Dickens in December Event: A Christmas Carol readalong

Caroline at Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Delia at Postcards from Asia are organising the Dickens in December event. There is a read-a-long, a watch-a-long and there are of course book reviews.

I participated in the read-a-long of A Christmas Carol. It’s not the first time I’ve read it. I read it a few years ago. Also, I’ve seen movie adaptations more than once so I was pretty familiar with the story before I started reading this time around.

Questions for the read-a-long:

Is this the first time you are reading the story?
This was the second time, I think.

Did you like it?
Yes, I loved it. I found it so funny.

Which was your favorite scene?
When Scrooge calls a boy on Christmas Day and asks him to bring the biggest goose he can get. And he says to himself what a lovely boy this is, and how clever, etc.

Which was your least favorite scene?
In the beginning, when Bob Cratchit is described as having hardly a coal in the fire to keep warm while working. I felt so sorry for the poor man!

Which spirit and his stories did you find the most interesting?
I liked the Ghost of Christmas Present the most. I loved it when Scrooge wanted to join in with the jolliness he saw in the visions.

Was there a character you wish you knew more about?
I was wondering about Jacob Marley, what sort of person he had been. Was he just like Scrooge, or did he have a family? What was he like when he was alive?

How did you like the end?
The end was a big quick. I’d have liked to spend a bit more time with the new Scrooge. Seeing in more detail how he spends his Christmas Day and how he visits his nephew and is all likeable and friendly.

Did you think it was believable?
Well, I don’t believe in ghosts, so: no. Also, I can’t see that someone would be so eadily changed in the course of a (long) night. Most people would begin with defending their way of living, rather than quickly accept it’s not right. He converted a little too easily!

Do you know anyone like Scrooge?
I know people who are the opposite to Scrooge. They like to pay for everything. Which is actually pretty annoying!

Did he deserve to be saved?
Yes, of course. Especially now that he turned out to be a generous man, willing to help out other people.

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Rating: 5 (out of 5) – very good

Pages: 91

First published: 1843

I got this book: bought it secondhand, a few years ago (re-read)

Genre: classic

Book Review: The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice by Nathan Leslie

Rating: 4.5/5 stars
Number of pages: 204
First published: 2012 (October 30st)
I got this book: from Atticus Books via Netgalley, ebook
Genre: coming of age, fantasy

This is my third book by Atticus Publishers. Without Netgalley I would not have found them. Their books, at least the ones I’ve read, are short, quirky and fun: about a man who becomes a hermit in a decorative garden (The Bee-Loud Glade), or about a man who discovers he has Eskimo blood and decides to go whale hunting (The Snow Whale) and then this book, The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice, about an orphan who is sent from crazy aunt to crazy aunt and finds a home nowhere.

The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice: What it is about

From the publisher’s website: “When Tommy’s parents abandon him as a baby, his grandmother Gaga takes him to her reclusive house at the top of Pike’s Peak. Gaga’s parenting methods are extreme, but Tommy soon learns her eccentricities are nothing compared to the rest of his family. As he’s passed between his outlandish aunts, Tommy’s journey takes him to the country homestead of Aunt Tess (who hides surprising objects in her voluminous hair), the four city houses of Aunt Penny (who prefers to communicate by ESP), and the cave-like desert home of Aunt Chelsea the coyote hunter. As his cross-country romp reveals how bizarrely different families can be, Tommy begins to wonder if the conventional home he’s dreamed of might not be for him after all.

The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice captures the unmoored feelings of young adulthood and the complexities of American identity. It’s a dazzling novel about the ineffability of childhood and the nature of family and relationships in the increasingly rootless American experience.“

The Tall Tale of Tommy Twice: What I thought

The cover may make you think this is a children’s book, but it isn’t: it’s an adult book about a child. It certainly was a tall tale! At first, nothing seemed amiss but when Tommy’s aunt grabs large objects from out of her unruly hair, it becomes clear that the story has some rather tall tale elements. It’s all funny as well as heart-breaking: orphan Tommy isn’t accepted with any of his family members and is moved from one to the other.

