I’m not sure what to say about this book. I feel as if I should warn potential readers that the book is rated R for nasty sexual behavior and that the protagonist makes immature choices and finally chooses the right thing for, mostly, the wrong reasons. I wanted to recommend this book to Dancer Daughter since the main character is a dancer, but I can’t do so in good conscience because of the R rating.

Still, I liked Pippa. I liked the atmosphere of Venice where most of the story takes place and the vivid portrayal of the world of professional dance. I thought Ms. Godden did a good job of showing the coming of age of a young, sheltered girl as she goes out into the world and yet meets with danger and seduction in her own backyard where she least expects it. Pippa reminded me of my own daughters, confident that they are prepared to meet any crisis, and yet so woefully unprepared for that one unexpected confrontation with raw evil. For that matter, I was reminded of myself at that age. I thought I knew everything because I’d read about it all in books.

Rumer Godden tells a good story. Her novel about the world of a Roman Catholic convent, In This House of Brede is one of my favorite books of all time. Pippa Passes is OK, but you can probably pass it by in favor of In This House of Brede if you’ve never read it. Now there’s a good story, and it deals with the same themes as Pippa Passes —loyalty to one’s calling, recognition of human weakness, the loss of innocence— in a much more nuanced and, at the same time, accessible way.

I’m a Texan and a reader, and I’ve never read any books by Pulitzer-prize winning author Larry McMurtry. I’ve heard of Lonesome Dove and Streets of Laredo and Terms of Endearment and The Last Picture Show. I’ve heard of the movies based on some of these books. But I’ve never read any of them, nor have I ever seen any of the movies. I saw a paperback copy of Lonesome Dove in the used bookstore a week or two ago and figured it was time to remedy my lack of Texas loyalty in reading.

I read a little over two hundred pages of this nine hundred forty-five page book and decided that life is too short to spend my reading time in the company of people I don’t like who are doing things I find repulsive. The book won a Pulitzer Prize; I would imagine there’s something there I just don’t appreciate, but I’ve come to a mid-life crisis in my reading in just the last year or two. I’m not telling how old I am, but I’m probably over halfway through my reading life. I have too many books on my TBR list to spend time reading books I don’t like. And I really didn’t like Lonesome Dove. How did I hate this book? Let me count the ways:

As I hinted before, I didn’t like any of the characters in the book. Gus is a talkative, lazy drunk who thinks he knows something because he can talk a blue streak and knows how to read and write and charm the ladies. Captain Call is a silent, hardworking, sober washed-up ex-Texas Ranger who may have depths of character that I will never fathom because I don’t like him or the company he keeps. Jake is a another lazy charmer who makes promises he doesn’t intend to keep and is so careless that he murders people by mistake. Oh, and they’re all a bunch of horse thieves. And there’s also Lori, the obligatory town prostitute who is suppposed to be idealistic because she dreams of going to San Francisco where I assume she will continue to ply her trade with an ocean view. She is. of course, more sinned against than sinner, hardened by the life she’s forced to lead, but with a heart of gold somewhere beneath her rough exterior. (Yech!)

I grew up in West Texas, a little later than the time in which this book is set (I’m not that old). I don’t know anyone who acts the way the people in this book act, nor anyone who talks the way they talk. The men are all a bunch of losers. They spend a lot of time arguing about nothing and teasing each other about inane subjects. My great-grandparents didn’t live the way these guys live. If this is West Texas or South Texas culture, I’m a monkey’s uncle. “You never knowed much about women,” says one of the characters. I’ve heard bad grammar in West Texas, and I could reproduce it, but “knowed”? And when they curse, they say, “‘I god.” What’s that supposed to be a representation of?

These people are depressing. They live in a (literally) God-forsaken dirt mound, no mention of any god except as a curse word, and they decide to leave and go to Montana, not because they want to better themselves or go somewhere else–just because. Except for Lori who wants to go to San Francisco for some unknown reason, no one really wants to go to Montana. On the other hand no one in the Hat Creek Outfit, the name of the poor excuse for a Texas ranch the characters mostly live on, has the gumption to back out of the trip once the momentum has started in that direction. Did I mention that they’re all a bunch of losers?

