Wrapping Up 2008

My goal for 2008 was to read 50 books. If I finish Bleak House in the next 2 days (hah! I'm at about 375 out of 900 pages), I will have read 81 books -- 28575 pages. It was nice to get back to reading this year. Z's time in preschool and the fact that he turned 4 and is much more self-entertaining both helped a bunch. Here are the books that I finished this year with links to my reviews if I wrote one --

Sleeping Murder - Agatha Christie
The Ladies of Grace Adieu - Susanna Clarke
The Quincunx - Charles Palliser
Northanger Abbey - Jane Austen
The Dream Stealer - Gregory Maguire
The Observations - Jane Harris
Sister Pelagia and the White Bulldog - Boris Akunin
Miss or Mrs., The Haunted Hotel, The Guilty River - Wilkie Collins
The Castle of Otranto - Horace Walpole
Kept - D.J. Taylor
Double Sin and other stories - Agatha Christie
The Beautiful Cigar Girl: Mary Rogers, Edgar … - Daniel Stashower
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - J.K. Rowling (re-read)
Armadale - Wilkie Collins
Special Assignments: The Further Adventures of Erast Fandorin - Boris Akunin
The Sun Over Breda - Arturo Perez-Reverte
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul - Douglas Adams (re-read)
The Blackest Bird - Joel Rose
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Volume I - Diana Wynne Jones
The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear - Walter Moers
No Name - Wilkie Collins
The Restaurant at the End of the World - Douglas Adams (re-read)
Life, the Universe and Everything - Douglas Adams (re-read)
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (re-read)
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Volume II - Diana Wynne Jones
The Regatta Mystery and Other Stories - Agatha Christie
The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie
The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Volume III - Diana Wynne Jones
The Secret Adversary - Agatha Christie
The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
The Winter Queen - Boris Akunin (re-read)
The Interpretation of Murder - Jed Rubenfeld
The Club Dumas - Arturo Perez-Reverte (re-read)
Partners in Crime - Agatha Christie
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas - Jules Verne
N or M? - Agatha Christie
Aurora Floyd - Mary Elizabeth Braddon
Dumb Witness - Agatha Christie
Murder in the Museum of Man - Alfred Acorn (re-read)
Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories - Various (14) (re-read)
Murder in the Mews - Agatha Christie
Murder on the Leviathan - Boris Akunin (re-read)
Howl's Moving Castle - Diana Wynne Jones (re-read)
The Golden Compass - Philip Pullman
The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
Fragile Things - Neil Gaiman
Mixed Magics - Diana Wynne Jones
The Invention of Hugo Cabret - Brian Selznick
The Subtle Knife - Philip Pullman
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman
We Have Always Lived in the Castle - Shirley Jackson
Memento Mori - Muriel Spark
Creepers - Joanne Dahme
Dark Lord of Derkholm - Diana Wynne Jones
The Glass of Time - Michael Cox
The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart
Dissolution - C.J. Sansom
Year of the Griffin - Diana Wynne Jones
Peter Pan - J.M. Barrie
84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff
The Sister - Poppy Adams
A Vengeful Longing - R. N. Morris
House of Many Ways - Diana Wynne Jones
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
Coraline - Neil Gaiman
False Colours - Georgette Heyer
The Dark Lantern - Gerri Brightwell
The Ghost Writer - John Harwood
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Murder on the Eiffel Tower - Claude Izner
Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email … - David Wolman
A Death in Vienna - Frank Tallis
Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
The Spiritualist - Megan Chance
Conan Doyle's Wallet: The Secrets Within - Patrick McNamara
What-the-Dickens - Gregory Maguire
Simon the Coldheart - Georgette Heyer
A Beautiful Blue Death - Charles Finch
Kiki's Delivery Service - Eiko Kadono
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - Helene Hanff
Bleak House - Charles Dickens (in progress)

Some of my favorite new-to-me authors of this year were Neil Gaiman, Helene Hanff and Georgette Heyer. The books I enjoyed the most were Armadale, The Glass of Time, the His Dark Materials trilogy and Good Omens. In the coming year, I look forward to reading all of my new Christmas books, some ARCs that I have received and a few sequels to books I read this year.

