Sunday Salon: Miscellaneous Fascinations

Thanks to Travis at 100 Scope Notes I now have the first entry on my Christmas wishlist, the T-shirt with this picture on the front from Unshelved:

National Book Award Finalists in the Young People’s Literature category are:

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer

I’ve not read any of these, but two of them, Mockingbird and One Crazy Summer, are nominated in the Middle Grade Fiction category for the Cybils, so I’ll be reading them soon. I’ll let you know what I think. All the nominees for the National Book Awards are here. I’ve read exactly one book on any of the finalist lists, So Much For That by Lionel Shriver, so I can’t say much about what I would choose as a winner in any of the categories. The winners will be announced on November 17th.

Amy needs prayer for the orphanage in Zambia that she and her husband run.

Betsy-Bee: “Pink spines and pink covers always attract me.” (They tend to repel me. I’m anti-pink.)

Drama Daughter is studying theater at the local junior college these days. I have reservations about her being able to reconcile her commitment to Christ with the demands of a career in theater, but if anyone can do it, she’s the one. Determined is that girl. Anyway, here’s an article about actress Patricia Heaton who faces the same tension.

Sunday Salon: Still More Forgotten Treasures And Saturday Suggestions

Sep19

It’s taken me several days to get through all of the posts linked at the Book Blogger Appreciation Week linky for Thursday on Forgotten Treasure, books that were one blogger’s treasure but were ignored, under-appreciated or forgotten by most of the rest of us. I already listed nineteen books that I want to read, gleaned from these Forgotten Treasure posts. Here are the rest of the books that I found that I want to read:

Hands of My Father by Myron Uhlberg is a memoir about a hearing child growing up during the Depression era with deaf parents. It’s recommended by Valerie, hearing-impaired blogger at Life Is a Patchwork Quilt.

I Had Seen Castles by Cynthia Rylant is about an old mans memories of his youth during World War II. I love Rylant’s picture books and easy readers, so I’m intrigued by the thought of reading an adult/young adult book by her. Recommended at DeRaps Reads.

Room by Emma Donaghue. I actually gleaned this one form the Saturday Review. Recommended at Take Me Away.

The Darkest Child by Delores Phillips. Recommended by Janelle at Lit Snit.

The Old Wive’s Tale by Arnold Bennett. A forgotten Victorian classic? I’m in. Recommended by KarenLibrarian.

Lying Awake by Mark Salzman. Someone else recommended this book about a nun who has visions to me, but I didn’t make a note. And I forgot all about it. Recommended at Word Lily.

Confessions of the Sullivan Girls by Natalie Standiford. Reviewed at YA Book Shelf.

Enough. I must stop. I already have enough books on my TBR list to keep me busy from now until my untimely death in about 2050. I’ll be 93 then and still reading, I hope.

To change the subject a bit, Mental Floss has an article you may want to check out if you’re a Tolkien fan like me: 10 Things You Should Know about JRR Tolkien. I guess I knew most of the things already, but it was fun anyway.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in August 2010

Aug29

Adult and Young Adult Fiction:
Shanghai GIrls by Lisa See. Sisters, sisters, there were never such devoted (Chinese) sisters. Semicolon review here.

The Secret Keeper by Paul Harris. Love and loss in war-torn Sierra Leone. Semicolon review here.

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card. Columbus gets a second chance to do right by the native Americans he meets on his historic voyage. Semicolon review here.

Hush by Eishes Chayil. ARC of a YA book that’s due out in September. I’ll have the review posted when the book actually comes out, but suffice it to say that the novel takes a powerful and thought-provoking look at abusive relationships within a closed and secretive religious community. Very well done.

Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson. Scarlett’s family not only name their children for actors and movie characters, but they also own a dilapidated hotel in NYC. However, the hotel’s about to go bust, and Scarlett’s brother, Spencer, can’t get a handle on his acting career. Fluffy, sometimes witty, slightly unbelievable.

Scarlett Fever by Maureen Johnson. More hotel hijinks with Scarlett and family.

Children’s Fiction:
Blood on the RIver: Jamestown 1607 by Elisa Carbone. Karate Kid read this one for school, and then he said he wanted to re-read it. I suppose that’s a recommendation on his part. I thought it was adequate, a good portrayal of the Jamestown experiment and of Captain John Smith.

