My Cat Saved My Life

Why would you read this book? Have you ever lost a loved companion, parent, sibling, friend? Perhaps you felt that societal restrictions on how you grieved didn't really provide sufficient room for your experience. Have you ever believed that soul is not the exclusive realm of humans? Have you ever been lost in a well of depression so deep that the light cannot reach you? Do you occasionally believe that animals know more about living than we (humans) do? Then this account will resonate with you. This heartfelt little book is written by Phillip Schreibman, who lost his emotional and spiritual footing following the deaths of his father and then his mother. He describes better than anyone I've read what it is like to experience someone dying. " A miracle of experiences, hopes, stories, thoughts, a way of smiling, a voice, vanished in the smallest fraction of a second." One minute they were there and the next they were not. "Now all the parts of me where my day-to-day living had once entwined with theirs were reaching out into nothing." But then he rescued a six-week old kitten and she, in turn, rescued him.

Love Walked In

At first you'll think that love walked into Cornelia's life and coffee shop in the form of a Cary Grant look-alike. She really wanted to be in love with Martin Grace because there were so many things to love about him. But the real fall comes when Cornelia meets Martin's estranged daughter, Clare. I'd be surprised if you don't fall in love with Cornelia as I did, and for the same reasons she fell in love with Clare -- because she's thoughtful, emotionally courageous, ultimately stays true to herself, and is willing to risk it all for what she wants. The characters are occasionally quirky, very well drawn, enormously endearing. We are reminded that, whether in families, friendships, or love affairs, there is no happiness without some cost, but it's usually worth it. Set predominantly in Philadephia, punctuated by delightful dialog and frequent classic film references, this first novel from Maria de los Santos is a most satisfying read.

Evil Genes--a plunge into non-fiction

The full title of the book is Evil genes : why Rome fell, Hitler rose, Enron failed and my sister stole my mother's boyfriend by Barbara Oakley. Although she deals with some genetic research, this is primarily an overview of the research on the neurophysiology and neurochemistry of various psychiatric disorders. Personal anecdotes are sprinkled throughout as her interest in the area did come from her puzzlement over her sister's often amoral and Machiavellian behavior. She focuses initially on the development of the construct of Machiavelliamism and then moves on to its relationship to various personality disorders, e.g., narcissistic, borderline, sociopathic and psychopathic disorders. She has separate chapters on Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Slobodan Milosevic. She posits that some personality disorders may actually be adaptive, helping certain people rise to the top and gain the power and influence to expand their gene pool. She has lots of interesting side notes on things like the neurobiology of religiosity and political beliefs. Her background is as a systems engineer and she does a reasonably good job of bringing some diverse areas of research together, but it is dense and technical reading and I wouldn't recommend it unless you yourself feel compelled to learn more about someone you think might be personality disordered. Her conclusions are that people really are determined more by inheritance than nurture--undoubtedly a comfort to parents/family of those with serious personality disorders. And so I am reminded that people do not change awfully much, and that wishing they would behave differently is just that--wishing.

Back to some old favorites -- Candace Robb

I thoroughly enjoy the Own Archer and Lucie Wilton series, partly because they are a series and the characters develop over time and you feel like you get to know them. I haven't actually read the immediate predecessor (A Gift of Sanctuary) to A Spy for the Redeemer, which apparently sets Owen off to Wales in the company of his father-in-law, Lucie's father. In this book, the impending revolt of Welsh rebels confronts Owen with his conflicting loyalties -- England vs. Wales. A mysterious suicide involves Owen directly with the various political factions and delays his return when he is ordered by the local Archdeacon to investigate. His long absence raises doubts in Lucie as well about Owen's love and commitment to her and their children, especially as rumors begin to circulate that Owen has joined the rebels. She is tempted by attentive men, some with good motives and some not. Lucie is distraught to learn her father has died on the trip and when she goes to check on his estate, run by her aunt, robbers attack, leaving Lucie unsure of what to do. What I like in general about historical mysteries--at least well-done ones like Robb's--is the opportunity to really get a feel for the events and settings and day-to-day lives of the people in a particular time and place, in this case, 14th C England (York especially) and Wales. Graduate work in medieval literature launched her interests in writing about the period and her literary career.

On Edge

This is the first crime novel that was written by Barbara Fister and I was finally able to track down a copy to buy and read, several weeks after I had read her 2nd book, In the Wind. This is also a police procedural with the protagonist a detective, Konstantin Slovo, who is currently on leave from the Chicago PD and under suspicion in the shooting death of his former partner. He is trying to restore a precarious emotional balance as well as recover from a serious gunshot wound he received in the same incident. On the flip of a coin, he heads east and stumbles into a small Maine town that is nearing mass hysteria after the kidnapping and murders of two young girls. The focus is on plot and the complex social psychology of groups getting crazy for any sort of action in the face of such horrible events that seem so out of their control. Slovo is haunted by the child abuse cases he has investigated in the past, especially the last one that he could never solve; it is therefore especially ironic that he becomes a victim of the town's vigilante group that is taking matters into their own hands. In the process of trying to help with the investigation--unofficially of course--he befriends local doctor Hari Chakravarty (the only source of any humor in the tale), the chief of police's daughter Ruth, and, it turns out, the killer.

