What I'm Reading Now-The Jumbo 2010 Catch-Up/I-Spoke-Too-Soon Edition, Part V

Soooo, remember how I thought I was all done catching up on my 2010 reads with my last post?  Well, as I was assembling my Books Read in 2010 page, I realized that I had one more that never got reviewed here.  I did review it on Goodreads though, so I am just straight up going to copy and paste.  Not only does that save me a lot of time, but it also means that all the embedded links are going to take you to Goodreads.com

Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle-I don't really have too much to say about this book. I liked it a lot better than #3 in the series, A Swiftly Tilting Planet, but I still didn't love it. I understand why L'Engle's books endure-I think she does a great job of bringing sophisticated science to young readers in a way that is interesting-I can see how some kid might decide she wants to be a physicist or a mathematician after reading some of L'Engle's books, and I think that's great; however, I don't think she's a very good writer. I hate to say that, seeing as how I have no credentials to base that on and I didn't really notice it as much in the first three books, but I almost couldn't keep reading after the first 20 or so pages of Many Waters. Things just feel clunky and awkward and so very non-Mary-Doria-Russell. (File this under "things that are being unfairly compared toThe Sparrow") 

That said, I thought this was an interesting interpretation of the story of Noah and the ark. Sandy and Dennys Murry, the popular twin brothers of Meg and Charles Wallace, find themselves whisked away to Biblical times when they accidentally mess with one of their parent's experiments. As in L'Engle's other books, there are mythical creatures, like unicorns and manticores, right alongside her other characters. There are nephilim and seraphim, which I didn't know anything about, but I took them to be similar to angels and fallen angels or angels and demons-in-the-making. After some wikipedia-ing, I see that I pretty much had it right. 

Like A Wind in the Door, this book is filled with creatures that I think would capture the imaginations of younger readers, and I'm sure it would also promote some good discussions about both religion and science.

There.  NOW I am done!  Woohoo!

Tying Up Loose Ends

Well, here it is, the end of the year, heck, the end of the decade. What? I know! How did that happen? Wouldn't it be ironic if all of our computers conked out when they rolled over to 2010?

Anyway, I have a few things that I've thought about blogging over the course of the year that I never quite got to, so this will sort of be a wrap-up post of miscellaneous stuff to close out the year.

Miscellaneous Thing #1:

This might be my favorite picture of the year. In May I flew home to surprise my dad for his 60th birthday. My sister picked me up at the airport in Denver, and we drove down to my dad's house. My sister's friend, Big A, came along with us and brought her son, Little A, who is four. Like many four-year-olds, Little A has his security blanket, and he keeps a pretty tight leash on it. We got in late that night, and my dad's party was the next evening. Before the party, Dad decided to take a nap in his chair. Little A decided that my Dad might be cold, so he went to his bed, got his blanket, and covered up my dad. Then he went downstairs where there are various stuffed animals and brought several of them upstairs for my dad to sleep with. After this picture was taken, he topped it all off with a Hacky Sack on my dad's chest. 'Cause you never know when you might wake up and need a Hacky Sack.

Miscellaneous Thing #2:

We went to Oregon this summer for more tree climbing lessons, and I kind of surprised myself by not blogging about it; although I did post a couple of random pictures from our trip. I won't give you as much detail as I did about last year's lessons, but I did want to at least put in one or two pictures! I know, you're thinking, How much can there be to learn about tree climbing? Well, last year, we just learned the basics; this year we learned how to facilitate other people up into the trees and how to do rescues. We also got to play with saws in the trees, learning proper pruning techniques. I'll tell you what, there's nothing like hanging from a rope with a sharp cutting device in your hand to make you pay really close attention to where all your gear is at any given time! Here is a tree all set up for facilitation:

The rescues were hard work, and I really impressed myself by being able to get a line into a tree, get my rope up and tied, get my gear on, climb up, get over to my "victim," attach myself to my victim and get him lowered to the ground and unattached from me in under 17 minutes. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that, but I do have a picture of me relaxing in a tree boat, which was a lot nicer!

