September novel: Out of the Easy

It seems that our reading circle flat lined sometime late July, but as the trees start ti wither we intend to blossom, or at least get back on track. For September we intend to read Out of the Easy by Ruta Sepetys:

Title: Out of the Easy
Author: Ruta Sepetys
First published: 2013

From the publisher/book website:

It’s 1950, and as the French Quarter of New Orleans simmers with secrets, seventeen-year-old Josie Moraine is silently stirring a pot of her own. Known among locals as the daughter of a brothel prostitute, Josie wants more out of life than the Big Easy has to offer.

She devises a plan get out, but a mysterious death in the Quarter leaves Josie tangled in an investigation that will challenge her allegiance to her mother, her conscience, and Willie Woodley, the brusque madam on Conti Street. Josie is caught between the dream of an elite college and a clandestine underworld. New Orleans lures her in her quest for truth, dangling temptation at every turn, and escalating to the ultimate test.

With characters as captivating as those in her internationally bestselling novel Between Shades of Gray, Ruta Sepetys skillfully creates a rich story of secrets, lies, and the haunting reminder that decisions can shape our destiny

Why we chose this book:

We have both encountered talk about and reviews of this book online, on YouTube, Goodreads and blogs, and we've been intrigued. A book set in 1950s New Orleans, starring a seventeen-year-old, born of a prostitue, trying to get out and into a new life? Could be great.

What we expect from it:

Kiwie: I want to read this mostly because of the New Orleans setting, I have slight fascination with the city (or rather it's portrayal), but haven't really read anything about it lately which is why this is a book I've noticed and keep seeing and going "oh yeah I might read that" but not actually getting far enough to even stick it in my to-read list on Goodreads. Plus I'm guessing this is also a coming of age story, which I like.

Katastrofekat: As Kiwie already said, this book caught my attention because of it's setting. I have been fascinated with New Orleans since I read the first books in Anne Rices Vampire Chronicles when I was a teenager. Then I read Poppy Z. Brites vampire novels a few years ago and was reminded of how wonderful I found this setting. I hope this book has some excitement and some of that dreamy mood from Poppy Z. Brite. The description sounds very promising and I'm very excited going into this book

World War Z by Max Brooks

So, things didn't go quite as planned this month. I finished the book and completely forgot to write anything about it and then Kiwie didn't finish it. She might write about why, but she told me she bought the audiobook, like me, but she hadn't been in a mood to listen to any audiobook this month. So she will finish the book but she probably won't write about it here. I was planning to make up for that by writing a long review but that did not go as planned either. I have been feeling kind of rubbish lately and don't have much to say about the book, so this month you just get the short review from Goodreads. Just know that this is us being human and not the book being bad. I liked the book a lot, I just can't muster the will to write a lot about it at the moment. So, have a short review:

This is my favorite zombie-book. I loved the way the book is out together, how it really feels like you get to hear many different peoples stories. This book felt very real and it must have been a hard book to write, with so many points of view and so many people from differing countries. To research this book must have been a nightmare and I'm very impressed with the finished result. 

Also, this book was very fitting as an audiobook. It really made the oral history of the zombie war come alive.

Death's Daughter (Calliope Reaper-Jones #1) by Amber Benson

This wasn't one of my favorite books I have read for this book club but I did find it quite enjoyable. The idea was a good one and this was that kind of book I loved to read when I was younger, so I enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane, so to speak. 

Calliope is trying to live a normal life in New York, normal job, normal friends and normal interests all included. But she is the daughter of Death and even though she doesn't have any contact with her family, she gets dragged right back into her old life when her father is kidnapped along with her oldest sister and almost everyone working for him. Calliope is the only family member left who can take over her fathers job and if she don't do it, her fathers powers and immortality will be revoked and he might be killed. So Calliope don't have much of a choice, she has to become Death. Of course becoming Death isn't that easy and she has to complete a series of challenges before she can get her powers and everything gets really complicated when she is also accused of being her fathers kidnapper.

The book was exciting and the idea was a good one, but where this book failed a bit for me, was Calliope. She had an okay personality, but I just didn't like her that much. One of her go to reactions when life fights against her is to sit down and cry while she waits for someone to help her. I would have liked her to be a bit more kick-ass and luckily she gets better during the book. I also liked that she didn't change her personality during the book. She started out as shopping loving girl and she was still the same when the book was over, even though I don't think I would be good friends with her.

I did like Calliopes sister, Clio. She was one of my favorite characters in this book and I don't think Callie would have gotten far without her. I also loved Runt, one of Cerberus pups which is a great support for Callie during this book. 

The story isn't the most original but I thought that Amber Benson did it in an interesting way and although parts of the book was a bit predictable, overall I enjoyed it. In the end she managed to surprise me couple of times and the book was an easy, entertaining read. All in all, the book had a few short-commings, but I enjoyed spending time in this universe and I might keep reading the series, even if it's mostly to get to know some of the minor characters a bit better.

