Staff Review: Armada by Ernest Cline

I’ll admit it. I'm a fan girl. I was more than ecstatic that Ernie Cline’s long-awaited book Armada was finally released. His previous book, Ready Player One, was such a fun adventure – nostalgic about the past, but set in a dire and ugly future landscape that everyone escapes by going to a virtual reality called “OASIS” to live their lives. Cline has such an extensive vocabulary of 1980s popular culture, that it permeates the whole book. In Armada, Cline takes us through similar tropes – video games, nostalgia for the 1980s popular culture, adventure, and a very important quest.

Zach Lightman is 18 years old and he has spent his childhood angry at the death of his father when he was only a baby. He lives with his widowed mother (who sadly never found love again) and spends many hours going through boxes of his father’s old belongings. His father was killed during the 1980s and most of his belongings portray a life deeply immersed in video games, popular science fiction films and space-themed paraphernalia. Zach takes on these interests, becoming an expert in his own right. He gets a job at a local arcade and becomes one of the best ranked Armada video game players in the world. Armada is a flight simulation game – the plot of which imagines a war between the people on earth and alien invaders called Sobrukai. Armada players fly unmanned drones that shoot down the alien spaceships.

Life changes for Zach when he looks out of his classroom window and sees one of the alien spaceships hovering in the air above his town. A Sobrukai craft. The same spacecraft he knows so well from his video game Armada. Zach soon discovers that his talents as a gamer (indeed the talents of all Armada gamers the world over) are needed to help save the universe from alien invaders. What follows is a whirlwind of flight simulation, discoveries about the universe, and betrayals and secrets that challenge everything Zach knows about his life, his history and his father.

This book felt heavier than Ready Player One - it doesn't have the sense of lightness that RPO had, even though RPO was set in a much bleaker landscape. The 1980s references and knowledge the main character had in RPO helped him through the story. In Armada, having the knowledge of his father’s past feels like a burden to Zach and one that holds darker implications. Also, unfortunately, it seems that the references don't actually move the story forward, nor do they play much of a role in the plot. They seem to be there just as gratuitous elbow nudges.

This book is very similar to existing stories - like The Last Starfighter and Ender's Game. This is freely acknowledged in the book and I think this book was meant as a nod/tribute to these stories. The numerous acronyms, combined with flight simulator equipment, functions and warfare strategies, were a bit heavy handed for me and I felt a bit lost at times. It took me out of the story. I was spending too much time trying to imagine just exactly what flight maneuvers he was doing, rather than focusing on where the story was going.

Zach’s general smart-assery betrays his absolute terror of what is happening to the world around him. One feels for Zach as he tries to handle all that is heaped upon his plate, but we don't quite know if he realizes it or if he is just in shock. His sarcastic and witty remarks do tend to ring a little desperate and look like a defense mechanism against the chaos. We don't get into Zach's head enough and so he fell a bit flat for me.

My conclusion: I think expecting Armada to be RPO all over again, though, was going to be a letdown no matter what. And it is not exactly fair to compare them, but of course that is what readers do. But I would definitely give this author another chance. I do think he is an inspired writer and I love the blending of "popular culture as character" into his works. Plus, Cline owns and drives a DeLorean. Come on now. I’d give Armada a C+ for effort.

~ Angie, Adult Services

 

You Read the Book (Maybe), Now See the Movie (Maybe): Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

Gillian Flynn, author of the bestseller Gone Girl, made into a movie starring Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike, now has another book that's been made into a movie.

Dark Places tells the story of Libby Day who was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered. Libby testified that her 15-year old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, she is leading a troubled life and is contacted by The Kill Club, who believe Ben is innocent and that the actual killer is free. Starting to doubt what she saw on the night of the murders, Libby agrees to work with the group and goes back to her hometown to relive the murders.

It's another thriller from Flynn and the movie (see the trailer here), starring Charlize Theron, Nicholas Hoult, and Corey Stoll, looks to be as tense and riveting as Gone Girl. The movie opens on August 7.

