The Belles
by Dhonielle Clayton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Belles / B071XNWRHC
I'd heard in advance this book was amazing, and even pre-ordered the Kindle version, so I was excited beyond words when the publisher sent me an ARC to read in advance. I meant to read it a little at a time (I'm trying to break my marathon-reading habits) but ended up devouring the entire book in a day. SO GOOD.
The people of this world are afflicted with a mysterious curse which drains them of color. But a few girls are born with color and a mysterious magical gift: they can provide beauty (any color! golden hair? sure! red-rose lips? on it! honey-brown eyes? here you go!), moderate moods and temperaments, and grant musical and artistic skill. These girls are called Belles and their entire purpose in life is to serve the people of Orleans and beat back the graying curse with constant vigilance in the form of beauty treatments.
...which are expensive.
...and very painful.
Camille, one of the latest batch of six graduating Belles, longs to show the people their inner beauty. She wants to *enhance* their loveliness and help them accept how wonderful they are. But life is about to take a sharp turn when she arrives at the capital and realizes that what the people *actually* want has nothing to do with natural beauty or self-acceptance and everything to do with a desperate scramble to the top of a treacherous and deadly social ladder.
If you liked HUNGER GAMES but wanted less running in the woods and more Capitol politics, clothing, beauty regimens, and rich people murdering each other--and President Snow as an evil princess with a miniature pet elephant--then you will like THE BELLES.
---Spoilers and Trigger Warnings--
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Review: The Belles |
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Review: Good Luck With That |
Good Luck with That
by Kristan Higgins
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Good Luck With That / B077CNXY2B
[Trigger Warning: Fat Hatred, Eating Disorders]
I want to say upfront I did not finish (DNF) this book. There are 39 chapters and a prologue, so 40 chapters total. I read the first 7 chapters, 2 chapters in the middle, and the last 4 chapters--13 chapters total I read, or almost a third of the book. I also heavily skimmed the parts I didn't read. I was looking, as close as I could, for something that would make this book stop being hurtful. In the beginning, in the middle, and in the ending, I only found more hurt.
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Review: D'Lish Deviled Eggs |
D'Lish Deviled Eggs: A Collection of Recipes from Creative to Classic
by Kathy Casey
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
D'Lish Deviled Eggs / B00AZKUERY
I love this cookbook so much and I keep coming back to it again and again. I know that seems silly, like, what more can you do with deviled eggs than the basic recipe? But this book has the best base recipe *plus* awesome variations with pulled pork, buttered corn, pimiento cheese, and a zillion other flavor combinations. For someone who really likes deviled eggs and has a lot of picky eating issues, this cookbook is great because it's good at presenting ideas (with gooooorgeous pictures) and letting you experiment with those ideas. "Hmm, what if Classic Picnic with Bacon Cheddar?" WHAT IF, INDEED.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Cheese and Beer |
Cheese Beer
by Janet Fletcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Cheese and Beer / 1449421849
Be aware right this is a *pairing* book. It's not about cheese and about beer, it's about cheese-and-beer together. That wasn't quite what I was looking for, but that's okay! Pairing books are important too.
This is a gorgeous book with a lot of beautiful pictures and a huge variety of pairing suggestions. I've seen another reviews complain that the selections are too easy to find, but I think that's going to vary widely--I'm in Texas, not California, and even the nicest grocers around here don't serve half the cheeses in this book. Fortunately the pairing suggestions are very versatile so you're not going to be "trapped" into being unable to use half the book. The instructions for storing and serving cheese are especially good to know; I'm kind of a foodie when it comes to cheese and I still learned stuff which is always awesome.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Amish Friends Cookbook Desserts |
Wanda E. Brunstetter's Amish Friends Cookbook: Desserts
by Wanda E. Brunstetter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Amish Friends Cookbook Desserts / 978-1616262921
There's nothing really wrong with this book, but there's also nothing really right. There are almost no pictures for the recipes, and it's not clear whether these even *are* pictures of the recipes or just generic stock photos of "apple pie", "pumpkin pie", etc. The recipes are short and sweet--about the size of a recipe card, which is convenient for storage but not if you want any kind of in-depth instructions. But if you're an advanced chef, I feel like you already know about these recipes; there's very little in the way of variety or invention. If you have even a single church cookbook from the past 30 years, you have most of these recipes already. If you don't, then I guess this is a decent collection? But don't expect instructions or pictures to help you out.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Holiday Cookies |
Holiday Cookies: Showstopping Recipes to Sweeten the Season
by Elisabet Der Nederlanden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Holiday Cookies / B01N6FSVZB
I seriously thought I reviewed this months ago, but it turns out I got lost in cookie making and forgot! I picked this book up on NetGalley thinking "oh, Ana, how many more holiday cookie books do you NEED when you own so many already" and it turns out the answer was "AT LEAST ONE MORE".
I love this book. I love the recipes; they're simple, and easy to read and follow. I love the pictures, oh gosh, the pictures. There is a picture for each recipe (as god intended for recipe books!) and they are all so gorgeous I want to lick the page. I love the variety; oh sure, we start with gingerbread and pinwheels and chocolate chunk but in no time whatsoever we're serving up cookies from Sweden, Italy, Austria, South America, Denmark, Mexico, and so forth. It's largely a very European selection and I would've loved to see more global variety (maybe for a sequel? please?) but what we have here is scrumptious, yummy, and there's almost certainly something here that isn't already on your cookbook shelves.
