Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne

Title: Bicycle Diaries 
Author: David Byrne 
Type: Travel Journal 
Genre: Non-Fiction 
Series: No 
Pages: 297 
Copyright: 2009 
Publisher: Viking 
Rating: 3 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads
A renowned musician and visual artist presents an idiosyncratic behind-the-handlebars view of the world’s cities

Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour. Byrne’s choice was made out of convenience rather than political motivation, but the more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided. Convinced that urban biking opens one’s eyes to the inner workings and rhythms of a city’s geography and population, Byrne began keeping a journal of his observations and insights.

An account of what he sees and whom he meets as he pedals through metropoles from Berlin to Buenos Aires, Istanbul to San Francisco, Manila to New York, Bicycle Diaries also records Byrne’s thoughts on world music, urban planning, fashion, architecture, cultural dislocation, and much more, all conveyed with a highly personal mixture of humor, curiosity, and humility. Part travelogue, part journal, part photo album, Bicycle Diaries is an eye-opening celebration of seeing the world from the seat of a bike.


Feelings: 
This was a hard book for me to put a rating on. I really enjoyed parts of it and other parts were not as interesting to me. The insights about society that can be gained from looking at how cities perceive transportation were very intriguing.

I should note that the book wasn't all about biking in different cities, that was only a small part of the book. A large part of the book was about David Byrne meeting people and going out and his thoughts about his. I did not find these as interesting as his musing on society.

In a care one would have sought out a freeway, one of the notorious concrete arteries, and would never have seen any of this stuff. Riding for hours right next to it was visceral and heartbreaking--in ways that looking at ancient ruins aren't. I recommend it. (p.26)

He says after a bike through the ruins on the outskirts of Detroit. I thought it was very interesting to compare ancient ruins to modern ruins and how the houses that were falling apart would never become ancient ruins but would be gone long before then.

I can't say I recommend this book as a whole but parts of it were very interesting to me.

Ironskin by Tina Connolly

Title: Ironskin
Author: Tina Connolly
Type: Novel
Genre: Steampunk fantasy
Series: Yes, Ironskin #1
Pages: 304
Copyright: 2012
Publisher: Tor Books
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Summary: from Good Reads

Jane Eliot wears an iron mask. 

It’s the only way to contain the fey curse that scars her cheek. The Great War is five years gone, but its scattered victims remain—the ironskin. 

When a carefully worded listing appears for a governess to assist with a "delicate situation"—a child born during the Great War—Jane is certain the child is fey-cursed, and that she can help. 

Teaching the unruly Dorie to suppress her curse is hard enough; she certainly didn’t expect to fall for the girl’s father, the enigmatic artist Edward Rochart. But her blossoming crush is stifled by her own scars, and by his parade of women. Ugly women, who enter his closed studio...and come out as beautiful as the fey. 

Jane knows Rochart cannot love her, just as she knows that she must wear iron for the rest of her life. But what if neither of these things is true? Step by step Jane unlocks the secrets of her new life—and discovers just how far she will go to become whole again.

Feelings: 
This was in some small ways like Jane Erye, the setting, and the young woman and the older man, however I didn't really feel it was as much like Jane Erye as some people seemed to think. This was original enough for me that I didn't find to be only a retelling.

Five years ago their was a war between the humans, that depended on the fey for technology, and the fey, body-less beings of light. During the war Jane Eliot is injured by a fey bomb and she must life with the curse of having something fey in her body. She covers the injury, a curse as she thinks of it with iron to keep it from effecting others. I thought that the war could have been explained a little bit better. For years the fey traded willing with the humans but what changed? There is a hint as to what happened at the end of the book but I didn't really think that was enough.

The More was grey, battlefield grey. It had been five years since the last fey was seen, but out here Jane could almost imagine the Great War still raged on. Grey mist drifted through the blackened trees, recalling the smoke from the crematory Kilns. That was a constant smell in the last months of the war. (p. 9)

I like the development of the relationship between Dorie and Jane. I didn't really buy into the Jane, thinks she might be in love with Rochart, because she had maybe had four conversations with him at that point. That is my biggest issue with the book I felt like the relationship between Rochart and Jane wasn't given enough time to develop and be believable. It just felt a little fast to me. Also, I saw Rochart more as appreciating her working with his daughter when no one else would but I didn't see how, or why that would go anywhere else.