Nonfiction:
Sparky: The Life and Art of Charles Schulz by Beverly Gherman. Semicolon review here.

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder. Having survived civil war and genocide, Deo Gratias arrives in the U.S., psychologically traumatized and physically destitute. The book tells Deo’s story: how he made a life for himself in the U.S. and how he returned to Burundi to help his people begin to rebuild.

The Mayflower and the Pilgrims’ New World by Nathaniel Philbrick. Fair and compelling, the book will probably offend both Pilgrim fans and Native American advocates. What more could one ask from a retelling of a highly controversial story?

Sunday Salon: Books Read in July, 2010

Aug8

Nonfiction:
River of Doubt: Theodore Rooseveltâ€™s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard. Semicolon review and thoughts about TR here.

Adult fiction:
The Big Steal by Emyl Jenkins.

Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card. Recommended by Seth Heasley at Collateral Bloggage. Semicolon review here.

Young adult and children’s fiction:
Princess of Glass by Jessica Day George. This Cinderella story, published in May 2010, is also a sequel/companion to Princess of the Midnight Ball. I liked it, but I found that after reading and enjoying the book, I didn’t really have much to say about it. Here’s a full review from Charlotte’s Library if you’re interested in re-imagined fairy tales.

They Never Came Back by Caroline B. Cooney.

Cross My Heart and Hope to Spy by Ally Carter. Great book in the Gallagher Girls series.

Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins. Semicolon review here.

Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper. Semicolon review here.

Started, but unfinished:
Good Behavior: A Memoir by Nathan L. Henry. Wa-a-a-a-y to much information about the dark recesses of the mind and violent human behavior.

Run With the Horseman by Ferrol Sams. God writing, somewhat tiresome and crude subject matter.

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love and the Search for Home by Kim Sunee. More thoughts on these three unfinished books here.

The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt. I actually spent quite a bit of time on this one and read more than half of the book, probably three-fourths. However, I finally realized that I didn’t like anyone in the book, and I didn’t believe that that many unsympathetic and unsavory characters could inhabit one small community. Possession was much better.

I’m also slowly reading through Edmund Morris’s Theodore Rex, a biography of the adult Theodore Roosevelt. I will finish it, but it may take a while.

Sunday Salon: Shakespeare and Company

Aug1

We’re back from our annual pilgrimage to Winedale where we saw the University of Texas summer program students perform two plays: Macbeth and Twelfth Night. Twelfth Night was Friday night, and all of the family who were able to go this year enjoyed the comedy together. Twelfth Night is not my favorite play. Malvolio evokes my sympathy as the victim of a cruel practical joke, and I feel uncomfortable laughing at him. I know he’s vain, but other than that his worst fault is that he wants Sir Toby and his drinking buddies to “amend your drunkenness” and settle down. Anyway, everybody makes a fool of himself or herself in Twelfth Night, and the only one who doesn’t get a happy ending is poor, vain Malvolio, who whimpers an empty threat of revenge as the play limps to a close. The student who played Malvolio, by the way, did an excellent job, and therefore made the character even more the central enigma of the play as he engaged my contradictory emotions of ridicule and sympathy.

What other people have said about Twelfth Night:

“The soliloquy of Malvolio is truly comic; he is betrayed to ridicule merely by his pride. The marriage of Olivia, and the succeeding perplexity, though well enough contrived to divert on the stage, wants credibility, and fails to produce the proper instruction required in the drama, as it exhibits no just picture of life.” ~Samuel Johnson.

“Refined minds today are apt to find the trick put upon him as distasteful, his persecution too cruel. Elizabethans enjoyed that sort of thing; we are no better–though our sympathies may well be with him, endeavouring to do his duty and keep some order in the house among the hangers-on, drunks, and wasters.” ~AL. Rowse, Introduction to Twelfth Night.

“Everyone, except the reluctant jester, Feste, is essentially mad without knowing it. When the wretched Malvolio is confined in the dark room for the insane, he ought to be joined there by Orsino, Olivia, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, Maria, Sebastian, Antonio, and even Viola, for the whole ninefold are at least borderline in their behavior.” ~Harold Bloom, Shakespeare, The Invention of the Human.

