Library Chicken Update CABIN-EXTRAVAGANZA 2017: THE CABIN-ING
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
CABIN-EXTRAVANGANZA: As you might imagine, weeks of prep are required for the Annual Family Trip to the Cabin Where Mom Gets a Glass of Wine, Puts Up Her Feet, and Reads the Entire Time. I have to make a list of all the books I want to bring and then carefully time my library hold requests so that I can pick up the books before we leave. I start working on my list weeks ahead of time: I especially like to get nice thick new releases (that I might not otherwise get to before they’re due back) and I don’t want to bring any potential duds (though of course there are always surprises). Over the years, my cabin memories have gotten mixed up with the books that I’ve read there (Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell, and The Three Weissmans of Westport by Cathleen Schine, to name a few), so it matters to me what I bring, meaning that it’s important to carefully winnow the list. Or not. I’m not so good at the last part. This year was a record: I brought three bags of books, wildly overestimating (as usual) how many I would be able to get to. But as Amy reminded me, that’s the entire point of Library Chicken, right?
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
This one was a lot of fun. A writer of Agatha Christie-like mysteries finishes his final book and commits suicide--or does he? And what happened to the last chapter of the manuscript? We get two mysteries for the price of one as the tale of the editor investigating the author’s mysterious death bookends the text of his final novel.
(LC Score: +1)
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple
A semi-famous artist and animator, now a full-time mom, deals with depression and anger during one very long, very bad day. I wasn’t sure how much I’d enjoy this novel given my mixed history with Semple’s other books, but this one is funny and heartfelt and goes in the YES column. NOTE: The main character will be easy to identify with for those of us (I know I’m not the only one!) who are married to super-nice spouses while being not-always-so-nice (even though we try, we do!) ourselves. And if you happen to be the super-nice one in the couple, you could always read this to see what it’s like being the other half.
(LC Score: +1)
Wodehouse: A Life by Robert McCrum
After having completed the Bertie and Jeeves oeuvre I wanted to read a Wodehouse biography. This one is solid and entertaining and deals well with the international scandal at the center of P.G. Wodehouse’s life, when, as an interned Englishman stuck in France during WWII, he agreed to broadcast on Nazi radio, even though he was in no way a Nazi-sympathizer himself. McCrum does a good job of explaining Wodehouse’s behavior (which was seen as providing traitorous propaganda to the enemy) without trying to excuse or defend it.
(LC Score: +1)
The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
Four adult siblings squabble over the disbursement of the family trust, which has been gutted as a result of the eldest’s irresponsible and immoral behavior. (Though maybe not in the way you expect.) At the beginning, the family seems to be made up entirely of mean-spirited jerks and pathetic losers, but new connections are forged and relationships shift, leading to a surprisingly sweet ending.
(LC Score: +1)
Ha’Penny by Jo Walton
Half a Crown by Jo Walton
The second and third books (following Farthing) in the Small Change trilogy, set in an alternate Britain (where the Nazis made an early peace with England and won the war on the continent) circa the 1950s. In Ha’Penny, following closely on the events of Farthing, we see England slip closer to fascism, while in the background a plot is hatched to assassinate the new Prime Minister and his guest, Adolf Hitler, on the opening night of a new London production of Hamlet. I had major issues with one of the relationships in this novel (and if you’ve read it, email me, because I would like to discuss it AT LENGTH), but it won me over in two ways. First, the actress involved in the assassination plot is one of the “famous Larkin sisters”, who are clearly and unashamedly based on the Mitfords, and yes, I’m up for reading anything and everything involving the Mitford sisters. (I may even occasionally cackle with glee while doing so.) Second, the Mitford-I-mean-Larkin actress is playing the title role in the production, a gender-bent Hamlet, and I found the backstage conversations about the motivations of a female Hamlet fascinating. (Also, I would now like to see this production. Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern, could you please make that happen?) Half a Crown jumps the action forward 10 years, to 1960 and an England with its own secret police force and soon-to-be-opened concentration camps. While the depiction of Britain’s fall into fascism felt scarily realistic, I thought the ending of the series was a bit too pat, though overall I enjoyed the trilogy.
(LC Score: +2)
The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore
Secrets and lie detectors! Polygamy and Margaret Sanger! Feminism and bondage fetishes! The creation of Wonder Woman is one of those you-couldn’t-make-this-stuff-up tales, brought to life in this well-researched history by Jill Lepore, who always chooses interesting and unique topics to write about. (I’m also a big fan of her Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin.) It’s a great read, especially if you’ve just enjoyed the new Wonder Woman movie. (And if you haven’t, what are you waiting for?)
(LC Score: +1)
Mister Monkey by Francine Prose
This novel consists of a cleverly linked series of narratives from various people connected with the doomed revival of a popular children’s stage musical, Mister Monkey. Though a very different book with a very different style, I was reminded of The Nest, in that it starts out rather sordid and grim, but ends up with a bit of sweetness and hope.
(LC Score: +1)
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Fifteen years ago, a reality show depicting an exorcism performed on a 14-year-old girl became a pop culture phenomenon. Now her younger sister is 23 and is being interviewed for a book on the events of that show and their shocking aftermath, declaring in the process that she believes her sister was actually mentally ill and was denied needed treatment. I don’t want to give too much away, but Tremblay owes a large debt to Shirley Jackson in this creepy and occasionally disturbing novel.
(LC Score: +1)
Swing Time by Zadie Smith
Smith tells the story of two young girls growing up in the housing projects of London, who meet in a dance class and become on-again off-again best friends. One of them becomes a professional dancer and the other, our narrator, becomes the personal assistant to an international pop star. For what it’s worth, this is one of those novels where I felt I missed the point somewhere along the way, but that didn’t actually hamper my enjoyment.
(LC Score: +1)
The Vacationers by Emma Straub
An extended family vacation in Mallorca leads to all sorts of secrets being revealed, with relationships upended and characters having to figure out a way to stay together—or not. This was a quick, entertaining read, but I was a little disappointed by the cliche nature of the family problems. Basically, all the men (with the partial exception of the nice gay couple) are sleeping around, and (DEEP SIGH) the 18-year-old daughter wants to lose her virginity before going home and starting college. (Is that still a thing? Really, is that a thing we’re still talking about as an important life goal? Could we maybe decide not to have it be a thing anymore?)
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
Howards End Is on the Landing by Susan Hill
In this memoir, subtitled A Year of Reading From Home, accomplished author and publisher Susan Hill devotes herself to reading and rereading the books on her own eclectic bookshelves. I’m always in the mood for a book about books, but I found Hill to be a bit of a lit snob, just a smidge smug and condescending. To be fair, I was probably never going to get along with someone who dismisses the Wimsey-Vane romance as ridiculous and has an entire essay on how she finds Jane Austen boring.
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
Library Chicken Score for THE CABIN 2017: 10
Running Score: 82
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates (Coates’s memoir of his father)
The Opposite House by Helen Oyeyemi (need to finish reading Oyeyemi’s backlist)
The Sinful Stones by Peter Dickinson (Inspector James Pribble #3)
Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie (the final Tommy and Tuppence)
Summer Reading: Lian Tanner’s The Keepers Trilogy
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This year we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
One of the wildly inaccurate misconceptions about homeschoolers that I’ve encountered out in the world is that we are, as a group, overprotective of our overly sheltered children. After all, why else would we refuse to send our kids to school if not to spare them the tough-but-necessary life lessons that can only be learned on the playground? Part of this comes, I think, from the tendency to send children off to preschool at earlier and earlier ages, as a good friend discovered when, after choosing to keep her 3-year-old home with her for another year, a family member told her, “You’ve got to untie those apron strings at some point.”
It’s also confusing to me as a modern parent how protective I’m supposed to be. As a kindergartener I walked a half mile or so on my own to school every morning, and as a tween (a word that was not yet invented when I was one), I rode my bicycle (not wearing a helmet, of course) along a busy four-lane highway to visit friends, and I don’t think I would have been comfortable with either of those scenarios with my children. On the other hand, when I was a teenager, whenever I went out I was expected to let my (responsible and engaged) parents know who I was with, where we were going, and when I’d be back. Now that my kids are all cellphone-enabled, I’m lucky if they tell me they’re leaving before they run out the door, knowing that I can text them if I’m wondering where they are, and they can call me if they need to be rescued. And while I’m pretty much okay with that, given that it’s never been a problem and my kids are good about responding, I still wonder if that makes me irresponsible and disengaged. My high school freshman daughter’s friends were shocked that I was fine with her heading to the coffee shop or public library (both within easy walking distance) after school let out without asking my explicit permission beforehand, just texting me at some point to let me know where she was. Apparently, despite all those years of homeschooling, I’m actually more on the loose and easy-going side of the spectrum.
Which leads us (albeit in a roundabout sort of way) to one of my favorite fantasy series for upper elementary readers and above. No matter whether you’re protective or permissive, the world created by Lian Tanner in his Keepers trilogy will give you a new perspective on how we choose to look after our children. In the city of Jewel, children are literally chained to the Blessed Guardians for their own protection until Separation Day, learning such lessons as “An Impatient Child is an Unsafe Child, and an Unsafe Child puts All Others At Risk!”
When Separation Day is canceled, Goldie escapes from the Guardians and takes shelter in the mysterious Museum of Dunt, where she must quickly learn to navigate its shifting rooms and discover its secrets in order to save herself and the people she cares about.
Goldie joins her best friend, Toadspit, on the trail of his little sister, kidnapped by child-stealers and taken to the city of Spoke during its Festival of Lies, when everything is turned back to front and upside down.
Back in Jewel, Goldie and Toadspit (with the help of a magical dog, a talking cat, and the bloodthirsty spirit of a warrior princess) join the battle to free their city from the tyranny of the Blessed Guardians.
Library Chicken Update CABIN-EXTRAVAGANZA 2017 : THE PREQUEL
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
CABIN-EXTRAVANGANZA, THE PREQUEL: Every July we pack up the cars for our annual family trip to Boone, NC (chosen because it is roughly halfway between Atlanta and my brother and sister-in-law’s home in Virginia Beach), where we stay in a rental “cabin” that, with three levels, a hot tub, excellent wifi, and an assortment of widescreen TVs, bears zero resemblance to any of the actual cabins I camped in during my outdoorsy youth. However, it is built of logs and there’s a nice fire pit in the back (not to mention a boulder-filled creek with a very convenient swimming hole) so I guess it’s sort of cabin-ish. Boone is a great little college town (Go Appalachian State Apps!), with unique restaurants, fun and funky shopping opportunities, and an assortment of great outdoor activities, so as soon as we’ve unloaded, we head inside the cabin and do our best NEVER TO GO OUTSIDE AGAIN. The family’s goals are to catch up on what’s been happening in our various lives, play board games from the truly impressive collection we’ve built up over the years, and nap as much as possible. MY goal is to read as many books as I can, even while being distracted by my loving family and their attempts to engage me in conversation and so-called bonding activities. As you can imagine, during the week prior to the cabin trip there is a flurry of last-minute housecleaning, packing, and frantic calls to make sure we remembered to get someone to take care of the pets. Meanwhile, I’m upstairs reading all the books that have to go back to the library and in the process not quite finishing the Library Chicken Update I was supposed to turn in before we left.
Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary With the Bard by Laura Bates
I’ve been trying to read more about our prison system, and in particular I am interested in education behind bars, both in terms of the men and women who choose to do that work, and the effects on the inmates who participate. Professor Laura Bates spent years teaching Shakespeare to maximum security inmates. Her memoir of that time exposes a world that few of us ever see, but I was surprised by her choice to focus almost exclusively on one particular student, Larry Newton, who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without parole while still a juvenile. Bates has clearly been deeply affected by Newton, who she describes as extraordinarily talented and insightful, and there’s some fascinating stuff here, but I became impatient with her concentration on Newton’s story and their relationship and was disappointed not to learn more about her broader experience with the dozens of inmates she worked with over the years.
(LC Score: +1)
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death by Colson Whitehead
Whitehead wrote this memoir of the time that a magazine staked him to play in the World Series of Poker several years before his novel, The Underground Railroad, won the Pulitzer Prize (and everything else), and gee, I sure hope he’s feeling better these days. His writing is smart and funny, but the tone of this memoir—written in his persona as a native of “the Republic of Anhedonia”—is cynical half-joking despair that never lets up. Ha? It’s hard for me to laugh when I’m worried about whether the author is eating and sleeping okay and whether someone is regularly checking up on him.
(LC Score: +1)
By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie
Tommy and Tuppence mystery #4—and my favorite so far (with one left to go). Tuppence, now a grandmother, gets suspicious when an elderly woman seemingly disappears from an old folks’ home. This one is by far the best-plotted of Christie’s Tommy and Tuppence novels (yeah, okay, maybe there are some plotlines that don’t quite get wrapped up but what’s a loose end or two between friends?) and of course I always enjoy hanging out with the Beresfords.
(LC Score: +1)
The Old English Peep Show by Peter Dickinson
This is Dickinson’s second mystery novel starring the fabulously named Inspector James Pribble and I think I’m hooked. In 1960’s England, Pribble is sent to the country estate of a famous and wealthy family to explore the suicide of an old retainer, but all is not as it seems, especially since a large chunk of the estate has been converted into an Olde Englande theme park experience. With man-eating lions, which just you know isn’t going to end well. (Insert your favorite Jurassic Park quote here.)
(LC Score: +1)
The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah
You know, I have loved books that everyone else hated and hated books that everyone else loved, so I get that reading is subjective. I generally try to be as positive as possible even when I didn’t particularly enjoy a specific book, and when it comes to official fanfic—like this “New Hercule Poirot mystery!”—my expectations are not high. But in this case, I kinda feel like I read it so you guys don’t have to. (In fairness to Hannah, I thought her Poirot was okay, it was the rest of the book that didn’t work for me.) (LC Score: +1)
Vermilion by Molly Tanzer
ARRGH. I loved loved LOVED the beginning of this book. Our heroine, Lou, is a Chinese-American psychopomp (essentially a freelance exorcist) in an 1870s San Francisco populated by ghosts, assorted undead, and sentient bears. Tanzer, you had me at the bears, but when you threw in SENTIENT SEA-LIONS (!!!) I immediately logged into the library system and put everything else you’ve ever written on hold. Unfortunately, the beginning just sets the stage and the main plot has Lou leaving San Francisco behind (the sea-lions, Lou, how could you leave the sea-lions?) to investigate why Chinese men are going missing in Colorado. And yes, there’s a Mysterious Sanatorium and other supernatural things to come, but I just didn’t find it as interesting as the initial set-up. Plus, once we got into the main plot I started having major issues with story and characterization. Mostly I just desperately wanted to go back to San Francisco. (Dear Ms. Tanzer, I will happily read an entire series of Lou’s psychopomp adventures in San Francisco—and please can she have a special sea-lion buddy?) Anyway, I’m still going to look for Tanzer’s other novels, but this one broke my heart a bit as it went from 'My New Favorite That I Must Tell Everyone About' to 'Flawed But With Some Great Ideas.'
