Library Chicken

Sparkly Thoughts: Twilight and Philosophy

2012-01-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

I've become a big fan of Blackwell's Philosophy and Pop Culture Series, where philosophical people look at some of the big media events of our time -- Harry Potter, Southpark, etc. There are actually several publishers combining the odd bed mates of philosophy and modern video, and I've enjoyed reading from Open Court's books as well, but I did appreciate Twilight and Philosophy: Vampires, Vegetarians, and the Pursuit of Immortality.

Most of the essays do seem to start with a philosophy statement and then start digging through the material to find examples or support, but a few times the essays start from issues worried at in the text. I actually like both sorts; I finally learned a bit about semiotics in the final sections here. There was a good diversity of opinions, from the fundamental questions of Team Edward vs Team Jacob (both sides are represented) to the feminist questions of whether Bella is a flat cypher, a feminist hero, or a sexist dinosaur. It's clear she's no Jane Eyre, but I preferred the essays that didn't dismiss her with contempt.

Anyway, it's not a college class (at least I hope not) but it was a fun way to revisit a topic that makes so many headlines. I started the book just before I went to see the latest movie, which starts with Jacob ripping off his shirt and running about to show off his abs; now that's a quick way to establish the underlying thesis of a film!

2012-01-27T07:54:00.000-08:00

Today was a very hard day at the library. First I went with X and N, both of whom had eagerly anticipated items on hold. X is trying out the first Harry Dresden novel, and Nicky had found a new Pokemon DVD in the catalog. I had a small stack of Cybils finalists waiting for me, so we got in, grabbed our holds, and got out.

BUT. That evening, on the way home from an errand, I remembered that I needed the book club book, so I dropped by, solo, to look for it on the library's shelves. They had it in audio form in their nifty Play & Go format -- basically they hand you an MP player with the book on it and off you go. Neat! I also ordered the dead tree version for my sister. And then I turned to go out the door, when a powerful gravitational force pulled me towards the PICK ME display out front. I tried to explain to the Force about the TBR Dare, that I was not checking out new books, but the copies began singing and dancing. Mike Shephard's new Kris Longknife. A Salman Rusdie. A nonfiction book about Alaskan fishing. All dangerous sirens, cajoling and seducing me, and me without my underage body guards. With a heroic effort, I threw myself out the door and plunged home, victorious but really sad about it.

Thank goodness for the Cybils.

Dear Hot Dog, Mordicai Gerstein. Cybils poetry book.
Nursery Rhyme Comics, Cybils middle grade graphic novel
Into the Unknown: How Great Explorers Found Their Way By Land, Sea, and Air, Steward Ross. Cybils nonfiction.
Beekeeper's Apprentice, Laurie King. Audio.

This brings me to a total of 38 items out on my card, which includes a few CDs. One is overdue, but I'm almost done. Everything fits neatly in my library bookshelf. I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures.

Ugly Lies: The Big Kahn

2012-01-26T22:16:00.000-08:00

I actually remember how this book arrived on my TBR list -- unshelved comic has a Friday feature of recommending books they've been reading with explanations of why it's a good read. Their enthusiasm often lures me into seeking out their choices such as The Big Kahn, a graphic novel by Neil Kleid and Nicolas Cinquegrani.

Rabbi Kahn, nee Donnie Dobbs, died as the respected head of a New York Jewish temple, leaving behind a grieving widow, a rabbinical son who expected to inherit the temple, a selfish and rebelling daughter, and a younger son who never quite fit in. He apparently figured that his love and affection only lasted until death, because in his will he revealed that he was as Jewish as the pope and had kept up the lie ever since he fell in love with his wife while running a criminal scam with his brother. The family found out the story at the funeral before the will was read, where Kahn/Dobbs' brother showed up and roughly revealed the truth. This is a great scene that first reveals the brother's depth of faith and the sister's self-centered nature before cracking open the lie of their father's life.

The knowledge tears apart the children; the older son finds his faith in God teetering with his faith in his father, while the temple he grew up in firmly rejects him. The daughter finds justification for her wild ways but the sight of her brother's pain brings her back towards piousness, and the younger son finds genetic backing for his love of cards and gambling. The pictures blend well with the text, although again I find my cluelessness with comics a hindrance -- I kept missing flashbacks or confusing the daughter with her roommate. It's an interesting, adult take on a comic book where the art moves the story along quickly so the book has the strength of a novella, with the complex emotions of a family built on sand.

So Then: With a Single Spell

2012-01-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

Years and years ago (well, in 2010) I saw Jo Walton's review of Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar books on tor.com, and she made them sound light and fun so I stuck them on my new Goodreads TBR list, which I then ignored for ages until the past few months when I started more systematically working my way through it. My goal is to be only 12 months behind, but I'm about twelve months behind that goal. This requested-reading fast probably won't help much, either.

Anyway, Walton is right in that With a Single Spell is a frothy read that is easily sipped in a few hours. It's about a young man figuring out how to have make a living without any skills beyond the single spell he acquired in his short apprenticeship, preferably a living that doesn't require a lot of work because he admits he's rather lazy. It's the kind of book where you just hang out and see what happens to a character for a while; there doesn't seem to be a unifying thematic arc where the writer ties up stuff with a bow -- if we are lucky (if the author does it right), we meet up with the character just when things start getting interesting, and then leave when we aren't terribly worried about anything that is still going on. Watts-Evans does it just right, with Tobas traveling a bit to show off his world and society, worrying just enough about what to do that I saw what the options are in his society.

When Stephen Gould does this, the characters usually display impressive ingenuity and intelligence, using the doo-dad or spell to maximum capability. Watt-Evan's protagonist isn't as ambitious, being willing and persistent but not especially perceptive. On the other hand, the book itself is perceptive and snarky and enjoys puncturing cliches about fantasy worlds with wizards and dragons and princesses. If I hadn't waited to read this book until it was overdue, I'd offer to my fantasy-fan seventh grader to read; maybe he'll have a chance at the next one. I've stuck some more of Watt-Evans' books on the TBR list.

Little Bit Funny: This Is a Book

2012-01-24T19:00:00.000-08:00

So, last year, when I allowed myself to pick up books on impulse when the library dangled them at me, in the happy days before my TBR Dare started, I saw a cute looking book and picked it up: Demetri Martin's This is a Book by Demetri Martin. I had a vague feeling that he was on the Daily Show or something. He doesn't seem that proud of it though; there's no mention of it on his web page, for example.

It's a collection of sketches, pictures, and musings, sometimes funny, although mostly at the smile level, not laugh out loud material. I dipped into it on and off over several days, as a little was quickly sufficient, and even worse, he frequently returns to a shtick involving a annoying aggressively stupid man-hits-on-women-who-are-only-sex-objects bit, which was so clearly not aimed at me as an audience that I'd wonder why I was still reading the book. What a waste of a now limited resource -- library books!

Pretty Girl: Amelia Lost

2012-01-23T20:00:00.000-08:00

The Cybils Nonfiction for Middle Grade and Young Adult finalist Candace Fleming's Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhart switches tantalizingly between chapters following the day Earhart's plane vanished over the Pacific Ocean and chapters tracing her life from infancy up to her final world-circling flight. Her early childhood, troubled adolescence, and shining career as an aviatrix alternate with the increasingly worried search and mysterious radio messages that chronicle her last day.

Fleming does a good job describing Earhart's tomboyish childhood and her struggles to adjust to an father transformed by a drinking problem during adolescence, but I get less of a sense of her adulthood. Most of the pilots she comes in contact with denigrated her skills, down to the man who failed to teach her to use her radio properly in her last airplane. So was she mostly a cute woman whose relationship with skilled promoter George P Putman propelled her to stardom? Or was she really a skilled flyer who maybe didn't require two days to figure out the radio and skimped on the lessons because she didn't need them? This book seems to lean towards the former view, but I think I want to know more. Did most pilots try to fly bigger airplanes than they trained on, or was Earhart uniquely arrogant? How likely was it that people in Florida and the Great Lakes picked up on radio transmissions that the men at the airport built for her on Howland couldn't hear? I don't have enough context to make evaluations.

I'll see if I can interested the older kids in this book; if so I'll update with their opinions.

Ice Storm Holds Up Reading

2012-01-23T10:00:00.000-08:00

I managed to tame my distractability a bit this week, finishing roughly a book a day. I even finally finished one of my bedside books in which I tend to only advance a few pages a night. Soon I will be able to fit all the books I'm reading in my portable book-bag. And my library count continues to drop, so in general my reading life is moving in the proper direction.

This is the meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Here's my report on the finished books, the book-marked books, and the upcoming books.

This week I finished:

The Red House, Edith Nesbit (NOOK)
Hereville, Barry Deutsch (Cybils)
This Is a Book by Demitri Martin
Amelia Lost, Candace Fleming (Cybils)
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley
With a Single Spell, Lawrence Watt-Evans
The Man Who Would Be King, Ben Mcintyer
Bindi Babes, Narinder Dhami
White Night, Jim Butcher (audio)

I've also read some of the Cybils picture books, but this year I'm not keeping track of my picture book count.

I'm currently reading sixteen books, but luckily they are all different so I don't get confused. And for anyone who doesn't know me, yes, I have a system. I'm reading one book I've recently acquired, one book from my library stack, and one book from my challenges stack. On Sundays I pick up a new RML (Reading My Library) book so that I average a book a week there. On Wednesdays I pick up a book from my TBR list on Goodreads. I usually have two books going on my NOOK, one a library book and one I purchased. I have the five or so books on my bedside table, and I have some book about a topic I'm interested in, currently popular culture & philosophy. In the car I have one or two audio books, depending on whether I have a second to listen to when the kids aren't around. And sometimes I have other books I've somehow started reading, or a book club book, or something shiny...

A Lady Awakened, Cecelia Grant. I think she's pregnant now. That's the plan.
The Male Brain, Louann Brizendine. Too much overgeneralization -- "all boys do this" when my boys didn't. Also, I think gays may not have as much breast obsession as she thinks.
Ancient, Strange and Lovely, Susan Fletcher. I finally managed to renew this. RML.
Toad Away, Morris Gleitzman. Australia toads head for South America. RML.
As If Being 12 3/4 Isn't Bad Enough, My Mother Is Running For President, Donna Gephart. RML. The title seems self-explanatory.
Which Big Giver Stole the Chopped Liver, Sharon Kahn. I have no idea how this book stumbled onto my TBR list, but here it is.
Among Others, Jo Walton. Rereading so I can decide which library to donate it to.
Twilight and Philosophy. Jane Eyre was cooler than Bella, but she's cooler than everyone.
Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones. Audio book for when the kids are in the car.
London Eye Mystery, Siobhan Dowd. RML. Kid has not yet returned it, but he's loving it so I don't complain. (His dad doesn't like him to read non-fiction, so he leaves his books at my place.)
Twenty Palaces, Harry Connolly. On my NOOK. When his publisher didn't pick up the Ray Lily books (BOO), he self-published the extra one. I like this author. And Ray Lily, who is more open about his ambitions in this book.
Anna and the French Kiss, Stephanie Perkins. Girl goes to posh school in Paris for her senior year.
The First Men In the Moon, H.G. Wells. They made it to the moon.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. Boy does she lack confidence with her son.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. My goodness, she thinks he's impersonating himself.
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. More panic about the fringe elements.

What will I read next? Mostly more library books coming due. The only new books entering the house will be for book clubs and Cybils finalists. After I conquer the library mountain, it's time to look at my home TBR bookcase, which I hope has a few books from my online TBR list.

Challenges I've signed up for (for which I've signed up?):

Cybils: 13/80. Or I should say 13/73, since the 7 Apps aren't possible.
What's In a Name?: 3/6. I will hope for cooler candidates though.
Where Am I Reading?: 3/50. Illinois, for three. I'm hoping for five by the end of the month.
TBR Double Dare. 3.
Comment Challenge. Staying on target.

Hero Kids: Hereville

2012-01-22T22:27:00.000-08:00

I'm still a novice reader of graphic novels; probably most of my reading is from the Cybils lists. My sons recommend others; they are comfortable with manga and other comic formats, but I still struggle to master the pictures with the text. This probably makes me a bad judge of more sophisticated stories, since I'm in the back trying to tell the characters apart when the author is dealing with complicated themes up front. So reading and enjoying the Cybils Graphic Novel finalist Hereville by Barry Deutsch was a bit of a feather in my cap.

It helps that Deutsch clearly thought through his designs with novices in mind, probably because his book is aimed at middle grade readers. The sisters have clearly different hair styles, and the older one wears glasses to make it even easier to keep them clear. Since they all dress in the uniforms proscribed by their orthodox Jewish school, my ability to keep them separate was not assured but Deutsch made it easy without seeming condescending. I enjoyed the unobtrusive vocabulary help at the bottom; he doesn't use asterisks or numbering in the pages, but anytime I wasn't sure of a word I could glance down and there it was. So all the scaffolding was there to let me just read the story.

I loved the combination of magical and personal problems -- Mirka battles angry talking pigs and her uncontrollable fury, determined to find a sword and fight dragons and appalled by her willingness to bully her brother when he tries to stop her. As an outsider, I see the see the problems with the sexism in her society, but she doesn't reject her family even as she refuses to accept the limitations they unquestionably try to impose. Feminine strengths such as homemaking skills (knitting!) are supported, even while the dangers of strict gender roles are underscored (Mirka's brother telling her fighting dragons is for boys even though there is no sign of any qualified male anywhere in the book).

My sons enjoyed this book as well -- I think they liked Mirka's quick talking that turned her knitting defeat into victory. My only complaint was the lack of place -- Hereville is clearly situation in the current time, not a distant past, but there is no indication of where on Earth the village exists.

Snow Day For Library Day

2012-01-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

The stiff restrictions on library loot continue, but so far I've played fair and only walked to the hold shelf and out. It's been tough, especially with the kids dragging me around by the New and Interesting shelves in the children's section, and then asking questions of the librarian so I have to wait in line by the "Grab Me" shelves. Thank goodness I always have a nice pile of Cybils books to comfort me.

Thursday the library was closed due to ice storm, but N insisted on going on Friday because he had a feeling that mere State of Emergencies could not keep him from his Pokemon movie. He was wrong, but I got:

Anya's Ghost, Vera Brosgol. Cybils YA graphic novel.
Dodsworth in Rome, Tim Egan. Cybils early reader.
Ghetto Cowboy, G. Neri. Cybils novel (middle grade?)
I Had a Favorite Dress, Boni Ashburn. Cybils picture book
Can We Save the Tiger, Martin Jenkins. Cybils NF picture book

This brings me to a total of 48 items out on my card, which includes a few CDs. As of today, I have nothing ovedue. I've very close to fitting all the books in the shelves allotted. I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures.

Bad Men: The Terrorists of Irustan

2012-01-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

Louise Marley writes smart and emotionally resonant books that explore particular ideas, whether it's an examination of a violently patriarchal religion or a link between ghosts and musical instruments or children that blur the line between saviors and victims. The Terrorists of Irustan is the patriarchal book, where veiled women pass from their father's control to their husbands in a religion clearly based on conservative Islam. On the planet Irustan this religion is complicated by a strong taboo placed around the body, so that only women can address illness, which means that the only educated women are the medicants who train on the complicated medical systems provided by the galatic government.

Marley examines the women's lives from different angles, looking primarily at the educated Zahra who struggles against the restraints binding her, but also from the galactic Jin-Li, who has problems with gender issues. In clear parallels to the modern world the galactics tolerate the limits placed on women in the name of religious freedom and the valuable minerals Irustan provides, but this also involves compromises and betrayals. However, the connections between Islam and the Book are too close for comfort; Marley has made up her own planet so she controls all the events but that makes the statements about anything in the real world suspect. I would have preferred either fewer similarities or a clear identification; the book itself ends up muddled as the answers come too easily. (Well, the author's answers; the characters themselves have tough times.)

It was good enough that I'll keep an eye out for more of Marley's books, but I hope she takes her imagination farther afield next time; sometimes distance is necessary to get the focus right.

Anybody Want a Peanut?: Cousins of Clouds

2012-01-20T18:00:00.000-08:00

I'm not a big poetry lover, so the Cybils Poetry category is a tough sell for me. My children hate poems with a burning passion, so even more so. Usually I can talk my younger son into sharing a poem a night with me -- I find children's poems work a lot better if read aloud, and reading to an audience brings some lines alive. Occasionally something wins our heart -- we all fell in love with last year's winner, Mirror Mirror.

Tracie Vaughn Zimmer's Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poems did not repeat that magic. Although some of the poems were informative, and I did enjoy the factual blurbs that accompanied each poem, nothing really grabbed our attention. P started dragging his feet about showing up for even a single poem. We did appreciate the "This Is Just To Say" poem, but more because of the concept than the execution. A few phrases shone through, but most of these poems were wasted on me.

"Memory"

She detours through brush
to caress the sun-bleached bones
of her lost sister.

(my favorite)

Flickering Memory: White Night

2012-01-19T18:03:00.000-08:00

For the Christmas holidays I drive from Seattle, WA to Salt Lake City, a fairly easy day's drive, and I usually pick out audio books from the library to accompany me. I like audio books, especially while driving, but I prefer to listen to books I've read before, because if the suspense gets tight I hate that I can't just listen faster to move along. I've enjoyed most of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books, and I've heard good things about James Marsters as the narrator, so when I saw White Night on the library CD shelves I grabbed it.

It turns out that my BIL had the BBC radio adaption of the Lord of the Rings, which easily trumped all my offerings. Just as well; I had forgotten about all the swearing that Dresden indulges in, so it would have been awkward to listen if the kids weren't sunk deep into their headphones. But I've been listening to it during my solo trips in the car and really enjoyed the performance; the Dresden books are all written in first person and the narrator really captured the feel of the self-assured, cranky wizard as he fights bad guys and saves the helpless and never forgives himself if anyone on his watch gets hurt. There are some graphically violent scenes that are probably more vivid to listen to since I think my eyes tend to skitter across when things get too grim.

The funny thing is that I can't remember if I've read this before or not. That's not too uncommon when I start a book, but usually by the end I've figured it out. I vividly recall the scenes about Harry's brother Thomas, especially when Harry and his giant dog invade his brother's apartment and he has to pretend to be Thomas's disgruntled lover, or where Harry and his brother fight together on a boat, but I have zero memory of Elaine, Harry's old lover and a major character in this book. She's also there on the boat fight, and everything about her involvement seemed fresh. Bits of the final fight scene sounded familiar -- the parts where Thomas shows up to help. The rest? Blank slate. I checked my list of books read, but I only have since 2007 in electronic form, so I know I haven't read it since then.

X really enjoyed all the bits I let him hear, so I've ordered up the print version of the first Dresden Files book. We'll see if he likes it even without Marsters whispering in his ear.

Self-Definition: The Man Who Would Be King

2012-01-18T18:57:00.000-08:00

Recognizable as the title of both a Rudyard Kipling short story and a movie derived from it, The Man Who Would Be King by Ben Macintyre traces the life of Josiah Harlan, who probably inspired Kipling's story. Harlan left his Pennsylvania Quaker home in the 1820's in search of adventure, and he certainly found it, wandering first through India and then disappearing into the wilds of Afghanistan to involve himself in the civil wars and international maneuvering familiar to me as the Great Game that Kim plays in Kipling's later novel.

Macintyre became interested in the topic when he found hints of Harlan during journalistic trips to Kabul, but little information remained until a lost manuscript of Harlan's planned book about his exploits surfaced. Using this as the basis and searching out related texts, Macintyre meticulously traces Harlan's transformations from sailor to "doctor" (well, he read a few medical texts) to soldier (he was a medical officer for a few months) to adventurer and king. Unfortunately, most of the excitement is left to the imagination of the reader -- Macintyre describes the situations and players with exacting detail, but rarely brings the events to life. I found myself slogging through chapters, but when I stopped at the end to review what happened, I'd realize that Harlan had again faced more stunning adventures and dangers.

I'm not sure how this book ended up on my TBR list, but I'm glad I read it, even though actually reading it wasn't nearly as much fun as I hoped. I'm clearly a very shallow person.

Good Auntie: Bindi Babes

2012-01-17T18:00:00.000-08:00

Nobody needs to feel sorry for Geena, Amber, and Jazz in Narinder Dhami's Bindi Babes; they have the best stuff, their teachers love them, and they pretty much get to set their own schedule. OK, their mom died last year, but they don't think or talk about that. Everything is going just fine, until their Auntie arrives from India and forces them to go to sleep on time, eat home cooked dinners, and maybe even talk to their dad on occasion.

