Dead as a Doornail (2005)

Sookie Stackhouse's adventures with supernaturals continues in this book by Charlaine Harris. This time she meets her guardian fairy who saves her from a person who is trying to reduce the population of weres and shifters.

In the world I lived in, the world of human people, there were ties and debts and consequences and good deeds. That was what bound people to society; maybe that was what was what constituted society. And I tried to live in my little niche in it the best way I could.
Joining in the secret clans of the two-natured and the undead made my life in human society much more difficult and complicated.
And interesting.
And sometimes. . . fun.

Sookie is shot and her kitchen is torched but she is protected and saved by the supernaturals and she is embroiled in the new leadership of the weres. All through this book she is trying to understand her feelings for Bill, Eric, and Alcide. New men catch her eye, too, which makes things even more complicated.

Still a fun series.

My rating for this book: +++

Forget Sorrow: An Ancestral Tale (2010)

An autobiographical graphic novel by Belle Yang, this book reminded me of the books by Pearl S. Buck which also took place in China.

Xuan (translated to Forget Sorrow) is the only daughter of Chinese immigrants. As a typical teenager she was embarrassed by their old world ways and accented English. She had the bad fortune of falling in with an abusive man and went to China to study traditional art, travel, and meet her grandparents. She returned to the U.S. right after the massacre at Tiananmen Square. In order to fix her relationship with her father, she listens to stories of his family.

I love Baba's stories. I want to be able to give voice to people who were forgotten.
Rotten Egg silenced me with his fist when I disagreed. The Chinese government silenced its citizens with tanks. I have a voice in America. I won't waste it.
Rotten Egg has reduced my world to these four walls, but I won't let him waste my life.
I'm going to work with Baba until I put in the last period...and send it out into the world.

Xuan's great-grandfather, his four sons, and the rest of the extended family lived in an enclosure in Manchuria off of the rent of tenant farmers. The story follows them through invasions, famines, revolutions, and intense family politics.

I highly recommend this book to readers who are interested in life in 20th century China.

My rating for this book: ++++

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag (2010)

This is the second book in the series by Alan Bradley about the highly intelligent 11-year old Flavia deLuce. She continues to follow her passion for chemistry and poisons and befriends a puppeteer and his assistant after their van breaks down in her town of Bishop's Lacey. While their van is being repaired, they camp out on the grounds of a neighboring farm and promise to put on two shows for the residents of the town. At the end of the second show, the puppeteer is electrocuted. Flavia uses her unique knowledge to help the local constabulary find the guilty party. She is able to flit about the village and learn stuff because few take her seriously.

"You are unreliable, Flavia," he said. "Utterly unreliable."
Of course I was! It was one of the things I loved most about myself.
Eleven-year-olds are supposed to unreliable. We're past the age of being poppets: the age where people bend over and poke us in the tum with their fingers and make idiotic noises that sound like "boof-boof" -- just the thought of which is enough to make me bring up my Bovril. And yet we're still not at the age where anyone ever mistakes us for a grown-up. The fact is, we're invisible - except when we choose not to be.

They are starting to take notice of her, however.

"Dammit!" Inspector Hewitt shouted, leaping to his feet. "Sorry, Vicar. But why haven't we found these things out, Sergeant?"
He glared from one of his men to the other, including both in his exasperation.
"With respect, sir," Sergeant Woolmer ventured, "it could be because we're not Miss de Luce."

Now the long wait for the third book in the series.

My rating for this book: ++++

Push (1996)

This novel by the author, Sapphire, is about a sixteen-year old girl who, when we meet her, is pregnant, illiterate, and being kicked out of her school. This is her second child, both from incestual relations with her father. Her mother, jealous of her husband's attention to Precious, abuses her physically, emotionally, and sexually.

Precious knows the only way out of this is to get her G.E.D., find work and accomodations for herself and her child. Luckily, she enters an alternative school and starts to learn to read and write.

I big, I talk, I eats, I cooks, I laugh, watch TV, do what my muver say. But I can see when the picture come back I don't exist. Don't nobody want me. Don't nobody need me. I know who I am. I know who they say I am -- vampire sucking the system's blood. Ugly black grease to be wipe away, punish, kilt, changed, finded a job for.
I wanna say I am somebody. I wanna say it on subway, TV, movie, LOUD. I see
the pink faces in suits look over top of my head. I watch myself disappear in
their eyes, their tesses [tests]. I talk loud but still I don't exist.

As Precious shows remarkable progress in her classes and learns she is not alone in her support groups, we see her language improve and see her learn she is not alone in her experiences.

