REVIEW: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
Publication Year: 1964
Genre: Middle Grade, Fantasy
Series: Charlie Bucket #1
Awards: NA
Format: Audio, Electronic from Library
Narrator: Eric Idle

I am in the embarrassing position of not having read Roald Dahl as a child.  In order to correct this fact I was drawn to pick up Charlie and the Chocolate Factory because the 1971 movie based on the book, starring Gene Wilder, is one of my favorite movies of all time.  In a way and unfortunately, this was a real detriment to my appreciation of the book which I'll touch on later, but full due must be given to Dahl as this is his imagination and it is wondrous. 

For those unaware, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory tells the story of a poor boy, Charlie Bucket living with his mother, father and four grandparents.  The Buckets live in deepest poverty and have only a little cabbage soup and bread to eat each day.  As such, Charlie and all his family share a special fascination with the mysterious and wonderful chocolate factory that operates in their town.  When the proprietor of this factory, Willy Wonka, opens his doors for the first time in many years to five lucky children who find golden tickets hidden in his candy bars, it fires the hope and imagination of all the Buckets but especially little Charlie. It seems impossible but Charlie does find a golden ticket and he and his Grandpa Joe head off to tour the wondrous world of Willy Wonka. 

So I should have called this post, 'Thoughts on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' but I'm afraid that may have made it sound more profound than it is:0).  The thing is I am finding it exceedingly difficult to actually rate and review the book. If I'm honest it was a 3 out of 5 as far as my reading experience goes but that is not really its fault.  It's a wonderful book, imaginative and unique with some of the most memorable child trope characters ever created: Augustus Gloop, Veruca Salt, Mike TV, and Violet Beauregard.  The fates of these children is also inventive and instructive.  The Oompa Loompas are weird and wonderful in all their judgmental industriousness.  Willy Wonka and his factory are like nothing I've ever encountered.  It's a perfect little story, obviously meant for 8-11 year olds or thereabouts. 

The problem is I was a little bored listening to it.  I've watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory countless times in my life and it sticks quite exactly to the book with a few notable exceptions.  And those exceptions, I think actually improve upon the book.  Adding the Slugworth spying angle to the movie, aka the test, creates dramatic tension that doesn't exist in the book at all.  At the end of the book, Willy Wonka just realizes Charlie's the only one left and everything's settled.  Also the Willy Wonka of the book is eccentric to be sure but otherwise he's really a little bland compared to the movie version.  Gene Wilder skates a line between danger and whimsy when playing Wonka which makes him fascinating and also helps along the tension in Charlie's decision at the end of the movie. 

So how to rate the book?  It's 4 to 4.5 if I try to be objective about it and give it credit for giving rise to a spectacular movie but it was a 3 reading experience.  Even with Eric Idle reading!  The former Python did a great job and has the perfect voice for the story but he didn't do anything especially interesting with it.

So what do you all think?  Have you ever struggled to properly review a book AFTER you've watched the movie of the book and loved it?  I think if they are quite a bit different, it helps but when the movie is a faithful dramatization of the book I find it harder.  For example, I read the Anne of Green Gables after having been obsessed with the mini-series but the the book and mini-series are different enough, I could appreciate both equally for what they offer.

FINAL VERDICT:  It is not a surprise that this is considered a children's classic and has been adapted twice into movies - its imaginative and weird and delightful!  3.5 out of 5 stars.

Read Harder Challenge: #6 - A book by a person whose gender is different than your own

#6 - Fiction for Foodies.  I know it's a stretch but the descriptions of the candy would make any foodie's mouth water.

REVIEW - Kiss An Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Kiss An Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Original Publication Year: 1996

Genre(s): Romance (Contemporary)

Series: None

Awards: None

Format: Audio (downloaded from library)

Narrated by: Anna Fields

I don’t read a lot of contemporary romance.  Heck I don’t read a lot of contemporary fiction period, preferring historicals, mysteries, SFF etc….  So this really was a stretch out of my normal reading rut and is precisely why I am participating in the Eclectic Reader Challenge.    For most of my life I hated beets and then one day 6 or so years ago a friend served me beets that were prepared just right and now they are one of my favorite foods.  I don’t want to be so biased in my reading choices that I miss out on gems or judge a whole genre based on the literary equivalent of pickled beets…. or something. 

