The Hunger Games

It took me a shocking amount of time to get around to reading The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. It came out in 2008 while I was entering university. I certainly heard about it, but if I was doing any reading for fun, it was my old favorites, not anything new.

 About the time that the film  adaptation was coming out in 2012, my brother told me that this was a book that I HAD to read. I  then knew that I would enjoy it. This was the brother who had, in the past ten years, basically only read Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Like me, sticking with two favorite series. Yet, I had a few books on my reading list which I already had on my shelf. It didn't make sense to buy another book just to have it sit on my shelf.

One day last spring I found it in the book section of Value Village and grabbed it up for $2.99. It then sat on my shelf until November.

I read the first couple of chapters in early November, and I did enjoy the read. Unfortunately, I started reading it on a couple of night shifts and was never really able to get into the "reading zone". I would read a couple of pages and a call bell would go off.  The book didn't make it out of my bag once I got home, and unfortunately November had a record low number of shifts for me, so it wasn't until mid December that I picked it up again.

I decided to start at the beginning, and I am glad that I did. By the end of my four days off I was half way done the book, and had picked up the next one. By the end of my next days off I was part way through the sequel, and by New years I had finished the Trilogy.

I haven't had a set of books hook me like that since Harry Potter.

This book really makes a person think without forcing it. Above all it is a story, but it makes the reader question their own morals and knowledge quite a bit. How far is too far? Where is the reality to line crossed? How much control is too much for the government? How much do we really know about how to world works?  What is the line between self defense, murder, war, assassinations...?  Could YOU really kill someone if put in the kill or be killed situation? Is it better to die than to live with killing something?

The reader doesn't necessarily realize that they are asking these questions, but when one judges the character's choices, and learns about that world, the reader does in fact start to think about these things. I think that these questions are important to think about. I don't really think that many of us will be put in this sort of situation, but when you replace killing with breaking the spirit, ignoring, bullying, or looking down upon, the same message comes across. Is is ok to put down others in order to make yourself look better to your boss? To get someone fired in order to get a raise?

All of this from a young adult novel about teenagers being forced by a corrupt government, to kill each other on tv.

Shadow of Night

      Shadow of Night by Deborah Harkness is past two of the All Souls Trilogy (part one being The Discovery of Witches. While this book is clearly in the middle of a larger storyline, it clearly takes on different issues than the previous book.
      This series is based around the search for a book, and the three missing pages from it. A very important, enchanted, book which contains currently unknown information about the genesis of the supernatural beings: witches, demons, and vampires.
      Shadow of Night continues to follow the story of Diana Bishop, a witch just discovering her powers, and her partner/husband/ significant other, the vampire Mathew Clairmont. Unlike the previous book, this one is set in Elizabethan England. Yes, this does make sense in the book. While the last book took place in what can be thought of as Diana Bishop's home turf, this one is clearly in Mathew Clairmont's.
     As a vampire, Mathew already lived through this era. In fact, some of his friends are major and minor characters. They are able to spend some time with his "father" who died during The Second World War. Diana is able to work on Alchemy (which she studies and teaches in modern times) with a famous female alchemist (who I hadn't heard of, but seems to have been quite important). Being in the different time period give Diana a chance to find someone to teacher her how to use her developing powers.
     The discovery of Diana's powers. Diana has always known that she is a witch. Her family have always been witches. However, Diana stopped using her witchcraft (in which she was not proficient in the first place), as a child or teenager, shortly after her parents died. She and Mathew are now under scrutiny, and in physical danger because of their relationship. Thus, they must travel back in time (using her newly discovered genetic time-walking power) to a time when they are not being hunted. Unfortunately, some unpleasant parts of Mathew's past are now in the present, and by the end they are forced to return to the tremulous present day.

The Kitchen Daughter

The Kitchen Daughter by Jael McHenry struck a bit of a cord with me. I follow many blogs about parents of children with disabilities. I know people on the autism spectrum. It was refreshing to read a book in which the main character had these tendencies, yet disability awareness wasn't the main point of the book.

I enjoyed the way that each chapter began with a recipe which was used as foreshadowing for the chapter. I found it interesting to immerse myself into the character's thoughts and feelings while she cooked. Reading how she was so passionate about her cooking and recipes was refreshing. For me, the aspect of the book around her seeing the spirits of the people who are connected to the recipes, and solving a family mystery took a backseat to the struggles for independence and finding her place in her newly divided family. .

