Tag Archive | book review

How to Stop Time: Love

Oct1

A couple of housekeeping things to get out of the way, and then I’ll dive into the book review.

Things I’m grateful for: Friends and family I love to spend time with. Fall in Minnesota even if’s it’s cold and rainy one day and blazing hot the next. My apartment complex finally turned on the heat, a big reason I have come to love October when it rolls around. Crazy, brilliant dreams. This time of year I have these weird complex dreams I half remember in the morning. Some good story ideas in there.

The Smile Has Left Your Eyes: It’s not often that I watch Korean dramas as they are being aired each week, but I make exceptions for either stories or actors that I really like. Viki.com has gotten the license for The Smile Has Left Your Eyes (or Hundred Million Stars from the Sky). Hopefully, I will get my review of each episode out early in the week, but it just depends when the English subtitles are added. Amazingly enough, even though I’ve watched a ton of Korean TV, I am not yet fluent in Korean. The Smile is a creepy murder mystery starring my current favorite actor Seo In Guk. He finally has his dream of playing a villain. Also starring the delightful Jung So Min from Playful Kiss and D-Day. This is a remake of a Japanese show that was pretty popular awhile ago.

Book review: How to Stop Time by Matt Haig isn’t so much an instruction manual as a thinking manual. Sometimes it’s fun to dream about living forever or near-forever and just having so much time to do whatever. The story is narrated by Tom Hazard, a man who has loads of time and opportunities, but just can’t get out of his old man head.

Like Tom, I am now in my forties, and it’s true the older you get, sometimes the memories from the past just come flooding in, clearer than you would have thought possible, and if your mind dwells there, you can miss the very real and awesome present. At first Tom seems only old and jaded. He has a rare medical condition in which he ages slower than the rest of humanity, so at forty, in regular years he’s hundreds of years old. As we get more into his thoughts, though, we realize–and so does he–that he’s just stuck dwelling on time instead of enjoying it.

The book also involves a bit of intrigue. There’s a shadowy society protecting others who have this condition–think passing reference to X-Men–and a couple of tight moments that get resolved a little too easily, but the book isn’t so much about the plot as about Tom finally changing his thinking.

Imagine yourself now having whatever time you think you have left, and being afraid to ask that person out or jump into a relationship or really get to know your kids, grandparents, friends, etc., because there just isn’t enough time. Or you’re afraid you’ll spend too much time with them, get attached, and fall to pieces if you ever lose anyone of them. Now magnify that fear across hundreds of years. How do people ever overcome this fear? Using the only way they can overcome it, like the way Tom overcomes it: Love. He falls in love, he finds someone who loves him back. It’s really not that complicated, but people live their whole lives standing on the brink of happiness and never, ever jumping. They have not learned how to trust the power of love.

Aside from the musings on life, time, love, etc., as an avid English reader and writer, I love the nods to Shakespeare, Fitzgerald, and the like. It makes me feel proud to be a part of this heritage, this heritage of speaking, reading, and writing English. I can speak a smattering of words and phrases in other languages, but even if I was fluent in them, they wouldn’t be my heritage.

Okay, back to love. How, you are asking me. How exactly does this stop time, Pixie? Think of the best times of your lives. You’re at your brother’s wedding, you’re hanging out with your friends, you’re babysitting your grandkids and laughing up a storm with them. You’re at a funeral, but there’s so many friends and family to see and talk to and catch up with. You’re staring into your darling’s sparkling eyes. At those times, in those moments, is it not as if TIME itself does not exist? God is LOVE and love is outside of time.

In How to Stop Time, Tom learns to enjoy the present of his days and to stop worrying over the past and the future. He learns to to put the guilt aside and marvel in the moment. He learns that the risk is worth it and he can finally let go of the albatross hanging around his neck that is telling him that falling in love is a waste of time. I felt bad for him. The guy was essentially stuck in a Groundhog Day (and if you don’t know what that is, I suggest you watch the movie, starring Bill Murray, immediately.)

