Author Archives: Kinsey

The Signature of All Things

by Kinsey

Lots of people make fun of Eat, Pray, Love. Of the overly earnest writing, of the privilege of a rich white woman writing about solving her problems by taking a year-long trip around the world, of the (admittedly terrible) Julia Roberts movie version. But you know what? I like Eat, Pray, Love! I have read it more than once! And I love Elizabeth Gilbert, who in interviews always seems fun and realistic about her crazy self-help book success. Also, her TED talk is pretty amazing. But I admit that I was a little wary of her latest book, a novel about a female scientist in 19th century America. Gilbert’s voice is so distinctive, and in her non-fiction novels is so specific to her experiences, that I was not sure how that might work in a period fiction piece. But The Signature of All Things worked for me.

It’s a long, sweeping book that tells the story of Alma Whittaker, a Philadelphia heiress in the early 1800s who bucks convention by not marrying and focusing instead on her study of mosses. The books her life from the day she’s born (and actually starts off with a really lengthy but about her father, explaining how the Whittakers got to Philadelphia), but most of the big action in the book takes place when Alma is in her fifties and her previously predictable life suddenly sends her in new directions (literally). A woman studying moss doesn’t sounds like a rip-roaring story, but Alma’s story takes all sorts of turns and did not end up anywhere I expected.

The story itself is interesting and twisty and detailed, and Gilbert clearly did lots of research on the time period and the science involved. But my favorite thing about it was the voice–it sounds like Elizabeth Gilbert. If you’ve read her non-fiction, you’ll know that she’s funny and a little irreverent, and all of that is right there in The Signature of All Things. The book reads like a period piece with characters that seem of the time, but there is still this slightly wry undercurrent the peeks out. I recently read The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, another piece of historical fiction that has gotten rave reviews. I didn’t write about here because it felt like a slog and I couldn’t quite articulate why, but reading The Signature of All Things helped me make sense of it. The Luminaries felt very straightforward, as if it could have been written in 1800, and it didn’t have that sense of humor running through it. That irreverence that Elizabeth Gilbert brings made all the difference for me and kept me hooked through Alma’s whole, incredible story.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Chewy, three-dimensional tale

You might also like: Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier, which is historical fiction about a female scientist (although it is based on a real person) or State of Wonder by Ann Patchett, about a modern day woman consumed in her scientific work.

The Secret Rooms

by Kinsey

I have been in a reading rut since January–I haven’t been able to get into anything, the things I do read are so slow and dragging I don’t want to recommend them, it’s all been very meh. But I recently ran across The Secret Rooms: A True Story of a Haunted Castle, a Plotting Duchess, and a Family Secret by Catherine Bailey–it’s not a perfect book, but I enjoyed it and it gave my reading a kick start.

Bailey is a historian who was granted access to the extensive records maintained by one of England’s aristocratic families so she could write a book about the experience of British soldiers in World War I. But as she starts her research, she find strange gaps in the records, gaps that were clearly deliberately created. She gets drawn into researching these gaps and learning what one of the former Dukes was trying to conceal. The story is told chronologically from Bailey’s perspective, so the reader is discovering what’s missing and what it might mean right along with the author. Am I making this sound boring? It’s actually a page turner, and I found myself thinking things like, “It’s midnight and I have to work in the morning, but I have to read one more chapter to read what she found in the attic!” (Full disclosure: I was a history major, so I might have been predisposed to find a description of primary source research fascinating.)

The reason I’m not jumping up and down and telling everyone to go find this immediately is that I  found the actual solution to the mystery a bit of a let down. This was partly because I’m not sure the mystery could live up to all the hype (spoiler: when the subtitle talks about a haunted castle, it’s being metaphorical). But also, I’m not sure the book did enough to put the Duke’s secret into context for the modern reader. I had to draw on my own knowledge of 20th century British history to understand why the big reveal would have been so scandalous, and I wish the book had included one more chapter that could have better placed the whole situation in its time. (I’m trying not to give away the mystery, but I’ll be happy to discuss more spcific details in the comments.) Also, there were some very detailed descriptions of World War I battles, which really bogged things down and left me feeling like Bailey was determined that the initial research she did on WWI wouldn’t go to waste. But those are really small quibbles. I really enjoyed this and was impressed with Bailey’s ability to make a book about archival research read like a thriller. If you’re feeling a bit of Downton Abbey withdrawal, this might hit the spot.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Intriguing, if anti-climatic.

