Erin Reads – Page 14 – Notes on Books & Life

Thoughts on “The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks” by E. Lockhart

I first read The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart years ago, around the time I’d just started Erin Reads. I didn’t end up reviewing it, despite the fact that I had a lot to say about it.

Then, just a few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend, and something in our conversation made me think of this book. I couldn’t remember more than the barest details and the certainty I’d had a problem with the ending, but I mentioned it to my friend. She ended up reading and loving Frankie’s story. Never one to turn down a bookish conversation, I reread the book so we could talk about it. And this time around, I’m writing about it here, too!

About the Book:

When we meet Frankie Landau-Banks, she’s standing at the threshold of her sophomore year at Alabaster, a prestigious boarding school. Attendance is something of a family tradition; her big sister, Zada, just graduated, and her father, Senior, still relives his Alabaster glory days with friends on a regular basis. No one expects Frankie, known as “Bunny Rabbit” to her family, to do anything but keep her head down, study hard, and graduate with all the advantages and connections a place like Alabaster can provide.

Except that Matthew Livingston, the gorgeous senior Frankie had a major crush on last year, has finally noticed her. More than noticed her. And with her newly gained access to Matthew’s world, Frankie starts down a path of challenging norms and thinking for herself that will lead to some unexpected places.

My Thoughts:

I’m so glad I reread The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. And that’s saying a lot, coming from someone who generally does not reread. Revisiting this one reminded me what I loved about the book as well as the precise nature of the problem I had with the ending. Let’s start with the former. (And don’t worry, I’ll warn you before I launch into spoilers!)

The Delightful Bits

Overall, I really enjoy E. Lockhart’s writing style. She writes intelligently and and cleverly. It’s clear she has issues to discuss, which for many authors can turn a novel into a thinly veiled soapbox speech. Yet Lockhart manages to blend the topics she wants to address with teenage-relevant stories you can actually believe. She really does weave her points so tightly into Frankie’s story that you cannot remove them without damaging the novel. My favorite? Society as panopticon, in which each person feels s/he’s always being watched by all the others and acts accordingly. Brought up as a topic in one of Frankie’s classes, this idea sinks its teeth into Frankie’s mind and seeps deep into the events that follow.

I haven’t read Lockhart’s other books, so I don’t know whether they share the same self-aware quality Disreputable History possesses. But there’s something delightful about a book that will acknowledge its own existence or an author (fictional or not) who will interpose herself into the story as needed. Just a short, spoiler-free example of what I mean:

“Most of the time they were joined by Elizabeth, Tristan, and Steve (both lacrosse players and relatively unimportant to this chronicle).”

It’s like we have a co-conspirator, a guide. Disregard Tristan and Steve. Noted.

There’s also Frankie’s love of neglected positives, imaginary neglected positives, and false neglected positives. As someone who likes to play with language, I was tickled to find a multi-page grammatical tangent plopped into the middle of an argument between characters explaining how Frankie defines these (examples included). Allow E. Lockhart to explain in a few snippets:

“Prefixes like ‘in,’ ‘non,’ ‘un,’ ‘dis,’ and ‘im’ make words negative, yes? There may be grammatical particulars I am not addressing here, but generally speaking. So you have a positive word like ‘restrained,’ and you add the prefix ‘un’ to get a negative: unrestrained…

“When there’s a negative word or expression — immaculate, for example — but the positive is almost never used, and you choose to use it, you become rather amusing. Or pretentious. Or pretentiously amusing, which can sometimes be good. In any case, you are uncovering a buried word. The neglected positive of immaculate is maculate, meaning morally blemished or stained…

“Other times, the neglected positive is not a word. It is then an imaginary neglected positive, or INP (inpea)… Impetuous means hotheaded, unthinking, impulsive. The positive of it doesn’t exist, so you can make a new, illegitimate word.

“Petuous, meaning careful.”

And so on. Amusing, no? (Or are you in Camp Pretentious?) The various flavors of neglected positives are everywhere, if you’ll only keep an eye out for them. If you’re curious, by the way, this was the bit that came up in my conversation with my friend, which in turn sparked my reread of the book.

The One Bit that Bugged Me

As I mentioned, I had a problem with the ending. Not the whole ending, even…just one aspect of it. What didn’t sit right with me was the way Lockhart sequenced her ending.

MAJOR SPOILER ALERT!!

Long story short, I wanted Frankie to have the chance to turn herself in. I believe when she found out Alpha was taking the fall for her, she would have turned herself in given the chance. It wouldn’t have been weak, or a sacrifice, or forced, or anything like that. It would have been the final piece of Frankie’s transformation. She would have been stepping into her new identity and fully owning her actions. That was taken from her when Matthew turned her in instead.