Murder and Mayhem in Hong Kong

I recently wrote about the forces aligning that led me to John Burdett's Bangkok 8. I investigated what else he had written and discovered that the movie rights to his series of three books set in Bangkok (also Bangkok Haunts and BangkokTattoo) had been bought and are slated to start filming soon. But I also ran across this title, The Last Six Million Seconds, and after messing around with how much time that really was (about 2 months), was curious to find out its significance. The book is set in Hong Kong prior to the handover from Great Britain to mainland China and clocks everywhere are counting out the days, hours, minutes and seconds to June 30, 1997. Our protagonist, Chief Inspector Chan Siu-kai ("Charlie"), is another character defined by others and struggling with himself due to being only half of his chosen national identity, i.e., Chinese. The other half is Irish, but all of him is vehemently anti-communist since he attributes the murder of his mother Mai-Mai, to one of their many purges. Like the detective in the Bangkok series, he is incorruptible and therefore problematic for those who consider political expediencies a higher priority than solving crimes. The grisly murders that anchor this story are dubbed by the press as the "Mincer Murders" since 3 bodies were run through commercial meat grinders while still alive. A tip leads Chan to retrieve 3 heads, sealed in a plastic bag, floating in the sea on the jurisdictional border between Hong Kong and mainland China--raising hopes that the hamburger leftovers might be identified and help solve the murders. The plot is truly labyrinthine and involves the highest levels of government interfering in Chan's investigation. Absolutely no character is all good or all bad, although you would never want to cross paths with most of them. They are driven by history and greed and hopeless passions. Like Bangkok 8, this is not for the faint of heart but an absolutely engrossing thriller, with complex characters and atmospheric settings.

Metzger's Dog is delightful

Yet another recommendation from Nancy Pearl, this book is delightfully quirky. It opens when Chinese Gordon is awakened by thieves breaking into his shop, downstairs from his living quarters. He has no weapons at hand so he takes desperate measures, although he knows there will be consequences. As the thieves move into the room and underneath the landing where he is hiding, Chinese drops his cat on the head of one of the thieves. The screams of surprise and distress-- by all parties involved-- convinces the thieves to depart in a hurry. Doctor Henry Metzger, by the way, is the cat and the dog in question is basically a junkyard brute trained to maim and kill. How he comes into Chinese's life and become the property of Doctor Henry Metzger you'll have to find out for yourself. Chinese, his woman friend Margaret and a couple of his equally unredeemed buddies stumble into the middle of a CIA plot and decide to blackmail the organization for 10 million dollars. They cleverly manage to play most of the bad guys against each other, shut down all the freeways in Los Angeles and get away with their ill-gotten gains, and you'll find yourself rooting for them the whole time. Perry, btw is the author of The Butcher's Boy, but it's been so long since I read it, I may have to add it to the pile beside my bed.

Guy Gavriel Kay still a favorite

Ever since Nancy Pearl turned me on to The Lions of Al-Rassan (see earlier post), I've had a niggling desire to read more of Kay's work and my last trip to Portland and Powell's bookstore offered an opportunity to do just that. The Last Light of the Sun is set in the same world with the same two moons but shifted considerably north and focused on relations between several groups that parallel the Norse, the Anglo-Saxons, and the Celts. Very engrossing story-telling, richly detailed creation of time and place with interesting characters and bits of magic. Faeries take on a vital role and interact with humans in surprising ways in this tale. The rise of a strong English king has put a crimp in the heretofore unimpeded raids from Vikings. Tribes within England have reached uneasy truces, which some seek to cement with politic marriages. The main characters are predominantly a new generation, the sons and daughters of the kings and leaders who waged wars. An interesting twist is offered through side tales of people whose lives intersect those of the main characters, e.g., the miller or a shepherd girl tending her goats. Althogh women are portrayed as resourceful, independent and intelligent, they do not carry the story in the same way they did in Lions. Nevertheless, an excellent read which encourages me to read more of Kay.

