The Nine Lives of Jacob Tibbs, by Cylin Busby

The Nine Lives of Jacob Tibbs, by Cylin Busby
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from the publisher
via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review
Jacob Tibbs is the runt of his litter. He watches as, one-by-one, sailors buy and bear away his brothers and sisters to be ship cats on other ships – leaving only him and his mother. The captain’s daughter begs her father to save Jacob despite his small size and his white paws (that are glow-in-the-dark beacons to the ship rats). And it’s a good thing the captain saves Jacob, because he has his mother’s talent for predicting weather…and a huge storm is brewing. 

I know I bragged about how awesome my last NetGalley book was, but this book was equally awesome for different reasons. This was just an adorable and fun book to read. I actually learned some interesting tidbits about ships from this book – Busby must have done a lot of research. I’m a cat person, and I loved the way Jacob always explained his actions with cat-like anthropomorphic reasoning (instead of just sounding like a human mind in a cat). I was surprised at how much action could be packed into a book this short. There was always something going on that made me want to read the next chapter. This book was so sweet and fun! I wish I had an appropriately-aged kid to read it to. 

I highly recommend this book for middle grade readers starting with precocious third graders. While you’re getting it for your child, read it yourself. You won’t regret it. 

Burning Midnight, by Will McIntosh

Burning Midnight, by Will McIntosh
Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher
via NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review 
This book takes place in the not-so-distant future – a future in which magical spheres have inexplicably appeared all over the world. These spheres can be burned by one person, and that person receives an extraordinary gift. 

In order to make enough money to help his mother pay the rent, Sully sells spheres at a flea market. When an edgy girl with an attitude and great spheres walks in, they make a deal to start hunting together. 

This is by far the best YA science fiction / fantasy novel  I’ve read in years. I knew it would be as soon as I started reading. The story pretty much starts out as a near-future mystery. Who is this girl Hunter and what’s her story? Where’d the spheres come from, and why? The action starts out slow and then steadily rises throughout the book until an adrenaline-pumped end. And the end is where this book went up from 4 stars to 5 stars. McIntosh has achieved the unthinkable: he’s wrapped up all of his loose threads in one book. It’s so nice to read a reasonably non-violent, non-sexual standalone book once in a while. And this one was exceptional, with its mixture of mystery, adventure, and action. 

I’d recommend this book to people anywhere from about 5th grade on up, and it’s appropriate for all ages. 

War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells

The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells
Narrated by Greg Wagland
Spoiler alert!

When a pod crashes just outside London, our intrepid observer (unnamed protagonist) is at first curious. He watches as a lid slowly unscrews itself, and an alien crawls out. He only makes a run for it when green lightening chases down the watching crowd, scorching them all to death. He runs home, takes his wife to an out-of-the-way town, and for some idiotic reason heads back home. The rest of the book is his adventures on the way back to his wife. It also contains a short couple of chapters about the adventures of his brother in London – just to add some greater perspective of the story. 


Despite the name of this story, War of the Worlds is about three pods that land in the London area it is not an en masse invasion. I think it’s interesting that yet again Wells wrote a book where the characters remain completely unnamed. Perhaps that’s meant to make the story more “autobiographical” or simply to say that events, not names, matter when something like this happens. I like to think of it as the second choice. 

If you’ve read past my spoiler alert, then you don’t mind if I mention that in the end of the book all of the aliens died from bacterial infection because they were not immune to disease on Earth. I think this ending was quite creative and forward thinking at the time. It also gives the reader a feeling of no control. No. We didn’t destroy the aliens with our brains and technology and sheer will to live. They were going to destroy us, and that’s that. But something completely out of our control is what saved us in the end. 

I thought this ending was quite fascinating when I read the book as a teenager. Then, when the Tom Cruise movie came out one of my friends told me “don’t see it, it has the stupidest ending, I’ve heard.” So I expected something really darned stupid to happen at the ending. When it ended, she turned to me to say “I told you so” when I pointed out that this is exactly how the book ended. She was like “it was based on a book?” That gave me a perspective that perhaps an ending outside of our control is too philosophical for most readers/movie watchers of the day? Perhaps we just want to see ourselves be in control of our own fate? 

I think it’s interesting to note that the ending to Independence Day also had a similar ending – a virus killed the aliens, but in this case it was technological warfare and not a biological infection that we had no control over. So metaphorical disease was there, just as in War of the Worlds, but the power was in our hands. 