“It is a wildly improbable, hugely entertaining fantasy. And just beneath the surface are life’s darkest, most terrible truths.” ~Ed Friedlander, Enjoying Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare.

“If this were play’d upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction.” ~Fabian in Twelfth Night.

Macbeth I found the more congenial of the two plays, even though “congenial” is an odd word to use about a play filled with murder, betrayal, and evil witchery. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are thorough-going villains and deserve the end they get. Malvolio’s pride only leads him to be foolish and absurd and pathetically vengeful. Macbeth and his lady screw their (malevolent) courage to the sticking place, literally, and commit bloody, violent murder and then they both go really, truly insane, not just pretend-mad like Malvolio and his tormentors.

I guess I can imagine myself in Malvolio’s place, being made ridiculous by a bunch of practical jokers and by my own stupidity, but the evil deeds of the Macbeth duo are beyond me. So Twelfth Night makes me more uncomfortable than Macbeth, and I can watch Macbeth with a more detached feeling.

The students who played Macbeth and Lady Macbeth gave a chilling and superb performance. I did feel sorry for poor, tormented Macbeth, somewhat against my will, and I was glad to think that I know no Lady Macbeth who would goad her husband to such vile murderous deeds. At least, I don’t think I know anyone quite that far gone.

All in all, our weekend in the country was an enjoyable success. In addition to the plays, I finished two books, Out of my Mind by Sharon M. Draper and Pastwatch by Orson Scott Card, and started a third, Shanghai Girls by Lisa See. I’ll write more about the three books soon, I hope.

If you get a chance to see some Shakespeare this month, or anytime, I highly recommend it.

Sunday Salon: 20 Examples That Feed My Fascinations

Jun26

Last week, I gave you a list of 52 things that fascinate me. This week I’m going to list some specific examples of the stuff that fascinates and gives joy and makes me think.

1. Crayola Monologues: I found this video in a list at First Things.

2. Carol at Magistra Mater recommends five five-star books. Carol’s entire blog is fascinating. She says, “My goal is to make my home a light, a sanctuary, a dwelling filled with the aroma of good things, a place where friends and family can flourish.” Carol reads and writes and makes bread and best of all, she thinks. Lovely.

3. What if the problem of evil isn’t a problem at all? by Christopher Benson at Mere Orthodoxy This brief article speaks to my fascination with God’s providence and with apologetics in general. What if evil in the world provides the only context from which we can talk about the goodness and mercy of God?

4. I already tweeted this link, and probably everyone has seen it. But since I am a fan of all things Lewisian, here’s a link to the first trailer for the new Narnia movie, due out in December, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. If they don’t showcase the meaning of Eustace’s dragon transformation and his healing, I’m out of patience with these movie interpreters of Lewis’s wonderful stories.

5. Carrie hosts The Chronicles of Narnia Reading Challenge at Reading to Know. This challenge supports my love of all things Lewisian.

6. Brenda at Coffee, Tea, Books, and Me shares her list of things she loves, a Bliss List. She loves Celtic Women, and John Denver and teacups and reading on rainy days. So do I.

7. Some others are calling their similar lists Book Hooks, a list of things, people, places, ideas that catch their interest and make them want to read more.
Word Lily likes books about spies and detectives, other cultures and languages, and convents/cloistered life, among other things.
Kim at Sophisticated Dorkiness likes reimagined fairy tales and multiple narrators.
Ms Bookish has 20 hooks that will make her pick up a book, including bookstores and “a Cinderella angle.”
Stella Matutina loves New Orleans and the French Revolution.
Melissa at Book Nut: A few things that fascinate me.
Carol’s fascination list at Magistramater includes clerical life, conversions, and names. Me, too.
Do you have a list of fascinations, or book hooks, or a bliss list? Please share.

8. Heidi at SImple Homeschool lists picture books that take you around the world. I love exploring other cultures and places, and I like picture books. I’m working on a sequel to Picture Book Preschool, called Picture Book Around the World. I keep collecting titles, but I’m not finding the persistence and self-discipline to finish this project. Anyone want to give me a kick in the pants? Or more suggestions for picture books that explore other lands?

9. The 2010 Bad Poetry Contest at Chip’s Blog. These are some seriously BAD poems. I don’t know how the judges managed to choose the worst of the worst.

10. To feed my Shakespearean muse (and to get the bad poetry taste off of my palate), I turn to this brand new version of Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart.

