Thursday Tea: November 26 (The Sophisticated Traveler: Great Tours and Detours)

November 26, 2009 in Memes, Thursday Tea | Tags: | 2 comments

Thursday Tea Thursday Tea is a weekly meme hosted by yours truly. To play along, all you need is some tea, a book, and the answers to these questions: what tea are you drinking (and do you like it)? What book are you reading (and do you like it)? Tell us a little about your tea and your book, and whether or not the two go together.

The book: I have literally just started The Sophisticated Traveler: Great Tours and Detours. I’m at the beginning so I have no idea if I like it yet, but considering its a short story collection of travel stories I’d guess it’d be pretty hard to dislike it, you know? But it seems like it’ll be a real trip (excuse the pun) because it covers nearly the entire world, excluding the Arctic.

The tea: Today is not tea day. Today is eggnog day. I know! It’s bad for you. But I can’t help myself– I love eggnog! I don’t drink it year-round, but as soon as Thanksgiving shows up it’s time to start chugging the eggnog.

Do you know the origins of eggnog? For some reason I had thought it was a Middle East kind of thing (because of the spices), but actually it was probably invented in England. Here’s a bit from Wikipedia:

The origins, etymology, and even the ingredients used to make the original eggnog drink are debated. Eggnog, or a very similar drink, may have originated in East Anglia, England, though it may also have been developed from posset (a medieval European beverage made with hot milk). An article by Nanna Rögnvaldsdóttir, an Icelandic food expert, states that the drink adopted the “nog” part of its name from the word “noggin”, a Middle English phrase used to describe a small, wooden, carved mug used to serve alcohol. Another name for this British drink was Egg Flip. Yet another story is that the term derived from the name “egg-and-grog”, a common Colonial term used to describe rum. Eventually the term was shortened to “egg’n'grog”, then “eggnog”.

 

And here’s an eggnog recipe from Alton Brown, and a vegan eggnog recipe. I’ve never made my own eggnog– have you?

Do they go together? Okay, let’s be honest. Eggnog would only go with books set in the winter time. The Sophisticated Traveler? Not set in the winter time. So, no: eggnog doesn’t go with this book. (I don’t care!!)

What are you drinking/reading this Thursday?

Bookmark and Share

Review: The Lost City of Z by David Grann

November 26, 2009 in 4/5, Adventure, History, Non-fiction, Reviews | Leave a comment

236. The Lost City of Z by David Grann

Publication: Doubleday (February 24, 2009), Hardback, 352pp / ISBN 0385513534

Genre: Non-Fiction, Adventure

Rating:

Challenges: 2009 Pub Challenge (#9)

Read: November 22-24, 2009

Source: Library

Summary from Amazon:

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century:” What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z?

In 1925 Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, hoping to make one of the most important discoveries in history. For centuries Europeans believed the world’s largest jungle concealed the glittering kingdom of El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many scientists convinced that the Amazon was truly inimical to humankind. But Fawcett, whose daring expeditions helped inspire Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, had spent years building his scientific case. Captivating the imagination of millions around the globe, Fawcett embarked with his twenty-one-year-old son, determined to prove that this ancient civilization–which he dubbed “Z”–existed. Then he and his expedition vanished.

Fawcett’s fate–and the tantalizing clues he left behind about “Z”–became an obsession for hundreds who followed him into the uncharted wilderness. For decades scientists and adventurers have searched for evidence of Fawcett’s party and the lost City of Z. Countless have perished, been captured by tribes, or gone mad. As David Grann delved ever deeper into the mystery surrounding Fawcett’s quest, and the greater mystery of what lies within the Amazon, he found himself, like the generations who preceded him, being irresistibly drawn into the jungle’s “green hell.” His quest for the truth and his stunning discoveries about Fawcett’s fate and “Z” form the heart of this complex, enthralling narrative.

Review

I immediately noticed that it was one of those books that tended to the more sensationalist side of things. That’s entertaining, but also off-putting because I’m not sure I can trust the information. It was interfering with my enjoyment of the book to keep thinking of it like it was actively tricking me into believing something false, so I tried to put it out of my mind. I tried to think of it more like a fictional book than a non-fictional one (or maybe like a fictional book with non-fictional leanings), and that worked pretty well. It let me be less hostile towards The Lost City of Z, and I actually ended up enjoying it a lot.

