NYT Notables of 2008 or Lots of Good Books

The 2008 versions of the New York Times 100 Notable Books and Notable Childrens' Books lists are out. The books are listed alphabetically and almost all have links to the NYT review. There is also a slideshow of Best Illustrated Children's Books.

I haven't read any of the adult books but am interested in a couple of them, including a non-fiction about Ann Hathaway (Shakespeare's Wife by Germaine Greer) and another about insects (The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance and Strangeness of Insect Societies by Bert Holldobler and E.O. Wilson).

One of the books on the short children's list is Wabi Sabi by Mark Reibstein which I just saw yesterday when we were setting up the book fair at Z's school. Its collage art and haiku poetry (shown in the picture on this post) combine for a really beautiful book and we will definitely look for it again.

Always in the market for another good book,
K and Z

The Wait for Jingle Bells Is Over!

This past weekend we hit the Christmas/Winter section at the library. We brought home three cute books.

Z is old enough to be done with board books but he still loves them so first we picked Dear Santa by Rod Campbell, the author/illustrator of another family favorite, Dear Zoo. In this book, Santa is trying to choose the right present for the kid author. This is an open-the-flap book so we get to open each present as Santa decides that one is too small, one is too big, one is too messy, etc. Go get this book and see what he ends up with!

The next book that caught Z's fancy was the bright and happy Merry Christmas, Cheeps! This book is written by Julie Stiegemeyer and illustrated by Carol Baicker-McKee, although "illustrated" is a misnomer. This book consists of photographs of cloth and clay crafts. The chickies are made of terry cloth and the surroundings seem to be modeling clay. The chicks have little knitted scarfs and hats and clay beaks. They are really quite cute! The words in the book are simple but catchy and there is a really simple cookie recipe too. This book covers all the important holiday traditions -- snow angels, singing carols, making cookies and reading! There appears to be a series of these Cheeps books so maybe we will find another one later.

The last book we found is My Penguin Osbert, written by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel and illustrated in beautiful pencil drawings by H.B. Lewis. The young subject, Joe, tells us how he hasn't gotten exactly what he thought he was asking Santa for in the past. He asked for a racecar and got one -- a toy model. He wanted a trampoline but got a pogo stick. So this year Joe was more specific in asking for a real live penguin and he got one! Osbert turned out to be a handful but Joe didn't complain because he had asked specifically for this gift. Joe writes to Santa again saying that if maybe Santa knows better than him, he could replace the present with what he should have received. So Santa sends some tickets to the zoo and when they are there, Osbert decides to stay with the other penguins. Joe is sad to have lost his friend but he can always visit at the zoo. This is a beautiful book with a good message.

Hoping we can make snow angels sooner than later,
K and Z


Buy Dear Santa, Merry Christmas, Cheeps! and My Penguin Osbert on Amazon or find them at your local library.

Happy Thanksgiving

And for my non-American readers, happy Thursday! As always, we are just thankful for our time together as a family and for the ability we have to live a lifestyle that leaves time for reading.

Turkey sandwiches and pumpkin pie dreams,
K

"Storm clouds raced over the barren plain between the fortifications and the goods station... where the scrubby grass smelled unpleasantly of sewers."

I really wanted to like Murder on the Eiffel Tower by Claude Izner, the pen-name for two Parisian sisters. I wanted to wait for more books in the series to be translated. I wanted to find a new detective. But Victor Legris is no detective and honestly is barely tolerable as a man.

The story begins with a seemingly random murder in a trainyard and continues to a murder on the Eiffel Tower during the 1889 World Exposition. Victor Legris is a peripheral character, a bookseller, who becomes entangled in the murders when he sees links between them and his new love interest, Tasha, and his mentor and father-figure, Kenji Mori. Victor doesn't know who to trust and alternates between trying to rule out his friends as suspects and believing that they are cold-blooded murders.

Legris is a rude, arrogant, self-centered twenty-nine year old man. He treats his friends badly when it suits him and he frequently walks away during the middle of conversations. He never really looks for answers -- he is too busy chasing skirt. The only reason he has any success in finding clues is that he happens upon them. He never once logically thinks things out and never takes a moment to evaluate what he already knows. It was hard to get through this book as I did not find myself sympathetic with any of the characters -- except maybe for the Senegalese man Samba, a worker at the Expo.

I don't know if I would pick up the next book in the series. There is a chance that I would read it based on curiosity as to how Victor can become the lead in a "detective" series. But part of me is afraid of reading more of what I did in this book.

