Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare | Audiobook Review

(All of the books in this trilogy have fantastic covers!)

Throwback Thursday Review!

Last Thursday I reviewed Clockwork Angel and today I'm reviewing Clockwork Prince in set-up for tomorrow's review of Clockwork Princess, the final book in the trilogy.  I ended up liking these books better and better the farther into the trilogy I got!  I definitely recommend them.

I originally listened to Clockwork Prince in May 2013 and I gave it 4 of 5 stars.  If I remember correctly, Clockwork Prince manages to avoid suffering from "middle book in a trilogy" syndrome, which is awesome.  Tons of things happen in this book.  It is definitely not "just" set-up for the finale!

1. The Clave want to remove Charlotte as head of the London Institute.  This would mean that Tessa would be out on the street with nowhere to go.  But remember from my review of Clockwork Angel: Charlotte is not just some simpering Victorian lady; she is made of steel and will not take this laying down!  Also, all the members of the London Institute love her and will stop at nothing to protect her.  I have many, many, many loves for all the characters for how they stick up for Charlotte!

2. Tessa learns more about who (what) her parents were.  This whole self-discovery journey part of the book nearly led to tears on my part.  I do not want to spoil it for you, but it is definitely bittersweet for Tessa and the reader when we find out who her parents were and what that means for her future!

3. Will also has a bit of self-discovery happen, in a good way!  The curse?  We find out more about that and what that means for Will's future!  And it's not terrible!  Again, I don't want to give anything away, but just know that you can cheer for Will and for overcoming personal demons in this book!

4. A little bit of set-up for the finale.  Because, of course, those steampunk robots aren't going to defeat themselves.

I didn't write much at all on Goodreads when I initially read and rated this book.  I did write: "historical fiction+neat inventions+action=awesome" and I still agree with that!

*I received my copy from my public library.

Also:  GIVEAWAY!  Today is the last day to win a hardcover finished copy of Summer House With Swimming Pool by Herman Koch.  Click here to enter!

Patches of Godlight: Father Tim's Favorite Quotes by Jan Karon | Book Review

(This is the book jacket; when I removed it, the book itself is faux leather, the same brown as you see behind the yellow band, and simply says "Father Timothy A. Kavanagh" in gold in the middle.  It feels very Father Tim-ish to me.)

Patches of Godlight is a sweet little surplus to the Mitford books, published in between the sixth and seventh books.  It appears to be handwritten by Father Tim himself, with extra little notes, and a few taped-in typewritten pages.  It was just a little harder to read the cursive, but that made it easier to believe that I could be reading Father Tim's quote notebook.  I also love Jan Karon's attention to detail; all the typewritten pages have a double "ii" from where his typewriter key sticks.  (This is mentioned in a couple of places in the Mitford books.)  It's also neat to see Father Tim's notes to himself to "send to Stuart" or "tell Morris L."  These are mentions of characters from Mitford books.

At first glance, the quotes seem thrown together very randomly, as though Father Tim had collected them haphazardly as he read various books or went about his daily life.  On closer inspection, the reader sees that Jan Karon has loosely grouped them by subject.  The reader will find a handful of quotes about love all together, then quotes pertaining to reading.  Christ and the Christian life runs all throughout.

I Post-It flagged so many quotes as I read!  I'll share a few of my personal faves below.  I kept reading quotes aloud to the hubby too!  I hadn't heard of this little book before, and neither had my mom (a fellow lover of all things Mitford), so I plan to lend it to her.  Share the joy.  Guess what?  I bought the book at the library book sale in "Mitford" (Blowing Rock, NC)!  Love it.  5 of 5 stars.

Here are a few of my personal fave quotes from the book.  This isn't meant to be a definitive overview of the book's contents; you may find that other quotes speak to you more.

"Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." ~Hebrews 11:1

"Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?" ~Henry Ward Beecher, 1813-1887  -with note from Father Tim: "Where, indeed?!!!"

"I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man." ~Geo Washington, 1732-1799

"Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work." ~Henry Ford, 1863-1947

"You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late." ~Emerson  -with note from Father Tim: "Mark This!"