How do I wish it had played out? Matthew visits Frankie in the infirmary, where he tells her about Alpha. But instead of revealing her secret then, Frankie waits until she’s out of the infirmary and then turns herself in. When Matthew finds out, he confronts her, and that is when the argument from the infirmary happens.

That’s all. The rest of it can stand. But it bothers the heck out of me that Frankie’s power was taken from her the way it was. And as soon as I read it the second time, I knew that’s what had bugged me the first time through, too.

The Verdict: Enjoyable

Despite my issue with one of Lockhart’s decisions regarding the ending, I can’t say how much I enjoyed The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. It’s smart, satisfying, and not afraid to take on heavy subjects.

I haven’t read anything else by Lockhart, but the friend who read Disreputable History after our conversation went on to read most of Lockhart’s other books and said they’re all good. So I’m pretty sure at some point something by E. Lockhart will end up on my nightstand again.

Your Turn!

Are you an E. Lockhart fan? Or is there a book you’ve read that had just one single feature or event that bothered you?

Thoughts on “The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde

After years of hearing fellow book bloggers rave about The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde and the Thursday Next books that follow it, I finally read the thing! Yay!

About the Book:

The Eyre Affair is a little hard to describe. It’s set around 1985 in what mostly resembles Great Britain. Certain key events in our own timeline have or have not occurred in the book’s, resulting in odd discrepancies. For instance, England and Russia are still fighting the Crimean War. Airship is a common form of transportation. Also, classical literature and its authors are treated the way we treat celebrities. And everybody has a theory about who actually wrote Shakespeare’s plays.

Our heroine, Thursday Next, is a rather tough Special Operations agent in literary detection (with a resurrected pet dodo). The Goliath Corporation seems to have an unhealthy stranglehold on the doings of England’s government (as well as the best-named character in the whole book). Oh, and someone has begun dipping into classic works of literature and holding their key characters for ransom.

My Thoughts:

Okay, I’ll be honest. I’m not entirely sure what to make of The Eyre Affair. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy it immensely. More that…I’m not really sure where to start.

How about this: Reading The Eyre Affair felt like begin handed a whole bunch of puzzle pieces from what are obviously very different puzzles. There are a few standard pieces are varying sizes. There’s a wooden one with teeth marks that clearly came from a child’s toy. There’s a piece from one of those three-dimensional puzzles. And just for kicks, there’s a piece from a floor puzzle that is bigger than all the other pieces combined. You can sit there for hours trying to make them fit together nicely, but it’s never going to happen. Luckily, they make a rather interesting collection just as they are. I mean, who says the pieces have to fit?

Yeah. The Eyre Affair is kind of like that.

Allow me to explain. And actually…if you aren’t big on spoilers, maybe just skip the part between the red lines. I’m really not sure how to discuss this book without dipping into the spoiler pool.

So, puzzle pieces. It felt a bit to me like Fforde wanted to have all these cool things in the book but wasn’t quite sure how they’d fit together…so he just made something up. There’s the ChronoGuard. There’s a touch of the supernatural, what with the werewolf and the one vampire incident and whatever is going on with Hades. There’s the whole Crimea situation and its politics, and the Goliath component. There’s Thursday’s love life. And then there’s my favorite part of the book: all the messing around with classic novels. I’m pretty sure the book would’ve worked with just one or two of the pieces and perhaps been more coherent as a whole. Together it was sort of like…well, like a bunch of mismatched puzzle pieces.

That being said, holy cow did I love the way fiction and “reality” blurred in the novel. Characters from classic literature getting held hostage? The plot line of Jane Eyre being permanently altered because some nutjob is running around inside the pages of the original manuscript wreaking havoc? Mr. Rochester showing Japanese tourists around Thornfield to make a little extra cash?? I’m practically rolling around on the floor in paroxysms of glee just thinking about all the amazing creativity happening in that particular aspect of the book.

My second favorite part had to be Thursday’s father and the alterations he seemed to be making to history. The bananas, in particular, cracked me up.

In the end, it was okay that the pieces didn’t really fit. First, it was Fforde’s first published book. Second, I enjoyed the parts I enjoyed enough that I was willing to overlook what didn’t quite make sense. I would really love to crawl inside Jasper Fforde’s head for an hour, just to see what goes on in there.

Most likely, I’ll continue with the series at some point. Perhaps in the near future, or perhaps not. We’ll see.