I’m trying to think of some modern books (besides outwardly religious ones) where a similarly dire situation is turned around by something outside of our control. If I recall, there’s a very popular Stephen King novel that ends in a deus ex machina sort of way. 


In which Rachel wraps up January 2016

Well, it’s been an eventful month for me. I started my EMT class and training for a new volunteer opportunity. And I put in my 2-weeks’ notice at work (next week will be my last). I didn’t set out to make the New Year a mini-rebirth, but I feel like a lot of good changes are coming for me soon.

My week was uneventful (thankfully). I  had my first exam for the EMT class and got a suitable grade. Below are my blogging & reading achievements for the week. 

Lectures



Posts



Currently Reading



Completed 



Watched



Acquired

February Plans


For next month month many of my books will be modernist for the Reluctant Romantic challenge over at Doing Dewey. 


This update is posted to Stacking the Shelves @Tynga’sReviews, Sunday Salon, Sunday Post @CaffeinatedBookReviewer,   @MailboxMonday, It’s Monday What are You Reading @BookDate

Devil in the Grove, by Gilbert King

Devil in the Grove:
Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America
by Gilbert King, narrated by Peter Francis James
In this 2013 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, Devil in the Grove is about Thurgood Marshall’s (“Mr Civil Rights” and arguably one of the best lawyers of the 20th century) work to save three black men accused of gang raping a 17 year old girl.

Gilbert King did an amazing amount of research for this book including reading the FBI’s Groveland case files and the NAACP’s legal defense files – and this research really shone through. His prose was acerbic at times, and it flowed smoothly keeping my interest the whole way through. Devil in the Grove gave a lot of background information on Thurgood Marshall’s life outside of the of the trial, thus bringing a personal light to the story. Gilbert also included stories about KKK activities against lawyers who defended black people accused of rape, which was terrifying and disgusting. 

Overall, a fantastic book. Read it. 

Little House in the Big Woods, by Laura Ingalls Wilder

Little House in the Big Woods
by Laura Ingalls Wilder
This is the first story of Larua as a 4-year old in a log cabin in the woods of Wisconsin. I’ve never read any of these books before, and honestly I can’t even say whether I ever watched the TV show. So I didn’t know quite what to expect. Whatever I expected, this wasn’t it. This book is written with a slice-of-life narrative with no plot and very little dialog – it was kind of a passive story…or perhaps a string of memories/anecdotes that are connected in approximate chronological order. 

Not that I’m saying I disliked it. It was really cute and a really quick read. I’m definitely going to continue with the rest of them. I’m also not entirely sure why this is considered a Christmas book. Yes, Christmas was included in the time-line, but it was about an entire year living in the little log cabin in the woods. I think the cutest part of the book was when Laura and her mother went out to milk the cow at night and mistook a bear for the cow. 🙂 Laura’s corn-cob doll was also pretty adorable. 

I think it’s interesting how many people care about whether this story was truly factual. I mean, of course it’s not fully factual – apparently Laura was younger when she lived on the Prairie than when she lived in the woods in Wisconsin, but she switched the timeline around. I’m sure some of the memories she mentions are also not fully factual, but that’s how family anecdotes are – they change with time and audience. This isn’t an autobiography, this is a string of anecdotes for children. 

In which Rachel gets the stomach flu

5 year throwback.
I miss you Grandma!

This week wasn’t as eventful as last week. I started working with my boss to have a smooth transition out – though I’m leaving him in a tight spot, so the transition won’t be much easier than if I strolled out in the middle of the day and never came back. I caught the stomach flu from my sister and was sick a couple of days. Spent a nice Olive Garden dinner with a friend, and that’s about it!

Posts: 

Wild Swans, by Jung Chang

The Rolling Stones, by Robert A Heinlein

The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

The Reluctant Romantic Challenge

Currently Reading: 

Books Completed: 

Watched: 

Nothing!

Acquired:


The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells

The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells
Narrated by Greg Wagland

This review contains spoilers

Using a time machine of his own making, a man travels to the year 802,701 to discover a world where humans have diverged into two separate species. The first species he meets are the Eloi. They are an indulgent people living in what the time traveler calls a communist society. It appears to be a utopian society in which everyone shares living spaces and food. But our time traveler soon discovers that this society isn’t as perfect as it seems. The Eloi are an uncaring race. When one of their own is drowning, they glance uncaringly in her direction and then move on with their own entertainments as if such an event were normal and uninteresting. There is a complete decline of intellect. 

