Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters by Jane Austen and Ben H. Winters

It's official! Jane Austen has no doubt rolled over, and over, and over again in her grave. In fact, she's probably kicking and screaming, pounding the walls of her underground wooden solitude using words like, it is not merely this affair on which my dislike is founded!

Perhaps to make her works more appealing to MEN, her tales of love and romance have been mercilessly invaded by first, the brain-eating, the scab-forming, walking corpses of gray loose and rotten flesh. Now it's muscular green Stretch Armstrong sort of men with tentacles where they shouldn't be, and I have no doubt aliens will be landing with Anne and Captain Wentworth in Lyme by this spring.

I'm not the first to notice this modern manification, or shall we call it - the "Horrification of Jane Austen", Misfit Salon also has a great link on this here, and I really can't complain because I gave the first offshoot 4 stars for crying out loud, but this one...well, I'm sorry to say it was hard for me to finish. Painstakingly hard. Not because of the writing. Ben Winters is a good writer, by my standards anyway. Maybe my normal tolerance level to B Movie Austenite violence was breached like the hull of a sinking ship after Zombies.

Illustration by Shane Harrison

Maybe I just didn't find the idea of sea monsters, such as man-eating octopii, hammerhead sharks, giant clams, amoeba-ish creatures absorbing unsuspecting humans whole, etc., trying to kill all the main characters, again and again, interesting enough after the first 100 pages or so.

Maybe not enough of the original story was included in this sea monster dance of death to hold my attention throughout. I believe this was mainly the case. I've read the original novel numerous times, and although it's not my favorite, not even close to being as witty as her others, I still enjoy many elements of this story, and I absolutely love the movie versions. The romance, the betrayals, they play out well on the screen. Here, although initially fun, it got old after the first ten deadly encounters or so.

If you like this sort of thing, then this book is for you. For me, it just wasn't a good fit for this particular story.

Maybe it's because I don't like to eat sushi, or shrimp, or lobster, or any other poor sea creature! But I would love to learn to knit! That counts right? Maybe?
2.5 stars

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Everything Austen Reading Challenge

The Historian

by: Elizabeth Kostova

A 16 year-old girl finds an old book in her father's library which doesn't have any writting in it, but has a picture of a dragon with the words "Drakulya" in the center of the book. She questions her father about the book and he goes on to tell her the story of how he found the book and what happened to him afterwards.

He begins by telling her that when he first received the book he confided in one of his professor's at his university about it. That professer had an intriguing story that included him saying that he believed Dracula was still alive. Hours later that professor mysteriously disappeared.

I had a hard time with this book. I liked it at first, then it got slow. Then it picked up again and I liked it, then slow again, etc. I wanted to know what was going to happen but I just couldn't seem to make myself get through it. It was like wading through a swamp. I wanted to get to the other side but my legs kept getting stuck in the mud and every step was labored.

I enjoy history and research, which is the majority of this book, and I found a lot of it interesting, but it began to get very tedious and I found myself not really paying attention. The author was very good at giving me the heebie jeebies though. Many a night while reading alone in the recliner I got the creeps and didn't want to open the door to put the cat out.

By the end I was all into it again and thought the whole book was worth it. All the build-up and suspense. I couldn't wait to see what happened. And then... major let down. The ending for me was very anticlimactic. I was disappointed. I was expecting more.

2.5 stars

The Irregulars

Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington

By Jennet Conant

How can a book be so very, very interesting and yet, at the same time, so eye-wateringly dull? Such is the sad state of The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington by Jennet Conant. There’s a lot of remarkable information in this book, but it often gets lost in details that may be of interest to a hardcore historian, but less so for the rest of us. So many times, I wanted to put this book down, never to return, only to come across a passage so fascinatingly brilliant that I had no choice but to plow on. If you decide to tackle this book, please consider a few humble suggestions:

Don’t expect Bond, James Bond: Mingling with the rich, famous, and influential? Absolutely. Hanky-panky? Oodles. High-tech gadgets? Not so much, although Ian Flaming did have a pen that ejected tear gas. Primarily, the spies in this book formed relationships with the right people, then kept their eyes and ears open (and occasionally seduced their sources) for information that would be valuable to Britain. Or they used gossip to destroy Britain’s enemies. True Bond-style action is rare, although the book does allude to a British spy training camp – Camp X, naturally – where spies were trained to “cripple police dogs by grabbing their front legs and tearing their chests apart, and to kill a man with…bare hands.”