There's also some amazing decorating work on the pages, and some creative ideas like cookie place cards (for settings at the table) and one of the prettiest 3-D Christmas tree cookies I've ever seen. The section on gingerbread houses comes with guides for you to trace and cut out on paper. (Though this won't be much use, probably, to kindle users. I wish cookbooks would start writing the measurements on guides now that tablets are becoming ubiquitous.) If you love winter cookies--and these are definitely winter/yuletide/christmas cookies, don't be mislead by the "holiday" in the title to think there's a Labor Day cookie in here--this is a great book for your collection.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: QUESO! |
QUESO!: Regional Recipes for the World's Favorite Chile-Cheese Dip
by Lisa Fain
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
QUESO! / B01MT4WC2K
I feel like I should like this book more than I do, and I've been sitting on this review for awhile but I need to post it and get it out of my system: this is a good book, but it's not quite the book I wanted.
I thought I was picking up a cookbook... and I was... kinda. There are a lot of chile con queso recipes here, there's no doubt about that. There's only pictures of about half the recipes, which is never a bonus in my book because I want pictures of *all* the recipes. On the one hand, these are queso recipes so the pictures aren't going to vary a whole lot from each other until we hit the more complicated fare. On the other hand, there *is* more complicated fare deeper in--queso with pork and corn and mushrooms, and vegan queso--and yes, I want pictures of those. The pictures which are on the page aren't labeled (or weren't in the Advance Review Copy I received) which means that every 3-4 recipes there's 1-2 pictures and you have to try to match the pictures to the recipes. For a book that I want to browse through when I have a hankering to throw cheese in a pan, that feels like more work than I'd wanted.
This is also a touch of a history book... sorta. The author grew up in Texas (as did I) and was raised on the Velveeta-and-Rotel recipe that white Americans grew up on in the American South back in the day. Then she started branching out and researching the roots of the recipe and visiting different Texas towns to gather regional samples. She's looked into fondues and rarebits and other melted cheese dishes. All of this research has gone into little 2-3 page "histories" before each section of queso recipes, along with little paragraphs of historical context with each recipe.
I love food history so I feel like I should like these parts more than I do. There's a distressing shallowness to a lot of the history, like there's a deeper story and we're just getting a couple condensed sentences that would go on a Wikipedia stub until someone fleshed the material out properly. And the history we do get feels very much like a white outsider peering in--and sometimes in the wrong directions. From the very beginning, the author explains that her trek-for-queso took her from El Paso to Corpus Christi to Austin to Houston to San Antonio. I would've expected at least one jaunt over to Mexico while she "drove along the Texas-Mexico border". The first section of queso recipes features recipes from Los Angeles, Boston, San Antonio, El Paso, Arkansas ("Arkansas Cheese Dip"), Lubbock (a Velveeta-based recipe), and Lady Bird Johnson's Washington Post recipe.
Those feel like very unusual choices to set the stage for a book that is trying to be a history of queso. I feel almost like I'm reading a gentrification of queso--the Arkansas Cheese Dip is called "the term preferred by folks in Arkansas". Do you mean white folks in Arkansas? Because you can say "white folks". I'm assuming Spanish-speaking Arkansans still just called it chili con queso. (Though they probably didn't make it with "1 pound yellow American cheese" and ketchup, so maybe "Arkansas Cheese Dip" is the better term after all.)
I dunno, I feel like I'm being mean. As a coffee table book for Christmas, I think this is perfectly adequate. As an addition to your cookbooks to flip through when you want cheese to nosh on, I think it works. If you're interested in the history of chili con queso in America as adopted as part of the American culture, I think this is an interesting read. If you go into the book with that mindset, I think you won't be disappointed.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Baking Class |
Baking Class: 50 Fun Recipes Kids Will Love to Bake!
by Deanna F. Cook
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Baking Class / B06XPQX1ZC
This is an extremely cute little book which I think would be great for small children wanting to get into baking--especially if they've been watching cooking shows for years (like my nephew) and wanting to dip their toes in the water. The graphics are colorful and helpful, and the steps are easy to follow. I love how all the helpers in the book are kids (with a good variety in racial representation!) because it really emphasizes that yes, kids CAN do these recipes and so can the kids reading along at home.
The selection of recipes here is not the widest or most diverse. The bread section is loaf bread, banana bread, cinnamon rolls, pizza dough, etc; the cookie section is chocolate chip, oatmeal, sugar cut-out, snickerdoodles, etc. I do feel like a follow-up book could branch out just a wee bit into some more multi-cultural directions than just what would've been incredibly safe and familiar to me as a white American kid. I don't think this is a point of criticism for the book, just something I wanted to note for potential buyers.
This is definitely a book for KIDS, though. Some baking 101 books are accessible for adults, but this one is geared strongly for the under-12 age crowd. As a birthday or holiday present for a kid wanting to get into baking, though, I think this would hit the spot. Helpful, colorful, cheerful, and creative within the confines of the "safe" recipes served up on the page.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Pride and Prejudice (Manga Classics) |
Manga Classics: Pride & Prejudice
by Stacy King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
MANGA CLASSICS: Pride and Prejudice / B01LW0JIK6
I love a lot of Jane Austen, but I've always been the odd one out in English major circles for not caring much for Pride and Prejudice. I liked the plot just fine, but I never could get around not liking Darcy. At all. Even a little bit.
No, no, come back! The thing is, despite the fact that he's very proud and reserved and shy and such, it did feel like he spent so much of the novel being rude to Elizabeth that it was hard for me to stomach the turnaround later. This manga adaptation of P&P does an excellent job of overcoming that barrier for me by adding that most powerful tool in the actor's toolbox: facial expressions. We're able to see Darcy's embarrassment, chagrin, and regret as actions unfold and I find I like him so much better when his cutting remarks are accompanied by a wincing expression as he reflects on what he's just said.
Overall, I feel this is an excellent adaption of the source material and I stayed up late reading until the end, which is quite a feat given that I already knew the ending! The art is gorgeous, especially for Elizabeth and Jane, and I feel that the supporting characters and side panels are well-depicted in ways that better foreshadow Darcy's concerns (which make his actions easier to stomach, understand, and forgive). I will add that there are some cutesy "chibi-style" panels where Mrs Bennet is a little tiny doll waving her arms around; nothing manga fans won't be used to.
