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Review- A Gentleman in Moscow

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A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

 51g6aenhgpl5/5 stars (I wish I could give it more)

Count Alexander Rostov is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the Metropol hotel. If he sets a foot outside of the building, the government has the right to kill him. That being said, the count still finds ways to make his life interesting. He develops great friendships at his new job as a restaurant server and spends a lot of his time just observing the hotel crowds. The count also meets a 9 year old girl, Nina, who changes his life in ways he never imagined. This curious explorer takes the count on adventures in the halls of the hotel and they find hidden spots using Nina’s stolen key. During his years in the Metropol, the count meets countless individuals who become very special to him, but perhaps Nina is the most special of them all.

This book blew me away. The last time I read a novel that hit me this deep was All the Light We Cannot See. This book changed me. It changed the way I think about life and the motto “everything happens for a reason”. Before A Gentleman in Moscow, I was unsure about this saying, but now I find peace in it. I wish I could call Towles and personally thank him for writing such a powerful story.

The writing in this book is absolutely phenomenal– it’s beautifully concise. I want to say it’s almost magical, like it puts you under a spell that lingers even after you’ve finished the book. This makes the characters very appealing and alive. I feel like I’ve been with the count through every phase of his life and the whole time I was right there in his hotel room next to him. It’s incredible to feel like you gained a friend (or many friends in this case) just by turning a couple hundred pages in a book.

Last year, I read a lot of bestsellers. Most of them were great aside from the endings that left me feeling like something was missing. A Gentleman in Moscow is not one of those books. I almost grew accustomed to novel endings that let me down and I was pleasantly surprised with this book. Again, I wish I could call Towles up and thank him for this.

As a little bonus “huzzah” for me, A Gentleman in Moscow has a lot of classical references. From Achilles to Odysseus to Anna Karenina, it somehow covers all of my favorite books. Someday maybe I’ll go back through the story and discover all of those hidden pleasures again.

I have nothing negative to say about this book. I would recommend it to any adult, readers and nonreaders alike. I expect this book to remain on the bestsellers list for a long time, as it deserves its spot. I can’t wait for more people to discover the count’s life and fall in love with it just like I did.

Review- High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris

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High Couch of Silistra by Janet Morris

imgresRating: 4/5 stars

-I would like to give a big thank you to Perseid Press for the paperback copy of this book!-

The men and women living on Silistra are governed by a hierarchy of sexual desire and fertility. Infertility is a widespread issue that allows the most sexually appealing women the greatest power. Estri is among the most powerful in the land—she holds the position of the high couch of Silistra. Estri’s mother died during childbirth and she has yet to know much about her father. She is sent on a quest to find her father and discover the secrets that his kind may hold.

In my opinion, this should be a classic science fiction book, especially for those who love female protagonists. Estri is a strong woman who leads with her body and her wit. She was really fun to join on this adventure across strange lands. I thought she was by far the most interesting character in the book, so I naturally paid a lot of attention to her and was left wanting more. I love strong-minded (and, in this case, bodied) women who don’t take any bs from men to whom they don’t owe anything. Go Estri!

I also thought it was cool to hear about the customs of these different societies that Morris so brilliantly created. Estri visits a few places that each have their own customs. I’m not sure how Morris made them so unique, but she found a way to make them all intriguing.

When I got to some of the first sexual scenes, I was a bit confused. I was thinking that Estri was submitting to men as a way of giving up. I soon realized that I was thinking in the mind of someone from our world, not Silistra’s. In actuality, Estri was pleasing these men as an act of power and domination. Switching into this mindset was very freeing.

I was searching for a good science fiction read, and I definitely found it. High Couch of Silistra is full of new cultures and creatures to study. I can’t stop thinking about how I really want to meet a hulion, a big cat with wings and a mane. I definitely want to read more of The Silistra quartet and follow Estri on more adventures. If you’re a science fiction lover (especially with a passion for female protagonists), you’ll love this book.

Review- The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko

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The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko by Scott Stambach

 Rating: 4/5 stars

28221009 “’I think the monsters are already in you’.

‘How do I kill the monsters?’

‘I don’t think you need to kill them.’

‘Then what?’

‘I think you invite them. And let them stay. And learn to live with them. Then when you die, they stop being monsters.’”

