The Host

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

Little, Brown & Company, 2008
hardcover - 619 pages

recommended - with reservations

Synopsis from cover:

Melanie Stryder refuses to fade away. Our world has been invaded by an unseen enemy. Humans become hosts for these invaders, their minds taken over while their bodies remain intact and continue their lives apparently unchanged. Most of humanity has succumbed.

When Melanie, one of the few remaining "wild" humans, is captured, she is certain it is her end. Wanderer, the invading "soul" who has been given Melanie's body, was warned about the challenges of living inside a human: the overwhelming emotions, the glut of senses, the too vivid memories. But there was one difficulty Wanderer didn't expect: the former tenant of her body refusing to relinquish possession of her mind.

Wanderer probes Melanie's thoughts, hoping to discover the whereabouts of the remaining human resistance. Instead, Melanie fills Wanderer's mind with visions of the man Melanie loves - Jared, a human who still lives in hiding. Unable to separate herself from her body's desires, Wanderer begins to yearns for a man she's been tasked with exposing. When outside forces make Wanderer and Melanie unwilling allies, they set off to search for the man they both love."

I have not read anything by Stephenie Meyer before this and do not plan to read anything else by her.

It's not that The Host is bad, but it certainly isn't breaking any new ground. Many previous books have explored what it is to be human. "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" stories are a common theme and abundant in science fiction. I enjoy a good alien invasion body snatching story (see Scott Sigler's series starting with Infected) as much as other science fiction enthusiasts. I actually thought I was going to enjoy The Host at the beginning, when it still appeared to be following a science fiction theme, but then it turned into a weird love story, and, well, that was just too much.

This should be classified as a YA book. It's supposed to be Meyer's first book for an adult audience, but it certainly reads like a YA novel. The writing and language is simple, the plot is very linear, there is no complex development of several storylines. Actually, I'm glad I read The Host after The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games is a far better book in comparison. It's not that The Host is bad, I will recommend it, but it just isn't living up to all the hype. After the beginning, the story slows down to a snails pace. I'm quite certain that Meyer didn't need most of the 619 pages in order to cover the persistence of love theme. It is an easy book to read, though, so you can whip through those pages quickly. Science fiction fans might want to avoid this one or be forewarned that it is more love story than alien invasion.

Oh, and the ending stinks.

Recommended for those who like tame love stories and can handle a little tiny bit of science fiction.

Edited to add:
My daughter, in college, liked The Host and would highly recommend it. I've asked her, when she has time (she's taking summer classes) to write up her more positive review. Look for that soon. Additionally, we're going to start the Twilight books and maybe continue dual reviews.

Quotes:

"The Healer's name was Fords Deep Waters.

Because he was a soul, by nature he was all things good: compassionate, patient, honest, virtuous, and full of love. Anxiety was an unusual emotion for Fords Deep Waters." opening

" 'This soul was especially picked for the assignment,' Darren said soothingly. 'She is exceptional among our kind - braver than most. Her lives speak for themselves. I think she would volunteer, if it were possible to ask her.' " pg. 4

"The soul shone in the brilliant lights of the operating room, brighter than the reflective silver instrument in his hand. Like a living ribbon, she twisted and rippled, stretching, happy to be free of the cryotank. Her thin, feathery attachments, nearly a thousand of them, billowed softly like pale silver hair. Though they were all lovely, this one seemed particularly graceful to Fords Deep Waters." pg. 6

" I knew it would begin with the end, and the end would look like death to these eyes. I had been warned.

Not these eyes. My eyes. Mine. This was me now. The language I found myself using was odd, but it made sense. Choppy, boxy, blind, and linear. Impossibly crippled in comparison to many I'd used, yet still it managed to find fluidity and expression. Sometimes beauty. My language now. My native tongue.

With the truest instinct of my kind, I'd bound myself securely into the body's center of thought, twined myself inescapably into its every breath and reflex until it was no longer a separate entity. It was me.

Not the body, my body. " pg. 9

"But there were whispers of this: of human hosts so strong that the souls were forced to abandon them. Hosts whose minds could not be completely suppressed. Souls who took on the personality of the body, rather than the other way around. Stories. Wild rumors. Madness.

