CassieBash's 75 Book Challenge 2016

OK, so it looks like I managed to beat the challenge for 2015 with a little over 80 books, including audiobooks. This was good and it made a slight dent in my backlog of reading. I think, for the most part, that I'll keep the same parameters as last time: only books with chapters count, both print/eBook and audio. This forces me to work on the three large stacks of books teetering precariously against my north wall (though I may miss the extra insulation). Story collections count as "chapters", by the way, as I may take this opportunity to read some of my folk and fairy tale collection, which has been piling up, as well as leaving me the option to re-read a Ray Bradbury collection around Halloween. I do love The October Country or Long After Midnight right about Halloween.

My next read is book 3 of the series Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, a fantasy whose most unique characteristic is that the storylines are all enhanced by vintage photographs, most unaltered and frequently disturbing. If I finish it before midnight tomorrow--not likely but possible--it goes in 2015 as the last read of the year. If not, it starts my 2016 list. Let the reading begin!

Welcome back! The Miss Peregrine books were great - I loved 'em!

Just stopping by to say hi. It sounds we have some similar interests in activities (gardening, butterfly gardens, embroidery) so I'm thinking I'll stop by to check on the books you're reading as well. I've only read the first Miss Peregrine but found it fascinating and have been meaning to continue on - the most thought-provoking part was trying to imagine the circumstances under which the various photos were originally taken.

>2 drneutron:. Thanks for the welcome back! This was so successful at keeping me motivated with reading the backlog that I felt I ought to do it again. It's not the challenge's fault that I acquired more books.... ;)

>3 muddy21:. I agree--The photos' back stories (the real ones, not the ones in context of the stories) must be fascinating and a little scary, too, I imagine. If you're interested in gardening books, especially those focusing on butterflies, you might check out my 2015 challenge list, and if you're interested in seeing photos of some of my butterfly and moth hatchlings, you can visit my posts in the garden and books group. My most recent thread there is found here and while there aren't any butterfly pics on that one, I provided in each new thread a link back to the previous one, so you an easily work your way back through my Lepidoptera summer. Among the species I raised were red admirals (by the tons!), spice bush swallowtails, monarchs (of course), Promethea moths, tiger moths, various inchworms and mysterious, difficult-to-identify generic green caterpillars, and one great big Cecropia.

Thanks, I'll look back through the threads. You've raised lots - I was thinking you must be in Florida and going year-round, but I saw in your intro that you're in Indiana. My older son was in Iowa for a brief stint at Cornell College. The one thing I regret is not visiting the Limberlost when we were driving through on our way out. Have you read A Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles? I loved them both, as did my mother when she was young. I did a lot of lepidoptera-raising one summer ten years or so ago but then went back to work full-time which made it more difficult. We raised spicebush swallowtails, monarchs, and a wide variety of moths including a couple of gorgeous sphinxes, Blinded Sphinx and another I don't recall at the moment. I seem to remember finding a cecropia caterpillar that summer but I don't think we brought it in.

>5 muddy21:. We've discussed going to Limberlost, too. I've not read either of those but I have read (and own what seems to be a first edition, thanks to my auction-going uncle) of Moths of the Limberlost, which is Stratton-Porter's personal experiences raising moth larvae. A fascinating nonfiction read for any Lepidoptera fan--I highly recommend it to you if you've not read it, especially considering your own adventures with raising them. I've been wanting to read both of them but have put it off because I'm trying to read from the piles taking up the narrow space between the wall and entertainment system right now. :) )

Dropping a star!

Happy New Year!

I actually have a copy of Moths of the Limberlost myself - packed away somewhere in a box from long ago. I bought a copy (print to order) for a friend from Amazon a few years ago. The print was fine but the illustrations were very poorly reproduced, but the price was quite reasonable. Good luck with reading and Happy New Year!

Have a wonderful bookfilled 2016, Cassie.

OK, so book 1 is my non-fiction, Angel Animals: Exploring Our Spiritual Connection with Animals by Allen Anderson and Linda Anderson, a husband/wife team who have collected stories from people about how animals in their lives--often pets but sometimes not--have helped them spiritually, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. An example: one of my favorite stories is about a bond between a horse and the man who boarded him--the horse wouldn't let the guy ride him but they shared a cup of coffee every morning, regardless, and the man was quite fond of the horse. While the man was installing a utility pole in the pasture, the horse grazed nearby. When the pole started to fall where the man was standing, the horse grabbed the seat of his pants and yanked him out of the way. (It says the horse got two cups of coffee that day!) There are some tear-jerker stories, particularly in the last sections dealing with loss, grieving, and death, but all are spiritually uplifting regardless. A few are a little too "New Agey" for me to believe in word for word but the essence of the stories are, in my mind, what really matters. As someone who likes to commune with nature, this book was interesting and inspiring. Not a keeper--personal story collections don't tend to be re-reads for me, and shelf space is limited. But it will find a new home through my boyfriend's used bookstore, White Rabbit Used Books in Muncie, Indiana (1st shameless plug of the year).

>7 ronincats: Thanks for the star! It wasn't showing up properly through the phone, so I wasn't able to fully enjoy it until now.

Hi! The Angel Animals book sounds like it would be right up my alley. I loved the story about the horse.

If I lived near Muncie, I'd check out White Rabbit Books. Although, I am in Ohio, so maybe sometime...

Sandy K

>12 sandykaypax: What part of Ohio? Muncie is fairly close to western central Ohio. One of my Ball State roommates was from Cincinnati; she had a much shorter trip than I did, and I live in Indiana. But I lived much further west and north, while she had a much more direct route.

There were lots of cool stories involving all sorts of critters, including the occasional bug. There were also, aside from a lot of cats and dogs and horses, several involving birds, a couple with deer and rabbits, but also raccoons, ferrets, a spider, a nest of bees, a koala, and a baby sea lion. Lots of variety regarding animal life and how we can learn and grow spiritually through our contact with and observations of them.

I live in the Cleveland suburbs. I looked on google maps to find Muncie--looks like it is west of Columbus, so yes, fairly close to central western Ohio. My guess is it would be about a 4 hour drive from Cleveland--not bad!

Ball State--David Letterman's alma mater! Big Letterman fan here.

Sandy K

>14 sandykaypax: Got my bachelor's at BSU in school media services (fancy name for "school librarian"!) back in the 90s. I knew some t-comm majors who benefited from Letterman's donations to the school. I have never given money to them as an alumni, and if I did, I'd earmark it for Bracken Library. But they shouldn't feel too bad--I got my MLS a few years back from IUPUI and I've never given them anything but tuition money (and two semesters' worth of parking pass fees), either! Maybe you could get a tour of the telecommunications building that Letterman funded--I would think they might have a mini-museum or a little collection of Letterman memorabilia, though don't quote me. If you like flowers and nature, you might want to check out Christie Woods (if you're lucky, you might see one of the elusive deer like I did a couple of times) and the Orchid Greenhouse. And, of course, there's always the library. Then you could really make a day trip of it! :)

Book 2: Counterfeit Magic by Kelley Armstrong: This one is a supernatural crime/detective story, not particularly long like Jim Butcher's Dresden books, so don't expect too many twists and turns. Paige and Lucas are a wife/husband team of detectives; Paige is a witch and Lucas is the reluctant heir to the most powerful Cabal (think supernatural mafia). They raised an orphaned girl named Savannah, part witch, part demon, and the three of them, along with their part demon associate Adam, try to keep the supernatural forces of evil in check when they can. (The Cabal Lucas will one day head is less ruthless and dangerous than a rival one they're keeping in check.) I tackled this as an audiobook, and the reader was "eh"; sometimes it was difficult to tell who was speaking, even though she attempted to create different voices, a la Jim Dale's Harry Potter audio readings, but at times the voices were too similar, particularly Paige and Savannah. From the plot side, I also felt that some things--mostly details--weren't quite explained; the why and who was there, but the how in a couple of spots seemed to be lacking, such as how a few of the murders were accomplished in front of people. I get that this is a magical world where spells, demonic possessions, etc. can happen, but I would have liked to know...was the fighter that dropped dead after a fight hit by a discreet spell from a distance, or from the ring, for instance? The storyline concept was good, but I felt the execution was just a little off. It is a series, though this book works as a standalone, but I will admit that some of the loose threads regarding Carlos, the heir-wannabe, will probably be extended into the next book. If you're a mystery reader who likes tidy endings, though, this might not be the book for you, but if you're a fantasy lover who is less interested in the details and more interested in the world and the relationships, this would probably appeal, as the characters' relationships and the world they belong to are where the author's strengths lie.

Book 3: Library of Souls by Ransom Riggs: Since this is book 3 and I don't want to ruin too much of books 1 and 2, I'm not going to go into details on the plot very much. Like the others, the coolest thing about this book is that the author uses actual vintage photos of some pretty weird, freaky, even scary things, to visually add to the plot and characters. An incredibly clever idea, and considering that there are some twisted vintage photos out there, he had a whole lot to work with. This is a fantasy series that is about "peculiars"--people with supernatural talents (think X-Men if you're Marvel comics fans)--living forever, hidden in loops (think of a time loop), guarded by women capable of turning into birds who hold the power of maintaining a loop. If a peculiar is out of a loop for too long, then time catches up with them and they age quickly. However, when someone begins capturing these women, causing the collapse of several loops, a peculiar boy from modern time must step up to help restore order. A very tight story, with each book building on the others, this one finishes the set nicely. An excellent read for fantasy readers, with just enough romance between Jacob and Emma to make the characters believable but not enough to slow the plot. No sex, little in the way of cursing (I don't think the "f" word was used once), so it's tame compared to some other YA books I've experienced. My sisters now have the set (Christmas gift) so I can borrow these for a re-read any time I want!

Book 4: My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett is an easy-to-read short chapter book perfect for those kids who want to read books with chapters but whose reading skills aren't yet developed enough to tackle advanced chapter books. Written as if the author is relating true events, it recounts the adventure of Elmer Elevator (I'm not making that up; that's apparently "Father's" name) and how he rescues a baby dragon from an island of animal bullies, who are using the dragon as a sort of ferry across a wide and wild river that nearly bisects the island they live upon. Apparently, there are other dragon adventures with Elmer, so fans can read more adventures if they enjoy this book.

I read the Father's Dragon books with my boys when they were young - we all enjoyed them. Wonder if they're still around? Hmmm....

>19 muddy21: Yes they are. Amazon has them listed, and the copy I read was a paperback printed in 2014 that I picked up off the freebie tables at a giveaway event at work.

OK, I'm using the phone to post so forgive me, please; I'll add touchstones later. Switching from keyboard to keyboard on a phone gets tiring.

Book 5: Medieval Legends by Philip S. Jennings is a collection of retellings, or summaries, if you prefer, of several traditional stories from predominantly Spain, Italy, England, and France. Included are a few of the Arthurian legends, but many were ones I hadn't heard or read before. The language is modern so the reading wasn't as difficult as reading, say, Chaucer in poetical form and certainly not like reading Middle English. Jennings gives credit to the actual authors of the primary source works so that if you wanted to track down the original to read you can. I would recommend it for someone who might be interested in that time period's work but hasn't cut their teeth on it yet and wants to get a hint of the type of stories representative of the time before tackling the full works. If you're already a scholar of this material but want only unabridged and "non Cliff's Notes" stuff, skip this.

Book 6: Invisible Enemies: Stories of Infectious Disease by Jeanette Farrell (updated 2005 Ed.) isn't as much about what the disease does to you (although there is a little of that) but instead goes into the history of man's struggle to identify and conquer them. Farrell chooses a small sampling of diseases and then looks at the sociological and historical impact: smallpox (our only successful "conquering" of a disease and how we did it), leprosy (the "unholy" disease associated with sin), plague (anti-Semitism), tuberculosis (difficult to eradicate due to high mutative rates), malaria (how studying mosquitos resulted in proving that insects do spread some diseases), cholera (how some people pushed for cleaner cities, even while claiming cholera wasn't spread through water supplies), and AIDS (the modern epidemic ignored for years). The book is written for junior high/ high school readers and as such has a very narrative, very easy to comprehend format. This isn't a book for those looking for higher-level or strictly medical information; while well-researched, the book's intent is to provide information on the discovery of these diseases, the historical attitudes towards them and their sufferers, and how we have (or haven't) managed to keep them in check. Gory? Not so much. The descriptions of what the diseases do are kept to a minimum. Recommend for people interested in the historical and/or cultural aspects of epidemiology.

Monday morning additional: Touchstones added. There. I feel better. :)

Book 7: The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (Mostly) True Story of the First Computer by Sydney Padua is part graphic novel, much of it "alternate universe" with a Steampunk flavor, with a lot of footnotes and endnotes correcting the graphic novel and supplying "real world" information. Purchased for our library on a whim--I purchase the occasional nonfiction graphic novel for the collection--I thought it looked interesting and checked it out myself after there were no other immediate takers. I managed to read it within 4 days, and it would have been much quicker, except that the footnotes and endnotes (and the appendices) are half the book and slowed me down considerably. Many of the footnotes/endnotes are complex and mathematical or mechanical in nature, and after a brief section on Ada Lovelace's background, the plot focuses instead on what might have happened if Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, working together, had managed to finish Babbage's Analytical Engine. Padua also makes a compelling case that while Babbage was a hardware man, coming up with the physical workings, Lovelace was the software or "program" person, envisioning how it would work beyond merely calculation of numbers.Crammed full of historical scientific and mathematical information, this book can be a bit complex and...well...math was never my strong point and some of the explanations were over my head (some were over the author's head, too, which she admits). The black and white illustrations are playful and clever, as is the text, with play-on-words and documented historical quotes and paraphrases worked in (noted in the footnotes). The beginning of each "chapter" or section is done up as a Victorian playbill, with clever title and "appearances by". My biggest issue with this book was with the footnotes; sometimes it was hard to tell which panel the footnote went with. I ended up reading a page of graphic novel, then reading that page's footnotes and figuring out what footnote went with which panel later. While the stories are strictly fictional (past the setup of Lovelace's background), you'll learn a lot from the footnotes, endnotes, and appendices, so take your time reading those if you want to learn more about these two weird but fascinating people: Babbage refused a knighthood because the type offered to him wouldn't allow him to use the "Sir" title, and Lovelace grew up with her mother squelching her "poetical" side and constantly monitoring her for signs of hereditary madness--after all, her father was the "poet and nutcase Lord Byron", as Padua puts it. I'd recommend this to those interested in the history of computers, science, and math, particularly if they're also into graphic novels and/or the Steampunk/alternate universe genres.

Book 8: Nightfall by Jake Halpern: Merin, her brother Kana, and Line were born on the island 14 years ago--the year of the sunrise. For in this world, night and day are very different from ours; at the equator, there are three days of daylight and three of night, but in the north, where the island sits, there are 14 years of day and 14 of night. And now it's nightfall, and the islanders must leave the island--rumored to be covered completely by ice during the long night--and everything must be left in perfect order. It has been done this way for as long as anyone can remember, and longer--but no one knows why. And no one dares stay on the island once nightfall happens; the islanders are picked up by traders and taken to the desert for the 14 years of darkness, to return only once dawn has once again graced the island. But when Line doesn't show up on the beach for loading, Merin and Kana go off to find him, only to return to the beach to find they have been left behind. Now, stuck on the island with night falling, they must survive the cold and dark...and what wakes up and lives in the dark.

This book is, in a way, more a survival fiction genre than a horror, even though there are monsters on the island that are trying to kill them. But the book isn't particularly scary or graphic (or maybe not in my mind, having read worse), but it is more like a suspense. Merin, Line, and Kana don't actually see one of the creatures until fairly far into the book, but the close encounters are a sort of teaser. Still, I get more heebie jeebies from a good H. P. Lovecraft or Ambrose Bierce, so if you're the kind who loves a good zombie book for the keep-you-up-all-night aspects, this may not be for you. However, if you're the kind who loves a good zombie book for the survival aspects, this might appeal more. (No, the monsters aren't zombies--I'm just using zombies as an example!) :) Not much in the way of swearing or sexual content; this is a rather clean horror story aimed for the age group of the characters, but an enjoyable read for adults who don't mind the YA level.

Book 9: The Prince of Mist by Carlos Ruiz Zafon: Wartime in 1943, and Maximillian Carver, a simple watchmaker, decides to relocate his family from the city to a more remote seaside village. (While the country isn't given, the book has a very Western European feel to me, but the author interview at the end states that he purposely didn't choose a specific place so the reader could decide.) He and his wife Andrea, daughters Alicia and Irina, and son Max move into a house built by the mysterious Dr. Fleischmann for he and his wife and, shortly thereafter, their son. The house had been abandoned since 1932--the year that the Fleischmanns' precious son drowned. But with the Carvers' arrival, something seems to awaken. Max finds a strange overgrown garden with stone statues of a circus troupe, with a creepy clown in the center--a clown statue that seems to subtly change position, and that shows up in an old home movie discovered in the old shed. Then there's the Orpheus, an old ship lying off the coast on the bottom of the sea. And then there's Roland, Max's new friend, and Roland's adopted grandfather, Victor Kray, who runs the lighthouse and was the sole survivor of the Orpheus wreck. And what of the strange symbol of a six-pointed star in a circle that can be found here and there in the oddest of places--including the creepy garden of statues?

A YA book that's part mystery and part horror, the story starts out simple enough but gets more complex later. It did have a couple of surprises; not a stellar read but enjoyable enough as a one-time read. The Prince himself is a suave maker of bargains, a classic deal with the devil situation, as again the author in the interview reveals his inspiration from Faustian stories. I don't think lovers of the adult horror genre will enjoy this--the horror is too muted if you're wanting something like Steven King's classics--but maybe still a little too intense for readers younger than 12 or 13--the low end of Zafon's target audience. Intrepid and hard to scare 10 or 11 year olds with good reading skills could handle this, though.

Tired of horror genre now; think it's time for mystery (print) and fantasy (audio). My big question now is which nonfiction book to read next!

Book 10: The Beautiful and the Cursed by Page Morgan: Keep your zombies and vampires; I've always been more fond of the more animalistic creatures: werewolves, shape changers, dragons, and of course gargoyles, in this book also known as the "Dispossessed"--creatures who are cursed for killing priests in their past lives when they lived as humans. Forced to protect the people in their territory, not out of affection but of duty, if they fail they are branded by an angel assigned to them. The brand marks their failure to other Dispossessed and acts not only as a physically painful punishment but as a social mark of disgrace. But Ingrid, her sister Gabby, and her mother know nothing of this when they move to an old abbey in Paris, France, in 1899, after sending Ingrid's twin brother, Grayson, ahead of them to prepare an art gallery their mother wants to open. When Grayson disappears, Ingrid and Gabby start an informal investigation that not only reveals to them the world of the gargoyles but also of their uneasy truce with a group of demon hunters known as the Alliance. When Ingrid is attacked by a Hellhound and somehow manages to repel it with what seems to be bolts of lighting coming from her hands, events from her recent past start making more sense. Ingrid starts feeling more than just gratitude for Luc, the gargoyle who guards the abbey's inhabitants, while Gabby is interested in Nolan, an Alliance member. To complicate things, Luc also begins feeling more than just the usual guardianship for Ingrid--a trait looked upon by other gargoyles as repulsive and punishable by death. And then there's Grayson, trapped in the demon realm, a prisoner of a mysterious demon who wants him alive for her own reasons.

There's a fair amount of romance and love triangles in this, but no sex scenes (that would be scandalous in this time period, after all!), but the amount of romance and the way it's handled didn't overpower the fantasy plot as I thought it did in Twilight, which I did attempt to read and just couldn't manage due to the heavy romance and teen angst. (Am I the only one who thinks Bella is obnoxious?) The reader was pretty good, although some of her pregnant pauses made me think a sentence was done when, in fact, it wasn't quite--this was only irritating when I needed to pause the book, though, and was overall used to good effect. The story ends with not so much of a cliffhanger as a teaser, hinting that the story could continue (haven't investigated that yet), but still complete enough that a reader can walk away satisfied, provided they don't absolutely love the characters and the concept so much that they must have more as soon as possible. While I found the story enjoyable, I didn't suffer that affliction (which is just as well, since I'm going to take a small break from audiobooks and concentrate for a few days on my print ones).

By the way, my current nonfiction is about the PBB contamination in Michigan that occurred in the mid-70s. The book is fascinating, scary, sad, and anger-inducing, all at the same time, just like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring.

Book 11: The Dragon King's Palace is an historical mystery that takes place in Japan. The story opens with what, at first, seems like an unconnected murder/suicide that, of course, eventually ties in with the main plot--the kidnapping of four women, one of whom is the shogun's mother. Sano the detective is used to solving crime with his wife's help, but unfortunately she--Reiko--is one of the four. While Sano and his rival, the shogun's chamberlain Yanagisawa, work to rescue the women, Reiko works at keeping herself and her companions alive as they're held prisoner by the madman who has dubbed himself the Dragon King.

This book comes with some warnings: there are homosexual relationships, though these get no explicit sex scenes, and incest is also mentioned. There is a rape scene that goes into descriptive detail so be forewarned if these sorts of things are the kind of things that cause you to set aside a book; you probably don't want to pick it up in the first place. I found the story less historically interesting than the Cadfael books or a couple of my ancient Egyptian mystery series; it didn't somehow feel uniquely Japanese, as if the story could have been set anywhere with few changes to the book. The focus was on the crime (OK, I understand it's a mystery but it's an historical mystery) and the political intrigue, which was the most Japanese-feeling part. I was hoping for a bit more of Japan to come through in other parts of the book, but I felt it seemed like the Japanese setting was underutilized.