The only thing I did not like is that Mr Collins is drawn in a very strange style and he stands out against the more realistic characters; I realize we aren't supposed to like him but his cartoonish appearance in contrast to the others made his arc difficult to enjoy. It was just very jarring. I considered taking a star off for that, but the rest of the book is so good that I think it overcomes that fault. I'll say 4.5 stars, rounded up.
NOTE: This review is based on a free electronic Advance Review Copy of this book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: The Scarlet Letter (Manga Classics) |
Manga Classics: The Scarlet Letter
by Stacy King
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Scarlet Letter (Manga Classics) / 978-1927925331
I've been a fan of Hawthorne since college, but I'll be the first to admit that his prose can be pretty heavy to wade through in parts. I've been wanting to re-read Scarlet Letter for years but it's just not something that I can sink easily into after a long day. So when a review copy of this book came available on NetGalley, I snapped it up as fast as I could, and ended up reading it in a single sitting that day.
First of all, the artwork in this manga is gorgeous. The book is fully black-and-white (which is my one complaint; the color cover is just stunning) and the rendering of the faces is incredible and evocative. Each character is rendered uniquely and is recognizable to me, which is always a big plus for graphic novels. The scenery shots, too, are gorgeous and there is no skimping on detail. Seriously, I would recommend picking this up based on the art alone.
Regarding the adaptation of the story: I love it. I haven't read Scarlet Letter in years, so there might be some details that I've missed, but this feels like a very faithful adaptation of the original. In some ways I almost like this adaptation better; I found Pearl and Dimmesdale to both be much more sympathetic here than I did in Hawthorne's novel, I think in part because of the emotive expressions rendered through the artwork. When Pearl is throwing flowers at the badge, for instance, she genuinely looks like a small child playing a game rather than a fae creature tormenting her mother (as Hawthorne was sometimes wont to render her). The added visualization made the story feel more real.
My only other real criticism of this is that I wish the publisher would make a kindle version; other manga series have done well in electronic form, so why not these? I hope they expand that as an option in the future.
NOTE: This review is based on a free electronic Advance Review Copy of this book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Hot Guys and Baby Animals |
Hot Guys and Baby Animals
by Audrey Khuner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hot Guys and Baby Animals / 978-1449407902
Alright, let's get this out of the way first: I'm not super-thrilled by the "pron 4 wimmen!1!" marketing for this book. This book isn't porn, and while it's fine to look at it and/or be turned on by the models, I don't think it's valuable to perpetuate the meme that women can't or don't look at real porn, when many of them do. That meme-road leads only to sex-negativity and shaming. (And, yes, I'm the Most Humorless Feminist in Nofunnington, to quote Melissa McEwan. I'll show myself out, etc.)
Now that we've got that out of the way, I like this book just fine for what it is. It has hot guys and adorable baby animals and -- and this is a BIG part of why I like it -- cute flavor text for each of the pictures. So you get things like:
MARK & SADIE BELLE
Mark thinks people like him because he has a great smile.
Sadie Belle thinks people like Mark because he has Sadie Belle.
See? It's cute! (Well, I think so.) And there's a lot of really sweet, upbeat friendliness to this book -- I almost feel like this is the sort of thing I would really value the next time I go through a bout of depression. In some ways it seems sort of tailor-made for therapy: lots of friendly nice people smiling at sweet fuzzy animals with humorous-yet-inviting flavor text that isn't an overwhelming wall of text. I like it, is what I am saying.
I also like that there's a diversity of skin colors among the 38 models, as well as a lot of welcome facial diversity. I'm less thrilled by the lack of body diversity, since there are no visibly disabled or fat models, but that's industry standard for these things, I suppose. Still, they could have added one stocky guy and one guy in a wheelchair and had 40; how hard would that have been? I'm just saying.
All in all, this is a cute coffee table book and I genuinely think could be helpful to anyone going through a depressive funk who also happens to like hot guys and baby animals. I'm sad to see, for that reason, that Amazon doesn't seem to carry a "hot girls and baby animals", because I imagine those could be similarly cheering to look at. Someone should get on that.
NOTE: This review is based on a free electronic Advance Review Copy of this book provided by the publisher.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Hip Hop |
Hip, Hop
by Catherine Hnatov
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Hip Hop / 978-1595722669
According to the back of this book, the book is available in English/Spanish and English/Portuguese -- to be clear upfront, the book I received for review is only in English. It may be available in other languages soon, though, as there are only 25 words in this book. I counted.
This is a cute book for infants. My copy has five animals -- a bird, a rabbit, a dog, a fish, and a cat -- and each animal has a short description of what it "does" and how it "sounds". The descriptions are black text on a full-page of color, opposite a drawing of the animal in black and white. It's fairly simple and cute enough, though I don't know if the book is worth the current asking price in terms of repeat enjoyment. I imagine the book is something that would please most infants, though.
The copy I reviewed is an electronic copy, so I can't speak for the quality of the hardcover (which I normally wouldn't speak to at all, but I figure when babies are apt to be gnawing on it, it's worth a mention). So I would recommend checking the other reviews, since this is a "content only" review.
NOTE: This review is based on a free electronic Advance Review Copy of this book provided by the publisher.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Eve |
[Content Note: Rape, Reproductive Coercion]
Eve
by Anna Carey
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Eve / 9780062048509
I picked up "Eve" from Amazon Vine because it was sold to me as a cross between "The Handmaid's Tale" (which I love) and "The Hunger Games" (which I also love). That was, as we will see, a dirty lie designed by marketers with black holes where their souls should be. And now I'm stuck having to write a review for a book that I flung to the ground in disgust at about the halfway point. However! I am nothing if not interested in helping potential buyers decide whether or not to spend their hard-earned money on a book, so here is my Very Useful Summary of the first third or so -- if you like this, PRESS THAT BUY BUTTON NOW.