I'm not much of a morning person, but see how smiley I am? That's because this was the first time in about a week that I had gotten a decent night's sleep. Seriously. Hotel room=slept like crap. Tree boat=Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

After our class was over, our instructor took my husband climbing in a big Douglas fir. He would have taken me too, but I chickened out. Since it was such a high climb (about 200-250 feet) they were climbing single rope which involves a lot of gear compared to double rope, which is how I am more comfortable climbing. I hadn't done much single rope work, and the few times I had, I always had trouble switching over from ascending to descending devices, and I didn't want to get stuck 200-feet up, so I stayed on the ground and acted like I wasn't bummed about missing out on this climb. That's OK though, tree climbing really gives you a new appreciation for listening to your instincts, and my instincts were telling me not to go that day. So, some other day. Hubby had a great time though-here's a picture of him on the way up.

Miscellaneous Thing #3:

Missing book reviews-I've read a few books that I never got around to reviewing here, so I will do some quick summaries so that they're not hanging over my head come the new year.

The Gardella Vampire Chronicles by Colleen Gleason-I believe it was Chris's review of When Twilight Burns, the fourth book in the Gardella Vampire Chrinocles that piqued my interest in this series. I picked up the first one, The Rest Falls Away, and, if my Kindle history is anything to go by, quickly devoured the next three books in the series. That's the problem with the Kindle, when you get to the end of one book in a series it's so easy to just click, click and get the next book! It's not that the writing is that great, in fact I remember some of the dialogue being pretty bad, but it is quick fun reading with some fairly steamy love scenes, and I just might have to pick up a copy of the last book in the series, As Shadows Fade, now that I'm thinking about it.

Children of God by Mary Doria Russell-I finished reading this a few weeks ago, and I hate to admit it, but I didn't like it as much as The Sparrow. I knew this was a risk-The Sparrow is a hard act to follow. I've been agonizing over reviewing it because I'm actually thinking I might need to read it again to give it a fair review. For right now, I'll leave it at that, but I will come back and do a full review later...so much for tying up loose ends!

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions by Neil Gaiman-This is the first Gaiman book that I have read and finished (couldn't make it through American Gods) and I really liked it. I'm not normally a short-story gal, but I did enjoy most of the stories in here. There were a couple I didn't really care for and one that I didn't even finish because I just had no idea what was going on. A lot of short stories leave me feeling like the author didn't quite have it in him to write a whole novel, so he just sort of wrote down the ideas that he had for a story and then left it to the reader to fill in the missing parts; but with Gaiman I (mostly) felt like his stories were fully-realized stories, crafted with the end reader in mind. Be sure to read the Introduction, which itself includes a story as well as some background on the rest of the stories.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy-It was stark and desolate and depressing and beautiful and concise and I think I hated the ending. I'm not sure; I can't decide. I do think McCarthy did a wonderful job of capturing the minimal survivalist relationship between father and son-there's never much said, but there wouldn't be, would there, if you've been wandering a burned out planet for months? years? It's not like there's much to talk about other than how to stay alive for another day. And you know how much love is there and your heart breaks for the man who's trying to save his son and for the boy who has to live in this world and see the things that he sees. I haven't seen the movie, but I think Viggo Mortensen might be perfect in this role, and the fact that Robert Duvall is in it makes me want to cry! I love Robert Duvall!

The Gunslinger (Dark Tower #1) by Stephen King-I read this on the plane on the way home from my Dad's house, and it was good enough to keep me interested, but not great. It's sort of a western/alternate world/good vs. evil/horror, so I was curious to see where everything was going. I started reading book #2 in the series, The Drawing of the Three, but I just never really got into it. It was taking place more in this world than in the gunslinger world, and I just didn't really care. I feel bad about this because this is one of my husband's favorite series ever, and I'm sure it probably gets better as it goes, but for right now, I'm not ready to delve back in.

Miscellaneous Thing #4

Molokai Day 3-See, I told you I could give you a whole month of Molokai! This is another one that I will have to follow-up on in the new year. For now, suffice it to say that we had a glorious day hiking in the Kamakou Preserve with our guide, Bill, from The Nature Conservancy.

