Childhood's End

In the long agonizing weeks between giving my daughter my Kindle Keyboard and waiting, waiting, waiting for my new Kindle Paperwhite to show up, I decided to grab something off my TBR pile.  I have an old, 80s cover art version of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End that I've always meant to get to.  I read a bunch of Clarke back in middle and high school and I was pretty sure I'd read this, but was foggy on the details.

As I re-read it this time I think I must have only read the first section because that was all very familiar but the ending was new to me.  Why did I stop reading such an elegant book half way through?  I have no idea other than I tend to read more than one book at a time and it must have just slipped through the cracks at some point.

Interestingly enough, this title isn't available on the Kindle as far as I can tell, so I guess it was a good choice. I remember buying it new (for $2.50!) and it has since yellowed with age. While dated in some ways, the story itself holds up marvelously.  I think it works so well because the science and technical details aren't as important as the allegory aspect of the tale.  Clarke is letting us know that the universe is bigger and stranger than we can probably imagine, so we need to do the best we can here and now before we drive ourselves to extinction.  He seems to worry more about a possible nuclear war, but climate change is a possibility as well.

I can't completely summarize the book without giving too much away.  Basically the old science fiction cliche (yes, even back in the 50s when Clarke wrote this) of a bunch of massive alien spacecraft appearing over the major cities of the world takes place.  The aliens never show themselves and do not take violent action except as necessary.  They become known as the Overlords and subtly but effectively push humanity in certain directions.  Wars cease.  Poverty is eliminated   Things are looking up.

But they never show themselves and the main point of view character tries repeatedly to find out why this is so.  Finally they give in and say that in 50 years, they will come down from their ships.  This gives them enough time to have a whole generation of humanity who have never known a world without them to be there when they reveal themselves.

The reveal isn't the major point of the book though.  It goes on with different POV characters and slowly more is revealed, not only of the Overlords, but of humanity and the universe in general.  It ends in some very surprising ways.

Many call the end depressing but I'm not sure I agree with that.  It's definitely wistful at least and probably more than that.  But just because something comes to an end, is that the worst that can happen?  Should we never buy a pet knowing full well we'll be burying it before two decades are out?  Should we never build or create anything knowing that nothing will withstand the ravages of time?  I don't think so but I suppose that those who find the ending depressing do.  I'm not saying nothing sad happens, but I didn't feel depressed after reading it.

Mostly, I was in awe of Arthur C. Clarke's achievement in writing such a fantastic book. He may be gone, but we still have his work to enjoy.  At least until the sun burns out or aliens attack or the Borg assimilate us or humanity evolves into something...else.

I have more to say but then I'd have to reveal too much, so I'll leave it to you if you're interested.

Books! Both audio, paper and electronic...

I've been reading a bunch but blogging little.  For my physical book club I read Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut.  They didn't have it in audio at my library, so I checked out the paperback copy they did have.  Usually I renew books as soon as I get home two times, so  I can keep them for the full nine weeks if I wish.  But this had a reservation on it and I had to turn it in before I was finished.  So I downloaded the Kindle version and read the rest that way.  It was a good, but uneven collection.  Vonnegut himself gives it a B-.  I'd rate it a bit higher but only a few of the stories really stand out.  I'll stick to the novels.

I listened to the audio of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and I'm so glad I did.  It's a book I've heard about for some time but it seemed to me that it was going to be another one of those Oh-look-how-clever-I-am-books like, well, you know who I mean I'm sure.  The Sword & Laser has been reading it this month in anticipation of the movie.  It's funny because a friend loaned it to my wife who was happily reading it until the first section cut off.  Then the movie trailer came out and she was like, "No thanks."  But the trailer actually intrigued me and I picked up the book, then got the audio from the library.  The audio is the way to go because it's actually six different stories nested together.  Think of those nested Russian dolls, except only the big one on the outside is complete, the rest are all cut in half vertically.  Then they are lined up with the smallest left half, the next biggest, the next, the next, then the big, whole one in the middle, then the other halves of the smaller ones in descending order on the right.  So the last thing you read is the second half of the first story you started with, which was cut off mid-sentence.

Only the sixth story is told complete, without any breaks.  They are all told in different formats as well.  The first is an adventurer's journal form the late 1800s.  The second is a set of letters from an aspiring composer in Europe in the 1930s.  The third is the pulpy novelized version of an investigative journalist's attempt to learn the secrets of a nuclear power company.  The fourth is the hilarious account of of a shady publisher who goes into hiding to avoid strong-armed creditors and finds himself, then trying to find a way to escape his own accidental imprisonment in a rest home of sorts.  The fifth is the holographically recorded testimony of a kind of cloned human created for slave labor in the future.  The sixth is an oral account told around a campfire in a post-apocalyptic future.  So yeah, Mitchell is very clever and playing games, but the stories are much more accessible than I expected and the references between and to the other stories, along with the recurring and refracting themes was always fun.  I'm especially glad I was listening because the audio producers decided to have a different narrator for each section.  The sixth story is also told in a kind of pidgin English that I would have probably found annoying on the page, but on audio it wasn't any more difficult than puzzling out a thick Irish accent--you get into the flow of it and it makes sense.  Or at least sense enough.  Problem is, now I don't know if I actually want to see the film.

