Guest Review: Where Things Come Back, John Corey Whaley

*This review is by my friend Rachel.*
I was seventeen years old when I saw my first dead body.  It wasn't my cousin Oslo’s.  It was a woman who looked to have been around fifty or at least in her late forties.  She didn’t have any visible bullet holes or scratches, cuts, or bruises, so I assumed she had died of some disease or something; her body barely hidden by the thin white sheet as it awaited its placement in the lockers.  The second dead body I ever saw was my cousin Oslo’s.  I recognized his dirty brown shoes immediately as the woman wearing the bright white coat grasped the metallic handle and yanked hard to slide the body out from behind the silvery wall.

“That’s him,” I said to her.


I did this book for my Book Talk, and I really enjoyed it. It’s about Cullen Witter, whose brother Gabriel goes missing, and at the same time a man comes to their town, claiming to have seen the extinct Lazarus woodpecker in this town.  Basically, the book shows the combination of these two events on Cullen’s life.  The really interesting thing about this book, however, is that it also followed the seemingly unrelated subplot of Cabot Searcy, who becomes obsessed with an obscure book in the Bible when his college roommate commits suicide.  It doesn’t seem like much of a plot, but it is.  The author wove the two plots together really well, so you slowly saw how they were connected, and by the end it was glaringly obvious.  The ending did leave a lot of questions unanswered, but it did so in a satisfying way; it could have gone on longer, but I at least finished it satisfied.

Except for the occasional chapter, the book was narrated from Cullen’s perspective, and the author played with his mind really interestingly.  He would make whole chapters about a dream Cullen had, but you never knew it was a dream until zombies started eating each other.  These weren't really my favorite chapters to read: I prefer the more literal.  But it was really cool to see how the author could convey so much of what Cullen is feeling without (almost) ever saying it directly.  In general, all the characters seemed really real, and they acted like real humans would act, rather than how we would think real humans would act.  For example, if my brother went missing, I would expect myself to be upset constantly.  But in reality, shocking as it seems, there would be some times when I would forget that he was gone, or at least act normally. Cullen did this, and many other things that contributed to that sense of reality.

Overall, this was a really great read, if not necessarily the “best” book out there.

228 pages, 4.5 stars.

The Most Beautiful Walk in the World: A Pedestrian in Paris, John Baxter

Every day, heading down rue de l'Odeon toward Cafe Danton on the corner of boulevard Saint-Germain or toward the market on rue Buci, I pass them. The walkers. 


The Most Beautiful Walk in the World is another great book about Paris. John Baxter, author of various other books about Paris, talks about not only his own experiences in various places in Paris, but also those of famous people before him who have stopped there. This book was similar to The Flaneur, actually mentioning it once, and of course touching on the subject of the flaneur, the walker. But it focused on the sixth arrondissement of Paris, the neighborhood where Baxter lives and where he likes to walk the most. This was actually pretty great, because when I went to Paris two summers ago, my family and I stayed in the sixth arrondissement, so I knew some of the places he was referring to. And also, the sixth arrondissement sounds the most interesting. It has the Luxembourg Gardens, a beautiful park, it's right across the Seine from the Louvre, and it has a market as well. The Most Beautiful Walk in the World also has a very elegant cover.


Read The Most Beautiful Walk in the World:

• if you like books about Paris
• if you like walking
• if you like history

285 pages.

Very Good! I would recommend this book!

The Aviary, Kathleen O'Dell

As a young child, Clara Dooley had felt that the Glendoveer mansion contained the whole world. George Glendoveer had been a famous magician and illusionist, and he and his wife, Cenelia, filled their home with curiosities from around the globe. Even the construction of the house owed its beauty to the arts and crafts of far-flung places: intricately carved woodwork with birds and flowers from Germany, Italian murals that made the ceilings into night skies scattered with stars, glowing Persian carpets int he shades of peacock feathers. 


"Twelve-year-old Clara Dooley has spent her whole life in the Glendoveer mansion, where her mother is a servant to the kind and elderly matron of the house. Clara has never known another home. In fact, she's confined to the grand estate due to a mysterious heart condition. But it's a comfortable life, and if it weren't for the creepy squawking birds in the aviary out back, a completely peaceful one too. But once old Mrs. Glendoveer passes away, Clara comes to learn many dark secrets about the family. The Glendoveers suffered a horrific tragedy: their children were kidnapped, then drowned. And their father George Glendoveer, a famous magician and illusionist, stood accused until his death. As Clara digs deeper and deeper into the terrifying events, the five birds in the aviary seem to be trying to tell her something. And Clara comes to wonder: what is their true identity? Clara sets out to solve a decades-old murder mystery—and in doing so, unlocks a secret in her own life, too. Kathleen O'Dell deftly weaves magic, secret identities, evil villians, unlikely heroes, and the wonder of friendship into a mystery adventure with all the charm of an old fashioned classic."


Though The Aviary starts out kind of slowly, it eventually picks up and becomes quite interesting and suspenseful. I loved the birds in the story, especially the honeycreeper, but also the cockatoo. They really helped Clara in her investigations. I love books set in creepy old houses with mysterious pasts! I was drawn into the mystery and really wanted to find out how it would all end. But Clara's mom seemed really kind of too overprotective; she never let Clara go anywhere. Even though she has a heart condition, she still needs to go outside and get to know other girls, and I found it unrealistic just how protective she was. I mean really. It was interesting though how *SPOILER ALERT* the birds were actually the missing children transformed.

Read The Aviary:

• if you like mysteries
• if you like birds (hint hint McKenzie)
• if you are looking for a suspenseful book
• if you like dark fantasy
• if you like books with ghosts

337 pages.