EVE: It's the evening before graduation, where I will present the valedictorian speech because I am the smartest girl in the entire world! Which is not terribly hard because 98% of the population was wiped out by a plague, but still. Also, I have no personality whatsoever besides being naive, obedient, and utterly unsuited for a dystopian environment, and am therefore intended to be a generic blank for the reader to sink into.
ARDEN: Hi! I'm the social outcast of the school and everyone rightfully mistrusts me because I lie and cheat and bully people! I have a personality, though, so you'll wish I was your protagonist instead of Meaningful-Name-Eve over there. I'm going to flee the walled school because graduates aren't sent to college; they're strapped to beds and forced to churn out babies in startlingly unsafe conditions considering how valuable they are as baby makers.
EVE: I don't believe you because that makes no sense: why would they teach us waltz and Russian literature if that were true? (NOTE: This really does make NO SENSE.) But despite the fact that you are an established liar, I'm going to break out of the dormitory, nearly break my foot, nearly drown, and get my hands torn to shreds on thorns JUST TO BE SURE. ... Oh, crap, she's right. Welp, nothing for it but to escape -- I'll go get my best friend.
TEACHER: Halt! Oh, Eve, I see you've decided to escape. I'll help you, but there's no time to get your best friend.
EVE: OK, if you say so.
TEACHER: I do. Oh, but go into the crowded dormitory and pack everything you own including the last letter your mother wrote for you before she died. Wouldn't want to leave that behind.
EVE: Of course not. I have priorities. And I'll try not to trip over my sleeping best friend while I pack. [later] Wow, it's really hard to find food and water when I've only ever been trained in waltz and Russian literature. Oh! Arden! Can I come along with you, despite the fact that my presence will hinder you and possibly get us both killed?
ARDEN: Sure, but I'll glower at you while the reader again wishes that I were the point-of-view character instead of you who are so impractical you refuse to use blankets if they've had a dead person touching them.
EVE: While you hunt food for me, I'll just wander off into this Walmart. Oh! A baby bear! Baby bears are dangerous; I know that much. But it looks like Winnie the Pooh. (NOTE: I am not making this up.) I'll just pet him for a bit. Oh! Look at the plot twist that is so obvious a dead man would have foreseen it: an angry bear mother. Whatever will I do?
CALEB: Hi. I'm a literal savior riding a literal horse. Sadly, though, I am not the Old Spice guy.
EVE: Er, how do you feed and shoe and nurture a horse in a dystopia?
CALEB: Look, just get on so we can escape the bear.
EVE: 'K. Don't rape me, though.
CALEB: I'm not interested.
EVE: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED. "The plague had killed far more females than males. As one of the few women in The New America, especially an educated, civilized woman, I'd always supposed I was every man's type. [...] I was intelligent, I worked hard. I was told I was beautiful. I was Eve, the valedictorian of School." (NOTE: That is a direct quote in the context of Eve being offended at being told by Caleb that she's "not [his] type" immediately after she's been indoctrinated her whole life -- and been worried for the entirety of the book -- that all men are degenerate rapists.)
...and that was when I threw the book at the wall, because if Eve thinks that rape is a compliment, then she's officially too stupid to live. (Also, I'm pretty sure the book maintains this rape-is-a-compliment theme, since -- if I gather correctly -- the King of America will decide that Eve will be his own personal baby-maker, come heels or high water. BECAUSE SHE IS JUST THAT SPECIAL. Obviously.)
The one good thing I can say about "Eve" is that it demonstrates how not to write a YA dystopia. Eve has no discernible personality underneath her whiny naivete, and it occurs to me that one of the reasons why I love Katniss Everdeen so much is because she's a distinct person -- she's not a blank for me to sink into, but an actual character worth following in her own right. And in "The Handmaid's Tale" -- which "Eve" wants to be so much it hurts -- Offred's gaps in her personality was part of the point; society was doing its best to strip her self away and that was a tragedy, not something for an author to aspire to.
While I don't demand walls of text to explain world-building in my dystopias, I do require the setting to at least make sense. The hand-wave for why a tremendous amount of resources are sunk into the girls' education is quite ridiculous; the Latin and Russian lessons were supposed to keep them occupied so they wouldn't become suspicious (and would make them erudite protagonists, obviously). The fact that a HUGE number of years and resources are invested into these girls only to then keep them in unhygienic conditions that I *guarantee* would have them dead in a few years flat cannot be chalked up to the Bad Guys being evil and stupid; the system literally should have collapsed on itself before we even get to Eve.
And if it had, we all would have been spared a lot of bother.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine, and which I am required to review as a participant of the program.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: The Slither Sisters |
Tales from Lovecraft Middle School #2: The Slither Sisters
by Charles Gilman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Tales from Lovecraft Middle School #2: The Slither Sisters / 1594745935
"Slither Sisters" picks up as the second in this series after "Professor Gargoyle", and I do feel like this installation in the series is even stronger than the first. As a brief recap of the series as a whole: Everyman YA Protagonist Robert Arthur lives in a world much like ours (minus anyone ever having heard of H.P. Lovecraft), except that Cthulhus and Shoggoths are using his middle school as a dimensional vortex for passing between worlds. The series relies heavily on Lovecraftian monsters, but doesn't delve as much into the tone and themes (presumably because this isn't meant to emotionally scar the targeted audience).