Wishing you a happy New Year!
K

Stocking the Kid Shelves

Z got very few toys for Christmas this year. He spends most of his time typing on the computer and reading books anyway. He got a good variety of books this year -- some that he can read now and some that will be available to him on his shelves whenever he is ready. I also took this opportunity to clear out some of the toddler books. There are some that are very loved and worn but they aren't holding his attention anymore. Here are the books that are filling the spaces --

Charlotte's Web - E.B. White
James and the Giant Peach - Roald Dahl
The Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster (this is a family favorite that I will probably take the opportunity to re-read this spring!)
The Rabbit and the Turtle - Eric Carle (a set of short retellings of Aesop's Fables)
Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, A Color of His Own, An Extraordinary Egg, Inch by Inch, and the alphabet tree - Leo Lionni (there was a bundle of these offered through the Scholastic book flier)
My Friend Is Sad - Mo Willems
Starry Safari - Linda Ashman
Come Rhyme With Me - Hans Wilhelm
Bonjour, Babar! - Jean de Brunhoff (a volume with all 6 original books in it)
and our own copy of the much adored Wolf's Coming by Joe Kulka.

We will be working through these over the next month or two and will post reviews and links for most of them. Right now Z is reading The Rabbit and the Turtle but since he already knows it as "The Tortoise and the Hare", he changes the words!

Enjoying a life full of picture books,
K and Z

Juice-less

The power cord on the laptop finally gave out completely so my postings will be spotty for the next week while I wait for a new one to arrive. Luckily, I have a large stack of books that I received for Christmas to keep me occupied! Here are the books that are joining the stack on my nightstand --

Henry James - The Turn of the Screw and Other Short Fiction
Wilkie Collins - Hide and Seek
Daphne du Maurier - Rebecca
Louis Bayard - Mr. Timothy
Louis Bayard - The Black Tower
Boris Akunin - Sister Pelagia and the Black Monk
Neil Gaiman - The Graveyard Book
James Reese - The Dracula Dossier
Gregory Maguire - A Lion Among Men

I'm excited to finally read more stories by Henry James and the two books by Louis Bayard. They are actually quite similar in tone despite the 125 years or so between them. A couple of these are series books so I may have to do some re-reading of other books first before I get to them. I have a really poor book memory.

That's it for today. I'm running out of juice. If I can get on tomorrow, I'll let you know what books Z got for Christmas. He did quite well for himself!

Until we meet again,
K

'Twas The Night Before

The winter storm has (hopefully) done its worse and we are still here -- minus a few hours of power today and the tops of a couple of trees that were overtaken by snow. I got a little bit of reading done while sitting on the floor by the window for light. I should have been making our traditional Christmas Eve chili or baking the cakes for our peppermint chocolate confection. Instead, I sat down with Dickens and spent some time in chilly Victorian England as the temperature in our own house dropped.

Now, the heater is on, we are all full of chili and Z is in bed, wearing the new pajamas that his Gramma makes him each year and hoping that his first letter to Santa was received and read. I sit here watching A Christmas Story and enjoying the amusing and pathetic view of our "Charlie Brown"-style Christmas tree. We never had the opportunity through all of this weather to buy a tree so we went in the yard today and cut down a scrawny nine-footer. It has about four levels of branches in eight feet and can't support more than a few light-weight ornaments. It's perfect.

Wishing everyone the best possible,
K and Z

Quiet but Still Reading

Z and I are missing-in-blog-action while we deal with the massive Northwest weather event of the past few days including

--the terrifying prospect of wind only two years after the worst week of our homeowning lives.
--the escape to a hotel close to the mall so that we could finish Christmas shopping and eat something other than peanut butter sandwiches and waffles.
--the disappointment of Alaska Airlines cancelling their flights today so that my baby sister can't come until late on the 24th. Grrr.

I promise we'll be back soon and I will give you a lot of nice filler posts while I take a few weeks reading Bleak House. For those of you that love the picture book reviews, there will probably be more of those! And I will finally get around to showing you my awe-inspiring Wizard of Oz collection.

Countdown to normalcy and waiting for room service,
K and Z

A Pair of Fantastic Marriages

If you don't recognize the name Hayao Miyazaki, you are missing out on something special. Miyazaki is a Japanese director of animated films. He has a unique vision and a sensitive but empowering way of portraying children. His most well-known film is Spirited Away, released in the U.S. a few years ago. Now almost all of his films have been dubbed in English and released here.