Staff Review: How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz

A lot was riding on how I felt about How to Start a Fire by Lisa Lutz. Lutz is one of my favorite authors and wrote my favorite series ever, The Spellman Books, which follows a family of private investigators who investigate each other about as much as they investigate suspects. She wrote that series' final book, The Last Word, in 2013 and I was sad that it was all over. So sad, I actually wrote a sonnet.

Shall I compare thee to another series?

Thou art more beloved by me than most books.

Why this is so I have several theories

And forever in me you have your hooks.

Thou art far more witty and have more heart

Than so many books before you I've read.

You are wacky, wonderful, you are smart.

Reaching the end of you I do so dread.

Lisa Lutz, your author, is wise, 'tis true.

Relationships and family struggles,

Love, grief, regret, hilarity make you

Enthralling for some books full of Muggles.

You are dear to me, Spellman family.

Devoted to you, I will always be.

Clearly, I was broken-hearted. 

I knew Lutz hadn't retired from writing and that her new book would come out eventually, but I was so enamored with the Spellmans that I was nervous about reading it. What if the characters weren't as charming and real as the Spellmans? What if I didn't like it and all I would have left of my Lutz love were books I'd already read and no expectation of future happiness? (I can be very dramatic when it comes to my books.)

After reading the Spellman Books, I knew Lutz's voice very well and as I read the first page of How to Start a Fire, my fears disappeared. This story follows three women, Anna, Kate, and George, for twenty years, starting from their meeting in college. In the hands of another author, I might not have wanted to read this book. A tale of friendship that includes marriages, divorces, affairs, addictions, and a big secret that changes the characters' lives seems all too familiar, but Lutz's sharp, accurate, and darkly funny writing make Anna, Kate, and George stand out when they could have been boring stereotypes.

Look at these three snippets. A lesser author could have made these simple and dull, but Lutz's writing makes them crackle.

Anna understood the customs of these events: a polite question was asked, and a polite answer was provided. She also knew that honesty was often the most direct path to ending a conversation. 

"Do you have a name?" he asked."Doesn't everyone?" she said.
"I'm not asking for your phone number or even a last name. Just give me something to call you," he said.
"I'm Kate," Anna said.
She smiled at her little joke. Miles thought the smile was for him. She had done this before, given Kate's name. She did it because she was doing something Kate would never do.
"A pleasure meeting you, Kate."
"Is it?

"She's incapable of having a normal conversation. I asked if she had any brothers or sisters. She said, 'Yes.' That's all. I asked her what she did for fun. She said, 'Not work.' I asked her what she'd done before coming to Blackman and Blackman, and she said, 'Something completely different.' I even made the mistake of inquiring about the scar on her forehead. It's not like she tries to hide it or anything. Told me she got it in a prison knife fight. Sometimes her only response to a question is 'I don't plan to answer that.'"

The heart, wit, and realness of the characters in her previous books are present in her latest. I no longer have the Spellman family to follow, but because they were a part of Lutz's imagination and immense talent, I haven't really lost anything; I've gained the anticipation of anything she writes. After reading How to Start a Fire, I will no longer fear to read anything new by her.

~Aisha, Adult Services

The Spellman Books

Other books by Lisa Lutz

Heads You Lose, co-written with David Hayward

A brother and sister pot-growing team finds the headless corpse of the sister's ex-fiancé on their property and must figure out why and how to get rid of it. Repeatedly, because after they move the body, it shows up again. Lutz and Hayward agreed to write alternating chapters without discussing what they were working on and would not undo plot written by the other. At the end of each chapter are notes written from Lutz to Hayward and Hayward to Lutz. This adds even more humor and suspense to an already funny mystery.

How to Negotiate Everything written by David Spellman with Lisa Lutz and illustrated by Jamie Temairik

In Trail of the Spellmans, David Spellman writes a book for his younger sister, teaching her how to negotiate. This is the fully realized version of that book.

