Year of the book challenge!

I'm ready to sum up my one-year, 100-book challenge.  It seems a little stupid in retrospect, but at least it made me read something new instead of just picking up the same old junk.  I got rid of a few books that had been hanging around my neck for years, but I added as many more.
The winners were:

The Shelf Discovery books trended out like this:
    Read: 57  Gave up on: 3
    Loved: 3
    Glad I read: 19
    Could have lived without: 32
    Loathed: 3 (plus the 3 I skipped)

My (mostly) apathetic results weren't caused by the books' target audience.  Some of the YA books became new forever favorites; some of the grown-up books had to be skimmed or skipped altogether.  And since a lot of the YA books were short, I didn't waste a whole lot of time on them. 

It was fun to be a kid again.  But next year, I'm going to seriously concentrate on clearing out my shelves.   I have a list (always!) of about 50 books that need to be read, re-read, or discarded.  No excuses!

Starting tomorrow.

Loved

Al Capone Does My Shirts by Gennifer Choldenko, audiobook read by Kerby Heyborne

(I thought the author was a man all the time I was listening to this.  How odd.)

It was adorable!  Is it polite to say that about a book?  I hope so, because I'm saying it.  It's one of those well-written children's books set in an unusual place, a curious time, and peopled with wildly interesting characters.  Moose--the hardheaded boy who loves both baseball and his "little" sister, despite being forced to choose between the two of them for a time.  His autistic sister who has to stay ten years old forever because his mother can't stand the pain of seeing her son grow up and do things that her daughter will never be able to do.  Conniving Piper, the warden's daughter.  Clever Theresa, the eight-year-old welcome wagon.

And Moose's mother and father, simple, hard-working folk who will never give up trying to find help for their daughter's disability.  I like people who don't give up.

(I like Frodo Baggins, too, but that's not the point.)  This one's a jewel.

Cereal with bananas

...is not as good as cereal with sugar and bananas.  Sigh.

                          Domestic Arrangements by Norma Klein

             Wins the award for the worst book cover designed by man--


It reads like this:
"How did the interview go?" said Joshua.
"Okay.  I hope I didn't come off too silly," I said.
Joshua rubbed my breasts.  We had sex.  Then we curled up in blankets in front of the fire.
I really didn't know how I felt about all this.  Dad was clearly wrong.  Our relationship wasn't all about sex.  We talked about lots of things.
Next day I....

Does that give you the idea?  (This thing reads like stereo instructions!)

I was just curious enough that I wanted to skip to the end and be done with it...but it's part of the 100-book Challenge.  And it wasn't quite bad enough to give up on.

Or so I thought.   For a book that was primarily concerned with sex, contraception and love, the only thing vaguely interesting was the narrator's desire to be a "doctor who delivers babies" some day.  She's only fourteen--I guess she never heard of the term obstetrician.   It doesn't matter, though.  Clearly she's going to grow up to be a clueless idiot like the rest of the people in the story.

Lovely lonely Saturday

Washed car; cleaned kitchen; messed up kitchen; cleaned one bathroom and read half of my last book on the 100-book challenge.  I'm so domestic!

Yuki investigating how a Christmas tree ornament magically descended from the tree and became a plaything.

Stupid vegetarian diet

Little good it does to read about how people are suffering needlessly due to poor food choices--when the pinto beans I ate last night are still roiling in my stomach.




Book #99 is On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta


Warning: heavy duty stuff, not for the faint of heart.

I had to stop halfway through this and read some reviews, because I was about to give up on it.   It's challenging--to say the least.  So challenging that I stopped listening to the audiobook production because I couldn't tell if I'd somehow downloaded the chapters out of order.  The paper version used italics to denote the dream sequences and flashbacks.

Now that I've struggled through to the end, I kind of understand the beginning.  Some of it.  Maybe I should save the audiobook and listen to it someday--I think I'd "get it" the second time around. 

Eating like an idiot

The China Study by by T. Colin Campbell, Thomas M. Campbell II

Do I feel like an idiot. 

A fat stupid American idiot.  I read Francis Moore Lappe's Diet For A Small Planet a thousand years ago and came to believe, implicitly, in protein combinations.  I experimented with vegetarian eating for a while, but since protein was king, I made sure to combine my beans and corn.  My weak, unevolved human body wasn't capable of nourishing itself without complete (a.k.a. animal) protein.

Then, a couple of years ago, I read Sears' The Zone diet.  At the time, I was interested in losing weight, period.  For losing weight, it's a winner.  You don't even feel hungry.

Now I'm interested in heart health, endurance, and cancer prevention.  And it took me all
these years to question what Big Mother National Dairy Council and Big Papa Animal Torture Organization was feeding me.  In simple, a pack of lies.

It's all I can do to keep from ordering a handful of copies of this book and sending them to everyone I care about.  But I won't--a good example and kindly dropped hint or two will hold more power than any amount of bludgeoning.

Do you know what's the highest praise I can give this work?  It's that early on, it got me thinking about science, research, and honesty, which in turn made me think closely about the contents of the book as I was reading it.  Which meant that any little exaggeration--any hint of inaccuracy--jumped out at me like a hot vegetable.  (No pun intended.)  Places where he states unequivocally that animal husbandry decimates the environment bugged me.  There are many landscapes that are unsuitable for agriculture but can easily nourish goats or rabbits.  Cheap food and unhealthy, but food for the starving nonetheless.

