Review:Dreadnought

After reading Boneshaker I knew I had to read the rest of the Clockwork Century series. Don’t let the fact that they are part of a series fool you all three books can act as a standalone so you do not need to read all of the books to understand what happens in the next book.

Dreadnought takes place during the Civil War. Mercy worked in VA at a Rebel hospital when she receives two devastating pieces of news. First that her husband who was fighting on the Union side was killed. Second is that her father who lived in Seattle and is dying wanted to see her. So she sets off on the journey.

The journey should be easy right? Go south then go west. But it is anything but. Things start to go wrong from the get go. First her dirigible crashes then it is one thing after another. She finally reaches St Louis and manages to catch a train the Dreadnought west. The Dreadnaught is a Union train so she keeps her southern sympathies hid. They say that the Dreadnought is on a purely civilian mission but as things start happening it becomes clear that is not the case. Mercy but figure out what the real purpose of the train is before they are all killed.

I have to be honest I loved this book. I think I may have found a new favorite genre. There were some elements that were the same as boneshaker but you did not have to read boneshaker to follow this book. There were not as many zombies and such in this book as there was in Boneshaker. I felt that the reader felt there was more danger in boneshaker than there were in Dreadnought.

The author weaves the alternate history parts together seamlessly into the story so that you were not jarred every time something out of the ordinary happened. It all had a nice flow to it.

While I might not be a die hard feminist I do like a story that has a strong female character. Mercy in Dreadnought is a very strong character, She shows times and time again that she can take control and have people respect her for it. No matter the situation she does not wait for a man to come rescue her but rather does her own rescuing. I think character such as these are important in literate as they show that a woman can be capable of taking care of herself and others.

I look forward to reading more of this authors books.

Review: Let the Great World Spin

There are books that tell a great story then there are book that function like a literary painting. They take a single snapshot of an event then paint with words with the event and the events around them. The effect if done correctly is beautiful. This is what Let the Great world spin is like.

On a  late summer morning in 1974 people on the island of Manhattan look up and saw a tightrope walker between the towers.

What transpires below is average people living average lives all converge as the author paints a portrait of each one.

They are from all walks of life. Hookers trying to make a living and a socialite trying to get over the death of her son in the war. Such disparate lives are all somehow linked to a tightrope walker.

I think McCann has done a fabulous job of taking one event and shown how a bunch of seemingly random life's are really at its heart interconnected. We often fail to think of the beauty that is inherent in these interconnected lives. If we stopped to think that one action can have so much negative effect then maybe we would be more aware in choosing our actions.

A problem can occur if a reader attempts to read this linearly. This is a novel that takes the reader around and around and up and down there is no straight line from point A to point B.  The beauty and the story is found in the circular ways and the what appears to be random interactions but really is not.

It is best to approach this work with as a literary painting rather than a novel with a nice arc in the plotline and a resolution at the end. In this novel there seems to be no beginning and end as the chapters weave in and out of charterers offering snapshots of what is happening right then,

Sunday Salon

Good Afternoon everyone! I have not been able to get a a lot of reading done this week because there has been a lot happening in life.For one thing my friend is moving so I helped or pretended to help while I considered which books to steal borrow. I cant help it it is a compulsion if there are book I think I have a hint of reading I must have it.This was a close friend so they was all to aware that the books was not exactly safe around me and caught me putting one in to my purse but they thought it was funny and let me borrow it.

I heard about the book the Artist Way on blogs and decided to check it out for myself. I have been making my way through the book. It is supposed to help you become unblocked as a writer and the two biggest things are to do morning pages which is three pages of writing anything that comes to mind. I have heard that three pages equal 750 words. I have been using Penzu (where I have a pro account) to do this. At first I couldn’t think of anything to say really but it is becoming easier and easier. The second big thing that they recommend is an Artist Date. I have never done one of those but it makes sense. Pick a time each week and do something u have always wanted to do that does not involve your art and let yourself be filled up with images. I am still trying to think of things to do.

Today I am going to finish reading The Artist Way then start on Dreadnought witch is a continuation of my exploration of the steam punk genre.

What are you reading for today?

Sunday Salon

Everyone is back from BEA and is telling stories and showing pictures. I hope someday I will make it to BEA. I had fun however participating in my first ever Armchair BEA. I got to know lots of new bloggers and I even got some inside traders secrets. To be honest unless BEA and book blogger convention has an interpreter I will probably get more out of Armchair BEA. I still wish I could meet everyone I meet online though. Maybe one day! I did win a prize in the twitter party so yay!!

I did not get a lot of reading done as I was trying to keep up with the 200 plus blogs in armchair BEA. I did get one review posted last night The Convert which was an ARC from Graywolf Press.

