What Do You Think?

May30

Two “literary” movies are coming out in December, 2012. I can’t decide what I think about either one. I have a tendency to be conservative and like what I’m already used to seeing, but these are at least somewhat appealing.

Les Miserables, starring Hugh Jackman, Ann Hathaway, Russell Crowe, Eddie Redmayne, and Amanda Seyfried.

The singing by Ms. Hathaway is a little uneven, but the sets and costumes look wonderful. What do you think?

The Great Gatsby, starring Leonardo DeCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Joel Edgerton.

For this one I definitely prefer the version with Robert Redford, Mia Farrow, and Sam Waterston. Mia Farrow just captured the character of Daisy, and I’ve always enjoyed watching Mr. Waterston and Mr. Redford.

Book Tag: Summer Setting, Summer Reading

May29

How would you like to play book tag this summer? The idea for this game originally came from Carmon at her blog Buried Treasure, but since she no longer seems to be keeping a blog, I thought we’d play here.

“In this game, readers suggest a good book in the category given, then let somebody else be ‘it’ before they offer another suggestion. There is no limit to the number of books a person may suggest, but they need to politely wait their turn with only one book suggestion per comment.”

So, the category for today is: Summer Setting, Summer Reading.

What are the best books you’ve read that are set during summer or make you think of summer or seem just right for summertime reading?

I’ll start off with a couple of links to posts here at Semicolon, and a suggestion.

Summer Reading: 52 Picks for the Hols
Death in Summer: Mysteries for Hot Days

And my suggestion to start off this game of book tag is Three Men in a Boat (to Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome. Three young men and a dog named Montmorency go boating down the Thames to improve their health and disposition. They meet up with angry swans and assertive steam-launches, among other obstacles, but they are nevertheless determined to finish out their “fortnight’s enjoyment on the river.”

It’s funny in a Wodehousian way, and I think it takes place in the summer, at least during some sort of holiday time.

So, ready, set, go! What’s your summer book recommendation?

Saturday Review of Books: May 26, 2012

May25

“Force yourself to reflect on what you read,
paragraph by paragraph.” ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

SatReviewbutton

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. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

May25

“[S]he had forgotten that it is the first concern of love to safeguard the dignity of the beloved, so that neither God in his skies nor the boy peering through the hedge should find in all time one possibility for contempt . . .”

I’m not sure what that statement means, to guard someone else’s dignity before God and man(?), but it is interesting to think about, as is this little story by Rebecca West, her first novel, published just as the First World War was ending in 1918. In 1914, The Soldier, Captain Christopher Baldry, is a sort of a hero, returning from the war, but the book is really about the women that Captain Baldry left behind: his cousin Jenny, his wife, Kitty, and his first love, Margaret.

The Return of the Soldier is another amnesia story, but it has an atmosphere and a poignancy that some of the other stories in the genre lack. Chris Baldry comes back from the war having lost his memory of the past fifteen years. The story is narrated by Jenny, Chris’s cousin, who grew up with Chris and who lives in his house as a companion to his wife, Kitty.

There are lot of questions raised in the story and left to be answered by the reader:

Is Jenny a reliable narrator? Are the thoughts and motivations of the other characters really as Jenny describes them or are we being told a tale that is only true in part from Jenny’s perspective? And who is Jenny? Why is she there, and why is she so interested in telling this story? I tried to read the story carefully, but I was never sure about Jenny’s personality and motivations.

What kind of person is Chris? Was he really happy in his marriage and his home before the war? Would he want to return to the war and “do his duty”, or is his amnesia not only an illness but also a subconscious running away from the horrors of the battlefield?

Who really loves Chris Baldry, the soldier? I would say that the woman who sacrifices herself for him is the one who really loves him. Who is that? Well, you tell me after you’ve read the book.

I recommend that you read this one slowly and carefully, paying attention to the details of time, setting, characterization, and plot. I wonder if watching the 1982 movie version of this novel, starring Alan Bates, Julie Christie, Ian Holm, Glenda Jackson, and Ann-Margret, would help at all in answering any of the questions, at least from the perspective of the screenwriters, the director, and the actors who made the movie.

The “B” Word, or Using Boredom to Educate

May23

It’s almost summer, and maybe your urchins like mine have finished up most of their formal schoolwork for the year. And, maybe, just maybe, they’ve already used the dreaded B-word once or twice.

“Mom! I’m bored! There’s nothing to do!”

Usually, I threaten to find them something to do, and it is a threat. Scrubbing baseboards is not a desirable or treasured substitute for boredom among my urchins. However, if you want to do something besides make threats, The Deputy Headmistress at The Commmon Room has a deal for you!

