A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotsen

When one thinks of post-WWI England, that mental image does not generally include Russian countesses.

Yet that's just what makes A Countess Below Stairs so very charming: Anna Grazinsky, a Russian countess who fled during the Russian Revolution, has come to England as a refugee and must work to support her widowed mother while her younger brother attends boarding school.

If I say much more about the plot, I'll probably spoil it, so let me recount the highs and lows of the novel.

The best part of A Countess Below Stairs is probably Ibbotsen's depiction of the English and Russian nobility. She explains what Anna's life is like before the revolution: charmed, full of seemingly limitless riches and friends. In Russia, Anna lives like a princess in the home of Count Grazinsky and his wife.

Ibbotsen also masterfully depicts the life in the home of an English noble after World War I. Mersham, the manor in which Anna finds employment, is the home of a young earl who recently inherited after his father and brother both died. The servants, however, are the most convincing, particularly the uptight Mr. Proom.

Though it is marketed as a romance, A Countess Below Stairs focuses much more on the relationship between the charming Anna and the rest of the staff at Mersham. Anna's sweetness and her eternal optimism wins over nearly everyone - including the earl, the neighbor girl, and the crotchety old lady living near the stables.

This charming YA novel is not for everyone - in fact, many more cynical readers may find it too sugary-sweet for their tastes. But for those looking for a fairy tale, an escape, or something akin to Ella Enchanted, Ibbotsen's A Countess Below Stairs may be the right book for you.

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

One of my favorite things in the world is history - the study of the past and its interpretation. In years past I've enjoyed historical fiction, particularly Ann Rinaldi. She has a way with American history that made it tolerable for me to endure the American Revolution.

The Devil in the White City is a historical study on the Chicago World's Exposition in 1893. The most interesting thing about it is that it reads like a novel, but is almost entirely fact.

Amazingly, the Chicago's World Fair connected a plethora of innovators and inventions. It made me sit back and think about how the United States, and the world, has been changed by the Fair. The standard for a building's electric circuiting is an alternating current, used by the Fair because the company that developed AC presented a better deal than the one that developed the direct current.

The Ferris Wheel was developed as a rival to the Eiffel Tower (Americans of the 1890's would be thrilled to know that over a hundred years later, there are Ferris Wheels at nearly every fair across the country and overseas).

American architecture was also influenced by the Fair's design - a controversial topic amongst architects, but a clear sign of the strength of the Fair's impression on the country. Among those that worked on the Fair was the architectural landscape artist Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York City. Mentioned briefly is a carpenter whose son, Walt, went on to create animated masterpieces possibly influenced by the Chicago World's Exposition.

Honestly, I am not a fan of American history. It doesn't seem rich enough, mostly because we only have had two hundred years, as opposed to two thousand, to learn from. However, in those two hundred years there have been a few historic events that have made me proud to be an American, and after reading Larson's book, the World's Exposition has become one of them for me. It was a remarkable feat of architecture in such a short period of time and left a lasting impression on the world. During its time, the Fair also unwittingly helped to stoke the labor union movement.

The buildings of the Fair were all designed in the classical style, with columns and domes, all finished in staff, a material that dried hard as rock. The buildings were then spray-painted (more of a prototype, but still the first instance in which paint was applied using a spray nozzle) a blinding white that impressed and amazed visitors to the Fair. These huge buildings housed exhibits from across the country, showing the innovation of America at the turn of the century.

I am also not a huge fan of amusement park rides, from roller coasters to those spinny tea cup things. The first time on a Ferris Wheel, I was terrified out of my mind. Those cars are tiny, holding three people at most, and have only a locking lap rail to hold you in. However, I agreed to give it another go, and another, until it was about six in the evening. It was then, at my church's festival, where the Ferris Wheel was situated in a corner overlooking the grounds, that I saw the magic of the ride. As the sun was setting, the festival began lighting up; white light bulbs went on along the food and game booths, and brightly colored bulbs flashed along the different rides. From so the top of the Ferris Wheel, you could see all the way to the church building, across the green where the rides and games were situated and the black-top where the big tent was set up. It was a view I'll never forget. I don't remember who I was with or what I was wearing or what day it was, but I'll always remember what the fairgrounds look like at sunset from dozens of feet in the sky, thanks to the Chicago's World Exposition.

