This month was an enormous reading month for me. Funnily enough, I finished absolutely no library books during my Spring Break, but managed to read a total of ten books while school was in session. I just can't do anything the easy way, I guess. And quite a variety of books too: science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, classics and children's stories. Quantity isn't everything, however; quality in books is also important of course! And for the first time since beginning my Book-of-the-Month reviews, I have more than one serious contender for Book-of-the-Month! As of this writing, I still have not decided which of the three books I'm going to pick for top honors. But I have to decide soon! I'll put stars by the titles of the books that ultimately receive the honors of first and second runner-up. If don't have time to read the reviews and just want to know what books I would recommend, scroll down to the bottom of the post where I have the list of titles along with appropriate links for more info.
So without any further ado, let's dive right in, shall we? Once again, books are listed in alphabetical order by their author's last name.
The Caves of Steel, by Isaac Asimov
I raced through this book. In fact, I managed to read it in one day, which is quite a feat considering that was a busy school day, work day, and the day I exercise at the school gym. I brought the book with me and spent an hour on the cycling machine just so I could read while I worked out, ha ha. This book is inventive, moves at breakneck pace, and is really thought-provoking as well as genuinely baffling--a murder mystery set in the far future (well, far in Asimov's time, anyway) involving two very different classes of humanoids, a variety of robots, and so many twists I nearly got dizzy. I possibly enjoyed this even more than "iRobot", mainly thanks to the very compelling and entertaining character duo of Lije Baley and R. Daneel Olivaw. I decided to not make this Book of the Month due to the surplus of excellent books this month and the fact that this is only the first book in a trilogy or something like that, so I am hoping the next books are even better!
*Something Wicked This Way Comes*, by Ray Bradbury
I've been meaning to read this book for years, so I'm glad I finally got around to it! In the beginning of the story I wasn't really impressed, for although the atmosphere and beautiful, lyrical style is all Bradbury at his finest, I wasn't really impressed with how the story was being told. It seemed too abstract, like Bradbury couldn't really decide whether what he was writing about was real, or a parable, or a dream, or whatever. Perhaps it was a deliberate attempt at being vague, but it didn't work for me; instead it distracted from the story itself. Once I managed to just relax into the poetry of Bradbury's writing, however, things got much better--particularly once the character of the father was introduced. I loved the character of Will's father. He really made this story come alive and immediate to me, and after that everything was pure magic and terror and exhilaration. The scene with Mr. Dark and Will's dad in the library is one of the most powerful and frightening things I've ever read; I re-read it multiple times before I was able to turn the page. The boys-wanting-to-be-men alone can't carry the story, but once they are paired to contrast and work with the father-who-is-wise-enough-to-be-afraid-of-the-fact-that-he-wishes-he-were-a-boy, the story just works. So although it ended on a bang, something about the execution of the first half or so of the story just didn't work for me, being more style than substance, and so I ultimately decided to NOT name this the Book of the Month--although it is vastly better than the last Bradbury stories I read, and there are parts of purest magic and marvel I don't like it as much as I adore "The Martian Chronicles".
High Wizardry, by Diane Duane
Aside from one stellar episode, I found this third installment of the "So You Want To Be A Wizard" series a bit flat. The idea of wizards deciding to update their magic by just downloading it all in program form into a computer is brilliant and quite funny, but Duane's method of including a side-character in each of her stories only to kill said character off in the end is getting old now that she's done it three times in as many stories. Also the end, although very reminiscent of "A Wrinkle in Time", was not quite as powerful as L'Engle's book, which further sapped the magic from "High Wizardry". I will read the fourth book, but if she introduces and kills a character and doesn't break from the pattern she's set for herself so far, I just might give up on the rest of the series, which is a pity, as I still really like the first book.
Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Another book whose parts ultimately proved greater than the whole. The idea of a spoof of the Apocalypse is just so nutty, and Gaiman and Pratchett pull it off with a decidedly British humor (very reminiscent of Monty Python and Douglas Adams in flavor) that frequently made me burst out laughing--at Crowley the not-quite-so-wicked-demon threatening his houseplants into growing properly, at the conversation between Aziraphale and Crawly the snake in the Garden of Eden at the beginning, at the idea that the Horseman of Plague threw in the towel after the invention of penicillin and had to be replaced by Pollution, and quite a few other tidbits. Still, the actual story itself seemed far too disjointed, with a myriad of characters that never quite found their center and so ultimately didn't quite work. This book was filled with funny and original ideas, but not so full of solid, well-paced plot. Also, some of the satire was just too irreverent for my taste. So although I enjoyed a lot of it, in the end I left the book feeling that "Good Omens" could have been a lot better.
Listen for Rachel, by Lou Kassem
This book was so boring, I don't even remember what happened in it. Something about a girl living during in Tennessee during the American Civil War, I think, and growing up. It felt like reading the outline of a potentially good story, not reading the final product. Quite a short read, too. So I'm still left hunting for good fiction set during the Civil War. I have yet to find a single novel, I think. Yes, "Gone With the Wind" doesn't count--I read it, and I really disliked it. I'm not ashamed to admit it. I don't see how anybody can enjoy reading about Scarlet, she's such a drama queen and frankly, if a character isn't going to develop at all over the course of a story, make it a short story, the reader will still get your point. Don't make me suffer through hundreds and hundreds of pages of Scarlet whining and treating people horribly. Gah.
