Suelle's Soapbox

The Airplane Boys Among the Clouds by John Luther Langworthy ****

2012-01-30T21:56:00.000-06:00

So I was browsing through http://www.gutenberg.org/ the other night & while looking at the listings of kids series books this one caught my eye. More accurately, this one caught my husband's eye. He likes planes & he likes history, & seeing a book written for kids back in 1912 about planes pretty much was a melding of the two. He begged me to read this one next & review it on here, so now here we go!

First off, this was fun to read. It starts with the full title: The Airplane Boys Among the Clouds; or, Young Aviators in a Wreck. I think I know what might happen to our two intrepid heroes, Frank & Andy Bird! But wait! They don't just fly their new-fangled fancy biplane up to the top of Old Thunder Top & give the eagles that nest there a nasty scare--they also deal with two mysterious men who've come to town. Oh yeah, & there's an escaped convict too who takes pot-shots at them while they fly above him. One of my favorite lines is when the police chief tells Frank Bird (remember, Frank's only about 17):

"He might try to steal your new biplane I've heard them talking about; or even burn down your whole outfit. Better get a gun, & keep watch. He's fair game, you know, if so be you catch him prowling around after dark. An escaped convict hasn't any rights in the eye of the law."

Alrighty then, Chief! I'll just shoot to kill then! Wow! Those were the good ol' days! Lucky for the convict, Jules Garrone, that Frank decided to spring a trap on him instead. And the Bird boys (including their friends Larry, Elephant, & I'm sorry to say Stuttering Nat) were quite upstanding lads to boot. After they caught the dastardly devil this is what ensued:

"Frank had meanwhile tied his ankles as well, & helped drag him further into the shop. When the man started to using language that was offensive, he warned him plainly that if he kept that up any longer they would find some means of gagging him."

Take that, you rotten scoundrel!

Even with my limited knowledge of aviation it amused me to hear the references to guy wires & the smart little Kincaid engine that the boys had put on the biplane they'd built. Also the fact they needed a good push sometimes to take off. The wheels were referred to as bicycle wheels, & the Wright Brothers were referenced also--as contemporaries!

So all in all, I'm glad Dog suggested this book. If you'd like to download it yourself for free just click this link. I don't think it's read too much anymore, but I can sense the amazed love that many a young boy 100 years ago would have had for this body of work.

The Secret of Zoom by Lynne Jonell ****

2012-01-16T20:48:00.001-06:00

The Secret of Zoom is another Mark Twain Award nominee, and though it's pretty fantastical in nature, I liked it!

Christina lost her mother in an explosion back when she was just a baby, so she lives with her scientist father in an eccentric mansion that she's never allowed to leave. She watches the kids from the nearby orphanage pick up garbage and live what looks like a miserable existance until she finally meets one, a boy named Taft, who asks her if she's found the secret tunnel. This sends Christina on a search of the house, the eventual finding of the tunnel, and an amazing adventure. Her whole life becomes questions: what is Zoom? Where do they take the orphans? Why does the evil head of Loompski Industries value children with perfect pitch? And is her mother really gone forever?

I couldn't put this book down and I can truely say the action never stopped. But if you've read my blog before this then you know my schtick is I'm ultra-aware of characters that have developemental disabilities. Before my son was born I never would notice this, but it seems like every book I read has at least some mention about the differently abled, if not a major character. The Secret of Zoom is no exception.
I can say that I think Lynne Jonell wrote the character of Danny with accuracy and grace. I know some would say he's been steriotyped, but I can see my own son reacting in the same ways to extreme stress and abuse. And I'm thankful Ms. Jonell had her other characters treat him with compassion and care. At one point Christina has to try to rescue Danny from out of the inside of a garbage truck, but at the same time she may be sacrificing the rest of the orphans she's trying to save. What worth is Danny's life?

What if she did save ninety-nine orphans while leaving Danny in the garbage? Could she really pretend to be a hero? Could she even look Taft in the eye, knowing she had done that?
Christina bowed her head. Ninety-nine wasn't going to be good enough. It had to be one hundred. And it had to be now.

Having read only two of the MTA nominees so far I can say that this book is my favorite. We shall see if that changes or not!

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje ***

2012-01-12T22:02:00.001-06:00

How many times have you seen a movie of a novel before you read it? I couldn't tell you the number I personally have seen, but The English Patient is one of those. I first saw it when it was released in theatres back in the spring of 1997. My husband and I saw it at the Battlefield Mall Cinema in Springfield, Missouri. I loved the movie almost instantly--the romantic story line, the amazingly beautiful cinematography, and of course Ralph Fiennes. I like Ralph. A lot.

So here is the series of events that caused me to read the book 14 years after seeing the movie: my husband finds the book laying in the hall of the high school he teaches at two years ago; he keeps it in his room and asks around to see who lost it but no one claims it; he puts it in the closet in his classroom and forgets it; about 10 days ago I'm talking with our foreign exchange student about movies we love and I mention it; Dog remembers he has the book at school and says he'll bring it home; he brings it home a couple days later after we both forget about it; I read it. Not so dramatic, but there are so many turn along the way that might have led me to never reading it.

So, now that I've read it the question is what do I think of it. And I'd have to say I liked the movie more. Don't get me wrong, Michael Ondaatje's writing is beautiful and poetic. He is a poet as well as a novelist, so this makes a great deal of sense. A poet can convey emotion very succinctly--just a few seemingly unrelated words can be strung together and make a portrait of feeling that you can feel to your core. But I guess I'm just a very pragmatic, practical person. For me, there has to be a good reason for the emotion. Why would someone shoot themselves? To me you'd need a pretty darn good reason. Why would someone turn their back on love when both of them desperately need it? Again, I crave a solid reason. And in the book, but not in the movie, for me the reasons just didn't seem real.

Dog and I watched the movie again after I finished the book and it just confirmed my feelings about it. I love the movie, and I think the characters from the book are carried over very well into the movie. But I feel more comfortable with the motivations of the movie characters.

If you've neither seen the movie or read the book, I suggest reading the book first. Then watch the movie and tell me what you think.

The Stupidest Angel by Christopher Moore ***

2012-01-12T21:36:00.001-06:00

Overall, this book can be summed up with one word: stupid.

But this is Christopher Moore, so I knew going into it that it would be stupid. This man is a genius of stupidity, if that makes any sense. He takes some really odd characters and basically makes their lives even more insane than they already were. I was pleased to see some of the characters from two of his previous books I've read, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove & Lamb, were included in this book.

The setting is in Pine Cove, California, one of those trendy, artsy towns that you end up visiting and thinking it would be neat to live there. And then you leave. Basically there is a murder, a confused angel, and zombies. Yeah, it's pretty stupid.

My only beef with the book is when the R-word comes up in reference to the angel. In many ways I think Christopher Moore did a fairly decent job dealing with the word, but I just hate hearing or reading it at all. I know it's out there, I know it's used by a lot of people, but I hate it and I don't see the need for it.

Other than that, I overall recommend this book if you want to read something really stupid and silly. If you want to read something that's silly but profound, I recommend Lamb.

The Potato Chip Puzzles by Eric Berlin ***

2011-12-11T22:00:00.001-06:00

I'm going to attempt to read all the Mark Twain Award nominees again this year, & this is my first one!
If you like solving all kinds of puzzles, then this may be the book for you. Eric Berlin does a good job of injecting math, word, geometry, & other kinds of puzzles into this fairly entertaining book.

Winston Breen is a puzzle sleuth, so when he helps the principal of his junior high solve a puzzle they find out that there is going to be a puzzle-solving competition, & of course Winston will be on the team from his school. The team of three students & one teacher must solve 6 different puzzles in order to win the prize: $50,000 for their school. But they're up against some of the best puzzle pros in the area. Can they win? And which team is cheating?

There was a lot of excitement in this book as the teams raced to solve the puzzles, but I was confused by the difficulty of some of them. Some were so hard to me that it seemed like I'd never have solved them on my own (lucky for me the answers are in the back of the book!). Yet I was surprised that the final puzzle wasn't as hard as I expected. Also I thought there would be more of a twist in the story at the end, so I was mildly disappointed when I reached the end of the book.

Overall, though, I think it's a great book for the puzzle-minded kid aged 8-14.

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes ***

2011-12-02T22:06:00.001-06:00

Tony is remembering his first girlfriend from back in the 60's. He's retired now, divorced, & rather confused when he gets an inheritance from Veronica's mother. Why would he get 500 pounds from his ex-girlfriend's mom 40 years later? He soon finds out it has something to do with his friend Adrian. After Tony & Veronica broke up back then, she started dating Adrian. A few months later, Adrian killed himself. Is Tony remembering the past correctly? And what is the past, if not what we remember?
Overall, this was a great book. The writing was excellent & it read quickly. You tend to feel Tony's confusion along with him, & you can become very emotionally invested in the outcome.
That said, there are two things about this book I didn't like. The first is something that has happened to anyone who reads. You've heard of a great book, everyone says it's the wonderful. So you get it & read it. And you just don't quite get it.
That happened to me with this book. It has a twist at the ending & I understood that. But there was an aspect of it that I just didn't grasp, & it's not because the author didn't supply it, it's because sometimes I just don't get the obvious. I don't want to give away the ending, but it's so hard not to & properly discuss this book. So I'm going to make an announcement:

SPOILER ALERT!!! PROCEED WITH CAUTION!!!

OK, so in the end we find out that Adrian killed himself because he'd gotten Veronica's mother pregnant. Alright, I get that. But what I fail to grasp is why Tony has anything to do with that. There's the implication that maybe he somehow encouraged it in his angry letter to Adrian when he found out he & Veronica were dating. But I don't see how that has made him some sort of accomplice to the whole affair. I just don't get it, so if you've read this book & you understand what the heck is going on, please leave a comment & tell me!
The second thing that upsets me is the portrayal of Adrian's son. He obviously has a developmental disability of some sort, but lame approach is taken that this is a horrible tragedy. I guess I'm tired of seeing people with those types of disabilities as being tragic figures. They can be tragic, don't get me wrong, but not because of their disability. The only tragedy that I saw was the fact that a young man would rather kill himself than deal with impregnating someone, even if it is his girlfriend's mom.
And that brings me back to the first problem--why would she leave money to Tony?
I think I better just leave it there & start reading a new book!

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens *****

2011-11-19T15:21:00.001-06:00

One of the main reasons I love this book is just because of it's title. It says it all. Who among us hasn't had great expectations when we were younger of what our lives would be like? We were going to be different. Individuals, living how we wanted, not like our parents. Not stuck in some small town or small mindset, but living large. I was young enough when I first read Great Expectations to realize that's how I felt, but old enough to hear the nasty voice of doubt whispering in my ear. Since then I've come to realize that giving a child the gift of great expectations is actually a curse--they'll be like Sisyphus, pushing that boulder up the hill but having it crush them at the bottom in the end.
Pip grows up in the country being brought up "by hand" by his shrewish older sister & her gentle husband. Joe, Pip's brother-in-law, is actually Pip's greatest childhood friend. Joe is a simple & ignorant blacksmith, but his kindness & care for others makes you realize how wise he actually is. Joe & Pip simply live for the day that Pip will be apprenticed to Joe & then "what larks!" they will have together. But a series of events that seem to be unrelated conspire to make Pip wish to be more than he ever thought he could be, & to then give him the means to that end.
Great Expectations is about the foolishness of youth & about growing up & leaving behind those that we love. It's about the abandoning of the people that made you good in favor of those that you think will make you great. And it's about the journey back home after being led far afield.
It's also a book about judgement. I can't tell you how many times I've labeled people in my mind based on some small aspect of their character that I think I've had some sort of special insight into. It's all rubbish. The label always comes from within the labeler-- you see something of yourself you'd rather not like to admit to in someone else. There are several quotes from this book that I like, but by far my favorite is one where Pip refers to his great friend Herbert:

We owed so much to Herbert's ever cheerful industry and readiness, that I often wondered how I had conceived that old idea of his inaptitude, until I was one day enlightened by the reflection, that perhaps the inaptitude had never been in him at all, but had been in me.

Thanks Mr. Dickens.

Thousands of Tiny Dots...

2011-10-13T21:55:00.000-05:00

Just thought I'd pop on here & tell you all what I've been up to. Haven't been reading anything new, unfortunately. But I have been re-reading some of my favorite books. Right now I'm tackling Great Expectations again. I haven't read much of Dickens, but this is by far my favorite book by him. I think it has a lot to do with my own great expectations, & how it seems like they just set us up to not appreciate all the small things that happen to us that, when added together, make up a solid life. When viewed in hindsight I think most of us would think a great many people have lived important lives in some way or another. I often wonder, though, how many of those people thought they were supposed to achieve something large, or great, all at once in the course of their time on earth. Only in retrospect can you look back & feel that you've lead a "good" life. At least that's what I hope. My expectations are still making my life difficult. I hope that once I'm out of my 40's (& God help me, I've only just gotten into them!) I can maybe start to forgive myself for what I consider my lack of acheivement in my life. I hope that I can start to see in a few years the solid wall of something built of the many little things that make up my daily life.

But for right now I'm still stuck not seeing the whole picture.

Fall of Giants by Ken Follett ****

2011-08-28T21:38:00.000-05:00

I'm a sucker for a good historical fiction novel, and this is one! It follows 5 families (one Welsh, one Russian, one American, one Brit and one German) from the turn of the century to just after WWI, showing how their stories meet and part while they live in those turbulent times. Now you know there are going to be a lot of characters when you have to have a list of them in the front of the book, but these are even organized by nationality and sometimes even by job. And I'm so glad Ken Follett did that, because I'm one of those people that has a hard time remembering who's who.

It's a big, sweeping book, and Follett is planing of following it with two more just like it, since it says on the front cover that this is book one of The Century Trilogy. I think it's fascinating to see how war brings very different people together that would never have met and creates a new reality that our ancestors would be rather surprised to learn about (for example: both of my husband's grandparents never would have met each other without WWII happening). So I can't wait for the next book, which will undoubtedly deal with WWII and how the same characters and their children experience it.

Thanks Ken Follett for another great read!

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain ****

2011-08-17T21:00:00.000-05:00

I needed a new book to read, something recent that looked good. I can't remember where I saw this book listed, maybe on the New York Times bestsellers list, but the idea of reading a pseudo-memoir about Hemingway's first wife was intriguing.

Hadley Richardson was from my hometown, St. Louis, and was considered a spinster at age 28 when she met Ernest Hemingway. He was 21 and just starting his writing career, not yet the man he would later become. They fell in love, married, and moved to Paris so Ernest could be where all the great writers of the age were: Gertrude Stein, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, and more. There they lived for several years in what for Hadley was marital bliss, but for Ernest became a tightening noose around his neck.

I appreciated this book on several different levels, one of which was the character of Hadley herself. I've seen that many people who've reviewed it thought that Hadley was a wimpy character, but I found her to be quite real. She was the only person in a circle of very bright stars that wasn't a writer and wasn't trying to be famous in some way. She was very ordinary, and as a rather ordinary person myself I liked her. It was as though she were trying very hard to not be eaten alive by the people around her, and somehow she came out the other end intact.

I would like to read The Sun Also Rises now since Hemingway's life while writing it was the model for this book. And my husband's favorite Hemingway book, Islands in the Stream, would be good to read also--it has so much to do with Ernest looking back on his life and his wives with regret and longing. And it's obvious that though she wasn't a flashy flapper, a love-starved socialite, or a petulant beauty queen, Hadley in many ways was the love of his life and an anchor that he lost and never could find again.

