I wrote of the first two books in this series that they were confusing, violent, headache-inducing, and fascinating. I want to like Mr. Wilson’s series about a boy named Sam Miracle and his sidekick(?) or maybe companion(?) or maybe better half, Glory Hallelujah. I want to understand or even just appreciate the books. But I just can’t keep up. And I can’t decide if that’s my fault as a reader or Mr. Wilson’s failing as a writer.

This third book is about the fall and rise of the son of Sam Miracle and Glory Hallelujah, Alexander Miracle. I think. Or maybe it’s about a Korean American girl named Rhonda who learns to be brave and walk through darkness. Or maybe it’s about how Sam and Glory sacrifice themselves to save their son.

The thing is N.D. Wilson writes delicious prose. His sentences are at times mesmerizing. Examples:

“Darkness wasn’t possible with smooth blankets of snow on every horizontal surface, and jagged rime frost armoring every pole and wire and fence post. Light, any light, bounced and bounced and lived on in such a white winter, but it also arrived in stillness, with none of the traffic and chatter of day.”

“And when she and Sam were deep in that oily and foul nothingness, she even sang. And while it helped Sam’s memory when an unbroken song straddled two different times, he knew that Glory didn’t just sing for him. She threw her voice through that outer darkness as a call to the ones she had loved and lost, and she hoped they would hear it, and know her voice, and be stirred.”

“It was like a magic beanstalk of flame. How high could it reach? Where was the ceiling in this place? Would it walk away like a tornado or would it sit here growling until there was no more oily air to burn? And how long would that be? He could see tendrils of darkness being swept up in the cyclone, slithering across the stone floor and groping through the air like his own hands had been only moments ago. The spinning inferno slurped it all in as it grew.”

See, the man can write. He’s definitely got the word picture thing going.

But . . . I have time travel whiplash. And Death keeps happening in these books, but it gets undone, or something. People go back in time and die over and over again, but they manage to change the timeline. And they don’t die or they don’t stay dead? So. what use is it to try to kill the villains in the piece if nobody really stays dead? On the other hand, it seems as if some of the villains are really, truly dead and gone. Have I mentioned that I’m confused?

If you’re going to read these books, and if anything I’ve written about them intrigues you and even piques your curiosity, I’d recommend that you read them in order: The Legend of Sam Miracle, The Song of Glory and Ghost, and then this one, The Last of the Lost Boys. I don’t know if this book is the last in the series, or if there will be another book in which Sam’s and Glory’s son, Alexander, learns to travel through time and “wield power without rage.” But the ending does leave the latter possibility wide open.

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This book may be nominated for a Cybils Award, but the views expressed here are strictly my own and do not reflect or determine the judging panel’s opinions.

Old Friends by Tracy Kidder

Sep11

I like Tracy Kidder’s books. His Soul of a New Machine is a classic nonfiction introduction to the culture of the high-tech computer industry. Among Schoolchildren gives an in-depth look at the community of a fifth grade classroom. House shows the joys and challenges of building one’s own home. And in Kidder’s Strength in What Remains the protagonist of the book, also nonfiction, is a young man from war-torn Burundi who finds friends and sustenance in the United States. Mountains Beyond Mountains is about American philanthropist and doctor, Paul Farmer, who works through the medical and international aid communities to help tuberculosis patients in poverty-stricken places.

I guess one thing that draws me to Kidder’s books is their emphasis on community, on looking deeply into a community of people who are pursuing a goal or forming a group to mutually support one another in life. Old Friends is about the forced community of a nursing home. Lou Freed, a 90-something Jewish man, and Joe Torchio, a 70-something stroke victim, are assigned to each other as roommates. Lou, nearly blind but otherwise healthy, has recently lost his beloved wife. Joe has re-taught himself to walk and talk, but he still warns others that he is only working with half a brain. The two men live in a New Jersey nursing home, Linda Manor, where they interact with other residents, staff, and visitors in a “home” that will most likely be their final place, their last experience of community.