The book is essentially broken down into two perspectives: that of Daniel Burnham, the main architect in charge of the Fair, and a man who went by the name H. H. Holmes, who was one of the first psychopathic serial killers acknowledged in America. It gave two interesting views on the Fair: those building it up, to make a name for Chicago and the nation across the globe, and those who took advantage of the Fair, from pick-pockets to con artists, to this especially psychotic man that lured women to his hotel to murder them.

There is reference in the book to the names given to the Fair and to Chicago at the time: the White City, where the gargantuan buildings dazzled visitors, and the Black City, where people got lost, where murders occurred, where the streets were dirty and there were unsavory folk of every walk of life.

This book is bursting with interesting facts and frightening mystery. I've learned a lot about architecture and its history in America, including how they built skyscrapers in Chicago, where the soil is apparently very difficult to work with. It has sparked an interest in architecture for me, from not only an historical standpoint but also from an appreciative standpoint.

What I read about the serial killer Holmes has made me think about what motivates people to do things; for him, it seemed, it was more about being in control than it was about becoming powerful or gaining a lot of money. His mind was obsessed with controlling and possessing things - people - and he was good at it.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in learning a little about America's past and the Fair that changed the world.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

It's not often these days that I get to sit down to read a book for entertainment purposes, so when I began "The Hunger Games" two days ago, I was set and determined to get it finished. It didn't take much to push myself, as I got sucked into the story fairly quickly.

I'll be honest - I really am not a fan of the dystopic. I didn't like "The City of Ember," "The Road" really freaked me out, and don't even get me started on "The Giver." There's something about the unfamiliar and depressing, and the things that are completely the fault of the human race that makes me lose faith for awhile. "The Road" is about the aftermath of what is surmised to be a gigantic nuclear warhead that took out most of North America. I've taken World History and seen "Dr. Strangelove," and the Cold War was just the beginning of the human race having the ability to destroy the modern world as we know it. Distopic fiction looks at how society is deconstructed after a man-made disaster.

I'm not sure why I like "The Hunger Games" so much. It might be the protagonist, a hard-working young woman from the poorest District who takes her younger sister's place in the Games because of her love and need to protect her.

Katniss Everdeen is the hardened girl from District 12, the coal mining district on the outskirts of civilization in what used to be the Appalachian Mountains. She goes out to hunt in the forests near the Seam where she lives to provide for her family and to sell on the black market. She is resourceful and kind to those she cares about.

As readers, we feel for Katniss because even though she lives in a different sort of world than us, she faces the same challenges. There are loads of expectations thrown on her when she steps in as tribute, but even before this she has responsibility in her family situation. She hunts illegally to support her depressed mother and younger sister, the three of them left to make it on their own after Katniss' father was killed in a mine explosion. It's something that people in America face today, as has been witnessed in the 5 April mine explosion in West Virginia killed at least 29 workers. Collins was able to pull current problems like poverty and work-related accidents that affect families and weave them into her story to reinforce that socially the world can indeed come to be like that if we let it.

It's probably the writing style and storyline that does it for me. It makes you fully aware of the state of Katniss' life in District Twelve, and follows her through the Hunger Games. The country Panem, where the story is set, had once been North America, but due to "the disasters, the droughts, the storms, the fires, the encroaching seas that swallowed up so much of the land, the brutal war for what little sustenance remained" has dramatically altered the countryside. We aren't told if these are the result of human exploitation of the earth, speeding up the natural processes, but it seems likely, what with the speed at which we as an industrial power strip the earth of its resources. We've already seen in the Dust Bowl what kind of damage can be done by not replenishing what we take. Cutting down trees that block the wind and squeezing all of the nutrients and minerals out of soil causes land to erode and make floods and infertile land. By depleting resources and exploiting the earth's surface, we invite natural disasters and the resulting fatalities.

Besides her careful deconstruction and rebuilding of society in this new North America, Collins also brings in different ways to look at different situations and emotions, and I think that's where I really began to enjoy the book. It's doom and gloom, but not insofar as other dystopic novels. In "The Hunger Games" there is hope, hidden in the games of cutthroat survival. We have faith in Katniss and the other District 12 tribute, Peeta, and that their plan will work. We hope, while we read, that she can not only survive the Hunger Games, but her own emotions and internal struggle.

Try this book if you liked: The Protector of the Small quartet by Tamora Pierce.

Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Have you ever pondered the mysteries of the Hylaean Theoric World? Ever try to puzzle out a solution to the Teglon?

Probably not.

In fact, you probably have no idea what the Hylaean Theoric World even is, let alone a Teglon. Both are important, however, in Arbre, the world of Neal Stephenson's Anathem.