Joplin

2011-07-05T22:56:00.000-05:00

I've been reading a lot of magazines lately and haven't felt up to finishing my current book, Say Her Name, yet. It's a good book, but the author's grief is hard to handle all at once. I've been taking breaks. One break was June 25th.
I work at a hospital that is part of a large system of Catholic health care providers, and one of the medical centers in our system was struck by an F5 tornado on May 22. My mother-in-law happens to work at this medical center, and also happened to be working that Sunday evening when the tornado hit. I'll refer readers to Dog's blog for the details of what she went through. The destruction was massive and the last I heard 156 people died in Joplin, Missouri that day.
Stuck up here in St. Louis, we didn't know what to do for the people of Joplin. Our family was lucky--no one was hurt and their homes were fine. But seeing the destruction on tv was hard. This is a town that Dog knew well. He hadn't lived there, but had grown up in several of the towns and cities in the surrounding area.
When my work started to organize employees to go help with the clean-up, I volunteered. So on June 25 I boarded a chartered bus at my place of work along with about 40 of my fellow employees and took the drive to Joplin.
One word to describe what was seen--overwhelming. There was so much gone. Just flat out gone. Even the trees were stripped of their leaves and bark. I could have been told that a bomb had been dropped on Joplin and I would have believed it.
We worked for only 1 1/2 hours on a small house near the hospital. Our short work duration was due to us getting there late (not sure why) and then the heat being so bad that they stopped us at 3 instead of 4. But I think we got some work done while we were there.
What we did was sort the damage out into piles. There was the masonry pile, the metal pile, the electronics pile, and the personal belongings pile. I regret now not taking pictures, but at the time that seemed like a very...disrespectful thing to do. That's the only word I can think of to describe when you're literally picking up the pieces of someone's life. I was able to guess at the sort of people that lived in this little house by what we found. I'll list some of the things that struck me the hardest:

a frilly little girl's umbrella
the top of the stove
the back-drop for a small aquarium
Are You My Mother? (one of Puppy's favorites when he was younger)
a huge stuffed teddy bear
curtains from Target
a gallon of milk
an extra large box of off-brand snack crackers
a child's collection of plastic blocks with letters on them
a VHS tape of Fievel Goes West
a picture of two young women

The last item was given to an Americorps volunteer--they were in charge of any and all photos. And those volunteers were some of the nicest people I've ever met. They were all young folks, college aged I'd guess, and they kept thanking us over and over for helping them. I was flabbergasted--they were the ones living down there in tents, doing some very hard work, both physically and emotionally. It was so good to see them caring about the people of Joplin, and caring about us volunteers too. They took good care of us, taking us right to where the work needed to be done and pressing water and Gator-Aide on us constantly.
I want to go back sometime in September and maybe get some other people from my department to go with me. I worried when driving down there that they wouldn't have much left for us to do.

There is more than enough.

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell ****

2011-06-14T22:46:00.001-05:00

First, I want to recommend a blog: Rolling Around In My Head. In general, it's a blog about the world of disabilities--having them, living with & loving people with them, working for people with them, embracing them. The reason I mention this is that the author of this blog, Dave Hingsburger, has a book club going that includes books that deal with-you guessed it-disabilities. Some of the best books I've read lately are the ones he picks. And like people who happen to have disabilities, these books aren't defined by the inclusion of disabilities. They're just great books.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is first and foremost about loss. Jacob is a young clerk sent from Holland to Japan in the very late 1700's to work for the Dutch East India Company. When he makes this journey he loses touch with his homeland and very importantly to him, his religion. He and his sister have been raised by his uncle, a minister, so it is very hard for him to be in Japan without any outward signs of his faith--Christianity was punishable by death at the time in Japan. Also comes a loss of belief in the honesty of mankind, when in his process of auditing the books at the Dutch installment of Dejima he finds that the corruption of money has gotten to every level of the "factory". Loss touches every character that touches Jacob also--loss of love, loss of a child, loss of faith, loss of youth, loss of innocence. Because of this overwhelming feeling of loss, this book can be rather heavy. But you can't stop reading because you want the losses to be abated, or at least to be for a higher purpose. Sometimes, though, loss is just loss. There is a hole and it won't be filled.
I'm sure Dave chose this book because of one of the settings--a perverse temple that claimed to care for women who were too deformed and imperfect to be missed from "normal" society. Women who could be used with impunity and no one would be the wiser; women who were actually grateful to be cared for there because the world outside had treated them so badly. It took a very special woman to come in and care for these "nuns"--though society could call her "deformed" also, she was confident in her knowledge and in her compassion. She made the hell of that temple bearable for her fellow nuns, until another loss by a person far away took away the prison walls.
I wanted, as I think most humans do, for there to be a "happily-ever-after" to this story. But in truth, how many of us get to have that kind of clean finality? I wanted a fairy tale ending, but I got reality. When I was younger I craved the starkness of truth in all I read and would ridicule the cutesy endings to many books. As I've aged I've noticed a desire to see that clean finality now. Is it perhaps because stark reality is all around us and it's only as we get older that we see it everywhere?
A very fine book, and another great recommendation from Dave. Thanks.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown **

2011-05-19T13:27:00.003-05:00

I was loaned this book by someone I work with, or else I probably wouldn't have read it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being a snob or anything, it's just that these kinds of books start to all seem the same. And since I've read The Da Vinci Code, I have to say that I was right.

I like The Da Vinci Code. It was fast paced, interesting, and the ending was great. Dan Brown wrote a great thriller when he wrote that one. So not surprisingly, he stayed with the same model when he wrote The Lost Symbol.

Here are some of the similarities: same main character, smart woman in distress that then helps the hero, classic architecture, big crazy scary guy that likes to kill, a secret that most people don't know but which is right under their noses.

Even with all those similarities, I was still flying through the book trying to find out how it ends. Well, it ended quite lamely. The ending was just not very good. It was anticlimactic and didn't make a lot of logical sense. For example, if you'd gotten your hand cut off and been tortured all day, wouldn't you want to take a nice rest around 2 AM? I know there are a lot of cool things you'd like to tell the hero, but you've had a rough day and to top it all off you found out a very disturbing bit of family info that would make most people collapse in pain and horror. But no. You'd like to take the hero on a little tour of Washington D.C. in the wee hours of the morning. Why not.

Also the massive revelation at the end of the whole sha-bang is just kinda...okay. I'm saying if I were the big scary guy that likes to kill and I was still running around at the end of the story, I'd be killing. Just cause I would have found out that none of this was really worth anything. And cause I'd like to kill.

So while this was an interesting and fast read, I don't recommend it very highly. I have only read these two Dan Brown books, though, so if his other writing gets off this same pattern I would be more than glad to give it a try. But if it uses the same format...I think I've already been there.

Found by Mararet Peterson Haddix ***

2011-04-28T21:50:00.002-05:00

I'm going to reveal something about this book that you might not want to know if you haven't read it yet, so don't read any further if you don't like having your book spoiled!!

*****************

I used to really like time travel books--I have always been fascinated with the past and I'd love to be able to go back in time to see what life was really like, especially the clothes! But as I've gotten older I have a hard time dealing with the paradoxes that present themselves when you try to actually think of time as fluid. That's the only reason I haven't given this book 4 stars. I guess I'm just getting to where I don't want to have to get a headache when I read anymore!

A plane load of babies mysteriously appears 13 years ago, with no pilot or crew. The 36 babies are adopted out, with Jonah and his friend Chip being two of them. And now someone is coming back to find them all, but what are they going to do with them? Jonah, his sister Katherine, and Chip must try to figure out what's going on before they're stopped...or worse.

This was a great page-turning read, and if it wasn't for my brain not being able to grasp all the complexities of time travel I would have liked it even more. I'm not sure if I'm going to read the next book in the series or not...we shall see! But certainly do recommend this book if you like suspense and sci-fi.

Margret and Flynn by Kathleen Duey ****

2011-04-18T21:47:00.002-05:00

I'll admit to my low expectations for this book. I'd prejudged it, simply because it seemed to be a stereotypical "girl and her horse" tale. And it is just that. But the story was much more arresting than I'd assumed and now I can certainly see why this was nominated for the Mark Twain Award.

Twelve-year-old Margret and her older sister Libby have been living a transient life ever since losing their parents many years ago. They would live with and help do the chores for different families and then move on when Libby sensed it was time to go--usually in the middle of the night during a full moon. But the girls have been living with lonely Mrs. Fredriksen in Colorado territory long enough for Margret to want to stay this time. Mrs. Fredriksen cares for the girls and wants them to live with her, but Libby's skittish ways are pushing them out again. Just in the nick of time a horse shows up after a terrible storm, and Margret must use her gentle nature to help heal the horse and make it shine in the 4th of July race, while also helping her sister to be healed as well.

Besides the main story line, I really enjoyed this book also because of the ending. I'll only say that it was more realistic than I thought it would be, which made it refreshing.

I recommend Margret and Flynn, even if you aren't a horsey-girl!

Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende ***

2011-03-31T21:37:00.003-05:00

The only other book I've read by Isobel Allende before this was Daughter of Fortune, which I liked a great deal. She writes of strong women in her books, women who have to overcome severe adversity to find happiness. In general I like that theme, I'm sure most women do--we all feel that though our lives in developed countries are much easier now, we still have adversity we must overcome in order to find some meaning in our world.

For that reason I thought I'd like Island Beneath the Sea very much. It tells the story of Tete, a Haitian slave in the late 1700's (Haiti was called Saint Domingue at this time). Her life is the result of a rape on a slave ship, and her own mother rejected her at birth because of this. Raised as a house slave in a life of extreme hardship, she knows that it could be worse--she could be a field slave, who's lives were worth so little to their owners that they barely fed them, just worked them to death and then purchased more.

Tete's main challenge in her life is to stay alive and care for her children. She includes Maurice, her master's son by his wife, as her child and loves him as much as her own. Living through the slave uprising in Saint Domingue and later finding her own place in New Orleans society, Tete always keeps her pride and continues to love and care for those around her, despite the cruelty that is heaped on her.

I loved the descriptions of life at this time and in this place. Haiti has always fascinated me, and it's interesting to see the extreme violence that this impoverished country has sprung from. When you read about the evil that humans perpetrated on their fellow man in this place, whether it be the Arawak Indians or the slaves, it leaves you feeling like Haiti is a country that deserves to finally have some peace.

Despite my interest in the history of this story, I had a hard time with it only because it seemed like Tete was used as a vehicle to tell the history of this time and she was put in one situation after another just to enable it to be told. I know that's the whole point of historical fiction, but I guess I'm saying it was just a little too much for me. I would have liked to have heard more about Saint Domingue after to uprising, and some was told, but she was whisked away in the book to New Orleans so the author could then expound on that place. I think I would have liked this to be two books, or one book with two characters, one in Haiti and one in New Orleans.

Overall the book is very well written and I do recommend it. I just was a little blown away by how much history was packed into one character's life.

Scandalous by Karen Robards ***

2011-03-18T18:43:00.004-05:00

Alright! I needed something new to get me going again, & evidently an historical romance is what I needed. I found this book sitting on the break room table at work & figured "why not?"

My maternal grandma always called these kind of books "Bodice Books", because either the picture on the front would show a gal whose ample bosoms were heaving against the restraining enclosure of her bodice, or something like that would be described between the covers at least three times.

For a Bodice Book, this one was pretty good. A young woman takes a chance on fooling society when she pretends her dead brother is still alive so she can marry off her gorgeous younger sister to a rich guy & they can all live happily ever after. Except some guy seems to be pretending to be her brother already...& of course the sparks fly between them. Forbidden romance, lusty glances, you know how it goes.

Look, I know this isn't great literature. But the bottom line is, I respect writing in all its forms. I wish I had the talent & nerve to write a few Bodice Books myself--it brings in decent earnings, you're getting published, & many many people get enjoyment from your writing. Honestly, what more could an author ask for?

And yes, I'll be reading the sequel. Maybe it'll be laying on the break room table at work when I go back Monday!

The Chronicles of Clovis by Saki ****

2011-03-05T09:14:00.007-06:00

I read the introduction by A.A. Milne to this short story collection just now, and I shouldn't have. Milne is such a great writer, it's hard for me to come up with a way to describe Saki without using his words now. I'll give it a go, but if you ever read this collection forgive me if I sound like Milne!

First I can say that Saki (H.H. Munro was his real name...hmm, these British gents back then liked to use initials instead of first names!) is one of the most sarcastic and bitter writers I've ever had the pleasure of enjoying! If one of his stories seems to be going along at a good, positive clip, you can be sure it's going to take a sharp turn soon towards irony. His recurring character in many of these stories is Clovis Sangrail, a 17 year old who has seen it all and knows how to use the people around him to make his life more amusing. The rest are about unrelated people and places, but they all have the touch of the dark side of life.

There are 29 short stories in this collection so I won't talk about all of them, but some of my favorites are "The Music on the Hill", "The Hounds of Fate", "The Remoulding of Groby Lington", "Tobermory", ... alright, I'll just talk about those four.

"The Music on the Hill" is the only story from this book that I've read before. It was part of a collection of short stories about weird and unusual phenomenon. It's actually why I thought that all Saki's stories would be like this, but they aren't. It's highly sarcastic, with a young couple living in their country home because the new wife thought it would be nice. It took a lot of persuading to get her husband to make the move, but now he seems to be reluctant to ever leave. There's an ominous feel about the place and the husband is acting strangely. So young wife decides to follow him one day, hears some odd piping music coming from the direction her husband went, and finds a small alter to Pan in the woods. Someone has put an offering of grapes on it, and in disgust she throws them away. The music stops, and her troubles begin.

"The Hounds of Fate" is one of those depressing little gems about how no matter how far you run, fate will track you down. It's well written and again rather eerie, though not as mystical as "The Music on the Hill".

For pure humor "The Remoulding of Groby Lington" is great. It's about a rather retiring man who has a pet parrot whose nephew brings to his attention that he's very similar to his pet. Then his brother brings home a pet monkey for Groby, and he turns from parrot to something else...

And "Tobermory" is just plain evil. It's about a cat who's been trained to speak English. Sounds great, eh? Well, that is until Tobermory starts blabbing about who he's seen doing what with whom...

All in all, a great collection. There are other stories I enjoyed also, but it's hard to go over them all here. Just take my word for it, they're worth the time!

The Awakening by Kate Chopin ****

2011-01-27T22:17:00.004-06:00

I've read somewhere that The Awakening is one of the first books about women's lib. I'd have to agree with that, though it doesn't have the positive connotations that later works would have. I do think that it is a very realistic portrayal of what you might call a mid-life crisis, though Edna, the main character, is only 29. I feel like I'm having one of those crises right now and I'm 40, but I've justified the similarities by saying to myself that people didn't live as long back then (1890's) so 29 might have been mid-life, and also that I'm hopelessly delayed in all things in general so this would be no exception.

Edna is, as I said above, 29 years old, married to a man that adores her and has two sons aged 5 and 7. Edna doesn't adore her husband, she just married him because he came along at the right time and was the right man to marry. They live in New Orleans but are on vacation on Grand Isle when the story opens. They are comfortably well off, with a nanny and servants. During the vacation Edna has an "awakening"-she suddenly feels the shackles of her life and wants to throw them off. This coincides with her relationship with a young man, Robert. They fall in love on the island but do not act upon it.

When Edna returns to New Orleans with her family she can't stand her existence anymore. She takes up painting and drawing again, old hobbies that she hadn't indulged in for years. Her husband leaves for an extended business trip to New York and while he is gone, she suddenly finds herself free. Her children visit her mother-in-law and her obligations are only to herself.

I'm sure this book has been analyzed to death and I know many people probably won't agree with me on my interpretation of it, but I thought the book was very good, even the ending. I won't give it away, just that it is true to the time and true to the character. It can't be put in the context of our current social situation--so much has changed in our world in just 120 years. I can empathize with Edna's ennui. I admire her ability to pull herself out of it, even if the struggle exhausts her.

The Red House Mystery by A.A. Milne ****

2011-01-21T21:45:00.004-06:00

I've resurfaced. To say I've had a heck of a time recently would be an understatement. I don't know if it's my age, my hormones, or just the time of year, but I was down in the dumps for the whole month of December & didn't know if I was going to be able to pull myself out. I've read that the early 40's are the most depressing time of most people's lives, so maybe this is just my new periodic normal. If it is, it sucks. I didn't read. Anything. Which shows how bad off I was. Even when I'm not actively reading a book I'm always reading something: a magazine, articles online, something. But not this time.

