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Sunday Salon: Books Read in October, 2011

Oct30

The Sunday Salon.com

Easy Readers for Cybils:
Mr. Putter and Tabby Ring the Bell by Cynthia Rylant. Cybils nominee: Easy Readers. Nominated by Maria Ciccone at The Serpentine Library. Semicolon review here.
Kylie Jean, Blueberry Queen by Marci Peschke. Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books. Nominated by Jennifer Glidden, Capstone Press. Semicolon review here.
No Room for Dessert by Hallie Durand. Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books. Nominated by Jama Rattigan. Semicolon review here.
Dixie by Grace Gilman. Cybils nominee: Easy Readers. Nominated by Bigfoot at Bigfoot Reads. Semicolon review here.
Ruby’s New Home by Tony and Lauren Dungy. Cybils nominee: Easy Readers. Nominated by The HappyNappyBookseller. Semicolon review here.
Dodsworth in Rome by Tim Egan. Cybils nominee: Easy Readers Nominated by Sondra Eklund at SonderBooks. Semicolon review here.
Ruby Lu, Star of the Show by Lenore Look. Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books.
A Call for a New Alphabet by Jef Czekaj.
Miss Child Has Gone Wild! by Dan Gutman.

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
Ties That Bind, Ties That Break by Lensey Namioka.
An Ocean Apart, a World Away by Lensey Namioka.
The Berlin Boxing Club by Robert Sharenow. Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Teacher.Mother.Reader. Semicolon review here.
A Girl Named Mister by Nikki Grimes. Nominated and shortlisted for the INSPY Awards, Literature for Young People category.
The Truth of the Matter by Andrew Klavan. Nominated and shortlisted for the INSPY Awards, Literature for Young People category.
Saint Training by Elizabeth Fixmer. Nominated and shortlisted for the INSPY Awards, Literature for Young People category.
The Final Hour by Andrew Klavan.

Adult fiction:
Over the Edge by Brandilyn Collins. Semicolon review here.
The Bishop by Stephen James. Nominated and shortlisted for the INSPY Awards, Mystery/Thriller category. Semicolon review here.
Fatal Judgement by Irene Hannon. Nominated for the INSPY Awards, Mystery/Thriller category. Semicolon review here.
Back to Murder by J. Mark Bertrand. Nominated and shortlisted for the INSPY Awards, Mystery/Thriller category. Semicolon review here.

Nonfiction:
Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir by Carolyn Weber. I think I would have enjoyed this one more had I read it in book form instead of on my Kindle. I’m finding that my reading experience on the Kindle just isn’t the same. But it’s difficult to explain how it’s different and difficult to know whether it’s the book that is the problem or the device.
For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder that Shocked Chicago by Simon Baatz. Semicolon review here.
Fabulous Fashions of the 1920’s by Felicia Lowenstein Niven.

Sunday Salon: What I’m Reading, Watching, Enjoying

Oct22

The Sunday Salon.com

Can a thriller be literary? by Adam LeBor from the London Financial Times.

“So what exactly is a thriller, and how does the genre differ from ordinary novels? The key word is conflict. The protagonist will confront a series of threats before the plot builds up to a climax, which is often violent. The hero will confront his inner demons along the way and be forced to make an impossible choice. All this should unfold in vivid scene-setting that takes the reader into a new and unknown world.”

What a great idea! Little (20 book) public lending libraries. I want one.
Little Free Library.

Literature-inspired sneakers and iPhone cases. I would want some of these if my favorite books were included. Maybe The Three Musketeers would be worth showing off.

I spent my TV watching time for the past couple of weeks with the first (and only) season of the program Commander in Chief, starring Geena Davis as the vice-president of the United States who is unexpectedly thrown into the job of president after the sudden death of the sitting president. It was a good series, 18 episodes about an independent woman acting as a credibly authoritative president. Unfortunately, the writers or somebody associated with the show couldn’t sustain the “political independent” part of the equation. The “bad guy” in the show is, of course, a nasty old Republican, played wonderfully by Donald Sutherland, and President Mackenzie Allen is supposed be an independent, neither fish nor fowl, neither Democrat or Republican, neither liberal nor conservative. So she supports an airline strike instead of ending it by presidential fiat, sends the FBI into Maryland to solve some crime without authorization, defends gay marriage, and finally, in fit of liberalism that can’t be denied, she resurrects the ERA and tries to get it ratified by three more states so that women can finally have the equal rights that have been so long denied to them. You may or may not agree with all of those policy decisions, but liberal Democrat is the only label that can be used meaningfully to describe a person who pursues those policies and others on the show.