Ernest Cline's Ready Player One was also a joy to listen to.  It's narrated by Wil Wheaton, which is appropriate since it's a celebration of all things geeky.  It's kind of a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory scenario for geeks who grew up in the 80s.  It also takes place in a terrible future.  It's not post-apocalyptic, but post-oil crunch.  The world is not a happy place, but luckily some genius has created a wonderful, immersive, online virtual world that everyone hangs out in anyway.  It's where our main character, Wade, even goes to high school.  The genius that created all this died five years ago and left a video announcing a contest.  Whoever can find three hidden keys, get through the gates they open, and find a final hidden "easter egg" will win and inherit a controlling interest in this virtual world's founding company and the creator's own multi-billion dollar nest egg.  Like I said, it's been five years and our guy is the first one to find something that puts him on the games leader board.  Suddenly he's the most famous gamer in the world and the competition gets stiff.

The fun thing about this one is that the genius creator, and obviously Cline himself, are obsessed with 80s pop culture so to navigate these puzzles and challenges, Wade and the other challengers must have and encyclopedic knowledge of music, movies, books, television shows and especially video games from the 1980s.  It's quite a hoot for someone my age.  I wouldn't put it quite up there with Snow Crash as a novel, but it's pure enjoyment and great fun if you're the right kind of geek.

Finally, I just read a good old fashioned library book.  It was John Wood's Leaving Microsoft to Save the World.  I recently watched the film Half the Sky based on the book by Nicholas Kristof and Cheryl WuDunn.  Holy crap is all I can say.  But one of the many great charities the referred to in the film was Room to Read set up by former Microsoft exec John Wood.  They are focused on providing books, libraries and schools to the developing world with an emphasis on the education of girls.  The book is about how he came to make the switch from being a Microsoft exec running himself ragged to becoming a guy who creates a successful non-profit and running himself ragged and trying to save the world.  And unlike that ultimate dingleberry Greg Mortenson (who wrote a similar but mostly fictional book called Three Cups of Tea and mismanaged a whole lot of charity money), Wood really is doing great work and his non-profit is actually doing what he says it's doing.  Think of all the Carnegie libraries in the US.  What a legacy, right?  Well he set up  2500  libraries, primarily in the US (and other English-speaking countries.  Room to Read has already set up more than 12,000 libraries AND built about 1500 schools AND publishes native language children's books AND has provided over 13,000 scholarships for girls.

Rock on, I say!

Read Aloud Update

We (the family an I) are reading Gordon Korman's Swindle right now, but before that we read the newest Familiars book, The Circle of Heroes by Epstein and Jacobson.  And right before that we read the third Gregor Underlander book, The Curse of the Warmbloods. And before that we read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

I don't think there's anything to say about Harry Potter anymore.  You either love it and know all about it, or you don't read this blog.  Either way, yes, we finished that one (actually listened to Jim Dale read it to all of us) and then watched the movie and then I took Harper to a GameStop where she traded in some older Wii games and got LEGO Harry Potter Years 5-7.  So it was a multimedia event, I tell you.

The third Gregor book was my favorite of the series so far. It's richer, more wide-ranging and seems to be taking the series to a darker but also more rewarding place than I first suspected.

The third Familiars book is action-packed but also pretty dark.  The authors do a good job at keeping it moving and throwing in lots of fun one-liners to keep it getting too bad, but the unending zombie hordes, along with the illustrations, will make sure you don't think this is just a cutesy animal series.  No, indeed.

Swindle has been out for a while.  He's turned this into a series as well, but the first one is very much a stand-alone book.  Some kids find an old Babe Ruth baseball card in an abandoned house and take it to a collector.  He gives them a couple hundred bucks and they're happy.  Then they see him on TV saying he's going to auction it off for upwards of a miiillion dollars!  Without a receipt and just being kids, they decide their only recourse is to try to steal it back.  Then they figure out he has quite a lot of security on his shop.  And the meanest Doberman Pinscher in the world.  But they just happen to know a dog whispering girl in their class.  And a computer hacker.  And a climber.  And so on.  So we get a Ocean's 11-type heist thriller for the upper elementary set with a very satisfying conclusion.