I'm glad to relate that I think I've snapped out of it. I hope like hell that I don't snap back into it, but I'm realistic if I'm anything. If you see a large break on here again, that's most probably what's going on. So bear with me, please.

On to the book--

I've been going through the Dover Publications catalog & looking at the books they offer in a new light. I had an AHA! moment & saw that most all of their items are copyright free. Which means something wonderful: Project Gutenberg. You see, I've got this doggone Kindle that I have a love/hate relationship with. I love the instant gratification of reading material, but hate the lack of sensory input, ie. the feel of the pages, the smell of the book, the heaviness or lightness of the tome. But when I get free ebooks from Gutenberg, well...I start loving the little devil again.

A.A. Milne, of Winne the Pooh fame, wrote a mystery book back in the 20's. And even though I kinda figured out what was going on before the amateur detective did in the book, I liked it. In fact, I liked it a lot.

The usual suspects are gathered at a British country estate in the roaring 20's for a lovely summer weekend. They do the usual stuff that those folk liked to do: golfing, playing on the bowling green (?), anyone for tennis, that kind of stuff. Oh yeah, & then a dead guy shows up & ruins the lovely weekend & I say!, let's figure out what happened, what?

There's all sorts of cool stuff like secret passages, a flamboyant actress, people doing mysterious things in a pond in the dead of night, & the really smart fella that just happens to show up just at the right time & figure the whole thing out. I'm amazed they didn't just kill off all those really smart fellas in England back in the day--they could have gotten away with so much crime without them!

It was a good book to get me out of my funk. If you get in a funk yourself & need a little nudge to get your ass back in gear, I suggest this chestnut. Jolly good show!

The Fairy Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley ***

2010-12-12T11:40:00.003-06:00

This is the first book in a series that looks really cute for kids in the 4th-5th grade. The premise is two sisters have been abandoned by their parents and have been bumped around in the foster care system for the past year. Finally a woman who claims to be their grandmother agrees to take custody of the children--the only problem is that the girls had been told by their father that their grandmother was dead!

Soon the sisters are living in Ferryport, a small village in upstate New York, with their "Grandma" Grimm and her unusual associate, Mr. Canis. Adventure ensues when Grandma is kidnapped by a giant and the girls realize that fairy tales really are true--at least in Ferryport!

Though there are more books in this series, I'm not planning on reading them at this time because I'd rather try to get through all the Mark Twain Award nominees this year! Plus this book is one of those that is so focused on a particular age group that it isn't ageless--I can tell it's a great read for the younger set, but not a timeless classic.

I can recommend this book, and probably the entire series for 4th-5th graders.

The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge ***

2010-12-05T20:57:00.004-06:00

I belong to a great online support group, Hemi-kids, that I get a lot of information and understanding from. Though Puppy doesn't have hemiplegia himself, he does have the same underlying issue--stroke. Puppy had a blood disorder when he was born called NAIT. Though it can be complicated to explain, I'll just say it made him prone to bleeding. When he was born he was covered in bruises and because the doctor used a suction device to deliver him he had a stroke.

A couple of years ago some of the people on the list serv started talking about this great book that proved brain plasticity. Not only that, it talked about how plasticity doesn't go away when we get older. For those of us dealing either personally or as a parent of someone with a brain challenge, this information can make your hopes soar. Something can be done to help either regain or establish those connections lost to brain injury.

Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist, and maybe because of this his writing sometimes gets a little...dry. But despite that, the book compels you to continue reading. Three chapters in particular were not boring at all for me: Chapter 2, Building Herself a Better Brain; Chapter 3, Redesigning the Brain; and Chapter 7, Pain.

Chapter 2 is fascinating in that it is about a woman who was labeled mentally deficient and how she not only figured out how to overcome her own obstacles, but opened a school for children in order to help those with learning challenges. Two things I took from that chapter that I've already tried implementing with Puppy are tracing and memorizing. Tracing has been found to help with writing (duh!) by building up those neuro pathways in the brain that control that function. It's a low-stress way of dealing with it, but with good results. The memorization helps kids with poor auditory memory. Puppy has poor memory in almost all ways, but right now I've been reading poems to him at bedtime over and over in the hopes that it will help him memorize them himself, and help him to learn how to do that too.

Chapter 3 is fascinating because of a program that is being used at Puppy's school--Fast ForWord. A scientist named Michael Merzenich developed it to help people with learning disorders learn to read. But as a side effect, it was discovered to also help kids with autism and various other developmental disabilities. Basically he figured out how to rewire the brain using fun computer games that get results without kids even realizing it.

Chapter 7 was interesting because it was about V.S. Ramachandran. He's described in the book as the Sherlock Holmes of modern neurology, and that description is apt. He doesn't like working with fancy technology--he works with what is around him and comes up with startling and amazing discoveries. I won't go into how he does it, but he can make it feel like he's hit your hand with a hammer simply by hitting the table in front of you with one.

Overall this was a very good book. I have a very hard time reading non-fiction and this book was no exception. I start to feel like I'm back in college reading something I have to for a class, so even if it was my own idea to read it in the first place it soon becomes a chore. But I forced myself through it and I'm glad I did.

I don't agree with all the theories presented by Doidge in this book, but I do understand them. Overall it gives me some hope for Puppy's future. But I also worry--there is no such thing as a magic bullet. And even if there was one, do I want Puppy to be someone else? Thoughts to ponder.

The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan ****

2010-11-18T20:53:00.003-06:00

I am loving Percy Jackson! Rick Riordan has really done a fine job of blending the old Greek myths into modern times, and his characters are great. Tyson is one of my favorites, he's such a sweet clumsy kid--who knows how many kids like that are really cyclops in disguise!

In this, the second of the Percy Jackson books, Rick Riordan wonderfully captures the horror of some of the classic monsters: Scylla, Charybdis, the Sirens. I don't know how much kids know of the Greek myths these days, but if they didn't know about them before they'll know about them now. So not only are the Percy Jackson books entertaining, but they subtly inject some classical education in there too.

Rick also makes this a great series for boys and girls by introducing some strong female characters too. At the end of the book you may meet the most compelling one yet.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett ****

2010-11-08T21:15:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure what I think of this book. It's well written and the characters will stay with me for quite some time, which for me is a sure sign that this is a good book. But I can honestly say I feel confused by this book in some ways. Maybe I can explore that here.

The Help is about the maids/housekeepers/nannies of Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960's. I have no personal concept of having someone do your housework and raise your children for you, mostly because of where I grew up (further North) and the society I grew up in (I never knew anyone that had hired help at all). So this book was like entering a foreign country for me, one where racism is so deeply ingrained that you would build another bathroom in your house just for the black maid to use.

Mostly this book is about Aibileen, a black woman in her 50's who's job is to clean a white family's house and raise a white family's children, all while not complaining about her foul treatment at the hands of her employers. It's about the complex relationships between these women and the white children they love, and who love them in return. That is until they reach the age when the subtle teachings of their society make them realize that the woman they love is less than human in their parents' eyes.

It's also about the relationships between the white women who depend on their maids, and the maids who make their lives run smoothly. These white women can make their maids' lives hell on Earth, as is the case with Yule May. Or they can try to befriend their maids, and treat them as equals, which is what Celia tries to do with Minny. Either way, the relationships are tense and filled with a protocol that has been laid down by centuries of racism--the maid eats lunch in the kitchen alone, while the lady of the house eats in the dining room alone--both of them eating the same meal that the maid has prepared; the maid is to use one plate, cup, and set of silverware for themselves, and keep them separate so they aren't accidentally used by the white family--but the maid has to clean and polish all the good silver in the house.

It's a bizarre world that existed in Mississippi back then, before the civil rights movement had reached its peak. And it's hard to believe sometimes how far we've come as a nation and as individuals learning to live together.

We live in a strange world. The Help is a wonderful road map of where we've come from, and a hopeful and shining beacon of where we are still going.

The Seer of Shadows by Avi ****

2010-10-25T20:41:00.003-05:00

Alright, I'm starting in on the Mark Twain Award nominees for 2010! I thought I'd try to read them all this year, so I figured why not do it in alphabetical order by the author's name? Therefore, my first book is one by Avi (though I've actually read one of the nominees before I realized it: Leanin' Dog).

Horace is a young apprentice to a photographer in New York City in 1872. When his mentor gets a commission to photograph a high society woman so that she can place her picture on her dead daughter's grave, Horace gets his first chance to take a picture himself. But when he does, he discovers a hidden gift--the image of a ghost appears on his photographs. And the ghost seems to be coming to life through Horace's pictures. And she isn't happy.

Written in a way that will help children really get into the past, Avi has told a story that I know most children between the ages of 9-12 will appreciate--it's spooky, yet doesn't talk down to kids or sugar coat the time period.

Not a bad start to the new season of awards!

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows ****

2010-10-21T22:02:00.004-05:00

I kinda like epistolary novels, one's that are written in the form of letters exchanged between the characters. I read a great one once, Fair and Tender Ladies, that I highly recommend. I also recommend this one.

Not many people in England are very aware of the Nazi occupation of the Channel Islands, let alone Americans. But it was the closest Hitler got to conquering the British Isles, and it's still amazing to think how close he came. From 1940 to 1945 the Channel Islands were occupied and fortified by German military forces, and the citizens of the islands were subjected to the same atrocities as other occupied territories.

The authors of this book lovingly spin a tale from letters exchanged between a young author in London and the remains of a small resistance group in Guernsey. They didn't resist overtly, but rather by gathering and finding comfort in each others' company and in their love of books, they were able to survive the war.

I believe that we in the US just can't grasp fully what it was like for Europe during WWI and WWII--we haven't been invaded, had bombs dropped on us on a daily basis, or had to deal with the kind of deprivation that was experienced on the continent and adjacent British Isles. The fact that a potato peel pie could be a delicacy to these starving people (the peels made the crust, the mashed part was the insides) is something I surely hope we never have to face here.

I hope you give this page-turner a try!

********************

A special thanks goes out to my friend Wendy from high school, who suggested this book to me, and my Aunt Patt who seconded her idea! Give me more!

The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan *****

2010-10-16T09:57:00.003-05:00

Yes, I'm back volunteering in my son's school library! I can find out about & read all the cool books for kids, and I've got to say there are quite a few good ones out there.

Now I knew I'd probably like this book from the get-go because it deals with the Greek gods. I remember distinctly checking out D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths from the library at Ferguson Junior High when I was in the 7th grade, not realizing at the time that I would be starting a life long love of mythology. The book not only talks about the Greek myths in a wonderful and interesting way, but the illustrations are the best ever! I think it's one of the best books you can get for the kid in your life (I bought it for myself online a couple years ago!).

Back to the book at hand--Percy Jackson is a 12 year old delinquent who's been tossed around from school to school for most of his life, always causing unexplained trouble where ever he goes. But now he's finally found out what makes him different--he's the son of a god! As he travels across the US on a quest with his new two best friends, he learns what his own special powers are and which Greek god is his father.

As if all that isn't good enough, Percy travels through St. Louis at one point and battles Echidna and Chimera at the top of the Arch!! I love it when my home town is featured in books--it's pretty darn rare to be honest. But having some Greek monsters cross paths with the Gateway Arch--that is just too cool!

I feel like Rick Riordan wrote this book especially for my 7th grade self! Thanks Rick, I feel like a 12 year old again (minus the awkwardness, ugly glasses, crippling shyness, bad hand-me-down clothes...alright, maybe it's good I'm not 12 again!). Five stars all the way!

The Falls by Joyce Carol Oates ****

2010-10-11T21:23:00.003-05:00

Have you ever read a book where one of the characters hits too close to home, reminds you of a relative or (even worse) yourself & you just have to cringe every time you read about that person in the book? The Falls had a character like that in it for me. I'm not going to say which one it was, but it was damn hard reading about this person because I wasn't sure if I liked or hated them. And I suppose that having those feelings is a sign of very good writing.

The story starts in 1950 at Niagara Falls. Married for barely 12 hours, a young man is running toward the Falls, to throw himself in. You hope that he will be stopped by someone, anyone. Maybe the man who takes tickets on the footbridge to Goat Island. But no one stops him. No one is able to. He succeeds in killing himself, & scaring his wife for the rest of her life.

The Falls is about this woman, but it's mostly about the Falls themselves & the city that encompasses them. Through her story I learned more about the city of Niagara Falls than I'd thought possible. Did you know that the Love Canal was in this city? I thought it was in Buffalo for some reason. And did you know that the people that work in the tourist trade at the Falls are discouraged from telling visitors how many people have killed themselves there?

The story of this woman & her second husband & the family they make together is a history of Niagara Falls, both the city & natural phenomenon. I really want to visit the Falls now, though I also am a little afraid to. The siren song of the water, as described by Joyce Carol Oates, holds out fascination & fear to me, even from afar.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz ***

2010-09-24T21:48:00.005-05:00

I like to read books that have won awards, I always want to see if I agree with the illustrious personages who determine which books are winners and which aren't. I don't know who decides the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, but I agree with them about 50% of the time.

In this instance, I think the writer is great and the story riveting. But my beef is that I don't speak Spanish. I know it is an extremely common language in the US, but I have to say that when about 20% of the book is in a language other than English, I'm gonna get lost. And I'm also going to feel left out and irritated. I like to know what's going on, and that ain't easy when you don't habla. There's an arrogance about it too, at least in my opinion. Like if I was a decent intellectual I'd know what these words are, therefore I must be an ignorant slob. I guess I kinda like being an ignorant slob. I like things spelled out for me, I'm silly that way.

I have another beef too, in that I can't quite figure out what was wondrous about Oscar's life. I kept waiting for the epiphany, but if it happened it was probably in Spanish. Oscar is an overweight nerd of Dominican lineage, born in the US. He doesn't fit in anywhere, disappoints his family and himself, and can't seem to get a girlfriend no matter what he does. He's the consummate outcast, trying constantly to fit into society while reading and writing science fiction and collecting roll playing game miniatures. We learn about his family and the dark curse over them all, and most enlightening we learn about Dominican Republic history too. I knew absolutely nothing about the state of affairs in that country, so I was very interested in learning more.

As I said, what I could understand of the story was great. It was witty, funny, tragic, heartbreaking, a very good read. But I just don't like not knowing the whole picture, and not knowing Spanish was a huge deficit when reading this book.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck ****

2010-09-18T21:55:00.002-05:00

I thought I'd turn to a classic for my next book. I've read some of Steinbeck's works, my favorites being Cannery Row & Of Mice and Men. I'd seen the movie of East of Eden with James Dean about 15 years ago and I couldn't remember any of it except that JD played an angst-ridden teen, angry at the world. So it was really all new to me.

This was a retelling of the Cain and Able story, set in the Salinas Valley of California at the turn of the last century. There were many themes explored by Steinbeck, but I think my favorite is whether humans have the ability to choose their own destiny. Even though you have tendencies given to you by your parents, can you be yourself and choose your own path?

Cal and Aron are twin brothers who both want their father's love and approval. But only sweet-natured Aron seems to get it. Cal is smart, crafty, and loyal. Yet somehow the things he does to gain his father's attention only seem to offend his dad, while Aron can do no wrong.

The story is more than this, though. It also deals with the boys' mother, a woman who has something missing from inside her. She doesn't seem capable of love and only uses those around her to get what she wants. After giving birth to the twins she leaves her husband and enters the oldest profession in a nearby town. The boys are told their mother is dead, and without the loving ministrations of their father's hired housekeeper, a Chinese-American man named Lee, they surely wouldn't have made it to adulthood.