The Verdict: Enjoyable

If you are a fan of quirk, absurdity, and extreme cleverness, then I bet at the very least you’ll be entertained by The Eyre Affair. If any one of those rubs you the wrong way, though, maybe you’d better find something else to read. Shades of Grey, also by Jasper Fforde, is a bit more subtle but still clearly comes from the same fascinating mind.

Your Turn!

Have you read The Eyre Affair? If so, did you get the puzzle pieces vibe? If not, have you read another book that didn’t quite seem to fit together?

Thoughts on “Daring Greatly” by Brené Brown (Audiobook)

Brené Brown is one of those authors I’ve meant to pick up for a while. It wasn’t until a friend sent me her TED talk on the power of vulnerability that I finally got my hands on her latest book, Daring Greatly.

About the Book:

Brené Brown is a shame and vulnerability researcher. She has spent years studying and defining people’s experience with these very real, very hard-to-face emotions. As a result, she has a lot of indescribably valuable and often surprising insights and experiences to share.

The book’s full title is Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. That sums up the book’s focus quite nicely. It examines the importance of vulnerability in our lives, from our families to our workplaces and beyond, and gives some strategies for beginning to explore what Brown calls “wholehearted living.”

My Thoughts:

I actually started Daring Greatly twice. The first time I just wan’t in the right headspace to benefit from Brown’s insights. The second time the timing couldn’t have been better. I devoured the book, hanging on every word and pausing frequently to take notes. The print version went onto my Amazon wish list before I’d even made it halfway through the audio. Yes…it’s that good.

One thing I particularly love about Brown is that she’s lived the very path she’s exploring in Daring Greatly. She used to be allergic to vulnerability and at the mercy of shame, and she’s done a lot of hard and ongoing work to change that. Her humor and personal anecdotes add a warmth and approachability to the book that some research-based works tend to lack.

Another thing I love is her careful attention to definitions. She clarifies exactly what she means by shame, for instance, and explores how it relates to and differs from related emotions like guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment. Big concept words like these often get used in a very abstract way, so I appreciated Brown’s efforts to nail down just what, exactly, she’s talking about.

Honestly, though, when it comes to writing a coherent review, I find myself facing two challenges. First, I always find audio harder to review than print because I can’t flip around easily. I find this particular impediment especially infuriating when I’m trying to discuss nonfiction. And second, I feel like I’m still processing what I heard. In fact, I’ll probably need to read the book another time or two at least before its insights and lessons really start sinking in. Which I will very happily do (says the reader who rarely re-reads).

So in lieu of my coherent thoughts, allow me to pepper you with good examples of what Daring Greatly and Brené Brown’s research are all about. I’ll start with a couple of my favorite quotes from early in the book (quite possibly formatted wrong, because they were transcribed while I listened to the audio):

“Vulnerability is based on mutuality and requires boundaries and trust. It’s not oversharing, it’s not purging, it’s not indiscriminate disclosure, and it’s not celebrity-style social media information dumps. Vulnerability is about sharing our feelings and our experiences with people who have earned the right to hear them. Being vulnerable and open is mutual and an integral part of the trust-building process.”

“Sharing appropriately with boundaries means sharing with people with whom we’ve developed relationships that can bear the weight of our story. The result of this mutually respectful vulnerability is increased connection, trust, and engagement.”

“We simply can’t learn to be more vulnerable and courageous on our own. Sometimes our first and greatest dare is asking for support.”

Next up, the TED talk that got me interested in Brown’s work. It’s long, but absolutely worth it — especially if anything I’ve said so far has piqued your interest.

[ted id=1042]

Want more of what Brown has to say (or an excuse to procrastinate for another 20 minutes)? Here’s her more recent TED talk, “Listening to Shame.”

[ted id=1391]

As for the audio production of Daring Greatly, I thought Karen White did an excellent job. Brené Brown’s writing voice walks the line between slyly humorous and compassionately honest, and somehow White managed to capture that in her reading.

The Verdict: Amazing

If you can’t tell, I loved this book. It came to me at the perfect time. I’m already looking into Brené Brown’s other books. For the general public, not knowing your thoughts on or interest in the book’s topic, though, I’d probably go with a rating of Excellent instead.

Your Turn!

Does reading about shame and vulnerability appeal to you? Why or why not?

Sunday Salon: Rating Systems, Revisited

When I started Erin Reads back in 2008, I decided not to incorporate a rating system. As I continued to blog, I kept revisiting the question, and each time I chose to keep the site rating-free.