This book was wonderfully realistic showing of the main character's desire to be self sufficient and independent after the death of her parents. Her sister believes that she is incapable of living independently and this is a bone of contention between the two sisters. While I spent the entire book rooting for the main character, but by the end I was not so sure.

A Discovery of Witches

               

I have had my eye on A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness for a while. I saw it in Chapters just before my Church Campmeeting in July, but didn't get it because it didn't seem like a particularly good book for a church camp. Later, in August, I saw it while perusing the books at Value Village, and snagged it. It then set on my shelf of books I have yet to read until midway through September. I picked it up, and got about a third of the way through fairly quickly. Then it sat on my bedside table for a few weeks. It isn't that I lost interest and started to read something else, I just wasn't really reading much. 

This book came to work with me on nights, but never left my bag. I was either busy, or my eyes just couldn't focus on a book at 0230. This book also had the unfortunate disadvantage of coming to me just as I discovered the joys of Netflix. 

Then I started to read again. Over the course of October I read this book, and it's sequel, Shadow of Night. 

I found A Discovery of Witches to be a well written, and quite a well thought out book. It brings a large number of well known (and most likely a fair number of not so well known, who I didn't recognize) people into the story line which certainly adds a level of interest. I am not typically one for vampires, but having the immortal element is a nice way to show history to the reader

At first glance, this is a book about witches, vampires, and demons, but one doesn't have to look very hard in order to become enthralled in the politics in the natural world, the supernatural world, and the interactions between the two.

I also enjoyed the science/ scholarly aspect being brought into the story. The two main characters both work at a university studying and teaching, one alchemy, and the other genetics. This brings about a deeper aspect to the storyline than I expected from this book when I first picked it up.

This is book one of the All Souls Trilogy, two of which are out and I have read. I don't know when the third will be out, but I am looking forward to reading it. It is nice to have series, and a book to look forward to, instead of finding them all once they are all out. I think that the anticipation will make the third book even better.

My Mother's Secret

                                 

    

My Mother's secret by J.R. Witterik is a Holocaust story from a different perspective. It follows a young woman and her mother as they live their lives during The Second World War. They build, and lose relationships. They they meet people, and this book shows how even the smallest actions may have great repercussions, for good or bad, in the future.  

The story shows the bravery of this mother and daughter as they attempt to hide and support whomever came to them. They go to great lengths to protect those who they hardly know simply because it is the right thing to do. 

When I think about what i would do in their place, I would like to think that I would do the same thing. I would like to think that anyone would do this, but if everyone did, it wouldn't be so amazing and awe inspiring.

Mercy Train

Mercy Train is an interesting book which follows the stories of three generations of women, each at a pivotal point in their life. One is a young girl leaving everything that she knows, one and elderly woman facing death, and one a young woman facing life after becoming a mother. .

Timeline wise, the eldest of the main characters is a young girl, growing up in poverty on the streets of New York in the early 1900s. This is the character is the one which the title most literally refers.

Her daughter's story takes place when she,the daughter, is an elderly woman coming to the end of her battle with cancer.

The story of the third generation follows a new mother who is given a box of trinkets that had belonged  to her mother. As she goes through them, she tries to piece together the stories of her Mother and Grandmother.

I found this book to be an interesting and easy read. I have found myself enjoying historical fiction more than science fiction now, which surprises me. Looking back I see that I enjoyed reading historical fiction for school, but I always thought of it as school reading, not leisure reading. I don't necessarily think that my interests have changed, just that I take a less direct route the the science fictions section of the bookstore.

A Map of Time

A Map of time by Feliz J. Palma is one of the only books which I have read which was not originally written in English. It was interesting, well written, and well thought out. I'm not sure what category this book would fit into. Somewhere between historical fiction, mystery, and fantasy. The book had a few story lines which were connected in ways which I was not expecting.

For much of the book I was expecting the narrator to become a character, who later wrote the events down, sort of like Bilbo in The Hobbit. The book is narrated by an all knowing, omnipresent point of view. This is not a perspective that I am used to. I'm not going to say that I don't like this perspective, but I prefer books written by a character's point of view.

The book includes many actual historical people, and I'm not sure which, if any of the events actually happened. I don't have enough knowledge of Victorian history to pick out fact from fiction. I know a bit about Jack the Ripper, H.G. Wells (and his book The Time Machine), and Dracula (although not much about the author). This is probably what the author was counting on. Inserting enough fact that readers will recognize names to make the whole storyline more believable.