Lee is a philosopher by nature and it is through his musings that Steinbeck explores his ideas on the meaning of life and man's ability to control his own destiny. I was very disappointed to see that his character was totally lost from the movie version that I'd seen. I knew I didn't remember a Chinese cook in the movie, but just hoped I'd forgotten. It seems a real shame that that opportunity was missed, but then again the movie was made in 1955, just two years after the end of the Korean War. At that point in American history, China was not seen as a "friendly" and unfortunately that fear was transferred to the big screen.

I've noticed that Steinbeck doesn't write very nicely about women in general and this book was no exception, with Cathy/Kate being an icy whore. But he tries to redeem that by creating Abra, the love interest of both Cal and Aron. She is everything Cathy is not and is a mother-figure to Aron, while something more to Cal.

Overall, the book was good though long. I like Of Mice and Men more, but I can't bring myself to read that book anymore since having a son with a developmental disability. Dog and I went to see it performed as a play about 3 years ago and we both left in tears after the first act. It's a very good story, but it hits too close to home for me anymore. If you have never read Steinbeck I recommend it as his best work in my opinion.

Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer ***

2010-09-13T18:44:00.005-05:00

I've been lax. Very lax. It's not that I haven't been reading, heavens no! It's that I haven't been blogging. Now why that is is a multi-faceted, complex, & difficult to describe reason. But I'll take a whack at putting that reason into words: I've been busy. And that will just have to do as far as excuses go.

Now, on to the book. I had seen this movie a couple years ago only because it had Eugene Hutz in it, & I love Gogol Bordello. Not only did Eugene give a great performance, but so did Elijah Wood & Boris Leskin. I highly recommend the movie.

The book was another story (no pun intended). It started out in a hilarious manner as a letter written by Alex, a young Ukrainian man, to Jonathan Safran Foer. You see, JSF is a character in his own book. And while I warmed up to his character in the movie, I grew to dislike JSF in the book. I think this is to be expected since we see Alex improve his English but also grow & change during the course of telling the story of why JSF came to the Ukraine. As Alex learns, he learns to dislike JSF also.

Why is JSF there? To find the woman, Augustine, who saved his grandfather from a Nazi death squad. All he has is an old picture to go by, & the name of the town he's looking for. But how can you find a Jewish town 50 years after the Holocaust?

The book has a lot of very confusing story lines that I just frankly didn't understand. I don't know why the story of Brod was part of this book, it didn't seem to advance the plot at all. And I've got to say I've never been a big fan of stream of consciousness, so when I ran into a few pages of it I had to just put on a determined grin & slog through it.

Overall this is one of those rare books that was, in my opinion, much better as a movie. It made more sense & it had a much bigger impact. I suggest renting the movie & enjoying Eugene & the fellas do a fine job of making pain, beauty, & collecting things illuminated.

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer ***

2010-07-28T22:02:00.003-05:00

Yep, I finally gave in and read the whole stinkin' series. I hadn't heard much about the last book, so I went in not sure of what would happen. I've got to say that Stephenie Meyer is great at writing for women--as my husband put it, her books for women are like Clint Eastwood movies for men.

I enjoyed the story up until the very end, when I was sorely disappointed. I'm not going to give anything away, but I think it just reminded me that these books weren't originally intended for an adult audience. I was looking for a lot of reality, but I'm not sure what I was thinking--these are vampire books we're talking about! Reality has nothing to do with it!

Overall, the series was a good read. I'm curious as to whether Meyer will be able to come up with a new series of books, or whether she'll take a chance on more adult literature. Either way, it will be interesting to see.

Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin ****

2010-07-19T21:35:00.004-05:00

I found a flier at the library that listed all the "classic" literature they have on their shelves. I perused the list and decided to read the first one I could find on the shelves that I hadn't read before. Go Tell It on the Mountain was totally new to me, and reading this story of how the sins of our fathers quite literally can shape our own unwitting lives was fascinating.

John, the main character, cannot figure out why his father hates him so. He is obedient, helpful, and the apple of his mother's eye. But his father favors his brother Roy, despite Roy's wild ways. In the 1930's, at a store front church service on a Saturday night in Harlem, we get to see the prayers of all the elders in John's life--his aunt, his mother, and the man he calls his father. The truth of who he is and how the circumstances of his life--including being a young black man--will shape his future we, as readers, must guess at. But at the end of the night, when John is saved, we are left with the hope that he can rise above his father's hypocrisy.

The separate stories of the adults in the book and how they came together to make a whole picture was great. I got lost on the imagery of John's "possession" by the Holy Spirit and didn't get much out of that, but I did like the sense of hope we are left with in the end. Despite being black in America in the 1930's, I really got the feeling that John was going to be able to somehow rise above what was expected of him.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee ******

2010-07-08T21:22:00.003-05:00

Six stars. I don't have six stars on my rating system, so I know I'm breaking my own boundaries by giving a book six stars. But if ever a book was written that would break boundaries, it is this one.

I never read this book before, mostly because of my high school English teacher my junior year. He was a good teacher, though very anal. He didn't want any of us to "cheat" on the book list that year, so he assigned only books that had no Cliff Notes written for them. I was exposed to some great literature that year, most notably Siddhartha by Herman Hesse. It was a very eye opening year of reading for me. But I did miss something.

In a way, I'm thankful for that teacher. I don't know how I would have reacted to this book if I had read it as a teenager. It certainly would have been in a different way than I've reacted to it now. My first knee-jerk response as I started reading was that I had to have a daughter. There had to be a way, and I was going to have one. I wanted a girl like Scout.

But after looking at my life, and looking at our family, I came to the conclusion that we don't always get what we want. As an adult I've had to deal with this many times. I'm not going to be able to have an infant daughter that I give birth to myself. Just as Scout didn't get to have a mother.

And then I got to the summer of Boo in the book. Boo, who has withdrawn from all society because of the things he's been told, the small trouble he got into as a child. He is locked away. I thought of my son, who I'm doing everything in my power to encourage to be part of our society, despite how our society has treated people like my son in the past. It was then that it hit me: I don't have a daughter like Scout, but I have son like Boo. But my Boo, my darling Boo, will be seen. He will be heard. He will be a character in life because of his presence, not because of his absence.

Mistakes are made when raising children, it can't be helped. But if you are there for your child, that may be something that even I won't mess up.

"He turned out the light and went into Jem's room. He would be there all night, and he would be there when Jem waked up in the morning."

The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo by Stieg Larsson ***

2010-06-28T21:43:00.003-05:00

The movie that has been made from this book is just now out in the US, though it was released last year in Europe. The premise sounded good to me and I wanted to read the book before I saw the movie, so it seemed like a good choice for the Kindle. I haven't seen the movie yet, but I hope to soon.

The first thing that strikes you when you start this book is the violence. It's not immediate, but once it gets going it's very graphic and disturbing. For whatever reasons, I just don't like books like that in general anymore. About 10 years ago I think this would have been much more my thing, but not now.

Another beef I had with the book was one of the main characters, Mikael Blomkvist. I just never really liked him. Again, I can't put my finger on it and say exactly why, but he annoyed me.

The character of Lisbeth, the titular female, is an interesting one. She has had a very difficult past that has made her a person of very little outward display of emotion and she is mostly misunderstood by those around her. Her ambivalence towards issues that most other people find very important has marked her as a rebel.

The mystery in the book is good, with many twists and turns that are hard to anticipate. I think the story itself is a very good one.

I don't think I'll be reading the other two books that Larrson wrote before his untimely death, but you never know.

The Postmistress by Sarah Blake ***

2010-06-10T20:48:00.003-05:00

This is one of those books that you finally get to the end of and you're left wondering many many things about it. Like, why?

It takes place in 1940-1941 before the US had joined up for WWII. The action happens on the home front and over in Europe, following two stories that converge in the end. The premise is that the postmaster of a small town on the tip of Cape Cod decides to buck her own principles and not deliver a letter to a woman who's husband is in London helping out during the Blitz. Now, my big Why? in this book is why did this woman's husband go over there? He's a doctor, he's lost his first patient, and he can't take it anymore. So he goes over to help in London. But he loves his wife very much and knows that he leaves her utterly alone when he's gone. I was mad at this guy from the get go. I guess it just didn't make enough sense to me that he'd leave her and that made any sympathy I had for him go right out the window.

Alright, meanwhile there's an American lady radio reporter over in London too, reporting on the Blitz. Her impassioned reporting is partly why the doctor went over there. She soon leaves London, though, to go to continental Europe and report on the plight of the Jews there. She makes voice recordings (the technology wasn't really quite there yet in reality) of the people she meets fleeing for Spain and Portugal, realizing that many of them would soon be dead. This was a pretty neat part of the book, and devastating in its description of children, older men, pregnant women, all of them desperate to get out of the hell that Europe had become for them.

Overall, this book is good. But the hard part for me was the slowness of the action, especially at the end. I kept wanting to yell at the characters to just get on with it. The opening of the book is odd too, since I don't really see where it was necessary at all for the story.

I'll say this--if you like books about the people caught up in WWII, this one will at least be up your alley.

Among the Barons by Margaret Peterson Haddix ***

2010-05-31T20:21:00.003-05:00

This is the fourth in the Shadow Children series. I'm pretty committed now to finishing them all, and this one is pretty good. It takes up where it left off with the character of Luke, who has assumed the identity of Lee Grant in order to come out of hiding. The problem now is that the real Lee, who died mysteriously, had a little brother who has decided to come visit his brother "Lee". Smits, the younger brother, knows that his real brother is dead, but can't seem to come to grips with that reality. Luke tries to help Smits, but after awhile everything becomes murky--why is Smits here? Why does he have a bodyguard that follows him everywhere? What are Smits' parents up to?

A good sequel, and it leaves the ending open for a new chapter in the series.

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield ****

2010-05-25T21:28:00.003-05:00

This one was recommended by a co-worker, she said she couldn't put it down and now I can see why! Though the time period is never clear, the action takes place in England and it is like a modern Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre, with all the Gothic horror to go with it.

A biographer, Margaret Lea, is summoned by the most famous writer in Great Britain, Vida Winter, to write her life story. Miss Winter has given at least 200 versions of what her life was like to 200 different reporters, all of which are untrue. Haunted by one young man from the past who asked her for the truth, Miss Winter decides to finally reveal her origins to Margaret. But is this the truth this time?

Like my friend told me, this is a very engrossing story that will leave you pondering how it all fits together until you get to the end. I'm not the most romantic person in the world, so I had a hard time suspending my disbelief at certain points in the book, but overall it was a great read and filled with interesting character studies. The twists and turns were at times hard to follow, but when looked at in the context of a master storyteller giving her last performance, I could believe that Miss Winter could tell her story in this way.

Another aspect of this book is it's description of the love of reading. This was one of my favorite parts, because I feel as compelled as the character Margaret to read all that comes within my grasp too. All the books of the world are there to be read, and when you look at them you realize that all their authors were trying in their own way to keep themselves alive, to make a monument to their knowledge to pass on. Even the most dull textbook from 100 years ago is of some value, because it contains the life work of someone. It is an attempt to continue one's soul beyond our earthly scope.

So if you like a good Gothic mystery in Jolly Old England, or if you just love to read, I think you will like this book.

Among the Betrayed by Margaret Peterson Haddix ***

2010-05-16T17:01:00.003-05:00

This is the third book in the Shadow Children series. Like all sequels, it's hard to keep up the excitement that the first book had. Ms. Haddix gets around that problem by introducing all new characters in this book, the main one being a child that was in the background of the last book. Now we learn about her story.

Nina is a third child, illegal in this future version of the US. So she has been in hiding at Harlow's School for Girls, along with most of the other students there. But when her first love, Jason, betrays her, Nina's life goes into a downward spiral that ends up with her beaten and in prison, waiting to be executed. When she's given the opportunity to live if she will betray three other third children, Nina faces a difficult decision. Mattias, Percy, and Alia are all younger than her, Alia only being 6. Should she do what she can to stay alive, or should she help these other kids too?

My only criticism of this book has to do with the ending, which if I reveal any of I'll give the story away! Let's just say I'd have been a little more angry with the way I was treated if I were Nina! But otherwise, this is a great book. I can't wait to read the next one!

*******************

As a side note, I tried reading an adult book between this one and my previous post, but I couldn't finish the book! It was The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. After reading other people's reviews of it, I realize that not knowing Yiddish was a big part of my problem. I can't recommend that book to anyone, so if you're wanting to read a Michael Chabon book, read The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay instead--much better!

Among the Impostors by Margaret Peterson Haddix ****

2010-05-08T21:08:00.003-05:00

This is the second book in the Shadow Children series by Margaret Peterson Haddix. I read it pretty quickly, so that could be seen as an indication of how good I thought the book was!

Luke has now assumed the identity of Lee Grant, in order to come out of hiding as a shadow child (any third child, since any children more than two are not permitted in this vision of the future). He's in a very odd boarding school without windows, trying to figure out what he's supposed to be doing and how to survive in this new world he's been thrust into. And most of all, he's trying to figure out who, if anyone, he should trust.

This was a good sequel to Among the Hidden, and I highly recommend it to anyone who likes futuristic sci fi.

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett *****

2010-05-05T18:35:00.004-05:00

I'd heard about this book somewhere, perhaps while listening to NPR. It sounded like an interesting experiment--what if a group of hostages started liking where they were and who they were with? What if they didn't want to be rescued? It's not really like Stockholm syndrome, it's something different. All the people are rich, powerful, and very busy. And when they are taken hostage, they suddenly have time.

The action takes place in the vice-presidential home of an unnamed country in South America. We are told the country is very poor, so in order to attract more investment they are holding a birthday party for a very important man--Mr. Hosokawa. Mr. Hosokawa is the CEO of an electronics company in Japan. But Mr. Hosokawa has no intentions of building a new plant in this "God-forsaken country". His only reason for travelling halfway around the world to this birthday party is because Roxanne Coss, the most talented operatic soprano in the world, will be singing for the guests. And Mr. Hosokawa's great love is opera.

So begins the infamous party, which soon turns ugly when three "Generals" and their barely teen aged troops sneak into the mansion through the air conditioning vents and take over the premises.

This is the kind of book I like, in that it is an in depth look at the characters and how they interact. Mr. Hosokawa, Gen, Roxanne Coss, Carmen, the Three Generals, Simon Thibault, etc. etc. You care deeply for them all by the end of the book, and fear what will happen to them. Roxanne I tended to get annoyed with, she was a very entitled person. But I have noticed that in general that if you act entitled, you are treated with entitlement. Of course you can't help but wonder how you would have behaved in the same situation. Selflessly, like Father Arguedas and Ruben Iglesias? Or otherwise?

I didn't like the ending of the book, but I think that was the point. It wasn't supposed to happen, and it leaves you feeling a sense of doom for the relationship that is featured. It's a futile attempt to recapture something that is gone forever. And haven't we all tried to do that ourselves?

If you like to delve into others, and thereby into yourself, I highly recommend this book.

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix ****

2010-04-29T21:03:00.004-05:00

Although I'm due for an adult book, my school librarian friend suggested this one to me. I thought I'd give it a try & I'm glad I did!

I know the whole crazy-future-government thing has been done many times before in both adult and children's literature (Below the Root, The Handmaid's Tale, 1984, etc.), but this is a fresh look at it from the perspective of a 12 year old boy.

Luke is a forbidden third child, prohibited by the government and hidden in his family's attic. Luke has no friends, and has never left the farm he is raised on. What little freedom he has is lost when the woods next to his house are torn down and a new subdivision is built. Now he can never leave the house again.

But one day, he sees a face in a window of one of the new houses. Is this another illegal child? Luke takes the biggest risk of his life--he sneaks to the neighbor's house to find out. What he learns turns his world upside down.

This is the first book in a series called the Shadow Children, and I can't wait to read the next one!

Emma's River by Alison Hart ****

2010-04-24T21:02:00.005-05:00

It's always neat to read a book set in your home state, especially if it's not written about very much. I've lived most of my life in Missouri, and most of that in St. Louis. So to have a book about a girl from St. Louis that rides on a riverboat up the Missouri River in 1852 is a nice change from all the books about westward expansion that only begin after leaving Missouri.