Book 12: PBB: An American Tragedy by Edwin Chen: So, as I said 2 posts up, this book was absolutely fascinating in that scary way that most of the nonfiction titles I read are (infectious diseases, poisonous chemicals, funeral customs, mummification, etc.). I don't live far from that Michigan/Indiana border, and though I was born before the chemical got into many Michigan farmers' animal feed by accident, I was probably exposed to it later, as it made it into every conceivably consumable farm animal product common to this area in the 70s, from meat to milk to eggs. And it wasn't just adjacent states; other states as far from Michigan as New York and Pennsylvania had PBB showing up in the environment. Chen summarizes the several-years-long problem, starting from the first suspicions of something wrong on Rick Halbert's farm through the farmers' struggles to get the problem officially recognized, to the eventual settings of tolerance limits in food to the beginnings of legislature designed to prevent a reoccurrence later. What's scary is how much Chen says the companies responsible tried to cover up their mistakes and how much both local and federal agencies seemed to assist in the coverup (or at least didn't try to curb it).

Recommending this to people who like medical and, probably even better, political nonfiction reads. There are some potentially disturbing moments, as birthing difficulties (Halbert has to dismember a dead calf to deliver it) and some rather descriptive (and sad) scenes where livestock are not only sick and wasting away but are shot and either buried in mass graves or left exposed to rot. Other farmers sent their animals to slaughter, some knowing they were tainted, so that it wasn't a total loss. If just reading this has made you put down your morning cup of coffee, you definitely don't want the full text version.

I'm reading something much more light-hearted now at work; I promise to post something less graphic and disturbing next time!

Hi there, I have had a little look through your thread amd there is much here to come back for! >10 CassieBash: looks interesting, and the first book you mentioned, Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children I have seen about on the threads, and have meant to seek out as well.

>25 CassieBash: I read a couple of doozies last year, Five Days at Memorial by Sheri Fink, and Ghettoside by Jill Leovy as well. Oh, also, Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. I can't help you with the fantasy or horror though sorry?

>29 LovingLit: Thanks for the compliment; I'd like to think that at least a couple of things I read are mainstream enough to interest someone out there, and that maybe some of the older, less widely-known titles might intrigue a few. Book 12, for instance, isn't something you'll come across just anywhere--it was published around 1980 so it's an older title, and it's not, to the best of my knowledge, considered a nonfiction classic like Silent Spring. But I could see where someone else might find it fascinating, whether it's because they collect Michigan history, are into political and legal issues, or maybe they're interested in the farming or ecological aspects. Anyway, I'm going to take it to The White Rabbit Used Books in Muncie to put it back into "circulation" so someone else may read it; I found it interesting but probably won't re-read it so there's no reason to keep it on my limited shelf space.

Don't worry--I have plenty of most genres stashed in my bedroom, so when I'm ready to return to horror stories, I've got some waiting. It doesn't help that the college I run the library for is greatly downsizing its nonfiction collection. I've purchased several interesting books we've weeded, including the PBB one. I usually have at least two, sometimes three, books going at the same time: a fiction and a nonfiction for home reading, and something at work to read during lunch. About the only thing I don't read in fiction is the romance genre, which I personally just can't seem to get into. I'm fine, of course, with others reading and enjoying them--far be it from me to tell you what to read--but I'm always telling Derek, owner of said bookstore above and my fiance--that he's the romantic one in our pair. He's the one who remembers just about every detail of every date we've been on, not me! :)

Book 13: Anguished English: An Anthology of Accidental Assaults upon Our Language by Richard Lederer: We've probably all gotten some of these in our inboxes; I know the section about the history of the world, as composed by students and containing such insightful gems as "Ancient Egypt was inhabited by mummies, and they all wrote in hydraulics" and "Abraham Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg Address while traveling from Washington to Gettysburg on the back of an envelope." But it is so much more; a collection of various types of gaffes and goofs of the English language, including misadventures in advertising ("Lost: small apricot poodle. Reward. Neutered. Like one of the family."), funnies from courtrooms ("Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods? No, I said he was shot in the lumbar region."), headlines that don't quite scan as intended ("Farmer Bill Dies in House"), malapropisms ("They had to give one of the players artificial insemination."), hilarious mistranslated phrases ("In a Bangkok dry cleaner's: Drop your trousers here for best results."), and misspellings ("Dickens spent his youth in prison because his father's celery was cut off."). I found myself, especially in sections that weren't duplicated and sent all over the internet, stifling the urge to laugh hard--reading this at work in my office while students are studying in the library proper. I'm recommending this to those who like word play and big laughs. I'll be reading the second one next, More Anguished English, to continue the laughs, chuckles, and giggles. Until then, I'll leave you with a couple more tempting examples from this work:

"When Lady Caruthers smashed the traditional bottle of champagne against the hull of the giant oil tanker, she slipped down the runway, gained speed, rocketed into the water with a gigantic spray, and continued unchecked toward Prince's Island."

"In accordance with your instructions, I have given birth to twins in the enclosed envelope."

"Dinner Special--Turkey $2.35; Chicken or Beef $2.25; Children $2.00"

(An accident claim) "The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went to rest in a bush with just his rear end showing."

>30 CassieBash: I learned about Silent Spring last year for a university course I am doing. I found it fascinating, not so much her assertions but how she was attacked for her views and denigrated and run down. Those days huh? They were pretty harsh on women.

Glad to hear your fiancé has a flip file of romantic moments ;)

>32 LovingLit: Ah, yes, the sixties political climate. She did openly criticize the FDA (ironically also criticized in Chen's PBB book) and received much of the same treatment from them as the farmers later got from them in the 70s. Criticizing large government agencies does tend to inspire political backlash.

Derek's flip file is in his head, which makes it even more impressive. He doesn't have a smart phone for taking notes or recording events. And if he's written them down somewhere, I have yet to come across the file. He's one of those that says, "Remember when we....?" and I'll be like, "Yeah, I recall something about that...," and he starts going in to specific details, sometimes even including what I was wearing if it was one of his favorite outfits (like the red Spanish-influenced ruffled skirt and the black silky blouse--we both loved the way I looked in that ensemble). What a guy, huh? He even made me the envy of Educational Resources in Ball State's Bracken Library, where I was a student worker during my undergrad days, by bringing me a rose one night, just for the heck of it. I remember that pretty clearly because the evening supervisor said she couldn't remember the last time her husband had given her flowers.

Book 14: More Anguished English: As promised, I read the sequel to book13 (this time at home where I felt more freedom to laugh, snort, and make other loud sounds of mirth). Much in line with the first, but with fewer that made it onto the Internet, which is a shame, because many were just as hilarious as the ones in the first book. If you liked the first book, you'll like the second. A very small sampling of some:

"The committee compromised six dedicated people who really knew how to do their jobs."

From a court transcript: "Q: Do you have any stocks and bonds? A: No. Q: Do you have any debentures? A: No, my teeth are my own."

News headline: "Kids make nutritious snacks"

On a medical record: "The patient refused an autopsy." (I think I would, too!)

"He ran outside and chased after the cat with a broomstick in his underwear." This particularly raised eyebrows at our house when I read it aloud; my sisters and I interpreted it as the man had a broomstick in his underwear, but mom actually pointed out that it could be interpreted, as she did, that the cat had the broomstick in his underwear.

>31 CassieBash: I read that one years ago and loved it.

>34 CassieBash: I had no idea there was a sequel. I guess I need to look for it.

>35 thornton37814: Happy hunting! There may be more--at the end of the "sequel" he was soliciting readers to send him more for his next compilation. These two are the only ones in our stacks and they are destined for storage or weeding, depending on how many other Indiana libraries own copies. Virtually all of the Indiana academic libraries have committed to holding on to "scarcely held" books for inter-library loan reasons. We long ago compared our collections and have now begun comparing with the rest of the libraries in the state.

Book 15: The Divide by Elizabeth Kay: Felix is dying. Oh, not right now, but he's grown up with his parents fussing and worrying over him because of his weak heart. It could happen at any moment. So he convinces his parents to take him to Brazil so he can stand on The Great Divide. But his parents are worried when they start the hike--the jungle is so hot and humid. Felix, undaunted, runs ahead despite that and, once he's on the Divide, he starts having one of his spells. When he wakes up, he finds out that The Divide is a bridge between our world of science and a world of magic, where humans and science are every bit as mythological as we think their unicorns and griffins are. Felix befriends a young elf girl and a mathematically inclined griffin, who search for a cure for Felix as well as a way back to his world. But the wicked Snakeweed complicates things when he learns that a human boy with the knowledge of science is in the realm of magic, and he plots to include Felix in his get-rich-quick medical scam.

Juvenile fantasy--say 5th or 6th grade reading level or so. A good read-aloud for children a bit younger but--spoiler alert--a few unicorns and other characters die, and there is a reference or two to mobs and looting/rioting. I don't think there was any objectionable language and the closest thing to sex was the mention of griffin mating (not described in detail, just mentioned), so if this were a movie I'd rate it PG at worst for the unicorn deaths. :)

Woo! I just discovered your thread, and starred it.

If you want to read more about Japanese history/society, I highly recommend Shogun. I have reread this several times, and cannot open it without getting swept into another reading.

>31 CassieBash: BB!

>38 fuzzi: I'll have to keep that in mind for later. It's a pretty good-sized book and I must make a bigger dent in what I've already got before I visit Derek next month. I'm actually reading short books that I think will be a one-time read only to whittle down the immense stack. Honestly, I didn't think I'd necessarily want to keep The Divide but I'm sitting on the fence with that one. I have the sequel but am holding off on reading it until I make a final decision. (If I take one to Derek's I might as well take both together.) But until I decide, I'll postpone the sequel in favor of less "keep-able" books. Which brings me to...

Book 16: Greensleeves by Marticia Burns McKinney is an historical Christian fiction set during the last two years of Queen Elizabeth's reign. Jane Grant's grandson, Thomas, is in prison for being part of the group of knights who marched with Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex. These knights are being tried and summarily executed, and Jane wants desperately to get Thomas pardoned, but doesn't know how. Until, that is, she overhears talk in the marketplace that the Queen will grant a favor to anyone who can tell her the identity of "Greensleeves", made famous by the song. And Jane knows who Greensleeves is, but telling the Queen could jeopardize her own life, since she might have to reveal that she's a Catholic to the Protestant Queen....

Enjoyable quick read with an interesting and refreshingly unromantic story, as most Christian fiction I've come across is heavily romance. If you prefer your Christian fiction that way, you might want to pass this by. However, if you want to try something a little different, pick this one up. One thing that I liked is that while it did go into the historical and political clashes of the Protestants and Catholics (very unavoidable in this time period), the ultimate message favors neither but promotes that all Christians should set aside their differences and instead focus on their common ground.

Book 17: Pooh's Workout Book by Ethan Mordden: Using the original illustrations and examples taken directly from the original Winnie-the-Pooh stories, Ethan crafts a scenario in which he is trying to bring exercise to the Hundred Acre Wood, with mixed results. He defines three overall shapes and tries to come up with exercises from them: the Tigger Shape, the Piglet Shape, and of course the Pooh Shape. The exercises are derived from many of the adventures in the original books, and some are obvious (Tigger's bouncing) and others, like the Hunny Pot Paddle, are not. I think the exercise most suited to me is Jumping and Squeaking, one of Piglet's exercises, and if no one shows up to study during my few extra hours today here in the library, I may actually do some Jumping and Squeaking to pass the time. An amusing, enjoyable book; I've been meaning to read The Tao of Pooh but haven't gotten round to it yet. This one was a book that belongs to my sister but she's going to pass it on to Derek's store, so I thought I'd read it first. It was quick, amusing, and yet with a deep ending. This is Winnie-the-Pooh for grown-ups; the lack of action will probably lose the attention of children, even if attempting it as a read-aloud. But adult admirers of Pooh will enjoy how the author ties in the original stories with the concept of exercise, while staying pretty true to the characters.

Now I've finally caught up with my fiction posts; I've had The Divide finished for a few days now and had Greensleeves finished during the blizzard, but fell behind with posting. I finished Pooh today so when I go home tonight, I'm gonna need a new fiction. I'm making slow but steady progress through my nonfiction, The Day of St. Anthony's Fire, which is about an ergot poisoning episode in France during 1951. Interesting but complex, especially since there are a lot of people to keep straight (just like the PBB book of post >28 CassieBash:) and also due to the fact that the author puts in phrases, passages, and comments in French, and only sometimes translates. This breaks up the flow even when I can piece together what it says (more or less) and slows me down. I have about 100 pages left and then I'll need another nonfiction, maybe a gardening or animal book this time.

Catching up on threads and you've definitely sold me on Anguished English! Sounds marvelous.

Book 18: The Day of St. Anthony's Fire by John G. Fuller: So I have this thing about dark nonfiction, apparently, what with diseases and poisons and such. This one is about a case in 1951 that happened in France, and for those who don't know what St. Anthony's Fire is referring to, this book is about a particularly nasty ergot poisoning outbreak. Ergot is a parasitic fungus that attacks rye, and it can be quite toxic. In fact, one of its many derivatives is LSD--and almost an entire town was accidentally poisoned by this, leading to chronic, long-term insomnia, hallucinations, convulsions, and a few deaths. The people of the town sought justice in an inept system that frankly couldn't wrap its head around the concept of such a potent and, at that time, unknown drug. (LSD was just being discovered at that time; ergot had been used medicinally for a few things, under controlled conditions, for some time.) No one but the doctors who treated the patients--many of whom had to be restrained in straitjackets or bound to their beds to keep them from harming themselves or others--believed it could be ergot, and eventually the French courts determined it was mercury poisoning, despite the symptoms being totally different from mercury poisoning. You have to feel bad for the people whose lives were ruined permanently, both physically and financially in most cases, and who really didn't receive justice. The book may be of interest to those with a fondness for medical reads but will probably be of even more interest to those who, like the PBB book, are interested in the political and governmental failings of an investigation. As I mentioned above, there are some untranslated French phrases and passages that slowed me down, but while I feel that it might have helped with an emotional impact I don't know that it really impacts the intellectual aspects in most places.

Haven't yet decided on my new nonfiction; I'll sort through what's available and see what strikes my fancy.

Book 19: And I finished yet another fiction. I should be getting some William Sleator books through the mail and I'm excited to read those, so I'm going to concentrate my efforts on my new nonfiction until I get the first Sleator. But the fiction I finished is Shadow by Joyce Sweeney. I tried to find the touchstone for this book but it isn't in the list, so I'm afraid there's no link. Shadow is a supernatural suspense written for older teens, I'm guessing, based on the mature content and the occasional "f" word; the plot is straightforward and the story short, and the angst of the teen kids, especially the rivalry between the brothers, Brian and Patrick, got on my nerves sometimes, even though I understand that this rivalry was integral to the plot. If it weren't for the fact that I wanted to know what happened with their sister, Sarah, who begins to see the ghost of her beloved cat, Shadow, I probably would have put it down. Something, she senses, is going to happen--something bad--and Shadow seems to want to tell her what it is. But Sarah can't untangle the dream images she gets, even with the help of the family's new maid, Cissy, who's psychic herself and who also sees the cat.

The book was mediocre in my mind; it was a fast read but I found it hard to like most of the dysfunctional family; despite her psychic abilities, Sarah is the most well-adjusted of the whole group, including the adults who seem to behave no better than their kids, wanting to dismiss or ignore problems rather than help their children through them. I'm giving this book a parental warning for the sexual references, violence, and some language.

Book 20: New William Sleator book number 1: The Boy Who Couldn't Die is a young teen horror that isn't all that scary--more suspenseful. When Ken's friend Roger is killed in a terrible plane crash, Ken decides to have his soul removed and stored somewhere "safe", just like in the folklore stories he'd read. He finds someone who says she can do it for $50--too good a deal? Of course. Turns out that she's a bokor--an evil voodoo sorceress--and she's just made his soul her zombie slave, which she can order about when he sleeps to do whatever she wants--including digging up the Roger's body or killing people. Now he wants his soul back, only he doesn't know where it is. Can he and his new friend, Sabine, find it before he's forced to kill again? PG at best; only one potentially-objectionable word (witch with a "b") for younger readers--I leave it, as always, to the parents to decide on language and content. As I said, I wasn't scared by this book, but then again, I'm in my 40s and don't get chills reading Goosebumps, which horror-wise is probably slightly less creepy than Sleator's work, mostly because living sponges under the sink are kind of goofy, even while trying to bite your ankles off. Enjoyable, though not one of Sleator's best, and it's nice to see that the traditional, voodoo-created zombie (as opposed to radiation/virus) didn't disappear after Night of the Living Dead, which started the whole "non-voodoo" zombie type.

Book 21: William Sleator book number 2: Among the Dolls: A beginner chapter book--very short--and yet another horror. In its own way--maybe due to the unsettling black and white drawings by Trina Schart Hyman--this book had a bigger creepy factor than The Boy Who Couldn't Die. The concept was certainly interesting; Vicky receives an antique dollhouse for her birthday, and is less than thrilled. In fact, she finds the thing downright unnerving--from the house to the odd collection of dolls that came with it--and in an attempt to make it more appealing, she buys a new, shiny plastic doll to round out the "family". But she sets up a dysfunctional home life--a stern aunt, a cruel mother, a spiteful daughter, and a father who can't stand up to the others in the face of their cruelty. When she finds herself literally drawn into their world, she is faced with the very monsters she's created. Only her little plastic toddler boy, Dandaroo, who she really didn't play with much, seems to have any spark of kindness left. He's willing to help her escape, but if the other dolls find out, what will happen to her and Dandaroo? Any child who's rough with their toys may think twice about how they play with them after reading this book. Like most of Sleator's best works, there's a psychological horror here as well as physical danger, and of course there's a twist that's found towards the end of most of his books.

I'm going to take a break on Sleator for my next fiction, even though I have plenty of his works to read. Still, I'll be seeing Derek in another week or two, and if I can read a fiction that I'll be less likely to keep, I can get yet one more book off my pile, and maybe even two. Sadly, as the weeding continues at work, I've discovered still more books that I'm contemplating purchasing--sigh. I need to start a pile of "lunch reading" books--ones I doubt I'll keep but am interested in reading--that I can read and then sell here when we have our sale. We have so many books this time around that I'm seriously contemplating having an ongoing summer sale from late May, after graduation and summer session I begins, on through to the end of July.

Books for sale...??? ::perk::

>45 fuzzi: I'll keep people posted. If you have an occasion to come to Indiana, or if there are Indiana lurkers keeping tabs on this conversation, feel free to come. I'll give more details out closer to the sale, but we usually do a "bag" sale--we provide standard paper grocery bags, you fill 'em with your choices for $2.00/bag. We move an incredible amount of books this way, since we don't have limits to the number of bags you can buy. It's amazing how many books a well-packed grocery bag can hold....

Book 22: Crispin: Cross of Lead by Avi is an historical fiction set in medieval England for younger readers geared for 5th-6th grade+. The 13 year old boy known only, even to himself, as "Asta's son" begins the tale by helping the village priest bury his mother. Her death soon sets off a series of events that leads to the boy--who learns that his christened name is Crispin--being a "wolf's head", meaning that his status is less than human and anyone may kill him. He's been falsely accused by the lord of his village of robbery and the death of the priest, who Crispin finds murdered while fleeing a mob after his own blood. Putting as much distance between his home and pursuers as possible, Crispin wanders until he comes to a plague village, with houses and buildings standing empty and abandoned after the plague decimated the village. Almost empty, it turns out, as in the church is a huge man known as Bear, a wandering performer who has a secret agenda and who captures Crispin and forces him to pledge himself Bear's servant. Now Crispin is forced to serve a man who speaks about freedom as if it were a God-given right, and not treason. Yet as Bear's kindness towards him dissolves Crispin's initial fears, he begins to fear for himself--and Bear--who seem headed towards both a discovery of Crispin's past and their own destruction. I don't know about a 5th or 6th grader, but I'd figured out Crispin's past--and the real reason for being branded a wolf's head--early on, but then I have a knowledge of the type of society in which this story is set. What I found most enjoyable was how Crispin--who wasn't used to thinking on his own but merely following orders--grew into a thinker, capable of handling problems with creativity and logic.

Have a wonderful Easter.

>48 PaulCranswick: Thanks; you, too!

Book 23: Speak to the Earth: Pages from a Farmwife's Journal by Rachel Peden is, in a way, a very fitting book to post on Easter. While not overtly religious it does have a very spiritual feel, as the author ties little life experiences into the bigger picture, and occasionally throws in sections of deep philosophy, such as this section towards the end of the book: "Until now, man has believed himself the masterwork of creation, has laid no restriction on his manipulation of earth....We are beginning, barely, to realize that man is not the masterwork, but only a component of the masterwork, which is the earth itself, and perhaps earth is only a component of a still greater masterwork." She constantly refers to the cycle of life, death, and rebirth and embraces the natural world as a spiritual connection to a higher power; though her neighbors may refer to God directly, she implies to Him (or at least to a higher authority) more indirectly, seeing Him in the passing of the seasons, in the overgrown ruins of an old farm, in the animals and plants around her. Gentler than Rachel Carson's Silent Spring and focused less on chemical issues than on man's disconnection to his spiritual relationship to his world, this is just what it claims to be--writings of personal observations, stories, and events from an Indiana farmwife. Most of the material in the book, she notes in the acknowledgements, was previously published in the Indianapolis Star and the Muncie Evening Press in a farm column she wrote.

Partly because of the local interest (I live in Indiana), I'm very tempted to log this book on Book Crossing and track where it goes; it would be very interesting to see if it ever leaves the state or if it finds a permanent home somewhere in a private Indiana history collection.

Recommending this to those who like personal reflections, naturalists, Indiana and farm history buffs. If you enjoy the magazine Grit, you'll probably like this book, too.