Swindle is actually the first pick for my spouse and daughter's newly-formed Mother/Daughter book club they've formed with some other mom/daughter combos they are friends with.  It'll be interesting to see how that goes!

An Abundance of Katherines

I'm so glad for this year's TBR Double Dare.  I'm definitely getting books off of my pile that I don't know when I'd have gotten to otherwise.  I actually started another book before this one.  It was a well-recommended mystery novel from one of those respected mystery novelists who write many books in a series about an interesting detective in an interesting place.  I tried.  I really did.  But I was nearly a fourth of the way into it and I just did not care.  I may go back to it someday, but it really wasn't doing it for me.  So in desperation, I went looking for something I knew would be lighter and more fun.

Nerdfighter John Green to the rescue!  This is definitely light.  It tries a little too hard at times and there are things that got a bit annoying, but overall it was a welcome relief from the ponderous abandoned murder mystery.

I first came across John Green through the Vlogbrothers Youtube channel he does with his brother Hank.  Hank wrote a song about Harry Potter back when the last book was coming out and it went viral on Youtube. Then many of us who love books, nerds, and brothers went back and watched these videos.  At some point in the recent past they had both gotten video cameras as a Christmas present and had started sending these videos back and forth.  But since they are so smart and  funny  it became more of a thing and it's popularity exploded.  It was also around the time I was deciding to switch from straight teaching to becoming a school librarian.  Since I was open to becoming a librarian at any school K-12, I thought I should catch up on some YA books and got the first three John Green novels but up to now had only read his first, Waiting for Alaska.

In this one we realize that John Green's main characters are going to be very similar people with different various obsessions looking for excuses to show of their random stores of knowledge.  Much like John Green himself.  We also realize that the main characters are always going to be obsessed with girls.  Especially beautiful unattainable girls.  And if the girls are in any way attained, it will usually not be in any believable way.  But there will be lots of humor and some thoughtful insight and interesting situations along the way.  So they're basically Woody Allen movies for the YA crowd.  Except they are books rather than movies, of course; at least for the moment.

I have one more John Green on my TBR pile and he just had a new one come out that is getting rave reviews.  So it'll be nice to read those and watch a writer mature before our eyes.  And if that doesn't appeal to you, then you can just follow he and his brother on Youtube where he does things like talk really fast about The Great Gatsby.

Kitchen Confidential

I finished this book early in the TBR Double Dare because I was waiting for the book club discussion.  Then the book club, toward the end of January, was so wonderful that I didn't think I could do it justice.  I am also afraid of getting any publicity for the book group or raising interest to a level that it becomes unmanageable.  (That won't be a problem this month since the actual meeting date and the one printed on the book store flyers don't match up for some reason.)

There's not much to say about the book.  It's been out a while, made Bourdain's reputation as the bad boy, rock and roll food lover he's known as today and catapulted him into various cable travel/food loving shows.  You either like him or you don't.  I don't know anything in particular about good food and I especially dont' know much about fine restaurants, so I learned a lot and didn't know who he was dishing about when he discusses different well-known restaurant owners, chefs, etc.

First thing is, it's very funny and very profane.  Second thing is, he loves the food.  Curt Cobain might have been a messed up individual but he obviously loved the music.  Bourdain can be messed up but doesn't claim to be anything he's not.  He even goes on at length about how exactly to run a kitchen and the absolute do's and don't you must follow as a chef.  Then, in my favorite section, shadows another chef near the end of the book whose work he adores and proceeds to see all of his rules not being followed.  This by a chef and kitchen he considers leagues better than anything he could do.  So while he's a loudmouth, he's a self-aware and, believe it or not, a sometimes humble loudmouth.

Some of the guys in the book club like food quite a bit and so this book was chosen to coincide with our first meeting in a members home.  We all signed up to bring some food and/or beverages and let me tell you, it was one of the best meals of my life.  Bourdain either inspired them to new heights or we secretly have some chefs in the group.

There was one ringer.  The homeowner brought a friend who had done the brisket.  It was divine.  I might cry a little to myself now just thinking about it.  I also brought a friend who had thrown four punds of pork shoulder into a pot and brewed up a Brunswick stew that had been bubbling away for 14 hours.  It was like honey, I tell you.  The homeowner has one of those big green egg-like ceramic oval cooker things (like this) on a specially built teak table on his deck that had been stuffed with pork.  It melted in our fingers.  We were pulling it off in chunks as he was carving it.

I know; a meat-induced coma, right?  There was plenty of food for the vegetarians as well.  Delightful appetizers.  A gorgeous and simple fresh salad.  A perfectly cooked potato side.  More veggies. Home made desserts that were delicious and not overwhelming.