"This habit of reading, I make bold to tell you, is your pass to the greatest, the purest, and the most perfect pleasure that God has prepared for His creatures.  It lasts when all other recreations are gone.  It will last until your death.  It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live." ~Anthony Trollope, 1815-1882

"It is a good plan to have a book with you in all places and at all times.  If you are presently without, hurry without delay to the nearest shop and buy one of mine." ~O. Wendell Holmes, 1809-1894

*I own my copy of Patches of Godlight.

Top Ten Tuesday

This is a neat weekly feature over at a blog I really enjoy, The Broke and the Bookish.  They read books similar to some that I've been reviewing, and they're fun and they write well.  Totally worth checking out!

Top Ten Characters Who Would Have Sat at My Lunch 

Table in High School

I definitely wasn't one of the popular kids in high school, but I wasn't friendless either.  I had a good group; a good mix of folks.  So here are the top ten book characters who I flatter myself by thinking might have sat with me in high school:

1. Ann from 45 Pounds (More or Less) by K.A. Barson.  She is such an all-around good person!  She's not perfect, but she is sweet and kind and friendly.  Just the type of person you want at your lunch table.

2. Junie and Oliver from Little Blue Lies by Chris Lynch.  I love their deadpan and snark!  We definitely would have gotten along.  I was born sarcastic.

3. Mia from If I Stay by Gayle Forman.  I was in orchestra (I played violin) all four years of high school.  We would have known each other from that class.

4. Madelyne and Logan from The Summer I Became a Nerd by Leah Rae Miller.  There was plenty of dorkiness in my high school crowd!  We quoted Monty Python and fanned over Harry Potter and LOTR... Madelyne and Logan would've fit right in!

5. Clary & Simon from Cassandra Clare's "Mortal Instruments" series.  At least at first, before they get so swept up in their Shadowhunter and vampire groups.  Clary is a fellow redhead, and we've got to stick together.  Simon is in a band, and I had a tendency to hang out with guys in bands in high school.

6. Davy from Uninvited by Sophie Jordan.  I took a ton of advanced/AP classes in high school, and so does Davy.  We could have studied together over lunch.

7. Jessica from The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen.  I ran track in high school, and so does Jessica, so we would have hung out.

8. Lily from The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.  I grew up in SC, so I know a fellow S. Carolinian would've sat with me.

9. Ana and Sam from Jodi Meadows' "Newsoul" trilogy.  They are really into music, and I hung out with a lot of kids from band and orchestra at lunch in high school.

10. Winger from Winger by Andrew Smith.  Totally cool and funny, but so young and book-smart.  (This one may just be wishful thinking.  He may have been "too" cool to sit with me in high school.)

What about you?  Who would you have hung out with in high school?  I love seeing what others have on their TTTs, so please leave your link below!

Also:  GIVEAWAY!!  I'm running a giveaway of a finished hardcover copy of Summer House With Swimming Pool by Herman Koch over HERE.  Check it out!

If I Stay by Gayle Forman | Book Review

(The copy that I read was a later reprint, and the publisher had removed the "Will appeal to fans of Stephenie Meyer's TWILIGHT" from the front cover.  I got lucky; I imagine even newer copies now say something like "Soon to be a major motion picture."  Sometimes cover blurbs are so ridiculous.  This book is nothing like Twilight and is so much more than a coming attraction.)

Yes, I know... I'm about 4 years late to the If I Stay party.  But it's about to be a movie, and I got pretty excited about the preview.  I think this is going to be a movie I want to see.  And we have a rule in our house that we have to read the book before we see the movie.  (Maybe someday I'll bore you with a book review/synopsis of Les Miserables.  My hubby lets nothing slide; I spent three weeks on that freaking French book so that we could watch the movie.  Bah.)  Fortunately, this one was short and sweet; a real pleasure to read.  Also fortunate: I had already read a bunch of reviews of the book years ago and have since read lots of reviews of Where She Went so I got to skip all the emotional turmoil!