This was a fun book that was more transparent to me as an adult than I would have noticed as a kid. It was immediately obvious that the girls' father had retreated in his grief and that the three of them had bonded together in their dedication to looking good because they couldn't bear to admit how awful their mother's death made them feel. It was an untouchable wound. Likewise, their ingenuous plots to get rid of their Auntie were as obvious to me as to her, but not in a condescending or mean way. The last chapter paid off particularly well, as several of the chance encounters that showed Auntie was more than she seemed came together in the high-stakes chase scene that had the girls racing down her well-marked path to keep her from flying away.

The shoes on the cover led me to pick this book from the shelf as part of my Reading My Library quest, and I hope they entice my niece as well; I'll offer this book to see how she likes it.

What Am I Reading?

2012-01-16T16:27:00.000-08:00

This is the meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. I look at what I've read, what I'm reading, and how I'm doing on any challenges. This week I haven't finished much, but I made up for that by starting a whole bunch of books. Here's my report on the few books finished and the seventeen books I have bookmarks in.

This week I finished:

The Blessings of a B Minus, Wendy Mogel
Darth Paper Strikes Back, Tom Angleberger (Cybils)
Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe

I've also read some of the Cybils picture books, but this year I'm not keeping track of my picture book count.

I'm currently reading:

A Lady Awakened, Cecelia Grant. Wow, they still barely like each other.
The Man Who Would Be King, Ben McIntyre. From my TBR list. Also, it's overdue.
With a Single Spell, Lawrence Watt-Evans. Another TBR listie.
This is a Book by Dimitri Martin, Dimitri Martin.
Among Others, Jo Walton. Rereading so I can decide which library to donate it to.
Twilight and Philosophy. So I could properly appreciate the movie.
White Night, Jim Butcher. Audio book for car. I can't decide if I've read this before or not -- some of it sounds familiar. I'll wait till I'm done to look it up. Also, it's overdue.
Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones. Audio book for when the kids are in the car.
London Eye Mystery, Siobhan Dowd. Actually my kid stole this, so I'll finish it when he returns it.
Bindi Babes, Narinder Dhami. Reading my library. Slowly.
The First Men In the Moon, H.G. Wells. Heh, heh, they just name-checked Jules Verne.
Twenty Palaces, Harry Connolly. On my NOOK. When his publisher didn't pick up the Ray Lily books (BOO), he self-published the extra one. I like this author.
The Red House, Edith Nesbit. On my NOOK. Free book recommended on tor.com.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm out of her youth so no more drugs. Yay!
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They got caught.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. She still hasn't figured out his true identity.
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. Always describe a trend by it's fringier crazy elements.

What will I read next? Mostly more library books coming due. The only new books entering the house will be for book clubs and Cybils finalists. After I conquer the library mountain, I'll start on my unread book piles.

Challenges I've signed up for (for which I've signed up?):

Cybils: 10/80. Or I should say 10/73, since the 7 Apps aren't possible.
What's In a Name?: 1/6. Maybe 2/6, but I have high hopes for a better match.
Where Am I Reading?: 2/50. California, for two.
TBR Double Dare. 1.
Comment Challenge. On target.

Let Them Fail: The Blessings of a B Minus

2012-01-16T00:42:00.000-08:00

First, I should say that I hope the author didn't mind me reading this book because I'm not Jewish. But I've already read Wendy Mogel's earlier book on letting your children fall down, so when I saw The Blessings of a B Minus on the library's Interesting shelves, I picked it up. And eventually I read it, because I do have a teenager now.

Mogel's main point is that teenagers are practicing to be adults, and if their parents don't let them fail, then they'll be unprepared when they do go off on their own. On the other hand, teenagers aren't actually adult yet, so they do need support and balance, so just pretending they know what they are doing doesn't make much sense either. Instead she covers picking battles, and why some battles aren't worth fighting until after their brains mature. Sometimes avoiding battles means ignoring behavior that you don't approve of (sullenness, arguing), and sometimes it means simply removing yourself from a situation rather than staying around to convince the teen that this is a bad decision. This can mean handing over laundry duties and then not interfering when the same clothes appear daily.

Mogel thinks it helps to occasionally treat dealing with your teenager as an anthropological field trip -- look at the strange local customs and costumes of these bizarre inhabitants of Teen World. Sometimes I felt the same way just reading about her examples; her teens grew up as in rich Jewish LA neighborhoods that seem wildly different from anything I or my teen will see. But reading the book helped keep me grounded as my teenager and I negotiated a rough morning, so I appreciate the advice about keeping your common sense around and not meeting your adolescent in emotional stand-offs at every moment. Our family rituals might revolve less around the Sabbath and more around Magic card games, but her points still seem sound.

Library Loot

2012-01-14T18:40:00.000-08:00

Library Loot for me has sharp limitations imposed by the TBR Dare I've accepted. Basically I can't check anything out, but since I'm also trying to read all the Cybils finalists this year I've exempted them. And if I need something for book club I'll give myself another pass. But this means that everything I get from the library I get from the hold shelf (and a few books I requested last year will come through this way) -- no browsing, no grabs from the New and Interesting display, no impulses.

Sigh. But it gives me a chance to get my unwieldy piles of books under some pretense of control.

Anyway, the hold shelf served up a nice load this Thursday:

Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow?, Susan Shea (Cybils picture book)
Bring on the Birds, Susan Stockdale (Cybils Nonfiction picture book)
The Shattering, Karen Healey (Cybils YA SF book)
Just Grace and the Double Surprise, Cherise Harper (Cybils Early Chapter book)
An Algonquian Year, Michael McCurdy, probably something I requested for my son's completed project. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't read it after all, since now it's just a book.
Libyrinth, Pearl North, something I put on hold last year

This brings me to a total of 51 items out on my card, which includes a few CDs. And two overdue books that I'm hurrying to finish. Maybe by the end of this month that number will approach something reasonable, and I'll be able to fit all my library books into the two shelves devoted to them. I'll go share my Library Loot at the event co-hosted by Claire from the Captive Reader (this week's host) and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader, where all the library addicts compare their treasures.

May the Fourth: Darth Paper Strikes Back

2012-01-13T23:30:00.000-08:00

It's a warm cosy feeling when I can get many things done by reading the same book. I read our family book club selection for January. I knocked off a Cybils Middle Grade fiction finalist, I cleared off a book I bought last year but haven't gotten around to reading, and I had a good time doing it all by reading Tom Angleberger's Darth Paper Strikes Back.

I bought this at the same time I got Angleberger's first book, The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, and my kids rushed through both books with enthusiasm but I am more easily distracted and never got to Darth Paper. Both book use the same technique of having Tommy compile many classmate's responses in his casebook, which gives an excuse for a lot of fun paper art and smudging and also for the cartoons and side comments all over the text, which makes my graphic novel loving kids happy. I felt that the stakes were raised higher in this book, since Dwight faces expulsion, but I suspect my kids found Tommy's worries about public humiliation just as jeopardising. There was also a bigger sense of character this time around, with Tommy having to put himself forward more both in decision making and in actions.

The school bureaucracy comes off very poorly -- I'm glad our middle school has a much higher standard of administrators than these kids face. But the ending is emotionally satisfying if a bit intellectually hard to justify. I'm looking forward to the family discussion tomorrow night, so I can ask if Harold rates as a good guy or a bad guy.

Smells as Sweet as a Challenge: What's In a Name?

2012-01-11T22:52:00.000-08:00

For the past few years I've enjoyed the What's In a Name Challenge, mainly because it's a challenge that I count on serendipity to complete. The host (Beth Fish Reads) picks several categories of titles, and I have to hope that I read books fitting each category. I suppose in December I could seek out a book to fit, but so far the most work I've done is see a book I like on the library's lure shelf and hesitate before realizing it fits a challenge and therefore I have an excuse to check out more books.

This year marks What's In a Name 5 and again Beth has come up with some fun categories that I'll try to complete:

A book with a topographical feature (land formation) in the title
A book with something you'd see in the sky in the title
A book with a creepy crawly in the title
A book with a type of house in the title

The Red House, Edith Nesbit

A book with something you'd carry in your pocket, purse, or backpack in the title

Darth Paper Strikes Back, Tom Angleberger

A book with a something you'd find on a calendar in the title

Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point, David Lipsky. But that's using the subtitle, so I hope I find a better one.

3/6

Pretty Nice Guy: Stories I Only Tell My Friends

2012-01-10T23:49:00.000-08:00

A friend recommended Rob Lowe's autobiography Stories I Only Tell My Friends, and of course that is more than enough to get me to read a book. Never mind that I'm only vaguely aware of him -- I remembered he was part of the Brat Pack, but couldn't pick him out of a line-up. And he came up in a discussion of The Outsiders movie, but again I couldn't remember which one he'd played. I wasn't even aware that he'd been on West Wing, which maybe isn't all that surprising given that I'd never seen an episode.

Despite my lack of context, I found myself drawn into his story. He spends a lot of time on his childhood, emphasizing how naive and innocent he was before he broke into movies. His mother's major contribution was first to divorce his father and then his stepfather before moving to California to be with her third husband, and then help him find bus maps so he could get to his auditions. In retrospect Lowe figures a lot of his inability to say "No" to anyone comes from the patterns of avoidance and distance he learned during these separations.

He also likes to tell stories about stumbling across famous people either when he was too young to recognize them or when they were too young to be famous. He was on a short-lived sitcom with Janet Jackson, he dated Cary Grant's daughter, he met LeVar Burton the week before the Roots miniseries makes Kunta Kinte a household name. I recognized most of the names he drops, making me feel more current.

But even more interesting is the stuff he leaves out. He talks about the excesses he got up to during his drinking days (and some sex tape stuff) but without much interest -- maybe he can't remember most of the good stuff. He's forgiving but bored by his playboy self, and much more excited about the life he lead after rehab, when he wooed his wife and had his kids. Apparently he doesn't talk much about his family or his problems to his friends, because there aren't many stories in there, just repeated assurances about what he values. A peek at Google shows that he had some big legal fight with a nanny who claimed they had sex, but nothing of that shows up in the book. He must be really bitter about West Wing, where he can't keep himself from revealing the broken promises, although he tells himself it's because he wants to show that he actually learned to make decisions for himself instead of just drifting along as he did through his mid-twenties. In the end, the interesting parts of his book are what he leaves out; I learned more about Rob Lowe from seeing what kind of person he likes to describe as him than from the descriptions themselves.

Diversity Club: Half World

2012-01-09T23:03:00.000-08:00

The second book for Rachel Manija's permanent floating YA diversity book club was Half World by Hiromi Goto, which I got from the library on my NOOK. Unfortunately this made it hard to share with my in-house YA, since he's not keen on electronic books and anyway I was hoarding my NOOK in a frantic effort to read books from all 50 States and from each continent and with authors and titles filling in every spot in the alphabet. December is a crazy month for the Silly Reading Challenge addict.

Anyway, once the new year started I was free to read what I wanted, so I called up Goto's story and started reading. For some reason I thought the main character was male, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Melanie the one called to save the world. The mythos seemed very Roman Catholic -- people live in the world of flesh, and when they die they more to Half World where they process their worst experiences (sounds like purgatory) and then they ascend to Spirit World. The pope probably wouldn't approve of the spirits eventually getting reincarnated back to Flesh world, though. But something severed the worlds, and Melanie is the only one who can fix things.

She's a reluctant savior, bullied and neglected, and she only goes in to save her mother, who has been fading for years and finally dragged back to Half World. Melanie has a few gifts to aid her: a magic 8-ball and a jade rat figurine that comes to life when needed. The creatures in the dream-like Half World are straight out of the Narnian Island of dreams -- nightmarish and terrifying. And the destruction of Glueman struck echos of Meg Wallace defeating IT with her love, although Melanie has the harder task of avoiding anger at the evil guy and eventually even finding compassion for him.

The ending was satisfactorily messy -- Melanie doesn't get her parents back, and she does end up with a lot of extra burdens, but she did save the worlds. So she can go on, even if it wasn't fair. This ending probably would have annoyed my YA, and his insomnia is bad enough without some of the images in this book, so I'm not too sorry he missed this installment, but I enjoyed it. The writing impressed me, and I saw enough of the illustrations to realize that my NOOK was not the best platform to read this on.

2012-01-09T13:36:00.000-08:00

Well, this year I haven't really settled down to reading much. So far it hasn't been hard to keep my resolution to only read what I have available, because what I have is a huge pile of library books rapidly coming due. But I want to check in and see what I've finished so far.

This is the meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. I look at what I've read, what I'm reading, and how I'm doing on any challenges. This week I finished:

Absolutely American, David Lipsky.
Mastiff, by Tamora Pierce
Dark Whispers, Bruce Corville
Half World, Hiromi Goto

All were from the library, and one was for a book club. I've also read some of the Cybils picture books, but this year I'm not keeping track of my picture book count.

I'm currently reading:

Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe. Turns out I can renew this, so it fell back in urgency.
A Lady Awakened, Cecelia Grant. Romance the Early Readers sent me.
Twilight and Philosophy. So I could properly appreciate the movie.
White Night, Jim Butcher. Audio book for car. I can't decide if I've read this before or not -- some of it sounds familiar. I'll wait till I'm done to look it up.
Enchanted Glass, Diana Wynne Jones. Audio book for when the kids are in the car.
London Eye Mystery, Siobhan Dowd. Reading my library book.
Bindi Babes, Narinder Dhami. Reading my library. Slowly.
The First Men In the Moon, H.G. Wells. Heh, heh, they just name-checked Jules Verne.
Twenty Palaces, Harry Connolly. On my NOOK. When his publisher didn't pick up the Ray Lily books (BOO), he self-published the extra one. I like this author.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm out of her youth so no more drugs. Yay!
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They got caught.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. They struggle on, knowing they'll never meet again. Ha!
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. A bad example he likes is a trend; one he doesn't like is an anomaly.

What will I read next? Mostly more library books coming due. The only new books entering the house will be for book clubs, Cybils finalists, and Reading My Library entries. After I conquer the library mountain, I'll start on my unread book piles.

Challenges I've signed up for (for which I've signed up?):

Cybils: 6/80. Or I should say 6/73, since the 7 Apps aren't possible.
Where Am I Reading?: 1/50. Everything I've read has either been in New York or off planet. Or in Canada.
TBR Double Dare. So far everything I've read is a library book.
Comment Challenge. I skipped yesterday, so I need 10 comments today.

Middle Story: Dark Whispers

2012-01-08T23:27:00.000-08:00

When browsing the C shelves for Reading My Library, I recognized Bruce Coville's name as a popular children's SF writer, with titles about brain-frying teachers. The Unicorn Chronicles were unfamiliar to me, and I had a vague memory that I needed more "U" books (wrong!), so I decided to try one.

Dark Whispers turns out to be the third book of four in the Unicorn Chronicles. So the story begins in media res, which is not really a problem for me but gave my older son hives when he saw me do it ("uh mom, you DO know that is the third book, right..."). The unicorns live in their own alternate dimension, along with a variety of other creatures (dwarfs, delvers, centaurs, griffins, etc.), some friendly, some hostile. Cara, our human heroine, is the granddaughter of the unicorn queen, and she has the gift of tongues and some fancy magic doo-dads that raise her status even higher than just having opposable thumbs in a kingdom of horned horses does. But the adventure felt rather flat and cliched to me, with very predictable beats and villains. I was a little more interested in Cara's father Ian, who is attempting to make up for years of misguided service on the wrong side, but even his story never really sparked to life.

The tone is very sincere, with strong overtones of high fantasy. Great quests are the norm, and struggles with virtue, and so on, with very few breaks for humor other than from the cute and unique squirrelly creature who follows Cara around. I'm probably missing a few things from starting in the middle (I'm not sure if I'm supposed to recognize the mysterious man who helps Ian), but mainly it lacks the quirky humor that Coville's SF stories have. Despite the steep cliffhanger at the end, I'm not motivated to pick up book four to see if the good guys win. I bet my sons would like the series, although they'd want to start at the beginning.

Cops Good, Slavery Bad: Mastiff

2012-01-07T23:36:00.000-08:00

Mastiff is the final book in Tamora Pierce's Tortall prequels about Beka Cooper, cop and direct ancestor of George Cooper, best known for his relationship with Alanna. Beka writes her own books, recording her story mainly as part of the official record keeper she does for her job, but also using the books as a journal since I think she plans on copying them out of the code used by her department before turning them in. Or maybe she just doesn't have much sense of privacy, I forget.

Anyway, Beka writes about feeling fraudulent at her fiance's funeral, because she had been planning on leaving him anyway, partly because of stupid behaviors that did indeed lead to his death. It's almost a relief when an emergency call drags her out of the city for the most important case of her career -- rescuing the young crown prince from his kidnappers.

Beka wrestles with the ideas of friendship, relying on her dog and her partner and his lover while learning to trust and then love the goofy mage also assigned to her party. The question of trust plays a large role -- the absolute trust between a dog and a handler, the trust between lovers, between partners, between servants and masters, between royalty and subjects. What happens when trust is betrayed? What about when it is abused? There are major betrayals at many levels, as well as small ones. Obviously the rebellious nobles who orchestrated the kidnapping personify betrayal, but what about a fiance who never trusts you to do your job? Or never listens when you ask for or refuse help?

Pierce also uses this book to attack slavery, which is a common practice in her world. Beka confronts the dangers and horrors of this practice in steadily building scenes as she gets closer to the prince, who is learning about the pains in a very personal way. The final solution seems very idealistic, but that is a Tortallan tradition. Beka's viewpoint keeps the book focused but limited; this is a good book for Pierce enthusiasts but probably a poor gateway into her worlds.

Toughest Challenge of All: TBR Double-Dare

2012-01-07T15:40:00.000-08:00

This could be the scariest challenge of all; that must be why C.B.'s TBR Double Dare isn't really a challenge, or even just a single dare. The Double Dare is to only read books my possession on January 1st, and the dare lasts until April 1st. Nothing new from the store or the library for months and months. Luckily for me, anything currently on my holds list at the library counts as "in my possession."

Also luckily for me, you can set your own exceptions. I already used that rule to check out a few books for my son's school report, since his card is disabled until we pay some of the fines. And I'm giving myself another exemption for Cybils Challenge books; I consider them all preloaded on my library hold list and as I read one from each category I order up the next. I am requiring myself to read any I have in my possession first, but it looks like that only applies to one book. And I'm sorta cheating on the Scholastic catalogs from school; I'm not ordering any for myself but if the kids pick the ones I've circled and labeled LOOKS LIKE A GREAT BOOK, well, that's just supporting their reading, right? I probably won't get to read them until after April anyway.

Also, I have a life-time goal of reading a book from each shelf of my library; I think I'll exempt that as well. I also attempt to read a book from my TBR list each week, but instead of working from the start down and using the library I'll hunt out any books I have in my possession. If I run out, I'll probably exempt those as well. Prior lists take priority, after all. I may not run out until I flunk out of the challenge anyway. The challenge anticipates that few will make the distance; part of the instructions involves returning to check in when I fall off the wagon. We'll see how long I last.

(I'm only listing books that I own, not library books, since the latter disappear from the pile whether I read them or not.)

Darth Paper Strikes Back, Tom Angleberger
The Red House, Edith Nesbit (NOOK)
The Terrorists of Irustan, by Louise Marley

High and Tight: Absolutely American

2012-01-06T21:33:00.000-08:00

Once again I have no idea how this book wondered into my TBR list, but I found David Lipsky's Absolutely American engrossing. Lipsky spent four years embedded into West Point, watching the kids in their classes, training, and career planning. His last year included the 9/11 attacks, which put everything the cadets did into a vivid reminder of the reason the country has military academies.

Lipsky focuses both on superior and lagging examples of West Point virtues. The worst one spends four years dancing on the edge of dismissal, coming within seconds of failing various physical tests and never moving much past probation in academics. The only lesson he seems to absorb into his bones is the creed that a cadet never gives up, although the various officers who practically beg him to resign don't see the benefit of that. Meanwhile other cadets also wrestle with the meaning of duty, of what it means to commit to the army, of whether they are trading a free education for five years of duty or whether they intend a lifetime of service.

I wouldn't have made it a week at West Point, so it's an alien world that I'll only see through a writer's eyes, and Lipsky's descriptions made it seem vivid and clear. He also seemed to keep himself out of the way more; he reported on kids who never doubted that their lives belonged in the military and on people clearly there for the career opportunities and cheap education with equal respect. This contrasted with Army 101, where the author never seemed to get past his bemusement that anyone could choose the military for any reason other than to escape a gun-torn ghetto.

Cybils 2011!

2012-01-05T22:37:00.000-08:00

Last year I managed to read my way through the entire Cybils Finalist list, mostly with pleasure. So this year I thought I'd try again. Sadly, I'm doomed because of the book apps category; I don't have a device so I can't "read" those, unless some of them play on my NOOK. And I don't think our library has them for borrowing, so even if technology falls from the sky I still probably can't get a look at them. This makes my tidy-list-keeping soul grumpy, but I'll still include them at the bottom of my checklist for completest sake. I'm also excited to note that I've already read four of them, and a fifth is my pick for our January family book club. So I feel all hip and in-crowdy.