Book 24: Alanna: The First Adventure by Tamora Pierce is a wonderful read (in my case, listen) for anyone interested in YA fantasy, particularly quick reads with strong female characters. Alanna, born a girl, is to be sent by her father to a convent to learn to become a lady, while her scholarly twin brother is to be sent to the royal city to learn to be a knight. Problem is, of course, that Alanna is far better and more temperamentally suited to knighthood, and her twin Tom is more likely to be interested in going to the convent to learn magic. Alanna "solves" this problem by having Tom, excellent at forging their father's handwriting, change the letters to now read that Tom is going to learn magic at the convent while Alanna, who cuts her hair to pose as a boy and renames herself Allen, goes to learn to be a knight. The story is the start of Alanna's adventure as she learns to cope with doing "boy" things while hiding her true gender. Problem is, she is totally unprepared for adolescence, as her mother died while she was young and no one really discussed womanhood with her. There is a scene regarding her first menstrual cycle--this was once practically scandalous to have in a YA book (think Judy Blume and Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret) but times change. However, if you're uncomfortable with your child reading this, you're forewarned. For adult readers, this book isn't as complex as some of Pierce's other works; it's a pretty linear book with few side plots. I'm hoping, since this is the first in a set, that it's like the Harry Potter series and that Alanna continues to grow and develop into adulthood, with the plots becoming more and more complex, the further into the series you go.

Hmm...touchstones don't seem to be working....

>52 CassieBash: they weren't working last night, either.

Really, when a library in our consortium says, "Would someone please check to see if Inter-Library Loan requesting is working right," I've got to stop being the one to step up. This sidetrack requesting isn't helping reduce the number of books stacked alongside my wall--my "to read" pile. Ah, well....

Book 25: Haunted Hoosier Trails by Wanda Lou Willis: A very quick guide to several haunted spots in my native state of Indiana, with an excellent folkloric slant; those of you who may have read my ghostly selections from last year's challenge may remember that I don't like "heavy on the investigation, light on the background" stuff--this book told the legends behind the hauntings (no real investigation aspect--just legends). Many of the stories I had come across before in my (permit me a moment of immodesty) rather extensive Indiana ghost legend research but there were a few new ones. This book would be a great place to get good "scary campfire stories" for Boy/Girl Scout meetings, summer camps, etc. One of my favorite suggestions for gathering 'round the campfire is "The Ultimate Long Distance Call"; for those of you who can't locate a copy of this book or request it free through Inter-Library Loan like I did (most libraries within the state should be able to borrow a copy for you--ask your local library about ILL), here is the story of Martin Sheets, along with a couple of other Vigo County legends. I was disappointed in that my county's story was not the most exciting one available; I'd have chosen "Little Egypt" cemetery and/or the "Troll Bridge" near it, or Plymouth's Hayloft Restaurant. I was also disappointed in that not every county in the state was represented, leaving gaps in the book (though making it that much more of a quick read). On the up side, I learned some fast facts about the counties that were covered, as each county gets a brief "bio" listing why it's named so, its county seat and the towns it has, plus a little local history on the side. A quick and easy read for those who like local Indiana legends, or ghost lore in general.

Hey, if you click edit and re-save posts that had been done when touchstones wasn't working, apparently it will now activate them. Joy! :)

54 Oh, neat! Is Clay County featured? That's where I grew up...

>56 scaifea: Yep. The 100 Steps Cemetery is Clay County's story. The story and some nice pics are hyperlinked here for non-natives and/or people who've never heard of it. This is one of Indiana's more famous haunted cemeteries, along with Little Egypt in Bremen; I find a lot of info on these cemeteries and a few others when doing Indiana ghost folklore research.

Book 26: The Happy Bookers by Richard Willard Armour is a brief, tongue-in-cheek history of libraries and librarians, from the Stone Age to speculations on the future (which would be after 1976 when the book was published). Illustrated by Campbell Grant, this book is a sometimes risque, rather amusing light history that, while not really presenting any details of the history of library science that most librarians and library aficionados wouldn't know about, it does give an amusing, basic overview that was enjoyable for the play-on-words, puns, and clever witticisms. And the speculation about the future of books being akin to "dial a book" on TV screens--eBooks, anyone? And he also thought along the lines of micro-microfilm, making the books fit on smaller and smaller mediums--smart phone apps like OverDrive come to mind, don't they? Enjoyable quick read but one that will be going into the library sale, as I don't imagine I need to read it twice.

I think my next nonfiction will come from the pile sitting here by my desk, and will either be etymology or entomology. Anyone have a preference?

>57 CassieBash: Haha! Cool! Oh, I've been to the 100 Steps. A bit of a rite de passage in school, I'm afraid.

>59 scaifea: bit of a rite de passage in school...yeah, I can see that. "Little Egypt" was apparently once a make-out place for teens but more recent reports suggest it's no longer safe, with vandalism being a big problem.

Book 27: A Gift of Sanctuary by Candace Robb is a medieval murder mystery; I promise--I do read mysteries that don't take place in medieval British Isles! I have an ancient Egyptian one sitting in my to read pile.... :) Anyway, this particular mystery starts out with a mysterious man found grievously injured on a beach and brought to the home of the bard Dafydd, who decides the young man needs protection in case his would-be murderer comes back to finish the job. When another man turns up dead outside St. David, where Owen, his ill father-in-law, and his two companions, a monk and Geoffrey Chaucer (who of course is famous for The Canterbury Tales, have gone on pilgrimage to, they become involved in the mystery on the English King's behalf. (Owen and Chaucer are there primarily in service to the king, under the Duke of Lancaster's orders.) The tale becomes more complex as a host of other characters and plots come to light: an unhappy marriage, supporters of the French king gathering rebels and funds--all of this weaves together nicely. Enjoyable, though I think I prefer the characters of the Cadfael series better (though this could be that I've read far more of that series than this). However, a lot of research went into this and one little detail of the writing style I really liked was that there were no modern contractions, which weren't brought into use in the English language until much later.

>60 CassieBash: Ha! Okay, just to be clear, I did NOT make out at the 100 Steps!

*ahem*

...

>61 scaifea: Never heard of that issue at 100 Steps--at least it's not mentioned in the folklore! Little Egypt is a very isolated, off-the-beaten-path cemetery surrounded by farmland. Is 100 Steps like that, or is it closer to human habitations and therefore less suited to teenage hormonal actions? :)

>62 CassieBash: It's sort of out there, I guess, but it's also a really well-known teen hang-out at night, so I think it gets patrolled fairly heavily. But I was always fairly clueless about make-out points and such - I was always such a nerdy thing that I had no idea of those sorts of goings-on. I was typically at home with my nose in a book. Or at band practice. Ha!

>63 scaifea: Me to, except for the band practice. Living in the country with both parents working, I was pretty much stuck at home and relied on the bus to get home, so no after-school activities for me. I still have the occasional nightmare about missing the bus home. I heard about it as a make-out point much later. And I didn't like too many guys at our school to be interested in make-out points, anyway.

Where in Indiana did you grow up, if you don't mind my asking (and if you don't mind repeating yourself if I've asked before - apologies; my memory is absolute crap)?

>65 scaifea: Marshall County. Northwest Indiana, just underneath St. Joseph County, home of the "Fighting Irish"--which frankly, not being a sports fan, I get tired of hearing about. My high school (and, technically, my elementary and junior high--it was a K-12 school) girls basketball team did go to state in semi-finals, so all along 31 down into Fulton County (Rochester--home of the Zebras), you could see Argos "Dragon" support signs, which was cool. But that was about as enthusiastic as I got about it.... :) I don't know if my fondness for dragons came from association with my school's mascot or if it's just that they're often depicted as cooler dinosaurs--I was dino crazy from a very early age.

Book 28: The Last Universe by William Sleator is a sci-fi, quantum physics story with a bit of...horror?...suspense?...thriller? I'm not sure just what the underlying tone is, but it's definitely got a bit of tension that starts up right away and just keeps building. If you'd class it as horror, it's not the monster/ghost kind of horror, it's more psychological. The basic story is this: Susan and her brother, Gary, live with their parents on the "family estate"--a large walled garden set beside a state park. The garden has always fascinated Gary, but Susan has never liked it much, particularly the pond where her aunt Caroline drowned as a child. But Gary's sick--really sick--and is in a wheelchair now; Susan is expected to take him into the garden on nice days. And though he knows she doesn't like it--maybe because of it--he usually wants to go to the pond. But the more they go into the garden, the more they notice unusual things, like huge tropical flowers that grow overnight and are nowhere close to being native to the area. And finally, even the garden itself--its paths, what they can access--changes. Gary tells Susan it's a quantum garden, that there are lots of paths, lots of different universes, and he's getting stronger because they're getting closer to a world where he's recovering from his illness. The maze, he says, is the key, but only if they can get the gardener's cat, Sro-dee, to help them out.

A good read, and like all Sleator's works, one with a twist--I'd predicted that twist (because it was the logical one). Ironically, Schrodinger's cat concept is integral to the book--only Schrodinger wouldn't have approved of this work, since he found the whole concept of the Copenhagen Interpretation--that objects can exist in all states simultaneously until observed--flawed and came up with his now-famous cat to prove how ridiculous the concept was. And this book certainly accepts the concept of multiple dimensions, bifurcation of dimensions, and other quantum concepts, though it doesn't go into the technical aspects in detail. A good introduction to the very basics of quantum physics for kids.

Ooof, I hear you on not being a sports fan in a sports-crazy place; I went to Ohio State University for my grad work and really don't care for football at all... Ha!

>67 scaifea: My younger sister went to Columbus College of Art and Design. I guess the running joke at their school was their "hockey team"--which doesn't exist but apparently gets good sports coverage in their campus student paper.

>68 CassieBash: Ha! Love it.

Book 29: All Color Book of Insects by Michael Tweedie has 101 color photographs! And most of the text accompanies them. While each "chapter", which is really mostly photo examples (beautiful photo examples in many cases, it must be said) takes on a major order of insects, with an extra introduction chapter about the ancient insects and one at the end on camouflage, this book is really an overview and will not go into too much detail in any one order. Published in 1973, there are a few things that might be out of date now but honestly, the book is so general that there's not much chance of the information being superceded by new info. Honestly, the fly family still only has one set of wings, after all, and the book is new enough that the Skippers in the Lepidoptera group are mentioned as being classified as their own sub-order. I didn't learn much but did see some great pictures of insects from around the world. A fast read that's probably just technical enough in its description (and it uses the scientific names) to be geared towards young adult audiences at the youngest. At least regarding the text--if you want to excite your youngest ones about insects, the color photos may be a great way to do it. Not a keeper for me, as I would need a more in-depth look at the insect groups to truly compel me to keep it, but enjoyable during my lunch times at work.

Entomology is done; on to etymology!

Book 30: Through the Woods by Emily Carroll Wow, was the touchstone originally weird with this one; for some reason, it brought up The Little Prince by Antonie de Saint-Exupery and I had to go in and change it. Not quite sure what that was about.... Through the Woods is a young adult graphic novel horror, full of monsters and scary enough that I'd give a parental warning. This is NOT R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series, where the horror is usually a bit silly, too, and things tend to work out, albeit with a hint of possible danger lingering sometimes. These 5 stories don't have happy endings. But they are eerily fascinating for those who like to feel those chills. Granted, I read these during the day, in the bright lights of the library during lunch hours, but I still found them a bit haunting. They have a traditional, fairy tale or classic ghost story feel about them, and the illustrations, simple at first glance, are full of nuances with the coloring, shading, and styles.

Book 31: The Book of Spies by Gayle Lynds is apparently one of a series about Judd Ryder and Eva Blake; this would be the first, I would assume, as it's how the two of them met. I came across it in our public library's OverDrive as an audiobook, and couldn't resist the concept of a secret library. What librarian could? But let me back up and give a brief setup of this thriller spy book.

The Library of Gold is a huge collection of rare, illuminated manuscripts, with one of the great masterworks of the collection being The Book of Spies. The library has a hand-picked director and its members are called collectively the Book Club. If anyone divulges the secret of the library, they're killed. And that's what happened to Judd Ryder's father, who got wind of the library's possible connections with terrorist activities and smuggled The Book of Spies out of the collection. Eva, who was sent to prison for vehicular manslaughter of her husband, even though she insists she never remembers being behind the wheel. She's reprieved when a CIA agent needs her to help keep an eye on the book when it's on public display--and it's there that Eva sees her supposedly dead husband. Judd Ryder, hired by the CIA agent to keep tabs on her, believes her ultimately, and the two have to chase him down when the book is stolen from its exhibit.

I'm not going to give any more of the plot away; this is just the basic setup and the story does get more complex, with enough twists and turns that the pacing moves pretty fast. If you like plots like National Treasure or any spy or espionage movie or book, give this one a try, either as a read or a listen. The reader wasn't as great as some but she wasn't as bad as many I've heard, either (she has a soft voice and may not be suitable for travel listening, as she may be drowned out by road noise). There is at least one brief sex scene and of course some rough language; this book isn't marketed for children or young adults, so be forewarned if you're thinking this would be a good choice for a family road trip.

Just a personal heads-up to anyone in the Michiana area planning on going to Leeper Park in South Bend tomorrow for the Shakespeare Festival--I will be telling some traditional English fairy tales there as "Storyteller Jane" at 12:30 and at 2:30. Three of the five I plan on telling are rated "G" and are humorous, the other two (and I'll give warning before I tell them) are PG-13 for violence and gore.

Woo hoo! I've finished two books in less than 24 hours! The first is Book 32: Smoke in the Wind: The Book of Cul by Wil Hanson. I've purposely left off the touchstones, as neither the title nor the author appeared. Sorry about that. But this is a fantasy story about an aspiring architect just getting started on an independent career on the west coast when he is hired, sight unseen, to build a home on a plot of land mapped out in beautiful colors on a genuine vellum scroll. He gets to work, falling into an almost trance-like state, only to find himself transported to the location on the map, complete with the castle he drew. He's greeted by his employer and is told he is actually a gifted wizard, blessed by the mysterious High Ones with the abilities to save their planet, Cul...if only he can master his new magic. The book is a good stand-alone but also leaves it open to the possibility of becoming a series...but it obviously didn't make it as such, since a quick search on Amazon under the author's name shows it to be the only book he wrote. It's an amusing (and raunchy at times) story of a man from Earth trying to learn the rules of magic and get accustomed to another planet and its inhabitants (including the love interest, Giselle), told as a first-person account. Language, sexual innuendo, and adult themes rate this as an adult-level book all the way. I thought many of the characters lacked depth of personality, and the white hats and black hats were pretty easy to identify, with little complexity of the plot. But it was a good read if you like straightforward, simple fantasy with plenty of action.

Book 33 was my work nonfiction title, Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends by David Wilton and was another amusing (and sometimes raunchy) read. The cover was what originally caught my eye; yes, let's face it, a good cover does make you want to take a better look at the book, whether we say not to judge by that or not. It's a cartoon illustration of an Eskimo village (stereotypical, of course), with speech and thought bubbles everywhere. In each one is a unique drawing of a snowflake...because everyone knows that Eskimos have 500 different words for snow. Except, of course, that they don't. And the author points out that we also have more than one word to describe different types of snow. What Wilton does for each word or phrase he investigates is look at the date of the usage, how it was used, what context it was used in when (for words, like gay, that have changed meanings over time), and then provides the most likely origin. In some cases, even he cannot pin down an origin--though he can usually debunk the linguistic legend by date of use. For instance, picnic has nothing to do with lynching African Americans; it's derived from the French word pique-nique and was used in France as early as 1692; picnic as spelled in English was first used in 1748 to refer to outings in the German countryside (complete with food, of course). Upset as a sports term doesn't come from the horse race between Man O' War and Upset, but was first used in 1877 (though still in connection with horse racing), after being "noun-ified". Prior to then, it had apparently been used as an adjective to describe racing fans when a favorite lost (upset crowd) as far back as 1865--well before Man O' War was even foaled. Other word/phrase origins investigated include f**k, Windy City, Indian giver, condom, balls to the wall, and several others, including that life in Elizabethan times email that gave several supposed word and phrase origins, including "throw the baby out with the bathwater" and "raining cats and dogs". Wilton provides citations and references; this is a well-researched book. Enjoyable, but like most of the etymological nonfiction I read, it's not a keeper, as I likely won't have a desire to re-read it. Into the sales books it goes!

Two in 24? Good job!

>74 fuzzi: I said finished, but I never said when I started. I didn't read them both within 24 hours, if that was your translation of my statement. Technically, I've been working on both books for a few weeks, particularly Smoke in the Wind, as I haven't had much time to read recently at home, and reading during my lunch hour, particularly when I'm the only person on duty, usually means interruptions. But very seldom does it happen to work out that I get to do a double post two longer books (my double post on >44 CassieBash: doesn't particularly count, as the doll book was extremely short and I'd had very little left of the other).

Regarding our sales, I'm going to start setting up next week, bringing books down from 5th floor storage to sort. Not sure yet if I'll be prepared to start in late May, but I'm gonna try! I'll let you all know when the sale officially starts, so that anyone with any desire to buy books in bulk by bag (try saying that 10 times fast!) can do so. Remember, at $2.00/standard-sized paper grocery bag (we provide the bags), this is an incredible bargain. And we'll have book carts ready to help you load up if you buy too many bags to carry in one trip. Now that's service! ;)

And I think by now the local grocery stores know by now that I'm going to ask for paper bags when I'm in line.... :))

Word Myths sounds like fun!

>76 drneutron: Oh, it was! But if you're married to a specific myth and he discredits it, it may distress you. (Hope you don't absolutely believe that "Ring around the Rosies" is about the Black Death!) He admits that many make a great story, and most are perfectly harmless (even if false) as a story, but some of them derive from ethnic and/or gender slurs and therefore he cautions repetition, especially as fact, of those types. Alas, space issues being what they are at my house, I can't justify taking a book home if I don't think I'll reference it or read it again. But I am confident that it will find a good home during the above-mentioned sale.

Cassie, I hear you are good at identifying caterpillars. Would you mind taking a look here and see if you know what is eating my swiss chard?
http://www.librarything.com/topic/220765#5573575

Book 34: Cold Tom by Sally Prue was what's known as a "high low" book--high interest low reading level suitable for 5th grade and up. It's a good fantasy with a nice balance between plot and story, with short chapters to encourage slower readers--it gives a sense of accomplishment. The story is about Tom, a young member of the Tribe, the fae that live out on the commons outside of a "demon" city. Tom really doesn't quite fit in; his senses aren't as acute as the others and he's a poor hunter. When he nearly exposes the tribe to a couple of demons, Tom is expelled and later condemned to death. To avoid dying, Tom flees to the demon city where a young demon--readers quickly figure out that demons are humans--takes him in and tries to hide him. But her half-brother finds out, and then there is an accident, and Tom finds himself a prisoner in a demon's home--but is this demon truly what she seems to be?

The book is full of great imagery, including "vines" that Tom sees binding various demons to each other--these vines are the attachments that we forge in our relationships to others, something that the self-absorbed fae of the Tribe detest and see as enslavement. I also liked the references to Tam-Lin and his capture and subsequent rescue. The fae come across, as a group, as fierce and cold--these aren't the Victorian fairies that appear to good children to reward them. If your kid loves the good fairy princess image, this isn't for them.

Book 35: Nightmare Town by T. Ernesto Bethancourt, aka Tom Paisley, a singer-guitarist of the 60s in Greenwich Village, is a weird mix of X-Files-esque horror and science fiction, which I frankly didn't see coming. Told first-person style by Jimmy Hunter, a 16-year-old kid who is sent to live with his abusive uncle and cousins after his father is arrested for murder. Jimmy fights back after his uncle punches him and he hits his uncle and cousin; he knocks his uncle out and breaks his cousin's nose. Then he steals his aunt's allowance (the one thing he regrets, since his aunt was nice to him) and runs away, heading away from New York to California. As he hitches rides, he ends up with a family heading to Los Angeles, and he meets Liz Gaynor, a girl his age that he begins to like on their journey. But as they're driving through the Arizona desert, they have car trouble and the car is in a terrible accident which leaves Liz's parents dead. She and Jimmy are thrown from the car; Jimmy is found by the local hermit/doctor, Karl, and Liz is taken into the nearby town of Celestial. This is where it gets a bit X-Filean. Remember that episode that they only showed on network T.V. once--Home? This town has been isolated for at least a hundred years, and the residents are terribly inbred, resulting in horrible birth defects. (SPOILER: It turns out that there's also radiation at work, too, via an extraterrestrial craft, but you don't find that out until close to the end.) They also have their own religious beliefs, and they plan to induct Liz into their church and society. Jimmy, of course, won't let that happen.

I have mixed feelings about the book. I liked the main characters, but the plot twist at the end seemed so sudden that it felt as if the author didn't know how to get Jimmy out of his predicament without skewing into more science fiction that the book had previously had. Not that the author doesn't work it into the story well enough; it's a tidy enough explanation, but reading it with nothing to go on but the description on the front flap, I hadn't expected anything like this. It's an abrupt change in the feel of the story. The language is also very dated; the book's copyright is 1979 but frankly, I think Jimmy's slang is mostly from the late 60s/early 70s instead. English instructors beware: Jimmy's storytelling is done in teen dialect, so there are lots of "gonna"s and slang like "rap" for "talk", plus some odd sentence structures. But I didn't hate the story, either; it just comes across as not holding up well with the passing years. So while it's not a keeper, it was amusing enough that I don't regret the little money it cost at our local Goodwill store, either.