And the wine!  My goodness, this guy had racks of it all over the place.  I asked him how he could possibly have this much of a backlog?  I'd have drunk it as it came in.  He smiled and said simply, "I like to entertain."  No kidding.  He even has a dartboard up in the living room!

I'm no cook, so I made sure to bring good beer.  There was also some after-dinner whiskey.  All of it was perfection.  Especially the company.

Since Bourdain makes frequent references to music in his book, so will I. It was the day Etta James died so we played some of her music during the time we were gathering, noshing and preparing.  Then the musicologist of the group stuck in his especially-prepared mix of food-related music.  Great stuff indeed, but after we could bring ourselves to push our chairs back I felt it important to play some punk rock, in honor of Mr. Bourdain's preferences.  With that fun "Genius" feature on Apple products now, I simply picked a Stooges tune and clicked on the "Genius" magic list maker thingy and soon we had Iggy and the boys, the Sex Pistols, The Buzzcocks, the Clash, etc going while we cleaned up.  Then, after dinner was a time for more thoughtful discussion with a backdrop of (only slightly) more mellow fare from the likes of The Black Keys and The John Spencer Blues Explosion.

Books, travel, art, music, good food, good drink, good friends, good conversation and darts.  A night to remember.

Cheers!

The Gollywhopper Games

If I forgot to mention it, Winterdance was not part of the TBR Double Dare.  I gave myself that one exception for the book club.  Everything else I'm reading until April, including The Gollywhopper Games, counts.

My wife told me about this book a while ago, but I had to squeeze it in now because this won the Georgia Children's Book Award and Jody Feldman is going to be in Athens, GA to accept the award this spring at the conference.

Gil Goodson knows just about everything there is to know about the Golly Toy & Game Company and desperately wants to be a part of the biggest and most exciting yearly contest in the univers, The Gollwhopper Games!  Thousands of contestants are quickly whittled down to ten, including (I doubt this is much of a spoiler) Gil.  Why does he want to play and win so badly?  His dad made him a deal: win the Gollywhopper Games and the family can move away from their town (which happens to be the same town as the toy company headquarters).  Turns out his dad had, until the last year and a half or so, been an employee at the company but had been (wrongly, Gil is sure!) accused of stealing ideas and money.

There are some tough competitors, fun puzzles, and delightful Dahl-ish touches in the amazingly absurd company headquarters (one room of which can be seen on the cover).  Of course during the course of the games, the truth of what happened to his dad begins to reveal itself and Gil has some decisions to make before things come to a satisfying conclusion.

Highly recommended for those who loved Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The Mysterious Benedict Society, The Westing Game and puzzles of all kinds.

Winterdance

The cover looks all nice and serious, doesn't it?  The photograph is by Mr. Paulsen himself.  It definitely strikes a man-out-in-nature tone.

That element is not lacking in the book by any means, but after finishing it, you come away with a different tone altogether.

This book is hilarious.

Oh sure, there's terror aplenty.  But Paulsen knows better than anyone, that terror and humor go hand in hand and this book is full of absurdities.

I mean, come on.  It's about running the Iditarod, for crying out loud. His subtitle is: The fine madness of running the Iditarod.  Madness indeed.  Do you have any idea how long this race is?  It can change year to year, but the most common estimate is 1150 miles.  To put that in perspective, that's roughly the same distance between Maine and Florida.  Alaska is really really big.  Maybe an illustration will help here.

It's not just the length, either.  We are talking about some insanely terrible conditions.  Oh sure, there is snow and ice and lots of biting dogs and their poop.  There are also savagely attacking moose, cliffs, breaks in the ice long stretches where there is no snow to sled on (!), drunken revelers, and  places where the temperature gets so low as to be not fit for life.  That's not even counting the unpredictable weather that can blow severe storms in at the drop of a snowshoe.

I know, I said this was hilarious and you're far from convinced at this moment.  But what this book most reminds me of is Bryson's A Walk In the Woods in which a woefully unprepared author and friend try to hike the entire Appalachian Trail.  I've read Bryson's but don't seem have to posted about it.  That's okay, my book club has picked it for sometime this year, so I'll write it up then.

So yes, Paulsen decides to run the Iditarod and proceeds to do every single thing wrong that you can think of.  He doesn't do any research at all, just plunges right in.  The only things he has going for him is his incredible sense for dogs, his inhuman determination, and a whole bunch of just plain dumb luck.

Probably the funniest bit is when he takes the team out on their first night run during training.  He's living in northern Minnesota and he's got a team of fifteen pumped up running dogs pulling a freaking car (sans engine) through the woods.  At night.  You know what else comes out at night in norther Minnesota?  Skunks.  I badly want to tell you this anecdote, but know I couldn't do it justice.  Even if you're not interested in the whole book, do pick up a copy in a library or bookstore and treat yourself to the top of page 82 until page 88.  I was laughing so hard I couldn't breathe.