Easy Readers

Aggie Gets Lost (Aggie and Ben)by Lori RiesCharlesbridge
Dodsworth in Rome (The Dodsworth Series)by Tim Egan
Flowering MindsFrog and Friends (I Am a Reader)by Eve Bunting
I Broke My Trunk! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)by Mo Willems

Early Chapter Books

Clementine and the Family Meetingby Sara Pennypacker
Have Fun, Anna Hibiscus!by Atinuke
Just Grace and the Double Surprise (The Just Grace Series)by Charise Mericle
Like Pickle Juice on a Cookieby Julie Sternberg
The Trouble with Chickens: A J.J. Tully Mystery (J.J. Tully Mysteries)by Doreen Cronin

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Middle Grade)

A Monster Calls: Inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowdby Patrick Ness
Breadcrumbsby Anne Ursu
Dragon Castleby Joseph Bruchac
Icefallby Matthew J. Kirby
The Cheshire Cheese Cat: A Dickens of a Taleby Carmen Agra Deedy
The Inquisitor's Apprenticeby Chris Moriarty
Tuesdays at the Castleby Jessica Day George

Fantasy & Science Fiction (Young Adult)

Angelfall (Penryn & the End of Days, Book 1)by Susan Ee
Anna Dressed in Bloodby Kendare Blake
Blood Red Roadby Moira Young
Misfitby Jon Skovron
Red Glove (Curse Workers, Book 2)by Holly Black
The Girl of Fire and Thornsby Rae Carson
The Shatteringby Karen Healey

Fiction Picture Books

Blackoutby John Rocco
Do You Know Which Ones Will Grow?by Susan A. Shea
I Had a Favorite Dressby Boni Ashburn
I Want My Hat Backby Jon Klassen
Me . . . Janeby Patrick McDonnell
Press Here by Herve Tullet
Princess and the Pig, Theby Jonathan Emmett

Graphic NovelsElementary/Middle Grade

Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Swordby Barry Deutsch
Nursery Rhyme Comics: 50 Timeless Rhymes from 50 Celebrated Cartoonistsby Various Authors
Sidekicksby Dan Santat
Wonderstruckby Brian Selznick
Zita the Spacegirlby Ben Hatke

Graphic Novels Young Adult

Anya's Ghostby Vera Brosgol
Bad Islandby Doug Tennapel
Feynmanby Jim Ottaviani
Level Upby Gene Luen Yang
Page by Paigeby Laura Lee Gulledge

Middle Grade Fiction

Darth Paper Strikes Back: An Origami Yoda Book by Tom Angleberger
Ghetto Cowboyby G. Neri
Nerd Campby Elissa Brent Weissman
The Friendship Dollby Kirby Larson
The Great Wall Of Lucy Wuby Wendy Wan-Long Shang
Warp Speedby Lisa Yee
Words In The Dustby Trent Reedy

Young Adult Fiction

Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Bunheads by Sophie Flack
Everybody Sees the Ants by A.S. King
Frost by Marianna Baer
Leverage by Joshua C. Cohen
Stupid Fast by Geoff Herbach

Nonfiction for Tweens & Teens

Amelia Lost: The Life and Disappearance of Amelia Earhartby Candace Fleming
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famousby Georgia Bragg
Into the Unknown: How Great Explorers Found Their Way by Land, Sea, and Airby Stewart Ross/Stephen Biesty
The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon (Exceptional Social Studies Titles for Intermediate Grades)by Carla Killough McClafferty
The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism & Treacheryby Steve Sheinkin
Unraveling Freedom: The Battle for Democracy on the Home Front During World War Iby Ann Bausum

Nonfiction Picture Books

All the Water in the Worldby George Ella Lyon
Bring On the Birdsby Susan Stockdale
Can We Save the Tiger?by Martin Jenkins
I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat: History's Strangest Curesby Carlyn Beccia
Planting the Wild Gardenby Kathryn O. Galbraith
The Case of the Vanishing Golden Frogs: A Scientific Mysteryby Sandra Markle
Thunder Birds: Nature's Flying Predatorsby Jim Arnosky

Poetry

Cousins of Clouds: Elephant Poemsby Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Dear Hot Dogby Mordicai Gerstein
Emma Dilemma: Big Sister Poemsby Kristine O'Connell George
Requiem: Poems of the Terezin Ghettoby Paul B. Janeczko
Self-Portrait With Seven Fingersby J. Patrick Lewis and Jane Yolen
We Are America: A Tribute from the Heartby Walter Dean Myers

Book Apps

Be Confident in Who You Are: A Middle School Confidential Graphic Novelby Annie Fox
Bobo Explores Lightby GameCollage
Harold and the Purple Crayonby Crockett Johnson and Trilogy Studios
Hildegard Singsby Thomas Wharton
Pat the Bunnyby Dorothy Kunhardt
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmoreby Moonbot Studios
The Monster at the End of This Bookby Callaway Digital Arts, Inc

15/80 (73 books)

2012 Where Am I Reading Challenge

2012-01-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

After all the fun I had last year storming BookJourney's Where Are You Reading? challenge, I'm going to try to do it again at a more sedate pace. At the end of each month I'll check my numbers, and if I haven't garnished at least 5 new states I'll deliberately toss in enough to round up the numbers. I think I'll also try to keep a running count; last year I mostly ignored books if I already had that location.

This year I'm also hoping to read a lot more outside the US, and I think I'll stick all unknown locations in Antarctica. There will be many fictional characters inhabiting that snowy plain, I'm guessing.

After carefully studying the instructions and finally recognizing Google's paperclip as the "link" icon, I made and linked a new 2012 map for this year's books:
View 2012 Where I Am Reading in a larger map

I'll list my favorite book, and then keep a count. Of course, this will be harder once I've read more than one book.

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California: The Blessing of a B Minus, 2
ColoradoConnecticutDelawareFloridaGeorgiaHawaiiIdaho
Illinois: White Night
Indiana IowaKansasKentuckyLouisianaMaineMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMinnesotaMississippiMissouriMontanaNebraskaNevadaNew HampshireNew Jersey
New Mexico
New York: Absolutely American, 4
North CarolinaNorth DakotaOhioOklahomaOregonPennsylvaniaRhode IslandSouth CarolinaSouth DakotaTennesseeTexasUtahVermontVirginia
Washington: Twilight and Philosophy
West VirginiaWisconsinWyoming

Afghanistan: The Man Who Would Be King
Canada: Half World
UK: Bindi Babes
Oceanea: Amelia Lost

3/50

Catch-Up and Starting 2012

2012-01-02T14:27:00.000-08:00

The start of the year is the time for new resolutions and fresh starts, but this is the post where I clear out all the books I read in December while trying to finish off my various challenges and, oh, celebrate Christmas with my family. I can also look at what I'll be reading this week and peek at the overview of the year.

This is the meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey, who also takes the blame for the Where Are You Reading challenge that had me scrambling on the last days of the year. I'll probably be doing that one again as well.

What have I read since December 5th?

Math Bafflers 3-5: Logic Puzzles that Use Real World Math, Marilynn Rapp Buxton (from Early Reader at LibraryThing)
Don't Be Such a Scientist, Randy Olson (TBR list)
The Wager, Donna Jo Napoli (Cybils)
An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin (Cybils)
Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers (Cybils)
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, Tom Angleberger (Cybils)
Liberty Porter, First Daughter, Julia Devillers (Reading My Library)
Emily and the Rats in the Belfy, Lynne Jonell
New York to Dallas, J.D. Robb
Queen's Play, Dorothy Dunnett (A-Z Challenge)
Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights, Gary Paulsen (state book)
Stolen, Lucy Christopher (Cybils)
How Tia Lola Ended Up Starting Over, Julia Alvarez (state book)
Vampire Defanged, Susannah Clements (literary analysis of vampires)
Paranormalcy, Kiersten White
Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey (A-Z challenge)
Twist of Fate, M.J. Putney (state challenge)
Wife of the Gods, Kewi Quartey (A-Z challenge)
The Stolen Lake, Joan Aiken (Global challenge)
The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar (A-Z challenge)
One Man's Bible, Gao Xingjian (A-Z challenge)
Under the Blood-Red Sun, Graham Salisbury (state challenge)
Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader, Amy Polakow (state challenge)
A Blue-Eyed Daisy, Cynthia Rylant (state challenge)
Dear America: The Light in the Storm, Karen Hesse (state challenge)
The Beef Princess of Practical County, Michelle Houts (state challenge)
Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War, David Axe (state challenge)
Backyard Giants, Susan Warren (state challenge)
The Map of My Dead Pilots, Colleen Mondor
High Plains Tango, Robert James Waller (state challenge)
The Thief, Megan Whalen Turner (family book club) (audio)
The Penderwicks, Jeanne Birdseye (audio)
Archangel's Blade, Nalini Singh

Whew! Eight non-fiction, nineteen kids books (including the YAs), two audio books, three paranormal fictions, three historical fiction, at least five PoC authors. It was an interesting variety of books.

I'm currently reading:

Mastiff, Tamara Pierce. Final book in the Tortall prequel series.
Stories I Only Tell My Friends, Rob Lowe. Recommended by a friend.
Absolutely American, David Lipsky. From TBR shelf. All three of these are due back soon.
White Night, Jim Butcher. Audio book for car. Hmm, I may have skipped this one; it doesn't sound familiar.
Bindi Babes, Narinder Dhami. Reading my library.
Dark Whispers, Bruce Covelle. Reading my library. Very slowly, apparently.
The First Men In the Moon, H.G. Wells. From my classics TBR shelf.
Twenty Palaces, Harry Connolly. On my NOOK. When his publisher didn't pick up the Ray Lily books (BOO), he self-published the extra one. I like this author.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm out of her youth so no more drugs. Yay!
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They are getting caught. I'm glad I'm reading this glacially.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. They struggle on, knowing they'll never meet again. Ha!
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. A bad example he likes is a trend; one he doesn't like is an anomaly.

What will I read next? Things I have around the house. I'm going to try to go on a book fast, where I don't check out or purchase new books. I may make an exception for Cybils finalists, and also for my Reading My Library habits, but no impulse books. Of course, I have a few tons of library books scattered about the house right now, so this won't get painful for a few weeks.

Challenges I'm considering signing up for:

Cybils: Most definitely. I checked the list, and I've already read a few. I feel very hip.

Global Reading Challenge. It was fun picking up some different books this way.

Where Am I Reading?: This ended up being a lot of fun, but I want to try to do it without the last minute panic.
What's In a Name: I like the silly nature of this one.
Science Book Challenge: I like their suggestions for nonfiction reading.

2012 First Book: Archangel's Blade

2012-01-01T21:09:00.000-08:00

After my last minute charge to finish all the challenges I signed up for in 2011, I turned today to a library book that had drifted overdue in that scramble. The fourth book in Nalini Singh's Guild Hunter series, Archangel's Blade crosses the line back over from urban fantasy to paranormal romance, which I gather is Singh's usual nesting ground. Previous books have followed guild hunter Eleni through her transformation into an archangel, complete with wings and a relationship with the top male archangel around. I found those interesting as they stuck with Eleni for three books, exploring both her problems with her metamorphosis and the world with angels who can turn humans into ageless vampires, but only do so under strict legal contracts enforced by tough leather-wearing hunters like Eleni and Honor.

Honor, the new lead in this story, is recovering from a horrible kidnapping and torture fest that dragged on for months and has not yet regained her sexy edge. Luckily Dmitri, the razor-sharp second-in-command to Eleni's mate, understands that it's time to stop coddling her and instead shock her into facing the world again, mostly by succumbing to his irresistible man-wiles. Oh yeah, and hunting down all the vampires involved in her abuse and with a little side-line in capturing a serial killer distantly related to the evil lord who made Dmitri a vampire while destroying his family. See -- she's helping him while he helps her, so they are partners. This combination of sex and violence helps Heal Honor's Wounds, but doesn't tell me a lot more about this society and also doesn't really give me interesting characters to care about, instead offering me a rather bland relationship and rather stock violent bad guys to horribly conquer. There will probably be more Guild Hunter books, but I'll only read them if they jump out at me from the library New and Interesting Shelves, which I'm not even going to look at for the next four months anyway.

I did notice that the first book I've read has an alphabetical title (A_B_), tempting me to read a C next, but unfortunately library due dates determine my next few choices, so I can't read the alphabet this year. It's a thought, though...

Declaring Victory on Where Are You Reading

2011-12-31T16:00:00.000-08:00

Where are You Reading Challenge Complete!

I've managed to read books from every state of the United States, plus the District of Columbia. Whew! This was the challenge that I feared leaving incomplete, since my plan of just reading all the books accidentally turned out to be a bad one and I was left with about twenty books needed for the last several weeks. Also, I'm now quite disgruntled at books with vague settings; in a few cases I actually emailed the authors to find out where the heck their books were set. This is particularly a problem for middle grade and young adult books, which I like reading.

I may or may not manage to review all the books today, but I promise I've read them. I'll keep updating this post with the emergency reviews for the books I've finished in the past few weeks, when all blogging was suspended because reading time took precedence. I will say that I've really enjoyed the last few books, especially the nonfiction titles I picked up for a change of pace that made Rhode Island and Alaska such fun reads on the last day of the year.

I kept track of the states on my sign-up post, and I have a google map with pointers to the books I read. Making that was pretty exciting.

Hey, looking at the conclusion post on BookJourney's blog it appears that not finishing every state doesn't mean the list police will hunt you down. Huh. Anyway, it was a lot of fun and I'll probably do it again next year, but hopefully will pay attention and either permit myself to leave it incomplete or search out the books I need a bit earlier.

View Book Trip in a larger map

What did I read? * are the ones I really enjoyed, and the mini-reviews here probably mean I read it in the past two weeks. Or two hours.
Alabama: Bird, by Angela Johnson
Alaska: The Map of My Dead Pilots, by Colleen Mondor. A memoir about working with an airline in the frozen north, with all the fatalities involved. It becomes a musing on memories and meaning and loss that encompasses much of what I think Xianjing was trying for and I wasn't seeing in One Man's Bible. *
Arizona: Alien Tango, by Gini Koch
Arkansas: Daisy Bates: Civil Rights Crusader, by Amy Polakow. Daisy Bates was a black woman who helped organize the Little Rock 9 to integrate the high school and ran a newspaper that reported on civil rights abuses throughout America. This book gave a suspenseful description of her life and actions.
California: Mouse Tales, by David Koenig
Colorado: Children of the Waters by Carleen Brice
Connecticut: Because of Mr Terupt by Rob Buyea
Delaware: A Light in the Storm, by Karen Hesse. Again I'm surprised by the authors writing in the Dear America series books -- Karen Hesse has won Newbery awards. I thought this book gave a good sense of the culture and attitudes of people at the start of the civil war, although there wasn't much plot. Florida: You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know, by Helen Seller
Georgia: Darwen Arkwright and the Peregrine Plot, by A.J. Hartley
Hawaii: Under a Blood-red Sky, by Graham Salisbery. Historical fiction about a Japanese boy in Hawaii at right before and after the attack at Pearl Harbor. Good enough to make me want to read the sequel.
Idaho: One Door Away From Heaven, by Dean Koontz. My first Koontz, I found it interesting with vivid characters but too long for its chops and with a bit too much time spent in the eeeeevil killer's head.
Illinois: Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri
Indiana: The Beef Princess of Practical County, by Michelle Houts. Straightforward and fun story of a girl learning to raise beef cattle and navigate some tricky situations during her twelfth year.
Iowa: Any Which Wall, Laurel Snyder
Kansas: Vengeance, David Thompson
Kentucky: Eli the Good, Silas House
Louisiana: Secrets of the Demon, Diane Rowland
Maine: Penderwicks at Pointe Mouette, Jeanne Birdsall
Maryland: Twist of Fate, M.J. Putney. Romance between an insecure lawyer transitioning from cutthroat corporate work to touchy-feely law and a ex-software magnate turned carpenter recovering from the execution of his serial killer brother. They bond over a last ditch effort to save an innocent guy from another execution. Aside from them not noticing the clear clues the author leaves them, it was a fun story with a cute love life.
Massachusetts: Clementine, Friend of the Week, Sara Pennypacker
Michigan: Working Words, ed. M.L. Liebler
Minnisota: Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights, Gary Paulsen
Mississippi: The Help, Kathryn Stockett
Missouri: Ghost in the Little House, William Holtz
Montana: The Whistling Season, Ivan Hoig
Nebraska: I Am a Man, Joe Starita
Nevada: Trick of the Light, Rob Thurman. Standard paranormal with secret identies, hot ladies, and dubious man-friends. Fun enough, and I like the strong emphasis on the action, not the sex.
New Hampshire: Horns, Joe Hill
New Jersey: The Half-Life of Planets, Emily Franklin & Brendan Halpin
New Mexico: Split, Swati Avasthi
New York: Every Time a Rainbow Dies, Rita Williams-Garcia
North Carolina: Wild Things, Clay Carmichael
North Dakota: Dakota Ambush, William W. Johnstone
Ohio: Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
Oklahoma: The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton. Hey, I didn't review this book club book? As angsty as I remember, we all approved of Ponyboy and his pals. My son gave it a thumbs up in his guest appearance.
Oregon: Nightfall, Ellen Connor. Oops, forgot to review this rather disappointing book about a group of people after the Apocalypse who battle bad guys who turn out to be werewolves and then discover they are changing themselves. Not as fun as it sounds.
Pennsylvania: Circles in the Stream (Avalon #1),
Rhode Island: Backyard Giants, Susan Warren. A tense year alongside amateur gardeners working towards growing a world record pumpkin. Warren got lucky in that this was a really good year for the R.I. pumpkin club she shadowed for this book.
South Carolina: Army 101: Inside ROTC in a Time of War by David Axe. Although Axe seems a bit puzzled about why anyone would want to join the military, he provides a good view on the lives of a corps of ROTC students and their struggles and hopes at the University of South Carolina.
South Dakota: High Plains Tango, Robert James Waller. Slight tale of a man moving to a small town where he beds two women, sights a supposedly extinct bird, and loses his house to a highway. The man is the illegitimate son of the guy from Bridges of Madison County.
Texas: Belly Up, Stuart Gibbs
Tennessee: Truth and Beauty, Ann Pratchett
Utah: Dinosaur Mountain, Deborah Kogan Ray
Vermont: How Tia Lola Ended Up Starting Over, Juliea Alvarez
Virginia: Paranormalcy, Kiersten White.
Washington: Five Flavors of Dumb, Anthony James
Washington DC: Liberty Porter, First Daughter by
West Virginia: Blue-Eyed Daisy, Cynthia Rylant. A year in a poor girl's life, where she meets her father over a hunting dog and makes connections at school.
Wisconsin: I Now Pronounce You Someone Else, Erin McCahon
Wyoming: Scumble, Ivy Law

Library Returns Today!

2011-12-31T11:57:00.000-08:00

A shelf of books had to go back to the library today because of tedious things like due dates and other people's holds. And then I went off to Utah for vacation. But here are some swift reactions to the books they got back.

Book From My TBR List:

Don't Be Such a Scientist, Randy Olson. Written by a marine biologist turned semi-successful movie producer, this polemic against boring attempts at persuasion looks at traditional ways of conveying information and laughs with scorn. Too often scientists use the same protocols for public speaking that they do for research proposals, sometimes salted with contempt for their audience and general arrogance. Olson suggests this may not be as effective as they seem to think.

Books From Reading My Library:

Border Crossing, Maria Colleen Cruz. Twelve year old Cesi Alvarez would be a good friend to Keeper, since they both have the common sense of a newt. Apparently no one ever told her that Mexico is a different country than the US. It tries to be a cute story about a girl understanding her heritage, but it relies heavily on willful and strident stupidity from Cesi. Luckily she sits next to her long-lost cousin on the train, much as a mermaid steers Keeper home. But it completes North America for my Global Challenge!
Liberty Porter: First Daughter, Julia Devillers. Nine year old Liberty looks forward to her new life in the White House, but first she has to straighten some things out with her dad's PR tool. Cute and bouncy story that I think my fifth grader would like. Also doubles as a location book for Washington DC, SCORE!

State Books:

How Tia Lola Ended Up Starting Over, Julia Alvarez. A blended family starts a B&B (or C&C&C) in VERMONT. I liked the way the two families and their extended friends interacted and the conflict from the mysterious ill-wisher kept things interesting. The sudden U-turn in the last few pages threw me violently out -- why suddenly tell me this is a book from a library and the characters aren't real? I mean, I KNOW that...
Popcorn Days and Buttermilk Nights, Gary Paulsen. City living has poisoned Carley, so that he intermittently erupts in meaningless acts of violence. His mom ships him to northern MINNESOTA to spend time in the country, where he learns about beauty and hard work and grinding poverty that gets alleviated with genius and more hard work.