I did enjoy the novel and found that it was enjoyable to read. I thought that for a young adult novel it was well crafted and there weren't any loop-holes I felt like I made an exception for.

I would recommend this to readers that like a darker young adult novel.

Burial Rites by Hannah Kent

Title: Burial Rites
Author: Hannah Kent
Type: Novel
Genre: Historical Fiction
Series: No
Pages: 322
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company 
Rating: 4 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads
A brilliant literary debut, inspired by a true story: the final days of a young woman accused of murder in Iceland in 1829.

Set against Iceland's stark landscape, Hannah Kent brings to vivid life the story of Agnes, who, charged with the brutal murder of her former master, is sent to an isolated farm to await execution.

Horrified at the prospect of housing a convicted murderer, the family at first avoids Agnes. Only Tóti, a priest Agnes has mysteriously chosen to be her spiritual guardian, seeks to understand her. But as Agnes's death looms, the farmer's wife and their daughters learn there is another side to the sensational story they've heard.

Riveting and rich with lyricism, BURIAL RITES evokes a dramatic existence in a distant time and place, and asks the question, how can one woman hope to endure when her life depends upon the stories told by others?

Feelings: 
I thought This was an excellent debut novel by Hannah Kent. This is the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir who was accused of being a accessory to the murder of two men. It is a historical novel that draws on real events from 1829 rural Iceland. I enjoyed the historical setting of this novel. It is not an easy read as you know from the first what the inevitable ending will be. Knowing from the start made the conclusion no less devastating that it would have been going into it  not knowing. 

Kent uses interesting point of view switches. Agnes is in first person however the story is told, also, from the point of view of the family she is staying with and Reverend Tóti. I did find the switches a little bit hard to follow sometimes for the first sentence or so. The switches changed in the middle of chapters with only paragraph hard breaks. I was a little bit bothered by the changes at times but it did work.

Sometimes I think I see it again, the farm, burning in the dark. Sometimes I can feel the ache of winter in my lungs, and I think I see the flames mirrored in the ocean, the water so strange, so flickered with light. There was a moment during that night when I looked back. I looked back to watch the fire, and if I licked my skin I can still taste the salt. The smoke. (p. 3)

This from the prologue shows the quality of the writing and the haunting quality of the narration from Agnes's point of view. It also begins to give a feeling for the landscape and the cold. In opposition to this is the third person narrative that also reflects the desolation of the landscape and characters.

It had been a particularly vivid bruise upon her chin that had disturbed him the most. A ripe, yellow color, like dried egg yolk. ... There are so many ways a person might take harm, Tóti thought. (p. 49)

This after Tóti sees Agnes arrive at Kornsá and he talks to her briefly as her spiritual adviser.

Kornsá were most of the novel takes place, a farmstead that has seen better days. Agnes lived on the same farm as child and coming back is hard for her. Viewed as a murderess by everyone it is hard to have compassion for Agnes but I think this book portrays her in a way allows the reader to feel for her. Did the actual events follow exactly the book, who is to really say, but this is a possible interpretation of events that lead up to the last execution in Iceland.

The character growth and development made the book enjoyable. Even though it is a devastating ending I really enjoyed the book. The setting is a huge part of what makes the characters and I thought that reading a book set in Iceland gave me a bit of a glimpse into what life is like there. Hard and cold.

I would recommend this book to lovers of historical fiction. The setting is outside of your typical European or American setting but I think that made the book better. This is an amazing first novel by Hannah Kent.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker

Title: The Golem And The Jinni
Author: Helene Wecker
Type: Novel
Genre: Fantasy, although I'm tempted to say historical fiction as well but that leads to a really strange combination.
Series: No
Pages: 486
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Harper Collins
Rating: 2.5 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads
Chava is a golem, a creature made of clay, brought to life by a disgraced rabbi who dabbles in dark Kabbalistic magic. When her master, the husband who commissioned her, dies at sea on the voyage from Poland, she is unmoored and adrift as the ship arrives in New York in 1899.