You might also like: The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey. This is one of my favorite books ever, and the real reason I wrote this post. Tey wrote a series of books set in the early 1950s about a Scotland Yard detective named Alan Grant. In most of them, he’s out solving mysteries as usual, but in this one, he’s stuck in a hospital bed recovering from a back injury. He’s wildly bored, so a friend decides to occupy him with historical mysteries, and he gets fixated on finding out whether Richard III really killed the two princes in the tower. The entire book is basically him, in traction, thinking, while the folks helping him describe the things they have found in the library. And it is SO GOOD. Really, go read this.

Americanah

by Kinsey

I was sick for most of January, and when I’m sick I tend to reach for both comfort foods and comfort books. So I haven’t had much to talk about here, since I’ve mostly been rereading Anne of Green Gables and Sharon Shinn books. But I’ve rejoined the land of the living with Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which was just stunning, and it reminded me what an impact a good novel can have. (On a related note, did you see this study about how reading novels improves brain function for days afterwards?)

Adichie is a young, female Nigerian writer who has written a couple of other very well-regarded books–Purple Hibiscus and Half of a Yellow Sun–that I enjoyed, but this one really hit home for me. I’m about 90% sure that this is because a lot of this book is set in the U.S., which probably speaks poorly of my ability to empathize with people in other situations. But whatever the reason, the characters in this book felt so real to me it’s like they were walking around next to me and I was just eavesdropping on their lives. Summaries of the book tend to describe it as a love story spanning the years as two teenagers meet in Lagos, drift apart, and meet up again in the present day. And it is that. But it’s also an immigrant story–Ifemelu (the female half of the couple) ends up in the U.S., while Obinze goes to England, and the stories show different sides of the immigrant experience. And it’s about race–in the U.S., in the U.K., and in Nigeria.

I feel like this might make the book sound heavy, and it’s not a romantic comedy, that’s for sure. But again, Ifemelu and Obinze are both such layered, complicated people that I felt like I knew them, and I was interested in finding out what happened to them in the same way I’m interested in my friends’ lives. And it seemed like Adichie felt the same–I felt as if the author really liked these characters and was treating them with respect, even when bad things might be happening.

Also, I originally picked this book up because one of my favorite people online was raving about it. Bim Adewunmi (@bimadew) is a British journalist who is completely hilarious and awesome on Twitter, talking about everything from politics to pop culture. She basically live-tweeted sobbing her way through Eleanor and Park, and when she recommends something I listen. A highly recommended Twitter follow.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Dense, thoughtful, and kind.

You might also like: Adichie’s other books are wonderful, but other good immigrant stories also could include The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, Brick Lane by Monica Ali, or even A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.

The Rest of 2013

by Kinsey
As I said at this time a year ago, when I really love a book I generally write about it here, mostly so I can tell as many people as possible what to do. So you’ve already read here about the best books I read in 2013: Code Name Verity, Eleanor and Park, Me Before You, and Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. But there were plenty of other books that I enjoyed but never got around to reviewing on the blog for one reason or another. Rather than let those slip through the cracks, here are the five best books I read in 2013 that I didn’t already mention on the blog:

1) 11/22/63 by Stephen King.

I am not a Stephen King fan, and this didn’t make me want to read anything else by him. However, I love books about time travel, John Kennedy, the 1960s, and Texas, so it’s like this was written especially for me. It’s way too long, and there are some annoying factual errors–some of them might not be noticeable if you’re not from Texas, but at one point he mentions JFK’s daughter, “Carolyn.” Where was his editor? But it was engrossing and I really enjoyed it, even if if weighs a ton and took forever to finish.

2) Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson

Did you know that you can give someone a book via Kindle, and it will appear on their device as if by magic? I love my Kindle. Anyway, one day I got an email saying that my friend Jocelyn had given me this book I had never even heard of, and it is completely delightful. Written in the 1930s, the book is set in a tiny, picturesque English village where Barbara Buncle has written a book based on the people she knows in town. When the book is published, anonymously, and becomes a hit, the townspeople are not too happy to see themselves in print. The whole thing is just charming.

3) You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me and Unsticky by Sarra Manning

The night before I was leaving for vacation this summer I realized I didn’t have enough to read to carry me through my whole trip, so I frantically got on Twitter looking for cheap e-book recommendations. Someone (I can’t remember now who, but thank you, whoever you were!) said that these were $2.99 on Amazon and were entertaining, and I bought them without knowing anything else about them. And I loved them both! I guess you’d call them chicklit–they’re both romances that involve cool, young, urban (London-based) 20-somethings. But I found them unpredictable, and all the characters were much more complex than I was expecting. I think Unsticky was my favorite, but they were both fun.

