Her Book Self

One of the reasons I love fantasy as a genre is for the mythical creatures.  Unicorns, griffins, minotaurs - I love the imagination of new beasts and monsters and one of my favorites is the Phoenix.  I knew the legend of the bird that dies by immolation and is reborn from its own ashes and of course, I loved how J. K. Rowling used Fawkes the Phoenix as a hero and symbol of hope in the Harry Potter series (most notably in book/movie two: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).

But I was intrigued when I discovered that Hans Christian Andersen had his own story about and titled after The Phoenix Bird (click the link to read the story).  It's a short tale - more akin to the origin type story told in The Ear of Corn by the Brothers Grimm than the usual fairy tale style I've come to associate with Andersen - but I do like it.  If you're not familiar with it, take the time to read it before continuing with this post because my favorite part really is the ending. 

There are a few things that speak to me about this story.  If we take the Phoenix as a symbol for the spirit of creativity and imagination, we see that it has been around since the dawn of creation.  As long as there have been human beings, this spirit has lived among them.  Andersen writes, "The bird flutters round us, swift as light, beauteous in color, charming in song," and one can imagine the natural gift of creativity in the form of a mythical bird swooping through Andersen's pen as this tale was composed.  We can also see that the Phoenix is shown to be universal - belonging to no single land or culture - and with the varied lands described in the story it is clear that the Phoenix "is not the bird of Arabia alone." Andersen ends the story with a lovely tribute to the bird in proclaiming a name for it:
I think this is a fitting conclusion to the simple story because in its essence this piece is much more of a poem than a traditional  tale.  The short length of the work and the vibrant writing speak much more of poetry than of a typical fairy story with a happily ever after ending.  What do you think about Hans Christian Andersen's The Phoenix Bird? 

This post is part of my 2011 Fairy Tale Challenge (2 of 12) and continues the Fairy Tale Fridays meme originally begun by Tif of Tif Talks Books.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this story or any other fairy tale of your choice!  Leave a link in the comments below if you're joining the Fairy Tale Fun this week!

Sometime back in 2006 I discovered the author Jim Butcher and his series The Dresden Files.  I admit I probably would not have given the author or series much of a glance were it not for the setting and premise of an urban fantasy following the adventures of the only wizard listed in Chicago's phone book (I'm a sucker for a local story!).  I took an immediate liking to Butcher's clever plot lines and witty characters and have been pacing myself through the series for the past few years (I read and reviewed the ninth book in the sequence last fall).  For a while now, I've been aware that Jim Butcher has another series out with a decidedly different flavour than The Dresden Files and though the first book has been sitting on my shelf for over a year, I've resisted reading it.  Part of me doubted as to whether or not it could live up to the expectations I had.  Earlier this year though, I took the plunge.

Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher introduces the reader to fifteen-year-old Tavi, who is somewhat of an anomaly in his village due to his lack of furycrafting - the ability to bond with and control an elemental of earth, air, fire, water, wood or metal. Tavi's village soon comes under attack by a barbarian tribe and the boy more than makes up for his strange lack of furies with an excess of resourcefulness and clever wit. Where he could have emerged as a stereotypical pig-boy of a protagonist, he is instead likable and charming - a character for whom the reader can not resist cheering.

True to Jim Butcher's style, the barbarian attack is not even close to the only point of action driving the story. Politics amidst the leaders in the villages (including Tavi's uncle and aunt) have tensions running high and Amara, a woman on assignment from the First Lord of the land becomes embroiled in the drama while trying to sort out treachery and betrayal among her own compatriots. Multiple storylines are woven together brilliantly and Butcher's meticulous details are never extraneous - actions, motives, thoughts, and emotions for the entire cast of characters complement each other seamlessly.

Furies of Calderon is the first in Butcher's Codex Alera series. I loved the worldbuilding in this book as well as the complex character development.  If the subsequent Alera books are as good as the first, I dare say that this is a series with the potential to outshine Butcher's more well-known (and also highly enjoyable) Dresden Files.

I really wish I hadn't waited so long to dive into this series because I was definitely impressed with Furies and it exceeded my expectations.  I may have even waited longer to read this one but my super awesome spouse got me the next two books in the series for Christmas (he frequently feeds my book addiction).  I try to pace myself through series that I really enjoy so I'm giving myself a few weeks before diving into book two but I really hope the next ones are as good as the first!

Do you ever have odd expectations of books only to have them totally surprise you - for good or bad?  Do you ever put off reading a book because you doubt it can be as good as something else you loved by the same author?

Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit, relates another gripping and emotional biography in her latest book Unbroken. Subtitled A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, Hillenbrand's work is exactly that.

