I was somewhat delayed in my ability to read and review Lauren Winner’s Mudhouse Sabbath because my wife scooped it up and began reading it almost as soon as I had brought it home (Lisa offered her thoughts and reactions here). We both were attracted to the book’s design and its subject.

I have long been a fan of short well designed books. They lack the intimidation of larger tomes and invite you to pick them up and take them with you. What fun to always have something to read. Mudhouse Sabbath certainly has this vibe, with its compact design and a picture of a diner/cafe table setting on the cover. The title is also intriguing; short but thought provoking and question raising.

But the thought provoking aspect goes beyond just its design and title and into the writing. Winner writes with a laid back and conversational style, but she raises issues that are worth thinking about. The focus is on what we can, and should, do to help us focus on our spiritual lives; to think about something bigger than mundane chores and tasks. In a world whose frantic pace, and often soul deadening culture, make spiritual contemplation a challenge this is an important project.

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I am finding myself more interested in mysteries lately. I am mostly interested in mysteries based in Middle Ages England. However, I just finished reading the first book in a series by Elizabeth Peters entitled Crocodile on the Sandbank based in Victorian times in Egypt. It’s worth a look.

The book is based on an English woman, Amelia Peabody, who turns out to be an amateur archaeologist and detective. She winds up in Egypt with her traveling companion Evelyn Barton-Forbes in the middle of an archaeological dig. Amelia and Evelyn team up with Egyptologist Radcliff Emerson and his brother Walter to solve a mystery involving a mummy and its attempts to disrupt the dig.

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I know we are only seven months into the year, but I think I have just finished my “book of the year.” I started Liberation Movements on my lunch hour yesterday and then went home after work and started reading again. I ended up staying up late just to finish it. I was so enthralled that I just had to keep reading.

Here is the brief synopsis from the book flap:

The year is 1975, and one of the People’s Militia homicide investigators is on a plane out of the capital, bound for Istanbul. The plane is hijacked by Armenian terrorists, but before the Turkish authorities can fulfill their demands, the plane explodes in midair.

Two investigators—Gavra Noukas, a secret policeman, and Katja Drdova, a homicide detective—are assigned to the case. Both believe that Brano Sev, their enigmatic superior and himself a career secret policeman, is keeping them in the dark both about the details of the case and all its players and about the true motives of their investigation, but they can’t figure out why. That is, until they learn that everything is connected to a seven-year-old murder, a seemingly insignificant murder that has had far-reaching consequences.

I plan on posting an in-depth review, but let me just say that Olen Steinhauer has really honed his craft. Olen weaves in elements of spy thriller, mystery, police procedural, and literary novel into one captivating story. Brano Sev, the central character from 36 Yalta Boulevard, is once again prominent but Steinhauer adds in a number of fascinating characters; including one that may or may not have an incredible/supernatural ability. There is also a philosophical depth underneath it all as Steinhauer explores issues like how our past determines out future, free will, etc.

If for some strange reason you haven’t read Steinhauer, here is what you need to do:

- Go out and buy the previous books in the series: The Bridge of Sighs, The Confession, and 36 Yalta Boulevard.

- Order Liberation Movements.

That will give you enough time to read the first three books before LM is officially released. Trust me, these books are the perfect way to spend the last six weeks or so of summer. If you are looking for entertaining and thought provoking reads, Steinhauer is hard to beat.

Frances Hardinge is the author of Fly By Night, a novel I described as “an imaginative and creative adventure story with an interesting philosophical/historical question weaved in.” The bio on her official web page is a little vague:

Frances Hardinge is a writer who wears a black hat. Notoriously unphotographable, she is rumoured to be made entirely out of velvet. Sources close to Frances who prefer not to be named suggest that she has an Evil Twin who wears white and is hatless. This cannot be confirmed.

The folks at Harper Collins help fill in the blanks a bit:

Frances Hardinge spent her childhood rambling around in a huge, isolated old house in Kent that “wuthered” when the wind blew and that inspired her to write strange, magical stories from an early age. She studied English at Oxford University, where she was a founding member of a writer’s workshop and won a magazine short-story competition. She recently returned from a yearlong round-the-world odyssey. Fly by Night is her first novel.

Fascinated by the blending of ideas and story in a young adult book, I thought it would be interesting to ask Hardinge a few questions. Via the magic of email I was able to do just that and she graciously answered them. They are reproduced below with my questions in bold.

1. This is your first novel. How did Fly By Night (FBN) come about? Did you get an agent, make a proposal, and sign a contract, etc. or something different?

The way in which I acquired a contract was a bit more eccentric than that, and certainly came as a surprise to me. One of my best friends is the children’s author Rhiannon Lassiter. When I had written the first five chapters of Fly by Night, she told me that they were good enough to show to an editor.

I, however, was convinced that they were better suited to burial in an unmarked grave. Rhiannon became understandably tired of my spinelessness and took matters into her own hands. She kidnapped my chapters, refused to give them back, and marched off with them to her own editor. A week later, to my astonishment, I had a book contract offer.

2. Have you always seen yourself as a writer/author? Was writing a novel always something you thought you would do?

I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want intend to become an author. I still occasionally stumble across my first literary efforts, many of which tend decidedly towards the grotesque.

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I have held for sometime now that if there is a group of people in the country you can safely attack and ridicule without fear of a media backlash it is conservative Christians.  Ensconced as most of them are in their wealthy, urban, liberal cocoons, the media approaches people of faith as if they were aliens - strange and threatening.

Watching the news, reading the paper, or listening to NPR it is not uncommon to hear terms like theocracy, dangerous extremists, and intolerant minority tossed around rather freely in reference to politically active Christians.  The so called Religious Right is one of, if not THE, most popular bogeyman of the commentariat.

