The Seer of Shadows by Avi

There is something fun about a good ghost story. A ghost is a kind of puzzle in literature. They represent unfinished business and hidden nefarious deeds. I love it. It's a little strange to me that they've fallen out of vogue, but I haven't seen too many written just lately. This one, by Avi, is set during the height of spiritism's popularity in 1872 New York City.

Horace Carpetine is fascinated by the science of photography. Accordingly, this enterprising 14 year old gets himself apprenticed to a somewhat dubious photographer: Mr. Middleditch. Mr. Middleditch is lazy but also a good teacher. Horace learns to set up the glass plates and how to develop the negatives and prints. In fact the only thing he hasn't learned to do is snap the shots himself.

All this changes when a high society lady in mourning appears to arrange a photograph of herself for her dead daughter's grave. Mr. Middleditch immediately develops a plan using double exposures to create the image of the daughter's ghost. A hoax, in short.

Things quickly get out of hand and there is more going on than it appears. Are the images a hoax, or a real ghost after all?

This was a good, fast paced book. Chapters were short and first person narration helped the creation of suspense. While this is clearly a ghost story primarily, it also tackles some of the contemporary issues surrounding slavery.

Month of Tamora Pierce

I had a bit of reading dry spell during my absence but broke it in early October when one of my co-workers loaded up my desk with 11 Tamora Pierce books. I generally think highly of Jess's taste in YA and since a student saw the books on my desk and got excited, I decided to break through my dry spell. I finished the last of the 11 early this morning.

Over all, I think Pierce writes good fantasy-based YA.What I read fell into three series all set in the same world. While she includes some gritty elements here and there, mostly it falls into a standard girl oriented format.

Beka Cooper Series

1. Terrier
2. Bloodhound
3. Mastiff

This series follows the deeds of Beka Cooper whose highest aspiration is to be a "Dog" or city guard. She was born in slums of Corus and can hear the spirits of the dead who linger on the backs of pigeons. This series, of the three I read, included the most gritty realism. Pierce does a good job describing a medieval city slum. Unlike the rest of the series, each of these books almost read like a thriller/mystery with all the action revolving around Beka's investigations. There is intrigue and betrayal and a talking cat of dubious origins. Good stuff.

Song of the Lioness Series

1. The First Adventure
2. In the Hand of the Goddess
3. The Woman Who Rides Like a Man
4. Lioness Rampant

 This series picks up at least 100 years after the Beka Cooper series. In fact, Beka's several times grandson turns up as one of the main secondary characters. In this series, it's been a long time since there were any lady knights, but Alanna Trebond is determined to avoid her fate as pampered noble lady. She disguises herself as a boy and joins page training at the palace. Over the course of the series she becomes a knight and then a hero. She has several love affairs, which are tastefully handled by Pierce. This series features a lot of court intrigue. While Alanna isn't a blundering warrior type, she's not exactly a deep thinker either. It's a solid series, but I wish there were more of the intrigue angle.

Immortals Series

1. Wild Magic
2. Wolf-Speaker
3. Emperor Mage
4. The Realms of the Gods

This is the series I actually started with. It takes place soon after the events described in "Song of the Lioness" and follows a character named Daine who is a young woman with a secret. The resolution of this secret accounts for most of the first novel so I won't say much. Suffice it to say, there is more than one kind of magical ability in this world and Daine has one of the more rare and unusual. All of Pierce's series seem to feature animal companions, but this series is practically infested with them. This series also opens the door for more magical critters which is an interesting expansion.

Update

It's been a long time, at this point, since I've written. Part of it is that I've been busy, but a bigger piece of it is that I've been very unsettled of late. So here's what is happening.

