Beguilement: The Sharing Knife #1 (Lois McMaster Bujold)

Hardcover/Audiobook

Bujold creates a new and interesting world in which the boogeyman -- or "Blight Boggles" (the name the farmers give it) or "Malice" (the lakewalker term) -- turn out to be real and more frightening than children's stories imagine.

Young Fawn is running from home with a hidden pregnancy when she's snatched by a Malice but quickly rescued by Dag, a lakewalker.  She becomes entangled in his world when she wields and "primes" one of the sharing knives employed by the lakewalkers in Malice battles.  In short order, the barely-legal Fawn and the triple-her-age widower Dag are graphically pleasuring each other  (I mean, if I were 14 I would've been SO INTO these passages...but they simply came off as unnecessary and voyeuristic and kinda yucky at this point).

The remainder of the book abandons the interesting world of Lakewalkers and Malices and focuses on getting Fawn's family on-board with the coupling.  Yawn.

C

Rules (Cynthia Lord)

Hardcover

Catherine is a normal 12-year-old, excited that summer has started and that a new girl her age is moving in next door.  But there's one potential obstacle to her summer plans: her autistic younger brother David.

Her parents assume that everyone understands and will make allowances for him, but Catherine knows that no one actually understands and is uncomfortable around David.  She loves him and takes up for him whenever necessary, but she's at the point where a home-life in which she's thought of only after her brother's needs are handled (and often she's the one tasked with handling those needs) is becoming lonely.

 She grows up fast over the course of a few weeks -- almost too fast to be believed, but I'll give that a pass.  Catherine meets Jason, a new patient at David's occupational therapy clinic.  Jason's in a wheelchair and can only communicate by touching pictures in his book with his curled fingers.  She's uncomfortable around him -- almost repulsed and frightened -- but she reaches out anyway to beef up his phrase book so he's not stuck with words that can't possibly express what he means.  For example, she makes him a "Whatever" card, finally giving him some pre-teen frustration vocabulary.  As she spends time with him in the waiting room, her revulsion gives way to actual friendship.

The author does a fantastic job of letting us watch the shift in her feelings for Jason, without ever hammering us over the head with it.  Just as Catherine had to know Jason in order to stop being uncomfortable, people would need to know David to accept him.  It's a wonderful book that I hope will find its way into the hands of many pre-teens.

B+

Conversation Piece (Bret Nicholaus and Paul Lowrie)

Hardcover

This is basically a collection of questions to get people talking.  The problem is that too many of them are similar (if you were a migrating bird, where would you fly for the winter...if you could celebrate Christmas with family and friends anywhere in the world, where would it be...), many have been asked before (if you could have any superpower, what would it be...what is your least favorite food), and several just aren't interesting/fun to answer or don't tell much about the answerer (if you could design a firework, what kind of explosion would it make....if you owned a clock shop, to what time would you set the hands). Better are the questions that make you think (what job could you not be paid enough to do...if you were blind but could see for one hour a week, how would you spend that hour), but they make up a small percentage of the questions.

What I found to be most annoying about this book is that it seems to assume that no one has had a good conversation without it.  The introduction advises us to "watch the fun begin" after reading a question aloud and tells us that we now have a "real opportunity" to have thought-provoking and fun conversations.  I don't think it's completely useless, but even Zobmondo (the "would you rather" game), with its outrageous forced-choice scenarios, has led to more enlightening and lively conversations than this book is likely to.

C-

Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)

Hardcover

As a free-thinking believer (in other words, I believe in the gospel of Christ but NOT in the extra rules of every church I've ever known), I've always respected Lewis as a kindred spirit.  In this book, he strives to define Christianity in the most basic of terms, without the denomination-specific stuff that doesn't have eternal consequence.

I was surprised to find that I did not agree with Lewis on every point, and even more surprised to realize how much this bothered me.  I almost stumbled into my old childish habit of talking myself out of what I know to be true simply because someone with more clout said something different...but I quickly got over that.  What I realized was that "mere Christianity" can be summarized in a few words: believe in the Lord, love God, love others.  An entire book is going to contain much more than that and is, by its very size, going to tip into the "overexplained Christianity" territory.

There is certainly value to what's in this book and it's clear that Lewis wrote it with pure intent, but remembering that this is not scripture but a man's honest attempt to work out his salvation on paper is absolutely necessary.

B+
Non-fiction #3

What's Your Poo Telling You? (Josh Richman and Anish Sheth, M.D.)

Hardcover

The authors seem to want to take the subject seriously, but can't resist the (literal) potty humor.  In straddling the line, they don't go far enough either way and it makes the book rather meaningless.

I never laughed out loud nor did I learn anything new.  At least it didn't waste a huge amount of my time...after all, I was just sitting there "waiting it out" anyway.

C-
Non-fiction #2

Special Topics in Calamity Physics (Marisha Pessl)

Paperback

So this is the book that is "brimming with just way too much description" that I mentioned a couple of weeks back.  I admit that I was impressed by some of the verbal pictures in the early chapters -- but since it turns out that the author refuses to allow anything to simply be itself, instead insisting on turning whatever into an adverbing adjective blahblah, the charm wore off but quick.  Oooh, ooh -- it was like being enchanted on a first date at the movies when you notice a single tear tracing down his face when the plucky dog finally dies...only to find out that he cries six times a day, sometimes just because someone cut him off in traffic (see what I did there?).

I wouldn't be at all surprised if it were to be uncovered that Pessl has been keeping a spiral notebook for jotting down apt similes and metaphors since she was in sixth grade...and that cramming every single last one into her debut novel has been her dream since.  And don't even get me STARTED on all of the annotations -- tiresome, to say the least.

OK, to the story.  Smart girl with blowhard father starts hanging out with some asshole slutty friends and their pretentious film studies teacher and things get mysterious.  And convoluted.  And I just wanted it to END.  But there were still, perpetually, more than 200 pages left.

D+ 

Danny the Champion of the World (Roald Dahl)

Hardcover

Danny idolizes his father, his only parent -- and rightly so.  His father clearly adores Danny and enjoys his company.  There's a story before bed every night, days spent learning about Dad's business (auto shop), midnight feasts, and amazing crafts like kite making and fire lantern launches.

But Dad's also a poacher. It's totally OK, though!  The man who owns the land from which Dad poaches is a real jerk who once treated Danny like the help when Danny came out to wait on him at the service station.  So, you know, if a guy's a jerk, stealing from him's fine!  Plus all of the "cool" people in town poach from him too (or at least happily cover up poaching activity): the doctor, the reverend and his wife, and even the local cop.

I'm not sure why this book left a bad taste in my mouth.  It's lightweight and good-natured, and I definitely don't have a problem "sticking it to the man."  But there was just something unseemly about the blatant thumbs-up given to thievery.  It was as though, as long as you're affable, anything you do to an asshole should be excused and even celebrated.  I'm taking this way too seriously, I know.

But anyway, it was a quick read but not a particularly memorable one.

C