11. “Mpower Pictures (“The Stoning of Soraya M.”) and Beloved Pictures are teaming to co-produce C.S. Lewis’ fantasy novel The Great Divorce. Veteran producer and Mpower CEO Steve McEveety will lead the production team. Childrens’ book author N.D. Wilson (Leepike Ridge, 100 Cupboards) is attached to write.” I told you I’m a C.S. Lewis fan, and I’m rather impressed with Mr. Wilson’s oeuvre so far, too.

12. This project ties in to my love of community and outside-the-box, but I have practical questions. Doesn’t it ever rain in New York? How can pianos stay outside in the weather and remain playable?

13. Hmmmm. My teens watch Glee, and I’m wondering how this new character for next season will work out. Probably very badly, but we’ll hope for the best.

14. Speaking of love, courtship and marriage, there’s an op-ed in Newsweek (June 11, 2010) about how marriage is outdated and unnecessary. Albert Mohler comments on this idea from a Christian perspective. Could it be that instead of gay “marriage” what we’ll eventually evolve to is no marriage for anyone other than Christians who still in their dinosauric way see the value and sanctity of such a union?

15. Mockingbird by Katharine Erskine. Small World says: “If you liked the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, you will love Mockingbird.”

16. Prepare to Die: A Princess Bride quiz by David K. Israel.

17. I could have used this advice about making a youtube video embed show up as a simple audio file last year when I was counting down the hymns. Some of the video is annoying or unnecessary.

18. Tim Hawkins: I Don’t Drink Beer. Someone asked The Headmistress what she thought about drinking alcohol, and then later I saw a video by Christian comedian Tim Hawkins. This song explains exactly why I don’t drink beer, right down to the nauseous.

19. Your Book as a Database by Chris Kubica. I’m not sure I understand completely, but it’s definitely mind-expanding.

20. “Social science may suggest that kids drain their parents’ happiness, but there’s evidence that good parenting is less work and more fun than people think. Bryan Caplan makes the case for having more children.” The economic and long term benefits of having more children.

Sunday Salon: 52 Things That Fascinate Me

Jun20

Colleen at Chasing Ray wrote this post about the the places, people, and ideas that fascinate her and infuse her writing. She got the idea, in turn, from this post on writing by author Kelly Link.

What I decided to do was to sit down and, very quickly, make a list of things that I most liked in other people’s fiction — these could be thematic, character driven, very general or very specific. I found that when I started this list, it began to incorporate ideas and items which I was inventing as I went along.

I like this sort of exercise, even though I’m not an author, maybe a writer, but not an author. Anyway, these are the themes and things that fascinate me:

1. Community. Communities. How a subculture develops around a shared interest like bicycling or collecting butterflies or playing Scrabble (Word Freak by Stefan Fatsis) or any other random interest. How those communities work and how they coalesce. What the rules are. How they resolve conflict.

2. Education, particularly homeschooling and education/growing up outside the box. Educational freedom and the limits to that freedom. Unschooling.

3. Insanity, mental illness, and mental differences and disabilities. Everything from schizophrenia to autism to deafness and blindness and how those affect perceptions and ideas. Where do we draw the line between insanity and eccentricity? How does blindness affect the way a person thinks about the world?

4. Religious cults and religions other than Christianity. How do these groups answer the Big Questions of life?

5. Eccentric people, collectors, people who live outside the box. How and why do they do it?

6. Old houses full of old stuff.

7. The Civil War. Not so much the war as the time period and the rationalizations and reasons people gave for their actions. The relationships between masters and slaves. The ambivalence in the North about black people in general and especially enslaved black people.

8. Historical Christianity: Celtic Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy, Nestorians, Coptic Christians, other groups that developed their own cultures around the message of Jesus Christ.

9. Idealism. Don Quixote tilting at windmills and dreaming the impossible dream.

10. Broken relationships. Scarlet and Rhett. Arthur and Guinevere. Can broken relationships be mended? How? How well? Will the cracks always show? Do we need to be broken to be rebuilt into something stronger and more lasting?

11. Wordplay. For example, Alice in Wonderland or the novels of P.G. Wodehouse. I wish I could write like Lewis Carroll or like Wodehouse or even Norton Juster (The Phantom Tollbooth).

