Book Reviews and Author Interviews

Well, it's been a rough week up here on the hill. The munchkin and I have both had a very nasty stomach flu. How does one get sick when you hardly go anywhere these days? I'm not sure.

So, instead of writing a new book review myself, I want to send you over to a blog from fellow writer in my writers group, Tarren Young. She has quite a few book reviews, and even author interviews up on her blog, which you may not have seen. She always has an interesting observation or four to make.

Here's the link - https://tarrenyoungauthor.weebly.com/book-reviews.html

Book Review: Peace Talks by Jim Butcher

Peace Talks

by Jim Butcher

I’ve seen mixed reactions to this book. It’s been five or more years since Butcher released a book in the Dresden Files series. I follow a couple forums and a number of people did a re-read of the previous books before Peace Talks came out. This makes some of the criticism more understandable. I only went to Wikipedia and read through the book summaries to refresh my memory.

I’ve seen some people say that this book is way too much of a re-hash of things we’ve seen before. I’m wondering if it wasn’t planned that way – to bring people up to speed and set up the next book, which is coming out in the fall, more than anything. If that’s the case, then I think it served its purpose well. Which also means that if you are new to the series, you don’t really HAVE to go back and read the others. You may want to eventually, but you can start here.

I thoroughly enjoyed getting caught up with Butcher’s characters. Harry Dresden is still the wise-cracking wizard detective, very aware of his own inadequacies, but he has grown in some ways.

“Then I ran my tongue thoughtfully over my teeth and closed it. Honestly, it’s really kind of startling how many problems that avoids. I should think about doing it more often.”

He still has some growing to do too.

“I felt awkward. I was never much good at parties.”

There are peace talks about to be joined that will take place in Chicago and require Harry’s presence as a member of the security team, complicated by the fact that his brother is under a kind of arrest, for murder, and Harry’s own status as a member of the White Council is in question.

So many characters from the former books come into play.

Butters, oh Butters, our polka-loving, Jedi blade-wielding, medical examiner.

Michael, former Knight of the Cross, whose stalwart presence always tries to lead Harry back to the most righteous path. (I hear a deep, resonant, measured and careful voice, in my head when Michael is speaking.)

I like Butcher’s unique way of describing things that’s culturally relevant and, as it is from Harry’s perspective, provides real insight into Harry’s mentality.

“When it got fully dark, Marcone’s castle looked like it was holding a flashlight under its chin.”

From horrible monsters and magic to more mundane, but no less important, concerns of family and home, it is lovely reading about Harry’s life again.

A thoroughly enjoyable interlude and adventure.

But for those who haven’t read it yet, if the cliff hanger is going to bother you, you might want to wait until closer to the next book to read it.

Home Learning: Episode 17

Summer continues and the garden is producing, finally. There are little yellow squashes on and thin wax beans, still green, even tiny cucumbers. However, we are battling the dreaded black and yellow striped cucumber beetles that are attacking all the squash and cucumber plants. My husband shakes the flowers into a can with dish liquid. I just get in there and squish them, sometimes running them to ground in the dirt before I get the dastardly little things.

We’re continuing with the schedule we came up with for the munchkin a couple weeks ago, and it seems to be working for all of us.

Most of my thoughts regarding home schooling and home learning this week have been focused on the question of whether there will be in person school in the fall and what it will look like. Also, whether we should send her if there is.

I know a lot people who already home school. That isn’t an option for me really at this point. But there are a number of online schools that might be an option for my child. She likes a schedule and is fairly self-motivated. But I also know how much she would miss her best friend. But will her best friend be there?

The debate seems to center around whether there should be in person school, and if there is, should it be regular full-time school with masks and a few other precautions or just a couple days then online the rest of the time?

I have to say the latter sounds better to me, but only if they mean that half the kids go a couple days and the other half of the kids go the other two days. I’m sure that won’t work for everyone.

The governor finally released some guidance in that regard, saying that those regions in phase 4 can reopen as long as infections in the area remain below a certain level. That seems to suggest to me that we will have in person school for the kids in the fall.

Still, there will be a lot of changes to the way that kids go to school. I can’t see any way around them getting used to wearing masks and REALLY keeping their hands to themselves.

Maybe there will be less colds if they are all wearing masks and washing more often?

There’s an instinct to ask the kids what they would want, but I have to agree with one parent who said, you just can’t. It isn’t about what they would prefer but what would be safest for them. This is one for the officials and the parents to decide.

Book Review: Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine by Alan Lightman

Searching for Stars on an Island in Maine

by Alan Lightman

I’ve had this on my Goodreads list for a little while. I’m not even sure how it came to be there, but I suspect it was recommended by a friend who is a scientist. Recently my book club decided on the theme of “Celestial” and I started looking through my list. There were three that fit the bill but this one just appealed to me so I downloaded a copy.