Book 36: Wise Child by Monica Furlong: medieval Scotland is full of superstition and fear of witches, but that doesn't keep the local peasants in the little village from going to Juniper for her herbal potions and remedies when they need it. Wise Child, raised by her grandmother because her sorceress mother abandoned her while her sailor father was away on a trip, ends up truly orphaned when her grandmother dies. Juniper ends up adopting her and begins teaching her what she would need to follow in Juniper's footsteps--if she chooses. But between Wise Child's fascination with her biological mother--who claims she wants her back, though her motives may be suspect--and the village priest's attempts to stir up the villagers against Juniper as a witch, Wise Child may be in more danger than she knows.

A fantasy based on the premise that dorans--white witches--were harmonious nature lovers that were not necessarily un-Christian--in fact, one of Juniper's doran friends is specifically mentioned as a Christian, and Juniper herself reassures Wise Child that she need not renounce Christianity if she, too, chooses to be a doran. But Maeve, Wise Child's biological mother represents, in part, the dark side of magic, providing the balance of good and evil and emphasizing the theme that it is our choices and not the natural attributes we're born with or given that is important and determines whether we are good or bad people.

I loved he characters and the details of settings and plot. It's not a hard read; young adults could read this and there's really not much objectionable about this book regarding language or sex--though if you're wary about magic scenes, this won't be your kind of book. There are some scenes of real magic in this book, though not the wand-waving kind. I'm leaning towards keeping it--I'd probably read it again though maybe not often, thus my dilemma. With space on shelves a premium, I need to be pickier about what I keep.

Yeah. Right. Easier said than done....*Sigh*

>81 CassieBash: Looks just about a keeper, I reckon.

Have a great weekend. xx

>82 PaulCranswick: Yeah, it probably is.

Book 37: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, audio version: In this fantasy world, people aren't separated out by the color of their skin, but by the color of their blood. Silver blood is the color of the elite, the powerful people with special abilities like invisibility, control over water or fire, plants or animals, even the power to read thoughts and take over the actions of another person. Red blood is the common blood, the worker and soldier blood, the blood that is spilled over a long, futile war between two kingdoms ruled by the Silvers. Reds have to find a job--be apprenticed--by a certain age or they're sent automatically to the war, whether suited to it or not. And Mare Barrow is headed in that direction, until she gets caught trying to pick the pocket of a Silver, who surprisingly offers her a job. Her world is turned around even further when, through an accident, she discovers that while her blood is red, she has an ability to control electricity. From then on, she is taken in by the Silvers' royal family, trained to be one of them and to marry the young prince Maven. But she still finds her loyalty is tied to the Reds, the people she's known and loved from birth, and when the Scarlet Guard, the Red rebels, come into her life, she finds herself wanting to help them. But it's hard to find people you can trust in this world, particularly in the Silver world when you're a Red.

This book is a good read for those interested in the politics of such a fantasy realm; however, there are some things that I wondered about, especially at first. There is some technology--all in the control of the Silvers, of course, though Reds make them--so it's hard to say what "earth-equivalent" time period it is. Sometimes it seemed like a post-apocalyptic modern tale, where some big societal upheaval has happened and that the technology is fairly advanced--but then while there are video cameras in the royal castle, there don't seem to be computers yet. There are vehicles like trains and boats but no cars (though the older prince has a motorcycle). This gives it a bit of a steampunk feel, but while steampunk tech is usually based on...well, steam, we haven't yet been told what generates the electricity for the monitors and cameras and electric shields. This is a series, with a couple of prequels to this book as well as a second book continuing Mare's story, so more may be revealed about the world in these. The romance is very teen, with a love triangle (OK, more of a love square, since there are no less than 3 guys interested in Mare), and the language and violence may not be suitable for pre-teen kids--there are fights arranged between Silvers under the pretense of giving the Reds a "holiday", but as Mare observes, it's more to show off who has the power in this world and to keep the Reds subdued. Lots of blood, both Silver and Red, is spilled, and the second book will likely be darker than the first. There are political machinations worthy of any spy novel, and I won't go into it any further than that, so as not to spoil anything. This is sort of like if the X-Men were all pretty much spoiled, twisted jerks in charge of a steampunk Victorian setting melded with the political machinations of a good political thriller book. Yeah, that's about as clear a comparison as I can make....

Book 38 will be delayed. I've set it down somewhere in the house and have lost track of it, so I had to start another. *Sigh* I don't often "lose" books for longer than a day but I also know I didn't take it out of the house, so I know it's around. But it's very, very frustrating!

>81 CassieBash: I've held onto my copies of the Wise Child trilogy, although really I should probably rethink that. These books are often available in libraries. Wise Child is the best of the three.

>84 ronincats: It's a trilogy? My paperback copy said nothing about their being more. I may have to contemplate inter-library loan for the other two. Or it may show up in the local library's book sale; that's how I ended up with a couple of sequels. And of course there's Derek's store, too.

For those interested and in the area, Ancilla College's library is having its book sale, with extremely low prices (hardbacks 50 cents each, paperbacks 25 cents each, fill a paper grocery bag for $2.00/bag--we provide the bags), through the month of June. Sale hours are 8 AM--6 PM, Monday--Thursday, Fridays 8 AM--4:30 PM.

Book 38: The Shroud by John Coyne is a supernatural horror based on Gnostic gospels and the Shroud of Turin. I kid you not. Father James "Jamie" Ignatius, an orphaned child found by a statue of Saint Ignatius at the Cathedral of the city, is raised by the Sisters and the Cardinal and always knew he'd follow the faith. But recently, having taken up meditation as a way to center himself spiritually, he finds himself haunted by realistic past lives of himself, and with the help of a young woman, Maureen, begins to explore his past lives, all of which seem to have violence, often with himself at the center, as a disturbing element. Jamie is left wondering who he is, and why he keeps seeing a mysterious "twin" of himself haunting the church he's in charge of. There's also what seems to be a "B" plot about the disappearances of homeless people; the "A" plot and the "B" plot come together nicely in the end. But alas, I found it difficult to really like even the main characters; somehow they came across as flat, or boring. Maybe they're too nice? I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't like them--I didn't hate them as I've found myself hating other characters in other books, I just was ambivalent towards them. Without giving away too much of the plot, I will say that many of the characters tied to the church came across as unlikeable; Jamie is about the only one you don't mind, and all the others seem dodgy and sleazy, and get more so the further into the plot you get. I'm not Catholic, but I really felt that the author was really giving Catholics a hard time for the most part, making so many of the church leaders seem like used car salesmen and/or uncaring jerks who aren't above using political machinations to get what they want. While I know there are some issues with some priests throughout the Catholic church, let's face it--you get that with any religious group, and I believe that most church leaders of any denomination really care about their respective flocks. Regardless, if you're Catholic, you might want to skip this unless you're thick-skinned or incredibly curious now. Even if you're not Catholic, unless you're prepared to deal with rather unusual possibilities regarding Christ's family and betrayal, you might not find this to your liking, and like me, you might also be a bit offended by the author's depictions of most of the Catholic characters in the book. Also, not particularly scary, so for a "horror" genre, it's kind of a let-down. Violence, language, sexual situations make this suitable for more mature readers.

Book 39: Hauntings and Other Tales of Danger, Love, and Sometimes Loss by Betsy Hearne: A collection of short stories dealing mainly with, as the title suggests, loss. I have no idea of the "sometimes" as most of the stories have some sort of loss in them, mainly via death but not always (one story has a young boy's mother so withdrawn into herself that she's in an asylum). The book is divided into three sections: the past, where most of the tales are adaptations of traditional Irish stories; the present, with the tales taking on a more modern feel; and the future, which contains only two stories, one focusing on God (and Her chihuahua Beanie) and the Devil and his ghostly persecutor, a dead dog that won't let go (literally). At the end, in a section she's marked as "nobody under 21 is supposed to read or even be interested in this information"--a sure way to have gotten me to read it as a kid--she describes the ideas behind each story, going into the folklore for the past, into her inspirations in the present and future. By far the best story I thought was the last, with the Devil and the ghost dog that "hounds" him (pun intended) whenever he's too wicked, latching onto him with her teeth (somehow, the Devil just knowsit's a her); the story was both unique and yet had unmistakable folklore elements, making it feel like a campfire story told for decades. I didn't find any of the stories scary, though some probably would be to younger readers; some were haunting in a sad, melancholic way, but again, not scary. No unsuitable language or content for junior high students; the loss factor might make this a yellow caution light for parents with students younger than the tweens, and even then you might preview it for triggers if loss (or imminent loss) is in your family and your child is disturbed by this. Older readers might find this book useful in helping cope, however.

Book 40: The Weirdo by Theodore Taylor: Everyone knows that Chip Clewt is a weirdo; you can tell by the way he looks, covered in scars and with half his hair missing, and that crippled left hand, all remnants of an airplane crash he'd survived. He tracks black bears in the Powhatan swamp, where a moratorium has been placed on all hunting for five years, working with a college student who's trying to get his doctorate and protect the endangered Powhatan black bear population, which has only begun to increase since the moratorium and isn't stable yet. But the local hunters have been itching to hunt the bears that are in their own backyards, rather than having to go further afield. When Samantha "Sam" Sanders goes into the Powhatan after her uncle and aunt's prize-winning dog she's caring for--the dog runs off, chasing one of those very bears--she has to spend the night in the swamp. Not much of an outdoorsie person, she does remember her grandfather's advice and literally holes up in a hollow tree for the night. When she wakes very early in the morning, she hears someone coming through the swamp. At first, she thinks it may be her salvation, but a sudden dread hits her and she remains hidden and quiet, only to see the silhouette of a man carrying a bundle slung over his shoulder towards the quicksand hole. Out of one end of the bundle is a foot, and she's pretty sure she's seen a murderer. The most likely victim? The now-missing college student, Tom Telford, who was studying the bears, hoping to extend the moratorium on hunting if their population still seemed too low to be sustainable. When she befriends Chip, learning to love the person Chip is inside rather than be repulsed by the person Chip is outside, she finds herself trying to solve the mystery of the "swamp walker" and the bundle he carried, as well as having to decide where she stands: with the bears or with the hunters? While like 38 above, I found the hunters all so black and white--none were depicted as being ready to listen to the other side of the argument, and virtually all were "trophy hunters" who were portrayed as only wanting to shoot any wild animal that moved--I didn't think this was as balanced as it could be. While I'm not a hunter myself and not particularly fond of gunfire--hunting season always makes me jumpy because it'll be a peaceful day and then suddenly BLAM!--I do know that not all hunters are this unconcerned with sustainable populations and not all just hunt because they like to kill. I know plenty who fill their freezers with deer to help cut down on their grocery bill. But I will say that this story interested me more than The Shroud and the main characters of Sam and Chip were much more developed and interesting.

As I'm almost out of lunch hour, I'd best get back to the grindstone. What a difference a few days' worth of vacation can do to the "to read" pile! I should have another--a juvenile chapter nonfiction--finished by Monday. Over halfway to the goal, and June's not quite half over! Huzzah!!

Book 41: Superstition: A Creative Understanding Book by Daniel Cohen is a juvenile chapter nonfiction about what makes a superstition and why people still believe in them. It includes a chapter on witchcraft hysteria and what fueled the hunts during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe (as well as later in America), a chapter specific to the "magic" of numbers and words, one on sympathetic magic, and more. Points of interest include a glossary, helpful for younger readers who may come across unfamiliar terms, a section describing some creatures in folklore, and most intriguing, a workshop section, set apart on yellow pages in the middle of the book, that gives ideas on investigating superstitions on your own--my favorite involves studying horoscopes. This is typical of Mr. Cohen's juvenile fiction; he researches and writes about a lot of supernatural themes, most notably ghosts. The information is too basic, like most juvenile nonfiction, to want to keep so it will be going on to Derek and his store. Sorry, no touchstone for this book came up.

It's amazing what a bit of a heat wave will do for reading. When it's too hot to do anything, just read and nap. :) Anyway, I've had these started for awhile; finished a few finally. I've got like four or five books going at once, so a few were bound to get finished sooner or later.

Book 42: The Third Pandemic by Pierre Ouellette: Imagine a deadly bacteria, spread through the air, capable of infecting both birds and humans, that is totally resistant to all known drugs? Dr. Elaine Wilkes and her highly sophisticated computer program has predicted this bacteria will emerge within 10 years. Only the Uni-verse, a huge global company dabbling in a bit of everything, knows of this--the company had swallowed her public service-minded Webster Foundation--and the cure that the program has also predicted. Bennet Rifkin, a bigwig in Uni-verse, is poised to make millions--maybe billions--profiteering when the disease emerges and Uni-verse has the only cure. Except that Elaine finds out his plan and takes the only current copy of the program and the full report and heads to Seattle to give the information to her public health contact there, hoping that she can save the millions of lives Bennet plans to sacrifice to make it look as if his company hadn't been sitting on the cure the whole time. Phil Paris, a Seattle cop set on her trail for the theft of the disks (the book was published in 1996), arrests her. She convinces him to take a copy of the full report to her contact, and when he does, he gets even more deeply involved. Paris has his own personal interests in infectious diseases--his wife died during a Salmonella outbreak that he's convinced was the work of a biological "poisoner", a man going around to restaurants that have always had a clean bill of health and spreading Salmonella bacteria on purpose. He hates to think of what a man like that might do if he can get a sample of this superbug, which has popped up in Africa and has started decimating the population.

Ouellette did a lot of research on infectious disease, and he wrote a reference to Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy crossing from cattle into humans. In his acknowledgements, he includes a paragraph about how he'd written it as speculative fiction but at the time of publishing, it was beginning to be suspected as fact. (He also wrote that he hopes "the rest of this book stays firmly embedded in the realm of fiction".)

I enjoyed the book, especially the parts about the bacteria's development into a superbug capable of withstanding our common drugs. Though the coincidence of the germ's development coinciding so closely to the prediction that it would happen is odd, it's needed to advance the plot quickly. There are some good villains to boo, good heroes to cheer. There are tender moments of humanity, even during the chaos and anarchy that develops as the disease spreads panic, and there are some brutal moments, too. This is an adult book with adult themes and language, including sexual references.

Book 43: The Animal Story Book by Andrew Lang really is edited or compiled by Lang; the stories seemed to come mostly from other sources, which are sometimes noted as a footnote at the beginning of the story. While these stories are, for the most part, supposedly true, I think a few may have a bit of embellishment (Baron de Wogan's stories seem a little too "tall tale"), and of course "Androcles and the Lion" is included. I had no idea that Alexandre Dumas had such a menagerie, and for the most part his stories--of which there were many--were very amusing, though sometimes with a bittersweet ending. There are some sad stories, some happy stories, some amusing stories, and some sections are supposed to be more educational than entertaining. Enjoyable, and the short stories made it convenient to set aside and pick up again with no concern about forgetting plot, since each story is self-contained. (I've been reading it here and there for over a month.) But this book is not, for me, a keeper; I doubt I'll feel compelled to read these again, and the nonfiction information is too general and short to really be enlightening and valuable to my collection. As long as the child can handle the occasional death, there's technically nothing in this book that would make it unsuitable for children, except for the dated language, which may make it difficult for some younger readers to understand.

Book 44 was my work lunch hour and took me very little time to finish: The Story of the Other Wise Man by Henry van Dyke tells the tale of Artaban, the would-be Fourth Wise Man, who was to meet up with the famous Three Wise Men for the journey to Bethlehem. But he is delayed by a mission of mercy and misses the rendezvous. With three gifts for the King of Kings--a pearl, a ruby, and a sapphire--he sets out on his own to find the prophesied Son of God, usually just missing him. Throughout the journey, he must choose between relinquishing one of his gifts for the Messiah in order to help his fellow man, or pass them by and try to make up for the lost time and distance on his quest. A good story for the family for either a Christmas or Easter read-aloud (the beginning of the book starts just before Christmas, of course, and ends on Easter), with pictures (at least, the Holiday Edition I read had illustrations) and a simple, easy-to-follow storyline, uncomplicated by multiple plots. Not particularly long, either--this copy has 72 pages, some of which are a full illustration on one side and blank on the other--so a few hours' of reading will likely be all you need.

Book 45, Signing Their Lives Away, is nearly done and I hope to have it finished before July 4.

Book 45 is actually Color Treasury of Butterflies & Moths by Michael Tweedie, though "by" is relative, as much of the book is big color photos of the said Lepidoptera. There is an introduction to the Lep family, and the photos are organized by families, with descriptions and identification of the examples provided. This is a great book...if you want to look at pictures. It's not going home with me (another lunch break read) because many of these species aren't found in my region and I have a couple of other books at home that have nicer pictures (the book was published in 1972, so it's as old as I am) of foreign species. Also due to the age of this book (presumably--maybe it was just incomplete or bad research), the information about the monarch butterflies' migration/hibernation is a bit wrong; they mention Florida rather than Mexico as the wintering spot. I'd only recommend this book for the pretty pictures now, especially for kids, who won't care about the dated aspects. It also could be good for artists looking for models, as the pictures tend to be pretty big and close to the specimens (some mounted, some alive and in the wild).

I only have about 3-5 signers now to cover, I think, and the supplemental stuff at the back, and then book 46, Signing Their Lives Away, will be finished (I promise!).

Book 46: Signing Their Lives Away by Denise Kiernan: This is like a collection of short, 3-4 page biographies about each person who signed the Declaration of Independence. I'm not going to go into specifics, because that would be like spoilers, but it goes into the basics of each person's life, and at the back of the book includes the Declaration of Independence and some fun trivia, like which signers were foreign-born and which signed more than one founding document. Yes, I have been known to read nonfiction that doesn't involve disease, death, and poisoning...oh, wait...uh...strike that. Because all of these and more can be found in the book. Did you know that one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was poisoned by his own nephew? And several died from diseases, of course, because we're talking about the 17- and 1800s, and medicine wasn't what it is today back then. (It was amazing to learn about how many signers suffered from gout aside from Benjamin Franklin.) And did Caesar Rodney actually ride eighty miles in one night? Everyone knows Richard Henry Lee made the official resolution for independence, but did you know he only had six fingers? And what about his brother, Francis "Lightfoot" Lee? Out of all the signers, only one officially voted against independence in the end--know who that was?

History buffs who like trivia may like this--or they may find that they know all of these stories already. As I said, the book doesn't go into any one person's life in depth, so this information may be famous and well-documented--or it may be famous and well-documented only in that signer's state. Many of these stories were new to me, but then this isn't a typical read for me, and I like my history more ancient as a general rule--the deader the better, I say. But it was an enjoyable read, and I'm passing it on to my older sister, who's the American history buff.

Book 47: Crazy English: The Ultimate Joy Ride Through Our Language by Richard Lederer is similar to his Anguished English books in that it gives delightful, amusing examples, but this time he focuses on words, not phrases and sentences that are misconstrued. This book explores words from all angles: words that have changed their meanings over time, words that look like they should mean something totally different from what they do, palindromes, anagrams, weird past tenses and plural nouns, figures of speech, etc. While I didn't find it as funny as his others, I did find it more interesting--Lederer does more examining of words in their various incarnations than of just providing funny examples of English language gaffes. Instead, he gets you to think, even in the more "nonsensical" sections like the chapter where he "visits" Farmer Pluribus, who takes regular plural nouns and makes them into irregular nouns on the grounds that there are no longer "irregular" plural nouns, with confusing results. (If the plural of man is men, then the plural of pan is pen, for instance. Though I like "foxen" as the plural of fox.) Those who like word play will like Lederer's books in general, including this one.

Book 48: The Bone Wars by Kathryn Lasky: Lasky is known for her young adult historical fiction (read Beyond the Burning Time if you're into the Salem witchcraft trials), for creating fictional characters that fit in well with historical ones. In this case, the time is the 1870's, the place America's west, and it interweaves certain events of our nation's past into the story, including General Custer's famous last stand at Little Bighorn. But for the most part, the story focuses on the down-and-dirty ways of the early paleontologists excavating dinosaur bones on the American frontier. While Lasky shies away from actual historical paleontologists, she does admit to blending characteristics of real ones to create the heads of the teams, led by men from Harvard and Yale from America, and a team of British paleontologists.

Thaddeus Longsworth is orphaned at an early age, and when he's given a job to work for his hero, Mr. Jim Dundee, on his cattle drive, Thad jumps at the chance and learns to hone his seemingly natural tracking and scouting abilities. But Mr. Jim never makes it to the end of the drive; after the death of his employer, Thad learns that some wealthy men from the east are coming out west and will need a guide. Though his first attempt doesn't pan out, he's given the advice to seek out William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, who then sends Thad with a letter of recommendation to Fort Abraham Lincoln to meet with General George Custer, who often goes out with the "bone men", as the native Americans call the paleontologists. Thad becomes a part of the Harvard team, and from there on, he learns the art and science of digging up delicate fossils. Thad and his counterpoint, Julian DeMott, son of the head of the British team, become tangled up in the tricks and schemes that the teams use to try to undermine the competition. When Thad and Julian meet and find out that they have the similar view of what should be done with the fossils--sharing them with the world rather than locking them up in institutions where only the experts can see them--they start their own dig site on the sly. But when one of the teams starts escalating the war into something far more dangerous than before, Thad and Julian must decide where their loyalties lie.

A good YA historical novel for any aspiring paleontologist, and with virtually all the characters being masculine (sorry, ladies, but paleontology was traditionally a man's field of study at that time), this probably should have some great appeal for boys. Some violence is involved here, and there are deaths, but the language is clean and there's no sexual situations, either (in fact, there's no romance, as the story stays focused on the digs and fossils).

>92 CassieBash: Lederer is a local here in San Diego--I remember listening to him on the local PBS station before his show got syndicated nationally, taking calls with questions. He actually had a partner at that point--they made quite a tag team.