Her e-book, 101 Answers to the Summertime, “Mom, I’m Bored” Blues, is available on Amazon for only $3.99. Ms. Deputy Headmistress has seven progeny of her own, and she’s an expert at turning boredom into opportunity. From the book:

“So give your kids the gift of boredom. Turn off the electronics, or at least limit them. Make sure your kids have time to play in mud, water, grass, and sand, to experience a variety of textures and habitats. The ideas in this book are not meant to interfere with free time in outside play, but to complement it.”

The ideas in The Deputy Headmistress’s e-book include indoor games to play, arts and crafts, summer recipes, ideas for water play, gardening ideas, games and playthings for preschoolers, and to top it all off, a story at the end that I thought was worth the price of the book. Read about “Outside Babies” and be encouraged that your children, too, can learn to make their own fun with little or no monetary investment from you.

The DHM has graciously offered to give one copy of 101 Answers to the Summertime, “Mom, I’m Bored” Blues to one of my readers. If you would like to have a copy of this informative little booklet to whip out (on your Kindle) at a moment’s notice or whenever you hear that dreaded word, just leave a comment below with your favorite summertime boredom buster.

I have written about this problem/opportunity before here at Semicolon, and some of my ideas are included in the DHM’s book (along with many more, lots more than 101).

Bored –Nothing to Do: 100 Ideas to Cure Boredom
100 More Things to Do When You’re Bored: Summer Edition
Summer Reading 2010: 52 Picks for the Hol(idays)

I’ll pick a winner at random for the free copy of 101 Answers to the Summertime, “Mom, I’m Bored” Blues on Monday, May 28th. So, get your creative juices going, and give me some new ideas for beating boredom this summer.

And the winner is: Heather at Lines from the Page.

Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis, with Beth Clark

May22

“I have absolutely no desire to write a book about myself. This is a book about a Christ who is alive today and not only knows but cares about every hair on my head. Yours too. I’m writing this book on the chance that a glimpse into the life of my family and me, full of my stupidity and God’s grace, will remind you of this living, loving Christ and what it means to serve Him. I’m writing with the hope that as you cry and laugh with my family you will be encouraged that God still uses flawed human beings to change the world. And if He can use me, He can use you.”

I was encouraged by this story of a young woman, a girl really, eighteen years old, who found herself called by God to live in Uganda and minister to the poorest of the poor and adopt orphans and be ministered to by those same poor people and orphans. Katie Davis is a normal, average American girl in many ways, but she has an unusual God to whom she said “yes!” when He called her.

I really devoured this book. Katie’s story is amazing and inspiring. I will admit to one complaint about the book (but don’t let this keep you from reading it.) I would have liked to know more about what made Katie the caring, compassionate adult that she is. I would have liked to know more about her background. She mentions that her parents are Catholic, but Katie doesn’t seem to be a practicing Catholic. She talks like an evangelical Christian. I would have liked to know more about Katie’s family and how God prepared her for her new life in Uganda. But maybe Katie didn’t feel it necessary or didn’t feel comfortable sharing those family details.

Anyway, it is an excellent and challenging book. I gave it to a friend for a graduation present. I would recommend giving Kisses from Katie to all Christian graduates, but only if we’re prepared to have God do radical, exciting things in their lives. Read it only if you’re prepared to have God do radical, exciting, difficult things in YOUR life.

Katie’s blog

Diversions and Fascinations

May21

Here are a few links to the articles and blog posts and other things that caught my interest this week:

The Science of Mysteries: Shock, Trauma, and the First Real War at The Last Word on Nothing by Ann Finkbeiner. Ms. Finkbeiner discusses Dorothy Sayers’ novel Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club in relation to the science of wars and weaponry.

This emotionally moving short film reminded me of the movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close that I watched last weekend with Brown Bear Daughter. I want to read the book by Jonathan Safron Foer now. Artiste Daughter has already read the book and recommends it.

A world without God is a world without fear, without law, without order, without hope. —C.H. Spurgeon

My mom was right: kids need to play outside. She used to send us outdoors to play and tell us not to come back inside until suppertime. I always took a book with me.

The Easiest Way to Memorize the Bible Actually, this method works for memorizing most anything; it’s just that the Bible is the most fruitful and rewarding thing to memorize.

N.D. Wilson on The Hunger Games: Why Hunger Games Is Flawed to Its Core. I think I agree with him, and yet I enjoyed the book and the series, so what does that say about me as a reader? I think Mr. Wilson just called me a “sucker” who “really can’t read.”

Is Science Fiction Un-Christian? by Ethan Bartlett at Christ and Pop Culture is a brief, thoughtful, and fair evaluation of the science fiction genre in light of a Christian worldview. I liked what Mr. Bartlett had to say.