And, yet, it was a well-acted, engaging TV show, and I’m not sure why it was cancelled after only one season. Wikipedia cites “declining ratings.”

I’ll be reading a lot more INSPY-nominated books, Cybils-nominated easy readers and early chapter books, twentieth century history, and anything else that takes my fancy. So expect review of those genres and books, coming up for your reading pleasure.

What are you reading, watching, and enjoying these days?

Kylie Jean, Blueberry Queen by Marci Peschke

Oct18

Cybils nominee: Early Chapter Books. Nominated by Jennifer Glidden, Capstone Press.

Kylie Jean, who lives with her family in Jacksonville, Texas, has a lifelong dream: she wants to be a beauty queen. I’ve never heard of Jacksonville, but it’s a real town in East Texas, Cherokee County, and it has a population of 13,868 (2000 census). Jacksonville is “the Tomato Capital of the World”, but it’s blueberries that play the starring role in Kylie Jean’s journey to becoming a beauty queen.

In the story the big festival in Jacksonville every year is not Tomato Fest, but rather the Blueberry Festival. Kylie Jean wants to be Blueberry Festival Queen, and since Kylie Jean is not only pretty, inside and out, but also determined, she enlists some help and sets out to realize her dream.

I’m not much on beauty pageants, but I liked Kylie Jean. She talks and acts “Texas” through and through with her “right pretty” and her “hollering” and her “yes, m’am” and “no, m’am.” I liked the way Kylie Jean makes a list of the things she needs to do to enter the beauty pageant, and she goes right down the list, checking each thing off as she gets it done. And I learned a few things you might not know (I didn’t):

“Shouting is not ladylike.” Beauty queens don’t shout.

“Beauty queens always wear a slip because it is classy.”

“Pretty is as pretty does . . . means being nice to the old folks, taking care of little animals, and respecting [my] momma and daddy.”

I’ll just bet at least one of those pieces of information is new to you, too. Consider it a part of your free education in Texas culture.

Z-Baby: “I think all of the books about Kylie Jean look good: Rodeo Queen, Hoop Queen, and Drama Queen.”

*This book is nominated for a Cybils Award, and I am a judge for the first round thereof. However, no one paid me any money, and nobody knows which books will get to be finalists or which ones will get the awards. In other words, this review reflects my opinion and Z-baby’s and nothing else.

Sunday Salon: Love and Marriage

Oct16

The Sunday Salon.com

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP) — If leaders of Mexico City’s socialist democrat Party of the Democratic Revolution have their way, the city’s 2009 law legalizing gay “marriage” will be followed this year with temporary marriage licenses.

The minimum marriage contract would be for two years and could be renewed if the couple is happy, the bill’s co-author, Leonel Luna, told the Guardian newspaper. The licenses would include a pre-divorce agreement on the disposition of children and property if the couple decides to terminate the marriage.

“The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends,” Luna told the Guardian. “You wouldn’t have to go through the tortuous process of divorce.”

I wonder if one could write a dystopian/utopian novel about a society in which this kind of contract was the norm. What would a practice of moving every two years or so from one relationship to the next, always in search of that elusive “happiness”, do to people and families and societal stability? Would it be so very different from the society we’re living in now?

Why young Christians aren’t waiting anymore by Joe Blake.

“The article in Relevant magazine, entitled “(Almost) Everyone’s Doing It,” cited several studies examining the sexual activity of single Christians. One of the biggest surprises was a December 2009 study, conducted by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, which included information on sexual activity.

While the study’s primary report did not explore religion, some additional analysis focusing on sexual activity and religious identification yielded this result: 80 percent of unmarried evangelical young adults (18 to 29) said that they have had sex – slightly less than 88 percent of unmarried adults, according to the teen pregnancy prevention organization.”

So how is our culture very different from the Mexican socialist proposal that we legitimize short-term relationships and go on from there?

I still believe in marriage, life-long and for one man and one woman. However, if our culture has reached the point that this ideal is no longer practiced, even among a majority of professing Christians, what can we do to get the culture moving in a different direction?

