Book #34 -- Water for Elephants

Uhhhhhh, woah. This book was aaaaaamazin'.

Sarah Gruen's Water for Elephants has been immensely popular since is publication nearly six years ago. I'm not sure why I ignored it for so long, but earlier this year, when it was turned into a movie (starring none other than Twilight's Robert Pattinson -- gag), I definitely know why I continued to ignore it. Just didn't seem like my cup of tea.

I recently found out that because I'm an Amazon Prime member, I can take advantage of the new Kindle Owner's Lending Library and "borrow" some select titles for free. I was browsing through the titles, and this one was the first one I came across that I recognized. I clicked to borrow it, mostly just to see how the whole lending thing worked. I had access to it for ten days, so I thought, "Why not give it a try?" So. Glad. I did.

The story is about Jacob Jankowski, a young student in veterinary school during the Depression. After a family tragedy that forces him to miss his final exams at school, Jacob takes off and jumps a train to try to escape his shambled life. He finds himself on board with the Benzini Brothers' Most Spectacular Show On Earth. At first, the shady circus workers he encounters on the train car are threatening -- in the days of the Depression, circuses were suffering, and free-loaders looking for work weren't welcome. When they find out that Jacob has a background as a vet, they realize his talent could come in handy with the show's exotic animals. Jacob land himself a job travelling with the show and soon learns about the strange (and often horrifying) things that go on behind the scenes of a train-circus in the 1930's. He also finds himself falling for Marlena, the beauty that performs with Liberty Horses as one of the show's biggest highlights. She also happens to be married to one of the easily-angered circus bosses. As more and more circuses around the country are closing due to the economy, things get heated, and eventually the Benzini Brothers' train takes a turn for the worst.

This is such a beautiful book. Gruen is a genius, and she absolutely did her research. One of my favorite parts of this book was reading an interview with the author at the end where she talks about how deeply she delved into circus archives from the era and describing that many of the events that take place in the novel -- the ones that are either so strange or so gut-wrenchingly horrid that you can't believe they're true -- actually did happen on train circuses in America. That really adds a lot to the emotion of the book, and I kind of wish I had known it before I read it.

The novel alternates between chapters told from Jacob's perspective while he was on the circus train, and chapters told from Jacob's perspective as a 90-something-year-old man in a nursing home. It's really just... awesome. I want to say so much, but I want you to read it so you find out for yourself.

And I suppose I'll watch the movie soon. Robert Pattinson (and Reese Witherspoon, too... bleh!) make me a bit nervous, but I found out that one of the deliciously evil characters is played by Christoph Waltz, who plays one of my favorite villains ever in Inglourious Basterds, so that alone is enough for me. We'll see how it holds up.

Read from December 22, 2011 to December 30, 2011.

5/5 Stars

--C

Special Post: Name Change, Kindle Lending, Book Club, Etc.

Happy New Year, folks!

You may notice that we changed the name of our blog. I hate to spring that on you, but honestly, "Sixty Books in 2010" just doesn't seem to fit anymore. Out with the old, in with the new. Since we recently started a book club with some friends and family (mentioned in this post), we decided to change the name of the blog to the name of the book club -- Descripted. As promised, we'll still review the books we read outside of the book club, but this just helps streamline things a bit. The URL for the blog will stay the same (http://sixtybooks.blogspot.com). Even though it's not actually sixty books anymore, our followers won't have to change their bookmarks if we keep the old URL.

I thought I'd mention a few things about Kindle, since I do so much of my reading on my Kindle and Kindle applications. First of all, just in case you aren't aware, there are a few options for accessing Kindle content even if you don't actually own a Kindle. You can download the (free!) Kindle application to various cell phones (including iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices) and the iPad. You can also download (free!) Kindle reading software on your PC or Mac desktop or laptop computers. Click here to download any of these. (I personally have the app on my Droid Eris phone and my computer, as well as owning a Kindle.) Any of these apps gives you full access to the Kindle store, both free and paid content.

Here's my favorite part -- For example, let's say I read 22% of a book on my Kindle, and I find myself waiting in line at the post office (happens more than you might think, since I work across the street from the post office and seem to constantly have something to mail). Let's say I just walked across the street from work without my bag, so I don't have my Kindle. I have my phone in my pocket, though. I take out my phone, open my Kindle app, and choose "Sync to furthest read location." Within seconds, it automatically takes me to where I left off on my Kindle -- 22% into the book. Suddenly the fifteen minutes in line at the post office isn't so bad... I get to be that obnoxious hipster who never puts her phone away. Oh well.

Kindle has also just announced the lending option, which I was really excited about until I did a little more research. I'm now only marginally excited, but I guess it's better than nothing. Kindle lending is basically exactly what it sounds like. If you have purchased a book on Kindle (or any of the Kindle apps), you can "lend" it to another person who uses Kindle for ten days. Most books are available to lend, although not all of them are. (None of the free ones are, but why would you lend a free book anyway?) This is a free service, but it does have its downsides. While your friend has the book you "loaned" them, you don't have access to it. After the ten days is up, you have your book back automatically, and your friend loses access. That's not really a big deal, because chances are, if I loaned you something, I've already read it, and ten days without it won't kill me.

The real problem is that it's only for ten days, and after those ten days, the book cannot be re-loaned to that person or anyone else. Basically you can lend each book one time and only one time. So, if you lend a book to a friend (let's say, Life by Keith Richards, which is, oh, I don't know, 584853948 pages long) and that person can't finish it all in ten days. Too bad, guess you'll have to buy the book to finish it. Or, if you lend a book to Friend A, and they totally love it and say, "You should loan it to Friend B, too!" Too bad, Friend B is left out of the sharing party. But I guess you can't really blame Amazon for that. If you let everyone lend willy nilly, eventually there'd be a big enough community of Kindle users who were willing to share, no one would ever need to buy a book again. The other devices similar to Kindle (eg. the Nook) have lending systems that work very much the same way. So, having the option to lend at all is better than nothing, but I guess it's not as amazing as I thought. You can go here to read more about Kindle lending and learn how to loan your books.

Lastly, I'd like to give y'all a heads up that the first book the Descripted Book Club will read for 2011 (chosen by a vote from all of our members) is Life by Keith Richards. Don't ask me how that happened. Be looking out for reviews by both Derrick and me sometime this month... probably towards the end of the month, since apparently this thing is longer than the Bible.

Hope y'all are having a wonderful beginning to 2011!

--C