Bangkok 8 -- Take a walk on the wild side

This book first wandered across my field of vision at a recent library instruction conference when we created a small virtual library for an interactive experience with books. I assumed someone chose to include the book because it was obviously about the sex trade and--well--the conference was in Las Vegas. But THEN, Nancy Pearl reviewed it and that really got my attention, so I decided to see for myself (she is one of my library heroines but we don't always see eye to eye on books, see for example the blog on Dingley Falls). It's really an engrossing read, not least of all because you get the nitty gritty on how a M2F sex change operation is performed. It is, at heart, a murder mystery--but one infused with, I trust, the culture of Thailand, or, more specifically, Bangkok. What we farang westerners would call magical thinking abounds as the protagonist is able to see people's past lives as explanations for their current behaviors and relationships. Sonchai Jitpleecheep is the son of a former prostitute and an unknown American soldier, conceived during our involvement in VietNam. He lives in a self-described hovel less than 10 feet square with a hole in the floor for a toilet. He is also a detective with the Royal Thai Police Force, but has made the mistake of becoming known as an arhat, an honest cop. This is an incredibly twisty plot that starts with the gruesome and imaginative murder (by snake bites) of a Marine who was way more than he seemed. There are unfortunate consequences of the murder that make Sonchai take a very personal interest in finding the killer. Icing on the cake-- Sonchai's frequent musings on his Buddhist beliefs and his explanations of Thai cultural essence, often told with biting humor. A couple of my favorite examples: when he is trying to explain the significance of his mother cursing the man who stabbed him, Sonchai concludes, "You will not make a good death is a power curse; it makes Fuck you sound like a benediction." At another point he relays a news report on the radio that says ghouls, the spirits of the dead, are causing traffic accidents at a busy intersection. Sonchai wryly notes that his people, in death as in life, "love to party."

Mostly fluffy stuff

Maybe because the books I've been reading to review are SO heavy--lots of non-fiction, self-help, etc.-- I'm doing a bit more escapist reading these days. I listened to another YA fantasy book, a classic set in Wales with ties to Arthurian legend called The Grey King by Susan Cooper. A 10-year old English boy is actually the last of the "Old Ones" who has been called on for a quest to stop the dark machinations of the Grey King. The reader, Richard Mitchley, did an excellent job with the snippets of Welsh dialog and place names.
I also persisted to the end with Coyote Blue by Christopher Moore -- it was a slow starter and I didn't really like it to begin with, but I've enjoyed a couple of his other vampire books (see earlier reviews in this blog), so I kept at it and in the end it was a nice love story with the usual Moore insanity of characters, plot and the supernatural driving it all. This time the supernatural characters center around Native American lore and the tale of the Coyote trickster.
Last but not least this week was the 14th installment of the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, Fearless Fourteen, which was a birthday gift from my friend and colleague, Dale. As always, there were laugh out-loud moments and Grandma Mazur is up to her usual tricks--this time getting immersed in online gaming, complete with black leather outfits. I don't think any cars got blown up this time around though and the interactions with Ranger were decidedly less heated, although still filled with innuendo. Not her best effort but still a fun read.
I'm on to more substantial fare, Bangkok 8, thanks to a recent set of reviews by my reading guru, Nancy Pearl.

More good vampire reads

You simply cannot be involved with anything involving young adult (YA) literature and NOT have heard all the kerfuffle about Stephenie Meyer's vampire series. So I took the plunge and listened to the first of the 4 books in the series to be told from Bella Swan's point of view. Twilight-- as well as its two sequels (New Moon and Eclipse)-- have all been on the young adult section of the NYT bestseller list. The fourth book, Breaking Dawn, is due for release in the U.S. on August 2. There's a movie version of Twilight forthcoming. So now you know at least as much as I did when I decided to check this out. Bella Swan is 17 and has just moved to Forks, WA to live with her dad, Charlie, who just happens to be the police chief in town. She has resided up to this point with her mother in Phoenix and isn't at all happy about moving to the gray, soggy, cold Olympic peninsula, but she's trying to give her mom and new step-dad some room to get their life together. Bella is a klutz. She falls down walking on a flat surface, which makes sports, dancing, etc. totally out of the question. She's never had a boyfriend. Now, however, every boy in the high school seems to want her for a girlfriend and she's not really interested. Instead she is fascinated by Edward Cullen who sits in the cafeteria with his three siblings--all adopted children of the local surgeon Carlisle Cullen. The Cullens don't mix with anyone. They are beautiful, graceful, and apparently rich--everything Bella considers herself not to be. Edward seems initially to have taken an intense and puzzling dislike to Bella and disappears from school for several days after an abortive attempt to transfer out of biology class where he is her lab partner. Predictably they fall in love with each other, which is a real problem because Edward is--of course--a vampire. Meyer does insert some interesting twists in the body of myth about vampires. For example, they can't go out in the sun because they....glitter?! Also, all vampires are not created equal, nor do they evolve similarly. The Cullens strive to be 'good' vampires, but you can be sure that some bad ones show up. In short, it was a treat. I got so engrossed that I stayed up til the wee hours on a Friday night so I could listen to the rest of the book once I got about halfway into it. You can be sure that as soon as the pile of review books is cleared from my desk, I'll be back for the rest. Oh, and I'm ahead of you in the Netflix queue to get the movie :-)