So much for my cheese cubes and sliced (free range) turkey breast.  Pinto beans for supper.

Non-review...skipped book. Shoot me.

Non-review: Flowers In The Attic
I quit, or rather, I refuse.  I will finish the books from Shelf Discovery--I have one more of those on my list.  but I'm not going to read Flowers In The Attic.

Why?  It's dated.  I don't like V. C. Andrews.  I don't like horror in general other than really cool sci-fi horror like The Passage or really well-written horror like 11/22/23.  And above all, I don't like authors who write without humor.

I'll substitute Speak (already reviewed) for it.  It's a little shorter but a whole lot better.

A quick kid's book

Indigo's Star by Hilary McKay

I didn't like this nearly as much as I did Saffy's Angel.  I think the reason was the medium--I listened to Saffy's Angel audiobook and I absolutely loved the reader.      
    Michael, darling!  Don't call me darling.  I'm a driving instructor.

But this one had its funnies.  Rose's increasingly weird letters to her father, trying to get him to come home, tinkled my funny bone.

So, I dunno.  I think I might have liked it more, if listened to.  I have the next book in the series on my table and will try again asap.

Movies to see. Finally.

Couldn't resist seeing Frozen today, with Callie and friends.  Pretty good for a Disney Princess musical.  And yes, the princess's eyes were bigger than her wrists.

500+ pages but back on track

By working only a half day and liberally applying the free time to my reading, I struggled through The Toss Of A Lemon.  It's hard to give so estimable a work less than four stars, but I will.  Because really--as a novel--it didn't work for me.

It was absolutely fascinating, engrossing, interesting and any number of 'ings I might dig out of the theasaurus for synonyms to "way cool."  My beef is with the plot, or lack thereof.    It was a novel that read like a biography, starting at Sivakami's marriage and ending when she was an old lady.   There was never any of that suspense that drives a good story.  There are questions, but not burning ones.  "Will she ever regain closeness with her son?"  "Will her love allow the kids of her daughter to survive their deadbeat dad and apathetic mother?"  "Will anyone ever really how badly their faith in horoscopes screwed up peoples' lives?"  Will she--Sivakami--survive progress without losing her pride?" 

The questions were all answered--sort of--but not convincingly, resoundingly, like they should have been in a novel.  The answers were real life answers--ambiguous and only vaguely satisfying.

Sivakami was a Brahmin and the years of her fictional lifespan would have been roughly 1886-1940, the time of my great-grandparents.  There was nothing like that culture in America.   We were heathens, hooligans worshiping a primitive, punitive god.  Where were our daily devotions?  The making of a puja on a new undertaking?  The ceremonies and blessings?  Such a rich, ancient culture! 

  And one thing blew my mind--there were as many different subcultures within the culture as there were religions in America.  Two people could grow up side by side and live a different life, by different rules.  Wow.

In progress (a good book)

It is odd reading The Toss of a Lemon shortly after reading The Valley of Horses, because I find that the same lengthy descriptions that I criticized in Valley I am admiring in Lemon.   Is it because these are true, or is it just better writing?

Toast? White bread? Sinful!

My family is eating toast for supper.  Devouring it.   Last night I fixed frozen shrimp, tater tots and corn.  They ate it--mostly--but I should have just pulled out a loaf of bread and the margarine.

I really need to start cooking again.

Cats and me

I have a new job description--bowel stimulant.  I get up in the morning; cats use litter box.  I get home in the evening; cats use litter box.  If I slept in one day, would they get constipated?

How to make really tedious traffic seem almost bearable

For some idiotic reason I got started listening to Middlemarch in the car.  Is this like the largest word count of any book in the English language?  Will I be able to keep the CDs from the library long enough to finish it?

The reader confounds me--she goes on and on and on, never needing to clear her throat or correct a misreading.  Never seeming to get tired at the endless roundabouts and dissolutions and meanderous poeticity that the author tacks on to decorate a rather slim story.  It reminds me of an illuminated manuscript--a lot of style and very little substance.

For all that griping, I'm still listening to it.  The CD player does have an off switch--I know where it is.

Followup on Wifey

By the way, I found a foreword for Wifey by Judy Blume and I also read all of the auto-biographical data on her web site.  Norman is not a real person--she says--but many of his characteristics were borrowed from men she knew.  The breakup of her first marriage inspired the book--maybe not the sexual liberation parts, but definitely the ideological liberation ones.  She left the marriage and took her two kids, and I'm sure she believes shedid the right thing.  Maybe the reason she didn't end up Wifey with a decisive, glorious breakup was a sign of the strength of her writing.  She's making us readers write our own endings...and lovely they be.



Meanwhile....

I finished Melanie Martin Goes Dutch by Carol Weston. 

I need to be careful which kids books I choose to read.  Some, like Saffy's Angel, are funny at any age.  And others, like The Great Brain, have a classic charm that wins you over.  But this one wasn't "age appropriate" for me.

I think I'd have adored it when I was younger.  I'd probably have clamored to be taken to the library so I could check out the rest of the series.  But, since I don't really know what I would have thought, I'll refrain from giving it a "star" rating on Goodreads.com.  It's not fair to take a chance on skewing its rating with my old fuddy-duddy opinion.