Staff Review: Vanessa and Her Sister by Priya Parmar

First, a pop-quiz question: Who or what was the Bloomsbury Group?

Answer: The Bloomsbury Group was a collection of early twentieth-century artists, writers, and other intellectuals who lived crazy, artsy, unconventional lives in the then-unfashionable (and shockingly bohemian!) London neighborhood of Bloomsbury. The most famous Bloomsbury members were the writers Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, along with the influential economist John Maynard Keynes, but the group’s core included seven others.

Priya Parmar’s novel Vanessa and Her Sister recreates the Bloomsbury Group’s world and, wow, does she do a bang-up job of it. The New York Times Book Review called her novel "an uncanny achievement" and it is. Presented entirely in fictionalized letters, telegrams, and journal entries composed by multiple characters, Vanessa and Her Sister doesn’t hit a false note. It’s truly a remarkable accomplishment.

The compelling focus of the story, which takes place between 1905 and 1912, is Virginia Woolf’s relationship with her sister Vanessa, a talented painter. Both women are in their twenties as the novel opens and living with their bright Cambridge-educated brothers in a free-form household that attracts the best and brightest to its co-ed “at-homes”: literary salons, art evenings, and dinner parties, where drinks flow, conversations shock, and no one staggers home before daylight.

Vanessa is the family’s rudder and she is forced to navigate turbulent waters, for Virginia -- beautiful, brilliant, mesmerizing Virginia, who strikes me as something of a spoiled brat -- is apt to go raving mad at any moment and has already spent time in an asylum. (Famously, 35 years later, the oft-published and successful Virginia Woolf will load her pockets with rocks and walk into the River Ouse for good.) Trying to maintain Virginia’s equilibrium takes up a good portion of Vanessa’s days.

Household waters grow more turbulent still when Clive Bell, an art critic and Bloomsbury Group member, sets his sights on Vanessa and resolves to make her his wife (in an open-marriage, of course). Virginia cannot handle it – she cannot abide anyone appropriating the attention of Vanessa, her lifeline (and, some might say, enabler). In an unhinged reaction to her own rabid jealousy, Virginia promptly attempts to win Clive for herself.

The plot is definitely something of a potboiler, but it’s based on fact and it plays out in a fairly civilized way. The Bloomsbury Group did live at a perpetual simmer and conducted themselves in the most unorthodox and incestuous ways: affairs and adulteries abounded, partners were swapped, sexual preference was rarely static, jealousies and intrigues were the order of the day, yet through the years the group remained largely intact. They were a brilliant, lively, and dynamic bunch, though a tad too gossipy, as Parmar illustrates, for my tastes.

They also traveled a lot (money doesn’t seem to be a big consideration for many of them) and the novel follows its characters all over Europe and farther afield. It’s a delight to read and even better to listen to, for the audiobook is narrated by a cast of great British actors whose faces you’d recognize right away from PBS’s Masterpiece Theater and Mystery. With their fine acting talent and oh-so-elegant accents, they do a superb job of bringing the Bloomsbury Group and this fine novel to life.

~Ann, Adult Services

Staff Review: Ms. Marvel by G. Willow Wilson, Adrian Alphona, & Jacob Wyatt

Heroes and heroism are at the center of the 2015 summer reading program, when the library challenges readers of all ages to read something new. We do offer rewards to readers who meet or exceed the challenge, so be sure to check out the details for the Adult Summer Reading Program if you haven't yet.

At various points in our lives, we all look to a variety of people and professions for our heroes, but who is more obvious than a superhero? They might not be real, but they can provide inspiration to people of all ages. I'm still fairly new to the world of superheroes, but I have my favorites, including Kamala Khan, the new Ms. Marvel.

