Heartsinger by Karlijn Stoffels

I went to Chicago a couple years ago and, at a book event, ran into Karlijn Stoffels and the woman who translated her novel into English. I got a copy of it, a small little book that ended up sitting on my shelf for two years. And now I can't believe I let this one collect even the tiniest bit of dust on its pages. I picked it up because it was short and I needed a small-paged book to go between two long 486475676198734 page books I was reading. Might have hyperbolized that.

But this book was good. It's told from alternating POVs, one being a young boy, Mee, whose deaf parents had died without ever hearing his voice, whose songs made people dance anytime he sang them. After they died, they made people weep. So he traveled the world and was a Singer of Sorrows, playing at funerals. Every time he arrived at a funeral and sang a song for those who had died, the succeeding chapter was the story of each life that went behind that death.

The other perspective was a girl, Mitou, who played the accordion like a boss and brought happiness to everyone who heard it. The opposing use of music, for both grief and joy, was pretty brilliant.

It felt like a slightly morbid fairy tale, which is just the kind of book I love to read. It's such an interesting, different way to tell a story. You find out all these unrelated tales of the past, through Mee's singing, and you'd think that would pull you away from the book because of it's break from the plot, but it made me more connected to it. This book felt long, not because it dragged but because there were so many characters and lives inside of it.

I felt like I had found an ancient book of stories at some abandoned house, a foreign group of tales that were entirely vivid and partially myth. From the woodcutter who was in love with a sailor to the princess who would never look away from her mirror, it broke into both small side stories and one interwoven plot.

I don't reread books a lot, but Heartsinger is one I'll definitely pick up again. Maybe 2358693427 more times.

Things That Roar

Dragons. I'm able to be classified as a nerd because I've read at least five books with dragons in them. From the classics, like Beowulf, where the dragon is evil, to popular YA books like the Inheritance series where dragons are intelligent and people ride them like horses that can talk. Except it's cooler than that. And then I've read books like Firelight, where the main characters are descendants of dragons, half human and half dragon.

And then I watched this show on, I think, Discovery Channel, where they showed how dragons could have been real - the idea that all these cultures depicted the creature in their cave drawings without any supposed way to communicate to each other. And how their whole fire-breathing thing would work. Which means I qualify into uber nerd category.

But dragons are cool.

My friend showed me this video of Maleficent the other day (after talking about the show Once Upon a Time) where she turns into this crazy purple dragon and goes and melts stones and shit. And I had just finished the latest Eragon book, so I was all dragon-minded and thought I'd create some kind of literature guide to dragons because that's what I like to do with my Monday nights, aside from Psych marathons.

So we have three types of dragons, right?

There's the evil kind, the kind that Disney, etc, loves. The kind fairy tales are made of. The evil, giant beast that guards princesses in castles and kills them if they get too close. Like Bowser from Mario. And you don't really realize how messed up that is, until you take a step back and are like - woah, what the heck IS Bowser and what is with the reverse beastiality? Anyway, we've got that kind. Like the previously referenced Beowulf. Slay the dragon, win the prize. (Generally a pretty girl that doesn't know how to escape said castle.)

Then there's the intelligent kind. The mythical kind that can speak and are kind of superior to humans, but they let you ride them anyway. Like in Inheritance. And also like in Never Ending Story except less creepy. I think these are the books for horse lovers who don't have horses. There's something people love about new creatures that only connect with certain humans. Like in Avatar with those bird-things, which is totally my favorite part of that movie and is probably why I like these kinds of books so much.

Then there are the dragons who are human-like, like in Firelight. Also like in that one episode of Supernatural. Dragon blood. I'd make a Charlie Sheen reference, but that's really old now and everyone has moved onto Ryan Gosling which I approve of. But anyway, this is kind of a new trend that's really interesting.

So, bam. Dragons. What fire-breathing books have you read?

Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts

This book is bloody scary. I haven't read an apocalyptic book so realistic and mind-messing since Life as We Knew It, which made me stockpile bottled water in the basement. It kind of reminded me of The Langoliers, Stephen King's short story about monsters that eat the world and leave trails of nothing behind them. In fact, "Nothing" was actually a point of view in this book. Except the langoliers were people. Not zombies, just people gone insanely evil.

It was slightly paranormal in that way, but in every other aspect was very realistic. To a sobering point. I mean, no one was spared in this book. Children, pregnant women, everyone - they all died just as brutally and easily as everybody else. This isn't the kind of book you want to sit down with for a light read. Unless you're me. Because I'm horrible and find something satisfying about reading the world into destruction from my vantage point of a zebra-sheeted bed.

The points of view were interesting - there were several of them, from all over the world, each with a completely different situation. A book with this many point of views can be confusing, but I don't think I've ever seen it work as well as it did in Dark Inside. It's like the reverse of that documentary Life in a Day. Death in a Day. The point of view of several people as they see everyone die. It's pretty morbid.

Anyway, I don't normally quote from books in my discussions, because I'm too lazy to write them down, but I stopped and jotted these because they kind of painted the scenery of the book into perspective:

"I'm just sorry. Sorry that there won't be any more camping trips for kids or rock bands or even new books to read. No more movies or fresh bags of popcorn."

The most horrifying, though - "He missed coffee. The way it used to be so convenient. All he had to do was go into a shop and order up a large or venti or jumbo or whatever fancy word was being used and receive a steaming hot beverage of his choice. Latte. Mocha. Caramel macchiato. Now coffee was pretty much impossible unless they had the option of fire."

Makes you grateful for leather couches and lemonade, right? And - no coffee? :( I really, really had some nightmares about that one.

But really, if you want to get a good picture of this book, listen to "Shankill Butchers" by The Decemberists. And read the lyrics alongside it. I feel like this is the absolute perfect theme song for this book.

Brutal and absolutely nightmare-inducing, it made it on one of my lists. I'm not sure which one, but it's significant enough to be listed somewhere.