"Professor Gargoyle" ended with the revelation that the two missing twins -- Sarah and Sylvia Price -- have "returned" but are really Lovecraftian monsters in human form. "Slither Sisters" picks up from that revelation with the announcement that the girls are running for student body president and, if successful in their campaign, will use their position to kidnap more students for a body exchange. The plot summary sounded a little twee to me, but to its credit the book really manages to make middle school politics something engaging and interesting to get into, possibly because Lovecraftian monsters are summoned left and right to liven things up.
Additionally, there's a lot of new character development around girlfriend Karina and school librarian Ms. Lavinia and I found those side-developments to be genuinely engaging. Everyman Robert Arthur tends to be just-barely-not-bland for me (although younger and/or male readers may feel differently), but fleshing out Karina's existential angst and Ms. Lavinia's unexpectedly horrifying existence went a long way towards guiding this series back to more Lovecraftian themes of isolation and terror, so well done there. Finally, I loved the concluding chapters of this novel. It's very rare for a YA novel to genuinely surprise me these days, and I was taken completely off-guard by the ending and was absolutely delighted.
And I forgot to mention this in my review of "Professor Gargoyle", so I'll mention it here: I own the Kindle version for both these books and am very impressed with the formatting. The pictures are lovely, and the chapter headings are a very nice touch. There's even drop-caps here and there when appropriate, and it's nice to see a publisher treat the Kindle version right. Kudos.
NOTE: This review is also based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine. (I received the ARC, and then purchased the Kindle version.)
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: The Princess Curse |
by Merrie Haskell
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Princess Curse / 978-0062008138
Here is what you need to know about "The Princess Curse": I started the book a little after dinner one evening, and ended staying up till after midnight to finish this addictive and satisfying story.
"The Princess Curse" manages to seamlessly blend the fairy tale of the twelve dancing princesses with the Persephone myth, and does so in a way that is truly intriguing. I am enormously impressed with Haskell's elaborate world-building as well as with her ability to deal out gripping (and often delightfully creepy) details about the curse as the novel progresses.
I am also deeply pleased with the characterization in this novel; even the "bad" characters are complex and if not sympathetic then at least understandable. And the heroine and her interactions with others is delightful: it's very nice to see Haskell's dialogue unfold organically, and to have a main character who understands how to maunevre herself thoughtfully through socially fraught conversations. For every reader who has hated Big Misunderstanding plot-twists and has wanted characters to just talk and think things out a little more, here is a novel that does that very thing.
Another nice detail is that the protagonist Reveka is an herbalist's apprentice, and this shines through every time she's on the page. She has a real passion for her craft, she thinks in terms of herbs and remedies, and she approaches problems like a professional solving a puzzle. It's wonderful to have a protagonist who is truly unique from all the blank 'reader insert' characters out there -- you may not be much like Reveka, but I can almost guarantee you will find her interesting and likable.
I also absolutely love that there are more female characters than male ones in this novel, and despite this being a novel with a 'historical setting', there isn't really a huge heap of sexism on display every five minutes. Instead, there are powerful women in the novel -- an Abbess, a herb-wife, a witch, an herbalist's apprentice, a Princess Consort, etc. -- who are powerful because they are clever and intelligent and because the men around them are willing and able to recognize their talents and give them space to use them. It's really wonderful to read a 'historical' setting which acknowledges that, okay, yeah, sexism exists while still giving its female characters room to be awesome and letting its male characters be sensible about the situation rather than being enormous jerks every five minutes for no good reason. More of this, please.
If there is a place where this novel falls down a little, it is perhaps the ending. (Minor spoilers ahead.) I like that the ending is happy, but in places it feels a little too cozy and a little too unfinished. There's actually a line that sounds a lot like the old "and that's how I spent my summer vacation" stereotypical ending for old books and films which weren't sure quite how to wrap things up. And there are a number of dangling minor plot holes, which I'm not sure were avoidable given the specific myths involved, but which kind of niggle at your brain an hour after putting the book down. But I feel kind of picky enjoying an exquisite 5-course dinner only to harp that the dessert course was a bit short and a little too sweet.
If you enjoy fairy tale re-imaginings, and particularly if you enjoyed the fairy tale of the twelve dancing princesses (a particular favorite of mine), I believe you will think "The Princess Curse" was worth the read. In spite of the occasional little plot hole or hiccup in the narrative, the overall writing style is fresh and evocative, and the final product is a tale that manages to be dark in the telling but bright in the resolution.
[Content Notes (Spoilery!): Some ableist terminology which may be intended as deconstructive; blood and bleeding feet; some mention of torture in the context of iron shoes; kidnapping, Stockholm Syndrome romances, and underage marriages (but no sexual content, and an explicit-and-tactful denial that underage sex is taking place); comatose patients; religious themes involving witchcraft, paganism, and immortal souls and their possible salvation/damnation; minor discussion of siege warfare; some discussion of abusive orphanage upbringing.]
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: 1493 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
by Charles C. Mann
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
1493 / 978-0307265722
I really enjoyed Charles Mann's 1491, but after struggling to get through 1493, I'm afraid to re-read the first and find that my opinion may now be reversed.
1491 was for me a wonderfully compiled and comprehensive look at the Americas before Columbus arrived and everything was inexorably changed. I appreciated the information presented in the book, as well as the manner in which it was presented -- I was strongly affected by Mann's tone with that volume and how he seemed to take a great deal of care in writing his narrative respectfully as well as engagingly and accurately. We, the readers, may have been treading on the bones of history, but there was (for me) a sense that we were doing so with reverence.
1493, on the other hand, seems to suffer from the success of the first.
We'll start with the title, which seems to imply that 1493 will be what 1491 was: a comprehensive look at the Americas in that pivotal year, only instead of taking a snapshot immediately before Columbus' arrival, we'll look at immediately after. Unfortunately, this isn't really the case; 1493 is about what Mann calls "the Columbian Exchange", by which he means the fact that people, animals, plants, insects, microorganisms, etc. were ferried all over the world by travelers (like, but not limited to, Columbus) into new ecosystems, where they wrought serious changes to the local ecology and economy.