This is supposed to be great literature, note the Pulitzer Prize, but I never got to the great literary part. If there’s a theme, I’m guessing that the book says that life is a drag, and death ain’t much better. So, you might as well argue, wh0re, and gamble yourself into the grave, but don’t have any fun doing it. Because life is a drag.

Since this week was Children’s Book Week, and since I found this meme and copied it at Kate’s Book Blog, I thought today would be an appropriate time to answer the questions. Scroll down for the Saturday Review of Books.

1. How old were you when you learned to read and who taught you?
I learned to read in first grade, public school, six years old, no kindergarten for me.

2. Did you own any books as a child? If so, what’s the first one that you remember owning? If not, do you recall any of the first titles that you borrowed from the library?
I don’t know what the first book I owned was, but I remember the first books I owned and lost. I had a whole set of blue-covered Nancy Drew mysteries, numbers 1-3?, and when we moved the summer after I finished fifth grade we left the Nancy Drew books behind for some reason. I still miss those books. I think some of the first books I borrowed from the library were the Snipp, Snapp, Snurr books and the Flicka Ricka, Dicka books.

3. What’s the first book that you bought with your own money?
What money? Honestly, I don’t know. It was probably something from Scholastic’s Arrow book club.

4. Were you a re-reader as a child? If so, which book did you re-read most often?
I didn’t have much time for re-reading as a child. There were too many titles calling to me from the library shelves.

5. What’s the first adult book that captured your interest and how old were you when you read it?
In my library, children were not allowed into the adult section until they were . . . I’m not sure what magic age. As a teenager, I checked out some books from the (one) shelf of YA books that marked the boundary between the children’s room and the adult section. At some point, about high school age maybe, I ventured into the adult section, and no one stopped me. I think I read some Agatha Christie and Rex Stout mysteries to start out. Then, one day, I checked out Exodus by Leon Uris, and I remember it being exciting, but somewhat shocking. In one scene, two unmarried young people who are “in love” but also in the midst of a war, find time to go off into the hills and make love with the excuse that one or both of them might be dead before they can get married. I thought this was a poor excuse for a foolish decision at the time, and come to think of it, I still do. But I loved Exodus.

6. Are there children’s books that you passed by as a child that you have learned to love as an adult? Which ones?
I never read The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame as a child, and I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it then. I now think it’s a delightful book. I preferred action to description back then.

I received a review copy of this first book in the Landon Snow fantasy series and also the sequels, Landon Snow and The Shadows of Malus Quidam and Landon Snow and the Island of Arcanum. Before I could read them, Karate Kid (age 9) gobbled them up, all three, and asked for more. Then, Brown Bear Daughter started reading them at a more ladylike pace, but just as voraciously. Now, finally, I’m getting my hands on them, and I think I see what all the fuss is about.

I don’t much like the marketing campaign for the Landon Snow books. Although it’s clever to put the books in covers that make them look like the very popular Lemony Snicket series or the almost equally popular Spiderwick Chronicles and although it probably entices readers (and parents) to tell them that the books are “a Christian alternative to Harry Potter,” these ploys do a disservice to the books themselves. (I’d complain about the idea that we have to have a Christian alternative to every bestseller that comes along, but that’s another post . . .) If I were to compare the Landon Snow books to anything else it wouldn’t be Unfortunate Events or Harry Potter or Spiderwick, but rather Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland or The Phantom Tollbooth by Norman Juster. Landon falls, like Alice, into a dream-like wonderland, and like Milo, Landon encounters lots of games and puzzles and wordplay and adventure.

Yes, the books are a “Christian alternative,” I suppose, but the Christian message is not obtrusive nor is the story subordinated to the preaching of a sermon. Scripture is sprinkled about in a tasteful and intriguing manner. In fact, the books may make some children curious enough to look up a few vocabulary words and a few BIble verses, just to see what the meaning and context are, not a bad side effect.