Tommy takes it all in his stride and tries to adapt to living with each of his aunts as best as possible. This must be one of the most deranged families ever! I loved how Tommy accepted every new situation and made the best of it. And how sad when he was made to move on to the next aunt!

The story is funny and never boring. It’s told in the matter-of-fact way a child looks at the world. While the story is quirky, the ending is very original. Actually, which ending? The author offers five possible (and very different ways) to end the story. All discuss what happened after he left his final aunt and how he is doing now, at forty or fifty years’ of age. The reader chooses!

I loved reading this funny short book. It’s a story that isn’t easily forgotten.

Quick Book Review: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness

This book was on the shortlist for the Indie Lit Awards in the Speculative Fiction genre. I read this book because I was in the jury for this genre. I had read one previous book by Patrick Ness, The Knife of Never Letting Go, which I enjoyed a lot.

This book was a children’s book. It has black and white pictures throughout the book, quite dramatic!

The book is about Conor, 13 years old, who is having nightmares. One nightmare in particular keeps coming back. But then one night, he wakes up to a real nightmare: A monster, looking like the yew tree that he can see from his window, is coming close up and looks very scary.

Conor’s mother is very ill and there are some doubts that she will get better, although everyone is putting on a brave face. At school Conor is being bullied, his grandmother (whom he doesn’t like) takes him in for a while, and at night he’s visited by a monster. Life is very difficult for Conor.

The monster that visits at night tells him stories from which it becomes clear that people aren’t just good or bad, as Conor has always thought, but that a baddie can do good things, and vice versa. This helps Conor in accepting his situation.

It was a very well-written book with a heavy topic. I’m not quite sure what age group this book would be most suitable for. My son (14) read it and seemed to enjoy it but we didn’t really get to discuss it together. I think he was a little ambivalent about the book.

I don’t read a lot of children’s books now that my own sons are teenagers, but I think this was a high-quality book, especially interesting for children who need to deal with a loss, or with guilt. Recommended.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

I got this book: from my on-line book store

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 216

First published: 2011

Genre: fantasy, children’s fiction

Quick Book Review: Just in Case by Meg Rosoff

For the A-Z challenge, I needed a book with the title starting with a J. Not easy! Then I came across this book in the library. Maybe not a book I would have chosen otherwise, but isn’t a challenge for trying something different?

So, I read it and I liked it… a bit.

The story is about David Case who is fifteen years old and has a small baby brother. When he stops his brother from falling out of the window, he realises that one day, things may happen that he cannot control. He decides that Fate should not be able to get hold of him and so he changes he name (to Justin) and also his clothing and behaviour.

A girl he meets in a charity shop, Agnes, helps him dress differently (not like David, but like the new Justin) and takes pictures of him. She’s nineteen and he falls in love with her.

As Justin, David’s life becomes more interesting, but he realises that he still can’t escape Fate.

Fate has a role in the book, too. It talks with bold type face. Sometimes with Justin, sometimes to itself (or to the reader). It plays with Justin, trying to get him killed. But that is not so easy!

I liked the idea of the book: a boy changing his name and way of life to avoid Fate. However, it becomes unrealistic when he moves in with Agnes and his parents not minding at all. In fact, like in many children’s books, the parents are rather absent. They don’t play a large role in Justin’s life.

On the other hand, the whole idea of Fate having a (talking) role in a book is of course pure fantasy, so some allowances have to be made for the realism of the book. Even so, it went a little too far for me. And the book didn’t really keep my interest all the way through. At points, I had to plough through a few chapters, before I found the story interesting again.

But I liked it that in his new character, Justin was able to achieve things that David had never even tried.

I think there is the moral of the story: you can re-define yourself if you want, but you cannot escape Fate.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I got this book: from the library

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 234

First published: 2006

Genre: fantasy, contemporary fiction, children’s fiction, YA

Book Review: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami

Because it’s Magical March this month, I decided to pick this book from my TBR. Many people had been urging me to read this book, after Novroz of Polychrome Interest first recommended the book to me and I was able to get a copy via Bookmooch.

