York by Laura Ruby

Sep18

York, Book One, The Shadow Cipher by Laura Ruby.

This middle grade alternate history and steampunk-ish fantasy had a few awkward phrases and descriptions, and I’m not at all sure that all the loose ends were gathered together by the end of the book. (Understandable, since it’s the first book in a series.) However, Ms. Ruby tells such an absorbing and delightful story that I can forgive a few minor bobbles.

“The city had many nicknames: Gotham. Metropolis. The Shining Starr. The Big Apple. The City That Never Sleeps. These nicknames were not always accurate.”

The main character, the protagonist, of this novel is the City, New York City. But it’s a New York City changed and perhaps improved by the benevolence and inventiveness of the Morningstarr twins, Teresa and Theodore, during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Morningstarrs “performed architectural and mechanical wizardry to make New York City the most dazzling city in the world . . . the gleaming metropolis of the future.” Then, they disappeared, leaving “their land and property to a trust in the city’s name” and “a parting gift: a sort of puzzle, or treasure hunt.” The Morningstarr twins were definitely imaginative and eccentric, and for the next hundred and fifty years and more after their disappearance in 1854, people searched diligently for the clues that would lead them to the fabled Marningstarr treasure. But no one found it.

Enter Tess and Theo Biedermann, also twins, but in the present day, twenty-first century. They live with their family in a Morningstarr building, one of the six buildings left in the city of those that were planned and built by the Morningstarrs. Unfortunately, for the sake of history and for the Biedermanns, there’s an evil real estate developer and millionaire, Darnell Slant, who wants to buy up all of the Morningstarr buildings and make them into over-priced cracker box apartment buildings. Can Tess, Theo, and their new friend, Jaime, solve the Morningstarr cipher/puzzle and find the treasure and stop Darnell Slant?

It sounds fairly standard: evil real estate developer, a puzzle to solve, a race against time. However, the alternate history and steampunk elements of the plot and setting keep it fresh and interesting. The pacing is good, for the most part, and I didn’t really know what to expect most of the time. There are echoes of and allusions to Newbery award winner The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin and New York City history and the movie National Treasure, probably other cultural artifacts, too. Those are the ones I noticed and appreciated.

And the book includes some interesting philosophical speculation, especially in regards to life and technology and puzzle-solving. Is the process of solving a puzzle or playing a game its own reward? Or is it the winning or the treasure at the end that counts? Is any treasure worth any cost? How do you go about counting the cost when you don’t know what the treasure is? What does it mean to “be yourself” and to “believe in yourself”? Does faith in some object or journey create its own fulfillment? What is the difference between living beings and non-living artifacts of technology? Can a machine come to have life and agency? Can it respond to its environment and make decisions? How?

York was a book well worth the time spent reading its 476 pages. Fans of steampunk or New York City or puzzling and ciphers or alternate history adventure would do well to check it out.

Educator’s Guide to York from Walden Press.

Review of York at Charlotte’s Library.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
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.

Saturday Review of Books: September 16, 2017

Sep15

“The Brahmins say that in their books there are many predictions of times in which it will rain. But press those books as strongly as you can, you can not get out of them a drop of water. So you can not get out of all the books that contain the best precepts the smallest good deed.” ~Leo Tolstoy

SatReviewbutton

Harvey and Me Update #2

Sep11

Well, I’m still living in a post-Harvey world. I stayed home today for the most part, after having spent every day for the last couple of weeks at my church in Friendswood, Trinity Fellowship. I was helping all I could with the administrative side of our Harvey relief efforts, and I felt so much “survivor’s guilt” and so much grief and sympathy for those who flooded that I just couldn’t focus on things at home. I had to be where I was doing some good to someone else, not because I’m such a good person, but rather because there is just so much need and destruction and chaos.

So, I still couldn’t focus very well on things here at home today, even though I tried. What I really want is to give those ten families from our church of about forty families, one quarter of our membership, the ones who flooded or sustained major damage, another hug. I wanted to ask them again what we could do to help. I wanted to make them another meal or find them a team of strong guys and girls to do some more clean up or pull out sheetrock or spray for mold or wash their clothes or load their furniture that survived into a storage unit or do something. Then, I wanted to call all of the other families that I know who flooded, the ones I haven’t even been able to touch yet, and ask them the same questions, give them the same hugs, listen to their stories, too. But there are so many stories, so much pain, so many households being disrupted and so many precious belongings being trashed.

