Review: Inkspell by Cornelia Funke

Really, really long. Grade: B

Review: When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

I really liked this book. A lot. I do find it very reminiscent of The Westing Game and From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frakweiler. Partly because it’s a puzzle, and all of the pieces don’t fall into place until the end. Partly because the characters are complex, but not overwhelming - just real. Partly because it’s set in the late 70’s in a very non-cheesy way (latchkey kids and game shows, but no bell-bottoms or disco). An added bonus - the story is sprinkled with references to A Wrinkle in Time. Grade: A

Review: Love Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli

Meh. The story is very predictably PC: an unconventional teenager makes friends with a bunch of quirky outcasts (an angry pre-teen, an agoraphobic woman, a goofy little girl, a crazy guy, a kid that steals stuff), knitting them into a community that finds its culmination in a winter solstice ceremony/celebration - and at the same time she tries to figure out if she still loves the boy that dumped her (in Stargirl) because she was too unconventional. Really? This book has its moments, but there’s way, WAY too much meditation. Grade: C+

Review: Eliza's Daughter by Joan Aiken

This was a terrible book. The dust jacket suggests that Aiken wrote this book out of "love and admiration" for Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility - but she doesn't seem to have particularly liked any of Austen's characters. Edward Ferrars is a legalistic, penny-pinching, and narrow-minded parson. Elinor is a dreary housewife, making the best of a lukewarm marriage. Marianne is domineering and jealous. Colonel Brandon is spoken well of (mostly) but never appears in person and eventually dies in the Napoleonic wars. I'm not sure what the point of all this is, other than a cynical rejection of a happy-ever-after ending. But not only does Aiken not seem to take any pleasure in Austen's characters, she doesn't seem to like any of her own characters. Austen's characters are often flawed, and sometimes very shallow and silly, but she has the grace to be amused and even delighted by them. Aiken doesn't seem to give a hoot for any character other than Eliza - the supporting cast are killed off one at a time by strokes and drownings and wasting sicknesses, but the book trots along and they're barely missed. And Eliza herself is hardly the sort of person I'd like to spend much time with (certainly not 316 pages!). It does seem odd that Aiken's writing should be so uneven - so winsome in her children's novels, and so heavy-handed and bitter here. But this book was written fairly late in her career, so maybe that's an explanation. Or maybe Dido Twite is just more fun to write about. Grade: D

Review: Jayber Crow, Wendell Berry

I saved this review for last because it was, by far, the best of my library books. I already wrote up a description for a friend, so I am going to cut and paste from the email I sent to her (with just a little editing)...

Jayber Crow is the fictional autobiography of Jonah (Jayber) Crow. He's born in the teens, and is looking back on his life as an old man in the eighties. He spends most of his life in a small town in Kentucky, and a good part of the book is about that small town and the people who live in it. It's a gentle book, and the characters are painted with grace and warmth, and that's what I liked best. There were several places where I laughed out loud. But there are profound passages too, some of which I've already quoted in my blog. It seems like a good book for someone making life decisions, or for someone who is just interested in vocation (like me).

Vocation, and the role of individual choice (self-determination?) is one of Berry's themes. He is also critical of many of the cultural changes that occurred over the course of the twentieth century, and this book mourns the passing of rural farming communities. I have a harder time embracing this theme—I tend to think that that the state of the world is neither improving nor disintegrating, just carrying on much the same as always. But Berry challenges that assumption, and perhaps it ought to be challenged. I disdain cultural relativism, and it strikes me now that I'm just expressing a sort of temporal relativism. Perhaps some ages are darker than others. And while nostalgia can be a bit of a sickness, it is appropriate to name and mourn what's lost.

I'll leave it at that, except to say that this book reminded me a bit of both Our Town and Theophilus North—so I guess Berry's prose has a Thornton Wilderish quality. A fine book. Check it out!

