The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

This is a first novel by a new author from 2007. I read some great reviews on it, so I decided to give it a try. I almost didn't when I got it from the library and discovered that it was 700 pages, but I'm glad I did. I got the feeling that a lot of time and care went into each page of the book, which is a feeling I don't get too much from these types of epic fantasies.

This is the first of a series, so be prepared that the plot will not be remotely close to wrapping up at the end of your 700 pages of reading. However, it is a well written and engaging first part of this epic story, so I was not annoyed or disappointed. I will definitely be picking up the next book, which I believe just came out.

The book is the story of the legendary Kvothe--hero, scoundrel, larger than life inspiration for tales told far and wide-- as told to a biographer who has found him hiding as an average innkeeper in a tiny hole in the wall in the middle of nowhere. Kvothe has had an extraordinary life. Beginning as a child prodigy born into a family of wandering minstrels, he continues through a troubled period of life on the streets and on to become one of the most infamous students at "The University"--an elite school of science and magic. There are unique and exciting adventures, intriguing secrets hinted at, a vendetta against some supernatural scaries, and, of course, a girl...

I found the book to be overall exciting and well worth reading. The only part that might be slightly off-putting is the love story. Honestly I'm not sure how to feel about this yet. It starts off in the typical annoying way that fantasy romances begin--he falls madly, soul-shatteringly in love with her and only her. She's mysterious and beautiful without "realizing just how beautiful she really is." I laughed out loud, as an alternative to throwing up, when he first describes her as a "wild thing." But there might be more than just annoying cliches to this love story...so I'm saving my final opinion until I read more of the series.

I think there is potential here. The world that Rothfuss creates directly addresses the idea of sexism from time to time, which is interesting. There is a memorable conversation where Kvothe considers his lady-love's circumstances and how her options are so much more limited being a female drifter with a hazy past than he does as a male of similar background. For a moment I got the sense that the story was hinting that if women were treated as equals in this fantasy world, then it could just as well be her telling this story of her fabulous life of adventures, but that somehow, because she's a woman with an entirely different set of worries and difficulties to overcome, she could never have such a legendary life, she could never be the hero of a story. I'll be reading the next book to see if there's anything to this. If there is, it could be really good.

Highly recommended for fantasy fans.

Ghostopolis by Doug Tennapel

I thought this book was ok, but nothing to rave about. Garth is a boy who gets accidentally transported to the afterlife by a ghostbuster who is less than meticulous in his work. Garth already had an incurable disease, but he wasn't dead yet, so now he needs to find a way back home. He makes friends with a skeleton horse, which is probably my favorite element in the book. The ghostbuster at fault comes to rescue him and they have a series of adventures trying to get back home and also saving Ghostopolis along the way.

I thought that the fantasy world of this graphic novel lacked depth. It had some really appealing concepts, but they were treated so cursorily that it was hard for me to really like them. The characters were a bit stereotypical and flat. The good thing was that is was a fast read, so I didn't get a chance to get really annoyed by these flaws. The good things about this book were the surprisingly poignant family plot and ending. I was especially surprised at how good these were considering the flat characters.

Overall probably a 3/5 stars.

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

I had gotten a bad review from a friend of this book before I started it, calling it the most boring book from the Jane Austen repertoire, or maybe in history, but I found that I liked it as much or more than the more famous Austen novels.

I can imagine that there would be resistance from other people to the character of Fanny Price, as far as general likability goes. She's much less easy to like than an Elizabeth Bennett or one of the Dashwood sisters. But there was an honesty to her character that I thoroughly appreciated. Fanny had much more realistic flaws to me and I certainly saw more of myself in her than in the other heroines. To me Elizabeth Bennett has always been a little too much of a superwoman, a little too perfect to be realistic. Elizabeth Bennett seems confident in every situation she is put into. She rarely stumbles. Discomfort, shyness, physical weakness--these are strongly characteristic of Fanny Price.

The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron

Lucky is a thoughtful 10 year old girl that has seen a lot of tragedy in her short life. Her mother died two years ago and she has a father who sends money has never had the urge to meet her. Lucky's guardian is Brigitte, her father's other ex-wife, and Lucky is scared that one day she'll have enough of life in their tiny desert town and move back to Paris.

Besides Lucky's rough life, she lives in a unique place. Hard Pan is a desert town in California, population: 43. There are windstorms, snakes hiding in the dryer and inedible government cheese. Lucky's best friend is obsessed with tying knots and the only other kid in town (it seems) is another abandoned child--a 5-year-old neighbor that alternately annoys and entertains Lucky.

This was decent. I agree with the opinion that better books have won the Newbery. It was sweet and comforting. Books about abandoned kids, for kids, tend to be.

Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp

Ever since I first discovered Caroline Knapp I've enjoyed reading anything she's written. This is a book that is basically her anorexia memoir, but it's more like an set of essays or reflective pieces about her experience with anorexia and her thoughts about the larger issue of physical and emotional appetites and how women indulge or deny them.

I thought this was a lot different than anything else I've ever read about anorexia or eating disorders. Knapp was struggling with anorexia in the early 80s and has a lot to say about how the political and social climate in the US at that time influenced her life back then. It was a time when feminism was seeing a backlash after it's huge heyday in the 60s and 70s. At this time, in the 80s, women were told that they could have it all, think big, be ambitious. Feminism had ostensibly leveled the playing field, but insidious undercurrents were there. While women were supposed to get bigger and bigger in their careers and ambitions, there was an enormous cultural push for women to be smaller and smaller physically. Inordinate worth was placed upon a woman's ability to be thin.

The book gives a lot to think about. Knapp does not propose that the main cause of anorexia is society's skewed views of women's bodies. To her this is a huge influence, but not the be all end all reason. At the heart of her compulsion to starve was a complex tangle of feelings about being a young woman, unsure of what she was supposed to do with her life, of how to realize all these new dreams that were open to women. Knapp proposes that women never really gained the freedom to acknowledge, experience, pursue, and understand their appetites fully. The push from society is to repress the appetite, to make yourself smaller. The concept of appetites is broadly framed. She addresses hunger for food, for sexual pleasure, for love from family and partners, for career advancement and professional success. She suggests that some women suffer from eating disorders, compulsive shopping, cutting, and other issues because of our problematic relationships to our own appetites in all these areas. Society does not truly support women being hungry for these things and so we find outlets that help us to repress or deflect our appetites we feel we're not supposed to have--we overeat, we starve, we purge, we cut, we steal, we drink. All to help us not feel the giant hunger for love and recognition as equals that is yet unfulfilled.

I really think this book was worth reading. You can read it quickly and feel like you're just rushing through it, but the ideas she puts forth really stuck with me.

Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green & David Levithan

I really liked this A LOT. I thought that it was a lot better than the other 2 John Green books I've read--Looking for Alaska and An Abundance of Katherines. I think I liked it about as much as David Levithan's other stuff. I thought the ending really went off the deep end, cheese wise, but since I liked everything up to then so much it was that offputting.

The story is about two teenagers in Chicago, both named Will Grayson. The story is told through both of their points of view in alternative chapters. The first Will Grayson is fairly affluent, straight but pretty reserved. His best friend is a ginormous gay man with a ginormous personality named Tiny Cooper that frequently overshadows Will in complicated ways. The second Will Grayson is not out yet gay man who is on medication for depression. He lives with his single mother, they don't have much money, and his dad is out of the picture for reasons never fully explained, but we assume he just left. The two of them meet through a weird coincidence in a porn store, and for a time their lives overlap.

I really liked the way that although romance was a big part of the book, we ultimately come to realize that it's not the main conflict in either boy's life. Straight Will's main issues are not with his girlfriend but with his best friend Tiny, and gay Will's main conflict is not with his boyfriend Tiny but with himself and his depression.

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond

This book took me a long time to read, but I think it was worth it. I really liked this book and I think it helped me to think about things from a new perspective. It's weird to try to approach something like European colonization of other continents without any moral judgments. But when you step back as far as this book does, all the way back to viewing all of human history from the very beginning of the species, it seems ok. Societies that have denser populations, more technology, and more bureaucracy have conquered or absorbed other societies several or many times before the Europeans did so beginning with Columbus. People from Taiwan spread out to populate and displace other populations in much of Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Farmers from Cameroon spread and displaced other people southwards in Africa. And the reasons that these societies had the characteristics that allowed them to conquer and displace others is due to geography and environment, ultimately. It makes you think, what will people be thinking about us in 10,000 years?