Detecting a stinker,
K


Buy Murder on the Eiffel Tower: A Victor Legris Mystery (Victor Legris Mysteries) on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"It was a dark and stormy night."

One book that I always knew about as a kid but never chose to read was A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. The title didn't mean anything special to me, the cover creeped me out and I didn't like the author's last name. And of course all of these reasons seemed extremely pertinent when I was ten years old. Recently I decided to find out if my youthful decision was a good one.

This book is about some odd siblings (and a new friend) who take a cross-dimensional journey to find the kids' missing father. He was a physicist working for the government but they don't know much more than that. They are assisted in their quest by beings from other worlds and physical planes. This is the first book in a series and there are other books set in the same universe.

I have to say that I'm not at all sure if the young Kristen would have liked this book. I wasn't really into physics and science and the universe but I was into fantasy a little bit so I might have found enough to be interested in. I certainly would have been more comfortable with all of the religious elements of this story than I am now as an adult. Now it just seems a bit preachy and predictable. Although, I do find the use of both science and religion in this book refreshing. Usually it's an either/or situation. Unless I find myself with nothing else to read, I don't think I will continue with this series but I can see why there were kids out there that were totally into it.

Pondering the strength of love in the universe,
K


Buy A Wrinkle in Time on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"I first saw the photograph on a hot January afternoon in my mother's bedroom."

As I started reading John Harwood's The Ghost Writer, I realized that I might not ever have read a book set in Australia. Isn't that strange? There have been stories that mentioned Australia as a destination (especially for convicts and people escaping debt or danger) but I can't recall a book set in the land down under. Of course, not much of this book has anything to do with Australia but it felt nice to have a change of weather, so to speak.

This story was simply one where nothing was as it seemed. Gerard knows his mother has secrets, especially pertaining to the reason that she relocated from England to Australia, but she never tells him about her past except for stories about a country house. Gerard has his own secrets, especially about his invalid penfriend, Alice. His mother knows about the letters but not about the intimacy growing between Alice and Gerard. Eventually, Gerard sets off to England to learn more about his mother, his authoress great-grandmother and, most of all, Alice.

I really liked the way that Harwood included Viola's short stories in the book and in the plot. It was a clever direction to take and led to multiple layers of suspense. The only complaint I had was the quick and slap-dash ending. I feel like there were too many questions left unanswered for me at the end. Although, I think his point was that Gerard was left with these same questions and no way to ever find answers.

If you are looking for a good winter fireside read, go ahead and pick up this book!

Wondering where all the ideas come from,
K


Buy The Ghost Writer on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"She sits stiffly on the seat of the cart, her whole self held in against the tumult of the city."

I started Gerri Brightwell's The Dark Lantern only remembering I had seen it on another blog. I couldn't remember what the review said but I was too lazy to look it up. After getting through a few dozen pages of the book, I went back to find that review -- from Katherine at A Girl Walks Into a Bookstore ... -- and I almost completely agreed with her estimation of the book.

The novel begins by telling the story of a housemaid in 1893, starting a new job in London after leaving her position in the country. She gets the job by lying about her past and isn't sure that this new job was worth it. Then we start reading about Mina, the daughter-in-law of the house's owner, who happens to be bedridden due to a seizure, so that Mina is responsible for running the household. We know that Mina also has a secret past and has chosen Jane as the maid because she hopes she can have someone that she can control in the house. Besides these stories, we also get the story of Mina's husband and his expertise in anthropometry -- the use of body measurements as a way of identifying criminals. And don't worry, there are a few more story lines thrown in for good measure.

This book seems to have been written without a lot of direction. If one or maybe two of these plot lines had been chosen and had been fleshed out, this would have been a much more satisfying book. The writing wasn't bad except for the tacky and gratuitous sex scenes and sexual references. I can't stand when a writer puts in even mildly graphic sex that does nothing to advance the plot of the story. It cheapens the story and honestly is never written very well. Another of my book pet peeves is in evidence in this book as "the dark lantern" has only a brief mention and has nothing to do with the plot of the story. I'm tired of book titles that are pulled out of a random sentence of the book but that ultimately mean nothing.

My last gripe with reading this book has nothing to do with the author or her story. I have just decided that I really don't like reading about Victorian servants. They are always in the worst conditions. They are shifty, dishonest and loutish. They are treated like animals and yet one is never sure that they deserve much more. I can't imagine that this was the way it was in the majority of situations and yet these are the only type of situations and positions we ever read about. It's tiresome and I want a break from this sort of negative stereotyping.

