Book Review: Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card

Goodreads

Rating: 5/5 stars

Pages: 380

Published: 1985

Before I start this review, I would like to say that I do not believe, agree, or condone any of the author’s ideas on sex, gender, and sexuality.  I feel terribly sad that someone uses their influence as a widely read author to spread harmful ideas.

That is why it took me so long to read this book. I don’t think I would have read it if I hadn’t got it as a gift. Also, Asa Butterfield helped. He is all my heart desires to play Artemis Fowl. Okay, let’s move on with the review.

Over all, I really liked this book. It was one of the best Science Fiction books I read, and I’ve read quite a lot of them in my time (actually, it is a genre I want to go back to reading. I miss it.) Not exactly because of the brilliance of the plot and of the characters, which were actually quite simple, but mainly because of the amazing twists. And also because it is very well structure and makes sense world-wise. There are some Science Fiction books that simply cannot reach a level of internal coherence so needed for the genre and they end up sounding fake. This world, even though we who live and breathe technology may find some aspects impossible, is very coherent as a story and as a world.

So, let’s take a look at the positive aspects of Ender’s Game:

- As I just mentioned, it is coherent. And it is a very gripping story. I always wanted to read another page just to know what was going to happen to Ender and what the next step of his training was going to be. I found myself completely immersed in the characters and the story and sometimes hooting for good things to happen.

- It has the right amount of explanation. We know what happened –an alien invasion that almost killed our entire species- and we know what is happening. We also get to know what is happened behind the curtains, the political tension our world is going through and what is at stake. The explanation is not over-the-top or too little, and it gets mixed with the story and we form the picture of the situation as the story progresses.

- There is an interesting view on technology and social networking. However, it does seem a little far-fetched for someone who is immerse in the world of blogging and online communities.

- And, for me, one of the best features of this book was the big plot twist at the end. After you read it you realize that the entire book was just building up to it, and if you had paid only a little bit more of attention to the small details and weird pieces of conversation you would have figured it all out. And that was amazing: how, in hindsight, everything was there, but reading it you let it all slip past you. Very well done.

Now, for the negative aspects:

- I felt the characters to be a little too young and sometimes it was really easy to forget how young they were.

- Now, my biggest issue was the underlying misoginy presente in the entire book. I almost stopped reading it in the beginning when the very memorable line of ‘Too many centuries of evolution working against them’ is said. Of course, ‘them’ is girls. Now, I don’t know what you consider as centuries of evolution working against me, but I am pretty sure a girl could do all the things Ender did. And not only ‘could’. There is a lot of women out there who do belong to the army, who are in wars and fight for what they believe in. And THAT is, and will always be as long as it proceeds, my biggest issue with Science Fiction and Fantasy books: it doesn’t matter how far away in the future the story is set, the authors use the same outstandily stupid gender role mentality. There is no evolution when it comes to equality. And not only of gender, but of race, sexuality, religion, among others. It is completely unbelievable.

However, I didn’t stop reading and I’m actually glad I didn’t. I had a lot of fun reading this book and I would absolutely recommed it. Oh, and don’t forget to watch the movie as well. It is very different from the book (when is it not?), but very interesting as well!

Book Review: The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah

Goodreads

Summary: " Hercule Poirot's quiet supper in a London coffeehouse is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered.  She is terrified – but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done.

Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at a fashionable London Hotel have been murdered, and a cufflink has been placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim..."

Let me say this straightaway: I was very disappointed with this book. It did not deserve to have 'Agatha Christie' written on the cover. It is not an Agatha Christie book and it is not an Agatha Christie pastiche. I sincerely don't know what it is.

Ok, that doesn't mean that Agatha Christie's novels are perfect. In no way they are. Yes, they have plot holes, there are some things that you honestly can't help but think: 'yeah, it makes sense, but in no way it would have been that easy to pull off'. However, they are incredibly entertaining. And what makes them even more entertaining is the human factor. The characters are three-dimensional and you can feel them. As the Doctor say in 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', Christie is good because she understands.  And she also makes us understand. A complex murder normally has a very simple explanation and a straightforward reason. You can see why the person was dead and you can see how the murderer pulled it, even if you not quite think everything would be that simple.

The mystery and the solution of this book are so convoluted you simply cannot accept it. The back story that made set everything in motion is so ridiculous that I simply couldn't believe that three people would be killed because of that. I also do not think it would have reached the proportions it did. They talk about it like it was this huge disaster and I was expecting something a lot more serious.

