Many months ago, I ordered a big stack of books and eagerly took them home from the mailbox to dive into hours of reading. The first one I chose to open is Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife, which I just finished this afternoon.

Obviously, this is not a good sign.

Sure, other activities have been pulling at my available time and energy (the toddler comes to mind), but not enough to explain weeks going by without my touching a novel on my nightstand. I so wanted to like this book. The premise appealed to me, I’d heard good comments on it and I’m such a good target audience for it – the cover is pretty, too. Unfortunately, it just didn’t grab me.

The writing is not lyrical, which would have been fine if it rang true (I actually get annoyed by stuff that’s TOO lyrical at times), but it was not poignant enough for me to – or I couldn’t bring myself to care enough to – conjure up the scenes and emotions it presented. More importantly in my experience, though, was the lack of any pull forward. Yes, the premise for the story is good – the love story between a man who time travels involuntarily for periods of time, and his wife – the premise is excellent, but there’s no real story pulling us through this. There are events and incidents, turmoils and emotions, but in the end, the book tells of their life and love, with the time traveling adding chaos to it.

There is an interest to the book, still. As I noted, the premise is very interesting. Plus, Niffenegger’s handling of the broken timeline is expert and nimble, and for this alone, the novel is worth the read.

With the arrival of baby 2, I’m not expecting much reading time in the future, but the next novel I get into is Widdershins by Charles de Lint – I’ll guiltily admit I’ve already read a couple of chapters on nights where I didn’t feel like picking up The Time Traveller’s Wife.

Amazon delivered! Xavier got a box for playing, and I got a stack of goodies. Guess what I’ll be doing tonight? Once I figure out which one to open first… See you in a month!

I was supposed to order on Thursday, but with the ultrasound Wenesday and a family gathering in Beauce (2 hours away) yesterday – terrible cold weather for August, with no coats packed, just our luck – I just remembered and got the time to hit the Amazon.ca pages. Here’s the final verdict:

“His Dark Material Yearling 3c Box Set”
Philip Pullman; Paperback
(Turned out slightly cheaper than getting the last two books separately.)

“Hyperion”
Dan Simmons; Mass Market Paperback

“The Time Traveler’s Wife”
Audrey Niffenegger; Paperback

“Widdershins”
Charles De Lint; Paperback

“The Black Company : The First Novel of The Black Company”
Glen Cook; Mass Market Paperback

—–
Dropped “Jonathan Strange…” in favour of the Black Company novel. Both seemed interesting and I’ll probably go back to Clarke’s novel at some point, but its length put it off this time around. Dropped the Bourne Identity, too. It was way off range, and there were just too many other good options, so I decided to take that risk at another time.

By a happy coincidence, all of these items are marked “In stock”, so I expect the parcel to drop in my mailbox mid-week, or at least before next weekend. Yay!

Let’s play a game.

I’ve finished reading Harry Potter 7 well over a week ago, and I’m now looking for my next read. I have some stuff lined up – and a 5$ gift certificate from Amazon valid only in August, how unfortunate… – but there are still some decisions to be made. That’s where I’ll be taking votes. Fun, isn’t it?

Usually, I order for at least 40$CDN with Amazon in order to get the free shipping. I figure they’re gonna say my 5$ rebate won’t count in the 40$, so I’m expecting to buy for 45$ this time around. My order, so far :

• His Dark Materials Book 2 – The Subtle Knife by Philip Pullman: Continuing the trilogy. I’m not sure yet if I should be getting the French version or the original English version. Usually I go for the original for obvious reasons, but I’ve read and own the first book in French for this one. The English version, however, is 5$ cheaper and in stock at Amazon. What say you?
• The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum : This is NOT the genre of books I usually go for. This is part of why I’m deciding to try it out. I quite enjoyed the movies – the last of which we saw on Saturday – and I think it will be the first book I’ll read AFTER seing the movie, should be interesting.

That’s it so far, and it amounts to 19,68$. I’m thinking of picking up another de Lint, maybe Widdershins, but hesitating.