Emma is 10 years old & is travelling with her mother & a family friend on the riverboat Sally May up to St. Joe, Missouri to meet her father. From there they have plans to travel west to California and seek their fortune in the gold boom. Emma has finagled her mother into allowing her pony, Licorice Twist, to come also, despite the extra stress this causes the family. Emma is worried that Dr. Burton, the family friend, isn't going to make sure that Twist is taken care of properly on board the Sally May, so she sneaks off to the lowest level of the steamboat to take care of him herself. There she meets Patrick, an Irish stowaway, and befriends him.

The details are expertly given on riverboat travel at the time, and I learned quite a few things about them. I didn't know that there were steerage passengers on steamboats also at that time, though after learning that it didn't surprise me that they were treated so poorly. I did know of the dangers of riverboat travel, especially the nasty habit they had of blowing up, after learning a few years back about Mark Twain's younger brother who died in a riverboat accident. They would try to race each other and get to their destinations fast, so they pushed the edge of their steam engines quite a bit.

I was a little disappointed in the ending of the book since it ended so happily--all of the main characters not only survive the blast, but decide to travel west together. But that could be because I'm a jaded adult reading a children's book!

All in all, it was a well done historical read, one that would help children really get into the past and understand what went on.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DeCamillo *****

2010-04-11T21:55:00.007-05:00

Lot of stars, I know. But this is the type of book I just loved as a kid, & evidently still love as an adult!

Edward Tulane is a rabbit, 3 feet tall, made of china. Abilene, 10 years old, is his mistress. She dresses him in silk suits, little leather shoes, & hats with two holes cut out of them for his ears. But Edward doesn't love her--he cares for no one other than himself.

But when he goes on an ocean cruise with Abilene & her parents, Edward is suddenly thrown overboard. And his life changes forever.

Not only is the story beautiful & sad, but the illustrations are so moving that they leave you breathless. There are several full color plates in the book, but I think my favorite picture is of the young boy Bryce, pausing while hoeing a garden, looking up at Edward. His expression is wonderful, & he looks rather similar to my own son.

This story about love, both giving & getting it, is appropriate for children at about the 4th grade level. There are some heartbreaking moments in the book that would be hard for a younger child to grasp.

I heartily recommend this jewel of a book.

My Lobotomy by Howard Dully ****

2010-04-10T21:10:00.004-05:00

Howard Dully was given a lobotomy in December 1960, when he had just turned 12 years old. His step-mother hated him & wanted him gone from her life, & this was her way of doing that. When that brutal procedure didn't make him non-communicative & immobile, he was made a ward of the state of California & lived the rest of his childhood & young adulthood in mental hospitals. As Howard writes in this book, he always wanted to know "why?" What had he done so wrong to warrant these actions against him?

When he was approached by two producers from NPR to do a 22 minute story about lobotomy, Howard finally found out what had happened to him. And the horrible truth, which was that he was a typical 12 year old boy, with no justification except his step-mother's lies for what was done to him.

To say this is a moving book is to put it mildly. The horror & outrage that I felt when reading this, & the fear that filled me when I realized that sometimes the medical community is not only incompetent but twisted, was breathtaking. How could this happen? How could this happen?

After reading the book I looked up Howard's NPR story online. If I thought the book was moving, it was nothing compared to hearing Howard himself finding out & dealing with what was done to him.

I think the thing that made the biggest impression on me was the realization of the power we, as adults, hold over children. We make so many choices for them, & not just for our own kids, but those we deal with in our jobs & in the community. We owe them the responsibility of doing what is best for them at all times, in all ways. As Howard points out, he was helpless against what was done to him. But no one stood up for him: not his father, not the doctors, not the nurses, no one.

With Holocaust Remembrance Day fast approaching (April 11), we remember to say, "Never again." Let's remember that when we deal with children also. Never again.

Gabriel's Triumph by Alison Hart ****

2010-04-06T21:03:00.005-05:00

This was a very satisfying sequel to Gabriel's Horses, & again for me it has a lot to do with the horse racing aspect of it. Hearing about the races, the crowds, & the excitement makes me anxious for the Kentucky Derby!

It's 1864, and Gabriel is traveling north to Saratoga Springs to race at the most famous racetrack of the day. He meets many hazards on the train ride there & in the barns of the racetrack itself, but also meets up with his old friend Jackson & makes a new one. His goal is to become a famous jockey, while overcoming the prejudice he experiences by being a free black man during the Civil War.

I enjoyed the second book in the Racing to Freedom Trilogy, & can't wait to read the third book now. I'm also looking forward to reading Emma's River, Alison Hart's newest book, & which the author was kind enough to send to me! How cool is that?!? Thanks again, Ms. Hart, & happy reading everyone!

**********UPDATE********

You can read about how Alison does research for her books & enter to win a copy of Emma's River here. Good luck!

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky *****

2010-03-29T19:44:00.008-05:00

Every once in a while, I will read a book that has a meaning of more than just the words that are written on its pages. This book in two parts, Suite Francaise, is a work of fiction. But the story behind its author has made it even more than the sum of its parts.

In the first part of the book, it's June of 1940, & the Nazis are invading France. The people of Paris are abandoning everything & racing in a frenzy to leave the city behind to what they assume will be its utter destruction. All classes of people are thrown together, much to their dismay, in this mass exodus. The rich, the famous, the struggling, the poor, all of them have the same kinds of experiences in the countryside surrounding Paris.

In the second part, Dolce, a small French village is subjected to the occupying forces. Nazi soldiers are housed in spare bedrooms, the community's horses are all bought for the war. The townspeople make money off the Germans, & the young people gradually find themselves in relationships with the enemy that they never thought they were capable of. As the new Eastern Front opens up with Russia, the book suddenly ends.

My above descriptions are of the book itself. What makes this more than it is, is the fate of the author.

Irene Nemirovsky was doubly damned, being not only Russian but Jewish. To the Nazis, Communists were almost as bad as Jews, & they pretty much assumed anyone from Russia was pro-Communist. Though Nemirovsky lived her adult life in France, she wasn't a citizen. When Paris fell she fled, like the characters from her book, into the countryside with her husband & daughters. There they thought they were safe, even as Irene started writing her new novel. Suite Francaise was going to be her masterpiece--her own War & Peace. She envisioned it in 5 distinct parts, like an orchestral symphony. She was destined to only get the first 2 parts done.

In July of 1942, she was arrested & sent to a concentration camp in France. From there she wrote 2 last letters to her family. Then she was put on a train east. To Auschwitz. She didn't last long there & died on August 17, without her family's knowledge. Desperate to find his wife, her husband, who was also a Russian Jew, frantically telegraphed & wrote to everyone he could think of who could help. It was to no avail, & 2 months later he was deported also. He was sent to the gas chambers immediately upon arrival.

At this time, Nemirovsky's daughters were 5 & 10 years old. A family friend immediately removed the yellow stars off all their clothing & hid the children in several different places for the rest of the war. They were continually hunted by the French police, who apparently had nothing better to do, but luckily they were never caught.

Denise, the older daughter, kept her mother's leather bound notebook with her all through the war & after. She couldn't bring herself to read what was written within, but kept it simply as a memento. Then, in the early 1970's, she decided to donate it to a French collection of war writings. Looking at her mother's writing for the first time, she was surprised to find not just a journal as she always suspected, but also a book. It was finally published in 2004.

That is the story of Suite Francaise. I could go on & on about the book & the emotions it has stirred up in me. Anger, mostly. The waste, the terrible waste of human life & genius because of the Holocaust. I wanted so very much to read the end of this book--all 5 parts. I know it would have been the masterpiece she envisioned. Instead, her own life became the ending of her book.

Leanin' Dog by K.A. Nuzum ****

2010-03-15T21:31:00.004-05:00

This book was recommended to me by the librarian at my son's school. I'd read another book by this author before & thought it was very good, but I didn't realize this was the same author until I'd finished Leanin' Dog.

12 year old Dessa Dean's mother has died--frozen to death while Dessa Dean helplessly tried to warm her. Now she can't even leave the porch of the cabin she lives in with her father without having what she calls a "daymare"--flashbacks to that horrible ordeal. But one day an old brown dog shows up at their door, & slowly Dessa Dean starts to come back to the world of the living again.

Leanin' Dog is another wonderful book by K.A. Nuzum. She's able to help us understand a girl's intense grief, & gives her a unique & special voice that you seem to be able to hear, as though she's talking out loud to you. For an author that's only written two books, she's had two winners already. I highly recommend this one to you.

Gabriel's Horses by Alison Hart ****

2010-03-08T21:08:00.004-06:00

First, I have to say that this book has something to do with horse racing. And I've really liked horse racing since I was about 13 years old & watched the Kentucky Derby for the first time on TV. So right there, it had me. But it's also a well written book, with some interesting characters & a great insight into what life was like in Kentucky during the Civil War.

The book starts with Gabriel, a 12 year old slave, being given the chance to go to Lexington with his father & also his master. His father has bought himself freedom, & hopes to earn more money to buy both his wife & son theirs also.

Gabriel has a true gift with horses, which he inherited from his horse-training father. With a fair-minded master, he has an easy life for a slave, & he knows it. Opportunities seem to be opening up for Gabriel as a jockey, but just when he thinks he knows what the future will bring, the War invades his work life & his family.

I'm honestly not sure if I'll read the other two books in this series, but I do like this book for the back-door education it gives young readers into the Civil War from a slave's point of view. I never knew myself that Kentucky was a neutral state--it was much more peaceable than my native Missouri, where there were many bloody conflicts. But no state came out unscathed by the war, & no family did either.

Another great Mark Twain Award nominee. The kids of Missouri are voting right now on the winner--I'll be anxious to see what they end up liking the most!

Way Down Deep by Ruth White *****

2010-02-27T08:10:00.003-06:00

This is another of the Mark Twain Award nominees, & so far it's my favorite. It's the story of the town of Way Down Deep, West Virginia, & also about a 3-year-old named Ruby June mysteriously found in front of the town courthouse just before the end of WWII. Ruby June becomes the heart & soul of Way Down Deep, but the peace & tranquility of town is disturbed when the mystery of her origins starts to surface.
Way Down Deep is the story of the preciousness of childhood, our greatest treasure. It's a quick read (2 days for me) & it will leave you feeling good about your own childhood & the kids around you. Give it a try, I highly recommend it.

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling ****

2010-02-20T21:23:00.003-06:00

I've never read The Jungle Book before--it was pretty good! I was bracing myself to read some of Kipling's notorious racist comments, but I didn't really encounter anything overtly bad. In the context of when it was written, it seemed fairly tame to me. I'm sure Kipling made his infamous opinions known in other works of his, but this one seems to be just typical of it's time.
The best part of this book was reading Riki-Tiki-Tavi. Puppy has watched the cartoon of this many many times, so I knew the story well. I was amazed by how true to the story Chuck Jones stayed when he made the cartoon--it's almost verbatim!
At this point in the book Puppy came up to me & asked what I was reading. I told him, & he insisted I read it to him. So I did. And then I had to read it to him again. And then one more time. He loved to hear it read, I think because he already had the pictures for it in his mind. It was neat to see how happy he was to totally understand every word he heard. I wonder if I can't find some other books that have been made into cartoons that I could read to him after he's seen them. It really seems to help with his comprehension.
Overall, a good book written mostly from different animals' points of view. Kipling had a wonderful way of portraying animals so people could understand them. I recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it before.

Emma on Masterpiece Theatre *****

2010-02-14T21:48:00.003-06:00

Well, I'm diverging. I'm going to review a TV show for a change, simply because it was so good. It's based on a classic piece of literature, though, so I figure I'm not going too far off my beaten path.
For the past few weeks, a new version of Emma has been on Masterpiece Theatre. Now I love Masterpiece--I've watched it since I was about 14 years old. And last year at this time they had a Jane Austen festival, if you will, where they showed all of her books made into movies. But this is a new production, & the very best version of it I've ever seen.
I think what makes this one so good is the rapport between Emma & Mr. Knightley. They banter back & forth & give each other trouble throughout almost the whole production without Emma ever realizing that they are actually in love. The actor playing Mr. Knightley does a wonderful job of making him a much more human character than I've seen in other productions. And though I know they've taken a few liberties with the book, this interpretation really speaks to modern viewers without totally forgetting the context in which it was written. The screenwriter also goes to the trouble of trying to help us understand why Mr. Churchill does the things he does, & leaves him in a little more sympathetic light.

Rent it, buy it, whatever. If you like Jane Austen, or any good romantic comedy, please see this!!

Mansfield Park by Jane Austin ***

2010-02-04T21:12:00.002-06:00

I've been putting off reviewing this one. I'll tell you why: it just wasn't as good as I expected it to be. I'd seen the BBC production of it last year on Masterpiece Theatre on PBS, & knew it wasn't Jane Austen's best story. But I thought, as most people do, that the book would be better. It wasn't, in my humble opinion. The movie actually made the story better & more believable, I think because it made it just a little more modern.
The biggest annoyance I had was the main character, Fanny Price. I just couldn't ever get to where I sympathized with her very much. She was so timid & frail that she just got on my nerves after awhile. And she tried so much to be good always that she just came across as a prude to me. Every time I got close to identifying with her, she would turn me off again. I especially didn't like her dislike of her own, very un-polished, family, who she visits towards the end of the book. Fanny was much more a bore to me than her family was to her.
The only redeeming character I came across was right at the end--Susan, Fanny's younger sister. It's like Jane Austen realized at the end of the book that she could have made Fanny more interesting--she could have been like Susan. Susan ends up in the same role Fanny had with the Bertram's, only with the promise of being a much more interesting person.
Sorry to slam it, but I just felt very frustrated by the end of the book. So sorry, Austenites!

The Death of Ivan Ilych by Leo Tolstoy *****

2010-01-20T21:11:00.002-06:00

A couple years ago I was reading Shannon's blog, Half Soled Boots, when she posted a link to the blog What Is Stephen Harper Reading?. First, for all my ignorant fellow Americans (I'm including myself in this), Stephen Harper is the PM of Canada. Duh. Why didn't I know that?
Anyways, the Canadian author Yann Martel started the blog to give Mr. Harper some suggestions of things to read. Looking at the list (which is now on it's 73rd book) I realized I've read very few of these lovely books. So I thought that whenever I felt the urge I'd just whale away at it.
This is book #1. If you're wanting something light & happy, don't read this amazingly short Tolstoy story. But if you want to read something profound & satisfying, do it.
The book opens with Ivan already dead, but we then travel back in time to follow his life up to the moment of his last breath. Ivan followed all the rules of society. So why does his life look like nothing as he lays in bed dying?
As I read the story, I couldn't help thinking of my own father's death. Is this how he felt, I wondered, as his life quickly folded up around him? Did I keep up the act, the farce, that he wasn't dying, just as Ivan's family does? I don't know. I do know that this is a book of great value. And I certainly can see why Yann Martel recommended it to Stephen Harper.
I recommend it to you.

Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery ****

2010-01-16T19:06:00.003-06:00

The second book in the series reminded me quite a bit of Little Men, at least at first. It grated on my nerves because the author, like Louisa May Alcott, tried to use her writing to influence the morals of the young people reading her books. Though I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with that, it does date the books very much. I wish both those authors would have just stuck to telling the stories of their main characters, rather than using them as moral benchmarks that I think very rarely are ever lived up to. For me, Anne of Avonlea was redeemed by some of the stories contained in it, which did just tell of Anne's journeys & experiences.
I know the use of characters as pinnacles of virtue to be attained is still used, but I do think that now they are shown in their weakness, thereby helping those of us who are so very imperfect feel more in common with them. Anne's imperfections are those of being dreamy & perhaps too optimistic, but I don't think those are really considered faults in our society.
All in all, Lucy Maude Montgomery paints a picture of a character that it's hard not to like, simply because she embodies youth & the promise therein. I'm sure my own pessimism towards Anne, which isn't much, has to do with the fact that I'm moving farther & farther away from those days myself with each new year. It's a hard job to keep those feelings alive in your heart, but perhaps I can give it a try in this new year. I do have one major thing in common with Anne--I love nature & am inspired by it as much as she is. Despondency gets wiped away when I look outside & see the beautiful world around me.
Maybe there is a bit of Anne in me after all.

