Bookviews

Ah, it's been a great start to 2008! I've already been able to polish off five books. I grant you, most of them were on the light side. A. always encourages me to toss in some non-fiction so I will have better character, and he provided My Grandfather's Son by Clarence Thomas for me to begin the year properly. It was an easy, entertaining read - not in the sense of being light-hearted or fluffy - quite the contrary. But it was thoughtful and well-written. The path Justice Thomas took from backwoods Georgia, to segregated Savannah, to his experiences as the "token" black student at Yale (he has nothing good to say about the so-called prestigious university) - to life in Washington D.C. and the lies and liars that hold that town together. He tells his story humbly and with dignity. And he wrote it himself, not using a ghost writer. I recommend!

Next I settled into The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, which was charming and very quotable. I loved the voice of the character Mma Ramotswe, and the very African flavor to the book. I plan to read more in the series.

At the same time, I checked out another book by Alexander McCall Smith, The Sunday Philosophy Club. I didn't care for Isabel Dalhousie as much as Mma Ramotswe...the main character was always sloshing around with some moral/ethical dilemma or another, pontificating on and on in paragraphs which I considered distracting. That was the point of the whole book, though--it being a novel about a philosopher-turned-amateur detective, I suppose there needed to be a fair amount of what I call "verbalrrhea."

And...still chipping away at the Newbery Project...I found a blog today that does what I've been doing! So I'll be checking in over there from time to time. At any rate, two nights ago I read the 2007 winner, The Higher Power of Lucky, by Susan Patron. I wasn't overly impressed. Lucky eavesdrops on various 12-step meetings and keeps hearing about attenders' "Higher Power" - and she's looking for one herself, because her mom's dead, her dad abandoned her, and she's being raised by her dad's first, ex-wife, who is French. The stepmonster is a good person, but Lucky is convinced that Brigitte is just taking care of her out of duty, and is really planning to catch the first flight back to France. I never figured out quite what Lucky's Higher Power turned out to be. Brigitte staying? Lucky herself, because of her survival skills in the Mojave Desert? Anyway, 2007 must have been a "meh" year for children's literature, because that's about how I felt when I put the book down on Tuesday night. Meh. That was number one? Meh.

Last night, Missing May by Cynthia Rylant. This had the same basic element as the previous book-- orphan raised by distant relatives - but this one grabbed me a bit more than Lucky did. Perhaps because I've witnessed how lost some people become when they lose a spouse - how they just literally give up hope and die of a broken heart - this book had a larger impact on me. Made me sniffle a bit at the end, but maybe that was the migraine headache I had.

I'm out of books. Better get online and reserve some!

School has been an absolute wash today. Nobody wants to do anything except stay at home and lie around, like those VeggieTales Pirates. I have just given the edict: NO DINNER UNTIL YOUR SCHOOL IS DONE. Dinner is going to be beef stirfry with rice, too, so there will be some sad little halflings if they don't get on the stick.