Squeeeeeee! This fun novel leaves me wanting to sleep in a hammock in the cleaning closet of an oddities museum. Okay, so the crazy uncle is a bit of a problem, though I'm not sure why the protagonist Thatcher thinks that talking to seagulls is an indication of his craziness. I've talked to every bowl and table in the house, and live things like the dogs and chickens, and I'm not crazy. Pretty sure, anyway. And as it turns out, the uncle had a good reason to talk to the seagull.
The museum reminded me of Marsh's Museum at Longbeach, Washington, back when I was a little girl and all the music player machines worked and it had a lot more nasty things in jars than it does now. The whale skeleton has disintegrated, the museum has moved across the street, and the aisles have widened. But it is still the home of Jake the alligator boy.
One slowly finds out the entire town is a museum of oddities, and then there is Atlantis, and a princess, and badboy squids. And then comes battle. And then....
I was surprised by the ending. It doesn't end with a lot of slashing and cutting. Oh wait, there is cutting. But not the kind you are thinking of. I was so pleased that Thatcher could go beyond dichotomies and find a third way.
I can recommend this book to anybody who likes fantasy.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
A Review of Murder a Cappella: A Sweet Adelines Mystery by James R. Callan and Diane Bailey
What a hoot this novel was! I would love to see this made as a movie with all the music provided by Sweet Adelines and Barber Shop Quartets. There are so many quotable lines, such as those in Princess Bride and UHF. (What? Mine are the only kids who memorized those movies?)
quote: Shutting down the speculation was about as likely as teaching armidillos not to become roadkill.
quote: Some of the habits I'd developed as a single working mother clung to me like staticky clothes from the dryer.
Delightful paragraph: They say being famous is not as easy or glamorous as it looks. As the afternoon stretched on, I believed it. Dozens of women approached to compliment our performance. I accepted their congratulations with as much grace as I could muster, but after several hours my graciousness had leaked out. I squirmed in my seat, hot, and hungry for something better than another hotdog. . . . By the end of the day, the only things holding me together were bobby pins and the vice grip of my makeup.
I love books that show me another world, another process, another way that I would never see on my own. I know I did not learn the whole of the world of the Sweet Adelines, but what I did see was fascinating. There was little blood to the murders, but there was lots of police investigation told from the viewpoint of a singer at a Sweet Adeline competition, held at the Alamo, who was also a policewoman.
I can recommend this book to anybody who doesn't need a lot of explosions in their literature to stay happy.
quote: Shutting down the speculation was about as likely as teaching armidillos not to become roadkill.
quote: Some of the habits I'd developed as a single working mother clung to me like staticky clothes from the dryer.
Delightful paragraph: They say being famous is not as easy or glamorous as it looks. As the afternoon stretched on, I believed it. Dozens of women approached to compliment our performance. I accepted their congratulations with as much grace as I could muster, but after several hours my graciousness had leaked out. I squirmed in my seat, hot, and hungry for something better than another hotdog. . . . By the end of the day, the only things holding me together were bobby pins and the vice grip of my makeup.
I love books that show me another world, another process, another way that I would never see on my own. I know I did not learn the whole of the world of the Sweet Adelines, but what I did see was fascinating. There was little blood to the murders, but there was lots of police investigation told from the viewpoint of a singer at a Sweet Adeline competition, held at the Alamo, who was also a policewoman.
I can recommend this book to anybody who doesn't need a lot of explosions in their literature to stay happy.
Review of Life of Pi by Yann Martel
I have not seen the movie, though I am told the film is beautiful and inspiring. The book was entirely puzzling to me. With the conceit of a reporter interviewing the lone survivor of a shipwreck, the story purports to make us the readers believe in God. I admit that I am obtuse about a lot of things; and I have no idea how the story was supposed to do that. Maybe one of you can tell me, but don't despair if I still don't get it.
I did love the descriptions of the zoo and the behavior of multiple animals. Since I agree that people are being foolish when they natter on how animals should be free in the wild, I found congenial the descriptions of how much better off animals are in good zoos and what wild lives are like. Do people really not know that living with nature is living with fleas and mosquitoes and ticks and parasites and leeches and cold and scarce food?
The protagonist's incidents of his attempts to love God by using every religion he can are amusing, and his Hindu perception of my Lord Jesus Christ are fascinating. I wondered if the name of Pi, an eternal number, reflected on his belief of eternal life.
The use of operant conditioning by Pi to keep the tiger from eating him was well done. (My husband's first degree was in Psychology in a school that focused on operant conditioning.)
