October Books That "Did Not Make the Grade"

As this month comes to a close, I am sad that I was not able to review as many books as I would have liked, but I am reading one now that is sure to please for next month!

In the mean time, here are the two novels that unfortunately "did not make the grade:"

Reconstructing Amelia by Kimberly McCreight: I liked the concept and how the character's could easily be seen with individual personalities, but there were a few problems that left me uninterested in continuing to read.  The biggest problem was that the storyline did not hold my interest; it reminded me of the film, "Mean Girls"  but with a sadder twist.  I was hoping my mind would be changed but some of the characters irritated me and I didn't care to learn more about what really happened.

The Translator by Nina Schuyler:  To be honest, I fell out of reading this novel because I wasn't sure where the plot was going, although it was written very well.  I can definately say that I would try reading this book again, maybe when I have a little more patience in finding out where the plot leads us.

Happy Halloween (for tomorrow) and I look forward to writing more next month!

~Shelly-Beans

Relative Identity by Holly Patrone

Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Date of Publication: January 15^th, 2013

Memorable Quotation: “It was Saturday night and people were jammed so closely that it would take a crowbar and a vat of petroleum jelly to navigate the crowd, and from the looks of it, half of them would have enjoyed the combo way too much.” (pg. 63)

Lasting Impression: Great humor, good characters, but sometimes a little corny, Relative Identity is an easy, enjoyable read for anyone who can relate with the curveballs life throws at the most inconvenient of moments!

Storyline: A-

Pace: B+

Characters: A+

Ending: B-

Overall: A-

When a spouse passes away, it is always hard for the survivor to live everyday to the fullest without thinking about their late significant other.  However, what if they never really left, and were always watching, for better or for worse?  That is the conundrum that April Serao faces everyday as she deals with her deceased husband Sal, now an angel after dying from a vigorous round of birthday sex six years ago. 

Not spiteful in the least, Sal watches over April, which is sweet and all but since she is the only one who can see him when he visits her, most would think she worries that her new boyfriend, Jack, and her three sons consider her crazy for talking to herself.  Things get a bit crazier, though, when April is told that her deceased husband’s identity has been stolen and only through numerous haphazard events and humorous occurrences does April find the culprit behind the theft and the real reason why Sal continues to watch over her.

The pace of the novel is nice and easy, so much so that you feel like April is one of your friends, telling you a crazy story.  The other characters are also relatable, each having their own quirk and identity to set them apart from everyone.  What I loved most about Relative Identity was the way you could really engross yourself into the Serao’s family life and relate to them as if they were your own.

Although I loved the storyline and the characters, I had two problems with the other aspects of the novel.  First, the dialogue does not always flow naturally and second, the ending is not the big bang the characters try to make it out to be.  Instead, the ending seemed forced compared to the easy flow most of the novel held.

This is a nice novel, overall; there are no deep topics to sit and contemplate, no confusing plot twists, but its simplicity is what gives it such depth.  Although some parts are overly-exaggerated for stock value, Relative Identity is a fun novel based around humor and how family should always stick together, especially in the strange, amusing circumstances the Serao family faces.

~Shelly-Beans

The Other Face: Experiencing the Mask edited by Wendy Klein and Brent Robinson

Genre: Psychology/Literature

Date of Publication: January 1, 2003

Memorable Quotation: “The mask’s purpose is not necessarily to hide the individual but to allow a particular aspect of the individual; to be communicated with greater focus and intensity.” (pg. 19, A Humanist Critique of the Mask by Sophie Rogers-Gessert)

Lasting Impression: The concept of the mask is brought to new light in this amazing collection that explains how the mask is not only a physical, but also something that wear psychologically without ever realizing it.

Accessibility: B

Content: A-

Creativity: A+

Layout: B-

Overall Grade: B+

If I have anything negative to say about this book, it is instantly lessened by the sheer fact that this book exists! It has been almost impossible for me to find anything about the mask and it’s history, meanings, and origins but while attending the NY Renaissance Faire a month ago, I was visiting my favorite booth, the Wendy Drolhma mask booth, and found this book.

This collection includes short stories, poetry, essays, and quotes about the physical mask we see at Mardi Gras, the mask that some say can be being a second skin that transforms you into a completely different person, or even a rouge for authenticity. Some of the sections about the mask are analyzations of what the mask means while others do not mention the mask at all, other than the title of the piece, but if you look unto the deeper meaning of the story, the mask does present itself.  For instance, one of my favorite stories was The Mask by Mark Sherman, in which he describes the sensation of putting on a mask and experiencing yourself as a different individual, although you have only put a mask on yourself. 