Sociologically speaking, the one big difference – and it’s monstrous – between the biblical teaching and our culture is the arranged marriages of very young people. If you get married when you’re 13, you don’t have 15 years of temptation. ~Scott McKnight

I’m not suggesting, and neither is Mr. McKnight, that 13 year olds should be marrying. But what about seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen year olds? Why is it that eighteen year olds are old enough to join the army and old enough to vote, old enough to have sex, but not old enough to marry, according to cultural expectations?

We need stories, historical fiction, dystopian fiction and others, that explore the ramifications of these and other questions about marriage. If you are a writer, you have the power to move the conversation in our nation, not in a propagandistic way, but as a powerful by-product of the stories you choose to tell.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in September, 2011

Oct2

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
Oh, Those Harper Girls! by Kathleen Karr. Semicolon review here.
My Brother’s Shadow by Monica Schroder.
Lord of the Nutcracker Men by Iain Laurence. Semicolon review here.
The Foreshadowing by Marcus Sedgewick. Semicolon review here.

Adult Fiction
On Hummingbird Wings by Laurraine Snelling.
His Other Wife by Deborah Bedford. Semicolon review here.
Unlikely Suitor by Nancy Moser.
Anna’s Book by Barbara Vine. Semicolon review here.
While We’re Far Apart by Lynn Austin. Semicolon review here.
Forbidden by Ted Dekker and Tosca Lee. Semicolon review here.
The Attenbury Emeralds by Jill Paton Walsh. Semicolon review here.

Nonfiction:
In the Neighborhood: the Search for Community on an American Street, One Sleepover at a Time by Peter Lovenheim.
The Five Love Languages of Teenagers by Gary Chapman. Semicolon review here.
Primary Source Accounts of World War I by Glenn Sherer and Marty Fletcher. Semicolon notes here.
Remember the Lusitania! by Diana Preston.

Miscellaneous Links and Thinks for Sunday Salon

Sep18

The Sunday Salon.com

I suppose I could “tweet” all of these links or put them on Facebook or even Google+ them, but I sort of like gathering them together here at the old blog. Tweet or facebook or + as you like.

Water lilies in my hometown, San Angelo, Texas. I like stories about self-educated hobbyists who pursue a subject with passion and become experts.

Cindy at Ordo Amoris does Shakespeare with the family. “I always tell new students of the bard that if they do not like Shakespeare that is fine but it is the height of ignorance to conclude that it is the Bard’s fault rather than something lacking within themselves.”

All of the back issues of John Holt’s Growing Without Schooling newsletter (1977-2001) are now available to read online. I have many of the early issues of this pioneering newsletter. I probably subscribed in about 1980 or 81. And the newsletter was inspiring. Before I even had children, I knew that there were all these crazy people out there —leftover hippies, religious types, farm families, suburbanites, and city-dwellers– who were teaching their children at home. Or maybe “letting them learn” at home is a more appropriate designation. Although we ended up with a more structured homeschooling experience than many of the original GWS contributors and readers, I learned a lot from the newsletter about educational possibilities and creative thinking in relation to the way children and adults learn. Along with Melissa, I’m welcoming the appearance of Growing Without Schooling, free, on the web. Thank you to all those who made this gift possible.

Seuss, Sendak, and Silverstein: Children’s Authors Who Broke the Rules. I must admit that all three of these authors are favorites of mine, Seuss and Silverstein more than Sendak, but all three to some extent. I never got the appeal of some of Sendak’s books (In the NIght Kitchen, Outside Over There), but Max the Wild Thing is a classic character and his story is worth sharing with kids.

The Thinking Mother shares a Dystopian Literature reading list that she developed for her fourteen year old boy. Good resource for teen boys who are interested in dystopia and science fiction.

Hollywood Republican: 12 Essential Films for the Moral Formation of Boys. I would add Chariots of Fire, Gettysburg, and The Bridge on the River Kwai.