The Garden of Eve by K.L. Going ****

2010-01-11T14:25:00.003-06:00

I've just finished another Mark Twain Award nominee, & the best one word description is "magical". Evie lost her mother to cancer 10 months ago, & her father has moved them far away from their home in Michigan to a failing apple orchard in New York state. She meets a boy who says he's a ghost, & gets a gift from someone she never met. And when given the choice between this world or one where her mother may be waiting for her, she has a hard time deciding.
The heartache of loss is told very well in this book. Losing a parent is never easy, but I can imagine losing one at the age of 10 would bring your world to a halt. Change is inevitable, & it's hard moving forward when you feel like you're leaving someone behind. But as Evie's mother says in the book, "There's a time for birth & a time for death. Life moves in cycles, Evie. That's the way things are meant to be."
May you read this book & find the beauty in life again.

Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery ****

2010-01-08T21:14:00.002-06:00

I've found that copyright-free books are available for free on my Kindle, so after downloading about a dozen of them I decided to actually read some! I'd never read Anne of Green Gables, though I'd seen a dramatization of it once when I was younger. It's one of those great classic books for girls, & I'm glad I've finally read it.

If you aren't familiar with the story, it's about an 11 year old girl who is adopted by an older brother & sister, Matthew & Marilla Cuthbert, who never married. They intended to adopt a boy to help around the farm, but accidentally got Anne instead. After meeting her they decide to keep her, & the rest is history. By the end of the book, she's made a bosom friend, a bitter enemy, & a lot of mistakes. But she's 16 years old & about to start teaching.

This brings up a question from me--how could a 16 year old be a teacher? I know Anne goes away to school for a year to study for it, but wow! I guess since the children she teaches are all younger than her it works. And I'm sure back when this was written it was hard to get teachers in the more remote parts of Canada. But being married to a teacher myself, I find it amazing to see the discrepancy between teacher training 100 years ago & now. Wow!

Let the Great World Spin by Colum Mccann *****

2010-01-01T19:27:00.002-06:00

First & foremost, this a beautiful book. That's the best word to describe this masterpiece--absolutely beautiful. Love & death, loss & renewal, hope & failure. It's all here. I marvel that a man could so eloquently & perfectly describe what goes on inside a woman's head. Not just one woman, but many women. All different, all familiar. Then you have the men. So different also, but at the same time all trying to get something, somewhere.
The setting is New York City, August 7, 1974. What happens is a man walks along a tightrope strung from one tower to the other of the World Trade Center. And how that is a backdrop to all the millions of lives in the city, that one moment in time, suspended in space.
If you read one book this year, I highly encourage this one. If you don't feel as though you have a connection to the person telling the story, just keep reading. You will. Because there are many tellers of this story.

On another note, this was the first book I read with my new Kindle. It is nifty, to say the least! I don't think I'll read all my books this way, but it is neat to use when I want to. I ordered a cover for it, which I think is a necessity for me since I take books everywhere & I know I'll be doing the same with the Kindle. I feel funny reading books on it, since I'm so used to holding an actual book, but I think I'll get used to it. I also hope libraries start having ebooks, then it would be a little more practical. Until then, I'm reading all the great free books I can get my hands on (other than the above book)! If you have an ebook reader, let me know what you think about it.

The Reptile Room by Lemony Snicket ****

2009-12-23T21:27:00.005-06:00

Ah yes. I've read the second book in A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is most unfortunate.
Same characters from the first book (I have a funny feeling that Count Olaf will be appearing quite regularly), just with the addition of a dottie uncle who collects bizarre snakes.
These books really frustrate the hell out of me, mostly because you just want the kids to run off & stop waiting for the dense adults in their lives to figure out the obvious. And obviously, Count Olaf is the bad guy.
Speaking of Olaf, they made a movie based on the first 3 books, I believe. And I know Jim Carrey plays Count Olaf. Now, for no apparent reason, Jim Carrey freaks me out. Maybe it's his shiny, shiny eyes. But whatever the cause & without having seen the movie, I think he'd make a good Count Olaf.
I recommend this book to all the good people of the world who are feeling a little down. This ought to send you right over the edge.

Hoot by Carl Hiaasen *****

2009-12-18T08:58:00.003-06:00

Excellent excellent! Carl Hiaasen just does the best job ever of writing a book for kids that is smart, funny, & has a conscious. I can see why this book won awards, & it wins an award from me too: 5 stars!
Roy has just moved from Montana to Florida, & misses his past life a lot. But thanks to a mysterious kid & his sister he not only starts to fit in at school, but he also starts to love & appreciate his new home state.
I've never been to the Everglades, in fact the one trip I made to Florida as a teen was to see my sister graduate from Navy basic training in Orlando & then to go to Disney World (side note: I didn't like Disney World. Sorry.). It was hot & miserable, & the only nature we saw was the 10 minute trip to the ocean to stand on a crowded beach & walk in the waves. So whenever I think of Florida, that's the image that comes to my mind.
Carl Hiaasen has made me want to go back to Florida, only this time to see it's natural beauty. That's so much more a part of who I am, & I'm lucky that my husband & son are the same way. Give us a secluded wilderness over a theme park any day! Gators & mosquitoes I knew were down there, but burrowing owls?!? I never never would have equated Florida with burrowing owls. Wonderful!
Thanks for the great trip, Carl! I'm gonna be checking out your books for adults soon!

The Bad Beginning by Lemony Snicket ****

2009-12-11T21:55:00.002-06:00

My God, this is a depressing book. The author wasn't kidding when he warns not to read it if you like happy endings. Of course it's funny & very clever too, but it put me in a crappy mood from the get go!

I grabbed this book at my son's school library because I wanted to read something at a higher vocabulary level--this one is 6th grade. I didn't know that most of the higher vocab words are defined in a rather humorous manner by the author. I can see this being a great series for kids who love words, since they'll learn new ones without quite realizing it. The writing is excellent!

If you don't already know, this miserable book is about the 3 Baudelaire children: Violet, Klaus, & Sunny. From the very beginning their whole world goes to crap when they find out their house has burnt down, their parents are dead, & they have to go live with a freak of a relative called Count Olaf. It goes downhill from there.

I'm not sure if I'll continue with the rest of the books (there are 13 in all!), but I do recommend them for the goth-in-training crowd & other morose youngsters.

Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn ***

2009-12-06T20:50:00.004-06:00

Well, when I break my reading fast I really break it! Just finished this little number--it's one of the Mark Twain Award nominees this year. It's the only one I've read so far, & it was pretty good.

It's the kind of spooky ghost story I would have really loved when I was in the 4th grade. It starts with a 13 year old girl, Ali, finding a picture of her mother & aunt from back in the summer of '77. The third girl in the picture has been ripped off, so that only her shoulder & some of her hair is vi sable. Turning it over, she finds that her name has been ripped off too--all that is left is a "T". She soon finds herself spending the summer at Gull Cottage in Maine with her aunt Dulcie & 4 year old cousin Emma. This is where the mysterious picture was taken 30 years before, & soon Ali is finding out that what happened all those years ago is still haunting not only her aunt & mother, but Gull Cottage as well.

Over all it was a fast, easy read that kept my interest. As I'm prone to do I found some nit-picky things that irked me, like the author describing the 2 cousins playing Candy Land with dice. Since when do you play Candy Land with dice?

Letting that go, I can see why the girls were reading this book like crazy at my son's school. My biggest beef with it is the lack of male characters--there is only the very minor character of Ali's dad, & that's it. It explains why I didn't see as many boys checking this book out as girls. I like balance in my reading, & I wish one of the major characters had been male. But I can also see why the author stuck with girls--it does lend some continuity to the stories of the past & present.

My only other beef is the level of maturity attributed to the 4 year old, Emma. At times she acts like a 4 year old, & at other times like a child much older. I had to go back at one point to the beginning of the book where it tells her age because I got so confused.

Otherwise, this was a good read, especially for kids. It didn't have much for adults other than the relationship between the 2 sisters, which sucked at times, & you don't have to tell me about that since I have a sister too! I highly recommend it for the 4th-6th grade girl in your life, if you have one!

Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden *****

2009-12-03T21:12:00.003-06:00

Yes, I've finally read another book. Not sure why I had the dry spell, but I'm glad it's over.

This is one of those books that haunts you for quite awhile, in fact parts of it may haunt me forever. It's amazing to me how images that form in your mind when reading can be the hardest to get out of it--things that you never saw, but feel like you did.

I heard of this book on a blog I follow, Half Soled Boots (Shan is very good at concisely describing the books she reads on there, so if you get a chance please check it out. And if you like knitting, she's the gal for you!). It sounded interesting, & since my library didn't have it & I've been wanting to try out the inter library loan function online, it worked for me.

Xavier & Elijah are two young Canadian Indian young men who join the army so they can go fight in WWI. They're both excellent shots, & so become sharp shooters. The story is about them, & about Xavier's aunt back home, Niska, who still lives in the wild as their ancestors did.

The scenes that haunt me are those of the WWI battlefields. I've seen a few movies showing the hell that went on over in Europe during the Great War, but as I said above, the images my own mind conjured up from reading the descriptions of the atrocities committed in the name of war will always be there.

I think that's the sign of a great author--not whether I like the plot or not, but whether I'm stuck with the images they somehow gave me in my head. I've read quite a few books that I honestly didn't like, but which were able to snake their way into my subconscious & now lie there waiting for some small thing to hatch them out again.

And now for a brief message from the emergency broadcast system...

2009-11-10T21:32:00.005-06:00

I haven't been reading anything lately, but mostly because I haven't been able to help at my son's school library lately. I should be there on Thursday this week, so I'm hoping to find a new series of books to read. The "Dear America" books seem very interesting, but I'm kinda in the mood for some good ol' fashioned fiction. If there's anyone out there reading this that has any suggestions, I'd be happy to take them!
On another note, I hope I don't ever offend anyone with my book reviews. This blog can be a great place for me to vent my under-appreciation of certain literature, but I also worry about being overly negative. Plus, it's so damn easy to judge someone else's work. I've made some half-hearted attempts to write myself, so I fully understand how difficult it truly is. I also understand how much of yourself gets wrapped up in what you write.
That said, I hope to have a new review on here soon. I'm going nuts without anything to read--the back of the cereal box is getting really old!

Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie by Kristiana Gregory ***

2009-10-24T21:22:00.003-05:00

I'm yet again reviewing a book for kids, but this is again because I've been working at my son's school library once a week & it's hard for me to not start perusing the titles in my spare time.

This book is part of the Dear America series, which seems to basically be fictional diaries of different young women thru the history of our country. This one is based in 1847 & is subtitled The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell.

It's a very quick read & does a good job of describing the difficulties of the people who attempted the trek west back in the day. I'm sure the author used as sources some of the real diaries that exist from back then & blended them into the story she came up with. I think it's especially good since it also touches on things that any 13 year old girl would be thinking about: boys, dresses, worries about younger siblings, being tired of said siblings, etc.

Overall, a good book about a very interesting topic.

The London Eye Mystery by Siobhan Dowd ****

2009-10-18T21:05:00.003-05:00

This book is part of the growing genre that have people with Asperger's as the hero of the story. Ted (love that name!) is the boy at the heart of the book. He & his sister Kat try to solve the mystery of what happened to their cousin, Salim, when he didn't come down off the London Eye.

The book is written for kids, but as all good books are, everyone will enjoy it. It is a true mystery & I couldn't figure out the ending at all before I got to it.

While getting my picture of the book's cover for my blog, I happened to read Ms. Dowd's brief biography. I was very dismayed to see that she died of breast cancer not long after this book was published in 2007. Cancer sucks--that's all I can say.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult **

2009-10-12T18:08:00.002-05:00

I'd never read a Jodi Picoult novel before, so when I saw this one in a pile of books my mom was getting rid of I took it home. The basic premise is the anatomy of a high school shooting, from the morning it happens, then jumping back in time & then forward from that day. The idea seems good, everyone wonders what goes through the mind of a teen who decides they can't take it any more & will kill their school mates. But I felt there were many flaws in this book. Some were just me being nit-picky, like finding four really obvious editing problems ("he" instead of "she", referring to something that wasn't possible in the time line given, etc etc), but some others were just things left unsaid. I wanted to know a little more about some of the characters, & I really wanted to sympathize with the shooter but had a hard time doing so. I guess I just wasn't that into the subject, maybe, but I kept wanting the teens to get over the popularity thing & get on with their lives.

I was disappointed in the book in general--it seemed like the kind of book that an author rushes to finish because of commitments to the publishing house. I still would like to read some of her other books, though, because I fear this one didn't do her justice.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling *****

2009-09-22T10:45:00.004-05:00

This has been quite a journey for me. A coworker of mine pointed out that it's not the journey most people who've been reading Harry Potter for 10 years had--they had 2 years between books, where as I had maybe one day at times! But I have to say I think fate had it's hand in this. From the time I started this series until now, it has been for me intimately tied to my father. From the time that it became apparent that he was slowly descending into death, to now, 3 days after his remains were laid to rest, this has been for me an escape. Not just an escape, though, but very much something I needed.

As I read these books, I told myself over & over, "When I'm done I'll be better. I'll be back to normal & able to function. When I'm done this will be over, & my dad will be laid to rest & that will be it." In a way, this has been true. I do feel better. I do think I will be able to function again. Dad is laid to rest.

"That will be it", though? I think that's just dumb optimism! Let's face it, when you lose someone that has been a large part of your life there's never a point where you simply stop thinking about them. They're always there, just like Dumbledore in his picture frame.

This book was about life & death, as all good books are. If I were to wax philosophical, I'd say that Joseph Campbell would have been proud of ol' J.K. She totally captured the hero character that has been a part of humanity for all of our existence. The Harry Potter books have their flaws, but they deliver exactly what we need--hope for ourselves, for our future, for being human. Every story we tell ends up with that question we want answered--are our lives worth anything?

As I'm sure many people were, I'm drawn to the character of Snape. I've been fascinated with who he was supposed to be from the very first book. I had my theories. I felt very disappointed in the 6th book, I didn't want to be wrong. After reading Chapter 33 in this book, though, I had to read it again. And again. And then I knew.

The real hero, after all, is Snape. And oddly enough, it always was. Because, as Joseph Campbell would tell us all, a real hero is flawed.

********************

Click here for a great blog post my husband wrote about my dad.

Harry Potter's 5 & 6 by J.K. Rowling ****

2009-09-16T20:57:00.004-05:00

I've had to double up on my reviews since I'm neglecting my posting duties. I really don't have much to write about either book, other than I can't wait to get the last book tomorrow. I can also say I'll be glad when I'm done with the series--I've not only neglected posting, but I've neglected doing much of anything else. And since cleaning is always on the bottom of my list...you get it.

My dad's memorial service was this past Saturday. We inter his remains this coming Saturday. So I have to say this too--Harry Potter has helped me through some tough times. Hokey, I know, but these books have really helped me keep my mind off some of the harder thoughts. So thanks, J.K.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling *****

2009-09-03T11:20:00.002-05:00

Yes, I've given this 5 stars. It's hard to believe that J.K. Rowling could write not just 3 good books, but 4 in a series, so I'm giving it to her on that. Also, on her great ability to have the seriousness of the stories equal the growing maturity of the characters in the books. It's been amazing how she totally understands what is important to 14 year olds in this book! Plus, the story gets darker, as it needed to. This series has been just the thing I needed right now to keep me from getting too down.