What confused me most about this collection was the layout.  The stories were not in one section while the poems were in another; everything was scattered around, making it difficult to find a rhythm throughout the book.  There were pictures of masks that seemed to be randomly inserted in places and I didn’t like how disorganized it felt. 

I must say that overall I was pleasantly surprised with this collection because I honestly was not sure what to expect.  The fact that there are so many different viewpoints of the mask is fascinating and even if there were a few things that bothered me, as I said before I am so happy that this book exists and hopefully this review can get the popularity for this book that it deserves.  

~Shelly-Beans

The Wall of the Sky, The Wall of the Eye by Jonathan Lethem

Genre: Short Stories/Science Fiction

Date of Publication: March 5, 2007

Memorable Quotation: “Hell doesn’t have a ‘before.’ Hell is stuck in time, repeating endlessly. Hell doesn’t have a past. It just is.” (From Happy Man, pg. 19)

Lasting Impression: Lethem had some very creative ideas strung throughout his stories but his decision to not give more attention to them made his work suffer. 

Overall, over the seven short stories:

Storyline: C

Pace: B-

Characters: B-

Ending: C-

Overall: C+

This was another piece of literature that was highly recommended to me that I, honestly, could not appreciate as much as my friend did.  As I said earlier, the ‘gimmicks’ Lethem strung through the stories were extremely creative but he did not focus on them like he should have, so his stories just came out being out of balance and confusing, leaving holes for the reader to fill themselves. 

There were seven short stories and only one of them I thought was successful in executing a story that was cohesive, rich with detail, and had an unusual circumstance that was consistent throughout the story.  The rest, unfortunately, each had a fatal flaw that made it difficult to read.

Before I give the brief story descriptions, you may be wondering why I read the entire collection when I said I did not enjoy most of them in the first place.  The reason is because once I get halfway through a book, there is no turning back for me (unless the story becomes excruciating).  Honestly, there was promise of real creativity in these stories, but I felt that Lethem did not let the ideas mature so he only gave the reader the scraps of what he had thought of, not giving any real dimension or originality to them. 

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To start, the first short story is The Happy Man, my friend’s favorite out of the collection.   The narrator is a man whose soul is torn between his own personal Hell and Earth and when he is in Hell, his body on Earth is a zombie; able to keep his job and bring in income for his wife but do nothing else of interest.   The man’s Hell is very creative, the characters in it are unique but the details as to how he died and why his soul is divided between the two worlds is never told.  The twist at the end is mediocre, and only brings more questions than answers so overall, I liked the story but I could not understand the hype about it.

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The next story is Vanilla Dunk.  The idea is that all of the great basketball players skills, including Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain, are passed down by imbuing them into exosuits, which are given to players in the beginning of each season but each suit is only used once.  A white player, who gives himself the nickname Vanilla Dunk, gets the coveted Michael Jordan exosuit, which causes racial tension among the players. If you are a fan of basketball, you will love and appreciate the idea behind this story but I only know the basics of the sport so I could only get into it so much as much.  The pace is slow, the story is pretty good, but the focus on the exosuits are only really discussed in the beginning and end, leaving me to read about all of these games and strategies I could care less about instead of the interesting twist that is left on the back burner. 

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Light and the Sufferer is the third story.  Two brothers are involved in a robbery over drugs, one an innocent bystander, Paul, the other a drug dealer, Don.  A Sufferer, a harmless alien that reminded me of Toothless from How to Train Your Dragon, has one purpose: to follow those that are troubled and protect them, so one begins following Don after the robbery occurs.  (That may not be right but that is what I understand their purpose to be.) Everyone can see the Sufferer, but not much more detail is given about them, for the story circles around Paul’s insistance on leaving for California before things get worse.  Of course, they do, and the story just becomes violent and pointless.  Honestly, this really wasn’t much of a story, and the only reason I finished it was because the Sufferer is rather amusing and created light in this dark world.

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Next is Forever, Said the Duck, the shortest and most confusing of the seven stories, also my least favorite. From what I could understand, a couple invites their lovers from their past to a huge party as means of saying goodbye to their past the night before their wedding.  The pace is very fast and with so many characters, it is pointless to try and remember anything about anyone.  I have no idea where they were or what happened in the story because of how strange everything gets, so this is a story only those with an appreciation for the artistic and abstract can handle.

