Monthly Archives: April 2021

Bad Kitty

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img_7749Book: Bad Kitty by Nick Bruel

This unique take on an alphabet book is great fun for all—cat lovers and deniers alike. (I refuse to believe that anyone cat really be a cat hater, they just have not found their right cat yet!) Unlike some books that fall into the “alphabet book” category, this one has a reasonable story to go along with it, and embeds several alphabetical lists into Kitty’s story. This is definitely one of my top picks for alphabet themed books.

Anyone who has known a cat personally can understand where things began to go downhill, when Kitty’s owners ran out of food and only had an alphabetical list of healthy foods to offer her. She then took her revenge on the world in her own little romp through the alphabet. Luckily, her people came through with some more appropriate alliterative alphabetical food offerings that put Kitty back on the path to be a good girl.

This book probably works best as a read aloud, as the alphabet book concept is more appealing to a younger age group, but some of the silly things listed push the required reading level up a bit. The story, especially the alphabet lists, includes a nice combination of text and pictures to make the lettered items stand out. Personally, I love the cat reaction pictures that are included along with the alphabetical food lists—they are exactly how I imagine one of mine would react if we could hold a conversation about what was for dinner!

Minka’s Thoughts: “Is this how I am supposed to do it?”

The House in the Cerulean Sea

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Book: The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune

Date Read: February 16 to 22, 2021

Rating: 5 (of 5) stars

This book was my one planned exception to the rules I made for myself in completing the challenges for the Unread Shelf Project this year. In order to truly focus on my unread shelf, I decided that I could only count books that were already on my unread shelf at the beginning of the year. The one exception being when it came time to read the book most recently added to my shelf. This is one of several books I wanted badly to add to my “to read” list, but was waiting for a paperback release. While I am still excited about the others, I am so thrilled that this was the first to be released.

I feel like everything about this book was set up for me to fall in love with it, and I was not disappointed. We start with a character that hits close to home: a social worker living a life that is just fine, if not completely satisfying. He is pushed out of his comfort zone into a setting that would seem magical all on its own—but has a dash of real magic mixed in for good measure. Enter a wonderfully diverse cast of misfits, some lessons to be learned about understanding others, and just a little bit of awkward romance, written in a style that alternately had me smirking and giggling. For me, this was the perfect combination for a book that I did not want to put down and left me with the warm fuzzies. The story was cute and charming, but still managed to have an edge of seriousness when it came to acceptance and appreciation of those who are different.

It’s a funny thing that I often have a much harder time expressing all of the things that I loved about a particular book; much harder than expressing things that did not fit for me. Out of a strange curiosity, I decided to check out a few of the more critical reviews. (I am not sure why, but I often feel the need to see why others dislike the things that I love.) In this case, it only reinforced why understanding of why this book felt so perfect to me: several of the reviews commented that the story was too much like a fairy tale, and the writing style similar to that of Douglas Adams. As an ardent fan of both fairy tales and Douglas Adams, there is no doubt as to why this one swept me off my feet.

Boris’s Thoughts: “Linus really should have just listened to the cat from the beginning. At least he finally figured things out. 3 paws.”

Snow Crash

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img_7621Book: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson

Date Read: January 10 to 28, 2021

Rating: 4 (of 5) stars

I chose this book to meet my first bonus challenge for the 2021 Unread Shelf Project: a book that has been on your to read shelf for more than a year. There were many options to choose from for this, so I decided to reach way back. This is the book that I suspect may have been on my to read list the longest. Although I do not remember the exact date that I added it to my shelf, a friend recommended it to me when I was in middle school. That was around 20 years ago. I cannot say for certain why it took my so long to get to this one. The same friend recommended several other books and authors to me as well, and I have loved all of them. For some reason, this one always got pushed off.

Well, I am glad that I finally read it, and a bit irritated with myself for putting it off for so long. I am not a huge reader of science fiction—it’s not so much that I do not like it, but that I often find it a bit dense and can become overwhelmed by the necessary details and descriptions. I do not avoid the genre, but tend to lean toward the lighter side. Without much of a range for comparison, I would say this was a little more toward traditional science fiction than I am used to reading. Despite the step outside my comfort zone, I really enjoyed so much of what was happening here.