The emotional turmoil to which I refer?  At the beginning of If I Stay, Mia and her family are in a car wreck.  Her family is killed.  She is left in a coma.  What follows are the first 24 hours.  Mia is having an out-of-body experience, so we see everything from her point of view; we also get to see all her memories.  What will she choose: to stay or go?  What would you choose?

If I Stay promo clip #1:

Back to the book.  I flew through the book in an afternoon.  Not only is it physically short, but it's well-written, so it's easy to get lost in the plot without having to concentrate too hard.  The entire book is told from Mia's point of view, and we see a ton of character growth in her.  It's amazing, really, how much her character grows and how much her boyfriend and best friend's characters are developed, considering that the book takes place over a 24-hour period during which Mia is in a coma.  That takes talent!  Gayle Forman does much of this through flashbacks and memories.  

At the beginning of the book (for all of 12 pages; literally) Mia has it pretty good.  She's got a loving family that's all in one piece (I feel like this is rare in YA lit anymore) and loving grandparents and a good boyfriend and an awesome bestie.  She's a solid B student, but she's a cello star.  She's in the process of applying to Julliard. Her boyfriend is in a punk band that just got signed to a medium-sized label.  I like that she's not naive about all this; at one point she actually reflects on the fact that she's never had any devastation, no major losses, in her life.  She wonders if she had, if that would make this devastation any easier.  I love love love that about Mia:  she's totally aware of the awesome life she has and not ungrateful for it.  She's smart.  She knows that nothing will be the same if she stays, yet it's hard for her to deny the immense amount of love in the waiting room, all the extended family and friends who are cheering for her to make it.  Somehow, magically, Gayle Forman is able to convey all of this without ever (not once!) sounding preachy.  I'm just blown away by the writing.

SPOILER ALERT

Skip this paragraph if you have been living under a rock and haven't heard anything about If I Stay or Where She Went.  So we all know that there's a sequel now, so we all know that Mia stays.  Yay!  I think I'd have had a more emotional reaction to If I Stay if I hadn't been aware of Where She Went.  As it is, I was able to focus more on the characters and the prose and the layout of the book.  However, I don't know that I could trust myself not to cry in the movie.  I knew the ending of TFiOS and I still totally melted in that movie.  Even knowing the ending to If I Stay, I was never bored.  I never skimmed pages.  I was totally engrossed in how the story unfolded.  Like I said just above, I am totally totally totally blown away by the writing.  

END SPOILER

If I Stay gets 5 of 5 stars from me, and I'm adding Where She Went to my TBR list!

If I Stay promo clip #2:

*I received my copy of If I Stay from my public library.

Summer House With Swimming Pool by Herman Koch

Summer House With Swimming Pool was really jarring after spending a large chunk of my summer reading sweet Mitford books. Also, despite the title, I'm not sure I'd say this was a good summer read. Most of the characters are not good people, and bad things happen on their summer holiday trip. Because I wasn't thrilled with the plot, but was impressed by the writing, I'm doing a giveaway! Yup; scroll to the bottom of this review and you can enter to win a finished hardcover copy!

There's been a medical mistake, and famous actor Ralph Meier is now dead. The hospital blames the actor's general practitioner, Dr. Marc Schlosser, and calls him before the Medical Review Board. And that's where the book opens.  In the following pages, we're taken back through the events of the preceding summer, to the opulent beach house with swimming pool where the Meiers, Ralph & Judith, are vacationing with their sons, Thomas and Alex, famous film director Stanley and his much-younger girlfriend Emmanuelle, and the Schlossers: Marc and his wife, Caroline, and their daughters Julia and Lisa. Full house! The group spends long lazy days by the pool or on the beach; grilling out fresh seafood and drinking wine by the bottle. The kids all get along really well and spend their days in the pool and playing ping pong. No itinerary, nowhere to be, just relaxing. On the surface. 

Under the surface.... That's another story. Nearly all the adults in this book are pretty despicable. Summer House With Swimming Pool is told from Marc's point of view, so we get to hear all his thoughts about the patients he treats. He looks down on all of them. Scratch that. Marc actually loathes all of them. There are a few diatribes where he talks about how disgusting he finds their naked bodies, and how he can only barely stand to listen to them talk when they come in for their check-ups. At first I was making a comparison to the fictional Dr. House of TV fame, but Dr. Schlosser feels much meaner and more spiteful. And then so many of his motivations, for the choices he makes and the actions he takes, while on this vacation are just skewed so far from what I would consider "normal" that it's almost appalling. 