(LC Score: +1)
Moxyland by Lauren Beukes
This is the second Lauren Beukes novel I’ve read (after the equally excellent Zoo City) and I would just like to say that she is amazing. Moxyland is a near-future modern-cyberpunk tale of the corporate-ocracy told by four alternating narrators (one of whom is an art student who allows herself to become, via a sort of nanotech tattoo, a literal walking advertisement for a soda company). It is original and energetic and I couldn’t put it down. Now I just need to work up the courage to read her most recent novels: The Shining Girls (about a serial killer targeting bright young women throughout time) and Broken Monsters (about murders where human bodies are seemingly fused to animal bodies). (Beukes is great and I really want to read her latest books but all the reviews talk about their “brutal and disturbing violence” and I’m kind of a wimp and keep chickening out.)
(LC Score: +1)
The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
After Fagan’s end-of-the-world story The Sunlight Pilgrims I expected this earlier novel to also be science fiction, but there’s nothing otherworldly or futuristic here—it’s the story of a 15-year-old Scottish girl who’s been in and out of foster care and who is now in a group home waiting to see if she’ll be charged with murder. The storyline is bleak and violent, but surprisingly I didn’t find it a particularly bleak or depressing read, in part because Fagan allows the humanity of her protagonist to shine through and even leaves us with a tiny smidgen of hope.
(LC Score: +1)
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
Atwood’s retells The Odyssey from the point of view of Penelope and the twelve maids who were murdered by Odysseus upon his return. Short and entertaining (if a bit grim, topic-wise), and would make a great high school side-by-side read with the original.
(LC Score: +1)
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
I have loved everything I’ve read by Helen Oyeyemi (White is for Witching, Mr. Fox, What is Not Yours is Not Yours) and this novel was no exception, but I struggled a bit getting through it. This was my second attempt and even with a running start I got stuck for a couple of week about a third of the way through. I hasten to add that this is a me problem, not a problem with the book. In this, her version of the “wicked stepmother” story, Oyeyemi deals with uncomfortable issues of race and parenting that made it a challenging read at times, though well worth it.
(LC Score: +1)
Deconstructing Penguins: Parents, Kids, and the Bond of Reading by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone
This guide shares tips and techniques that the Goldstones have learned after years of hosting a series of book clubs for upper elementary and middle school students. I’ve found it a helpful resource when thinking about how to begin discussing literary analysis with middle-grade readers, and I picked it up for a reread to get ready for the middle school literature this fall. (Though clearly I’ve been hanging out with Amy too much, because every time the Goldstones talk about teaching the kids to be “book detectives” who find the meaning hidden within each book by the author, I think to myself, “The Post-Structuralists might have a bone to pick with you about that.”) HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED (despite those wacky post-structuralists).
(LC Score: +1)
The Great Brain is Back by John D. Fitzgerald
While working on a recent Summer Reading post I discovered that there was an 8th Great Brain novel I hadn’t read, published after Fitzgerald’s death, and of course I had to find a copy. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s a necessary addition to the series; posthumously published works are hit or miss to begin with, and in this particular case, I really struggle with the character of Tom (the Great Brain) as he gets older. From a parental perspective, Tom does some terrible things to his siblings and friends (which, I have to say, did not bother me at all when I read and reread these books growing up), and in his first adventure here he ends up cheating his brother and taking a loss because he can’t stand the idea that little brother J.D. might actually have gotten the better of him this one time. As Tom enters teenagerhood that behavior stops being funny and clever and just-maybe-acceptable and starts to look a wee bit sociopathic. (I was comforted to read that the author, John D. Fitzgerald, also struggled with this as the characters aged, feeling that it was past time for Tom to mature and permanently reform, while the publisher insisted on his adventures continuing just the same as always.) Please do continue to pass along the original Great Brain books to any upper elementary readers in your vicinity, but I think it’s okay if you give this last one a miss.
(LC Score: +1)
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier written by Alan Moore, art by Keith O’Neill
This Week In Comics (Part 1): Previously on Library Chicken, I reported on Scream for Jeeves, a Lovecraft-Wodehouse crossover. One might think that we had covered all the Cthulu/Jeeves mash-ups available, but not so! In Black Dossier, a collection of League histories from its earliest 17th century incarnation onwards, one short story has Bertie Wooster telling us about the time Lovecraftian monsters attacked his Aunt Dahlia’s home, Brinkley Court. (SPOILER: Gussie Fink-Nottle’s brain gets removed, but no one notices.) The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, for those who are unfamiliar, is a group of Victorian heroes, including Mina Harker, Captain Nemo, Allan Quartermain, and Dr. Jeckyll, documented in a series of comic books by Alan Moore and Keith O’Neill. (There was also a truly awful movie adaptation that you should feel free to ignore.) This graphic novel brings some of the characters forward to 1958 (when, in this universe, Britain is just coming out of its 1984 Big Brother era) in a framing story where they must steal the files containing the history of the League. WARNING: I love the concept and all the literary references, but Black Dossier and the other comics in the series would qualify for a hard R-rating (violence and <ahem> quite a bit of sexual content) and are definitely NOT for kids.
(LC Score: +1)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl & the Great Lakes Avengers
This Week in Comics (Part 2): This Squirrel Girl collection, made up of material from before the current run of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl by Ryan North and Erica Henderson, consists of a few miscellaneous appearances plus her adventures with the Great Lakes Avengers, most of which spoof Marvel Comics and their occasional grimdark tone. WARNING: While the GLA issues can be funny and entertaining, they are also cynical, violent, occasionally mean-spirited, and sometimes come awfully close to being outright offensive (all the while playing it up with cute little comments like “Look how offensive we’re being! Oh, that’s terrible! We’re going to get letters!” so that we can be sure to appreciate how clever and ironic they are). Plus: Deadpool guest-stars! Despite the incredibly adorable cover, these comics have a very different tone and spirit from the current run and are definitely NOT appropriate for young SG fans.
(LC Score: +1)
Library Chicken Score for 7/18/17: 14
Running Score: 72
On the to-read/still-reading stack for THE CABIN:
Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz (a mystery within a mystery)
Today Will Be Different by Maria Semple (loved Where’d You Go, Bernadette, did NOT love This One Is Mine)
The Nest by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney (squabbling adult siblings, my favorite)
The Vacationers by Emma Straub (more squabbling family members—on vacation!)
Summer Reading: M.T. Anderson’s Pals in Peril series
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This year we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
For me it all started with The Secret in the Old Clock. My dad was good about bringing home presents for my brother and I whenever he traveled for work, and after one trip (perhaps wildly overestimating the current reading comprehension level of his 2nd grade daughter) he gave me the first book in the Nancy Drew series. I had it by my bedside for months, doggedly making my way through, reading (and rereading) the pages until I could figure out what was going on, but eventually I triumphed—and immediately began working through the rest of the series. Downstairs in our homeschool room there is an entire shelf crammed with those familiar yellow hardbacks, next to a healthy sampling of Hardy Boys, half a dozen Happy Hollisters, a smattering of Bobbsey Twins, almost the entire run of Trixie Belden, not nearly enough Cherry Ames, and a selection of Tom Swift from my dad’s childhood.
I liked the way Tom Swift looked on my shelves, but I never did get around to actually reading them, so I probably shouldn’t have been so surprised when my children looked at my carefully preserved and lovingly displayed collection and said (more or less), “Naah, I don’t think so.” My older daughter read a handful of Nancy Drew mysteries, more out of duty than pleasure, but no one was really interested. Mostly they just sat there, collecting dust.
That’s one reason I was so happy to discover M.T. Anderson’s Pals in Peril series. Anderson must have grown up reading the same books I did because these “Thrilling Tales!” are an affectionate tribute to the mystery and adventure series of decades past. The pals in question are Jasper Dash, Boy Technonaut (who is stuck in a bit of a time-warp), Katie Mulligan (a resident of Horror Hollow, where she regularly fights off zombies, werewolves, and rogue mind-sloths), and Lily Gefelty, an ordinary girl whose life feels a bit boring next to the exploits of her daring friends. My children hadn’t read much of the source material, but that didn’t stop them from enjoying these hilarious and ridiculously over-the-top adventures, stuffed with fabulous illustrations by Kurt Cyrus, absurd footnotes, and full-page advertisements for Gargletine Brand Patented Breakfast Drink, Official Beverage of Jasper Dash! (“Say, Kids, Want to Feel Peachy Keen? Drink a Quart of Gargletine!”) This series has been one of my favorite readalouds (though mid-elementary readers and up should be fine reading it on their own) and is worth checking out by anyone who grew up with Nancy and Frank and Trixie for both its humor and the sweetness of the friendship at its core.
“On Career Day Lily visited her dad’s work with him and discovered he worked for a mad scientist who wanted to rule the earth through destruction and desolation.” The whales cannot be trusted! Fortunately, Lily can rely on Jasper and Katie to help her save the world. The books get slightly more complicated as the series goes on, but this a great choice for young readers who are venturing beyond beginning chapter books. (Though if parents do them as a readaloud they’ll be able to share the enjoyment of chapter openings like, “If you have ever been present at a vicious attack by elevated sea animals, you’ll know exactly what the people of Pelt felt like. I, for example, was unlucky enough to be working as a house-painter in Minneapolis that terrifying summer of the Manatee Offensive.”)
The Clue of the Linoleum Lederhosen
Jasper, Katie, and Lily are taking a well-deserved vacation at the Moose Tongue Lodge and Resort when they run into the adorable mystery-solving Hooper Quints, the brave but not-that-bright Manley Boys, and the boy-crazy Cutesy Dell Twins. But what happened to the heiress’s priceless diamond necklace?!?
Jasper Dash and the Flame-Pits of Delaware
The pals encounter dinosaurs! lost cities! gangsters! and monks! while exploring the Land That Time Forgot: mysterious DELAWARE. Plus, the Delaware state song! This novel is by far the longest of the series and ends with our pals still stuck in the trackless jungles of the Blue Hen State, leading directly into:
Agent Q, or The Smell of Danger!
The tyrant known as His Terrifying Majesty, the Awful and Adorable Autarch of Dagsboro, is determined that those meddling children shall not escape his clutches, and sends his Ministry of Silence spies out to disguise themselves as furniture and lay in wait for our unsuspecting trio.
Back at home, Lily has to deal with her mom, who’s been acting strangely ever since her visit to Todburg, the most haunted town in America, while Katie is menaced by a visit from her cousin, bratty (and ever-so-bored) Snott Academy student Madigan Westlake-Duvet. Can Jasper help his friends survive the onslaught of the undead? Will the author successfully describe Madigan’s outfit every time she is mentioned in the narrative, as he is contractually obligated to do?
He Laughed With His Other Mouths
In the final Pals in Peril adventure, Jasper goes on a dangerous quest to find his father, who he has known only as a concentrated beam of energy from the region of the Horsehead Nebula. Fortunately, Lily and Katie refuse to let him go alone. And while the Pals are busy saving Earth from invading aliens, a second story—of Busby Spence, reading Jasper Dash novels while waiting for his father to return from the war—unfolds in a series of footnotes. (Warning: parents reading this book aloud should be prepared for unexplained allergy attacks—I did NOT cry, the room just got dusty!—and may want to lay in a store of tissues.)
Looking Back on a Decade-Plus of Homeschool Life
Once I decided that ‘school’ didn’t have to look anything like the model I grew up with, I also started thinking about happiness, and success, and what I really wanted for myself and my husband and my children as we grow up together.
I can tell you exactly when I decided to homeschool. Kid No. 1 was nearly three, Kid No. 2 was an infant, and Kids No. 3 and No. 4 were years away. I was sitting on my bed next to my husband, reading my way through a stack of library books— not unusual, except in this case, the stack consisted of every single homeschooling book my local library had available. About halfway through the stack I turned to my husband and said, “I think we can do this.” I believe his response was a dubious “Hmmm.”
That was over 10 years ago, and if you ask me why I choose to homeschool, I can give you a decade’s worth of reasons. Initially, it just sounded like a whole lot of fun. I loved school and was a fairly accomplished nerd in my day, so the idea of doing school with my kids (of whom I am also rather fond) seemed pretty great. Academically, it turns out that the one-on-one of homeschooling is such an efficient way to teach that we could take Fridays off and still keep up with what was being taught in our local schools, even as we watched our school-friends deal with bullies, school bureaucracy, and the occasional lousy teacher. I believe that homeschooling supports family relationships and creates life-long learners, and we’ve chosen this course with great care and thought.
Of course, if you ask my kids why we homeschool—and people have—they will tell you that it’s because “Mom likes to sleep in and wear pajamas all day.”
Now, as it happens, this is also true. Which I think illustrates something important about homeschooling: it’s not just an educational choice, it’s a lifestyle choice. I thought I knew this going in. I pictured my kids’ educational journey as just that, a road trip, where instead of taking the interstates like most other folks, we had decided to take the back roads, enjoying the scenery and confounding the GPS.
But I’ve since realized that metaphor doesn’t go far enough. Once I decided that ‘school’ didn’t have to look anything like the model I grew up with, I also started thinking about happiness, and success, and what I really wanted for myself and my husband and my children as we grow up together. We’re still on a journey, but it’s not enough to say that we’re driving the back roads. I think we’ve left the car behind and are doing something radically different— more like taking a trip in a hot air balloon, with an entirely different view of the scenery.
“We’re still on a journey, but it’s not enough to say that we’re driving the back roads. I think we’ve left the car behind and are doing something radically different— more like taking a trip in a hot air balloon, with an entirely different view of the scenery.”
I didn’t quite know that’s what I was signing up for, halfway through the stack of library books, and it can get a bit nerve-wracking up there at times, but I have learned a few things I can share with my fellow balloonists.
Be flexible. You’re in charge up there, but you’re not in control. Health, financial, or other family issues may mean that the best choice for your family today is not the same as it was last year, or even last week. Give yourself permission to change course.
Keep your destination in mind. Whether you’re planning to homeschool for a year, until college, or for as long as it works, at some point your child will have to deal with the more traditional expectations of the rest of the world. This can be a rocky transition, but there’s a lot you can do to prepare and make it easier.