Saturday Review of Books: May 19, 2012

May18

“In 1946 in the village our feelings about books. . . went beyond love. It was as if we didn’t know where we ended and books began. We didn’t simply read books; we became them. We took them into ourselves and made them into our histories. While it would be easy to say that we escaped into books, it might be truer to say that books escaped into us. They showed us what was possible.” ~From Kafka Was the Rage by Anatole Broyard

SatReviewbutton

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. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

YA Fiction You Can Skip

May17

. . . ’cause I read it for you. I know about the 50-page rule and Nancy Pearl’s addendum to it:

When you are 51 years of age or older, subtract your age from 100, and the resulting number (which, of course, gets smaller every year) is the number of pages you should read before you can guiltlessly give up on a book. As the saying goes, “Age has its privileges.”

But I still have trouble not finishing a book that I’ve started. Even if it’s a bad book, and I can tell it’s a bad book, I want to know what happens. I want to finish. It’s not a matter of guilt—it’s more curiosity. I can’t bear to not know. Did the book get better? Does it end the way I think (fear) it will? Do the characters become more or less likable? Is this book really as much of a train wreck as I think it is?

So, I finished the following YA novels, but you don’t have to read them. They really are not worth the time, unless there’s nothing else in the house to read or you’ve already started on one of these and have the same compulsion I have to finish.

Someone Else’s Life by Katie Dale. Such a soap opera, with a fictional soap opera actress thrown in as a minor character. Rosie’s mother dies of Huntington’s Disease, but Rosie finds out that her mom wasn’t her mom at all. Rosie and another baby were switched at birth! And that’s not a spoiler because that surprise revelation drops on page 46. But oh my goodness, there are many more confessions, and admissions, and drama-filled disclosures still to come—one about every forty or fifty pages in this 445 page tear-jerker. But I wasn’t crying because the roller coaster ride of emotional reunions and spectacular crises left me feeling . . . nothing much. It was all too, too much, and I just had enough curiosity to read to the end to see who would find out what next, and how many fireworks could be stuffed into one overly long book.

Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet. I really enjoyed reading two other books by award-winning author Mal Peet, Exposure, a novel set in South America and based on Shakespeare’s Othello, and Tamar, a book about World War II spies in Holland. However, this latest YA novel by Mr. Peet was a clumsy amalgam of two stories. In 1962,two British teenagers, Clem and Frankie, from different sides of the cultural divide, muddle their way toward a sexual liaison while world leaders Krushchev, Castro, and JFK blunder their way toward World War III in what later became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. These two events, the sex and the world crisis, are supposed to have something to do with each other, but I never saw the connection. At the point of connection, there is an actual explosion, and then at the end of the book another explosion (9-11) is supposed to lend irony to the entire mish-mash. But it doesn’t really. The novel was a disappointment with way too much graphic sex.

Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St. by Peter Abrahams

May16

In most books, Magic always follows rules. You can only get into Narnia under certain circumstances, with Aslan’s permission. In Half Magic by Edward Eager, you always get exactly half of what you wish for. The One Ring (Tolkien) works in a specific way to do specific things and can only be destroyed in one, very specific place. Harry Potter has to go to school to learn the rules of Magic in his world.

In Robbie Forester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St., Magic shows up, but it’s an unpredictable, capricious sort of Magic that only seems to have rules. The children involved in this magical adventure never do figure out the rules of when the “magic power” will appear, much less how to control it. It seems to have something to do with injustice: Robbie and her friends, Ashanti, Silas, and Tutu, receive magical help and powers whenever there is injustice to be righted. But, as Robbie notices, the world is full of injustice, and the magic only shows up sometimes, following its own rules that are unfathomable both to the reader and to Robbie and her merry band of outlaws.

Robbie Forrester and the Outlaws of Sherwood St. tells the tale of a group of four young teens who become friends in spite of their differing backgrounds and talents and join together to “rob the rich and give to the poor.” The villains in the piece are greedy capitalist land developer, Sheldon Gunn, his fixer/lawyer, Egil Borg, and a nasty little arsonist named Harry Henkel. The rob-the-rich and capitalists-are-evil subtext bothered me a little bit, but the story was well-paced and fun. Sheldon Gunn really is an evil capitalist who goes so far as to try to put a soup kitchen out of business (isn’t it always a soup kitchen or a homeless shelter?), and the kids are purely good, never even thinking about keeping some of the money they “steal” for themselves. There’s not a lot of nuance here, just old-fashioned good vs. evil with some temperamental magical help along the way.

There are questions raised in the book, about Ashanti’s family, about Tutu’s future, about the possible reappearance of the magical powers, that are not resolved. It looks as if we’re being set up for a sequel, or maybe this book just doesn’t follow the rules for a magical fantasy.