And guess what? The other men aren't right either. There's Ralph, who is openly lecherous toward females. He's pretty non-discriminatory: he leers at Caroline, who's over 40, and her daughter, Julia, who's only 13. And he mentally undresses lots of other girls/women while on vacation. Then there's Stanley, who's over 50 and dating a girl who is roughly 18 or 19. But that's not enough for him, either; he joins Ralph in flirting with other girls at the bar or on the beach. 

Then the unthinkable happens, and Julia is raped one night at the beach. Due to a combination of alcohol and bad decisions, none of the adults are with the young teens Alex and Julia as they walk up the beach to a nightclub. No adults are with them when they walk back. And Julia suffers. (This isn't a spoiler; it's in the Goodreads blurb.)

So at the end of the book, I hated nearly all the characters. But I feel like that's the intended reaction, so that's an indication of good writing. The prose flows seamlessly. The descriptions are so well-written that I really felt like I was there, with those nasty people. Where the book suffers a little are in the repeated extended inner monologues that Marc has, where he discusses all the ways (in graphic detail) that he finds the people around him disgusting. The book also suffers for want of character growth. Not a single character learns anything or becomes any better members of society. And finally, I personally feel like the book suffered a little (for me) for the differences in cultural mores between America & the Mediterranean & Holland. Like, how normal is it for adult males to spend entire days around the pool nude? With pre-teen & teen girls in attendance? The level of alcohol consumption in the book- normal for vacationing Europeans or overindulgence?

My final rating: 3 out 5. Good writing, but I felt like I needed to wash my hands (and my mind) after reading it. Enter my giveaway, win the book, and let me know what you think of it!

*I received my copy of Summer House With Swimming Pool from www.BloggingForBooks.org.  Thank you!

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Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare | Audiobook Review

(This entire trilogy has beautiful covers!)

Throwback Thursday Review!

I will soon be posting a review of Clockwork Princess, the last book in this trilogy, but I wanted to post quick throwback reviews for Clockwork Angel and Clockwork Prince first.  I originally read Clockwork Angel in Feb. 2013.  I gave it 3 of 5 stars on Goodreads and didn't write a review.  To be honest, I think it lost stars only because I was distracted, listening to it in the car during a not-fun commute.  This really is a good trilogy.  I agree with the majority of reviewers... it really is better than the Mortal Instruments series.

This trilogy is set in late 1800s England.  (Don't you love it already?  The dresses, the social mores, the speech....!)  Tessa Gray is on a mission to find her missing brother, who she believes has been swept into England's seedy underground.  She doesn't expect to discover the secret society of Shadowhunters, or to discover that her brother is not at all the person she thought she knew.  Along the way she befriends Jem and Will, which sets up a nice YA love triangle, of course.  Next thing she knows, Tessa is swept up into the fight against the Pandemonium Club and their army of automatons (robots)!

So, so, so much to love about this book!  I love that Tessa stays true to herself and the "fight for right" even if it means letting go of someone she loves.  I love that she doesn't let anything stop her just because she's a girl.  Screw the Victorians and their "weak female" ideas!  She's going to suit up and fight the robots right alongside the gents!  Speaking of, I love the gents.  I love Jem and his quiet reserve; his love of music and poetry, and the way that he cares so deeply for all his friends.  I also love Will, and for the exact opposite reasons!  (They compliment each other nicely.)  I love his wit and his dry humor and his impetuousness.  The girls definitely hold their own, also.  Jessamine is an absolute spitfire and I love her for it.  She is overflowing with confidence.  And Charlotte: she is a winner!  She is totally a proper lady... who can also hold her own in a sword fight.  You don't always get that in a book.  

Ms. Clare also does a fantastic job with world-building.  I had no trouble at all imagining the Shadowhunter world, and it was gorgeous & rich!  