But that seemed almost to be the Healer's accusation....

I dismissed the thought. The more likely meaning of his censure was the distaste most of us felt for the Seeker's Calling. Who would choose a life of conflict and pursuit? Who would be attracted to the chore of tracking down unwilling hosts and capturing them?" pg. 19

"I know what they will realize when they return, the monsters who look like a nice couple in their early fifties. They will know exactly what I am, and the search will begin at once. pg. 32

"It would be nice to be alone again. To have my mind to myself. This world was very pleasant in so many novel ways, and it would be wonderful to be able to appreciate it without the distractions of an angry, displaced nonentity who should have better sense than to linger unwanted this way." pg. 48

The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Scholastic Press, 2008

hardcover - 374 pages.

Young Adult novel, ages 12 and up.

Very Highly Recommended

Synopsis

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister's place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before - and survival, for her, is second nature....

This is a dystopian YA novel where the society forces chosen teens from the outlying districts to fight to the death in a televised game show. There have been numerous recommendations for The Hunger Games, and I agree with those assessments. Some adult readers could quibble that this plot has been done before, and that Collins didn't provide many in-depth details on the society, setting, or the cameras, which is all true, but I still felt this was a very successful YA book. Since it is told from the point of view of Katniss, a teenager from one of the more oppressed districts, I believe that she doesn't know all the societal details or much more information about the setting than she is sharing. It might have been nice to know how the cameras worked, but I can accept the fact that Katniss knows they are there and so does the reader, without an explanation. At the very beginning I thought the simple reading level would start to frustrate me, and it briefly did, until I was so caught up in the story that I forgot all about it, a fact that also recommends the book. As it is, I felt The Hunger Games was a very successful novel, and I'm looking forward to book two, Catching Fire. Very Highly Recommended, probably for ages 14 and up

Quotes:

"When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping." opening paragraph

"Even though trespassing in the woods is illegal and poaching carries the severest of penalties, more people would risk it if they had weapons. But most are not bold enough to venture out with just a knife. My bow is a rarity, crafted by my father along with a few others that I keep well hidden in the woods, carefully wrapped in waterproof covers. My father could have made good money selling them, but if the officials found out he would have been publicly executed for inciting a rebellion." pg. 5

"But here’s the catch. Say you are poor and starving as we were. You can opt to add your name more times in exchange for tesserae. Each tessera is worth a meager year’s supply of grain and oil for one person. You may do this for each of your family members as well. So, at the age of twelve, I had my name entered four times. Once, because I had to, and three times for tesserae for grain and oil for myself, Prim, and my mother. In fact, every year I have needed to do this. And the entries are cumulative. So now, at the age of sixteen, my name will be in the reaping twenty times. Gale, who is eighteen and has been either helping or single-handedly feeding a family of five for seven years, will have his name in forty-two times." pg. 13

"Just as the town clock strikes two, the mayor steps up to the podium and begins to read. It’s the same story every year. He tells of the history of Panem, the country that rose up out of the ashes of a place that was once called North America. He lists 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. The result was Panem, a shining Capitol ringed by thirteen districts, which brought peace and prosperity to its citizens. Then came the Dark Days, the uprising of the districts against the Capitol. Twelve were defeated, the thirteenth obliterated. The Treaty of Treason gave us the new laws to guarantee peace and, as our yearly reminder that the Dark Days must never be repeated, it gave us the Hunger Games." pg. 18

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins. pg. 18

"To the everlasting credit of the people of District 12, not one person claps. Not even the ones holding betting slips, the ones who are usually beyond caring. Possibly because they know me from the Hob, or knew my father, or have encountered Prim, who no one can help loving. So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong." pg. 23-24

Hipee and the Cash Register

Hipee was always meant to grow up and become the high powered executive and professional bargain shopper she is today. When she was young there was a toy that totally captured her imagination. It was a pink cash register. It may have been a Tom Thumb as in the picture.

Oh how Hipee loved her pink cash register! She could ring up items on it all day, selling you things, and making (fake) change. She was working on her sales patter and on fostering good interdepartmental relationships even when she was a child. She was always a cheerful cashier and encouraged you to buy more. If your fake money had all been spent, she would open up that pink cash register and give you more.

