Found Not Lost

I bought the Anansi Boys sometime ago but I haven’t read it yet. I am saving it for a good day. In the meantime, I got American Gods from the library so I can read it first.

I’ve loved all of Neil Gaiman’s books and have read Stardust and Neverwhere. I decided to start with the thinner volumes

American Gods was a very interesting and satisfying read. I like fantasy novels that work on a premise that I hadn’t read of before. In American Gods, the basic premise is that when early settlers to this country first landed on American soil, they brought with them their Gods from the old world. The old Gods flourished in this new country as they did in the old as long as someone believed in them. In these modern times in the new world, the old Gods have been pretty much forgotten. But what do old Gods do when no one knows about them anymore? Their story are the stories within the story in American Gods which is about a man named Shadow. Shadow has been dreaming of the day when he gets out of prison and gets to see his wife again. He swore that when he got out of prison he’ll do everything to never go back again and just live a peaceful and happy life with his wife.

Isn’t it always the case that when you want something too much, you may never get it? A day before he is released, Shadow learns that his wife has been killed in a car accident. To make things worse, on the plane home, Shadow is immediately derailed by a Mr. Wednesday, a mysterious man who seemed to know an awful lot about him. Shadow grew suspicious and got off the plane the first chance he got but it seems the fate that Mr. Wednesday has in mind for Shadow had just his incident in mind to get Shadow off his laid out plan. A revolution of sorts is brewing and unbeknown to Shadow, he will not only be caught up in it, he will be the center of it.

This is a long book, but you will never be bored. There are stories woven within stories that will keep you entranced and surprise you.

My grandmother was married off two days shy of her tenth birthday. My mother found a husband when she was twenty. I thus reckoned that if every generation increased by a decade the acceptable age for marriage, I should have become a wife by thirty.But at thirty-three, I was nowhere close to being married. And it was this that brought much consternation to all, tainting the joy and iciting hitherto-suppressed family politics, at the wedding of my twenty-two-year-old cousin, Nina. ~Kavita Daswani in For Matrimonial Purposes

For Matrimonial Purposes is a novel by Kavita Daswani. It outlines the misadventures of Anju, a woman considered somewhat past her prime in the dating scene of India. In India there is much pressure on girls to marry young and settle down with a suitable young man, of good caste(social standing) and religion. From the very beginning it is obvious that Anju is doomed, and every relationship opportunity to come up will be a complete failure.

Daswani’s novel is a great read that is captivating in all its mystery and romance. The story’s hero, Anju, is a character you want to root for, you feel her pain and her distress. With each turn of the page a bit more of her story is unraveled and it seems Anju will never find a respectable mate. However, as you begin to understand Anju, you also begin to understand that when it seems others happiness depends on you, it helps if you are first happy yourself.

For Matrimonial Purposes is a fun read, and I highly recommend it.

My daughter and I couldn’t wait for this third installment of the House of Night series by P.C. Cast and daughter Kristin Cast. We both enjoyed reading the book, but it left us hanging and sort of unsatisfied. It wasn’t long enough, too many plots left unfinished… So we’re hanging until the next book, Untamed.

“..darkness does not always equate to evil, just as light does not always bring good”

This has been cautionary words of wisdom, since the beginning. The book, it’s story line and the sub plots have all pointed to this truth that things are not always as they seem or what you think they should be.

In this third book, Zoey is still dealing with her best friend Stevie Ray being undead as she tries to find ways to get her friend back the way she was. She also has to deal with another death at the school, this time around one of the professors die. She is still juggling three romantic interests; and while my daughter thinks she was being totally stupid in her choices, I think she is just being a typical teenager. She also has to make a mature choice in working with her former enemy, who may turn out to not have been an enemy after all.

There are certainly enough subplots in this book to keep you engrossed. I read this in one sitting, practically, and was left wanting for more.

I just happened to sit in front of the TV right when a movie was coming on. The first few frames looked interesting, and when the movie’s title came up, it was Vinegar Hill. I thought, oh good! I know this book, I’ve read it before. I have it. So I settled down to watch the movie.

As the movie progressed, the story captured me but I’ll be darned if I can remember the plot of the book! I was hoping the movie would trigger my memory and the story from the book would suddenly come back to me. But no, I was a blank slate. So I settled down to enjoy the movie with fresh eyes and vowed to read the book anew.

I found the book and re-read it. Ellen, her husband James and their two children move in with his aging parents at their farm house in Holly’s Field, Wisconsin because James had lost his job in Chicago. The book weaves in and out of the different lives forced to share a roof. How those lives touch on each other, the secrets they hold and how those lives affect and ultimately shape the people who live them, I think, is the main and underlying story told by the book. It tells how the mundane events of daily living, our actions and reactions to those around us is the thing that makes or breaks us. It’s not the material things that determine who we are, no matter how we think it would greatly change things for the way we live our lives.

Now I remember when I read this book. Now I remember why I don’t remember the story. I was in a place much the same as Ellen. Reading the book, I could so relate to how she was feeling. The helplessness, the feeling of being caged in without escape, the lovelessness, the loathing, the self-hatred, the meanness, the guilt, the anger, the breathlessness; yeah, I remember all of those feelings. I read books and watched movies without really seeing without really absorbing without really understanding. I know, I’ve been there before and it’s a suffocating place to be. That’s what this book is all about.

The best thing about life though, is that like the movies, you do have control with how you let it affect you even when you don’t have control about what is happening to you. The movie took quite a bit of artistic license in adapting the book, but I think it did a good job conveying the emotions. The movie’s ending is quite different from the book, but I think they both end at the same place. Whether Ellen stays with James or not, the final result is that she realizes that she does have the power to control her life and choose who she wants to be part of it.

It was definitely worth re-reading the book and the movie was almost a whole new story altogether. Both of them worth experiencing.

In the second book, we meet up with the talking dog. In this third book, we see more of Fang the blogger. While I have been enjoying the series, I am really amused by the fact that bloggers are going to save the world in the third book. 

Some mysteries are revealed in this third book, like who Max’s real parents are.

The saving the world ending is a little lame, but for teen fiction, I think it’s good enough. It keeps you entertained and wanting more.

If you are interested, the author, James Patterson has a blog too: James Patterson’s Amazon Blog

If you’d like to see Fang’s blog, visit: http://maximumride.blogspot.com

What I wrote about Book 1 and Book 2:
Angel Experiment
School’s Out Forever