Don’t expect too much Roald Dahl either: Contrary to the title, I don’t consider Dahl the main character in this book. There are entire chapters where he is barely mentioned. This book is really about the people and politics of wartime Washington. Dahl is useful to the narrative because as he wanders through Washington, he rubs elbows with many of the key players in the labyrinthine political scene and Conant can then introduce them to us in depth. The Irregulars doesn’t really suffer for this. Most of these other characters are vibrant and interesting in their own right.

Don’t feel like you have to remember everything: Especially all of the people and acronyms. Where it comes to all of the acronyms, just assume that each one stands for a clandestine government agency; its specific role generally isn’t important. As for the people, the ones you really need to know are mentioned so often that you’ll soon come to know them without too much effort.

Don’t be afraid to skim: A lot.

In the end, it takes a lot of effort to wade through this book. Most will probably choose not to, which is a shame. They won’t witness the elaborate lengths a rich tycoon will go to in order to conceal his mistress’ pregnancy. They won’t laugh at Dahl’s boyish pranks or marvel at the tale of the fake map that convinced the U.S. that the Germans had American conquest in mind. Maybe, if we’re lucky, Reader’s Digest will publish a condensed version that everyone can enjoy. 2.5/5 stars

Does My Head Look Big In This?

by Randa Abdel-Fattah

I don’t know about anybody else, but I’d want to return to my high school years about as much as I’d want to see the IRS on my caller ID. Those years are tough on all of us, a time for our rapidly growing ideas and minds to catch up with our rapidly growing body parts, a time to figure out who you are. My path through those hormonal years was rarely clear of debris and thorny sticks, and I always watched with a little bit of envy those whose path seemed clearer and more focused than mine.

Amal is one of those people. She’s a typical teenager in her Melbourne prep school. She’s on the debate team, has a close circle of girlfriends, is concerned about her clothes matching and whether she has a zit, and most importantly, if the cutest boy she’s had a crush on for ages is noticing her. But there’s one thing that’s not so typical, she’s a Palestinian-Muslim, the only one in her school and this year she’s decided to wear her head scarf (hijab) fulltime as a statement of her faith.

It’s 2002, a year after the September 11th attacks and a few months away from the Bali explosion in Indonesia. Tensions against Muslims are running high everywhere, in her school, her neighborhood, and in her city. Yet, Amal is a strong young woman who has come to the decision to stand up for what she believes in, despite the obstacles, and in the end they only seem to increase her resolve to stick with what she believes in.

What’s not to like about a story about a young teen who clearly knows what she wants? For someone who knows nothing about the Muslim religion, I found what was discussed here a light taste of something infinite. The author was clearly trying to explain to non-Muslims that Muslims are just like everybody else through Amal’s interactions with her parents, her extended family and her friends, but I might’ve liked seeing a deeper look, like why Muslim women wear the hijab in the first place. Not all Muslims are terrorists, I get it. The majority of them are peace loving people trying to do the best for their families. This was probably the main point of the book, over and over and over again.

Therein lies my problem with this story. Think peachy with an r conveniently situated. The plot was so well calculated it didn’t flow naturally for me. It didn’t seem realistic at all, from her relationship to her parents, to her experiences with prejudice, and especially her discussions with her friends. In college maybe, but 11th grade? Really? What planet is she from? Maturatron. (I wonder if they wore leg-warmers there too?) Oh, why couldn’t I have been from there as a teen!

Kudos to you, Ms. Abdel-Fattah, for creating a strong female lead for other teens to look up to, but next time ease up a bit on the moral lessons as it sometimes makes a teen, er…an adult like me rebel and give you a 2.5 stars. Sorry.