In reading the book, it’s impossible not to start thinking about time and how we spend our time. Most of my best times are spent with my family, friends, and fellow Christians, and I know that people are really the only things we can take with us to heaven, and that God has put us all together on this rock to be blessings for each other and to love each other. Everything else becomes so unimportant in comparison.

At the beginning of time, humans did live for hundreds of years and they probably got as downhearted and depressed as Tom did, but unlike Tom, they had a Creator and Savior who loves them to look to for comfort and strength. And I think that’s why some leap so easily into love instead of dithering on the precipice. They know that even if their fellow humans fail them, God never will. Some days I think my faith is that strong, other days not so much. Sometimes I think about what it would be like to live forever and with a start have to remember I will live forever, just in a new heaven and a new earth. Jesus’s love made it possible. Anyway, I don’t want to get too religious about it, but that’s what I thought of at the end. I will live forever in love and with those that I love. It’s pretty amazing. It’s like having a secret super power.

The Thief: Book Review

Jan7

There’s a lot of buzz circulating about the Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. Although I enjoyed the first book, The Thief, it very much seemed a simple opening act to a far larger, grander story, so I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series. Many YA fantasy series tend to take off from Greek and Roman culture and mythology, so I can’t say this series is very unique in that aspect, but the narration is done well to the point that once one finishes the story, one wants to go back and analyze it from the beginning. As a whole, the world of the series is well defined, which helps aid the slow pace of the story. The pacing is probably the most troubling aspect. Nothing “happens” for long periods of time, but, again, in going back, one would realize a lot happened, or, at least, a lot of information was given. The problem is that many readers may give up far before the ending, but as the series as a whole is getting a lot of good buzz and recommendations, I think that was a risk the author was willing to take.

This book reminds me of a similar tale regarding the narration called The False Prince by  Jennifer A. Nielsen. That book also has some trouble with keeping the energy up, but is well plotted.

Spoilers:

Both series involve unreliable narrators and both use that element well. It’s annoying when such narration is used, but there’s no “twist in the tale,” as they say (see my review of Here Lies Daniel Tate). Both stories are also smaller openings in a much wider story. Starting out simple and building is a great way to build an audience at the same time. I tend to like jump starting the deeper plot aspects right away, but there is nothing so satisfying as a slow burn of a tale and The Thief is that.

How Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?: A book review of Gabriel Finley and the Raven’s Riddle

Nov3

Gabriel FinleyAwhile ago I wrote three posts entitled “The Next Harry Potter” with suggestions of possible book series  that could fit the bill, so to squawk – I mean speak.  For volunteering at the Minneapolis Book Festival this past October, I received a number of free books, many signed by the author.  One of those was Gabriel Finley & the Raven’s Riddle, the first book in (I hope) a series, that like Harry Potter has the titular figure trying to make his way in a new and strange magical world.

Gabriel Finley is an orphaned boy much like other boys in children’s stories.  He lives with an eccentric aunt and doesn’t really know what happened to his parents.  That all changes when one day he discovers he can talk to ravens, and that he and ravens share a common love of riddles.  The book takes readers to a magical world involving ravens, riddles, puns, and a powerful, elusive necklace called a torc.  It may be a bit gruesome in parts for younger readers, but on the whole is a fun story in which kids learn to work together to solve the case and to understand one another.  It’s also a great Halloween tale with several riddles for readers to solve throughout the book.  It reminds me a little of Harry Potter, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Lord of the Rings, and Narnia.  It also has a few odes to Alice in Wonderland.  My favorite element in the tale was a raven-clawed writing desk that likes to dance and disguise itself in people clothes.

The story is unique in its affection for word puzzles as well as birds.  I do hope there will be a sequel of some kind, as there are many hints that birds aren’t the only magical creatures around in this world.  It’s authored by George Hagen and you can find more information about the story at gabrielfinley.com.

How Is a Raven Like a Writing Desk?  I’ll let you be the judge of that after you’ve read the book.  🙂