Well, apparently campaign consultant and blogger Patrick Hynes had had enough off this nonsense.  Tired of seeing this straw man regularly trotted out, and of seeing pundits downplay and dismiss the groups’ real importance and impact, Hynes wrote a book: In Defense of the Religious Right (henceforth IDRR).  In it he aims to expose many of the myths - and to undermine many of the ridiculous associated stereotypes - about this much discussed group of voters.  

Given its popularity, and frequent use, Hynes decided to accept the term Religious Right, but rather than allow the liberal talking heads and radical activists to paint conservative Christians as a threat to the country, he marshals demographic and polling data that reveals them to be well within the mainstream of American opinion.

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***The following review was writen by my wife Lisa. She stole the book from me when I brought it home, so I will post my thoughts on the book once I have finished it. ***

Lauren Winner first struck a chord in me with her tactile little book Mudhouse Sabbath. Liking my coffee as much as I do, and being very visual, the book - which has a picture of a diner table and a cup of coffee on the front cover - grabbed my interest. It did not disappoint.

I have struggled myself with a switching of religious upbringings, which this book addresses, and then some. But its appeal to me stems largely from my wanting a rich and full experience of God not just in the realm of reading his word and prayer but things I can “hang my hat on.” I like being tactile. I want tradition to wrap me up into Gods’ holiness, to quietly be reminded to seek and look for him in daily reverences.

Coming from a background where this was not just a requirement but the only way to find one’s holiness and deliverance into the Kingdom of God, I have spent more than half of my life pushing away any traditions at all. Now having read this, and the place I find myself in life (wishing I had some traditions), I see a thinly veiled security in her looking to Judaism to bring depth to her Christian walk. I think she hits a chord in all of us in wanting a daily experience to bring us closer to God in all we do. But it comes at a price.

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Dave over at Faith in Fiction had some interesting comments while discussing The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show. According to Dave, the novel’s exploration of the role of mythology and tradition in one’s faith sheds light on the current evangelical church:

It underscores–if it needed highlighting yet again–the particular way that modern American evangelicals have somehow rid themselves of any sort of lasting mythology. And not even mythology, but really any link to the historical church. The liturgies, the hymns, the Holy days that passed unchanged through generations fell out of favor in recent decades, replaced with, really, nothing tangible.

Dissection of the current church feels more like poking fun at old yearbook photos, (ie, Wasn’t it funny when we all thought Carmen’s “The Champion” was the coolest thing out there? Wasn’t it neat when we all said that prayer with Jabez in it?) than some confrontation with anything of much lasting power. Like much of the culture around it, church tried to be relevant by simultaneously being disposable. “Don’t like it this week? Don’t worry, you’ll find something that resonates.”

In either scenario, believers are left with the same difficult question: What’s real? What’s True?

Is it better to have 2000-years worth of jerry-rigged tradition that sometimes seems to be held together with little more than a string of beads or a vacuum in which apparently waits the gleaming Son of God, but which often seems more like the void of space–boundless, silent, cold, and intimidating?

Continuing in my quest to read about important battles, I read Agincourt by Juliet Barker. It is a superb read with excellent background information and good descriptions of the Agincourt Campaign.

Barker essentially breaks her book into three parts: The Road to Agincourt, The Agincourt Campaign, and The Aftermath of the Battle. Obviously, the major section is the Agincourt Campaign itself. However, Barker spends a good deal of time on the first part. She covers the reasons for the Campaign - mainly that Henry V claimed the French throne. She does an excellent job in describing Henry and how his years prior to the crown shaped him into the king he was to become. In fact, her descriptions border on adoration.

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I am not an expert on George Saunders nor am I particularly knowledgeable about short story writers. But, as readers of this site know well, that has never stopped me from pontificating about anything. My previous exposure to Mr. Saunders came through the enjoyable children’s book The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip and a few stories from Pastoralia.

But as I am always on the lookout for short and interesting new reads - and those with intriguing designs and illustrations -, I recently picked up The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil and last week I finally managed to read it. I have to say I was disappointed. It was clever in parts and I chuckled at the dialog and a couple of Phil’s speeches. But overall it was just a silly story that made fun of the human tendency toward cowardice, obfuscation, and that great bogeyman of the multiculturalist “fear of the other.”

I had vague recollections of hearing good things about it around the the Internets and Saunders has a impressive reputation. Perhaps, because of this my expectations were too high. I was looking for biting satire or insightful humor. Instead, I found it all rather odd - entertaining to some extent but odd.

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What makes a book a children’s book (or young adult, etc.)? Is it the publisher; the style; the nature of the content? I have never been sure where that line is exactly. The Flame Tree was published by Simon and Schuster young adult but I thought it as compelling as most “adult” novels. I on occasion take flak for enjoying this young adult fare and wonder if many people aren’t aware of the quality that is out there. I am not denying that there are young adult and children’s books that wouldn’t be enjoyable or challenging to adults, but there are also books in this genre that are highly entertaining and even thought provoking.

One such example is Frances Hardinge’s debut Fly By Night. Fly by Night is an imaginative and creative adventure story with an interesting philosophical/historical question weaved in. Despite this being Hardinge’s first book, the story moves at a good pace and the philosophical element rarely disrupts the adventure. The writing is witty and her descriptions of the characters and settings are poetic and quite often subtly wise. What a joy to read a story that is fun, mysterious, and thoughtful all at the same time!

Clearly I wasn’t the only one who enjoyed the book as it recently won The Branford Boase Award which is awarded annually for “the most promising first novel to a first-time writer of a book for young people.”

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