Pastwatch

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The Redemption of Christopher Columbus
by Orson Scott Card
ages: adult
First sentence: “Some people called it the ‘time of undoing’; some, wishing to be more positive, spoke of it as ‘the replanting’ or ‘the restoring’ or even ‘the resurrection’ of the Earth.”
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I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around this one ever since I finished. It’s so hard to sum up: as one-part dystopian, one part historical fiction, and one part time travel, it has a bit of everything.

The end of the world came, basically destroying most of the Earth. Only a few thousand people survived, and they’ve been trying to restore the Earth. As part of this, they developed a technology, and a group called Pastwatch evolved from this technology, to watch the past, to learn from it.

As part of this, one researcher, Tagiri, discovers that Christopher Columbus played an important role in the shaping of the current world. Which got her to thinking: what drove Columbus to go west in order to find India? What if he never made it back to Spain, thereby sending more conquerors to the Americas to plunder, rape and enslave the native populations? There’s a lot in the book from Columbus’s point of view: Card explores Columbus’s thoughts, motivations and the amount of conviction it took to convince Ferdinand and Isabella to fund a seemingly crazy trip.

After the Pastwatch researchers start thinking about Columbus’s decisions, and after they discover a couple bits of crucial information, they begin musing about how to — and whether or not to — influence the past. Eventually, for many reasons — sometimes this novel was a bit circuitous and confusion, but eventually, if you wade through all of Card’s exposition (and he tends to philosophize, especially in his later works), it does make sense — they do decide to send a team into the past to reshape the course of history.

The novel had an intriguing balance: more than two-thirds was set up, and the pay off was less than one-third of the novel. It makes it a much more philosophical novel than I was expecting, but it turns out to be a good thing. I think it was Card’s intention to raise questions about pre-destiny and divine right, as well as acceptance of religion and race. He presents things to think about, but he’s very heavy-handed in doing it. More than once I felt like I was being hit over the head with a hammer, and I even agreed with the sentiments he was expressing.

In the end, I was surprised at how much I ended up liking it. For all it’s flaws, it’s an interesting story.

A Corner of the Universe

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by Ann M. Martin
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Last summer, the summer I turned twelve, was the summer Adam came.”
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It’s the summer of 1960, the summer Hattie turns 12. She lives in a small town in Connecticut (I think; I was never really sure), and she enjoys her little life: she helps her mom and dad with the boarding house they live in, in spite of Nana and Papa’s disapproval. She wanders around town, talking with her friends — none of which are her age — reading, enjoying the lazy summer days. But this summer is different: it’s the summer she finds out she has an uncle, Adam, who she never knew existed.

See, Adam, who is 21, suffers from an unnamed mental illness. And in those days, especially for people like Nana who like things just so — from insisting upon Sunday dress at the girls’ lunches she hosts, to the china plates at the Fourth of July picnic — mental illness was seen as a disgrace, something to be tucked away.

And therein lies the central conflict of the novel: Hattie doesn’t “get” Adam much of the time, but she likes him, and she understands that all he really needs is love and attention, not to be hidden away. She doesn’t understand Nana’s (and to a lesser extent, her mother’s) embarrassment of Adam. He’s her friend, and she wants him to be happy.

It doesn’t have a happy ending, however. It’s still 1960, and Adam’s problem which today could be correctly diagnosed and helped escalates into something not so happy. It’s necessary, though, to see the bad in order to see the good: Nana’s not as cold-hearted as Hattie things, and everything is infinitely more complex than an 11-year-old would like it to be.

It’s a moving novel, slim but effective in expressing one girls search for belonging and understanding of both herself, her family, and the world around her.

Sunday Salon: Vacation Reading

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We’re off on our vacation: driving from here to Boston and back again, with several pit stops along the way to see both our church’s historical sights as well as US history sights, and New York City. It’s a LOT OF driving to say the least. Which means: audiobooks!

I tried to get a little something for everyone. (Hubby’s excited about Wee Free Men and Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe, so I didn’t leave him out.)

As for me, I’m not expecting to have a whole lot of time to read, and yet I can’t travel without a pile of books. It’s just impossible. I’m really excited about my pile.

