Sunday Summary, On Tuesday

What did I read this week? Well, the question really is what did I read on Monday, when I had to grab the easily finished books on my bedside table and make sure I finished the clear-your-shelves challenge. Then I went back to my old ways of reading little bits of many different books, until my table again towers higher than my sleigh bed, which is saying a lot.

I plowed through a classic western, a regency romance, a kidlit retelling of Snow White, and the last bits of an interesting memoir of the space industry, and then only finished a luminous SF book in the rest of the week.

I challenged my kids to help make a Christmas wreath around the room. Every time we finish a book, we add a link. At first we alternated colors for me and them, but that got stressful because, as you know, if you put two of the same colors next to each other on a paper chain, the world will end. So know we have a lot of different colors in the fruit basket, and you just add as many as you need each morning. Much more sane.

• The Necessary Beggar
• Flint
• Lord Caldwell and the Cat
• Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science
• Fairest

What am I still reading? Ignoring the books lost in the limbo between Real Sunday and Tuesday-Sunday, I have bookmarks in these library books:

• A Weed By Any Other Name. Has inspired me to cancel my lawn service.
• Marcelo In the Real World. I snuck ahead to read the ending, which has slowed my urgency.
• The Prisoner Within. Nasty torture scene is not making me rush back to this one.

Books I own with bookmarks that may move this week are:

• American Gods, Neil Gaiman. Maybe I should read Coraline first. It's shorter.
• Heart of Gold, Sharon Shinn. A book about a race war between the blues and golds.
• Clutters Last Stand, Don Aslett. Reading about cleaning is more relaxing than doing it.
• Whiskey and Water, Elizabeth Bear. I've bought the next two books, but not finished this one.
• Stolen, Kelley Armstrong. Werewolves, witches and vampires, oh my.
• Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner. A sharply faceted gem of a book.
• Powers, Ursula Le Guin. I'm past the part where the sister dies, so I can read again.
• Broom of the System, David Foster Wallace. First hints of great-grandma in many pages!
• End of Racism, Dinesh D'Souza. Rather dry.
• The Glass Harmonica, Louise Marley. I wish I knew how much of the music stuff was made up. I've met this author, by the way.
• Downbelow Station, C.J. Cherryh. A reread. I've met her too.

The Necessary Beggar Proves Your Happiness

I read a lot of science fiction, and I also read from the regular fiction shelves, and usually you can tell within a few pages where you are. A lot has to do with the reader's expectations, and how much explanation is needed before introducing new things. But other times the only difference is who is writing the story; Margaret Atwood would be shocked to find her blatantly SF books shelved over there behind Asimov. The Necessary Beggar by Susan Palwick is labeled SF on the spine because Palwick writes for TOR, and therefore is a SF writer. The book has a ghost, so I guess that is accurate.

It's a story about family, forgiveness, and trust. The family is exiled to Earth because of a crime; because family is sacred, exiling a criminal means sending the entire family, parents, siblings, nieces and nephews into the unknown. They land in America, refugees beyond any hope of returning home, and more prosaically, without any hope of getting the proper documents to justify their existence. How they adapt, from the grandfather who loves his family both in success and in utter failure, to the seven year old who pledges herself to succeed as an American to help bring her family into balance, to the wretched Darotti, whose crime they were exiled for and whose suicide solves nothing and leaves him as a saddened ghost watching the family struggle. For a while I slowed down while reading because I couldn't see how to reconcile the different dilemmas, but in the end Palwick provides hope for almost everyone. A

Storm Glass: Defining Young Adult Books

Maria Snyder was the author of our recent book club book (Poison Study). Her fourth book in that series, Storm Glass, begins a new direction by following a different protagonist. Opal can do magic with glass, but isn't sure how much use she or her magic really is. Although she has adventures (the usual -- kidnapping, battling evil magicians, foiling jewel forgers, etc.), the story arc really concentrates on her growing self-acceptance and self-confidence, complicated by the trauma of her experiences in the earlier books.