The first half of the book is like that.  The training and the numbskull mistakes that sometime almost kill him and sometimes just provide onlookers (usually his wife) with something to point and laugh at.  He doesn't even get to Alaska until past the halfway point of the book (which is under 300 pages).  The second half, the race itself, has just as much hilarity but also more scary challenges to overcome.

At the end we learn that due to a heart condition he won't be able to run the race again (though we also learn he did it at least one other time before the bad news from the doctor).  This was published in 1994 and the events described were from about a decade before that.  It's okay, he seems to have lived well with his heart condition. He's now in his seventies and has published over sixty books since this one.

An enjoyable book from an entertaining writer about something I never want to do but am so glad he did so he could write about it so well.  Highly recommended.

The Burglar In the Rye

You ever have an author you read pretty consistently and then...something happens?  You get busy; you get into other things.  You still buy some of their books but for some reason you just have other stuff to get to.  Then you finally pick up one of their books again and you’re instantly back in their world and remembering all the other books while reading this one?

That’s what happened to me with this book.  As part of the TBR Double Dare, I’m pulling things off my shelves that I’ve realized I’ve never read and finally getting around to them.  It’s the best resolution I’ve made!  I love doing away with reader guilt!

Lawrence Block is an official Grand Master of the mystery genre.  He’s got three popular series.  Well, he has more, but these three are his most famous: the Matthew Scudder series (my favorite), the Keller series, and the Bernie Rhodenbarr series.  Matt Scudder is an ex-drunk ex-cop who, in a gritty series, is an unofficial PI who deals with some serious moral grey areas.  Keller is a fun series about a professional killer and stamp collector.  Bernie owns an runs an antiquarian bookshop on paper, and that’s how he spends his days.  But many nights find his plying his true calling: that of being a burglar.  He’s a fastidious and entertaining character who often finds himself breaking into a room with a corpse and having to solve the murder so it doesn’t get pinned on him.  He’s the dry-witted Holmes in these situations and his Watson is the hard-drinking lesbian pet groomer next door to the books shop, Carolyn.  While the Scudder novels are gritty and hard-bitten, the Bernie books are all lighter than air and Block uses then as an excuse to play with all the usual tropes of these types of mysteries.  Scudder can be traced back to Hammett.  Bernie back to Agatha.  He’s even got the requisite cat in the book shop. The body, while obviously damaged in some way, has already been done away with.  There’s rarely ever any on stage violence.  It’s a game of wits that many times ends in a moment in which Bernie gets to say, “I’ll bet you’re all wondering why I’ve brought you here.”

This one is a riff on the Salinger letters and bios of the late 90s and early 00s.  In this one, a woman asks Bernie to break into the hotel residence of a famous reclusive author and steal his letters before the old editor sells them at auction and has them published.

Of course Bernie gets into the hotel room only to find that someone has just been there, gotten the letters, and done away with the old editor.  Bernie gets out; and to make sure the evening isn’t a total loss, steals some high-priced rubies from another hotel room on his circuitous path out of the hotel...and right into the arms of the cops.

So now he has to find the letters, solve more than one murder and clear up some confusion about these multiply-stolen rubies if he wants to stay out of the clink permanently.

With this many balls flying in the air, don’t even bother trying to figure out whodunnit because, well, you’ll never guess and it doesn’t really matter.  It’s more about watching the juggling act and enjoying the show.  And while you’re at it you’ll learn to appreciate those old writers who have filled our lives with these wonderful books.  Not bad for a light mystery.

Two Fun Videos

 (via Richard Wiseman)


 
(via Baby Got Books)

Hoot

This is part of the TBR Double Dare!  Hoot is a book I’ve been meaning to read for a while.  I went through a period in the 90s where I read all the Carl Hiaasen that was out there.  Light, funny, insightful and just pure pleasure.  Especially if you recognize the craziness from living in Florida.

I’m happy he’s writing books for kids now too.  I could totally picture them him subtracting the sex, toning down the violence and keeping the crazy bullies and wacko animals and knew the eco-friendly message would go over well with the kids.

This is pretty much what I imagined.  Completely irrational bully: check.  Minor eco-terrorism (more like eco-pranks, including a port-a-potty full of baby gators): check.  Wacko animal on a rampage: nope!  There are the aforementioned gators and some cottonmouths (with glitter paint on their tails--don’t ask; it’s Carl Hiaasen and that’s how he rolls.)