The main plot had a really intriguing combination of ancient religions and modern ideas, with the perfect amount of absurdist humor. Also a unique situation when I refer to modern, as I truly do mean current despite the book being around 30 years old (more on that later). There were definitely some satirical elements that were current at the time of publication that still ring true today, but I found the connections to ancient mythology really fascinating, particularly as to related to the spread of information. Today, we talk about things going viral online, but this was long before that was in common usage or even that internet usage was widespread enough for it to reach so many. Stephenson really dug into the concept of virality, tying in the spread of culture while also pulling in the idea of a computer virus spreading to humans. While it obviously sounds a bit bizarre, the connections made felt really valid.

Coming back to the timeline, another interesting aspect to me was that this was a book set in the future, but not too far into the future. With this being a recommendation from so long ago, and the book released about 10 years earlier, I would put the time frame for the setting to be around now, possibly a few years ago. Given that, it was really interesting to me to see some accuracies (and inaccuracies) in the technology. While there are some things that might be attributed to the novel (like the popularization of the term avatar for someone’s online representation), there are many that are more likely to be either coincidence or some educated guesswork. Personally, I liked that there were some pretty spot on pieces with modern cell phone technology, but that pay phones were still in use.

Boris’s Thoughts: “This all seems unnecessarily complicated. You know what isn’t complicated? Naps. 2 paws.”

The Art Forger

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img_7822Book: The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro

Date Read: March 1 to 18, 2021

Rating: 4 (of 5) stars

In March, The Unread Shelf Project had me do some traveling, by challenging me to read a book that I got on a trip. I had plenty of options, since books are one of the things that I collect when I take trips! I currently have a book for every country that I have visited, and am working on collecting books for each state. I chose this one for this prompt because it was the first “official” book in my states collection. Although it was not the first purchased, it was the first one that I got with the intent of a collection. I picked it up on a weekend trip to Boston a few years ago.

While I did enjoy this one, it fell a little short of what I was hoping it would be. There were so many elements here that appealed to me: a little real life mystery, dual story lines, descriptive settings, and some art nerdiness. I suppose I have always fancied myself to be the creative artist type, although I never had the talent or dedication to make anything real from it. Instead, I content myself with the brilliance of others’ art. So of course, as I started reading about the specific artwork and the Gardner Museum heist, I was compelled to do a little research of my own. I was disappointed to learn that although the heist was real, the main painting that the book focuses on was not. At the end of the story, I understood the decision to write about a fictional painting—but that did not do much to ease my discontent.

Despite my personal irritation at needing to imagine myself a picture of the fictional Degas painting, there were some really intriguing elements to the novel. I liked the art history aspects, which other than the information related specifically to the made-up work were true to life. I felt like the mystery was played out well, with just enough information given in the letter flashbacks to keep things moving. The descriptive use of setting was interesting as well. Personally, I could have done without the romance storyline—it felt a bit forced, as if added in for a little more scandal and intrigue.

I do have some mixed feelings about how the ending played out: while I was mostly happy that Shapiro did not go with the obvious easy solution, I was not wholly satisfied with the ending. It seemed to wrap up a little too quickly and neatly. As I was nearing the end of the book, I was getting anxious that there were not enough pages left to reach an ending with sufficient closure. I was happy that it did not have a completely smoothed out happy ending, which would not have felt realistic given the number of problems to be resolved. I suppose I have chosen to be mostly satisfied with how things turned out: despite some foolish decisions along the way, I felt like Claire got the redemption that she deserved without it being a straightforward “win” for all involved.

Minka’s Thoughts: “There should be more fancy artwork featuring cats. Why is it always ladies bathing? I am much more elegant when I bathe. 2 paws.”

Unread Shelf Progress for March

  • Books Read: 1
  • Books Acquired: 1
  • Total Unread Books: 268