Top Ten Tuesday

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted for us book blogger types by the Broke and the Bookish. They provide a topic, and all of us participants post our answers on our blogs and we hop around checking out one another’s answers! This week’s topic is: 

Top Ten Books I was Forced to Read

1. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
Not only was Chopin’s novel well known for its reputation by being banned by a number of states when it was first released in 1899 for inappropriate themes.  Not only that but Chopin explored the wonderful awakening of a woman’s sexuality in the strict Creole society at that time. 

2. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Possible unreliable narrator, tragic love story, ghosts….what more could you want?
3. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
I’m still not necessarily a huge fan of the vignette writing style, but it was impossible to not be intrigued and moved by Cisneros stories. 

4. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Ah, the Modern Prometheus.  This book is full of fascinating themes other than biology and the ability of man to play God.  The plethora of Daddy Issues and the author inserting herself  (M.S.) into the text as the recepient of Robert Walton’s letters that tell the story.  

5. Animal Farm by George Orwell
Animals exemplifying Communism? Is there any other way to learn it? 

6. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie
This book I just really loved because it scared the crap out of me.  But it was well written and kept me on my toes the whole time! 

7. Atonement by Ian McEwan
As heartbreaking as this text is, it really is a testament to modern storytelling and the use of an unreliable narrator. 

8. American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
This is such an excellent novel, nay, Graphic Novel on the subject of modern racism. 

9. King Lear by William Shakespeare
Most definitely my favorite of Shakespeare’s tragedies and the literary home of my favorite Villian, Edmund. 

10. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick
Middle grade is most definitely not normally an age that I enjoy in fiction, but Selznick really brought tears to my eyes with the phenominal story telling and the excellent graphics. Plus, that train coming out of the building? Crazy, right? 

What were some of your favorite novels that you were “forced” to read?!

Waiting on Wednesday!

Every week Breaking the Spine hosts a book meme where all of us book bloggers can get together and share the books we are desperately waiting to be released! 

This week I’m waiting on…

Release Date: January 8, 2013

Imagine a modern spin on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein where a young couple’s undying love and the grief of a father pushed beyond sanity could spell the destruction of them all.

A string of suspicious deaths near a small Michigan town ends with a fall that claims the life of Emma Gentry’s boyfriend, Daniel. Emma is broken, a hollow shell mechanically moving through her days. She and Daniel had been made for each other, complete only when they were together. Now she restlessly wanders the town in the late Fall gloom, haunting the cemetery and its white-marbled tombs, feeling Daniel everywhere, his spectre in the moonlight and the fog.

When she encounters newcomer Alex Franks, only son of a renowned widowed surgeon, she’s intrigued despite herself. He’s an enigma, melting into shadows, preferring to keep to himself. But he is as drawn to her as she is to him. He is strangely… familiar. From the way he knows how to open her locker when it sticks, to the nickname she shared only with Daniel, even his hazel eyes with brown flecks are just like Daniel’s.

The closer they become, though, the more something inside her screams there’s something very wrong with Alex Franks. And when Emma stumbles across a grotesque and terrifying menagerie of mangled but living animals within the walls of the Franks’ estate, creatures she surely knows must have died from their injuries, she knows.

Book Review: Such Wicked Intent by Kenneth Oppel

When does obsession become madness?

Tragedy has forced sixteen-year-old Victor Frankenstein to swear off alchemy forever. He burns the Dark Library. He vows he will never dabble in the dark sciences again—just as he vows he will no longer covet Elizabeth, his brother’s betrothed.

If only these things were not so tempting.

When he and Elizabeth discover a portal into the spirit world, they cannot resist. Together with Victor’s twin, Konrad, and their friend Henry, the four venture into a place of infinite possibilities where power and passion reign. But as they search for the knowledge to raise the dead, they unknowingly unlock a darkness from which they may never return.

Victor Frankenstein is recounting his story to Henry Clerval in Mary Shelley’s original novel, Frankenstein when he states, “It was the secrets of heaven and earth that I desired to learn; and whether it was the outward substance of things or the inner spirit of nature and the mysterious soul of man that occupied me, still my inquiries were directed to the metaphysical, or in its highest sense, the physical secrets of the world.”

It is this quote that I believe helped Oppel really embody the vigorous character of Victor Frankenstein as a teenager, and this second installment in “The Apprenticeship of Victor Frankenstein” pushes the character to limits that helps readers understand his adult counterpart and his later actions in his tries to reanimate dead tissue.

