Book review: Curioddity by Paul Jenkins

I bought Curioddity from the dollar store because the cover and the summary were intriguing.
Amazon summary:
Will Morgan is a creature of habit―a low-budget insurance detective who walks to and from work with the flow of one-way traffic, and for whom imagination is a thing of the distant past. When a job opportunity enters the frame in the form of the mysterious Mr. Dinsdale―curator of the ever so slightly less-than-impressive Curioddity Museum―Will reluctantly accepts the task of finding a missing box of levity (the opposite of gravity). What he soon learns, however, is that there is another world out there―a world of magic we can only see by learning to un-look at things―and in this world there are people who want to close the Curioddity museum down. With the help of his eccentric new girlfriend Lucy, Will will do everything he can to deliver on his promise to help Mr. Dinsdale keep the Curioddity Museum in business.

Sounds cool, doesn't it? I love books about finding hidden magic and museums, so I was sold. It sat on my bookshelf for a while, then in my mailbox waiting for me to grab and read it during a reference desk shift, until I finally did.

I enjoyed this book, although not quite as much as I thought. It started off boring and depressing, then sped up and because more interesting, just like Will's life. The writing style was clearly trying to be clever and funny, but came off as kind of jerky (the movement, not the adjective form of jerk or the meat), at least until the story picked up and I got caught up in it. The author has definitely read Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, and you see their influence in the most fast-paced, high stakes parts of the books. It's not as good as Adams, of course. There was a running gag that involved Will getting hit on the head with a heavy object again and again, which I did not find funny. I did find the smartphone with the sentient AI amusing, once we got past the tedious "old man yells at technology" bit we inexplicably get despite Will being 32 and not an old man.

Will's dull life is explained by his parents. His mother was a dazzling scientist who taught him about magic and wonder and conspiracy theories (idk) who died? in a physics accident. His grieving father banned all magic, wonder and science and pressured him heavily into living a stable, safe, and predictable life identical to his own. There's the usual "parent's desire for child's safety/a certain profession in order to not lose the child actually pushes child away" thing, but I won't go into it. Surprisingly, Will's mother's "death" isn't solved; perhaps Jenkins has another Curioddity book in the works? It didn't feel like a beginning of a series.

Mr. Dinsdale is the typical kinda crazy kinda wise kooky old man who has a connection with magic or whatever and teaches our hero to see the world differently etc. etc. You get it. Lucy, Will's love interest and girlfriend of all of one (1) date, is basically a manic pixie dream girl who dresses like a hippie, including wearing an oft-mentioned anklet, and says stuff like "groovy!" and "epic fail!", often in the same sentence. Both these statements date the book, and I found them cringy. Her personality basically just consists of her being bubbly and up for anything. This is unsurprising because male authors are notoriously bad at fleshing out female characters, especially love interests. They make them pretty and quirky and then stop there. Given how boring Will is, I don't understand Lucy's attraction to him, especially given his behavior. Such is the mystery of the MPDG/depressed guy's relationship. Lucy's magic/thrift shop and the Curioddity museum have some magical space-time connection that isn't really explained, despite my wishing it would be.

Anyway, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to while away an afternoon. You need a strong tolerance for ~*magic is everywhere if you know where to look*~ type stories, as well as fantasy/science fiction hybrid stories. I liked it but not enough to be sure I'll keep it, since I have such limited shelf space.

Cover notes: I like the cover, although it is definitely for a different book, one much scarier than this one. There are no isolated eyes or eye motifs in this book, and Will never wears a hat or carries an umbrella. I like the colors and font though. The book is new enough that there are no other covers to compare this one to.

Score: 4 out of 5 stars
Read in: early November
From: dollar store
Format: hardcover
Status: giving away probably

Reading update

I had a leisurely dinner at Panera and read two novellas on my nook. They were both diverse fantasy DRM-free ebooks with LGBT characters.

The Water That Falls on You From Nowhere by John Chu
A short story with lovely writing. Kind of magical realism, as water falls from the sky when you tell a lie.

Burning Girls by Veronica Schanoes
Jewish mythology fantasy that is very sad but sooooo good. It's also a fairytale retelling of Rumpelstiltskin (highlight to see the spoiler). I loved this even though it didn't have a happy ending. Go get it, it's still free!

Still slowly making my way through Uppity Women of Medieval Times by Vicki Leon. It's cool and I'm learning about so many kickass ladies from history, but her tone is a bit flippant and gimmicky at times (saying that a politically ambitious Chinese concubine had a rival Shanghaied, for instance. No.). Still recommended.

Roadtrip Reading

My parents and I drove up to the Bay area to see my brother for his birthday this last weekend, and I was able to get some reading in since my parents don't trust my driving and would rather do it themselves. I read:

-Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke: I had actually started this back in like October but stopped reading it because of reasons (length and laziness, mainly. It's the size of a latter Potter). JS&MN is an alternate history of England where magic is possible. It's a story of a prophecy and two magicians and their friends/acquaintances and disagreements and such, all told in the style of Jane Austen (genteel and excellently shade-throwing). It has tons of magical history and stories and footnotes (one of my favorite things in books) and I adored it. 4.99999/5 stars, only because one villain didn't get a harsh enough comeuppance and also one major enchantment should have dissolved when its caster died but whatever. They're going to do a miniseries of it and I can't wait.

