NOAH'S COMPASS – Anne Tyler

Read this title a few weeks ago and going through my documents I realized I forgot to blog! Yikes, hope I can remember enough.

A few years ago (maybe 10 or 15) My friend Paula and I got interested in reading Anne Tyler. Her books all take place in Baltimore and are about quirky personalities. They aren't really fast moving or plot driven. What keeps one reading are the unique people, the odd things that happen, and the difference between how the characters behave in light of what the reader would expect.

You may remember some of her books that were made into movies like Breathing Lessons (James Garner & Joanne Woodward) and The Accidental Tourist (William Hurt & Geena Davis) which were two of my favorite books along with Saint Maybe which I don't think was a movie but was a great read.

Noah... is a pretty short novel and not mentally taxing, just fun. Liam Pennywell is 60. He has failed at two marriages and has been fired from his job as a teacher at a boys school. He isn't great at his relationships with his grown daughters either and doesn't even know why. But he isn't depressed or self-pitying at all. He knows he has to conserve and so he procedes to downsize and finds an apartment to move into. On his first night there his apartment is broken into and he is knocked unconscience. From there it is a continuous revolving door of daughters, ex-wife and others trying to help him get back on his feet. However, he cannot remember being accosted and embarks on a quest to remember. Liam desperately wants to recapture the lost hours even though everyone tells him it would be better not to know. While on this quest he meets Eunice a very unusual young woman who becomes his best friend and accomplice in his quest. I know this sounds not very interesting but it is hilarious and so fun. You get to know Liam as the very flawed person who doesn't understand himself or his family but is nevertheless a decent and caring man. Plus there is a somewhat shocking turn I didn't see coming at all involving Eunice!

Liam's daughter who has joined some type of charasmatic fundamentalist church (with lots of rules of what not to do) asks him to babysit for her unusual little boy while she has several appointments. He does so and over a few weeks bonds with the boy and reads Noah's Ark to him trying his best to answer the boy's pointed questions about the story without angering his daughter – hence the title comes from one of those questions/answers about Noah and the Ark. If you like character analysis and quirky plots you will like Noah's Compass.

MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND – Helen Simonson

Jay County Public Library Book Club met Monday to discuss Major... We had a nice turn out even though Elizabeth once again had not finished the book! Come on Lizzie get with the program ;-) This British import is a very good read and pretty short so it's a good one to take on a trip or if you have a bunch of appointments where you are in the waiting room a while. The writing style is quite nice and proper and one which I always enjoy. The beautiful artwork on the cover is creative and lovely also. Members had both paperback and hardcover both having the same illustration.

Major Pettigrew is a widower and a retired English teacher who lives in a close-knit community clinging to traditional values and that proper British-ness that we Americans love to read about and at which to often poke fun. The poor Major, still pining for his deceased wife whom he dearly loved, has lost his brother Bertie and now is struggling to keep his greedy son Roger and his niece from selling the family heirloom pair of hunting rifles. While he is fretting over the guns and preparing to participate in an important hunting event sponsored by the local gentry, the Major befriends Jasmina Ali. Mrs. Ali is Pakistani and the recent widow of a local food shop owner. She and he meet to read and discuss literature.

The locals would prefer a nice Christian woman for him but of course you know he will and does fall in love with Mrs. Ali. And the love story is not the only story here. The community has social events to plan and attend and Roger has an American fiance who is not assimilating any better than Jasmina into the community. Mrs. Ali's family also decides that she should follow the traditions of the Muslim community and sign over her establishment to her nephew taking her submissive and “rightful” place in the family. Tension mounts on all sides.

Poor Major turns to his best friend who is also the local vicar for solace and guidance but is sorely disappointed - and not comforted I might add. Instead he gets an intolerant sermon. Over all the prejudices and family feuding light still shines and the Major must take a “stand.” There is sorrow but also humor here to keep you reading. Loved the Major in all his stuffy properness.

Now I must say not all of our group was happy with the love story. One woman wanted the Major to follow the vicar's council because she disapproves of religiously mixed marriage (actually I think just Christian with anything else) and since she feels “Jesus is the only way” I am guessing she is not wanting the Major to love someone destined to go to hell (my words not hers) and so... I had wanted the vicar to comfort the Major and tell him God loves him and her as his children and even though there would be tough times with the community that if he had searched his soul and prayed about it, he should follow his heart and be thankful he found someone to love and care for.

There are also very funny episodes, one pertaining to the hunting event involving a lot of crying school children, protesters, and ducks. I will remember Major Pettigrew for a long time. Books like this one help to keep a trip to England on my bucket list.

THE LIFE AND TIMES OF THE THUNDERBOLT KID – Bill Bryson

Tuesday the Adams Central Adult Literati met at the Brick House Restaurant in Monroe to discuss this humorous memoir by Bryson. We had in the past read A Walk in the Woods as a group and then several of us had tackled some of his others. Bryson has a definate appeal to people over 40 and anyone who enjoys laughing at people's foibles and ironic situations. He did not disappoint. I have liked some of this other titles better such as the above mentioned and I'm a Stranger Here Myself but none-the-less I/we had a great time with Thunderbolt.

