Book Review - Winterhouse

 

Winterhouse was well-received in middle-school book circles, so when the current 9yo and 7yo suggested it as a read aloud, I said yes.  Here's what we thought!

The Good:

This is a very imaginative and interesting story with a lot of unique points to it.  You can tell that the author has researched his genre well, and is very familiar with other modern novels in the same age group - I'm thinking of Book Scavenger, Mr. Lemoncello's Library, etc.  The characters are fairly straightforward and don't necessarily grow during the story, but are good illustrations of their types.  I appreciated that between the two younger characters, the emotional roles were reversed from traditional tropes; the girl was bossy, difficult and authoritative while the boy was biddable, quiet and reserved.  The plot was intriguing and we honestly were not sure what would happen next, despite numerous clues and hints given, and there were lots of little rabbit trails that wound off into the distance, and that sort of thing appeals to us immensely.

The Bad:

I am usually pretty permissive about fantasy elements in fiction when it comes to children's books.  Magical creatures, witches and goblins and elves, make believe and pretend is all generally fine.  Which is good, especially if you're reading this level of book - because a lot of fiction for children involves elements of fantasy.

But where I start to feel uncomfortable is when the fantasy becomes dark, and it isn't always clear that it's still 'pretending '.  I felt this way, if you recall, reading The Boundless.  The line between fact and fiction was faintly drawn at points, and so when the story turned dark, it was harder to separate the truth easily in a child's mind.

And here we have the main issue with Winterhouse.  It wasn't dark in a deliciously creepy but child friendly way,  not was it 'traditional fairy tale dark', where evil is acknowledged to exist,  but is ultimately overcome by good.  This was just...weirdly dark for a kids' novel.  There's a coffin shaped box holding the half dead body of a dark arts practitioner that's carried around by her daughter in the hope of restoring the soul to the body.  The children are chased through the woods by that same disembodied soul, dark arts symbols are etched on a bridge, etc. etc.

Like so many modern books advertised for the 8-12yo set, the actual storyline is fine for the age group, while the content is probably too old.  

Book Review - The Thief Knot

This is the third book in the popular Greenglass House series.  In this one, we're following Marzana, who is introduced to us in book 2, The Ghost Of Greenglass House.   Marzana lives in a section of the city of Nagspeake called The Liberty of Gammerbund, which functions as a self-ruling sanctuary, and is populated by thieves and criminals of the more Robin Hood type.  Good thieves, you know.  Fighting against the tyranny of customs agents Deacon  and Morvengarde.  Smugglers,  dealers in information,  forgers, magicians,  sneaks.

Marzana, however, seems to think nothing interesting ever happens to HER in the Liberty, and so when a girl from Nagspeake is kidnapped and rumors start that she's been hidden in the Liberty,  Marzana disobeys her parents instructions to stay safe, and puts together a crack crew of friends to find her.  They call themselves The Thief Knot.

This was probably my favourite of the Greenglass House books so far.  The Liberty is wonderfully magical and bizarre and the storyline is fantastic.   There is more language in this one than the other two, and also a kiss on the cheek, but nothing that couldn't be edited if you needed it to be.

In the previous two books in this series we've read a lot about Milo's struggles with his adoption and his panic attacks.  In this book, we get the interior life of Marzana,  who feels left out from her parents' other lives as smugglers and underground agents, and who also has social anxiety and a fear of saying the wrong thing.   The author never gives us pat answers about these mental health issues or relationship complications,  but somehow still keeps the stories moving forward and the characters showing growth. 

My only real issue with this story focuses on a scene where Marzana expresses herself to the rest of the Thief Knot, in a totally justified way, and yet the other characters end up 'trumping' her painful outburst with issues of their own.  It struck me as a little thoughtless. 

In short, we loved it!

January 1, 2022 - The Great Reading List Re-Cap

 Happy New Year, y'all!

As a friend of mine mentioned on F-book, "If Betty White didn't want to live in 2022, this doesn't bode well for the rest of us."

My fingers are too worn out to be crossed, but please, Lord, let it be better.  It doesn't have to be perfect, but not 2021 level.

ON TO THE BOOKS!

According to Goodreads, I read 95 books this year.  My goal had been 100.  I'm pretty impressed with myself that I accomplished what I did, actually!  As always, my definition of a 'book' for the purposes of adding it to my list is fairly broad.  I don't count picture books or young children's books that I read aloud to the children.  I don't count collections of comics (unless I read the Complete Works of something), or anything that isn't a substantial example of its genre.  I do count graphic novels, YA books, stuff I read aloud, stuff I pre-read for the kids, stuff I read myself, e-books, print books, and I'd also count audio books if I ever listened to them, which I don't.

My shortest book was A Girl Called Echo - a graphic novel exploring Indigenous time travel.  It clocked in at 48 pages.

My Longest book was Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers - 501 pages!

32 of the books were classified as 'children's' or 'young adult' books and 63 were 'adult' books.  I never really understand those arbitrary designations but there you have it.

20 were nonfiction, and 75 were fiction.

My LEAST favourites of the year were these ones:

The Dan Harris book was a long, whiny ridiculous piece of garbage, and I wrote a fairly scathing review about it.  

Olive Kitteridge was very well written but just so harsh and dark and sad that it didn't appeal to me at all.  

The NYPL book was full of neither peculiar questions nor practical answers, thereby negating its whole point of being, and I just didn't like Tony Hawks.  No good reason, just thought it was a silly book is all.

My MOST favourite (new reads) were:

I hadn't picked up a Nancy Mitford before and I thought she was hilarious, witty and cutting in the best possible way.  The Pursuit of Love is the first in a trilogy (I only read the first two) and I thought it was the best.

Piranesi was absolutely outstanding.  I loved...I loved everything about it.  It was a little creepy, which usually doesn't appeal to me, but honestly if ever a storyline required an atmospheric eeriness, this was that story.

Gaudy Night is one of four Sayers that feature the Wimsey/Vane relationship prominently, and again I managed to read three of those books and thought this was the best of the ones I read.

Ella Minnow Pea had been on my to read list for years now, and I was so taken with it and how the author managed to not handle the topics he did with a heavy hand, which would have been all to easy.

Twice this past year I challenged myself to read a book 'blind'.  The first time, I went into a store and selected a novel based only on the cover illustration, with no other knowledge.  That gave me this one: 

 A very disturbed family consisting to two parents who put on performance art pieces and their two children, Child A and Child B, unwillingly roped into the pieces and eventually betrayed utterly by themselves, their relationships, their friends and finally, their family.  Imagine if The Royal Tenenbaums had all been deeply mentally ill and psychotic.  It was...it was a different book than I usually read, that's for sure.

For the second, I actually wrote an article about choosing a book totally without knowing what it was about.  Since The Family Fang was chosen for the cover, which gave me some control, I ended up picking this one by using Libby Overdrive and writing down the first five titles that came up under 'popular'.  Then I had my husband randomly pick a title.  Which is how I read this one:

I haven't read a Moriarty before.  I find it interesting that these sorts of plots are so popular amongst women - it's all spousal abuse and cheating husbands and disagreeable children.  Not really the sort of things I find myself drawn towards, frankly.  I mean, ANOTHER high society murder of rich white people?  It's all not really my cup of tea, I guess.  But I read it.  It wasn't a bad book.

And finally, only 8 of the books were read aloud to the children this year, which is my most disappointing statistic.  It was a rough year for read-alouds.  Let's hope that changes in 2022!