Four on the Floor

Black and Blue
Ian Rankin
Orion

I'm giving some serious thought to shutting down my blog.   I haven't been feeling that creative lately and while I've been reading a tonne, I find that I don't have too much new or inspiring to say.  You guys can only take so many "wow -- that book was awesome!" or "wow -- that booked totally sucked" reviews, right? 

Maybe I just need to shake it up a bit and read something that really knocks my socks off.   Ugh.  So hard to know what to do.  That said, I'm here now and I might as well get down to business and give you the skinny on Rankin's Black & Blue.

I would consider this novel to be Rankin's best that I've read so far.  Rebus' professional life is a bit of a wreck -- he's been kicked out of his precinct and assigned a new home, he's under investigation for helping a colleague who is suspected of planting evidence, the media is hounding him about a wrongful conviction, and he's working four cases.  Sigh. Yes, he's still the perfect man.  Well, aside from the drinking.  Since I'm over 40 now, I guess I'm not supposed to be that picky.

With so much going on in Black & Blue, you would almost expect the narrative to be somewhat choppy and episodic.  Rankin defies expectation and writes a tight, dark, action-packed story that flows from location to location, case to case, emotion to emotion.  Four hard-boiled detectives out of five.

So many books, so little time

The Hunger Games
Catching Fire
The Mockingjay
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic

According to Dictionary.com, the word "addict" can be used to describe someone who habituates or abandons him/herself to something compulsively or obsessively.  It can also be used in the context of physiological or psychological dependence on a substance or thing.  Is this definition ringing bells with anyone else?  Apparently, I have a problem.
I came to this deep and penetrating insight late a couple of Fridays ago  when I was downloading book two of the Hunger Game trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  It was almost three o'clock in the morning and I had just whizzed through the first novel in the series.  Even though I could barely keep my head off the pillow, I had to read on.   It was that good.

Set in post-apocalyptic America, the novel opens in District 12.  We are introduced to a young woman named Katniss Everdeen.  Katniss is an aloof girl -- mostly keeping her thoughts to herself and oblivious to her impact on others.  Her world completely changes when  the government comes to town to pick two "warriors" -- one boy and one girl -- as the District's tribute to the Hunger Games.  "Required watching" for everyone in the country, the Hunger Games is a reality show where the tributes (two from each of the country's twelve districts) battle to the death.  The tributes are plucked from their regions, made over into heroes (with compelling back stories, of course) and then set in an arena with instructions to kill or be killed.  It is all quite gruesome, but happily packaged for TV.  Katniss volunteers to be the tribute from District 12 when her younger sister is picked in the lottery.  The baker's son, Peeta, is the other "winner" and the two teens head to the Capitol to take part in the games.

I loved the premise of these novels (as disturbing as it was) and can guarantee that I will be reading the entire trilogy again.  Katniss is smart, resourceful, naive, and unrelenting.   Peeta is kind, focused, loving, and equally as unrelenting.  They make a good team, but unfortunately, there can only ever be one winner, or can there?  The Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay get five fiery manticores out of five.

Brains!  Brains!  (I promise this is not a zombie entry)

The Brain the Changes Itself
Norman Doidge
Penguin

Depending on how old you are, you might remember your biology teacher telling you that once you get through early childhood, your brain is pretty done changing and that it is very hard to teach the old dog new tricks.  Well, researchh in the 20th century has disproven this theory and now neuroplasticity, the term for the brain's ability to re-map itself, is its own field of study.

The Brain that Changes Itself is a very consumable read in which Doidge, a researcher and psychiatrist, makes some enthusiastic claims about the capabilities of the human brain.   He describes how stroke victims have managed to remap their brains to perform functions that had formerly been controlled by now "dead" sections of their brains.  He chronicles how researchers have used simple devices to eliminate the pains (and itching!) in phantom limbs.  And most importantly, he tells compelling stories about real people that makes hard-core science into a can't-put-it-down page-turner.  Three point five neruoplasticity tongue twisters out of five.

And Then There Were Two

The Graveyard Book
Neil Gaiman
Harper Collins

My friend Jill loaned me her copy of this book in August of 2009.  I adore Neil Gaiman (have you read his blog?) and I had heard nothing but good things about his most recent novel.  When I got home from Kemptville, I put the book on my beside table fully intending that it would be the next one on my list.  And there it sat.  Unread and unloved.  Poor, wee book.

Flash forward to the fall of 2010.  I was out for a birthday dinner with my mostly best friend and in addition to showering me with love and laughs and decent grub, he brought me gifts.  Included in the red paper bag (he's a boy, they don't do pretty with friends) was my Christmas gift from 2009.  And yes, it was a copy of the Graveyard book.

That decided it.  As soon as I got home, I picked up Jill's copy -- still sitting on my nightstand -- and was immediately lost.  The book opens with the mysterious murder of the protagonist's family.  Somehow, the toddler (yes, I typed toddler) escapes and wanders into the graveyard that is up the street from him home.  Understanding that the baby is still being pursued by his family's attackers, the graveyard occupants -- ghosts from across different centuries -- decide to bend the rules in this place of the dead and raise the baby themselves.  The toddler, who is renamed Nobody Owens, grows up in a rather unconventional environment and goes on to do some rather extraordinary things.

Bod (well ... you can't be Nobody forever) is heroic, gentle, loving, funny, sad, kind, wise, naive, and beautiful.  He's definitely worth getting to know and I'm glad that I read the book when I did.  Thanks for sharing Jilly Bean.  I  get why you gave it to me when you -- I just wasn't ready.

Five beautiful fairy tales out of five.  And oh yeah -- as for the the title of this post, please say hello to the next contender for the DES book of the year.