Collected Miscellany

I was inspired by Wild Magic to check out more books by Cat Weatherill so I started with Barkbelly. I am not sure if it was my mood or the style of this particular work but it didn’t have quite the same – ahem – magic as I had hoped.

It is creative and again clearly influenced by oral storytelling but if feels a bit more like episodes tied together rather than a seamless story. The hook – an orphaned wooden boy seeking to find his place in the world – was interesting, and the story has some well done ingredients, but it just never quite “took off” for me.

Here is the teaser from the publisher:

One silver-starry night, a shiny, wooden egg falls from a flying machine high in the air . . . down, down, down through the midnight sky . . . down to the small village of Pumbleditch, where Barkbelly is born. Where he’s the only wooden boy. And where he’s the cause of a tragic accident.

Suddenly, Barkbelly’s only choice is to flee for his life—to run. As he tries to escape his haunting past, he faces extraordinary adventures and dangers. Every wooden step leads Barkbelly toward the dark and startling truth about where he comes from and the burning question of where he really belongs. With deliciously imaginative storytelling, Cat Weatherill creates an utterly magical world—and one wooden boy who’s sure to melt readers’ hearts.

More of my take below. (Some spoilers involved)

Read the rest of this entry »

No matter what genre of style you prefer, non on expects every book to be perfect. But there are those books that come along that remind you – yes, this is why I keep reading.

This happens frequently enough for me that I keep going back to young adult fiction. The latest example is Leepike Ridge by N.D. Wilson.

I remember noting this book, and the positive reviews, at the time it was released – and I think I even added it to my Amazon Wish List – but never got around to reading it.

But when The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards came out this year it reminded me I wanted to read this author and figured I would start at the beginning before moving on the 100 Cupboards books.

I am glad I did as it turned out to be a great adventure with great characters and a unique author’s voice. A great read for any age.

Here is the basic plot stolen shamlessly from the School Library Journal:

Eleven-year-old Tom Hammond lives with his widowed mother in a windblown old house chained to the top of a gigantic rock. One night, unable to sleep, he heads down to the stream that borders their property, where he has left a heavy piece of refrigerator packing foam. What starts out as aimless drifting down quiet water turns deadly when Tom’s foam slab feeds into the rougher mountain water and he is pulled under a rock, ending up in an underwater cavern.

More of my thoughts below.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jure Fiorillo’s Great Bastards of History: True and Riveting Accounts of the Most Famous Illegitimate Children Who Went on to Achieve Greatness is about the most famous illegitimate children who went on to achieve greatness.  Fiorillo primarily covers famous illegitimate children from England, France, and the United States, with a few from other countries.   These figures are discussed in chronological order, beginning with William the Conqueror and ending with Fidel Castro with many interesting persons in between.

Fiorillo’s basic argument is that these figures who were born out-of-wedlock tried to overcome the societal boundaries put up against illegitimate children.  This was true for many of the people, but not all (their success in overcoming the social stigma is dependent on when and where they were born).  I do not get the idea that many of them suffered too much for being illegitimate – sure some were denied higher social positions, but they made up for this in their success in other areas.  For example, although Leonardo Da Vinci was denied a vocation in his father’s field of work, he succeeded beyond all measure in his other pursuits.

I have read some reviews that have questioned Fiorillo’s choices – why she choose one person from a time period rather than another – but I do not think this is an issue.  I take this book as a general overview of pivotal illegitimates from history (although a very select group from limited points on the globe).  One reviewer questions why she choose Alexander Hamilton over Thomas Paine – the argument being that Paine had more of an impact on the American Revolution than Hamilton did.  However, I would argue Hamilton had a more profound effect on early American government than Paine did, thus a more lasting impact.

Finally, Fiorillo’s style of writing is easy to follow and understand.  She writes clearly and concisely.  The amount of information that is given is great considering the limited space for each person.

I just finished the latest book in John Maddox Roberts’ SPQR series that chronicles the adventures of Roman Senator Decius Caecilius Metellus during the last days of the Roman Republic.  Roberts’ latest novel is entitled SPQR XIII: The Year of Confusion: A Mystery (The SPQR Roman Mysteries). 

Here is a brief description of the book’s plot from its publisher:

Caius Julius Caesar, now Dictator of Rome, has decided to revise the Roman calendar, which has become out of sync with the seasons. As if this weren’t already an unpopular move, Caesar has brought in astronomers and astrologers from abroad, including Egyptians, Greeks, Indians and Persians. Decius is appointed to oversee this project, which he knows rankles the Roman public: “To be told by a pack of Chaldeans and Egyptians how to conduct their duties towards the gods was intolerable.” Not long after the new calendar project begins, two of the foreigners are murdered. Decius begins his investigations and, as the body count increases, it seems that an Indian fortuneteller popular with patrician Roman ladies is also involved.

