An Extemporaneous Poem

I am the sand after the sea
     streaked with salt
     detritus littered
The leavings of the Tide.

The House With the Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs

This is a book Ryan bought for me to read in aid of my general goal of getting a handle on a broader base of YA lit. Published in 1973, this book is a great deal older than many of the things I've been reading and so describes a world that many of my students would find odd, even above the ideas of magic clocks and wizarding uncles.

Lewis's parents have died and as a result he must now live with his notorious Uncle Jonathan. Jonathan lives in huge house in Zeebedee, Michigan. Jonathan is also a wizard. Lewis is overweight and awkward. He doesn't play sports and he doesn't make friends easily. So when he does make a friend, Tarby, he'll do anything to keep a hold of him. This includes sharing the secret of his uncle's power and trying a few tricks of his own.

Of course, things go wrong. Ancient evils unleashed. All that fun stuff.

Good solid read with a well imagined world. In many ways the relationships between the characters make it seem like a precursor to Harry Potter.

The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan

It has been a while since the last time I followed a series as it was actually being written. My usual modus operandi is to wait until and author's finished and then read the thing in one big gulp. Reading that way, those little tricks an author uses to remind the reader what happened in the previous book were annoying because I'd just read the previous book.  However, I read book 1, Sword of Summer, in January. It's been close to a year because I had to wait for Riordan to write the next book. It was an interesting experience. I found myself floundering around a little trying to remember how things left off. Definitely a different way of reading.

So, Magnus Chase has had six glorious crisis-free months off, but alas all things end. A mysterious goat killing assassin interrupts a coffee appointment with Samirah the Valkyrie and he's off again battling with giants and assorted elves, gods, and dwarves to find the Hammer of Thor and stop Loki.

Alex, the new character, is another child of Loki like Samirah is a somewhat enigmatic figure in the beginning. Violent and angry, she/he walks around with a virtual keep away sign on her forehead.  However she/he is an interesting exposure to the idea of gender fluidity.

All in all it's a good read. It seems like Riordan is trying to use his books to promote tolerance on some real world issues which is a good thing. Downsides, this was a hefty book and the narrative wasn't as tight as in previous books. It came in at around 450 pages and could have, should have probably, been 350. This is why good editors are important kiddos.

A Series of Unfortunate Events (revisited)

Dear Everyone,

Do you remember when I wrote a post about the random nature of the Universe about a month ago? Well it continues to be "random." By which I mean, I seem to be jumping from catastrophe to catastrophe. I think it is wearing me down because I've been sick much more than usual.

I don't really want to get into a tirade of negativity so I'm not going to get into specifics. However, I do have a bad tendency to navel gaze. Otherwise known as introspection when done in a healthy way, navel gazing is a form of self-absorption and I try to avoid it. I feel myself sliding into it and damnit, I'm not going there.

There are a lot of good things going on amidst the bad. So, I'm going to start lining up projects to keep myself busy. Here's what I got so far:

• mulching the front "lawn" until the spring
• planning out next spring's expanded garden
• Sourcing materials for said garden
• Build composer
• Finish hanging the last 4 curtain rods
• Clearing brush from back yard for primary path
• yanking kudzu and English ivy off the trees
• Organizing and cleaning basement post flooding catastrophe
• waterproof painting basement wall
• Finish retaining wall
• Repaint back bathroom with mold retardant paint
• Get better fan for bathroom

That's enough to keep me busy....right?

Kissing Doorknobs by Terry Spencer Hesser

Tara Sullivan can't explain why she does the things she does. She can't explain why she has to count cracks or line up grains of rice before eating them. She doesn't know why she has to confess every sin or pray every time someone swears. She knows it's weird and that no one else has to do it. Maybe she's crazy. Her parents certainly seem to think so and she can't really argue.

Things get worse and worse until a family friend finally steps in.

Published in 1998, the public was much less aware of OCD so reading this was a little weird. It's not really a novel that focuses on story. It reads more like a fictionalized diary or personal testimony. I suspect the author wrote it as an educational tool, in fact. Window into the Obsessive-Compulsive mind, or some such.

It's only about 150 pages in hardcover so it's a quick read. It's an interesting voice and it definitely conveys the helplessness of dealing with these compulsions. However, it's jarring the way the book assumes that most people are completely unaware of what OCD is.

In a post-Monk world, I think everyone has a passing familiarity with what OCD is. It leaked into our language, and we self apply it when we are being super detail oriented about something. It's lazy language and most people don't fully understand the horror of it, but at least they are aware of it as a thing that happens.

Eh. It's a decent book, but I can't think of who I would recommend it to.

The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

bwahahahaha I did it, I finally did it. I finished the book! The Chessmen of Mars is the last book in the big John Carter Omnibus that my dad bought for himself last Christmas and immediately handed to me to read. It is now almost Thanksgiving. It took me a year. Me! . . . A Year!

Honestly, they are fun books but they are so formulaic that I just couldn't read them back to back. Hence the long slog. Any way, on to the review!

The Chessmen of Mars is about John Carter's daughter, Tara of Helium. Tara is a brat. She's a real spoiled pain in the butt. So I admit when she got her self blown into a far off land as the result of a temper tantrum, I uttered a small but malicious giggle. In a weird way, The Chessmen of Mars is a twisted little coming of age novel. Tara matures from that spoiled little brat into admirable strong woman.

The main love interest for this one is a Jed from a far off land named Gehan. I liked him way more than Tara for most of the book. This novel also introduces a weird new insectoid species calling themselves the Kaldanes of Bartoom that have an odd symbiotic relationship with a headless humanoid animal they call rykors.

So, all in all good escapist stuff.

Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

Speak is a hard book to read. It's not tough because of vocabulary level or sentence structure. It's tough because of content. It originally turned up on my reading list as part of my exploration for my LD reading ladder. This book has absolutely nothing to do with learning disorders. It is a good book though.

Melinda Sordino has a secret and it's tearing her apart. The reason she's an outcast, the reason her grades are terrible, and the reason she skips class to hang out in an abandoned janitor's closet all come back to this secret. She doesn't even want to admit it to herself and she bites through her lips to stay silent.

Her friends can't help her because she's never told them what happened. She can't speak.

This is an excellent book for young women to read. The statistics say that 1 out of every 4 teenage girls experiences sexual abuse in some way (1 out of every 6 boys, by the way, too). Clearly it's a woefully common issue for teenage girls and it happens at a time when many girls feel alienated from adult support.

I'm not saying a good book is a substitute for adult intervention and support. But I do think that books help us process difficult ideas and events.  This is not a book I would idly recommend to just any student. Certainly it is aimed more firmly at females and the subject matter is a little alarming. However, it has a solid treatment of the issue and the kind of feelings that can result. While the end is perhaps a little more "sunny" than I think the story necessarily warrants, it also emphasizes the need for communication and action.

This is a solid novel and worthy of its awards.