I didn't mean to use this post as a rant but this book just made me a bit cranky! There was nothing terrible or unreadable about this novel and I would grudgingly recommend it to someone looking for a frivolous Victorian soap-operatic thriller (did I just totally make up that adjective?).

Glad to have clean air and no servants,
K


Buy The Dark Lantern on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Words of Wisdom

There was a bulletin board at Z's school that had these stars on it. They were safety rules as written by 2nd graders. These were just a couple of them. They have nothing to do with books but I couldn't resist. I wish I had photographed more of them. Like the one that warned not to jump into a "sallow" pool ...









I'm a little worried that there were two separate kids who had been warned against knives in toasters. And that second one is a little blurry ... it says "Mitl finger ... Don't stik it up." Or what? I'm not even going to talk about the "bom on the plane" kid. He's just naughty.

Wondering what ever happened to "don't run with scissors",
K

Z's Holiday Wish List

As promised, here are some of the books from Z's wish list! We are using this holiday to stock his shelves wih some of the books that we hope he will want to read in the next couple of years. It was nice when I was a kid to have well-stocked bookshelves at home that I could then supplement with visits to the library.













What books are your kids wishing for this year?

Waiting for our first snowman of the season,
K and Z


Visit our Amazon e-store for a great selection of books that we have reviewed or recommended on this site.

K's Holiday Wish List

As I'm sure you can guess, I have an Amazon wishlist and it is chock full o' books. I thought I would share with you some of the titles I am wishing for -- just in case you are pondering what to wish for.

The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, compiled by Michael Cox and R.A. Gilbert. It was obvious from reading Michael Cox's books that this area is his specialty so I'm curious to see what stories they collected. The author list includes J.S. Le Fanu and M.R. James, of course, Elizabeth Gaskell, Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens, Henry James, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Apparently there are 35 stories -- and for $15.99, this seems like a great deal.

The Law and the Lady, Wilkie Collins. Another blogger read this recently and liked it and it's about time that I read another Collins book. I think I actually have four or five of his books on my wishlist right now.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: A Shocking Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective, Kate Summerscale. This is a non-fiction account of a Victorian murder, investigated by one Detective Inspector Whicher from Scotland Yard. This book is supposed to be similar to The Beautiful Cigar Girl in that it goes beyond the story -- in this case, to also talk about the beginning of the modern concept of a "detective" and of forensic police methods.

The Painter of Battles: A Novel, Arturo Perez-Reverte. This is a thriller about a war photographer turned painter, trying to exorcise his demons and forget his past. Unfortunately, he is not allowed to do this when someone from his past shows up and forces him to face the repercussions of his actions. I've been waiting for a new Perez-Reverte for a while and am glad that there is one out of the Captain Alatriste series. This book sounds somewhat similar to Iain Pears' The Portrait so I'm interested to compare them.

And a few more:
The Journal of Dora Damage, Belinda Starling.

Novel Destinations: Literary Landmarks From Jane Austen's Bath to Ernest Hemingway's Key West, Shannon Mckenna Schmidt and Joni Rendon.

Uncle Silas, J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel, Salman Rushdie.

Did you see anything that looks interesting? Tomorrow I will post Z's Holiday Wish List!

Always wishing for world peace,
K


Visit our Amazon e-store for a great selection of books that we have reviewed on this site.

"It was past two o'clock when the job-chaise turned into Hill Street ..."

False Colours by Georgette Heyer is an amusing Regency period novel about identical twin brothers Kit and Evelyn, Lord Denville. Kit comes to London from Vienna based on a hunch that something has happened to his brother and finds him missing on the eve of meeting the family of his new fiancee, Cressy. Kit's mother, a light-hearted and spontaneous woman, gets her mind set that Kit should impersonate Evelyn for the one night in order to protect his honor and the honor of Cressy, her goddaughter. Kit finally agrees but when Evelyn doesn't show up even after the dinner, Kit has to decide his next step.

The characters in this book are fun and complex and the story is far-fetched but also believable. The only problem I had with this book was funnily the same problem that I had the other day with The Maltese Falcon -- the slang. There were times in this book when I couldn't quite understand what they were getting at because of the heavy use of period slang. But the story was fun to follow and I appreciated that the characters were smart and resourceful.

I have a few other of Heyer's books in my TBR pile, one more period novel and two historical fictions. I look forward to starting another one!

Wishing someone could step in for me sometimes,
K


Buy False Colours on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"Coraline discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house."