Written by G. Willow Wilson, and illustrated by Adrian Alphona and Jacob Wyatt, Ms. Marvel is both entertaining and inspiring. This is the sort of comic book I wish I could give to my teenage self to read because she would've loved it. There will be some spoilers from this point forward, so be warned!

Kamala, a normal teenage girl, suddenly gains superpowers that allow her to save people just like her hero, Captain Marvel. Unfortunately, she gained them after sneaking out of her house to attend a party her parents specifically forbade her to attend. And that's the charm of this series, in between superpowered battles, Kamala faces challenges and questions familiar to most teens and young adults. Everyone has to learn how to balance the expectations of family, friends, and society at large, while still being true to the person you are inside. Kamala is exploring not just what it means to be a hero, but how she can be a hero and a good daughter to her parents who moved from Pakistan to New Jersey to give their children a chance at a better life.

Not that Ms. Marvel is 100% serious all the time, this is absolutely a fun series. Seriously, if I were limited to one word it would be fun. Kamala's shapechanging abilities are versatile, unstable, and used to great effect. The art is both detailed, with interesting backgrounds that make the setting a real part of the larger story, while still colorful and cartoony. The book does assume you have a basic familiarity with superheroes, but you don't need to get any of the references to other series or characters to thoroughly enjoy this series on its own.

There are currently two volumes of this series available, with the third to be released later this summer:
Ms. Marvel volume 1: No Normal
Ms. Marvel volume 2: Generation Y
Ms. Marvel volume 3: Crushed*

~Sarah, Adult Services

*Volume 3 is on order and will appear in the library's catalog for holds by the end of the July.

Staff Review: Ten Things About "Ten Things I've Learnt About Love" by Sarah Butler

1. Reading it took my breath away. The writing is simple but true.
2. Each chapter starts with lists written by the two main characters, Alice and Daniel. “Ten Things I’m Frightened Of”, “Ten Things People Say to You When Your Father Dies”, and “Ten Things I’d Rather Forget” are a few of them. It’s a good writing technique and helps the reader find out a lot about a character’s interior thoughts in a small amount of words.
3. Daniel has synesthesia so sees words and letters as colors. He describes someone’s name as “the color of sun-warmed sandstone”. The letter D is “a pale orange, like powdered sherbet”. Alice’s name is the color of “milky blue water”.
4. Butler does a wonderful job of capturing the ache of wanting someone to love you.
5. Daniel walks around London, collecting things like bottle tops, paper clips, a string of plastic pearls, and an empty photo frame to make found art he uses to express himself.
6. This sounds weird, but I felt like my heart was also reading and reacting along with me.
7. “When the whisky is finished, I screw the top back on and slam the bottle into the ground. It doesn’t break. I want something to break.” Those lines perfectly capture the frustration of feeling broken and wanting everything around you to be broken, too, so you're not alone.
8. Butler’s writing style put me so into the novel that when a character was distracted, I felt it, too. A character’s thoughts would interrupt lines of dialogue and leave me with their feelings of uncertainty in my head.
9. Lines like these: “And I carried on doing what I’ve been doing for years. I have written your name more times than I can remember. Always, at the beginning, I write your name.”
10. I didn’t want it to be over.

Ten Things I've Learnt About Love is the debut novel of Sarah Butler. Alice is the youngest of three sisters and has never felt a true part of the family since her mother died when Alice was young. She’s off in Mongolia, escaping heartache, when she hears that her father is dying and returns in time to be there when he dies. Daniel is homeless and looking for the daughter he’s never met. We watch as these two characters slowly come together. As I mentioned before, Butler’s writing is simple but true and shows how the hope of love can root us when nothing else can.

~Aisha, Adult Services

Science Friday: Shark Week

After more than 25 years of Shark Week, you might think America would be losing interest in all things shark. Sharknado alone just screams that things have "jumped the shark," so to speak. Instead Sharknado has spawned its own franchise of campy films.