>94 ronincats: Yes, Lederer was (is? not sure what he's published recently) a prolific writer about the English language. We still have a couple of his works on our shelves; I merely took off the less scholarly, more frivolous (more fun?) books. Unfortunately, since we don't have a class anymore about the history and development of the English language, we haven't had much call for these kinds of books. Sad, since language is actually pretty interesting and fun to read about (provided you get a great author to do it, of course). Bet he is fun to listen to!

>92 CassieBash: Richard Lederer's books sound innerestin....

>96 fuzzi: He'd like that; probably has a whole book on dialects. My new work nonfiction is ironically on a similar topic, not dialects but rather foreign words that are untranslatable in simple one or two English words. Like samizdat, a Russian word for "underground dissident writing". I'll be getting a small sample of words from Spain, France, Hungary, Russia, Persia, Arabia, China, Japan, and more. It's not a thick book but we're picking up here, with lots of lunchtime ID creation going on, so it may take me a bit to finish. But it promises to be an interesting read, and I'm only halfway through the introduction.

Book 49: So Cold the River by Michael Koryta: Most supernatural horror stories have a body count that's astronomical, that adds up throughout the story as the monster/demon/alien/ghost/whatever maims/claims/eats/whatever the characters in the story until all you have left is the main hero and/or heroine. Not so with this one. The story focuses on Eric Shaw, a washed up film cameraman who got blacklisted by Hollywood and now does compilation videos for funerals in the Chicago area. He has a knack for it, especially as he gets psychic impressions about what photos or video footage is especially important. When he's hired by Alyssa Bradford to make a documentary about her husband's family who came fromFrench Lick, Indiana, for an extremely large amount of money, he takes the job, seeing it as easy money. Problem is, the husband's father is dying and the only other known relative is Josiah Bradford, a surly and uncooperative man with a nasty temper. Armed with an old bottle of Pluto Water, a tonic made from spring water common in French Lick, which had been in the Bradford family for decades, Eric goes to Indiana to see what he can find. But he's tasted the water, and it brings visions of the past to him, and he glimpses the evil of Campbell Bradford, the man behind murders and bloodshed in the French Lick area during the time of Prohibition. Of course, Eric becomes tangled in the history of the Bradford family and realizes that Campbell is becoming more and more real, and must try to stop him before he "comes home".

While there are supernatural horror elements to this book, it also reads a bit like an historical mystery, with much more complex plot than the brief bit I've put in up there. There's a question as to who the real Campbell Bradford is--while Alyssa's husband's father is old, he's not as old as the Campbell Bradford people in French Lick remember. There's also the question of the water--the bottle Alyssa gives Eric in Chicago has water different from other old Pluto Water samples, both in the way it effects Eric's visions and in taste. The characters are wonderfully real and the reader (this was an audio version) did a good job with inflection. My only complaint with the audiobook was that at times the sound effects in the background could be distracting--though the violin piece was utilized well, as a violin player from the past is very important to the story, and the haunting melody is perfect for the mood. (In fact, at the end of the recording, the author notes that the violin piece used was written and performed by a Bloomington, Indiana man and that he'd heard the piece before writing the book, and felt that it needed a story.) There are adult situations and language, and of course there is violence (though not as much as in some horror stories I've read), and the audience is definitely for adults, not children. But this isn't your typical slasher horror--more like the old-fashioned, psychological horror stories--and I enjoyed it immensely. I've often felt that a lot of horror overemphasizes the gore and not the actual horror, going more for shock value than true fear, but this book does a nice job at giving chills (but not too many too quickly) based more on situation than gore.

Book 50: Where the Germs Are: A Scientific Safari by Nicholas Bakalar is a look at the various places we go to and the risk for infection. For the most part, this book is reassuring in that many places (including New York's subways) are cleaner and safer than you might think. And that the most effective way to protect yourself is to wash your hands with soap and hot water--not antibacterial soap, unless your job requires it, because the author recognizes the studies that show our overuse of antibiotics and antibacterials has led to resistant diseases. From the kitchen (the dirtiest room in your home) to cruise ships (the CDC has a voluntary inspection program; you can get the results of inspections of cruise ships here. Drinking water, laundry, commercial airline flights, even the salon get a section or chapter in this book (think twice about using the foot baths in salons, or find out if they clean it thoroughly and regularly). He has advice about your hospital stay (before any staff member touches you, ask if they've washed their hands first) and swimming. I found the chapter on bottled and tap water to be most informative, as it goes into labeling as well as health impacts (little to none) of bottled water. There's a chapter devoted to sexual diseases, and one devoted to pets. He devotes the entire last chapter to looking at the antibacterial claims--many of which are overstatements and marketing ploys, of course--and this too was a very interesting chapter; I had no idea what agencies are responsible for what segments of oversight, particularly of the marketing, and what claims manufacturers can and cannot make regarding antibacterial products. The author has done considerable research, and the notes at the end of the book cite his sources, which is always nice to see in a work of nonfiction. However, like most books on diseases, there are some disturbing descriptions of what the various diseases can do, and their mortality rate if left untreated, so it might be disturbing to some, particularly if you're a mysophobe (person afraid of germs). For the layman interested in knowing more about the diseases and ways we can reduce our exposure and know your risks, then it's a great read.

So after checking to see where I am compared to last year, I'm about a month behind (Books 50 & 51 were finished in the last week of June). However, several things account for this difference:

1) I'm reading longer books (even the young adult novels have been, on the whole, longer than last year's).
2) I think I've read more nonfiction than last year--and I read nonfiction more carefully than fiction, as a general rule.
3) I'm doing more reading as opposed to audiobooks.

As far as helping with my ultimate goal--to read through the stacks of books I've not yet read--this year I think I am about at the same point. This is due in part to two things:

1) Reading longer books and more nonfiction slows me down.
2) I keep getting more books!

This last one is, of course, the kicker. Especially since we're just coming off of a book sale at work, where I've a bag of books sitting by my side that I plan on buying. The good news? Half are classics that didn't sell and are going straight to my boyfriend's shop for resale, and of the other half, only a couple are books that are "reading" titles; the rest are reference (a needlepoint how-to, an identification guide or two, etc.). But it is amazing how many books can fit in a standard-sized paper grocery bag when you're determined to fill one....

Book 51: Merlin's Mistake by Robert Newman: Merlin gave young Tertius a gift--the gift of all knowledge. At least, that's what the blessing was supposed to be. What really happened was that Merlin gave him the gift of all future knowledge, and he decides to go on a quest to find a wizard who can help him learn magic, hoping this will help him use his knowledge of future knowledge. On his way, he meets Brian, a bored lad who's knightly father is presumed dead, never having returned from the Crusades, and who now seeks only to go on a quest himself. The two team up and, on the way, encounter a town plagued by the Black Knight (isn't there always a "black knight" in these things?) who, Merlin once prophesied, can only be defeated by the Knight of the Red Shield. Despite this, Brian makes an effort to defeat the knight, but is unhorsed himself, and hurt. The king's daughter, Lianor, skilled in healing, helps him recover, and as Tertius and Brian continue their quest, they are joined by an old crone named "Maude", whose vague answers to their questions about why she's joining them leave more unanswered than before (but, as Tertius points out, most quests have an old man or woman involved). While the plot is simple and you know who's going to end up being the Knight of the Red Shield right away (I mean, come on, this is so obvious), it's a good book for a 5th grader and a good introduction to fantasy fiction for younger children as a read-aloud (no inappropriate language or adult themes).

2) I keep getting more books!

I think most of us have that same problem issue...

>101 fuzzi: Actually, I've been relatively good about that this year. I've been avoiding going into the public library (they have ongoing book sales there, just inside) unless I have to go, and I'm only walking away with one bag of books from our sale, and as I said, most of those are for Derek's store. I also have been fortunate to miss all the Muncie library sales when I visit him. Last year I picked up about two paper grocery bags full, on top of the two from Ancilla. So as you can see, I'm the very model of restraint. *snort, chuckle*

Book 52: This weekend, while not as hot and humid as last, was still much too warm for my taste, and I wasn't feeling well, so I did what any bibliophile would do: read. So I managed to get Book 51 done and book 52 well underway.

Oh my darlin', oh my darlin', oh my darlin', Clementine. You are lost and gone forever. Dreadful sorry, Clementine. Didn't ever think anyone would be able to come up with a story based just on this one song's refrain, but Kathryn Reiss did. Book 52 was Dreadful Sorry, a young adult supernatural suspense (it never got to the point of horror in my opinion). Molly is a typical teen girl, with one year of high school to go. She's a good student, and though her parents are separated, she stays in contact with both, and she has her close friend, Kathi. But there's a catch, a small flaw in her otherwise happy life; she goes to a prestigious school where there's a swimming test required to graduate, and Molly has a phobia of the water. She doesn't really know why, but she also has bad dreams about a girl in an old-fashioned dress and braids, a mysterious hallway in a strange house, and a door from under which seeps blood. And then there's that song about the miner's daughter that she hears every so often, too. When Kathi's cousin, Jared, throws her into a pool at a mutual friend's party and she nearly drowns, he swears it was an accident, and that it was like he was possessed. Her lawyer mother urges her to take swimming lessons but instead she flees to her father's Maine house--which has a hallway identical to the one in her dreams. As her dreams start taking over her waking life, she finds herself "becoming" Clementine and watching her story unfold. Her father says it's a haunting and that Clementine wants something done so she can be at peace; her stepmother thinks it's reincarnation and that Clementine is looking for a second chance to "get things right this time". Either way, it's clear to Molly that Clementine will continue to haunt her, unless she can figure out a way to help Clementine....

Definitely young adult; there are a couple of words inappropriate for younger readers (although not too many and not too bad, really--I've come across far worse in YA novels), and there's some heavy romance, although no sex. But there is a heaviness in the material, which deals with responsibility and independence (and how far you'll go to get it). Clementine was not a nice person and used a lot of people without a second thought to try to get what she wanted, with disastrous results. Molly is, fortunately, much more likeable, as is her love interest Jared, and the book reads almost more like a supernatural mystery than a horror, even when events in current times start running parallel to the past.

Book 53: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling, Jack Thorne, and John Tiffany: This is actually a script book for the play, so it was a very quick read. Most of it was dialogue, with only enough description so that you could more or less envision what was going on up on stage and/or in the aisle. Harry is now 40, his young son Albus Severus has befriended a fellow Slytherin (yes, Albus is a Slytherin)--and not just any Slytherin, but Scorpius, the son of Draco Malfoy. Albus and Scorpius both have issues with their father, and Scorpius--well, rumor has it that he's the son of Voldemort. After overhearing a conversation between Amos Diggory and his father, Albus becomes convinced that he should steal the only known Time Turner still in existence--Hermione, the Minister of Magic, has ordered the destruction of all others--and go back in time to keep Cedric from being successful in the TriWizard Tournament so that he will survive. He, Scorpius, and Amos Diggory's niece go back to stop Cedric from doing well in the first task, and when that fails to save Cedric, Albus and Scorpius go back again to make him fail the second. This changes events significantly, and they have to set things back to the way they were.

I found it way to easy to figure out what was going on (though I won't say more--I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum). But I will say that I wonder how much of this was Rowling's work v. the other two; while the Harry Potter series was complex, with hidden villains and unexpected twists along the way, this one seemed almost painfully obvious as to what was going on. It didn't seem up to her usual complexity and it lacked the mystery of the novels--but that might be because this is a play and it can't be a five hour epic. Still, I yearned for the in-depth character development, the plot twists, the hidden villain. I am a bit ambivalent--even now, almost 24 hours after finishing it and having time to reflect, I'm not sure if I liked it, didn't like it, or am just "eh" about it. I've read some really good scripts--if you get a chance to read Making Ghostbusters go for it, the comments written by Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, and others are well worth it--but this is a straightforward script that sometimes leaves you wanting to know more about what the characters are feeling and doing. But Harry Potter die-hards probably should give it a try, because though I am an uber-fan, I might be a bit more critical than some, who may well find the book an excellent post-script to the series.

Book 54: Indiana Folklore: A Reader edited byLinda Degh is a book lent to me by an Ancilla College faculty member, who knew I'd enjoy reading about such things. This takes folklore beyond just the ghost stories (although there are some in there, including Indianapolis's House of Blue Lights, Lawrence County's Big Tunnel, and the chain that appears on the tombstone of Floyd Pruett in Bond's Chapel Cemetery, among others. But this is a sampler of lots of different kinds of folklore, including using string measurement to cure "short growth" (some would call it failure to thrive), a seer named Betty Weeks in Porter County, and even information on less ethereal folklore (more like folk skills) such as Parke County's covered bridges, the art of building stone walls, and the art of quilting. Certainly, if any of these cross into your areas of interest, go ahead and track down a cheap copy if possible, or try to borrow through inter-library loan, to read those sections interesting to you. I was fascinated by pretty much all of it, though the technical aspects of building bridges and stone walls was a little dry for me; certainly the reasons behind the buildings, and the comparison of styles of the builders, was much more interesting. Recommended especially for Indiana history buffs who might want to expand into more sociological areas of history; even the ghost legends and the string measurement stuff was written more as studies than as retellings of the legends, as these are reprints from issues of the Indiana Folklore: Journal of the Hoosier Folklore Society, so this is more scholarly than the usual folklore books I post, which tend only to retell the stories and not go into the reasons why these stories are so popular, as this book does.

Book 55: A Coalition of Lions by Elizabeth E. Wein: The Princess of Britain, Goewin, is betrothed to the British ambassador to Aksum (an African nation), Constantine. When her father, the High King Artos and his son Llew are killed in battle, and his other son, Medraut, vanishes into thin air, Goewin finds herself a target of her politically ambitious aunt, Morgause, and so journeys with her ambassador from Aksum, Priamos, to make arrangements for her marriage to Constantine. Constantine, however, is far from a perfect match for her, and his own political ambition rankles her. He accuses Priamos of being a traitor to him, as Priamos's brother was, and treats him harshly, much to Goewin's displeasure. They fight over everything regarding the rule of Britain. Goewin does have some cards she can play; there's Medraut's son, Telemakos, who she could set in place as High King instead of Constantine. She could marry someone else and therefore start a new line for Britain's rule. But all the cards she can play have risks, and Constantine has a few of his own in hand.

This book is not the end of the story, I think, but rather the beginning (or maybe the middle?). While it can be a standalone, it does have a sequel. It's historical fiction--the author has attempted to stay true to what is known of the relations between Britain and Aksum at the time--but as she points out, this is a work of fiction and there are a lot of historical holes about the people that she could play with. It's a complex story with no fantasy elements in it, so Arthurian fans of knights questing for the Holy Grail, or Arthur's struggles with Morgan LaFay, or Merlin casting spells, won't be in this story. It's a sound story, however, with complex characters that are believable--some you like, some you don't. There are no true "villains", just political machinations. If you like historical fiction of the ancient world, this should be a good read, particularly as this area of the world (most of the book takes place in Aksum) doesn't seem to be written about in historical fiction very often. I liked the book well enough but not so much that I feel compelled to read the next one in the series, but then again, straight historical fiction, like straight romance, isn't my cup of tea. There was just enough intrigue to keep me hooked, but not so much that I'll go out of my way to get a copy of the sequel, not when I've got so many other books lying around demanding to be read.

A note about the Muncie Public Library bag sale this past Sunday: I went. I bought. In fact, out of the 55 books listed here, most went to Derek's shop, a couple were loaners, at least one I passed on to a family member. I probably, in that one day and within only a couple of hours, have physically replaced just about all the books that I had taken to Derek's over the course of the year so far. So much for progress, huh? :)

...our public library is having a 50 cent sale on September 10th and 11th...

>106 fuzzi:. Be strong. Or weak. Whatever your preference. ;) Unlike my bag sale, where I've standardized the size of a bag, Muncie lets you bring your own. I've got these big ones that I used; you can fit a lot in a standard grocery store paper bag, let alone a huge cloth book bag. And for $3 a bag, I got my money's worth. Not that I wouldn't be tempted to go to yours if I lived closer....

But that brings me to Book 56: The Dragons of Spratt, Ohio by Linda Zinnen: John Salt, his mother, and his father work at the Wilds, a wildlife preserve (based on the real Wilds--the International Center for the Preservation of Wildlife--outside of Zanesville, Ohio, the author's home town). Things at the Wilds have been even more wild since the mother dragon decided to use the edge of the preserve--deserted coal land left to the Wilds--as her wheyr for her eggs, laid at the end of her lifespan. Nine baby dragons is a lot to care for, but Salt seems to manage--until his Aunt Mary Athena comes to town. Her interest in the dragons has far less to do with their beauty than her own, and John has a sneaky suspicion his aunt is up to no good.

Another youth fantasy chapter book, a great read aloud unless your child can't handle a little gore. One of the dragons meets a rather nasty end at the hands of John's aunt, who has figured out that dragon blood might just be the hottest new anti-age cream, if she can work out a way around that pesky side effect. She's the make-up world's version of Cruella DeVille. The book has a strong message about how we sometimes slaughter or abuse animals just to experiment on for our own vanity.

Book 57: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is the true story of the author's battle with a life-threatening illness and how a single snail (at least to start with) gave her the strength to continue living. When she becomes ill, a friend digs up a wild violet and plants it in a pot, and adds a live snail. The author's observations and, later, research into the habits and lives of snails runs parallel to her experiences with her illness, which keeps her prone and bedridden. She comes to know the snail as a species but also as an individual, and respect for such a small and seemingly insignificant creature, whose life provides her with gems of wisdom and helps teach her patience and fortitude. Packed with so much information on snails but delivered in a story-like way, it's hard to believe how much you've learned about these little critters until after you reflect on what you've read. The book gives at the end a bit of information on her illness, but the focus of the book always remains on the snail; despite the fact that the author is in a crippling state of health, the book is far from depressing because of that focus. Instead, it's a celebration of the "slow" life--though anyone who has observed snails will know that "slow" is a relative term, when taking into consideration their size.

I do love animal non-fiction, but it can be a bit dry, loaded down with facts presented in a lecture style. This book avoids that. I would suggest this book to anyone who might want to give animal non-fiction a try but who doesn't tend to like non-fiction because of the "just the facts" presentation, or to anyone who might want to learn about basic snail behavior, diet, reproduction, and their ecological niche.

It's a two book day! I've just finished, after a lengthy break from it, Book 58: In Other Words: A Language Lover's Guide to the Most Intriguing Words around the World by Christopher J. Moore. This was yet another linguistic gem from our collection that, sadly, holds little value regarding our current curriculum and therefore got the axe. But what value to the language-lover! Despite taking a prolonged break from lunchtime reading--I find it difficult to read when I'm getting up every 3-5 minutes or so to make an ID--I did get back to it now that things have settled and lunches are quiet again (relatively speaking). This book is a collection of words and phrases from many different languages that don't have convenient, direct translations. Some of the words are more or less familiar--tao, schmuck, potlatch--but have a deeper or slightly more defined meaning than that which our sometimes woefully inadequate English language can convey easily, and some may be totally unfamiliar. Each "chapter" gives a brief background into the language from which the selected words come from, so that the reader has a bit of understanding about how the culture shaped the language. A selection of words from various languages found in this book are:

"horripiler"--basically, French for something so terrible it makes your hair stand on end
"drachenfutter"--the German word that, literally, means "dragon fodder" but really stands for the gift a husband gives to his wife asking forgiveness for a transgression
"gagung"--Chinese word for a man who isn't likely to marry due to their now skewed gender ratio in their country
"sluagh"--a word I first heard in the video game Soul Reaver, in the game it's the spirits of the dead, in the Gaelic, it's...the spirits of the dead
"pic so orite"--Creole for "to poke the octopus" literally, but apparently, poking an octopus translates most closely for us as rising to meet a challenge

There are very nice and elaborate woodcut illustrations, created by Neil Packer, scattered throughout, giving the book a fittingly folksy feel (say that fast a few times, eh?). Written with a humor that still conveys respect--even admiration and awe--for the various languages' words, this book was loads of fun for those who appreciate words and phrases, no matter the language. There are a few words here that are "colorful"--schmuck is literally translated as a part of the male anatomy--so be prepared for the occasional "naughty" word.

>109 CassieBash: I love words, will put this one on my list TBR...

Book 59: Crystal Rain by Tobias S. Buckell: John DeBrun doesn't remember anything prior to his being washed up on the shores of Brungstun, a village-town along the coast of Nanagada, a country on an Earth-like planet where, legends say, the ancestors of the current population came from to escape persecution and tyranny on Earth. Most of Nanagadu's citizens are peaceful, coexisting in agrarian and fishing societies, with the exception of the "big city", Capitol City, which is slightly more advanced technologically. They have blimp-like airships, steam-powered ships, and the like, while everyone else relies on basic boats, ox or horse carts, or just plain walking. It seems idyllic, and it would be, except for the threat of the Azteca, a war-like society thus far kept at bay from the rest of the world because of the Wicked Highs, a mountain chain that separates the northern peninsula from the rest of the continent, except for a narrow pass guarded by a skilled fighting group known as mongoose-men. The Azteca and their bloodthirsty gods, the Teotl, want to conquer these people, enslave or sacrifice them, and bring glory to their gods while defeating the gods of Capitol City, the Loa.

For those familiar with South American and Haitian mythology and/or anthropology, theTeotl, and theLoa should sound pretty familiar. While viewed as gods by most of the people in the book, it's revealed that these "gods" are merely alien races (or one race split into two different evolutions and alignments). The best description of the genre that I can come up with is a multicultural fantasy/sci-fi/steampunk thing. It was bloody and gory in places--the Azteca certainly take their human sacrifices seriously, just as the Aztec civilization once did--and of course war is never tidy and clean. I wouldn't recommend this for a young audience, of course, but it's certainly enjoyable--or at least interesting--for adult readers of this genre. A note about the steampunk thing: while the technology of the blimps and ship is steam powered, the technology isn't in the forefront, so don't expect the author to go all-out with descriptions of how these work or that the characters are always using them. The people on the planet are mainly plain folks trying to live their lives while under the threat of war. That being said, I loved the multicultural references and could truly imagine these people having come from Earth, bringing elements of their old culture with them. The names of the towns practically shout the ethnicities of the people who must have settled there originally. Not a keeper for me, as I don't think I'll re-read it, so anyone interested in this can look for it soon at the White Rabbit Used Bookstore in Muncie, Indiana.