Another thing that didn't work for me was the narrator. Catchpool has to be the most annoying, idiotic narrator and the most dumb police officer in the history of mystery novels. He not only leaves the crime scene unprotected because he cannot deal with the dead bodies, he has to complain all the time and not do any detecting whatsoever. He expects all the answers to be handed to him by Poirot. He also has a "dark" past, which is shown to us with lots of italics. The author makes a big deal of it and then tell us what it is by chapter three. And when we do find out what the problem is it is something so unimportant I simply cannot understand the relevance of it to the plot.

Have I mentioned that he does not do any detecting? Because he doesn't. He goes to the village where the whole story started and then keeps complaining that everybody is avoiding him. He spends the most part of the journey whining. I don't think it ever crosses his mind to go to the village's constabulary, that's how good he is at his job.

However, my biggest problem of all was not with Catchpool or the mystery itself. It was with Poirot. Simply because it was not Poirot. It was a character that shares a name with him. Not only this Poirot only drinks coffee, he also gets annoyed, red in the face, and screams at people every too often. He doesn't explain how he came to his conclusions and only repeats the same facts over and over.

The last 100 pages consist of every character telling the same story and Poirot 'explaining' what happened to a clueless audience and a clueless Catchpool. The denouement takes forever. By the time we actually get to know what happened I was so bored that I didn't care about it anymore. I just wanted the book to be over.

I'm really disappointed with it. I don't know why the choice of a new narrator, much less one so idiotic as this one. I would have preferred Hastings. Yes, Hastings is not smart, but he is not a Scotland Yard detective as is Catchpool. I don't understand how this person got to be in Scotland Yard in the first place and why he chose to be a police officer to start with.

Honestly, it was a big waste of time. But, what can I say, I couldn't resist a new Poirot novel and, to be completely honest, if there are more books to this series, I'll probably read them too. I know, I don't learn with my mistakes. But there is always the hope that it will get better. 

Rating: 2 stars

Treesofreverie's Read-A-Thon - Days 1 and 2

April, 24^th

During the first day of the read-a-thon, I set down to read ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time” by Mark Haddon. I wanted to read the whole book in one day but, unfortunately, real life got in the way. I managed to read 110 pages only. I finally finished it during the second day of the read-a-thon.

I am kind of in love with this book. It is funny, poignant, full of twists, and told by a very reliable first person narrator (if there is such a thing, but the narrator himself says he does not tell lies, because telling lies makes no sense). Even if he were a totally unreliable narrator, one couldn’t help but like him and trust what he is saying.

Christopher has autism and a life full of rules and patterns. He does not like when the patterns are broken, when someone touches him, nor the colors yellow and brown. His neighbor’s dog, Wellington, is killed one night, so he decides that he will solve his murder in the style of his favorite detective (someone in possession of a logic and clear mind), Sherlock Holmes. As he sets out to detect (as he often says), he discovers a lot about himself, his family, and the world around him.

It is a story full of ups and downs, mistakes, and changes. Christopher is a lovely character and narrator and the way he sees the world is unique, unique in its simplicity and its complexity. I lovely read for all those who are looking for a nice and thoughtful read.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Now I’m off to read ‘The Adventures of Tom Bombadil’ and ‘Shatter Me’

Book Review: Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Goodreads

I read this book for the 2014 Book Genre Challenge.

I'm going to say it right away: I did not like this book. While I didn't hate it to pieces to warrant a 1 star rating, I thought it was boring, racist, and it made me really uncomfortable. I did not like the characters nor the story and, which is worse, I couldn't believe the characters nor the story. To me, the characters felt flat and the story unrealistic.

This review will be me commenting the thoughts that I had while reading the book. If you loved this book and you don't want to read a negative opinion about it, I suggest you stop this review now. I don't have many nice things to say about it. Also, this review may contain spoilers and it does contain quotes from the book. 