Reading About the Titanic

Sep12

On April 15, 1912 the luxury liner Titanic hit an iceberg and sank. 1595 passengers and crew died. Only 745 people were saved. For some reason, more than almost any other tragedy or shipwreck, the sinking of the Titanic has inspired dozens, maybe even hundreds, of books, movies, poems, and other media. Here’s a list of a few of the Titanic books for children and young adults:

Children’s fiction:
Tonight on the Titanic (Magic Treehouse Series, No. 17) by Mary Pope Osborne.
Dear America: Voyage on the Great Titanic, The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, R.M.S. Titanic 1912 by Ellen Emerson White. 13-year old Margaret Ann, a London orphan, is hired as companion to accompany the rich American lady, Mrs. Carstairs, on the Titanic to America. Reviewed at Reading Junky’s Reading Roost.
I Survived the Sinking of the Titanic, 1912 by Lauren Tarshis. Reviewed by Becky at Young Readers.
Titanic by Gordon Korman. A series of three books about four young passengers and their adventures aboard the doomed ship. The titles are Unsinkable, Collision Course, and S.O.S. Reviewed at The Fourth Musketeer.
No Moon by Irene Watts. Louisa, a nursemaid, overcomes her fear of the ocean and sails with her charges to New York aboard the Titanic.
Back to the Titanic (Travelers Through Time) by Beatrice Gormley.

Young adult fiction:
Fateful by Claudia Gray. Paranormal romance with werewolves, danger, and the Titanic. Reviewed by Christa at Hooked on Books.
Amanda/Miranda by Richard Peck. This one has a prophecy/supernatural angle, too. It seems to go with the territory. Mistress Amanda and her maid, Miranda, are almost identical in appearance, and Amanda exploits the resemblance for her own ends. However, when the two young ladies board the Titanic for their journey to America for Amanda’s wedding, they are unaware of how much is about to change for both of them. Reviewed at The Shady Glade.
Titanic Crossing by Barbara Williams.
Distant Waves by Suzanne Weyn. Spiritualism and the Titanic. The Taylor sisters deal with their mom’s profession as a spiritualist, and in the process they meet up with many of the most famous characters of the age: Harry Houdini, Nicola Tesla, John John Astor, George Bernard Shaw, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Benjamin Guggenheim and others. Lots of discussion of supernatural communication with the dead and whether or not spiritualists are truly gifted or fraudulent. I read this one just a couple of weeks ago, and I find it has lodged itself in a place in my mind. I keep wanting to look up more about Tesla in particular.
SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting. Typical teen romance-type novel with good historical detail. There’s a steward who foresees the disaster because of his supernatural “gift.” And there’s an underlying theme of class war and class distinctions just as there was in the movie, Titanic.
Titanic: The Long Night by Diane Hoh. Scholastic, 1998. Two couples face their fates aboard the Titanic.
Remembering the Titanic by Diane Hoh. Sequel to Titanic: The Long Night.

Nonfiction:
The Heroine of the Titanic by Joan W. Blos. A picture book about the “unsinkable Molly Brown.” Reviewed by Sally at Whispers of Dawn.
The Titanic: Lost and Found (Step-Into-Reading, Step 4) by Judy Donnelly. We have a copy of this beginning reader, and it’s a good introduction to the subject.
The Titanic Coloring Book by Peter F. Copeland. A Dover Publications coloring book.
The Watch That Ends the Night: Voices from the Titanic by Allan Wolf. Due out October 11, 2011.
Titanic (DK Eyewitness Books) by Simon Adams.

April 15th of next year (2012) will mark the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. It’s quite likely that more books, both for adults and for children, will be making an appearance in commemoration of that tragic event. If you have any suggestions to add to the above list, please leave a comment.

Sunday Salon: Books Read in August, 2011

Sep11

Children’s and Young Adult Fiction:
This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen. Semicolon review here.
Lock and Key by Sarah Dessen. Semicolon review here.
What Happened to Goodbye by Sarah Dessen. My review at The Point: Youth Reads.
Distant Waves: A Novel of the Titanic by Suzanne Weyn.

Adult Fiction:
Love, Charleston by Beth Hart Webb. Semicolon review here.

Nonfiction:
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918 by Adam Hochschild. Semicolon review here.
Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God by David Platt. Interesting, but hardly radical.

I think I read more books than these in August, but these are the only ones I remember or have records of. Oh, well, out of sight, out of mind.

Texas Tuesday: Oh, Those Harper Girls! by Kathleen Karr

Sep6

A few years ago I read Kathleen Karr’s The Great Turkey Walk out loud to some of the urchins, and I remember us deriving immense enjoyment from the humorous story of a simple boy named Simon and his turkey drive across the Midwest. Well, I would love to read this book, Oh, Those Harper Girls!, to my younger children sometime when we’re studying Texas history. I’m sure they would love getting to know the six Harper sisters: March, April, May, June, Julie, and Lily. (Lily, the youngest was born in April, but that month had already been taken. Hence, Lily.)