4) Going Clear by Lawrence Wright

I am OBSESSED with Scientology. As in, I read blogs and message boards where people who’ve left the church hang out, and follow the gossip like it’s about people I know. It’s all just so INSANE. I’ve read a bunch of books about the church, and this one is definitely the best. It swings between detailing L. Ron Hubbard’s life  and the beginnings of the church, and current day leadership and scandals. It a long, detailed book, and I found every word of it FASCINATING.

5) The Good Nurse by Charles Graeber

Do you ever watch those true-crime TV shows, like Dateline ID or 48 Hours? I love those, and this is like a really, really good one in book form. It’s about a nurse who killed people–maybe dozens, maybe hundreds–during his career, and how he was ultimately caught. A quick, but riveting read, that may make you terrified of even the idea of being in the hospital.

And now I’ve started a new list of Books Read for 2014 and am looking forward to a year of more awesome reading.

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

by Kinsey

About this time last year, Anna reviewed a series of YA fantasy books by Holly Black that started out with White Cat. We both finished that trilogy this year, and really enjoyed them. So imagine how happy I was to see that Black released a new book this fall! It’s a YA book about a teenage girl who gets swept up into a whole adventure with vampires. Yes, another one of those. But this one is awesome, and rather than try to explain why by describing the plot, I’m going to list just a few of the ways this book is better than Twilight:

1) First and foremost, the main character, Tana, is the totally kickass opposite of Bella Swan. She takes care of herself and others and doesn’t particularly need saving. And it’s not that she’s a superhero–she’s terrified most of the time–but she sees things that need doing, so she just does them.

2) There is a bit of romance, which I like in my books, but it not the main point of the story. Also, it isn’t a love triangle. Why do books and movies so often involve love triangles, when my experience is that they are just not that common in real life?3) In this book, the public is aware of vampires, because although the old vampires had managed to keep themselves secret for years, they eventually lost control and it all came out and vampires ended up being celebrities. You know that if vampires were real they would be all over YouTube and People.

4) Being a vampire isn’t particularly romanticized here. There are characters that do glamorize it, but it’s actually presented a lot like fame: it might seem exciting, but the reality is not that much fun. The main character spends most of her time trying very hard to not become a vampire, which I found refreshing.

So, overall, a little gory, but very entertaining and way way way better than a lot of vampire stuff out there.

Kinsey’s (Approximately) Three Word Review: A fun, dark ride.

You might also like: Sunshine by Robin McKinley, which Anna already told you to read.

The Girl You Left Behind

by Kinsey
Back in the summer I raved about Me Before You by Jojo Moyes, and I have apparently become one of her groupies: she is delightful on Twitter and I’m here now to tell you to go read her new book. Like Me Before You, this latest one would be an excellent airplane book, and would be a great distraction for those of you about to embark on holiday travel.

The Girl You Left Behind is a little more intricate than Me Before You, with a narrative alternating between two story lines. The first story involves Sophie, a French woman in a small town occupied by the Germans during World War I. Her husband, a painter, has been sent to the front and all she has to remember him is a portrait he painted of her. But the portrait catches the eye of a German officer, and no good can possibly come of being too involved with the occupying soldiers. The second story line follows the painting to the current day, where it’s owned by Liv, a London woman with problems of her own. Her troubles get worse when the mystery of how the painting got from small-town 1917 France to modern-day London blows up in a very public way.

I have heard some critics of Me Before You say that is was predictable, and at times a little far-fetched. I think both those things are true and they’re true of this book, as well. I never know where any story is going, and I guessed pretty early into The Girl You Left Behind how the issue with the portrait would be resolved. But that doesn’t really matter in either book. The characters are so nicely drawn–complex and flawed, but sympathetic–and the stories move along at such a clip that both of these books are just very readable. And I mean that as a high compliment. I finished The Interestings by Meg Woltizer not long ago and while I was reading it I enjoyed it a lot and thought it was very well done. But the instant I closed the book each night I forgot all about it and lost all interest in picking it up again. I didn’t think about it when I wasn’t reading it, I didn’t long to get back to it, or feel the need to read “just one more chapter.” With The Girl You Left Behind, I stayed up until 1:00 in the morning on a Tuesday, desperate to find out what happened.

Also, both of Moyes’s books seem absolutely made to be turned into movies. I’m not sure what it is about them that make me think that–I’d be interested in hearing what other folks think makes a book seem ready for adaptation to the screen. But I think both of these stories would movies as compelling as the books are.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: A sad, suspenseful page-turner.