It’s about a middle school boy named Roy who has recently moved to some fictional town in Florida (why can’t I ever remember the names of fictional towns) and notices an intriguing barefoot boy running through people’s lawns on a day when the rest of the kids are on the bus headed to school.  He notices this because the previously mentioned bully is strangling Roy and shoving him into the glass window of the bus.  It turns out the mysterious running boy believes saving a family of endangered owls from a new pancake house construction site is more important than school.  He reluctantly lets Roy in on the scheme which builds to a satisfying, hilarious and relatively unrealistic conclusion.  Just like the Hiaasen books written for grown ups!

I understand this was made into a movie but it kind of came and went.  You really have to “get” Hiaasen’s sense of humor to make the right kind of film.  In the wrong hands this could be a generic happy-go-lucky, aw-shucks family feature, missing the requisite amount of satire, fear, and absurdity.

He’s got another one for the kids called Flush which I’ll definitely be adding to my ever-growing list.

Holiday Reading Roundup

Well, we’ve almost finished all the Sister’s Grimm books with our nightly read-alouds at home.  We now have to wait with everyone else for book nine coming out in the spring.  My daughter loved them and gave copies away to friends for Christmas so they can catch up and “play Daphane and Sabrina!”  Now we’re reading the last How to Train Your Dragon Book.  Then it’ll probably be the third Harry Potter because she liked dressing up as Hermione so much that she wants a Harry-Potter-themed birthday in March.

The book club read an unnamed Russian minor classic last month.  It remains unnamed because I couldn’t get through the darned thing (and most of the rest of the group didn’t either, including the guy who picked it).  But the great thing about our book club is that the book is often a jumping off point for many other wonderful discussions too.  And anyway, we had to pick next years books!

We’re doing something special for January.  We’re reading Kitchen Confidential and meeting at one of the guys’ houses to cook lots of food and drink to everything.  Should be
fantastic.  The book was certainly a hoot.  I finished it on my holiday travels (along with a few others I have coming up in separate posts).  I especially like how Bourdain describes in detail the pirate-like crew and raucus kitchen he runs, telling you exactly the rules you need in place to have everything go smoothly.  The he observes another chef’s kitchen and points out how basically every ironclad “rule” he has at his own place is broken here and probably for the better.  Even if you don’t cook, you’ll learn some things about what to order (and what now to order) in restaurants and you’ll just learn a whole lot about food in general.  It’s also an R-rated romp of excess and hilarity that’s just fun for it’s own sake.

Clean up on cheap Kindle books

Yes, they have a list of 100 Kindle Books for $3.99 or less.  Some goodies my kidlit, literary and sciency friends might be interested in:

Feed by M. T. Anderson

Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut

Galapagos by Kurt Vonnegut

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall

Junie B. Jones and the Stinky, Smelly Bus by Barbara Parks

Magic Treehouse #1: Dinosaurs Before Dark by Mary Pope Osborne

They also have a Kindle Daily Deal now (today's os some boring management book, but there have been some good ones and it's worth keeping an eye on).

Okay, enough crass commercialism.  Back to our regularly scheduled lazy posting (non)schedule.

The Pendericks at Point Mouette

Again, delightful.  My wife the fourth grade teacher and I had, of course, already read the first two.  So when this came out my daughter snapped it up for her Mama's early June birthday.  We were getting ready for a family trip to Maine, so we got the first two for the Kindle and read them out loud on the trip, finishing the second one a few days after our return.

So then we cracked the new one and recently finished it.  And it's about a family vacation to Maine!

It's a cool book in many ways but not the least of which is how Birdsall has changed things up a bit.  The father, new wife and her toddler are off in England, the eldest sister is off with friends to New Jersey.  So the rest of the clan go up to a cabin on the coast of Maine with Aunt Claire.  This makes the next oldest, Skye, the OAP (Oldest Available Penderwick) and she is not as comfortable in the role as her older sister which leads to hilarity and character growth.

There's a cool guy named Alec staying with his ornery dog next door and my wife and I immediately began betting whether he was going to be a love interest for Aunt Claire (understanding love is a theme of the book) or the missing father of their dear friend Jeffery.  We knew one or both of these would be the case the moment he appeared because Birdsall loves a big coincidence but somehow pulls them off with her characterizations.

One fun thing I noticed as we went through all three of them.  Birdsall likes to give props to other books and writers by having the characters mention them but I was especially happy at the cat named Asimov and Skye's enjoyment of Neil de Grasse Tyson's Death by Black Hole.  My daughter got some of the references (''Ivy and Bean!'') and knew who Neil de Grasse Tyson was!  What can I say, I'm a nerd and she watches Nova ScienceNOW with me on occasion.  She was impressed when I showed her my copy of Death by Black Hole.  At some point in one of the books the sisters all play the game of Clue.  She didn't know what that was so we ran out and picked it up (I thought I had one, but no).  Now, of course, she loves the game and I'm sure is happy because she learned about it from those awesome Penderwick girls.