I may just have to make time to read!

I don’t know if I’ll be blogging while I’m gone; it all depends on how much time is left over from all the other things we’re planning on doing. If I don’t, see you sometime in mid_July!

Nerds Heart YA, Round 1: 8th Grade Super Zero vs. MindBlind

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8th Grade Super Zero
by Olugbemisola Rhuday Perkovich
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Everyone know’s what’s up, because it’s the first day of school and I set the tone.”
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Reginald Garvey McKnight did not start the school year off well. Which means, for this eighth grade year, he’s stuck in loserville because of an unfortunate vomiting incident on the first day of school. Reggie’s content putting his head down and just surviving, even with the constant (nasty) teasing by his former friend Donovan. But then his church youth group does a service project at a local homeless shelter. For many reasons, this moves Reggie, and suddenly what was going to be a low-key year of just surviving becomes something more. And as he gets involved, he finds that he’s becoming something more.

I loved the characters of this one — the ethnic and religious diversity, as well as just their genuine heart — as well as the issues it discussed. It’s very broad: there are issues of homlessness and community responsibility, as well as religion, bullying, race relations, sibling rivalry, as well as a parent that’s unemployed. You wouldn’t think with so much going on that it would work, but it does. Perhaps because it’s a slice of life: the conflict is minimal, though real, and lets Reggie’s inner struggle and questions shine. I also liked how it treated everyone (even the bullies) with respect.

MindBlind
by Jennifer Roy
ages: 12+
First sentence: “Open File: C:\MyFiles\genius\first_time.avi (Date: 1/14/99)”
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Nathaniel Clark is not a genius. He’ll be the first to tell you that. Sure, he’s 14 and has graduated from college already, and yeah, so he has Asperger Syndrome, but in order to be a “genius”, he needs to have use his talents to make a contribution to the world.

Getting through daily life seems to be quite all he’s able to do, with his math, and the friends he does have — Molly, his bowling partner; Cooper, the boy next door; and Jessa, a friend that Nathaniel wants to be more than a friend — and keeping everything in check, so he can appear “neurotypical.” And that’s not even mentioning his stubbornly obtuse father.

As we follow Nathaniel around, we get to know him and his quirks, how he thinks and feels, and experience the world from his fascinating perspective. We learn about his life through flashbacks (he accesses his memories as computer files and watches them like movies). We experience good times, when he’s doing well, as well as times when he crashes and retreats into N-world, his own safe place.

It’s all very captivating and interesting, but Nathaniel is also more than that: he’s a winning character, a sympathetic person: fascinating and engaging and cheer-worthy.

Decision:
It was difficult to decide between these two books, both of which were fantastically written and captivating to read. But, in the end, I think I’m going to go with Reggie and 8th Grade Super Zero for breaking the mold, for giving us a story of a God-fearing, caring, interesting, black boy, who wants to help and not be shoved into any of the black male stereotypes. That definitely is something to cheer about.

10 Questions for Jennifer Roy

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I was lucky enough to get Jennifer Roy’s book MindBlind for the first round of Nerds Heart YA. I’ve read Jennifer’s first book, Yellow Star, and was more than excited to read MindBlind. (You have to wait until tomorrow to see what I thought of it, though.) And when I noticed that she was still available for an interview as part of the whole Nerds Heart YA event, I jumped at the chance. You can learn more about Jennifer and her books at her website.

(Photo credit: Mark McCarty)

MF: What was the inspiration for writing a book about a teen with Asperger’s Syndrome?
JR: The inspiration for Nathaniel, the main character, was my son (an Aspie) as well as all the people on the Spectrum that I’ve met and read about. My son is only nine, so the teen part is fictional. But many of the anecdotes are real!

MF: Was it difficult to get inside Nathaniel’s head at times? Or did it flow fairly naturally, once you got the character?
JR: It would have been impossible for me to write from the point-of-view of a person with Asperger’s Syndrome before I became a Mom. But my son has been so quirky, hilarious and – most importantly – honest and open about his thoughts and the way his brain works. I adore and envy the way he processes things! Through parenting and homeschooling him, I’ve kind of “absorbed” his personality enough to create a character based on him. It’s the opposite of how I think (neurotypically), but I had a great time writing Nathaniel!