Teach the kids how to steer. When it’s appropriate—and as often as possible—let them make the decisions about where to go next. And, of course, enjoy the ride. Skip math and grammar and spend the day in bed with the kids and Harry Potter. Take a family trip when everyone else is in school. And definitely, always, wear the pajamas.
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (7.11.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
Somehow we’ve made it to the middle of July, which means that school starts in less than a month for those kids in my house who attend traditional high school. (The one homeschooler remaining doesn’t start back until September, so I imagine he’ll spend the month of August lazing around and playing loud video games and generally being obnoxious to his siblings while they try to do homework.) I need to get serious about breaking out of this reading slump if I’m going to get one last burst of summer reading in—though that’s hard to do when I’m busy going to the movies (Wonder Woman! Cars 3! Baby Driver! The new Spiderman! Wonder Woman again!) all the time. I’ll just have to bring Jeeves and Wooster along to read in the theater while I’m waiting for the coming-soon trailers (The Big Sick! Dunkirk! The new Thor!) to start.
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Jeeves and the Tie That Binds by P.G. Wodehouse
The Cat-Nappers by P.G. Wodehouse
Jeeves and Wooster #7 through 10. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the best Jeeves and Wooster novels come from the middle of the 10-book sequence (beginning, I’d argue, with my personal all-time favorite, The Code of the Woosters). By the time we get to The Cat-Nappers, Wodehouse has lost some steam, though I think we can forgive him given that this 10th Jeeves and Wooster novel was published in 1974, when he was 92 years old. So while the last few novels are maybe only for hard-core fans, I still thoroughly enjoyed going through the whole sequence, mostly because I got very attached to Bertie and his lovable dopiness.
(LC Score: 0 for Stiff Upper Lip and Tie That Binds, off my own shelves; +1 for Cat-Nappers)
Jeeves and the Wedding Bells by Sebastian Faulks
Which brings us to the “extra” Jeeves and Wooster novel, an homage to Wodehouse (officially sanctioned by his estate) by novelist Sebastian Faulks. As I’ve mentioned before, I find that these kinds of books can be hit or miss (mostly miss), but Faulks gets a lot of things right. While he can’t match the sparkling brilliance of Wodehouse at the top of his form (who can?), he clearly appreciates Bertie and gets that while Bertie may be an upper-class twit, he is also cheerful, friendly, open-minded, and endlessly obliging and generous to aunts, old school chums, and ex-fiancees. In this last adventure, Bertie and Jeeves end up switching roles, with Jeeves pretending to be a Lord and Bertie masquerading as a gentleman’s gentleman—as to be expected, hijinks ensue—but the most important thing (SPOILER! SPOILER! SPOILER!) is that after more failed and accidental engagements than one would care to count, Bertie finally meets The Right Girl. It’s a sweet ending to a series that celebrated farce but never became mean-spirited or cynical. (BONUS HEADCANON: The future Mrs. Wooster works in publishing, so clearly she must have met Harriet Vane, and I’m sure the two of them hit it off. And then, given that Lord Peter and Bertie are both old Etonians and Oxford alumni and must have mutual friends, Wimsey-Wooster dinner parties undoubtedly followed. With Jeeves and Bunter butlering in the background. THIS MAKES ME VERY HAPPY.)
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
Scream for Jeeves by P.H. Cannon
Okay, maybe I’ll sneak in just one more Jeeves and Wooster homage—after all, if you see a book advertised as a Lovecraft-Wodehouse crossover, you pretty much HAVE to read that book, right? This very slim volume takes three Lovecraft stories (I had to look up the references, as I’m not as up on Lovecraft as I am on Wodehouse) and plugs in Jeeves and Bertie, behaving pretty much as you would expect. It’s cleverly done and gave me the giggles but I think you need to be a big fan of both authors to make it worth your while.
(LC Score: +1)
Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie
Tommy and Tuppence #2. The Beresfords, now a young married couple, take over a private detective agency and entertain themselves by solving mysteries in the style of their favorite fictional sleuths, including (because Agatha was meta before meta was cool) Hercule Poirot. And a whole bunch of other detectives I’ve never heard of. It’s a fun collection, though I was slightly disconcerted by the number of attractive young women who drop dead immediately after encountering Tommy and Tuppence. I also winced a bit at the very end when Tuppence cheerfully gives up detecting because she’s got a new calling: Mother-To-Be. That said, the Beresfords are awesome and you’ll have to excuse me now because I have to think up a good way for them to get invited to the Wimsey-Wooster dinners.
(LC Score: +1)
Ugly Ways by Tina McElroy Ansa
Have I mentioned that I love novels that are about adult children coming together and returning to the old hometown to deal with a death or other major family issue, A.K.A. Getting the Fam Back Together? I first heard of this one while making a list of authors from Georgia that I wanted to check out. Here, the three adult children of recently deceased “Mudear” (a nickname for “mother dear”) return to their small Georgia hometown to arrange her funeral and deal with the personal fallout from their relationship with this neglectful and emotionally abusive woman. I have a hard time with abusive mothers in fiction, but Ansa gives Mudear her own voice and the opportunity for rebuttal throughout, making it clear that she’s more complicated than simply being the villain of the piece.
(LC Score: +1)
Bats of the Republic by Zachary Thomas Dodson
And I think we’ve established that I love epistolary novels (BRING THEM ALL TO ME). This is an epistolary novel To The Extreme, a beautifully designed book that includes an actual sealed letter bound in the text for the reader to open. It’s also a post-apocalyptic novel of sorts, with two narratives that mirror each other: Zadock Thomas’s story set in 1843, and his descendant Zeke Thomas’s story set in a “post-Collapse” 2143, both revolving around a mysterious letter. I really enjoyed reading this book. I also think it is flawed in some interesting ways—in my opinion, the narrative collapses under the weight of the puzzle it has created. A good read, though, and certainly worth picking up to admire the artwork and how it’s put together.
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
Bone Vol. 1: Out From Boneville by Jeff Smith
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Beats Up the Marvel Universe written by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson
Dial H Vol. 2: Exchange written by China Mieville
This Week in Comics: The Bone series was a big hit in my house when my kids were younger, so I’ve been meaning to pick it up for a while, and of course I’m always up for a Squirrel Girl adventure (in this standalone graphic novel she accidentally clones herself and you know that never ends well). I wanted to finish the Dial H series since I had read the first volume earlier, and believe it or not volume two got even weirder—I don’t think I ever really figured out what was going on, though I enjoyed the introduction of a Sidekick-Dial to go with the Hero-Dial.
(LC Score: +3)
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters
Lord Darcy by Randall Garrett
The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine
Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison
A lot of great-looking books went back to the library this week because of (1) the previously mentioned reading slump, and (2) I’m clearing the decks for our upcoming Annual Family Vacation to North Carolina, where I sit on the back porch reading all day while my family tries (in vain, mostly) to get me to participate in bonding activities like board games and conversation. Gotta return all the books that would come due while we’re gone so I can get a brand new stack of books to carry out to the back porch.
(LC Score: -6, RETURNED UNREAD)
Library Chicken Score for 7/11/17: 1
Running Score: 58
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
By the Pricking of My Thumbs by Agatha Christie (Tommy and Tuppence age gracefully!)
Shakespeare Saved My Life: A Memoir by Laura Bates (teaching Shakespeare in a maximum-security prison)
Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (I’m overdue for a reread of this one)
Vermilion by Molly Tanzer (in which I will apparently learn what a ‘psychopomp’ is)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (7.4.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
Happy Fourth of July! Today I will be enjoying the traditional re-watch of the musical 1776 and hissing and throwing popcorn at the screen whenever Thomas Jefferson shows up. I might also read a bit. I’m still in a reading slump, meaning that I find it hard to focus on anything and have at least half a dozen partially finished and temporarily (I hope) abandoned books lying around. When I’m feeling like this I have a hard time dealing with any kind of fictional conflict, so when I see it approaching I put down the book and pick up something else—typically a reread and/or something with very low stakes. Bring on the Jeeves and Wooster!
Jeeves in the Morning by P.G. Wodehouse
The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse
Bertie Wooster Sees It Through by P.G. Wodehouse
How Right You Are, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
I’ve been reading and rereading Wodehouse for decades, but before now I’ve never tried to read through all ten Jeeves and Wooster novels in chronological order. (Mostly because the joys of Wodehouse are not dependent on “story arc.”) I’m enjoying the experiment, of course, but I’m also finding that it allows me to appreciate Bertie’s voice even more—his verbal tics and repetitions, the way that the story of his winning the Scripture Knowledge prize at school works its way into every single narrative. These are books #4 through #7—three more to go!
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
The Secret Adversary by Agatha Christie
Tommy and Tuppence #1. Young Tommy and Tuppence, childhood friends just demobbed from their service in The Great War, run into each other in London and (through the usual series of unlikely coincidences) find themselves caught up in a mystery involving the sinking of the Lusitania, Bolshevik spies, and a missing girl named Jane Finn. It’s all utterly ridiculous plot-wise, but great fun, especially if this if your first introduction to the Beresfords. I’ve read it before and remembered The Big Twist, but still enjoy reading it as a romance, even if the mystery is a bit silly.
(LC Score: 0, Kindle)
The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
Another reread! Inspector Alan Grant, flat on his back after an in-the-line-of-duty accident, revisits the murder of the Princes in the Tower. This novel consistently ranks as one of the best mystery novels ever written and I’ve read it at least a couple of times before, but it’s actually the fifth novel with Inspector Grant. Last year I went back to read the beginning of Tey’s series (the first one is The Man in the Queue) and found that I really enjoyed them (though fair warning: they are typical detective stories, so don’t go in expecting something like the historical conundrums of The Daughter of Time). When I got to The Daughter of Time in the sequence, I wasn’t in the mood for a reread (too many great library books on the stack) and it’s taken me until now to get back to it. One thing that struck me was how much more I enjoyed the book now that I understand more of the historical context, having read more English history in the interim. I also think it makes a great homeschool read, not just because of the history, but because the whole point of the book is to develop your critical thinking skills and look at history (or more specially, historians) with a skeptical eye. It’s a great way to introduce students to the idea that history is written by the winners. Since it helps to have context, it would be a good side-by-side read with for anyone studying that period, and I highly recommend it for anyone who’s doing Shakespeare’s Richard III. HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black
Shockingly, NOT a reread! This YA fantasy is one of the books I’ve been picking up and putting down for a couple of weeks now and I decided to power through. I love the beginning: there’s a modern-day town on the edge of a forest and everything is perfectly normal, except for the unbreakable glass casket in the forest where a horned prince has slept for decades. And a changeling attends high school with our protagonists and every year a couple of tourists get eaten, but yeah, other than that everything’s perfectly normal. This novel has a lot going for it—there’s a great scene where the high schoolers are partying and drinking in the woods around the glass casket like they do every Friday night because of course that’s what teenagers would do—but (and this may be the slump talking) it turns out I’m kinda over Faerie at the moment. I’m also definitely not in the mood for YA teenage kissing, and there’s a LOT of YA teenage kissing in this book. (Diverse kissing, though, so thumbs up for that!) I think it’s a case of wrong book, wrong time for me, but I’d have no hesitation in passing it along to my favorite YA readers.
(LC Score: +1)
Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead by Sara Gran
So YA fantasy isn’t working for me; let’s head back over to the mystery section. Claire DeWitt is a very unusual private investigator who has been hired to find out what happened to a missing lawyer in post-Katrina New Orleans. I really enjoyed this book. I also am now completely freaked out about ever visiting New Orleans, since Gran vividly depicts it as a lawless violence-ridden Third-World city that you need special skills to survive. (Seriously: my daughter’s freshman chorus trip was to New Orleans and if I had read this book before then I might not have been able to sign the permission slip. Fortunately she and her fellow singers had a great time and all returned unscathed.) Alongside that, there’s an incredible amount of love and respect for the city and its inhabitants here. If anyone out there is from New Orleans please read this and let us know what you think—I’d love to see a reaction from someone who knows the city.
(LC Score: +1)
Farthing by Jo Walton
A murder has taken place in a country house in 1949 England, getting us comfortably back to the world of Wodehouse and Christie—except that in this version of 1949, England made an early peace with Hitler (as a result of the Hess Mission, which, yes, I will happily read ALL THE BOOKS, fictional and otherwise, about Rudolf Hess and his bizarre flight to Scotland) and so now exists in the shadow of a Third Reich-controlled Europe. The owners of the house and their friends make up the “Farthing Set,” a group of powerful pro-German politicians who helped broker the peace. Things do not end well. I don’t want to say too much, except that it’s a great book and I recommend it, but the book does have a strong political viewpoint and I was surprised to see that some reviewers thought it heavy-handed. I did not, which may be an unfortunate side-effect of the times we are living in. It’s the first book in a trilogy; as soon as I work up the emotional energy I look forward to tackling the next two books.
(LC Score: +1)
The Glass-Sided Ants’ Nest by Peter Dickinson
In her introduction to Farthing, Walton thanks Dorothy Sayers, Josephine Tey, and Peter Dickinson for getting her on the right track regarding British mysteries. I had not read Dickinson, but of course I have to check out anyone mentioned in such illustrious company. This is his first novel, written in 1968, and first in a series with Inspector Jim Pribble as our detective. Here’s the setup: During World War II, a (fictional) New Guinea tribe called the Ku were slaughtered by the Japanese. The handful of survivors now share a home in London, along with the anthropologist daughter of the white missionary couple that had lived with them in New Guinea, and their chief is murdered. When I first saw the cover of the library edition, featuring a cartoonish African man, I was...concerned. You might be thinking that all this sounds like a great opportunity for a lot of casual racism and general offensiveness, and you wouldn’t be wrong. The Kus are described as primitive and child-like, definitively alien and Other, and characters more or less continually comment on the blackness of their skin. One character also suggests that the anthropologist, who has been accepted as a member of the tribe, is keeping them as her own private project, a personal “ant farm” that she can tend and watch. That said, Dickinson gives depth to the story and the characters, and the Kus that we meet (the few with speaking parts) come across as distinct individuals. I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this novel, but I can tell you that I read it more or less in one sitting and that I’ve got the next one coming. I’m hoping for no more cartoon African covers.
(LC Score: +1)
The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu
The nice thick sequel to The Three Body Problem. Nope, not this week.