The oddest thing about her cash register obsession, and it was an obsession, was the noise she made to accompany adding purchases up on the register. It was sort of a low “eerrrrrrrr” that turned into a higher pitched “uhh” at the end. Eerrrrrrrr-uhh. The clicking of the keys on the register wasn’t enough. She had to make the noise too, after every keystroke. “Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.”

“Oh, corn is on sale today!”
“Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.”
“What a nice jar of pickles!”
“Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.”
“And that Truly Scruptious doll is a great deal!”
“Eerrrrrrrr-uhh. Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.”
“Will that be all today, m’am?
“Eerrrrrrrr-uhh, eerrrrrrrr-uhh, eerrrrrrrr-uhh.”
“The total is $215.”
“Thank you and please come again!”

The unspoken part of “please come again” was “immediately” since when Hipee was at her register, she was in her element. She was in the zone. You were required to shop until you drop at Hipee’s store.

I suppose kids make a beeping noise to imitate scanning purchases now. I’m not sure exactly how Hipee’s noise imitated the cash registers found back then. It seems like it was more of an old adding machine noise. That aside, the real burning question in my mind is does Hipee still make her “eerrrrrrrr-uhh” noise now, even if just in her head, when she’s using a calculator, or doing other high powered executive type stuff involving money? “Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.” Does she do it in her head when paying bills? “Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.” Is it lurking at the back of her thoughts when making purchases at a store. “Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.” Or am I the only one haunted by this sound effect? “Eerrrrrrrr-uhh.”

The Third Pandemic

The Third Pandemic by Pierre Ouellette was originally published in 1996. My mass market paperback copy has 403 pages. The Third Pandemic is an excellent example of a book that could easily have been outdated a few years after publication but the author, Ouellette, was prescient enough to write a good book with some staying power. There were a few little facts that dated the book, such as a brief mention that the internet was dependent on the phone system (pg. 302), but certainly not enough to not recommend the book. Obviously, the subject is relevant today, even to the relatively brief mention of the media doing special reports of the outbreak, only for a good reason in this case. The characters weren't especially well developed - there were several of them, including the bacteria, and maybe a little too much jumping from one character to the next at the beginning - but all in all it was an enjoyable book. Recommended

Synopsis from back cover:

The disease starts out like a cold - and soon turns deadly. It is caused by a highly communicable, wildly aggressive bacteria that is immune to all know antibiotics, it will kill sixty percent of the global population within one year... At this point it is just a theory - a brilliant, highly credible bit of research by California scientist Dr. Elaine Wilkes. Then, a world away, a bizarre confluence of events makes it real. As the fatal epidemic races toward America's shores, communications crumble, the dead pile up, and the law of the streets takes over. In the midst of the madness.... a psychopathic genius readies the final, stunning blow.

Quotes:

"The metal detector screeched nastily as Philip Paris passed through the electronic security portal. The last thing he expected was that the power would still be on here." opening

"The tribe went by the name of Salmonella, a form of bacteria legendary for stalking the poultry of the world. But this particular tribe had recently endured a horrific battle against a devious chemical called tetracycline, which crippled, shriveled, and decimated their number." pg. 7

"Some time back, he had made the right connections and worked his way into the Virtual Reality Surgery Center out of Stanford. He knew the jargon, he knew the medicine, and he studied each procedure with great care before he participated." pg. 24

" 'I got a little sick,' she whispered. 'Then I got a little sick again. And again.'

