BOOK: The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, 326 pages

Dewey's Book Challenge

This was an adorable little book set in Paris and nearly all the action takes place in an apartment building. The concierge, Renee, is one of the main narrators, and she notices and observes the difference in the classes, intellectually and culturally. She does her best to hide her true intellect and adopt the stance of a lower class worker. One of the residents is a precocious twelve year old girl, Paloma, who thinks the same kind of thoughts, and it also in a very unhappy place in her life. She is chronicling her Profound Thoughts and Beautiful Movements in the world. When a new resident moves into the apartment building, a kindred spirit to both, their outlooks begin to change.

There is one chocolate Florentine left, which I nibble out of greediness, with my front teeth, like a mouse. If you change the way you crunch into something, it is like trying something new.

What I liked: the characters were touching, if a tad pretentious. The little plot twists were gentle, as was the whole book, and there may have been a little tear on my cheek at the ending.
I also liked the very short, titled chapters, which kept my interest. I like when chapters get their own title too.

What I didn't like: the philosophy paragraphs went on a bit too much, but were easy to skim over and for those more inclined, they could be interesting. I was more interested in the characters themselves. I couldn't help but think of Gilead, a similar reflective book full of ideas that bored me to tears, and yet Hedgehog was very cute when I read around the philosophy.

I smeared my lips with 1 layer of 'Deep Carmine' lipstick that I had bought 20 years ago for a cousin's wedding. The longevity of such a useless item, when valiant lives are lost every day, will never cease to confound me. I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers. (page 301)

I had this on 7 day loan from the library which always worries me, but I had no problem getting though the 326 pages, with 3 days to spare.

also reviewed by:
Gwen Dawson at lit license, caribousmom, Boston Bibliophile,
, Jenny’s Books , Musings ,

BOOK: The Sister by Poppy Adams

The Sister by Poppy Adams, 275 pages

What's in a Name?: relative; 2009 TBR lite; DeweyBooks

If the measure of a book is how much it makes you think, then this book was great. There are several aspects to it: the behaviour of moths (the title this book is known by in the UK), the relationship amongst a fairly dysfunctional family, and the narrator herself.

The moths and their behavior is the family specialty, and the narrator, Virginia, has devoted her life to their study. The story begins with Virginia's sister, Vivien, returning to the family home after over 45 years away, with no contact at all. Why hasn't Vivien kept in contact with Virgina in all those years? Ginny's routine will be severely affected here, and it causes her to remember back on her life beginning during and after the second world war, at the time of her sister's birth. We travel back and forth between past and present, and some rather dramatic events, all of which we begin to see through Ginnie's rather suspect view of things. She continually states she is a scientist, and only looks at the facts, which covers up her lack of emotion and feeling.

Fairly early on, I gathered that the narrator was not all there, and that her view of events was severely restricted by whatever disorder she had. It felt like something was kept from her, and I would have liked to hear more from Vivien's point of view. But maybe it was not knowing what really happened that kept the story interesting; it is up to the reader to decide what really happened. I liked trying to see the parallels between the moths and Virginia, whereas I imagine many people skim over the moth stuff. It does get a bit tedious, and only the game of trying to see why it was written there kept me into that part of it. And that is why I think this book was so good: it really engaged me and had me trying to read between the lines.

The idea of the unreliable narrator, when I can recognize it, generally makes a book I will like. In ways I cannot particularly quantify, it reminded me of The Interloper, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and ??( there's another one that's not coming to me now, something British, with remembering). I read a few reviews that found the ending ambiguous, but I liked the ending, and thought it made sense, for Virginia.

BOOK: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, 352 pages

Celebrate the Author; Herding Cats; Dewey Books

Barbara Kingsolver, author of The Poisonwood Bible, and her family decide to spend a year eating only food from their area, mostly on the farm they move to. This book is the chronicle of their journey, and was a real family affair - daughter Camille adds recipes and short essays to the end of chapters and husband Steven Hopp adds some more technical and fact-driven sections. I was worried that this book would make me feel guilty for every banana that I eat, or every package of granola bars I buy. And while I certainly will think twice about the food that comes into my house, Kingsolver keeps the story low-key and simply her families journey. She doesn't preach and the book is a gradual awareness of the fuel necessary to bring me watermelon in April and lemons whenever I want them.