A worthy addition to the series and we can't wait to hear more from these fun sisters and the interesting boys in their lives.

The Penderwicks at Pointe Mouette

Death by Black Hole

Clue

Got my computer back

Half-fixed anyway.  The double quotation key stopped working a while ago, but like I would drive to an Apple store just for that.  But then the camera crapped out and my parents love to video chat with my daughter so I made the drive Saturday and just got my machine back today (earlier than they said, so that's something I guess).  The camera now works but the double quotation key doesn't.  So that's why I'll still be quoting like a British person for a bit longer. 'Hallo, guvnor!'

In the meanwhile I finished The Greatest Show On Earth by Richard Dawkins which was pretty great and Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman which was light but delightful.  Oh, and The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi!  That was really dark but so well done.  Wow, reading a lot, huh?  Maybe I should get outside more.

I also sent Leila some books for her cool summer project.  You should too if you have anything suitable for a boy's camp library (ages 7-17).

So we just got back from Maine

Ice Cream!

Miss Rumphius was here!

It was great fun, with a side trip to Canada.  I've recently finished some reading.  Both for myself and with the little one.  Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey, How to Twist a Dragon's Tale by Cressia Cowell, The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto, The End of Eternity by Isaac Asimov and we've been reading Penderwicks books with her so we can all enjoy the third one together.

Hope your summer is going well!

The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard

And it is complete, let me tell you.  There are 31 stories in here and not al of them are that short.  I didn't realize it went to well over 500 pages when I chose it for this challenge.

But I'm happy I read it.  Not only was it fun to try a genre I'd really only engaged with when it comes to movies, I got to go back to early works of a favorite writer and see how he started off.

They're good but I don't think I would have taken them straight through if it hadn't have been for the challenge.  I would have read one or two at a time spread out, which is how I usually read short story collections.  Straight through the main characters tend to blur together.

But it's definitely Leonard.  Tough, lean and fun.  Actually, they weren't that fun, especially at first.  I've come to expect a certain dark, wry and dry humor from Leonard and that didn't start showing itself until about halfway though (about when you get to the original 3:10 to Yuma).  That's about when he starts experimenting with his now trademark dialog.  Before that point, there's more description and writerly-writing than you see in Leonard today.  of course he was probably writing for a penny a word or something and like a lot of magazine pulp writing, tended to be more verbose.

They're about what you'd expect with Elmore Leonard.  Usually one smart guy leading a bunch of less-smart guys and trying to stay alive while they go up against some baddies.  Sometimes the smart guy is a ranger or tracker, sometimes an Apache.  Sometimes the Apache is the bad guy, sometimes it's a greedy treasure hunter.  Either way, the Apache usually wins or is only headed off because of the smarts of the main character who is the only one who really understands the Apaches and isn't a racist dummy who about gets the rest of them killed.

One thing that struck me, other than the elegant way he dealt with the racism, was the immediacy.  What I mean is, sitting here at my laptop I have plans for the day, for the weekend, for the summer and beyond.  Most of the characters in these stories live much leaner and closer to the earth.  They're living for right now and don't plan on much except the end of the ride or the hunt or whatever.  Lives take twists and turns that happen so quick and end just as fast.  Every story definitely takes place in the here and now.  I wonder if that's typical of the genre?

Of course, I couldn't help seeing most of these in my mind as grainy black and white  films usually starring Glen Ford.  Which was awesome.

Most of them weren't too much of a stretch from what Leonard does now.  Instead of drug dealers or bank heists there are stagecoach robbers and gold digging treasure hunters.  It's all good.

Now that I'm finished with this challenge I'm going to go enjoy my summer.  School is out, man.  I plan on reading a ton including lots of stuff from the TBR pile along with book club books.

I have no clue how much blogging I'll do.  Right now I just want to kick back and enjoy.

Thanks for the challenge, C.B.

The Complete Western Stories of Elmore Leonard

Are School Libraries Obsolete?

"Are school libraries obsolete? 
Sent to the Los Angeles Times (May 24)

Those who think school libraries are obsolete might consider the results of a Scholastic-Gates Foundation poll, given to 40,000 teachers, published in March, 2010. One question was: Where do your students get books for their independent reading most often? Select all that apply.

The winner: School libraries. Teachers reported that 80% of high school students, the group least dependent on school libraries, get reading material from school libraries. In contrast, 35% get books from retailers and 46% from public libraries.

Will e-books take over? To compete with the library as a source of books, e-book readers and e-books need to get cheap enough for everyone to be able to buy, use, and replace. Kindles now cost over $100, e-books about $10, and there are restrictions on sharing. Little wonder that only 7% of adults read e-books (NY Times, 10/14/10) and they are an affluent group (Mediamark, 12/1/2009).