The novel is set up as an almost journal-like account of the life of Fraa Erasmas, an avout in the Concent of Saunt Edhar. None of the terms are probably familiar to you, but may remind you of terms that are. Here's a hint: translated into Earth-English, the description of Erasmas may be something like Friar Erasmas, a devout in the Convent of Saint Edhar.

Although Erasmas is decidedly not religious: concents are places not of religious devotion, but a devotion of a different sort. Avout in concents like Saunt Edhar's spend their lives studying logic, theory, and other sciences while remaining separate from the Saecular world, emerging only at Apert.

While I could go on and on about the world of Anathem, it would likely take up the same whopping 937 pages as Stephenson's novel, so I will refrain and instead move on to the most important aspect of this novel: the Hylaean Theoric World and Complex Protism.

The Hylaean Theoric World is what sets the world of the theoric avout apart from the world of the religious Bazians and Deolaters. It stems from an ancient story about a man who looked into the sky and saw an isoceles triangle. The Deolaters thought it a vision of a higher world, a deity, while the Hylaeans believed that it was a vision of an "ideal" triangle: not the representation humans create, but the actual ideal version.

This line of thinking bred the avout.

But this idea is not the only thing that drives the plot of Anathem. There is also Protism: the thought that information flows from the Hylaean Theoric World, or from the ideal, to Arbre, or to the less-than-ideal. Complex Protism, Erasmas learns, includes other worlds beyond the basic HTW and Arbre. Complex Protism eventually becomes incredibly important in the events that unfold in the novel - but I won't spoil the surprise.

Other things in Anathem are also important - for example, Erasmas' relationship to his mentor, Fraa Orolo, shapes much of the novel. His friends are also important not only to Erasmas' development as a character, but also to the development of the plot.

Still, the sheer length of Anathem - 890 pages of plot, plus 47 pages of Glossary and Calcas - may be daunting to the average reader, many of whom struggled through the relatively short and simple Harry Potter novels.

My conclusion? The dedicated reader of science fiction, philosophy, or logic will find Anathem an intense read that stretches the mind and the beliefs of anyone who might pick it up.

Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison

I must say, Once Dead, Twice Shy by Kim Harrison was a bit of a disappointment. With the basic premise (dead girl who created a fake body with a stolen amulet tries to navigate normal life while light and dark reapers flit about her world) and the pretty cover (black and white photo, cool hair and eye make-up on the girl), I was expecting a much more exciting book. However, I had to practically force myself to plow my way through 232 pages of bland writing, under-developed characters, and a decidedly unharrowing plot.

One interesting thing that the book brings to the table is the idea that light is good and dark is bad. Most generally take that assumption and run with it, generally not questioning it. Even in its ridiculous abruptness, the story questions our idea of right and wrong, along with the argument over fate versus free will. Fascinatingly enough, the author chucks this idea in amongst the unimaginative dialogue and definitely-not-the-seat-of-your-pants action.

The protagonist is flat, with very little going on with her besides, of course, being dead, and "just wanting to be myself." Though, as the reading public, there's not a lot to tell us what brand of "me" this girl is. We know she likes purple hair and photography. Greatttt. There's not much else to work with.

Now, the plot was interesting, which is why I finished the book, faulty characters, boring writing, and all. One topic I've been drawn to in recent years is angels; one of my favorite books deals with the idea of floating angels and their role in desperate people's lives (but that's a whole other blog). I had originally been drawn to this book based on the idea of a corporeal body created by an amulet for a dead person and how cool that would be. But the reason I kept reading was the angels. Warrior angels, to be precise, which is probably one of the most bad-ass concepts ever. Avenging angels, epic swords, flowing cloaks, and curses on their enemies - it makes for a really exciting addition to a story. Not to mention that they're un-sexual beings (almost the opposite of hermaphrodites: they don't have a gender at all). They are also doing the work of God in the most direct manner, battling the actual root of the problem - evil in the form of actual demons and fallen angels.

But this book used a different idea of warrior angels, and while Harrison is perfectly at liberty to do that, as it's fiction, I was disappointed in the lack of distinction and attention paid to the angels, called "reapers." The particular brand of angel shown is much like humans but they are supposed to be the fearsome warrior angels who fight over the lives and souls of humans on earth. I don't know if she just didn't make them sound exciting enough, but I was disappointed because of how central of a role they played in the plot, but the best she could do was say they all looked like models, they were so pretty.

Moral of the story: it's a boring book that brings up some interesting points for about five seconds, before spiraling into its blandness once again.