The Broken Shore by Peter Temple ****

2009-08-24T08:28:00.002-05:00

I found this book on NPR as one that has gone "under the radar" but was a good read. I have to agree with them.

The main character is Joe Cashin, a big city detective who has been posted to his backwater home town after a particularly vicious run in with a crime boss. He lost his young partner in the event & feels massive guilt for it.

As the story unfolds, you learn not only about the crime that occurs in Port Monro & throws Joe back into action, but about Joe's family. I wasn't really aware of the racial dynamic in Austrailia between the white & aboriginal peoples. Needless to say, there is a lot of racism going on & there is a lot of similarity to the US in that regards.

Joe had an aunt that was aboriginal (I have no idea what the acceptable term would be for the native peoples of Austrailia other than aboriginal--mostly unacceptable terms were used in the book!) & grew up with his cousins, so has a much different outlook than most of his fellow white cops.

The plot got a little predictable for me towards the end, though the scope of it was very surprising. I'm not the biggest fan of crime novels or I would have given this 5 stars. But anyone who likes to read good writing would enjoy this book immensely.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling ****

2009-08-17T21:26:00.002-05:00

Another good one. I like this one more than the second one, though now I'm starting to get them all mixed up in my head!

Not much more I can say other than that.

Austenland by Shannon Hale ***

2009-08-12T19:26:00.002-05:00

I had to read this, since it's Shannon Hale's only adult book to date. And now I can see why she doesn't write adult fiction. It's not that the book is bad in any way, it is just a very light read. Her books for teens actually seem to have a little more substance to them. The premise is that a 32 year old single gal gets a non-refundable trip to Pembrook Park, a resort in Jolly Old that claims to give you the full experience of being in a Jane Austen book. Like I said, it's a cute read & great for when you're not wanting to get into anything dark or morbid. If you go in with low expectations, you won't be disappointed. I had higher ones based on her teen books, but hey, you can't get everything in life.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling ****

2009-08-09T14:23:00.003-05:00

Yep, this one was good too. Though I doubt there are many people out there who haven't read it yet. I know, I'm 10 years late getting to this one!
Snakes--boy do we humans have an obsession with them! My son loves the scaly devils, though he doesn't want to necessarily touch one or anything. But man does he enjoy the snake house at the zoo!
I guess I feel sorry for the whole serpent world for how we portray them in books. At least Harry Potter can speak to them, & thereby give them some voice. I know the late Croc Hunter enjoyed hanging out with them too, but he was definitely a little different, to put it nicely.
Well, this has been an exceedingly lame post. It's probably because I've been simply reading lately to divert my mind from the fact my dad passed away this past Wednesday. Though I'm not in the state of despair I was in for the past 3 days, I'm still not quite myself yet. I've been wondering if I ever will be. As ol' W.B. Yeats said, "..peace comes dropping slow...".

Wishful Drinking by Carrie Fisher *****

2009-08-07T19:51:00.004-05:00

I'm going to keep this short--this is a good book. Read it. It is funny. I liked it. Carrie Fisher is crazy. She has lots of problems. But she has a great sense of humor. So what the hell. Don't we all?

Harry Potter & the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling ****

2009-07-31T22:04:00.003-05:00

If someone had told me 10 years ago that I wouldn't start reading the Harry Potter series until 2009, & that I'd start doing so to divert myself from my father's loosing battle with cancer, I wouldn't have believed them. But that's what's going on, & it's working very well in the diversion category.
I don't know yet about the other books in the series, but I can say that J.K. Rowling tapped into something we all want--a unique, wonderful world where we truly "belong". Isn't that what we all want? A place where we are accepted as we are, & where our natural talents are celebrated, as opposed to ridiculed? It's pretty universal.
I know when I was little I used to imagine that I was an alien from another planet that was dropped off here by accident when I was born. That would explain my lack of fitting in, & why even though I tried really hard to please my family, it was never enough. I think we've all felt that way from time to time in our lives. Wouldn't it be neat if we could all just go off to Hogwarts for 9 months & "find ourselves"?

Pictures at an Exhibition by Sara Houghteling ***

2009-07-27T21:35:00.003-05:00

The premise of this book is great: a Jewish art dealer in Paris before the Nazi's march in, flees the city in advance of the invasion, returns to Paris after it's liberation to find that not only is his gallery & home destroyed, all of his art work is gone. The story follows his son, Max, as he tries to find their art in order to finally gain approval from his father. I like that the subject of disability does arise (where doesn't it arise, once you're aware of it?), but overall it just didn't click with me. Like I said, the idea is compelling. But the characters just don't come across as memorable. There is a lot of fact wrapped up in this novel, which makes me want to read one of the author's sources, The Rape of Europa . All in all, it wasn't a bad book. I just didn't find it to be the kind of book that I will think about later.

Princess Academy by Shannon Hale ***

2009-07-19T13:07:00.003-05:00

Yep, I've reverted back to reading pre-teen books again. Well, I was at the library & didn't have a book picked out ahead of time & had a brain fart as to the name of any author I wanted to read, so I ended up with this. I've read three other books by Shannon Hale & if I had a teen-aged daughter I'd highly recommend them for her.
It's a cute book about wanting more in life, then realizing you already have everything you'd ever need.
This book isn't in the series about the imaginary kingdom of Bayern (which, ironically, is the name of Bavaria in German), but it's very similar.

American Family of the 1920s by Tom Tierney *****

2009-07-14T21:30:00.005-05:00

I know, I know...long time no post. So much for my lovely vow to write on here twice a week. Twice a month is probably a more realistic goal!

One reason I haven't written is that I haven't read anything lately. I've started a few books, but just haven't been able to get into them right now. I guess I'm going thru one of my dry spells again.

But that doesn't mean I haven't looked at any books. The book for today is part of a series I absolutely love--The American Family paper doll books by Tom Tierney. Not many people know that I love fashion. I am not a fashion plate by any means--most would categorize me as fashion-compromised. But I truly love looking at what people wore in the past. I think it helps books become more real to me if I know what the people were wearing, & this book series is great for that. I already own the following American Family series books: Pilgrims, Colonial, Early Republic, Pioneer, Civil War, 1890's, & 1900-1920.

This particular book was harder to come by because for some reason it's out of print. Nevertheless I was able to get it, & it's a gem. I can't help but make up stories in my head about the family members, since Tierney likes to make the families related thru the years.

I tried cutting out the dolls with one of my first books, but found it not to be a good idea. They're too detailed & once they're cut out they're easy to lose.

I highly recommend these books for anyone interested in the clothing of a particular period in American history!

Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business by Dolly Parton ***

2009-06-28T21:53:00.003-05:00

Yep, I read Dolly Parton's autobiography. I guess there has been some debate recently if women can be funny, & on the side of women definitely being funny was this book. Yes, it is a hoot in parts. Her hilarious descriptions of life in the mountains & the fact she doesn't take her self very seriously are great to read. Plus, her one-liners are the best.
She seems like the sort of person that gets along with everyone. She's very spiritual also, though not religious. There's a lot to find in common with her, & I like where she writes upfront that anyone who's reading this book to be like her shouldn't do that--be like yourself.
Here's why I'm only giving this 3 stars though--I guess I just get tired of reading stories about famous people. Pretty damn lame, eh? Like an un-famous person is going to get a deal to write about their massively exciting life. I guess what I mean is that it seems to be that famous people are rather selfish & self centered. I think this is by necessity, because you have to constantly strive for your goals & not let other people get in your way if you're going to become famous. You can't bow out of opportunities of you want to become famous either.
I suppose I'm a tiny bit jealous, to be honest. I live a compromised life, like 95% of the people on the planet. I know a self-help guru would say I'm choosing that, but like I said, so are 95% of my fellow humans, so I don't feel very alone. We all go out & buy the self-help books, write down lists of our dreams & goals, make all the moves to make it come true, then realize we don't have the money/time/energy/support/motivation to do it. And we come off feeling like shit.
Now, Dolly acknowledges her fans & seems like a genuine, sweet loving woman. But at the end of the book she talks about all her plastic surgeries, her refusal to be seen by anybody without wearing a massive amount of makeup, a wig, & 5 inch heels, & her talk about starting a cosmetic line the help all those "homely" women out there.
No thanks, Dolly. I'd rather just roll out of bed & let the world see me for who I am. How horrible!

Summer Solstice

2009-06-21T21:35:00.004-05:00

Well, things have been kinda weird around here. There are three reasons for that: summertime, cancer, & careers.

In the summertime heading, it's hot & Puppy is out of school. Now he's still in ESY (extended school year), but that's only half days Monday thru Thursday. So he's thrown out of sync. Plus we just can't live as regimented a life as they have at school, & he thrives on routine. Therefore, his behavior is careening around from one extreme to another, & the house is taking a pounding. He's ripped several things off the walls & hurt plants outside for no reason. He's in limbo land, & right about the time he gets in the swing of summer, school will start again. Sigh....

Also under the heading of summertime is that fact it's hotter than hell around this godforsaken patch of land. The humidity is thru the roof & you only have to walk outside for 5 minutes to be covered in sweat. God help you if you actually move around out there in that soupy mess, cause you'll be begging for mercy soon after.

Now, on to cancer. My dad has it, it's metastasized, & he's getting chemo. He's tolerating it well, but he's still very weak & has lost a lot of weight & muscle mass. We won't know if the chemo is working until late August/early September when they do another CT scan. So until then it feels like everyone is in a holding pattern.

I don't really want to go into my relationship with my father on here, but suffice it to say it's had some rocky patches. Those were quite awhile ago, & I certainly don't dwell on them anymore. But when mortality rears its ugly head it funny what you start to think about. All the issues, all the worries seem to bubble to the surface again. That's been difficult to deal with lately.

Now, on to career. I'm slowly going back to school. That is hard for me to officially say, since I've tried doing that before & it just didn't work out. I'm hoping that this time it will really happen & I can make a career change, but it's going to take several years for me to get to that point & I'm worried I won't make it. Hence, I'm scared to actually tell anyone about it.

So there you have it! It looks like it may be an interesting summer, but I'm remaining hopeful on all 3 counts. That said, I've decided to try to update this & my other blog twice a week--we shall see. If I actually do that, I'm sure I'll be writing about my 3 issues again. Wish me luck!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon ****

2009-06-14T12:46:00.003-05:00

I don't know much about comic books since I haven't read one in about 30 years. I used to go through piles of them at my grandma's house in St. John when I was a kid--I'm guessing they were ones my older cousins had discarded. A lot of them were Disney ones, about Donald Duck, his nephews, & his Uncle Scrooge McDuck. There was one great one of Macbeth--yeah, Shakespeare. I'll always have the image in my mind of Lady Macbeth scrubbing her hand & saying, "Out out, damn spot!" that was imprinted there from that comic book.
More recently, the closest I've gotten to comics is reading Maus by Art Spiegelman. It's Spiegelman's attempt to wrap his mind around the experiences of his father & mother, who lived through the Holocaust but lost their only child (at the time) to it. He portrays Jews at mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, & Americans as dogs. It is an amazing book, & he wrote a sequel also. The imagery is stark & graphic, the subject difficult but necessary.
Kavalier & Clay was obviously influenced by Maus, but it was mostly influenced by Jack Kirby, who the author acknowledges at the end of the book. It's about the hey-day of comic books, right before & during WWII. Two cousins, Josef Kavalier & Sammy Clay, collaborate on a new superhero--the Escapist. It proves to be monstrously successful, but both cousins have demons they are trying to escape from themselves.
For Joe, it's Nazi Europe. He is desperate to get his family to America, but fate is making it very difficult to do so.
For Sammy, it's himself. Society doesn't make it acceptable to by gay in the 1940's, & Sammy doesn't want to be on display.
This is a great book. I highly recommend it. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is because of the ending. It's not a disappointing ending, it's just kinda abrupt. But it is good. Very good.

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson & David Oliver Relin ****

2009-05-23T08:11:00.002-05:00

My sister loaned me this book, she’s in a book club that reads non-fiction books from & about different cultures. Basically, it has to do with a man who tried to climb K2 & failed, but in the process found his true calling—building schools for the people of the Karakoram Mountains of northern Pakistan. I have to say that this is a very inspirational story, where one person actually did make a difference. Greg Mortenson now heads an organization called the Central Asia Institute that’s responsible for building 55 schools in Pakistan & Afghanistan.
Musing on how important education is to those who don’t get to have it, it makes me think about how much me take for granted in our country. The US has a lot of problems, that’s true. But they’re the kind of problems born out of plenty. We’re fat, depressed, & stressed, all because we get to have too much. When seeing how other people live, in countries where food is scarce, let alone education, it makes me feel like our country needs to do more. And when I say do more, I don’t mean exporting & imposing our way of life onto others. I mean just giving them a fair chance, like all of us have.
Dog & I got to see President Obama about a month ago when he came to town to give his first 100 days speech. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience that I’ll never forget. I particularly liked his take on giving aide to other countries. He pointed out how little of our budget is spent on foreign aid—it’s a pittance. By reaching out a hand to help other countries make their own dreams come true, we do good for others. When we retroactively wage war against people who don’t even know who we are, & who we certainly haven’t taken the time to know, all it does in set the human race back. I hope we’re getting back on the right track. I know I feel much better about the direction of our country now than I did a year ago.

Rules by Cynthia Lord ****

2009-05-09T08:30:00.003-05:00

Alrighty, after this one I'm almost caught up with blogging about what I've read lately! I'll just need to write about a book I've almost totally forgotten about, then I'm clear!

Rules is another very good book by a first time author. It's about tween Catherine, who happens to have a younger brother with autism. There's a new girl moving in next door that she's sure she'll be best friends with, but the book is very good partly because what is expected just doesn't happen. Like real life. She's met a boy her age at the therapy center her brother goes to, who happens to communicate with a communication book (pictures that he points at). By making him a few new pictures to help him express his teen aged angst, they get closer. Meanwhile, the stress & embarrassment (both real & imagined) of having a younger brother with autism is portrayed very vividly--I never realized how extremely frustrating that must be for siblings. And her frustration with her parents' necessary neglect of her in favor of her brother is heartbreaking.

Great book!

A Small White Scar by K.A. Nuzum ****

2009-05-03T18:40:00.004-05:00

This is another book for ages 10 & up that was nominated for the Mark Twain book award. I picked this one because it & 2 other books (see Finest Kind) all had to do with kids with developmental disabilities of one kind or another. It's fascinating that 3 books are written with DD heavily imbuing the story this year for kids--maybe it's a sign of the times.
Basically the story is about twin brothers Will & Denny. 15 year old Will is determined to leave behind his father's ranch in 1940 & make his way being a rodeo rider & ranch hand. The problem is that he's chief caretaker for his brother Denny, who happens to have Down's Syndrome. Their mother died when they were about 7, & their father has placed the burden of looking after Denny squarely on Will's shoulders. Will is tired of being treated like a child by his father, & tired of being tied to the ranch by Denny. He decides to run away to the rodeo in La Junta, the biggest one around, & seek his own fortune.
It's funny how I underestimate how well a first time writer can write. Finest Kind was the 5th or 6th book by that author, but it just didn't ring true. In contrast, K.A. Nuzum writes a remarkable book by dealing with the feelings that overwhelm the sibling of a child with DD. Torn between caring & irritation, you can feel the frustration in Will. Other issues regarding how DD were dealt with back when the story takes place are eye opening & very important also.
A very good book, well written & beautifully peopled.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro *****

2009-04-20T18:38:00.003-05:00

I have to say that I'm a little back logged. I've got a couple other books to review, but I just finished this one today & I have to write about it.

First off, I think it's the saddest, most heart-wrenching book I've ever read. I almost cried at the end, and though that might not sound like much, I was in the break room at work eating lunch at the time with a crusty old man. So I really really didn't want to cry in front of him, & I managed to keep tears from falling. But my eyes got pretty damn misty.