Vampire Literature Books:

The Vampire Defanged, Susannah Clements. A review of vampire literature from Dracula through Sookie Stackhouse, looking at how Christian themes first dominated the literature and then gradually become replaced with more secular interests, paralleling the change from horrible monsters to sexy man-friends with an edge. Clements thinks the genre would benefit from a return to a harder edge, which would also allow the Christian themes more room to thrive.

Books From My Favorite Authors

I read Tempering of Men by Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear just as the news of Anne McCaffrey's death come out, and it's an interesting homage to the Dragonrider books. These men bond with their wolves, but the wolves are the dominant end of the equation, and the men adjust their lives to accommodate the wolves more than vice versa. Sex gets complicated, for example. And just as in later Pern books, these men are also facing the results of success -- they have beaten back the main threat that led to the pairings, so are they even necessary? And what happens if the man you love doesn't love you back?

Alphabetically Scrambling to Finish off 2011

2011-12-31T11:08:00.000-08:00

Things have been quiet around here as I try to finish up my last challenges while still celebrate the holidays with my family. Now I'm holed up alone in my room chasing down the last few pages.

The A-Z challenge had a few leaves that were hard to shake from the tree, but I've finally knocked them down. Coincidentally they also helped me round out the Global Reading Challenge, which was looking a bit anemic. During the holidays I've read the following on my NOOK, completing the A-Z challenge:

Jasper Jones, Craig Silvey. An Australian coming-of-age story where the narrator learns about the fronts put on by everyone around him, proving that he doesn't have to doubt himself if his own courage and self-confidence aren't always bone deep. The twin mysteries of his parents' marriage and the murder of a school mate implicating the notorious Jasper Jones provide the lens focusing these revelations, as well as the minor bits of plot that accompany the journey of interior growth. I also learned a lot about cricket.
Wife of the Gods, Kwei Quartey. Darko is a police detective in Ghana, where modern investigative techniques run parallel to rougher, simpler modes of justice, with magic and witchcraft lurking in the corners. Darko's sense of fair place and justice stem from his own mother's disappearance, and the chance to solve a murder in his mother's home village also gives him the chance to peer into his own family's secrets. An interesting glimpse into Ghana culture as well as a detective story.
The Space Between Us, Thrity Umrigar. Rich Parsis and poor Hindu workers may think that their friendship can transcend an employee-worker relationship, but the rich will betray the poor every time. Poor and uneducated people always lose, and it's because their poverty leads them open to bad choices based on smaller understanding.
One Man's Bible, Gao Xingjian. Another book translated from Chinese that felt like it was written behind glass -- somehow I've never been able to connect with any I've tried. It didn't help that women in this book were considered alien creatures there to either inspire lust or to fail miserably in that purpose. The tricks with pronouns didn't illuminate much to me; the whole book felt false so the changing identities didn't resonate deeply. The parts set in the past at least gave a sense of setting and reality, as opposed to the much vaguer parts in France or other western cities. As a "fictionalized account" of the cultural revolution it worked better than as a "meditation on exile" and "the essence of writing" (from the B&N description.)

Final Cybils Post

2011-12-19T23:30:00.000-08:00

Whew! I finished the 2010 Cybils Challenge, just in time for the announcement of the 2011 Cybils Finalists. This was really a lot of fun; I liked revisiting picture books and early readers and seeing what the kids thought of books they considered below them in reading level. It's interesting to see them step back a bit and consider what would make a good book for their past selves, their DISTANT past selves that I think I saw around here yesterday or so.

I also had a lot of fun with the nonfiction lists; I rarely read kid nonfiction and I hadn't realized how good it could be. I had some luck in getting the kids to read them along with me. Poetry was hard; I got P to read a lot of it along with me because I like reading it out loud, but neither of us really got into most of the options. Well, Borrowed Names sent me off on several reading interests, but I felt the poetry part lessened rather than added to its appeal, and everyone loved Mirror, Mirror.

YA novels are incredibly depressing; I was surprised by how little I enjoyed them. YA fantasy on the other hand is still a favorite of mine and my middle schooler. I learned a lot about graphic novels through this challenge, and I'm now capable of reading manga with only a little bit of brain strain. I'm super impressed by all the judges, who read more books than this in only a few months while I'm sliding into the finish line for just the finalists. And now I can look at my fancy bookmarks, which I'll be sharing with two elementary schools and a junior high -- I've been avoiding the winners list so my reading was uncompromised.

I've been slacking a bit on the reviews, so here are the thumb nail thoughts on all the books I've just finished or otherwise neglected to comment on:

Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off, Jacqueline Jules. A simple tale of a boy who gets magic shoes and figures out where they came from and what they can help he do, or better yet what he can do without getting in trouble at school. Bonus points for helping a puppy. A cute book, but didn't really resonate with me or my sons; A declined to try it.
Ninth Ward, Jewell Parker Rhodes. The story of a girl trapped in New Orleans with her dying guardian, her dog, and a boy who may be her friend. The ghosts she sees sometimes help and sometimes threaten her. I felt the mix of fantasy with the realism pulled away from the strength of the story, but it's still a strong peek into an exciting and dangerous time.
The Shadows (The Book of Elsewhere #1), Jacquiline West. Middle grade fantasy with the magical and real elements in harness to match her real world problems with the battles inside the pictures of her new home. X also enjoyed this one and wants the sequel; I've put it on P's pile.
The Wager, Donna Jo Napoli. I have a personal dislike to plots of the sort "horrible thing happens to main character, who then suffers in agony for the rest of the book." So although I appreciated the writing and skillful depiction of character, I can't say I enjoyed this entry.
The Strange Case of Origami Yoda, Tom Angleberger. If the clueless class clown voices advice through his folded paper creation, does the advice morph into wisdom? The kids wondering about the knowledge of the paper Jedi illuminate truths about friendship and peer pressure. Both my kids loved this book and have already gobbled down the sequel.
Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania, Haya Leah Molnar. Molnar recalls details of life under newly communist Romania as her parents first suffer because of their Jewish heritage and then use it to emigrate away.
An Unspeakable Crime: The Prosecution and Persecution of Leo Frank, Elaine Marie Alphin. A history of an almost certainly mistaken verdict that cost the life of a Jewish pencil maker in Atlanta. The police decided what kind of villain they wanted and then forced the evidence towards the Jewish Yankee manufacturer that fit their description. When the governor balked at execution because of the flimsy evidence, a lynch mob made up of educated and wealthy men killed him anyway.
Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers. Remember my aversion to plots that involve walking on nails through the course of the book? This is another in that genre, as well as being a call for homeschooling. It's about evil girls, weak girls, and the turn of fortune's wheel.
Stolen, Lucy Christopher. A twisted story of a girl taken by an obsessed man. All alone in the Australian desert she struggles to understand why he would kidnap her, and if he truly meant to save her. Gemma finds herself twisted by strange loyalties when Ty puts her safety above his own.

Reading High: Queen's Play

2011-12-16T18:09:00.000-08:00

Someone may have noticed the quiet around here. That's because I'm frantically pawing through books trying to figure out a path to finishing all my challenges before the end of the year. I really want to finish the Cybils finalist list, but the super-depressing YA offerings really slowed me down. I'm now on the last one, so I'm comfortable reading about 50 pages a day through the weekend, and then I'll write up a final post of all the last-minute books plus the ones I skipped reviewing somehow.

Meanwhile I've loaded my NOOK with books to finish off the Alphabet challenge, which means I can flail about to see if I can find things for the geography puzzles. Of course, just because I'm in list crisis mode doesn't mean I stop Reading My Library or poking at my TBR list. Oh, and a bunch of library books are coming due as well. And I hear some holiday or other is coming up, or so the kids tell me. I think I'm supposed to be doing something, rhymes with hopping. Stopping? Flopping? It'll come to me.

Anyway, I managed to finish a book! And here's a review!

When I volunteer in the elementary school library, I hear a lot about choosing books at the correct level. The idea is to pick books that you can comfortably read, not too easy and not too hard. Although I'm certainly willing to help kids find books in this magic range, I don't actually subscribe to the philosophy. I think that interest and enjoyment are the main reasons to pick a book -- I certainly don't turn down a book just because it is "too easy" for me. Hey, I still like picture books and I've really enjoyed some of the Easy Reader choices from the Cybils challenge and my kids and I rarely drop a series just because they've grown past it -- when is Cynthia Rylant going to write another Mr Putter book anyway? (I just checked -- I'm missing the latest one. Humph.)

Of course, with all my sophistication and wit, not to mention my lazy habits, I rarely find myself reading a book that would count as "too hard." But Dorothy Dunnett can really put me in my place. I just finished the second book in her Lymond series, Queen's Play, and it took me several tries to get into it and I found myself trying the dictionary on my NOOK (uselessly; we seem to share the same vocabulary) or typing phrases into babelfish to try to understand the French or Latin quotes the characters toss about. Actually, this book had more in-line translations than the first, and less German and Spanish. But after only eighty pages or so I was having far to much fun to stop, even when I had to pause to try to figure out what the text was hinting at. It's not just the language that's tough -- the author also expects the reader to stay on her toes and notice connections and intrigue and subtext and whatnot. A really delicious journey, but not for the lazy-minded. I'm very glad that my need for a "Q" title nudged me into trying this book a second time. Although choosing 500 pages books for the frantic end-time does raise questions about that wit I claimed at the top of this paragraph.

Good Kid: Wild Things

2011-12-11T23:10:00.000-08:00

I grabbed Clay Carmichael's Wild Things from the shelf because the jacket copy mentioned a setting in North Carolina, and I feel very efficient when I combine Reading My Library with the dangling book challenges. In addition to the lucky location, Wild Things also delivered a strong orphan character and a touching story of two loners letting people back into their lives.

As a kid, I liked reading about competent protagonists, and I even liked it when the child clearly took on too much, but did it well, and then found some place where adults could take over and let the kid be a child again. That's the pattern here; Zoe's uncle Henry takes her in when her mother dies, and she even admits to herself that dying was probably the best thing her mother ever did for her so that Zoe could go to him. Zoe has been taking care of herself all her life, and Henry has been alone almost that long, and it takes them a while to find their places in Henry's home. Quirky neighbors also join in, as well as a mysterious adolescent who runs about with an albino deer and provides chances for Zoe to choose when to trust Henry and when he has to trust her. It's all well done with the added pleasure of a stray cat throwing in his opinions on occasion.

I resented the coincidences at the end, but that's an adult curmudgeonly reaction that I wouldn't have had in my youth.

Popular Car Book: The Report Card

2011-12-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

Our latest audio book for the car was Andrew Clements's The Report Card, a popular choice. The boys had read it before, but A got to enjoy each twist for the first time. P's opinion: "The Report Card is great! It's my favorite book." This is probably because he's fairly unhappy with his school life right now, so he likes the idea of a kid challenging the structure of school itself.

I've read it before as well; I'm a big Clements fan in general. I like the way that intellectual gifts and maturity do not march hand in hand, which seems very true to life for me. My kids enjoyed the examples; Nora decides to disguise her gifts in kindergarten by pretending to be a cat, an act she figures will be fairly inconspicuous. Um, no. And the idea that children can control property taxes through their efforts in school warmed their little hearts.

A big complaint however was the troublesome long tracks. Since I was in the car a lot more than the kids, it would have been nice to be able to switch over to other CDs to listen to music while they were in school, but with tracks as long as nine or ten minutes it was hard to find good stopping places. Come on Random House -- get with the program and put in breaks every three or so minutes -- that's much easier to manage.

Space Wars: Pluto Confidential

2011-12-07T23:49:00.000-08:00

The tensions over Pluto's demotion still run high in many hearts, although luckily violence rarely breaks out. Laurence A Marschall and Stephen F. Maran sit on opposite sides of the Pluto-Planet debate, but still managed to amicably write Pluto Confidential, a history of planet definitions and controversy. After starting with a description of the organization and meeting that created headlines with its Plutonic decision, they back up into a description of the discovery of each planet and how the planets got names and reputations.

Other planets have been listed and then demoted, stripped of the right to call themselves planets. I like using terms like that, because after all, every planet is just a hunk of matter spinning around in space where no one can hear it scream, let alone complain about naming rights. Hunks of matter don't have volition, let alone vocabularies! Anyway, the sun used to be a planet, but when scientists established that there had been a heretical misunderstanding and it didn't revolve around the earth, it was slapped with the label "star" and told to hush up. The moon also lost planetary status, but it took it well.

Then new planets were found -- Uranus (aka Herschall), Ceres, Neptune (or Leverrier), Pallas, Vesta, Flora, Iris, Vulcan -- what? what? I'm not listing them in order from the sun, just in order that I remember them. Some of them later got transmogrified into asteroids, and Vulcan was relabeled a figment of the imagination. Yes, Vulcan disappeared completely without survivors. And then Pluto.

I like reading about the partnership between mathematicians and astronomers, because mathematicians are just cool. Gauss figured out the orbit of Pallas with basically two sightings and a paper clip. John Adams sent accurate predictions of Neptune's orbit to Britain's Royal Astronomer, who ignored him because Adams had a proletarian accent, thereby ceding Neptune's discovery to the FRENCH. Oops.

Why are Marschall and Maran on opposite camps? Marschall is comfortable with the IAU's definition of planets, which acknowledges Pluto's non-unique Kuiper belt status. Maran points out that the main reason there the IAU has a definition of "planet" is to figure out how to name new objects, which is not an issue with Pluto, and that astronomers never get the final word on what to call things anyway -- things end up with the name everyone uses, which is why no one has heard of Hershall or Leverrier and why Jupiter's moons aren't named after the Medici's. Both are right, and both agree that the name isn't really that important but wow isn't it great that people get so excited about this? Science is fun!

Electric Wind: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind

2011-12-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

William Kamkwamba grew up fearing magic and ghost planes while working on his father's farm. He planned to start working hard at school as soon as he made the secondary grades, but unfortunately this meant his grades on the selection exam were poor and he was assigned to a low rated school. Since Malawi is a poor country that struggles to supply even the top rated classes, this meant few textbooks and crumbling facilities. When famine struck the farmers in 2002, school fees became impossible as the family gave up eating more than once a day or the chance of growing a cash crop.

Refusing to relinquish his dreams of an education, William turned to a local library in hopes of learning at home until he could return to classes. Finding books on electricity, he decided to build a windmill to provide power to light his house, and eventually to bring irrigation to his family's farm. Enduring ridicule as he picked through junk yards and trash heaps for materials (even a few feet of copper wire overpowered his minuscule budget) he slowly assembled both the windmill (never before seen in his village) and the generator to transform the wind into electricity. Soon his household was the only one with a steady source of light, and his cell phone charger because a neighborhood attraction. Fame and (very modest) fortune followed a TED conference appearance; the last few chapters detail the difference this has brought to his family and village and prospects.

Brian Mealer helped write The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (William barely spoke English as he taught himself physics from a British science book), but the voice sounds authentically young. Brian's website talks about how he worked to bring William's story to life, even mentioning how he took notes and charged his laptop with the titular windmill. The story of William's Edisonian efforts to find scraps to fit the needs of his invention is inspiring and real, making look at my own slacker kids with jaded eyes. (Good thing I can't look at myself with those eyes!)

Rushing Into the End of the Year

2011-12-05T08:27:00.000-08:00

The last month of the year is upon me, so this is my last chance to read whatever I'm going to read this year. So what did I read this week? Again I'm jumping on the meme that Sheila at Book Journey hosts where book bloggers report what they've read, what they're reading, and what they plan to read. I also peek at my challenges to see how I'm doing. Books and lists -- two of my favorite things! This week I've finished:

Fatal Judgment, Irene Hannon (NOOK)
The Shadows (Books of Elsewhere), Jacqueline West (Cybils)
The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton (book club book)
The Tempering of Men, Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Border Crossing, Maria Colleen Cruz (Reading My Library)
Effective Curriculum for Underserved Gifted Students, Tamra Stambaugh
How I Met My Countess by Elizabeth Boyle
Pluto Confidential, Laurence A Marschall
Scrawl, Mark Shulman (Cybils)
Skeleton Man, Joseph Bruchac

I like that mix -- everything from children's books I read for the school's book club to books by my favorite authors (Bear and Monette) and including nonfiction, very different flavors of fantasy, and romance.

I'm currently reading:

Don't Be Such a Scientist, Randy Olson, about how most scientists fail to communicate (TBR)
Math Bafflers, Marilynn Buxton. A book of logic puzzles from Librarything's Early Readers.
Dark Whispers, Bruce Covelle. Reading my library.
Sheltering Hearts, Robyn Carr. Free NOOK story from Barnes & Noble.
Queens' Play, Dorothy Dunnett. (NOOK) I'm caught up in Lymond's story again.
The Vampire Defanged, Susannah Clements. Another literary look at vampires.
Traveling Mercies, Anne LamoItt. I 'm out of her youth so no more drugs. Yay!
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They are getting caught. I'm glad I'm reading this glacially.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. They struggle on, knowing they'll never meet again. Ha!
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. A bad example he likes is a trend; one he doesn't like is an anomaly.

What will I read next? I'm trying to get those challenges done! I'm going to concentrate on Cybils books, alternating a YA book with the remainder of the middle grade categories. Then my overflowing library stack needs attention. I have a West Point memoir from my TBR shelf waiting. And some stuff from Scholastic catalogs came in.

Challenges:

A-Z: 47/52. Need authors for Q, U, and X and titles for J. I'm reading a Q title. This seems doable

Cybils: 71/76. Finished Scrawl and Shadows.

Global Reading Challenge:19/21. I need an Australian book and another South American, and I'm using memoirs Africa but honest in North America.

Take a Chance: 10-ish/10. I read the picture book for ten, but it feels weak. That's how the dice fell, though.

20/11: 20/20. Done!

Where Am I Reading?: 38/50. I got Oklahoma. I need Alaska and Arkansas. Delaware, Hawaii, and Indiana. Also Maryland, Minnesota, South Carolina, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia. This one is looking dubious. My only hope is a lot of overlap with Cybils and A-Z.

Worst Things I Could Do: Scrawl

2011-12-04T23:50:00.000-08:00

Mark Shulman's Scrawl is the second Cybils YA Novel finalist about a boy who hits other people that I read in a row. Although it shares an explosive protagonist with Split, it feels and reads as a younger, less introspective book. That's not a criticism; it deals with violence directed outward and hard choices forced by societal pressures, so it makes sense that the main character looks outward more. Tod, the main character, writes his journal as punishment after been caught breaking into the school, and that's the text we read. For some reason, the guidance counselor sentenced him to write every afternoon instead of calling in the police. His co-conspirators are left cleaning up in the yard. (We do get to hear her explanation at the very end of the book.)

Promising not to lie, he writes about his life and struggles, from managing to keep his pals happy to staying warm without a furnace to somehow getting finagled into making the costumes for a school play. Although the journaling doesn't really stand up to firm scrutiny, I was completely willing to relax into Tod's voice and watch him almost learn to succeed. The dynamics of his struggles with the play seem particularly spot on, as did his struggles between pride and self-respect. I'll hand this over to my seventh grader, who should like it despite the lack of dragons.

Kid Perception: What Jamie Saw

2011-12-03T23:07:00.000-08:00

What Jamie Saw is the second book about abuse I've read in the past few weeks, although its aim and direction differ greatly from the previous one. Room was a book about abuse written for adults; the child narrator sees what happens, but the abuser focuses on an another adult. Carolyn Coman's book What Jamie Saw is written for children and the child narrator sees another child at risk. The level of evil also shifts; the bad guy in ROOM was recruited from the Ultimate Evil team, while the perpetrator in Conan's book knows he did wrong and regrets his actions.

Jamie however knows that what he saw was horrific; his stepfather Van cracked under the relentless sound of Jamie's baby sister's crying and threw her across the room. Miraculously Jamie's mother caught the baby and instantly called Jamie over and left. She finds them a place of safety and the rest of the books finds them slowly finding a safe way to re-enter a world that suddenly seems dark and frightening. First they find their friends, then they try to step back into public, always afraid of seeing Van, then gradually trying to slide back into school and work but now with a knowledge that sometimes the world shifts and you have to get away.

Jamie is older but less perceptive than Room's Jack, expressing himself often by his need to run or move rather than by his thoughts. I'm not sure how a child would react to this book; it was hard for me to distance myself enough to remember how I'd react years ago, when I'd identify with the kids rather than with the adults. I don't think I'll leave this one around for my boys to read; it doesn't feel like the kind of book I want them to read under the impression that I want them to read it.