Fluffy Romances

Stop now if you only read serious literature. But then if that were the case, you probably wouldn't be reading this blog at all, right? While I do draw the line at reading books where the covers depict a partially clothed women in the passionate embrace of some ridiculously pretty man, I still go for the occasional comic romance. Admittedly these don't have any particularly enduring literary value, nor do they stretch one's brain while trying to figure out a complicated plot, and they probably won't totally absorb you in the elegant use of prose, yet they are often good fun and offer some non-demanding downtime. Janet Evanovich's pre-Stephanie Plum novels are fairly entertaining examples of this genre, especially because her female protagonists tend to be mouthy and opinionated --yeah I know it's hard to imagine why THAT would appeal to me. The latest bit of confection I consumed was Wife for Hire which involves 27-year old school teacher, Maggie Toone, who wants to take a break from her job long enough to write a book based on the diaries of her Aunt Kitty, who was a madam. The part-time job she takes is to be a fake wife for an apple farmer in Vermont, Hank Mallone, who is trying to create a responsible enough image to get a bank loan for a new cider press. Complications abound. For example, the bank president happens to be Hank's father. Both Maggie and Hank have interfering family members who still think they are the headstrong and troublesome youngsters of years past. Hank's dog chases Maggie's cat. Hank's best friend stops by for breakfast way too often. Then there are all Hank's old girlfriends who think nothing of dropping in for dinner at the farmhouse. Finally, there is a totally unprecedented rash of attempted break-ins at the farm after Maggie comes to stay--could they possibly be after Aunt Kitty's diaries? Of course Maggie and Hank fall for each other; with Hank being quicker to acknowledge this while Maggie is absolutely determined NOT to give in to her historically unreliable passions. The wacky characters and plots twists presage the more well-developed family nutcases and predictably insane personal catastrophes in the Stephanie Plum numbered series that still make me laugh out loud.

Psychological Mysteries

The best mysteries, for my taste, involve not just a well-conceived and conveyed plot, but an examination of the psyche of the characters involved. Sometimes the focus is more in the mind of the killer, sometimes more in the tortured soul (don't forget soul and mind have common etymological roots) of the investigator. Blood Memory by Greg Iles is definitely in the latter category as the protagonist's own history becomes credibly interwoven with solving a series of bizarre murders in New Orleans. Forensic investigators of all sorts are popular main characters (e.g., Patricia Cornwell's medical examiner, Iris Johansen's forensic sculptor) and Iles' forensic odontologist, Catherine Ferry, is a well-developed and complex woman who finds out that the sexual abuse angle of the murders has some very personal meaning for her. Sexual abuse of children is a much more common crime than most people realize--or want to realize--and its conflicting emotions and outcomes are well drawn here. To his additional credit, Iles follows the text with a plea to hear out and support victims of sexual abuse.

The Lion and the Mouse

If you are at all interested in children's literature, read this article in the New Yorker, "The Lion and the Mouse," brought to my attention by my dear friend Sara. It tells the story of Carroll Anne Moore who made it her goal to create libraries for children and established the Central Children’s Room at the New York Public Library. It effectively set the standard for what a children's library should be. She also promoted borrowing privileges for children, inaugurated the first Children's Book Week, and offered inclusive literature and reading experiences for children of immigrant families. Moore also effectively became the first to legitimize children's literature by writing regular critical reviews in a number of well known publications (e.g., the NY Herald Tribune and The Horn Book) She harassed E.B.White to write his first children's book, Stuart Little, and then panned it. Fascinating story!

Italian mysteries

I discovered a new mystery series by Italian author Andrea Camilleri recently when I read The Patience of the Spider. I love to read mysteries where I also get to learn something about another country, culture or time period. Inspector Montalbano is apparently an aging and rather eccentric but clever member of the constabulary in Sicily who is recovering from recently being shot. In fact he was traumatized psychologically as well as physically and now wakes up in the dark hours of the morning at precisely the same time that he was shot. But occasionally he does his best thinking then. He's trying to solve a puzzling kidnapping...the perpetrators have taken a young woman whose immediate family is virtually penniless. Then it turns out that her uncle is rich and he is the real target of the ransom demands and of a campaign to destroy his reputation and his potential candidacy for political office. The side stories about Inspector Montalbano's tempestuous love life, his love of good food, and the Sicilian countryside all make this an enjoyable if somewhat lightweight read. I love Italian food, too.

I've read some other good mysteries set in Italy that I would recommend. The early works by Iain Pears (e.g., The Raphael Affair, The Titian Committee), before he got into writing more substantial historical mysteries (An Instance of the Fingerpost, The Dream of Scipio), center around a couple of art theft investigators (Flavia di Stefano of the Italian National Art Theft Squad, and consulting British art historian Jonathan Argyll) operating out of Rome. Because Pears is in fact trained as an art historian, these are also chock full of factual information as well as local color.