P.S. A little note about why we are only reviewing one book each, even though we were supposed to read both. I can't review The Ocean at the End of the Lane because I haven't gotten it yet. I pre-orderd the book but it has yet to turn up in my mailbox. This is why we are reviewing one book each, even though Kiwie has read them both and I will most definitely read The Ocean at the End of the Lane as soon as it turns up. 

Katastorfekat

The Ocean at the End of the Lane

My initial thought after finishing this: Beautiful. 


When I first started reading I wasn't entirely sure if this book would sit well with me. It is the first Neil Gaiman book I've pre-ordered. The first adult fiction book he's published after I fell in love with his words (which was sometime before the Graveyard book came out, which I got for Christmas in a really pretty edition from my aunt who is magical at gifs. Or psychic. Or she just talks to my mother.) for real. After I somehow learned that Gaiman is a writer who writes books. Weird, I have Coraline sitting on a shelf and it's been sitting there for years, and I've read Sandman and you know been generally aware of Gaiman since I was a kid, but it wasn't until 07/08 I really got into him and read most of his fiction. So I was worried I was going to be let down because I've built him up. I wasn't.

This was and wasn't Gaiman as I've know him. The book started off like books do, uncertainly, teaching the reader it's language and I was puzzled for a while, but by page 50 I was so drawn into the story that there was no putting it down until the final page. I read every single word. If books are boring, or parts seem to not be relevant to the overall plot I often read, but don't register much of what's going on. That didn't happen. Gaiman writes beautifully, sometimes his descriptions and observations make me go "this is truth" or feel like I'm having a eureka moment, which is a wonderful thing, or just making the words seem very real. (*coughpage112cough*) I'm expecting to see a lot of quotes from this floating about the web, in pretty fonts and on pretty pictures. 


It was beautiful, and scary and I wish it was longer and not. I also want to tip my hat for his naming skills. Ursula Monkton! Sounds villainy to me.

Not to mention the beautiful name and the cover of my edition. Well, the book underneath the dust jacket as well as the dust jacket (do you even call them that?).

Yes, there are flaws, yes there were parts where I wished someone had edited the language differently, but for the most part I wouldn't change a thing. I think this is a lovely little book and I cried at the end. There's a magic to it, and while the universe is intangible it isn't annoyingly so, not to me anyway (I know others will disagree). This is not my favoirte Gaiman novel (tie between American Gods, Coraline and The Graveyard book!), but I loved it.

Again: Beautiful, I wish I could say something better, but that's all I can come up with.

Best wishes,
Kiwie

July Novel: World War Z by Max Brooks

An oral history of the zombie war

Title: World War Z
Author: Max Brooks
First Published: 2006

About the novel:

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Why we chose this novel and what we expect from it:

Why not? It has a certain reputation/level of fame, it has been turned into a move and it presents itself in a documentary style, and of course: ZOMBIES!

Kiwie: No idea what to expect I've heard people love it and I've heard people hate it. All I know is: Zombies that nearly destroy us. Which is good, as I like both zombies and destruction!

Katastrofekat:

June alternate/#2 pick:

Title: Death's Daughter (Calliope Reaper-Jones #1)
Author: Amber Benson
First published: 2009

About the novel, as presented on Goodreads:

Calliope Reaper-Jones so just wanted a normal life: buying designer shoes on sale, dating guys from Craig’s List, web-surfing for organic dim-sum for her boss...

But when her father—who happens to be Death himself—is kidnapped, and the Devil’s Protege embarks on a hostile takeover of the family business, Death, Inc., Callie returns home to assume the CEO mantle— only to discover she must complete three nearly impossible tasks in the realm of the afterlife first.

Why we chose this book and what we expect:

Amber Benson wrote this, she's good on twitter, she was great on Buffy (Tara!) and you know she seem like a nice lady so getting friendly with her novels were the logical next step really, and when they're about death's daughter, well, that just makes them more interesting.

Kiwie: I've followed her tweets, and now the Bloodkiss movie kickstarter (where she'll be a singervampire, along with Neil Gaiman or other pick, who will also be a vampire!) and thought "why not read her novels?" and now I am going to give them a shot. I've been reading a lot about heaven and hell so why not add some more? Probably not the deepest book I'll read this year, but I love stories about Death so. Light, fun and deadly?

Katastrofekat: This sounds like a nice summer read. I'm always into paranormal stuff and this sounds like something fifteen year old me would have loved to either read or write so I guess this will be a good pick for my taste.

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Kiwie: Haaaaaaai!

Katastrofekat: Yo!

Katastrofekat: So, Lolita then?

Kiwie: Yeah, what did you think about the read?

Katastrofekat: It was an okay book, but it was a bit longer than what I feel it should have been.

Katastrofekat: You?