How could you not like a book interspersed with family photos and each chapter starting with a bit of an article from the Des Moines Register which were very funny. For instance chapter one begins with this February 6, 1955 entry;

“The State Senate of Illinois yesterday disbanded the Committee on Efficiency and Economy “for reasons of efficiency and economy.””

More than just a narrative of his childhood Bryson gives us a kind of tongue-in-cheek commentary of life in the 50s and early 60s. What I for one really liked about it was his portrayal of the times as glowing and innocent, kind of quirky and clean. Which is how I remember a lot of life in the 50s. Fifteen cent comic books, roller skates, 45 records, bomb shelters in back yards, Sky King, Red Ball Jets and engineer boots, and wax lips. Ahhhh those were the days. When he covers the not-so-good and even dangerous things like X-raying children's feet in the shoe stores, watching nuclear explosions in the West, and smoking he is not mean about it or judgmental.

Apparently growing up in Des Moines, Iowa wasn't much different from Van Wert, Ohio or Monroe, Indiana. Bryson's parents were writers for the newspaper. His mother wrote a women's column and his father was a sports writer, and apparently a very good one who won awards. Other than his mother not being a housewife and being a bit "unaware" to boot, his formative years seemed to be pretty typical of middle-class America but much more fun and funny than my middle-class upbringing. In a witty way he covers social issues too like the demise of small farms, shrinking pockets of people who adhere to their “old country” cultures, disappearing local movie theaters or as he puts it on page 186, “...I saw the last of something really special. It's something I seem to say a lot these days.” And to that I must say, “Me too.”

Remember Dick and Jane books, the teacher handing you warm papers with purple ink that smelled wonderful, and paste that you could eat and not die?

AS HOT AS IT WAS YOU OUGHT TO THANK ME – Nanci Kincaid

I was talking to my friend Dawn recently about the fact that she and I both like to read southern writers. She gave me this title of hers and I picked it up last Friday and finished it Saturday - not being able to put it down and carrying it in my purse when I had to go on errands in order to steal every minute for reading. Now I need her to come for supper so we can rehash it.

So appropriate that it begins the first paragraph with a description of a loved cat, since Dawn and I are both cat lovers. The whole book takes place over a summer, and a long hot humid one it is, in small Pinetta, Florida. The setting is in a time period that Dawn and I remember well. A time with no air conditioning, soda in bottles, and ice cubes in trays with levers to break them out, mothers who were housewives, and fathers who ruled their families with stern hands.

Berry Jackson, 13 is the narrator who is longing to be pretty, and to understand her family, friends, and neighbors. Pinetta has one school, two churches, and a gas station. Everyone knows everyone else and pretty much all their business. Berry's father is the school principal and is well-respected. Her mother is a good mother but longs for something “else” and appears to be pining for the good-looking overly friendly preacher. Berry's best friend is the neighbor boy who likes to wear dresses and nail polish. Her brothers are typical boys mystifying Berry with their mischief. Just as the reader is floating along with Berry while she sorts things out, the Baptists compete with the Methodists for the most attendees and the loudest singing, a hurricane hits and the town is torn apart. Mr. Jackson and a beautiful neighbor girl are missing, a chain gang from the prison comes to town to rebuild, and Berry falls in love.

Kincaid has a wonderful style able to evoke whole days from memory of life in the 50s and 60s. She is able to make one feel cool rain on hot skin, the frustration of trying to find a cool spot on a hot and humid night, and smell burnt timbers from a bonfire. She is also able to make skin crawl with descriptions of snakes that get flooded out of their dens during hard rain. There is nothing like the prose of a southern writer with a rich vocabulary and especially this one who remembers how we thought and talked back then. Who says davenport instead of sofa today, and no one I know drinks Kool-Ade like we did then. I don't feel I can do this book justice but to say I highly recommend it. Thanks Dawn Williams, fellow feline fancier and southern literature connoisseur.

MISS PEREGRINE'S HOME FOR PECULIAR CHILDREN – RANSOM RIGGS

My sister-in-law had a copy of this title and said it was really good. I wanted her to give it to me but she passed it to my niece (her daughter) instead so I looked for a copy from an online vendor. When my copy arrived it was slightly damaged but I couldn't send it back because by then I desperately needed to read it. The vendor did give me a discount so that is fine too. Starting it last evening I read today until finished. I do have to say once started I wanted to have undisturbed reading time to the end.

Years ago I read and loved several books based on the premise of true stories told in the form of fairytales. In the beginning this book seemed to be one of those. Aging Abraham Portman has told his grandson Jacob stories about himself as an orphan fleeing “monsters” in the 1930's and living in a magical children's home where life was beautiful and children could levitate, hold fire in their hands, lift incredible weight, and other such wonderful things on an island off the coast of Scotland. Abe's story appeared to be a Holocaust story cloaked as a fairy story.