I needed to take a rest, focus on my family and my library, pull back a little, but it’s hard. I think Houston will have to take it a day at a time. I’ll have to take it a day at a time. In the meantime, keep praying. Keep sending help. Ask the Lord to give us all wisdom about a time to work and a time to rest. I’m sure I’ll get back to bookish posts soon, but right now it’s all too fresh and immediate.

Drone footage that my pastor took in Friendswood on September 9th, Saturday.

Harvey and Me

Sep8

I’ve been really busy and overwhelmed here in southeast Houston where we received over 40 inches of rain about a week ago. You may have heard something about that storm on the news. Anyway, sorry about the Saturday Review last week and the lack of blog posts this week. We didn’t sustain any damage at our house, but many, many friends and neighbors did. I have dozens of friends who lost almost everything they owned. We’re going to be digging out from under this disaster for years to come.

Here’s a brief video about what’s going on here in Houston now, post-Harvey. You need to know that these are my people, my church, my pastor, my friends and neighbors. I know many of the people in this video. We are brothers and sisters in Christ, and we are family. Please do what you can to help, either here or in Florida as Irma comes through.

Hurricane Harvey Response from EFCA on Vimeo.

Also, if you can share this video on Facebook or on your blog, it will help people to visualize the massive devastation that Houston has sustained and a bit of what I am afraid that Florida is experiencing right now.

World War II Novels and Nonfiction

Sep1

On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland, and World War II began. So I’ve gathered up for you and for me a list of as many of the reviews of novels and nonfiction set during World War II that I could find while looking through the back posts of the Saturday Review of Books.

Adult Novels:
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah.
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.
The Auschwitz Violin by Maria Angels Anglada. Reviewed at Bart’s Bookshelf.
War on the Margins by Libby Cone. Reviewed at Amy Reads.
The Gathering Storm by Bodie and Brock Thoene. Reviewed by Beth at Weavings.
Against the Wind by Brock and Bodie Thoene. Reviewed by Beth at Weavings.
A Thread of Grace by Mary Doria Russell.
The Madonnas of Leningrad by Debra Dean. Reviewed by Mindy Withrow.
My Enemy’s Cradle by Sara Young.
Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. Reviewed at Small World Reads.
Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.
The Swiss Courier by Tricia Goyer and Mike Yorkey. Reviewed by Beth at Weavings. Reviewed at 5 Minutes for Books.
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico.
Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis.
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake. Reviewed at Small World Reads. Reviewed at Diary of an Eccentric. Reviewed at The Common Room. Set in New England and in London.
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. Reviewed by Janet at Across the Page. Set on Guernsey Island.
While We Still Live by Helen MacInnes. Sheila Matthews, a young Englishwoman is visiting in Warsaw when the Nazis invade. She stays and joins the Polish underground to fight against the German occupation.
The Kommandant’s Girl by Pam Jenoff. Reviewed at Lucybird’s Book Blog.
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk.
Atonement by Ian McEwen.
Winter in Madrid by C.J. Sansom.
My Enemy’s Cradle by Sara Young.

Young Adult and Middle Grade Fiction:
Eyes of the Emperor by Graham Salibury.
Code Talker by Joseph Bruchac.
The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen.
Meet Molly by Valerie Tripp. Reviewed at Diary of an Eccentric.
Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop. Reviewed by Nicola at Back to Books. Set in France.
Someone Named Eva by Joan M. Wolf.
Don’t Talk To Me About the War by David A. Adler.
On Rough Seas by Nancy L. Hull. Young adult fiction. Fourteen year old Alex lives in Dover, England in 1939, and he is eventually a hero as he participates in the rescue of the British soldiers at Dunkirk.
Snow Treasure by Marie McSwigan. Reviewed by Nicola at Back to Books. Set in Norway.
Blue by Joyce Meyer Hostetter.
Yellow Star by Jennifer Roy.
Jimmy’s Stars by Mary Ann Rodman
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
The Devil’s Arithmetic by Jane Yolen.
Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata
The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis by Kirby Larson.
Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith.
Tamar by Mal Peet.
Tropical Secrets: Holocaust Refugees in Cuba by Margarita Engle.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys. Reviewed at Books and the Universe. Set in Lithuaina and Siberia. YA.
The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow.
The Boy Who Dared: A Novel Based on the True Story of a Hitler Youth by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.
For Freedom: The Story of a French Spy by Kimberley Brubaker Bradley.
Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein.
Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein.
The Winged Watchman by Hilda van Stockum.
Children of the King by Sonya Hartnett.
The Winter Horses by Phillip Kerr.
The Green Glass Sea by Ellen Klages.
The Extra by Kathryn Lasky.
Up Periscope by Robb White.
My Family for the War by Anne C. Voorhoeve. Reviewed at Hope Is the Word.
Projekt 1065: A Novel of World War II by Alan Gratz.