I chose Kiss An Angel because it was near the top on a Goodreads list of Contemporary romance and had one of the highest average ratings.  While, this book has not won me over to the contemporary romance genre, I do understand why it is beloved. 

NOTE:  There will be a few mild spoilers below, nothing huge but I can’t really talk about the book properly without revealing some of it and it is revealed in the first 20 pages.

The set-up is this:  Daisy is a spoiled rich girl who has never had to work a day in her life and finds herself in deep financial troubles when her super model mother passes away.  Her disapproving father (parents were never married), an American diplomat to Russia, insists that in order for him to bail her out of her troubles, she must marry a man of his choosing and stay married for 6 months.  The man of his choosing is surly Alpha male Alex Markov who is, of all things, a manager of and performer in a second-rate traveling circus.  As you might imagine things are rough in the beginning but guess what?  Alex and Daisy find that they are a match made in heaven.

As you can probably guess, by the primary setting being a second-rate traveling circus, the characters and ambiance of the book is decidedly unique.  Both of the protagonists have Baggage with a capital ‘B’ in the form of crappy parents and the main conflict revolves around them overcoming their emotional dysfunction.  The second main conflict of the book is secrets – great big honking secrets that beyond just creating conflict, also provide a lot of forward momentum and drive to read.  Phillips takes her time and doesn’t take the easy way out in getting these two together which I appreciate.  She also does a good job of creating an extremely unlikely pair, even sans baggage, and illustrating why they are actually perfect for each other.  So for the big things, mission accomplished.

I still didn’t love it though and it wasn’t all to do with the contemporary setting.  I ended up liking Daisy all right but she is not the type of female character I really connect with and her transformation from spoiled rich girl to hard working, good-hearted animal whisperer frequently made me cringe.  I also never really warmed up to Alex not being able to get over his level of cruelty at the beginning, his lack of humor and the fact that for the first quarter of the book he calls Daisy "angel face" (NOTE:  Any guy calls me angel face he’ll have angels flying around his head after I punch him in his face). On a lighter note, this book is definitely a product of its age (pubbed in 1996) as Daisy has a fantasy about making out with a guy in a white limousine to the soothing sounds of Michael Bolton:0).

FINAL VERDICT:  While Kiss An Angel was not enough to convince me that I have been missing out all these years not reading contemporary romance, it was good enough for me to not dismiss the genre in the future. If you are already a fan of this genre you will probably like this one if you haven't already read it.

Do you have any really fantastic and perhaps out of the mold contemporary romances to recommend?  

Both the Read Harder and Eclectic Reader Challenges have romance category.  For the Eclectic Reader Challenge it's specifically Contemporary romance and for the Read Harder challenge it is just romance. 

REVIEW - Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal by Mary Roach

Original Publication Year: 2013

Genre(s): Non-fiction, Biology

Series: NA

Awards: None

Format: Audio (from Audible.com)

Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller

As with most Mary Roach books I went into this book not knowing that I had any interest in the gastrointestinal system. As usual she quickly convinced me that in fact not only was I interested but obsessively fascinated.  She specializes in taking a science topic and digging into it, uncovering all the weird but still often relevant details.  She is also seemingly incapable of being embarrassed by her curiosity and will pursue things like how astronauts poop in zero gravity to the bitter end.  It is all so well researched and delivered with such a wry wit that I find it impossible not to get sucked in to every single detail.

So the Alimentary Canal?  Utterly fascinating and seemingly designed for a Mary Roach type treatment.  After all the whole process of digestion and waste production is messy, frequently embarrassing and mostly taboo for cocktail party conversation.  However Mary Roach had me wanting to spout various interesting facts like the fact that when babies were offered a range of healthy foods, before cultural bias had kicked in, some of their favorites were bone marrow and sweetbreads (pancreas of a calf or lamb).  There are people that have volunteered as part of a research project to smell and describe farts.  There are people researching and dissecting all the various gases and compounds of farts.  Roach delves deeply into all aspects of the digestive system, from the mouth to the colon, without flinching.  I think she may be at her most witty as well. 