Despite what Hollywood might tell us, your average shark faces more danger from humans than we do of being attacked by a shark. Still, Jaws and Sharknado have their own appeal. With that in mind, we've put together a short list of books and DVDs mixing the educational and the entertaining.

If you're looking to swim with the sharks, we recommend checking out:

Soul Surfer: a true story of faith, family, and fighting to get back on the board by Bethany Hamilton, Sheryl Berk, & Rick Bundschuh

Surviving the Shark: how a brutal great white attack turned a surfer into a dedicated defender of sharks by Jonathan Kathrein, Margaret Kathrein, David McGuire, & Wallace Nichols

Sharks of the World by Leonard Compagno, Marc Dando, & Sarah Fowler

Shark Girl by Kelly Bingham

Tech Thursday: Michael Fassbender Transforms into Steve Jobs

If you haven't seen the trailer for Steve Jobs (based on the book by Walter Isaacson), here's a link to it. Starring Michael Fassbender as Steve Jobs, Seth Rogan as Steve Wozniak, Kate Winslet as Joanna Hoffmann, and Jeff Daniels as John Sculley, the movie opens on October 9.

What do you think? While Fassbender was probably not a lot of people's first thought for the role, after watching the trailer, it looks like he embodies Jobs very well.




If you're interested in this, here are some other books you might want to check out.

Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader by Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli

Powers of Two: Finding the Essence of Innovation in Creative Pairs by Joshua Wolf Shenk

Smarttribes: How Teams Become Brilliant Together by Christine Comaford-Lynch

#WCW Woman Crush Wednesday: Ursula K. Le Guin

Photo Copyright © by Marian Wood Kolisch

When Rachel wrote her review of The Dispossessed this weekend, I was reminded of how much I love Ursula K Le Guin's writing, which made her an obvious pick for this week's #WCW

I'm not a native Dubuquer, and I attended high school in a small Wisconsin town where the public library was small enough that the entire building would've fit in Carnegie-Stout's children's department. As a teenager who loved fantasy novels, I would check out any book with a unicorn sticker on the spine, so it wasn't long before I stumbled across A Wizard of Earthsea. I liked Earthsea okay, but it was her stories of the Hainish Ekumen that I returned to again and again.

The attention and detail she put into the people and societies in her stories captured my imagination. Her writing was a significant influence in my decision to major in anthropology as an undergrad, and I was only a little surprised that the "K" in her name stands for Kroeber. Her parents, Alfred and Theodora Kroeber, were early anthropologists of some note. Alfred Kroeber was, fittingly enough, one of the topics for my senior research paper on the history of anthropological theories.

Le Guin remains the standard by which I judge science fiction to this day, even as my tastes have changed and grown over time. I suspect that I wouldn't have quite the same reaction to reading her books for the first time today as I did when I was a teen, but it's equally true that if I hadn't read her books as a teen, I would not have become the person that I am today.

~Sarah, Adult Services

#WCW WomanCrushWednesday: Cheryl Strayed

No author has affected my life in the past few years as much as Cheryl Strayed has.

Photo found at http://www.cherylstrayed.com/

I loved Strayed before I knew her name. TheRumpus.net is an online magazine whose advice column, Dear Sugar, was a favorite of mine because of its honest, humorous, and heartfelt offerings. The column was done anonymously, but a few years ago, it was revealed that Strayed was Sugar. Some of my favorite Sugar-given advice is, “Every last one of us can do better than give up”; “The only way out of a hole is to climb out”; and “Be brave enough to break your own heart”. Tiny Beautiful Things is a collection of her Dear Sugar columns and I highly recommend you read it.