(LC Score: -1, RETURNED UNREAD)
Library Chicken Score for 7/4/17: 3
Running Score: 57
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Ha’penny by Jo Walton (sequel to Farthing)
Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway by Sara Gran (sequel to City of the Dead)
The Singing Sands by Josephine Tey (next Alan Grant book)
The Old English Peep-Show by Peter Dickinson (next Jim Pribble book)
Summer Reading: John Connolly’s Samuel Johnson Series
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This year we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
Books written by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett rank high in various lists of mine, including Comfort Reads, Series to Recommend to Just About Everyone, and Books That In General Make Me Feel Better About Being a Human. Humor is subjective, however, and I’ve found that when I run across a book blurbed as “the next Douglas Adams!” or “in the spirit of Terry Pratchett!” it usually ends up in the “meh” category, provoking maybe the occasional smirk but that’s about it. John Connolly’s Samuel Johnson series is the exception.
I knew things were looking good on the very first page where we have both (1) footnotes (I ADORE FOOTNOTES IN FICTION IT’S A SICKNESS HELP ME) and (2) entertaining chapter titles (e.g., In Which We Delve Deeper into the Bowels of Hell, Which Is One of Those Chapter Headings That Make Parents Worry About the Kind of Books Their Children Are Reading). We soon meet 11-year-old Samuel and his very important dachshund, Boswell, and Samuel soon learns that his neighbors (with an accidental assist from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider) have opened The Gates of Hell. After that it’s up to Samuel, Boswell, Samuel’s friends Tom and Maria, and unlikely ally Nurd the Demonic Scourge of Five Deities (including Erics’, the Demon of Bad Punctuation) to save the world.
For me, Connolly’s Samuel Johnson series hits the sweet spot, reminding me (in the best ways) of Hitchhiker’s Guide and Discworld without feeling derivative, while at the same time telling a story about friendships, unexpected and otherwise. I know humor is subjective, but this one is definitely worth trying—and if you aren’t immediately sucked in by the footnotes and chapter headings, you can at least use it as an excuse to revisit the masters and spend some time with Arthur Dent and Rincewind. (Bonus recommendation: John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things, a “fairy tale for adults” about a boy who finds himself in a fantasy world and must search for the way home, is also excellent and I highly recommend it for YA readers and up. Please be aware, however, that it contains some very dark elements, and I would not hand it to a middle-grade reader, even though the publisher is trying to market it to that age group by putting a preview chapter in with The Gates.)
In Which We Learn That Even If You’re Super-Bored You’re Better Off Not Messing Around With Old Books Written In Languages You Don’t Recognize But Still Understand Somehow, Especially If You Happen To Live At 666 Crowley Road.
In Which We Learn That Even After You’ve Defeated A Demon Wearing The Appearance Of Your Ex-Neighbor Mrs. Abernathy It May Still Return to Seek Revenge By Plunging You Down Into The Dark Realm Of Hades
In Which We Learn That Even After It Seems Like The Bad Guys Have Been Defeated And Everything Is Going Well You Should Still Avoid Demonic Toy-Shops That Open Just In Time For Christmas
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.27.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
So have you ever had one of those weeks where Everything Is Awful and there’s really No Point in Even Trying Anymore so you might as well give up and binge-watch an entire season of Real Housewives after which you feel vaguely nauseated for the next day or so rendering you completely unable to focus on any of the four or five perfectly nice books you’ve started reading or cope in any way with anything that requires functioning brain cells? Anyone? Or is it just me?
Thank You, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse
Nothing better than the first three Jeeves and Wooster novels for a reading slump. As usual, Bertie is busy trying to help his old school friends get engaged (or to get out of one of his own frequent accidental engagements) and nothing seems to work out until Jeeves comes in to save the day. The only bad thing I can say about any of the Wodehouse books is that they do occasionally betray their age. Thank You, Jeeves, published in 1934, uses the n-word (without any malice, apparently, but it’s still jarring) to describe a traveling troupe of "minstrels," and a major plot point revolves around Bertie disguising himself in blackface. So that’s fun. Fortunately, my favorite of the three (and perhaps my all-time favorite Wodehouse novel), The Code of the Woosters, is free from random racial slurs, so that I can thoroughly enjoy its delights: Bertie sneering at a cow-creamer! Roderick Spode and his Black Shorts! Gussie Fink-Nottle and a bathtub of newts! Farce involving a policeman’s helmet! Now I need to go re-watch the Fry-Laurie adaptation, which I’m sure is better for my spirit than Real Housewives.
(LC Score: 0, from my own shelves)
N or M? by Agatha Christie
I mean no disrespect to Poirot or Miss Marple, but the best sleuths ever created by Agatha Christie were clearly Tommy and Tuppence Beresford. Christie must have loved them too, because after first appearing as 20-somethings just after World War I in The Secret Adversary, Christie’s second novel, she returns to them over and over again during her career, so that we see them age along with her until their final appearance as 70-somethings (in Christie’s last-written, though not last-published novel) in Postern of Fate. I picked up N or M?, from the middle of their career, at a library booksale a while back and was glad to have it in hand so as not to completely overdose on Wodehouse. During World War II, Tommy and Tuppence (now middle-aged) are undercover at a boarding house trying to sniff out Fifth Columnists. Frankly, they do a fairly terrible job of it, suspecting the obvious choices while the real culprits go undetected, but I don’t even care because I enjoy hanging out with the Beresfords. Sadly, there are only five Tommy and Tuppence books. I’m not always excited about professional fan-fiction, where a current author contracts with the estate of a deceased author to carry on one of their series, but I NEED more Tommy and Tuppence, so someone should get on that IMMEDIATELY. (NOTE: I would also accept a stand-alone series starring Ariadne Oliver.)
(LC Score: 0, from my own shelves)
Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times Vols. 1 & 2 edited by Ann Short Chirhart and Betty Wood
Leftovers from my stack of Georgia history. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -2)
Trail of Tears: The Rise and Fall of the Cherokee Nation by John Ehle
Nope. In no way do I have the emotional stamina to be reading this one right now. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 6/27/17: -3
Running Score: 54
Umm, did I mention that I may be in a bit of a reading slump? Recovering from a slump requires lots of comfort books so there may be some Georgette Heyer or Dorothy Sayers or Elinor Lipman in my future. Also I’ve got these lined up on the nightstand:
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
The Secret Adversary and Partners in Crime by Agatha Christie (Tommy and Tuppence #1 and 2)
Jeeves in the Morning and The Mating Season by P.G. Wodehouse (Jeeves and Wooster #4 and 5)
Summer Reading: James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This year we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
From the beginning, our homeschool has revolved around books. In preschool and kindergarten, that meant an after-breakfast readaloud (maybe My Father’s Dragon) followed by a little bit of phonics, handwriting, and math, topped off with a myths-and-legends readaloud, and then the day would end with a readaloud selection of favorite picture books. That schedule evolved with us through elementary school, as we moved up to Oz and The Odyssey, Harry Potter and Robin Hood. In middle school, we still kept the readalouds (in part because I was unwilling to give up my favorite part of the day), but we added another element: Each month or so, Mom would choose a book for the middle schooler to read and then write a mini-book report on. In general, the choosing part was fairly casual—I’d wander by the bookshelf and ask, “Have you read The Phantom Tollbooth yet, or was that your brother? Wait, you HAVEN’T read Tollbooth? Here, drop everything and read it IMMEDIATELY.” But in our family, one of the first middle-school books assigned has traditionally been James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small.
My love affair with these books—All Creatures and its sequels—goes back over 30 years. In them, Herriot tells stories of his days as a Yorkshire veterinarian working on both farm animals and pets, beginning when he is just out of school in the 1930s and has joined the practice run by eccentric Siegfried Farnon, assisted (more or less) by Siegfried’s hapless brother, Tristan. The tales are sometimes tragic, as when a farmer loses both his livestock and his livelihood, and sometimes hilarious (“Mrs. Pumphrey’s Tricki Woo has gone flop-bott again”), while always being warmly affectionate and self-deprecating. Supposedly these are Herriot’s real-life experiences—”James Herriot” is the pen name of Alf Wight—but over the years there have been different opinions on how much is real and how much is fiction, so that I’ve moved my own copies from the “memoir” shelf to “fiction” and back again, but when the writing is this enjoyable it doesn’t really matter where they end up.
I was 11 or 12 when my dad first handed me All Creatures Great and Small—though we weren’t homeschoolers he was not averse to giving me the occasional “assigned reading”—and I couldn’t even tell you how many times I’ve reread it since. The books are long (my edition of All Creatures comes in at over 400 pages) and aren’t typically marketed to younger readers (though specific stories have been pulled out and republished for the children’s section) but the chapters come in convenient bite-sized chunks and the original series is well within the range of confident middle school readers. They’re also a great option for YA readers who may be getting a bit tired of your everyday average apocalyptic dystopian future. (If any adults in the house haven’t read them you could consider doing them as readalouds to share the fun, though I confess I never gave that a try. I wasn’t sure I could handle the Yorkshire dialect, and I didn’t really want to read aloud all those sections where James has his arm up the back-end of a cow.) These are comfort books for me and one of the few series that has been given the universal thumbs-up by everyone who I’ve forced to read them. As a bonus, once the household has had a read-through you can enjoy the 70s-80s BBC series, which stars Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge as Siegfried Farnon and Doctor Who (number five) as Tristan.
In the first book we are introduced to newly-certified veterinarian James, learning on the job as stern Yorkshire farmers glare at him and express their preference for his more experienced boss, Siegfried Farnon. Siegfried, meanwhile, is generally unflappable except in matters involving his always-in-a-scrape younger brother, Tristan. SPOILER: James manages to survive his not always auspicious beginnings in Yorkshire and even falls in love with a local girl, Helen.
All Things Bright and Beautiful
Book two has more stories with familiar characters as James enjoys married life with his very patient wife and becomes experienced enough to take charge of the occasional vet student.
At the end of the 1930s James joins the R.A.F. and survives the daily life of a new recruit by reminiscing about the vet life.
World War Two is over and James is back home in the Yorkshire dales with Helen and their two children.
This last book was published several years after the first four and I’ll confess that I never loved it quite as much as the originals, perhaps because I haven’t reread it enough to know all the stories. Of course I would never pass up the chance to see everyone again—including Tricki Woo and Mrs. Pumphrey!
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.20.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
IT’S ELECTION DAY! Today is the runoff in the congressional election in Georgia’s 6th District. I care quite a bit about the election outcome, but no matter what happens I’m ready to celebrate two things: (1) no more political ads! (at least for a little while), and (2) I can park at my library again now that early voting is finished!
Version Control by Dexter Palmer
Palmer, author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion, is back with a novel, set in a not-so-great near-future, about a time travel machine, or as the physicists involved would put it, a ‘causality violation device.’ (Which still sounds pretty cool and/or terrifying, in my opinion.) It’s also about relationships and family and tragedy, and how we cope with all of the above. I don’t want to spill any spoilers because it’s good and you should go read it, but I will say that a major plot point involves an accident caused by self-driving cars and user error and now I’m totally freaked out about self-driving cars so thanks a lot, Mr. Palmer.
(LC Score: +1)
Roses and Rot by Kat Howard
In this retelling of Tam Lin, two sisters, a ballerina and a writer, attend a prestigious artists’ retreat (in part to escape their abusive mother) and soon discover that All Is Not As It Seems. They have to decide exactly what they are willing to give up for their art, or for each other. (As a bonus, this reminded me that it’s time for one of my periodic re-readings of Pamela Dean’s awesome Tam Lin, set on a college campus in the 1970’s.)
(LC Score: +1)
The Rabbit Back Literature Society by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen, translated by Lola M. Rogers
Have you been thinking to yourself that you really don’t read enough Finnish novels? And that you’d especially like to read one about a mysterious writers’ group created by a world-renowned children’s author who may or may not be entirely human and who has definitely disappeared under bizarre circumstances? OF COURSE YOU WOULD. This novel, by an award-winning Finnish science fiction and fantasy author, has been described as Twin Peaks meets The Secret History meets the Moomins, and if you can resist that you’re made of stronger stuff than I. My only complaint is that this appears to be the only one of Jaaskelainen’s works available in English--and Duolingo doesn’t have a Finnish option.
(LC Score: +1)
Dial H Vol. 1: Into You written by China Mieville, art by Mateus Santolouco
Lumberjanes Vol. 4: Out of Time and Lumberjanes Vol. 5: Band Together written by Noelle Stevenson and Shannon Watters, art by Brooke Allen
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 5: Like I’m the Only Squirrel in the World written by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson
This Week in Comics: One of the great things about modern comics is the crossover of authors from the literary world to the comics world and vice versa. In Dial H, weird and wonderful fantasy author China Mieville reboots an obscure DC title about a magical phone dial that can temporarily turn the user into a random superhero—sometimes not so “super” and not so much “hero”. The resulting book is definitely weird—perhaps not one of my favorites, but worth a read just to encounter “heroes” like Captain Lachrymose, Iron Snail, and Boy Chimney. Plus: the Lumberjanes learn more about their camp history and rock out with mermaids, and Squirrel Girl vacations in Canada!
(LC Score: +2, Lumberjanes borrowed from daughter)
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity by James C. Cobb
Redefining Southern Culture: Mind and Identity in the Modern South by James C. Cobb
The Brown Decision, Jim Crow & Southern Identity by James C. Cobb
Even though I’ve lived in metro Atlanta since I was 17, I’m married to a (mostly) Southerner, and my children are all native Southerners, I’ve never felt much like a Southerner myself. What does being a Southerner even mean in the 21st century? Professor Cobb’s books and essays go a long way toward explaining what “being a Southerner” has meant over the years and how it’s changed now that the South is no longer defined only by white supremacy and opposing anything deemed “Yankee”. Away Down South (an expansion of the essays collected in Redefining Southern Culture) is a fascinating read that does a good job of walking the line between dense scholarly tome and pop-history for non-academics. The Brown Decision, a lecture published for the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, revisits the legacy of that decision, illuminating some of the arguments that have arisen in academia (that I was unaware of) over whether segregation would have ultimately faded away even without intervention and the possible negative effects of Brown. (Professor Cobb is definitely in the pro-Brown camp.)
(LC Score: +3)
Death’s End by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
Okay, so after reading The Three-Body Problem I put the second and third books in the trilogy on the hold list, but I didn’t know that the third book, Death’s End, was still a two-week no-renewals check-out and really there’s no way I could get to it in time so it’s totally not my fault. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 6/20/17: 7
Running Score: 57
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi (I LOVED Oyeyemi’s White is for Witching and Mr. Fox)
Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (Amy says that if I’m going to read about Southern stuff I have to read some Faulkner so <sigh> okay here I go I guess)
Farthing by Jo Walton (post-WWII alternate history from the author of Among Others)
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War by Karen Abbott (why, yes, this is relevant to my interests)
Summer Reading: John D. Fitzgerald’s The Great Brain
Welcome to Summer Reading 2017! This summer we’re taking advantage of the long summer days to read our way through some of our favorite series for children and young people.