I know there’s a big list of books I want to read tucked away in some corner of my mind, but I just can’t remember any of them at the moment. So if you have a good recommandation, now’s the time. I’ll simply request that you keep to books under 800 pages or so, and preferably stand-alone novels, unless it’s a really really good read. I’ve been through Kay, Hobb, Gabaldon and Tartt, btw.

And the last question : which book do I start on first? I might well let people decide for me on this one.

Daemons are cool. I’m talking about those little animal-shaped exteriorised souls of Philip Pullman‘s His Dark Materials trilogy. I just finished the first tome, and so tonight’s web surfing brought me to the upcoming movie adaptation’s website, which has the neat feature of creating one’s very own daemon, through a set of 20 questions. My result is what’s showing above. At the present time, it’s a crow, but it might possibly change if people start agreeing/disagreeing with the personality test included. We’ll see.

The reading list
Just to update my reading list…

I continued with “Reine de mémoire – 1. La maison d’oubli” by Elisabeth Vonarburg since my last update, but I still haven’t finished the book. It’s quite interesting, but just not engaging enough to keep me up late. I know Vonarburg’s works are really rewarding once read, they’re just not page turners… and thus I tend to cut it through with other novels:

The Tawny Man trilogy by Robin Hobb
I had gotten the first tome (“Fool’s Errand”) as a Brightweavings.com Secret Santa gift at Christmas, and read it during the winter, but due to time constraints and other great books at hand, I had not continued on with the rest of the trilogy, even though “Fool’s Errand” was engaging literature. I did so just recently.

When I first heard about Robin Hobb, I was looking forward to read her Liveship trilogy, but felt I should pick up her Farseer trilogy to begin with, as it was set in the same world at a prior time. I’m glad I did so. I loved both trilogies, in the end, for different reasons. I was not quite content with how the protagonist’s (Fitz) story ended after the last Farseer novel, and so I was glad to pick up the third trilogy, “The Tawny Man”, which follows through Fitz’s story some (15?) years later.

Oddly, though, it was the second tome of this last trilogy, “Golden Fool”, which I prefered – mainly because Fool became one of my all-time favourite litterary characters. And although the last tome manages a well done happy ending for Hobb’s whole series of books, it was not exactly to my liking so I was not quite as delighted as I should be. SPOILER ALERT : Mainly, I felt Hobb really pushed – pushed? crammed is more like it – Fitz and his lost love’s reuniting at the end of the story, while I’d been rooting for a good part of the book for Fitz to head into a relationship with a certain notable character – whose ambiguous gender let my imagination run and project a truly amazing pure and true love story in the works. I know this imagined ending might have ruined some of what the author was trying to achieve with this relationship, but on another level it would have been just SO romantic. Much more than this quick reunion with a long-lost character that’s just half-mentioned throughout most of the books. Anyway – maybe it’s just me.

Artemis Fowl book 5 : The Lost Colony by Eoin Colfer
A quick read (youth literature), I quite liked this fifth installment of Artemis Fowl – although that ending is getting me to wonder how much longer Colfer will be able to keep Butler in the run, the way he’s aging him every other book. It was better than the fourth (“The Opal Deception”), but it still lacked by Juliet’s absence in my opinion (I liked reading about Juliet Butler, even though she was far from being a main character).

His Dark Materials book 1 : Northern Lights (or “The Golden Compass” in the USA, I believe) by Philip Pullman – read in French
I started this one a long while ago, but was not engaged enough to finish it – probably because I had picked it up originally while in Harry Potter withdrawal, and was hoping for a similar fix, which it is NOT. The upcoming movie raised my interest in it again, and I’m glad to report the book proved worthy of this second chance. It might feel a bit slow in the start, but once one gets in the mindset of the work, it’s a nice piece of literature. I’m looking forward to the second tome, “The Subtle Knife”. The movie looks like it will gloss over the religion theme – and probably also some of the darker stuff in consideration of the kids’ delicate minds – but it should, nonetheless, play to its strengths and expand on the amazing imaginative and fantastic scenes of the book. Eyecandy à la recent Star Wars, without the tacky lasers and spaceships.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling.
I haven’t got my hands on it yet, but for sure it is on order and the next item on my reading list. And despite hosting Xavier’s first birthday party in 10 days, I’m sure to find some time to spend at Hogwarts in the next while.