Vampires with an historical twist

By now, probably everyone but me has already read and reviewed The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I like some vampire books and I usually like historical novels, so when my sister gave this to me, it moved to the top of the reading pile (well, except for the books I was supposed to review for the children's literature database:-) Although set in the 20th century, this novel is all about delving into the history of eastern Europe and Turkey in the 15th century. The plot is driven by the appearance of apparently very old books with no text, but only a compelling woodcut image of a dragon with the word Drakulya underneath. Are the books delivered as an invitation or a warning or perhaps both? Is the image really a map that indicates where the real Dracula is/was buried? The mysterious volumes invite investigation into the life of Vlad Tepes (aka Dracula) who supposedly ruled an area of eastern Europe around current day Romania in the 1400's. He was at war with the Turks but was expansive in his legendary cruelty and both his own subjects and the enemy were recipients of grisly tortures. It's a fascinating insight into how historical scholarship might be pursued--through interviews, primary source documents, local folklore and songs, connections with other scholars. The problem is that those pursuing the inquiries, or more often those close to them, seem to keep dying or disappearing or worse. And just when you think things have finally been resolved (and it is a long book), Kostova twists your tail/tale and you have to start looking over your shoulder all over again.
p.s. While hunting down an image for this post, I ran a whole website devoted to books on vampires, so if this just whets your appetite for more, check it out.

In the Wind

It's just not fair to run across someone so talented in multiple arenas. The author of this book, Barbara Fister, just happens to be a librarian I admire greatly for her passionate participation in discussions about libraries, about fostering collaboration between librarians and other disciplinary faculty, about how to best teach college students and much more. And now I discover she writes really good stories as well. I'm sure the comparisons between her work and that of Sara Paretsky abound: they both have a former cop, now private investigator as the protagonist, both are set in Chicago and convey realistically the good and the bad of that city, both tackle thorny social issues. In the Wind is sort of a cold case mystery, since the woman that Anni Koskinen is trying to help is accused of murdering an FBI agent 30 years ago. There's a lot going on in this story--white supremacists, former members of the American Indian Movement, the socially disenfranchised under our very noses. But at its core, this is about the current incursions on our civil liberties that are reminiscent of earlier and equally bad episodes in our history when Americans were spied upon and persecuted, largely because their beliefs and behaviors weren't convenient for the Executive powers.

Was Kant a serial killer?

Or maybe he wasn't the actual killer, but had just created one? Somehow this premise of Critique of Criminal Reason by Michael Gregorio just stretched me the wrong way, so even though I had read several positive reviews (Booklist, Washington Post, & Publishers Weekly) the book has not inspired me to read additional works. According to Amazon.com, Michael Gregorio is the pen name for two academics, Michael G. Jacob and Daniela De Gregorio. She teaches philosophy, he teaches English (www.michaelgregorio.it or www.michaelgregorio.info). It is certainly a dark and brooding consideration of the limits of rationality in dealing with out-of-limits human behavior. Set in early 19th c Konigsberg on the eve of Napolean's threatened invasion, paranoia about spies is intense, the weather is brutally cold, and someone is killing ordinary citizens without appearing to leave a trace of how it was done--leading some to suspect supernatural forces. Immanuel Kant recruits a young protege to investigate the murders and passes along the strategies which would later inform forensic investigations.

On the bright side, I read a young adult book by Neal Shusterman called Unwind, which I can recommend. This is set in a future century, following the Second Civil War, when a compromise has been reached by the pro-life and pro-choice factions. From "The Bill of Life":

• ...human life may not be touched from the moment of conception until a child reaches the age of thirteen.
• However, between the ages of thirteen and eighteen, a parent may choose to retroactively "abort" a child...
• ...on the condition that the child's life doesn't "technically" end.
• The process by which a child is both terminated and yet kept alive is called "unwinding."

Unwinding is a euphemism for disseminating all their body parts to those needing replacements, somewhat reminiscent of Nancy Farmer's story House of the Scorpion. The protagonists of this tale don't agree with the parents and state home authorities that they should be unwound and so escape, at least temporarily, via a system somewhat like the earlier underground railroad, to a safe haven in the Arizona desert. It's an interesting speculation on how far people can go to rationalize irrational behavior. The main characters, two boys and a girl, are well-developed, flawed as you would expect of children in such a situation, and yet remarkably resilient. I defnitely will find more of Shusterman's books to read.

I've moved and so...

...my reading has been on a bit of a hiatus. Whenever I get really stressed with too much too do--like pack and move my household from one state to another, or start a new job--it seems my reading takes a break. It shouldn't I know, but in some ways, it reaffirms for me that when I read, I exert more mental energy than when I watch TV. And I have a bit of catching up to do with books I need to review for various folks so that has to take some precedence over leisure reading. I did try reading Beautiful Children while involved in moving since my new job and abode are in Las Vegas. But it was quite grim, at least in the part I got to, so I had to take a break. However I'm still alive and kicking and will be back to it soon, especially since I read some intriguing book reviews and have already ordered a book through interlibrary loan :-)

Reading the YA award winners

Hard to believe it's been a month since I last posted notes on my reading. In my defense, I am in the process of moving to a new job and a new state, so I've been a little pre-occupied with trying to finish up projects at work and home. But we recently got in a batch of young adult books that have won awards so I dipped in and here's what I came up with.

