Kate's comments (member since May 04, 2009)

Kate's comments from the The Next Best Book Club group.

"Witch of Blackbird Pond" is a good coming of age book - the heroine goes from indulged and impetuous rich girl to a steady and courageous young woman.

"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" is one of the best - a girl's experience of poverty, school, college, romance, work, and death.

It's a sci-fi series, but Lois McMaster Bujold's "Vorkosigan series" deals with some extremely interesting topics. "Brother-In-Arms" and "Mirror Dance" in particular deal with the ethics of cloning - only takes the view of a universe where cloning is already widespread. In some places, cloning is a strictly legally controlled business; in others it is used for horrifying illegal brain transplants. Some fascinating issues come up.

I'm technically still reading "Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury, but I've been stalled in the middle for literally months. However, I did manage to race through all the Jonathan Tropper novels, all excellent. He writes sort of quiet family dramas but from a male perspective. "How to Talk To Widowers" is very good.

The Dark Tower series is wonderful, but the first one (in my opinion) is the weakest. But you kind of have to get through that so the others make sense. If you don't find yourself warming to The Gunslinger, push through it and give the second one a try - it will be worth it.

I think an interesting question is WHY did the Twilight series hit it so big? Why that one, and not a billion other teen vampire books out there? I read all four books, trying to analyze it, and I think I came up with an answer that at least satisfies me:

In a cynical world, there's not much Grand Romance anymore - the never-get-over-it, can't-live-without-you kind of romance that makes the stories of Romeo-Juliet, Tristan-Isolde, and Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot still be read and treasured today. Meyer, rather than just aim for a teen romance, swung for the fences and went for Grand Romance, trying to give Bella and Edward a love for all time like Romeo and Juliet.

Now personally, I think she struck out - Edward is a tad too tousled and gleaming for my tastes. But millions of readers across the country would disagree with me and say that she smacked a home run for grand romance, and their opinions are just as valid as mine. So I will salute Meyer for aiming for the stars, because for many people, she got there.

Jennifer wrote: "Have any of you read anything by Tabitha King? (since she came up in the discussion about Lisey's Story, thought I'd throw that out there...)
The only book I read by her was "The Trap." It was a..."

Read his book "On Writing" - which is part autobiography and part writer's manual - to get the story on him and his wife. She is what he calls his IR, or Ideal Reader - he says he writes with her in mind, and she is always the first reader of any new book, so her feedback is crucial. "On Writing" is a very good book in lots of ways. One thing many people over look in King is how funny he can be. I happen to be a huge Red Sox fan as well, and I adored the Red Sox diary he co-wrote with Stewart O'Nan in 2004 - great baseball talk and funny King, all the way through.

I like the Anne series, but I did get tired of Anne after a while. Her dreaminess and romanticism are funny in a young girl, especially when comic disasters keep continually ambushing her, but I always thought she got awfully sappy in the later books. But I read them anyway because the side characters are so much fun. I don't think it's LM Montgomery's fault that Anne got boring - she herself said she was bored with Anne after about the first two books, but her publishers and public kept harassing her for more, so she dutifully produced them.

I write historical fiction, and I love music to write by. Beethoven symphonies are a favorite, and I also like movie soundtracks, particularly for epic-y films like Lord of the Rings. Movie soundtracks tend to have a nice mixture of the stirring and the poignant, so I've found them useful. What I'm writing also comes into it: I wrote a book about a medieval nunnery, for example, and found myself listening to a lot of Gregorian plainchant while I wrote.

You sometimes have to wonder if college professors have actually read anything that isn't on a booklist. I so rarely got anything off the beaten track in college.

This is probably cheating, but my list is pretty much authors only:

1. Anything by Dan Brown.
2. Anything by Danielle Steel.
3. Anything with "Chicken Soup" in the title.
4. Anything by Herman Melville.
5. Anything by James Patterson.

Ellen Conford is wonderful funny YA - "A Royal Pain" is a screamer. Also great are the Anastasia Krupnik books by Lois Lowry; marvelous funny stories about a middle-school girl growing up.

I agree with everybody who promoted Eva Ibbotson; she is wonderful. And Mrs. Mike is a great read, though it has some very sad parts - deaths in the family, etc.

I love music with reading. Sometimes, either by accident or on purpose, I'll end up with a really spectacular pairing. For example, I once read the end of Cornwell's "Excalibur" where about half the major characters die, and Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrows was playing on the CD player - big sad swells of sound with a poignant soprano voice threading in. I was a mess by the end of the scene. Music can add GREATLY to a read.

I want Bernard Cornwell's next installment in the Saxon Series. Hopefully it's coming out in a few months . . .

A more obscure historical fiction novelist is Gwen Bristow - her specialty is American history. She has a terrific book about pre-Gold Rush California called Jubilee Trail, a terrific trilogy set in Louisiana that goes through the first Louisiana settlers, the Civil War, and the First World War, and a nice Revolutionary War book called Celia Garth. All highly recommended, but Jubilee Trail is my favorite.

I don't tend to buy books unless I have read them first at the library and know I want to own them. There are a few writers out there who I love so much I will buy anything they write - and there are a few out there I will rush out immediately to buy the book in hardback. That's the ultimate test of a writer for me - will I run out and buy their book in hardback the minute it comes out? The last one I did that for was George R.R. Martin's "Feast For Crows."

Unless I have to have a book right away, I tend to buy off Amazon rather than go to a bookstore. I'm slowly collecting all the Richard Sharpe books by Cornwell, one by one as they go on sale on Amazon.

Some writers are natural companions for others. Anything by Sarah Addison Allen is a good companion for anything by Alice Hoffman.

I liked "The World According To Garp" a lot, but it is a strange book. It was astoundingly funny in a lot of places.

"In This House of Brede" and "Body and Soul"

I haven't read it, but I'll look it up.