Kiwie: Agreed, some parts were just too dragged out for my tastes. Like when they were driving around the country and Humbert Humbert (H.H) was basically just listing a lot of places and mentioning a thing here and a thing there. I just skimmed those pages and put the book down for a couple of days before I continued.

Katastrofekat: Same here.

Kiwie Kristine: This is really one of those books that I liked more after I was done and had a think than during. Not that it was bad, it was just tough to get through, not just because of the writing, but also the "romance" between H.H and a girl who is 12 at the start...

Katastrofekat: That is true. Also, I kind of whis we could have gotten to know Lolita  a bit better. She just was around a lot, but I don't think she had that much of a personality

Kiwie: Yeah, but that's the nature of a first-person narrative we only see people through the narrator and he didn't bother getting to know her at all. She liked movies and boys as far as he was concerned. Of course she was broken throughout and possbly hid her personality well.

Katastrofekat: Yeah, how can you not be broken if you grow up with a mother that resents you. No wonder she wanted to be loved, no matter how wrong the romance might have been

Kiwie: Yeah, and what we learn about her when H.H visits her with her new husband is equally disturbing, she really didn't have a chance, unless she got though and just let it happen. She seems a bit emotionally crippled to me, very no-nonsense. She bartered with H.H "I do this and you give me that," so she must have had an end in mind too.

Katastrofekat: She can't have had an easy life, no matter how though she got. I did like who H.H started to lose his mind when they were on their second trip through America. When he saw people following them.

Kiwie: I liked that too, when he was falling apart was great, getting paranoid, making up advanced scemes etc. We know he was in mental health institutions several times during his life and it wasn't until the end he himself truly realised how sick he was. Earlier he'd brush it off as if it was just exhaustion or something, but the really started to lose it when he got paranoid.

Katastrofekat: One thing that really annoyed me was when he narrated the story and suddenly changed to french. I had french for three years and I still didn't understand enough to actually know what he meant by it. I wish he could have stuck to english or at least translated the french in footnotes or something. I felt like I was missing stuff and that was really annoying.

Kiwie: Ugh, the french! I used google translate for some parts, made noe more sense with that... He also threw in some german and latin for good measure. Frustrating!
Kiwie: Well, some of it made sense, but sometimes he used his pet names for Lolita there as well and google translate was all "WTF?"

Katastrofekat: Yeah. Even though I liked the book, I didn't like it quite enough to actually bother with google translate.

Kiwie: I hate feeling left out...

Katastrofekat: Oh, the pet names! Omg, that girl had to many names if you ask me...

Kiwie: Yeah, and he couldn't keep other people straight either! I know he was making up names for them, but dude, stick to the same ones for the same people! He was too meticulous about the other stuff to not be able to do it (as a narrator).

Katastrofekat: In the start of the book I had trouble figuring out who he was talking about, when he called both Lolita and her mother by their last name.

Kiwie: Yeah. Everything was jumbled (and I guess it was so in H.H mind too, but I don't think that's an excuse for overdoing it Nabokov!)
Kiwie Kristine: H.H is an pretentious ass and that made it hard to read too sometimes. All those french philosophers and what nots.

Katastrofekat: Yes! That's excatly what he was. The story he told us was very interesting and disturbing at the same time, but I had a hard time relating to him at all.

Kiwie: I did a little research (okay, wikipedia) and there is apparently an annotated version that explains stuff (especially references to other things and I'm sure I only picked up on the Poe related ones...). I think that would have been more fun to read, this isn't exactly the kind of story that drags you into it anyway, the interruption would probalby be welcome. The story is interesting, and I loved how it started out as a defence of his actions and ended up as a confession of his sins instead. That is brilliant story-telling and perfect use of the first-person!

Katastrofekat: Yeah, I think I would have liked to read that version as well, as I felt kind of stupid at times while reading, since there obviously was stuff I was missing out on. I agree, the story-telling was good and this book wouldn't have worked as well if it wasn't written in the first-person. I'm glad to have read it, as I now will be able to get Lolita references but it won't be a book I will be in a hurry to read again.

Kiwie: Nothing is more annoying than when you know you don't get it. It's like banging your head against a wall. I won't re-read either I think. I do have a penchant for unlikeable main characters, but not the perverted ones. Tip of the hat to Nabokov though, he wrote a pretty good and unredeemable guy, who I think appears to be a good example of the pervert (as shown in the media at least), only with a different narrative. Nabokov gets a lot of it right, but also makes H.H annoying and in fact as childish as the child he abuses sometimes makes the novels somewhat annoying as well.

Katastrofekat: That's right, Nabokov wrote this book very well. Also, This is a main character I'm actually glad not to be able to relate to, if you know what I mean.

Kiwie: Haha, yeah, I'd be pretty disturbed at myself if I read it an thoguht "hey, that H.H's on to something!"

Katastrofekat: Ai, that would be pretty bad!

Kiwie: This could be a book peple get suspected pervs to read and go "so what did you think?" and if they liked H.H: lock em up!