Blah. So glad when this is over.

After I write my thoughts on Wifey, I'm going to go look at Judy Blume's web site to see if she hated writing the ending as much as I hated reading it.  You know how they describe people as enablers when they allow an abusive person to continue their behavior without challenging it or attempting to prevent it?  There was no "abuse" in this book but there was definitely an enabler...which maybe means, there was abuse.  Isn't it considered abuse if a person continually hurts another's feelings and makes them feel bad about themselves?

I think I just wrote a big fat spoiler, but that's okay.  The book was published in 1978.  Anyone who was going to read it already has.  As usual, the people who might benefit from reading it, won't.  A person as controlling, rigid, and thoughtless as her husband wouldn't recognize himself--if he were capable of seeing how awful he was, he wouldn't be so.

So let me talk about the woman.  IMHO, she gets what she deserves.  I'm sorry for her, truly sorry, but what she needs is to get out, make herself a life, and then see if she wants to go on with this miscarriage, I mean, marriage.  The implication is that she's going to try to work things out gradually, from within.  She's going to try and she's going to fail--every word, phrase, and tone of voice in the husband's last remarks shows that clearly.  He's not going to change.

I'm reminded of the wise phrase--
           You can't change the world.  You can only change yourself.

Enjoying a light mystery

The No, 1 Ladies Detective Agency
by Alexander McCall Smith

I just loved this book.  It seems slow-paced but never drags--it meanders like a springtime walk in the woods.  It only took me a minute to fall in love with Mma Ramotswe and I'm eager to read all her adventures as the first lady private detective in Botswana.  It's not Sherlock Holmes vs. Moriarty, but who cares?  Sherlock Holmes gets boring when he's always one step ahead of the rest of us.  Mma Ramotswe is right there beside us, drinking a cup of tea and relaxing in the shade of her acacia tree.

Life, interrupted.

The ice came down on Thursday night.  Sometime Friday morning the power went out.  And stayed out.  No episodes of Kevin or Supernatural were viewed.  No one worked a shift at Lowes on Friday or Saturday--we couldn't get the cars down the driveway.  No social life happened for Callie.  No computer time for me.  Nada.

We spent our days reading books, playing games, and huddling under covers.  Sometime on Friday the power came on for a minute or so, just long enough to bring up all our hopes...Nope.   Again Saturday morning...nope.

We managed to scrounge up enough Coleman Fuel to fry bacon and eggs for supper Friday night.  We managed to dig up enough lamp oil to have light for reading, and we had a car with a full battery charge for Nintendo DS's and phones.  Other than those, we lived as an eighteenth century family for one and one-half days.

The power came back on at about four p.m. today, although it's gone off briefly at least four times since then.  Trouble with these newfangled devices--like electricity--is a fellow gets to depending on them.  I should dig up that exact quote but I'm too cold.  Did I mention that the temperature didn't get about 26 all day?  The power has been on for three hours and its...54 degrees in here.  Brrr.

The animals want to know why the stupid humans are keeping it so darn cold--

Time for a new audiobook!

Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro

Disclaimer: I listened to it on the IPod, but for the first time in my audiobook experience, I wish I'd read it on paper.  Because... It dragged. A lot. Before it even reached the halfway point I started muttering under my breath...waiting, endlessly waiting, to find out what "the big secret" was. At times I even said it out loud--
          "Enough already! Tell us the big secret and get on with the story!"

Most infuriating quote ever:
             "But I'll get to that later."
When he finally "got to that", the focus switched to why it was happening and how it happened and that made for an ending of shivering surreality. You'd cry for these poor kids if that wouldn't have meant admitting that they could have been real people in a real world and maybe they were and we just didn't know it!

If I'd been reading the book with my eyes on paper, my pace would have been roughly 4x the speed of the audio version, and I think I'd be giving this book a solid 4 stars--really liked it.

Wouldn't have read if it hadn't been on the list, but...

I substituted Valley Of Horses for The Clan Of The Cave Bear because I'd already read Clan and couldn't bear reading it again.  This one wasn't nearly as bad, just way...too...long.  I expect a writer to do her research but that doesn't mean every single bit of it has to be crammed into the finished work.  There are too many huge, honking descriptive paragraphs that read like non-fiction, which might have been fine if I were reading non-fiction.  Non-fiction is a different style of reading, for me--it's a whole different "attitude" about the material and how I expect it to flow.  This book kept making me switch between the two different styles of reading and it irritated me.

And--a personal quibble--there's such a thing as too many words.  If, for example, you describe a horse as a "small filly the color of hay," then do you later need to say, "...watching the hay-colored horse..."?  Is it possible that the author edited this book simply by adding a bunch of words to enhance the "color" and increase the word count?

In any rate, I more-or-less finished the book and I enjoyed a little of it.  Of the 500 or so words, I read about 300--beginning, end, and some of the middle.   Such careless reading behavior would have been inexcusable if I were ever going to read a sequel, but I'm not.  Cro-Magnum man will have to procreate the world without me.

Book #93

My diet thing is really sucking.  I've having trouble distracting my mind--I really hate the book I'm listening to and I'm not especially pleased with the one I'm reading.   Things should be better soon.
Meanwhile,

When one group of people was given six jams to sample and another group was given twenty-four jams to sample, both groups tasted about the same number of jams.  Thirty percent of the people who had the six-jam array actually bought a jar; but only three percent of the people with the larger array did.