Short takes

2011-12-02T23:44:00.000-08:00

Some books I've read but don't really have much to say about, so I'll pile them all in together to make a Friday post:

Slave Empire: Prophecy by T.C. Southwell reads like a NaNoWriNo novel; it never looks back even when it detours, clunky passages remain, and emotional detours don't make sense. It's offered as a free teaser so I tried it on my NOOK, but I won't go back for more.

Y:Last Man 3: One Small Step by Brian Vaughan: If someone is telling me a story, I want to trust in their choices of character and details. This whole book is about people who don't really matter -- the male astronauts who end up dieing trying to return to earth. It looks like I could have skipped it and not missed anything important to the Last Man story line. Humph. But my kid is now into these, so I'll order up the next.

Summer's Crossing (Julie Kagawa): Barnes and Nobles had this in their free-for-the-NOOK section, and I've been eyeing the Iron Fey series for a while. I bounced off some earlier books by Kagawa so I've been hesitating, and this novella seemed a good way to stick my toe in. I liked the fey court described and the interactions between Robin Goodfellow and his friends and/or enemies, and I think I'll go after the longer books now.

Effective Curriculum for Underserved Gifted Students, Tamra Stambough: This thin book written for teachers discusses the problems with recognizing and then effectively teaching gifted children from poor or ethnic families. Gifted programs in general tend to under-represent children from African American, Hispanic, immigrant and Native American populations, and in a related fashion also see fewer poor kids than expected. Chapters also address various curriculum and the research that show their effectiveness for gifted children, especially for the children from unorthodox backgrounds. The vocabulary and phrasing definitely aim this book at teaching professionals rather than laymen, and I found it more useful as an overview of the field than for any specific recommendations or practices. Thanks to LibraryThing's Early Readers for sending me a copy.

Night World 2, L.J. Smith: I'm never sure to whether to count this as one book or three -- the three books included are clearly separate novels set in the same world. Anyway, all three books (Dark Angel, The Chosen and Soulmate), features strong women facing hard decisions complicated by finding their True Love, who tends to have a minor defect like being an evil vampire or something. But these girls are tough enough to find a solution. Good books to sit next to the Twilight stories, with less adult squeamishness about "the message."

2011-12-02T06:32:00.000-08:00

Just me and the fifth graders today, since X was home slacking off and N home recovering from surgery. We stopped by to see the volunteers out dancing about with flags and cookies to promote the Self Check-in Machine, which is inconveniently located around the corner from the entrance. But I love robotic devices, so we've been regular worshippers at the mechanical beast for months. But it was fun to do it with cookies today.

Then we went inside and I went straight to the hold shelf, checked out my books, and fled. P as well. No CDs for us, since this is the time for radio Christmas All The Time.

Outsiders, S.E. Hinton. This is our book club book this month. I'll try to get X to read it as well.
Mars: The Worst Case Scenario. This is really for P, who enjoyed the Everest version.
Akata Witch, Nnedi Okorafor. This will honestly finish off Africa in my Global Reading Challenge.
Twin Spica 3, Kou Yaginuma. Last chance to wow me again, young astronauts!
The Big Khan, Neil Kleid. Unshelved put this on my TBR list.
Y The Last Man: Safeword, Brian Vaughan. Book four.
I Want My Hat Back, Jon Klassen. I've read raves and incomprehension about this picture book.
Reaching For the Moon, Buzz Aldrin. Recommended by Book-a-Day Almanac, which hasn't steered me wrong yet.

Did I mention that the New and Interesting display is actually on the way to the hold shelf? It's not like I was detouring when I picked up the newish J.R. Ward book, Lover Unleashed.

Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Clare from The Captive Reader take turns with the linky for Library Loot. That's where all us library lovers go to compare our hauls for the week. The library notes me at 65 items today, which includes probably about ten CDs, so that's a lot of books. I'd better get reading.

She's Gonna Blow: Boiling Point

2011-12-01T23:30:00.000-08:00

Well, it turns out that in the normal course of events I don't read much South American fiction. So I had to go out looking to have any hope of finishing my Global challenge. It's surprisingly hard to find fiction books by continent; nonfiction is easy enough but turns out I foolishly signed up for a challenge that wants novels. I may cheat a bit.

Anyway, poking around in the online catalog brought me to Boiling Point by Karen Dionne about a bunch of earnestly idiotic environmentalists who rush to an erupting volcano in Chile. The volcano, Chaiten, is real and did erupt in 2008, with just enough warning to allow the nearby villagers to flee without any belongings, but all the scientific tourists in the book are invented.

It says bad things about me, but the high body count really endeared the book to me. In the middle I was staring at some of the characters thinking "you are just too stupid to live" and it turns out that the author agreed with me! They don't get away with their foolish decisions. Which makes things a lot more fair, really. The book also lays out some environmental questions and some thoughts on personal responsibility, but the focus is on the danger from the lava and the sulphur and the VOLCANO.

Can't See Me: Dazzled and Deceived

2011-11-30T22:19:00.000-08:00

How does camouflage work, and who invented it? Is a history of camouflage a military history or a Darwinian narrative of biology and genetics? Well, if Peter Forbes writes that history (which he did in Dazzled and Deceived: Mimicry and Camouflage), it's both.

He traces the discovery of butterfly mimicry and its importance in the development of the theory of evolution, from Darwin's ideas through the controversies of the 1800's and early 1900s, and then turns to the artists who pioneered the ideas of camouflage in World War I. From there he moves back and forth between soldiers, artists and scientists, following the various attempts at human and vehicle disguise through World War II into the modern day, the fight for precedence and credit for that work, and the theories and counter-theories of animal appearance as the understanding of genetics deepened.

Forbes isn't afraid of going deep into a topic. The chapters on genetics worry at individual chromosome traits; chapters on naval painting trace which committee listened to which similarly declaiming expert and who officially gets credit for each new technique. Sometimes the crannies he delves into leave me skimming, while other times I'm willing to follow his interest every step and hope he keeps drilling down. It's a strange mix of a wide subject, which indicates a more popular touch, and a willingness to bore down into the fine details of the topics of each chapter. Mostly it works, although I doubt my seventh grader would be interested enough to stick with it.

Rewound Ending: Heat

2011-11-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

My hobby this year has been devouring critical analysis of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, reading books that use the show to examine ideas about gender or race or ethics or whatever floats the academic's boat. I've also read some of the graphic novels and comics based on the series, including some of the "official" continuations of the story. But there are also a flotilla of fiction books set in the world of the show, some of which are written by authors I've heard of in other contexts. I've read some vampire anthologies written by Nancy Holder (as well as some non-vampire books written by a different Nancy, Nancy Springer, whom I somehow confused with Holder which is why I read the first books), so I decided to try one of her Buffy books: Heat.

It was all right. The big problem with books written inside a series is that nothing interesting can happen to the characters -- they have to fit into the shows that happen before and after the book. So nobody can change or grow. Occasionally a book will manage to sneak in some hidden information that explains things without contradicting events; the classic version of this is Orson Scott Card's Abyss which encompasses the movie it is based on but includes a lot more. Heat does not do this, being set somewhere in Buffy Season 7, sometime before Principal Robin comes out to Buffy and sometime after Spike's insanity subsides a bit. I forget where this places it in Angel Season 4.

It's also a bit too long; when reading a snack book it's best to get through it before noticing how shallow everything is. Heat is about twice as long as it should be, probably because it stuffs in all the characters from both Whedon shows -- Buffy, Angel, Spike, Cordelia, Willow, Xander, Anya, Wesley, Gunn, Dawn, Fred and Lorne all get some screen time as viewpoint characters. So do Connor, Lilah, Jhiera, Robin, and a slew of original characters, mostly villains or doomed witnesses. This drags down the story. Then, to emphasize the low stakes involved, Xander gets killed off in the final climatic battle, forcing the author to make the characters reverse the polarity of time (or something) so that everything that happened didn't.

There's a reason I don't super-size my junk food orders, and reading novel serializations of TV stories is really just literary junk food. I'll pay stricter attention to page count next time I feel like indulging.

Name Drops of Coffee: How Starbucks Saved My Life

2011-11-28T22:04:00.000-08:00

My TBR list is about two years old, which means I rarely remember why a particular book showed up on it. I can see how the premise of Michael Gates Gill's book How Starbucks Saved My Life intrigued me -- I too have a fear of outliving my pension and ending up broke and wandering in the wilderness eating berries. It almost makes it worthwhile to budget like I was planning to leave money to my kids.

Anyway, Gill wrote his story of how he managed to fritter his life from his high-flying days as an advertising executive who fraternized with everyone from Jackie Kennedy to the Queen of England to a guy hoping desperately to keep his job as a Starbucks barista so he could afford to make one more months rent on his tiny apartment. And then he suddenly noticed that actually, he was a lot happier with his new job, which was all about making people happy by giving them something they wanted. A guiding principal at work urged employees to support each other, while great benefits provided health insurance and college assistance to help build better lives. In the old days, his co-workers competed to see who could sabotage each other the quickest, while clients casually paid as much in contempt as they did in revenues. His new life fed his soul at a much deeper level. He also figures out how much of his success came from his privileges as a rich white guy, who now works for a black woman.

Unfortunately, every moment is seasoned with another chance to drop a name, so we all know how important Gill was before he donned the green apron. I was not joking about the Queen of England -- he works in a moment where he embarrassed himself by pushing her aside to get at a cucumber sandwich. He brags about clients from his advertising past, famous people he met at Yale, or through his dad's connection with the New Yorker, or at his country house, or anywhere else he can drag in a big name. The name-dropping really slowed down the story of his sudden growth through blue-collar work.

Rushing To Keep Up on Monday

2011-11-28T08:20:00.002-08:00

There will be no scheduling of this post; I'll be lucky to finish it on Monday. But I'm determined to get it in. Sheila at Book Journey hosts this meme where book bloggers report what they've read, what they're reading, and what they plan to read. I also peek at my challenges to see how I'm doing. This week I've finished:

Prophecy (Slave Empire), T. C. Southwell, NOOK
Dazzled and Deceived, Peter Forbes
Summer's Crossing (The Iron Fey), Julie Kagawa (novella), NOOK
Y The Last Man, Vol 3: One Small Step, Brian K. Vaughan
Boiling Point, Karen Dionne
One Door Away From Heaven, Dean Koontz
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba (NOOK)

Still not reading very efficiently, but I enjoyed most of these books. Some could have been shorter and kept me happy, though. Well, the novella was just about right.

I'm currently reading:

Effective Curriculum for Underserved Gifted Students, Tamra Stambaugh. A gift from LibraryThing's Early Readers.
Scrawl, Mark Shulman. A Cybils book.
The Tempering of Men, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. Very harsh companion-to-animals book.
Pluto Confidential. Laurence Marschall and Stephen Maran. Nifty science book from my TBR list.
Dark Whispers, Bruce Covelle. Reading my library.
Fatal Judgment, Irene Hannon (NOOK). Free book from Barnes & Noble.
The Vampire Defanged, Susannah Clements. Another literary look at vampires.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm now in her adulterous youth. Still lots of drugs.
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They are going to get caught real soon.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. She must go on without him. And without sex.
How I Met My Countess, Elizabeth Boyle. He's still an idiot. The child isn't hers either.
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. He's looking at SAT scores now.

What will I read next? I'm trying to get those challenges done! I'm going to concentrate on Cybils books, alternating a YA book with the remainder of the middle grade categories. I have another science book from my TBR shelf waiting. And another EarlyReader arc. And a book my fifth grader recommended.

Challenges:

A-Z: 46/52. Need authors for Q, U, and X and titles for J, and Q. Hey, I already read a Z author that I forgot about! Checked out a Q title for my NOOK. I think I'll concentrate on digital books here.

Cybils: 69/76. Just started Scrawl.

Global Reading Challenge:19/21. Read the South American novel. May be forced to count memoirs as fiction. I need an Australian book and another South American, and I'm using memoirs in North America and Africa. Humph.

Take a Chance: 10-ish/10. I read the picture book for ten, but it feels weak.

20/11: 20/20. Done!

Where Am I Reading?: 36/50. OK, I'm counting One Door Away From Heaven as Idaho, because that's where it ends. I need Alaska and Arkansas. Delaware, Hawaii, and Indiana. Also Maryland, Minnesota, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

More Manga: Twin Spica 2

2011-11-27T22:46:00.000-08:00

I was interested enough in the story started by the Cybil Finalist Twin Spica 1 by Kou Yaginuma to ask for the second book, because the story of kids learning to be astronauts seems like a lot of fun. I'm getting impatient with this series though, because the second books seems to spend even more time with set up and there isn't really much action. We again see the various characters who have made it through the entrance exams, we get reminded of their roles (loyal friend, disdainful aristocrat, snide bystander, etc.), but this is all repetitive.

As an ex-lifeguard, I wasn't all that impressed with the water scenes, either from a safety aspect or the details of the various rescues attempted. That was the main physical action. Then we had a lot of flashbacks, very slowly providing new insight into the crash the spun everything into motion years ago. But I found the pace drained this plot of tension, and I only felt impatience when the teachers tried to use some of the limited information to convince the heroine to quit.

I'll probably try one more, but then forget to summon the others if it doesn't grab my attention. I'm slowly getting better at reading the left-turning manga, but it's still unnatural enough that a book has to work even harder to draw me in.

Sweet Little Lies: Hill Hawk Hattie

2011-11-26T22:28:00.000-08:00

Deception is the theme of my latest Reading My Library find, Clara Gillow Clark's Hill Hawk Hattie. After Hattie's mother dies, she and her father face off in glum depression, until he orders her to pretend to be a boy so she can accompany him on his annual raft trip down the Delaware River. Luckily she recently cut off her braids in a fit of mourning.

Of course, the father still isn't telling her the truth. She alternates between joy in the excitement and skill of rafting and worrying about keeping her gender secret, not finding out until the end that her dad already told their crew mates, who for unknown reasons didn't tell her they knew. I couldn't tell either, actually, but I did notice that everyone but she knew the final secret her dad kept as they complete the trip to the city where her grandparents lived. Meanwhile she kept all her own counsel, telling her hopes and dreams to a diary addressed to her dead mother rather than speaking them to her distant father. This actually helped give the book a sense of historical realism, since the modern habit of sharing all with everyone doesn't seem very deep.

I was disappointed when I figured out they they never got any where near Delaware, since I need that state for my geography challenge. Foiled!

Fun Family Stories: Clementine and the Family Meeting

2011-11-25T22:42:00.000-08:00

Sara Pennypacker puts out the next installment of Clementine's life, and I admit that things are getting a bit repetitive. Clementine is still the bright bundle of energy, but many of her patterns are set -- she's a good older sister, she calls her brother vegetable names (I can't remember his real name any more), her parents are kind, understanding, and strict, and her school is endlessly patient.

In Clementine and the Family Meeting, most of the big problems fall onto Clementine, rather than having her create them, which slows down the urgency a bit. She manages to deal with delusional science partners, missing laboratory rats, and a changing family situation, but I still wanted her to cause the problems that she wrestles with. I'll leave the book out for the boys; it's a nice quick snack of reading that no one could regret.

Thanks To the Library

2011-11-24T23:04:00.000-08:00

Last week was a very short library trip, and actually so was this week although it was extended. My book count is creeping back to highly unsustainable, so I'm trying to limit my picks to the hold shelf, but that shelf is full of the books I have to read Real Soon Now for my challenges. Also, I had stuff coming due at odd times which forced me to go back a few times.

Thanksgiving was a true feast this year, helped by my sister's Amazing Culinary and Organizational Powers. I made the turkey, although she comes over to make sure I don't mess it up, and I also contributed some onions which were nice. Our friend Jen came bearing potatoes, and with the broccoli casserole, the corn bread stuffing, the home-made gravy, the canned cranberry sauce (yum) and the pumpkin soup I just realized I never went back for pie. Clearly Black Friday will be a day of left-overs.

I got three books last week, and then went back for my Reading My Library selections, and then got two more books this week, plus some CDs:

How to Save a Life, Sara Zarr (A-Z challenge!)
New York to Dallas, J.D. Robb
Molly Bannaky, Alice McGill (mentioned on Book-a-Day-Almanac)
Which Big Giver Stole the Chopped Liver, Sharon Kahn (TBR list)
This Is a Book, Dmitri Martin

I made a special trip for my next batch of Reading-My-Library titles, because I forgot to get them at the regular time. I'm in the D's!

Dark Whispers, Bruce Corville
Border Crossing, Maria Colleen Cruz
Liberty Porter: First Daughter, Julia Devillers
Bindi Babes, Narinder Dhami
The London Eye Mystery, Siobhan Dowd

Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Clare from The Captive Reader take turns with the linky for Library Loot. That's where all us library lovers go to compare our hauls for the week.

Hard Place: Split

2011-11-24T20:21:00.000-08:00

I'm moving faster through the 2010 YA Novels Cybils finalists, since that's the largest category left for me this year. Luckily King County has Swati Avasthi's Split for my NOOK, so I could read it conveniently. I also tend to read my NOOK in short bursts, which helped me with this novel, which had me in turns dreading to see what main character Jace would do next, or what would happen next.

The plot follows Jace's escape from his abusing father; after Jace finally hits back and gets thrown out, his mother gives him the address of his older brother who had disappeared from Jace's life five years ago. Then things start piling up -- Jace seems determined to sabotage himself. I started to wonder if Avasthi was deliberately making him hard to like -- he's a thief, he's rude to his peers, he resents his brother's girlfriend, he lies to his brother. Pieces of his past float up, memories of the abuse he watched his family suffer, and then what happened when his father included him in the violence. And the destructive relationship with his girlfriend that ended with him hitting her, the act that really precipitated his flight.

Jace is trying really hard to not be his father, and he's terrified that he's already lost this battle. He tries to keep all girls away from him, fearing that he'll erupt again. And he's terrified about his mother and desperately wants her to escape with him. Avashti depicts the relationship between Jace and his older brother Christian with harsh accuracy; Christian is both the beloved older brother from Jace's childhood and a young man still trying to deal with his own abused childhood that he's not sure he escaped. Jace's arrival also brings forward the fears for his mother that Christian has buried deep, mainly because there is nothing he can do. The story of Jace's step forward is a very powerful one, although I don't think I'll order the print version to give my thirteen year old.

The climax of the novel happens around Thanksgiving, so I'm glad I finished this one in time for Turkey Day. And I'm grateful for all the good reading the Cybils have brought me this year.

Unpleasant Heroes: Reckless

2011-11-23T20:04:00.000-08:00

I feel a bit like I'm double-dipping from my library; I have two copies of Cornelia Funke's Reckless checked out, one in hardback and one for my NOOK. But I need the hardback to convince my kids to read the book while I prefer ebooks if I can get them. I'm glad I had both copies of this 2010 Cybils Fantasy and Science Fiction (Middle Grade) finalist out because my seventh grader gobbled it up. Now that I've read it however I'm not as keen to pass it on to the fifth grader. His to-read pile intimidates him if it gets over two inches tall, so I'm very selective about what I place on it.

To be brutal, I found the book unpleasant. The concept is nifty: Jacob finds his father's secret passage to a magical kingdom but never tells his little brother about it. Little brother eventually finds it, gets in danger, and Jacob has to save everyone.

But little brother Will doesn't find the passage until they are adults, and he brings along his girlfriend (fiance?) Clara, and nobody really has any great magnetism. Will poisons himself within minutes of blundering through, and his brother is frantic to pull out a rescue that has never been done before. Clara is clearly in the way and will certainly slow them down, but she insists on accompanying them anyway. Which does indeed mean that they don't save Will in time, due in a large part to Clara refusing to believe that Jacob could possibly know more than her about this world in which he's been working for fifteen years. After all, she loves Will, and she's been in there several hours! Or days, since they don't move too quickly with her assistance.

I need to talk to my son about why he liked it so much, and maybe that will realign some things for me. The only redeeming quality I saw in Jacob was his loyalty to his brother; Will was too ill for most of the book to have much personality, and I spent most of the book rooting for the Goyl, who I think were supposed to be the bad guys. The emotional arc of the brother's relationship doesn't seem as if it would be interesting to kids; I'm not sure my son really noticed how much Will resented his brother's constant disappearances. The book never explained what happened to their father, another emotional loose end. And I was a bit surprised in the many sexual encounters in a book on the middle grade list; I thought this book was YA until I went to grab the link for this review. Huh.

They Liked It!: Old Man's War

2011-11-22T20:15:00.000-08:00

Ever since a devastating misunderstanding around Grendel (note: it's not primarily an AU Beowulf) which nearly led to me getting kicked out of my book club, I've been nervous about recommending books. Never mind that my new club is much more laid back, and that we have a strictly enforced rule about not reading the book if you don't want to, the scars remain. So I was very sensitive to the skeptical looks when I proposed John Scalzi's Old Man's War to them. Most of of the members are not into the space war genre, except for the occasional Bujold.