• A+ for Park in the beginning. New girl and all he can think is that she looks like a scarecrow. For one who is afraid the other kids will pick on him, he can be extremely mean;
• 'Especially not for someone like this'. A+ again, Park. That's the spirit!
• 'the Asian kid'. Not 'the guy' or whatever. 'The Asian kid'. And it goes on for the entire duration of the book. While I give Rowell my congratulations for trying to portray the racism and prejudice that Asian citizens of the US had to endure during that time (and sadly still have to endure now), there is no need to remind us at every page that his Asian by saying 'Asian kid' or 'Asian boy'. And the worse is that this is how Eleanor describes him on her head: the Asian boy;
• I didn't like how we know close to nothing about Park's mom. Park doesn't know much about his mom or her culture!
• Now, this is a peeve of mine, but I hate that every foreigner character in books speaks the same way. They can live in a country for ages, but they don't know the most basic grammar rules of the English language. I'm not talking about accents, there's nothing wrong with those. There is nothing wrong with making mistakes as well, but you don't need to make one mistake after the other only because you are not a native speaker! Your foreign characters don't need to be written like that, there will be other things to define them, like their culture! Which Rowell completely forgot;
• Oh, the bullshit!
• 'Asia is out-of-control huge'. Yup, nice way to describe it;
• 'Whatever perversion coused him to like her'. Yes, that totally makes me buy the whole 'they're completely in love' thing;
• I liked how Eleanor wanted to tell him 'that he was prettier than any girl' (yes, that was sarcasm). Why? Because he's Asian, of course!
• And, if you had forgotten Park was Asian, his almond flavored eyes would remind you of that, and the way they almost desappeared when he smiled, or his skin, or his ninja magic, or... I'll just stop here. Eleanor almost objectifies Park and the fact that he is Asian, it was something that really bothered me when I was reading;
• This next bit made me really, really, really angry for a number of reasons. It was the Dainty China people and how Park's mother reminded Eleanor of one. And also how Park's father 'sneaked her [Park's mom] out of Korea in his pocket'. Seriously, I screamed with the book during this bit. I couldn't believe that! I guess it could be an attempt from Rowell of showing the way Asian people are stereotypied ands seen as the 'other', the 'different', thus something that needed to be romanticized. But then I saw it wasn't. Eleanor stopped looking at Mindy as a person and started seeing her as something that could be smuggled out of a country. And then I read Rowell's reasons as to why Park is Korean and I saw this: 

                   'So … in Eleanor & Park, Park’s dad gets sent to Korea because his brother has died in combat                                    in Vietnam. He meets his soulmate there. And he brings her home.'

       

         No, ok. No. It wasn't home for her. No, she is not an object to be 'sneaked out of Korea'. She is  a            person. One who left her cultural identity, family, and language back to go home with the man she                 loved. But a woman with a solid cultural background that is hardly ever mentioned, if ever mentioned at         all, who only seems to be there to make Park half Koren so he can whine about it;

• Then Eleanor starts wondering where the slim girls keep their organs... 
• Park goes 'weird white girls are my only option' and 'it was nice to have the most popular girl in the neighborhood offering herself to him every now and then.' And people wonder why I don't like him;
• Oh, he also goes 'He'd thought that he was over caring what people thought about him. He'd thought that loving Eleanor proved that'. And people wonder why I don't think they were in love...
• Eleanor says Park looked as dangerous as Ming the Merciless;
• 'Nobody thinks Asian guys are hot' and 'Asian girls are different. White guys think they're exotic' and 'Everything that makes Asian girls seem exotic make Asian guys seem like girls' made me want to throw the book against the wall (I only didn't because I was reading the book on my Kobo). I could spend a long time talking about fetishzation of Asian women (and all other 'different' women) and how dangerous it is to put something like this lightly on a book, but I guess you can see that for yourself;
• The ending felt bland. I didn't like how the writings on her book were only solved in the end and how absolutely nothing was done about it, how her siblings would remain in the care of a abusive alcoholic guy, and how Park's father let him drive Eleanor alone at 2am.

I didn't like the book, but I also didn't hate it to pieces (because there were some interesting aspects - such as the huge difference between their families and its influence on their relationship -, even though they were underused and underdeveloped in my opinion). So my rating is:

2 out of 5 stars.

Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins

Goodreads

'Anna and the French Kiss'... This was my second attempt at reading this book. I couldn't focus on it, nor get interested in it, during the first attempt. Now, as I joined Booktown Bookclub, I thought I'd give it another go. Sadly, it didn't get any better for me. I still didn't like it and couldn't get into it. 