This sums up one of the themes of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz.  Having too many choices confuses us, makes us second-guess our decisions, and makes us ultimately unhappy with our choices.  Other themes of the book deal with comparisons--how we rate ourselves against other people; memory--how we give a higher weight to the end of an experience rather than the whole of it; and adaptation--the way we get used to a good thing and learn to expect it rather than appreciate it.

There are a lot of good thoughts in this book, but I wish it had been 100 pages long instead of 200.  He repeats himself.  Sometimes what I take to be a repetition might actually be a slight alteration of the theme, but such subtle nuances are lost on me.  I keep thinking I'm reading the same thing over and over again.

A couple--but only a couple--of his themes bugged me.
In the chapter, Everything suffers from comparison, he states, "Comparisons are the only meaningful benchmark."  Huh? A benchmark is a standard which is used for comparison.  So the statement is saying, "Comparisons are the only meaningful standards for comparisons?"

He goes on to say that when we evaluate an experience, we always do so by comparing it with other experiences, and that always causes it to suffer by comparison.  Who compares a sunset?  A child's laugh?  A strike in bowling?  I, personally, have seen "the best movie I've ever seen" many times, and I see no inconsistency in that statement.  It is the best.  There are a lot of bests.

I also disagree with the statement in a later chapter:
          "The result of having pleasure turn into comfort is disappointment."

The point he's trying to make is this: buying a new car is thrilling; the first few weeks of driving it makes you happy; after that, it's just comfortable and therefore, boring.  You want a new new car.

Maybe that argument is true of movies--the third time you see a movie, the thrill is gone--but I'm not sure it's true of things you use, like cars or clothes or computers.  Maybe it's just me, but I'm pleased every time I start my car and hear the quiet hum; put on my hoodie and feel comfy; turn on my computer and see the welcome screen.  The pleasure will only vanish when the owned thing starts to wear out.

Maybe my satisfaction is a result of my advanced age. I expect that the younger you are, the more relevant this book will be.

Monday, wasn't expecting much

Seventeen Against The Dealer by Cynthia Voigt.

I'm puzzled about this one.  I know and love the Tillerman family so much that I couldn't help devouring it, but it left me feeling a little sad.  I wouldn't have expected a happy, tidy, Little Women-type of ending.  I wouldn't have been happy with one if she'd given it to me.  So I guess I got just what I expected.  But it wasn't enough.

Is she going to write another two books, at least?  To carry on Maybeth and Sam's stories a little?  I sure hope so.

Good movie alert

Catching Fire--even in the front row, thoroughly enjoyable.  Disturbing trend in movie-making to cast children as killers.






I struggled through to the end of My Sweet Audrina by V. C. Andrews.  Just for the reading challenge.

On Goodreads, one star means "didn't like it" and two stars means "it was okay."  So I'm going to give this one-and-one-half stars.  In all honesty, I didn't like it.  I wasn't interested in reading a story about a freakshow family, two messed up girls (and then a third) who'd seen so little of normal human love that they couldn't help but grow up functionally insane.  A few people showed a perverted kind of love that caused more hurt than pleasure; everyone else seemed to hate everyone and be determined to live their lives as miserably as possible.  The one person who was somewhat sane turned out to be, "a brutal, evil man when it all came down to it."

Other than the fact that I disliked it royally, it wasn't a poorly written story...if that's what you're interested in.  I suspect that most of its popularity came from teenagers who snuck it into the house in their book bags and searched out the dirty parts with flashlights under the covers.  Everyone and everything seems to be about sex, and even the most normal of couplings are a little unclean.

To sum up--if my teenage daughter were going to sneak something forbidden off  my bedside table, I'd vastly prefer she found a Sandra Brown "romance" there.  At least the sex is fun.

More Tillermans--guaranteed good

Sons From Afar

Must be read if you've read the first five books in the series and have become enamored of all things Tillerman.  It doesn't stand on its own, which was okay by me.  It doesn't really start and it doesn't really end, which, also, was okay by me.  It's like reading a diary of a good friend who is still alive--you don't want or expect an ending.  It's a...how did you get that way? novel.

Cynthia Voigt demonstrates amazing skill at portraying the adolescent mind.  You absolutely know these kids and, because you know them, you love them.  Love them the same way you do Frodo Baggins or Sam Gamgee--you've been with them to Mordor and back--you've been in their heads as they fight orcs, cower in the shadows, shiver in the cold under the stars.

I have one small quibble--with all Ms. Voigt's skill and understanding, why does she totally skip sexuality?  I'm told that the adolescent male spends a lot of time and energy on it--when I once suggested to a friend that the primary thoughts in a young man's mind concerned, "girls, sports, school," in that order, his correction was: "girls, girls, girls..." with sports maybe on the list at number 39 and school totally absent.

Don't get me wrong--I'm not wanting Cynthia Voigt to change her writing.  I'm just a little puzzled that she leaves out such a huge slice of the adolescent psyche.

One day left on the calendar and that day is today.

Old in a new way

         

Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife
            by Francine Prose

Consider this: what's the difference between a diary and a memoir?  Answer: The Diary of a Young Girl.
Huh?