I am not sure how much reading I will get done today (I am in the middle of Elegant Universe). I promised to partake in Memorial Day weekend activities so it remains to be seen how much reading I will get done. However I will be the book nerd who brings along the book hoping to get a chapter or two in.

I am off. What are You doing this Memorial Day? Happy Memorial Day to everyone!

Review: The Convert

This is a tale of Margret Marcus a Jewish girl growing up in the shadows of War World Two. While she hears about the horrors going on in Europe, her fascination  is with the Arabs. She gets upset at the formation of Israel and decides to convert to Islam. She has also spent time in mental wards.

Mawlana Abul Ala Mawdudi a man known for his staunch support of political Islam became her guardian when so moved to Pakistan. While in Pakistan Margret Marcus who became Maryam jamaleh upon her conversion to Islam, wrote a number of book supporting militant Islam and condemning the West. She was very influential in some circles in Lahore.

However it was not all smiles and writing in Pakistan. Before she had left the United States she had spent time in a mental hospital with Schizophrenia. She states in her letter that her decision to come to Islam is one of the sanest she has made in her life but one wonders. Then she ends up in a notorious madhouse in Lahore.

One gets the sense of reading this of how much of her thinking is muddled by her mental state and how much she really believes. Then again she was probably freer in Pakistan than she would have been in the US. In Pakistan she was able to marry and have kids and have her sister wife take care of her kids leaving her to write and so what ever else she wanted. while if she had stayed in the US she would probably ended up a ward of the state in a hospital somewhere.

Ever since 9/11 it has been a zero sum game for Islam and the West. If one wins the other loses. It was fascinating to trace back this ideology on the Muslim side to a specific political group and how they in a way took Maryam in and used her to showcase just how degraded the West really was.

Here was a perfect example of how when one followed the west your parents could kick you out, get rid of you or drop you off at the local state hospital while you traveled the world. While in Islam once you had a child you are responsible for it forever. That was the thinking anyway. It seemed it was to their own best advantage to use her to their political ends.

I found this book fascinating. The whole thing seemed unreal. Even the author admits all this was hard to imagine until she went to Lahore. First when she read the letters in New York public Libary it seemed that Maryam had finally found a place she could call home. That it was not rife with the strife that afflicted her with her parents in the US. However when the author went to Lahore she found something unsettling. From her old foster family saying that what she wrote home to her parents is not exactly what transpired in Pakistan. That she was guilty of a multitude of sins. When the author finally reached her for an interview she found a woman who acted complete different than what her letters portrayed. I felt that the author was being a little harsh in her judgment of Maryam. But who am I to say? I wasn’t there. Where the author gets to this point in the book I felt that it starts to fall apart. It as if the author let her emptions color what she wrote and we only get a nuanced version of the “real” Maryam. With sayings such as “I could not wait to leave the room” we are getting the author's emotions instead of what the story was supposed to be focused on.

The rest of the book is tightly written and a fascinating look at Maryam life as a political Islamist. Pick this book up if you want to know why someone would trade a middle class existence to a Life under a veil in poverty struck Pakistan.

Best of 2011

I have a couple that I have read that are my favorites ones was published in 2010 but it is among my all time favorite books. It is BoneShaker.

It was my first foray into the world of steampunk. I told myself that this year I was going to branch out into all genres instead of limiting myself with literary fiction. I was so glad I read this. It was a perfect read for the cold dreary northern winter. (I am originally from the south).

The second is a nonfiction book and it is

I liked this because she gives real advice on how to be happier right where you are. And the advice she gives it well researched and works. I know cause I have been following my own happiness project and and corny as it sounds I am happier.

I got this book for an ARC and it impacted me too so I don’t want to leave it out.

The man wrote 365 thank yous for things to ne grateful about. This really had a deep impact on me because sometimes in my deep dark depressions I feel as there is nothing. So I started thanking people for little things and keeping a gratitude journal and now I do feel more positive and I interact more positive also.

Armchair BEA: How I Armchair

This is my first armchair BEA that I have partispated in. I look forword to what the week will bring. I will be armchairing (can I use that word) in my new favorite lazy-boy recliner.

I love reading and writing and tech stuff above all else. After trying different career paths I decided to go back to school and get my degree in Library and Information Technology. My days are spent studying for the GRE and trying to remember math I took a life time ago.

I love meeting new people but sometimes where I am Deaf it gets in the way cause I cant understand what people are saying. That’s why I love the internet so much! It levels the playing field.

I will read just about anything. I am a very eclectic reader. My gulity pleasure is self-help books. My friends don’t hesistte to tell me most are full of crap but I cant help it. It like a great big choclate chip cookie dough ice cream (another thing I love) for the brain.

I look forward to meeting all of you! If you want to know anything else feel free to ask!