Young Adult is a relatively new genre, and definitions of it vary depending on which book store or library is shelving the books. Lately it seems to mean "Older Children" or "Late Teen," with books aimed at about the high school level, sometimes even junior high. But to me, the genre means books where the characters are learning to be adults, and that is where this book fits. Opal is young, maybe twenty or so, and she is deciding how she wants to live. She's at a magic school, which gives her some of the leeway college gives modern kids -- out of the family shell, but not really independent yet. She wonders what kind of relationship she wants, what kind of career to aspire to, what kind of trust to have for herself.

And of course, she gets to do it with magic, which makes things even more fun. But her approach is an adult one, even if a naive and new adult. Not great literature maybe, but a good solid read. B

PS. My bookmark for this book was my movie stub from New Moon, the latest Twilight book-to-movie. There's an example of Young Adult meaning "Older Child" -- did anyone get the sense that Bella was making adult choices? Because I sure didn't, even in the last book.

Library Library!

Thursday morning I had 66 items out (including anything on the kids' cards). My library bag was bulging with things to return, since I didn't go the the library AT all last week. (Thanksgiving). Because my library habit is completely under control, and there is no intervention needed, thanks anyway family, I did not feel the need to go on extra days. I'm fine!

My kids just got Scholastic book orders in, so they didn't feel the need to go to the library. We arranged for me to go before I picked them up from school. I was just dropping things off, really, maybe picking up any holds that had come in. So I hauled in my bulging back of returns, and left with 68 items out. Which wouldn't be that bad, except I turned in a bunch of CDs and DVDs, and came out with almost all books. For me. They just attacked me, begging to go home. One book hadn't been checked out in almost three years! I couldn't just leave it.

The hold shelf gave me:

• Transformers: More than meets the Eye. A highly prized DVD, which the kids watched avidly in the car on our trip to the city Friday night. No sound, but apparently Transformers are made of so much AWESOME that speakers are superfluous.
• Ludell, by Brenda Wilkinson. For the Shelf challenge. This is my first ILL (inter-library loan) book ever. A whole new vista has opened to me...
• Why Gender Matters, Leonard Sax. Recently recommended from two different directions; I took that as a Sign.
• Unwind, Neal Shusterman. I really thought this was coming in next week. It's a young adult that was the only book I hadn't read on a list of recommended books, and I had liked all the other books. I just can't remember where I saw the list.
• An Arsonists Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, by Brock Clarke. I saw a review of this, and the title alone sold me.
• Picture This, by Norah McClintock. The author of Dooley Takes the Fall also wrote some other books, so I'm investigating her backlist.
• Sea Glass, Maria Snyder. I wasn't expecting this sequel to Storm Glass until next week.
• The Knife of Never Letting Go, by Patrick Ness. This YA book has been showing up on award lists for ages, so I finally requested it.
• Good Poems, which I already have out but the other library got it in. They thought they had lost it, so I got it from library #2, but then they found it. It really shouldn't count; I only checked it out because they were so excited at finding it I didn't have the heart to say I didn't want it anymore. Not My Fault!

A few other books caught my eye, especially since I found myself with a handful of lists. I love lists. I had a list for each kid; if I like the book I'll recommend it to the appropriate child. Maybe. Or maybe I'll keep all the books for MYSELF. I deserve them. I'm very special.

• Bird, by Zetta Elliott. On the new shelf, chirping for me to take it home.
• When the Tide Rises, by David Drake. The book before the one I read last week; I skipped a few in this series. Can't have that, can we?
• Vanished, by Kat Richardson. The next book in her series.
• Huntress. Some short stories, including one by Marjorie Liu, who invented extreme plotting. She's tons of fun. The library had a group of books whose covers featured people's backs; it took me a while to figure out the unifying theme. I had to reward such ingenuity by choosing one.
• Caught By the Sea. Another memoir by Gary Paulson.
• Mr. Williams. Picture book for our bedtime.
• Ugly Fish. Another picture book.
• Big Fat Hen. (picture book.) From the youngest list, the pictures are delightful.
• Upstairs Mouse, Downstairs Mouse. (Picture book). Another list book.
• Only Opal: the Diary of a Young Girl. From the third grade list. This book was orphaned on the wrong shelf, and hadn't been checked out for years and years. I SAVED it. I'm a hero.
• Colibri. The fifth grade book.

