The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
“This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it.”
The Night Circus, at its most basic level, is about a challenge that takes place within the confines of a circus. It starts with two gentlemen who make a wager and then train their two students in this game. They are very coy about the details and we are left to take the clues that are dropped throughout the book to deduce what we think it entails. They move to the periphery but are ever present. The story then focuses on the students and the circus. The two students (one male and one female) are bound to compete. They do this using their unique abilities. Overall, the book is about the magical and the love that develops between two formal rivals. A circus is built as the arena in which the competition materializes and people get to enjoy it all over the world as it travels from city to city. We get to learn about the many people involved and how they interact and contribute to the competition. It is a fantasy novel but realistic in nature.
I have heard good things about this book and it did sound like something that was up my alley. It sounded magical, beautiful, and enchanting. When I started reading it, I could see all of it. I was excited to continue as I was intrigued and pulled in right away. The premise was promising and I was roused to continue by how Erin Morgenstern captured my attention. Now, I normally do not like books that take a second person point of view but the author did it right from the very beginning. Let me clarify, the whole book is not second-person, but there are chapters sprinkled throughout that really draw you in and make you feel like you are actually there. I could vividly picture myself walking around and experiencing what was being described. It made me think of those choose-your-own-adventure novels or a fantasy video game which I loved. The visuals that were invoked in my mind were stunning. I wish something like this really existed. There were many characters that were introduced. Each character was unique, and it was pretty easy to know who was being referenced but it did take a few scenes to get there. I really did like a lot of the characters and what they brought to the novel. Despite all those good things, it did take me a little longer than normal to get through this one. It might not have been the right book at the right time for me but I did finish and found some delight in it. It was a very slow and methodically written novel. At first, I didn’t find it boring though as it sounded ethereal and I still had expectations left in me. I didn’t mind the slowness as it was still early in the book and things were building but then excitement or a driving plot never materialized. I was forcing myself to pick it back up to read just a little more to finally finish it. I was hoping for so much more. I wanted a stronger story and I felt let down.
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Tag: slow
Murder By River And Wading Through Molasses
The Current by Tim Johnston
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
The Current is about a “closed” investigation and a current one. They both involve at least 1 woman dying in a river under suspicious circumstances. There are cops, lovers, and family dynamics interspersed amongst the slow march towards a resolution. It starts off with a college road trip back to Minnesota with Caroline and Audrey, who I would say is the main character. This trip felt relatable as I have made many college road trips before. A strong supporting character is Gordon, a father, who is just getting by day by day. A majority of the story takes place in Minnesota, which is where I am from, or Iowa. It was cool to have that relation to a major location and I could connect when the sights and smells of the state were described. There are several tangents that are explored but the investigation takes a backseat to the description of the characters’ lives.
I would not say that this is a heart-pounding thriller or even a regular thriller. It is not a murder mystery or cop procedural. I am not sure how I would classify this book. Tim Johnston is the author and one thing I think he is good at is painting a vivid and unique picture of what is going on. On the road trip, he describes moving “out of cotton country into wheat and then into corn”, which one can trace on a map in their mind. Or describing someone as smelling of “the outdoors, but an outdoors that was much later in the day and colder”. He had some beautiful language and could be quite eloquent but there were many things that annoyed me about this book. One set of grievances was the way it was written. There were plenty of run-on sentences and missing punctuation, mostly when relaying conversations. It could be a technique that he utilized but it didn’t work for me. There was a high percentage of chapters that took me several paragraphs to understand what was happening, who was being talked about, or even when it was taking place. The author used generic pronouns and set no signposts to help guide the reader. He seemed to be obfuscating on purpose. There are many words that I would use to describe his writing style including murky, convoluted, and elusive, to name a few. Another grievance was the lack of urgency or excitement at any point. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was boring, but I was thinking, just get on with it a lot of the time. In general, it was a lot of work to read this book. You had to read every single sentence closely and this just wasn’t something I was expecting or looking for at this time. I was disappointed. To use another analogy, it was like wading through molasses. The first spike of intrigue was over halfway through and then 4o pages from the end I felt a smidgen of tension but even then, it was like wading through warmed up molasses. It also is not wrapped up in a clearly defined bow. Read Reykjavik: A Crime Story or even reread Stieg Larsson instead.
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Bored To Death and Other Queer, Geeky Ways To Die
Board to Death by C.J. Connor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This is about 30-year-old guy who chooses to come back to Utah and help run a board game shop for his father as his father was diagnosed with a medical issue. He is gay and recently divorced. A shop owner neighbor comes into his life as a murder takes place on his doorstep. The murder seems to revolve around an original game that predates Monopoly. There is a small amount of romance and an even smaller amount of mystery. I am not sure how to classify this one. I cannot find a genre to place it in. The book dips it’s toe into a few different classification pools but never takes the plunge. The main character, Ben, annoyed me slightly. I am not a fan of the meek, easily scared, or pitiful literary trope and unfortunately Ben fits this mold. Granted, it is not as strong with him as other characters, but it still applies. There were two quotes that I did enjoy though. “I loved attempting to read Dune. It was so much easier to accomplish than actually finishing it.” I relate as I have attempted several times to get more than 50 pages into that novel. The other I thought was funny and unique was “I’d had a bowl of Thin Mints doused in milk for breakfast, for goodness sakes. You can’t ethically expose the world to yourself when you are in that state of mind.” Sadly, two good quotes do not a good novel make. Ben was not a good sleuth (he just started giving all his own information away at one point) and it felt that he had no impact on moving the story along. I can’t recall of anything he did by himself. It was bland but a very easy read. I did like that it had queer elements though. You can skip Board to Death and play Solitaire instead.
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