 -I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review-

 Ivan is a 17 year old boy living in the Mazyr Hospital for Gravely Ill Children. He has lived there his whole life, as he does not know his mother’s name or even his own birthday. Ivan was born without legs and only one arm that bears two fingers and thumb. It is believed that this condition was a result of radiation from a nuclear reactor. Ivan does almost the same thing every day—eat three meals alone and use the TV three hours. He goes to bed at the same time and has a set routine for getting his clothes on in the morning. Ivan believes he has each patient figured out until a girl his age walks in into the hospital. This girl, Polina, has beautiful hair that will soon be gone due to chemotherapy, as she has leukemia and was sentenced to the hospital after both of her parents died. Ivan’s entire world is turned upside down and his daily routine is shattered as he tries to figure out Polina and learn what it’s like to have a real friend and possible love.

This book was great, but it was really, really depressing. The story reads as Ivan’s diary and the language is very raw. Ivan does not sugarcoat his life of a legless boy confined to a hospital full of other ill children. He shares in great detail what it’s like trapped in that building with nurses who don’t care and patients that don’t make any conversation.

I really enjoyed the first quarter of the book because it’s when we really get to know how things work around the hospital and the other characters through Ivan’s voice. He tells us about Dennis, the boy born without a soul. Dennis spends his days rocking in his bed at a steady pace, a pace so steady that Ivan can use it to count time. We also learn about the ginger twins. These twins don’t say a word to each other, or anyone else for that matter, but somehow communicate well enough to do everything at the same time.

Polina enters the story about a 1/3 way through the novel and, although it is a very interesting plot line, I was actually more curious to hear about daily hospital life. I did think that the growing relationship between Ivan and Polina was very cute, but it didn’t grab all of my attention like I was hoping. Still, I was definitely rooting for them and the inevitable end made me very sad (sadder than I already was reading this depressing diary).

From the reviews that I’ve read, I gather that The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko is very similar to The Fault in Our Stars. I haven’t read the latter novel, but I’d say if you enjoy John Green books you’d probably like this one as well. A big thank you to St. Martin’s Press for a copy of this wonderful book! I really enjoyed this read.

Review- Edenborn

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“No one ever proved to me why we’re so fucking great. Why should we be at the top of the food chain? If we die out, some other animal just takes our place. That’s as it should be. Maybe it was our turn to go. But we didn’t. Maybe our existence ruined Nature’s plan.”

3/5 stars

Pandora, Haji, Penny, and their families all live on Earth after a disease called Black Ep killed the last generation of pure humans. Now, everyone left on Earth is formed through cloning or artificial wombs. Many of the adults spend their time researching a cure for Black Ep that may make the planet habitable for natural life forms in the future. These individuals tell their children that they are always only one mutation away from being infected by the disease. What if that one mutation is already in the works? How can the population survive in a world where a plague is one amino acid combination away from killing all of them?

As I try to summarize this book, I’m realizing that I’m not quite sure what it was really about. There were a lot of storylines going on and the book wasn’t long enough to let them properly intertwine and piece together. On the other hand, if it had been much longer, I probably would have just put it down. It wasn’t interesting enough to be more than 350 pages.

Maybe my problem with Edenborn is that I haven’t read it’s prequel, Idlewild. I say maybe because every review I checked before picking up this novel told me that I didn’t have to read the first in the series to know what was happening. I guess I’m just making excuses for a mediocre book.

I don’t have much to say about Edenborn. I was hoping for a great science fiction read with a hint of feminist rhetoric and ended up with a story with great potential that fell short of the mark. A+ idea, C- execution.

 

 

Review- Joe Gould’s Teeth

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Joe Gould’s Teeth by Jill Lepore

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

“Torment had never stayed his pen: Gould was an artist, a bohemian, suffering for his art, suffering for their art, suffering for all art.”

Somewhere around 1918, Joe Gould began recording every conversation he had with other people living in the United States. He wrote in hundreds of composition journals and filled the pages with quotations and paraphrases from his daily encounters and called it the “Oral History”. Gould insisted that publishers could not publish his work until after he died, as it was not meant for the current generation. In the late 1940’s, Gould was admitted to a hospital that virtually ceased his writing. After that, the journals stopped. After Gould passed away in 1957, the search for the “Oral History” began. Researchers tried contacting Gould’s friends, relatives, and people mentioned in his surviving letters. The story told in the surviving paperwork falls apart upon fact-checking some of the dates. If there is no trace of the hundreds of journals containing the “Oral History”, is it possible that it never existed at all?