As with the other books in this series, Roberts does a masterful job of developing the plot and characters of this latest mystery.  You find out clues and facts as Decius finds out – I like this style because it keeps you guessing (whereas some books cover events that the main character does not know about until later in the book). 

Roberts continues to flesh out the relationship between Decius and Caesar.  Decius was never really comfortable with Caesar as Caesar rose in power.  In this book, Decius is even more wary of Caesar because Caesar continues to grab more power and make more questionable decisions.  Roberts describes this uneasy relationship wonderfully.

Roberts has the ability to bring the era to life in his books.  For example, he describes the sights and sounds of ancient Rome – what the Roman baths were like and how they were used by the Romans.  His descriptions bring a good visual picture in your mind.  In the scope of Decius’ investigation, Roberts also touches on the mundane things of life like how people travelled from one part of the city to another – the wealthy preferred to be carried in litters while the commoners walked.

As with his other books, this latest book by Roberts will keep you guessing who the culprits are until the very end.

For some odd reason my kids love to visit Barnes & Noble. They love to hang out on the stage in the children’s section or play with the train set. My son in particular likes two story stores but that is just because he loves to ride on escalators.

The problem with this is that it only leads to trouble on my part (as if I don’t already have a book problem, right?). And it can be frustrating too. Standing there in the Children’s/Young Adult section one is tempted by the ever more creative and interesting books that are out there for young people. And the kids always beg to stay longer.

It was on one such trip that I noticed Wild Magic by Cat Weatherill on an end-cap and made a note to put it on the wish list. Due to financial constraints that we – like so many – are feeling I avoided the temptation to buy it and instead checked it out from the library (sorry B&N, publishers & authors).

Having read it, however, I can cheerfully suggest you purchase it should you have the necessary discretionary funds to do so (yikes, starting to sound like a lawyer here). It is a creative and intelligent mix of myth, mystery and coming of age stories.

Here is the publishers blurb:

The Pied Piper had his reasons for enchanting the children of Hamelin and stealing them away—ones rooted in a deep history of wild magic. Mari and her brother Jakob are among the children who followed the piper’s song, and they are now trapped in a beautiful but cruel world inhabited by a horrid Beast. They must remain there until he finds the right child, the chosen one, who can lift his century old curse. But the price of breaking the curse is a terrible one. This fast-paced, richly fantastical continuation of a familiar tale is a powerful story of a family torn apart by tragedy, and the magical adventure that heals them.

More of my take below.

Read the rest of this entry »

I finished James Bradley’s The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War a few days ago and I have been thinking about the book ever since.  He writes about an ugly period of our country’s foreign policy – when the United States joined the ranks of the colonial powers by its acquisition of the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and Cuba (Cuba for a brief period).  Our leaders at the time cloaked our colonization in terms of helping the natives to become civilized and then giving them back their sovereignty once they were civilized.

The book centers around the 1905 cruise led by Secretary of War William Howard Taft that visited the Phillipines, Japan, China, and Korea and that had a secret agenda – Taft was ordered by President Theodore Roosevelt to make an unofficial treaty with Japan that encouraged the Japanese to adopt their own “Monroe Doctrine” for Asia.  Bradley claims that this secret treaty caused the Japanese to be more aggressive in their foreign affairs and eventually led to war with the United States (Bradley never explains how this treaty led to the events of World War II in the Pacific – there were too many other events that occurred between the signing and the beginning of World War II).

I do think that Bradley is dead-on with his criticism of Taft – he knew practically nothing of the countries he was visiting, but he was our lead diplomat in the tour.  In trying to project a strong American image, Taft came across at times as clueless.  Bradley states that Taft was sent because he was a front man and “yes” man for Roosevelt (apparently Roosevelt was the de facto Secretary of State and Secretary of War).

Read the rest of this entry »

The World’s Bloodiest History: Massacre, Genocide, and the Scars They Left on Civilization by Joseph  is not a book about the happiest of topics, but it does provide some interesting insights.  The book has examples of some highlights, or should I say lowlights, of human history – how we so easily kill those who are different from us.

The book begins with the Roman sacking of Carthage in 146 BCE and ends with the massacre of Bosnian Muslims by Christian Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1995. Cummins covers many of the largest atrocities committed in history, but he also describes some not so well-known.  They all share the common link of being turning points in history.  For example, Cummins mentions the massacre of Cheyenne Indians (mainly women, children, and elderly) by Colorado militia in 1864.  He argues that this action triggered Indian uprisings and attacks across the West - more importantly it convinced the various Indian tribes that they could not trust the whites (they had signed a peace treaty and wrongly assumed they were safe).  After this, some of the worst fighting in the history of warfare between Indians and whites occurred.

Read the rest of this entry »