A while back, I noticed in the credits that one of his films, Howl's Moving Castle, was based on a book by Dianna Wynne Jones. This was the first book that I read by her and she is now one of my favorite YA authors. Miyazaki's Howl movie is actually only loosely based on the book but both are completely enjoyable. Sophie is a shy hatter's daughter who is put under a spell that makes her into an old woman. She leaves home and ends up taking up residence in the castle of the wizard Howl -- a castle that moves around the countryside and has multiple magical entrances in multiple towns. Sophie becomes Howl's housekeeper as she looks for a way to reverse her curse and also to build her confidence as a woman. That simple story is the basis of both the book and movie but the details past that diverge in two fantastic directions. Z loves this movie and I'm sure he will read the book when he is older.

This past week at the library I picked up another book that Miyazaki made into a movie, Kiki's Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono. This one was different in that it was truer to the book and though it had some different plot lines, they seemed more like they were just other things that would have happened to Kiki and not really a change of the main plot. When Kiki turns twelve, she leaves home to pursue her career as a witch. Her only witch talent is for flying so she decides to start a delivery service. She makes friends and learns how to be successful and enjoy life. Both the book and the movie are simple and sweet, as any story about a twelve year old should be.

I think these are the only Miyazaki films based on books so I will have to find an excuse to sing the praises of his other films later!

Loving the joy of Miyazaki's magic,
K


Buy Howl's Moving Castle (the book), Howl's Moving Castle (the movie), Kiki's Delivery Service (the book) and Kiki's Delivery Service (the movie) on Amazon or find them at your local library or video store.

"Theoretically, it was one of the happiest days of my life."

I fell in literary love with Helene Hanff a month ago when I finally read 84, Charing Cross Road. That book was a series of letters over twenty years between Helene and Frank Doer and his family, co-workers and even neighbors. In 1971, Helene finally made her dream trip to London -- after the success of Charing Cross. This book, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, is her trip journal from that trip. She spends time with Frank's widow and daughter and various people that contacted her after the release of her book. She is shuttled around like royalty, hence her self-assigned title of "The Duchess".

This book has all of the spunk and wit that we discovered in the first book but also with an amazing sense of fulfillment and wonder as Helene finally gets to discover the England of her books and dreams. It had definitely rekindled all of the desires that I have to go to London. This is another short book so sit down on a rainy (or snowy) evening and enjoy a trip back to 1971 London with a semi-neurotic, self-made woman who definitely marches to the beat of her own drummer.

Dreaming of Towers and Parks,
K


Buy The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"The fateful note came just as Lenox was settling into his armchair after a long, tiresome day in the city."

On a recommendation from the local library blog, I just finished reading Charles Finch's A Beautiful Blue Death. Charles Lenox is a Victorian nobleman who does detective work as a hobby. He is successful enough at what he does to "assist" the police and have them take credit for a job well done. His next-door neighbor and life-long friend, the widow Lady Jane Grey, sets him on the trail to find the murderer of a former maid of her employ. As he investigates the murder, a larger conspiracy begins to unfold and Lenox enlists the help of a chemist, a botanist, his butler, Graham, and his Parliamentarian brother, among other people. The "beautiful blue" of the title is the type of poison responsible for the death of the maid.

This was not a very suspenseful mystery but it was smart and Charles Lenox and his friends and family are very likeable characters. I will definitely read the second book in this series, September Society. There is a hint of a romance brewing that I need to spy on a bit more as well!

Yearning for a life of leisure and a little mystery,
K


Buy A Beautiful Blue Death on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Family and Friends

Instead of writing to you tonight, I had to sign and write almost fifty addresses on holiday cards. Now my eyes and fingers hurt and I am going to bed.

Tomorrow I tackle envelope sealing and stamps,
K

"He came walking from Bedford into Cambridge one May morning when the sun was still young and the dew scarce gone from the grass."