12. Anorexia, cutting, alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, self-destructive tendencies in general. This one may not be a very healthy fascination, but it goes back to #3. How do people go “off track,” and how do they return? Where is the line between healthy and unhealthy, between repression, balance, and dissolution, between normal and abnormal?

13. Secret passageways. Secret rooms. Hidden or isolated cottages. Hermits. Aloneness.

14. Small town communities and cloistered communities. Again back to the community. How does a community form? How does it sustain itself? What happens when there are conflicts and broken relationships within the community?

15. Genius. Intelligence. What is intelligence? What can it do, and what are its limits? The Wise Fool.

16. Con artists and liars. A long, elaborate con. Ethical dilemmas like when is it wrong to tell the truth? Is it OK to lie when the Nazis ask if you have Jews hidden in your house? Isn’t a murder mystery the unravelling of an intricate con game? The Great Imposter.

17. Old photographs.

18. Names and naming. What names mean. The origins of certain names. What naming someone does for that person. Nicknames.

19. Biblical allusions.

20. Shakespeare. Not the man so much because we don’t really know that much about him. Bit I’m fascinated by the plays themselves, what they mean, the characters, the relationships, the words Shakespeare used, the intricate design of the plots.

21. Alternate societies and worlds. (Going back to #1) How a world works, what the rules are, what’s different from our society, how one constructs a Narnia or Lilliput or Middle Earth.

22. Aphorisms. How they contain meaning, how they become cliches, how to restate old cliches and give them new meaning.

23. Sports, particularly baseball but other sports too, used as a metaphor for life.

24. Prodigals and how they return home. What makes them come back? How does a person repent?

25. Medieval and Renaissance British history. This interest could be extended to Europe as a whole, but mostly I’m an Anglophile.

26. King Arthur. Knights. Chivalry.

27. Byzantium. Constantinople. Eastern Orthodox Christianity.

28. Autumn is much more interesting than any other season.

29. Race and racial tension. Not so much white people versus black people, but what causes racial divides in the first place. What makes us decide that some people who look a certain way or have a certain ethnic heritage are so different as to be non-human? How do we reconcile ethnic and racial groups who despise one another? How can we see our own prejudices?

30. Matchmaking. How a couple comes together and how they stay together. Not so much romance, but rather the rules and mechanics of how two people are bound together in marriage. How does this cultural community do wedding? Courtship. Arranged marriage. Polygamy. Monogamy.

31. Behind the scenes at any large organization or business or collective. How did the business get started? How does it work? What are they doing back there where we can’t see? Nonfiction books such as Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder or even The Way Things Work by David Macaulay. Fiction books like Hotel by Arthur Hailey or
Runaway Jury by John Grisham.

32. Communication. How babies and young children learn to talk and communicate. Helen Keller and other children with disabilities that interfere with their ability to communicate. How to overcome those disabilities.

33. Twins and triplets. I used to read a very old series of books from my library when I was a beginning reader about twins from different countries: The Dutch Twins, The French Twins, the Chinese Twins, etc.

34. Utopian communities. Dystopian cultures. How this works. What’s wrong in the dystopian community, and how do the characters in the book know it’s wrong if it’s all they’ve ever known?

35. Inventors and inventions. How do they think of such things as bicycles and butterfly bandages?

36. Obsessions and obsessive people. OCD. Monk.

37. Dreams and sleep. What really happens to us when we sleep? How is sleep different from losing consciousness or passing out? Why do we dream? What do dreams really mean?

38. Homemaking. How homemaking can be artistic and a service to those who live in the home. The Hidden Art of Homemaking by Edith Schaeffer.

39. Plagues. Holocausts. The end of the world. How will it end? With a bang or a whimper?

40. Teddy Roosevelt. Not Franklin, just Teddy.

41. Genealogy. Family history, especially my family history, but others, too, if they have stories to tell.

42. Winston Churchill.

43. Historical mysteries. What ever happened to Ambrose Bierce? Why did Agatha Christie disappear for a week while half of England searched for her? Who was Jack the Ripper?

44. People who do weird, uninhibited things like dance in the supermarket or paint their house dark purple with yellow flowers. I want to paint my front door red, and I want fire engine red counter tops in my kitchen.