I think more people are aware and tend to eat local that live in more rural areas. If I lived in the city, there would be less options for me to get my food, but the rural area I live in, and the suburban lot I live on, provides me with access to local and fresh food. And in some ways, we do eat by the season, when we can. We gorge ourselves on strawberries when they are ripe here, and freeze bags for later in the season. We plant a garden and live on our tomatoes and green beans and peas in the summer. My inlaws plant a sustaining garden, and always have, and provide as many vegetables and apples and raspberries as we, and their neighbours want. So I spent much of the book thinking - I try to do a lot of this, just on a very small scale.

The plight of the local farmer has been a topical issue in my province, and a farmer group has opened up a small store with local products, including a meat market. It's mostly root vegetables this time of year that are local, and they bring in some vegetables, but lots of meat and cheese and dried herbs and beans. I won't be growing turkeys and gathering eggs from chickens anytime soon, but buying most of my meat from these 'neighbour farmers' is the best I'll be able to do in this regard.

Kingsolver and her family tried an extreme situation for a year, and she doesn't advocate that everyone do this. They prepared for several years to be able to live on their land, and it wasn't an impulsive decision. Her point was to see how much they relied on food that had travelled far distances. Awareness and thinking about the food we eat is the first step. Great book, with some neat looking recipes to try.

BOOK: Just Listen by Sarah Dessen

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen, 371 pages

dewey's books; young adult

1. Sarah Dessen, a very popular young adult writer, has written nine novels including Lock and Key and The Truth About Forever.

2. For a while, the novel was typical teenage angst - popular girl appears to have everything and then gets shunned by her so-called friends. Meets with a quirky, 'uncool' guy who she wouldn't' have associated with before.

3. Music plays a big role in the novel, with Owen into unusual music and he tried to expose Annabel to new bands. Owen had his own local radio program and was never without his iPod.

4. Just Listen has a very similar plot to Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, but they are somewhat tackled differently - one girl won't speak, and the other needs someone to listen. Same effect really and obviously a serious issue for teenage girls to deal with.

5. There is another plot with Annabel's sister who is struggling with an eating disorder. This is part of what makes Annabel go into herself - she doesn't want to bother her parents with any other issues.

6. I really liked Annabel and her sisters and it was the part that really got to me as I was finishing the book - read that to mean I was crying in bed as I finished the book. The three sisters were realistic and well written characters and were a central part of the book.

7. It was nice to see that the parents weren't portrayed as dolts, ignoring their kids. The sisters actually had a good relationship with the parents and they were real people with problems of their own. As a parent of almost teenagers, that becomes an important part of books I read now.

8. Most of Dessen's books are set in the same town in North Carolina so there is all kinds of overlapping landmarks and characters within her books. For example, Remy and Dexter from Truth Squad in This Lullaby, later appear as the band performing 'The Potato Opus' (written in This Lullaby) at Bendo in Just Listen. (taken from wikipedia) Maeve Binchy does that too in Dublin and it is a technique I really like.

9. When I read a young adult book full of 'issues', it reminds me that for most of the students I see every day, school and physics are really not the issues foremost on their minds.

10. I'd read another book by Dessen but I am beginning to feel that I've gone beyond some young adult books. I've learned that people aren't what they seem, that even 'perfect' people have problems, and it's not good to keep things bottled up inside. Yeah, I get it. But for teenagers, a well written book that deals with these topics is still a very good thing.

BOOK: Looking for Alaska by John Green

Looking for Alaska by John Green, 221 pages

dewey's books, young adult

Very good book about friendships, and death, and the great beyond, if there is one. Miles goes to boarding school in Alabama and makes his first real friends, falls in love, smokes, drinks, and pulls pranks. This makes is sound like a frat house, and in a way it is but the story is much deeper and tells bigger truths about friendship and guilt.

It always shocked me when I realized that I wasn't the only person in the world who thought and felt such strange and awful things.

If only we could see the endless string of consequences that result from our smallest actions.

It's the kind of book I would have loved, and read and reread as a teenager, with a feel of The Outsiders by SE Hinton. The characters are not the popular kids but they have their own circle and friendships and they are not concerned with doing what is expected or good. Lots of literary references as the characters are smart and read a lot.