-Diary of a Wimpy Kid: After JS&MN I wanted something completely different in tone, plus I had downloaded this from the iBookstore because it was free. It was funny and I can see why it's a kids bestseller. I'd read a later one that was my younger cousin's and found it hilarious, and if this series had come out when my younger brother was a kid he would have eaten them up. 3.5/5 stars, because of character meanness.

-Leave No Stone Unturned (Lexie Starr Series #1) by Jeanne Glidewell: This was the weakest of the bunch. It was a Nook blog Free Fridays pick and the protagonist works in a library, so I downloaded it to my Nook app. Firstly, I was under the impression she was a librarian, and she's not. A part-time library volunteer is not the same thing as a librarian (not knocking them. Library volunteers rock and anyway I used to be one myself). Apart from a key piece of information being discovered while Lexie Starr was helping a patron do research on microfilm of newspapers (do library volunteers even do that?), the library thing was pretty much nonexistent. Deliver on your hook! I was disappointed. Secondly, the writing was just... not good. Tons of telling and little showing, so much clunkiness, Mary Sue-ness, too-perfect and/or too-quirky characters that never really felt like real people, unnecessary details in a misguided attempt to flesh out characters and scenes, et cetera and so on. I would have forgiven the lack of librariana if the writing hadn't been so No. If I'm getting distracted from your story by your ham-fisted writing, you're not doing it right. And the stupid and weird romance thing! I can't even get into it because I could write a whole ranty blog post about it (I'll spare you), but it was just weird and unbelievable and it happened way too fast. The love interest was just too perfect to be true. Also, there was something just really off to me about having one of the main baddies/suspects be a gay tattooed, pierced, drug addicted male stripper with daddy issues. And as half Native American, he was the only person of color in the book! Very negative. Oh yeah, and Lexie immediately starts impersonating officers and exterminators and stuff to get info, and her love interest immediately and without reservations starts doing it with her too! The whole time I'm reading this I'm thinking "this woman is a published author. WHY." And then I felt simultaneously motivated (if she gets published with that kind of writing then I def should be able to) and disillusioned (she sucks and got published and I probably suck less but can't find the nerve to write :/). The mystery was semi-passable, I guess. 1/5 stars.

"Chanson D'Adventure" by C.S. Lewis

I heard in Addison's Walk a bird sing clear
'This year the summer will come true. This year. This year.

'Winds will not strip the blossom from the apple trees
This year, nor want of rain destroy the peas.

'This year time's nature will no more defeat you,
Nor all the promised moments in their passing cheat you.

'This summer will not lead you round and back
To autumn, one year older, by the well-worn track.

'Often deceived, yet open once again your heart,
The gates of good adventure swing apart.

'This time, this time, as all these flowers foretell,
We shall escape the circle and undo the spell.'

I said, 'This might prove truer than a bird can know;
And yet your singing will not make it so.'

This is one of my favorite poems by my favorite author, C.S. Lewis. Not many people know that he wrote poetry. I love this poem because of the sense of hope and expectancy and magic it has; it's perfect for the beginning of summer, and by the time autumn begins I am always one year older (my birthday is August 29). I'm going to try to memorize this poem. Source: The Inklings blog.

Book Review: The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo

Peter Augustus Duchene wants to know if his sister lives. "She lives... an elephant will lead you there," a fortuneteller says, and the boy is not sure whether to hope, to believe differently than what he has been told all his life. In another part of the city, a magician summons an elephant instead of a bouquet of lilies for a noblewoman, and the lives of the boy, the magician, the noblewoman, and some others are forever changed.

I read this book for a paper I wrote on the author, and read it for a second time last night. Like most of DiCamillo's other books, it is sad and beautiful, full of simple and insightful truths about the world and about life, extremely quotable and a bit difficult to properly blurb without giving away the ending. I liked this book very much, although not as much as The Tale of Despereaux or The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, two of my all-time favorites. Everything ended as it should, but my one complaint is that all the fuss was unnecessary: **SPOILER** if they had just thought to ask the midwife where she took Adele, then they could have found her right away. There was not even a proper reason given for not doing so; the midwife wasn't dead or missing, she was just entirely forgotten about except for the fact she took the baby away. Even if they had lost contact with her, any policeman worth his salt would have gotten the idea of looking in all the city's orphanages until a girl whose name and general age was known would be found. The elephant, I am sorry to say, wasn't necessary. The story would have been way less interesting, but it hurt my heart to read of what happened to the elephant and to the poor woman she landed on, and I feel I would have rather they not gone through that and the policeman just think of the practical way of finding a missing child. But then I am not the storyteller, and I suppose the magician and the beggar's dog and the ex-stonecutter wouldn't have gotten to do their heart's desires. So there's that. **END SPOILER**

I would recommend this book and would give it an A-, perhaps. I'm bad at grading books.