This isn't a bad thesis, and certainly there are a number of interesting facts here, but it means we're talking about a globe-spanning topic with millions of individual unique examples, without any single narrative to really tie things firmly and interestingly together. Perhaps the book would have worked better if it were limited to the Americas, as 1491 had been, and just looked at what the Europeans introduced into the American ecosystem -- and possibly a look at what the Europeans brought back from America with them. That would have been a more cohesive narrative, I think, than trying to tie the African slave trade in the 1700s in with a look at the effects of sweet potatoes on Communist China in the 1900s.
Even if you're willing to stick with the narrative wherever it takes you -- and without being bored sometimes at the ratio of encyclopedic facts to engaging narrative -- there's additionally a huge tonal shift between this book and its predecessor, and for me at least this was a serious obstacle. 1491 had a very respectful tone, and was very self-aware of its own shortcomings. Mann open acknowledged that he was something of a dilettante historian, and that he was only stepping forward with his book in order to fill a literary gap that he felt needed filling. There were troubling untruths being told in service to the Columbus myth and he felt that the record needed to be set straight on certain issues.
Yet here in 1493, it feels like Mann has shed his respectful demeanor and taken on a tone that seems terribly self-aggrandizing. Just to select from the first chapter alone, he spends a tremendous amount of time setting up a Golden Mean Fallacy: 'some people claim THIS, other people claim THAT, but the truth is here in the middle'. This isn't necessary, it detracts from the narrative, and it pads the book out to a tedious length for no reason that I can see other than so Mann can pat himself on the back for being Right while others are Wrong rather than just getting to the meat of the subject matter. Here is one quote where he handles different aspects of the Columbus myth:
"Unsurprisingly, native people rarely endorse this view of their history, and Colón's part in it. An army of activists and scholars has bombarded the public with condemnations of the man and his works. They have called him brutal (he was, by today's standards) and racist (he wasn't, strictly speaking--modern concepts of race had not yet been invented); incompetent as an administrator (he was) and as a seaman (he wasn't); a religious fanatic (he surely was, from a secular point of view); and a greedy monomaniac (a charge, the admiral's supporters would say, that could be leveled against all ambitious souls). Colón, his detractors charge, never understood what he had found."
I don't understand why Mann wants to bash on the people he sees as ideological opponents (an "army of activists"? Really?), instead of just talking about Columbus from the ground up. He would have been better served to do so, really, because this kind of summing up of the opposition seems so lazy as to make me worry about the scholarship of the rest of the book. For instance, Columbus isn't called "racist" because his detractors mistakenly believe he subscribed to the same understanding of race as we do today; they call him "racist" because he didn't have a problem with enslaving and casually genociding people who weren't sufficiently like himself to deserve his empathy. They are, in other words, applying the term to his actions rather than to his supposed train of logic in service to those actions. For Mann to pretend otherwise troubles me: either he really doesn't understand Columbus' detractors, or he does understand and he's deliberately misrepresenting them. I find that a matter for concern.
Later, in the same chapter, Mann will casually dismiss local disapproval with the Columbus monument in Santo Domingo as nothing more than misplaced anger at dictator Rafael Trujillo, and will go so far as to lecture the residents on what they should consider the 'true' meaning of the Columbus monument:
"Residents of the walled-off slums around the monument told reporters that they thought Colón deserved no commemoration at all. A thesis of this book is that their belief, no matter how understandable, is mistaken. The Columbian Exchange had such far-reaching effects that some biologists now say that Colón's voyages marked the beginning of a new biological era: the Homogenocene. The term refers to homogenizing: mixing unlike substances to create a uniform blend. With the Columbian Exchange, places that were once ecologically distinct have become more alike. In this sense the world has become one, exactly as the old admiral hoped. The lighthouse in Santo Domingo should be regarded less as a celebration of the man who began it than a recognition of the world he almost accidentally created, the world of the Homogenocene we live in today."
So, just to be clear, Dominicans who regard the local monument to Columbus as a reprehensible commemoration to Columbus are wrong because they "should" view the monument as recognition of the fact that some people -- including, but not limited to, Columbus -- piloted a lot of different ships to a lot of different places over a lot of different time periods, and some of the results of those events are things like sweet potatoes and their effect on Communist China. Clearly.
I wanted -- so much! -- to like 1493. I expected to like it so much that even after receiving a free copy through Vine, I purchased an e-book version as well so that I could have both. I did this because I liked the scope, the cohesion, and the tone of 1491 immensely. But the scope of 1493 is so vast as to be almost infinite, the narrative cohesion is non-existent in places and is often abandoned in favor of lists of facts, and the tone seems to indicate that the author thinks he understands history better than anyone else, in the wake of one extremely popular and successful book. Because of that, I personally did not find 1493 to be entertaining, enlightening, or respectful of the subject matter, and I really cannot recommend it.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through Amazon Vine.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Waffles |
Waffles: Fun Recipes for Every Meal
by Tara Duggan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Waffles: Fun Recipes for Every Meal / 978-1616282059
We love waffles in our family, but I'd not really considered the level of variation that they can apparently lend themselves to: this ~100 page book has quite remedied that misconception. There are recipe variations here for American waffles, Belgian waffles, and the delightful-and-hitherto-unknown-to-me spherical "egg" waffles popular in Hong Kong. Almost all the recipes here are usable with either of the three forms, though a few note when American or Belgian shapes are more appropriate for the given spread or filling.