Landon, age 11, is a boy with a a lot of questions —and answers– and a love for books and words. His sister, Holly, less than a year younger than he is, likes numbers. And Bridget, the baby at seven years old, asks lots of questions, too. Along with their parents, the three children go to visit their grandparents in Button Up, Minnesota, and the most exciting part of the trip is a visit to the BUL, the Button Up Library, a magical place where first Landon, then Landon and Holly, then all three children, are drawn into adventures the same way a reader will be drawn into this series of books. The blurb on the back of the book warns: “Don’t Fall In. {This book may swallow.}”

I would suggest that these books would make wonderful Christmas presents for boys and girls ages nine to thirteen. However, I wouldn’t buy just the first one because I think your fantasy fans are going to want to read the second and third books, too. Mr. Mortenson, by the way, is an ordined minister and a Navy chaplain. Go to the Landon Snow website to learn more about the author or about the books.

Funny: Breaking the novel habit, courtesty of readers of The New Yorker.

Thought-provoking: “Kathryn Joyce is working on a book about Christian conservative women, to be published by Beacon Press.” What she has now is this article in Nation about what she calls “the Quiverfull movement.” I certainly wouldn’t endorse everything Joyce writes about Christian families with large families, but she does have an interesting, albeit secular, perspective. She’s totally missed the many Catholic families and families of other denominations (not fundamentalist) who have embraced a family-centered, God-honoring lifestyle.

Gift-giving: I am going to use this list of “Ten Books On Scientific Subjects That I Personally Guarantee You Will Enjoy Immensely (Or, At Least Find Mildly Interesting)” as a guide for buying My Favorite Engineer and Amateur Scientist and Mathematician a Christmas present. (Don’t tell!)

Truth in labelling: Carmon writes about bookplates, with links to sites where you can print some out or design your own.

Thanksgiving: The Queen of the Beehive recommends some great Thanksgiving books for families. I thought about doing a post on Thanksgiving books, but why re-invent the wheel when Queen Bee has already done such a great job?

Professor Dr. Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is a bit of an academic Charlie Brown. His masterpiece of philology, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, is well-known in philological circles and has sold two hundred copies, but the publishers are about to sell the remainders to a furniture company to furnish the home bookshelves of wealthy patrons. He is the most distinguished professor at the Institute of Romance Philology in Regensburg, but it is his colleague, Professor Dr Dr (honorary) Florianus Prinzel who was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Palermo. And even when Professor Igelfeld finds a dentist who is the most beautiful creature he’s ever had the privilege of allowing to pull his tooth, well, he becomes the victim of the old saw, “Faint heart never won fair maid.”

I must say that after reading Possession by A.S. Byatt, a serious novel about the arcane world of literary scholarship, it was just pure fun to read Portuguese Irregular Verbs, a comedic collection of vignettes that treats the equally arcane world of philological scholarship with a light touch and a Wodehousian humor. Poor Professor Igelfeld is so proud of the “von” in his name and of his almost twelve hundred page epic on the vagaries of Portuguese verbs. Then, he discovers that his book is being used by at least one person as a step-stool, and the institute librarian has plans to move it to the basement storage room.

But Professor Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld is not discouraged for long. He comes back just as Charlie Brown comes back to try one more time to kick the football, and he maintains his dignity in the face of nefarious plots in the library, ominous warnings from an Indian holy man, and danger in the canals of Venice.

This book has two sequels, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs and The Villa of Reduced Circumstances. I plan to seek out both of them as soon as possible; Professor von Igelfeld is my new, rather absurd, quixotic hero.

Alexander McCall Smith also wrote the series of detective books that begins with The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency and another series of mystery stories set in Scotland, starting with The Sunday Philosophy Club. All of his books, all the ones I’ve read so far, are worth your time with delightful characterization and insight into human nature.

Hero Netherfield is the new girl in sixth grade, and she’s been in that situation many times before. So she knows what to expect, and she expects not to fit in and not to like it. She’s also not much interested in Shakespeare, even though her literary parents named her after a character in Much Ado About Nothing.

But Shakespeare, and Queen Elizabeth, not to mention Edward de Vere and Anne Boleyn, keep intruding into Hero’s life as she tries, with the help of an elderly neighbor and an older boy named Danny, to sort out her place in her family and in school. Here’s yet another “literary mystery” written for young adults and older children, but in this one the main character is a normal, not-so-literary young lady who becomes interested in literature by way of a treasure hunt for some mysterious jewels.

If the title puts some kids off, the plot should draw them in if they give it a chance. I enjoyed it.