The Plot
This is a memoir, and more a string of events than a story with a plot. However, the basic premise is that the author, his wife and their toddler decide to give up life in San Francisco in favor of moving to a village in Wales. Here, the lovely country air and the peaceful British countryside will provide their child with the perfect setting for growing up.

In Short
The title of this book is somewhat misleading, as the author acknowledges midway through the book, when Sixpence House finally appears for the first time. It seems, at times, that the author could not decide if this was a straight up memoir or a collection of anecdotes tied together by various bits of obscure quotation from out of print books. It was interesting to read, though I wish he could have made up his mind as to which direction he was going to go. The book would have been better for being more focused, with more attention being paid to either tightening up the stories or packing in info from even more random books. These issues are probably as much a result of poor editing as they are the author’s scattered attention. But while it was not the best book ever, it did provide a fascinating little glimpse of Hay on Wye, and I do now intend to attend the Hay Festival at some point.

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.

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.

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.

So, the winner of this year’s Newbery medal is “The Higher Power of Lucky”

…

Yeah, I never heard of it either.

According to Amazon, it was published in November 2006. What the heck? Are the Newbery Awards now the Oscars, with books packing in the last few months of the year so they remain fresh in the minds of the voting committee?

But just in case you thought the Newbery Committee had gone out on a limb and picked a book that hashed out new and interesting themes, let me reassure you: based on this review from School Library Journal, it’s the same drivel they love to choose year in and year out.

When Lucky’s mother is electrocuted and dies after a storm, Lucky’s absentee father calls his ex-wife, Brigitte, to fly over from France to take care of the child. Two years later, the 10-year-old worries that Brigitte is tired of being her guardian and of their life in Hard Pan (pop. 42) in the middle of the California desert. While Lucky’s best friend ties intricate knots and the little boy down the road cries for attention, she tries to get some control over her life by restocking her survival kit backpack and searching for her Higher Power. This character-driven novel has an unusually complicated backstory, and a fair amount of exposition. Yet, its quirky cast and local color help to balance this fact, and the desert setting is fascinating. Lucky’s tendency to jump to conclusions is frustrating, but her struggle to come to terms with her mother’s death and with her new life ring true. Phelan’s cover and line drawings are simple and evocative, a perfect complement to the text. Fans of novels by Deborah Wiles and Katherine Hannigan will be happy to meet Lucky.

As I noted a while back, the Bobbsey twins books were recently republished in a newly revised edition more agreeable to modern sensibilities.

At the time, I never really wondered about the older version of the book I had, which, upon reflection, is a bit odd: I’m well aware of the fact that Nancy Drew, published by the same syndicate, was revised and re-released in the 50s and 60s. The Bobbsey Twins, as it so happens, were also victims(?) of this.

Nowhere is this so clear as in the first book, now known as The Bobbsey Twins of Lakeport but originally published as The Bobbsey Twins: Or, Merry Days Indoors and Out. Happily, the Bobbseys are even older than Nancy, and as their first book came out in 1904, there are quite a few of the original texts now available through Project Gutenberg. I’ve been reading through some of them, and they are incredibly amusing.

I leave everyone with this dire warning courtesy of Mr. Bobbsey, particularly E, who I know recently purchased a jump rope.

“She was–was jumping rope, and couldn’t jump any more,” sobbed Nan. “Oh, papa, she–isn’t de–dead, is she?”

Mr. Bobbsey was startled and with good reason, for he had heard of more than one little girl dying from too much jumping. He took the limp form up in his arms and hurried to the Lavine house with it. “Run and tell Doctor Briskett,” he called back to Nan.

[...]

“Grace is not dead,” he announced. “She had a fainting spell, that is all. But I think after this she had better leave rope skipping alone.”

I haven’t read a single book yet in 2007. That’s pretty pathetic, for me, though I am in the middle of 4 books, of which at least one should be finished soon.

2006 was a mediocre year in reading. 160 books total.

That’s more than 2004, though not all that many more, and significantly less than 2005.

non-fiction: 28 (17.5%) — success! the goal was 24.

new: 109 (68%) — success! though not a rousing one. Last year I read 100 new books. The percentage is only greater because I didn’t read as many overall.

manga: 29 (18%) — mainly because I had no money to buy them… the decrease in the overall number read can be completely attributed to less manga reading.

children’s/YA: 40 (25%) — pretty much unchanged in that number. Last year was 41.

This year my reading goal is to keep the non-fiction at that level (I anticipate this being relatively easy being at the library so constantly and seeing the new books come in), but raise the overall number. Given that I haven’t finished anything yet this year, 200 books may well be out of reach without going manga-crazy, but that’s the tentative new goal to aim for.

The Newbery Project hasn’t had much of an update recently, mainly because I slacked off on reviewing several of the books from the project which I’d read and found completely uninspiring. And in an effort to not get backlogged with unwritten reviews, I simply stopped reading new entries from the list altogether. So a tertiary goal is to move forward with that.