Ha. V. amusing indeed.

Sarah Palin Quote Generator.

Rather like Maniac Magee, but even worse, I read The Giver back when I first started trying to review all the Newbery books, then didn’t write the review right away. And in the intervening two years(!) life intervened, we spent 8 months in Lebanon, and I didn’t even write in this blog for a year and a half. Unfortunately, I did not like The Giver well enough to reread it, so this review will have to be based upon my lingering impressions of the book I completed way back on April 28, 2006.

In Short
As intended, I’m sure, this book left me feeling uneasy and queasy, and that was before I had a child. Its themes make it a favorite for reconsideration: it was recently challenged in our local school system as being inappropriate for elementary students. I also found out that the author returned to this world in two further novels, which slightly mitigates one of my complaints — the ending is too ambiguous. Overall, it’s not my cup of tea, but it dealt with some disturbing themes in a non-boring way. I would also consider it one of the rare science fiction entries in the Newbery list. 7/10.

I’ve always been a big fan of series books, ever since I was little. It’s nice to open a new book and already be familiar with the characters; to revisit old friends and find out what new things are happening to them. In some cases (for instance, the Princess Diaries, or A Series of Unfortunate Events), the series starts out okay, then grows annoying, but you feel compelled to finish. In other cases, the characters don’t actually develop or change, no matter how many books are written about them (for instance, Nancy Drew). In the best series, neither of those things are true: characters grow and change as things occur, time passes, continuity is maintained, and new and interesting stuff continues to happen.

The recent republication of Judy Bolton has set me back to flirting with working on collecting other older series. I’ve also been reading this blog which has also got my acquisitional interest stirred up. The problem is that most of the older series are out of print, hard to find in good condition, and often expensive. And, of course, the best ones are also really long! Even the shorter ones can be a dozen books or so, and others have 30 or 40 titles to collect.

So it’s a serious thing to decide to go after a series. I saw on eBay that the Robin Kane series (only 5 or 6 books long) was relatively inexpensive, so I thought I might try it. The shortness of the series is not particularly promising, but I thought the cheapness might outweigh that. And some series with good potential were simply marketed poorly and didn’t find their audience.

Come to find out, though, I already had book 1! I’m in the process of re-organizing our books, having acquired a few slightly larger bookshelves, and I discovered it while I was moving all the childrens’ longer series to an area of their own. So I promptly brought it upstairs and read it this morning.

The book is set in northern California, along the coast. The Kanes are a middle class family who live in a large house (something which would propel them right into the upper class nowadays, even with the housing market collapsed) with a pool and two guest houses. Dad writes a comic strip; mom is a homemaker; Kevin, 14, is a surferboy; Robin, 13, seems to be Trixie Belden; Amy, 10, is the little sister. Their best friends are Mindy and Michael Hunter, the wealthy children of a movie producer who live in a mansion and also conveniently own a horse ranch. The series opens with everyone already knowing each other and pretty much all of the establishing action having taken place off camera, so the reader is dropped right into the middle of daily life without much of an introduction to anyone.

As a result, the first book is heavy on action, but pretty light on characterization. We find out about Robin’s obsession with her favorite of Mindy’s father’s horses, Nugget, whose theft (along with the theft of some other livestock) is the mystery plot upon which the book rests. The B plot involves the arrival of a child star who is working in one of Mr. Hunter’s movies. The children all immediately become good friends, and very little is really done with this; I was expecting some snobbery or something, but none ever materialised.

Interesting period items included mention of soldiers going to Vietnam, Cape Kennedy, and a peripheral character (Amy’s best friend) who suffers from the results of having contracted polio.

Based on the first book, this series is probably going to turn out to be pretty weak overall, and I don’t feel any rush to collect the rest. I may do it eventually if a good deal presents itself.

Working on making my various sites a bit more integrated. The stylesheet here is still a bit messed up (most notably in the sidebar), so links may be screwy until I manage to get it set up properly.

As mentioned a few posts below, I often keep a draft post in Wordpress where I jot down ideas I’ve had for blog posts before I forget them. Ostensibly this list will help remind me later what the idea was when I have some time to write.

Since I basically haven’t touched this blog in about a year and a half, most of these jottings are now as mysterious to me as they would be to anyone else. I present them all, repeats and not repeats, for your perusal as I begin a new draft to hold my gestating posts.