1. I feel a lot of pressure, both internal and external, to figure out what I'm doing with my life, particularly in the sense of furthering my education. I'm stuck in a bit of motivation soup. I like many things about my job, so I'm not sure why it can't 'just be enough.' However, every time I think I've convinced myself of that, I get this anxiety linked up with a sense of moving forward, or not as the case may be. Now, part of that is money, teachers don't get paid much, but it's a livable wage. At my school, any way, moving up to admin wouldn't necessarily be much of an increase in my pay check at all. Moving up to admin would also mean a step away from the kids and one of the things I've known for a while, it's not the teaching I love, it's helping these kids, this demographic. Additionally, I'm not sure I really want to deal with the headaches inherent in being admin. To make it worse, that means going back to school for my M.ed. and trying to balance that with job and life just in order to move into a job that I'm not sure I want. However, if I don't move in that direction, I can't think of any other move that would be worth the risk and anxiety. My ambition towards writing always raises its head at this point, but I'm not a fool enough to think that is anything but a pleasant dream. Even if I could get my writing habit back and find the time, there's little likelihood that I could make any money at it. So, there I'm stuck on that issue.

2. I'm feeling a lot of anxiety about Thomas's daycare. Not to get into it too deeply, I just don't trust them to give me the information that I need to make plans. They've already held him back into the 2/3 room on the basis of potty issues. They sprang that on us even though I expressed concerns many times over the previous year and even made plans over the summer on the basis that they were working on it with him, only find out two weeks before the change over that they had not been. They had many opportunities to talk to us about it and didn't. In fact they handled it very poorly when I expressed frustration. So the longer he lingers in the this room, the longer I worry that we are facing a similar experience when he needs move into pre-K. He's making progress on the potty front, but I have no idea what their standard for moving him into the 3/4 room is and don't feel like I can talk to them about it based on how they responded to the previous issue. Everyone I've tried to ask has been absurdly vague. I don't want to move him to a new daycare while he is making progress with the potty but I also don't want him missing the intellectual stimulation he needs. I feel like there's no good choice.

So, that's mostly what's going on. I have so much of this stuff whirling around, that I'm having a hard time coming up with public writing for the blog. However, I suspect that's actually making the anxiety worse, so I'm going to try to get the blog going again.

Sorry to natter on.

Storm-a-thon 2017 Day 1

So with (now) tropical storm Irma bearing down on us, this seemed like as good a time as any to restart the good ol' blog. I'm sorry I disappeared, I hit a massive introspective streak and I try to spare people from my insane ramblings and navel gazing.

First thing's first. If you are out of town and reading this, I'm pretty sure we are all going to be ok. Everyone's house but Ryan's and mine are in high-ish areas. My house is in a low point but we are also right next to both the storm drain access points and a above ground stream drainage for the area. While I'm sure there will be flooding, it would have to be much more than what is predicted to hit the house. The next biggest threat is the trees, and really where are you going to go in Atlanta to avoid trees? The monsters right behind our house are deep-rooted specimens so hopefully they will weather the storm well. If not we've establish the most structurally sound places in the house to weather the worst of it and have an exit plan if we need one.  So we are about as fine as anyone is going to be.

We also pulled in all the outside tools, moved the wood planks and pulled in the bean towers and tomato cages...any other debris is probably unavoidable.

Interesting point of fact: this is the very first time that Atlanta has been under a tropical storm Warning/Watch.

On a somewhat lighter note - I've come out the other side of my introspective streak with a refined set of priorities and a renewed interest in my surroundings. It's all very calm and very zen.

My reading pace has slowed down tremendously, but I've been enjoying the challenges the new school year has tossed my direction.

Stay safe everyone.

This Time it Wasn't My Fault . . . Really

I know I've had a spotty record just lately with posts, but this time it was out of my control. My Lenovo Yoga 3 hit a fatal screen error which put me in the position of either paying more than the machine was probably worth to fix it or buy a new computer. I bought a new computer. It came in yesterday and I spent most of the day charging it, running updates, and developing a list of gripes/concerns.