Battle Royale: What it is about

This is the original Hunger Games. I mean that quite literally. This book is from 1999 and The Hunger Games from 2008, and the resemblance is more than a coincidence.

It’s 1997 and the Republic of Greater East Asia is a dictatorship. Japan, where this story takes place, is part of this republic. A school class of 15-year olds is kidnapped by government officials during a school trip and taken to an island where they will have to fight the Battle. Each year, 50 classes are selected to take part (each fight their battle separate from the other classes), and this is all done “for research purposes”. The class has to fight until there is only one survivor, the winner.

Battle Royale is a term that means a fight between people in an arena where everyone fights everyone until there is one survivor. Many against one, or one-on-one battle are all allowed as long as just one person remains.

The children are let out one by one and take a bag with a random weapon. Around their neck they have a steel collars that track their position and register their eventual death. Every few hours, a new part of the island is declared Forbidden and entering such a forbidden zone means the collar will explode. So, the area that the children can use becomes smaller as time goes by.

There are 42 children to start of with, and the reader follows in particular some of the “good” people, that don’t want to play the game and refuse to kill anyone, and the “bad” people, that have decided to play along and kill each and every one of their class mates. Worse, the most psychopathic of them all has the most dangerous weapon: a machine gun.

Slowly but surely, the number of children is reduced, and after each chapter in the book, the number of remaining children is given in bold letterface. Every 6 hours an announcement is made over invisible speakers about who died in the last few hours and what new zones will become forbidden.

There is some hope, as one or two clever children have plans to escape the system. But will they be able to stay away from the boy with the machine gun?

Battle Royale: What I thought

Yes, this book is a little more gruesome than the Hunger Games, where the descriptions of people’s deaths are less vividly described. Still, this is not a horror story full of guts hanging out. But there are a few moments that you’d rather not read about.

This book is too much like The Hunger Games to be a coincidence, but the latter is the better story. There is more variation in the individual battles in The Hunger Games. In Battle Royale it’s a lot of death-by-gun. However, it is good fun to follow the story of the pupils who have a plan to beat the system. The ending is also very good.

Of course, the fact that you read mostly about the “good” and the “bad” kids is a bit predictable, but on the other hand, you can’t have a story with 42 protagonists.

There is betrayal, secret loves, friendship, distrust and unscrupulous behaviour.

The idea of the story is brilliant. While a bit more bloody than The Hunger Games, this story is a lot more realistic. It was set in the current time and life wasn’t all that different form what it is now in Japan (except of course for the obvious, like the dictatorship and the Battle Royale itself).

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

I got this book: from Bookmooch

Number of pages: 624

First published: 1999

Genre: speculative fiction

Extra: I read this for the Magical March Challenge by Roof Beam Reader

Extra: Of course, if you haven’t read The Hunger Games, you could read that series instead, or as well.

Book Review: The Other Life by Ellen Meister

Because it’s Magical March this month, I decided to pick this book from my TBR. It’s about a woman who can go through a portal to go to another life, a life that she would have had had if she’d  made different choices in her earlier life.

I love books about alternate realities but this book had a few problems, for me at least, to make me stop from loving it. It was a nice read, though.

The Other Life: What it is about

Quinn Braverman is married to Lewis and they have a 6-year old son, Isaac. Quinn has always known there is a portal in the basement of her house, from which she can visit another life, the one she didn’t choose. That other life is one in which she stayed with her boyfriend Eugene, living a fast life with famous people and definitely no children.

In her “real” life she’s happy, until she becomes pregnant with her second child and there are complications. Now she wants her mother, but her mother, a bi-polar sufferer, committed suicide years ago and never even knew Isaac. In the other life, her mother is still alive…

The baby she is expecting turns out to have a severe problem. The baby may not live through the pregnancy and if she does, she is likely to be disabled and will need a lot of care. Quinn and Lewis need to decide whether to stick with the pregnancy or not. At the same time, Quinn is reconsidering her other life, the more easy-going life in which her mother is still there. After some more visits to the other life, Quinn has to make a decision about which life she wants to lead.