Paris went into full alert. she had that stare, that terrible stare. He'd seen it many times on the street, with gunshot and accident victims." pg. 31

"There's been five more cases since her E. coli. all the same strain. The lab reports are still coming in. The public health people are already on it." pg. 33

"The world had now come out of a pleasant fifty-year slumber, when infectious diseases seemed flat on their backs, and awakened to find them making an insidious comeback." pg. 47

The Year of Magical Thinking

The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion was originally published in 2006 and was the winner of the National Book Award for Nonfiction. My paperback copy has 227 pages. This is a highly personal account of author Didion's attempt to cope with the grief following the death of her husband while their daughter was extremely ill. The Year of Magical Thinking was highly recommended by many people after it was published. I wanted to appreciate this book and my heart aches for Didion, but reading this book sometimes made me feel alienated, like I was reading a personal journal, not a published book. Sometimes the names and details included made it feel like Didion was trying to show their place among the intellectual illuminati. I'll have to admit that I found no encouraging message in The Year of Magical Thinking that would help others I know deal with their grief and would not recommend this book to anyone grieving the loss of a loved one. A great part of the reason for this is that Didion doesn't have the spiritual strength and support found in deeply held religious beliefs. A deep and abiding faith in something greater than yourself would have served Didion well, along with some grief therapy.
So-so for me; Recommended by many

Library Journal Synopsis:

On December 30, 2003, Didion witnessed the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne, from a massive coronary in their living room. The couple had just returned home after visiting their daughter, Quintana, who had been hospitalized and placed on life support several days earlier, diagnosed with a severe case of septic shock. Several weeks later, their daughter recovered, only to collapse two months later from a massive hematoma that required emergency brain surgery and an arduous recovery. (Quintana Roo Dunne Michael died on August 26, 2005.) This work is both a memoir of Didion's family life and a meditation chronicling the course of her grief. Throughout this account she describes her attempts to study grief, reading extensively on the topic because "information was control." While the events and emotions disclosed are tragic and uncomfortable, the author's description of her relationship with her husband and daughter lend beauty to the tragedy. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information

Quotes:

"Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

The question of self-pity." opening

"It was in fact the ordinary nature of everything preceding the event that prevented me from truly believing it had happened, absorbing it, incorporating it, getting past it. I recognize now that there was nothing unusual in this: confronted with sudden disaster we all focus on how unremarkable the circumstances were in which the unthinkable occurred, the clear blue sky from which the plane fell, the routine errand that ended on the shoulder of the road with the car in flames, the swings where the children were playing as usual when the rattlesnake struck from the ivy." pg. 4

"It is now, as I begin to write this, the afternoon of October 4, 2004.

Nine months and approximately five days ago, at approximately nine o'clock on the evening of December 30, 2003, my husband, John Gregory Dunne, appeared to (or did) experience, at the table where he and I had just sat down to dinner in the living room of our apartment in New York, a sudden massive coronary event that caused his death. Our only child, Quintana, had been for the previous five nights unconscious in an intensive care unit at Beth Israel Medical Center's Singer Division, at that time a hospital on East End Avenue (it closed in august 2004) more commonly known as 'Beth Israel North' or 'the old Doctor's Hospital,' where what had seemed a case of December flu sufficiently severe to take her to an emergency room on Christmas morning had exploded into pneumonia and septic shock. This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself." pg. 6-7

"I needed to be alone so that he could come back.

This was the beginning of my year of magical thinking." pg. 33

"I realized that I had never believed in the words I had learned as a child in order to be confirmed as an Episcopalian: I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting, amen.

I did not believe in the resurrection of the body.

Nor did Teresa Kean, Parlance, Emmett McClure, Jack Broderick, Maurice Dodd, the four people in the car, Charles Buckles, Percy Darrow, or Walden McClure.

Nor had my Catholic husband.

I imagined this way of thinking to be clarifying, but in point of fact it was so muddled as to contradict even itself.

I did not believe in the resurrection of the body but I did believe that given the right circumstances he would come back." pgs. 149-150

These Granite Islands

These Granite Islands by Sarah Stonich was originally published in 2001. My hardcover copy has 310 pages. These Granite Islands recounts the memories of a dying ninety-nine year old woman, Isobel Howard, and, more specifically, the questions she still has about a friend she made in the summer of 1936. Because this is written as if a dying woman is remembering, the story is not completely linear at all times. It also shifts from the past to the present. I found these shifts were easy to follow and, in fact, added to the story, made it feel more authentic. I will have to say that remembering a specific friendship from one summer in such detail so many years later does seem a bit incongruous, however, I can accept that the mystery surrounding it at the end is what made it memorable and she could have been recounting the details in her mind for years. Stonich writes beautifully, which added to the story. Highly Recommended