The Michael Printz Award is sponsored by a publication of the American Library Association (Booklist) and intended to exemplify “literary excellence in young adult literature” (ALA YALSA website). This year’s winner is The White Darkness by Geraldine McCaughrean, the first ever 3-time winner of the Whitbread Children’s Book Award (now Costa Book Awards) and a previous Carnegie medal winner—in other words, this woman knows how to write YA books! Here’s an excerpt from page 1: “I have been in love with Titus Oates for quite a while now—which is ridiculous, since he's been dead for ninety years. But look at it this way. In ninety years I'll be dead, too, and the age difference won't matter.” And this from the book jacket will give you the basic storyline: “Sym is not your average teenage girl. She is obsessed with the Antarctic and the brave, romantic figure of Captain Oates from Scott's doomed expedition to the South Pole. In fact, Oates is the secret confidant to whom she spills all her hopes and fears. But Sym's uncle Victor is even more obsessed—and when he takes her on a dream trip into the bleak Antarctic wilderness, it turns into a nightmarish struggle for survival that will challenge everything she knows and loves.” Symone is a resourceful and tough 14-year old who will engage male as well as female readers, not least of all because she has struggled with being bullied for her hearing loss, and had to live in recent years without a dad. This is an incredibly intense survival story that so compellingly conveys the harsh reality of this frozen wilderness that you will relish anew being in a safe warm place when you read it.

Last year’s Printz winner and the first graphic novel to be a finalist for the National Book Award is American Born Chinese by former comic book creator Gene Luen Yang. I am new to graphic novels—The invention of Hugo Cabret being my first (see earlier blog). This book is largely about the impact of discrimination against ‘the other’ on the sense of self. There are 3 apparently separate story lines that all come together in the end. Each character, the monkey king of Chinese legend and two teenage boys, wants desperately to be something other than what he is—to transform himself. The moral of the story is that it’s best to accept and be who you are, and I have to say that I found it a bit simplistic and heavy handed on that score. Perhaps the format also limits how deeply one can explore the very real prejudices faced by those in non-dominant cultures.

I’d heard a lot of positive raves about The Wednesday Wars by Gary Schmidt on the YA listserv I monitor. It was an Honor book for the Newbery Award, and, of this batch, it was my favorite. Above and beyond being stuck with a name like Holling Hoodhood, our seventh grade protagonist is the only non-Jew and non-Catholic in his class. This means he is stuck with his teacher, Mrs. Baker, on Wednesday afternoons when his classmates all disappear for religious instruction at their various places of worship. Initially she tries to get him transferred back to 6^th grade math class, then she consigns Holling to cleaning not only the blackboards and erasers in her room, but in every other 7^th grade classroom—the story is set in 1967 so they still have chalk and blackboards. Eventually her “torture” settles on making him read Shakespeare, and Holling discovers he likes the stories so much that he takes a role in a local theatre production of “The Tempest.” Schmidt brilliantly captures the angst of being a teen, being the son of an aggressively ambitious father, being the brother of an older sister who is opposing the war in Vietnam, and being at the top of the hit list for the local school bully.

By far the winner in the “heavy book category” is Brave Story by Miyuki Miyabe, which also won the Batchelder Award (given to the publisher of a book originally published in another language and translated into English). Weighing in at 816 pages, I doubt I am the first reader to think it is too long. It’s a fantasy adventure about a 12 year boy who passes through a temporary portal into an alternative world, Vision, which is created by the cumulative imaginings of people in this one, the real world. Again this tale struck me as a bit simplistic morally; our protagonist Waturu is more considerate of others instead of being totally selfish, and so achieves the ultimate prize in the end. The fantastic creatures he encounters and befriends in Vision range from a Barney-like giant lizard to a seductive cat girl. Still it is commendable that the protagonist gradually and believably comes to act and see himself as more brave and competent than he did before his series of adventures, and so can serve as an engaging and worthy role model for young boys.

The Serpent's Tale

I had my name on the list at the public library--awaiting the sequel to Ariana Franklin's Mistress of the Art of Death (see my earlier blog post on that) and it finally came last week. I devoured it in the way that true bibliophiles do--ignoring social conventions of conversation, participation in meal preparation, etc. Well worth the wait! Our medieval forensic doctor, Adelia Aguilar, is called back into service by King Henry II from her retirement to country life in the fens of central England. Henry's favorite mistress has been poisoned; all the obvious clues lead to Henry's disgruntled Queen. If Queen Eleanor is truly guilty, civil war is seemingly inevitable and Henry doesn't want that, so Adelia must determine the true identity of mistress Rosalind's assassin. Adelia is also reunited in this book with Rowley Picot, her former lover and father of her baby daughter; he is now Bishop of St. Albans and their relationship is very complex and totally understandable given their individual dispositions. Franklin is the pen name for Diana Norman, who has written a handful of other historical novels, many of them also set in the middle ages , and she has become quite well known for the accuracy of her historical research and richness of characters. All of this plus the challenge of finding the killer(s) makes for an absolutely engrossing read. I love learning about a country, a culture, a time period-- through literature, especially when it is well researched and palatably written. These remind me of Candace Robb's mysteries with another strong woman protagonist who works as an herbalist in medieval England. Other authors using similar time period and settings are Sharon Penman and Edith Pargeter (aka Ellis Peters) of Brother Cadfael fame. Of course I loved the BBC series with Derek Jacoby playing Cadfael. Anyway, this book is an absolutely delicious diversion so hide yourself away for a weekend and dive in.