Jill Lepore, thank you for writing the biography that got me out of my reading slump. I rarely read nonfiction, much less biographies, but I am so glad I picked up this book.

What I love about this book is the dual-plot structure between Joe Gould’s history and Lepore’s search for clues about the accuracy of the first plot. She tells Gould’s story as previous researchers have told it, but also voices her questions and rediscovers parts of his life herself. Although others have tackled the debate over the existence of the “Oral History”, Lepore certainly conducts her own research and draws her own conclusions. Interestingly, although Lepore outlines the facts she discovered, she allows the readers to form their own thoughts on the issue as well. Lepore says, “After reading everything about Gould I could possibly get my hands on, here are the facts and the story as I found it; do what you’d like with that”. In my opinion, that makes for the best kind of biography.

I also want to comment on the language of the book. The sentences are structured in a clear and succinct way. I have been deterred from biographies in the past because of the superfluous sentences that make the plot boring. I end up wondering why I’d want to read a biography about someone whose life was plainly uninteresting to me, and set the book down. Lepore has a way of keeping each sentence short enough to continue holding the reader, but concise enough to give the information needed. I wish every biography that I tried reading in the past could be rewritten into this sentence format because I am sure I’d pick them up again.

This was a really great read on a subject and person I knew nothing about beforehand. I’m glad I picked it up off of the NYT nonfiction best seller’s table at my town’s bookstore. It was an impulse buy, but a cherished one.

Review- Super Sad True Love Story

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510jnPKfu5L._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

Rating: 3/5 stars

“‘You don’t understand, Leonard’

The phrase I hate the most in the world. I do understand. Not everything, but a lot. And what I don’t understand, I certainly want to learn more about.”

Leonard, or Lenny, Abramov is a 39 year old business man working to make people live forever. He, himself, is not in perfect physical condition, but he travels around the world in search of good candidates. While in Europe, he meets a beautiful, and much younger, girl named Eunice who captures his heart. He journals about Eunice and invites her to stay with him in New York when they both arrive back in the states. Although very mismatched, the couple finds themselves living together a few weeks later. Through Lenny’s journal entries and Eunice’s chat logs with her friends, these two narrate what a complicated relationship truly looks like.

I picked up this book because I saw my friend reading it for his college English class. He actually told me that he really did not enjoy it, but I wanted to give it a try for myself. I genuinely thought I would like this book more, but it didn’t live up to my expectations.

Super Sad True Love Story reads more like a catalogue of events and feelings than an actual novel. Most of the book is told in the format of Lenny’s journal entries which are, to be honest, really pathetic. He is a really unlikeable character whose only redeeming quality is his ability to somehow always see the good in a girl who treats him poorly. I felt bad for Lenny while reading his pitiful diary entries, but not bad enough to actually like him as a character.

Eunice, too, doesn’t have very many good qualities about her. She plays with the heart of a man who truly wants the best for her, uses her parents for money, and seems to lack general maturity. On top of this, it wasn’t even fun to read from her point of view. I skimmed most of her sections.

I gave this book a lot of patience and wasn’t really rewarded in the end. That being said, I did read all the way through it without being put in a reading slump. The quality of writing and narration was there, but I couldn’t get on board with the characters. I wish I had liked Super Sad True Love Story more.

Review- Divergent

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Divergent by Veronica Roth

Rating: 5/5 stars

Yes, I finally gave into the hype that is the Divergent series. I randomly chose this book out of haste at my local library and took it home without thinking much about it. It has been a long, long time since I got wrapped up in a Young Adult novel, but Divergent definitely grabbed me.

Tris lives in a world that is divided into factions—each faction living off of different morals and specializing in different work. She was born into Abnegation, which honors selflessness and helping others, but feels like she does not share these same qualities with her family. At 16, Tris takes an aptitude test that is supposed to reveal which faction she truly belongs to and grants her eligibility to switch out of Abnegation. Her tests results come back as inconclusive, meaning she scored equally in more than one faction, and she is deemed DIVERGENT. Tris is told that this label is extremely dangerous and she should, under no circumstance, ever reveal her test results. When ceremony day approaches, Tris must decide if she will leave her family in Abnegation, a place where she does not truly belong, or switch into a faction that suits her better. Her heart battles between protecting her parents and staying true to herself.