Synopsis from cover:

"These Granite Islands is an arresting first novel about a woman who, on her deathbed, recalls the haunting and fateful summer of 1936, a summer that forever changed her life.... Isobel has been wife, mother, hatmaker. At the end of her long life she is simply herself, with one last story to tell her only surviving child. She picks up the threads of a mystery that has shadowed her for sixty years and recalls her brief but unforgettable friendship with an extraordinary woman. During one long-ago summer she witnesses a passionate and dangerous love affair that tests her loyalty and challenges her definitions of what is proper. This summer becomes the prism to refract the essence of Isobel's life. When it dissolves in a haunting tragedy, Isobel is left to assess her future and her own marriage and, finally, to ponder the risk of loving someone wholly. An intimate and gripping story of a friendship, a portrait of a marriage, and a meditation on the tragedy of loss..."

Quotes:

"They worked side by side through the warm days, and in the evenings they traveled the fringes of town to the reedy shore, walking arm in arm the way women no longer walk." first sentence

"A tear fell then to the pebbly sand, where it was taken by the lazy tongue of surf. One drop of a woman's sorrow or happiness pulled away, absorbed into the grey song of a glacial lake." pg. 4

"The summer began with the island, and the island began with Christmas of the winter before. Church bells heralded Christmas, and so in a way rang in the existence of the island. Isobel remembered easily now, clear as the carillon resounding from the bell tower at Our Lady of the Lake on a snowy afternoon.
On Christmas Eve Victor came home, not with gifts for their children, but with three peppermint candy canes." pg. 5

"By the third day, Isobel was nearly herself. She'd grown accustomed to being alive; she even felt resolve, a near optimism about continuing on. As she took in the room's false cheer of yellow wallpaper and orange plastic chairs, she remembered the fleeting moments of her stroke." pgs. 18-19

"Strange how you know of something all your life and only find at the end there has been a better word for it all along. The syllables bumped pleasantly against her dentures as she read aloud, 'Tintinnabulation: The sound of the pealing of bells.' " pg. 29

"she woke early to find the sun not yet risen and the house perfectly quiet. She lay motionless next to her husband, the deep silence revealing a jewel within her cache of memory. she had only to reach up and wrap her hands around the glad weight of it.

Had it been there all this time?" pg. 30

On this Memorable Birthday...

When I turned forty my Dad called, wished me a happy fortieth birthday, and asked if turning forty was bothering me. After hearing my mumbling non-answer, he said, ”It didn’t bother me either.”

Now to be entirely fair to him, there are very few people with whom I would immediately share my true feelings. I could have the roof of the house leaking and the basement full of water and if, after answering the phone I was promptly asked by someone how things were going, I’d be most likely say, “Well…OK, I guess.” Over the years I’ve developed a slightly hesitancy to share on the phone what is honestly going on in my life. It is a learned behavior that, combined with my upbringing, has resulted in a measure of doubt that the caller really cares merging with a cautious Midwest reluctance to admit that things are going pretty darn bad right now, I’m maybe even worse off than you, and I might have to run if the water gets higher. After we’ve talked for awhile and you have aired all your grievances, then I might admit that my feet are wet, I’m having some problems, and may have to go.

What this means is that I’m a great friend to call and unload all your problems on because chances are I might never get around to telling you about my problems. As you can imagine, this has made for some interesting exchanges. On the one hand, I am a great listener; on the other hand, after telling me all their woes sometimes people don’t always want to listen to my problems or feelings, should I decide to share them.

I learned this extreme hesitancy several years ago. Before this I was relatively normal on the phone, although always a bit reluctant to share everything forthwith. I’ll always remember what happened when someone who I would have said was a friend called me up to bitterly complain about someone else’s opinion on some issue. She had, apparently, completely forgotten that I was the one who had originally taken the offending position when talking to her. It was a lesson learned.

So, on this, the day of my 50th birthday, I do believe I’m not answering my phone. Let’s all just skip the long phone calls talking about how you are feeling and what you are doing. Please try to understand and allow me this one day to preempt those calls about you with this simple message:
YES, IT BOTHERS ME VERY MUCH.
Thank you for listening.