It's both.  The originally published version--the one I read a a child--was a diary.  Anne wrote the diary but later revised it, taking out some of the personal storms of adolescence and adding in pieces of universal interest.  Anne's father took the original and revised versions and (if I understood this correctly) restored much of the original content but sometimes kept the revised words and phrases that were superior to the original.

Anne's revisions were aimed at producing a book for publication after the war--a memoir.  I never knew any of this, nor did I ever consider that the content had undergone extensive revision by Anne, herself, as she advanced as a writer.  I don't have a copy of "the critical edition", to compare the copies, but maybe I'll get one someday.

This book by Francine Prose made me look at a childhood classic from an adult perspective and I thank her for that. Ms. Prose's work is not, as I expected from the title, a 3-part volume with an artificial boundary between the three topics of book, life and afterlife.  It's an adventure in mind, space and time, simultaneously explaining who wrote what, what it meant, and what it has come to mean now.  Good work!

Long on the list and short on content

It's Kind Of A Funny Story
by Ned Vizzini




I committed the unpardonable sin of watching the movie before I read the book.  That kind of takes away the freshness, you know?  If I'd read the book first, I might have liked it better.


This book gets top ratings for the description of "cycling"--the unending circle of painful thoughts in the mind of the depressed.  Also top ratings for the ending.  For the stuff that comes in between--well, it just happens.  There wasn't enough in the middle--dialog, description, action, anything. 

Thor: The Dark World

Nothing like those machine gun-equipped space alien dark elf space ships, huh?

Quick review (because I don't know what to say)

                              Big Machine
                              by Victor LaValle

Blown away.  Flabbergasted.  Confused as heck.

I think I get the message, but I don't understand one thing in particular--what was Solomon Clay trying to do?  Or maybe I do understand, sort of.

Victor LaValle is probably the equal of Neil Gaimon in coming up with mind-altering literature. And I sense there's a whole lot of meaning in here.  Since I'm not literary or even all that perceptive, I'm not sure exactly what that meaning is. Other people might even find other meaning.  It's that kind of deep, you know?

The calendar is looking good.

The cold front is heading this way

...and I have a headache.  (An actual twinge, not a thinly veiled reference to a teenage daughter.  I have one of those, too, but it's not giving me a headache at the moment)

Too bad I didn't get home before dark.  I could have taken autumn foliage pictures before it all falls off and turns into soggy mush.




So I will read books.  I finished the audiotape of Speak a few days ago.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

It's simultaneously a humorous expose of the insane world of high school and a deeply personal journey from betrayal to recovery.  To tell more would be telling.  I'll just say that it touched me where it hurts.  High school has got to be the hardest time in the average person's life--you're full of hormones and haven't yet learned to recognize them; you desperately need to grow up but still want to be a kid sometimes; and you sometimes have a very painful secret that threatens to destroy you....

Well, some of you do.  I didn't, but it was still a hard four years.

The parents in the story are so unbearably clueless, it hurts to hear them talk.  They remind me of a lot of parents I've met in books--they do fine with babies and children but can't seem to recognize they have an emerging adult in the family. They try avoidance, denial, control and anger, but never compassion, patience, friendship and support.   I hope I'm not like that--I miss my fun little kids, but it's kind of nice to have someone that I can take to grownup movies.

For my listening pleasure

Saffy's Angel
by Hilary McKay

On the surface, this is the story of a hilariously eccentric family and a misfit's search to find her place in it.  Underneath, it's more.  And it works well on both levels.

Saffron is a girl of thirteen, living with older sister Cadmium, younger brother Indigo and little sister Rose.  Only they're not her real family, as she became painfully aware at age eight when she studied the color chart and found her name wasn't there.

People often describe a book or movie as "deeply satisfying." Well, this book most definitely isn't "deeply satisfying"--and I still say it's a great story. Other reviews say that it ends too quickly, but I don't agree--it makes a nice conclusion.  But like many works of great fiction, you find yourself wanting more.  I did.  In particular I wanted to see the father wake up to discover that he really wanted the family that he so happily rode away from every Sunday evening.

It's also funny enough to contend in the category for best YA humor.  Cadmium (Caddy's) driving lessons, with or without hamsters, are ticklish.

Book #90 was a bit of a bummer

I picked up the wrong book at the library--it was supposed to be All Of A Kind Family by Sydney Taylor, but instead I got All Of A Kind Family Uptown. A sequel, one of many.  I don't think I'm going to finish it.  The reading level is about fourth grade and I could knock it off in an hour, but why?

I don't mean anything negative by this, it's simply lack of interest.  At this point in my reading life, the book has nothing to offer me.  If I were an eight-year-old girl I'd be happy with it--maybe not as much as with Harriet The Spy or one of the Danny Dunn series, but happy enough to search out the rest of the series.  They're sweet little books about a family of kids growing up in New York in the years after World War II...oh, shoot!  I do need to read them for historical data.  This one was published in 1958.

Erase that!  The time period for the book was during the war, not after it.  It turned out to be pretty good--for an eight-year-old audience.

Book #89 and major spoilers

The False Prince
            by Jennifer A. Nielsen


I hate stupid author tricks.  Like hiding the main character's history and revealing it suddenly, for shock value.  Should I call it schtick value?  Characters should stand up for themselves and draw me into the story so deeply that I forget there even is an author.  The author shouldn't suddenly shove himself into the story and jerk it around, just to see how badly he can mess with my mind.  I want him to create a world for me--not play silly games.  Blah.