I had no idea what to expect from this book, which worked to its advantage. I had not seen any of the Divergent movies or read any previous reviews of the series. Going into Divergent blindfolded was a wonderful experience and I truly got to form my own opinions on Roth’s novel.

I loved Tris, I thought she was a great protagonist with a lot of admirable qualities without pushing the “misunderstood teen” character too much. I can imagine teen girls reading Divergent and emulating the willpower and strength of Tris. I love imagining what it would have been like for my younger self to read YA books and predicting how they would have affected me. Divergent definitely would have been a positive influence in my teen years.

I liked the way that Roth incorporated the love interest in this book. The interactions between Tris and this young male were very organic and innocent. Tris learns what it’s really like to be attracted to someone and it takes her by surprise. Re-experiencing the feeling of having a first, major crush was very heartwarming and I think Tris’s emotions stayed very true to that of a real 16 year old girls.

I am so very pleased with this book and very happy that I decided to pick it up at the library. It was a quick, but very entertaining read. I plan on watching the movie sometime soon and (hopefully) moving on to the second book of the series.

Review- Fishbowl

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Fishbowl by Bradley Somer

5146-n3Pb+L._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Rating: 3/5 stars

-I received a an eCopy of this book thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.-

A cheating hunk, a woman in the midst of childbirth, and an agoraphobic, professional phone-sex employee are all seen through the eyes of a goldfish. This goldfish is named Ian and he is falling from his bowl on the 27th floor of an apartment complex. He often forgets that he’s airborne, as goldfish have very short memories. Nonetheless, he gets a glimpse of an eclectic bunch of events and people living in the homes beneath him. Before Ian hits the ground below him, he sees many people who have lived very isolated lives come together as one apartment complex.

This book was okay. I ended up skimming about a quarter of the pages. Despite this, I liked the writing and storylines enough to keep reading and finish the novel. At first, it was a bit confusing to keep track of the very unique and different characters, but about halfway through the novel ,I was immersed in their interwoven lives. I loved seeing the formerly disconnected residents of the apartment complex come together in quite fascinating ways.

I wish I liked this book more. I feel like it had a lot of potential but fell short of the mark. I do give Somer credit for writing a handful of interesting plots in one novel. The execution wasn’t my favorite, but I’m glad I didn’t put this book down. I rarely give books a 3 star rating– I usually either love a book or absolutely hate it. This is definitely an exception to that rule. This book was just okay; that’s the best description I can give it.

For those of you looking to read this book– my favorite storyline was definitely between the building maintenance worker and the ever mysterious Garth. (spoiler alert?) I’m sure Garth looked beautiful in his gown and the two men dancing together made me smile.

May, June, and July Wrap-Up!

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I apologize for not having a picture of all the books I’ve read in the past 3 months. I’m in the process of moving so most of my books are packed away in boxes. I’m excited for them to have a new home on my shelves in about a week or so! Here’s the breakdown of what I’ve been reading (7 physical books, 2 eBooks):

The Star Side of Bird Hill (fiction) – 5/5 stars

A New Orchid Myth (science fiction) – 4.5/5 stars

Ready Player One (science fiction) – 4.5/5 stars

All Inclusive (fiction) – 2/5 stars

The Sirens of Titan (science fiction) – 5/5 stars

The Goldfinch (fiction) – 4.5/5 stars

Defects (YA Fantasy) – 5/5 stars

Do Not Disturb (thriller/erotica) – 4/5 stars

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (YA LGBTQ) – 5/5 stars

Calling All Authors!

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I’ve been thinking of doing an “Author Spotlight” for a while now. I think it would be a cool way to expose myself (and my followers) to new genres and great books! I would do this once a month and feature an author (who contacts me) and one or two of their books, depending on what they send me. I would be open to novels of any length and genre.

If you’re interested in being featured, please send me an email at hedgehogbookreviews@gmail.com with the subject “Author Spotlight” ! Please keep in mind that I greatly prefer physical copies of books over kindle editions. I find that I give more thorough reviews when I can tab and highlight memorable quotes and events. All of my favorite books are full of rainbow sticky tabs! I look forward to hearing from some wonderful authors!