Very Good! I would recommend this book!

Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading From Home, Susan Hill

It began like this. I went to the shelves on the landing to look for a book I knew was there. It was not. But plenty of others were and among them I noticed at least a dozen I realized I had never read.


One day, Susan Hill, a British writer was searching for an elusive book, when she noticed that there were tons of books on her shelf that she had never read before. She decided to spend one year only reading books that she already owned; in other words, no new books. Howard's End is on the Landing not only chronicles what she did, but is mostly taken up with various books: the books she loves and rereads, the books she's been meaning to get around to, and the books that she just can't like. They are all quite interesting to read about, and her writing style was engaging too. Hill also met a lot of famous writers, including Roald Dahl! (So jealous...) And many others too. This was a good book, and I'm glad that I took the time to read it. Hill talked about a lot of writers that I had read before (like Trollope) and I got some good recommendations.

Read Howard's End is on the Landing:

• if you like books about reading and books
• if you are looking for a good book to read (this is not only a good book itself, but also provides lots of recommendations)
• if you liked The Yellow Lighted Bookshop

234 pages.

Very Good! I would recommend this book!

Forgotten Bookmarks: A Bookseller's Collection of Odd Things Lost Between the Pages, Michael Popek

It's happened to all of us: we're reading a book, something interrupts us, and we grab the closest thing at hand to mark our spot. It could be a train ticket, a letter, an advertisement, a photograph, or a four-leaf clover. Eventually the book finds its way into the world-a library, a flea market, other people's bookshelves, or to a used bookstore. But what becomes of those forgotten bookmarks? What stories could they tell? By day, Michael Popek works in his family's used bookstore. By night, he's the voyeuristic force behind www.forgottenbookmarks.com, where he shares the weird objects he has found among the stacks at his store. Forgotten Bookmarks is a scrapbook of Popek's most interesting finds. Sure, there are actual bookmarks, but there are also pictures and ticket stubs, old recipes and notes, valentines, unsent letters, four-leaf clovers, and various sordid, heartbreaking, and bizarre keepsakes. Together this collection of lost treasures offers a glimpse into other readers' lives that they never intended for us to see.

That pretty much sums up the book. It was quite an interesting idea for a book, too. I certainly sometimes pick up random cards and use them as bookmarks, so I could relate. Different unfinished stories unfold throughout the book, which is divided into five sections: Photographs; Letters, Cards, and Correspondence; Notes, Poems, Lists, and Other Written Ephemera; Receipts, Invoices, Advertising, and Other Official Documents; and The Old Curiosity Shop: From Four-Leaf Clovers to Razor Blades. Some sections were more interesting than others, but it was fun book to read. The pages were high-quality, and the photographs of the different objects were good. It was also interesting to see what book each object was found in. 

Read Forgotten Bookmarks:

• if you're interested in strange stuff found in books
• if you like old stuff
• if you're looking for an interesting book of photographs and letters

181 pages.

Very Good! I would recommend this book!

The Rose and The Beast: Fairy Tales Retold, Francesca Lia Block

From "Snow": When she was born her mother was so young, still a girl herself, didn't know what to do with her. She screamed and screamed- the child. Her mother sat crying in the garden. The gardener came by to dig up the soil. It was winter. The child was frost-colored. The gardener stood before the cold winter sun, blocking the light with his broad shoulders. The mother looked like a broken rose bush. 


As you can (obviously) tell from the title, this is a book of retold fairy tales by Francesca Lia Block. I love fairy tales, especially with new twists or different endings, so this was the perfect book for me-or so I thought. Block is known for writing dark stories, and these fairy tales are as well. Perhaps a bit too dark. They are very different from the original. Block's writing style is very distinct too. In fact, many of the blurbs on the back of the book commented about Block's language. I'm not sure if I liked it though. Kind of flat. And really, reflecting back, the stories were really grim. And not just in the Grimm sense of the word. Grim. One M. I mean, I know that fairy tales aren't all skipping in meadows filled flowers, and I enjoy reading slightly dark fairy tales, but not this dark. Read Angela   Carter (The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories) if you want some darker fairy tales. Not this.

Read The Rose and The Beast:

• if you like fantasy
• if you like fairy tales
• if you like very dark retellings of fairy tales

229 pages.

Okay book, but it left me wanting more!

Brooklyn: A Novel, Colm Toibin

 Eilis Lacey, sitting at the window of the upstairs living room in the house on Friary Street, noticed her sister walking briskly from work. She watched  Rose crossing the street from sunlight into shade, carrying the new leather handbag that she had bought in Clerys in Dublin in the sale. Rose was wearing a cream-coloured cardigan over her shoulders. Her golf clubs were in the hall; in a few minutes, Eilis knew, someone would call for her and her sister would not return until the summer evening had faded.


Eilis Lacey grew up in a small town in Ireland. A priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor her in America, and she decides to go, leaving her mother and sister behind. Eilis works in a department store, and finds unexpected love in the form of Tony, who loves the Dodgers. He slowly wins her over, but a family tragedy back in Ireland threatens her future.  


I mainly decided to read this book because of the title; I really love New York. This book, however, did not impress me. The characters felt flat and unreal; I barely cared about them. The narration was sort of passive and basically nothing happened. Even when something did, I didn't get too excited about it, because the way it was told was boring. I only finished it because it was fairly short and I thought I might as well to see if it ever picked up. But it didn't

Read Brooklyn:

• if you like books set in Ireland and New York
• if you like historical fiction
• otherwise, just skip it

262 pages.

If the library doesn't have it, don't worry about reading it!