Stephen Krashen"

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Discouraging Read-Alouds

I forgot to post my monthly GLMA blog post, so here it is:


I heard a horrible rumor about a school librarian that was actually discouraging teachers in his/her school from read alouds.  I’m not one to listen to gossip and especially not one to share it but I’ve been thinking about this ever since and so feel compelled to write about it. Now, like most rumors, I doubt this one is true. A librarian?  Discouraging teacher read-alouds?  That would be kind of like a dentist discouraging you to brush your teeth wouldn’t it?

Maybe I misheard.  Maybe the gossiper meant the librarian was encouraging read-alouds.  Yeah, that must have been it.  But then, why would anyone be talking about that?  That’s what we spend a good deal of our time on, isn’t it?  I know not only am I actually reading aloud to classes but I’m often showing teachers new books that would be good read-alouds, suggesting more when they bring one up to check out and updating lists on the wiki of good read-alouds for certain grades and subjects.

As one of my favorite children’s lit. professors used to constantly reiterate: “Read aloud every day in every subject.”

My art teacher was delighted when I shared Chalk and Pete the Cat with her this year.  I’ve done much the same for many of the teachers in the building in a variety of subjects.  Yes, there are great non-fiction red-alouds!  Yes, you can turn that into an easy and fun reader’s theater! Yes, yes, yes!

The only problem I’ve ever heard with read-alouds is when someone doesn’t correctly match up their students and the book being read.  Often this comes from inexperienced or lazy teachers who haven’t read the book.  At one school I worked in, a fourth grade teacher picked up The Giver.  Maybe because it had an award on it, I don’t know.  It was a little much for that class and one student, upset at the ending, complained to parents.  The media committee in that school decided that the book was not appropriate for elementary and pulled it form the shelves, sending the copies to the middle school.

Maybe something like that happened with the school librarian in question.  Even so, that’s a dramatic and rare example that just reinforces the importance of the librarian’s job in helping find the right read-alouds for the right teachers and grade levels.  You can’t have people just pulling any old book off the shelf and reading it.  (Yes, I’ve seen this done, usually with bad results.)

So we need to encourage read-alouds and help teachers find the right books so they can…

Read aloud every day in every subject!

Virus!

I had a great post I wanted to do for Sunday, but my computer is infected.  I sent it off with my local geek to have it cleaned up and I just don't have time at work to properly blog.

But it has been kinda nice not having a laptop for a couple of days.  Then that blog post seemed silly.  I spend way too much time reposting.  If you're interested in that stuff, then just follow my shared items feed.

This space is for original content.  But I may not have any for a spell.

In the meantime, let me know your summer reading plans in the comments below.  I plan on hitting my TBR pile hard, other than book club books.  I need to clean out physical books so I don't feel any guilt about buying stuff for the Kindle!

What's your plan for the summer?

Thimble Summer

Here's an oldie but a goodie.  I found a practically pristine copy on my shelves and decided I'd better read it before weeding.  Turns out I'll keep it and recommend it to a few kids to see if they get as much out of it as I did.  This will be fore those who love outdoorsy girls and historical fiction. Those who love Charlotte's Web and the Little House books will love this.  It wasn't historical fiction when it was written back in 1938, but now it sure is.

It has great names.  Garnet, Citronella, etc.  It has great exclamations: "Land!"

It's not plot heavy, but character and place rich.  A small town farm girl in the 30s is worried about the drought affecting the farm.  She finds a shiny silver thimble. Rains come, an interesting boy joins the farm, she briefly runs away and has an adventure.  A pig she raised wins a prize at a local fair.  She decides this will always be remembered as "the thimble summer."

You get a good feel for the writing in the first chapter.  It begins with a great description of the hot, dry weather, still as a drum.  The tension and worry of this state of affairs for the farm family is palpable, the the release comes as a thunderstorm rolls in, banging the like a drum and releasing all the tension.

Garnet is drawn as a pretty, wispy blonde 12-year old but is described as someone who prefers to be barefoot and loves running and playing in the mud and has a good old time.  The weird thing is that she's always referring to her friend Citronella as "fat" but she's drawn as just not as wispy as Garnet.  I'd think it was a problem of interpretation of the illustrator if the author wasn't the illustrator herself and was actually an illustrator before she was an author.

But that's a minor quibble.  This is a well written book. I'll definitely be trying to breathe back some life into it as far as my own collection goes.

Oh, Travis is making his own covers for past Newbery winners and came up with this for Thimble Summer. I think I'd go more for a focus on the thimble or the bare feet than the pig, but what do I know?