It’s a gentle story, somewhat tragic, but ultimately hopeful. The residents of Linda Manor are a mixed bag. Some are cognizant of their surroundings, intelligent and aware, and others are overcome by dementia or Alzheimer’s or some combination. Joe calls the former, the mentally alert residents, those who got-all-their-buttons. Some Linda Manor residents spend their days in bed or watching television; other roam the halls. One picks imaginary flowers from the carpet as she walks through the home. Joe and Lous participate in exercise classes, bingo games, and other planned, and sometimes unplanned, activities. They deal with visitors and phone calls and health alarms and staff cuts. They talk about how to maintain or improve their health and how to relate to or help the other residents and the staff at Linda Manor. They make jokes, act in a play directed by one of the residents, Eleanor, and monitor each other’s mental state and physical ailments.

The ending for this book was always going to be a problem because we all know how it ends. These men are not going to recover their health, go home, and start over. As it is written, the book covers a year of life at Linda Manor, and the two old friends are still old and still friends at the end of the year. Of course, I wanted to know what exactly happened to Lou and Joe and when, but a part of me is content to leave it there. I guess I know generally what happened since it’s been over twenty-five years since the events in the book took place. And that’s enough. From the introduction to the book:

There is an ancient proverb:
Don’t judge a life good or bad before it ends.
~Sophocles, Women of Trachis

Other books about growing old or about nursing home residents:
The Song of Sadie Sparrow by Kitty Foth-Regner. Sadie Sparrow is an eighty-six year old widow who has come to live at The Hickories because her daughter is too busy to care for her at home. Meg Vogel is freelance writer who has been hired to write the residents’ biographies, to take down their stories. Their friendship seems unlikely, but as they get to know each other and the other residents and visitors, their questions and the answers they find lead them to consider eternal truth and ultimate answers.
A Song I Knew By Heart by Bret Lott. This novel is based on the book of Ruth, and the characters even share (or come close to) the Biblical names: Naomi, Ruth, Mahlon, Eli, and Beau. However, this book is the story of an elderly Southern woman who has been living in the Northeast. After the deaths of both her husband and her only son, Naomi decides to return to her childhood home in South Carolina.
Winter Birds by Jamie Langston Turner.
A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. Katherine Forrester Vigneras is an elderly, and quite famous, pianist, musician, and grande dame. She moves to lives in New York City and finds community in the people who live near and in relation to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
Summer of the Great-Grandmother by Madeleine L’Engle. Nonfiction. Reflections on family life, death, and dying in a Connecticut farmhouse.
Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande. A doctor writes about his own experiences with aging parents and the issues surrounding terminal illness, hospice, nursing home care, and death and dying.

The Inventors at No. 8 by A.M. Morgen

Sep10

George, the Third Lord of Devonshire and the unluckiest boy in London, has a number of problems. Everyone who comes near him seems to die or at least suffer some sort of tragedy. He’s an orphan with no family left. He has sold almost everything he owns, but he’s about to lose his home anyway. His last heirloom, a map that’s supposed to reveal the hiding place of a treasure called the Star of Victory, is stolen. And his only friend and caretaker, his manservant Frobisher, has disappeared, presumably kidnapped.

Then, George meets Ada Byron, his neighbor across the street, and life gets even more interesting—and dangerous. Ada introduces George to Oscar, whose father is a long-absent pirate, and to Ruthie, the orangutan who is Oscar’s friend, and the four of them set out to find the map, the Star of Victory, and Frobisher. Will George’s notoriously bad luck jinx the entire quest? Is Ada really able to fly—and land—her own self-invented flying machine? Are Oscar and Ruthie a help or a hindrance in the mission to find the Star of Victory? Where and what is the Star of Victory, and can it help them rescue Frobisher? And is Ada like her estranged father Lord Byron, “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”?