A few years ago, when I finished the first chapter of her memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, I put the book down and with tears in my eyes, said out loud to no one, "If the rest of the book is like that, I cannot handle it." In the book, Strayed's mom dies of cancer and at the time, my mom was four years cancer-free. I didn't want to read about a mom, anyone's mom, dying of cancer. I did get through the book and it remains a favorite of mine. I'm a person who prefers not to feel emotions and that book made me feel so immensely that I should have thrown it across the room and instead, I embraced it. I embraced it so much that when a friend told me his mom didn't like Wild because Cheryl Strayed wasn't prepared for the hike she takes in the book, I actually told him to tell his mom to come say that to my face. No one says anything bad about Cheryl Strayed around me.

When my mom was rediagnosed with cancer in mid-2013, I could not look at my copy of Wild (sometimes just a glance at the book would make me tear up), but I frequently turned to Tiny Beautiful Things and a poster with Dear Sugar quotes I had on the wall above my computer. I can't say I always took to heart sayings like "The thing about rising is we have to continue upward. The thing about going beyond is we have to keep going", "The unifying theme is resilience and faith", and the above-mentioned "Every last one of us can do better than to give up", but I wanted to. As I'm sure many other people who've read Strayed's work can attest, Strayed makes you want to hope, makes you want to try. Some days, I would see "The only way out of a hole is to climb out" and think, "Maybe today, it's okay for me to stay in my hole, but tomorrow, I'll get started on climbing out of it."

My mom died in October 2014 and again, Strayed helped me, this time with her advice of "Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start there." "Gutted" is the perfect word to describe how I felt when my mom died and one of the reasons I'm not curled up in a ball on the floor is Cheryl Strayed and her advice. For that, she's my WomanCrush.

~Aisha

Staff Review: Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire

Cookies and milk, chocolate and peanut butter, mac and cheese, some things are just better together.* So when I realized that one of my favorite authors, Seanan McGuire, had the audiobooks for one of her series narrated by one of my other favorite authors, Mary Robinette Kowal, well, I purchased and downloaded a copy immediately.

If you enjoy character-driven Urban Fantasy and dark humor, you too should check out Rosemary and Rue, the first book in the October Daye series. And yes, we do have the audiobook! The story is set in a San Francisco with a hidden underworld populated with a dizzying variety of Fae characters (my favorites were the rose goblins, a cross between a cat and a rosebush). October Daye, or Toby, is a changeling, a person born from one human parent and one fae, who has inherited a small amount of magic and a seemingly endless amount of trouble.

Without spoiling too much, Rosemary and Rue starts with Toby at a very low point in her life. She's barely scraping by with a terrible job and has almost completely isolated from her friends and family (aside from her two cats). Toby considers herself a failure and is punishing herself accordingly, until an old friend reaches out with a job she can't refuse. You see, Toby is a sworn knight to the Duke of Shadowed Hills, which translates in the modern world as something like a magical private eye.

The mystery makes for a fast-paced plot, though the amount of world-building and the complex relationships between all of the characters can be overwhelming at times. Bear in mind that this is the first in a series, so many elements are set up for pay offs in future volumes.

Mary Robinette Kowal's narration is clear, and the many characters were easy to distinguish. Some of the characters sounded a little cartoony, but this helped to lighten a story that was at times very dark. I'm not sure how many times Toby almost died, but I hope that as she learns to deal with her depression she gains a more cautious approach to risk.

When not writing Urban Fantasy, Seanan McGuire wears a variety of hats, including musician, author Mira Grant (the pen name she uses for her zombie fiction), and the person behind one of my favorite tumblrs. Her reblogged gifs are the entire reason I marathoned Leverage last year.

When she isn't narrating audiobooks, Mary Robinette Kowal writes the Glamourist Histories series (a series which I've mentioned loving before), works as a professional puppeteer, and offers writing advice and guidance. Speaking of which, I'm happy to announce that Mary will be coming to Carnegie-Stout Public Library in Dubuque, Iowa this October! I'll be sharing more details as the event approaches, but if you want to make sure you're up to date on all the events offered to adults at Carnegie-Stout, be sure to sign up for our new monthly newsletter.

~Sarah, Adult Services

*Why yes, it is almost my lunch break. However did you guess?