I got an Asus and so far I'm pretty happy with it. It combines a lot of the things I liked about my Lenovo without having to deal with the general corporate skeeviness of Lenovo who I'm fairly convinced combine 1984 big brother issues with sheer programming stupidity. I'm not even a hacker and I can see how their adware opens up critical vulnerabilities in operating systems. All things considered, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out my screen failed because Lenovo decided it was time for me to buy a new computer and sent a kill command. (I promise, I'm not generally a paranoid person)

It's always possible that I will end up as distrustful of Asus, but I can't find many frustrated people online ranting about Asus and there are tons ranting about Lenovo.

So, the Lenovo died on Monday. After establishing I was already out of warranty, I even cracked it open to pull the battery and force a full reboot. (I actually enjoyed poking around in there, it's fascinating stuff. Silver lining, I guess) Tuesday, I went shopping and decided on my Asus. Unfortunately, I had to get it shipped and because I wasn't sure I'd be home on Thursday, I didn't get it until Friday. I suppose if I'd been really motivated, I could have found the machine somewhere in Atlanta, but I decided to wait and spend some time thinking through some things.

1. Repair Costs - it seems disingenuous that it costs as much or more, in some cases, to replace or fix a component than buy a whole new machine. It feels like forced consumerism. I know that there are some valid reasons for this, but on the whole I think that component costs are deliberately inflated. I suspect (but don't know) that this is to support the infrastructure of industry which tends to base its bottom line on sales of new machines. I think that there is some equation out there that measures the point at which the average consumer will tolerate built in obsolescence and then prices repair/component costs to take advantage. After all, the companies are protecting their bottom lines and if they can get us to buy new computers even a year earlier that we otherwise would, that helps them so why not find a way to force it.
2. Machine Recycling/Toxicity of Components - So if we are buying computers at a faster rate than we otherwise would, what happens to the cast off machines. That's a lot of waste when you sit down and think about it. In a perfect world, we are all trading them in or taking them to recycling centers (and the recycling centers are actually recycling them - which is not a given). However, I know a lot of people just throw them in the trash especially if they know their broken device has no trade-in value. Aside from the general landfill issue this creates, most people don't realize just how many toxic components are in our devices. Cadmium (used in device batteries) alone is causing huge problems in many poor countries where unscrupulous companies are dumping used-up tech. 
3. Microsoft Bullying - I hate microsoft. I really really do. I think it's a shoddy product and I think that they are big ole corporate bullies. I just think mac/apple is just as bad and that I don't have time to manage a linux system. The reason, therefore, that I stick with microsoft machines is that I better know how to get around and subvert microsoft idiocy. And yes, sometimes I bully it back. Microsoft is trying it's darnedest to keep people from using chrome on microsoft machines. Get over it Microsoft. Figure out how to make a browser that people actually want and you won't have to play playground bully anymore. Oh and by the way...I'm posting this through Chrome so neener neener neener. 
4. Privacy Concerns - Network security and privacy is this big scary thing. There are so many places and ways to lose control of your data and ultimately it all comes down to trust. Do you trust the people you buy your software from? At this stage it's no longer practical to write all your own apps and OS's. Things have gotten too sophisticated and complex. Even if you do program, your programs often make use of preexisting code. Exploits and snoops are everywhere and we have no real guarantee that a button to opt out really opts us out. It's just a digital button, it doesn't have to be connected to anything. We just are wired to think and trust that they do. I don't inherently trust these people. I used to code and know how easy it is to mess with people.  I put most of reliance in vigilance and being too insignificant to bother with. Also, I tend to keep an eye on what the paranoid tech-savvy teenager set have to say about various companies. There are some advantages to being a teacher and teenagers know a lot more than people tend to give them credit for. They just don't always know things that we value. (That's a different issue though)

Nothing has changed, and none of these things are things I didn't already know. However, it's been a while since I really spent time thinking about it. The downtime was a good thing.

Booked by Kwame Alexander

I've been delving into this Verse Novel format more. It's a strange way to read a story and not at all like the epics I teach. When I first heard of it, I thought it would be clumsy and difficult for a young audience in the same ways that reading the epics are. I was wrong.

