into the stacks 20.2
posted by soe 11:21 pm
I know, I know, I know. I promised you nightly updates of my summer reads a month ago and not only did I fail to deliver that, but then I also neglected to give you my September books. All I can say is that I’m working on it.
The second installment of my summer reading:
Mrs. Pollifax on Safari, by Dorothy Gilman
From the jacket: “Now the incredible Mrs. Pollifax, part-time geranium expert, part-time spy, has been sent on a safari to smoke out a very clever international assassin whose next target is the president of Zambia. ‘Just take a lot of pictures of everyone on that safari,’ the CIA man told her. ‘One of them has to be our man.’ It sounded simple enough. But it wasn’t. Because shortly after Mrs. Pollifax started taking pictures, someone stole her film. And right after that she was kidnapped by Rhodesian terrorists….â€
My take: I’d once before listened to a Mrs. Pollifax mystery, so I suspected I’d like this one when I spied it at a library book sale. I was right. Not only did the book provide a fun mystery with lots of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming half the time, it also provided me with an interesting primer into the African nations of Zambia and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia). Mrs. Pollifax will appeal to anyone who enjoys the Jessica Fletcher/Murder She Wrote type of books or someone who wants to be immersed in another culture in their reading.
Pages: 223
Sense and Sensibility, by Jane Austen
From the jacket: “Two sisters of opposing temperaments who share the pangs of tragic love provide the theme for Jane Austen’s dramatically human narrative, Sense and Sensibility. Elinor, practical and conventional, is the perfection of sense. Marianne, emotional and sentimental, is the embodiment of sensibility. To both comes the sorrow of unhappy love….â€
My take: I led a read-along of perennial favorite Sense and Sensibility on Ravelry which lasted much of the summer as we examined five chapters a week. I enjoyed learning the outdated definition of “sensibility,” which corresponds more to a modern definition of “empathy” and which is a decidedly romantic approach to a life outlook than one governed by sense. (How I read this the first time without exploring this language change is really beyond me.) While Elinor remains a favorite, I found that I did tire of her very tightly reined in approach to life and love (even if her mother and sister’s emotionally charged lives do go a long way toward explaining it) and wanted to see an outburst or two…
Pages: 314
The Mysterious Benedict Society, by Trenton Lee Stewart
From the jacket: “’Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?’ When this peculiar ad appears in the newspaper, dozens of children enroll to take a series of mysterious, mind-bending tests. (And you, dear reader, can est your wits right alongside them.) But in the end just four very special children will succeed. Their challenge: to go on a secret mission that only the most intelligent and resourceful children could complete. With their newfound friendship at stake, will they be able to pass the most important test of all? Welcome to the Mysterious Benedict Society.â€
My take: I really enjoyed this story of four children who come together to respond to a newspaper ad — logical Reynie, resourceful Kate, obstinate Constance, and Sticky, who never forgets. Each of them, already alone in a world being subdued via television and subliminal messages, agrees to work for Mr. Benedict, a genius who has pinpointed the source of the evil and that children are being utilized to disperse it. The team, for that’s ultimately what they must become, must infiltrate the “school,” find a way to get into the good graces of its benefactor, and destroy the machinery that will ultimately destroy them if they fail. Perfect for those who don’t quite fit.
(My absolute favorite part of the book may have come even before the story began. The dedication reads “For Elliot” and the thanks conclude “… I would like to thank … my son Elliot, for being Elliot — which is to say, for making everything fine.” Can you imagine a nicer compliment?)
Pages: 486
Find the first installment of summer reads here. Part 3 next week after I return from Connecticut and Karen’s wedding…
gone
posted by soe 3:24 pm
Olsson’s Books and Records has shuttered their last four locations.
Remember, it may be cheaper to buy online or from a big box store, but you’ll never beat the locals for personal attention and local knowledge.
Local business owners are your neighbors. The same civic quality-of-life issues that matter to you matter to them.
If you don’t support them with your money*, they will fail.
Pardon me while I shed a few tears into my teacup…
*I am not suggesting that you spend your money unwisely. Obviously, if you can’t afford to buy a book at your local bookstore, you shouldn’t do so just to help keep them afloat. But I can live in a world without Amazon a whole lot more comfortably than I can in a world where small businesses are shuttered.
into the stacks 20.1
posted by soe 11:54 pm
So… the book reviews. I realize that if I put all of the books from this summer into one post that although it would be thorough, it would also be unreadable. Instead, I’ve decided to do a few each night with the hopes you’ll read through them and find a new story to love.
Tonight, the first three:
Blandings Castle, by P.G. Wodehouse
From the jacket: “Clarence, the ninth Earl of Emsworth, is master of the pleasant seat of Blandings Castle. Happy to potter through the flowerbeds, kept immaculately by McAllister the stern Scotch head-gardener, or to ogle the perfect form (for a Berkshire sow) of the prize Empress of Blandings, Lord Emsworth’s life is under constant threat of disruption by, among disasters, his offspring, the Hon. Freddie Threepwood.â€
My take: P.G. Wodehouse was a funny man. He was a keen observer of human behavior and saw just how to convey the humor that bubbles just below the surface of most situations. Come up with the most ridiculous scenario you can think of and populate it (generally) with self-involved, affluent folk and their hired help. Then double it and you have a peek at what sorts of things Wodehouse writes. But he does it without ever removing the humanity of those he is (gently) mocking, so while you’re snickering at the situations Lord Emsworth finds himself in — fingered for trying to steal tulips from Covent Garden, held at gunpoint as a mistaken burglar in his daughter-in-law’s hotel flat, repeatedly having his life saved while trying to go for a swim in his own pond — you still feel for him for the very real confusion he experiences as he tries to sort things out.