Book 60: Between Two Ends by David Ward is a children's fantasy about the (literal) magical world of books. What if you could wish yourself into any story you wanted to, to be a part of that world? Shari and her friend William find a way to do just that, only Shari doesn't just want to be in the world, she wishes to be a specific character. Shari wishes to become Shaharazad, the female protagonist of the overarching story behind The Arabian Nights, but of course once she becomes the character, she begins to forget who she is in the world outside of the story. Her friend William has to return (or literally lose his head). This is backstory; William has grown and married but has been battling depression and the growing suspicion of insanity regarding her disappearance from this world. He brings his wife and son, Yeats, to the place where Shari disappeared--his mother's house--to find that Shari's grandfather is now living there, too. Shari's grandfather is insistent that Yeats is the one who will rescue Shari from the book--a declaration that confuses and frightens Yeats, who has no idea about the backstory and simply wants his mother and father to reconcile their differences over this issue. When Yeats finds a pirate bookend in the garden and catches the pirate moving when he reunites the pair, he's told he can wish himself into the story. Is this his chance to save Shari? To do so, he has to remind her of who she is, and convince her that she wants to break the original wish with all her heart. A tall order when you've never met the girl and she can't remember her past life....

Good read-aloud adventure book for both boys and girls; there's enough action and suspense to keep kids interested while not overshadowing the main plot. Kids will love how Yeats wheedles answers to his questions from Skin the pirate, by trading him an insult for an answer, round for round. One nice thing is that while Yeats has the main adventure, Shari's grandfather ends up helping at the end--a children's book where not only the children are strong protagonists, but also at least one adult (though Gran doesn't get involved directly, you have to admire her spunk and charisma, even if just as an onlooker). One thing I like about the title is the multiple way you can interpret the title: between the two end covers of a book, between two (book)ends, or between two endings of two very different stories--the one in The Arabian Nights and the one that would be the ends of their own stories, their own lives.

Book 61: Sword of the Rightful King by Jane Yolen: Two for one weekend! Hip hip huzzah! I almost had three because I'm nearly done with my audiobook as well, but I'm not quite there yet. Give me another day....

You can't go wrong with Jane Yolen has been my general appraisal of her work, as she steeps her stories in all sorts of folklore--and Arthurian legend is easily one of her favorites. This is a YA novel about the legend of the Sword in the Stone and how it came to be. The mage Merlinnus comes to the realization that in order to get all of Britain to back Arthur as the "once and future king", he must devise a way to make it seem as if fate has had a hand. He creates the sword and stone as a trick to allow him to control who can pull it, creates the message on the stone about how the man who can pull the sword from the stone will be High King of Britain, and decides to spread the rumor around and let all the schemers and would-be king wanna-be's have a try before Arthur (with aid from Merlin's magic) pulls it free. But the evil North Queen, Morgause, wishes to put one of her sons on the throne--so that she can rule from behind the scenes. She wants Arthur and Merlin dead, and it may be that the only thing standing between their deaths and the failure of Merlinnus's scheme is a young boy named Gawen, who has mysteriously shown up shortly after the arrival of four of Morgause's sons, including Gawaine, of whom Gawen seems to be scornful. With an unknown assassin lose, ready to kill Arthur, and Morgause's plotting and planning, there's no shortage of political intrigue and suspense. There are a couple of times when language (the two "b" words, and maybe reference to Hell--I can't remember that last one) may make some parents hesitate--that's up to your discretion, of course. There are allusions to nighttime meetings between knights and women of various social standings, but nothing explicit and it's not even brought up in a direct manner, just winks and suggestions. Morgause also uses less-than-savory items for her magic spells, which are very black and therefore involve things such as human body parts and dead animals, so this isn't a suitable read-aloud for younger children with squeamish streaks.

Both books were good, but if I were to choose one over the other, definitely go with Yolen. Character development is awesome, showing Arthur not as the confident, bold knight many picture him as but as a doubtful king, always wondering if someone more deserving of the crown was out there, and fully acknowledging that the only reason he sits the throne is because Merlinnus desires it. Merlin is wise but not all-knowing and his over-confident at times, under-confident at others. Gawaine's struggles with his family and his rejection of his mother's control while at the same time his acceptance of Arthur make him a likeable character, though Gawen's reservations make you question Gawaine's noble and gallant appearance. If your young adult is ready to tackle a simple introduction to this aspect of the Arthurian legend, it's a good beginning and might help get them hooked on more complex books on the same subject.

Book 62: Uprooted by Naomi Novik: Corruption. The very word sends fear to everyone in the land, especially for the ones living in the valley where the source of the corruption--the Wood--exists. But the people in the valley's villages have come to terms with the Wood, even though people still are taken by the mysterious Walkers, or even just breathing in pollen from the twisted Heart Trees. But of more immediate concern to Agnieszka and the people of the valley is that the Dragon, the wizard who lives in the Tower in their valley and who helps hold back the Wood and the corruption from it, is coming to choose a girl to take back with him to the Tower. Everyone knows it's going to be beautiful, graceful Kasia. She's been preparing for this practically her whole life, and so has Agnieszka, who's about to lose the best friend she's ever had. And she does, but not because the Dragon takes Kasia away. He chooses her instead. His choice confuses and astounds everyone, not least of all Agnieszka herself, who is clumsy, plain, and frankly seems to draw dirt and dust and picks in her skirts like a magnet. All she does is seem to annoy the Dragon, who begins to teach her magic, and she realizes that this was why he had chosen her--not for her looks or grace as he'd chosen other girls in the past, but for her magical abilities hidden inside. But his type of magic, stiff and formal, isn't her type of magic, and when she begins to follow the spells in an old book the Dragon has shrugged aside as worthless, a book penned by no less than Baba Yaga, with great success, the Dragon is forced to reconsider how to teach her. While he uses incantations, she uses music. But put together, the spells they can do are more powerful and pure than apart. But events begin to spiral out of their control when Agnieszka hears that Kasia has been taken into the Wood by Walkers, and is even now becoming a corrupted Heart Tree. When Agnieszka frees Kasia and gets the Dragon's help to rid her of corruption, word spreads that the Wood has suffered a defeat, and Prince Marik, whose mother the Queen has been trapped in a Heart Tree for years, demands their help in freeing her. But once free, is she truly rid of corruption? Or does something darker lurk under the hard, wooden skin?

A great story with a very Old World feel, not made less by the Russian and other Eastern European folk references. The type of magic Agnieszka uses hearkens back to hedge witches in medieval Europe. This is a well-crafted story in fairy/folk tale tradition, with wonderful characters and a complex plot. In fact, the ending had a satisfying, though not predicable, source of the ultimate corruption. Good for mature young adults--there is a sex scene and some language parents may object to--and adults who never outgrew fairy tales. I will caution that I personally didn't care for the reader, not because of the Eastern European/Russian accent (affected or not, I couldn't tell), but because of her inflections and unusual pauses. There were times I thought she'd finished a sentence because the pause went on longer than the comma, and other times when the pause just seemed to come from out of the blue. My sister Kerri asked if that was because maybe the reader really was Russian and was trying to think about complex words before attempting them, but this wasn't the case in a lot of places, where the pause would be before words like "and", "as such", etc. I doubt an audiobook company would hire a reader who would have such problems reading these words--and in any case, she had no problems with far more complex ones. I acknowledge it could indeed be a cultural thing, if she was actually from an Eastern European country. But to me, it seemed disjointed, choppy. But the story was so good, I listened despite that, and at least the reader was loud and clear enough that I could understand what she was saying, even over road noise--which is more than can be said for some readers I've experienced.

>112 CassieBash: I've read several of Jane Yolen's dragon books, and found them good. Uprooted sounds interesting.

>114 fuzzi: Uprooted was mentioned in last month's (or was it this month's?) popular requested review books on LT. I can understand why. As you know, I love folklore and the last two reads were both heavily steeped in this (granted, one was Arthurian legend and one was Russian, but still both were pretty good about maintaining the basics of the original lore while crafting an original story). My current read is also drawn from folklore, this one from the legend of the Flying Dutchman, but it's waaayyy off base on any legends I'd heard connected to it. Still, it's a fun (and funny) read--very British humor.

Book 63: Flying Dutch by Tom Holt: While a story about the cursed, ghostly ship the Flying Dutchman sounds like it should be a horror story, this is anything but. Tom Holt is a British author with a typical British sense of humor. At times his writing reminded me of a couple of other great British comedy authors, including Terry Pratchet and Douglas Adams. Who knew that the entire global financial status could be in jeopardy because of an immortal sea captain's life insurance policy, or that you could make such a great comparison between banks and socks? Ah, but that is the case in this modern (OK, late 1980s-early 1990s) story about the ancient legend of the Flying Dutchman, who happens to be Vanderdecker, a Dutch sea captain from the 1500s whose unfortunate run-in with an alchemist's elixir that looked enticingly too much like rum transformed the captain and crew (and alchemist) into immortals. Unfortunately, there was one side effect, aside from the immortality, and that was The Smell. Potent enough to kill fish if they swam in the sea (as they did the first time it came on), The Smell plagues the drinkers of the elixir for seven years, only letting up for one month of each seven. During that month, the crew stocks up on as much food, drink (mostly alcoholic), books, games, and other non-electronic entertainment, because they'll all be stuck together on the ship, getting on each others' nerves, for another seven long and boring years. But then Vanderdecker reads an article about nuclear physics that excites him; it seems their alchemical friend, Montalban, has managed to control The Smell somehow; he's living and working around people, and he's big into nuclear physics? Could the solution to The Smell be tied to toxic waste? Should Vanderdecker take the offer that Jane, an accountant who Vanderdecker is beginning to actually enjoy having around, has given him to buy out his life insurance on behalf of the Great Sock? Will Sebastian ever stop trying to commit suicide by jumping from tall places as a way to get out of his humdrum existence? And what of the immortal guinea pig, the cat?

Extremely amusing, fans of British humor will feel right at home reading this book. The characters are good and the plot, while not fast-paced overall, keeps up a steady one and doesn't really get too slow, either.

Since I knew I was going to Derek's this Sunday and didn't have the time to likely finish any other book in my possible discard piles, I read a couple that I've not read before but were in my likely keep piles. Books 64 and 65 are William Sleator books, a favorite children's/YA author of mine. Of the two, the first was probably my favorite, though neither were as good as Interstellar Pig or The Beasties.

Book 64: The Test is a much different book than any other of his I've read to date so far--for one thing, there is nothing supernatural, and there are no quantum physics or time travel or any of that overtly science-fiction or fantasy elements that he usually has. Instead, this is obviously his take on what standardized testing will eventually become--and how it shapes our society. Think of this as a utopian fiction without a utopia. He doesn't even try to make the society look at all appealing. And it's all based on the one test that all public school seniors (private schools aren't required to administer this test) have to take, the XCAS. This test determines, regardless of how well you do in your actual classes, whether you graduate and can go to college to get a better life with a higher-paying job, or whether you end up working long and hard hours just to pay the rent and afford food. The test means everything, and not just to the students, but to the school administration and teachers, whose funding and job status are based on the scores. But the test is designed to set you up for failure, even as the teachers spend huge amounts of time teaching to the test--and especially so if you're an English Second Language student, or have a learning disability, or simply just have a little harder time in one area (like math or English) than another. On top of that, getting certain questions wrong sends a red flag to the test monitors that you could be potentially dangerous, and you could end up in jail. So when Ann, a senior struggling to prepare for the XCAS, discovers that the most rich and influential man in the country, Mr. Warren, owns the company that makes the test and gives out answers to bribe desperate people into doing illegal things for him, she sets out to bring down the test.

Not being a fan of overdone standardized testing myself, I was right there with him. Indiana has had ISTEP for years and it seems that they're finally getting rid of it--but it sounds like it'll just be replaced with more standardized testing. I personally would like to see more project-based assessment of learning, even at the K-12 level. There's just too much emphasis on passing test after test anymore, and I know school systems where that "teaching to the test" does happen a lot.

Book 65: The Phantom Limb is much more like Sleator's usual story--in this case a supernatural one. Isaac's mother is in the hospital and seems to be getting worse rather than better, and he begins to suspect the doctor might have something to do with it. Isaac's passion is illusions, particularly optical ones--and he has several in his collection, including a spiral aftereffect and a Menger sponge. But he finds a new one, a mirror box, in his new home. This box has mirrors on the side and was invented for helping patients with phantom limb syndrome. Isaac finds it cool that he can create a "third" arm in the box and what it does to his senses. But then a third arm really does appear--while he has both his arms already in the box! This one operates independently of his and seems to be sending him messages, trying desperately to communicate with him. Isaac is frightened and gets more so as he pieces together that the limb is trying to tell him something's not right at the hospital--and that his mother could be in danger. Can he trust the arm he sees in the mirror box? How can he help get his mom out of the hospital, even with his grandfather helping?

This one had places where I found it a bit unbelievable (even in the context of having a phantom hand); there are a couple of scenes where a group of hospital workers grab Isaac and give him a procedure (and endoscopy and MRI), saying the orders were given from "higher up", but they don't go through normal channels, they don't question anything. As a kid, you probably wouldn't think about this, but unless your entire hospital is set up for sadists, you're not going to have a large group of hospital workers who blindly follow orders if something looks fishy. After all, nurse licensing boards don't take kindly to those who violate professional ethics--and the higher-up employees are in the same boat with their licensing boards. The one person who's responsible either has everyone by their proverbial throats--not likely, as she wants to keep quiet about what she's doing--or that hospital has to start doing better background checks on their staff. Still, younger children (this was not geared towards YA as the "Test" book was) probably won't think about this, and will find it suitably creepy. I loved the concept of the hand and the plot, but that one thing about the hospital staff just really seemed contrived.

I've got two others to post but will tackle those later.

Book 66: Cinnabar: The One o'Clock Fox is by a lady many fans of juvenile horse fiction should recognize, Marguerite Henry. Though she also wrote books about other animals, most notably dogs, she spent most of her time writing well-researched books on horses, usually specific ones, including the founding sire of the Morgan breed (Justin Morgan Had a Horse), the race horse Black Gold, and of course her famous Misty of Chincoteague and all the follow-up books to it. This is her only book about a fox as far as I can tell, and supposedly it, too, came from, if not fact, then legend. The legend states that General George Washington, an avid fox hunter, had a crafty adversary in a fox that always took his rounds every day around 1:00 PM, and lead the hunters on a merry chase. Whether true or not, Henry departs from her usual style and anthropomorphizes the animals, so that you follow Cinnabar's adventures from his point of view. Because of the human qualities of the foxes, her tried and true illustrator, Wesley Dennis, also had to slightly alter his style, so that Cinnabar at times stands on his hind legs and poses much like a human. It would be a good read-aloud for kids; the most violent thing that happens is that Cinnabar loses a toe, and it has a happy ending. If you're a first-time Henry reader and you liked this story as a read-aloud for your kids, keep in mind that this is different from many of her other works, some of which end badly for the animal or are disturbing in content (Mustang: Wild Spirit of the West is based strongly on the life of Wild Horse Annie, who was appalled at the roundup of wild horses and burros for slaughter in Nevada. As always, I recommend previewing her other books before starting a read-aloud session with your child, just in case. After all, you know what you child can handle and what they can't.

Book 67: Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman is a short book written much as a legend of fairy tale based on Norse mythology. Odd was always...well...odd, even though what his name really means is "the tip of a blade", but he's a quiet introvert given to deep thinking and much silent smiling--much to the chagrin and annoyance of everyone in the village. His father died at sea and his mother remarries, and during a year when the winter just keeps going on and on, Odd decides he's had enough of his stepfamily and leaves for his father's old cabin out in the wood, where he plans to camp. But he's no sooner eating his dinner than he spots a fox that clearly wants him to follow it. The fox leads him to a bear that's wedged between two trees and is stuck; Odd sets the bear free, expecting to be eaten. But the bear, the fox, and an eagle all follow him back to his cabin, where he shares what food he has with them and settles down to sleep. But during the night he's woken by voices; turns out the bear is Thor, the fox is Loki, and the eagle is Odin--all Norse gods that were tricked by a Frost Giant and who are now stuck in animal form. The Frost Giant has Thor's hammer and is what's causing the endless winter. Can Odd help Odin, Thor, and Loki regain their forms and end the endless winter?

Again, a good read-aloud, perfect for fans of fairy tales, mythology, and folklore.

>118 CassieBash: Cinnabar: the One O'Clock Fox is one I've not yet attemped, though I've most of the author's works that I've read.

I picked my copy up from a used bookstore in Chicago. (It was a neat place, but I confess I'm spoiled by my boyfriend's prices at--shameless plug--The White Rabbit Bookstore in Muncie, Indiana, where I can get used books for only a buck or two, depending on the title.) I may gift it to my younger sister, who's crazy about foxes.

>120 CassieBash: I would recommend two books about foxes:

The Running Foxes by Joyce Stranger

Red Fox by Charles G.D. Roberts

Thanks, I'll keep an eye out for those.

Cinnabar was one of my favorite books as a child--I reread it numerous times!

Book 68: Whispers from the Grave by Leslie Rule: Around this time, my thoughts turn to Halloween and horror stories (not that I don't read horror at other times of the year, too, but somehow it seems right in October). So I picked up this book thinking it sounded like a good supernatural thriller, if not a true horror story, or maybe just a good mystery. The back synopsis certainly didn't prepare me for the plot, which turns out to be more science fiction that supernatural. While there is a potential murder and it does have elements of both a murder mystery and a science fiction novel, ultimately the book's message is about family and belonging. Allow me to explain this rather convoluted book (hopefully without giving too much away)....

Jenna's family moves into an old house (built in 1870--and the setting of the book is 2070) her mother inherited. In the house's attic, Jenna and her friend Suki find a diary of a girl dead 100 years--Rita, a girl who looks almost exactly like Jenna, so much so that they could be sisters. Which is impossible, right, because Rita was murdered in 1970 by her boyfriend, Ben. Yet when Jenna is signed on at Twin Star Labs to do PK experiments (psychokinesis--moving and manipulating objects mentally, for those unfamiliar with the term) because they believe she has an innate ability, one of the workers lets slip that Jenna has a sister. Jenna begins an investigation that leads her to some astounding information--she is not the biological daughter of her mother, but rather was an embryo from Rita's parents, sold to the Twin Star Labs to be frozen for later implantation. She is indeed Rita's sister--and Rita herself had shown some extraordinary PK abilities. But bending a few paper clips isn't what the head of the lab's project has in mind; he's perfected a visor that will amplify Jenna's abilities and let her travel through time with just the power of her mind! While she's warned not to mess with the past, she is determined to use this power to go back into the past and save her sister Rita from Ben's drunken, murderous rage.

An interesting take on time travel, since the only machine needed is the visor that enhances a natural ability. The murder mystery comes in the form of Rita and Ben--did Ben actually do it? Or was someone else involved? Plus, as Jenna makes decisions and takes action in the past, she invariably changes the future, which she constantly worries about. Yet ethically, there were some choices that would be impossible to debate in any other situation--she ethically had an obligation regardless of the outcomes. And once in the past, Jenna feels torn about whether to return to her own time or stay put in the 1970s, where she was certain she belonged before she actually got there. But as she comes to realize that just because the woman who raised her isn't her biological mother, it doesn't mean that she didn't love her all the same.

Certainly not what I expected from the back, which only hints at the sister thing and doesn't mention PK, time travel, or even that the book takes place so far into the future. Wow. That was a lot to leave out! I can see how someone who might think from the synopsis that this is a murder mystery/thriller might be a little put-off (fortunately I don't mind sci-fi/fantasy crossovers into other genres). I thought it was a pretty unique book that did a pretty good job of incorporating so many different genre elements into one plot. Though I was half a step ahead of Jenna when it came to Rita's murder, it did keep me guessing for awhile. Those concerned that there would be ghosts or supernatural monsters can rest assured that there are not, so while it hinted at a ghost story on the back, it was far from it. It was also nice to see that Jenna came to appreciate the mother who raised her as she learned more about her biological mother, who is depicted as self-absorbed, even with Rita, whom she birthed. Not a keeper but worth a few days' read.

Book 69: Darkwood by M. E. Breen: WARNING! Some minor spoilers!! There's no way around it really, without being so vague you won't get a sense of anything or without quoting the back cover. I'll try not to give away too much.

Kinderstalk. The word is enough to send chills through the bravest and strongest of men. Night, when it falls across Howland, falls fast and dark. There is no moon, and only creatures that can see in the dark, including the dreaded kinderstalk, venture forth. Unless, of course, you find out that you're going to be sold to work at the Drop, a horrible mine where ringstone, the coin of the realm, is mined. When Annie overhears her aunt and uncle discussing selling her, she escapes into the night. Strangely, she realizes that no matter how dark it becomes, it seems as if she can see, at least a little, and the power gradually grows. She finds that many of the children she'd been told had been taken by kinderstalk have actually been sold to work at the Drop, and she helps her friend, Gregor, to escape. Or at least she hopes she has--they're separated in the attempt, and she's taken prisoner and put into a pit full of ringstone and currencies from other countries, too--and she realizes that Gibbet, the head of the operation, is holding back from the king, and worse, that he's planning on overthrowing the king to rule in his stead. She sees this as a two-fold opportunity--help the king maintain his crown, and inform the king about the horrible conditions at the mine, especially the conditions at the "orphanage", so she can shut the place down and keep Gregor safe. With the help of two cats, a pair of sisters as different from each other as night and day, and her own estranged sister, Annie must try to stop the building war to bring down the king, while learning about her own past and the strange kinship she--and her sister--have with kinderstalk. The book has a conclusion that's self-contained but also leaves it open, even hints at, a possible follow-up.