45. C.S. Lewis.

46. Gender roles. How are men and women different? How are they the same?

47. The time period between World War I and World War II.

48. Secrets and hidden meanings. Puzzles. Word games. Codes and ciphers.

49. Adoption. Adoption across racial and ethnic lines. Cross-cultural adoption.

50. Artifacts from the 1930’s. Ball canning jars. Cigar boxes. Dial telephones. Old radios.

51. Word origins. Languages. Dead languages and how they died out.

52. Lists and list making.

I’m probably forgetting something that interests me very much, but these are some of my own obsessions. What are yours?

Sunday Salon: Gleaned from the Saturday Review

Jun13

Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder. Recommended by Ruth at There Is No Such Place as a God-forsaken Town. I like Tracy Kidder. I read Soul of a New Machine a long time ago and thought it was some of the best nonfiction I’d ever read. I can also recommend House, the story of a couple who supervise the building of their own house, and Among Schoolchildren, a chronicle of a school year in a fifth grade classroom. Last year I read Mountains Beyond Mountains, a look at the work of American philanthropist Paul Farmer in Haiti and other places, fighting tuberculosis and poverty.

Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard Logan, PhD, and Tere Duperrault Fassbender. Recommended by Heather at Age 30+ . . . A Lifetime of Books. A true survival story with some kind of mysterious twist (Heather didn’t give it away). I wanted to read this one as soon as I read Heather’s review.

Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier. Also recommended by Heather. Watch the book trailer featuring author Tracy Chevalier. The book sounds fascinating.

Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart. Recommended by Carrie at 5 MInutes for Books. Carrie is a trusted source, and if she gives it such a high commendation . . . this memoir must be good.

The Wife’s Tale by Lori Lansens. Recommended at Whimpulsive. I like the premise here: a massively overweight woman manages to leave home and find herself beneath the layers of physical weight and emotional pain.

Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. Recommended by Sarah at Library Hospital. Sarah says the book is nothing like the movie, although both are good. I’m intrigued.

Mrs. Tim Carries On (Leaves from the Diary of an Officer’s Wife in the Year 1940) by D. E. (Dorothy Emily) Stevenson. Sarah also mentions this book in her review of Mrs. Miniver. I want to read more books by D.E. Stevenson.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in May, 2010

May30

Children and YA Fiction:
To Come and Go Like Magic by Katie Pickard Fawcett. Semicolon review here.
The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone. Magical miniature rooms in a Chicago museum. Semicolon review here.
The Last Summer of the Death Warriors by Francisco X. Stork (the same author who wrote Marcelo in the Real World). Semicolon review here.
The Batboy by Mike Lupica.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Semicolon review here.
Akimbo and the Elephants by Alexander McCall Smith.
The White Giraffe by Lauren St. John.

Adult Fiction:
Greenmantle by John Buchan. Lots of rather obscure historical references and geographical details and early twentieth century slang, but it’s still a thrilling ride worth persisting.
Trustee from the Toolroom by Nevil Shute. Semicolon review here. Shute also wrote A Town Called Alice and On the Beach.
The Pact by Jodi Piccoult. I decided to give Ms. Piccoult another try, and although this one was much better than the one I read a few months ago, it still had some issues. Piccoult writes problem novels, and in this one the problem is teen suicide. Interspersed thorughout are details about various characters’ sex lives that were vivid and gratuitous. At least, I thought they were gratuitous since I could see no reason that we needed to know. I’m kind of old-fashioned that way: I think sex, even fictional sex, should be private unless it serves some purpose to advance the plot or theme or characterizations in the novel. The book itself was a page turner, and I read to the end to see what would happen. Pay your money and you’ll take your chances.
The Far Country by Nevil Shute. Not as good as Trustee or the other two mentioned above, but it does have some lovely descriptive passages extolling the beauty of the Australian countryside.

Nonfiction:
National Geographic Mysteries of History by Robert Stewart. Basic stuff: Stonehenge, King Arthur, The Hindenburg, etc.
Plan B by Pete Wilson.
Disrupting Grace: A Story of Relinquishment and Healing by Kristen Richburg.
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much by Allison Hoover Bartlett.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in February/March, 2010

Apr11

Young Adult Fiction:
The Maze Runner by James Dashner. Semicolon review here.