You might also like: The Girl in Hyacinth Blue by Susan Vreeland, which also deals with a painting of mysterious provenance, or any of Tracy Chevalier’s novels about historical figures, including The Girl With the Pearl Earring.

YA Book Battles and Sad Holiday Movies

by Kinsey
It’s pretty clear that all of us here on Biblio-therapy are big YA fans–we may read and review other things, but we always come back to YA. Which is why we were so excited when Friend of the Blog Hannah pointed out Entertainment Weekly’s “What is the Best Young Novel of All Time” bracket game! You can see the complete bracket here. (And boy, do I love a good bracket–the bracket episode of How I Met Your Mother is one of my favorites. “I was there! Trust me! It’s Dead Baby!”) Voting started Monday so we’ve missed Round 1, which is probably all for the best because there were a few choices that seemed impossible. Anne of Green Gables or The Hobbit? I Capture the Castle or The Catcher in the Rye? Harry Potter or Holes? The Fault in Our Stars or Code Name Verity? I’m not sure what I would have done! (Okay, actually, most of those decisions are pretty easy: Anne, Castle, and Harry. But I am torn on the last one. Verity, I think, but I might have to read them both again before I felt truly comfortable with that decision.)

I’m going to keep an eye on the EW website for a while now, because I am looking forward to voting in the next rounds. But I do have one complaint (aside from the whole how-can-one-possibly-vote-on-art thing): some of these books are not YA. I understand that the lines can be a bit blurry, but in some cases, there is no blur involved. Dune is not and never was a young adult book. The Princess Bride? The House on Mango Street? Not young adult. And Prep? Just because a book is about teenagers does not mean it was written for teenagers. Plus it goes the other way, too–The Invention of Hugo Cabret is a straight-up kids book, and seems overmatched in this field.

EW did get it right by including The Book Thief, though, which is one of my favorite YA books ever. And last week I actually had the opportunity to see the new Book Thief movie (officially opening tomorrow). There are so many good things about the movie–all of the actors are just wonderful, especially Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson as the main characters adoptive parents. And the whole thing has a beautiful look. But I wish they had been able to use those same people and sets and costumes and make a six-hour miniseries instead of a two-hour movie. The Book Thief is a long, complicated story, and so many things that had so much meaning in the book were brushed by in the movie because there simply wasn’t time. I am not one to get huffy about film adaptations of books–I tend to like seeing how the shift in format is made–but for me the movie had much less impact than the book. But then, the friend I was with who didn’t know the story, and who is not an overly emotional sort, started sobbing about halfway through the movie and never stopped, so maybe I’m a bad judge. There are a lot of lovely things about the movie, so I hope it does well in theaters. And I hope it inspires more people to go read the book, which is truly stunning.

The Shining Girls

by Kinsey

As if the sudden chill in the air, the changing leaves, and the dark evenings weren’t enough to convince me that fall is officially here, my apartment building decided to get in on the action this week by setting up an ENORMOUS inflatable grim reaper in the lobby. It’s just decoration for the annual Halloween party, but it looms over you in an ominous way when you’re checking your mail. And speaking of things that kind of freak me out, The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes is an excellent book to read to get you in the Halloween mood by scaring the bejeezus out of you.

Serial killers and their victims may seem like well-covered material, but this version has a twist–the killer has found a house in Chicago that allows him to travel through time, killing women in Chicago throughout the 1900s. But one of his planned victims survived, and she’s on a mission to figure out who attacked her, no matter how strange the answer might be. The action alternates between the killer and the survivor, and the tension builds as their stories converge. And the occasional chapter following one of the doomed women feel like tiny historical fiction stories, providing snapshots of life at various points in the twentieth century.

There are a lot of things that make me want to recommend this book, including a compelling mystery, a kick-ass female lead character, and a compelling first-person view inside the mind of the killer. But it is a very dark, very creepy, and at times hard to read–I had to stop reading it right before bed because it was giving me nightmares. Also, something bad happens to a dog. But if you’re looking for something to scare you a bit, this is a solid bet.

Kinsey’s (Approximately) Three Word Review: Criminal Minds meets Quantum Leap

You might also like:  Any of the mysteries by Tana French or Gillian Flynn–I know I recommend these two all the time, but they have a similar feeling. And Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro has a similar mystery combined with a slightly different universe than ours.