In addition to the half dozen or so Blandings Castle stories, the book also includes a few that take place in Hollywood, related by a man at a bar to others identified only by their drink of choice, as well as one about an American publisher’s visit to a wealthy author’s British home.
I picked this volume up at a library sale up in Connecticut in June and must remember to see what sort of Wodehouse selection our own library carries. I wouldn’t want to find myself in dire need of a laugh without some of his work nearby. A quick cure for certain!
Pages: 255
The Subtle Knife, by Philip Pullman
From the jacket: “In this stunning sequel to The Golden Compass, the intrepid Lyra finds herself in a shimmering, haunted otherworld — Città gazze, where soul-eating Specters stalk the streets and wingbeats of distant angels sound against the sky. But she is not without allies: twelve-year-old Will Parry, fleeing for his life after taking another’s, has also stumbled into this strange realm. On a perilous journey from world to world, Lyra and Will uncover a deadly secret: an object of extraordinary and devastating power. And with every step, they move closer to an even greater threat — and the shattering truth of their own destiny.â€
My take: I read The Golden Compass some years ago and immediately went out in search of the sequel. I remember taking it to Falcon Ridge with me and reading it while sitting on a hot hillside while listening to the music. I also remember reaching a certain point in the book, a point that I found far too stressful to keep reading past in such a bucolic setting that I put the book down in favor of something else. I’d pick it back up again, I told myself, when I got home.
Time passed (years — the bookmark in it is a card addressed to our Middletown address) and instead of being able to pick it up again where I’d left off, I had to start over again — all the while knowing that that moment would come again. And you know what? When I reached it, it wasn’t all that stressful or scary. Totally could have kept going…
If you’re unfamiliar with the first story, Lyra lives in long-ago Oxford, raised by the bishops of her church and generally being allowed to do what she wants. In this version of the world, humans each have a daemon, an animal iteration of their soul, if you will. There’s a schism between the church and scientists and Lyra somehow finds herself at the very center of it and what amounts to a civil war.
In this volume, Lyra meets up with Will, a boy from the Oxford of our ken, when he flees after accidentally killing a man who has broken into Will’s house after threatening his ailing mother. This man is seeking information about Will’s father, who disappeared twelve years before, so Will decides to look for some answers himself. Lyra starts out trying to find out more about the “dust” that the scientists of her world are so excited about, but after ending them in a few scrapes, she joins Will in his quest.
Add to this that the police and the government are looking for Will in his world, the church and Lyra’s psycho evil mother are hunting for her, and adults in the world in between are being attacked by Specters and left as zombies, and you are left with a tense story that demands you read on to the concluding tome, The Amber Spyglass.
Pages: 326
The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak
From the jacket: “It is 1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier, and will become busier still. By her brother’s graveside, Liesel Meminger’s life is changed when she picks up a single object, partially hidden in the snow. It is The Grave Digger’s Handbook, left there by accident, and it is her first act of book thievery. So begins a love affair with books and words, as Liesel, with the help of her accordion-playing foster father, learns to read. Soon she is stealing books from Nazi book-burnings, the mayor’s wife’s library, wherever there are books to be found. But these are dangerous times. When Liesel’s foster family hides a Jew in their basement, Liesel’s world is both opened up and closed down.â€
My take: You think, when you pick up a book about growing up in Hitler-era Germany, that it’s going to be depressing. When you discover, upon opening to the first page, that it’s narrated by Death himself, you know it’s going to be. And when he tells you that characters — main characters — are doomed not to survive his telling, well, it’s about as much as you can do to keep turning the pages.
But then, as you keep reading, you get used to Death’s unusual narrative style. You read the heaviness of his words and help to bear the weight of all the souls he must dispense. You find that he is compassionate and that he sees the beauty in the human soul in ways, perhaps, that people are too close to see for themselves.
And you see that although the lower-class street in the outskirts of Munich are populated by Germans of the time, that most of them are so busy trying to exist that they really can’t be bothered with actually supporting the war. Yes, there are Nazis, but mostly it’s just people who are being trampled on by life.
Add to that an extraordinary couple who take in a little girl whose mother must leave her behind. The woman is coarse, but her love runs so deep that it almost is buried. The man is kind — and his remembrance of others’ kindnesses toward him help him to keep offering them to others, even when it puts him at odds with his neighbors, his country, and his well-being.
And center the story around a little girl whose grief haunts her until she slowly begins to fill in all those empty places inside with the written word — and the multitudinous offers of escape they hold. The words help to make her whole — and to help her community heal.
Add these things together, and you end up with a story that is heart-breakingly beautiful. It is one of the most amazing things I’ve read in years. I hope that schools will teach it as a companion piece with Anne Frank’s diary, as I think that they would complement each other.
(I will admit that this book was another one that I had to put down. I stopped at the last possible place I thought I was likely to leave the majority of the main characters in a safe place and then couldn’t bear to force them out from their havens to act out their destinies. Ultimately, it was rewarding, but I cried buckets over the final hundred pages. Regardless, I recommend it without reserve for anyone over the age of ten.)
Pages: 552
Stay tuned to tomorrow for three more books!