The whole book seems to revolve around this thought, presented much later –

I have come to believe that it’s good to waste time. In fact, it’s probably essential to waste time. That’s when the mind has a chance to think about what it wants to think about, without being cudgeled and shoved by the external world.

Lightman is a physicist but a superb writer as well, his powers of observation and description are sublime.

The island in winter is a German opera house in white, with white balconies and balustrades, white carpeted hallways, white winding stairways, white filigreed ceilings. The trees are expensive displays of Steuben glass, each branch lacquered with a transparent sleeve of crystal.

Perhaps, his first book wasn’t quite this good, but his writing style is indeed well suited to explaining the theoretical with concrete examples that beautifully illustrate the science he is trying to explicate.  

The most extraordinary and graphic demonstration of the materiality of the body is the replacement of natural body parts by manufactures and machines. These days, we have artificial hands, artificial legs, artificial lungs, artificial kidneys, artificial hearts.

His musings start out with a transcendent moment of lying back in a boat under a night sky near his summer home on an island in Maine and falling into a reverie that brought him into communion with the night sky and stars.

After a few minutes, my world had dissolved into that star-littered sky. The boat disappeared. My body disappeared. And I found myself falling into infinity.

His musings revolve around science and the intersection as well as juxtaposition with the infinite. Scientific discoveries are discussed and how they challenged perceptions of the world at that point in time.

…the world appears to run not on absolutes but on relatives, context change, impermanence, and multiplicity. Nothing is fixed. All is in flux.

He has ways of stating things that subtly alter one’s perception of the event. He talks about his three-year-old granddaughter speaking with him via Facetime – “For her, the fleshy version of me is only Grandfather 1.0.”

I suspect that this is a book that I will read again at least once more, and possibly at different points in life, to ponder. I would definitely recommend it.

Adventures in Home Learning: Episode 16

Summer has been quite dry here and yet the weeds in the garden continue to grow. Thankfully so have the vegetables. I finally just started requiring the munchkin spend 20 minutes weeding in the garden a day without me looking over her shoulder. The plants are big enough that she won’t mistake a weed for one.

My husband found this collection of short videos by the London Philharmonica Orchestra. They are only 10 to 20 minutes long. He’s having our daughter watch one every day to learn about all the instruments. She balks at sitting down with them, but then she is fascinated by them. (I think it’s partly the lovely accents.) Maybe she’ll have a choice for school in a year or two?

Instrument Guides #StayHome #WithMe (Philharmonia Orchestra)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqR22EoucCyccs5J639SCefaM7mD9dMSz

One thing I am grateful for this summer is that my daughter seems to have taken a much deeper interest in reading. It’s totally unexpected. We started with anime and she has moved on to the things in her book case that she never got around to reading. Frankly, I’m a little afraid she is going to run out of things to read!

That got me started thinking about books I loved as a kid. Then I started asking my family and friends about books they loved as a kid.

One of my favorites was The Mystery of the Crimson Ghost by Phyllis A. Whitney. Like most teen girls, I was horse crazy. Of course, it didn’t help that I grew up on the same street where they held horse auctions every other Friday and I walked horses to cool them down after polo matches one year.  I spent years trying to find this book again because I didn’t have the title quite right.  I finally ran across it and found out it was by none other than Phyllis Whitney.  This was the perfect story for a horse crazed teenager with a love of mysteries.  Janey goes to visit her Aunt Viv on summer vacation and sees a mysterious crimson ghost dog across the lake.  There’s also a beautiful horse across the lake.  In order to ride the horse, she’ll have to figure out the mystery surrounding the crimson ghost.

I’m hoping I can find a copy of it for her. I want to order a few books to just have around that she “might” pick up. But, thankfully, there’s also Overdrive through our library.

Here’s some from our Overdrive catalog that I’m looking forward to (hopefully) getting her to read.

The Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer

https://stls.overdrive.com/library/kids/media/650397

Alex and Conner Bailey's world is about to change, in this fast-paced adventure that uniquely combines our modern day world with the enchanting realm of classic fairy tales. The Land of Stories tells the tale of twins Alex and Conner. Through the mysterious powers of a cherished book of stories, they leave their world behind and find themselves in a foreign land full of wonder and magic where they come face-to-face with the fairy tale characters they grew up reading about. But after a series of encounters with witches, wolves, goblins, and trolls alike, getting back home is going to be harder than they thought.

The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau

https://stls.overdrive.com/library/kids/media/1282934

Since 2003, readers of all ages have been captivated by Jeanne DuPrau's bestselling dystopian story about a doomed city and the two children determined to escape it. Now new and old fans alike can celebrate The City of Ember with this deluxe edition, which includes an introduction by the author and a brand-new story!

Flush by Carl Hiaasen

https://stls.overdrive.com/library/kids/media/105208?cid=1071412

You know it's going to be a rough summer when you spend Father's Day visiting your dad in the local lockup. Noah's dad is sure that the owner of the Coral Queen casino boat is flushing raw sewage into the harbor–which has made taking a dip at the local beach like swimming in a toilet. He can't prove it though, and so he decides that sinking the boat will make an effective statement. Right. The boat is pumped out and back in business within days and Noah's dad is stuck in the clink.