Nonfiction:
A Boy’s War by David Michell.
The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom.
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life and the Afterlife by Francine Prose. Reviewed by Girl Detective.
Night by Elie Wiesel.
The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman
Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption by Laura Hillenbrand. Reviewed at Library Hospital. Reviewed by Alice at Supratentorial.
Lost in Shangri-La: The True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II by Mitchell Zuckoff. Reviewed at Sarah Reads Too Much.
South to Bataan, North to Mukden by W. E. Brougher. Reviewed by Hope at Worthwhile Books. More about the same book.
Winston’s War: Churchill, 1940-1945 by Max Hastings.
The Mascot: Unraveling the Mystery of My Jewish Father’s Nazi Boyhood by Mark Kurzem.
We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance by David Howarth. Reviewed by The Ink Slinger.
W.F. Matthews: Lost Battalion Survivor by Travis Monday
High Flight: A Story of World War II by Linda Granfield. Illustrated by Michael Martchenko. A children’s biography reviewed by Nicola at Back to Books.
Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet, Martyr, Spy by Eric Metaxis. Reviewed at 5 Minutes for Books.
The Port Chicago 50 by Steve Sheinkin.
Home Front Girl by Joan Wehlen Morrison.
The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the impossible became possible . . . on Schindler’s list by Leon Leyson with Marilyn J. Harran and Elisabeth Leyson.
Helga’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp by Helga Weiss, translated by Neil Bermel.
D-Day: The Invasion of Normandy, 1944 by Rick Atkinson.
The Story of D-Day: June 6, 1944 by Bruce Bliven, Jr. (Landmark Book #62)
Mission at Nuremburg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis by Tim Townsend.
Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Thomas E. Ricks.
Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War by Lynne Olson.
Irena’s Children: The Extraordinary Story of the Woman Who Saved 2,500 Children from the Warsaw Ghetto by Tilar Mazzeo.
For the Glory: Eric Liddell’s Journey from Olympic Champion to Modern Martyr by Duncan Hamilton.

More World War II reads and reviews at War Through the Generations.

What is your favorite World War II-related novel or work of nonfiction?

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.

Autumn Beginnings

Aug28

Hooray for fall! Here are a few introductory lines from children’s fiction books with an autumn setting—or at least, an autumn beginning:

MoominValley in November by Tove Jansson. “Early one morning in Moominvalley Snufkin woke up in his tent with the feeling that autumn had come and that it was time to break camp.”

B Is for Betsy by Carolyn Haywood. ” . . . this morning Betsy was so busy feeling unhappy that she forgot all about the birds. Betsy was unhappy because today was the first day of school. She had never been to school, and she was sure she would not like it.”

The Moffats by Eleanor Estes. “The way Mama could peel apples! A few turns of the knife and there the apple was, all skinned! . . . Jane sighed. Her mother’s peeling fell off in long lovely curls, while, for the life of her, Jane couldn’t do any better than these thick little chunks which she popped into her mouth.”

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. “It was a dark and stormy night.”

Mr. Popper’s Penguins by Richard Atwater. “It was an afternoon in late September. In the pleasant little city of Stillwater, Mr. Popper, the house painter, was going home from work.”

Freddy Plays Football by Walter R. Broooks. “Jinx, the black cat, was curled up in the exact center of the clean white counterpane that Mrs. Bean had just put on the spare room bed.”

The Bully of Barkham Street by Mary Stolz. “Martin Hastings wriggled at his desk. He squirmed and yawned and wished the bell would ring. It was the last period of the day, a hazy, hot fall day, and he was restless.”

Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Paterson. “He began to trot across the yard. His breath was coming out in little puffs—cold for August. But it was early yet.”

Mystery Over the Brick Wall by Helen Fuller Orton. “One afternoon in late September the four members of the Bond family piled into their car for a very exciting trip. They were starting to a city fifty miles away, where they were to have a new home.”