If you happen to visit my hometown library this summer, you could go in the front door, pass the desk, take the first right into the children’s section and go all the way down past the right-hand shelves to the back wall. Third shelf up, about halfway in—that’s where you’ll find The Great Brain books. I checked them out so often that I’m fairly sure I could still find them blind-folded. These books, based loosely on Fitzgerald’s own childhood, chronicle life in the Mormon town of Adenville, Utah in the 1890s and—I’m not sure if I should admit this or not—I always loved them much more than those other more famous books involving little houses and prairies.
The books are narrated by J.D., the youngest boy in one of the few non-Mormon families in Adenville. J.D. tells us the adventures of his older brother, Tom (a.k.a. The Great Brain), an entrepreneur extraordinaire. In the opening chapter, we meet Tom charging the other kids in town a penny a head to view his family’s new water closet, the first indoor toilet in Adenville. That’s actually a fairly straight-forward money-making scheme for Tom—he’s always playing the angles and is not terribly concerned about ethics if there’s cash involved. Poor J.D. usually comes out of the deal with the short end of the stick.
In fact, it was an eye-opening experience to revisit these books as an adult when I started passing them along to my own kids. I had collected the first seven books for our home library and I was excited to read them again, but from my new perspective as a mom, I kept getting upset with Tom for swindling his little brother over and over again and with the parents for not handling it better. As an adult reader, though, I could appreciate even more how Fitzgerald draws a picture of his hometown, dealing with difficult issues of loss, prejudice, tragedy, and even suicide via the matter-of-fact narrative voice of young J.D. Despite the occasionally dark themes, the books are incredibly funny (with the added bonus of Mercer Mayer’s illustrations), and Tom’s adventures make for addictive reading.
(Also, I would really really like for someone to write a Ocean’s Eleven-type heist fanfic starring a crew including 20-something versions of Tom and J.D. along with their partners-in-crime Anne Shirley and Encyclopedia Brown. They should probably go up against a rival crew headed by Tom Sawyer. Make it happen, people.)
In which we meet Tom and J.D. and the rest of the family and are introduced to Tom’s materialism and flexible moral compass—balanced (at least at times) with the good things he can accomplish for his friends and his town when he puts his Great Brain to work.
More Adventures of the Great Brain
Tom “discovers” a prehistoric cave beast, goes up against the Silverlode ghost, and teaches the new girl in town to read in his second collection of adventures.
With Tom away at school, J.D. tries his hand at wheeling and dealing but nothing seems to work out the way he plans, at least not until the Fitzgeralds take in a little boy traumatized by the loss of his family. J.D. must now look after and protect his new adopted little brother, Frankie, even as the town is menaced by outlaws.
The Great Brain at the Academy
Meanwhile, the students and faculty of the Catholic Academy for Boys in Salt Lake City don’t know what’s hit them when Tom joins his older brother at boarding school.
Tom is back for summer vacation and ready to raid Adenville’s piggy-banks, but when his river raft excursion almost gets J.D.’s best friends killed, J.D. decides it’s time for the kids in town to put Tom on trial as a confidence man, swindler, blackmailer, and all-around crook.
Tom is living at home now that Adenville is building its own nondenominational academy, but after his “trial,” he claims to be a reformed character, only using his Great Brain for the public good (and perhaps some private reward) by solving a train robbery and murder.
Of course, J.D. knows that the Great Brain’s reformation will never stick—“Some day for sure our family will either be visiting Tom in the White House or in prison,” he tells us sagely—and so we get one last collection of Tom’s adventures before he turns 13 and (according to J.D.) is “hypnotized” by Polly Reagan. At least, I thought it was the final collection until...
WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THAT THERE WAS A NEW GREAT BRAIN BOOK?!? I SHOULD HAVE BEEN INFORMED!!! As I discovered when getting ready to write about the series, an 8th and final book was published in 1995 from notes left by the author (who died in 1988). It’s true that books published posthumously from “loose notes” often have little resemblance to the previous works that were finished and polished by the author, but it’s also true that I can’t possibly turn down the opportunity to read more about the Great Brain. Fortunately, my local library has a copy, so look for a mention in an upcoming Library Chicken!
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.13.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
It’s a short update this week. You’d think that would mean that I was super-productive and got a lot of other things done since I clearly wasn’t spending all my time reading, but nah, not really.
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt
In this Booker-nominated novel, the Sisters brothers are sent to San Francisco during the Gold Rush era on a mission of murder. The younger brother, Eli Sisters, narrates their travels, during which they drink, learn about dental hygiene, and commit the occasional horrifically brutal act. Normally a book described as “startlingly violent” would not be my cup of tea, but I was completely captivated by Eli and the surprising sweetness glimpsed every so often in his musings and life story. I’m looking forward to reading more by DeWitt.
(LC Score: +1)
Everfair by Nisi Shawl
Steampunk in central Africa! During King Leopold’s brutal regime in Congo, a group of white Europeans, black Americans, and local Africans come together to oppose him and build a settlement. They get a technological boost from balloon-lifted “aircanoes” and prosthetic hands that can be switched out for weapons. Shawl tells the story in bite-sized chunks, rotating through a large cast of narrators and skipping around in location and time, which moves the pace along briskly and allows her to cover a lot of ground. An unfortunate side-effect (at least for me) in this otherwise enjoyable book was that I sometimes felt like I was reading edited excerpts of a novel instead of the novel itself.
(LC Score: +1)
Three Moments of an Explosion: Stories by China Mieville
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders by Neil Gaiman
Story collections from two of my favorite modern sf/fantasy writers. Nice to dip in and out of while steampunking around Africa or murdering folks in the wild west. (LC Score: +2)
Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World by Fanny Burney
So here’s the thing: I love Brit Lit. I love Austen and all the Brontes (except for that ridiculous wuthering one) and Dickens and Trollope and Collins and Lady Audley’s Secret (have you guys read Lady Audley’s Secret? you totally should because it’s awesome) and the whole pack of ‘em. I was looking forward to Evelina, especially since it’s an epistolary novel and we have established that epistolary novels are Perfect and The Best and Give Them All to Me. I loaded it into my Kindle as my official “stuck waiting somewhere and forgot to bring a book” book, and then, at 38% in, I came to an important realization: life is short. And if I have to read one more page about the horrible Captain Mirvan playing “pranks” on the horrible Madame Duval while everyone else sits around and shrugs genteelly I will poke myself in the eye with a sharp stick. So I’m closing the Kindle and crossing this one off the TBR list and I don’t even feel badly about it. (Still going to read that Burney bio, though.)
(LC Score: 0, read on Kindle)
Library Chicken Score for 6/13/17: 4
Running Score: 50
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (magic via mixtape in 1980’s Mexico City)
Version Control by Dexter Palmer (time machines from the author of The Dream of Perpetual Motion)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl: Squirrel Meets World by Shannon Hale & Dean Hale (middle grade Squirrel Girl novel co-written by Newbery Honor winner Shannon Hale)
The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley (epic fantasy from the author of The Geek Feminist Revolution)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (6.6.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
Early voting has begun in the runoff being held in Georgia’s 6th congressional district! How is this pertinent to Library Chicken? Well, one of the early voting locations is very conveniently set in my Friendly Neighborhood Library. I’m thrilled to see the turnout—even in the first couple of days voting lines have occasionally been out the door. I’m less thrilled that my early-voting patriotic countrymen and women have been filling up the parking lot so that I have to park down the street if I want to actually use the library for its intended purpose. Also, the voting line blocks my hold shelf. BUT being that I am also a patriotic American and support the whole democratic process and all that I guess I can put up with it for a couple of weeks. (Seriously, I’m shocked by the lines. We never get lines for early voting—that’s the point. And everyone seems fairly patient and cheerful, which is nice.)
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 3: Squirrel, You Really Got Me Now
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 4: I Kissed a Squirrel and I Liked It
written by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson
This Week in Comics: It is so much more difficult than it ought to be to read comics. Not actually the reading part—the figuring out what to read part. By now, I think I’ve got the hang of the fact that 1) the individual issues come out, 2) the issues are collected into a trade paperbacks, 3) which may then be further collected into a hardback. So when I started reading the current run of The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, I read the hardback Vol. 1, collecting issues #1-8 (not to be confused with the paperback Vol. 1, collecting issues #1-4), and then jumped to the paperback Vol. 3, which collects issues #1-6 but that’s a completely different #1-6 because Marvel started the run over with another #1 issue so that Squirrel Girl had two #1’s in 2015 AND HOW IS ANYONE SUPPOSED TO FIGURE THIS OUT. It feels like I spend more time researching a particular run to figure out what to check out at the library (Wikipedia is usually helpful, though not always up to date; Amazon sometimes tells you what a collection collects, but not always) than I do actually reading the thing. Squirrel Girl continues to be awesome, so I guess there’s that at least.
(LC Score: +2)
The Last Days of New Paris by China Mieville
I love China Mieville. For me he’s in the same category as Neil Gaiman with brilliantly original horror-tinged fantasy. This slim novel is an alternate history (another favorite genre of mine) exploring the Surrealist political movement, about which I know virtually nothing (but conveniently for me, my daughter came home from her AP World History class earlier in the year talking about it, so I wasn’t as utterly lost as I might have been). In an alternate version of Nazi-occupied Paris, an explosion composed of Surrealism and occult energy has rearranged the city, so that Nazis and resistance fighters fight each other in a bizarre and unpredictable landscape while giant figures from various works of art, brought to life by the blast, stalk the streets. Plus, there are Nazi-summoned demons, just to make it interesting. A large chunk of the novel is populated entirely by actual historical figures, including Jack Parsons and Varian Fry (both of whom you should immediately Google if they are unfamiliar to you) and a whole bunch of Surrealist artists who I know nothing about but whose works I spent most of the novel looking up on the internet. Aside from being an all-around great book, this would be an amazing side read for a teen studying either art history (you could base an entire Surrealism curriculum on the references here) or resistance in Nazi-occupied Paris.
(LC Score: +1)
Arabella of Mars by David D. Levine
More alternate history! Here, Regency Britain has (as it was wont to do) colonized Mars and its inhabitants. (As it turns out, there is plenty of breathable atmosphere between the planets, which, yeah, seems fine to me. Carry on.) Arabella was born and raised on Mars, but her English mother, worried about her going native, has dragged her back to Earth, where Arabella learns of an assassination scheme against her brother back on Mars. There’s nothing for her to do but disguise herself as a cabin boy and take passage on one of the Marsmen clipper ships, hoping to get back there in time. This is a fun Regency steampunk adventure, and I’m looking forward to Arabella’s next outing.
(LC Score: +1)
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
This novel has been compared to Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice, in part because it too was nominated for both the Hugo and the Nebula awards, and there are definitely some interesting parallels between the galactic empires portrayed in both books. Unlike Leckie, though, Lee concentrates almost completely on the military side, so if you’re in the mood for a hardcore space opera shoot-’em-up, this is the book for you. I got a bit lost in the all the world-building (which was well done, but left an awful lot unexplained) but I’ll be back for the sequel, which (conveniently) is coming out in just a week or two.
(LC Score: +1)
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race edited by Jesmyn Ward
Excellent collection of essays (plus a couple of poems) in many different styles from writers of color about their personal experiences with American racism past and present. Belongs on the shelf next to Coates’s Between the World and Me.
(LC Score: +1)
Deadly Persuasion: Why Women and Girls Must Fight the Addictive Power of Advertising by Jean Kilbourne
(Also published as Can’t Buy Me Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel.) In this 1999 book, Kilbourne, who’s spent decades studying how advertising depicts women, explores the effect advertising has on American culture, particularly its role in supporting addiction by pushing alcohol and tobacco while cynically devaluing the importance of human relationships. I read this as research for a class on Critical Thinking and the Media that I’ll be teaching in the fall and although I think Kilbourne occasionally overreaches (and of course the material is out of date) many of her points still stand.
(LC Score: +1)
The World of Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
This glorious 650-page collection brings together every single Jeeves and Wooster short story ever written (with ONE exception, according to Wikipedia, but we’re ignoring that because otherwise it would bug me until I embarked on an obsessive quest to find that one last story, and frankly I’ve learned from experience that that sort of thing never turns out well). Anyway, as I said, it’s got all the Jeeves and Wooster stories and it’s been the reason I survived this homeschool year. I’ve used it as a read-aloud with my older kids in past years (because Wodehouse should be an important part of every homeschool curriculum) but we quit after a half-dozen stories or so. By then, you’ve seen just about every combination of Bertie’s-school-friend-in-crisis plus Jeeves-saves-the-day (and gets Bertie to stop wearing that horrible pair of trousers/vest/moustache/etc.) that you’re going to get. (I adore these stories, but originality is not their strong suit.) This year, however, with my younger kids, we just kept right on going. And the way 2017 has been, sometimes the only thing that got me up in the morning was knowing that we were going to start the day with Jeeves and Wooster. We didn’t make it all the way through—only to page 500 or so—but I polished off the last few stories myself and am now starting to reread all the novels in chronological order, beginning with Thank You, Jeeves, which under the circs (as Bertie would say) seems incredibly appropriate. I can’t wait to sneer at a cow creamer or two. HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.
(LC Score: 0, off our homeschool shelf)
Library Chicken Score for 6/6/17: 7 Running Score: 46
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt (a “cowboy noir” that’s been on my list for years)
Ink and Bone (The Great Library) by Rachel Caine (because you know me and books with “library” in the title)
Mister Monday by Garth Nix (reread for a Summer Reading write-up)
Three Moments of an Explosion by China Mieville (short story collection because I’m in the mood for more Mieville)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (5.30.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
Hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend and are getting ready for some summer reading! We’re done with homeschooling for the school year so now I can get serious about checking things off the TBR list. It’s the most wonderful tiiiiime of the year… (Except for the miserable Georgia heat and humidity of course, but I solve that problem by never leaving the air-conditioned house except to go in the air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned library.)
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
I was a science fiction junkie growing up. And the first sf I fell in love with was hard sf, from the likes of Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, and Clarke. In hard sf, science is the star—the pleasure is in exploring scientific and technological problems, imagining what it would be like to live on this sort of planet, or how to build that sort of spaceship. Characters often exist primarily as tour guides to show you around, with a plot to move them from one piece of the carefully-constructed, scientifically-accurate set to the next. This novel, first in a trilogy by Chinese science fiction master Liu, is firmly in that tradition, exploring the repercussions of a first contact situation with a fascinatingly original alien race. All the while, the narrative voice remains calm and detached from the action—I’m not sure if that’s Cixin Liu’s individual style, or if it has more to do with Chinese literary tradition (being as I’m pretty much entirely ignorant of Chinese fiction). These days, I generally ask a bit more from the plot and characterization in a novel (and I may have less patience for pages of scientific explanation), but a novel like this hits all my nostalgia buttons and of course I’ll have to find out what happens next. The aliens are coming, after all.