BOOK: Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani

Remembering the Bones by Frances Itani, 283 pages

Dewey's Books; 2nd Canadian Book Challenge; What's in a Name: body part

I've just finished reading this sweet book, about Georgie, 88 year old widow, as she recounts her life lying in a ravine after her car rolled on the way to visit the Queen. Since I read this for Dewey's Book Challenge, I decided to head over to Dewey's to read her review, the one I'm sure I read a year ago that first intrigued me to Remembering the Bones. Oh dear. Dewey's review puts the book in a whole new light. Instead of pulling quotes from the book, I'm pulling quotes from Dewey's review:

Georgie is one of those characters that seem so real, you think of them for a long time after you finish reading, like old friends. Much like Dewey shared her life online and made us all feel like we knew her. I'm still having trouble in some ways defining the relationships with online friends, especially since we read about each other, almost like characters in a book.

My favorite thing about her is that when reminiscing, nearly all her thoughts are of the people in her life. Almost nothing else seems to matter at the end, and that’s how I feel every day, that life is about the people we love.

Georgie comes from a family of strong, long lived women, and the reader gets to know them all very well. Her family is small and close-knit and covers some spectacular times in history, the 20th century. It's the kind of book I like, where the families are ordinary and don't have tragic incidents, other than the everyday tragic events of birth, life, and death. I had the same feeling when I finished A Good House by Bonnie Burnard.

The times that loom large in Georgie’s memory, because they’re painful, or full of happiness, or simply unusual for Georgie, matter to the reader, in the same way that our own common griefs or joys matter to us.

Maybe it's too weird to read about a woman at the end of her life, recommended by Dewey who so recently died. It cheers the heart to know that Dewey enjoyed the book and could see the love from the book as reflected from her experience.

BOOK: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

After Dark by Haruki Murakami, 191 pages

Japanese Literature Challenge, unread author, Dewey's books

Perspective. Memory. Sleep. Things that occur during the night in Tokyo connected with two sisters, Mari and Eri. I'm still not sure if I liked this book.

The story of Mari is more concrete and easy to follow. She meets up with a friend of her sister's, Takahashi, and they talk. She helps a stranger, and meets up with Takahashi again. We get to know more of Mari and her plans and thoughts. Eri is sleeping through the night and there is some funky third person point of view, but like a camera, observing her. The narration is observing itself observing Eri. It gets very abstract with Eri and I still don't quite understand her connection to another character, the business man who perpetrated a crime.

I liked the story as I read it, but the ending didn't answer anything for me. I didn't understand the purpose of some of the perspective. I didn't mind during the reading, but I needed a bit more payoff in the end for suspending my understanding. I liked Murakami's prose and it had beautiful imagery and ideas about sleep and memory, and the feeling of menace that subtley developed, but ultimately I just didn't get it.

There was a section where a character refers to the movie Love Story, which I found funny because he completely missed the ending and what the story was about, but liked it enough to retell the plot. Ironic, isn't it?

CHALLENGE: Dewey's Books

Dewey had such good taste in books, and I kept wanting to read books she reviewed. Except the knititng books. I'm not much of a knitter. Chris and Robin are hosting a reading challenge occuring for next year, picking books from Dewey's archive, and some mini challenges coming up as well associated with the challenge and drawing on Dewey's community building. Check out the challenge blog for all the details.

There are two options:

1. Pick one book from each of the 6 years that Dewey has archives of. You can access her archives by clicking on the archive link in the sidebar of her website. It’s a dropdown menu. For instance, you would read one book that she reviewed in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 for a total of six books.
2. The other option is to read 5 books that Dewey reviewed. These can be from any year and I’m guessing that each of us has at least 5 books on our TBR list because of Dewey!

I was going to look at the past years, but before I finished reading her books from 2008 I already had a good list. I'll pick option 2 and read at least 5 of these, linked to dewey's reviews:

If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period by Gennifer Choldenko

I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

Remembering the Bones by Frances Itapi : my review here Feb 28/09

Looking for Alaska by John Green: my review here Mar 21/09

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green: my review here Mar 7/09

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver: my review here Apr 25/09

After Dark by Haruki Murakami :my review here Dec 20/08

Just Listen by Sarah Dessen: my review here Mar 25/09
The Sister by Poppy Adams my review here June 30/09
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff; my review here Nov 04/09

*edit (Nov 2009) The links aren't going to Dewey's site anymore. I can still read her reviews on my Google Reader if I search for them. It's harder then, to find the books that Dewey read and reviewed.*

plus books she didn't review, but read:

Paper Towns by John Green

The Abstinence Teacher by Tom Perrotta

and I might include The Elegance of the Hedgehog, her last currently reading book. reviewed here Aug 21/09

In the last year, Dewey and I read 8 books the same. Seeing her list was very familiar.