At the end of this rather extravagantly nonsensical story, the author quotes Ada Byron Lovelace herself, who was a real person, really the inventive and talented daughter of Lord Byron, the poet. From a letter to Ada Byron’s mother:

“P.S. I put as much nonsense as I possibly can in my letter to you because I think it compensates you for the grave dry subjects of your letters, but I suspect the truth is it gives me pleasure to write nonsense.”

I suspect it gave Ms. Morgen much pleasure to write this fantastical adventure story, and it gave me some pleasure to read it. I did have trouble following the logic of the story, but that may be due to the lack of logic in some parts. The children, as children and adults are wont to do, often make assumptions and jump to conclusions that are unwarranted. If you are looking for a Poirot-type logical and sensible mystery story, this adventure isn’t it. But it is a romp. And the characterization is lovely:

George, the 3rd Lord of Devonshire, is a Puddleglum, pessimistic, superstitious, wary of Ada’s flights of fancy, and untrusting (with reason). But he works himself up to bravery in spite of his fears, and he begins to believe in impossible adventures by the end of the book.

Ada Byron is the Pied Piper, luring George into adventure, danger, and belief in the impossible. She is inventive, intelligent, and confident, everything that George isn’t and doesn’t believe he can possibly become. In the author’s note, Ms. Morgen tells us that twelve year old Ada Byron really did dream of building a flying machine, but it never quite got off the ground.

Oscar is bit less well-developed as a character, but he does add “character” to the ensemble, especially when he talks to Ruthie the orangutan using semaphore sign language.

Anyway, for the enjoyment of this particular fantasy, you will need to suspend disbelief and judgment and maybe logic and just go with the flow. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

The Kissing Hand by Audrey Penn

Sep10

With over six million copies sold, countless children have been introduced to Chester Raccoon through The Kissing Hand, the first title in the series that firmly shows the importance of characters with whom kids can share their troubles. Now in its 25th year of printing, The Kissing Hand has found its way into the hearts of teachers, librarians, parents, and children around the world, especially during times of separation like starting school, entering daycare, or going to camp. Celebrate the special Kissing Hand anniversary with Chester and his mother in this limited edition family keepsake with a dedication page, Letters to Chester booklet download and, of course, heart stickers.

That’s the PR copy, and I did get a copy of the 25th anniversary edition of The Kissing Hand for review purposes. It seems to be a love-it/hate-it kind of book with parents and precious preschoolers in the love-it camp and librarians and jaded older children on the hate-it side. Or maybe not. The Kissing Hand is included on Betsy Bird’s Top 100 Picture Books List at #95 with commentary that it “seems to raise no ire. It simply fulfills its purpose in life and continues onward after that.” Publisher’s Weekly calls the book “sugary” and “pleasant if sentimental.”

I find it certainly appealing to some, but rather forgettable for me. Maybe I just don’t care for “therapy books.” Or perhaps I’m too much of a homeschooler to fully appreciate a book that’s meant to comfort a child who’s being sent off to day care or kindergarten. The 25th anniversary edition is lovely, and I will include it in my library. However, since my library patrons are also crotchety homeschoolers who eschew sending off their children to school, it may not get much circulation.

Publication date for the new edition is September 11, 2018—tomorrow. It seems a bit late for back-to-school, but if your child is still having separation anxiety, The Kissing Hand may even now come in handy, so to speak.

Antonin Dvorak: Composer From Bohemia by Claire Lee Purdy

Sep8

Antonin Dvorak, b.September 8, 1841, d.May 1, 1904.

