America’s Women

February 22, 2005booknutgirls 1 Comment

Every so often, I read a non-fiction book that entertains me while it educates. America’s Women by Gail Collins was one of those. It’s a basic portrait of women’s lives from pre-colonial times to the present. Yes, she highlights the women who made names for themselves — Elizabeth Stanton, Abigial Adams, Annie Oakly, Eleanor Roosevelt — but this book is so much more than that. It’s a view of what life was like for a Puritan woman, or a Victorian woman, or a slave woman, or an immigrant woman. It made me very glad that I didn’t give birth in the early 19th Century. I admired those who endured hardships, who tried to make the world a better place. It reminded me of the need to keep journals and correspondence with other women. Most of all it made me proud to be a woman. An excellent book.

Sci-Fi and Fantasy

February 21, 2005booknutgirls 7 Comments

Truth be told: I’m a geek. I’m one of the few women I know (I run in a limited circle here in Jonesboro) who loves the Lord of the Rings, who will read science fiction and fantasy and books about magic and not think it’s weird or unusual. After I went through an Agatha Christie phase in junior high where I read everything she wrote (or at least everything the library had), I discovered fantasy. I was hooked. (At one point, I was reading all the Star Wars/Star Trek fan fiction. Thankfully, I realized it was a huge waste of time.) I read to escape (I’ve said that before) and sci-fi/fantasy is one of the best means to escape real life.

Books that aren’t here that I’ve read in the past, but need to re-read: Douglas Addams Hitchhiker’s series; the Isaac Asimov Foundation series, Moreta by Anne McCaffery, and probably many others that I can’t think of right now.

Deerskin, Robin McKinley
Read this ages ago, so I don’t really remember what it’s about. I do remember that she used new-agey Goddess healing as a plot device, and that I liked it (it’s Robin McKinley, after all).

Dragonflight and Dragonquest, Anne McCaffrey
The first two of the Pern dragon series. And they’re quite interesting — good storylines, heroic adventures. The final book, White Dragon, sucked. I think you can get away with reading the first two of the series and not finish it out…

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula LeGuin
Many people really like this book. I just found it to be so-so. I tried reading the second book in the series and was bored.

Four Ways to Forgiveness, Ursula LeGuin
Interesting. But not what I was expecting.

The Lathe of Heaven, Ursula LeGuin
I think, out of all the books I’ve read by her, I like this one the best. She is good at not giving you quite what you expect out of a science fiction book, but it’s still intriguing. This one is about power and the abuse of it,
under the guise of a hypnotherapist “helping” a patient who’s dreams really do come to pass. A good book.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, Douglas Adams
A funny little book, though for the life of me, I don’t understand the ending.

A Long, Dark, Teatime of the Soul, Douglas Adams
Another “Dirk Gently” book – better than the first one, I think. Funnier, and the ending makes sense this time.

Curses, Inc. and Other Stories, Vivian Vande Velde
An amusing collection of “witch” stories (though I think I would call them “spell” stories). My favorite was “To Converse With the Dumb Beasts”.

The Silver Crown, Robert O’Brien
My niece Sarah recommended this to me, and I found it to be a very interesting premise. It’s not very often that the magical and the real are intertwined so believably.

A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories, Robin McKinley
Good fantasy short stories. Includes ones based upon The Hero and the Crown.

Spindle’s End, Robin McKinley
Great take on Sleeping Beauty

Redwall, Brian Jacques
I have to admit, I picked up this book because I was interested in the cartoon version they advertised on PBS several years ago. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book; I couldn’t put it down. I know there’s tons of books in the series, but I haven’t bee interested in reading any of the others.

Boy Books

February 21, 2005booknutgirls 1 Comment

Okay, so while I only have girls, I don’t only read books for girls about girls. I like a good action adventure and science fiction as well. Though, I have to admit, that the whole gender disction in books is pretty lame. A boy can like Little House on the Prairie (as my husband found out, though he never read it as a boy) as well as girls liking Dragon Lance or Isaac Asimov. Things are the way they are, though.

Indian in the Cupboard, Lynne Reid Banks
A great boys book. Good lessons on the value of life.

Artemis Fowl and Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident, Eoin Colfer
Not very well written (Harry Potter’s written better, and that’s not saying a whole lot), but the world he has created is fantastic. That, and it’s interesting to be rooting for the “bad guy”.

The House of the Scorpion, Nancy Farmer
From the cover and dust jacket description, I thought it would be kind of spooky-weird. But I was wrong. It’s about a boy – a drug lord’s clone, actually. In this future, clones are present, but considered beasts, a lower class than humans, and not to be touched, treated or accepted. The book follows the boys life from birth through age 14, and the adventures, trials and his… well, read it and find out. It’s a captivating book and the ending’s terrific.

Point Blank and Stormbreak, Anthony Horowitz
About a teenage “James Bond”esque, unwilling spy. The first book was super-cool: the “I just can’t believe this is happening!” type. The second was less so, and by the time the I read the third one, I had been there, seen that. A one-hit wonder series, but the first one is a lot of fun.

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
I never read this as a kid (again, it’s a “boy book”) but I sure had fun with it as an adult. It’s the classic pirate story; it’s a grand adventure!