Unbroken tells the story of Louis Zamperini. With humble beginnings as a neighborhood troublemaker in Torrance, California, Louis rose to the national spotlight as a runner in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Barely missing a medal, he set his sights on the next Games, but like many, he delayed his dreams in order to serve his country and enlisted in the Armed Forces as a bombardier. His duty turned nightmare when his plane went down and survival on a raft drifting through the Pacific was only a sliver of torment compared to life as a POW in Japan.

Despite horrid and dehumanizing conditions, Zamperini survived, and his story is chronicled along with details of his family and fellow servicemen. Hillenbrand relies on primary sources and unfolds the story with an expert pen. Powerful, amazing, dramatic and inspiring barely scratch the surface of describing Zamperini's journey. I was captivated throughout the book and really enjoyed delving into this biography of an American hero of whom I was previously unfamiliar. This is a story of history and survival, but even more so it is a testimony to the power of the human spirit which in Zamperini's case, through the darkest times, remained Unbroken.

Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is one of the best books I've read in the past decade and has joined the shortlist of my all time favourite novels.  (Don't ask me what else is on that shortlist because it's a very fluid ever-changing answer...)  I blogged a bit about this book in a comparison review a while ago, but I wanted to revisit this work for A Weekend to ReCOVER and compare a few covers that I've seen for it recently.

For those that have read The Book Thief, which cover did your copy have?  Which do you prefer, and what do you think of the others?  If you have not read The Book Thief, which cover most catches your eye?  Would any prompt you to a closer examination in a bookstore, or would any cause you to pass over the book?

I own this novel with the first cover shown (left), and - perhaps because it was my first exposure to the work - it remains my favourite cover.  I think the darker tone corresponds with the serious subject matter, and I like the focus on the domino chain.  It lends an air of anticipation and spotlights a dramatic scene from the story.  That said, I also like the second cover (middle).  For those unfamiliar with The Book Thief, the story is about a little girl, but is narrated by Death.  The image of Death dancing with the girl is a clever one and I think it captures a bit of Zusak's tone in juxtaposing humor with seriousness throughout his writing.  The third cover (right) is the only one with which I'm not too impressed.  I like the image of the lone figure on the snowscape, but I find the blood spots a little disconcerting. For some reason, the cover reminds me more of a horror story than a historical fiction. What do you think?



A Weekend to ReCOVER is a blog meme discussing and analyzing cover art hosted by Her Book Self. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comment section or feel free to join the fun with your own post!  Help yourself to the AWTR badge image at left and leave a link below so I can be sure to check out what covers you are admiring or criticizing this week!

Call it Snowmaggedon, Snowpocalypse, SnO-M-G, or any other type of Blizzaster - whatever cutesy moniker you pin on it did not make it any less of an annoying or inconvenient weather phenomena.  Schools canceled, work canceled and the general advisory was not to leave the house on Wednesday unless absolutely necessary.  And after the necessary shoveling was done (digging or tunneling might be a better word...) staying inside all day really did seem a pleasant option.  Warm clothes, comfy blankets, hot tea, and of course - good books! 

I suppose I have Chicagoland's third largest snowfall in history to thank/blame for my recent reading progress.  Not only did I finish Preston & Child's Fever Dream (a read aloud with my husband), but I made extensive progress through Romancing Miss Brontë by Juliet Gael as well as jumping back into a bit of The Count of Monte Cristo on my Kindle.

Were you home-bound by severe weather recently?  Did you use it as an excuse to get some extra reading done?

photo credits: "Snow Day" by Betty M and "Dude - Where's my car?" by Tatiana A.

With a novel centered around the odd connections that strangers can make online, it's no coincidence that I was thrilled to connect with yet another awesome author online.  Please join me in a big Her Book Self Welcome to Bonnie Rozanski!

*applause, applause*

How did you come up with the idea for your novel Six Clicks Away?

I’d been thinking for some time about how the world is getting smaller; with people increasingly linked to each other in social networks, businesses connected by global links and whole economies dependent on one another.  And it was obvious that practically anything – a rumor, a virus, a financial crisis – could cascade throughout the world in record time. I began reading about computer networks and, specifically, what happens in very highly connected networks. One thing I read about was a winner-takes-all network, where the fittest node suddenly grabs all the links, causing it to develop a star topology, and all the nodes end up connected to a central hub.

I thought immediately of what would happen to Facebook if someone could go beyond the current restraints of 5,000 friends, and get a half a billion friends. Poof! Facebook reconfigures to form a star, and everyone has to go through one person to get to anyone else.