I listened to this on CD and thought the narration was pretty good.  The tone was right and all, but the narrator was a male with a bit of a softness to his pronunciation, so sometimes my mind would wander a little.  And the accent!  The book is set in England, so maybe this shouldn't be a surprise, but the narrator had a lovely English accent.  It sort of surprised me because the author is American, as is the publisher.  But what a lovely pleasant surprise!  

Overall, although I initially gave this only 3 stars, I would definitely highly recommend this book.

*I received my copy via my public library.

Son by Lois Lowry | Audiobook Review

Son is the fourth book in the Giver Quartet, so this review will contain spoilers for the first three books. You've been warned.

This is such a neat quartet of books!  You really need to read all four to get the best appreciation, but each one could also be a standalone.  That really impresses me, that Lois Lowry pulled that off.  If you read The Giver, Gathering Blue, and Messenger you are in for a real treat in Son:  the main characters from the previous three books are all present and accounted for in it!  The Giver isn't mentioned in Gathering Blue or Messenger, but he's brought back into play in Son.  Remember Jonas, who was being trained to be the next Giver?  At the beginning of Son, he's just a boy.  And no, he's not the titular son.  I really just cannot gush enough about how COOL it was to see the whole story from the first three books brought full circle in this fourth book!

Son is told in three parts, with multiple chapters in each part.  There is Before, Between, and Beyond.  In the first part, Before, we meet Claire.  She's a young girl, 13 years old, and is at her first work assignment in her community.  She is a Vessel.  Come to find out, Vessels are young girls (13-16 years old), and their "job" is to produce Products.  Products being babies.  Older girls, who have already Produced one or two Products tell Claire what to expect.  There will be a little bit of pain, and she'll be blindfolded, and then it will be over and she'll get to rest for 6 months before Producing again.  Are you weirded out yet?  I sure was!  Anyway, it gets worse:  when it comes time for Claire to Produce, something goes wrong.  The pain is intense.  She ends up undergoing a c-section, although it's not called that in the book.  Because of this, Claire is allowed a little time to recover and then released from being a Vessel and reassigned to the fish hatchery.  In her society, everyone takes "vitamins" every day, and the vitamins damp down feelings.  There's a clerical error or something and Claire ends up not taking the vitamins, even after being reassigned to the fish hatchery.  She finds reasons to visit the infant care center, and ends up discovering which baby she produced.  No surprise here:  she loves the baby, Product 36, and daydreams of taking him and raising him herself.  Of course that can't happen.  She ends up sort of befriending a nursery worker guy, who is taking extra special care of Product 36.  I say sort of befriending because even though he and Claire talk nearly every day, she never bothers to ask his name.  Seriously.  There's a few places where Lowry asks for suspension of disbelief.  

So that's Before.  And I feel like there'd be spoilers if I went into too much detail with Between and Beyond.  Lets see... so in the official back-of-book description it does say that there's a culmination to the battle between good and evil.  So you know that's coming.  And you know from the back of the book that Claire will stop at nothing to get her son back.  And I mean nothing.  Claire has to work long and hard, like, for years, to get back to her son.  She also ends up having to make a pretty huge sacrifice.  I'm an adult reading this book and I got all kinds of emotionally invested and my heart just broke for Claire.  I was so rooting for her!

I've already gushed about how much I loved the whole tying-it-all-togetherness.  Now for the small gripe: Lowry kind of asks a lot of the reader in making come connection leaps over a few plot potholes.  Like, at one point Claire is in a village where the men all fish, in boats, yet the only way to leave the village is to scale a cliff.  What about the boat, Lowry?  Why can't anyone sail around the cliff?  Just a few little things like that.  I wouldn't say it's enough to knock any stars off my rating.  

I listened to this book on CD and loved it.  I thought the narrator did a great job.  The pacing was great and the narrator kept me engaged and focused.  There were a few times I was tempted to sit in my car in the parking lot and just keep listening.  

This book would be 4 of 5 stars as a standalone and 5 of 5 stars as a series finale!

*I checked out my copy of Son from my public library.