wednesday september 12
I’m glad the new version of 3:10 to Yuma is getting good reviews. The Western is such a classic American genre, and it’s wonderful to see it rediscovered periodically both in film and on the page.
I’ve blogged previously about Elmer Kelton and how much I like his Western novels, elegantly simple frontier tales that are somehow as grand as the landscape in which they’re set.
Refugio, They Named You Wrong, by Susan Clark Schofield, is another favorite of mine.
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tuesday september 11
I was one of those kids who left the library each week with a new stack of books, getting carsick on the way home because I couldn't wait to start reading. From Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden to C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, my childhood books usually involved misfits and hidden worlds of one kind or another.
Madeleine L'Engle passed away last week at the age of 88. She wrote more than two-dozen works of fiction as well as volumes of poetry and non-fiction.
After I read about L'Engle's death, I immediately retrieved our copy of her most celebrated book, A Wrinkle in Time. This book has some of my favorite misfits and hidden worlds. Meg is a high school student (or junior high? We're never given an exact age) who never seems to work to her potential. She wears glasses and braces and is belligerent toward adults and other students alike. Charles Wallace, Megs brother, didn't start talking until he was four; he now speaks, at age five, in complete sentences with perfect diction. Calvin is one of the popular kids in high school, but only because he pretends. The three of them--with help from Mrs Whatsit, Mrs Who, and Mrs Which--embark on a journey through time and space to find Meg and Charles Wallace's father.
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sunday september 09
When my book club decided to read Gordon Korman’s newest novel, Schooled, for its September meeting, I wasn’t too excited. I thought it would be another depressing book about bullying and peer pressure. But boy was I wrong! The book turned out to be very funny and has a great message about being true to yourself. Now I can’t wait to discuss the book at our next meeting.
Schooled is the story of thirteen-year-old Cap Anderson, a boy who is being raised and home schooled by his hippie grandmother, Rain, on an alternative farm commune. Unfortunately for Cap, Rain falls from a tree branch while picking plums and breaks her hip. Cap must move into a foster home and attend middle school while Rain recovers from her injury.
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saturday september 08
It is safe to say, we are in the dog days of summer. I’ve lost count of the number of days it’s been over 90’. Why not sweat it out with some of these dog themed favorites?
Bark, George by Jules Feiffer is by far my favorite dog book. A lovable pup tries to bark, but all that comes out are other animals' sounds- he quacks, he oinks, he moos, until a trip to the vet unleashes the problem.
In Move Over Rover by Karen Beaumont, obliging Rover allows, first, Cat, and then a succession of other animals to seek shelter from a rainstorm in his doghouse. All is well until skunk arrives…
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friday september 07
If you're looking for a new mystery series to delve into, I highly recommend Laura Lippman's Tess Monaghan series. The Baltimore-based series began in 1997 with Baltimore Blues. Tess, an ex-reporter-turned-PI, enjoys rowing, food, and arguing with her large extended family. In this, her first case, a fellow rower asks Tess to investigate his fiancee, whom he believes is having an affair with her boss. When the boss, a prominent lawyer, ends up dead, Tess must fight to find the real killer and clear her friend's name. Tess is nothing if not a dogged investigator and has a habit of putting herself into dangerous situations. A statuesque redhead with a quick temper and fierce loyalty to both her boyfriend and slightly wacky (not to mention slightly corrupt) family, Tess is one PI you won't want to miss. If you enjoy Baltimore Blues, you'll want to read all of Tess's adventures, including the latest, No Good Deeds.
Lippman has won many awards for her work, including the Edgar, Shamus, Agatha, and Anthony awards. She is also the author of three stand-alone thrillers: What the Dead Know, about the disappearance of two sisters; To the Power of Three, about a school shooting; and Every Secret Thing, about the murder of a young child by two adolescents.
thursday september 06
Brock Clarke, a Cincinnati writer and all-around good guy, does not promote arson or any other sorts of criminal activity, really. It's just that the hero of his novel inadvertently started a fire at an important historical site, and things quickly went downhill from there. In An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England, Sam Pulsifer is an 'accidental arsonist', a self-professed 'bumbler', and sort of an everyman who seems to be sleepwalking through life. He serves as a lightning rod for the trials and tribulations that commonly befall the modern American male.
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wednesday september 05
From Aesop to Animal Farm to the delightful mystery Mark blogged a few weeks ago, it’s a fine old literary tradition to dress up a sharp-toothed bit of satire in sheep’s clothing, so to speak, telling a telling tale by pretending you’re just talking about animals.
Or even insects. Yep, there’s precedent for that, too, of course.
So readers of Donald Harington’s The Cockroaches of Stay More shouldn’t be surprised to find a sly literary spoof and social satire between the covers of this cult classic, an immensely clever and entertaining novel that pokes fun at a whole range of human foibles—literature, sex, class, religion, and the atom bomb—all from the point of view of cockroaches.
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