That’s what gave me the idea for the central plot. As for the six degrees of separation idea, it inspired me to write about people in disparate places. I had lived and worked in New York, New Jersey, Seattle, and Toronto, so it was natural to set four of the stories there. I really had fun with that.

The book features a diverse and extensive cast of characters.  Are any of them based on people you know (in real life or online)?

The only character based on a real person is Raj, whom I had read about online.  A mortgage broker much like Raj did, indeed, bilk a lot of people in just the way Raj does, putting the profits into his Bollywood productions and his over-the-top mega-mansion with fountains of elephants spouting water into the air. He had a wife and children he doted on, just as Raj did, but I filled in all the personalities with my imagination, and once I did, they seemed to react as real people would.

I find that most of my characters are concocted of bits and pieces of real people, but very rarely is anyone based on a particular person. Julia, the writer, has a number of my experiences, but even there, her scenes are filtered through my imagination (e.g., the Amazon sequence, which really happened but not in that way and not in a coffee shop.) But Julia is definitely not me, thank God.

Likewise, I had been to the Pike Place Market many times when I worked in Seattle and always loved the bustle and the noise, especially of the fish mongers. But Kevin is very much a made-up character, as is Antara (I read a lot about Bangalore and its call operators.) Same for Matthew and Mabel. To be honest, I don’t know where these characters come from. They more or less write themselves. When I first started writing SIX CLICKS AWAY, I had worried whether I could create a character like Antara, about whom I knew so little. As I began to write her story (or as she wrote herself), however, she became this universal caring character in a sometimes uncaring world, someone who seemed very real to me.

Which character is most like you, or to which one do you most relate?

Gender aside, I think Kevin is the one most like me. He so wants to find his bliss, but family obligations always seem to pull him back to reality.

As an avid Facebook user, I'm often surprised when friends that I know from different circles - schools, jobs, activities - are already connected to each other.  Have you had any similar experiences in the world of social networking?  What's the most random connection you or someone you know has discovered?

Funny you should say that. I don’t believe that any network connection is random. Networks have this deep underlying order and operate according to simple but powerful rules. For instance, there’s the tendency of people to congregate with people they like; and the general rule that people who like you have a greater probability of liking each other. Both of these simple non-random rules, executed over and over, are at work in generating a complex network.

That said, I’m still puzzling over the odds of my meeting my husband at a college mixer.

How long have you been writing professionally?  Tell us a bit about some of your other works.

Uh-oh, I’m already stuck on your question. What is the meaning of “professionally”? The moment I got published? And where does that leave the writers who are self-published?

The fact is I’ve written most of my life. As a child I wrote poetry and short stories. In my mid-twenties I finished my first novel (it shall remain nameless). When it was rejected by Viking, I decided that I needed some life experience before I could produce anything worthwhile. So, I worked in business for quite a few years, raised my son, collecting a few academic degrees along the way. Finally, when I finished my last degree, a MS in Computer Science, I decided that what I really wanted to do was not to go back into computers but to write. That was twelve years ago. But I wasn’t published until six years later, and that was actually the fifth book I had written.

Currently, I have two traditionally published books, BANANA KISS and BORDERLINE, both by Porcupine’s Quill, a small but fine literary press in Ontario, Canada. BANANA KISS is narrated by a young woman with schizophrenia who lives in a psychiatric institution and thinks she is God. The Toronto Globe and Mail called it “powerful, compelling storytelling and a unique reading experience.” It’s also funny, believe it or not.  BORDERLINE, a story about a boy, his autistic brother and a wolf was shortlisted for Foreword's Book of the Year Award in 2008 and received a silver medal at the Independent Publishers' Book Awards in the same year.

I have three other Kindle e-books besides SIX CLICKS AWAY. All have some kind of scientific conundrum at their core as well as a wicked sense of humor.

Y is a sci-fi thriller about what would happen if a microbe infected women of child-bearing age, and in its wake women were to find they were no longer able to give birth to male children. How would society cope in a mostly female world?

RIGHT SIDE TALKING is a psychological thriller about Anna, a young girl with epilepsy who undergoes an operation to sever the connection between the two sides of her brain (this is a real procedure for relieving epilepsy but don’t try it at home!) In the hospital she is then witness to a murder. Unfortunately, her left brain cannot recognize unfamiliar faces, and so is unable to identify the killer. Her right brain can, but is unable to speak. Only by painstakingly spelling out its thoughts in scrabble letters can Anna describe the killer. But then….

TODD THE DREAMER is another psychological thriller about lucid dreaming, the rare state in which a dreamer knows he’s in a dream. This is probably the most surreal of all my books.

What authors would you say have inspired or influenced you?