The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
I have to admit: I refused to read this as a girl because, well, it’s a “boy book”. When I did get around to reading it as an adult, I enjoyed the time I spent with this book thoroughly. It truly is a classic children’s story: adventure, mystery, greed, war, happy endings. What more can you ask for? (I’m going to try and encourage my girls to read this one… we’ll see how successful I am!)

The Darksword Trilogy, Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman
One series I did read as a teenager… it’s okay, but not as good as I remembered it being.

Dealing With Dragons

February 16, 2005booknutgirls Leave a comment

I finished this a bit ago, but was waiting until I got around to finishing the rest of the series — it’s one of four books in The Enchanted Forest series by Patricia Wreade. However, I’ve gotten sidetracked by another book, and I figured I needed to type this one up before I forgot what I thought about it.

I liked it. A friend of mine years ago put this one in my hand and I remember liking it then, but I didn’t remember much else. It’s not a deep or profound book. The plot is: Princess Cimorene who hates being a proper princess and runs away to become the princess of a dragon. That’s about as deep as it gets. But if you know your fairy tales, it’s a lot of fun. There’s a lot of references to all sorts of princess (and other) tales, and it’s also a good “strong girl speaking her mind and doing what she thinks rather than what she’s told” books.

By the way, my 8-year-old daughter thought it was great, too.

Messenger

February 5, 2005booknutgirls 1 Comment

A side note before I get to the book: I tried, during our last book group, to convince the women who come to read this book. I also tried to convince them that LOTR was not a “fantasy” book but rather a significant work of fiction, and history and a meaningful epic for our times. They kept responding, “But it has trolls and elves and magic, right?” “But it’s not ‘real’, right?” “I just don’t read that sort of stuff.”

Well, they’re missing out.

Messenger, by Lois Lowry, is a powerful, wonderful, simple, eloquent tale. It’s set in the same “world” as The Giver and is meant to tie that book and Gathering Blue (which I haven’t read, but will as soon as I find it) together in one cohesive story. My friend, Janice, thought highly of this book. She also thought highly of Lois Lowry, as do I. She’s one of those writer’s who surpasses the “good” label and makes it into the “I don’t think she’s ever written a bad book” category.

A highly recommended book. Even if you haven’t read The Giver and don’t like “made-up” worlds.

The Storyteller’s Daughter and The Ear, The Eye, and The Arm

February 4, 2005booknutgirls Leave a comment

Oops. I read both of these a while back, and as I was cleaning out my various folders, found a note reminding myself to write a post on them. Better late than never, right?

The Storyteller’s Daughter, Saira Shah
This was recommended to me by a friend who loved Saira’s CNN/BBC Behind the Veil special on the women in Afghanastan. I loved it; she didn’t finish it — she kept comparing it to the documentary and finding the book uninteresting in comparison. I thought it was a good portrayal of wartime in Afghanastan (though not so much about women in Afghanistan), and it raised some interesting issues regarding stability and democracy in and the US position toward Afghanistan. I’ve never seen the documentary, so I don’t know how it compares.

The Ear, The Eye and The Arm, Nancy Farmer
This was a Newbery Honor book, so I figured it couldn’t be that bad. It wasn’t. It was a bit of weird SciFi/Fantasy work. I usually like SciFi/Fantasy books, and I usually give them a huge margin for stupidity, so I was surprised that I didn’t like this one all that much. I think I just grew impatient with the way the story plodded along…

Things Not Seen

February 2, 2005booknutgirls 5 Comments

Things Not Seen, a youth fiction book by Andrew Clements was my favorite book that I read while on vacation. An intriguing premise: 15-year-old Bobby wakes up one morning and is invisible. It’s done better than any other invisible movie/story I’ve read (which, admittedly, isn’t many); he’s empowered by his new-found status as invisible boy, but finds it lonely and hard to connect. He befriends a blind girl, which makes it more interesting. I think the science in the book might be a bit suspect, but I don’t know enough to discount the theories they come up with. Anyway, it moves along well and kept me interested; a good book.

Seven Days of Possibilities

February 2, 2005booknutgirls Leave a comment

Seven Days of Possibilities: One Teacher, 24 Kids and the Music that Changed Their Lives Forever, by Anemona Hartocollis is the (true) story (I don’t read much non-fiction, thought I’d mention that this one is) of Johanna Grussner. She’s a singer from Aland — an island off the coast of Finland and Sweden — who moved to America to go to school and ended up teaching music at PS 86 in the Bronx. The title gives the book high expectations, but it’s not that pretentious. I liked it — it was an interesting story of how one person can affect the lives of many, especially if she has the will and the means — but the writing style bugged me. It’s not exactly something I can put my finger on; I just didn’t like the way Hartocollis put the story on paper. It’s a decent story though.

Everything on a Waffle

February 2, 2005booknutgirls 1 Comment

I saw Everything On a Waffle, by Polly Horvath in Chinaberry a while back and was intrigued by the title. I borrowed it from a friend to read while on vacation in Hawaii recently. I actually liked the book, though there wasn’t much to say. It was a story of a girl whose parents are washed out to sea, yet she still feels she’s alive. There’s not too much else to the story, except for a bunch of recipies. It was enjoyable, but not really memorable.