Flaming Arrows by William O. Steele. “‘I reckon it’s suppertime,’ remarked Chad, letting his ax slip to the ground. He straightened up slowly. He was bone-tired, and his back was one fierce ache. But he was proud of himself. He figured he had never worked so hard in all his eleven years, for he’d spent this livelong day chopping trees and had done a man’s work.”

Sounder by William Armstrong. “The tall man stood at the edge of the porch. The roof sagged from the two rough posts which held it, almost closing the gap between his head and the rafters. The dim light from the cabin window cast long equal shadows from man and posts. A boy stood nearby shivering in the cold October wind. He ran his fingers back and forth over the broad crown of a coon dog named Sounder.”

Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink. “On a bright Saturday afternoon in the early fall, Tom and Caddie and Warren Woodlawn sat on a bank of the Menomonie River, or Red Cedar as the call it now, taking off their clothes.”

Ramona’s World by Beverly Cleary. “It was a warm September day, and Ramona, neat and clean, with lunch bag in hand, half skipped, half hopped, scrunching through dry leaves on the sidewalk. She was early, she knew, but Ramona was the sort of girl who was always early because something might happen that she didn’t want to miss.”

The Great Brain at the Academy by John D. Fitzgerald. “When my brother Tom began telling people in Adenville, Utah, that he had a great brain everybody laughed at him, including his own family. We all thought he was trying to play some joke on us. But after he had used his great brain to swindle all the kids in town and make fools of a lot of grownups nobody laughed at my brother anymore. I think that was why just about everybody in town except his own family was glad to see Tom leave Adenville on September 1, 1897.”

51 Sycamore Lane, or A Spy in the Neighborhood by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat. “School starts tomorrow and I bet the first assignment in Miss Nathan’s English class will be a composition titled ‘How I Spent My Summer Vacation.’ This would be my third year with the same title.”

The Jersey Brothers by Sally Mott Freeman

Aug25

It’s raining; it’s pouring here in Houston, Texas. And Hurricane Harvey is headed for Corpus Christi and set to bring Houston a whole heck of a lot of more rain and possible/probable flooding. And my personal and family life is a bit of a mess, too.

However, if ever a book would cause me to pause and count my blessings, The Jersey Brothers: A Missing Naval Officer in the Pacific and His Family’s Quest to Bring Him Home is that book. I thought the scenes and descriptions in Unbroken by Laura Hillebrand were harrowing and violent and disturbing, but this book tops that one for sheer cruelty and horror, man’s inhumanity to man. It’s not gratuitous, either. As far as I can tell the scenes and events the author describes really happened and were the central truths of the experience of Barton Cross, an American Navy prisoner of war to the Japanese in the Philippines during World War II. YOu’ve heard of the “Bataan Death March”? Well, that’s described in this book in excruciating detail, even though Ensign Cross didn’t have to participate in that particular piece of history. (Many of his fellow prisoners did.) And the Battle of the Coral Sea and Iwo Jima and Tarawa—all described, again in horrific detail because one or the other of Barton’s two brothers were there. All three brothers were Navy officers, and the older two, Bill (the author’s father) and Benny, spent the war fighting on Navy ships or working in Washington, D.C. and trying all the time to find Barton, their baby brother.

Between the three of them the Jersey Brothers, called that because they were from New Jersey, had a sweeping view of the war in the Pacific, from FDR’s War Room in the White House to Pearl Harbor to the battles across the Pacific to the prisons and camps of Mindanao and Leyte and other Philippine islands. As I read about the experience each of the brothers and of their mother, Helen Cross, at home in New Jersey, I was overwhelmed with gratefulness both for their sacrifice and that of many, many others and for my relatively easy and uneventful life. We may have our problems, but not many of us since World War II have had to suffer or endure anything near what those “greatest generation” men and families did.