MF: Nathaniel’s father has some major issues with Nathaniel’s diagnosis and condition. Why did you decide to include a character — especially one so close to Nathaniel — like that in the book?
JR: First, as my son is quick to say, the father in MindBlind is nothing like my son’s real-life Dad! I even dedicated the book to my husband to make sure no one thought I based the jerky dad on him. But I am very aware that denial and anger are common in family members of Aspies and other people with “differences.” Although I wanted to whack Nathaniel’s father and tell him “get over it and just enjoy this kid,” I knew it was crucial for there to be a (sadly) realistic villain.

MF: I wanted to whack his father as well! Though I do agree that a villain was necessary… Which leads me to wonder, do you have a favorite character or scene?
JR: Please skip – I can’t choose!

MF: LOL! I would have a hard time choosing as well. Out of curiosity, how did you come up with all the math formulas?
JR: The math and science knowledge that I tapped into when writing this book is all due to having to keep up with my son’s homeschooling. He’s profoundly gifted, and suddenly I was learning all the things I didn’t “get” in high school. At warp speed! I sometimes joke that my book is smarter than I am.

MF: What would you like your readers to take away from their experience reading MindBlind?
JR: What I’d like people not to take away from MindBlind is a blanket statement about people – (e.g., all Aspies are gifted, all mothers are understanding while fathers stink) – because each Aspie family is unique. What I would like people to gain is a little validation or insight or compassion or enjoyment. Or all of the above!

MF: Your first novel, Yellow Star, was a novel in verse. What are the similarities/differences between writing that and MindBlind?
JR: Writing Yellow Star, I had to get into the head of a young girl trying to survive the Holocaust. Obviously, and thankfully, I didn’t experience that directly. But my Aunt Sylvia did, and it’s her true story I wrote about in Yellow Star. Like Nathaniel in MindBlind, I had to put myself in someone else’s shoes and view an incomprehensible world through his/her eyes. But, in a more general way, I too have anxiety and confusion about the world and people in it. So in that way, I can relate. The different writing styles reflect the way I felt the characters expressed themselves best.

MF: Who, or what, inspires you to write?
JR: Writing can be hard! So I have to draw inspiration from wherever I can. My favorite author, Madeline L’Engle, was my first literary inspiration. I am one of those “voracious” readers – hundreds of books a year. Being an author has allowed me to be around book people – bloggers, kids, librarians, educators, teens, parents – people who love reading. And, I still get star struck meeting other authors. So, the opportunity to be with book nuts inspires me!

MF: What’s the last book you read and loved, and why did you love it?
JR: The last book I read and loved was Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys. It tells the story of a girl who survives WWII in Siberia. The reason I loved it was because my father and his family also made the same journey from Poland to Siberia in 1939. My Dad was too young to remember the details, but when I read Between Shades of Grey, I could finally have an idea what my Grandma and her five kids went through. Frankly, it was horrifying and heartbreaking. But it was well-written with compelling characters, and while I wish, of course, my family hadn’t suffered, I’m grateful that Ruta Sepetys helped me understand my family history a bit better.

MF: If you don’t mind telling us, what can we expect from you next?
MF: Next up – Book 4 in the Trading Faces series, which is about identical twins who switch places (co-authored with my identical twin sister Julia DeVillers). My character, Emma, is academic and socially awkward, while my twin’s character is an outgoing fashionista. The books are cute and fun with a positive message. My sister and I hysterically laugh our way through the books.

On the more serious side, I’m doing another literary book for Marshall Cavendish. It’s set in the early 1950s and incorporates both sides of my family’s history. (My Mom grew up Quaker, and my Dad was a Holocaust survivor. Certainly not typical…) I’ll keep you posted!

MF: Not typical is an understatement! I’ll be interested to see the final product. Thank you so much for your time!
JR: Thank you so much for noticing and recognizing MindBlind. We heart nerds back!