Haven’t been joting down my reading list, after that first transition post.

Reine de mémoire – 1. La maison d’oubli by Elisabeth Vonarburg
[French] This is the third book I read by Vonarburg, who is Guy Gavriel Kay’s translator (most times) in Québec (and maybe in France, I don’t know.) First was was “Les voyageurs malgré eux”, when I was in high school, and more recently “Chroniques du pays des mères“. Vonarburg’s stories are very slow-paced, but emcompass some very intricate world building, and delicately detailed characters.

“Chroniques du pays des mères” (literaly “Chronicles from the Land of Mothers”) is a story set in a world where some unknown event of the past has taken away a lot of the technology and history records, and promted the apparition of a disease. This has affected births, many children die at an early age, and very few males. Children are kept together and raised by gardians, instead of family, males are a despairing minority, used for their seed and generally treated like cattle, and heterosexuality is not the norm (and even discouraged!). The protagonist is a young woman destined to be head of house (a region, really) but whose revealed barennes prohibits the life she was raised for. She leaves her home, then, almost in exile, which will eventually expand her horizons and take her places she’d never imagined. It was entirely worth the read, for its reflexions and perspectives, as well as its characters.

“Reine de mémoire” is a series with children as protagonists, set in an alternative past, and it is a little hard to describe, as I’m not through it yet, and they are still in discovery mode where I’m at. Religion is a theme, gender in religion also, as well as childhood and cultures. I’m enjoying it less than ‘Le pays des mères’, but then again Vonarburg’s writing is very much glimpse by glimpse, and you usually need to get to the end of a novel before you really know what it was about.

I halted my reading of it, to cut with my Christmas gift…

A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
As always, Gabaldon’s Outlander novels are compulsively readable. Very earthy, fragrant and felt, you read it for Claire and Jamie Fraser, whose story you just can’t get enough of, no matter that the first books were the best ones. I’ll admit easily the 5th installment wasn’t up to the task, but I stopped expecting the focus and excitement of the first few novels, and I’m just enjoying reading the continuation of their lives, like an interlace of short stories or as in a tv series. Yes, it’s over-the-top passion; yes, it includes maybe one or two more highly satisfying romantic rescues than entirely believable, but that’s why we love it.

Gabaldon will have to get to the war of independance in the next installment, however, otherwise the series will fade out too much. Apparently the character might hop back to Scotland next, though, which is something I’d stopped hoping for, but should prove a very good move (and we want more Lord John Grey and William storylines!). I enjoy that series so much, I felt like rereading the first installment, which is what I’m doing now instead of resuming “Reine de Mémoire”. The contrast of the character’s appearance, 30 some years ago, is very interesting upon reread.

Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay
I halted my read of ‘A Breath…’ to read Kay’s new novel, of course, even though I resisted at first. Putting aside the eagerness to read any new material by GGK, I was really lagging behind all the discussion regarding Ysabel on the BrightWeavings.com forums. The first part of Ysabel read like a vacation, all sun and fun, and even though it got more serious after the first hundred page or so, the novel itself still feels like a lighter read than earlier works from GGK. Then again, I had that feeling with ‘Last Light’, his previous book, but the novel seemed to have gained some weight with a reread – Kay always weaves his stories with layers of themes and patterns, and sometime hidden hints and false perceptions, that almost require we come back to them for full understanding. I expect it is the same with Ysabel, and the story will ground itself down and thicken on a reread. I think I liked ‘Last Light’ better, still – though I’m the first one surprised : I’d usually lean more towards ‘Ysabel’ kinds of stories, in theory. Oh well.

Jeez, and to say I just wanted to jot down my recent reads… I’m really in a writing phase (both on and offline) nowadays.