I tried to explain this reaction to my daughter and she said that every author hides part of the protagonist's backstory, revealing it slowly as the plot progresses or "big bang" to make an impact.  She may be right, but in that case the author usually drops hints and suggestions that something is coming.  This makes us pay more attention to our characters, wondering...wondering....then BLAM!  So that was the point!  Suddenly you understand everything.

Not this book.  It was more like, BLOOP!  Do I feel like an idiot, or what?  And incidentally, the main character is an idiot, too, and the plot is suddenly revealed to be as holey as Huck Finn's breeches.

Oddly enough, I liked the characters enough to want to finish reading the trilogy.  But not with the same excitement I had when I started it.

Everyone else liked this better than me

Not much reading got done this weekend, but I did manage to finish The Botany Of Desire.  I have mixed feelings--parts I liked very, very much, but other parts I disliked, almost enough to poison the whole book for me.   The parts that deal with history and culture are fascinating and revealing.  The Johnny Appleseed chapter was a true eye opener.  You know about apple seeds?  Well, I didn't either--but I do now.

Mr. Pollan's remaining three sections deal with tulipmania in Holland, the genesis of modern-day cannabis production, and the contribution of the humble potato to agricultural knowledge.  Great subjects.

But I don't the way he writes whimsical speculations as if they were facts.  The apple and the tulip sections are full of statements that aren't fact or even scientific theories undergoing serious consideration.   Some of his statements (a.k.a. speculations) read more like flights of lively fancy.

"When lack of food killed people, people judged body fat to be a thing of beauty."  "Try as they might, people have never been able to domesticate the oak tree, whose highly nutritious acorns remain far too bitter for humans to eat."  "...a well-developed culture of flowers is a luxury that most of Africa historically has not been able to support."

 Not that they're not interesting speculations--sometimes they're good jumping-off points for lively debate.  At other times, just beautifully drawn fantasy.  You might even say, poetry.

So...good book but be careful what you quote.

Good cat, bad picture.  She apparently knows how to use a bed.

Audiobook ambrosia

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows

I wish I could give this four-and-one-half stars because it's just so darn delicious. I should read it on paper to see if has the same kick.  The audiobook was narrated by four voices, each taking on multiple characters as they read the letters back and forth between Juliet, her publisher Sidney, and the friendly people on the Isle of Guernsey, off the coast of France.  It takes place immediately after World War II and gives a vivid glimpse into people's experiences during and after the war.


As Juliet gets to know the people, and herself, and they get to know her, and themselves, the magic unfolds as gently and delightfully as a time-elapsed blossom.  Don't expect high drama, scandal, murder or mayhem in these pages--but be prepared for someone to get a smart slap in the face when needed.

Great book. Want more.

                 Come A Stranger
                 by Cynthia Voigt

This fifth book in the Tillerman Cycle was a little hard to get into.  The main character wasn't as interesting as previous ones have been--her challenges seemed trivial; her worries manufactured; her personality undeveloped.  I shouldn't have worried--she grew into still another of the marvelously complex Cynthia Voigt creations that I've learned to expect.

It's amazing that the five books in the series have all been interconnected despite the difference in time and perspective.  She must have planned this in advance, but I don't see how.  I don't dare read an interview with the author--not until I've finished all seven books in the series.  An interview might contain spoilers.

I must read the next two books, but unfortunately there was a wreck right at the entrance into the library parking lot.  Tomorrow....



Changing the subject, about a year ago I made a list of the "recently added, unread" books on my bookshelves.  There were 21 of them.  I put them on a to-read list and added the Shelf Discovery books and came up with 100 books.  I've been working off this list, in order (mostly), all year.

A few of the 21 original books have since gone to the Half-Price Books buying area; a few more to the library donation stack.  I also got rid of six or seven books from a mystery series that I didn't expect to ever read again.  And now...my bookshelves are fuller than they were before!

This is a sad state of affairs.  IMHO, a bookshelf should only hold books in the categories below:
    plan to read,
    intend to read again someday,
    useful for reference material, and
    may never read again but can't bear to part with.

So there is my goal for 2014--trim the shelves.
Step 1 of my goal is to identify the problem, and this I have done.  I have made a list of 53 books that are currently occupying space on the shelves.  A very few of those are books I read many years ago and need to re-read, but most have never been opened.

So, here are my rules.  (Last year's rules with slight modifications)
1. Must read the first two chapters of a book before giving up on it.
2. Any books that are given up on must be blogged about, explaining my delinquency in full.
3. An occasional swap is okay but don't make a habit of it.
4. New books can only be added at the list's indicated insertion points. (no matter how appealing they are.) 
5. Exceptions to #4 are only allowed if the new book is a library book or some other sort of temporary loan.
6. No more than 20% of reading can be done during my lunch break.

Slogging through to prove a point?

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation by David R. Goldfield


I shouldn't make too much a big deal out of this, but I can't help myself. For all that the book is and isn't, it is not a demonstration of "How the Civil War created a Nation."  Maybe it should have been subtitled, "How the Civil War almost prevented America from becoming a nation."  Occasionally--very occasionally--the title was illustrated in the text--but not enough to justify the subtitle.