Things I liked:

• I loved the descriptions of the places! One thing the book did great in my opinion was to make me feel as if I were in Paris. It was great. I loved the places and how Anna saw them. It was lively and believable. The descriptions made me feel as if the story was actually happening and that I were watching it unfold;
• I also liked the description of the characters. I felt like Perkins wanted to give as much detail about the characters as possible, but also did not want to overdo it. And she didn't. I really enjoyed the way the characters were described and I liked she left some details to our imagination;
•  I liked the culture shock Anna experienced. Not only when she went to Paris, but when she went back home as well. 

Things I didn't like:

• Actually, the whole storyline. I'm not really a fan of romance books, but if the story and the characters are interesting, I have nothing against them. The thing is, I didn't find neither the story nor the characters interesting;
• I did not like Anna in the slightest, especially the whole 'she's not like the other girls' thing. She is annoying, always judging other people, she got angry with her friend for 'stealing' her 'boyfriend' and then she did the same thing. I did not like the character at all;
• Of course St. Clair had to be the hottest, most well loved boy in school. Why not?
• Ellie. I have nothing against Ellie. She was hardly ever present, only mentioned. She  turned her back on her friends, went away, and never got in touch again. This, of course, was only there so Anna could appear to be a nice girl and we would be hooting for her and St. Clair to be together;
• The whole cheating thing. I absolutely abhor cheating. It doesn't matter if they're the main characters and we wan them to be togehter. I'd like St. Clair to be braver and act on his feeling. He should have broken up way sooner than that. Also, he was cheating on his girlfriend (yes, cheating: he was flirting and sleeping with Anna, and he kissed Anna when he was still with Ellie), I'm not sure if I'd trust him;
• The whole high school drama. This was the point when I started rolling my eyes;
• The background characters that are only there to make Anna company or something and to say how great St. Clair was;
• The mushy part (but that is me, I don't like it).

Overall, I found the idea to be interesting, the descriptions are great, but the book, in my opinion, didn't meet my expectations.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Book Review: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

Goodreads

This book is part of my reading for the 2014 Book Genre Challenge.

I chose to read this book for the Contemporary challenge first because I an a fan of Sherman Alexie's work and second because this seemed to be a very nice read!

• The overall story. I really enjoyed to know Junior and his life and difficulties and how he overcame some of his problems;
• How the cartoons complemented the story and, sometimes, even showed us what happened in the story instead of the narrator's voice;
• First person is always good for this kind of book, it helps us to see what the character is feeling in his own words and perspective. Junior's perspective is unique and funny and helps us understand better the world we live in;
• As much as I liked the way Junior told the story, I admit it took me some time to get used to it. However, when I did, I really enjoyed the whole story. 

Rating: 4 stars out of 5

February Wrap Up

This month I read the total of 8 books! They are:

• Across the Universe by Beth Revis. I read this book for the 2014 Book Genre Challenge. I liked the story and the characters. I just had some issues with how some things in the book were dealt (or, in this case, not dealt) with . You can find my review here. 
• The Maze Runner by James Dashner.  I also read this book for the 2014 Book Genre Challenge. I didn't enjoy this book so much, I think some aspects of it were underused and I would like to have had the chance to understand the mystery as it unravelled, not have the answers thrown at me in the end. You can find my review for it here. 
• The Vile Village by Lemony Snicket. Seventh book in the 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' books written by Daniel Handler under the name Lemony Snicket (read the books and you'll find out why this is so amazing). 
• The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  I am very sad to say that I really didn't enjoy this book. I simply couldn't get into the story and everything felt so flat and boring to me. I have a review here. 
• Angels in America, Part Two: Perestroika by Tony Kushner. In a word: amazing! Loved it, really. I totally recommed this play. Read it. And the first part as well!
• Insurgent by Veronica Roth. The second book in the Divergent trilogy was also read for the 2014 Book Genre Challenge. In my opinion, it was slightly less interesting than the first one. However, we finally start having some world build! You can read my review here. 
• Tiger's Curse by Collen Houck. First book of the Tiger Saga series. I had mixed feelings about this book: on one hand, I liked the adventure and the mythological aspects; on the other hand, I really disliked some aspects of the story and of the characters. You can read my review here.  
• The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Sicket. Yet another book in the 'A Series of Unfortunate Events' adventures. In this book, the Baudelaire siblings delve further into the mystery of the fire that killed their parents and into the unfortunate events that seem to rule their life at the moment. 

Those were the books I read this month. If you want to see the books I've read so far this year, you can always check out my 2014 reads!

What did you read in February?