Your choice of young heroines

Really I am stretched to think how the books I most recently read can be compared; they probably shouldn't be. They have young adult female protagonists, but that's about the extent of shared ground. So suffice it to say that they represent some of the variety of what I consume in a any given time period. The most dazzling by far is Special Topics in Calamity Physics, told from the POV of Blue vanMeer, now a freshman at Harvard, as she briefly recounts her early years in the company of her itinerant and professorial father, and then focuses on her final year in high school. Ordinary mortals like me will occasionally find it tough going to wade through the endless footnotes and citations comparing every person, place and experience to some bug, animal, book or movie. There is a complex mystery to be explored--surrounding the death (murder or suicide?) of the film teacher, Hannah Schneider (or is she?). Blue seems a decent sort in spite of everything and especially in contrast the her school peers who epitomize everything that is wrong with "the younger generation." I would never read this book again and someone would have to really twist my arm to make me read anything else this person subsequently writes--this is Marisha Pessl's first novel. That being said, it is--on occasion--bitingly funny, and brilliantly literate. Other reviewers have been more positive in their regard, for example see the piece in Salon.com.
At the opposite end of the spectrum, there is the totally fluffy (my word for reading that is reasonably entertaining but of little enduring literary value) first novel of Marissa Doyle, Bewitching Season. Our 17-year old protagonists, Persephone and Penelope, are twins and heir to witching talents which are being honed by their governess Melusine Allardyce. Set in early 19th century England, when Victoria is still a princess, they are about to embark on their "coming out" season in London society, which gets really complicated when Ally mysteriously disappears and Persey casts a love spell on the handsome boy next door.
And last but not least off the bookstack this week is How I Saved my Father's Life: And Ruined Everything Else by Ann Hood. The typical YA-type title should alert the reader to the pre-teen POV for the story. Madeline Vandermeer is just barely 11 years old when she accomplishes two miracles: the first is to move a glass of water without touching it and the second is to save her father’s life when he is caught in an avalanche. But now she needs to make a third miracle happen because her father returned to his family only briefly before leaving them for a celebrity life, a new wife, and a baby on the way. Madeline is convinced her mother is to blame for the divorce, because she is so “ordinary,” whereas the new step-mother, is so glamorous. Left in the falling-apart house they can’t afford to remodel, Madeline and her younger brother are weekly subjected to their mother’s culinary experiments which provide the fodder for her food column in Family magazine. Madeline sees her mother’s work as foolish and based on lies, since they are no longer the happy family of her dreams. Worse yet, when her stressed mother takes Madeline out of ballet school in Boston, an hour away, and puts her in a local class, she sees her chances of becoming a world class ballerina slipping away. Then Family magazine offers to send the family on an all-expense-paid trip to Italy so mom can write about the joys of travelling with children. While there, Madeline, initially interested only in visiting reliquaries of various saints, has some perception altering revelations of her own. This is a great book to offer tweens and teens facing divorce and new step-families. The young protagonist exhibits all the wretched feelings and behaviors that accompany such significant losses but comes eventually to a balanced view of parents and the hard choices we all make when life isn’t perfect.

Who Done It?

This slang reference for mysteries will take on added significance if you read this twisty tale, What Never Happens, from Scandinavian Anne Holt, set in Oslo, Norway. This is another totally new author for me--but I just got back from ALA with a box and a bag full of advanced reading copies (ARCs) and I was in the mood for a mystery, so I grabbed this one. Apparently Ms. Holt has published an earlier work (variously known as Punishment or What is Mine) starring this pair of detectives, Johanne Vik and Adam Stubo, but now they are married with a brand new baby, significantly impinging on Johanne's ability to work on the case. Johanne has been trained as a profiler by the FBI, although she seems determined to keep that chapter of her life buried; with famous people dying in bizarre and symbolic ways, however, her skills are sorely needed. Holt has come up with an unusual and yet totally logical character for her killer and the ending will just leave you creeped out. This author is compared to Henning Mankell, a Swedish author of detective procedurals, but he is also someone unfamiliar to me. Maybe I need to pursue some of these Scandinavian authors a bit more, although the ones I have read (Giants in the Earth by O.E. Rolvaag, Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Hoeg, some of the books by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo.) are very dark. Must be the climate and the long winters....maybe not the best reading for an Oregon winter, or maybe just perfect!

Go read a good children's book!