1. J2/J1 asshat in restaurant, mom ‘calm down’
Presumably my brothers were behaving poorly in a restaurant and my mom’s reaction was not what the situation demanded. Beyond that, I have no idea what this meant.

2. funny conversation or story? Not dad backing into van… clifton park pizza?
Alas, I no longer remember even to what story ‘dad backing into van’ refers.

3. Uncle B namedropping. Dean Witter. Ellison. Michelle Pfeiffer.
Filthy Rich Uncle often talks about the famous people he knows or has met.

4. tile in bathroom – egg, clown
At least this one I can explain. In the downstairs bathrom at my mom’s house the vinyl floor has a semi-regular pattern imprinted upon it. It’s sort of faux marble and sort of not. There is one splotch that looks very much like a fried egg, and as it’s near the commode, it’s a spot I have been able to view many times over the years. Nearby is a bit of the pattern that looks like a clown head. Apparently, even though she’d lived in the house for over 20 years, my mom had never noticed these things until I pointed them out one day when we were talking on the phone.

5. joyful voices or whatever
My long overdue review of one of the strangest Newbery winners of all.

6. 2 books – dragonsong, wrinkle in time
These are books that changed my life. I don’t recall if I ever quite got around to explaining why.

7. books w/author name too large
NORA ROBERTS and JAMES PATTERSON, I’m looking at you.

As an Olympics addict, the book Rome 1960 caught my eye every time I spotted it at the library. I finally gave in and picked it up, even though I was a little burnt out on the Olympics after Beijing.

For a non-fiction book, it was a pretty light, fast read — essentially NBC’s Olympic coverage in book form, though I suspect the author would not be best pleased to hear it. Only certain events were covered in any depth, and even those had a focus on athletes whose stories were deemed interesting enough to deserve page time. The subtitle of the book was “The Olympics that Changed the World” and after reading it, I’m still not sure how it was supposed to have done that beyond happening to occur at a time the world was changing around the Olympics.

I would recommend it for anyone who is looking for an Olympics fix in between now and Vancouver, especially if you weren’t alive when the Rome Olympics actually took place.

Applewood Books (who republished a number of Nancy Drews in their original format) recently brought out half the books in the Judy Bolton series, with the other half to follow before the end of the year. Judy, like Nancy, is a teenage sleuth, but unlike Nancy her books were all written by the same person, and she is allowed to grow up over the course of her serises. The books are sort of overpriced, at $14.95 (not counting any discounts) for slender paperbacks, especially considering the recent abortive reprint of Trixie Belden were hardcovers for $6.99. It’s probably still cheaper than trying to find the originals, however, and they’re worth reading. Judy has a temper much like the original Nancy, and her interactions with the people in her town are revealing of attitudes at the time.

We basically missed the whole primary season during our extended hospital stay, which is probably a good thing; the reports that leaked through were frustrating enough. In the end, I didn’t ever have to decide whether I was for Clinton or Obama, a choice I’m still not sure about.

Recent events leave me, in a word, stunned. McCain’s choice for vice-president is so astoundingly ill-considered, cynical and ridiculous that I am still boggling, over a week later. Do he and the Republican party truly have such a low opinion of Clinton supporters that they think she was being supported simply because she was a woman? That her actual positions on issues, her experience and her abilities meant nothing? That women are interchangeable and we would blindly vote for whichever candidate has a vagina?

Given McCain’s age and his health problems, it would have behooved him to make a more considered choice for VP. Say, someone with actual experience and qualifications rather than the pork-queen from Wasilla with her shiny new passport. Instead, he’s demonstrated his own desperation to become president without regard for future of the American people.

I’m just hoping that the backlash against Dubya and his parade of idiots didn’t peak too soon, back in 2006 and we have a clear demonstration at the polls that we see through McCain’s ploy and won’t be fooled by his attempt to pander to the extreme right and fake out women at the same time.

For anyone who read this blog and may actually still be checking it, I’m still here.

The latter half of 2007 and the first half of 2008 were sort of eaten by the great preemie disaster of 2007. Updates on that situation can be found at Miss Dorrie’s blog, which is where I’ve mostly been posting.

But I don’t think Dorrie’s blog is really the appropriate place for me to ramble on about non Dorrie related stuff, like politics and books and television and anything else that crosses my mind. So it’s about time to resurrect this one.