I’ve always been very eclectic in my literary tastes. I remember when I was growing up, loving Pearl S. Buck, A. J. Cronin, James Hilton and Sinclair Lewis. More contemporary loves are Phillip Roth, Michael Chabon, Anne Patchett and Mordecai Richler. I’m sure they inspired me by their capacity to paint wondrous universes out of what is essentially our own, realistic world.

I also loved anything medical or scientific. I know this is going to surprise you, but the one who actually inspired me most was Michael Crichton. I love science, but up till Jurassic Park, I had rarely seen it incorporated so effectively into contemporary fiction. I think Crichton actually inspired a lot of people, because since the late seventies, there has been an explosion of real science in fiction.

What projects are you currently working on?

You’d be surprised how much time goes into marketing your own books. That’s what I’ve been doing for the past few months.

However, when I am finally done marketing my e-books (if I am ever done marketing my e-books) I’m planning to go back and rewrite book #7, which has yet to see the light of day. The story is based on newspaper reports of zombiish behavior in people who have taken the sleeping drug called Ambien. These people get up in the middle of the night to walk, eat, and drive cars in their sleep. The next day, sometimes finding themselves in jail, they have no memory of what they’ve done. And then (!) there are the patients who wake up after years in a vegetative state – ten minutes after they’ve been given Ambien. You’ve got to admit there’s something intriguing about all this.

Where can we find out more about you and your work?

My Author Central page at Amazon.com:
http://www.amazon.com/Bonnie-Rozanski/e/B001KJ0PFA/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

Porcupine’s Quill for my print books:
BANANA KISS: http://porcupinesquill.ca/bookinfo3.php?index=199
And BORDERLINE: http://porcupinesquill.ca/bookinfo3.php?index=213

Red Adept Annual Indie Awards site where SIX CLICKS AWAY won a 2010 award for top drama: http://redadeptreviews.com/?page_id=4166

I am also a playwright:
http://osureadings.blogspot.com/
http://thecatherine.blogspot.com/2005/02/villagers-new-playwrights-series.html

Thanks so much!  
Six Clicks Away and Bonnie's other works are available now!

Since I seem to be in the mood for confessions, I'll toss out another one.  I'm an internet junkie.  I grew up in a household of technology and mastered PacMan around the same time as cursive writing (as an adult the former may actually be a skill that gains me more compliments).  Comfort with computers and the ease of integrating technology into my life stayed with me and grew throughout my college experience and I still spend (probably a great deal too much) time online.  When I'm not blogging or reading blogs or commenting on blogs; there's a good chance I'm checking email, playing games, popping around facebook, or making edits to my LibraryThing catalog.   I try to keep my internet dependence in check and have resisted getting a smart phone or a Twitter account because I really don't need any more online distractions or addictions in my life, but I am a firm believer that in moderation the convenience of technology making our world smaller really can be a good thing.  This theme was explored in a novel I recently read and enjoyed.

Taking a modern spin on the theory of six degrees of separation - the theory that any two strangers can be linked through six different friends of friends - Bonnie Rozanski's novel Six Clicks Away starts with a New Jersey college student who sets out to become online friends with the Dalai Lama. What starts as a sociology project quickly spirals outward to become a look at the interconnectedness of people around the world.

The story begins with sorority girl Rachel and her geeky classmate Jeremy but as their network expands, the reader meets many endearing characters such as Julia an author in Canada; Kevin an engineer turned fish vendor in Seattle; Antara, a collections agent in India; and multiple others. The lives of these individuals seem to have nothing in common but over the course of the novel their stories impact and affect each other in creative and interesting ways.

I enjoyed the tales that Rozanski wove together in this book. She presents an interesting look at the world of social networking, and "MyFace" - her fictional blend of facebook and MySpace - proves to be a literary mirror that will leave readers considering their own online presence and digital lives. Overall, this is a unique and modern story that raises ideas about how small the large world has become and will make any reader stop and think about from whom they might be Six Clicks Away.

The list of reasons I enjoy blogging is numerous, but high up in rank is the ability to connect with people so far away.  A few months after creating this site, I added a flag tracker (on the right sidebar below recent comments), and I love checking it out every month or so to see where in the world people visiting Her Book Self are located!  In just a few months, I've had hits from almost all 50 states in the USA (where's the love from Idaho?!?) and over 70 other countries (every continent but Antarctica!).  I love that reading and books are universal passions and that the blogosphere really has made the world a slightly smaller place.

I'm curious if other bloggers have had a similar sense of wonder at connecting internationally.  Have you ever been amazed by the site traffic to your blog?  Any Her Book Self readers want to brag about how far away from Illinois they are?

Stay tuned for my author interview with Bonnie Rozanski this week!