The Raven Boys

by Kinsey
First of all, let me say that the people I write this blog with are very, very smart. I haven’t been writing many reviews lately because I’ve been too busy with things that they’ve already told you about. But just in case you missed any of Anna and Rebecca’s previous recommendations, I add my full endorsement to :

The Lizzie Bennett Diaries–these are so good, I now own merchandise.

White Cat–as I said in a comment on Anna’s review, this whole series was like Harry Potter meets the Sopranos.

The Tightrope Walker–-very 70s and fun.

Frost Burned–one of the more enjoyable of the recent Patricia Briggs books.

But I finally got around around to reading something new. The first Maggie Stiefvater I read was her teenage werewolf trilogy that starts with Shiver. The story was fine, if maybe a little weighted down with teenage romance, and maybe sharing a little too much DNA with the Twilight books. But The Raven Boys, the first book in her new Raven Cycle, felt much more original and confident.

The boys of the title are teenagers attending a fancy school in Virginia, and Blue is a local girl who gets caught up with their efforts to solve a supernatural mystery. Magic is treated very calmly here–Blue is from a family of psychics, and ghosts and time travel and Arthurian legend are all just common currency–so don’t expect a lot of explanation for how anything works. And since this is clearly intended to be the start of a series, a whole lot of guns are introduced in this first act that have yet to go off. But I liked the characters and, even more, liked the tone of the book. This isn’t a bleak story, but it is creepy and ominous, and it gave me the shivers reading it at night. The second book in the cycle, The Dream Thieves, just came out on Monday, and I have that squiggly sort of feeling about reading it–I can’t wait to find out what happens, but I’m not sure I can bear to find out, since I know things can’t possibly end well for everyone. It’s going to be an excellent thing to read as the year races towards Halloween.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Eerie, magical mystery

You might also like:  White Cat, or Grave Mercy, or Beautiful Creatures, or any of those young adult magic/fantasy series. But let me also recommend another YA book about a boarding school that has a similar melancholy, atmospheric tone, minus the magic: Jellicoe Road by Melinda Marchetta.

She Left Me the Gun

by Kinsey
I love memoirs–I’ve said this before–and can read one after another, but even I get a little tired of the endless string of “Here’s The Unique Way that My Parents Messed Me Up” stories. I certainly understand how a traumatic childhood can allow for the kind of narrative arc that works well in memoirs, but they are such a drag to read. Which is one reason that She Left Me the Gun: My Mother’s Life Before Me by Emma Brockes was a such a refreshing change from the usual memoir.

Though told from Emma’s point of view, the book is really about her mother Paula, who was born and raised in South Africa but emigrated to England as an adult. After arriving in London, she got married, had her daughter, moved to the country, and lived out a normal, sedate village life. It was only after her mother died that Emma started looking into some of the vague things that her mother had said about her past. It takes Emma a fair amount of research, including multiple trips to South Africa and visits with extended family, to piece together exactly what happened to her mother before she got to England, and I’ll just say that very little of it was good.

The book goes into some detail about what happened to Paula, and offers an intriguing glimpse into everyday life in modern South Africa, as Emma ends up spending a great deal of time there meeting family and doing research. But the real heart of the book seems to be Emma trying to get her head around both who her mother was, and how much of the past she has the right and/or responsibility to know. Her mother kept this information from Emma for her whole life, and clearly wanted her to be as protected as possible; by discovering the truth, does Emma undo her mother’s work? Did Emma really know her mother, if she knows nothing of the first 30 years of her life and the momentous events that shaped her? (Emma does a great job of explaining that kid feeling of, “My mom was born, and then she had me. The end.”) And after her mother has died, does Emma have an obligation to learn what happened, so that SOMEONE knows exactly what her mother had to overcome?

The biggest question asked here, though, is just how does someone start over again? No matter the specifics of what happened to Paula, the upshot is that at 30 years old she walked away from a troubled life in South Africa and started all over again in London. She got married, had a child, and remained, as her daughter describes her, a vibrant, funny, functional person. How does someone do that? How could Paula do it when so many others couldn’t? The book doesn’t really answer that, of course. It’s a bigger mystery than one book can solve and Paula herself isn’t around to offer her thoughts. I wish she were, because she sounds like she would have been a riot, even if she couldn’t tell you how she did this magic act of creating a new life.

Kinsey’s Three Word Review: Inconclusive, but satisfying.

You might also like: The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, another memoir by a daughter that is (largely) about her mother. In this case, the unknowable part seems to be how Walls ended up so functional when her mother was so dysfunctional, but it addresses some of the same key questions about how you construct a life.