The Unfinished Angel, by Sharon Creech
Chuckelous ESL wordplay, but nothing like ye olden Creech novels. Thin ice, and no depth below.
A Season of Gifts, by Richard Peck
Review forthcoming--one of my favorite books of 2009.
Be a Genie in Six Easy Steps, by Steve Cole & Linda Chapman
Reviewed
Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, by Ben Carson
This month's family read-aloud. My mother chooses the titles. Dr. Carson's story was interesting, though (he's the neurosurgeon who successfully separated Siamese twins joined at the head).
Celia's House, by D.E. Stevenson
A brilliant, beloved reread.
I Corinthians, II Corinthians, KJ Version
The Miles Between, by Mary Pearson
I can't decide. I can't decide if it was a cotton ball, or if it's going to stick in my mind and end up a really good book. The whole experience was like being twelve and reading Walk Two Moons for the first time. Only, YA. And there was no question with Walk Two Moons. It rocked my young axis the same way that Tuck Everlasting and Bridge to Terebithia did.
Catching Fire, by Suzanne Collins
Lived up to the hype, oh yes. Anticipating #3, oh yes. But, as with Hunger Games, not one of my year-end favorites.
Silent on the Moor, by Deanna Raybourn
Practically perfect in every way. If only the author wouldn't insist on jabbing homosexual acceptance where it isn't wanted, by the story or by readers interested in a period drama. However--spoiler warning!--Julia's homosexual sister is abandoned by her partner, who chooses to marry a man so that she can have children. There's an important philosophical implication deep-rooted in that development, about the nature of human persons as beings with a gender who have a purpose (procreation) apart from their function, ability or desire, which could each be inconsistent with how human persons ought to be by nature. (Blame that tangent on the Relativism book.)
On my Nightstand for October
Mmm, another month with sticky, toffee stories to look forward to.
After my lovely Lady Julia jaunt last month, I’m going to try another period series: And Only to Deceive. It looks intriguing. The author was inspired by Gaudy Night. What more must I say?
I’m still plugging away at Anna Karenina—finished book one!
Heard a lot about Fat Cat earlier this summer, and it’s finally coming out this month.
Now this one I am incredibly excited to read. A Brief History of Montmoray. Look it up. Stay tuned. Prepare for brilliance. (It’s being compared to I Capture the Castle. And the author is an Aussie.)
The other day I was listening to a Katherine Paterson speech I heard at the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing. Her topic was Beauty in Stories. I fell with a crash that could be heard for miles. She is amazing. I’ve been prejudiced against Jacob Have I Loved ever since I saw the film version when I was twelve, and hated the story. But I’m going to give it another try. Because Katherine Paterson is amazing. Aren’t you glad children’s books can be read even when you’re not a child?
I’m reading Pollyanna to my little sister as our literature selection this month. Quite different from the Disney film, but quite enjoyable to my 8 year old audience.
And Relativism: Feet Firmly Planted in Midair. I’m in the middle of this one... meat city!
How about your nightstand?
Scoop of the e-e-evening: Be a Genie in Six Easy Steps
Americans definitely got a raw deal in the transfer from England. Cover? Title? The prize goes to Britain. But the dedication remains the same:This book is dedicated to the memory of the author E. Nesbit. Her wonderful books about magic and ordinary family life inspired us both to write this story in tribute--a kind of "Four" Children and It for today's readers.
When Milly, Michael, Jason and Jess move to a town in the middle of nowhere, the last thing they expect to find is a magic book - with its own talking bookworm called Skribble! The grumpy worm promises that "The Genie Handbook" can make them into genies in six easy steps. Soon they are diving into a world of weirdness and wonder, trouble and trickery, trying to make each other's wishes come true. But when the wishes start to go wrong the magic seems scarier. What is the secret of the mysterious couple watching from the shadows? Why is Skribble so afraid of them? And if the children's greatest wish of all is finally granted, will their world change for better or for worse?Omniscient novels with three or four main characters inevitably face the challenge of memorable heroes. It's even more challenging when those characters are related. How to distinguish between a pack of siblings in the reader's mind? How to reveal nuances that the other protagonists ignore as too familiar to notice?
Chapman and Cole do a lovely job on all points. Michael, Milly, Jess and Jason are new step-siblings. This leaves plenty of discoveries for the children to make about each other as the story develops, while still presenting us with a united band of heroes. The children each have their quirks--Michael is the gamer, Milly the baby, and dreamer, Jess is the perfect, picky older sister, while Jason is the brain. Each personality has a role in the plot.
The narrating voice is very British, which I loved, and I laughed out loud more than once. The magic goes wrong in classic Nesbit style, which of course I couldn't resist.