Stories of adventurers and explorers always excite me, and this one is particularly exciting. I don’t want to ever wander around the Amazon jungles myself– the bugs and deadly plants and killer animals are just too overwhelming– but I do enjoy reading about other people doing it. With ice and desert landscapes you get the psychological aspects of having to survive in a bald landscape under horrific temperatures, but the jungle is quite psychologically damaging as well. The Lost City of Z mentions quite a few times when the constant attack of gnats, flies, ticks, maggots, ants, termites and other bugs caused explorers to basically go mad, and I can understand why. I hate just even thinking of bugs crawling over me; no way I could survive them actually doing so!
Read the rest of this entry »

Review: The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley

November 25, 2009 in 4/5, Action, Adventure, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Reviews | Tags: | 4 comments

234. The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley

Publication: Penguin Classics (August 30, 2005), Paperback, 272pp / ISBN 0143039334

Genre: Action/Adventure, Historical Fiction?

Rating:

Read: November 20, 2009

Source: Library

Summary from Amazon:

Originally titled The Curse of Capistrano in its 1919 debut, this exciting tale achieved immortal fame thanks to Douglas Fairbanks’s 1920 blockbuster film, The Mark of Zorro—a cinematic triumph that inspired Johnston McCulley to retitle his novel and dedicate it to Fairbanks. Set in Mexican California during the 1820s, the story follows the career of Don Diego Vega, by all appearances an effete and foppish aristocrat. But Vega’s timorous reputation is nothing more than a mask to conceal his alter ego: a California Robin Hood known as Zorro, whose swift blade strikes down those who exploit the poor and oppressed. The inspiration for dozens of film and television adaptations, The Mark of Zorro remains a paradigm of swashbuckling adventure.

Review

A coworker of mine is pretty obsessed with Zorro, and after a while she interested me enough to try and read one of the books. I’m familiar with some of the movies, and I like sword-fighting dashing young heroes who always have something witty to say, so I figured it was a pretty safe be that I’d like The Mark of Zorro.

The Mark of Zorro is the first Zorro book, and it was originally published serially. Serialized stories are almost always action-packed, exciting, and rather wordy– think Alexandre Dumas or the Sherlock Holmes stories. Every chapter either ends on a note that moves the story forward and wants to keep you reading. In The Mark of Zorro, the chapters tended to end on a “and then something shocking and/or exciting happened!” note, which meant the book moved like lightning. I was not actually expecting to like that formula, though, so imagine how surprised I was when I found myself eagerly reading chapter after chapter like a pigeon who found a stash of seeds.

It was so exciting! I’m going to use that word a lot, but that’s exactly what The Mark of Zorro is. It’s exciting, and romantic, and it hardly has any of the horrible early pulp fiction problems that I hate.

It was also rather wordy in some places, like I said. That’s because serial novelists got paid by the word (think Dickens), so while some parts are fantastic and energetic, other parts are just too much. I think I skimmed most of them, now that I think back on it. The first page is a real killer in too-much department, but don’t let it fool you– the chapter ends in a really great way.

About Zorro/Don Deigo– was I not supposed to know that they were the same person? There’s a big reveal/explanation at the end of the book, but, like…I already knew all the stuff that’s being explained! Would people reading it for the first time and with no previous knowledge of Zorro not really have figured it out during the course of the book anyway? Hm. No idea.

Anyway, I actually really like Zorro/Diego. Diego I found funny and somewhat campy and he lightened the novel up a lot. Zorro was dashing and exciting and everything I could want in a hero, really.

His love interest, Lolita, was fine for the most part, but whenever the two of them got together there were even more exclamation marks than when they were apart, and it got quite distracting. But I loved how Zorro wooed her, and how Diego kept striking out. I didn’t expect to like their romance so much, actually, since I tend to despair of any strong women existing in a pulp novel. But Lolita is quite strong, and I liked her.

The plot is good, too, with lots of those sword fights I love and lots of vengeance against bad dudes, which I also love. It ends rather abruptly, and in a way that I think meant Mr McCulley wasn’t planning on writing any more Zorro novels. It was a bit surprising, that, especially since the Zorro in the movies is always taking such pains to hide his identity.

Anyway, I really, really liked The Mark of Zorro! I was pleasantly surprised, and I’m glad I read it. I’m definitely going to read some other Zorro books.
Read the rest of this entry »

Book Trailer Tuesday: Under the Dome

November 24, 2009 in Book Trailer Tuesday, Memes | Tags: | 2 comments

Book Trailer Tues Book Trailer Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by me, Anastasia. It’s very simple to play along: find a particularly awesome book trailer, embed it in a post, then proceed to coo all over it. Or, y’know, talk about whatever you want to talk about. Why did this book trailer catch your eye? Why do you want to share it with people? Did it make you want to read the book? Why was it effective (or not)?