I was following the story with great interest until it got bizarre near the end with a blind fellow floater Frenchman who wants to eat him and then the floating island, um, okay, with the human-eating tree, Not Okay. So....hallucinations there toward the end. He comes ashore in Mexico and is hospitalized, where he is visited by some Japanese insurance representatives. They tell him that they don't believe his story, so then he tells them an ugly, even more harrowing story.
Near as I can tell, the moral of the novel is that it is better to believe the beautiful story that may be false than the ugly story that is plain fact. Um......That would seem to undermine belief in God. Or maybe Yann Martel is saying that belief is good (even if in something false) because it makes the world look better and you feel better. If so, that is an argument that does not impress me.
I know that conclusion is superficially like the argument by the Marshwiggle in The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. If I were more erudite and capable with philosophical language, I could tell you what the differences are. Perhaps one of you could grant language to my inchoate thoughts.
I would recommend the book only for adults without ADD.
I did love the descriptions of the zoo and the behavior of multiple animals. Since I agree that people are being foolish when they natter on how animals should be free in the wild, I found congenial the descriptions of how much better off animals are in good zoos and what wild lives are like. Do people really not know that living with nature is living with fleas and mosquitoes and ticks and parasites and leeches and cold and scarce food?
The protagonist's incidents of his attempts to love God by using every religion he can are amusing, and his Hindu perception of my Lord Jesus Christ are fascinating. I wondered if the name of Pi, an eternal number, reflected on his belief of eternal life.
The use of operant conditioning by Pi to keep the tiger from eating him was well done. (My husband's first degree was in Psychology in a school that focused on operant conditioning.)
I was following the story with great interest until it got bizarre near the end with a blind fellow floater Frenchman who wants to eat him and then the floating island, um, okay, with the human-eating tree, Not Okay. So....hallucinations there toward the end. He comes ashore in Mexico and is hospitalized, where he is visited by some Japanese insurance representatives. They tell him that they don't believe his story, so then he tells them an ugly, even more harrowing story.
Near as I can tell, the moral of the novel is that it is better to believe the beautiful story that may be false than the ugly story that is plain fact. Um......That would seem to undermine belief in God. Or maybe Yann Martel is saying that belief is good (even if in something false) because it makes the world look better and you feel better. If so, that is an argument that does not impress me.
I know that conclusion is superficially like the argument by the Marshwiggle in The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis. If I were more erudite and capable with philosophical language, I could tell you what the differences are. Perhaps one of you could grant language to my inchoate thoughts.
I would recommend the book only for adults without ADD.
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Review of Translucent Facts: Cutting Boards and Roses by Barbara Sutryn
This is a beautiful love story, not a romance as the present genre is represented. This is gentle, tender, true love shown by people who love God and almost everybody around them.
As other people have noted, without naming a single person or place, we the readers always know who we are with and where we are in the book. I feel privileged to have seen a bit of these people's lives.
Decades ago I read another of Sutryn's books: The Sign Painter. I still have it on my shelves, and wish I could make everybody read it. Now she has written another that I wish I could make everybody read.
As other people have noted, without naming a single person or place, we the readers always know who we are with and where we are in the book. I feel privileged to have seen a bit of these people's lives.
Decades ago I read another of Sutryn's books: The Sign Painter. I still have it on my shelves, and wish I could make everybody read it. Now she has written another that I wish I could make everybody read.
Monday, December 3, 2012
Review of The Deepest Waters by Dan Walsh
The Deepest Waters is another book I won in a promotional giveaway and truly enjoyed.
At first I thought the cover showed a ship sailing off the edge of the world, but what I thought was falling water on closer inspection turned out to be grasses on a shore. I think the picture is a symbolic of the story.
The story begins with the deep grief of the many widows on a ship that has managed to rescue a couple hundred women and children from a sinking ship that was carrying California gold to New York. But only six of the hundreds of men were rescued before the ship sank.
The crew on the rescuing ship divvies up their food amongst the widows. During the struggle through the storm and then becalming, the ship runs out of food. Laura discovers that her husband has never told his cold family in New York that he is married. She has never met them, and considering his description of them in his final letter to her, she does not want to meet them. But where is she to go? She has left her small family behind in California during the Gold Rush, and has no idea how she will pay to get back, or even if she will reach land after this disastrous honeymoon cruise.