I was also convinced again that maybe the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the best solution for an intractable problem—that of ending the war with the least possible loss of life for all concerned. The Japanese were employing suicide bombers (kamikaze) to a much greater extent than I ever remember reading about, and they were not willing to surrender. General MacArthur was intent on invading the Japanese islands, but the predictions of 600,000 American casualties—or more—convinced Truman that the threat of the atomic bomb would save many American and Japanese lives. The army was predicting Japanese casualties during an invasion to run over a million. The Japanese civilians and military were instructed to fight to the death, and many, many were willing to do so. Deaths from both atomic bomb blasts were much, much fewer than any of those estimates and many times fewer than the deaths already sustained by both the Allies and the Japanese in the battles across the Pacific. As horrific as the atomic bombs’ destruction and devastation were, they were not nearly as cruel as the terror and savage brutality that the Japanese visited upon the prisoners of war and the subject peoples that they conquered and ruled over in the Philippines and elsewhere. Take what you’ve read about the Holocaust and the concentration camps in Europe and transfer it to jungles of the Philippines and Southeast Asia, and you will have some idea of the absolute evil that was put to an end by the evil of two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes, the atomic bombs were vicious and horrible, but maybe it was God’s mercy that allowed it to happen.

I recommend The Jersey Brothers, if you are able to read about the savagery and the suffering that went on during the war in the Pacific. It did make me thankful for the problems I have and the ones that I don’t.

The Song of Glory and Ghost by N.D. Wilson

Aug24

I could just say that everything I wrote about the first book in the Outlaws of Time series is true of this one, in spades. If you read and liked The Legend of Sam Miracle, you’ll probably like this second book, too. If you had some issues with the first book —pacing, confusing time shifts, complexity, violence and clutter— then, you’ll find those same issues in The Song of Glory and Ghost.

In this volume, Sam and his friend/sidekick, Glory, and the boys of SADDYR, are at their home base on an island near what’s left of Seattle in the year 2034. (Warning to N.D. Wilson from George Orwell: those exact years in the future catch up to you, finally, if your book lasts that long, and before you know it, it’s 1984, or 2034, and the future is no longer the future.) Well, they are mostly on the island, when Peter and Glory aren’t practicing time travel or hunting for The Vulture (El Buitre) or riding a motorcycle back in time to look for supplies. 2034 is a bleak year. Since Sam didn’t kill The Vulture, history has made a turn for the worse, and Seattle and most of the west coast has been destroyed in a series of apocalyptic events. Millions have died, and it’s all Sam’s fault. If he can only find The Vulture in one of the time gardens that is left and destroy him once and for all, maybe the timeline will right itself and Sam will have fulfilled his purpose.

But it’s Glory who takes center stage in this book. When she meets up with Ghost, a sort of Grim Reaper character, he tells her that she is the one can save Peter Atsa Eagle, guide Sam to the time and place where he can confront The Vulture, and defeat the desert demons called the Tzitzimime (somebody pronounce that one for me!). The Vulture has teamed up with the Tzitzimime and their zombie-like army of evil creatures, and their mission is to destroy, decimate, and rule the world. Only Sam and Glory can defeat them and save the world. Yes, the plot sounds a lot like a comic book, and the repeated references to comic books and drawing comics and Sam Miracle as a superhero reinforce the graphic novel feel. But it’s not a graphic novel, or a comic book, and there’s an undercurrent of theme and foundation that makes this story more than just another superhero story.

The problem is that the book tries to be many things: superhero myth, apocalyptic novel, spiritually significant story, and just a not-so-plain time travel adventure, just to name a few. Mr. Wilson draws on Spanish legend and language, Aztec religion and mythology, Christianity, and tales of the Pacific coast and the southwestern United States, again to name just a few sources. And in the middle of serious world-changing scenes, he can’t resist throwing in wry or corny joke or two:

“The two of you are permitted to see me only twice,” Ghost said. “The third time we meet eye to eye, I will be carrying your soul away. Then you may see me as often as you like.”
“Perfect,” Sam muttered. “Let’s hang out tons after we’re dead.”

It’s either comic relief or a distraction, depending on your sense of humor. This book introduces a new character, Samra, and I’m not sure what her purpose is. Maybe she’s Everyman (woman), the one who observes the action and the crazy time travel and snake weaponry from the vantage point of an ordinary human being. Glory, Sam and Peter (Father Tiempo) have become a sort of trinity of gods or super-beings by now so maybe we need an ordinary person to round out the cast.

The Song of Glory and Ghost won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it is indeed full of interesting and arresting scenes and themes and characters. If you haven’t read The Legend of Sam Miracle, do read that book first. I don’t think this book would be a good introduction to the series. But again if you liked Legend, you’ll probably like this one, too.

Amazon Affiliate. If you click on a book cover here to go to Amazon and buy something, I receive a very small percentage of the purchase price.
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.