I now have 68 things out, counting items on the kids' cards. I count those, since I'm the one who pays for things that get lost. On book is missing, but it's mine, dang nab it. I'd better look under my bed. Or in my kitchen.

I went back to the library today, for their family game day. P and I played some Yatzee, danced a few rounds of DDR, and taught Apples to Apples to another family. Then P used all of his burl to get me out without checking out anything new. I'm going over to Reading Adventures now to sign up for the weekly Library Loot. Compared to many of the participants, I barely check out anything at all.

Fortune and Fame, Redox

Rereading books you've read a long time ago is a pleasant time of nostalgia, but rereading books you've recently finished is self-indulgent. I am nothing if not self-indulgent, of course, so this is a frequent habit for me. There are the books that you reread as soon as you finish, because you want to see how it looks now that you understand the characters and the plot. There are other books that are instant comfort reads, so in a bad time you might go back to them several times.

Fortune and Fame is just good fun. I read it earlier this year, because I enjoy Sharon Shinn's books, particularly the ones in the Twelve Houses series, and when I saw it on the librarian picks shelf I grabbed it again. The main characters are new, with a few appearances from the jolly group that earlier books focused on. Wen, the super-cool fighter whose guilt over a failure keeps her on an endless quest to do good, has all the benefits of a supremely competent protagonist with a believable reason not to be smug about it. Her new boss, Jasper, is a bibliophile, so I liked him immensely too. There's a romance, which is fun because of the role reversal -- can Wen's lover handle her violent profession? There is intrigue, there is a young noble learning her responsibilities and capabilities, and there isn't really any danger of it all going bad. I had fun revisiting Wen's problems and adventures, and knowing what was going to happen didn't detract, since I knew even the first time that it would end happily.

Queens of the World

Michael Cunningham and George Alexander work together to produce the photographs and text of Queens: Portraits of Black Women and Their Fabulous Hair. The pictures are wonderful, ranging from candid shots of women at all stages of life through models in hair contests I had never dreamed existed.

Before reading this book I was vaguely aware that the hair of black girls needed different techniques and care than mine, but since I have always tended to ignore my own hair I didn't pay much attention. I knew bits from what our neighborhood friends drop, but never put anything together. So in addition to appreciating the gorgeous women and their hair I got glimpses into a world I barely knew existed (straightening, braiding, natural, etc.). I still liked the photos best because of their elegant black and white style, but the short vignettes by each woman fascinated me. Now I have a better sense of what I don't know. I rarely look at coffee table type books, but I think I'll use our library to check some more out, maybe starting with Cunningham's Crowns.

This is a bit of a cheat for me, because I read it a few weeks ago but just got around to writing the review, but I can't find any unread Q books! I think I will reread Queen of Attolia today, because that is also a wonderful book. But still, this is my official entry for the A-Z Wednesday, Q edition.

The Magician's Elephant Fell a Bit Flat

I've never completely leaped on the Kate DiCamillo bandwagon. Some of her books I've liked, but I haven't loved anything yet. My favorites are the realistic books; her fantasies don't hit the mark for me somehow. The Magician's Elephant left me a bit cold. It tries to be a beautiful fable about believing in yourself and working to make magic real, but the mix of magic and realism didn't work for me.

The central idea is that a magician almost accidentally performs an act of true magic, calling an elephant to fall out of thin air, and this event causes a transforming cascade of events in the lives of an orphaned boy, his lost sister, a police detective, a rich woman crippled by the elephant, and the magician himself. Unfortunately, the moment the rich woman's legs are shattered by the bulk of the elephant, I was lost. How did the elephant survive? The cover shows it falling from the roof -- there is no way the pachyderm can avoid serious injuries. And if the magic is protecting the elephant, why not the lady? So my balance of disbelief was shattered, and the rest of the story proceeded without the glimmer of fairy tale that it needed. The people were too sweet, the coincidences too frequent, and I just felt like a scrooge for resisting. C+