I haven't tried all the recipes in this book, but the ones I have tried were quite delicious. I'm also intrigued by the author's use of waffles as bread in a number of "sandwich" waffles, as well as in Napoleon stacks for desserts. There's a full-page picture for almost every recipe, which I appreciate because it makes assembly easier and all of the pictures are positively mouth-watering. Last but not least, a "basic recipes" section at the end gives various base recipes (classic, Belgian, buttermilk, sourdough, etc.) which can be endlessly varied upon with additives and toppings. A full list of recipes follows:
Breakfast & Brunch
* Vanilla Bean Belgian Waffles with Whipped Cream and Strawberries
* Sour Cream-Orange Waffles
* Classic Buttermilk Waffles with Blackberry Syrup
* Hong Kong-Style Egg Waffles
* Lemon-Ricotta Waffles with Blueberry-Citrus Syrup
* Lemon-Poppy Seed Waffles
* Pecan-Crusted Waffles with Cranberry Sauce
* Cranberry-Ginger Waffles
* Whole-Wheat Blueberry Waffles
* Oatmeal Waffles with Brown Sugar and Bananas
* Yogurt Waffles with Honey Cream
* Gingerbread Waffles with Maple Butter
* Waffled French Toast
* Pumpkin Waffles with Cinnamon-Nutmeg Cream
* Buckwheat Waffles with Smoked Salmon, Dill Sour Cream, and Capers
* Cornmeal-Bacon Waffles with Thyme-Infused Syrup
Lunch & Dinner
* PB&J Waffle Sandwiches
* Fresh Corn, Goat Cheese, and Roasted Pepper Waffles
* Spinach and Ricotta Waffles with Pine Nuts
* Zucchini-Asiago Waffles
* Sourdough Waffle BLTs
* Cornmeal Waffles with tomato Chutney
* Chicken and Waffles with Pan Gravy
* Multigrain Waffles with Avocado and Tomato-Almond Pesto
* Waffle Bites with Roasted Pepper Aioli
* Ham and Cheddar Waffle Sandwiches with Dijon Dipping Sauce
* Three-Cheese Waffle Sticks
* Potato Waffles with Applesauce
Dessert
* Waffles with Salted Caramel Sauce
* White Chocolate-Butterscotch Waffles with Almonds
* Pineapple Waffles with Raw Sugar
* Chocolate Chip Waffles with Whipped Cream
* Chocolate Waffle Bites with Peanut Butter Cream
* Coconut-Rice Waffles with Mangoes and Lime Cream
* Waffle S'mores
* Raspberry Waffles with Lemon Sauce
* Double-Chocolate Waffles with Strawberry Sauce
* Ice-Cream Waffle Sandwiches
* Waffle Banana Splits
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: Alice in Wonderland (Graphic Novel) |
Alice in Wonderland
by Raven Gregory
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
Alice in Wonderland (Graphic Novel) / 9781937068400
I love Alice in Wonderland adaptations (as well as the source material) and I really wanted to like this graphic novel, but while I feel like the idea for this volume is commendable, I think the execution -- particularly the writing and drawing -- is unfortunately rather poor.
First and foremost, I feel that the object here is titillation to the detriment of the actual artistry. The outfit Alice is wearing on the cover is far more modest than her actual outfit in-text; she spends pretty much the entire book in a cleavage-busting corset and a midriff-bearing skirt. I like the female form, so I can deal with that. What I can't deal with is the fact that after Alice's stomach and breasts are rendered in a panel, everything else seems optional. Legs come and go, costumes are altered between panels, and facial features change radically. Of the four major women characters in this novel, many of them are rendered with identical faces that nevertheless shift and change from panel to panel. I don't think this is a commentary on the changeable nature of Wonderland; I think it's just lackluster artistry.
Though I like the concept underlying this story, the actual writing is not very good. Points are repeated numerous times, and whoever was inking in the dialogue boxes seems not to have understood which words needed emphasizing in the jokes. For example, a card-suit character makes a joke that soon people will "call me the suicide queen". This is an obvious reference to the King of Hearts being called the "suicide king" because his sword is positioned behind his head. But in the dialogue bubble, the wrong word is bolded for emphasis: she doesn't say "call ME the suicide queen" (to differentiate herself from the King of Hearts), nor does she say "call me the suicide QUEEN" (to point out that there's been a gender-swap). Instead, she says "call me the SUICIDE queen", which rather ruins the joke in my opinion and makes me wonder if the artist was unaware of the reference. The rest of the humor is pretty lackluster: there's several jokes where the "punchline" is basically that some people in the world are fat. Very original material, this.
Of note here is the strange "footnotes" that exist in text. Frequently characters will reference things that took place in different volumes of the series, and a footnote will say something like "Editor's Note: See Call of Wonderland." This does nothing to clarify what is going on in-text, and the little sarcastic notes that accompany some of them (like "weren't you paying attention?") aren't nearly as witty as the editor seemed to think. As a reader, this strikes me as a bad attempt at marketing: I'm not likely to put down the current book to go get the backstory, and if I'm able to puzzle out the relevant backstory, I won't go get that volume later because I already know what happens. I know it's not easy to make an interconnected series, but I feel like there are better ways to reference off-screen events than with a non-explanatory footnote telling me to stop reading and go read something else.
Here I will insert a minor but nagging point. (Spoiler!) Death isn't permanent in Wonderland, but Alice needs to defeat a dangerous enemy for good. Early on, a mystical blade is introduced as causing permanent death, and this *feels* like a decent setup for a Chekov's Gun. But after the death of two minor and utterly unimportant characters, the blade is carried off by a mouse and we... never see it again. Maybe it shows up in a later volume, but a *lot* of the book feels like this: details are introduced, but then shuffled off stage and forgotten. After awhile, the reader starts to feel like half the book is just killing time rather than weaving a coherent narrative.