If you think you would be wasting your time reading a book written for children or young adults, you're missing some really wonderful experiences. The Golden Compass, my previous post, was written for YA's... I won't even mention "she who shall not be named" and her book/movie mania. Some of my favorite books in the world were written for YA's, like the two by Virginia Euwer Wolff, Make Lemonade and True Believer, or those by Deb Caletti, like Honey, Baby Sweetheart or The Nature of Jade. There are some absolutely brilliant picture books that stun you with their art and move you with their message. Henry's Freedom Box: A True Story from the Underground Railroad, by Ellen Levine and illustrated by Kadir Nelson just won a Caldecott Honor and When Marian Sang, by Pam Munoz Ryan, is illustrated by Brian Selznick who just garnered the Caldecott Medal for his new work, The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Written and illustrated by Selznick, Invention is clearly a labor of love. Weighing in at 530 pages and documented with source material, it can be finished in just a few hours since the creator has capitalized on the burgeoning graphic novel trend and included dozens of full page and double page illustrations. Sometimes, in true GN fashion, the story is conveyed by the B & W illustrations alone. Other times, the plot moves forward with the spare text. Illustrations vary from the vast panorama of a full moon over 1931 Paris, the setting of the story, to the detail of an anxious eye peering out from a hiding place behind the clock on the wall of the train station. You can read reviews about the book in a dozen places such as this collection by Powell's Books.
On a slightly different note, but not really, have a look at this funny/not so funny bit of invention in The Onion about some weird guy who read a whole book, under no apparent external pressure or duress, and actually enjoyed it! My friend Sara made me put this on my blog, probably because I rant so much to her and anyone who stands still long enough about how important reading is, but I must give credit to my colleague Loretta for pointing this one out to me.

The Golden Compass

Well, what a lot of kerfuffle about a book being made into a movie. After reading this article in The Atlantic ("How Hollywood Saved God") and talking with my sis-in-law, I think the controversy about religion and anti-religion was a cover up for the real issue, sexuality. And we know that we don't talk about sexuality in this culture. So better to try and worry about whether the movie will turn people from the one true path... You DO already know I am opposed at the core of my being to organized religion so admittedly I am not a sympathetic audience to the would-be censors of movie and books. I actually went to see The Golden Compass movie and then came home and re-read the book--all in one day. Whew! I was really trying to pay attention and I just don't get why people are so upset. But anway, what I found more interesting and what also generated more conversation with S-I-L Joan was the way the characters were simplified in the translation from text to screen. Not surprising in some ways; after all, books are very hard to translate in all their subtlety. But just to take a couple of examples of relatively minor characters. In the book, it is the Master of Jordan College who tries to poison Lord Asriel, not the Magisterium. So he is a more conflicted being than we see in the movie where he is uniformly on the side of the good guys/gals. Late in the book we witness a conversation between Lee Scoresby and the witch Serafina Pekkala where he indicates, in the gentlest way, that he would really like to get paid for this work he is doing to help the good guys/gals because he is after all a businessman and is saving for retirement. Well that is not the portrayal in the movie where we are led to believe that he jumps in to help Iorek and Lyra at risk of life and limb just out of the goodness of his heart and pure friendship. So we started conjecturing about the possible relationship between these visual interpretations that presented people and issues in, shall we say, fewer shades of gray, and the propensity of our society (as witnessed by electing "you know who" twice) to view issues as black or white. Which is the chicken and which the egg? Is this part of what we lose as we move away from a culture that reads? Of course it's not that simple as my colleague Anne-Marie points out in her blog and as the recent article in the New Yorker by Caleb Crain affirms. But it sure makes you wonder.

Vacation Reading

Aahhh! My idea of vacation is reading things that aren't even vaguely work related. So my 12-day vacation to Hawaii and the following holidays allowed me to indulge. I discovered two new authors, both writing Robert Ludlum type spy novels--only with current players (terrorists instead of cold war villains). The first was Greg Rucka, whose Tara Chace works for HMG as a Minder (that's the British secret services euphemism for all-around-clean-up-person for messy situations and occasional assassin). She was apparently born in the graphic novel world in a series called Queen and Country; although I haven't seen/read these, I thoroughly enjoyed the two regular books I read, A Gentleman's Game: A Queen and Country Novel and Private Wars. He also writes a series about a professional bodyguard named Atticus Kodiak and I am just about to finish listening to the first in this series (on tape while I commute) called Keeper--also an interesting enough character that I'll look for more to while away the highway miles.
The other author I got temporarily hooked on is Vince Flynn. It was another one of those serendipitous discoveries while browsing the books on tape at Corvallis public library and I liked it well enough that when I ran across one of his paperbacks on the book exchange shelf at the condo where we were staying, I grabbed it. His professional spook and assassin is Mitch Rapp who works for the CIA. Lots of D.C. political intrigue and plenty of fodder for those who think most of our government is corrupt at so many levels. I consumed (in print or on tape) Act of Treason, Consent to Kill, and Executive Power.
Then I scarfed up an oldy by Martha Grimes, and finally read one of those I felt I needed to read in order to be considered a legimate fan of children's and young adult literature, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. I have been slowly trying to fill in what I perceive to be gaps in my childhood reading--those books that serve as the benchmarks for everything that has come later, such as Charlotte's Web. And finally I re-read The Golden Compass after going to see the movie and started a couple of other books...but I'll save those for a later post.