Ahmad is a jinni, a being of fire, born in the ancient Syrian desert. Trapped in an old copper flask by a Bedouin wizard centuries ago, he is released accidentally by a tinsmith in a Lower Manhattan shop. Though he is no longer imprisoned, Ahmad is not entirely free – an unbreakable band of iron binds him to the physical world.

The Golem and the Jinni is their magical, unforgettable story; unlikely friends whose tenuous attachment challenges their opposing natures – until the night a terrifying incident drives them back into their separate worlds. But a powerful threat will soon bring Chava and Ahmad together again, challenging their existence and forcing them to make a fateful choice.

Feelings: 
This was a well written very readable first novel from Helene Wecker. I enjoyed reading the book. I did wonder how all of the different narratives would come together but they did. When they did I almost wondered if it was too neat at the end and I think it was. The ending just wasn't believable to me. The strongest part of the book is the setting in New York City in 1899. The setting was beautiful and added to the story. It felt real and historical. However, the story with the relationship between characters progresses very slowly.

There was a question I had the carried through the book and it does bother me a bit that it was never answered. What was Ahmad's real name? He thought about it all the time yet it seemed like he was unable to do anything about it because of the form he was stuck in. I guess I'm willing to let it go but still it seemed like a very important thing to a main character and yet it is never answered.

Another thing that bothered me is why do we start getting flashbacks of Fadwa when the jinni has no memory of her and yet her story starts long before the jinni has anyway of knowing about her. She is the blank space in his memory that bothers him. I don't think it helped the story for us to know about her before the jinni does.

From the start of the book to the end of the book we follow thirteen or fourteen different people. There are only two main narrators: Chava, the Golem, and Ahmad, the jinni. There are also three minor narrators: Boutros Arbeely, Yehudah Schaalman later called Joseph Schall, and Mahmoud Saleh. The other eight play relatively small parts in the narration: Ratfeld, Rabbi Avram Meyer,  Fadwa al-Hadid, Michael Levy, Sophia Winston, Abu Yusuf, Anna Blumberg, and ibn Malik. Some of these are in flash back. I feel that I also may have missed the switches of point of view at times and there might have been more. The number does seem like a lot for a book but it does work because everything merges nicely together. At the end of the book I felt like the convergence of all of the different narratives was a little to neat. That is probably my biggest problem with the book, the joining of the narratives seemed to neat that the end. There really weren't any loose ends left.

From Syria, and Europe to New York City the story moved smoothly and the relationship between Chava and Ahmad was interesting to watch. They seemed so different and to have largely opposing personalities yet they find they have much in common. Their fear of being discovered as being something other than human brings them together. Both characters were fun to follow and I enjoyed reading this book.

I would recommend this book to those that like historical fiction as well as those that like fantasy. However, I will note that in a lot of ways this feels to me a bit more like historical fiction than fantasy.



*****SPOILERS BELOW*****

I wanted to like this book so much but I ended up thinking it could have been better and I could have liked it more than I did. So let me name the things about the book and talk a little about each one.

1. The jinni gets a name and he hates it. It isn't his real name but for some reason, not explained, he can't have that name. However, if he dislikes the name Ahmad so much why doesn't he just change it? Seems like he could if he wanted to.
2. The back story of the characters. I felt like the back story of the jinni and Fadwa came before the jinni had a memory of it and that just didn't seem right to me. Also, there were so many characters whose back story we got. I felt like it may have muddled the book a bit. This isn't to say that I didn't like their stories I just didn't see how it really added to the story of the Golem and the Jinni.
3. THE ENDING. I just didn't think it felt real. one when the golem gets a master she doesn't feel anything for the jinni anymore and is more than happy to throw him around at the slightest thought from Schaalman, however, as soon as Schaalman is in the bottle she suddenly returns to her old self. She has a master now, she should be doing everything she can to get Schaalman out of the bottle but she doesn't do that. She instead goes back to how things were before she was bound to him. She does say she can still feel his screams of anger at being in the bottle but she ignores them. Really, she can ignore them? That just doesn't seem right. Schaalman is her baster now she would not be able to ignore him. That was very unbelievable to me.
4. The prologue ending. The relationship between the golem and the jinni at the end. They were both very unhappy in New York City why are they staying there? Also, I'm not sure that I buy that they would end up in a relationship. Yes they think about each other but I'm not sure it was more than friendship. I felt like the ending with the relationship between the golem and the jinni was a bit forced and I would have liked it more it the ending had been different.