Beyond anything else, I'm somewhat saddened by how flat and one-note this Wonderland is. The writers have decided that if everyone in Wonderland is insane, then therefore they must all be *violently* insane. There's a lot of limbs and guts and gore flying, but everything is one-note. There's none of the sadness of the Mock Turtle, none of the cheer of the Cheshire Cat, none of the questionable work ethic of the Duchess and the Cook that added so much dimension to the source material. Instead, pretty much everyone Alice meets is immediately interested in killing her, full-stop. Alice's own inner narration even pokes fun at this, asking when she'll stop trusting people, but though this question deserves an answer, we never receive one. Alice just blunders through, heartily wishing to leave Wonderland behind, and eventually the reader may feel the same.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: My Boyfriend Bites |
My Boyfriend Bites
by Dan Jolley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
My Boyfriend is a Monster 3: My Boyfriend Bites / 978-0761370789
I've been following this loosely connected series with interest, since I like the concept: a series of graphic novels about "monstrous" boyfriends, all written and illustrated by different people. I loved the first novel ("I Love Him To Pieces"; zombies), and was ambivalent about the second novel ("Made For Each Other"; Frankenstein's monster). Now we come to the third in the series and it's a story about vampires in New Mexico and a drop-dead sexy blond boyfriend, so how does this one compare?
"My Boyfriend Bites" reminds me of the second book in the series, in that it seems like the author was more interested in telling a monster story rather than in telling a story about a monster boyfriend. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but it seems like we already have buckets of stories with monsters in plus the tacked-on addition of a supernatural romance. I expected this novel to be different and to have a little more exploration of what it would like to be in an actual relationship with a supernatural character; I was anticipating more of the *being* in a relationship over the *formation* of that relationship.
But moving past my slight disappointment with the subject matter, this is still a solid story well-told. Without wishing to spoil too much, this book contains all the elements of a fun vampire story: an army of frat-boy vampires, transformations into huge bat-winged humanoids, a Chosen One (who may or may not be destined to fight vampires for all eternity rather than going to college), gratuitous references to Abraham Van Helsing (who is rapidly becoming the Mitochondrial Eve of the genre), and armloads of garlic. The pacing and plotting are done admirably well, there's a lot of good foreshadowing at the beginning that pays off nicely at the end, and the sidekick character is endearing rather than annoying.
I can also highly praise the artwork on display here: I really love the art style, including the appreciation to detail and the realistic facial expressions. It's not often that I read a graphic novel where the characters' facial expressions are so consistently drawn that I can actually identify facial quirks over time, like Vanessa's tendency to pull her lips into her mouth when she's nervous or upset (a facial gesture that I demonstrate on occasion, myself).
The only thing that keeps me from giving five stars to this novel is that sometimes it felt like it was doing too much with too little. There's a *lot* of story-telling techniques here, like false memories and dream sequences and red herrings, but there's not a lot of romance or character building between our protagonist and her titular boyfriend. They obviously have chemistry when on screen together, but those moments are so few and far apart that it's hard to sustain the "boyfriend" angle of the story. Still, if you ignore the title page and just dive into the story, you'll almost certainly find a fun story to occupy your interest.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll
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Review: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Graphic Novel) |
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Graphic Novel)
by Denise Mina
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (Graphic Novel) / B009DNVXX8
I'm a big fan of the Millennium Trilogy, having read the novels several times, listened to the audiobook narrated by Simon Vance, and own the original movies with Michael Nyqvist and Noomi Rapace. (I have not, for the record, seen the American remakes.) I selected this graphic novel at NetGalley with a great deal of excitement, fully expecting to enjoy it, but... well, I won't say I'm disappointed exactly, but I'm not enthralled.
This installment of the series takes us from the opening (with Vanger receiving the yearly flower) to maybe about a third of the way through the novel (where Lisbeth revenges herself on Bjurman). I want to recognize upfront that adapting this much material into a ~150 page graphic novel could not have been easy, and I think the adaptation author did about as good a job as could be hoped for.
The story and characters have been altered pretty radically, though, in order to convey emotion and urgency "on screen" through facial expressions and dialogue rather than narration. Erika Berger talks candidly about sex with Mikael Blomkvist and Christer Malm's sexuality at board meetings, Dragan Armanskij openly flirts with Lisbeth at work, Henrik Vanger cries on receiving the yearly flower, Lisbeth dances and laughs and flirts with Mimi in public, and so forth. Everyone feels like they're wearing their heart on their sleeve and that change doesn't really work well with the tenor of the story, I think.
The dialogue, too, has been changed pretty radically to support the format of the adaptation. Cecilia Vanger contributes more proactively to the investigation, and the old friend who sets Blomkvist off after Wennerström in the beginning has an entirely different story to tell. I think all these changes are fair enough, given the needs of an adaptation, but I'm less enthused about some strange Americanisms creeping into the dialogue. When Lisbeth confronts Bjurman, for example, she quotes Al Pacino from "Scarface" by saying "say hello to my little friend!" Things like that ended up jarring me out of the narrative, though others may feel differently.
A word on the art in this novel: it's not really my cup of tea. There's a lot of heavy use of shading and shadowing in panels to prevent having to draw facial details beyond a rough outline. Lisbeth is rendered very well, and her facial expressions are extremely vivid, but Blomkvist's face (and even the shape of his head!) seems to shift and change a little too much from panel to panel. It's also worth noting that the scenes of Lisbeth's rape are extremely graphic, with blood covering much of the panels -- this isn't a criticism so much as a caution to know what you're getting into if you purchase this volume.
On balance, I'm glad this graphic novel exists but it doesn't really "feel" like the story I know. I think this will be a great introduction to the series for people who are curious about the story but weren't able to get into the densely detailed books, and I consider that to be a good thing. But if you are a hardcore fan of the books, whether or not you like the adaptation will boil down to how you feel about the changes made in service to the new format. I'd give this book 3.5 stars, but I won't be picking up the next installment for myself personally.
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll