Sister: A Waste of My Time

I recently did something I never do. I read a book because there was an advertisement for it in the New York Times Book Review. Not a review. Just an ad. With blurbs. That made it sound like a good book. I was duped.

I also blame many of the Goodreads readers since I checked out what some of them were saying before I read the book. My opinion of Goodreads readers has now gone down a bit.

I know I have no one to blame but myself and rest assured that I will never do something so silly again. I remember seeing ads for books on the subway and thinking what a weird thing it is to advertise books that way. Who would read a book on a billboard? It wasn't like I ever saw some great book that everyone was raving about on the subway station ads. Usually thrillers and such. Which isn't really my genre and so I was sucked in even more by the Goodreads review that called it something like a thriller for people who don't like thrillers. They made it sound literary.

Again, no one but myself to blame.

So anyway. The book is Sister: A Novel by Rosamund Lupton. And right away we have the first thing that annoyed me. The "A Novel" thing after the colon. Really? You needed to tell me that? I wouldn't have figured it out even though the book is, you know, fiction?

It started vaguely promising (I'm not going to do a plot recap at all - if you care enough, you can go on Amazon or Goodreads and find one). Seemed well enough written with interesting things like:

"No, from the start I was clearly a Beatrice, sensible and unembellished in Times New Roman, with no one hiding inside. Dad chose the name Arabella before I was born. The reality must have been a disappointment." p. 3

and

"But that’s what his “discretion” always was – disownership hiding behind a more acceptable noun." p. 13

But then things started to horribly wrong. The narrator is supposed to be some kind of marketing person living in New York. So every color is described by its Panetone number with some vague commentary about how to ordinary people it looked like beige, but was actually Panetone number blah blah blah. And then as if this wasn't annoying enough, it gets dropped midway through in favor of random literary references that just need to show how smart she (whether author or narrator I'm not sure) is. And THEN she decides that what she really always wanted to be an architect. Okay then. What's next? I always wanted to be a lumberjack!

 

But I digress.

After a while (a short while), I gave up trying to underline anything of interest and instead just starting making the Kindle version of margin notes. And I love that you can do that in library books, btw. I think it is actually amusing to see those notes so here you go:

Me: Clinque, Panetone, Pixar – these brand names are so jarring especially when the rest of the writing is quite good. At times.
p. 11 (Ah, so naive and hopeful)

Me: Really? Triffids? p. 32 (Seriously, I have to agree with me here. Triffids??? Who does that?)

Me: And now sudden random literary references: Mad Hatter, Auden, Ancient Mariner p. 56 (But it's too late to impress me. You already said triffids)

"…boiling up the bunnies "
Me: sigh… p. 73

"…Chagall print in the kitchen"
Me: Fine art now! p. 77

"They actually use words like that: “saving” and “owing her life to,” comic-book words that are in danger of turning me into someone who wears pants on the outside of her tights, switches outfits and personas in telephone booths and has web coming out of her wrists."
Me: That’s how you do it. p. 105 (I think the point I was trying to make there was that you didn't need to work so hard on name dropping the pop culture references, that you could find a broader theme that the reader then renders specific in his/her own mind)

"…Kafkaesque turned ordinary"
Me: Ummmm…okay p. 141

"I hadn’t been in a public place since you’d died and the loud voices and the laughter made me feel vulnerable."
Me: Doesn’t she work in a bar? p. 151 (Yeah, about that one. One of the first things she does is go take her dead sister's job at the bar b/c that happens a lot. And aren't bars full of, let me see, loud voices and laughter? What the hell?)

"I reminded you I studied literature, didn’t I?"
Me: ugh p. 190

"She was framed for her own suicide."
Me: Huh??? p. 227 (If someone can explain this to me, I'm happy to listen.)

"Not just a double but a triple negative. His oratory wasn’t an impressive as he believed it to be."
Me: Thank you for the commentary. p. 238 (Pot, meet Kettle)

"…Proust’s tea-soaked petites madeleines"
Me: sigh… p. 246

"Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are."
Me: Stop trying so hard!!!p. 260

"We get to St. James’s Park, which looks like that scene from Mary Poppins, all blossom and buds and blue sky with white meringue clouds. "
Me: No. p. 272 (What if I, the reader, have never seen Mary Poppins?)

"I thought of Donne chastising the busy old fool of a sun for making him leave his lover and marveled that his poetry now applied to me."
Me: pllltthhh p. 293

Really makes you want to go read it, doesn't it? What is even more mystifying is that I went and found the New York Times review of this and they seemed to like it. So clearly part of my problem is that I just don't like thrillers. I'm not much of a beach read person. I know it's an art form in its own right to be able to produce such page turners, but they just don't do it for me.

At least I didn't buy the book!

Flashback Review

Note to self - do not start a new blog right at the beginning of the holiday season. Self will not have enough to time to actually read books, let alone post about them in any coherent fashion, especially once The Child is out of school.

So, with that said, I'm going to repost one of the original reviews from when I had this blog way long ago. It's for the fourth Harry Potter book, Goblet of Fire, and a review which for some reason people seemed to enjoy a lot on Goodreads.

Hope everyone had a good holiday season. As soon as I can organize my thoughts, I'll post a new review. In the meantime, from August 2007...



Now THAT'S a book!  The groove that J.K. Rowling starts to find in HP 3 is fully realized in 4.  Partly it's that the kids (and therefore the readers) are getting older so she can delve into more adult, complex themes and situations, and partly it's that I think she's really finding her voice.  We finally got our very own HP's, I am happy to report, and it's so funny to look at them all side by side b/c of the HUGE leap in size between 3 and 4.  Then they get a little tricky b/c while 4 and 5 look to be about the same length, the font in Order of the Phoenix is much smaller, hence a longer book.  I just started that one and it honestly feels longer already.  More of a book book and less of a fun afternoon's diversion.  But I like these books as they get both darker and longer.

But to focus on Goblet of Fire specifically for a moment...again, not that I think I can bring anything new to the table in discussing these books.  Nevertheless, I'll throw a few ideas out there just for your reading pleasure.  One thing that struck me, as I mentioned before, was the increasing maturity and complexity of situations and themes.  Clearly having someone die is a huge deal and I found that whole series of events really moving this time around.  I may have last time as well, but I don't remember.  In a way, though, some of the more complex issues feel jarring next to the goofy concepts she originally created.  Calling non-magical people "Muggles," for instance.  It's just a stupid word and yes, it sounds funny and makes kids laugh, but sometimes it's hard to take all these people seriously.  "Mud-bloods" on the other hand is vicious and definitely drives the point home.  I just wonder if she was to do it over again if some of those terms or ideas would change a bit.  Yes, we'd all like to revisit what we did/wrote when we were less sure of ourselves and our voices and ideas, but of course we can't and neither can she.  And what do I know?  She claims she always knew what would happen to Harry, so maybe for her "Muggle" is the ideal word.

Since, as usual, I find it impossible to discuss the books without referencing the films, let me just say that although I hated Dobby in the movie (2?) and was glad to see him mostly cut from subsequent screen incarnations, I really loved him in this one.  The dialogue is actually quite funny and Hermione's whole S.P.E.W. thing just cracks me up.  Yes, I know a lot of people hate it and find it annoying and whatever, but I love it.  Of course she would have a cause like that.  That's who she is!  And poor Winky.  They're weird creatures (and OH how I love Kreacher in the next one!) and I can't decide whether I am with Hermione or everyone else on their "plight."  Either way, I like that they exist; they provide a bit of moral ambiguity in a world that is mostly cleanly divided between good and evil.  You might wonder about people, but for the most part they end up squarely one or the other.  Other than Snape - another great piece of moral ambiguity whose complexity grows from book to book.

I also continue to marvel at Rowling's ability to write about the teenage mind.  Ron and Harry's fight is spot on, as are Hermione's various reactions to it.  And oh these poor boys having to ask the girls to the feast.  I wish I had known when I was in middle school how truly hard it was for boys to talk to girls like that.  Although I probably wouldn't have cared, being the good self-involved teenger that I was.

I still want to go to Hogwarts.