The Harper girls live in Texas, in 1869, just after the Civil War, with their refined mother and their ne’er-do-well daddy on the Double H Ranch. Unfortunately, the bank is going to foreclose on the Double H if the Harpers can’t come up with enough money to pay off daddy’s bank loan. Fortunately, Daddy H has a plan. Unfortunately, the plan involves rustling some of the neighbor’s cattle and re-branding them with the Double H brand. Fortunately, the girls fail at cattle rustling. Unfortunately, Daddy has another plan . . . etc, etc, etc.

Oh, Those Harper Girls! is a wonderful comedic farce set in frontier Texas. I think kids and adults together could read this one and enjoy the broad humor as well as the subtle touches or irony and understated absurdity. For instance, the Double H, which is falling apart and mortgaged to the hilt, has a backyard full of “black ooze that kept creeping up around the plants no matter what Mama did to get rid of it. Disgusting, thick, sticky stuff. . . Wouldn’t you know her daddy would pick just such a site to build his ranch on. Poor Daddy never did do the right thing.” Only thirty years too soon.

For some Texan hijinks with a little comedic romance and jail-breaking and a stage tour and stagecoach robbery and even a foiled bank robbery all thrown in for free to keep the story moving along, you can’t go wrong with Ms. Karr’s portrait of six sisters trying to survive and thrive in heat- and poverty-stricken Central Texas. Near Fredericksburg. But the sisters eventually get to go to New York and go on stage at Tony Pastor’s Opera House. (We’ll join the Astors at Tony Pastor’s/And this I’m positive of/That we won’t come home/That we won’t come home/No, we won’t come home until we fall in love!)

1905: Events and Inventions

Aug9

January 22, 1905. Bloody Sunday. In St. Petersburg, 10,000 workers and their families march to the Winter Palace to petition Czar Nicholas II for better working conditions. Cossack troops fire on the unarmed crowd, killing over 100 of the demonstrators and injuring many hundreds more.

January 25, 190. Frederick Wells, a mine supervisor in Transvaal, discovers the largest diamond ever found, weighing 3106.75 carats or 1.33 lbs. Transvaal (now called South Africa) was a British colony in 1905, and the jewel eventually became part of the British Crown Jewels after it was presented to King Edward VII on his birthday in 1907. The diamond is called the Cullinan diamond or The Star of Africa.

February 17, 1905. As his carriage passes through the Kremlin gates in Moscow, Grand Duke Sergei Aleksandrovich, the uncle of Czar Nicholas II and one his chief advisors, is killed by a bomb thrown onto his lap.

May 28, 1905. The Japanese navy sinks twelve Russian warships in the Strait of Tsushima, ending Russian hopes of winning the war with Japan at sea. The war continues to go badly for Russia on land as well, and the Czar and his government face continued civil unrest at home as peasants and workers demand the right to vote and to be democratically governed.

July 24, 1905. Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany and Czar Nicholas II meet in Russia and agree to conclude a secret treaty of alliance between the two countries. They plan to invite France to join this secret defensive alliance, but Russian ministers opposed such an alliance.

August 13, 1905. Norway votes to end its union Sweden which dated back to the 1814 Treaty of Kiel. Norway becomes (again) an independent country and in November the Norwegians invite Prince Charles of Denmark to become their new king.

September 5, 1905. President Teddy Roosevelt of the United States is instrumental in bringing the Russians and the Japanese to sign the treaty of Portsmouth, ending the war in Korea and Manchuria. The Japanese and the Russians agree to withdraw from Manchuria, but the Japanese are to have free rein in Korea and in the formerly Russian ports of Dalny and Port Arthur in Manchuria.

September 7, 1905. More than 1000 people have died in the oil fields of Baku (Azerbaijan) as fighting continues between the Armenians and Tartars, encouraged by Turkish propaganda. The Russian government has not taken action to reconcile the two groups, and oil production is being destroyed by raging fires as a result of the fighting.

October 30, 1905. In a new manifesto, Czar Nicholas II promises Russians limited civil and voting rights and an elected parliament, the Duma.

October, 1905. British suffragettes Emmeline Pankhurst and Annie Kenney prefer to go to prison rather than pay fines for an assault conviction. The suffragettes say that they are tired of waiting for the right to vote and they are willing to use violence and hunger strikes in prison to gain their victory.