Michael looked at Jess and stared. "Oh ... my ...!"
"You'd better not be looking at my underwear!" she told him furiously.
"Not your underwear." Michael's face turned a shade of green. "The X-ray vision's getting worse. I can see your skeleton! All the bones and bits of gristle and your brain! Ugh..." He turned, staggered behind a car, and was sick--very, very noisily.
Family plays a big part in the story--it just begs to be read aloud at bedtime.
Be a Genie in Six Easy Steps is truly to Nesbit what Snyder's Any Which Wall is to Edward Eager: a lively continuation of a great author's legacy. One of my favorite books of 2009.
Note: The authors have published a sequel in the UK: Genie and the Phoenix.
While my destination is not a desert island...
... it is an island, and I am having muy trouble deciding what books to place inside my suitcase.Or rather, what books to leave behind.
Only three months to ruminate on this mighty conundrum! And then five months to live with the consequences.
Oh, well, London does have a few bookshops.
Jammy Blogs -- Book Blogger Appreciation Week
Inspired by Sarah at Library Hospital, I'm celebrating Book Blogger Appreciation Week by tipping my hat to ten blogs I follow. I appreciate their fun, their facts, their presence in this floating Laputa neighborhood that exists inside my head ... and yours. My reading just wouldn't be the same without a now-and-then post from:bookshelves of doom
Always good for news and a smile.
A Library is a Hospital for the Mind
A fellow lover of Marple and Montgomery.
Miss Erin
Quiet lately, but worth straining your ears.
eating a tangerine
Succinct. And thought-provoking.
Fireside Musings
Booky cousin #1 (or, bookish, rather)
My Utopia
Bookish cousin #2
The Longstockings
A band of authors and their thoughts.
All About Children's Books
News and writerly tidbits.
Becky's Book Reviews
Never a bookless moment.
A Fuse #8 Production
Front-line librarian, information and entertainment hand in hand.
In my ears
This song.
I must waltz.
Now.
Waltzing,
in a t-shirt
and underwear.
In my ears
This song--
and the vacuum.
One flick,
a narrow path of clean carpet--
the song is gone.
Well,
Behind the noise,
invisible.
Do I live this way?
This song.
I must waltz.
Now.
Waltzing,
in a t-shirt
and underwear.
In my ears
This song--
and the vacuum.
One flick,
a narrow path of clean carpet--
the song is gone.
Well,
Behind the noise,
invisible.
Do I live this way?
Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries
You know that thing...
Like, in War and Peace (please, humor the geek in me) where Andrei and Natasha have just finished their first dance, and Andrei follows Natasha with his eyes, and he says to himself, if she looks back at me now, she will be my wife.Do you ever do that? If/then mind games? If I skip every other stair on my way up, then... If I blink at each telephone pole that flashes past the car window, then...
Or is it just me and Andrei?
(I reallyreallyreally want to the see the 2007 mini series. Maybe by the time it's available in the States, I'll have recovered from Henry Fonda in the 1956 version. That was painful. [Henry: It's pronounced Ahndrey. Not Anndray. Ahn. Drey.]
Book Giveaway: Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse
Win a free ARC of Kaleb Nation's debut novel, Bran Hambric: The Farfield CurseAll you have to do is tell one person about the contest, and direct them to my blog: http://www.noeldevries.blogspot.com/
Then enter your name and email address in the comments section.
Closes midnight (CST), September 25th
While you're at it, check out what other readers had to say about Bran Hambric:
Sunday, August 30th
Monday, August 31st
Tuesday, September 1st
James Holder’s YouTube Channel
Wednesday, September 2nd
Thursday, September 3rd
Friday, September 4th
Saturday, September 5th
Sunday, September 6th
Monday, September 7th
Life After Twilight vlog channel
Tuesday, September 8th
Wednesday, September 9th
Thursday, September 10th
Friday, September 11th
The Inside Scoop With Chandelle
Saturday, September 12th
Sunday, September 13th
Monday, September 14th
Tuesday, September 15th
Wednesday, September 16th
Thursday, September 17th
Friday, September 18th
Saturday, September 19th
Scoop of the e-e-evening: Bran Hambric: The Farfield Curse
I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel whose characters instantly conjured up an illustrator. But the moment I met Kaleb Nation’s Wilomas family, my mind screamed, Quentin Blake! Which, if you’ve read any Dahl, tells you a lot about Bran Hambric. It’s Matilda meets Harry Potter. 
With gnomes.
There is plenty for middle grade readers to enjoy in this story. Nation relies on action to move events forward, and his scenery is well-painted. His characters are vivid, if not exaggerated, as mentioned. His prose is lively, dusted with words like “gluttonizing.”