To my great relief, it was a complete success. Not everyone finished it, since Scalzi's demand is apparently greater than King County can keep up with, but everyone declared they enjoyed it. We met on Veteran's Day, so talking about a book starring soldiers seemed especially apt. It turned out than no one else had read Heinlein's Starship Troopers, so there wasn't a lot of contrasting with other SF soldier-building stories, but we looked at the differences between old age and youth, at what grief meant at different stages, and what the effects of war would be on anyone from an adolescent through a retiree. The delights of snarky comments also got mentioned. And I had some tasty food.

As an added bonus, my oldest son pulled off a successful babysit of my youngest nephew. The adults concerned were all a bit nervous about the arrangement since when the two of them are near other responsible parties, things tend to degenerate into screaming and wailing, but apparently when it's just the two of them and a remote control to the television, things go a lot smoother. Although they deny it vehemently they share many video preferences.

Rotten History: "I Am a Man"

2011-11-21T20:22:00.000-08:00

I picked Joe Starita's "I Am a Man" from the library catalog because I need a Nebraska book for my Where Are Your Reading challenge, and the last few ones I tried didn't actually have anything to do with Nebraska. Starita's history of the Ponca tribe's struggles with the American government's constant treaty revisions and lies seemed safely Nebraskan, although I admit to having qualms when their reservation was accidentally given to the Lakota (yes, that's right) so the administration decided that the best thing to do was force all the Ponca to move to Oklahoma, which was clearly better than admitting to making a mistake.

By that time I was less interested in qualifying for my challenge and genuinely caught up in the disaster wrecking upon Chief Standing Bear's people. Corruption, incompetence, and prejudice resulted in several horrific journeys causing the death of hundreds of people, especially young children. The last third of the book showed the legal struggles of Standing Bear; when he snuck back with the remnant of his family and was arrested for basically not dying, he found some legal help which established the right of Native Americans to sue in federal court (something the feds contested). One part of the legal decision involved legally declaring Indians to be human, which is frightening in that this was actually a contested point. The court battle ended with partial restoration of their home lands, although it let me to consider the issue of granting tribal lands to a tribe versus to individuals and maybe I'll read more about this (another Stream idea!). Starita did a good job describing the people and events involved to a popular audience, since I didn't have more than a basic knowledge of the history involved.

Monday Again

2011-11-21T08:25:00.000-08:00

I'm scheduling this post, that's how early I finished it. I like the idea of checking what I'm reading. Sheila at Book Journey hosts this meme. This week I've finished:

Wild Things, Clay Carmichael, a Reading My Library book)
Heat (Buffy/Angel), Nancy Holder
Split, Swati Avasthi (NOOK), a Cybils nominee
Twin Spica Volume 02, Kou Yagimuma
Report Card, Andrew Clements (audio)

I really don't seem to be reading too much this week. On the bright side, I've caught up on a lot of TV lately. And my currently-reading shelf is a measly 10 books wide!

I'm currently reading:

One Door Away From Heaven, Dean Koontz. Still working my way through, hoping that the three, now four main plot threads eventually meet up.
Boiling Point, K.L. Dionne. The volcano has erupted.
Dazzled and Deceived, Peter Forbes. Nifty science book from my TBR list.
Prophecy, T.C. Southwell (NOOK). Free book from Barnes & Noble.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, William Kamkwamba( NOOK). Library book from my TBR list.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm still in her druggie youth days, yawn.
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They are going to get caught soon.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. Poke book. They've just agreed to part..., oh wait maybe not.
How I Met My Countess, Elizabeth Boyle. He's an idiot. Could the child be his?
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. I disagree with most of his conclusions.

What will I read next? I'm trying to get those challenges done! I'm going to concentrate on Cybils books. I have another science book from my TBR shelf waiting. And my latest batch of books for Reading My Library were chosen with location in mind.

Challenges:

A-Z: 46/52. Need authors for Q, U, X, and Z, and titles for J, and Q.

Cybils: 69/76. Just finished Split.

Global Reading Challenge:17/21. Reading a South American. The novel restriction is unexpectedly constricting.

Science Book Challenge: 3.141/3.141... Done! And hey, Switch is sorta science. I should add that.

Take a Chance: 9/10. I have the last book at home. Unread, but at home.

20/11: 20/20. Done!

Where Am I Reading?: 35/50. OK, I read a North Caroline book. Fifteen left to go. I need Alaska and Arkansas. Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho and Indiana. Also Maryland, Minnesota, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

Following the Footsteps: Any Which Wall

2011-11-20T22:53:00.000-08:00

E. Nesbit wrote some great books about groups of children, usually siblings, who find magic in their everyday world (a carpet, a creature in the sand pit) and then have adventures which usual ending untidily. The kids then have to deal with awkward interactions with adults who don't want to hear "magic" as part of any explanation. I love those books.

So did Eager, who added to the tradition by writing his own books about kids, sometimes using cousins to round up the numbers, who also come across magic and have their own adventures, sometimes mentioning how much they learned from reading Nesbit about how to handle these kinds of things (a magic well, or lake, or a partial coin). And now in Any Which Wall Laurel Snyder also embraces this tradition with her group of kids (neighbors, two sets of siblings) who find a magic wall and use their knowledge of magic learned from Eager and Nesbit's books to figure out the system and how to handle the magic-induced fall out.

It's hard for me to judge how kids would appreciate this book, since they would not feel the warm cozy blanket of nostalgia. But they'd probably like it for the same reason that Nesbit and Eager's contemporary children liked their books -- interesting children solving interesting problems on their own, and the problems range from esoteric magic theory through escaping danger to facing unpleasant facts about yourself.

I'll try it on my seventh grader. And my fifth grader, if he catches up on the reading I've already piled around him. They are good test cases, as I don't think they've ever read the Nesbit or Eager books. Humph.

Juicy Pulp: Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom

2011-11-19T21:54:00.000-08:00

If I ever get to go back to homeschooling, I have a new handbook. Among the many delicious asides in the wildly goofy and pulpy Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom by Tim Byrd are many descriptions of the lessons learned by the young explorer siblings Brian and Wren Wilde. Twelve year old Brian gets introduced while translating an ancient Greek text, only to squabble with his younger sister over some vocabulary. They trade insults in four languages from three continents, then thankfully hear the call of another adventure beginning.

Of course they are both martial artists as well as young scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers. They can't help but be modest in the shadow of their superlative father, who is ably assisted by several side kicks. The family chases about a secret South American volcano in battle against the wily and inter-dimensional frogs in an rollicking adventure helped along by cheerful cliffhangers highlighted with bold fonts and text balloons. My seventh grader delighted in the short romp, and my fifth grader wants to try it out as well. As a final spice, I am claiming the book as a South American novel, so it works for a neglected challenge. Another fun selection from my Reading the Library journey.

Sekritz: If You're Reading This, It's Too Late

2011-11-18T22:05:00.000-08:00

There's a special niche in kidlit aimed at quirky, smart kids with a sarcastic sense of humor. The Lemony Snicket books rest here, as do the Benedict Society stories, and I've suspected that Pseudonymous Bosch's books also belong to it, and now that I've read If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, I can confirm it. Alas, I can't interest my kids in this book, since they recoil from starting a series with the second book.

Max and Cass have interesting home lives, although Max's bifurcated home life probably seems amusing rather than horrific to kids. They also confront puzzles and villains with a combination of homegrown skills and native intelligence, which often prove more affective against villains than against their school nemesis. There's a nice interleaf between the annoyances caused by cliques or foolish teachers at school and the frustrations with working for a secret society against diabolical criminals. There were no unexpectedly moving emotional truths, but I don't really need that in a book of this sort.

I'm glad my Reading the Library quest inspired me to finally read one of P.D.'s books, and I'll leave the first one lying around for my younger son when he has a little reading breathing space. Too many choices frighten him.

High Hopes: Witch Eyes

2011-11-18T00:01:00.000-08:00

An author I ~~stalk~~ follow on the internet started hosting a permanent floating YA diversity book club, so I amiably ordered my library to deliver the first book to me, and then managed to read it on time (given my library habits, this is a strong achievement). Scott Tracey's Witch Eyes sounded great -- a boy with magic eyes (I love magic eyes) goes home to face feuding families (I love feuds) while finding his true love (OK, I can handle teen love). And his true love is another boy, which should be fun.

It even has two hot love interests, although our hero Braden quickly focuses on the correct one, the one in the opposing feudal family (the other one is a werewolf type, who I hope does not fall in love with Braden's child in book four). Unfortunately, Braden's first person account kept annoying me too much to really appreciate the book. I find that if a main character is going to constantly make what I find to be really dumb moves, it's better for me to read about it in the third person so I can make excuses for him. When he decided to raise the town founder from the dead so she could answer a few questions, I pretty much gave up on him. OK, his plan did end up getting him his first kisses from his boyfriend, but that was just dumb luck.

The romance was OK; I was judging it against Bella of Twilight fame, so my standards were low, but it was fun watching Braden fumble about with Trey, and it was cute when Trey's sister started frantically matchmaking for them. Braden kept the secret about his family for a fairly long time, and since I had already established that I thought the boy was as dumb as a post it seemed a reasonable move for him. I never did get a real sense of what the witch eyes could do; Braden's powers seemed to ebb and grow depending on what the plot needed rather than on what he expected to do or what he had done in the past.

I'm going to try this book on my middle school son; maybe he can bring me to a better appreciation. Otherwise I probably won't try to hunt down more in the series.

Update: My son gives this book much higher marks, especially in terms of Braden's agency and intelligence. X pointed out triumphantly an earlier trip to the library -- raising a witch from the dead wasn't Braden's FIRST idea, just his second choice. X liked the various mysteries, and how Drew and Trey played into them. He also pointed out that Braden didn't really have a choice of two hotties, since Drew isn't gay. I asked him point blank if the gay protagonist bothered him, and he looked started at the question; he doesn't like it when characters fall in love at all, but the gender of the love interest is irrelevant. And Braden ran about fighting enough demons and bad magic that a few kisses can be overlooked. I am instructed to keep my eye out for future books.

I highly suspect my critical eye towards first person teen narratives reflects my personal fears for my kid as he enters these teen years; it is much more painful for me to see kids making (dumb, i.e. appropriate) mistakes. My boy has boundless self confidence and no worries about his looming adolescence. Also, I have already warned him about trying to raise anyone from the grave unless he's tried at least THREE alternate means of getting the information he needs.

Men, Fish, and Cycles: The Last Man 2

2011-11-16T20:37:00.000-08:00

I confess that I'm only slightly interested in the ongoing saga of Y:The Last Man, a comic I'd seen recommended on tor.com. But since I'm a list-checker, I automatically ordered up Brian Vaughan's second volume Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2: Cycles after I read the first. Now I've got X hooked on them, so I guess I'll keep them coming.

The second book established that Yorick's sister Hero is no hero, but a weak willed murderer. Not all women are bad; a bunch of ex-convicts show true grit. Yorick himself is mostly anti-killing, even when it might be a good idea. He still doesn't see it as his job to repopulate the planet, and since we don't know why all the males died, maybe it wouldn't work anyway. He may get some help in that department, since some guy astronauts are returning from their mission.

The pictures are a bit too gruesome for my taste, especially when the Evil Amazon women (such as Hero) are shooting people in the face and whatnot. Also, Yorick is still a goofball.

Extended Family: Anna Hibiscus

2011-11-15T20:45:00.000-08:00

I am chasing down the finish line of the Cybils challenge, although I don't have much low-hanging fruit left. A quick lap came with Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke, my penultimate read in the Early Chapter Book finalists group. I've had this on hold for about eight months now; it was one of the books I requested my library buy (King County Library is awesome in many ways) and the first one to magically show up in my hold list because I had asked them to buy it. Computers are nifty.

It's a gentle read about Anna Hibiscus and her life among all her brothers and cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents in their sprawling family home in Africa. She goes on a holiday, meets a new aunt, learns a lesson, and gets a wish granted in four chapters liberally illustrated with cosy black and white depictions of the events. A few times the lessons learned grated for me -- her parent's wish for a private vacation is revealed as foolish and nearsighted, and the problems of space available in a small holiday cottage are ignored out right. But I doubt kids will mind; they will have too much fun watching the parents stumble about making mistakes that only more family can fix.

I'll offer it to my kids to see how they like it; it's a fun child-eyes view of life in another country. Unfortunately they are all dragging their feet because of the obvious lack of robots or dinosaurs in the book, but I will keep trying. After all, X will read anything.

Damaged Kids: Zebra and Other Stories

2011-11-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

I use book challenges to prod myself into reading things outside my comfort zone, books I'd never noticed if I wasn't fulfilling some arbitrary goal. Sometimes these are books that's I'd have read eagerly anytime I noticed them, but it took some silly challenge like finding a book that starts with the letter Z to stumble across it. For example, I have no idea that Chaim Potok wrote a book of short stories called Zebra and Other Stories until I was casting about in the library catalog to fill that hole in my A-Z challenge.

Potok delivers the highly articulate children that I know from his novels, but the kids in these stories deal with family problems and solutions. They also are not conspicuously Jewish; some are explicitly Christian. Each story confronts the child with a detailed tough situation, from obvious problems such as an injury through damaging secrets and family conflicts. I recognized themes from his books (loyalty to one's family and parents balanced against personal needs, the pain caused by rigid gender roles, the inherent decency of children), but short stories give a chance for single facets to shine.

Monday Status Check, Maybe on Time

2011-11-14T04:05:00.000-08:00

Well, I just missed last week's Monday check-in, but this week I'm ready! It's a habit I want to get back into, so I can see what I've been reading. This week I've finished:

"I Am a Man": Chief Standing Bear's Journey for Justice, by Joe Starita, my Nebraska book
How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gill, from my TBR list
Old Man's War, John Scalzi, for my book club (reread for me)
How They Croaked: The Awful Ends of the Awfully Famous, Georgia Bragg, a book I got for my kids but looked good enough for me as well
What Jamie Saw, Carolyn Coman, a Reading My Library book (I'm on kidlit C's!)

Wow, the majority of books finished this week were nonfiction. And adult books.

I'm currently reading:

One Door Away From Heaven, Dean Koontz. I think this is the first Koontz I've read; it was a gift from the school bus driver. I'm mid-way through. Again.
Boiling Point, K.L. Dionne. A South American book for my challenge.
Dazzled and Deceived, Peter Forbes. From my TBR list.
Prophecy, T.C. Southwell (NOOK). Free book from Barnes & Noble.
Split, Swati Avasthi (NOOK). Library book on the Cybils list.
Heat, Nancy Holder My finisher award book.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm in her druggie youth days, yawn.
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. They are going to get caught soon.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. Poke book. They've just agreed to part..., maybe I should stop here.
How I Met My Countess, Elizabeth Boyle. She's an idiot. They broke up because they didn't talk.
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. I disagree with most of his conclusions.

What will I read next? I'm trying to get those challenges done! I have almost all of the remaining Cybils books from the library, and I'm trying to combine the alphabet and state books. And work in the Globals. Ack!

A-Z: 45/52. Need authors for Q, U, X, and Z, and titles for J, and Q. Need to write up Z.

Cybils: 68/76. Just finished Zapato Power.

Global Reading Challenge:17/21. Need 1 Africa, 1 Australasia, 2 South America.

Read Around the World: 21/20. Done!

Science Book Challenge: 3.141/3.141... Done! And hey, Switch is sorta science. I should add that.

Stream: 3/3, 1/3, 3/3, 3/3. I have to figure out how to register myself as done.

Take a Chance: 9/10. I have the last book at home. Still.

20/11: 20/20. Done!

What's In a Name?: 6/6. Done!

Where Am I Reading?: 34/50. I read a New Hampshire book and realized I meant to read a Vermont one. Oops. I need Alaska and Arkansas. Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho and Indiana. Also Maryland, Minnesota, North and South Carolina, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and West Virginia.

Friends Despite Themselves: Ivy and Bean

2011-11-13T20:41:00.000-08:00

When I'm doing my Reading-My-Library shelf crawl and I see a book I've been sort of meaning to read for a while, I tend to grab it. Annie Barrow's Ivy + Bean starts a series of early chapter books that I didn't notice until my sons were out of that genre, so they weren't a huge priority of mine, and I also got them confused with some other series about two girls that I liked but didn't love. But when I saw them on the B shelf they clearly were their own thing and a thing I hadn't read yet. So I grabbed what turned out to be the first one, and found it charming.

Ivy and Bean are two little girls who live near each other on a cul-de-sac. Their parents are accidentally waging a campaign to keep them apart by constantly urging the girls to play together, which makes them instinctively draw away. But when Bean is on the run from some mischief Ivy steps up to save the day, and the girls soon find that their parents were completely wrong and they do belong together. My favorite part of the book is seeing how Ivy organizes her room into different sections that reflect her current interests. Maybe I'll try some of Barrow's adult fiction now that I see how much fun she has in the kidlit arena.

Immortal Beloved: Tuck Everlasting

2011-11-08T09:13:00.000-08:00

Our latest car book was Tuck Everlasting, written by Natalie Babbitt and read by Melissa Hughes. It took a while to find a pattern for listening; X is the main audio book enthusiast but actually spends very little time in the car. Neither N nor A showed much interest, while P remembered his teacher reading this book to his class last year. The final decision had me listening when alone or with just P, since he could dip in and out and use his memory to fill in the blanks.

As with most audio books I pick, I had read this before, but not for decades. I liked Hughes's narration; she gave each character a distinctive voice without sounding fake or pretentious. It was fun for me to see what was familiar and what had completely vanished from my memory. The toad and Winnie's choice had stayed vividly in my mind, but I had forgotten her crush on Jesse. I remembered there had a been a villain planning to commercialize the spring, but his actual plot and his death had fallen through the cracks, so the story had suspense for me this time around. At three disks long, it's pretty much the perfect length for a week or so of trundling around schools, and Winnie's grasp of the issues and problems stayed both realistically young and respectfully profound. I did quibble at some of the legal issues, but in general really enjoyed hearing this story again.

Late Monday Status Check

2011-11-08T00:02:00.000-08:00

I'm trying to slide into bookjourney's Monday check in, where everyone reports on what they've read and what they want to read and what they are currently reading. It's a habit I want to get back into, so I can see what I've been reading. This week I've finished:

If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, Pseudonymous Bosch
Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom, Tim Byrd
Clementine and the Family Meeting, Sara Pennypacker
Hill Hawk Hattie, Clara Gillow Clark
Witch Eyes, Scott Tracey
Reckless, Cornelia Funke (NOOK)

Three of them are for my Reading My Library project, one is because I love the author (Pennypacker), one is for an online book club, and one is a Cybils books. The pattern seems to be that I read a lot of children's books.

I'm currently reading:

One Door Away From Heaven, Dean Koontz. I think this is the first Koontz I've read; it was a gift from the school bus driver. I'm mid-way through.
I Am a Man, Joe Starita. Reading because it's about history in Nebraska.
How Starbucks Saved My Life, Michael Gill. From my TBR list
Prophecy, T.C. Southwell (NOOK). Free book from Barnes & Noble.
Heat, Nancy Holder My finisher award book.
Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott. I'm just poking at this book from my nonfiction shelves.
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. Again slowly moving through.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverly. Poke book. They've just agreed to part...
How I Met My Countess, Elizabeth Boyle. She's an idiot. They broke up because they didn't talk.
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. I disagree with most of his conclusions.

A-Z: 45/52. Need authors for Q, U, X, and Z, and titles for J, Q, and Z.

Cybils: 67/76. Just finished Reckless.

Global Reading Challenge:17/21. I'm counting kids books.

Read Around the World: 21/20. Done!

Science Book Challenge: 3.141/3.141... Done! And hey, Switch is sorta science. I should add that.

Stream: 3/3, 1/3, 3/3, 3/3. I have to figure out how to register myself as done.

Take a Chance: 9/10. I have the last book at home.

20/11: 20/20. Done!

What's In a Name?: 6/6. Done!

Where Am I Reading?: 33/50. I'm reading a Nebraska book, and possibly an Idaho one. We'll see if the characters travel in the Koontz book.

Sister Power: Children of the Waters

2011-11-07T23:16:00.000-08:00

Carleen Brice's Children of the Waters follows two women with completely different lives who discover that they are sisters, and from that discover what family really means and how they can define it. Trish is struggling to define herself as a divorced mom, worried about her son's edging into manhood and especially confronting how his mixed-race status defines him in ways she doesn't want to consider. Worrying about the way her family seems to be fraying, she delves back into some family history to discover that her younger sister didn't die; her grandparents put her up for adoption.