This biography for young adults, one of the series published by Julian Messner in 1950’s, begins with a delightful picture of composer Antonin Dvorak’s childhood in rural Bohemia (Czech Republic). The author paints a word picture of the village where Dvorak grew up, the son of a poor butcher and innkeeper father, but in a family and culture that highly valued music and dance and music-making. The story manages to incorporate a great deal of Czech history and some lovely folktales, and all in all the first third or even half of the book is a wonderful introduction to not only the composer and his music but also nineteenth century musical trends, Bohemian folk tales, the city of Prague, and the political difficulties of Bohemia under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

At about the halfway point, when as a reader I was already hooked, the narrative slowly devolved into a list of the places Dvorak went and the musical pieces he composed. Maybe the travel and the compositions were his life after he became famous. Nevertheless, I was impelled to read on because the first part was so interesting, and I quickly looked up some of Dvorak’s music on YouTube and played it as I read. Some of the most interesting tidbits that I gleaned:

1. Dvorak was achingly poor as a youth, the very picture of the impoverished artist. He had to wait eight years and pull himself up out of poverty in order to finally marry his fiancé. Eight years is a long engagement. Dvorak was 32 years old when he married his 19 year old bride. (Whoops! I guess there was more than one reason they had to wait eight years to get married. He certainly couldn’t have married her when she was eleven.)

2. Antonin and Anna Dvorak were married in 1873; by 1876 they had three children. In the spring of 1876 their eldest daughter died after a brief illness. In September their son died, and their second daughter died in October. Now, that’s a tragic story.

3. Anna and Antonin went on to have six more children, all of whom survived childhood and thrived. The oldest daughter, Otilie, became a composer like her father.

4. Dvorak wrote his famous New World Symphony when he was in the New York under contract as Director of the National Academy of Music, a school that famously “enrolled poor students without charge and . . . welcomed members of the Negro race.” The New World Symphony is said to be greatly influenced by African American spirituals, work songs, and folk music that Dvorak was exposed to and admired while he was in the United States.

5. Dvorak loved birds. He composed many operas, symphonies, symphonic poems, and choral works. His favorite instrument was the viola.

6. Dvorak died in 1904. “In the dreadful years 1939-1945 Dvorak, along with Smetana and other native composers, was declared an outlaw by the Nazi conquerors. It was a crime to play his music in Bohemia. In 1941, the year of Dvorak’s centenary, his own Czech people were forbidden to play a bar of his music.”

I’m determined now to listen to more Dvorak. Any suggestions of specific pieces I should look for?

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

Sep7

Originally published at Breakpoint.org, September 24, 2012

My Aunt Helen was my favorite person in the whole world. She was my mom’s sister. She got straight A’s when she was a teenager and she used to give me books to read. My father said that the books were a little too old for me, but I liked them so he just shrugged and let me read.
~Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

When it comes to teenagers, I’m usually a “shrug and let them read what they want” kind of parent. I like to talk about the books that my adolescents are reading, but I don’t generally refuse them permission to read books. My 17-year-old daughter has read The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, and she thought it was okay. However, if my 13 year old asked to read the book, I’d explain my concerns and ask her not to read it until she was older, or maybe not at all.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower which has just been adapted into a movie, is an epistolary novel narrated by 15-year-old Charlie. He is just entering high school in 1991 as he begins writing this series of self-revelatory letters to an unnamed friend. Charlie is the wallflower of the title. He lives on the fringes of high school’s social scene, and his best friend Michael committed suicide the year before the book’s opening, while the two were in middle school. So Charlie, “friendless, innocent, naive, and wounded,” enters high school as an observer rather than a participant.

Unfortunately for the conservative reader, a lot of what Charlie observes and then writes about in bald, unadorned prose is shameful behavior: date rape and abuse, drug abuse, drunkenness, homosexual and heterosexual experimentation and promiscuity, and bullying. Yes, it’s realistic, and none of the behaviors is celebrated, except maybe the homosexual explorations of Charlie’s friend, Patrick. But Charlie describes all of these things that happen to his friends, family, and acquaintances in such an artless, unsophisticated, and generally non-judgmental manner that I found it difficult to believe that Charlie was for real. On one page, Charlie seems to have some sense of right and wrong as he becomes angry with a guy named Dave who abused a girl in Charlie’s presence. But then a few pages later Charlie reverts to his old detached manner, reporting the drug abuse and other illicit and harmful behaviors of his friends and family with calm near-indifference.