A great fantasy with some really dark characters (Gibbet has secret, twisted origins of his own) and moments, but not a true horror. (I've been striking out trying to pick out the true horror books from my pile, but I've shifted some titles around and think I have a few more "seasonal" ones on top. Though I'm beginning to get the urge to read The Halloween Tree, The October Country, Long after Midnight, or Something Wicked This Way Comes--true Halloween reading classics.) I'm on the fence about keeping this one; I can see myself re-reading it but shelf space is so limited. However, since it's not a classic like some of the other children's books I've weeded from my collection, knowing I can find copies easily at a library if the urge ever strikes me, I'm going to hold onto it for now as it may be difficult to track down again if I should change my mind. (Don't you just hate it when you say, "Oh, I'll come across it again?" and then it seems to disappear into the mists of literary obscurity? Grrr!)

Book 70: The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury: So I figured since our theme for the Halloween party this year is Dia de los Muertos, this was the appropriate Bradbury tale. For this book is partly the history of Halloween and partly the philosophy behind it, wrapped into a novel appropriate for (and sometimes marketed to) children and young adults. Through a quest that 8 boys go on, searching for the soul of their friend Pipkin through time and space, they uncover the origins of Halloween, from the myths of night killing day and winter killing summer, to the remembrance of the loved ones that have passed before us. Like the movie version, the focus is on Tom Skelton, dressed in his Halloween bones, and the history of harvest and death festivals in ancient Egypt, medieval England and France, and of course Mexico's Dia de los Muertos--the Day of the Dead. Always one of my favorites, Bradbury's imagery and poetical descriptions really shine here, and the book isn't too scary for most older kids, my biggest issue is a historical (OK, rather a mythical) one: Osiris was not as heavily linked to the sun as he was to the Nile, which was just as important--perhaps more so--to the start of the new year, as it was the annual flooding of the river most Egyptians anticipated. Still, though, the philosophical beginnings of our fears of death--the death of the sun, of the seasons, of ourselves--is a big part of this book and would be a good opener for discussion about mortality and remembrance.

Book 71: White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick is a quick teen read, horror in some ways but not in a supernatural way--though the book leads you to think that. It is more a psychological horror; the horror comes from what people can (and sometimes do) do to each other and the reasons why they do it. Some do horrible things in the name of "science", such as Dr. Barrieux, based on a real person and his own experiments (I won't disclose here who the real person was, or what his experiments were), and some do so because they are lost souls, such as the girl Ferelith. Much more what I was looking for in a Halloween-time read, yet not quite (I love a good, traditional ghost story that's scary but not necessarily gory), the book is told from three different people: a general narrator, third-person for Rebecca's part, and a first-person point of view for Ferelith and the priest, who's part is actually from the 1790s and therefore is flashback from the modern time the two girls live in. Ferelith lives in the little quiet town of Winterfold--a town that's slowly dying as the sea eats away at the cliff foundation the town sits on--while Rebecca is there because her policeman father needed to escape from the press; he's under investigation for negligence in the line of duty. As both father and daughter, already drifted apart before they even arrive in town, withdraw from each other more and more, Rebecca finds herself spending time with the orphan Ferelith, who manipulates her easily into acts of trespassing...and worse. No sex scenes, no major cursing--I can't recall one swear word of any sort, in fact--so as far as language and sexual content, there's nothing objectionable from a parental perspective. Ferelith isn't a nice person, though, and the final scenes are pretty intense, but nothing that I think most teens couldn't handle. It took a little bit of getting used to, switching from one perspective to another, though the priest's parts were always dated at the top, and Ferelith's first-person sections had a very different font, so once you knew what you were looking for, it was easy to adjust.

Book 72: How to Train Your Dragon book 1 by Cressida Cowell: I seldom write a review like this, but my first advice is this: if you want to enjoy this book and you've never read it but you've seen at least one of the movies, try to forget the film versions. This is a rare case where I actually liked the movie version better. But I will be honest--I might have enjoyed this book more if I hadn't seen the film. So if you've not seen the movies (there are actually 2 of them), you can give this book a try and try it first! Because the films (both of them, surprisingly) have strong character development and plot, so you may end up like me and find yourself wanting the film version (of Toothless in particular). In the book series, two (friendly) rival Viking clans have a yearly celebration that includes the young lads of the tribe showing off the young dragons they steal from the caves where the young hibernate, and then train to help them hunt and protect the tribe as a sort of initiation ceremony. Hiccup, the son of one of the tribe's chiefs, is considered weak, and the dragon he procures is one of the most common and unassuming kind. And Toothless turns out to be a common and unassuming dragon--stubborn and lazy, Hiccup realizes that he's got no chance of passing the test at the yearly festival, and is likely to be sent into exile (apparently the standard punishment for just about any screw-up). He's hopeless at yelling, which is what the foremost leading expert on dragons in Viking culture says is the way to train them, so Hiccup must come up with his own way to train Toothless, using his (technically banned) ability to speak the dragon language. And that's where I really didn't like this book--Toothless talks, and you don't see the bond that forms between Hiccup and Toothless as you do in the movie. Hiccup must bribe and plead and even taunt his dragon into doing what he wants him to do, rather than the partnership you see them form in the movie. You don't even see Hiccup's really clever thinking, so prominent in the first movie as he makes observations and creates inventions to solve problems, until the end of the book. Maybe the partnership between Hiccup and Toothless develops through the rest of the series--there are something like 12 books--but at this point in time, I have no interest in pursuing more.

How my stats are stacking up so far:

From 2015:

Audiobooks: 30
Nonfiction: 15
Fantasy (YA/Adult): 18
Fantasy (Children): 8
Historical Fiction (YA/Adult) 1
Historical Fiction (Children): 5
General (YA/Adult): 4
Mystery (YA/Adult): 2

Total: 83* *I know I missed one; just not sure which one it was....*

From 2016:

Audiobooks: 9
Nonfiction: 22
Fantasy (YA/Adult): 19
Fantasy (Children): 8
Historyical Fiction (YA/Adult): 3
Historical Fiction (Children): 2
General (YA/Adult): 3
General (Children): 2
Mystery (YA/Adult): 1
Graphic Novels: 2

Total: 71* *Dang! Missed another one!*

2015: More audiobooks. Waaayyy more audiobooks.
2016: More nonfiction. A decent amount of more nonfiction. And more print books in general.
Fantasy reads remained more or less the same for both years, regardless of age group.
Two graphic novels may have helped move things along in 2016--but then again The Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage was a lot more text than most graphic novels have....
Number of books retained from reading list in 2015: 10
Number of books retained from reading list in 2016: 10 so far*

*I plan to give Cinnabar to my younger sister, as well as give Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to my mom. Plus, I want to track Speak to the Earth when I give it up, just out of curiosity, but I haven't yet set that up. As all three of these books are technically still in my room, I'm counting them for the moment. But by the end of the year (Christmas), I should have 2 of the 3 gone! Of course, I still have a few more books to read this year, so I may still tie with last year's retention count....

As suspected, I read more print books and more nonfiction, which has slowed my progress. Still, it is progress and I have some good-sized nonfiction lying around that I have yet to tackle. And some big novels. If this winter's snow levels are exceptional, and we end up snowed in some, I may make a strong showing early. 2014 would have honestly been a good year for me to have started this challenge; that was the year they closed the county to non-emergency travel, literally, for a week--truly a good blizzard, and you couldn't even think of starting to shovel those first few days between the falling snow and the blowing winds undoing everything. A hot summer, or a rainy one like 2015, would also do it--less time in the garden, you know. So the 2017 challenge will rely somewhat on weather.

Book 73: The Timekeeper's Moon by Joni Sensel: OK, this is a sequel and it would have helped to read the first one before this, but it's still an enjoyable stand-alone. There are allusions to past events that the first book would help explain in more detail, but it wasn't crafted in such a way that you'd have to start with the first book, which is called The Farwalker's Quest. And if you haven't read the first book yet, stop reading now and just know I liked the book, because there's at least one big spoiler in the next paragraph!

Ariel is plagued by the moon--literally. It's telling her feet to go someplace specific by a certain time--and that time is running out. She's used to following her feet--that's what a Farwalker does, after all--but never have her feet held such urgency, and never has the moon held power over her, to the point where her life is endangered as she sleepwalks, following the moon's directions. When she finally heeds the call and figures out that she's to follow an ancient map held in the Vault, a storage place of information and wisdom from the world before an apocalyptic time. Accompanied by her protector, Scarl, they go out to cross the landscape in areas she's not yet traveled, discovering new villages, new places, and new insights into not just the world in which she lives, but insights into herself and what it means to be a Farwalker.

I really don't want to give away more plot, because there are some surprises along the way. I will disclose that it's never clear if the world in which they inhabit is its own world or if its Earth after a societal and technological collapse (there are certain hints you get that implies it might be), and that a certain amount of time/space continuum element is present (though not in a technical "Star Trek" kind of way). I'm saying this book is appropriate for 5th and 6th graders and up; Ariel is 13 and while there is mention of her "time of month" it isn't dwelt on as more than a biological fact (and that her intuitive abilities and her moon-speak may be heightened at that time), Sensel doesn't dwell on it. Nor is there any sex scenes, though feelings about sex and seduction (one character tries seducing Scarl, who later explains to a jealous Ariel the difference between love and lust) do come up. The language is about as clean as you get otherwise; no cursing, no explicit descriptions of anything. Young persons coming to terms with growing up will identify with the jealousy and mixed emotions that Ariel has about the people around her. I read it quickly, because I found it very interesting despite that I have a harder time identifying with the protagonist's age group anymore (anyone else find that Harry Potter got annoyingly whiny and angst-y during those last few books?), but the book was as much in some ways about Scarl, and I found him just as interesting as Ariel.

I've got a couple more audiobooks loaded up on the "phone book", as I have a weekend full of travel (Muncie, back home, Muncie, back home). But they may be the last 2 audiobooks of the year; we'll see. I've still done far less audio than print this year, which is good because I would like to take out one stack of unread books by the end of next year (probably won't happen but I can try).

Book 74: Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell is a collection of short stories. In the audio version I borrowed, there were multiple readers--one for each story--so be forewarned if you go this route. All the stories have a fantasy element to them; some have elements of horror, most have a profound ending. Personally, I didn't much care for the title story, but I loved some of the others. Here's the brief breakdown:

Vampires in the Lemon Grove: Vampires need blood, right? That's what Clyde always believed, but she convinced him all the myths about their kind--and they're the only two of their kind as far as they know--are wrong. For a vampire, what could be better than drinking fresh lemonades and soaking up the Italian sun? But after awhile, doesn't it kind of get...boring? The premise was OK but somehow I just couldn't get into this one. It had a slow and gentle plot that was mostly Clyde's personal recollections of how he'd lived before he'd met his wife (sorry--have forgotten many names/heard too many names while listening to remember this one), how she'd changed his life, and how her desire to move on, while he's perfectly content for things to stay as is, tears at their relationship. It comes across more as a personal memoir or biography rather than a story; I think that's part of my disappointment.

Reeling for the Empire: Now I loved this story; again, there's a first-person narrative but the plot moves much faster and is much more unique. A Japanese silk factory sends their "agent" out to find girls whose fathers or husbands need money and buy them to work "reeling" silk. In actuality, as soon as he has them away from their family, he gives them a special tea that starts a transformation in them--they become the silkworm. They become half-women, half-caterpillar. Each girl has their own special silk color, and things are going along fine, until the narrator begins thinking about the life she left behind--of them all, she is the only one to have sold herself, rather than have the decision made for her--and her silk changes from an emerald green to a black. She thinks it's a sickness, but then she talks with another girl about escape, and learns more about metamorphosis and silkworms, and the captive girls begin to wonder if they have a unique way to escape, after all.... Loved this in part because of the silkworm thing, but it's a good "women power" story in the end, too. The narrator uses her research into caterpillar metamorphosis, conducts experiments about how much control she has over her own silk, and uses her brain to think of a way that she and the other girls can escape (and get their revenge as well).

The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach, 1979: Another "eh" story for me; the concept of seagulls stealing vital pieces of our lives to ruin our futures was not exactly Hitchcock's "The Birds", even though the narrator clearly wants you to feel that way. I have no problem with the concept of animals, especially birds, stealing things; magpies and crows are famous for it. But somehow the "human-ness" of the gulls doesn't come through; it left me wondering if the narrator is simply just becoming paranoid. If the author had intended the gulls to seem more intelligent, she missed the mark here. Plus, the story's sudden and (to me) unsatisfying end just doesn't seem right and leaves you with no real explanation behind the gulls' thefts.

Proving Up: The story takes place on the American frontier and involves the Homestead Act; one of the provisions of the Act was that every house should have a glass window. When Miles is sent out to a neighbor's farm with their glass window (obtained through questionable means) to lend to another neighbor so that they can "prove up" and claim official stakeholding on the property, a rare storm causes him to lose his way, and what he discovers is frightening. Another good one; this is the one story in the book that is true horror and, ironically, the least fantasy-based of them all. There are no supernatural creatures or strange unexplainable events here--just a good, old-fashioned psychopath, introduced carefully to induce the most anxiety, made more intense by the fact that you like the main character and you want his family to succeed in their own claim (Miles was supposed to return with the window after their neighbors passed inspection, so that the inspector would think both houses had glass windows and therefore would pass).

The Barn at the End of Our Term: I loved this very unique concept. What else would happen to a former U.S. President, except that he would end up trapped in the body of a horse in what seems to be a limbo farm? Half the horses are just regular, typical horses; the other half of the barn's inhabitants are U.S. Presidents from various time periods (there is no order, as far as they can see, as to who ends up joining them--some Presidents, like Washington and Lincoln and Nixon--never seem to make it to the barn, but the main horse in the story, Rutherford B. Hayes, thinks this place is Hell, and that Farmer Fitzpatrick is Satan himself. The fence keeps them in; no horse has ever jumped it, even though they've all tried. Until James Garfield suddenly escapes, that is--and is replaced with John Adams, who is determined to beat the fence and take the other Presidents with him, so that they can return to their own bodies and own times to help their country. Only Rutherford, who longs only for his wife to be on the farm, seems uninterested. I don't want to spoil the ending, so I'll just say that you really like Rutherford and are glad for him by the end. This story had a particularly spiritual feel to it.

The New Veterans: Another good one, this focusing on the question of what it means to heal, especially mentally. When the physical therapist Beverly begins seeing Derek, a veteran whose friend was blown up on April 14 and whose death he has memorialized on his back in tattoo form, she finds that she not only wants to stop his physical pain but also his emotional one. When he speaks of the red trigger wire and blames himself for not saying anything, she "erases" the memory from him accidentally when she massages away a thin, red scar she finds on his back. At first she convinces herself it's a good thing, but then as events continue to unfold, she begins to wonder if it was wrong to take that memory from him. An interesting take on what it means to heal and how much our memories of events, good or bad, are a part of us.

The Graveless Doll of Eric Mutis: When a gang of bullies finds a scarecrow that they recognize as having the face of one of their former victims, they're a little freaked out by it. One of them finally takes action and cuts it free from the tree where it had been tied, and throws it into a deep ravine. When parts of it start disappearing, they point fingers at one of their own, congratulating him on sneaking down the steep sides and wondering aloud how he managed to do it. But he knows he didn't do it; as the parts disappear, he thinks back more and more to the time when Eric Mutis, the boy he once bullied and beat, and he begins to feel worse and worse about all the things he'd done to the real Eric Mutis. I liked this one and appreciated the anti-bullying message and the one gang member's seemingly change of heart (though there's no indication it's permanent or even if he'd treat other victims differently), but while I liked it OK, it didn't stand out as quite on the same level as "Reeling", "Proving Up", "The Barn" and "The New Veterans".

I have another collection of hers in print, St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves that I've been meaning to read; I suspect the stories will be of similar hot/cold nature. It's buried under a lot of other titles so I probably won't get to it any time in the near future, but I do want to give it a try.

Unless I've miscounted, I have one more book to go to reach my 75!

Book 75: The Tequila Worm by Viola Canales: Well, since our family did Dia de los Muertos for our Halloween party theme (see my posts in the Gardens and Books group), this book seemed appropriate, since it is a Hispanic/Latino title that won a major award in 2006, the Pura Belpre Award. (There is a chapter featuring Dia de los Muertos, and it pops up from time to time throughout the book.) It's a quick read, probably good for tweens and teens, as the protagonist, Sofia, is about 14-15 years old for most of the story, and focuses on her challenges growing up in her rapidly-changing barrio, or neighborhood, as it changes from a small collection of families living in small homes to a more crowded, low-rent apartment area. The book is set up as a collection of events in Sofia's life, with each chapter pivoting around a focal part of her life as she began the transition from child to young woman: bullying, envy of the "rich people" with their fancy houses and cars, the chance to get into a good private school on a scholarship (and how she convinced her parents she should go), and of course friendship and family. Full of gentle humor and wisdom, The Tequila Worm is a glimpse into a culture rich in family traditions. Not a keeper for me, since I don't tend to read realistic fiction (aside from realistic animal fiction like Marguerite Henry's) over again, but I'm sure someone will give it a good home when they find it at Derek's shop in Muncie. (That's the White Rabbit Used Books, remember--shameless plug!)

It's taking me forever to read this year's banned book, One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, not because it's not a good read, but rather because I'm reading it at work during my lunch break when I can, but because there are times when I'm the only librarian on duty, it's not easy to run the desk and read simultaneously if it's a busy day. My next home read is a thick nonfiction book of scholarly nature; because I've already met my goal, reading the exceptionally thick nonfiction books no longer are detrimental to achieving the goal--the only downside to the challenge if you don't normally have a lot of time to read. So I'm tacking The Invention of Murder, which has over 500 pages of Victorian murder-fascination, death obsession, the start of forensics and detective work, etc. I picked this rather lengthy tome up in a used book store in Chicago some time ago and haven't looked at it since; it just ended up in the "to read" pile where it would have collected dust if so many other books hadn't been packed on top and around it. I've also got a YA audiobook started (and nearly finished); I'll probably end up with one or two more besides this, depending on how many drives to Muncie I make by year's end--still far fewer audiobooks, so I've (theoretically) made a dent in the "to read" pile. So how come it looks bigger than ever? :)

>130 CassieBash: How does One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest compare to the movie, so far?

>131 fuzzi: Don't know. Haven't seen the movie yet. Wanted to read the book first.

Book 76: Alchemy and Meggy Swann by Karen Cushman: A historical fiction that takes place in Elizabethan times, Meggy is a girl with big problems. Raised by her grandmother (who kept her out of her mother's way as she ran her country inn), Meggy is sent to live with her father, who is a noted alchemist, in London. Feeling at first that she is well rid of her mother, who thinks of her as useless and cursed due to her crippling birth defect that keeps her from walking without pain, she finds at first that her situation is little improved, as her father was under the impression that she was a son, rather than a daughter, and at first he is as dismissive of her as her mother was. But Meggy has lived with her lameness her whole life, and her grandmother had created a pair of crutches for her, with which she gets around fairly well. She becomes her father's errand "boy" but along the way picks up friends--something the superstitious country people never were, as lameness was seen as a curse from God, or a sign you were in league with the devil, beliefs that many in the city think foolish and wrong. But when Meggy overhears a plot that involves her father and the murder of a Baron of the Queen, she endeavors to think how to spoil the plot without betraying her father, who will risk anything for the funds needed to continue his obsession with his work.

Meggy is a likeable girl overall, with some character flaws that improve as the story unfolds, so there's some good character growth. Like Cushman's other books, this one is steeped in historical flavor--the broadsides, the persecution of actors, tinkers and other "lower class" workers, the superstitions surrounding those physically different from others--and of course contain notes at the end about these (even the audio version I listened to included the author's notes, as well they should!). The language is generally acceptable, though I do recall she thought about how she'd recognize a person despite having a "sh*tload" of paint on his face (he was an actor), and there might have been one or two "d" or "h" words in there, too. Certainly the readability for kids ready to tackle more advance chapter books should be high, especially for those tween girls, as there is a hint of a rocky romance between Meggy and an actor lad. And Meggy attempts to solve her problem with some clever thinking and strategy. So while she does have some flaws (mostly she's stubborn and fiery-tempered), she has some good points to her, too, overcoming her problems with brains rather than brawn.

Ironically, every time the broadsides were mentioned in the audiobook, it made me smile when I started reading the Victorian murder book, since broadsides were still very popular past the Renaissance and well into the Victorian age, where they focused a lot on murders and executions, not only setting a precursor for the modern newspaper, but also for the penny-dreadfuls, small pamphlets, often published as a series, that sometimes dwelt on fictionalized (and highly sensationalized) murder cases.

Congrats on 75!

Thanks!

Woo hoo! Congratulations on passing the 75 book mark!

Thanks! I hit the mark at about the same time as last year, but I don't think I'll be finishing quite as many overall; this Victorian crime book is fascinating but very academic--not at all a light read, and it has some footnotes that slow me down a little. I'm nearly done (finally!) with One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest; got some more reading in today and tomorrow I should be able to finish it, so I can start Tales of the Peculiar. I'm reading a fiction book at home, too--a historical mystery, The Anubis Slayings--when I want something a little lighter than Victorian murder and mayhem.