But Bran Hambric is also a debut novel, begun at age fourteen. There’s room to grow. At times, Nation’s prose was redundant: “It was a dark, icy prison, his body racing downward and upward and in all directions at once. Fear crawled through him. He felt eyes upon him, coming from all directions” or overly dramatic: “...the dream cleared itself from his head like the last echoes of a dying man’s voice.”
However, the novel’s pacing and story arc, though not 100% brawn, kept me turning pages. Every now and then, serious scenes and violent action jarred against Nation’s Dahl-like style, but I don’t think the impact would bother a middle grade audience. In fact, I think they’d enjoy the variety.
The Farfield Curse’s ending leaves plenty of room for the projected five sequels. It will be interesting to watch Nation’s talent develop over the next few years. He’s off to a good start.
ARC courtesy of Sourcebooks Jabberwocky
Publication September 2009
Wanted: A Nanny for Two Adorable Children
Well, I can officially announce my exciting news: I've been accepted into a program that provides nannies to international missionaries. There are still many details to work out, and I could end up in Spain or Albania, but my fingers are crossed for an extended stay with a family in London, England!
My Life in Literature meme
Using only books you have read this year (2009), answer these questions. Try not to repeat a book title.
Describe yourself: The Story Girl (L.M. Montgomery)
How do you feel: The Reluctant Heiress (Eva Ibbotson)
Describe where you currently live: Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Silent on the Moor (Deanna Raybourn)
Your favorite form of transportation: Along for the Ride (Sarah Dessen)
Your best friend is: Savvy (Ingrid Law)
You and your friends are: Mystery and Manners (Flannery O'Connor)
What the weather is like: North of Beautiful (Justina Chen Headley)
You fear: Jane Austen Ruined My Life (Beth Patillo)
What is the best advice you have to give: Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton)
Thought for the day: Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy Sayers)
How you would like to die: Eyes Like Stars (Lisa Manchev)
Your soul’s present condition: Manalive (G.K. Chesterton)
From Becky's Book Reviews.
Describe yourself: The Story Girl (L.M. Montgomery)
How do you feel: The Reluctant Heiress (Eva Ibbotson)
Describe where you currently live: Cry, the Beloved Country (Alan Paton)
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Silent on the Moor (Deanna Raybourn)
Your favorite form of transportation: Along for the Ride (Sarah Dessen)
Your best friend is: Savvy (Ingrid Law)
You and your friends are: Mystery and Manners (Flannery O'Connor)
What the weather is like: North of Beautiful (Justina Chen Headley)
You fear: Jane Austen Ruined My Life (Beth Patillo)
What is the best advice you have to give: Orthodoxy (G.K. Chesterton)
Thought for the day: Murder Must Advertise (Dorothy Sayers)
How you would like to die: Eyes Like Stars (Lisa Manchev)
Your soul’s present condition: Manalive (G.K. Chesterton)
From Becky's Book Reviews.
Fancy Nancy Soiree
My Fancy Nancy Soiree at the library last week.
Learning proper posture
My sister and me ... whose glasses are plain, and whose are posh?
Pinkies up, darling!
Mystery and Manners (Flannery O'Connor)
Noah: "Prepare for the deluge!" meaning rain.Noel: "Prepare for the deluge!" meaning quotes.
In the greatest fiction, the writer's moral sense coincides with his dramatic sense, and I see no way for it to do this unless his moral judgement is part of the very act of seeing, and he is free to use it. I have heard it said that belief in Christian dogma is a hindrance to the writer, but I myself have found nothing further from the truth. Actually, it frees the story-teller to observe. It is not a set of rules which fixes what he sees in the world. It affects his writing primarily by guaranteeing his respect for mystery.
I think the writer is initially set going by literature more than by life.
You may say that the serious writer doesn't have to bother about the tired reader, but he does, because they are all tired.
The great novels we get in the future are not going to be those that the public thinks it wants, or those that critics demand. They are going to be those that interest the novelist.
I find that most people know what a story is until they sit down to write one. Then they find themselves writing a sketch with an essay woven through it, or an essay with a sketch woven through it, or an editorial with a character in it, or a case history with a moral, or some other mongrel thing. When they realize that they aren't writing stories, they decide that the remedy for this is to learn something that they refer to as ... "the technique of the novel." Technique in the minds of many is something rigid, something like a formula that you impose on the material; but in the best stories it is something organic, something that grows out of the material...
But the world of the fiction writer is full of matter, and this is what the beginning fiction writers are very loathe to create. They are concerned primarily with unfleshed ideas and emotions. They are apt to be reformers and want to write because they are possessed not by a story but by the bare bones of some abstract notion. They are conscious of problems, not of people, of questions and issues, not of the texture of existence, of case histories and of everything that has a sociological smack, instead of with all those concrete details of life that make actual the mystery of our position on earth.