Such Wicked Intent picks up a few weeks after the end of This Dark Endeavor with the Frankensteins, Elizabeth, and Henry mourning the loss of Victor’s twin brother Konrad.  Victor is still conflicted over the failure of the Elixir of Life and watches the books from the Dark Library burn in a scene that reminded me a lot of the one with the Nazi book burning in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  But, a metal book-shaped object escaped the wrath of the flames.

This book is the instigator for the adventure that follows through the novel.  Victor discovers an entrance to the spirit world where he is able to see his brother Konrad and obtain an obscene amount of knowledge (including how to turn lead to gold).  I wonder if the information he obtained while in the spirit world will be the reason he turns to studying science…because when we meet Victor in Shelley’s novel, he is a student. 

Oppel did a great job of continuing the characterization of Elizabeth, and I believe that the experiences in this novel will really help her become the character described by Shelley as, “She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.” In addition, the cover really forshadows the eventual marriage between the two characters.

Something to look for in Such Wicked Intent, an allusion to the famous image of Victor Frankenstein and the creature speeding along the ice with dog sleds.

Overall, I think I liked Such Wicked Intent more than This Dark Endeavor and think it deserves 5 Bards.

Book Review: This Dark Endeavor by Kenneth Oppel

Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures…until the day their adventures turn all too real. They stumble upon The Dark Library, and secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are discovered. Father forbids that they ever enter the room again, but this only peaks Victor’s curiosity more.

When Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is not be satisfied with the various doctors his parents have called in to help. He is drawn back to The Dark Library where he uncovers an ancient formula for the Elixir of Life. Elizabeth, Henry, and Victor immediately set out to find assistance in a man who was once known for his alchemical works to help create the formula. Determination and the unthinkable outcome of losing his brother spur Victor on in the quest for the three ingredients that will save Konrads life. After scaling the highest trees in the Strumwald, diving into the deepest lake caves, and sacrificing one’s own body part, the three fearless friends risk their lives to save another.


First things first:

Yep, it’s true.  Not a literary character that one expects to develop a crush on, that is for sure.  Granted, in Shelley’s original novel, Frankenstein is a very troubled man.  Oppel’s novel, This Dark Endeavor, strives to examine and possibly explain the development of Frankenstein’s interest in alchemy and the desire to re-animate dead tissue.  

The inclusion of Elizabeth in the novel (who was Victor’s cousin and wife in the original story) as a close friend of Victor and his fictional twin, Konrad, was brilliant.  Not only does it provide a better back story for Elizabeth, but it begins to explain how she grows up to become somewhat despondent as an adult.  

While the original story is told through a series of letters from Henry (who ALSO appears in this novel as a close family friend) to a MWS (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley), Oppel’s take is told from Victor’s point of view.  This provides the reader with a special view into his mind and how the obsession with the intricacies of  dark science began.  Oppel does use those established characters in This Dark Endeavor, but the family Frankenstein really provides a backbone to the story, especially the juxtaposition between Konrad and Victor.  Despite the fact that they are twins, they are somewhat compared (in my mind) as sort of a good twin and a bad twin.  Konrad has all the charm and intelligence…while Victor has the sarcastic fire and ambition.  

Even Oppel’s prose was indicative of an intense study of Frankenstein. 

I could go on for pages about how much I adored this book, and how true to Shelley’s original characters were their younger counterparts in This Dark Endeavor…but I won’t bore you with all the intricate details that I loved.

The novel does end on a sort-of cliffhanger, and I am excited to read Such Wicked Intent that will be released in August!

4.5 Bards.

Now Reading: This Dark Endeavor

 

Victor and Konrad are the twin brothers Frankenstein. They are nearly inseparable. Growing up, their lives are filled with imaginary adventures…until the day their adventures turn all too real. They stumble upon The Dark Library, and secret books of alchemy and ancient remedies are discovered. Father forbids that they ever enter the room again, but this only peaks Victor’s curiosity more. When Konrad falls gravely ill, Victor is not be satisfied with the various doctors his parents have called in to help. He is drawn back to The Dark Library where he uncovers an ancient formula for the Elixir of Life.

Elizabeth, Henry, and Victor immediately set out to find assistance in a man who was once known for his alchemical works to help create the formula. Determination and the unthinkable outcome of losing his brother spur Victor on in the quest for the three ingredients that will save Konrads life. After scaling the highest trees in the Strumwald, diving into the deepest lake caves, and sacrificing one’s own body part, the three fearless friends risk their lives to save another