I wanted to label him in my mind as autistic or savant or mentally challenged or disturbed, but Charlie is none of these. He cries a lot. Various people in the novel call him a freak. He sees a psychiatrist, and the doctor prescribes some kind of medicine, probably an anti-depressant. And eventually he does have a sort of mental breakdown because of an episode from his childhood, the memory of which he has repressed.

But for most of the novel he is intelligent; stable, if odd; and, of course, quite observant. I just felt as if Charlie was too strange, too quirky, too out-of-the-mainstream for me to identify with him or understand how he could be so very innocent and disingenuous, and also so insightful, at the same time.

I’ve read several comparisons between The Perks of Being a Wallflower and the classic teen angst book, Catcher in the Rye. In fact, in Perks, Charlie reads Catcher in the Rye and identifies himself with Holden Caulfield.

I kept thinking, though, of another book from my teenage years: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. The protagonist of Flowers for Algernon is also named Charlie (Gordon), and he also is a sweet, innocent young man who lives on the fringes of society. Charlie Gordon, however, is actually severely mentally disabled, and he only understands much of what is going on around him after he takes a drug that increases his IQ to genius level. Even though reading about a “smart drug” that turns a mentally disabled man into a genius requires some suspension of disbelief, it made more sense to me than Charlie in Perks, whose voice alternates between Profound Philosopher and Forrest Gump.

The book just didn’t work for me, as a coming of age novel, as a quirky depiction of introversion and mental illness, or as a sketch of high school angst and friendship. Most conservative Christian readers will find the sexual content offensive and somewhat propagandistic, and there are just better books out there that deal with the same themes and topics. I read countless reviews of The Perks of Being a Wallflower that extolled it as one of the best books the reviewer had ever read and a modern classic, but I just didn’t see it.

If you’re a parent and your teen wants to read the book, I’d recommend that you read it first and decide whether your child would be more confused (as I was) or charmed (as were many others) by this tale of a spectator who tries to enter into life and joy but fails. As far as I can tell from the epilogue of the book, Charlie never really makes it into the dance.

September: National Piano Month

Sep5

All eight of my children have attempted to play the piano, taken piano lessons, or at least tried out piano lessons, and although I can’t say that any of them are concert piano material, they do enjoy playing and composing and generally messing about with music, some more than others. I, on the other hand, can’t play a note. Well, maybe one note.

Pianos are wonderful instruments.

“The piano keys are black and white, but they sound like a million colors in your mind.” ~Maria Cristina Mena, The Collected Stories of Maria Cristina Mena.

Nonfiction about pianos and pianists:
Forever Music: A Tribute to the Gift of Creativity by Edith Schaeffer. Mrs. Schaeffer tells the history of her Steinway grand piano, and she also weaves a story about the fallenness of man and the creativity that God built into each of us. This book would be a lovely gift for any musician in your life or for anyone who cares about music.
Piano Lessons: A Memoir by Anna Goldsworthy. This story of a girl and her piano teacher sounds really good. Has anyone read it?
Piano Lessons: Music, Love and True Adventure by Noah Adams. Another memoir, this time about a middle-aged man who decides to pursue his life-long dream of learning to play the piano. I am drawn to the premise.
The Piano Shop on the Left Bank: Discovering a Forgotten Passion in a Paris Atelier by Thad Carhart. Yet another memoirist returns to the piano and the company of musicians as an adult and an amateur.
Note by Note: A Celebration of the Piano Lesson by Tricia Tunstall. I might give this one to my favorite piano teacher.
Mr. Langshaw’s Square Piano: The Story of the First Pianos and How They Caused a Cultural Revolution by Madeline Gould. Pianos and history combined. I can’t resist. Reviewed at 5 Minutes for Books.
Piano Starts Here: The Young Art Tatum by Robert Andrew Parker. Reviewed at Becky’s Book Reviews A children’s picture bio of a jazz great.
Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra by Brian Pinkney. Another picture book biography.
Giants of the Keyboard by Victor Chapin. Includes chapter length biographies of Johann Christian Bach, Muzio Clementi, Jan Dussek, Johann Cramer, Johann Hummel, John FIeld, Karl Czerny, Ignaz Moscheles, Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, Louis Gottschalk, Anton Rubinstein, Teresa Carreno, Paderewski, Ferruccio Busoni, and Artur Schnabel.