Review: Archer's Goon, Diana Wynne Jones

I don't know what to say about this book. I borrowed it from the library because the library didn't have Howl's Moving Castle (by the same author), recommended by a friend. The title (Archer's Goon?!), cover art, and plot synopsis are all completely unappealing. But the story is riveting. Clever contemporary fantasy.

Review: The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Jeanne Birdsall

Well, I liked this too. This is the second book about the Penderwicks, four little girls, their widowed dad, and Hound. These books belong to the family subgenre of children's lit—like E. Nesbit's Bastable family stories and Eleanor Estes' Moffats. Birdsall sets her books in contemporary times, but apart from a few unimportant details, they might as well be set in the 50s or 20s. There are lots of strong female characters—but the same can be said of Roller Skates (copyright 1936) so I'm not sure that makes this an especially modern book.

I suppose the reason why these books don't seem to belong to the modern world is that there isn't much grit (conflict and sadness yes, but no Sin). In The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, Daddy dates, Rosalind gets mad at a boy, Jane and Skye swap homework assignments, and Batty spies on a mysterious stranger. By the end of the book, everything resolves neatly. But the resolution is satisfying—like a Shakespearean comedy where everyone ends up married to the right person. A cozy book, good for reading in bed.

Review: Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat, Lynne Jonell

I liked this book. Not one of the great works of children's lit, but fun and whimsical and a pretty good story. Also, charming artwork by Jonathan Bean—when you flip the pages, a rat tumbles out of a tree and down the page. Emmy is a good little girl in the clutches of a nasty nanny. She befriends a talking rat with special powers—his bite makes people shrink. There are actually a lot of rodents with special powers in this book, but it's not The Secret of Nimh. The rodents are winsome, but Emmy is the character you care about. This is a pleasant book. Even though Emmy's nanny (Miss Barmy) is fairly despicable, she isn't really frightening—Emmy and her friends always seem to have the upper hand, and it's hard to imagine the story ending unhappily. But the ending is still pretty satisfying and not entirely predictable.

Review: Maisie Dobbs, Jacqueline Winspear

Two weeks ago, I took a stack of books out of the library; now that I'm through most of the them, I thought it would be fun to write short reviews. So, from bottom to top...

Maisie Dobbs is the first in a series of historical mysteries, set in London in the earlyish part of the 20th century. I had great hopes for Maisie. But alas, she's less a woman of her time, and more a 21st century independent working woman with a very contemporary worldview, plunked down in the 30s. Maisie solves the mystery by being empathetic in a creepy new agey way and by making a bunch of phone calls that the reader isn't told about until the final chapter. Much of the book is taken up with Maisie's backstory, particularly her service during WWI as a nurse and her ill-fated romance with a surgeon. An engaging enough book, and it was interesting to think more about what it must have been like to live through WWI. But I don't really like Maisie enough to read any more in this series.

Review: The Christian Imagination, ed. Leland Ryken

I stumbled across this book last weekend, as I perused Wheaton's card catalog in search of lesser-known essays by some of my favorite authors (Buechner, Chesterton, O'Connor, etc...). This is a marvelous book, exploring literature as an art-form from a Christian perspective. I'm sorry I didn't have time to read it more thoroughly (alas, 500 pages or so), but I had a lovely browse, and copied out as many quotes as I could - many from Lewis, but a few from other sources too. Some are posted below, and there will be more over the next few days...

Review: The Willoughbys, Lois Lowry

This is a book about four old-fashioned children, their nefarious parents, a not-really odious nanny, an affable infant, and a melancholy tycoon...among others. It’s tongue-in-cheek, reminiscent of Lemony Snickett’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. I was taken aback by the cynical tone of the first few chapters. (When I first picked this up, I was searching for a Fairmont bedtime story...and a book in which the main characters ruthlessly abandon an infant seemed a bit too dark. Ruthlessly - hah!) But I’m happy to say there is redemption, and things end well for almost everyone. Except, perhaps, the parents. But they are nefarious, so it’s okay. SO, this was a fun read. And Lois Lowry is a great author. The end.