An Earthly Knight, by Janet McNaughton
I got this book from the library because I glanced at the title and instantly thought "Tam Lin!" Sure enough, this is a retelling of my favorite Scottish ballad. How good a retelling is it? Well . . . as a story it isn't so bad, and in fact in many ways it's quite good, or at least decent. My biggest problem with the story is that I never really connected with the character of Tam Lin. After spending many pages getting the reader to care about Janet, McNaughton hardly has any Tam, . He just seems included as a side character to Janet, which doesn't do the captive knight justice at all in my opinion. In the climatic scene when Janet goes on her midnight ride to rescue her true love from the Fairy Queen, I was even slightly bored, and couldn't really understand in the context of the story why his rescue was so important. Whereas when I read or listen to the ballad, my heart pounds to the beat of the galloping hooves. At least this was a valiant effort, but "Fire and Hemlock" remains a better retelling, albeit it is modernized while this book was set in the appropriate time period.
Beowulf, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Of course this is by no means a book that could be read as a replacement to the real poem; as the daughter of a man who holds a doctorate in "Beowulf", I am a devoted fan of the original work, both in the original language and in translation (as translated by Seamus Heaney!). Sutcliff's retelling, however, is beautifully done, rich with her own special, lyrical use of words and her talent for both bringing heroes to very human life and keeping them heroic. It's a slim volume, designed as a children's introduction to Beowulf and his story, and as such it delivers completely. If I have children one day this is definitely going on their nursery shelf--right between Heaney's translation and Tolkien's "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" essay. Gotta train them while they're young.
Frontier Wolf, by Rosemary Sutcliff
Huzzah, a return to original Sutcliff novels! I really loved this book. Sutcliff's characters are always so real, her settings are so real, and the dilemmas her characters face are both mundane and profound, with the result that her books don't even feel like they were consciously written; they feel breathed, as natural as though I were seeing everything happen with my own eyes. This story was quite sad, with hard choices that reminded me of "Horselord", but uplifting too: Alexios' interactions with the British people were especially fascinating. Firm friendships are forged, and yet in times of war and foreign occupation even two close friends can be unexpectedly separated by the cultures they were raised to honor and politics that neither has control over. I was fully engrossed and rooting for Alexios' redemption for the entire novel, and left its pages feeling as though I had just made new friends of my own. In a normal scenario, this would have snagged Book of the Month without question; the fact that it does not this time just goes to show you how excellent so many books I managed to read this month were!
Aaaaaand finally: The Books of the Month! Yes, I have come to it at last and still cannot choose between my top two, so I'm going to make the unprecedented decision of sharing the top spot between my two favorite reads of March, which have both since joined my personal collection of books and read multiple times. Okay, are you ready? Here we go:
1. The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents, by Terry Pratchett
This book was like a "Watership Down" for rats, except told with its own winning flair and pathos as well as with dashes of Dickensian wit, and although ostensibly a children's story, it is actually full of extremely large and wonderful ideas, grown-up concepts and questions that are presented through the mouths and minds of a group of rats who, having learned to think, are now afraid of the dark, and of course Maurice the cat. In fact, this is not like "Watership Down" at all. Or, rather, it is like what "Watership Down" might have been like if the rabbits, instead of being determined to build their own rabbity colony, got ahold of a copy of "Wind in the Willows" and decided they wanted to live like that. Which is kind of what the ratty characters in "Maurice" do. Now I'm rambling and confusing even myself. This is not an easy book to summarize. It is, however, a brilliant book, a serious book, a funny book, and a book that doesn't talk down to its audience--in short, the perfect sort of book for children, that type which should be read by adults too and understood equally well by both groups, just on different levels. This book is strongly, strongly recommended. I was intrigued by it because of the premise: A talking cat, a clan of talking rats, and a boy street musician going from town to town pulling a Pied Piper scam--but upon reading was pleasantly surprised to find that there is far more to the story than its hilarious and genius storyline. And that's why it merits a spot at the top.2. Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman
Again, it's a nearly impossible book to describe. It's an adventure story--a quest--a mystery--a horror story--set in a dreamworld--a fantasy--a realistic novel--I could go on and on and still not quite manage to pin it down. In short, then: "Neverwhere" is the story of a man named Richard Mayhew, who after performing a kind deed for a stranger suddenly discovers that he's fallen through the gaps of the world and into an entirely different and fantastical world that lives under London, and while his quest throughout the book is ostensibly the quest to return back to his old, normal life, it's really a quest to define himself in a new world, and perhaps there make something of himself that he never managed to back in the world of London Above. There are a myriad of fantastic characters to help and/or hinder him, each with personal agendas of their own, and all now among my favorite book characters ever, particularly the Marquis with his complicated, suave scoundrel of a personality and the characters of Mr. Croup and Mr. Vandemar, who both made me laugh aloud and terrified me more than any fictional character has in a long time. I don't want to say any more for fear of revealing too much about the plot, but it's endlessly inventive, hugely fun, and very well-written. Aside from a few warnings about language, I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who likes a good story.
And with that, I'm done with March and ready for April! Happy reading, everyone!
Recommended Books for March: *Neverwhere*, *The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents*, Frontier Wolf, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and The Caves of Steel.