Piano fiction:
Anatole and the Piano by Eve Titus. Anatole, the conductor of the Mouse Symphony Orchestra, goes down inside a grand piano. Picture book.
Nate the Great and the Musical Note by Marjorie Sharmat. Nate the Great, junior detective, solves a musical mystery.
Moxy Maxwell Does Not Love Practicing the Piano by Peggy Gifford. Easy chapter book.
A Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban. Zoe dreams of playing the piano at Carnegie Hall—if she can just get her parents to spring for lessons. however, the tricot the music store doesn’t turn out exactly the way Zoe had envisioned. Can she become a star with her new Perfectone D-60 organ?
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis. Bud Caldwell sets out for Grand Rapids, Michigan to find his long-lost father, the great jazz musician Herman Calloway and his band, the Dusky Devastators of the Depression. Newbery Award book.
The Lucy Variations by Sara Zarr. YA fiction about a teen piano prodigy who confounds her family and the concert world by suddenly quitting piano.
A Small Rain and A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L’Engle. Two of my favorite novels by Ms. L’Engle, about concert pianist Katherine Forrester, first as a teenager, then as an elderly, and quite famous, grande dame. Adult fiction.

The Splintered Light by Ginger Johnson

Sep4

Giving thought to how the world, the universe, we live in was created with so many varied elements of sound, light, taste, smell, invention, and shape is not a bad exercise in gratitude and appreciation for the vibrancy and diversity of our world. Ginger Johnson’s The Splintered Light leads the reader on a journey of pondering the immense creativity and inventiveness of a God who could create this world ex nihilo, out of nothing. And yet it’s a story, not a sermon, as Ishmael, the protagonist of this story, learns more about the Commons, a place where the different halls (schools) of Color, Sound, Gustation, Manufactory, Scent, Shape and Motion work together to create posticums, worlds for the colonization of their creators.

“Posticum means ‘back door.’ It’s a room for creation that opens up in the stone wall of the Commons. Back home is a posticum, too, but you’d never know it. Color Master told me it was one of the first. All the oldest posticums are worn out and run-down and only have oval sheep and round chickens. The sheep and chickens in the newer posticums are more refined. Plus, they have all kinds of other creatures as well. That’s how you know the age of posticums.”

Ishmael only left home to find his brother Luc and bring him back to help Mam and the family on the farm, but when he does find Luc in the Commons, Luc is unwilling to leave. And Ishmael himself is fascinated by the new sights and possibilities he glimpses in the many halls and schools of the Commons. The Hall of Hue, where Luc lives and works, also welcomes Ishmael as an apprentice of exceptional promise, but Ishmael is determined to return home and to bring Luc with him, after just one more day, and then another, and then another . . .

It’s hardly an insult to say of this debut novel that when I reached the end I was disappointed that there wasn’t more. I really would like to know what happened to Ishmael and his friends after the posticum closed and the stones rested. Maybe I should use my own creativity and imagine it for myself.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to whatever might come next from this talented new writer, and I really like the fact that she sprinkles lines from one of my favorite poems throughout this book about the diverse and variegated world(s) in which we live and breathe and move and have our being:

Pied Beauty by Gerard Manly Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things –
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise him.

And this TED talk that I saw the other day seems to serendipitously belong alongside The Splintered Light:

Oh, today is the official publication date for The Splintered Light.

Born on This Day: Joan Aiken

Sep4

Joan Aiken, b.September 4, 1924, d.January 4, 2004.