The reader of the audio book is fine but I didn’t love her.  I feel like the reader should be someone with a more mature, dryer voice for some reason.  Someone who can really do the sly wit justice. 

FINAL VERDICT:  This is probably my next favorite Roach offering next to Stiff – all the information flows together, is relevant and has just the right amount of detail and Roach really lets her humor shine.  Four out of Five Stars. 

Who, besides Mary Roach, would you like to have at your next cocktail party?  

Both the Read Harder and Eclectic Reader Challenges have a Microhistory category.  I'm not sure Gulp technically fits the bill but it does in spirit - very focused on a specific and somewhat odd object and it includes plenty of history about the study of said object. 

2015 Read Harder Challenge

Book Riot Read Harder Challenge

The word eclectic is not used anywhere but this is very similar to the Eclectic Reader Challenge in that it is meant to help broaden what one reads.  I am definitely attracted to these kinds of challenges though they don't seem like a natural fit.  I'm a mood reader and have trouble forcing myself to read anything.  But it's good to push oneself, right?  I am overlapping books on this challenge and the Eclectic Reader Challenge as much as possible which makes me feel like I am kind of defeating the purpose but there are a number of categories that don't overlap so it does end up being 26 books overall between the 12 categories for the ERC and the 24 categories for this challenge. 

Here are the tasks and what I intend to read for each category, subject to change on a whim of course.  I left one category open, #18 A book that someone else has recommended to you, because I know I will get a lot of recommendations over the next year and want to go with the flow. I didn't double up within either challenge - each task/category gets its own book.  When possible, I've tried to overlap the list with books I already own and with my 100 Books Project.  I am organized this year, y'all! It may all go horribly, delightfully wrong:0)!

One final comment  - if there are links within the task text those are Book Riot's links that provide ideas for that particular task so check those out if you are interested.  Also, book links go to Goodreads.

24 Tasks

1. A book written by someone when they were under the age of 25 
• St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
2. A book written by someone when they were over the age of 65
• Our Endangered Values by Jimmy Carter
3. A collection of short stories (either by one person or an anthology by many people
• The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
4. A book published by an indie press
• Zenn Scarlett by Christian Schoon (Angry Robot - I have no idea if they count but they are smallish)
5. A book by or about someone that identifies as LGBTQ
• Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
6. A book by a person whose gender is different from your own
•  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
7. A book that takes place in Asia
• Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See
8. A book by an author from Africa
• Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
9. A book that is by or about someone from an indigenous culture (Native Americans, Aboriginals, etc.)
• Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
10. A microhistory 
• Gulp by Mary Roach
11. A YA novel
• A Separate Peace by John Knowles
12. A sci-fi novel
• The Fall of Hyperion by Dan Simmons
13. A romance novel
• Kiss and Angel by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
14. A National Book Award, Man Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner from the last decade
• The Round House by Louise Erdrich (National Book Award, 2012)
15. A book that is a retelling of a classic story (fairytale, Shakespearian play, classic novel, etc.)
• Winter by Marissa Meyer
16. An audiobook
• The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
17. A collection of poetry
• Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
18. A book that someone else has recommended to you
• OPEN
19. A book that was originally published in another language
• The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson
20. A graphic novel, a graphic memoir or a collection of comics of any kind (Hi, have you met Panels?)
• Fables, Vol 20 - Camelot by Bill Willingham
21. A book that you would consider a guilty pleasure (Read, and then realize that good entertainment is nothing to feel guilty over)
• The Girl that Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Cathrynne Valente
22. A book published before 1850
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
23. A book published this year
•  Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham
24. A self-improvement book (can be traditionally or non-traditionally considered “self-improvement”)
• Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

Right!  Better get reading.  I think I'm going to curl up with Mr. Kiss and Tell - some tawdry pseudo-noir mystery sounds lovely.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!