Rarely do I feel drawn to a character as quickly as I did in my second outing with Georgette Heyer, Simon the Coldheart. Set in the early 15th century, we meet Simon, a young boy of fourteen, setting out to find his way in the world. He is a bastard son of the Lord of Malvallet and he chooses to join the household of the lord's rival, Lord Fulk of Montlice. He doesn't do this out of malice but because he wants to have no advantages given to him based on anything but his own merit. Simon quickly endears himself to Fulk and his son Alan while holding his own emotions close. He uses his honesty and his strength to gain the allegiances and respect of all of the men he works with. Eventually, Simon proves himself indispensable to Fulk, his own half-brother Geoffrey, the young Prince Henry and his father, King Henry IV. Eventually, he heads to France to fight for England and to finally find love with the feisty Margaret.

It is very satisfying to follow Simon from youth to adulthood as he makes his own fortune and future. This is a fast-paced book -- quite different from many historical fictions. Heyer doesn't show off all the historical research she did by writing elaborate descriptions. There aren't any long battle scenes to bog down the narrative as there are in some other historical tomes. Heyer really focuses on her plots and it makes for a satisfying read. If you need a good initiation into historical fiction, I strongly recommend this one.

Enjoying history with a heart,
K


Buy Simon the Coldheart on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Poetry in Picture Form

When I started reading Neil Gaiman, the first poem I really connected with of his was "The Day the Saucers Came". It's about the various science fiction apocalypse themes, merged into a sort of reverse love letter. Now an artist, Jouni Koponen, has made an illustrated version of the poem and it is fantastic!

Please click on the link and read the whole poem and then if you want to purchase a printed copy, hurry over to Neverwear and buy one of the 500 numbered copies. What says "I love you" at Christmas more than flying saucers, zombies and biblical nightmares?

Wishing you the best of days,
K

p.s. We got our snow! It's coming down right now.

Penguins, Snowmen and Bears ... Oh My!

We like holiday books a lot around here but we also love seasonal books. We get to read about snow, ice skating and arctic animals. Here are three books from our collection that we tend to pull out year round.

One of everyone's favorite cold climate animals are penguins and what could be a more inviting title than Penguins, Penguins, Everywhere!. Bob Barner has written and illustrated (with cut and torn paper) this fact-filled and cute book. We learn about penguin habitats, coloring and parenting habits. The last pages of the book have illustrations of each species of penguin - 17 in all. Z prefers the Macaroni penguin while I like the Little Blue from New Zealand. The strangest part of this book is the "Penguin Puzzler" section that answers questions like "What do penguins say?" and "What do penguins eat?" -- and if your young child ever wondered, "Who eats penguins?". It's all science, kids.

The Biggest Snowman Ever by Steven Kroll and illustrated by Jeni Bassett is a book about hard work and teamwork. The young mice of Mouseville find out about a town snowman contest and each sets out to make the biggest snowman. Two different mice work very hard only to find out that they each made the same size snowman. They decide to work together instead and improve their chances of winning. So they roll all the parts of their own snowmen together to make one huge snow guy and they win the town prize. Yay!

Our most recently acquired winter book is the adorable The Snow Bear. Written by Miriam Moss and illustrated by Maggie Kneen, this is about a young bear who gets separated from his mother and needs someone to comfort him so he decides to build a mother out of snow. Different arctic animals like Musk Ox, Snow Goose and Moose come to help the little bear. Eventually the snow mother bear is done and the baby cuddles up to it and sleeps. In the morning, he wakes up and finds that his real mother has snuggled in next to him and all is well in the arctic forest.

Hoping to wake up to snow in the morning,
K and Z


Buy Penguins, Penguins Everywhere, The Biggest Snowman Ever and The Snow Bear on Amazon or find them at your local library.

"By evening, when the winds rose yet again, the power began to stutter at half-strength, and the sirens to fail."

Two years ago, we sat through a twelve-hour windstorm while over twenty trees on our property fell down all around us. We were cold and hungry and very tired and didn't end up having power for almost a week. So when I started reading this book about a family trying to cope during a storm, I could relate to their fear and stress. In What-the-Dickens by Gregory Maguire, three children and their twenty-one year old cousin, Gage, pass the time during a strong storm with a story.

Gage tells the children the story of a orphaned skibbereen or as we know them, a tooth fairy, named What-the-Dickens. He travels, learns the hard truths of life and finally meets another of his kind, Pepper. She takes him back to her colony and he tries to discover his purpose in life. He finds his unique talents and helps other skibberee to make the most of their lives as well.