(Bonus modern-day hard sf suggestion: Andy Weir’s The Martian.)
(LC Score: +1)
Paper Girls Vol. 2 written by Brian K. Vaughn, art by Cliff Chiang
Lumberjanes Vol. 3 written by Noelle Stevenson & Shannon Waters, art by Carolyn Nowak
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Vol. 1 written by Ryan North, art by Erica Henderson
This Week In Comics: Last week I was excited about Paper Girls and Lumberjanes, so this week I want to rave about The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. <deep breath> OMG SQUIRREL GIRL IS SO AWESOME! Buddies with Iron Man, victor over Marvel’s biggest-baddies including Doctor Doom and M.O.D.O.K, friends with the crush-worthy Chipmunk Hunk, she is the BEST and the MOST PERFECT and y’all should run out and buy her (on-going!!!) series right now. Seriously, this is funniest comic I have read in years (my husband kept coming over to see what I was giggling about) and it’s appropriate for ALL AGES, so send your favorite 5-year-old an issue or three to get their comics habit going. I know I’m using a lot of all-caps here, but check out her adventures with sidekick squirrel Tippy-Toes and tell me I’m wrong. The only problem I’m having with all these wonderful comics collections is that I read them too fast—I go through ‘em like a bag of chips and ending up craving MORE immediately.
(Bonus cheer-you-up-if-you’re-having-a-bad-day suggestion: google ‘Squirrel Girl cosplay’. You’re welcome.)
(LC Score: +2, Lumberjanes borrowed from daughter)
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
Atwood is such a Giant of Modern Literature that it feels slightly blasphemous to critique her work in any way, but I have to admit that I don’t often enjoy her writing. I find her work compelling, important, fascinating - but a fun read? Not so much. This retelling of The Tempest, though, was a very pleasant surprise. Shorter than usual for an Atwood novel, her Tempest involves a prison production of Shakespeare’s Tempest, created by an unfairly ousted theater director as a vehicle to get vengeance on those who wronged him. It’s a satisfying, enjoyable, and occasionally very moving read.
(Bonus homeschool suggestion: This would make a great side-by-side read for anyone studying The Tempest. HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.)
(LC Score: +1)
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
I haven’t yet read Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Underground Railroad—I know it’s going to be difficult so I’m working my way up to it—but I was excited to pick up this novel, his debut. Set in an alternate recent past, where the highly respected calling of Elevator Inspector is divided into opposing camps known as Empiricists and Intuitionists, we follow the career of the first black female inspector as she navigates a professional and personal crisis. Yeah, I know, it sounds weird when I say it, but you should go read it anyway. Whitehead is exploring issues of race and gender (and elevators, I guess?) and I would never have guessed it was a first novel - clearly the man knew what he was doing.
(Bonus zombie-novel-authored-by-Pulitzer-Prize-winner suggestion: Whitehead’s Zone One. And if you know of any other zombie novels authored by Pulitzer Prize winners, please let me know ASAP because I will read the heck out of ‘em.)
(LC Score: +1)
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi
This book, which came out in 2016, is important and perspective-changing and everyone should read it. In clear and readable prose, Kendi untangles the confusing and contradictory ideas fueling/created by American racism, from the early colonial days through the Obama presidency. It’s not a short book, and the material is emotionally challenging, but it’s an absolutely necessary read for those of us who missed out on ‘the history of racism’ in school (meaning pretty much all of us) and want to understand what’s happening today.
(Bonus suggestion: PLEASE READ IT, I MEAN IT. Which I guess isn’t much of a bonus, but I feel strongly about this.)
(LC Score: +1)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin
Still catching up—y’know, I can’t think of one book, nonfiction or fiction, that was required reading in my high school lit classes that was written by a person of color or had a person of color as the protagonist. I’d say 'oh, look how embarrassingly backward things were 30 years ago,' but my daughter, who just finished her sophomore year at the local high school, not only has never had a person of color for required reading, but she’s yet to read ANY female authors. And the only female protagonist(ish) was Lady Macbeth. (When they can pick a book from a list, the authors are fairly diverse, but in terms of required reading that every single student has to get through before graduating? So far, ALL white guys. BURN IT ALL DOWN, PEOPLE.) ... Anyway, sorry, got distracted. This slim volume is a classic for good reason—I’m glad I had a better idea of the context from Kendi’s work.
(Bonus side-by-side reading suggestion: one of the essays here is a letter from Baldwin to his nephew that would be really interesting to read side-by-side with Ta-Nehisi Coates’s letter to his son, Between the World and Me. HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED, of course.)
(LC Score: +1)
Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor
Are you looking for something to fill the Harry-Potter-sized hole in your reading heart? Do you want to provide your middle school/YA readers with a more diverse bookshelf so that they don’t end up exclusively reading books by white guys about white guys for their entire educational career? (Not that I’m BITTER over here or anything.) I’ve got the book for you! This fantasy novel is about 12-year-old Sunny, born in America to Nigerian parents who have since moved Sunny and family back to Nigeria, where she discovers that she’s a Leopard Person, heir to certain magical abilities. Like Rowling, but in a completely different setting, Okorafor creates a magical world existing next to and within our own, and we get to see Sunny explore this world, making friends, finding teachers, and shopping for magical items. (Is it weird that I LOVE the magical-shopping parts in fantasy novels?) It’s a great read - highly recommended.
(Bonus long-awaited-sequel suggestion: Akata Warrior comes out this October!)
(LC Score: +1)
The Way It Was in the South: The Black Experience in Georgia by Donald L. Grant
Looks fascinating but it’s due back and I really do need to take a break from Georgia for a minute. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
- Library Chicken Score for 5/30/17: 7
- Running Score: 39
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (since I enjoyed Hag-Seed so much, thought I’d check out Atwood’s version of The Odyssey)
Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee (more SPACE OPERA for my summer reading)
The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison (and some fantasy so that my sf/fantasy pile doesn’t get too unbalanced)
The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race edited by Jesmyn Ward (follow-up from Baldwin)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (5.23.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
NOT BOOK RELATED: Is anyone else listening to The Black Tapes podcast? I saw it described in a BookRiot post as Serial crossed with The X-Files and that’s pretty much exactly right. I’m only a few episodes in, but it’s my new favorite thing to do while not reading. (Or sleeping. I’m a big fan of sleeping.)
This One is Mine by Maria Semple
So I loved Semple’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette, but sadly I did not love this novel. Semple is an engaging and entertaining writer, but these characters were so incredibly vicious—shallow, self-absorbed, mean-spirited, and spiteful—that I read most of it wincing and holding the book as far away as possible. The character I ended up liking the most (or disliking the least) is the husband who was hateful to his stay-at-home-mom wife because she didn’t do a good enough job of taking care of him, so that should tell you something. At the end, after they’ve done a whole bunch of utterly unforgivable things, the three main characters come together for a little bit of hope and redemption, but I don’t know. I’m worried they’ll just end up carving a swath of horribleness through the innocent bystanders in their vicinity.
(LC Score: +1)
On Turpentine Lane by Elinor Lipman
After a disappointment like that, I was delighted to find Elinor Lipman’s latest novel on the new release shelf. Lipman writes warmly affectionate stories about screwed-up but still loving families, both those we are born into and those we create along the way. In this one, our heroine moves into a new home and soon gets caught up with (1) a decades-old possible murder mystery, and (2) a handsome new housemate. Lipman’s characters are funny and actually try to be nice to each other and she’s never let me down—highly recommended for comfort reads (and getting over any mean-spirited and spiteful novels you may have accidentally read).
(LC Score: +1)
Among Others by Jo Walton
This Hugo and Nebula award-winning novel has been on my to-read list for years and I’m so glad I finally got to it. (It’s Amy’s fault because she read it so I immediately had to.) It’s a girls’ boarding school story told in diary entries (two of my reading sweet spots, right there) by Mori, who ran away from her abusive mother after the death of her identical twin sister. Plus there are fairies (not quite like fairies I’ve encountered elsewhere) and magic (maybe?) and most of all, BOOKS. 15-year-old Mori is a science fiction fan and watching her discover various authors and series is like jumping back in time and visiting with 15-year-old me. (Mori is writing in 1979; I was about 5 years behind her, but there’s quite a bit of overlap in our reading lists.) This is a quiet book, a love letter to science fiction fandom (which we don’t often get to see from a girl’s perspective), and most of all an appreciation of what we can find in books.
(LC Score: +1)
Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger
I love the concept here: it turns out that bartenders are secretly alchemists, whipping up magic (alcoholic) potions that give them special powers to defeat demons (called tremens) that would otherwise infest the human world. And the most secret, most magic potion of all? The Long Island Iced Tea. It’s a very fun idea, but lacked something in the execution.
(LC Score: +1)
The Dream of Perpetual Motion by Dexter Palmer
This speculative fiction novel is set in a steampunky alternate-present with zeppelins and mechanical men built by a technological genius called Prospero. Our narrator, Harold, gets mixed up with Prospero’s daughter (who’s named Miranda, naturally). There’s a lot here about machinery vs. humanity, knowledge vs. mystery, and science vs. miracles. It’s beautifully written and even though I’m not quite sure I ever really figured out what was going on I certainly enjoyed the ride.
(LC Score: +1)
The Chimes by Anna Smaill
Lots of sf/fantasy this week! Smaill’s novel is set in a dystopian future England where some past catastrophic event has destroyed buildings, killed all the birds, and left people without the ability to read. Music has become the main way to communicate and pass on knowledge. Daily ‘Chimes’ rung throughout the land bring communities together—and may also have the sinister effect of destroying people’s long-term memories. It’s an... interesting choice to write about a world where all the characters have trouble remembering what happens from day to day, but fortunately it turns out that our hero (for reasons never explained) has special memory powers. The writing is smooth and lyrical and Smaill creates a hazy, impressionistic sort of world where the plot is less important than the vision she is trying to convey. I’m glad I read it and I appreciate the originality of Smaill’s creation, but I’m a plot-girl—I always feel like the author is cheating when too many details are glossed over or have clearly not been thought through, and I’m easily distracted by all the questions raised when a fictional world is not fully realized.
(LC Score: +1)
Georgia: A Brief History by Christopher C. Meyers and David Williams
I may be ready to take a break from Georgia history. This is a good one to go out on—a nice complement to Cobb’s Georgia Odyssey—and it does an especially good job of explaining the economic consequences of slavery, King Cotton, etc. Recommended for all you Georgia scholars out there! (It’s only me, right? I’m the only one reading these books, aren’t I? <sigh>)
(LC Score: +1)
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
Okay, everyone settle in because I have some thoughts. (Warning: rant approaching.) After careful consideration, I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that it’s time to BURN IT ALL DOWN. I mean, maybe that’s a slight overreaction, but right now it’s hard to believe that women aren’t being forced to take a giant step backward, fighting all over again for the basic rights and protections we thought we’d achieved decades ago. This certainly wasn’t the world I thought I’d be living in. I am extremely grateful to my parents (and a series of really wonderful teachers) who helped me grow up believing that my gender was no obstacle to anything I might want to accomplish, believing that the fight for women’s rights was over and we WON—woo-hoo!—and it’s nothing that sensible people need ever worry about again, but I wish someone had made me read this when I was 16 or so. Certainly, growing up in the 80s I felt no need to revisit the dry and dusty tomes of of the 60s women’s movement, and so I missed out on Friedan’s engaging narrative voice and her straightforward analysis of how the 50s and early 60s were a complete horror show for women—particularly any woman who might not be emotionally and intellectually and sexually fulfilled by scrubbing the kitchen floor. (Of course, we know that the idealized American 1950s beloved of so many politicians and social commentators were a nightmare for anyone who wasn’t white, straight, and male, but still.) Maybe it wouldn’t have done me any good to get angry at 16, but at least I would have had a better understanding of where we were coming from, how hard we had to fight to escape the narrow confines of “femininity," and the cycles of progress and stagnation/backlash that seem to come in regular waves. Now, when I see that picture of old white men deciding what healthcare (for example) should look like with nary a woman or a person of color in the room, when I see them trying desperately to drag us back to the 50s—yep, I’m thinking it’s time to BURN IT ALL DOWN. Friedan’s 1963 book shows its age—in particular, her discussion of “the male homosexual” goes beyond ridiculous all the way to offensive—and, as many others have noted, it’s limited by exclusively addressing the problems of straight white middle-to-upper-class women. Friedan follows the outdated thinking of her time in blaming nearly all psychological problems in children on incompetent mothering, which in her thesis is due to lack of maternal self-fulfillment, plus she, like everyone else in the 60s, seems to be utterly obsessed with the female orgasm. (What did the Kinsey Report do to these people? When did the female orgasm become the sole measure of personal fulfillment? How even--? ...On second thought, never mind. Forget that I asked. Some things should probably be left alone.) We also learn that some things never change: Friedan expresses concern about the early sexualization of young girls through revealing clothing, describes the 1963 version of “helicopter parents," and has a whole chapter on how “kids today” are unmotivated, entitled, and allergic to hard work. Despite the issues, I found The Feminine Mystique a very readable introduction to the “a woman’s place is in the home” thinking of post-WWII America, a philosophy that lives on through many of the politicians and social commentators who grew up in that era. I’ve ordered a copy to give to my 16-year-old. (End of rant.)
(LC Score: +1)
Paper Girls Vol. 1 written by Brian K. Vaughn and illustrated by Cliff Chiang
I am still a newbie to the world of graphic novels and comics, but I LOVE Brian Vaughn’s Saga and so I was very excited to read this series about a pack of pre-teen newspaper delivery girls in 1988 who get caught up fighting a scary and mysterious invasion from the future. In fact, I bought a copy for my 14-year-old graphic-novel-loving daughter (who hasn’t read Saga yet because it’s extra-hard-R-rated, seriously not for kids I mean it). I thoroughly enjoyed it and am looking forward to Vol. 2, but the 14-year-old preferred the next entry...
