American Housewives: Stories by Helen Ellis (audio)

★★★ 1/2

"I fix myself a hot chocolate because it is a gateway drug to reading."

I don't usually read a lot of short story collections, but I kept hearing about this one and it sounded interesting.  The stories usually entertaining and were filled with irony and humor.  Most of the  featured "housewives" were a bit overkill, but they did the trick and had me laughing more than a few times.  I also enjoyed the focus on literary and publishing themes.  Some of my favorite stories included "Hello! Welcome to Book Club," "How to Be a Patron of the Arts" and "My Novel is Brought You to By the Good People at Tampax."  

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

★★★★★

"Sometimes books don't find us until the right time."

"Every word the right one and exactly where it should be.  That's basically the highest compliment I can give.  I'm only sorry it took me so long to read it."

"Why is any one book different from any other book? They are different, A.J. decides, because they are.  We have to look inside may. We have to believe. We agree to be disappointed sometimes so that we can be exhilarated every now and again."

"It's so simple, he thinks. Maya, he wants to say, I have figured it all out.

But his brain won't let him.

The words you can't find, you borrow.

We read to know we're not alone.  We read because we are alone.  We read and we are not alone.  We are not alone.

My life is in these books, he wants to tell her.  Read these and know my heard.

We are not quite novels.

The analogy he is looking for is almost there.

We are not quite short stories.  At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.

In the end, we are collected works."

"We aren't the things we collect, acquire, read.  We are, for as long as we are here, only love.  The things we loved.  The people we loved.  And these, I think these really do live on."

This was a book about books and and love and loss. And people that fall into your life at the most unexpected times and change you in the most unexpected ways.  This was one of those books that I couldn't put down.  I read the first pages and fell in love with the story from the very beginning.  It was one of those books that seemed to have a little bit of everything in it - mystery, romance, literature.  And I loved the incorporation of short stories at the beginning of each chapter.

My daughter was about a month old at the time and, after putting her to bed completely exhausted, I somehow stayed up reading the entire thing - it was so good!  a bit like a Hallmark movie at times, but totally worth it.  Highly recommended for anyone that loves books as much as I do! And so many great quotes!

This book was #7 on my top ten list of 2015.

Eight Girls Taking Pictures by Whitney Otto (audio)

★★

"Later, Jenny would say she seldom knew what she would take a picture of when she picked up a camera, that she only knew once she peered through the viewfinder, as if the photograph had finally found her."

This book was not at all what I was expected.  I guess I thought it would be a novel - but it was actually eight short stories about eight different girls who were photographers in the late 1900's to 1980's.  The research was excellent (from what I could tell) and the writing rather good in some parts, but I guess this book just wasn't for me.

My main issue with the book was that all of the eight characters seemed exactly the same.  One of the stories might have been a great stand alone short-story, but after reading a few, I couldn't really tell one apart from another.  They all seemed like the same person, but in a different time period and slightly (and I mean slightly...) different circumstances.  Many this was the author intention?  Either way, it got annoying after awhile.  It also was way to feminist for me.  All of the girls had major conflict between their photography careers and their family/love interest.  Being set in the time period that it was, I understand there was a real battle here (you couldn't usually be a famous photographer and a wife/mother at the same time), but I felt like each character made the same choice.  It was annoying.  The books only saving grace was the reference to different characters through out the stories - espeically at the end reference to Cymbeline (the first women's story).  I felt like this book could have been great, but it just wasn't.

Clockwork Fairy Tales: A Collection of Steampunk Fables by Stephen L. Antczak (audio)

★★★ 1/2

" 'Not my job to judge, boy.' Baba Yaga filled and fit the pipe again.  'But I do observe that its difficult to escape familiar patterns.  When you live your life with cruel words, you look for people to give them to you.  When you escape and evil stepmother, you take an uncaring bride.  When your father throws you out, you love someone who won't love you back.  And to keep yourself in cruelty, you're willing to risk head and hands on the mayors side board.  Keep the pattern going. Hm.' "

Short stories are hard to review.  I found myself really enjoying some of the stories, but others not so much. This collection combines classic fairy-tales with steampunk.  I found the incorporate of steampunk elements in the stories to be really interesting and I'm always up for fairy-tales.  My first introduction to the "steampunk genre" was last year when I read Clockwork Angels by Cassandra Clare.  I had to do a bit of research because I knew practically nothing about it - definitely a unique genre!  My favorite stories from the collection included La Valse, Fair Vasyl, You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens, and The Mechanical Wings.

I've always been really interested in fairy-tales and re-tellings of them.  I am currently reading the Barnes and Noble edition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairy-tales - and I have Brother's Grimm waiting on my dresser.  Since I listened to the audio book, I had a hard time finding a complete list for the fairy-tales.  Here's what I came up with:

La Valse by K.W. Jeter - based on The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen

Fair Vasyl by Stephen Harper - based on Vasilisa the Beautiful by Alexander Afanasyev and tales of Baby Yaga

The Hollow Hounds by Kat Richardson - based on The Tinderbox by Hans Christian Andersen

The Kings of Mount Golden by Paul Di Filippo - based on The King of the Golden Mountain by The Brothers Grimm

You Will Attend Until Beauty Awakens by Jay Lake - based on Sleeping Beauty by Charles Perrault with an adaptation of Little Briar Rose by The Brothers Grimm

Mose and the Automatic Fireman by Nancy A. Collins - based on legends of Mose the Fireboy

The Clockwork Suit by G.K. Hayes - based on The Emperor's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen

The Steampiper, the Stovepiper, and the Pied Piper of New Hamelin, Texas by Gregory Nicoll - based on legends of the Pied Piper

The Mechanical Wings by Pip Ballantine - based on The Wild Swans by Hans Christian Andersen

The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien (audio)

★★★★★

"They carried the sky.  The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity."

"A true war story is never moral.  It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done.  If a story seems moral, do not believe it.  If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, of if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible life.  There is not rectitude whatsoever.  There is no virtue.  As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."

Goodreads description: "They carried malaria tablets, love letters, 28-pound mine detectors, dope, illustrated bibles, each other. And if they made it home alive, they carried unrelenting images of a nightmarish war that history is only beginning to absorb. Since its first publication, The Things They Carried has become an unparalleled Vietnam testament, a classic work of American literature, and a profound study of men at war that illuminates the capacity, and the limits, of the human heart and soul."

This book was extremely well-written and very powerful.  I listened to the audio book in less than four days and it drew me in from the beginning.  I loved Tim O'Brien's narrative writing style and how the book presented different stories from the same platoon of soldiers in the Vietnam War.  The fact that the stories jumped back and forth between pre-war, war, and post-war made the stories even more intriguing.  I've been meaning to read this book for awhile and I'm so glad I did.  Plus it's my fiance's favorite book and he doesn't read - that has to count for something, right?

This book was #9 on my top ten list of 2014.