We have another windy front headed our way this weekend and I'm hoping that it turns out to be minor. But if it isn't, I just might try to get through it this time with a story (and some JiffyPop).

Hoping for a silent night,
K


Buy What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"By the time Old Bear fell asleep for the winter, it was snowing hard."

When I worked the book fair a couple of weeks ago, one of the books that caught my eye was the new book by Kevin Henkes, Old Bear. I didn't get a chance to read it when I was there so when I saw it this last week at the library, we picked it up. It is a very simple story about a bear that hibernates for the winter and while he sleeps, he dreams about the seasons. When he wakes up, he isn't sure if he is still dreaming because the spring is so beautiful.

Henkes has drawn fanciful pictures for this book and the bear is adorable. I feel that too many picture books these days go for edgy illustrations rather than simple, sweet ones. The drawings have soft lines and the text is simple but meaningful. We love this book and it would definitely be a good book to give to a toddler or preschooler in any season.

Wishing humans hibernated,
K and Z


Buy Old Bear on Amazon or find it at your local library.

This Life is the Next Life

When I agreed to review Patrick McNamara's Conan Doyle's Wallet, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. But since I had read two fiction books recently that had spiritualism as main plot elements (A Death in Vienna and The Spiritualist) and had watched a movie that revealed Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's views on supernatural phenomena (Fairy Tale: A True Story), I felt that this book was the proper follow-up to the thoughts and questions that had come up.

What I found in this book was part-biography and part-discussion of the author's views on spiritualism and the afterlife. Patrick McNamara is a medium and psychic in Britain who had always been fascinated with Arthur Conan Doyle, the author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries and a very public believer in spiritualism. When McNamara was able to buy a wallet at a Christie's auction of Conan Doyle's effects, he got a special insight and connection to the man who died in 1930.

I was hoping that this book would have more of a history of spiritualism in modern times but it does briefly tell the stories of some famous cases -- enough information to allow one to do more research on the subject if you were interested. The Conan Doyle biography is disjointed but comprehensive and again is a good introduction to the subject. Most of the book actually belongs to McNamara's own views on the afterlife, the materials of which we are made and the ability of anyone who desires it to become a medium.

The only major complaint I had about this book was that it was quite poorly edited. There were sentence fragments and superfluous punctuation all over the place which detracted from the reading experience. However, the author makes the point that if we put out positive thoughts and feelings, we receive positive feedback in return so I will recommend this book to anyone interested in this subject and hope that you end up with a second edition! And if you would like to learn more about McNamara, you can visit his website.

Not a skeptic nor a believer,
K


Buy Conan Doyle's Wallet: The Secrets Within on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Lost in the Past

I forgot to blog last night. I was putting together our family's old Super 8 tapes into a DVD. I have made this video over and over during the past year or so for various family members. This time was especially hard though as I haven't watched the film since my grandma died in the spring. It was like watching the "People We Have Lost This Year" footage at the Oscars -- highlights from a lifetime that is now over.

I don't read many books that are solely about loss. I'm a pretty emotional gal and there are just some books that I decide not to read (The Sweet Hereafter). There are others that I don't know much about and so I read them and then emphatically swear that I will never read them again because of the sadness involved (Prayer for Owen Meany). Am I ducking out on an essential part of life or is it okay to avoid something that I feel I get enough of in real life?

And yes, the weather in Seattle has been quite grey ... how did you know?

Putting the melancholy back into the holidays,
K

"The fog crept in at four o'clock."

My reading list of late is full of books set in Victorian times. My most recent read, The Spiritualist by Megan Chance, is set in New York in 1856. It's a murder mystery involving an "upper ten" family, a New Orleans spiritualist and a host of upper and lower class characters. This story was engaging and well-written but I was a bit annoyed by the plot. After a short while, I started wondering if she was going to take the predictable route as to whom the murderer would turn out to be and I was right. I won't go into details and spoil the plot for future readers but if you have read this, let me know if you felt the same way.

This was still an enjoyable book despite the necessity to shout "I knew it!" and I have read some good reviews of An Inconvenient Wife so I will definitely read that at some point.