(LC Score: 0, borrowed from my daughter)
Lumberjanes Vol. 1: Beware the Kitten Holy
Lumberjanes Vol. 2: Friendship to the Max
written by Noelle Stevenson and Grace Ellis and illustrated by Brooke Allan
More pre-teen girls kicking butt! Stevenson (of Nimona fame) co-writes this comic about a group of best friends who fight monsters (and the occasional Greek god) while earning merit badges at Lumberjane Camp. Sillier and more cartoony than Paper Girls (which gets violent and may be too much for younger readers), it’s diverse and funny and a complete delight and my daughter is zooming through the collections as fast as she can get them. Me too.
(LC Score: 0, borrowed from my daughter)
Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld
A modern-day retelling of Pride and Prejudice. I know better, I really do—these things never go well. I nope’d out early on, once it was revealed that Liz (a New York City magazine editor/writer in this version) was having an affair with her married ‘best friend’ (the Wickham character), who she’d mooned over for years, never quite able to give up on him even as he dates girl after girl, keeping her on the side. THIS IS NOT THE ELIZABETH BENNET I KNOW AND LOVE. It goes rapidly downhill from there. For those of you in the market for an actually quite good update of P&P, I recommend The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the funny and clever YouTube series. Also, the 14-year-old is having a great time with Pride and Prejudice: Manga Classics (adapted by Stacy King). She’s reading it on the side during our current mother-daughter read-aloud of P&P and aside from being entertainingly ridiculous in all the ways you’d expect a manga version of P&P to be ridiculous, she says it’s helping her keep track of all the characters and understand what’s happening a bit better.
(LC Score: +1)
Pandemonium by Daryl Gregory
Gregory is one of those why-haven’t-more-people-heard-of-this-guy? novelists. He writes sf/fantasy (with the occasional dash of horror) and I’ve read and enjoyed two of his novels: Afterparty and We’re All Completely Fine. I’m looking forward to reading the rest, including Spoonbenders (due to come out later this year), but I couldn’t get to this one in time. EXPIRED HOLD.
(LC Score: -1)
The Age Altertron by Mark Dunn
Hey, the guy who wrote Ella Minnow Pea also wrote a middle-grades kids’ novel! I should put that on hold and read it! But maybe not this week when I’m busy with the 60’s women’s movement and bad Austen fanfic and entirely too much sf/fantasy! EXPIRED HOLD.
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 5/23/17: 7 (it helps that I was finished with Eligible in about 20 min)
Running Score: 32
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (Atwood does The Tempest)
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead (the debut novel from the recent Pulitzer Prize-winner)
Stamped From the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X. Kendi (just started this one but so far it’s excellent)
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin (yep, still catching up on books I should have read in school)
- one year ago: Monday Pep Talk No. 37
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (5.16.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
So you want to know the secret of winning at Library Chicken? I will share it with you, for I am generous of heart: Read a lot and do not do ANYTHING else. I cannot emphasize the ‘not doing of anything else’ part highly enough. Here is a representative but incomplete list of things yours truly has not done at Library Chicken HQ this week: (1) laundry, (2) grocery shopping, (3) successfully remembering the call-time for daughter’s choral performance, (4) any form of exercise, (5) any making of meals, (6) replacing the Jon Ossoff yard sign that was stolen by neighborhood gremlins, (7) returning a friend’s texts about summer plans, (8) clearing away fast food debris (after the not making of meals), (9) planting those hostas we got a month ago that are beginning to look a little sad, and (10) making the kids actually finish their homeschool lessons instead of saying “eh, that seems like enough for today.” Now, I realize that not everyone may have my level of commitment, so consider starting small—skip the laundry, or maybe don’t remember to pick your kids up from class (walking is good for them, right?—and as you progress, you too can become A WINNER. #Goals #LeaveMeAloneI’mReading #Can’tYourFatherParentForTheNextMonthOrSo?
A Hundred Thousand Worlds by Bob Proehl
This book hit ALL the nerdy sweet spots for me. Valerie, an actress who starred several years ago in an X-Files-ish cult sci-fi show (playing the Agent Scully role), is on a road-trip with her 9-year-old son, Alex, taking him from New York back to California to be with his father (the actor who played Mulder). That’s really all I need right there, but on the way she attends several sf conventions, hanging out with comic book artists who work for not-quite-Marvel and almost-DC. All of this not-quite-but-almost could be a little fanfic-y, but I found it utterly delightful. (When I realized that Alex was reading the in-universe version of Harry Potter on the way to California I may have squeed a teensy bit.) It’s not all superheroes and magic wands, though: we learn that Valerie violated the custody order when she took her son away (following a tragedy linked to her show) and may now lose custody entirely. Aside from all the fangirly awesomeness, this book is sweet and serious and funny and absolutely made my week. Bonus points to Proehl for (1) a lovely portrayal of women in sf/f fandom (including a posse of superheroines), and (2) making Valerie and Alex HOMESCHOOLERS. It’s as if he wrote it just for me—he knew I’d need some cheering up this week(/month/year) and so wrote Agent Dana Scully (one of my personal when-I-grow-up-I-wanna-bes, see also: C.J. Cregg) as a homeschooling mom. Well played, sir, well played.
(LC Score: +1)
The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan
Dylan, mourning the deaths of his mother and grandmother, leaves the London art house cinema that was both family business and home for a caravan in remote Scotland, where he meets his new neighbors: a survivalist mom and her pre-teen transgender daughter, Stella. Oh yeah, and it’s 2020 and climate change is out of control and the world may very well freeze over in the next month or so. I’ve read a fair amount of impending-apocalypse science fiction—for some reason, climate change-based apocalypses are very hot (heh, sorry) right now—and what sets this one apart is that the approaching (possible) doomsday is only a background for human relationships and people just carrying on, trying to make it from day to day as usual. Stella in particular is wonderful—the book would be worth reading just for her character—and even though things end on an unsettled note, I felt more than satisfied with the journey Fagan had taken me on.
(LC Score: +1)
More Than Petticoats: Remarkable Georgia Women by Sara Hines Martin
Have I mentioned that I’ve been reading Georgia history lately? Unfortunately, this book (one of a state-by-state series) didn’t add much. It’s a compilation of short biographical sketches of 13 Georgians (Juliette Gordon Low, Margaret Mitchell, etc.) and it reads like one of those blurred, soft-focused histories written for kids trying to do a quickie school report.
(LC Score: +1)
The Nix by Nathan Hill
I’m not sure what to say about this book. It’s received a lot of praise and I can see why, but ultimately I think I have to come down in the not for me column. Despite being about an adult son’s relationship with the mother who abandoned him, it felt very much like another white-American-male midlife-crisis book (not inherently a bad thing, but I’ve read a LOT of those), at least until I decided it was more like a white-American-male coming-of-age book, even though the character is at least a decade or two late to the coming-of-age party. I don’t know that I would discourage anyone from reading it if they’re interested, but I would warn them that the book goes to a fairly bleak ‘no truth, no beauty, only ugliness and bitter humor, plus the bad guys always win!’ place, all the while trying to be funny and clever about how awful everything is. Plus, misogyny! Even though I believe the author is condemning rather than sanctioning any of it, I’m just not in the mood. I might try Hill’s next book, though.
(LC Score: +1)
Company Town by Madeline Ashby
In this near-future science fiction novel, Hwa is a bodyguard on a city-sized oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland when she gets mixed up with the family business empire that has just bought the rig and is making some changes. It’s actually a thriller/murder mystery of sorts (that gets fairly dark at times) and though the plot had a few bumps along the way, I enjoyed Hwa’s narrative voice so much that it carried me smoothly through. (Not a huge fan of the romance subplot, though, I have to admit.) Not everything is explained at the end and I confidently expect a sequel, which will then go on my ever-expanding library hold list.
(LC Score: +1)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
You’ve read this, right? If not, please do. I was surprised to find that it was such a slim, undersized book—I almost didn’t see it on the shelf. I am not a newcomer to the idea of white privilege (though I don’t claim to be very far down the path as the process of understanding and changing perspective and learning from others is always ongoing) but I was surprised (and embarrassed) by how challenging I found it at times. It was a wonderful, powerful read—go pick it up. I know I’ll be reading it again.
(LC Score: +1)
Cinderella Ate My Daughter by Peggy Orenstein
I loved Waiting for Daisy, Orenstein’s memoir about dealing with infertility, and I found her recent book, Girls + Sex, about the sexual landscape that teenage girls and young women are currently navigating, to be interesting and thought-provoking, and I AM DETERMINED to read this book, about the “girlie-girl” culture of Disney Princesses and the pink aisle at Toys R Us, but <sigh> it won’t be this week. I’ve already checked it out twice; guess I’ll have to go for three. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn
Zinn has been on my haven’t-read-but-really-I’m-going-to-get-right-on-that list for an embarrassingly long time and he got a bump recently when there was yet another conservative Republican attempt to ban his work from being used in schools (looking at you, Arkansas), but sadly I failed again. Soon, though, I mean it! RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
I love Solnit, plus I was hoping that this meditation on the act of walking would motivate me to get out of the house and back into the habit of daily walks, but didn’t quite get there. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 5/16/17: 3
Running Score: 25
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Last Call at the Nightshade Lounge by Paul Krueger (billed as ‘A Novel of Magic and Mixology’, so I’m on board)
Among Others by Jo Walton (been on my to-read list forever but then Amy went ahead and read it so now I have to catch up with her)
This One Is Mine by Maria Semple (loved Where’d You Go, Bernadette and looking forward to this one, her debut novel)
Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity by James C. Cobb (I’ve really been enjoying Cobb’s writings on Southern history)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (5.9.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
Have I mentioned that I love epistolary novels? This one, set on the (fictional) island of Nollop, is a particular joy. The islanders revere their native son, Nevin Nollop, creator of the pangram, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” but when letters begin to fall off of Nollop’s monument, the government decides that the fallen letters must be banned. The rest of the book is one big language game, as letter after letter is removed from the alphabet. I’d definitely recommend this book to homeschool teens—read it for language arts and enjoy the wordplay, or read it for history as a satire on the creation of a police state! HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.
(LC Score: 0, got it in a library sale)
I’m trying to do a better job of reading widely so that I can be a better ally in the fight against racism and other forms of oppression. Plus, I don’t want to miss out on great books (like this one) because I wasn’t paying attention. This is Smith’s short but powerful memoir centering on his answer to the question, “How do you learn to be a black man in America?” Along the way he talks about sexism, homophobia, and his own deeply ambivalent (to put it generously) feelings about the Obama presidency. Smith is still a young man (29 when this books was published) and I’m hoping that he’ll write a part two at some point to bring us up to date on his journey. Another great book for teens—and anyone else who is concerned about the world we’re living in. HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.
(LC Score: +1)
When I was a student at Georgia Tech, I often ate spring rolls at a Vietnamese restaurant that was literally a stone’s throw away from The Dump, the (then unrestored) apartment house where Margaret Mitchell wrote her magnum opus. At that point in my life, I had little interest in either Margaret Mitchell or Scarlett O’Hara. As part of my current quest to read all-things-Georgian, though, I recently made my way through Gone With the Wind (my opinion of which is a whole other essay) and then turned to this biography. I was delighted to learn that Margaret Mitchell—debutante, girl reporter, and world-famous author—is at least as fascinating as (and much more funny than) her heroine, Scarlett. I enjoyed getting to know her in this detailed biography, but I can’t ignore its major flaw: Just as Mitchell wrote a 1,037-page Civil War novel set on a Georgia cotton plantation yet somehow managed to almost totally ignore the institution of slavery, Pyron has written a biography that completely side-steps any examination of Mitchell’s racism. Aside from one anecdote about bad behavior as a Smith College freshman (when she pitched a temper tantrum that went all the way to the highest levels of the administration because a young black woman was enrolled in the same lecture class as she was), we learn almost nothing about how Mitchell’s racist beliefs affected her personal or professional life, nor does Pyron look at how her famous novel is irreparably marred by her racism (in my opinion at least, see: a whole other essay). At one point, for example, Pyron says that Mitchell was infuriated when her novel was described as “anti-Negro,” but he never attempts to explain why she disagreed with that assessment. Despite this fairly gaping hole, I did like this biography and learning more about Mitchell (especially that she wholeheartedly concurred with the psychologist who diagnosed Scarlett as a “partial psychopath”), but, even though it would not be a fun read, I’d still like to find a book that grapples with the white supremacist side of Mitchell and the culture she grew up in, and how that is reflected in her work.
(LC Score: +1)
The final Mrs. Pollifax adventures! While I was sad to bid her farewell, I have to admit that I didn’t love the last book, published in 2000, where Mrs. Pollifax goes gallivanting around Syria, which had then just come under the rule of Bashar al-Assad. It was surprisingly uncomfortable to have the fictional CIA agent come so close to today’s tragic headlines. Gilman never published another Pollifax story after 2000; I have to wonder if she felt the same way about her black-belt grandma in a post-9/11 world.
(LC Score: +2)
This YA fantasy novel (which, honestly, I would have picked up just for the cover) is set in Jazz Age 1919 Boston, and tells the story of teenage best friends and nightclub performers, Ada and Corinne. They are hemopaths, meaning that they’re allergic to iron and have special powers: Ada can affect people’s emotions through her music, while Corinne can cast illusions by quoting poetry. Together they have to deal with anti-hemopath sentiment and escape the evil doctor who’s running hemopath experiments in the asylum just outside town.
(LC Score: +1)
In this collection of short essays, Ajayi explains how we’re all Doing It Wrong, laying down the law on topics ranging from personal hygiene to racism to #Hashtag #Misuse. Meanwhile, I’m judging my library system for only having one copy of this popular book in circulation—I was on the hold list for about six months!
(LC Score: +1)
In general, I agree with everyone who says that it’s better to see Shakespeare’s plays performed than to read them, but I’ve also found that the plays are a lot easier to follow if you’ve read a story-adaptation of the plot first. Over the years I’ve looked at several different Shakespeare adaptations, but this collection (and its follow-up, Shakespeare Stories II) is by far the best I’ve found. Beginning with Twelfth Night and including Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, and Macbeth, I’ve used it as a read-aloud introduction to Shakespeare in our homeschool (in conjunction with the BBC series Shakespeare: The Animated Tales, and episodes of Shakespeare Uncovered, available on PBS streaming). I don’t usually include homeschool readalouds in Library Chicken, but we’ve just completed our very last read-through of the book with my 6th grader <sniff>, and I wanted to mark the moment. Now we’ve got a stack of film adaptations to watch and maybe we can catch a show at the Atlanta Shakespeare Tavern! HOMESCHOOL RECOMMENDED.