This week’s featured book trailer is:

Stephen King’s Under the Dome! Now, a disclaimer: I don’t particularly like Stephen King’s books, and I won’t be reading this one. But I like this trailer because of the move from an innocuous beginning, with just a few sound effects, to all out chaos by the end (with a lot of noise). It’s remarkably effective, especially since it looks like it was made with a computer hailing from the year 1997. And I also really like how you just get that hint of the fire-death-omg what’s going on out of the corner of your eye.

I think it’s a really nifty little trailer and it’s pretty effective, I think. If I had never heard of Stephen King before and hadn’t already tried to read about seven of his books and hated them all, I’d definitely want to read this.

What book trailers caught your eye this week? Leave a link to your post so others can find out!

Bookmark and Share

Discussion: Abandoned books

November 24, 2009 in Misc | 14 comments

I don’t write a DNF review for a book unless I’ve read about half of it, but there are loads more books that I’ve tried to read and ended up abandoning before the halfway mark. Generally I try to give a book a decent shot before giving up, but sometimes a book is so bad, or so boring, or just so not for me that I have to get rid of it quickly before I waste more of my time.

I don’t feel any guilt for abandoning a book, but sometimes I do feel weird because the book I’ve abandoned might be one that has been given a lot of good reviews. And then it’s like “What’s wrong with me? Why didn’t I want to finish reading this book?” And “should I have stuck with it longer?” This is a completely different feeling from completely reading a book and not loving it (like with The Magicians), because at least I still finished it. But to not give the book a decent chance…? Okay, I do feel a little guilty.

But not guilty enough to keep reading it!

Anyway, I thought it’d be interesting to look at some books I’ve abandoned this year and see why I quit reading them. And then maybe, by putting this out into the ether, I’ll find some other people who have abandoned the same books and then I won’t feel weird and guilty any longer! :D Hopefully.

All of these are (I think) pretty popular, though some of them are maybe more popular than others.

  • The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I’ve tried reading this at least three times before, and every single time I got bored around page 100 and found something else to read.
  • The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I actually only got two pages into this? And then I read a review where an issue with the book’s plot regarding race was discussed and I just felt too uncomfortable with the whole thing to continue reading the book.
  • The Very Ordered Existence of Merilee Marvelous by Suzanne Crowley. Got about 30 pages in, then was so bored and so unconvinced by the dialogue that I couldn’t continue, even though it was such a short book.
  • The Affinity Bridge by George Mann. About 50 pages into this I asked myself “do I really care about these people or what they do?” And the answer was “no.”
  • Drood by Dan Simmons. Got one sentence in and then remembered how much I dislike Charles Dickens.
  • The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Crown by M.T. Anderson. Somehow both utterly horrifying and boring at the same time. Got 50 pages in and then I couldn’t stand it any longer.
  • Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green. It’s a small book, so I thought I could push through the last half of it. Nope. I clocked out at page 105– it was so bad that I actually tossed it away from me in disgust.

I’ve abandoned more this year, but I can’t remember them! But anyway: have you ever abandoned a popular book? Did you ever go back and finish it? How did you feel?

Bookmark and Share

Review: Hood (King Raven #1) by Stephen R. Lawhead

November 23, 2009 in 3/5, Action, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Reviews | 4 comments

233. Hood (King Raven #1) by Stephen R. Lawhead

Publication: Thomas Nelson (June 5, 2007), Paperback, 472pp / ISBN 9781595540881

Genre: Historical Fiction, Fantasy

Rating:

Read: November 19, 2009

Source: Bought

Review

I got this a few months ago when BookCloseouts was having a big scratch-and-dent sale. It looked interesting, and I don’t think I’ve read anything Robin Hood-related since the last time I read The Once and Future King. But that whole thing in the woods with Robin and his merry men made me want to puke with the mushiness hippie-ness of it all, so I was excited to read something that took a more realistic approach.

As a whole, I don’t think it was an utter waste of my time. I enjoyed most of it, and even though some parts really annoyed me, they didn’t annoy me enough to stop reading it. However, looking back I had a lot more problems with it than I had, uh, non-problems, and that’s why I don’t think I’ll be reading the next two books in the series.

Summary from Amazon:

For centuries, the legend of Robin Hood and his band of thieves has captivated the imagination. Now the familiar tale takes on new life, fresh meaning, and an unexpected setting.

Steeped in Celtic mythology and the political intrigue of medieval Britain, Stephen R. Lawhead’s latest work conjures up an ancient past and holds a mirror to contemporary realities. Prepare yourself for an epic tale that dares to shatter everything you thought you knew about Robin Hood.

It starts off with extremely high action, which is probably why I kept reading it through to the end– the action sequences are very action-y, and I needed a bit of an adrenaline kick after my last book. The middle is more slow but it’s building back up the tension and by the end it’s really exciting again.