I had my reasons. As I wrote back in 2011:

For me, ratings are a way to remember my own personal sense of a book. My experiences as a reader, a blogger, and a bookseller have shown me again and again that one (wo)man’s literary trash is another (wo)man’s treasure, so I don’t feel comfortable assigning an overall rating to books I talk about here.

But as I started thinking about what I wanted Erin Reads to be like when I revived it, I leaned more and more toward incorporating a rating system of some kind. After all, I already rate the books I add on Goodreads and LibraryThing for personal reference. I have a good sense of where a book falls on my own 1-5 scale. And some part of me really wanted the rating I already do to be a part of this blog — this record of my reading.

In short? I’ve decided to make ratings part of Erin Reads, to play a supporting role in my reviews.

The Role of Ratings in Reviews

Heart made out of book pages (erinreads.com, photo by Kate Ter Haar via Flickr) — photo courtesy of Kate Ter Haar

Working in a bookstore taught me that there is no one book that everyone will love. Some people prefer plot twists to beautiful writing. Some will sacrifice beautiful writing for well developed characters. The possible preferences are truly endless. The meat of the review, then, hopefully provides the details you’ll need to decide whether a book might be for you.

The new rating system, on the other hand, is like my answer to your question: “Such-and-such book looks interesting. What did you think?” (NOT “Should I read this book?”) It’s just one person’s opinion, backed up by the rest of the review and set within the context of an individual’s reading preferences. I pretty much never give blanket recommendations because I really don’t think there’s a book out there that every single person would like!

So with that in mind, here’s the system I’ll be implementing.

The New Erin Reads Rating System

I thought about using numbers for my rating system. But they seem so cold, so impersonal. I have a sense of what kind of book gets a 3-star rating, but an isolated number doesn’t convey that sense to someone reading my review.

Instead, I decided to use adjectives, which give a clearer bite-sized picture of where a book falls on my personal scale. I equated each adjective to a number (out of 5) to correspond with my LibraryThing and Goodreads rating systems. I also worked out my answer to the “What did you think?” question and the likelihood I’d recommend it.

Here’s what I came up with:

Amazing:

On a scale of 1 to 5: An amazing book would receive a 5+. I tag these books as “Favorite” in Goodreads, since their rating system stops at 5 stars!
My reaction, in a nutshell: This book is a new favorite!
Would I recommend it? Absolutely. In fact, I’ll probably beg you to read it.

Excellent:

On a scale of 1 to 5: An excellent book would receive a 5.
My reaction, in a nutshell: I loved this book. I have no complaints; it just didn’t quite hit the level of amazing.
Would I recommend it? Oh yes. I’d recommend it to anyone interested.

Enjoyable:

On a scale of 1 to 5: An enjoyable book would receive a 4.
My reaction, in a nutshell: I really liked this book. I had one or two minor issues, but overall, a great book.
Would I recommend it? Yes. I would not hesitate to recommend this book to most people.

Mediocre:

On a scale of 1 to 5: A mediocre book would receive a 3.
My reaction, in a nutshell: This book was pretty good. A couple of things bugged me. It wasn’t my favorite, but it was fine.
Would I recommend it? Depends. If the book appeals to you, go for it. Otherwise I’d probably say don’t bother.

Lacking:

On a scale of 1 to 5: A book that’s lacking would receive a 2.
My reaction, in a nutshell: This book left something to be desired. I had more complaints than compliments.
Would I recommend it? No. You won’t hear me pushing this book.

Lousy:

On a scale of 1 to 5: A lousy book would receive a 1.
My reaction, in a nutshell: I strongly disliked this book. It’s possible I didn’t finish it.
Would I recommend it? Definitely not. Read it if you want, but don’t say I didn’t warn you!

The breakdown above now lives on its own page on Erin Reads, and I’ll link to it each time I use one of the adjectives (which I’m calling “The Verdict”). The first book to get an official rating was Helen of Troy by Margaret George, which I posted about on Thursday. Maybe someday I’ll go back and add verdicts to old reviews, too!

What about you?

Do you use a rating system on your blog or on sites like Goodreads? What role do your own ratings and the ratings of others play in your reading?

Thoughts on “Helen of Troy” by Margaret George (Audiobook)

Helen of Troy by Margaret George (cover)

Helen of Troy by Margaret George is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read…oh, approximately forever. It was the first of George’s weighty tomes about prominent historical figures to cross my path in used book form, so it’s where I began with her work.

About the Book:

Helen of Troy is just that: the story of Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, the face that launched a thousand ships, the alleged cause of the Trojan War. The tale begins with Helen’s earliest memories and follows the infamous Greek-turned-Trojan throughout her life.

