Last week I finished:
I haven't read a Judy Blume book since Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret in about fourth grade. I knew she had a couple of recent adult books, but I'd kind of forgotten about them until In the Unlikely Event came across my desk at work. My interest was piqued, and I started reading it right away. This is the story, based on actual events, of how three commercial plane crashes in Elizabeth, New Jersey, in the 1950s changed the lives of family, friends, and strangers. There are a lot of characters in this one (there's a helpful guide up front), and the action moves from person to person, though the narration remains third person omniscient throughout. I enjoyed this book immensely. It was my reading sweet spot. I love historical fiction with great characters, and this one had that in spades. The writing and plotting were swift, and it really kept me reading. I highly recommend this one to all. My rating: 5 stars.
I believe A Spool of Blue Thread is my third Anne Tyler read, and it's definitely my favorite. It has the quirky characters that Back When We Were Grownups (see my review here) and Clock Dance (see my review here) have, but it also has a depth of plot and characters that they lack. This is the story of the Whitshank family, present day and past; their oddities, quirks, and foibles; and their house, built by the patriarch's father. Several times, I thought ah, so this is what the book is about only to find as I kept listening that it was just a subplot. I'm not a fan of that kind of uncertainty in a book. But although I found the structure of the book a little sloppy, overall, I enjoyed listening to it a lot. Tyler does have a way with quirky characters, and while her books don't tend to be as serious as I generally prefer, I do find them fun. And I found this one even more fun than past reads. My rating: 4 stars.
The next three reviews are for books read for Cybils award judging and represent my opinions. My reviews do not necessarily reflect the opinions of other panelists.
My first middle-grade Cybils read was Never Caught, the Story of Ona Judge. This is the young reader's edition of Never Caught : The Washington's Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge. In the late 1700s, one of George and Martha Washington's 200 slaves, Ona Judge, walked out of the president's home never to return. Although she was located living as a free woman in Philadelphia, she could not be persuaded to return, and nothing much was done to capture her and return her to the Washingtons. It's not quite the harrowing story I expected. I have major quibbles with this book. First, it would seem the only source document the author has to tell Ona's story is a newspaper article she was interviewed for in her later life. In it, she does not describe the escape or years since in detail, nor is she even able to tell which year it happened, only that she does not regret her choice even in light of the poverty she suffered as a free black woman. There are primary source documents in the form of letters sent to and from President Washington, to tell his side of the story. Which leads to my main quibble: there is much editorializing in this book. Due to its lack of material, it should have been written as a fiction book. Throughout, the author tells her readers again and again how evil slavery is, how wrong the Washingtons were, how mistreated slaves were, how immoral it was to buy and own slaves. (Who today doesn't agree?) It was so heavy-handed I cringed and so full of personal opinion it cannot honestly be called nonfiction. Unless, of course, the standards are lower for children's nonfiction, but I sincerely hope they aren't. This one falls into the category of books that commits the cardinal sin of historians: you cannot judge the past using the criteria of today. It's intellectually dishonest. A much more interesting take of this material for this grade level would have been the question Was Washington a bad man because he owned slaves or a good man in spite of owning slaves? Overall, although I was interested in the story, and I learned a few things I did not know about the years leading up to the Civil War, I found the writing mediocre and the nonadherence to the definition of nonfiction troublesome. My rating: 2.5 stars.
David Macaulay's Crossing on Time: Steam Engines, Fast Ships, and a Journey to the New World is a bonanza of information of the history of steam ships, how they work, and how they're built. Inspired by his own trip as a child crossing the Atlantic on the SS United States in the late 1950s, Macaulay examines the history of steam ships, explains the inner workings, and provides numerous drawings of ships from the 1800s to the mid-1900s. This history leads up to the ship that carried Macaulay and his family to America in 1957. There is a gigantic fold-out cross-section of the SS United States in the middle of the book, and boy is it something. I spent time pouring over it just like a little kid. It was fascinating. Although some of the more technical parts of the book (there's a lot of time spent on pistons and whatnot), were a little less interesting to me, I still think an older child (it's categorized on Amazon as being for grades 5-9) will be able to follow the descriptions. I found this one fascinating, and for a kid interested in ships, I think this book would be a hit. I was impressed. My rating: 4 stars.
I'm sure I haven't read a biography of Emily Dickinson since I was a kid, so I was excited to find Becoming Emily: The Life of Emily Dickinson on my list of Cybils reads. This book expertly takes us through Emily's life, describing her family, whom she was very close to all her life; her home; her school years; and her hermitlike ways as her desire to spend more and more time writing poetry deepened. By today's standards, her life was a small one. Added to the restrictions of the day on unmarried women, she often found herself homebound by her own illnesses and in caretaking for her parents and sister during their illnesses. I was interested to find she was a big fan of Jane Eyre and also the poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. I was also fascinated to find that upon her death her sister hired her husband's mistress to prepare manuscripts of Dickinson's poems for publication (something Dickinson was never interested in during her life), but then a war broke out over the poems, some being kept by the family, and some by the mistress. It's stunning that the poems ever saw publication, all things considered. This book is categorized for grade level 5-7, but I would have thought it was for a much older audience (cover illustrations aside). I liked this one, and although it wasn't flashy (Emily, after all, wasn't flashy) I learned a lot. My rating: 4 stars.
Today I'll begin:
I'm kind of excited for this one.
My evening reads:
The poetry is sliding in order to get through as many children's books as possible before they're due back to the library. The decorating book is surprisingly slow going. And learning about wildebeests? Not so much my thing.
My current audiobook:
Only, what, 20 years late?
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