The nation-building that occurred during the period was only incidentally a consequence of the war.  When the southern states succeeded, the departure of their Democratic Party forces from congress left a republican majority.  That, plus a strong president, allowed our government to get things done in a hurry--the  Homestead Act passed, granting 160 acres of public land to farmers; a Department of Agriculture was established; land grants were made to finance the transcontinental railroad; government bonds were issued to pay for the war.  The National Bank Act of 1863 established a national currency.  The North was becoming a nation--the South didn't rejoin until long after the war and reconstruction were over.

The book was full of fascinating facts about a fascinating time in history.  For example:

- Jeff Davis' inaugural address described the constitutional basis for succession and how it "preserved the founding principles of the American nation." It was an admirable speech; convincing even to modern sensibilities. A month later, his vice president Stephens made a speech that declared, "Our new government is founded on [...] the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery; subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition."

- The actual percentage of successionists in the south was nowhere near a majority.  Only in Texas was the ordinance of succession submitted to popular vote--the other states were afraid it wouldn't pass.

- The northerners' desire to prohibit slavery in the territories was not based on moral abhorrence but rather on fear of competition for jobs.  They were, on average, just as prejudiced against the negro as southerners.  "We did not enlist to fight for the negro and I can tell you that we neer shall..."

- I never realized how much Walt Whitman, in his poetry, captured the events and sentiment of his time.  If it weren't for my self-imposed ban on reading poetry, I might be tempted to take up an anthology.  Provided it was cross-referenced with the events on which he was waxing poetic, so I'd know what he was writing about.

That last note pretty much captures my reaction to the book.  I wanted more primary sources and less commentary.  We have transcripts of the speeches; we have Whitman's poetry; we have newspapers and letters from the front.  Those could have been arranged to tell the story better than the book's endless words--words that were frequently hard to read.  His description of the soldier' experiences at the battle of Shiloh was vivid--fascinating--depressing.  But a lot of the exposulatory text was disjointed and confusing--several times I'd get halfway through a paragraph only to look up and think, what the heck is he talking about?

So, if you're a history student wanting an introduction to the era, this book is an excellent jumping-off point.  If you're a casual but knowledgable reader, skip it.  The scope is too large; the focus alternates between macro precision and wide-angle blur.

Nonfiction that's better than fiction

               Dani's Story: A Journey from Neglect to Love
                by Diane Lierow, Bernie Lierow and Kay West



Deeply involving--impossible to put down--and not enough.  More!  I wanted more!

Okay, I admit that a life story of a living person has to end somewhere and this was published in 2011.  She was probably about 10 years old at the time.  The website it refers you to hasn't been updated since 2010.  But I just wanted to know more.

Darn.  I guess people have a right to a little privacy.

So I brought this thing home.yesteday

What am I going to do with it?
The thing has consumed most of my morning and is now taking a nap on Winston's chair.  Do cats truly have no noses, like dogs think, or does he find Winston's smell comforting, like a big brother's?

I also finished reading

                        I Think I Love You
                        by Allison Pearson

Don't read reviews of this.  Even the most careful review will give away too much of the story.  I didn't know anything about it when I plugged it into my car speakers and started Chapter 1.  And  I was delighted by everywhere it went. 

Let's just say that it starts in 1974, in Wales, with a pair of teenage girls who were--like most teenage girls--madly in love with David Cassidy.   And it starts in London with a man who takes a writing job for The Essential David Cassidy Magazine.  Two sides of the same teen craze--two people trying to figure out where they fit into the world--two could-have-been-true stories.

For all of my love of the printed word, I don't recommend you read this book.  If you're not Welsh--or even British--you won't be able to pronounce the delicious dialect and have it flow trippingly off the tongue.  British accents are so adorable!  Get the CD sound recording and plug in for three hours of auditory delight.

Yesterday Edward and I ventured to the Angelika to see
Twelve Years A Slave

I was under-impressed.  I think a good director could have made a really good movie out of this material.  Sigh.

Makes me want to read the book.

The Runner by Cynthia Voigt

I thought Cynthia Voigt's other Tillerman books--The Homecoming and Dicey's Song and A Solitary Blue--were the most painful and joyful young adult literature I would ever read.  Guess I'm still reading.

major spoiler follows:
Suggestion: do as I did, wait a few months after you read Homecoming before you read this book.  Assuming your memory is as weak as mine, you'll be halfway through before you realize who the main character is.  And if your memory is really bad, you'll have forgotten how it's going to end.

I wonder if nowadays, when people can freely choose to have or not have a child, if there are fewer atrociously bad parents in the world?  Probably not.  Who really knows what they're getting into when they choose to have "a baby"?  We're going to have "a baby."  "Some kids."  "My daughter."  "My son."
In the phrases above, prospective parents should replace "have" with "make."  Replace "my" with "a."  And replace "we" with "I".

They should say: I'm going to make a unique individual with likes and dislikes and needs and demands that aren't the same as mine.  Someone who's just as likely to inherit my faults as my virtues, and sure to invent a few new faults all their own.  If I try to make them be like me, I'll fail, every time. 

I read science fiction--my daughter reads yaoi manga.  I love making things--my son loves playing video games.  I say potato--they say po-tah-to.