(LC Score: 0, off our homeschool shelf)
Maybe one day I’ll learn that it’s a bad idea to check out that big ol’ nonfiction history book at the same time that I’m grabbing a dozen or so *must-read-this-IMMEDIATELY* sf/fantasy novels. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 5/9/17: 5
Running Score: 22
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
The Sunlight Pilgrims by Jenni Fagan (I’m NOT a fan of the trendy term “cli-fi” for climate-change science fiction, but I won’t let that stop me from reading this novel about the world freezing over)
The Nix by Nathan Hill (this novel was all over the best-of-2016 lists)
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates (because I’m the last one in the country who hasn’t read it)
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan (also catching up on my Feminism 101 reading)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (5.2.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
It’s a good week in reading when your stack of ‘books I enjoyed’ is taller than your ‘meh’ stack. It’s a great week in reading when you find one of those books that you know you’ll be recommending to friends (and friends-of-friends and acquaintances and innocent bystanders and random passers-by) for years to come. It’s an extraordinary week in reading when you can’t decide which of two outstanding books to gush on at length about first. This week, Ada Palmer and Rebecca Solnit were definitely at the top of my list:
Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer
First Ann Leckie and now this—there are some incredible things happening right now in the science fiction genre, folks. In the high-tech future of 2454 where affinity-based Hives have replaced geographically based nation-states and mini-communes called bash’es have replaced the nuclear family, ex-criminal Mycroft Canner tells a story of high politics and forbidden theology, deliberately choosing to do so (as he tells us repeatedly) in the outdated style of an 18th-century novel, referencing heroes of the Enlightenment along the way. Plus there’s a young boy who can bring inanimate objects to life with a touch, living in secret and protected by a bodyguard of tiny green plastic army men—but that’s only the beginning. This book is hard to for me to talk about (just ask Amy) without a lot of excited hand-waving and “oh, yeah, I forgot about this other thing” and “but wait ‘cause meanwhile” and “AND THEN” sorts of sentences. About three-quarters of the way through, I thought I was starting to get a handle on what was happening, which is when the author lifted up the top of this carefully-crafted society to show the ugliness and corruption underneath, an unexpectedly dark turn that I was completely unprepared for. This is volume one of a series—warning: the action doesn’t so much wrap up at the end as come to a brief pause —and I have no idea what’s going to happen and I WOULD LIKE TO READ THE NEXT BOOK NOW PLEASE.
(LC Score: +1)
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit
Anyone who has read accounts of real-life disasters knows that, unlike what we’ve been repeatedly told by Hollywood and our political leaders, people in the midst of catastrophe do not inevitably devolve into panicked every-man-for-himself monsters. Instead, the vast majority of people turn to each other to provide help and support, coming up with creative and intelligent solutions for immediate problems. Often, the greatest danger in the aftermath of a natural disaster is actually a phenomenon called “elite panic”, where the Powers That Be, experiencing their own panic at their loss of control and fearing the hordes of humanity that will be unleashed now that the thin veneer of civilization has been ripped off, treat the citizens they’re supposed to be protecting as the enemy, giving orders to shoot looters, withholding information from the general public, and blocking “non-official” relief efforts. In this book, Solnit gathers historical accounts of how people have reacted to disaster, showing that human decency is not the first casualty in times of chaos, and that in fact these disasters often bring out the very best in those people who are most affected. She goes on to meditate on the nature of utopia (with assists from the likes of William James and Peter Kropotkin) and to explore why communities can respond with hope and even find joy in times of fear and enormous loss. What is special about how people react during disaster, and how can we create that sense of purpose and connection when we’re living our everyday non-catastrophic lives? This book made me cry and also made me BURN-IT-ALL-DOWN angry (I recommend frequent breaks while reading the Hurricane Katrina chapter) but mostly it made me feel hopeful about human nature and the choices we can make in our own lives to create meaning and community. Also, while I wouldn’t necessarily compare our current political situation to an earthquake or a hurricane (I’d actually probably go with zombie apocalypse), I found this book (published in 2009) incredibly relevant to what many of us are experiencing right now—both the fear and sorrow, and the hope and joy people are finding in coming together as activists. Sometimes you read the right book at the right time and it just might end up changing your life. (Also, I’m putting together a fund to send a copy to every writer on he Walking Dead because you people need to LIGHTEN UP. Seriously.)
(LC Score: +1⁄2, returned overdue)
After O’Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia edited by Hugh Ruppersburg
I was feeling very virtuous and self-sacrificing about picking up this collection (given that I’m not the biggest fan of so-called Southern fiction), but wow, once I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. There are 30 stories here—some Southern-y, many not—written in 1990-2005, by authors with a connection (sometimes a bit tenuous) to Georgia. There are the authors you’d expect to see (Alice Walker, Bailey White) and ones you might not expect (Michael Bishop, Ha Jin) and there’s not a bad story in the bunch. If you need a pick-me-up, do yourself a favor and find a copy of “The Widow’s Mite” by Ferrol Sams. You can thank me later.
(LC Score: +1)
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
Every once in a while a book comes along that seems tailor-made for me, but somehow we just don’t click. A mysterious Library that sends Librarian agents to alternate worlds to collect one-of-a-kind literary creations? Check! An adventure that involves zeppelins, vampires, remote-controlled alligators, and a Sherlock-alike? Check!! A universe where the Forces of Order, represented by dragons, and the Forces of Chaos, represented by the Fairy Folk, are battling it out?!? CHECK, CHECK, and CHECK! I expected to fall in love with this series, but for whatever reason this novel didn’t quite work for me, which is a bummer. I’m firmly of the “it’s not you, it’s me” camp, so if that sounds interesting for you or for your favorite middle/high schooler, I’d say go ahead and give it a try. (You gotta at least read the remote-controlled alligator scene.)
(LC Score: +1)
Mrs. Pollifax Pursued by Dorothy Gilman
Mrs. Pollifax and the Lion Killer by Dorothy Gilman
Mrs. Pollifax adventures #11 and #12—I’m getting close to the end of the series, which is upsetting. How will I get my black-belt world-trotting grandma fix now?
(LC Score: +2)
Underfoot in Show Business by Helene Hanff
As anyone who’s listened to our podcast on 84 Charing Cross Road knows, I find Helene Hanff delightful. This is her short memoir of not making it on Broadway as a playwright. Unsurprisingly, she continues to be delightful.
(LC Score: +1)
The Wishing-Ring Man by Margaret Widdemer
And, speaking of delightful, this is a follow-up (of sorts) to The Rose-Garden Husband from a couple of weeks ago, where Phyllis and Allan return to help out a young woman who is tired of being a muse to her famous poet grandfather and just wants to be a normal girl. There’s a romance kicked off by a ridiculous coincidence (and very briefly imperiled by a ridiculous misunderstanding) and it’s all very fun. Plus, considerably less racism than in The Rose-Garden Husband!
(LC Score: 0, read on Kindle)
The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang
Chinese-American businessman Charles Wang loses his cosmetics empire fortune and goes bankrupt, forcing his family to come together to deal with their new reality. I am a sucker for any kind of “family-comes-together-to-deal-with” plot and I thoroughly enjoyed this debut novel and all the Wang children, who include a once-famous-now-disgraced New York artist and as aspiring stand-up comedian.
(LC Score: +1)
The Gay Revolution by Lillian Faderman
I’ve been reading a lot more about activism and the history of civil rights lately, but I just couldn’t get to this book before it was due. RETURNED UNREAD.
(LC Score: -1)
Fanny Burney: A Biography by Claire Harman
I recently read a great biography of King George III—Royal Experiment: The Private Life of King George III by Janice Hadlow—which reminded me that I need to read more about Fanny Burney, famous author and courtier to George’s wife, Queen Charlotte, but then I got caught up in 18th-century-style science fiction and Hurricane Katrina and everything else. RETURNED UNREAD (which is okay because I need to read Burney’s Evelina anyway).
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 5/2/17: 5 1⁄2 Running Score: 17
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell and the Making of Gone With the Wind by Darden Asbury Pyron (the quest to read all things Georgian continues)
Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching: A Young Black Man’s Education by Mychal Denzel Smith (heard great things about this one)
Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters by Mark Dunn (I LOVE EPISTOLARY NOVELS GIVE THEM ALL TO ME)
Iron Cast by Destiny Soria (because wow, that is a GORGEOUS cover!)
Book Nerd: Library Chicken Weekly Scoreboard (4.25.17)
Welcome to the weekly round-up of what the BookNerd is reading and how many points I scored (or lost) in Library Chicken. To recap, you get a point for returning a library book that you’ve read, you lose a point for returning a book unread, and while returning a book past the due date is technically legal, you do lose half a point. If you want to play along, leave your score in the comments!
In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that due to our Tuesday publication date, this “week” was actually closer to 10 days—because we pride ourselves on ACCURACY here at Library Chicken HQ.
Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars by Catherine Clinton
Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 by Fanny Kemble
Fanny Kemble was a celebrated British actress—part of the famed Kemble/Siddons theater family—who came to America on tour and fell in love with a wealthy American, Pierce Butler. What she didn’t know when she married Butler was that his family’s wealth came from large plantation holdings on and around St. Simon’s Island, Georgia. (For my Hamilton fans out there: the Butlers were friends of Aaron Burr and it was to their plantation that he fled to hide out after The Duel, when New York charged him with murder.) As Fanny was an ardent abolitionist, this caused a problem or two. Her husband, an absentee landlord most of the time, really didn’t want her anywhere near his plantation or his slaves, but he did allow her to spend one year down there, during which she wrote her Journal. The marriage eventually fell apart in dramatic fashion (detailed in Clinton’s biography) and Fanny, who had become known as a memoirist, eventually published the Journal. It’s a fascinating if grim read about life on an isolated plantation in the Deep South, where the authority usually rests in the hands of a hired overseer, often the only white man present, whose only concern is to provide a good-looking balance sheet for the absentee owner. Fanny was especially interested in the lives of enslaved women, recording details of their lives that other (male) witnesses may never have seen or heard about. I read these as part of ongoing prep for the Georgia history class (and let me tell you, Fanny was not a fan of the Peach State).
(LC Score: +2)
Ancillary Sword by Ann Leckie
Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie
SPACE OPERA. Leckie, as you may have heard me say, is my new hero. A stay-at-home-mom, she was in her mid-40s when she published her first novel, Ancillary Justice, which then went on to win just about every award in the science fiction genre. I made Amy read it with me for the podcast and we’re due to talk about it next time around (as soon as the stars and our schedules align). SPOILER: I thought it was pretty darn good. Leckie explores gender and personhood in wonderful and original ways, plus people get to shoot at each other with ray guns! So of course I had to pick up books two and three in the trilogy and finish them off. If you’re already a SF fan: c’mon, read Ancillary Justice already. I know you’ve heard of it. What are you waiting for? If you’re most emphatically NOT a SF fan: well, this is definitely very science-fiction-y science fiction, so maybe give it a miss as it’s probably chock-full of all the things that annoy you about the genre. If you don’t know if you’re a SF fan or not: this series is a great example of some of the exciting things that are happening in modern SF right now—pick up the first book and give it a try!
(LC Score: +2)
Quite a Year for Plums by Bailey White
Nothing With Strings by Bailey White
I am on record as not loving the sort of Southern fiction where everyone is always hot, sweaty, and barefoot, and every attic room houses an insane cousin/brother/uncle (looking at you, Faulkner), but I do love Bailey White and her stories of Southern small towns (primarily in Georgia, Alabama, and Florida), where eccentric elders spend their time fussing over the younger generation and vice versa. As part of my quest to immerse myself in everything Georgian, I’ve been treating myself to a reread of her work.
(LC Score: +2)
The Shadow Guests by Joan Aiken
Joan Aiken’s YA/children’s novels are a bit hit or miss for me. I find them to be an unpredictable mixture of entertainingly gothic and unpleasantly grim. I’ve had this one on my shelves forever (for Atlantans: it had an Oxford Too stamp inside, so you know I bought it a while ago) but I was excited to pick it up and find a promising beginning, with a young boy sent to Oxford, England to live with his aunt in a house not entirely ghost-free (reminiscent of the Green Knowe series). Ultimately, however, it came down on the grim side for me.
(LC Score: 0, off my own shelves)
Mr. Midshipman Easy by Frederick Marryat
My dad insisted that I stop everything and read this book, a mostly forgotten classic set during the Napoleonic Wars and written by a friend of Charles Dickens. The title character is raised by an philosopher father, whose eccentric beliefs include the idea that everyone is equal. Friends of the family conspire to get the son into the navy, in the hopes that he will rid himself of these patently ridiculous ideas passed down from his father, but it takes a while, as young Easy has been trained to argue every point and will happily do so all day. My dad <ahem> may have said that the character reminded him just a teensy bit of my younger son.
(LC Score: +1)
Observatory Mansion by Edward Carey
GUYS, I LOVE Edward Carey. Have I told you how much I love Edward Carey? Have I told y’all to run, not walk, to your nearest bookstore and buy his Iremonger trilogy (beginning with Heap House) for your favorite middle/high schooler, though of course you should really read it first before passing it along? The trilogy that Carey wrote after moving to Austin, Texas from England because, as he says, he missed feeling cold and gloomy? Have I told you how delightfully bizarre and weirdly Dickensian his books are? My only complaint about Carey is that he doesn’t write fast enough. Aside from the Iremonger trilogy, he’s written two books for adults: Alva & Irva: The Twins Who Saved a City (very very strange—read it immediately) and this one, his first novel, with a narrator who works as a living statue, collects (i.e., steals) important objects from the people around him for his private collection, and never ever takes off his white gloves. Carey is interested in what happens when you objectify people and personify objects and really I have no idea what’s happening, but I LOVE him SO MUCH, GUYS.
(LC Score: 0, because my library didn’t have it and I had to buy my own copy, darn)
Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled An Empire by Julia Baird
After catching a few episodes of Victoria on Masterpiece Theater I thought this would be a fun read—but apparently so did everyone else. RETURNED UNREAD (because it was due and had holds and I’m in the middle of this whole Georgia thing right now anyway).
(LC Score: -1)
Library Chicken Score for 4/24/17: 6
Running Score: 11 1⁄2
On the to-read/still-reading stack for next week:
Georgia: A Brief History by Christopher Meyers and David Williams (like I said...)
After O’Connor: Stories from Contemporary Georgia edited by Hugh Ruppersburg (hopefully not too many sweaty barefoot insane cousins)
A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster by Rebecca Solnit (because Solnit is wonderful and I’m obsessed with disasters)
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman (because I will read anything with “Library” in the title!)
SUZANNE REZELMAN is home | school | life magazine’s Book Nerd. Subscribe to home/school/life to read her brilliant book recommendations and literary musings every issue. Your library list will thank you.