Book 77: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey was my pick for this year's banned book. Next year, I guess I need to start in late July/early August to try to finish by Banned Books Week. Last year, lunchtime was not busy; this year, our students seem to be putting forth more effort as a whole and are actually asking for help and/our resources--and they're doing it during lunch. So if I start a bit earlier, hopefully I can finish the banned book sometime closer to Banned Books Week. Any suggestions?

So this one was banned for "pornography", glorifying criminal behavior, violence, torture, etc. Considering this was published in 1962, parents probably saw it as many people see Fifty Shades of Grey--unredeemable smut. However, looking at it from a sociological perspective, as Kesey originally intended (why do people not consider what the theme of the book is when they start asking for a ban?), it's a great piece of literature that looks at not just some of the destructive procedures for "treatment" of people with mental illness in the 1960s, but also human control over others' lives. Nurse Ratched, or "Big Nurse", is a veritable Hitler, with her "black boys" (was racial slurs and stereotypes a complaint as well?) acting as her Nazi police, and she rules everyone on the ward: patients, other nurses, even the head doctor. Everyone, that is, until Patrick McMurphy is brought in. McMurphy is a rough-and-tumble man who, over the course of the book, starts out trying to take the authority from Ratched on a bet, but ends up liking his fellow "loonies" so much that in the end you know he's doing it for them, trying to break her control over them and start them living again. Because the "Big Nurse" has taken everyone's lives from them and made them meek and compliant, simply existing. "Big Chief" Bromden, a Native American who plays at being deaf and mute to help remain anonymous, tells the tale, which is half his and half McMurphy's, because as McMurphy begins to wear down the nurse's control, Bromden comes out of his shell (as do many of the other patients) and begins realizing that maybe he can face the real world after all.

Without spoiling the ending, I will say it has a rather mixed, bittersweet end, and it's hard to say who really ultimately wins in some ways, Nurse Ratched or McMurphy. There's some great imagery and metaphors in here: the Combine for society's expectations on how we should act and what we should say and the fog for the way Bromden tries to hide from conflict are two of the biggest ones that come up many, many times in this book. This book isn't for kids and if you're a parent of a junior high child, preview before you let them read it if they express interest. There are scenes of electroshock therapy, and while they don't go into the specifics of the lobotomy, at least one is performed. There is death, swearing, sexual situations and comments--pretty much the grab-bag of typical controversial wording. But it's a classic for a reason: the characters are wonderfully complex, the drama of the fight for control between the nurse and McMurphy, the awakening of Bromden and many of the other patients. It's a great social commentary on how we view and handle mental illness, what exactly mental illness is (many of the patients are self-checked in, rather than truly committed--they put themselves in there, much to McMurphy's surprise). It looks at power struggles between people, and at times you question the sanity of the "caretakers" compared to the patients. The last several pages of the book are both grim and hopeful, as dark actions and events lead to the promise of hope for some.

Book 78: The Anubis Slayings by P.C. Doherty: An intriguing historical mystery set in ancient Egypt during the rule of the Pharaoh Queen Hatusu (aka Hatshepsut). The detective role here is played by Amerotke, a high-ranking judge in the Queen's court. As part of a series, it's a good standalone and doesn't rely on or allude to other books in the series much. (I have one set of ancient Egyptian mysteries where each book has its own "internal" mystery but each book brings you closer to the overarching mystery--so there are mysteries within mysteries in that set.) The Mitanni, old enemies of the Egyptian state, have been crushed by Hatusu and her army and are now in Thebes to sign a peace treaty. But before the treaty is signed, mysterious deaths start happening, and a precious amethyst, the Glory of Anubis, has gone missing from a temple room that was locked from the inside--the key still on the guardian priest's mantle--with no other way in. To make things more disturbing, Anubis himself has supposedly been seen prowling around the Temple and desolate areas near Thebes. Most of the victims die without any signs of struggle and while poison is suspected, no one can find evidence of it in food or drink. The Mitanni are pointing fingers at the Egyptians, though Hatusu believes the Mitanni are responsible, even when their own envoys are killed. I have to admit that I didn't solve this one completely before the end--there were certain things that I figured out but the details had me stumped a lot of the time until they were revealed--always nice with a mystery, I think. For the moment, I'll hold onto this one--I would like to find others in the set and may wish to re-read it when I have others--and from the list on his website, it looks like I may want to keep an eye out for other titles by him.

I've got only three or four chapters left in the Victorian murder nonfiction book. Too bad each chapter is about 75 pages long.... ;)

Happy Thanksgiving, all!

>140 CassieBash: with chicks!

Same to you.

Book 79: Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs: Alluded to in the Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children trilogy, this book is a collection of fairy tales in the spirit of Tales of Beedle the Bard by J.K. Rowling, done as an accompanying piece to the Harry Potter series. Tales features stories selected, edited and with notations by one of the peculiars in the series (won't say which one--it might be a spoiler of who survives the series) and each has an accompanying introduction, notes, and other features that explain possible reasons for the story's existence, morals, meanings, and other things of interest. Like Rowling's Tales, this one is a great read for fairy-tale lovers of all sorts, and like hers, many lean towards the dark (particularly the first, "The Splendid Cannibals").

Book 80: The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling: Classic coming-of-age story of an Indian boy raised by wolves and other jungle animals from infancy to a young man. Separated from his own kind by Shere Khan, the tiger, this collection of three Mowgli stories, plus a few more of his famous animal tales ("The White Seal", "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", "Toomai of the Elephants", and "Servants of the Queen") is Kipling's work for younger readers, as the stories in The Second Jungle Book are darker and more adult. For those only familiar with the Disney animated version, don't expect Baloo to be the laid-back bear or Bagheera to be the stodgy fuddy-duddy--and especially don't expect Kaa the snake to be an incompetent villain. All of Kipling's animals--and particularly Bagheera and Kaa--have a wild grace and dignity appropriate for masters of the jungle, which is what they are. "The White Seal" is perhaps the darkest of the stories, as it deals with fur seal hunting, and I remember thinking it was well-handled in the animated short by Chuck Jones. ("Rikki" was also a Chuck Jones animated short, and well worth watching, as it is very faithful to the story.) Kipling's animals, though anthropomorphized, still retain a lot of their animal natures and I think this is why the book is a classic. I just finished this as my read-aloud choice to take with us in the car during trips where my two sisters and I are traveling together (RenFaire weekends/rehearsals, holiday trips to visit Grandma, etc.), as my older sister Laura had never read it before, and Kerri and I grew up reading it and have always loved it.

Not yet sure what my next choice for read-aloud will be, but whatever it is, I doubt it'll make it onto this year's 75 list now! :)

>143 CassieBash: I love both Kaa and Bagheera in the originals.

>144 fuzzi: As do I. I had two black cats (not at the same time!) named Bagheera. One was a stray, one was an abandoned kitten from one of our barn cats--a notoriously bad mother--that we hand-raised when she moved her entire litter except for him. (The rest of the litter died, from what we can tell. He was actually the lucky one.)

Getting much closer to finishing the Victorian crime book--I'm under 100 pages now. Just under. Probably close to 80 pages--and about 50-60 of those are the last chapter. I will hope that you'll forgive me for skipping the last couple hundred pages of the book, which include the index, the references notes, and the selected bibliography. I intend to consider this book done after I've finished the two page acknowledgements.

>145 CassieBash: no need to apologize or ask forgiveness...you should enjoy reading. Life is too short to obsess over trivial stuff like reading notes and bibliographies.

I never managed to name any of my black cats Bagheera, I should have. I had black or mostly black cats named Mittens, Sam, Flicka, Mouse (a Piebald), Fraidy, Java, Moonpie...

The cat preceding Peppa was Nocturne; he was almost completely black but I broke with tradition and called him Nocturne (for night music) because he had the most musical meow I've ever heard a cat have. Plus, he had what we called "moon eyes"--pale blue-green. Very pretty, unusual, and striking. So we thought he needed a name that stood out.

Other black cats we've had included Coal and Halloween, who had an eerie habit of disappearing every year in the spring and showing up around Halloween to take up residence in the barn through the winter. Totally wild cat; wouldn't let you touch him and he'd hiss and spit at you if you got too close. If it hadn't happened consecutively every year for a decade, we might have thought it was a different cat. He was kind of creepy that way.

>147 CassieBash: & >146 fuzzi: We have a black cat who was named Cinders by my eldest girl.

>148 PaulCranswick: That's a good name for a black cat, too. Right now we don't have any true black cats--our last one, a barn cat we named after Edmund Blackadder, a character in a British sitcom, but we have two tuxedos--Peppa and Tux-o-fur (Tux for short, of course). Peppa, my cat, seems to think she's a dog; she doesn't get along very well with the other cats, but she'd like to be BFFs with the cocker spaniel, Fauna.



Book 81: The Supernatural Short Stories of Sir Walter Scott by, well, Sir Walter Scott. (That's kind of an obvious thing, isn't it?) A collection of 5 short stories with supernatural elements, varying greatly in degree of how much the supernatural plays into the story. For instance, "Wandering Willie's Tale" is positively dripping with ghosts (though not really frightening--the story reads more like a fairy or folk tale), while the only supernatural element in "The Highland Widow" is one instance of the widow's husband appearing before her son to warn him of her treachery. None of the stories are scary, though "The Tapestried Chamber" probably comes the closest, with an old-fashioned haunting, though lacking in the suspense and tension of a truly scary story, in that the "victim" of the haunting tells of the events through flashback, so you know that, despite his being shaken, he is physically unharmed, which always is part of the fear factor in a truly scary story--that sense of not knowing what's going to happen to the protagonist. Out of them all, "Wandering Willie's Tale" and "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror" (about a mystic who uses a mirror to see events that are or soon will be happening--another fairy/folk tale type story) were my favorites, though the first may be difficult to read, at least in this version, as dialect is used extensively. This book is nice in that there's a glossary at the back to define the most commonly used Scottish words found throughout, so you could reference it if needed. I won't be keeping this one; if I wish to obtain the two stories I really liked from this collection, I should be able to get them through Project Gutenberg or Librivox, as his works are public domain. Fans of classic literature--especially literature from the UK nations--may enjoy this collection more than me.

I'm almost done with the Victorian crime book--less than 20 pages to go! I may be able to finish it tonight and report book 82 tomorrow. I think I'll leave non-fiction alone for a bit; as I'm trying to get into the Christmas mood, maybe I'll choose a Christmas book for my next read and book 83.

Yep, it's time to post book 82: The Invention of Murder: How the Victorians Revelled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime by Judith Flanders: This scholarly tome is part literary history, part social history, and part criminology history. The Victorians loved reading and seeing stories of true crime in their broadsheets, newspapers, plays, and songs, and they loved going to criminal trials and public executions. Before the Victorian age, and a little at the beginning of that time period, there wasn't an organized police force in England, and Scotland Yard hadn't been created. But as it became clear that the small, local forces were inadequate at preventing and detecting crimes--especially violent ones--legislation in England pushed for an organized force, and eventually got it. (Although "organized" was a loosely applied term in places, and the forces were district-specific, so if a criminal left one district, their original pursuers had to inform the new district's force so they could pick up the chase.) As police and detectives began appearing in penny dreadfuls and plays, one particularly famous and familiar character began to emerge: Sherlock Holmes. As forensic science began to develop, so too did the character of Holmes.

A fascinating read that should be a great choice for anyone interested in the history of crime and/or detective stories or the Victorian era. Despite its size (those who prefer Kindle editions of thick books so they aren't intimidated by size might consider the Kindle version for this 400+ read), it has a personable, and often amusing (as amusing as one can make such tragedies as murder) tone, as the author notes some of the problems of prejudice, bias, and suspicion that existed between the classes, as well as noting some of the more absurd things that the papers, broadsides, and playwrights did to romanticize murder victims and murderers, even if they had recently beforehand criticized them. I'll be keeping it for a little bit; my older sister, fascinated by all things Victorian, will find this a great read. But after that, I'm fence-sitting; it was a wonderful nonfiction read but it's not a reference work (I have a lot of identification guides that will be mine until death) and I'm not sure I'd tackle it again. On the other hand, I'm not sure I won't. What I'll probably do with it is "cheat"--ask my sister if she wants to keep it and if she says yes, I'll gift it to her (and then I can borrow it again if I want to). And Derek is another possibility; he would probably add it to his collection (though he's also trying to cut back on his collection and acknowledges that he can't keep it all if he wants new stuff). Maybe I'll pass it along at some time but, for the moment, though, I'm going to at least keep it in the family.

So I’m not going to count this book, because it doesn’t fall within my prescribed parameters to count, but it is a Christmas book and a beautiful one, so I’m going to take this opportunity to promote it for those of you out there who collect Christmas books. It’s St. Nicholas and the Valley Beyond by Ellen Kushner, and it is another “how Santa Claus came to be” story. Nicholas starts out as an orphan boy, starving and freezing in our world, but he stumbles through a shroud of mist, led along by strange animals, and finds himself in a huge secluded valley, protected from the outside by the ring of mist. Once inside this world, however, Nicholas finds he's grown now, and is accepted by the villagers as one of them. Soon his childhood hardships are forgotten, as he marries the lovely Winnie and becomes a respected member of the valley, and he befriends all the craftsmen: the tinsmiths, the doll makers, the candle makers, the bakers--all those in the valley who create wonderful things that they then trade to each other. But he begins to have bad dreams and continues to encounter "The Lost Riddle"--unsolvable by the villagers, and prophesied to be solved only by someone from beyond the valley. When a lost, hungry boy shows up in Nicholas and Winnie's home, it triggers a new adventure for Nicholas, who learns from the villagers that the land seems heavy, overburdened by its own bounty and what the villagers have done with it--their baked goods, their toys, the candles, even the fine cloths and clothes their artisans make. But with each gift they give to the lost boy, the land seems lighter. Could giving presents be the solution to the valley's problem?

This oversized picture book is wonderfully illustrated; the paintings are incredibly detailed and for that reason I would suggest enjoying this in a print edition--I have my doubts about the pictures adapting well to the small Kindle screens, especially since one of the illustrations is absolutely huge and unfolds into a lovely scene of the villagers admiring Nicholas's gift. (No, I'm not going to tell you what it is!) There's a fair amount of text; the pages are usually split so that the text is on the left side of the book while the illustration takes up the entire right side, so this may not be a good, quick bedtime story, but if you want to read it aloud to children, it's certainly suitable, with a message appropriate to the Christmas season, and it's fun to look at the illustrations with someone else, because some of the pictures have a lot to see and it's nice to have another person who might notice something you've overlooked.

Another really good recommendation, while I'm at this, is The Christmas Deer by April Wilson; another beautifully illustrated book, a reindeer wakes up to find he has these strangely-shaped things tied to his antlers by ribbon. The objects, unknown to the deer and the creatures he encounter, are cookies in the shapes of wild animals, and as he goes along he gives them away to those very animals: the mouse, the woodpecker, the wolf, the squirrel, etc. The deer wants to know where these strange things came from, and each animal joins him on his quest, which leads them to the obvious answer, it being Christmas. At the back of the book there should be an advent calendar, so if you do decide to purchase used (this book is sadly out of print), you may want to inquire about the calendar's state in your copy. (It can be removed and/or easily damaged, as it's a paper-based advent.) But the illustrations are again wonderfully done, and the story is a faster read-aloud than the above, though just as suitable for children.

My current Christmas read (and this one does have chapters so it will count) is one of the Time-Life Enchanted World set: The Book of Christmas. This set, if you haven't seen it, is awesome for folklore and fairy tale lovers, and with beautiful illustrations done in varying styles (some are reproductions of master or famous paintings, others are probably done specifically for the books). I worked hard to get an entire set but thanks to (shameless plug) Derek's shop in Muncie, Indiana--The White Rabbit Used Books, find it on Facebook--and eBay, I managed to complete the set. This one focuses on the origins of Christmas and Christmas celebrations around the world, up to and including New Year's. This is a less young-child friendly set of books in that it's much darker (sacrifices on the solstice, ghosts and witches and other horrible things wandering the winter nights, frost giants and other Nordic monsters, etc.--and this is one of the less dark books of the set) but older children and certainly teens might enjoy reading about the pagan rituals and customs that were absorbed into the Christian holiday.

So there are my Christmas picks for this year. There are lots of good Christmas/winter reads out there: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum, Skipping Christmas by John Grisham, and anything winter-themed by Jan Brett, of course. Please feel free to share yours.

Book 83 was finished officially last night and is reviewed above: The Book of Christmas from the Time-Life set.

>151 CassieBash: I like!

>153 fuzzi: If you get a chance to view even one of those Time-Life books from the Enchanted World series, either at a used bookstore or through a friend or from a library, do so. Even if you don't read it, the illustrations are well worth a look. And I see from your catalog and our shared collection comparison that you already have Wilson's "Christmas Deer" book. :)

I did finish another Christmas non-chapter picture book last night, The Story of Santa Claus, attributed to Scribbler Elf though if you look at the copyright, the touchstone is correct. While the very human Mr. Paulson is ultimately responsible, the fun part of the book, especially for children, is that it is "narrated" by one of Santa's very own elves, his top scribe, and so the story comes across as being very real. It answers questions about how Santa can manage his one-night trip, how he got his flying reindeer (even if it doesn't exactly answer the "why"), how he met the elves and how they traveled to the North Pole. Scribbler notes that since he's a writer, he had other elves do the illustrations--and because different elves have different styles, the illustrations in the book are not done in the same style: some are very realistic, some are more whimsical. Again, at 94 pages, this book isn't exactly a short read, considering that like the "Valley Beyond" book above, some of the pages have a fair amount of text. But it's definitely a good read-aloud and very kid-friendly, and even though it's not a philosophically deep as "Valley Beyond", the message of giving comes through loud and clear.

>154 CassieBash: I just added The Christmas Deer to my books, as a "want" entry. There are a number of "like new" copies of that book for sale online, for about $20. I'm thinking...

I'll look into the Time-Life series, they usually publish good stuff.

>155 fuzzi: Right now on Amazon, someone's selling the complete set of the Time-Life Enchanted World series for just $224.99. :)

>156 CassieBash: oh, wow. I can do that, just "pocket change"! :D

>157 fuzzi: Makes that Christmas Deer book look more affordable, doesn't it?

Book 84 was Blackbriar by William Sleator; his first book, originally published in 1972, it hints at what his writings would eventually be like: the little clues and plot twists, the supernatural elements. But this book is more subtle and it takes a little bit for the action to really start, whereas in many of his later writings, he often hits the ground running. So be forewarned if you're a fan of or are more familiar with his more recent works--there's a lot of setup compared to many of his other works.

Phillipa is the unofficial caretaker of Danny since he became an orphan. Unmotivated, coddled in many ways by the controlling Phillipa, he doesn't want to leave their London home for a remote country house without water and electricity. But it takes too much effort to quarrel with Phillipa over something like this; she has her mind made up, and where she goes, Danny follows. But once he gets to the country, things change. He finds the mysterious house--and the locals' strange reactions to it--the most interesting thing he's ever had happen to him. From the names and dates carved into the wall of their cellar door, to the odd doll that makes Phillipa uneasy (and that Danny pockets secretly), the house presents a mystery he feels compelled to solve. As clues mount, Danny isn't sure just where they all point to--Mary Peachy, perhaps, who's name is carved into the cellar door but is the only one without a date--or perhaps their strange neighbor, who still seems to think that Mary may still be around--despite that she lived during the Black Death.

This is almost what I would call a "gentle" horror--maybe more suspense than true horror. The supernatural elements are muted and aren't particularly scary--you won't have monsters chasing people around trying to eat them or ghosts doing anything quite so obvious as dropping chandeliers or rattling chains. Even by the end, the story leaves a little room for doubt and the reader can decide for him- or herself whether and to what extent anything supernatural happened. A must read for any die-hard Sleator fans but if you're more a fan of his scarier books, then this is probably not the read for you.

Wouldn't it be nice if 2017 was a year of peace and goodwill.
A year where people set aside their religious and racial differences.
A year where intolerance is given short shrift.
A year where hatred is replaced by, at the very least, respect.
A year where those in need are not looked upon as a burden but as a blessing.
A year where the commonality of man and woman rises up against those who would seek to subvert and divide.
A year without bombs, or shootings, or beheadings, or rape, or abuse, or spite.

2017.

Festive Greetings and a few wishes from Malaysia!

This is the Christmas tree at the end of the Pacific Beach Pier here in San Diego, a Christmas tradition.

To all my friends here at Library Thing, I want you to know how much I value you and how much I wish you a very happy holiday, whatever one you celebrate, and the very best of New Years!

>159 PaulCranswick: and >160 ronincats: Thanks for the holiday well-wishing; in a perfect world, there would be peace and natural beauty such as that tree would be universally valued.

To everyone: Hope your seasonal celebrations were wonderful!

Rounding out the year with book 85, The Roald Dahl Omnibus, by Roald Dahl, of course: This book is a collection of short stories written for a more adult audience; in fact, a few of these stories are probably R rated if not X--some of them are pretty raunchy, in particular the last story, "B****". Some are just darkly amusing, like "Lamb to the Slaughter", which I'm pretty sure I've read in another short story collection--possibly a mystery/crime collection. Other stories are very amusing, such as "Champion of the World", in which two men hatch a unique idea to maximize pheasant poaching, with a very humorous hiccup in the plan.

Not intended for kids, adults are far more likely to get the nuances and humor in even the tamer stories. If you can handle dark and raunchy stories, this is a great collection. I enjoyed most of them; the ironic twists and black comedy that's so common to Roald Dahl's books for younger readers (and that I like so much) is every bit present in this collection. Just don't read them aloud to your kids!

Looking forward to your continued company in 2017.
Happy New Year!