Babies are kittens, so adorable, so wondering, so curious...and so doomed to become cats.  Cats shred the furniture.  Cats kill small animals and eat them and come back in the house to puke on your carpet.  Cats wake you up in middle of the night, yowling to be fed.  They kill and fight and mate and make more cats.  Cats will be cats.

But I like cats. And sometimes, if you're patient, they'll sit on your lap and purr.

Book #88 and only one more "old fashioned" to go

A Little Princess

by Frances Hodgson Burnett

1905


Somewhere in my sobbingly sentimental heart there's a deeply buried yearning for works like this.  Yeah, the story is contrived; dated; a little short in the action department; and not something I'd recommend to anyone who hadn't bawled her eyes out when Beth died.  But it's got that certain timeless something.  The secret in the attic.  The games of let's pretend that lighten the day-to-day toil.  The certain reward for true virtue.

All of the books in this chapter of Shelf Discovery  are kids' books, and that, I believe, is the first fatal flaw in my whole "teen classic" project.  The subtitle of the book was wrong--it should have been young adult classics, not teen classics--but I've already complained about that.  It was my fault that I didn't catch what Lizzie Skurnick was saying in her reviews.  A year ago when I first read Shelf Discovery, phrases like "eight-year-old brain" and "fourth grader" didn't register with me.  They do now--now that I'm looking for them.

The second fatal flaw in my project is that the booklist is so very jumpy.  It hops from a coming of age novel (Forever) to a young adult thriller of the seventies (Happy Endings Are All Alike) to a childrens' classic from 1905.  Both books can live in my mind, but they can't coexist on my bookshelf.

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman

Warning: spoilers below.
This quote that seems to define the book,

If I serve Thee in hopes of Paradise,
    Deny me Paradise.
If I serve Thee in fear of hell,
    Condemn me to hell.
But if I love Thee for love of Thyself,
    Then grant me Thyself.

I think this quote sums up the basic conflict in the hearts of all those who seek to know God.   But even if I'm wrong, it still makes you think.  The whole book does.

I came to the book as someone who'd read a great deal about the orders of contemplative nuns and The Rule, so nothing in the text shocked me or puzzled me--but I doubt if that would be true of many readers.  I wonder how strongly he borrowed from other works of fiction, especially In This House of Brede and The Nun's Story. But it's okay if he did.  It is NOT a rehash of the same questions they ask, not at all.  It asks a much more serious question.

(not telling what!)

You don't say

What You Wear Can Change Your Life
Trinny Woodall and Susannah Constantine

They nearly had me convinced on that.  Fun, funny book by a pair of fashion favored Brits; full of tips on what to wear and, more importantly, what not to wear.  It also includes makeup and miscellany, such as how to shape your eyebrows and pose for photographs.

I enjoyed it thoroughly and probably won't take one wink of their advice.
But it's worth reading for the chapter on vacation photography alone.  Bad vacation photos can sour a memory, they say--do what you must to ensure good ones.  Their tips may not change the positions in which I, myself, might pose, but they'll certainly be considered when I photograph my friends.

Catching up on books

Last week I finished Belles On Their Toes by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey.  87 on my list of 100.

It was much better than Cheaper By The Dozen and I almost liked it.  I might even recommend it...maybe.  It's like a newspaper article--a lively recitation of who, what, when, where, and how--but never why.  There's no depth in it.

Apparently the two books were semi-biographical, written by two of the children of the family of a dozen.  I wonder if they were written while their mother was still alive?  If not, then I don't fault them for lack of depth; but if so, I wish they'd asked more questions of her.  She's a woman who had so much to tell--did she never get a chance to tell it?

Me give up

I'm struggling with my current book,   
                 America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation.
 It's hard to read--either
(a) the writing style is inconsistent, or
(b) my brain is too old and decrepit to follow such an erudite discussion.

I think the correct answer is (a).  Sometimes his sentences flow smoothly along, but other times they run on and I get halfway through one of his huge, fat paragraphs and realize I've gotten lost in stuff that doesn't fit together.

Half of good history writing is research--getting the facts.  But the other half is reporting the facts, with a flowing narrative or a convincing argument.

I'll stick it out.  It only has 22 chapters, so if I manage 5 chapters a week it will be done with one renewal.

In other news, I pulled a stupid yesterday. After airing up two of the three flat tires on the lawnmower, I decided to start it, then back it up a couple of feet and air the third (front) tire.  The front tires don't carry much weight, so that would be a safe maneuver. 

Since I'd had to jump start it the last twenty times I'd used it, so I wasn't surprised to find the battery dead.  I hooked up the jumper cables and...

And nothing. It thumped a little, clicked a little, then went silent and stayed that way. I reseated the jumper cables four or five times.  Continued silence.

Enough.  It was high time to buy a new battery.

I put the jumper cables away.  I put back the car I was using for a power source, got out a socket wrench and started to remove the battery. Immediately I noticed that the nut on the negative terminal was very loose, barely making a connection.

So that was that.  I'd been applying current to the battery but not to the starter.  Too late--I was halfway done removing the battery by then.  Bah!  I quit.  The battery is in the garage, the lawnmower in the shed, and the sopping wet grass is drooping in place.  It's going to rain all night and all day tomorrow.

Current Conditions.