I recently found out that one of my favorite movie makers, Henry Selick, the creator of stop-animation films The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, was finishing a new film -- Neil Gaiman's Coraline. I decided to read the book before the movie comes out next February and since I was at the library anyway, well, I picked up this small book and went ahead and read it today!

Coraline is a young girl who has moved into a new home with her parents. They are a bit detached and so she goes looking for adventure and finds more than she bargained for. She finds a rusty old key and opens a creaky old door which leads her into a mirror world. Here she finds that her life is in danger and she must fight to save herself and her parents. This book is quite creepy but not incredibly suspenseful. After all, it is a sort of Alice in Wonderland adventure and we know that our heroine will make it back through the looking-glass.

This is a good story about facing fears and finding internal strength. I can't wait for the movie to come out -- although, I will really be waiting for the DVD. We don't get to go to movies except for ones that Z chooses! (Wendy at Let the dog in! recommends Madagascar 2 right now.)

Imagining my life in stop-motion animation,
K


Buy Coraline: The Movie Collector's Edition on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"Samuel Spade's jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth."

It's not very often that I read a book after seeing the movie version more than once but Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon is now one of the exceptions. I have seen the movie easily over a dozen times. It is a late night favorite in our house. It's dark and smart and complicated. I guess I never really thought about reading the book until I saw it on a "must read" list this year. I've read some Raymond Chandler books so I figured it was probably along the same vein. I was right but this book was definitely worth reading.

The first thing I noticed was the extreme difference in the Sam Spade from the movie --

(Humphrey Bogart, dark and five foot eight) and the description in the book -- "He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan" and "He was quite six feet tall". It was hard to picture this new Sam Spade and certainly to give him a voice other than Bogart's perfect nasal tenor. The mystery was followed quite closely in the movie except for a few pieces of background information that, for me, gave some much needed clarification on some things that had never quite clicked for me in the movie. The book also has some homosexual references in it that are not included in the movie (Peter Lorre is creepy, not gay).

This book is well-written but as in all period detective fiction, a little bit of it is lost to a modern reader due to the use of jargon and current affairs references. Still, this is worth reading if you have any interest in 90 year old detective fiction or in The Maltese Falcon film. Now I need to decide if I want to read Hammett's The Thin Man series -- another set of movies that we watch quite often.

Thinking a blond satan might look a bit like Leslie Howard,
K


Buy The Maltese Falcon on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Good News for Novel Readers

I came across this article in The Guardian that points to a new study by a team from Manchester University and the London School of Economics called "The Fiction of Development: Literary Representation as a Source of Authoritative Knowledge". In layman's terms, reading realistic (and accurate) stories about social issues are effective at giving the reader an understanding of the issue. The authors think this is a more successful delivery method than academic papers to spread widespread awareness of an issue. So, go ahead and pick up that novel ... it could lead to social change!

Justifying too much time spent in a book,
K

A Grey Elephant Week

Lately, Z has been obsessed with Babar. He got a Babar DVD a couple of years ago as a gift and has finally shown a real interest in it. So when we went to the library, all of the books he chose were Babar books.

First, we have Babar's Busy Year by Laurent de Brunhoff. This is a nice little book about the seasons, starting with autumn. Z liked this part because it shows pumpkins and the changing colors of the leaves, just what we are experiencing in our own lives. This is a very easy reader and is good for the youngest kids. It has bright colors and fun illustrations (also by L. de Brunhoff).

The second book Z picked is Babar's Birthday Surprise, also by Laurent de Brunhoff. This is a more text-heavy book about the commissioning of a Mount Rushmore-like mountain carving of Babar as a surprise for his birthday. The whole town works together to keep the surprise. Of course, the children also cause some mischief. I think the doctor is called in almost every Babar book! This book has a lot of different animals in it and it's quite fun.

The final Babar book we have right now is Babar and Zephir by Jean de Brunhoff. This is one of the original Babar books from the 1930s and is really just a book about Zephir. Zephir is sent home during the summer to Monkeyville, a city in the trees. We meet his parents and siblings, have some chocolate banana soup and go fishing and catch a mermaid. The mermaid later helps Zephir when a monkey princess is kidnapped. It was really strange to read this book because it was vaguely familiar, though I'm sure I haven't read anything about Babar in many years. Then, I reached the point where they describe the monster Polomoche who smells like rotting apples and I totally remembered having read that as a kid! I must have thought that was pretty strange to have stored it away in my brain for 25 or more years.

Enjoying the sharing of memories from generation to generation,
K and Z


Buy Babar's Busy Year, Babar's Birthday Surprise and Babar and Zephir on Amazon or find them at your local library.