There is a bit of Shakespearean feel to multiple reunions and feel good endings. There is only one really bad guy in the whole book, though there are people who view things through different lenses than Laura does. The captain of the rescuing ship is a Christian and a slave-owner. The slave, who is glad to finally have an owner who treats him well, is kind to Laura and shows her how to have gratitude during trying times. He had lost his children years before when a prior master sold them. There is another captain who thinks that a bird hitting him in the head is a sign from God. There are steamship company owners who try to sneak away from liability. And there are speculators who lost everything in the sinking of the ship with its cargo of gold and men. And there is a silly mother who faints a lot. Sorry, I have trouble abiding such a person.
I enjoyed reading the adventure and the history and the bumping of people against one another's needs and assumptions. I think most people would enjoy this book.
At first I thought the cover showed a ship sailing off the edge of the world, but what I thought was falling water on closer inspection turned out to be grasses on a shore. I think the picture is a symbolic of the story.
The story begins with the deep grief of the many widows on a ship that has managed to rescue a couple hundred women and children from a sinking ship that was carrying California gold to New York. But only six of the hundreds of men were rescued before the ship sank.
The crew on the rescuing ship divvies up their food amongst the widows. During the struggle through the storm and then becalming, the ship runs out of food. Laura discovers that her husband has never told his cold family in New York that he is married. She has never met them, and considering his description of them in his final letter to her, she does not want to meet them. But where is she to go? She has left her small family behind in California during the Gold Rush, and has no idea how she will pay to get back, or even if she will reach land after this disastrous honeymoon cruise.
There is a bit of Shakespearean feel to multiple reunions and feel good endings. There is only one really bad guy in the whole book, though there are people who view things through different lenses than Laura does. The captain of the rescuing ship is a Christian and a slave-owner. The slave, who is glad to finally have an owner who treats him well, is kind to Laura and shows her how to have gratitude during trying times. He had lost his children years before when a prior master sold them. There is another captain who thinks that a bird hitting him in the head is a sign from God. There are steamship company owners who try to sneak away from liability. And there are speculators who lost everything in the sinking of the ship with its cargo of gold and men. And there is a silly mother who faints a lot. Sorry, I have trouble abiding such a person.
I enjoyed reading the adventure and the history and the bumping of people against one another's needs and assumptions. I think most people would enjoy this book.
Saturday, December 1, 2012
Review of The Reunion by Dan Walsh
The Reunion is one of the three books sent to me by Dan Walsh after I entered one of his giveaway promotions. I'm so glad I won because I found a new author I enjoy reading.
The book has one of the cutest covers I have ever seen: Title and name in a red box against a green canopy of trees, and below that a red trailer house with red curtains and a string of Christmas lights along the top. The skinny door makes me doubt I could enter easily. In front sit two directors chairs with green backs, and in front of them rise a marching horde of green weeds.
Aaron Miller, the main character and Vietnam war vet, does not get to live in that cute trailer; he lives in a storage shed of a trailer park and is the maintenance man. No one knows he is a war hero, except for the three war buddies who want to find him and bring him to their annual reunion. They hire a reporter for the search.
There is some romance, bleh, but not for Aaron, also but not so much that those of us who hate romance (in books, not real life) will find it hard to bear. At the end, there are multiple reunions and fantasy happy endings etc. A feel good book. I like feel good books. It even has a funny explosion in it. If you are getting a little tired of the dreary you are reading, try one of Dan Walsh's books.
I am giving this book to a Viet Nam vet friend of ours. I think he will enjoy the gentle love for all our vets.
The book has one of the cutest covers I have ever seen: Title and name in a red box against a green canopy of trees, and below that a red trailer house with red curtains and a string of Christmas lights along the top. The skinny door makes me doubt I could enter easily. In front sit two directors chairs with green backs, and in front of them rise a marching horde of green weeds.
Aaron Miller, the main character and Vietnam war vet, does not get to live in that cute trailer; he lives in a storage shed of a trailer park and is the maintenance man. No one knows he is a war hero, except for the three war buddies who want to find him and bring him to their annual reunion. They hire a reporter for the search.
There is some romance, bleh, but not for Aaron, also but not so much that those of us who hate romance (in books, not real life) will find it hard to bear. At the end, there are multiple reunions and fantasy happy endings etc. A feel good book. I like feel good books. It even has a funny explosion in it. If you are getting a little tired of the dreary you are reading, try one of Dan Walsh's books.
I am giving this book to a Viet Nam vet friend of ours. I think he will enjoy the gentle love for all our vets.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
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