Rammer Jammer Yellow Hammer

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by Warren St. John
ages: adult
First sentence: “At some point in theLink life of every sports fan there comes a moment of reckoning.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

First, a disclaimer: I am a college football fan. (University of Michigan Wolverines. Go Blue!) So, naturally, I was curious about this book. Sure, it’s about the Alabama Crimson Tide, but to a great extent football is football is football, and a fan’s experience is pretty much the same.

However, reading this book had two effects on me: first, it made me question my actual fan status. See: I’m not nearly the fan that these people are. St. John is a lifelong Crimson Tide fan and became interested in the psychology of sports fan. However, this is not a pop psychology book; rather, as St. John finds a crowd of fans (maybe it’s a Southern thing?) that follow the team during the season in their decked out RVs, it becomes more of a travel book.

At first glance, these fans are insane: who in their right mind would spend so much money (one man spent $1.4 million) on a traveling hallway just in order to be near the stadium of their favorite football team. But as the book progresses, you come to admire their dedication to the team and to the game. They are a community: granted, one that meets just for 12 weekends a year, but they have a common bond, which makes the temporary nature of the community irrelevant. They are fans in an intense, life-consuming way. And I wondered: if I wasn’t willing to put my allegiance to my team out there as loudly as they are, can I even really call myself a fan?

As the book goes one, I found myself respecting the RVers. They have a dedication to their team — to the game — that is unparalleled. They are fully invested in football, which is superficial, yes, but is also something that bonds people together. As St. John travels with the group (yes, he does buy an RV), he also focuses on the game itself. Though, he writes not from a technical aspect, but more from the experience as a fan in the stands. It’s a personal experience for him, though he does connect with people who are fans to a greater and fans who are fans to a lesser degree than he is. It’s an insightful book, lovingly written; a love story not just to the Crimson Tide, but to all sports fans everywhere.

Which brings me to the second thing the book made me want to do: actually go to a game again. There is something to be said about experiencing the game in a crowd of like-minded people, to be a part of all the fans cheering on their team, experiencing a win (or a loss) together as a group.

If you’re not a sports fan, I’m not sure why you’d pick up this book. But if you are, it’s a fantastic read.

2011 Once Upon a Time Challenge Finish Line

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It’s Midsummer, and another Once Upon a Time Challenge comes to a close. I read, this year:

1. Fantasy: Exile, by Anne Osterlund
Enchanted Ivy, by Sarah Beth Durst
Reckless, by Cornelia Funke
Dragonfly, by Julia Golding
Magic Under Glass, by Jaclyn Dolamore

2. Folklore: My Unfair Godmother, by Jannette Rallison
(I moved Runemarks, since after reading it I realized it was mythology and not folklore. Thankfully, Unfair Godmother involved Robin Hood, which counts. Though it also has Rumpelstiltskin, which is fairy tales…)

3. Fairy Tale: The Fairy Godmother, by Mercedes Lackey

4. Mythology: Zeus: King of the Gods and Athena: Grey-eyed Goddess, by George O’Connor
Runemarks, Joanne Harris
The Throne of Fire, by Rick Riordan
Mad Love, by Suzanne Selfors
Gods Behaving Badly, by Marie Phillips

Heavy on the mythology, which surprised me, and general fantasy, which didn’t. My favorite book out of these? Possibly The Fairy Godmother or Dragonfly, both of which were surprisingly good.

As always, thanks Carl for hosting!

The Trouble With May Amelia

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by Jennifer L. Holm
ages: 10+
First sentence: “My brother Wilbert tells me that I’m like the grain of sand in an oyster.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

It’s just a few months after our last adventure with May Amelia, and nothing much has changed. She’s still the only girl on the Nasel. She still has a bucketload of brothers, even if her oldest brother, Matti, off and married an Irish girl (in secret because their father would highly disapprove) and moved to San Francisco. It’s still a tough life for them.

And things don’t get easier in this book. (I hate the cover, by the way. She’s too old, and what’s the deal with the chicken?)

The land is still hard to work, and when an a man interested in buying their land to incorporate a town comes along, it’s up to her to translate for their father. It sounds like a good deal, so they opt in, thinking about all the things they can get with their riches. It sounds like the Jackson’s boat has finally come in.

Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a book if that were the plot. There has to be conflict, right? And so things happen to May Amelia and her family: her brother loses a hand at the logging company; Matti comes back which creates tension with her second oldest brother, Kaarlo; her cousins come to America, after a horrific event in Finland, and there’s finally another girl, which is not exactly all that May Amelia had hoped.

And, most of all, there’s her father. I know this is 1900, but her father is so old-fashioned, so male-centric it’s painful. There are times when he treats May Amelia so badly that you just cry out for the poor girl. And yet, her resilient spirit and hope shine through. She is hurt, she is sad, but she doesn’t stop loving her family. May Amelia is a remarkable girl, and that shines through.

Like Our Only May Amelia, there’s not a whole lot of plot; it’s essentially just snippets from May Amelia’s life on the Nasel at the turn of the 20th century. It doesn’t matter, though: Holm captures us with her storytelling, with the spirit of the book, with a captivating picture of a way of living and a community.

Historical fiction at its best.

Gods Behaving Badly

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by Marie Phillips
ages: adult
First sentence: “One morning, when Artemis was out walking the dogs, she saw a tree where no tree should be.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

The gods have a problem. They’ve been stuck in an increasingly run-down house in London for 300 years. They’re bored. They’re losing power. Sure, they’ve tried other occupations — Aphrodite has a bit of a business as a phone sex operator, and Dionysus runs a pretty happening club, not to mention Apollo’s stint as a TV psychic — but it’s just not working for them. Things just aren’t going well.

Enter Alice, the unassuming cleaner and her would-be boyfriend, Neil. She’s pretty shy, as far as mortals go, but after Artemis hires her to clean the absolutely filthy house, she brings some life to the group. (That’s helped along a bit, due to some revenge work by Aphrodite: she gets Eros to hit Apollo with an arrow and he falls for Alice.) This leads to some sticky situations, though, culminating in possibly the end of the world. Interestingly enough, Neil finds a role as a hero, and the gods find a new reason to exists again.

It’s a unique little take on the Greek gods. Sure, I prefer Percy Jackson, but this one deals directly with the gods themselves. They’re dealing with the lack of belief from Mortals (can I say one of my favorite parts was Eros’s devotion to Christianity? Very intriguing.), though they don’t realize that’s what it is until near the end. (Though an observant reader will pick that up, so it’s not really a spoiler.) It’s not as funny or as witty as I would have liked, but it is entertaining. I’m also not sure the overall story is quite what I would have liked it to be: there’s a trip into the Underworld, and the whole “Everyone Believes” at the end seemed a bit forced; but that could just be my devotion to Percy Jackson talking.

There were moments that made me smile, though. And I liked Artemis and Alice and Neil, so there’s at least a couple of characters that I could connect with. So, t’s a not a complete waste of time after all.

The Heart of a Samurai

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by Margi Preus
ages: 10+
First sentence: “Manjiro squinted across the expanse of glittering sea at the line of dark clouds forming on the horizon.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!

I wanted to like this one. The cover is pretty, it won a Newebery Honor this year, and the cover calls it a “novel inspired by a true adventure on the high seas.”

Manjiro is a 14-year-old Japanese boy in the mid-1800s. He’s from a small fishing village, and doesn’t have much chance for a future. He signs on with a fishing boat, which gets lost at sea in a storm. Eventually, they get washed up on an island, and a while later are rescued by an American whaling ship. Manjiro spends the next 10 years away from Japan, most of it on a ship, learning English and experiencing everything from the freedom of the open sea, to new technology, to racism, to the opportunities that America offers that Japan doesn’t. He eventually returns to Japan, to a less-than-amiable reception, but eventually helps the Japanese end 250 years of isolationism.

The story is all fine and good, but the book just fell flat. (At least it was a quick read.) All the things I was interested in: being stranded on an island, experiences on a whaling ship, racism in mid-1800s New England all got glossed over. While there was conflict, there wasn’t enough to keep the story interesting enough. And it was basically just a retelling of the years Manjiro was away from Japan, with an epilogue about his time in the government after his return. It would have worked better as non-fiction, if that’s all the author was going to do.

It could have been an interesting book. Disappointing.