Billie grew up with educated and rich parents who take pride in their African American heritage. She has immersed herself in spirituality and healing to control her lupus, and her unexpected pregnancy may push this technique to the limit. Her relationship is tottering under the stress of this pregnancy, and then her connection to her parents is also strained by the sudden revelation that she was adopted, and that her sister is white. Billie and Trish slowly become friends despite their differences, although each step closer meets a hesitant step back. The intersection of race and family issues develops organically, with the gentle and rhythmic prose keeping each woman distinctly understood. I'll look for more books by Brice.

And of course, it takes place in Colorado, which makes me even happier.

Kids Dying Young: Yummy

2011-11-06T23:24:00.000-08:00

The latest 2010 Cybils Graphic Novel (Young Adult) finalist book definitely represented a change of pace. Yummy: Last Days of a Southside Shorty by G. Neri delivers a tough history lesson about the decaying culture of the Chicago southside, where children turned to gangs for support, and the gangs exploited the kids by using them in violent crimes for which juveniles received almost no punishment. Neri invents a child to view the events, someone who played with Yummy when they were small and who never knows whether Yummy has turned up to bully him for lunch money or to show off a frog found in the sewers.

When Yummy tries to impress his gang leaders by shooting a rival, his world collapses. He kills a neighborhood girl instead, and the authorities who ignored him while he stole cars and mugged his peers instigate a man-hunt (a boy-hunt) that leaves Yummy terrified and lost. The nation solemnly discusses Lost Youth and gang violence while Yummy huddles in derelict houses and under dripping bridges, until the gang decides he's more trouble than he's worth. My seventh grader had eagerly grabbed this book (he loves graphic novels) and then indignantly told me that it wasn't fit for kids. He views the death of children as too harsh for his eyes, and he was shocked to learn that it basically told a true story. Neri tells a powerful story, but one that is probably more appropriate for high school than junior high. Sad that the boy in the story might still be in elementary.

Library Loot!

2011-11-06T12:09:00.000-08:00

I've been forgetting to note my library loot, although I haven't been forgetting to go to the library. I've even snuck in a few extra trips when my car accidentally swerved into the parking lot, or when we only averted book-store induced bankruptcy by driving directly to the library to get the new releases that snuck up on us.

November is a very slack month for schooling, so I hope to get a lot of extra time in for reading. My kids just got a new baby sister via their dad, so it is possible they will spend a little extra time here to allow the adults over there to sleep more.

I'm getting serious about my incomplete challenges, so most of my reading is centered there. Not that I'm stopping my Reading My Library adventure, or the nibbling at my TBR list that I keep on GOODREADS. But I keep plugging along:

Rosa's Bus, Jo Kittinger. Random Walk book for Take a Chance.
Zapato Power: Freddie Ramos Takes Off. Jacquiline Jules. A Cybils book.
An Unspeakable Crime, Elaine Marie Alphin. Another Cybils book.
Some Girls Are, Courtney Summers. Cybils book.
Stolen, Lucy Christopher. Still another Cybils book.
The Wager, Donna Jo Napoli. Yet another Cybils book.
The Shadows, Jacqueline West. Cybils book!
Ice Wager, Robin White. I got another book for the Take a Chance because I thought a picture book felt a bit cheap.
Eutopia, David Nickle. Author's name: N. Setting: Idaho. Two-fer!
Tempering of Men, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear. If two brilliant authors collaborate on a book, and then it shows up on the library new books shelf while I'm waffling between buying it in hardback or for my NOOK, then I grab it.
The Blessing of a B-, Wendy Mogel. Parenting book that probably agrees with my general philosophy, so it will be pleasing to read. And maybe have some good advice.
The Male Brain, Louanne Brizendine. No idea how I got this, but it looks OK.
The Romeo and Juliet Code, Phoebe Stone. I got this to read at the school showing of Gnomeo but I ended up working concessions and didn't have to watch anyway. I bet that just like in the movie not everyone dies at the end.
Clementine and the Family Meeting, Sara Pennypacker. And I read it already, so it's filling up my library shelf.

Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Clare from The Captive Reader take turns with the linky for Library Loot. That's where all us library lovers go to compare our hauls for the week.

Reasons To Be Self-Centered: Milo, Sticky-Notes, and Brain Freeze

2011-11-05T23:31:00.000-07:00

As I started Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze, my penultimate read in the Cybils 2010 Middle Grade Novel finalist section, I thought I recognized the genre Alan Silberberg was writing in: annoying middle grade boys who draw cartoons. The Wimpy Kid types, ranging from the selfish Roddy and the slightly nicer Nate the Great. My kids love these books, but I find them a bit dull.

But Silberberg surprised me with a sharp turn towards the Newbery type of things -- Milo's mom is dead, and a lot of his self-centered behavior directly stems from his attempts to deal with this loss. His family, all equally shell-shocked, provide little help. Dad tries hard, but is clearly overwhelmed. His sister never emerges as a character. Milo is all alone with his grief.

The mourning seems very realistic, and Milo's general boyishness reinforces and parallels the parts about his grief. His is lucky in his friends; his best friend, the amazingly kind neighbors, even the final connection with the girl of his dreams. I'm still unsettled by the tone shift in the middle, where we suddenly learn where Milo's mom has been -- not divorced but dead. I gave it to my son to read, and he devoured it eagerly because of the illustrations, and then knocked straight into the same issue ("Mama, is Milo's mom DEAD?"). And we both cringed during some of Milo's more spectacular social failures; the seventh grader actually skipped the pages around Valentines Day because they were too painful to read. I admitted to zipping through them with my eyes half-shut. My fifth grader also likes it although he's less influenced by the emotional storms. It's truly an unexpectedly powerful addition to the reluctant-reader shelf.

PS: Congratulations to my sons for getting a new baby sister!

Robot Love: Celia's Robot

2011-11-04T22:40:00.000-07:00

I've read a lot of middle grade fantasy, especially on my walk through the shelves, but not as much science fiction. That made Margaret Chang's Celia's Robot especially pleasant. Celia is a disorganized fifth grader whose busy parents don't have time to walk her through her chores. Her computer scientist dad does have time to build her a robot for her birthday, a mobile, voice-enabled, motion-sensing interactive machine that keeps her on track and helps her clean her room, do her homework, practice her piano, and feel safe at home until her parents arrive.

The book treats the robot as of equal importance to her school, where she juggles best friends and tries to ignore the boy who used to be her friend but now just likes to tease her. She worries about her parents when they argue. She feels awkward sometimes because she's the only Asian child in her Connecticut classroom. And she ventures out into a snowstorm to rescue her dad's invention when his evil business rival tries to steal it.

I'll leave this for my seventh grader to try; it's a gentle book of a kid with a nifty treasure; I liked the way Celia's biracial heritage matters but isn't an "issue" and the way that her friendship with the neighbor boy gets messed up by school but then gets resolved without romance. I'd also give it to my fifth grader, but he's far too slow a reader and I've already given him three books to read this month. I'm glad I found another good read as I journey around the shelves of my library. I'm about to round the first corner of Children's Fiction. Well, if by "about" you mean "in two weeks."

Literary Detectives: Talking About Detective Fiction

2011-11-03T23:15:00.000-07:00

Long, long ago, in the century prior to this one, I read a book about detective fiction from my boyfriend's father's shelves (he had a grand and delightful library, one that almost made visiting the boy's 'rents worthwhile. Almost). I can't remember the title, but it was a collection of essays about various detective stories. The authors of both the essays and stories reviewed were English, and the writing was brilliant -- taut, precise, with an economical use of five-dollar-words that punched straight to the heart of the topic. It was delicious and it reminded me that college essays were not the pinnacle of literary criticism, that thinking about and enjoying books was a true and worthy passion.

While P.D. James's short book Talking About Detective Fiction does not quite rise to the heights of that long-ago memory, it has the same feeling. A smart, invested person looks critically at her field, discussing English and American detective fiction and looking at the big names involved and the processes used. It reminded me why I enjoy so many mysteries, from the puzzles of Sherlock Holmes, Perry Mason and Miss Marple to the more psychological twists of P.D. James's work herself. Reading about reading is true bibliophile's joy.

Depressing Choices: The Last Town on Earth

2011-11-02T22:58:00.000-07:00

Thomas Mullen's The Last Town on Earth: A Novel is a book about people consistently making poor choices, through good intentions, through greed or anger, through grief or frustration or weakness or because of needing to justify earlier poor choices. No one has a chance; some of the best endings come to the people dying of the flu.

The Last Town on Earth is a place founded on idealism; a well-off man hopes to build a lumber mill in cooperation with his employees rather than through exploitation and union-busting. The town bands together in their optimism, reinforced by the suspicion that other communities have towards their socialist tendencies in the militant days of World War One. When the flu spreads across America, the town leaders decide to isolate themselves in hopes of avoiding the disease. Things do not go well.

Philip, the young adopted son of the mill owner, moves from a slightly insecure youth to an embattled young man who can longer trust his father or his best friend. He leaves the book attempting to cling to some strands of optimism -- he did grow in strength through the horrible events of the book, but it's pretty clear that the next few months will break him and destroy that hope. Graham, his friend and mentor, also faces a grim future, since even if he manages to avoid prison (very doubtful) he has lost his job, his home, his wife's trust, and his self-respect. The town is probably doomed, and the few characters who still show hope seem more misguided than reassuring.

Lazy Reading: Born To Run

2011-11-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

As a kid I enjoyed lounging on the couch and watching aerobics shows. There is nothing quite as relaxing as sitting in air conditioned splendor watching other people sweat uselessly. Even watching sports isn't as perfect; after all, it is possible that athletes are having fun. The literary equivalent is reading books about ultramarathoners, such as Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, which I read on my NOOK so I wouldn't have to exert myself by holding an weighty tome.

The interesting parts of the story followed several of the elite athletes who do ultramarathons, where the first 26 miles are just the warm-up. The Tamahumara Indians are the holy grail of this sport; they are a tribe in Mexico who run for days on end as a matter of course. They rarely come out into the world after a few distasteful episodes, so for a one day race (helped along by the author of this book) many of the top runners came to them. The book weaves about, talking about the Tamahumara, about the people who stumble into running, about how the author's injuries during his own running training and how that sparked his interest in people who broke all the rules and yet stayed healthy, and how various trainers and experts approach gear and style to help athletes protect their legs while running. One theory is that most of the advanced technology in running shoes has never been tested; another is that running barefoot helps prevent injury because things hurt faster, making you stop. Except it doesn't seem that any of the ultramarathoners described in this book stop just because things hurt.

I'm not sure about a lot of the science I read, but it did make running sound like a possibly enjoyable activity. Maybe I'll try it again. In a desert. Wearing tire-treads for shoes. Or maybe I'll just read about it.

Status Check!

2011-10-31T23:42:00.000-07:00

It's been over a month since I did a Monday status check about what I'm reading, have read, and what to read, and I want to clear the decks. So, here is what I've read in October, and most of September:

Zebra and Other Stories, by Chaim Potok
Pirate King (Mary Russell book) by Laurie King (NOOK)
Once a Princess, by Sherwood Smith (NOOK)
Talking About Detective Fiction, by P.D. James
Anna Hibiscus, Atinuke (early chapter book)
The Rogue's Return, by Jo Beverley
Yummy: The Last Days of a Southside Shorty, by G. Neri (graphic novel)
Milo: Sticky Notes and Brain Freeze, by Alan Silberberg
Celia's Robot, by Margaret Chang
Any Which Wall, by Laurel Snyder
Ship Breaker, by Paolo Bacigalupi
Reluctant Disciplinarian, Gary Rubinstein,
The Last Town on Earth, Thomas Mullen (NOOK)
Grave Dance, Kalayna Price
Night World No. 2 (Dark Angel, The Chosen, Soulmate), L.J. Smith
Under a Red Sky: Memoir of a Childhood in Communist Romania, Haya Leah Molnar
Y: The Last Man, Vol 2: Cycles, by Brian K. Vaughan
Children of the Waters, Carleen Brice
Room, by Emma Donoghue
Potato Chip Puzzles, by Eric Berlin
The Dark Pond, Joseph Bruchac
7th Sigma, Steven Gould (November book club book, so I have an excuse for not reviewing)
Keeper, Kathi Appelt
Curfewed Night, Basharat Peer
Princess Posey and the First Grade Parade, Stephanie Greene (easy chapter book)(NOOK)
The Snow Goose, Paul Gallico (short story)
Ivy & Bean, Anne Barrows
Born to Run, Christopher McDougall (NOOK)
Heartless, Gail Carriger
Across the Great Barrier, Patricia C. Wrede
Dakota Ambush, William W. Johnstone
Ninth Ward, Jewell Parker Rhodes
Wench, Dolen Perkins-Valdez
Buffy, Ballads, and Bad Guys Who Sing, edited by Kendra Preston Leonard
Eye of the Wolf, Daniel Pennac
I Now Pronounce You Someone Else, by Erin McCahan
Duel, by David Grossman
Toby Alone, by Timothee de Fombelle
Nowhere to Run (Joe Pickett book), C.J. Box
The Last Houseparty, by Peter Dickinson
Twin Spica, by Kou Yaginuma (graphic novel, a manga)

There's a clear pattern -- I am not an intellectual. What am I reading right now? Not that much:

One Door Away From Heaven, by Dean Koontz, a present from the school bus driver
Witch Eyes, Scott Tracey, for an online book club
Doc Wilde and the Frogs of Doom, Tim Byrd, for Reading My Library
If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, Pseudonymous Bosch, another Reading My Library pick
Reckless, Cornelia Funke, library book on my NOOK, also a Cybils nominee
Heat, Nancy Holder. A fiction Buffy book.
Flux, Kim Fielding. Another ebook.
Slave Empire: Prophecy, T.C. Southwell. More B&N freebies for my NOOK.
The Terrorists of Irustan, Louise Marley. Bedside book.
The Secret Duke, Jo Beverley. Another glacial read.
How I Met My Countess, Elizabeth Boyle. I'm trying to avoid reading so I don't learn that the big MISUNDERSTAND was that the man was not aware of how babies are made.
The End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza.

What will I read next? I'm frantically trying to finish off the Cybils challenge, the alphabet challenge, and the 50 States challenge. While plugging along on reading my library and working my way down my TBR list, but occasionally those help out in the challenges. Somehow my library check-outs exploded again, but I hope to someday address that.

A-Z: 44/52. Just need to review my "Z" title. I can't believe I haven't read any "N" authors all year.

Cybils: 66/76. And I'm reading one more right now.

Global Reading Challenge:14/21. Going for kids books here. I'm reading a South America book.

Read Around the World: 21/20. Done!

Science Book Challenge: 3.141/3.141... Done! And hey, Switch is sorta science. I should add that.

Stream: 3/3, 1/3, 3/3, 3/3. I have to figure out how to register myself as done.

Take a Chance: 9/10. Time for a random walk!

20/11: 20/20. Done!

What's In a Name?: 6/6. Done!

Where Am I Reading?: 33/50. Seventeen to go. Any good Virginia stories out there?

Personal Battles: Curfewed Nights

2011-10-31T23:28:00.000-07:00

Basharat Peer's memoir Curfewed Night gives a journalist's account of growing up in Kashmir, a contested territory where bombings and disappearances gradually become so commonplace they almost seem an invisible part of life. Peer describes his childhood, starting from before he really understood any of the politics and just before those politics became deadly; as he moves into adolescence and the conflict becomes violent he encounters military barricades, mandatory identify cards, armed searches, and friends disappearing to join the insurgents. His gradual understanding and growth in both experience and perspective helped me comprehend the situation, since I came to the book with a very limited knowledge of the history of Kashmir and its role in the Indian-Pakistan wars.

The second half of the book follows Peer's active attempt to understand what was happening to his country and to the people in it. After he graduates and works in Delhi as a journalist, he decides to leave his job and write about his homeland. He mentions the uncertainty of going from a salaried position to free lance work, but concentrates more on the issues facing the people he interviews, from parents of people killed (by both insurgents and the Indian army) to current and ex- warriors to people trying to navigate a life in between the restrictions and bombing. He faces his own involvement as well, admitting that he isn't dispassionate and sometimes can't ask the questions his training prompts him towards because of the insensitivity required. His subjects are his peers and friends before they are witnesses, and he tells their stories from the inside.

I felt Peer gave a good introduction to the situation, one that gave me a sense of the many aspects of the situation and showed me hints of where I needed to know more of the history and personalities to really understand why the fighting continues. I think I had picked this book because of my Global Reading Challenge, but actually it doesn't count since it's not a novel. I'm still glad I read it.

Dumb Kids: Keeper

2011-10-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

This gentle, loving book (Keeper, by Kathi Appelt) should go over well with people who love the delicate innocence of childhood and its fragile magic. Also with young children who still believe in fairy tales and Santa Clause. Unfortunately for me, I felt old and jaded and grumpy while
reading it. I couldn't get over how dumb Keeper is as a ten year old -- I know many ten years olds, two intimately, and they are much more aware than Keeper. I needed Keeper to be six to justify her decisions and actions, from laboriously working out how to transport crabs in a bowl to coming up with her plan to solve everything by getting lost at sea.

And I wanted some consequences for the decisions made -- Keeper makes many bad choices, but the end was all unicorns and rainbows. The only negative that didn't get fixed was the flowers blooming in the pots she broke and no one cared. It felt cheap. I mean, I'm not saying the dog should have died, but at least let the poor thing wash ashore to get adopted by another family, one with children that won't accidentally toss it overboard during an foolish attempt to talk to a mermaid. Yes, I get that the boat ride was a metaphor for Keeper learning about her true family, but it was also a kid who doesn't have the sense to come in out of the rain sneaking a boat out into the Gulf of Mexico in the middle of the night, and the actual plot kept me from enjoying the layered meanings.

I did like how the true love of the old man with the ruined flowers turned out to be another old man. Go diversity in children's lit! especially when the text isn't all proud of itself for being so enriching. I'm glad I read this book as I wonder through my library's shelves, but I didn't actually enjoy it. I can see how other people might, and it has nice short chapters for an easy read-aloud.

Reluctant Disciplinarian

2011-10-29T22:32:00.000-07:00

Gary Rubinstein's Reluctant Disciplinarian is a slim book with lots of white space and padding, so it's more of an entertaining pamphlet than a manual or textbook about teaching. It was written by a Teach For America teacher who had a terrible first year, one that still has him apologizing to the students unlucky enough to be in his classroom that year. He clearly had no idea how to keep order in a classroom or how to call for help when he figured this out.

Eventually he managed to learn from his mistakes and become an effective teacher, and he uses this book to humorously show both some of the mistakes he made and what he learned. He also spends a bit of time discussing the nature of advice -- showing how advice he ignored really did have grains of insight and giving some perspectives from other teachers who do things a bit differently to acknowledge that not everything he did works for everyone.

It's not a book to be assigned in a classroom training teachers, but it looks like a good book for new teachers (especially thinly trained ones) looking for encouragement that things do get better, and maybe a bit of advice on how to get there even if they are starting almost from rock bottom.

Thanks to LibraryThing's EarlyReviewers program for sending me a copy of this book.

Bleak Future: Ship Breaker

2011-10-23T22:51:00.000-07:00

Well, things have gotten bad. Due to the evils of big corporations, the world is a dark and dangerous place; the climate changes mean that bigger, stronger hurricanes batter the changed coastline of a ruined America, where only a few slums remain for the barbarous refugees to grunge for a living. In the my latest Cybils 2010 YA Fantasy and Science Fiction finalist, Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker, the protagonist Nailer has it lucky: he hasn't yet grown to big for his child-labor job of sliding through narrow vents in ancient wrecks hunting for wires and other salvageable materials. His luck holds even when an accident almost kills him; he survives but another child in his work group moved too quickly to try to take his place and ends up thrown out to starve. Time for a party!

Yes, this world is too gritty to reward loyalty or tolerate betrayal, and Nailer's abusive and drug-addicted father doesn't take it kindly when the boy chooses his work mates over his family. When Nailer and his friend find a survivor on the newest shipwreck, they have to choose between following a long shot chance at riches or accepting that they too can kill to survive. Paolo Bacigalupi paints a world full of violence and greed, where corporations delight in grinding down the poor while creating half-men genetically forced into blind loyalty to their owner/employers. Nailer himself faces test of loyalty in many different ways -- can he betray his father? Does he trust his work crew? Can he trust Lucky Girl, the rich survivor that so obviously finds him barely human? Overall I found Nailer's world too grim for pleasure; I could guess plot points just by wondering what would put capitalism in the worst light and be most depressing for our hero.

