adult eye, but I was pleasantly surprised to see  that I enjoyed it almost as much as when I was a kid- only some of which I attribute to nostalgia.

Book Review | The Shining by Stephen King

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Title- The Shining
Author- Stephen King
Publication Date- 1977
Length- 659 pages
Genre- horror- supernatural
TW- smoking, alcoholism, drinking (heavy), drunk driving, drug use, sexual imagery, strong language, Child abuse, violence against children, violence towards animals (a dog is kicked, if I recall correctly), domestic violence, weapons, violence (graphic), major injury, dental trauma, murder, attempted murder, mention of decapitation, corpse, blood, gore, suicidal ideation, mention of institutionalization, mental illness, medical treatment, seizures/seizure-like episodes, ableism, racism, sexism, homophobia, slurs (sexist, racist, ablest, homophobic), insects

What better way to start October by hitting one of the Stephen King classics that have been sitting, unread, on my shelves. Admittedly, this one probably would have been a better mid-winter read, but at least it’s not The Stand. Unfortunately, I also knew enough about this one to be sufficiently spoiled, but I’ve found ways to avoid letting spoilers ruin the experience. 

And this one was definitely an experience. Just in case you’ve managed to avoid spoilers for The Shining and know nothing about the story, it follows the Torrance family as Jack (the father) attempts to get his feet under him, taking a job as caretaker for the Overlook hotel after losing his job at a private school (partially due to his previous alcoholism and largely due to his temper). It  doesn’t take long for the dark nature of the hotel to come to light, especially considering the extra-sensory abilities of Jack’s young son, Danny, and the family struggles to retain their lives and their sanity as winter closes in around them. 

Horror, I have found, is not an easy genre to write in. Or at least not easy to write well. The balance in tension is difficult to maintain, too little and it falls flat, try too hard and boy does it show, falling into corniness. I never encountered either problem, reading The Shining. There is a creeping sense of dread that permeates the story, even before the Overlook Hotel becomes a constant figure, and one of the reasons I wish I had read this book during the winter is the overarching feeling of isolation and claustrophobia. Yet amongst that are small snippets of normalcy, growing ever fainter as the darkness encroaches in on the family, slowly tearing them apart. 

Part of the reason the story, and the slow unraveling of the Torrance family, is so effective is that you care about the characters. It’s one of the most glaring differences between the novel and what I’ve seen of the Kubric film. Danny is an endearing kid, without feeling cutesy for the most part, clearly struggling to figure out how his own gift (or curse) works; a confusing world is made all the worse by adding in adult elements he’s not yet ready for. And Jack is such a tragic figure, in many ways. He’s so incredibly flawed, and sometimes you just want to punch him, but you can see how much he loves his wife and son, and that makes his descent into madness so much worse. Especially since he’s so aware of his own flaws, and his struggles with them are  part of the foundation of his character. It’s heartbreaking to see those flaws pulled like loose strings, letting him slowly unravel. 

Unfortunately, the story is rather marred at the beginning by what I would consider to be a sloppy usage of point of view. Within a single scene the point of view will go from one character, to another, and then back to the first again. The shifts often feel abrupt, with no warning other than the fact that the two characters are both in the same scene. It’s especially frustrating when the perspective shifts from an adult voice to Danny’s, considering the difference between the ways adults and children see the world. To make matters worse, these shifts often happen over a very short amount of time, with the second perspective at times taking up only a few paragraphs out of a several page section. Although I could see the reason that King would want, in those scenes, to have the two perspectives on events, it still felt lazy. 

Overall this was a fairly minor problem, however, in a book that was, otherwise, incredibly well-crafted. I fully intend on pulling it off the shelves again this winter, when the storms creep in, and the cold and isolation inherent in the book can have full effect.

Book Review | Beach House by R. L. Stine

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Title: Beach House
Author: R. L. Stine
Publication date: 1992
Length: 210 pages
Genre: ya, horror
TW: Violence, blood, body/corpse, life-altering injury, death, murder, abduction, jealous/ potentially abusive relationship, bullying, possible classism

Beach House is the story of two sets of teens, and the murders/disappearances that reach across forty years, connecting their summers. Normally, when writing a summary or book review, I feel like I have trouble condensing the story down into a few sentences. That’s certainly not the case with this book. Take from that what you will.  