The Daylight War by Peter V. Brett

Title: The Daylight War

Author: Peter V. Brett

Type: Novel
Genre: Fantasy

Series: Yes. Book Three of The Demon Cycle

Pages: 639
Copyright: 2013
Publisher: Del Ray Books

Rating: 4.5 out of 5


Summary: from Good Reads.
On the night of the new moon, the demons rise in force, seeking the deaths of two men both of whom have the potential to become the fabled Deliverer, the man prophesied to reunite the scattered remnants of humanity in a final push to destroy the demon corelings once and for all.

Arlen Bales was once an ordinary man, but now he has become something more—the Warded Man, tattooed with eldritch wards so powerful they make him a match for any demon. Arlen denies he is the Deliverer at every turn, but the more he tries to be one with the common folk, the more fervently they believe. Many would follow him, but Arlen’s path threatens to lead him to a dark place he alone can travel to, and from which there may be no returning.

The only one with hope of keeping Arlen in the world of men, or joining him in his descent into the world of demons, is Renna Tanner, a fierce young woman in danger of losing herself to the power of demon magic.

Ahmann Jardir has forged the warlike desert tribes of Krasia into a demon-killing army and proclaimed himself Shar’Dama Ka, the Deliverer. He carries ancient weapons--a spear and a crown--that give credence to his claim, and already vast swaths of the green lands bow to his control.

But Jardir did not come to power on his own. His rise was engineered by his First Wife, Inevera, a cunning and powerful priestess whose formidable demon bone magic gives her the ability to glimpse the future. Inevera’s motives and past are shrouded in mystery, and even Jardir does not entirely trust her.

Once Arlen and Jardir were as close as brothers. Now they are the bitterest of rivals. As humanity’s enemies rise, the only two men capable of defeating them are divided against each other by the most deadly demons of all--those lurking in the human heart.

Feelings: 
The third in The Demon Cycle series I thought this book was better than the ones that came before it. The characters are more developed and the story is still about the struggle between human survival and the demons but this book also looks at humanity. The relationships between individuals and how they relate to each other plays an important part in this book.

My biggest complaint about the book is that I feel a little like we have a Middle Eastern based people, the Kasians, who will take over the world with their believes and a more Western interpretation the Thesan, Greenlanders, as they are often referred to. I'm willing to let that go though because the story is very will done and it isn't only about the struggle between the people but a struggle to survive.

I didn't notice in the other books but the chapter headings have images that indicate from which characters perspective the chapter will be from. Inevera has dice, Renna has a knife, Rojer a violin, Leesha a mortar and pastel, Abban a camel crutch, Arlen a hand with a ward, the Royal Consort, a mind demon has a demon head, and Ahmann Jardir has a warded spear. There are eight points of view in the novel and it works there wasn't any confusion even without the symbols in the chapter headings to indicate who we would be reading from their perspective.

In this book Inevera was the character we got to know and she became a main narrator. In The Desert Spear most of the book was spent getting to know Ahmann Jardir, and in the first book The Warded Man Arlen was given most of the space however we also got to know Leesha and Rojer's stories from the beginning.

Unlike the other books this book left you hanging at the end. With the first two I wanted to read the next book. However, I wasn't left feeling like it was imperative to read the next book as soon as possible. There is only one problem with this, in that this book was published in 2013 and the next book is set for 2015 meaning I have a good while to wait. There are a projected five books in the series and it looks like it will be 2018 or later when the series is wrapped up. Let the waiting begin.

I highly recommend this book to those that love fantasy.