What's In A Name Reading Challenge Completed!

I think this was the first challenge I signed up for, hosted by Annie of "Words by Annie."
The challenge was to pick a book with a title that fit each of the six themes. Here's what I have read for each theme, along with links to reviews:

Color - Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Animal - Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
Name - Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Place - Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen
Weather - A Wind in the Door by L'Engle
Plant - Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald

My favorites were Gathering Blue, Goose Girl and Veil of Roses.

I remember when I signed up for this challenge, I had a schedule of when I would read each one--every other month throughout the year. That was new book blogger naivete, as well as being unrealistic to think that I would stick to any sort of schedule, being a very haphazard reader by nature. I like to go wherever my mood takes me and that can be very unpredictable. Anyways, I loved this challenge and the different themes to pick books from so much that I ignored my schedule. Thanks, Annie!

Life of Pi by Yann Martel (2001, 326 pgs.)

Life of Pi is part adventure story, part zoology lesson, and part philosophical musing. It is the winner of the Man Booker Prize, and when this is announced with a big gold circle on the cover, a reader has high expectations. During the first part of the book we are introduced to Piscine Molitor Patel (shortened to Pi for obvious reasons), a young boy from India, the son of a zookeeper, who embraces three major religions: Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. I loved this part of the book--it's quirkiness, humor, and the different religious perspectives that are explored. Since I have started rating books on Shelfari and my blog, I find myself thinking throughout the book how many stars it will get, and it often changes throughout the book. In the beginning I was thinking, "This is such a cool book! Five stars all the way!!" And then his family and some of their zoo animals needed to emigrate to Canada by ship, the ship sank, and Pi and a few animals, including a Bengal tiger are the only survivors. And I was bored. (Uh-oh! Down to three stars!) For me there were too many details about how he survived on the boat for 227 days. And the account of this is the bulk of the book. Then the very end entertained me a bit more--a humorous interview of Pi by members of the Japanese Ministry of Transport in trying to determine the fate of the ship that sank (sunk?). This is were the message of the book comes full circle, although it is open-ended and makes you think rather than come to any firm conclusions.
This book was exactly 100 chapters. That thrills me, but I couldn't say why!

The final verdict (drum roll, please . . . ):

Review Roundup

Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1955, 132 pgs.): What amazes me about this little collection of the author's musings on womanhood and relationships is how things have really not changed that much in over 50 years. I personally find great comfort when I find someone whose thoughts mirror my own, and obviously there are many others who feel the same way, as this book continues to be popular. My one complaint is that I felt that the comparisons between different stages of a woman's life and the various sea shells was too forced. I would have enjoyed the book more without this structure.

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare (1601): Shakespeare for me is more of a game or puzzle than a traditional literary experience. For me trying to make sense of the words in a Shakespearian play fills that same need that drives others to do crossword puzzles or Sudoku. The plays that I have read recently I have read on Barnes and Noble's "No Fear Shakespeare," where they have the original text on one side, and a "translation" of sorts into modern language on the other side. I like to puzzle over the original and figure out what it means, and then check to see how close I am. Sometimes I'm right on target, and other times I have made up something completely off the wall. I read Twelfth Night because my daughter's third grade class is performing a version of this in June, and I wanted to be fully prepped for the experience! This one is a comedy filled with unrequited love, mistaken identities, and gender mix-ups. Orsino is in love with Olivia, Olivia is in love with Cesario (who is really Viola dressed up as a man), Viola is in love with Orsino, who thinks she is really a man, and ambitious Malvolio, Olivia's head servant, is tricked in to believing that Olivia is in love with him. Throw in a witty fool, a drunk uncle, and of course, Viola's twin brother who she presumes is dead, and you've got quite the soap opera. It was not one of my favorites, however (out of the mere 6 that I have read!). I'm guessing I will enjoy my daughter's performance better!

Shake Down the Stars by Frances Donnelly (1988, 642 pgs.): This out of print book was loaned to me by a friend who found it in a common room while she was in Alaska over ten years ago, and she fell in love with it and lent it to me to read. It follows the story of three very different young women who come from the same village in England, and how the war affects their lives. One girl I liked, one I wanted to shake her and tell her how stupid she was being, and the other I wanted to shoot. And yet I found myself attached to all of them, and I loved to see their imperfections along with their strengths. There are some interesting love scenes thrown in (to me they seemed like a man wrote them, and one of them made me laugh), and the characters don't exactly live a life of purity. There are some references to abortion, as well as one abortion scene that I personally found very disturbing, but I think that was the author's intention. The book was almost as much about feminism as it was about romance. But, to be honest, the romance was the part that I liked. I'm wondering if there is anyone else out there who has read this? I don't know how popular it was when it came out.