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The fifth story is Five Fucks, which I loved at first but towards the middle, everything twists into a completely different story, throwing me for a loop.  The first storyline, the one I loved and understood, followed a girl who meets a guy at a bar and spends the night with him.  The next day, when she gets home, she finds there is a Missing Persons report about her because she had allegedly been gone for two weeks, when she had only thought was one night.  After staying with him a second time and losing more of her sense of time, she files a missing persons report on herself and then things just get messy…a girl and guy wake up in dumpsters, then there are monsters and a village and I can’t even tell you what happens because I just don’t get it.  This would have been my favorite story, if it didn’t take a turn for the worst.

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Hardened Criminals is the sixth story, and definitely my favorite one.  The narrator, Nick, is sent to prison after being an accomplice in a robbery but not any prison. What makes this prison different is the prisoners that died there are put into cement and used as building blocks for the prison.  Only their backs, feet, and back ends are seen on the outside but on the inside, their heads pop out of the cement, and with chips in their brains, they can still speak.  Nick is first sentenced to the hole, a dark tower where all around are talking heads but after a week, he is taken into the regular prison where only one wall has the heads, one of them being his father’s.  The pace was good, Lethem kept with the concept of the heads, and the story was great; even the ending wrapped up everything nicely; I definately give him kudos for this one.

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The last story, Sleepy People, had an interesting concept but Lethem, once again, barely touched upon it. A woman comes home from work to find a man sleeping on her front porch to find out from a coworker that he is a ‘sleepy person’ and they are very warm individuals who help plants grow. (Yeah, that’s all of a description I got about them.) There is a military and dinosaurs and once again, I have no idea what is going on.  The plot has no direction, the characters are one dimensional, and the ending comes out of left field so sadly, I was not a fan.

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As I said before in one of the mini summaries, this is a collection for those of you who welcome a surreal landscape with the plot ready to twist at any moment. I saw what Lethem was trying to do with his concepts, and I can definitely appreciate his work, but his style and train of thought are a little much for me to handle.

~Shelly-Beans

The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

Genre: Fiction/YA Romance

Date of Publication: January 10, 2012

Memorable Quotation: “The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.” (pg. 312)

Lasting Impression: I laughed, I cried, I felt so much love and emotion toward Augustus and Hazel!  When I finished this novel, I needed a moment of silence to revel in the brilliance of the story. This is, by far, John Green at his finest.

Storyline: A

Pace of Story: A

Characters: A++ (Most well-rounded characters I have experienced in a LONG time!)

Ending: A++ (Best ending I have EVER experienced!)

Overall: A++

As most of you may, or may not know, John Green is another of my favorite authors.  I fell in love with his writing when I read Looking for Alaska and continued to love and appreciate his work in The Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns.  However, with The Fault in Our Stars, he really outdid himself. 

The Fault in Our Stars is about two teenage cancer survivors, Augustus Waters and Hazel Grace Lancaster, who first meet at a cancer support group.  Augustus falls for Hazel immediately and with a little time, Hazel allows herself to fall for him too.  I know this sounds like your regular love story because I thought it was just that too when I read the book jacket but once you get into it, you realize it contains so much more.

One of the best things about the story is that these characters are SO relatable. It is almost ridiculous how realistic these characters are and how involved I became in their lives, feeling like a part of their family.  As I continued reading, I loved how Green integrated the message that Cancer is just a disease for these two amazing people, it would not ruin their lives or make them look for pity as they tried live their lives they best they could.

In a novel surrounded by the sadness of terminal illnesses, it is important to have some humor in it, and the conversations Augustus and Hazel had made me laugh aloud multiple times with their rants reminding me of Clerks because of the debates they would have over the most mundane of things. (For example, Why are scrambled eggs locked into being a breakfast food?)

The characters, their interactions, and the pace make this story incredible, but the ending is what really seals the deal. What made this ending so perfect was this rare moment of love that is almost never exposed to the other person because our most secret thoughts about that person can only be revealed after we have gone, and most of the time they are never written down so they are lost when we die. This time, though, those thoughts are written down and when they are read, the person they were written about will know from the bottom of their heart that even if their love on this earth only existed for a short period of time, it did exist, and that’s all that mattered.

This is my favorite kind of book because it goes beyond any genre. I love a novel that makes me feel something, one that makes me feel like I have known these characters all my life, and I felt that and so much more as I was read The Fault in Our Stars. 

These characters accepted their fate more than I could; here I am crying when bad things happened but then one of them would say subtextually, “This is the way it is meant to be, okay?” All I could say was “Okay,” in return.

~Shelly-Beans