...you can't make an inadequate dramatic action complete by putting a statement of meaning on the end of it or in the middle of it or at the beginning of it.... when you write fiction you are speaking with character and action, not about character and action.
It's always wrong of course to say that you can't do this or you can't do that in fiction. You can do anything you can get away with, but nobody has ever gotten away with much.
Quoting Joseph Conrad: And if [the artist's] conscience is clear, his answer to those who, in the fullness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus: -- My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel -- it is, before all, to make you see. That -- and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm -- all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.
It is the nature of fiction is not to be good for much unless it is good in itself.
Any discipline can help your writing: logic, mathematics, theology, and of course and particularly, drawing. Anything that helps you to see, anything that makes you look. The writer should never be ashamed of staring. There is nothing that doesn't require his attention.
The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.
In fact, so many people can now write competent stories that the short story as a medium is in danger of dying of competence. We want competence, but competence by itself is deadly. What is needed is the vision to go with it, and you do not get this from a writing class.
...in good stories, the characters are shown through the action and the action is controlled through the characters, and the result of this is meaning that derives from the whole presented experience.
Your beliefs will be the light by which you see, but they will not be what you see and they will not be a substitute for seeing.
[The habit of art] is more than just a discipline, although it is that; I think it is a way of looking at the created world and of using the senses so as to make them find as much meaning as possible in things.
The characters spoke as if they had never heard any kind of language except what came out of a television set. This indicated that something is way out of focus.
In most good stories it is the character's personality that creates the action of the story.
You ought to be able to discover something from your stories. If you don't, probably nobody else will.
Story-writers are always talking about what makes a story "work." From my own experience in trying to make stories "work," I have discovered that what is needed is an action that is totally unexpected, yet totally believable, and I have found that, for me, this is always an action which indicates that grace has been offered. And frequently it is an action in which the devil has been the unwilling instrument of grace.
Being a novelist and not a philosopher or theologian …
The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality.
The Catholic novelist frequently becomes so entranced with his Christian state that he forgets his nature as a fiction writer. This is all right, this is fine, if he stops writing fiction, but most of the time he doesn’t stop writing it, and he makes … [a] spectacle of himself…
We are not content to stay within our limitations and make something that is simply good in and by itself…. Yet what is good in itself glorifies God because it reflects God. The artist has his hands full and does his duty if he attends to his art. He can safely leave evangelizing to the evangelists.
The Catholic novelist doesn’t have to be a saint; he doesn’t even have to be a Catholic; he does, unfortunately, have to be a novelist.
…what we call the Catholic novel is not necessarily about a Christianized or Catholicized world, but simply that it is one in which the truth as Christians know it has been used as a light to see the world by. This may or may not be a Catholic world, and it may or may not have been seen by a Catholic.
We see people distorting their talents in the name of God for reasons that they think are good—to reform or to teach or to lead people to the Church. And it is much less easy to say that this is reprehensible. None of us is able to judge such people themselves, but we must, for the sake of truth, judge the products they make.
Poorly written novels—no matter how pious and edifying the behavior of the characters—are not good in themselves and are therefore not really edifying.
… the novelist who is a Catholic may feel some friction between what he is supposed to do as a novelist and what he is supposed to do as a Catholic …. Is he supposed to change what he sees and make it, instead of what it is, what in the light of faith he thinks it ought to be? Is he, as Baron von Hugal has said, supposed to “tidy up reality?”
When the Catholic novelist closes his own eyes and tries to see with the eyes of the Church, the result is another addition to that large body of pious trash for which we have so long been famous.
The tensions of being a Catholic novelist are probably never balanced for the writer until the Church becomes so much a part of his personality that he can forget about her—in the same sense that when he writes, he forgets about himself.
…the conscientious novelist works at the limits of his power and within what his imagination can apprehend. He does not decide what would be good for the Christian body and proceed to deliver it. Like a very doubtful Jacob, he confronts what stands in his path…
The poet is traditionally a blind man, but the Christian poet, and storyteller as well, is like the blind man whom Christ touched, who looked then and saw men as if they were trees, but walking.
We reflect the Church in everything we do, and those who can see clearly that our judgment is false in matters of art cannot be blamed for suspecting our judgment in matters of religion.
…evil is not simply a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be endured.
The fact is that if the writer’s attention is on producing a work of art, a work that is good in itself, he is going to take great pains to control every excess, everything that does not contribute to this central meaning and design.
… if [the novelist] is going to show the supernatural taking place, he has nowhere to do it except on the literal level of natural events, and that if he doesn’t make these natural things believable in themselves, he can’t make them believable in any of their spiritual extensions.
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