Bridesmaids Revisited by Dorothy Cannell (2001, 256 pgs.): I was excited "revisit" the Ellie Haskell mystery series, having loved Wuthering Heights and The Thin Woman, but I was disappointed in this one. Ellie receives a letter from the "bridesmaids," three friends of her grandmother, telling her that her grandmother has a message for her. The problem is, as you've probably guessed already, her grandmother has been dead for a while. As usual, this story involves uncovering family secrets, eccentric characters, and humorous allusions to Gothic mysteries. It just wasn't up to par with the other two I had read.

Femmes Fatal by Dorothy Cannell (1994, 304 pgs.): Another Ellie Haskell mystery (I was in the mood for fluffy reading!). This was like "Desperate Housewives meets The Carol Burnett Show." Ellie feels like her marriage is lacking in passion since she had twins, and so she joins Fully Female, a club that promises to help a woman "fulfill her physical, emotional, and sexual potential." (It sounds racy, but it isn't really.) After not too long, people start dying, and it's up to Ellie to find the culprit. I had a few laughs, and it was an entertaining diversion, but it wasn't as good as others in the series.

A Wind in the Door by Madeliene L'Engle (1973, 209 pgs.): This is a companion to A Wrinkle in Time (one of my favorites) that I have had on my bookshelf for a while, and I kind of wished I had just left it there. Reading this made me understand people who have a distaste for fantasy. It was just way too fantastical for me. Like a drug trip or something. I appreciated the themes she was trying to convey, but not the story she used to convey them.

Veil of Roses by Laura Fitzgerald (2006, 320 pgs.): If you're looking for a great feel-good chick flick in book form, this is it. Iranian Tamila has three months in America to find a husband or she has to return to her restricted life in Iran. One prospect for her is a man who is an obsessive germ freak who insists she have a full medical exam before he will marry her, and another is gay, just trying to make his mother happy. During this husband-choosing process, Tami meets Ike, the blue-eyed dreamboat who works at Starbucks. She also becomes friends with her fellow students in the English learning class, including an pregnant, abused, mail order wife from Russia, and a "colorful" (especially in her language) soldiers wife from Germany. Through the story, Tami seems to be finding her own voice that she has never had the freedom to express. I laughed, I cried, it moved me.

Catching up on Some Reviews!

I don't call myself "Chain Reader" for nothing! As soon as one book is done, I'm grabbing for another. That's one of the reasons I started this blog--it makes me at least stop and think about the book I have just finished so they don't all just blur into one another. But I don't always have the self-discipline to keep myself from opening that perpetual "next" book until I've done a review. Anyways, this is just my discursive way of saying that I'm behind on reviewing the books I've read. So I will try to do a few nutshell reviews to catch up:

Cleaning: Plain and Simple by Donna Smallin (2006, 290 pgs.): I am convinced that this is some sign of reading sickness that I even read books about housework. I think I just get bored so easily, and if I can find some new method for doing laundry every few months, or learn some new homemade concoction for scrubbing the cabinets, cleaning could actually be a little bit fun! This one is actually one of the best I've read. It has some general advice, and then is divided up by room, and goes beyond the basics, including some natural cleaning options. There a many quotes scattered throughout the book, and I loved this one by Erma Bombeck: "My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?" Amen to that!
Rating: 4.5/5

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (2008, 384 pgs.): Hanna Heath accepts the assignment to restore the mysterious Sarajevo Haggadah, an ancient Jewish manuscript with stunning and unlikely "illuminations." She discovers a few clues to its history: an insect wing, a wine stain, salt crystals, and a white hair. The book alternates between her scientific discoveries about the clues and the stories of the past keepers of the Haggadah. I enjoyed reading it and had a hard time putting it down, although the fact that some parts are told in reverse-chronological order gave me a bit of mental vertigo.
Rating: 4/5

