Has anyone else been following what’s been happening in Iceland?

The whole thing reads like a cautionary tale for the U.S. which unfortunately occurred too late for anyone here to draw any lessons from it. Aside from the fact that the dollar can’t (because of its greater importance to world markets) be let collapse quite as far as the krona, I’m afraid we’re on a course to follow Iceland down the path to economic disaster. 15% inflation here we come.

I saw this article on the Telegraph site today.

Josh Heinzl answered the phone with an enthusiastic “Hi, Josh’s Toys and Games! This is Josh.” The smile on Heinzl’s face and the welcome in his voice were quickly replaced with a blank stare and frustrated tone.

“Listen,” he spoke politely but pointedly into the phone, “are you guys going to offer me free processing? Otherwise I’m not that interested. You never offer a better rate.”

Heinzl hung up the phone and let out an agitated sigh.

“Credit-card processors,” he explained. “They call at least three times a day.”

This is the life of a new businessman. But Heinzl isn’t your typical entrepreneur; he’s 15 years old. And while he isn’t old enough to drive, the Windham native is buckled in and ready for a ride to the top, in a car made of Legos.

Josh’s Toys and Games opened last Friday in the Pheasant Lane Mall. The store, which is located on the ground level near the Sears entrance, offers a variety of Lego products as well as puzzles and games.

I have to go to the mall this week in my errands run; I’ll have to check this place out. Any competition for KB is good.

Feeling not so fresh?

Don’t worry. Douse your “delicate tissue” with LYSOL.

The Plot
In 1941, before Pearl Harbor brought the United States into WWII, Britain made a treaty with Nazi Germany and abandoned Europe to the Third Reich. Eight years later, Hitler is still in power, most of Europe is under his control, and the Jewish people are being systematically exterminated. The British Empire remains free, but hanging out with the wrong crowd for so long is beginning to tell. When Sir James Thirkie, the architect of the peace treaty, is found murdered in his bed during a country house weekend, Scotland Yard is dispatched to find out who did it.

In Short
Overall, I think this book was trying to be too many things at once. It was a country house mystery, it was an alternate history, it was a political intrigue, it was a social commentary. Unfortunately, the author was not quite up to the task. What suffered the most was the central mystery plot, which was full of holes and unresolved threads. Many of the rules of the Detection Club were broken. There were a number of other far-fetched bits which also detracted from the whole, though given the idiotic behavior of politicians in the real world, that was more a case of fiction needing to be less insane than reality. It’s difficult to evaulate the book on its own, though, as in spite of the mystery seemingly wrapping up by the end, it’s really not a stand alone novel. If you like alternate histories, you may like this one; I wouldn’t recommend it for straight up mystery fans.

I also take exception to the classification of this book as science fiction. It is not science fiction; there is no science whatsoever involved in the plot. The correct classification would be speculative fiction, of which science fiction is a subgenre along with fantasy, alternative histories and a few other hybrids.

The 1980 Newbery Winner is in diary format. I assume the title is to make it more accessible to the audience by mentioning a larger location; the main character is from New Hampshire and has never travelled out of the state.

In Short
This is a slice of life novel along the same vein as Little Women or Anne of Green Gables, but in diary format. The only real plot is the passage of time, though there are incidents and events which occur during the course of the book. That said, many slice of life novels are quite good (see the aforementioned) — the main requirement is that they correctly capture the life they are slicing. I think the author has done that here. Unfortunately, she must be penalized for throwing in a random character death on top of the initial pre-novel parental and sibling death. While I understand the setting allows easily for people to die of trifling little colds (to paraphrase someone from another novel) it was oddly done here. 5.5/10 after the penalty.

1989: Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman

The Plot and My Thoughts — in short
No spoiler space here, because, surprise, there is no plot! This is actually a book of short poems about bugs. I believe they are intended to be read aloud by two people.

I assume the fact that it’s poetry is what made it eligible for the Newbery Medal, because the length of the book (it is very very short) and the size of the pictures (they are very very large) makes me think it would have made more sense to give it a Caldecott.

Those of you who know me know I have very little use for poetry, so I cannot in all rights recommend this book at all. I went back to look at the Newbery list for this year, and both 88 and 89 appear to have been the peak of the children’s literature dark ages. The winners from those years are odd indeed, and there are only two Honor books to go along with them. I cannot rate a poetry book as I would prose, so I can’t give a rating out of 10 for this one. But the target audience is not the typical Newbery audience; I don’t think anyone over the age of 8 would want this book.