Soon enough, our time traveler meets a second brutish and cunning race that live underground. They are called the Morlocks. (How he discovers this is unclear, since the Morlocks don’t talk to him and the Eloi refuse to talk about them as if it is extremely rude even to bring them up.) He has very little contact with them, but he believes that the Morlocks eat the Eloi. 

At a loss for what exactly H. G. Wells was getting at when he wrote this book, I read a couple of critical essays. Critics say that H. G Wells 1) was suggesting that there would be an inevitable decline in intellect of the human race, 2) was parodying the indulgent and uncaring aristocracy and the brutishness of the working class – a common parody of his time, and 3) was parodying communism despite the fact that he, himself, was a socialist. My father suggested that H. G. Wells had the Nazis (Morlocks) and the Jews (Eloi) in mind when he wrote The Time Traveler – though I find it hard to believe that the Wells believed that the Jews were a self-indulgent and unintellectual race. 

What I noticed about both The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds is that both mentioned a subclass of humans who, in the future, would prey upon other humans. (In War of the Worlds it was suggested that humans might, in the future, be used as slaves to hunt humans so the alien race could eat them.) Thus I am inclined to believe that H. G. Wells is suggesting that some humans have a brutish quality in which they inevitably take advantage of and prey upon an untintellectual and uncaring group of people. 

I am also interested in this communist aspect. What was he saying? If you have any ideas, please let me know. I am curious what other people think of this story. 


The Rolling Stones, by Robert A Heinlein

The Rolling Stones, by Robert A Heinlein
Narrated by Tom Weiner
Teenaged twins Castor and Pollux Stone cajole their father into buying a space ship, and the entire family goes on a trip around the galaxy. But Castor and Pollux repeatedly end up in trouble with their schemes to make a fortune on distant planets.


This is a hard book for me to review, so I’ll keep it short. I’ve only read one other book by Heinlein, A Stranger in a Strange Land, and that was as a teenager, so I expected something a bit more serious and meaningful in this book. Is this what pulp is? I’ve only read one pulp-fiction book, A Princess of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs, so I’m very inexperienced with the genre. It took me a while to get over the cheese. But I recognize that when you’re reading a book that was written in a style foreign to you, it’s better to view the book within its context rather than comparing it to your usual type. And after I approached the book from this perspective, I began to really enjoy the humor and even became emotionally invested in the characters. I wouldn’t say I highly recommend this book, but I enjoyed my second pulp experience. 




Wild Swans, by Jung Chang

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
by Jung Chang
narrated by Joy Osmanski

This contains spoilers. 

Wild Swans is the memior of Jung Chang’s childhood in China during the Cultural Revolution, but it’s not only about her. She begins with the story of her grandmother. 


Jung Chang’s grandmother was a concubine to a warlord. She had to use charm and wit to keep herself safe from being held prisoner by the warlord’s family – as she was considered the property of the warlord and of his legitimate wives. Upon her warlord’s death, she made the very difficult decision to marry, which caused many problems for her, her new husband, and potentially her afterlife (in which her husband and warlord would cut her in half to share her). This story delves into great detail about the strife that Jung Chang’s grandmother had to overcome. Now that I’m familiar with how foot binding works I will shudder every time I hear mention of it. I never realized….

The next section of the book is about Jung Chang’s mother, who grew up mainly during the strife between her mother and her stepfather’s family. WWII was also raging, which meant occupation and brutalization by the Japanese. (This was the most difficult section for me to read.) Once the Japanese occupation ended, their country was ruled by tyranny, thus bringing on the communist uprising. Jung Chang’s mother became deeply involved in the Communist Party while very young, but felt betrayed by The Party by the time she was pregnant with her first child. 

The final section talks about Jung Chang’s childhood, watching the Communist Party emotionally and physically torture those around her, including her parents. She vividly portrays the original innocence that she had – believing in the communist party and Mao’s propaganda. Slowly, gently, she began to emerge from this innocence. More gracefully than would be expected, given what was going on around her. That speaks to the power of Mao’s campaign. 

This was a fascinating and beautifully written book. It’s written lovingly, yet it’s brutally honest. The research is so amazing that every once in a while I wondered “how does she know that?” Her years’ worth of research definitely paid off. This book deserves the fantastic worldwide sales that it has received. I am tempted to read Jung Chang’s biography of Mao pretty soon.