Now Noah is determined to succeed where his dad failed. He will prove that the Coral Queen is dumping illegally . . . somehow. His allies may not add up to much–his sister Abbey, an unreformed childhood biter; Lice Peeking, a greedy sot with poor hygiene; Shelly, a bartender and a woman scorned; and a mysterious pirate–but Noah's got a plan to flush this crook out into the open. A plan that should sink the crooked little casino, once and for all.

Book Review: Legacy of Hunger: Book 1 in the Druid's Brooch Series

Legacy of Hunger

by Christy Nicholas

I came into the Druid’s Brooch series later on and I’ve enjoyed ALL the books I’ve read, they’ve stood well on their own. So, in reading this book, I was going back to the beginning.

Valentia McDowell is a young woman in America, circa 1846. Her father has a prosperous farm in Ohio, but Valentia has always been fascinated by stories of her grandmother’s homeland and a mystical brooch her grandmother had. She longs desperately to travel to Ireland.

The story begins in Pittsburgh, with a fire. Valentia proves herself resourceful in caring for her mother and leading their servants to safety, while her father and brother are away seeing to some other business. The author portrays the fear of a fire in an early city where a mass of people are hemmed in with wooden construction very well.

Valentia is a well-to-do young woman of the time, very aware of her station but also kindhearted. I would say downright arrogant at times, but “pride goeth before a fall” and she is definitely humbled, time and again. However, she pitches in to help care for patients who were caught up in the fire and suffer from burns and smoke inhalation.

Finally, Valentia’s mother convinces her father to capitulate and Valentia sets off for Ireland with her brother and servant, Maggie. She can’t wait to begin her grand adventure, but reality of the harshest kind soon sets in. It is a long sea voyage and illness overtakes them. The brother and sister do not make the crossing unscathed.

The book is filled with charming details that set the scene beautifully, “There were tinges of marsh grass and mud, and the faint tang of cow manure on the breeze. The scent was clean, bright, and she relished it.” And sometimes not so lovely details, as when Valentia visits a work house in Ireland, as the potato blight is ongoing.

Valentia makes some good friends in Ireland, who help her on her way, and also meets some people who seem to want to help her, but for their own purposes. Her friends also help open Valentia’s eyes to the hardships the people of Ireland are enduring and entreat her to help as best she can. Though she has lived a fairly sheltered life, Valentia is swift to take up the cause wherever and however she can, as she pursues her own goals. Finding her family in Ireland is not a simple process, and Valentia has many adventures on her journey.

I really enjoyed this book, it was moving and compelling. An excellent historical summer read with just a touch of fantasy. It is full of wonderful imagery, adventure, a bit of romance, and a few tears too. I highly recommend it, and you’ll just be starting the journey as there are many more books in the series.

Home Learning: Episode 15

Well, the schedule has pretty well been a hit. She likes to adhere a little more strictly to it than is easy for those of us trying to work, but I can live with that.

Today I suggested we plug in the little hand held vacuum to charge while she did a math worksheet, then she could vacuum the stairs once it was charged. She didn’t like that at all. “No, chores are at ten to ten-thirty.” O-kay.

I suggested picking mulberries outside, but she just said, “later.” I told her if she waited that she wouldn’t get any, the birds would get them. She rushed out and I was able to stay inside and work, with the window open. J She was hopping around, trying to reach the lowest branches of the tall, old mulberry tree. 

She is growing up so quickly. For the first time, she asked me to sit on the other bunk bed in her room while she went to sleep instead of sitting on her bed. She said she was working up to going to bed on her own. I’m proud, looking forward to it, but also there’s a little ache in my heart. She’s growing up and needing me less. I’ve longed for that, but now that it’s here, it makes me sad too. A precursor to moving away. (I know it’s 8 years off, but the last 10 went so fast!)

She has dived into the reading bit on her schedule. I was somewhat surprised. She sorted the books on her little book case in her room and made piles of things to give away, sorting what she has to read, and asked for a few things. I’m happy to try to keep her supplied. I’d like her to stretch her imagination and try writing some more stories, but I’m happy with her drawing characters too.

It makes me a bit sad that the munchkin is turning into such a loner during this time. She Zoom chatted with her cousin once but hasn’t seemed inclined to do so again. We tried to connect with the mother of her best friend, but had no response. She wrote a letter to her friend and we mailed it but there has been no response to that either.

Personally, I’m enjoying this minimalist time, but I like being alone and I have my family. I wish she at least had her friend to talk to on the phone. I’m checking on whether she can talk with a friend’s daughter who she has met on one or two occasions.

The rain has done a good job of perking up our little kitchen garden. Still only one pumpkin plant, but everything is leafing out and getting bigger. Here's hoping for a bumper crop this year!