The plot utilized is an interesting premise, not a revolutionary one but certainly with the potential to make a good story. And the author does make some attempt to ground the story in its respective time-frames – making the distance between the two time-periods felt well enough, while also showing the similarities between the two. It was actually the shifting between settings that caught my interest, initially. Split between a contemporary setting in the 1950s, there’s room to play around with parallels between the two sets of characters and events. I know what can be done with non-linear storytelling, so I had hopes for the story.

Unfortunately the execution (pun not completely intended) leaves a lot to be desired. In this case, that nonlinear structure actually weakens the story significantly. The problem largely lies in the fact that the length of the book is still fairly average, thus each set of characters really gets about half the amount of time as they would if the story were completely devoted to them. While the stories are connected, they’re also largely separate until the end of the book, so there are two individual stories that never fully have the time to come together with much in the way of detail.

This not only affects the plot, however, but the character as well. With at least ten of them it’s difficult to set many of them apart, and they all sort of bleed into each other- simply displaying various shades of jerk. Speaking of, there’s little in the way of sympathetic characters in this book, running the gamut from  mean to jealous and borderline abusive at times- and that’s without mentioning the murderer. Unfortunately, this is one of those books where the girls are all afraid of their boyfriends/potential boyfriends but just keep going back anyway. I actually can’t think of any male characters who didn’t get the ‘suddenly dangerous and looming’ treatment. 

In addition, there’s so much that’s either implausible or made no sense whatsoever. This includes everything from small details (a literal torch used in the house, having never heard of Elvis Presley) to the entire plot twist at the end of the story, which went far beyond the normal suspension of disbelief required by a teen thriller/slasher novel. it was out there, even for an R. L. Stine book,  and I remember some doozies from my time reading Goosebumps.

Overall, I had hopes but Beach House just ended up being a super-flawed story that totally went off the rails at the end.

Book Review | The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

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Title: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Author: Stephen Chbosky
Publication Date: 1999
Length: 206 pages
Genre: Epistolary, Diary Fiction, YA, coming-of-age
TW: Depictions of sex, rape, child abuse (molestation), mention of violence that led to death, violence, strong language, smoking, alchohol, non-consensual drugging, discussion of death (close family member), mental illness, ptsd, hospitalization, slurs (homophobic, sexist), homophobia, racism

The things about being one of the ‘weird kids’ is that reading a book with one as a protagonist will forever feel awkward and uncomfortable. Sometimes, the better the book the stronger the discomfort. And boy did this book leave me suffering from second-hand embarrassment. 

The Perks of Being a Wallflower introduces us to Charlie as he begins his freshman year, coming out of a year in which a close friend killed himself and navigating the strange and treacherous world of high school- befriending a group of seniors that open up a whole new world for him. He tells his story to an anonymous reader, through a series of ongoing letters. 

I loved the structure that this book took, something riding the line between epistolary fiction and a diary. We, as a reader, don’t know who Charlie is, and neither does the recipient of his letters. The two never meet and the communication is solely one-way, so the writing acts more as a self-exploration, even more so than an obvious attempt to connect with the outside world. 

Thankfully, the author doesn’t shy away from the consequences that come with this structure. Charlie is an awkward character, and this comes out in his naivete and his at-times-surprising oversharing. Additionally, his writing is stiff and clumsy at first, sounding exactly like a novice writer. It makes the beginning of the novel a little difficult at times, but it really does allow the reader to see just how much he grows through the course of the book. 

A lot of this growth is due to the group of seniors that he befriends. They’re an interesting mix of characters (with lgbt rep) and I appreciated the fact that none of them felt like character ‘types’. Chbosky is very good at capturing that strange mixture of wisdom and immaturity that comes from being a teenager, and applying that to his characters. They are people, warts and beauty marks and all. 

If there’s one thing that I might complain about, it’s that the realism was at times set aside for whatever reason. Charlie’s family feels fairly normal- yet in some respects his parents are the epitome of hands-off. Evidently there is no such thing as a curfew for this kid, as going out to a party at nine oclock on a school night, and being out of the house at any given point in time is no biggie. This interaction with the older group of kids was vital to the book and Charlie’s maturation in a lot of ways, but Charlie’s strange hours are never addressed at all, where I would expect it to at least cause some level of parental tension. And that part felt like a stretch, especially in a book that is so grounded in realistic depictions of topics. 

Despite this problem however, and the second-hand embarrassment Charlie kept putting me through all week, I really liked the book. It was one that stuck with me for a few days, pulling at my thoughts. I always know I’ve found a possible favorite when the book refuses to be put down even after the last page.