The Other Life: What I thought

An nice and easy read, fluently written. The story of Quinn and Lewis finding out about the baby and worrying about what to do was interesting, but as the decision would be a no-brainer for me (from my comfy chair, not being in that situation), I couldn’t really feel close to them.

Quinn has a gay brother, Hayden, and he has some relationship problems and that was fun to read about too. Quinn herself was a woman with whom I did not identify and that was one of the problems I had with the book. She stayed a stranger for me, through the whole book, even when I knew quite intimate things about her.

Another problem was the portal. There is a extra portal later, when Quinn makes her decision, and it seems that for any big life choice she makes, a new portal is added with the alternative life that she didn’t choose. But that wasn’t technical enough for me: I could not believe in these portals.

This is mainly because of the “butterfly effect“, which says that even a very small change in the current situation can have a large impact in the long run. So, at any point in life there should be a portal to an alternate life, because even e.g., deciding to drink tea rather than coffee could have an effect on her life in the future (it probably won’t but it could). So for me, to say that you would (only) get an alternate life at main choice points in your life didn’t really make sense.

But the book was fun enough to read if I didn’t think too hard about the alternate lives and the decision she has to make regarding her baby.

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

I got this book: won it in a game on Shelfari

Number of pages: 312

First published: 2011

Genre: contemporary fiction

Extra: I read this for the Magical March Challenge by Roof Beam Reader

Extra: Another book about alternate life (but more about re-doing part of your life) is The Summer House by Jude Deveraux

Book Review: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

There’s been quite a hype about this book and when I won it in a giveaway by Capricious Reader I was really excited. More so even when a beautiful hardback copy arrived on my doorstep. The book was such a pleasure to look at and to hold, it’s magic!

And what was inside, was very good too. Oh no: I’m going to add to the hype! This was a fantastic book. I loved it all the way through.

The Night Circus: What it is about

It’s the late 1800s. Prospero the Enchanter is an illusionist with a secret: his magic is real. When it turns out his daughter Celia has magic skills too, he sets up a challenge with an old rival of his: his rival may find and train whatever person he likes, to enter into a competition with Celia, and he is convinced that Celia will win.

Enter Marco, a boy from an orphanage, who is being trained by a mysterious man in a grey suit, to become Celia’s competitor. Neither he nor Celia understand the rules of the game, but they both become involved with the Night Circus, that opens at nightfall and closes at dawn.

The circus consists of a large number of tents, each with its own show. Celia has her illusionist show while Marco is only sometimes at the circus, he works in London, doing the accounts.

Celia and Marco fall in love but they are also competitors. How can they solve this insolvable problem?

The Night Circus: What I thought

I already said it: I loved this book. The time, Dickens’ era in which futures were told by mysterious ladies and the death were contacted via a medium. The setting, a circus so special that people could lose themselves in it.

I also enjoyed the parade of characters: two sets of twins, a mysterious man in a grey suit, a clock designer from Germany or a Japanese contortionist. They all had something intriguing about them. They were slightly cardboard, we could have learned a bit more about them, but it didn’t matter really, since all were pawns in the challenge of Celia and Marco.

The language in which the book is written is also appealing. Slightly old-fashioned but no tormentingly long sentences like you might find in Dickens or Wilkie Collins’ work.

The story is sometimes a little vague, not all is explained and that adds to the atmosphere of magic.

My main point of complaint comes from outside the book: because some people in my part of the blogging world had not finished the book or given it a so-so rating (you know who you are and actually, you have all the right in the world to stop reading or give a so-so rating but that’s beside the point), I was expecting to also want to give up after some time. But I kept liking the book, and liking it more and I wondered when this point would come that I wouldn’t like it anymore: It didn’t happen – I liked all of it. I should have skipped the negative reviews so I would have had a better reading experience.

As it was, I’d say this is one fine book that will be counted among my favorite books for this year. Stop reading the reviews, read the book!

Rating: 5/5

I got this book: from a giveaway by Capricious Reader

I read this in: English, the original language

Number of pages: 402

First published: 2011

Genre: fantasy (magic)