This is a very tough read because of the suffering this girl has been through. Readers should be warned that there is sexual content and that it is raw and not pretty.

My rating for this book: ++++

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (Creating Currents of Electricity & Hope (2009)

This autobiography was written by William Kamkwamba with Bryan Mealer. William is a young man who lived with his family on a farm in Malawi. He completed the state sponsored primary school and was looking forward to attending secondary school when his country felt the devastating effects of a drought. With all of his family's savings gone to buy food necessary for his family to survive, he could only go to the library where he studied books. He thought that he would try to keep up and be able to rejoin classes at a later time. His favorite subject was science, in particular, physics. While reading the section of the book on electricity he started to design a wind generator so his family could have light at night.

William gives us a view of his day-to-day life as well as introducing us to his family and friends. We also see how his family exists from crop to crop and when they have a poor season, how the entire country suffers. We see how civilization breaks down when there is no food and how governments in third world countries like Malawi increase the suffering with rampant political corruption.

This bright young man fashioned his windmill using parts of machinery left in scrap yards. He gets his light working and then works on improvements such as a brake to stop the rotors when the wind was too high and a circuit breaker so his make shift wiring wouldn't cause a fire in the thatched roof.

His work was finally brought to light when people visiting his village school's library noticed the structure and reported it to their superior. After he saw it with his own eyes he told the national radio station about it. Since then, William has visited England and the United States and has become a spokesman, not only of wind power, but also HIV/AIDS.

This book is a true inspiration and a testament to the benefits of an education.

My rating for this book: ++++

The Dogs of War (2010)

This mystery by Conor Fitzgerald takes place in modern Rome and starts with the murder of an animal activist who had recently produced a film about illegal dog fights. He was discovered by his wife, a senator, and his young son shortly after his murder. His mistress, the daughter of a crime boss, left minutes before the murderer arrived. Alec Blume, an American born Roman police detective, is called in to supervise the investigation. He reminded me of another literary detective, Arkady Renko in the book Gorky Park who was also non-native born, single, singularly dedicated to his work, and skating through the politics of various different police agencies.

The story is told from the viewpoint of the murderer as well as Blume so the reader knows who the perp is but not his motive. The intervals between the alternate POVs is a little awkward and disorienting even though the date and time is given at the top of each chapter. Another small gripe I had with this book is that I was not given an explanation or translation of the names of the agencies or the titles of individuals. Since Blume was originally English speaking, it would have been easy to give us a tour of Roman crime fighters.

It was a rather dark mystery punctuated by Blume's sarcasm and occasional lack of respect for fellow policemen and interviewees. We get a view of the dog fighting world and the repulsive manner they keep and train dogs and we are introduced to a very old dog breed, Cane Corso, a kind of Italian pitbull bred strickly for fighting and consequently antisocial. It is no surprise that the case is solved but there is a rather unexpected and satisfying twist at the end.

This book is for serious mystery readers.

My rating for this book: +++ 1/2

When You Reach Me (2009)

Rebecca Stead's book received the 2010 Newbery Award and is quite different from winners of past years. Miranda is a 12-year old girl who lives in Manhattan with her single mother in the 70s. She has the intelligence and common sense that most latchkey kids get with the responsibility and freedom of getting around a big city on one's own. She is given a copy of Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time, and she ponders the complications and contradictions of time travel. In the meantime she deals with the typical sixth grade stuff like stuffy friends, bullies, homeless guys, and not so typical stuff like finding notes referring to events that have not yet happened.

On the Friday after Thanksgiving there was no school, but Mom still had to go to work. I'd been trying hard not to think about them, but I spent a good chunk of that morning worrying about your notes. I held one in each hand and read them over and over. The part about writing a letter wasn't too scary. The scary parts were "I'm coming to save your friend's life" and "Oh, by the way, where do you keep your keys?" and "P.S. Don't ever tell anyone about any of this." Seeing my name written out on the second note was also pretty creepy, because I was still trying to pretend the notes weren't really meant for me. And also where you wrote "I won't be myself when I reach you." I didn't like that part at all.

But of course, we the readers are looking at all of the characters trying to figure who it was that came back in time and which kid was the one to come back. It was refreshing to read a book about a young city dweller that wasn't involved in drugs and gangs but maneuvered around city life with confidence.

My rating for this book: ++++

Equal Rites (1987)

This is the second book in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series (thanks, Lucien) and I liked it even better than The Color of Magic. This time Eskarina, Esk for short, was given the power of a dying wizard moments after she was born and moments before we learn that she is not a boy. Oops! Granny Weatherwax, a local witch failed to mention that little fact when she brought the baby to the wizard.