My Thoughts:

I’ll begin with a warning: I’m going to assume most people know the general shape of Helen’s story. If you don’t, and if you’d rather not hear anything about it, I’d suggest you skip this review! There are spoilers in what follows, and I’m not calling them out individually.

My feelings toward Helen of Troy were mixed. Let me start with what I really liked.

What I Liked

First, Margaret George’s version of the infamous Trojan War is far easier to read (at least, for mere mortals like me) than something like Homer’s The Illiad. It’s an excellent story, with plenty going on and an impressive cast of characters. (George doesn’t neglect the minor, less impressive characters, though; the few closest to Helen truly take on lives of their own.)

Second, George manages to tie in all kinds of myths. It seems like pretty much everyone who was anyone pops up at some point. From Mount Olympus, Zeus, Athena, and Aphrodite all make an appearance (or several). We hear the prophecies surrounding and deeds attributed to the likes of Achilles, Agamemnon, Hector, Odysseus, Ajax, and more. Names from other stories peek in around the edges, even if they’re not directly involved in the war.

Finally, and along similar lines, there is George’s attention to historical detail. Even though (as she cites in her Afterword) there is technically no proof that the likes of Helen, Paris, Priam, and the others actually lived, their lives are so rooted in the ways and customs of what we know of Greek and Trojan life from history that it isn’t hard to see what their lives may have been like. I appreciated the way George tucked a ritual into her tale or dropped a few details into a particular scene without going overboard and losing herself in description.

What I Really Didn’t Like

Unfortunately, the not-so-good part for me was kind of major: Helen herself bugged me. I found George’s portrait of this famed beauty disappointingly spineless and naive. I tried to make allowances for the roles of gods and omens in her culture. And I realize divorce was probably not so much a thing in Ancient Greece. But I chafed at the way Helen handled her decision to flee with Paris and the subsequent fallout nonetheless.

Let’s say Aphrodite really did enchant Helen, leaving her no other option but to go with Paris. Fine. It’s not Helen running away with Paris that bugs me. It’s her disbelief at what follows that I found so hard to swallow.

Imagine with me: You steal away from your husband (that’s Menelaus, the king of Sparta and kind of a high-profile figure) in blackest night with a (much, much younger) guest from a rival city. You leave on the heels of said husband, who is sailing home to attend to the funeral rites of his father. Oh, and then there is said husband’s bloodthirsty monster of a brother (i.e. Agamemnon) who, as you’ve seen with your own eyes, is getting restless for battle and would do almost anything to start a war. Yikes, and let us not forget that all 40 of your suitors swore an oath long ago to defend your choice of husband should the need arise. (You did pick Menelaus yourself, after all. He wasn’t forced on you.) And there’s some prophecy about about lots of Greeks dying for you. Helen! How can you be repeatedly shocked and dismayed when bad things happen??

It’s not that I expected Helen to foresee everything. But her disbelief toward the Greeks’ aggressiveness and the Trojan royal family’s standoffishness bothered me throughout. When Helen was shocked by the lengths to which Menelaus and Agamemnon were willing to go to reclaim her, I sighed. When she bemoaned the misery befalling her adopted Trojan family as the war progressed, I rolled my eyes. When they gave her the cold shoulder, I wanted to shake her and yell, “Well DUH! Did you really not see this one coming?” And while it’s true she grew a bit of a backbone in later years, to me it seems too little, too late. I wanted her to own her actions more, to step into her decisions and face what was coming and not be so eye-rollingly shocked at the consequences.

Obviously, I kept listening. I made it through all 25 discs of the unabridged audiobook. Because the history, the myths, the tale really are that good. But Helen…ooh. She drove me a little nuts.

As for the audiobook itself, I found it to be adequate. Justine Eyre’s voice somehow matched Helen’s character for me. She handles the mail voices pretty well, too. The only thing that bothered me a little was her accent. It seems to be some kind of hybrid of American and British pronunciations. And for a few characters — I never really figured out the pattern — she affects something different (but equally unidentifiable). There’s also the issue of the Afterword, which is not included in the audiobook version. I like reading the historical notes for novels like these, so I was happy I had a paper copy of the book and could read it there.

The Verdict: Mediocre

I certainly intend to read others by George. I’m hoping Helen was the problem here and not the way George portrays her female subjects in general. Would I recommend Helen of Troy by Margaret George? Eh. If you want the story of the Trojan War without having to slog through The Illiad or something similar, then yes. But as a top ten read of 2013? Not likely.

Have you read others by Margaret George? If so, which one would you suggest I try next?