So, the best part of the book: the fight sequences.

I also like the whole reboot. Robin Hood in Wales? Cool! I like Wales. I also liked that it had a paranormal/fantasy kind of tint to it; at first I thought it was weird, but then I figured it was like King Arthur or something and then it really worked for me. But then came the problems.

The characters were flat. It was interesting to see how Mr Lawhead changed them from the original versions, especially Robin/Bran, who’s more selfish and lazy and a bit of a player at the beginning. He changes by the end, though he’s still a bit of a coward. But I liked seeing him evolve through the story.

However, the rest of the characters were either bland or so all over the place with their emotions they turned into jesters. It wasn’t unusual for someone to be REALLY FREAKING ANGRY and then two sentences later they’re calm and calculating. Not just one dude, by the way, but almost all the dudes entirely. And not either of those emotions were convincing; it was like watching Plan 9 From Outer Space set in the middle ages. Merian and Bran definitely had the worst conversations: they were utterly unconvincing and Merian turned into a standard fake-strong female heroine trope instead of staying the most convincingly real person in the whole cast. Disappointing.

The writing was, as I said last Thursday, trying too hard to be clever. I said that when it tried to be clever instead of being enjoyable like an in-joke it came off more like “you’re too stupid to figure it out so I’ll explain because I’m so smart” kind of thing. Really annoying, though it didn’t happen too many times. And the writing wasn’t overly horrible, it just wasn’t up to par with things like The Winter King.

The plot itself wasn’t bad. It was pretty good, actually! And like I said, I like the whole reboot-a-myth thing. But the writing and the characters just dragged it down, and the fight sequences weren’t enough to lift it back up. I’m sort of torn, though. I liked it, kinda. And I for sure didn’t hate it. But I feel sort of wishy-washy about it. Ambivalent! That’s what I mean. I’m ambivalent.

If you think you’d like reading a Robin Hood story in a new setting with slightly changed characters and plot, then you might like this. But– I’d get it from the library just in case you don’t.

And

Find your own copy @ Amazon or IndieBound.

Other reviews: Miss Picky’s Column | Eye on Everything | A Writer’s Daydreams

- Read a sample chapter.
- Check out this album that was inspired by the book!

Bookmark and Share

APFOL: November 15-21

November 22, 2009 in Link Posts, Misc | 1 comment

Interesting posts and other things that have caught my eye this week. It isn’t actually everything, since I didn’t want to kill myself copy-pasting, so for the entire link collection check out my Delicious page.

And now, I present to you, my readers: Awesome Post Full of Links #12: November 15-21!

It’s been a pretty quiet week, actually, but there’s some very good recommendation lists.

Books in General

Authors & Publishers

  • Brooklyn Arden: On Protests and Publishing
    “But we readers can create positive economic pressure in a way that actually benefits the publishing industry and the authors we support. And that’s by buying books with gay characters — either the book in question if it’s in a Fair, which will prove desire for such books outweighs the repressive effects of the Christianists, or other books in the bookstores, which does the same in the trade.”
  • When will hardcovers be retired? « Follow The Reader
    “I understand the economics of publishing: hardcovers are more profitable. But where is the value to the consumer? How can I, in good conscience, direct any child to purchase the same product in different binding for 3 times more when the reading experience will be exactly the same (maybe better for the softcover if you consider the fold-out insert)?”

Meta: Delicious | Google Reader

Bookmark and Share

Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

Hiya! Welcome to Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog. I'm Anastasia, and I'm the head honcho around here. I review books, talk about book-related things, and occasionally have something witty to say regarding the publishing industry. I focus my reviews mainly on fiction, specifically YA, fantasy, adventure and sci-fi, with some dabbling into other genres (sometimes even non-fiction).

If you'd like to learn more about me, check out the "About" page above. If you'd like to contact me, check out the "Contact" page, also located above.

Please note that I am not the author of any of these books. If you want to contact the author of a book, please try Googling the publisher first.

2009 reading challenges have been moved to the reading list page. 2010 challenges have their own page here.

Big fat review policy is here.

Currently Reading


63/278 pages

Out Soon

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones; pub April 6, 2010. Eeeek!

Rating Guide

5 birds = Loved it!
4 birds = Liked it a lot.
3 birds = Not bad, but I probably won't reread it.
2 birds = Mostly bad, but had some merit.
1 bird = Horrible. Probably hated it.
Half-birds = halfsteps between ratings.

Categories

And

Add to Technorati Favorites

Books Blogs - BlogCatalog Blog Directory

Get your own free Blogoversary button!