Rapping three times for yes,
K


Buy The Spiritualist: A Novel on Amazon or find it at your local library.

"It was a nice day."

I'm steadily becoming a full-fledged Neil Gaiman fan. Each book I read of his is better than the last. This one, Good Omens, is a collaboration with Terry Pratchett, the creator of the Discworld series. This is an intelligent and hilarious telling of the birth of the Antichrist and the impending apocalypse. It tackles such topics as the origins of evil, the true nature of angels and demons and the number of nipples on a witch. No really, it does. Leave it to the Brits (and the British ex-pats) to make the apocalypse funny. I mean, how can you not like a book that has a "meat and two veg" joke.

The next book I will be reading by Neil Gaiman will probably be The Graveyard Book and I'm really excited.

A little bit angel and bit of demon as well,
K


Buy Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch on Amazon or find it at your local library.

Difficulties of a Semi-Technical Nature

Something is wrong with the laptop power supply so if we disappear for a short while, you can imagine us sitting in front of a dead laptop screen, crying and wishing Dell didn't charge so dang much for replacement parts. I'm going to use my non-computer time to catch up on some books in my TBR pile. Z is going to have to find some other way to make ridiculously long word lists (right now he uses Notepad). Maybe this is our chance to work on learning to write!

Back in a few,
K and Z

From Spelling to Word Origins

After my reading of Righting the Mother Tongue the other day, I have a revived interest in the history of the English language. The next book on the subject that I think I might read is The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English by Henry Hitchings. This is a book about word origins which is always an interesting and humorous subject. Apparently English has its origins in 350 languages. This explains a lot about the spelling and pronunciation discrepancies that were pointed out in David Wolman's book.

There is a review up on The Independent right now. This picture is the cool UK cover.

Pondering words and all the baggage they bring with them,
K

"It was the day of the great storm."

Frank Tallis' A Death in Vienna is the first in a mystery series featuring psychologist Max Liebermann and Police Inspector Oskar Rheinhardt. Liebermann is part of the new generation of psychologist, friendly with Freud and subscribing to most of Freud's new beliefs and techniques. Rheinhardt is an intelligent detective who is thoughtful and cultured. The two spend time together as friends making music (one plays piano and the other is a baritone), drinking coffee and eating pastries, and attending musical performances. They also help each other professionally in this smart and interesting locked-room mystery.

This book highlights the cultural change in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century -- the advances in knowledge, technology and social ideas. It was pleasant to read again of purposeful investigations and cautious analysis. The only problem I really had with this book was that it took me a while at the beginning to identify the characters as they are all just called by their last names. For some reason I have problems with this (also a problem in Russian fiction). It was a little annoying in a couple of places where information was revealed to the characters but not to the reader but I suppose it's just a different style of writing and I learned to be patient and the same information would eventually be revealed to me.

I liked this book and I will definitely move on to the second book in the series.

Desiring a torte of any kind,
K


Buy A Death in Vienna: A Novel on Amazon or find it at your local library.

A Brief History of Spelling

I am a speller. I just "get it" and always have. The first word I missed on a spelling test was in junior high and it was a classmate's last name (not a real word, if you ask me!). When I was in an elementary school spelling bee, my fourth grade self came in third to two sixth graders. I catch every typo on television, in books and anywhere else there are words. I feel that the ability to spell is as innate as athletic prowess or musical talent.

David Wolman's Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling is the history of spelling from the very early creation of the English language to modern day. This book is equally interesting for those who love spelling and those who hate it. It includes a brief history of printing, dictionaries and spell-check. We hear about those who have campaigned for phonetic spellings and those who wanted to remove evil French and Greek influences from the language. There is even a discussion of the modern effect of text messaging on the language. This book is not very long so nothing is too in-depth, just right for a general history for anyone mildly interested in this topic.

After finishing this book, my question for you is this: do you spell-check? My theory is that there are three types of people -- those who spell-check, those who don't because they don't "need" to and those who don't because they don't care if they are right or wrong as long as they are getting their point across. I fall in the middle category. I am such an avid proofreader that I never run spell-check. I'm so ridiculously mental that I reread each post three to five times before I hit Publish Post.

Admitting that I'm a spelling freak,
K


Buy Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email, the Tangled Story of English Spelling on Amazon or find it at your local library.