I'd better hurry on my Cybils quest; next years nominations have already finished and the judging teams are preparing the list of the 2011 finalists. I have one more left in this category so I'll order it up from the library today. I'm not sure my seventh grader will get through this book; he tends to read more optimistic fare but I'll definitely leave it lying provocatively around.

Solid Standard: Grave Dance

2011-10-21T11:35:00.000-07:00

Kalayna Price's Grave Dance provides the second installment of the Alex Craft saga. It's an urban fantasy series that is competently written but for me reads as too much paint-by-numbers without anything that really resonates with me. That's probably a personal thing for me; someone who identifies more with Alex probably gets a lot more out of these books than me.

There's the woman with nifty, unorthodox powers who doesn't understand all that she is capable of (Alex). She has stalwart friends that she alternately helps and gets help from; I do like that Alex gets to help her friends instead of only calling on them for their specialized aid. She has a mysterious family background that provides conflict and mystery. At least two men are fixated on her, and she can't quite choose between them. Both have major drawbacks -- one is the sworn servant of an enemy, the other is Death, who is sexy but mostly incorporeal. To solve her problems she needs to learn to use her powers in new and flashy ways, ways that are mostly consistent with the way magic is painted but still surprising. It's all done fairly well, with an interesting world twist (faeries came out a while ago, and one result was new patches of land appearing), but nothing really grabbed me to make me insist on reading farther. I guess the fact that I remember more about the plot than the themes is a sign that I wasn't deeply hooked.

If the library puts the next one out on the grab-me shelves I'll probably pick it up, but I won't actively look for it. But if I were in the mood for a new urban fantasy, I wouldn't mind grabbing one of Price's books.

Seeking Out Misery: Room

2011-10-14T23:42:00.001-07:00

Have you ever felt so happy you could burst? So filled with joy that your life was actually in danger? Worry no more, because any page of Emma Donoghue's Room is guaranteed to bring enough sorrow and gloom that explosions of happiness are right out.

Maybe I'm particularly vulnerable to her story because I like kids; both mine and all the ones I meet in the halls of their school. The five year old Jack has spent his entire life inside the tiny room that his mother's captor built to contain his prize. Although a bright kid, his lack of experience severely skews his expectations and conclusions about the world he finally meets Outside. His mother has built her entire life around keeping him happy, secure, and away from the evil man who imprisons them. They are highly magnified versions of every kid and mom -- the child whose mind often surpasses their knowledge, and the parent who bends over backward to make the world a safe and welcoming one for her family.

Donoghue paces the book carefully, showing us Jack's world and his place in it, then placing it in jeopardy both literally and emotionally, and then breaking him out in several stages. Again these are highly magnified versions of real emotional checkpoints -- five year old Jack has to go out on his own, but instead of heading for kindergarten he has to fake his own death and escape from a sadistic kidnapper. Although there are a few lapses into melodrama, overall the book kept a firm grasp on Jack and his emotions, a slightly looser hold on his mother, and a constant deep sadness for this reader throughout the entire read. So a good book, but not for the sad-hearted.

Sick Days on Library Days

2011-10-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

This Thursday library day looked doomed. Two kids were home sick, one was in disgrace, and I was cranky. But my holds called me, so I tried to sneak in on the way home from school with one kid, which made me so late I almost missed the pickup for another kid. But I got my books and I got some reference material for an overdue school project. And I forced that kid to at least watch me in research action, even if I didn't manage to make him attack the computers (or the reference librarians) himself. (Or write the report, so far.)

On the brighter side, most kids were off school today, so the ten year olds and I made a pilgrimage to the nearest Seattle Public library, since King County had neglected to purchase a book on my TBR list. Slackers.

Due to a mainly musical disaster (last week everyone wanted to pick out several CDs) as well as the research books, my library list has ballooned to 58, although I have not aged accordingly. Oops. And I just realized I forgot to check out the next batch of Reading My Library books, so things will so get even worse. La la la. Oh, this is actually two weeks worth of books; I never got around to writing up last week's picks:

Archangel's Blade, Nalini Singh. Looks like this goes back to a paranormal romance format, with a new couple instead of continuing with the power struggle of the previous Archangel books. Hmm.
Absolutely American: Four Years at West Point. David Lipsky. From my TBR list. I'm currently getting books from about 18 months back, so I can't remember anything about how they landed on that list. I hope I knew what I was doing last year.
The Puzzling World of Winston Breen, Eric Berlin. Because I enjoyed his other book.
Pluto Confidential. Steven Maran. Another TBR list pick.

Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Clare from The Captive Reader take turns with the linky for Library Loot. That's where all us library lovers go to compare our hauls for the week.

Pond Scum: The Dark Pond

2011-10-11T23:57:00.000-07:00

I've done fairly well with the kidlit B section of the library, including the short adventure story The Dark Pond by Joseph Bruchac. Although the protagonist is a high school student at an expensive boarding school, the tone and style place it fairly in the middle grade arena, since Armie carefully explains what is going on with a minimum of angst or sarcasm, two requirements for YA. Being cast as older lets Armie have more freedom, so that the school policy of letting kids take themselves out for long hikes or overnight camping trips seems plausible.

Armie has the added attraction of being an animal magnet; small creatures such as birds gravitate towards him. This and his large build have made him a bit of a social outcast, and his parent's obsession with their careers only feeds his loneliness. The MONSTER IN THE POND preys on this weakness, but our hero, with the help of a friendly scientist, saves the day. I liked Armie's identity as a Shawnee; his Indian heritage is an important part of his life and a source of a lot of his knowledge and competence, but he assumes that the readers don't share this knowledge and doesn't mind bringing us up to speed. It's a fast read that ends with happy endings all around, to a degree that did make my adult cynical lip curl -- right after he discovers that the other students shockingly admire him, his parents show up for a long-delayed reunion. But I bet my kids accept all that as his due.

Do the Adirondack mountains extend into Vermont? The book doesn't specify where the school is located, and I need a Vermont book for my 50 states challenge. Vermont seems like a better tax haven than northern New York...

Book Game: The Potato Chip Puzzles

2011-10-10T23:59:00.000-07:00

As I wonder across the library on my quest to read a book from every shelf, I've found clunkers, gems, and everything in between. Well, actually I'm exaggerating a bit. I'm only on the B's of juvenile fiction, so my quest is barely started, but I've definitely read some books that I never would have found without this nonsensical plan. Sometimes that's a good thing, as in the book The Potato Chip Puzzles by Eric Berlin, which I mainly chose in the hopes that it would help boost my Where Am I Reading Challenge tally. Sadly, the setting is not specific enough to tell the state (I'm betting Connecticut, which I already have), but I had a good time reading about the puzzle-loving Winston and his buddies on their quest to win their school glory and funding though a puzzle based challenge.

There were plenty of puzzles scattered through the book, both for the contest the boys enter and ones they find or make up along the way. Each time the book warns you so you can either solve it yourself or get the answer (I did a mix of both), and I also enjoyed the moral dilemmas along the way -- how much should you help or hinder other teams? What if your team mates draw the lines differently? How much help can you accept? These puzzles don't feel forced by the text but natural problems caused by the story as it unfolds. I like this book enough to request Berlin's other books, and to put it aside for my fifth grader to read as soon as he catches up with his book club assignments.

October Book Club: The Snow Goose

2011-10-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

Family book club faced a crisis last night -- several members had not finished the September book. Through adroit negotiations I negotiated a solution -- P picked the October book (short) by virtue of us having read it together over the past few weeks, X quickly read it, and we headed out for sushi to much rejoicing. Paul Gallico's The Snow Goose, illustrated by Beth Peck, provided a full meals worth of discussion and tangents, so I declare the intervention a complete success.

X officially disliked the book, shocked at the unhappy ending. The protagonist dies at Dunkirk, leaving the young girl bereft, and the goose disappears forever. P also expressed his dislike for the ending. I pushed the issue, asking what would happen next if the guy didn't die, and we got into a discussion of the creepiness factor of old people (really old -- some over 30!) who fall in love with children and then the children grow up to marry them. All three of us find that very disturbing. I mentioned Emily of New Moon's Dean and Bella's daughter Renesme as examples of creepiness in literature, and the boys declared that they currently had no teachers they intended to grow up to marry, which I applauded. So I said that maybe violent death was the best place for this book to go, since a reunion between girl and old guy could only be creepy, but at that point their love was still innocent. X seemed interested by the idea that death could be the happiest ending for a book.

We also talked about Dunkirk and World War II a bit, and the boys even put up with me reciting a few lines of Robert Nathan's Dunkirk and we talked about the battle and about the difference between the snow goose imagery and the idea of the ghosts of English admirals helping the kids bring their boat home safely. We talked a bit about Peck's paintings, which P and I had scrutinized as we read the book; X had assumed that the book was a collaboration, with the story and the illustrations informing each other (the story came first by many decades). And I ate a Hella Hot roll (yum) and we all declared ourselves happy.

Two Hauls in One

2011-10-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

Remember our brave new plan of visiting our favorite bakery on library days? Well, fate mocks us -- they have new closing hours that deny us our treats, unless I somehow start remembering to go on my way to pick up the kids from school. That should take me a few weeks. Oh well, we had fun at the library anyway, especially during the hilarious mix-ups when the boys couldn't tell whose library number was whose.

I have managed for my third week to have my library list equal my age, so again I limited myself to my holds, and then had P pick two CDs to bring me to 43. He scrupulously kept his eyes shut for the selection process. Oh, this is actually two weeks worth of books; I never got around to writing up last week's picks:

Boiling Point, K.L. Dionne. I need more South American Novels.
Reckless, Cornelia Funke. Another Cybils book. I have this out on paper and on my NOOK, I wonder which I'll get to first...
Emmy and the Rats in the Belfry, Lynne Jonell. Third in the series.
The Vampire Defanged, Susannah Clements. More literary vampire writing.
Don't Be Such a Scientist, Randy Olson. More from the TBR list.
Scrawl, Mark Shulman. Another Cybils book.

The music was a Meatloaf CD and something with two CDs that I forget. Last weeks music included the new KidzBop 20 CD as well as some Parental Guidance stuff that I liked but couldn't quite share with the kids. Maybe KidzBop will cover Robyn's "U Should Know Better." Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Clare from The Captive Reader take turns with the linky for Library Loot. That's where all us library lovers go to compare our hauls for the week, and now that I've written mine up I can go see what beauties other readers have brought home.

Future Me: Princess Posey and the First Grade Parade

2011-10-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

When I reserved the next Cybils Early Chapter Book finalist, I noticed that the library had Princess Posey and the First Grade Parade in an epub version, so I grabbed that. Instant delivery! I wasn't sure how it would work; picture books definitely do not read well on my black and white NOOK, and illustrations are often an important part of a chapter book. Luckily most pictures were half page, so that I could see them in full and clearly.

In this case my bias against "girl" books worked against Stephanie Greene's story; in the words of my seventh grade son it was "just too pink. Pinky." I didn't really start to like Posey until she poked the teasing neighbor kid with a stick. The story painted her character fairly clearly, although I thought her connection to her baby brother annoyingly stereotypical ("I was the baby until you got here.") But she didn't do anything to solve her problem, and no one even suggested that maybe showing courage was an option. Although it read easily enough I feel no need to search out the next one, or even to wonder what happens to Posey next. This is probably a flaw in me more than in the book.

Eff is Off: Across the Great Barrier

2011-09-22T23:51:00.000-07:00

Across the Great Barrier (Frontier Magic, Book 2), the second book about Eff, thirteenth child in a very magic-intense family, spends a lot of time roaming about the countryside, which is more pleasant than it sounds. After the first book covered her entire childhood, the next installment slows down to observe Eff's deliberate attempts to define herself. She resists her brother's love of college and instead attaches herself to the professors at the local institute, earning herself a place on several expeditions so that we all get to see the complex magic/natural ecosystem and the new animals Patricia Wrede seeded her alternate North America with -- saber toothed lions and petrified field mice included.

I liked hanging out inside Eff's head -- she's modest but capable, and starting to take a more active role in understanding her magic rather than surprising herself with constant failures and occasional spectacular successes. She continues to love her dangerous brother with an unerring loyalty, but she's emotionally more aware of herself and him as distinct people, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. I'm looking forward to the next installment of the Frontier Magic books.

Wild Weekend: Foursome

2011-09-22T09:05:00.000-07:00

No time for computers this weekend -- it started off with Foolscap, a book-centered SF fan convention that I dragged my kids along to. The neat thing (well, one of them) about my wonderful children is that they are not only eager to go to this convention with me, they are even willing to go to the panels. I enjoy Foolscap for the people; it's a bunch of smart and interesting people who tend to read the same kind of books as me, so discussions of books leave me with with long lists of things I want to read, and discussions of anything tend to be animated and wide-ranging. Everyone tends to punctuate conversations with mentions of books that deal with whatever sort of thing we are referencing, so more book lists!

The kids tolerate or enjoy the discussions, although they loved the Game Show (about books) and other interactive events (chocolate fountain!). P wore the Funny Hat he won at last year's masquade; if anyone saw the Kid With the Beanie, he's mine. X got to be a contestant at the Game Show this year, which would have been the highlight of his weekend if things for him hadn't just kept getting better. Saturday X's cold kept him home so it was just P and me; highlights included discovering that P likes Thai food, stretching our artistic chops to the limits in Iron Crafting, and learning more about how to look at computer art in the docent guide through the art show. Oh, and picking up more books from both the book sale and the book swap, and letting my kid laugh at me at the Real-Life Achievements panel. It was very hard to be a Good Parent and head out at 10 PM with my ten-year-old, just when the YA book discussion started sparking out good stuff.

Sunday Foolscap had to go on without us because we had major family milestones to celebrate. My baby brother is turning 40 just as my oldest turns 13, so clearly the day before Talk Like a Pirate Day called for a Boffer Party. Just to make it super special, we secretly flew in Gramma and two cousins and surprised the birthday guys with the special guests. A great time ensued. Let me know if you want an invitation to our next one.

On Monday and Tuesday I hung out with my mom most of the day, while finishing up the library books that absolutely positively had to go back that day. The five books that I read at some point on this weekend without blogging:

I Now Pronounce You Someone Else, Erin McCahon. Story of a high school senior who almost gets married before college. I found it a bit didactic -- the flags highlighting "this girl isn't really all that mature" and "now she realizes what she will miss" waved a little too brightly, and her come-to-her-senses moment was over-dramatic and selfish. But the characterization was solid, and I really enjoyed the dynamics of her immediate family, even if her too-good-to-be-true godfather was conveniently oblivious whenever the plot demanded it. This Cybils YA Fiction finalist was good enough to be uncomfortable to read -- I can't imagine my kids being ready for marriage in that short a time.
Eye of the Wolf, Daniel Pennac. This French children's book plays with a magical realism feel that somehow left me cold. Maybe I just don't get French sensibilites, but I disliked the attempt at a wolfish point of view and found the child more annoying than precious. Humph.
Buffy, Ballads, and Bad Guys Who Sing: Music in the Worlds of Joss Whedon, ed. by Kendra Preston Leonard. I'm enjoying the return to reading literary analysis, especially since I'm doing it through the nontraditonal method of reading deep Buffy analysis. I now remember what diegetic music is.
Wench: A Novel (P.S.), by Dolen Perkins-Valdez (NOOK). I liked the complexity of the main character, a woman who loves and hates the man who owns her and who fathered her children. This is a heart breaking story of the twisted nature of slavery.

Ninth Ward, Jewell Parker Rhodes. It was hard to judge this book fairly, since it wasn't the book I wanted. The ghost part of the story weakened the more interesting depiction of a young girl facing difficult times bravely, both the dangerous world of New Orleans as the floods of Hurricane Katrina start rising, and the emotion troubles of growing up too quickly when her caretaker falters. I wish I could have offered my sons this Cybils Science Fiction and Fantasy (Middle Grade) finalist so I could get their take on Lanesha's journey, but the library called it home.

Setting the Bar Low: Dakota Ambush

2011-09-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

The last western I read aggressively pulled the average down for literature everywhere. The plot was silly, the characters cardboard stereotypes, the setting monotonous, the theme childish, and the dialogue laughable. So when I finally found and read Dakota Ambush (Matt Jensen: The Last Mountain Man, No. 6), a Matt Jenson book by the deceased William W Johnstone (with the help of J.A. Johnstone), living person, I really wasn't expecting much. I didn't get much, but that was more than I bargained for, and it was clearly a case of a book meeting the goals it set for itself.

Matt Jenson is a Good Guy and a Fast Shot. He travels about defeating bad guys, who are briefly and unpleasantly surprised by the swiftness of Matt's draw and the steadiness of his aim. He meets and helps good but inadequate people, such as the relentlessly crusading newspaperman or the lonely (and widowed) boarding house proprietor, and then he moves on, leaving a trail of dead bad guys and the accompanying bodies of the good guys killed before Matt showed up. In this book, that pile was disconcertingly large, but then postal service was slow in the old days so it took him a while to hear the call for help. I'm not going to seek out more of these books to read, but reading this book rarely made me squirm with disbelief.

Now I just have to figure out which Dakota to claim this for my 50 States challenge.

Responsibility Is Me

2011-09-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

It was a very quiet trip to the library -- one sick kid was excused, and one kid was off on a shopping expedition. But I've now added a stop at the local bakery as part of the library ritual, and now everyone loves books again.

I headed straight for the hold shelves:

Twin Spica Vol 2, Kou Yaginuma. Continuing the story
Anna Hibiscus, Atinuke. Cybils finalist.
Yummy: Last Days of a Southside Shorty, G. Neri. Cybils finalist.
Zebra and Other Stories, Chaim Potak. How nice of an author I like to write a book starting with the letter "Z."
I Am a Man, Joe Starita. I'm hoping this takes place in the midwest.

I then headed to the children's section where I quickly grabbed a book from the next four library shelves in the J Fiction area. I don't close my eyes when I pick, but I don't like to spend too much time deciding either. I did find myself leaning towards non-fantasies in the hope that some books would happen in actual American states:

Ivy + Bean, Annie Barrows. I've always meant to read these.
The Potato Chip Puzzles, Eric Berlin. A nice yellow cover.
If You're Reading This, It's Too Late, Pseudonymous Bosch.
The Dark Pond, Joseph Bruchac. A known author, new book.

Then two kids picked out a CD case each, which I then rejected with scorn since I was at my age limit. I told them they could check out their own music, and they laughed with their own scorn. Apparently I'm the only one who avoids music radio on our car.

That brings me to 43 items out on my card. Guess how old I am! I'm so proud of me. Marg at The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Clare from The Captive Reader (this week's host) take turns with the linky for Library Loot. That's where all us library lovers go to compare our hauls for the week.

Short Stuff: The Duel

2011-09-16T23:12:00.001-07:00

I've been keeping on track with reading a book a day for a while now, but this weekend will stretch me -- I'm spending Friday and Saturday at Foolscap talking about books instead of reading them, and then Sunday is the big Boffer Party to celebrate X's entry to teenagerdom, Kevin's entry to old age, and Pirates! So I'm cheating by reading very short books, in particular short books that won prizes for best kidlit translated into English.

Today's book was Duel, by David Grossman, winner of the 2000 Marsh Award, translated from Hebrew by Betsy Rosenberg. It's a standard fifth grade type book, with a kid dealing with a tough situation and succeeding. I ate these books up with a spoon in my day, and would have devoured this one with extra pleasure for its setting in Jerusalem and interesting bits about histories I'm still unfamiliar with. It's a kid watching two elderly men fight -- one literally challenges the other to a duel with pistols at noon, and the boy finds a way to stop the fight, and reading it gives hints about life in Israel in the 60's (when the book is set) as well as thirty years earlier -- I hadn't known that women seen fraternizing with the British would have their heads shaved. I'd leave the books out for my kids to read except that it's due already.

Math Geek: Toby Alone

2011-09-15T23:25:00.000-07:00

Timothee de Fombelle's Toby Alone is an ambitious kidlit book that tackles tough issues such as child abuse, environmental abuse, bullying, responsible scientific discoveries, xenophobia, young love, betrayal, and death, but my immediate response is that the math doesn't add up. This is because I am a shallow math geek. See, Toby is repeatedly stated to be less than two millimeters tall, but then the size of the leaves and bugs around him don't make sense, and the distances between characters also don't work. The author has a disconcerting habit of giving these numbers precisely (he was only two millimeters away or something) but if the people are less than two millimeters tall, someone standing that far away isn't exactly in someone's personal space.

I also found Toby hard to like. Yes, he was smart and athletic and cunning and limber, but all these super powers just made him dull. Good people loved him, bad people hated him, weak people betrayed him but then felt bad about it. Whatevers. No one seemed worried at how unforgiving or arrogant he was. When the final pages of the book frantically set things up for a sequel, I didn't have the heart to follow him around anymore. Maybe I just don't have a French sensibility.