The Known World by Edward P. Jones (2003, 14 hrs. 13 min.): This was the Pulitzer Prize winner for 2004, and I've got to be honest, that's the only thing that kept me listening to the end. **CHEATER WARNING** Review from Amazon:
Set in Manchester County, Virginia, 20 years before the Civil War began, Edward P. Jones's debut novel, The Known World, is a masterpiece of overlapping plot lines, time shifts, and heartbreaking details of life under slavery. Caldonia Townsend is an educated black slaveowner, the widow of a well-loved young farmer named Henry, whose parents had bought their own freedom, and then freed their son, only to watch him buy himself a slave as soon as he had saved enough money. Although a fair and gentle master by the standards of the day, Henry Townsend had learned from former master about the proper distance to keep from one's property. After his death, his slaves wonder if Caldonia will free them. When she fails to do so, but instead breaches the code that keeps them separate from her, a little piece of Manchester County begins to unravel. Impossible to rush through, The Known World is a complex, beautifully written novel with a large cast of characters, rewarding the patient reader with unexpected connections, some reaching into the present day. --Regina Marler
The last sentence cracks me up. It's code for "boring and complicated, with too many characters to keep track of." I was patient, but didn't feel rewarded.
Rating: 3/5

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen (1798, 179 pgs.): This is the only Austen book I hadn't read, and the saying "save the best for last" does not apply here. Another expression that keeps popping into my head is "you can't win them all." Jane Austen is truly a genius, and in most of her works, her wit jumps out from every page, every sentence and every word. In Northanger Abbey, it just emerges every once in a while. I didn't hate it though--it is Jane Austen for heaven's sake! (Kind of like The Avengers is one of the lamest movies ever made, but Ralph Fiennes is in it, so I'll enjoy it anyway). Also, Catherine Morland reminded me so much of myself that it was scary--reads too much, bends her will to please others, and cries a lot.
I've watched about a third of the movie so far, and have learned that I have been pronouncing the title all wrong. It should be North-Anger--anger as in mad. But everyone likely knew that except for me.
Rating: 3.5/5

Uglies by Scott Westerfeld (2005, 448 pgs.): Here I can truly say that I have saved the best for last, (of my reviews, that is). I loved this one, showing that I will forever be a teenager at heart. Tally Youngblood lives in a world 300 or more years in the future, in which everyone is turned "pretty" at the age of 16 through a very thorough cosmetic operation. Tally learns of a small group of rebels who choose to live another way of life, rejecting the idea that everyone should be perfect. Fans of The Giver by Lois Lowry should love this one. My 13-year-old daughter loved it too and has read it twice, along with the rest in the series. (I should note that she was mortified that I wanted to read the same book as her. She couldn't find it for a couple of months, and I'm still not convinced that she didn't hide it on purpose.)
Rating: 5/5

Thank goodness I've gotten all of this off my chest and into the blogosphere. I can sleep without having nightmares about review-evasion agents coming to get me.

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale (2003, 383 pgs.)

I was tempted to do this four-word review for The Goose Girl:

Loved it. Read it.

But unfortunately that doesn't say anything about the content of the book. For those who need more to go by, here's what the inside if the front cover says:

She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Here name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt's stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. When she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.
From the Grimm's fairy tale of the princess who became a goose girl before she would become queen, Shannon Hale has woven an incredible, original, and magical tale of a girl who must find her own unusual talents before she can lead the people she has made her own.

Of course if fairy tales aren't your thing, you probably wouldn't love or want to read it. But for those who enjoy a wholesome, beautifully written tale of fantasy every once in a while, this is one of the most enjoyable I've read.

Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

This novel begins in a graveyard of sorts where Kira has spent four days watching her mother die, leaving her an orphan in a post-apocalyptic society devoid of compassion. With a twisted leg she has had since birth, she attempts to negotiate with her hostile neighbors to keep her land and a place in society despite her handicap. This leads her to the Council of Guardians, who take her in because of her talent for embroidery. She is commissioned to make repairs on the special robe of The Singer, one who retells their history each year at The Gathering. As she works, she maintains an affectionate friendship with Matt, one of the few members of the society who shows compassion towards others, and meets Thomas, who is also kept by the council because of a special talent. As the story unfolds, Kira, Thomas, and Matt make discoveries that lead them to question the motives of the Council in controlling their creativity and to discover that there may be a better way of life beyond their borders.
Although Gathering Blue lacks the impact and depth of The Giver, the Newbery-winning companion novel, it is still an excellent book. I love Lowry's writing style and the mood she creates. I am looking forward to reading Messenger, the final book in the set.