If you can think of any other miscellaneous things for me, let me know. I know 2009 was rough for a lot of people, and if you're one of those people, I hope 2010 is better. If you had a great 2009, well, I still hope 2010 is better for you!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

What I'm Reading Now-The Gargoyle

Cover of The Gargoyle

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson-What can I say about The Gargoyle? I'd heard so many good things about it, but I was so disappointed by it. The funny thing is, I don't necessarily think it was a bad book, I think it just suffered some timing issues. Here's a rough breakdown of my reading timeline:

Week 1: Reading The Gargoyle

Week 2-3: Reading The Sparrow (which I loved!) because my conscience finally kicked in and made me return The Gargoyle to the library.

Week 4-5: Slogging through the rest of my re-checked-out copy of The Gargoyle.

During Week 1, I was really enjoying The Gargoyle-I thought it was interesting and that the narrator was funny in a dark, cynical kind of way. He's been badly burned in a car accident, and his ensuing hospital recovery is filled with his wry acceptance of the fact that he will probably not be able to return to his career as a porn star as well as lots of interesting medical facts. For instance, did you know that burn victims go through a period of hypermetabolism when they're healing, thus "...a body that normally requires two thousand calories a day can consume seven thousand after a severe burn."? I didn't either!

So, this book is filled with interesting little tidbits like that along with some pretty gruesome narration about the things that happen to a burned body, both during the actual burning of the flesh as well as during the recovery period. The book is also full of stories told by Marianne Engel, the seemingly crazy woman who comes to visit our narrator in the hospital. She claims that they have known each other in previous lives and proceeds to tell him all of their fateful love stories, trying to convince him that she is, in fact, not crazy and that they do really know each other. I didn't really care one way or the other. It's not that the stories were bad--in fact I rather liked some of them--or that I couldn't suspend my disbelief for this possibility, but I kept thinking how much I liked The Sparrow and how much this paled in comparison. The writing seemed flat and I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, but, oddly enough, there were a lot of things that both books had in common.

-They both had main characters for whom words are their life. In The Sparrow, Father Emilio Sandoz is a linguist and in The Gargolye the narrator is a writer and a smooth-talker of women. At some point in each of their stories, their words, the one thing that they have always been able to count on, fail them miserably.

-In The Gargoyle, Marianne's 14th-century self discovers at an early age that she has a gift for translation, much like The Sparrow's Sandoz for whom languages come easy.

-Both The Gargoyle and The Sparrow address suffering as it pertains to religion. The Sparrow brings up questions of how God can allow so much suffering and The Gargoyle discusses suffering as a way to become closer to God.

-Both books have characters that are described as resembling Raggedy Ann/Andy dolls. That's kind of weird, right?

-Both books have characters who question celibacy and the church-is it right and/or necessary to deny the love of and for another of God's children in order to serve God?

So, while you would think it might be good to have a lot of things in common with something that I enjoyed so much...you'd be wrong. I felt like The Sparrow was what The Gargoyle wanted to be when it grew up; but, as I said earlier, I think this mostly just suffered from timing issues. I think if I'd read it at another time, I might have liked it better. The Gargoyle suffered the fate of many a rebound relationship. No matter how good it is, it's going to suffer strain under the constant comparison to your last relationship. That said, The Gargoyle seems like a perfectly nice guy. He's had a bit of a sordid history, but he's cleaned up his act, and he's got a good sense of humor. He just wasn't right for me. But you might like him!

Random favorite quote that I was too lazy to couldn't fit in anywhere else: "...against stupidity even the gods struggle in vain." See what I mean? Good sense of humor!

Reviews and other stuff:

Ann at Books on the Nightstand (podcast portion starts around 3:29) gives us some interesting background on the book.

Joanne at The Book Zombie tells us about a song that reminds her of The Gargoyle.

Jessica at Both Eyes Book Blog examines some of the historical aspects of the book.

Ali at Worducopia gave us some thoughts during her read as well as a final mini review.

Fond of Snape loved it!

Did you review The Gargoyle? Let me know, and I'll add a link to your review.