The book is about a boarding school in England. That's all I can really say, other than it's about the relationships among the students. Very vague, I know. But if I said anything else it would give away too much. From the second line in the book you'll be scratching your head, wondering what the heck the narrator is talking about. At first I thought, "It's those Brits. They use strange words for things." But oh, it's not that. Not at all.

Please read it. I can't say you won't be upset at the end, but it's necessary. Things need to be thought about.

Finest Kind by Lea Wait **

2009-04-10T19:37:00.006-05:00

I came upon this book when I saw the Mark Twain Award nominees on my son's school's website. All the books had brief synapses & a was surprised that 3 of the nominees were about siblings of children with developmental disabilities. Since Lea Wait was the only one of the three authors who'd written before, I chose that book first.
I was very disappointed with the woodenness of the writing, but I had to remind myself that this book was written for 8-12 year olds & maybe that's why she kept the language so simple. But I have to say that overall, it was disappointing.
The story is about a young boy named Jake who travels to rural Maine with his family in 1838. Jake grew up in Boston in a privileged home, but the fall of the stock market brought about financial ruin. His family sold their fancy house & have moved to Maine in search of a job for his father.
Jake's brother Frankie has what would be called cerebral palsy now. He has frequent seizures & at age 6 is not able to communicate or move independently. The family is ashamed of Frankie's condition & try to hide his existence from their few neighbors. When Jake's dad gets work at a mill in another town, the family suddenly realizes that they will have to fend for themselves without the father's help, since he can only come home on weekends. And that means Jake will have to do most of the work, since his mother must stay home & take care of his brother.
Bottom line, it was hard to have much sympathy for the characters. I think it's a great history book for kids, which may be it's primary goal, even though I question some of the sugar-coating. From the stand point of an accurate portrayal of developmental disabilities, it was fair. It wasn't very historically accurate in the town's acceptance of Frankie, but maybe I'm being too harsh.

Place of Birth

2009-03-09T17:46:00.004-05:00

I haven't been able to read Precious Bane or any other book right now due to my class & also being on overload right now.

I don't know if anyone else out there ever gets to book burn out, but I've been in it for about a week now. I can't read anything. This happens to me about 4 times a year, & then it goes away as mysteriously as it came.

So until I get out of it, I thought I'd try something new.

I thought of some of the questions we have to answer all the time, like when we go to a new doctor for the first time, filling out a job application, things like that.

And then I thought I'd answer it in a way that they didn't intend to hear--completely.

So my first question is the title of this entry.

And the answer is:

The place I work.

Oddly enough, I work at the same hospital in St. Louis, MO where I was born. It sounds pretty cool, until you realize that St. John's is literally a baby factory. They had a billboard up a couple years ago on I-270 listing the thousands of babies born there that year. I guess that was supposed to make you want to have your baby there, but I would think it turned off about as many people as it turned on. I mean, everyone wants to think that their baby & their experience is utterly unique & incomparable to someone else's. The thought that 15 minutes after they swab down the delivery room they're going to have some other poor, screaming wretch in there doing the same thing you just did doesn't fit in with the *magic* that is your own birthing experience.

But all that aside, it is kind of neat to walk the hallways there & think about traveling back in time to when I was born. I'd like to sidle up to my parents & tell them that their newborn baby girl was going to be working at that very hospital in 27 years. Of course, they'd assume I was going to at least be a doctor there, if not director of the whole shebang. But there are great benefits to being a lowly pharmacy tech. Like learning all the secret passageways & staircases that seem to abound in every nook & cranny. For example, I was overjoyed (really!) to have found a new way to get out of the building the other day. Out the back door, up a poorly marked stairwell for 2 floors, take the door on the left & presto! you're in the courtyard by the fountain! I didn't even know a door was there! I felt like Marco Polo walking into the Forbidden City (except, was he forbidden there?). It was like a re birthing process--OK OK, that's going too far.

But it is interesting to see that no matter how far I think I've come, I'm still at the same place I started.

Eclipse by Stephanie Meyer ***

2009-03-03T16:21:00.004-06:00

HA! Yeah, well, I...

Nevermind, I won't try to justify reading the next book. All I'm going to say is that it's better than the second book. And I'm sure I'll end up reading the 4th book, since I've sworn never to do so. So just wait awhile, it'll be up here soon.

Meanwhile I'm going to re-read a book from a couple years ago, Precious Bane. I've tried looking on here to see if I've reviewed it, but it doesn't seem to be here. So what the hay! It's become one of my all-time favorites, up there with Katherine by Anya Seton. It's the kind of book that, for some reason, I hold so close & personal that I don't want others to read it. I guess I get scared that someone else would make fun of it & blemish the smooth, round, wholeness of this beautiful story. It's a deeply personal journey, I find, to read Precious Bane. I hope some other people out there read it & it touches them too.

New Moon by Stephanie Meyer ***

2009-02-20T18:29:00.003-06:00

Yes, I did it. I read the next book in the "Twilight" series. I'll say this for it--I'm not as gung-ho to read the next book in the series now. I got tired of the whole werewolf thing, & Edward annoyed the hell out of me.
But that doesn't mean I won't be reading the next book. I'm not a monument to fine literature. And for all I know, Stephanie Meyer will be worshipped a la Jane Austin in 200 years.
I guess we'll just have to wait & see!

A Brief Intermission...

2009-02-04T08:40:00.002-06:00

I've been taking a psychology class (long story short, I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing career-wise before I turn 40. Time is running out!), so I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to be right now. I'm being one of those older, ultra-prepared students that reads all the text assignments before class discussion & studies diligently. I don't know how long I can sustain that since I'm lazy & easily diverted by nature, so I may have a new book on here very soon if I can't keep acting like a grownup.
Til then, I hope everyone has fun reading!

The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch *****

2009-01-26T19:13:00.002-06:00

I was first aware of Randy Pausch when Katie Couric announced his death on the evening news on July 25, 2008. I guess by that time the youtube film of his last lecture had made him famous, but I wasn't in tune to that as much as others & so had never heard of him. After seeing the news story, Dog went online & listened to his lecture. He told me it was great & I needed to watch it, but there's a lot I need to do that I don't get around to & that was one of them.

Then a few weeks later, the interview he did with Diane Sawyer aired & we watched it together. There were excerpts from his lecture included, but I still wasn't convinced. I guess I just get tired of having people held up as the ideal, either in the way they live their lives or how they die, & feeling like a very selfish, sub-human creature afterwards because I get upset about not getting what I want. I feel sometimes that's the set up the media gives us so we'll buy more stuff & try to become perfect.

But this Christmas, a friend of mine from work that I don't get to see very much anymore gave me the book. First Dog read it, then Dick read it. Then I finally gave in.

Here's the thing that's great--never does he make out that he's got the answers to all life's problems. The book is for his kids. It's all the things he wants them to know, that he wasn't going to be able to tell them himself. It's not for anyone else. We can read it, of course, but he didn't write it for us. And that's the beauty of the whole thing.

Twilight by Stephanie Meyer ***

2009-01-25T09:34:00.003-06:00

I know, I know. I've jumped on the teenage-girl bandwagon & read the book that all females under 18 have read about 5 times & seen the movie about 6 times & talk about with their friends on a constant basis. And it's pretty good.

If you haven't heard of this series of teenage vampire books yet, you may need to look around you & see if your home is indeed under a large slab of granite. Geared toward teenage girls & all they crave, Twilight is one of those books you don't want to like, but you do. As a 38 year old woman who's been married for almost 15 years, some of the sappy romantic lines made me roll my eyes, but the tension between the 2 main characters is great. Edward is a vampire, & Bella isn't. So she's always running the risk of him getting a wild hair up his ass & eating her. Yep, it's a little different.

Reading this book was like time travel for me, not because my high school years were anything like what the characters experience (HA! Not only did I not date any vampires while in high school, I didn't date any humans either!), but because of reading vampire books. Interview with the Vampire was out in paperback, & my best friend loaned me hers after she finished it. Soon we were both on to The Vampire Lestat & then Queen of the Damned. That's as far as I got in the series, though my friend read every last one. But I so much remember talking with her about every little detail of those books, all those years ago: who should play Lestat if they made a movie? how could they actually get a child to play Claudia? was Lestat really so bad?

Those were the days!

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson *****

2009-01-09T12:19:00.002-06:00

Every once in a while you come across a book out of nowhere--you don't know why you picked it up, but there it is in your hand & you're going to give it a chance. Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon was like that for me--I just found it laying on a shelf at the library & grabbed it. It was great, not just because it was well written, but because it was mine--I found it all by myself.

I can't claim that with this book, but I wish I could. I found it here, the same place I found the previous book. From the get go, this book is crazy. Get this--a porn star/producer wrecks his car while high on cocaine & booze & suffers horrible 3rd degree (maybe 4th degree) burns to his body, one burn being so bad he has to get a penisectomy (yep, it's what you think it is!). While in the burn unit at the local hospital, a beautiful female psych patient come into his room & tells him that they were lovers in 14th century Germany. Thinking her crazy, the narrator (who I just realized is never named) is not sure what to make of her, but after her repeated visits he starts to warm to her. She's the only visitor he gets, outside of his PT & a staff psychiatrist, & she seems to care for him deeply. On her visits she tells him stories, either about her own life & how they met or about other star-crossed lovers. Despite himself, the narrator is pulled into her life & a bond is formed.

You've got to admit, the premise sure grabs you. But what's wonderful is that it doesn't disappoint after the initial shock. It's a wonderful first novel, & I can tell it's a first novel for Andrew Davidson because it seems to be full of all the stories he's been pondering over the years as he got up the nerve to write. I hope he can continue on the road he's begun, because I for one would love to read more from him.

Mudbound by Hillary Jordan ****

2008-12-27T09:08:00.004-06:00

I found this book on a list from NPR of recommended first books from new authors. I was having a heck of a time finding one of them at my local library, & it just happened that they had this one.
I have to say up front that I have no desire to go to Mississippi--it just sounds hot, humid, poor, racist, & just plain foul. I know that's not what the state really is (I know there are probably even more people out there that have an even worse view of Missouri, maybe deservedly), but I've got to say that this book doesn't help. Alright, it takes place in 1946, so it's not like things were very progressive back then. But I think the reason that this book makes me feel that way about Mississippi is because the main character, Laura, feels that way. She's from Memphis & when her husband, Henry, uproots her from her large extended family & plops her down on a muddy Mississippi farm she's understandably upset. The change in her scenery makes her act in ways she never thought herself capable of, both positive & negative.
The character of Ronsel is wonderful too, you just want him to get the hell out of there & go somewhere he can grow & expand & fill up the space made by his potential. Jamie is the imperfect person that always is there, reminding us of our failings & weaknesses. And of course there's Pappy--you gotta hate him.
I suggest you give this one a try.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards **

2008-12-27T08:43:00.002-06:00

You know how you can read a book & not really figure out how you feel about it until later? That's how this book was for me. Initially I thought I liked it. It's about how people deal with a child with a developmental disability so I should like it, right?
It has a great premise, the giving away of an infant because she has Down's & how that haunts the rest of her family all of their lives. But I just got tired of it all. It's one of those books where you think you should have a real emotional epiphany at the end of it, but all you feel is glad that it's over. I've read some of the other reviews on Amazon & I have to agree with a lot of the 1 & 2 star ones in that it's just a bunch of slow, repetitive cliches. By the end you just don't care very much about any of them, & the reveal is so late in coming that it's very anticlimactic also.
Not recommended by me.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain ***

2008-12-27T08:16:00.004-06:00

I know, I know. I've been very lax. I have good reason, what with the holidays & all. But have I stopped reading? Not really. I usually do limit my reading at this time of year just so I can get everything done for Christmas. But I have read 3 books since my last posting & I'll share them with you.
The first, of course, is Huck Finn. It starts out very promising, but I have to say that once the Prince & the Duke join them I lost a lot of my interest. It seemed like it got way off track, & major characters (like Jim) were suddenly ignored. Once Tom Sawyer was in the book again that did it for me--I had to skim the rest of the book just to get through it. Tom's character annoyed me in the first book, I certainly didn't want to see him again in Huck's book.
I have to admit that this book isn't fresh on my mind (I read it about a month ago), but my overall impression is that Mark Twain didn't know what he himself thought about slavery in America. He built Jim up into a very real person, someone we could all find something to identify with, then discarded him when that became too uncomfortable for him. I can't help but look at the book from my own time period & perspective, & maybe that's why I judge Mark Twain too harshly. I suppose most of it has to do with the building up of Mark Twain himself--especially with living in Missouri I've heard about how great he was all my life. It's probably just natural that he couldn't live up to his own legend. I think sometimes we do a disservice to authors by putting them on a pedestal.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain ****

2008-11-17T11:57:00.001-06:00

I thought to myself thought I, why not read some classics? But where to begin, says I. Mark Twain. That's where.
Beside the fact the man was born in my state & he's known as one of the greatest American authors of all time, the reason I settled on him was because he's goddamn hilarious too. I wish I could have the humor of Samuel Clemons! What a gift!
That said, you may wonder why I gave this illustrious book just 4 stars out of 5. The reason is I've already started reading "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" & I'm saving my 5 stars for that. I was greatly amused by Tom Sawyer, but Huck has him beat. I actually laughed out loud while reading Huck, & this while I'm trying to suppress it 'cause Puppy was going to sleep. But I digress--
Back to Tom Sawyer. I can't help but be amused by Tom, but I already liked Huck more. Tom seems to symbolize who we all are. Huck is who we wished we were. Tom, though he gets into trouble, follows the rules of society, & the rules of society are foul. For example: don't talk to those beneath you (in this instance, slaves), it's OK to cheat to get the prize, using other people to make someone you care about jealous is alright, & money is everything. We've all done these things, you've got to admit it. But it sure feels like crap when you do. Meanwhile Huck has been brought up outside of accepted society, & therefore doesn't follow the nasty rules we use against each other. It's all cut & dry for Huck, & you love him for it.
I recommend "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", but mostly because of Huck.

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson ****

2008-10-31T09:05:00.002-05:00

I've read Marilynne Robinson's other book, Housekeeping, when it was on the Diane Rehm book club back a few years ago. I really didn't get that book, so I can say that this one is a great improvement over that.
Gilead is good, but very very slow. It takes most of the book to get to the meat of it, & by then you're almost too frustrated to care. The story is about a man in his 70's who's going to die soon--he has a heart condition. It's the 1950's in Iowa, he's a preacher (though I never really figured out of what religion), & he has a young son that he never thought he would have. The whole book is a journal that the man is writing for his son, so he'll have some idea what his father was like when he's grown. It's a very nice book, well written. I'm just not used to the extremely slow pace, I think. One of the characters, Jack Boughton, is memorable in that he's flawed. Everyone else seems to be so very well behaved, though we really don't get to know about John Ames' wife. Jack's character was the best part of the book for me. I, like most of us, like my story heroes flawed. And Jack is flawed. But of course, tries his damnedest.
If you can handle the slow pace, I highly recommend this one.

Rape: a Love Story by Joyce Carol Oates ****

2008-10-09T09:31:00.002-05:00

What a great title, eh? This is an extremely short (154 pages) extremely fast read & I thoroughly enjoyed it. It tells the story of a woman who gets gang raped in a park while walking home on the night of the 4th of July. Her 12 year old daughter is with her, & much of the book is told thru her words. That moment changes their lives forever & sets in motion a series of events that are told in short chapters. The incident happens in 1996, & one of the cops that responds to the call is a Desert Storm veteran. It's amazing how this violent attack attaches these lives to each other, never to be separate again.
I read this book because Dog heard on NPR a listing of 4 American authors that deserve to win the Nobel prize for literature, but probably won't. Other than Joyce Carol Oates, there was John Updike, Philip Roth, & Cormac McCarthy. I've read Philip Roth recently (The Plot Against America), but had never read the others.
The story on NPR was right--none of them won. It was French author Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio. I'd like to read some of his work in the future. But for right now, Joyce Carol Oates wins on Suelle's Soapbox!