How To Say Goodbye In Robot by Natalie Standiford. Quite odd, but sort of fun. This one made the Cybils YA fiction shortlist. If you read it, expect something totally different, like late night conspiracy-theory UFO radio. Review by Melissa at Book Nut.

In the Path of Falling Objects by Andrew Smith. Subtitled “the road trip from hell,” it really is. Not much fun. Two brothers back in the 1960’s find out that hitchhiking is a dangerous way to get to Arizona. I suppose you could use as a cautionary tale, even though it wasn’t meant to be that.

In a Heartbeat by Loretta Ellsworth. YA ARC about a heart transplant recipient and her donor. I’m giving this one to my ice-skating enthusiast friend who doesn’t read. Maybe he will.

Enthusiasm by Polly Shulman. Jane Austen fan-fiction with a present day setting.

Children’s Fiction:
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. Re-read for my Middle School girls’ book club.

Galveston’s Summer of the Storm by Julie Lake. Re-read for my Texas History class at co-op. Semicolon review here.

Winnie’s War by Jenny Moss. Re-read for Texas class.

Or Give Me Death by Ann Rinaldi. Re-read for girls’ book club.

Adult Fiction:
Janice Meredith by Paul Leicester Ford. Bestselling book of 1900. I read this one for the Books of the Century Challenge

SIster Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. Classic tale of a fallen woman who actually ends up with nothing worse than a feeling of vague discomfort with her pointless life.

Best Intentions by Emily Listfield. Sort of a murder mystery/thriller, but it’s really about marriage, and suspicions, and misunderstandings. Good insights into the disintegration of trust in a marriage and how that can happen.

Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden. I want to see the movie version of this book. I can picture Deborah Kerr as the head nun, Sister Clodagh.

Crossers by Phillip Caputo. Very violent with gratuitous sex, but also insightful about the U.S./Mexico border wars. Crossers are people who cross the border illegally, for whatever reason, mostly drugs or economic opportunity.

The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson. Ms. Lawson’s second published novel made me want to read her first entitled Crow Lake.

Mr. Emerson’s WIfe by Amy Belding Brown. I wonder if Ralph Waldo Emerson was really as difficult and cold as this novel portrays him. The story is that of Lidian Jackson Emerson, RWE’s second wife and the mother of his four children.

Unleavened Bread by Robert Grant. Another best-selling book of 1900. This one reminded me of Sister Carrie, which I had just finished when I read it, of Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, and also, curiously, of a biography of Huey P. Long that I read a long time ago. The ending was somewhat unsatisfactory since no one “got what they deserved.” And the main character, Selma, deserved to get it.

We Have to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Very introspective, depressing, and thought-provoking.

The Widow’s Season by Laura Brodie. A ghost story with insight into the seasons of grief and recovery.

Triangle by Katharine Weber. I think my friend Hannah would like this book since it’s not only about the famous Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, but also about music. And it’s a history mystery.

How Do I Love Thee? A Novel of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Poetic Romance by Nancy Moser. Historically accurate for the most part, both in facts and in tone, this novel captures the Victorian era and the poets of the day quite well. I would like to read more about Robert Browning in particular, a very interesting man.

Nonfiction:
Safe Passage by Ida Cook. Recommended by Magistramater. I want to give this one to someone I know who’s looking at saving up to do something big someday. The sisters in this book deny themselves all sorts of pleasures so that they can travel to hear their favorite opera singers.

At Large and At Small: Familiar Essays by Anne Fadiman. Essays about such varied subjects as Charles Lamb, lepidopterists, ice cream, circadian rhythms, literary criticism, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, coffee, and flag-flying. I enjoyed every one of them. What essayists do you recommend?

Truce: The Day the Soldiers Stopped Fighting by Jim Murphy. World War I and the Christmas, 1914 spontaneous cease-fire.

Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough. The March Semicolon Book Club selection, and a lovely pick, if I do say so myself.

Sixpence in her Shoe by Phyllis McGInley. I’ve taken to keeping a book of essays next to my bed, and this one was the follow-up to Ms. Fadiman’s book. Ms. McGinley is much more practical and not as likely to lead me to add other authors to my TBR list. That’s a good thing since my TBR list is way too long anyway. On the other hand, I would like to read more of Ms. McGinley’s poetry and prose, so I guess she added to my list anyway.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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