I was wrong because my assumptions were flawed. Epics are difficult for younger readers because of the use of poetic conceits and need for abstraction in approaching even basic plot points on top of overarching difficulty with approaching a fundamentally alien culture that happens with any translated literature. Verse novels are a new format for YA so the text is written with a contemporary YA audience in mind. I'm not sure how well they will wear as time marches on, but for now they are very accessible. The authors have mostly dispensed with poetic conceits by entirely writing in a straightforward blank verse. While descriptive and expressive language is still of primary importance, the use of metaphor and simile tends to be used more sparingly and with more in-text explanation. The result is actually more concrete than prose in some cases because the poetry format allows a more direct description of character emotion without feeling heavy handed. Couple that with the greater amount of whitespace on the page and it explains why this format is so successful with struggling readers.

Of course some examples of the format are better than others. After reading The Crossover,  I immediately picked up Alexander's other verse novel: Booked. It's an excellent book, but not as emotionally devastating as The Crossover.

Nick Hall is a middle school soccer star. His dad is a linguistics professor and his mother is an out of work horse trainer. All Nick wants to do is play soccer, but when his mom leaves the house to take a job, Nick's relationship with his dad gets strained. Add on top of that a couple of neighborhood bullies and Nick is having a rough year.

I liked how intelligent Nick was. His voice felt appropriate for a 13 year old boy, but his approach to issues was more than usually thoughtful and his expression more articulate (thanks to his father's word obsession). While he rebels a little at the academic expectations, he also revels in his use of words which is a lot of fun to read.

The bully angle is not the primary focus of the book, but the subplot is well handled and resolves well. Overall, it's a good read.

Chomp by Carl Hiaasen

Once I read one of the Hiaasen YAs, I had to go looking for the rest of them. Mainly, I wanted to make sure they were stand alone novels and not part of some series. Turns out that they are all stand alones, which for my purposes, is a good thing.

Chomp is about Wahoo Cray, the son of a professional animal wrangler. Apparently, this is a real thing. Animal wranglers are professionals who work with non domesticated animals by removing them from inappropriate locations and, in some cases, rehabilitating injured animals and training them. These animals are then sometimes used as stand ins for their wild counterparts in nature shows and documentaries. Who knew? I learn something new every day and from the strangest places.

Anyway, Wahoo's father gets hired to wrangle for a reality tv show reminiscent of "Crocodile Hunter."  The difference is that Steve Irwin was actually a fairly competent wrangler himself. Derek Badger, the TV personality in Chomp is a egotistical and generally useless person who I pretty much immediately wanted to punch in the face. Wahoo's dad seems to agree with me. 

Wahoo and his dad have to keep this yahoo alive in the Florida Everglades as everything proceeds to go wrong.

This is a fast paced book. As always with Hiaasen's YA, ecological concerns are front and center but not the main thrust of the plot. There were two things that I found particularly interesting. First, apparently Burmese Pythons have become a major invasive species in southern Florida. I used to keep a ball python when I was younger. However, I lived in Michigan so if my python got away from me, it was unlikely that it was going to have much of an environmental impact. South Florida however has a very hospitable climate to a python's way of thinking. The problem is that the Burmese Pythons get big enough to successfully kill a human and have no natural predators in the Florida everglades so they are pretty much running rampant. There is an actual campaign to exterminate them. Interesting stuff.

Second, Chomp really got me thinking about nature programming and reality tv. The line between educational/informational programming and entertainment has become blurred in recent years. This is having many deleterious effects.  Nature shows, like the one described in Chomp, encourage a certain contempt for the natural world. I think when they started, the idea was to educate and raise awareness, but somewhere along the way, they turned into idiots doing stupid dangerous things and surviving it. I'm not opposed to entertainment, but when it's presented as fact oriented educational programming, people believe it's real.  This is a problem and it's one that Chomp obliquely addresses.