When Esk is older, Granny takes her to the Unknown University where wizards get their training. It is not easy because everyone knows girls can't be wizards, only witches, even though boys can be wizards and warlocks. Granny helps her get into the building but Esk shows her worthiness as a wizard, not by showing what she can do but more how doing nothing is sometimes the right thing to do.

As Esk tried to work out how to move the staff the ripples spread out in the magical ether, changing the Discworld in thousands of tiny ways. Most went entirely unnoticed. Perhaps a few grains of sand lay on their beaches in a slightly different position, or the occasional leaf hung on its tree in a marginally different way. But then the wavefront of probability struck the edge of Reality and rebounded like the slosh off the side of the pond which, meeting the laggard ripples coming the other way, caused small but important whirlpools in the very fabric of existence. You can have whirlpools in the fabric of existence, because it is a very strange fabric.

Pratchett has an amazing ability to turn words and the lesson I see in this book is not to assume. Anything. Ever. Not even how a sentence will end. Fabulous fun.

My rating for this book: ++++

The Van Alen Legacy (2009)

The fourth book of the Blue Bloods series by Melissa de la Cruz is exciting and action-packed. Schuyler Van Alen spent most of the book jetting around the world hiding from the Venators because she was accused of killing her grandfather. She tried to sneak into a party (what a party!) to contact the Countess of Paris, a member of the European Coven, to seek shelter but all hell breaks loose (not just an expression). Mimi Force, a Venator on another team, has been sent on a mission to find a missing girl. The third character, Bliss Llewellyn, was battling with a sinister dark force that was taking over her body. All three girls came back to New York to return to their last year of high school.

But she would have to continue her education somehow. What had Lawrence always said? School was more than academics; an education prepared you for the humdrum of real life: working with others, tempering one's personality to
assimilate with the group but without losing your individual identity,
understanding the factors of logic, reasoning, and debate. For a person -
vampire or human - to succeed in the world, unlocking the mysteries of the
universe was insufficient. One would also need to grasp the mysteries of human
nature.

The cruel fact that love wasn't always convenient became apparent to all of the characters. Mimi was scheduled to "bond" with her twin, Jack (not too weird since their characters had always bonded in previous lives), but Jack loved Schuyler. Schuyler loved Jack but wanted to remain loyal to her human "Conduit", Oliver, who loved her. Bliss loved Dylan but he was dead and appears to her as a ghost. It's never easy, is it?

I have enjoyed this series since I picked it up after reading the Twilight series. In many ways I prefer this series, especially since Schuyler is so much more proactive than Belle. I loved how de la Cruz snuck in the pitch for high school quoted above. The next book, Misguided Angel, will be out in October.

My rating for this book: ++++

The Edith Wharton Murders (1997)

I had so much fun reading this mystery by Lev Raphael and I am going to keep my eyes open for more of his books.

Nick Hoffman is a professor at SUM (State University of Michigan) and lives with his lover Stefan, a writer who also works at SUM. At a department meeting it is proposed that the university host a conference about Edith Wharton. Nick had published a bibliography about her and is named as the perfect person to organize it. He would love to get tenure and fears that refusing this task would ruin his chances at getting it. One of his reservations about this conference is that Wharton scholars are polarized into two opposing groups; the Edith Wharton Association and the Wharton Collective. As it happens, this should have been the least of his fears.

The writing of this book is intelligent and clever without being condescending and has a delightful sense of humor, possibly due to the fact that the main character is gay.

I wanted to smile when I listened to the paper given by Gustaf Carmichael. He ignored Wharton entirely to discuss an unknown Swiss woman novelist, Greta Inderbitzen, who was Wharton's contemporary and might even have met her in Paris. Around the small room I could sense how baffled and jealous the audience was. Carmichael was doing the ultimate act of academic one-upmanship by chamioning a writer no one had heard of or read.
He could make whatever claims for Inderbitzen's novels (all thirty-eight of them!) he wanted and no one could challenge him. It wasn't any more sophisticated, really, than a little kid sticking his tongue out and mocking his peers with a singsong "Nanny, nanny poo-poo!"
He was such a weasel in his leather pants and Vatican City T-shirt.

I liked Nick and his friends and I appreciated how he struggled with strident homophobes and the competitive life of a university professor. I hope other mystery fans will get as much of a kick out of this book as I did.

My rating for this book: +++ 1/2