She was the daughter of American poet, Conrad Aiken, and her mother was Canadian, later married to yet another famous writer, Martin Armstrong. Her older sister was also an author, so the writing gene seems to have run in the family.

Joan Aiken was homeschooled by her mother until she was twelve years old. Then, she attended a girls’ school for about four years, and then she began to write. She finished her first full-length novel when she was sixteen. She never attended university. She published over a hundred books in many different genres. Homeschool success story, anyone?

Her books are quite well-written, intriguing, and imaginative. The children’s books that she is most famous for, the Wolves Chronicles, are not going to be to everyone’s taste. They’re rather Dickensian, alternate history, with a touch of Edgar Allan Poe.

Take, for instance, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase. It’s creepy and perilous. It’s set in a sort of alternate Georgian England in which there are dangerous wolves everywhere, and everyone knows how to shoot them for self-protection, even children. Add in a villainous governess, a duplicitous lawyer, an orphan sent to a Dickensian school, and a ship lost at sea, and you’ve got Gothic for children. Just scary enough to be fun, but everything works out in the end. The other books in the series are Black Hearts in Battersea (1964), Nightbirds on Nantucket (1966), The Whispering Mountain (1968), The Stolen Lake (1981), Dangerous Games (1999), The Cuckoo Tree (1971), Dido and Pa (1986), Is Underground (1992), Cold Shoulder Road (1995), Midwinter Nightingale (2003), and The Witch of Clatteringshaws (2005).

Then, there’s second series for children, the Arabel and Mortimer books, which begins with Arabel’s Raven and continues on with twelve more volumes. (Ms. Aiken was obviously a fan of long series of books with the same fantastic setting.) I’ll read that one someday, after I finish all of the Wolves Chronicles.

Ms. Aiken was also a Janeite, and she wrote several books that were sequels to or take-offs on Jane Austen’s novels. I’d like to read one of those one day.

More about Joan Aiken:
Happy Birthday, Celebrating Joan Aiken.
Review of Mansfield Park Revisited by Joan Aiken at the blog Diary of an Eccentric.
Joan Aiken’s website.

Saturday Review of Books: August 25, 2018

Aug24

“It is with the reading of books the same as with looking at pictures; one must, without doubt, without hesitations, with assurance, admire what is beautiful.” ~~Vincent Van Gogh

Welcome to the Saturday Review of Books at Semicolon. Here’s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesn’t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can link to your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Friday night/Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where you’ve written your book review. Don’t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after you’ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book you’re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews they’re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read.

Saturday Review of Books Participants

1. Glynn (Hear the Echo)
2. Glynn (Murder in the Cathedral)
3. Glynn (What Can We Know About God?)
4. Glynn (Fire in the Thatch)
5. Sick Heart River by John Buchan
6. Foxes and Fairy Tales (Not Your Villian)
7. Foxes and Fairy Tales (The Hero’s Guide…)
8. Foxes and Fairy Tales (Spinning Silver/)
9. Michele – Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton, Chapter 8

10. Michele – The Child from the Sea by Elizabeth Goudge
11. Michele – In His Image by Jen Wilkin
12. Barbara H. (Full Assurance)
13. Barbara H. (Reshaping It All)
14. Barbara H. (Before We Were Yours)
15. Soulful Lemonade (Falling for You/True to You by Becky Wade)
16. Becky (Rocket Men)
17. Becky (The Hazel Wood)
18. Barbara H. (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place: The Long-Lost Home)

19. Susanne@LivingToTell (The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry)
20. Reading World (1876)
21. Susanne@LivingToTell (The Lost Art of Mixing )
22. Beckie@ByTheBook (The House at Saltwater Point)
23. Beckie@ByTheBook (Darkwater Secrets)
24. Ari @ Books. Libraries. Also, cats.
25. Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews (SOLD ON A MONDAY)
26. Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews (THE DAISY CHILDREN)

Learn more about Saturday Review of Books here.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

Outlaws of Time: The Last of the Lost Boys by N.D. Wilson