The format of the book is wonderful and the book is beautiful. The end papers and chapter divisions look like aged fabric and the chapters include old photographs of peculiar looking children. Many of the photos are downright creepy. The photographs represent characters from the book and mostly children who lived under the protection of Miss Peregrine in 1940. I liked the construction of the novel and the idea of the home being for children who were either orphaned, or abandoned and who had supernatural powers. Probably because I had a preconceived notion that this would be a supernatural thriller I felt disappointed that it was actually an alternate world time travel fantasy. But, by the time that realization set in I was hooked.

It is through the grandson Jacob that the reader follows Abe's clues to Scotland, finds the “loop” where he time travels to Miss Peregrine's orphan home. There is enough action, gore, monsters, and suspense to keep the pages turning. The characters are not only peculiar but also so creative. It is most definitely the marriage of the eerie pictures with the text that makes the book so good.

Not being familiar with Quirk publishing led me to investigate. Quirk can be found at quirkbooks.com and you will see that they were established in 2002, are “seekers of all things awesome,” and publishers of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and other such silly books that make some of us laugh and make some of us mad.

One tiny little quirk of my own got a workout though. I hate typos and situations that I can't work out appearing in a finished book. It always leads me to believe the publisher doesn't have good enough proof-readers. On page 140 Jacob has his hands tied behind his back. When asked to remove his shoes and socks and roll up his pant legs he does. I am pretty sure most of us could not do that while our hands are tied behind us. Typos included a may when it was supposed to be my, they for their, and a few others I noticed. Also a few of the pictures didn't have corresponding characters at the home and I was disappointed, like the dog with the head of a boy. Oh well. 

I can't help but still think about the kids at my old school AC that are readers of fantasy and thrillers. I hope their new librarian buys this book for them and I hope they find it, read it, and enjoy it as much as I did. 

Oh me oh my - changing focus

For the first time since I retired in June from my job as a school librarian I have to admit feeling sad, and my heart aches from missing the school kids.  Being busy every day with things that are fun, relaxing, or even doing work, but work I choose to do, is not quite dispelling my melancholy. It kills me that my (ex)-students are talking reading and good books with .... not me! I also need to change the sub-title of my book blog since I will no longer be discussing books with students. Need to think about that a bit.

But, I will not miss the politics at school, the rat race of getting everything done, trying to please cranky teachers (sorry), or trying to measure up to impossible goals from administrators.

Any adult who happens upon this blog, please remember to ask young people what they are reading. Young people have great insights and they just need to know that you care what they read and what they think about what they read. Working with young adults has been the light of my life for the past 15 years. I am still looking for the proverbial "new door" to open since closing this one.

WENCH – by Dolen Valdez

Did you know there was a resort close to Xenia, Ohio called Tawawa, where in the 1800s southern men could vacation with their slave lovers? I did a bit of research and the place did exist. There is a marker at the site of Wilberforce University that makes reference to the resort in Greene County, Ohio. At the NPR website there is an interview with the author that explains more about the resort and the reason it was chosen by southerners which had to do with accessibility for them.

Anyway, it isn't a long book and was quite surprising. Apparently Tawawa became a safe haven for Southern slave holders to meet, escape for a while, evade the prying eyes of their communities and their wives, and live for a while in ease with their slave lovers. I had never encountered this concept or similar stories before. Lizzie, Reenie, Sweet and Mawu are the slave women whose vacation lives we examine in this engaging book. We see them during their “vacations” over four years during the 1850s at which time the Fugitive Slave Act was in place. Therefore, while in Ohio, though the women are in a free state, if caught after escaping their masters they would legally have to be returned. Assured, there would be dire consequences. Also there are children or other family back in the South that they do not wish to leave behind. In some cases they really do love their men/owners too and their lives, loves, and fears are complicated.

While at the resort the women still work. They take care of their master's cabins or work in the resort. They do get to dine elegantly in nicer clothes (actually left behind by white vacationers summers before) in the evenings. Lizzie knows her master Drayle actually does love her and their children. And yet, in the South property is property, therefore their children live in the quarters separated from their mother. Drayle keeps Lizzie in the main house. One of my favorite excerpts was read by the author on NPR and follows:

He brought her books. The first word she learned to read and write was she, and it delighted her so much, she wrote it everywhere she could. She wrote it in the biscuit batter with her spoon. She dug it in the dirt out back with a stick. She sketched it in the steamy windows when it rained. When she pricked her palm with a kitchen knife, she squeezed the skin until she could write her new word out with blood on a scrap of cloth. She traced the word with her fingers on the smooth parts of his body while they laid together in the storeroom at night.

That scene to me illustrates Lizzie's intelligence and yet how it is that she came to love him.

Mawu does not fare as well as Lizzie. She hates her master/lover and there are plenty of violent scenes between them. She also knows perfectly well what it means that they are in free territory and tries to plot escape. She practices a type of Voodoo and has no use for the passivity of the Christianity that the rest ascribe to.

For a short book there is plenty to think about and examine. I recommend it.